Well, the big night arrived, and the three of us gathered together to experience this historic moment in America the only way we knew how:  via the warm glow of our computers.  Welcome to the recap of the big finish for the Democratic National Committee Convention.  Jon, Dw, and I are ready to take you where you’ve probably already gone since, you know, the Convention was last night.  Okay, on with it!

Dick Durbin Introducing Obama’s Biographical Video

Ted: Are you watching Dick Durbin?
Dw: Yup.  I’m giving him a pass. He’ll start Jenny Craig tomorrow.
Jon: I wish he’d get it over with.  I didn’t tune in for pasty-face.
Ted: Dick Durbin looks like a guy who could own a motel on Interstate 80 … near North Platte, Nebraska.

The Biographical Video Starts

Jon: This profile video is a bit lackluster for my taste.  All these videos have to be compared to Bill in ‘92, and that video of teenage Bill with Jack Kennedy.  This video is a bit generic — apart from the personal details, the themes could be plugged right into Hillary or Biden’s intro video.
Ted: I have to admit that my mind is wandering as I watch this.
Dw: True story. After Obama’s speech in 2004, I told people he was going to be the nominee in the next election cycle. They told me I was nuts.
Ted: I remember his speech, and I too saw a winner.  But I kept it to myself.
Dw: Wise move. I should learn to shut my mouth more often. (more…)

It’s a cynical world, and there isn’t much to do about it. I grab rare glimpses of virtue whenever I can, but I’m seldom overwhelmed with opportunities. A couple weeks ago, however, we all caught sight of incredible bravery, strength of character and guts, and I couldn’t let the event pass without taking note.

But before I go into that, I need to clarify what I believe Hollywood’s standard definition of an actress is: a body. If the body can recite lines of dialogue somewhat convincingly, so much the better.

As an actress moves into the field of celebrity, how she looks becomes even more important to the grist mill. Is she getting fatter? Is she sickly thin? Is her hair short, long, thick, thinning? None of this really relates to her acting ability, but all of it seems to be preeminent on the minds of the Tinseltown machinery. I haven’t seen Angelina Jolie’s turn in last year’s A Mighty Heart. Maybe she’s really great in it. I don’t know. But I know that her biggest roles, from the animated Beowulf to the Tomb Raider flicks and this summer’s Wanted, have relied very heavily on her looks. That’s just Hollywood and, in all honesty, it’s always been that way. Above and beyond possessing talent, an actress has to look good, and so the maintenance of the body becomes almost an all-consuming task.

Cut to the shocking announcement. Christina Applegate, only in her 30s, was diagnosed with breast cancer. We came to know her almost 20 years ago as the ditzy, slutty Kelly Bundy on Fox’s Married … With Children. She was, to be blunt about it, the eye candy of the show, but she also had sharp comic timing. She wouldn’t get enough credit for it until a couple decades later, when she held her own with the big silly boys in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), and even though the premise of her role was, again, the hot object of affection, she handled it beautifully as the nemesis of Will Ferrell’s egomaniacal newscaster.

Her most recent role, in ABC’s dramedy Samantha Who?, has allowed her to work all of these aspects, showing range, an adeptness at wordplay, and the occasional bit of slapstick here and there. She had proven again and again she was more than a body, but for many, she would always be Kelly Bundy.

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Jon: Well, so much for the “civic duty” I believed would guilt the Popdose community into following the political conventions: Even my heretofore partner in blogging crime, Ted Asredagoo, abandoned our noble cause to catch a Waifs concert last night! (You know, Ted, Hootie & the Blowfish played a gig not five miles from my house on Tuesday night, but did I skip out on Hillary’s orange “traveling pantsuit” to catch them? Noooooooo! I thought to myself, Hill, I only wanna be with you…)

Before I introduce our guest analyst for the Bill & Biden show, allow me to note that, after two evenings dominated by women, the Democrats finally let the testosterone flow last night. As a result, there are no women to objectify – except MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell, about whom I always have just one thing to say (even when she’s eight months pregnant): Hubba hubba. So, without further ado, our surprise curmudgeon: Dw. Dunphy!

Dw.: These Democrats sure can talk! Don’t they know I gotta work in the morning? Anyway, it’s my turn to hang out with Jon and the ‘Bots on the Satellite of Love. Dr. Forrester’s evil show for the evening: Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. I’ll make sure I have extra hamdingers at the ready.

Jon: WTF is a hamdinger?

(Editor’s note: Jon, betraying a lack of pop-culture understanding that should get him banned from Popdose forever, apparently is unaware that hamdingers are deviled-ham patties that were sold by the block and often used for fish bait – a fact that is common knowledge to fans of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, as hamdingers played a key role in episode 512 and made a brief appearance in episode 513.)

