Letters in edgewise - The mailbag

I'll never forget the day the Daily Press’ former editor told me I should submit my work on the same day every week, "for your readers." At the time, my semi-stunned reaction was, "I have readers?" Two years later, I’m still amazed that anyone takes the time to read my stuff; and it blows my mind whenever someone recognizes me from this column. They say a good opinion piece is like a conversation with the reader and, as much as I love and appreciate my readers, I’m glad the conversation is relatively one-sided. That said, I thought I’d take the opportunity with this last column of 2008 to respond to some of my favorite e-mails (if it goes well, maybe I’ll empty my mailbag more often). So Happy New Year, dear readers, be safe and I’ll see you in 2009!

"Amazing the SMDP allowed you to waste a whole page with your hate. You twisted more facts in this story than Bush did to justify war. Gee Kenny, I guess Shaq gets a full pass from your manure-filled timeline, and you imply that Jackson is about $$$ only. It would have been kind of novel and interesting if you had written the piece from the perspective of a transplanted Easterner rooting for your team among all of us native Angelenos, but you choose the hate road and filled in the piece (I really mean it) with your nasty hatred. The laugh is going to be on you when Pau and Lamar dominate the middle and the Lakers take this series quickly,"

Michael A.

If I was going to "hate," I would have brought up the fact that the Lakers’ signature athlete almost threw his life away over some Plain Jane from Colorado when his goddess of a wife was at home taking care of their new baby. Or I would have mentioned that Phil Jackson would have never come back if he wasn’t sleeping with the boss’ daughter. I didn’t. As the great Yogi Berra said, "prediction is hard, especially about the future." Don’t let the fact that I’m so good at it make you believe anyone can do it.As much as I appreciate the tip on how I should have approached the subject, I can’t take advice from a guy who was so wrong about so much. Still, you’re welcome to join me at Sonny MacLean’s for the Celtics/Lakers rematch in February.


"I was reading your column in the Santa Monica Daily Press, and I just wanted to let you know that there is a recurring misprint. In your short biography section at the end of the column it lists you as ‘comedian.’ Clearly, youmeantto write ‘talentless hack.’ You are the absolute worst. Never have I seen a more frustrating, worthless, stale piece of regular drivel than your God awful rants. I didn’t realize that mining 10-year-old tapes of the Tonight Show counted as comedy. I can’t even imagine what a bore you must be in real life.

I find reading your self-indulgent tripe a constant reminder of the fact that Los Angeles is an intellectual wasteland. Not only do people like you feel that you have editorial-worthy opinions, somebody at an actual newspaper agrees!"

Dustin B.

You probably meant this to be hurtful, but I actually enjoyed it because you admit that you read me regularly and I’ve clearly struck a nerve. And if I’m such a "talentless hack," what does the fact that you keep reading (and took the time to write this e-mail) say about you?


"Well, Kenny, you are the man for predicting the fabulous day for America. I was so nervous, but watched the TV last night with hope. What a night and what a great thing for America and the whole world! God bless you, Kenny Mack and God bless and keep Barack Obama. We are going to see some class in the White House. We have an ethical, brilliant man in the White House at long last. I am very grateful for what this presidency means for us, and in particular for my granddaughter, who asked me what ethical means. I said it means doing the right thing no matter what it costs you. I am the happiest woman in the world."

Marilyn B.

If you’re not going to the Inauguration, I’ll be happy to mail you a postcard from D.C. so you can have a little piece of history to give to your granddaughter. I’ve had to respect your gangsta (as the brothers say it) ever since you wrote, "I don’t care if (rappers) paint the White House black, or green or purple as long as President Barack Obama is sitting in the Oval Office in January 2009." That’s a bold statement from a self-described "Senior white woman," and I want you to know that you are, by far, my favorite reader.

Getting the green light on Christmas - Holiday movie guide

Because we live in Santa Monica, it’s easy to forget that when you leave here, you’re in Los Angeles. I’m just glad that Hollywood only comes here sporadically in the occasional movie star sighting at the skating rink or on the Third Street Promenade (and an unfortunate episode at Whole Foods when I asked the woman in line behind me if anyone ever told her she bore a striking resemblance to Jennifer Beals only to realize, to my horror, that it actually was Jennifer Beals). Outside ourbeloved bubble, this is an industry town - and that industry is the movie business.

