Soft Cheese Blog | Spreadable Commentary

The Politics of Touring

2008-09-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

Madonna should focus on music and leave the politics to the political machine. The '80s are gone and with them, her ability to stimulate and provocate has long passed.

Her McCain/Hitler stunt on her Sticky & Sweet Tour in Wales where her stage video programming portrays John McCain as Hitler just shows how irrelevant her opinion has become and out of touch she is. She's trying to go back to the scandal well that dried up for her many years ago.

Sure, when she effigies herself on a mirrored disco cross, good Christian people in small town America are going to cast stones, and if it's a slow news week, you'll get an evangelist or two condemning her to the gates of hell for blasphemy. But seriously, the disco cross is pretty lame when it comes to bastardizing the crucifix.

Let me state plainly that I don't think any of the current candidates are Hitler.

But, if any of the two candidate were going to be compared to Hitler, I think Obama would be the better comparison. I'm not talking about the old, murderous, deranged old Hitler. I'm talking the the young idealistic, propagandist Hitler. There's a slight difference. It's kind of like comparing the young, svelte Elvis and the old, fat Elvis.

The Hitler that Obama most resembles is the Hitler who wanted to do great things for Germany -- a Germany which, before his rise to power, had gone through war, had a bad economy and was in a generalized, low-level state of turmoil.

You can send hate mail if you want. I am not saying Obama is Hitler. I'm just saying Madonna's McCain/Hitler comparison is also silly and irrelevant. And who knows, there may have been some "Change" and "Hope" signs at the Beer Hall Putsch.

Madonna's music and live shows are still very much relevant and if she focuses in that area, she could still be touring and in demand at 60. But only if she focuses on the music. Well, if she focuses on the music and stops wearing underwear and top hats on stage.

It is the music, after all, in her own words that "makes the people come together."

Dead Carpet: Academy Award Pre-Shows Stank It Up

2008-02-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

More is not always better.

In the ever-devolving battle for OSCAR® coverage dominance, media outlets are throwing more hours toward the event.

In the most ridiculous attempt, E! started their coverage at 9AM (PST). This pre-red carpet show ran for six hours until the less disastrous E! red carpet show started with Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancid.

The E! pre-red carpet show was called the "Countdown to the Red Carpet." With this show spanning six torturous hours, E! would have done much better by running six hours of infomercials for The Magic Bullet, the ThunderStick Pro and Time Life's Beautiful Worship.
There were no name hosts and guests sharing no real insight if any significance.

Two poorly dressed women picked Valentino's Top 5 Oscar gowns in honor of his retirement. They picked all one-strap dresses in an obvious bias to try and fit in with a fictional trend Ted Casablanca is trying to shove down our throats.

Stuckey & Murray who one of the E! hosts called "very talented" gave insight into the nominees in top categories by spoofing a song from "Juno." Once wouldn't have been so bad, but they used the same song to spoof so it was the same song with different sets of spoofed lyrics. Really? Couldn't have picked a few other songs to spoof? No let's just do the same song over and over with different lyrics while dressed like a character from "Juno."

The E! True Hollywood Story Spoof on the doll from "Lars & the Real Girl" was inspired and in the attempt to try and find something positive about the day, I'll even forgive the way it dragged on -- a 90 second piece would have been perfect.

The "Live From the Red Carpet Show" with Seacrest and Rancid seemed great in comparison to the "Countdown" show. Maybe that was the E! strategy -- comatize the audience for six hours and then bring in the big guns.

Except for setting up Jennifer Gardner by purposefully unleashing Gary Busey on her, Seacrest wasn't so bad. He noted the red carpet was actually a colour of "Duckhorn Merlot." Rancid was typical although I didn't understand why she started the show with an interview of Federline's lawyer regarding Britney's visitation rights.

The absolutely worse part of the day, even worse than Richard Roeper on ABC's aspirationally named "An Evening at the Academy Awards," was Kimora Lee Simmons.

