The eternal lameness of remakes.

Michele's pissed because Limp Bizkit hijacked "Behind Blue Eyes", and she worries that the younger generation will think Fred Durst wrote it. I just shake my head and shrug, since I knew people in high school who honestly thought Eric Clapton wrote "I Shot the Sheriff" and Bob Marley ripped him off.

Besides, that's not nearly as horrifying as Eddie Vedder muttering his way through "Last Kiss". Admit it.

Return of the King.

Behold the trailer here, and marvel.

Yeah, I delinked Bill Whittle.

Wanna make something of it?

He just doesn't update enough. Besides, whenever he does get around to posting something, everybody else on the blogroll will let me know.

Robert Palmer is dead.

Heart attack, Paris, age 54. 2003 has been a rough year to be a celebrity.

Fantasies of the powerless and insignificant.

From WSJ's Best of the Web:

"Actor Tony Randall has a fantasy: when he dies President Bush and Vice President Cheney show up to pay their respects but they're turned away--because his family knows he didn't like them," the Associated Press reports.

My fantasy is that when I die, George Clooney will show up to pay his respects, and my family will ask him what the fuck he was thinking when he did Solaris.

Bleah.

I was going to make extended reference to Martin Sheen paying Canada left-handed compliments ("You don't shoot each other."), but I decided I just don't care. [From Drudge, via Tim Blair.]

Why, oh why, oh why, oh --
Why did I ever leave Ohio?
Why did I wander to find what lies yonder
When life was so cozy at home?

Wond'ring while I wander,
Why did I fly?
Why did I roam?
Oh, why oh, why oh,
Did I leave Ohio?
Maybe I'd better go home.

--Bernstein, Comden & Green, Wonderful Town.

Good luck with that rock banjo thing.

Courtesy of the Angela the Coffee Muse, this item: Chicks to break with country scene.

The Dixie Chicks say they don't want to be a country music band any more.

Violinist

Fiddle player.

Martie Maguire told Spiegel

The catalog people? Or is this, as I suspect, a German publication?

magazine: "We don't feel part of the country scene any longer, it can't be our home any more."

Am I to infer the quivering lip and the misty eye, or should I rather assume the pout of an urchin whose hand has been smacked for reaching into the cookie jar five minutes before dinnertime?

She said she was disappointed other country singers didn't back up the Dixie Chicks in their criticism of George W Bush's politics on Iraq.

"A few weeks ago, Merle Haggard said a couple of nice words about us, but that was it," Maguire complained.

Probably because the rest of the country music scene recognized that you couldn't have pulled a bigger faux pas if you had started lighting farts during a papal audience. You slipped the turd into the punchbowl; don't act so surprised nobody wanted a drink after that.

"The support we got came from others, like Bruce Springsteen."

Yeah, Bruce is also eternally in search of his own authenticity. He apparently believes New Jersey borders Nebraska. The four of you should get on like gangbusters.

Going home empty-handed from the Country Awards ceremony also made them decide to break with the scene, Maguire said.

Dingdingdingdingdingdingding!! "If you don't reward our brave dissent we're going to pack our toys and go home."

"Instead, we won three Grammys against much stronger competition.

"We don't want your stinky awards anyway." Way to burn that bridge, fiddlechick.

"So we now consider ourselves part of the big Rock 'n' Roll family."

I'll alert Ozzy. Just remember not to invite Ted Nugent to your housewarming; I don't think he's quite ready to adopt you yet.

Well, this one's just wrong.


Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

Holy Prime Directive, you're Robocop!

The hell you say.

Well, you're neither colossal, nor technically a robot, but your arthritic lurching and dubious morals

Well, that part's true.

have found their way into the hearts of futuristic rebels and children everywhere. You walk through fire, catch bullets from the air, and you never, ever smile. Combine this with an abstract, almost random concept of duty and honour, and you have a police officer one cannot fail to adore.

Thank you, Robocop.

Whatever.

(Brought to you because I refuse to foreswear silly tests. Unlike some people.)

[Via Emily Jones, in a roundabout way.]

You're Egypt!

Curator of ancient mystical secrets, your life on the surface is fairly typical these days, though you are in denial about more things than most people. Nevertheless, you're trying to convince people that you're safe despite your more volatile and unstable times that seem to be behind you. You like cats a whole lot. You'd probably really appreciate The Blue Pyramid.

Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

[Via Steven Chapman. He's Mexico. Viva!]

Behold the power of my wrath.

Just the threat of a hissy fit was enough to make whoever the hell left that grill on my patio take it someplace else. At least, I guess that's what it was.

They toil not, neither do they spin.

Thanks to Bernadine for the heads up on this unbelievable bullshit:

September 14, 2003 -- THEY have cell phones. They've got e-mail. They shop free at Old Navy, McDonald's and Virgin record stores. They have free access to acupuncture treatments, yoga classes and massage therapy.

Welcome to the coddled lifestyles of New York's new "homeless" - young kids who, besides getting pampered by charities, rake in hundreds of dollars a week begging on the street.

Cell phones and e-mail.

Cell-phone toting Dawn, who like most interviewed for this story did not wish her full name revealed, is one of their number, and she's staked out a corner at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street as her begging spot.

A sign at her feet reads, "Hungry, broke and miserable . . . All I want is a warm, safe place to stay until I . . . get back home . . . or back on my feet here."

Dawn told The Post she averages $40 a day panhandling - what the new homeless called "spanging" - but recently a stockbroker handed her $600 cash, saying he'd once been in similar straits.

"I don't spend my money on drugs, so I'm able to afford a cell phone, buy clothes and go to the movies once in a while," she said. "Part of the reason I'm living like this is to get away from the material life."

Then ditch the cellphone, stop asking strangers for money, and change your motherfucking sign, you lying bitch. You're neither hungry, nor broke, nor miserable, and the cynicism with which you are manipulating the good-hearted people who hand you money for your bullshit sobstory makes me hope someone steals your phone and beats you up. Repeatedly.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend, scion of a well-to-do family, declaims,

"I don't find joy in a 9-to-5 gig," Tom told The Post. "I'm kind of happy with the way things are now. And if it ever gets to the point where I'm not, I'll change my life."

Fuck you, you goddamn parasite.

I just feel all warm and tingly thinking that the tax money of regular schmoes who hold the 9-to-5 jobs Tom so disdains is being handed to him in the form of Virgin Records coupons and Old Navy gift certs. Yes, indeed, I do.

Entertaining invective.

Via Michele at A Small Victory, this priceless rant on this year's rather lame crop of Rock'n'Roll HOF nominees.

Of course you know, this means war.

Some dumb son of a bitch here in the apartment complex had the gall, the boldfaced nerve, to leave an old, worn out propane grill on my patio. I don't care if I don't ever set foot on that goddamn patio, I pay rent for it and there will be no grills stored there that I have not purchased my own self.

Measures will be taken. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Unintentional hilarity.

Hipocrisy is saying one thing and doing another.

Hippocracy is government by horses.

It might be a good idea to memorize the difference between those two.

(Comments, scroll down to Posted by Jeremy on September 11, 2003 11:34 PM. I wasn't going to mention it, but it kept making me laugh.)

Mark Morford should be fired.
For offenses against the English language.

"some mutant shellacked Maria Shriver-like perma-saluting mannequin"

"all fake smiles and bleached teeth and Botoxed worry lines and pumped-up, silicone-enhanced flag-waving bravado"

"an entirely new, politically purified, blazingly conscious, peace-seeking vision"

"run roughshod over your id like an SUV crushes a bird's nest"

That's just painful.

He winds up his 9/11 retrospective with this gem:

It all comes down to this: Can you, on the deepest and most acute levels possible, in a raw and divine way that does zero dishonor to the various tragedies of your world but instead injects them all with mandatory doses of perspective and divine drunkenness and hot screaming love, can you, with every fiber or your being, with the deepest breath you can possibly take, laugh at the cosmic carnival of it all? .

No, I can't. Bite my ass, shitnugget.

[Via Michele, whose page will no longer load as I post this.]

Not for nothin'...

...but what use does Subway have for giant cans of "Country Sausage Gravy"? Do they even serve breakfast?

Never forget.

I stink at being thoughtfully somber and I don't have the eloquence to do justice to the day. These people do:

Damien Penny.
Sheila O'Malley. (And here.)
Emily Jones.
Michele Catalano. (Andrea Harris concurs.)
Ian Hamet.
James Lileks. (Second half of the entry.)
Mark Steyn.
Christopher Hitchens.

Zevon.

Like everyone else, I have my favorites:

10) Play It All Night Long -- Sweet Home, Alabama, play that dead band's song/turn those speakers up full blast and play it all night long.

9) Mohammed's Radio -- Don't it make you want to rock and roll, all night long.

8) Mr. Bad Example -- I'm proud to be a glutton, and I don't have time for sloth/I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross.

7) I'll Slow You Down -- You know I hate it when you stick your hand inside my head/And switch all my priorities around/You think you're pretty tricky but you're simply overbred/Go on without me, I'll just slow you down.

6) Turbulence -- We've been fightin' with the Mujahedin/Down in Afghanistan/Comrade Gorbachev/Can I go back to Vladivostok, man.

5) Splendid Isolation -- Don't want to wake up with no one beside me/Don't want to take up with nobody new/Don't want nobody comin' by without callin' first/Don't want nothin' to do with you.

4) Poor, Poor Pitiful Me -- Met a girl at the Rainbow Bar, she asked me if I'd beat her/She took me back to the Hyatt House...I don't want to talk about it.

3) Lawyers, Guns, and Money -- And I'm hiding in Honduras/I'm a desperate man/Send lawyers, guns and money/The shit has hit the fan.

2) Werewolves of London -- I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain...

1) Renegade -- Some prayers never reach the sky/Some wars never end/And some dreams refuse to die/Next time I would rather break than bend

Bad taste alert.

Ok, I could almost understand the Chinese not grokking the opprobrium associated with all things Hitler. The Italians, however, really ought to know better.

Depp redux.

Also via Tim Blair, Johnny Depp now claims his "dumb puppy" comments were--say it with me--taken out of context:

The magazine quoted the actor as saying "America is ... like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive." He was further quoted as saying he wanted his children to "see America as ... a broken toy" that they should explore, get the feel of, then "get out."

Explaining his comments a day later, Depp he had been using a metaphor that was taken "radically out of context," adding, "There was no anti-American sentiment."

America as a broken toy isn't anti-American?

"What I was saying was that, compared to Europe, America is a very young country and we are still growing as a nation," he said. "My deepest apologies to those who were offended, affected, or hurt by this insanely twisted deformation of my words and intent."

Is it me, or is 'taken out of context' this decade's 'just good friends'?

Update: Ben Kepple of Ben Kepple's Daily Rant went so far as to pull the transcript for the interview in question.

Second update: The more I think about the questionable judgment exercised by the interviewee, the more I giggle. At least America doesn't have "Wino Forever" tattooed on its collective chest as the sad and tatty reminder of a lame attempt to expunge an ill-advised tribute to its neurotic goth ex-girlfriend, Johnboy.