It Ain't Easy Buying "Green"

Right color, wrong song!

First of all, listen to your mother. She was right. As the victim of several robberies over the course of my lifetime, I can back up everything she's said about how it's wrong to steal.

But then, not all thievery is created equal. There's a huge difference between breaking into someone's house and hauling off everything of value inside of it, and illegally downloading the latest Katy Perry single.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but it's not like Katy Perry isn't going to be just fine. And sometimes I wonder if the music industry isn't asking for it. Why do retailers sometimes make it so frustratingly difficult to legally acquire music that falls outside of the mainstream (Don't get me started on what I used to go through to get my Robyn imports back before "With Every Heartbeat" made her hot outside of her native Sweden), especially if, like me, you don't live in the English-speaking world? I recently discovered just how tough it can be when I tried to buy "(It Ain't Easy Being) Green" -- not the Kermit the Frog classic (note the clever use of parentheses), but a song from Shannon McNally's 2002 debut album Jukebox Sparrows.

At the time of Jukebox Sparrows' release, McNally's label, Capitol Records, sent me a complimentary copy of the CD for review, and I immediately fell in love with track five. The album never went anywhere, and when I got rid of all of my CDs a few years ago, McNally's was one of them. Unwisely, though, I forgot to copy that magical song to my computer, and it's been something of an obsession ever since it randomly popped into my head at some point last year.

After searching for it in vain on YouTube, I tracked it down on Grooveshark, a website where you can stream a variety of songs by various artists. The only problem is that to enjoy the song, I had to listen to it on my computer. I couldn't take it on the run during my thrice-weekly jogging treks around Lumpini Park. And making matters worse, after months of being at the mercy of Grooveshark, my song recently mysteriously disappeared from the website.

If I wanted to listen to it, I'd have to buy it. First, I tried to download it on iTunes. Unfortunately, although I'm living in Bangkok, I'm still connected to the iTunes store in Argentina, and was able to make purchases there only. In order to access the U.S. store to buy music there, I would have to create a new iTunes account and change my location -- annoying but doable. Or so I thought: In order to create an account in any country, you must have a credit card with a billing address in that country. Since both of my credit cards are billed to my Buenos Aires address, I was stuck in Argentina, though living in Bangkok and craving a U.S. connection.

It's bad enough that iTunes restricts where you can play the music that you purchase there. Do they have to make it so complicated to buy it in the first place?

Next up, Amazon. Strike two! The Amazon store wasn't available in Thailand. Neither were several of the other digital-music retailers that I tried. I was beginning to think that the only way I would ever get to go running with my song blasting in my ears would be if I brought my laptop with me.

Then I remembered 7digital, the UK-based digital-media retailer whose website I used to log on to whenever I wanted to buy new British music that wasn't yet available in the U.S. back when I lived there. Finally, my luck was changing. Not only was Shannon McNally's debut album available for download in 7digital's U.S. store, but there were no international restrictions, and I didn't need a U.S. billing address to use my credit card (or PayPal) to buy my song for $1.49. That's 20 cents more than it was on iTunes and 50 cents more than on Amazon, but you get what you pay more for, right?

I hate to admit it, but had 7 Digital not come through for me, I may have been forced to resort to stealing. It's not right, but it's okay --- especially when the music industry puts me at such a disadvantage when I want to legally purchase music that falls outside of the parameters of Top 40. It's bad enough that Bangkok only seems to get the Hollywood blockbusters that I'm not interested in seeing. Must I be forced to buy only bad music, too?

We've come a long way from the days when the only way to acquire import music was to shell out at least $30 for it at some specialty record store on Bleecker Street in New York City. One would think that by eliminating the need for shipping and handling, digital music would have made international distribution easier, but I suspect that the music industry remains bogged down in it's own legal red tape when the top priority should be getting music to whomever wants to hear it, regardless of where they live.

Now that I got what I wanted, I'm once again heeding what my mother used to say: It's always good to share. To that end, I created a YouTube video for "(It Ain't Easy Being) Green" by Shannon McNally so that everyone can hear what all my fuss was about. Is it worth all of the effort it took for me to get it?

Do Famous Women Always Cheat for Love?

"There is a huge gender double standard when it comes to cheating. If you ask me (and you didn't, I realize), it all comes down to the general perception of how men and women have sex. I'm stereotyping and generalizing here, but men need a physical connection. Women need an emotional connection. There's a reason that there's no such thing as Viagra for women. (Well, save for dark chocolate. That might count.) So, perhaps we find it easier to forgive someone who is 'in love' rather than 'in lust' because lust is more fleeting than love."

That's the intelligent and provocative response of one of my favorite bloggers, a woman, to my recent post "What 'Fatal Attraction' Taught Me About Love, Cheating and the Battle of the Sexes 25 Years Later." When I wrote that post, I was referring to men and women in film, not venturing into the realm of reality, in Hollywood or beyond. But today, it's hard not to. Not with Kristen Stewart, 22, ending her long silence about the nature of her relationship with her Twilight costar Robert Pattinson, 26, by announcing to the entire world that she cheated on him.

I mean, what straight celebrity comes out like this? Who finally acknowledges that she has indeed been involved with a costar for several years by issuing an official statement apologizing for cheating on him (in Stewart's case, with Rupert Sanders, 41, the married director of her recent film Snow White & the Huntsman)? I would have put my money on a tryst with her Snow White costar Chris Hemsworth, as most of the tabloids previously had, which adds to the intrigue.

Was her intention to protect her public image while humiliating Pattinson even further? Or perhaps she felt she had no other choice since Us Weekly -- a magazine for which I was a senior editor for two years -- slapped her and Sanders on the cover and ran pictures of them engaging in something far more intimate than acceptable boss-employee rapport.

"I'm deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I've caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected. This momentary indiscretion has jeopardized the most important thing in my life, the person I love and respect the most, Rob. I love him, I love him, I'm so sorry."

So wrote Stewart in her statement, and she's not the first famous woman to feel that way. Women in Hollywood have been not standing my their men for decades, as I pointed out two years ago in the post "Do Famous Women Cheat?". In 1949, when Ingrid Bergman, then married to Petter Lindstrom, had an affair with director Roberto Rossellini (and got pregnant, too!), she became persona non grata in Hollywood and went into self-imposed exile for seven years. Upon her return, she won the second of three Oscars, Best Actress for 1956's Anastasia, and was greeted like a homecoming queen.

