A Doodical Miracle

I'm back from the dead like Lazarus and Don Killuminati with more news about my radio show

2007-03-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while. I doubt that this has been the cause of consternation for many people, but nonetheless it's been almost a month so i'm past due.

I have a regular show from 1-3 AM on WRIR, 97.3 LP (low power, holmes) FM. The show is called Paul's Boutique. I play what I believe are some hot jamz.

I realize that it's a brutal time slot so I'm looking into podcasting it. Anyone that knows how to do this, please let me know. Until then, you can stream the show and see what I'm playing by clicking on the link above.

This week I'll have some new Arcade Fire, !!!, vintage country & western ditties and more. Yee haw.

Early in the Mo'nin

2007-02-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

I'm hosting "breakfast blend" tomorrow from 6-8 am on WRIR, 97.3. You can stream it on the web at www.wrir.org. I've got some good tunes picked out, a little bit of protest songs, a couple songs for those feeling jilted after Valentine's Day and some for those that aren't.

Jeff Lynne's Big Head Gonna Getcha

2007-02-08T13:46:00.001-08:00

In what can't be a good sign, I found myself weirdly moved and inspired by this song.

And then this video blew my mind.

The Mammary Man

2007-02-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

This guy may not account for much production on the court, but after I chanced upon his name in a box score this morning, he's already become one of my favorite players.

NASA, You've Come a Long Way, Baby

2007-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

There's a story blowing up today featuring a romantic triangle, kidnapping attempt, even a bad disguise - all the key ingredients for a lurid pulp crime yarn. Old story, sure, but this time everyone involved is an astronaut (begging the question, if Leprechaun 4 can be set in outer space, how long until Fatal Attraction gets the same treatment?) so it's little wonder the cable news channels and every other news outlet is all over this story like so many pigs in shit. Questions of whom exactly NASA is sending into space aside, sordid tabloid stories like this aren't exactly front-page worthy while a war is being lost. Having said that, one heavily reported detail really does take this story over the top. Looks as if lovestruck astronut Captain Nowak lost her marbles in zero gravity.

"Orlando police allege that Captain Nowak drove 950 miles from Houston to Orlando -- wearing adult diapers -- and disguised herself in a dark wig, glasses and trench coat to confront Captain Shipman in the parking lot of Orlando International Airport, according to a police affidavit. Captain Nowak considered her a rival for the affections of a fellow astronaut, Cmdr. Bill Oefelein, according to the affidavit." Full New York Times Article.

It seems when you've got kidnapping on the mind, there just ain't time to salute the old procelain god.

Agent Zero aka Dance Commander

2007-02-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas, aka Agent Zero, aka The Black President is a fascinating dude so I was excited to discover that he has a blog on NBA.com. I wasn't disappointed. Arenas isn't delivering the usual boring sports star pablum. Here's what he wrote about receiving a call informing him he'd be starting in the upcoming all-star game:

"I was sleeping with my daughter and I got a call. They told me that I might have won. They was 95 percent sure that I won, but they still didn’t know yet, they were still calculating the numbers. They said, “We’re 95 percent sure that you overtook Vince Carter." So I woke my daughter up and we started dancing. She was crying because she was still sleepy, but I considered it laughing. That was unbelievable. I chopped it up and was like, “Well, it will depend on the coaches again and I think I’ve proven I’m worth it this year.” But then when I heard…like, thinking about it now still makes me smile."

I'm feeling a little uneasy about Gilbert's parenting. Props for his use of "chopped it up," though. More Agent Zero Musings Here.

Frosty

2007-02-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

And yet he looks so happy.

Not the Bees!!!!!!

2007-02-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

"A man who would come here as a virgin. A man who has come here as a fool."

Last weekend I took in a double dose of Wicker Man while visiting my sister in Brooklyn. She had heard about the incredible crappiness of the 2006 Neil Labute/Nicholas Cage remake of the original 1973 hippie British horror oddity starring Christopher Lee. Neither of us had seen the original so we rented both for a daring 3 plus hours of Wicker Man action.

