The Rambler, The Gambler, The Back Biter

Additions to the happy list: Donald Rumsfeld stepping down, and John "Useless Dickhead" Bolton potentially/probably being ousted from his pissy little outpost in the UN Ambassadorship. (I hate that guy.)

Last night I was watching VH1 and saw a world premiere video for a Cash song I really like. It's called "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and I downloaded it a little bit ago and quicly began obsessively listening to it. What can I say, I love marching-ish, rhythmic beats and Johnny Cash's big ole rumbling voice. But here's the thing...as we know, Johnny Cash died a while back, so he wasn't able to create a video for this posthumously released tune. However, a bunch of artists got together and made one for him. These artists included the following.

Iggy Pop
Kanye West
Chris Martin
Kris Kristofferson
Patti Smith
Terrence howard
Flea
Q-Tip
Adam Levine
Chris Rock
Justin Timberlake
Kate Moss
Sir Peter Blake
Sheryl Crow
Dennis Hopper
Woody Harrelson
Amy Lee
Tommy Lee
Dixie Chicks
Mick Jones
Sharon Stone
Bono
Shelby Lynne
Anthony Kiedis
Travis Barker
Lisa Marie Presley
Kid Rock
Jay Z
Keith Richards
Billy Gibbons
Corinne Bailey Rae
Johnny Depp
Brandon Flowers
Graham Nash
Brian Wilson
Rick Rubin
Owen Wilson

Now some of these make sense. Fine. But the VAST MAJORITY of them gave me this super-creepy vibe of exploitation...supposedly these folks were making a tribute video for the Man in Black, and what they came up with was a bunch of "I am SAD" shots of all of THEM? Gross. Just gross. Also, if you're going to take part in a tribute? Think about whether your presence will seem SO GODDAMN WEIRD that it will jolt the watcher right out of the experience to figure out what the hell you're doing there. I am talking to you, Johnny Depp, and I love you dearly. You know what, I love the video that a huge swath of artists did that was a remake of "What's Going On" with the blindfolds and everything, thought it was cool as hell. And they did it to raise awareness/money for AIDS...double great. They didn't just jump on someone's song and film a video of them all looking pretty while the camera jumped around for that added epilectic effect.

It just grossed me right out. I like to think Cash would have slapped the stupid out of all of them.