Amoeba Music and Phil Blankenship are proud to present some of our film favorites at Los Angeles’ last full-time revival movie theater. See movies the way they're meant to be seen - on the big screen and with an audience!

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Saturday August 2

James Brolin in

Night Of The Juggler

1980, 101 min

New Beverly Cinema
7165 W Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Midnight, $7

 

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August
August 2 Night Of The Juggler
(No one can stop James Brolin!)
August 9 Rainbow Brite & The Star Stealer
(Rainbow Brite's first movie - insanely RARE performance!)
August 23 The Gate
(... pray it's not too late!)
August 30 Little Darlings
(Paramount Archive 35mm Print! Rare Screening!)

 

September
September 6 Idle Hands
(9th anniversary for the 1999 stoner horror comedy!)
September 13 Showgirls
(Beyond your wildest dreams. Beyond your wildest fantasies!)
September 20 Michael Mann's The Keep
(25th Anniversary! Paramount Archive 35mm Print!)
September 27 Over The Top
(Sylvester Stallone. Big Rig Truckin'. ARM WRESTLING!)

October
October 4 Hard To Kill
(Steven Seagal is Mason Storm. Mason Storm is... Hard To Kill!)
October 18 All Night Horror Show!
(100% Movie Mania! New Bev Fundraiser! 12 Hours Of Movies, Fun & ??)

I still can't believe that summer has already started. I am sure that it will be over even quicker. Soon it will be Christmas time again. The year is a little more than half over and I have been back in Los Angeles for about 6 months now. The boyfriend just moved down last week and it has been a busy couple of weeks for me, but it has been a bit slow for the new releases the last couple of months. Some big things are right around the corner for the next couple of weeks, but not so much for this week or the last. Last week was the week of the debut album for the Black Kids and the release of the second album by CSS. There was another Nine Inch Nails album and a new Dr. Dog.

This week is basically a new Neil Halstead album and a new one by Rick Springfield. Not a very big week. I am a huge fan of both Slowdive and Mojave 3, so I am a bit excited about the new Neil Halstead, but I have not yet heard it. Next week we get new albums from both The Faint and Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes. They both were on the label Saddle Creek Records up until these new albums. Bright Eyes put out a ton of albums on Saddle Creek and helped to make a name for the label, but he has made the jump to Merge Records for his new solo album. The Faint decided to go with their own new label for this new album. Conor is one of those guys you either love or hate. Most people I know have some passionate opinion about him. I know I have talked about this before. I was on the hating side for a bit, but crossed over to the fan side about 4 years ago. Conor Oberst will also be playing a free show at Amoeba in both San Francisco and Hollywood. The Hollywood instore is this coming Monday, August 4th. We will also be selling the album the day before it comes out since the actual street date is the day after the instore. He is playing at the San Francisco store 3 days before the album comes out, on Saturday August 2nd. There will be tons of people at both these instores, but I think it is worth dealing with the crowds just to see him perform live. It might convert you to a fan as well.

It is exactly 8 days to 8-8-8 (aka August 8th, 2008), when many noteworthy events are scheduled to take place, including, of course, the kick off of the Olympics in Beijing and such lesser publicized events as World Hoop Day. 8-8-8 is also the date for the Boredoms' 88BoaDrum show.

This free large scale drumming concert, which takes place in LA.'s Hancock Park, is scheduled to start at exactly 8:08PM next Friday (August 8th). The show is a sequel to last July 7th's 77BoaDrum celebration in Brooklyn, NY. As you probably already know from reading this website, the event will feature a total of 88 drummers performing for 88 minutes. As you also most likely know if you are an Amoeba fan, two weeks ago the Hollywood store gave away a chunk of tickets for this big, free (but so in demand that the free tix became a premium) event. Check out the blog I did on last year's 77BoaDrum.

Another music-related event scheduled for 8-8-8 at exactly 8 o'clock is when Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV has announced that he/she will have the final surgery in the ongoing series of gender reassignment operations in the unique Pandrogeny Project (a love story of gender reunion), that he/she and his/her late partner/collaborator Lady Jaye, who tragically died suddenly late last year, were going through together -- essentially a process whereby they were attempting to become one and the same person, or as close to it as physically/mentally possible.

Last week ‘the father of surf films,’ Bud "Barracuda" Browne, the onetime lifeguard who began showing his 16-millimeter movies commercially in the early 1950’s, died in his sleep at his home in San Luis Obispo. He was 96.

