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KIIS FM is Censoring the Word Sex - Why?

I listen to the radio still. I am not a big music guy but I like to know what the kids are listening to so I don't feel too old. (Writing the last sentence made me feel roughly 55 years old.)

This explains why I still listen to KIIS FM. This Los Angeles-area radio station has been an omnipresent part of my life living in Southern California; since I was a child, KIIS has played songs aimed at the teenage to young adult crowd. Unlike many other radio stations in Los Angeles, KIIS has never changed its format and rarely changes its style; for example, the vacuous, harmless, vanilla Rick Dees was replaced with the vacuous, harmless, vanilla Ryan Seacrest.

So, sometimes I will flip on KIIS and find whatever new artist is playing - and the other day I happened to catch Rihanna's song S&M.

I don't particularly care for Rihanna but the song has a catchy chorus that goes something like this:

"I like being bad but I'm perfectly good at it. Sex in the air - I don't care, I love the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me."

Like I said, catchy.

However, when KIIS plays the chorus, the radio station omits the word sex.

So the lyrics are now ".... in the air - I don't care, I love the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me." (I have caught this deletion mostly during the day so it may be at night when all children and teenagers stop listening to the radio, KIIS may include the offensive word.)

So why exactly is sex being censored? It's not a bad word, as far as I can tell. There are many famous songs that use the word sex. Sexual Healing. Sex on Fire (which was played on KIIS and Sex was not deleted from that song, as far as I know). I Wanna Sex You Up. (Note: This is a list of famous songs that use the word sex; this does not necessarily make them any good.)

I understand deleting expletives, I get that. But deleting the word sex? In a song entitled "S&M"?

I am sure that KIIS is trying to protect young children who hear this song but why delete the word sex? Why not delete the phrase "chains and whips excite me"?

Because if I am an impressionable youth, the question I have about "S&M" is not about "sex in the air" - whatever the hell that means - but more about why "whips and chains" excite Rihanna. If KIIS is going to delete any part of the song, why not the whips and chains part?

And for the parents, I imagine I would have a harder time explaining the "whips and chains" part of the song to my kid, rather than explaining the "sex in the air" portion - which is meaningless.

May I make a suggestion KIIS? Replace the words "whips and chains" with "dips and chips" and "sex" with "Chex".

The song will now say:
"I like being bad but I'm perfectly good at it. Chex in the air - I don't care, I love the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break my bones but chips and dips excite me."

Boom, problem solved! Now the song is about cheating on a diet!

KIIS FM, you are welcome. Let me know what other songs you need censored and I will get right on it.

I Am Sad for Spider-Man Vegas Street Performer

We ended with Spider-Man, thus we begin with Spider-Man.

I was in Las Vegas with my girlfriend over the weekend and happened to grab some photos of one of the costumed street performers that are now parading in front of the Strip casinos. If you want a picture of them, they will gladly pose with you for a tip. Similar performers can be found in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

In Vegas, I saw two guys dressed up as Star Wars characters hanging out in a traffic median, a Stormtrooper with a bucket designed to look like R2-D2 (and to also hold tips!), and - this is my personal favorite - a man dressed as Jesus hanging out with a woman dressed as Elmo. Elmo and Jesus, together at last!

But I happened to be a few feet behind what I can only call Sad Spider-Man and grabbed a few pics. This guy was dressed in not the best Spider-Man suit and was traipsing around the Bellagio when I saw him. He had removed his mask while inside the Bellagio (No, Peter! Your secret identity will be ruined!) and was putting it on as he went down the escalator.

I went outside on the street bridge outside Bellagio and took one more pic of sad Spider-Man. (No, I did not tip him.)

Sad Spider-Man, as you can see below, was protecting the city streets of Vegas clad in the best Spider-Man costume that $20 bucks can buy. Plus he was wearing sneakers! I know Peter Parker has struggled with money issues in the past but.....

Anyway, I guess what I am saying is if you are going to ask for tips on the Vegas strip, maybe go ahead and shell out the extra hundred bucks or whatever it costs for the full Spider-Man costume. Don't just pull your Halloween costume out of the closet and ask for tips - that's cheap.

(Postscript to this story: I saw Sad Spider-Man hanging out in the shade a little bit later, struggling to get his costume off because it was hot. This is why he was Sad Spider-Man.)

The web breaks: The end of Spider-Man's marriage

It's over.

A marriage that has lasted for nearly 21 years has ended.

And I am pretty darned upset about it.

The marriage of Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man) and Mary Jane Watson has been annulled by the demon Mephisto.

Basically, Marvel Comics - after years of hearing complaints that the company erred when it had Mary Jane marry her long-time pal Peter Parker in 1987 - has decided to MacGuffin the Parker marriage.

