Daily Rambling
So over at my dad's house watching the Lakers game last night, I was paging through the new Entertainment Weekly.  Or "Entertainment Weakly" as I, and most everyone else, thinks of it.

I guess it's not bad for a fluffy entertainment mag, but it's so inconsequential.  I can remember two real articles in the 5 or 6 years it's been out.  One was on the hypocrisy of the movie rating system, how they pass graphic violence but are hung up over any type of sex, and more so on minorities having sex.  I can't remember the other one that was good, but there must have been one somewhere.  I think I've seen interesting things in two or three of the interviews, and since I only read about every 20th interview (out of disinterest in the other 95% of the subjects) I could be missing more.

The good things about the mag is that it's easy to read a full issue in 20 minutes, and you'll see a few tid bits of interest, along with their lame superficial movie reviews.  Newsweek is a great publication, but you know it'll be some hours to read it all, even if you skip various articles on topics you can't be arsed to inform yourself about.  They are uniformly well-written and researched, etc.  Blows Time away, IMHO.

But anyway, EW is tolerable, though the celebrity worship gets a bit tedious.  They have a small feature in each issue, near the front of the mag called, Gimme Shelter, and click that to see the online archive of it that I just went to hunt up.  If you ever want to learn hate celebrities even more than you already do, it's a good place to start.

The feature lists some generally B-list celeb's recent mansion purchase.  I wouldn't mind if it were a real star like Spielberg or David Geffen or someone you know is richer than god.  But it's so often someone on some crappy sit com you've never seen, or who did one stupid teen movie, and they're buying a $4m mansion in Kauai or something.

This issue's is about Ellen DeGeneres, selling a house she bought with the perpetually-dazed Anne Heche back when they were a couple and Anne was having some severe personality issues.  Ellen is buying another house for about $2m, and the article mentions that she owns "another small retreat near Ojai", and "a small town house near Santa Barbara".  How the hell does she have that much money?

I have nothing against Ellen.  Well, she's about the least interesting lesbian on TV (other than Rosie *shudder*), and she's not funny, but I do sort of give her props for being a dyke in the public view, with the pressure and negative attention that brings, and like all real men, I love lesbians.  At least stripper-hot lipstick types, who are of course very representative of lesbians on the whole.  *cough* (And yes, I realize that Ellen's "coming out" was a huge career boost.  She'd certainly not have gotten another major network show if she weren't semi-controversial for being gay.  She'd be lucky to be a wacky neighbor on some blackexploitation series on the WB.) Plus she bagged Anne Heche, who is clearly nuts, but still pretty hot.  

But how does she have so much money?  Ellen has done a cancelled sitcom that was never really successful and wasn't on long enough to get into syndication.  She's got a new sitcom that no one watches.  Does that pay that well? I can't think of any movies she ever did, if she did they were far from hits, so how does she have enough cash to own three homes worth like $5m combined?  Probably she's a producer on her TV show and that pays well, but I really don't know.  Seems a bit absurd, and I hate that section of the magazine anyway, seldom reading it.

How does the mag know about celebs selling their houses? If I were a celeb, given the issues with stalkers, I sure as hell wouldn't want anything about my residence in a magazine, especially not a picture of it and relative location information.  Maybe the realtors submit it to get publicity?  Maybe the magazine just scans legal documents to find the stuff?  Possible, but I assume the celebs authorize it, or their publicists do.  They want any sort of publicity, and figure this is a free plug for whatever they are now doing.  Not counting on people like me who read it and are sickened and want them to die of pancreatic cancer.

Looking at EW's online page as I hunted up that Gimme Shelter thing, and got it's puff.  I guess that's what people want, I mean try to "read" a People magazine next time you're in a waiting room somewhere, it's unbelievably vapid.  EW at least does some articles and features and reviews.

EW also covers the Internet, but just barely.  Their online coverage is 99% celebrity or movie websites, whatever are part of some major company that buys ad space in the mag. They do profile "real" websites occasionally, I.E. ones someone is doing for their own edification and enjoyment, but generally just as a link to some celeb worship site on Geocities. I don't know what I want from that section, but something more than massively-well known sites any idiot could find in 5 seconds with a search engine would be nice.

This issue has 2 pages, with a big review of cell phone games, a short review of Playstation Star Wars game (how the hell is that internet-related?), a meaningless quote from Nicole Kidman in an online chat (but since there's a big picture of her, I can't complain), short descriptions of the official sites for the best actor nominees, 3 new movie websites, and hit stats for 5 major Olympics websites.  Talk about superficial shit, eh?  Any web log site that covered that sort of junk would be lucky to get 10 hits a day, yet somehow it's the entire Internet section for a week in the most popular entertainment magazine in America.  *sigh*

I hate to comment on celebrity news, it's so superficial and unimportant, but they have a funny note in the magazine that that Kevin Costner is turning down the role in Dances with Wolves 2.  Another brilliant career move, eh?

He is such a mystery; obviously he has absolutely no idea what makes a decent movie, as he's done just one bomb after another the last 8 or 10 years, with the ones he was involved in producing the worst of the lot.  For the same man to make Waterworld and The Postman and still be able to get in the door to any movie studio without taking a hostage is certainly some sort of achievement.  But of course he doesn't want to do Dances with Wolves 2, I mean someone might actually go to see that, god forbid.  He's probably right, I mean it just about has to suck, but it's not like any of his other movie choices are anything but enormous duds, so might as well make an enormous dud that pays well, right?