Kimora is very unfabulous and has no business commenting on fashion. Baby Phat a fashion expert does not make and a tired reality series doesn't mean America is waiting for her commentary.

She is slamming fashion choices of real stars when she's standing there wearing a chiffon drape with way too much, disproportionate jewelry. She claimed she was wearing the "most expensive hairpiece ever made." I'm sure Tyra Banks or Howard Cosell spends more than that for their hair pieces and as far as the head jewelry implication of her term "hairpiece," I'm sure the Queen of England's crown is worth more than $1-million.

And she's going to be on again tomorrow rehashing her obvious lack of fashion sense.

There's always next year.

Use Your Period for Good

2007-12-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

I think it's clear that the kids are starting to take over the ad agencies and infiltrate the executive suites in the marketing departments of America's biggest companies. I'm not a grumpy thirtysomething feeling threatened by the youth. By kids, I mean folks just slightly younger than me in their late 20s.

Like any generalized group, it is unfair to indict all of the individuals of said group, but how else do you explain the new campaign from Proctor & Gamble's Tampax brand, "Use Your Period for Good?" Ladies, use agonizing pain and bleeding caused by the shedding of your uterine wall for the betterment of mankind. By a Tampax stopper (pardon my translated French) and save the world.

Being a convert to the corporate world, I know how the team ended up at this Sphishak-worthy slogan. Some old guy sent the mandate down that Tampax needed a Green campaign. With all of the toxins (pesticides, chlorine, alleged asbestos to name a few) in the cotton that the girls are sticking up their duchesses each month to stop, you'd think Tampax was making Chinese-made toys.

Then, the KidNation of cube dwellers got together and after learning what's in a tampon, decided green would not be the way to go. No, they needed to find a cause where tampons are on the front line, making it a brighter day for you and me. Someone from the group, inspired by Bono and a couple of pints of Stella, recommended having Tampax join the (RED) campaign. Luckily someone stepped in and decided (RED), while a good cause, is the end result of their products and it may be a little too obvious.

Then the brainstorming could have really heated up from there following the plausible train of thoughts.... tampon, cotton, slaves, Africa, African issues genocide, poverty, menstrually-caused truancy ... perfect. Then the young turks in the room, in the defining moment of the slogan, could have said "Mensturation is such a drag/ Somebody should use their period for good."

Then, all you need is a respected actress like Regina King for the voice over work and then a sinister online campaign with a Website and everything that benefits the UN's HERO Program.

It's not like they didn't have any number of add ideas to remote. A new tampon launched later this year that supposedly cuts down on toxic shock syndrome. That would have been something of value to customers.

Even though some money is going to a good cause, overall this campaign is an exercise of marketing greed, and a lack of experience and vision.

Movies and music took a downturn when twentysomethings were wee kids -- in a cultural cess pool that was the '90s. As a result, the kids today don't have well-rounded emotional maturity. The sad thing is it probably is contagious, which explains how anyone over thirty at P&G approved this commercial.

Oh well, it's their millions of dollars they're spending on the campaign and the donations.

They need to use that for good.

It's Been Awhile

2007-12-15T23:48:00.000-08:00

Much to talk about so trying to fire up the Soft Cheese and give it some proper attention. E-mail me at gothko@gmail.com if you have any requests for specific commentary.

Crazy Ray, You Crazy Son of a Bitch ... God Just Got a Mascot

2007-03-18T01:30:00.000-07:00

I'm slightly sad that Cowboys unofficial mascot Crazy Ray died on St. Patrick's Day. If I had any sort of ability to experience grief or empathy, I may be more than slightly sad, but here's a man who did what he loved to do and as a consequence, probably had a really good life and I respect that.

If the cliche goal in life is to leave the world a better place, Crazy Ray did that by touching peoples' lives -- people more capable of human emotion than myself. He shared his enthusiasm and later his hardships and personal victories and it helped people.

Even when he had his leg amputated in 1997, he still showed up to the games and spread cheer.

