Barbershop 2 is even more slight than the original, if that's possible. It's like it's barely even there. I loved the original, and the new one still has a lot of the easy, loping comic charm. It's more based on characters than scenarios, but it has so many characters that they all come across as being pretty one-note, which is fine since they all hit their one note beautifully. But the new movie has less of the comic interplay and more of the Ice-Cube-learning-a-valuable-life-lesson, which is sort of lame. And Queen Latifah seems to be in the movie for the sole purpose of plugging the inevitable Beauty Shop spinoff. I'm glad I waited to rent the movie, but I'm glad I rented it.

A couple of my friends went up to the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island this weekend, where they saw Moby and Sandra Bernhard making out on the beach while a crowd of people followed them around. Try to get that nasty-ass image out of your head.

One thing I learned from P-Fork's Top 100 of the 70s list: I own just about no music from the 70s. Seriously, I only have like six albums on that list. Time to do some shopping. The list is Pitchfork's usual combination of really good and incredibly lame, and I could really give a fuck about Exile on Main Street and Pink Floyd and Funkadelic, but I have no excuses for not owning Entertainment or Trans-Europe Express or the first Suicide album. And does anyone know how I can get ahold of that Giorgio Moroder joint?