For the past few months, Marvel has published a four-part series that ran through all of the Spider-Man comics. Entitled "One More Day", the story centered around Peter Parker's attempts to find a way to save his beloved Aunt May - a character that has been near death for approximately 1 trillion times through the course of the various Spider-Man comics.

In the story, Aunt May, critically shot, cannot be saved and Peter Parker, as Spider-Man, desperately searches for a way to cure Aunt May either through natural or supernatural means. And Peter succeeds! Well, sort of.

You see, Mephisto, Marvel's version of Satan but not quite, offers Peter Parker a deal to save Aunt May. That deal? Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson have to give up their marriage and all knowledge of their marriage will be wiped from the minds of everyone, save Mephisto, I suppose. (Mephisto gains because he I guess gets all of their happiness.)

And Mary Jane and Peter take the deal!!

You would think that, Peter Parker, arguably one of the smartest alter-egos ever created, would pause at making a deal with the devil!!

But no! Peter Parker, a gifted chemist who was given a full-ride scholarship to Empire State University, decides, "Hey, making a deal with the devil would be a good idea!! Where do I sign?!"

And so Peter signs the deal, Aunt May recovers and Peter Parker and Mary Jane go back to being friends which is where they will remain I suppose.

I have a number of problems with this storyline and decision by Marvel Comics:

1) You are Peter Parker. You've been picked on for most of your years in high school and are basically a nerd and along comes this radioactive spider that bites you.
After the spider bites you, you gain super powers, you have a pretty exciting life post-high school (i.e. Peter Parker actually turns into a pretty popular dude in college, he bangs Gwen Stacy and he's got a pretty cool mini-bike). And then after college, you get to be a successful photographer for arguably the biggest paper in town, the Daily Bugle, and then your good friend growing up, Mary Jane Watson, somehow blossoms into a pretty hot supermodel. And then you marry her and you get to bang a supermodel!!
So given the choice between keeping his chronically sick Aunt May alive for a few more years (and honestly how much longer could Aunt May last? She constantly seemed to be at death's door in every issue in the 1960s) or remaining married to a hot supermodel where you could probably have hot sex just about every night and never get tired because - for Pete's sake, you're Spider-Man! - you choose the frail, old aunt!
Now don't get me wrong, I understand the desire of Peter to keep Aunt May around since she raised him ever since he was orphaned at an early age. Peter loves and cares for Aunt May; she's been his rock.
But, dude, sometimes you have to let go. Especially if there is a super hot supermodel waiting in the wings! Even Aunt May would support your decision!

2) For years, Marvel comics writers and editors have bitched about how difficult it has been to write Spider-Man because he is "married." (Part of me wonders though, how many Spider-Man writers have been married? How many have actually ever interacted with a girl?)
Many of these writers whined about the days when Peter Parker was dealing with girl problems and wasn't happily settled down.
Yes, writing about a married character is difficult but that is part of the challenge of writing about a character that has been around for 40+ years.
Writing a new and different and interesting Spider-Man story should be a challenge; he is a complex character that millions of people care about.
Basically, annulling Peter Parker's marriage is a copout - especially in the manner it was done. Having the marriage basically erased from existence by a demon is one of the most MacGuffiniest plot twists ever.
My point here is that writers should have embraced the Peter Parker-Mary Jane marriage and done more with it, rather than hide from it. And if they did want to go back to the status quo, they should have opted for.....

3) Peter Parker and Mary Jane getting a divorce.
Now, obviously, the powers that be that run Marvel Comics were never going to go for having its most popular character get divorced but a Mary Jane-Peter Parker split makes much more sense and is much more controversial than a demon annulment!
The news of the Peter Parker-Mary Jane demon anullment got a middling headline on today's Yahoo! But a divorce would have garnered far more new attention and would definitely have sold more comics!!
And a divorce would have been more real. Imagine a plotline where Mary Jane, after years of being threatened by villains and worrying about the danger Peter puts himself through, decides she can't remain married to Peter anymore and files for divorce. Now that would be a storyline!! (Ironically, Marvel Comics teetered close to this plotline a few years back and even had the couple separate but they eventually reconciled.)
Imagine the storylines that would unspin from a Peter-MJ divorce; you could have animosity generated back and forth between Peter and Mary Jane. You would have all of their friends wonder what caused them to split. Imagine the actual divorce proceedings where Mary Jane asks for half of Peter's possessions, including his web shooters!
But writing a divorce storyline would have been all too real - and, of course, too difficult - for the Spider-Man writers so they opted for the MacGuffin.