Even through the Dave Campo shill years, he still showed up.

Jerry Jones never paid the man, except to give him a parking space and entrance to home games, but I'm not sure if there was a novelty giant-sized foam cowboy hat budget. I could say that it wasn't about the money for Crazy Ray and what the hell do I know? Crazy Ray never called me to say he's not doing it for the money.

He was probably doing it for the love of the game and the love of the attention, but Crazy Ray did more for the Dallas Cowboys than T.O., Bill Parcells and Tony Romo and should have been paid accordingly.

His legacy will live on, but when we're all just footnotes, it would have been nice for Crazy Ray's family to have something real and tangible for his contribution to America's Team.

Adios, Crazy Ray.

The Best and Worst GRAMMY Performances 2007

2007-02-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

The GRAMMY Awards were less about the awards this year and more about the performances. I'm not sure what that means other than the obvious attempt of some corporate suit trying to drive more ratings. The GRAMMY Awards are typically the most boring of the awards shows, especially the music shows.

The problem is that three to four hours of television is still three hours to four of television, regardless of how you fill it. And to make it worse, people aren't enlightened musically so the audiences are segmented by genres of music. Not everybody likes rap or country or pop so it's a tough proposition for people to sit rhough the show to see the few songs or artist they like.

The Owen Wilson, Mandy Moore and LeAnn Rimes trio presenting Best Country Album is a good example of trying to cram in too many interests. Luke said he didn't sing so he'd let Mandy talk. Mandy said she wasn't country so LeAnn should present the nominees. When the camera cut back to the trio for the winner announcement, Mandy's mouth was open so wide like "why the hell am I here?" I'm not hating on Mandy, I don't understand the DJ AM thing, but she's great. It's just the situation.

Mary J. Blige had the best perfromances of the night. The worst performance of the night was Quentin Tarantino's presentation of the nominees for Record of the Year with Tony Bennet. What a jackass, but not like a funny jackass, just an irritating bratty piss-poor one-trick hack job.

Here are the other worst and best performances of the 49th Annual GRAMMY Awards of 2007:

Moving Violations
I was probably, like most of America, anxious to see The Police sing "Roxanne" and I was romanticising the anticipation by thinking the performance would be so moving that I might actually want to go see their reunion tour this summer. I have a policy to not see bands in reunion tours or if they've passed their prime, because if a concert sucks, that will be my most recent memory of a band. I'm afraid if I go see another Cure show fro example, it may be so bad that it would wipe out most of my adolescent memories where they helped me through some tough times with their songs and lyrics. The way Sting butchered that song with the skill of an amateur jam band, killed all hope. Anyone who enjoyed that performance is either stoned or has very low self-esteem.

Chicks Rule
I really liked the Dixie Chicks performance. I've had a soft spot for the Dixie Chicks ever since I saw them sing at a private party in Dallas just before they became big stars. A lot of modern country, post 1993, is consistently crap as far as country 'n' western music is concerned. Some of the songs make great pop hits or gospel hymns, but don't call it country. The Chicks walk a sometimes fine line between country and something else, but the roots of their music keeps it grounded. And when they admitted they were ashamed the president was from Texas, I knew we were kindred. The fact that they are back professionally and won Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and two more GRAMMYs after they were red-balled off the radio for their comments almost four years ago, proves they had a point much bigger than the president's approval ratings.

Not Ready for Jelly
Even though Beyonce's performance was a test in patience with melodramatic facial expressions and "American Idol" style of hand-gesturing, at least she didn't try to dance. No doubt she can sing and physically, she's strikingly beautiful and as a skinny Tyra Banks, she is bootylicious, but I don't think she's ready for her own jelly. The girl can't dance... on stage, in videos, anywhere.

Future/Scary Cam
Justin Timberlake was doing really well until end of the performance and he had the handheld cam. His face distorted like that was some scary shit.

