We left Mohegan Sun around 11 p.m. on Saturday night because we had seen all we wanted to see, we were down five bucks, and we had a long drive back to Westchester ahead of us.

But we didn’t realize we were leaving at precisely the same time a Kid Rock there let out, so we got to share the shuttle bus back to the parking lot with a group of Kid Rock fans. That alone was an interesting a sociocultural experience as the trip to the casino itself, and so, you know, two for the price of one.

Kid Rock fans — at least the ones in the shuttle bus back to the Winter Lot at Mohegan Sun — are, for lack of a better term, hicks. I don’t know what they’re doing in the middle of Connecticut or how they got there, whether they were uprooted from the middle of America in search of work on the East Coast, live in some small pocket of cowboy territory in New England, or simply traveled from afar to see Kid Rock.

But it’s intriguing to me, because Kid Rock, from what I understand, is not really a hick. I saw his Behind the Music. His real name is Bob Ritchie, and he grew up in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit, the son of a wealthy auto dealer.

Actually, Kid Rock got his start in Detroit’s hip-hop underground and was signed to his first record deal as a rapper, but it fell through — if I recall the VH1 show correctly — because Vanilla Ice blew up and blew over, and Kid Rock’s act was too deemed similar.

I guess that makes a little bit of sense. The only Kid Rock song I can think of offhand is his first big single, Bawitaba, and that certainly incorporates some rapping, if you could call it that.

I don’t really care for Kid Rock’s music, but I think Kid Rock is awesome. A lot of this stems from when Kid Rock came into the wholesale/retail lobster farm I worked at on Long Island, bought a couple of lobsters and tipped me four bucks. That was cool — not everyone knew to tip their lobstertrician, so I appreciated it. Thanks, Kid Rock.

Also, it seems like Kid Rock was just sort of hellbent on stardom from an early age, and so, you know, good for him. You could probably accuse Kid Rock of selling out for abandoning his hip-hop roots in favor of whatever it is he’s doing now that appeals to all the people in cowboy hats on the shuttle bus, but I don’t think it really counts as selling out if your whole goal in the first place was to sell places out.

Also, I’m pretty certain Kid Rock was the first non-Cher person I ever heard use auto-tune in the manner it has since become popular, so kudos to Kid Rock for trendsetting, or at least trend-foreshadowing or something.

Lastly — and this was my main point about Kid Rock, and it took me 500 words to get here — a few years ago someone released a sex tape featuring both Kid Rock and Scott Stapp of Creed. I wrote about it at the time on a now long-forgotten blog. I was going to revisit the same topic again, but I’ve already written too much about Kid Rock, so I’ll instead just excerpt some here:

Scott Stapp and Kid Rock. Who even knew they knew each other? Like, how did that come about? I gather that they were touring together at the time, so I guess that puts them in the same place at the same time, but, well, how did they first broach that subject? Are Kid Rock afterparties the types of places where orgies just break out? I mean, I guess it’s entirely possible, since it’s not like I have any frame of reference here. Orgies certainly don’t break out at the parties that I’m attending, maybe that’s just how it goes in Kid Rock’s circle.

The thing is, by appearing in a porno video, Scott Stapp — a purported Christian — proved himself a hypocrite. By appearing in a porno video, Kid Rock proved himself an honest man. Nothing Kid Rock ever said or did made any claims that he wouldn’t, if given the opportunity, film himself having sex with several women and with other dudes around too, because hey, that’s just the way Kid Rock rolls.

Thus, one porno video somehow made Scott Stapp less cool and Kid Rock moreso, and, to tell you the truth, that’s cool with me.

I haven’t seen the video, but I’ve heard it’s pretty filthy. In fact, from what I understand, it’s the single most vile, most disgusting, and most morally debased product of the mass media since Kid Rock’s second album.

Zing!

Oh, me in 2006. Anyway, in conclusion, Kid Rock is cool, even if his music isn’t. So here’s to you, Kid Rock.

Finally, I would be remiss if I mentioned Kid Rock without linking to his amazing collection of mug shots. No one in history has ever been so happy to be arrested outside of a Waffle House.

The show Lost starts up again tonight. I’m psyched.

