Mostly Modern Media

Reminder: I've moved

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Come over and visit me here. Update bookmarks, blogrolls, blog readers.

Moving ...

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:05:00 +0000

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Newspaper sites = troll magnets

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:48:00 +0000

Check out the unadulterated, inhuman crap being posted at the Sun-Sentinel after Springsteen postponed his show in the wake of ... oh, just the death of his bandmate and friend of 40 years, Danny Federici.

Here's an idea: Let's use the IP addresses and track these people down, then have them stand before a live national TV audience as we read their comments out loud. Wonder if they'd still call Springsteen a liberal crybaby.

(Obviously, I'm not speaking for my employer. Nor do I really think that's the best way to handle Web trolls. It'd be fun, though, wouldn't it?)

Live-blogging Last.fm

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:20:00 +0000

It's been a while since I live-blogged anything, in part because I'm no longer idle on weekdays and in part because we finally pulled the plug on XM.

But I'm giving Last.fm another chance. I've even downloaded the player and "scrobbled," which I still think is a hip way of saying "uploaded all of your marketing preferences and occasional accidental stumbling onto porn sites to a database shared by a giant telemarketing firm and Homeland Security." But anyway ...

Hmmm ... chose an artist or tag. I'll choose "rock." And we get ...

Alanis Morissette, You Learn: The song from which her staggeringly popular debut Jagged Little Pill takes its title, but not even the top half of the songs from that release if I ranked them. Cute song with a few good hooks, but overproduced like some old Tiffany release.

Counting Crows, Round Here: Hate the band, love this song. Adam Duritz could sing anything from Louie Louie to Close to the Edge and still come across as the pretentious college-DJ type who hooks up with a succession of the campus' most eligible women because they all think they'll be the one to rescue him from those dark clouds following him. (Yeah, those dark clouds? They're the stench of erratic bathing and pot smoke.) Except on this recording, where he gives just the right emotional lift to an enigmatic, interesting song.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Wind Cries Mary: Like You Learn, this one isn't bad, but it's a little flimsier than some of the vital work produced by the same artist. Surely a good change of pace for a live show.

The Troggs, Wild Thing: I'd much rather hear the Hendrix version. Or the Sam Kinison version.

Yes, that's Jessica Hahn, of Jim Bakker scandal fame, in the video.

OK, so where was I? Oh, right ...

Toto, Selfish: For some reason, I want to work in some sort of joke along the lines of "Kansas? I don't think we're in Toto anymore." Surely Steve Morse managed to be in both bands somewhere along the way. I have no idea where to place this song -- clearly years and years after the band was any semblance of its platinum days -- so I'm relying on Popdose to fill me in. Really, it's what you'd expect -- a vocalist screaming to try to get some sort of attention while everyone else is focusing on the endless noodling of the overly skilled musicians in the rest of the band.

Billy Idol, Sweet Sixteen: When is Billy going to pull a Rod Stewart or Brian Setzer and start paying homage to the 40s and 50? He could pull it off, and it'd be better than utterly forgettable 80s relics like this.

My Chemical Romance, Welcome to the Black Parade: I don't know. Maybe if I were 19, getting rejected by all the women who were hanging out with Adam Duritz-type DJs, looking forward to financial independence even if I had no idea what to do career-wise, reading tedious academic prose and all that, I might appreciate this with the correct level of irony. Since I'm now officially 2x19, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel sympathy for the unfortunates mentioned in the song or to view them with cynical detachment or what. I just maintain Natalie Merchant could kick all their asses.

I'll have to wrap there for now. Interesting mix of music, at least.

Song du semaine: The Donnas, "Fall Behind Me"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:08:00 +0000

Just a clinic in rock guitar playing here. Poor video, unfortunately, almost as badly synced in places as the old Joy Division clip for Love Will Tear Us Apart.

And to my great surprise, it almost works acoustically. I say "almost" because it really needs drums and a more emphatic vocal. The guitar, though, is still pretty good.

Firefox and punctuation

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:25:00 +0000

Anyone else wonder if the reason this movie is getting so much play on cable these days is that people might think, "Hey, someone made a movie about a Web browser!"?

That sentence leads me to a grammar point. I have trouble with quotation marks because I studied a considerable amount of logic in college, and the rules on quotation marks ain't logical.

