Hunter S. Thompson said it best: “How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

See, it happens every four years: A host of presidential candidates start out with the best of intentions –- well, many of them do -– but before you know it they’re stuck coping with the media’s horse-race mentality, a focus on pointless minutiae and the sound of rough, human edges being polished to a sterile gleam by a raft of consultants.

So I try to arm myself with two works that expose the gears and sludge of our political process, a book and movie that remind me that it’s always been this way: Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72” and the 1972 film “The Candidate.”

“The Candidate” gets much of its attention for its central performances: Robert Redford’s turn as Bill McKay, the idealistic lawyer and governor’s son who gets pulled into an allegedly hopeless U.S. Senate race; and Peter Boyle’s work as Marvin Lucas, the hard-charging campaign consultant who turns McKay into a winner – at the cost of McKay’s willing soul.

Both are excellent, but “The Candidate” is full of terrific elements, from the name of McKay’s Republican competitor (Crocker Jarmon, played by the great character actor Don Porter), to Michael Ritchie’s deliberately ragged, verite direction, to -– best of all -– Jeremy Larner’s Oscar-winning screenplay, which offers both brilliant set-pieces and cool detachment.

Indeed, Larner (like most screenwriters) is too often the film’s forgotten man. The former Eugene McCarthy speechwriter knew what he was writing about, and his bitter knowledge shows in every frame. (One of these days, I’ll get around to reading his 1970 political memoir, “Nobody Knows: Reflections on the McCarthy Campaign of 1968.”)

Amazingly, “The Candidate” only has one DVD edition, a bare-bones job from the late ‘90s. Talk about a movie that deserves the full-on Deluxe Special Anniversary version.

And then there’s Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing ’72,” which put the good Dr. through the election-year wringer as Rolling Stone’s National Affairs Correspondent. Thompson was the perfect man to chronicle the circus. He hadn’t spent years on the Washington cocktail-party circuit, so he could look at the campaign as a jaundiced outsider -– but he also cared, deeply, and his passion burns on every page. When McGovern loses to Nixon, nobody takes it harder.

Exchange the typewriters for computers, and all too much of what Thompson wrote 36 years ago is still true today: idealistic supporters clashing with craven deal-makers, bleary candidates watching their plans turn to ashes, and mints of money flying out the window.

Let that be a lesson to all of us.

So, as McKay asked, what do we do now?

Well, we make our way through the next six months. And me, I’m going to read two new books — Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland” and Thurston Clarke’s “The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America.” Because I always need to learn the lesson over and over again.

– Todd Leopold, CNN.com Entertainment Producer

The fourth season of “Mission: Impossible” hits shelves next week on DVD. Nothing against the show — it was often stoically clever, and the fourth season added Leonard Nimoy to the mix — but when I think of “Mission: Impossible,” the first thing that comes to mind isn’t Peter Graves or self-destructing tapes or agents in disguise.

It’s the theme song.

Lalo Schifrin’s tense, jazzy music — its menacing horns like little explosions — IS “Mission: Impossible.” It did what the best TV themes did: established a tone and elevated what was to come.

Much has been made of the decline of the TV theme, with most of today’s shows’ opening credits barely lasting long enough to show a title card, much less air a 30- to 60-second piece of music. But even those discussions often focus on the themes with lyrics — “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Happy Days” — and neglect the great instrumental compositions.

Which gets me pondering some of the classics. Some that come to mind right away are “Hawaii Five-O,” Morton Stevens’ brilliant, pounding horn-and-organ concoction; Barry De Vorzon’s “Theme from S.W.A.T.,” a terrific instrumental that was far more exciting than the show it was written for; and Thomas Newman’s theme for “Six Feet Under,” a yearning, unusual melody that suggested its show’s bittersweet mix of joy and pain.

What are some of your favorites? Remember, instrumentals only.

– Todd Leopold, CNN.com Entertainment Producer

Notes from Stagecoach, Day 2:

Relationships between mothers and daughters are often complicated when they’re played out in the privacy of their own homes. When those loving, but intense, conflicts are set to song and displayed in front of an audience of about 40,000 people, you have a reunion of The Judds.

Naomi Judd and her daughter Wynonna were the darlings of country music in the ’80s and ’90s, but stopped touring and recording as a duo in 2000, after Naomi was diagnosed with hepatitis C. Saturday night, they played their first show together in nearly eight years at the Stagecoach music festival in Indio, California. It was an emotional set — kicking off with “Girls Night Out” and finishing with an encore of their signature song, “Love Can Build a Bridge.”

“I think my parting words were, ‘The show’s dedicated to therapists across America,’ ” Naomi told us aboard her tour bus, still in stage makeup and sparkles after the concert. “Hey, maybe we’ll get a free session!”

