The Ol' Blog Shop

Bait Shop Update!

2012-01-08T17:58:00.001-08:00

The Bait Shop mothership has been updated, complete with my Best of 2011 lists!

And since I don't update this blog nearly enough these days, be sure to check out The Screengrab In Exile and the Blue Estate Facebook page for all the latest!

Bait Shop Update!

2011-05-14T18:08:00.001-07:00

Check out all the newest news at the updated Bait Shop Mothership!

Wonder Con 2011

2011-04-03T07:58:00.001-07:00

Greetings from Wonder Con 2011, where I'm gettin' my geek on with celebs, quasi-celebs (and, for some reason, the Soup Nazi) to promote the release of BLUE ESTATE! Let the cartoons...begin!

Still Yet More Festivus 2011!

2011-03-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

More Festivus 2011!

2011-03-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Festivus 2011!

2011-03-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

I've just submitted my first SXSW blog post to Nerve (which should hopefully be up later today), but in the meantime here are some photos from my first two days at the fest!

(Can you spot the celebrity in the first picture? Stay tuned for more info!)

Best of 2010: Music

2010-12-08T04:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, let’s get this Best of 2010 wrap-up rolling, shall we? I’ll be doing a Top Ten movie list with Baron Von Doviak for Nerve (just as soon as we both have a chance to see back-to-back Dude spoilers True Grit and, of course, mofokin TRON). And my top TV shows, books and theatrical experiences of the year will take a bit more thought.

So let’s just start things off slow and super subjective with my 2010 soundtrack, bearing in mind that I’m even less qualified to write about music than all the other things I write about (and some of the following recordings didn’t even come out this year).

2010 Theme Song: “Spacious Thoughts” by Kool Keith & Tom Waits

And the best of the rest, in no particular order:

ALBUMS:

Vampire Weekend, Contra -- Almost as catchy as their first album, which means this prep-rock follow-up was pretty damn catchy.

Amanda Palmer and friends, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? (2008) & Evelyn Evelyn (2010) -- One self-titled solo album and one faux-Siamese Twin side project (long story) from my favorite new punk-cabaret singer-songwriter obsession.

Laurie Anderson, Homeland (2010) -- I barely made it through one entire listen of her last album (Life on a String), but my favorite performance art chanteuse was back in fine, Vocoder-y form with this haunting elegy to the smoldering wreckage of post-W America.

Liz Phair, Girlysound (2010/1991) -- The Guyville gal may no longer be a critic’s darling (and, in fact, I’m still undecided on her weird 2010 Bollywood fever dream, Funstyle), but the bonus CD that came with her new album is filled with vintage lo-fi Phair goodness from 1991.

Hans Zimmer, Inception soundtrack -- Sure, I understand that Zimmer’s thudding, portentous whale song of a score may not be everyone’s cup of meat, but for me it was the perfect soundscape for a long, strange year trapped inside the machinations of virtual world creation for a start-up video game company!

Amy Correia, You Go Your Way -- A great new album from a talented singer-songwriter I just happen to know personally (and be sure to check out her 2004 release, Lakeville, with its title song tribute to the littler town right next to my own little hometown)!

SINGLES:

Jesca Hoop, “Four Dreams” -- This Haysi Fantayzee-esque charmer jumped out of my radio and into my heart.

Antoine Dodson & Auto-Tune the News, “Bed Intruder Song” -- Not only is the song great, but I also love the fact that its success is bringing the charming Mr. Dodson ever closer to his hair styling dreams...so you can run and tell that!

The Royalty, “Vampire Graffiti” -- My favorite song from a free SXSW promo CD that turned out to be packed with lush, lyrical goodness. Find it if you can!

Sade, “Soldier of Love” -- The downbeat, ominous rhythms of this 2010 release gave me a whole new appreciation for this smooth operator.

Commodore Snerd, “I’m Bored” -- Okay, so I recorded this one myself, but look for the lovely vocal stylings of Amy Jeglinski-Osborne on the Society for the Advancement of Hearing Loss website in 2011...you’ll be glad you did!

Worst Album of the Year: Cyndi Lauper, Memphis Blues -- Sure, I love Cyndi. But she and I both should have known an album of her screechy blues covers was a bad idea.

Bait Shop Update!

2010-07-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty quiet around the Ol' Blog Shop since I started posting more at Screengrab In Exile...but there's news today (along with updated links and movies) at the recently updated Bait Shop Mothership!

Please to enjoy!

Festivus Finale!

2010-03-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

It's cold and grey here in Austin as the 2010 SXSW festival winds down -- and even though I'm sorry to see it go, after a solid week of screenings and parties, I can frankly use the relaxation of getting back to work after such a hectic "vacation."

Each year's incarnation of the cinematic spring break I like to call Festivus has its own flavor, but there are certain recurring themes, and one of them is the physical impossibility of catching ALL the treats spilling from the annual entertainment piñata -- and SXSW 2010 was no different, with special regrets including an inability to locate an alleged live demonstration of Cherie Curry's chainsaw-art prowess and (especially) the fact that I missed Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Ghost-Bustin'-Ass Murray at the premiere of their new film Get Low (about a man who stages his own funeral). Other films I wanted to see but couldn't get to for one reason or another include SATURDAY NIGHT (James Franco's behind-the-scenes documentary about a week in the life of the comedy juggernaut) and Best Documentary winner Marwencol, described to me by the A.V. Club's Leonard Pierce as the bizarre and fascinating tale of a man who loses his memory after a savage beating, then for inexplicable reasons begins to build a tiny World War 2-era town in his backyard (featuring a tiny version of himself building an even tinier town)...

Meanwhile, in the "better to regret something you did rather than something you didn't" category, I'd have to list the three (!) basil-chicken-olive "Poultrygeist" pizzas I consumed at the Alamo Drafthouse during the week, all of which were completely delicious (though perhaps not the healthiest choice to accompany the various screenings I saw at the venue)...but then again, like all the pints of Shiner Bock that helped to wash them down, they're a delicacy I only get to enjoy once a year, so what the heck?

Likewise, I regret not having a better screening to attend yesterday than Tom DiCillo's pretentious, completely unnecessary Doors documentary When You're Strange (which, at the very least, gave me a new understanding of Jim Morrison as the George W. Bush of rock stars) -- but it was, at the very least, a relatively diverting way to kill two hours as we waited for the start of a fun, free, and reliably RAWKIN' free concert at Austin's Auditorium Shores fairground by Cheap Trick (introduced, arguably, as "the best fucking rock band in the world").

The lovely Zooey Deschanel will also be appearing tonight on the same stage, outside in the cold with her band She & Him, but Scott and I will probably be at a closing night screening of Four Lions, described unpromisingly in the SXSW catalogue as a comical tale of suicide bombers.

Yet despite the last-day blues, the week's successes far outweight the regrets. I noted some of the films I enjoyed at Nerve.com, and to that list I would add And Everything Is Going Fine, Stephen Soderbergh's career-spanning retrospective of the life and times of the late, great Spalding Gray (including revelatory footage of his family life and surprisingly lucid final days). Other enjoyable late-week screenings included Mars, an animated mumblecore science fiction adventure-romance (of all things) and an equal parts charming and depressing documentary about roadside attractions and the death of small town America called World's Largest (as in Home of the World's Largest Peanut/Clam/Frying Pan/Boll Weevil/Lutefisk, etcetera).

And, as always, in addition to all the great breakfast tacos, chicken mole, BBQ (and occasional healthy choices like fried chicken salad), there was the general carnival atmosphere of Austin during SXSW, featuring thousands of musicians and music fans from around the world crammed into every square foot of the city (including Somerville's own one-(wo)man-band Audrey Ryan, a former screenwriting student of mine who I coinicidentally encountered bringing her rich, tuneful (and surprisingly multilayered) singer-songwriter mojo to an outdoor patio gig at Jaime's Spanish Village on Red River in the midst of all the madness.

With luck, I'm hoping to squeeze in one last celebrity sighting (comedian and Chelsea Lately regular Matt "Eggly Bagelface" Braunger, tonight at Esther's Follies) and one more breakfast taco before I jet back to Boston tomorrow...but whatever happens, SXSW is nearly over again for another year, and I guess I'll just have to look on the bright side: at least spring is here, and maybe now I can finally get some damn sleep...

Festivus: March 15, 2010

2010-03-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

It's Day 4 of SXSW, and Scott and me have turned in (relatively) early to catch our collective breaths following a tumultuous weekend, but here are some of the recent highlights...

Sunday:

After delicious breakfast tacos at Austin Java and a brief stop at some kind of kite festival, we attended a long, rambling (but relatively interesting and not entirely unentertaining) documentary called Dirty Pictures about (A) the scientist who inadvertently popularized Ecstasy, (B) his wife, (C) their son, (D) a bunch of scientists studying the positive (and negative) effects of psychedelic substances, (E) a DEA agent who turned his back on the War on Drugs, (F) the meaning of life, (G) cacti and (H) all the weird and wonderful things you can do and see at Burning Man.

After that, we expected to attend a Steven Soderbergh documentary about Spalding Gray, but were ultimately thwarted by the size (and befuddled staff) of a small-ish venue crammed with a distinctly "out-of-town" (i.e., New York and L.A.) crowd of obnoxiously entitled festival-goers...so instead, we bowled a few games at the swanky HighBall and swilled cocktails a few stools down from Wiley Wiggins of Dazed and Confused fame.

Determined not to bother the perfectly friendly Mr. Wiggins, I actually wound up being rather brusque in my request for a photo, and so Wiley -- if you happen to read this -- what I meant to say was, (A) nice to meet you and (B) we're actually two degrees of separation, since my film, Apocalypse Bop, played at a terrible film festival in Austin a few years ago along with the fantastic Plastic Utopia, the magnum opus of the Zellner Brothers, who later gave you a starring role in their bizarre 2001 faux-foreign war film, Frontier.

Anyway, as Scott and I were enjoying our brush with greatness, we noticed a massive line snaking past the window of the HighBall and realized we probably weren't going to get seats for Saturday Night, either (i.e., James Franco's documentary about the eponymous comedy mastodon)...

...so instead, we dropped into a packed screening of the completely amateurish and disjointed Elektra Luxx, a -- comedy? -- about a retired porn star featuring a surprisingly high-profile (and thoroughly wasted) ensemble including Carla Gugino, Timothy Olyphant, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Malin Akerman, Alicia Silverstone and Vincent "Pete from Mad Men" Kartheiser as a guy trapped naked in an elevator for reasons I can't begin to remember.

Fortunately, the film and/or the projector broke down halfway through the flick, allowing Scott and me to sneak out and grab some ZZZZs before hitting a more satisyfing pair of screenings on Monday about the dead cult comedian Bill Hicks and the live cult band The Magnetic Fields...

...but it's too late to post those reviews right now, so stay tuned for more SXSW updates, coming soon!

Festivus: 2010!

2010-03-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

As Willy the Shakes reminds us, beware the Ides of March...

...but then again, Shakespeare never went to SXSW. And this year, I'm a guy who really needs some good ol' fashioned Festivus...

...so, after a week in San Francisco Adjacent, working on my latest gig (VIE...stay tuned for more details!) and a schmancy meal of sushi and champagne with my Bulgarian employers and a half dozen or so French game designers, I flew into Austin on Saturday and met with my host family, Scott and Maury the Wonder ChiBeagle.

After a much needed pitcher of Shiner Bock and a chicken club sandwich at the Casino el Camino, Scott and I strolled over to the Paramount for the premiere screening of Cyrus, the studio debut of mumblecore All-Stars Jay and Mark Duplass (of Humpday, Baghead and Puffy Chair fame).

With their big Hollywood budget (i.e., less than the cost of one Na'avi from Avatar), the Duplasses (Duplassi? Duplee?) were able to afford big name talent like John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill and Catherine Keener for their tale of a schlubby divorcee who starts dating a dreamy single mom with a possessive, passive-aggressive son.

The film was sporadically funny in the rambling, verité style that gives mumblecore its name (and also tends to alienate more caffeinated viewers), but the Q&A after the screening was even better as improv ninjas Reilly and Hill skewered the typically inane questioners who thrive on opportunities to hear themselves talk in large groups of people. "If I understand correctly, you're asking whether I took the role for an opportunity to wrap my leg around Marisa Tomei," Hill deadpanned to some audience member at one point. "The answer is no. And also, you are an asshole."

After the premiere, jet-lag kicked in and Scott and I retired to South Austin, but stay tuned as Festivus week continues!

Andrew Osborne's 2009 Top Tens!

2009-12-30T04:56:00.000-08:00

MOVIES
So, I recently contributed my picks for the best movies of the decade to a list on Nerve.com, and it was fun to reflect on the 21st century’s impressive cinematic yield to date, from Almost Famous (2000) to Young@Heart (2008), and especially the bumper crop years like 2001 (The Royal Tennenbaums, Ghost World, Mulholland Drive, etc.) and 2007 (There Will Be Blood, Juno, No Country For Old Men, etc.).

Tellingly, no films from the past year scored Best of Decade honors on the aforementioned list…which is not to say 2009 was a bad movie year, exactly. In fact, picking the following Top Ten was difficult because many of the films I saw in the last 365 days were pretty damn good (if not great) works of high-level craftsmanship from old reliables and talented newcomers.

Click Here for the Full Post!

The Decade In Theme Songs

2009-12-05T16:05:00.000-08:00

When I was young, I thought of my life as a movie.

Now, with the slow accumulation of minor incidents building to occasional Season Finales of suspense and drama, I think of my life as a long-running, low-rated HBO series with a small but dedicated cult following.

And, just as HBO promos often feature thematically evocative songs to hint at future seasons, I typically find some tune stuck in my head this time of year (which more often than not winds up fitting nicely with the drift of events in my life and the lives of those around me).

At the moment, Nelly Furtado's "Say It Right" seems to have nominated itself for my 2010 theme song, but the month is young so we'll see...

As for the rest of the decade's theme songs, they generally applied eerily well to the years they previewed, and if you buy me a beer sometime I'd be happy to recount the twists and turns of the past ten exciting seasons (though even without the recaps, you can probably guess the general gist of some of them based on the soundtrack below...)

And so, as the era of New Year's Eve glasses featuring funny OOs for eyes draws to a close, please to enjoy the following selections, courtesy of my psyche:

2009 SEASON: "Sex Changes" by the Dresden Dolls (which, I should note, had nothing to do with me actually getting a sex change operation...)

2008 SEASON: "No One" by Alicia Keyes

2007 SEASON: "Sad Little Fat Man" by David Bowie

2006 SEASON: "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass

2005 SEASON: "This Year" by The Mountain Goats

2004 SEASON: "Mr. Blue Sky" by E.L.O.

2003 SEASON: "Lose Yourself" by Eminem

2002 SEASON: "New England" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

2001 SEASON: "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys

2000 SEASON: "Momentum" by Aimee Mann

Happy New Year!

