...That he Savage Garden songs for his favorite sports team.

I dunno. I think I’ve already seen that one.

Catchphrase. Laugh laugh laugh laugh.

Poor, stupid, little boy.

The tragedy isn’t so much that he ended up dead of a drug overdose (accidental or otherwise), but that he represents a wasted life. He couldn’t grow up enough to take responsibility for his life, he couldn’t be strong enough to stop abusing drugs, and that he threw away the friendship and opportunities that he had in his too short life.

To be honest--although not without a point--the world didn’t lose a hugely talented actor. Neither of the Coreys were great actors, they were great, fun personalities. Where Corey Feldman seems to have grown up and moved on with life, Haim just got stuck. The value of a life isn’t in how good an actor a person is, but in what they do with the years that are given them; the world didn’t lose a great actor, it just saw another person who failed to find a way to give his years any meaning.

I’m sad for the people who cared for him, but I wonder how many of them are actually surprised? I watched a part of the A&E show The Two Corey’s and knew that sooner or later he would end up dead or in jail because no matter how many chances he had, no matter who reached out to him, he had an amazing drive to self-destruction.

Poor, stupid, little boy.

The funniest news of the morning comes to us from AdFreak:

This is awesome. The New York Post reports that Lindsay Lohan is suing E*Trade for $100 million, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing “milkaholic” named Lindsay in the company’s Super Bowl commercial...from Grey Advertising was clearly modeled after her. “Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E*Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Lohan’s lawyer says. “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

I had been wondering where the insane little starlet had gone; it’s good to know that she hasn’t lost all her crazy.

(Okay, no, I wasn’t really wondering where the insane little starlet had gone. It just fit the flow of the narrative.)

...And Tyler Perry shows up to present an award. He had this to say: “They just said my name at the Oscars. I’d better enjoy it because it’ll probably never happen again.”

Yeah, that’s probably true. Thing about Tyler Perry is that, firstly, he seems like a nice enough guy, secondly, his heart seems to be in the right place in his films, and, thirdly, he doesn’t come close to deserving an award. Of course, many of the movies don’t deserve their awards, but his tend to be phenomenally bad. Not only does he scrape up every racial stereotype possible, but the scripts, the direction, and the acting are usually atrocious.

The same kinds of people who will tell you that Tyler Perry movies are good in any kind of an artistic sense are the same kinds of people who would tell you that the Left Behind books are artistically satisfying, that The Gamers: Dorkness Rising had good art direction, and that contemporary Christian pop music is something other than uninspiring pablum.

Okay, there may be a few exceptions to that last part, but the point still stands.

Those people so strongly believe in the subject matter that they entirely ignore the artistic flaws. There is a difference between artistic merit and personal preference; the Oscars may not always find the artistic merit, but it should always be their goal. Tyler Perry doesn’t deserve that kind of recognition, regardless of how nice of a guy he is and how much he tries to make moral movies.

The Oscars this year were a bit of a fumble, though, weren’t they? A few funny bits here and there, a fun intro with the resurgent Doogie, a great dance number, and some worthy winners were nice. It was also (up to the point where I am writing this, at least) pleasantly politics-free.  On the other hand, the camera cuts were horrendous (especially noticeable at the beginning of the memorial section), the Baldwin-Martin team was uneven (although not horrendous), and a goodly number of the presenters proved themselves incompetent without a script and without good editing (Cameron Diaz, you’d be number one on that list).

Cheers to Jeff Bridges (goofy, strange acceptance speech aside) and all the other winners on the night, though. Whatever lack the show might have, it is always an honor to be recognized by your peers.

On a more important note, now that I know that Morena Baccarin is in it, I might have to watch V.

Update: Forest Whitaker’s introduction of Sandra Bullock for the Best Actress nominations was top notch. Some of the others, for both Best Actor and Best Actress, were nice, too, but Whitaker’s was pitch-perfect.

Update to the Update: The previous note was convenient since Sandra Bullock won and gave a touching and funny speech of her own. Love her.

That said, leave it up to Barbra Streisand to point out that we could have the first female or black director winning an Oscar this year. It turned out to be the first woman (Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker) and a well-deserved win on merits.

But did it really need to be about that? Couldn’t it just be about the movie or even just about her talent?

Tom Hanks just noted that Casablanca was the winner the last time there were 10 films up for consideration. I watch it somewhat regularly and, though it’s a little old-fashioned, it has maintained its relevance artistically, culturally, and even politically through the decades. A wonderful movie.

Will any of the movies nominated this year wear as well? A few of them might, but I doubt that any of them will be as well-remembered as Casablanca. Which isn’t to say that it was a horrible class of movies (I liked Up, Hurt Locker, and Inglorious Basterds. I’m still pondering A Serious Man. Both District 9 and Blind Side were surprisingly good.

Casablanca is tough to live up to, though, in the same way that Lawrence of Arabia would be hard to live up to.

