Last night a leather daddy tossed a beanie baby named Cancun to me while strutting 10 feet in the air across the SAP Center. That’s usually a weird thing, but I know that many other people at the Lady Gaga show last night (and others across the country) had their very own leather daddy throw them their very own beanie baby from their very own spot under the lucite catwalk. So that makes it mundane? Less fun? Ironic? Extra fun?

“Do you think she cries at every show?” I asked my friend on the ride home.

“Oh yeah for sure, I think she can cry on command,” she answered immediately.

During her encore performance of “Gypsy,” alone at her piano, Gaga started sobbing and had to start over. What does one make of that?

If it’s real, it’s admirable. If it’s not, isn’t it still admirable? It makes for a good show after all, and whether fans suspend their disbelief or not, Gaga and her connection to them obviously means a lot.

In a legit touching moment, Gaga brought two fans up to sit beside her at the piano while she performed an acoustic rendition of “Born This Way.”

Both fans, dressed Gaga chic with bejewled vest and crop top, hands over their mouths, lost their shit while singing every word, and then got to go down the trapdoor beside Mother Monster.

Oh yeah, there were trapdoors—all over the stage in fact, which extended far across the crowd via interconnecting transparent catwalks, about as high off the ground as an average guy wearing heels and a peacock headdress.

Gaga would go down the trapdoors to thunderous cheering, letting her five-piece band vamp for a couple minutes, then reemerge as a black leather octopus or in a bejewled bikini, still to thunderous cheering.

At one point, different trapdoors opened, unfurling what were supposedly the native flora of Venus, for her song of the same title. For a planet supposedly devoted to the feminine, it’s native flora is very, very phallic.

But this is all the usual Gaga stuff: the signifiers of sex, kink and transgression without the actual substance.

She changed her costume on stage just as all the recent breathless headlines reported, promising that “If we haven’t made you uncomfortable yet, we will now.” But when I had already spent 30 minutes before the show dodging skinny dudes in nothing but boxer-briefs and heels and the smattering of pasty-only ladies, plus an hour-and-a-half of staring at Gaga’s butt, it didn’t make me uncomfortable so much as bored.

By the end of the show though, I couldn’t walk away un-entertained. Really, someone would have to try pretty hard to not enjoy the spectacle.

She absolutely killed it on the older hits like “Bad Romance” and “Alejandro,” though this might have been because the dozen new Artpop songs in the setlist still don’t measure up to her previous work, even with a huge soundsystem and 12 scantily clad back-up dancers.

The set looked great, with her band housed in what looked like an unpainted set from the original Star Wars, which was periodically covered in video projection matched to the huge screen behind it.

Gaga played the hits and brought the show. If a Little Monster paid the hundred-something bucks to get onto the floor, it’s no doubt they had a good time. At one point Gaga sang happy birthday to one lucky fan with her best Marilyn Monroe impression, and later she read a note tossed on stage, in which a fan thanked her for writing “Born This Way” and making him feel loved.

So I can sit here all day and think about whether Gaga is cynical or authentic, whether her attempt at transgression is empty posturing for monetary gain, or whether she already thought of all this and this is the point of the whole enterprise, she’s a genius, blah blah blah whatever. I think her fans already know what she means.

Lady Gaga has already achieved icon status with her music, but her biggest contribution to the culture has been her hoard of heinous threads.

Fashion has always played a big roll in the character of Lady Gaga, who performs tonight in San Jose at HP Pavilion, and the line between fashion faux pas and business as usual blurs when it comes to assessing her best and worst looks—most of which are assembled by her own team, Haus of Gaga. Instead, we’ve chosen the rather middle of the road list of Gaga’s most outrageous looks—a word that lacks the sort of punch some of these pieces pack.