When Elizabeth Taylor dumped Eddie Fischer for Richard Burton after an affair on the set of the 1963 film Cleopatra, she launched one of Hollywood's greatest love stories ever told (onscreen or off), somehow managing to sidestep any major professional repercussions. Times had changed in Hollywood.

Meg Ryan's career nosedived following her fling with Russell Crowe on the set of 2000's Proof of Life, but that had more to do with poor professional choices on her part than bad choices in her marriage to Dennis Quaid. In 2002, Jennifer Lopez upgraded from hubby Cris Judd to Ben Affleck and became an even bigger superstar. More recently, Tori Spelling and LeAnn Rimes have found that there is indeed life after cheating on their husbands with married men. Spelling even got her own short-lived reality TV series, 2006's So NoTORIous, out of it.

Though Rimes did receive some flack when Self magazine put her on the October 2010 cover (How dare they after Rimes left her husband for actor Eddie Cibrian, a married man?), prompting the editor-in-chief to apologize in an email to subscribers, none of these women had to/will have to spend the rest of their careers wearing a scarlet letter (A is for Adulteress). And as far as I know, none of them went into damage-control mode by issuing a public mea culpa as quickly as Stewart did.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but from where I'm sitting (and typing), Stewart actually isn't looking so bad. Not that I'm condoning on-the-set affairs (though I must wonder, what do Hollywood couples expect when actors and actresses spend so much time on movie sets, away from significant others, in close quarters with temptation?), but for the first time ever, I actually find Stewart kind of interesting. Not only because she's human like the rest of us, but because I'm not 100 percent convinced that her public apology was entirely well-intentioned. (Poor Rob!) She's not so snow white, after all!

As I pondered my reaction, it hit me: Oh my God, I'm doing it, too! Would my reaction to this story be the same if Pattinson had been the one caught on camera with his hands in another woman's goodies jar? I doubt that this will have much of a negative effect on Stewart's career. She'll get tons of coverage in the weekly tabloid magazines, and by extension her next films, On the Road and Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2, will get a huge profile boost. Not that the latter needed one.

I'm fairly certain that if Pattinson were walking in Stewart's stilettos, he'd be in a far worse place professionally. Any actor would be. Perhaps it's because when men cheat, they tend to do it so much more flagrantly and tastelessly (see Jude Law and the nanny, Sandra Bullock's ex, Tiger Woods, John Edwards, and too many others to list). Women tend to go about their indiscretions less shamelessly, though I'm not sure why Stewart and Sanders didn't just get a room -- and stay in it! -- and why attached Hollywood women almost always seem to go for married men.

But does Stewart deserve the pardon that fictional female cheaters always seem to get? From the coverage I've seen thus far (and from her carefully worded statement, if we are to take it at face value), there is nothing that would indicate that Stewart and Sanders' "momentary indiscretion" -- her words, not mine -- was about much more than sex.

At least Bergman, Taylor, Spelling and Rimes married the guys with whom they cheated. If Stewart is not in love with Sanders, did she wreck her relationship with one of the most desirable guys in movies -- and, presumably, Sanders' marriage -- just for sex? And will the public forgive her for cheating if it wasn't all about love? Stay tuned. Hollywood's battle of the sexes is about to get a lot more interesting.

"Can You Forgive Her?" Pet Shop Boys

Death Music: Songs About the End

Let's talk about the three Ds: dying, dead and death. (Ooh, let the fun and games begin, right?)

I have such a complicated relationship with them. If we're talking dead, as in not being alive, as opposed to death, the moment when life ends, I'm good. I figure that being dead must be a lot like sleeping. As long as I don't see it coming, there's nothing to fear but fear itself -- and a corpse that isn't discovered until days, or weeks, later.

Which brings us to the moments before when life ends, which is an entirely different and terrifying beast. I probably spend an unhealthy, inordinate amount of time wondering and worrying about it. A palm reader once told me that I will live a lengthy life that will end in a prolonged illness. I'm not sure how I feel about the prospect of living past 78, but I'd definitely pass on the long goodbye. Now I get to spend the rest of my life not looking forward to an extended farewell tour.

And then what?

My brother and I recently had the most morbid conversation about songs we'd like to have played at our funeral. At one point, I was set on Sarah Brightman's version of "Time to Say Goodbye" (her solo version, without Andra Bocelli), but now I think I'd prefer for the funeral planner to surprise me.

To be completely honest, though, I'd rather skip the funeral entirely and head straight to the afterlife, not that I'm 100 percent convinced that there's going to be one. You know, I hate goodbyes, and if I'm going to spend months before I expire saying them, I'd rather just rest in peace and quiet than have to lie still through yet another round of them. But if there's music involved, I'll reconsider. I may not be able to dance to it, but half the fun of having a party is in planning the soundtrack.

During that same conversation with my brother, he suggested that I do a post on goodbye songs. I haven't gotten around to it as of yet, though I did include three "goodbye" songs in another post a few months ago. For now, I guess that this -- my personal death wish playlist -- comes close enough, for what is death but the ultimate, and final, goodbye?

"Death's Door" Depeche Mode "Death is everywhere, there are flies on the windscreen for a start..." Oops, wrong song. This is an even better song, from the 1991 Until the End of the World soundtrack, an essential death album and until Trainspotting came along five years later, my favorite soundtrack of the '90s.

"Days" Elvis Costello More doom and gloom from Until the End of the World.

  
"The First to Leave" Elvis Costello/The Brodsky Quartet Costello was on some death roll in the early '90s, wasn't he? A standout from The Juliet Letters, 1993's excellent chamber-pop experiment.

"What's Good" Lou Reed The crowning achievement of Until the End of the World's death triple.

"Cemetery Gates" The Smiths A bit of gallows humor to liven up the most morbid date ever.

"Dead" Pixies The messy, sonic flip side to resting in peace.

"El Paso" Marty Robbins Perhaps my earliest exposure to death. As a kid, I never wanted the song to end because it's a great song, and because, well, I knew exactly how it was going to end.