Bait Shop Update!

2009-11-01T18:44:00.000-08:00

This poor blog has been even more neglected than usual since I've been posting at Screengrab In Exile, but at least there's a brand new update at the Bait Shop mothership, so...enjoy!

Requiem For WBCN

2009-07-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Boston Phoenix -- which owns the generally underwhelming “alternative” radio station WFNX, one of whose DJs tellingly got his panties in a bunch the year Tom Waits scored a Best Alternative Grammy, because said deejay didn’t consider frickin’ Bone Machine as “alternative” as, say, Green Day -- gleefully reported this week that CBS Radio was pulling the plug on FNX’s competitor WBCN so they could replace it with the kind of Mix station that pumps out product from popular “music” brands like American Idol and the Pussycat Dolls.

According to the Phoenix obituary, CBS is whacking the 41-year Boston institution because of, duh, corporate greed and the death of radio...but also, according to a smug quote from WFNX program director Max Tolkoff, because the Rock of Boston “flipped to alternative and started to chase after ‘FNX in the early ‘90s.”

Which is only true if you accept the WFNX definition of “alternative” as shitty neo-grunge Nu Metal and a maddeningly repetitive playlist virtually unchanged since the day Kurt Cobain ate his shotgun. (Honestly, guys...even Courtney Love doesn’t want or need to hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit” every hour on the hour.)

Inventive, offbeat music that’s actually an alternative to the same old mopey, tuneless noodling that’s defined the mainstream “alternative” format for nearly two decades can, of course, be found every day on college radio stations like Emerson’s WERS...and way back in my beloved 1980s, it could also be heard on WBCN, side by side with the likes of Led Zeppelin, back when people enjoyed music in more than one marketing demographic -- which, as the success of the iPod reminded pretty much everyone but terrestrial radio and the music industry -- is pretty much ALL the time.

Before switching to a rock format in the 1960s, WBCN (a.k.a., the Boston Concert Network) was a classical music station of the sort my folks might have enjoyed in the early years of my own life, when symphonies, show tunes and Mitch Miller holiday albums accounted for 90 percent of my listening environment. Then, in 1981, my friend Steve Lewis gave me a cassette of the “Nocturnal Emissions” Christmas show he’d taped off 104.1 FM (complete with awesome time capsule spots for the likes of New Wave clothing boutique Hubba Hubba) and effectively rocked my world, opening my eyes to a brave new universe of music -- from Elvis Costello, Siouxsie Sioux and David Bowie (along with his bestest duet buddy, Bing Crosby) to the Kinks, the Waitresses, the Damned, the Residents and the weirdo who penned the immortal lyric, “I found the brains of Santa Claus underneath my bed...”

“Nocturnal Emissions” was the oddball fiefdom of WBCN’s program director Oedipus, who (long before WFNX began broadcasting in 1983) had already helped to popularize the music of truly alternative acts like the Ramones and the Clash while famously breaking local bands like The Cars and Aimee Mann’s one-hit wonder ‘Til Tuesday. Indeed, that local flavor and focus was always my favorite aspect of the Rock of Boston, from its support of up-and-coming New England bands (exemplified by the annual Rock & Roll Rumble showcase competition) to Charles Laquidara’s Big Mattress drive-time show, which attracted both pointy-headed prog-head college students, North Shore professionals and working class South Shore Sullys -- and, though I’ve never heard him directly acknowledge it, clearly inspired a young B.U. student named Howard Stern, who adopted much of Laquidara’s morning party comedy format (including, at one point, Big Mattress alum Billy West).

Unsurprisingly, my parents hated WBCN and the muted but transformative adolescent rebellion it unleashed in me. I’ve always suspected, for example, that my mother deliberately trashed (or burned) a treasured 104.1 t-shirt I used to wear in the early days of my burgeoning New Wave consciousness. Which is sad, because while that particular piece of clothing surely wouldn’t fit me anymore, and though the station eventually became a soulless shell of its former self (not unlike the lobotomized Randle Patrick McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), I could at least run it up a flagpole today and fly it half-mast in tribute to the once (and future?) Rock of Boston.

T.V. Party Tonight!

2009-05-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

So, the other day, my lovely Polish bride is reading “Splendor In The Grit,” an article in the June 2009 issue of Vanity Fair by James Wolcott about New York City in “the crumbling anarchy” of the 1970s “when artists’ lofts were inhabited by actual artists, every subway car held potential drama, and legends -- Lennon, Warhol, Garbo -- walked the streets.”

At one point in the article, Wolcott talks about “the advent of cable-access programming,” which, long before the Internet, allowed commoners (as well as plenty of uncommon fringe dwellers, like pornographer Al Goldstein and NYC stripper emeritus Robyn Bird) unprecedented access to mass communication and local notoriety. And one of the most successful and influential programs to emerge from the new DIY-TV scene was “Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party (with a guest list that included Blondie, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the Clash),” which ran from 1978 until 1982 in Manhattan and, eventually, L.A.

After reading that O’Brien’s show had been preserved and released on DVD, my better half Netflixed several episodes, as well as TV Party: The Documentary by filmmaker Danny Vinik, which traces the evolution (and eventual dissolution) of the coolest televised cocktail party of all time.

Taking his cues from Playboy After Dark and the Rat Pack days of the Carson-era Tonight Show, O’Brien (a handsome, martini-dry New Wave bon vivant) invited his artsy Village friends to come to the studio, hang out, smoke pot, and play with the equipment -- and since they were young, creative and weird, the results were funny, chaotic, and pretty much unlike anything else on TV, before or since.

For one thing, O’Brien’s friends included the likes of Fred Schneider, Fab 5 Freddy, Robert Fripp and an adorable pre-fame Debbie Harry (who, in one segment, bounces on a pogo stick to demonstrate the nuances of punk rock dancing). Meanwhile, familiar faces like David Byrne and Klaus Nomi pop up in the house band, while Basquiat is in the control booth, typing absurdist poetry on the Chryon.

David Letterman, back in the “anything goes” phase of his career, was a kindred spirit and professed fan of the show, and as the notoriety of TV Party and its regulars increased, it began attracting ever more famous scenester guests, from Bowie to Mapplethorpe, until the rising wave crested and, like all good things, the party came to an end: O’Brien got married, Harry’s bandmate Chris Stein caught a nasty case of pemphigus vulgaris (contributing to the breakup of Blondie), the yuppification of Manhattan drove the bohemians out and eventually everybody just moved on.

But Vinik’s documentary brings it all back, and those with fond memories of the early ‘80s may feel like they’re watching old home movies of their younger selves in a far funkier time, only with more famous faces and a freakier soundtrack. Rent it today...you’ll dig it the most!

A Very Somerville Memorial Day

2009-05-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

The parade had already been going awhile by the time Amy and me got back from hiking in the Blue Hills. Broadway and both Teele and Davis Squares were closed for the event, so we had to sneak in the back way...the wrong way down a few one-way streets...to get to our neighborhood, then we parked and joined the scattered crowd of townies along the route.

Now, I know a lot of governments like to celebrate national holidays by rolling all their niftiest tanks and missiles through the capitol, but that kinda thing just makes me nervous.

On the other hand, what makes me feel downright patriotic in the least ironic way possible is an event like the Somerville Memorial Day Parade, from the tiny old man playing trumpet in the American Legion marching band and the Sons of Italy color guard hanging out with friends on the sidewalk during pauses in the procession to the young Asian girl marching along stone-faced in minuteman regalia and the black kids and Albanians and Greeks and Lebanese hanging out on the sidewalks in lawn chairs, buying SpongeBob balloons from vendors and firing bubble guns into the soapy musket smoky air.

Ah, but ain’t that America for you and me? Ain’t that America something to see baby? Ain’t that America, home of the free?

Yes, I just spent the afternoon in a John Mellencamp video.

Ooh yeah.

But, really, for me it was all about the Shriners, or whoever those guys in the Aleppo fezzes were, and there were scores of them, possibly hundreds, taking up easily half the parade with their flags and weird Arab trumpet noodling and fake goatees and turbans and their candy-tossing...and forget about tiny little cars: the Somerville Shriners had tiny little 18-wheelers, not to mention tiny golf carts, tiny buggies, pop-wheelie clown cars, horses, horse cars, Segways and a trailer broadcasting a Shriner quartet as they sang “Yankee Doodle went to Baghdad riding in a Humvee” into dangling CB radio handsets.

Given the median age of most of the Shriners seemed to be about 78, I began to worry that someday there would be no one to drive the tiny little cars along future parade routes...but then I started noticing some tattooed hepcats under the occasional fez, so maybe there’s hope.

And ever since this past November, I’m all about Hope.

God Bless The Troops!

Sock Pox & Welcome, Screengrabbers!!!!

2009-05-23T14:00:00.001-07:00

Hey, there! So, Nerve.com is discontinuing the Screengrab blog I've contributed to for the past year or so, and at some point before they pull the plug, Scott Von D. and/or myself will be posting a list of links to the blogs of all the various Screengrab refugees...

...which means a few more people than usual may conceivably be checking out this poor, neglected blog in the near future, so I suppose I oughta get on the stick and start updating with a little more regularity.

In the meantime, as I recently noted on the aforementioned Screengrab, I participated in the 2009 Boston edition of the 48 Hour Film Project a few weeks back, and the resultant short movie ("Sock Pox") is posted below. Enjoy!

Festivus: Days 6-8

2009-03-21T13:48:00.000-07:00

More SXSW! Pictured below: Experimental Aircraft at the Carousel Lounge, recently departed but fondly remembered Carousel hostess Stella, Jenny & Emily & Abe at the Carousel, a dog with a big ol' head, Exene Cervenka in action, Banana Man, Andre Williams, more Wavy, Kinky Friedman, ridin' the Jackalope, poker night with a sex-crazed turtle, Scott hunting some big horn sheep, me & Exene...

Festivus: Days 3-5

2009-03-18T06:43:00.001-07:00

The SXSW party train rolls on here in beautiful Austin, TX, with stops for St. Patrick's Day, Wavy Gravy, a little psychedelic fuzz rock and a sneak preview of Richard Linklater's new film, Me and Orson Welles , reviewed by Mr. Von Doviak over on the Screengrab, along with My Suicide, Best Worst Movie and New World Order (which has already drawn nasty comments from an ever-growing mob of angry internet libertarian/anarchist conspiracy enthusiasts)!

As for me, I've reviewed Humpday, Beeswax and The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle...and there's more to come!

SXSW guru and Orson Welles director Richard Linklater is pictured at right. Meanwhile, in the photo gallery below: St. Paddy's Day in Austin with the Capitol Street Highlanders, a pair o' cute pooches, Leslie by night, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard (stars of Humpday), the sexy keyboard/tambourine girl from The Upsidedown, the lovely songstress Miranda Lee Richards, barbecue, hot dogs and Mr. Gravy walking his pet fish...stay tuned!

FESTIVUS 2009: Days 1-2

2009-03-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Hoo-baby! It's Festivus time once again, a.k.a. the South-By-Southwest Music, Film & Interactive Festival in grey and drizzly Austin, Texas!

This year, I've actually managed to score myself a press pass as a correspondent (along with my hosts, Scott Von Doviak and Maury the Wonder Chibeagle) for The Screengrab on Nerve.com (although I haven't actually done any official corresponding yet, mainly because there simply hasn't been any time in the SXSW whirlwind thus far).

It's Sunday morning and Scott and me are just rolling out the door for some breakfast tacos at Katz's Deli, but stay tuned for plenty of rock, roll, trolls and mumblecore after a short pause for station identification!

Mmm...breakfast tacos...

Okay, we're back...so, Friday, after a ridiculously busy fortnight of writing, teaching and very special Somerville guest stars (including Heidi, Jody, Janine and U2), I kissed Zuzu and my lovely Polish bride goodbye and cabbed out to Logan Airport, where (for maybe the first time ever), I utilized my Amazing Race skills to snag an earlier-than-ticketed flight to TX on the most excellent wings of JetBlue (while all the poor bastards flying American Airlines were screwed, as usual, judging by an increasingly grim series of terminal announcements).

I was literally up the entire night before my flight (trying to finish up a project), so most of Friday was a blur of booze and exhaustion as Scott and I drifted from the massive Austin Convention Center (for press credentials), down Sixth Street (for booze and, eventually, a delicious, restorative Sergio Leone pizza at Frank & Angies), then out to the Tiniest Bar in Texas for a performance by The Box Spring Hogs, a most excellent Tom Waits cover band whose outdoor performance was, unfortunately, cancelled due to inclement weather. The night ended with a blur of hipsters at the opening night party, where somebody stuck a fake mustache on top of my real mustache (as part of a tie-in with the upcoming SXSW premiere of I Love You, Man).

I was a bit more awake Saturday, when Scott and I hooked up with fellow Screengrabbers Hayden Childs and Leonard Pierce (on special assignment for the Onion) for a screening of Beeswax, a mumblecore "legal thriller" by Boston's own Andrew Bujalski (which I'll review for the Screengrab later today or possibly tomorrow).

After debriefing over cocktails at the swanky Driskill Hotel (a.k.a. the Dressed-To-Kill) and pub grub at the Casino El Camino, we made our way to the Alamo Drafthouse for a screening of Winnebago Man, a film about this guy:

The man (Jack Rebney) and his Winnebago were on hand for the premiere, but they stopped admitting people to the packed house JUST as Scott and me got to the front of the line, so instead we wound up seeing American Prince, a film about this guy, followed by Best Worst Movie, an irresistably charming film about the inexplicable cult success of Troll 2 and an early contender for my Best of 2009 year-end Top Ten list. (Stay tuned for my review of the film here and Scott's review on The Screengrab.)

Anyway, Scott and me are getting ready to head out for another round of screenings, so that's all for now, but stay tuned!

SXSW Celebrity Sightings To Date: Indie maven John Pierson, corpulent geek overlord Harry Knowles, uber-Slacker Richard Linklater, Dazed and Confused star Wiley Wiggins and, according to Scott, Jeffrey "Hey Now!" Tambor, both at the opening night party and later in a men's room at one of the screenings (though I missed him both times). Hey now!

*************************************
Below: the American Prince (Steven Prince), bar dogs, the Best Worst Movie gang, Sissyboy, my esteemed colleagues and Lesley, the unofficial mayor of Austin...

Bait Shop Update!

2009-01-10T12:12:00.000-08:00

Hey, cats and kittens! Be sure to check out all the latest news and links (including one to my entire Screengrab oeuvre) and, best of all, the brand new Bait Shop Multiplex at my newly updated Mothership website, baitshop.org!

