In the future Paul Westerberg will be famous again for 49 minutes (and one second).

On Saturday, July 19, Paul Westerberg released 49:00 through Amazon.com, charging only 49 cents for his latest album. Except it's not really an album—it's a single MP3, with no track listing and no breaks between songs, and some of the songs are just fragments, with one fragment playing on top of another in certain spots. 49:00 isn't 49 minutes long, either—it lasts 43 minutes and 55 seconds. But Westerberg is 49 years old. Except he's not—he turns 49 later this year.

Paul Westerberg is a mystery wrapped in a riddle, smothered with beef and cheese inside a crunchy enigma shell.

On Tuesday, August 5, Westerberg completed the puzzle, at least in terms of 49:00's length: he released a new MP3 called "5:05," which can be bought at Tunecore.com for either 99 cents or $5.05, depending on how much you want to support Westerberg, I guess. Add 5:05 to 43:55 and you've got 49 minutes. Except "5:05" actually runs five minutes and six seconds. Intentional? I'm not sure.

Amazon stopped offering 49:00 for purchase on Thursday, July 31, after less than two weeks, supposedly because Westerberg infringed on some copyrights by covering the Beatles' "Hello Goodbye," Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," and Elton John's "Rocket Man," though only a few seconds of each song are heard. (In the last few seconds of "5:05," he sings the first line of the Beatles' "Oh! Darling," which J. Neas at Aquarium Drunkard sees as a sly acknowledgment of 49:00 being pulled as well as a reminder from Westerberg that his old band, the Replacements, copied the melody of "Oh! Darling" note for note in their song "Mr. Whirly" 25 years ago.) He does sing the majority of the Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You," an example of the type of AM bubblegum Westerberg fell in love with as a child. Could it be that Reuben Kincaid is behind all this?

No one seems to know the real reason for 49:00's disappearance from the digital marketplace, but it wasn't sold as a "protected" MP3 like the kind you buy from iTunes, which means anyone can e-mail it to their friends and post it on their websites, making it a collector's item only in spirit.

Earlier this week Westerberg released two new MP3s to add to the mystery of his recent output: "Finally Here Once" is three minutes and 27 seconds long, and "3oclockreep" runs 20 minutes and eight seconds, which qualifies it for status as an EP all by itself, if you ask me. They can be bought together for $3.99 at Tunecore. When "5:05" was released and made available for 99 cents or $5.05, 49:00 had already been removed from Amazon, leading some buyers to think that if they paid $5.05 at Tunecore they'd receive 49:00 in addition to "5:05." They didn't. They paid more than five dollars for one song. Westerberg's funny that way.

I haven't heard the two new releases, but I did buy 49:00 in July, and I got "5:05" for free off of a music blog. Sorry, Paul, but the irony is that I wouldn't have minded paying 99 cents for "5:05," since it's better than anything on "43:55."

Not that I'm complaining about paying 49 cents for an album-length MP3. But 49:00's most memorable hooks are provided by another Paul—McCartney—and a fake band created for a TV sitcom almost 40 years ago. I thought I remembered reading an interview with Westerberg last spring, when the first wave of Replacements reissues came out, in which he said that he didn't have plans for a new album but that he had recorded a bunch of new material and passed it along to his manager to see what he wanted to do with it. Maybe I imagined that. But in an interview with Billboard.com in April, Westerberg did say that his manager and he "are kicking around the idea of selling the [new] songs online, having like a song of the month club. That might be the best way."

Well, 49:00 does contain some songs, but I'd rather hear a proper album and pay $12 for it. The last one Westerberg recorded, Folker, came out in 2004, and though it has its share of filler like any other Westerberg album (he's the first to admit it), songs like "Anyway's All Right," "What About Mine?," and "Folk Star" are as good as anything he's recorded since the Replacements broke up in 1991, and "My Dad," a tribute to his father, who died in 2003, is a genuine tearjerker that avoids cheap sentiment.

Westerberg is the best lyricist of his generation, and "As Far as I Know," my favorite song on Folker, shows he hasn't lost his gift: "I'm in love with a face that I've never seen / Once upon a place, long time ago / I'm in love with a time that never took place, that's easy to trace / As far as I know." For anyone who's ever worried that they'll never find "the one" or worried that they've already peaked in life and it's all downhill from here, Westerberg elegantly reminds us that "the one" is a myth and the glory years we long to return to have been filtered through the forgiving haze of nostalgia. The title of the Replacements' 2006 best-of sums up that second point the best: Don't You Know Who I Think I Was?

Folker was the fifth album Westerberg had put out in a span of just over two years: Stereo and Mono were released in 2002, and Come Feel Me Tremble and Dead Man Shake came out the following year. Mono and Dead Man Shake bore the name of Westerberg's pseudonym, Grandpaboy, which he uses when he wants to release some lo-fi, ballad-free "rawk." But almost everything Westerberg's released since 2002, either under his own name or Grandpaboy's, has been pretty down and dirty, even the ballads. He records by himself in his basement at home in Minneapolis, generally using the first take, even if the tape runs out before the end of the song, like on Stereo's "Don't Want Never." Even 1996's Eventually, which seems to be considered the slickest of Westerberg's solo albums by critics and fans, includes a major flub that thankfully wasn't edited out: on "Hide N Seekin'," there's a long pause between the first and second verses, as if Westerberg has forgotten the words.

49:00 takes the DIY warts-and-all aesthetic as far as it should probably go, even if Westerberg does sound like he's having fun layering those song fragments on top of each other and skipping from one to another, creating the illusion of a radio dial being controlled by an impatient listener. Impatient for a memorable song, maybe?

Westerberg has said that he has attention deficit disorder, so this approach feels honest, but it doesn't compare with, say, the song suite on the second side of the Beatles' Abbey Road, or a real ADD-style album-length masterpiece like Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, a True Star (1973). On that album the listener is left with the impression that the artist has so many wonderful melodies in his head that he wants to get them all out right now before he forgets any of them, not that he's reached a dead end after only 60 seconds and is moving on because he's bored and thinks you probably are too. In the end 49:00 feels like an experiment, a storage shed of random thoughts being emptied out.

I assume that artists like Westerberg enjoy the freedom of releasing their music when they want in whatever format they want, without a record label telling them, "Your new album is amazing! Oh my God, Paul, you've outdone yourself. Seriously. No, really. But this one's going to need special care on the marketing side, so we're going to put it on the shelf for now, and we'll let you know once we've come up with a good strategy for selling it, okay?"

But the more I hear self-distributed music like 49:00, or Josh Rouse's last two albums, which were distributed through the Nettwerk label but paid for by Rouse, I wish these artists did have a label questioning some of their decisions and saying, "I don't hear a single." That sort of thing drives artists mad—always has, always will—but creative tension between artist and label, or artist and producer, can often lead to stellar results.

