Sequels! Adaptations! Ill-advised remakes! It’s gotten so it’s hard to tell what’s a real movie in development and what’s a story in The Onion — and that’s where our quiz comes in.
A nation mourned Wednesday night, as CNN’s Lou Dobbs, an outspoken critic of illegal immigration, announced his retirement from the network. Though it’s still unclear which nation is in mourning, experts have conclusively ruled out Mexico.
According to the Associated Press, the controversial newsman “angered CNN management this summer by pressing questions about President Obama’s birth site after CNN reporters determined there was no issue.”
I myself was skeptical of the president’s birthplace until he drank a domestic beer — Bud Light — at the July 30 “beer summit.” Then I remembered that Anheuser-Busch, the makers of Bud Light, sold their company last year to InBev, a Belgian company. Thanks to CNN’s shortsightedness, we may never find out if InBev is secretly run by Kenyan expatriates.
This isn’t the first time Dobbs has left CNN. He was one of its original anchors back in 1980 when it debuted, overseeing financial news and hosting Moneyline. But in April of ‘99, after being reprimanded by the network’s then-president, Rick Kaplan, for cutting away from a speech by President Bill Clinton on the Columbine shootings, Dobbs announced that he was departing CNN, saying he wanted to focus on a new website he’d founded, Space.com, because in space no one can hear you call your boss an idiot.
(I was working at CNN in a bottom-rung position back in 1999, and I would bet money that Kaplan’s voice, which combined the omnipotence of God with the volume of a T. Rex, can be heard in space. If I remember correctly, he was also nine feet tall.)
“Everyday People” entered the Billboard Top 40 on January 4, 1969. Six weeks later it was the number-one song in the country, holding onto the top spot for an entire month. The lead single from Sly & the Family Stone’s upcoming album Stand!, it espoused “different strokes for different folks,” with the group’s leader, Sly Stone, assuring listeners that “I am no better and neither are you / We are the same whatever we do.”
Later that year the “psychedelic soul” band from San Francisco — featuring black, white, male, and female members — played the Woodstock festival, taking the stage at three in the morning on August 17 with inspirational anthems like “You Can Make It If You Try” and “I Want to Take You Higher,” which quickly moved the predawn crowd out of their sleeping bags and onto their feet.
In hindsight, it was as high as Sly & the Family Stone would go.
On January 10, 1970, their first single of the new decade, the double-A-sided “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” and “Everybody Is a Star,” landed in the Top 40, and within a few weeks had become the band’s second chart topper.
Ushering in the era of bottom-heavy ’70s funk dominated by bands like Kool & the Gang, Ohio Players, and Earth, Wind & Fire, “Thank You” featured a harder sound than the Family Stone’s previous hits, with Larry Graham’s percussive thump-and-pluck bass dominating the track alongside Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini’s trumpet-and-sax combo. Sly’s lyrics weren’t exactly relegated to the background, but expectations of good-time vibes from the group that recorded “Dance to the Music” tended to obscure lines like “Flamin’ eyes of people fear burnin’ into you” and “Dyin’ young is hard to take / Sellin’ out is harder.”
The lyrics that typically stand out on first listen are the titles of previous Family Stone hits incorporated into the third verse: “Dance to the music all night long / Everyday people sing a simple song.” It comes across as playful — a clever summation of the Family Stone’s triumphs in the decade just ended.
President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a decision that instantly created controversy. For one thing, Tina Fey wasn’t even nominated. For another, Obama’s been president less than nine months, and had only been in office for 12 days when his nomination was submitted.
In case you’re wondering who nominated him, NobelPrize.org states, “The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.” So if you’re an anti-birther or anti-taxer or anti-tolerater, the answer is: the Forces of Evil. (And if you’re wondering how I know about Tina Fey, sorry, but I’m not sharing my peyote with you.)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which chooses the winner each year, explained that “Obama has as a president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.” According to the Associated Press, committee member and Norwegian politician Aagot Valle added that this year’s prize should be seen as “support and a commitment for Obama.”
The president, for his part, was humble about his victory. “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize,” he said. “I will accept this award as a call to action.”
