Remember the WAP song? Remember how conservative snowflakes lost their minds about it[1]? It was funny. P-word is, uh, female genitalia. Classic.
One facet of it has been rattling around in my head for a while, and it’s a silly little facet that doesn’t really matter, but this is my blog and it’s been quiet lately, so I’m going to do a brief lukewarm take on it.
This gif has nothing to do with the post. But it’s a very underrated gif that deserves more time in the sun.
Fight me. I am Galdolf.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh right! Ben Shapiro, male masculine penis-having big boy man, was vewwy upset and responded hilariously. He also demonstrated what real music was, and in a move that may have actually upset me more than any amount of lightly-oiled in-your-face Cardi B rear-endal voluptuousity could achieve, he very nearly spoiled Les Misérables for me.
Now, I like Les Mis. I couldn’t say why. The story doesn’t exactly resonate with me, since I’m not a lower-class Frenchman from 1830. But it’s stirring. It put to music a sort of ideology of fighting back instead of giving in to unfairness that I suppose helped turn Little Hatboy into a social justice warrior, even though Little Hatboy identified more with Gavroche than he did with Valjean or Thénardier[2]. To this day I cannot watch this video without weeping, although that’s only about 25% to do with the song. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables will forever be right up there with Khe Sanh, Brothers in Arms and The Green Fields of France on my anti-war anthems list.
So I was a bit disgusted to see Shapiro singing Stars, the main theme of…
Oh, right.
Yeah, I guess if you’re going to be a contard with a deep emotional connection to a character in a musical, it might as well be the cruel and morally inflexible authoritarian and (literal) son of a whore whose inability to show the merest scrap of humanity and mercy is such that – when faced with the choice between doing what is right and doing what is legal – he commits suicide rather than accept he’s the bad guy. The ultimate symbol of fragile ideology and absence of moral character.
Makes sense.
Anyway, that was how I learned to stop worrying about Shapiro liking a musical I like, and went back to laughing at what a weenie he is.
Also, today is my big brother’s birthday and he has always been a far better singer than I am.
Big brothers always are.
Happy birthday, Jim! Dare I say, WAP-py birthday?
No.
That would be wrong.
[1] Fun fact, the last time I talked about WAP was last August and we had a plumbing renovation underway. Well, yesterday the dude came by to put in the last tiny plastic plug they’d forgotten to put in, a bit of negligence that was filling our front room with the smell of Wet Ass Sewage, and put the cover back on the water heater. So they’re done! It took them less than a year, people! Actually I think Aaron was the only person I was still actively following up about this with, but there you go. Closure. And by “closure,” I mean “of the sewage stankhole.”
[2] Another fun fact, I very nearly auditioned for the part of Gavroche when I was a kid and Les Mis was casting an Australian troupe. I didn’t, in the end, because I was too shy. But my family still give me shit about it. Hardly seems fair.
And then, finally, a medley of Final Fall of Man characters (rather too 21st Century pop-cultural in places, and Çrom says where’s instead of whereas at one point, but it’s still good):
