He wears his pants one leg at a time like everyone else, but when he puts his pants on, he makes Gold records.

A glimpse into my friendships.

This article is a small email conversation a friend and I had this afternoon (posted in its entirety with his permission), and with his name retained out of respect.

On a cold winters afternoon in the mid-west at 1:48 pm, Feb 3rd, 2010...

"Lately, I have perused the book of faces only to find the usual signs of sociocultural apocalypse. References to typical media whores abound, unsurprisingly. Whichever pop-culture darling it happens to be, know this: time in the spotlight in the modern era is as fleeting as a desert rainstorm; the initial impact provides a striking anomaly to the landscape, but as quickly as the anomaly appears, it is gone, leaving once again a barren wasteland with no marked signs of the dichotomy.

Where am I going with this, you might ask? Well, chill out you tumbling, impatient dickweed--I will get to it. Everywhere I turn, I see people referencing so-called "artists" like Lady Gaga (hardly a lady in the sense of etiquette or in the most literal sense of gender) or the latest foul-mouthed, brain-dead rapper. The former claims to be presenting itself as some sort of satire of fame and the latter presents himself as fame embodied. I see no satire. Therefore, I see no difference between the former and the latter. They are the same creature, so wrapped up in the ideas of themselves, they are willing to do anything to maintain relevance.

The problem is that neither has relevance. The only difference between them is that one has an excuse for the behaviour. Which makes the rap "artist" at the very least, honest. But I will make no concession for someone who is honest in this case, either, because someone with the ability to influence the vast number of stupid Americans (of which there are plenty) should never be allowed to do so when their head is lodged so far up their ass.

So I launch an indictment of the two: the Lady Gaga and the Kanye. Both are terrible, terrible individuals, so much so, that even the most charitable of intentions is most certainly still a thin veneer covering a media-whoring popularity contest.

These people, nay ideological nightmares, merely provide the elevator music to Hell. They continue to plunge our contemporaries into an abyss filled with shallow benchmarks of ignorance. The truly depessing thing is that our culture continues to gobble it up, growing obese with the pop-culture feces that these people continue to shit out. And you can bet that it will continue.

I arrived at this rant after monitoring the musings of people on facebook. They were trying to determine who their celebrity doppelganger would be. But my question is this: shouldn't they be more concerned with blazing their own trails? Shouldn't they be concerned with other things than the latest issue of US Weekly? Shouldn't they abandon taking endless drunken photos in which they utilize the "skinny pose?" I am disgusted. Or too idealistic. Art for art's sake is dead. Ingenuity and genuinness are dead. The phrase "like" should never be used as a preposition. I see the world for what it is and I do not like it. In contrast the world sees me and shares mutual feelings."

After re-reading it I told him to write a book, asked if I may post this on my blog, that I laughed loudly, and also that my doppelganger was Serpico - then I completed my response with the following:

"Your email itself is art for arts sake. The idea of art for art's sake has never existed amongst the popular – ergo, the scarcity makes it sacred. We are the Sufis and fools that dance and paint and write and sing it to the world. It’s like Kerouac said, “the only people for me are the mad ones”. This 'art for art' is yet not dead, for we mad ones carry it within our very essence!"