i was in a store called kwantum yesterday. marleen and i were looking at a carpet. while we were in the store a song with the lyrics "i want to make love - in this club" came on the the sound system. first i laughed. i thought it was funny that the music in the home goods store was talking about making love in the club. then i wondered if in the club was referring to something other than my assumption that it meant in a dance club. maybe young r&b dudes refer to their bedrooms or the kitchen as the club these days. then i wondered, "who the hell is this, and why does he have a career?" i wanted to know who the "artist" was and who was listening to him. i whipped out my handy iphone computing device, and i googled "make love in this club" and it turns out that shit tons of people listen to him. the song is by usher (featuring little jeezy), and while i am not intimately familiar with their work i can tell you that i have heard enough. i seem to recall seeing usher on a daytime talk show when i was in high school making him roughly my age, maybe a little younger, and i have come to the conclusion that he sucks meaningfully and deeply. i got a little angry that he gets to make gobs of money singing ridiculous tacky songs with a sidekick named jeezy. i know i sound like the crotchety old man saying "damn kids and their crazy music!!!" it's not like that. i don't think the music is crazy at all. i truly believe that the music he puts out is of low quality. the music is overproduced to mask the fact that its quality is so low, and for some reason the demographic that he is selling to is too uninformed to listen to something better. i find it difficult to imagine that in this age of the ubiquitous internet that anyone in his target demographic is uninformed, but that can be the only explanation for this crazy train of pain i will call the rise of the house of usher. it is truly mystifying to me.
as we were leaving the store i was bitching about usher's crappiness to marleen, and she pointed out that ushers is attractive and that he's a really good dancer. that is more than i can say for almost all of his female counterparts in the world of music directed at the top 40 youth of america. most of them can't sing, dance or make a sandwich, but they look good in underwear. at least he can dance as well as being a fine specimen of man.

that is all for now,
jim

p.s. usher, i may be mistaken, but i believe that if you are doing it in a club it is not called making love. it's fucking.