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The band that performed with KISS during the Dr Pepper commercial in Sunday night’s Super Bowl? You might have a chance to see them up close soon.

MiniKISS is a KISS tribute band that consists of little people, all under 4-foot-4.

Here’s the Dr Pepper spot.

MiniKISS is apparently scheduled to play Decatur’s Little Square Theatre later this year. A schedule of events submitted to the Herald & Review has MiniKISS on the schedule, but no date appears on the release or on the MiniKISS or Lincoln Web sites.

One sad bit of news about MiniKISS – they do not play their instruments. So apparently we’ll see a mime show when they come. Is that worth it? We’ll see what the paying customers (or not) think.

There seemed to be a lot of generational debate during and after Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

Like or dislike of the ads and the entertainment – at least that to which I was exposed – was hardly unanimous.

On Facebook, I was seeing “rocks” a lot from the older fans and “sucks” from a lot of the younger ones. Myself, I didn’t agree with either analysis. If you didn’t know the songs (as I suspect was the case with many of the younger viewers), snippets of tunes weren’t going to be very satisfying. On the other hand, it was probably the coolest stage setup ever at the Super Bowl – I could have looked at those overhead shots forever.

And Pete Townshend windmilled 10 times during the final chord of “Who Are You.” Gotta love that. If only the drummer had appeared older than the newest song they played (“Who Are You,” 1978).

I talked to people ranging in age from their teens to their 50s for my story in this morning’s Herald & Review, and there was no consensus on the best commercials. FloTV ads were mentioned as the best AND the worst, as were Doritos spots.

One panelist said, “We’re not considering CBS’ promos, right?” I said, “Right, or else I’d be arguing that the David Letterman-Oprah Winfrey-Jay Leno promo was the best.” For me, it was the most stunning thing of the evening.

Well, second most-stunning. I was sure the Colts would win by two touchdowns.

The ads can be seen at cbssportsline.com/superbowlads.

Sorry about this one, gang.

The last few years, I’ve either blogged or conducted a chat during the Super Bowl so we can evaluate the commercials together.

But that’s been when I’ve had someone to write the Super Bowl commercials review story for the daily newspaper.

This year, because of switches in our staffing, that story falls to me. Ashley Rueff, who spent the last half of 2009 as the Herald & Review’s entertainment reporter, has shifted beats.

We’ve filled Ashley’s position. James Vorel will start later this month. And Ashley’s byline will still pop up in the Friday entertainment section now and again.

In the meantime, I’m a little concerned about taking on more than I can handle, so I won’t be liveblogging or chatting on Sunday.

Keep your eye out for the story Monday morning, though. I’ve got what appears to be a fun and solid cast of reviewers for the commercials.

Enjoy the game. And be sure to vote in our poll about the game.

I readily acknowledge I didn’t see this one coming.

Just as I didn’t see “Titanic” pulling in all the money it did, had I wagered (as I often have) that “Titanic” again wouldn’t be topped by the latest sensation in theaters, I would have lost this week.

“Avatar” surpassed “Titanic” as the United States’ box office dollars champ this week.

I’ve been passing this link along to everyone I’ve e-mailed lately, just to show the difference between HOW MUCH and HOW MANY people are paying to go to a movie. (I remember “The Sound of Music” being a big deal, but holy cow, look at those numbers. I never guessed it was that huge.)

What does it say about James Cameron and “Avatar”? It certainly doesn’t denigrate the accomplishment, even though the accom-plishment took place with inflated rent-these-glasses prices. Get your film into the top 25 in all-time attendance and you’re standing pretty tall with some other legends.

It’s interesting to note as well that many of the films in the top 20 benefited from re-releases, sometimes single, sometimes multiple. If I’m letting my memory list those that did NOT – and frankly, right now I wouldn’t know where to look to research re-release informa-tion – I’d say only “Titanic,” “Jurassic Park” and “The Phantom Menace” didn’t get a second shot at screens, because they stayed around so long the first time.

I know I’m pretty much alone on the island on this one, but “The Blind Side”? Really?

