Okay, who hasn’t thought America’s favorite family has jumped the shark by now? Even with the success of last year’s movie (which I found quite funny) still fresh in the audience’s mind, the actual show has become something not so much unfunny as it is unfriendly.

Allow me to back up here. This assertion has been going on for a decade now, ever since a particularly harsh mean streak started to creep up on good old dullard Homer Simpson. His callous nature and general ignorance to all but his own personal needs cataloged deaths, a desire to get a friend back off the wagon ’cause he needed a drinking buddy, framing his wife for a DUI to save his own ass, and many a faux pas resulting in the viewing public crowning the character “Jerk-Ass Homer.” If there was an upside, it was that the rest of the characters seemed to be coping, uh, in character. The other saving grace was that, often, the show was still funny and still, dare I say it, human. As if to acknowledge that the audience’s statement was heard loud and clear, the term “Jerk-Ass Homer” started working itself into the scripts.

But now, in its millionth season on the air, all the characters are becoming jerk-ass. Homer dreams of suffocating his father, abandoning his kids, and shacking up with a rack of meat in a motel room. Marge also dreams of escape while attempting to live vicariously through her kids. Those kids, Bart and Lisa, are exhibiting less of a sibling rivalry and more of an ingrained hate for each other, and where the show once balanced the absurdities of real, mundane life with the occasional flashes of cartoonishness, now it is, inside and out, a cartoon.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

The trend in non-fiction literature as of late has been to title books with a snappy, concise name and then attach an absurd, ridiculously long subtitle, just to be clear on exactly what the author’s intentions were. So then, if this was my book, my subtitle would be: No, It Really Isn’t Like Throwing A Poodle In The Pitbull Cage, The New Album Just Ain’t That Good.

And it really ain’t that good. Following the Eagles’ lead, Journey has made Wal-Mart the sole seller of their physical product, a three-disc set called Revelation. When we pop culture pundits first heard of the Eagles plan for Long Road Out Of Eden, we scoffed. Desperate, we cried! Pandering, we tittered. Bloody dang effective, none of us said, yet the CD sold many, many copies without ever actually spawning a “hit” song. It was recently announced that AC/DC will be doing the same. I suppose, in hindsight, it makes perfect sense. We think in generalizations of the type of person who frequently shops at Wal-Mart — their income bracket, their tastes — but some things are certain. The average purchaser is probably of an age to have seen the glory days of all three of the aforementioned acts. While they probably have iPods, they still buy CDs and do not rely solely on digital downloads. While the rockist, elitist indie snob shuns the negative connotations of buying from Wal-Mart, there are people who do all their weekly shopping there, from groceries to electronics to tires, and they tend not to be enthused by whatever Dan Deacon or Animal Collective drops this week.

Journey’s Revelation was not made for a rockist, elitist indie snob. It may not have even been made for the band’s causal fans. This is for the guy (or gal) that wants 1981 all over again, the year that Escape dropped, AOR history was made and the dreaded spawn known as the “power ballad” plummeted from Evil’s angry uterus. It doesn’t matter that you really kinda dig “Open Arms,” either. Hitler painted landscapes, and what’s your point? My point is that Revelation lacks a heartbeat, a sense of passion or spontaneity and sounds more like a faded fan’s wish list, clicked off item by item and committed to digital file. First, in direct contradiction to the remaining band’s insistence that “Journey is a whole lot more than the band that backed Steve Perry,” they want you to welcome (cough, with open arms, cough) Arnel Pineda. Pineda is the scariest of pod-people in that he sounds exactly like Perry except for a Filipino accent. He even looks a bit like Perry (except for other Filipino accents). The man can wail and rock and stand on his own merits, but that isn’t why he was hired. (more…)

Popularity: 12% [?]

Katie Couric is sexy. I’ll give you all a moment to digest that.

Aaaaaaaand … scene.