"John and Elvis Are Dead" George Michael Not quite as affecting as Elton John's "Empty Garden" (look, Ma, no tears), but right up there.

  
"Gone Again" Patti Smith Two years after the 1994 death of her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith (who, incidentally, was her duet partner on Until the End of the World's "It Takes Time"), the Godmother of Punk returned with one of the most cathartic bracing rockers of her life, co-written with Fred.

"Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park" Cowboy Junkies The 1992 song (from Black Eyed Man) that presaged my current obsession with crime-time TV. I saw Cowboy Junkies at the Beacon Theater in New York City when the band was touring behind Black Eyed Man, and John F. Kennedy Jr. (R.I.P.) was in the audience, which makes this song, which Cowboy Junkies performed that night, even creepier to listen to today. (Pardon the lo-fi video below -- I couldn't find any studio versions on YouTube -- and just buy the album.)

Can Florence + the Machine Survive Calvin Harris?

The last time I was in London, my friend Andy and I had a minor disagreement over Florence + the Machine. It was March of 2010, and Florence had just gotten into the UK Top 5 for the first time with "You've Got the Love." Andy insisted that Florence's remake was superior to the song that it covered, The Source featuring Candi Staton's "You Got the Love," which hit the UK Top 10 three times between 1991 and 2006 and was the last thing we heard at the end of the Sex and the City series finale in 2004. (I bought the Now Voyager Mix, the version used in SATC, during a trip to London in 1997 when it was in the Top 5 for the second time.)

I believe Andy's exact words were "Florence's version has more soul."

What?! Was he kidding me? More soulful than Candi Staton?

But the more I listened to the two versions back to back, the more I understood where Andy was coming from (though I still prefer Staton's more restrained approach, which makes her version sound more like a prayer and less like a love song). Despite, the newly grammatically correct title, Florence had a lot of soul. This Florence girl, I thought, must have some future ahead of her to even come close to out-souling someone like Staton, a gospel and disco legend who had a massive 1976 disco hit with "Young Hearts Run Free," and has been going strong ever since, though often too far below the radar.

This week I'm having another Florence + the Machine debate, this time with myself. The band, which is technically British singer-songwriter Florence Welch under an assumed group name, recently scored its first No. 1 UK single with "Spectrum," but it comes with strings attached. The version that's currently No. 1 for the second week isn't the original that appears on Ceremonials, Florence's second album, but a Calvin Harris remix re-titled "Spectrum (Say My Name)."

My first reaction was that Calvin Harris took the original track, slapped one of those generic dance beats onto its bottom, and watched it soar 103 notches to the top. So what? And then there was the similarity between the newly added subtitle and the title of Cheryl Cole's recent No. 1 single, "Call My Name," which was produced by Harris. I love Cole's song, but I never asked to hear Florence and the Machine in such a setting.

The more I listened to "Spectrum," though, alternating between the remix and the original, the more I started to get it. While the remix sacrifices some of that spacey, free-flowing thing that, for many, is a large part of Florence's charm, those very same qualities are why I like her music more than I love it. She's a great singer and certainly an interesting one, but her songs have a meandering shapelessness that causes my mind to wander, no matter how much yelping and shrieking she does.

Harris's remix tightens up the track to a brisk 3:38 (the original is 5:11), making it more palatable and far less "Dog Days Are Over." By extending the driving beat to the verses, he provides a dramatic musical counterpoint to Florence's lower-register vocals while building momentum throughout the entire song. Musically, Harris's work here is not as magical and inspired as his contribution to "We Found Love," his recent collaboration with Rihanna, but then, nothing he's done since, including his solo hit Feels So Close," is.

"Spectrum (Say My Name)" is more on par with "Missing," the 1994 Everything But the Girl track that Todd Terry remixed into an international smash. The success of Terry's reworking of "Missing" led Everything But the Girl down a new sonic path, which resulted in some of the duo's best work.

If having a No. 1 hit ends up having a similar effect on Welch's music, I'm all for it. The last thing pop needs is another dance diva, but for an artist as out there as Florence, sometimes the most daring thing you can do is get with the beat (without handing over your identity completely -- see Nicki Minaj). I was always disappointed that after Armand Van Helden's dance overhaul of Tori Amos's "Professional Widow," which sent that Boys for Pele track to UK No. 1 in 1996, Amos didn't choose to explore that path further.

Hopefully, Florence will. Now I'm even more excited to hear what she does next.

Moving Music: Songs That Make Me Cry Like a Baby

Here come those tears again. No, not the 1977 Jackson Browne song, the real stuff.

They've been coming out in squirts for a couple of days now, ever since I began writing a 2,000-word freelance essay on Elton John. Instead of whistling while I work, I've been listening to music, his music, remembering how much I've always loved his sad songs -- they say so much, and they're so so good. I've been crying, too. Not sobbing uncontrollably, or even weeping. Just tearing up. A little. On and off and on again.

It's fitting that I'm losing it over Elton John songs right now ("Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters," "Curtains," "Sacrifice," and too many others to list) because he was actually the first singer to make me cry. The year was 1982, and the song was "Empty Garden," John's post-mortem tribute to his fallen friend John Lennon. I don't think I've been able to listen to the song since without getting a little wet around the eyes.

Some might call me a big cry baby, and once upon a time, they would have been right. Back when I was a kid, I'd cry over anything. I must have used up all my tears because I rarely cry over everyday life as an adult. Sometimes I dream that terrible things are happening to me, and I can't bring myself to the point of tears.

It's a recurring nightmare that's actually based on reality. One Sunday morning in 2001, I received an early wake-up call from the NYPD. They wanted me to come down to the Gramercy Park station to answer a few questions. When I arrived, they told me that one of my best friends, from whom I'd been estranged since we'd had a huge blowout over the 4th of July on Fire Island a month earlier, had been murdered in his apartment the Friday night before.

I wasn't surprised. He was probably the most reckless person I'd ever known, and although I wasn't expecting it to come to that, I always knew that it wouldn't end well for him. As the cop broke the sad news ("I'm afraid your friend is no longer with us," he said), I felt sorrow start to well in my eyes. But my internal faucet must have been malfunctioning. Nothing actually came out.

