toledoblade.com -- The Blade ~ Toledo Ohio

"...as human beings we are capable of making sense of situations based on the thinnest slice of experience."

— Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point.

THE BOYS ARE BACK: Nineties bad boys Beavis and Butthead -- heh, heh, heh -- are coming back with new episodes this summer. Is the world ready for their return? Probably. South Park actually makes the fellas and their scatological humor seem rather tame. After all Beavis and Butthead favored double entendere and blunt, sledgehammer-like stupidity, compared to the more slice it and dice it style of the current cartoon fare. Plus, they were on David Letterman's show. RL

CRYSTAL ALERT: American Idol runner-up and singer/songwriter Crystal Bowersox was out and about recently in Atlanta, visiting a children's hospital and playing a few songs. The northwest Ohio native also talked to the local folks, shedding a bit of light on her post-Idol career -- apparently, unless she's joking around, she's doing her best to get pregnant -- and played a few songs from her "Farmer's Daughter" album. She also met the California Rasin in Nashville, so she's staying busy, mixing family fun with business. Good for her. RL

WHITE STRIPES NO MORE: The White Stripes announced Wednesday that they're breaking up, which isn't all that surprising given all of Jack White's side projects such as the Raconteurs, his production jobs -- most recently with Wanda Jackson -- and the band Dead Weather. The Stripes, who hailed from Detroit, have a pretty interesting niche in rock history that will be sorted out over time. With only two people in the band, Jack White and Meg White, they blazed trails for the minimalistic kind of garage rock practiced by everyone from the Black Keys to the Hard Lessons. And White became something of a guitar hero thanks to the band's Zep-like brute strength and riff-mania evident on tunes like "Icky Thump" and, of course "Seven Nation Army." Thin Slices salutes the Stripes. Minimalism never sounded better. RL

SHEESH: Charlie Sheen has a serious drug problem, obviously. So we're not going to make fun of him. But the guy seems to relish being on the fast track to oblivion based on this account from one of the porn actors at his most recent bingefest. The guy makes Keith Richards look like a piker. If Robert Downey Jr. could get straightened out then so can Sheen, we suppose, but perhaps some hard time in the clink would facilitate the process. It's hard to think he's really scraped bottom yet. RL

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