Top Ten Movies Of 2008

2008-12-30T07:47:00.000-08:00

Click here for my Top Ten Movies of 2008 (and stay tuned for a long-delayed Bait Shop update)!

Happy New Year, y'all!

Whew!!!!!

2008-11-04T22:06:00.000-08:00

Change Is Good

2008-09-03T05:17:00.000-07:00

So, the current script goes something like this: Sarah Palin is a social conservative who's against birth control and sex education. Then...surprise! Her teenage daughter gets pregnant (like many teenage girls in many conservative "red" states, where teen pregnancy rates tend to be higher).

The Republican/conservative response to this dramatic example of the failure of abstinence education? They don't care, they're going to keep doing it anyway.

Our standing in the world is trashed, our treasury is drained and there are more terrorists than ever because of the Iraq war. They don't care, they're going to keep doing it anyway.

Every single study shows the War on Drugs is a costly failure that actually makes the problem worse. They don't care, they're going to keep doing it anyway.

Torture is abhorrent, fuels anti-American hatred and doesn't work as an interrogation method. They don't care, they're going to keep doing it anyway.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Whether it's conservative homophobes who pretend to be straight instead of just admitting they're gay (and it's okay!), "intelligent design" scientists who refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence of evolution/global warming or Dittoheads who keep voting against their own interests time and time again while the neo-conservatives steal American wealth and make the Chinese and Saudis rich...

IT REALLY IS INSANE

TO KEEP VOTING FOR

NEO-CON REPUBLICANS,

SO PLEASE STOP DOING IT!

Thank you.

Happy Birthday, Madonna!

2008-08-20T09:41:00.001-07:00

Yes, amazingly enough, we've been living in the Material Girl's material world for a half century already...and so, to celebrate, I recently ranked Ms. Ciccone's cinematic performances (with the help of my lovely Polish bride) over at our sister website, The Screengrab.

Enjoy!

George Carlin, R.I.P.

2008-06-23T06:59:00.001-07:00

Alas, poor George. Nobody could depress me with a stand-up routine about the sorry state of the world like he could!

Read more: George Carlin: 1937-2008

Shmemmy...WINNER!

2008-06-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

So, for those of you playing along at home, the answer to the question, "What won the 2008 Daytime Creative Arts Shmemmy for Outstanding Game/Audience/Participation Show" is...

CASH CAB!!!

In your face, Trebek!

(Actually, Trebek was very nice about his loss and congratulated the Cash Cabbies as the new kids on the block. Made of class, that Trebek.)

And, although I was skeptical about whether or not I should actually consider myself a Shmemmy nominee (and now, ahem, winner) as opposed to just a guy who spent a few weeks writing for a Shmemmy nominated/winning show, it turns out my name was indeed listed in the program so I guess it's actually and technically true.

Plus, I got to go down on stage with all the other producers and writers (and Cash Cab host Ben Bailey), and then, at the after-party, the wife and I both got to play with the Shmemmy to our hearts' content...in fact, after we posed for pictures with it, we didn't quite know what to do with it, and had a hard time getting someone to take it off our hands)!

Shmemmy trivia fact: if you win one, they give you a nice little Shmemmy box to carry it home on the subway in! (And there were many Shmemmy boxes outside the "Jazz at Lincoln Center" building at Columbus Circle Friday night, believe you me!) Sadly, while I think I can now describe myself as a Shmemmy winner, I did not in fact get a statue of my own. Maybe next year!

But what you're really asking yourself is: were there celebrities? Well, does Trebek count? Or Bindi Irwin? Or Christopher "Doc Brown" Lloyd? Or David Canary from All My Children?

Or...OSCAR THE GROUCH & BOB FROM SESAME STREET?

Then, yes.

Oh, yes.

There were celebrities.

Pretty Blue

2008-06-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Hey, culture lovers...check out the latest Ol' Bait Shop production, a video of the song "Pretty Blue" by F.O.B.S. "Moonflower!"

(And also please to enjoy my latest blogs over at The Screengrab on Black Presidents in Cinema, the Top Ten Greatest Movie Bars and Barroom Scenes, My Troma Summer and Original vs. Remake: Ocean's Eleven!)

Sydney Pollack, R.I.P.

2008-05-27T05:44:00.000-07:00

Like Divine and Robert Altman, this is one of those celebrity deaths that make as sad as if I actually knew the person.

Sydney Pollack, both as an actor and as a director, was such a constant, avuncular presence during the course of my movie-going life that I really will miss him. He represented a level of class and professionalism in pop culture that's in desperately short supply.

"You were a tomato!!!!!!"

TEST DRIVE

2008-05-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

EPISODE TWENTY: CAITLIN

(Previously on Test Drive)

“Forget it...”

Frank focused his attention on the burner, hoping to simply ignore Red until they were back on the ground, but as he reached for the valve to lower the balloon’s flame and begin their descent, Red covered his large hand with her own tiny one and said, “Look...I did eighteen months at the Farm and another year at Shutter Creek, up in Oregon. I know what it’s like, Frank...the shitty job, the halfway house, the asshole parole officer...”

It was the tone of her voice as much as the cool, soft touch of flesh on flesh that caused Frank to hesitate. Turning, he saw again the weariness he’d glimpsed only fleetingly before, as if the aging grifter were finally breaking character, dropping the charade of girlish manipulation and carefree abandon in favor of a truer, though still undoubtedly calculated version of her actual persona. “...that can’t be all you want outta life,” she continued quietly, “just growin’ old and playin’ it safe the rest of your days...”

“Stop it, okay?” Frank snapped, annoyed, uncertain why she was still playing him, what more she could possibly want. “I’m not listenin’ to any more o’ your horseshit.”

But Red continued as if he hadn’t spoken, and Frank couldn’t help but see himself clear in her words, the tiny, cramped shell of his life. “Settlin’ down, settlin’ for table scraps when you could be howlin’ at the moon...”

She was playing him and they both knew he knew it...but, then again, he realized, so were Mitch and Lucia and the parole officers...the whole goddamn shell game, the biggest hustle of all, the one about keeping his nose clean and playing along and sucking it up in hopes of some happily ever after where he’d eventually be a successful, respectable citizen instead of a marginal ex-con, scraping along for the next thirty years until he finally became the government’s problem again, fading away in some cut-rate, piss-stained nursing home, alone.

“C’mon, Frank, admit it,” Red smiled, tracing her fingers along the taut forearm and bicep under the sleeve of the starchy white salesman’s dress shirt. “Out there on the I-10, you an’ me, racing Charlie...when’s the last time you felt your blood just singin’ like that...like you just got laid so good it made you cross-eyed?”

Frank couldn’t answer, couldn’t remember, couldn’t really argue that either hustle was any better or worse, except one stretched on longer before the other shoe finally dropped, and the other might at least be fun while it lasted.

“So how ‘bout it, goose, whaddaya say?” Red said, pressing closer. “You watch my back, I scratch yours?”

“Lady, I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you,” Frank replied, just being honest.

“I’d say that’s plenty,” Red smirked, glancing over the side of the basket to the surrounding desert, still a pretty good throw beneath them. “Besides, if you think about it, I've never once lied to you, Frank.”

The statement was so blatantly ridiculous that Frank could only laugh, prompting Red to clarify, “Okay, so I wasn’t really planning to buy that Mustang, and I gave you a fake name and tricked you at the gas station...which you totally deserved, by the way...but aside from all that, I’ve been completely honest!”

“You’re lying right now!”

“Nuh-uh!” Red insisted, stubborn.

“You lie so much you can’t even remember what you lied about!”

“Name one thing!”

“You said Charlie was your husband...”

“Ex-husband!” Red explained, digging in her purse for a crumpled snapshot which, to Frank’s genuine surprise, actually did appear to depict Hombre and Red arm-in-arm, side-by-side in a quickie Las Vegas wedding chapel. “It’s not my fault he was already married! I mean, if anybody ruined Charlie’s life, it was Charlie!”

“Well...” Frank stammered, a little less sure of himself as he continued to gape at the unexpected snapshot, “what about the other guy, that Mercedes dealer from Oregon?”

“I’m not saying I’m a model citizen,” Red shrugged.

“You’re a menace!”

“Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...hey, if you don’t want the money...”

“Yeah, right,” Frank scoffed, “listen, I may be stupid, but I ain’t dumb enough to think I’m actually ever gonna see one goddamn red...”

The word cent transformed into another gasp of astonishment as Red produced a tight roll of hundreds from her purse, pressing the money into his palm. “I’ll pay you the rest when I get to my brother’s place...he’s been watchin’ my daughter for me...”

“Oh my God...you actually spawned?”

As soon as the words left Frank’s mouth, he saw in Red’s narrowed eyes that she wasn’t lying about the daughter.

“That’s Caitlin,” she said, reaching into her purse for a photo booth snapshot of a somber young girl with fiery hair and a glittering gaze unmistakably her mother’s. “And nothin’ in the world is gonna keep me away from her.”

The Shmemmies!

2008-05-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

So, here's a new one.

The good news is...I'VE BEEN NOMINATED FOR AN EMMY!

Yes! Really!

Well, okay, to be completely honest, the Discovery Channel game show Cash Cab was nominated for an Emmy (or a Shmemmy, as Kathy Griffin calls the not-ready-for-primetime version of the awards)...but since I was a writer on the nominated season, I actually received an invitation today!

Now for the bad news. THE TICKETS ARE FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!!

That's right...I apparently have to PAY for my Emmy ticket. Talk about D-List!

On the plus side, it does come with "cocktails & light supper."

More on this as it develops. Or doesn't.

BAIT SHOP UPDATE!

2008-04-25T21:44:00.001-07:00

Check out De Zomer Kamp (Team Bait Shop/Burt Wood's 2008 entry in the 48 Hour Film Project) and all the latest news at the Bait Shop mothership!

Test Drive - Episode Nineteen: Big Spring

2008-04-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

Previously on Test Drive

Red giggled, seemingly unfazed by the storm of violence they’d only just survived, as if all the recent danger was nothing more than a half-remembered dream. But Frank, bruised and powder-burned, trembling with adrenalin and fear and rage and who knew what else, could only mumble, “Great,” as he stared down at the silver handgun far below, glittering in the desert sun.

Then, gazing up towards the riot of police lights far behind them now on the receding horizon, Frank suddenly noticed the dark red Jaguar XK, still bouncing towards them across the arid dirt in hopeless, wild pursuit.

*****

Hombre stared back at Frank through the cracked windshield of the British roadster, while slouched in the passenger seat beside him, a particularly violent jolt caused Eric’s eyes to flutter open as he roused back to muzzy consciousness, dabbing his sliced, bloody forehead in confusion. “Wha...what’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, pal. We’re on our way to the hospital...everything’s gonna be fine,” Hombre said with a less than reassuring grimace, gamely offering his best salesman’s handshake. “Charlie Blackfloe, Las Vegas Dodge.”

“Eric Gunderson, Van Horn Imports.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Hombre withdrew his grimy paw from Eric’s dazed grip and turned his attention back to the rainbow balloon, easing up on the gas as his fevered brain downshifted to a new plan of action. His airborne quarry was picking up speed on a hot gust of wind and he figured he’d bust an axle if he kept barrel-assing across the high desert terrain, so instead he turned north, towards the distant grey ribbon of interstate leading east to New Orleans.

After all, he thought darkly, it wasn’t like he didn’t know where she was going.

*****

A mile away and a half mile up, Frank had taken several deep breaths and was attempting once again to impose logic on the chaos of the past two hours of his life. “All right, I’m gonna try this damn thing again,” he cautioned, gingerly examining the balloon’s burner unit, “so you might wanna...”

“Are you crazy?” Red giggled, amused and alarmed, gesturing towards the uninhabited wasteland around and below them. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! What, you’re gonna walk outta here?”

“I don’t care if I have to walk a thousand miles,” Frank snarled in response, “as long as it’s away from you!”

“Meanie.”

Red thrust out her lower lip and scowled the exaggerated, bratty pout of the teenage girl she clearly hadn’t been in decades, folding her arms and huffing in faux indignation. Irritated, Frank opened his mouth to reply...then remembered she was insane and promptly thought better of it.

“What?”

“Nothing, just....” Frank closed his eyes and took another breath, forcing himself to focus on salvaging whatever he could from the fiasco of their time together. “...tell me where you ditched the Mustang so I can go pick it up, okay?”

“You mean you’re really going back?” Red laughed with a start of unfeigned disbelief at the salesman’s bull-headed tenacity.

“Yes, crazy person! And don’t try to follow me!”

“Gee,” Red said, pouting again, “and here I thought we were kinda hitting it off.”

“Lady, you stuck a FUCKING GUN IN MY EAR!” Frank exploded, knowing it was pointless to continue the conversation, but somehow unable to stop himself.

“Ah, that was just for show!” Red shrugged, dismissive. “You and me, we got bigger fish to fry. I’m sure Charlie told you all about the big score, the moonshine millions...”

Then, pushing closer, Red defaulted to seduction, breasts against his arm, hot breath in his ear: “There’s plenty to go around...and you seem like the kinda guy who knows what to do in a...tight spot...”

But Frank wasn’t having it. “Listen, Stella...or Marion...or whoever you are,” he said, tired of the game, pushing the voluptuous redhead angrily away. “I know your kind o’ trouble, and I just don’t want no part of it, okay?”

“Oh really?” Red purred, arching a mischievous eyebrow.

“I wasted too many years runnin’ around like an idiot, boostin’ cars and shootin’ guns with trailer trash like you...”

“Hey!”

“...then I lost another five in Big Spring, hopin’ to Christ my ass didn’t look cute in prison pants...”

Red’s lips curled back in a helpless grin, eyes darting instinctively to the gangly ex-con’s skinny little butt. “Guess you were outta luck there, huh?”

She giggled and Frank rolled his eyes: it was hopeless.

But Red wasn’t through with him yet.

Test Drive - Episode Eighteen: Physics

2008-04-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

Previously on Test Drive

Hombre fired another bullet in frustration, hardly expecting to hit the hot air balloon drifting quickly away to the south...

...but, two hundred yards up, the bullet nevertheless managed to catch its target, slicing up through the wicker between Red’s scarlet fuck-me pumps, just missing the tips of her toes and the mouth of the balloon’s multicolored nylon envelope before reaching the top of its trajectory and arcing back earthward.

Hearing the near miss zing of the shot, Red whirled around to return fire...Frank lunged forward, grabbing the silver Beretta, trying to wrestle it from her grip...

...while, far below, Hombre heard the crack and whistle of another bullet and ducked for cover ‘round the corner of the grounded Spitfire, rushing for the crumpled Jaguar.

“STOP!” Ray-Ray hollered from somewhere behind him, squeezing off another shot. “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!”

A trim, thin-haired man was slumped unconscious in the passenger seat of the Jaguar and the keys were, thankfully, dangling in the ignition when Hombre slid behind the wheel and cranked the uncooperative ignition, snarling, “Come on...come on, you limey piece o’ shit...”

