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In Either/Or, we take two people in similar pursuits, and you choose between them. It can be based on any criteria: professional ability, personality, intellectual prowess, physical pulchritude, or who you’d want backing you up in a knife fight. It really doesn’t matter: just choose Either/Or.
Either Kyra Sedgwick of “The Closer”:
Or Holly Hunter of “Saving Grace”:
Either Keith Olbermann of MSNBC:
Or Bill O’Reilly of FNC:
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On Friday, I spent six hours in line at the Apple Store. An hour from now, I’m interviewing Kevin Costner. And here, direct from 1983, is the synergistic fusion of my last few days, an ad for the Mac’s predecessor, Lisa.
Chase McInerney
Starting on Monday, I’ll be taking vacation, but Staticblog will be kept alive and fit through the fine, diligent, perfect-posture typing of comments section master scribe Chase McInerney.
McInerney and I met when we were both members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, covering the dissolution of the marriage of Carrie and Eddie Fisher at hands of that homewrecker, Montgomery Clift. Well, everyone else thinks it was Liz Taylor, but Chase knew the real story, and it can all be read in his extraordinary autobiography, My Life Under the Casting Couch: Lifting the Lingerie Curtain on the Real Hollywood.
Enjoy Chase’s wit and grammar while I’m gone — He’s a true gentleman to keep this blog going while I’m knocking back Sidecars in Monte Carlo. I’ll see you when I return, and I’ll bring you back some chips and maybe a refrigerator magnet.
Cheers,
George Lang
Charlie Rose leads a discussion of Hunter S. Thompson with Jann Wenner, Graydon Carter and Alex Gibney, the great documentary director (”Taxi To the Dark Side,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) who helmed “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.” As Idolator points out, Rose drops in a bizarre reference to alleged plans by Conde Nast to acquire Rolling Stone, and it looked like, for a moment, Wenner lost his tan.
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Via Idolator, here is a bizarre curio for your consumption: “Love Will Tear Us Together” by The Captain & Tenielle feat. Joy Division.
George Carlin
Four days before he died on Sunday at age 71, The Kennedy Center announced that George Carlin would be this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Carlin was never much for formal recognition, so the timing of his passing could not have been more appropriate.
I saw Carlin only once, in 1990 in a performance at the DeAnza College Performing Arts Center in Cupertino, Calif. While it’s hard to recall specifics of his set, what I always held in awe was Carlin’s ability to find ironic juxtapositions and isolate the outright lies in conventional wisdom. With this laser-like skill at parsing language and sussing out the culture’s fine art of obfuscation, Carlin had an uncommon gift, and if he had chosen to use that gift in the polar opposite direction, he could have been a wizard on Madison Avenue.
As he is eulogized today, Carlin is mainly regarded as a comedian of the counterculture, but that is specifically incorrect, and I’m not sure that such an animal exists. He was a member of the counterculture whose knowledge base and focus was aimed at the culture at-large. His comedy was fueled by righteous anger at the collectively dumb things that we do as players in society and the globally stupid things done by our surrogates.
Chase pointed out to me that there’s some irony in Tim Russert and George Carlin dying so close together, since they both had acutely sensitive b.s. detectors. But while Russert had entre to the halls of power, Carlin was screaming outside the security gate. Society needs both players to keep things straight.
Those days of carbing up after Green Door shows might be long gone, but for Nick Wheeler and Tyson Ritter, 2 a.m. just isn’t 2 a.m. without a Moon Over My Hammy.
Via Idolator.
Those of you who do or have in the past received promotional discs, or you just saw the racks at the used disc places filled with them from time to time, know about those gold-embossed warnings on the promo cutouts, warning the holder that the disc in question is property of the record company and can be recalled at any time to the mothership. You couldn’t even throw them away.
Well, that might not be especially true anymore.
Back in April, Universal Music Group sued an eBay reseller named Troy Augusto, who would buy promo copies from used record stores in Los Angeles and resell them on the auction site. The suit was filed in federal district court, even though most copyright law experts said that UMG’s claims were wishful thinking at best.
Well, as of today, a federal judge has thrown out the suit. This means that if you’re in the media business, you can get rid of all those promo discs they sent you of long-forgotten post-grunge bands and early ’90s white rappers.
