hey kids! the 6th annual freaky trigger focus group results are in! it's topped by a bootleg! and in the time it's taken to get this fg up, the bootleg has become totally passe! also: it's taken so long that i no longer agree with -- or even understand! -- most of my comments. to wit, i said this w/r/t to tweet and i don't know what it means:
"not that it matters, really, since it's a fucking pear"

(but, but tom, you get my link wrong on the contributors page! the horror!)
posted by fred solinger 6:35 PM

 
for delillo fans: his next novel, cosmopolis, will be published in april 2003. here's a description, presumably from promotional materials:
This is the story of a spectacular downfall. One man, one day, the trembling of global markets. Eric Packer, age 28, emerges from his $104-million penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limo. At age four, Packer figured out what he would weigh on every planet in the solar system. Now, he is a billionaire asset manager, and on this April day in the year 2000, he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. His journey to the barbershop is a contemporary odyssey, funny and riveting. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol's funeral, a movie in the making, and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors - his experts on security, technology, currency, finance, and theory. Sometimes he leaves the car for intimate encounters. Sometimes he doesn't have to.

for more info, and to see the book's cover, visit the delillo site at perival.com.

more don d.! the rights to underworld were purchased at the time of book's publication by scott rudin (south park, the royal tenenbaums). p.t. anderson was approached to direct, but he ultimately passed and rudin's option lapsed. the rights have since been bought by robert greenwald (xanadu, the burning bed (!)).

meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, barry sonnenfeld and disney obtained the rights to white noise in 1999. their option was scheduled to run out this month, but as recently as june '02, the movie was mentioned to have been in development at disney. i'm a bit nervous about this, but we'll see what happens.
posted by fred solinger 4:28 PM

 
is anyone else outraged by the nissan xterra ad featuring the stooges' "t.v. eye"? i like to consider myself a rather relaxed person. oh sure, i get flustered, even flabbergasted at times. but when i saw this ad -- with extreme skiers, no less -- i felt genuine outrage. of course this isn't the first time iggy/stooges music has been used in ads: there was nike and "search & destroy"; "the passenger" for guinness; "real wild child," used by ftd; and the ubiquitous "lust for life." none of these bothered me at the time -- in fact i was pleased to see the music get some recognition. perhaps i feel this just ossifies the trend of using "alt" music in ads, of appealing, well, to whom, exactly? it seems like it's done just to get on my nerves. "tv eye" feels like an especially personal affront, it feels like a violation of my headphone world. funhouse, i gather was not a commercially successful album, and "tv eye" is an album track. it's a song i've never heard anywhere outside of my room, my car, my discman; a song i felt that i, in particular, championed. and now it's being used to sell cars and, worst of all, it's not even a good commercial. i'm just tiring of this infringement upon my secret world by large corporations. it feels as if there's no place left for us to live privately anymore, with our passions undetected by the mainstream.
posted by fred solinger 4:12 PM

 
"the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit."
posted by fred solinger 12:33 PM