OK kids, here’s the breakdown this week:
Survivor — Again, boring by my standards. It really doesn’t get all that exciting until the merge hits and the castaways are forced to turn on each other. To nobody’s surprise, Spencer, the gay kid, went home last week. Not because he was gay (nobody actually knew, he hadn’t come out), but because he was a pansy and didn’t perform well at the challenge. He really didn’t have a chance. [Read more →]
I went to the midnight IMAX showing of The Watchmen and felt like a kid again. Literally, the average age of a theater goer had to be 35, about ten years older than me — and it was awesome! [Read more →]
After rushing to theaters for a pre-Academy Awards rampage that included Slumdog Millionaire, Doubt, The Reader, Gran Torino, The Wrestler and Rachel Getting Married, I decided it was time for a palate cleanser. I thought He’s Just Not That into You might be just the spoonful I needed. [Read more →]
Before hearing about the movie, I’d read the Watchmen graphic novel and wasn’t impressed. It was included in Time Magazine’s list of 100 best novels of all time; whatever. I planned to stick with Frank Miller (Sin City, 300). But leaving the theater last weekend, I was blown away. [Read more →]
I am a man. I’m not a woman, and I’m not a boy anymore. I am a man, and it is noticeable in several areas of my life. The movie-watching experience is one of those areas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a macho man who can only watch action movies and slapstick comedies. I cried watching Terms of Endearment and I loved Thelma & Louise, but I often find myself at odds with a woman over our opinions of a movie. [Read more →]
Survivor is filming in the Brazilian Highlands this season. I believe we are in the 18th season and much like MTV’s The Real World Brooklyn, it’s stagnating. Don’t get me wrong, I still watch it. I just love me some Jeff Probst. And watching these people scramble to form alliances and dig for hidden immunity idols just hasn’t gotten old yet. I think one more season and I might be done. Maybe. Nah, probably not. [Read more →]
Sunday I am in the TKTS line on Broadway for half price tickets and a young man is hawking Blithe Spirit starring “the legendary Angela Lansbury.” He seems like a nice young man and Angela Lansbury is a famous actress, but she is not legendary. Now, if the Gryphon or the Pushmi-Pullyu were in the play, then the word “legendary” would be appropriate.
Come to think of it, I would enjoy seeing the Pushmi-Pullyu in the Angela Lansbury role.
This is hilarious. Maybe there is an upside to the recession. More people will have free time to create funny videos for us to watch so we can stop thinking about the fact we can’t pay our bills. This reminded me of those Barbie commercials from the 80’s… and maybe a little of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Hat Tip: BettyConfidential
I have a love/hate relationship with reality television. My personal favorite reality show of all time would have to be the very first season of The Real World. It really felt real. There had never been a show like it. It was a new and raw concept and it was full of people who had never seen reality TV before. That alone set these seven strangers picked to live in a loft apart from the hundreds of cast members to follow. And if nothing else, Eric Nies was so much fun to look at… vacant and narcissistic, but fun.
Today is a new day. A day with douchey bachelors who propose to girls on national television only to break up with them on national television just weeks later. Whether you’re under contract or not, it’s a classless thing to do to someone. Even former bachelors and bachelorettes are bashing him. If you’re not familiar with the show but would like a recap, you’re not getting it from me. I’m over this guy. However, Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly puts it perfectly here.
The show I would like to talk about is American Idol. It’s a full on train wreck. The performers, for the most part, are maniacal and untalented. The judges are on drugs (just admit it, Paula) and Seacrest is a midget with a grin so irritating I sometimes fantasize about stapling his lips together.
Here are a few contestants that stand out to me, good and bad… [Read more →]
Not sure if you saw Joaquin Phoenix on David Letterman. My husband and I watched it the night it aired and figured he’d either gone crazy or it was all an act to prop up his new rap career. I don’t know which it was but he has provided fodder for some great comedy. My favorite is this impression, done the night before the Oscars, at the Independent Spirit Awards. It joins a bizarre Phoenix with a very angry Christan Bale. It’s way better than Stiller’s bit at the Oscars and great for a really good laugh.
Oops, that may not be the best title. Oh well, it’s been typed & I am not going back. When was my last post? I don’t know. I think I was writing about getting a band going & being over 35. Somehow, I have kept the band thing up (do you live in the greater Tampa Bay area & play drums? check out http://www.myspace.com/tragedybecomesher.) In some ways the band may be keeping me sane. So that was where I left off. And then I got all Jobed. Minus, you know, the boils. Suddenly I was on the brink of divorce, laid off & dealing with the possibility of foreclosure. Suddenly I was an episode of Oprah with lots of layers & no focus. I was at home with my son, trying to make his days full & happy. Mostly trying not to just cry all the time. Or at least shut the bathroom door.