I panicked because I knew I was a suspect (along with anyone linked to the phone numbers in his mobile phone, which was how the police had been able to contact me), and I'd seen enough police procedurals to know that the friend who doesn't cry always gets the blame -- at least, initially. Even without any tears on my part, the cop must have thought that I seemed appropriately upset, which was an understatement for what was going on inside of me. I've never really gotten over my friend's death, nor have I, to this day, shed a tear over it.

"Jeremy, when was the last time you cried?" a friend asked me several years ago when she was visiting me in Buenos Aires from L.A. "I can't imagine you ever crying." Does she know me or what? I thought to myself. I can count on one hand, with a few fingers left over, the number of times that a real-life incident has made me cry since I reached adulthood. Movies move me but with a few exceptions (Trois Couleurs: Bleu and Interiors are the two that immediately come to mind), rarely to tears, and aside from those creepily effective voice overs at the end of each episode of Desperate Housewives, nothing on TV does either.

Oh, but when I hear music! I should have told my visiting friend that I probably cried the last time I listened to a good tear-jerker, but I was too busy thinking about the lost friend I never cried for, and those devastating dreams in which I never weep. Maybe what all of life's saddest moments need is a really moving soundtrack because songs always seem to take me there. Here are some of the repeat offenders.

"Only Human" Dina Carroll If you've ever had the displeasure of watching someone you love's rear view as he, or she, walks out of your life, you know exactly what Dina's talking about.

"Something So Right" Annie Lennox In Lennox's hands, Paul Simon's song about withholding emotions always makes me lose control of mine.

"Making Love" Roberta Flack Aside from it being the first time I ever saw two men kiss onscreen, I can remember very little about the 1982 film Making Love other than Kate Jackson without her Charlie's Angels halo, a post-Clash of the Titans/pre-L.A. Law Harry Hamlin, and Roberta Flack, killing me softly with her song, the movie's love theme.

"The Windows of the World" Dionne Warwick I'm generally immune to the emotional manipulation of your average state-of-the-world pop song (love "We Are the World," wouldn't shed a teardrop over it), but then, Warwick is not your average singer.

"I Still Love You" Terence Trent D'Arby Here's the thing: I rarely mourn the end of a romance with tears -- until a great song comes on that makes it impossible for me to think of anything else.

"Immigrant" Sade I once spent part of a London-to-Paris train ride listening to this song from Sade's Lover Rock (the perfect soundtrack for an an album-long crying fit, if ever there was one), trying to hide the tears running down my face. Why? It's a gorgeous song, and this sort of thing still happens, you know.

"Wouldn't That Be Fine" Nanci Griffith I never cry over spilt milk, but what ifs are such an emotional landmine.

"Long Distance Lover" The O'Jays The song that was playing on repeat on my Discman (yes, for me, this was still pre-iPod) as I walked to the police station that sunny Sunday morning in August 2001.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major (The Second Movement) Would The King's Speech have won last year's Best Picture Oscar without it?

What Women Want: Should I Believe Anything I See on "The Real Housewives of New York City"?

I thought I'd learned pretty much all there is to know about women (on a strictly platonic level, naturally)?

I grew up surrounded by them: my mother, my sister, my female friends, girl singers, and women on TV and in movies. For most of my life, women have been the foundation, my rock, my solid ground when I've been veering off-path and into quicksand, trying to maintain my balance and some semblance of order in my wobbly life. In short, women rock -- on and offstage.

But I'm beginning to wonder, what do I really know about the fairer sex? After all, I'm a man. Gay though I may be, I'm still from Mars, far from the planet, Venus, that women call home. And we always treat visitors differently than we do those living under the same roof. Do my girlfriends treat me differently than they treat each other? Does anyone ever really know what it feels like for a girl unless you're one, too?

These are the thoughts and questions that run through my mind as I watch The Real Housewives of New York City. For years, I'd avoided watching the show, until one recent night I slipped and caught a 2010 season 3 episode on Bangkok's Sony Channel (as with so many syndicated programs on the network, it's running two years behind). It was like a multiple-train wreck. I couldn't turn away.

It would be so easy to dedicate an entire blog post to each one of the housewives -- except for maybe Kelly, who must have gotten on the show because she's hot and looks like a poor woman's Denise Richards -- but in my head, for some reason, I always come back to LuAnn. She's beautiful, she's sexy, she's got a great voice (speaking, not singing), and she must be the most infuriating woman on Planet Housewife. Could this possibly be what female friendship is all about?

In the episodes that I've seen, LuAnn always seems to be berating someone, in the most passive-aggressive way possible, or carping behind someone's back, for not living up to her social standards. In one B-roll segment, the now-departed Bethenny (my favorite, because she at least owns her crazy) complained that LuAnn hadn't paid her way for some surfing excursion they went on together. LuAnn was livid, not so much over the money (in her mind, since it was Bethenny's idea to go surfing, or whatever, Bethenny deserved to be stuck with the tab), but because she didn't want to feel like every time she turns her back, Bethenny will be saying something "snarky" (such a New York city word!) about her.

But isn't that what they all do? I swear, I'll be watching a perfectly pleasant scene where two or more women are playing nice and semi-bonding, then they'll cut to the B roll, and the claws come out. I watch and wonder: Are these women just a special breed of petty and disloyal, or is this what women do? When they look each other up and down, are they just looking for something to criticize? What do they want: real human friendships, or loyal subjects and ego boosts?

Male friendships, even ones between gay men, are different. We simply don't spend so much time thinking -- or talking about each other. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe I don't know my male friends at all. It's possible that every time I walk out of a room, they start aiming the daggers right at my back. But as far as I know, men don't really size each other up unless they're going to have sex.

In the history of male friendship, I can't imagine that one guy has ever said to another, "But I just want to know that when I leave the room you aren't saying snarky things about me?" I don't really want people saying terrible things about me when I exit stage left, but I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it, or spend an entire hour-long episode of my life dwelling on it, or start crossing people off the guest list at the door to my circle of friends.

