At least two companies have pulled their ads from the upcoming July 25 premiere of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) program Hot Ghetto Mess which is based on the popular website of the same name.
Expressing the same attitude as the website, the program will show viewer-submitted videos of stupid things people do, with an emphasis on the black community. It will also feature comedy, pictures, music, and man-on-the-street interviews to "shine a spotlight on prevalent images in pop culture and examine what role they play in American lifestyle," as the BET web page for the program puts it. It will feature, according to the BET site, "shaking booties, thug life, baby-mama drama and pimped-out high schoolers."
In short, in showing the stupidity and ignorance of many Americans, Hot Ghetto Mess will do precisely what a good many shows directed at a broad audience do, but will be directed toward black Americans.
Continue reading ""Hot Ghetto Mess" TV Program Under Fire" »
The nominations for this year's Motion Picture Academy Awards were announced today, and they basically repeated those made earlier this year by the Golden Globes. Dreamgirls was left out of the Best Picture nominations, rather surprisingly according to Hollywood insiders, and Sacha Baron Cohen was not nominated for his performance in Borat, which was not a surprise. (The Academy seldom honors broad comic performances, except those that are intended as serious. . . .)
The AP story noted that ethnicity appeared to be a plus this year:
With five blacks, two Hispanics and an Asian, it was the most ethnically diverse lineup ever among the 20 acting nominees. After decades in which the Oscars were a virtual whites-only club, with minority actors only occasionally breaking into the field, the awards have featured a much broader mix of nominees in the last few years.
The nominations are indeed much more "diverse" ethnically than in prior years, and in fact much more so than the population of the country. A non-caucasian is now decidedly more likely to receive an Academy Award nomination than a caucasian is.
Can affirmative action for caucasian actors be on the way?
Peter O'Toole was nominated for Best Actor for his role in Venus, which nobody saw, which suggests that he will miss out with a record eighth time nominated and no award. Forrest Whittaker is favored to win for his performance as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Meryl Streep was nominated for a record 14th time, in this instance for her performance as Cruella DeVille in The Devil Wears Prada. Eddie Murphy was nominated for his daring and uncharacteristic choice to play a character less than fifty feet tall and under 700 pounds in Dreamgirls.
Little Miss Sunshine received a Best Picture nomination and a couple of performance nominations for being the comedy version of last year's winner, Crash (that is, the spunky little independent movie that could). And Babel received a Best Picture nomination for being both epic and disturbing and for being another variation on Crash in telling multiple stories.
All in all, another great year for postmodern Hollywood cliches.
Here's an interesting item in our ongoing series of observations that everything happens in the Omniculture. Women's Wear Daily reports that photo editors are beginning to retouch photos of seriously underweight fashion models in order to make them appear . . . healthier:
PUTTING ON THE POUNDS: As the body mass index of runway walkers continues to make headlines, skinny models just might present a whole new problem for editors. Everyone has a story of a celebrity cover slimmed by Photoshop, but several editors have been quietly ordering the retouching of gaunt model shots to make them look, well, a little fatter. "A model shows up and you realize she's too thin and has lost weight since the booking, but the show must go on," said Allure editor in chief Linda Wells. "When the film comes to me, I realize I don't want to see hip bones and ribs in the magazine."
Enter the retouching process, which helps make the haggard look healthier. "If a girl shows up at a shoot and she's too skinny, a good stylist can pose her so that the reader doesn't have as much of a sense of it," said Lucky editor in chief Kim France. But, she added, "There are angles at which a girl's arm can look haunting."
"It's never something where you made the girl look heavy," said France. "It's just a quiet, small change." . . .
"It seems like we've been doing it more lately than in years past," said Wells. "It is something we noticed at the fashion shows this year — there were some alarming moments on the runway. And that caused some chatter."
It seems unlikely that the fashion in ladies' figures will soon become Rubenesque, as in the image immediately above, but a comparison between the Rubens image and that of the fashion model shown at the top of this item suggests that it is a good thing indeed if the trend toward increasingly gaunt fashion models has run its course. The change suggests a salutary self-correcting aspect of the Omniculture. Everything happens, and often good things do occur.
