"Artist found burned to death on top of his masterpiece."

"Artist Jorge Selaron may have taken his own life by setting himself on fire on the very steps of his masterpiece, a brilliantly colored public staircase that became a symbol of Rio de Janeiro..."

The stairs, his life's work, were declared city patrimony in 2005, when Selaron was made an honorary carioca, as Rio residents are called. The steps have been featured in Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful" and U2's "Walk On" music videos, as well as part of the video that Brazil made for their 2016 Olympic bid.

Here's the Snoop Dogg video. Here's the U2.

"John Edwards is First Name Uncovered in 'Millionaire Madam' Investigation."

"Most of the women don’t have any idea about the identities of the men they sleep with... How would they know a money man from Wall Street or the face of a lawyer or banker who shows up? But the face of the national politician?... She knew."

Via Instapundit.

Hey, but wait. What if said prostitute thought she was servicing, say... Bono!

Dogged journalist grills a guy who looks like Bono.

Makes a big deal out of it before it's figured out that they guy was not Bono.

Pavel “Bonodouble” Sfera showed up [at some big music event] in his Bono-impersonation garb. ”I went there as a spoof,” says Sfera....

[Jason Mattera, editor at large at Human Events] "started asking questions about why I had taken money out of Ireland and moved it to Holland for a lower tax base,” recalls Sfera....

Sfera says he was “waiting” for Mattera to figure out that he wasn’t really Bono. That moment didn’t come, and Sfera decided not to help his interlocutor. “I let him go,” says Sfera. “I didn’t think he was being legitimate and fair.”

Ha ha. Did I ever tell you that circa 1960, my father looked like Frank Sinatra? He'd get asked for his autograph, and he gave it. Frank Sinatra. My other story like that is that one time — in the 1970s — I was in a restaurant in NYC with my brother and his friend who just happened to resemble Bruce Springsteen. Some young woman rushed up and began hugging him and raving about how she loved all his songs. We didn't know what the hell was happening. I figured it out later, but the lady must believe, to this day, that she got close to Bruce.

What is wrong with people?! I'm never sure I recognize someone!

Pick your "Perfect Day."

1. With Elvis Costello:



2. With Pavarotti:



3. With Bono, Dr. John, Elton John everybody:



4. Lou, alone:

"Poetry, not special effects, is the engine that drives lyric theater, and 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' is as unpoetic as you can get."

"[The] book is flabby and witless. The score, by U2's Bono and The Edge, sounds like a double album of B-sides ("Don't think about tomorrow / We've only got today"). Not only are the songs forgettable, but they never succeed in generating any dramatic momentum—all they do is get louder."

Says Terry Teachout, observing that "no stage show, even a multimillion-dollar extravaganza, can offer anything remotely as believable-looking as the digitally generated magic that moviegoers have been taking for granted for the past couple of decades."

Why see a stage show, when there are movies? The makers of stage shows need to have an answer to that. And it really should be a better answer than: this combination of glitz and familiar names will trick the rubes into handing over their money.

Scotty wins. Seems to be having a love affair with Lauren.

Beyonce appeared to be in hell while singing a hellishly awful song. Steven Tyler got to follow Bono. Jennifer Lopez's husband had a whole big number because he's Jennifer Lopez's husband. Tom Jones showed up and sang "It's Not Unusual." Besting him in the oldest man competition, Tony Bennett was there. He's 85! He sang with Haley. Like they're a couple. Judas Priest deigned to appear. "American Idol" is not something they scorn. Who can scorn "American Idol" now? They sang with James Durbin. And Jack Black sang with Casey Abrams. That was ugly. Jacob Lusk got Gladys Knight and they sang about Heaven. Lovely. Scotty McCreery did a duet with Tim McGraw who, we're told, is the most-played artist on the radio of the last 10 years. And Lauren Alaina did her duet with Carrie Underwood. And Lady Gaga sang about being "on the edge" while standing on a scenery cliff, which I was worried she'd fall off of, and then she did intentionally fall off in the end, onto some hidden foam, no doubt. I'm sure she'll be back to howl at us on future occasions.

Off the top of my head, that's what I remember from tonight's big "American Idol" results show.

Bono sings at Sargent Shriver’s funeral.

"He defies the laws of physics as his daily exercise, but without him the universe just wouldn't be as friendly to humans."

Bono effuses inanely over Bill Clinton.

"Nobody has ever loaned me money. I mean, I was going to die on a few occasions. Johnny Depp gave me CPR on one."

"That’s as close as I ever got. I was watching that movie where he plays Dillinger, and I was like ‘Motherf***er, I never had myself any JD except CPR."

Yeah, Depp's adorable.

