Nothing Better than Really Old Guys Arguing About How Much They Dislike Each Other
In the most recent edition of “garbage news only people still living in 1988 care about” Morrissey recently wrote and “open letter” to former Smiths bandmate and all around cool guy Johnny Marr, telling him to “keep my name out of your mouth” when Marr talks to the press.
The whole letter is here if you want to read it. It’s pretty psycho so just a word of warning. Not that I don’t get that Morrissey could easily be annoyed by this, I mean I really wouldn’t appreciate someone talking to the press about their opinions of me or speaking for me, but seems pretty inconsequential to Morrissey actually being able to just go about his life normally. I don’t know maybe I’m wrong about that.
Marr absolutely did not give a damn, however, and let a response fly on twitter that made me laugh out loud. No concessions, no apologies, just pure troll-job by the guy who invented the riff on “How Soon is Now”
This tweet has everything. He begins with the traditional friendly letter salutation, followed by the most unconventional use of a space and period you see in letter (tweet) writing. “Dear @official moz .” is an absolute power move right off the bat. Doesn’t even want the comma leading into his next sentence. Johnny just has to make it clear that this is a full pause after addressing Morrissey. Pure BDE.
Next he mockingly puts single quote marks around ‘open letter’ just to make it very clear that he is being sardonic. Then he calls out the Mozfather for being both extraordinarily old and old-timey by using the open letter format instead of ‘social media’ (once again he employs the underrated single quote marks, however I’m a little confused on how he’s applying here). Throw in a little non-sequitur jab at Trump for some reason (which feels very 2015 to me personally) and finished with calling out Morrissey accusing The Mayor of Marr-a-Lago of spreading Fake News with the dreaded out of fashion accusation, something that is guaranteed to cut deep someone as ‘traditionally stylish’ as the Wizard of Moz. And then the final obligatory hashtag (this is twitter after all, not the ’50s) #makingindiegreatagain which is both a call back to the Trump joke earlier and a jab about how much better Marr is at making indie music today.
The world’s best copy-editors eat-your-heart-out. Johnny – be proud man. Be proud.
Just the savagery and lack of care on the part of both of these guys who presumably used to be friends is absolutely preposterous and really just kinda sad. You’d think borderline geriatric stars of yesteryear could put their disagreements aside and settle for general apathy as they both slowly succumb to what I would assume will eventually be kidney disease or some sort of rusty guitar string-induced sepsis (you know, on account of they’re old rock stars – get it?)
What people get wrong about reality TV, etc is that it’s absolutely very entertaining to watch people that hate each other interact. It shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s junior high school gossip that helps the world turn. Realizing that reality is probably more sad than realizing your favorite bandmates from the 80s don’t like each other anymore.
P.S. This video is hilarious. Better than anything cable comedy has produced in decades.