Song: "Dead Flowers"

The Stones's Dead Flowers" is a direct response to Alanis Morisette's You Oughta Know".



Knowing nothing at all about what Jaggar etc meant by this song - which is fine, Death of the Author, etc - I have to say, this is the bitchiest song ever made.

Alanis: "And I'm here/ to remind you/ of the mess you left/ when you went away." Alanis is sending a message, and the message is, I WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF THE CHAOS THAT IS OUR BROKEN RELATIONSHIP. I WANT DESPERATELY TO DISCUSS WHAT HAPPENED AND WHAT IT MEANT. I WANT YOU TO FEEL AS BAD AND AS RAW AS I FEEL. I WANT YOU TO BE REMINDED OF WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN US, AND I WANT YOU TO DO SOME SERIOUS SELF-EXAMINATION. Mick: "You can send me dead flowers to my wedding/ but I won't forget to put roses on your grave." Mick's message: I DON'T GIVE A SHIT.

Why so angry and/or non-plussed? The song sort of opens the door to a political/class-based analysis. In the first verse, the idea first sprouted that the protagonist or his (lower) class had become degraded by the ex or her (upper) class: her "silk-upholstered chair" was placed in opposition to his "ragged company." Is this a message about revolution? Emphatically, NO. In the third verse, the narrative voice rambles, "Well, when you're sitting back/ In your rose-pink Cadillac/ Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day/ I'll be in my basement room/ with a needle and a spoon/ And another girl can take my pain away." In 1970, as today, pink Cadillacs and Derby bets may approach hipster cool, but not when adjoined: a person, especially a rich girl, in such a car, enjoying such a task, is not connoted cool. These things, when adjoined, may only suggest shallow bullshitery. The protagonist's use of heroin and random sex (esp. in 1970), however, does connote cool. While the vapid douche's out doing shallow things, psychotically sending out bad vibes to the awesome laid-back awesome-dude-narrator, the protagonist is chillaxing, fucking other girls, not caring what you think.

Is it possible that he's thumbing it to the establishment? No. Because the Establishment does not care who you're fucking, as long as you're not fucking the Establishment over. And this song does not inspire revolution.

I have nothing more to say about this.

Book: "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"

In every bookstore, even Powell's, perhaps especially Powell's, you'll invariably find this book in the STAFF RECOMMENDS section. It has a unique title, and a well-designed jacket. It's made of that same sort of matte material they used to make Vivid VHS boxes out of - so nice. And where did that precocious French girl get her boots?



And then you read it. Preferably where people can see you, because you know they've all seen it in the NYROB or on the EMPLOYEE PICKS shelf, and now they all think you're smart and awesome, good job!

It's like this: Don't you love it when there's a precious French setting, like a Parisian hotel, peopled with intellectual concierges, despicable food critics, and pre-teen solopists? And don't you love it so hard when the lonely hotel inhabitants, so disconnected from society, so much smarter and better than the outside world, get to ruminate at length about how much smarter and better they are?

It's the kind of book where we know that the lonely concierge and the lonely little girl are destined to be friends because each, separately, falls in love with a vague sense of Orientalism. (It's the kind of book where you feel smart for having seen the COMPLETELY BORING "Hiroshima, Mon Amor.")

It's the kind of book where everyone else is shallow, and greedy, and fake: Holdon Caufield territory. It's the kind of book where characters think not very hard at all about how good they are at Philosophy 101, and journal it out anyway.

It's the kind of book, essentially, where at the end one of the main characters dies, which leads another character to decide not to kill herself. It's the kind of book that starts out being all about a world of Hierarchy and Capitalism, and ultimately ends up being about the characters' Hope and Humanity.

No. Ultimately... it's the kind of book that makes you wish you hadn't paid $14.95 for it. Decision: Fail.