Showbiz Twinz

Twins! In show business! A classic combination!

Marge and Mary Ann Ganser gave The Shangri-Las twin power.


Cherie and Marie Currie had a brief run after The Runaways broke up. Cherie is now a chainsaw artist. That rocks.


Tegan and Sara - Canadian art rockers. And twins.


Kim and Kelley Deal brought us one of the strangest hit songs ever. Still kicking the jams in The Breeders. Thank you, Dayton!


Jenny Lewis is enhanced by The Watson Twins. This Sarah Silverman clip reminds me uncomfortably of that Hee Haw lunchbox I had to use in third grade because my mom waited too long to take me lunchbox shopping that year. It wasn't an ironic lunchbox choice, merely mortifying.


The Cocteau Twins are not twins, but it's my blog and I get to include them anyway.

Half-ass TV Recap: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion Part 1

I couldn't help noticing that blogs that post TV recaps tend to get a lot of traffic from fans of the show. With that in mind, allow me to introduce my own concept, thought of right here in the Captive Wild Woman think-tank (family room alongside the wall of my nice thumpy-disco neighbors): Half-ass TV Recap. I don't have time to watch much TV or to even pay attention to most of what I watch (unless it's "The Wire" or some such thing). I will watch a disaster show like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills because I want to see what happened to former childhood star Kim Richards, but I don't relish the moment. In fact, I tend to feel suicidal afterwards. Therefore: some random thoughts and feelings as felt by me, suicidal reality-show watcher on last night's Reunion show, Part 1. For those of you who avoided this reality wreck, I commend you.

The Beverly Hills housewives are seated in a semi-circle around smarmy host and interviewer Andy Cohen in the fabulous Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. I think briefly about taking notes or making screen grabs (consisting of me taking a photo of my analog TV screen) but then decide, "Fuck it. It's just this stupid show." I am a committed half-ass. So committed, I didn't start recapping until the post-season reunion show. You're welcome.

Andy Cohen is the last person on earth you want to interview you. I don't care if you're a shallow, mean-spirited rich lady wearing unflattering shiny clothes and giant sparkly earrings that look like chandeliers for a monkey-house. There must be some clause in their contracts forbidding them from calling him a putz as he pelts them with rude questions about their looks, their net worth and their general fucked-upness, all disguised as "America wants to know" email questions. This guy is so oily he should be liquefied and shot into Taylor's forehead for never-ending smoothness.

He starts off asking about their terrible plastic surgery and some of the housewives chime in that they've only had injections and anti-aging agents pumped into their faces. The others sit very still and try not to call attention to themselves, like hamsters in the wild. Some reader wants to know if Taylor will ever remove her lip implant because it's so friggin' big. Taylor defends her implant, saying she's not going to have surgery to please some people. She says Internet commenters have written that her mouth is too big so maybe she should have surgery on that as well. Kyle cackles, "Mouth reduction for you!" and they laugh and laugh. Oh Kyle, you're such a good friend.

There's a question about the price of milk. Kyle and Kim seem to know the most about that, guessing $3.49 for a gallon and less if you shop at Costco. The other housewives look askance and murmur, "Costco? Whatever are you talking about?"

Taylor is asked if it was worth it to throw a $60,000 birthday party for her four-year-old. Taylor looks unsure. "I think so. The guests had a good time...?" she offers. The other housewives sit very, very still except for Lisa who brings up Pin The Tail On The Donkey and how her kids were brought up differently. I love competitive parenting, don't you? It's the best.

Andy points out that Lisa seems jealous of Kyle's new friendship with Taylor. Lisa is all like, "Well, I never! They're just annoying together." As if to demonstrate, Kyle and Taylor link fingers like sixth-graders going steady. Kyle starts calling Lisa "Jealous! Jelly beans! Peanut butter and jelly sandwich!" Lisa rolls her eyes, as do we all. All the housewives imitate them by pairing off and nuzzling one another. It's a botox love-in extraordinaire!

Then there's a lightning-rod focus on Camille's most-hated status in America as dipshit Andy reads off the words describing her among the press and tortured TV-watchers across the country. I'm cheating because I'm using The Vulture's very funny recap here to recall his list of evil traits. Camille, throughout the season admittedly appeared as a creepy, insecure sociopath by being: conniving, passive-aggressive, catty, jealous, cruel, hypocritical, self-absorbed, manipulative, fake, insincere, delusional. Andy smiles as he continues reading. Camille, who was quite gracious on this episode, says it hurts and that people write anything at the computer, but the edit was purposefully made to make her look like that and she's not really such a horror-show.

