So I headed on down to Shock City Studios in Saint Louis, owned by Chris Loesch, with nothing more than a concept. The idea; what if the founding fathers rose from the dead only to see how badly we’ve screwed things up? What you now see is the fruit of hard working professionals as well as the inability to pay our rap-video sirens in anything more than sandwiches.

Note: No women were actually objectified during the making of this video. Not while they were looking.

Sometimes, The Material Girl is the sexually charged songstress posing nude for a coffee table book or dry humping one of her tour dancers. Next, she’s the primly dressed children’s book author trying to be a good role model for her own kids.

This week, the latter piped up to chastise singer M.I.A. for flipping the audience the bird during Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show.

Madonna has taken to the airwaves to express her disappointment with M.I.A.’s decision to flip the bird at cameras during the halftime show, calling the move a “teenager … irrelevant thing to do.” Madge was chatting with Ryan Seacrest about her performance when he brought up the incident.

To the pop star, the middle finger was simply “out of place” at a show characterized by “such a feeling of love and good energy and positivity.

M.I.A. would have better served the event by making out with another woman, apparently.

One wonders if Madonna has truly learned the error of her shocking ways, or if she’s grumpy people are still talking about M.I.A. and not her.

And that’s just what the Republicans in Congress did to Hollywood when it abandoned the rush to pass SOPA and regulate the Internet for the benefit of Tinseltown. Astonishingly, considering its usual inability to perform competently at even the most basic level, the GOP not only managed to embrace good policy but drove a wedge into the Democratic coalition that may well have dramatic consequences down the road. And, best of all, it provided a bit of long overdue payback to the smug oligarchs of LA’s West Side who have spent the last couple decades treating Republicans like something you’d hasten to flush.

Hey, suckers, how do ya like us now?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is only the latest attempt by Hollywood to breathe some life back into its dying business model. Enraged that online “pirates” are passing around bootleg copies of movies, shows, books, music, and all other manner of intellectual property, the industry did what it has done for years: ran to Congress for ever more burdensome and onerous laws designed to hold back the inevitable consequences of progress. 

But this time, it went too far. Perhaps it was Hollywood’s arrogance. Perhaps it was the provisions allowing Hollywood to use the United States government to shut down any website it pleased on the mere accusation of “piracy” without any due process, a power lefty–fascist bureaucrats would be only too eager to accept.

Not surprisingly, the people who make their living on the web were less than thrilled about giving Uncle Sam and the media conglomerates an off-switch.

Initially, the Republicans once again fell into Hollywood’s trap. When Hollywood needs something from Congress, it dons the mask of “business” and enlists the GOP ideologically. After all, the Republicans are supposed to love “business.” Until now, they have been blind to the fact that many of the “businesses” that plead for special breaks before them are about as capitalist as your typical Occupy Wall Street mutant – the only difference is nicer suits and better drugs.

They aren’t capitalists; they’re cronyists, either relying on government handouts directly or basking in the protection of special favors. And that’s precisely the opposite of what we conservatives are about.

Businesses compete; “businesses” like the entertainment industry use the government to enact rules and regulations that make it so they don’t have to compete.

So, like Pavlov’s dogs hearing the dinner bell, the GOP started drooling when Hollywood started playing the business card. In fact, Republican Lamar Smith of Texas was only too eager to carry water for it – as were several other normally solid Republicans who should have known better.

Of course, Hollywood laughed. It laughed because it holds Republicans in contempt. For decades, Hollywood has endeavored to depict conservative Americans are weirdos, losers, petty tyrants, religious nuts, baby killing fanatics, and idiots. And, once again, the GOP was falling into its trap and dancing to its tune. “What a bunch of suckers!” snickered the Hollywood big shots.

Oh, and the Democrats? Not an issue. Not only are Hollywood and the liberals in ideological lockstep, but Hollywood represents buckets of money and bushels of glamor. The Dems are always on board for whatever Hollywood wants. They know where their locally-sourced, whole wheat artisan bread in non-dairy buttered.

But something funny happened on the way to the fascism.