Religious Experience
John Legend, Corrine Bailey Rae and John Mayer should immediately book a national tour and share that energy with as many people as possible. Not a weak link there, even for you John Mayer haters. Note that Cristina Aguilera sat through the standing ovation. I guess she had a premonition she was about to lose to John Mayer for the pop vocal Grammy.

Strokes Can Be Beautiful
I'll admit that I've bought every Shakira album. I justified the purchases by saying I'd work on remixes and while that's true, I like the music. The arrangement for this version of "Hips Don't Lie" with Wycleaf was rocktastic and when she started shaking it, I realized that if I ever stroke out, I hope it looks like that.

Gnarly to the Max
The airline-costumed, slower version of "Crazy" Gnarls Barkley did for UK's "Top of the Pops" was considerably better, but I think it was the environment that caused the difference in sound. The UK version was a smaller setting and sounded more cohesive, but this slow version still kicked ass.

Queen Mary I
Mary J. Blige's first performance was so powerful, it made my scrotum shrink in awe. That performance of "Be Without You" is what Beyonce aspires to be one day when stops trying to act the words of her song and just expresses them. You can see the sincerity of emotions on Mary J.'s face and you can see the sincerity of her motions in the rhythm of her little bop dance groove.

Carrie Underwhat the Fuck? and Rascals Is Just Flat
It's hard to mess up Bob Wills' "San Antonio Rose." It's a simple, yet brilliant song honky tonk standard, but Carrie Underwood screwed it up. I've heard a hundred versions of that song -- the best being 1100 Springs -- and this was absolutely the worst.

Continuing the theme during the same musical intermission, Rascal Flatts screwed up another easy standard, "Hotel California." In fact the lead singer of Rascal Flatts sounds so much like a girl, I thought Carrie Underwood had kept on going. Rascal Flatts needs to decide if they to stick with country or be a rock band. Their recent version of "Life is a Highway" was disrespectful to the whole of '80s rock music. The lead singer doesn't have the voice, or hair, for rock. Their manager and record label is trying to push crossover a little too hard.

Carrie Underwood sang "Desperado" and it wasn't all that bad, but I'm wondering why a second song for her. Does that mean Rascal Flatts is going to sing another one? Why yes it did. It was a collaboration with Rascal Flatts on "Life in the Fast Lane." A four-song performance during the GRAMMY Awards? Really? What the fuck?

Solid Gold
Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie and Chris Brown all pulled off solid performances of their hits. I think it would have been more interesting to have each one of them do one of the other's songs, but we can only be so visionary here. I just hope Chris Brown realizes that the standing ovation wasn't solely for him.

Get Off Your Knees
Christina Aguilera's performance of James Brown's "It's a Man's World" started out as a decent enough tribute. She has a sexy, husky voice that I could listen to for days without coming up for air. When she imitated James Brown's signature kneel, we could have done without that. At least no one came out and draped a cape over her.

Queen Mary II
Ludacris and Mary J. Blige together was quite nice. Mary J. was percolating in that red one-piece jump suit with the Farah hair and Luda's new hairdo makes him seem grown up.

Rolling a James Blunt
If I'm honest, I'd say that I secretly listen to James Blunt's "Beautiful." In fact, I can play it on ukelele. The problem is, anytime I've ever seen him sing it, he looks like a mental patient singing. I don't if that stare down is involuntary or that's how he thinks he ads emotion to the song as a performer. That's why I listen to the song and don't watch the video.

I always wanted him to do Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" and she could do his "Beautiful." At least it would mix it up somewhat.

My GRAMMY Moment
Nice gimmick -- have a mini-Idol type contest where the winner gets to sing with JT. Robyn Troup won the right and did fine. The arrangement of "Ain't No Sunshine" was horrible and Justin should never be seen with a guita in public. It's unnatural. When they broke into one of Justin's songs, things picked back up.

Red Hot Chili Poopers
I stopped looking forward to anything to do with Red Hot Chili Peppers once they started just doing different versions of "Under the Bridge" and passing it off as new records. Billed as "the performance everyone will be talking about tomorrow" and hailed as Chris Rock as the best rock band ever during their intro, I tried to keep my dinner from expulsing from my body and splattering all over the floor.