All that prologue aside, Hanks’ announcement of Hurt Locker winning Best Picture was a bit anti-climactic, wasn’t it?

My wife, the lovely woman that she is, has no appreciation for the classics. For example, after fifteen minutes watching Caveman streaming from my Netflix account, she stated flatly: “This might be the dumbest movie ever.”

Crazy talk. Ringo Starr has never been better (well, never been better as an actor, anyway) and neither has Shelley Long. Dennis Quaid, on the other hand, did go on to bigger and better things.

Maybe I’ll make her watch the Dudley Moore anti-classic, Wholly Moses later…

If you were hoping that you could join me in listening to semi-random music while working late into the night, then here’s your chance. A late night list of tunes to nudge your creative spirit (or irritate the neighbors).

I consider both to be worthy goals.

The time of beauty pageants in America is coming to an end. Or, at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

TLC has announced that it won’t renew its deal to run the Miss America Pageant, the one-time major TV event that fell on hard times over the past decade.

I’m entirely okay with that.

The pageants for young girls are freakish and the girls are a ridiculous mockery of feminine beauty. The women and girls who compete in pageants are airbrushed and perpetuate a focus on physical beauty as the standard of a woman’s value to the world.

If I were a dad, I wouldn’t want my little girl taking part in pageants. Not because I wouldn’t want her to be beautiful or to feel beautiful, but because I would want her to understand that her ultimate measure of value in the world is in the things that she does, the lives she effects, and the things she accomplished--and, just as importantly, not in how good she looks in a bathing suit.

I’m sure that many of the parents and many of the participants are good people. I’m sure many lead happy and good lives and that the pageant system didn’t do them any harm.

But what I value in life is decidedly at odds with what I believe those pageants teach young girls. If the Miss America Pageant were to die off completely, I wouldn’t shed a tear.

Read the rest.

It’s been a dreary day here in Denver. A gray, weepy game with drizzling, cold rain and snow. For a melancholic soul like me, it’s a catalyst for the worst of my own mind. Fears, worries, and a creeping, spidery awareness of my own failings poke at the back of my head, needle sharp and insistent. Much of it comes from memories that play in my head as if the I was living through some of the worst moments of my life again.

I can see, hear, smell, and feel everything that happened in those moments. Sometimes I think I understand junkies and alcoholics. If you can’t turn off the noise in your head by shear force of will, if you can’t find a way to get away from the most vicious bits of yourself, then drugs and booze are a hell of a temptation.

Which is one of the reasons I stopped drinking at one point in my first marriage. Not that it saved us, but I started to understand why I liked drinking so much, and it wasn’t a very happy realization.

Some of you know that I lost a friend when I turned 21. He died an ugly death around the same time I started bartending--a death directly attributable to his alcoholism. I had been drinking since I was about 13, but his death was almost like someone firing a starter pistol and I was racing to the bottom of the bottle. Most people that I knew then were drinking because it was part of the party; I was drinking because I wanted to kill myself. I had a very specific view of myself and I wanted to destroy the person that I saw, I wanted him to sink away and never come up for air.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way and it wasn’t constant--which is why I never quite made it to either addiction or suicide, why I still had friends, and why, when I grew up some, I found out that I could be okay. That I could start shaping my life to be something better, something happier and more full. I think I also learned that loneliness is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But some nights, old habits crawl back in.

Which, if you know me well, probably explains my taste in music. If I have to relive the worst bits of my life, then the soundtrack should fit, right?

With that introduction, here are a few songs that I’ve been playing today. Enjoy.

I know this is a little late notice, but Dave Cullen is speaking and signing books at the Barnes & Noble Park Meadows off of County Line Road.

He’s a good writer, he’s a smart man, and he’s about as nice a guy as you can imagine. If you’re in the area, it would be well worth your time to go and have a listen.

Details here.

Watching Sweden’s and Finland’s Olympic hockey teams beating up on each other, I was just informed that the “Titans will clash!”

Brilliant bit of marketing, that. I hear that when the movie is released, all of the new material will be re-branded. “Titans are clashing at a theater near you!”

(Warning: That is one slow loading site.)

After reading Paul Theroux’s book Sir Vidia’s Shadow, I found myself wondering just how much of the tone of the book was merely the taste of bitterness in Theroux’s mouth over a friendship grown cold. Was VS Naipaul really the man portrayed by the words and actions in Theroux’s book, or was he someone else entirely.

Sir Vidia’s Shadow is a well written book that draws the reader into the writer’s world and, very particularly, that kind of world as inhabited by these particular writers. It’s a world of intriguingly shallow people--writers, politicians, their loved ones--who see themselves as people of great depth and importance. It is also perpetually unflattering to Naipaul as it shows him as being cheap, petty, cruel, fickle, rude, and whiny.Wherever a ray of humanity shines through to give some view of Naipaul as something other than small, it is often immediately ripped away by a deep contrast that nudges the memories of his failings.