Naomi is impossibly kewpie doll-cute at 62 — or “sex-ty two,” as Wynonna calls it. At 43, Wy continues to be the brassy and strong-willed teenager. Theirs is the classic story of the talented daughter and the charming stage mother who can’t seem to cut the cord, try as they might. When the performed together Saturday night, it seemed to re-open — as well as heal — old wounds.

“I’ll have to say the pressure today was almost painful, and that’s not like me,” Naomi confided. “I mean, I used to work in ICU as an R.N. But I do really well when there’s a crisis. Hey, I raised Wynonna and Ashley Judd, so nothing scares me anymore!”

The Judds performed half a dozen songs together before Naomi went backstage for a costume change and Wynonna took the stage alone. It was an interesting contrast. Without her mother’s taffeta skirt to hide behind, she was less demure, much more raucous and commanding. Even a cover of Foreigner’s 1985 pop ballad, “I Want to Know What Love Is,” sounded like a gritty gospel-blues sermon delivered from a church somewhere deep in the Delta.

Naomi re-joined her daughter for a handful of songs, including their early hits, “Why Not Me” and “Mama, He’s Crazy.” After their encore of “Love Can Build a Bridge,” they walked off stage, hand-in-hand, visibly moved.

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day, and Naomi can already picture the chain of events back home in Tennessee.

“I won’t look anything like this,” she said, referencing her rhinestone-laced gown. “I’ll have on no makeup. Probably elastic-waist pants.” She laughed. “Barefoot in the kitchen cooking, and my dogs and my husband — and hopefully, Wy and Ashley.”

-– Denise Quan, Music Correspondent/Senior Producer, CNN Entertainment

How do you lose an inflatable pig that’s as big as a two-story house?

Have you seen this pig? There’s a $10,000 reward for its return.

The big escape happened Sunday in Indio, Calfiornia, on the last night of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters was performing his song, “Pigs,” to 50,000 people when a giant balloon in the shape of a 50-foot pig rose from behind the stage and floated above the audience. (Fans will be familiar with such displays going back to Pink Floyd’s “Animals” tour in the ’70s.)

Organizers cut the anchor cables free Sunday night and made plans to retrieve the pig when it landed — but as of late Monday, the inflatable animal has not been located. Now, his owners are offering a $10,000 reward for his safe return, plus lifelong tickets to Coachella for four people.

If a 50-foot pig floats by your window, please contact lostpig@coachella.com. The pig can be identified by graffiti on its sides, and the name “Obama” spray-painted on its underbelly.

– Denise Quan, CNN Entertainment Producer

Postscript, Wednesday 10:21 a.m. ET: The pig has been found! See this Associated Press article for details.

“What the [bleep] is Sean Penn doing on the main stage of Coachella?” asked the actor-activist to the crowd gathered at the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — the three-day indie rock celebration held this weekend in Indio, California.

Penn was there Sunday to recruit festivalgoers for his six-day Dirty Hands Caravan, which will make a round trip to New Orleans and back on a fleet of biodiesel buses, spreading a multi-layered message of voting, volunteerism, political activism and continuing the post-Katrina clean-up in New Orleans.

“We got buses right here at Coachella. We’ll feed you and take care of lodging at no cost to you. We’ll leave at 1 p.m. tomorrow from the clock tower.” Musicians Ben Harper and Everlast will provide entertainment along the route.

The 47-year-old Oscar winner went on to tell the crowd, most of them under 30, that “revolution is a young man’s job, and you can be the revolutionaries.”

He then ended his plea quoting Spicoli, his stoner character from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” “I’m going to say something I haven’t said in 27 years. Hey bud, let’s party!’”

– Denise Quan, CNN Entertainment Producer

Before there was “Millennium,” before the “Bodyguard” soundtrack, before “Thriller” and “Saturday Night Fever” and “Rumours,” there was “Tapestry.”

Carole King has been writing hit songs since the late 1950s.

Carole King’s opus, just released in a new, 2-CD “Legacy” edition, came out in March 1971 and quickly became the biggest, fastest-selling album of its time. It spawned a No. 1 hit – “It’s Too Late” – spent 15 weeks as the top album in the country, ranked as one of the top-selling albums of both 1971 and 1972, and stayed on the Billboard album charts for more than six years.

It also won King, who had risen to fame as one of the great Brill Building songwriters of the early ‘60s, the Grammy for album of the year.

Thirty-seven years later, it’s still a revealing record. King didn’t have overwhelming pipes, nor did she hide her voice behind a layer of coyness. She simply sang – about breakups, about sex, about death (in the rather cheerful “Smackwater Jack,” with lyrics by her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin), about life for a woman just turned 30.

