Hansel contemplates: So what if the The Big Bounce Dere-licked balls?
“Owen Wilson’s comic crime caper ‘The Big Bounce’ bombed with $3.3 million, finishing at No. 12 and averaging just $1,439 in 2,304 cinemas.”— You Got Served wins box office
I guess he really is the minus man.
From The New York Post‘s On The Newsstand column:
“The fab four of the cover of Spin won’t be playing Ed Sullivan anytime soon, or probably any talk show you know.”
From Matador Records’ Interpol Web site:
02/03/03 — The latest
In the wake of appearances on ‘Late Nite With David Letterman’ and ‘Carson Daly Is On Daily’ (ed note: Nils, please fact-check this program name, I don’t want any of those TV booking people blackballing our bands for another 5 years again. I swear I’ll kill myself if that happens), Interpol have another round of US touring scheduled to start in mid February. [ironic ‘ed note,’ theirs.]
From BBC News, Jan. 9, 2004:
“The Darkness‘ jump comes as they begin to promote the album in the US, with an appearance on David Letterman’s chat show on CBS lined up for Friday.”
Actually, more like 15 years ago…
SPY, Nov. 1988…. U.S. News, Feb. 2, 2004
The Boyz In Their Hoodz
Yes, he got a cake. A very, very nice one, too. But what about the prezzies for the Vice Prezie? What do you buy the man who has everything (including a democratic Iraq and a soon-to-be shrunken deficit)? How do you buy a present for a man who has given us all so very much?
We here at low culture agonized for weeks over what to give Vice President Dick Cheney for his birthday today.
It was hard, but we finally figured it out (with a little inspiration from someone who’s full of great ideas). We also got one for his bestest buddy, too!
Happy Birthday, Dick, wherever you are!
Did Eli just say he was on mescaline? “I did indeed. Very much so.”
Our long, cold, Owen Wilson-less winter has finally ended: today, Owen hits the screen with The Big Bounce. Reviews indicate that the film is pretty lame, but everyone speaks highly of Owen, so that’s one reason to see it.
A remake of the 1969 Elmore Leonard-adapted piffle starring Ryan O’Neal, The Big Bounce boasts the sort of checkered parentage that births so many films these days. Directed by George Armitage, who started his career writing Gas-s-s, a druggy dollop of dreck for Roger Corman, but who’s gone on to direct some great, dark comedies like Miami Blues (which he adapted for the screen) and Grosse Pointe Blank, one of the best comedies of the 90s. (Miami Blues and Grosse Pointe Blank are both “daytime noirs”: mostly brightly lit comedies about conflicted, charismatic psychos.)
Big Bounce‘s other daddy is billionaire Hollywood hanger-on Steve Bing, who most recently wrote and produced the “slightly-better-than-a-stick-in-the-eye” comedy Kangaroo Jack, starring a rapping, CGI-‘roo and the fat kid from Stand by Me. As embarrassing as Kangaroo Jack is, Bing’s highest profile, biggest budget production so far has been Elizabeth Hurley‘s bastard child, Damian.
But forget all that: If we’re gonna see Big Bounce, we’re gonna see it for Owen. The Wonderful Wilson boys get a lot of press and love from fans: The ladies love Luke, the freaks sweat Andrew “Futureman”, but everyone’s gotta admit, Owen is the genius of the family.
“Unbelievable Sexy!” Quicktime required
From the warped minds of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim comes the next European reality TV show to be optioned by Mark Burnett. Or maybe not. “Taste your own lips—you be the judge!”
When these guys are famous, you’ll say you linked to them when…
Sidebar: Other Tim & Eric movies.
“Oh my god! You bought me a rap singer!”
Another day, another Post assault on hip hop:
“The Post accompanied Dizzy on a mission to deliver a birthday greeting to Michelle Burkholder, a 26-year-old assistant shoe buyer for Saks.
“‘We always do special things for each other’s birthdays,’ said Stefanie Rogers, who’d hired Dizzy. ‘And this seemed like something totally different.’
“On arriving at Michelle’s office, Dizzy took off his jacket to reveal a huge silver crucifix, then launched into his rap:
“This one goes out to Michelle Burkholder/ Back in Minnesota / Her momma used to scold her/ Now look where you’re at/ You’re a shoe buyer for Saks! . . .
“And you look good Boo/ Sportin’ your Jimmy Choo shoes/ No one can do it quite like you do/ In them 7 jeans/ Struttin’ it up/ Flash a bling-bling/ Start shakin’ your stuff.”
