By Daniel B. Kline
Exactly how many hit singles does a singer need for people to forget that he was likely a child molester? If you only have a couple is it okay to rob a store or maybe to beat your wife? Perhaps Huey Lewis gets a free pass on a speeding ticket but Paul McCartney could murder a hobo with nobody thinking negatively about him.
Michael Jackson recorded a lot of hit songs many years ago, but he hardly deserved the fawning praise he has received since his death. Though never convicted of anything, Jackson was repeatedly the subject of allegations of child molestation. These accusations made public the revelation that the singer spent nights alone in his bedroom (housed in a giant amusement park) with young boys.
In addition to simply spending the night, more than one of these boys told tales of drinking wine and actually sharing a bed with Jackson. Clearly no grown man, no matter how childish, should behave this way and it's wildly inappropriate at best, criminal most likely. When you're rich and famous though, the law hardly matters as the singer paid out millions to make potential accusers keep their mouths shut.
An important performer who became the biggest singer in the world for a time, Jackson's skills as a showman essentially forced MTV to play his videos. That broke barriers for black artists and ultimately changed the face of music history. He also had a lot of hit songs, wrote "We are the World" and created the long-form video with "Thriller."
The so-called (and self-named) "King of Pop" was never my cup of tea as I may have been the only person in my elementary school class to not own or enjoy "Thriller." This did not spare me from having to see the endless making of video at more than one birthday party, but it did mean I never donned a single glove or a rhinestone covered shirt.
After his early run of hits, Jackson slowly faded into artistic irrelevancy. He released increasingly more ridiculous albums and became even weirder adopting pseudo-military garb while turning his skin white and his hair straight. For many years, Jackson was more famous as weirdo than as a singer, but all that was seemingly forgotten when he dropped dead suddenly.
It's one thing to appreciate the man's music, but quite another to not even acknowledge his failures as a man. It would be like writing Phil Spector biography and not mentioning the last couple years or doing a documentary on Bernie Madoff and leaving out the whole Ponzi scheme thing.
I never loved Jackson's music and honestly like it even less now as most of his songs have aged badly. Like an episode of "I Love Lucy," or "The Carol Burnett Show," Jackson's once cutting edge material now seems dated and stale. "Thriller" was never a good song and the list of cheesy Jackson songs far exceeds the list of classics.
Still, if you love his music, pay tribute to the songs, not the man who created them. I don't remember Michael Jackson as a moonwalking hitmaker. I remember him as a sheltered weirdo who probably molested kids.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Let comedians not politicians make the jokes
By Daniel B. Kline
When we start letting politicians set the standards for humor, then we have accomplished something not even Carrot Top, Jay Leno or even Larry The Cable Guy has managed to do. We will have killed comedy and what will remain will be as sad as knock knock jokes as pathetic as the "humorous" riddles on Popsicle sticks and about as funny as that wall plaque of a fish that sings.
If we take humorless dolts like Sarah Palin seriously when they get mock outraged at a late night talk show host's joke, then, we pretty much close the door on comedy. The only mistake David Letterman made with his joke about Palin's daughter getting "knocked up" by A-Rod during the seventh inning stretch of a Yankees game, was apologizing for it.
The joke, which got a laugh -- the essential goal of any joke -- was funny and it clearly played off the fact that Palin has a daughter who got pregnant at a young age. Whether Letterman knew that Palin attended the baseball game the joke was made about with her younger daughter, not the one with the baby, is irrelevant because the comedy works anyways.
Make Letterman only do mild jokes that won't offend anyone and you essentially have Jay Leno -- a man with enormous appeal to the humorless. These are folks who never get the joke and are always looking to become enraged when somebody says something they consider offensive.
If the joke offends you, change the channel or don't support Letterman's advertisers. If you think the joke was part of some liberal political agenda then you're delusional lost in a Rush Limbaugh fantasy world where every question comes down to political ideology. Letterman may do his show from New York (which to ultra-conservatives makes him both liberal and Jewish) but he's an equal opportunity offender.
I would guess that Palin was no more offended by Letterman's joke than I was. Instead, she saw an opportunity to pander to her far right supporters. She may be fairly dumb, but she knows an opportunity when she sees one and going after Letterman for "attacking a 14-year-old girl" allows Palin to act like she's being targeted by the "liberal" media.
If we let comedy fall prey to the silly partisan politics that has ruined all reasonable political discourse in this country then we truly have become so uptight that we may never recover. It's okay to be offended by a joke and just choose to not like that comedian. We don't have to have press conferences and demand apologies.