I've never actually seen Dances with Wolves, other than short bits here and there when it used to be on HBO every 15 minutes, and it seemed very ponderous and overlong.  Perhaps it's brilliant, perhaps it's just okay and everyone says it's brilliant since it's about Indians in a sympathetic way, etc.

I see Russell Crowe as the '00's version of Kevin Costner.  Sort of accidentally became a star through a movie he had nothing to do with, then got in a couple of other good ones right after that.  Now he'll be all powerful and start producing and picking his own scripts, and his lack of any real talent will show up soon enough.

He's clearly a dick, as recent news reports have demonstrated, and him winning the Oscar for Gladiator is quite a mystery.  I mean what does he do?  His stunt double kills guys in sword fights and he has a dramatic death scene that requires him to lie on his back and mumble some.  His acting is nothing but various grunting and wearing good costumes and occasionally looking noble or concerned.  Which of course beats out 90% of action stars, but they don't win Oscars either. The emperor and his sister both have very good performances that require actual acting, Crowe as the Gladiator does nothing, but Oscar loves epics.  Must not have been anyone playing a cripple/retard/colorful nutcase that year, since those win every other best actor Oscar. 

Music Reviews

Oddly enough, the main reason I wanted to mention EW was to comment on the music review in it, and I'm finally getting to it a mile later.

They review four CDs in one article, and give them all a "C".  Indepth there, eh?  But the review is what's so dumb.  A quote:

Every day is the same old gauntlet of abject, intense, horrid torment from which there is no escape, even worse no one listens (Puddle of Mudd. Default.) Your friends can't be trusted or counted on; the ones you thought loved you, in fact, don't (Hoobastank). Even when you go back home, the old aggravations haunt you; your parents still don't understand (The Calling). Everywhere is a bleak, ink-black hole of loneliness, pain, rejection and two-faced friends (all of them).

Now that all may be from accurate lyric quotes, picking out one or two songs from each 10 song album, but who gives a shit?  I have no idea what the lyrics or songs are about on 90% of the CDs I own, and I like it that way.  What I buy music for is the sound of it, does it rock, is it catchy, is it well-played and recorded. In fact lots of music I'd prefer to not know the meaning of the songs, since the artists are generally drunken idiot junkies, whining about love lost or everything sucks or overblown sentimentality.

Plus now there are all of these Christian bands who have the same sort of sound, but their songs are mine fields of "don't make baby Jesus cry" lyrics, so you're beginning to enjoy the track and then you realize the whole thing is about praying about how your dead friend is playing Basketball in heaven or something equally ridiculous, but since there is decent guitar it's hard to hate it completely.

If I'm buying rap or spoken word or poetry (not that I do) I care about the lyrics, since that's what it is, lyrics, words.  Rock, metal especially, just enjoy the sound.  I have every Slayer album but the last couple, and most of their songs are about human sacrifice and such, but you look at them as short stories, fictional accounts, whatever.  Something sorta interesting and creative, something you can't hear every stoned, backwards ball cap wearing, poorly-tattooed, wallet-chain jingling, twenty-something and still running from the mall security guards, loser, whining about.  And yes, I realize I just described every lead singer in every metal band today.

Rammstein is great and they speak fricking German.  Just regard the voice as another instrument, try to ignore whatever the idiot is yapping about, and see if the music is good.  Most of it's not, unfortunately, and all the metal bands now sound the same, I will admit.  I can't tell half of the songs apart, or keep the bands straight, but that's true for most musical types.  Generally there's one original band, and then two dozen bad imitations as the sound gets beaten to death.

The rest of the EW music review does describe the sounds a bit more, but the reviewer obviously doesn't like the heavy - slow - heavy - scream, sort of rock sound, so why have him review it?

I've long though that music reviews were pretty pointless. You either like a type of music or don't.  I'd give every R&B album ever recorded an F, since I can't stand that sort of slow sentimental crap.  I'd give every pop album the last 10 years an F.  I can't listen to that stuff, and I could differentiate somewhat between them in quality, but I'd either hate it and know it was junk, or hate it and know it wasn't junk. I'd have problems making it through an hour of the CD to review in the first place.

So really the only meaningful music review is in a relative sense.  Is an album better or worse than other albums by that artist, and how is it compared to other music in the same genre.  For this reason the EW guy giving 4 albums all a C, just sharing the grade in the article I mentioned above, is exceptionally idiotic.  Obviously he doesn't like that type of music and wants to make a point about how it's all the same, and that's more or less true I'm sure, but how is that of any use to readers?  Either you like that type and might get it, or you don't and won't.  If they give a new boy band album an F or an A, it makes zero difference to me, I know what it sounds like, and I loathe it.  That's only of interest to people who like that type of music, and you should say it's better or worse than the last N'Synch Kids on the Backstreet, if the sound has progressed or there are any really good songs, etc.

So having read the review of 4 rock albums in EW, I've got no information I didn't have prior to reading it.  Most types of music all sound the same.  I couldn't tell you if a song were Brittney Spears, Christian Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, etc.  They all sound the same to me, equally vapid.  Yet I'm sure fans of the genre have their favorites (hopefully not based on whose clothing they like more) and could tell you how the sound had changed from album to album, etc.

I could give detailed reviews of the differences between Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, etc, since I have albums by all of them and like the music.  To someone who doesn't like the Grunge sound, they're all the same.

Anyway, I'm beating the point to death, but for a useful review, you have to go to someone who sticks to that genre exclusively, and can do it comparatively.  Check out the Essential CDs on Kerrang.com, they are very good for that, with a discussion of every album by a group, and relative ratings.  I added that page to my Links page yesterday, for just this reason.

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