The Kids Are Alright

The Who, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones are the bands I first loved when I was getting into music around age 7 or 8. Anything I subsequently liked in Casey Kasem's American Top 40 or elsewhere had to stem somehow (however loosely, Nena "99 Luftballoons," I'm looking at you) from those three roots. 

So it's amazing that I'm just now getting around to watching The Who's 1979 rockumentary The Kids Are Alright. There's not much that needs to be said about it. They play a lot and joke a lot. Keith Moon is a crazed freak show who plays and beats up his drums like no other rock drummer will ever do again so well. John Entwistle's fingers jaw-droppingly motor on top of the bass. Pete Townshend's hair catches on fire from one too many guitar-destructo moments. And Roger Daltry swings his microphone and is generally a more jock-like version of Robert Plant. Just watch the film. Few bands have ever had four such powerhouse individuals.

***** out of ***** stars

Oh Woe is Poe

Edgar Allen Poe is history's greatest horror writer. Perhaps nobody will ever top chilling tales like "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," and, most of all, "The Black Cat."

But I'd like to see them try. So I started to read a new anthology called Poe's Children: The New Horror. The title certainly enticed me. In the introduction, editor Peter Straub, who himself has written dozens of horror novels, claims the genre is "the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades." Readers must be "open-eyed and flexible as to category to get what's going on."

But if Straub's going to give us that hard of a sell, it seems like he should start out the compilation more strongly that with Dan Chaon's "The Bees." A husband with a normal, happy family begins to hear screaming in his head and have nightmares. The problems start when his wife finds him blacked-out and naked in the middle of the living-room floor. Things get weirder when we learn that the husband had a secret former life. He was previously married with child and was apparently not-very-nice to either. The karma of those earlier poisoned relationships comes home to roost. The tale is indeed terrifying, but a little suburban and plain for the lead-off story. 

Maybe I should read further into this anthology, but I think I'll continue this search ... elsewhere. Or maybe just read the above-mentioned Poe stories for the umpteenth time.

George W. Bush: Most Boring President Ever

Platoon and The Doors are two of my all-time favorite movies (Natural Born Killers, JFK, and Born on the Fourth of July aren't too shabby either). So when it was announced that Oliver Stone would take on George W. Bush in his next film, I was pretty excited.

But W. has to be considered a bit of a disappointment. All the juiciest details are here (the ex-prez's obsessive love of baseball, his fraternity alcoholic hazings, his under-explained relationship with Jesus) and there are gripping inner office roundtable meetings with Condi, Rummy, Colin Powell, and the whole gang.

Josh Brolin is perfect and an undeniable force as W. Elizabeth Banks is good but too cute and not nearly as creepy as First Lady Laura. James Cromwell is excellent as the villainous Daddy H.W. Bush. And the rest of the actors do admirable jobs as other cabinet members (especially Richard Dreyfuss as the purely evil Dick Cheney). The problem is that they all feel like such caricatures rather than fully fleshed-out characters.

The series of vaguely connected scenes work well as 5-minute segments on their own. Taken together, it's just not that interesting at more than two hours. Or, then again, maybe Oliver Stone just didn't have much to work with. Maybe W. just isn't that interesting of a person.

*** out of ***** stars

The Future of Environmental Journalism

An event on Thursday at the Woodrow Wilson Center featured fascinating analysis of the uneasy state of science and environmental journalism. The panelists were (pictured, left to right): Seth Borenstein of the AP, Elizabeth Shogren of NPR, Jan Schaffer of J-Lab, and Peter Dykstra, formerly of CNN.

Borenstein set the tone: "The journalism business is like Detroit. We're getting it worse and we're getting it faster." 

Examples from the other panelists and audience members drove home this point: The L.A. Times' D.C. bureau has closed. NPR has had big layoffs. Content-sharing agreements between former rival newspapers are increasingly happening, quite a change from the old days, when every paper and reporter wanted the scoop.  Many bosses/editors see the environment as a "marginal beat." The Baltimore Sun has gone from three environment reporters to one. The Boston Globe has terminated its Health and Science section and now environment stories are placed in the Features section.

The was a lot of talk about how niche publications are taking the place of mainstream ones. For example, interested readers and experts can get more information about global warming than ever before from online sources such as Climate Wire, Mother Nature News, and Grist. But an average Joe still needs mainstream media reporters to pluck the most important news away from these niche publications because he won't go to Climate Wire (either because he doesn't know about it or won't pay for the pricey subscription). For more on this, there's a powerful new study by Pew about the growing importance of niche reporters in Washington D.C.

