FRIDAY MORNING JUKEBOX : The Triple-Shot Of Hope Edition!

As the euphoria recedes just a little and we as a country and a collection of cultures set out on what we hope will be a more positive direction for ourselves and the land around us, we wanted to serve up just a few final bits of the afterglow to help you get through the weekend.

The scene above is from Madison Square Garden this past New Year's Eve, where My Morning Jacket rang in '09 with a cover of, of all things, "Celebration" by Kool And The Gang. Not that I doubt Jim James' affinity for '70s funk, but to see the crowd embrace the moment so joyfully hints, perhaps, at where so many of us were coming from mentally, and how much more of a release the clock striking midnight, and the official end of the past 365 days, was for us.

Our second clip was one of the few bright spots in Tuesday's Neighborhood Inaugural Ball that didn't directly involve the new President and First Lady. While Beyonce's joyous cover of "At Last" has gotten the bulk of the attention coming out of the event, I thought Alicia Keys surging rendition of "No One" might have been the best overall performance that night. While "At Last" framed a perfect moment for the Obamas, Keys managed to give the crowd a moment of its' own to take home.



Watching Keys' performance that night, I found myself wishing the crowd well. Wishing they felt like I did the last time words like hope and change were bandied about with so many smiles: Inauguration Night 1993, when my generation came together behind a seemingly so-young President from Arkansas and his hyper-intelligent progressive First Lady. As the Cross Colours 1990s were beginning to hit their stride, and we hoped we'd seen the last of the trickle-down disaster and Rambo culture of the previous decade, it was Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe who seemed to usher this brave new world in for us with "To Sir With Love":



As Merchant later sang, those were days: When peace wasn't confused with cowardice; when diversity was desirable, not divisive; when cynicism seemingly wasn't necessary to get through the damn day. Hope might spring eternal, but it seemed to take eight years to become viable this time around. Here's to ... well, hoping it sticks around a bit longer.

Hustle

Working on a couple of angles right now, but, a couple of notes:

* Rumour via @discotrash: Britney at Coachella?
* I have a look at 'Momma's Boys' up at Racialicious, besides our running diary on the Neighborhood Ball. Next up: Bromance?
* Your Moment of Zen comes courtesy of Jason Chan:

Arturo vs. The Neighborhood Ball -- LIVE!

I admit, I spent most of Inauguration Day taking it all in quietly. Even my cynical heart warmed a little during the day. I didn't have a thing to make fun of. Thank the stars ABC gave me the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball.

8:10 -- Delayed start, but: Mary J. looked GREAT, and Will.i.am struck a good note -- addition by subtraction of Fergie, perhaps?
8:19 -- W. had Ricky Martin. O has Maroon 5. This is progress?!
8:20 -- Robin Roberts! Yay! I remember when she was a SportsCenter rookie ...
8:21 -- Nick Cannon is as much a DJ as George Bush was a Decider.
8:22 -- Mariah has a blinged-out mic stand. Take that, Mary J.!
8:25 -- Oh shit, Denzel is there?
8:30 -- Denzel arrives! PLYMOUTH ROCK, GET THE FUCK OFF!
8:31 -- Mariah can't lend the President her mic stand?
8:32 -- "How good-looking is my wife?" Epic.
8:34 -- Is that Faith Hill next to Denzel?
8:34 -- Beyonce nails the first note ...




8:35 -- Beyonce's mic also had some bedazzle to it. Is this the next arms race?
8:40 -- Homeland Security U.S.A. advert -- Good to know Republicans still have some programs to watch.
8:41 -- For a comedian, Jamie Foxx is a hell of a singer
8:42 -- Shakira's music sucks nowadays, but DAMN
8:43 -- Nice to see Sting is growing another rainforest on his chin
8:45 -- We have a president who bumps people. This might work out after all.
8:45 -- @Soulcamp: "The President may think he's got good music at his party, but I get to see Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings this week. I win." Can't argue with that.
8:49 -- These "all-star jams" rarely go well. Damn you, ABC, for not trusting Stevie Wonder to do his own damn song.
8:50 -- For a comedian, Ray Romano is a hell of a waste of space.
8:51 -- "I can't believe I'm here." I can't believe you're there either, Romano.
8:53 -- This moron is DYING out there. Somewhere, there's a hotel lounge missing a headliner ...

8:55 -- Ooo-wee-ooo, Jigga looks like Buddy Holly!
Oh Oh, where's Beyonce Tyler Moore?

8:57 -- Is it me, or does Jay sound like he's out of breath?
8:59 -- Y'know, when I wore glasses like those in fourth grade, I got my ass kicked. Now they're in fashion?
9:03 -- "Destiny calls." You go straight to voicemail, Lost.
9:03 -- Who in the blue hell is Kate Walsh?
9:05 -- I don't think I've ever seen Alicia Keys do a song badly.
9:08 -- This might be the song of the night, up there with Beyonce
9:09 -- Send in the clowns tumblers people jumping around on weird-looking shit!
9:10 -- Info from @duffcalifornia on miss Walsh: "Best known for playing Addison Sheppard on Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice on ABC. Don't judge me for knowing that." No, but I will quote you!
9:11 -- The crowd doesn't know what to make of the tumblers. Was the wrestling bear booked?
9:12 -- The tumblers are cut off. For the first time in my television-watching life, I wish we'd gotten more commercials.
9:16 -- If I sent a text from Tijuana, would Mexico get a star on the Map of Vague Good Feelings?

