M IS FOR MARSHALL MATHERS

I backed into Marshall Mathers, sort of like I have back-doored into most of the great blogs I found on blogger in the very beginning.  I used to think it was sheer luck that I found these excellent reads.  Then I decided that The Universe decided to look upon me favorably.  Then I decided that eventually every bird finds a worm.  So, there you go.  Let's circle back specifically to Marshall Mathers, shall we?

One of my new blog friends posted Marshall Mather's (aka Eminem) newest video, at that time, off of his Recovery album on HER blog.  The song was called Not Afraid.  I sat and looked at that YouTube footage- in horror- for probably two minutes.  I post a lot of YouTube footage, and really want people to take the time to actually WATCH it.  Ergo, I try to give others the same courtesy.  But rap, seriously?  I hate rap.  My hand hovered anxiously on my mouse.  I did not want to take this plunge.  Before I could go back, I clicked.

And I was astounded.  Amazed.  Mesmerized.  I watched it three times.  On her blog.  I dare you to watch it (only once)...

Then, I went to YouTube.  And that was when the confusion began.  There were videos like Not Afraid, but there were also these really angry songs that I didn't like at all.  Watching the video Superman made my stomach turn.  How was this the same guy?  And there were more of the same and worse.  So the quest began.  Who was Marshall Mathers?

I threw a Shout Out on my blog asking for help in explaining this mystery.  I got some excellent feedback from some amazing Blog Buddies (you know who you are) detailing that Marshall Mathers has *personas* that he raps as in each song.  Eminem, Slim Shady, and Marshall Mathers are all distinct characters in The Eminem Show.  They each have their own unique voice.  The fact that I hate the Slim Shady voice is just my own opinion.  Other people have reached out and embraced that hate speech, making Slim Shady very popular.  That is more a reflection on Public Opinion than anything else, folks.  Just sayin'.  (Yep, I am saying that the masses are a hateful bunch.  My opinion.)

Eminem's voice is still "street" but not so hard.  From The Man himself in his autobiography, he says that his song Lose Yourself, from the 8 Mile Soundtrack, is a good example of the Eminem voice.  When he raps as Marshall Mathers, he is actually himself.  He says that the song Mockingbird is one of those.  There are not that many songs coming from the Marshall voice, because he doesn't think people actually want to hear what Marshall has to say (according to him in his book).  I think he couldn't be more wrong about that.  Marshall is the only REAL person in the room, and everyone is very curious to know what Marshall has to say.  Again, that is just me. 

I think that there was a lot more Marshall in the Recovery album than in any of his previous work.  That is scary stuff.  When you are hiding behind a persona and everyone loves it, it is scary stuff to suddenly expose yourself.  And he went full throttle.  He told everyone about his addiction problem, his inability to cope with his best friend's murder, and the fact that he was an abusive husband to his former spouse.  In fact, I have never seen anyone be so honest about what abuse looks like in a relationship.  It often goes both ways.  The fact that one person is stronger than the other does not make the person being abused get out, stop it, or even curb things.  Please understand me... Not saying that they deserve anything that happens to them, but it is like an avalanche that everyone sees happening, except the two people at the bottom of the hill, about to be buried by it.  In their own ways, at different times, they are both certain they have got it under control.

Marshall Mathers taught me that I can respect someone for their honesty, without liking every minute thing about them.  The things that I don't like in him, he doesn't like in himself.  But he isn't lying anymore about them.  He isn't glossing them over.  I can respect that.   And I have to believe that when you know better, you do better.  That is what life lessons are all about.

As Marshall says, "I can't tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like."

Marshall Mathers: IDK yet.  He's been a Passion.  I thought he might be a Phase.  I certainly have learned some Life Lessons.

Had you seen either video before today?  Did it change the way you saw Eminem or Marshall Mathers?  Did I LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE feel like a sucker punch in the gut when you saw it?  Are there people whom you respect without liking every single part of them?  Are you able to accept people with their flaws and all?  If this was your first exposure and you are now intrigued, I recommend Lose Yourself, Beautiful, and Airplanes Part 2 as your next stops on the Eminem Tour.

The Grammys and Marshall Mathers Should Have Won Best Album. Just Sayin'.