The estimable Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune quotes former NBA Utah Jazz coach Frank Layden on current Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who just achieved his 1,000th victory as a coach in the NBA, regarding Sloan's legendary toughness:
Sloan replaced Frank Layden in 1988, and this was Layden on Sloan: "Nobody fights with Jerry because you know the price would be too high. You might come out the winner, at his age, you might even lick him, but you'd lose an eye, an arm … everything would be gone.
"I know you're going to think I'm kidding when I say this, but I saw Jerry Sloan fight at the Alamo, I saw him at Harpers Ferry, I saw him at Pearl Harbor. He's loyal. He's a hard worker. He's a man.
There aren't many men you can say that about these days.
And that is not a good thing.
Our friend Mike D'Virgilio has posted an interesting article on a cultural trend toward "cleaner" products and has kindly granted us permission to present it to you here. Mike's article notes something important about the Omniculture: everything happens, and while there is much on what traditionalists would call the extremely bad end of the spectrum, there is also much more than in recent decades on the more wholesome end of things as well. Here's Mike's article:
I guess if you live long enough you pretty much see everything, but I never thought I’d see an article I read on the front page of Friday’s Weekend Journal. (I can’t link to it, because it requires a subscription--I get the dead tree version--but I can steal a few quotes.) The article’s title drew me in: “Comedy Comes Clean: In a backlash against racy and gross-out material, some comics are turning to still-biting but less salacious jokes.”
Who would have ever imagined that post-Lenny Bruce, the cutting edge of comedy would be comics who refuse to utter vulgarities or refer to bodily functions?
Since I’m not a connoisseur of comedy I had no idea such a thing even existed. Sure I’ve heard about a few comics who refuse to throw the F-bomb to get a laugh, but I would have thought they are few and far between. One of the reasons I think that I’m not a big fan of comedy is that vulgar amorality just doesn’t appeal to me. I would be the first to agree that a good curse word at the appropriate time is not a bad thing at all, but appropriate is the key. Seeing somebody stand on a stage and have vulgarity flow like a river out of his or her mouth isn’t my idea of a good time. Sounds like there is hope for folks like me.
Jeffrey Zaslow, the author states:
It’s no joke. Those in the funny business are saying that, despite all the explicit sitcoms and mean-spirited Internet humor, there’s a quite countermovement toward clean comedy. Some comedians are deciding they’re tired of using profanity as a crutch. Others find clean comedy can be more lucrative.
It’s a backlash, 40 years in the making, in which some comics say it’s time to redraw the line between edgy and unacceptable. “Blue comedy is so commonplace, it’s no longer counterculture.” Says Brian Regan . . . .As he sees it, today’s twenty somethings grew up clicking through cable and pay-TV channels, absorbing a steady diet of nonchalantly raunchy comics and sexually explicit sitcoms. To them, inoffensive humor can seem refreshing.
Zaslow quotes an amazing poll:
According to a [Zogby] poll released yesterday, just 6% of 9,065 respondents say they want edgier, more-sexual entertainment programming; 51% said they want more shows with positive messages, and even references to God and the Bible.
Well, maybe it’s not so amazing. Americans have been exposed to an ever-increasing amount of “edgier” content in every kind of entertainment medium. It makes sense that, in the inexorable laws of economics, that the supply of something determines its cost. The ubiquitous sex, vulgarity and just plain old tastelessness has cheapened the value of such stuff so much that most people over the age of 14 simply don’t find it all that valuable any more. This bodes well for the vast majority of Americans who simply want entertainment that actually entertains.
Our Reform Club colleague Tom Van Dyke sent us this nifty quote from the late Jerry Garcia, of the rock band The Grateful Dead, in which Garcia observes that the real action in changing American society actually happened before the hippie revolution of the mid- to late 1960s, as I argued in my two-part article on the Omniculture a few years ago:
"It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness." — Jerry Garcia
That's as good a description of the Omniculture as I've seen.
There is something rather interesting and revealing in all the recent controversies about celebrities running their mouths and acting like peabrains. You've heard about these controversies on the news, of course, such as Mel Gibson's drunken diatribe against Jews, comedian Michael Richards's racial slurs in response to being interrupted by a heckler during a disastrous nightclub comedy routine, Danny DeVito's drunken rant against President Bush on The View yesterday, etc.
