Dispatches 27 October 2000   Schadenfreude moment of the week: the headline reading "Christina Aguilera Out of Action with Tonsillitis." How I laughed.   BAHA, HUMBUG Song I will be sick of by the time you read this: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" by the Baha Men. Who licensed it to every single sports arena across this country? When both Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and whoever did the commentary during the World Series can make jokes about the song… Can you say overplayed?   HOLLER DOLLY I've been thinking about leadoff singles from Spice Girls albums. (Procrastination does terrible things to your mind.) "Wannabe" announced the brash arrival of a group hell-bent on asserting their (grating) presence. "Spice Up Your Life" was a giant "screw you, if you think we're cheesy we'll give you as cheesy as cheesy gets." So what does "Holler" – available as an import single – say? With its stuttering beats and lyrics about sex ("I wanna make you holler"), it just comes across as a generic R&B song. What's more, they don't seem to be having any fun. And it's sad that the whole song sounds subservient to the production of Rodney Jerkins. Time to reevaluate my Women's Studies paper on the Spices as feminist role models. And proving that the Net really has everything, here's a site with haikus about the Spice Girls, many of which can't be published in a family website like this one… here's one of the less risque ones: Sometimes I watch them And strange voices in my head Tell me to hurt them   RECOMMENDED READING Can you listen to Kid A, the new Radiohead album, without thinking "this is Radiohead, supposedly the greatest band of the 1990s"? It's like not thinking about a pink elephant. One never considers the New Yorker a place to read about popular music, but last week's issue had a good article by Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity and About a Boy fame, possibly one of the best writers on popular culture) on that very question, and why people will universally learn to adore it because of who Radiohead are. Check it out. (Note: that Radiohead article isn't available online... this is a good Salon.com piece on the same phenomenon though)   THOUGHT OF THE WEEK You aren't allowed to describe your music taste as "eclectic" if all it means is that your Winamp playlist has Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit and Aretha Franklin on it.   SUBMARINE A new week, a new U2 album. Life is good, isn't it?   WHO'S ON FIRST Richard Ashcroft, former lead singer of the Verve, should be promoting his solo album at the Paradise next Wednesday, but it's been cancelled. On sale right now are tickets for the WBCN X-Mas Rave show (headlined by Collective Soul) on Nov. 29, for the Shane McGowan show on Nov. 30 and for the Richard Marx show on Dec. 3. If you buy tickets for all three concerts, yes, you can call yourself eclectic.