When talking points collide

As German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met with President Bush at the White House today (both men presumably enduring the event with forced smiles and pseudo-affable buddy posturing), Number 43 let fly with a puzzling new iteration of one of his trademarked "Bushisms" as the two leaders discussed that whole war/crisis thing going on in the Middle East -- specifically, the potential for democracy to flourish in the region.

"Bush and Schroeder also talked about the Middle East, with Bush stressing the need to put democratic institutions in place 'that survive the whims of men and women.'

He didn't offer specifics about what that meant, but repeated his belief that democracy and freedom can help stem terrorism."

At the tail end, there, the AP's Jennifer Loven was thoughtful enough to remind readers of the confusing tenor of the President's remarks, but, in true objective journalistic fashion, neglected to take the opportunity to provide the most likely interpretation: his remarkable ability to stay on message all week long!

Of course, Bush seemed to have forgotten which event this was, and that he had already proposed his "marriage as a union of a man and woman" constitutional amendment earlier in the week, and that today's particular remarks should have instead featured the President making the usual hyperbolic proclamations about making the world safe again.

Presumably, even, for homos, though we can forgive Bush for mixing up his discussions of conservative minority-as-majority regimes.

Slipped Right Through His Fingers

Mike Tyson, London, July 21, 1989, Courtesy: The Ring Magazine. (From Boxer)

"Bankrupt boxer Mike Tyson is financially down for the count, saying things have gotten so bad that he's struggling just to put food on the table."
BROKE TYSON: I'LL FIGHT FOR FOOD, by Adam Miller, The New York Post, Feb. 27, 2004

Whenever I read about Mike Tyson's travails—rape convictions, ear-biting, arguments with reporters, acrimonious divorces, fist-fights in a Brooklyn hotel, facial tattoos, bankruptcy—I always think of the scene in Barbara Kopple's phenomenal, empathic 1993 documentary Fallen Champ in which Tyson, age 15, has a breakdown between bouts at the 1982 National Junior Olympics in Colorado and sobs to his trainer Teddy Atlas:

"It’s all right now… I’m Mike Tyson… everybody likes me, yes, everybody likes me… I’ve come a long way, I’m a fighter now, I’m Mike Tyson."

Just beneath the tabloid spectacle of Tyson's public decline is a very real tragedy. Unfortunately, Tyson is such an unsympathetic figure that it's hard to feel bad for the guy. Sadly, his story's gonna get a lot worse before it ends.

I disliked Big Fish, too, but I wouldn't call it 'crud' (Or 'Enthralling,' actually)

"Billy Crudup, who starred in Big Fish, has managed to make crud enthralling."

Unabashed Stars Break the Shackles of the Name Game, by Virginia (insert your own lame joke about my last name) Heffernan, The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2004.

Absolutely Our Last Passion-Related Post (Today)

The early reviews are in:

'Jews Killed Jesus' Sign Causing Controversy: Pastor Refuses To Remove Or Change Saying On Outdoor Marquee, ABC News, Denver

[Thanks, Krusty!]

We hates the U.N....NO! We loves the U.N.!

from Reuters: Britain, Russia sweat as secret operations exposed

The British government was rocked by allegations by a former cabinet minister that it spied on United Nations chief Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq war last year.

"Huzzah," He Lied

How do you know a publicist is lying? His lips are moving.

Check out this hilariously deluded comment from Mel Gibson's PR man, Alan Nierob (whom we're told is "himself the child of Holocaust survivors"), in Sharon Waxman's New Film May Harm Gibson's Career (The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2004):

"I think Hollywood appreciates good art and will embrace the talent of a filmmaker."

C'mon, Alan! Even you can't believe that.

Lewis Black Can't Lose (Actually, he has. And he's still pissed.)

If you thought Lewis Black was just that overly-caffeinated, disheveled comedian who does Back in Black on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, swing on by The LA Weekly to learn about his early career as a playwright. (In Love, Pissed, by David Shulman).

