So once again the Eugene Record Convention has come and gone, as has my paycheck. Record buying is akin to heroin addiction, but easier to brag about. But since I’ll be living off beans and rice for the next month, I don’t feel it would be appropriate to brag about all the goodies I picked up, which is what I usually spend my post-convention time doing. Instead, I think I’ll do the generic entertainment reporter job and give a run-down of the latest celeb gossip, movie releases and other various forms of cultural detritus.
Let’s see, drug abuse is a good start. Matthew Perry has been hospitalized for drug-induced seizures stemming from barbiturate use. Thus the slow, sad slide from “celebrity” to “former-celebrity drug-user” begins. The Michael Jackson trial continues, once again giving Corey Feldman a reason to
exist. Brad and Jen remain broken up, Paris Hilton is still a dirty little talentless tramp, Janet Jackson is being sued for an absurd amount of money in a non-nipple related incident and Katie Couric turned out to be vindictive and petty, much to the surprise of nobody. There, that sums up the celebrity gossip. Let’s move on to the films. This is fun, isn’t it?
Dave Matthews makes his film
debut next week in “Because of Winn-Dixie,” thus answering the prayers of all of those who said to themselves, “You know, that Matthews fellow really should do more acting.” “The Son of the Mask” opens next week for no reason, as does a new Keanu Reeves
film/comic book adaptation.
Top at the box office is “Hitch,” in which Will Smith plays an insufferable bastard with a heart of gold, and “Boogeyman,” a movie about ghosts or some such crap. “Are We There Yet?” gained a strong showing among the lobotomized community, while those outstanding defenders of American culture at “The 700 Club” gave away the ending to “
Million Dollar Baby,” apparently
because they had nothing better to bitch about.
In music news, eight Grammy awards went to a dead guy who used to shill Pepsi, apparently because there are no good living musicians left in the mainstream. Motley Crue’s greatest hits album, “Red, White and Crue,” broke into the Billboard top ten this week, proving once and for all that it is in fact still the 1980s. Jessica Simpson will be starring in the adaptation of the
television show “The Dukes of
Hazzard” along with Johnny Knoxville. She will also be singing on the soundtrack with co-star Willie Nelson. There is absolutely nothing about those last two sentences I do not find infinitely appealing.
In the highfalutin’ world of American literature, the latest piece of crap from John Grisham tops the New York Times best-sellers list,
followed in order by a piece of bizarrely inaccurate pop suspense, a book Nora Roberts was too embarrassed to put her own name on, another load of steaming feel-good sentimentality by Mitch Albom and some raving polemics from a man
famous for writing about dinosaurs.
Well that about sums that up. I think I’ve taken about as much pop culture as I can stand for this week. Now get out of my column, you damn kids.