But just a few hours before Obama’s victory was announced, he stood idly by as NASA tried to blow up the moon! From what I can gather, the U.S. space agency’s $79 million rocket was supposed to poke a giant hole in the Alan Shepard Memorial Golf Course, at which point all the water inside the moon would rain down on Earth — because the moon is up above and we’re down below and that’s how gravity works — thereby solving our planet’s impending water crisis.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi TV reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last December, was released from prison on September 15 after serving nine months of a one-year sentence. (Throwing a shoe at a person is considered highly disrespectful in Islamic culture.) Immediately hailed as a hero in the Arab, Muslim, and NPR-listening worlds last winter for his act of defiance — he yelled “This is your farewell kiss, you dog!” and “This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!” as he hurled each shoe at Bush — al-Zeidi emerged from prison into a world with a new American president and a decreased U.S. military presence in his home country. Now, in a loosely translated Popdose exclusive, he speaks out about his experience.
When I went into prison last year, I was 29 years old. Now I am 30 years old. I am a man now, and in prison I was the man, as you Americans say. People made T-shirts. A game on the Internet called Sock and Awe was created by people with much time on their hands. (It is fun. Play it. You could waste your life in worse ways.) And the video of me throwing my shoes at President George Bush “went viral,” I was told. My prison guards even threw me a birthday party in January. They gave me bright green shoes with holes on the top side that are called Crocs. It was amusing at first.
Many things can change in a short amount of time, however. The zeitgeist — it has shifted. The world has moved on. My people say to me, “The sectarian violence is not like it was, Muntadhar, and this new American president, unlike the previous one, he has a brain.”
Now there is a very bad crime wave, however, and it is led by the same people who almost pushed Iraq into a civil war. They cannot find jobs, so they kidnap and demand ransoms instead. Learn new skills, gentlemen. Take computer classes. Oh, that is right, I have forgotten — there is no electricity to run the computers! Carry on then, sectarian thugs.
When things are said off the record in the world of politics, they should stay off the record. Unless I need something to write about, of course.
Last week I brought you an exclusive report on the scripted outbursts Rep. Joe Wilson almost said in place of “You lie!” when responding to President Obama’s position on illegal immigrants receiving universal health care. I obtained the list of outbursts from a congressional aide named Mark Cloth, who asked not to be identified, but I’m not a real journalist with “ethics” or “common decency” — either slip me a Benjamin or suffer the consequences.
I went ahead and used Cloth’s name, but it turns out he was using an alias inspired by Deep Throat, from All the President’s Men. He duped me, but I’m not mad. The way I see it, we both got what we wanted, and neither of us had to look at the other one naked.
Yeah, right. The tape was already rolling, and Terry Moran, co-anchor of ABC’s Nightline, apparently overheard the pre-interview conversation, because he soon jumped on his Twitter account and wrote, “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential.” And that’s unprofessional, Moron — unless you somehow got a Benjamin out of it, that is. (I wonder if he had to look at Vice President Biden naked.)
Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina became a household name on Wednesday when he “heckled” President Obama during the commander-in-chief’s speech on health-care reform before a joint session of Congress. After Obama assured lawmakers that any systemwide overhaul wouldn’t extend health benefits to illegal immigrants, Wilson rebel-yelled, “You lie!”
According to congressional aide Mark Cloth, who wished to remain anonymous but didn’t bribe me enough to warrant serious consideration, Wilson was seen drinking 12-ounce cups of espresso for several hours before the president’s speech. The fourth-term conservative Republican lawmaker was also “high on pro-life and a two-day marathon of Lou Dobbs Tonight on his DVR.”
The cheapskate aide also revealed that Wilson’s supposedly spontaneous outburst was carefully scripted in order to convey the most effective opposition to Obama’s health-care initiatives, with dozens of drafts written over the past several weeks. In the end, however, simple noun-verb agreement combined with pro-wrestling body language proved to be the most direct route to getting Wilson’s point across.
And what’s so bad about simplicity? We live in a time of “tweets,” after all. Call Rep. Joe Wilson what you will, but he’s taught me a valuable lesson about keeping Sugar Water short and simple from now on, because otherwise all those words in my brain just pile up alongside all those newspaper clippings gathering dust on my desk, and suddenly it’s been almost two months since I wrote an actual column.