I could go on, but I'll mention one other point. The panel was about the future of environmental journalism. So what will environmental journalists be covering? Borenstein said it will be pork, waste, and stupid spending; and land mines left for Obama by the previous administration. 

Shogren said programs in the economic stimulus package will provide endless stories. Will the electric grid get any smarter? Will people change the way they use electricity? How will the country decide to curtail our greenhouse gas emissions? What will happen with cap-and-trade money? Do climate bills fail because they look like pork? What will be the impacts of climate change?

The full two-hour Webcast of the event will be up soon here and a more in-depth article on last week's event appears online at the Columbia Journalism Review.

Don't Sweat It: I Love You, Beth Cooper Arrives!

I Love You, Beth Cooper by Simpsons' writer Larry Doyle was the best comedic novel I read in the past year (thanks for the recommendation, Dewey).

And now the trailer is online for the film, set for release in theaters on July 10. Hayden Panetierre of Heroes' fame and Paul Rust play the leads, in what will surely take you back to your cliquish high-school days.

The story involves nerdy class valedictorian Dennis Cooverman proclaiming his love for popular cheerleader Beth Cooper. When Beth actually takes Dennis up on stopping by for Dennis' graduation party at his parents house, a hilarious and unforgettable night ensues.

***** out of ***** stars

Wiener Sausage: The Songs!

Plans are still in the works to carry Wiener Sausage: The Musical! forward to other cities in the U.S. Those plans are predictably coming along slowly by WS's co-creators, myself and Dan Sullivan (pictured left), but they're still coming.

In the meantime, I'll be editing some footage of the Capital Fringe performances from last summer and posting on You Tube.

For starters, here are clips of the songs Not Cash or Check, Baby and Free.

For more songs, stories, and similar nonsense, go to the Wiener Sausage Web site.

Too Hot in the Furnace for Duke

Duke lost at home Wednesday night in what Raycom announcers called a "furnace" and "the feel of a summer-league game." North Carolina, after a couple of unexpected midseason losses (many expected them to go undefeated for the year; they're that good), appears to be the cream of the NCAA crop again. Duke is pretty good, but as the Tarheels pulled away late in the game, it really seemed liked no contest.

Nobody scores 100 points in Cameron Indoor. North Carolina got 101, in a dominant offensive performance, led by Ty Lawson's 25 points.

North Carolina 101, Duke 87

Timothy Leary's Head

This is the second installment of a series based on a book I'm reading called Stories Done, which is a great collection of tales of excess from counter-culture leaders.

LSD figurehead Timothy Leary did something almost nobody does when he found out he was dying from prostate cancer: celebrated. He called friends and told them he was "exhilarated" by the news.

Leary planned to have his death broadcast on his Web site. After dying, a crew of cryonics technicians would freeze his body and preserve his brain. Leary would be placed into a cryonics coffin. His blood would be drained and replaced with antifreeze compounds.

Over time, Leary became creeped-out by CryoCare employees' "ghoulish interest in obtaining the head of Timothy Leary." It became even worse when family and friends learned that the employee charged with the decapitation and freezing process had signed on to write about it for Wired magazine.

Bottom line: We'll never have another Timothy Leary again. But apparently this man is full of these kinds of stories, so I plan to read his acclaimed autobiography, Flashbacks, whenever I get a chance.

Back to High School With Stephen King

 

I hadn't read Stephen King since high school, when I devoured horror pop-culture classics like The Stand, Night Shift, The Dark Tower, Pet Semetary, It, and Different Seasons.

But when I recently bought an Amazon Kindle, one feature that I realize I love about the e-reader is its ability to download lengthy free samples of books from Amazon. Since I especially liked King's short fiction, I thought I'd sample his new collection, Just After Sunset. But the first story, "Willa," had me hooked and, when the sample ended in the middle, I just had to go ahead and purchase the whole book.

Thus marked my first purchase on the Kindle. Ironically, on Monday, King was Amazon's spokesman in announcing the new Kindle 2.0.

Meanwhile, I'm reading lots of samples on my old-school Kindle 1.0, but still sticking with Just After Sunset. I just finished "The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates," about the widow of a 9/11-like plane-crash victim who receives a haunting call from her husband just prior to his funeral. Many of the stories in this book are very post 9/11, and the author is still clearly a populist master of the pen.

Ed Hightower Representin' Eville

Hard to believe Ed Hightower, one of the NCAA's most prominent refs, is the superintendent of my Edwardsville, Illinois school district, where I grew up.

I think he's a great ref, and he did his usual steady job in the one game I saw him work earlier this year at Georgetown. But the fans of Kansas apparently aren't so fond, as this Photoshop gallery suggests.