Like any writer, Black's got a little creation myth about the moment he was first prompted to put pen to paper. Like his comedy, it's half bitter, half funny as hell:

“I’d been living with an actress... And she went over and did a major motion picture in England. We’d been together three years, and now we were in Skid Mode. So she goes over there [England], and I don’t hear from her until she calls me up and tells me she’s met the man she’s going to marry. And I’m like, Are you out of your fucking mind? Because this is a girl without a mainstream romantic bone in her body. Less than a year later, she’s marrying the guy. All my friends went to the wedding. And I didn’t... I really loved her family. We got along really well, and I heard that all the family talked about at the wedding was me, and how they couldn’t believe she was marrying this other guy. So all I did was go, Wow — what if I had shown up? And that was really what the play became about.”

His lose is the audience's gain, I guess.

Black's show, One Slight Hitch, is playing now at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank.

S-I-T-C-O-M Men

Method Man and Redman: The New Face of FOX?

The mainstreaming of Method Man and Redman continues with the announcement that the rappers will star in a new sitcom for FOX. (Fox Parties with Boyz N' the Gated Hood, Hollywood Reporter, Cynthia Littleton and Nellie Andreeva).

Setting aside for the moment the awful, dated headline, here's the story of the show's premise:

The untitled Method Man/Redman project, now in production in New Jersey, is one of the heat-seekers on Fox's comedy development slate this year... The project, described as a kind of edgier take on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme, was the brainchild of Method Man, the Wu-Tang Clan member who figured that his idea for a TV series couldn't be any worse than a lot of the stuff he has seen in primetime in recent years.

I'll withhold my judgment until I see it, mostly because Method Man is so fucking awesome. I still listen to Tical all the time and whenever I hear Meph's growling, blunt-smoking frogman voice on a Wu-Tang album or side project (his verse on Raekwon's "Ice Cream" is a classic), I marvel at just what an amazing MC he is.

Redman's pretty great, too: Dare Iz A Darkside is the rare CD that holds up ten years after its release. And Redman's sense of humor is evident in some of his more playful rhymes.

I've never seen How High, but I know from their videos and their short-lived Right Guard commercials that Method Man and Redman have great comic chemistry. (Maybe not the best taste in material, as a series of deodorant commercials suggests, but hey, they've got kids and college is expensive.)

It's also interesting to see how the mainstream uses—and is used—by edgy rappers. Snoop Dogg set the template for transforming a frightening rap persona into a cuddly pose. (Even your mom says "Fo' Shizzle" nowadays.) Ice Cube is following suit with Barbershop and Barbershop 2: Back in Business. By this time next year, Method Man and Redman may be trading small talk with Regis and Kelly: time will only tell.

It'll be interesting to see how this show is positioned by FOX. Can they make it into another Bernie Mac Show or will they drop the ball like they did with Cedric the Entertainer?

[via TV Tattle]

Kael, Kael, Spin, Spin

Pauline Kael and Shane Black: The Beautiful and the Damned

Shane Black, the poster boy for overpaid Hollywood hacks, is set to write and direct his first film for producer Joel Silver. According to Done Deal, the specifics are as follows:
Title: Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang
Log line: A thief posing as an actor teams up with a tough-guy private eye and a frustrated actress. The three stumble upon a murder.
Writer: Shane Black
Agent: David Greenblatt at the Endeavor Agency
Buyer: Warner Bros. Pictures
Price: n/a
Genre: Action Comedy
Logged: 2/25/04
More: Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures will produce. Shane Black will make his feature directing debut. Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan will star.

Sounds like another classic Black film, fitting somewhere between The Last Boy Scout (a tough-guy private eye and a frustrated ex-quarterback try to solve a murder) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (a tough-broad former secret agent turned amnesiac mom and a frustrated detective try to solve the mystery of her past).

What bothers me is the title, which is boosted Pauline Kael's second book of movie reviews. Kael explained her title this way:

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.

One of Hollywood's highest paid, most notoriously mediocre screenwriters lifting a title from the most respected film critic of all time? Not cool. Not even a little ironic.

Also, done, done, done, and done before.

