Mtv Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Mtv. Here they are! All 100 of them:

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
David Foster Wallace (Up, Simba!)
Loki'd!
Tom Hiddleston
Here's to the kids. The kids who would rather spend their night with a bottle of coke & Patrick or Sonny playing on their headphones than go to some vomit-stained high school party. Here's to the kids whose 11:11 wish was wasted on one person who will never be there for them. Here's to the kids whose idea of a good night is sitting on the hood of a car, watching the stars. Here's to the kids who never were too good at life, but still were wicked cool. Here's to the kids who listened to Fall Out boy and Hawthorne Heights before they were on MTV...and blame MTV for ruining their life. Here's to the kids who care more about the music than the haircuts. Here's to the kids who have crushes on a stupid lush. Here's to the kids who hum "A Little Less 16 Candles, A Little More Touch Me" when they're stuck home, dateless, on a Saturday night. Here's to the kids who have ever had a broken heart from someone who didn't even know they existed. Here's to the kids who have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower & didn't feel so alone after doing so. Here's to the kids who spend their days in photobooths with their best friend(s). Here's to the kids who are straight up smartasses & just don't care. Here's to the kids who speak their mind. Here's to the kids who consider screamo their lullaby for going to sleep. Here's to the kids who second guess themselves on everything they do. Here's to the kids who will never have 100 percent confidence in anything they do, and to the kids who are okay with that. Here's to the kids. This one's not for the kids, who always get what they want, But for the ones who never had it at all. It's not for the ones who never got caught, But for the ones who always try and fall. This one's for the kids who didnt make it, We were the kids who never made it. The Overcast girls and the Underdog Boys. Not for the kids who had all their joys. This one's for the kids who never faked it. We're the kids who didn't make it. They say "Breaking hearts is what we do best," And, "We'll make your heart be ripped of your chest" The only heart that I broke was mine, When I got My Hopes up too too high. We were the kids who didnt make it. We are the kids who never made it.
Pete Wentz
I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?
Jess C. Scott (EyeLeash: A Blog Novel)
MTV and video games have solved that problem as far as most of humanity goes. That, and telly, as it were.” “Telly?” Who was that? He grunted in amusement. “Television, of course. Don’t you speak English?” “You sure don’t,” I muttered. Shaking his head, he frowned at me.
Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, #1))
I've tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine, and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be "stupid"? I'll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.
Christopher Moore (Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal)
What up, peeps?" I looked at my hairless cat for a moment. "What up, peeps? You've been watching MTV again, haven't you?" "Word.
Jaye Wells (Red-Headed Stepchild (Sabina Kane, #1))
In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to have give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, knew that even realising it is a cliché. The impasse that paralysed Cobain in precisely the one that Fredric Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in ‘a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, where all that is left is to imitate dead styles in the imaginary museum’.
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
Brie! Do Beyonce or Christina or whichever lame MTV diva you're mostly admiring this week waste their time with what-ifs? No, they spend all their energy on looking fabulous and cutting down any bitch that dares get in their way.-Charlie
Sarra Manning (Pretty Things)
As you wish, of course." Lucius lowered the volume on an old record player, which spun a warped vinyl disk that wailed unfamiliar music, scratchy and whiny, like cats fighting. Or a coffin with rusty hinges opening and closing over and over again in a deserted mausoleum. "Do you like Croatian folk?" heasked, seeing my interest. "It reminds me of home." "I prefer normal music." "Ah, yes, your MTV with all the bumping and grinding. Like a shot of raging adolescent hormones administered via television. I'm not averse.
Beth Fantaskey (Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Jessica, #1))
Jesus Christ, MTV would make a mint with a reality TV show about their unit. The relationship drama alone would carry the ratings, forget the actual fieldwork.
Charlie Cochet (Rack & Ruin (THIRDS, #3))
Chimes?" Phyllis asked. "Chimes to call a lover? Chimes with the voice of a bird trapped in them? Chimes that play you whatever song you most desire to hear?" "No thanks," said Nick. "We've got MTV.
Sarah Rees Brennan (The Demon's Lexicon)
Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.
Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind)
Remember, do the things that you fucking believe in, alright? This is what it's all about right now. [MTV Awards 2005]
Billie Joe Armstrong
He was a boy, she was a girl Can I make it any more obvious, He was a punk, she did ballet, What more can I say, He wanted her, she wouldn't tell, but secretly she wanted him as well, All of her friends stuck up their nose, They had a problem with his baggy clothes He was a sk8er boi, she said "see you later boy" he wasn't good enough for her, he was a sk8er boi, she said "see you later boy", he wasn't good enough for her. Five years from now, she sits at home, feeding the baby, she's all alone, she turns on TV, guess who she sees, sk8er boi rockin' on MTV, she calls up her friends, they already know, and they got tickets to see his show
Avril Lavigne (Avril Lavigne - Let Go)
I got really offended when my single 'Smile' got banned [during after-school hours] from MTV in the U.K. because it had the word fuck in it. They said, 'We don't want kids to grow up too quickly.' But then you have Paris Hilton and the Pussycat Dolls taking their clothes off and gyrating up against womanizing, asshole men, and that's acceptable. You're thinking your kids are gonna grow up quicker because they heard the word fuck than from thinking they should be shoving their tits in people's faces?
Lily Allen
If you're a sports star and you say 'faggot' on the courts, you get fined. But if you're in music and you say it 234 times, you get an MTV music award.
Tegan Quin
Who wouldn’t love this jargon we dress common sense in: "formal innovation is no longer transformative, having been co-opted by the forces of stabilization and post-industrial inertia," blah, blah. But this co-optation might actually be a good thing if it helped keep younger writers from being able to treat mere formal ingenuity as an end in itself. MTV-type co-optation could end up a great prophylactic against cleveritis—you know, the dreaded grad-school syndrome of like "Watch me use seventeen different points of view in this scene of a guy eating a Saltine." The real point of that shit is "Like me because I’m clever"—which of course is itself derived from commercial art’s axiom about audience-affection determining art’s value.
