Wednesday, December 9, 2009
SHE'S NO WAYNE NEWTON: The Wynn, trying to keep things relatively young and hip, is attempting to get Beyonce to sign a deal to be a marquee performer (alternating with Garth Brooks). Two questions--is this the right career move for Sasha Fierce at this point, and who do you think should be looking at Vegas residency for their own career?
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
SHE'S THE ONE FOR ME; SHE'S ALL I REALLY NEED: This blog does not ordinarily traffic in gossip; our Remarkably Promiscuous Golfers Desk has remained unfilled for years, and we plan to keep it that way. But can we ignore the reports that Billy Corgan and Jessica Simpson may be dating? No, we cannot. This, indeed, is more shocking than that other story ... until we hit double digits. (Perkins? Really?)
NOW ADD SOME GOLD AND SILVER FOR SOME PIZZA PLACE CLASS: There are a lot of reasons why I should be a long-time fan of They Might Be Giants. My ear bends toward do-it-yourself indie pop, I entered college in the 1980s, I am easily amused by songs that take arcana seriously and occasionally entertained by novelty songs, and my college girlfriend went to Lincoln-Sudbury High School just a few years after the Johns. I'm not a long-time fan of They Might Be Giants, though, because I dock points for using drum machines and not using bassists (as TMBG did and didn't when I first encountered them), because there is an exponential relationship between time (x) and the annoyingness of Linnell's voice (y), and because it's frustrating how the band veers between beautifully and meticulously constructed pieces and other songs that feel like offhand improvisations.
They solve little of this in their children's music work. In fact, to paraphrase Spacewoman's comment on No!, their kids' work sounds exactly like their grownup work except with the same music and lyrics. Yet, because the kids' music genre is more forgiving (or maybe just makes me feel more forgiving), I find the kids' albums more enjoyable. Songs like "Seven Days of the Week," "I Am Not Your Broom" and "Violin" still send me racing for the skip button, but I know there's a payoff at the other end.
Here Comes Science is, I think, the band's fourth kids' album (after No!, Here Come the ABCs, and Here Come the 123s), and it's the best. For one thing, the science theme is specific enough to give the collection some coherence without being so narrow as to require too much lyrical absurdity as a way of filling out the album. For another, the disc hits the sweet spot where the songs are interesting (usually clever, often outright funny), instructive, hummable, and well-performed by a band that includes both a live drummer and a bass player. It's an educational collection that does not condescend to its audience -- neither music nor lyrics are dumbed down. I think the kids appreciate that, and lord knows, so do I.
The other great thing about the album is that it's a little bit ballsy. Dan Zanes, as one example, sometimes takes tentative political stances in his albums ("Down By the Riverside"; "I Don't Want Your Millions, Mister"), but they're watered down in Kum-Ba-Yah folksiness or winking anachronism. It may not be particularly controversial to say, as TMBG do, "Science Is Real," but in case you missed the point, TMBG doesn't try to avoid the sore spot: "Now I like those stories about angels, unicorns, and elves/I like those stories as much as anyone else/But when I'm seeking knowledge, either simple or abstract/The facts are with science." In other words, please feel free to burn this children's disc. Funny.
They solve little of this in their children's music work. In fact, to paraphrase Spacewoman's comment on No!, their kids' work sounds exactly like their grownup work except with the same music and lyrics. Yet, because the kids' music genre is more forgiving (or maybe just makes me feel more forgiving), I find the kids' albums more enjoyable. Songs like "Seven Days of the Week," "I Am Not Your Broom" and "Violin" still send me racing for the skip button, but I know there's a payoff at the other end.
Here Comes Science is, I think, the band's fourth kids' album (after No!, Here Come the ABCs, and Here Come the 123s), and it's the best. For one thing, the science theme is specific enough to give the collection some coherence without being so narrow as to require too much lyrical absurdity as a way of filling out the album. For another, the disc hits the sweet spot where the songs are interesting (usually clever, often outright funny), instructive, hummable, and well-performed by a band that includes both a live drummer and a bass player. It's an educational collection that does not condescend to its audience -- neither music nor lyrics are dumbed down. I think the kids appreciate that, and lord knows, so do I.
