Live Dearth of Good Ideas

Can someone please explain to me why I just received an email from Netflix informing me of a "Free show July 15th with The Bacon Brothers in Baltimore!"? I'm seriously asking--why did I receive this email? As far as I know I have never rented from Netflix any feature films starring either Bacon brother and/or Kyra Sedgwick, nor have I rented any documentaries about shitty-ass musical acts that feature famous actors. In other words, it's not like I'm in some pro-Bacon database somewhere in the sub-cockles of a Netflix server. That's really beside the point, however; what bugs me about the email is that I really don't think that it's any of Netflix's business which bands I choose to see live, or for that matter how I choose to spend my free time in general. How about just focusing on sending me movies in the mail, and letting me plan my non-movie-watching activities on my own, Netflix? If I were at Jiffy Lube, I wouldn't want one of their mechanics to take a break from trying to sell me a new air conditioning filter to, for example, tell me about an awesome play that's being mounted across town. Why? Because I go to Jiffy Lube to get my car jiffied and/or lubed, not to learn about Bertolt Brecht. Similarly, I use Netflix to rent movies, not to learn about concerts that are happening an hour away from where I live. Jeez. Now, all of that aside, I have to ask--is anyone interested in going to see The Bacon Brothers with me in Baltimore for free this Saturday? It's going to be awesome!

Speaking of music, I watched some of the coverage of the Live Earth concerts this weekend. While I enjoyed some of the performances that I watched, and while I am sympathetic to the aims of the Live Earth concerts in a general sense, overall I was rather disappointed by what I saw. Why, you ask? For this reason: not one of the artists that I watched perform altered their lyrics to be topical and/or germane to the issue at hand. The artists involved with the Live Earth concerts missed a golden opportunity to temporarily alter their lyrics--doing so would have been advisable for a variety of reasons, the most important being that if someone was just channel surfing and happened across the concert coverage, s/he probably would have thought it was just footage from Boner-Roo or one of those other penis-related music festivals that you hear so much about on the Internets. But, if the artists performing had suitably altered their lyrics to reflect the climate crisis-theme of the event, bingo bango, this channel-surfing douche bag would know exactly what was happening. Furthermore, everyone else wins as well--the bands could release these altered tunes as new singles and make some extra cash, and fans of the music get fresh takes on timeless classics. If only someone had put a little, you know, thought into this. Honestly, would it have been so hard for Duran Duran to change Hungry Like the Wolf to Hungry Like the Wolf Who's Habitat has been Destroyed by Global Warming? Was Kanye West too busy to rearrange Slow Jamz as These Jamz be Slow but Climate Change Isn't? Nobody in the Lenny Kravitz camp thought that the line "I want to get away, I want to fly away, YEAAAAH!" wouldn't have been more effectively phrased as "I want to get away, I want to fly away, but only by utilizing carbon credits so as to be environmentally responsible, YEAAAAH!"? For that matter, would it have killed the Red Hot Chili Peppers to sing "Under the Bridge downtown is where I built my superefficient new house that has cut my emissions by over 50%"? I think we know the answers to all of these questions. Ultimately, the act that I'm most offended by in relation to this Live Earth chicanery is Metallica. Not only do they have numerous song titles--Hit the Lights, Creeping Death, Enter Sandman, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Motorbreath--that could be easily reworked to deal with conservation themes (except for maybe Enter Sandman--I'm not sure how they could have reworked that one), but they had a song in their pocket that would have required the least amount of work out of any of the aforementioned changes, and they BLEW IT. I'm referring, of course, to the Metallica song Trapped Under Ice. All you have to do is call it Not Trapped Under Ice, and everyone gets the point. Way to go, Lars. Anyways, I guess I shouldn't be so hard on everyone involved, because it seems like the Live Earth shows were a rousing success. I haven't seen the final figures, but I would be shocked to find out that the concerts didn't achieve their goal of earning enough money to thaw out the frozen head of Teddy Roosevelt so that he could fight Dr. Doom for control of Antarctica.