During the Camille grilling, the camera cuts back numerous times to Kyle in close-up, smirking, looking smug. But when Camille has to re-live her break-up with her Kelsey, Kyle is shown carefully rearranging her face into what appears to be sympathy. Now who has the "bitch-edit"? Way to turn on a dime, Bravo producers.

I'll say this: The camera doesn't lie BUT editing does. I have no doubt that Camille gave the producers plenty of fodder to work with, but having worked with editors, I can attest that the cutting of the footage is everything. It's fairly easy to make a bitchy person look even MORE bitchy, by simply not showing the cause of the bitchiness. I worked on a film that did just that. Just one small additional piece of footage with one sentence of explanatory dialogue changed the entire course of a filmed conversation and gave the bitchy lady in the film a good reason for being so obnoxious in that particular scene. It gave her some humanity at least, even though she came across as a difficult person. You could kind of understand where she was coming from, just from that one extra sentence. Take out the sentence and she was insufferable. Put it back in and she's a complex human: like magic!

So, if Camille claims she got the bitch edit, I can give her the benefit of the doubt. Besides, Kelsey Grammer is just so disgusting. She deserves a big fat settlement just for having her humiliating breakup filmed for the world to see. Jesus. What is wrong with us? I gotta stagger out into the cold gray world and have a moment...

I'm back! So Camille admits she might have been difficult and insecure because Kelsey wasn't calling her all the time and perhaps she thought something was amiss when he moved 3,000 miles away for a year and encouraged her to stay in Los Angeles and star in a reality show known for humiliating its subjects. Perhaps... There's mention of Camille's soft-porn past and how the housewives were all watching it in a limo after a disastrous dinner-party at her house. There was argument back and forth about who was the bigger skank, Camille or Faye Resnick, who posed for Playboy. The argument was not resolved.

Then there was a snit-fit between Taylor and Kim over a dinner-party conversation about the mysterious but epic fight between Camille and Kyle. Look, Taylor, don't torment my beloved Kim Richards, you would-be sister-stealing Heather! Why would you pick a fight with a formerly decent child star? The former child star, even one who probably suffers from acute anxiety disorder, through poise and an innate sense of drama, will always look better. Just give it up. But Taylor's too grotesquely un-self aware to see how this is playing out. By sitting quietly, unruffled, while asking Taylor, "What did you mean when you said you were going to go 'Oklahoma on my ass'--you who run a charity for domestic abuse victims--you were quick to go there," Kim ends up looking like a halfway decent person--not easy on this show. "Were you going to take me out in the back and beat me among the dumpsters?" she continues, making Taylor laugh and pish-posh it away with a "I was JOKING!" But Kim will not be deterred. She starred in Tuff Turf for pity's sake. She knows Taylor's type. "I just thought it was ODD, for someone of your background to get so violent like that." "But I didn't!" Taylor almost squeals. Ha ha! So enjoyable.

The citizens of Oklahoma grumble and start writing emails immediately.

Then Taylor brings up Kim's supposed alcoholism, even though the entire cast drank its way through multiple parties that would have consisted of discussions of shoe shopping without the much-needed cattiness provided by cast and crew. I'm telling you: a normal person would have to drink to get through this season. I don't get all the shocked accusations. Don't most families in America have 2-3 alcoholics in them? Am I projecting? Isn't everyone in Beverly Hills on something? Kim: star in a Lifetime movie about a victim of bullying. It will be great.

Camille and Kyle have it out (AGAIN) about their New York City fight, which was never caught on camera and so consists of "She said She said" accusations. All of which are boring me, so I won't go into it. Something about how no one would care about Camille if it weren't for Kelsey and how Kyle never said that, and she's a liar and she's a victim and she's a phony and she's a bully and "bully" is a (*finger quotes*) "buzz word of the moment" and "No--you BULLY me," and so on. At this point I realize this is only Part 1. No freaking way! I have to watch on Tuesday for the exciting conclusion. You 12 readers better tune in for the half-ass recap.