Geffen Records financed Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 but never released it. When it finally came out in 2000, after several years on the shelf, it was through Mann's own label, SuperEgo. Near the end of 1995 Mann released her second solo album, I'm With Stupid, through Geffen, but it'd been financed by Imago Records, which went bankrupt in 1993 right after releasing her first album, Whatever. It took two years for Mann to get out of her contract with Imago and shop I'm With Stupid to other labels. (The album's title was a dig at Imago, though Mann would soon be calling Geffen stupid as well.) Previously she'd been absent from the music scene for three years as she attempted to get out of her contract with Epic Records, the label she was on with her former band, 'Til Tuesday.

It's easy to see why Mann doesn't like dealing with major labels; anger and frustration sometimes lead to creative breakthroughs, but not many artists willingly seek out collaborators or superiors who want to infuriate them. After Geffen executives heard Bachelor No. 2 for the first time and didn't like what they heard, they sent Mann back to the studio to record some potential singles. She came up with "Red Vines" and "Nothing Is Good Enough," the latter a relationship song that was also directed at Geffen ("Nothing is good enough for people like you / Who have to have someone take the fall / And something to sabotage / Determined to lose it all").

The thing is, those are two of the best songs on Bachelor No. 2. Mann had been forced to come up with new songs that could be played on the radio, and even if they didn't get played, she still succeeded in creating pop singles that didn't compromise or betray her songwriting talents. The push-pull had worked.

(Other successful examples of push-pull between artist and label are Wheat's sole release on Columbia Records, the 2003 album Per Second, Per Second, Per Second ... Every Second and Sara Bareilles's "Love Song," a 2007 single that's still going strong on radio this year, but it wouldn't even exist if Bareilles hadn't been asked by Columbia's sister label, Epic, to deliver a certain kind of single; she responded with an irresistible melody and ironic lyrics: "I'm not gonna write you a love song / 'Cause you asked for it / 'Cause you need one, you see.")

But when Geffen's parent company, Seagram Universal, bought Polygram in 1998 and consolidated its old and new assets, Geffen was lumped into a trio with Interscope Records and A&M Records. When Interscope-Geffen-A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine heard Bachelor No. 2 in 1999, he reportedly said, according to Mann, "Aimee doesn't expect us to put this record out as it is, does she? If Aimee just wants to put out a record for her fans, this is not the place to do it."

So she left, luckily without all the legal hassles she'd had when she left Epic and Imago, plus she now had an Oscar nomination for Best Song thanks to "Save Me," from the movie Magnolia (1999), whose hit soundtrack featured nine songs by Mann, four of which reappeared on Bachelor No. 2 six months later. Magnolia's writer-director, Paul Thomas Anderson, said he originally conceived of the soundtrack as an Aimee Mann mix tape because he was such a big fan of her work, even using a variation on the opening lines of her song "Deathly"—"Now that I've met you / Would you object to / Never seeing each other again?"—as dialogue in the film.

(I saw Mann on her "Acoustic Vaudeville" tour with Michael Penn and comedian Patton Oswalt shortly after Bachelor No. 2 came out. Worst concert experience of my life thanks to two women almost getting into a fight while Mann was singing "Wise Up." How appropriate. But the woman who started the fight was right, and the offending loud woman and her loud yuppie-scum friends left before the encore, even though it was clear they were there to hear just two songs, 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry" and Michael Penn's "No Myth." Both were played during the encore. Ha!)

Bachelor No. 2 earned a lot of critical acclaim, and Mann's follow-up, 2002's Lost in Space, was recorded and released without any label interference whatsoever. It also happened to be really really dull.

I'll admit that by the fall of '02 I'd gotten over the quarter-life malaise that'd attracted me to Mann's music in the first place, but if I'd been a label head at that time and she'd tried to pass Lost in Space off on me, I would've told her, "Sorry, but I only hear two or three songs worth keeping."

Rick Rubin, one of the music industry's most successful producers over the past 20 years, said in a New York Times profile last September that when artists come to him with new songs they've written, "Most people will write 10 songs and think, That's enough for a record, I'm done. When they play the songs for me, invariably the last two songs they've written are the best. I'll then say, 'You have two songs, go back and write eight more.'"

I can imagine that's painful for any artist to hear, whether a newbie or a veteran, but if it pushes the artist to dig deeper for better lyrics or melodies, he or she will be grateful in the end for the creative push, right? Well, maybe. Sometimes the end result isn't worth the pain that can go hand in hand with the creative process. I don't think any musician can completely erase memories of heated arguments with bandmates or producers (though drugs can help), just as they can't judge their work objectively from the inside looking out the way a listener can from the opposite direction.

Westerberg has produced his own work all by himself since Stereo and Mono in '02, and even Don Was, who coproduced 1999's generally ignored Suicaine Gratifaction with Westerberg, ended up using several of the singer's home demos on the finished product. Westerberg knows what he's doing at this point, but I'd still like to hear a proper album. (Between Folker and 49:00 he recorded some songs for the soundtrack to Open Season, a 2006 animated film, and Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? The Best of the Replacements included two new songs—both "Message to the Boys" and "Pool & Dive" were written by Westerberg around the time of the Replacements' breakup in '91 and are terrific additions to the band's resumé, a far cry from lackluster pseudo-reunions like Big Star's 2005 album In Space.)

In an interview with Pitchfork.com's Joshua Klein in April, Westerberg said the Replacements' best producer was Matt Wallace, who produced 1989's Don't Tell a Soul. "With Matt Wallace, we'd do 48 takes but use take two ... After a couple of weeks he realized that first take we came rolling in and did was the one that captured it rather than have us play 50 takes hoping the 50th would be great. It was not that way with us, and still isn't for me."

Klein then said, "A lot of people seem to pick the Replacements album they heard first as their favorite, since your songwriting is so consistent from record to record. If someone heard Don't Tell a Soul first, I could even imagine that being their favorite Replacements album."

Good grief, Charlie Brown: "I could even imagine that being their favorite." As a matter of fact, the band's next-to-last LP is the first Replacements album I heard, way back in 1991, courtesy of my older brother, and in many ways it still is my favorite.

Once I really started digging into the Replacements' discography in college in '95 I read that Don't Tell a Soul is considered by critics and fans to be their weakest album, but I still like it more than 1985's Tim, and I'm glad Westerberg has defended it, saying that the final mix of the album, which gives the songs their all-too-'80s cavernous drum sound, is what dates it, not the songs themselves.

I don't think Rhino's reissue of Don't Tell a Soul, which comes out next month, will include a bonus disc of the entire album unmixed, but I wonder if such a copy exists, sort of like the 2003 Let It Be ... Naked reissue of the Beatles' Let It Be, which stripped away Phil Spector's wall-of-sound production from the original album. (Of course, the Replacements recorded their own album called Let It Be in 1984, using that title as a nothing-is-sacred joke on their manager-producer, Peter Jesperson, a huge Beatles fan, but also because titles can't be copyrighted.)

