I like Rob Sheffield. I loved his memoir Love Is a Mix Tape, and he's usually good for a laugh when he appears as a commentator on those VH-1 pop culture shows. However, I take issue with his music reviews in Rolling Stone. (I also take issue with music critics in general, because I've always questioned their validity; music critics seem to me like they're just writing to impress other music critics. Also, I am certainly not going to buy the new CD from a boring jam band just because some drooling geek in Spin gives it five stars. Similarly, if someone is into Rihanna, they're going to buy her crap CD no matter what Tweedle McFartpants in Rolling Stone says about it. But that's a whole other post...)

Sheffield reviewed the latest Daughtry release in a recent issue of Rolling Stone. I don't know much about Daughtry, other than it's fronted by some bald dorkus whose last name is Daughtry. Oh, and I think he was on American Idol too. That's about it. But check out what Sheffield has to say about him and his band in his review, titled "Daughtry's Lady-Killing Cheese Rock":

Ladies love Daughtry, and and it's never been simple for the men in their lives to figure out why...(H)e has no interest in playing cool; all he cares about is ovary-melting power ballads. Hell, he even calls his band by his last name, a corny trop that rock stars haven't dared since the days of Winger and Montrose....He brings in chick-rock titans like Richard Marx and Nickleback's Chad Kroeger, and teams up with Vince Gill for an ace country heart-tugger...Daughtry is cocky enough to know the ladies love him even more when he makes their boyfriends suffer.

Okay, Rob? First of all, never ever use the term "ovary-melting power ballad" again. Because, ew. And second, why are Richard Marx and Chad Kroeger (who?) considered chick rock? I've always thought of chick rock in terms of bands like the Go-Go's, the Donnas, Elastica, and the Runaways. In other words, chicks that rock, and not candy-ass has-beens like Richard Marx, who is not a chick (despite his hair), or the other lite-rock denizen he cited, Vince Gill. (I still have no idea who Chad Kroeger is, and can't be bothered to google him). I also resent Sheffield's insinuation that most anyone with XX chromosomes gets off on this sort of watered-down dreck. I mean, does he only hang out with menopausal 50-something grandmothers? Is his view of women so narrow that he believes every single damned one of us listens to Michael Bolton while watching Lifetime TV and daydreaming about meeting Celine Dion? Because if so, he's better off writing for Reader's Digest.

Just to clear up any confusion, here's a video of some REAL chick rock.

And speaking of the other kind of "birther," here is my friend Tim's rant on Angelina Jolie. He sent this in an email to me, and it's too good not to share. I'm posting it here (with his blessing, of course).

...For me, the making out episode with her brother(?) was the tipping point, which she followed up by having limousine sex with Billy Bob on the way to some Hollywood function. After that, she could do nothing right in my eyes. The episode where she accused the U.S. of holding up progress in Darfur comes to mind. Never mind that China, with it's oil concessions in Sudan, has been the principal impediment there. But, she's a fast learner, and soon with her own personal foreign policy advisor (yes, really) she was offered membership in the Council on Foreign Relations (unbelievable!). God, how I long for simpler times when the entertainment elite had the good graces to separate their altruism from their incessant celebrity narcissism. The post-celluloid career humanitarianism of Audrey Hepburn comes to mind.

In the end, we can only hope the public appetite for all Brangelina all the time dissipates. The actor Michael Douglas said it best a few years back, "I don't know about Brad Pitt leaving that beautiful woman (Jennifer Aniston) to go hold orphans for Angelina Jolie. I mean, how long is that going to last?" Unfortunately, it's already lasted far too long.

Bill Maher's birther rant:



Word to the third. Well-timed and well said, Billy boy.