There's an obligatory montage of Adrienne and long-suffering Paul bickering over clothes and food. Andy calls her out on her obvious disdain of her husband, which makes me like him for a millisecond. But I also like Adrienne, who seems hard-working and decent. She never got in the middle of a stupid fight like the others and she seems to understand that Kim needs support.

Then there's more of Taylor who is accused of stirring the pot of the off-screen fight that never made sense but took up an entire television season (and beyond) to resolve. There's back-and-forth of I didn't stir the pot, I think you did, No I never did. Andy puts in his two cents: I think you stirred the pot. I agree with him.

Perhaps next week there'll be some resolution for sisters Kim and Kyle who apparently aren't speaking to each other after the grand finale blow-up in the limo last week. That was uncomfortable to witness to say the least and never should have been on TV. Well, none of it should, except for maybe Lisa's little dog, Jiggy. Because he was going bald, proving that no matter how wealthy you are, you can still lose your hair, dignity and ass when someone goes Oklahoma on it.

Toys that poop

I have got to direct some traffic to this blog. My numbers are plummeting in the clogged sea of information that is the Internet. It's like that plastic island the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean--who will find my tiny bottle-cap of a site in all that non-biodegradable garbage? So while I work on my brilliant plan for Internet domination, here are toys that poop. And pee. Enjoy, and ignore the stink of desperation.

Goliath Games makes pooping a competitive sport. You win by collecting doggie's doo. Good self-esteem builder.



Even better in German - Kackel Dackel.




Leave it to Barbie to focus on the worst aspect of pet ownership: body waste. Tanner eats and shits the same substances. Brilliant, Mattel, brilliant!




Uh-oh, peeing puppies. With the death of newspapers, how will we train them now?




Miko's thirsty and you get to litter-box train her. It's great being a girl!




Hours of fun.




Magic Potty Baby. It certainly seems magical how a toilet works (hey, great idea for a toy), but this doll focuses on other kinds of inner workings.




I'm really sorry about this one. I need the links but my soul has definitely entered a dark place of no return. Forgive me.




Don't forget farting! It's muy importante!




Milky the Marvelous Milking Cow would like to step in now and try to class up this joint. Just add milk pellets.




Lest we forget: saliva.

Lady Bunny for Secretary of Satire

Is the Department of Satire just a dream?

As seen on I Should Be Laughing.

Bobby Badfingers - Professional Snappist

Have a finger-snappin' day, the Bobby Badfingers way.



Damn!



Get folky! Get down!



Worldwide fame is only a finger snap away.

Bugging Out - Insects get their own reality show

The Science Channel has produced a new reality show called "Bugging Out" featuring the country's largest insectary and its proprietor, Ken.



Why am I interested? Bugs are not my favorite creatures. I'm more of a mammal/bird person, but this show takes place in my home-town of Concord, California and let me tell you: there aren't a lot of reality shows being filmed in Concord. So watching Ken and his wife, Georgi search for scorpions along Contra Costa County hillsides is pretty interesting to me. Plus, let's face it: insects will one day rule the world. Let's give them the media attention they deserve.

Technically my home-town is San Francisco, but I grew up in Concord and just these short clips evoke so much of my upbringing: long hair, rocker t-shirts, tattoos, laid-back discussions about insect collecting. If they have an episode where the bug-shop crew drives up to Mt. Diablo for a company barbecue, I'm good. That's all you need to know about Concord.

Ken the Bug Guy's Web site. The show is on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. or you can get it On Demand if you're so lucky.

I Have A Dream - Common (featuring Will.i.am)

With comedy comes levity

I love Stephen Colbert and his cheerfully sick sense of humor.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Video Archive

You too, Jon Stewart! Make us laugh through our tears. Keep sanity alive!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
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Where the heck are all these free MP3s I keep hearing about?

I don't have time to look for free MP3s--defined as downloadable music that is free and clear and legally obtained from the struggling musicians who make it. My ethical make-up gives me automatic guilt whenever I even consider "stealing" music from sites that make it available: you know who you are. I admit to downloading some very obscure albums that are completely out of print and impossible to find, but even those I completely stumbled upon accidentally while linking around the Net (a practice that has landed me in many unusual Internet places over the years).

