Category: culture

t. rex, scruffy the cat, lloyd cole, and the perils of aging

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

sometimes you get little reminders that your brain ain’t what it used to be.

kirk and i had a fantastically fun time last night at joe’s pub in the park. joe is joseph papp, the guy who started doing the shakespeare in central park thing, and his public theater has an adjacent performance space for bands and cabaret and performance artists called joe’s pub, but it’s downtown, and sometimes they produce joe’s-pub-style shows in central park at the delacorte, which is where shakespeare in the park is, and last night was one of those nights.

whew.

that bit of explanation aside, we originally went to last night’s show because justin bond was covering the carpenters’ “close to you” album in concert. you know, kiki and herb justin bond. the combination of justin and karen carpenter being, of course, too irresistible to resist. and he did not disappoint. their registers and resonance sound remarkably similar, and he engagingly covered all those bacharach tunes. also did “superstar” as a bonus, and told a chillingly effective story about being a kid and being forced to play softball. it went badly, and he took solace in listening to the “close to you” album with a young relative, and feeling loved and accepted regardless of his inability to hit a softball. it was a favorite childhood memory, and that relative was in the audience, so it was full circle for justin. a lovely moment.

justin was done, but he was just the opening act. two more sets: a guy doing covers of some guy’s music that i’d never heard of, and a t. rex tribute on the occasion of marc bolan’s sixtieth birthday, which was also the thirtieth anniversary of his death. i never knew that marc bolan died on his thirtieth birthday. wow.

i had no interest in the penultimate set, but i’m a bit of a t. rex fan, and kirk was into it, so we decided to stick around. so glad we did.

the second set turned out to be songs by scott walker. i’d never heard of him, but i’m now a huge fan. he predates the beatles — he’s an american singer who got his start as an teenage expatriate in london in the ’50s. if you can imagine it, his music sounds as if englebert humperdinck did a set composed entirely of leonard cohen songs. fantastic stuff, and the singer, david driver, performed it wonderfully. i’m a david driver fan now, but a bigger fan of scott walker. i love it when something surprising, new and cool gets unexpectedly thrown at you — you gotta be open to that possibility, though.

the evening wrapped up with the t. rex tribute. quick t. rex story from back in the day: when i dj’ed at einstein-a-go-go in jacksonville beach in the mid eighties, there was a huge t. rex poster behind the booth. some kid came up to me and asked, “who’s trex?” pronounced as one word. evidently he missed the period. i told him that “trex” was robert smith’s first band before he formed the cure. so he went and told all his friends, and word spread like wildfire, and suddenly all the black clad youth were requesting “trex” songs to be cool. so i got to play lots of marc bolan, and the younguns were none the wiser, at least for a while.

anyway, the t. rex tribute was so much fun. patti smith did “children of the revolution” — how perfect is that? lots of new york rock royalty performed — here’s a list from the joe’s pub site:

An All-Star Collective of musicians including Clem Burke(Blondie/Drums), Tony Shanahan (Patti Smith/Bass), James Mastro (Ian Hunter-Patti Smith/Gtr), Jane Scarpantoni (Lou Reed/Cello), Dave Amels (Mary Weiss/Keys), Tish & Snooky (Manic Panic/Back Vox), Geoff Blythe (Dexy’s-Black 47/Sax), Rob Youngberg (Honeycomb/Percussion), and Claudia Chopek (Violin) will back a glittering array of special guest singers. Performers who will be singing the praises of Bolan & T.Rex include Sylvain Sylvain and Steve Conte of the NEW YORK DOLLS, Richard Lloyd of TELEVISION, Tony Winner Michael Cerveris, Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), Justin Bond (Kiki of Kiki and Herb), Ragga, Robert Gordon, Richard Barone, Lloyd Cole, Willie Nile, Ivan Julian (The Voidoids), Keanan Duffty (Slinky Vagabond), The Bedsit Poets, Screaming Orphans, Justin Tranter (Semi Precious Weapons), and Marc’s son Rolan Bolan and featuring special guest of honor the legendary T. Rex/David Bowie/Morrisey producer Tony Visconti.

ivan julian was especially good — he sang and played the guitar while seated, and it’s been a while since i saw someone command a stage like that. the chair barely contained his energy, and he was a kick-ass guitarist.

and lloyd cole was there, with his son william. william is a great lead guitarist and has perfect emo hair — the kid is going places. i used to play lloyd cole’s music a bit at einstein’s and i sat there racking my brain trying to come up with the song i loved. and it popped into my head this morning. the song i was so desperately trying to think of?

