Your Song Sucks: What Troubles Me About Katy Perry's "Birthday"

This party apparently had two cakes.

Maybe I’m biased. Though I find Katy Perry aesthetically pleasing, I find most of her musical catalog aurally repugnant. In fact, I can’t summon a single song of hers that I can enjoy. So already I approach her single “Birthday” with skepticism and disgust after recognizing her vocal work from the get-go. She’s a capable singer, I’ll grant her that. But even though she collaborated with four other writers, the song couldn’t be any less boring or formulaic.

The lyrics aren’t subtle in the least: “Pop your confetti / Pop your perignon / So hot and heavy / ‘Til Dawn,” and later, “So let me get you in your birthday suit / It’s time to bring out the big balloons.” This isn’t to say you shouldn’t write songs about sex; Prince established a music empire solely on lyrics of lovemaking, and it’s one of the oldest subjects sang about since we discovered that our vocal cords make pretty noises. But at least make a half-assed attempt to be clever about it. The word “party” is used in that vague way that suggests more than cake and ice cream, Also, the fact that the speaker wants the subject to “pop” two different things that produce two substantially different substances makes me concerned for both parties.

The speaker is also ambiguous about her relationship to the subject. One might be quick to assume that they’re in a girlfriend-boyfriend pairing, but the opening lines suggest something far more complicated: I heard you’re feeling / Nothing’s going right / Why don’t let me / Stop By,” and later, “You know that I’m the girl that you should call.” The second passage suggests that the subject has a harem of female acquaintances that he could select from. Why would a girlfriend tell her boyfriend he can call he when he's in Frowntown? But the speaker insists that she has what it takes to turn his proverbial frown upside-down.

In spite of the speaker’s good intentions, the chorus makes me want to fall on my sword:

Boy, when you’re with me

I’ll give you a taste.

Make it like your birthday everyday.

I know you like it sweet,

So you can have your cake.

Give you something good to celebrate.

So make a wish.

I’ll make it like your birthday everyday.

I’ll be your gift

Give you something good to celebrate.

It reads like the death rattle of a metaphor. Here she uses the birthday analogy in almost every configuration uniform to the North American tradition of the birthday party. We get cake eating, wish making, gift giving—the three primary pillars stand firm even though it feels like Miss Perry and her writing collective are somehow picking up the pillars and beating me senselessly with them. Maybe that’s why the song falls apart.

After the vaguely Daft Punk-sounding bridge, Miss Perry says, “Happy Birthday” in a way that sounds like an attempt to emulate Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” It’s not true enough to the original to make me confident that it is in fact what she’s going for, but I’m distracted by it. I’m bothered by it.

I find the melody problematic. In spite of the song’s upbeat disco tempo, we’re left with a dull and ultimately unsexy background to supposedly sexy lyrics. The way she sings the last two words on certain lines like “’Til Dawn” and “’Stop by” feels discordant with the melody as it doesn’t quite keep up the song’s rhythm. This happens enough times that it’s noticeably awkward and feels as though they just gave up when they got to the final lines of those stanzas. The notes also sound as though they don’t offer the temporal finality that we expect from the end of a stanza. But it’s been a while since I took a music theory class so I can’t eloquently or accurately articulate what it is about the song that makes it so boring, so you’ll just have to cope with that. In a way, it looks constructed with the sort of ease of Lego, yet looks like something a three-year-old might put together with a Duplo brick: it technically fits but looks clunky and unsophisticated, and is less fun to step on.  

Wondering About Wiz: A Review of Todd English P.U.B. in Birmingham, AL

Todd English P.U.B. in Birmingham, AL, is attached to a Westin Hotel, which is in turn attached to a Sheraton (which we stayed at). A whole cluster of city blocks are connected by veins of skywalks, no doubt to shelter travelers from the sweltering summer sun of the American South. Because we refused to expose ourselves to the heat after a productive day of sightseeing and museum meandering, we had few choices: Casey’s Sports Bar and Grill, the Atrium Café, or Todd English P.U.B. Casey’s looked hopelessly bland and the Atrium Café looked rich for our blood. So, we navigated the labyrinthine corridors that led from our hotel room on the 15th floor of the Birmingham Sheraton to the very trendy Todd English P.U.B adjacent to the Westin’s lobby.

