Photo by cliff1066™
Just wondering…
November, 2009
29
Nov 09
Steven Seagal on Phony Celebrities
Steven Seagal has a new show on A&E called “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” which documents his activities as a sheriff in Jefferson Parish, LA. In a story for today’s New York Post, Seagal told me about the time he has spent over the past 20 years quietly helping fight crime in Jefferson Parish, avoiding the cameras while simply doing one of the many non-acting activites he enjoys.
Steven Seagal playing at The Ferry in Glasgow. Photo by thisgig.
After we talked about his efforts to rescue people during Katrina – efforts not, by his own desire, really covered in the press – he talked about celebs (not by name, unfortunately) who did find their way there to help, seemingly with make-up people and publicists in tow.
I don’t wanna talk about other celebrities, but there have been some other people who came down there and pretended to do something for New Orleans in a time of trouble, and after they made a phony appearance for five minutes, the next night they’re on Larry King talking about what they did. It shouldn’t be like that. You shouldn’t be talking about what you did to anybody. You gotta be out there doing it every day.
Any guesses as to who he’s talking about? Leave ‘em below.
A school bus decimated by Katrina. Which celebs thought, “how can I use this to get on Larry King?” Photo by laffy4K.
In the meantime, enjoy this sketch from SNL about celebrities “helping” in the aftermath of Katrina.
24
Nov 09
Complaints, Grievances, and a Lifetime of Wisdom: The Miraculous Mind of George Carlin
George Carlin’s “Last Words” – Review from the New York Post
Interview with Carlin co-author Tony Hendra in City Scoops Magazine
My first-ever public performance occurred in elementary school, when I was around 10 or 11 years old. For the P.S. 216 talent show, Russell Magidson and I dressed up in little kiddie suits and ties, sat at tiny desks like itty bitty mini news anchors, and “performed” George Carlin’s “The 11 O’Clock News” routine (from his “FM & AM” album) in front of several hundreds students and teachers.
And by “performed,” I mean, we read the hilarious, pre-SNL selection of one-line news headline parodies off of scripts. Also, by performed, I mean that we killed.
This first exposure to the thrill of making an audience laugh would ultimately lead to a lifelong relationship with comedy in various forms, including writing, performing, and covering it at great length (although in fairness, early SNL, Monty Python, and the National Lampoon had a hand in it as well – together with George, they were the grand Four Horsemen of my comedic development.)
So George’s death last year was a shock to me. As a fan, writer, comedian, and one who was fortunate enough to have gotten to know the man just a bit beyond simply watching him on the small screen, I found that George contained a practical wisdom almost unheard of today, especially within the media.
21
Nov 09
DEVO – HISTORY BOTH FUNNY AND SAD
Proving They Are Still DEVO (from today’s New York Post)
I first “met” DEVO in 1982, when they played the Palladium in New York, a great little concert hall on 14th Street now better known as the NYU dorms. (Actually, it is now the Palladium NYU dorms, but I refuse to acknowledge that they retained the name, the same way I refuse to call Irving Plaza “the Fillmore.” The Fillmore was a legendary venue (two, actually – east and west) of the late 60s/early 70s, and I refuse to soil that name by using it for a venue that hosts the likes of the Hip Hop Karaoke Championship.)
So when I saw the band there in ’82, Mark Mothersbaugh wowed the crowd in mid-show by leaving the stage during one song, then re-appearing on the venue’s balcony, and using a rope to climb down into the crowd.
20
Nov 09
CHARLES BUKOWSKI – KEEPIN’ IT A BIT TOO REAL
The Lost In A Supermarket web site turned me on to this awesome clip from a 1977 B-movie called Supervan. It’s a wet T-shirt that couldn’t look and sound more authentically seventies if Richard Dawson came out to give the girls a kiss while Ted Nugent played “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” in the background. But the best part is the pervy old dude in the knarly half-shirt sweating all over one of the young lovelies at the end. Yup, it’s none other than the booze-soaked vagabond Charles Bulowski, getting his sleazy horndog on. Hey, if this is what it takes to be a legendary writer – where can I pick up my half-shirt?
18
Nov 09
A Sad Week for Comedy – R.I.P. Ken Ober & Kevin Knox
If you’ve spent any time in the comedy world, you know that it’s small. Hang around long enough, and eventually you’ll run into everyone. The comedy world lost two well-respected veterans this week – Ken Ober, former host of MTV’s “Remote Control,” and longtime Boston comic Kevin Knox. I didn’t know either one of them well, but brief interactions can give you a pretty good idea of what people are like, and I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of both.
15
Nov 09
Kramer’s Revenge
The Seinfeld reunion kicked into high gear on tonight’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and Michael Richards addressed the controversy from several years back, when he lost his mind while dealing with a heckler and casually tossed out the “N” word, in humorous fashion. Larry David had said they would deal with it in some way, and when, during a rehearsal for the (fictional) Seinfeld reunion episode, Kramer shows up at Jerry’s door with a black prostitute, you kinda saw it coming. But, it turned out, she was a bit of a head fake. The real deal came later, when Leon, hilariously played by former SNL writer JB Smoove, was asked by Larry to play a friend who might have the same disease as Michael. (Larry had told him about this friend, citing how well he had been doing, without knowing that the man had died). But Michael Richards had been expecting a man named Duberstein – and JB Smoove does not look like a Duberstein.
So when Leon shows up at Michael Richards door, Richards screams out, ““Look, I made a mistake. It’s been three years. Don’t hurt me!” Then later, when he finds out that Leon is a fake, he berates him in front of a large line of tourists, screaming, “If only there was some name I could call you that would hurt you like you hurt me!” And of course, as soon as he does this, everyone around whips out their phone and starts recording. Brilliant.
15
Nov 09
All We Hear is – Radio WTF???
Check out my take on some of the more bizarre “highlights” of the new Lady Gaga video, “Bad Romance” in today’s NY Post. Whatever your feelings on Gaga, it’s surely entertaining viewing. If you think of a filmed piece of work as the art of creating images that suck you in – images that are fascinating to watch and that make it hard to look away – then she and director Francis Lawrence created a masterpiece. Of course, it may be somewhat of a B-movie masterpiece, as in, so bizarre, awful, and mystifying that you can’t look away – but fascinating nonetheless.
