By Troy Brownfield

A Variety Show

Things I've read, heard or are on my mind...

• "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procul Harum is the most-played song in the last 70 years in Britain. Of course it is. Everyone's still trying to figure out what the fuck they're talking about.

• NBC has no new Law & Order spin-off prepared for next year, and CBS may not pick up Yes, Dear. If the Pacers take The Finals, then those previews for The Day After Tomorrow might be more accurate than we thought. (And yes, I'm a Pacer fan; don't email me whining because I made a joke. I got one assclown who complained to me last month about an article I wrote about Isiah Thomas when he blew it in the Playoffs last year. Way to stay current, pal).
  
  
• What is the deal with ABC taking three or four weeks off between installments of Alias? They're repeatedly stupid about it. They didn't do much extra promo when 13 Going on 30 came out, and the show wasn't even on the weekend that Daredevil opened. What's the good in a network developing a breakout star if the network won't support her friggin' show?
  
  
• Just because Avril wrote a song about not doing it, it doesn't mean that she suddenly acquired any depth as an artist. Similarly, Britney's latest video is not "artistic" just because it rips off Live's Lightning Crashes. And just because New Found Glory put together a video that's interesting to look at, we shouldn't re-examine their 23rd-generation punk as anything more significant.
  
  
• Incidentally, in an interview with MSNBC, Avril said that her angry lyrics are the result of carb consumption. How very, very punk. I'm sure that's why The Stooges did "I Wanna Be Your Dog". Too much bread.
  
  
• I remain massively sad that Angel goes away this week. I comfort myself with this dialogue exchange from the end of the penultimate episode, when Angel and the others plan to go all first-12-issues-of-The-Authority on the bad guy's asses...

Angel: This isn't a keep-fightin'-the-good-fight kind of deal. Let's be clear. I'm talking about killing every...single...member of the Black Thorn. We don't walk away from that.

Lorne: Do we crawl away, at least?

Angel: We do this, the Senior Partners will rain their whole wrath. They'll make an example of us. I'm talking full-on hell, not the basic fire-and-brimstone kind we're used to.

Gunn: We know the drill.

Angel: No, you don't. 10-to-1, we're gone when the smoke clears. They will do everything in their power to destroy us. So...I need you to be sure. Power endures. We can't bring down the Senior Partners, but for one bright, shining moment, we can show them that they don't own us. You need to decide for yourselves if that's worth dying for. I can't order you to do this. I can't do it without you.

WB? You guys suck.

• In the talkback for my new column at Comicon.com's Pulse News, International Pop Overdose, I think I discovered a new strain of comic fan: one who thinks that they're above other fans because they were embraced by the jocks in high school. It's a rather bizarre phenomenon, tantamount to saying, "I'm validated because the football team liked me." I hope to high hell that guy isn't a psychologist.

• The Spurs blew it. They had a lead. They have the talent. And they blew it. I'm not sure if they were just too complacent or what, but they couldn't have looked more stunned if one of the Laker's, let's say, guards, had slipped something into their drink, bent them over the furniture, and yelled "What's my name?".
  
  
• I can't decide which is more frustrating: the fact that the administration insists we'll hand over Iraq on 6-30 when we all know they won't, the fact that Bush is still blathering about gay marriage on a day when a member of the Iraqi council got blown up, the fact that his people keep whining about any Vietnam comparison in the media despite the fact that this whole thing is obviously like Vietnam, the fact that there's no outrage about the things that Bush and his people continue to do and lie about, the fact that Disney made a play to quash a film based on the tax credits they'd lose if they offend the Bush camp, or the fact that so many Americans seem to blindly support a group of people who certainly don't give one shit about their health, the crime in their cities, their schools, or sending their kids off to die.
  
  
• I'm also frustrated by the fact that Bush's people would sink so low as to cast aspersions on the record of a man who served in Vietnam when he didn't. Oh, wait, I was talking about what he did to John McCain. He's doing it to Kerry too.
  
  
• I'm sure some super-genius will try to ask me about my personal military experience. I don't have any. In fact, there's a fair-to-middling chance I wouldn't qualify based on the occasional severity of my asthma. I can tell you that my Dad went to Vietnam and spent a year touring the lovely Mekong Delta in less than fun conditions. I can tell you that my grandfathers both were in the Navy, and that my Grandfather Brownfield was on the U.S.S. Mobile during Midway. I can also tell you that they went to war with the intentions that their sons wouldn't have to. It obviously didn't work for my grandfathers, and I would have been too young for Gulf One to begin with (by a year). I made my choice. And others have made theirs. I just think it's bullshit for a president and a vice-president that did everything they could NOT to go to take great efforts to slam the men that do. (And as an aside, I'll give props to the first Bush; as a pilot, he killed more people than Ted Bundy. That's saying something.)
  
  
• Hey, at least gas prices suck.
  
  
• Doesn't it say a lot about how progressive the rest of the planet it is and how progressive we're, well, not, when the Olympic Committee will okay transgendered athletes, and we still have people who write complaint letters about Will and Grace?

• That's not to say that Will and Grace hasn't become shrill and lame. Those complaints are fine.
  
  
• A New York hotel is offering a $1000 omelet. And people wonder why other countries hate us.

Troy Brownfield is the Editor-in-Chief of Shotgun Reviews. Email Troy at psikotyk@aol.com

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