The file is too big, or I would have cued Dr. Dog‘s song “The Beach” right here. [Read more →]
10. “I hear Frank Langella used the same makeup for Nixon that he used for Dracula.”
9. “I love Price, but I never much cared for Waterhouse.”
8. “I’m sorry, but those seats are reserved for the two people who actually saw Frost/Nixon.”
7. “Michael Moore? I’m sorry, Mr. Moore, but you’re not allowed to bring any food into the auditorium.”
6. “They gotta be fixed; I mean, Beverly Hills Chihuahua deserved something!”
5. “Did anybody find out why Heath Ledger’s a no-show?”
4. “I’d like to thank the Academy. And for those of you who think it’s an honor just to be nominated: What a bunch of losers!!!!”
3. “Now that Wolverine has hosted the show, can Cyclops and Storm be far behind?”
2. “I love that new ‘anatomically correct’ Oscar; it’s so much easier to carry!”
1. “I hear they’ve already started torturing that kid from Slumdog Millionaire to find out how it won.”
A friend wrote me the following yesterday, in response to my piece about the iPod. He suggested I do a follow-up, but I can’t improve on this.
Thesis: Technophoria, rather than technophobia, is what led us to the current dismal state of the music industry. It isn’t so much (or only) that the big labels failed to respond to the technological innovations of Napster and other digitizing file sharers, it’s that the digitizing, in and of itself, carried the seeds of music’s destruction, in terms of the weakening of the influence of the major labels, the de-professionalization of music, the cheapening and commoditization of music, the lower sampling (bit) rates of digital versus analogue, the poorer sound quality, and on and on.
Now the same thing is on the verge of happening to books. As in music, we’re beginning to do things only because they’re possible, not because they’re desirable. But do we really want to see all books digitized (and their contents commoditized and cheapened) merely because we’re all afraid of being accused of being old fogeys and technophobes? Do we really want to throw away thousands of years of printed history just because it’s possible to digitize books? Not all technological innovations are good ones (cf. nukes and frozen burritos.) E-books, in and of themselves, are not a bad idea — but the possibility that printed books and other forms of printed literature will as a result entirely disappear will be very, very bad for literature, in my opinion.
The irony is that the techno geeks who want to shove everything analogue into the shadows are themselves less capable of envisioning the future than the old-fogey technophobes. Because they clearly didn’t see what digitization would do to music, and they can’t see how digitization will destroy books the way it’s destroyed music.
Now, I am not a Luddite. I love my MacBook and my Blackberry Curve. But, in terms of the quality of experience, it seems to me self-evident that:
A home library is better than a Kindle.
The New York Times paper is better than the New York Times online.
The New York Times Book Review is better than the book review section of Popmatters. (And I write for the latter!)
Compact Discs are better than Mp3s.
A stereo sound system is better than an iPod.
Talking on the phone is better than texting.
A letter is better than email.
A great bookstore is better than Amazon.
A great record store is better than iTunes.
But, in ten years, we’re likely not to have the New York Times, CDs, and book and record stores, while talking on the phone (at least for my 17 year old), the letter (we call it “snail mail”!), and home stereo systems are virtually gone already. And, as my friend suggests, will books be far behind? What is it about our culture that we happily trade quality of experience for convenience, portability, and quantity of experience?
I invented the iPod. Or, at least, I invented the iPod that’s currently on my desk. In 1970, an avid music-lover, with hundreds of LP’s in my collection (no, for those of you too young to know, I won’t define LP), I dreamed of having a portable way of listening to all of my music. I called it my “universal jukebox.” I couldn’t envision the actual technology, of course, but I imagined a kind of personal radio, with me as the DJ, spinning only my records, at the touch of a button. (I also invented the compilation CD, but that’s another story.)
