REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF

Because we're recovering from the anemic gathering of protesters in Central Park that followed yesterday's massive anti-Bush march, beautifully described by Robert D. McFadden as "a roaring two-mile river of demonstrators," we leave today's commentary to pop expert Ryan McGee's running account of the really important stuff: last night's MTV Video Music Awards.

This not only gives us a rest. It fills a celebrity gap here at ArtsJournal, which chooses not to acknowledge this annual celebration of frivolous cultural attainment and hence dismisses its significance as a parody of human achievement. So here's a taste of McGee's minute-by-minute self-sacrifice:

6:45 pm: No Doubt is being interviewed by John (N to the Nizzle) Norris. This will appear on the next No Doubt DVD under the featurette "When Gwen Realized She Didn't Need These Guys Anymore."
6:54 pm: Alicia Keyes just promised I'd never forget her performance. What I'm sure I'll never forget is the dead beaver that up and lept on her head.
6:57 pm: They released Kurt Loder from his cryogenic chamber to help host the pre-show. This guy ages in Dick Clark years. Stunning.
7:15 pm: I'm now downstairs in the living room on the roommate's computer. 27" TV in front of me, surround sound speakers, and a laptop all in the same room. And yet, they're threatening to let Ashlee Simpson perform after the commercial break.
7:22 pm: Kurt: "So what's your album like, Paris?" Paris: "It comes out in January." Wow. Sometimes brevity is the soul of wit, and sometimes it's the soul of Mistress Skankula.
7:29 pm: I'm going to leave it up to the professionals to explain why Bruce Willis showed up on P. Diddy's boat. And why Naomi Campbell's doing her impression of Imam in the Michael Jackson "Remember the Time" video.
7:32 pm: In the category of 'White People Saying Things They Shouldn't," Bruce just told John No-No-Norris that, "I'm just here running with my friend Sean." White people shouldn't run with anybody unless it's David Lee Roth and he's running with the devil. It's just a personal opinion. Like Andre 3000, I'm just being honest.

When you read the full version, forgive his errors: McGee believes in typing as fast as he can. For really more important stuff, Howell Raines in The Guardian does the job on how the Bush brain ticks.

August 30, 2004 12:01 PM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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