Of all the films available to fill up the “second five” among the Academy Award best picture nominees Tuesday, “The Blind Side” was one I never considered would earn a nomination, especially after seeing it.

I find myself avoiding a lot of romantic comedies, and despising the ones I do end up watching (and despising myself for watching them). Why? They’re all so formulaic. If you don’t know what’s going to happen with each character and with the plot, and if the beats of the story don’t all fall exactly where you know they always do, then either you don’t watch many films, or you’re not paying attention, or you’re getting something truly different.

(I find for me, there’s generally one romantic comedy per year that rises above the putrid norm. “Love Actually,” “Definitely Maybe” and “Music and Lyrics” have been recent pleasant surprises for me.)

(And if you enjoy romantic comedies, more power to you. Enjoy away. They’re just not my thing.)

It seems Hollywood film makers are pushing sports movies toward that same romantic comedy trap – make sure all the beats are in the right places. Set up some improbable if not impossible barriers, show the athlete catching peoples’ eyes, throw in the occasional slight setback, and catch all the triumphs. There’s never a 3-yard rushing play in a football movie, there’s never an infield popup in a baseball movie (except in “Bull Durham”), there’s never a wire-to-wire victory in the last race in any movie.

And if there’s a white-black race issue somewhere in the story, all the better. (See “The Blind Side,” “Remember the Titans,” “The Express,” etc.)

So yeah, I found “The Blind Side” pretty pedestrian. And I’m not even sure that Sandra Bullock is being nominated for best actress as anything more than a career achievement award. Was that a great acting job? Better than “Crash”? Or “Practical Magic”? Or even “Love Potion No. 9”? (Go put that one in your Netflix queue. She’s a charmer in it.)

Rather than “The Blind Side,” I’d rather have seen “Star Trek” get a nomination, or even “The Hangover.” You might have liked “The Blind Side” better than the other two, but I promise you had less idea what was coming next at any point in the other two. “The Blind Side” couldn’t have telegraphed its intentions any better with subtitles or road signs.

***

In a couple of other Academy Awards notes:

“Crazy Heart” and “An Education,” each of which have multiple nominations, open in Macon County Friday. “Crazy Heart” plays The Avon, and “An Education” opens at Hickory Point. (It’s also opening in Mattoon Friday.)

And our annual picks contest is available here.

If this isn’t as bizarre as it gets … well, let me start again.

If Decatur Celebration’s apparent bookings get any more bizarre, my eyes might pop out of my head.

First, The Dollyrots are coming. You’d be excused for not knowing The Dollyrots, a trio from Los Angeles by way of Florida. They’re a punk-pop band (friends say The Dollyrots bring to mind The Donnas), and their 2007 album “Because I’m Awesome” amused me to no end. The Dollyrots say on their Facebook page that they’re playing all three days of Celebration.

The title song from their newest album was used in a Kohl’s commercial (which almost caused me to fall out of my living room chair the first time I saw it):

And here’s the full video:

OK, so that’s strange. Here’s even stranger. Apparently a Germany-based Barry White tribute act will play this year’s Celebration as well.

If ever the phrase “the mind boggles” were appropriate, it would be at the knowledge of the existence of a Barry White tribute band based in Germany.

Who knows if they’ll bring the full light show and all of the players? But even if it’s just a few people and the remainder are here on tape, it will be something I know I’ve never seen before. Of course, if it’s just a guy singing karaoke to some backing tracks on CD, I HAVE seen that before.

Finally, the first of the headliners has been announced on the web. The Charlie Daniels Band plays Sunday, Aug. 8. Daniels has been a long-time target for Celebration - I’ve been hearing his name come up virtually every year.

I got caught up in the Decatur Celebration discussion last week, and didn’t get a chance to post anything about the death of legendarily reclusive author J.D. Salinger.

I’m not going to offer any great insight. Rather, My first thought upon hearing Salinger’s name has nothing to do with “Catcher in the Rye.” Instead, it revolves around “Nine Stories,” Salinger’s collection of short stories, and my high school literature teacher’s insistence on our class reading EVERY ONE of the stories and discussing them.