For a while, that wasn’t necessarily the case. This will be the final season of the show — a longform mystery rooted in dime-store philosophy and science fiction — and after the end of the last season, I feared the show’s myriad still-unanswered questions could be answered in some manner I wouldn’t find satisfying.

Nothing that’s happened in the interim has quieted that concern. I’m still a little put off by the fact that the mysterious Jacob — a powerful character we’d only been hearing about in vague terms until the Season 5 finale — turned out to be just some J. Crew-model-looking dude and not one of the characters we already knew locked up in some bizarre time-warp trap, as I had previously guessed.

It felt like a cop out, and made me skeptical about the promise made by the show’s writers since the first season that they knew exactly what was going on with the Island and had an endgame in mind.

I used to think about how mad I’d be if the ending sucked. I’d joke about a lifetime protest of ABC programming, or an angry letter-writing campaign, or worse. I thought that if the show didn’t come to a satisfying conclusion, it would mean all the time I’ve spent thinking about it would amount to time wasted.

But at some point, I realized that regardless of what happens this final season, the enjoyment I’ve derived from the show so far is real. For all I know, the writers have had no plan in mind whatsoever, but they were at least good enough to make me believe they did.

And the show has been, to this point, good enough to make me consider massive real-life questions of faith and science, free will and destiny, and the awesome implications of time travel.

And it’s got a whole lot of hot people running around on the beach without a lot of clothes on.

Hilariously, and perhaps ironically, Lost demands faith from its audience while depicting characters repeatedly rebuked for the same quality. So sometimes I wonder if the ending will be something intentionally dumb, just to show us what we get for all our faith, because sweeping, tragic irony is a big part of what Lost is all about.

And yeah, I realize that would then mean we should have had faith in the producers all along, but, well, messing with people’s heads is the main thing that Lost is all about.

I’m kidding, obviously, and I’m flying off the rails here. Whatever, I’m excited. Forgive me for being an annoying Lost fan. Here’s The Onion, featuring SNY.tv’s own Brittany Umar as Bree Lindsay, on the matter:

Final Season Of ‘Lost’ Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever

Occasionally I check Craiglist for bands in my area looking for a bassist. I’m rusty on the instrument and my amp is buried somewhere deep within my parents’ garage, but I miss playing shows and figure if I found the right group of area would-be rock stars it might be fun to join on as a hired gun of sorts.

So I saw an ad recently for a band seeking a bassist in my age range with his own equipment. I have that, so I sent an email. The next day, I got a response.

The guy asked me for a picture, so he could run it by his band’s manager and producer and see if I fit with the group’s image before they extended me an audition.

No, sir, you can not have my picture. First of all, this is Craigslist, so I recognize there’s a halfway decent chance you aim to cut and paste my head on some ugly naked guy’s body and sell it elsewhere on the Internet as porn, or something to that effect. I don’t know the mechanics of it, but I’m certain it’s sketchy.

Second, you just exposed yourself as about the lamest would-be rock star imaginable. Your band’s image? Bite me.

I happen to be achingly beautiful in a totally pliable way and I’m certain I could be made to fit in with whatever it is you’re trying to package, but now you don’t get to see my pretty face or hear my pretty bass playing because you and I don’t see eye-to-eye on what’s most important about being in a band at all.

Also, what band with a manager and producer is looking for a bass player with his own equipment on Craigslist? Shouldn’t a competent manager at least have access to the bulletin board at the local guitar store?

Look: I recognize that, to some extent, rock and roll has always been about the image. But… I don’t know. I hold very things to some romantic ideal, and music is one of them. I always thought the Internet would eventually emerge as this amazing instrument by which musicians would meet and collaborate and paradigms would be entirely shifted, and it just hasn’t happened yet.

And then I go out and try to find some guys to jam with, and I begin to figure out why. Image. What am I, joining Limp Bizkit?

I told the guy it didn’t sound like my scene and left it at that. I should’ve given him a good scolding though. Or better yet, I should have asked him for his picture, so I could see if the band fit with my image.

Anyway, here’s an image of me playing the bass, with a fake mustache. Fake mustaches are a big part of my image. Dig my white leather guitar strap. White leather is also a big part of my image.

I have no interest in starting a band, mind you. Organizing a band is a huge pain and not something I have anything like the time or energy to do.

