Word: pops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...worst. But rather than self-pitying, the tale of how Mom launched her misbehaving son's drug problems by dosing him with Valium turns out to be tragic, squirm-inducing and funny: "All right, Ma, you win, I don't feel like arguin'/ I'll do it, pop and gobble it and start wobbling/ Stumble, hobble, tumble, slip, drip, then I fall in bed/ With a bottle of meds." It goes without saying that "My Mom" and "Insane" - the latter about the sexual abuse dished out by a nasty stepfather - are horrible and more graphic than they need...
...aging chanteuse in his paean to theatrical longevity, "I'm Still Here," Sondheim has survived through musical vogues and eras. The Broadway where he started out in the '50s is no more. Once the majority of Broadway audiences were New Yorkers; now they are mostly tourists. Rock and pop have moved into the mainstream, edging out movie and show tunes as the world's musical lingua franca. Sondheim's not bitter: "Pop made people listen to lyrics more." He is regretful, though, that orchestras have shrunk - no new Sondheim show has had a full orchestra since 1981, and as smart...
...spoofing is bright, not dark. And with a well-chosen sound track and arch comedy, the pilot is just a giant basket of happy. If Murphy can flesh out the overly broad characters, this series could be a rare, sophisticated, joyous hybrid that gets to have its pop candy and satirize it too. As Randy Jackson might say, Glee's early tone is a tad pitchy. But this show works it out, dawg...
...show with the most explicit cultural politics is 18 Kids, whose Duggars espouse a pro-life, Evangelical Christianity. (The dad, Jim-Bob, was an Arkansas legislator and ran for Senate in 2002.) They homeschool, reject evolution and eschew pop culture--except Today show visits and their series--and when the kids watch a DVD, an elder daughter puts a hand on the screen to hide a character's immodest dress. Watching Jim-Bob criticize Hollywood moviemaking--"It might make money for companies, but it's not good for individuals"--you're staring at the strange no-man's-land where...
...coils of razor wire glint in the prairie sun like silver tumbleweeds, piled against the chain-link perimeter fence around the Two Rivers Detention Facility in Hardin, Mont. Two years ago, the town (pop. 3,600) celebrated the completion of this $27 million state-of-the-art private prison, capable of holding 464 inmates. Convinced that the facility would provide employment for more than 100 people and a steady source of municipal income, Hardin and a neighboring town issued revenue bonds to finance its construction and turned it over to a for-profit prison-management corporation. On a 40-acre...