I watched the remake first because it was getting late and my friend Kate was over and had to get back to her apartment in Harlem that evening; I'll talk about the original first, though.
I really liked it. A cult classic, it is simultaneously goofy - filled with groovy folk songs and 70's era camp like Britt Ekland's nude gyrations, and yet genuinely odd and creepy. It's strange and charming and unlike anything else that I've seen. Christopher Lee is excellent, I particularly liked his prancing about in a wig and white make-up in celebration of mother earth. (You have to see it and it still doesn't make sense.)

Labute's remake, on the other hand, is a real steaming deuce. Since a movie like the original, with its hippie/earth-loving/pagan vibe, could only have conceivably been made during the 70's, Labute and Cage change up the tune a bit. As in the original, the protagonist is on a quest to find a missing child, but they've changed the setting from a quaint sea-side British town into an island in the Peuget Sound inhabited only by women. And that's not all. These ladies be mysterious evil creatures who are out to kill you after taking your man seed. (Gotcha ladies! Labute's on to your game. See The Black Widow (no Labute involvement) for more insight..."She mates and she kills.")

However, Cage and the Labutester manage to make a movie so terifically bad that it copmpletely deadens the impact of the virulent mysoginy of the material. There's just no possible way to take this movie seriously. It replaces the folked-up odd ball weirdness charm of the original with a completely incomprehensible plot, half-baked story and boringly generic filmmaking. The ending has absolutely zero pay-off terror-wise. It takes some seriously ham-fisted directing to turn a torture scene into a laugh-fest, but somehow the ending sequence gets funnier every time I see it. Bravo.

The female lead, Kate Beahan is either the worst actress I've ever seen or was directed by Labute to look sharply constipated and/or spit out incomplete fragments of sentences as if she were suffering from aphasia. Pretty sure this was an attempt to make her character mysterious. I don't know.

Nicholas Cage does his typical confused dufus routine until morphing into Chuck Norris toward the end, dropping haymakers on any woman he can find and karate kicking the shit out of Leelee Sobieski like the Texas Ranger himself.

The Wicker Man ala Cage DVD has two versions, a theatrical and director's cut. I watched the ending of both and I think the theatrical release is funnier. Cage's screaming and ranting about Bitches and Honey is completely hilarious as a voice-over disembodied from any corresponding action, plus it features an absurd tacked-on ending that would probably fit better as a scene in the movie Species. It's totally lame and out of place, a cherry on the top of this butt sunday.

Labute is a real choad, but I'm hoping that he makes some more movies like this. Sure the first 3/4 is laborious, poorly written, ill-conceived, hackneyed and incoherent, by the end it emerges as an unintentional comedic wonder. Check out this nice highlight/lowlight reel that somebody put together. You probably don't need to see the movie.

Bizarrely, Johnny Ramone is prominently credited at the end of the movie. Apparently he was a huge fan of the original Wicker Man and introduced Cage to it's strange charms. Good thing he didn't have to see the remake; it's Murder! Murder!

Somewhere, somehow, some insurgent must have kicked you around some...

2007-02-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

More bad news anyone? I read today that well over 1,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes each day in search of safety. In other words, we've helped create what is quickly becoming the largest refugee crisis in the world. Speaking of refugee crises, I don't recall the Bush administration questioning the press's lack of positive reporting on the situation in Darfur. Weird.

Were that Rummy was around to add a keenly perceptive aphorism like "freedom sometimes means fleeing for your life into a hellish world of fear, begging and prostitution." Thank God for the upcoming 'surge' that will finally put an end to the disastrous situation over there. Ruh-roh...unfortunate that we can't deploy another 'serge', Serge Gainsbourg, who's sadly no longer with us. We'd probably have better success using him psy-ops style as a cultural ambassador with his message of love. On second thought, maybe that wouldn't play so well in the Muslim world.