Blogcritics.org

The Will and Grace Finale--Finally

.

.

Will and Grace was a hit for one reason, and it had little to do with the show's lofty intentions. It drew viewers inweek after week because it was just funny--slapstick vaudeville naughty (but not too naughty) funny. It has been obvious the past couple of seasons, though, that the series was running out of steam. The spark was gone as the focus shifted into issues that are more "serious."

.

Thursday's finale reflected both the brightest and dimmest of Will and Grace. NBC, desperate for anything to pull it out of its slump, heralded it as a two-hout "event,", and promoted it as if the course of western civilization hinged upon its climax. The network's webpage was laden with emails (presumably genuine) all saying how the respective writer would cry as the series ended.

.

Truth of the matter is the hype shamelessly oversold the show. It was far from an event, two hour or otherwise. It was two seperate programs--one done quite well, the other--not so much.

.

The first program, "Say Goodnight, Gracie," was a one-hour retrospective of the series' eight season run, and it reminded us how hilarious Will and Grace could be, especially when it was Jack and Karen in the spotlight. Will and Grace themselves were too neurotic to be consistently funny, but Jack and Karen never strayed too far from loony land, and they were ultimately the glue that held the show together.

.

The highly trumpeted finale was a letdown, though. After a promising opening--a clever take-off of the dreaded dream ending, the episode drifted aimlessly through a series of predictable vignettes tracing the characters' life paths over the next twenty years. It wasn't so much that it was painful to watch but that it was drab and lifeless. If the series' principals wanted to go out on a poignant note, they never quite made it.

.

Without giving away the ending, NBC did leave open the possibility of a spin-off--Will and Grace: The Next Generation perhaps?

Blogcritics.org

Dubbya and the May Sweeps:

Can Bush's Immigration Reform Speech

Pull Him out of the Ratings Doldrums?

.

.

No matter which side of the fence you've perched yourself upon, you'll have to agree that George W. Bush simply does not know how to work a room anymore. Gone is that "they can run but they can't hide" bravado, that aircraft carrier straddling "mission accomplished" swagger, only to be replaced of late by performances that can be charitably described as "wooden."

.

Nowhere has his decline as a performer been more apparent than in Monday night's much hyped immigration reform speech. Reeking of flop sweat and with all the passion of an automaton, Mr. Bush announced his "five point plan" for immigration reform. Despite a cherry position in the Monday night line-up-- not only the lead-in for Prison Break but also Deal or No Deal ferchrissakes, the President barely mustered a monologue that would not play in the most boorish of venues.

.

In a program that sorely needed a grand opening, Mr. Bush chose instead to offer a tired, but safe, cliche--"We must secure our borders." One could almost hear a collective moan when he uttered those words. But the President was undetered by the sigh, and continued with a half-hearted proclamation that he is sending 6000 National Guard troops to the troubled US-Mexican frontlines to assist US Border Patrol officers. Hoping to reel the audience in, he added that we have more than enough troops to win the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and the soon to be announced addition, Iran-- plus deal with natural disasters and secure the border, too.

.

While he hoped that declaration would give new emphasis to the buzzphrase "army of one," the audience saw it as meaning we will eventually have one soldier in every country on the planet. One must build empires by whatever means are available, after all.

.

In the second act, Mr. Bush tried to catch a second wind with abysmal results. He trumpeted out his "guest worker" initiative with his tired line that they do the jobs Americans won't do. The audience merely shook their heads at this point in the performance--it echoed that Archie Bunker mentality of the seventies, or worse, that "good nigger" racism of the early sixties.

.

Reeling from the hisses from all quarters of the venue, Mr. Bush attempted a comeback by using his tired old saw about corporate America benefitting from a workforce bereft of any rights, and, by extension, Americans reaping the harvest through lower prices at the retail level. That was small consolation to the portion of the audience that can't afford to boost the economy because they cannot find a job. Patriotism is either linked to crisis or to an empty wallet.

.

In the final act, Mr. Bush attempted in vain to validate his performance by recounting the story of a young illegal immigrant who is proudly serving this country, not his native country, in Iraq, because he is so damn proud to be in this country. Despite the mom and apple pie slideshow that accompanied the little tale, the audience was not impressed.

.

They'd heard it all before.

Blogcritics.org

Rolling Stone turns 1000!

(that's 38 in human years)

.

.

Rolling Stone had a birthday last week--one freakin' thousand issues and still as fresh and relevant as it was on its first day on the planet, 9 November 1967. Yeah, she has a few wrinkles here and there, but she's remarkably well-preserved, and can still hold her own with any magazine that came before or after her birth.