I led a band in college that met with some minor amount of success for a college band, and so whenever I brag about that, people comment about how college kids playing shows for college kids must have been great for our collective love lives.

Not the case, at all. Until you get to the level of having managers and roadies, the only action you get after shows is the joy of loading hundreds of pounds of equipment into a Nissan Sentra. Plus a lot of that equipment is borrowed, so you’ve got to go about returning it to the people who lent it to you. Plus a lot more of it is “borrowed,” so you’ve got to go about returning it to your college’s music room before anyone notices it went missing.

And while all that happens, all the people who were in the bar you were rocking leave with other people from that bar, none of whom are busy playing Tetris with amps and the trunk of a Nissan Sentra. A huge percentage of them leave with my friend Dan, who, to this day, has never met better matchmakers than the members of the Moo Shoo Porkestra.

The wife was out last night and Death Race was on Cinemax. So that’s what this is about.

Jason Statham is awesome. He perpetually looks like he’s about to kick someone’s ass, even in scenes when he’s tenderly romancing his wife in the kitchen and such.

In fact, it feels like just about every Jason Statham movie has a part when he unexpectedly beats the crap out of someone, like going from zero to Bruce Lee in a split second. The only movies he doesn’t do that in are the ones where there’s no downtime between him kicking asses.

Jason Statham is a master of beating people up with objects that are not normally used to beat people up, like a cafeteria tray or a bicycle or whatever. I know that this is nothing new in action movies, but he really makes an art of it. Anything is a deadly weapon in Jason Statham’s hands. Sometimes it seems like he’d be better off just using his fists, but whatever. If there’s something within Jason Statham’s reach, he’ll find a way to beat you senseless with it.

Jason Statham should play Bond. I don’t understand why they keep trotting out debonair charmers like Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig when Statham’s ripe for the picking. It’s the 21st century, baby. Bond should be doing a lot more kicking. Hollywood’s sitting on the most badass Brit since William the Bastard (who it turns out was French, but whatever) and they trot out Daniel Craig? What, you think Statham can’t wear a tux? C’mon.

The plot of Death Race was very similar to that of Gladiator in that both male lead characters were enslaved and forced into gladiator battles by someone who had murdered their wife.

Unlike Gladiator, though, Death Race had triumphant explosions. And somehow, Jason Statham didn’t win the Academy Award for his role in Death Race. Also, unlike Gladiator, Death Race was jaw-droppingly stupid.

They didn’t even bother explaining the rules of the death races themselves, nor why — and this part was particularly baffling — there were so many experienced death racers at this one prison even though nearly all the competitors in most death races die.

Apparently it’s a remake of a Stallone movie from the 70s, but I haven’t seen the original. I assume that one, like the original Rollerball, had some subtleties that the remake glossed over.

It basically seemed like someone made a movie out of a video game, only no one bothered to read the game manual or figure out what all the buttons on the controller did before they started filming. It even had random “lighted shields” in the middle of the road that the death racers tried to drive over for no clearly defined reason. Maybe for points, or bonus lives, or to unlock new levels or secret characters you can play.

But all that said, it was still awesome. Some movies are just about the spectacle. I’m still trying to find a showing of Avatar in IMAX 3D at a reasonable time that’s not sold out. Hoping tonight’s my night.

So apparently it’s a big deal in England to have the No. 1 single during Christmas week. And apparently for the last four years, the Christmas charts have been dominated by winners of X Factor, a Simon Cowell-produced pop-singing competition in the American Idol mold.

And apparently this year, someone got so disgusted with it that he started an Internet movement. So this year, Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” will be the U.K.’s No. 1 Christmas single.

Cool.

If I were to list bands by the amount they impacted my life, Rage would easily crack the top 5. I vividly remember the first time I heard their self-titled debut album, in my friend’s basement when I was in 7th grade, and spending the rest of the day figuring out the basslines while he tried his best to imitate Tom Morello’s erupting volcano of guitar posturing.

I don’t listen to them much anymore unless they come up on shuffle or something, at least partly because at some point I considered the various issues inherent in being socialist rock stars. Presumably the members of Rage Against the Machine made a lot of money off it, and though I suppose they would argue spreading their messages was for a greater good, I spent a lot of cash on their albums, concert tickets and paraphernalia.

That made it harder to take their shtick seriously.

