for 30 June 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Steve Case, Superstar Your homage to Aerosmith was remarkable. What does this Steve character have to do with the band? Terry Higgins <thig@uwm.edu> Glad you liked our Aerosmith tribute. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler has said that without Steve Case, there would be no Aerosmith. During the band's formative years in the 70s, Case was their roadie for five consecutive tours. While they suffered through gigs in miserable podunk venues, Case drove the van, soothed personality conflicts, and filled in when bandmembers were incapacitated from substance abuse. As the "fifth member" of Aerosmith, Case composed all the lyrics for "Livin' on the Edge," and... Okay, the truth is, Steve Case just wrote a review of an Aerosmith concert that he saw in high school in the 70s. He's actually the CEO of America Online, and the piece was about HIM, not an Aerosmith tribute. Dream on! Destiny  Case tells his high school newsletter that "I had a mediocre voice, but tried to hide that with showmanship." Five years later, he'll head a mediocre online service which he will try to hide with showmanship. Mediocre? Compared to what? Better yet, you build an online service and see how it stacks up. Too bad you don't know anything about Steve Case. You'd see he's a hard-working guy just like you (I'm presuming), and he's the first to admit he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. But of course if you ever actually interviewed him, instead of lifting excerpted nonsequiturs out-of-context from newsweeklies, you wouldn't be able to profit from your "satirical" cheap shots, since they're made under a veil of ignorance. (And what are you waiting for? Even Imus met Hillary Clinton!) Your profession is what? Pundit? Humourist? I read your story wishing it would get funny, or clever, but it just seemed desperate and cheap -- all told, a mediocre experience. And I don't think I'm the only one who thinks so. Jeff Robelen <JRobelen@aol.com> We really want to lift the veil of ignorance on Steve Case. Please tell him Suck.com wants an interview next time you see him in Arlington. But I've never heard Steve Case admit that he was lucky. Instead, we get the dry, carefully-controlled words of a career PR flack trying to convince Wall Street of the inevitability of his dominance. Never a word about his personal life, his childhood, or the time he divorced his first wife with three children to marry someone he met at work. (Whoops! There we go again....) Because of Case's reticence, most of what we know is about AOL. Like that $3.5 million fine they paid to the SEC in May for mis-stating their profitability for two consecutive years, the four class action lawsuits they're currently facing, or the fact that one of their censorious volunteers thought "breast cancer" was a dirty word. See, it sounds like you and I disagree on some fundamental points. You ask, AOL is medicore compared to what? Compared to any local internet service, Jeff. Both get you online, but on AOL there are mandatory advertisements on your mailbox when you sign on, and even on the status bar when you try to download a file. In 1997, AOL even wanted to sell subscribers' home phone numbers to telemarketers. You talk about our essay, "wishing it would get funny, or clever, but it just seemed desperate and cheap — all told, a mediocre experience." That's how I felt the last time I used AOL. And I don't think I'm the only one who thinks so... Warm Regards Destiny P.S. We found your name listed as the administrator for two mailing lists run off LISTSERV.AOL.COM. One's about Elvis Costello lyrics and the other is for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Assuming it's the same Jeff Robelen, thanks for taking time from debunking UFOs to send us an e-mail! My Aim is True... Destiny Hit & Run Today's Hit n Run is very strange. Bollywood, chicken movies, and Kelsey Grammer. I went through a Bollywood phase a couple of years ago (those actresses are HOT), but ultimately they're all too well behaved to make interesting celebrities. Interesting when compared against Kelsey's B'way turn. At least he gave it a shot - just because everyone laps up his 2 note show like it's at the bottom of the creme broule bowl, don't expect Kelsey to play it safe. He's one of those celebrities whose life is more interesting than his body of work. Of course, there are more and more of those lately. Chickens? I have nothing to say about that, except that the English cartoon you guys linked to has been downloading for almost 10 minutes - nothing's THAT funny. Colin Not true, Colin. If it made your computer crash, for example, just as you were finishing up the last draft of a suicide note that you hadn't saved, and as a result you decided not to kill yourself, but then while rebooting you had a power surge and were electrocuted, that would be really funny. Sucksters Thanks for the essay on Grammer — I always hate it when the Times pastes an actor strictly because he's dared to do television. However, how could you people not mention Grammer's greatest role — the voice of the literary psycho Robert "Sideshow Bob" Terwilliger? He almost nuked Springfield! Never realized what an exposure to violence and suffering the poor guy had in real life. Richard Von Busack <regisgoat@earthlink.net> That ain't nothin'! In his "uncensored, uninhibited, and totally irreverant memoir," we get to see Kelsey Grammer "lost and broken, trapped by family patterns and haunted by violent death" and "seeking relief in liquor, drugs, and women." We learn how "at the prestigious Julliard school in New York, he's the acting student with long hair, a surfboard, and an attitude to match. In New York, he gets respect by throwing a Broadway superstar off the stage. [Christopher Plummer — Iago to KG's Cassio on Broadway in 1981.]" We get Grammer, in his own words, describing the first stirrings of the lubricious shrink he was destined to play: "Nice girls made me really nervous, claustrophobic. But broken women, women in pain, women looking to be fixed — ah, for these women the doctor was in." Truly, So Far... gives us a Grammer that even television's finest writers could never conjure. All Grammer and nothing but Grammer, just the way we like it! Dear Sirs & Madams, While reading your incisive interview with Park & Lord of Aaardman Studios, I was struck by the apparent collusion between interviewer and interviewees to suggest that Mel Gibson is an American. Has Oz been reclassified as a U.S. colony? What's the story-behind-the-story here? Perspicaciously yours, Eli Chiaviello <eli@homer.kom.net> We truly hope this topic is a snore-inducing for you as it is for us, Eli, but Mel Gibson, in full American accent, plays an American rooster in this film. By our reckoning, he has not used his Australian accent in a major role since 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (he has several "as himself" parts listed at IMDB, and may have used his Aussie twang in those). Moreover, Gibson has throughout much of his career played American roles — helped in no small part by the fact that he was born in Peekskill, NY and spent the first 13 years of his life in the US before moving to the Commonwealth of Australia, a country for which the Sucksters, and most likely Americans in general, have nothing but the warmest feelings and highest regard. In any event, if you see the film yourself, you will understand why we asked this particular question and why Mr. Lord gave this particular response. Finally, we'd like to remind readers that the subject of whether Suck, or Hollywood, or any other US-based institution, is too Americentric is without a doubt one of the most boring and imbecilic subjects ever devised, and we'd particularly like to remind our overseas readers that we welcome their readership and look forward to seeing their own web efforts, which we hope will be intriguingly Iricentric or Russocentric or Indiacentric, as the case may be. Sucksters Subject: Oh no! Now you're just like the others I've noticed that you've been relying more and more on... Oh! Gosh! photographs. Please, don't be like the others. Illustrations are way cool! Carl <nightclubbers@yahoo.com> Is this the kind of drivel that passes for reader mail these days? We're trying to publish as many non-u-suck emails as possible, but you're not making it any easier on us. Sucksters |
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