.

Sure, there were other music magazines before Rolling Stone--Crawdaddy for the hippie-oriented and the original Hit Parader with its chord charts and lyric sheets come to mind, but by and large, those magazines were beholden to the record labels and their content reflected that. Whatever else there was about rock & roll was pretty much teen fanzine fodder.

.

Rolling Stone changed all that--and then some. From the first, her edict was rock & roll not only can change the world, but is changing the world, and you'd be well-advised to listen. That was a powerful message, a defiant proclamation, and one to which, through all the years and changes, the magazine has steadfastly adhered. And somewhere along the way, it went from being an almost underground newspaper to evolve into the cornerstone of modern journalism it is today.

.

Nobody writing about pop culture today can deny they were influenced by Rolling Stone-- in fact, most of us would probably not have been inspired to write at all had it not been for Jann Wenner and his cadre of guerilla journalists. Guys like Hunter S. Thompson vindicated my belief that the way we were being taught journalism was just--well, boring. He and others writing for Rolling Stone demonstrated that not only was it okay to immerse oneself in reportage, to become a character in the story--it was essential. I've not used the phrase "in my opinion" since-- it seems a redundancy.

.

From its inception, Rolling Stone recognized the power of the image--that publicity still of John Lennon in How I Won the War was the reason I, a scrawny fourteen year old kid with delusions of rock stardom, bought that first issue. Those cover images kept me-- and millions others--coming back again and again. Whether it was Annie Liebowitz reinventing the art of portraiture in her photos or Robert Grossman's brilliant caricatures, the covers have--almost all of them--been snapshots of that moment. More, they stand as testaments to history.

.

It's only fitting that the 1000th issue of Rolling Stone should be not a mere retrospective of the past thirty-eight years, but a celebration of where we were then, where we are now and where we may be headed. This isn't merely a magazine issue--it's more akin to a coffeetable edition in content and feel--all it needs to be one is heavier paper stock and a hardcover-- oh, and a price tag of around forty dollars.

.

At US$5.95, RS1000 is a steal. The 3D cover alone, inspired by the Sgt. Pepper album jacket, is worth the price of admission. A whimsical hologram of all figures pop, it's a coup de grace of technology melding with acid flashback. While some have derided it as a syptom of the magazine's midlife crisis, I find it a source of endless hours of enjoyment and eyestrain.

.

Rolling Stone has always had great covers, though-- they've been immortalized in song--if one can count Dr. Hook as immortal-- praised as news photos, even adored in museums. But the proof is in the details, and RS1000 illustrates in word and picture why Rolling Stone didn't just report modern culture--in the process, she became pop culture.

.

The writers, photographers and illustrators that have worked on the magazine through the years have done so with a passion that wasn't found in journalism before Rolling Stone--even the magazine's title was inspired by Bob Dylan. And like Dylan, they have never shied away from being controversial.

.

Rolling Stone set the bar for pop journalism and no one has ever been able to raise it to the next level. Many have tried (myself included), but nobody thus far has been able to raise that bar to the next level. It's become trendy in some quarters (mostly young Republican quarters) to dismiss Rolling Stone as a hippie relic no longer relevant to today's world. The truth is RS1000

shows in no uncertain terms that not only is she relevant, she's kickin' it.

.

W

.

Blogcritics.org

The Fox, the Mouse, the Peacock and That Big-Ass Eyeball

.

.

Ah, May... the dying days of spring are upon us and the summer beckons us into three or so months of lethargy before we reap the harvest we planted what seems like only yesterday...

.

Yes, friends--it can mean only one thing--May sweeps are upon us

.

And that means the Big Four television networks are on their semi-annual prowl to nurture their more hearty offspring and kill their weaker children in order to appease the Gods of Advertising. In times past, it seemed a brutal, albeit necessary, ritual of the balancing of electronic life. Now, it's more akin to the decline and fall of any given empire, replete with inbreeding and cannibalism. If Law and Order is flailing, bring in The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli, dress him in cop's clothing but change little else about him and call it a "groundbreaking" performance. If House needs a boost, stretch a mundane episode over two nights, have the second part be the lead-in to a ho-hum American Idol boot episode, and call it an "event" (and then top off the entire mess with the utterly asinine Unam1mous. And what better way to perk up CSI than the recurring Dominatrix with a heart of gold and a thirst for justice?

.

In short, the traditional networks are doing what any decaying empire does--serve up bread and circuses in lieu of substance. And we, awash in fear and loathing of the boogey men that never actually storm our gates-- but might at any moment--lap it up. We make American Idol the ratings juggernaut it is because we've been duped into believing that we can make or break the next sensation, that we, by god, are going to shape culture.

