I'd party with *this* guy

I most often delete the forwarded e-mails that I receive from friends. You know the type. But sometimes they are worth passing on, or at least worth posting on the blog. It is not necessarily the message of the shirt, its the message PLUS the mustache and glasses. It all works. Take a look at the background. I don't know what kind of "event" this is. But I know I wanna go, and with this particular gentleman.

Classic Tripe From Yesteryear

Currently being served up on something called Showtime EX, which might just mean Extra Weak, is some disaster called Big Bad Mama 2 from 1987. There must have been tons of coke going around for this to have been green-lighted. Cast? How about Robert Culp? I will see you your Culp and raise you an Angie Dickinson, wearing more fake diamonds than Liberace performing at the Kennedy Center. I watched it for 10 minutes and witnessed a bedroom scene with the actors listed above. The body doubles used for the scene, which was Red Show Diaries-esque, appeared to have used Hines Ward of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Penelope Ann Miller. The dialogue was even worse. Don't make me quote anything. Just awful.

Prison Break

Highlights from the Monday 11/13 episode of Prison Break:

#1) bad bald guy asking blond hooker for a "cleveland steamer"....and willing to spend $750 for it.

#2) bathtub n' iron interrogation treatment

#3) another balding bad guy telling cohort on telephone that he would "gut him, bow to stern."

I have to admit it was quality network tv...and I don't watch much of it.

Ramsey Lewis and PBS

There is a PBS show on PBS HD called "Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis". I highly recommend it. Check your local listings for times. It comes with Dolby Digital sound, and the colors in HD add flair to the visual presentation of these talented artists. Ramsey hosts music heavyweights (himself being one, of course - check him out if you are not familiar with Mr. Lewis), holding short interviews with the guests before releasing them to perform - and that is the real magic of this show. Tonight, bossa nova is on the menu with Oscar Castro-Neves and Ivan Lins.

XMen 3 Breakdown

I love reading James Lileks (www.lileks.com). Here's his take on the 3rd XMen movie, a flick that I found less than excellent by a wide margin. Last Stand? I just hope its the Last Movie. Seems he agrees:

"Movies: I watched X-Men 3. Might as well have called it X-Men: Let’s Just Kill Off Everyone, Then. I liked the second one, but never really loved the franchise, to use that horrid word. The entire mutant-as-a-metaphor was insulting, anyway –if you know anything about kids you know that a teen with the ability to shoot fire out of his ears would not be shunned as a weirdo freak but elected class president on general principle: dude! Awesome! I can understand parents getting upset if their kid was blue and covered with hairy nodules, but the idea that parents would consider their kid “sick” if she had the telekinetic ability to raise every car in the neighborhood nine feet in the air – please. We have parents who will go across the ocean to adopt a Down’s Syndrome baby; are we to believe that the majority of American parents reject their kids because they can levitate or cough up gold by the quart or exude perfectly formed Neapolitan Ice Cream bricks from their hindquarters? Far from persecuting them, they’d get their own reality shows. Storm would be a TV meteorologist in New York. As for your morning commute, I’ll see what I can do. Stay classy, Manhattan.

And then there’s Wolverine - he’s Troubled and Frowny and Haunted, even though he appears to be a 35 year old man living in a high school with no job, surrounded by good-looking women, and able to kill whoever he wants without any sort of legal repercussions. You almost want some mutant to confront him in the kitchen some night: what you so mad about, anyway? You can heal from a gunshot to the head in six seconds and you got spikes coming out of your hands. Yeah, well, it hurts when the spikes come out. Oh really? I shoot liquid nitrogen everytime I pee. That’s my mutation. I go by the name of Holdit. Wanna switch?."

Passenger 57

Seems that Mr. Snipes has found himself a bit of trouble:

TAMPA, Fla. — Actor Wesley Snipes was indicted Tuesday on eight counts of tax fraud, accused of trying to cheat the government out of nearly $12 million in false refund claims and not filing returns for six years.

Prosecutors said Snipes fraudulently claimed refunds totaling nearly $12 million in 1996 and 1997 on income taxes already paid. The star of the "Blade" trilogy and other films including "Jungle Fever" and "White Men Can't Jump" was also charged with failure to file returns from 1999 through 2004.

While the story is disturbing, I will not declare Wesley guilty until proven innocent....who knows how this case will go. What really disturbs me is that hat. Who told him that was a good look? He looks like an extra from the set of A Clockwork Orange...or maybe he is taking hints from the wardrobe people that worked on Freedomland...because that hat sucks too. Thats right, Mace Windu, your hat alone kept me from even considering that film.

