I happened to catch Lady GaGa’s new video Bad Romance
or shall I say Nemiroff’s Vodka new video?

I had to both laugh and cringe at the story behind her video and the rampant amount of product placement.

By the looks of this video, it seems like Nemiroff Vodka (which you can see about seven times in the video) is the winner of the “most shoved in your face award” hands down.

The video not not only shows the Lex Nemiroff bottles repeatedly, they show people drinking glasses of clear liquid which is supposed to insinuate drinking the vodka. They also show someone pouring it into a glass, and also forcing a glass of clear liquid down GaGa’s throat. 

Nemiroff Vodka is not only being shoved down GaGa’s throat in the video, but GaGa chose to shove it down her fan’s throats.

Then there is the story behind the video, that can be very questionable to certain audiences. Doesn’t GaGa have an awful lot of young fans? Was booze, kidnapping and sex slaves the right direction to go with this video? We will get to that in a bit.

The product placement is EVERYWHERE in this video.

In the beginning of the video, once you get past the first picture of the Nemiroff Vodka bottle, there is a group shot of the “cast” in the video and right up front on either side of GaGa is a Parrot by Starck pair of black funnel tower speakers with an iPod or iPhone perched on top on the left speaker.

Then you can see GaGa’s mesh covered finger push the button on a Parrot by Starck iPod speaker. Parrot by Starck was designed by French product designer Philippe Starck (although the real product name is “Zimku”). It is a $1,600 sound system for an iPhone or iPod.

We then move on to GaGa wearing a pair of her very own silver Lady Gaga Heartbeats head phones in the bath tub scene. These will set you back $100.00 and of course, they’re available on her website.

Then THREE times you see GaGa wearing a pair of white “Safari” sunglasses by Carrera.

And last but not least, there is the HP Envy Beats Limited Edition laptop and headphones by Monster. There is a whole row of these laptops to show the “sex slave bidding” results in the video’s story. The laptop logo was very prevalent. A real bargain at $2,500. 

Also making an appearance, was a Wii controller a couple of times which was used to bid on GaGa the sex slave by the bidding Russian mafia men. Wonder how Wii weighs in on what their controller was used for?

Now there are a few smaller product placements in the video, but they are not as visible. There are gold aluminum cans in the beginning of the video on the floor and some of the “actors” are holding them. Maybe someone knows what they are? 

There are also plastic bottles of a red “drink” on the tables which are seen several times. It also shows one the “actors” drinking one of these bottles. Looks like Vitamin Water (acai blueberry) to me, but the name is not visible. I guess they didn’t pay enough moolah for their name to be visible in the video. Funny they showed people pouring vodka, made it look like people were drinking vodka, but put no emphasis on the Vitamin Water.

They showed SO much vodka in this video, I was kind of shocked. Even though you don’t actually see the word vodka on the bottle, I still think it was a big mistake. Gaga has a lot of young fans, what kind of message does this send? In one of her earlier videos,LoveGame, it shows people drinking Campari on the subway. Again, more booze placement.

I know many other artists do this too. Rappers show a lot of crap they shouldn’t be showing when it comes to excessive behavior and demeaning women, but this video wins the award for booze placement.

This new video is definitely Lady GaGa’s style in all her wackiness and her “edgy” shenanigans. One of the things I did like about this video, was the scene with the floating crystals around her, I thought that was pretty darn cool.

Now the premise behind the video according to Wikipedia:

“Gaga is kidnapped by a group of supermodels who drug her and then sell her off to the Russian mafia for sex slavery.”

The Russian mafia? OH! That’s where the Nemirfoff Vodka ties in — their bottles state it’s a product of the Ukraine.

Lovely story for young fans, isn’t it? Hello sexual degradation…your table it waiting!

Lady GaGa believes that the opening scene with her wearing a pair of razor blade glasses “portrays a tough female spirit.”  I didn’t really pick that up from that scene.

I guess the “tough female spirit” is then squashed with the rest of the video’s story:

“Two women pull her out of a bathtub, rip her clothes off and force her to drink a glass of vodka. As the second verse begins, Gaga seductively dances for a group of men bidding on her. She straddles one of the men and performs somewhat of a lap dance on him.

