Amy's Robot

This is what Jerry Garcia looked like in 1967 at age 25. He had just recently started the Grateful Dead (a name the whole band hated) and he was a big fan of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and bluegrass.

It's this period of Garcia's life that a new biopic will focus on. Spout is suggesting some actors to play him, but their ideas all sound like the later-era Jerry Garcia, the heroin addict and egg cream fiend. They're talking about Philip Seymour Hoffman, Vincent D'Onofrio, or Paul Giamatti. I love all those actors, but we need someone young, hairy, and maybe a little doughy-faced to play Jerry when he looked like this:

So here are a few ideas: Jeremy Sisto. He's got the hair, he'd have no trouble growing a big beard, and look at that smile:

Here's another one: Danny Masterson, from That 70s Show. Put a few pounds on him and he's just about perfect. Plus, everyone already associates him with being a stoner.

Then there's the obvious choice: Seth Rogen. The man is the real hirsute frizzed-out deal, and is clearly no stranger to Cheetos. But his range is pretty limited: I'm guessing the first half-hour or so of the movie might involve some scenes where Jerry Garcia is not high, and it's hard to imagine Seth Rogen pulling that off.

Please add other ideas in the comments.

This is a tough one, so I'll just tell you who it is. If you subtract the beard, hair, and about 65 pounds from this guy, but kept the expressive eyebrows and sort of wild expression, you might be able to guess that this is John Turturro's brother.

According to the Post, Ralph Turturro has been causing all kinds of problems for his Hell's Kitchen neighbors on West 46th--they've called the cops on him 5 times since August:

The more famous Turturro's Wikipedia entry says that his older brother Ralph is a middle school art teacher, but the Post says he's an unemployed artist who has "caretakers" with him all the time, which I'm guessing means he lost that teaching job. Neighbors say they hear him screaming and throwing furniture around the apartment.

While the older Turturro [UPDATE: it turns out the artist is John Turturro's cousin, not his brother, and is not mentally ill] may have mental problems, his art isn't bad. I found a website that appears to be his featuring a lot of his abstract art. I'm no expert on this, but some of it looks really good (I like this one from 2002.) The "recent works" are from 2003 and earlier, so maybe his creativity has suffered lately. His artist's statement is an interesting take on abstraction, subjectivity, and discipline, so it seems like he had his shit together at one point.

In an interview from 2 years ago, Ralph Turturro says he comes from a family of artists, though "the rest of my family that aren't actors never talk to each other because of one emotional thing or another." Maybe that means he's still in touch with John and Aida who can help get him away from his neighbors.

UPDATE: It turns out the mentally ill Ralph Turturro, John's brother, is not the same person as Ralph Turturro the artist. The professional artist is John's cousin, and is not mentally ill. See the comments for more anecdotes from one of the neighbors dealing with the unwell Ralph's outbursts.

I'm not sure what it is about the photo for this edition of Who'dat?™--the celebrity in question isn't aging beyond all recognition or going through a radical transformation for a movie role or anything. The reality of what this person looks like doesn't quite coincide with my mental image of her.

To play, try to guess who this is, then click on the picture to see if you are right.

CNN may have called the election at 11:00 PM last night, but Tracy said it back on March 15: Black is the new President, bitch!

When I think of the most memorable actors and characters of the Coen Brothers' movies, I usually think of the men. There are guys they use again and again, like John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and John Turturro, and those genius one-offs like Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey Lebowski, Billy Bob Thornton in The Man Who Wasn't There, or Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. Spout made a really great list of 10 supporting Coen Brothers actors that often get overlooked, since it's often the supporting characters that give their movies their distinctive bizarre and unsettling style.

But what about the ladies? Just about all of their movies feature a bunch of male leads with only one main female character. In 4 movies now they've gone with their best gal Frances McDormand (Joel Coen's wife) and twice they've used Holly Hunter (in O Brother Where Art Thou? and Raising Arizona.)

Coen Brothers women mostly conform to a type: they're tough as nails (if they aren't at the beginning of the movie, they definitely are by the end), often inscrutable and distant, and their no-nonsense exterior either masks a soft and tender interior (like Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy, Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand as sweet but gutsy cops in Raising Arizona and Fargo) or amplifies a genuinely manipulative and selfish nature (Tilda Swinton in Burn After Reading or Frances McDormand in The Man Who Wasn't There.)