My first impression of the P.U.B was tainted by the presence of what I imagined was a wedding rehearsal dinner—tables guarded by wine glasses, guests in business casual attire, the nervous atmosphere of a time before the knot gets tied. It elevates a location to a level of sophistication it otherwise doesn’t enjoy. When we returned the next day to dine, I saw behind the curtain.

Now you might notice that not only pub an acronym. If your next question is "Why?", take comfort in knowing that much of this review will be spent on meditating that very question with regards to the aesthetic and philosophy of the restaurant itself. First thing’s first, though: let’s talk about that name.

"Todd English P.U.B." is no doubt a play on the phrase "English pub." But it’s taken a step further. No longer is pub just a word, but now it’s an acronym that stands for Public Urban Bar. Now, any English major or anglophile worth their salt can tell you that pub is a shortening of the term public house. Bar here now just seems redundant since a bar tends to be a necessary factor in a pub setting. Urban, it seems, is unexplainable. I suppose it is located in an urban environment, but there isn’t anything about this place that is distinctly urban. Oh wait. The servers wore T-shirts. Maybe that was the urban element.

The interior decorating doesn’t shout urban, unless urban can be interpreted as an American imagining of an idyllic pub in the United Kingdom. It doesn’t have to be England. It could be Scotland. Hell, why not Ireland? We have a couple of fake dartboards painted on sheets of metal that appear to have dents on them. That’s like an English pub, right? They do darts. Or how about our placemats? We put a bunch of quotes because we’re intellectual, too. We printed them in old-looking typefaces because that’s what an English pub’s printed quotes would look like: fresh off the Gutenberg printing press.

I'm not a stickler on service. You can insult my lineage back to medieval Poland and if you give me good food, I'll still give you a tip. But the service that evening in Todd English P.U.B. was, to borrow very English, very trendy terms, shite and bollocks. After we were sat, we waited a good while before we were asked for our drink orders. In the interim, we subsisted on the complimentary cup of popcorn that the hotel compound seemed hellbent on serving to everyone and Sam left to get ibuprofen from the lobby of the Westin. She took said ibuprofen and returned in time to join me in a game of "Who's Our Server?" in which we craned our necks to figure out who the culprit was. Waiters and waitresses all buzzed by our table avoiding eye contact. It was like Clue except ideally we'd be fed in the end and not dead.

The menu was a collection of modernized pub favorites--burgers, tacos, et cetera--but given that special Todd English touch. What that Todd English touch is I can't quite tell you except pretentiously presented bland food boldly branded with TE before the title. Feeling some Mexican food? Try our TE Tacos. What makes the TE Tacos? They have "wiz." Cheese Whiz but not all share the wiz that makes the TE Tacos oh so TE. A few items are simply branded with Todd's name, like "Todd's Fish & Chips." It's got aioli, just like the TE Tacos, so maybe I'm getting somewhere.

I'm a simple man with simple tastes, so I forewent anything with Todd or TE attached to its name. I ordered the “Pub Burger,” which surprisingly wasn’t the “P.U.B. Burger” in a rare show of restraint for the establishment. An old standard, the fanciest things about it were its “brioche bun” and “fatty fries” (or potato wedges, as we plebes call them). The server asked me if I wanted cheese or bacon. I voted both, with a choice of cheddar. When our food arrived (timely, surprisingly enough), I was presented with my burger atop not a plate but a wooden paddle shaped like a cricket bat with a piece of parchment paper to cover the surface. Cricket bats, as you might be aware, are narrow, not the optimal space to eat anything on at all. Fatty fries came in a small metal pail like one might put peanuts in. The burger was underwhelming, even more so given its $12 price tag. Never before had I been so bored with a burger with bacon on it. I found myself getting distracted by the toppings, thinking that maybe they were to blame for the burger’s poor performance. In truth, it was that “8oz. all beef patty” itself. What happened? I whispered to the burger before I finished it. Expectedly, I received no response.

Your Song Sucks: What I Don't Like About Imagine Dragon's "Radioactive"

Such excitement.

Imagine Dragons is a band that the kids like these days, and I can see why with their song "Radioactive": they got some dark brooding lyrics, poundy drums that make the song feel epic, and judging from their website and music videos, they even have a sense of humor. There are much worse acts out there that people could be eating up. But this song is painfully middle-of-the-road that it might as well be painting the line. The instrumental work might get a preteen amped, but the vague electronic undercurrent to the melody seems like an abandoned synthesis that an unambitious mad scientist is responsible for. But nothing puts me out quite like the song's lyrics.

