The Revolutionary Herb Ritts Sex Romp!

Let's say for the sake of argument that you are an aspiring pop superstar embarking on the most important, controversial, and image-defining period of your life. I'm listening, you say. Your last two music videos featured the following: burning crosses, gang violence, interracial kissing, black Jesus, interracial black Jesus kissing, you licking milk out of a bowl like a cat, you naked on a bed in chains, crotch-grabbing, and proto-cone bras. Feminist groups are outraged. Religious leaders decrying your name (which was, considering your name, deliciously ironic). Multinational beverage companies are cursing you and wishing Lionel Richie were still relevant. How do you blow all of this out of the water?

Well... you kind of don't. Instead, you just make a gorgeous, iconic video that launches a string of gorgeous, iconic videos by one of the most notable photographers of the '90s. Ho-hum.



Gorgeous, no? And somehow a bit... familiar? That's because Herb Ritts launched a summer-drenched assault on MTV during the early nineties, and it was all very black-and-white-sexy. Very Calvin Klein, very Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. You'll see his name popping up quite a bit this summer, because he was a master of combining sex with (shockingly!) the message of the video.

Objectively, "Cherish" is a sweet song bordering on being sentimental; it's very confident, but very child-like. Sort of a carry over from True Blue, but with some gnarly Steve Winwood noodling that pops up every once in a while. So Herb Ritts gave this song what it needed: just a little bit of an edge. A sweet little turn on the Little Mermaid, with loving shots of Madonna at her most charming and Tony Ward being Tony Ward. And that adorable, sexually-ambiguous kid! What a wonderful debut, and a video that elevated the song and its singer.

Summer Camp Love!

Oh man, this was the song totally turned me on to Mariah Carey. All the whistle register stuff used to skeeve me out something fierce, not to mention that terrible and terribly spot on "I'll Be There" cover. Girl should not sound just like an eight-year-old boy. This video was so sweet, though; as a kid, it really made you want to have a secret summer love, something that in adult terms is actually awful. You can have your Shriekbat-Ingenue Mariah or your Sexual-Emancipation-from-Tommy-Motolla-Mariah or your Weird-Fight-with-Bitchy-Evil-Twin-for-the-Love-of-Jerry-O'-Connell Mariah, but I'll take Sweet-Tire-Swing Mariah every time.

Oh, yay, Google! How... festive of you?

Google has taken to celebrating the shortening of the days in the Northern Hemisphere by, uh, confusing your mother on their front-page! So what do you do when you're writing a 500 word article about a weird Japanese artist's 11th-grade-geometry-notebook-inspired Google doodle? Why, you veer for the inappropriate:

Murakami emerged as a self-styled late century Andy Warhol in 1996 when he founded the Hiropon Factory, a collective of young artists who would reproduce his works like widgets. I first encountered his art in the form of a sculpture called Hiropon: a wide-eyed girl-woman with comically massive breasts swinging a stream of lactating milk like a jump-rope around her skipping body.

No link here, sorry! What kind of summer do you think this is? Besides, you already looked it up, admit it. Oh, but it gets better:

She was cute, even sexy by way of hyperbolic parody. But she was also, quite possibly, deranged.

That's a... way of putting it, Roland Kelts. By the way, we are pulling you out of Japan. You have been there long enough that dead-eyed, lactating pop-art is "cute, even sexy" in a way. If he had done any investigative reporting, he would have linked those two to the creepy little people in the "Sour Girl" video by STP. Again, no link. What kind of summer...

Don't worry... we just want hugs.

Hells yeah, it's summer rain!

In somewhat of an anti-climax, the first day of summer solstice here has been hit with nature's version of a Super Soaker 50.

No, I said... No, not the Oozinator! No! Yuck! Gross!

What I'm saying is, clouds are angry today. Like, stop Yankees-Reds games angry, and I have never been that angry, especially in Yankees-Reds-related ways. It's enough to put a damper on your ridiculously optimistic summer mood. What to do in times of self-doubt? Answer: The B-52's, duh.

You dance in the garden in torn sheets in the rain, and if you happen to piss off a few Normals on the way, all the better! I feel like getting Michael Stipe to do this with me would be deceptively simple.

The Solstice, Y'all!

Finally, the calendar has verified what the unseasonably hot weather and the presence of schoolchildren at times you are not prepared to see schoolchildren have belied: the true summer has begun! Bring out the lawn sprinklers and pump-action water cannons! Tempt us with your salads with fruit in them and your beguiling farmer's tans! Off with shirts! On with flip-flops! And goddammit, if your margaritas are frozen, we'll take a pitcher!