Josh Freese has a new album coming out. I’d never heard of Josh Freese before tonight, so I can’t say for certain whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I can say this – his marketing campaign is worth paying attention to. It’s not unusual for bands to offer pre-release packages of varying prices - $10 gets you a CD, $20 gets you a CD and shirt, $30 gets you a CD, shirt, and lithograph, etc. – for loyal fans. Freese, who Wikipedia (that fount of rigorously fact-checked knowledge!) says “is a permanent member of A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo, and was the drummer for Nine Inch Nails from late 2005 until late 2008,” is willing to go the extra mile (or five) for his loyal, and loaded, fans, with several intriguing packages. $7 gets you a difital download, $15 gets you a CD/DVD and digital download, and for $50, Josh will call you on the phone and talk for five minutes about whatever you want. It gets weirder from there...
$250: Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you're into.)
$500: Meet Josh in Venice, CA and go floating together in a Sensory deprivation tank (filmed and posted on youtube) -Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 Steak and "all you can eat" Shrimp on)
$1,000: Josh washes your car OR does your laundry....or you can wash his car. -Have dinner with Josh aboard the "Queen Mary" in Long Beach, CA -Get drunk and cut each other's hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on youtube of course)
$2,500: Get a private drum lesson with Josh or for all you non-drummers have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome) -Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or DEVO (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the "Spearmint Rhino" -Signed DW snare drum. -Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve) -Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)
[Ed. note – I’m assuming he has a baby, because otherwise the diaper implications are deeply unsettling.]
$5,000: Josh writes about a song about you and make available on iTunes. -Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the youtubes. -Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland -Get drunk together. If you don't drink we can go to my Dads place and hang out under the "Tuba tree" -Stone from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on "Since 1972"
$10,000: Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle's 2003 tour. -Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking) -Twiggy from Manson's band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe's Chicken n' Waffle in Long Beach for dinner. -Josh takes you and guest to "Club 33" (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterwards (preferably the Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and The Tower Of Terror) -At the end of the day at Disneyland drive away in Josh's Volvo station wagon. It's all yours....take it. Just drop him off on your way home though please.
$20,000: A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour. -Maynard James Keenan, Mark from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube) -Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd St where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining "Nirvana." See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted using a Fake I.D. at when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg's high- school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live.=2 0For another $25 he'll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut. -Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the "Ghosts And Legends" tour. (separate rooms...no spooning.) -Josh writes 2 songs about you and it's made available on iTunes and appears on his next record (you can sing back up on em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever....) -Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again...couples welcome and discreet parking available) -Pick any 3 items out of Josh's closet.
$75,000: Go on tour with Josh for a few days. -Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story. -Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.) -Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while. -Josh will join your band for a month...play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.... -If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm) -Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here) -If you don't live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks. -Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robin's place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.
I don’t know, man...I have always wanted my own personal cabana boy, but $75K is about $74.9K more than I can afford at any given time. Is this the future of self-marketing? Are all artists doomed to become glorified prostitutes in order to finance a creative career in this unfriendly economic climate? Or, in the very least, will we all have to devote at least 70% of our creative energy on figuring out new, wacky ways to promote the stuff we created with the other 30% of our creative energy? I can’t decide if this whole thing is brilliant or insane. I’m leaning towards brilliant, but to be fair I’m a little punchy because it’s 3:30 in the morning and I only got home from work an hour ago, because I’m financing my creative career by working in media, which is at least a clothes-on endeavor.
Hey, remember when Lost first premiered, and it was really, really cool? With the WTF-polar-bear and mysterious monster and “Guys, where are we?” And then it got really confusing and half the characters died and the other half got arrested for DUI and we all kind of got over it? Well eff that, because Lost is back. Sure, it kind of sucks for you if you got into the show because of the specific characters from Season 1, because most of them remain dead and the rest have to share screentime with newer characters of varying quality. But the mysteries are kind of intriguing again, and answers are finally getting doled out at a decent pace. Clearly, setting a specific end date was the best thing that the show has ever done creatively because it has allowed them to focus on a specific story arc and stop, you know, sucking. Which got me thinking, what other shows would benefit from knowing when they’re going to end? Not counting, of course, Two and a Half Men, whose end date should have been somewhere in the same year it premiered.
3. Gossip Girl
Here are my predictions for the 2009 Oscars:
Okay, did a last bit of Oscar catching up this weekend and caught The Reader and The Visitor, so now I’m officially awards ready.
Last night marked the end of an era – the last Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Oh, sure, soon enough you’ll be able to catch Conebone in Jay Leno’s old spot, but you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s going to be anything like the old Conan we knew and loved.
As you might have guessed, I take horror movies 
I didn’t watch the whole thing – I spend about eight hours a day watching television at my job, which means I don’t have the attention span to watch much at home. I haven’t even made it through the premier of Lost, fercrapsakes. But the parts of the BAFTAs I did catch made me happy. Namely, 
My favorite shows have a tendency to die early deaths. Some linger in the limbo of unresolved cliffhangers (Popular, Dark Angel), some get resolution in other forms of media (Angel’s comic book continuation, Firefly’s big screen outing Serenity, the upcoming Dead Like Me straight-to-DVD movie), and some are given the chance to write a satisfying finale episode before they’re yanked off the air (Birds of Prey, The O.C.). Almost all of them, however, get cancelled before they get to tell all the stories they wanted to. So if one of my favorite shows gets a miracle new lease on life via another network, I should be happy, right? So why can I barely bring myself to watch Scrubs in its final season on ABC?
