Ditto
Nugent for me too. I saw him at a very small venue here before he hit it really big. It was still TN and The Amboy Dukes. That show rocked my world! I started to like him a lot less when his talk about his love of hunting started to sound more like a love of killing as many animals as possible. Once he started in with the wingnut political stuff I started to actually loathe him.
I will repeat the story- I liked Aerosmith back in high school. Then I went to see them. The sound was terrible. Mid-show, Joe Perry tried to do a leap off of the drum kit’s riser, tripped, and rolled head over heels into the speakers. Roadies ran out, tried to put another guitar around his neck, but he wasn’t having it. He bashed his guitar into the drums, and ran off stage. The others finished the song without him. To end the show, Tyler had the gall to say “Goodnight, Indianapolis- I hope we’ve passed the audition” and then the arena lights came on. There was no encore. That was the only big-name concert I ever saw where the main act was booed at the end.
That show totally changed my opinion of them.
I can’t believe I didn’t see OneCentStamp’s post about Kate Mulgrew before posting mine! :smack:
Calling him an actor is probably a bit of a stretch but I remember one time in the '90s I was looking for entertainment for a Friday night and had to choose between a Denis Leary video and a Dennis Miller video. I chose both but liked Dennis Miller’s more - he just seemed more articulate than Denis Leary did. Now I’ve found out that Dennis Miller is a hard-core conservative so I definitely don’t like him any more. Conservatives in this country have gone so totally wacko that when I found out that anybody is one I instantly just about all respect for that person that I might have already had. Dennis Miller is no exception to that.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was a huge fan of Bob Mould and his later band, Sugar, and also a semi-Christian prog band called King’s X. In the mid 1990s, both artists changed their musical styles and their music declined precipitously in quality.
In the late 1990s, there were a lot of news stories about Christian artists having affairs with each other, and I wondered when one of them was going to reveal that s/he was gay. I had no idea it would be King’s X’s singer/bassist, Doug Pinnick. Not that it matters, BTW.
Look, Our Yacht’s A Lemon
Whatever happened to Dennis Miller, anyway? I can’t believe I loved him decades ago on SNL because he appeared SMART. The last time I saw him on TV was some years ago, he looked about 80, he was SWEATING, and his jaw was fixed in a rictus as he unspooled his long totally unfunny spiel without stopping for a breath. Like he knew his career was over and in the toilet but by gum he was going to say his piece. What a tool. Whatever happened to him, anyway?
He’s gone over to the “Dark Side” politically and he sure isn’t very nice about (I’m not sure there is a “nice” way to migrate to the Dark Side politically). I think you just answered your own question, actually.
He seems to have forgotten that his job is to BE FUNNY.
Jim Gaffigan is probably conservative in his personal life, but he mostly checks that at the door and he puts on a great show whenever he performs, in my experience. Dennis Miller seems to be unwilling (or perhaps unable) to put aside his personal beliefs in an effort to be funny.
We call that the “Jeff Dunham Curse.”
I saw Miller in Vegas a couple of years ago, and he killed. And most of it was not political, just old time Dennis Miller rant comedy. But when you see him on TV or on his show, he’s got his ‘political pundit’ hat on, which makes him very different.
My pick would be David Letterman. You couldn’t find a bigger fan of his when I was younger. I never missed an episode. I taped his first episode on my old betamax VCR and watched it repeatedly. So it pained me to watch him morph into an angry old man who’s schtick is that he doesn’t know nothin’ about nothin’, but has an opinion on everything. Then I found out that he was banging interns, and the ‘ew’ factor went up substantially. I can’t stand the guy now.
Steven Spielburg. I don’t remember the last good movie he made, maybe it was Jurassic Park back in 1991.
Tom Hanks: he keeps getting trapped in something: island, airport, elevator, etc.
Donnie Yen: Entered a time machine and got stuck in 1930’s China.
Jackie Chan: Too many injuries and too old.
Eddie Murphy: Got married and stopped being angry.
My understanding about Dennis Miller was that he went insane as a response to 9/11.
Yeah, I’ll listen to conservative talk radio in the car just to see what they’re saying and Miller just isn’t amusing. It’s about 40% general talk & politics, 20% reminiscing about times people remembered or cared who Dennis Miller was, 10% telling jokes and 30% laughing at the joke he just told.
To be fair, I might just be missing some of the jokes but I kind of doubt it since each joke has to be followed by a minute of him laughing at how great his joke just was.
Then again, back when his radio program started, I made a thread about it and how he gave a “rant” during his first day then went on The Daily Show and gave the exact same rant, almost line for line, except now with Stewart feeding him openings and Miller acting as though he was winging it. I guess that’s how it works and all but any respect for his supposed “brilliance” went down the tubes with how nakedly rehearsed his whole schtick was. I can memorize a bunch of jokes and say them rapidly as well; perhaps not as effectively in a comedic sense but certainly as “intelligently”.
I humbly suggest you give Bob Mould a chance at redemption. His last three solo albums, District Line, Life and Times, and Silver Age, have been absolutely stellar. Probably his best string of consistently amazing songwriting since the Husker Du days.
Incidentally, Dug (as he now spells it) Pinnick has had a bit of rebirth as a solo artist in the last few years as well. I still think he’s one of the best singers in rock history.
I want to clarify I DID know about Dennis Miller’s thing about politics. When I last saw him ranting on and on in a conservative vein in his erudite way, I wasn’t surprised about that. Just he looked so bad, and his schtick was so humorless, and mean, and he went on and on with his jaw set, in a monotone, getting it all out… I was just wondering what he was doing for a living as I haven’t heard a thing about him in years. So I guess he is doing comedy clubs, then.
Spielberg has taken himself too seriously for decades now. Law & Order did a great send up of him in the episode Turnaround in 1997. They called the character “Steven Berger” but he is clearly patterned after Spielberg.
Tom Hanks fell off the wagon after Cast Away. He had a great run from ***Philadelphia ***until then but after that everything he has done has been some degree of maudlin.
Jackie Chan was just too overexposed. He made too many movies for children and one too many films with Chris Tucker. Also for a man who has been in films for decades he has never learned how to act and he channel Buster Keaton too often lieu of that skill.
I personally trace Eddie Murphy’s decline to the revelation that he liked transsexuals in 1998. After that point, with the exception of his role in Dreamgirls, his fare has been “family friendly” pap that is barely watchable. It seems like he wanted to throw people off the scent of “Eddie Murphy: Bisexual.”
I’d suggest just sticking with Silver Age for fans of Husker Du/Sugar - you can listen to “The Silence Between Us” from District Line and “I’m Sorry, Baby…” from Life and Times to hear the better stuff, but those albums have a lot of weaker, more “mainstream alternative” sounding songs, IMO.
Have you read Bob’s autobiography? I did. Good book.
Far be it from me to defend an asshole like Ted Nugent, but my understanding is that the phony speaker cabinet thing has been routine at big rock shows for years, and wearing hearing protection onstage is simply good sense.