Jon: What a bunch of dweebs I’m working with here! (Hey! I just figured out what that pretentious “Dw.” thing is all about.) Last night Ted blew 200 words on Vulcans, and now I have to deal with MST3K? (more…)

For all my pretensions, all my attempts to present myself as a literate, knowledgeable, and discerning fellow, I’m really a lowest-common-denominator guy at heart. I don’t often allow that to come through. I know that a fart joke is just about the basest, most tasteless thing in the world, especially during Holy Communion, but it can also be the most freakin’ funny thing in the world, especially during Holy Communion, especially if it’s insinuated that it was the monsignor who stepped on the duck.

I’ll tell you about it someday.

That may explain my fascination with the Kids’ WB! animated series Freakazoid!, produced by Steven Spielberg back in the rip-roaring mid-’90s. Warner Bros. Television Animation had been through a resurgence of sorts, propped up by the success of the moody, atmospheric, and terrifically written Batman: The Animated Series. They suddenly had the rest of the entertainment world paying attention, so much so that Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment came to call. From there, a succession of fondly remembered series tumbled out: Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain. The word came down that Spielberg’s next series should be a superhero show, so Bruce Timm, an integral part of the Batman show, started spitballing ideas, working up a premise and designing characters. The result was a show far more earnest than Spielberg planned, so he sent back the message to crank up the humor. He should have been more careful with his direction.

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Have you read the entertainment news today? Oh boy. A particularly dreadful tune is set to break some major records for sales, this week’s new movies arriving under a mantle of critical kudos have been trounced at the box office by The Dark Knight, a four-week winner no less, and the spate of mind-numbing reality TV shows, once considered dead in the water by pundits, are not only thriving but multiplying for the 2008/2009 season. It is, as the critics have feared, the grim realization that they have zero effect on the zeitgeist. But then again, we always knew that.

The few critics that actually heard Darn Floor Big Bite, the 1987 release by the band Daniel Amos, were flabbergasted. They praised the textured, atmospheric guitar work as a revelation in contrast to the band’s keyboard-driven previous releases, Vox Humana and Fearful Symmetry. They were keen on the balancing act singer/writer Terry Scott Taylor had struck lyrically, still as literate and mature as before but not as heavy-handed. In a time where guitar groups were hair metal, and regular groups were messing with their synths, Daniel Amos (known at that point as Da to avoid the whole “Which one is Daniel” question. Answer: none) looked to the underground and came up with an angular, nervy winner.

And now you get to say, “Well it can’t be that great, because I’ve never heard of it,” which has been the bane of Da’s musical existence from the start. The band started, of all things, as a thoroughly Christian country act, morphing into a Beatle-esque rock outfit, then fully embracing the original new wave ethic that was coming from CBGB darlings like Talking Heads and Television.

Problematically, they were the antithesis of most bands from the Christian subset. Their Beatles and Beach Boys influences came at a time when outside forces were totally verboten. Their four Alarma Chronicles albums (Alarma, Doppelganger, Vox Humana and Fearful Symmetry) plumbed the sounds of punk, garage, darkwave synth-rock and Krautrock, none of which sat well with the established Christian organizations, record labels and bookstores. They were alternately branded for “consorting,” being too secularly intellectual and just plain too weird. Oddly, the secular music outlets rather much felt the same way in vice-versa terms.

Perhaps the most damning charge thrown at them was that they dared to criticize the Church as equally as they looked toward the scriptures. It has been one of the major drawbacks for people in accepting Christian rock as rock music with the specified worldview that discernment with worldly ways was fine, but when it came to investigating the hypocrisies within the institutions, well, it just wasn’t done. Da, however, dared to go to that thorny place. (more…)

The Police make me thankful The Beatles never had a full-fledged reunion.

It was a strange Sunday evening in the wilds of Holmdel, New Jersey. The PNC Arts Center usually allows patrons onto the property two hours before show time at 6:00 PM, and so I found myself on the Garden State Parkway with Elvis Costello’s Brutal Youth CD on the stereo and thoughts of scoring a sensible parking space bouncing in my brain. Little did I know that, as a courtesy to the weekenders, the venue let people in at 4:00. They dumped me out into the adjacent woods to park! This did not bode well.