“you dirty rat”

by scruffy the cat, not by lloyd cole. jeebus. i’m getting old.

but “you dirty rat” is an incredible song — one of my favorite einstein’s-era songs. listen to it — catchy as all hell.

anyway, aging brain notwithstanding, it was a fantastically fun evening. gotta do more stuff like that. david driver does lots of loser’s lounge stuff — maybe i should check that out. i’ve always wanted to.

update: hilary, who stage managed the show, has pictures, a detailed set list, band info, and more on her blog. check it out.

going to the picture show

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

tickets for a 6:00pm showing of “into the wild”, the sean penn movie about the guy who starved to death in the wilderness of alaska. that shorthand version of the story, of course, does it no justice whatsoever.

i vaguely recall reading a long piece about this guy, maybe in the new yorker, and being absolutely fascinated by him. it’s the old ditch-your-possessions-and-escape-the-world story, taken to an extreme. and sean penn is an artist i respect, even if i think his politics are themselves a bit extreme at times. anyway, reading about the movie made me want to see the movie.

and that happens less and less, lately. there was a time, not so long ago, that i went to the movies several time a week. now, not so much. maybe once a month, probably even less. i watch a lot of movies at home, via netflix, but rarely go to a theater.

i don’t have the standard complaint about noisy awful obnoxious audiences. for the most part, new york movie audiences are well behaved. i go at odd times, and i (for the most part) don’t go to movies that attract large crowds of teenagers. but even when i do, i find that those teenagers are noisy and rowdy in context of the movie. you can hoot and holler all you want if it’s appropriate, and that’s fine with me.

maybe i’m being provincial with this next comment, and i’m the first to admit that my sample size is small to be making it. but the bad experiences i’ve had in movies recently have been outside the city. kirk and i saw that last awful m. night shyamalan movie “the lady in the water” somewhere in new jersey about a year ago. the theater was so full of kids running around talking to each other, talking on the phone, running laps around the theater, etc., that we went and got our money back about 20 minutes into the movie. it was clear that they had been dropped off by the parents on the way to dinner or whatever — no supervision whatsoever and the theater management could have cared less. it was impossible to hear the dialogue in the movie over the din — that’s how bad it was.

but i’ve not had similar experiences in the city. yet, anyway.

hopefully all will go well tonight, and i expect it will. and hopefully, “into the wild” is as good as i think it will be.

my television-free life

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

it’s been several months since kirk and i decided to drop digital cable, and stop watching television. there was some apprehension, and some trepidation (would we miss watching baseball?). it was a financial savings, to be sure — our cable bill went from $120 per month with time warner cable before the move (digital tv + premium channels + dvr + high-speed broadband cable) to $29.95 per month with comcast after the move (much higher-speed broadband cable only).

and the verdict?

don’t miss it a bit.

we thought that no baseball games would be the dealbreaker. turns out that listening to the games on the radio is a much, much better experience. the guys who call the game on wfan radio are brilliant at setting a visual scene through words. in this regard, i feel lucky being a mets fan — the yankees radio announcers on wcbs are boring as all hell, with their vast quantities of dead air. the wfan guys always have something interesting and cogent to say, and even their occasional off-topic wanderings are worth a listen.

so, baseball is fine. what about the news? get it from the paper, and the net.

what about lost? i don’t care who’s on the damn island anymore. if i did, i’d get it from netflix.

and there’s the cheat. if there’s something i really really want to watch, i’ll just get the dvds from netflix. i was a huge deadwood fan, so we watched the entire season over the course of a few days.