Granted, I spent all of August traveling around the country to President Obama’s town-hall meetings so I could stand beside angry Americans and shout “Rubber baby buggy bumpers!” over and over again — none of them heard me since they were all busy yelling nonsensical words and phrases themselves — but now I’m back. America, I need this forum. And you need me. Even if you have no interest in bribing me.
The summer movie season finally begins to wind down this weekend with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. So what’s next in Hollywood’s blockbuster pipeline? Would you believe a song-and-dance remake of The Bodyguard starring Hugh Jackman and Miley Cyrus? As of July that was the case, but earlier this month a spokesperson for the Wolverine star denied he was involved in the project.
It’s just as well since “Personal Security” sounded like an April Fool’s Day joke in the first place, but these days it can be difficult to tell when Hollywood’s being serious about its various remakes (The Last Dragon, The Secret of NIMH, and even 1985’s Clue, among many others, are currently in development), sequels (a second Bull Durham, a fourth Beverly Hills Cop, a fifth Indiana Jones adventure), and adaptations of everything under the sun. (By the way, I loved that comment you left on the site that one time. In fact, that comment would make a great movie!)
Can you believe everything you read? Well, of course you can, but that doesn’t mean you should. Without consulting any sources, including all your friends who work at Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, take the quiz below and submit your answers to me via e-mail. A winner will be chosen at random and will receive a prize package that includes Hannah Montana: The Movie on Blu-ray, the first season of Peyton Place on DVD, and a free copy of Jack Wagner’s Don’t Give Up Your Day Job, recently reissued on CD by Friday Music. Hey, remember when the General Hospital star made the jump to the big screen in 1984’s Hard to Hold? Or maybe that was somebody else. Oh well, on with the quiz!
I realized the other day that it’s been a couple months since I updated you on my personal life. No one’s asked for an update, of course, but I figured the fan letter that said “Send me the music from Running Scarred because I dont know how to use the internet except for email and this is the first time I have used email – I swear – so please hurry” was probably from a non-English speaker who really meant to say, “How’s your girlfriend, Aimiee, and the child you abandoned in Nebraska last fall?”
Well, I have good and bad news about Xing, our adopted son who’s really our daughter. The good news is she’s doing really well for herself in Lincoln, Nebraska, having been accepted for early enrollment at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the tender age of seven. She’s also reclaimed her natural name of Zhen, along with the gender Aimiee and I denied her. (Every parent makes mistakes. Don’t judge our gender reassignment until you’ve seen for yourself how it can have an unexpected negative side.)
As is the case with almost all children, Zhen got bored while waiting for school to start, so she took advantage of her free time and created a new iPhone application. Her “app” tells you how much longer you’ll be able to hold out before you break down and buy the latest iPhone.
I’m so proud of my little boy-girl! She’s all grown up now. This bird has flown, it’s time to let her make her own mistakes, we set the bar as low as possible as parents so she’d have nowhere to go but up, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. Of course her new family in Lincoln still sees her as a seven-year-old who needs love and attention and discipline, even if she is a genius, but frankly I think that’s an insult to someone of her caliber.
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing opened in theaters on June 30, 1989, and as he told the Associated Press recently about the film’s controversial climax, “White people still ask me why Mookie threw the [trash] can through the window. Twenty years later, they’re still asking me that. No black person ever, in 20 years, no person of color has ever asked me why.”
Perhaps the white people who’ve asked Lee that question also wondered why black people across the United States celebrated the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson, a famous black football player accused of murdering his white wife. As Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California, noted in the HBO documentary O.J.: A Study in Black and White (2002), the gut reaction boiled down to psychological payback. In other words, for every black man in this country who’s been beaten, lynched, shot, or thrown behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, you didn’t get this one.
It didn’t have to be O.J., who wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of black pride. And it wasn’t that every black person in America thought he was innocent. But, as Boyd noted on ESPN.com two years ago when discussing Barry Bonds’s home-run record, “acquittal in a court of law was trumped by conviction in the court of public opinion” in the following decade. Now Simpson is behind bars, for armed robbery and kidnapping — the verdict in that 2007 case was handed down exactly 13 years after he was acquitted for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman — and it’d be difficult to believe that the jury wasn’t influenced by the general perception that Simpson had gotten off scot-free in the ’90s.
