Gothic BC

So, today the big news is the death coked-out pop-schmaltz diva Whitney Houston. And just like a few months ago when the pedophilic king of plastic surgery kicked it, the Intertubes are a-buzz with nostaligic suckiness from those who strangely bonded with magazine and tabloid photos and characters portrayed in movies that can only be described and really, really lame—and even more inexplicably, actually liked the music.

But I too must thank and applaud these paragons of pop culture, because their ear-bleed inducing crud was the primordial ooze that alternative culture crawled out of. With thoughts of "Jesus Fucking Christ, dear God, fuckity damn shit, there must be something better than this crap!" we skulked around in the wee hours waiting to tune into Brave New Waves and made our pilgramages to Lyle's Records and Odyssey Imports. With thoughts of "Jesus Fucking Christ, dear God, fuckity damn shit, we can do something better than this crap!" bands were formed. Club nights were launched to play and dance to the music coming from those bands. The music-industry darlings of the 80's and 90's were the voices of the culture we opposed and rejected. Their watered-down sea of awful was what we floated above.

So, thanks, you dreary, dead shlock-monsters: your suck gave us something to be alternative to.