Blart No Blunder: B.O. Boffo! (Hire me, Variety.)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the number-one movie in America for two weekends in a row before falling to second place last weekend. I don’t think anybody predicted it would land on top its first week, let alone its second.

Its PG rating probably helped, bringing in parents who might’ve stayed away from the kind of movies the film’s producer, Adam Sandler, usually stars in. But Sandler scored a family hit over the holidays starring in Bedtime Stories ($108 million and counting), and since Will Smith faltered with the drama Seven Pounds ($69 million; A.O. Scott of the New York Times said it's "among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made"), does that mean Sandler is now the biggest movie star in the world? I believe it does. However, his last PG-13-rated comedy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, barely crossed the $100 million finish line last summer (final gross: $100,018,837), which means his next comedy not designed for the kiddies needs to top it in order to keep the box office analysts off his back.

Paul Blart’s success also has something to do with its star, Kevin James, who costarred with Sandler in 2007’s gay-panic comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and costarred with Smith in 2005’s Hitch. He was still doing his long-running CBS sitcom The King of Queens when Hitch came out; its nine-season run ended two months before Chuck and Larry was released. That show is now on TV every day thanks to syndication. So people know who Kevin James is. And they appear to like him.

“In these tough, recession-laden times, you’d think people wouldn’t want a movie that’s based around a mall, but they totally do,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the president of box-office tracking firm Media by Numbers, in an Associated Press roundup of the top movies the week Paul Blart was released. Now, I might not want to see a movie about people working in a mall that’s dying one storefront at a time, because that sounds depressing, but I don’t think people will mind paying to see a movie based in a mall that isn’t about to close. Everybody likes watching movies about rich people, especially if they become poor before getting their money back, but even if they stay rich the whole time, that’s fine—we escape at movies, and we’d rather be a fly on the wall of some rich jerk’s life than someone more like ourselves, whose bathroom fixtures aren’t nearly as fancy.

Besides, Paul Blart is a movie about a fat guy. “Fatty fall down” is funny to lots of people. If Adam Sandler’s friend and former Saturday Night Live castmate Chris Farley were still alive, he’d be playing this role, not Kevin James. Besides, the main character’s last name rhymes with “fart.” What do I gotta do, draw a map for you, Dergarabedian?!

To be fair, Dergarabedian is quoted every single weekend by the Associated Press for analysis on why the #1 movie is #1 instead of #5, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s too tired to give a good answer sometimes. In the summer of ’06, when Superman Returns was released to solid opening-day numbers, he said something like “People really seem to be in the mood to see superheroes right now.” They’re also in the mood to get out of the house and, with any luck, shut their kids up for a few hours. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Paul!

Of course, the Associated Press shouldn’t quote him if he has nothing worth quoting, but that’s not Dergarabedian’s fault. If nothing else, his last name keeps proofreaders on their toes, so in that sense he provides a much more valuable service than anyone whose name rhymes with “fart.”

Speaking of malls, back in November I was curious to see if I could find anything online about Record Bar, a former chain of record stores that had a spot at the Macon Mall when I was growing up in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Thanks to Wikipedia, it's easy to feel like everything from your past is just a few clicks away on your computer (well, not everything, but that's what Facebook is for—it allows you to voluntarily invade your own privacy and share pictures and memories from high school that had previously been offline for a very good reason), but there was hardly anything on the Internet about Record Bar.

However, I did find a blog post from August of '06 that's written by a former employee. The comments under his eight short paragraphs stretch into 2009. It’s fun to see former coworkers reconnect after many years apart and share their memories from the '70s and '80s, though a sentence in one of the comments speaks to the dangers of nostalgia: "Sigh, it kinda makes me sad." Coming down from a nostalgia high can be a bitch, especially if your life now doesn't quite resemble the dreams of your teens and 20s. But living up to those dreams is a tall order for anyone. For one thing, those dreams were concocted by someone with the metabolism of a hummingbird. Don't blame yourself—your body, like your government, gave you false hope.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop, you’ll be lucky if you’re remembered as fondly as Record Bar is 30 years from now. Now fall down again, fatty. I need a good laugh.

once underfoot, now six feet under

During my freshman year of college 14 years ago, my friend Julianne would occasionally mail me an advice column from an alt-weekly newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, where she attended the College of Charleston. The paper's name was Doormat, and the column was called Dear Doormat. The questions were supposedly real, but the answers were always sarcastic, so once you figured out the gag you had to be a masochist to ask for advice. Then again, people still make fools of themselves on The Daily Show nearly 13 years after it debuted, because some people will do anything to get on TV. Or, in Doormat's case, see their words in print.

Here's a question printed in Dear Doormat during the 1994-'95 school year:

Dear Doormat,

I'm hooked up to the internet and I'm currently surfing the network. Could please publish your e-mail address for easy access?

On-Line

The reply was:

Dear On-Line,

We don't do internet. Fax you.

For what it's worth, Doormat no longer exists, though I have no idea if it was another casualty of the Internet age or not.

To protect the innocent (though he is guilty of mediocre writing), I won't name the author of a Doormat column from November of '94 in which he listed the things he is and isn't thankful for. It's typical of college-newspaper op-eds, at least from when I was an undergrad: "I am thankful for all talented musicians who put passion into their work and are able to communicate it to those who listen. I am not thankful for uninspired dorks with instruments who should know who they are, but are probably too stupid."

He continues: "I am thankful for the modern technology that appeared as I grew up, such as remote control, VCRs, Compact Discs, and personal computers. But I am really not thankful for any modern technology since 1988, especially 'advances' that use the following terms: internet, on-line, superhighway and cyber-space. The same goes for Virtual Reality. Isn't Reality Reality complicated enough?"

