I'm Back! With "Pride"

Hi there! Remember me? I used to blog. I got away from it for many reasons -- partly related to laziness, and other things I won't talk about right now (or maybe ever) -- but I want to get back to it. I need to get back to it.

So, as we go along perhaps I'll get to some other stuff I've been meaning to post. For now, though, here's a little iTunes Baker's Dozen. Not a shuffle from my collection, but from iTunes Radio's special LGBT Pride station. I'm trying to figure out exactly where the "LGBT" comes in, how this is different from any other pop-oriented radio station (other than the inclusion of the old Cher hit). Also, at some point in the near future, will Pitbull appear on EVERY song?

Rock Your Body - Justin Timberlake

I Will Never Let You Down - Rita Ora

Chandelier - Sia

Wut - Le1f

Drunk in Love - Beyonce feat. Jay Z

Into the Wild - LP

Song for the Lonely - Cher

Hideaway - Kiesza

Dark Horse - Katy Perry feat. Juicy J

Exotic - Priyanka Chopara feat. Pitbull

Summertime Sadness (Cedric Gervais Remix) - Lana Del Rey

Fancy - Iggy Azalea feat. Charli XCX

Problem - Ariana Grande feat. Iggy Azalea

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 4-12-13

Sadly, I continue to procrastinate at this blogging stuff. But somehow, someday, I'll do something more substantial than this...


Walk Away From Love - David Ruffin
All The Things She Said - Simple Minds
U Got The Look - Prince/Sheena Easton
Love Come Down - Evelyn "Champagne" King
Got To Give It Up (Pt. 1) - Marvin Gaye
Give It To Me - Timbaland feat. Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake
Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
He's On My Team - Ari Gold feat. Kendra Ross
Smithereens - Annie Lennox
Gold - Spandau Ballet
It's My World - Ultra Nate
We Are Monkeys - Travis
Waste - Smash Mouth

A Tale Of Two Justins

Dear Justin Bieber,

It's quite simple: if you don't like being compared to Justin Timberlake...



...why would you sing a Timberlake song in concert?



Please go away,
Sincerely,

Joe in Philly

P.S. Sorry to hear about your recent breakup with Selena Gomez. If you need to talk, I know a guy who'd love to listen.

P.P.S. It's not me. Good grief, no.

Too Long For Twitter: Stand Back, Philadelphia...

...because you oughta know whatcha gonna get in me: just a little touch of star quality!

Yep, the Evita song "Buenos Aires" is stuck in my head this morning. (The classic Patti LuPone Broadway original, that is, not the Madonna movie version or that "Glee" thing the other night.) And this, on a little more than 3 hours' sleep after having a rather tough week. This could be an interesting day.

Speaking of star quality, my friend Kurt was fantastic last night in his featured role in the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus holiday concert, "Nutcracker: A Tale of Sugar Plum Fairies." There are two more shows, this afternoon and tonight. Go see it.

I hope to see a movie today, and if so, tell you about it more promptly than I did with the ones I saw recently.

For now, I leave you with this: Justin Timberlake's musical comeback hit has already been written for him...

Quick Reviews: Captain America, Friends With Benefits

And without further ado, here are the two films I saw most recently...

Captain America: The First Avenger: A little better than "Thor" and "X-Men: First Class," definitely better than "Green Lantern" on the Summer Superhero Scoreboard. Chris Evans is not a great actor, which actually makes him well-suited to play this particular hero. Hate that his chest was shaved/waxed to within an inch of its life. My grade: B-plus.

Friends with Benefits: Not a remake of, and better than, "No Strings Attached." Funny, though a little predictable (aren't all romantic comedies?). Good chemistry between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. And quite a bit of Justin's butt. Woody Harrelson plays a gay sports editor (co-worker of Timberlake's character), which normally might be refreshing. But my friend Kurt felt the character was too much of a stereotype, while I was more put off by Harrelson's overacting. My grade: B-plus.