That's the Omniculture for you. Everything happens, and everything gets on TV or the Web, which is the new TV.
In short, expect a lot more of this.
People often act badly under stress—which is when a person's integrity and strength of character shine through or the lack of these bursts forth. And there will always be stressful situations to endure, even for the wealthy, famous, and powerful. Hence, there will be many incidents of crummy behavior by such persons. In a society with strong democratic and egalitarian impulses and consequently little to no sense of noblesse oblige among its most privileged members, such trashy behavior is inevitable.
Given that eveything happens in the Omniculture and is immediately distributed to everybody by way of TV and the Web, this will simply be the way of things for the foreseeable future: Big mouths saying and doing stupid things, and other big mouths complaining about what they said and did. There will be no escape, short of moving to a deserted island without TV or internet access.
I've been out of town at a conference for the past few days, and haven't had much of a chance to post items on the site. I'm back, however, and you can expect the flow of wisdom to become a ferocius torrent.
One thing that struck me recently was upon viewing an episode of the current Warner Bros. cartoon series The Batman, which runs on KidsWB, a Saturday morning block of cartoons. The program premiered in 2004 and is in its fourth season, somehow.
What is not particularly interesting is the narrative I saw, from one of the first-season episodes. The series, from what I saw and have been able to glean from various sources, deals with Bruce Wayne's early years as the Batman, in which he establishes what the character will be like in his prime, as depicted of course in numerous other media products over the past three quarters of a century. In sum, the show covers Bruce's early years as the Batman.
Not surprisingly, the story I saw involved several fanciful villains led by a particularly ambitious and egotistical one, in this case the Penguin, whom the Batman must subdue lest all sorts of badness rain down on the blithely sheeplike people of Gotham.
An interesting observation is that we don't see any of those innocent bystanders in the episode I saw. They are more of a concept than a reality. This seems to fit well with a sense a good proportion of Batman fans have conveyed, that the series is not as "gritty" as Warner's previous Batman cartoon series (which was a superb example of this kind of series). Not showing the bystanders would seem to take away some of the sense of danger that would otherwise be experienced by younger children who could more easily thereby see themselves as threatened by the villains and narrative events. Batman fans seem in general to judge that the characterizations and story lines of The Batman are not as rich as in Batman: The Animated Series, especially through most of season one, although they do also seem to agree that the show becomes quite interesting thereafter.
From my viewing of a first season episode, this seems a fairly accurate assessment though by no means a dispositive condemnation even of the first season: the program seems to be geared toward a younger audience, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. If the WB wants to create a laudable hero for younger wee ones, I'm definitely not going to complain.
But what I found most striking and rather appealing about The Batman was the visual style. The characters are obviously strongly influenced by Japanese manga comics and anime. They have that odd combination of sweeping, angular, but rounded features and body shapes that is common to those Japanese forms of drawing. And it is very interesting to see that style applied to the familiar Batman characters, as it brings them some new life.
This Eastern style of character drawing, however, is joined to a thoroughly classical use of perspective in the visual settings—the background locations, the environment in which the characters operate. Here, the buildings, streets, rooms, and other locales are presented through a vivid use of classical perspective with a single focus point that is usually in the horizontal center of the screen. The sense of perspective is very strong in the episode I saw, and creates a sense of a highly logical world in which the wicked behavior of the villains is a disturbance, not an inevitable outcome of the circumstances surrounding them. Even when odd angles are used, the perspective is not distorted.
Unlike films noir and most modern action films, with their frequent use of deliberately distorted visual perspectives, and unlike Batman: The Animated Series, the visual style of The Batman openly suggests that good and evil are human choices, not just phenomena flowing inexorably from environmental (and genetic) circumstances.
In this way, the program seems to send a very salutary message to young people: the choice is yours.
Is this a stretch, a matter of seeing too much significance in something trivial. (Translated: Is Karnick seeing too much in this?) I don't think so at all. This visual style is definitely present in the program, and the contrast between the visual presentation of the characters and their surroundings, whether consciously chosen or not, is real. And its meaning seems to me evident, strong, and significant. Those of us who believe in free will should find this visual presentation an interesting and happy thing.