David Foster Wallace
I think I've done the best I can do at the time and been as honest with myself as I can be and I can sleep good at night knowing that. - interview w/ MTV 2005
Trent Reznor
My generation was weaned on subliminal advertising, stupid television, slasher movies, insipid grocery-store literature, MTV, VCRs, fast food, infomercials, glossy ads, diet aids, plastic surgery, a pop culture wherein the hyper-cool, blank-eyed supermodel was a hero. This is the intellectual and emotional equivalent of eating nothing but candy bars – you get malnourished and tired. We grew up in a world in which the surface of the thing is infinitely more important than its substance – and where the surface of the thing had to be “perfect,” urbane, sophisticated, blasé, adult. I would suggest that if you grow up trying constantly to be an adult, a successful adult, you will be sick of being grown up by the time you’re old enough to drink.
Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)
Purify your intentions, your inner being, your heart and be sincere in your actions,’ he wrote. ‘God looks into your heart, not at your outer form. He looks at what lies behind the clothes … He looks into your private sphere, not at your public show.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
I've never been to a strip club but I turn on MTV and see in every single video what it must look like... if you have to work so hard at appearing sexy, then perhaps you weren't that sexy after all, perhaps your music has no sensuality, perhaps your music is dull, indeed, that you have no choice but to pelvic thrust your way through a pop video in a leather bikini in order to detract from its mediocrity... it might be advisable to do something else.
Stevie Nicks
With technology and everything, compact discs are going to be, like, vintage soon, right? The way vinyl is now. Like, if I ever have kids, they’re going to look at CDs and think, ‘What is this crap, geez, how clunky.’ By then everyone will have the fiftieth edition of iPods—or maybe they’ll just have music downloaded directly into their brains, like with microchips, or something. And I’ll be the old lady in the corner going, ‘Back when I was a kid, we had mix tapes, and floppy disks, and gas didn’t cost twenty bucks a gallon, and oh, yeah, MTV actually played music videos, if you can believe it.’ And they’ll probably say, ‘Oh, Mom, you and your stories, we’re jetting to the oxygen bar, see you later,’ and take off in their flying cars. You know there’ll be flying cars, it’s only a matter of time.
Hannah Harrington
Your muse ain't singin' on your MTV? Can't even see him on your HD TV?
David Mutti Clark (Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues)
For every new art form there's someone to come along and pronounce it dead, but rarely has an art form been born dead - as is the case with rock video, and its major outlet, MTV.
Greil Marcus
MTV introduced me to punk music and gay people.
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
Amy Finnerty: At the end of it [MTV Unplugged taping], we went back to the hotel, and Kurt said to me, "I didn't do very good." I said, "What are you talking about? That was a historical moment, that was a really incredible performance. Why do you feel like you didn't do very good?" He said, "Because everybody was so quiet, nobody really clapped that loud and they just kind of sat there." I said something to the effect of, "People felt like they were seeing Jesus Christ for the first time. It was intense for people. They were trying to be respectful by being quiet and just letting you do your thing." And then he kind of got a little smirk on his face and said, "Thank you.
Mark Yarm (Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge)
These days MTV is known for…I actually don’t know what MTV is known for now. I haven’t watched MTV regularly in at least fifteen years. I assume MTV’s programming consists of reality shows in which twenty-one-year-olds flash their junk in exchange for Skrillex tickets, but don’t quote me on that.
Steven Hyden (Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life)
and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes into the bathroom and I wait a couple of minutes and then she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed and I put my hands on her shoulders, and she says stop it and, after I let her go, she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she's naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain De Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do. And she takes the tube of suntan lotion form me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do. After a while I stop and reach over to her and she stops me and says no, and then places my hand back on myself and her hand begins again and after this goes on for a while I tell her that I'm going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she's almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie's on the stereo and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on and she hands me a box of Kleenex. I wipe myself off then look through a Vogue that's lying by the side of the bed. She puts a robe on and stares at me. I can hear thunder in the distance and it begins to rain harder. She lights a cigarette and I start to dress ....
Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero)
Politics is clearly a not so happening topic in our young blood. I could clearly see many students yawning. Some might have been discussing the new Shakira video amongst themselves, the one shown on MTV these days. Bloody donkeys, if it was a porno movie featuring an interracial orgy, their eyes might have ogled out and ears might have become sensitive to the oohs and aahs but not for causes of the nation. Hrmpf …youth power indeed!
Faraaz Kazi
May in Varanasi. 25° and wet. It's like the 6th circle of the inferno here, Edith - where they flail the arses off the howling heretics and the men who fuck marine life etc. NATO's stomping on the Balkans while India and Pakistan threaten one another with nukes. "Dead From the Waist Down" on MTV. The humidity's making me horny and mad. I miss Robin. In his new book, Ken Wilbur calls it "skin hunger". I feel like I'm building up a charge. Monsoon's on its way.
Grant Morrison
Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan—punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish.
Terri Windling (Welcome to Bordertown (Borderland, #8))
...back to the USA where there is honor and integrity and Lord knows what else, I thought. I got confused. President Bush and Clarence Thomas and antiabortion and AIDS and Duke and crack and homelessness. And everywhere, MTV, cartoons ads, magazines--just war and sexism and violence. In Mexico, at least a can of cement falls off a scaffold on your head, no Uzis or anything personal.
Lucia Berlin (A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories)
Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should be an occasion of cross-cultural hospitality. Consider an analogy: when I travel to France, I hope to be made to feel welcome. However, I don't expect my French hosts to become Americans in order to make me feel at home. I don't expect them to start speaking English, ordering pizza, talking about the New York Yankees, and so on. Indeed, if I wanted that, I would have just stayed home! Instead, what I'm hoping for is to be welcomed into their unique French culture; that's why I've come to France in the first place. And I know that this will take some work on my part. I'm expecting things to be different; indeed, I'm looking for just this difference. So also, I think, with hospitable worship: seekers are looking for something our culture can't provide. Many don't want a religious version of what they can already get at the mall. And this is especially true of postmodern or Gen X seekers: they are looking for elements of transcendence and challenge that MTV could never give them. Rather than an MTVized version of the gospel, they are searching for the mysterious practices of the ancient gospel.