To begin on this odyssey into mediocrity, the song is lyrically lazy. So much of the chorus consists of the vocalist singing, "Ohohohohohohoh" at least twice. I get it. It's a chorus. It should feel like an anthem, and it's easier to do that with some repetition. But this isn't a matter of the chorus being repeated--it's a matter of words being repeated within the chorus. Let's take a look:

Ohohoh
I'm waking up
I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age
To the new age
Welcome to the new age
To the new age
Ohohohohohohoh
I'm radioactive
Radioactive
Ohohohohohohohoh
I'm radioactive Radioactive 

The phrase "to the new age" comes up four times in that chorus, as does the word "radioactive." I've heard the key to repetition is to repeat something in threes, but this seems like overkill. Also, bear in mind that we haven't even reached the second verse yet. Worry not, friends. You'll get it a couple more times to let it sink in deep.

Notice that the speaker is "waking up" at least twice in the song: first in our inaugural verse, and then immediately in the chorus that follows. In each repetition of the chorus, the speaker continues still to be "waking up." The theme of awakening is not something ever addressed, unless you consider that "checking out on the prison bus" is the speaker returning to slumber. This happens twice, by the by, in verses one and two. Half of the first verse is cannibalized for the second verse. It's not repainted with any clever wordplay. We're treated to the same bland image twice:

I'm breaking in and shaping up
Then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse

Apocalypse, huh? How spooky. And it looks like the speaker's in a dystopian nightmare to boot: "I'm waking up to ash and dust / I wipe my brow and sweat my rust / I'm breathing in the chemicals." What dreaded chemicals is the poor speaker respiring? Dunno. Is this a biblical apocalypse? Dunno. In fact, "dunno" might be the answer for just about any question regarding the lyrical content of the song. Listeners are barely given a watered-down broth. The speaker is so unsure of him- or herself that no picture is painted, no senses stimulated via the imagination.

One of the lyrics' biggest sins lays this line: "It's a revolution, I suppose." The "revolution" bit fits the vaguely dystopic theme of the song, but almost never is the phrase "I suppose" acceptable in a song--especially at the end of a line. It feels like filler, especially since the line follows the phrase "...dye my clothes." They have rhyming dictionaries out there for a reason.

Lyrics provided by Imagine Dragons official website

Late to the Party: Finishing Mass Effect 3

2007 was a good year. I graduated high school, started college, and received what I still believe to be one of the greatest RPGs put out in recent years: Mass Effect. The premise was simple: you were a space marine chosen as the first human Spectre—elite agent of the galactic Citadel Council. Mass Effect had a fully fleshed out world that could give the Star Wars Extended Universe a run for its credits. Unique alien races with developed cultures and histories and a bounty of planets to explore. Yes, the exploration could be tedious and even frustrating in standard definition, and though it wanted to be a third-person shooter, the combat mechanics made the firefights clunky. But I loved it and regardless of the “improvements” that the sequels made to the mechanics, the inaugural game remains my favorite in the series.

I looked forward to carrying Jim Shepard—my Shepard—over to Mass Effect 2. I didn’t expect any heavy decisions from Mass Effect to interfere with my Mass Effect 2. Some familiar faces returned, and those faces that didn’t were missed. The endgame was suitably epic with its “suicide mission,” despite the narrative’s insistence on reminding me that this was a SUICIDE MISSION (caps lock necessary). But regardless, I lost some characters I wasn’t attached to, saved those I was attached to, and wondered what the big bad Reapers had left to throw my way so I could take it out in typical American Earthling fashion.

Unfortunately, the canon of Jim Shepard ends there.

I played through the first two Mass Effect games on the Xbox 360. I played through 3 on the PC. To put it succinctly, the combination of price and poor reception for the ending barred me from buying it immediately, and the superior performance of the game on PC only complicated my decision further. My excitement stayed strong long enough for me to play the demo upon its release. The gameplay felt identical to Mass Effect 2, which was expected, but the glaring issue of characters having undergone some sort of brainwashing that changed them entirely. Urdnot Wrex (who died in my first playthrough of Mass Effect) was best-buds-chummy with Shepard, a far cry from his respectful-but-still-gruff demeanor in Mass Effect 2. Already, Mass Effect 3 was shaping up to be a bizarre continuation of a beloved series for me.