Pull The Trigger

Hi-Def music channel currently featuring VH-1 Rock Honors repeat with Kiss, Queen, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. I have seen 2 of the 4 bands live. I really should have seen Judas Priest, as well, in the 80's - they came through AZ often enough. Kiss finishes the 2 hour program with "Love Gun", accompanied by a shitload of pyrotechnics at the end. Recommend the footage if you haven't caught it.

For reference value, from Allmusic.com :

The secret to the musical longevity of Kiss is its ability to marry the sonic muscle of hard rock to songs full of indelible pop hooks. "Love Gun" is one of the best examples of this skill, an ideal marriage of hooks and riffs that has become one of the group's defining classics. The lyrics are a statement of hard rock machismo at its most grandiose as they depict a powerful lover who likens himself to a deadly weapon: "No place for hidin', baby/No place to run/You pull the trigger of my love gun." The melody is equal parts hard rock and pop song, wedding verses that swing in an ominously heavy fashion to a chorus built on a simple, surprisingly flowery singalong hook that underlines its repetition of the title phrase. Kiss' recording of "Love Gun" turns the song into a stomping rocker punctuated with a few pop frills: the surging, swinging power chords and the machine-gun-like drum fills that drive the chorus along are pure hard rock, but the fluttery, high-pitched backing vocals that sail in on the chorus are pure pop. Paul Stanley completes the sound with a snarling vocal that makes the hyperbole of the lyrics work (fans might also be interested to know that Stanley also plays bass on this track in addition to his singing and guitar duties). "Love Gun" surprisingly failed to become a hit single despite its high hook quotient, but the song became an instant staple of the Kiss live show and retained this place of honor for years.

Ideal P.R. Man

I don't see what the fuss is about. Why does the Kazakhstan government have an issue with this man representing their country? Look at those stylish shades, the snappy footwear...and..um....that fluorescent green thing. He is a master of fashion, while remaining accessible to the everyman. I salute you, Borat.

The Irwin Effect

Now I know they are serious about this: stephen a smith interviews that bearded naturalist from WildBoyz (the grizzly adams guy with the shark tooth necklace) on the Deuce regarding the death of Steve Irwin. When a 3rd tier cable news show devotes a segment + interview, with a 3rd tier host and a 3rd tier guest, the story is extending through the architecture....it is remarkable to watch it develop from Drudge link to such a detailed analysis of Stingray behavior with the esteemed academic staff of....WildBoyz.

***Update: I thought I had seen enough, but then I came across Mean Guns (1997)
Please, stop it. Highlander? Ice-T? Something special is brewing here: "A crime lord challenges his rivals to a gunfight in an abandoned prison, with the winners getting $10 million." Wow. Anytime you can get The Pusher involved with the Swiss-educated sword-wielding Legend of Greystoke, magic will surely result. Come to think of it, Lambert is about as well-spoken as Van Dammage when it comes to pronouncing the language, so maybe not magic. Plenty of laughs, but no magic.

V For Vapidity

Rented V For Vendetta through Netflix. I think I can summarize this film thusly:
"It's Must-See Thursday! First, at 8, Padme and V hang out watching classic b&w movies; V blows up some
shit."

The effort to paint a lunatic as a disfigured jazz aficionado with a Mensa vocabulary and a flair for entertaining made me laugh out loud. I know it was a DC Comics graphic novel, and I don't have an issue with the story line. But IMDB readers make it sound like All The President's Men . This flick was Fantastic 4 with better acting. To call it ham-handed would be a compliment.

Viggo

In case anyone is interested, AMC is serving up Hidalgo right now.

(muffled chuckle)

The Bills Must Be Paid

I don't know about you, but when discussing Hollywood and its denizens, the names of Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman come up frequently. In fact, people seem to often be thinking of one guy when they are actually thinking of the other dude. If you use 1990 as a baseline you have several big name films that feature one of these actors. Lets see.....for Paxton: Tombstone, True Lies, Apollo 13, A Simple Plan,Twister. For Pullman: Singles, Wyatt Earp (the connection to Tombstone is very weird.) Independence Day, The Grudge. Mr. Paxton was born in 1955. Mr. Pullman was born in 1953. Obviously there is no cosmic connection, but these two gentlemen seem to often occupy the same movie discussion. Tonight, however, was different. ScatTime featured some flick called Brain Dead (1990) Plot line: A process to erase unhappy memories takes a turn for the worse when a patient loses his mind during surgery. I felt like Indiana Jones finding that golden head statue thing in the cave - such a rare, rare find....a movie that had BOTH Paxton and Pullman. It was a P&P Double-Shot. Imagine that. Then sit back and consider the awesome consequences.