James K.A. Smith (Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture))
Dear Producers, Something is radiating deep within me and it must be transmitted or I will implode and the world will suffer a great loss, unawares. Epic are the proportions of my soul, yet without a scope who cares am I? This is why I must but must be one of the inhabitants of MTV's "Real World." Only there, burning brightly into a million dazzled eyes, will my as yet uncontoured self assume the beauteous forms that are not just its own, but an entire market niche's, due. I am a Kirk Cameron-Kurt Cobain figure, roguishly quirky, dandified but down to earth, kooky but comprehensible; denizen of the growing penumbra between alternative and mainstream culture; angsty prophet of the already bygone apocalypse, yet upbeat, stylish and sexy! Oscar Wilde wrote, "Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating... [they] live the poetry [they] cannot write." As with Dorian Gray, life is my art! Oh MTV, take me, make me, wake me from my formless slumbers and place me in the dreamy Real World of target marketing.
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
She’s doped up watching MTV and I want to watch the goddamn MacNeil/Lehrer report.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho (Vintage Contemporaries))
Now shut the fuck up and watch some MTV.
Henry Rollins (Black Coffee Blues)
MTV will lead us to believe that the B word has become a term of endearment or slang among equals, but I still mainly think of it as the insult of choice for the inarticulate.
Ally Carter (I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Gallagher Girls, #1))
I performed “Emotions” at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Soul Train Music Awards. And here I was again, about to hit another stage, and somehow I had no clue that I was famous.
Mariah Carey (The Meaning of Mariah Carey)
I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.
Win Butler
Like so much in Atlanta, Stone Mountain had become a bland and inoffensive consumable: the Confederacy as hood ornament. Not for the first time, though more deeply than ever before, I felt a twinge of affinity for the neo-Confederates I'd met in my travels. Better to remember Dixie and debate its philosophy than to have its largest shrine hijacked for Coca-Cola ads and MTV songs.
Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War)
Leo was reciting from the album covers: “Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar, Huey Lewis, Paula Abdul? This is like a bad MTV segment of ‘Where Are They Now?’” “More like, guess who joined the Columbia House Record Club
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (The Nest)
It takes time,patience and endurance to become a devout Muslim. No one, not even God, expects anyone to become an angel overnight. That’s fortunate, I thought, because I sensed that the road ahead might be a long one
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who rest assured are not dumb and are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV Spring Break on Primary Day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.
David Foster Wallace (Up, Simba!)
Leo was reciting from the album covers: “Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar, Huey Lewis, Paula Abdul? This is like a bad MTV segment of ‘Where Are They Now?’” “More like, guess who joined the Columbia House Record Club when she was
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (The Nest)
Was this for real? Andrew had forgotten how to be happy! He suspected that it involved unwarranted feelings of fondness for other people, too much self-esteem, a sort of long-term delusion that manifested as charisma, and a blocking out of certain things, like lonely people, depressed people, desperate people, homeless people, people you've hurt, people you like who don't like you, politics, the nature of being and existence, the continent of Africa, the meat industry, McDonald's, MTV, Hollywood, and most or all of human history, especially anything having to do with the Western Hemisphere between 1400 and 1900, plus or minus 200 years -- but he wasn't sure. Why did it involve so many things? Maybe it was just too hard.
Tao Lin (Eeeee Eee Eeee)
Steve Isaacs (MTV VJ): When I was hired at MTV, in August of '91, I was "musician guy." I had long hair, and I was a singer-songwriter. And then the next month, Nevermind hit. It was the most perfect time to have an experience like this. I became the silly MTV grunge poster boy. I was wearing flannel a lot. I loved Nirvana, I loved Pearl Jam, I loved Alice in Chains, I loved Soundgarden, I loved Screaming Trees. when I talked about Whitney Houston on-air you could see me die in my eyes a little bit.
Mark Yarm (Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge)
When Justin cheated on me and then acted sexy, it was seen as cute. But when I wore a sparkly bodysuit, I had Diane Sawyer making me cry on national television, MTV making me listen to people criticizing my costumes, and a governor's wife saying she wanted to shoot me.
Britney Spears (The Woman in Me)
As artists and professionals it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. We overthrow the programming of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV, and MTV by which we have been hypnotized from the cradle. We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.
Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
It might be instructive to try seeing things from the perspective of, say, a God-fearing hard-working rural-Midwestern military vet. It's not that hard. Imaging gazing through his eyes at the world of MTV and the content of video games, at the gross sexualization of children's fashions, at Janet Jackson flashing her aureole on what's supposed to be a holy day. Imagine you're him having to explain to your youngest what oral sex is and what it's got to do with a US president. Ads for penis enlargers and HOT WET SLUTS are popping up out of nowhere on your family's computer. Your kids' school is teaching them WWII and Vietnam in terms of Japanese internment and the horrors of My Lai. Homosexuals are demanding holy matrimony; your doctor's moving away because he can't afford the lawsuit insurance; illegal aliens want driver's licenses; Hollywood elites are bashing America and making millions from it; the president's ridiculed for reading his Bible; priests are diddling kids left and right. Shit, the country's been directly attacked, and people aren't supporting our commander in chief.
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
For example, polls sponsored by MTV in 2014 show that millennials profess more tolerance and a deeper commitment to equality and fairness than previous generations did.12 At the same time, millennials are committed to an ideal of color blindness that leaves them uncomfortable with, and confused about, race and opposed to measures to reduce racial inequality. Perhaps most significantly, 41 percent of white millennials believe that government pays too much attention to minorities, and 48 percent believe that discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against people of color. Many
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
PAUL IS SOMEBODY WHO DOES THINGS WITH ENTHUSIASM, which makes people feel appalled and insulted at things he chooses to do. If you’re under thirty, you have never heard of a song called “Spies Like Us,” and I am a horrible person for being the one to tell you. It was the theme for a big-budget Hollywood spy comedy starring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. Nobody saw the movie, but Paul’s theme was worse than the movie could have been. MTV played it constantly during the 1985 holiday season, though radio wouldn’t touch it. Paul does a rap that goes something like, “Oooh oooh, no one can dance like you.” In the video he plays multiple roles as members of a studio band, mugging and biting his lower lip. The drumming is where his cheeky-chappy act gets profoundly upsetting. You see this video, you’re going to be depressed for at least ten minutes about the existential condition of Paul-dom. His enthusiasm makes you doubt the sincerity of his other public displays. It makes you doubt yourself. You might think it’s a cheap laugh but it will cost you something.