Afterwards, he raises his bid and becomes the highest bidder for Gaga. When the chorus is played for the third time, Gaga is shown wearing a jacket made of a polar bear hide. She walks toward the man, who is sitting on a bed, unbuttoning his shirt. Gaga has a look of indifference on her face and removes her jacket and sunglasses.

Suddenly, the bed spontaneously combusted with the man still sitting on it. The video ends with Gaga laying beside a smoldering skeleton on top of the destroyed bed with ashes everywhere. She smokes a cigarette, while her pyrotechnic bra goes off”

The Russian Mafia Bidding Scene

Ok, I am not a fan of censorship, but again, she has MANY young fans. Between all the vodka drinking and sex-slave bidding…is this the message GaGa wanted to send? FYI.. Her website sells Lady GaGa back to school supplies.

There was a comment left on her website by a women who said her daughter loved the video so much that she watched it 100 times. Now I know it is up to the parent to police their kids, and I don’t know how old this girl was, but it’s close to impossible to watch your kids 24/7.

But wait, there’s more…

Rumors have been circulating lately about the gender or shall I say the genders of Lady GaGa. Many people thought that The Princess of Pop (yeessh) is a hermaphrodite. For those of you who do not know what a hermaphrodite is, it is a person born with both male and female genitalia.

The picture that had everyone a-buzz, is the one below. It clearly shows a “bulge” of some sort in the crotch region.

People were wondering, if this was carefully placed “package” for shock value for her career? Or a photo-shopped picture? Or is Lady (I use the term lightly) more than just a lady?

Well Lady finally came forward and put an end to the rumors and said that “she was not offended, but her beautiful vagina was very offended”.  Thank God that is cleared up, I will no longer have sleepless nights. *snicker*

Wait….what did she say? Her beautiful vagina? Who the hell talks publicly (or at all for that matter) about having a beautiful vagina? (with the exception of the Vagina Monologues)
Wow!  Talk about being totally full of themselves.

The Examiner.com reported:

Since the hermaphrodite rumors started circling around Lady Gaga back in August, the singer has kept quiet about whether or not she has both parts.

Lady Gaga reportedly told an Australian radio station, “My beautiful vagina is very offended. I’m not offended; my vagina is offended. I’m not embarrassed. I sold four million records in six months; I’m not embarrassed about anything. I think this is society’s reaction to a strong woman.”

“The idea that we equate strength with men and a penis is a symbol of male strength, you know, it is what it is. But like I said,” the dance-pop diva reiterated, “I am not offended at all, but my vagina might be a little bit upset,” she added.

The singer has been flaunting her naked body in various magazines since the rumors began, hoping to disprove that she may have both man and lady parts, but we all know what a little Photoshop can do.

What do you think? Is Lady Gaga telling the truth or just deny, deny, denying?

My reply? Who gives a damn? Sorry, I could care less what she’s packing, and besides, what’s the difference? Are people saying if GaGa was a hermaphrodite that they wouldn’t be fans any more? Why, can’t a hermaphrodite be a diva too?

This story oddly peaked my interest and I decided to look more into GaGa’s music, since I wasn’t too familiar with it, and I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. What I discovered wasn’t much. I found an ok looking gal who loves to dress in kooky outfits and writes some really lousy songs.

GaGa is going the ol’ shock diva route because she basically needs those costumes and stage performances to hide her lack of talent. Her audience needs a lot of distractions. And now that she has a following, he crappy songs wont’ matter as much.
 
Her voice and song style comes pretty close to Madonnas, although Madonna’s songs were better written. Now I am not a fan of Madonna’s either, but nobody can deny that when Madonna blew up big in the 80’s that she was at least original and her songs were much better than GaGa’s. 

I have to say, that some of GaGa’s outfits are very cool, I will at least give her that. I love the way she sometimes meshes a vintage look with wackiness and forms some pretty outrageous get-ups. BUT…is that it? Yes, that’s it.

Let’s not forget this has been done a hundred times over in the music biz, and way before she strapped on that bubble suit for the cover of Rolling Stone.

Performers have been making names for themselves via shock for years. Way back when, Liberace was one of the first shockers and was the king of outlandish outfits. He was one of the first pioneers of  “putting on the dog“.

