Ben, The Evil, Homicidal Pet Rat

So, I haven't been writing on here for a few days because I have been trying to write a review of Michael Jackson's new album, "The Ultimate Collection," a five-disc, 57 song + DVD career retrospective. It's truly a herculean task, and I have to do it in only 200 words. It's almost impossible for me to decide what I want to say when so many promising topics introduce themselves. Consider his first solo hit, 1972's "Ben." From the film of the same name, it is a love song to a pet rat. Not only that, but a pet rat who turns evil, and recruits an army of evil rats to kill humans. See, the something's-a-tad-off-with-the-lad theme has been brewing for a while. But who made it impossible to ignore? Is it our salacious media? Our culture of celebrity worship? Or maybe it has been his own aggressive public weirdness for the last 3 decades. I just don't know. But thinking about him, I can't help but compare him to another LA music genius/weirdo, Brian Wilson. Both had young success. Both had overbearing fathers who were clearly jealous of their talent and intent on crushing their sensitivity. Both made weirdo pop albums. But Brian turned his demons on himself. All he did was get fat, set up a tent in the living room, and do drugs. Jacko seems to have become a child predator. So does a music reviewer really owe it to him, or to the art form itself, to overlook that? I don't know. My boyfriend is a genius writer and editor himself, but he fell asleep and my deadline's tomorrow. I read his - my boyfriend's - review of Elliott Smith's posthumous album today in his magazine, and it literally brought me to tears. The way he uses words is just so elegant and - I don't know- thoughtful? Soulful? I can't even write well enough to describe how good his writing is. Anwyay, I am going to keep on chopping away at my MJ review, which is now 400 words, twice as long as it should be. And it has no point. And it's riddled with cliches. Wish me luck. At least, even if the piece turns out so crap that the editor won't run it, I have learned something cool and weird. And that is that the bridge of 1983's "Wanna Be Startin Something" goes like this: “You’re a vegetable/ still they hate you/ you’re just a buffet / you’re just a vegetable / they eat off you.”

Emotions In Motion

Is there anything more gruesome than a delighted Karen Hughes? She looks like Patrick Swayze in drag in that Wong Foo movie.
The presidential debate tonight toyed with my emotions. I went into it despairing that it mattered; convinced that Bush would win if he only seemed semi-normal. Then, as the discussion began, my hopes rose. I thought that Kerry had drummed up some new material and that Bush was boring, repetitive, and cranky. To me, it was a total choke on Bush's part. He seems like a man who doesn't want to be running, who resents the personal inconvenience to him. Kerry was more refined, concise and calm than ever. Then came the pundits, saying Bush wiped the floor with Kerry. Ok, it was only Sean Hannity who said that, but CNN's polls have it at 2 points. You know what? If the American people think it was a toss up tonight, then they deserve whatever they get. At least Wonkette made it fun.

I Have Stopped Believing

It's not too late to sign up for the once-in-a-lifetime Rock and Roll cruise with REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey. A lot of things in this world depress me, and this is no exception.

Healing The World

So, maybe it's just the cold medicine, but I am enjoying this first-season Surreal Life marathon on VH1 way too much. My favorite moment: Corey Feldman's comments about his on-air nuptials. Of his decision to have both a Rabbi (star of his own one man show "Religion Out of The Box") and a Christian minister (MC Hammer): "I think it sends a really positive message to the world.

Hay Hollywood, Go Home

I have been trying to get together something to say about last night's debate all day but I have yet to think up anything smart. It was dispiriting to see that Cheney's authoritative, mean-spirited, alpha male routine won him the immediate praise of every TV pundit I saw. I was somewhat heartened to read that Sullivan gave it easily to Edwards, and that when corrected for bias, even the ABC poll had it basically tied. However, there are times like these when I doubt the whole principle of democracy. It seems inevitable that Bush will win on Friday, since all he has to do to win is be more of a guy you'd wanna have a beer with. The only real reason he lost on Thursday was that he was a pouting, impatient, peevish guy instead of our smirking, Hey Buddy in chief. I doubt our process; I felt this way in the primaries too, when it seemed that once Iowa had gone Kerry, so did everyone else. There was no listening to policy or comparing character; it seemed like, once there was a winner, he was the winner, and the momentum was unstoppable. Now I feel, watching the "debates" that Cheney "won" by being a mean, evasive, superior, careerist, and that Bush will "win" by not being as weird as Kerry. I guess democracy means embracing permanent anti-intellectualism as our fundamental mechanism. But maybe I am just feeling outnumbered and surrounded by dummies. A TV show is shooting on my street today in Brooklyn and my landlord has posted a sign on our building which reads, "Hay Hollywood, Go Home."

Uncle McScrooge V. Richie Rich

I know we are all fascinated by the Veep debate tonight. Will Cheney softball? Will we get to see the glint of darkness in his eyes? Will wonderboy's flashy grin and Daddy-was-a-Mill-worker, Norma Rae antics work? This piece in the Washington Post ("the chatty paper") today claims that Cheney is the de facto NSA. I've read before that Condy is less an NSA than a Bush lap dog, viciously guarding her proximity and access, and expending far more energy on her relationship to the man in power than on her job itself. Kinda reminds me of power publicist Chloe Walsh, who somehow managed to parlay her closeness with Jack White into a whole career. Sleaze, pandering and mediocrity always triumph over actual work. Just comtemplate the success of Maxim magazine if you disagree. Bah, humbug!