Regarding the well-known Las Vegas promotional ads claiming that "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," the allusion to them in last night's episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (see the item immediately below) vividly reminded me of how revolting I've always found that ad campaign to be.
Yes, revolting.
The claim, of course, is that running wild in a strange town has no consequences.
The subtext is that prostitution is legal in Nevada.
Hence, for married folk the implication is that you can be sure your spouse will not know about your indiscretions when you return from your business trip out there (because you run no risk of getting arrested for solicitation), so please book your meetings and conventions in Vegas. For single people, the point is that there will be lots of people out looking for a good time with no commitments: the young men will have the fallback option of using the legalized prostitution, and the young women know that the legal prostitution means that there will be plenty of young men there.
Of course, contracting a venereal disease would seem to be a very possible negative consequence of what often happens in Vegas, but perhaps they have unusually good and discreet health care for tourists.
Even so, the notion that one can run wild without any consequences to the state of one's mind and soul is truly repulsive. Casting aside your morality for a few days may seem to be just a temporary matter of "blowing off a little steam," but that's just a convenient excuse: human beings are not steam engines.
To think that one can indulge in extramarital affairs, long hours of gambling, or binge drinking and not expect to carry home some reinforcement of the urges that brought the person to Vegas in the first place is incredibly naive and truly stupid.
And note the words used in the ad: what happens in Vegas. These things simply "happen" in Vegas, you see. You're not responsible for your choices; they simply happen. So of course there should be no consequences—it wouldn't be fair for you to be punished for something that simply "happened" to you.
What a wretched message to send to people.
The prizes have been awarded at the Toronto Film Festival, and as might have been expected, the Fipresci Prize, voted by an international panel of film critics, went to the political "snuff" film Death of a President. (See story here.)
The top award at the festival, however, went to Bella, a romantic drama by Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde. The People's Choice Award is voted on by festival audiences, and is describe by Reuters as often indicative of future Academy Award nominations.
Bella received little press attention during the festival, and its selection as best picture was described as a surprise.
The film, produced in the United States, tells the story of "two people whose lives converge and turn upside down on a single day in New York," according to Reuters. It is director Monteverde's first film.
I am regrettably rather late in mentioning the actor Brad Pitt's enlightening recent comment regarding why he has not yet married the acclaimed actress Angelina Jolie, a subject which he believes should have an important effect on the nation's political process.
USA Today reports the tragic, earth-shattering news:
Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.
I think he's referring to domestic animals here, but I'm not entirely sure, as he has neglected to provide specifics. In any case, let's get together and change the laws to Brad's liking so that he and Angelina can move in together and have kids and whatnot, OK?
It's little enough to ask a country to do, after all, for such an important person.
The commercialization of eccentricity continues to reach new levels of absurdity. Charismatically nutty Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad Johnson is marketing his goofy new hairstyle, AP reports:
Chad Johnson, the master of the touchdown dance and the locker room list, is branching out into the field of marketing.
Marketing what? Himself, of course.
The Pro Bowl receiver changed his hairstyle this season -- instead of the shaved head, he's got a blond-dyed Mohawk -- and is helping the Cincinnati Bengals sell his new look at their gift shop.
For $30, fans can buy a rubber scalp with a blond Mohawk to slip on the tops of their heads, a sign of unity with the most colorful Bengal. The "Chad Mohawk Head" will be available at the team's gift shop before the home opener against Cleveland on Sept. 17.
"You don't have to cut a Mohawk anymore," Johnson said, in a late-night infomercial tone. "You can just go buy the hat. You can buy the head. It's me."
Here's a publication no one should be without: Four Weeks is a new monthly magazine that includes a variety of articles in four categories customized for the four weeks of a woman's menstrual cycle.
In week 1, the magazine informs us, ladies like things to be "Fun, Familiar," and in subsequent weeks "Exciting, Exotic," "Indulgent, Introspective," and "Cautious, Caring," respectively.
Also of great interest is the magazine's Hormone Horoscope, which deftly combines two things of utter inscutability into an easily understood guide to life.
Thanks, gals!