Some fans saw Don't Tell a Soul as the Replacements' first blatant attempt at reaching for a radio hit, and "I'll Be You," one of their best songs, did reach #51 on the Billboard Hot 100. But as Joshua Klein acknowledged, the songwriting on Don't didn't deviate from previous releases, though Westerberg's writing did mature with each new release. It's a great album. Don't let that big-bam-boom drum sound fool you.

Besides, by the time Don't Tell a Soul came out, the Replacements were finally sobering up and delivering the kind of concert performances that fans of their music, not the rubberneckers who just wanted to see them fall down drunk onstage, had always hoped they could give on a consistent basis.

Or so I'd like to think.* After all, I was 13 at the time. I admit that it would've been something of a thrill to go to one of their shows and have absolutely no idea whether it was going to be a triumph or a disaster, but as bassist Tommy Stinson said in his own interview with Billboard.com in April, "When I get people coming up to me saying, 'I saw this show back when, and you guys were so f*cked up. You didn't even play any of your songs. It was the greatest show I ever saw' [laughs]. It's like, 'Well, dude, that just sounds bleak. How could that possibly have been the greatest show you ever saw? You must be really living a small life.'"

And as Klein pointed out in his Pitchfork interview with Westerberg, "When you were on, you disappointed the people who came to see you sloppy and falling down. When you were sloppy and falling down, you disappointed the people who came to see you on. You could never make everybody happy." Westerberg replied, "Lots of times we would try to balance it. We'd get up there wasted, but by the end of the set we'd sober up." He laughed, "We'd bring it together at the end!"

The best Replacements bootleg I know of is Shit, Shower & Shave. It contains portions of two concerts from the second leg of the Don't Tell a Soul tour, which found the band opening (unhappily, according to them) for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Six songs from the band's show on August 28, 1989, in Mansfield, Massachusetts, are included, as are 12 songs from the August 31 show in Bristol, Connecticut. (Happy 19th birthday, Bristol show!)

The Replacements sound terrific on both sets, especially the August 31 show, as they storm their way through classics like "Bastards of Young," "Alex Chilton," and "I'll Be You," while "The Ledge" sounds much more urgent live than it did on 1987's Pleased to Meet Me. Their cover of Chuck Berry's "Around and Around" (titled "Round and Round" on the back cover of Shit, Shower & Shave, like David Bowie's version) has a swagger I don't think they could have managed if they'd been wasted. Here they don't end songs early like on bootlegs I've heard from the Tim and Pleased to Meet Me tours, where they're too drunk to remember all the chords and lyrics and try to blame the lighting guy for breaking their concentration.

They're also funnier when they're sober. For instance, when Stinson does pass along some constructive criticism to the lighting guy, it's "Hey, Joe, I don't want no spotlights tonight. I don't feel very pret-ty." And right before "Around and Around," which the Rolling Stones covered on 12 x 5 in 1964, Westerberg tells the crowd, "The Rolling Stones are playing in Philadelphia tonight. But we're better, so fuck 'em."

During "Nightclub Jitters"—the Replacements do stumble their way through this one, but it's charming, not frustrating—Stinson does his Axl Rose impression, which he repeated at the Replacements' final show in Chicago on July 4, 1991, captured on the It Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Roadies Play bootleg. (Chris Mars had angrily left the band before their final tour. He was replaced by Steve Foley, who died of an accidental overdose of prescription medication last weekend in Minneapolis.) Ironically, in 1998 Stinson joined Rose's band, Guns n' Roses, whose new album still hasn't been released, even though recording allegedly began in 1995. Stinson told reporters earlier in the decade that the eccentric Rose is much easier to work with than Westerberg, who replied in an interview with Harp magazine in 2004, "Wouldn't Van Gogh be more difficult than Norman Rockwell?"

The bootleggers behind Shit, Shower & Shave were also nice enough to include the entire Inconcerated promotional EP from Sire Records that came out in '89 after Don't Tell a Soul was released. It includes five songs recorded at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on June 2, 1989. (I bought Shit, Shower & Shave six years ago in Athens, Georgia. Come to think of it, I bought it on Friday, August 30, 2002. Happy belated sixth birthday, 8/30/02! Who knew there'd be so many birthdays to celebrate today ...)

I'll end this long, long one-sided conversation with one final quote from Westerberg, who told Joshua Klein that the trick to making timeless music "is doing it in a hurry without thinking about it." 49:00 certainly doesn't sound like it was fussed over for very long, but Westerberg's written so much timeless music, especially as the Replacements' frontman, that I can easily forgive him for a time-consuming, interference-free head-scratcher or two every now and then.

* I thought wrong. According to Bob Mehr's terrific biography, Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements (Da Capo Press, 2016), Chris Mars had started to sober up by the time of the Don't Tell a Soul tour, but the rest of the band was still drinking heavily. Westerberg wasn't sober until the band's tour to support All Shook Down, its final album, in 1991.

new/old music to look forward/backward to this fall

I found out yesterday from Jeff Giles at Popdose that the Lemonheads are planning to release a new album next month. I knew there was talk of Evan Dando and his revolving-door bandmates releasing something in '08, but I hadn't heard anything official.

It turns out the new album is a holding-pattern type of release—titled Varshons, it contains 11 covers, or versions, including Gram Parsons's "I Just Can't Take It Anymore," which the Lemonheads have been playing in concert for a while now, and Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful." That one may seem like an odd choice at first, but almost from the beginning the Lemonheads have covered songs originally sung by women—Suzanne Vega's "Luka," Linda Ronstadt's "Different Drum" (performed with the Stone Poneys), Patience and Prudence's "Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now," Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know." I could listen to Dando sing the phone book, so Varshons will be required listening, but I was hoping for a new album of original songs. Dando's never been a prolific songwriter, though—4 of the 11 songs on 2006's The Lemonheads were by other writers—so I'll take what I can get.

In addition to the Lemonheads' new album—which doesn't have a firm release date, so it may not come out next month after all—new releases and new reissues by several other artists I flipped for in college a dozen years ago, back when people still used phone books, will be coming out this fall. Ben Folds's Way to Normal comes out September 30, his first album of new material in three years, and Todd Rundgren's Arena comes out the same day, his first album since 2004's Liars. There's also George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love, which hits shelves September 16 and features a cameo from the once-great Sly Stone, who hasn't appeared on a record since 1987, I think. Since no new Sly and the Family Stone album is forthcoming, and since the band is still canceling concerts at the last minute after all these years, including one in Chicago back in April, fans have to take what they can get from Clinton's album.

Unlike the Family Stone, the Replacements haven't reunited in a new configuration, which is a good thing, but their four albums for Sire Records, which came out between 1985 and 1990, will be reissued by Rhino with bonus tracks on September 23. And a box set called Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia comes out October 21, featuring the usual Philadelphia International Records classics but also tracks that Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff produced before they founded PIR, plus songs that Thom Bell wrote and produced for Philly groups like the Spinners, Delfonics, and Stylistics.

an uncomfortable fit

In June an advance copy of Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III showed up at work a few days before the album "dropped" (yeah, I'm hip to the lingo) and soon became the first album since 2005 to sell more than a million copies in one week. 

