Need A Go-Go Girl Who Dance Like Lady Gaga

Last night I went to a Lady Gaga-themed 30th birthday party for a friend. Attendees were encouraged to dress like Gaga or in Gaga-inspired outfits. Some people took their direction from Gaga videos and replicated the bubble outfit or the Diet Coke rollers. Other people simply wrapped themselves in electrical tape or something sparkly because nothing which is aware and celebrates its oddness is really un-Gaga. I myself took the four aces and a joker from a deck of cards and stuck them to my forehead with double-stick tape.

It all relates to a simple truth. Like or dislike her music (I personally like it), it would be pretty difficult to deny Gaga's influence as a cultural force. In the last two years she has released 8 new singles and 7 of them have been top 10 hits with the most recent being the Isla Bonita-esque "Alejandro." What distinguishes Gaga as a cultural force is that each video is a envelope-pushing production and the new video is no exception.

In her early videos, she celebrated rockstar-like Midwest partying, L.A. decadence and, like a good New Yorker, New York. Then came the dual turning points of "Paparazzi" and "Bad Romance" where the now-famous Gaga began making insider points/mocking the celebrity culture which now enveloped her. By the time "Telephone" and its unabashed product placements arrived Gaga was both ensconced in the business-side of things while winking at us from the art-for-arts-sake side. How "Alejandro" distiguishes itself from Gaga's earlier videos is the type of iconography it choses to ape.



It's disappointing to me Gaga's first foray from what she'd done well with into new turf didn't take her anywhere interesting. Gone are American influences as Gaga draws from an even deeper pool. Unfortunately the influences she draws are the tired and worn-out trifecta of Fascism, Catholicism and Victorianism. If she's feeling restricted from producing her art (and quite unworthily so) the play isn't to recycle cliche. Even if it reads as unintentional homage to Madonna, it's a rare misstep from Gaga and hopefully one she doesn't soon duplicate.

So why didn't it work? I'd offer this as a simple possibility. We Americans have our cultural feet placed deep one-each into two cultural pools: that of Europe and that of Africa. Gaga represents an excellent balance between those two cultural pools. It's not a stretch to call her music techno or to call it R&B. Some may look down their rock critic noses at dance pop here in the Anglosphere but dance music is what makes the rest of the world move. You could play "Alejandro" in an international setting and not seem over-reaching or out-of-place in either Stockholm or Malawi. Gaga's American melting pot is what distinguished her from other also-rans. I put forth the video doesn't work because it tilts to formalism while forgetting about that world-moving sensation of dancing.

The truth is Gaga is one of only two American popular artists who have actual credibility within all but the shrewdly discriminating of our culture. If her career follows the arc of Justin Timberlake's (an artist who has his own internationally-infused songs), she'll be just fine.

My Reading List

A friend asked for my reading list. This was the result. Get on GoodReads and you'll get an e-mail every I add or finish a book. Starting with January '09...

Read

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
The Genocides by Thomas Disch
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Black Hole by Charles Burns
People Are Unappealing: Even Me by Sara Barron
Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher
The Ghost Map... by Steven Johnson
Bonk by Mary Roach
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientists Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Black Hole War... by Leonard Susskind
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!... by Richard Feynman
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Alex and Me... by Irene Pepperberg
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
How Proust Can Change Your Life... by Alain de Botton
The Book of Basketball... by Bill Simmons
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 edited by Dave Eggers
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Inventory... by The Writers of The Onion
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
Why God Won't Go Away... by Andrew Newberg
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Pleasurable Kingdom by Jonathan Balcombe
Big Machine by Victor LaVelle
Professor Stewart's Cupboard of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

Reading

Twitterature by Alexander Aciman
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Avoid Boring People... by James D. Watson
News, Nudity, Nonsense: The Best of Vice Magazine Vol. 2 (2003-2008)

To Read

The Biology of Belief... by Bruce Lipton
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
Speaker for The Dead by Orson Scott Card
House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Aristotle and Aardvark Go To Washington... by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
The Tall Book by Arianne Cohen
Wigfield by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paulo Dinello
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart
Second Nature by Jonathan Blacombe
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Supermob by Gus Russo
The Collected What If... edited Robert Cowley

It's A Number Game But Shit Don't Add Up Somehow

From the time I got on the bus yesterday morning until when he stopped texting me back seven hours later, Smallz and I exchanged mini-diatribes about the NBA Draft ranging from which player the Wolves should take with the fourth pick to the proper way to evaluate talent and construct a team to the other person's deficiencies at evaluating talent and those of their chosen method to constructing a team. Basically our arguments were this.

