Category: TV, Celebrities

Sunday Blabfest

bags in a bar

I have luggage that needs to be sorted and I don’t mean I took a trip. I was disappointed that Bill Moyers is retiring before Oprah. If you want a great talking heads fest with Bill, check out this web exclusive with Glenn Greenwald. Find out why I’m disillusioned with Barack Obama and politics in general. It’s around 40 minutes so go get some popcorn if you decide to watch it.

Sunsets Are Better Than Others

brooklyn sunset

My fat cat woke me begging for the new cat food I got her for a treat. Old cats are like old pants. Anyway I found a sunset pic which is also like old pants. I wasted some time Friday night on Google’s image labeler. That is some addictive software and meanwhile, you’re helping the man. I played for about an hour thinking one of my photos might come up and then seeing what keywords my partner might come up with… “blue night crap”? Har Har. I was also waiting to see if anything came up from the Middle East or Asia or some other war zone. I figured out that most people know different stuff about different celebrities and that most people aren’t color blind.

Terrible Magazine Selection

I don’t know who the manager of this Bank of America is, but he/she is not a go-getter. Do not trust this person to ever go the extra mile.

In Mad Men, the young Don is taught the symbol that tags a house with a “dishonest man.” I say everybody start tagging places the way the hobos do. Someone should invent a tagging system on the internet the way you can tag email as spam. Go for it if you think you can. We have tags and Digg and so on but we could use picture tags for business sites.

Before He Was Famous: Robert Duvall


Robert Duvall in The Time Tunnel


Everybody doing the funky chicken in the time tunnel lab

Hulu has the entire run of a show I loved as kid: The Time Tunnel. I used to tumble around with friends in slow motion pretending to land in some other time before playing cowboys and indians or cops and robbers. The wiki article has some good trivia on the show. It was produced by Irwin Allen who also did Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space and then went on to do a few of the famous 70s disaster movies like Towering Inferno and the original Poseidon Adventure. For this, people called him The Master of Disaster.

I was rather surprised to find Robert Duvall in one episode playing a time-traveling tool. How many actors can go from playing idiots in kitschy old sci-fi shows or movies to the Oscars® and superstardom? (And which of them worked with George Lucas? Duvall is also in THX-1138.) Harrison Ford is the only other one I can think of and he has only managed a nomination. On a similar tangent, it’s interesting that a former porn star, Sibel Kikelli, won the German Oscar for best actress (the Deutscher Filmpreis) in 2004. (Head-On is a great film by the way.) You go girl.

Post About Post-Pagoda

Having been in a few bands, I know how clubs can rip off the artists and keep most of the door money. Knowing that I probably didn’t do all I could’ve to promote the show, I gave almost all the money to Pagoda and Investigative Reports. So much for being a promoter. Seriously though, we’re going to get the Sunday matinees going one of these days.

Talking to people later, some people liked Pagoda more and some people liked Investigative Reports more. (By the way, if your band is hard to find on the internet, you need a new name.) Different strokes for different folks as Mom and Grandma used to say. I liked them both. Hanging out with Michael Pitt afterward was pretty cool. I forgot my camera but got a kick out of some Columbia kids getting their picture with him. Rather disappointing that he threw his voice out so soon and played such a short set. I know someone was shooting video and taking pictures so as soon as I find those, I’ll update this.

Leave of Absence Overwith

Crappy cell phone pictures are back. I’m back. Gonna put batteries back in my camera and kick some ass.

By the way, the last season of Battlestar Galactica is jumping the shark. I disagree with the prehistoric actor’s assessment of the newer version but I think the writer’s strike completely ruined the new stuff.

And I hope 24 jumps its 59th shark as soon as possible.

I believe I gave Jay his first writing job. He’s back since getting laid off of NBC. Check his blog out please.

The Next Feminist Platform Revisited

Happy moms, happy babies…. Some friends on facebook commented on one of my earliest posts on this blog which dealt with orgasmic childbirth. Last week, ABC’s 20/20 finally ran their promised segment on it with a positive spin I’m happy to say.

If you have any questions on waterbirthing etc, see Judith’s website. Her photos are also featured on the orgasmic birth site.