Okay, I know that you have all been on pins and needles awaiting my Grammy Award breakdown. No, I didn't have a breakdown of any sort after the show. I am referring to my critique of the event. You guys are so silly. Since you seemed to like the bullet points, perhaps we shall gave that another go.

*Once again, they only presented awards to the folks who showed. That is getting annoying. That means entire categories get left out. They also just didn't present some awards to folks who did show, but announced before they performed that they had won awards. Now, that is even suckier. What awards?
*In the case of my man Marshall, they announced his two award wins before he even won the second one. Idiots. Of course, since they run that thing so crazily, and he was up for ten awards, how was he to know?
*Another clue if you are going to win: are you performing? If so, chances are good that you are a winner. Ding ding ding.
*A lovely surprise of the evening was the first announced award. Train won Pop Duo or Group for Hey Soul Sister. I love Train. I am glad to see them getting back on track. Pun totally intended.
*Miranda Lambert winning The House That Built Me didn't shock me at all after she had just performed the song. Personally, very happy to see Miranda get some Grammy love. Now, she was not favored to win in this category, but I think of the Grammys in much the same way I do the ACM awards.
*How's that, say you?
*The most unlikely people win those awards. Let's say someone has a huge year. They give the award to someone that has just popped out of the woodwork and has maybe two songs under their belt. That is just how they roll. It leaves everyone rolling their eyes and saying, "WTF" at the watercooler the next day.
*Apparently the Grammy voters lunch with the ACM voters and discuss the "proper" way to do these things.
*Batshit crazy. That's how. Moving on.
*Now, I am not saying that they always get it wrong. I am just saying that they often pull things right out of their a$$. That's all.
*For instance, Lady Antebellum picking up all of the country awards is not surprising. They are freaking awesome and deserve them. I have posted several of their songs on here. Love them. However, I have not posted Need You Now. So, here it is.



*I loved David Letterman's list of ten things. I have to agree with him on one major point. What is the difference between Best Record and Best Song? Near as I can tell, it is nothing. They are both nominations for songs. And it appeared that most of the noms were the same. In this case, Lady Antebellum won them both for the same song.
*Isn't that redundant?
*Or is it just me and David on this one?
*Lady Gaga winning best Pop Vocal Album was totally expected.
*Lady Gaga arriving in an egg was a huge surprise.
*While I will never count myself a Justin Bieber fan, I can't count myself a Justin Bieber hater either. You gotta admire someone who is willing to fight for a career as a singer at 13. Usher told him something like, "If we meet again, we'll see." And he kept coming. At 13, that would have been enough to send me home.
*I would have been crying and saying, "He wouldn't even listen to me sing." That is the difference, you see, between someone who knows that they have the magic "it" and someone who just wants to be a rockstar.
*I still want to be a rockstar, but I know I don't have the magic "it."
*Every now and then I can sing a good tune.
*Back to the awards show...
*So, anyway, this kid can actually sing. And then Will and Jada Smith's kid comes out and raps with him. And OMG, that was the cutest. He is a cute kid. But what was the cutest was the look on Will and Jada's faces. They were not celebrities. They were parents who were all about their kid.
*Priceless moment at the Grammys.
*Back to me and what I am doing while the show is on. I found this site on yahoo. It has each category with the nominees, Expert Pick, and the percentages of people who voted for each person. In other words, it should be a good indicator of how the general public feels about who should win in each category.
*Now, you see what I mean about how the head scratching over the choosing of the winners. And why it reminds me of the ACMs.
*Now, that we have talked about everything non-Marshall Mathers, let's get down to it.
*I know from having read his book that he would really like to win an award that is not specifically a rap award. He did win the video award for Without Me, but that is it.
*I really thought with 10 noms that this would be his year. He would get Album of the Year, Record of Year, or Song of the Year. Nope. Lady Antebellum snatched Record and Song and Arcade Fire grabbed Album. Frankly, I think that he should have won best Record and Best Album. I am perfectly happy letting Lady Antebellum keep Best Song.
*As I said, they are the same thing. Different voters. Dumb. Moving on...
*That it is not what happened. And it hurt. A lot. It was painful for me. I can't imagine what it was like for Marshall. It had to sting.
*With that in mind, I went through the old winners and rap just doesn't win much outside of its own category. Outkast won a couple of years ago, but that is about it.
*I am going to throw up some more live footage. One is MM performing with Rihanna and Dr. Dre. It has some breaks in it, but it is the best going on youtube. The song is Love The Way You Lie Part 2 (modified) and I Need A Doctor (modified). I am also throwing up Marshall accepting his Grammy for Best Rap album. Then I am throwing up both original songs with lyrics. They make more sense that way. You might want to watch those first and then the live performance.











image found at www.weheartit.com

RELAPSE OR RECOVERY?