The other great thing about the album is that it's a little bit ballsy. Dan Zanes, as one example, sometimes takes tentative political stances in his albums ("Down By the Riverside"; "I Don't Want Your Millions, Mister"), but they're watered down in Kum-Ba-Yah folksiness or winking anachronism. It may not be particularly controversial to say, as TMBG do, "Science Is Real," but in case you missed the point, TMBG doesn't try to avoid the sore spot: "Now I like those stories about angels, unicorns, and elves/I like those stories as much as anyone else/But when I'm seeking knowledge, either simple or abstract/The facts are with science." In other words, please feel free to burn this children's disc. Funny.
Monday, December 7, 2009
THAT WAS A VERY LOUD BEEP ... I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THIS IS WORKING, MARK. MARK, ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU SCREENING YOUR CALLS? IT'S MOM: New York magazine catalogs seventeen once-everyday objects rendered obsolete by the end of the Aughts.
The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods | Health and Wellness | AlterNet
LLOYD DOBLER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS LIST: The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods.
TRASH LIKE THAT TAKES ITSELF OUT: Continuing my practice of only writing about shows several days after they air, I have a couple of things to say about the Blake Lively SNL that aired two nights ago.
The quick thought: am I the only person in the entire world who thinks it was exceedingly strange that they cut directly from a skit whose punchline was Tiger Woods being the victim of domestic abuse to a close-up of Rihanna in the digital short? I guess the way the show is built, and with Rihanna carrying the digital short, that skit was going to come either immediately before or immediately after a Rihanna performance, but I might have tried to use something -- anything -- as a buffer. One of the fake UPS ads?
The somewhat more labored thought: the show is not particularly funny these days, but it's also not as unfunny as the Internets would have it, and a lot of the stuff that doesn't work is a result of the pressure for SNL to be funny in the exact same way that it was funny before. I read a lot of stuff suggesting that the show was only funny in one or more of the the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time-Players/Eddie Murphy/Bill Hartman-Dana Carvey/Will Ferrell eras, with the current cast paling in comparison. One of the reasons the current cast pales in comparison, though, is that it's trying to do what past casts were good at. Fey's first Palin sketch aside, though, this is the wrong age for SNL to do either political satire or send-ups of talk shows, because the bar has been raised too high for that stuff, and the current cast isn't cut out for it. It feels like they think they have to do it, because that's what SNL does (this also works as a summary of Joe Piscopo's entire SNL ouevre).
The most memorable SNL performances, though, came from people who weren't trying to repeat an earlier cast's success. The original cast created something completely different from what was then on TV, Eddie Murphy saved the show by running in an entirely different direction, and, as people now seem to forget, Will Ferrell created some extravagantly and defiantly weird TV (the Lord of the Flies morning TV sketch with Grier and Oteri that predicted the gang fight in Anchorman; "more cowbell"; his Neil Diamond). It took people several years to warm to Ferrell. To me, the show is at its worst whenever Jason Sudeikis's Biden is on-screen, because it's a bad impression with no convincing hook done out of duty to SNL's traditions rather than any comic imperative, a cheap Phil Hartman ripoff (though, in candor, I never enjoyed much of Phil Hartman's work until News Radio). The show needs more people trying weird things, not more Sudeikises echoing Piscopo echoing Aykroyd (and note: head writer Seth Myers was the boyish guitar-playing successor to Jimmy Fallon, who was just a cut-rate Adam Sandler).
So I agree with the consensus (where "consensus" = Hitfix) that this week's was a good, but not great episode, and completely disagree with the "why." When Spacewoman said to me something that I hear a lot -- "nothing after the news is ever any good" -- I had to disagree. To me, that's where all the good stuff, the really weird stuff, is. The best thing on the show was the last -- the bizarre NASA-potato chip sketch with the inexplicable accents, antebellum costuming, 70s set dressing, and weird melodrama. That may be my favorite thing on SNL all year. And I loved the "To Catch a Predator" talk show, not for the talk show part of it, but for the way it absolutely nailed the feel of the source material (particularly Chris Hansen hiding under the desk). Though it came before the news, I also thought the "Under-Underground Festival" ad was very funny. Which, oddly, makes two sketches where I enjoyed Sudeikis. Then again, I had no need for the compulsories -- the political bit, the dig at reality stars, the parody of the guest's show, the notion that anything making fun of one of the boroughs or of New Jersey is itself a punch line (all of which came before the news).