I was probably too young and/or too immature to be reading them at the time. I despised them. I remember being frustrated that we were spending so much time reading and discussing Salinger when there were so many other great American writers out there.

I went to a small high school, and had the same teacher in creative writing as I had for American literature. I decided I would write every story in creative writing in the style of “Nine Stories” Salinger. People conversed AT each other rather than WITH one another, They carried on independent conversations.

And I added a nice little hack-like O. Henry twist at the end of each piece by having somebody shoot themselves.

My teacher was as unamused as I imagine most of you are right now. After the fourth such story, she wrote on my paper, “I get it. Do this again, and you fail.”

And as dumb as it is, that was my first thought when I heard Salinger died.

They’re already coming out, and I confess I don’t understand any of them.

There are groups in town who absolutely LOVE Decatur Celebration, and those who completely DESPISE it.

I don’t get it.

I’m not in either camp. There are things I like about the event (seeing friends, certain food and crafts vendors, some of the entertainment), and things I hate (standing in the heat, being in the midst of an odorous crowd that will not move, tracking down totally unfounded rumors).

I suspect I have some of those in common with a lot of you.

But I was hearing from people yesterday who swear the event isn’t broken. Something must be wrong with the board members who resigned earlier this week, these people argue. The event is marvelous, and there’s something wrong with anyone who doesn’t support it.

Incorrect. There are obviously issues, or else the event’s budget would be closer to reality than it’s been most of the last decade. There’s a disconnect between what’s being provided to the audience and what the audience wants. That needs to be repaired. Whether it can be is anyone’s guess. But the people responsible need to try, or regardless of their desires to keep the event alive, it will die due to lack of interest.

But I’ll also admonish those of you who cheer uncontrollably for Celebration to die a sudden death. Even if you think producer Fred Puglia’s numbers double the actual attendance (and I’ve generally figured Puglia is good for about a 30 percent bump), that’s still 150,000 people a weekend. Nothing in Macon County draws close to those kind of numbers, not even “Avatar” in 3-D.

I can understand not liking the event, for any number of reasons. But I don’t understand actively rooting for it to fail and fold. That’s like rooting against a business, only on a much larger scale. I know people do it. I just don’t understand why they do, or how they can.

As I’ve always said when discussing Celebration, it’s not up to me whether the thing sticks around or not. In fact, for the most part, it’s not up to the people who are most vocal about it one way or the other. It’s about the thousands who make that decision every August whether and/or how often to come downtown. You can’t poll them, you can only wait for them to make their feelings known by their appearance or lack of same.

My personal wish? I’m sick of people thinking of me as Decatur Celebration’s biggest cheerleader, or its worst enemy. I’ve been called both often, continually and recently.

I’d also like to avoid having obscenities being thrown my way from the stage, and being misquoted by performers.

Somebody get word to Ryan Cabrera, OK?

***

Oh, and believe it or not, this is officially the 1,500th entry in the history of this blog. Why am I not surprised that Celebration was the topic?

In tomorrow’s Herald & Review, I’ll have some of my take on the mass resignation of members of the Decatur Celebration board of directors. In the meantime, I wanted to throw this area open for discussion.

What do I expect here? It would be nice to have some reasonably intelligent discussion about Celebration, but I also understand the event has polarized peoples’ opinions so much, that may not be possible.

Can we at least try?

I’ll say right now that I’m not holding anything back for tomorrow’s column. Unless something severely drastic happens between now and tomorrow morning’s paper, I can honestly say I’m not going to shed a lot of direct light on what’s happening.

I have my suspicions, and I imagine if you read between the lines of some carefully crafted statements in today’s story, you may come to some of the same conclusions. But as much as it pains me to write this, we’ll have to let some of this play itself out a little longer.

The Groove Hogs are the first act to mention on the Web that they’re playing Decatur Magazine’s Blues in Central Park this year.
According to the band’s Web site, they’re playing the Aug. 19 date of the series.