Then there was LuAnn vs. Ramona. It really should have been LuAnn vs. Ramona's husband Mario, but why go after the guy when you can bitch at another woman? LuAnn, who apparently fancies herself a countess of some sort, got upset with Mario because at some event, he made an under-his-breath crack about her, calling her a "countless." LuAnn didn't find it funny, and neither did I. Not because it's offensive, but because it's dumb. I couldn't imagine giving such a bad joke a second thought, but LuAnn harped on it for an entire episode. Rather than taking it up with Mario immediately, she picked a fight with Ramona well after the fact... on a yacht. Over "countless"!

What did she expect the woman to do? Call up her husband and scold him for hurting the feelings of her "friend"? And I have to ask, if the wife of a male friend had made such a crack, would she have fretted to her male friend, or gone straight to the source, the woman? Something tells me there would have been a catfight of epic proportions, which would have been a lot more enjoyable than the scenes that played out between two middle-aged women on a yacht who were acting like they were back in fourth grade.

I'm not saying that men make better friends. Au contraire, I actually think that women do -- particularly if you're a guy like me, gay, and therefore capable of having a relationship with them that's uncomplicated by sex and sexuality. Women feel more, they react more, in good times and in bad. When my chips are down, I want to be surrounded by my female friends. And when they are up, too.

But can women say the same thing about each other? "We hate it when our friends become successful," Morrissey once sang (on a song that I never particularly loved.) Well, I wonder, was he was singing about how women are with other women? If Bethenny is a Morrissey fan, I'm sure she thinks of Jill whenever she hears the song.

When my female friends complain to me about each other, the gripe, or explanation for whatever misdeed, I probably hear most is "She's just jealous. She can't handle it when things are going well for me" -- and sometimes I think they might be right. That said, I've never gotten the impression from any of my female friends that "misery loves company" in relation to me. Does that apply, though, when they're dealing with each other?

If I'm to believe everything I see on The Real Housewives of New York City, with women, a friend who has a friend in need is a friend indeed. But give her a cute, successful mate when her friends' romantic lives are either falling apart, stagnant, or non-existent, or put her slamming body in a skimpy bikini, and she should just consider herself a friend who's out in the cold, with everyone whispering about her on the other side of the door.

Whether this is based on reality (and not just expert editing and an extremely well-acted script), I'll let women work it out amongst themselves. Like most of the husbands on The Real Housewives of New York City, I'm staying out of it.

What's Her Age Again?: Why A-List Hollywood Actresses Are Getting Younger Every Decade

The other day while I was watching the American Film Institute's 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award tribute to Shirley MacLaine, I couldn't get a certain number out of my head.

78!

No, that's not the number of times the Universal Channel will probably air the show in Bangkok before finally giving it a rest. It's the number I came up with when a voice over revealed MacLaine's birthday (April 24, 1934) early in the show, and I did the math. How could she possibly be only 78?

It's not that she looks older, and the year of her film debut (1955, in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry) would certainly put her in that chronological vicinity, but wasn't she already middle-aged, like, a lifetime ago? Did we all rejoin her in one of her next lives, already in progress?

The first time I ever saw MacLaine, playing an ex-ballerina stage mom in 1977's The Turning Point, which I watched on HBO in 1978, she was already middle-aged. At the time of the film's release, she was 43, the age Jennifer Aniston is now, but could anyone imagine Jenn (who, by the way, played MacLaine's granddaughter in 2005's Rumor Has It...) as the mother of an actress the same age, 20, that Leslie Browne (who played MacLaine's daughter in The Turning Point and earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination) was then?

MacLaine was on the cusp of turning 35 when Sweet Charity was released in 1969, and just eight years later, she was already typecast as mom, a role for which she would finally win an Oscar six years later, at age 49, playing the mother of Debra Winger, then 28, in Terms of Endearment. Does anyone think that by 2019, Reese Witherspoon, now 36, will be playing the mother of a 20ish actress?

Years ago, when I first watched the Katharine Hepburn movie Summertime, which was released in 1955 when Hepburn was 48, I remember feeling a twinge of pity for Hepburn's character, because, well, who wants to be almost 50 and all alone in the city of love? It gave the film a certain pathos that I don't think director David Lean necessarily intended it to have. (What did I know? The closer I get to being 48 myself, the less I focus on her age and the more I think, Lucky girl! She's in Venice!)

If Julianne Moore were to be cast in a similar role today, anyone who doesn't know her age (51) could conceivably peg her as 35, the age she played eight years ago in Laws of Attraction. Men have always gone for leading ladies who are young enough to be their daughters, which might be why it was such a shocker to recently see Robert DeNiro, 68, in bed with Jacki Weaver, who's 65 and looks it, in the trailer for The Silver Linings Playbook. Now the leading ladies are going younger, too.

In 2009's The Proposal, Sandra Bullock, then 45, fell for Ryan Reynolds, then 33, and their age difference wasn't even written into the script. Interestingly, that same year she played the foster/adoptive mother of a high school football star and won an Oscar for her efforts. But would anyone cast her as the mother of Carey Mulligan, who, at 27, is certainly young enough to be her daughter? They'd probably give that role to Melissa Leo, 51 -- who already won her Oscar for being mom to Mark Wahlberg, 41, and Christian Bale, 38 -- or some other actress who doesn't have an eternally youthful image to uphold (see Hollywood's B-to-Z list).

Actresses have long complained about how few roles there are for women over 40, but I'd say that part of it might be because so few of them are passing for women over 40. You can pin some of the blame on changing fashion, too much plastic surgery, too much Botox, and too many yoga and Pilates sessions. But I'd put even more of it on the unwillingness of many A-list actresses of a certain caliber to go gently into that good dusk, the golden middle age -- especially when grown children are involved.

It might be fashionable today to play the cougar, the older woman bedding the younger guy -- a role assumed in recent years by the likes of Cate Blanchett (in Notes on a Scandal), Uma Thurman (in Prime), Kate Winslet (in The Reader), Catherine Zeta-Jones (in The Rebound) and Michelle Williams (in My Week with Marilyn) -- but the actress who is robbing the cradle, so to speak, is generally perceived as being hot enough to land a guy any age, and if she's playing a character with kids, they're usually well under driving age.