That Theroux was willing to publish such a personal, raw look at a former friend and mentor speaks volumes about his personality, too. Of course, after reading his books, it would be hard to imagine wanting to like Theroux in his personal life as he has portrayed himself (and thinly disguised versions of himself, as in My Secret History) to be a painfully difficult and selfish person, too. For that matter, in Sir Vidia’s Shadow, he’s certainly showing himself as another victim of Naipaul’s fickle nature, but he doesn’t imagine himself as an angelic figure.

The honesty is compelling, but it is a vicious kind of person who can write a memoir about a relationship and reveal, in such brutal terms, the warts and flaws of a former friend.

So, recognizing the book’s viciousness, I did wonder at its truth.

This, from the Telegraph, makes me wonder if Theroux was understating Naipaul’s flaws.

They have led French to paint a picture of a bleak, largely loveless marriage in which Sir Vidia frequently put his wife down - he refused even to buy her a wedding ring. He often abandoned her to go travelling with Mrs Gooding, the married Anglo-Argentine with whom he fell in love in 1972, and they periodically lived apart.

When in a self-pitying mood, Sir Vidia, who was born to Indian parents in Trinidad but has lived in Britain since winning a place to Oxford, would tell his wife how he was missing Mrs Gooding but then say that he needed Lady Patricia to help him with his books.

Trapped and unable to leave the husband she worshipped, Lady Patricia’s diaries reveal how she became little more than his cook and carer, and how for a time she became dependent on Mandrax, the prescribed sedative.

Sir Vidia’s sister, Savi, regarded her brother’s claim that Lady Patricia accepted the situation as “absolute rubbish, such profound vanity”.

Both of the men are wonderful writers, and both of them look less impressive when you see them up close. VS Naipaul’s personality--so profoundly sour and self-indulgent--might make it completely impossible for me to read his work in the future. It’s lost its shine.

Global warming!

When do we want it?

Now!

Well, global warming and more muay thai on ESPN 8, the Ocho.

Thanks to Steve for sharing the good stuff.

Cancer Man (or, if you’re of a slightly different mind, Cigarette Smoking Man) was on Human Target tonight. Not a big fan of the show, but it was good to see him working again.

I’m almost as surprised by the Saints’ win today as I was by Shannon Sharpe’s missing the final cut for the Hall of Fame. Happier about the former, though.

As disappointed as I am for Peyton Manning, it is impossible to be truly disappointed in the result.

Boo, on the other hand, to Audi for an ad that made me want to buy a Hummer. Or a Chris “Birdman” Anderson-mobile.

In case you missed it, Barney’s phone number is: 1-877-987-6401.

In reference to the Super Bowl half time show: lovely light show, but a boring performance from a band who hasn’t had a meaningful hit in longer than I can remember. Not that they didn’t play well and do their best to inject energy and excitement into their mini-concert/mash-up of some of their biggest hits. It’s just that the music sounds nothing close to relevant.

Was this really the best choice for keeping the audience in their seats instead of clicking over to the latest Danica Patrick “Too Hot for TV Internet Only” abomination at GoDaddy.com?

Think of this as my apology for that last post. It’s best enjoyed loud.

Not my favorite Queens album, but I love the song. There’s some fun guitar work in there, too.

I just episode one of Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Well, what to say about that?

It makes 300 look subtle. It makes The Passion of the Christ look bloodless. And it has more boobs than you can count count. That last bit may not be strictly true. You probably could count the breasts on display, but it would take a sharp eye and strict attention to the task, which sort of takes the fun out of it.

That’s not all. You also get ridiculously bad acting, over-the-top writing, uproariously strange sex scenes, and some full frontal male nudity for the women. What you don’t get is compelling story-telling, interesting characters, or a moment’s respite from the overly stylized presentation.

I enjoyed 300,, but this takes the same ingredients and, somehow, screws up the recipe. I would say that the urge to oversell the comic book aspects of the violence, with explosions of blood consuming the screens, limbs flying willy-nilly, and even the smallest moments of violence given slow-motion treatment and imposing music. The sex scenes, well-short of the graphic nature of pornography but exhibiting the same skewed sense of fantasy sensuality, is just as off-putting as the stylized violence.

I suppose that’s a long winded way of saying that I thought that 300 stepped over the line of good story-telling and good taste in some of the same ways as Spartacus, but I still found something worth enjoying. This new Spartacus, on the other hand, left that line so far behind that all I could find was the urge to point and laugh when our hero’s wife fairly exploded into a wash of blood during the climax of one particularly strange dream sequence. I’m sure there’s something good about the show outside of its admirable commitment to gratuitous nudity; but, then, it fails even at that titillation when you realize that the writhing girls and simulated orgasms are an insult to anything remotely resembling real intimacy.

Don’t even get me started on the mismatched accents…

While I don’t think that the US has fallen into a second Great Depression, I do think that we can look back and enjoy some music.

And when I go home tonight, I think I’ll torture my wife by making he watch Cinderella Man. Just to keep the mood going.