So how to find new music? I've tried Pandora and other similar services over the years. I'm glad they exist because it's nice to sit at the computer and have some humanly inspired algorithm figure out what I might like to hear. But after about 20 minutes, I get tired of this narrow musical approach. I miss the days of college radio dj-ing where seemingly everything independently produced was available to pick and choose from according to my whims, curiosity or desperation when I ran out of ideas during the last hour of my shift. What a treasure trove that "recommended for heavy rotation" record shelf was every week.

At home, we have an extensive CD (and LP) collection but it's frozen in time up to the 90s, when we pretty much stopped buying CDs. This was a joint decision involving lack of funds, lots of moves across cities and states, and general disgust with the music industry for the past 20 years. Still, we never obtained MP3 players due to an aversion to ear buds and disappointment with the quality of sound that the majority of MP3s make when amplified. Kids, it's true; they're tinnier than a CD, which is darn tinny to begin with.

So lately I've been collaborating with some locals who have done a huge amount of work gathering free MP3s on their music sites. These song selections have been culled by a variety of musicians and music lovers for your listening pleasure. And the music-makers have all granted permission to download them for free, in the hope that you'll like discovering a new band and perhaps purchase some of their music. You never know.

Here's a list of MP3 sites with new and old music to stream or download. It is the dawning of the digital age of Aquarius:

Superfan 2011 - Are you a superfan? Me too! A new download every day with a helpful blurb which is doubly helpful since the selection is super eclectic.
Superfan 2010 - 365 days of downloads--a plethora of riches.
Superfan 2009 - I don't even remember 2009. Perhaps this site will help.
You may "friend" Superfan Musiclover on Facebook for your daily downloads. I really think you should. Seriously, if you read this site at all, you might as well friend that site, hint, hint.

MP3 Jackpot features weekly musical winners, like a game show where no one loses.

Music2Eleven! has good taste that tastes good. Examples: Sigur Rós - Olsen Olsen and Raveonettes - Aly, Walk With Me.
Music2ten - 365 downloads from 2010. Geez, there's gotta be something in there you'll like.

PublicDomain2ten showcases excellent public-domain classics from the golden era of jazz, blues and Americana. That's right--scratchy old music that started it all: Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington, Sam Butler, Scott Joplin. I don't even know where to find most of this stuff otherwise. This is an essential music site for historians and old-timey music fanatics.

Din2ten is a mass collection of MP3s picked by Eric Din, who plays guitar and sings in The Uptones. He's been a professional musician since before the Internet. We must listen to him.

And if you want to stream and find music by genre, go to MP34U and pick a channel. It'll grab an entire selection of music from various sites for your enjoyment and edification. I'm listening to the "78s" channel as I type this. Leadbelly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night? is scritchy-scratching its way out of my computer speakers, reminding me that everything old is new again.

Shabazz Palaces - Belhaven Meridian

Remember Butterfly from Digable Planets? Shabazz Palaces is his current and rather enigmatic Seattle-based project. I love one-shot videos and this one's arty take is by director Kahlil Joseph.



I have the same problem with hip-hop as I have listening to poetry--the flow of words tends to sound rhythmic to my ears and I have trouble discerning the meaning. Not always--sometimes lyrics really grab me, just generally. Oh well--one-shot video, people! Not easy to pull off. And I like this black & white look too. Who knows if it's actual film or doctored digital? Back in 2009, cinematographers were still using film occasionally.

Look, Tide is experiencing the Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat). I'm all for bands making a livable wage with their music, but sorry marketers, this particular pop-culture appropriation makes me want to stay grubby.

Happy Anniversary, Blog!

It's the five-year, 30-day anniversary of the blog! In celebration, I'll commence with a third-grade writing assignment that I helped facilitate at Jackson's school today. The kids are learning to use adjectives in their writing, especially focusing on their five senses to describe the winter season. I'll alter the assignment to reflect my feelings about Captive Wild Woman, the blog, on this wintry day. I will highlight the adjectives in hopes of improving my writing--the goal of the blog, by the way, was to improve my writing. And to get the attention I crave.

