IN PRAISE OF POP CULTURE:
From Mensch to Ubermensch: Celebrating the Music of America
by Yuriy Bronshteyn

Cruising down Lexington’s shrewdly designed Nicholasville Road in the late afternoon on a September weekday, basking in the brilliance of popular radio, I sometimes wonder: can life possibly get any sweeter than this?

This answer is a definitive: no it cannot. Now that we as a civilization have reached the mountaintop, we just can’t go any higher.

Just turn on the radio in your sporty Chevy Avalanche sometime and really listen. You’ll quickly realize that American music has fundamentally peaked out. It has reached a state of perfection that is simply conclusive. Period. Underscore. Exclamation point. It’s over. Our timeless search for the perfect song is over. Mike Jones has produced no less than fifteen of them. Who is Mike Jones?™ That is the question ringing in the ears of the millions of prescient American consumers who purchased his debut album. His consequent rise to the top of the authoritative Billboard charts was little more than ceremonial icing on the proverbial cake of his apotheosis to the throne of musical Mt. Olympus. Apparently, what Mozart, Bach and Beethoven were missing was not an undiscovered harmony or a rigorous, unified theory of music but something so much more elusive: automated interrogative repetition of the artist’s own name. Here is a representative sampling from Jones’ celebrated “Pac Man Freestyle”:

“Do’Do I blow dat cuz I’m who?
Mike Jones
Who-Who Mike Jones,
Who-Who Mike Jones

My album, Who Is Mike Jones
comin’ soon
My album, Who Is-Who Is Mike Jones
comin’ soon

When my album come
I’ma sow it up
Mike Jones-Jones,
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones,
Mike-Mike Jones
(Repeat til’ the end of song)”

By their very impeccability, Jones’ musings reveal the shortcomings of the work of all other pre-Jonesian musicians. Throughout history, terrestrial minds had perpetually shackled the “hook” to the confines of a “chorus.” Only Jones’ celestial spirit could emancipate the hook and give it the encouragement to serve as the beginning, middle and end of every verse. Only Jonesian Jenius™ could produce songs for the explicit purpose of publicizing forthcoming commercial releases.

But to honor you,
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones™,
With prose seems shallow;
With poetry only can we our dearest poet,
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones™ hallow;
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones™, you are
Our mellifluous inspiration in the car;
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones™,
Our firmament’s brightest shining star!
Mike-Mike Jones-Jones™,
Mike-Mike Jones™
(Repeat til’ the end of song)

IN PRAISE OF POP CULTURE:
How Long Do We Have to Wait for a Napoleon Dynamite Sequel?!
by Bephen Sturnett

This time last year, I had only one thing on my mind: a heated desire to witness the cataclysmic destruction of human dignity. I wanted it in the worst way. I wanted to laugh at the miserable plight of helpless high school “losers.” I wanted to sneer self-righteously at the backwardness of fictionalized country rubes. I wanted average black and Latino people to finally be exposed for the caricatures that they are. I wanted to find a narrative plot that was somehow simultaneously both clichéd and pretentious. On top of that, I wanted it all packaged into a “comedy” so smug, so formulaic and so infantile that that it would inexorably infect America’s young hipsters like a venereal disease.

Luckily for me, the people at Fox Searchlight Pictures had my best interests in mind. I had just given up hope of ever having my dream realized and quickly resorted to brutalizing homeless people out of frustration, when I suddenly caught glimpse of an alluring ad in a newspaper one of the bums was using to protect himself from the blow of my steel-towed industrial boots. The ad bore an image of a skinny, oafish teenager who was, presumably, the butt of the jokes of his peers! A miserable outcast, unfit for society no less! I stopped kicking the bum in mid motion to take a closer look. “Napoleon Dynamite,” the ad read. I was intrigued but, of course, reticent. Appearances can be dangerously deceiving. NBC’s “Freaks and Geeks,” for example, promised to make a circus spectacle out of its contemptible characters but only ended up making said characters sympathetic, to my deep disappointment and regret.

Thankfully, my first screening of Napoleon Dynamite – the first of many – turned out much differently. I vividly recall being doubled over with gastrointestinal pain as the protagonist threw out hilarious one-worders like “Liger” and “Sweet!” I was both amazed and somewhat relieved when Pedro’s cousins turned out to be none other than a couple of benevolent Hispanic hoods – but who could have seen it coming?! And the appearance of LaFawnduh was just too much comedy to bear – I always knew black people looked like that! When the time finally came for Napoleon’s uproarious dance, I could no longer restrain my laughter-induced erection.

Yes, few movies before or since have even approached Napoleon’s subtle interplay of anemia, stupidity and popular hype, which is exactly why we need Part II. The sequel would be even more languid, more trite and more widely celebrated! It could focus on how Napoleon fails socially in college or how Pedro finds a job as a migrant farm worker or how Kip struggles to start a new life as a child pornographer. Wouldn’t that be hilarious! Yes, it certainly would be. Just imagine legions of pseudo-intellectual collegians regaling each other with piecemeal reenactments of its mindless dialogue! Are you listening Fox Searchlight? America is waiting. Make our dreams come true!

As God-fearing Christians, we often have a tendency to be oblivious to the forces of evil in this world. But as 1 John 2:18 warns us, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” Indeed, truer words were never spoken, and we purport to have caught one such antichrist with his square pants down.

He lurks just below the surface of the sea of anthropomorphic children’s programming. We as believers must grow complacent merely because we have smitten the now defunct diva Tinky Winky, because a coalition of the gay agenda has retaliated. The suspects include (but are not limited to) Big Bird, Bert and his partner Ernie, Barney the purple dinosaur with his peculiarly named yellow triceratops friend “BJ,” and the leader of this multi-headed beast—SpongeBob Squarepants all of whom are being promoted in “tolerance” videos throughout the country. Mr. Squarepants in particular seems to be a creature we have been warned of before. Consider the following passages from scripture:
Revelation 13:1: “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea…”

It is highly probable that this account describes the exposed. Granted there is no mention of a pineapple, but this detail is trivial since the Antichrist’s lair would be difficult to view from the observer’s shore-oriented perspective.
Revelation 13:2: “And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard…”

Take a second look at Mr. Squarepants. Would you not also agree that, during Biblical times in which modern conveniences such as sponges did not exist, the observer perhaps may have mistaken the “holes” in the body as leopard-like “spots?” And since the accuracy of the Bible is without fault, perhaps it is our own secularized perspectives that are warped. Other parallels within Scripture can be traced, but there is little reason to delineate them – true believers should accept this proposition as an article of faith.

Many will undoubtedly mock our careful examination of the ancient text of Scripture, however, as I Peter 2:8 tells us, “Be sober, be vigilant…” Thus, we should behave accordingly—for the Apocalypse is coming Godly readers, and it’s wearing square pants.

Visit the following sites for more information:

www.leftbehindprophecy.com
This site provides an explanation of how the United States fits into Armageddon, and why this super power with it’s 82% proudly Christian population is not mentioned in prophecy.

www.family.org
Dr. James Dobson, one of the first to get the low down on SpongeBob indeed being on the down low, runs this site with a plethora of informative articles on hot topics such as homosexuality, singles, pornography, and Easter.

www.countdown.org
The name says it all. Count down with these folks as we all watch for the signs of the Second Coming. This site also does a commendable job of updating and deleting its predictions to adapt to newly evolving circumstances.

www.armageddon.org
Here you can find a gaming experience similar to that of a massively multiplayer online role playing game in the fantastic desert land of Zalanthas.

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