It's the Bon Jovi ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Video 4-Pack -- singer Jon Bon Jovi, keyboardist Dave Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, and guitarist Richie Sambora all in one video for your convenience! (Also available as a MP3).


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charge $16.99!



But seriously, folks, here's the backstory:

The NFL Buffalo Bills football team is for sale. Rock star Jon Bon Jovi has always wanted to own an NFL team -- he owned the Philadelphia Soul arena football team for a while. Amid rumors that he's ready to retire from making music, he has partnered with Larry Tanenbaum, owner of the Tornoto Maple Leafs hockey team, and Edward Rogers III of the Toronto-based Rogers media conglomerate.

The key word there being "Toronto."

Buffalo New York and Toronto Ontario are 100 miles apart around the western rim of Lake Ontario, and Buffalo Bills fans are VERY nervous about the team being moved if Bon Jovi and his Toronto-based partners succeed in buying it. They're so nervous, in fact, they've organized a Buffalo Fans Alliance and gotten the band's music banned from local venues and radio stations. Why? Because they rightfully suspect that Jon would be running the team in name only.

While Jon's net worth is estimated at 350 million dollars, Tanenbaum's is at $1.78 billion and Rogers' at $7.6 billion: their AVERAGE net worth exceeds Jon's a dozen times over. It's obvious why Tanenbaum needs Rogers: he doesn't have the additional operating capital that would be needed. It's obvious why Rogers needs Tanenbaum: he doesn't have Tanenbaum's experience in running a major league sports franchise. It's obvious why Jon needs Rogers and Tanenbaum: As a "mere" millionaire, he won't have ANY operating capital to contribute once he puts up his share of the franchise fee (the current bid is alleged to be $1.2 billion) which would require converting every cent of his net worth into to cash and paying off all his debts. But why do Tanenbaum and Rogers need Jon? As far as the Bills fans are concerned, Jon is to be the American crowbar with which his partners will pry the Bills out of Buffalo, since he wouldn't have the money or the power to stop them.

There's a lease deal where the Bills would have to stay through the 2020 season. But it would be easy to run the team into the ground by then: All the "Toronto Brothers" would have to do is cut Jon off financially. Between that and his "inexperience" as an NFL team owner, his partners would be left with no recourse but to "replace" him and restore the franchise's financial viability by moving the team to Toronto!

Thus, the T-shirt. While Jon may be too starry-eyed to see what his partners have the potential to do to him (ironic much?), I think it makes him more like a innocent babe in the woods than a genocidal dictatorial despot. And since his entire band are public figures, I think a visit from the FBI is in order: a $16.99 price tag is a crime indeed!


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If Bonfante is of the opinion that Nevone ran off with and permanently ruined his idea, that's one thing. But his filing against the rest of the cover band (but not the drummer who replaced him!) borders on judicial malpractice -- you'd think a lawyer would realize that his opinion of the band is completely irrelevant.

Even worse, I think Collette is being exploited in another way.

She's not the only one being sued -- indeed, it's Rik Nevone who should be the "star" of this drama. But I suppose it makes for a "better" story to make Colette's "ugliness" the primary focus. From her crowdfunding page:



From XoJane.com:



But to her credit, Collette's making the most of being misogynized -- right down to selling "Justice For Collette" T-shirts!

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Because it was music you saw, you started seeing too many good videos of less-than-good songs. Looks became more important than talent, forcing MTV to subsist on constantly reinventing itself visually -- why do you think Madonna became its patron saint? The beginning of the end was when the VJs, most of whom had actual backgrounds in music, were replaced with "personalities," which culminated in the Village Voice describing the MTV News host (a veteran Rolling Stone reporter) as being "the only person MTV hired because he had a brain." So it was doomed right out of the gate.










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at the same time.

Unfortunately, Hooks made her very legitimate argument a casualty of her rhetorical overkill. Are you really "controlling your sexualization" if you wouldn't have a musical career without it -- that is, if you really DID have to rely on your musical talents for a living?

You see, I had this argument over thirty years ago about Madonna. I distinctly remember hearing Shining Star on the radio and wondering, "How the hell did SHE get a record contract?" My neighborhood wouldn't be wired for cable for a few more years, so the first time I actually laid eyes on her, she was on the cover of Time magazine -- with the headline "Why She's Hot."

She was hot because her male fans wanted her, while her female fans wanted to be her because males wanted her. They all said, "But it's different with her -- sure she has more sex appeal than talent, but it's HER sex appeal! Doesn't that make her a feminist?" I said, "No -- it makes her a pimp. And being your own pimp doesn't make you any less of a whore."