"The first film I worked on was Mommie Dearest. I used to measure people nipple to nipple. The first line I heard from Miss Dunaway was: 'Who is that fat girl in my eyeline?' I was terrified."

I don't really know what "I used to measure people nipple to nipple" means but that seems like an amusing thing to say. To do.

Anyway, the speaker is Courtney Love. Here she is reminiscing about her daughter, Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances:

"[W]hen Frances was about nine, there was an awards ceremony that Michael Stipe, her godfather, was singing at, and Bono was picking up an award. “Frances was holding Stipe’s and Bono’s hands and she goes, ‘You guys are jealous of each other, aren’t you?’ It was the craziest moment. It was so brilliant. Genius. I was so proud of my child at that moment.”

"Nice work with the hug dodge."

Obama to Bono.

"Elvis the ecstatic/ Elvis the plastic/ Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance that could explain the energy of America.”

Bono's poem about Elvis, aired on British radio:

A warning about the poem’s language preceded the airing, as a series of offensive words including “nigger” and “spastic” were employed.

Here in America — where we have Elvis energy, apparently — those 2 words are on completely different levels of offensiveness, but I guess that's the way they talk in Britain, where, presumably, "spastic" is not a word to be used casually.

***

Bonus: "Saturday Night Live" transcript. ("Oh no, its Chaz 'The Spaz' Knerlman!... Why don't you shut up, Spazalopolis!")

Ah, now it's coming back to me. Remember back in 2006, when Tiger Woods got into trouble for casually saying "spaz" in Britain? Language Log had a great post titled "A Brief History of Spaz":

[T]he clumsy or inept meaning of spaz remained mostly on the playground until the late 1970s, when it began seeping into American popular culture. In 1978, Saturday Night Live started running occasional sketches starring "The Nerds," with Bill Murray as Todd DiLamuca and Gilda Radner as Lisa Loopner. On two shows that year (Apr. 22 and Nov. 4), host Steve Martin joined in, playing the character Charles Knerlman, or "Chaz the Spaz" as he was known to Todd and Lisa.... A year after the SNL sketches in 1979, Bill Murray starred in the summer-camp comedy Meatballs, which featured a stereotypically nerdy character played by Jack Blum called "Spaz."

For someone like Tiger Woods who came of age in the '80s (and who, incidentally, is on record as saying that another Bill Murray movie, Caddyshack, is his all-time favorite), the American usage of spaz had long lost any resonance it might have had with the epithet spastic. This is not the case in Great Britain, however, where both spastic and spaz evidently remain in active usage as derogatory terms for people with cerebral palsy or other disabilities affecting motor coordination. A BBC survey ranked spastic as the second-most offensive term for disabled people, just below retard....

***

Don't you love the energy of America?

"Read Bono's column and, in 20 words or less, explain its theme."

Says Dan Drezner, who thinks the column is insufferable nonsense, and enters his own contest with: "Did you know that I knew Frank Sinatra?"

I'll enter the contest: Art is in the moment.

***

Here is yesterday's post on the Bono column.

Bono is "struck by the one quality [Frank Sinatra's] voice lacks: Sentimentality."

Quaff a pint glass of the velvety blackness of the rock star's prose.

***

Things Frank said to Bono:

“I don’t usually hang with men who wear earrings.”

“Miles Davis never wasted a note, kid — or a word on a fool.”

“Jazz is about the moment you’re in. Being modern’s not about the future, it’s about the present.”

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill White says:

Sinatra's voice was the most selfish I've heard, which makes his Christmas songs hilarious or unlistenable depending on your mood.

And Original George links to this movie clip of Sinatra singing "Someone to Watch Over Me" — which has that line "I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood," which is surprisingly unmasculine, and in fact, the song was written for a woman:

Wedding photographs of the "Bride and Groom" are being taken, and Kay, still disguised as a maid, tries to convince Jimmy she would be a better wife than fussy Constance. She tells her rag doll that she needs "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Now, I think the song is sentimental when a woman sings it, so how can a man sing it — especially with that "lamb" line? Yet, the song is better sung by Sinatra. It's a mystery. Does it have to do with selfishness?

We're also talking about lambs this morning over on the "Macho Jesus for men" post: "Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs." We're exploring masculinity today, and I propose reconciling the macho with the lamb.

"There is a difference between people who sing and those who take that voice to another, otherworldly place, who create a euphoria within themselves."

Robert Plant, talking about Elvis, who ranks #3 on Rolling Stone's "Greatest Singers of All Time."