Joe Calderone
Lady Gaga’s male alter ego, Joe Caldreone, was first spotted without an accredited name in a Japanese fashion magazine. Fans everywhere went crazy when rumors began spreading that this mysterious new male model was in fact just Lady Gaga in drag. By the time the 2011 MTV VMAs came around, and Joe showed up to open the show with a nearly five minute monologue, leading into a live performance of “Yoü & I” still in character, it was clear that Joe wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The first time I paid attention to Lady Gaga (really paid attention: watched her; mused on her; dissected her willingly) was when she killed herself. It was her breakthrough live performance at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, where she performed “Paparazzi,” a song that equates the bloodthirsty hounding of her lover-to-be to the relentless lens of the paparazzi.

Ever the extremist, Gaga made sure the metaphor worked twice over, by famously ending the set with her own death, hanging bloodied, surrounded by dancers-turned-pariahs with theatrical bulbs flashing—a victim of the fame.

This was, of course, only shortly after her first album had been released, and its artistic statement was muddied by the fact that Lady Gaga had only recently achieved even a semblance of the fame she claimed to be falling victim to. Here, Gaga was giving us the dramatic finale to her entire mythology as a pop artist—all before we’d even gotten a chance to fully digest her.

Has there ever been a more postmodern performance in mainstream media than that of the Icon as Martyr, before even being established as either? It was clear that a performer with a true knack for zeitgeisty self-promotion had been born.

And just in time, too. With the official death of monoculture (Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, Michael Jackson, most of the Beatles), the state of pop culture had been in a heady tailspin for the better part of a decade, making it almost impossible to imagine a time where a single person could dominate more than just momentary conversation. Multiple sources are to blame: declining revenue in a time where the culture is expected to be free; the speed of the Internet and the faster rate of overturn and backlash; Warhol’s retort that “everybody will be famous for 15 minutes” proving to be alarmingly prophetic.

So when Lady Gaga entered the scene in 2008, and when she commanded the scene in 2009, and when she became the scene in 2010, it felt like we had collectively found the icon that had eluded us for most of the aughts. Finally, someone understood the culture’s scope and could take the shift and embrace it wholly as part of her identity, both mockingly and self-serious.

Lady Gaga, who performs Jan. 17 at HP Pavilion, is the first pop superstar to be born during the decade of hysterical celebrity culture.

Madonna used the then-growing paparazzi syndicate to her advantage, creating a shock-and-awe campaign everywhere she went; Britney was a victim of the lens, proving once and for all that the act of observation will inevitably change that which is being observed. But it’s Gaga who is the true byproduct of the 24-hour news cycle, where celebrity news has become both personal and political; where tabloids are read as religious texts; where fame and infamy are no long mutually exclusive.

Her influence is undeniable. Lady Gaga has morphed the state of music and the state of pop culture as it exists now. She has, of course, been aided by this era’s refusal to build anything particularly new, rehashing a series of images with some semblance of history, recycling it until it can vaguely be recognized as both something familiar and something radical. Gaga has been aided by this, and has cleverly referred to her body of work as an extension of pop art, which is, by its very nature, about recycling the familiar until we find something new in it.

There Is No Center

Here’s the most important thing to realize as a citizen of contemporary culture: there is no longer a center. Think of the culture, as it exists now, as a dance circle. Various people take turns jumping in the middle, doing a combination of moves and riling up the crowd, only to then gradually fade back into the surroundings, waiting for another to jump in and test out their moves.

Gaga’s sheer theatricality is her move. And it is in fact the same thing that has kept her personal life at arm’s length, allowing her to maintain a private life that would make other stars of her stature salivate. Her persona as a pop artist who values presentation and the grandiose makes her life beyond the stage less and less interesting—an irony considering that her big picture mythology is that of a star forever in conflict with the notion of “fame.”

Her impact has been rather immediate, and her influence on pop—a genre which has already bled into a variety of others that were once impossible to infiltrate, including indie rock and hip-hop—is undeniable. Just as Kanye West’s emphasis on confessional and vulnerable lyricism served as the perfect breath of fresh air in the early 2000s, during a time when crunk and Southern rap had taken on a horrible life of their own, Gaga has similarly made theatricality an undeniable tenant of the modern pop star.

