The Whining Stranger on Music

Wasting Away in Mediocre-ville



Note: If you are a fan of singer-songwriter [sic] Jimmy Buffett, you probably don't want to read this post.

So, this morning, the Whining Stranger had the pleasure of watching a Today Show summer concert by that balladeer of the resort package, that raconteur of the faux Caribbean, the Cheeseburger in Paradise himself--Jimmy Buffett. Wow. And you thought the Rolling Stones were the quintessence of pop-music-corporate-whoredom! Jimmy Buffett has his own line of tequila. Jimmy Buffett has books that he's "written" [when they release handwritten manuscripts to the public, I'll let my incredulity subside] about life in Margaritaville. Jimmy Buffett has a chain of restaurants. Jimmy Buffett is not so much a singer as a marketing phenomenon. He is the ultimate salve for boring cubicle-dwellers (by which I mean those people who work in cubicles and think, "Yeah, baby, this is the life") and middle-aged-guys-in-suits who like to think they still got it, that they're still wild and crazy for having a drink before noon or for padding around in bare feet on a weekday. He is the soundtrack of your travel agent-devised tropical vacation. He provides the music for exploiting warm but poor nations. He epitomizes that beachy lifestyle because he uses steel drums in his tunes. Heads up, Peter Tosh. Jimmy Buffett is the poet laureate of warmer latitudes.

Not.

Sorry to be negative, but the shamelessness of his Let's-get-crazy-in-the-surf-I-don't-work-I'm-drunk-by-nine-a.m.-and-I-don't-care-in-a-Hawaiian-shirt nonsense burns me up. The man is a farce. Here's maragarita salt in your eye, Buffett.

And while I'm ranting, I think I am going to send the local weather girl--the one Al Roker throws to periodically to tell me what the temperature's like in my neck of the woods--money for elocution lessons. I haven't understood a thing she's said in two years. But she seems to have an expensive haircut, which is, I imagine, how she keeps the job.