it comes in pints?

Which is why I would lobby for piped-in-music-free stores. They cannot pick music that won't offend at least part of the shopping population.

I would observe that music featuring a screaming diva is a particularly bad choice, unless they are trying to drive people from the store.

Televisions hung from store ceilings are even worse; I have fantasies of carrying a small but powerful pistol with me and shooting out the picture tubes of those accursed tvs that are placed there to bathe us with surround-sound advertisements for other items the store sells.

Ricki,
After visiting the mall this weekend for the first time in ages, I've come to the conclusion that there is barely such a thing as quiet shopping anymore. It's one thing to do that in boutiques aimed at younger consumers who may not mind that kind of thing. I don't go into a place like Hot Topic (complete poser joint, by the way, but that's another rant entirely) and expect to hear Mozart gently playing for shoppers looking to buy nose rings and Slipknot t-shirts. But in regular stores aimed at all ages, could you keep the flipping noise down, please? I mean, this song wasn't simply playing, it was *blaring*. Maybe it's the way she was singing and a normal song might have been unobtrusive. But Jeebus, I actually put the couple of items I had back on the rack where I got them and left for fear of gripping my ears in agony and slumping over in pain like a parody of a bad "Star Trek" episode. It was that bad.

There are good "Star Trek" episodes?

If you smoke enough pot, Marc, yes. There are.

Hmmm...intriguing...

Then again, if you smoke enough pot, Battlefield Earth actually becomes watchable.

Emily - bite your tongue!

Actually, how much fun would it be to get stoned and watch Battlefield Earth together?

I think we need to make a plan to do that next time I'm in your neck of the woods. I can hear the guffaws of laughter from here!!

Sheila,
Notice, I didn't say "good." Just "watchable." Which it is, in that "can't take your eyes off the train wreck" sort of way. It's one of those few movies that I watch just to revel in how truly, AMAZINGLY bad it is.

Now, if only I could find a copy of Mr. Madonna's Revolver (which didn't really get a theatrical release here and so far, efforts to find it on DVD have been fruitless, despite the fact that Ritchie has managed, on the basis of two mediocre movies with essentially the same plot, to garner his share of unthinking sycophants that would love him if he made a movie that was nothing but a constipated Chinaman sitting on a toilet for three hours), we could make have a "How Cults Ruin Careers" mini-film festival. It's a date!

I know - I am reaaaally curious about Revolver. I have an odd fascination with terrible movies. Not just bad movies - but movies that are so bad that they make people ANGRY.

I love movies like that.

Me too. It's almost a fetish. I found a copy of The Village in a five dollar bin last week and almost bought it.

Actually, I kind of regret not buying it now.

The closest I can get to finding Revolver at Amazon was a region 2 DVD listed as "currently unavailable." This is torturing me.

Hmmm. Are you on Netflix? Is it not on there??

I'm not, but I just checked.

It's got four out of five friggin' stars!

Alas, if you read the fine print, it notes "This movie has not been released on DVD. Future availability is not guaranteed."

Nobody in the US has seen it, but the sycophants are rating it four stars? WTF?

Maybe it's because our intellectual better, Mr. Ritchie, was really correct. It's not that it was a shit movie, it's just that all us little people were too stupid to "get it."

Excellent discovery of pot tech to enable watching of certain movies.

I had forgotten about Revolver, but remember being awfully curious to see if it seemed as labouriously ("u"s in honor of Madonna's accent) desperate to seem cool or if every shot screamed "EFFORT! FILMAKING EFFORT!". I just did a casual check of availability and was given a "release date unknown". Sounds like we have a Da Vinci codesque conspiracy on our hands.

//"u"s in honor of Madonna's accent//

hahahahahahaha!!

Marc,
His first two movies were definitely like that. Sad thing is, while they weren't great, there was promise for Ritchie as a director, if he learned to stop with the hyper-cool, completely over-stylized, extended mix-tape approach to everything and dropped the whole bogus-mockney-posh-guy-pretending-he's-tough bullshit.

I haven't seen Swept Away yet, but may have to settle for that one in the place of Revolver, though I will never give up my quest to see that at least once.

Sheila,
How about "the pot tech"? Hahahaha.

I know - bwahahaha

Pot Tech helps you clear out a ton of engrams, seriously.

I'm still stuck on Vodka VII, but it helps a lot.

I've actually only seen "Snatch", but heard enough about the first one with the long title to know I've basically seen it. It wasn't offensive, but it definitely was trying way the fuck too hard. It was in getting the full force of his fans explaining the glorie (too glorious for your normal spellings) of his talent and genius that I got really annoyed with it.

I think you actually watched Snatch at my house, didn't you?

But yeah, Lock Stock is basically the same movie, except that instead of diamonds, they're chasing a large stash of pot. There are some genuinely funny moments in both films, but not enough to carry either as a good movie on the whole.

And the in-your-face soundtrack where there's a new super-cool indie song playing every six fucking seconds is just too annoying for words and he does that in both.

I am so not caught up on current popular culture. Or what passes for it.

In the case of Ms. Aguilera's musical stylings, Ken, consider yourself lucky.

Yes. You are to blame for me seeing that movie. It's one of the many grudges I still hold.

Yeah, I only saw Snatch as well. I did enjoy it - but it sounds like he has gotten a bit overly serious. Which - come on, dude - is so not warranted with the kinds of movies you're making. But then again, he married THE MOST SERIOUS LADY ON THE PLANET ... so I guess it makes sense.