Today, I have 3 iPods. One has all my contemporary classical, from Karlheinz Stockhausen to John Adams. One has approximately 20,000 tracks, mostly from the last 10 years, ripped from CDs, downloaded from iTunes, and free downloads (not a single one illegal) from sites like 3Hive and Daytrotter. My universal jukebox, though, is my 30 gig iPod classic with 670 albums, all ripped from CDs, every great album from the 60’s, 70’s and a few from later decades, what I call the “canon.” [Read more →]
I noted with sadness recently the passing of Delaney Bramlett. Those of us over 40 remember the group Delaney and Bonnie and Friends as one of the high points of late 60’s/early 70’s music. As this Rolling Stone article from 1969 indicates, they were something. Melding southern rock, soul, and gospel, they made one of the greatest live albums of all time with “Delaney and Bonnie On Tour With Eric Clapton.” George Harrison once asked to join their band, and they recorded with some of the finest players of their time, including Leon Russell, Steve Cropper, Duane Allman, and Billy Preston. Their album “Motel Shot” was one of the templates for the stripped-down Americana so popular in the last decade, and my favorite, “Accept No Substitute,” includes the incredible “The Ghetto,” which made anything Elvis did on that topic sound bloodless and trite.
I had the pleasure of spending time with Bonnie Bramlett a year ago when I managed a concert featuring her and backup band, Mr. Groove. [Read more →]
To my knowledge I am the first and still the only male honorary member of the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Team. In the early 80’s in Colorado Springs, I worked on behalf of the symphony with several Olympic groups. I helped with something called “Classical Splash” — poolside concerts featuring swimming synchronized to a live symphony orchestra — and produced events that included Olympic skaters and the Olympic Torch. All a lot of fun. [Read more →]
Mr. Smith went to Washington yesterday, with Barack Obama playing the role of Jefferson Smith from the feel-good movie starring Jimmy Stewart about an unlikely United States Senator who leads his countrymen, women and children to their common senses and their common purpose. To say that I shed a tear or two would diminish the national deluge that greeted President Obama’s oath of office. With a single, “So help me God,” this unlikely candidate, and even unlikelier winner, became our 44th president.
If it seemed like a movie, it was. It was a national spectacle filled with famous and anonymous faces of Americans who realized that a page in human history has been turned, millions of whom have been dreaming and praying for just such a day. America, at long last, has proved to itself and the world that it means what it says because it believes its own founding myth. That all men are created equal and that we the people control our own destiny.
Jimmy Stewart is the perfect role model for Barack Obama in the role of the people’s president. He even started his presidency with a Jimmy Stewart stammer because of the crossed signals during Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert’s recitation of the Constitutionally mandated Presidential oath of office. At the same time the cast of characters surrounding the event looked like every hero and villain from Bedford Falls in Frank Capra’s other Jimmy Stewart classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. Tell me that outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t look like he was doing a Lionel Barrymore impersonation as the evil miser Mr. Potter when he rolled onto stage in his wheelchair and cane.
It was great theater and it was a great day for America and for the world. The only thing missing was Zuzu’s petals and the sound of a bell ringing. For somewhere in heaven an angel certainly earned his wings for showing us all that a single life can indeed change the world. Oh happy day.
I’ve never been big on foreign films. In fact, prior to Sunday, I had only seen two in my entire life — Haute tension, a french horror flick, and Crimen ferpecto, a Spanish comedy with some telenovella elements. So when Slumdog Millionaire ran roughshod over its competition at the Golden Globes, I was a little unsure whether or not I should take some time to see it. After all, it’s not what I’d consider my usual type of movie. But I decided to give it a whirl.
I’m glad I did. I’m not going to bore you with the plot details, as I’m sure you’ve heard about its basic idea focusing on an Indian boy, named Jamal, who racks up the rupees on his country’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” What’s great about the film is how it shows you the way that Jamal came to know the answers to the questions he’s asked. It’s a fascinating journey through a hard life that makes it impossible not to root for him as he sits in the hot seat. The film doesn’t drag one bit. Its two hours of length fly by. Cringe worthy moments? A few. Humorous moments? Also more than a couple.
Slumdog received a rousing ovation from the packed independent movie house I went to. I felt a little out of my element, as I was probably the youngest person there and also the only one who attended the 2:20 PM screening solo, but I was in agreement with everyone about how good the film is. It deserves every single accolade it gets.
I met Yo Yo Ma when he was about to go under the knife. This was in the early 80’s and he was performing the Lalo cello concerto with the Colorado Springs Symphony. There had been some bad blood between his management and the conductor when Yo Yo switched to the Lalo from what had originally been programmed. It seems he didn’t want to learn the other work, which he knew, but not well, because he was afraid he’d never play it again.
This was his last performance before having spinal surgery and spending six months in a body cast. I remember him talking about it. He was scared to death. The doctors had told him that there was a chance, albeit slim, that he’d never play the cello again. And, he worried that he’d never been even a few days without practicing. What would a 6-month hiatus do to his skills? [Read more →]