9:17 -- Shakira's butchering "The Right Side Of The Road," but DAMN.
9:18 -- Shakira, harmonica. Harmonica, Shakira.


9:23 -- Stevie! Seriously, who needed The 5 Maroons?
9:26 -- SW is stealing the show right from Alicia
9:30 -- Grover on Scrubs? I thought Zack Braff was the only sock puppet allowed on that show.
9:32 -- Even Biden gets a pop!
9:33 -- Even Biden gets an "AWWWWW"!
9:34 -- Even Biden gets a dance!?
9:36 -- Make that half a dance.
9:38 -- Which final 20 minutes will be worse: the Neighborhood Ball's or the average SNL's?
9:40 -- Who in the blue hell is Carrie Washington?
9:40 -- Faith Hill just answered my question. I apologize, Lorne Michaels.
9:44 -- Playing Joan Jett as bumper music is just a fucking cruel tease.
9:46 -- Hey, Gitmo might be closing soon -- are the CMT Awards looking for a new site?
9:49 -- Sting + Stevie doing "Brand New Day." Could be worse -- that could be Shakira playing harp.
9:50 -- @Soulcamp: "Looks like Sting is practicing tantric shaving"
9:52 -- If we're rehashing '90s inspirational pop for this, why not just book Jesus Jones?
9:55 -- Watching the Frost/Nixon advert, wishing for the sequel: Olbermann/Bush.
9:57 -- Looks like the end of an SNL episode, doesn't it? Too bad Obama didn't close with "Thanks to all of our guest-stars ... and Ray Romano."
9:58 -- We're closing with the tumblers? I miss Ray Romano!
10:00 -- ABC News says, "The balls are in full swing." Now that is how you end a party. YES WE CAN change the channel now.


So, the lesson of the night? The audacity of hope can conquer anything ... except bad music. If it wasn't for Beyonce, Alicia and Stevie, the Ball would've made Dick Clark's NYE show look like Soul Train.

Normally you could blame this on events like MTV and the Youth Ball (what would you rather have watched, Sting and his kite-eating beard or Kanye and Fall Out Boy?), but for cripes' sake, Common was at the Obama Home States Inaugural Ball. That's like deciding the national football championship at the Humanitarian Bowl. I can only hope that someday, we as a nation and as a people can come together to get actual hip-hop and rock artists on a "major network" gala event. But hey, there's always 2012, right?

* All photos courtesy of Reuters

Return Of FRIDAY MORNING JUKEBOX!

As a longtime Franz Ferdinand fan, I'm happy to devote the first FMJ of 2009 to their return at the end of the month with Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. I'm not necessarily big on the crowd they seem to attract -- hipsters are not my cup of tea -- but I can't blame the band. Assuming you haven't gotten sick of this track on your normal radio outlets, enjoy "Ulysses."

Batman, B.I.A.B.?

SPOILER ALERT ON



Is Batman/Bruce Wayne dead? Short answer: I don't think so, despite the conclusion reached in this spoiler-rific commentary on Final Crisis #6. Why? There's many reasons beyond "He makes the company too much money."

1. This latest Crisis started with a resurrection nobody wanted expected, Barry Allen. When a character whose primary contribution to comics was dying is resurrected, that doesn't bode well for any other "deaths" that transpire during the story.
2. In the same issue where Batman is seemingly charbroiled by Darkseid, we're introduced to a "Miracle Machine" entrusted to Superman. Gee, I wonder what Clark would wish for regarding his best pal?
3. There's already proof the "Omega Sanction" Darkseid blasted Bats with isn't fatal; in Crisis writer Grant Morrison's much-ballyhooed but ultimately-forgotten Seven Soldiers series, the new Mister Miracle is hit with the Sanction, basically an advanced mind-whammy that forces the recipient into a series of successively worse lives. Not only did Mr. M survive the experience, he escaped. And if he could do it, is there any reason Batman couldn't?
4. There's still one issue left in Final Crisis, so there's still time for a reboot button to be it -- allowing Bruce Wayne to survive, just maybe not as Batman.

So, while there's potential to resurrect the character, rehabilitating him might end up being trickier. Because in that final confrontation, Morrison wrote Batman as shooting Darkseid with the same Magic Bullet that killed Orion. And as hackneyed as the phrase "betrayal of the character" has been made by endless commenters on endless message boards, this is one instance where it might actually stick. For the guy whose entire mission was based on taking down evil without actually killing it to suddenly make a "once-in-a-lifetime exception," as Morrison wrote is going to be really hard to swallow and reconcile for readers, let alone the character whenever he returns.

Did the TARDIS miss the boat? Arturo v. The Eleventh Doctor!

A message-board buddy of mine summed up my reaction perfectly: "And just who the hell is Matt Smith?"

Turns out the 26-year-old is the Eleventh Doctor, as confirmed Saturday. But, on one level, Matt Smith will represent, to me, a wasted opportunity.