Others, like Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski, Marcia Gay Harden in Miller's Crossing, and Judy Davis in Barton Fink are also mysteriously sexy and remote, sometimes with a whiff of treachery. I can only think of one real casting misstep: Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty, which just didn't work.

One partial exception is Kelly Macdonald as the wife in No Country For Old Men--one of the few movies the Coen Brothers adapted from someone else's story. She has a small role, and lacks the grit of most Coen Brothers women, but in her final big showdown with soft-spoken psychopath Javier Bardem she shows an unshakable resolve and inner strength, and ends up kind of serving as the moral anchor of the whole movie [video].

Anyway, in their current movie Burn After Reading, there are actually two female leads, both of which are pretty ridiculous and insensitive people. Frances McDormand is a selfish but harmless woman who can't see anything beyond her own needs, though her chronic loneliness and moments of real joy in finding connections with other people makes her a bit sympathetic. Tilda Swinton, on the other hand, is an icy, cruel bitch on wheels, which makes the reveal of what her profession is towards the end of the movie the single funniest moment in the whole thing.

Burn After Reading has gotten a lot of lukewarm or negative reviews, largely from critics who compare it to the more serious variety of Coen Brothers movies like No Country. I loved No Country as much as anyone, but you've got to remember that at least half of their movies are goofy screwball comedies in which bumbling but lovable characters wildly chase after the things they desperately want, which they almost always fail to achieve. Three times in Burn After Reading different characters say "This isn't fun and games," by which I think the Coen Brothers are reassuring us that this IS all fun and games. In his review, one of the most positive ones I've seen, Roger Ebert notes that the plot doesn't matter at all--the strengths of the movie are the dialogue and the characters, both of which are as good as ever. It's inconsequential, but that doesn't mean it's not worth seeing.

Anyway, their next movie is called A Serious Man (that oughta make the No Country For Old Men-loving sourpusses happy.) It doesn't use any of their regular actors, and some of the cast have only worked in Minnesota theater--including leading lady Sari Lennick. I'm going out on a limb here and predicting that she plays a ballsy lady who doesn't take any crap. The movie also stars character actor Richard Kind and Broadway star Michael Stuhlbarg.

Humboldt County is coming out in a couple of weeks, and looks like it should be good. People who saw it at SXSW have said pretty much what you could say based on watching the trailer: it looks like a less Zach Braffy Garden State but with a weirder/better cast, and seems to has a good soundtrack. Here's the official site.

About the cast: the main non-Zach Braff guy with an overbearing father who is successful on the surface but dead on the inside is played by a relative unknown--Jeremy Strong. He was in The Happening earlier this year, but hopefully no one saw him in it.

The mysterious, free-spirited girl is played by Fairuza Balk, who you probably remember from movies that came out many years ago, like The Craft and American History X. Her character's name is Bogart-- oh, haha, like "don't Fairuza Balk me".

Lately she hasn't been working much, but check this out--she appears to be turning into character actor Christine Baranski (who has been in a million movies including Cruel Intentions and Mamma Mia.) You can really see it in the Humboldt County trailer.

Fairuza is also going to be in the Werner Herzog's inscrutable "don't call it a remake" version of Bad Lieutenant.

Humboldt County also features good old Peter Bogdanovich, who still shows up in stuff every so often. He's now directing a movie that looks interesting: The Broken Code, about scientist Rosalind Franklin whose x-rays were instrumental in Watson and Crick discovering the double helix structure of DNA.

2000: Lars Ulrich, Metallica's outspoken drummer, alerts Napster to 600,000 fans who had downloaded their music. Their accounts are canceled, and fans are outraged at the band for targeting them, as on the whole they are probably some of the most loyal music fans on the planet. Ulrich also testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on file-sharing, and asks them to stop services like Napster, "before this whole Internet thing runs amok." Newsweek calls him a "cyber narc".

While this was going on, Ulrich did an interview with Slashdot in which he defends his primary argument (file-sharing is stealing), but also admits that record companies blew it by not understanding the Internet's impact on the music industry soon enough.

This week: Copies of Metallica's not-yet-released album "Death Magnetic" are getting downloaded all over the place after a Paris record store started selling it.

Not only does Lars not flip out and threaten to sick the government on his fans, he actually sounds totally OK with it:

Wow. Maybe all that band therapy got him to let go of his "fiercely independent and controlling" nature, or maybe he's just rechanneled his rage back into his music, which fans and the New York Times are saying is the best thing they've done in many years.