Hearing: I remember the first day I figured out how to embed a music video in a post. I copied another blog's bizarre javascript code and used that with YouTube videos for half a year before realizing I just had to click the "embed" button on the video page to get the proper copy-&-paste code. I never said I was brilliant. Still, that first day was an exciting one for my ears, because now, despite copyright infringement issues, I can listen to almost every awesome and horrible song I've ever heard in my entire life, and post it here for your ears as well. What power! It's like being a DJ but with home-style snacks and fresh air. Plus fuzzy slippers. This is a music geek's dream, to hear anything at all at any time and to relish the aural possibilities of commenting on it for others to experience. I have an elaborate system of embedding streaming music as well, but it involves a Tumblr site and more weird-ass code and patience, and I won't go into it here. Still, I can stream music, man!

Sight: I think it's obvious that blogs are some of the ultimate visual mediums of our time. Despite creeping irrelevance in the wake of Facebook and whatever the future holds in today's ethereal Internet realm, blogs continue to putter forth as long as there's an abundance of obsessive attention-starved oddballs who need to express themselves by posting videos of Sailor Moon theme songs from Season 4 and dogs jumping on trampolines. Any publishing tool that can easily line up jpegs, animated gifs, videos (both home-made and public), plus comics, photos, art work and so on, will be around for us to cherish and comment on, thanks to the forward-thinking Blogger founders and our benevolent corporate overlord, Google. (*waving obsequiously* "Hellooo Google! Thank you!")

Touch: You can't touch a blog. (Fail!) But a blog can touch you (whoo). Seriously, sometimes people start blogs to get through really difficult times in their lives or to deal with life-altering events, such as chronic illness, severe writer's block, or civil rights. The ability to get your message "out there" quickly and for so little cost (once you're plunked in front of an Internet-ready computer), is essential. There's also a lot of pop-culture garbage to wade through. I like well-written garbage, don't you?

Smell: If you spend too much time on the computer and don't take care of personal hygiene issues, you will smell. So get up and walk around once in a while, and make it over to the shower while you're at it. I'll try and do the same.

Taste: Computers taste terrible, but here's a nostalgic food blog of questionable taste to whet your appetite.

Consequently, one of my first posts was about God, or the lack thereof. Aim high! I always say. To be honest, I think my very first post was about "John & Kate Plus 8" but I accidentally deleted it when I was fooling around with the buttons on the blog dashboard. And so ends our anniversary reflection.

Bad Writing - the trailer

Bad Writing coming to a theater in a major city near you, or sitting in a pile on my desk right now.

Blurb: Bad Writing is a documentary about a wannabe poet who sets off on a quest for answers about writing -- bad writing, good writing, and the process in between. What he learns from some leading figures in the literary world will inspire anyone who has ever dreamt of creating art.

Featuring interviews with David Sedaris, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, Nick Flynn, Steve Almond... (continued on the official site).

Happy New Year - Jellyfish are Rad

It's 2011 and what's more celebratory than a bunch of jellyfish floating around at the Mystic Aquarium in historic Mystic, CT? Give up? Nothing! Nothing is more festive than that. We were in New England all last week, landing just a few hours shy of a massive blizzard that paralyzed the Eastern Seaboard and much of the southern states as well. When flying in the dead of winter, be sure to time your trip between flu season and historic storms.

We also had luck coming back, managing to have a scheduled flight that fell on the day when all the airlines seemed to have caught up with their cancelled flights. One guy at our gate had been trying to return to California for five days. That is a lesson in patience, I guess. I felt for New York City, which doesn't run too smoothly under several feet of snow dump. In our case, we were not delighted with excessive wind-chill factors, but once that died down, the days were bright and beautiful. Much sledding and snowball fighting ensued.

Now we're back in cold, gray, wet California--hooray! The secret of California winters is: it's a basically a monsoon season. People forget that during the drought years. It looks like we're on schedule for regular winter dampness and gloominess. That is good. Check out these jellyfish. The Mystic Aquarium has some fabulous outdoor exhibits too, full of Beluga whales, penguins and California sea lions. I hope the sea lions aren't too homesick.

I find it impossible to watch jellyfish, no matter how beautiful, primitive, and ethereal, and not think of SpongeBob Squarepants. Thanks, pop culture and cable TV!