Then, with a shudder and a groan like a Welshman having sex, the Jaguar stirred to life, shrieking and scraping as it disentangled itself from the fuselage of the Spitfire. Pulling clear, Hombre jammed the gearbox into drive, ducking low when Ray-Ray blew out the back and side windows before while he stomped the accelerator, thundering across the airfield in pursuit of Red’s balloon.

Ray-Ray emptied the clip of his back-up pistol, hobbling after the car until the pain in his wounded leg forced him to retreat back, defeated, to the front seat of his cruiser. Grabbing the handset of the Crown Vic’s mounted VHF radio, the young patrolman watched the Jaguar and the hot air balloon as they disappeared into the desert, vaguely aware of the growing din of police sirens shrieking towards him along the distant I-10 frontage road. “291 to Dispatch!”

“Go, 291,” the radio gargled.

“Dispatch,” Ray-Ray began, weary and light-headed from the accumulated toll of his injuries, “you ain’t gonna believe this shit...” He paused as a momentary glint of light drew his gaze to the distant balloon...

...where Frank had just that second managed to curl his fingers around the trigger guard of the shiny Beretta, prying it slowly from Red’s grip...

...when the feral redhead suddenly drove the top of her skull against the underside of the ex-con’s jaw, forcing his teeth into his tongue.

Frank howled in shock and pain, spitting blood, but tightened his grip on the gun, eyes so fierce

Red found herself fearfully stammering, “Hey...you wouldn’t hit a girl, right?”

His answer came fast in a return head-butt that loosened Red’s grip, knocking her sideways and turning her forehead scarlet. “Okay,” Frank scowled, breathing hard, clutching the weapon, victorious, “okay, now...”

“Frank, listen...”

“Shut up!” Frank snapped, adrenalin turbo-charging his anger. “Now how do we land this fucking thing?”

“How the heck should I know?”

The answer was extremely displeasing to Frank, who in turn could only counter, “I thought you were the balloon expert!”

“Why would you think that?” Red smiled, infuriating.

“Never mind,” Frank snapped, moving to examine the valves on the burner, gun trained on Red.

“This here...this controls the altitude, right?”

Before Red could answer, Frank grabbed the larger of the two valves and cranked it counter-clockwise, reducing the flame to a flicker then, when that seemed to produce no immediate result, he grabbed a lever connected to the vent valve at the top of the nylon envelope, giving it a hard tug that caused the balloon to drop forty feet in the four seconds it took Red to leap forward to crank the burner to full, halting their descent with a bone-rattling lurch. Frank, stomach in throat, instinctively grabbed for the edge of the basket...

...instantly regretting it as the Beretta tumbled from his grip over the side, shrinking to a silver speck as it fell before hitting the distant ground with a discharge that blew a buzzard from its perch on a Saguaro cactus a dozen yards away.

Red took a deep breath, then caught Frank’s wild eye, giggling, “Guess you skipped physics, huh?”

The Screengrab

2008-04-03T09:56:00.001-07:00

Hello! Shia LaBeouf and I would like to invite you to check out my new blog-away-from-blog, The Screengrab, where I'll periodically be posting on cinematic subjects along with other snarky folks like our ol' pal, Baron Von Doviak.

Enjoy!

TEST DRIVE - EPISODE 17: BURNER

2008-04-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Previously on Test Drive

Frank had seen plenty of Mexican stand-offs in movies, of course...but the reality of two people aiming actual guns at him was more than his nervous system could handle just then, especially considering that one of the two people was a Texas cop who’d somehow managed to pop up directly behind him despite having been cuffed in the back of the Crown Vic literally moments before.

“No, no, no...wait!” Frank stammered, desperate to explain himself to the angry young Latino, momentarily forgetting the stolen 9mm he was now inadvertently pointing at the man.

“DROP IT, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Frank dropped the gun...

...while, down on the ground, Hombre watched the weapon hungrily, saw it bounce towards him, the handle inches from his fingers...

“Okay, okay,” Frank said, flashing empty palms at the cop. “Please...”

“ON YOUR KNEES! HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!”

But, before Frank could even think about complying, Red was swiftly and suddenly behind him, pressing the barrel of her own gun into the hollow of his ear, shielding herself with his body as she snarled a challenge at Ray-Ray: “BACK OFF, COWBOY!”

“...oh God...” Frank groaned, simultaneously terrified and exasperated.

“DROP THE WEAPON!” Ray-Ray cried, aiming over Frank’s shoulder at Red, yet perfectly willing to drill a bullet through either or both of them. “There’s nowhere to go!”

And he was right. They were in the middle of a treeless fairground, at least a mile from Wild Horse and two miles from the interstate. The majority of the air show tourists had run for cover when the first shots were fired, so there was no question of escaping into the crowd. The nearest getaway car was currently crumpled up against the aluminum skin of a vintage British fighter jet and probably wouldn’t start even if Red somehow managed to reach it without getting shot...not to mention the fact that sirens were shrieking all around them now like banshees on the wind. Any minute...any second...the whole place would be a police convention, and that would pretty much be that.

Ray-Ray took a step forward and Red took a step back, keeping Frank pressed to her chest like a bullet-proof vest.

Red took another step backwards, knowing she was only maybe a move or two from checkmate, and yet...

...somewhere behind her, something was hissing, even louder than her own roaring blood. Pivoting slowly, careful to keep the cop in front of her, she angled around towards the sound until she spottede the source: a flaming liquid propane burner, suspended over the basket of an abandoned hot air balloon, not twenty yards from where she was standing.

Red smiled. Ray-Ray saw her eyes dart, realized what she was thinking and surprised himself with a startled laugh, mumbling, “You gotta be kiddin’ me...”

...just as Hombre went for the gun on the ground, hand lashing out like a rattlesnake strike...

Ray-Ray swung around, too late...

...Frank heard a pop and a scream...

...then Red was pushing him towards the balloon, shouting, “MOVE!”

While, behind them, Ray-Ray felt a hot spike of pain in his thigh and squeezed off a reflexive return shot, toppling sideways into the sod. Hombre ignored the near miss whistle of the lawman’s bullet, propelling himself up and forward in a drunken stumble towards Red, firing wildly as his quarry disappeared into the balloon’s basket with Frank and punched the blast valve on the burner, sending a plume of blue fire into the nylon rainbow gas bag billowing over their heads like a giant bloated jellyfish.

“NO!” Frank cried abruptly...

...and then the balloon shot seven stories straight up, before jerking to a lurching, stomach-dropping stop at the end of its tether line.

Clutching desperately for the edge of the wicker basket to regain his balance, Frank whirled and saw Red raising her little silver pistol. “Don’t...” was all he managed before she pulled the trigger...

...severing the tether with a single silver bullet, setting the balloon adrift in the wind...

...while, far below, Hombre fired helplessly into the sky, shrieking at the top of his lungs...

“WHAT’D I TELL YOU, FRANK? FUCKING BALLOONS!”

TEST DRIVE: EPISODE 16

2008-03-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

So as some of you may know, I've been writing a little pulp fiction serial called Test Drive over on Shuffleboil for the past few months...but that website recently shifted gears, content-wise, meaning Test Drive (and some other former Shuffleboil refugees) will soon be taking up residence here at The Ol' Blog Shop.

If you haven't been following Test Drive, CLICK HERE to catch up on the story thus far...

...otherwise, hang onto your hats, because this week's episode starts right now...

EPISODE SIXTEEN: RAY-RAY

Through the windshield of the cruiser, Frank saw the biplane descending, saw the Jaguar avoid it by inches, careening in a panicky swerve into the fuselage of a vintage British Spitfire, saw the vehicle’s passengers lurch forward in a burst of airbags...

...while Hombre only saw that Red had stopped moving. He drew a bead and fired, again and again, blowing out her tires, closer every second to the final, orgasmic shot that would finish her forever...

...until Frank grabbed the barrel, trying yet again to wrestle the weapon away. Hombre stomped the brakes and they both lurched forward. A bullet discharged like a thunderclap, deafening in the claustrophobic Crown Vic interior, scorching Frank’s temple with a bright hot lightning bolt of pain. He cried and recoiled, reaching for the heat as Hombre scrambled from the car...

...then, opening eyes he’d clamped shut instinctively, Frank glanced in the passenger side mirror and spotted a nasty black powder burn above his right eye and realized he was still alive.

Launching over the seat, Frank yanked a baton from the state trooper’s belt, muttering, “I’m really sorry about this.”

*****

It was Ray-Ray Alvarez’s third day on the job. The first day had been kinda cool, the second kinda boring and since that morning, of course, everything had pretty much gone to shit. If there had been something in his training about the possibility of a seemingly dead crash victim suddenly lurching to life to attack his rescuer for no reason, he was pretty sure he’d missed it, but even so it was still pretty goddamn embarrassing to be in his current predicament, kidnapped and cuffed with his own goddamn cuffs in the back of his very own goddamn patrol car, and he certainly had no intention of letting some other peace officer find him trussed up like a goddamn hog in such a humiliating, fucked-up scenario -- he knew for a goddamn fact he would never hear the fucking end of it -- and so the second the perps were out of the vehicle, he quit playing dead and swung into action as fast as he could in his compromised, immobilized condition. Thankfully, he’d taken the off-the-record advice of his DEA buddy, Marko, and purchased a back-up piece, currently strapped to his ankle, which, at the time, had seemed like a superfluous macho accessory but now seemed like the smartest purchase of his life.

And, fortunately, the maniac from the Diablo wreckage hadn’t cuffed his wrists behind his back, so it was relatively easy to reach the gun. The tricky part was positioning the barrel so it blew apart the chain connecting the cuffs, and Ray-Ray put several bullets into the floorboard of the Crown Vic before he finally managed to free himself.

And then he was out the door, pumped with the adrenaline of success and righteous fury, dashing across the air show field towards the spot where the Jaguar had rammed the Spitfire. The greasy perp in the sharkskin suit was there now, yanking a voluptuous redhead from the wreckage onto the ground by her long, curly hair, screaming, “Come here, bitch! I wanna talk to you!”

The redhead fought like a rabid coyote, thrashing and snapping her jaws until the perp smacked her across the jaw with Ray-Ray’s 9mm, pinning the woman with his knees on her arms while he forced the barrel of the weapon into her mouth. The rage on the redhead’s face was practically demonic as the greasy perp cocked the hammer of the pistol and snarled, “Remember me, you fucking harpy? Huh? Who am I? Say it...“the love of your fucking life!” Remember? SAY IT!”

Ray-Ray dropped into a firing stance and raised his backup piece, but then before he could draw a bead on his target or shout a warning, the lanky perp who’d stolen his security baton suddenly lunged at the sharkskin hombre from his blind side, cracking the club against the maniac’s skull with enough force to drop him to his knees.

Hombre bellowed like a stuck pig, losing his grip on the 9mm as Frank lunged for the piece and Red shot to her feet, yanking her own silver gun from her garter.

“HOLD IT!” Frank demanded, swinging the 9mm back and forth to cover both Hombre and Red. “Now everybody just calm the fuck down!”

“Frank!” Hombre wailed up from the dirt, “We got her, man! What are you doing?”

“Turning her over to the cops...and you too...”

“Goose, please...” Red began.

“Shut up!” Frank said, noticing the barrel of her little silver pistol now pointed at his chest. “Where’s my car?”

And then the Texas state trooper they’d all been too busy to notice cocked his own gun and screamed, “EVERYBODY DROP YOUR WEAPONS! NOW!”

Tex-Mex!

2008-03-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

In last week’s episode, Baron Von Doviak’s car was stolen right at the start of my visit to SXSW 2008. The car’s stereo had been swiped a few weeks earlier...but then, in a humorous turn of events, police found the stolen vehicle, complete with a brand new stereo the thieves had installed. So there you go: crime DOES pay.

After an exhausted St. Patrick’s Day in Austin, I flew to meet Amy, my lovely Polish bride, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which reminded me very much of Los Angeles, except without the ocean, the film industry or the colorful flora.

But New Mexico DID have the following:

* The awe-inspiring (for me, anyway) Very Large Array, a series of 27 giant radio telescopes in the middle of nowhere (and featured in the movie Contact) used by scientists to map the universe and search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

* A pretty awesome zoo, with a very friendly giraffe.

Vacation Fun Fact #1: Giraffes have long, prehensile tongues like black snakes.

Speaking of snakes, we also visited the Rattlesnake Museum, one of the few non-turquoise-jewelry-selling establishments in Old Town, ABQ. The owner of said museum took a photo of the wife and me with an ancient Polaroid camera, and informed us that, because Polaroid no longer manufactured their classic instant developing film, ours was the second to last Polaroid photo of dorky tourists posing with snakes the Rattlesnake Museum would ever take. Oddly enough, the FIRST dorky tourist ever photographed with said camera was Ansel Adams.

Vacation Fun Fact #2: The Rattlesnake Museum, like just about every other business in Albuquerque, had its doors wide open for the United States Bowling Congress, whose Open Championships are evidently taking place in the city from February to July this year. Sadly, the wicked pissah rattlesnake bowling shirt on display in the Rattlesnake Museum was not for sale.

Vacation Fun Fact #3: While visiting the Ten Thousand Waves spa in Santa Fe, I finally became one of those fancy people with cucumber slices on my eyes. Sadly, no photographic evidence exists.

Vacation Fun Fact #4: If you’re ever in Santa Fe, there’s no better restaurant to visit after a nice relaxing spa treatment (or anything else, really) than the Cowgirl Hall of Fame on Guadalupe, especially on Saturday afternoons during the bluegrass jam.

Vacation Fun Fact #5: Mexican restaurants in New Mexico generally have honey on the tables, the better to enjoy sopaipillas, a local fried dough staple that may account for New Mexico’s ranking as one of the fattest states in the nation (although, to be fair, most of the people we saw were not especially corpulent).

Vacation Fun Fact #6: According to Frommer’s guide to New Mexico, some of the hippies in Taos live “off the grid” in half-underground houses called earthships. And after visiting Taos, I believe it.

Now we’re back, and I’ve got a screenwriting class tonight, where I plan to share a very astute quote from Georgia O’Keefe that I picked up at the Santa Fe museum dedicated to her work:

“Nothing is less real than realism...
Details are confusing.
It is only by selection, by emphasis,
that we get at the real meaning of things.”

