We find the defendant guilty

You should feel guilty for not digging this, jerkface.

Tales of long-entombed Jackson Victory Tour posters, trainwreck Super Bowl halftime shows but I repeat myself & the brilliant backstory farce of the unbrilliant farce Kid Rock prompted parle Pynchon (must be something in the air) that soon permutated into whether the concept of the guilty pleasure even exists wherein I admitted under gunpoint duress (kidding -- maybe, I'll never tell) that once upon a yesterday upon hearing a bouncy Duran Duran track over & above the lifeblood catacombs of diabolic dirges, coffee-stained pearls flashed a moment of weakness. Fifteen-year old Randal just kicked thirty-seven year old Randal in the nuts & Californistan just chugged a whole celebration of some overpriced Napa Valley swill.

(O ancient gods of death & dismemberment, verily I shalt cleanse this unworthy soul with Mayhem, now that's a riff, sons & daughters)

We can train disdain for X, Y &/or Z, hex a curse on some verse, but rest assured, what tugs at the hearstrings or the berserker rage of the individual hunk of flesh & bone high on select biochemicals remains a magical mystery tour that must not succumb to Madison Avenue Will™, or worse (because the worst of corporates is the default setting), the evil eye of acid-tongue subgenre gatekeepers. Do we fear engaging in the blasphemy of failing to sacrifice on the altar of (today's) high art, thereby overcompensating in falsity, defying the self? Do we cringe at having a range outside the hermetically-sealed norm, hiding from the inevitable smashed face from acceptable taste's hammer? Do we care? Should we? Fuck no.

Par exemple, black metal, once the obscure, grizzled den of middle-class Norwegian disconnection stabbing & burning through the land of ice & snow, paeans to troo kvlt underground ideals & all that vikingjazz that garnered nothing but mainstream scorn, is now a mere fifteen years later meriting Village Voice pieces, Pitchfork column inches & scholarly symposia.

Is art then unworthy of judgment, its only task to bide its time until acceptance (or canonization) à la Impressionism? Again I say, fuck no. There's plenty of crap I loathe, chthonic & big box, & plenty of crap I love that others would nelsonmuntz if lured off an imaginary cliff whilst holding an Acme anvil & vice versa. To hell with kumbaya bullshit. A billion in sales or five, Zeppelin rules, Ottonian encomium or no. Whether the art's garbage or treasure is in the eye of the beholder, the entity actually not/touched emotionally, intellectually, thus, inform yourself chumps, speak your mind, chimps, explore each human condition niche, figure what moves your entrails & save wretched guilt for the imprisonment of whistleblowers, acts of droning unwashed masses, not what you listen to, look at, read, groove on, even if you end up digging Duran Duran for three minutes that I'll never get back.*

*Thomas Kinkade excepted, but you knew that.