Quick Review: Bad Teacher

I was sort of looking forward to "Bad Teacher," starring Cameron Diaz in the title role. It begins on the last day of the previous school year, when Diaz's Elizabeth Halsey -- foulmouthed, drinking, drug-using teacher that she is -- is leaving her job because she's getting married to her wealthy boyfriend. His mother helps put a stop to it, so Elizabeth is back in school in September, and so is a new substitute, Scott, (Justin Timberlake) who is earnest and squeaky clean. In the same way she rebuffs the gym teacher's (Jason Segel) interest, Elizabeth isn't interested in Scott, until she notices his expensive watch and learns his family owns the company. Elizabeth is interested. Very interested. (Now I ain't saying she a gold digger, but...okay, Kanye, take it from here.) There are lots of individual funny lines and scenes, and Elizabeth's turn from showing movies all day to taskmaster (taskmistress?) -- when she learns of a cash prize awarded to the teacher whose students score highest in the state's standardized testing -- is played for comedy and not serious, personal-improvement inspiration. It falls short of "Bridesmaids" in the R-rated comedy department, but it's not bad. My grade: B.

A Couple Of Things...

I guess this is like a MixBlog, but shorter. (Mainly because I want to put something up without starting the posts on the four movies I got to see in the last week.)

• The (C)rapture didn't happen yesterday, so I want the fraud who claimed it would occur behind bars. Since I know the government won't do it...

• I watched last night's Saturday Night Live. The only parts of the show I enjoyed were those featuring Lady Gaga -- both her musical performances and a couple of sketches. No fault of Justin Timberlake's, but this show is unwatchable. It takes a very special reason (Betty White last year, or last night's host/musical guest combo) to get me to tune in. (Speaking of Gaga, her new album will finally be released -- after at least four single releases in advance of it -- and it's apparently going to be available on iTunes, Amazon, etc. at midnight.)

• I'm debating whether or not to play in this year's Liberty Bell Classic softball tournament. My team has a spot for me if I want to play. There are pros and cons, so I'm undecided. There's a block party on Saturday night on Camac Street as well. There's lots of stuff swirling around in my head right now...

• Chase Utley is expected to be in the Phillies' starting lineup tomorrow night. Maybe his presence will help the offense somehow. They've scored 3 runs or fewer in nine consecutive games. Of course, it could be worse: besides the fact that they're still in first place in the NL East, a year ago today they were shut out 5-0 by Boston, beginning a stretch of 12 games in a row with 3 or fewer runs (including 3 straight shutouts by the Mets).

• I posted this on Twitter/Facebook last night...just feeling the need to emphasize how much I want those (C)rapture nuts arrested. Fraud, incitement to riot, something. Child endangerment charges for any parents who quit their jobs and got rid of their possessions.

Quick Review: No Strings Attached

There may be a new trend in movies: romantic couplings in which the guy gets all gushy and falls in love with the girl, but she just wants sex. There was "Love and Other Drugs" a couple of months ago with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Coming up later this year is "Friends With Benefits," starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Right now there's "No Strings Attached," with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman as the two friends, Adam and Emma -- actually, it doesn't seem they're very close friends at first; the film starts with flashbacks which seem to be the only times they've met prior to arriving at the present -- who have sex and afterwards agree to keep having sex without dating or anything romantic. It's Emma's doing, although there's not as specific a reason as Anne Hathaway's character in "Love and Other Drugs" had. She's just a standard commitment-phobe. Sure enough, Adam starts falling for her and tries to win her heart. It was better than I expected, and Portman shows she can do comedy, although it has a sappy and predictable end. It's rated R and, besides some raunchy language, features a sighting of Kutcher's bare butt. Between that and how much skin Gyllenhaal showed in his movie, Justin Timberlake has to step up. Also, "No Strings Attached" was titled "Friends With Benefits" before production began, and Kunis and Portman went at it in "Black Swan," so it seems to me that, with so much already in common between the films, Kutcher and Timberlake should have a sex scene in a movie as well. My grade: B.