Smallz loves efficient players. Thus Kevin Love is his one shining beacon on our entire roster. As such Al Jefferson inspires much hatred in Smallz's gut. Not only does Jefferson play the same position as Love but inefficiently uses the ball in offensive situations Love would efficiently use them. His evidence is statistics and his team-building philosophy is to find other efficient players to pair with Love.

I, on the other hand, believe Jefferson is inefficient because he needs to be. Love is a good player and a compliment to Jefferson. But efficiency statistics don't tell the whole story. As the most offensively-skilled player on the Wolves, a less-than-efficient attempt from Jefferson is still better than passing the ball to a less talented teammate. Being the focus of the offense and the volume of his shots he can't cherry-pick only the best attempts. Basketball is scored as a quantitative game, not an efficiency game, and to remove Jefferson without a suitable replacement will only focus the defense on another lesser player.

(Further reading found HERE.)

This is especially important with the NBA draft coming up. Since the Wolves didn't get one of the surefire guys at the very top of the draft, their path forward is a lot less clear. Smallz wants to trade Jefferson to free playing time for Love and draft Kentucky's DeMarcus Cousins, a freakishly large center who may have character issues. I want to keep both Jefferson and Love while drafting Syracuse small forward Wesley Johnson, a lower risk lower reward player who plays a position of need. We could argue back and forth for hours (and did) about which one would be a better fit for Minnesota. I wanted to model the problem and get some results now.

How I Used Math To "Solve" the Problem

So let's assume three things. First that either Cousins or Johnson could boom or bust with equal likelihood. Let's just say Cousins wider range of possible outcomes averages out to Johnson's thinner range to make things easier. Second, let's assume the pick is an independent outcome. Let's say if Minnesota picked Cousins they wouldn't keep Jefferson and his minutes would go to DeMarcus. Third, the actual outcome will be one of many possible outcomes. When a weatherman says 55% chance of rain and it doesn't, he was right. It just fell in the 45% he didn't mention.

Here's the "game" I developed. Imagine every possible outcome for DeMarcus Cousins' and Wesley Johnson's careers is represented by a playing card. Since they are top draft picks they are more likely to succeed than fail so all face cards represent complete success (being a cornerstone), ten through six represent qualified success (being an NBA starter) and five through two mean they bust. I could look up the real success rate but let's keep it simple. Now draw two cards, one representing Cousins and the other representing Johnson. Reset the deck, reshuffle the cards and repeat the process 100 times.

(Or do like I did and use a random card generator like THIS ONE.)

What I found is Cousins is a cornerstone 37% of the time, a starter 38% of the time and a bust 25% of the time. Likewise Johnson is a cornerstone 38% of the time, a starter 33% of the time and a bust 29% of the time. In 48% of the cases Cousins is the better player while Johnson is the better player 45% of the time. (The remaining 7% is when they're even.) It's also worth noting Cousins is significantly better 27% of the time while Johnson is significantly better 26% of the time.

So what do the results tell us about who the Wolves should take? Nothing. This is a simplified model of an enormously complex system. But within the context of the system it says we should expect any result to be possible. In that way both experience and this simulation align. In the NBA Draft eventually you have to play the odds and hope for the best.

P.S. This is the raw data from my simulation. Cousins is on the left and Johnson on the right. Ignore the symbols. That's just me coding the data.

CJ

A4**
A3**
A9**
88-
610++

610++
Q8**
QK*
63*
32*

5J++
10Q+
9J+
87*
410++

56*
3Q++
34+
5A++
67+

109*
QJ*
4K++
82**
109*

63*
56+
7Q++
86*
J8**

3A++
910+
5K++
J9*
Q4**

103**
KJ*
JQ+
A2**
9Q+

25+
K5**
9Q+
4A++
63*

44-
6K++
6Q++
9K++
K3**

KJ*
8A++
5J++
8Q++
A5**

25++
7Q++
KA+
K8**
A3**

J3**
22-
J3**
37++
24+

76*
9J+
A4**
3K++
QJ*

KA+
88-
53*
A8**
82**

36+
J8*
8Q++
J7**
Q9*

6J++
AA-
6A++
A5**
310++

92**
QQ-
JK+
56+
8Q++

8J+
Q9*
Q6**
Q5**
810+

J2**
33-
104**
A7**
QA+