Rob Sheffield (Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World)
my management partner, Simon Napier-Bell, was more camp than a row of tents.
Craig Marks (I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution)
Prayer will carry you to Judgment Day; it is your nourishment and your protection. In prayer you are closest to God. It is then that you develop your own personal relationship with God.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufis often likened it to the process of dying and being born again. ‘Die before you die’ is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gai told me.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
I invited her over to the apartment in an attempt to recreate the club's horror movie nights. I started off with a sure bet: Scream. A perennial fave. But to my horror Saundra showed up at my apartment with her tablet loaded with the MTV series based on the movies. When I told her, ver gently, that I would rather tear my skin off than watch that abomination, she laughed and hit play.
Goldy Moldavsky (The Mary Shelley Club)
The words of the Quran all seemed strangely familiar yet so unlike anything I had ever read before,’ he told us. He embraced Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf, the Arabic for Joseph. ‘I identified with the story of Joseph in the Quran,’ he said. ‘His brothers sold him like goods in the market place.’ Yusuf felt the music business had treated him not like an artist but as a commodity.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. We overthrow the programming of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV, and MTV by which we have been hypnotized from the cradle. We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.
Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
Local Girl Missing, Feared Dead. Beneath it was a photo of me-my most recent school photo. “Oh, no.” My heart filling with dread, I took the paper from Mr. Smith’s hands. “Couldn’t they have found a better picture?” Mr. Smith looked at me sharply. “Miss Oliviera,” he said, his gray eyebrows lowered. “I realize it’s all the rage with you young people today to toss off flippant one-liners so you can get your own reality television shows. But I highly doubt MTV will be coming down to Isla Huesos to film you in the Underworld. So that can’t be all you have to say about this.” He was right, of course. Though I couldn’t say what I really wanted to, because John was in the room, and I didn’t want to make him feel worse than he already did. But what I wanted to do was burst into tears. “Is that about Pierce?” John looked uneasy. Outside, thunder rumbled again. This time, it sounded even closer than before. “Yes, of course, it is, John,” Mr. Smith said. There was something strange about his voice. He sounded almost as if he were mad at John. Only why would he be? John had done the right thing. He’d explained about the Furies. “What did you expect? Have you gotten to the part about the reward your father is offering for information leading to your safe return, Miss Oliviera?” My gaze flicked down the page. I wanted to throw up. “One million dollars?” My dad’s company, one of the largest providers in the world of products and services to the oil, gas, and military industries, was valued at several hundred times that. “That cheapskate.” This was all so very, very bad. “One million dollars is a lot of money to most people.” Mr. Smith said, with a strong emphasis on most people. He still had that odd note in his voice. “Though I recognize that money may mean little to a resident of the Underworld. So I’d caution you to use judiciousness, wherever it is that you’re going, as there are many people on this island who’ll be more than willing to turn you in for only a small portion of that reward money. I don’t suppose I might ask where you’re going? Or suggest that you pay a call on your mother, who is beside herself with worry?” “That’s a good idea,” I said. Why hadn’t I thought of it? I felt much better already. I could straighten out this whole thing with a single conversation. “I should call my mom-“ Both Mr. Smith’s cry of alarm and the fact that John grabbed me by the wrist as I was reaching into my book bag for my cell phone stopped me from making calls of any sort. “You can’t use you phone,” Mr. Smith said. “The police-and your father-are surely waiting for you to do just that. They’ll triangulate on the signal from the closest cell tower, and find you.” When I stared at him for his use of the word triangulate, Mr. Smith shook his head and said, “My partner, Patrick, is obsessed with Law & Order reruns.
Meg Cabot (Underworld (Abandon, #2))
Sergeant Pepper was dead. G.I. Joe lived on. George Bush was president, movies stars were dying from AIDS, kids were smoking crack in the ghettos and the suburbs, Muslims were blowing airliners from the skies, rap music ruled, and nobody cared much about the Movement anymore. It was a dry and dusty thing, like the air in the graves of Hendrix, Joplin, and God. She was letting her thoughts take her into treacherous territory, and the thoughts threatened her smiley face. She stopped thinking about the dead heroes, the burning breed who made the bombs full of roofing nails and planted them in corporate boardrooms and National Guard Armories. She stopped thinking before the awful sadness crushed her. The sixties were dead. The survivors limped on, growing suits and neckties and potbellies, going bald and telling their children not to listen to that satanic heavy metal. The clock of the Age of Aquarius had turned, hippies and yippies had become preppies and yuppies. The Chicago Seven were old men. The Black Panthers had turned gray. The Grateful Dead were on MTV, and the Airplane had become a Top-40 Starship. Mary Terror closed her eyes, and thought she heard the noise of wind whistling through the ruins.
Robert McCammon (Mine)
We arrived and we thought, 'This is our time. This is our generation. We have a responsibility.' " @garyjkemp of Spandau Ballet in "Mad World: An Oral History of the New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s
Lori Majewski (Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s)
Хотя многие журналы и отдельные телевизионные программы начинают вкушать прелести брэндинга, модель полной интеграции брэндов и СМИ представляет собой пока только один из телеканалов, а именно — MTV. Он создавался целиком на спонсорские деньги как совместное предприятие Warner Communications и American Express. С самого начала MTV был не просто маркетинговым инструментом для продвижения продукции, которую канал круглосуточно рекламирует (будь то лосьоны для очистки кожи или альбомы групп, которые канал раскручивает, транслируя их видеоклипы), но и круглосуточной рекламой самого MTV как первого настоящего телеканала-брэнда. Хотя с тех пор появились десятки имитаторов, оригинальность MTV, как объяснит вам любой маркетолог, состоит в том, что зрители не смотрят некую конкретную передачу, а смотрят просто MTV. «Для нас „звездой“ был MTV», — говорит основатель канала Том Фрестон.