Born July 12th, 1912, in Newtonville, Massachusetts, Browne began swimming competitively at age seven. He attended USC, was captain of the swim team and in 1933 ranked second in the nation as a collegiate swimmer. While working as a lifeguard at Venice Beach in late thirties, Browne was introduced to surfing. In 1938 he went to Hawaii to ride the big waves in Waikiki, taking along an 8-millimeter movie camera to film the local surfers. One his first and most prized reels of film recorded the legendary king of the surfers Duke Kahanamoku.

During World War II, Browne served as a navy chief specialist in athletics (earning the nickname "Barracuda" for his long lean look). Following the war he became a teacher in Los Angeles, working as a middle-school physical education instructor and also attended USC Film School. He upgraded his camera to a 16-millimeter Bell & Howell. In 1953, after spending several years filming surfers in Hawaii, Browne pieced together enough footage to compile a 45-minute film. Hawaiian Surfing Movie debuted at John Adams Middle School in Santa Monica.

Browne eventually gave up his teaching gig and took to chronicling the 1950’s surf scene full time, releasing at least one movie a year between 1953 and 1964. With films such as Trek to Makaha, The Big Surf, Surf Down Under, Cavalcade of Surf, Locked In and Gun Ho!, Browne documented all the surfing greats of the longboard era, like Phil Edwards, Buzzy Trent, Greg Noll, Miki Dora, Linda Benson and Dewey Weber, plus the first-generation of shortboard riders, like David Nuuhiwa, Nat Young and Gerry Lopez. In addition to completing nearly 20 of his own films, he also contributed footage to other projects such as Big Wednesday, directed by John Milius, Greg McGillivray/Jim Freeman’s Waves of Change (also known as The Sunshine Sea) and their 1972 classic Five Summer Stories. In the early 1990’s Browne began re-editing some of his earlier efforts. The first project, Surfing the 50's, honed his best color footage from the eight films he produced during the fifties. That success led to re-releasing some of his other movies such as the 1963 classic, Gun Ho!.

Tonight only, director Enzo G. Castellari will be appearing at the New Beverly Cinema to introduce his films THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS and BATTLE SQUADRON and do a Q&A during the intermission. As an incredible added bonus, THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS stars Fred Williamson and Bo Svenson will be joining Castellari for the introduction and Q&A!

The one clear message from the always fun annual Bay Area Maker Faire a couple of months back was that we, a society weaned on consumerism, need to shake the shackles of dependency on corporations who sell us products shrewdly manufactured with a built-in obsolescence -- products whose mechanisms are deliberately made difficult to figure out.

To hell with that! We should not have to always hire others to fix our cars, fridges, vacuum cleaners, lawn-mowers, bikes, computers, etc., etc. when they (inevitably) break down.

Instead, we should learn all we can about the products we own and use daily. Furthermore, we should not only know how to fix these things when they break down but we should also know how to build our own things from scratch. DIY baby!

Of all the homemade items that people create, the most inspiring to me are homemade musical instruments created out of found parts. These can range from the most simple (an empty pork rinds bottle with a rubber band & piece of cloth tied on top as a drum) to the most intricate (an electronic keyboard built from found odds and ends).

Over the years I have seen/heard many great variations on all types of instruments, from string to wind to electric and I thought it was time to do an Amoeblog about them, drawing from videos I found on YouTube, where I even discovered an interactive thread on making your own instruments, which includes perhaps one of the most popular one among music instrument makers-- the cigar box guitar.

One is from the recent Memorial Day observed Morningside Build Your Own Instrument Day in Pittsburg, PA, featuring Jim Lingo's creative string instrument, which drew equal parts awe and amusement from those at the outdoor event. Then there is the homemade electric bass by KgldMond who built his instrument from a piece of wood, an old turntable, and a string. Finally, there is CrazyEzra's nice noise maker constructed out of a saw, a pick up and a big purple synth modulator.

The Grindhouse Film Festival returns to the New Beverly Cinema TONIGHT with a special Ted V. Mikels double-feature. We'll be screening Ted's film THE DOLL SQUAD and will have star Francine York (THE CENTERFOLD GIRLS, CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE, CITY BENEATH THE SEA, and a ton of TV appearances) in attendance to introduce the film and do a Q&A afterwards. This film, also starring Michael Ansara, Anthony Eisley and the incredible Tura Satana, was the uncredited inspiration for the original CHARLIE'S ANGELS TV show and should not be missed. Following THE DOLL SQUAD will be a second, surprise Ted V. Mikels film.



The event starts at 7:30pm, and admission for the two features plus a reel of rare exploitation trailers and our world-famous free raffle is still only $8.00.



For additional information and schedules for upcoming events, visit our MySpace page at www.myspace.com/grindhouse.



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Tuesday • July 29th, 2008

NEW BEVERLY CINEMA
7165 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-4038
Admission: $8.