.

The sad thing is--we do. We are the networks' enablers, giving them the justification to serve up pablum, telling them that America is the culture of the Lowest Common Denominator and damn proud of it, to boot. Give us Deal or No Deal--Jeopardy makes your brain hurt.

.

The networks know this, and the advertisers that are their overlords certainly do. And both know that the May sweeps ain't what they used to be. So what's a bedraggled peacock, an upstart fox, an ancient mouse and an omnipresent eyeball to do?

.

Turn to the internet and the tabloids, of course.

.

The Mouse, aka ABC, got a headstart when they made the "startling" announcement back in April that fans would be able to watch, at their leisure, previous episodes of programs such as Desperate Housewives, Lost and Grey's Anatomy via the internet. Brilliant! Finally television was recognizing the shift in our culture, albeit with limited commercials. What they didn't mention, however, is this is only going to be available through June--i.e. through the sweeps. Not to worry, though-- between the travails of Teri Hatcher and the tribulations of Star Jones, they have enough fodder to see them through the month.

.

Not to be outdone, the Peacock unleashed the bombshell that Katie Couric would jump the Today ship at the end of May to serve the venerable eyeball that is CBS as the first female network anchor.Who, oh who, could possibly replace her?-- Anne Curry?..Natalie Morales?..no, wait, of course!--the blonde from The View! On a roll, NBC announced that the first hour of Today would be available anytime via their website. Just in case that doesn't grab you, there are the earth-shattering finales of Will & Grace and My name is Earl. Oh yeah--and Deal or No Deal.

.

CBS, the eternal, all-knowing eyeball, appears to be committed to online programming with its newly launched Innertube, an add-on that primarily promotes such drivel as Survivor, but has already rectified itself with a 45 minute Pearl Jam concert taped after their appearance on Letterman. There may be hope for network TV after all.

.

The fox--need I say it?--FOX may have the best website of the four, even though it is bereft of original programming. Still, it's interactive, animated and entertaining. But when you're the network that demands suspension of disbelief, you don't need a lot of extras on the web. When you have 24, and on a lesser level, Prison Break drawing viewers, not to mention American Idol, you don't need a stream to promote them. FOX may be the upstart network, but they understand better than their competitors that a weekly cliffhanger will rope them in every time.

.

But will these new tactics keep the networks alive? Or are they the death throes of an empire still playing out its glory days to an empty stadium?

.

My money says it depends on the upstarts.

just a quick note here... I've been incredibly busy the past few days, but not to fear, my babies-- the saga of the Fox, the Mouse, the Peacock and that Big-Ass Eyeball is forthcoming-- promise.

In the meantime, check out Blogcritics by clicking on the red button just above, Sinister cabal they may be, but they will make you think.

Neil Young's Living With War:

Guns blazing against apathy

Neil Young may very well be the last of the old hippies--and I mean that in the best way possible. In a career spanning nearly forty years, he has never wavered from the notion that music can change the world, and he's never been overly concerned about what rewards, or lack thereof, he might reap in the process. If he had never sold a record, it wouldn't have mattered to him. Neil Young just loves those magic three chords and the magic they can unleash.

On Living With War, Young offers no apologies about his feelings toward the current turmoil in America, particularly in regards to the war in Iraq. This is not a soft, country-tinged work, nor should it be. Rather, this a blistering indictment of the Bush Administration's handling of not only the war, but its dealings with dissent at home. It's only fitting, then, that Living With War harkens back to Young's Crazy Horse days.

Deceptively simple at its surface, Young's latest work is in a league with Woody Guthrie's Depression-era classics that spoke to the everyman and gave them a voice they couldn't quite find alone. It is protest music at it's finest, and will undoubtedly be featured in movie soundtracks when they make films about these times.

Living With War goes on sale May 8, but you can hear it for free in the meantime athttp://neilyoung.com.

Trust me--it's worth a listen.

Coming up: May sweeps are upon us. Stay tuned for "The Fox, the Mouse, the Peacock and that Bigass Eyeball."

Look out, kid--it's somethin' you did--

God knows what--

but you're doin' it again...

Bob Dylan

So there I was, minding my own business--well, at least as much as I ever mind my own business, when she said-- and I kid you not-- "I blame the media on everything."

I was aghast. I was agog. I awash with astonishment.

But mostly, I was just amused.

I run into this kind of thing on an almost daily basis, and usually from people who seem to be from the same planet as me. And I'm always reminded of Jack Nicholson's line to Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces: "Everything would be just fine if you didn't open your mouth." Unlike Jack, I've refrained from beating the crap out of a steering wheel to emphasize the retort.