Incidentally, despite the fact that he appears as a performer in just about every movie there is, I can't shake the thought that when Bill Hader leaves the show, he is going to write and run a transcendently funny TV show. And one other thing: If you took the "over" on Matt's query about the number of mentions of Blake Lively's breasts, you lost some money.
The quick thought: am I the only person in the entire world who thinks it was exceedingly strange that they cut directly from a skit whose punchline was Tiger Woods being the victim of domestic abuse to a close-up of Rihanna in the digital short? I guess the way the show is built, and with Rihanna carrying the digital short, that skit was going to come either immediately before or immediately after a Rihanna performance, but I might have tried to use something -- anything -- as a buffer. One of the fake UPS ads?
The somewhat more labored thought: the show is not particularly funny these days, but it's also not as unfunny as the Internets would have it, and a lot of the stuff that doesn't work is a result of the pressure for SNL to be funny in the exact same way that it was funny before. I read a lot of stuff suggesting that the show was only funny in one or more of the the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time-Players/Eddie Murphy/Bill Hartman-Dana Carvey/Will Ferrell eras, with the current cast paling in comparison. One of the reasons the current cast pales in comparison, though, is that it's trying to do what past casts were good at. Fey's first Palin sketch aside, though, this is the wrong age for SNL to do either political satire or send-ups of talk shows, because the bar has been raised too high for that stuff, and the current cast isn't cut out for it. It feels like they think they have to do it, because that's what SNL does (this also works as a summary of Joe Piscopo's entire SNL ouevre).
The most memorable SNL performances, though, came from people who weren't trying to repeat an earlier cast's success. The original cast created something completely different from what was then on TV, Eddie Murphy saved the show by running in an entirely different direction, and, as people now seem to forget, Will Ferrell created some extravagantly and defiantly weird TV (the Lord of the Flies morning TV sketch with Grier and Oteri that predicted the gang fight in Anchorman; "more cowbell"; his Neil Diamond). It took people several years to warm to Ferrell. To me, the show is at its worst whenever Jason Sudeikis's Biden is on-screen, because it's a bad impression with no convincing hook done out of duty to SNL's traditions rather than any comic imperative, a cheap Phil Hartman ripoff (though, in candor, I never enjoyed much of Phil Hartman's work until News Radio). The show needs more people trying weird things, not more Sudeikises echoing Piscopo echoing Aykroyd (and note: head writer Seth Myers was the boyish guitar-playing successor to Jimmy Fallon, who was just a cut-rate Adam Sandler).
So I agree with the consensus (where "consensus" = Hitfix) that this week's was a good, but not great episode, and completely disagree with the "why." When Spacewoman said to me something that I hear a lot -- "nothing after the news is ever any good" -- I had to disagree. To me, that's where all the good stuff, the really weird stuff, is. The best thing on the show was the last -- the bizarre NASA-potato chip sketch with the inexplicable accents, antebellum costuming, 70s set dressing, and weird melodrama. That may be my favorite thing on SNL all year. And I loved the "To Catch a Predator" talk show, not for the talk show part of it, but for the way it absolutely nailed the feel of the source material (particularly Chris Hansen hiding under the desk). Though it came before the news, I also thought the "Under-Underground Festival" ad was very funny. Which, oddly, makes two sketches where I enjoyed Sudeikis. Then again, I had no need for the compulsories -- the political bit, the dig at reality stars, the parody of the guest's show, the notion that anything making fun of one of the boroughs or of New Jersey is itself a punch line (all of which came before the news).
Incidentally, despite the fact that he appears as a performer in just about every movie there is, I can't shake the thought that when Bill Hader leaves the show, he is going to write and run a transcendently funny TV show. And one other thing: If you took the "over" on Matt's query about the number of mentions of Blake Lively's breasts, you lost some money.
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