Hee Hee

She is not that fat, but you have to laugh just the same.

2 More Reasons Why Movie Channels Suck

Currently on HBO-E:
Land of the Dead (2005) A mercenary leader squares off against a rebellious comrade, while flesh-eating zombies threaten their fortified city.
Starring someone named Simon Baker and John Leguizamo.
Comment: More like Land of the Extremely Shitty Movie.

In case your crap meter is not red-lining, HBO-Zone concurrently offers this "film":
Supercross: The Movie (2005) Sibling rivalry threatens to tear apart two brothers after one wins a slot on a motocross team. Starring Steve Howey and Mike Vogel.
Comment: I don't remember Supercross: The TV Series, do you?

Star Wars Jam

Speaking of Star Wars....I received this strange illustration in my inbox today.

Barely Scraping By

I was in the grocery line this evening and I took my usual glance through the bold headlines on the covers of People, National Enquirer, etc. The current Us Weekly cover features a photo of Tori Spelling, aka Admiral Ackbar (hint: Tori is the one on the right) The storyline was that her mother was going to cut her out of the $500 million estate left after Aaron Spelling passed away, and it said on the cover that she is "struggling to make ends meet." Yes, I am sure it must be quite rough for her right now. Hopefully her website is providing a revenue stream of some kind. I wonder if that hideous color represents royalty on the home planet of the Mon Calamari.

Memory Lane

The process of ripping all of my CDs into MP3 has been time consuming, no doubt. However, the necessary steps to do so provide a walk down the musical streets of yesteryear. Or at least the "heavy rotation" of yesteryear in terms of what you were playing in your car, walkman, discman, whatever at any given point in your music history. I do have plenty of space on my 30GB iPod, but I am still trying to not add any shitty music, if I can help it. Some CDs get added with no editing. The fringe players? They are not so lucky.

Today's voyage included a reintroduction to two of Robert Plant's solo efforts - Now And Zen (1988) as well as Manic Nirvana (1990). After saying "hello" to Dance on my Own, Helen of Troy, and White, Clean and Neat for the first time in years, it was extremely pleasurable to say "goodbye" in the same 30 seconds. N&Z only was able to get 4 tracks by the editor. Sorry, Robert, but all the cool coyote symbol flags and bracelets don't get you anywhere when you are serving it up hot & steamy with songs like Billy's Revenge.

Manic did much better, with 7/10 tracks making the cut. Hurting Kind rocks. Tie Dye on the Highway rocks. Good recovery, then, for Mr. Plant.

Tonight's Netflix Selection

I had been told about this film, and had seen parts of it on cable, but finally sat down tonight and watched it from start to finish : Cube (1997)

It was a pleasant diversion for 90 minutes. I think I was supposed to like certain characters versus others, and maybe hope for my favorites to survive....but actually learned to dislike the whole bunch. Their bickering became annoying, and I became more interested in who/what was confining them instead of their fate - which I guess I was supposed to focus on. They all supposedly brought something different to the table - one was a math whiz, one a doctor, etc. One guy was an autistic Rainman type, with the commensurate math skills. I would have to say the highlight for me was near the end, when the cop character referred to the idiot savant as "telethon boy". Made me chuckle. Score: 2.5 Stars (out of 5)

Not In His Wildest Hallucinations

I just saw yet another of the "Man Law" commercials from our friends at Miller Lite. Aron Ralston is the guy wearing the tiedye shirt, and the one missing his right arm from the elbow down. I give ultimate props to Ralston for making a tough decision to self-amputate, in the interests of survival, after some kind of hiking accident. What I wonder about is this: if you consider Ralston's consciousness and the hallucinations that he might have experienced during this horrible ordeal, do you think he ever would have come up this: In a few years I will be doing commercials with Burt Reynolds, Eddie Griffin, and Jerome Bettis - with Miller Lite paying the freight. No way.

Hits from the Blog

I was using the "Next Blog" random browsing feature of blogspot, and came across this gem. The caption says "Redneck PalmPilot". I love it.