But technology seems to have changed so rapidly since '94 that I'd imagine there's a ten-year-old somewhere in the world right now saying, "Now I can program the DVR with my phone? I just learned how to program the DVR period." Then again, probably not—I'm just old. The upside is that I'm thankful it's not November 1994 anymore.

leveraging the ordinary

Back in November at work (when I was still working) we received promotional junk from TNT to promote another one of its new series, Leverage. It stars Timothy Hutton, and TNT wants to remind everyone that he's an Oscar winner, though it's been approximately 57 years since he won the Best Supporting Actor award for Ordinary People.

I saw that movie for the first time in October, knowing Hutton had won for Best Supporting Actor, but I was surprised to see that he plays the main character. Then I wondered if Donald Sutherland, who plays his father, was nominated for Best Actor.

Studios will often trumpet a lead actor in a film for a Best Supporting Actor or Actress nomination if they think another lead in the same film has a better chance at a Best Actor or Actress nomination—they don't want the nominees canceling each other out. An example that immediately comes to mind is John Travolta being nominated for Best Actor for 1994's Pulp Fiction and Samuel L. Jackson getting a nod for Supporting Actor, even though their characters share equal time and stature in Quentin Tarantino's film.

I think I've even read that some actors have it written into their contracts that those "For Your Consideration" ads that take up so much space in Variety during awards season only promote them, not their costars, for Best Actor or Actress. I definitely remember reading that trade-paper ads like the ridiculous one that asked Academy voters to take a second look at Sylvester Stallone in the 1996 disaster movie Daylight are the product of contractual agreements. (Stallone did get a nomination—for Worst Actor at that year's Razzie Awards, but he lost to Tom Arnold and Pauly Shore, who tied.)

Back to Ordinary People. I looked at the movie's page on IMDB and saw that Sutherland wasn't nominated for Best Actor, though Mary Tyler Moore, who's impressive as Hutton's mother, was nominated for Best Actress. I assume that Paramount, who produced the film, was hoping for a Best Actor nomination for Sutherland and it didn't come through. Judd Hirsch was nominated alongside Hutton as Best Supporting Actor, but they obviously didn't cancel each other out.

And now back to Leverage. The promotional junk we received at the Chicago Reader included an energy drink with the series' name and a picture of the cast wrapped around the can. It's the Leverage beverage! "Fuel up for TNT's newest high energy drama series," the can says, so I did.

Or at least I tried. I'd never had a Red Bull or any other kind of energy drink before, so when I poured the 8.3 fluid ounces of liquid Leverage into a glass, I was both mesmerized and repulsed by its resemblance to radioactive urine. I used to like Mountain Dew and Mello Yello, but I always drank them from the can—"out of sight, out of mind" is the best course of action you can take with those yellowish-green soft drinks.

I took one sip of the Leverage beverage and realized something important: I wasn't missing out all those years I didn't try Red Bull. I'm sure it's a taste one acquires over time, like Diet Coke or mass murder, but I'd rather waste my time doing and tasting other things. I poured out the rest of the Leverage beverage, scrubbed the glass clean, and went back to being an ordinary, award-free citizen.

Christmas miracles and otherwise

On December 23 I received an e-mail from the president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Network of Strength. The subject heading was "We can't wait for tomorrow's cure." What great timing for such momentous, uplifting news (unless you're Jesus, but he always upstages everyone else born on December 25, so it's about time he was knocked down a peg)!

Unfortunately, Christmas Eve came and went without any announcement of a cure. I felt used, like anyone who's ever sat through endless teasers on a local newscast just to find out it's the chili at Wendy's that contains human fingers, not the burgers or fries or Frostys or anything I would normally order there. And then when you discover that the chili never contained fingers, that it was all a hoax concocted by a customer who decided to try a unique approach to asking for a refund, you wonder if you'll ever be able to trust anyone again.

Speaking of hoaxes, I saw Lasse Hallstrom's 2007 film The Hoax over Christmas. I think it might be my favorite movie of the past two years. Based on a true story chronicled in the book of the same name, it stars Richard Gere as author Clifford Irving, who convinced his publisher, McGraw-Hill, that he'd been contacted by Howard Hughes to help him write his autobiography. Never mind that Irving's previous book was Fake!, a biography of art forger Elmyr de Hory. Though McGraw-Hill was suspicious, they weren't about to let the autobiography of the world's most mysterious recluse billionaire get away. Irving proceeded to write the book with his friend and researcher Richard Suskind (played by Alfred Molina, who has good comic chemistry with Gere, an actor who gets better with age as his vanity continues to fade), thinking no one would be able to discredit what he wrote since Hughes would never surface to contradict him.

What I loved most about The Hoax is that it's based on a true story that's based on an elaborate lie. Movies based on true stories always take certain liberties with the facts for the sake of dramatic license—movies are "life with the boring parts cut out," as someone once said—and whenever we watch a movie, we buy into the lie when we pay for our ticket. It's in the contract.

Frost/Nixon, for instance, fictionalizes certain events surrounding the 1977 televised interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon in order to build suspense and provide motivation for the "characters," and just as no court cases in real life proceed anything like the ones you see on TV shows such as Boston Legal, it's hard to imagine that neither Frost nor Nixon had any kind of poker face during the real interviews. (You can see clips from them on YouTube.)

But all of it works in the name of compelling drama, even if, like me, you leave the theater and are crushed when you read a review that says a piece of damning information against Nixon that appears at the 11th hour in the film had been in Frost's possession much earlier. (And now the truth: I read that in a review before I saw the movie. But it works better in terms of this plot if I say the opposite.)

It's hard to know what's fact and what's fiction in The Hoax, but that works in the film's favor, especially in scenes where Irving believes he's been visited by Hughes's own private CIA but can't prove it exists outside of his imagination, just as he imagined entire decades of Hughes's life before committing them to the page. That's why it's funny that the Wikipedia page on Irving contains the following sentence: "Irving ... decried the film as a distortion of the story, in particular citing the film's portrayals of himself, Suskind and Edith Irving as inaccurate and claiming that the film added events and scenes that did not occur in real life."