When French actress Simone Signoret fell for younger guy Laurence Harvey in 1959's Room at the Top (winning a well-deserved Oscar in the process), not only was she presented as being kind of over the hill and desperate, a thoroughly tragic figure, but at 38, she was only some seven years older than Laurence! Would any director today dream of casting Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, 36, and Ryan Gosling, 31, in a remake? Would Cotillard take the "older-woman" role opposite an actor so close to her age? If Steven Soderbergh were directing, probably, but would anyone buy it?

Later this year, Kristin Scott Thomas, 51, whose 2012 leading men have included Robert Pattinson, 26, and Ewan McGregor, 41, will add Gosling to her list in Only God Forgives, Gosling's reunion with Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn. "At my ripe old age, I'm getting these fantastic leading men," Scott Thomas told me earlier this year when I interviewed her in Bangkok, where the film was shot. But, she added, "I am playing his mother." Hopefully, she'll be handsomely rewarded -- with an Oscar nomination? -- for acting her age.

Charlize Theron, 36, won plaudits (but no Oscar nod) for acting her age last year in Young Adult. Well, kind of. Although her character, Mavis Gary was 37 years old and competing with a grown woman (played by Elizabeth Reaser, 37) for the attention of her college boyfriend, Mavis was a childless former beauty queen who could have passed for 29 even if she hadn't been acting more like 19. This year, in Snow White and the Huntsmen (which could almost be seen as an allegory for aging in Holllywood), Theron's onscreen competition is Kristen Stewart, 22.

Sarah Jessica Parker did entire episodes of Sex and the City about competing with twentysomething women, but she's still acting like she's not that much older than one. Over the course of six seasons on Sex and the City, she proved herself capable of playing more than light romantic comedy, yet she can't seem to get out of the city and out of her thirties. She's 47 now. It's time for her to stretch. She'll never be Meryl Streep, but I'd hate to see her turn into Meg Ryan, evidence of the damage that trying to be forever young can do to a career -- and a face.

Even Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth. Instead he stumbled upon Florida, a state now best known for being the final resting place for retirees. Draw your own conclusions.

3 Songs I'll Probably Be Listening to All Day Today

What is it with short-lived TV shows?

Why are so many of them airing on Bangkok TV long after they were cancelled in their countries of origin? And why are they where I seem to be hearing so much of the new old music that I'm loving these days? I can't hardly wait to hear what I discover next on the Thursday episode of Ringer. Until then, I'll likely be obsessing over "Heartbreaker" by Jenn Grant (in between spins of Steve Winwood's Chronicles, from 1987, and Rumer's Boys Don't Cry, the UK singer-songwriter's recent album of covers of '70s songs written by men that features some of the best new old music I've heard all year).

I first heard Grant's song from her 2009 album Echoes yesterday as the closing credits rolled for Shattered, the 2010 Canadian TV series that lasted only an unlucky 13 episodes and airs on Thailand's Universal Channel, and it's been battling Rumer and the best of Winwood for space in my head since then. Why don't I ever hear anything this good during the Sony Channel's umpteen airings of Desperate Housewives on any given Monday?

Add singer-songwriter Grant to my list of reasons why we should all hail Canada!

"Heartbreaker" Jenn Grant

"Home Thoughts from Abroad" Rumer

"Arc of a Diver" Steve Winwood

How I Learned to Stop Hating Acronyms and LOL

Don't be misled by the title of this post: I've been laughing out loud for most of my life. In fact, I do it at least five times a day, sometimes in public, for no apparent reason.

But LOL? I'm afraid that's a relatively new phenomenon for me. I probably would have started doing it much earlier, if I'd known WTH it was. The first time I stumbled upon it was about 15 years ago, at the dawn of the email era, back when "You've got mail" still meant that the postman was at the door. (In this era of Facebook and text messages, how quaint do movies like You've Got Mail and The Postman Always Rings Twice now seem?)

My friend Jason and I had been spending a large part of the work day exchanging emails, thoroughly excited about this novel form of conversation. It was the first time we'd ever communicated with each other when we weren't face to face or talking on the phone, and apparently, Jason had discovered a new side of me, the me that comes out in writing but not necessarily in oral conversation. "Until today, I never had any idea that you were so dry and sarcastic," he wrote shortly before quitting time. "LOL!"

LOL? What is that supposed to mean? I thought. Over the next week, it must have popped up about three times per email. I figured it must involve "love." Back in high school, I remembered all the girls used to write "LYLAS" (for "Love you like a sister") in each other's yearbooks. With Jason, he obviously approved of the "new" me, so it must have been love: Lots of Love? I was confused, though: What's "love" got to do with it? Jason and I were only friends.

It would be more than a decade before I realized that he wasn't expressing love; he was laughing out loud -- with me, not at me, of course. I think I must have been on Facebook when I had my epiphany -- or maybe one of my FB friends explained it to me. I can't remember, and I suppose it doesn't really matter now. All I knew (at the time) was that everyone on Facebook was doing it, which gave me the perfect reason not to.

For a while, I studiously avoided LOL, in much the same way that I refused to stoop to using ":)" and ";)." Those people weren't fooling me. I saw through the way they'd say something kind of bitchy and follow it with "LOL" and/or a smiley face. It was like they were saying, "I'm not trying to be an asshole...smile!"

Eventually, though, I finally gave in, not only because I, too, wanted to be free to be as passive aggressive as I wanted to be. I realized that it was also an excellent time saver and the next best thing to turning on the webcam. Now my friends could read my words and imagine my facial expressions, without having to see what a mess I was looking, and without my having to explain that I was only joking (though I sometimes wasn't). The smiley faces and winks were most useful when I was chatting with my Argentine friends in Buenos Aires. Sarcasm doesn't translate so well in Spanish. People were always misunderstanding me, and a well-placed smiley face was the best way to avoid a fight.

So fucking what?: How did S.F.W. never catch on?

Now I LOL nearly as often as I laugh out loud. I also regularly use GF, BF, BFF, WTH, WTF, BTW, OMG, and TPTB (the latter usually when I'm on the soap boards, where everyone is always referring to "the powers that be"). And although I still have no idea what "SOS" actually stands for, I love the song by ABBA, which, BTW, is one of the most clever acronyms ever. I use smiley faces and winks more sparingly. Yes, in graphic-icon form, they look pretty, and they reveal the spirit in which my words were written, but to overuse them is to risk coming across as trivial.