And in additional Decatur Celebration news, local band The Still joins Ryan Cabrera as acts that have announced their upcoming presence at the 25th Decatur Celebration in August.

The Still is scheduled to play Friday night.

This is really more fun than you’d think, and more fun than it has any right to be. Examining the baseball minituae of “Peanuts” strips and determining the teams’ records through 1970.

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If this report about a Seth McFarlane joke being trimmed from the end of the 450th episode of “The Simpsons” is true, I’m very sad. It would have been epic.

***

If this material from an interview with a Facebook employee is accurate, then any idea of privacy on that site is as much of a joke as it is anywhere else on the Web. Think about it, folks. It’s a fascinating look inside the behemoth. And it features some naughty language, too.

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WFMU’s Beware of the Blog always has some great reads on it. This one recounts some of the early history of “The Tonight Show” and leaves you thinking the show has endured DESPITE NBC rather than because of it. The piece is also some nice history for people who might think late night television began with Jay Leno and David Letterman.

***

It’s The Beatles’ world, we’re just living in it. A project on its first legs is Charting the Beatles, which so far is doing interesting things with timelines and authorships and self-references.

***

Speaking of The Beatles, there was a time when I thought The Jam was the greatest band on the planet. So the dozen or so people reading this who actually KNOW The Jam will be excited to know that leader Paul Weller has reunited in the recording studio and in life with Bruce Foxton. The rest of you, read on, please.

***

The point at which we realize we’ve nuked the fridge on Leno-O’Brien commentary? When Leno gets compared to Hitler. I realize it’s a satirical piece, but …

***

In the fallout of my piece last week listing my favorite albums of 2009, I received a pretty entertaining e-mail from somebody who wrote “for probably the 25th time, your list contained nothing that i’ve ever owned….but thats ok.”

(This was my 25th published list.)

I chuckled at that, and laughed additionally at the writer’s memory of his mother buying him his first album for Christmas, KISS’ “Dressed to Kill.” “My mom only bought it because they were all dressed in suits.”

What made it especially funny was the last time my mother decided to try to buy music for me for Christmas. It was at a time when I was exploring new music and wasn’t anxious to spend a lot of money on material I hadn’t heard previously, so her request of a list was received gratefully and graciously by me. I included albums by Dead Can Dance, The Wolfgang Press and Xmal Duetschland.

It still amuses me to think of her standing in line to purchase those.

I’ve been fascinated by the rise of Ralph’s World on the children’s music scene. Anything that entertains kids and gets them interested in music is great in my book, but can you imagine Elvis Costello as a children’s entertainer?

That’s pretty much the equivalent of what’s happened here. Because Ralph is known to me and a bunch of others as Ralph Covert, the songwriter behind the band The Bad Examples, who about 20 years ago should have been the next huge thing to come out of Illinois.

In 1990, their “Bad Is Beautiful” album made my top 10 list of the year, and if you listened to music at all in the Midwest, you knew “Not Dead Yet.” (Even now, when I’m at shows and Covert and maybe even some other Bad Examples are going to play, I tell people around me, “You know ‘Not Dead Yet’.” They don’t recognize it from my woeful attempts at singing it, but when Covert starts, they turn and said, “Oh yeah, this one.”)

Sorry, but this partial version of the song with an odd video coupling is the best I can come up with. But there’s enough here to recognize.

Sadly, “Bad Is Beautiful” – a wonderful combination of Elvis Costello, Squeeze and Graham Parker (which is to say upbeat pop and roll with witty and intelligent lyrics) – did not sell in the mass quantities it should have. “Statue by the Phone” and “One Perfect Moment” were great hit singles in the alternate pop universe that I often occupy, and if you never heard (or were part of) an audience singalong of “She Smiles Like Richard Nixon,” well, that’s your loss.

The Bad Examples eventually faded, occasionally doing one-off reunions (often at Chicago’s annual International Pop Overthrow celebrations). And Covert began performing as Ralph’s World, which he will do Saturday morning at the University of Illinois at Springfield’s Sangamon Auditorium. I hope the kids appreciate the music as much as the adults will.