Naomi Klein (No Logo)
The decision to create a book trailer is entirely up to you. I can remember when "video killed the radio star" on MTV and how excited I was with some music videos (the ones that lived up to or exceeded my imagined vision of the song) and the ones I disliked so much, I even stopped listening to the song (the imagery just ruined it for me!) Some people argue that in a visual landscape, a book trailer is a must, while others stand firm that books should be read and not seen; unless of course it gets made into a screenplay and then a film. The most practical advice is to trust your instinct. You know what you want to say with your book and if it aligns congruently with your brand, then for a non-fiction book it may be a strategic move. On the other hand, it may come off as too "salesy" and go in the opposite direction. As you can see, I still have a love / hate relationship with matching someone else's images to my own imagination. No matter what you decide, remember to keep it aligned with your brand.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Let us add also that the urban pub has been fiercely undermined by the gym. Instead of heading straight to the pub after work, an increasing number of pleasure-hating lunatics appear to enjoy going to the gym, where instead of quaffing foaming pints of nut-brown ale in convivial company they run alone on treadmills while watching MTV on giant screens to distract them from their agony. If you really want to exercise, then why not find a pub that is a one-mile walk from the office or home? That way, you ' ll walk two miles every day and have a good time.
Tom Hodgkinson (How to Be Idle)
In every single town I traveled to, I’d go out of my way to find a local bookstore or gift shop and pick up a book on local tall tales and legends. Some of these books are ghost stories. Some are about monsters. Other are about local characters who did horrible things or miraculous things or were just so weird people can’t stop talking about them. I remember doing an interview during those MTV years and explaining this practice. I told the reporter that I wanted to be able to drive cross-country with my kids and have a story for every single stop we made.
Hilarie Burton Morgan (Grimoire Girl: Creating an Inheritance of Magic and Mischief)
doesn't matter to the universe, it should matter one hell of a lot to YOU. In fact, it should matter to you more than it currently does. If you knew how small you are and how short a time you have to do what you can, you wouldn't waste time watching five fucking hours of TV a day. You wouldn't waste time doing a job you hate. You wouldn't waste the little time you have dealing with assholes, feeling sorry for yourself, or being timid about the things you'd really like to do. I'm 35, and it dawned on me just recently that it's not at all long before I'll be forty. And forty is FUCKING OLD in the mind of a guy with the mentality and sense of humor of a teenager. I mean, hell, you can make an argument for 30 being young despite the fact that the MTV crowd says different, but forty-something is what your grandmother was. When I had this epiphany, a succession of uncomfortable and incredibly obvious realizations followed. If I can turn 40, I can turn 50. If I can turn 50, I can turn 60. Once, I was a kid and everyone else was old. The tables will turn. I'll be the guy that kids look at and see as old. Me. Fucking ME. Me, who was once out cruising on Friday nights, staying up until dawn. Me,
Johnny B. Truant (The Universe Doesn't Give a Flying Fuck About You)
The problem in both cases can be attributed to poor connections between the greenfield and the mainstream. Indeed, when people operate in silos, companies may miss innovation opportunities altogether. Game-changing innovations often cut across established channels or combine elements of existing capacity in new ways. CBS was once the world’s largest broadcaster and owned the world’s largest record company, yet it failed to invent music video, losing this opportunity to MTV. In the late 1990s, Gillette had a toothbrush unit (Oral B), an appliance unit (Braun), and a battery unit (Duracell), but lagged in introducing a battery-powered toothbrush.
Harvard Business Publishing (HBR's 10 Must Reads on Innovation (with featured article "The Discipline of Innovation," by Peter F. Drucker))
When you accept Islam, you don’t cease to be the person you were before in your identity and culture,’ he told me. ‘The only thing that Islam does is make you stronger in your identity in terms of actualising your personality, and in understanding who you are, what you’re supposed to do and what the purpose and meaning of your life is.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
42. What is the name of her first EP? Title 43. When was her first EP released? September 9, 2014 44. What was she nominated for at the 2014 American Music Awards? New Artist of the Year 45. What was she nominated for at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards? Best Song with a Social Message 46. What was she nominated for at the 2014 NewNowNext Awards? Best New Female Musician 47. What was she nominated for at the 2014 Capricho Awards? Revelation International 48. What was she nominated for at the 2015 People's Choice Awards? Favorite Breakout Artist and Favorite Song 49. What was she nominated for at the 2015 Grammy Awards? Record of the Year and Song of the Year 50. Which albums of hers are self-released? I'll Sing with You and Only 17
Nancy Smith (Meghan Trainor Quiz Book - 50 Fun & Fact Filled Questions About Singer Meghan Trainor)
Or is it the opposite-that the US has moved so far and so fast toward cultural permissiveness that we've reached a kind of apsidal point? It might be instructive to try seeing things from the perspective of, say, a God-fearing hard-working rural-Midwestern military vet. It's not that hard. Imagine gazing through his eyes at the world of MTV and the content of video games, at the gross sexualization of children's fashions, at Janet Jackson flashing her aureole on what's supposed to be a holy day. Imagine you're him having to explain to your youngest what oral sex is and what it's got to do with a US president. Ads for penis enlargers and Hot Wet Sluts are popping up out of nowhere on your family's computer. Your kids' school is teaching them WWII and Vietnam in terms of Japanese internment and the horrors of My Lai. Homosexuals are demanding holy matrimony; your doctor's moving away because he can't afford the lawsuit insurance; illegal aliens want driver's licenses; Hollywood elites are bashing America and making millions from it; the president's ridiculed for reading his Bible; priests are diddling kids left and right. Shit, the country's been directly attacked, and people aren't supporting our commander in chief. Assume for a moment that it's not silly to see things this man's way. What cogent, compelling, relevant message can the center and left offer him? Can we bear to admit that we've actually helped set him up to hear "We 're better than they are" not as twisted and scary but as refreshing and redemptive and true? If so, then now what?
