Mmmm pulpy

Found this while I was looking for pictures for a post on my personal blog.

Life is silly.

Mmmmm, mistrial, mmmmmm

Is it just me, or does Phil Spector look kind of like a skexies from Dark Crystal?

Would a Moment of Silence Be Ironic?

I love reading dead celebrities bios. This man fought the nazis!

At 83, Marcel Marceau is dead. Which raises that question, if a tree falls over in the woods and lands on a mime, does anyone care?

My New Favorite Vodka

After a day of digging around in the dirt for United Way on Friday, I stopped by Von's downtown to have a drink to get change for the bus (cause I lost my bus pass two weeks ago and blah, blah, blah). I sat directly across from the coolest vodka bottle ever.

Gotham Vodka.

I don't know how much the bottle looks like the Empire State Building but it's still got the art deco design I love and...ladies...WOW!

Like drinking water. Seriously. Sooooo smooth with just the hint of the good part of vodka flavor.

And $18 for a vodka on the rocks. Hmmm.

The bottle online is only $33 so I guess I learned two things:

1) Von's will completely rip you off (which isn't really news but still...

2) GOTHAM VODKA ROCKS MY SOCKS!!!

Again, we have a PO Box...I'm just saying.

Old Games are the Best Games

Because I'm a nerd I recieve a weekly e-mail that gives entymology of phrases. This weeks phrase "barking mad."

Apparently the first time the phrase was published was in an article about the sport AUTO POLO!!

Check out that picture. I wanna play!!


...in hindsight there was probably a way to mention Auto-Polo without revealing what a big geek I am.

Koko's a FREAK!

Does anyone else remember seeing Koko the signing gorilla on Reading Rainbow back in the day? I had my very own copy of the picture book "Koko's Kitten" about her getting a cat.

Turns out we all grow up...

"Koko has been involved in several sexual harassment lawsuits.[5] At least three former employees, all female, have claimed that they were pressured into showing their breasts to Koko. They alleged that Dr. Patterson encouraged the behavior, often interpreted Koko's signs as requests for nipple display, and let them know that their job would be in danger if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish." Koko has been known to playfully grab both male and female nipples without warning or provocation. Dr. Patterson claims that Koko uses the word "nipple" to refer to humans.[6]

All claims of harassment have been permanently dropped as of 21 November 2005 after the foundation and the parties involved reached a settlement. [7]"

Wikipedia, I love you so much...

Across the Diner (aka Lookit that Jukebox Over There)

Despite all of the trailers for "Across the Universe" I've seen this summer, I was actually blindsided by it's under-the-wire American release last weekend. My first set of cassettes I owned were "Meet the Beatles," "Srgt Pepper" and the two "Best of the Beatles" double cassettes and I've been a fan ever since. When I saw that a new Julie Taymor film with a hot British guy and a soundtrack made completely of Beatles songs was coming out I was quite excited. The trailer only increased my anticipation with rocking orchestrations and clips of the mind blowning visual effects Ms. Taymor is known for.

And then I caught the 10:30 "Across the Universe" last night.

It's not a bad movie, but it's not what I expected and it's too long. The first realization, which was actually a pleasant surprise, was that "Across the Universe" is honestly a musical and doesn't just use Beatles music as background. The main probelm is that it's "Mamma Mia!" with a more relevant storyline, because it has more relevant music. I.E. rather than all the songs being about dancing and relationships, there are a lot of Beatles songs about the changing world, USA mired in an endless war, etc.

The movie reeks of Jukebox Musical doldrums right down to inside jokes like the fact that every character has a name mentioned in a Beatles song, a scene where the main character, Jude, sketches a green apple, and a reunion performance on a rooftop to wrap up the film.

As best as I could gather from the trailer, the story was the standard "teens caught in the whirl of a world falling apart in the late 60's". An interting twist being that Jude is an illigal Liverpudlian. And of course I had high hopes for Taymor's artistic take on these standard elements. If you've seen the trailers, you've seen the extent of her visual extravagance, which were few and far between and felt forced. That's not to say that over all the movie wasn't visually well constructed, shot, and, edited, but the trailer gives the impression that it's practically Moulin Rouge! with it's quickfire, abstract visuals, and it isn't.

As much as I enjoyed the re-orchestrations and new conceptualization of the songs, there were too many. Especially when a good third of them didn't even move the story along or elaborate anything. Despite impressive performance value, for all that they added, they may as well have been playing in the background under action which actually propelled the story. The worst example of this is the character Prudence. While "Dear Prudence" is probably one of my favorite Beatles song, her entire storyline which lead to the performance of that song was pointless. As evidenced by the fact that once "Dear Prudence" was song, you don't see her again until the final scene.

I think I'm probably being a little too harsh on the film mainly because it failed to live up to my expectations, which is no one's fault but my own, and a comment that often bothers me when others make it about productions. It would be interesting to see a review from someone not well acquainted with the songs who wouldn't see certain numbers coming a mile away. Of course I have no idea where you could find someone not familiar with the majority of those songs.

I would reccomend "Across the Universe" to any die hard Beatles fan. I would suggest it to Taymor fans because the visuals are best seen on the big screen. All others...meh...if you like musicals and attractive English artists, you could do a lot worse. "Across the Universe" may not deliver on it's title, but it will do as a 20th century period piece which will take you across the space of an evening on an interesting emotional ride.

Someone didn't tell her they were taping rehearsal

Saturday night I had a conversation about how Brittany's performance at the VMA's could be an awesome opportunity for her to prove everyone wrong and perform the balls off something the way she did back in the day.

Or she could put one more nail in that career coffin of hers by showing there's essitenally no recovering from such a steep spiral.

Looks like she took the second option.

Oh well. I like Christina better anyway.

The Neverending Story

For those of you who thought the Anna Nicole story couldn't get any weirder, apparently now there's a book coming out alledging that Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern were knocking booties. There's also a video of them polishing each other's knobs. I've never really thought of Stern in that context but...if I'm in the mood to get my Jew on and watch a blonde idiot fool around, I could see how that would be kinda hot. Maybe...

I never thought to put Anna Nicole and BEARD in the same sentence.

I'm really wondering what the next twist is going to be...

PS Is it just me, or does that picture make you expect a fly to just get right into Larry's mouth?

Stuck in a You-Tube Hole

I think these are a little old, but they're new to me. Enjoy





This last one is for all of my broadway bois out there. Liza performing in Victor, Victoria 10 years ago.