The Fabulous Art Direction of A Star Is Born (1954)

Remember "A Star Is Born" with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson? Well, don't BOTHER with that muck-colored, would-be weepy (Streisand, a rock goddess?--no). This 1954 remake (the first version was made in 1937) starring Judy Garland and James Mason, directed by George Cukor, is the only "Star Is Born" you need to see. Ever. Period. Even in its studio-butchered truncated edit, or if you're a glutton for overwrought musical dramas, the restored version currently available on DVD (with stills and sound tapes standing in for lost footage on the cutting-room floor).

Some people don't like this film, claiming: Too long! Too ham-fisted! Judy's weight fluctuates too much and she's too old! Who did her hair, for God's sake! James Mason is too drunkenly psychotic to be considered charming! To that, I say: Pooh. Have you no appreciation for art direction? Cinematographer Sam Leavitt's use of CinemaScope is stupendously rich and eye-poppingly colorful. Oscar-nominated Art director/Set Decorator Malcolm C. Bert earned every vote of his nomination. I always thought I'd grow up to own a house where I would decorate every room as an homage to every set in this film. I was a strange and underdeveloped 23-year-old, I admit. But, look, this musical is just saturated with creative thought processes, some of them in need of editing, some of them overly ambitious. But they add up to a bunch of errors in judgment that somehow manage to stand the test of time.

So while elements of "A Star Is Born" don't jive with today's hip, now, happening world (like the entire story, for instance), one thing is for sure: Ms. Garland has the most fantastic voice in Hollywood musical history. She really belts it out here and manages to be completely heart-felt as well. Plus her Vicki Lester/Esther Blodgett is a sweet-natured, enabling, loyal sort. If her relationship with James Mason's falling-down-drunk Norman Maine is unhealthy, who are we to judge? I mean, look at Norman's fabulous bachelor pad--who wouldn't fall for that? And that is successful art direction. And now...

Look at the pinks and sparkly tiaras of the opening scene! Only there to wow us with their pinkness and sparkliness.

Which are echoed in this fading-out chandelier. Wowee-wow-wow.

What alternate universe is this? This scene just keeps going into "over-budget" territory.

Ulp.

 

This is a great room to pass out in, and the fact that he manages to hit the bed first shows what a pro drinker Norman Maine is.

Nice matte painting from Hans Koenekamp and crew. I like to give matte painters credit when possible, though I don't know who actually painted this.

The bamboo interiored, intentionally fake palm-tree night club, was built from the ground up with no purpose other than to get Norman from this end of town to the other while looking for Esther and her ultimate singing voice. I mean, she's not even here. And he just leaves, ignoring the advances of the would-be groupie sitting at table 12. And still, I want to go to this club.

Oh, there she is, at another club, after-hours, belting out The Man That Got Away. Check out that multi-colored screen, back on the left. Just a minute detail to liven up the joint. Judy sounds fabulous in this clip, but how does she muster this energy so late at night after two performances already? I don't wanna know...

You go, Garland.

The cheap motel Esther must reside in, between on-the-road digs. Very JC Penney in scope, but kind of sweet. I've stayed in worse, believe me. There was this Motel 6 in Portland--oh baby, let's not go there...

More of Norman's Asian-inspired digs. What's that thing to the right of the fireplace? Visual interest.

Nothing much to see here, folks. Just thought I'd note the two hanging sconces on either side of the bed with the lamp in the foreground. Someone needs a lot of light, perhaps for reading all those star contracts and screenplays.

When I saw this needless scrim, I got so excited, I dropped my optical mouse off the desk. Needless scrim--a rarely used theatrical device that just looks cool.

The intro to the seemingly endless Born In A Trunk. Check out the juxtaposition of the pants against that flower backdrop. That's movie magic.

I used to work with some former Midwestern art students who became San Francisco hipsters.They would play Born In A Trunk in their restaurant at closing time. There's nothing like the sound of plates and wine glasses clinking together on the way to the dishwasher with this epic show-business saga pumping through the ceiling speakers—made clean-up a breeze.

And look at this funky art direction. George Cukor had left town for Europe when producers (including Garland) inserted into the film. It has a spare, minimalist (cheap) look that doesn't match the rest of the art direction. Plus, viewers complained: It goes on too long! Well, they obviously never bussed tables at midnight like I did. Thanks, Judy, for getting me through every weekend my sophomore year in college.

Norman's bizarro studio-lot dressing room. Bigger than most NYC apartments and full of weaponry. Ominous, and not a very beguiling view of the studio-system way of interior decoration.