Tribute to Ted V. Mikels

Special Guest: Francine York

7:30pm THE DOLL SQUAD (1973)

Directed by Ted V. Mikels
Starring Michael Ansara, Francine York, Anthony Eisley, Tura Satana and John Carter

    

LA and San Francisco may be offering a lot of really good free entertainment this summer, but New York City tops both of them with a richly varied, non-stop offering of entertainment to choose from all summer long: much of it stuff that you would happily pay to see, from great concerts to cool exhibits. Topping this list is David Byrne's Playing The Building (Friday, Saturday, Sunday Noon to 6PM) at the Battery Maritime Building (10 South St.), which has been extended through August 24th. If you are making a visit to NYC by then, make time in your schedule to include this hands-on sound exhibit.

As explained by the former Talking Heads member in the video below, the idea for this unique installation came about after he realized that you "could turn the space into a musical instrument by attaching machines to the various parts of the structure." In conjunction with the wonderful NYC arts group Creative Time, who specialize in transforming soon to be demolished or restructured old city buildings into cool art spaces for their final days, Byrne took over this lower Manhattan decades-abandoned ferry terminal (soon to be remodeled) and turned it into a giant musical instrument.

Byrne and company painstakingly created this giant musical instrument by hooking up a series of sound-generating gizmos, strategically positioned throughout the empty cavernous old ferry building, and connecting them, via long cables, draped down and across the ceiling and back down to the keys on an old organ (the only thing on display in the otherwise completely empty building), which in turn causes the whole building to vibrate and resonate into a myriad of hypnotic noises/sounds. Fun!

I’ve often said coincidence does not exist, but I'll save that diatribe for another time. However, a couple of days ago, and for the first time, not one but two Paul Jones 45’s -- he’s the former lead singer for the 1960’s British invasion band Manfred Mann -- wandered into Amoeba from separate collections. Both of these singles are from the same soundtrack, Privilege, a film released in 1967 starring Paul Jones, who was making his big screen acting debut. Now, two days later, I find out that for the first time ever, Privilege will be released on DVD today. Coincidence or plot? I just don't know. Well, anyway...

The film was directed by Peter Watkins, whose highly controversial anti-nuclear drama The War Game won the 1966 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (and was soon to be banned in Great Britain). Watkins once again doesn’t stray far from controversy in Privilege. Taking place in a totalitarian English State of the near future, specifically 1970, the dark comic vision of Privilege criticizes the media and its media manipulation, corporate culture and its corporate manipulation. It portrays a time where most everything seems to bounce off the absurd and neurotic teen pop-dom dominating the age and the happily tranquilized population is content with fluffy distractions. The main character, Steven Shorter, played by Paul Jones, is a rock god. His popularity and career have been meticulously engineered by a vast music corporation, reaching dizzying Beatlesque heights. But all this begins to crack when an artist, played by the original supermodel Jean Shrimpton, is hired to paint Steven Shorter’s portrait, and finds an unstable, empty shell of a man, lost in a lonely world, a puppet trapped by the demands of a music business out of control, and a simple singer victimized by all the excess, process, and success. Of course, the artist tries to rescue and prop up Steven Shorter before he becomes yet another statistic in the eternally doomed scenario of recyclable pop stars. But as can only happen in real life and/or rock melodramas, fortunes take a Machiavellian twist when rebellion is only a pop song away. Now that’s entertainment!

Recently, Joey Jenkins and I were giving Vinylandia its once every 7 years cleaning. I guess you could call it the 7 year itch, maybe the 7 year sneeze, as that's all I did for two days afterwards. You would not believe the amount of dust that accumulates when you are sorting and cleaning vintage vinyl... Anyhow, we found quite a few gems tucked away in all the nooks and crannies. One of the best finds is this collection of covers that Chris Guttmacher has set aside over the years. These are THE  "Bad Boys At Nite"...

I've been letting my Movies We (I) Like blog languish for far too long, so before I get to my Batman critique, I'm adding not one, but two entries to it with in the next couple of days. I'm going to try to add one a week from here on out (we'll see how well that goes). Anyway, until they appear, I won't keep you in suspense: the first pick is the pretty darn good Mad Men (which is a TV show, not a movie, but it's better shot than most movies) and the other is the surprisingly thoughtful and balanced Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music (a documentary about the current Christian rock scene).