I actually thought Lock, Stock was the better of the two. Funnier and before he had let his ego run riot after getting a few glowing reviews.

But Snatch had Dennis Farina in it. That guy could light up an Amish barn.

ha!! Dennis Farina is awesome, indeed.

I should see Lock, Stock ... a lot of my friends saw it and thought it was great.

But then he succumbed to Kabbalah. And it's been downhill ever since.

I'm pleased to say I have seen none of GR's works.

I see that Revolver of which you speak is on amazon.co.uk though. It's got loads of 1 star reviews.

Sheila,
I think he succumbed to Madonna first and then was *forced* by her overbearing personality to succumb to Kabbalah. Do you remember all those reports about their marriage being in trouble because he wasn't really interested in being Mr. Red String anymore? I wonder what direction his career might have taken if he never married her?

Mark,
The original reviews after the theatrical release in Britain over at IMDb were *ruthless*. Aside from the aforementioned sycophants who would follow Ritchie into Hell, it was almost unanimously panned. But I'll definitely have to check out the one star reviews at Amazon.

Yeah - it was like he has been battered down completely by her will.

"Battered down completely by another's will" is a fairly solid capsule definition of cult membership.

Or marriage.

ba-dum-ching

Or a disappointing inheritance.

Bingley - seriously, you just freakin' crack me up. I am guffawing.

I had a conversation with a couple of people who actually defended Madonna as an "artist", because she puts out an album every couple of years. I did not go into a discussion as to the quality of the albums.

But they did think that Britney Spears was an untalented hack, so there's some hope for them.

Well, I think old-time, pre-Kabbalah/fake British accent/"I am the most intelligent woman in the world" Madonna was at least entertaining. Her music wasn't Earth-shattering genius and she's never been a particularly dynamic or interesting *singer* per se, but I found it the fun sort of stuff to put on when you do the dishes or whatever. Britney Spears has never done it for me, but I can understand when people sometimes just feel like a little bit of mindless pop.

But that Aguilera song was painful. It's supposed to be some touching love song, yet she is literally SCREAMING THROUGH THE ENTIRE SONG. It's show-off bullshit that does more to detract from the beauty of a song than add to it, along the same lines as singers like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Faith Hill. They're talented singers who can hit all the right notes, but their style of singing is just pure and utter shit (though, in the case of Faith Hill, aside from being very beautiful, I honestly cannot understand the appeal. Her voice is average-sounding and her songs are bland, yet she's this enormous superstar. Huh? There are hundreds of women in Nashville with more interesting material than hers).

There's a reason Don Was dubbed Celine Dion the "Porcelain Foghorn".

Oh, and I forgot to comment, loved the Mars Attacks reference. I promise I will never forget to comment on that again.

It's just mechanical isn't it? Their vocals are impressive machines but utterly soul-less.

Gram Parsons for instance had a weedy voice really, but he went to emotional places with it.

And then there's fat Elvis!

"The porcelain foghorn." Oh my gawd, that is friggin' hysterical. That's exactly what she and those other types are. Foghorns.

It is mechanical, Mark. And when it's not outright irritating and painful to listen to, it's just boring and totally lacking in emotion.

I think Tom Waits might be along the same lines as Gram Parsons. His voice isn't a finely-tuned instrument, but I believe that he means every single word he sings even when they're about fat whores in Singapore licking his uncle's armpit while he drinks boiled eel juice through a twisty straw. Or something like that.

A moray?

I can't remember if the particular type of eel was specified. Or if it even exists, come to think of it. I just pulled that little bit from what I believe you Brits call your "bum."

"When you swim in the creek and an eel bites your cheek, that's a moray."

Can't let Bingley have all the fun.

Like Emily pointed out, the technology makes soul-less crap possible. One you get a voice in the computer you can fix the pitch, add some richness, put a little reverb on it, and MAGIC!

Or Paris Hilton. Ew.

...they're about fat whores in Singapore licking his uncle's armpit while he drinks boiled eel juice through a twisty straw.

If that goes on in Hawthorne Emily I'm booking the flight now.

I never much appreciated Madonna, Emily, although I will admit that she had her high points, in her pre-Kabbalah days.

But I am with you on the screeching singing. A lot of the stuff coming out in the last 20 years or so is like that....I have to pick through some albums for the good stuff. God bless iPod!

Of course, you all realize that when it comes to screeching, Yoko raised the bar so high that these other "screechers" are fighting for a distant second.

Ken,
I'm not really qualified to comment since, last I checked, the only species I know of that were capable of hearing Yoko's music were dogs.

it's a good thing I wasn't consuming Beverage when I read your a-moray crack, Ken; I would have spoiled a perfectly good monitor.

Blame my kid, Ricki!

Emily, you may well be right about only dogs hearing the "music". I can only hear some satanic screeching.

Bwahahaha! I love it, Ken. And Bingley.

that's a moray, OMG.

My daughter used to volunteer at a cat shelter on Saturday mornings. Apparently the cats like to listen to easy-listening radio, but it gives her hives. She came home one morning, walked over to me, gripped my upper arms, stared into my eyes, and said, "MY HEART WILL GO ON." I said, "I'm so sorry." I'll have to pass along that "porcelain foghorn" thing.