Comedians should offend people. They should illuminate uncomfortable truths and sometimes there's comedy in being just plain offensive. There's very little to laugh about these days and if we look for ways to reign in comedy with political correctness then we will have even less funny to go around. We need to stop looking for reasons to be offended and start laughing -- even at ourselves -- a little more.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline.
When we start letting politicians set the standards for humor, then we have accomplished something not even Carrot Top, Jay Leno or even Larry The Cable Guy has managed to do. We will have killed comedy and what will remain will be as sad as knock knock jokes as pathetic as the "humorous" riddles on Popsicle sticks and about as funny as that wall plaque of a fish that sings.
If we take humorless dolts like Sarah Palin seriously when they get mock outraged at a late night talk show host's joke, then, we pretty much close the door on comedy. The only mistake David Letterman made with his joke about Palin's daughter getting "knocked up" by A-Rod during the seventh inning stretch of a Yankees game, was apologizing for it.
The joke, which got a laugh -- the essential goal of any joke -- was funny and it clearly played off the fact that Palin has a daughter who got pregnant at a young age. Whether Letterman knew that Palin attended the baseball game the joke was made about with her younger daughter, not the one with the baby, is irrelevant because the comedy works anyways.
Make Letterman only do mild jokes that won't offend anyone and you essentially have Jay Leno -- a man with enormous appeal to the humorless. These are folks who never get the joke and are always looking to become enraged when somebody says something they consider offensive.
If the joke offends you, change the channel or don't support Letterman's advertisers. If you think the joke was part of some liberal political agenda then you're delusional lost in a Rush Limbaugh fantasy world where every question comes down to political ideology. Letterman may do his show from New York (which to ultra-conservatives makes him both liberal and Jewish) but he's an equal opportunity offender.
I would guess that Palin was no more offended by Letterman's joke than I was. Instead, she saw an opportunity to pander to her far right supporters. She may be fairly dumb, but she knows an opportunity when she sees one and going after Letterman for "attacking a 14-year-old girl" allows Palin to act like she's being targeted by the "liberal" media.
If we let comedy fall prey to the silly partisan politics that has ruined all reasonable political discourse in this country then we truly have become so uptight that we may never recover. It's okay to be offended by a joke and just choose to not like that comedian. We don't have to have press conferences and demand apologies.
Comedians should offend people. They should illuminate uncomfortable truths and sometimes there's comedy in being just plain offensive. There's very little to laugh about these days and if we look for ways to reign in comedy with political correctness then we will have even less funny to go around. We need to stop looking for reasons to be offended and start laughing -- even at ourselves -- a little more.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Finding a way to say goodbye
By Daniel B. Kline
When we first brought her home over 11 years ago she sat shivering in fear in the darkest corner of our apartment while my wife, Celine, and I sat close, but not too close, trying to make her feel better. I had never had a pet, let alone a cat before, and while I had visions of endless lap sessions, cuddling and purring, I had little idea what to actually do.
That night we sat with Calamity until her shivers turned to silence and ultimately towards walking up to us, sniffing for a while then taking a seat on my lap. She slept at the foot of our bed that night, more on my feet than on the bed, waking us up at 4 a.m. mostly because she wanted a little attention.
A rumpled Calico with a perpetual weight problem, Calamity Allison (after Calamity Jane and my friend Allison) was our child before we had a child. She got spoiled, eating table scraps at least until one unfortunate incident with a possibly bad shrimp cost her a night in the hospital and us $700.
Aside from that one medical incident, Calamity gave us little trouble except for the two times she found her way outside our house. The first time she escaped, we spent the afternoon and evening desperately searching the neighborhood for her. We were crying and generally terrified that she would get lost, hit by a car or that we would never know what had happened to her.
She returned, just after dark, walking into the garage a little dirty, but with what would count as a content look on her face if a cat could have such an expression. The second time she got out, I found her fairly quickly huddling under our neighbors porch, wedged between some rocks and quite obviously scared. That adventure ended her quest to escape and she would be content lying in the sun or just looking out the window thereafter.
A friendly cat, she had a patented move where she would walk a few steps onto the carpet and then cast herself to the ground in a shameless attempt to have her belly rubbed. This almost always worked as did crying in front of her food bowl as a way of getting sneaked a few extra pieces.
She was a shelter cat when we adopted her in 1998 and we had no idea as to her exact age. The shelter worker guessed four and that would have made her approximately 15 this year -- fairly old for a cat. She had slowed some recently, sparring less with her "sister," Noodles, and becoming a lap cat who spent long stretches purring on top of one of us.