“[‘Tapestry’] is an album of surpassing personal intimacy and musical accomplishment and a work infused with a sense of artistic purpose. It is also easy to listen to and easy to enjoy,” wrote Jon Landau in Rolling Stone, praising King’s “marvelously expressive” voice.

King’s quiet, polished directness was a staple of the singer-songwriter movement, a group that included Cat Stevens, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and her friend James Taylor. (Others, including Neil Young, Paul Simon and Van Morrison, were also lumped into the genre at times, though “singer-songwriter” soon became synonymous with a kind of lightweight earnestness that Young, for one, couldn’t wait to leave behind.)

At 67, King is still making and performing music — and, given her amazing output (much done with Goffin), she has plenty to work with. But “Tapestry” remains a high point in a long and honored career.

– Todd Leopold, CNN.com Entertainment Producer

Saturday marks Record Store Day. Its founders say it’s an opportunity to celebrate the culture of the mom-and-pop record stores across the country.

It’s also an opportunity to have a big party. Many of the more than 450 stores taking part in Record Store Day are throwing a celebration. Watch what Record Store Day is all about

Record Store Day co-founder Eric Levin, owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta, Georgia, says the idea was spurred by the notion that independent record stores are becoming extinct – often taken over by large retail chains or vanishing entirely. But Levin says that’s not the case. While some stores do go out of business, he says, many are a strong part of the community — releasing records, hiring musicians and participating in local events.

And Record Store Day is garnering support from some major names in the music business. American heavy metal band Metallica is launching the day with an event at a local record store near San Francisco. Log on to recordstoreday.com and you’ll see a listing of events taking place on April 19, in addition to testimony from musicians such as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Harper on why record stores are essential.

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Joan Jett, known for “I Love Rock N’ Roll” and “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” puts it this way on the Web site: “Any artist that doesn’t support the wonderful ma and pa record stores across America is contributing to our own extinction.”

Nowadays, of course, a growing number of people get their music online. Some may have never set foot in an actual record store. But, says Atlanta musician Shannon Mulvaney, there’s a big difference between sitting in front of a computer listening to music and walking the aisles of the local record store, sifting through vinyl and CDs where you are surrounded by “music geeks.” It’s not just bits and bytes in a record store – it’s music, with all its colors.

So take some time Saturday and drop by your local platter seller. You don’t even have to be a music geek to do so.

– Lila Eidi, CNN.com Senior Producer, Digital Content

Did “big” make a difference?

(Clockwise from top left) Lil’ Brotha, Scar, Khujo Goodie, Janelle Monae and Sam Chris arrive at “big.”

The new ballet, a collaboration between OutKast’s Antwan “Big Boi” Patton and the Atlanta Ballet, premiered Thursday night to a packed house at Atlanta’s 4,500-seat Fox Theater. The idea of pairing one of hip-hop’s biggest stars with the often staid world of the ballet was innovative enough — but how would the audience react?

During the intermission hip-hop fans said the night would be a critical turning point for the artistic community. One man echoed a sentiment I heard throughout the night, saying it was time to “take the stigma of hip-hop off the streets and back onto the stage.”

The night was pivotal to the ballet regulars, too. Many said the ballet community was feeling a lag, with attendance numbers dropping and a lack of enthusiasm. If putting a hip-hop star on stage performing with a live band reinvigorated the ballet community, most were all for it.

One 75-year-old woman I spoke to observed she had no idea who Big Boi was or what any of his songs were saying — but it didn’t matter. Seeing a room filled with children, teens and young adults at the ballet. ­That was priceless, she said.

Indeed, one of the most telling signs of “big’s” success was the number of families in the audience. As parents ushered their kids to their seats, one father told me he never goes to the ballet; his wife and daughters usually go, but he and the boys stay at home. But tonight, he said, he was going to be there.

The audience’s enthusiasm was evident throughout the evening. It seemed if the crowd would jump up any moment to dance along with the show, which at times gave off more of a concert vibe than a ballet. Stifled by perhaps the more subdued atmosphere of the Fox, many chose instead to dance in their seats.

And no classical show I’ve ever been to has ended with the cast on stage and some of the youngest performers tearing it up with their freestyle dance. As the entire audience rose to its feet, howling and applauding, Big Boi broke out one of OutKast’s biggest hits: “I Like the Way You Move.” Move they sure did, and moving it was.

– Mallory Simon, CNN.com Writer

A swarthy man in black pants and a ruffled shirt walked into the room.

Scott Weiland and Dean DeLeo perform at the Stone Temple Pilots show Monday night.

“Are you the fire eater?” asked the bass player of Stone Temple Pilots.

“Yes. Are you Robert DeLeo?” replied Ted the Fire Eater.