Yesterday we lost the unbelievably popular voiceover artist Don LaFontaine, who died of complications related to a collapsed lung, ending a 40 year career that produced many thousands of trailers and ads.

Unfortunately, this means that your window of opportunity to get him to record your outgoing voicemail message has now closed. He says he got lots of requests from people to do their voicemail; in the short, funny interview below, he says if he had time, he would often do it.

"In a world where Adam Slutsky is not available..."

He sounded like a hardworking guy who was very proud of his gigantic body of work:

A few other things about LaFontaine, from his bio: he got his start as an audio engineer in NY, then started producing movie ads years before he recorded any voiceovers himself. He was also a big "Arrested Development" fan.

Happy Birthday, John McCain! On your 72nd birthday, you can celebrate by announcing your VP pick, a gift to political commentators who are still light-headed and hoarse from Obama's acceptance speech last night, and are ready to start tearing into something fresh. Especially if you picked that Alaska governor no one's ever heard of. (oh crap, you actually did. Oh jeez. Way to pander, dude*. Let the savaging begin!)

Happy Birthday, Michael Jackson! In an interview today with Chris Connelly on Good Morning America, he said, "I feel very wise and sage, but at the same time very young." Which is maybe even creepier than if McCain had said he feels young.

Happy Birthday, Katrina! The storm hit three years ago, and another one might be coming. On a recent tour of New Orleans, McCain said he still hasn't figured out whether he thinks the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt or not. "I really don't know," he said. "That's why I am going ... We need to go back to have a conversation about what to do: rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is."

The photo above is from McCain's 69th birthday in 2005, when the storm hit. Newsweek on the birthday cake photo op:

* OK, a lot is going to be said about this Sarah Palin thing, but I bet no one is going to be madder than die-hard Hillary supporters. McCain sees what went on during the primaries, says, "Oh, hey, people like women this year!" and picks some 2-year governor no one's ever heard of (maybe she's well known among conservative Christians?) sort of implying that she's the equivalent of someone like Hillary Clinton. He is going to get destroyed on this. Can you imagine the VP debates?

Update:
Please enjoy Palin's wikipedia entry. There's so much fun information there. Runner up for Miss Alaska! Tried marijuana but didn't like it! Fun ethics scandal (maybe)! Opposes gay marriage but has gay friends! Was known as Sarah Barracuda in high school! Kids are named Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig! And much, much more.

--Cushie

We already knew that Amy Poehler loves Bon Jovi (see above, and SNL video), but it turns out she's an indie rock fan, too.

For its 20th anniversary, Merge Records has asked a bunch of famous people--some musicians, some not--to curate a series of compilations of their favorite Merge tracks. So far, they've got Peter Buck and the guy who directed Junebug and some Superchunk videos to curate the first two, then later in 2009 will come volumes by Jonathan Lethem (who's a big music fan), David Byrne, Amy Poehler, and the chef at Momofuku, David Chang, who I guess is a celebrity now (here he is on Charlie Rose.)

The only way to get these CDs is to subscribe to the whole series of 14 compilations, called SCORE!, which you can do starting September 8. Proceeds from sales will go to the charitable organizations picked by each curator. Neat!

Pitchfork has some more details about the series.

A few Merge bands I've liked from the pre-Arcade Fire years: The Magnetic Fields and The 6ths, Polvo, Neutral Milk Hotel, East River Pipe, and the re-released stuff by The Clean.

Two movies come out today that I've been waiting to see: Hamlet 2 and The House Bunny. Both of them got pretty lukewarm reviews, but hey, so did Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, and those were still worth seeing. These two new ones have at least a few things going for them.

Critics are saying that Hamlet 2 is badly structured, uneven, and a lot of the jokes fall flat. But OK, look: it's got Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener, David Arquette, and Amy Poehler as an ACLU lawyer named Cricket Feldstein. And my old favorite Elisabeth Shue. It can't be all bad, right?

A.O. Scott would have been the best Times reviewer, but instead we got Stephen Holden, who as usual spends most of his review recounting the plot. David Edelstein doesn't love it, but says Steve Coogan is riveting, and the movie "gets points for weirdness." Kenneth Turan over at the LA Times says "the hits are so dead-on that the misses don't seem to matter." Good enough for me.

