1-800 ... and small change

Hopefully the last entry - in a while - on those two lovely scoundrels:

...As for the group's name — a hip-hop-ization of former NBA star Charles Barkley — suffice to say it's equal parts declaration of purpose and goofy humor.

"We were looking for a name that sounds like its own genre," Burton said, seated near a mixing board at a Burbank recording studio where he was producing tracks for New York dancerock group the Rapture. "A perfect example is when I heard of [electronica musician] Aphex Twin. It could describe a sound. And there was just something familiar about Gnarls Barkley...

Burton being Danger Mouse's real name, excerpt being from Chris Lee's article for the LATimes, March 24, 2006.

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And now, a little, educational TV digest (I've been home working on an MTV story. Clearly, working)

1)What's up with the McDonalds commercial where the two guys talk about all the stuff you can get for *FREE* off the dollar menu and the *FREE* gets bleeped cuz it's so cheap it's outrageous: the bleep is gone. G-O-N-E. Please tell me it was designed to happen, like one of those teaser ads that only show you a piece of "could-be-anything" and after 12 months uncover... a new food processor, WOW. Please, tell me that's the reason and not, NOT that some moron of a censor found it to be inappropriate, the bleep over the mouthing of a word starting with "f", Lord fobid it could have been "fuck".

2)By any means necessary... really, by any ANY means? Tonight's episode of Bones (umpteenth CSI copycat, this time she is a forensic anthropologist and deals with ... c'mon guess ... yup, bones. Her partner in crime is Boreanz, aka Buffy's Angel. Why do I watch it? It smells vaguely like CSI plus I always had a thing for Angel. I love dark sides) was set in New Orleans, post-Katrina. Matter of fact, the whole episode had to do with body-recovery in NOLA. What is wrong with that?
I won't even get into whether it's morally objectable that they should show and discuss wound and decomposition patterns on the Joe and Jane Does left behind by the hurricane - families and friends could have been watching. I guess this goes on a par with the movie United 93 and this is not the place nor the time to discuss it. But I will say that the very first time I saw the United 93 trailer the whole theater fell silent, the woman sitting next to me started sobbing and eventually said "They shouldn't make people watch this".
Back to Bones. I do appreciate the intention, the fact that the production chose NOLA as a location in the attempt, I like to presume, not to exploit people's curiosity rather to reboost local economy. BUT was it necessary to do so perpetrating the same old trite frankly insulting cliches? Naturally, there's a lot of voodoo talk, ALL the local police force is corrupted, everybody calls everybody "cherie" and everywhere you sit and eat, you can bet there's a saxophonist playing in the background and some fedora-donning cats sashaying around him.
Our two heroes appropriately provide the American Red Cross 1-800-help-now number at the end of the episode. Still doesn't make me feel better.
New Orleans has my heart


(New Orleans May 2005)