I don't know what you think about it, because I don't have a gizmo planted in your head that tells me where you're coming from, but I've grown mighty weary of the Taylor Swift phenomenon.
It's strange because I didn't feel quite the same way when Smiley Silage was coming at me with eyes like a wrecking ball, presumably intent on ruining my solid marriage with her handsomeness and ability to get me horny dressed in her all-American dollar bill onesie. Suddenly, I knew instantly what Jagger meant by that lyric at the end of "Start Me Up" -- the one about the dead man coming to life again. If I had a seven year itch now, I'd probably have to settle for a scratch-and-sniff card, like the ones they gave out at the John Waters Polyester film festival, so many plastic years ago. Odorama, indeed. Estrus never smelled so good.
Taylor Swift doesn't move me that way. I don't get it. At best she reminds of a young lady I met as a temp at a money-market agency in Concord, New Hampshire, in the much-coveted '80s transition to our current sense of reality. Girl next door, sweet and virginal, but you knew that her liking Bryan Adams to your Dylan fixation was a terminal cancer for the relationship. There would be no seven years for this itch to come to fruition.
And yet, dig this, man, everyday last year Taylor Swift was featured or mentioned in The Guardian. Every day. 256 articles in 2023. This past Sunday I trembled in anticipation of when the TV network would show her, with her girlfriends, in a privileged box, a reaction shot of Taylor concerned or ecstatic after an execution on the field by one of her beloved Kansas City Chiefs. With about 30 seconds left in the half the game play-by-play guy told the viewer that poor Taylor had come "10,000 miles" (it was actually 5500 miles) to see something not pretty so far, the Chiefs behind. What would she do? the camera shot seemed to ask. Involuntarily, I had a Macaulay Culkin Home Alone look on my face. I was empathizing with Taylor. And when Hall of Fame Tight End Travis Kelce of the Chiefs pushed his Hall of Fame coach, Andy Reid, frustrated by something, it almost felt supernatural -- like Taylor had stuck her pins and needles in his voodoo ass. Nothing would have been a greater publicity stunt than having her man score the winning touchdown.
Taylor featured in all the televised NFL playoff games her KC Chiefs were in. We couldn't, we shouldn't, keep our eyes off her reaction to unfolding events. The ref blew the whistle -- a frisson swept her facial features!
It made me wonder: Does Taylor Swift secretly rule the world? Is she Barbie? Is she an AI? I'm a lifelong pacifist, but if you claim Taylor's a feminist I might have to punch you in the face. I'm already looking to join the NRA.
Consider: No one has had her pull since former choir-boy-broke-bad Joseph Kony drew hundreds of thousands of American children into a moral rage and saw them form an online army to chase him down in the Congo, where he hadn't been for three years. Now that's some hoodoo. But even K wasn't in the paper every day. Winning awards for brutality one day. Black handsomeness the next. He wanted to accept the award at the Oscars had the Ugandan (hey, remember Idi?) film, Kony: Order From Above won the foreign film award. Purportedly, He would have said, "You like me. You like me." Children would have clapped 'like little hands that gleefully laud a magic show and thrill for more.' (h/t early me).
Consider all the coverage (whatever that means) Taylor got for the cheapshot deepfake but shallow videos of her naked and sexing. Outrageou smut and we felt for her. You don't really get it, though. Dialing in on her body as an indiscreet object of desire doesn't immediately seem like the obvious thing to do. (When Madonna sang that time "Like A Virgin" and humped the floor in a white dress, well...) But so much was written you ache for Taylor's reputation. How can 'they' do this to her.
Consider -- nay, digest -- that she has had 50 (!) hit songs, according to Variety magazine, and that her number one hit is that filfy bar of soap, "You Belong With Me (2008)." I dunno, imagine if Dylan's number one hit of all time was "Wigwam." Makes you want to keep lookin for that lost shaker of salt, doesn't it?
Consider that Taylor and Smiley Silage won awards at the 2023 Grammy's. Are you still considering that? I myself can't take much more. WTF is going on?
Consider that Time magazine made Taylor the "Person of the Year" for 2023. Reminded me of that scene when Jeff Bridges (hip Lebowski) looks in the Time Man of the Year mirror in the wheelchair-bound Lebowski's office (The Dude's there to collect recompense for home invaders having pissed on his area rug, thinking he was the rich guy ) and he goes, Hmmm, in the mirror. When you consider The Dude as Man of the Year, it seems suddenly do-able -- especially if he had Taylor's publicist. Trump has been Person of the Year, and now he's been nominated for two Nobel Peace Prizes. Don't tell me some new Hell's not here.
Last week, some crazed f*cker suggested that Taylor Swift, as Taylor Swift, could swing the 2024 presidential election. First you imagine Taylor wiff Joe. A loooong silence in the heart ensues. Then you see her liking DJ touching her vagina -- and everything. Longer silence. Has the lesser-of-two-evils choice come down, way down to this: asking Taylor to be a swinger? What a ploy! The Guardian article even invites European academic Desiree Schmuck to weigh in? Schmuck? What would Travis Kelce, her current boyfriend, think of this? Would he push her to do it? Would he beat the sh*t out of Trump if he tried to lay his and-everything hands on his beloved thigh-charged Taylor? I mean, she looks like she good do damage -- like Darryl Hannah's Pris inBlade Runner (1982).
Craziest of all is that Taylor has embarked on a new tour to push her new album. Dig this: The Tortured Poets Department. I don't know about you, because I still care, but I picture the detainees at Guantanamo being waterboarded until they sang poetry. True story. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times until he started spouting poetry to his torturer's wife. We can only imagine. Or we can look at the volume of poetry put out by Gitmo detainees, Poems from Guantana'mo:The Detainees Speak. (See my review.) Will Taylor favor these prisoners of conscience with a Concert for Guantanamo Detainees? You know, like Johnny Cash did Folsom Prison. He said it changed how he saw The Man. Will you go that route or will Travis haul you into his gathering arms and relieve your tension?
I reckon the real virus out of 2019 was not Covid but Taylor. But there's no vaccine for loving her, is there? Travis is like Oppie and Taylor is like Barbie. We can't wait to see them coming down the aisle together, Tight End and Wide Receiver, forever bound in toxic bliss. Think (and that's an order) of Nabokov's recently released honeymoon poem re: Superman and Lois Lane. Who needs the royals when we have this kind of entertainment?
Please pass the bong.