Finally, I gave in when the game was cheap enough on PC. Already, a friend of mine was playing it and another avenue for gaming and socializing was enticing. Unfortunately, there was no easy way of moving my save file from my Xbox 360 to my PC, so Jim would have to be remade from scratch. I began with character creation, trying to be as close to Jim Shepard as I was before. I thought I’d get some options to craft the backstory as I had at the beginning of Mass Effect 2 when I tried to start a new game. No such luck. So far, my Shepard was my Shepard in name only.

Even without the issues stemming from this not being my Shepard, inconsistencies in both gameplay and narrative manifested quickly: no sign of or reference to Urdnot Wrex, who was alive as far as I knew from my last playthrough. Instead, he has been replaced by his brother who sounds and acts like Wrex 1.0 than Demo Wrex. My conversation options seemed more limited in that opportunities to choose what Shepard was going to say were infrequent compared to previous games. Bioware did a lot to make the game accessible to not only newcomers to the Mass Effect series, but to role playing games in general. Starting a new game in Mass Effect 3 is not just creating a new character. It’s tailoring the whole game experience. Decide you don’t like fighting but you like some story? They’ll dial back the combat for you. Find story a buzzkill? We’ll minimize the cutscenes and let you maim ‘til your heart’s content. All of this would be admirable had they done this in the beginning.

I’ve spoken to some who’ve come to Bioware’s defense. Yes, it expands the audience. But someone who plays Mass Effect 3 as their first exposure to the series is not going to be happy when they go back to game one. Why can’t I dive sideways? Why does my gun keep overheating? Where’s the reload button? Why won’t Shepard stay in cover? There was a different mindset behind Mass Effect than its sequels. Maybe it was EA’s evil influence or just an overzealous move to improve the original’s weaker mechanics. What is inarguable is that Mass Effect is the weird grandpa whose worldview seems backwards to its son and grandson, Mass Effect 2 and 3. But I was there with the weird grandpa from the beginning. I understand his worldview. 2 and 3 need to get the hell off my lawn.

Watching Wheatley

British director Ben Wheatley may be one of my new favorite directors, but it's hard to pin down why. So far, he's got four features under his belt: Down Terrace (2009), Kill List (2011), Sightseers (2012), and A Field in England (2013). I consumed the Kill List immediately after finishing Down Terrace. After two months, I took a trip to A Field in England after obsessively watching the trailer on YouTube for nearly a half a year, and the following day I found that Sightseers had been added to Netflix. You can guess what happened next. After seeing all four of them so close together, I'm still don't know what draws me to him.

In the beginning, there was Down Terrace, as it and Kill List were available on Netflix and still are as of this post. The two couldn't be more radically different in tone. I can best describe Down Terrace as a dark comedy, whereas Kill List is simply dark. And it could be argued both are family dramas. But the former is about freshly-released bumbling paranoid criminals seeing out their betrayer while the latter is about a hitman with a wife and kid who gets increasingly violent and paranoid. Down Terrace still has its share of violence but they are mostly quick cut. Man is killed with hammer. On to the next scene. Kill List, however, seems to linger on those moments. Man is killed with hammer. Killer keeps swinging.

Of the two, Down Terrace is the easier to recommend because it's lighter. It deals with heavy subject matter, sure, but it doesn't sit with you quite like Kill List does because it provides you plenty of humor to keep the tone light and amusing. These aren't the hardened professional criminals they want folks to believe they are; they're too clumsy for that. Kill List, on the other hand, is unrelenting. That made me feel like I watched Straw Dogs for the first time. A claustrophobic conclusion that is one of the more disturbing endings to a movie I can think of.

And yet, I wanted more. Not more of the unrelenting cold of Kill List, but more of Wheatley's work. What else could he do? A period piece? Surely, you jest. But he did one, and it doesn't feel much like a period piece at all. Yes, everybody's costumed up in 17th-century garb, and there's a certain way some characters speak that reminds you this takes place more than a few years ago, but there seems to be more going on than in another period piece like, say, this year's Great Expectations. Maybe it's the mushrooms most of the characters are force-fed that gives it that different feel. And an esoteric ending that I'm still working out.

Sightseers is more straightforward: a couple go RV-ing across England. But the man is a serial killer and the woman starts to open her mind to her partner's criminal tendencies. It's a funny movie, more so than the rest of Wheatley's work, including Down Terrace. But like the rest, it's dark. People die, and they don't go in funny ways. One does, but it's funny from a point of irony but little more.