I’m not kidding here. I find Miss Couric genuinely attractive and, to add to that, I think that is the primary stumbling block for her turn as anchor of the CBS Evening News. To understand where we are, we need to remember an important detail. From the beginning of news dispersion, from radio to the infancy of television to the Golden Age of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, this has been a patriarchy, a game run by men of age and experience with that commanding “Voice of God” presence. It is a role the networks have been only too happy to fill, even if the distinguished gentlemen taking the spotlight weren’t the most qualified to serve. They looked and sounded the part. That was enough.

In an effort to energize their sagging news division, CBS put their faith and a large amount of prestige behind Couric, going 180 degrees away from the standard. Since then it has been nothing less than a death-clock countdown to her stay there and, really, that is unfair. Yes, the viewership has moved to other networks and other anchors — male anchors who can wear the suit and sound appropriately authoritarian — but most of these viewers probably get the bulk of their news from old media anyhow. Network news and, in shockingly severe numbers, newspapers have been losing eyes to cable news outlets and the catch-as-catch-can speed of the Internet. The exodus from Couric, while partly due to this gender shock, is more about the waning relevance of these organizations. (more…)

Popularity: 9% [?]

A couple weeks ago, my colleague Jon Cummings posted his opinions on Keith Olbermann’s current Bizarro-world rantings, exhibiting a vehemence seldom seen from the supposed liberal left. Jon rightly claimed that Olbermann’s spasms were frighteningly right-like and as over-the-top as Bill O’Reilly. At the same time, he said that the underlying sentiment of anger at President Bush, his penchant for being so out of touch with the very country he runs, and his patronizing stabs at letting the little folk think know he commiserates are dead on. I have to disagree.

When I talk to my friends and co-workers, the folks “down here” on the totem pole, I don’t get a sense of anger, certainly not the eye-bulging, vein-throbbing anger of a certain MSNBC commentator. I get despair, and lots of it. I have written in the past about the shell game that is the Economic Stimulus Rebate, saying that our ever-mounting bills, still faltering job market and ever increasing debt-load, would render the whole thing null and void. As we roll into summer (and yes, 2008 is almost half over!) few families can afford that trip to a sunny destination and many are wondering if they can even afford to take the whole family to the movies a couple times this year. Gas prices are shattering records and that 1970s inflation curve economists have been ameliorating us with (”If you do the math, we’re still paying less than we did in ‘73! Boo-Yah!”) is rapidly breaking apart. Under the weight of all this, I find those around me are too depressed to be pissed, too burdened to rage. If the true plan from the upper 10% of America was to drive the lower 50% into a suicidal funk, it’s starting to work.

So even though it is oddly cathartic to see Olbermann bitching, ostensibly for our benefit, it is hardly about capturing the national mood. See, America used to be the land of dreams, many unrealized, but it was okay to believe better times were ahead, our lives could turn for the better just like that, and that the much vaunted ‘good life’ could be ours. It doesn’t seem like dreaming is allowed anymore. There are too many gatekeepers to pass, too many toll-takers to pay, not enough air to breathe. We can’t even go for a Sunday drive without fearing the financial backlash on Monday morning. My brother Dan has been in a band, Core Device, for more than a decade and they’re good. As a matter of fact, as metal bands go they’re actually great, and that’s not nepotism. Yet, with a small family of his own to support and a job market that could never provide what he needs, Core Device has been pushed farther and farther into the margins. My friend Tom died a couple years ago. Well, died is a soft-shoe term because he actually killed himself. His business went under, his wife was sick, his bills kept mounting and hope seemed like a fool’s game. My uncle had to take on loans to save his home and now, in a period of his life when he was hoping to retire with minimal debts, is working as a janitor where his boss condescendingly calls him “Pops.” (more…)

Popularity: 10% [?]

Actually, this column is titled “De-evolution, or Long Distance Pissing on the Moon,” but I didn’t think that would be the most genteel headline, so I waffled.

Regardless, I am amazed at the lengths we supposedly evolved and intelligent creatures go to in order to be utterly animalistic, and I don’t mean in drastic and outrageous ways either. We all know about our random acts of savage indifference to one another. It’s hard to think of Rwanda, Darfur, hell, even a family basement in Austria and assume we’re an advanced species. But these are extraordinary totems. Think of some of our more mundane acts, how we just can’t leave a place untouched or unsullied. We have to jump in, wipe our bums on the scenery and do a little victory dance in our wake.