My best friends growing up were almost all Jewish kids (liberal Massachusetts Jews whose parents loved me like one of their own) and one of the things I learned about was the ancient Christmas night tradition of going out for Chinese food and a movie. With Christmas falling on a Thursday this year, weekend box office totals will get the padding of an additional day on top of the annual "Baruch Atah Adonai Bump." Half a dozen of the biggest names in the biz have movies opening Christmas weekend in everything from romantic comedies to historical dramas. If not for the state of the economy, that would be a good thing. But this weekend will end up being like a make-or-break sales pitch for a few different film genres, and whichever movies get butts into seats in the next few days will be the templates for the movies that will get green-lighted next year. Hollywood may occasionally take a chance on a studio head, but never on projects for A-List actors.

For your consideration, here are this weekend’s big openings and where they’ll finish:

"Bedtime Stories" stars Adam Sandler as a loveable janitor baby-sitting his adorable niece and nephew who discovers that the outlandish things the kids make up when he reads to them at night actually happen the next day. Hijinks ensue when he tries to use the kids’power to get his dream job. A Christmas day opening for a movie with a Jewish lead actor is a good play and this one should finish in the top three, so look for plenty of feel-good family films in 2009.

"Valkyrie" stars Tom Cruise as a German army officer at the center of a failed plot to kill Hitler in 1944. This wish-fulfillment-fantasy is also a good play for a Christmas day opening. Unfortunately, Cruise has the same problem as Angelina Jolie in that even when he’s wearing an eye patch and Nazi officer’s uniform, all I can think of when I see him on-screen is, "that’s Tom Cruise in an eye patch and Nazi officer’s uniform." This one should finish in the bottom three, thankfully ensuring we don’t see any big stars in historical dramas next year.

Only serious make-up prevents Brad Pitt’s instantly recognizable face from being a distraction in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." But when you start with an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who was born in his 70’s and aged backward to childhood before dying, add Brad Pitt, and get David Fincher to direct, you get quality filmmaking. A top three finisher for sure.

"Marley & Me" is about a blonde couple and their precocious yellow Lab. It stars Jennifer Aniston,Owen Wilson, and a dog. It will finish in the top three and next year there will be a ton of movies starring all-American girls, squarejawed white guys, and animals. Also, Jen might get the sweet redemption of opening bigger than Brad this weekend.

Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet trade the long, slow death of drowning for the long, slow death of suburban life in the ‘50s in "Revolutionary Road," opening Friday. It looks excellent, but will finish in the bottom three, ensuring the nostalgia for that period will be confined to "Mad Men" and won’t make it to Hollywood next year.

My money is on Frank Miller’s "The Spirit" to finish on top. It’s a classic tale of good vs. evil in the battle for immortality, fought in an urban landscape occupied by a bevy of comic book beauties played by some of Hollywood’s hottest. It would be a can’t-miss hit even if it didn’t have a built-in fan base that geeks out on graphic novels, but the fact that moviegoers can hit the multiplex twice this weekend means "Spirit" fans will be doubling down at the box office while those others will only get one look. As a comic book aficionado, I’m hoping "The Spirit" is number one with $30 million in box office on Monday — if for no other reason than to slow down the "Twilight" phenomenon and stem the tide of teenage vampire movies the studios are rushing into production for next year.

R.I.P rap music - Kanye West killed the art form on "SNL"

I was raised on rap music. Being born black in the 1970s in a major American city, it was unavoidable. Where there was a turntable or cassette deck, we blasted rap music - and at maximum decibels. Rap spoke to us in a way we had never been spoken to before. It was the truth. It was the musical expression of our collective cultural experience and we loved it because it felt so authentic. I now realize that back then, when the needle dropped on the latest record from the Sugar Hill Gang or Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, I was witnessing the birth of a new American art form. It pains me to say that when I watched Kanye West on "Saturday Night Live" this past weekend, I was witnessing the death of that art form as I knew it - murdered by the gloved hands of its favorite son screaming into a ridiculous lipstick-red microphone.

If you aren’t familiar with rap music, let me break down the elements for you: there’s the beat and the rhymes, that’s it. With the exception of live bands like The Roots, the beat is provided in one of two ways. Originally, it was by a highly-skilled DJ who would use two turntables and a mixer to repeat the best bits of a song over and over again like Jam Master Jay did with "Walk This Way." A beat can also come from a producer who creates it in a studio with drum machines, samplers, keyboards, etc. The rhymes only come one way and that’s from the rapper. The best ones are lyrical artists with true rhyme skills and a message to deliver. When done right, the DJ/producer/rap artist combination can lead to classics comparable to the greats of any genre (like Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s "T.R.O.Y.") and when done wrong, you get the hot messes Kanye gave us last Saturday.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m feeling "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless" when they’re playing in my car or on my iPod. But the true test of the quality of a piece of music is when it is performed for an audience. A real rap artist never fails that test precisely because the elements of this art form are so simple. Kanye failed miserably because the elements of his performance have become so complicated. In his personal style, his use of video, his insistence on singing when he knows he can’t, and his reliance on the maddening Auto-Tune software and vocoder (the robot voice), he has embraced the avant-garde in so many areas that the music has almost become an afterthought. He can no longer walk on a stage, pick up a mic, and move a crowd (assuming he ever could) and that tells me that the biggest name in rap music has either forgotten or forsaken the art form that made him who he is — and would rather be a pop artist than a rap artist.

