It was quite a thing to hear.

The big U.S. auto manufacturers, finding their sales affiliates smarting over the loss of business for the once-profitable mammoth, 4X4 luxury monsters in deference to smaller, fuel-friendly models and higher prices at the pumps, started testing the waters to see what would happen if… they sold those divisions? Maybe they might just close the Hummer and Escalade plants down, seeing as how the time for them had come and gone. A part of me, the part that never could afford one of these stupid counties on wheels and was gleeful in spite, cheered the announcement. Sure, it wasn’t a concrete plan of action — merely a “f’rinstance” — but the merest mention of the possibility was enough. At least, it momentarily was.

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I said something that sent a jolt of disbelief through the ranks of Popdose. I have been known to take my opinions to the far side, but this one threatened to betray an ignorance I didn’t know I harbored. Let me spell it out and see if I’m as far off base as some have claimed me to be:

Madonna will not be remembered for her music as much as her controversies. In fact, the latter is likely to shadow the former so much that her output as an artist will become an afterthought. And while Mariah Carey’s vocal acrobatics have become the standard pop style (thereby irreparably screwing everything up), Maddy’s antics have become the standard conduct by which all young up-and-comers must match or else not be noticed at all.

Your first salient question would be, “Dunphy, do you even like Madonna’s music?” Honestly, it’s not that I dislike her music at all. No, I’m not a fan and no, I don’t own any of her albums, but I can say unequivocally that she’s made three truly great songs in her career, a lot that I like in passing, and some that are total crap for the sake of spiking the media. The three great songs are, in no particular order, “Live To Tell,” “Oh Father,” and “Frozen.” All three indicated to me that she could radically depart from her patterns and deliver. There is nothing on her latest, Hard Candy, that comes close to the style and sentiment of the aforementioned tunes, even though that album is being hailed as a return to form.

Ideally, that’s what we should be talking about, right? That album? The music? Sure, Maddy’s a PR animal and seeks attention the way sharks seek chum, but she’s a singer and that ought to be the first thing that comes to mind, no? (more…)

In a recent smackdown bitch slap Chartburn discussion that will be published tomorrow, we had cause to discuss the merits of “She’s a Beauty” by the Tubes. I won’t disclose the consensus, because we’d rather all of you read the post and not rely on my Dose-opedia version. Suffice it to say that I suddenly had an urge to revisit the band’s work. I avoided the earlier and — some would rightly say — weirder stuff like “White Punks on Dope,” and aside from a solitary spin of my vinyl version of The Completion Backward Principle (1981), I didn’t swim too far into the dangerous waters where the deadly David Fosters lurk (even though that’s where all their best material is floating).

First up was the Todd Rundgren-produced Love Bomb, a recording that is wildly uneven, even for a band that prided itself on unevenness. (”Wild Women of Wongo”? “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman”? Issues, anyone?) There wasn’t much to say about the album. I liked the tune “Piece by Piece,” but you could get that on the Tubes’ 1992 best-of compilation, so memory lane tends to be awfully unkind to ol’ Love Bomb.

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No, it wasn’t a nightmare. I was surrounded by jive-ass talking cartoon animals, and so were you.

The dictum of great animation is that it gives us something a straightforward film cannot. It can show us visions that would be impossible in reality, if not just ridiculous looking. Animation affords an instant degree of suspension of reality, that magical bit of stuff that allows us to empathize with photos projected in succession. It’s an unwritten pact between the maker of those images and the person who spent $10+ for the ticket — take me out of reality for an hour and a half. For many years that pact has been, if not broken, arguably fudged and cheated. It’s the only way I can explain 2005’s Madagascar, 2006’s The Wild and Over the Hedge, this summer’s Kung Fu Panda, and even the upcoming CG-tweaked horror of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It’s as if the studios all gave up writing and just agreed to make animals yammer and yap for a couple decades.

Pixar, the little CG studio that could, wasn’t immune either. In their defense they were able to work the worlds of insects (1998’s A Bug’s Life), fish (2003’s Finding Nemo), and culinary rats (2007’s Ratatouille) with a lot more finesse and intelligence than their competitors, in both the visual sense and the sheer commitment to story. Fortunately I didn’t get railroaded by hippos, rhinos, roaches, cats, dogs, and amoeba spouting the latest catchphrase in pop culture, rapping, or other such unforgivable acts, and I didn’t have bovine herds congratulating one of their own with “You go, cow girl!” Pixar always seemed intent to keep the fauna among themselves. Regardless, there were still talking animals.

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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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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…)

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…)

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…)

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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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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