The voice from Shawshank just called me Cheesehead

1500 miles away from Los Angeles, the 102^nd meeting of the Vikings and Packers was played at Lambeau Field last night. Back here in Hollywood, one of my co-workers and I made a bet on the game.

I lost.

Part of my penance was that I had to walk down to our sound stage where the entire crew would be and walk around for a bit. Having to explain that “NO” I wasn’t a Packers fan, I just lost a bet was all part of the “fun.” Anyway, as I was walking toward stage past all the cast trailers, Morgan Freeman’s car pulls up. He, his assistant and his driver all get out and see me coming. They stop and Mr. Freeman looks at me with a big smile and says “Cheese-Head!” “No, Morgan, I’m a Vikings fan and I lost the bet.” He laughed a big hearty laugh and walked into his trailer. One of the most sough after voices in the world today just laughed at me and called me cheese head.

I proceeded to the stage where I was called up to video area where the director and producers all sit, and then was paraded around a bit, being razzed by the producers and director and most of the crew.

I am now sitting at my desk with a foam block of cheese on my head, where it will stay until the day is over.

F-ing Vikings. F-ing Brett Farv-ra!

Run Away Production....

The saying here in Los Angeles when a film or television show leaves the city or state to go shoot elsewhere is "run away production." Canada, Czech Republic, Australia...and now Africa?! Where before the motivation for these moves was fueled largely by money, judging by a lot of the content that has already been created from shoots in Africa, it would seem that this one is more based in subject matter. Maybe it's just the idea of getting to go on location in Africa that I like, but regardless this is an example of "runaway production" that I can appreciate.

Read the Article Here.

All I want for Christmas is...

Karen Allen.

Every now and then, the planets align, things just fall into place and sense can come from complete random madness. This is what happened to me a few days ago while I was at home watching TV. Flipping through the expanse of channels that line the Time Warner cable system I stumbled across Animal House, in HBO.

National Lampoon's Animal House, obviously as I don't need to tell you, is the bench mark classic college frat movie. Many have come in it's wake, but most all of them are simply the same jokes updated for the decade in which they were made. Animal House started it all and it also started something else, the career of Karen Allen.

Playing Katy, the girlfriend of one of the frat boys, this was Karen Allen's first role in a major motion picture (at least according to the IMDB) She played the perfect, lovable, sharp edged, take only so much shit before giving it right back girlfriend. She was real, she was believable and she held her own when ever she was on the screen.

I watched the movie right up to the part where Donald Sutherland shows his better (or worse) half while reaching for the cereal and started flipping again. Building up steam I worked though the channels, watch flip, watch flip, check the guide, back to flipping.

Then, as only happens on Saturday afternoons that are, well talked about in Blogs, I hit the very opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark! The opening!! That never happens, you always flip in during the middle of the movie or the end and then can't decide if you should put the DVD in or just continue watching it on TV with the commercials. I stick with the broadcast and then it happened. Indy walked into a bar...

...and there she was doing shots of what one can only assume was gasoline, hustling the huge locals and eventually drinking them all under the table before trying to decide if she should take the money or keep the priceless family heirloom. Karen Allen again! With out a doubt the best Indy girl of all three movies, and tentatively slated to appear in the 4th - should that ever happen. You can keep your Bond Girls - give me Indy girls any time, especially Karen Allen. She drinks, she smokes, she steals, she has a soft side, you know she would be cursing if the movie had an R rating. Just as the movie was the best of the three, so too Marion was the best Indy female lead.

While two would have been dismissible the end of my evening what was provoked this blog entry. I finished Raiders and turned the television off, not thinking much about the phenomenon I was in the middle of. Ran some errands, did a few things around the house and then, to put me a bit into the Christmas spirit I popped in one of my favorite Christmas movies, Scrooged. Bill Murry as an angry television exec who drinks Stoli and Tab and is visited by three ghosts - how could it not send some one straight to the streets a'caroling?

