That's why a middlingly successful felon like Itzler - who's supposedly lost two fortunes, but really just wants to produce a reality show - can label himself "King of All Pimps" and have interviewers lap it up.

The best trick a call girl's magic vagina can do is disappear.

I would've liked to see more exploration of the "indie pandering" to which the author offhandedly refers. Unlike him, I didn't think their cover of "Gone Daddy Gone" displayed any kind of brilliance; on the contrary, it was a blipped-up, shiny pop bastardization of the original's nervy angst. In Gnarls Barkley's hands, it operated as a nod to its target audience: See, kids? We like some of the same white music you do! It's a trip Kanyeezy fell into when he sampled Can and Daft Punk for two of last year's most sluggish hip-pop tracks. 70 years of recorded popular music have proven that white audiences are more than happy to meet black artists on their own terms. Even if I assume that yes, Cee-Lo is finally making the music he's always wanted, I'm slightly mortified to admit it's nowhere near as exciting as a Goodie Mob cut. Most of St. Elsewhere was thematically comprised of a navel-gazing, goth-lite outlook that wouldn't be out of place in a Tim Burton first draft - or a She Wants Revenge album. The only exceptions were "Crazy" - fresh sound, facile "aren't-we-artistic-people-like-insane-or-something" message - and "Smiley Faces," which leavened a life-sucks message with existential bomp.

And Danger Mouse - it's appropriate that he sprung to mainstream consciousness on the strength of a mash-up album that bore no authorial stamp. That's the problem with his production - it's so glossy, the imagination can't grab hold. There's no sonic trademark. All his projects have been like this; the man is the epitome of the jack-of-all, master-of-none condition.

Hip-hop (to name just one "black" genre) is rife with the kinds of angst Lewis seems to dig (and the Cure/Depeche Mode comparisons are, like, so trite, dude)... and you don't even have to watch these guys' muddled visual mummery to get to it. And there's also the matter of bands like Bloc Party, Pretty Girls Make Graves, and the Dears that similarly rock a "post-racial" aesthetic (black/brown people doing "white" music), only they take treat rock as more than consumer enticement. Props to the boys for being so weird (self-consciously or no) and still maintaining a pop presence for two albums, but without an thematic ambiguity that's more than playful, I can't get too excited.

When Dowd and her fellow inkspillers remonstrate Democratic candidates about their egghead ways, isn't that just a veiled way of saying "the people," the salt-of-the-earth Joad types, are idiots? Their little minds can't deal with someone from another American culture? They don't want a president with a grasp of law, history, policy? It's one thing to say that Sen. Obama's "bitter" comments are insulting (that can be debated on its merits, certainly); it's another thing entirely to say his entire persona - his way of life and those fundamental historical bits of him that can't be focus-grouped into obedience - is an affront to regular ol' America. That, to me, is the real condescension, and I'd say the primary results thus far show how little Democrats subscribe to Dowd's unimpeachable, empirical evidence.

...when they've got a show on basic cable?

No one's saying the Heat tanked.

Her supporters, as quoted by the Daily News, are shamelessly utilizing the "this is art, man, it's not my fault small minds can't comprehend the weighty questions involved." As usual, academia (or the academically-aspirant, in the artist's case) wants to convince us that an abstract, literally visceral project is more relevant, and will provoke better discussion, than 40+ years of the abortion discussion. As if countless, heartbreaking stories of teenage girls discarding fetuses in bathroom stalls and dumpsters is less compelling than one Eli with a turkey baster and a dream.

You know what? I don't care. I'm remaining unprovoked by anything other than the arrogances that would concoct this project, then po'-facedly protest that "it's just, like, artistic and thoughtful, not controversial." At least Beuys and Burden were honest about their aims. Unless she's a one-hit wonder, Shvarts is doomed to a half-life of succesful self-promotion in cloistered, endlessly-amused high-art circles. Surely this was her aim from the word go.

That you're a troll whose only two posts on this site are links to asinine, non-starter YouTube clips and a rant from Sean "If everyone taps their heels three times Clinton would be the primary-vote leader?" Wilentz? The term "troll" is grossly overused on this site and elsewhere, but I'm fairly certain it applies here.

And I want ten bucks for my ticket, now that you've given away the end of the film.

in the business, we call that an EPIC BURN.