Beginning its second season today, Mad Men is about a third-tier agency on Madison Avenue in the early sixties, a time of radical (well, pseudo-radical) change in the world of selling stuff. The first season is set in 1960, following the recent appearance of the famous Volkswagen ads by the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency. William Bernbach was a critic of advertising as a science, instead using it to convey emotions and deep-seated connotations to sell a product. His ads sold you an image of yourself, rather than a laundry list of the product's qualities that were supposed to appeal to you. The approach proved highly successful, and it's why we have the Super-Bowl commercials we do today.

There's a scene in the final episode of the first season where head adman Don Draper sells a campaign for a new slide projector to clients by using snapshots of his own family. So moving is his pitch that one of the other admen, who's currently undergoing some marital woes, has to leave the room lest he be seen crying. Ironically underscoring this heartwarming moment is the whole season where Don has been shown in the company of two mistresses. Advertising is an art that says less about itself or its creators than it does about the intended audience. It's art that's meant to be entirely consumable by being designed with the audience, not artist, in mind. If it's not understood by the target demographic, then it fails as art. That's why it's questionable to even call it art. It's not intended to offer resistance, only acceptance. Any resistance that it offers is purely manufactured, meant to play into a collective mind that wants to see itself as an uncollected group of free-thinking individuals. That Bernbach and others following him could and can walk that line -- selling individualism as a collective commodity -- is the evil brilliance of late-20th century advertising. 

I was thinking of Bernbach's movement and that scene from Mad Men while watching Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music, named after the song from Larry Norman. Norman serves as the inspirational spirit for the film, promoting God while still managing to make music that could exist on its own terms. I don't know about the rest of his stuff, but that song's pretty catchy. I love country songs about Jesus, hillbilly sacred harp, classic Gospel, old Southern and Negro spirituals, et al., but the closest I ever came to being inspired by so-called contemporary Christian was dropping acid at a Stryper show (someone had to do it, and therein lay my inspiration). When a womanizing boozer like Kris Kristofferson asks "why me, Lord," one gets the sense of some struggle going on between his beliefs and his actions.  That sort of struggle gives the song an air of authenticity. But when Michael Sweet and his band sing they're "soldiers under God's command," one gets the message that this is metal being sanitized for the easily contaminated. Little has changed since when they were on top.

Most of the bands featured in Heather Whinna and Vickie Hunter's documentary sound like particular secular bands, just with special lyrics. The ones escaping this marketing pigeonholing tend to do so by sounding so generic that they can't be ascribed a particularized label. That strategy was employed by Stryper during the metal heyday, obtaining secular acceptance by sounding blandly like the genre, rather than the Christian-Iron Maiden or -Van Halen. 

The fundamental problem with Christian rock is that, rather than build on an authentically religious tradition of struggle, it's made to serve two masters: mass culture and fundamentalism. It fails both because it has no soul, no aesthetic inner life, being entirely outwardly directed. Like a modern ad, it tells you no more than what you already bring to the table. On the one hand, it's designed to appeal to the "secular audience" (i.e., the largely Christian audience in the U.S. -- if the census is any indication -- that aren't Christian enough for the extremists). Here the connotation is that Evangelicals are just like you (evidently just as bland as you), and after conversion you can keep on liking the same stuff that you liked in your heathen days. This message is doomed to fail, I suspect, because it's saying there is no essential change in who you are when coming over to their side, so why bother? On the other hand, the music is designed to appeal to the "Christian audience" (i.e., those teens raised with a severe pop cultural immune-deficiency order) who really like music, but live in fear of its not serving God, only itself -- in a word, idolatry. By giving the fundamentalist youth what they want, the ability to rock, while only reinforcing their cultural seclusion, the music is depleted of its potential aesthetic-objective vitality, instead serving as agitprop. In making rock music easily consumable, the dialectic between beliefs and the world is cut short. The religiously conservative audience doesn't have to struggle with popular art any more, because it's now being made with only one message in mind: buy Christian. With the Christian rock scene, the religion has become just as much of a commodity as the music that it copies, easily consumable in one's leisure time.

Calliisto



Callisto was discovered by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610. It was named by Simon Marius after a nymph in Greek mythology who was associated with Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt. In the Grecian religion, Zeus took the form of Artemis to seduce Callisto because she didn't fancy the fellows. Then he raped her.



Its diameter is approximately 99% that of Mercury's. It orbits Jupiter. The surface is primarily dominated by impact craters which cover it almost to the point of saturation. However, underneath the surface of rocks and ice is a salty subsurface ocean 100km deep*.

  

Above the surface, a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide coats the icy world. NASA's Revolutionary Concepts for Human Outer Planet Exploration has named the world as the favorite for a future Jupiter base.