There was a backlash. The peasants revolted! Tech savvy Americans, both right and left, saw that the Internet that they had grown up with and embraced was in grave danger of being bound by regulations for the sole purpose of ensuring that the dying Hollywood business model would last a bit longer – at the price of stifling everyone else.

No dice.

The rebellion came as a shock to the GOP congresscreatures, who in reality probably had not given much thought to the contents of SOPA – that is, until all hell broke loose. Suddenly, they became VERY interested in intellectual property and telecommunications law.

The Republicans, pushed by a groundswell of opposition from conservative new media types, bailed. SOPA was a non-starter, and now everyone will be looking the next time Hollywood tries to play them. Hey, Hollywood, there’s a new paradigm in Tinseltown.

And the Democrats who supported SOPA  – and who could not back out no matter how outraged the nutroots got – ended up looking both foolish and like tools of the corporate power structure.  And that’s just what they are.

But it gets better.

It gets better because this was a great object lesson all around. To those in Republicans in Congress, it brought attention to a subject that had been sadly ignored but is vital to a huge number of influential voters. It gave them an issue – Internet freedom – that is truly congruent with conservative values, unlike the past political payoffs to connected Hollywood cronies. We conservatives can run on this.

It was also a lesson to young, tech-savvy people who see themselves as culturally liberal and just kind of voted that way, mostly out of habit.  The group that really shares their values – creativity, enterprise, freedom – is the conservativees. The liberals they counted themselves among wanted to shut down websites, not the conservatives. SOPA opened a lot of eyes.

Everything they thought they knew was a lie. Here was Kevin Bacon, and he was telling John Lithgow not to dance.

Can you say “Wedge issue?”

Internet freedom, besides being the right thing to do, is a powerful banner to carry aloft into the battle for the next generation’s hearts and minds. The young, affluent, educated voters the Democrat Party is counting on for the future have to choose between the stolid, limited, controlled world of the Democrat’s corporate owners or the free market of the conservatives where their only limits are those they impose upon themselves.

The Democrats can’t flex on this – they are bound to Hollywood for money and what’s left of its fading aura. But the GOP? It won’t miss what it never had.

In fact, Hollywood’s history of trashing conservatives only make it sweeter when its emissaries come to us for help and we laugh in their botoxed faces.

With its crappy product, promotion of (mostly) non-stellar “stars” and sneering contempt for the majority of its customers, Hollywood seems desperately committed to failure. That’s why when is asks us for a life preserver, we should be only too happy to hand it an anvil.

The series debuted at a contentious time in our nation’s history, and audiences of all colors could watch – and groove to – the sounds being spun by host Don Cornelius.

The “Soul Train” impresario may have passed this week at 75, but his musical and cultural legacy will endure, says Kansas City Star columnist Jenee Osterheldt:

The show first aired in 1971, on the heels of the civil rights movement, and it proved to be a great unifier. It served as a platform for black artists like Al Green and Johnnie Taylor, but it didn’t take long for the likes of Elton John and David Bowie to ride the train too. To me, that’s what makes it so important.

On “Soul Train,” you could tune in and see people of all colors and ethnicities singing and dancing together. What fan doesn’t remember Cheryl Song, the long-haired Asian dancer with moves to mimic? And Rosie Perez? She’s arguably one of the best dancers of the past few decades….

On that show, I didn’t just see a diverse party. I saw people who looked like me, people who looked like my mom and people who looked like my dad. And the three of us? We couldn’t look more different. But that show proved we were all still the same, and our differences were good.

Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Trace Adkins, Wynonna Judd and Montgomery Gentry contributed original tunes inspired by the new film for its upcoming soundtrack release.

“Act of Valor” hits theaters Feb. 24 and features active-duty Navy SEALs in an action-packed movie unlike any military movie seen before. The film’s soundtrack is available now for pre-order on iTunes and will hit store shelves Feb. 21.