Since she was smarter than I'll ever be, I'll give Pauline the last word, with this sideswipe at Black and Silver's Lethal Weapon, by way of complimenting Jonathan Demme:

"Sometimes movies which you would think would be big box-office successes just don't attract the wide audiences, either because of the way they're promoted or because the audience is just drawn to Terminator and Lethal Weapon and doesn't relate to the nuances of something like Married to the Mob or The Fabulous Baker Boys."

Confidential to Dennis Miller: "Paki" is a racial slur

Pre-commercial bumper on Dennis Miller, CNBC, Feb. 25, 2004.*

"'Paki' is an extreme racial slur used to refer to people of South Asian origin. It is a South Asian equivalent of the term 'Jap' or the 'N word.' President Bush apologized after using the word last year at a press conference."
(From, an open letter from the Asian American Journalists Association, March 4, 2003)

"Paki" is listed in The Racial Slur Database

To do: Send email to Dennis Miller to express your disapproval of racial slurs on television.

*Weird angle and TV screen-within-screen is the style of the bumper, not the screen shot

Man on the Cross Street (Passion Survey #1)

We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ at the Jerusalem Multiplex 16 to get their opinions on this controversial film.

	"I found it hard to watch... for obvious reasons. What did I ever do to Mel Gibson?"
	"Um, it didn't end that way. I came back, you know."
	"Me? I don't really remember much of the film. I tried to buy a diet Coke before it started, and they were all charging $4.50, and I'm all, 'Fuck that!' and got this free cup of tap water instead, which I immediately turned into el vino and promptly got wasted off my ass, sitting in the back of the theater...Jerusalem in the hoooouuuuuse!"
	"The third act...was excruciating. It was painful to watch, outright unbearable."
	"I liked the first half hour. The rest reminded me of stuff I'd rather forget."
	"I hate to quibble since he got so much right. But Roman Soldier #6 wasn't such a jerk to me. He actually gave me a stick of gum, which was nice."
	"Pshaw! Like I ever knew a girl as hot as Monica Bellucci!"
	"I didn't get to see the film...they had a 'No Pets' policy in the theater. They wanted me to sacrifice my lamb's movie going experience, and I said, 'No!...C'mon, he's not so baaaaaaaaaaaad.' Ha! Get it? I make jokes sometimes, you know."

Mensch on the Street (Passion Survey #2)

We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ in Brooklyn to get their opinions on this controversial film.

	"I didn't see it. I was here to see Welcome to Mooseport, which, incidentally, is a little anti-Semitic. But I still love Raymond!"
	"If I could say just one thing to Mr. Gibson, it would be 'Can you read my comedy script about a Hasidic Jewish crime fighter?' What? Someone already made that movie? Well, there goes my last six months."
	"I'm shocked. Disgusted. This place charges $4.50 for a small Diet Coke. I brought my four young children and it cost me $85 dollars. Very offensive. Very."
	"You'd think with everyone in Hollywood studying the Kabbalah, they'd be a little more sensitive. Mel should spend more time with Madonna and Paris Hilton: he might learn some wisdom and compassion. Ha! I'm joking. Some of us have senses of humor, you know."
	"Well, it was a lot less offensive to the Jews than the last Woody Allen film. Anything Else? I called it 'From Hunger'."
	"Yes, it was extremely anti-Semitic. But what movie is perfect, right?"
	"Critics need to lay off Mel Gibson. This was just one man's opinion. One man with $25 million to spend on production and another $25 million for promotions to tell it. Like I said, just one man and his opinion."
	"Loved it. Loved, loved, loved it! My name is Self-Hater I. Jewman, by the way."

Talking Pod's Memo

Johnny on the Spot: 9 PM, via satellite... 11PM, live and in the flesh

Right wing relaxed fit Beltway pundit, John Podhoretz made a comedians-turned-pundits bank shot by appearing on Dennis Miller's eponymous CNBC show and Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night. He managed to trade quips with both men without breaking a sweat or changing his flattering grey suit with matching blue shirt and yellow tie (in honor of the troops?).