And around and around we go.

One of the most interesting aspects of The Hoax concerns Richard Nixon, in fact, and the conclusion of the film wants us to believe that the Watergate break-in was executed in part to retrieve advance copies of the Hughes autobiography, which reportedly contained dirt on Nixon and had been sent to the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. I don't know if that's true, and part of me doesn't care since The Hoax plays such an entertaining mind game.

Frank Langella, who plays Nixon in Frost/Nixon and whose performance is the best part of the movie, said in a New York Times article on January 4 that there isn't much personal information about him on the Internet or elsewhere because "I'm not in the business of confessing, and I'm deeply offended by people who are."

If he doesn't want to confess whether or not ex-girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg was good in bed or not, that really is his business, but it makes me wonder what he thought of Nixon's partial confession of guilt in the final Frost-Nixon interview about Watergate. Screenwriter Peter Morgan, who also wrote the play the movie is based on, implies that one reason Nixon agreed to the interviews was because he felt guilty about his guilt, that he needed to confess in order to move forward.

In the film James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) says he'll take on the job of researcher for Frost if he's guaranteed that the Nixon interviews will give the pardoned president the trial he never had, not make the viewing audience sympathetic to him in any way. But in that New York Times article Langella says he knew that "whatever I did, I could never satisfy some people, especially the ones who just want to hate Nixon ... But why shouldn't he be human? Why shouldn't he be sympathetic and touching, along with all the rest—vicious, cruel, a liar and a crook?"

Langella, Morgan, and director Ron Howard do succeed in making the audience sympathetic to Nixon, or maybe I'm just speaking for myself as someone who was born after he'd resigned from office. For one thing, in terms of historical context, Nixon seems a hell of a lot smarter than George W. Bush ever was or ever will be, and unlike Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he inherited the Vietnam war from previous administrations, though he did escalate it.

These points were brought up after a prerelease screening of Frost/Nixon on December 1 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., attended by Howard, Morgan, and Reston. According to political columnist Roger Simon, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace objected to Reston after he said, "The younger generation feels Richard Nixon was railroaded out of office and what he did was trivial compared to what George W. Bush did." Wallace argued that Bush's post-9/11 actions were done to "protect this country" against its mortal enemies, not its political enemies, as was the case with Nixon.

I can see both sides, and I've heard that Oliver Stone's W., which opened last October but faded quickly, turned Bush into something of a sympathetic figure too. Howard said at the Wilson Center screening that he shot an alternate ending for Frost/Nixon and showed it to some test audiences, who responded well to it and wrote on their comment cards after the test screenings that it showed how Nixon had "changed" as a person, making him more sympathetic. Howard, perhaps bowing to the pressure of American history in this case more than he would have, say, with Tom Hanks's character in the mermaid comedy Splash (1984), decided not to use the alternate ending.

Even so, Nixon remains a tragic, sympathetic figure in the film. If that seems like a hoax to some viewers, it will still remain the truth for others. Besides, it's not like he ever put a finger in someone's chili. Nixon was tricky, not pranky.

It's a mad mad mad mad world.

Mad Men has been an Emmy-winning hit for AMC, which used to be American Movie Classics, but once it started showing films like Death Wish 3 (sponsored one night last summer by, of all things, a Time-Life collection of Contemporary Christian Music), the cable channel had to take a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and come clean. Or, better yet, abbreviate its name and not tell anyone what it stands for anymore.

Tomorrow night TNT debuts Trust Me, starring Tom Cavanagh (Ed) and Eric McCormack (Will & Grace). It's another series about people working at an ad agency, except it's set in the present day and doesn't have the pedigree of being created by an ex-Sopranos writer.

In August 1988 CBS debuted its own show set in the advertising world, but it only lasted one episode: Mad Avenue was its name, and according to IMDB, it was a "drama about the 'frantic professional and personal' lives of the staff at a national advertising agency." The title is short for Madison Avenue, but IMDB says the one episode was shot "entirely on location in Toronto, Canada."

False advertising? No, but the way in which CBS presented Mad Avenue to viewers was slightly misleading.

Back in the '80s, when the networks could still afford to take the entire summer off and depend on viewers coming back en masse in the fall for new episodes, original programming often boiled down to tossed-off pilots of shows that weren't picked up for fall or midseason. Since they weren't going to see the light of day any other way, CBS decided to air its unsold pilots under the umbrella title of CBS Summer Playhouse in 1987, '88, and '89.

Mad Avenue was one such pilot that didn't make it onto CBS's 1988 fall schedule. It starred a post-Hill Street Blues, pre-Doogie Howser James B. Sikking (on the latter show he always looked like he'd had a drink or two before arriving on the set), presumably an adman at the fictional agency of Stein, Atkins, Thomas, Andrews & Noble. IMDB helpfully points out the acronym: SATAN. And the address of the agency was 666 Madison Avenue. (I used to like a girl who worked at a museum located at 666 Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Take a wild guess as to how that courtship panned out.)

These days unsold pilots rarely make it to the air, though the once proud, now dead cable network known as Trio showed some of them in 2003 under the umbrella title of Brilliant But Cancelled. Some network executives have suggested that pilot "season," when pilots are ordered, cast, shot, and edited, be done away with entirely because of all the time and money that's expended on the final product, the main problem being that the majority of the pilots won't be sold and turned into series. (Last season's writers' strike affected pilot season, which is one reason it was reevaluated. Mad Avenue aired a couple weeks after the 1988 writers' strike ended.)

I didn't see Mad Avenue when it aired, but the name has stuck with me all these years. So has Bill Hicks's routine about people who work in marketing and advertising.



Hicks was 30 when he filmed Revelations, the stand-up special the above clip is taken from; he died two years later of pancreatic cancer. If he was alive today he'd be 47, and I assume he'd be a mellower guy about things like commercials and the people who create them. But maybe not. I just hope he wouldn't be taking supporting roles in movies like Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) and its upcoming "squeakquel."

David Cross, a Hicks-style comedian and actor who appears in the Chipmunks movies (to be fair, he's also been in critically acclaimed movies like I'm Not There and Ghost World), was 38 when he recorded his stand-up album Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! (2002). The jokes and routines have a mostly bitter edge, especially when he discusses politics and religion.

Bitter can be funny, as Hicks proved, but on that album Cross rarely makes himself the butt of the joke just as the humor is about to tip over into anger, therefore turning some of his routines into self-righteous rants. He also interrupts himself so many times with the all-purpose adjective and adverb "fuckin'," not to mention the handy time-stalling phrase "you know," that his jokes go on far longer than they should, weakening the punchlines. On his follow-up album, It's Not Funny (2004), his timing is much sharper, he's more self-deprecating, and his jokes are funnier in general. It is funny. It's also a single disc, whereas Shut Up contains two discs filled with two hours of material—the preaching to the drunk choir feels like it'll never end.

Cross defended his participation in the first Chipmunks movie early last year on the website he shares with fellow Mr. Show creator Bob Odenkirk and their comedian friends. He wrote that his fans and critics shouldn't bother questioning it because it's "a waste of time and energy. I choose to care about other things that I believe are worth the investment of that kind of outrage, disappointment, and sense of urgency."

But if you're going to dish it out in a war of words with comedians you don't respect, like Larry the Cable Guy, you should be able to take it just as well and understand why you're on the receiving end this time. Cross also admits that "I used my 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' money to pay for the down payment [on a cottage]. Seriously, I totally did." Seriously? Yes, totally. Because it's easier to forgive a cozy new cottage than a pile of coke and hookers (for the record, one pile of coke, one separate pile of hookers).

I bet a lot of actors who do commercials, even voice-over work like the kind Gene Hackman does for Lowe's (Cross has done it for video games like Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto, according to his IMDB page, and he was the Daniel Stern-like narrator of the Fox sitcom Oliver Beene five years ago), enjoy the paychecks they receive that allow them to buy new summer homes. Unlike Hicks, who was an angry young man at the time, I forgive them. But I don't want to get into the politics of stardom. I'd much rather hear Cross deliver a ... fuckin', you know ... funny, self-mocking routine about it instead.

how to keep customers coming back for more

Good customer service is critical. People might not come back to your store if they're treated poorly by the employee at the cash register. Recently I noticed post-transaction meet-and-greets, if you will, at the top of receipts from Walgreens and Jewel-Osco, the latter a midwestern grocery/drugstore chain.

Michael's message is a little too eager. I don't know if he's going to get to first base with me the next time I'm at Walgreens. In other words, I won't buy an impulse item in the checkout line just because he's grateful he was allowed to serve me the last time I was there. Michael, I came into your store. I'm chasing you, so stop kissing my ass! Play hard to get next time and see if you get more repeat business. How about something like "I'm Michael. It was cool meeting you, I guess, but it's not like we're married now." Or "I'm Michael. Come back soon and I'll show you where I hide my stash." Or just "I'm Michael. Whatever."

The Jewel-Osco thank-you note is more subtle but also more direct. I'm intrigued, I'm confused, I'm blown away, and the words "thank you" are never used. Good job, Jewel employee.

Let it be, but don't let it end.

For Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gave me the reissued editions of Tim (1985) and Pleased to Meet Me (1987), the Replacements’ first two albums for Sire Records. Exactly 15 years earlier my brother gave me Tim on CD. It’s an album that’s grown on me—when I received it on Christmas Day in ’93 I was disappointed by it in comparison with Pleased to Meet Me.

It wasn’t until 2002, when I read a long article about the band online and listened to all of their albums again, that I realized just how great “Bastards of Young” is. And “Left of the Dial.” And a few years later “Little Mascara” won me over. Even “Dose of Thunder” and “Lay It Down Clown” aren’t bad as far as filler goes. When I first heard Tim, the songs that struck me were “Hold My Life” (“Because I just might lose it ... / Because I just might use it”), “I’ll Buy,” “Waitress in the Sky,” and “Swingin Party,” but that was it. Now I realize it was a terrific big-league debut for the band, proof that their spirit hadn’t been diminished in the transition.

I think they peaked with Let It Be (1984), though. Don’t Tell a Soul (1989) is my sentimental favorite because it’s the first one I heard (naturally, my brother owned it), but Let It Be is the Replacements' best. I listened to it today on my way back to Macon from Athens and was reminded how gosh darn positive it is. But Let It Be doesn’t earn that adjective by peddling false hope or love-will-conquer-all banalities—it does it by being inclusive.

I didn’t grow up working-class in Minnesota like the Replacements did, and I never got fall-down drunk in my 20s, but I do know what it’s like to be lonely, and that’s all you need to connect to the band and all their fans. It’s why almost every song on the album is an anthem, but not in a calculated way—if you’ve ever felt like an outcast or a loser, Paul Westerberg’s lyrics are there to reassure you that you’re not the only one. His lyrics will be instantly memorized and repeated for decades to come, because teen and twentysomething alienation isn't going out of style anytime soon.

Here are two verses from “Sixteen Blue,” inspired by bassist Tommy Stinson, who was only 12 when the band formed in ’79:

Drive your ma to the bank
Tell your pa you got a date
But you’re lying
Now you’re lying
On your back

Your age is the hardest age
Everything drags and drags
You’re looking funny
You ain’t laughing, are you?
Sixteen blue

The melody, Westerberg's vocals, and the band's performance ache right along with the lyrics. Then there’s “Androgynous,” which is more whimsical in nature but just as open-hearted:

Something meets boy and something meets girl
They both look the same, they’re overjoyed in this world
Same hair, revolution
Unisex, evolution
Tomorrow who’s gonna fuss?

This is the chorus:

Mirror image, see no damage
See no evil at all
Kewpie dolls and urine stalls
Will be laughed at
The way you’re laughed at now

I saw Westerberg perform “Androgynous” on my 21st birthday, in 1996, when he was touring behind his second solo album, Eventually. He couldn’t remember all the words, so the audience filled in for him, a couple hundred self-diagnosed outcasts and losers helping out their hero the way his songs helped them through the rough patches of adolescence. Moments like that are why I still go to concerts, and no concert since Westerberg's has topped it.

The supposed tension between Westerberg and lead guitarist Bob Stinson, who wasn’t interested in playing the singer’s slower stuff, may have led Westerberg to amp up “Unsatisfied” and “Answering Machine,” two other anthems about romantic frustration and loneliness. Let It Be is the last Replacements album on which Stinson plays a major role; though he’s credited as lead guitarist on Tim, he was reportedly absent from most of the recording sessions, and after the band was finished touring behind the album, he was fired.

It can be argued that Let It Be is a collection of songs rather than a cohesive artistic statement: there’s a nothing-special cover of Kiss’s “Black Diamond,” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” and “Gary’s Got a Boner” are jokes, but at least they're funny and they rock. But you could also argue that teens and twentysomethings are highly contradictory creatures whose moods can turn on a dime, from bleak to silly and back again in the course of a couple minutes. In that respect the various moods of Let It Be are right on target.

the meaning of "platonic"

United Feature Syndicate's Mr. Know-It-All was recently asked the following question:

I'm a male and have been involved in several platonic relationships. What does the word "platonic" mean?

In case you hadn't noticed, it means you ain't gettin' any.

a crying shame

If Illinois' first lady, Patti Blagojevich, cries on camera to Barbara Walters or someone of that sort and apologizes for using salty language to express her feelings about the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Tribune, then I hope a newspaper headline the next day uses my favorite riff on her maiden name: "Patti Melts."

I saw an ad on TV last night for AmeriCash Loans, which used fake newspaper headlines to illustrate all the bad news about the economy that people have been receiving lately. It didn't point out, of course, that newspapers are suffering right along with banks, real estate companies, the auto industry, etc. Newspaper headlines are still the norm for quickly conveying information in ads like the one for AmeriCash Loans.

Even in last Sunday's Simpsons episode, when Homer had a vision of the future in which honey didn't exist, he was alerted by a "Honey Famine Continues" headline on the front page of a Springfield Shopper lying on the ground. This future also included a WALL-E robot that scavenged for valuables such as a bear-shaped honey dispenser. Thanks, Homer, for imagining a postapocalyptic future that has room for robots and newspapers, but a lot of people would place bets on robots—and political corruption, which will never go out of style—being more commonplace than printed news 100 years from now.

a photo on Wikipedia that needs a caption

After struggling in vain to remove a wind instrument from his lips, smooth-jazz superstar Dave Koz implores soul singer and 2008 Black Yul Brynner Lookalike Contest winner James Ingram to not turn around and answer fans' questions about the status of his tailored suit.

recent sighting

A few minutes ago I was walking behind a man outside the Reader's office who had some sort of doll still in its packaging in his left hand. In his right hand was a glass of white wine. I'm going to guess that he was disappointed in the door prize he received at his company's scaled-back holiday party this year, so he decided to take his glass of wine with him. (Cash bar only this year, staffers. Sorry, but we are in a recession.)

My grandmother would've turned 90 today.

In 1997 my grandmother, Martha McKay Stovall, passed away ten days after her 79th birthday. Below is a picture of her and my grandfather, George Walter Stovall, who died last year at 90. When this photo was taken in the summer of 1947 she was 28 and he was 31. Both were younger than I am now.

Here's something I've wondered about for a while now: Theoretically, heaven is, well, heavenly. You lived a good life, so you're rewarded with eternal happiness. But people generally die when they're old, and who wants to arrive at the pearly gates only to discover that you're going to spend eternity with arthritis, cataracts, and liver spots? 

I wasn't the wisest or most even-tempered 21-year-old, but physically speaking, that's the age at which I was the least self-conscious, so I'd like God to restore my legal-drinking-age features once I get to heaven. And I'd like to be reunited with my grandparents, but would they be in their early 20s—or whatever period of their lives at which they were the least self-conscious—when I meet them again? I'd recognize them, of course, but are family reunions in heaven filled with people who look like they're all in their teens and 20s, with no middle-aged or elderly bodies in sight?

the morning after

The honeymoon will end sooner rather than later, and the punch-drunk goodwill of election night will give way to the sober reality of economic and military crises, but what excites me the most about last night's election is thinking that the first president my young nieces will be conscious of is Barack Obama. Their generation may have some racial barriers broken down before they even know those barriers once existed. It's a long shot, of course, but it's nice to think about. For them, it won't just be lip service that anyone can become president of the United States of America.

You can still pull this one out with one more negative ad, Republicans!!!!

I know the polls have closed and McCain's way behind in the electoral-college vote count so far and there's absolutely no chance of him winning ... but dammit, you pulled a fast one in 2000 and you can do it again! So listen up ...

Barack Obama's middle name may be Hussein, but something about his name smells even fishier—his initials.

That's right—Barack Obama's initials are B.O. America, do you really want B.O. in the White House—and in your lives—for the next four years? Think about it. Or is it already too late?