Beyonce isn't doing anything that Madonna through Miley Cyrus haven't -- including trying to pass it off it as feminism. If you sift through the ashes of Hooks's "friendly fire," you'll find that she mentioned "capitalist patriarchy." That's what Beyonce and her video pop tart "ancestors" have enslaved themselves to -- and it is most certainly NOT a "black thing."

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To which I'd like to add what I wrote in the DU thread I started about Beyonce's Time cover:



MTV opened the floodgates with Madonna, drenching us in the notion that you don't need impressive vocals OR impressive music if you have impressive bodies, impressive wardrobes, impressive cinematography, and impressive publicists. Madonna started out as a "boy toy," and was last seen putting swastikas in her videos to generate attention.

There are two big disadvantages to being a video pop tart sensation. One is that sensations wear off, forcing you to stay competitive by placing a premium on evolving visually rather than artistically. (Otherwise you end up dead in the water -- and ripe to be traded in for a younger model.) And, of course, you also have to put up with being seen as a blight on women who are striving to be seen as "serious" about their work.

Consequently, I find Hook's talk of terrorism, imperialism, anti-feminism and visual assault to be the equivalent of swatting a fly with a heat-seeking missile. She's right about the capitalist patriarchy of the entertainment business being the root of the problem, but she's wrong to see it as the exclusive burden of black women. Its commandments are "Sex sells" and "Controversy sells" and "Do unto others as others have done unto others," none of which is news to Madonna, Britney, Miley, Katy, et cetera (Did you forget Lady Gaga, WorseBeforeBetter?).

They and Beyonce are just doing what it takes to maintain their fame, fortune and recording contracts. I don't believe they're interested in doing the alternative. And as for "control," I think it's safe to conclude that Miley is more interested in being the next Madonna than the next Adele!


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is a line from a play by William Congreve (not William Shakespeare). First, Congreve draws a parallel between the inherent righteousness of heaven's outrage and the inherent inappropriateness of hell's. Then he goes a step further by assigning hell's fury exclusively to women!

There are, of course, women who have expressed their being scorned with guns and other forms of violence, but their numbers are dwarfed by the number of men who do the same. That's mainly because such behavior is not seen as "ladylike," as opposed to using poison, throwing acid, or revealing their partner's illegalities to the authorities. However, violence can work when the man's strength advantage is neutralized by his being asleep.

So it all comes down to gender-based stereotyping and social acceptability -- scorned men avenge ("'Vengeance is mine!', sayest the Lord"); scorned women sin. While a man's fury is wrong but "only human," a woman's is just a byproduct of her being a female canine.


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It's not just Zach's dumb questions and absence of charisma -- it's his greasy hair, scruffy clothes, flushed complexion, slouching, wrinkled script (from which he has to read the president's name). There's no eye contact with either his guests or his camera angles, and he sulks when checkmated. Add the crap production values that were the hallmark of no-budget, pre-cable public access TV, garnish with the irony that the guests are from the top rather than the bottom of the ladder where public access TV guests traditionally came from, and Between Two Ferns can't help but be a living monument to unprofessional media.




Put another way, my sister once told me that Patrica "Hyacinth Bucket" Routledge of Keeping Up Appearances "really is a very good singer in real life." I said, "You wasted your breath telling me that -- you HAVE TO be a really good singer to sing as BADLY as she does as WELL as she does!"




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Vargas starts out the video by describing himself as "the most privileged undocumented in America" because he works as the kind of journalist who can get published in the New York Times:


He certainly wasn't worried about being deported, or he wouldn't have done it -- at least, not without an American "sponor" in his back pocket. As for the political "silence" he speaks of, here's a newsflash (if you'll pardon the expression): the politicians are silent because they're perfectly happy with the status quo. With a vulnerable, expandable, powerless, practically penniless underground workforce, wages can only decrease and organized labor can only get weaker -- good news for the corporatists who finance the politicians. That's why Washington only makes enough noise about "reforming" immigration to get votes, then shuts up about it.

Meanwhile, how dare Obama utilize the illegal immigration laws that are already on the books! As I understand it, he's concentrating on deporting those who have criminal records, so it makes sense that he would do so "silently." And was Vargas happier when Bush II was looking the other way, or would he have preferred President Romney's "self-deportation" policy?

Talk about speaking with a forked tongue! And come to think of it, why would someone as educated and talented and "privileged" as Vargas have a problem a good-paying journalist job in his native Phillipines? Maybe he didn't take such a big gamble after all...


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