I for one am super excited! They were really pussy-footing around, will they or won't they. But they did!
No wonder my Twitter is all blown up. Fantastic pick, perfect.
31 Comments 
I think the pick is aimed directly at the true believers. It won't earn any new converts, but I expect the base will turn out in numbers that make this a smart decision.
So because you categorized it is effluvia, I take it you object to the choice of this band? Or am I missing something? I thought this would be about the presidential election when the title showed up in my inbox.
You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick the Spice Girls without Paul Ryan…wait, what?
@Ben – …that's the joke, man.
You woke me up for that?
"Ew" dot-com is the right place for it, anyway.
The only way to balance our Federal budget is for a mixed approach that cuts spending and raises revenue. Hardcore ideologues on either side, who demand only tax increases or only spending cuts, are the main roadblock to restoring balance to our budget, and Paul Ryan is one of them.
Hooked a couple already Derrick.
Ryan is now also running away from his decades-long love of Ayn Rand. In his life he had given away her books to scores of people. Now it is: "Ayn Who?" He can deny his affection for her but his proposals have her fingerprints all over them.
I say this as a former Rand fan. That lasted from age 15 to 18, or so.
Kirk McPike,
The government has entirely too goddamned much income. It gives the semi-evolved simians who run that mess the impression that there is always going to be more. I am prepared to look at raising taxes only once some real spending cuts happen, not cuts in what they expected increase spending by. There have been a few in my lifetime (the mohair support program springs to mind), but not nearly enough.
WHEN the political class shows clearly that they are ready to give up some real degree of spending, THEN I will be ready to listen to arguments that more taxes are needed.
I'm sorry, but your argument has been used too many times to justify raising taxes without making any real cuts. It simply doesn't fly with me anymore. When we no longer hear, about some hundreds of thousands of dollars in clear wretched excess, that "it isn't enough money to be worth the time to eliminate", then I will feel we are on the right track. Let the Political Class go through the budget looking for "loose change" for a while. THEN I will be ready to accept that it is time to talk about tax increases.
Not that my opinion is going to matter. The feckless morons who are making our foreign policy opaque are going to open us up to a serious terror attack; one ten times the death-toll of 9/11, and when that happens the country really will lash out in rage. When the dust clears, the American Republic will be truly dead, and the American Empire will have begun.
It will be comfortable, for a while. If we really do start spending blood for oil, well, we'll get the oil, won't we? An Imperial America will be able to run on the spoils of conquest for quite a while. Probably the rest of my life, at least. But it won't be good for the country or the world.
In a perfect world, I would love to see the government return to screaming distance of the limits that a literate non-lawyer would say the Constitution and Amendments placed on it. It ain't going to happen. I think that fairly shortly the rest of the world will wish that it had.
Whenever I hear the term "balanced", I know it is just a euphemism for "raise taxes". Democrats never cut spending. They just talk about cutting spending.
I expect to hear a lot about "former Randian". That means someone who is firmly in the liberal camp and expects free stuff.
Derrick: My congratulations, sir. This is one of the finest bits of troll bait I've come across in a long, long time. You win Saturday's Internets.
Like sushi, we have been spice rolled.
Spice, Spice, Baby!
It's always fun to watch the fish leap into the boat, well done sir!
Love this post.
Ah this is a classic! At first was caught on hook and then I saw the link url before clicking and laughed from taking the post too seriously on just the title. Well done!
Mckayla is not …a big fan. 
This is possibly the single finest troll in the history of the internet. Bravo!
Longtime Popehat readers have learned never to assume that what one thinks a front-pager is talking about is what he is actually talking about.
Anyone here agree that in a hundred years or so people won't be able to see any meaningful distinction between the Spice Girls and the Beatles? I mean, very cute young people with no real musical training putting out catchy melodies? Is there any more to it than that?
@Roscoe: I'm betting that in 100 years, the distinction between male and female will still have some meaning.
What does "musical training" even mean, anyway? The Beatles put together more than ten years writing and playing their own songs from scratch. That should count for something – I'd say even more than the two semesters of music theory I took in high school.
We still play Beatles music on the radio after 40+ years. Let's see if the Spice Girls make it that far.
Every generation thinks the next generation's music sucks. You have to wait a long time to find out if they were right or not.
Sturgeon's law applies to popular music, too.
Xenocles – When I say the Beatles didn't have any musical training, I mean they couldn't even read and write music. You know, notes on a page? The sort of thing that kids in the junior high school band learn how to do.
Roscoe,
If we were just talking pre-Revolver, I might not agree with you, but I would consider this to be a difference of opinion or a matter of taste.
Revolver, and more famously Sgt. Pepper were at the vanguard of a huge evolution in popular music. There is nothing comparable in the Spice Girls' oeuvre.
The list of rock musicians who couldn't read sheet music is long and glorious, and starts with Elvis and Buddy Holly. It was the ones with classical training, the Ray Manzareks of the world, who most often turned into absolute wankers.
Gillo, what did this "huge evolution in popular music" evolve into? Perhaps "Get Ur Freak On" or "Big Pimpin'"?
Pop music is just light entertainment. Now there is nothing wrong with light entertainment. I still like comic books, and movies made about comic books (are there any other kind of movies made these days?). But I don't fool myself into thinking I am reading Shakespeare or Mark Twain.
For people who couldn't write music, the Beatles sure wrote a lot of music – know what I'm saying?
As far as training goes, well, "by their fruits shall you know them." Experience provides a huge amount of training – I learned more from my first solo watch at sea than I did during my entire qualification process.
"Pop music is just light entertainment."
This is snobbery of the highest degree. Popular music, like popular culture, includes work both sublime and seminal along with a lot of garbage. Time tends to filter the garbage out of the cultural memory – that's what makes old stuff seem better.
My favorite is Sporty Spice
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Aug 11, 2012 
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