One has to draw the line somewhere, though, and I draw mine at ROTFL and LMFAO. (I also never use TTYL, BRB and IDK, but not because I have anything against them. I just never get around to them.) It's bad enough that one of the worst pop acts in the history of music has adopted the latter as its moniker, but really, does anyone ever actually roll on the floor laughing? I don't. I've never laughed my fucking as off either, and if I did laugh harder than LOL, I'd probably leave it at LMAO, since I'm still not entirely convinced that "ass" and "fucking" belong together. TMI? (Too much information?)

Last night, thanks to Facebook, I finally discovered the meaning of an acronym that's been puzzling me for a while now: SMH. It's always looked sort of awkward to me, perhaps because it lacks a vowel and doesn't quite roll off the keyboard. I figured it must mean something like "shut my hole," which is even cruder than LMFAO. Almost immediately after I posed the question "What does SMH mean?" as my status update, an FB friend responded: "Shaking my head." (If you can shed some light on FTW, FTL and/or IRL, please do!)

Oh, yeah! Why hadn't I thought of that before? Possibly because in everyday life, I shake my head about as seldom as I LMFAO and ROTFL. (I'm prone to headaches, so I avoid unnecessary head movements.) If someone says -- or writes -- something that I find particularly ridiculous, I'm more likely to roll my eyes, which is something I've been doing probably longer than I've been laughing out loud.

Alas, RME looks even more awkward than SMH. It reads like it should be part of a college course listing, not something one does in everyday conversation. But the next time someone feels the need to SMH mid-conversation, RME is exactly what I'll be doing.

10 Music Acronyms That Are So Much Better Than LMFAO

"SOS" ABBA

"OMG"

TLC

SWV

R.E.M.

OMD

ELO

"TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" MSFB

Nature Vs. Nurture Revisited: The Young and the Potentially Murderous

There's a story currently playing out on The Young and the Restless that's totally sucking me in to the otherwise barely watchable daytime soap. It revolves around private investigator Paul Williams (played by Doug Davidson, who should have a shiny new Daytime Emmy Award on his mantle by this time next year), and his now-late son Ricky (played by Peter Porte, who should be regularly popping up in prime time or feature films any month now).

Paul recently shot Ricky in the arm to stop him from killing another character, Eden (unconscious at the time), with one of the scariest-looking knives I've ever seen. Falling backwards, Ricky tumbled through the bathroom window of his hotel room to his death three stories below. I'll spare you the gruesome details and the gaping plot holes, because there are quite a few of both, but for me, the storyline has resurrected an interesting theme -- nature vs. nurture -- one that kept popping up onscreen last year, in moves like We Need to Talk About Kevin and Beautiful Boy.

In the last few Y&R episodes, Paul has been blaming himself not only for his son's death but also for his every misdeed, which includes up to three murders. He's been telling anyone who will listen, including his ex-fiancee and attorney (the same person), that he's a terrible man who probably belongs in prison. He might actually end up there permanently if that scary knife isn't found, or if Eden, now suffering from amnesia following a blackout after hitting her head on the tub in Ricky's bathroom during a tussle with him, doesn't gain back her memory to corroborate Paul's story.

Why is Paul accepting so much blame? Because he was a rotten father. While Ricky was being raised by his maternal grandparents in California (his mother has been in an insane asylum ever since she went after one of Paul's girlfriends -- the ex-fiancee/attorney -- in the bathtub with another scary knife), Paul was in Genoa City, Wisconsin, never seeing his son because he was too busy doing whatever Y&R story dictated.

Thanks to the dictates of his current story, Paul has enough to deal with, almost too much (not to mention, a perfect excuse, should he ever need one, for not making any weekend trips to the West Coast). The prospect of going to prison for first-degree murder -- with which he was formally charged on Friday's episode before being denied bail -- is scary on its own. I can't imagine having that horror compounded by so much grief and guilt. I wouldn't wish the grief-guilt combo of losing a child and feeling responsible for it on the worst father in the world, whom I certainly wouldn't kick when he's down by assigning him responsibility for everything his late child ever did wrong.

Those who contend that we're all a product of our environment, and that our collective experiences make us who we are, would no doubt say that even if Paul is cleared of the murder charge, he's still guilty because he was a crappy father. Guilty of being a crappy father, yes -- there's simply no excuse for being an absentee dad when you've got all the means not to be one -- but not because of it. With a murderous mother (who was played by Eva Longoria, before she became a desperate housewife) and a murderous paternal aunt, both of whom are currently in mental institutions, what hope did poor Ricky have? The odds were pretty much stacked against him from the moment of conception.

Sure he could have turned out to be a model citizen with Paul's guiding light, but who can say for certain? It still may have come down to that messy confrontation in a hotel bathroom. Having children can be like Russian Roulette -- you simply never know what you're getting, or with whom you'll end up. Kids with excellent parental role models sometimes turn out to be criminals, and criminals sometimes produce productive, law-abiding children. In hindsight, most of us had pretty fucked-up childhoods. That's between you and your therapist. But at some point, the actions of grown women and men, which Ricky most certainly was (for proof, Google search or YouTube search "Peter Porte shirtless"), are all on them.

I don't mean to downplay the influence of one's environment, but neither should the influence of nature be underestimated. We're all born with our unique predispositions. Some of them can be effected by our surroundings, others are stronger than the world around us. Siblings raised in the same household with the same parents don't grow up to have the same personalities, or even the same moral fiber. The sons of a man who beats his wife don't all grow up to do the same any more than do Olympian athletes spawn only the same. On Y&R, Paul's sister is locked up, and his brother is a priest!

Hopefully, Paul will eventually stop blaming himself -- for Ricky's murderous activities, not for being a terrible father. But I hope he doesn't get over it too soon. Thanks to his committed performances, I'm enjoying his guilt trip as much as I enjoyed Tilda Swinton's in We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I haven't been so impressed by snot pouring out of an actor's nose since Viola Davis became famous in less than 15 minutes of screen time in Doubt. Come to think of it, she was dealing with a troubled son, too, and totally screwing up cause and effect.