The track listing includes music by Keith Urban (“For You” which is heard over the film’s end credits), Sugarland (“Guide You Home”), Lady Antebellum (“I Was Here”), Trace Adkins (“If the Sun Comes Up”), Lori McKenna (“Two Soldiers Coming Home”), Jake Owen (“The Best I Can”), Montgomery Gentry (“What It Takes”), Josh Kelley (“The Best of Me”), Hunter Hayes (“Where We Left Off”) and Wynonna Judd (“Whatever Brings You Back”)

Making a semi-autobiographical tale of a singer confronted with the daughter he didn’t know he had helped complete Rosenthal’s real-life healing process.

“It was hugely cathartic for me. I’m so glad to have it done it,” Rosenthal tells Big Hollywood of the personal film project. “It brought us together on a whole different level …. I wanted to do it for me and for my daughter.”

“Janie Jones,” out on DVD today, follows a selfish rock star (Allesandro Nivola, “Junebug”) who learns he’s the father of a 13-year-old girl named Janie Jones (Abigail Breslin). The girl’s junkie mom (Elisabeth Shue) deposits her in his care while she heads to rehab. That forces the distracted rocker to care for his daughter while trying to hold his struggling band together.

No, Rosenthal isn’t a hard-charging musician, but the story’s themes clearly mirror his own life. He just made sure “Janie Jones” didn’t shadow reality too closely.

“I definitely had to pull back. There were so many people involved,” he says. “I had to get to the essence of my experience, and then fictionalize it.”

In the film, Breslin’s character turns out to be a whiz with the guitar, and while her father’s tour hits one speed bump after another he finds comfort in his daughter’s ability to sing and strum like papa.

Rosenthal wrote the rock star character as a bit of a jerk, but he wanted him to have some redeeming qualities to help pave the way for his potential redemption.

Casting Nivola made that task easier.

“Allesandro has a natural quality about him. Even when he’s impish or acting in a way that he is in the film, you still want to root for him,” Rosenthal says.

It certainly helps that Nivola could sing and play the guitar before arriving on set, and even young Breslin proved to be an accomplished singer.

“I wanted all the actors to be able to play music. Allesandro really plays the guitar, Frank [Whaley] really plays the drums. That renders some authenticity to the music. If they can’t do that, it throws all the proceedings into a mess,” he says.

Rosenthal used a separate songwriter for each character to fully flesh out their unique personalities and hardships. He recruited Gemma Hayes to write the uplifting songs Janie sings on screen, while folkie Eef Barzelay  penned the more chaotic numbers Nivola sings with his band. That helped Rosenthal bring believable music sequences to the film, but he admits he was taken aback at how mature Breslin was on set.

“She does a scene, you call cut, and she’s a kid again. She wants to go to the mall. She’s very sweet,” he says of the Oscar-nominee for “Little Miss Sunshine.” And when Breslin asked Rosenthal where she needed to be emotionally on a scale from one to 10 in a given scene she “nailed it” every time, he says.

Breslin also bonded with Rosenthal’s real-life daughter, who served as an assistant on the film.

“It inspired a lot of the crew and actors. ‘Oh, that’s his daughter,’ they said. They got a sense of our relationship. They could feed off of that,” he says.

“Janie Jones” debuts on DVD this week without a significant theatrical launch.

“We all dream about being able to reach a massive audience, but it is a small film,” says Rosenthal, whose next film “A Single Shot” stars Sam Rockwell. “I feel grateful to having made the film and for having got it into theaters.”

With that said, it was after the Jesus Movement of the ’60s and ’70s, during the 1980’s that many non-denominational churches sprouted up all over America, some of them overseen by self-appointed pastors and leaders who were unaccountable to anyone but themselves. As a result, in the Christian community, young adults, desirous to serve God, were drawn into congregations with showbiz-style charismatic leaders who exploited the enthusiasm and commitment of individuals who, at that time, were too immature to differentiate the counterfeit from the divine.

Kids “raised” in many of these churches responded harshly to hype and unbiblical legalism and emerged from the experience tattooed, smoking, drinking, and toting around babies born out of wedlock. Lost between redemption and confusion were grossly cynical parents who realized they wasted precious years serving man and not God and a generation of kids who sang with Psalty, then grew up eager to partake of forbidden fruit.