In the last few months she started rapidly losing weight and lost her normal zeal for food. She became even clingier, never leaving one of our sides and perhaps she knew in some way that we did not have much time to spend together.
Our vet told us her liver was failing and that force-feeding her in an attempt to get her appetite back might buy her a little time. We tried gamely to give her droppers full of a horrible smelling concoction, which she resisted, eating only a tiny bit. It was as if, she knew her time was gone and she didn't want to participate in a charade that she would recover.
She spent one of her last nights, sleeping between us, waking me more than once with her purring. Whenever I woke I rubbed her a bit and unashamedly gave her a kiss. Now that she's gone, I tear up at the little things. like seeing only one bowl food out or when I expect her to be there when I get home.
She was a good friend and she will be missed but not forgotten.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline.
When we first brought her home over 11 years ago she sat shivering in fear in the darkest corner of our apartment while my wife, Celine, and I sat close, but not too close, trying to make her feel better. I had never had a pet, let alone a cat before, and while I had visions of endless lap sessions, cuddling and purring, I had little idea what to actually do.
That night we sat with Calamity until her shivers turned to silence and ultimately towards walking up to us, sniffing for a while then taking a seat on my lap. She slept at the foot of our bed that night, more on my feet than on the bed, waking us up at 4 a.m. mostly because she wanted a little attention.
A rumpled Calico with a perpetual weight problem, Calamity Allison (after Calamity Jane and my friend Allison) was our child before we had a child. She got spoiled, eating table scraps at least until one unfortunate incident with a possibly bad shrimp cost her a night in the hospital and us $700.
Aside from that one medical incident, Calamity gave us little trouble except for the two times she found her way outside our house. The first time she escaped, we spent the afternoon and evening desperately searching the neighborhood for her. We were crying and generally terrified that she would get lost, hit by a car or that we would never know what had happened to her.
She returned, just after dark, walking into the garage a little dirty, but with what would count as a content look on her face if a cat could have such an expression. The second time she got out, I found her fairly quickly huddling under our neighbors porch, wedged between some rocks and quite obviously scared. That adventure ended her quest to escape and she would be content lying in the sun or just looking out the window thereafter.
A friendly cat, she had a patented move where she would walk a few steps onto the carpet and then cast herself to the ground in a shameless attempt to have her belly rubbed. This almost always worked as did crying in front of her food bowl as a way of getting sneaked a few extra pieces.
She was a shelter cat when we adopted her in 1998 and we had no idea as to her exact age. The shelter worker guessed four and that would have made her approximately 15 this year -- fairly old for a cat. She had slowed some recently, sparring less with her "sister," Noodles, and becoming a lap cat who spent long stretches purring on top of one of us.
In the last few months she started rapidly losing weight and lost her normal zeal for food. She became even clingier, never leaving one of our sides and perhaps she knew in some way that we did not have much time to spend together.
Our vet told us her liver was failing and that force-feeding her in an attempt to get her appetite back might buy her a little time. We tried gamely to give her droppers full of a horrible smelling concoction, which she resisted, eating only a tiny bit. It was as if, she knew her time was gone and she didn't want to participate in a charade that she would recover.
She spent one of her last nights, sleeping between us, waking me more than once with her purring. Whenever I woke I rubbed her a bit and unashamedly gave her a kiss. Now that she's gone, I tear up at the little things. like seeing only one bowl food out or when I expect her to be there when I get home.
She was a good friend and she will be missed but not forgotten.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Movie critics have lost all credibility
By Daniel B. Kline
Had I not been with my son who needed my services as a driver to get home, I may have gouged my eyes out with a Junior Mint during our recent viewing of Pixar's "Up." A mix of implausible with just plain boring, this film basically grew out of the idea that having a house flying because it got attached to a bunch of balloons made a nice visual.
Nevermind that helium balloons, even a lot of them, would not lift a house into the air like a hot air balloon and you still have a boring, clumsy movie with no real plot for at least its first two thirds. This follows the equally wretched "Wall-E," Pixar's previous movie about a trash cleaning robot that teaches humanity about conservation, love and how to just barely avoid getting sued by Number 5 from "Short Circuit."
Being terrible did not stop "Up" from getting four star reviews in a number of newspapers. This proves that film criticism has completely devolved into pathetic pandering and that the eighth grade book reports posing as movie reviews published in these papers are essentially worthless.
To give a basic journalism lesson, film reviews should offer an opinion on a movie using the plot and other details to justify that opinion. Unfortunately, aside from a very few critics like Roger Ebert, this format has been ditched in favor of just telling readers what happens and tacking on whether you liked the movie or not.