Of course, it's not really about all time. There aren't even any opera singers on the list. And it's based on some survey that asked various experts who were their favorite singers of the rock era. Which is kind of an annoying categorization, because #1 and #2 are not rock singers, really. And then, we aren't really even talking about singing -- are we? -- if Bob Dylan is #7. But it is interesting to read what Bono has to say about him:

There is certainly iron ore in there, and the bitter cold of Hibbing, Minnesota, blowing through that voice. It's like a knotted fist....

Or -- I don't know -- I didn't need to read that.

Meanwhile, Robert Plant is only #15, and you have to slip all the way down to #32 to get to Bono.

But it's silly to argue about such things. What's nice is that if you upload the Rhapsody software, you can choose 25 full-length songs to play for free out of the list of songs for each of the 100 singers.

I'm trying to collect my thoughts to tell you what I thought of the movie "Across the Universe."

This is a movie built on Beatles songs — covers of Beatles songs — and you must understand that I love The Beatles. So factor that into what I say. But I wasn't drawn in and entranced the way you're obviously supposed to be. Here is a love story, a really simple love story. There's a man and a woman and they are made for each other, but some misunderstanding separates them temporarily. Ho hum. That's the most basic story on the face of the earth.

But Beatles songs undergird everthing. And some of it is damned clever — especially "Mr. Kite" and — following right after it — "Because." But it's nowhere nearly as good as "Moulin Rouge," which is what it's most like. It's better than "Tommy," which is what it really reminded me of. So let's just say it's on the same level as "Hair."

Mr. Kite was played by Eddie Izzard, and he was far and away the best thing in the movie. He kept changing the lyrics in a way that was really cool: "Have you seen it? It's great! They've got stuff!" If only everyone else had so much stuff... But they are mainly pretty people with typical hopes 'n' dreams. Set in the 60s, of course, so there's plenty of Vietnam and LSD to beat you over the head with the spirit of the times.

Bono is in the movie too. He plays a character similar to Izzard's. He's a psychedelic huckster. — Dr. Robert. But he doesn't do so much with the role. Still, he gets credit for singing it all very well and for allowing them to make him up to be so terribly ugly.

Let the "fleeting expletives" fly -- says Second Circuit.

The NYT reports:

The decision, by a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, was a sharp rebuke for the F.C.C. and for the Bush administration. For the four television networks that filed the lawsuit — Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC — it was a major victory in a legal and cultural battle that they are waging with the commission and its supporters.

Under President Bush, the F.C.C. has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio. While the judges sent the case back to the commission to rewrite its indecency policy, it said that it was “doubtful” that the agency would be able to “adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the networks.”

It all started with Bono:

Beginning with the F.C.C.’s indecency finding in a case against NBC for a vulgarity uttered by the U2 singer Bono during the Golden Globes awards ceremony in 2003, President Bush’s Republican and Democratic appointees to the commission have imposed a tougher policy by punishing any station that broadcast a fleeting expletive....

Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

Yeah, stick it to Bush and Cheney.

I love the way the NYT seems enthused about this new liberation in media but still can't print "Go f*ck yourself." (Me neither, but I'm only using the asterisk out of fear of what filters might do to me.)

“We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel.

So this is not a First Amendment decision, though the majority does say “We question whether the F.C.C.’s indecency test can survive First Amendment scrutiny.” The court is finding fault with the process of developing the new policy. In dissent, Judge Pierre Leval stressed the "the deference courts must give to the reasoning of a duly authorized administrative agency": "The commission’s position is not irrational; it is not arbitrary and capricious.”

The case involved findings that the networks had violated the indecency rules for comments by Cher and Nicole Richie on the Billboard Music Awards, the use of expletives by the character Andy Sipowicz on “NYPD Blue” and a comment on “The Early Show” by a contestant from CBS’s reality show “Survivor.”

So Bono opened the door and now every nitwit celebrity and reality show half-celebrity will be saying "f*ck" on the slightest provocation. The networks say it's up to you to decide what shows to watch, so... good luck figuring out what to let your kids watch.

"The sort of movie that plays best when you stumble across it on cable."

I'm clicking through the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of "Leonard Cohen -- I'm Your Man," and this "Short Takes" one by Elizabeth Weitzman of The Daily News sounds apt:

The possibilities inherent in Cohen's complex life and work are extensive, which may be why [director Lian] Lunson never gets a handle on either. Extended scenes from a tribute concert featuring artists like Rufus Wainwright are interspersed with gushing compliments from Bono, and neither is half as interesting as the curiously brief interviews with Cohen himself. Offering both too little material and too much, the movie leaves us in the bizarre position of understanding its subject no better by the end than we did at the beginning.