Here’s a link to some Ralph’s World videos on YouTube.

I have a great admiration for the truly fearless among performers. There are so few of them that the ones willing to dance on the edge deserve the occasional tip of the beret.

While I don’t watch much late-night television (for reasons I detailed earlier), the Web has given me a chance to still sample some of what’s being broadcast while I’m sleeping. I’ve found myself regularly scanning YouTube to see what kind of silliness Craig Ferguson has gotten up to on his CBS “Late Late Show.”

For some reason, I keep watching this clip of Ferguson, a couple of his staffers and a batch of puppets lip-syncing Fatboy Slim’s “Wonderful Night:”

I think what I enjoy most about this is Ferguson puts himself way out there, without betraying his thoughts about his silliness. Conan O’Brien wouldn’t do something like this without letting the audience know he was in on the joke. David Letterman would just have staff members or hired actors do the work while he observed. That’s just the nature of O’Brien’s and Letterman’s humor.

And it goes without saying, but this kind of surrealism is bluntly too clever for Jay Leno anymore.

Ferguson, meanwhile, stands in there and makes himself as much a fool as he asks others to be.

Another actor who doesn’t seem to have any shame is Ed Helms. Helms went from “The Daily Show” to “The Office” on TV and “The Hangover” in film. Each step of the way, I have images in my head of producers, directors and writers concocting the most outrageous nonsense imaginable, and approaching Helms expecting to be dismissed, only to have him say, “Sure. Then what?”

Here’s a collection of some of Helms’ best singing moments from “The Office.”

I admit both are acquired tastes. I remember e-mailing an “Office”-loving friend and asking “Was the point of all that (a 10- or 12-episode arc that added Helms to the show) the addition of one unlikeable character?” Turns out I was wrong.

Now this is some interesting thought processes, and I can think of a few people who might beg to differ.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says people no longer have an expectation of privacy thanks to increasing uptake of social networking.

The article goes on to discuss how some of us fail to use common sense online. We put vacation plans or weekend plans on Twitter and Facebook, essentially inviting the less scrupulous among us to take advantage of our silliness by breaking into our residences.

We forget that our bosses and/or people we don’t like or even know have access to much of the information we trot out online for our friends.

Sometimes, too many of us are just careless. And we pay the price.

It’s why I’m grateful for something I observed a few weeks ago. After viewing the transcript of an online chat I had with a friend’s 10-year-old offspring, my friend banned the 10-year-old from Facebook for a weekend.

My friend determined the child had exhibited inappropriate behavior. It didn’t matter whether it was with me or some faceless stranger. The behavior was inappropriate, and my friend was taking steps to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Maybe my friend should be employed looking at some of our Twitter and Facebook posts.

It’s that time of year again, and more of a challenge than ever before.

We need volunteers to participate in the Herald & Review’s annual Super Bowl commercial ratings story.

Sure, it’s the most-watched sporting event of the year. (This year’s game is Feb. 7. With any luck, it will feature my beloved Minnesota Vikings, even as they’re led by the reviled Brett Favre.) It’s usually the most-watched (and most-discussed) television event of the year. The Super Bowl is also the broadcast where many companies trot out their big-ticket ad campaigns. And for the last seven years, Herald & Review staffers and others in Central Illinois have taken part in a post-game instant poll ranking the best and worst commercials.

This year provides a little more interest. Economics have some key players in past Super Bowl advertising deciding to cut back or sit out. Most notably absent will be Pepsi. And we apparently won’t be seeing many car advertisements.

Previous winners:
2009: Troy Polamalu remake of Mean Joe Greene Coke ad
2008: Budweiser Clydesdale trained by Dalmation
2007: Bud Light literal rock-paper-scissors game
2006: Sprint cell phone as “crime deterrent”
2005: careerbuilder.com’s series of office ads featuring monkeys
2004: Budweiser crotch-biting dog
2003: Reebok’s Terry Tate, football-playing office worker
2002: Budweiser Robo-bash, a violent refrigerator

If you’d like a chance to participate in this year’s post-game survey, send an e-mail to me at timcain@herald-review.com, and some of you will be contacted in advance of the game.

