I was watching a video of a David Foster Wallace lecture from 2006 (please don’t hate me) when I realized something deeply disturbing. Draw your own conclusions:

Mac Arthur-Sanctioned Genius David Foster Wallace (b. 2/21/1962)

Poison Frontman/Rock of Love Star Bret Michaels (b. 3/15/1963)

Whether it’s objectively disturbing or one in a series of signs of my decaying mental state is not for me to judge. I would like to say that Rock of Love takes irony to dizzying new lows, and I would like to take us back to this 1993 interview with DFW, where he says something that should serve as a warning to all we sneering Rock of Love fans:

Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.

In other news, Daisy is TOTALLY going to win.