ljungberg
Originally written 05.06.2002.
swede freddie ljungberg is quickly becoming my favorite footballer. it could be the rad pink mohawk (this guy looks like he has style of his own, rather than beckham who always looks like someone else dressed him), or it could be that he allegedly doesn’t touch alcohol, but the real reason is that he’s just an amazing player. this weekend, he put the finishing touch on arsenal’s 2-0 fa cup victory of chelsea with a goal so awesome it put the beautiful in the phrase “the beautiful game”. not only did he deftly beat two defenders and somehow break through a hard tackle, but he finished with a curving shot that landed precisely in the side netting. awesome.
a diagram of ljungberg’s goal from bbc sports:
ljungberg celebrating a goal (but not the one above):
britney
Originally written 05.06.2002.
britney spears is the worst role model for young girls ever. ever. look beyond her constant claims of virginity (which are all a farce according to the british tabloiss) and one will realize that she’s sending her masses of preteen followers all the wrong messages. i was watching her new video, “slave 4 you”, and it was horrible. britney has always liked to play up the dichotomoy between innocence and sexuality. first it was the schoolgirl uniform and now it’s taking a provocative song title and peppering it with the sort of alphanumeric abbreviation that seems distinctly preteen girl. however, while the schoolgirl antics were fun and saucy, brit’s latest offerings just seem, well, dirty. in her latest video she starts by whining about being treated like a little girl. however, in experessing her autonomy as a women she doesn’t make any kind of meaningul assertion of her personality. instead, she prefers to throw logic and reason to the wind and be a “slave” to her pent up sexual passion. she might equate everything to dancing in the song, but we all know what she’s really talking about. fucking. and that’s the problem. it’s not her sexuality, per se. in many ways female sexuality, particularly in the 60s and 70s, was really empowering and liberating for women. the problem with britney’s sexuality is that it’s not her own. rather than being a sexual entity in her own right, she has to define her sexuality in terms of being someone else’s “slave”. even her claims of virginity reflect this. virginity seems less and less like a personal choice and more like an obligation, a burden, a set of shacles. it seems that women’s sexuality has come full circle since the sexual revolution. sexualality is no longer their’s. it belongs to the lifeless, meaningless void of mtv culture.