The last few days have been kind of crazy, right? As soon as Americans returned to work after the Thanksgiving weekend, their government got right back to work on impeachment proceedings against President Trump—and that was just the beginning. The president also flew to the UK last week to meet with NATO leaders who were caught on camera appearing to laugh at him. Internationally, France has stopped working, literally, while the Canadian town of Asbestos has finally realized maybe it should change its name. Meanwhile, almost 700,000 people are losing their food stamp assistance. Still, at least Spotify is reminding everyone how bad their music taste actually is. Think that’s all? Oh, there’s more. So much more.
Billie Eilish Doesn’t Know Who Van Halen Is
What Happened: Apparently, it’s very essential for everyone to know that one very famous 17-year-old hasn’t heard of rockers Van Halen. This fact is not, however, all that important to either the members of Van Halen or the 17-year-old in question.
What Really Happened: It says something about 2019 that this not only became one of the most widely discussed stories of the week, but that there doesn’t really seem to be anything particularly strange about that. But, yeah. Billie Eilish doesn’t know who Van Halen is. (Are? Let’s go with the singular, even though it’s a band. They’re a band? It’s so confusing.)
Some were upset about the news—
—while others were … well, just preparing to deal with those who were upset about the news.
Putting aside the common joke being made by many across Twitter—
—the whole thing somehow became a something that got reported on by the media as if it mattered, which really feels like a sign that the world has slightly lost perspective. Especially when Billie Eilish truthers got involved, which … what? How is that even a thing in the first place?
For those as curious as we were, the last time Van Halen charted in the Top 40 in the US was in 1995, or 24 years ago. So, even if Eilish is in her mid-twenties, she would still have needed to have remembered a quasi-successful rock band from when she was a baby to know about Van Halen. At least calmer heads prevailed when it counted.
Let’s just put this into a little bit of perspective, shall we?
The Takeaway: The real takeaway from this story might be asking how we can all enter this nirvana-esque (note the lower-case; let’s not get into whether or not she knows about Kurt Cobain) state.
The Next Phase of the Impeachment Inquiry