TV vs. print, suave international assassins vs. racist rural assassins

Last night one of the top-story teasers for the 10 PM newscast on Channel 2 (WBBM, the CBS affiliate in Chicago) concerned two white supremacists' plans to assassinate Barack Obama. In today's Chicago Sun-Times the story gets eight short paragraphs and is on page six, mainly because the would-be assassins were arrested October 22 in Tennessee and never got anywhere near Obama, though authorities took their threats seriously, which included targeting a "mostly black school." Even the senator himself said on the newscast that he wasn't worried about the suspects' threat. But I wouldn't have seen him say that if I hadn't taken Channel 2's teaser bait, now would I? Good work! Also, shame on you.

Here's my favorite part of the assassination-threat story: according to court documents, "Both individuals stated they would dress in all-white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt." Hey, who doesn't appreciate a touch of class?
Maybe these white supremacists are just two overgrown kids who like to play James Bond in their backyard (which is surrounded, of course, by signs that say "Trespassers will be assassinated on sight"). Well, James Bond if he were a hateful bigot, at least. I bet their favorite Bond film is 1973's blaxploitation-influenced Live and Let Die, the one that introduced Roger Moore as Bond. If that's the case, then they deserve to go to prison—nobody would pick Moore as their favorite Bond. (Objection! The prosecution is jumping to false conclusions and committing character assassination.) (Overruled! I don't care if "Who's the best Bond of all time?" isn't even the issue at hand. Verdict: guilt by association.)

Colin Farrell isn't married.

But if he was, I doubt his wife would let him out of the house wearing this shirt.

Can't wait for "Flashdance II," Colin!

This is a picture of Instant Karma, a Chicago-area John Lennon tribute act, walking across Abbey Road just like the Beatles did in 1969 for their famous Abbey Road album cover. At first I laughed, because there is absolutely no "rock-star cool" emanating from this photo. But then I realized they're not trying to look cool (which isn't an easy thing to do when you're wearing shorts and ankle-high socks); they're just fans of Lennon and the Beatles, and they probably got a huge kick out of walking across the same intersection their idols did almost 40 years ago. It also occurred to me that they all traveled to England together to take this photograph, which says a great deal about their friendship.

Finally, I sure do hope this naysayer is proven wrong next Tuesday. If he isn't, may he wear Colin Farrell's ballet blouse until he's learned an important lesson about optimism.

the reality of the situation

The September 25 Chicago Tribune included an article about Army scientist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide on July 29 as the Justice Department prepared to charge him for the post-9/11 anthrax mailings that killed five people. The article's focus was an e-mail Ivins sent to himself on September 7, 2007, in which he declared that he'd discovered the identity of the anthrax mailer even though he was the authorities' prime suspect. The parts of the e-mail quoted by reporter David Willman include lots of exclamation marks: "Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!! ... I've pieced it together! ... I'm not looking forward to everybody getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will all be over ... I should have been a private eye!!!!"

"The e-mail," Willman wrote, "along with other correspondence [shows] that Ivins more recently mused about how to blind or kill a reality TV participant...."

Wait a second—Ivins killed five innocent Americans in 2001 and "sickened or injured" 17 others, but he could only find enough motivation to harm one reality-TV star? How twisted can a man's morals be?

Whoop! There it is!

Whooping cough is a highly infectious respiratory illness caused by Bordetella pertussis, a known player in the infectious disease world since the 16th century.

Play on, player, play on!

In its heyday it was responsible for at least 200,000 cases a year just in the United States.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

These cases were reduced significantly with the development of the vaccine in the 1940's.

You were the coolest infectious cat on the block for 400 years, BP, but every party has to end sometime. Still, I gotta give you props. Y'all give it up for BP! Everybody put your hands together for BP!

Here's another freebie for you, Republicans.

Late-night TV comedy writers and talk-show hosts regularly make fun of politicians, especially during election years like this one. So why aren't they making fun of Barack Obama?

They say it's because the Democratic senator from Illinois is "perfect," but the real reason is because he's black (for the most part). And they're white (for the most part). And because black comedians can make fun of white people but white comedians can't make fun of black people. (Don't go there, girlfriend.) It just isn't kosher, though Holocaust jokes can be enjoyed by everyone, of course. (Ancient history, people. Let it go already.)

American voters, do you really want a president who's too "perfect" to be made fun of on TV? Do you really want four more years of white actor Fred Armisen impersonating Obama on Saturday Night Live? Even he looks bored already, and he's only been playing the Illinois Muslim terrorist senator for a month. (In blackface, no less! ... Okay, more like grayface, but don't act like that doesn't make you squirm, white-guilt bleeding-heart liberals.) Don't you want a president everyone can laugh at regardless of their race?

On November 4, vote for John McCain, a president we can all ridicule. Plus there's his running mate—I mean, is she hilarious or what?

(Paid for by the Coalition of African-Americans and Cracker-Ass Crackers to Elect John McCain.)

Read the newspaper story about the Train while you're on the train reading the newspaper.

Jake Austen's cover story about Soul Train's beginnings in Chicago was published last week in the Chicago Reader and can be found online here. It's well worth your time if you're interested in the show, which aired in black-and-white on Chicago's WCIU, or '70s soul music. The photos that were unearthed from Soul Train's modest early years feature Curtis Mayfield and the Staple Singers, and "while [host Don] Cornelius's sharp suits became his signature when the show went national, early publicity photos show the host in bolder attire: despite being in his mid-30s, he wears a low-cut tank top accented by chains, studs, and leather."

You can have this one for free, Republicans.

This photo was taken on Thursday, September 11, in New York City, when senators John McCain and Barack Obama participated in a Time magazine-sponsored forum on national service at Columbia University. Doesn't Obama look scary in this picture? Doesn't he look like he's threatening the white-haired old white man? That's not what he was doing, but doesn't it look like that's what he's doing? And isn't that worth more than the thousand words Democrats could use to justify the thousand other things that were probably going through Obama's mind at that particular moment?

Do you want your next president to threaten your sweet, defenseless, white-haired grandpa, America? On November 4, vote for the white-haired man. He only threatens our godless enemies. Plus his running mate is totally do-able!

(Paid for by the Committee to Elect a President Who Isn't Mean to Grandpas or Grandmas or Puppies or Rainbows.)

memories that hang by a thread

As we get older, our brain pushes out older memories for newer ones. Sometimes that's not such a bad thing, like when someone from high school reminds you of a pretentious thing you said when you were 15 and you have no recollection of it whatsoever. Therefore it never happened. I savor this kind of small victory.

But there are other times when you have only the thinnest strand of a memory still trapped in your head, like an image from a movie or a TV show or a music video, but the image isn't enough to help you identify where it came from, even in the Internet age, where information on seemingly everything is available whenever you want it.

In January I mentioned that I'm glad to go into a grocery store these days, hear a song I haven't heard before on the PA, and not be able to identify it even if I write down a line or two and then look up the lyrics on Google when I get home. (Some people, of course, can access the Internet on their phones or PDAs and would be able to identify the song right away. But I don't want that much Internet in my life.) It's nice to not know. And yet a part of me still wants to know, especially if I want to hear the song again.

I remember a video that came on MTV in the summer of '87 that featured some sort of jungle setting, though the jungle was created on a soundstage and was meant to look fake. That summer I looked for the cassette that featured the song while I was with my grandfather in a music store in Douglas, Georgia, where my grandparents used to live. But that's all I remembered about the song—not the title, not the artist's name, not even a basic melody. Just a vague image from the video and a vague recollection of the location where I briefly considered buying the entire album so I could have that song. (I'm sure I just wanted to buy something that day, no matter what. That allowance money/spoiled-grandchild money was burning a hole in my pocket.)

On April 23 Dave Steed helped me solve this minor mystery in his Popdose series called Bottom Feeders, where he meticulously tracks down every song that peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s below #40. On that day he featured a song by Jon Astley (no relation to Rick) called "Jane's Getting Serious." I thought I hadn't remembered anything about the melody of that mystery song from 21 years ago, but something clicked when I listened to Astley's minor hit. I love how the brain works that way.

Now that I had the title, I started looking for the video for "Jane's Getting Serious" on YouTube. It wasn't there, but I did find a sentence or two on another site about it being set in a jungle, which made sense in terms of "Me Tarzan, you Jane." It took 21 years, but I'd finally identified the Song With No Name. And a few months ago the video showed up on YouTube:



Another vague image that's never left my memory comes from even earlier in my life—I was probably four or five when I saw a TV show in which milk was poured on a person's head while he was sitting at a kitchen table. I thought maybe it came from the TV series based on the film The Paper Chase, though I wasn't sure why. Memories get jumbled over the years, especially the ones from the first years in which your long-term memory is active.

About a month ago a rerun of Eight Is Enough came on Me TV, and at the end of the episode ("Triangles," 9/28/77) Tommy Bradford (Willie Aames) made a sarcastic comment about money to his sister Mary (Lani O'Grady), who retaliated not by yelling at him for ripping her off but by kissing him softly on the cheek, then opening the refrigerator and pouring a carton of milk on his head. Tommy didn't seem that confused by the out-of-nowhere kiss, nor did he get mad at Mary for dousing him with milk. Tommy wasn't the brightest Bradford.

But as soon as Mary kissed him on the cheek, something in my head clicked once again. I didn't know what was about to happen, but I was glued to the screen. Once the milk hit Tommy's head, another minor memory mystery was solved.

Me TV's sister station, Me Too, ran an Our Gang short recently that I remember very strongly from childhood, one in which Jackie Cooper gets caught trying to play pranks on his new teacher, Miss Crabtree. She tells him and his co-conspirators to go home and explain to their parents what they did, but right before they exit, the rest of the class is given cake and ice cream. As Jackie sits in the schoolyard crying, ashamed at what he was planning to do to his lovely, sweet new teacher, she brings him a plate of cake and ice cream.

Once again, I was glued to the screen, even though my memories of "Teacher's Pet" from Little Rascals reruns in the 1980s have never been vague like the other two examples I mentioned. I was just glad to see it again for the first time in many years. It's a tearjerker for the kindergarten set.

I also have a vague memory of where I put my wallet yesterday, but you probably don't want to hear about that.

I'm doing my part to keep the American status quo alive and well.

A few weeks ago, right after Sarah Palin was chosen by John McCain to be his running mate, this anonymous comment showed up in a Chicago Sun-Times "reader reaction" sidebar:

Well, why didn't they choose Condi? She's a good Republican. She likes to travel, too, and she wears nice suits. She's even educated like Obama. She had no experience, but look at what a fine job she has done.

lady opinion

To imply that most African-Americans aren't educated and don't dress well is condescending, ignorant, and downright offensive. Now get back in the kitchen where you belong, you silly, stupid bitch.

I was never crazy about the ending of Raising Arizona, but while I'm daydreaming ...

It makes me smile to think that in 70 years my nieces will have these same smiles, which will be captured in pictures much like this one. Side by side. Sisters and friends. With nieces, nephews, daughters, sons, and grandchildren of their very own. (The purple pajamas are optional, but if the mood strikes them, why not?)

Old Sweat

Singer Keith Sweat turned 44 in July. In the highly scientific realm of R&B evolution, that makes him "a grown-ass man."

I heard Sweat's new album, Just Me, recently at work. It contains the song "Just Wanna Sex You," on which Keith banishes all thoughts of his impending prostate exam so he can tell his listeners how much he wants "sex in the morning, sex in the evening, sex in my Jeep." He also wants to "have sex on my lunch break, sex after work, and sex in a strange place." Does your nephew's high school graduation count as "a strange place," Keith? (No, you're not invited to his graduation party.)

I think recording desperately horny songs in your mid-40s to reaffirm your verility puts you in "a strange place"—I call it the land of overcompensation—but you're not the first middle-aged singer who's refused to let go of his early glory days, and you won't be the last.

This isn't to say that people over 40 can't love and lust just as intensely as a 19-year-old. Not at all. It's just that it's embarrassing when someone over 40 compares himself to the Energizer Bunny because he can "keep goin' and goin' and goin' and goin'," especially since Sweat needs the help of Auto-Tune, a.k.a. vocal-cord Viagra, throughout Just Me to help him hit the required notes.

You can grow old gracefully in pop music and still be accepted by your fans, but both sides have to acknowledge that being young at heart doesn't equal being young in the flesh. Otherwise you risk becoming a Chris Rock joke: "Every man has to settle down eventually. You know why you gotta settle down eventually? Because you don't want to be the old guy in the club. You know what I'm talking about. Every club you go into, there's always some old guy. He ain't really old—just a little too old to be in the club."

Maybe Keith Sweat really is "an addict when it comes to making love." (If that's the case, Keith, seek counseling like Michael Douglas and David Duchovny did.) But I do think anyone would agree, no matter how old they are, that sex on their lunch break would be a refreshing change of pace from eating yogurt and reading Us Weekly in the break room.

Soul Train is about to reach its last stop.

We received this e-mail at work yesterday from an employee of WGN-TV:

Got a call last week from someone at Chicago Reader regarding our final airing of "The Best of Soul Train." The timeslot has changed to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 20.

I'm not the one who called, and I don't know why anyone from the Reader would've called, but it is news, because after September 20 Soul Train may be gone from the air for a long time.

According to Wikipedia (sorry, it's the only source I can find), "The future of Soul Train," which hasn't produced new episodes since the end of its shorter-than-usual 35th season in the spring of 2006, "was placed in further uncertainty with the announced closing of Tribune Entertainment's syndication division [Tribune Company owns WGN] on December 18, 2007, leaving Don Cornelius Productions to seek a new distributor for the program. DCP then secured a deal with Trifecta Entertainment & Media, which also distributes another former Tribune Entertainment series, American Idol Rewind. In May 2008, the rights to the Soul Train library were purchased by MadVision Entertainment, whose principal partners come from the entertainment and publishing fields. The price and terms of the deal were not disclosed."

Since December of '06 Soul Train has been airing reruns from the '70s and '80s under the name The Best of Soul Train. I first discovered these reruns on WGN last October when Bunny Sigler appeared on my TV screen. It turns out that episode aired again last Saturday, and now I'm a little mad that I didn't check the schedule so I could tape it.

I haven't watched the Soul Train reruns in a few months because more and more episodes from the '80s were being shown, and they just aren't as interesting to me as the '70s installments, mainly because the soul music of the '80s didn't hold a candle to that of the Me Decade. Plus, The Best of Soul Train keeps repeating the same two dozen episodes, making me wonder if the show's staff is very, very selective about what's considered "best" or if they lost most of their assets in a fire a long time ago.

By the '80s Don Cornelius had learned a thing or two about how to start off an interview, which meant fewer mind-boggling but highly entertaining faux pas like "Your new single sounds a lot like the last one" or "You look like you've put on some weight since I last saw you." That second comment was made to Village People producer Jacques Morali, who was French (he died in 1991), so I'm not sure he fully comprehended what the Soul Train host and former Chicago radio personality was saying to him. Too bad he didn't reply in pidgin English, "And I see that you are still, uh, how you say ... socially awkward, yes?"

According to Wikipedia's list of Soul Train episodes, the September 20 rerun will be from December 15, 1984, with Donna Summer and the Staple Singers as the guest performers. After that you'll only be able to hear the sooooooooooul train in the distance until Trifecta Entertainment & Media finds it a new home.

classics

Paul Westerberg wasn't the only artist to give his fans almost-free music this summer. On Friday, July 25, California rapper Murs released Sweet Lord for free over the Internet. It's his third collaboration with producer 9th Wonder, following 2004's Murs 3:16: The 9th Edition and 2006's Murray's Revenge. Sweet Lord isn't up to the level of Murray's Revenge, but it would've been tough for Murs and 9th Wonder to have reached that peak again. Besides, it gives the listener more hooks than Westerberg's 49:00, and in less time.

Though Sweet Lord was free, donations were accepted. I gave $10, partly because Murray's Revenge is one of my favorite albums of the past few years, but I heard it through a free promotional copy at work, which I still have. I feel a little guilty about that, so I was happy to donate.

Earlier this week I bought Classic, the 2005 album by Living Legends, a rap collective of which Murs is a member, along with Luckyiam, Sunspot Jonz, the Grouch, Scarub, Eligh, Bicasso, and Aesop. I heard tracks from Classic last summer at work thanks to a departed coworker whose computer still contained all the music he'd loaded onto the hard drive. Classic has a half dozen or so terrific cuts, including "Blast Your Radio," on which Murs declares that Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle is a classic (I wonder if he's a Judy Blume fan too); the soulful, sultry "Good Fun"; and "Down for Nothin'," which drips paranoia and seething anger ("He's always up to somethin' ... / Forever huntin' someone / Screw over loved ones"). Classic also contains "Even Though," the best rap breakup song I've heard. The chorus is "Even though we don't get along, I still love you," sung in unison by the Living Legends at their most wistful.

On "Blast Your Radio," one of the Living Legends (sorry, I can't tell whose voice is whose except for Murs's) says, "Now, just because it's retro don't mean that it's classic / Just because it's classic don't mean it ain't brand-new." Another Legend responds, "That's true / The Love Below was new, I considered it a classic / Like a pickle made by Vlasic." I'll give it a few more years, but I'd wager that Classic already is.