Let this be a lesson to all the parents out there who are taking on too much, including the actions of their kids. The applicable idea is not so much nature vs. nurture as it is nature working with nurture to determine who we are and how we act. Sometimes the best that you can do as a mom or dad is nurture your kids as much as you can, set an excellent example, and then sit back and let nature do her thing.

Songs We Used to Sing (And Still Do): In Defense of Pop Music from the '70s

Click on just about any YouTube video of a pop, R&B, or country hit released in the previous century, and you're almost certain to come across multiple comments extolling the superior music from back in the day, and damning today's shallow, mindless pop pap.

Is vacuous pop music killing the industry?

It depends on how you look at it and what you like. To the millions of people who've embraced and downloaded Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," probably not. I mean, how can a song that's sold 4.3 million copies be accused of hurting the industry? Without such big, vacuous hits, there would be no industry. So in a sense, these songs are actually keeping the industry alive.

But what's the meaning of life if the main purpose of it is to make money, not to leave behind a legacy with some merit or value that isn't completely crassly commercial? According to a recent article on Billboard.biz -- "Vacuous Pop Music Was Never the Problem" -- there's never been much meaning to pop life or pop music, at least not the kind that sells well.

"But the truth is," the article claims, "most pop music hasn't aged well." It goes on to list the Top 3 songs of 1976 -- Wings' "Silly Love Songs," Elton John and Kiki Dee's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," and Johnny Taylor's "Disco Lady" as back-up. It then goes on to cite Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a benchmark of quality pop in 1976 that ranked at a dismal (to them) No. 18 among the top 100 songs of 1976

"Bohemian Rhapsody" might not have even entered the discussion had it not been for RouteNoteblog, which compared it to Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)," which I suppose now represents the epitome of modern pop. RouteNoteblog's complaint: It only took one writer and one producer to create the Queen classic as opposed to the virtual community (six writers, four producers) credited on Beyonce's 2011 single.

Oh, the problems with RouteNoteblog's faulty comparison -- and so many of the points made in the Billboard.biz article!

First of all, being the No. 18 song of any year is a huge honor. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a massive hit in the '70s (No. 1 UK, No. 9 U.S.), and it became an even bigger hit in the '90s after lead singer Freddie Mercury's death in 1991 (No. 1 UK) and when it appeared in the 1992 film Wayne's World (No. 2 U.S.). I can't imagine a high-quality song that goes so far against the grain being so popular today.

Second, commercially speaking, there really is no comparison between "Run the World (Girls)" and "Bohemian Rhapsody." The latter was a Top 10 single upon its initial release, and only 17 songs did better among Billboard's top 100 singles of 1976. That's a pretty big accomplishment for a song that was so out there at the time. "Run the World (Girls)," in contrast, peaked at No. 29 on the Hot 100, and many cite the weak kick-off single as the primary reason that Beyonce's 4 album did not do well. It's hardly the prime example of what sells in the 2010s.

As for the vacuous greatest hits of 1976, I think the Billboard writer is way off. Paul McCartney, Elton John and Johnnie Taylor are legends in their respective genres, and although those three No. 1 hits are indeed fast-food pop, McDonald's today doesn't taste quite the same as it did in the '70s. Regardless of what you think of "Silly Love Songs," "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Disco Lady," they are enduring classics that remain as beloved today as they were 35 years ago, perhaps even more so.

In the year 2047, will anyone be singing anything by Taio Cruz, or Flo Rida's "Wild Ones," or even "Call Me Maybe"? Adele's "Someone Like You," yes. Gotye's "Someone That I Used to Love," possibly. "fun.'s "We Are Young," possibly not. But I suspect that I'll see Carly Rae Jepsen and all the hits she manages to scrounge up before disappearing into oblivion fade from everyone's memory by the time I die -- or well before I turn 50!

And don't get me started on the article's dismissal of disco, the '70s genre that gave us Donna Summer, Barry White and Chic!

The one good point the article does make is the idea that it takes a village to create a hit nowadays. I think this is partly the result of technology. In the '70s, people had to be in the studio together when they were recording. Nowadays, you can pass tapes around from producer to producer on various continents and cobble together something that features input from numerous people but is hardly the vision of any one of them.

Then they all demand a songwriting credit! Also, with songwriting, you have powerful performers like, well, Beyonce, who demand a credit even when her input might be limited to changing a single word on one of the verses. Let's not forget the rampant use of samples today either. They further pad the list of songwriters for any given song.

So yes, there always has been vacuous disposable pop, but vacuous disposable pop from the '70s and '80s was a lot sturdier and more durable than vacuous disposable pop from the '90s on. If you want to hear proof, just listen to Billboard's top 100 singles of 1976 and the top 100 singles of 2006. Aside from the aforementioned songs, the 1976 hit list contains iconic songs by iconic artists like the Four Seasons, the Miracles, Paul Simon, Barry Manilow, and Diana Ross.

Meanwhile, every single on it lives on today (UK singer-songwriter Rumer just covered Hall and Oates' "Sara Smile" on her current Boys Don't Cry album), if not as a classic, in infamy. The most ridiculed song on the chart, Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" at No. 17, remains a pop classic, and Starland Vocal Band is recognized today as having pretty much defined the idea of the one-hit wonder. (Incidentally, five years later, "General Hospi-tale" would be the lone Top 40 hit for an act called the Afternoon Delight.)

Flashing forward 30 years, not only was the 2006 list led by a one-hit wonder, "Bad Day" singer Daniel Powter, but I can barely remember at least a quarter of the songs -- "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone, "Grillz" by Nelly, Paul Wall and Ali & Gipp, "Over My Head (Cable Car)" by the Fray, "It's Goin' Down" by Yung Joc and Nitti, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" by Panic! At the Disco -- and 2006 was only six years ago. If you were music then or now, wouldn't you rather be a silly love song than "Promiscuous" or "So Sick."

Long live '70s pop!

"Kiss and Say Goodbye" The Manhattans (No. 6 of 1976)

"Love Is Alive" Gary Wright (No. 9 of 1976)

"Misty Blue" Dorothy Moore (No. 19 of 1976)