FESTIVUS: DAY FIVE

2008-03-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

So, the Baron (a.k.a. Scott) and me finished up the film portion of SXSW with a documentary about (and named for) George W. Bush’s favorite cynically selected folksy backdrop...I mean, uh, vacation spot, Crawford. The film profiles the titular town and its residents from just before the future commander-in-chief's arrival (he bought his ranch there around the time of the 2000 presidential campaign, back when he was governor of the state) through the Decider's recent reversals of fortune. The film was interesting, though less moving and more preachy-to-the-choir than Full Battle Rattle, and taught me the following things about Crawford:

The town is small, but not really as dusty and rural as the president would have you believe. In fact, in one of the doc’s best moments, the filmmakers reveal how dozens of different TV news crews use the same farm equipment as a backdrop for their reports from the "Western White House," while carefully framing out the modern high school adjacent to the folksy rustic hardware.

There’s a pretty wide, purple-state range of opinions in the heart of "Bush country"...and, in fact, a “peace house” was sitting smack dab in the middle of Crawford even before Cindy Sheehan and the Camp Casey crowd showed up.

Once the novelty wears off, having your small town crammed with reporters, protesters and secret service agents gets old pretty quick.

And so, with the film portion of the festival done, Scott and me turned our attention to the other two legs of the South-By Trifecta, namely music and barbecue. First, we trotted over to The Side Bar to check out some former bandmates of Scott’s friend Hayden in their new incarnation as the Dexateens from Tuscaloosa, Alabammy, along with a pair of bands from Athens, GA (Modern Skirts and Mouser) that Hayden’s son, Abe, thought were very loud.

Next it was on to Club de Ville, where I unexpectedly discovered my new favorite Swedish chanteuse, Lykke Li, who sounds like a cross between fellow Swede Nina Persson of the Cardigans and the Motels’ Martha Davis, with a sprinkling of Bjork’s growling, bouncing performance style along with Tom Waits’ percussion and megaphone fetish. Lykke’s music sounds wilder live than the studio stuff featured on her website -- and, no offense, but girlfriend needs a stylist (the white Soccer Mom shorts were at odds with the rest of the Eurosexy package) -- but I sure hope an American label signs this lady pronto before I wind up dropping $35.00 (plus shipping!) on her import-only debut CD Youth Novel.

And finally, after all the music (and crazy-hot sunshine), the day ended with some damn fine barbecue at Stubb’s...

...then, over breakfast tacos this morning...THE COPS FOUND SCOTT’S CAR!

To Be Continued...

FESTIVUS: DAY FOUR

2008-03-15T07:53:00.000-07:00

So, after breakfast at the second annual SXSW Morning After party, we hit the outdoor music-palooza of South Congress, where every restaurant and vintage clothing store seemed to have a band or singer out front or playing on the back patio.

It was crazy, Amazon hot, so I didn’t stay anywhere very long, but in between hydration breaks, I managed to catch the hypnotic, opium den electro-chant of Pity Party, the laid-back noveau-Guthrie harmonica and guitar goodness of AA Bondy, and some extremely fine Bloodshot recording artists (including the enjoyably mid-period Tom Waits-y Firewater) at the annual Yard Dog party (where, this year, they substituted the free, unlimited goodness of Pabst Blue Ribbon with the even better goodness of somewhat less unlimited free Shiner Bock).

Later in the day, we hit the Alamo Drafthouse for the first movie I’ve seen this year that might potentially wind up on my year-end Top Ten: Full Battle Rattle, a documentary by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber about a simulated Iraqi province in California’s Mojave desert, populated by Iraqi-American citizens and U.S. Army “insurgents” in a full-immersion training scenario where soldiers practice both their combat and diplomacy skills before heading off to the real war in Iraq.

At first, it’s funny to watch battles interrupted by visits from the ice cream man, and fascinating to see the way the military combines role-playing and stagecraft to create what seems like a strange, gorey theme park or game show (complete with graphically wounded mannequin “casualties,” designed to prepare fledgling medics for the realities of war).

But it’s those harsh realities waiting for the participants beyond all the play-acting that provide Full Battle Rattle with its emotional core, as we come to know the various players, including an Iraqi immigrant terrified of being deported and an American combat vet who admits, tellingly, that after returning from a tour of duty, it takes him several days to start viewing his Iraqi colleagues as people again, rather than potential enemies. By the time the simulation ends and the soldiers we’ve come to know say goodbye to their families and ship out to an uncertain future, the lady next to me in the movie theater was openly weeping, and there seemed to be something in my eye as well.

Our second feature of the night, Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie (another documentary about men blurring the lines between truth and simulation), profiled a pair of hard-luck backwoods Sasquatch enthusiasts who've invested so much of their time and self-esteem in pursuit of the legendary monster that I began to wonder whether or not the whole production wasn't a giant Blair Witchy scam. If not, then the likeable, desperate true believers depicted here by director Jay Delaney (more or less without exploitive condescension) really need a more productive hobby...but then again, I’m writing all this for a blog that hardly anyone reads, so who am I to judge?

And now...still yet more indie films!

FESTIVUS, DAY THREE

2008-03-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

A laid-back day in Aus-Town yesterday as the Baron and myself enjoyed some tasty sankwiches at the local Whip-In, then hit a screening of Second Skin, an interesting but seriously overlong documentary about the positive and negative societal and individual aspects of spending way, way, way too much time online playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft and Everquest.

Our plan was to then go check out a mumblecore psychodrama about three female frenemies called Yeast, but as we dawdled through the carnival atmosphere of Sixth Street, packed with hipsters and weirdos and with bands on every rooftop and streetcorner, we decided it would be more fun to just barhop through the scene, grab a Sergio Leone pizza from Frank & Angie's and check out Austin supergroup Spoon at Auditorium Shores. And then...Survivor (poor Penner!). And Lost (poor Jin!). Yes, even during SXSW, our Thursday night stories take precedence over the real world!

FESTIVUS, DAY TWO

2008-03-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve just experienced my second day at the SXSW film festival in beautiful, sunny Austin (and really, the weather and foliage here are fantastic, although, according to filmmaker David Zellner (via The Austin Chronicle), “South by Southwest takes place during the best time of year, which gives visitors an interesting misconception that Austin’s always really pleasant and wonderful to live in. Sure, the weather is perfect today, but in two months, it’s going to be hell. But they won’t ever experience that.”

David, together with his brother, Nathan, have been crafting distinctive independent cinema since 1996, but I first became aware of them at a terrible parasite film festival called 30th Parallel that leeched onto the back of the 1997 SXSW fest, analogous to the Slamdance/Sundance arrangement, but much shoddier (and short-lived, since 30th Parallel barely made it through its first and only installment).

I know about the 30th Parallel Fest, because it featured the Texas premiere of my own indie film, Apocalypse Bop. The whole misbegotten affair kicked off with a reception in the back room of some hotel notable for a sad tray of vegetables and the absence of any members of the 30th Parallel staff to greet us. This led to some awkward bonding among the invited filmmakers as we all stood around, confused, waiting for some information about what we were supposed to do. Then, eventually, we all left.

Because just about every movie theater, auditorium and/or other screening venue in Austin was booked for SXSW, 30th Parallel mostly screened its selections in the back rooms of bars, which wasn’t a terrible idea in theory. Unfortunately, the Zellner Brothers had the misfortune of premiering their surrealist mime masterpiece Plastic Utopia on “Melrose Monday” at some 6th Street dive, meaning that many of the 30th Parallel films screened that evening were drowned out by blaring Melrose Place-themed trivia questions from the front of the bar.

Additionally, the 30th Parallel projectors were seeming World War II-era relics that kept jamming and breaking down every few minutes...and, even when they worked, they often caused the projected films to stutter, blur and, occasionally, melt.

And yet, it is to the Zellner Brothers’ credit that, despite all the hellacious distractions, I not only sat through the entire, tortured screening of Plastic Utopia, but came away considering it one of the most brilliantly deranged independent films I’ve ever seen, a surrealistic cult classic that, sadly, has never inspired nearly the cult it deserves.

Yet, while not cult figures on the level of, say, John Waters, Kevin Smith or Jim Jones, the Zellners have slowly built a small, devoted following, in Austin and elsewhere, despite their tiny budgets and occasional peculiar experiments like 2001’s Frontier, a faux foreign film in a fake foreign language (Bulbovian) starring an older, puffier Wiley Wiggins (of Dazed and Confused fame).

Recently, the Zellners have devoted themselves to dry, absurdist short subjects which highlight the pair’s strengths: unexpected, offbeat writing and visuals combined with their own very likeable recurring screen personas: David, the excitable, put-upon cynic and Nathan, the mellower zen weirdo.

The shorts (available for viewing at ZellnerBros.com) opened the door to the influential Sundance Film Festival, which recently premiered their latest feature film, Goliath, once again starring David and Nathan, with cameos by Wiggins and mumblecore poster boy Andrew Bujalski.

The film, in terms of tone and subject matter, plays like the bastard child of Little Children and Year of the Dog. Goliath, the titular tiger-striped tabby owned by David Zellner’s protagonist, goes missing and his recently divorced owner goes more than a little insane, eventually scapegoating a neighborhood sex offender (played by Nathan) as the source of his troubles.

The film plays out in a deadpan naturalistic style that left me yearning for a little more of Plastic Utopia’s antic narrative drive and visual invention, yet nevertheless hooked me with its own peculiar rhythms, dry wit, occasional slapstick, Asian porno drumming (yeah, you heard me) and its sometimes harrowing depiction of the hazards of love and pet ownership...without giving too much away, I’ll just note here that if you’re a tender-hearted pet lover, this may not be the movie for you.

Yet, despite its occasional grim moments, Goliath is a Disney Holiday on Ice compared to the equally low-budget Wellness, which snagged the SXSW Grand Jury Award on Tuesday and may be the least sexy movie ever made. The cinéma-vérité squirmer (written and directed by Jake Mahaffy) follows a homely, middle-aged salesman (a visceral performance by Jeff Clark) from one ugly, snowy, low-rent hovel to another as he deludes himself and his white trash customers about an obvious Ponzi scheme involving a vague, almost certainly fictional “international” pharmaceutical brand called “Wellness.” Clark’s growing psychic and financial desperation as his character, Thomas, blindly adheres to the poisonous false promises of his odious “business unit manager” (and, by extension, capitalism itself) would be unbearable if not for the humanity and bleak humor of the protagonist and the sense that, no matter how bad your life may seem at times, at least you’re not any of the characters in this movie.

Finally, my Wednesday movie-going wrapped up with a screening of the big-studio adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Choke, which I’m told is daring and provocative and, apparently, beloved by hipsters. The theater was filled with big studio Men in Black armed with night vision goggles and whatnot to prevent any pirating of their upcoming release...odd, considering the much more likeable and successful Knocked Up got screened at last year’s festival without nearly so much off-putting, paranoid nonsense.

Anyway, Choke tells the story of sex addict Sam Rockwell and his sex addict friends (including Joel Grey?!!?!?) and their struggles with sex addiction, which is apparently a terrible problem in Los Angeles and, uh, probably other places...although, to be fair, I’m guessing it’s more of a problem for sex addicts who don’t get to screw around with gorgeous starlets like Kelly Macdonald and Bijou Phillips. Rockwell’s character also likes to pretend he’s choking in restaurants, because the attention it brings him makes up for the love he was denied by his wacky, now Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother (played by recent bad-mom specialist Anjelica Huston). Ho-hum. Not a bad movie exactly – there’s some funny bits involving a colonial theme park and, of course, plenty of nudity – but I left the theater wondering how many better movies Jake Mahaffy and the Zellner Brothers could have made with the millions they spent on this utterly disposable studio offering.

And now...brunch.

FESTIVUS 2008 - DAY ONE

2008-03-12T07:29:00.001-07:00

Greetings from warm and sunny Austin, Tejas!

After getting up very, very early for a morning flight out of Manchester, New Hamster, my Southwest flight made a brief stopover in Nashville to disembark the squares and take on a fresh cargo of goateed, tattooed, square-framed, comically be-hatted guitar-toting hipsters bound for the South-By-Southwest Film and Music Festival.

After touching down at the lovely Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (notable for its locals-only terminal vendor policy and the groovy three-piece combo serenading the baggage claim area), I was startled to discover (via voice mail) that my host for the week, Baron Von Doviak, had gotten his car swiped from the spot in front of his building THAT MORNING...meaning our carbon footprint on this year's SXSW will be just as small as last year, when the Baron's car died only minutes after picking me up at the airport.

Deciding to stay positive about the local constabulary's auto-recovery efforts and not let a little grand theft auto spoil the day, we made our way to Guerro's, a local Mexican food landmark, where I had the first of many margaritas and Shiner Bocks and enjoyed my new favorite Mexican meal, the Mauro Plato, which was like steak served in a big dish of gooey, cheesy French onion soup, but without the soup.

Then it was on to the Continental Club for more Shiners and margaritas and the multigenerational musical stylings of Planet Casper, a nice group of fellahs with an old-timey repertoire and a baby-face fiddle player.

After some billiards and fake video golf at Ego’s, I hit my first flick of the fest: Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a tribute to cantankerous sci-fi icon Harlan Ellison, a raging but entertaining egomaniac who was a big influence on my own teen and college pop-culture geekery with his cynical and insightful collection of media essays The Glass Teat, his gritty urban youth-gang novel Web of the City and classic episodes of Star Trek and, later, Babylon Five.

Like Ellison himself, Dreams With Sharp Teeth was fascinating but ultimately exhausting (or maybe it was just the fact that I’d been up since six a.m. and drinking since three p.m., Central Time), and the day ended shortly thereafter with the discovery my favorite pair of sunglasses had somehow gotten trampled underfoot by some fellow filmgoers at the Paramount Theater and a quick cab ride home, followed by a deep Texas sleep.

And now...breakfast tacos.

OSCARS 2008

2008-02-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Sad that you didn't get to spend Oscar night at the Ol' Bait Shop? Well, thanks to the magical interconnected tubes of the Internet, you can enjoy the Academy Awards with me...VIRTUALLY!!!!!

Please note: since I'm watching via the magic of TiVo, the times listed herein will be approximate, as opposed to, y'know, when they actually happened. (P.S.: Blanca's desk? Long story.)

6:20-ish PM: Ryan Seacrest interviews a considerably more likeable Ryan, namely Amy, a.k.a. The Wire's "Beadie" Russel, a seemingly down-to-earth working actress who's clearly digging the whole glamorous Oscar experience in a totally unjaded, very charming way that makes her seem like some old friend from college who somehow wound up on the red carpet. She's working on some movie where Clint Eastwood taught her to throw a fake movie punch and Ryan asks her to demonstrate. Sadly, she doesn't ACTUALLY punch him. Meanwhile, Amy (my lovely Polish bride) and Dori, her lovely mother, weigh in on Ryan's outfit: thumbs down. I feel the brown-lapelled tux would look better with a fez and, possibly, a hookah.

6:35-ish: Kristen Chenoweth: one hot Republican.

6:42-ish: It's raining on the Oscars!

