Bill Wyman, the music critic (and not of the Rolling Stones), has finally found a way to measure the level of a musician’s selling out, à la Moby’s Play (in which every track on the album was sold to an advertiser). In fact, Wyman calls this formula “The Moby Quotient.” As you will see, pop stars like Kelly Clarkson score low (a good thing) because of factors like “sacredness,” “origins,” and “reputation,” whereas the Clash and the Ramones score rather high. Wyman refers us to a Nissan commercial, “which wanted consumers to understand that, if you owned an SUV, you could drive places. To underline the point, the commercial broke into the Ramones, who sang, ‘Hey! Ho! Let’s go!’ That’s the famous break from the punk rockers’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop,’ a heartfelt ode to pogoing to the beat of a Nazi military assault.” Adds the author, “Well, at least it wasn’t a Volkswagen ad.”

Sadly, Wyman fails to mention my favorite instance, EMF’s “You’re Unbelievable,” which then became “You’re Crumbelievable.”

My hero.

I used to think it belonged to the cop who was running the sting on Larry Craig, but now I’m not so sure.

Over the weekend I pulled out the 1996 Doug McGrath-helmed, Emma, which stars the young Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s not a great movie, but it’s fun, and it’s Austen, and it’s probably Paltrow’s best performance. Anyway, while gazing at the DVD case, I noticed for the first time how the film is plugged on the back:

This delightfully fun and lighthearted comedy is based on the story that inspired the hit movie Clueless! Dazzling Gwyneth Paltrow (The Perfect Murder) shines as Emma–a mischievous young beauty who sets up her single friends. Funny thing is . . . she’s not very good at it! So when Emma tries to find a man for Harriet (Toni Collette–Muriel’s Wedding), she makes a hilariously tangled mess of everyone’s lives. You’ll enjoy all the comic confusion . . . until Emma herself falls in love, finally freeing everyone from her outrageously misguided attempts at matchmaking!

Having to write that copy surely qualifies as the worst job in America.

The Baseball Crank has a little bit on the Rockies’ impossible run, but I’d like to see more from him. Do the Rockies need to win the World Series, or does what they’ve done already count as the greatest streak in baseball history?

Bonus: Can we now get the idiots at ESPN (particularly Golic and Greenberg) to stop mouthing the mantra that “momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitching”?

In the course of Slatester Tim Noah’s attack on Chris DeMuth and AEI, he attempts to tar the Weekly Standard by noting:

The leading neoconservative publication, the Weekly Standard, argued forcefully for deploying troops to topple Saddam (though subsequently it’s had more than a few quarrels with the Pentagon’s conduct of the war). The Standard is a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., not AEI … but its office is in the AEI building

This might be the laziest attempt at short-hand I’ve ever seen. You know what other print publication used to have an office in the AEI building? Slate! It’s true! The Slate staff even had access to AEI’s famous dining facilities. I once had lunch there with David Plotz and Frank Foer, back in the day. Their neoconservative ties are now undeniable!

Fox has pulled the plug on the theatrical licensing for all of their television products, including the Buffy episode “Once More With Feeling.”

AICN’s Herc reports that Bionic Woman is now being unofficially run by Jason Katims. You can read the story if you want to make sure that someone else’s workplace political infighting is way worse than yours.

Hope for this show is fading.

Update: Every once in a while, trolling the comments section can be gold. Here’s one from the AICN thread:

[D]id Mark Sheppard graduate from the Tom Sizemore school of acting, just like Miguel Ferrer has a masters in Micheal Ironside Studies. While Isaiah Washington went to the Community College version of Denzel university (We all know Chiwetel Ejiofor will soon be graduating Summa Cum Lata from the main Campus). While Michelle Ryan took a summer course (with Damian Lewis and Kevin McKidd) in how to act American but still love thy Queen, taught by Hugh Laurie.

Galley Friend R.J. sends us this link to what may be the worst Mr. T ad of all time. It’s like a mini-movie and it’s, well, I can’t describe it. Just push play.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1S2tsxVHg&rel=1]