It has been so long since I have able to write on a topic of my choice I thought I might come up empty today. Turns out that once I started thinking about it, I had LOTS of ideas. Who knew that so many things were stirring around up there itching to come out? In fact, I have one post that I probably should break up into 3 posts, just so that your eyeballs don't fall out or glaze over. I can get just a bit long-winded. In fact, while I was in The Think Tank it occurred to me that non-profits are all about being human change agents. It stands to reason that a lot of the things that work in successfully running a non-profit would also work in successfully running a life. In other words, if you are wanting to be the source of your own change, some of the techniques in this book would work on you. It actually could be a self-help book. Weird. But totally cool.

So, let's get down to the first of what is likely to be a three-parter. I have been wanting to talk about this for weeks now. I am just not sure where to begin. I have so many new followers AND this is a topic that is relatively new for me, so I am really jazzed about it. More so than I might be if it were old hat. Marshall Mathers did a 13 minute interview on 60 minutes. I will probably end this piece with that. And pick up tomorrow's with my breakdown on the interview. Maybe. I never understood UNTIL NOW why there was a breakdown about what the President said after he gave a speech. It always ticked me off. I would mutter things like, "Do they think we are stupid? We just heard him say that."

Well... I totally get it now. They have to give their interpretation of what was said. And what was not said. Sometimes that is more important than what WAS said. The thing is that I didn't major in political science, and it only makes me mad to listen to it all the time, so... I miss the little details that are actually really important. I could start listening, but that would super stress me out, and then I would be like that old lady in the commercial who has fallen and can't get up. I would be banging away on the emergency button for a rescue, and cursing like a maniac. I can't see that ending well.

My apologies to anyone who find this little bit of stuff a rehash. I have been researching Marshall Mathers on Wikipedia (btw, I love wikipedia), have yet to see 8 Mile (but I really want to), found out he wrote an autobiography (and now I must own it!), and have been doing the best that I can to piece together the person with the music and the facts. Oh, and I watched a ton of old videos until I finally figured out the whole Slim Shady, Eminem, Marshall Mathers deal. That about drove me nuts until it sank in. Lira sent me a hint of a comment on this (thinking that I knew something about it) and Phoenix sent an extended comment trying to break it down. Misery pointed me toward some songs to further confuse me. Ha! Seriously, it is confusing. For those of you not in the know, this is how I finally pieced it together in my head....

Marshall Mathers is living on 8 Mile in Detroit. Things are sucking. Always have. However, he now has a wife and daughter to support and the only thing he is really good at is hip hop. He gets words. There are natural born writers and cultivated writers. He is the former. He hears something that most of us don't. He hears the break in the syllable and goes for the impure rhyme that makes most impossible to rhyme words possible. The thing is that he keeps knocking on the door and no one wants to let him in. It pisses him off. It happens again and again. He knocks on the door until they force him to punch through the floor. And he comes up angry. And they like it. Anger works. Slim Shady is born. It is a show. It is theatre. But you can't be angry all the time. So, what comes after? Apology. And Eminem is born. Who arbitrates? The only real person there, of course. Marshall Mathers. I finally got it when I watched one of his videos from The Eminem Show. (He even called one of his records The Eminem Show.) I think he did that because people weren't getting it ~ that it was all a show ~ that he wasn't Eminem, that he wasn't Slim Shady. He had to write a song saying "I am Marshall Mathers." People still don't get it. Eminem doesn't exist. All that anger that he wrote wasn't real. It was part of the show. The same way a playwright would do a play or a writer would a book. If there is a villain in the cast, it doesn't mean that the author embodies that character. It is fiction. Moving on...