Norman and Esther/Vicki's magnificent beach-front property. It's a miniature. I would love to have this on my fireplace mantel.

Fabulous parties featuring multi-room views and swanky guests holding strong cocktails.

 Too many cocktails can undo a man. Norman's Asian inspiration has been feminized under Vicki's guidance. She's taking over the world, his world and ours.

Mid-century modern. This set was designed to be completely overrun by Vicki's number Someone At Last. Take a look at every inch of this still. She will use all these props in a dance routine that is exhausting but somehow uplifting for Norman, whose star is on the wane. And there's jazz hands too.

Throw pillows, furniture, leopard rug, lamps, a wall clock, strobe light, and even houseplant fronds all have their moment in this one. Not the most P.C. of numbers but better than watching kitties on the Internet.

Christmas at the fabulous beach-front property is not a festive affair with Norman in a sanitarium attempting to dry out. What's in all those packages anyway? I think they're home-versions of TV game shows, like Password and To Tell The Truth. That's what my parents used to get for Christmas.

Some miserable modern art, to go with Norman's demise.

And we end on a bleak note. Sorry. Vicki will triumph of course, because it's Hollywood. But for now, her master bedroom suite is a textured honeycomb of misery and despair. Still, she will pick up the pieces and carry on the dream of being Mrs. Norman Maine and when all is said and done, that's apparently a step up from being Esther Blodgett.

An excellent and very detailed account of the design, building and dismantling of the fabulous Malibu beach house is at Jetset Modern. Writer Sandy McLendon includes an anecdote about what happened to all the mid-century modern furniture that Judy used so well in her Someone At Last number. It's a funny story, like so many in the movie industry.

Freaky toys for freaky people

It's TOY SEASON. I mean, Christmas, Joyous Noel. But seriously, as my mom told me during our exhausting shopping excursion today, "It's really for the kids." Well, my kid doesn't even know what Christmas means. We don't go to church and he actually doesn't have a concept of God, so for him, Christmas means ordering toys from Santa. He even brought a catalog last year to show Santa the exact makes and model numbers. He's very practical, my kid.

I wanted to bring my movie camera into the toy store so many times this year, but of course I always forgot each time we went. And it's too late now. The shelves are getting picked clean like Christmas carrion. And chances are, even if I'd brought my camera, the toys wouldn't have worked properly. Like the time I walked down a baby-doll aisle at Target and a whole line of dolls "woke up" and started cooing out to me, crying, trying to mechanically climb out of the boxes, designed to look like cribs, and basically scaring the be-Jesus out of me. If I had my camera. They would have just sat there, looking innocent and in need of batteries--I'm sure of it.

So here's a brief round-up of weirdness at the toy store. It's all about the economy. And Baby Jesus, of course.

Fisher Price Bigfoot. No comment. Just see for yourself. Many children would not forgive or forget if you gave this to them. Others would LOVE it, and those are the ones you should watch with an eagle eye at all times.






Barbie Sweet Talking Ken Dollwas just released in time for the holidays and what a find. Girls record sweet-talk into his chest, then push one of three buttons on his back for deep-voiced Ken, medium-voiced Ken, and I guess, girl-voiced Ken. I know when I was a teenager, I would have gotten a lot of use out of this, recording the choices phrases I heard yelled from the quarry-truck drivers as my friends and I walked to school on their route each day. Hearing Sweet Talking Ken bellow unspeakable obscenities back at me would have given me the incentive to throw him over the roof of our house over and over again. How cathartic.










Monster High Dolls. The sexualization of our teenage monster dolls has got to stop, don't you agree?

I haven't watched any Phineas and Ferb but apparently this is a Perry karaoke system. I believe Perry is, judging by his pricey electronics line, some kind of angry blue platypus, though he looks merely perplexed here. Could be because he resembles a footstool more than a karaoke machine. He's also a digital camera and an alarm clock, none of which costs less than $60. Disney Channel markets to children like the free-market system is imploding into a black hole any moment now. You gotta admire their immediacy of action when it comes to leveraging their hit shows.





Face Bank! Eats and burps. Just like a real...face.