Still, that shouldn’t take away from how funky and awesome their songs are. Hearing “Killing In the Name” played live in the video attached to the article linked above reminded me how powerful their music could be, and how stylish Zack De La Rocha’s lyrical flow is, and how they’re really the only band to ever master the rap-rock subgenre.

So good for them, and good for the Internet, and good for society at large. Morello says it’s a sign that “people in the U.K. are tired of being spoonfed one schmaltzy ballad after another; they want to take back their own charts.”

And so they were, and so they did.

It feels like a lot of great musical movements stem from backlash; there will always be trendsetters and outliers and good music beyond what’s dominating the charts, but at the same time, there will always be plenty of open-mouthed consumers happy to swallow up whatever record companies are spoonfeeding them.

Eventually, it gets so predictable and so overwhelmingly awful that someone or something comes along and shakes up the system, and then those same consumers wake up and beg to be spoonfed something else for a while. Then the record companies figure out what people are buying, and how to mass-produce it, so Nirvana and Pearl Jam beget Creed and Nickelback and eventually the whole cycle repeats itself.

Not necessarily a bad thing, just a thing.

I’m not so naive as to think one Internet stunt is going to topple the Simon Cowell empire, and that thanks to this incident record companies will suddenly start searching for and promoting cool and original music again, but it’s got to be at least a small step in the right direction.

Anyway, here’s Rage’s “No Shelter.” When this came out, I thought it was about the most rock and roll thing imaginable that a song on the Godzilla soundtrack could deem the movie “pure [expletive] filler.” Then I realized the makers of Godzilla and producers of its soundtrack probably didn’t care, and maybe even figured the line might help them sell a few more CDs.

Still a good song, though. Lyrics NSFW:

I saw James Cameron on the street Monday night, outside of a bar on 51st St. in Manhattan.

I considered walking up to him and asking, excitedly, “Excuse me, are you the man responsible for Titanic?” and then, when he said yes, punching him in the face.

I realize that’s not a nice thing to do, plus James Cameron probably would spare absolutely no expense in suing my pants off, but on the other hand, Titanic sucked so hard. And I figure that’s a perfectly reasonable defense to present in court if I were to get sued for punching James Cameron.

“But your honor, did you even see Titanic? Why did Leo DiCaprio sink? Seriously. Dead people float!”

I opted not to do any bodily harm to James Cameron because, for one, it turns out he’s much bigger than me and, second, I remembered he also made the Terminator movies.

Also, I’m pretty psyched for Avatar.

I’m not certain Avatar will be good. In fact, if I had to bet, I’d guess it will suck. But because it’s the most expensive movie ever made, chances are it’s either going to be a towering epic or a complete catastrophe, and so, either way, it’s going to be awesome.

If you’re unfamiliar, the film opens Friday and is about a future in which humans are invading an alien planet to reap a mineral called — no joke — Unobtainium.

I assume there will be heavy-handed environmental allegory all over the place, which could be completely sickening or obvious but effective, depending on how much I like the movie.

Cameron himself has already produced some amazingly pretentious quotes about himself and his film, many of which are contained in this New York Times piece. Here’s my favorite:

My brother’s a Marine, and his friends are my friends, and this is how they think. Their idea is that the harder things get, the better it defines you. That’s something I understand. It’s why I make the kind of movies that I make. I’m not humping a 100-pound pack through 120-degree heat for 10 hours, but it’s the same kind of thing. I know I’m doing something other people can’t do.

You see, making a movie on a $250 million budget is the same kind of thing as BEING A MARINE.

With a master of simile like that at its helm, how can Avatar fail?

One particularly exciting thing about the movie is that it will feature an entirely new type of 3-D technology, which is described in the same Times article.

I’m on board with that. Say what you will about Cameron, the guy has always been dope at manipulating the best available cinematic technologies and creating new ones. Avatar stands to be a most awesome visual spectacle, regardless of whether it’s any good.

I’ll be seeing it in IMAX 3-D, because, as I’ve stated on numerous occasions, I like most things in ridiculous scale. Also because, as I’ve argued before, 3-D technology hasn’t really come very far since the old red-and-blue paper specs they used to hand out at 7-11 to promote sweeps week on FOX.

