Entries Tagged as 'art & entertainment'

music

Shut Up and Drive

While the stock market has acted like a yo-yo, the last few days of weather in the Northeast have been fantastic. You’ve got to love summer-style weather in mid October, right? It’s especially good if you happen to be someone like me, who loves being behind the wheel and driving with the window down. Now granted, nobody likes sitting in traffic, but when there’s a clear road ahead and some time to kill, what’s better than cranking up the radio when good tunes come on?  Talk radio puts me to sleep, and I don’t have a tape\CD player in my ’97 Plymouth Breeze.
 
So I got to thinking while I was on the road one night… what are the best songs to drive to?  I’m talking about for highway driving, straight on through, no lights, etc. The answers are going to be subjective based on people’s preferences, as I can’t imagine a die hard fan of Three Dog Night would blast Miley Cyrus at peak volume. But here are five of this relatively young adult’s well-known favorites in no particular order.
 
               – Hypnotize, Notorious B.I.G…. great, steady, pounding bass beat. I don’t know a single hip hop fan that doesn’t like it.
 
               – Thunderstruck, AC\DC…fast beat, great vocals, even better if you hear a live version with the crowd in the background. If you’re on your way to a big event of some sort, it is impossible not to get pumped up when you hear it.
 
               – Where The Streets Have No Name, U2… slow build-up in the beginning, but the pace picks up quickly.
 
               – Run Like Hell, Pink Floyd…I’ve been told that the Disco Biscuits do a fantastic version of this song, but I’ll take the original here.
 
               – For Whom The Bell Tolls, Metallica…this used to be a song that I would strictly reserve for trips to the casino, but again, it’s really hard not to get pumped up by the bells and the group’s distinct guitar riffs.

art & entertainmentcreative writing

The Worst Actor of Our Time, Part II

 

Part Two:  The Dead Return 

A week ago, when I posted the first half of this reminiscence of my very brief career in my twenties as a performer, I had intended the follow-up to be a light-hearted account centering on one of my two objectives back then in pursuing acting: meeting girls. 

But every time I tried to write that story, the face of one actress in particular, and her unimaginably horrific story, kept materializing like an admonishing wraith, and I realized that this instead was the story I needed to tell.

[Read more →]

art & entertainmentcreative writing

The Worst Actor of Our Time

Part One: Bury The Dead

My recent post on this site entitled “Robert De Niro’s Ugly Mug: A Roundabout Review of Righteous Kill by Way of a Long-Forgotten Horror Flick CalledThe Flesh Eaters,” prompted a number of complaints (the number, to be precise, was one) that I had no right to mock a once-great actor like De Niro — an Oscar-winner, no less — when I myself had never personally experienced the challenges of creating a character, the terrors of facing a live audience, or the trauma of encountering witheringly negative reviews.

All of this is utterly untrue.  I have known terror.  I have felt trauma.  And not only have I experienced the challenges of embodying an onstage character, I have failed in every conceivable respect to meet those challenges. 

In short, I do indeed have a background in acting, and one that is not without an interesting parallel to De Niro himself.  Just as De Niro, in the years between Mean Streets and Meet the Parents, once was widely considered to be the Greatest Actor of His Generation, I once was regarded in certain very narrow circles as the Worst Actor of His Time. [Read more →]

movies

Robert De Niro’s ugly mug: a roundabout review of Righteous Kill by way of a long-forgotten horror flick called The Flesh Eaters

One of my earliest movie-going memories is of being dropped off at Chicago’s Nortown Theatre with my friend Saul when we were nine or ten years old to see an ultra-low-budget horror movie about microscopic monsters called The Flesh Eaters.  Some promotional genius at the studio had come up with the idea of offering all attendees one free packet of blood per ticket.  

The packets, which were handed to moviegoers along with your ticket stub, were similar to the ones used for soy sauce in carry-out Chinese, and contained some sort of viscous red liquid that must have been edible.  As idiotic, tasteless, and utterly inappropriate promotional gimmicks go, this one was bloody brilliant — at least in the sense that, to this day, I can still remember it vividly.

[Read more →]

art & entertainmentends & odd

Examining my belly-button

I had an opportunity, recently, to reflect on the nature of man’s search for unique ways to express his creative drive in socially acceptable fashion.

My, that sounded pretentious, didn’t it? The truth is that I got frustrated and didn’t have a clue why. This led to one of those moments I, like most people, avoid like the plague.

Self-evaluation. [Read more →]

conversations with Paula and Robertmovies

Hancock: What’s race got to do with it?

(Warning: Plot spoilers ahead)

Paula: The movie Hancock, starring Will Smith, recently opened in theaters to excellent reviews. Smith plays a surly superhero who gets “reformed” through the intervention of a good-hearted PR guy played by Jason Bateman. Bateman is married to preternaturally blonde Charlize Theron, who it turns out has been keeping under wraps the fact that she is a superhero, too. Most of the hype and resulting reviews claim the movie is no ordinary superhero movie but a kind of allegory about the problem of being human. I’m frankly puzzled. The movie struck me as an unsettling and unsatisfying amalgam of possibly racist motifs. [Read more →]

art & entertainmentends & odd

What’s So Funny?

I’ve recently learned through the magic of the internet that that staple of physical comedy in the modern era, the blow to the male groin, has reached its apotheosis in a YouTube favorite called Kicked in the Nuts.  If you have not watched this bit of entertainment, the segments feature a wiry man sporting a bright orange wig — reminiscent of Carrot Top or the McDonald’s clown — who sneaks up on unsuspecting victims and kicks them in the groin. [Read more →]

art & entertainmentbooks & writing

Dead Trees Part I

I make zines. I’m a writer, and making zines is a big part of my writing life. At this point it’s a big part of, just, my life-life. A sizable percentage of the people I consider good friends are folks I’ve met at zine fests, by trading zines with them through the mail, or in online ziney gathering spots. 

I’ve been interested to notice — and thought it would be interesting to note, here on the world wide web — that on occasion over the last several years a person who isn’t involved with zines will ask me or my fellow zinesters, rhetorically, musingly: “I guess blogs have kind of killed zines then, right?” 

This annoys me. [Read more →]

art & entertainmentFred's dreams

Theater

May 21, 2008

I dream I am watching a play with my wife, Gail, and my sister-in-law Helaine. A cute dog is a character in the play, and I notice that the tip of his nose moves in and out somewhat when he talks. I wasn’t aware that dogs’ noses did that, although I was aware that dogs’ penises [Read more →]

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