What he didn't manage to do, however, was come up with enough material for both shows. While promoting his new book Bush Country (the title of which is a deliciously naughty mnemonic tautology), he dusted off a few choice chestnuts. Very few.

From, Dennis Miller, 9PM EST, Feb. 24, 2004:

Dennis Miller: Gimme three or four the most crazy liberal ideas about our President.

John Podhoretz: Well, I think I got eight of them in the book. One of them, of course, is that he's an idiot—which I think that anyone who believes by now is an idiot because he keeps de-pantsing people who underestimate him... The other is that he's a puppet of his dad, uh, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, the neo-conservatives—no one can decide who he's a puppet of because he's not a puppet, he's his own man... Liberals think that he's a religious fanatic... [They] say he's a cowboy... These are some of ways he's mischaracterized, misrepresented.

From, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 11PM EST, Feb. 24, 2004:

John Podhoretz: I do believe that a lot of people who criticize the President do criticize him in a reckless and irresponsible and unfair fashion. As you mentioned, I go through the book, eight, what I call 'Crazy Liberal Ideas About Bush.' One that's he's a moron, one that he's a puppet, one that he's a religious fanatic, one that he's like Hitler, and so on...

Repeat it one more time, and Beetlejuice will appear!

They Found It At the Movies

Esquire, August 1970

"In his prerelease screenings, Mr. Gibson invited mostly conservative evangelical clergy. They in turn responded by reserving huge blocks of movie tickets for their congregations. When the film opens today, expect theaters around the country to be turned into temporary churches."
- Kenneth L. Woodward, Do You Recognize This Jesus?, The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2004

Other Recently Proposed Constitutional Amendments

Dogs Constitutionally- recognized as better than cats

No more special treatment for Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate

Paul made the Constitutionally- recognized best Beatle

Infield Fly Rule unilaterally banned

Lefties to be forced to become righties, or be burned at the stake

Discussions about the weather in elevators no longer protected by First Amendment

Super intelligent robots, should they be invented, never to be endowed with human emotions under penalty of being unplugged

About Face

[Thanks, Dave, who waited two weeks for this joke.]

Co-opting the Friedman

The pissing contest between FOX 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman and The New York Times' Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has spilled over into Cynthia Cotts' Press Clips column in this week's Village Voice.

To be honest, Friedman's doing most of the pissing, complaining that Waxman is boosting his exclusives without attribution. He complained to Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, who decided that Waxman had done nothing wrong.

Buried at the bottom of Cotts' story is this nugget:

Sometimes Friedman gets it right. But anyone who starts crowing about inaccurate and unethical reporting will eventually have the spotlight turned on himself. Other scribes express varying degrees of affection and pity for Friedman. One calls him "marginal, with delusions of grandeur"; another says he wants "to be respected."
[...]
The worst rap on Friedman is that he shills for Miramax, a charge he denies. He edited an Oscar supplement for Talk magazine in 2000, and Miramax backed the 2003 r&b documentary Only the Strong Survive, which Friedman co-produced. Colleagues say his column often repeats Miramax spin.

Reminds me of this passage from Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures:

"The most notorious example [of Harvey Weinstein manipulating the press] is Roger Friedman, who often uses his Internet gossip column, 411, to tout (and very occasionally knock) Miramax films. Says [former Miramax publicist Dennis] Higgins, 'There's no one in the pocket like Roger. It's almost, "Whaddya want him to write?" We [even] got him to say The Shipping News is great.'" (p. 410)

Perhaps fittingly, Waxman writes today about factual inaccuracies in Capturing the Friedmans.

Amending prior amendments (Amended)

As expected, President Bush (decked out in full white-male, closed-minded power-broking asshole regalia) came out in support of a constitutional amendment today which would aim to specifically ban same-sex marriages, ostensibly in an attempt to "prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever" after the occurrence of events in California, Massachusetts and New Mexico which have indicated that "a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization."