Not that I think Smith will make a bad Doctor, necessarily; despite what some old-school Whovians may tell you, the series is hardly ever bad. But at a time when both the oddsmakers and popular opinion were backing the idea of the first Doctor of color, or the first female Doctor, this was the perfect chance for incoming executive producer Stephen Moffat to finally make good on the idea that “The Doctor could be anyone.”

For most of the nine weeks speculation ran amok about the Eleventh Doctor's identity, the name on seemingly everybody's lips was Patterson Joseph. Joseph had amassed a sizable resume on BBC television, most recently in Jekyll, also produced by Moffat; animated series Chop Socky Chooks (yeah, it sounds pretty bad); and the post-apocalyptic drama Survivors. One could say that the support toward casting Joseph, a known commodity, showed parallels to Peter Davison's taking over the role after the last pre-eminent Doctor, Tom Baker. Davison had already become popular in his own right before taking on the role, taking some of the pressure off himself before embarking on his run.

On another front, a group of female scientists began a public campaign urging Moffat and company to pick a woman for the role, arguing that a female Doctor would “bring the issue of the important contribution women can and should make to science in the public domain.” Indeed, names like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Helen Mirren began to pop up in consideration, though the bookies apparently had former Companion Billie Piper getting “promoted.” And really, how cool would it have been to have The Doctor, arguably the most brilliant person in the universe, be a woman for a few years? Imagine the slashfic gender-expectation-bending possibilities!

It's tough to find an American equivalent to the character of The Doctor. Even if many people have played, say, Batman, the character has always been defined as the secret identity of Bruce Wayne. By contrast, not only has the mantle of The Doctor been worn by 10 different actors, but the role itself has changed with each re-generation. The character is still an arch do-gooder, of course, but David Tennant's interpretation was different than Christopher Eccleston's, which was different than Paul McGann's, and so on. He's part superhero, part science hero, part professor, part Bugs Bunny.

And, as regards Tennant's run, The Doctor is money -- the centerpiece of a multimedia franchise covering books-on-tape, toys, fan magazines, conventions, memorabilia and three(!) spinoff series. “Journey's End,” the fourth-season finale, was the No. 1 rated show in the whole U.K., the first Doctor Who episode to reach that level of viewership, capping off a week in which seemingly everyone in the country was wondering whether Tennant's time had run out early. Put it this way: without Christian Bale and David Goyer, would anybody who didn't read comics take Batman seriously anymore?

Charged with continuing all that success, the show's creative team played it safe. Smith gives them not just another (white) bloke, but an actor they can mold into their Doctor. One could also argue that Smith also gives them an actor who would work more cheaply than Joseph, or Chiwetel Ejiofor, or many other contenders. BBC Wales Drama head Piers Wenger is quoted as saying, "It was abundantly clear that [Smith] had that 'Doctor-ness' about him. You are either the Doctor or you are not." While that may or may not be true, this time around, Wenger and Moffat had the opportunity to make the statement "You are the Doctor" mean just a bit more, and chose not to take it.

In The Valley Of The Cam Dolls: Arturo v. Yahoo Chat!

Well, it didn't take me long to make my first blunder of the new year.

I came home Friday night and wasn't quite tired, so I thought I'd hop on to my usual boards to see if anybody was up for a quick chat, maybe even a voice-chat thingamabobber, so I could use the swank microphone The Mortician provided me El Secreto for use on Hour 42. No dice. No surprise, I guess. Then I figured, why not try Yahoo Chat?

I have a history with chat rooms. Back in the Cenozoic era -- the mid '90s, that is -- I made a gaggle of friends, online and off, via various rooms and boards. Even learned to drink at quite a few of the parties those folks threw. If you were around and of age during those days, I'm sure you also remember the feeling of exploration each of those gatherings fostered. I was convinced at the time that our get-togethers would someday be looked at as the spiritual heirs to the early Beatnik gatherings. What can I tell you? I was a dope in college.

I even met a few nice folks thru YChat while living in Kansas. Unfortunately, the only thing I remember from those meetings was the woman who told me she only heard about the Wichita Chat party from her boyfriend, the rather older gentleman sitting next to her. "We met in the Fisting Room," she cheerfully told me. It takes diff'rent strokes, indeed ...

Notwithstanding all that, I figured a quick check of the old YStompingGrounds couldn't hurt. I've rarely been so wrong.

Ten windows popped up before I even filled out the widget confirming I wasn't a spambot, with similarly-worded greetings.

Hey baby, wanna chat?

Hey gorgeous.

Hi! 25/f/Poland. I'm sitting here in my bra and panties.

It might surprise you to learn that I don't always get that kind of reception when I walk into a room away from teh interwebz, as the kids call it these days. It wasn't any better inside the chat itself; it seemed like a dozen different "independent models" were lonely for attention. If only some kind gentleman, they all whined, would join them for a chat!

"Is anybody here not a bot?" I asked. The next post was someone asking for help testing their new cam. Settled that question. Not that I'm against the free market, but I like my webcam/cast fare a bit funnier. Next time I'll just go straight to bed.