So far.

I smiled thinly, and asked her, "Doesn't that fall under the category of shooting the messenger?"

She was on a roll now, eyes flashing ice and voice speaking from another plane. "No," she hissed, "and I'll tell you why. The media just tells us every day we deserve this and it's everyone else's fault we don't have it. And I'll tell you what else," she leaned in, as if to impart the secret of life to me, "the Democrats started it all.."

And with that, she scurried away, back to her daily routine of marking inventory down to sale prices in the vain hope that the company will turn around, if not in this quarter, then the next.

You think I'm making this up. Folks, you can't even buy this kind of material.

I guess I'm a member of that nebulous entity known as the media. And I'll readily admit to recording history--it's called writing. And I'll even cop to injecting an opinion here and there. But I am at a loss to explain how I, or my peers (Fox News notwithstanding)

am responsible for global unrest, the war in Iraq, the Katrina debacle, the AIDS pandemic, obscene oil company profits, Hollywood divorces and pregnancies, illegal wiretaps, or even the fact that Joey is still on the air.

The fact is this. The Administration has gotten all the spin they can get from 9/11 and Bush squandered his self-proclaimed "political collateral", so it's time to blame --once again-- the media. The even sadder fact is that they are, in fact, the media--self-contained in their own version of the universe. Make no mistake about it--these guys are masters of manipulation.

She was right about one thing, though. You can blame it on the media.

She just bet on the wrong horse--the one that refers to any whisper of dissent as "culture wars."

In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Andy Warhol

Poor George Orwell--all his bleak, monochromatic visions of a future epitomized by a jackboot stamping you in the face forever were made even more horrible by the real 1984--beginning with Apple's legendary Superbowl commercial wherein at least the proles won, thanks in no small part to the introduction of the Macintosh for the masses. That fooled us momentarily, but then came the onslaught of big hair, which begat glam hair bands, which begat spandex as de rigeur apparel for every mall rat in America, which begat, as a counterstrike, alligator polo shirts, which begat Urkel, which begat Tiffany, the first mall pop superstar, which fulfilled Andy Warhol's prophecy.

The future turned out to be not Winston Smith, but Madonna.

Okay--we did get newspeak and black helicopters, but the world, at least superficially, turned out to be not Orwellian, but Warholian. And Warhol's vision was every bit as grim as Orwell's. Warhol saw a future where fame was manufactured, and consequently meant nothing, as evidenced by his Marilyn Monroe series.

All of which brings me to American Idol...

At its core, Idol is a singing competition--not exactly an earth-shattering concept--in fact, it's been a mainstay of entertainment from Day One, albeit usually relegated to second or third tier syndication. But Idol is light years removed from Star Search. American Idol is a paean to flash and glitz disguised as an earnest search to find America's next sensation.

Make that America's next fifteen minute diversion.

What makes it the phenomenon it has become is that it preys on our baser instincts, such as, say...rubbernecking as we whiz by the scene of a horrible automobile accident and the subconscious superiority we feel that we weren't part of the carnage. The instinct to survive is a powerful one, made even more palatable if we don't have to get actively involved. Of course, Ryan Seacrest will scold us if we con't vote for our favorite contestant, to remind us that it's our fault that the voted-off contestant is fated to return to a life of drudgery in heartland honky tonks when he or she was soooo close to becoming the embodiment of all that is good and just in the world.

Truth be told, they were just too mediocre to take the time to call or spend the dime to text our support. Besides, I couldn't live with myself if I had been responsible for nipping Bob Dylan's career in the bud because he was "a little pitchy", as Randy Jackson would say. Not that I would need to feel guilty-- Paula Abdul would absolve me of any guilt by reassuring Bob and me that he made every performance his own. None of that would matter, though, because Simon Cowell would reassure me that the reason he lost was because he just didn't have what it takes to be an American Idol so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

And therein lies the fallacy of American Idol.

You simply cannot manufacture art--it's just not a democratic process. Any artist has to heed his inner voice, not put his soul to a popular vote. Sure, most of the contestants can actually sing, but so can millions of other people. That does not in and of itself make one a pop star. In the end, there has to be that voice that speaks to all people--Sinatra had it. So did Johnny Cash, as does Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen-- and more recently, Bono and Leela James. The list goes on...

But what separates the artists from the American Idols is not that they can sing, but that they believe in themselves enough to not need validation from the great unwashed before they pay their dues and ultimately force themselves into our collective soul.