Just FYI, the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards took place in New York City last night. I have no idea who won or even who attended, but I will note, for your edification, that it did indeed happen.
Here's a photo of the performance by Christina Aguilera, who once said, "Beauty is shit!" in a determined effort to prove that she is a singer and not just a pretty hunk of flesh:
I'm convinced.
Here's a photo of Shakira proving that MTV is truly multicultural:
Here's a shot of a band called the Pussycat Dolls, which won an award for something:
For an organization allegedly dedicated to free expression, I sense a certain sameness of theme here. Perhaps I'm just missing something.
And lest you fear that these photos are not truly representative of what went on there last night, we present the following picture of Beyonce performing at the ceremony:
Finally, here's a shot of stylish rap star and big businessman Sean "Diddy" Combs at the ceremony.
Oh, the glamour!
I watched a few minutes of the Emmy Awards ceremony last night on NBC. Some thoughts:
Manners are important to society and to each of us as individuals, in that they codify and simplify many of the hundreds of little decisions we have to make every day. Contrary to modern thinking, manners don't oppress us, they free us.
The talented and acclaimed actor William Macy made this point yesterday in a thoroughly admirable criticism of the unprofessional behavior of a younger colleague, the actress Lindsay Lohan, in her work on a film in which the two appeared together. As E! Online reports,
When it comes to tardiness, William H. Macy follows the golden rule. Do unto under-the-gun film crews as you'd have them do unto you.
"You can't show up late," the Emmy winner said Thursday at a Los Angeles press junket for his new film, Everyone's Hero. "It's very, very disrespectful."
So let that be a lesson to you, Lindsay Lohan.
"I think what an actor has to realize [is that] when you show up an hour late, 150 people have been scrambling to cover for you," Macy said when asked about Bobby costar Lohan's usual check-in time. The two share a scene together in the Emilio Estevez-directed drama about the 16 hours leading up to Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968.
"There is not an apology big enough in the world to have to make 150 people scramble. It's nothing but disrespect. And Lindsay Lohan is not the only one. A lot of actors show up late as if they're God's gift to the film. It's inexcusable. They should have their asses kicked."
Habitual lateness may not just be a problem for Lohan but, according to Macy, despite his opinion that she's a huge talent, "she was pretty late" all the same.
A studio spokesperson declined comment.
Lohan has some very good traits, I am sure, especially her expressed wish to travel to Iraq to entertain U.S. troops stationed there, but grand (and highly publicized) gestures do not wipe away other offenses, especially habitual ones.
Macy's comment is just right, on all levels.
Cor bless yer, Mr. Macy! Cor bless yer!
Sure, our subways are soaked with urine, but at least we're spared THIS:
[AP reports:] Tokyo's subway authority will allow a station advertisement featuring a nude and pregnant Britney Spears, officials said Thursday, dropping an earlier plan to censor the photo.
HB Japan Inc., publisher of the Japanese edition of Harper's Bazaar, plans to rent ad space at the posh Omotesando station next week to promote its October issue with Spears posing naked on the cover.
The ad, in which Spears bares her belly but covers her breasts with her hands, is the same one used in the August issue of the magazine's U.S. edition. The 24-year-old pop star is pregnant with her second child.
OK, the magazine cover did appear on newsstands here, but at least it was smaller and might be covered up by a copy of Guns and Ammo or Beekeeper's Fortnightly. This ad will be unavoidable. People of taste will have to hire large people in overcoats to stand in front of the ads and block them from view. It's an extra expense to clean up the subways, but a necessary one.
Yes, in the Omniculture, everything happens.
The New York Times has brought on a perfume critic, AP reports. The column will appear frequently in the Times's style magazine. In a statement, new Times perfume critic Chandler Burr said, “Every other true art has a serious criticism. I believe perfume should as well.” He said he intends to take his new position very seriously.
Well, I suppose somebody has to—and it makes sense that it would be the person who's being paid for it. . . .
Variety reports that Steve Buscemi and Dan Ackroyd have joined the cast of the forthcoming Adam Sandler film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which spoofs "gay marriage":
Steve Buscemi and Dan Aykroyd have joined the cast of the Adam Sandler-Kevin James comedy "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" at Universal.The Dennis Dugan-directed laffer, most recently scripted by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, is about two straight, single Philadelphia firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple to qualify for domestic partner benefits. Buscemi will play a city worker from financial services who's determined to expose the pair as cheats.
