imageI have this dream. It usually strikes me on the long drive home from work, the setting sun glowing orange against my smiling face and glittering across my eyes which focus on a distant vision. That vision is of Joan Jett, Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde beating the unholy fuck out of Avril Lavigne.

If her Pantene-shiny hair and carefully smudged eyeliner weren’t dead giveaways already,  Lavigne carelessly revealed her phoniness before the whole world when she announced David “Baow-wee” as a Grammy nominee, thereby desecrating the name of a man who changed LITERALLY the face of rock and inspired the punk look for the coming generations – the very look she would emulate if she weren’t terrified of clogging her pores and getting split ends.

Unfortunately, this does not mean Rolling Stone, Maxim and Stuff magazines will stop smearing her bratty pout all over their pages as one of those “Girls You’re Supposed to Want to Fuck.” (On a side note,  women’s magazines obsessively put pictures of Josh Hartnett all over them, as if I am supposed to find him dreamy instead of offensively mediocre, which I do.)

However, the walking boners who read these things don’t give a rat’s ass about her music,  (and don’t mind being insulted by a Pavlovian media who knows most men will respond to any hideous borefest being oiled up and paraded out to them in torn jeans) and therefore aren’t keeping her in Noxema products by buying up her bullshit albums.

imageSo my beef is with the Suits that shove her in our faces almost daily, hoping to make some profit off of her before her fan base – mostly suburban upper-middle class girls whose feelings of rage and alienation are much too innocuous to warrant reading Nietzsche and defacing hymnals in church – go bouncing off to the next stage of their lives. Which at this rate I’d say is a Communications degree from a Good School (paid for), anorexia nervosa and a penchant for Josh Hartnett.

Granted,  the responsibility partly lies with the people-products themselves, Avril Lavigne and the whole horde of debutante wanna-be rockstarettes. Namely their utter refusal to learn about, experience, or respect those badass women who rocked their way into a place where women were no longer just seen as half-naked bimbos writhing on Whitesnake and Poison videos. That would be like me yammering about being an important writer and having never read Gore Vidal. Or pronouncing his name “George Vidal” at an awards show. Fucking moron. (For the record, I don’t want to be an important writer - just a trite one. Which is why the only Gore Vidal book I ever read was “Lincoln” when I was in third grade, just for a stupid report.)

Although I could attribute such ignorant hubris to their youth and to the relentless sycophantic ass-wiping of their family and friends, the heads I’m calling for are the editors of music magazines, who had a responsibility to civilization and dropped the ball. But that’s for another article.

Back to the dream: Sometimes they just take her down with their guitars, upon which they have kicked so much ass over the years, while Lavigne’s publicists have been only wise enough to not even photograph her next to one.

imageSometimes they hang her by her stupid necktie (now being sold at Contempo Casuals for only $25, girls!) and scream “Boh-wee, you stupid slut!” in her ears until they bleed.

My favorite one is where they plug in all their amps and gather around a kiddie pool with Avril tied up in it, then play a rancid-sounding chord as they throw their guitars in. Sweet.

If you haven’t already read the now infamous letter to Rolling Stone allegedly written by Joan Jett (though it turns out it was written by someone else) in response to their October 2002 issue “Women in Rock,” featuring Shakira, Britney Spears and Ashanti on the cover, here it is. Enjoy:

Joan Jett Letter to RS Editor

If I were Avril Lavigne, I would stay away from swimming pools. And so help me GOD, if she gets an acting career out of this brief encounter with fame, you will all suffer my wrath, because it takes a village to raise a child-star.

What Other Staff Members Think:

David Bowie: Eff this brat and her banal career. In ten years she’ll be dancing at “Frank’s Chicken Shack” or “Wiggles” while in another 100 years I’ll still be releasing hit albums after I’m transformed into a futuristic cyborg. She is to me as the mortals were to the Olympian gods of myth. I would smite her with a thunderbolt if it was worth my effort. Which it isn’t.

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