I’ll freely admit I was more excited to see Costello and the Impostors and was not disappointed. Mixing older fan favorites like “Pump It Up,” “Every Day I Write The Book,” and the requisite “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding” with newer songs like “45″ from When I Was Cruel and “American Gangster Time” from the current and very worthwhile Momofuku album, Costello covered the necessary bases. Performing them with the gusto and spastic fire of a man half his age was wonderful to see, especially after hearing all the rumors that things would be toned down for those tender Jerseyan sensibilities. And just to give the set an extra dash of coolness, Sting came out to duet on “Allison.”

Now, had the evening ended there, I wouldn’t have walked away from this performance completely baffled. It would have been my shortest concert experience, but we all would have felt like we wanted to be in the same room with each other, band included. We’re all aware of the behind-the-scenes tensions purportedly happening in Camp Police. We’re also aware that even back in the early days, Sting commanded the majority of the attention, a position that could quickly irritate, and while hearsay shouldn’t color one’s impressions so early in the game, it was evident when Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland took the stage that they were plainly irritated.

The PNC Arts Center is a weird venue to start with. It is essentially a large, round coffee table where you and the stage are placed beneath. It is both an indoor and outdoor theater and, at the same time, neither. So there is a tendency to rig the electronics and the mix to accommodate all seats, including the uncovered lawn seats to the far back. The upshot is that the mix tends to be louder than it truly needs, causing all the music to come at you as a bass-heavy muddle. It can be compensated for. A few years back, Megadeth played the main Gigantour stage and the sonics were perfectly fine. An hour earlier, Dream Theater was on and the sound was that of a seal being clubbed (miked from the inside of the seal, no less). The Police, by contrast, were much louder than either of those bands, louder than any other show I’ve seen there this year, and easily the most sonically murky. (more…)

The Popdose staff was sitting around the other day, doing what we do best — namely, talking about records that most people wish they didn’t remember — when a discussion about the Moody Blues’ “Your Wildest Dreams” somehow led into some heavy-duty reminiscing about the records we all listened to when we were kids — and how those records were more or less culled from the Top 40 hits of the day, hits that our parents, as often as not, listened to along with us.

So, we wondered, who’s making music these days that impressionable preteens and their parents enjoy? Top 40 radio is pretty much dead, and the lines between Radio Disney, MTV, and whatever the hell it is that the over-30 crowd is listening to these days have been drawn depressingly deep. Look, it isn’t just that we think the Jonas Brothers and Lil Wayne aren’t all that great; it’s that some of us can remember enjoying the latest hits from the Spinners, the Bangles, or Cheap Trick right alongside our parents.

Current music is still a multigenerational thing, but not the way it used to be — so here, without further ado, is a list (with downloads, natch) of some of the stuff your faithful Popdosers were listening to in their formative preteen years. Pull up a chair and a set of headphones, and give in to Tweener Mixtape Madness! (more…)

David Medsker: I love Paul Carrack as much as the next guy, but is what I refer to as a non-song. Not a whole lot of meat on these bones.

Jeff Giles: An odd little hit from an odd little record. People remember Paul Carrack and Paul Young (no, the other Paul Young) as Mike +/& the Mechanics’ singers, but this album featured lead vocals from two other guys. I can’t remember either of their names, but I do remember that I like “Taken In” more than “Silent Running” or “All I Need Is a Miracle.”

Jon Cummings: If I remember correctly, M+M albums were packaged with drool cups. Or did I just dream that during the 48-hour nap that was induced by my one and only full hearing of this song? Even 23 years on, it’s extraordinary that a nuclear war/Terminator/whatever prog-rock “epic” could be so abysmally boring. (Compared to this oblique blather, Sting’s contemporaneous “Russians” was a Tolstoy novel.) It’s also extraordinary that Carrack’s voice could be so thoroughly wasted. His M+M work is so pulse-deadening that it calls into question everything he did before. (Was “How Long” really that good? Doesn’t Glenn Tilbrook sing “Tempted” just as well in concert as Carrack did on record?) God, I hated this band.

Dw. Dunphy: Mike + the Mechanics got off to a good start, didn’t they? Big hit, nice synth-y melody, Paul Carrack — but it’s all for naught. I don’t understand a whit of this song. It sounds like the theme to some really bad syndicated sci-fi show. If you don’t pay too much attention to it, perfectly pleasant.

Scott Malchus: I often wonder what songs from the ’80s, with all of the lame electronic drums and synths, would sound like with real instruments. This song holds up okay. I guess I always expected more from Mike Rutherford since he was the lead guitarist from Genesis (and, before that, the bassist). All of the Mike + the Mechanics songs sound very “lite rock” compared to what he did in the ’70s. Then again, look at Phil Collins’s solo output. Worse, look what Genesis had become by the end of the ’80s. How is it that only Peter Gabriel was able to maintain his artistic integrity after he quit the band?

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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…)