That sounds like a funny idea.
The Chicago City Council, in its infinite wisdom and benevolence, has banned the sale of foie gras, arguing that some producers of the delicacy force-feed the geese from which the liver pate is produced, which the Chi solons say is painful and inhumane.
Chicago mayor Richard Daley opposed the ordinance but it went into effect anyway. The New York Times reports that many people in the city are embarrassed and angered by the law:
On Tuesday, this city’s lawbreakers were serving foie gras.
The illicit substance could be spotted in places it was rarely seen when it was legal: buried in Chicago’s famed deep-dish pizza, in soul food on the South Side, beside beef downtown.
In one of the more unlikely (and opulent) demonstrations of civil disobedience, a handful of restaurants here that never carry foie gras, the fattened livers of ducks and geese, featured it on the very day that Chicago became the first city in the nation to outlaw sale of the delicacy.
“This ban is embarrassing Chicago,” said Grant DePorter of Harry Caray’s Restaurant, which dreamed up an appetizer of pan-seared foie gras and scallops ($14.95) and a Vesuvio-style entree pairing foie gras and tenderloin ($33.95) just to buck the new ordinance. “We really don’t think the City Council should decide what Chicagoans eat. What’s next? Some other city outlaws brussels sprouts? Another outlaws chicken? Another, green beans?”
The "offense" is subject to fines of $250 to $500, though there remains some question about how aggressively the city will enforce it. The alderman who sponsored the ban, Joe Moore, has been the subject of praise from animal rights activists and derision from restaurateurs, gourmands, and people generally concerned about erosions of individual liberty in the City of Big [Government Looking Over Your] Shoulders.
The law has already induced mockery from outside the city, according to a Chicago Tribune story:
Allen Sternweiller, executive chef and co-owner of Allen's New American Cafe, whose company is a plaintiff in the restaurant association's lawsuit, said Chicago is getting an unwanted reputation based on its proposals regarding trans fat and foie gras.
"Some of my colleagues (around the country) call Chicago 'The Nanny City,'" Sternweiller said.
The prospect of foie gras speakeasies and gang wars over rights to distribute the delicacy is amusingly farfetched, but the increasing number of things being banned by the Nanny City and other places makes a greater flouting of the laws a certainty at some point.
The Thomas Kinkade company reports that a new development in Columbia, Missouri, will feature homes modeled on the popular artists' paintings:
Thomas Kinkade- inspired homes will be featured in a new master-planned community in Columbia, MO, announced HST Group, LLC, the Northwest-based real estate development firm in charge of the project. About 100 luxury homes will feature architectural designs inspired by the artwork of Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light(TM)" and world-renowned artist.
"The homes will be reminiscent of Thomas Kinkade's charming cottages that are found in many of his works," stated Rann Haight, Director of Architectural Design for HST Group. "We will also be concentrating our efforts on creating a village atmosphere and neighborhood streetscapes such as those found in Thomas Kinkade's painting, Lamplight Lane."
The 85-acre community, named "The Gates at Old Hawthorne," will be the second in the country to feature the Thomas Kinkade - Masterpiece Homes brand of design. The finished homes are anticipated to be valued between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Construction is targeted to begin in the fall of 2006 with the first home complete in July 2007. HST Group will design, build, and sell the homes in The Gates at Old Hawthorne.
Those are some expensive houses. This is the second Kinkade development. The first broke ground recently in Idaho, and the houses there are even more expensive.
HST Group has seen a tremendous amount of interest with its first community featuring the Thomas Kinkade - Masterpiece Homes brand. "The Gates of Coeur d'Alene" in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, broke ground in June 2006, and will feature five custom homes with designs replicating the look of manors and cottages found in Thomas Kinkade paintings. The luxury homes, which overlook Lake Coeur d'Alene, will be 5,800- to 11,000-square feet with values starting at $4 million.