i always said the nice thing about having a dvr was that you watched only things you really wanted to watch, rather than having to watch whatever was scheduled. no wasted time, and all. it’s much the same now, only there’s an effort involved to watch something, so it’s even more efficient. i find myself mildly interested in whatever new shows are being flogged in the press, but i’m not driven to watch them. the only one that’s broken through the clutter for me recently was mad men. that’ll probably be something i’ll watch when it comes out on dvd.

so what do i do now that i don’t have tv taking up my time? it’s amazing how busy you can make yourself, when you don’t have the default option of television. since it’s baseball season, we have the games on the radio in the evening. sometimes i lay on the couch and listen, sometimes in bed. sometimes i listen while doing other things, which isn’t really a good option with television. i find projects to do. i cook dinner. i take walks, read books and magazines.

time passes without your help. no need to actively try to passively pass it with something as nonsensical (i now realize) as television.

it’s a drug. don’t believe me? try to do without it for a week. you’ll go through withdrawal. i did. but then, like any addiction, time passes and the weirdness and imagined agonies lessen, then disappear.

nothing wrong with television, mind you.

not much right with it, though, either.

learning about joybubbles

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one of the great things about the internet is that by goofing around you can stumble across the most interesting things.

and yesterday, via boing boing, during my lunch hour i learned about joybubbles.

joybubbles was the adopted name of joe engrassia, a blind man who was one of the first phone phreakers. phone phreakers predate computer hackers — they specialized in manipulating the phone system for fun and [sometimes] profit, but mostly for fun.

for instance, did you know that years ago, captain crunch cereal gave away a whistle as a prize in a box of cereal, and the sound produced by the whistle could be used to get free long distance calls? that’s just the beginning of a long, fascinating history of phone phreaking that was recounted in a seminal article in the october 1971 issue of esquire. among the readers of the article were two california guys named jobs and wozniak, who were then inspired to start tinkering in the garage. and we all know how that ended up.

the author, ron rosenbaum, took me on a journey into an underground that i didn’t know existed, and now i can’t get enough of reading about it. set aside an hour and read this. it fulfills my first rule of good writing: take a subject that no one knows about, and could care less about, and make it so engrossing that you can’t stop thinking about it.

who made steve?

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

but then who made steve?

here’s the brilliant answer

an excerpt:

This oft-quoted text presents a mystery. If God did not make Steve, then where did this uncreature come from? How did Steve come to be?

God did not make Steve, therefore we must also assume that Steve was never born. If Steve had been born, after all, then he would be “begotten, not made.” Surely we are not meant to conclude that Steve is a little-known fourth member of the Trinity.

short, funny, cogent, and insightful — one of the best things i’ve read in ages.

the pope gets it right

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pope: creation vs. evolution clash an ‘absurdity’

there’s not many topics on which i can agree with the pope. but, my god (no pun intended) did he nail this one (again, no pun intended).

from the article:

The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

and he expands this concept to stewardship of the earth, and environmental issues.

The pope, leader of some 1.1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide, said: “We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.”

“This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness … than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,” he said.

too bad the jesus camp crowd won’t be listening. they are too busy planning/hurrying the end of days.

never thought i’d say this, but yay pope. go pope. you da man, pope.

bedtime stories a problem for many parents

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

via digg, a story about how many parents don’t understand the bedtime stories they read to their children.

from the article:

Almost a quarter (23%) skip passages they cannot read or invent words to get to the end of a sentence, the poll found.

well, at least we have this —

…the poll found that reading stories is enjoying a renaissance, with 73% of families preferring it to playing in the park or watching TV.

i’m hoping that the former isn’t true, and that the latter is.

fake steve on the iphone, consumerism

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

day in and day out, fake steve jobs for my money has the funniest blog on the web. even if you aren’t an apple fan, it’s still worth a read. his takes on apple, technology, current events, and miscellany are consistently hilarious.

and often insightful as well.