Kanye killed the music of my life and I’d like to thank him for it. Rap music has been dying for a long time and I’m glad he finally put it out of its misery. Because now that rap is dead I can do something I never thought I’d do and that’s warn parents about the dangers of exposing their kids to it. One of the drawbacks of rap’s popularity is that record companies have mastered the art of the catchy chorus or "hook" and too many of those hooks aren’t exactly good for children to hear. For example, I know of a teenage scion of a famous family who couldn’t stop singing the chorus of T-Pain’s "Buy You A Drank" while her mom was in rehab for alcohol. And it starts much younger than that. A friend’s 4- year-old can already recite the lyrics to Flo-Rida’s "Low," and I’m sure a song about gluteal gymnastics isn’t exactly the kind of thing her parents want her repeating around the schoolyard at Roosevelt Elementary.

Hip-hop as a culture will endure, but rap music as an art form is in need of a renaissance. Like me, millions of young people have grown up with rap as the soundtrack of their lives. Any true fan who doesn’t should own "By All Means Necessary" by BDP, "Paid In Full" by Eric B. & Rakim, "It Takes A Nation Of Millions..." by Public Enemy, "Stakes Is High" by De La Soul, "Do You Want More" by The Roots, and "The Low End Theory" by A Tribe Called Quest so they can get to know great rap music. Because when an art form becomes pop art, it loses its authenticity. In that case, the only thing you can do is return to the classics. Some of us have never left.

Getting her groove back - I like Britney on top

It's hard to love someone from afar. It’s even harder when you know that person needs your love more than anything, but doesn’t realize it. I’ve learned that it’s not enough to love someone unconditionally; that person has to be able to recognize what you’re offering them, be open to receiving it, and be in an emotional place where they can allow themselves to be loved. As a bonus, it would be nice if they also appreciated you and knew you existed.

I don’t want to jinx it, but after a year in which she pushed the boundaries of eccentricity and did her best to push me away, the love of my life (and the woman I moved to Los Angeles for) may finally be ready for a committed, monogamous relationship with me. Of course, I’m talking about Miss Britney Jean Spears.

It was a tough year for all of us who love my Britney, and it was especially difficult for me. I had a hard time understanding how Adnan Ghalib, the paparazzo-turned boyfriend, made it into 2008, given the fact that he had "sleazy" written all over him from day one. So I was really happy he supposedly shopped their sex tape all over town — not because I wanted to see it, but because I wanted her to see his true colors. Now that she has, I hope I don’t see him around because there’s no guarantee I won’t slap that flavor saver right off his face for disrespecting my Britney like that.

My future mother-in-law threw me a little bit with her book.

You’d think that with one daughter in the middle of a meltdown and the other becoming a teenage single mom, she’d want less attention paid to her parenting skills, not more. But my future father-in-law stepped up and gave Britney a measure of stability in her life that allowed her to do what she loves.

And I think having him in her house running her life for this past year did the same thing for her that Thanksgiving dinner at my mother’s house always does for me: remind me why I left home in the first place.

Now she’s focused on making a home and family of her own and taking control of her career.I’ve been watching the promotional tour for her new album,"Circus," and I have to give her props for getting her back on top of her game. The industry didn’t understand her a year ago when she was shooting the video for "Piece of Me," and showed up late because she was with her sons. But after that video won Best Female Video, Best Pop Video, and Video of the Year at the VMA’s, they understand her now. I, of course, always have.

That’s why I’m a little concerned about the fact that my future father-in-law wasgranted permanent conservatorship over her affairs because if it remains uncontested,he could control her life until he dies.

That worries me because this is something the courts do for crazy people, but my Britney isn’t crazy. She went from being a 17-year-old girl to a 27-year-old woman as an international pop star and with the whole world watching. If those 10 years of any of our lives were available on YouTube, we might look crazy, too, but that doesn’t mean we’d need someone else to take care of us for the rest of our lives.