Dunphy, you may comment, you’re overreacting. Okay, maybe I am, but perhaps I need to make my case a bit clearer. If we take it down to the feline species, the cute little housecat, and add a brand new wall-to-wall carpet, chances are that we’ll soon be seeing that same fuzzbucket dispensing a liter or so of Mine, All Mine on it. In nature, it’s called marking one’s territory. Moving up to our closest biological ancestor, the ape, we find similar traits. Gorillas don’t come across their own feces and wonder, “However am I to dispose of this?” They generally throw it or wipe it on the wall, a symbol of boundary. My kingdom, my poop.

This had little to do with a recent drive home from work, windows rolled down, car stereo playing something catchy. I was feeling pretty good. The weather felt decidedly spring-like, a rarity in New Jersey. Ordinarily we have prolonged periods of cold and then, the next day, right into the ’80s and air conditioning for the next five months. No, I was doing alright … until I saw this: a billboard proudly proclaiming “Moonvertising Is Coming.” A heaviness immediately landed in the pit of my gut. It also provided a website, which I checked out when I got home.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

It’s May 15 as I write. By the time you read this, I will be dead. By the time you read this, we’ll know with absolute certainty who the Democratic candidate is. By the time you read this, we’ll know if the Indiana Jones franchise has been turned into utter crap by the series’ first film in 19 years, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The rumblings in the underground aren’t positive. George “Yippee!!” Lucas, the film’s executive producer (he also gets credit for the story along with Catch Me If You Can’s Jeff Nathanson), has already started up the spin machine, saying that fan expectations could never ever ever be satisfied with the reality of the moviemaking process, and that unfair disappointment is sure to happen. This is, of course, patently untrue. But let’s step back a moment …

I have never been on board for “Indy IV.” My status as a royal geek is in jeopardy, I know, but I always thought Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) ended just right, the book closed on the last page of the story with grace and a ride into the sunset. (For those who’ve been in a coma the past 27 years, the series began with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark and continued with 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.) In the intervening years everything changed, not the least of which was the director of the Indy films himself, Steven Spielberg. Gone was his movies’ simplistic yet entertaining worldview of good guys versus bad guys. The world no longer crested to happy endings; instead, the rightly cynical topics of World War II, the Munich murders, and what it means to be human as opposed to being a machine that is programmed to want to be human demanded nuance, pathos, and a lingering sense of darkness. That darkness has been aided by longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski’s moody and textural cinematography ever since Schindler’s List (1993).

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Popularity: 11% [?]

Mind if I freak you out here? Yes? Too bad; I have nothing else to write about. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have a lot to write about, judging by all the files I’ve put up on the handy-dandy Popdose FTP.

1) No, you cannot have access to the Popdose FTP.

2) I mean it, NO, you cannot have access to the Popdose FTP.

See, when you write for a forum such as this, you can overload yourself fairly early, clogging the works with all those notions you’d like to tackle, restraint be damned. Then life gets in the way and you find yourself getting all topical and current and, very quickly, your digital cabinets runneth over. So I think it is time to do a little spring cleaning, with an added bonus of providing outlet for democracy.

(Get to the point, damn it!)

There are a few candidates on my list that I’m just not going to get to. As much as I love the music from these artists, it just seems more and more unlikely that they’re going to get their day. That’s where you come in. Your petty little vote may not mean much when compared to a mighty Superdelegate, but it means something to me. I swear, and not just because I’m trying to get to second base with you. I’ve decided to give you a choice for whom I next tackle. Simply drop a comment with your choice from the following artists and the act with the largest popular vote gets an expanded column. It’s that simple, and you’ll respect yourself the morning after. And yes, you have lovely eyes.

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Okay, this is how I think it’s going to go down: before the end of the year, a major player in the music industry will announce that it’ll no longer sign bands to make albums. It’ll institute ten-song deals versus three albums, the product to be delivered over a two-year period versus a contract tying up five to ten years. Each of the ten songs are to be considered singles, radio-ready, with at least a 65 percent probability of hit status, otherwise the band in question is liable to be dropped for fulfillment issues. If the losses are great, breach-of-contract litigation is not out of the question.