Problem 1:

"The comma goes before the quotation mark," he said, realizing that the rule makes no sense from a logical standpoint. The quotation is a complete expression. The comma separates it from a descriptive clause.

Problem 2:

Eric said, "My team will be ready to play Saturday." The comma is grammatically correct and logically unsound. The quotation is the object. Eric said X. Imagine other sentences with an object.

Mark threw the ball.

Not:

Mark threw, the ball.

So take note, English majors. This is why philosophy majors are laughing at you.

"But there are plenty of reasons to laugh at philosophy majors" is a perfectly valid response.

Questions I can't answer

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:21:00 +0000

Today in the car ride home ...

MMM Jr.: What song is this?

MMM: It's an old song by R.E.M. called Can't Get There From Here.

MMM Jr.: Where is he trying to go?

Um ... Philomath?

The new journalism career

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:08:00 +0000

1. Go into journalism straight out of college.

2. Work for a decade or two, building yourself up as a prominent voice in a particular niche.

3. Take a buyout or just find a better-paying job, then set up a blog/site/podcast that takes advantage of the expertise you built up in journalism.

It makes perfect sense. Journalism will continue to exist, but if you're under 40, your chances of promotion to a family-supporting job will be minimal. You'll eventually face pressure to head out the door because, even though you're making less than your similarly educated peers in other fields, you're making more than the kid they can hire for your job.

And that's why I'm happy to see a talented TV critic like Ed Bark embracing the change.

I don't mean to sound like a negative nabob while there are so many good people gathered in Durham to talk about the Next Newsroom. I see this career path as a positive. Perhaps journalism will lose a lot of good people when they hit age 35, 40 or 45, but that's better than leaving them in unfulfilling jobs. And perhaps this sort of path will attract a few good people in the first place.

(Note to USAT folks: No, I'm not leaving! I'm just starting to have fun.)

Song du semaine: Velvet Revolver, "Fall to Pieces"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:43:00 +0000

We all knew Velvet Revolver wouldn't last, right? Weiland hasn't learned self-control in any sense of the word by this point, and it may never happen.

And that's a shame, because in his better moments, he's a talented singer willing to open up to startling self-examination about his drug-riddled past.

Fall to Pieces is a good, solid rock song -- pretty guitar figures from Slash and Dave Kushner, building to a stirring chorus as Weiland sells the drama.

But the video is remarkable as well. It has a sweetness you don't usually see from rock clips, with Weiland laying bare his reliance on loved ones and bandmates to get him through the tough times. It's all believable -- you get the impression this isn't the first time Duff has had to wrap up a trashed bandmate and let him thrash it out.

Pity no one was able to keep talking sense into these guys.

Mindless cynicism du jour

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:10:00 +0000

Hate Disney World if you must. Fine. It's a small world, but there's still room for diverse opinions.

Just have a reason for doing so other than thinking you're just too cool for the whole experience.

At Slate, Seth Stevenson takes a shot at the land of the Mouse:

After spending the past five days here, I've come to the conclusion that Disney World teaches kids three things: 1) a meaningless, bubble-headed utopianism, 2) a grasping, whining consumerism, and 3) a preference for soulless facsimiles of culture and architecture instead of for the real thing. I suppose it also teaches them that monorails are cool. So there's that.

Except that he doesn't develop any of those points.

He sees "bubble-headed utopianism" in the "It's a Small World" ride but concedes that he finds it charming. "It's an unassailable message, and there's also something comforting in the ride's retro simplicity."

The rest of his complaints:

1. Disney World sells packages to people who go roughly once a year. Isn't that excessive? People buy time shares near warm-weather golf courses all the time. Think of Disney World as some great golfing that happens to have a few amusement parks within a shuttle or monorail ride, and is it really so strange?

2. Had Disney lived longer, his utopian vision might have mutated into something like L. Ron Hubbard's. OK. And if Jim Morrison had lived longer, the Doors might have become a Christian rock band. Lots of historical determinism there, and it has nothing to do with the park itself.

3. Disney World is like a church of Disneyism! Just look at all the weddings in the Magic Kingdom! Weddings, you say? That's a sign of religion? If that were true, shouldn't we all pray facing Vegas?

4. Between the Mickey/Minnie gender roles and the princess/pirate split among kids, Disney World reinforces gender stereotypes. OK, sure, the storytelling in Disney films can be a little old-fashioned. But plenty of kids have favorite characters who aren't so easily pinned down. What the hell is Stitch, anyway?