I listened to it, mostly because I knew nothing about Lil Wayne beyond magazine articles in which certain hip-hop peers of his claimed he's one of the best rappers around right now. Well, Tha Carter III didn't do much for me, but the one song I liked, "Comfortable," features Babyface, the real king of pop in the '90s (face the facts, Michael). As a producer Babyface was all over the radio back then, shepherding megahits like Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Eric Clapton's "Change the World," and as a performer he racked up a bunch of hits himself on the pop and R&B charts ("Whip Appeal," "When Can I See You").

On "Comfortable" Babyface provides the vocal "hook," and if it was his song alone and he had a chance to write some verses to go along with the chorus, it'd probably be terrific. As it stands, it's merely a good song, because Lil Wayne raps the verses. Aside from the line "Don't I treat you like soufflé?" his lyrics aren't a crime, to paraphrase a Babyface single from 1989, but there should be a rule for rappers whose songs utilize the talents of actual singers: Do not add your singing on top of your guest's. Babyface can sing. Lil Wayne cannot. He can grunt, but he sounds like he's out of breath throughout "Comfortable," and if you can't breathe then you shouldn't sing, especially if you're singing over Babyface near the end of the track. This isn't karaoke, dammit. It's as if Babyface's obnoxious nephew snuck into his recording studio late at night and decided to play a prank by overdubbing his wheezing onto one of Uncle 'Face's finished songs.

Remember when pop/R&B/"new jack swing" songs in the early '90s would feature a guest rapper in the slot where pop songs would feature guitar solos? Songs like Christopher Williams's "I'm Dreamin'" and Michael Jackson's "Black or White," both from '91, usually didn't credit the rapper in those days the way they're spotlighted now, with their names prominently listed on the back covers of albums and on iTunes after the ubiquitous abbreviation "feat." (For the record it was L.T.B. on the latter song, while the New Jack City soundtrack's liner notes don't list any performer besides Williams on "I'm Dreamin'.")  

And these days rappers constantly show up on each other's tracks or pop and R&B singers' tracks, sometimes making a name for themselves through cameos before releasing songs of their own. The reverse is also true, as is the case with Babyface adding class to "Comfortable." I wonder if guest rappers formed a union sometime in the late '90s after years of missing out on lucrative royalty checks. (Gangsta rappers belong to Local 187, of course.)

Tha Carter III didn't make me a fan of Lil Wayne, but judging by those first-week sales, he's got plenty already. And I have to give the self-described alien credit for one thing: "Comfortable" is more memorable than anything on Babyface's 2007 album Playlist. Would his cover of an easy-listening chestnut like "Fire and Rain" have been enhanced by Lil Wayne adding "Baby, I'm your friend / You ain't gotta pretend / We go together like the Colonel's special blend"? Maybe it's time for Wayne to actually sneak into Babyface's studio and find out.

"It's not easy being easy."

A guy I passed on the street last night was wearing a T-shirt with that adorable phrase written across the front. I didn't turn around to see if the back of the shirt said, "This syphilis ain't gonna cure itself, people."

I did some more summertime spring cleaning over the weekend, so here are three more completed drafts from a while back.

5/13: sea, air, land ... and love
5/19: Don't do drugs, especially the ones that have 500 different nicknames.
7/16: "Boy, 12, slices off friend's ear"

old news about an old person

The following Associated Press story is from February 16, 2008. It's worth a read.

Singer, 104, takes stage amid protests

By Toby Sterling

Several dozen people protested outside a theater Saturday where a 104-year-old singer who once performed for Adolf Hitler took the stage in the Netherlands for the first time in four decades.

Johannes Heesters was never accused of being a propagandist or anything other than an actor who was willing to perform for the Nazis, and the Allies allowed him to continue his career after the war. But in his native country he is viewed by some as irredeemable.

"He kept singing for the Nazi regime, for the Wehrmacht, and he earned millions," said Piet Schouten, representative of a committee formed to protest Heesters' performance at De Flint theater in Amersfoort.

"Those are facts and we have a problem with that on behalf of all the victims" he told national broadcaster NOS.

In 1964, Heesters was booed off the stage in Amsterdam when he tried to appear as Nazi-hating Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."

No disturbances were reported during Saturday's concert in Amersfoort, where Heesters was born in 1903.

Heesters, who lives in Germany, has been a popular figure in German-language cabaret since the 1930s. On Saturday, he performed "The Merry Widow," the German song that made him famous, and "There by the Windmill," a Dutch classic, among others. At times he asked his wife, on stage with him, to remind him of lines but his voice was steady.

Around 50 demonstrators gathered outside. A handful of neo-Nazis also turned up — uninvited — to support Heesters, and several were detained by police after throwing eggs at the demonstrators.

Concertgoers were forced to submit copies of their passports and undergo airport-style security scans before being allowed to enter the theater, which seats 800.

Many of Heesters' critics focus on a visit his theater company made to Dachau in 1941. He had never disclosed the visit, but it became known when photos of him with Nazi soldiers were published in 1978.

One of the protesters carried a banner reading "my grandfather was in Dachau too."

Heesters says he didn't perform for the soldiers and didn't know about conditions at the concentration camp.

After the war "I was ashamed of myself and I still haven't stopped feeling this way," Heesters wrote in his autobiography. "I am angry with myself for being gullible, credulous and naive."

In an editorial, Dutch newspaper Trouw wrote Saturday that "the stain will always remain, but Heesters is welcome home in the Netherlands — it's nice that he's appearing here 104 years after his birth."

"It's all too easy for people today, most of whom grew up after the war, to pass judgment on the collaborators then," the paper wrote. "What would we do under comparable circumstances?"

Faux gangsters make me thirsty.

Before Mean Streets' Harvey Keitel pitched Gatorade ...



... before A Bronx Tale's Chazz Palminteri hawked Vanilla Coke ...



... and before Scarface's Robert Loggia shilled for Minute Maid ...



... there was a pre-Sopranos Tony Sirico using his powers of persuasion to make you buy Dunkin' Donuts coffee.



If all does not continue to go well in their movie careers, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and James Gandolfini's series of Sierra Mist commercials should begin airing sometime in the next decade.

"Black Baby Born into Southern Klan Family Inspires Love and Hatred in Tale of Homosexuality and Redemption"

Hmm ... racism, homosexuality, redemption, a southern setting—you've got my attention, press release for a self-published novel. Tell me more.

Elijah, the protagonist in the book by the same name, is a black baby born into a white southern Klan family. His father hates the child and plans to kill him and the mother. The seven-year-old brother challenges the father and saves the child, hiding Elijah in a dark basement.

Alright, so far so good.

There, Elijah is visited by the ghosts of great composers and is taught by them.

Well, that's a twist I didn't see coming, but sure, I'll go along with it. Continue.

