Yep: HBO showed a Lady Gaga concert this weekend to go with all of their other salacious weekend programming. There’s gyrating buttocks and bouncing boobies aplenty here, so if you’re into that kind of thing, well, I think you’ll probably like this. Unless you’re homophobic, that is: there’s a lot of scantily-clad gentlemen gesticulating suggestively to one another and to all of us too, so if that sort of thing upsets you, you might just want to give this a pass. But be forewarned in any case: there’s more fake blood in this show than you’re likely to see in a Britney Spears show.* And it looks like she’s trying to pick up the crotch-grab mantle left behind when Michael Jackson died.
Okay, I hate to be the one to say it, but Bill O’Reilly’s going to be really mad when he finds out about this! He’s always complaining about Ms. Gaga and her penchant for public pelvic pumping and such. He also likes to show us all of what his purported peevishness pertains to by playing all the juicy bits on his show, but only so we can see what he’s got his panties in a wad over. (Yeah, right! Ratings, anyone?) Unsurprisingly, it’s usually someone else’s panties on display. I think he just secretly wants us all to get an angry boner like him. Or could it be that he can’t get a boner anymore that makes this stuff get his goat? I don’t see what difference it would make anyway: none of these ladies would be interested in him anyway. Or maybe that’s why he gets mad. Oh, who can say?
So, what was the show like? It was constantly changing sets and costumes and setups, etc., so it’s really hard to pin it down. It sounded like it was mixed really well, so if you like her music, you’ll probably enjoy it. The costumes she wore were glimmeringly gorgeous and god-awfully hideous in equal measure. She doesn’t seem to have any real sense of what looks great and what looks terrible, and so she does both a lot. But at least she’s rarely boring or bland. I can’t decide if she’s doing it on purpose, if she thinks they all look great, or if she’s just wearing whatever her designers hand her without even questioning it, but whatever she’s doing, it’s ten times more fun than anyone else has been since KISS was in their prime in the 1970s! She seems to want to go for glamour, glitz, grit, and gaudy in equal measure, and it’s fantastic fun, even when it’s making my eyes want to barf.
Oh, and the huge ‘fame monster’ puppet she uses in Paparazzi is totally wicked! It’s this big black thing with giant sharp teeth and tentacles that looks like one of those deep-sea fish from the dark with a glowing lantern thingy hanging off of its head to lure prey with. Awesome! (Really!)
Okay, I have a confession to make: I love Lady Gaga. I don’t like all of her songs; not by a long shot, and half of this concert I wasn’t crazy about either. But the ones I do like, I really like! (I’m a punk rocker & metal head, so the fact that I like any of her stuff is truly amazing!) It’s really only a few: Poker Face, Bad Romance, Telephone, Paparazzi. Okay, so that’s four, but when you look at that list of four songs, you’re looking at some of the greatest pop songs in decades, perhaps of all time. In a field of cookie-cutter hacks and sound-alikes, Lady Gaga stands alone as an artist, at least as far as I’m concerned. She’s always provocative, and while that word usually translates into “sexhibitionist” or “salacious” when applied to someone else, with Gaga it really means provocative as in thought provoking, challenging your belief system, etc. She’s an artist, and she’s an original.
And I love what she stands for: loving yourself for who you are, and not letting anyone else take that away from you. In her position, she could spout whatever she wanted to and people would lick it up. She’s on top of the world, and she could only hang with the “beautiful people” if she wanted to, but that’s not her thing, even though she’s one of them (whether she likes it or not!), at least looks and success-wise. But she chooses to make it her mission in life to spread the word that everyone is valuable, and that the black sheep will inherit the Earth. Oh, and she’s for equal rights for everyone regardless of any kind of prejudice people might have. Hip hip hooray! I love that message, and if all the public figures constantly throwing stones at her could match her good intention, good vibes and inspiration to others, the world would indeed be a better place.
When you look at the crowd shots in this concert, it’s not just people going “Whoo!” like you’d see at any other show; these people truly love this person: you can see it in their eyes. It’s really something to see, and I think she deserves it, because she seems like a real sweetheart! When she talks, sometimes you can tell that she’s still just a nerdy girl who dreams of being a star someday, even though she’s about as big as it’s possible to be. It’s really cute.
* Actually, I can’t stand Britney Spears, so for all I know, she could be soaked and writhing around in fake ‘vampire’ blood for her entire lip-synched dance-offs. But I seriously doubt it. (But I’ll bet that’s someone’s fantasy!)