Although Liberace’s voice was far from good, he did play a mean piano. And look at Elton John, who started out as sort of a meek country bumpkin and ended up going all Liberace on everyone, once fame came knocking on his door.

Elton was not only an elaborate dresser, but he had quite the collection of outrageous glasses, which became a signature for him. So was Elton copying Liberace? It really didn’t matter, because he can sing and play piano to boot.

There was David Bowie who dressed up as Zigggy Stardust, and Cyndi Lauper who started an entire fashion craze with her gobs of costume jewelry, and her poofy crinoline slips.

But again like Elton, this girl can sing.

Take the band Kiss for instance, who was popular in the 1970’s. They rose up in the ranks due to their alter ego wild costumes, pyrotechnics on stage and Gene Simmons spewing blood and wiggling that long snake of a tongue. It was freaky to see a band dressed like that with full face paint back  in the 1970’s, and it was very innovative. (I was never a Kiss fan though, I think their movie ruined it for me *snicker*) But they did have some talent to back up their look.

Alice Copper, another unusual performer, used to hang himself on stage complete with an entire gallows set up on stage. He also would whip bloody plastic baby dolls on stage during his Dead Babies song… but again…Cooper had the talent to rock the house.

Let’s not forget Dee Snyder in Twisted Sister, ok… never mind, we can forget that one.

(Just have to mention, and way off topic, but I think Christina Aguilera definitely stole Dee’s look when she did the video for Moulin Rouge).

And what about Boy George? He started out rather tame with Culture Club (well sort of) and then showed up in an airport one day dressed like a Geisha girl, and got more outrageous from there. But nobody can deny that the man possessed decent set of pipes on him. We won’t get into where he is today.

Back to Madonna…
But wait, there’s more…

Alex Da Silva of TV’s So You Think You Can Dance fame, has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting four of his students in his two homes over the last six years.
The charges that were brought up against Da Silva made me cringe. There is a total of eight felony counts. Four counts of forcible rape, two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and two counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object. Are you freakin’ kidding me?

Da Silva is 41 years old. Let’s hope that this abuse has not been going on for a longer period of time. It is always possible that more students may come forward. With Da Silva arrested, other students may now have the courage to speak up. It really makes my blood boil when I hear of any cases of abuse like this. But when it involves any sort of teacher or mentor, it enrages me even more. The thought of students being victims of someone they trust AND someone they are paying, is just horrendous. Not to mention the pain and suffering that these victim’s families and friends must endure. I wonder if Da Silva promised these poor students fame and fortune.

The bail was set at on over 6 million dollars, and when this trial comes up, if found guilty, Da Silva can face life in prison. I hope he gets what’s coming to him and that he doesn’t get a slap on the wrist like SO many rich or famous people do.

Eonline reported:

So you think you can come up with an alibi?

Alex Da Silva, who up until this past season was So You Think You Can Dance’s go-to salsa, mambo and Argentine tango choreographer, was arrested at his North Hollywood home this morning on a bunch of sex-crime charges involving four different women he tutored.

All told, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office charged the 41-year-old dance instructor with eight felony counts: four counts of forcible rape, two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and two counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object.

Da Silva is currently being held on $6.2 million bail and, if convicted on the charges, could face life in prison.

According to Deputy District Attorney Rosa Alarcon, who works within the bureau’s Sex Crimes Division, the alleged assaults were committed against women ages 20 to 26, all of whom are dancers, and all of whom met the choreographer through his self-taught instructional classes.

The incidents all took place between August 2002 and March 2009. Da Silva worked as a choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance between 2005 and 2008.

We’re guessing his feet are anything but happy right about now.

Da Sleazo’s career doesn’t have to be over though. He can still carry on with his love for dance if sent to prison. I am sure there are plenty of inmates that would love to trip the light fantastic with him at a place where the tables can turn and the predator will then become the prey. Seems only fair to me.

Perhaps they will send him to the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines.
After all, the inmates at that center have been busting a move there for some time.

But that would be WAY too kind of a sentence for the likes of Alex Da Sleazo. I think a place a little farther South with a muy caliente climate would suit him better, where he can be among his own kind.
Everybody sing… Feeling HOT HOT HOT!