Via Stereogum, Converse sneakers is celebrating its centennial by playing matchmaker between three artists that, at first blush, don’t look like they’d have much in common. But as summer fizz goes, the results of Pharrell Williams, Santi White and Julian Casablancas’ meeting of the minds and mouths, “My Drive Thru,” is a nice example of what can come from bizarre couplings, or triplings, even if it is all for the sake of selling shoes.
So, let’s play a comments section game. Put three people together, and try to articulate what the resulting mess would sound like.
Yes, this is the site of up-to-the-minute, play-by-play, nitro-burning funny car excitement for the next two hours. Live from Staticblog World Headquarters in the historic and picturesque central neighborhoods of Oklahoma City, I will be chronicling every time-waster, every superfluous use of the word “pitchy,” every sub-sentient utterance by Paula Abdul, every strange and underwhelming guest appearance, and the ultimate coronation of Simon Cowell’s pet human. What does it look like when the country’s favorite show reaches it’s critical mass? It looks like two hours of watching toothpaste harden. Here we go!
7:01 p.m. Here you go: 97.5 million votes for a David. So glad to see the youth so energized by an election.
7:03 p.m. “Correspondent” Mikalah Gordon, dressed in a gold-lame sausage skin, shows Kansas City fans screaming for Cookie, while Matt Rogers looks like he’s going to bust a blood vessel amonst the Archuletans.
7:05 p.m. What a way to suck all the soul out of a Temptations classic. I’m old, so I remember where I saw this group performance first: the “Brady Bunch Variety Hour.” I can hardly wait for Greg to push Bobby in the pool — that’s comedy gold.
7:10 p.m. Okay, so this Chad Kroeger song from “Spider-Man” was not a good choice for Cook, since it only points out what 19 Entertainment has in place for his Nickelbackian post-”A.I.” career. Little Arch gets to do the soaring melisma. Can hardly wait to see him in the next Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza.
7:13 p.m. Mike Myers gets a massive plug for his seemingly stillborn “The Love Guru” non-comedy. “Mariska Hargitay,” indeed. According to the Guru, Archuleta might make “boom-boom in your Pull-Ups.” I think my son is doing that right now. In his Pull-Ups. Now I understand why that Hindu group keeps sending me daily nastygrams about this movie.
7:18 p.m. Syesha Mercado and Sealhenry Samuel sing. Honestly, he hasn’t been the same since he stopped working with the illustrious Trevor Horn, who hasn’t really been the same since he produced Yes’ 90125. And Yes hasn’t been the same since that awful Tormato album cover.
7:21 p.m. Ah, a “Love Guru” mersh. Got to savor the rich, full-bodied taste of synergy.
7:26 p.m. Jar-Jar Castro returns for another run at Leonard Cohen. Hey, get that anesthesia mask off me! Oh, there’s no mask, that’s just my bodily functions slowing to tree sloth levels. No, Jeff Buckley didn’t write that, coffee shop boy.
7:28 p.m. I’m going to miss these Ford music videos — I think I’ve seen more of them in the past few months that I’ve seen actual music videos. Great production values. Shouldn’t these people have been practicing instead of clowning around in an Escape hybrid?
7:29 p.m. Oh, they each get one. Nice. You get to pay taxes on that, Cook. And Archuleta, your dad gets to pay taxes on yours.
7:30 p.m. This Donna Summer medley is… pitchy. And here’s Donna Summer performing her new song, apparently not knowing that the Sandmen are coming after her for being over 30 in a shallow pop music environment.
7:37 p.m. Watching that “Incredible Hulk” rehash is, once again, going to be alot like watching my nephew play Playstation 3.
7:39 p.m. Carly Smithson and Michael Johns doing Alex Chilton, but it’s more like the Joe Cocker version, especially Carly. I know many people will see the appearance of also-rans as a charitable move by 19 Entertainment, but that’s not the vibe that comes off it. It’s more like, “You didn’t like these people enough. And here they are for your derision.”
7:44 p.m. Jimmy Kimmel calls “American Idol” “19 weeks of karaoke singing.” He is a national treasure.