It's impossible to ignore the body count in each one of Wheatley's movies. The highest is Kill List's (go figure), but in each of the movies there are at least four deaths. It's not surprising given that each of the films focus on criminals. Ben Wheatley could also be obsessed with death or it's an easy way to commit dramatic action to film or print, but either way the body count is as consistent as his casting of Michael Smiley in each movie:

Structurally, each of the films are divided into distinctive chapters. It's most explicit in Down Terrace and Kill List, as each is split up by days of the week and people on a kill list, respectively. But the dismantling remains in Sightseers and A Field in England as well. Each location that the couple visits in Sightseers is established with a shot of the RV pulling onto a road towards a museum or campground, almost as if the signage on the road are the titles introducing the next sequence. A Field in England's approach is perhaps the most peculiar in that there are a few moments when the cast are frozen as if posing for a painting. Some of them are frozen in an action, while others are posed unnaturally. Each time this happens seems to introduce a significant scene. It's different, and it's easily one of my favorite things about that film.

It could be that criminal element that drives me to watch Ben Wheatley's movies. After all, criminals are fun to watch. But what impresses me most about his body of work is that, despite the shared elements, each of these movies could not differ more. I look forward to whatever he's got next just to see where he goes. And to keep count of the deaths.

Review: Teleglitch Die More Edition

You've been running for a while now. Your legs want to give out but you know you can't stop because to stop is to die. The chattering of the abominations hot on your heels change fight or flight to an act of both. You count three, no, six of them barreling down the hallway. You backpedal, pull out the shotgun slung over your shoulder and fire three successive blasts. Each shot cuts down one, but those that remain continue on to pursue. You could throw the canned meat, that usually slows them down. But you haven't eaten in some time. Or there's the cangun you improvised only moments ago. Rain a hail of hot nails upon your pursuers. But you might just kill yourself in the process.

I shouldn't have eaten that canned meat.

Teleglitch follows a long line of rogue-like games with an attitude that says, "If you die, that's it." It doesn't do anything as drastic as uninstall itself from your computer, but if you die in Teleglitch you just have to restart the game. Its expanded version, subtitled "Die More Edition" emphasizes the brutality of the charmingly simple game and, while mathematically speaking you may die more often in this new edition, you'd still die plenty in the original.

There is a story to the game that reveals itself through various computer terminals and a brief opening interlude. Get this: you're at a space colony and things go south fast. Dark matter swallows hallways and mutants and zombies of all sorts scour the corridors seeking flesh. They've got two items on the menu: canned meat and you.

The game's visuals are a pixelated simple feast. Character models differ just enough that you can tell the difference between you and them, but that's the only distinction you have to worry about. Some enemies are a bit bigger, so you can guess it's going to take a few extra shots (or stabs if you're out of ammo) to bring down. The camera hovers over the landscape like a voyeuristic drone watching a lone survivor narrowly avoid being a main course for a mutant social gathering. It zooms in and rotates depending on how big of a room you enter, which can get dizzying but is able to be turned off in the options. Your map is activated by hitting Tab and the camera zooming all the way out, revealing everything you've explored thus far and obscuring the unknown in a blanket of black. Everything outside the randomized corridors and rooms is that same absolute black, reinforcing a fear of the unknown. While traversing the facility, you might come across a hallway that ends in darkness with a strange colorful ripple on its surface. "Anomalies," they call them. I'll let you guess what happens when you walk into them.

For the average PC shooter fan, the controls are a walk in the park. WASD moves your character swiftly through the claustrophobic environments. Your mouse wheel picks a different item in your inventory like a shotgun or a medkit. Right mouse button aims. Left mouse button shoots. The way the Good Lord intended.

Then there's the C key. By default, this is the "Combine" key that allows you to combine different items in your inventory to make new tools or weapons. Combine a can of meat with some RDX_250 explosive and make the sophisticated "meattrap." Box of nails and some more RDX_250? Nailbomb. It doesn't have the engineering depth of a game like Minecraft, but it does add some survivalist flavor to a game where your second objective to hopping teleportation pads is to survive.

It's no Game of the Year contender, but it's a challenging and simple odyssey that proves it's well worth its cost. You can pick it up on Steam for $3.25, where it normally retails for $12.99.