5. Everything is so sanitized. The fireworks always start at exactly 9 p.m. The berms hide the Dumpsters. Concealed trash? Fireworks starting on time? Those freaking Nazi bastards!

Look, if I want to see Dumpsters, I'll walk out behind my local grocery store. (It's not in front? Those freaking Nazi bastards!) If I want to see a little utopian fantasy land, I'll go to the Magic Kingdom.

And he doesn't even scratch the surface of what you can actually see in Disney World. Animal Kingdom's safari ride gives you the closest view of wild animals you could possibly want. If you're tired of the "Small World" utopianism, take your pick from the rides at any of the parks.

He briefly mentions Epcot -- "Mightn't it be better to broaden your children's horizons just a tad? Like, maybe visit Canada—instead of just the Canada pavilion in Epcot?"

Notice that he mentions Canada. Notice how different -- and how elitist -- this sentence would read if he had said, "Like, maybe visit Japan -- instead of just the Japan pavilion in Epcot?"

Those of us who have neither tens of thousands of dollars nor eight weeks of annual vacation to travel the world with our kids appreciate the chance to go culture-browsing at Epcot. Even if we had all the time and money in the world, we might still take the Epcot highlight reel.

We don't live far from the National Zoo, but we still check out the panda cam on occasion. If we use a shortcut like that instead of packing up and driving 30-40 minutes, would we really pack up and fly to Mexico every time we want to see something vaguely Aztec?

Essentially, this guy's arguments boil down to some what-ifs and some complaints about consumer behavior. If people take Disney World as something more than an occasional escape, if they buy time-shares, if their girls dress as princesses, if they only see international culture at Epcot and if they get married at the Magic Kingdom ... then they might have warped views on gender roles and garbage collection.

When he takes Disney World for what it is rather than what obsessed fans with no sense of reality make of it, he enjoys it.

But how unhip a story would that be?

Two questions of taste

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:18:00 +0000

1. Should a story on Poison's drummer facing rape charges included an embedded video for Talk Dirty to Me?

2. Yes, Wikipedia has the same info, but does anyone else think Rikki Rockett might have fabricated his "real" last name?

500!

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:06:00 +0000

I've made it to my 500th post!

So should I switch to WordPress now?

Song du semaine: Sara Bareilles, "Love Song"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:45:00 +0000

I hear the response already: "Are you kidding me? Even in this era of unlimited choice in which a big album might sell 40,000 copies in a week, everyone knows this song already!"

Yes, that's true. But I think this song actually deserves its national earworm status, and that's worth celebrating.

Besides, it's brilliant that she wrote something that works equally well as a jab at her record company and a demand for a boyfriend's respect.

R.I.P., XM

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:34:00 +0000

On the day the Justice League said XM could merge with Sirius, we let our subscription lapse. I loved it, really, but we just weren't listening to it enough to justify the money.

Now if someone can convince me that Pandora or Last.fm is worth another shot ...

(Still a Launch subscriber, but I might let that go soon.)

"It reminds me a joke I once heard about upper-middle-class people ..."

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:25:00 +0000

Poor Celia Wren. It seems that her writing career took a wrong turn somewhere, and she was forced to earn money doing a Washington Post theater review that forced her to be sequestered in a room with the sort of person who would find historical and literary farce amusing.

This blogger, also a professional journalist, should warn you that the review to which I've linked describes a situation so desperate that you may be unable to stop weeping. If you're especially sensitive to the plight of reviewers stranded among uncouth men and women of the evening who watch comedy, do not click that link. Just limit yourself to a sampling of her words ...

At the Lansburgh Theatre, you once stood a good chance of encountering a classic drama. Now, though, it's playing host to the Reduced Shakespeare Company, a troupe that has built a cottage industry out of undergraduate-quality literary sendups. ...

Judging by the gales of laughter that greeted performances Saturday, many theatergoers find this sort of thing hilarious. ...

In an era when even HBO is taking the Founding Fathers seriously, "The Complete History of America" might seem nearly as sacrilegious (as "The Bible"). ...

The horror ... the horror ...