He becomes a child prodigy, and he and his brother Joshua ultimately become lovers.

Wait, why does he become lovers with—

Elijah's future father also becomes Elijah's lover and is able to help guide Elijah to a happy and useful life.

Wait wait wait, slow down—he has sex with his brother and his adoptive father? Now, I am a southerner who'd get it on with a cousin just to keep a proud, offensive regional stereotype alive ("Always keep them yankees guessing" is my motto), but nuclear-family incest crosses the line, even in salacious self-published novels.

See, when I was visited by the ghost of To Kill a Mockingbird film composer Elmer Bernstein last year, he specifically told me, "Homosexuality's no big deal, but incest is bad bad bad. Avoid it at all costs. Even if your sister looked like Natalie Wood in her prime, it'd still be a dicey proposition." And what if you're a guy and your brother looks like a young Robert Redford? Or your adoptive dad looks like a late-'70s Warren Beatty? "That bastard still owes me money!"

Obviously a sore subject for Mr. Bernstein's ghost. I didn't bring it up again, and he hasn't visited since. And I'm still not a 32-year-old child prodigy of film-score composing, so thanks for nothin', Elmer. But, you know ... rest in peace and all.

I'd forgotten the real reason why Morgan Freeman has an agenda.

It's so obvious. It's because he's God.

In 2003's Bruce Almighty and 2007's Evan Almighty, Freeman plays God. Or, rather, he plays the role of God. Yes, it's another case of the Oscar winner being typecast as a wise old black man, but at least in these two movies he plays the wisest and oldest black man of them all. I haven't seen either one, but now I'm beginning to wonder if Freeman ad-libbed lines about Americans liking bad food and bad TV. Never stop pushing that agenda of yours, sir.

This summer Freeman's starring in The Dark Knight alongside Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Michael Caine, and in Wanted opposite Angelina Jolie. On July 18 everyone at work received an e-mail from the head of the IT department in Atlanta that read: "Don't open any e-mails that talk about nude photos of Angelina Jolie. They will appear to come from either yourself or someone you have e-mail'd previously."

Thanks, but as Morgan Freeman is my witness, I'm pretty sure I'd remember sending nude photos of Angelina Jolie to myself.

spotted on a street corner under a tree at the end of my block

A shoe, an empty two-liter bottle of Fanta, a cassette case for the Phantom of the Opera original cast recording (cassette missing), and two empty condom wrappers. I didn't realize Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was going to be in Chicago this weekend, but he's clearly on the prowl.

Batmania 1989 vs. Batmania 2008

Nineteen years ago the first Batman film made $100 million in ten days, setting a record. It also had the biggest opening weekend of all time: $42 million. But that was 1989. Now The Dark Knight, the sixth Batman film but only the second in director Christopher Nolan's "reboot" of the franchise, stands to make $300 million in ten days, after a record-breaking opening weekend of $158 million.

Nolan's first Batman film, 2005's Batman Begins, made $205 million in its theatrical run. The general rule used to be that a sequel was expected to earn 60 percent of its predecessor's box office take, with diminishing returns each time out. But that rule changed earlier this decade, as far as I can tell, when sequels like Rush Hour 2 (2001), The Mummy Returns (2001), X2 (2003), and Shrek 2 (2004) all topped the first installments in their franchises. Shrek 2 is the most striking example: 2001's Shrek made $267 million, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but Shrek 2 made $441 million three years later.

Below is the New York Times article from July 4, 1989, that talks about Batman's record-breaking gross 19 years ago. Remember when $100 million was the magic number for a movie to gross in theaters? Now franchise films routinely cost that much or more (The Dark Knight has a production price tag of $185 million), and grossing $100 million in just three days seems almost commonplace.

'Batman' Sets Sales Record: $100 Million in 10 Days
By Aljean Harmetz 

Inexorably swooping down on movie audiences for the second weekend in a row, ''Batman'' continues to dominate the box office. The movie broke another record on Sunday. In just 10 days, the movie, from Warner Brothers, has sold $100.2 million worth of tickets, breaking the record of ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,'' which reached $100 million on its 19th day.

At Warner Brothers, normally the most phlegmatic of studios, executives boiled over with emotion—grinning, joking, and describing the weekend as ''Batweek No. 2.''

Barry Reardon, the president of distribution at the studio, is predicting that ''Batman'' will sell a minimum of $250 million worth of tickets. The studio says its research shows that 13- to 18-year-olds are already going back to see the movie three and four times. It is this repeat business that propels a movie into the Top 10. Although it is far too early to tell whether ''Batman'' will challenge ''E. T.'' and ''Star Wars,'' the two most successful movies ever made, Mr. Reardon said he thought it would pass ''Return of the Jedi'' for third place.

Predictions of Success

Mr. Reardon said that by Friday ''Batman'' will have earned $90 million in film rentals, that portion of the ticket sales that is returned to a movie's distributor. The most successful movies ever produced by Warner Brothers were ''The Exorcist,'' which had film rentals of $89 million and ''Superman'' with film rentals of $82.8 million.

The top movies at the box office last weekend were ''Batman'' with ticket sales of $30 million, Disney's ''Honey, I Shrunk the Kids'' ($13.1 million), Columbia's ''Karate Kid III'' ($10.4 million), Columbia's ''Ghostbusters II'' ($9 million), Paramount's ''Indiana Jones'' ($7 million) and Disney's ''Dead Poets Society'' ($6.7 million).

Of the three movies that opened last weekend, Orion's ''Great Balls of Fire'' is considered dead, having grossed a paltry $3.9 million in 1,417 theaters.

'Do the Right Thing' Does Well

By contrast, Universal's ''Do the Right Thing,'' Spike Lee's disturbing comedy about good intentions and racial violence, sold $3.5 million worth of tickets in just 353 theaters. Universal's research shows that ''Do the Right Thing,'' which has gotten glowing reviews, is playing equally well in black and white neighborhoods. The big question is whether the movie will continue to do well when it broadens to 1,000 theaters.

Although ''Karate Kid'' made more than $10 million at 1,560 theaters, its future does not look bright. The movie took in less money on Saturday than it did on Friday, something which happens only when a movie has bad word of mouth.

The major disappointments of the summer so far are Clint Eastwood's ''Pink Cadillac,'' which has grossed less than $12 million for Warner Brothers, and Paramount's ''Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,'' which continues to sink. ''Star Trek III,'' the weakest of the first four films in the series, brought Paramount $39 million in film rentals, or close to $80 million at the box office. (A studio usually ends up with 50 percent of the box-office receipts.) ''Star Trek V'' has reached $42.4 million in ticket sales.

"Boy, 12, slices off friend's ear"

That's the subject heading of a spam e-mail I received today at work. Here's the body of the e-mail: "Oprah Winfrey announces wedding plans." Wow, whoever that boy was, he must've had a massive crush on the big O.