It looks like there's only one reason to see The House Bunny: Anna Faris. The intensity of critical love she gets for this movie is almost at post-Lost in Translation Bill Murray levels. Sure, the movie is a rehashed Legally Blonde (same writers and everything) but she's got the knack for playing the goofy smart-dumb hot girl who will do anything for a laugh. "All hail, Anna Faris, fake bimbo par excellence", from the Times. And the folks at IFC wrote a gushing piece about how great she is. Thank God this role went to someone really funny and not Kirsten Dunst.

Dana Stevens at Slate stresses that the movie is about as empowering to women as "My Super Sweet 16", but is glad to see enough funny material for Faris to "hint at a well of anarchic, defiantly ungirly humor that her career thus far has barely begun to tap." And, for what it's worth, Kurt Loder loves it, and swears it's hilarious even though it's formulaic. There have already been a few letdowns in this year's big summer comedies, so we need it.

Anna Faris co-stars with Seth Rogen in a comedy called Observe and Report next year, so it looks like the big time is about to be hit.

Isaac Hayes was unexpectedly killed by a treadmill yesterday, after having some recent health problems. The NY Times obituary says his music "defined the glories and excesses of soul" through his early years as a songwriter and musician at Stax Records in Memphis.

Cushie and I happened to visit the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis a few months ago, and it was one of the best music history experiences of my life. Before he did "Theme from Shaft" and became a celebrity in his own right, Isaac Hayes wrote around 200 songs from the Stax catalog with his partner David Porter, including Sam and Dave's "Hold on, I'm Comin'" and "Soul Man", and played keyboards with Otis Redding , Booker T and the MG's, and pretty much everybody else on Stax as a session musician.

Also in the Stax Museum is Isaac Hayes' car, a blue 1972 Cadillac Eldorado, which was lined with fur, had a bar that popped out of the dashboard, and because he was a man undaunted by the technological limitations of his time, he had a small black and white TV sort of wedged awkwardly into the area below the radio between the two front seats. The car was taken by the IRS in 1977 when Hayes had some financial problems.

In a good VH1 interview from a few years ago he talked about his fearless and distinctive sense of style, which sounds more like a celebrity from this decade with an army of personal stylists on staff than a southern black man starting out in the early 60's:

Here's a video clip of Isaac Hayes making his dramatic entrance at the Wattstax concert in LA in 1972. Pink tights, black and white fur boots, and gold chains. He is so awesome:

Hayes seemed to move effortlessly from one important moment in pop culture to another for his entire life. After helping to create soul music in the 60's and defining himself as a symbol of black pride during the 70's, he moved onto TV and movies in the 80's. He was in Escape From New York, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, and showed up on "The A-Team" and "Miami Vice". In the 90's came "South Park" and, of course, Scientology. It would have been only a matter of time before he did a song with Kanye.

Incredibly, Hayes had just finished making a movie called Soul Men with Samuel L. Jackson and good old Bernie Mac, who also died this weekend. Hang in there, Samuel L.

LA Times also has a very lengthy and in-depth obituary. Reports of the number of kids he has varies from "several" in the LA Times to 6 on IMDb to 12 in the NY Times. There's a good, if not very well organized bio on his website.

MTV has joined with Fox Television to do a remake of every high school Drama Club geek's favorite midnight movie, Rocky Horror Picture Show. I guess it will be for TV?

OK, it's not very cool to admit that I have been to a few of these screenings, complete with a shadow cast in front of the screen, props, and a theater full of assistant stage managers singing along to "Time Warp". A long time ago. But I agree with some of the very indignant Wired commenters that this will be a tough remake to pull off without enraging a lot of devoted fans.

So let's think about recasting. The cast for a Rocky Horror remake needs to be energetic and funny and able to camp it up and dance in heels and fishnets. And ideally also sing.

Here's what I've got:

Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Tim Curry was in the original. I want to see Alan Cumming, who could generate the appropriate level of drag flamboyance (as he demonstrated in the Lincoln Center production of The Bacchae recently.) Or maybe, and I know I'm going out on a limb here, Robert Downey, Jr. He's gotten himself together now, but I think he's still just unhinged enough to make it work.

Brad, the Eagle Scout do-gooder waiting to be corrupted. Barry Bostwick in the original, who later went onto "Spin City" and the forthcoming Hannah Montana movie. I think this would be perfect for Chris Klein, who needs a good comeback. Or how about this one: Justin Timberlake! He was great in Southland Tales and Black Snake Moan and has no problem with campy choreography. I'd love to see him in drag.

