NFR - Lana Del Rey

To this point, the songs constituting the Lana Del Rey oeuvre can be divided into two major categories: the “bangers” and the “stinkers” (as well as third category of unremarkable songs in between). The “bangers” are the signature hits: “Summertime Sadness,” “Cola,” “West Coast,” “High by the Beach,” and the list goes on and on. The “stinkers” are the songs that didn’t work, and they are much less frequent.

Del Rey’s previous record, Lust for Life, had a few true bangers, including “Love" and "White Mustang,” but it also had more than a few stinkers (viz. anything with A$AP Rocky or Shaun Lennon in it). Moreover, Lust for Life was marred by a lawsuit that deemed the song “Get Free” had plagiarized Radiohead’s “Creep.” The plagiarism is debatable; the real travesty of justice is how lifeless British tripe like Radiohead remains relevant.

Del Rey’s latest offering, titled NFR (or Norman Fucking Rockwell in full) is something of a bounce-back record. Or perhaps it is a finale. The songs are darker and longer, the lyrics elegiac and rambling. This is not a negative, however. While there are no real bangers on the album, there aren’t really any stinkers either. The album is eminently listenable from start to finish, even if it isn't built around patent singles. There certainly are some standouts on this album, perhaps most notably "Venice Bitch," a 9-plus minute track premised on a pun paralleling that of LMFAO’s 2008 offering “I’m in Miami Bitch” (although in a considerably maturated iteration). Nonetheless, the album is best appreciated as a single, cohesive whole. Its rambling verses are integral to the artistry, as they read like poetry. 

Quite fittingly, given the nature of the lyrical compositions, there are several Sylvia Plath references. Often, Del Rey speaks in finalizing terms. “The culture is lit, I guess this is it, and I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned out after all,” she offers on “The Greatest,” a resigned, poignant, but ultimately self-satisfied eleventh track that could have aptly closed the album.

Will this be Lana Del Rey's last kick at the Pepsi Cola can? Probably—hopefully—not. This haunting, wandering album leaves us wanting more. It doesn’t feel like an ending, exactly, but rather like the ushering in of a new dispensation—a Lana Del Rey who has fully evolved out of her poppy past, and is now in full-on poet mode, very much like the bearded, pot-bellied Jim Morrison who lends his voice to An American Prayer. With Del Rey, it seems as if it is not going to be about “bangers” and “stinkers” anymore. It’s going to be about poetry and melody over protracted instrumentation.

If it wasn’t obvious before, it's clear in listening to NFR that, apart from her trademark murdered ennui, there is now a palpable frustration in Lana Del Rey. Perhaps she’s feeling a futilitarian exasperation from a career of being variously characterized as a plagiarist, an anti-feminist, and an oversexed Lolita, among other things, when she is not really any of these. Perhaps contemporary critics got so singularly fixated on “getting” and subsequently labelling Lana Del Rey that they missed that she is ineludibly so much more—a poetess of vision so profoundly abysmal that it’s almost ineffable. Had the aesthetics of the era not been so obsessed with commercial popularity and political correctness, Lana Del Rey would be the Cobain or Morrison of her time; instead, incorrigibly poppy divas like Lady Gaga or Beyoncé inexorably occupy those stations. As such, Del Rey has been consigned—or has consigned herself—to the role of a Sylvia Plath: overwrought and underappreciated.

Sylvia Plath deserved a better ending, and so too does Lana Del Rey. Hopefully she will get the appreciative finale that she deserves, but not for decades.

What Philosophy Can Do

The late Gary Gutting used to be the big swinging dick of matters ontological and epistemic. I remember seeing him stand toe-to-toe with Basil van Fraassen, constructive empiricist extraordinaire, in an epic heavyweight dust-up in the pages of Monist back in '82. With his 2015 book What Philosophy Can Do, Gutting has attempted to go mainstream. He argues that philosophy can be useful in, say, potentially polarized political debates, as it can identify the convictions behind (and the limitations within) any given liberal or conservative position. This all smacks of the optimism of the pre-post-Truth era, and that seems to be the dustbin to which Gutting's book has been consigned. Just the other day, I saw more than a few copies marked down to $2 at my local paper peddler. Apparently, philosophy can't do much for anyone anymore. Thorough, well-researched, and well-considered arguments don't fly in this day and age of Trump and trigger-warnings. Nice try, Mr. Gutting, but everybody just goes with their gut now. If psychiatric drugs can't help these people, do you think philosophy has any hope? May peace be upon you, because we certainly won't have it here on earth.

AEW Fight for the Fallen

“This is great pro wrestling, because the fans are loving this.” These were the words of All Elite Wrestling commentator Jim Ross and, though the man possesses at least some bias in that he works for the company, they adequately characterized AEW’s July super-card Fight for the Fallen. In spite of a few hiccups, Fight for the Fallen reclaimed some dignity for professional wrestling, both in the ring and out.

Most of the matches impressed, especially the tag team contests. Early on in the card, a three-way tag match featuring the Dark Order (Evil Uno and Stu Grayson), Anjelico and Jack Evans, and the team of Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy, set a sizzling, spot-happy pace. It was hard to keep up with the innovative offense, which featured, among other maneuvers, a choke suplex, a Black Tiger turnbuckle bomb, and a double-team Gory Special into a Diamond Cutter. This latter maneuver won the match for the Dark Order. A more conventional tag match between the Lucha Brothers and SoCal Uncensored (Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky) also offered up moves far too adept for WWE programming. The Lucha Brothers successfully executed a top-rope Canadian Destroyer, a rapid, rope-aided solebutt, and a stomp-capped double-team package piledriver (for the win).