But he's not alone, of course. The entire nation seems to have a massive crush on the big O, though I doubt the majority of her fans are psychos who would slice a friend's ear off to get the billionaire entrepreneur's attention. Most of her talk-show audience isn't made up of preteen boys either. (Would they tune in to Tyra Banks's talk show instead? Nah, probably not—too much female discourse on fashion, weight, and relationships, and not enough of the former Victoria's Secret/Sports Illustrated supermodel's skin on display. But nowhere near as corrosive to your soul as a typical Jerry Springer episode.) Oprah's fan base consists primarily of women, and lots of 'em.

Last November Oprah came to my hometown—Macon, Georgia—to tape her show's annual installment of "Oprah's Favorite Things." I didn't know what an episode of her favorite things would entail—mountains of money? unlimited power over mankind? sitting around the house naked?—and the audience (4,500 requested tickets, but only 300 were chosen) didn't seem to know what she had in store for them, but once she said the three magic words, the Macon City Auditorium exploded. Middle-aged women lost their damn minds, y'all, and chaos ensued. No blood was shed, but it was touch and go for a few seconds. (A few men were in attendance too, but I assumed they were just there for aesthetic purposes. Or they're gay.) The tears! The high-pitched shrieking! The joyful, spontaneous embracing of thy studio-audience neighbor!

These women were excited, and I can see why—they walked out of the city auditorium that day with a bunch of expensive crap, compliments of their benevolent hero. Plus they were treated to a special holiday-themed performance by singer Josh Groban, accompanied on piano by big-time record producer David Foster, the antihero of everyone's favorite soft-rock-loving Norwegian, Terje Fjelde. But what exactly made Oprah decide to descend from above, i.e. Chicago, to bestow her gifts of space-age refrigerators and stylish watches on her believers in middle Georgia? Well, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's AccessAtlanta Web site:

[Macon] may have only 235,000 TV households, but Oprah's rationale stems from loyalty. "Macon has the highest ratings for 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' ever since we went national in 1986," Winfrey said in a statement.

That means 45 percent of TVs that are on in Macon any given weekday at 4 p.m. is set to Oprah, compared to a still solid 15 percent in Atlanta on WSB-TV.

In your "solid" face, Atlanta! Most of your residents are too busy sitting in traffic and creating smog at 4:00 to be at home watching TV. That's why you need TVs in your cars. And if you start watching The Oprah Winfrey Show on a regular basis and boosting those Nielsen ratings in your city, maybe she'll buy all of you new cars with dashboard monitors that are automatically programmed to turn on Oprah at 4:00 and drown out whatever music, cell-phone call, or repetitive child you're listening to at the time. But you also have to vote for Obama in November. Twice. Don't argue!

Oprah was the subject of a recent Chicago Reader cover story. Actually, her omnipotent influence was the subject. Is Oprah bigger than Jesus? Yes, but it's better for everyone if I say it rather than her. Otherwise she might end up marrying Yoko Ono, and that's a wedding none of her fans want to hear about via spam e-mail, especially the ones who are prone to slicing their friends' ears off.

spring cleaning in the summertime

I finally finished a draft from last month and one from as far back as December in addition to two from March, just in time to brighten my 2.3 readers' lives with the glare of their computer monitors instead of skin-cancer-causing sunshine.

12/7: why my favorite TV show died
3/21: Morgan Freeman has an agenda.
3/25: The Lord and David Caruso
6/6: The martial arts are funniest when performed by chubby white guys.

the certainty of sucking

I recently got around to reading an article I clipped from LA Weekly last year called "Sucking in the '70s," by Kate Sullivan, who writes about listening to a rerun of American Top 40 from March of '78 on XM Satellite Radio and being amazed at how many of the songs are still in our collective consciousness and how many have stood the test of time as examples of excellence in pop craftsmanship. All this despite 1978 supposedly being a bad year for the quality of pop music, with disco invading every corner of the mainstream, and punk rock giving it the finger over in the margins.

All this music was the most commercialized crap the record industry could crank out. And most of it gets played on radios, stereos, iPods and jukeboxes every day, bringing pleasure to millions. But 1978 is even more impressive when you add to the equation what was happening off the Top 40 chart—in punk, new wave, metal, electronica, folk, reggae, rap. Pretty amazing, right? It's difficult to imagine almost anything from the Top 40 of the past few years enduring for decades to come; sadly, the same goes for the indie scene.

I often feel like a curmudgeon when it comes to things like people cursing in public more and more often, as if the F word is so commonplace now I should just get used to it, or riding their bikes on the sidewalk long past the age of 12, but I try not to be a curmudgeon about music. I love the music of the '70s more than that of any other decade, but my heart belongs to plenty of songs from the '80s too (which is when I started becoming aware of what was on the radio), especially ones I've heard for the first time in the last few years thanks to blogs like Lost in the '80s. The '90s produced a ton of classics as well, and though radio has gone through a lot of changes since the early '90s, when I was in high school and stopped listening on a regular basis, I'm still happy when a sunny pop song like Sara Bareilles's "Love Song" can break through on radio and reach lots of people.

Music has absolutely gotten worse. Except it hasn't. And if you think the music of today is the best ever, you're absolutely right. Except you're wrong. This argument will never be settled, and most of it has to do with one's age. I love the music of the '70s, but in the early part of that decade, when my parents were the age I am now, they might've thought the product being pushed on AM radio didn't come close to matching what Motown, Stax, and bands like the Beatles were creating in the '60s. And they're right. Except they're wrong.

Music will never die. And neither will our valid opinions about its quality. But in the end they are just opinions. So the next time you're riding your bike on the sidewalk and you don't hear me yelling at you because your iPod ear buds are blasting the latest, greatest hip-hop single that's making you happier than any song in recent memory, embrace that feeling and don't let anyone tell you music was better when they were your age. But first and foremost, please get the fuck off the sidewalk.

satisfaction not guaranteed

Below is an oddly worded sentiment I found earlier today at the bottom of an e-mail from a friend of a friend:

"God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in HIM!"

Yeah, like God really cares about the report card you give Him. He's God! I'm pretty sure His ego can withstand your lack of fear or faith, puny mortal.

etiquette for panhandlers

Before you ask random strangers for money, take off your ear buds and press pause on your iPod. That way they'll have your undivided attention when they respond with something along the lines of "You have got to be kidding me."

Chicago Public Radio relationships

On the air each weekday morning WBEZ newsreader Lisa Lavez and traffic reporter Abby Ryan sound like former friends who aren't happy that they still have to work together. Abby always clips the end of "You're welcome" after Lisa says, "Thank you," as if she knows Lisa's gratitude doesn't reach one millimeter beyond that microphone. 

Does Lisa realize what it takes to update traffic reports every morning? Does she know that Abby suffers from acrophobia and would get the shakes real bad if she ever tried to go up in a whirlybird? (I don't know that for a fact, but I bet I'm right.) She might even wet her pants (I bet I'm right about that too), but do you care, Lisa? No! Because you're the one who reads the news, and therefore you think you're a big shot. "Look at me on my news-reading throne! I press this button and this happens, and when I press that button that happens. Fa-la-la-la-la!"