There is just a week left to catch the recommended BAM/PFA (Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive) photo exhibit by Bruce Conner, who sadly passed three weeks ago In San Francisco, reportedly from a liver ailment. The exhibit focuses on the one year period in the late seventies (77-78) Conner spent taking photos of both punk bands and punk fans at the infamous West Coast punk palace the Mabuhay Gardens (aka "The Fab Mab" -- the dismal failing Filipino supper club that would be saved/immortalized by punk rock) on Broadway in San Francisco.

The fifty three Bruce Conner photos on display at the BAM/PFA, which act as an excellent historic overview of the early SF punk scene, include wonderful action shots of bands and artists including Frankie Fix of Crime, the Mutants, Penelope Houston of The Avengers, and Negative Trend's Will Shatter (who later went on to form Flipper).

Multi media artist Bruce Conner, who the curators at BAM/PFA aptly describe as  "a proto-punk provocateur who scavenged cultural waste to construct his assemblages," ended up doing the photo series by mere coincidence. In the late 70s, Conner was 44 years of age and an established avant-garde artist who created film mash-ups from a mixed bag of found sources and whose rich legacy dated back to the SF 1950's Beat scene. While attending Devo's first ever San Francisco show in 1977, Conner crossed paths with V. Vale, now the publisher of RE/Search magazine, who was about to launch the seminal punk zine Search & Destroy. 

For any alternative sport/entertainment fans looking for a new fix in the pedestrian gene puddle of cable TV athletics, one event next week just might be the best thing to ease your cravings since competitive eating and Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi. It's time, once again, for the World Yo-Yo Contest held annually in Florida. The 2008 event will take place in Orlando at the Rosen Plaza Hotel on July 31st, August 1st, and August 2nd.

There are several categories and divisions in competition, such as '"One Handed String Trick Division," "Two Handed Looping Division," "Two Handed String Trick Division," "Off-String Division," "Counter-Weight Division," and a lot of other divisions and descriptions and concepts I just don't quite understand, but it's absolutely amazing to watch. My five year old son and I were glued to Youtube this morning watching some of last year’s competition. Tricks like the Nunchuk, Atom Smasher, White Budda, Warp Drive, Brain Twister, Superman, Shoot the Moon, Sword and Shield, Double Iron Whip, Lladder Escape, And Whut, and Eiffel Tower have come a long way from simply Walking the Dog. And, oh yeah, read some of the posted comments on these YouTube videos! There are some serious yo-yo geeks out there with one helluva critical eye!

Anyway, here's a clip from the 2007 Champion, Yuuki Spencer, an incredible freestyler with a love for death metal. Yuuki won both the U.S. Nationals and Worlds in 2007, an extraordinary achievement to accomplish in the same year.

So, on a walk back from the Egyptian a couple of weeks ago I had had the displeasure of running the gauntlet....Hollywood Blvd. on a Saturday Nite: females in late 80'sish formalish wear, hoar-moanally pumped young men who mad-dog everything in sight-- probably even the trees, cracks in the sidewalk and their own reflection in the windows. Hell, there were even a couple of Guardian Angles, two of the most out of shape guys imaginable. In fact, that gave it kind of retro twist, as I haven't seen GA's since 1990 or so.

Anyhow, we passed the old Frederick's of Hollywood building-- it's now another "classy" "party" palace.  The facade is still intact, one of the nicest on the Blvd, but the interior is now just another one of those places plushed up to make the bridge and tunnelers think they might rub elbows, or whatever, with Sienna Miller. 

I prefer Hollywood Blvd. in the day time, as it's had the same vibe for many decades.  

"Hollywood Blvd. my foot. A lot of bit players out of work and fish faced blondes trying to shake a hangover out of their teeth."
--Raymond Chandler, Bay City Blues

OK, so I rest my case. The Blvd. by day still delivers... a huge let down for tourists, a real dream ender.

A couple of days later I stumbled upon this LP with the tag intact. I thought it really embodied the yesterdays of classic Frederick's. Tacky yes, but no dream ender...

HOLLYWOOD AMOEBA MUSIC HIP-HOP TOP FIVE:

1) Nas Untitled (Def Jam)

2) Immortal Technique The 3rd World (Viper)

3) Lil Wayne Tha Carter III (Cash Money/Universal)

4) Suga Free Smell My Finger (HMF/Warner)

5) Jean Gray + 9th Wonder Jeanius (Blacksmith/Warner)

Thanks to Scott Carlson in the hip-hop department at Amoeba Music Hollywood for this week's top selling albums chart, which includes in the number three slot the brand new release from SoCal's Suga Free, Smell My Finger, which dropped earlier this week. 

