I The Behrend Beacon
VHI follows one very
strange relationship
By David Hiltbrand
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
The title "Strange Love" doesn't even
begin to describe it.
VHl's "reality" show, at 9:30 p.m.
EST Sundays, chronicles the garish.
almost inconceivable relationship
between hip-hop pixie Flavor Flay and
statuesque former action star Brigitte
Nielsen.
He's 5-foot-8. She's 6-2. He's from
New York. She's from Rodovre,
Denmark. She speaks six languages. He
has trouble making himself understood
in English. She chain-smokes, even
while dining. He won't touch any kind of
food that isn't readily obtained from a
drive-through window.
About all they have in common is that
he often wears a Viking helmet with
horns while she, as you may have
noticed in such B movies as "Red
Sonja," looks like a genuine Valkyrie.
But together they have chemistry.
Bizarre and volatile, but chemistry
nonetheless. Imagine a Bronx Pepe Le
Pew relentlessly pursuing a Nordic
giraffe.
The first question people always ask
when they see "Strange Love" is: Are
they putting us on? Or do they really care
Ruminations on College Life
By Aaron Karo
(KRT)
Don't you love trying to sneak out of a
class early? You gather all your books so
that they can be easily grabbed and you
move to the edge of your seat. You scan
the aisles to see if there are any back
packs or sleeping kids that might block
your path to the exit. Then you wait for
just the right moment when the professor
turns his back and starts to write on the
board. It's your chance. You grab your
books and tiptoe to the door, making
sure to close it very quietly so as not to
get the professor's attention. You made
it! Freedom! I love college.
Is it OK to take the book you are read
ing in class to the bathroom with you?
Once, I walked out of poly-sci with the
huge textbook under my arm. When I
came back ten minutes later, everyone
was giving me looks. I mean, if you have
to read something while on the can, it
might as well be relevant to the class
you're missing, right?
My friend Jeremy had an interesting
experience with a professor once. He
went to the professor's office hours to
argue for more points on a paper he had
just gotten back. The professor skimmed
the paper, mulled it over for a minute
and then said, "You know what? This
paper is actually worse than I first
thought. I'm going to lower your grade,"
and sent my friend on his way. What a
sucker.
I love when the professor says, "OK,
this next part is not going to be on the
exam but I think you should know it any
way." She might as well say, "OK, for
the next fifteen minutes don't pay atten
tion at all, just do the crossword puzzle
and play Snake on your cell phone while
r I r
:,i
I.' UDENT Li
for each other?
"It's real," insists Mark Cronin, the
show's executive producer, "because
even when we're not filming them, when
they're alone, they are like that all the
time. They really are. They're crazy for
each other. And just plain crazy. It's like
a harmonic convergence of insanity."
In an interview, Flay, 45, the onetime
front man for the seminal rap act Public
Enemy, says, "The relationship I got with
Brigitte is unique and real. It is nothing
phony. Everything is all real."
Making a series with this pair was a
real adventure. It's apparent from how
late both of them were for interviews that
their schedules are at best guesstimates.
"They live by their own clock, so we
had to be really flexible," Cronin says.
"But when you sign up for the gig of fol
lowing these crazy people around, you
have to embrace that."
Having spent all that time with Nielsen
and Flay, Cronin is convinced that their
affection for each other is genuine.
"If they are really faking us all out,
they are brilliant, brilliant actors," he
says. "But the fact is, they're not good
actors."
And "Strange Love" is proof that
fame, even the tattered. faded variety,
conquers all
I ramble on," because that's what we're
going to do anyway.
I took this course once where the pro
fessor smoked a pipe during class. Kind
of strange, but not really a big deal right?
But listen to this: he even lets kids
smoke cigarettes during class! I am not
kidding. Everyone in the hack was light
ing up. How ridiculous is that'? The only
good thing is that with all the smoke in
the room, no one even noticed when I
left to go to the bathroom carrying the
textbook!
From 'Ruminations on College Life' by
Aaron Karo. Copyright © 2002 by
Aaron Karo. Reprinted by permission of
Fireside, an Imprint of Simon &
Schuster, Inc., NY.
Ruminations
By Jim Farber
New York Daily News
(KRT)
Pop used to he so simple.
You had a No. I single and every
one in the country hummed your
But over the years, trends began
tearing away at the old notion of a
hit.
People started buying fewer and
fewer singles - to the point where
someone could go No. I in sales with
as little as 5,000 copies purchased.
Radio stations kept splitting into
ever-narrower formats, based on
genre, taste and demographics.
All of which made it increasingly
hard to form a consensus on what
was truly the biggest song in the
land.
Then came downloads, adding
even more confusion
The legal version of this practice
has been growing by leaps and
hounds of late; listeners draw up to 6
million tunes into their computers or
portable players every week. While
the music industry's bible, Billboard,
introduced a Digital chart in July
2003, the magazine still had no way
to reflect those sales on its far more
influential pop song chart.
Until now
This week. Billboard began figur
ing in download sales in its main pop
singles list, mixed with the two other
factors it long leaned on radio play
and retail sales.
At the same time, the magazine has
introduced a new, download
enhanced chart that more accurately
measures those songs that truly are
the most popular.
Dubbed the Pop 100 list, the new
chart, with Ciara's I. 2 Step" at the
top, takes the radio portion of its data
solely from Mainstream Top 40 sta
tions. (The old Hot lOU list draws
from a far wider variety of formats).