That fundamental institution, of course, is the ability of one man and one woman to marry. Historians familiar with the establishment of religion, the writing of the Magna Carta, the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, and the onset of the American Revolution know this firsthand: these events were each based primarily upon the ability of men and women to wed, and were in no way grounded upon issues of individuality or self-respect or self-governance or human and civil rights. Right? Oh, I'm sorry, I was reading from the rightwing playbook there for a moment.

Back to that most fundamental of institutions, marriage...

Bush went on to explain, "Our government should respect every person and protect the institution of marriage. There is not a contradiction between these responsibilities."

Hmmm...let's take a look at the current Bill of Rights and the other extant amendments to the current United States Constitution. I think I see some of these potential "contradictions," to say the least, despite President Bush's reassuring words to the contrary...

Article IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Article X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Article XIV. Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

If, in some burst of mass hysteria and irrationality on the part of our legislative body, this proposed 28th Amendment is passed, we can hopefully look forward to the eventual and subsequent passage of Article XXIX, which, in the tradition of Article XXI, would state, "Section 1. The twenty-eighth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

At which point the U.S. Constitution will be nothing more than a cheapened document, comprised of little more than the expression of a series of conflicting values, borne of an "issues of the moment" ideology.

RELATED: Immigrating To Canada - Resources For Moving To Canada

Doll (Private) Parts

"With Karen's face obscured, it became hard to tell whether she was real or not."

Disclaimer: The link to this story is absolutely not safe for work! (Especially if you work at a toy store.)

Grant Stoddard, Nerve's jolly human guinea pig, makes love to a Real Doll in his "I Did it For Science" column month.

The photos are way disturbing, especially the fact that the doll looks so much like Britney Spears.

Can't they make a doll whose eyes close when it's horizontal, like those dolls kids play with?

Dirty Dancing: Rewrites

A riddle for the ages: How many screenwriters does it take to make a hit?

Apparently eight. Coming this Friday, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, written by:

1. Victoria Arch
2. Ronald Bass (writer of every movie, ever; cf. Tad Friend's "The Two-Billion Dollar Man," in Lost in Mongolia)
3. Jonathan Bernstein (former SPIN writer and author)
4. Mark Blackwell (former SPIN editor)
5. Pamela Gray
6. James Greer (former SPIN editor and author)
7. Christina Wayne (writer, Dominique Dunne - An American Tragedy: The E! True Hollywood Story)
8. Boaz Yakin (once promising writer/director of Fresh, more recently, director of Uptown Girls)

Can't you just see them all in one big room, laptops networked together, ideas flying left and right? Teamwork: it's a beautiful thing.

Of course, all of them combined couldn't come up with a line as quotable as "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!"

Collect 'Em All!

The New York Post's The Passion of The Christ Collector's Edition Covers:

Related: Coming soon, Mad Max: Fury Road, to be produced by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions and released by 20th Century Fox.

Brett Ratner, Character Witness

Brett Ratner talking about Michael Jackson's underage accuser:

"[The boy] would sit in my director's chair. When I told him to get up, he'd tell me to go to hell... He used to tell me, 'Brett, I don't like the last shot' while he was watching us make the movie. He's telling me how to make my movie! He's more street smart than I was at that age. If someone tried to fondle him, he'd punch them in the face. He's an adult. I think the jury will see that." (From Roger Friedman's FOX 411 column, Feb. 24, 2004)

So the kid thought Ratner couldn't make a movie? He's obviously a child prodigy. From this point forth, I believe everything he has to say.

There are two things wrong with this picture

ANSWER KEY:

1. The bus in the center, presumably destroyed by a suicide bomber, much like yesterday's blast which killed 8 people and injured scores more.

2. The wall itself, a 24-foot-high concrete monstrosity subject to review by an international tribunal at the Hague today to debate the "legality" of the wall, a gargantuan construction which certainly plays no part in dehumanizing Palestinians, but instead provides security for Israelis and prevents suicide bomber attacks (See answer key item #1, step, and repeat).

Drive, He Spanked

Driver nabbed while watching porn movie

ALBANY, N.Y., Feb 20 (Reuters) — Andre Gainey found out the hard way that in the state of New York it's illegal to drive while watching porn.