What a "tremendous amount of interest" in five houses translates to is anyone's guess, but evidently Kinkade's plan to take over the world is beginning to work. Certainly what he and his paintings stand for is nice and pleasant:
"The Thomas Kinkade brand stands for the values associated with home and hearth, peace, joy, faith, family and friends. Partnering with HST in the creation of homes inspired by the artwork of Thomas Kinkade delivers on what collectors tell us inspire them most about Thom's work -- that they wish they could step into the world created in the painting. The Thomas Kinkade Company is pleased to align itself with such a visionary home builder," said Dan Byrne, CEO of The Thomas Kinkade Company.
But the paintings are so exaggerated in their presentation, they tend to make their subject matter seem a bit silly and weird. Kinkade makes Norman Rockwell look like a psycho by comparison. Still, people certainly like Kinkade's paintings, so his intense evocations of simplicity and striving for transcendence obviously serve some powerful need in modern-day Americans. Kinkade is important not so much for his actual aesthetics as for the values he sells.
Another hugely successful "fringe" phenomenon (see my Lollapalooza post immediately below) is the Edinburgh Fringe, which Reuters characterizes as "the world's largest and most irreverent arts festival." According to the Reuters story, this "fringe" phenomenon is a big business and highly influential on the culture. The festival's director "said the Fringe has sold about 20 million tickets over the past six decades 'and we hope this year to top the million mark again which we have done for the last three years.' "
A common theme in this year's program reflects some current concerns, but with a typically quirky approach. As the Reuters story reports, the Edinburgh Fringe
. . . celebrated its 60th birthday on Sunday with religion the big theme being tackled this year by playwrights and comedians.
Fringe performers revel in controversy and 2006 should be no exception with "We Don't Know Shi'ite" about British ignorance of Islam and "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years."
"It is the most amazing barometer of world politics," said The Scotsman newspaper's theater critic Joyce McMillan, reflecting on the Fringe which last year tackled the subject of terrorism head on after the London suicide bombings.
Fringe director Paul Gudgin, overseeing 17,000 performers at the three-week festival of anarchy, said "I find it endlessly fascinating how a thread like this emerges.
"It's either about what is happening with radical Islam or reflects interest and concern over the influence Evangelical Christians seem to be having in the United States," he told Reuters.
The Edinburgh Fringe festival is another of those "fringe" phenomena, like the Lollapalooza Festival, that become part of the mainstream culture and redifine it, as is the way of things in the Omniculture. Another truth about the Omniculture is this:
In the Omniculture, everything happens.
The Edinburgh Festival is a fine example of this principle. As Reuters notes:
Wading through the Fringe program is a stamina test in itself, but picking the quirkiest title of the year can be fun.
Leading contenders are "Afternoon Tea with a Transvestite" and "Sit: The History of the Chair" but it is difficult to top "How To Explain The History of Communism To Mental Patients."
The reality of the Omniculture is this: If something hasn't happened yet, it will.
For a summary of what the Omniculture is all about, click here.
The Lollapalooza festival of "alternative" music is drawing huge crowds in Chicago this weekend. Reuters reports:
Thousands of concert-goers, mostly in their 20s, returned to Chicago's lakefront Grant Park on Saturday as the three-day music festival Lollapalooza resumed after drawing more than 50,000 people on Friday night.
Billed as one of the city's largest music events ever, the festival is expected to draw about 150,000 people by the time it ends on Sunday.
I put quotes around the word alternative because the very popularity of the music indicates that it is a mainstream part of the culture, no longer—if it ever was—some sort of fringe phenomenon. Scheduled performers such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West, the Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, and Manu Chao are anything but obscue, and 130 music acts in total are scheduled to perform at the festival.
It's a great example of what happens in what I call the Omniculture, where the counterculture continuously becomes the culture. If you want to know what is going to surround you tomorrow in American culture, look at what is on the fringes today.
Here's a fascinating tidbit for you. The twenty-five-year-old actress/model/allegedlyunwillingpornstar/crazyrichgirl/humancuriosity Paris Hilton has decided to swear off sexual activity for a year. E! Online reports:
I
n an interview for the September issue of British GQ, the star whose oeuvre includes The Simple Life and One Night in Paris set out to dispel rumors that she's a sure thing when it comes to taking relationships to that next level.