Flashback: Saturday afternoon, the Independent Spirit Awards. Rainn Wilson funny, but trying way too hard. Awkward moment: Angelina Jolie graciously accepting applause for her nomination in the saintly role of Daniel Pearl's saintly widow in A Mighty Heart, then finding herself reduced to a tight, brittle All About Eve smile as young whippersnapper Ellen Page wins for Juno.

6:51-ish: Ruby Dee! Damn!

6:59-ish: What, exactly, is the deal with John Travolta's hair? Amy notes that it seems painted on, as with a ventrioloquist's dummy.

7:03-ish: Amy is disappointed by the lack of train wreck fashion. But Tilda Swinton has yet to appear.

7:11-ish: Finally, a truly hideous dress appears on the wife of Daniel Day Lewis, but Amy says it doesn't count because non-famous movie star spouses get a free pass.

7:16-ish: Woo-hoo! Ask for train wreck and you shall receive: Gary Busey appears out of nowhere and accosts Ryan Seacrest, then kisses an extremely unnerved Laura Linney and tackles a downright frightened Jennifer Garner in a passionate bear hug. Security is, presumably, summoned.

7:23-ish: Ryan Seacrest praises Miley Cyrus for creating such a wonderful brand. Y'know, as opposed to music. Dori and Amy give four thumbs up to the ever-stylish Helen Mirren.

7:36-ish: Tilda Swinton does not disappoint.

7:40-ish: Marion Cotillard tells Ryan Seacrest she's having a eunuch time. Amy and Dori inform me "eunuch" is French for "unique".

7:52-ish: Nice hat, Spike.

7:53-ish: Zelwegger, picking at her hair self-consciously. Oh, Bridget Jones, will you never win? Meanwhile, Katherine Heigl is gorgeous, but looks like she got punched in the face.

7:58-ish: Cate Blanchett, purple gown, silver sparkles. I say: Sorcerer's Apprentice. Amy and Dori say: at least it's not red. (Actually, they like it a lot.)

8:01: Philbin!

8:18-ish: Regis Philbin interviews THE WORLD'S OLDEST RED CARPET BLEACHER FAN! "So what year did you first come here to watch the stars on the red carpet?" Regis asks. The WORLD'S OLDEST RED CARPET BLEACHER FAN says she's been attending the Oscars since...1986. Regis is visibly underwhelmed.

8:32-ish: CGI opening sequence. Amy's verdict: LAME!

8:33-ish: Scab Jon Stewart makes jokes about the Writer's Guild strike. No one seems to mind. All is apparently forgiven.

8:36-ish: First Javier Bardem hair joke.

8:37-ish: Funny joke about how Norbit sucked.

8:41-ish: Another black joke...quick, cut to Spike Lee!

8:44-ish: First award -- costume design. Elizabeth, The Golden Age wins. I'm already trailing in the Oscar pool. Amy & Dori agree the winning costume designer (Alexandra Byrne) really doesn't have the back for that backless dress.

8:46-ish: Mmmmm, Clooney. I'd tap that.

8:50-ish: First montage -- classic clips from old Oscar broadcasts. You know what? I loves me some Oscar montages.

8:54-ish: They show scenes from all the nominated animated movies instead of rushing through, as if everybody watching didn't really want to be watching and wanted to get through the show as quickly as possible! They even show scenes from the movies nominated for best make-up! Apparently, somebody finally told the Oscar producers people who watch the Oscars actually ENJOY watching the Oscars! Otherwise, y'know...we'd just read who won in the paper tomorrow. Well done, Oscar producers!

8:59-ish: Hey! Amy Adams is just STANDING there singing "Happy Working Song!" Where the hell are the animated cockroaches? Booooo, Oscar producers!

9:07-ish: Awww, the special effects guys from The Golden Compass are adorable. I'm glad they won, even though I'm sucking ass in my Oscar pool.

9:12-ish: Sure, Vanessa Paradis is beautiful and married to Johnny Depp...but she's still got make-up on her teeth. Hah-hah!!!!

9:18-ish: Holy shit! Who would've thought Javier Bardem would win Best Supporting Actor?!!?? Oh, right...everyone. Cute Spanish shout-out to his mother, plus Javier Bardem hair joke #2.

9:22-ish: Funny faux montages!!!

9:25-ish: Wait...a dozen black people at the Oscars? Oh...right. Gospel choir.

9:40-ish: Oh...uh...huh? Swinton? Okay, I can live with that. Excellent speech, terrible dress is the consensus here on Hooker Avenue.

9:46-ish: And this year, the geeks down at the Sunset Boulevard Denny's two weeks ago for the Scientific Technical Awards won...Jessica Alba!

9:51-ish: Funny accountants!

9:54-ish: Miley Cyrus...I LOVE that brand!

9:56-ish: I mentioned how I'm married, right? To a woman? In case, you know, you're an eligible gay bachelor wondering if I'm single. Because I am, in fact, taken and not, in fact, gay. I mention this to avoid any confusion before saying how much I just love, love, loved that production number from Enchanted!

10:00-ish: Totally digging the Seth Rogen/fat Suberbad guy routine. See? Straight.

10:15-ish: Marion Cotillard guarantees herself a spot in the next several decades of montages for her adorabley excited acceptance speech about how "there really are angels in this city!" Of course, it's L.A., so there aren't, but it's still a line you're going to hear about a hundred more times. And even though I didn't see La Vie En Rose, it seems like that poor actress went through hell playing Edith Piaf, so tres bien for her!

10:18-ish: Colin Farrell warns us about a slippery spot on the stage. Amy on Colin Farrell: "He looks like a pubic hair."

10:20-ish: The song they sing from "Once" is much better than the song from "Once" they sang on the Independent Spirit Awards.

10:28-ish: Roderick Jaynes is nominated for best editing, and they post a picture of what I can only assume is some 18th-century haberdasher. Heh-heh-heh.

10:41-ish: Dad calls. He thinks the fix was in on that whole Tilda Swinton thing. Maybe some kinda Vegas swindle: "Amy Ryan was robbed! Tilda Swinton...she just said words!" Aaah, Oscar controversy!

10:47-ish: Best Foreign Language film. As per tradition, Austria kicks Poland's ass.

10:50-ish: I don't know who this dude is singing the latest song from Enchanted, but I sure will be happy when he stops.

10:53-ish: John Travolta slips on that slippery spot on the stage Colin Farrell warned us about.

10:54-ish: The loveable buskers Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova win best song against all odds. Then, as Amy points out, Marketa is drowned out by an orchestral version of her own song, shooing her off the stage while she tries to say thanks. Ah, irony.

11:01-ish: BUT THEN!!!!! Jon Stewart brings Marketa back onstage after the break to say thank you, and she's adoreable. But she rambles a bit. Amy worries the orchestra will drown her out again. But still...awwwwwww!

11:08-ish: So...I guess Roy Scheider missed the cut, chronologically, but no Brad Renfro in the memorial montage? I mean, he didn't have Heath Ledger's career, but still...ouch.

11:14-ish: Servicemen in Iraq presenting the award for best documentary short: very cool.

11:26-ish: Diablo!

11:35-ish: Insert milkshake joke here.

11:50-ish: And...COENS!

Good! Very nice! We approve! Just about everything you want in an Academy Awards ceremony: funny jokes, pretty people, a variety of really good films honored, the uniting power of art, some thanks to mothers and fathers, plus it's not even midnight yet!

So, you know what? I'D like to thank the Academy, for another year of movies.

And now...sleep.

NEARLY "LOST" ME by special guest blogger Amy Jeglinski-Osborne (with additional bitching by Andrew Osborne)

2008-02-12T05:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, the fourth season of "Lost" is now being broadcast, and I for one, am a card-carrying Lostie. From the very inception of the series, premiering back in September of 2004, I have been intrigued by the plight of the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors: conflicted spinal surgeon Jack Shephard, spunky fugitive Kate Austen, tortured torturer, Sayid Jarah, wise-ass con man, James "Sawyer" Ford, cursed clown, Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, and my personal favorite, peculiar vigilante, John Locke, to name a few. The show really packed a wallop and stirred a large, loyal fan-base from the very beginning. Combining compelling characters, stirring story-lines, a touch of the paranormal, adventure, romance, humor, and a consistently kick-ass soundtrack, along with enough twists and turns in each individual episode to satisfy even the most circumspect philosophy freak and conspiracy buff...what's not to love?

Well, I guess any show that is so immensely ambitious and complicated, featuring an ever-growing (and perishing) roster of characters, all with their own intersecting storylines, told in the present, past and future (with flash-backs and now flash-forwards), is bound to be intriguing, but also occasionally annoying and puzzling.

So now, at the risk of upsetting the diehard Losties, here is my list of things about the show that almost "lost" me:

- Charlie Pace's insipid and unnecessary death. I know it was Desmond's 'prophecy' that Charlie drowns in order to be the sacrificial lamb and free the remaining survivors, but he easily could have communicated with Penelope in the sub-station and opened the door to flee with Desmond without buying it. Why kill off such a beloved character? I think all the Lord of the Rings sequels have concluded filming, right? Or did Dominic Monaghan get a recent DUI?

- The NUMBERS! What the hell happened to the freakin’ NUMBERS? They appeared to be so crucial in launching story lines in the first and second seasons...and now? Well, apparently we've moved on to Jacob's ghost shack and the the Boaties and Tall Ghost Walt...so, according to some interview I vaguely remember hearing with series creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, if you want to find out what the Numbers mean, you can go play the stupid internet game for 70 hours, ‘cuz, y’know, apparently completing the story they started on the actual show you were watching isn’t really their job.

- And speaking of the Numbers...so, uh, Desmond spends years entering the damn Numbers on the Radio Shack computer in the Hatch, then the Losties take over, allowing Desmond to run away and finally, FINALLY stop the maddening task of entering the Numbers every 108 minutes (I mean, really, how much would that suck?). Then Desmond comes back, and does still yet more Number entering. Then, finally, Locke decides NOT to enter the Numbers, and all hell breaks loose. Until Desmond turns the whole thing off with, uh, the key he’s had all along...so, uh, he didn’t really have to stay in the Hatch and enter the Numbers all that time after all. But, on the other hand, he did get to enjoy all those cool Mama Cass albums.

- Why is Hurley getting fatter and everyone else, not so much? I know they had mayonnaise in the Dharma hatch but, come on! Constantly running from warthogs, smoke monsters, Others and now woebegone spirit Jacob has gotta burn a few calories! I think Jorge Garcia has actually gained weight from the beginning of the show. He needs to get in contact with Robert DeNiro or Christian Bales' trainer, pronto!

- What happened to the Others? Where the hell did they go? Have they given up trying to figure out what’s going on, too? Are they on the other side of the beach, competing against the Fans on Survivor: Wherever The Hell? And are the mysterious powers of the Island responsible for Nestor Carbonell’s magical eyeliner?

- The body hair issue. How do all the menfolk shave? I don't see any "Future Jack" beards on the fellas, especially smooth-as-a-baby’s-ass, Jin? And how does Locke keep his dome so shiny and moisturized? Also, the ladies of Lost would all have ape-like legs and tufts under their pits by now, for sure. Is the smoke monster actually a giant, sentient tube of Nair?

- And do they really have enough Dharma sunscreen to make all these people appear dewy and fresh? You'd think at least pasty Brit, Charlie, or pale blond Claire would get killer sunburn at some point.

- Claire, no baby-weight gain? Really? I think Hurley gained all the weight that she lost. And speaking of weight-gain, Sun should be getting Mommy boobs and her pregnancy chin by now.

- So, how DID "Tall Ghost Walt" age four years when the rest of the Losties have only been there for, what, a few months?

-And why does Ghost Charlie have no accent and brown hair in the afterlife?

- NO MORE JACK FLASHBACKS, PLEASE! I am so sick of hearing about this noble sap. I know, you have father issues, sorry to hear it, but join the friggin' club! Every damn person on this island has a father issue, that's what bonds them all together...well, that and their uncanny ability to not grow hair on their bodies or gain weight (Hurley excluded). Also, no more episodes involving Jack’s 'mysterious' tattoos and please, for the love of Christ, no more Bai Ling ever.

- I miss Libby. She had a pretty good storyline, and it was nice to see Hurley develop a love interest, but I guess since Cynthia Watros had a DUI, she has officially been axed from the show. I was hoping she would make a 'Brunette Ghost Libby' appearance soon...maybe getting her ass handed to her in a "Connect Four" game with Hurley?

- Why would Rose be so anxious to leave the island with Jack when her cancer disappeared on the island, a la Locke’s paralyzed legs? I know she thinks Locke is bat-shit crazy, but you'd think she'd bond with him a bit more. Plus, she digs old white guys, right?

- Does Ben speak French? How did he bag Rousseau? I'd like to see him get in a tizzy and say something smarmy and manipulative in his crazy-ass Ben Linus way with subtitles so nobody would understand. Trés amusant!

- The gargantuan big-toed statue? Will we ever revisit this? And does it hold any meaning whatsoever? Or has it been forgotten like “4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42”?

- Will Desmond's psychic abilities help them figure out how the hell they are going to get off the island and when? Or who the fuck Jacob is, or ANY ANSWERS WHATSOEVER? His psychic skills seem limited to dramatic obits only.

- And finally, will we EVER find out what happened to Roddy Macdowell, Ike Eisenmann and Jared Martin? (Suck on THAT obtuse reference, Losties!)

Anyway, regardless of my bitchin’, this really is my favorite dramatic series. I am forever looking forward to every episode and love that ragtag group of castaways and I am rooting for every last one of them to survive their journey in one piece.

***************

(And for more of Amy's rants and reviews, please to check out her semi-regular columns over on Shuffleboil...and it's never too late to catch up with the weekly pulp fiction of Test Drive over there, neither!)

Scabs?

2008-01-10T16:16:00.000-08:00

So, I hate to ask this, because I don't want to think bad thoughts about some of my favorite imaginary television friends, but...if Kathy Griffin is providing commentary for this year's half-ass, Writer's Guild picketed Golden Globes, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are doing their shows without writers...aren't they all providing content for the Man (a.k.a. the AMPTP), and doesn't that undermine the Writer's Guild strike? Aren't they just doing what everybody got mad at Ellen Degeneres for doing?

Don't all these people say they support the writers? I mean, am I missing something?

BAIT SHOP UPDATE!

2008-01-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

Strike! Strike! Strike!

Then Click! Click! Click! to visit the very special Norma Rae edition of The Ol' Bait Shop!

2007 TOP TEN!!!!

2007-12-31T07:00:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's that time of year once again...so before we all say a big fat hello to 2008, be sure to check out the 2007 BAIT SHOP TOP TEN!

TEST DRIVE

2007-12-09T15:44:00.000-08:00

Hey, there! The Ol' Bait Shop 2007 Top Ten is coming soon, but in the meantime, please to check out my new weekly serial Test Drive at the swanky new (and much more frequently updated website) SHUFFLEBOIL!