Lil Wayne's hot selling new album (#3 on Amoeba chart) has caught the attention of Abkco Music who are suing the rapper, his songwriters, and his label (Cash Money - a division of Universal) for "copyright infringement and unfair competition" over a new Lil Wayne album track that appears to heavily borrow from the Rolling Stones song "Play With Fire" which they own rights to. 

SF rapper Z-Man's group One Block Radius (the alt rock trio he is  a part of when not doing solo stuff or with his Gurp City familia) have signed to Def Jam. The Cali based One Block Radius accurately describe their unique, pop-ready sound as "Pharcyde meets Steve Winwood meets Sublime meets Outkast meets Hall and Oates" and drop their major label debut in September.

Amoeba Music and Phil Blankenship are proud to present some of our film favorites at Los Angeles’ last full-time revival movie theater. See movies the way they're meant to be seen - on the big screen and with an audience!

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Saturday July 26

Kelli Maroney
& Barbara Crampton in

Chopping Mall

1986, 77 min

New Beverly Cinema 7165 W Beverly Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90036 Midnight, $7

w/ Special guests director Jim Wynorski & star Kelli Maroney in attendance, schedules permitting.

 

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August
August 2 Night Of The Juggler
(No one can stop James Brolin!)
August 9 Rainbow Brite & The Star Stealer
(Rainbow Brite's first movie - insanely RARE performance!)
August 23 The Gate
(... pray it's not too late!)
August 30 Little Darlings
(Paramount Archive 35mm Print! Rare Screening!)

September
September 6 Idle Hands
(9th anniversary for the 1999 stoner horror comedy!)
September 13 Showgirls
(Beyond your wildest dreams. Beyond your wildest fantasies!)
September 20 Michael Mann's The Keep
(25th Anniversary! Paramount Archive 35mm Print!)
September 27 Over The Top
(Sylvester Stallone. Big Rig Truckin'. ARM WRESTLING!)

Kathy Griffin?! Somehow I never thought I would say I enjoy Kathy Griffin. I know, I know-- considering the fact that I: a) have been referred to as a fag hag on many an occasion and also that I: b) actually live in the Castro, this should come as a shock to some.

Forgive me, for I have caught on at last: with the recent advent of cable to my home and the latest season of her reality show My Life On the D-List airing regularly, color me hooked.

I applaud Kathy for being so unabashedly herself. She knows what she is good at (making fun of others, but also herself) and she knows her fans (mainly gay men but also middle aged straight women), and she has no qualms about catering to them. In the near-past I had always thought of her as sort of irritating and uncreative. Now I see that she is both of those things at times, but plenty of others the rest. She knows she is merely a comedic commentator and she knows she is an attention whore, so why not live it up? She is a woman of many faces-- whatever it takes to continually secure her place on the D-List, and I support her in her quest.

Now I am scrambling to catch up on what I missed-- there are 3 other seasons of the show on DVD! I should never have underestimated my enjoyment of poking fun at celebrities. What have I been thinking all this time? Kathy has been there with her gays and her snarky humor all along, and here I was shunning her for no real reason other than her copious plastic surgery and her copious need to talk about it! For shame! Once again, I have learned not to judge a book by its cover...I'll let Kathy do that for me in her stage routine, so I can laugh along! 

1) RBL Posse - Ruthless By Law
2) Spice 1 - Amerikkka's Nightmare
3) Lil Ri - Deep N Tha Game
4) West Coast Bad Boyz - High Fo' Xmas
5) Dru Down - Explicit Game
6) Goldy - In The Land of Funk
7) D-Moe - Do You Feel Me
8) Young Rich The Factor - Gettin' A Grip
9) V/A - West Coast Bad Boyz
10) Young Joker - Who's Laughin At Cha

11) C-Bo - Gas Chamber
12) A.M.W. - The Real Mobb
13) Rappin 4-Tay - Don't Fight The Feeling
14) Paris - Guerilla Funk
15) Fly Mar - Ya Betta Ask Somebody
16) Ray Luv - Last Nite                                  
17) Rondo & Crazy Rak - The Abused
18) Roots From The Underground                  
19) GLP - Straight Out The Labb
20) Hugh EMC - The M.O.B.

I am finally back in good ol’ L.A. after my extended hang about on a gorgeous island in the Puget Sound. Unfortunately the tall tales I could tell would probably lull even a meth head into a deep coma. Not a lot happens on Vashon Island … except the brutally unexplainable!

So before I reinvent my accounts and bring to you the hard hitting, hard boiled, sinister saga of the vast depravities, the whorish lives in the wanton Northwest, I thought I’d first show the newest music video from the Los Angeles based band Listing Ship, “Voice of the Future.” This sci-fi/video game homage is directed by James Fletcher. By the way, since I advocate fair and mostly truthful blather, I should disclose that I make a brief appearance -- and me think too brief an appearance -- as the plucky rampaging robot. There are other facts I should also add, but who really needs more facts about me...