The Biggest Pussy

Over at hulu, you can see all of The Missouri Breaks with a few commercials for free. Besides being one of Marlon Brando’s most peculiar and inspired performances, it is a parable for how certain idiots view the idea of honor. The moral ambiguities of so many iconic 70s movies could probably do as well.

Jack Nicholson’s character heads a gang of rustlers and his nemesis hires Brando the Regulator (sort of like a Pinkerton) to vanquish him. Brando turns out to be a pussy because he can’t look his victims in the eye when he dispatches them… besides being a cross-dresser who flirts with and kisses his horses. Nicholson gets the girl, schools Brando, rides off into the sunset leaving us with the moral that sometimes there is more honor among thieves than amongst the law and order.

When a certain someone gets on a high horse and whacks the sheep with “who’s the biggest pussy?” I just have to drain the bath. I don’t know which is worse: stealing horses or riding a magic carpet powered by farts.

You Blew Up Your Television

Find the matching set!

The gears of garbage trucks woke me up. On Tuesdays, my block is often blessed with the garbage truck followed by the recycling truck and they hold up traffic so with luck, we also get honks and yelling. It’s not much worse than being woken up by “The Takeaway” on WNYC. I’ll take that apartment across the street facing the courtyard with southern exposure now please. Thank you.

Heading to California for a week for Turkey Day with the family. I hope to have cheerier photos, however, I will also strive to make Orange County look as creepy as Manhattan at night.

Oh, those Swedes! Nina Ramsby has one of those voices that gets under your skin… well, my skin anyway. Say you’ve been sleeping with the pillow over your head because of garbage trucks outside and someone has to wake you up. It could be Nina, sure. Her melodies are beguiling while the lyrics sometimes border on the paranoid obsessive–which might be good or bad depending. Anyway, she’s got three major music projects: Salt, which was a grunge band in the vein of Nirvana from the 90s (I’m pretty sure I saw them open for a crappy band at Brownie’s in NYC); Grand Tone Music, who are a good deal mellower; and then Baxter, a drum-and-bass electronica outfit (not to be confused with American punk band Baxter). I like the latter the best but all three are worthwhile explorations. Lately, she’s been singing solo in Swedish and fiddling with experimental jazz and folk and other electronica.

A new Baxter is said to be ready any minute now.

I’m Not There (but I’m Free)


Be careful of shrinks. If you say the wrong thing (or the right thing depending on your point of view), they will call the cops and put you in the psych ward. There really are shrinks out there who view their job the same way an asshole cop does: whatever it takes to keep the streets free of dirt. Mr. Bad Vibes must not be allowed on television figuratively, or on the 6 o’clock news. Judge, jury, sometimes executioner.

I just watched I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ brilliant film about Bob Dylan’s life in the 60s and early 70s. Yes, it’s brilliant. I’m listening to Dylan’s 1966 “Royal Albert Hall” concert. I’m behind the curve and need to stay up on these things when they hit the theaters. Anyone with a creative life, who has ever been onstage for an extended gig and has ever had to answer for it, or maybe if you’ve been a critic parsing someone else’s jello nailed to the wall — should have an appreciation for this film. If you’ve ever studied film, this is one for the books. The internets have enough written about it already. Do a google®.

In the commentary, Haynes throws out some zingers during the credits regarding freedom. I believe these were credited to Ginsberg and Rimbaud. “You are free only as long as you are free to say no.” And “No one is free. Even the birds are imprisoned by the sky.”

This brings me full circle to crap I usually talk about in this blog: politics. Bush’s insane “conservative” budget was ramped not just by the war on terror, but by a domestic spying program and police state (severe crowd control techniques) designed to intimidate naysayers into silence, as well as an expensive public relations effort designed to overwhelm naysayers and keep them out of mainstream media. I’m dead certain John McCain would continue expanding these mostly needless expenses that basically burn money and manufacture nothing — a largely overlooked black hole in the American economy. A transparent administration wouldn’t need such frivolity. Barack Obama appreciates that freedom without security is meaningless whereas security without freedom is an oxymoron. Obama embraces dialog and that is a breath of fresh air I can believe in.

George Bush has been the world’s (fascist) asshole cop long enough and needs to get in the shrink chair.