New England Screenwriters

2007-10-25T11:15:00.001-07:00

So, I've heard a lot about this "e-commerce" the young people enjoy, and now my own little slice of the dot-com bubble (or pie, if you prefer) is ready for your perusal at:

NewEnglandScreenwriters.com

Tell all your screenwritin' friends!

The Office theme song on marimba

2007-09-01T10:01:00.001-07:00

The Office theme...now 87% more soothing!

R.I.P. Mr. Butch

2007-07-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

Technically, Kenmore Square is still a geographical location in Boston, but the Kenmore Square of my New Wave youth has been gone for years...and now, like Gandalf leaving Middle Earth, Mr. Butch, too, has departed for that Rat/Nemo's Pizza/Bertha Cool in the sky. Rock on, Mr. Butch.

Farm Force!

2007-06-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Here now, for your viewing pleasure (assuming this works as easily as YouTube seems to think it will), a link to the Team Baitshop/Burt Wood entry in the 2007 Boston edition of the 48 Hour Film Festival!

LOST...Spoilers

2007-05-23T20:36:00.002-07:00

Okay, so, uh, don't read this if you haven't seen the Lost season finale and care about such things.

I'm serious! Don't read any further if you don't want to hear about what happened in the season finale.

Last chance!

Right then. So...

...Rousseau finally getting with her daughter, then both of them tying up and abusing Ben? Good.

...Hurley with the blue bus rescue? Good.

...Bernard surviving? Good.

And I even liked Sawyer shooting Zeke.

But, uh...

...ANOTHER freakin' mopey Jack flashback (or forward or what have you)? Especially when he's wearing the alternate universe Spock beard, and at first I think it's gonna be a supercool episode where we see a parallel universe of Lost people who DID die in the crash...but then it turns out the big wait-until-January cliffhanger is that the Losties got off the island but Jack wants to go back? Uh...bad.

Charlie finally dying, but in a really stupid way? (I mean, when he saw the indestructible Russian, why didn't he just go through the hatch and lock it from the other side? Or why didn't he and Desmond simply swim out the way they came in?) Bad.

The Russian being indestructible again? Bad.

Ben saying the people with the ship are bad, but once again offering no explanation why (or why on earth anyone should trust him? Bad.

And Locke. Feh.

Here's a cooler ending: Locke reappears...but with all the Others, who now are following him instead of Ben.

Or: the smoke monster shows up at the end and reveals something new about itself and/or the invisible guy in the shack.

Or: The people from Not Penelope's Boat show up and we see they're even worser then Ben.

Or: We finally get a Rousseau flashback, leading up to her big reunion with her daughter.

Or: The big four-toed creature from the statue shows up. Or the Polar bears show up. But no: sad Jack and bad Jack beard.

Oh, Jack...will you ever win?

BAIT SHOP UPDATE

2007-05-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

Click here to check out all the newest news and links at the Bait Shop Mothership!

Goodbye, Festivus!

2007-03-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

Well, the wife and I are saying our sad farewells to Austin, Baron Von Doviak and Maury the Wonder Chibeagle this morning, hoping our Super Shuttle gets us to the airport in time to join the mass exeunt from the 2007 South by Southwest Festival. I've had my last breakfast tacos at the Java Company until next time, and we're on our way back to the chilly but thawing East Coast.

And, let's see...since last we met, I've seen the turtle sanctuary on the U.T. campus, a program of excellent Texas-made short films (including the indescribable "Babycakes") and a bunch of highly kick-ass cover bands at the all-day Ego's cover band festival, topped by a Tom Waits cover band called The Box Spring Hogs, featuring uncanny voice-a-likes for both the current gravel-preacher Tom AND the old-timey young barroom balladeer Tom. The band also included a glockenspiel, a Tilda Swinton-as-White-Witch fiddle player and THREE drummers (two dudes and a lady completely possessed by the awesome power of the wappadang).

I haven't seen Tom in person since the mid-80s, but this was definitely the next best thing, and a far more satisfying musical experience than just about any live show or recorded single I've experienced in years.

And now, airport security.

FESTIVUS, PART TWO!

2007-03-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

The wife arrived here in Austin yesterday and launched right into the SXSW fray with our host, the Baron, starting with a big outdoor party at Yard Dog featuring the Waco Brothers, the Gore Gore Girls and plenty of free Pabst Blue Ribbon. During all the rock, Amy and me did a quick lap around South Austin, hitting all the other outdoor concerts and hipster boutiques we could find.

Meanwhile, since the last post, I've seen another great festival movie: The King of Kong, a rousing and hilarious documentary about two guys slugging it out to reach the notorious Donkey Kong "kill screen" and take their place as the official best Konger of all time. See the real deal before the inevitable Will Ferrell/Ben Stiller remake.

And the other great documentary I saw, Hell on Wheels, came to life when Scott and me checked out a real live banked-track match between the Texas Rollergirls and the Arizona Renegades, complete with two rockabilly bands and the "Spank Alley" penalty box. If you ever get the opportunity to watch tattooed roller babes zooming around and around to the sound of an upright bass and Hammond organ, I HIGHLY recommend it.

All this and the ever-delightful Lily Allen in a brief but blissful free in-store concert at Waterloo Records, featuring a charming acoustic cover of "Heart of Glass" -- aaaaaah.

And now...breakfast tacos.

FESTIVUS 2007!

2007-03-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the South by Southwest Film Festival in lovely, overcast Austin, Tejas! So far, I'm two for two on quality movie-going (and about 50 for 50 on quality beer drinking...up north we can't get Shiner Bock, my favoritest beer of them all, so I gotta enjoy it as much as possible while I'm here)!

Right off the plane, I saw the funny, fascinating and tattooed-babe-a-licious noveau roller derby documentary HELL ON WHEELS in a theater PACKED with the very roller derby vixens I was seeing up on the screen. And since the doc told the story of a mini-civil war in the Texas derby community, with the participants all cheering for their respective factions, I can't imagine a better (or scarier) setting to see the film...but I highly recommend it, even if you can't see it surrounded by derby divas.

Then last night was a sneak preview of the new Judd Apatow joint KNOCKED UP, starring Seth Rogen and a bunch of my other imaginary friends from Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared. The movie's at least as funny as The 40-Year-Old Virgin if you, like me, can't get enough Gen-X/stoner/pop culture humor. Plus, Monsieur Rogen was in attendance, along with Martin Starr, Paul Rudd and Loudon Wainright, although they didn't stick around for Q&A 'cuz they had a swanky party to attend.

And coming up tonight: more beer!

ShoeTube

2007-02-02T05:22:00.000-08:00

Check it out...the Ol' Bait Shop and online video, together at last! Click here for SHOE, the Team Bait Shop/Burt Wood entry in last year's 48 Hour Film Project. Enjoy...and be sure to spread virally!

BEST OF 2006!!!!!

2007-01-02T14:09:00.000-08:00

Hey, kids! Check out the BEST OF 2006, over in the Bait Shop mothership!

Shine On, You Cranky Diamond

2006-11-21T11:51:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/entertainment/robert_altman

Oh, dear. This is one of those rare celebrities (like Divine) where I actually felt an "Oh no" sinking of the heart the second I learned they were gone...one of those make-believe celebrity friends who was so unique, contributed so much entertainment to my life and was around so long it's actually kind of a shock to lose them.

Well, at the very least, I'm glad his last movie was A Prairie Home Companion and not Dr. T and the Women.

Go easy, Bob.

Great Moments in Politics: 2006

2006-11-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

Oh, Kerry, you moron.

That's it. From now on, I'm a Whig.

PAPER ANNIVERSARY: DAY 8

2006-10-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the City of Big Shoulders as the wife and I wrap up the fun part of our anniversary trip (as opposed to the ass-numbing 15 hour drive back) with a visit to the incredibly friendly and informative Polish Museum of America, the incredibly lovely Chicago lakefront and the incredibly drunk and raucous Wiener's Circle hot dog stand, where all the drunkest people in Chi-Town apparently gather late on Friday and Saturday nights for red-hots and verbal abuse from the staff. Amy and I (and our gracious host Heidi) wound up amongst the Weiners last night after some dive-bar karaoke (as opposed to the LIVE-band karaoke we've been promised tonight) and an hour of most excellent comedy, drama and performance art at the Big Windy theatrical institution TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND. All this and WAIT, WAIT DON'T TELL ME with Mo Rocca, Dave Barry, some British chick and the delightful Roy Blount, Jr.

We like Chicago. It's deep dish, baby!

Paper Anniversary: Day 5

2006-10-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

Woke up in lovely Akron, Ohio today, en route to Chicago, home of the Polish Museum of America, which the wife and I are naturally keen to experience. We're probably going to skip the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, since we wanna get to the Big Windy in time for LOST...but we DID make time yesterday for a rainy afternoon at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. I'll let their brochure speak for itself:

Our one-of-a-kind treasures include --

the plaster cast of the torso of world-famous Siamese Twins, Chang & Eng, and their cojoined livers
Joseph Hyrthl's collection of skulls
preserved body of the "Soap Lady"
collection of 2,000 objects extracted from people's throats [Ed: Including a "Perfect Attendance" pin!]
cancerous growth removed from John Wilkes Booth's thorax
tallest skeleton on display in North America

Okay...onward to the Polish Museum and live band karaoke!

Paper Anniversary

2006-10-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Greetings from New Jersey! The wife and I are currently in the midst of a road trip to Chicago in celebration of our one year wedding anniversary, by way of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash (a.k.a. Kevin Smith's most excellent geekatarium in Red Bank, NJ). Tomorrow we're anticipating a day of medical oddities at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, followed by a long drive to Chicago (with a possible pit stop at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland).

So more on that later, but in the meantime, let me just state for the record: Aaron Sorkin is now officially America's embarrassing hippie uncle.

Yes, that's right, Aaron...what America really needs is more Gilbert & Sullivan jokes and Commedia dell'Arte references on our late night comedy programs. And better dressed comedy writers.

Yeesh.

BAIT SHOP UPDATE!

2006-08-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids! Check out all the newest news and links at the
Bait Shop mothership!

2006-05-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

Cripes! I'm just finishing up my latest semester at U-Mass, so I'm way behind as usual...but there's all kindsa neat stuff to hip you to here at the Bait Shop, including TWO upcoming indie features, a potential new Jed-related movie (set in Africa, of all places) and a new Pinehills show. More on all that stuff when I get around to updating the Bait Shop News over in the main website...but in the meantime, I just wanted to mention the 48 Hour Film Project, which I participated in just recently with the missus and some nice young people from the Burt Wood School for the Performing Arts.

As part of the Project, Team Bait Shop was given the genre "sci-fi" and had 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and submit a 7-minute digital short. In addition, the 60 or 70 teams competing were all supposed to feature a common prop (bicycle pump), character (G. Goforth, a competitive eater) and line of dialogue ("That's why I don't trust her anymore").

48 hours later, Team Baitshop submitted "Shoe," a Lost parody featuring a cast of teenagers. The race to the finish line was like something out of the Amazing Race, and I dropped off the film in the nick of time, meaning our film got to screen in competition at the Kendall cinema a few weeks later.

We didn't make the finals, but we got a lotta laughs (in all the right places) at the screening, and seeing my little video projected on a big screen in a packed Cambridge art house re-infested me with the whole indie film sickness, so stay tuned...Aslan is on the move!

FESTIVUS!

2006-03-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Austin, Tejas! Just spent the past few days enjoying SXSW 2006 and a few good movies, including 2AM (by my supertalented, supercharismatic friend Korey Colman), LoudQuietLoud (a Pixies documentary), And God Spoke (a documentary about Al Franken), The Notorious Bettie Page (a film about tasteful nudity), Heart of Gold (a concert film about aging rockers) and some entertaining Texas shorts (including a film by the ever talented Zellner brothers, whose Plastic Utopia is one of the great unheralded cult films of the 20th century). Celebrity sightings thus far include Neil Young, Jonathan Demme, Spoon, Echo & the Bunnymen and indie film guru Jon Pierson, who once had thoughts about punching me in the nose. But that's another story entirely. Stay tuned!

2005 TOP TENS

2006-01-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's that time of year once again -- a time for reflection, a time for lists and arguments -- so be sure to check out my picks and pans and all the latest news and links at THE OL' BAIT SHOP: BEST OF 2005 EDITION!

WEDDING SOUNDTRACK: DISC 3

2005-11-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

Here's the next batch of wedding soundtrack listings... sorry it's taking so long, but I made the CDs in such a rush that I'm not really sure what wound up on them (since they're not exactly the same as the ones we gave the deejay and we didn't wind up with any copies for ourselves)!

So until I can figure out what's on Discs 4 & 5, here's the track listing for Disc 3, comprising the first dance set of the reception.

WEDDING SOUNDTRACK: DISC 3

· Thirteen – Big Star

· Sanford & Son Theme – Quincy Jones

· Rock Lobster – The B52s

· Sandwich – The Psychoneurotic Squeeb Band

· One Step Beyond – Madness

· Jockey Full of Bourbon – Tom Waits

· Thursday - Morphine

· Georgia – Ray Charles

· Jump, Jive & Wail – Louis Prima

· I Wanna Be Like You – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

· What’s New? – Frank Sinatra

· Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd

· A Little Less Conversation – Elvis Presley (remix)

· Hang Onto Yourself – David Bowie

· BBC - Ming Tea

· I'm Your Boogie Man – KC & The Sunshine Band

· The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face – Roberta Flack

· September – Earth, Wind & Fire

WEDDING SOUNDTRACK LISTINGS

2005-11-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

Hi! Sorry it's taken so long to upload the track listings for the Wedding Soundtrack CDs, but me and the missus only just recently got back from our romantic honeymoon getaway to California (check back here in a week or so for the full story)!

Anyway, I’m starting with Discs One and Two – again, check back soon for the rest. I’m pretty sure about the listings below, but I need to verify the remaining discs...the physical production of the CDs got a little, uh, chaotic (i.e., I was still churning them out the night before the nuptials and ran out of discs and had to juggle some tracks around), so the wedding soundtracks on the tables didn't wind up matching the discs we gave to the Deejay, hence the need for verification).

Okay, enough palaver. Herewith, the first two (hopefully at least 89% percent accurate) Wedding Soundtrack listings.

DISC ONE: WEDDING EVENTS

1. All You Need Is Love (The Beatles) -- Wedding Party enters

2. MacArthur Park (Richard Harris) -- Cutting the cake

3. Thirteen (Big Star) -- First dance

4. I Will Live My Life For You (Tony Bennett) -- Father/daughter dance

5. When You Wish Upon A Star (Jiminey Cricket) -- Mother/son dance, Joe Walker Sr. tribute

6. I Remember It Well (Gigi soundtrack) -- Buzz & Ellie 40th anniversary dance

7. Pop Goes the Weasel (Anthony Newley) -- Bouquet toss

8. Two of Us (The Beatles) -- Last dance

9. We'll Meet Again (Johnny Cash) -- Exit music

(* Plus several bonus tracks I threw on from the other discs that I can't remember now...but if you hum a few bars, I might be able to identify them!)