as was the case with a recent post: 29 june 2007, the day the world changed. it’s set up as a fake message to the apple faithful, on the occasion of the release of the iphone. but here’s what he has to say about the thousands of people lined up for hours, or days, for their iphone:

It’s about saying, Look, I realize there’s something bad happening in Darfur, and there’s some kind of AIDS epidemic in Africa, and there’s some crazies who want to blow us all up, and there’s a war in Iraq where thousands of people are dying for no reason — and yes, those things are important, and someday we may take to the streets to say something about them, if we can think of anything to say about them, but for now we Americans take to the streets for this cause.

i can’t recall reading a better summary of the times in which we currently live.

michelle shocked, my other favorite artist

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

amy, a commenter on one of my kristen hall posts, asked me about some of my other musical favorites.

i blab on so much about kristen hall, and kiki and herb, that you might think that’s all i like. but you’d be wrong.

although i don’t listen to music nearly as much as i did when i was younger, and although most of the music i do listen to when i listen to it was made before 1990, and although i very infrequently attend live music concerts, and although when i do attend them the artists giving the concert most likely got their start long before said year 1990, i do have some current musical opinions.

even though the subjects of my current musical opinions aren’t themselves very current.

back in the day, when being emo meant you were merely just another black-clad youth, i listened to my cure, and my smiths, and my siouxsie, and my pil, and my depeche mode, and my sisters of mercy.

and i listened to my skinny puppy, and my ministry, and my severed heads, and my moev, and my nine inch nails, and my legendary pink dots.

and i listened to my r.e.m., and my fetchin bones, and my love tractor, and my dbs, and my connells, and my royal crescent mob, and my mojo nixon.

and i listened to my alphaville, and my the the, and my new order, and my cabaret voltaire.

and i listened to my nirvana, and my mudhoney, and my sonic youth, and my dinosaur jr., and my jane’s addiction.

and i listened to my kristen hall, and my michelle malone, and my ani difranco, and my utah phillips, and my michelle shocked.

and of all those, the one i still listen to, and listen to the most, and go see whenever she plays in new york city, is michelle shocked.

she, and her music, is a little bit of everything and constantly surprising and enjoyable. she’s a bit of a troubadour and a story-telling raconteur (like utah phillips), and a bit of a brilliant acoustic musician (like ani difranco), and a bit of an incredible lyricist (like kristen hall), and a bit of a political animal (like michael stipe).

except that it’s all in one package. and she’s creative (each of her albums is completely different), uncompromising (she gave her label the stiff middle finger better than nearly anyone else ever has), and entertaining (self-effacing, spontaneous, and explosive).

not familiar with michelle shocked? if you like acoustic, start with texas campfire tapes; if you like folk, start with arkansas traveler; if you like protest rock, start with short sharp shocked.

but you’ll end up listening to all of them anyway, so start wherever you damn well please, or with whatever is accessible or handy.

puppet 1, kiki and herb 0

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

aaaaargh. my worst fears have come true. the puppet that replaced kiki and herb at the helen hayes theater won the tony.

words cannot express my fury, and my sadness.

on the positive side, justin bond looked stunning, classy, and totally beautiful on tv last night. for the two seconds we saw him. simple and elegant makeup, hair and dress. perfect. and kenny mellman looked good too — classy (if a bit standard) in his tux.

it would have been a treat to see them onstage, as winners.

i’m sure miss du rane will have many comments about this.

100 words every high school graduate should know

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

via a digg link, here are the 100 words.

before i clicked, i thought i’d know most, if not all, of these words. i’m a college graduate. i taught high school english.

after clicking through?

let’s just say it was a humbling experience. there were more words i didn’t know, or at least didn’t know a precise definition for, than i thought there’d be.

and although i recognized nearly all of the words, there was even a word (moiety) that i’d never even seen before.

here’s my personal list of words for which i need to confirm a definition. for me, having a vague idea of the definition, or having the ability to use the word in a phrase without knowing the precise meaning, means i included the word on this list. context isn’t always everything.