Girlfriend, you need an attitude adjustment. And Abby, you need to smile through the tears and possibly fall out of a news chopper to help you conquer that fear I claim you have. My point is, people are listening, so you two either need to bury the hatchet or get a room. And call me before you make your decision so I can plan my evening accordingly. Thank you. (You're welcome.)

how to interview a rock star like a rock star

In the November 15, 2007, issue of the Sacramento News & Review, Josh Fernandez interviewed heavy metal singer Sebastian Bach about his career, including his time as the frontman for Skid Row and his new solo album, Angel Down. Here are some uncorrected excerpts:

You know, Angel Down gives me the same feeling as the first time I put on Mötley Crüe's Too Fast for Love.

Oh wow! Really?

Yeah, dude, right when the song "Angel Down" came on I was like, "Holy Shit!"

Yeaaahhhhhhh! Hahaha! Well, the song "Angel Down" is great. It makes you turn your stereo up because the intro is quiet, so you're like, "What's goin' on?" Then it's like, fuckin', "Boooooom! It's over!"

Yeah!

It kicks your ass! I made it like that, dude—for me. I'm trying to make an album that you can put in your iPod next to Slave to the Grind and fucking it makes sense. And that's not easy.

Would you be pissed if someone said that Angel Down is better than anything Skid Row has ever done?

Would I be pissed? I'd kiss the motherfucker!

Oh shit.

[A few songs later in Fernandez's set list ...]

I was reading in an interview when I think you were 20-something. You were like, "When I'm 39, my voice will be at its peak." [Bach is now 39.]

Is that what I said?

Yeah dude. And you're like, "I'm gonna' have long-ass hair like Crystal Gayle."

Ha! No way!

And finally, you're like, "and I'm still going to be rocking!"

That's right!

And you still are, dude!

That's totally true! And my hair is getting back to fucking Crystal Gayle level here. I'm on track!

Good.

[Now for the power ballad that shows off Fernandez's vulnerable side ...]

You know, when I heard "Falling Into You," I think I fell in love with you a little bit.

Ahhhhhh!!!! [Pause] That's OK!

Ha, does that make you uncomfortable?

That's fine with me. No. I wrote it with Desmond Child. I know he wouldn't be uncomfortable about it.

When you were approached by MTV with Celebrity Rap Superstar, were you kind of bummed out at first?

I kinda just rolled my eyes. My attitude is kind of like, "Uh, is this what you want? This is what you want? It's what you want, right? Here. Here you go." Phhhhhesh.

Jesus.

Like, that is my attitude. I've been doing television shows for MTV for 20 years—this is another one of them. That's what that is. You know?

[En-core! En-core!]

You're the best dude.

Thanks, buddy.

the hands of a Guy

On Saturday I was at a street festival here in Chicago with some friends, and I got to know their friends, two sisters named Kristin and Lauren. They're tall. I'm not. But I do have smaller hands than them. 

Oh, right—that's not something to brag about.

They mentioned an episode of Seinfeld I've never seen in which Jerry dates a woman with "man hands," and any time the woman touches him the camera cuts to a close-up of a man's hands.

On Monday I read an article in the current issue of Spin magazine about Coldplay's new album, and how they still haven't met the recently installed head of their record label, EMI. His name is Guy Hands. Hahaha, your name makes me laugh, powerful businessman!

Hands is the owner of a private equity firm that gobbled up EMI for $6.4 billion last year; corporate restructuring will soon lead to layoffs for nearly 2,000 of EMI's 5,500 employees. At least the unemployed can say they were defeated at the hands of Hands. (What, not funny? Maybe you'll appreciate it more if you get to keep your job.)

On January 21, 1999, nearly ten years ago, 170 of A&M Records' 200 staffers were laid off after Seagram's Universal Music Group bought the company along with the Mercury, Geffen, and Island labels and started consolidating its new properties. 

Think about it—only 30 people kept their jobs. If I'd been one of them, I'm not sure I would've attended the "We're All Screwed" party, since the fine print on the party's banner would've said, "Except for You, Kiss Ass!" 

I was laid off from a job almost eight years ago after three months of gainful employment. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise: I got out before the job market slowed down later that year, and my delicate lady hands were back at work one month later at a new job, where I gently bathed them in milk and honey and a sprinkling of rose petals every other hour. I like to spoil myself. Because I'm worth it.

Stop monkeying around, media muckrakers!

I get so tired of the media and its liberal bias, especially when that bias extends into the area of anti-simian discrimination. The photo on the right was used alongside a real news story last week to undermine our president, but what's wrong with a commander in chief who resembles a chimpanzee? Those who drag their knuckles along the ground are closer to the earth and therefore better equipped to address the concerns of the common man, such as the current Central American banana crisis. Who will supply us with our bananas in these troubled times? We have no bananas!

But we mustn't panic. Instead we must put our trust in the banana Republican who leads our country. He may be a lame duck, but ... wait, he can't be both a chimp and a duck. And if he drags his knuckles on the ground, doesn't that make him a gorilla, not a chimp? Or do apes drag their knuckles, not gorillas? And do all simians eat bananas, or am I totally stereotyping them? I bet one of those smart gorillas who knows sign language could settle this once and for all. And if none of them are available, I'm sure someone could travel forward in time and ask Dr. Zaius. But we shouldn't send some liberal, monkey-hating clown like Al Franken. He'll sarcastically call Dr. Zaius a "damn dirty ape," the good doctor won't get the reference, and then we'll never get the answers we need.

a movie poster that could've used ... well, anything but this image

What Happens in Vegas was released over a month ago, but the film's poster still haunts me.

I read a review that said the film's cinematography doesn't do Cameron Diaz any favors. Well, neither does this poster. Meanwhile, Ashton Kutcher's facial expression and body language seem to be saying, "Can you believe this girl? Is she crazy or what? Seriously, you guys." 

Kutcher studied at LIF, otherwise known as the Louder Is Funnier school of comedy. Sometimes louder really is funnier, but Kutcher is a former male model, and people like me tend to be suspicious of pretty boys who do comedy, a form of entertainment that springs from personal pain, failure, and rejection. Has Ashton Kutcher been rejected once in his entire life? Okay, maybe in 2002 he asked out Joan Collins and she said no so he had to settle for Demi Moore instead, but I doubt it. All I know is that his self-pity will never equal mine. I've got warehouses full of it, so don't even bother trying to catch up, Ashton.

Here's one more promotional picture from What Happens in Vegas:

Shudder. But so far the film's made about $75 million. Obviously, somebody's been paying to see it. And by "somebody" I mean women who are forcing their boyfriends or husbands to tag along and put up with loud but pretty comedy for 90 minutes.

The martial arts are funniest when performed by chubby white guys.