Janet. A very young Susan Sarandon in the original, which is still hard to believe. I'd like to see Amy Adams in the remake. She's really funny, so she'll be good at the blushing, nice-girl part at the start of the movie, and I bet she can vamp it up for the slutty transformation.

Riff Raff. Richard O'Brien in the original. We need someone who can play a sort of weirdly sexy creepy ghoul from outer space. I'm going for Rhys Ifans, or, even better, Seth Green.

Magenta. Patricia Quinn in the original, who I definitely haven't seen in anything else she's done since RHPS. We need a scary/sexy alien for this one. How about either Asia Argento, who is terrifying and hot, or maybe Pink, who is mostly just terrifying.

Eddie. It was good old Meat Loaf in the original. Kid Rock could do a good job as a crazy undead rockabilly lobotomy victim, but I think an aging, puffy, crinkly Sebastian Bach might be good too.

Columbia. Nell Campbell in the original, whose career has not taken off since. Best choice is Scarlett Johansson. I've really lost faith in her movie choices lately, but I bet she's still good in comedies, and would look great in a gold-sequined tap dancing outfit.

Then Brian Cox can play old Dr. Scott in the wheelchair.

What about Rocky? The blonde sexbot hunk of chiseled beef? Either some nameless gay porn star could do it (the original Rocky didn't have much of a legitimate career, either) or a prettyboy heartthrob, like Chace Crawford from Gossip Girl. Is he hunky enough?

If you think of Matthew McConaughey as a celebrity product, he's one of the most consistently branded and immediately recognizable products on the planet. In most photos, he is a) on a beach, b) in shorts, c) holding a surfboard, d) wearing a do-rag, e) drunk, or most often f) a combination of at least 3 of these.

Matthew McConaughey is his own logo, and it looks like this:

or maybe like this:

Since Matthew McConaughey's branding is so consistent, it becomes easy to predict the details of new business ventures he's getting into. For example, if you hear that Matthew McConaughey has started a record label, what genre would you guess his first artist is in?

That's right: Reggae! The first single is "Here Comes Da Train" by Mishka.

Here's another one: What do you think his upcoming movie that he stars in and produced might be about?

Yes: surfing! Surfer Dude comes out later this year. It's also features Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson and is about a surfer on a mystical journey. So actually, if your guess had been "smoking weed" you also would have been right.

From the IMDb message board for Surfer Dude:

See what I mean? The man is a rigorously disciplined marketing genius.

UPDATE: I just noticed that the director of Surfer Dude is S.R. Bindler, whose only other movie is maybe the greatest documentary ever made, Hands on a Hard Body. So yes, it will be awesome. It looks like Bindler and Matthew McConaughey were in high school together in Texas.

One result of the ongoing uncertainties and fighting over James Brown's estate is that many of his personal possessions are being auctioned off. Christie's has the full catalog online, and amidst the many jumpsuits, leather sofas, awards, original paintings, and "GFOS"-emblazoned accessories are many really personal letters and notes, and a few mementos from the darker years of his life.

Here are a few notable items up for sale.

Standard flamboyant celebrity clothing:

• White fur cape
• Rainbow-flame leather suit, with eagle

Some items I would love to bid on:

• Photo of Snoop Dogg signed, "2 Uncle James Brown, Luv U Like A Microphone"
• James Brown records from his own collection, including a duet single with Al Sharpton
• 83 pairs of James Brown's sunglasses

Really personal/cool/strange/sad stuff:

• Republican Presidential Task Force membership card
• Lyrics to "Thank the Lord" written on back of envelope ("Ha Ha Ha Ha/ Do you want to get funky")
• "I love you baby, always" note to ex-wife Adrienne
• Letter to break up with ex-wife Adrienne (she's the one who died from taking PCP and a load of other drugs two days after liposuction)
• Hair rollers and supplies, with Polaroid of James Brown using them
• Inmate inventory, from when he was in jail in 1989 (includes a "God Father of Soul" belt)

The auction is on July 17. Starting on July 12 you can go to Christie's and look at all this stuff in person.

Wildly successful writer and loathed memoir-fabulist James Frey has been having a rough few years. One thing he can be thankful for: he's not a child molester.

Another guy named James Frey got busted over the weekend for soliciting some kids in Washington Heights. First he offered a 9 year-old boy $5 to run away with his pants half way down. That same day he allegedly punched a girl in the face for refusing to give him her underpants. Ew.