That format is lazy and easy to write and has led to a generation of film critics that have no idea how to criticize films, Instead of risking someone disliking his or her opinion, these alleged critics tell you what happened and make the criticism part the backdrop when it should be the other way around.
Somehow, this get-your-name-put-in-a-newspaper-ad type of journalism has also resulted in the insane over-praising of Pixar movies specifically. The reviewer from the New York Post called "Up," "perhaps one of the best movies of the century."
This insults our collective intelligence and shows that either the reviewer has seen very few movies this century or that he values a film's visual appeal more than he does a plot. "Up" looked pretty and I'm happy Ed Asner got a paycheck, but that's all the praise the film deservers.
Grownups-- and this includes those of you who work as film critics -- must stop watching children's movies and pronouncing them entertaining for adults as well. This generally happens most with Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks animated films as normally intelligent grownups (Gene Shalit aside) all crow about how fabulous these movies are.
It started with films like "The Little Mermaid" and "Toy Story;" children's tales that are not painful to watch as a grownup, but are not films for adults, and it has gotten worse recently with "Wall-E" and "Up." Both of these movies received excessive praise and four star reviews from so many critics you have to wonder if Pixar might be slipping a few dollars in with the popcorn during critics' screenings.
If you're a grownup who can still summon the child inside and likes these movies, that's wonderful, but they are appealing to you in that fashion, not as entertainment for an adult.
I still enjoy watching the "G.I. Joe" cartoon, but I don't tell my friends that it's wonderful grownup entertainment and if I was a movie critic, I'm pretty sure I could make the difference clear in my review.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
Had I not been with my son who needed my services as a driver to get home, I may have gouged my eyes out with a Junior Mint during our recent viewing of Pixar's "Up." A mix of implausible with just plain boring, this film basically grew out of the idea that having a house flying because it got attached to a bunch of balloons made a nice visual.
Nevermind that helium balloons, even a lot of them, would not lift a house into the air like a hot air balloon and you still have a boring, clumsy movie with no real plot for at least its first two thirds. This follows the equally wretched "Wall-E," Pixar's previous movie about a trash cleaning robot that teaches humanity about conservation, love and how to just barely avoid getting sued by Number 5 from "Short Circuit."
Being terrible did not stop "Up" from getting four star reviews in a number of newspapers. This proves that film criticism has completely devolved into pathetic pandering and that the eighth grade book reports posing as movie reviews published in these papers are essentially worthless.
To give a basic journalism lesson, film reviews should offer an opinion on a movie using the plot and other details to justify that opinion. Unfortunately, aside from a very few critics like Roger Ebert, this format has been ditched in favor of just telling readers what happens and tacking on whether you liked the movie or not.
That format is lazy and easy to write and has led to a generation of film critics that have no idea how to criticize films, Instead of risking someone disliking his or her opinion, these alleged critics tell you what happened and make the criticism part the backdrop when it should be the other way around.
Somehow, this get-your-name-put-in-a-newspaper-ad type of journalism has also resulted in the insane over-praising of Pixar movies specifically. The reviewer from the New York Post called "Up," "perhaps one of the best movies of the century."
This insults our collective intelligence and shows that either the reviewer has seen very few movies this century or that he values a film's visual appeal more than he does a plot. "Up" looked pretty and I'm happy Ed Asner got a paycheck, but that's all the praise the film deservers.
Grownups-- and this includes those of you who work as film critics -- must stop watching children's movies and pronouncing them entertaining for adults as well. This generally happens most with Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks animated films as normally intelligent grownups (Gene Shalit aside) all crow about how fabulous these movies are.
It started with films like "The Little Mermaid" and "Toy Story;" children's tales that are not painful to watch as a grownup, but are not films for adults, and it has gotten worse recently with "Wall-E" and "Up." Both of these movies received excessive praise and four star reviews from so many critics you have to wonder if Pixar might be slipping a few dollars in with the popcorn during critics' screenings.
If you're a grownup who can still summon the child inside and likes these movies, that's wonderful, but they are appealing to you in that fashion, not as entertainment for an adult.
I still enjoy watching the "G.I. Joe" cartoon, but I don't tell my friends that it's wonderful grownup entertainment and if I was a movie critic, I'm pretty sure I could make the difference clear in my review.
Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. When he is not writing Kline serves as general manager of Time Machine Hobby New England's largest hobby and toy store, www.timemachinehobby.com. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com.
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