Sorting Myself Out

I've been working on a movie-still project for the blog but it's a long movie. Some might say "vanity project," so it's taking a while. Work requirements and the stern task-master that is Christmas have already butted in, plus Daria-watching in the morning with a bowl of cereal on my lap. It's a very hectic life I lead. In the mean time, please enjoy:



From the lazy, self-indulgent and always funny Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews.

Also: this octopus is carrying a coconut. Just so you know.

Classic Rock Vocals for the classic rock minimalist

I think Clear Channel Communications, Inc. should seriously think about a radio station that only plays classic-rock vocal tracks--just to mix it up a bit. Especially around the Bay Area. How many of you Bay Areans are driving around (and you're always driving around) thinking, "MAN, I wish these classic rock stations would play even more Steve Miller Band." Well, for you, perhaps a vocals-only station isn't necessary. But for the rest of us--we need a little variety around here. Even if it's the same regurgitated music, broken up into separate tracks.

The classic classic-rock vocal by David Lee Roth. Imagine standing in a tiny recording booth with a big mic and this comes out of your vocal chords. Pretty awesome--goddammit baby, I ain't lyin'...




I need more reverb (and background vocals--the unsung heroes of many pop songs).




Ladies! You have not been forgotten. Once a month, Classic-Rock Vocals-Only station will play this song. So just quit bugging us already, OKAY?



Baby boomers--you're included too. KFOG needs a vocals-only show even if it's at 3 a.m. People over 57 have lots of sleep issues.




Some of us have wondered over the years, how in the world did ABBA sing like that? The answer: high-waisted leather pants.



Add background vocals and instruments for instant ABBA.

Girl Bands That Time Forgot

Some of you might remember them. It helps to be over 40 and if you hung out in a college radio station for a few years, so much the better. Before the Internet, we relied on cooler people than us and fanzines for our information. Now there's YouTube to continue this information-gathering legacy.

Kleenex - "Nice" The lawyers at the Kimberly-Clark Corporation encouraged them to change their name, so they did (to LiLiPUT). This was recorded in 1978 from the mean streets of Switzerland.


The Mo-Dettes - "White Mice" They only made one album back in 1981, so if you blinked, you missed them.


The Slits - "Instant Hit" The Slits were truly making it up as they went along. Lead singer Ari Up would go on to celebrate dub reggae in the New Age Steppers. RIP Ari Up.


The Raincoats - "The Void" Dammit, every time I embed something by The Raincoats, it gets ripped away from YouTube like a copyright-infringement tornado. I don't know what the issue is with Raincoats songs. They're not that precious. And yet, they actually kind of are...


Tiger Trap - "Words and Smiles" In this batch of girl-groups, this is relatively recent--1993. But I don't hear a lot of praise for Tiger Trap lately, so let's hear it for Tiger Trap--yay!


And while I'm thinking of the 90s, here's Bratmobile, who seemed to be touring constantly during the early part of that decade. They kept sounding like this on a regular basis and so I say, hats off to you, Bratmobile.

Neolithic dioramas to mull over

Taken with a camera phone at the San Francisco Public Library. If some of the images are a little blurry, sorry--it is the Neolithic era and not everything can be sharp-focus during the stone age. A fine job from the students at Presidio Middle School with emphasis on farming and hunting. You know the kids who featured "hunting" were thinking, "Hmmm, gotta get some blood in there..."

Disco Afflictions

Disco wasn't just a celebration of debauchery and dancing in shiny Lycra finery. No--it was problematic on several levels. The music spells it out clearly and succinctly: inappropriate boogying, disaster, hangovers--it could all lead to Armageddon--but what a blast.

The Trammps - "Disco Inferno" Usually infernos are considered bad things. Nobody wants to be part of a raging inferno, but The Trammps made it sound fun; inviting even. Try to resist their invitation to "burn baby burn." You can't, can you? You're out of control but it's so entertaining when the boogie starts to explode.


The Sylvers - "Boogie Fever" Disco dancing as treatable disease. But it's a good thing. If everyone did the bump all night long, think how much our recession-era malaise would lift.


Diana Ross has a "Love Hangover" but she doesn't want a cure. Understandable, since she's fabulous.


Evelyn Champagne King - "Shame" Her youthful self-worth is careening toward a bottomless pit of confusion and insanity. Nonetheless, we cannot keep our feet from tip-tapping across the dance floor. Shame!