The story ends well, though. He got caught when a group of teens, led by the older brother of the kid Frey offered $5 to, circled around Frey and cornered him until the police got there. "That's my brother. I didn't want anyone to hurt him," said 14 year-old big brother Jamel Hadley.

The Post has a good picture of the resourceful group of kids who captured the evil predatory James Frey:

Sex offender James Frey was also arrested in 2005 for abuse. Here's his file in the state sex offender registry, which makes the other James Frey look like an eagle scout.

Media punching-bag James Frey has a good interview in this month's Vanity Fair. He seems like he's more or less doing OK. Janet Maslin seems to have forgiven him enough that she wrote her review of his new novel (we're all just coming right out and calling it fiction this time) Bright Shiny Morning in his old style of short, sharp sentences, which he thankfully seems to have left behind.

Over the past six years, you may have heard about successful and deranged R&B singer R. Kelly and how he was charged with having sex with (and maybe also peeing on) a teenage girl/girls, and taping himself doing so. Finally, the judge, the lawyers, and Kelly himself all showed up at the same time, a jury was selected, and opening statements are happening today.

Even though the judge in R. Kelly's case has forbidden access to sealed documents and closed hearings, there are so many weird details about this case, including all the other instances in which R. Kelly has had sex with underage girls, that the media is still finding plenty to talk about.

The Chicago Sun-Times published a long story in 2000 about R. Kelly having sex with teenage girls, and two years later, the incriminating videotape was sent anonymously to one of the authors of that story. The paper's website has has an incredibly thorough special section dedicated to the case. Recent headlines include "R. Kelly angrily hurls basketball at reporter at rec center" and "Potential juror: R. Kelly's 'not very smart'".

They also have a blog about the case, with a recent post suggesting that Kelly's brother might testify against him with evidence that R. Kelly tried to bribe him to say it was him in the infamous video. In an earlier interview, the paper quoted Carey "Killa" Kelly as saying, "And I say to America, the criminal justice system: If you let that n***** off, he's going to do it again, trust me. I bet my life on it."

The Sun-Times has owned this story from the beginning, but the NY Times has a good background article today, too. They interview some media and culture scholars about the case, with a few interesting conclusions. One of them thinks that since 2002, we've all gotten so used to sexed-up teenagers that this dirty video case seems like less of a big deal than it might have at the time.

The Times quotes a professor of black culture at Duke, Mark Neal, who notes that since the indictment, R. Kelly has continued to write songs about having threesomes and called himself the "Pied Piper of R&B", implying that he seduces children with his music. "Either he’s absolutely demonic or stupid or crazy."

Yep, probably. Or, as R. Kelly once attempted to explain the messes he's gotten himself into: "In life, you have people that love to party. That’s me. People that love God. That’s me. People that love sex. That’s me. People that love people. That’s me. And people that make mistakes. That’s me also."

Mm-hmm. Well, he also said at the time of his indictment that "Osama bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through."

I think I'm going to stick with demonic, stupid, or crazy.

Alanis Morissette's new album is called "Flavors of Entanglement", by which I think she means "Jagged Little Pill, Pt. 2: I Can't F'ing Believe I'm Going Through This Breakup Bullshit All Over Again".

She tells People that the album is about the "unraveling" of a significant relationship, and "chronicles the rock bottom finally being hit."

There has been much speculation about who she was singing about in "You Oughta Know", her first single about how much it sucks to get dumped, with most theories pointing to Dave Coulier from "Full House" and, more recently, "Skating With Celebrities". It's a lot clearer this time around--she and Ryan Reynolds dated since 2002 and broke up last year. He was with Scarlett Johansson a few months later.

"Flavors of Entanglement" comes out June 10; Scarlett's vanity-album of Tom Waits covers comes out next week (and generally isn't getting great reviews.)

Maybe not that surprisingly, it looks like Alanis is appearing in better movies than Scarlett this year. Alanis has got Radio Free Albemuth, an adaption of a Philip K. Dick novel about an extra-terrestrial resistance movement against a despotic president, and The Other Side, a supernatural mystery with Giovanni Ribisi and Jason Lee.

Scarlett has He's Just Not That Into You, which looks sort of like Sex and the City but with worse clothes. Ryan Reynolds is starring in Adventureland, which is by the director of Superbad and feateres Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, so will probably be at least OK.

In today's Who'dat?™, look at the thinning celebrity photo below, try to guess who it is, then click on the picture to see if you are right.

It's been interesting watching the Disney reaction to the flap over Vanity Fair's tamely sexualized photograph of Disney star Miley Cyrus. Even though Miley willingly removed her shirt while posing for magazine pictures, she says she's "embarrassed" to have those pictures out there in the world for everybody on the planet to see. Who knows, maybe she reconsidered and really is embarrassed. Or maybe the producers of her show are trying (in vain) to maintain her squeaky-clean image.

Whatever change of heart Miley may or may not have had, Disney's response to the photos is totally clear: they blame Vanity Fair for exploiting their young star. Spokesperson Patti McTeague said, "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines."

It's like Disney is just begging for someone to track down an instance of the company using sexualized images of young girls to promote their own products.

Slate contributor Daniel Brook is happy to oblige.

Brook dug out a photograph he took a few months ago in Beijing of a billboard ad for, of all things, a Disney bra-and-panties set intended for 12 year-olds. I have discreetly covered the potentially shocking areas of the ad with an emblem of unblemished virginal intactness (though the scaffolding in front of the billboard adds a disturbing, girl-in-cage kind of aspect) but you can click on the pic for the original version.

Embarrassing!

Asked about how this ad manipulates a pre-teen girl in order to sell Mickey-themed underwear, another Disney spokesperson has been trying to rationalize. Yes, they approved the image, which was created by a Chinese licensee of their brand. And in Disney's defense, the spokesperson says that in China these kinds of images are "not unusual at all" (like they are over here...?)

This photo is from last night's premiere of Baby Mama--Tina Fey and her husband Jeff Richmond.

They met while they were both working at Second City and have been married since 2001. I would bet cash money that he is a wonderful and funny guy. Incredibly, Fey says that before she met him she "could not get a date."

But I have to hand it to Tina Fey for staying with this guy instead of doing what other celebrities who suddenly find their public value rocketing to super-fame levels would do, such as divorcing him to trade up for someone more famous like Naveen Andrews or John Stamos (or even her agent.) She's a real movie star now; in terms of media measurement of her fame, she's progressed from being on the cover of Bust to being on the covers of magazines at the checkout at Rite Aid.

How many TV/movie stars under 40 at a Tina Fey-level of fame can you think of who are married to a someone who a) you've never heard of, and b) also isn't conventionally attractive (i.e. not a former model)? Anyone?

Little Rudy Huxtable = all grown up.

That cute elementary-schooler in pigtails that was America's kid sister in the '80's, Keshia Knight Pulliam, recently turned 29 years old. For people my age, Keshia is like a one-woman version of the Olsen twins that we watched grow up on tv. The difference is that Keshia's a lot better looking, and successfully graduated from college.

Her post-"Cosby Show" career hasn't really taken off (though she was in Beauty Shop with Queen Latifah), but now she's about to enter an important rite of passage for anyone transitioning from child star to adult actress: starring in Tyler Perry's latest family movie as a hooker named Candy.

Who's America's pigtailed cutiepie now? That'll show 'em!

I just learned she also appeared in a 2003 Chingy video with a brief shot of her in a bra [video]. OK girl, we get it, you can put your shirt back on.

This is going to blow your mind.

Today is Robert Downey, Jr.'s birthday. And today also would have been Heath Ledger's birthday. Both are exceptional actors, both got destroyed by drugs, in one way or another.

I bet good old Robert Downey, Jr. knows full well that he shares a birthday with Ledger, and is spending some time today thinking about his memorable "I've got a shotgun in my mouth, with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal" metaphor for his relationship with drugs.

It's also David Cross's birthday (he's actually a year older than RDJ! Amazing.) He loves drugs too, judging from his stand-up routines and some interviews.

If you're into this kind of thing, here's Robert Downey, Jr.'s astrological chart and someone's analysis of it. Here's Heath Ledger's.

All the big awards were won by Europeans at this years Oscars. The UK was represented by Daniel Day-Lewis and the magnificent and extra-terrestrial Tilda Swinton, France by Marion Cotillard, Spain by Javier Bardem, and the Grand Duchy of Minneapolis by the Coen Brothers and Diablo Cody. Those last two won writing awards, demonstrating that the fine European sensibility is best for interpreting the multi-faceted nuances of American culture.