Police said the 35-year old man from Clifton Park, New York, was watching a adult movie called "Chocolate Foam" on Tuesday night while driving his Mercedes Benz in the town of Schenectady when he was spotted by an officer at a stop light...

[Courtesy of the brilliant Javier, who very rightly wondered why we needed to know the video's title.]

"Why Are You So Awesome?"

Chris Farley and Martin Scorsese

Remember the old SNL skit where Chris Farley (R.I.P.) had his own talk show? If Chris had had a better vocabulary, it might've been a lot like this: The Business: Kevin Smith interviews Tom Cruise. (Arena, Feb. 2004)

[via GreenCine Daily]

Weather Report from Hell: Temperatures dipping below 0°

Holy fucking shit: Noam Chomsky wrote an Op-Ed in today's New York Times: A Wall as a Weapon.

Related: Pigs Fly; Lion Lays Down with Lamb.

Another slow news week

"Since we know you're wondering, let the record show that every weirdly combed follicle you see is his. Trump swoops up his bangs to prove it. "I don't say my hair is my greatest strength in the world, but it's not terrible," he says, though perhaps it would look better if someone other than his girlfriend cut it," The World According to Trump, by Keith Naughton and Marc Peyser, Newsweek, Feb. 23, 2004

Related: "The numbers are stark and staggering. In the past three years, 232,400 jobs have been lost in the city. Every employment category except health care and teaching and educational services has taken a brutal hit... And the jobs could be gone forever," Where Have All The Jobs Gone?, by William Sherman, New York Daily News, Feb. 23, 2004.

Suggested themes to avoid at NYC's 2004 Republican National Convention

Actual waste products

As Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove, et al prepare for this fall's upcoming Republican National Convention in Manhattan, we thought it wise to advise the party's pollsters to not have President Bush's chief economist N. Gregory Mankiw give one of his customarily rousing speeches about economic populism, which, in the past, have gone something like this:

Outsourcing jobs overseas is "probably a plus for the economy in the long run...outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

Perhaps Gillespie and Rove might consider having Pennsylvania State Legislator Frank LaGrotta speak:

"I wonder if George Bush believes this. I doubt it, I tell myself. George Bush is a 'compassionate conservative.'

Compassion: A feeling of empathy, concern, care...

Outsourcing: Treats working Americans like waste products of a Robin-Hood-in-reverse strategy to rob from the poor and give to the rich."

OK, scratch LaGrotta, too. Better to avoid the topic entirely and stick to "safe" themes, like recalling how close Madison Square Garden is to Ground Zero.

Uh-oh. Four more years! Four more years!

From the February 22, 2004 Washington Post:

Edwards, Kerry Were Barely Solvent Last Month

New campaign finance reports show that the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination were barely solvent at the end of January heading into a prospective $50 million-plus ad blitz by President Bush.

Bush ended January with $104.4 million in the bank, nearly 100 times as much as the net balances of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic front-runner, and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), Kerry's leading challenger for the nomination.

"We will never catch up," said Michael Meehan, Kerry's spokesman, noting that so far in February, Kerry had raised $5 million.

We've Met Before, Right? You looked different then.

"'The Zippies Are Here,' declared the Indian weekly magazine Outlook. Zippies are this huge cohort of Indian youth who are the first to come of age since India shifted away from socialism and dived headfirst into global trade, the information revolution and turning itself into the world's service center." — Thomas L. Friedman, Meet the Zippies, The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2004.

"What we have here is a major player in the premillennial cultural meme pool, and a loose-knit movement of folks who aim to change the world—while having the best time of their lives. Cyber-crusties, techno-hippies, post-ravers—the British media have tried pinning various compound names to its members... But one name stands out, maybe because it was designed to. And for the moment it's sticking: zippies. It stands for Zen-inspired professional pagans..." — Zippies!, by Jules Marshall, Wired, May 1994.

Related: Zippy the Pinhead

Spot Bush, R.I.P.