The black community had a similar, though more muted, reaction when Michael Jackson was found innocent of child molestation in 2005: “the powers that be” had failed to bring down another rich and famous black man who had risen to the top of his profession. (R&B star R. Kelly, who wrote Jackson’s 1995 hit “You Are Not Alone,” was acquitted of 14 counts of child pornography last year. So far, his career hasn’t been affected the way Jackson’s was.) But the biggest musical star of his generation wasn’t a symbol of black pride, either, at least not on the outside: since the mid-’80s his skin color had become lighter and lighter, his hair straighter and straighter, and his nose smaller and smaller due to an overabundance of plastic surgery. In 2002, when he accused his record label, Sony Music, of not supporting its black artists, the standard joke was “Who is this white woman and why is she calling Tommy Mottola a racist?”
In February 2007 The New Yorker published “Whatever It Takes,” an article by Jane Mayer about the Fox series 24, and how the politically conservative views of the show’s creators, Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, have influenced its use of torture scenes. “The truth is, there’s a certain amount of fatigue. It’s getting hard not to repeat the same torture techniques over and over,” said Howard Gordon, the show’s head writer, or “showrunner,” who described himself as a “moderate Democrat.”
In that same month, Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, announced he was running for president, while on 24 there was already a black president in the White House: Wayne Palmer, the brother of ex-president David Palmer, who was assassinated in season five. That’s right — two black presidents in a span of three fictional terms of office. Pretty liberal, huh? (Author and NPR favorite Sarah Vowell is a fan, and former Air America radio host Janeane Garofalo was a regular cast member this past season.) And how about all those scenes of indestructible government agent Jack Bauer using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” forcing terrorist suspects to talk so he can find whatever ticking time bomb is set to go off before the end of each season? Pretty right-wing, huh? (Rush Limbaugh’s a fan — and a good friend of Surnow’s — and Senator John McCain made a cameo in season five.)
24 is a bleeding-heart-liberal show soaked in the blood of our freedom-hating enemies. Everybody wins! Everybody except the show’s fans, who, regardless of their personal politics, know the once riveting show’s best days are behind it, and not just because the post-9/11 cultural zeitgeist can no longer lend 24 the kind of collective-unconscious off-screen urgency it used to. Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury summed it up nicely in a strip earlier this month, in which a CIA applicant who asks about “ticking time-bomb exemptions” is told, “Everyone’s over ‘24.’” The truth is, there’s a certain amount of fatigue on both sides of the screen when it comes to the long-running series.
I myself was skeptical of the president’s birthplace until he drank a domestic beer — Bud Light — at the July 30 “beer summit.” Then I remembered that Anheuser-Busch, the makers of Bud Light, sold their company last year to InBev, a Belgian company. Thanks to CNN’s shortsightedness, we may never find out if InBev is secretly run by Kenyan expatriates.
In hindsight, it was as high as Sly & the Family Stone would go.
In case you’re wondering who nominated him, NobelPrize.org states, “The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.” So if you’re an anti-birther or anti-taxer or anti-tolerater, the answer is: the Forces of Evil. (And if you’re wondering how I know about Tina Fey, sorry, but I’m not sharing my peyote with you.)
When I went into prison last year, I was 29 years old. Now I am 30 years old. I am a man now, and in prison I was the man, as you Americans say. People made T-shirts. A game on the Internet called 
I went ahead and used Cloth’s name, but it turns out he was using an alias inspired by Deep Throat, from All the President’s Men. He duped me, but I’m not mad. The way I see it, we both got what we wanted, and neither of us had to look at the other one naked.
According to congressional aide Mark Cloth, who wished to remain anonymous but didn’t bribe me enough to warrant serious consideration, Wilson was seen drinking 12-ounce cups of espresso for several hours before the president’s speech. The fourth-term conservative Republican lawmaker was also “high on pro-life and a two-day marathon of Lou Dobbs Tonight on his DVR.”
Perhaps the white people who’ve asked Lee that question also wondered why black people across the United States celebrated the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson, a famous black football player accused of murdering his white wife. As Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California, noted in the HBO documentary O.J.: A Study in Black and White (2002), the gut reaction boiled down to psychological payback. In other words, for every black man in this country who’s been beaten, lynched, shot, or thrown behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, you didn’t get this one.