It's important for Ms. Wren to take a stand against such "entertainment." Why, we could end up like the British, where students at Oxford and Cambridge traditionally perform "skits," often in drag," and the ones who are deemed good at it turn professional! One young man was doing research on Chaucer and ended up doing some sort of nonsense in which people bang coconuts together and search for the Holy Grail!

( /sarcasm )

This is the sort of condescending crap that makes the world hate journalists. I'm unabashedly elitist, with very little patience for stupidity, and yet the Post sometimes cranks out content that can't possibly appeal to anyone other than D.C. residents (not those curious people over in Virginia) who are pretentious and have no sense of humor. Government workers generally aren't pretentious, so they're out of the target audience. And the popularity of Reduced Shakespeare -- not to mention the big theaters' tendency to book big-time comics -- proves that someone here must have a sense of humor.

So perhaps we really should pity Ms. Wren and her editors. Their demographics aren't good, and they're too full of themselves to enjoy a good laugh. That's sad.

Song du semaine: Journey, "Faithfully"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:17:00 +0000

The spoilsports at Sony disabled embedding, so I'll just link to the video and give you some screen captures of the most embarrassing grimaces caught on tape. Then I'll tell you what a beautiful ballad this really is.

First, the grimaces, not exactly enhanced by the poor picture quality I'm delivering here ...

Forget Randy Jackson -- I'm Ross Valory, bitch!

I never really felt like part of the band.

Star Trek XLII: The Wrath of Schon

Should we tell Jonathan Cain his mike isn't plugged in? Does he think he's singing, or is this some sort of Liberty DeVitto tribute?

The guy from Guster never contorted himself backwards in pain and exhaustion after crashing a couple of cymbals, and he hit them with his hands. Is this why Steve Smith eventually went back to jazz?

Or maybe it was the video for Separate Ways, in which Cain steals the show by re-inventing the art of air keyboards.

All very silly. And yet this song is brilliant. It builds from a solid hook on the piano that carries through into the vocals and Schon's guitar work.

The lyrics blow away the typical power-ballad crap. Maybe you have to have been in a 10-year relationship to appreciate it, but "Two strangers learn to fall in love again / I get the joy of rediscovering you" is dead-on, and Perry's delivery is powerful without sounding like some melismatic monster on American Idol.

Rather than re-mastering their old stuff, Journey should probably just reshoot the videos. The songs are fine.

I'm back, baby

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:14:00 +0000

Check out the story I wrote on my first day back and the blog I cranked up on my second.

Sounds like my high school band

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:33:00 +0000

The Onion has an audio report on the latest from the music scene.

Does jazz suck?

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:54:00 +0000

I do feel a little guilty asking the question. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, having grown up in an area in which "jazz band" meant you played Booker-T and the MG's or the Hawaii Five-O theme. I played one semester in the Duke Jazz Ensemble but clearly couldn't keep up. Besides, we should all be celebrating jazz after Herbie Hancock's stunning Grammy, right? (For an album of Joni Mitchell covers??!!)

But not all is well in the jazz world. "Smooth jazz" is dying. Some might not lament that -- no one I know will ever admit to liking Kenny G, but I never minded hearing George Benson and Norah Jones when I was giving blood. (A few months ago, they switched to one of the local "urban" stations. You know, "urban"? I guess it's shorter than "African American," but it seems even less accurate.)

Then there's the stuff they play at Panera. I suppose you might call it "postbop" or maybe "hard bop" (but not "Mmm-bop"). Or the name I call it, "music that featured in Manos, the Hands of Fate."

Good jazz exists. We played some good stuff in jazz ensemble, even my fingers never quite caught up to the notes on the page. I have some albums by various Marsalis brothers, including the truly excellent Black Codes (from the Underground). That album has memorable hooks and a sense that the talented musicians in the group were connecting. The crap they play at Panera sounds like a bunch of guys went into the studio at different times, played erratic phrases on an unfamiliar instrument while stoned, then patched it all together. And yet someone deemed it worthy of recording for posterity and foisting on Panera diners as if it were listenable.

When I was growing up, Wynton and Branford had substantial followings. Musician magazine covered jazz almost as thoroughly as it covered rock.

In these days of fragmented media, you're not likely to find a magazine that covers jazz and rock. With the decline of "smooth jazz," you won't hear much that falls under the "jazz" umbrella unless you seek it out on XM or the Web.

So perhaps the question isn't whether jazz sucks. Maybe it's just dying, despite Hancock's Grammy?