Adding downloads has already had
a striking effect.
The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" didn't
even make the previous Hot 100
KRT CAMPUS
Billboard charts give ),,,j)
downloads a voice fi
Song list. This week, it's in the Top
40. Last week, Lenny Kravitz's
"Lady" was at No. 40. The download
factor boosted it to the mid-20s.
Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken
Dreams" shot from No. 8 to 4.
On the other end, the rapper Lloyd
Banks has felt the sting of stingy
downloads. His "Karma" plunged
from the teens to the 30s.
"The new system brings the con
sumer's voice back onto the charts,"
explains Silvio Pietroluongo, who
manages the new chart for Billboard.
"Radio play is really important, but
nothing replaces the consumer who
actively buys a single."
"The new system
brings the consumer's
voice back onto the
charts."
Over the years. that voice has been
quieting to a whisper. While single
sales were huge in the '6os and '7os,
by the mid-'9os they had faded - a
trend greatly encouraged by the
labels themselves.
"The companies felt they were
cannibalizing album sales," explains
Billboard's Geoff Mayfieid.
Increasingly, radio singles weren't
even released to stores. When a song
like No Doubt's "Don't Speak" was
one of the nation's biggest songs in
the '9os, it wasn't anywhere on
Billboard's chart because the maga
zine would list only singles fans
could buy in stores.
By December 1998, the magazine
ended the ban on nonretail songs. But
it still allowed sales of singles to
account for fully 25 percent of its
Hot 100 Song chart. Only in the last
18 months has that ratio plunged to
Crossword
ACROSS
1 Festive affair
5 Links grp.
9 Ratify
14 Downfall
15 Melodramatic
exclamation
16 Bar for lifting
17 Poetic tributes
18 Marshes
19 Bronte or
Dickinson
20 "Higher Love"
singer Steve
22 Ways up
24 Do it wrong
25 Deadlock
26 Experiment
27 Chicago
stopover
30 Well-mannered
32 Harmless cysts
33 Beyond
scientific
explanation
37 Writer Hentoff
38 Small crown
39 Whitney or
Wallach
40 Rousing agents
42 Jib or spinnaker
43 Wave tops
44 Spiteful
45 Items of info
48 Carnival city
49 Interdiction
50 Hillary's hill
52 Open footwear
56 Sweet treat
57 Sister/wife of
Osiris
59 Pit-bull biter
60 Bridal path
61 Fill completely
62 Weaver's device
63 Runs away
64 Rolling stone's
lack
65 Hankerings
DOWN
1 Get bigger
2 Autobahn auto
3 Claim on income
4 Responses
5 Piece of work
6 Trudge
7 Practical joke
8 Muggers
ru ri
r i ri
-Silvio Pietrolungo,
Billßoard manager
All rights reserved
9 Actor Baldwin Solutions
10 Mother of
Persephone
11 Of sheep
12 Bombards
13 Secret
rendezvous
21 Galena or
bauxite
23 Fishing nets
25 Ontario city
27 Has title to
28 Preliminary race
29 Debate side
30 Bloodsucker's
way of life
31 Wee one
33 Punt propellers
34 Carnivore's
choice
35 Came down to
earth
36 Easter flower
38 Bad dog
41 Andrea of
"Annie"
42 Bloodsucking
pest
Friday, February 18, 2005
roughly 1 percent, where it remains
That left room for downloads,
which have been escalating at a
breathtaking clip. Right after
Christmas, Billboard's chart mavens
noticed a spike, from an average of 4
million or 5 million to more than 6
million for the week.
"Everyone was getting iPods and
(download services) gift cards for
presents," Pietroluongo explains.
Adding downloads has the poten
tial to broaden the types of songs that
enter the single chart, because listen
ers can choose any song from an
album - old or new.
While radio's influence on the
chart is reduced, Mayfield says,
download information could help
programmers choose a more popular
mix. "It shows them directly what
people really want," he says.
The new, two-fisted singles lists
give everyone more, and different,
information about what's popular.
With its broad list of stations, the Hot
100 shows us which songs are get
ting the widest airing. With its sharp
er mainstream focus, the Pop list tells
us which songs have the most popu
lar appeal.
This can result in some notable dif-
ferences in a song's position on the
two charts. Currently, T.l.'s "Bring
'Em Out" is Top 12 on the Hot 100,
but it's only No. 51 on the Pop list,
because its play is far stronger on
niche hip-hop and R&B stations.
Teen pop's Jesse McCartney's
"Beautiful Soul" stands at 6 on Pop
but 16 on the Hot 100, because he
gets more play on mass-market Top
40 stations.
Observers expect the downloading
factor on both charts to grow signifi
cantly. Pietroluongo wouldn't be sur
prised if it one day reached a 50 per
cent parity with radio. (Right now,
downloads account for 33 percprkt
the overall chart.)
Regardless of how you measure
popularity, adding downloads, and
creating the Pop list, helps the charts
get closer to their ultimate goal:
accuracy.
44 Give the ax to
45 Low-boost
coffee?
46 Be of use to
47 Nervous
49 Foundations
51 Checks out
52 Poses
53 Medicinal plant
54 Boxer Spinks
55 Wanamaker and
Waterston
58 Portuguese
saint