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
Sometimes I was too tired, other times just lazy. Now and then, I was frustrated because nothing seemed to be happening – no signs from God, no enlightenment, nothing. But that wasn’t the point, the Shaykh explained. What mattered was the inner connection with God, which builds slowly and only transforms us gradually. Another obstacle, however, was that I often found it hard to concentrate during the dhikr.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
Of course I’d like to marry a practising Muslim, someone I can share my life and also my religion with, but I just haven’t met the right man yet,’ I told her. Fadwa was sympathetic and understood my dilemma. ‘Concentrate on your relationship with God; purify yourself, your life and your intentions. Better your religion!’ she recommended. ‘If you are patient and steadfast, then you will be rewarded, insha’ Allah.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
Living a lie – pretending everything is fine when we are actually discontented – is hard work and, in the long run, even bad for our health. We pay a high price for compromising on this honesty – and neglecting ourselves. Finding our inner passion, our mission in life, and connecting with who we really are, our spiritual being or our higher self – this is the key to success and fulfilment. Our ‘soul’ purpose is our sole purpose in life.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
According to Islam, whenever we are struck by illness or misfortune or someone hurts us, there is a higher purpose behind it, which we may not understand at the time,’ one of them said to me. ‘That’s where trust comes in. Through suffering, God helps us to better ourselves and make good our mistakes. It is a form of purification and also God’s way of testing the strength of our faith and the goodness of our character.’ Another lady suggested I look on the bright side. ‘Suffering draws us closer to God and that is our aim in life,’ she said. Then she quoted Rumi who had said, ‘It is pain that draws man to his Lord, because when he is well, he doesn’t remember the Lord.’ I tried to look at the positive and believe that there was a higher, spiritual perspective on what I had just been through, and all the advice I was given helped me a lot. But it took quite a while for my heart to catch up with my mind.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
It was clear to me by now that studying Islam was one thing – and absolutely worthwhile, because it helped me grasp the meaning of the religion and how it all fitted together. However, I felt as though I was standing in front of a shop window full of lovely things, and all I could do was admire them from afar. I was still separated from them by the window, or, as Muslims might say, a veil. In order to lift this veil, there was only one way forward: to get down onto the prayer mat and start living according to Islamic principles.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
Boys will always be boys,’ he said. ‘The relationship obviously wasn’t meant to be.’ He told me I should trust that the break-up was for the best, even if I couldn’t see that yet. As with every form of suffering, heartache brings with it catharsis, and turns us into better human beings. ‘It is like an iron in the furnace that is beaten into shape,’ he said. These bad experiences were ultimately a good sign because God tests the ones He loves. That might be why He has so few friends,’ he added dryly. His words cheered me up a bit.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
Benetton markasının düzenli yayınladığı Colors dergisinin 2000 yılının ilk sayısı, kültürlerin devamlılığı önündeki en büyük tehlikelerden biri olarak ‘tektipleşme’yi sayıyor ve bu savını destekleyecek çeşitli örnekler veriyordu: Bugün dünyada yaklaşık 300 milyon evde Amerikan müzik kanalı MTV izleniyor. Yaklaşık 200 ülkede gençler, artık Sevgililer Günü'nü kendi bayramlarından çok önemsiyor ve sevgililer gününde sevgililerine Hallmark'ın hazırladığı kartlarla aşklarını ilan ediyorlar. Tüm dünyada çocuklar, Disney'in Mickey Mouse'unu, kendi devlet büyüklerinden daha iyi tanıyor. 1998'de dünyada en çok gişe yapan 20 filmin 19'u Amerikan filmlerinden oluşuyordu. Güneydoğu Asya'da gençler saçlarının Jennifer Lopez veya Meg Ryan gibi olmasını istiyorlar. Bunun yanında, Dünyada her 5 saatte bir McDonald's restoranı açıldığı belirtiliyor. Aralarında binlerce kilometre fark olan ülkelerde aynı hastalık (AIDS), aynı ilaç (Viagra), aynı içecek (cola), aynı haber kanalı (CNN), aynı haber (Clinton'ın aşk maceraları), aynı maç (Avrupa futbol şampiyonası finali), saat farkıyla popüler oluyor.
Anonymous
This is not the "relativism of truth" presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. president turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a "mockery of the promise and fitness of things," to return to the OED definition of irony. This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They are not flawed protagonists either, but are driven at least as much by their unsavory characteristics as by any moral sense. They aren't flawed figures who try to do the right thing; they don't necessarily learn from their mistakes; and we aren't asked to like them in spite of their obvious faults. Though they usually aren't interested in making good, they do set themselves some kind of mission--Anderson's films are mostly quest movies in an age that no longer believes in quests, and this gives them both an old-fashioned flavor and an air of disillusionment and futility.
Arved Mark Ashby (Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers after MTV)
During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God’s voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith. We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practising them mostly benefits ourselves.
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
The culture generated by peer-orientation is sterile in the strict sense of that word: it is unable to reproduce itself or to transmit values that can serve future generations. There are very few third generation hippies. Whatever its nostalgic appeal, that culture did not have much staying power. Peer culture is momentary, transient, and created daily, a “culture du jour,” as it were. The content of peer culture resonates with the psychology of our peer-oriented children and adults who are arrested in their own development. In one sense it is fortunate that peer culture cannot be passed on to future generations, since its only redeeming aspect is that it is fresh every decade. It does not edify or nurture or even remotely evoke the best in us or in our children. The peer culture, concerned only with what is fashionable at the moment, lacks any sense of tradition or history. As peer orientation rises, young people's appreciation of history wanes, even of recent history. For them, present and future exist in a vacuum with no connection to the past. The implications are alarming for the prospects of any informed political and social decision-making flowing from such ignorance. A current example is South Africa today, where the end of apartheid has brought not only political freedom but, on the negative side, rapid and rampant Westernization and the advent of globalized peer culture. The tension between the generations is already intensifying. “Our parents are trying to educate us about the past,” one South African teenager told a Canadian newspaper reporter. “We're forced to hear about racists and politics…” For his part, Steve Mokwena, a thirty-six year-old historian and a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, is described by the journalist as being “from a different world than the young people he now works with.” “They're being force-fed on a diet of American pop trash. It's very worrying,” said Mokwena—in his mid-thirties hardly a hoary patriarch.on a diet of American pop trash. It's very worrying,” said Mokwena—in his mid-thirties hardly a hoary patriarch. You might argue that peer orientation, perhaps, can bring us to the genuine globalization of culture, of a universal civilization that no longer divides the world into “us and them.” Didn't the MTV broadcaster brag that children all over television's world resembled one another more than their parents and grandparents? Could this not be the way to the future, a way to transcend the cultures that divide us and to establish a worldwide culture of connection and peace? We think not.
Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers)
DOCTEUR JOUVE AND MÍSTER MAC TITULAR Aquí está el extraño caso que conmocionó al país, los crímenes más terribles de Mister Mac en París. NOTICIA El docteur Jouve nació en el corazón de Europa, cosa que se traslucía en sus modos y en su ropa. De niño fue algo precoz, si bien su primera cita no fue una cuestión de amor sino, más bien, erudita. Por la mañana se tomaba un tostón de Thomas Mann, un vaso de Joyce de frutas y un milhojas de Renan. Llamó a su perro Lacan, llamó a su gato Goethe, el benjamín era Walter y su esposa La Feyette. Tenía un chale en la Pleyáde una casa en la Montaigne y un Nietzsche en el cementerio con un busto de Verlaine. Cuando estaba en la Camus su esposa era Simenon porque le cogía un Sófocles si él quería un Fenelón. Como estaba Debussy, ella se sentía sola, por eso empezó un diario y al final se sentió Zola. Los años van Maupassant, se va quedando Calvino, se siente un poco Stravinski, y muy poco cervantino. Pero el docteur Jouve esconde un secreto terrorífico tras las botellas de Evian que inundan su frigorífico. Tiene oculta entre el burdeos, en gruyère y el gorgonzola, una pócima secreta que se llama coca cola. Cada vez que se la bebe se le altera el mecanismo y se transforma en un monstruo de contumaz consumismo. Se arranca entre convulsiones la americana pana, los pantalones a cuadros y la bufanda de lana. Luego se pone sus levis, sus adidas y su custo y sale con ganas de consumir con sumo gasto. De este modo transformando docteur Jouve en míster Mac se va directo de compras sin pasar por el FNAC. De golpe adora a los USA compras nikis de la NASA le pone Pamela Anderson y su cultura de masas. Después de haberse comprado un doble de Britney Spears, va a depilarse la espalda pues no es un lobo en París. Tiene una serie de Friends que invita siempre a su House para mirar la MTV y en los highlights pone pause. Por la mañana volvía a ser el gran europeo que viste ropa de Sartre y es -gracias a Dios- ateo. Era tan grande su Ovidio que desde una estantería <<¡Qué vedo!>>, exclamaba Góngora y <<¡Te Virgilio!>>, Marías. Pero una noche quemó su nutrida biblioteca, y no se salvó del fuego ni el penúltimo planeta. Otra noche mató a un hombre que parecía Balzac y luego entró en un McDonalds y se pidió un big mac. Por estar leyendo un libro de un tal Jünger Habermás dicen que a un colega suyo nadie lo volvió a-ver-más. Con su Northface y sus RayBan y su jerga angloparlante Míster Mac se llevó a muchos al infierno por peDantes. CIERRE No hace falta que escojáis entre Pamela y Balzac que todos somos a ratos docteur Jouve y míster Mac.
Dino Lanti (Cuentos cruentos (Spanish Edition))
It has been well documented that for a few decades MTV played music videos. VJs like J.J. Jackson, ‘Downtown’ Julie Brown (‘we saw your boobs’ – hat nod to Seth MacFarlane), and wet-fart Jesse Camp used to intro the freshest, hippest songs in all the land. Heck, they even introduced us to the musical side of Eddie Murphy with his immortal anthem ‘Party All The Time’. Nothing beats the cameo from Rick James in which he nods uncontrollably each time Murphy fails to hit a note.
Jon Chattman (Time Heels: Cheating, Stealing, Spandex and the Most Villainous Moments in the History of Pro Wrestling)
Once I’m finished writing a song, my job is done and my only input is: please perform it often and loudly and sell many, many copies. If I want to do an artist thing, then I’ll go write a song for myself and go perform it the way I want to. But if you buy it, you can do what you want to and I’ll be happy. I don’t want to be a producer or a performer, I want to be a writer. And letting it go after you’re done writing it is a big part of being a writer. I’ve never had any problems with the way any of my songs have been recorded and I’m not sure I’d tell you even if I did. My mama says, “Don’t shit where you eat.” I’m pretty hopeful and confident about the future. I think I’ll continue to make a good living at this and have lots of fun. Unlike performing, this is a field you can grow old in. The performers have to put up with the youth culture bullshit more and more lately which is one reason MTV looks so good and sounds so bad. But the writers can be old and ugly ’cause no one ever sees them. A lot of writers are in their fifties or sixties. I see myself like that one day. But whether I’m successful or unsuccessful, this is something I have to do. I mean that. If I don’t spend a certain part of most days with the music, I get very unhappy and cranky. I’d do it even if I weren’t getting paid for it. So right now, I am very grateful that I don’t have to have a day job to support my songwriting habit.
Marisa Bowe (Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs)
If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thingas not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
On the Apollo 11 heroes’ “Giant Step” world tour, traveling alongside the other Moon couples, Joan had watched as Buzz went deeper and deeper into a depression. Returning to Earth, her husband, who later inspired Disney’s Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story (and MTV’s original logo), felt that he no longer had structure in his life, with no one telling him what to do and no one sending him on a mission. He eventually crash-landed, having, in his words, “a good old American nervous breakdown.