The Fame Game destroyed his personal life. He has now admitted to various addictions. He did use his music as a platform to hurl some viciousness around at specific people. He really let his ex-wife have it. He and Mariah Carey went back forth numerous times. No, the man is not perfect. He has done an excellent job at keeping his kids out of the media. It is darn near impossible to find current pics of his kids. The most common google search for my blog is "what do Eminem's daughters look like now" or some variation on that. It has been like that for months. I was curious so I googled it myself. There are no pics out there. Good for you, Marshall, on keeping your kids out of the press. You chose this life; they did not. And shame on you people who have no business checking out celebrity kids. They are KIDS. Get over it.

You can thank or blame Misery for my interest in Marshall Mathers. She posted NOT AFRAID on her blog. Since I post so much youtube footage, I feel obliged to watch other people's footage. Honestly, I expected to hate it. Hip hop is so not my thing. I watched it three times. He followed that up with I LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE with Rihanna on the hook. That is a disturbing song, but nothing about abuse should be pretty. Next up was NO LOVE. I hated it on myspace. I am a member of Eminem's website, but I honestly do not see the point, because that is one more site I cannot figure out. So, I knew it was coming (NO LOVE, I mean). I listened to it on myspace. Hated it. Hated it. Hated it. Too fast. Couldn't understand anything. When the video came out, it featured childhood bullying. Okay. I'm back in. I went to lyrics.com. The thing was that it wasn't about childhood bullying.


I wrote a blog about this on a Saturday. I didn't come out and say this part, because it has been on simmer, but I think that MM got dragged into making a video about bullying because it is a hot topic. This song is about the Record Machine trying to bully MM. Probably someone specific at the label. That person knows who they are. MM couldn't make that video, so he went with this one. The best things about this song are the WORDS. MM shows how wicked smart he is in this song. I did say that in my blog. Never before have I had to look up a word in the dictionary to understand what a SONG meant (or a line in a song). Kudos to you, Marshall Mathers. I said it in that blog, but I will say it again. You are a better writer than I am and I majored in English. On the one hand, that depresses the crap out of me. On the other hand, it really makes me admire you. Not sure which hand is typing right now.

This album was going to be Relapse 2, but you changed in mid-stream and decided on RECOVERY instead. It shows. All of your previous albums are tied somewhat to a central theme. If you look at this one you can see the break where you flipped the switch. It is like you were walking down a street doing the Relapse theme and you just couldn't take it anymore and decided you wanted to turn a corner. Except you couldn't quite make the full turn. So, where you are now is at a crossroads. You have one foot on one side of the corner and one on the other side. Your next record will tell the tale. Will it be relapse or recovery?

Aren't you dying to watch that 60 Minutes Interview now?




all images found at www.weheartit.com

I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT IT REALLY IS...

I can only tell you what it feels like, and right now there's a steel knife in my windpipe. I can't breathe.

If those words sound familiar it is because I borrowed them. Or stole them. Or copied them. Maybe I plagiarized them. I don't know. Ask Purple Cow. She wrote a blog all about this and seems to have a handle on it. I want to get back to the topic at hand. Oh yeah, I borrowed them from Marshall Mathers. It is the opener from his song I LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE. Which is about abuse. Well that is appropriate for this blog. Moving on...

I wrote this blog on Wednesday. It was about my first day of school at Wilson Junior High School. I also wrote this blog a while back to help you gain some understanding, if you want further understanding, of all the things spiralling out in my life and making me feel like crap back then.


I have spent two days trying to get a handle on why my junior high school experience was worse than other people's experience. I have decided that it was not worse than everyone's experience, obviously. Wilson was just the worst junior high school in my town. There were two other junior high schools that didn't spit out kids who felt like they walked through a war zone. Why? All of those kids were, more or less, living at the same socio-economic level. In other words, they were more the same than they were different. It was only at Wilson that they took kids from the bottom of the food chain and kids from the top and threw them together. It was like expecting community fish and piranhas to live in harmony. Ha.

I think I mentioned that I wrote several blogs about junior high on facebook and got this unexpected backlash of comments and emails. It turns out that it was torturous for everyone that went to Wilson. The kids from Lincoln and Roosevelt were like, "Whatever. It kinda sucked." The Wilson kids aka adults read that, got drunk, and sent me crying emails. So, no, this horrible, miserable, three years were not just mine. The pain was spread around. However, I can't own other people's pain, and I don't know how it affected their futures. I can only speak for me.

