A few random thoughts

Not all about college basketball? Nope. But since this blog is going to be pretty much nothing but for the next three weeks or so, might as well get a couple extraneous thoughts out of my head now.

* First of all, just another quick plug for the Tournament Challenge. You can still sign up, and as per the last entry, you will not be excluded simply for not having five dollars into my hand by this Thursday. We're at 13 right now, so I'd love to have at least three more to include more people in the prizes.

* I was at Jewel the other day and there was a sign on the freezer case that said something to the effect of: "Due to massive demand, the Lean Cuisine Paninis are not currently available. Stouffer's is working to fill this demand and more Paninis should be available for June 2006."

Now, this raises a couple of questions:
1. Microwaveable sandwiches were so popular that Stouffer's ran out of them?
2. It takes three months to produce a reasonable supply of frozen sandwiches?

* Is there anything that could possibly be less like the spirit of the band Devo than this? I mean, the A*Teens, at least ABBA was a bubble-gum pop act to begin with. But can you think of a single thing more idiotic than a bunch of taking-ourselves-way-too-seriously middle-schoolers singing "Whip It?" Just take a look at that site - the lead singer describes her musical influences as "Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, and Fergie from the Black-Eyed Peas." Counter-culturals all! The girl who plays keyboards lists the musical "Wicked" as one of her influences musically. What?? None of these kids were even born within TEN YEARS of "Whip It" being a hit! It's also interesting to note that besides the bassist, none of them list DEVO as a musical influence! Gee, you think they really like Devo, or do you think that they're just doing this because it's a way to potentially get famous? Uh, yeah. Clearly no one at Disney has even the slightest sense of irony, since this whole thing is being done with what looks like a totally straight face. The real question is, why did Devo get in on this one? Either they really need the money or they thought it would be a chance to expose, from the inside, just how lowest-common-denominator pop culture is, and it's the ultimate in satire as most of the participants aren't even aware. I'd love to think it was the latter... but it's probably not.

The funny thing, of course, is that it's not like I'm even much of a Devo fan - I mean, "Whip It" is kind of cool in its way, but it's not like I own all their albums or anything. Heck, I wasn't born when "Whip It" came out either (by two years). Yet this really, really bothers me for some reason. I think it's just because it's symptomatic of everything I loathe about the modern entertainment industry - why have original thought when you can just remake something that was clever or entertaining or original when it was created 20 years ago? It's not even that part of it that bothers me, though, as much as the fact that such things sell. Why take the time to think about what was good about the original? The modern version comes pre-chewed, pre-digested - well, it comes pre-excreted. (But that's another issue.) Remakes almost never live up to the spirit of the original works; they dilute them, boil them down to their simplest parts, and deliver them in a way that removes all that was interesting or challenging about the original art. Think about Planet of the Apes - the original delivered a potent anti-global-war message, while Tim Burton's painful remake features a scene in which the human hero fends off the attacking ape army by detonating a nuclear bomb. That's just one of many, many examples. Musically, how about Britney Spears covering the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," wholly oblivious to the fact that she's an ingrained part of the mainstream culture the original song so effectively satirizes?

It would be one thing if someone were updating a piece of art and adapting its message to one that fits into the modern world while remaining true to the original. But this happens so infrequently that it hardly even seems worth it. Someone should declare a moratorium on the production of anything that is, at the very least, an explicit remake of an older work. Give the entertainment industry a chance to be original for a while and see if, at the very least, they can't turn out a few things more worthwhile than watered-down rehashings of things that were actually quality.