Paul McCartney - Birthday

...you say it's your birthday, it's my birthday too, yeah!...

So come on and dance with Paul (and me) on my birthday...:-)

Scott Baio is 45 and Single/Rock of Love

In the future every fading or faded star will be given his or her own embarrassing reality TV show. Oh wait, apparently the future is now. VH1 upchucked…I mean, debuted…two new more of these things on Sunday night.

Scott Baio is 45 and Single…and apparently willing to trade what’s left of his dignity for a shot a getting back into the spotlight with a show that manages to hit every false, staged note it possibly can. The conceit here is that Scott Baio, who has been what some people would call a “toxic bachelor” (womanizing, unable and/or unwilling to commit), is trying to find out if he’s ready to settle down with and marry his current girlfriend. Baio hires a life coach who instructs him to go back and find out what went wrong with his many failed relationships (starting with his Happy Days co-star Erin Moran, the first girl he had sex with, who shows up for a meal that sounded like it was scripted and then dares Baio to join her for an autograph signing session. The kicker to this is a stilted, cringe-inducing phone conversation with Henry Winkler.) And oh yeah, Baio gets pissed off whenever anybody calls him “Chachi” (dude, let it go.)

Baio has a smarmy sidekick who apparently gets his jollies drafting off his friend’s celebrity and a group of buddies who sit around having oh-so-spontaneous conversations while smoking big cigars at the racetrack.

By the time, Baio’s agent takes him off to have a “private conversation” in glass walled room and the cameras dutifully follow them to “surreptitiously” capture the entire thing anyway, all I was thinking that Scott might want to think of getting new representation.

The less said about Rock of Love the better. I never thought anything could make me think back wistfully on Flavor of Love…and that remains true but this knockoff starring Poison lead singer Bret Michaels (who really loves the word “awesome!” apparently) looking for his true love (or at least some fun) from among 25 “smoking hot babes” does a yeoman job of trying to make me long for Flavor Flav and the ever-charming Flavor of Love girls. As on Flavor of Love, none of the participants on Rock of Love has the good sense to be embarrassed by volunteering for this leering, empty-headed mess.

With the Two Coreys (Feldman and Haim) on the very near horizon and Snoop Dogg having just signed up for his own reality gig, the end of these things is nowhere in sight. Lucky us…

Live 8

MTV and VH1 are taking a do-over on Live 8. After getting taken to school by, of all things, AOL last week, the "music" networks are trying to make amends this week.

I don't have that many good things to say about AOL (I'm still praising my cable TV company for getting high speed internet service so I could kiss the big A goodbye years ago) but their coverage of Live 8...with simultaneous feeds and, as far as I could tell, no service problems...made MTV look like a dinosaur (the same way MTV made radio seem hidebound and old-fashioned in the early 80's.)

On the other hand MTV's "coverage" (simulcast on VH1)...with its incessant commercials, the neverending blather from their insipid talking heads, and, worst of all, the truncated performances...was all but un-watchable.

Having been slammed all week (as well they should have been) by critics and viewers, today (Saturday) MTV and VH1 are presenting 10 hours of Live 8 highlights...10 hours of commercial-free, VJ-free music with complete, uninterrupted sets by various singers and bands that performed.

Better late than never, folks.

On a related note, I'm glad that Bob Geldolf and Bono were pleased with...and kind of taking credit for*... the 50-billion dollar aid pledge that the "G-8" nations promised for Africa over the next 5 years (double previous pledges) but I reserve the right to remain skeptical until those pledges are turned into actual aid on the ground. We shall see.


*Personally I'm dubious that President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and the rest of the leaders really took Live 8 all that seriously though if they did pay some attention it's all good.