File this under "the medium is the message": At a teeny-bop concert in Ecuador, Miley Cyrus performed the world's most incongruous rendition of Nirvana anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I say this as someone who once witnessed a violin-flute duo called Nerdvana at an Illinois summer camp talent show in the '90s.
Nirvana may have borrowed from Boston and the Pixies to craft "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but what if they delved even deeper? The sped-up video of Kurt Cobain "dancing" adds extra bounciness to this impossibly catchy mash-up.
Oh, hey you guys, anyone know of a good apartment for Frances Cobain? She's thinking downtown, a room for her mom, maybe an office. No more than $7 million, though. Eight, tops.
For some parents, raising a child alone after a partner has committed suicide is a sensitive thing. Then, as always, there is Courtney Love. Last seen recommending orgasms to the Jonas Brothers, the singer is once again in the news for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on her daughter's 16th birthday party, a suicide-themed affair that included games like a "who can look the most dead" contest. No bonus points for dressing like Kurt Cobain, as that was Frances Bean's costume:
Here's how a writer on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website decided that Courtney Love might front a reunited version of her late husband's band Nirvana this summer: First, a writer for the local alt-weekly received a random text message saying it might happen, then blogged about it. Then, the co-founder of indie record label Sub Pop, which was supposedly hosting the pioneering grunge band's reunion, posted a comment on the alt-weekly post saying "it's 100% true." A shocked music blogger blogged about the apparent confirmation, and a blogger at the Post-Intelligencer — a reader in the "Reader Blogs" section, mind you, not a newspaper staffer — followed with his own post. Since this post was on the Post-Intelligencer website, it had enough credibility to be forwarded to our tips email address. The only problem?
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Paul Anka. Maybe it is old, but I sure as shit never saw it before. Now I can't stop seeing it!
In tomorrow's Times Book Review, 2005's it-novelist Ben Kunkel reviews Everett True's Nirvana: The Biography. Though there's no doubting Kunkel's competence in the relevant literature — apparently, Heavier than Heaven is "badly marred" by the influence of she-devil Courtney Love and Come as You Are "scants [the band members'] backgrounds" — one wonders if Kurt Cobain is really the super-sensitive misunderstood wünderkind in question here:
