the flag, in song form

FROM October 24, 2004

"America! Fuck Yeah!"

These are the lyrics to one of the three funniest songs in Team America, from a beefy WWE halftime-type of number you can imagine being sung by Vin Diesel or some other GNC nutrition powder poster-man . . . a little steroidal, with a pectoral posse chorus, Flying V's wailing the solo after a real hefty pump on the stomp box. The song is cued every time a puppet-sized, red-white-and-blue fighter jet shoots from the top of Teddy Roosevelt's head at Mount Rushmore, which houses the not-so-secret HQ of Team America. It is the most honest commercial the US Air Force never made.

Team America is a crew of the nation's best--best football star, best clairvoyant, best actor, best psychologist--with a mission to fight terrorism across the globe, bumbling and armed, shooting anything that moves to defend their nebulous, clumsily righteous conceptions of "democracy" and "freedom." The movie's political viewpoint is ambiguous; the reportedly Libertarian/Republican directors, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, skewer Michael Moore and the progressive, outspoken members of the Screen Actors Guild (referred to as the "Film Actors Guild" for an easy "FAG" joke that was old before it started), portraying them as crazed and easily persuaded jihad-friendly communists. But Team America, as the protagonists, are equally idiotic (the jokes are misanthropic and sometimes racist; their portrayal of Kim Jung Il is deeply, DEEPLY unfunny). Their vague moral center and cavemannish humor is why the clearest swipes it takes, its satirical high points and its sharpest zeitgeist, come via its best songs. In the lost-girl lament "Pearl Harbor Sucked... and I Miss You," the love doesn't get much beyond plasticene, but it does parallel the feeling of being w/out u girl with the directors' intense hatred of the movie Pearl Harbor. "I miss you, girl, like Ben Affleck needs acting lessons," the main character sings, his puppet-motorcycle revving into the moonlight. "Freedom isn't Free," the essential conservative-country rouser, twangs in an exaggerated Toby Keith style, that "Freedom isn't free," because "freedom is really fucking expensive." Clearly! There are other musical numbers –- notably, the song parodying '90s B-Way standard Rent goes maniacally, "Everyone's got AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS!" -- but these three are just perfect; Stone and Parker are acutely aware of hovering over the top, the sentiment just one tiny sliver beyond bona fide American jingoism.

Tomorrow I will post on Hearts and Minds, when I am mildly less depressed from it.

Today I will post on Usher Raymond; who, according to Gawker according to NYDN, has filmed a sex tape w/two ladies, one of whom whimpers "Ush" to the tune of "Waterfalls" by TLC. I never tire of the fact that Usher, incredibly, proposed to TLC singer Chilli MID. COITUS (so sayeth the greatest interview Rolling Stone magazine published this year, the gargantuan "Usher is a megalomaniacal freek-a-leek" piece). I would kill to be Usher's shrink.

In other news of narcissists, I heard on 97 this morn that all November dates of the Jay-Z/R. Kelly Best of Both Worlds tour are canceled; apparently, Jay has grown weary of R.'s lack of punctuality. I cannot provide more details because it was at like, 7:30 am and I was half-asleep.