I think that’s crap, and so I’m hoping Cameron is the guy to usher in the next generation of making things in movies look like they’re flying off the screen at me. For that alone, I will be glad not to have punched him for Titanic.

I’ve been so caught up in Winter Meetings nonsense this week that I’ve been totally remiss in weighing in on non-baseball nonsense.

Mark McGrath, in case you’re unfamiliar, is Sugar Ray.

You might argue that technically Mark McGrath is just the lead singer of the band Sugar Ray, but as my colleague Dave Tomar has pointed out at the Perpetual Post, Mark McGrath is quite obviously Sugar Ray. It’s pretty much indisputable.

You probably remember Sugar Ray from cheesy pop-rock hits like “Fly” and “Every Morning,” intolerable songs your high-school girlfriend made you listen to over and over again that one summer until you finally broke up with her because you couldn’t take it anymore.

OK, she dumped you because you didn’t look enough like Mark McGrath, but whatever, the songs sucked.

Anyway, one mildly interesting thing about Sugar Ray is that apparently before the breakout success of “Fly,” they made some pretty decent music. I didn’t listen to it, so I can’t really vouch for this, but my former roommate was a big pre-“Fly” Sugar Ray guy and used to defend them all the time, citing their debut album Lemonade and Brownies. I’m pretty sure he even played it for me, and though I can’t say I remember it, I support it in principle.

And apparently “Fly” was the only song on that album that sounded like “Fly.” Then the next album came out and every song sounded like “Fly.”

Whatever. So they sold out. A lot of bands sell out. It’s far from the most interesting thing about Mark McGrath.

By far the most interesting thing about Mark McGrath is that Mark McGrath knows absolutely everything about music. Seriously. Mark McGrath was on VH1’s celebrity Rock and Roll Jeopardy! a bunch of times and was completely dominant.

If I recall correctly, one time he was up by so much that they had to randomly award 500 dollars (I believe they were actually “points” in this case, because the proceeds were going to charity) to each of his opponents so they could even hold a Final Jeopardy!. Otherwise, it would have been just Mark McGrath, alone on the stage for the end of the show, because the other two guys were both in the red when Double Jeopardy! ended.

Also — and this is hazy — I’m pretty sure at one point the correct answer was actually the name of a soap opera that one of McGrath’s opponents was on at the time, at which point McGrath turned to the guy and said something like, “I think you better take this one, buddy.”

Then the guy still got it wrong before McGrath chimed in and got the points.

Honestly, I watch Jeopardy! in every form whenever it’s on, and I’ve never seen a contestant as outstanding as Mark McGrath was on celebrity Rock and Roll Jeopardy!.

And yet Mark McGrath chooses to make songs like “Someday.”

He knows about Stevie Wonder’s back catalog and the Buzzcocks’ greatest hits and the pioneers of New Age music, and he chooses to make bland adult contemporary radio pop.

I can’t determine if that’s depressing or hilarious or damning or what.

Being a member of the Strokes must suck. You have to deal with having tons of fans, playing sold-out shows all the time, suffering through endless praise from critics, and sleeping with models on top of giant piles of money.

Actually, I’m being sarcastic. That wouldn’t suck at all.

And yet apparently none of the Strokes are happy just being members of the Strokes. It feels like they’ve all got solo projects going, because another terrible thing about being in the Strokes is that you can record just about anything you want and get some major label to distribute it.

While driving around upstate a couple weeks back listening to the excellent EQX, I heard, for the first time, Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture’s new band, cleverly named Nickle Eye. Get it?

The song I heard, presumably the band’s first single, is called “Brandy of the Damned.” It features three minutes of essentially one repeated reggae-inspired riff. It’s not a terrible groove, for what it’s worth; it’s vaguely reminiscent of The Police.

The lead singer, I assume Nickle Eye himself, sounds bored, maybe because his song is just the same thing over and over again, or maybe because recording detached and bored-sounding vocals is a hip thing to do, or maybe because he’s bored with the trend of sounding bored and is aspiring to some sort of meta-boredom.

Anyway, the lyrics go like this:

Don’t let them get you down.
They’ll step on you to get to higher ground
All my life I’ve been a working man.
I’ve been working for the man.
In this life you only get one chance.
Music is the brandy of the damned.