"People think I sleep with everyone, but I'm not like that," Hilton told the magazine. "Kissing is all I do.
"I'm not having sex for a year. I've decided. . . . I'll kiss, but nothing else." . . .
The hotel heiress, who seems to change boyfriends faster than shoes, appears excited about the effect her vow of chastity could have on her personal life. . . . [S]he sounded as if there's some method to her madness--she has thought this one over and knows exactly what she's doing.
"I feel good about it," the 25-year-old told GQ. "I like the way guys so crazy when they can't have sex with you. If he can't have you, he stays interested. The moment he has you, he's gone. Unless he is really in love with you."
She went on to say that, as far as she knows, she only plans to walk down the aisle once and that, when she goes on dates, she prefers to be treated "like a princess."
It's interesting to see a such a prominent and highly . . . experienced young lady decide to become a renewed virgin. It is quite possible that this resolution will last only as long as anything else Miss Hilton has done, but we have to give her credit for thinking about the subject a little. One doubts that it will really strenghten the chastity movement among the nation's young people, but stranger things have happened in this world.
MTV turned 25 this week, and your intrepid correspondent has contributed a few thoughts to a National Review Online symposium on the deeper meaning of it all. Most of the comments in the symposium are fairly light, but there are some interesting facts to be gleaned and ideas to be pondered.
It's certainly interesting to see this group of right-wingers' rather amused and unworried reaction to MTV, widely considered to be a powerful force of cultural change. Perhaps American conservatism is not so conservative after all.
For those newly visiting from NRO and looking for additional commentary on the state of popular music, I suggest my post, from earlier this week, on the rise of gloom, doom, and general depressingness in popular music.
In addition, the category entries at the right side of the page offer full lineups of articles in various subject areas, including quite a few on music.
The season-ending episode of Hustle, one of the very best programs currently on television, will be broadcast tonight at 10 p.m. EDT on American Movie Classics. AMC will begin cycling through all 18 episodes of the BBC-AMC co-production again on September 20, so feel free to drop in tongiht and see why I think this program is so good.
Set in present-day London, Hustle has a terrific mid-'60s feel to it, from the animated opening credits to the charming, rougish central characters (including Robert Vaughn of The Man from Uncle fame) and on to the very concept of the program: a group of English confidence tricksters target deserving bullies and con them, to take away a bit of their money and as much as possible of their arrogance. The plots are tricky, sophisticated, and morally challenging, and they usually include a nice twist or two at the end. The con artists are likeable despite the questionable morality of their enterprise. Consider them to be avenging angels if if makes you feel better.
I'll write more about Hustle later, in particular drawing attention to the tradition of rogue heroes of which it is the latest noble installment. For now, watch and enjoy.
Those who have read my music criticism in the past know that I prefer compositions that are melodic and musically logical. I like music to sound good, and I don't think that's too much to ask, thank you very much. I like a wide variety of types of music, from Haydn and Bruckner to Clarence Williams, Frank Sinatra, Fats Domino, the Beach Boys, the Rev. Gary Davis, Deep Purple, Bill Monroe, King Crimson, Badfinger, Ella Fitzgerald, 
Roy Wood, Hank WIlliams (Sr. and Jr.), Sly and the Family Stone, Neal Morse, and dozens upon dozens of other composers and popular artists. If it sounds good to me, I like it.
Unfortunately for souls such as myself, popular music has become increasingly charmless and depressing in the past couple of decades. Writing in the excellent All Music Guide in an article titled, "Is Rock & Roll Really Dying? A Case Against Rock Dourism," AMG critic Thom Jurek laments the rise of gloom and doom in popular music:
Listening to rock & roll radio has become a chore. It's not the ten minutes of commercials or the narrowing of formats. CD stores and online music retail sites have the same problem -- though, truth be told, the offerings are more diverse.
The bands that rule the airwaves now are Korn, Nickelback, AFI, Tool, Godsmack, and their ilk. Rock & roll, that great music that celebrated freedom and exhilaration, has become repressively dour. The bright and wild colors of rock & roll have faded to a shade of dark gray.
Lest he be lambasted as a right wing, H