With bright colors and costumes fit for a drag show, she led the way for an undeniable camp factor that allows stars like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj to sing with their tongue planted firmly in cheek. These elements have entered the pop visual lexicon as if they’ve been lived in for decades.

She’s made an artist’s fan base part of their personal brand, with her Little Monsters giving way to such niches as Nicki Minaj’s Barbies or, less popularly, Rihanna’s NAVY (a title chosen conveniently close to the release of the singer’s first film appearance in last summer’s Battleship).

All of this is to say that much the same way that pop culture once existed in a post-Michael Jackson era, much of the 2000s’ second decade will be defined as entirely post-Gaga. The question is whether she herself will last.

Hard to say: Gaga herself doesn’t seem to be completely immune to a culture that expects more and expects it more often. Her ticket sales (largely considered to be the only way for a musical artist to make money anymore, aside from endorsement deals) have gone down tremendously, with some tickets selling for over 50 percent less than face value. Her last album had one of the biggest first-week sales in Soundscan history, only to then see an 84 percent sales drop the following week.

This is, for lack of a better term, bad news. But what makes Gaga such a product of her time is that her work and her evolution as an artist has become so self-referential so quickly, harking back to her own iconography and showing us the end path of a star still in her infancy. In that way, it doesn’t quite matter if Gaga the performer maintains her status—whether she is still kicking on stage or hanging bloodied off of it. It’s always been the idea of Gaga that’s persisted most. Why else would we have seen the end so close to the beginning?

Lady Gaga
HP Pavilion
San Jose
Jan. 17 7:30pm
$52.50 and up

Beliebers rejoice! As if the widely publicized dissolution of the Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez union wasn’t enough of a Christmas gift for tweenage girls across the globe, the Beebs has added 30 dates to his North American tour, including a stop at HP Pavilion in San Jose.

If you can handle it, they offer multiple levels of VIP packages (with names like Sapphire and Diamond) that include autographed memorabilia, exclusive merch and—squeal!—a meet and greet and photo op.

The 18-year-old Canadian Tiger Beat cover staple has been on the road promoting his 2011 effort “Believe” to sold-out arenas, his 15 minutes lasting longer than anyone except my 12-year-old cousin could have imagined.

Considering his Twitter account is second only to Lady Gaga in number of followers, and the hip pixie dust he’s acquiring via collaborations with respected artists like Drake and Ludacris, he might still be around to celebrate his success with a legal drink. The tour stops at HP Pavilion on June 26th and tickets go on sale December 14.

Good news for Little Monsters, Lady Gaga announced today that she will stop in San Jose on her Born This Way Ball World Tour.

The perpetually touring pop star will stop in San Jose on January 17 at HP Pavilion. The tour, which will hit 25 North American cities starting January 11, has already sold out numerous dates in Europe, Australia and Asia. It is expected to be the Lady Gaga will likely only sit behind her pop diva rival Madonna for top-grossing tour by a female artist this year. Madonna stops in San Jose on her MDNA tour at HP Pavilion on Oct. 6-7.

At Lady Gaga’s show, fans can expect an “electro-metal pop-opera; the tale of the Beginning, the genesis of the Kingdom of Fame. How we were birthed and how we will die celebrating,” according to a a statement from Gaga today.

In addition to a live performance giant, Lady Gag is a powerhouse in Silicon Valley with 2.2 billion combined views of her online videos, 53 million likes on Facebook and 30 million Twitter followers (one report claims she makes +$30 million on twitter). She also recently launched her own social media network.

Tickets for the HP Pavilion show go on sale Friday, September 21.

If his show at Mountain Winery last night taught us anything, it’s that nobody has followed Weird Al’s career like Weird Al.

The guy must have a hell of a clipping service, because he seems to have collected every single pop culture reference to him ever made, for use in his “ALTV” between-song video montages. In some cases, he’s even incorporated them into the set, as when a Jeopardy question about “White and Nerdy” Segway immediately into Al busting out onto the stage in his trademark segue for the song.

What’s even crazier is that when I saw him a few years back in San Mateo, he used just as many pop-culture clips about himself, and yet most of them were entirely different than the ones he showed last night. Is the guy secretly on everybody’s mind all the time, or what?