Sound ridiculous? Or does it sound like the obvious conclusion for an industry that continues to lose money and customer patronage, seeking to cut away anything that doesn’t promote profit — album tracks that may appeal to a creative sense but can’t be capitalized upon, extra production costs inherent in those tracks, and design, packaging, and promotion of a product the public only wants 10 percent of. Witness the next music-industry model circa 2010: the business model of 1961. A label executive now sees his competition focused solely on bankrolling hits, not album sides or expensive packaging, and has to mull over whether it’s better business-wise to chop his staff in half or chop his label’s output in half, retaining the profitable side for himself. Of course the second option is better. He follows suit, and the business model we know today ceases to exist.

Now, you as a music fan and album purchaser hear this news and are appalled — what about the creative angle, the cohesive whole, and the notion that an artist has the broadest canvas with which to work, expand, and grow? Well, what about it. It was recently reported that Apple’s iTunes is now the dominant provider of music in the world, bigger than electronics stores that stock CDs as loss leaders, bigger than even monolithic Wal-Mart, which itself was once the king of music retail. iTunes has made its bones on singles, pure and simple. Few of the portal’s primary users actually go for album sides; people with that mind-set are still likely to buy the physical product, but their numbers are dwindling fast. To say the public in general will miss the album is to ignore the obvious — not only won’t they miss it, they haven’t missed it for five-plus years and counting.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

I always get a little thrill when Danny Elfman decides to step back in front of the microphone or, more bluntly, when Tim Burton decides to let Danny Elfman step back in front of the microphone. His last actual studio recording with a band was 1994’s ill-fated Boingo, an attempt to drag wacky and macabre party rockers Oingo Boingo into the ’90s, yet the dire and very pointed rock sound of the album accomplished two unwanted things: it alienated the original fans who wanted the music to be more fun and less funereal, and it failed to attract new fans thanks to its alignment with the moody, grungy times. After a live farewell concert, documented on a final band release, Elfman and longtime collaborator Steve Bartek went back to the scoring stage.

It makes perfect sense. Elfman had carved out a wildly successful and respected niche in film scoring, and his signature polkas from hell and minor-key romanticism have become immediate signals to an appreciative audience. Still, whenever there’s a reason to sing and Elfman accepts the challenge, it gets me charged up. That it takes Tim Burton’s strange visions to do it ensures that such occurrences aren’t altogether frequent. Remember that Burton’s last musical partner was some dude named Stephen Sondheim, whoever the heck that is; when it’s Elfman’s turn I start to get those old heebie-jeebies back. His music for The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) leaned heavily on his film-music sensibilities, but his tracks for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) as well as a jazz number from Corpse Bride (2005) drew from his more contemporary side.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Depending on who you ask, Janet Jackson may not actually be in need of fixing. Her latest album, Discipline, is a hit and so is the first single, “Feedback.” Things should be pretty good in Nasty-land, but a quick peek under the numbers reveals a different story. Although the album debuted at #1, Discipline is actually not selling as many copies as her previous releases. It’s a case of new math and relativism: 20 Y.O. and Damita Jo sold more, but did so in a more robust music sales market and could only eke out the #2 spot on Billboard. Discipline looks strong only because the market is so very weak.

The album also continues a disturbing trend with Miss Jackson where a real spark of excitement, inspiration or fun is replaced by a demented sexuality feeding off of shock. She may attempt to project empowerment, but all she seems to reveal is that she can’t be anything in her creative world other than some contented plaything or, even worse, a little kid that likes to shout out the dirtiest words she knows because it makes the adults in the room quake. It was that perverse acting-out that ruined The Velvet Rope. The fans rejected it and she attempted some poppier fare afterward. Seems that she’s treading into old, shallow waters once again. The digital workout of famed producer Jermaine Dupri can’t save her from the same old schtick. (more…)

Popularity: 15% [?]