That’s it. Those are all the lyrics to “Brandy of the Damned.” They repeat a couple of times, but it’s got to be the easiest karaoke song of all time. Nearly every line is a cliche, and the only one that’s decidedly not — “Music is the brandy of the damned” — is a quote from George Bernard Shaw.

Also, it’s hard to really empathize with the lead singer, because we know he’s in the Strokes and has decidedly not spent his entire life as a working man, working for the man, just sitting around rhyming “man” with “man.”

I guess he’s singing in someone else’s voice or whatever. Whatever.

Maybe I’m missing something here. Maybe Nickle Eye is super cool and awesome, and I just have bad taste in music. I prefer my brandy a little more interesting.

I’ve just been made aware of this wonderful news:

Apparently IFC is showing two episodes of Arrested Development every Tuesday night.

DVR set.

Arrested Development, if you’re unfamiliar, is the best thing that’s ever been on TV. I know the popular thing among people with good taste is to say it’s The Wire, and I absolutely loved The Wire and think it’s almost certainly the second best thing to ever be on TV.

But Arrested Development is a special, special show. It’s like what would happen if James Joyce wrote a sitcom, only more comprehensible. Honestly, watch it tonight and pay attention: Every detail matters. Every joke is funny in isolation and in the larger context of the show. If you don’t laugh in every scene, you’re almost certainly missing something.

It’s downright perfect. All the performances are stellar, the pace is right, everything.

The second episode IFC airs tonight will be “Pier Pressure,” arguably the masterpiece in a series chock full of masterpieces.

I took a screenwriting class once and the teacher told us he kept two scripts at his desk. I forget which they were, but one was to remind him that there were produced screenplays that he was capable of writing to keep him confident, and one to remind him that there were screenplays he was incapable of writing to keep him working to get better.

Arrested Development is that second thing. But it’s so tightly crafted, so overwhelmingly well-planned, that it’s way more depressing than it is intimidating. No one could ever hope to create anything so awesome.

We’re still better off for its having been made, though.

Did anyone watch The Prisoner miniseries on AMC? It’s a remake of a series from the 1960s, presented in three two-hour installments, or, depending on how you like to divide things, six one-hour installments. It aired Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of this week, but it will be re-aired starting on Sunday.

Anyway, it’s pretty awesome.

It starts with Jim Caviezal waking up amnesiac in a desert to the sounds of gunfire as a militia hunts down an unarmed old man.

He soon learns that he’s been somehow transported to the outskirts of a creepy little town run by Ian McKellen and known as The Village, kind of like in the M. Night Shyamalan movie, only this time I wasn’t able to predict the plot twist from the trailer.

Residents in The Village cannot escape, and many don’t want to, as they are unaware that anyplace besides The Village even exists. But Caviezal — known as 6, since everyone in The Village is numbered — remembers living in New York, and suspects at least a few other villagers have pre-Village memories, too.

I’m not finished watching it yet plus I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t recap the plot any further. The narrative itself, though, is disjointed and nebulous, so the viewer — through the first two hours at least — feels a bit like 6 must: confused and without foundation.

The show appears to be thematically and aesthetically similar to Lost, one of my favorite TV shows of all-time. Some of the parallels are so striking that it seems like Lost might be borrowing heavily from the original — which I haven’t seen — or, alternately, that the AMC remake was made with Lost in mind.

One advantage it has over that series is its abbreviated format. Though I’ve invested countless hours watching and rewatching the first five seasons of Lost, I’m still a bit skeptical that it the narrative will conclude in some satisfying way, as — despite claims to the contrary — it’s always unclear whether the writers and producers had an ending in mind at the series’ outset.

With a miniseries there are no such concerns. Clearly everyone responsible for The Prisoner knew exactly when and how the story would wrap from the start of the project, so the plotline should be tighter and more clearly defined.

That’s cool, and with scripted serial sci-fi dramas all the rage these days, I hope that the industry trends toward more programs with planned end-dates, as is more common in Europe.

I recognize that there are some pretty huge differences between the American and British television industries and that ratings have long determined the length of series in the States. But since shows like Lost bank on viewers making long-term investments in solving their mysteries and trusting the writers to end them well — leaps of faith, if you will — it strikes me that, after a few disappointing or dragged-out series finales, it might become a better business strategy to assure audiences that the storyline is fully crafted from before a show’s premiere.