Well, kind of. I mean, who doesn’t love Weird Al? And what person alive the last three decades doesn’t recognize him as a cultural touchpoint of some type? Whether your generation rocked to “My Bologna,” “Eat It,” “Fat,” “Amish Paradise” or “White and Nerdy,” you know Weird Al.

Seeing him live is like a two-hour study in why he’s remained a trending topic in the back of our minds for this long. First of all, his parodies are, for a huge chunk of the show, cut down into a medley blitz, featuring about the first two-three minutes of each. And that’s always the most clever part, isn’t it? I really only need the first verse and chorus from his Rocky-meets-deli “Eye of the Tiger” parody, “The Rye or the Kaiser.” Now, when I was 10, it might have been a different story, but now that’s perfect. Same with the Backstreet Boys parody “EBay,” his REM “Stand” take-off “Spam” and the “La Bamba” parody “Lasagna”—all of which he ran through quickly.

The true fan favorites (and most elaborate costume changes) got the full-song treatment, though: both MJ parodies, “Amish Paradise,” the stormtrooper-staffed encore for his Star Wars-themed parodies of “American Pie” (which I have to admit has grown on me over the years) and “Lola.” Plus, more recent songs like the Lady Gaga parody “Perform Like This,” the Taylor Swift re-imagining “TMZ” and his version of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.,” “Party in the C.I.A.”

Second, it hit me last night how annoying it is when other artists who do musical comedy try to distance themselves from Weird Al by saying “Well, he’s a parodist,” as if this allowed them to look down on him in some way. Actually, he’s quite a brilliant comedian even when he’s not parodying songs, as his fake video interviews showed again last night. Editing himself into interviews of various celebrities made for some hilarious absurdist comedy.

Lastly, Weird Al, against all odds, still has the ability to surprise. He opened his set last night with Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio.” Not a parody of it, mind you, but the actual song, done in all seriousness. Seriousness? Now, that’s just weird.

Is the Oakland-based rapper Kreayshawn an Internet conspiracy or an absurdist comment on the state of popular culture? With a penchant for warped beats, chirpy hooks, and colorful baubles that combine Harajuku with the hood, the 22-year-old born Natassia Zolot has confounded the same Internet that gave birth to her. She performs Saturday at Studio 8’s Anniversary Party.

The surrealist asexual swagger that she traffics in has drawn lame comparisons to Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, even Lady Gaga. She also shares the criticism that she’s being “weird for weirdness’s sake,” and if that’s not enough—alert the authorities—she’s white.

In the video for “Gucci Gucci,” a wonky, fiendish rebuttal to exhausted brand names and simple minds, Kreayshawn and her crew of delinquent white girls strut through West Hollywood, pointing accusingly and mouthing cuss words. Adorned in what can only be called ‘cartoon couture,’ Kreayshawn dazzles in a Minnie Mouse headband and a blinged-out Indian head hanging from a waist-length chain. Her waif in crime, ‘Lil Debbie,’ bops in the foreground wearing a jean jacket and thick, square glasses—prescription unlikely. It’s as if someone animated the entire line of Polly Pocket and fed them a steady diet of hallucinogens and rap music.

But it’s not her fashion sense, or senselessness, that’s got the world in a fix. Her rap sheet reads thusly: an accomplice, Vanessa “V-Nasty” Reece, liberally peppers sentences with” the N-word.” Nude photos of a supposedly underage Kreayshawn were leaked on the Internet, right after a very public and very comic spat with heavyset rap-don Rick Ross. Also did we mention she’s white?

The thing is: Kreayshawn isn’t embarking on a quest to’save hip hop. It’s not clear if that’s even her genre. Hyper-referential, flippant and a little darling, it’s ridiculous to watch as hip-hop purists launch a series of missives against what’s really just hyphy junior—unthinking sure, but fun, dammit, fun. Cindi Lauper fun.

Kreayshawn performs February 25 at Studio 8’s anniversary party. The party starts at 9pm.