De Very Same Skippy

We are living in a wonderful time. I don't know if anyone but me is aware of it, but the apotheosis of Western culture is upon us. I am referring, of course, to the new commercial for Skippy Peanut Butter Bars. One marvels at the Darwinistic process which begins with opposable thumbs and ends with CGI Rasta Elephants rapping over dancehall beats. Could anything but the hand of the Divine guide such matters?

The first time I saw the ad, I knew. It was clear what cultural forces were at work. The anti-carb diet mania, which has given us totally redundant 1/2-carb versions of Coke (C2) and Pepsi (Pepsi Edge) must've caused someone at Skippy to scratch his head. Hmmm, he must've thought. Our product is relatively high-protein, relatively low carb. Could be a trendy Atkins-snack, if you ignore the massive amounts of sugar involved. Maybe we could market "to go" tubes of Skippy as a hip, low-carb, snack. And what would be the best way to market this product? What would be the most effective means of communicating that the bar is pure Skippy? No granola, no caramel, no chocolate.

The answer they came up with: CGI Rasta elephants on a set resembling MTV's Spring Break. On an idyllic beach, the Rasta Elephants take the stage. Summer gear and macramed hats are in tow. They rap and dance reassuringly, all to a dancehall beat:

"Skippy, dat wot's in de bar; de very same Skippy dat wot's in de jar.
Bom diddy Bom diddy Skippy, Bom diddy Bom diddy Skippy."

Don't worry; it's de very same.

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter

Last night I went to see a band play. The artist is a nouveau 1970's country act from Seattle called Jesse Sykes. I liked the album a lot, with its spare sound, sort of a mixture of Cat Power's ethereal melodies mixed with Son Volt's catchy fake-country-by-way-of-indie-rock twang. However, the live show was another matter entirely. The show was at Brooklyn's best venue, The Hook, where the artist was put to shame by the vast superiority of everyone in her band, The Sweet Hereafter. It was only the violinist/backup vocalist's lovely, spot-on harmonies that made Jesse's weird Patti Smith caterwauling bearable. Jesse seemed to know about 4 strummable chords, and if that guitar player she snagged from Whiskytown (a band I never liked) didn't write all those songs for her, I will be a monkey's publicist. Oh, wait, I already am. I kid, I kid. Between the repeated false starts, the self-conscious languidity, the endless prattle about how "whisky helps," I was ready to head on home before the show even finished. Jesse is on Barsuk Records, home of the inexplicably huge Death Cab for Cutie. I mean, I like them too, but their next NYC gig is at The Roseland, the 3800 capacity venue where I saw Justin Timberlake and my most beloved band of them all, Oasis. So, one woman's opnion: the disc is pretty good, the show was awful, but hey, every night out can't be a champagne supernova.

The War At Home

I am a happily engaged woman, lucky to be with a very deep, thoughtful, kind, funny man. However, like any couple, we fight. Sometimes our fights are like anyone else's: money, the dog's constant destruction of our property, family, general irritations. But other times we seem to fight about politics, which always surprises me. It's not that we disagree on larger issues, and we both read the same journals and newspapers. More often than not, he seems to chafe at my critique of liberalism. What makes it interesting is that he almost entirely shares my views. But somehow, I sense a fear that I will "go too far." The other night, we clashed while discussing the announcement by Tony Blair that he was seeking a third, but not a fourth, term. Sorry, Terry McAuliffe, despite your pronouncement on John Gibson's show on 9/30, he is not "retiring" because the Bush foreign policy kills all who touch it. In the words of Aersosmith, Dream On. I was saying to my beloved that I think it's a shame to see Blair go, and unfortunate that he seems to be leaving under a cloud of suspicion. My fiancé replied that the suspicion was somewhat deserved, at which point I interjected that I didn't think the famed British intelligence on Iraq had been "sexed up," as was charged. "Yes it was," he insisted, and we were at an impasse. What makes this disagreement interesting is that we had largely read the same pieces about the case; the excruciatingly detailed narrative in The New Yorker, and the website of The Hutton Inquiry itself. Yet somehow, we came to opposite conclusions. From my memory, there were two inquiries, I believe, both of which held the BBC, not 10 Downing, responsible, despite charges that Alastair Campell et al leaned on Kelly. In fact, wasn't the head of BBC, Greg Dykes, removed over the incident? Anyway, that was my understanding. But there are, and always will be, charges and insinuations. I think that what we were really fighting about was my comparatively greater comfort with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the fact that I am pretty much undaunted by the absense of WMD. My fiancé, I know, feels much more conflicted than I, and he finds my strident support for the war to be unfamiliar terrain. We are both life-long Democrats, successors to the Boomers, protesting apartheid in college, memorizing the litany of U.S./C.I.A. crimes. Now we find ourselves just as likely to direct our seemingly endless supply of personal bile towards Michael Moore as towards John Ashcroft. It takes a great deal of personal certainty to let go of pat partisanism. I know that he is right, that in my case, there is a truculence born directly of personal anger at the murder of a friend on 9/11. He, on the other hand, is, by nature, coming from a more considered, careful, thoughtful position. Fortunately, it was only a minor and temporary flare-up; we were quickly reunited (and it felt so good, Peaches and Herb ), when RNC weirdo, and my fiancé's fellow UGA classmate, Ralph Reed, showed up on TV. Hiya, Ralphie Boy. I was regaled by stories of working at the Red and Black, their college paper, and what a reactionary douchebag crank Reed was, even then. All was again well at 116 Berry. I don't know how it is in your family, but nothing unifies us like a new, shared object of contempt.