The performance was predictably lame and filled with cliches. What was the wall of confetti about? At least it covered the cameras enough to obscure some of the lameness. Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres didn't seem so thrilled with the perfromance or the confetti or maybe they were angry that it took them until the end of the show to figure out that if a group performs, they win the next GRAMMY being presented as RHCP did for Best Rock Album after their craptastic performance.

The show ended on a high note with the Dixie Chicks winning Album of the Year and the unfortunate news that Scarlett Johansen is recording an album. I shouldn't judge yet. Maybe Rick Rubin will produce it and it will be something wonderful. As long as it's as good as Paris Hilton's or Lindsay Lohan's records, Scarlett just may be up for a GRAMMY next year for the 50th annual edition.

We Get It, Anna Nicole Is Dead And It's a Slow News Week

2007-02-10T22:37:00.000-08:00

CNN officially became irrelevant today.

In the middle of a news special about insurance fraud in Mississippi, just when the plot was thickening, a breaking news alert interrupted the show. The only reason I was watching CNN was because the hotel I'm staying in has five cable channels and that was the best thing showing. But I had invested enough time into the show that I needed a payoff.

When the "CNN Breaking News" graphics started to roll, I thought maybe we found Osama or maybe it was something with Obama. As the graphics were ending, I actually said aloud, "This better not be about Anna Nicole Smith."

"We bring you development in the fight for Danielynn Smith."

Holy shit.

First of all, the birth certificate lists the baby's last name as Stern. I don't care who's the baby's daddy is and neither should anyone else except Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern. But, as a news organization, CNN should get its facts straight.

Then there's the holy shit of CNN's questionable editorial judgement that anything related to Anna Nicole Smith is breaking news. Even when she died, that information in no way, by any stretch of the imagination is worthy to break into regular programming.

You'd figure the way they go on and on about her death, they found Osama (or Obama) in her vagina during the autopsy.

Her death should be well documented on sites like TMZ.com, who incidentally has purchased Google keywords to help drive traffic to their coverage -- brilliant and a sign o' the times! If E! wants to break into "Talk Soup" with Ryan Seacrest or Juliana Depandi (thank god she started covering that forehead with her new hairdo) droning on about Anna Nicole, the crazy lady turned dead person, then that's probably OK, but CNN?

How many people died in the war that on February 8, 2007? What are their names? How many children were exploited in America on February 8, 2007? Where are their stories? How many patients died on February 8, 2007 because they couldn't afford healthcare? Where are their obituaries?

The third holy shit of CNN's "Breaking News" segment is that it basically was reporting that a motorcade pulled up to the house in the Bahamas where Ann Nicole was living. The guy who owns the house, changed the locks and basically a car was pulling up to the house. They didn't know who was in the car or what was being said, but it was Breaking News. Little to do with the fight for Danielynn other than mentioning Bahaman immigration law.

Don't blame the amount of coverage on the American appetite for celebrity or death or the jackpot of a celebrity death. It's too easy for these media oulets to play the hero and point the finger at the public by saying "we're simply offering the service of information to the American people." A car driving up to a house in a foreign country without any additional news is not any sort of relevant exhange with viewers.

I wasn't even surprised when someone e-mailed me news about her death. I didn't bet on her in a death pool, but regardless of the size of her breast or the fidelity of her bleached roots, crazy people die untimely deaths and she's about has crazy as they come. That's not a news flash for anyone.

CNN invented the 24-hour news cycle and now is drowning in the waste product of that invention. Hopefully next week, someone with a bigger name will die so CNN can shovel more shit into the cess pool. I'm sure they're planning out coverage of the paternity test results right now and they'll even give it a special graphic that says "Decision 2007" -- much like they do for Presidential elections.