Three rules for participation:

1. Be willing to pay attention during the commercials.
2. Be available after the game to quickly (and we do mean QUICKLY) run down your list of three favorites and three most-hateds.
3. Be willing to avoid an overexposure to adult beverages. (Believe me, it hasn’t worked out that way in years past.)

The original trade magazine advertisement that former Herald & Review staffer e-mailed me last month indicated this was the case.

And stories coming out now about the home video release of “The Informant!” confirm it.

If you want to hear the commentary track by director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Burns, you’ll have to buy the Blu-ray version. The only extra that will be on the regular DVD is some deleted scenes.

(Scenes shot at Hickory Point Mall? The downtown Firestone scene? Some of the dialog scenes featuring locals that we know were shot but didn’t make the cut? It will be interesting to see.)

There are no indications of any kind of behind-the-scenes or making-of documentaries, although we know one was being shot.

The Blu-ray disc, of course, will be more expensive than the regular DVD, and this move is just the latest example of more content being made available on the pricier Blu-ray discs.

After reading some of the fevered discussion about the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien-NBC-“Tonight Show” controversy, I found myself wondering why I didn’t care more.

After all, I cared deeply in the early 1990s. I was on Team Dave. I’d been a David Letterman fan for as long as I knew who he was, bemused by his appearances on game shows and even fondly remembering his bizarre and sadly brief morning talk show. (Here’s some information about that. My favorite bits? Edie McClurg’s household tips, and the mock photos that showed then-NBC personality Joe Garagiola at various historic disasters. I think I enjoyed the latter more because I saw Garagiola more than any human being outside of his family in the 1980s – he was a regular visitor to Rochester, Minn., and always wandered through our newspaper’s newsroom.)

I wanted to see Letterman as host of “The Tonight Show.” I thought he could be to his generation what Johnny Carson had been to his. NBC decided otherwise, picking Leno. And my contempt for what Leno produced in that slot was only exceeded by the contempt spewed by Bill Hicks.

(There’s naughty language at the end of this.)

At that time, it all MATTERED to me. Twenty years down the line, I care less than I ever would have suspected.

Late night television is no longer part of my life. I go to bed earlier, and if I’m up Conan, Dave or Craig late (with apologies to their fans, I won’t even consider Jimmys Fallon or Kimmel), I’m not sitting in front of the television.

I’m no longer even shocked by bad artistic or business decisions out of television. This is the medium that killed “Twin Peaks” and “Sportsnight” before their time, and tamed Leno from a hard-working stand-up to the shell of a shill he is today.

Silly and bad business decisions by other media don’t trouble me much. Maybe because I’m trying to help my business recover from some of its own monumentally bad decisions.

Is this a big deal, or not?

The first listed performer for this year’s Decatur Celebration has been found on the Web.

Pollstar.com lists Ryan Cabrera as performing at Celebration Friday, Aug. 6.

Decatur Celebration is to run Aug. 6-8 this year.

All right, everybody ask together: Who is Ryan Cabrera?

He’s a contemporary pop-rock singer-songwriter who debuted in 2004 with “Take It All Away,” a top-10 album. His 2005 album “You Stand Watching” made it to No. 24, and his most recent release, “The Moon Under Water,” scraped the bottom of Billboard’s Top 200 in 2008.

He’s had a handful of top 10 single hits, including “On the Way Down,” “True,” and “Shine On.”

But perhaps he’s best-known as the former boyfriend of Ashley Simpson.

Is this a coup for Celebration? Hey, you tell me.

We take a break from the petty concerns of our entertainment universe to deal with some real world stuff.

If you wish to help, text the word HAITI to 90999 to have $10 automatically donated to Red Cross relief efforts.

The donation is added to your phone bill, and the U.S. State Department even legitimizes the effort.