I can’t stop laughing. If you want to know why I can’t stop laughing type in, “Nickelback hit with rocks” on Google and click on the first link that appears. Oh yes, that is the good stuff.

Having been in and around music all my life, I have often debated which music form has the largest demographic of chromosomally challenged fans, country or metal. To me, it is an even draw. Both seem inextricably linked to enabling and promoting idiocy. Last week, two of the genres leading practitioners of dullard appeal—John Rich of Big & Rich and former

Nothingface/HellYeah/Deadlights/Danzig bassist Jerry Montano—got into brawl at the Saddle Ranch on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Rich reportedly got the best of Montano, breaking his nose with a well-placed beer-bottle smash to the face leaving the forever troubled Montano dazed and confused, muttering, “The little guy hit me,” over and over again to police that arrived on the scene. While this drunken clash of mental midgets won’t settle the debate, it is a telling reminder that the stupidity that can be found in abundance in obsessive fans of either genre is directly attributable to the imbeciles that inspire them with song.

Megaplex Theaters, which operates 70 screens at five theaters in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Lehi, Sandy and South Jordan in Utah, will not be screening Zack and Miri Make a Porno when it opens nationwide this Friday. Why did they, the only chain in the country that has turned down the movie, decide not to show the latest Kevin Smith creation? Simple. It’s about (god forbid) sex. Despite the movie’s R rating, Megaplex general manager Cal Gunderson told The New York Post, “We feel it’s very close to an NC-17 with its graphic nudity and graphic sex.” Oh, the horror. Back in the olden days, people used to be able to decide for themselves if they wanted to see a sexually explicit movie or not. In fact, gratuitous sex is as American as apple pie. The fine folks at Titty Shakers (http://www.tittyshakers.com) explore the rich musical legacy inspired by the early films of Russ Meyer, low budget hot rod and rock’n’roll movies and sexploitation flicks of yesteryear. Filled with the vintage burlesque bump and grind sounds of The Nomads, The Knight Beats, Drits & Davey (featuring a young Dr. John on their 1960’s New Orleans gumbo rock sleaze 45, “Talk That Talk”) and hundreds of others, Titty Shakers is gloriously taboo and offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of 20th century audio and visual promiscuity that today’s self-proclaimed guardians of moral decency would like you, the consenting adult, not to see or hear.

Speaking of music and movies, Neal Hefti, renowned as a forward-looking composer and arranger for Woody Herman and Count Basie who wrote the enduring theme for the 1960’s television show Batman (for which he won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental song in 1966) and for the movie and television versions of The Odd Couple, died Saturday at home in Toluca Lake, California at the age of 85.