[…]
“‘It was so funny,’ Burkholder said. ‘I kind of knew something was going to happen, but I had no idea it was going to be that.'”
For Diss & Dat (yes, that’s the real headline), by Tom Sykes, The New York Post, Jan. 29, 2004
Buy your own hilarious rapper here: Rap-a-gram. (Available in “Pimp” and “Thug” models, as well!)
“The story, so far, of the Democratic primary is: Don’t believe the hype.”
—John Podhoretz, The Media Lose, The New York Post, Jan. 28, 2004
“Here’s a letter to the New York Post
The worst piece of paper on the east coast
Matter of fact the whole state’s forty cents
in New York City fifty cents elsewhere
It makes no goddamn sense at all
America’s oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit
[…]
Here’s a letter to the New York Post
Ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on
Founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton
That is 190 years continuous of fucked up news”
—Public Enemy, “A Letter to the New York Post
Sidebar: I left out the headline, because I couldn’t decide between the following:
John Podhoretz: House of the Rising Son
John Podhoretz: Sophisticated Bitch
John Podhoretz: You’re Gonna Get Yours
John Podhoretz: Lost at Birth
John Podhoretz: Godd Complexx
John Podhoretz: Public Enemy no. 1
Miller, soon to grace the cover of VICE?
Finally! Tonight’s the night that the soulless pod person formerly known as Dennis Miller premieres with his new CNBC show and I couldn’t be more ambivalent about it. Part of me wants to see if this shaggy dog still has some bite, another part of me wants to see him put-down.
Miller was the ur-eighties hep cat comedian when I was growing up. His intelligent, wildly-associative riffs (or “rants,” as he came to call them) were oases of wit in a televisual landscape dotted with bad prop comics and even worse observational comedians standing in front of the exposed brick walls—firing squad style—of two-drink minimum comedy shitholes across the country.
While I’d like to believe that Miller was once a lefty, I know that’s not true. His politics, like his famously unruly hair, was all over the place. I recently caught Miller on an old episode of Late Night with David Letterman on Trio (which rebroadcasts Letterman’s juvenilia as “Classic Dave” every weeknight at 10PM EST) which disabused me of any fantasy that he was once a liberal. Dressed in a wide-shouldered black and gray checked jacket over a black button down (yes, I Love the Eighties), Miller went on a mini-rant about the Ayatollah Khomeini, replete with stereotypical “Indian” accent. (Hey, old Dennis: Khomeini was from Iran, where they have an entirely different accent you can mock for a cheap laugh.)
But what Miller had back then—despite difficulty pinning-down his exact politics—was an anti-authority attitude, an anger at the elites that dominated the eighties from Reagan to Boesky to Milken. Miller’s pre-9/11 outlook can be charitably described as anti-authoritarian/libertarian, but we all know that that’s changed. (For a better analysis of Miller’s conversion, check out Rick Chandler’s Miller’s Crossing over at The Black Table.)
Since Miller has jumped—swooned, actually—into bed with the G.O.P., he’s morphed into something like Lenny Bruce in reverse. Think about it: where Bruce shredded pieties and tore-down the hypocrisies of the 50s and early 60s, the new and improved Miller defends the status quo, and uses his comedic platform to bolster those in power. Forget speaking truth to power: Miller whispers sweet nothings in power’s ear and even writes jokes to come out its mouth from time to time. The shaggy mutt with the wily look in his eyes and the occasional fangs has become a lapdog, happy to roll over and have his tummy rubbed by the President.
Dennis Miller premieres tonight at 9PM EST on CNBC.
Sidebar: If you’re thinking CNBC is the network day traders watch between killing sprees, you’re wrong. It’s now the home of several comedy shows (intentional and otherwise) hosted by has-beens. Some dead drunk may have once said that there are no second acts in American life, but there are, and they’re on CNBC. How long ’till this guy has his own entertainment and politics show and tosses softballs to his cousin on-air?
From A Man With a Past Best Forgotten Goes to All Lengths to Remember by Dave Kehr:
“The complicated plotting [of The Butterfly Effect] soon spins wildly out of the control of the filmmakers (their last credit: Final Destination 2) and begins producing unintentional laughs, as when Evan wakes up to find himself the newest and prettiest resident of a prison full of predatory neo-Nazi homosexuals.”
Also known as “Dan Savage‘s favorite scene.”