abjure
abstemious
churlish
evanescent
feckless
hegemony
jejune
mitosis
moiety
pecuniary
quotidian
tautology
unctuous

i’ll have to get busy soon.

update: someone wrote a wordpress plugin that checks your blog for which of the 100 words you’ve used, and how many times you’ve used them.

excluding the listed words above, i’ve used four of them: euro, wrought, reparation, and irony.

clearly i need to raise the level of the dialogue around here.

mcguire’s forced to remove “joke” bathroom signs

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

this has to be the dumbest damn thing i’ve seen in a while.

there’s a great irish pub in pensacola, florida. used to go there all the time, back in the day. they have live music, usually some folky guy with a guitar with whom you can sing “the unicorn song” or whatever. they have the last of the original tullamore dew in a glass display case, and i think you can buy some for an astronomical sum, if i remember correctly. you sign a dollar bill and staple it to the wall or ceiling on your first visit, after you’ve kissed the moose on the wall or some such thing. the regulars all have mugs with their names on, for when they visit.

you get the picture. goofy fun type bar. great atmosphere, fun people, good food and drink.

and one of the jokes is that the signs on the bathroom doors (you can see the signs if you click the link above) mislead you into entering the wrong restroom.

big frigging deal. it happened to me the first time i went there. and i walked into the ladies’ room.

and i immediately realized my mistake, and exited, and everyone laughed, and someone bought me a drink.

and i laughed too.

maybe that’s because i have the ability to laugh at myself. that’s a trait i treasure in a person.

and evidently it’s the trait lacking in the sad asshole-y poor excuse for a human being who threatened to sue mcguire’s because his 15-year-old daughter got walked in on by mistake by a college-age guy. and the state made mcguire’s take the signs down.

good lord. big fat hairy deal.

i’m hoping this turns out to be a snopes-worthy hoax.

i’m betting it isn’t, though. it’s idiots like this who ruin the world for everyone else.

get a life, dude.

kiki and herb get a tony nomination

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good lord, it happened.

kiki and herb were nominated for a tony.

i’ve written a lot about kiki and herb. kiki is portrayed by justin bond, of shortbus fame.

their homepage is a good place to start if you don’t know much about them.

congratulations to our miss du rane. we saw her last sunday at joe’s pub, and my god what an epic show it was. nearly two and a half hours of complete derangement.

it was delicious, and hysterical. even herb basically stopped playing piano just to watch the meltdown. definitely a show for the ages, or the vaults, or whatever. our friends from out of town loved the show.

and we’re going to see them again on thursday–they are taping their dvd at the knitting factory. should be quite an event.

anyway, here’s hoping that kiki and herb win that tony. their only competition is jay johnson, the ventriloquist.

dear god, please don’t let kiki lose to the puppet that replaced her at the helen hayes theater.

of course, if she does, it’s a comic vein that will be mined for years, which i guess makes it a win-win situation.

unexpected theatrical pleasures

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

there was the play i was dying to see.

and the play that, frankly, i was dreading seeing.

we saw “deuce on friday night, and had plans to see “our town” on saturday night.

yes, that old warhorse. staple of dinner theater and high school gyms everywhere. we had a friend playing the stage manager, and he was reprising the role for another theatrical company. we’d seen him play the role before, in a production where kirk was both professor willard and his understudy who went on as stage manager once.

this other production of our town was less than a year ago, and i saw it twice then–once to see kirk as professor willard and once to see him as stage manager. i’m supportive that way.

so you can imagine how anxious i was to see the three-act-two-intermission-long-and-heavy-themed “our town”. and i told you how anxious i was to see angela lansbury on stage again after 25-odd years off it.

well, that just goes to show you not to settle your opinions and expectations too early.

deuce, frankly, was a major disappointment. oh, angela lansbury was fine. and marian seldes was outstanding, and frankly outdid lansbury by a mile, i think.

but the play was pretty tedious. it’s about this superannuated (typecasting, i know) doubles tennis team who sit in the stands at a u.s. open tennis match, and discuss their career together.