A Dog's Life Remembered: Spot Is Dead At Age 14

The big difference between foreign and American films

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)... The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003)

Jean Rouch, 1918-2004

Jean Rouch, an Ethnologist and Filmmaker, Dies at 86, by Alan Riding, The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2004:

"Jean Rouch, a French explorer, ethnologist and film director who played a significant role in forging the cinŽma-vŽritŽ style, died on Wednesday night in a car crash in the west central African nation of Niger, the French Embassy there said. He was 86.

"Mr. Rouch (pronounced roosh) was attending a film festival in Niger, where he first worked as a civil engineer more than 60 years ago. Reuters reported from Niamey, the Niger capital, that Mr. Rouch's wife, Jocylene Lamothe, the Niger filmmaker Moustapha Alassane and a Niger actor, DamourŽ Zika, were also injured in the accident."

I still remember how uncomfortable I felt watching Les Maîtres fous (The Mad Masters, 1955) in college. The images of Hauka priests undergoing spirit possession were terrifying but also sort of funny and strange. The film provoked a heated discussion: Was it racist? Was it anti-Colonialist?

The participants in the ritual were imitating—parodying, actually—the personalities of their colonial occupiers. According to Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction, "By day the cultists are dockers and cattle herders, but at the ritual, one becomes an army captain, another the governor, a third an elegant French lady. Rouch's doctoral thesis argued that in parodying their rulers, the Hauka release their feelings of imperialist oppression. 'The violent play,' the film's commentary warns, is only the reflection of our civilization.'"

This is very different from most depictions of Africa during that era in documentaries like Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi's Africa Addio (Goodbye, Africa, 1966), which I wrote about last year. Jacopetti and Prosperi used shock and terror to frame Africans: their sympathies are clearly not with their subjects or Africa.

Rouch was different. As Daniel Pinchbeck (Out of Africa, Art Forum International, Oct. 2000) writes:

"Les Maîtres fous has been called the greatest anticolonialist movie ever made, yet when Rouch first showed a silent version of it in Paris, Griaule, among others, asked that he destroy it. They feared the film would confirm every stereotype held by Westerners about 'savages.' In response to their criticisms, Rouch recorded a voice-over narration that adds humor and humanity to the spectacle. To this day, fearing misunderstandings, he does not allow the film to be shown to the general public unless he is in attendance. Perhaps because of such fears, his works are largely unavailable on videotape."

(A slightly more contemporary American analog would be Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning (1990) in which gay African American and Latino men perform in voguing competitions by vamping down the runway parodying the businessmen and rich people the world will never let them be.)

Rouch is one of those influential filmmakers who's slipped through the cracks. His films—particularly Moi un noir (Me, a Black Man, 1959)—influenced the French New Wave and the cinŽma vŽritŽ movements. Unfortunately, his work is hard to come by outside of academic conferences, but perhaps they will find their way to DVD in the future.

Also worth seeing is Manthia Diawara's Rouch in Reverse, which takes on the filmmaker's work from an African's standpoint.

They're so cute when they're little

I know what you're thinking: How will you live without Sex and the City?

Better, probably. And with more laughs, too. But for those of you who can't get enough of SaTC and want more than the easy to swallow (har har) half-hour doses you get on cable, you can start waiting on line now for the big screen version. (As if each episode didn't already feel two hours long.)

In the meantime, print out these photos and place them in your wallet if you love the show so much.

Sarah Jessica Parker on Square Pegs

Cynthia Nixon in Little Darlings

Kim Cattrall in Porky's

Not Pictured: Kristin Davis, who was born fully-grown.

Pink: Road Warrior

Pink kicks off her European tour... Wez kicks ass in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Lords of the Bling

I'm just as surprised as you are that one of the most incisive critiques of hip hop capitalism would come from MAD Magazine, but it's a crazy world, right?

On newsstands this month, The Lords of the Bling movie poster. I was sad that there wasn't room for Farnsworth Bentley as Samwise Gamgee ("Mr. Diddy, look out for that giant spider!"), but it's pretty perfect as it is.

