The actual environmental threat is still hot but the celebrity pile-on should be put on the endangered species list.
I'm a big fan of Spinal Tap. The movie is a gorgeous funny satire of celebrity and the music business. And, my friends who are professional musicians tell me, it's an amazingly accurate and non-satirical look at celebrity and the music business.
The Tap are dinosaurs and don't know it -- heavy metal headbangers who aren't aware that the world has mostly forgotten them. VW added tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) to its New Beatle campaign in an effort to get a wink, wink connect with consumers. Unfortunately for VW, Tap fans (Tap Heads?) know that the band exists to mock, not to sell. Putting the Tap into a marketing effort just highlights the superficiality of the attempt to connect this way. (That said, I'm all in favor of Guest and the other Tappers -- Harry Shearer and Michael McKean -- getting as much work/money as any company is willing to give them.)
So the fact that the Tap "will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7" is definitely a good thing -- from the perspective of satire and art. What could be a better comment on the silliness of a concert to fight global warming than Spinal Tap being there? Hell, they should be the headliners.
Global Warming: The Event has just jumped the sharks that global warming -- the reality -- is killing off.
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