Small World

My son recently began kindergarten at the Catholic school just down the street, and it turns out the school's music teacher and I played together in a band back in our mutual hometown twenty years ago.

No reunion tour is planned yet; I recently heard that our drummer, who still lives in Pennsylvania, was arrested for trying to burn down a strip club.

Drummers.

Memo to Neighbor

Seeing as it's April 5, 2005, might you consider taking down (1) the Christmas wreath, (2) several strings of icicle lights, and (3) the homemade KERRY 2004 sign?

The multicolor Kerry sign is made up of one letter/number per sheet, so it's possible they're poised to spring with a roll of cellophane tape and an "8" ... in any case, there's plenty of time to stow the wreath. We don't need a little Christmas right this very minute.

A Pimp For the Shrimps

I hear you. You went to Saturday Mass to pray for the pope and ended up missing Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards. Well, Saint K has you covered.

Self-diagnosed sex addict Usher took home the Blimp for "Best Male Singer" -- no great surprise, since the other three nominees -- Chingy, Nelly, and LL Cool J -- don't sing but rap.

I was kind of looking forward to Chingy's acceptance speech. Who knows what message he had prepared for the babes in arms in the largely up-past-bedtime audience? Likely something along the lines of his youth-empowerment anthem "Right Thurr":

The type of girl that'll get ya up and go make ya grind,
I'm thinking 'bout snatching her up dirty, making her mine,
Look at her hips, butt, look at her legs,
aint she stacked?
I sho wouldn't mind hittin' that from the back,
I like it when I touch her cause she moan a lil bit,
jeans saggin, so I can see her thong a lil bit,
I know you grown a lil bit,
20 years old you legal,
don't trip off my people just hop in the regal

If you have iTunes installed, click on over and sample "Jackpot the Pimp (Skit)" for a taste of Chingy's noted dedication to animal welfare. He eats, sleeps, and breathes pussy, motherfucker! Surely he'll have his own show on Nick next season.

Everybody Doesn't Know This Is Somewhere

Ouch. From Pitchfork's article on Neil Young's brain aneurysm:

The first signs of trouble came on March 14, after a performance with the Pretenders at New York's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Perhaps Joel and Dawn will visit there and bring me back a T-shirt.

P.S. Pitchfork operates out of Chicago. That's in Illinois.

Critical, But Not Serious

William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer offers one of the few negative reviews of Sin City this weekend, suggesting that, in giving Frank Miller directing credit, Robert Rodriguez is "cowardly shielding himself from the backlash.... Hey, this is Miller's world, not mine."

But don't confuse Arnold with the "Christian right and other voices for movie censorship." (Ironic, then, isn't it, that he calls the film "a giddy spectacular in which we sit back like Romans at the Coliseum watching people being decapitated, disemboweled, dismembered, castrated and humiliated." And hey, you like irony with your irony? The same guy wrote of Gladiator, "it delivers a particular kind of visceral historical spectacle that movie audiences haven't seen in decades.")

He doesn't believe in censorship, or that movies "motivate mass murder." But:

"I do think that a film like this, especially one made by a major director under the flag of artistic integrity, adds something ugly to the air for which critics must hold it accountable."

Oooooo! Watch out, Hollywood! The movie critic for the Seattle paper has given you an "F!" You have been held accountable! Not for your film itself, not the direction or the acting or the editing or the visual style, but for "the ugliness it's added to the air!" Not to mention that Arnold has called Sin City the movie for the guards at Abu Ghraib. (I guess that makes Roger "four stars and a big severed thumb up" Ebert head guard on the night shift.)

I haven't yet seen any right-wing Christian efforts to censor this film (those Bible thumpers have been rather busy lately), so Mr. Arnold's going to have to stand alone and shield himself from any Hollywood backlash. "Arnold? Isn't he that prude from Seattle? What is he, a Christian or something?"

Hey, cleaning up movies is his gig, not mine.

UPDATE: Not to let Ebert off the hook here; just a week ago, in reviewing the ultraviolent Korean torture/revenge flick Oldboy, the sweatered one declared:

In its sexuality and violence, this is the kind of movie that can no longer easily be made in the United States; the standards of a puritanical minority, imposed on broadcasting and threatened even for cable, make studios unwilling to produce films that might face uncertain distribution.

Um, yeah. There's that puritanical minority again, making life hard for artists. Just try finding a theater that's playing Sin City this weekend (OK, it is opening on 3,230 screens) or a Blockbuster that doesn't have Kill Bill available. "No, sorry, a puritanical minority was in here earlier and burned all the copies."