Related: Black Book has Jay-Z on the cover of it's special "Bourgeois" issue, also out this month. (Coincidentally, Hova's upcoming MTV books/Pocket Books memoir is also titled Black Book.)

Slow News Week

2004 is shaping up to be a funny year

David Gest and Diana Ross may marry - reports

In related news: Writing Staff of Saturday Night Live Experiences Collective Spontaneous Orgasms During Idea Session

UPDATE: ROSS: I'M NOT GEST'S FIANCÉE, New York Post, Feb. 20, 2004. Sad.

A Billion Points of Light

As seen in The New York Times: Billionaires for Bush. Finally, a charity I can support without feeling guilty.

[via Wonkette]

The (Former) Sorcerer's Apprentice's Apprentice

America, you're gonna love the little midget!

Michael Eisner's month just got a little worse, but every bad comedy writers' has just gotten better: Jeffrey Katzenberg may star in a Los Angeles-based version of The Apprentice for CBS.

That should bring some seriousness and dignity to DreamWorks after this week's release of Euro Trip.

Two words, Jeff: Project Greenlight.

[via TV Tattle]

Nailing the Marketing Plan

"Replicas of the nails used to hang Jesus on the cross have become the red-hot official merchandise linked to Mel Gibson's controversial new movie,The Passion of the Christ." — 'JESUS' NAIL SALE, by William Neuman, The New York Post, Feb. 19, 2004

Anyone remember the old Bill Hicks routine about how pissed off Jesus would be if He came back and saw all His followers wearing crucifixes? Like He wants to see one of those ever again.

This is probably the worst movie tie-in since the official Exorcist crucifixes or the Elephant Man pillowcases.

[Photo courtesy of The New York Post]

"Oh, Happenstance!"

Newly chatty Billy Corgan tells all about the demise of Smashing
Pumpkins (photo Dec. 2, 2000)

Clint Howard as Balok on Star Trek ("The Corbomite Maneuver," Nov. 1966)

But they did approve the use of "Wrinkled Crinkled Wadded Dollar Bill" for a national chain of strip clubs

Johnny Cash's Family Upset About Use Of His Song

LAUNCH Radio Networks

Johnny Cash (news)'s children are squelching an ad agency's idea to use the Man In Black's hit song, "Ring Of Fire," in a commercial for a hemorrhoid-relief product. A producer with Fort Lauderdale-based company Big Grin Productions approached one of the song's writers, Merle Kilgore, with the idea. According to reports, Kilgore thought the idea was funny, but it was no laughing matter once Cash's children got word. The song was co-written by the late June Carter Cash (news), and both Cash and Carter Cash's children are reportedly angry about the prospect.

Might we suggest?: Bruce Springsteen, "I'm on Fire"; The Beatles, "Fixing A Hole"; Dolly Parton, "I'm Burning"; Blue Öyster Cult, "I'm Burnin' For You"; Andy Dick, "Little Brown Ring"; Donna Summer, "Can't We Just Sit Down"; Van Morrison, "Brown Eyed Girl".

Stupid like a FOX

'Mister Ed' gets a new voice

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter)—Sherman Hemsley of "The Jeffersons" fame is lending his voice to the title character in Fox's updated version of "Mister Ed."

Hemsley joins David Alan Basche, who was previously tapped to play Wilbur Post, and Sherilyn Fenn, tapped as Wilbur's wife.

"Mister Ed" is a remake of the 1960s talking-horse sitcom. This time around, the equine title character has an urban sensibility.

How "urban" can a show about a talking horse be? Is Mr. Ed one of those inner-city horses we see all the time nowadays?

And what the hell happened to Sherilyn Fenn? First she played Pacey's Mrs. Robinson-esque boss/stalker on Dawson's Creek and now she's playing opposite a horse? What did Audrey Horn do to deserve this? I almost regret having had a crush on her when I was 14.

[via TV Tattle]

Irrefutable proof: The New York-Saddam Hussein connection

Best Bets "Bush Doormat"... Mosaic floor pattern of Bush, Sr. at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad

[Best Bet via Wonkette]