Thought 1: Whatever your feelings on Billy Crystal in blackface, surely we can all agree it was less disturbing than the way his face looked the rest of the telecast. (He’s crossed that fine line between “Botoxed” and “embalmed.”)

Thought 2: Apparently, there was a production meeting when someone said: “We have two Best Song nominees, one of which involves Muppets… meaning we could have a song performed by Muppets, who are beloved by children of all ages. Instead, let’s feature some dumb-ass Cirque du Soleil thing and Billy doing blackface.” [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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Whitney Houston is dead at 48 due to a self-administered overdose of warm, soapy water; to which she was addicted. It is unclear when she set off down this path. Many observers blame her widower, Bobby Brown, saying that before he came along Whitney took showers, ran through the car wash or just re-applied her hairspray. What cannot be denied is that hers was a daily habit involving gallon upon gallon of the substance she clearly felt was so sweet and embracing but wound up taking her precious life at a tender age. There has been some confusion and dissembling. It should be obvious why Big Bath would be interested in diverting attention from their own intoxicating wares and onto the drugs prescribed for Ms Houston by her doctors or perhaps onto those medicinal preparations from her herbalists. These monopolist robber-barons are already in a stink owing to the epidemic of bath-salts snorting among teens. They fear that their decades…. nay, CENTURIES of sloshing murderous tubs and fragrances onto a hapless humanity (at a tidy profit) might finally come to an end. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, drugs & alcohol, ends & odd by Ken Watson
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10. “Billy Crystal’s hosting? What, was Letterman busy?”

9. “For Jack and Jill, I thought Adam Sandler would be nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress.”

8. “The Tree of Life is up for a new award: Most Cryptic.”

7. “Somebody told me the stars of The Artist actually know how to speak!”

6. “George Clooney and Brad Pitt? What category is this, Most Hunky?”

5. “I thought The Iron Lady was such a lame sequel to Iron Man!”

4. “I want to see Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese duke it out!”

3. “This thing is lasting longer than a Kardashian marriage.”

2. “I love the new ‘anatomically correct’ Oscar; it’s so much easier to carry!”

1. “I hear in their next film, Meryl Streep and Glenn Close are going to play each other!”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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My PC was on the fritz for more than a week, so it was hard for me to keep up with all the juicy February headlines. So many blog-worthy things have happened since Super Bowl Sunday: Whitney Houston died, Rick Santorum became a viable candidate for president, and America became obsessed with Jeremy Lin. I just bought a new laptop and I’m back. So what better way to tie all of these things together into one blog, than to give you an outrageous headline like the one above? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, politics & government, sports by Robert O'Hara
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Kudos to the city council and mayor of Los Angeles, California for exhibiting rare leadership by mandating that pornographic film actors wear condoms when they make their films within the LA city limits.

With just a few strokes of his pen, the mayor has saved literally dozens of lives, probably. Actually, it’s probably millions of lives, because now not only will the performers in pornographic films be completely protected from uncovered penises, but the people who watch pornographic films will be reminded of how great condoms are, and they will emulate their pornographic film performer heroes and put them on when they engage in their own coitus. [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, movies by Ricky Sprague
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I have a tendency to find songs that I get addicted to–listening to on repeat incessantly, walking around with its lyrics in my head all day. One of the most recent examples of this has been Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” (linked below for your convenience.)

As this song keeps finding its way back on my playlist, I started to wonder what it was that made me love the song, and even the video, so much. [Read more →]

Tags: music by Sara W. Moreno
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10. It’s Larry the Cable Guy’s first dramatic turn

9. Your movie was the basis for the television show “Working It”

8. It stars either Smurfs, gnomes, or chipmunks

7. The opening and the closing credits meet in the middle

6. The jury at Cannes recommended the death penalty

5. It’s called Incredibly Quiet and Extremely Far Away

4. During its in-flight run, people kept walking out

3. Like The Artist, it’s a silent film, but only due to a technical error

2. Instead of Meryl Streep, it stars Merle Haggard

1. In his review, Roger Ebert said he wished he had more than two thumbs to put down
 
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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Gore Vidal is not the chronicler but the fictionalizer of American history. The twin capitals of the nation warranted titles of their own, in his estimation. The one was Washington DC. The other was Hollywood. I ascribe not even the tarnished Golden State as the residence of Hollywood. Instead this bucolic appellation that once meant a modest agricultural hamlet now describes an ethereal thoughtscape that hovers above and beyond terrestrial boundaries. Hollywood rests on a state of mind, not a mere State of the Union as the existence of Bollywood and other imitators attests. It is a factory town and it’s one produce is Dreams. Tony Montana was well advised. “Don’t get high on your own supply.” Mark Wahlberg should have listened. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, terror & war by Ken Watson
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Over at Bleeding Cool, someone called Darin Wagner thinks he has hit upon the primary reason that comic book sales have been steadily declining. And as it turns out, he has actually hit upon the primary reason that comic book sales have been steadily declining, and he stumbles into it in the second paragraph of his essay:

You pick up a superhero comic book featuring a childhood favorite of yours, hoping to reignite some of that magic you felt way back when and you see that the opening sequence in the comic deals with an oil rig disaster. You immediately and disappointingly know what’s going to be said, either by your childhood favorite or by some other character given credibility within the story. You turn the page, and sure enough, your childhood favorite grumbles about his/her country’s dependency on oil or how inherently dangerous oil drilling is to the environment and how it’s not worth it or simply mutters to him-or-herself briefly about the evils of corporate America. That’s when you put the comic back on the shelf and your local retailer loses a sale. (Sound familiar? Brightest Day #5 contained a similar scenario featuring Aquaman.)

Mr. Wagner claims that it’s “liberalism” that is — or, per the title of his piece, “may be” — hurting comic book sales. He claims that it’s Aquaman’s grumbling about oil drilling and the dangers of said practice that represents the “liberalism” that’s turning off readers. But it isn’t that. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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I first encountered Rammstein in an almost empty cinema on Glasgow’s Buchanan Street, during an afternoon matinee of the largely unloved David Lynch movie Lost Highway. Balthazar Getty had just broken into a house, a porno starring his lover was unfolding on a giant screen, and something was about to go very wrong — a point underscored on the soundtrack by sinister chanting, tolling church bells and an impossibly low German voice muttering words I didn’t understand. It was ominous, bombastic, absurd, utterly hilarious- and yet also thrilling: [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, music by Daniel Kalder
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10. You’re a perfect 36: 12, 12, and 12

9. The judges make note of a suspicious bulge under your bathing suit

8. You can’t stop belching

7. Your evening gown is made out of pork rinds

6. You claim to be from East Virginia

5. During the interview portion, you say that the man you most admire is Satan

4. You spent all your preparation time polishing your tooth

3. The only thing you’ve ever won before is an Abe Vigoda Lookalike Contest

2. Your talent is standing erect

1. Instead of using adhesive spray to keep your swimsuit from riding up, you use duct tape
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. So You Think You Can Wassail

9. I Saw Uncle Charlie Kissing Santa Claus

8. The Littlest Angel: You’re Gonna Do What With That Christmas Tree?!

7. When Elves Attack

6. How the Grinch Got Green Genital Warts

5. Sheep in Heavenly Fleece

4. America’s Funniest Home Videos Nutcracker

3. Frosty the Hypothermia Victim

2. It’s a Wonderful Life for the One Percent

1. The Black Friday Special: Assault & Pepper Spray
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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I generally hate Christmas music. Happy, happy, joy, joy — elves, lollypops and sugarplums. I am looking for a Bluegrass or Rock version of the Messiah. A goth or punk version would be fun too.

Not that there aren’t some great Christmas songs. A lot of them are in Latin or German, and reflect emotions other than “oh boy, oh boy, this is gonna be great!” They reflect a sense of yearning, hope and melancholy. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Mike Farrell
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For me, like most people, memory is intricately intertwined with music. Another Brick in the Wall pt 2 was a hit the year I started school, and so the song always resurrects those early experiences of classroom tedium. Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus,playing on the ferry that brought me from England to Holland in 1986, summons textures of my first trip abroad from the sinkhole of amnesia; while Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity is forever fused with a 6am walk I took around Amsterdam ‘s Schipol airport. Endlessly and subjectively I can listen to a track and landscapes, people, places and moods return.

What is the mechanism behind this? I don’t care. I note only that the links in the chain of music and memory are almost always forged accidentally- standing in a shop, watching TV, sitting in a café. When I was travelling in Central Asia a few years ago however I decided to conduct an experiment- I would intentionally fuse some music with the landscape to use as an aid to memory later. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, music, travel & foreign lands by Daniel Kalder
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My friend Will Corwin is a sculptor and painter. These pursuits have taken him places ranging from Germany to China, so it was a thrill when he invited me to join him in an exhibition at the most exotic location of all: Queens. (In fairness, it is where Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall specifically elected to go in Coming to America.) I accepted his offer to participate in a show at the Queens College Art Center and then set about creating some art. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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10. The Home Neutering Kit

9. Miss Piggy’s Big Bag O’ Pork

8. Gasp! – The Dry Cleaner Bag Game

7. Mr. Wizard’s Acid Factory

6. Fontanelle Lawn Darts

5. Hello Kitty Tiki Torches

4. Pin the Tail On the Family Dog

3. Mattel’s Bathtub Surge Protector

2. Baby’s First Nail Gun

1. Easy Bake Sushi
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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10. Law & Order 2: Electric Boogaloo

9. How I Met Your Accountant

8. Mad Cows

7. The Quantum Field Theory

6. So You Think You Can Play the Accordion

5. Grey’s Biochemistry

4. America’s Funniest Voicemails

3. CSI: Bayonne

2. Extreme Makeover: Prison Edition

1. Dancing with the Has-Beens
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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On Sunday, I was leafing through People when I spotted somebody I used to work with in the gossip pages. Apparently she’s dating a movie star and they are about to get married.

Wow.

The fact that she was marrying a movie star didn’t shock me so much (her sister is a well-known actress) but rather that somebody I knew had made it into the pages of a tabloid. A law of nature had been violated: celebrity magazines should contain pictures of people I don’t know, like Angelina Jolie, or Jennifer Aniston, or Michael Jackson’s (ex) doctor. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, movies, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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10. Homo for the Holidays

9. Makin’ Gravy

8. Deep Turkey

7. Pull My Wishbone!

6. Debbie Does Plymouth

5. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Gay Pride Parade

4. Butter Balls

3. Do You Want A Breast Or A Thigh?

2. Poke-ahontas

1. Go Ahead and Stuff It!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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Dear Executives of Film,

The other day,  I was at the movies when a PSA flashed on the screen before the previews.  It was a plea from theater owners who are doubtlessly lamenting the move of their audience from the movie theater to their own living room thanks to game changers like Netflix and OnDemand. The PSA was actually pretty effective- there is something huge and remarkably profound that gets loss in the move from big screen to small screen. But I was shaking my head because it seems that you are all still missing the point regarding why we’ve, largely, stepped away from the movies. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, movies by Judi Cutrone
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