So, Robin, what did Wilson do to you?


1) It gave me a certainty that I would never be enough. I would never have enough. I would never be able to keep up. Even if I saved and saved for the right brand of jeans to fit in, as soon as I bought them, they would go out, and I would be wrong again. Or they wouldn't matter because my shirt would be all wrong. Or my shoes. Or my coat. Or my hairstyle. It didn't really matter, because there was nothing I could do to ever be enough. I was all wrong and I couldn't change it, fix it, or accept it.

2) As a non-person at Wilson, that also makes you unpretty. Your wrong clothes with your wrong haircut combined with the glasses you have to wear... that all adds up to unpretty. Even when you get contacts, the unpretty feeling remains. Once unpretty, always unpretty.


3) You are not good at anything athletic. This is because you are small and unpopular. You are unpopular because of #1 and #2. You are small because you are small boned and naturally a small person. The super athletes at this school are not going to give you a chance to see if you can play any actual sports. Instead, they will knock you down to get to the ball. You get knocked down enough times, you are smart enough to step aside and let them play your position and theirs. The gym teacher never once calls them out for this behavior, because he thinks that you can't play sports either. This is confirmed by being picked at the end or near the end for teams. In the beginning, there was this thought that ran in my head, "If they only knew I am a gymnast and I can out play their ass if they would let me." That thought lasted until I picked myself up off the ground the fourth or fifth time. Then it became, "I suck at sports." Don't ask me to play sports, because I really do suck at sports now. I hate effin sports.

4) Fear. I learned all about fear at Wilson. Unfortunately, I didn't learn what to do with it. I worked on my invisibility skills without a lot of success. There was this one girl who I thought was just bullying me. Turns out it was her mission to terrorize as many people as possible. (That was one of the things I found out on facebook.) It was daily. Pokes and jabs. Small things. The irony is that I never saw them coming until they hit their mark. How do some people do that? Her best ones were always when I thought she would overlook me that day. Or when I thought I was in a safe zone like class.



We were in Home Ec. In hindsight, I should have taken Shop. Careerwise, it would have served me better. It was the cooking day. We had made our Whatever. It was all up at the front and there was a line. I already had mine and was sitting at my table. Kellie (yeah that's her real name), my tormentor, was walking back to her table with food and drink and decided to stop right behind me. Not good news. I only knew she was there because she started talking to me. She was holding her cup of red juice over my head. She says, "I could pour this whole cup of juice over your head and nobody would care." She gives that a long pause to let it sink in. The nobody would care part and the fact that she's contemplating such an act. The cup is still dangling over my head. "You're no one in this school." She let that sink in. Cup still dangling. "I could say I slipped. No one would question me." Finally someone came back to my table and she moved on. She and her cup of red juice. And I said nothing. Not to her. Not to anyone at my table. Maybe not to anyone. Well, probably to my neighbor, Robin, who got to hear about each and every horror that I lived through at Wilson. Not sure anyone else. Well, all of you who are reading this.

It probably wasn't long after that I read THE OUTSIDERS and it changed everything for me. And I wrote about that in this blog. Matter of fact, on my trip to the library today I checked out that book again. I haven't read it since I was a teenager and I wanted to see if it would read the same now. Probably not quite.


Wilson. The place I lost my voice. The place that a whole lot of people needed to be told to fuck off (pardon my language, but there really is no nice way to say it). I wish that I had seen PRETTY IN PINK sooner. Of course, that was impossible, because it hadn't been made yet. However, there was my answer to problem #1. If you can't keep with The Jones's you don't try. You think about this problem and decide on YOUR STYLE and then you create it. It might mean you spend some time in Goodwill and places like that, but you get creative.

My point is this: I thought I kicked that negative tape loop when I went to high school, because I loved high school, and I have an awesome Kellie story (later gators). BUT... somewhere in my head that tape loop is still running. Or it was. Or it can. When I feel under pressure or something makes me feel like I am back at Wilson for some reason, that switch gets flipped. I need to burn that tape once and for all.


and before I make any more copyright infringment mistakes....
all images found at www.weheartit.com