To be fair, the other news organizations have lost their mind as well. ABC News runs "The Anna Nicole Smith Story" on Friday and then tries to justify it by running the story, "Why we're all so obsessed with every new development in this tragic tale." Regardless of the poor, redundant headline writing, if there wan't this abundance of supply, the demand, or "national obsession," wouldn't exist.

This is an internet story for now suitable for real-time discussion. If CNN wants to cover it, they should leave it to the channel's fringe journalism shows like Nancy Grace. I'm sure she's trying to figure out how Anna Nicole's death relates to the disappearance of Natalee Hollaway. When there is more information to actually report, then legitimate TV news can step in and finish the story. But only during regularly scheduled news times. I can't wait to get John Stossel's point of view about this air quote, tragedy, end air quote.

CNN, give me a break.

The Superfluous Bowl

2007-02-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

Football is one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have to prove the existence of a god. Violence and grace are the works and faith in this dogma of pigskin. Beer and beef are proxies for the proxies of the blood and body of Christ during this "Last Supper" of the season. There is, after all, a reason we celebrate the Super Bowl on a Sunday.

This year's communion, Super Bowl XLI, was a good game, but for most of the world that had to watch the game on TV, it was one of the worst experiences to date and the football wasn't to blame. The action on the field was predictable, but good. Everyone without a Chicago City Sticker knew that the Colts were going to win, but it was like watching reruns of "Frasier." You know the ending, but you still enjoy the (kill me now for using the following word in this context) journey.

Everything else around the game is to blame with the major offenders being the actual broadcast and the typically triumphant commercials. This was the first CBS Super Bowl since the Janet Jackson show. While Jim Nantz is broadcasting vanilla and neither here nor there, Phil Simms has no business commentating, especially for such a big game. Phil Simms always sounds angry and his voice by comparison makes Dan Dierdorf sound like Damien Rice.

The rest of the broadcast was just crap. Granted, the Super Bowl should never be played in the rain in this era, but if it is, CBS should have been prepared. While big media and the NFL view Peyton Manning as a savior, the halo effect from the Colts' white uniforms through the foggy lenses, was a bit dramatic. And then there were the stationary cameras with rain drops all over the lenses. It doesn't matter where the cameras are placed, there's no excuse. Even if the camera is hanging off the side of the press box, tie someone to a pole, give them a towel and keep the lenses dry.

Then there are the Super Bowl ads, usually almost as anticipated as the game. It seems like anyone responsible for creating these $2-million+, 30 seconds of crap never watched a Super Bowl commercial, with the exception of Anheuser-Busch. The best clips of the day belonged to Budweiser and Bud Light. GoDaddy.com needs to realize that, with the exception of late-night "Girls Gone Wild" and personals commercials, "whore marketing" is almost as tired has Perez Hilton. Yeah, we get it, 'sex sells.' But unless yo're offering soft-porn versions of the commercials online, give it up. The Bob Goulet shtick for Emerald Nuts was creative, but not entirely Super Bowl worthy. The Doritos customer-supplied commercials were a marketing gimmick that didn't totally suck, but again, more worthy of You Tube than the Super Bowl. One of the worst commercials of the night was the FedEx moon office. I'll save the eloquence and just state, it's dumb. And screw all of that touchy-feely stuff. It's the Super Bowl and as such, Super Bowl ads should only be funny.

Next year, the Super Bowl is on Fox and at the technologically advanced Cardinals Stadium so there will be no rain and hopefully the broadcast won't interfere with the watching experience.

Top Five Reasons Britney Spears Should Keep Her Knickers On

2007-01-30T23:31:00.000-08:00

Number 5:
Always being photographed increases stress and then of course stress raises cortisol levels and cortisol increases labia fat.

Pudgy labium isn't attractive.

Number 4:
Jesus is watching.

Number 3:
Her "lady part" keeps breaking into karaoke versions of '70s Motown hits: "Just my vagination, running away with me...."

Number 2:
Self-cleaning leather seats haven't been invented, yet.

Number 1:
Kobe beef farts