Portrait of the artist as a young (Omega) man

Singles action did not disappoint, either. AEW Championship contender Hangman Page pounded Kip Sabian with, among other super-moves, a bridging pump-handle suplex, a backdrop onto the apron, and a powerbomb onto the ramp before pinning him with an Ax Guillotine Driver. Nonetheless, the highlight of the match came when Sabian silenced an elderly, ornery fan at ringside by kissing him on the lips. The matchup between Kenny Omega and CIMA started off deceptively slow, but then all at once accelerated, getting very intense, very quickly. CIMA answered Omega’s precision strikes with a Schwein (“White Noise” to WWE fans) onto the apron that occasioned the chant of “You killed Kenny!” throughout the building. This was not WWE “wrestling”, and these were not WWE fans. The strong-style stallions went on to exchange very stiff blows in NJPW fashion, before Omega summoned the One-Winged Angel to score the pinfall.

The main event was a tag team contest between two fraternally predicated teams: the Young Bucks and the Rhodes brothers, Dustin and Cody. The match didn’t reach the fever pitch of the evening’s previous tag contests, as could be expected given the inclusion of the fifty-year-old Dustin Rhodes. Nonetheless, the former Goldust hung in there with the former Stardust, even pulling off a Canadian Destroyer/Styles Clash combo. The Rhodes boys also victimized the Bucks with simultaneous turnbuckle groin kicks, formerly known as the “Shattered Dreams” in the days when WWE was still compelling (that is to say, the days of the WWF). Nonetheless, the Young Bucks fought back by taking a page from wrestling video games and employing the ever-demoralizing stolen move tactic, hitting a Crossroads on Cody. In due course, they perpetrated the unfailingly gaudy Meltzer Driver to secure the pinfall. Afterward, the Bucks attempted to apologize to Cody and Dustin for the gamesmanship tactics they had employed in the lead-up to the match, but they were unfortunately cut off when several key members of the AEW roster processed themselves out to the ring. This interruption did not happen for purposes of storyline, but rather for time considerations. In cringe-worthy fashion, numerous AEW mainstays took the mic and made reference to having gone over time, with some even questioning whether or not they were “still on the air.” They were, and thankfully, before signing off, the cameras were able to capture the presentation of a $150,000 check to the Victim Assistance Advisory Council. This group aids people who have suffered on account of gun violence in America; these individuals were the “Fallen” referenced in the title of the super-card.

Aside from the inventive maneuvers, this social conscience was perhaps the most refreshing aspect of AEW’s Fight for the Fallen. WWE has, of course, traditionally kept its cause-themed super-cards military-centric, as is best exemplified by their annual Tribute to the Troops shows. Military personnel make incalculable sacrifices and undertake unfathomable risks, and so supporting them is a laudable endeavor. But Vince McMahon and his underlings have rarely if ever made a business decision that wasn’t calculated, and so anything bearing the WWE logo is inherently exploitative. Thus, Tribute to the Troops has always smacked of easy positive publicity or, in wrestling terms, a cheap, patriotic pop. Moreover, such an event aligns itself fairly squarely with the American military-industrial complex, situating capitalist interest in close proximity to martial might. As such, Tribute to the Troops clearly courts the more conservative elements of WWE’s fan base. Fight for the Fallen was altogether different. Rather than proffering the predictable plaudits for the people of the American Armed Forces, AEW has been brave enough to identity an egregiously overlooked (and ever-burgeoning) group—the victims of gun violence. Here AEW has displayed the corporate cojones to call out a distressing problem in the United States, one that much of mainline America (and certainly the WWE) have determinedly chosen to disregard: the fact that it’s a risk just to go out in public. AEW is willing to label gun violence as the blight on America that it is, rather than tacitly accepting it as an ignorable downside to sacrosanct Second Amendment freedoms. In acknowledging that America is far from perfect, AEW has demonstrated a moral maturity that the WWE simply does not have. Believe it or not, professional wrestling can (and does) have a socially responsible side, and by cultivating this at Fight for the Fallen, AEW defined itself in marked contrast to the amoral late-capitalist jingoism of WWE.

The Writer's Guide to Weapons

If you’re going to be writing any story set in the United States, you’re going to need a working knowledge of a variety of firearms. That’s where Benjamin Sobieck’s Writer’s Guide to Weapons comes in. Sobieck writes with an obvious passion for firing guns and neutralizing targets, taking aim at writers who write poorly about weapons. He shoots down a lot of misconceptions in the process. Did you think the AR in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle”? Nope. It doesn’t stand for “Alt-Right”, either. It means Armalite, you ignoramus. In the presence of a gun nut, a faux pas of this magnitude could prove fatal, and Sobieck’s book makes sure you won’t end up a target of an NRA lifer’s ire. Sure, the skeptical may be saying, “hey, gun nuts don’t actually read.” True though that may be, do you want to be the writer who pisses them off when and if they learn how? In the meantime, reading The Writer's Guide to Weapons can at the very least help when you’re passing through rural areas—now you just might have an easier time making small-talk with sons of the soil.