it’s mildly entertaining, and you get to hear jessica fletcher (if that’s your angela lansbury reference point) utter a few choice swear words that seem to put there, well, just for the sake of hearing cute old ladies say “fuck” and “cunt”.

but the problem is that there’s absolutely no conflict. none whatsoever. it’s the stage equivalent of “forrest gump”, my least-favorite supposedly classic movie. something happens, something happens, something happens, play over. not adding up to much.

the lack of conflict has a point–to highlight the difference between the genteel play and lives of older tennis stars, as compared to the endorsement-filled, slash-and-burn play of the new generation of tennis stars.

but that doesn’t make for much dramatic interest. at the end, i felt like i had attended the angela lansbury lifetime achievement awards, complete with the last line of the play, a gentleman fan sweeping his hand toward the standing pair of actresses and intoning “you will never see their likes again” or some such overwrought nonsense.

yeah i get it. goodbye angela lansbury or whatever. i’ll just have to close my eyes and imagine her as mrs. lovett in sweeney todd–something i can listen to on cd but never see for myself.

and then, last night, came the dreaded obligatory visit to “our town” to see a friend in a role i’d seen him play before, in a play i’d seen twice recently and read innumerable times.

bo-ring, right?

wrong.

they had done some judicious trimming, splitting the play into halves with the second act beginning with george and emily’s flashback of how they fell in love, which moved then right to the wedding.

they consolidated some parts (out professor willard, with his lines read by wally webb as a school report, which makes good sense), changed others (rebecca webb as a very young child, which also makes sense when you hear her lines coming from a six year old, and would have been much more effective if played by a child that wasn’t completely annoying and a terrible actress), and beefed up others (simon stimson makes several added strategic appearances, with his drunken stumbling underlining the lines of others in the play).

the church choir was more omnipresent as well, and although i wouldn’t have had them sing “you lift me up” or “you raise me up”–i can’t remember which, but it’s that horrible schmaltzy “wind beneath my wings”-sounding gospel-y song that i’ve heard on the commercial for some late-night time-life cd compliation–it worked for them to sing under the lines and action as mood music. and there was canned mood music as well–sometimes worked, sometimes a bit cheesy and too much.

but i digress. overall, very, very well done, with all nearly all the actors giving spot-on excellent performances. they definitely breathed new life into an old chestnut.

angela lansbury would have been much better served had she been downtown playing mrs. gibbs.

p.s.–dinner at i trulli magnificent as always. i had warm mozzarella in a tapenade of vegetables, followed by loin of rabbit with mozzarella tomatoes and capers, with heavenly polenta and broccoli rabe; cheese for dessert. kirk had cantaloupe soup with proscuitto followed by pheasant with wild mushrooms and the aforementioned broccoli rabe; sheep’s milk ricotta and berries for dessert. food delicious, service perfect, atmosphere lovely.

update: ben brantley’s ny times review is kinder than i am to angela lansbury, but he hates the play.

angela lansbury in “deuce” tonight

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

that’s what i’m doing, along with eating at i trulli.

it’s been a number of years since angela lansbury was on broadway. 1983 to be exact–a revival of “mame”. before that, you are in the ’70s with “sweeney todd”.

so as soon as i saw “deuce” go on sale, i jumped all over it. it’s a limited run–18 weeks. we bought tickets for my favorite time–in previews, a day or two before opening night. my logic with that is that most or all of the kinks will be worked out, and the cast’s energy is building, and if the show’s a hit you don’t have to deal with the madness that comes after opening night.

and if the show’s a flop you still got to see it. nothing worse than the show closing before the night you had tickets for a performance, if you really wanted to see it.

it’s been a while since we went to i trulli, but it’s wonderful non-red-sauce-italian food that’s consistently tasty, and the atmosphere and service are always top-notch.

i need a good new-york-style great night on the town.

i think i’m going to get it.

inside scoop: the final sopranos episode

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you may not know of my cassandra-like abilities.

you may not be aware of my similarity to nostradamus.