Similar scenarios were common in churches across America and could explain the disturbing phenomenon presently on display where the worldly success Christian pop stars achieve is often accompanied by a public fall from grace. Two of the most obvious examples of church kid tragedy include the sorry lives of Jessica and Ashlee Simpson and train-wreck-waiting-to-happen Katy Perry.

In Jessica and Ashlee Simpson’s case, they are the daughters of a former minister-turned-showbiz-pimp named Joe Simpson. Mr. Simpson began as a youth pastor at Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, Texas and, if one were to guess, probably aspired to heights at “Heights” higher than the youth ministry.

It’s probable some kind of disappointment caused Joe to drop the Bible, change from preacher to manager, and work toward elevating his singing daughter from the choir to reality TV. Problem is, ever since Joe made Jessica’s stardom his religion, nothing but disaster has followed the girl. Jessica ’s foray into the world of Hollywood notoriety may have made her a superstar/business mogul, but with success has come irreparable pain and humiliation.

Jessica Simpson’s climb to fame began when she revealed herself to be a bubble-headed ditz after mistaking tuna fish for chicken and ended soon after when she divorced wholesome, nice guy Nick Lachey. The star-studded Simpson divorce list also includes another failed marriage for younger sister/pop star Ashlee, whose marriage to Pete Wentz produced one son named Bronx Mowgli.

After her divorce from Lachey, Jessica Simpson’s romantic life read like a who’s who of unattached men.  The list included such notables as: Maroon Five’s Adam Levine, comedian Dane Cook, and blabbermouth pop star John Mayer, who described Jessica this way: “That girl was like crack cocaine to me… Sexually, it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm.”

Then there was football star Tony Romo, Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, and her latest, Eric Johnson, father to Joe Simpson’s unborn grandchild.

And let’s not forget Jessica’s breakout movie role in which she soaped up a Dodge Charger dressed in a pink bikini, as Daisy Duke in butt-exposing hot pants in the remake of “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

So while church life and church people are imperfect, the answer was certainly not for Joe Simpson to replace the flawed outworking of Christianity with dysfunction, promiscuity, divorce, and public ridicule which, in Jessica and Ashlee’s case, came disguised as fame and fortune. One can’t help but wonder: if and when Pastor Joe contemplates the cost of celebrity, is he proud?  Has it been worth it?

Either way, besides the Simpson sisters, in the church-kid arena, there’s also alleged teen father Justin Bieber, raunchy Tweeter Natasha Bedingfield, and bawdy Southern Baptist girl Britney Spears. Yet not one of them surpass the biggest disaster in the PK (pastor’s kid) department, former Christian singer turned flamboyant superstar, the shameless self-promoter Katy Perry.

Unlike Joe Simpson, Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson’s father Keith would probably prefer that his pop-icon daughter not profit by gaining the world and losing her soul. However, hugely successful for all the wrong reasons and based on some of her blasphemous comments, outspoken jester Katy might disagree.

Cartoon Katy is indeed the consummate reactionary Christian school and camp/singing in church/no-TV-or-dancing kid. Katy rebelled by remaking herself into a gay activist/slutty pinup girl.  She sings songs like “Ur So Gay,” married ex-heroin and sex addict/comedian/Hare Krishna/80-women-a-month Russell Brand, and filed for divorce after just one year.

In her Rolling Stone magazine interview entitled “Sex, God & Katy Perry: The Hard Road and Hot Times of a Fallen Angel,” Katheryn Hudson said, “When I was a kid, I asked questions about my faith. Now I’m asking questions about the world.”

Hopefully, when the applause of the world Katy Perry is asking questions about stops – which it will – the klieg lights cease to reflect off her electric blue wig, and the cupcake bra is hung out to dry, Ms. Katy will stop singing “I Kissed a Girl” long enough to embrace the essence of truth she was raised to accept but thus far chooses to reject.

And rather than becoming another casualty of an imperfect church filled with imperfect people, perhaps Katheryn will one day have an opportunity to teach Pastor Joe Simpson a thing or two about grace, redemption, and what the God he purported to once believe in considers the true measure of success.

The bassist for KISS, who can always be trusted to speak his mind and who, unlike many other entertainers, actually has something to say, gave us his take on Robert Redford, President Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney.