And that pretty much summed up the carnival atmosphere Monday night at Los Angeles’ Houdini Mansion, once the home of the famed magician, where a Fellini-esque assortment of contortionists, sword swallowers and waiters serving up hot dogs and churros set the stage for the return of the Stone Temple Pilots.

But then everything surrounding the band has been a three-ring circus.

Monday night’s private event in Laurel Canyon officially announced STP’s first national tour in eight years. They’d been broken up for five, after several years of alternately pumping out hits and trying to hold it together during Scott Weiland’s well-publicized battle with drugs.

In 2008, the mood backstage is quite different than it was during the Grammy-winning quartet’s tumultuous heyday. Guitarist Dean DeLeo — who’s struggled with his own demons — will notch his fourth year of sobriety in a few days. Their happy-go-lucky drummer, Eric Kretz, is even happier these days, with a wife and young child. In the meantime, Robert DeLeo’s angelic two-year-old son, Duke, walked in, sporting a miniature peace-sign shirt. He serenaded the room with “It’s a small world after all,” perfectly on-pitch. His father groaned and mumbled something about how he’d better not grow up and become a singer. Weiland glanced over, unfazed.

Outside, 300 radio contest winners and VIPs gathered in front of a platform draped with bunting. It looked like a life-sized marionette stage — a giant toy strangely nestled among the trees in the middle of a residential community. The band was scheduled to perform at 8:15 p.m. Just before 9, STP casually strolled onto the stage. Weiland spoke into the mic.

“Sorry to keep you waiting — for five years,” he said.

They also apologized for Ted the Fire Eater, saying the fire marshal wouldn’t allow him to do his thing.

A sea of cell phone cameras immediately popped up as the reunited Stone Temple Pilots launched into the slow, psychedlic groove of 1994’s “Big Empty.” For the next 30 minutes, they presented faithful renditions of some of their biggest hits, including “Plush,” “Lady Picture Show” and “Interstate Love Song.” Weiland leaned into Dean’s back during a guitar solo on one song; he draped an arm around Robert’s shoulders during another.

The set abruptly ended at 9:30 — a victim of the local noise ordinance. Amid chants of “S-T-P! S-T-P!,” the four bandmates returned to the stage for a bow, their arms linked. Fans will just have to wait for their 65-date tour for a real encore. Like Ted the Fire Eater, Stone Temple Pilots are waiting for their chance to truly ignite once again.

– Denise Quan, CNN Entertainment Reporter

Check out Denise Quan’s one-on-one interview with the Stone Temple Pilots on CNN Headine News and CNN.com this weekend.

There was a time in the not so distant past when pop culture observers like me looked to the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears for our daily dose of scandal. Those girls could always be counted on to flash a crotch, cop a plea or be caught in possession of an illegal substance.

Britney Spears acquitted herself well on “How I Met Your Mother.”

But in recent weeks paunchy middle-aged men have replaced the pretty young things as the poster children for outrageous behavior. Now Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, and a recently initiated member of the horny elected rat pack, Kwame Kilpatrick, have replaced Young Hollywood on the front pages of the tabloids.

As a result, in the days leading up to the Iraq war anniversary serious journalists were grappling with questions like, “What comes in a seven-diamond package?” and headline writers were churning out tawdry gems like “Ho No” (the New York Post on Spitzer).

And now we have loads of new tidbits to file away in our “too much information” folder, whether we like it or not. Do we really need to know that Spitzer prefers to keep his socks on while doing the deed? That Paterson’s romper room of choice was at, of all places, the Days Inn?

Um, I’m going to go with a resounding no.

Nevertheless, we gobble it all up –- down to the titillating mayoral text messages (thanks, Kwame). And why?

Maybe it’s because we like to watch them recklessly flout the rules we’ve agreed to live by. Maybe it’s because we like to know our leaders are, to borrow a phrase from US Weekly, “just like us.” That is, far from perfect and sometimes shockingly stupid.

But here’s the difference. Most of us don’t spend our entire adult lives focused on how to be powerful and likable enough to earn the popular vote. And most of us don’t peddle ourselves as moral leaders with impeccable judgment. Hollywood’s girls gone wild certainly never did.

After jail time, rehab stints and reams of bad publicity, the starlets finally appear to be wising up … at least for now. At the ripe old age of 21, Lindsay isn’t the night crawler she used to be. Paris is in South Africa whooping it up at night, but touring orphanages during the day (that’s hot). And back under her dad’s thumb again, even Britney, the worst of the bunch, is apparently cleaning up her mess of an act. She looked healthy and thin and — most importantly — sober the other evening when she played a receptionist on the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.”

We’ll see if the boys hunker down, pull their pants up and follow their lead.

– Lola Ogunnaike, “American Morning” entertainment correspondent