Fess up, folks---the real reason we love American Idol is the same reason we love The Sopranos---

We just have to know who gets offed this week.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, has an agenda.

The more insidious it is, the more rigorously it is denied.

Ray's Rules

Don't believe the above is true? Congratulations! You just proved my point.

We'll discuss this topic further very soon. Right now, I have other, more pressing business on my plate.

Just kidding...

Whether it's using an impending childbirth to promote your upcoming movie or just plotting your way through the day, we all have agendas. True, they're apt to change in a heartbeat-- check any given episode of 24 or the weekly audience votes for American Idol contestants--but the agendas are always lurking.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the spin cycle world commonly known as the Bush Administration.

A bit of backspacing is in order here, and for that we must turn to the administration of George the First and his initial declarations of the need to be "politically correct." The first time I heard the term, I thought, this makes no sense, sort of like "alternative music"--alternative to what?

But in the down the rabbit hole logic of the Bush Wannabe Dynasty, it makes perfect sense. If language is watered down enough, all issues are rendered impotent. Blind people are suddenly visually impaired, cripples are physically challenged, people in ghettos are economically disadvantaged.

In short, dilute reality to the point that it means nothing and we can get away with anything.

Pontius Pilate would have been proud.

Fast forward to now.

The younger George doesn't have the finesse his father did. He may even have an Oedipal complex. He's determined to outshine his father (not that difficult a task) but he's failing miserably. He surrounds himself with incompetence and insists he's making the right move regardless of the miserable results. The war in Iraq, the Katrina aftermath, soaring energy costs, on and on, ad nauseum.

What does this have to do with pop culture?

Anybody but me remember Kentucky Fried Movie?

There is a skit in it in which a very pre -Law and Order Richard Belzer plays a kick-ass president. What has always stood out in my memory is his line:

"I'm the fuckin' President and I make the fuckin' rules."

George toned it down a bit and said, in his usual nonsensical way:

"Im the decider and I decide what's best."

Charming, ain't it?

One on tiptoe cannot stand.
One astride cannot walk.
--Lao Tzu
Tao Teh Ching

Let's get this bus rolling, shall we?

These are interesting times--no, these are most interesting times, rife with smoke and mirrors and snake oil on a planetary level, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's the season of illusion, friends, and it looks to be around for a long while to come. It's Orwell meets Disney and we just love every second of it.

I do, anyway.

I was born in the earlier years of the last half of the twentieth century, a time when television was only three networks and maybe five or six channels, all recording in fuzzy black and white only, reflecting an Eisenhower world-view of good versus evil. My own ethos was shaped by that box. I was born into a universe unlike any previous generation had seen, where Bugs Bunny and Peter Gunn and Zorro would shape my sense of right and wrong as much, if not more, as Socrates influenced the ancient Greek juvies.

Couple TV with two teenage aunts enamored of rock and roll, not to mention a grandmother notorious for her fashion sensibilities (at least in East Texas), and the die for me was pretty much cast from the outset.

But I digress.

Pop culture in all its facets, be it comic books or movies or TV or fashion trends of soundbite politics or any of the niches in between, has always been the driving force in my life. The idea that something designed to be utterly disposable has such an inexorable hold on our lives fascinates me to no end. It speaks volumes about how we view ourselves as a society. More, it defines us. World leaders use movie lines to sell their agendas, rock stars are global ambassadors, supermodels are self-contained fundraisers, sports figures are dark celebrities and everybody else is getting their fifteen minutes any way they can, from Survival to American Idol.

Me? I just observe it all and record it.

In point of fact, I've been recording it for a while now. My first nationally published work was a letter to the long defunct Doctor Strange comics, for which I won Marvel's coveted no-prize. I was sixteen and I was hooked on seeing my name in print. By 1981, I I was publishing my own magazine, Pulse: Tomorrow's Trends Today, the first magazine to be dedicated to pop culture. After its demise, I freelanced for a number of publications, and eventually whored myself into the world of advertising, where I really learned how transitory our culture is. As sidenotes, I've worked as an actor, musician, working painter, photographer, and a whole bunch of other things I'd rather not talk about here.

And believe me, folks--it's all pop culture.

And we're going to wallow in it here, dissect it and put it back together, and see if it looks any different once we see what it says about us. We're going to examine it in all its myriad forms- from music to literature, from literature to fashion, from politics to cartoons--in short, anything and everything goes. And hopefully, we'll realize in so observing that our world is not a melting pot nearly so much as it is a tossed salad of flavors that shouldn't work together but somehow make a tasty dish nonetheless.

Stick around. I think you'll enjoy it...