Lemme be serious for a minute. So I’m in the car driving to work a couple months back and I’ve got Z100’s morning show on because I, like so many working stiffs before me, need things to be dumbed the fuck down on a Monday morning. Anyway, Miley Cyrus comes on the radio. The song is “Party in the USA.” It’s infinitely catchy and infinitely disposable. But that’s not why it’s important -which it clearly is.

I said I was going to be serious, and trust me I am. Just follow the bouncing ball/flaming skull harbinger of apocalypse.These are the lyrics to Party in the USA if you were to buy it on iTunes or acquire it in a similarly unclever way in which a fool and his money were parted:

 The taxi man turns on the Radio and a Jay-Z song was on… and a Jay-Z song was on… and a Jay-Z song was ON.

The morning that I heard it on the radio, however, the lyrics were different.

 The taxi man turns on the Radio and Z100’s on… and Z100’s on… and Z100’s ON.

Frankly, I wish I could say I was more surprised than I was but I’ve come to expect gross -emphasis on the ick- commercialism in popular music. Don’t let my jaded apathy dull the point though. This is terrifying stuff. When a song can be formatted to fit the listener’s needs, the world is indeed looking more and more like the shiny future of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report where advertisements show you what you need based on who you are, where you are, and how you acquire things. Mind you this isn’t a live recording, this was tailor made for the station and mixed into the studio recording.

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Forgive the visual pun but I simply have to say it. There’s no way to act in a film without getting your hands dirty (or bloody as the case may be.) I recently acted the lead in my friend’s short horror/romantic comedy genre-straddler The Courtship of Ronson Crumb and it ruined me emotionally and physically for hours at a time.

Guys, let me start off by saying that I do not claim to be an actor. I have never studied acting. I’m not even sure I know what “acting” is. For a long time I believed what an actor friend of mine told me: Acting is lying. To be a good actor you have to be a good liar. Well, it didn’t take long into the shoot for me to realize that this, like the Abominable Snowman before it, was horse feathers.

From my limited experience playing a delusional psychopath I have come to the conclusion that acting is not lying. Acting is far more similar to telling the truth.

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