4) My final problem with bringing Peter Parker back to his single roots is that it's a mistaken belief by writers that Peter Parker, as a guy who has bad luck with the ladies and pretty much rotten luck all around, is a much more interesting character and becomes easier to write.
I don't think it's that easy. I think that many of the stories featuring Peter Parker in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s focused on his bad luck. From 1962 (when Spider-Man was created) to 1987, you essentially had 25 years of stories that showed Peter Parker being hapless with the ladies.
For whatever reason, there is some kind of wishful thinking that those stories were better. At the time, they were better; DC Comics had no sense of continuity and would publish imaginary tales of Superman.
There was no competition for Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s as far as character-driven storytelling went and Peter Parker, as the most relatable and Everyman of all the comics heroes, was the most popular.
And today's comics writers remember those days fondly and wish for a return when Peter Parker was a bumbling nerd and had women problems.
But now that they have their wish, I think they will find that the comic marketplace is a far more competitive place. The stories from the 1960s are not the stories from the 2000s.
Comics publishers have found that they can sell more comics by publishing character-driven comics (influenced of course by heroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men).
So where Peter Parker/Spider-Man was once a unique character plagued by the problems that everyday male teenagers faced, he is now surrounded by dozens of characters who also have similar problems or face "everyday problems." There are at least 10 comic titles out there, if not more, that focus on teenage heroes who face everyday problems. (One such title, "Spider-Girl" is an alternate universe take on a Mary Jane-Peter Parker daughter.)
So while Peter Parker has now been returned to being single, I think it will remain just as great a challenge of coming up with new stories to write for Spider-Man as before. If not more.
Because now, not only do you have to come up with a new and original idea for the Spider-Man mythos - one that has not been written in the past 40+ years - you also have to come up with a fresh story that competes and outdraws and outsells the other 30-40 comics titles in the marketplace.

Alas, Mary Jane and Peter Parker, I am sorry it had to end this way. May you find true love in Ultimate Spider-Man. Or the movies.
I, myself, would rather go out with Kitty Pryde.

My hottest women from TV

AOL.com just released a list of the 50 sexiest women in television of all time. As with all lists, this one will cause some debate, especially its top 10.
The AOL list got a lot of names right but they got a lot wrong - at least in my opinion.

Here is the AOL Top 10:
10. Tina Louise: Ginger from "Gilligan's Island"
9. Catherine Bach: Daisy Duke from "The Dukes of Hazzard"
8. Katherine Heigl: Izzie from "Grey's Anatomy"
7. Barbara Eden from "I Dream of Jeanie"
6. Diana Rigg from "The Avengers" (Sidenote: I can't tell you how disappointed I was as a kid to hear this show existed but did not have Captain America or Iron Man in it.)
5. Eva Longoria from "Desperate Housewives"(Seriously she is ranked way too high.)
4. Heather Locklear from all of her various television roles.
3. Lynda Carter from "Wonder Woman"
2. Farrah Fawcett from "Charlie's Angels"
1. Pam Anderson from "Baywatch"

Here is my reranking:

10. Sarah Michelle Gellar (from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; she was ranked No. 50 on the AOL list.) I actually don't think Buffy is that hot but I had to put her on here because of Ratt. "But what about Buffy?"
9. Jessica Biel (from "Seventh Heaven"; she was ranked No. 25 on the AOL list) I never watched "Seventh Heaven." Apparently Jessica Biel was on it; apparently she grew up to be quite hot.
8. Barbara Eden (from "I Dream of Jeanie"; she was ranked No. 7 on the AOL list.) If I were a teenage boy in the 1960s and I saw Jeanie in her midriff baring outfit, I would rub my magic bottle, if you know what I am talking about.
7. Dawn Wells ( Mary-Anne from "Gilligan's Island", not "Gilligan's Bi-land" which is a far, far different form of entertainment, she was ranked No. 11 on the original AOL list.) Personally, I like Mary-Anne more than Ginger but I think overwhelming opinion would choose Ginger over Mary-Anne. Ginger was meant to be sexy, Mary-Anne just happened to end up being sexy.
6. Charisma Carpenter (from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Veronica Mars"; she was ranked No. 22 on the AOL list) She is hot! even if she does have, er... darker-colored areolas. I would rank her higher but I think this is as high I could put her for argument's sake. Not a lot of people know who Charisma Carpenter is but they should.
5. Alyssa Milano (from "Whos The Boss?" and "Charmed"; she was ranked No. 29 on the AOL list.) I am not the biggest fan of Alyssa Milano; she likes the Dodgers. I never really watched any of her two shows; still, she needs to be ranked higher than 29!!
4. Christina Applegate (from "Married with Children" and no other shows; we will pretend that "Jesse" and "Samantha Who" don't exist; ranked No. 19 on the original AOL list) Every time she appeared on "Married with Children" the audience would hoot and holler and whoop it up; if that isn't an endorsement, I don't know what is.
3. Tina Louise (from "Gilligan's Island." She played Ginger; ranked No. 10 on the AOL list.) I can't argue with Ginger being ranked this high; she was supposed to play hot and sultry and she pulled it off. Do you think she did it with the Skipper, Gilligan or the Professor? Maybe she got it on with Mary-Anne. Yummy!
2. Jennifer Aniston (from "Friends" - duh. She was ranked No. 21 on the AOL list.) She may have been overhyped as we her haircut but Jennifer Aniston is very underrated as one of the sexiest women on television. See seasons 2-3 of "Friends" for her peak.)
1. Heather Locklear (from various shows, most notably "T.J. Hooker" and "Melrose Place."; ranked No. 4 on the AOL list.) I realized I had to put Heather Locklear in this No. 1 spot; while I am not personally the biggest fan of hers, I do realize her body (ha-ha) of work on multiple shows is significant. Basically, whenever she was on a show or joined a show, she made a significant impact and was arguably the hottest woman on whatever show she joined. For example, when she had a two-episode stint on "Scrubs" she never looked better.