Regarding Redford’s statements against one-percenters, statements that only Occupy Wall Street types could love, Simmons said:

He means well, he’s a great guy. But it’s a bit hypocritical, since he’s part of the one percent, to address the 99 percent.

Simmons then went to speak to that fact that he doesn’t like all the class warfare, all the dividing of people into different camps.

Either we are all Americans, or you’re going to fall victim. This is the reason why the old Roman Empire died, it fell from within. Division from within is one of the stupidest things you can do.

Regarding Obama, Simmons basically called him a rookie, and stated anew his regret for supporting him in 2008.

I voted for [Obama], last minute. I wasn’t going to vote for him because he didn’t have a good resume. He only had two years of local political experience, he’s never run a company, he’d never been overseas, and he didn’t know any of the political leaders. I voted my conscience, based on some sort of – well, it’s the right time in history.

In other words, Simmons was driven to vote for Obama out of the same white-guilt that drove so many other Americans to vote for Obama in 2008. But no more. Simmons made it clear he is on board with the GOP in the coming election and that his favorite is Mitt Romney:

But I want Mitt Romney and Barack Obama to face off on the economic and political issues of our time. I want a real dialogue, and I, as a private citizen, want to be able to vote my conscience. More often than not, I want business men and business women in politics, not college professors.

“Shout it Out Loud,” Mr. Simmons. Such common sense is sorely lacking in today’s conversation.

Its cover was a gorgeous picture of then-young actress Tuesday Weld gazing into a camera, a vision of beauty that nonetheless appeared too perfect to last.

Indeed, both the cassette and the relationship wore out eventually, as I played its 15-song cycle of love prayed for, won and lost until it snapped in my stereo deck, and as Laura fell for another guy while spending the next semester in Spain. As Sweet ruefully sang in the closing song, nothing lasts.

That lesson and those memories came back to haunt me and a few hundred other people Jan. 13 when Sweet hit the stage of the Echoplex for the final stop of a special tour marking the 20^th anniversary of his best-selling album, a record considered along with the likes of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” as one of the seminal albums of the ‘90s.

Despite continuing to craft mostly sterling power-pop in the decades since, Sweet had fallen into relative obscurity before launching what could have been just another cash-in nostalgia tour. But for every band like Creed or Motley Crue that hops on a bus to milk the cash cow, there remain a few true artists whose initial passion still shines through. And even as Sweet has fattened considerably and grown a white-flecked beard which together make him look like the aging stoner uncle of his once young and clean-shaven self, he still delivered the album’s tunes, start to finish, with passion and the occasional surprising insight.

It’s admittedly unfair to single out Sweet’s bigger gut and aging jowls, as nearly everyone in line – including my own now-bloated self – looked like they were trying to recapture their college glory days, if only for an evening. And at least Sweet’s songs still carried the lyrical power and the hard-charging oomph that they were born with, back when he wrote the album as a go-for-broke final shot at success after a couple of prior albums had bombed.

As I pulled my bike up on the sidewalk above on Sunset, outside the Echoplex’s sister club, The Echo, I was happy to see dozens of twentysomethings in line for what I thought was the same show.

“This the line for Matthew Sweet?” I asked.

“Who?” responded a young Latino Romeo, who was awaiting an entirely different show, his arm wrapped around his girlfriend in the exact same way I once held Laura on a cold night in Austin, waiting for Sweet’s initial “Girlfriend” tour back in 1991.

“Sorry, I guess he’s downstairs. Who are you seeing?”

“The Growlers,” he replied, to which I had to laugh right back with a “Who?” of my own.

It was a rare case in which I felt the generation gap slap me in the face, between my young, music-loving self at age 20 and the guy I am now at 40, who favors watching and performing comedy over exploring new bands in dark clubs. As I hustled down to the actual Sweet line below, I overheard several other guys my age and older laughing about their own interactions with the “kids” above.

What these ex-frat boys out for a night away from the kids didn’t seem to realize is that 20 years from now, those kids upstairs might be lining up themselves to see The Growlers relive their glory days, long after Sweet and the rest of us are parked full-time on the couch in a retirement center.