Song du semaine: Velocity Girl, "Sorry Again"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:46:00 +0000

Just a good fun song about apologizing from a local band. (Aside to Wikipedia -- College Park and "Washington DC area" are not two different places.) I wish I'd known lead singers like that would be in bands with geeky guitarists like me when I was 23 or so. My glasses were never that geeky.

Enjoy ...

Progress report

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 03:11:00 +0000

I've written roughly 70,000 words, completed 15 interviews. I'm expecting to do four more in this final week of leave, and then I'm back to the grind.

I don't usually apologize for a lack of blog activity, but it's pretty obvious that if I've written this much while shopping the book around to publishers and preparing to go back to work, I haven't had much power left in my brain or my laptop to write anything coherent about music or media. It's been a while since I've had a spare hour to live-blog VH1 Classic or XM. But I'll get back to it. I promise. Especially once someone agrees to publish this thing.

Quick review: "Unhitched"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:04:00 +0000

Rashida Jones deserves better.

Told you it was quick.

SNL and one-joke sketches

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:38:00 +0000

One-joke sketches on Saturday Night Live aren't inherently awful. "It's Pat" wasn't exactly complicated. Tom Hanks did well as "Mr. Short-Term Memory." Even The Coneheads and the wild-and-crazy Festrunks didn't exactly match the complexity of a classic Seinfeld or Arrested Development. Nothing wrong with that.

But when a debate sketch, so often SNL's bread and butter, resorts to one joke, that's a missed opportunity.

That's why SNL's otherwise excellent return to the air last weekend had a slow start.

OK. We get it. The media have been fawning over Obama recently. Just as they fawn over every front-runner. Say, Hillary Clinton, three or four months ago.

That's really not enough for a debate sketch. Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis are left with little to do but caricatures. (I especially feel for Wiig, who gets stuck with a lot of these characters for some reason -- the new woman in the cast, Casey Wilson, is already getting better parts. In the evening's best sketch, a parody of birth-control pill ads, Wiig is seen making out with a dog.)

The classic SNL debates have layers of jokes on all the candidates. Dana Carvey's memorable Bush vs. Jon Lovitz's pained Dukakis. Carvey's Bush vs. Carvey's Perot vs. Phil Hartman's Clinton ... a trifecta of brilliant characterizations. Then the best of them all -- Darrell Hammond's overbearing Gore vs. Will Ferrell's borderline illiterate Bush, which was heavy on Gore but still introduced "strategery" into our vernacular.

The whole racial question over Fred Armisen playing Obama is overblown -- both men have family trees that look like Benetton ads. Maya Rudolph had no problem playing characters of any ethnicity. Neither should Armisen.

The blame here is on the folks who were on strike all this time -- the writers. Come on, folks. These people are funnier than that.

Song du semaine: Anna Nalick, "Shine"

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:24:00 +0000

Yes, it's a current song. New territory here at MMM.

It's so new that I don't see an actual video for it yet, just a couple of things at YouTube. One is apparently an official release of some sort, though it's just a bunch of pictures of the handwritten lyrics (with unfortunate apostrophe errors included). So as you're reading, you can watch that or just listen at her official site.

Nalick's breakthrough -- spurred along by Grey's Anatomy, proving that something good can come from that piece of dreck -- was a few years removed from the Great Young Woman Invasion of 2000-2002. You remember those days -- Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton and Avril Lavigne all hitting it big while a bunch of oppressive male critics lumped them all together. I have vague, possibly hazy memories of people claiming you couldn't tell them apart, which is about like a critic in 1966 saying you can't distinguish Roger Daltrey from Mick Jagger.

(Unrelated TV quiz: Name the show that made reference to "the Rolling Who.")

All three of these women were tagged as "anti-Britneys" because they clearly took their music more seriously than their image, refusing to sell themselves as mere teen lust fodder. That was before Branch and Lavigne posed for Maxim. Carlton was apparently one of Jane's "11 people you'd most like to see naked," which was an odd stance to take for a magazine allegedly marketed to young women. In any case, I don't know of any evidence that she took anyone up on the "offer."

And all three brought something different to the radio (or Launch player, in my case). Branch delved into several pop-rock styles, from overt Beatles references to modern dance beats. Carlton had sort of a retro piano-rock vibe. Lavigne was to postpunk rock as Liz Phair was to classic rock, recasting all the standard themes from a female perspective.