The AOL list is also missing some noteable names; Gillian Anderson from "The X-Files" is one name that leaps out at me.

Goodbye CW - I C(an't) W(atch) you anymore

Dear CW,

You understand that I am not going to watch CW anymore, right?

In an era of crappy reality shows and half-baked comedies, Veronica Mars was the one show I really looked forward to every week. It combination of whip-smart dialogue with layered plots made it one of the best shows on television.

It constantly made me laugh and entertained me.But deciding to not renew Veronica Mars was a mistake.

The CW has so few quality shows and you are going to let your best show die?

I am truly disappointed in your network and the state of television today.But more to the point, I am now on the warpath against CW.

(Now I know why they call it the Can't Watch network.)

While I will no longer watch the CW, I will badmouth the network every chance I get.If someone mentions Farmer Gets A Wife to me, I will say, "Oh, that's on CW isn't it? I hate that network; it's full of crap."

If CW is on somewhere, I will ask someone to turn the network off or I will leave the room.And the worst part about all of this?

You could have had me.

You could have had me and my $40,000 plus a year salary. I am the type of young influential watcher that networks want.

Now I will turn my viewing habits elsewhere, if anywhere on television at all. There is little that is entertaining on right now.

I guess that is the worst part about all of this for you, CW.

You lost a customer.

Sincerely, Joe Florkowski

He Doesn't Have the Force Anymore

This article in Daily Variety today pretty much establishes my feelings about George Lucas.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117960606.html?categoryid=1682&cs=1

Let's face it: George Lucas has lost it. Not his mind, necessarily, but his creative EDGE. And I'm not the only one who has written about this but the variety article has emphasized just out of touch he is with the rest of us here on planet Earth.

I don't dispute that George Lucas is a great storyteller but he doesn't seem as creative anymore.

There is a reason why people now walk around with shirts that say "Joss Whedon is my master now." Like George Lucas, Whedon has created a massive fantasy/sci-fi universe with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and to a lesser degree "Firefly."

But unlike Lucas, I don't think Whedon has let the quality slip as much. Both tell exceptional, well-done stories but when it comes to dialogue and characterization, Whedon blows Lucas away. Part of this may also have to do with the fact that Joss Whedon wrote scripts for "Roseanne" and knows something about how real people talk. George Lucas probably still tells himself "Mesa hadda good idea about Jar Jar."

It pains me to write this since the original "Star Wars" trilogy is still the greatest film accomplishment in the history of cinema, other than the "Police Academy" series. I rank "The Empire Strikes Back" as my favorite film of all time.

I am not turning my back on George Lucas. I will go see "Indiana Jones 4" when it comes out next year. And if he eventually produces a live action "Star Wars" series, I will watch that, as well. But he has to just do the storytelling on these films; no more dialogue or direction from him!

But George Lucas is seemingly getting to be more and more of an old crank; you just know that when he watches movies and television shows, he is saying to himself, "That's not how we used to do it. In our day, we used...."

And while George Lucas has embraced CGI for his three most recent films, he still seems old fashioned and out of step. He is stubborn. He should have had others direct the "Clone Wars" and "Revenge of the Sith" movies. I liked the stories in both of those films but I think the dialogue and direction left a lot to be desired.

I remember that when "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" came out in 1999, it was well hyped and everyone talked about it. But the film that more people talked about and was better received was "The Matrix." And "The Matrix" was cool, well-done, and really blew a lot of people away.

That was what George Lucas used to do.