Vestron Video VA5103

At a recent music event in San Francisco, where a guy was busily handing out flyers promoting the upcoming Bay Area concert appearance by Donna Summer, I overheard a short but slightly-heated conversation between the guy handing out the flyers for the disco diva and someone walking by.

"Has Donna Summer been fully forgiven for allegedly been homophobic and......?" the passerby began asking, innocently enough it seemed. But before he could even fully finish his question, the street promoter, sounding jaded at still fielding this seemingly recurring question on a long dead topic, had cut him short: "It's not true. It never happened. It was a rumor based on a myth."

Known as the "gay myth" this nasty slice of misinformation has haunted Donna Summer for the last 25 years and, apparently, seems like it will never fully die. The rumor started in 1983, back when the disco bubble had popped and Summer's career along with it. She had also recently gotten divorced, gotten into a mental funk, and consequently become dependent on anti-depressant medication. Because of all of this, the singer, who had topped the charts with songs like "Bad Girls," had found God and become a born again Christian. More importantly it was when the AIDS crisis was tightening its frightening choke-hold on the gay community -- long Summer's core dedicated fan base.

Here's a batch of labels that ape their cover. Most are of the front cover, but a choice few are of the back cover image.

MCA Universal Home Video 55051

Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog is a 3-act webcast musical created by Joss Whedon with his brother Zack and half-brother Jed (the latter of whom also does the score). Hurry up and watch it, as you'll have to pay iTunes for the privilege after July 20th. Or buy the dvd. Or watch the degraded YouTube version:


This is the tale of Doogie Howser all grown up in a world that doesn't appreciate his eccentric genius.   Unlike in Doogie, Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) doesn't get a preternaturally chesty girlfriend who loves him for being an outsider with a weird, greasy friend. He still has a despicable sidekick, Moist (Simon Helberg), but the best Dr. Horrible can manage is to daydream in song while staring across the laundromat at Penny (Felicia Day), the whey-faced nerd girl on whom he's fixated. Otherwise, feeling like Klebold and Harris, he plots the destruction of the normalizing cultural institutions that have marginalized him out of existence. With each nefarious deed, he gets one step closer to being allowed membership into The Evil League of Evil, run by his hero, Bad Horse. But every time he tries something, he gets pulverized by the fists of the status quo, Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion). Things go from bad to worse when the cloddish attempts of Captain Hammer to stop a heist of Horrible's puts Penny at risk. Even though the bad Doctor is the one who saves her, it's the Captain who gets the credit and a date. When the beefcake good guy learns that Penny's the only thing his downtrodden nemesis cares about, he begins to torment him (in song, of course) saying stuff like, "normally I don't sleep with girls more than once, but I hear that the second time's when they start doing the weird stuff." Cue the chorus of Hammer groupies. That's more than the put-upon villain can take, so he plots the death of the hero. 

There's nothing particularly novel about this story. In fact, it's real similar to The Villain (1979), itself a comedy Western spin on the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons. In that movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a dipstick do-gooder protecting Ann-Margaret from the villainous Kirk Douglas. Douglas' character is wittier, more charming and all-around more creative than the dullwitted hero, but the forces of order are constantly working against him, just like poor Wile E. Coyote, super-genius. The Coyote is a fundamentally repressed part of the modern psyche, which has been stripped down and mass produced by the homogeneous order. We want to side with the villain against the stifling forces of control and celebrate true individualism, until we realize that cute bird would be eaten. The Coyote cartoons maintain the agony of the paradox (between desire and morality), whereas The Villain cheats and lets Douglas get the girl.

What the Brothers Whedon add is that line between sadness and funny one-liners that Joss and his writers regularly managed to walk on his TV shows. Unlike The Villain, they don't let you off the hook for wishing for chaotic freedom. Dr. Horrible, therefore, sides with Wile E. Coyote and our own moral reality.  And it's nice to hear dialog from his company that doesn't sound like the Buffyverse argot, which I was beginning to think was the only dialect they could write in (the diminutive form gets old really fast). The music is similar to the Buffy musical, Once More With Feeling. It still has that Rent-burnished pop sound to it, but the lyrics are funny and the music generically catchy enough to get you through. I'd say the music and singing are, at least, an improvement over the Buffy episode. If you hate Joss Whedon, none of this will change your mind, but if you appreciate his pop virtues, this is good stuff.

