In my time at NYU, I have had the privilage of encountering weird, random celebrities. There was the Britney Spears lingerie incident on University Place. The time Moby apologized for pushing my chair at Teeny's. Mandy Moore asking what book I was reading in Weinstein. Jon Meacham at Newsweek falling into my perfectly orchestrated trap regarding Bill Clinton's virginity. The list was added to tonight, when Devra Bogangles of Bogangledom ensured her place in the Badass Hall of Fame by acquiring free tickets to a screening of the new Hanson documentary, with a Q&A session featuring the Oklahoma lads themselves.
Full disclosure. My father thinks Hanson is a girl band. He bought Mmmbop because he thought the middle sister was cute. I don't believe he was ever alerted to the existence of their extroverted sexual organs. You can't really blame the guy.
Like you can tell.
This is where the band lost me. I thought the three singles off that first album were great. However, it NEVER made sense that these guys were tauted as JTT-like sex symbols. They weren't stud material. 1997 was the year of moptops, not lion manes.
When you type in mop top on Yahoo image search, you get this:
Surely, there is logic in this somewhere.
I'm getting off-track. So they showed this documentary, which was a good 90 minutes long. I'll never get that hour and a half back. It was bitchass long, and completely unnecessary. The idea behind the documentary is that Hanson had a rough time producing and recording their third album because the music industry is full of cunty people. This idea is regurgitated more times than Calista's lunch, and I almost killed the soulless people around me. It wasn't pretty. Here's the problem with this. The reason Hanson has trouble making this album happen is because the music isn't any good, and I know this because they were naive enough to supply yours truly with a free copy of the CD. Which I thank them for. Every song sounds the same, most of it is really slow and acoustic-y, and anyone with a true taste for pop culture knows that the best Hanson music is the rocking shit that maximizes Taylor's voice. It's bland. It's rectal cavity-esque.
But that's not the only problem with this whole documentary thing. We're supposed to feel sympathetic for their plight. They weren't able to get the third album off the ground for a few years. Boo fucking hoo. These people were lucky enough to score a HUGE fucking mother hit a couple of years ago, and tapped into the teenybopper culture at its very crest. Most people don't even get to make a successful SECOND album. Are we really supposed to feel bad because Hanson isn't that prolific? Come on. Props to Hanson for starting their own record label et cetera, but they're not going anywhere if they can't make good music.
Do not buy me. You could spend your time more efficiently by buying a fake mustache and walking down 8th Street
Which...I might have done. Tonight. Averts eyes.
AND, these fucking Sinn Fein Irish girls totally hijacked the Q&A session, it was insane. Who knew the Hansons had an Irish following? It was at that point that I decided that the audience didn't deserve to hear my questions, and I had two. Number one: what was the name of the song that had the music video where Weird Al pretends to be Bill Paxton from Titanic?
It's "River." I looked it up. But wouldn't that have been amazing to just ASK one of them? It would have killed me.
My second question involved them doing an interview on the blog. Now, this is probably not going to happen. It's not 1997 anymore, but I suspect Hanson has better things to do with their time than conduct irreverent chat room interviews with me and my decrepit band of raving looneys. Just a hunch. However, that didn't prevent me or Devra from writing down this blog's address on our documentary response sheets and handing them in. I suspect since Hanson gave off a very DIY vibe tonight that they'll actually look at those sheets firsthand, which means there's a minute minute MINUTE chance they'll look at this blog. Clearly, I am not insane, all about Hanson, but I don't think there's a single person alive that wouldn't take the opportunity to interview the Tulsa lads if given a chance. So, gentlemen - if you're reading this, we would love to have you here in the near future, even though I just gave your CD a scathing review and slammed your livelihood. God. I have no potential career in this business.
There WERE some positive aspects from this. They're a lot hotter than they were back in the day, because they finally cut their hair off and aren't draped in flannel like Cynthia Nixon's girlfriend. It was a pleasure to look at them, which you can't say for that many people.
Devra mentioned this on her response sheet, which I teased her for mercilessly because she wrote a treatise on the back of the paper, but it was a really good point. During the documentary, we're treated to these long-winded oratories by the Hanson brothers that are supposed to show their frustration about being treated like shit by the record label, but they just sound like ditzes. They don't come off very intelligient in the documentary, but the weird thing is, they sounded really fucking coherent tonight in person. They were very well-spoken and articulate, and I can't figure out for the life of me why the documentary doesn't convey that. Probably because it wasn't a good documentary.
One last point on this Hanson evening, and then I'll stop. The purpose of this entire evening was for Hanson to shed their teenybopper image and attempt this mature speaking tour where they discuss the problems with the music industry. More power to them, it's a good idea. The problem is, this event was open to pretty much anyone that had heard about it, so 80% of the people there were lame ass Hanson fans in Abercrombie. This event should have been made available to Tisch and music majors, none of the groupies. Hanson would have been able to make a more significant impact. I think they thought that they could somehow convert their old fans into acquiring this awareness, but come on. Dumb bitches are dumb bitches, and you can't change that, even if you're a Hanson.
I think it's time to blast some mad old school 7th grade music, starting with Mmmbop and ending with Jimmy Ray.
Come se dici one hit wonder?
P.S. I SO called the Harriet Miers withdrawal. God. What a weenie. I had a better chance of being confirmed. R.I.P. Swoosie Kurtz lookalike.
P.P.S. We totally need to conduct a forum about the NY Times bitchfest between Maureen Dowd and Judy Miller, if only because Maureen kicks SO much ass and is my favorite of all ness.
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