There is some great singing in this film, and the songs are exactly what you'd want to put in front of a great singer. But Lunson simply doesn't have any documentarian panache. I get the feeling he was way too excited about the fact that he got Bono to stand in front of a door and babble about Leonard Cohen. I feel sorry for Bono -- not really, why feel sorry for Bono?! -- who quite rationally could have assumed that somewhere in the verbiage there would be a few cool phrases and these would be plucked out by the editor and it would be perfect. Instead, they ran with all the footage.

Check it out, it's Bono! He's still standing in front of that brown door! He's still got those wraparound glasses on. He's still murmuring about Leonard! Okay, let's go watch Rufus emote charmingly around Leonard-lyrics. And now... Oh! It's Bono! And that richly paneled door! And he thinks Leonard is truly sublime.

The filmmaker must have loved the idea of Cohen as an enigma. To this end, Buddhism is used heavily. Don't Buddhists ever get sick of the use of their religion to create an aura of depth and mystery around a Western celebrity? We see a lot of shots of Leonard sitting next to a fat gnome of a monk. Hey, he's a Buddhist monk. You're supposed to be automatically impressed. He doesn't have to say a damned thing interesting about Buddhism or anything else. You're supposed to just get it. Ooh, he's a fat monk! He must be full of profound wisdom. And there's Leonard sitting right next to him.

I would have liked more substance, less abstract effusion. There was a nice sequence in there about "Suzanne," accompanied by some of Cohen's drawings. Suzanne was his friend's wife, and she really did live by the river. "And she feeds you tea and oranges/That come all the way from China." Yeah, she really did serve tea that had little bits of oranges in it. Oh, all these years, I've been eating a whole orange with my tea and thinking "Suzanne." But here's Leonard, and he's saying Suzanne's tea had the oranges in it. It was Constant Comment tea, he says. (It comes all the way from Connecticut, I note.)

What's so cool about the song "Suzanne" is that it has all the concrete detail surrounding the enigmatic character and the religious mysteries. River, boats, tea, oranges, rags, feathers, honey, garbage, flowers, seaweed...

Nothing against Cohen, but the filmmaker lacked the art to make a real documentary film. It would have made a great TV show to stumble across on cable. If you want to get a sense of what a real film would be, watch "Crumb" again.

The Condi for President trend.

ABC News reports:

A disparate group of Internet gurus, political junkies and foes of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is pushing a Rice candidacy even though President Bush's top diplomat has said repeatedly that she has no desire to be president.

But the Republican also has declined invitations to rule out a bid in 2008, spoken about the likelihood of a minority winning the White House in her lifetime and taken steps to soften her image words and deeds that have provided a glimmer of hope to her fans.

Mick Wright, a webmaster in Memphis, Tenn., is one of more than a dozen people who registered draft-Rice Web sites in the year after Bush was re-elected.

"Once that was all over, you started thinking, what's going to happen in the next election?" said Wright, a co-founder of http://www.condipundit.com. "The first one to come to mind as a viable candidate was Condoleezza Rice."

(I made that a hot link. In a classic demonstration of MSM obtuseness, ABC didn't.)

More in the article. I'll just note this part, about whether Rice is planning to run:

Greg Haas, an Ohio-based Democratic strategist, said Rice's image makeover is a telltale sign.

"The fact of the matter is when you see somebody revolutionize their style, their appearance and their speaking manner, that is not happening all by itself," said Haas, who ran Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign in Ohio. "She has clearly begun presenting a different image, moving from a harsh persona to one of a more warm public official."

Rice has showcased her talents as a pianist at the Kennedy Center, lifted weights for a local Washington TV news show and discussed her musical favorites, from Elton John to Aretha Franklin to Mozart, for a British newspaper. The latter was a favor to rock star Bono.

Run, Condi!

"One Life, With Each Other, Sisters, Brothers."

Best line in a song, ever? It was voted so, in a VH1 survey, beating out "So You Go, And You Stand On Your Own, And You Leave On Your Own, And You Go Home, And You Cry, And You Want To Die." Well, it's a hell of a lot cheerier, and since optimistic, hopeful lines -- like "Look At The Stars, Look How They Shine For You" -- are all over the place on this list of 20, I think it's a very impressive showing for The Smiths.

Re "One":

U2 classic One is often played at weddings, but guitarist Edge has in the past said: “It’s not that kind of song”.

The three videos that the band made for the single – depicting everything from the band in drag, Bono singing at a restaurant table, and buffalos running across a plain – shed no light on the meaning of the song either.

I think people especially love song lyrics that they can't quite understand. A few evocative words, sung with passion and style, but just enough out of reach that you can pour your own meaning in -- we love that.

"The first job of a rock 'n' roll band is not to be dull."

Bono pretends to worry that U2 will kick him out of the band.