Quick Review: The Social Network

For a film that has no chase scenes or buildings blowing up, "The Social Network" is surprisingly energetic. If you're looking for it to be the completely true story of the creation of Facebook, you're out of luck. It's structured around depositions in two different lawsuits against co-creator and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). In one, Harvard rowers and identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for a website to allow Harvard students to connect with each other. (One twin is played by Armie Hammer, and the other by Josh Pence's body with Hammer's face and voice digitally added -- weird! And impossible to notice, at least for me.) The other suit was filed by his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), whose algorithm was used by Zuckerberg in the creation of "The Facebook," which started with Harvard and then moved to other schools (and eventually to all of us, of course, losing the "The" in the process). His shares in the company were reduced from one-third ownership to less than one percent after Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), creator of Napster, was brought into the company by Zuckerberg. None of the principals were involved with the movie, whose screenplay (by Aaron Sorkin of "West Wing" fame) was based on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich. It tries not to take sides so it's up to the viewer to decide, for example, if Zuckerberg is an insensitive jerk and a lying thief or merely a misunderstood genius. (Although it pretty much paints "the Winklevi," as Zuckerberg refers to the twins, as entitled snobs, and Parker as a party animal whose new friendship with Zuckerberg ends up destroying Zuckerberg's friendship with Saverin.) In a movie that's well-acted throughout, Eisenberg is the biggest revelation here. He is extremely successful in breaking out of that sensitive-soft-voiced Michael Cera mold. Cera himself made a start, but only a start, in breaking his own mold in playing Scott Pilgrim. He should take on a more challenging role, as Eisenberg has done here. My grade: A-minus.

Return Of My Summer Playlist!

I stumbled upon a link to Billboard.com's compilation of their top 10 songs of summer (using a point system based on heir chart methodology) for every year from 1985 through 2009. Looking through their listings, I decided some additions to my summer playlist (Part 1 here, Part 2 here) are required. (I also am adding others to the list of songs I need to own.)

The following, however, are already in my iTunes library. Some I overlooked the first time around and others I've changed my mind about. I'm sure you will find some of them quite cheesy, but it could've been worse: I still left "MMMBop" off the list. Adding these songs and "Commander" (my song of summer 2010) to my original list, I now have exactly 100 summer songs.

Oh, and here's some pretty summer scenery: Hugh Jackman at the beach...


A View To A Kill - Duran Duran (1985)
Sussudio - Phil Collins (1985)
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free - Sting (1985)
Raspberry Beret - Prince and the Revolution (1985) - I can sing the hell out of this at karaoke.
Papa Don't Preach - Madonna (1986)
Invisible Touch - Genesis (1986)
On My Own - Patti LaBelle & Michael McDonald (1986)
Higher Love - Steve Winwood (1986) - Also a killer karaoke song for me.
Venus - Bananarama (1986)

Perez Hilton: No Trolls Allowed

So it seems that a trio consisting of Perez Hilton, American Idol creator Simon Fuller and someone I've never heard of are doing a search for the "next" boy band. Apparently there's a gap in the entertainment industry that needs to be filled. (Damn you, recently reunited Backstreet Boys, for not being big any more!) Males age 13-21 are eligible to be part of this contest. But...

Hilton encourages everyone to try out, but he does have strict guidelines as to who they’re looking for. “We don’t want any ugly ones,” he says. “We don’t want any Joey Fatones, if you know what I mean. So it’s not going to be easy. That shouldn’t discourage people from auditioning. We really wanna see everyone. [But] we don’t want anyone that’s, like, hideous. We want five Justin Timberlakes.”

"That shouldn't discourage people from auditioning"? What I'm hearing is: "If you have superstar talent -- voice, dance moves, even songwriting ability -- but you're not pretty enough, you can audition if you want but you'll be wasting your time!" Yes, let's send the music industry spiraling into oblivion even more quickly.

The following has presumably been done many millions of times since Perez Hilton started his blog but hey, even though I'm a latecomer I'm still entitled to one: