70 Grand Don't Come For Free

Ashley Smith received $70,000 for reading The Purpose Driven Life. Still no word on how much I'll get for reading The Da Vinci Code.

That's Not Entertainment!

The Jane Pauley show is cancelled
Jane Pauley had a TV show?

Judge lifts gag order for Leno's jokes
Why do the courts hate us?

Phil Spector has gun habit
This story is brought to you by Understatement Weekly

Seacrest upset over American Porn Star

I always thought that there would be a Ryan Seacrest/gay porn story one day. I thought the details would be a bit different though.

The Passion of the Christ is recut with fewer scenes of blood and torture
Rejected tag line: Now with slightly less passion!

I hate to be the one to say this, but does Peyton Manning really want to associate himself with the Braves?

"Hi. My name is Peyton and I dominate all season long yet can't win in the postseason either. Would it be cool if me and my little brother came down and hung out with you guys?"

Robyn Hithcock, Badly Drawn Boy, Bright Eyes, Garden State, Ray Lamontagne, and They Might Be Giants

I always think of stuff to write about the things you see in the column to the right, but I rarely take the time to actually type them out. I have let a lot of stuff slip lately and here is a quick wrap-up of the music I’ve been enjoying over the past month.

Moss Elixir & I Often Dream of Trains – Robyn Hitchcock
Scott has been giving me Robyn stuff for about 3 years now and I never really got excited about any of it until I saw Robyn live last year. I always hoped for the best, but never came away really loving any of the solo stuff. After seeing the concert and after fully enjoying Spooked, I have been anxious to hear some more of Robyn’s albums. I have enjoyed both Moss Elixir & I Often Dream of Trains, but Moss Elixir is exceptionally good. My favorite song is probably Devil’s Radio. (A line from that song has been featured at the top of this blog for a while now.) I Often Dream of Trains is a fun listen, but it's nothing I have put on to enjoy from start to finish. I have read very good things about IODOT through the years so maybe I had built it up a bit much. [IODOT: 2.5/5, ME: 3.5/5]

One Plus One Is One – Badly Drawn Boy
My friend Jon first brought Badly Drawn Boy to my attention with the soundtrack to the movie About a Boy (based on a novel by Nick Hornby – ah, the circle of life). I loved that and have since listened to his first album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, and 2002’s Have You Fed the Fish? OPOIO was a surprising pleasure to listen to. For my taste, it lacks focus and is too long to be a great album, but it reminded me of what I liked about Badly Drawn Boy in the first place (I kind of lost track with that after HYFTF?). [3/5]

I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning – Bright Eyes
I heard plenty about Bright Eyes, but had never actually heard any of the music until I got a Lost Highway compilation. I wasn’t blown away by the song on there, but I was definitely intrigued. Any interest that was piqued by that song was quickly squashed when I heard Lifted. I never could get into that album and was kind of put off by the whole thing. IWAIM is a whole other story though. There are great songs, the good things about Conor Oberst are front and center while the pretension and theatrics are mainly put aside, and it’s good from start to finish too. (Okay, I could do without the minute plus spoken word intro on the very first track, but other than that…) [3/5]

Garden State Soundtrack
I love this movie. When watching this movie at the theatre I thought the music worked really well and I made a note to pick up the soundtrack. Well, the soundtrack doesn’t work for me without the movie, despite having some good songs by some artists that I normally like. It’s the anti-Vanilla Sky, which I think has a brilliant soundtrack that runs circles around the actual movie. The movie is funny and for the most part puts you in a good mood; the soundtrack, however, is anything but jovial. [2/5]

Trouble – Ray Lamontagne
I knew nothing about this going into it, but I liked it the few times I listened to it. His voice has a Van Morrison thing working and the overall feel is very singer-songwritery. I’m going to keep my eye out for any future releases and maybe go back and listen to this one some more at another time. [2.5/5...for now]

Here Come the ABCs – They Might Be Giants
This is TMBG’s second album for kids, or as I see it, their second album for the kids of geeky parents. This one is geared more to the preschool set. When I say it’s geared to the preschool set, I actually mean it was made specifically for my son, Aden. To be fair, TMBG probably didn’t have Aden specifically in mind, but I can’t imagine anything being created that Aden would love more. There is a DVD as well as the CD and they have both been on a pretty steady loop at our house. My wife and I have enjoyed it too. It’s funny, clever, educational, and it also has Aden using the word gyroscope as well as Zimbabwe. At this rate my son will be able to kick my ass in Scrabble by the age of four. [4/5]

The Sports Guy asks, "Who is the U2 of sports?"

This is an entertaining article from Bill Simmons. I'm not the world's biggest U2 fan, but I can always understand why people like them so much.

A few points:

I've never played the musicians-to-atheletes game before and trying to come up with a few of my own examples is giving me a headache. I keep wanting to compare musicians to sports franchises instead of individual atheletes.

I think there's only a 15% chance that Kurt and Courtney would be in a reality show on VH1 if Cobain were alive today, not a 90% chance as Simmons suggests. And making the jump with all of the what if's involved, the show would definitely be post divorce.

Is there some sort of special rule for atheltes that become musicians. Can Deion Sanders be Deion Sanders? Can Shaq be Shaq?

Can we directly draw a correlation between Michael Jordan's baseball carrer and Garth's Chris Gaines experiment? Or is that another game entirely?

Does anybody have any examples they want to share? I'm dying to know Keith Lockhart's musical equivalent.

The not-so-timely Oscar post

I have been watching the Oscars since 1990, the year that Driving Miss Daisy and Field of Dreams were nominated for Best Picture. It was the first time I think I ever saw a movie (let alone two) that was up for an Academy Award, so I somehow convinced my mom that staying up to 1:00 in the morning on a school night to watch the Oscars was perfectally acceptable thing for a 12 year old boy to do. Ever since then I have watched every single minute of every telecast…until Sunday. Due to circumstances out of my control (more like circumstances that I hastily deemed out of my control, i.e. a screaming two year old in the house) I recorded the show and started watching it when it was almost over. I did see the first 30 minutes of it live and I thought Chris Rock did a good job with the monologue, but not a great job. I think he has/had the ability to be a lot funnier, but he wasn’t due to the restraints of the circumstances. Anyway, I watched the rest of the show zipping through commercials, various acceptance speeches, and the tribute to the dead folks segment. I probably watched the whole thing in about an hour. (By the way, the dead folks segment is the tackiest thing imaginable because they leave the audio from the auditorium on and you can hear people applaud the famous dead guys and sit quietly while they show the dead cinematographers and costume designers. I have always hated this and I have been happy to read in the past 4 or 5 years a lot of other people don’t like it either. I smell a petition.) I don’t really have anything to say about who actually won the awards. I stopped caring who won somewhere along the way, but here are some observations from the show:

The time cutting measures seem to have worked regardless of how unfair or tacky they may have seemed.

Can someone take the batteries out of Robin Williams? Please?!?! I know this could be an overwhelming thought, but could you imagine what would happen if they let him host one year? First of all, the first few rows would have to cover up like they were at a Gallagher concert because of the massive amount of flop sweat that man produces. (Have you seen one of his HBO specials? That man sweats more than a Bush twin that's a few days late. "Uh, daddy, I might be pregnant. I don't know it could be anybody's. It's hard to keep track. Remember your genes have genetically prediposed me to alcoholism and that's really the reason for all of this. Daddy, you aren't mad are you? And daddy, I think there might have been a photographer watching me leave the drugstore with an EPT in hand. Uh, daddy? Swear you aren't mad at me, please!") Secondly, the show is so long he would almost have to come up with some new material. It might actually be worth it.

I thought the tribute to Johnny Carson was really stale. There had to be some funny moments that happened the years he hosted, why didn't they show any of those?

Wow! That Counting Crows guy still has the same hair style from when they were really popular. That's just precious.

Man, Jeremy Irons is really funny. Maybe he could host one year.

The guy that won Best Song has given me an idea. None of the nominated songs should be performed, then when the award is presented the person who wins gets to have their song performed by the artists of their choice or they could sing it themselves. I'm thinking nobody is picking Antonio Banderas to sing for them. They probably wouldn't pick Beyonce either and that's kind of a shame. I don't really want to hear Beyonce sing, but it's nice just to have her there.

Who would have guessed Sean Penn doesn't have a sense of humor?

And finally Martin Scorsese loses again. I guess he's just that guy that's destined to be, what's that phrase, always a bridesmaid never a Best Director? I leave you with this: Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Cape Fear, Casino, Bringing Out the Dead, and Gangs of New York.