Loudest of all was a guy named Bob, a late-40s home contractor from Riverside  who was loudly boasting of his college concert-going days and about the fact he wrote a letter of outrage to a Nevada sheriff who made national news for a pot bust against a ski trip-bound busload of college kids. Ironically, by the time I got a drink about 15 minutes into Sweet’s set, Bob was either passed out or asleep in a seat along the back wall of the Echoplex, as his wife chatted with another lady friend like they were hanging out at a church social.

At least Bob had found a wife and partner to settle in for the long haul. I and plenty of other people in the crowd were obviously still single, having endlessly repeated the cycle of longing, love and loss that Sweet had so expertly captured. As I played the CD endlessly in the week leading up to the show, I thought about Laura and the girlfriends who had come and gone through the years since, and I remembered that since she was “the one who got away” – a gorgeous and funny girl from Missouri whose voice dripped with Southern-tinged honey – I had tracked her down a couple years ago after finding her mom’s number in a college photo album.

I was surprised to find Laura at her mom’s house right at that moment, just as surprised as her mom sounded to hear me calling again, no doubt. And while I, of course, hadn’t wished Laura any serious sadness over the years, anyone who’s ever checked in with a love who broke their heart knows that you don’t exactly hope to find them ecstatically happy, either.

And Laura wasn’t. She had just moved home after a five-year live-in relationship had ended and told me that she had spent the 15 years since graduation with a “5-5-5” situation – five years of marriage to the guy from Spain, five years alone, and then five years of cohabitation hoping for another ring that never came. In return, I told her of my broken engagement several years before after finding my fiancé had severe and incurable bipolar disorder, and of my own health struggles in the years since (now healed, glad to say).

We spoke for an hour, in the kind of surface-happy yet actually-awkward conversation that exists especially between past loves. And then it was obvious that nothing more would come of this, ever, and it was time to say goodbye in a falsely sunny fashion. I threw the number away and put my scrapbook back on a high closet shelf, thinking I’d never think of her again.

And I rarely if ever have, until that week leading up to Sweet, that CD in perpetual play on my stereo half a country away from Laura. Watching Sweet that night, he joked about how some people actually had “Girlfriend” on cassette (“Can you imagine that? Wow, remember cassettes?”)   Yeah, I can imagine, and remember. And as Sweet encored with songs like “Time Capsule” and “Baby We’re the Same” from other brilliant albums, I realized his CD and this concert formed a perfect capsule for about 500 of us, standing in a dark club the way we used to in our college days. And while we’d like to think we’re the same, it’s still even more sadly true that nothing lasts.

As I was making my way to D.C. to meet up with the band for their scheduled free concert at the Capitol Hill Club immediately following their scheduled “Occupy” performance, I spoke with Richard on the phone and was surprised to hear Madison Rising was still listed in the lineup for an on-stage appearance.

I thought to myself, “Oh boy, this is going to get interesting; when these malcontents hear the lyrics to their songs, especially their song Honk if You Want Peace, which mocks the occupiers, they will be booed right off the stage, at a minimum.”  Wrong again.

In a story you will NOT hear or read about in the mainstream media, it appears Madison Rising truly did “occupy” the Occupiers and those in attendance were completely oblivious to the fact that they were being entertained by a pro-American, pro-military, pro-capitalism (you get the picture) band. In fact, they absolutely loved the music; they were dancing to it, cheering them on, and even tweeting how “tight” this band was as they performed songs like American Dream, Honk if You Want Peace, Before the Hyphen Came, and Where Was The Media Then. Perhaps they were too stoned to pay any attention to the lyrics or could it be they are just that clueless? My guess is both!

Madison Rising made their way to the Capitol Hill Club following their “Occupy” gig completely unscathed and put on a fantastic amplified acoustic show for several local conservative groups and media representatives. Be on the lookout for some great video footage taken by Media Research Center’s Alicia Power and Joe Schoffstall in the next few days.

Please do check out their official website for links to where you can purchase their music and check out their lyrics, latest news, and booking/touring information.