Wednesday, January 14, 2009

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."

I've come to realize that the people I admire most are complete assholes. For my writing class we have to write two papers on a person. One with good things about them, another with bad things. We had to pick three different people then narrow it down to the one that would be the best. My choices were:



Jimmy Urine
Marilyn Manson
Andy Warhol




Now, if those people aren't a couple of the biggest assholes you've ever heard of, then I am sorry that you have had to deal with more. Let us observe.



Jimmy Urine, who is known for kissing his fans for money, asking them for cash, and also for them to buy him things. Jimmy knows, and uses to his advantage, the fact that his fans will do just about anything. While I was at an MSI show, he took his microphone and claimed it to be magical because he could use it to make people do anything. And he proved his point by getting the entire audience to bark like several different sized dogs, meow like cats, and make buffalo noises, later says "Ah! So that's what those fuckers sound like!" He has admitted that his blatant disrespect for the crowd is simply for his own entertainment. Firing strings of insults into his screaming audience seems to get them more fired up. Perhaps "Mindless" really is a great word to used. He truly is an asshole and an amazing con artist. Though he seems to be lacking in intelligence, that is quite the misconception, considering that he has successfully gotten millions of people to practically bow at his feet, despite the distasteful things he does. And THAT is why I find him fantastic.


"Buy lots of our stuff. Give me some money, stop making more bands. Make an animated series I like to watch instead."







Marilyn Manson is an asshole on an entirely different level. Manson has an intimidating intelligence that give him the ability to put almost anyone in their place. His sense of humor is one that is undetectably sardonic. He tends to take the anti society route other than the anti-musician route. His way of going about things is incredibly offensive in a way that somehow manages to make the ones who are offended look bad. His words and actions reflect his dislike of society, the American way of thinking, and the general monotony of the public. He is an asshole, but for the right reasons.


"Anybody intelligent enough to realize what America is, is not going to sit
around and do nothing about it. They're going to be the same way that I am.
They're going to be the same way our fans are. They're going to be pissed."





Andy Warhol could almost be called an anti-artist. Though not part of Dada, Warhol had a way of showing people that everything could be bought, that money could fuel anything, and that to him, art was unnecessary while being completely necessary. No only could his painting be considered ridiculous and boring, but also his films. Warhol's film Eat is a 45 minute film that consists of nothing more than a man eating a mushroom.
Warhol took polar opposite things and made them equal. Two of his most famous paintings are a picture of Marilyn Monroe and a picture of a Campbell's soup can. Both vastly different, but both made equal. Andy Warhol considered money to be incredibly important. To him, making money was art and having a good business was the best kind of art. He admitted to being a 'deeply superficial person" and wanting to be "plastic". His vain love of money, his infatuation with the boring, and his ability to con people into eventually thinking that something as simple as a soup can could be art is really what made him an artist. And an asshole.
"I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked
the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting
money. "



Now, these people are not the typical kind of asshole that just cut people off while driving or don't tip (though I wouldn't put it past some of them...), they're the kind of people that others see as assholes because of how they blatantly surface controversial and dist respectful viewpoints simply to stir other up. Each did it for his own separate reason, and each reason has a lot of truth behind it. Whether a pop artist, musical artist, or performance artist, each is a con artist and in the end, a brilliant, brilliant asshole.

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