Far be it from me to disparage someone’s dream. We all have dreams. One of mine is to somehow be financially solvent after two divorces and a devastated job market. Another is to make that money doing something I love instead of doing something I hate like retail, food, or putting up with assholes with IQs equal to the average temperature of Barrow, Alaska. Those are fairly standard dreams and they are ones I am sure I share with many, many people. So you know what pisses me off? When someone achieves that dream and then turns his or her back on that dream only after showering it with explosive diarrhea and then jumps head long into someone else’s dream just so he or she can proceed to piss all over the new dream. Okay maybe that is complicated, I will simplify: I hope JaoquinPhoenix is pulling a big Punk’d fuck you to the world or he is a completely insane asshole.

Back in October actor Jaoquin Phoenix announced that, despite success and much critical acclaim, he was going to quit acting. Fair enough if you are tired of making millions of dollars doing what kids do on playgrounds and having your talent daily verified by millions of fans a goodly portion of whom are ready and willing to suck your dick until your socks come out, I can see how that would be stressful. Joking aside, I do see how being in the limelight and being under constant pressure to perform well and make money for other people can get to you so if a dude wants to retire, more power to him. When that dude then turns around and announces that he is launching into a music career, suddenly his logic seems a little faulty and somewhat disingenuous. Now it is fair to say that a person’s reason for retiring is none of my business and everyone can do what they want but usually when these sorts of things crop up the person in question doesn’t hold a press conference and announce to the world that they were doing this. Did anyone really care? Apparently I did or I would have written about it you say? Just wait, there is a reason I care now.

Before we get to that though, I have to linger a moment on these actors who have marginal musical talent who insist on launching a music career. Every time I hear  Jennifer Love Hewitt, Hillary Duff, Demi Lovato, Lindsay Lohan or whoever the latest flavor de jour is these days on the radio I think of all of the struggling bands that have talent that may have their spot in the music world filled by someone who is pretty and can have their voice made vaguely acceptable through technology. It is really annoying to have this shit be foisted on us by people who have an open door in the industry because of who their parents are or because they have a show. It would be one thing if they were talented but Brooke Hogan is not fooling anyone. That people with real talent have to fight their way into a record deal when Ashlee Simpson get’s a deal handed to her because her sister has awesome tits is a fucking travesty.

That out of the way, the press conference angle of this really annoys me. If the dude wants to focus on music, why not just do that between movies or concentrate on that for awhile. Jared Leto doesn’t have to announce that he isn’t doing another picture this summer because 30 Seconds to Mars is touring. Bruce Willis has a band that plays out live and he doesn’t have to retire from movies. Keanu never did that shit with Dogstar, because no one gave a fuck. We don’t need a press conference to let us know that you are going to piss your time away with a substandard music project. All the press conference did was stroke Jaoquin’s ego as he pretended a few things: 1. He was above Hollywood and burnt out by the machine, 2. Music is the fire that burns his soul and reading scripts and pretending to be other people was too much work, 3. that anyone in the world cared at all how spent his time, 4. that he had any musical talent at all. Now, this last point will raise ire. ‘What about Walk the Line? He was a brilliant singer in that!’ That is true, he mimicked Johnny Cash very well and he can sing. So that was fine at the time. When I heard the announcement I shrugged and said ‘OK, yeah he can sing that might work’ and went back to obsessing about which new Autobots are going to be in the new Transformers. After this morning, I have to retro-actively go back and take away all credit given for Walk the Line.

In one of the most batshit crazy moves ever, Jaoquin has announced that he is ready to show the world his musical chops. He claims that music is what speaks to him and that it is his true love and true passion. The acting thing, the thing that millions of people would love to for a living and that he is actually very, very good at, is just bothersome now and he is leaving it behind. I am not sure but I think that maybe music is speaking to him in a different language because if this is the music of his heart, he has been dead since sometime in the late 80’s.  I can’t speak for them but I have to believe that Michael Richard’s on stage epithet spewing lynch invoking diatribe was less offensive to black people than what you are about to see. Also, Yusuf Islam called and he wants his look back. And with that, I bring you Jaoquin Phoenix-Rapper.