7:46 p.m. A Bryan Adams medley is made unbearable by the fact that Cook started out “Heaven” sounding a little hellish. And here’s the man himself, the one honored on “How I Met Your Mother” when Cobie Smulders called Bruce Springsteen, “The American Bryan Adams.” He doesn’t really look any different than he did in 1983. It’s like they’ve been curing him in a vat of Labatt’s.
“I need somebody/ Somebody like you/ Yeah, I need somebody/ Yeah/ I need somebody/what about you?/ Yeah, need somebody.”
Wonder if Castro got the words right.
7:54 p.m. For the love of all things holy, I’ve been doing this for an hour, and nothing has happened. It’s like live-blogging golf. Or C-Span: The Musical.
7:56 p.m. Cookie jams with ZZ Top. And he does the ZZ rubberleg dance, too. This song is as old as he is — seriously. And ZZ Top hasn’t done a noteworthy song since they released that industrial cover of “Viva Las Vegas” the year Archuleta was born.
8:02 p.m. Brooke White looks a little alarmed during her duet with Graham Nash on “Teach Your Children.” Could be because she’s getting schooled.
8:05 p.m. Cookie does the Tom Cruise underwear scene from “Risky Business” in a Guitar Hero III commercial. Cook, no matter what he tells you, Dianetics does not have all the answers.
8:08 p.m. The Jonas Brothers perform, which is one of the most demographically appropriate appearances of the evening. They should really have a nice, long chat with two or three Hansons.
8:11 p.m. Tryout zaniness. Jared Wiley should win “Alpine Idol.” That was Von Trapp-worthy. And James Lewis, the guy in the giant gold suit, looked like he was doing Jake LaMotta’s nightclub act — if LaMotta spoke humpback whale.
8:14 p.m. Does this atonal pirate Reynaldo Lapuz really deserve the USC Marching Band treatment? Where’s Lindsey Buckingham when you need him?
8:21 p.m. Young Archie jams with OneRepublic, but without Timbaland grunting and conducting from the control room, they’re nothing.
8:25 p.m. “Correspondent” Matt Rogers tries to sow seeds of hatred amongst Archie’s grandparents. Schmuck.
8:27 p.m. I’m going to say something nice: the song Jordin Sparks is singing, “One Step at a Time,” could have been a hit during Janet Jackson’s prime. Also, that Coldplay song in the iTunes ad is sooooo much better than “Violet Hill.” I guess that wasn’t so difficult. Now, on with the show.
8:34 p.m. Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. are Pip-tastic. But this isn’t getting us any closer to the results. I feel like I’m on the “Permanent Midnight Train to Georgia.” Get it? Aaaaah, look it up on IMDb.
8:37 p.m. Just as my colleague Brandy McDonnell predicted, Carrie Underwood is doing “Last Night” again, but she’s looking like a hot wedding cake and sounding better than any of this year’s contestants. Some people don’t need “American Idol” to be stars, but maybe it happened for Carrie just a little bit sooner than it would have otherwise.
8:44 p.m. Now Archie gets to do the Cruise tightie whitey dance for “Guitar Hero.” Xenu, he’s right down here.
8:45 p.m. Mother, the lights are growing dim. The Top 12 women are doing George Michael’s “Faith,” which makes me feel like I’m watching a really bad episode of “Eli Stone.” Now the men are doing “Father Figure,” and it’s going to be really awkward when Archuleta starts singing the lead. Okay, that didn’t happen. So now we’re up to “Freedom ‘90,” and George Michael still hasn’t shown up.
Man, I should know better than to write things like that. Now it’s exactly like a really bad episode of “Eli Stone,” except he’s singing “Praying For Time,” his relatively brave attempt at Elton John singing a John Lennon song — I mean, other than “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” Actually, we should all be praying for less time than two hours of this mess.
8:57 p.m. This is a little redundant, given the time stamp and all, but it’s 8:57 p.m., and we still don’t know who the freakin’ winner is. I guess Andrew Speno’s 9 o’clock newscast is getting the bum’s rush.
9:02 p.m. And after all that padding, here it is. And the winner is…
David. Good night, ladies and germs! We won’t be here all week, mainly because it’s already felt like it. And congratulations, Tulsa (and Kansas City, I suppose) — Simon’s pet didn’t win after all.
9:08 p.m. Man… I didn’t even get to use this photo in context. But it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want:
Good night!
