Nas says sleep is the cousin of death, and, with the exception of the putrid homophobic slurs he slings at Jay-Z and Roc-a-Fella from time to time, I’m pretty much backing whatever Nas says. I flat-out detest a good 37 of my 40 winks, from the drool-soaked pillows to the recurring dismemberment nightmares to waking up with my kitty’s brown eye deposited on my face to simply missing out on even the most mind-numbingly pretentious and inane of bar babble (note to world: We have nothing else to say to one another about Lost in Translation, especially the @$%#ing soundtrack).
Alas, until the cybernetic conversion I have scheduled for my 50th birthday, it appears that slumber will persist as a necessary evil in my so-called life. So on the rare, unfortunate occasions when I succumb to exhaustion just as something “good” is about to happen on television, and somebody’s courteous enough to ask, “Do you want me to wake you up for this?” I steadfastly reserve the affirmative for only the most life-altering events?you know, like, the 2000 presidential election. That or the Headbanger’s Ball debut of the latest “hey, the budget’s shot, so here’s three minutes of us ‘getting crazy’ on the bus” Papa Roach video.
It took a Friday night rerun of Carson Daly’s late-late train wreck Last Call to trigger my first wake-up call of 2004. Imagine settling into your nocturnal cocoon, swaddled in blankies with your significant other, and hearing the future star of Mannequin vs. Robocop mumble something about “making her domestic debut . . . later in the show . . . Dannii Minogue.” Strike that. Presuming that your reaction would probably skew toward the “drifting off in relative indifference” ballpark, rather than the far more column-worthy “screeching, ‘OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FUCK?! DANNII FUCKING MINOGUE?! NO SHIT?!’ like John Waters’ 10-year-old niece” realm, imagine me settling into my nocturnal cocoon, all swaddled and crap.
I just can’t get her?or her sister?out of my head. Barf.
My fandom of Dannii and Kylie is, I suppose, troubling. It’s sort of in that scary, extensive no-man’s-land between playfully quasi-ironic and Patriot Act-justifying. My paraphernalia is minimal, but telling: one 2003 Kylie calendar, featuring various states of undress; multiple promo posters for Kylie’s endearingly atrocious, likely hit-free, brand new album Body Language (Capitol), the follow-up to the endearingly atrocious hit factory, Fever; one homemade “I Heart Kylie” T-shirt, designed by My Ex-Roommate Mat as a playfully quasi-ironic 26th birthday present; one promotional glossy of Dannii taped above my desk; and wallpaper on my work computer featuring Kylie and Dannii draped over a couch, dousing each other with Super Soakers (which, I might add, is probably only the third most blatantly lascivious wallpaper in this office, well behind Steve Wiecking’s para-pornographic Brad Pitt display, which I’m not at all bringing up because he had the audacity to dis Kylie in my very cubicle).
Why are the Minogue girls my pop-rock pet rocks, and not Justin, Britney, or even Kelis? I don’t think it’s a physical thing, although they’re unquestionably Maxim sexy?I like to downplay my Kylie obsession by ripping off Howard Stern and referring to her as a “butter face” (everything’s hot . . . but her face). It’s definitely not an intellectual thing, seeing as how every song in their collective catalog is about doing boys, being in love with boys, or being really, really sad that certain boys don’t love and/or want to do them. [You forgot dancing.?Ed.]
After (way, way too) much deliberation, I’m pretty sure my unyielding dork-boy fascination with Kylie and Dannii is directly related to my unyielding dork-boy fascination with Return of the Jedi. Their distinctly European, trashy, disco-chic booty grinders make me feel like Jabba the Hutt in his heyday, slapping around Bib Fortuna, feeding impudent dancing girls to the Rancor Monster, downing slug cocktails while Jedi Knights are forced into the Sarlaac Pit. You can’t tell me I couldn’t garble “Put the Needle on It” or “Love at First Sight” in Huttese and that blue, elephant-looking bastard on the keys wouldn’t know exactly what I was talking about. HO HO HO! BO SHUDA!
As implied earlier, Kylie’s Body Language is a smidge too esoteric for Yankee, much less earthly, tastes. The beats are retarded, accelerated, and distorted until each track sounds like an ugly amalgam of its own future remixes. Synths and drum machines puke all over Kylie’s notoriously thin erotic whimpers. Intended “club jams” like “Still Standing” and 33 rpm-delight first single “Slow” are even less populist than Dannii’s impenetrably icy lady-about-town hurricanes. You could say this stuff is groundbreaking, if the ground you were referring to was extraterrestrial.
Is it worth waking up for live? Not unless gold lamé slave bikinis are involved. On the backup dancers?which I wouldn’t put past the Minogues.
Send news, rumors, and unsubstantiated, feckless dirt to abonazelli@seattleweekly.com.