The premise is set up, the characters are introduced, everything is going along just fine and then you find out what we're really doing here: Karen Allen smacks a younger Bill Murry in the head with a door and in doing so begins a love affair that the movie eventually sets out to rekindle. Clair is a voluenteer, optimistic, idealist, was a bit of a hippie and even though the world around her turned cold has kept her optimism on the world. She still even holds the hope that things are salvageable with Murry's stone hearted character.

It was in that moment that I decided that all I want for Christmas this year is Karen Allen. No I'm going to go set off to find out where she lives now (Kentucky....kidding) but some where between the mid 1970's and the late 1980's, she became the quintessential perfect girl in some of the greatest movies and for the large this seems to have gone largely unnoticed. In fact I might have even missed it and instead wasted my time this year asking Santa for a new computer, a loft apartment in the Village, or a book. If it wasn't for a lazy Sunday evening, the randomness of cable TV and the desire to get a little Christmas in me I might have missed this all together. So if you happen to see a Katy, a Marion or a Clair send them my way this Christmas, or any time really!

p.s. in case you were wondering, no - this is not a request to be set up, was just a good blog entry idea - that's all. thanks for playing though....

Tribal, Funked-out Nuclear Jazz

I heard his voice before I laid eyes on him, the smoke billowing up from the stage doesn't slow down a voice like that.

"pop goes the weasel, i'm pure evil"

With a devil like swagger stepping out on the town, the lead singer for The Toledo Show, Toledo, saunters in front of the stage, weaving between the three girls who lean on their canes on opposite corners of the floor.

...and don't worry, the torn holes in their fish-net stockings won't slow them down a bit.

Try to imagine walking into a late night basement Tom Waits show, but instead of a solo piano he has the P-Funk All Stars playing back-up, and George Clinton singing by his side. Tonight, accompanying the usual drunken piano is a stoned microphone, a long neck base guitar, drum set, turn table, trumpet and a wailing sax.

I sat there, thinking of the best way to describe the music and the show and after a two sets, a few bottles of bud, and some unexpected Sunday night dancing the best I could come up with was "Tribal, Funked-out Nuclear Jazz." You shouldn't need me to explain Tribal Funked-out Jazz, but if you wonder why it's nuclear it's because the energy literally radiates through the crowd. What starts off as a docile Sunday night crowd slowly get their atoms excited from the energetic sound blasting at them from the stage. The lead singer, the music and band all drip so much cool onto the floor, that eventually it runs up to your shoes feeding the illusion that you're cool as well. Between the growling vocals, the funking music, the burlesque show that travels through the bar and the cloud of smoke that envelops it all: to simply call it sexual would be an understatement.

This is a Sunday night show reserved for people who go out on weekday nights and drink before Noon on the weekends. It happens every Sunday in Santa Monica after 9pm at Harvelle's. Grab a drink, find a spot near the stage and don't be surprised if you see me there.

No, it's not PC....

...but on a friday it's pretty funny.

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/

The Politics of the News

Ever been curious to know the political leaning of your favorite news webpage?

Earlier today, the "Iraq Study Group Report" was released and was front page news on every webpage that covered current events. Huge, bold headlines splashed on the screen, with sublinks offering everything from opinion polls to talking head commentaries.

But then, something else happened, water was apparently discovered on Mars!! Or so Fox News and The Drudge Report proclaimed on their lead banners. Sure, a report about one of the biggest political and perhaps even social issues of the past several years just hit with a huge thud - but that news apparently pales in comparison to a photograph that may or may not prove that water once existed on Mars, at least according to Drudge and Fox.

Seeing that I got the feeling that those web pages didn't want the story that actually has the text "We can no longer afford to stay the course" in the big headline spot? Of course, it works both ways and I'm sure that the liberal pages will beat this story over and over for the next month, but it just amused (and angered actually) me that today Drudge and Fox would rather tell you about WATER ON MARS than about the debacle in Iraq and a report that is finally telling it like it is.

p.s. which, after reading the headlines about what was in the report, did you just feel like saying "no shit?!" How did the rest of the country know that we were losing the war, that we needed to talk to the neighboring countries instead of making bigger enemies with them, that we have failed in our accomplishments and were losing the war in every aspect...how is it that most of us already knew that yet it took a 150+ page report to finally get through to our moron President?