Lily Koppel (The Astronaut Wives Club)
The default posture of Generation X has always been to trash the boomers. The boomers were yuppie sellouts, sanctimonious blowhards, fair-weather hippies who joined the establishment as soon as they realized the upsides to having health insurance and retirement accounts (see: backstories of Big Chill characters and Hope and Michael et al.). They did tons of drugs and had tons of sex and then left us to trudge through the AIDS and crack epidemics they left in their wake. If you were a young writer in the 1990s, as I was, you could find a steady stream of magazine work composing irony-laden rants about how much the boomers had screwed over the Xers—economically, culturally, sexually-transmitted-diseasedly, et cetera. In the span of a few years, I wrote no fewer than fifteen articles that were essentially some variation on “broken homes ruined our belief in marriage, MTV ruined our attention spans, and AIDS ruined our sex lives. Our world and the baby boomers’ world are many galaxies apart.
Meghan Daum (The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion)
Independent of injury risk, easy running is indispensable for long-term speed development. That seems counterintuitive. But if running training were an episode of MTV Cribs, when they got to the room with easy running, you’d say “This is where the magic happens” as you winked at the camera. Easy running enhances capillary development and aerobic enzyme activity—introduce an anaerobic stimulus to the mix, and it all gets mucked up. It also increases your running economy, reducing the amount of energy it takes to go a given pace.
David Roche (The Happy Runner: Love the Process, Get Faster, Run Longer)
past. For a minute, you have the ability to be in two places at once: you’re forty and pissed at your husband and too old to be in this bar, but you’re also twelve and sitting in your childhood living room, watching MTV like you’re going to be tested on it. Like it might actually teach you something. You’re practically taking notes. The way they’re dancing, the way the women have applied their lipstick: this is one way a life can be. In a few minutes, Van Halen or Cyndi Lauper will show you another way, and you’ll see what you think of that one.
Carolyn Parkhurst (Harmony)
The video for “Sweet Child o’ Mine” was on MTV when we set off in July, but on the first few dates we still got a tepid reaction from the crowd—polite applause. Soon, however, the song became a phenomenon, much to all of our surprise, to be honest. We had not even seen it as a potential single when we put it together.
Duff McKagan (It's So Easy: And Other Lies)
I almost never got to watch MTV, only when I was at my friend Nickie's house and only when her parents weren't home. But I saw this video, not even the whole thing, and I just knew that it was going to be my favorite song for... for the rest of my life. And it still is. It's still my favorite song... "Lincoln, I said you were cute because I didn't know how to say-- because I didn't think I was allowed to say-- anything else. But every time I saw you, I felt like I did the first time I heard that song.
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
Heavy Metal has been forced to create its own underworld. It plays by its own rules, follows its own aesthetic prerogatives… Metal is no longer a staple of FM radio, nor are record labels publishing it like they used to. Watching MTV and reading popular magazines, one might not even realize Heavy Metal still existed at all. Rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated, however, as the Metal underground boils and seethes worldwide. Especially left to its own devices and relegated to independent labels run by the fans themselves, this has allowed Metal’s most antisocial and aggressive tendencies to develop unburdened by any system of moral checks and balances, which society provides–at least tenuously–for other forms of music.
Michael Moynihan (Lords of Chaos)
It was actually happening. I was watching MYSELF on MTV. Not Michael Jackson or the Cars. Not Madonna or Bruce Springsteen. No. It was Krist, Kurt, and me, playing a song we wrote in a fucking barn. Dalí’s melted clocks had nothing on this most surreal moment.
Dave Grohl (The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music)
MTV has been watching Prince Rogers Nelson.
Petra Hermans (Voor een betere wereld)
regional variations in things like slam dancing had gotten erased by MTV. “It went from each town having its own little story to it being kind of the same group of people in every town.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
I was taught to prioritize what's "important"; food, water, children (Being the eldest among our siblings, I was taught to watch out for the younger ones). I was taught that the important stuff wasn't shiny; it involved logistics, practicals, survival. Only the necessary stuff to get by. Style, beauty, self-expression, affairs, superficiality — these are luxuries in my world. I could barely afford to eat lunch, much less buy clothes or get my hair styled in a salon. My family couldn't afford cable TV so I never watched MTV to learn the latest trends. So when I started high school, I had no regard for appearances. This is how I learned, the hard way, that maturity has no place with teenagers who could afford to have fun.
John Pucay (Karinderya Love Songs)
Nevermind is almost two years into being everywhere. Grunge shit is all over MTV and, to paraphrase the Dead Milkmen, they’ll slam to anything
Joe Gross (In on the Kill Taker)
Indeed, the Prophet-5 was the first synthesizer to be shown on MTV, in the very first music video that was broadcast in 1981.
David Abernethy (The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The complete story of Sequential Circuits)
[L]ove in the context of youth culture in Qatar was far more complex than anything I had ever seen on MTV. Because segregation between the sexes is so enforced , when a love affair does gain any kind of traction [...] it has to fly below radar.
Sophia Al-Maria (The Girl Who Fell to Earth)
Nowadays, queer teens have no idea how good they have it, with their lesbian-outfit Instagram accounts and their dreary homophobia movies and their JoJo Siwas. Back in my day (2003), finding something gay to be horny over was like navigating the Oregon Trail. You'd have to run home from school and sit in front of the TV for hours waiting for the "Me Against the Music" video to play on MTV, just so you could get a sliver of gay, and that would be your only shot at seeing gay that whole day. No quietly streaming Netflix on your laptop in your room, no saving photos of Cara Delevingne and Selena Gomez showering together to camera roll, no "every Jamie and Dani scene in The Haunting of Bly Manor" compilation video on YouTube. Just a single queerbait moment of the day with absolutely no idea when it would come or ability to plan for it. Just sit and wait for Britney and Madonna to flirt. Oh, you have to go to the bathroom? What if you miss it? No, you'll be fine, just go. You missed it. The flash of a moment where Britney pins Madonna against the wall and they almost kiss is gone. Sorry you ate too many SunChips and got diarrhea and blew past the only possible lesbianism you could find today. You died of dysentery. You missed the gay; try again tomorrow.
Jill Gutowitz (Girls Can Kiss Now: Essays)