LMFAO, ES&D

Hi, I’m Meathead. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there seems to be a whole lot of really shitty music being made lately. I mean, I used to think there was a lot of shitty music back in the 90s, but it’s gotten to the point where I’m actually starting to miss the Spin Doctors. I yearn for the days when the worst reaction I’d have to bad song on the radio would simply be “this sucks, change it,” rather than nearly causing a fifteen-car pileup on the freeway as I try in vain to stifle vomit from spraying from every orifice in my body while frantically scrambling for any button that will make the terrible sounds go away. The bar has been lowered so much that it’s now somewhere near the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Hootie and the Blowfish, please come spare us from Fall Out Boy and Soulja Boy and I promise I’ll never again make fun of your bland, middle-of-the-road non-rock that’s destined to be played as background music at Applebee’s.

One unintentionally good side effect of today’s state of music, as we crash head-first into the brick wall at the dead end of western civilization, is that it’s getting easier to spot these worthless hipster pieces of shit early on. Gone are the days when you’d see a band’s promotional picture or album cover, scratch your head and say, “Are these guys any good? Should I risk spending my money on this?” Today, thanks to the magic of douchebaggery and smug self-satisfaction, you can almost always tell if a band is going to suck without even subjecting yourself to a single note of their music, and you don’t need an iPhone app to do it. All you need do is to look at them.

For a textbook example of this concept, you need look no further than the ever-so-hip musical duo that actually goes by the name LMFAO (pictured at left). I can’t even begin to describe the feelings of heartache and despair that filled my entire being when I first became aware that someone had actually named their band (for lack of a better word) after a motherfucking chat room acronym. WTF. BRB, I’m going to be AFK for a few while I go SMITB (stab myself in the brain). IDK, my BFF Jill? Seriously, there is no justification for this shit. It’s not cool, and not the kind of “not cool” that’s cool in its not-coolness. It’s just fucking stupid. This is the ditch by the side of the road where irony has been mugged, raped, stabbed repeatedly and left to die.

A crucial part of humor, and a part that flies miles over the heads of 99 percent of this “epic fail” generation of internet users, is knowing when to let a joke die. Stop while it’s still funny (assuming it was even funny to begin with, and odds are it wasn’t). This whole “look how intentionally dorky we look” joke officially stopped being funny at around, say, Weird Al Yankovic’s second or third album. Yeah, I know, Kanye obviously never got the memo either. Well, consider this the memo. It’s not funny, and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably still getting used to the feeling of having pubes.

Now, on the off chance that I misjudged these guys and that they’re actually very talented and worth listening to, which is comparable to the off chance that I’ll sprout a nipple on my arm in the next five minutes, I decided to give one of their YouTube videos a spin. This was their one chance to change my mind and prove me wrong. I mean, this would have to be some really mind-blowing music to make up for being called “LMFAO” and looking the way they do. I decided to watch what apparently is the video for their song “I’m In Miami Trick.” What is it with this Miami shit? Is there something inherently funny about Miami that I’m just not getting? Should I just laugh my fucking ass off at the mere mention of Miami? If we’re just naming cities in Florida, why not Tampa or Fort Lauderdale? What about Tallahassee? It has the word “ass” right in it!

(Edit: I just noticed that Universal Music Group has disabled embedding of the aforementioned music video. Can’t imagine why! Anyway, I’ve substituted an equally terrible LMFAO “song” in its place. Enjoy.]

Allow me to quote a comment from the page for “I’m In Miami Trick”:

Some people have no sense of humor? I guess.

Funny. Trashy. Garbage? Maybe…but they *know* it’s garbage…which is something 90% of the music today lacks.

But I doubt Little Dnick would know anything about all that.

Cop part at around 3:30 had me lmmfao!

Okay, so let me try to wrap my head around this San Andreas faulty logic. I don’t have a sense of humor because I don’t like trashy garbage, but I should like it because the people making the trashy garbage are aware that it’s trashy garbage and continue to make it anyway, with some bizarre, misplaced sense of pride in the fact. No. Logic does not work that way. Not only is LMFAO’s gimmick not funny, but the fact that they’re in on it makes it even worse. Case in point: R. Kelly’s magnum opus, Trapped In The Closet (Chapters 1-12), which is one of the most unintentionally funny artistic endeavors in recent history. The humor hinges solely on the fact that everyone but R. Kelly is aware of how ridiculous it is. We’re laughing at him, not with him. Once he got in on the joke and released Chapters 13-22, there was no reason to keep watching. There was never any reason to pay attention to LMFAO in the first place. Of course, they remain blissfully unaware of this fact.

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