i try to be modest about my ability to see the future through my dreams. i reveal this ability only when i know that i can do good by its revelation.

so, having dreamed of the ending to the sopranos last night, i’ve decided to let you in on the secret, so you can sleep nights yourself, and stop wondering.

and of course, this comes with a definite:

«spoiler alert»

and a definite:

«sick & twisted mind alert»

first up is tony. he’s on his way to surprise carmela for her birthday–she’s at the strip joint she works at now.

didn’t you know that? i guess she gets the job in the last episode.

anyway, tony looks at the marquee for the strip joint. damn! uma thurman is appearing tonight!

he’s pissed. parking is going to be a nightmare.

so he drives, and drives, and finally finds a parking space. he quickly locks his suv and dashes across the street toward the strip joint.

but no! he doesn’t make it! he’s hit by a car! he flies through the air and off the road.

but it’s not an accident. the car is driven by a horde of gypsies, and they quickly carry his body to a waiting tent, where they cut out tony’s vital organs to sell on the black market.

carmela is a different story. turns out she never made it to work at the strip club that day. she was at home, recovering from her brain surgery. to operate, they had to take off the entire top of her skull, from right above the ears. and afterwards they stitched it back on, but rather crudely.

she’s still a bit dizzy, evidently, because she stumbles and hits her head on the coffee table.

and the top of her head flies off.

she stands up, momentarily confused by what’s happened, and tries to feel the top of her head. of course, her fingers plunge into her grey matter.

not good. she immediately starts hallucinating. she sees all the people who have died on the sopranos before her. big pussy. adrianna. ralph. all of them, around a dining table.

she sits down at the table. and falls backwards, and dies.

then a dog comes up, and starts chowing down on her brain. and a few more, and pretty soon there’s a whole gaggle of dogs, munching away.

fade to black.

remember.

you heard it here first.

the millenium the music died

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

there’s an unbroken line that runs from frank sinatra, to elvis, to the beatles, to david bowie, to the sex pistols, to u2, to nirvana, to eminem.

someone was always around to shake things up and make music interesting again, when all was looking irretrievably lost. the sex pistols had sid. u2 has bono. nirvana had kurt. the beatles got lucky and had two people. well, maybe, two and a half, if you count george.

i wish someone would come along and make music interesting again. and don’t tell me about the arctic monkeys or franz ferdinand or whatever the flavor of the month band is now.

you know what i mean, and the scale of influence to which i’m referring.

npr is getting boring.

justin bond and the monks

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

sunday and monday, i attended back to back theatrical events that showcased the variety of opportunities for fun in new york city.

on monday night, i was at joe’s pub for the inaugural talk show with justin bond. justin bond is the performer who portrays kiki of kiki and herb, who i write about all the freaking time. his guests were michael musto the gossip writer, jay brannan from shortbus, and jane adams, an actress who most recently starred in “little children”.

it got off to a bit of a slow start but got progressively more interesting and hilarious as the evening wore on. the highlight? most definitely justin’s performance of “god hates fags”, a song he got off a (who knew?) anti gay “christian” website.

don’t get me started.

anyway, here’s the clip in all its glory, straight from you tube:

jay brannan also sang a song, but it’s not up on you tube yet. it was called (i think) “half a boyfriend”–he has a gorgeous voice and plays impeccable guitar. someone sign this kid up!

we’re going back next week as well–it’s john cameron mitchell from hedwig and shortbus, debbie harry from (of course) blondie, and someone else whose name escapes me. well worth the $20 + two drinks to see.

sunday night, at the polar opposite of the spectrum, we saw the gyuto monks from tibet at town hall. not what i would have picked for myself, but kirk wanted to go so i went too. and it was marvelous.

they do this deep-throated guttural chanting that sounds like three notes at once. and when you get twenty of them doing it at once, and throw in some native instruments like drums and bugle-y horns and steel drum-y things, you get a very unusual and surprisingly calming sound.

i loved it.

not as much as i loved justin bond, but still. two great nights in a row. can’t ask for more than that.