DISC TWO: DINNER MUSIC

1. Love (John Lennon)

2. Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)

3. Iguazu (Gustavo Santaolalla/Deadwood soundtrack)

4. Le carnaval des animaux, zoological fantasy for 2 pianos & ensemble: No. 7, Aquarium (Camille Saint-Saens)

5. My Love (Wings)

6. Java Jive (The Inkspots)

7. Valencia (Paul Whiteman)

8. Survivor Theme (Ancient Voices/Survivor Soundtrack)

9. Something’s Coming (West Side Story soundtrack)

10. New York City (They Might Be Giants)

11. Big Day (XTC)

12. Polyester Bride (Liz Phair)

13. Never Gonna Give You Up (Barry White)

14. Am I The Walrus? (Grand Moff Tarkin)

15. Funeral for an American (The Pogues)

16. Black Cow (Steely Dan)

17. Down In The Hole (Blind Boys of Alabama)

18. I Miss You (Bjork)

19. The Weight (The Band, with The Staples Singers)

That's all for now...but stay tuned!

WEDDING SOUNDTRACK LISTINGS

2005-10-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hi! Check back later for the wedding soundtrack listings -- we'll post them soon!

Andrew & Amy

Bait Shop Update

2005-08-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's that time once again! Check out all the new news, new links and...well, that's pretty much it...at the Bait Shop Mothership, currently orbiting a computer near you.

R.I.P. CHARLENE

2005-07-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Whether you knew her personally or merely enjoyed her great scene as the screaming mother chasing the baby carriage in Puke, please take a moment to commemorate the great Charlene Hervey-Shurtleff, a.k.a. Black Charlene, who died recently (and very unexpectedly) from cancer. She was a real sweetheart and I'll miss her.

I hope there's an afterlife, Charlene, 'cuz if there is I'm sure you're having fun up there. See you soon.

2005-06-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

Top Five Best Moments of the Provincetown Film Festival: (5) The Hat Sisters. (4) Gus Van Sant's awful new movie about Kurt Cobain finally ending. (3) The incredibly delicious Bloody Marys at a place on Commercial Street with a sign that says "Tavern Food" out front (but is probably called something else). (2) Drinks with the Polack, Bun, Rosalita and Miss Heidi at some swanky chandelier bar. And (1) offering John Waters a copy of Baron Von Doviak's book Hick Flicks, only to discover the Prince of Puke already owns a copy!

2005-06-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

So, here's five reasons to see Lords of Dogtown -- (1): I never thought I'd say it, but I actually enjoyed the presence of Heath Ledger. (2): the big-pants teen mall rats in the theater with me actually applauded at the end, in hushed reverence. (3): The obvious PUKE homage where the angry blonde kid shaves his head while glowering into the mirror all punk-like. (4): A somewhat unnerving Rebecca Demornay performance. (5) Damn, that whole skateboarding around an empty pool thing sure looks like a helluva lotta fun.

2005-06-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

EEEEEK!!! Pretty scaaaary, eh, kids? Yes, the work on ASSASSIN continues...ASSASSIN, of course, being the horror movie video project I've been working on with the youngsters of the Burt Wood School for the Performing Arts in Middleboro, MA, scheduled to premiere this summer after the Burt Wood Summer show (which I'm directing) followed by a second screening at the Herring Run Arts Fest in the Fall. Besides ASSASSIN, I've just finished up my first year of teaching and studenting at U-Mass, along with a slate of various classes, writing projects, wedding planning and season finales (go Woo!)...all of which is my way of explaining why I haven't actually updated this blog in weeks. But stay tuned for a big Baitshop update, coming soon!

Tribeca!

2005-04-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

So, I just got back from THE F-WORD premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival (a LONG journey, considering the Greyhound driver had to keep asking passengers to help her find the bus stations along the route) -- the movie itself was very well received in a packed auditorium full of well-wishers and Bush bashers (although, like the RNC protesters themselves, the movie had a lot more complaints about the current administration than actual solutions or strategies for winning back the government). Yours truly wound up with a short cameo in the movie where I mention how it was shameless of the Republicans to stage their convention in a liberal city just to milk the 9/11 imagery of Ground Zero -- shameless, but effective. The rest of my rant (which didn't make it into the film) points out that, like contestants on SURVIVOR, the Left really needs to learn from the Republicans and put aside their emotions and complaints in favor of effective STRATEGY to win the country back into their tree-hugging arms. But does the Left ever listen to me? No, sadly, it does not. Ah, well. As for the rest of the Fest, I didn't really stick around long enough to see much beyond THE POWER OF FEAR, a very interesting British documentary about the creepy philosophical similarities between the neo-conservative movement and bin-Ladens' gang (although, naturally, the neocons are downright cuddly in comparison to the batshit crazy Islamic Jihad). I also went to a loud, bad, overcrowded F-WORD party at the Tribeca Grand with no celebrity sightings except for WARIS (of Team Zissou fame) who has one of the best scenes in Jed's movie. And now, sleep.

2005-04-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

Check it out: new news and updated archives are now available at the Ol' Bait Shop!

2005-03-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Austin, TX!
Yesterday, I saw my first SXSW movie, STAGEDOOR, about a performing arts camp in upstate New York full of talented young people. While the subject was naturally interesting to me, I also had another surprising connection to the movie, in that one of the camp teachers featured in the documentary was Jeff Murphy, who played Perry (the drag queen who changes into a naked blonde woman) in APOCALYPSE BOP (although, sadly, Jeff wasn't live in person at the screening).
Later, Senator Von Doviak and I got blocked from attending a packed screening of an Asia Argento movie we weren't all that interested in seeing in the first place. So, instead, we strolled down Sixth Street to one of my all-time favorite bars, Casino El Camino, and had our first quasi-celebrity sighting: an MTV camera crew following around some bland blonde chick from the new season of THE REAL WORLD, currently taping in Austin. (In fact, we only knew she was a REAL WORLD character because a white stretch limo full of sugar-high teenagers celebrating a sweet 16 pulled up and wanted her to party with them).
So, now I guess I'll have to watch REAL WORLD: AUSTIN to see if the Senator and I have a cameo! Stay tuned!

OSCARS!!!

2005-02-23T22:38:00.000-08:00

When I have a little more time, I'd like to say a few words about the good Doctor Gonzo, Mr. Hunter S. Thompson.

But in the meantime, while they're blasting his ashes over Woody Creek, here are my OSCAR PICKS for 2005.

(And by the way, I just realized my comment feature was disabled...so if anyone ever reads this, could you please leave a comment so I know it's working? Thanks.)

BEST PICTURE
Finding Neverland

-- Okay, I admit this was wrongheaded. It looks like it's gonna be Million Dollar Baby, but I thought I heard something about people liking this movie. I figured Aviator was too impersonal, Million Dollar was too grim, Ray was flawed and Sideways was too small, so Finding Neverland would win on schmaltz...but then again, I thought Jolanda was gonna make it to at least the merge on Survivor, so what the hell do I know?

DIRECTOR
Martin Scorcese

ACTOR
Jamie Foxx

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Clive Owen

ACTRESS
Hilary Swank

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Virginia Madsen

ANIMATED FEATURE
The Incredibles

ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
The Phantom of the Opera

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Aviator

COSTUME
The Aviator

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Born Into Brothels

DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Children of Leningradsky

EDITING
The Aviator

FOREIGN FILM
The Sea Inside

MAKEUP
The Passion of the Christ

ORIGINAL SCORE
Finding Neverland

ORIGINAL SONG
“Learn To Be Lonely”
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Phantom of the Opera

ANIMATED SHORT
Lorenzo

LIVE SHORT
Little Terrorist

SOUND EDITING
The Incredibles

SOUND MIXING
Ray

VISUAL EFFECTS
Spider Man 2

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Sideways

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Eternal Sunshine

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...

2005-01-26T15:53:00.000-08:00

Apparently we've accumulated more snow here in New England in the last few days then we have in the past 100 years or so. I'm hearing a lotta grumbling and I've done a little myself, but you know what? After however many years in L.A., I'll take the full four seasons over eternal sunshine any day.

TOP FIVE NICE THINGS ABOUT SNOW:

1. If it's not too cold and you're not stuck in it, it's goddamn beautiful (or, when it's not beautiful, it's at least cinematic and interesting).

2. Cold weather wakes me up and keeps me alert, as opposed to hot weather, which just makes me all sluggish (and occasionally nauseous).

3. Can't get enough of that crunching snow sound.

4. Two words: Snow Day. Thanks to our friend snow, the missus and I just got ourselves a nice unexpected three day weekend (and some nice, unexpected exercise digging out the car).

5. But this is the big one: that nice feeling of camaraderie you get in the winter, that sense of "we're all in it together" that I only experienced in L.A. on Oscar night and after a nice, juicy earthquake. Plus after surviving these next few snowy months, the sun and warmth of spring will feel extra sweet, assuming I survive.

So there.

2005-01-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

Nope...I just signed onto another computer and the blog appears to be fine...it's just the AOL on my laptop "protecting" me from my own blog, while allowing every other friggin' pop-up ad and spyware program on the Internet to get through. One of my resolutions for 2005: SCREW AOL!!!! Anyway, here, for the last time, this dirty stinkin' link: BEST OF 2004!

2005-01-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

Wow, I apparently just did something that my blog program did not like AT ALL, and it appears all my previous posts have now gone into cyber limbo. Yikes. Well, anyway...starting fresh with a new post for 2005, be sure to check out my top ten list at baitshop.org and Happy New Year!

2005-01-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

Arrrrggghh!!!! Okay, okay, I think I've got it now. The last link didn't work, but I'm comfortably certain I've got the hang of this now, so here it is again...the link to my BEST OF 2004!

2005-01-01T06:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm not sure if this is gonna work, but I'm gonna attempt adding a link to my website for my best of 2004 list! Ready? Here we go...BEST OF 2004!!! Now, if that didn't just add a link, then you can go the old fashioned way to baitshop.org...and Happy New Year!

2004-12-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

AAAIIIEEEE!!!! In the preceding post, I just wrote "it's" instead of "its"! That particular grammar mistake is one of my biggest pet peeves, and now I've gone and misgrammared on my very own blog! IT'S ONLY SUPPOSED TO HAVE AN APOSTROPHE IF IT'S "IT IS," NOT WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ITS POSSESSIONS, WHATEVER "IT" IS! And me, an English major! Oh, the humanity...

2004-12-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Oh, I loves me some Survivor. This wasn't the strongest season, but I'll take the weakest Survivor over the best ever season of just about anything else on television. All you need to know about America's conflicted soul (and it's conflicted political system) is right there on display, complete with product placement, 16 weeks at a time, season after season. Even Amy Jeglinski was into the final episode tonight, rooting for poor, guilt-ridden Twila. Yes, that's right, the beautiful Polish princess Amy Jeglinski, who will now hopefully show up on Google (in fact, she may even wind up as a Google-Whack)!

2004-11-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

Still haven't figured out how to do links on this thing, but you can believe one thing: Chengwin loves you. (www.chengwin.com)

2004-11-16T23:09:00.000-08:00

Celebrity sightings thus far in Manhattan: David Byrne today in the Builder's Association office where I'm workshopping the show Super Vision and Amy Poehler (pictured), Horatio Sanz and Seth Meyers in ASSSSCAT 3000 at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, doing improv much funnier than most of their skits on SNL. And Chengwin. Oh, yes, Chengwin. How to describe the magic of Chengwin? Well...let's see...picture hundreds of people running through the streets of Soho waving pom-poms, cheering a half-chicken, half-penguin in his battle against his half-chicken, half-skunk nemesis Chunk. Aaah, Manhattan.

2004-11-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

Arrrghh...I keep screwing up my posts. What I was gonna say was the recent election was plenty depressing, but what's really depressing is how little time I have to share my feelings with the world vis a vis this blog. I mean, seriously, it only takes a few minutes a day to update this thing, but for MONTHS now, I literally have not had a few minutes free to do anything, ever. Grad school, plays, teaching...yikes! But hopefully this crazy lifestyle will be getting at least a little less constrictive soon. I'll be heading down to NYC this week to workshop a play with the builder's group -- yes, that's right, for those keeping score, I'll actually be down to ONE job for the next two weeks, and hopefully that'll give me a chance to catch up on important things like this blog and that "Lost" show everyone's been talking about. Or not. Egad. (On the other hand, as far as I know only one other person in christendom is checking this blog anyway, so I guess it's understandable if its maintenance is not on the top of my priority list...but I blame that on my overcrowded schedule, too! With more time, I could upload pictures of the new Star Wars movie or fake nudes of the Olsen twins or something to increase traffic...ah, well. Maybe next year.

2004-11-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

So, yes, the recent presidential race was depressing...

2004-10-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

Oops...actually, I meant to write more, but I accidentally posted instead. I still haven't gotten the hang of this cockamamie thing. Anyway, I was gonna say I'll have a lot more time for posting (and sleeping and Texas Hold'Em and my good friend T.V. and all my other loved ones) after I finish MURDER ON THE MAYFLOWER, an interactive musical dinner theater whodunnit lollapalooza I'm staging at Plimoth Plantation this week for the Pinehills Players...so stay tuned for my long overdue update on the Austin City Limits festival, reports from NYC and, of course, all the latest soup and bisque recipes you've come to expect from the Ol' Bait Shop.

2004-10-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

So, okay...it's not exactly a DAILY blog, but at least I update it more often than my website!

2004-09-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Tex-Ass! I dodged Ivan last night, and now I'm down here with Baron Von Doviak for the Austin City Limits Festival, featuring a zillion bands like the Tex-Ass-Kicking Gourds (pictured), the Pixies, Sheryl Crow, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Elvis Costello and MORE! MORE! MORE! I still haven't completely figured out how to work this blog, so I don't have any links yet, but stay tuned for that and all my upcoming adventures in Rock and Bar-B-Q!!!!

2004-09-04T17:02:00.000-07:00

So, yes, as it turns out, I did in fact make it back safely from the RNC, after marching with thousands of protesters, eating breakfast at a restaurant owned by Moby (TeaNY) and appearing in a scene from The F_Word with Josh Hamilton (above). But more later, after I finish the endless aggravation of updating the rest of the Bait Shop website!

2004-07-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

Bad seeds, good folks

2004-07-24T17:02:00.000-07:00

Bad Seed Babes

2004-07-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Penmark & friend