So here she is with three VMA’s, a number one song that she performed in London, Paris, and New York, lighting the trees at Rockefeller Center and L.A. Live, and a new album of good music (I challenge anyone not to dance to "Lace and Leather"); all while looking and sounding better than she ever has.Some people will say my Britney is on the comeback trail after a difficult period. I say she never left.

Her career successes aren’t as important to me as her personal life. In her documentary, "For the Record," she talks about where she is and what she wants — and that’s why I’m starting to believe she may be ready for me. "I used to be a cool chick," she said, "and I feel like the paparazzi has taken my whole cool slang away from me. Like going out and doing stuff and seeing a guy and hanging out. The way I used to live I was a pretty cool chick, you know? And I’m not really that
way any more."

She went on to say, "That would be heaven for me: to have my kids on an island, and a man, and no one could get to us." It took meeting the right man for Stella to get her groove back, all it will take is Britney meeting me to get her cool slang back.

Getting in gear - Bailing out Detroit automakers

My friend, Matt, grew up in a Detroit suburb called Bloomfield Hills and for his 17th birthday, his parents got him a car. He wanted to have the fastest car in school so he picked the Mitsubishi Eclipse, but the car he got was an Eagle Talon. It was identical to the Eclipse, except it bore the badges of an American car company. In Bloomfield Hills, status isn’t conveyed by owning the fastest car, but by owning the fastest American car. Around Detroit, the three diamonds in the Mitsubishi logo might as well be a hammer and sickle.

This week, the CEO’s of the "Big Three" U.S. automakers will be back before Congress begging for their bit of the bailout bonanza after initially being rebuffed. Two of these guys run companies that will basically be out of cash by the end of the year (GM and Chrysler), and the third company (Ford) only has cash-on-hand because it mortgaged everything it owns — including its oval-shaped blue logo. Still, the chief executives of all three not credit-worthy companies flew into Washington on private jets so they could ask for $25 billion in loans. I give them credit for their collective cojones, but it’s too bad there isn’t a functioning brain in the bunch. They think the problem is that they’re running out of cash and the solution is to borrow. They’re wrong. The problem is the industry has passed them by, and they’re running out of cash because nobody wants their cars. The solution is for the Big Three to change the industry.

First of all, two of the three have to go. None of them seems to be good at the business of designing, building, selling, and servicing new vehicles, so let’s combine them into one iconic American car company. To level the global playing field, let’s give that company, its unions, and its suppliers as many benefits for innovation, capital investment, and healthcare as can be written into the tax code. And to get the American public to buy in, I propose a national design challenge to come up with a name and logo for this company in an "American Idol" meets "Project Runway" reality show — produced by PBS and hosted by Michelle Obama. I’d watch it.

Also, the time has come to phase out the one thing most responsible for killing our country and our planet: the internal combustion engine. There, I said it and I don’t care if it gets me assassinated because the internal combustion engine will eventually be the death of us all. These things run on gasoline and diesel fuel, the need for which compels us to pay a fortune to former nomadic tribes in the deserts of western Asia who occasionally send our money back to us in the form of exploding young men. As a by-product, these engines create noxious fumes that poison the air we have to breathe and help raise the temperature of the planet we have to share. The sooner we focus our engineers and engineering students on developing the automotive power plant of the future, the better off we’ll all be. And if anybody says that’s a pie-in-the-sky, decades-away solution, tell them about the Tesla Roadster (an electric car available right now that hits 60 mph in about 4 seconds, will do 130 mph, and can go up to 250 miles on a single charge) and wait for their comeback. They won’t have one.

And the car buying process has to change. Most salesmen are like drug dealers who act like a car is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it and before the credit market tightened up, dealerships made as much money selling car loans as they did selling cars. I suggest these CEO’s watch the disturbingly authentic movie, "Suckers," in which the mentality of the car business is summed up perfectly in two words, "we’re whores." Because when you have a pusher on the lot selling crappy cars and a shark in the office selling overpriced loans at a brothel of a dealership, it’s not surprising when there are no buyers.

The biggest phenomenon in the business in recent years has been the Toyota Prius. It sells for more than its sticker price, its buyers wouldn’t drive anything else, and its owners report nearly 100 percent satisfaction. Unlike other status symbol cars, it says more about its owner’s priorities than it does about its owner’s finances. When the American auto industry makes a high-quality product that says its owner is part of the solution, we’ll all insist on buying American — just like Matt’s parents in Bloomfiel Hills. Then these CEO’s can go back to business as usual, giving outrageous sums of money to Congress instead of trying to get outrageous sums of money from Congress.