Last fall at work I came across a battered copy of the Beverly Hills Ninja soundtrack that had been left behind by a laid-off coworker. The movie came out in January of '97, and usually when a studio releases a film at the very beginning of the year, it's a sign that the product's no good. However, in the last few years studios have begun to realize that the three-day Martin Luther King Day weekend can be a lucrative one, hence Paramount's release of the monster movie Cloverfield this past January. It had a big opening weekend—$46 million—and then trailed off pretty quickly, with a final gross of $80 million in theaters. But perception is what rules in Hollywood, so the final verdict was "hit," not "disappointment," probably because Cloverfield cost $25 million to make instead of $100 million. I'm sure it'll make millions more on video.

Beverly Hills Ninja also came out right before Martin Luther King Day, but it made $12 million in its opening weekend and $31 million total. I've only seen parts of it on TV, and those parts didn't make me want to see the whole thing. It's the last movie Chris Farley appeared in before he died on December 18, 1997, at the age of 33 (the same age as his hero, John Belushi, and his savior, Jesus Christ), though two more were released after his death. Desperate Housewives' Nicollette Sheridan and Farley's Saturday Night Live costar Chris Rock are in it too, though Rock's never had anything nice to say about the film.

Ninja was directed by Dennis Dugan, who started out as an actor in the '70s on TV shows like The Rockford Files (1974-'80) and its short-lived spin-off, Richie Brockelman, Private Eye (1978). (Actually, the character first appeared in a 1976 TV movie, then showed up on a two-hour episode of Rockford in the spring of '78 in an attempt to get that show's fans to watch Richie Brockelman in the same time slot a few weeks later. But the series only lasted six episodes, and then it was back to Rockford for one more two-hour episode in the spring of '79.)

Dugan was also Maddie Hayes's quickie-marriage husband, Walter Bishop, for about five seconds on Moonlighting in 1988, as well as Steve Martin's jackass boss in Parenthood (1989). He also played a character named Tom Trimble in 1979's The Spaceman and King Arthur, which I think my brother and I saw on TV when we were little. Coincidentally, Tom Trimble is a friend of our dad's. Not the fictional character—a real person named Tom Trimble.

Dugan directed some episodic television in the late '80s, including one of the final episodes of Moonlighting (he also appeared in shadows in the very last episode as a TV executive telling David and Maddie why nobody watched Moonlighting anymore), then made his feature debut with Problem Child in 1990. It starred TV mainstay John Ritter and earned five times its budget despite horrible reviews. In other words, a surprise hit.

Dugan's next film was 1992's Brain Donors, an attempt at a modern-day Marx Brothers farce. John Turturro played the Groucho surrogate, and it looked like nothing else in theaters at that time, but it came and went quickly, grossing less than a million dollars. After that it was back to directing TV until Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore (1996), a low-budget comedy like Problem Child that earned almost four times what it cost and became an even bigger hit on video and cable. Dugan then directed Beverly Hills Ninja, which didn't gross that much less than Happy Gilmore—$31 million compared to Happy's $38 million—but the all-important perception was that its gross wasn't anything to cheer about.

Dugan returned to Sandler's nurturing embrace for 1999's Big Daddy, and since then he's found all of his box-office success working with the popular comedian, directing him in last year's I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and this summer's You Don't Mess With the Zohan, which opens today. Sandler also produced Dugan's The Benchwarmers (2006), which earned a respectable $59 million, whereas Chuck and Larry grossed $120 million, and Zohan will most likely be another $100 million hit for Sandler, whose loyal audience of eternal 12-year-olds loves him in comedies, if not dramas. Between Big Daddy and The Benchwarmers, Dugan floundered with 2001's Saving Silverman ($19 million) and 2003's Martin Lawrence vehicle National Security ($36 million), which was released, like Beverly Hills Ninja, in mid-January.

The Ninja soundtrack is one of many mid- to late-'90s movie soundtracks that was unfortunately influenced by the soundtracks for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, meaning that in between songs like Blondie's "One Way or Another" (easily their most overplayed song) and Carl Douglas's "Kung Fu Fighting" (not a shining example of '70s kitsch) there are snippets of dialogue from the movie, such as the following exchange, which kicks off the album:

CHRIS ROCK: Ninja? You're a ninja? Get outta here! You a ninja?!
CHRIS FARLEY: (bored by the question but defensive at the same time) Yes. I am a ninja.
CHRIS ROCK: You know, I took a few karate lessons myself. I mean, I'm not as advanced as you. I'm what you might call a tangerine belt, a orange belt, you know. I'm one of them citrus colors, you know what I'm sayin'.

Doesn't exactly have the snap of "Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every motherfucking last one of ya," does it? Tarantino writes memorable dialogue, but that's not true of the majority of screenwriters, so with a soundtrack like Ninja's you're stuck with dialogue tracks titled "You're the big, fat Ninja, aren't you?" and "... Yes, I guess I did." We wanna see fatty Farley fall down, not hear him talk! The soundtrack also features Patti Rothberg's listless cover of "Kung Fu Fighting" and the Hazies' pointless retread of "Turning Japanese." On the positive side, the soundtrack includes War's "Low Rider," Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy," and Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy," so it's not a total waste, but the whole thing's only 36 minutes long, so if you paid more than $9.99 for it in '97, you got hosed.

Around the same time I discovered the Ninja soundtrack at work last October, I came across a promotional DVD containing the trailer for Kung Fu Panda, which opens today to mess with Zohan for weekend box-office dominance. The DVD came in its own plastic container, like DVDs you buy in stores, and features its own version of the film's poster, displaying the title, Jack Black's name, the Paramount and DreamWorks studio logos, the tagline "Prepare for Awesomeness," and the reminder that the movie is "in theaters June 6, 2008." All that for a trailer that lasts one minute and 11 seconds. Imagine how much money was wasted to package and distribute those 71 seconds to media outlets like the Chicago Reader! Naturally, I'm impressed. (It doesn't take much.)

Compare the posters for Ninja and Panda. In many ways Jack Black is the comedic successor to John Belushi, a distinction that Farley probably wanted more than Black ever did, but he had some of the same addictions as his hero, which helped bring about his early death. Farley's sense of humor tended toward the juvenile, but you couldn't deny his stage/screen presence on Saturday Night Live and his commitment to characters like motivational speaker Matt Foley. Some of my Farley-derived laughter was of the nervous kind when I watched him on SNL in high school, because I wasn't sure if I was about to witness the overweight actor go into cardiac arrest on live television. But that tension, shared between the actor and the viewer, helped produce some memorable performances.

I have a feeling Kung Fu Panda will do better at the box office than Beverly Hills Ninja. But will it open to bigger numbers this weekend than Dennis Dugan's newest comedy? Well, Sandler does kick people in the face in You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Maybe all of the eternal 12-year-olds will show up for Zohan this weekend if their long-suffering wives agree to take the kids off their hands at screenings of Kung Fu Panda. Sorry, ladies, but you should've known on the second date when you slept over at his apartment and saw his videotape collection that this was going to happen.