Marcus Reeves, former editor of the the Source hip-hop magazine and contributor to such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and Vibe magazine, recently had his book Somebody Scream! (Rap Music's Rise To Prominence In The Aftershock of Black Power published by Faber and Faber Inc.

Like Jeff Chang's critically acclaimed hip-hop history Can't Stop Won't Stop, Somebody Scream likewise takes an analytical look at hip-hop -- a musical form that, like rock before it, is now all grown up and going through its own kind of mid-life crisis. Cornel West called Reeves' book "a strong  timely book for the new day in hip-hop" and he is right.

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with the East Coast based author to talk about his new book, Somebody Scream,  and its subject matter: hip-hop. Here is that dialog:

Amoeblog: First up, how hard is it writing a book on a topic that is still unfolding around you as you report on its subject matter?

Marcus Reeves: Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard to write because before I even started I had a beginning, a middle and an end. I’d already picked out who were the most influential rap artists—the ones who lead their particular era—strung their stories together by chapter and let the narrative unfold. And the narrative was easy because, like so many who’d watched the story of commercial rap over the last 30 years, it was also the story of my life. All the history and events that the music reflected, and I talk about in the book, were things I lived through and impacted my life. The last chapter of the book, which discusses what events shape the music now, helped capture all those moments that were still unfolding.

AMOEBA MUSIC SAN FRANCISCO HIP-HOP TOP FIVE 07:18:08

1) Lil Wayne Tha Carter III (Cash Money/Universal)

2) Messy Marv Hustlas Motivation Mixtape

3) Jean Gray + 9th Wonder Jeanius (Blacksmith/Warner)

4) Immortal Technique The 3rd World (Viper)

5) Nas Untitled (Def Jam)

This week's number one seller at the Amoeba Music San Francisco store should come as lil surprise. It was Tha Carter III by Lil Wayne, which, despite advance leaks and rampant downloading of its tracks, still managed to sell big numbers (by today's music industry standards) and hit the number one spot on countless charts (both airplay & sales) from Billboard (3 weeks straight @ #1) to KMEL to Amoeba etc. Luis in the hip-hop department at the Haight Street Amoeba, who kindly supplied this week's Hip-Hop Top Five, said that Bay Area music buyers love Lil Wayne just as much as national audiences (especially considering the historic Bay Area/Dirty South connections), but that their dedication to Bay Area rap/hip-hop, including this week's chart's number two album, is unbridled.

There is a new Nas album out this week, but that is about it. Nothing much else for me to share with you. The big albums might not be coming out every week, but the big summer movies continue to come out. Both the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, and the movie version of the musical Mamma Mia! come out this weekend. As a huge fan of both Batman and ABBA, I will be seeing both of these movies as soon as I possibly can. The week after this weekend is the release of the new X-Files movie, I Want to Believe. Some people may not like that they keep making movies out of old TV shows, but I would much rather see an X-Files movie with the actual cast than a remake 10 years down the road starring new 20- something actors in the roles of Mulder and Scully. You know it is going to happen. They did just remake Get Smart into a new movie with new actors, and Hollywood seems to be constantly turning old TV shows into new movies. But they usually don't work out so well-- The Dukes of Hazzard with Jessica Simpson and The Beverly Hillbillies with Jim Varney are two bad examples. It did have both Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in the cast, so I guess it wasn't all bad. Still, sometimes these remakes work out beautifully, like the big screen adaptations of Charlie's Angels. I also have to admit that I like the Brady Bunch Movie as well, and I am looking forward to the Wonder Woman and A-Team movies. I just hope they don't make Jake & the Fatman or Head of the Class into big screen movies. But a Murder She Wrote movie is not such a bad idea. I bet it would actually make some fantastic money among the senior set. Unfotunately I think they waited too long to make a Golden Girls movie. The Get Smart movie actually worked. I know there were a few people out there that did not like it or decided to not give it a chance, but I think Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway could do no wrong. Without them in it, I seriously doubt I would have even seen it.

Living Legends, the LA based hip-hop collective with their roots in the Bay Area, have long had a strong bond with Amoeba Music, dating way back to the nineties when Amoeba Berkeley was the first record store to believe in them and carry their underground tapes when they were still a (virtually) unknown crew living in a warehouse deep out in East Oakland. Back in those tough early days, in efforts to make ends meet, the struggling artists used to slang their lo-fi cassettes on the streets of the East Bay, publish the simple but entertaining Xeroxed and stapled rapzine Unsigned & Hella Broke (UHB)* and throw Top Rawmen/99cent "survivor" parties at their community living space. These inspired events not only allowed them to practice their craft but served as a necessary way to buy groceries (noodles galore) and scrape together enough money to pay their overdue PG&E bills.