Even the best song and best score awards went to Europeans. Ireland's Glen Hansard and Czech Republic's Marketa Irglova won for their acoustic-y "Falling Slowly" from Once. Hansard's gleeful acceptance speech ate up 100% of their alloted time on the stage, and Irglova didn't get to say a single word before the orchestra started playing and stopped her.

So then Jon Stewart came back on and said, "That guy is so arrogant"--my favorite line of the night. After the commercial, Stewart went off-script to bring Irglova back on to deliver her very sincere acceptance speech.

Here's a video of Hansard's acceptance speech, Jon Stewart's one-liner, and Irglova's return to the stage [link fixed].

A complete list of winners.

In today's edition of Who'dat?™, we bring you a celebrity featured in the current issue of Vanity Fair, the annual Hollywood issue. The issue includes a really cool section with current movie stars in recreations of famous scenes from Alfred Hitchcock movies. There's Jodie Foster as Tippi Hedron in The Birds, Keira Knightley and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Rebecca (who are exactly who I think would be cast in that movie if it were remade), and--this is genius--Seth Rogen as Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

But there's one celebrity in the series that might be trickier to identify. To play Who'dat™, look at the person in the Vertigo recreation below, and try to guess who it is. Then click on the picture to see if you're right.

This isn't even the first time this celebrity has been a Who'dat™ subject. The chances I'd be able to recognize her on the street are probably zero.

Here's the whole Vanity Fair series.

Even De Niro has endorsed Obama, although his speech was a bit awkward:

"Barack Obama does not have the experience to be president of the United States," he began, evoking a pantomime "Boo!" from the crowd. "I can prove it. He wasn't experienced enough to vote to authorise the invasion of Iraq."

If Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Michael Chabon and Craig Newmark didn't sway you, surely Robert De Niro will.

On the other hand, as of Friday, Snoop Dogg was still undecided.

Someone over at the A.V. Club had the brilliant idea of getting Patton Oswalt to actually eat a KFC Famous Bowl™, the fast food metaphor for a world that has totally given up: "America has spoken - pile my food in a fucking bowl."

This is akin to getting TLC to go on a date with a scrub, or having Amy Winehouse spend a week in rehab.

So he wrote about it, and it's funny.

First, some photographic documentation. KFC's assertion as to what its Famous Bowl™ looks like:

Patton Oswalt's actual Famous Bowl™:

And a few descriptions of his experience eating it:

If you haven't ever seen his KFC Famous Bowl™ bit, you can watch it here:

The good folks at Wired completely understand what people like me want in this world: they got David Byrne to interview Thom Yorke about the digital release of the Radiohead album, the future of music, and pretty much everything that's strange, wrong and/or interesting about the music industry.

It's not too long, worth reading. There are also lots of audio snippets of their conversation. But here are a few highlights:

• Radiohead made about $3 million from download sales of the "In Rainbows" album, which is more than they have ever made from all digital sales of their earlier albums combined.
• This is probably because EMI, their former label, gave them exactly $0 for digital sales of their music. Wow.
• David Byrne makes most of his money from licensing. Radiohead make most of theirs from touring. Albums sales hardly enter into it.
• In spite of everything, both guys still think releasing albums, rather than a song here and there, makes sense. Yorke: "Songs can amplify each other if you put them in the right order." He says it would have been snobby not to release an actual CD of their album.
• This is probably already obvious to everyone, but Thom Yorke explains it well: The old system where labels sent advance copies of CDs to the media so the albums could be reviewed in the press pre-release was all for the goal of making albums chart high in the first week they were released, which nobody really cares about besides labels--bands or fans sure don't. And this very practice is what allowed (and encouraged) people to leak and download music pre-release, which has largely brought about the nosedive in CD sales over the past few years. You manipulate the fans, they bite you in the ass.
• Best part of the interview: both guys realizing that record labels are spending all their time worrying about distribution and DRM and licensing and suing people if they think they're getting ripped off-- which is all just "the delivery system". They have forgotten why people buy music in the first place. Byrne says, "people will still pay to have that experience"--connecting with music they love. Yes, yes, yes.

Great stuff.

In related news, MTV calls 2007 The Year The Industry Broke, with a blow-by-blow recap of all the events signaling the end of the music industry as we know it. There are a lot.

Yesterday at the inquest into the death of Princess Diana, one of her close friends revealed that she could not have been pregnant.

"While we were on this boat she had her period and that was just ten days before she died."