Had director Garry Marshall consulted me during the postproduction editing stage of Pretty Woman, the film would have ended with Julia Roberts’ lovable hooker Vivian being driven away from the Beverly Wilshire to the strains of Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love”. We would also have seen the wonderfully empty Richard Gere’s emotionally distant corporate raider Edward standing on a Wilshire balcony, mourning the loss of the only woman he ever truly loved, or at least the only one he ever paid three grand to fuck for a week.
Fade to black. Cut. Print. Roll credits.
Oh, no, you say, not so fast, Cecil B. DeSmitty. You want the fairy tale, just like Vivian tells Edward before that particular montage. Lots of people wanted the fairy tale. Garry Marshall certainly wanted the fairy tale, and instead of a relatively reasonable ending to a film with a decidedly unreasonable premise, we got Sir Edward riding in to “save” Princess Vivian from turning her life around on her own terms, whisking her away to be his well-cared-for trophy wife forever and ever, amen. (more…)
Though I’ve been a Bowie fan for just about as long as I’ve been a sentient human being (thanks, Dad!), I’ve only seen him live once and it was on this tour. My favorite moment, oddly enough, was the very beginning, seeing him come on stage and thinking “that’s really him!” My favorite musician, live and in the flesh. 
blood, and like siblings, we fought, had misunderstandings, hurt each other and went through periods in which we didn’t speak. We weren’t on speaking terms when he died, so there wasn’t a chance to say goodbye. It was an incredible loss, having known this man since we were first graders and we would walk home from school together. I would often stop in his house for a snack, or to check out his room full of the hippest toys, like Maskatron — enemy of the Six Million Dollar Man — an action figure that came with three interchangeable faces, or leafing through his latest issue of Mad Magazine or Cracked.
I have developed a reputation as someone who hedges his bets when it comes to criticism, and Peter Gabriel’s first full album in a very long while (since 2002’s 
, in fact) is no different. In fact, it will read like the script from the latest miracle drug commercial: Do not listen to Scratch My Back while driving, as side effects include sleepiness. Do not take if you have been diagnosed with, or are prone to, feelings of depression. If symptoms persist, contact your doctor or at least change the CD.
hits collection, but Scratch My Back, on the surface, smacks of being that sound repeated again and again. In the hands of someone less talented it would be irreconcilable, but in Gabriel’s you get a disc’s worth of meticulous, and sometimes disturbing, lullabies. I’d recommend it to only Gabriel fans and the most open-minded of listeners. The rest of you should take the doctor’s advice: Do not listen while operating heavy machinery.
is available from Amazon.com.
Being a Bowie fan is one thing; being a fan of Bowie books can be an altogether separate fetish. There’s such a wide variety of tomes about the wispy art-rocker from Brixton—and so much to talk about, from the music itself to its art-world significance to his real-and-imagined sexual escapades and how he played the media to build a modern rock-star myth. No wonder so many rock critics and Bowie-sphere hangers-on have written their versions of his history.
, read by Jeffrey Tambor (2009)
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I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this weekend marks my first anniversary writing for Popdose. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I also can’t believe I haven’t run out of movies to write about yet. Pretty soon I’m going to have to remake some of my earlier posts with younger, more modern (you know, shittier) words.