Not that they were polished and brilliant. All three needed some work on the lyrics. But they were far better than anything I was writing at age 17. I'm just glad YouTube wasn't around when we recorded the R.E.M.-style video for Let's Rock and Roll 'Til We Get Herpes and Die. I always dreamed of being a rock star and was actually a little jealous of Debbie Gibson, but the 20 or so people who've heard the recordings of my high school "band" would surely tell me I made the right career choice. Sniff.

But instead of progressing, all three declined. Carlton's later singles were listenable but not particularly memorable. Branch released a second album with several solid singles, married her bass player despite a rather substantial age difference, formed a country-ish duo and has a daughter who's more than a year older than my second son. Lavigne, despite heading to the altar as well, seems to be getting younger, creating the unnerving duality of a tween-oriented signer flouting her sexuality from a magazine rack.

That leaves Nalick as the great hope for those of us who like to hear women on the radio and can't wait an eternity between Sarah McLachlan albums. Those of you who have read this blog for more than 30 months know I have a soft spot in my heart for Nalick because she sang in a Rush cover band.

And she has the best voice of this group, by far. She puts it great use here. At times, she sounds like Kate Bush in places, but less pretentiously ethereal.

The lyrics aren't bad, either.

Lindsay Lohan sheds clothes, not cynics

noreply@blogger.com (bdure) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:18:00 +0000

This isn't so much about the Lindsay Lohan nude photos (NSFW) as it is about the predictable blog reaction:

Spoiled Pretty: "what baffles me is why legendary photographer Bert Stern chose Lohan to recreate the shots that Marilyn Monroe made famous. Makes you wonder who turned him down before Linsday jumped at the bit."

The FiveForty: "As we mentioned yesterday, probably everybody expected Lohan to pose nude eventually, particularly in light of her declining career—so the fact that she posed nude isn't surprising."

Feministing: "I am appalled. Not because Lohan is pictured nude - to each their own on that front - but because there seems to be no awareness whatsoever about how this spread fetishizes the death and downfall of women in the public eye." (Some of the commenters in a rather intelligent thread point out that it's not so different from James Dean and River Phoenix fetishes, and I'd add Jim Morrison to that list. "He's hot, he's sexy, he's dead," indeed.)

If You Write It: "As has been noted elsewhere, Lindsay Lohan is no Marilyn Monroe. Even a nude Lindsay Lohan is still just Lindsay Lohan. Except for that drugged out look of the-end-is-near in her flat eyes , she has none of Marilyn Monroe's charisma." (So, wait, the drugged out look was part of Marilyn Monroe's charisma?)

Kottke (et tu?): "This photo shoot of Lindsey Lohan as Marilyn Monroe only serves to underscore how unlike (and inferior) Lohan is compared to Monroe."

(OK, the Gawker limericks are pretty funny.)

Those of you who know me know that I love to tweak conventional wisdom. So here goes ...

1. Two words for those who want to write off Lohan at this stage of her career: Drew Barrymore. And Drew hadn't done half as much substantial work as Lohan before she went into her wild years. By the time Mean Girls came out in 2004, Lohan was a well-regarded teen actress. She was also damn good on Saturday Night Live.

2. Monroe, on the other hand, was a model who had some "work" done before she broke through as an actress.

To recap so far: Lohan was a well-regarded actress who became known as a "babe." Monroe was a well-regarded babe who became a well-regarded actress.

3. Read the story, and you'll see that Lohan is well aware of the Monroe history and is determined to avoid living the last few months of it.

4. If you ask me, the more control a woman has over her nudity, the less it bothers me. This isn't a desperate Dana Plato turning to Playboy and some questionable films.

5. And it's not quite as hypocritical as, say, Avril Lavigne on Maxim.

No, the Lohan portfolio isn't some iconic piece of art, though it's certainly the most interesting nudity I've seen since ... I don't know, some dance performance in college? But neither should it be an excuse to trot all sorts of overly romanticized notions of the past. This isn't Tawny Kitaen reprising Meryl Streep's role in Sophie's Choice (or even the underrated Postcards from the Edge). It's not Pink attempting Barracuda. It's a troubled, frequently downloaded actress recognizing history.

And we say kids don't care about history these days.