My First Album(s)

Once again, I steal an idea from the AV Club. In this article, the AV Club staff discuss the first albums they ever purchased with their own money. (Oh, and while I'm thinking of it: Noel Murray! Donna Bowman! Nathan Rabin! Where are your entries?) So I thought I would share mine. You're welcome.

I have a very clear memory of that day. It was at Blue Sky Music in Ojai. It was early '84, which means I was 13. And I bought two tape cassettes at the same time. That's right, tape cassettes: not as cheesy as 8-tracks, but equally as dead, the all-but-forgotten stepping stone between the retro-cool record album and the high tech CD (which itself is being driven to obsolescence by the mp3 -- damn you, change!!!).

The first:


ZZ TOP: ELIMINATOR
And the second:


"WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC IN 3-D
I regret nothing.

I got Eliminator because ZZ Top was everywhere that year. I don't know if you can recall back that far, you young folks, but when Eliminator came out, MTV was blanketed with ZZ Top videos, all of them featuring that car, those spinning guitars, and scads of hot, hot ladies. (Well, almost all of them, the exception being "TV Dinners," which was just weird as hell.) I don't think I'm exaggerating by saying these videos helped establish the identity of the still fledgling music channel and set the template for a generation of music videos to follow. I mean, just check 'em out:


Gimme All Your Lovin'


Sharp Dressed Man


Legs
Great videos, great album, great band.

I got the "Weird Al" tape because I was then, am now, and always shall be a huge nerd. I used to stay up late listening to Dr. Demento on the radio, hoping to catch a new "Weird Al" tune, and I was thrilled every time MTV would play the video for "Eat It," or "I Lost on Jeopardy" (which, back in the day, was a lot). I'm still a "Weird Al" fan, and 3-D is still entertaining as hell. So there.

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So what about you folks? What was the first album you ever bought with your very own cash? Tell me in the comments!

I may be an atheist, but God still hates me

Proof that the universe is out to get me:

• NBC has rewarded Medium, a show whose pretensions of depicting "real-life" psychic crime-solving I find to be morally repugnant and infuriating, with advance commitment to a full second season in 2005-06. Sure, it's all based on real events! Psychic crime-solving is totally not fake at all! And hey, did you know The X-Files was based on real life, too? Agents Mulder and Scully were fashioned after real people, and they really did solve paranormal cases for the government! And they really did meet really for-real aliens! And they all rode around on unicorns and ate food made out of rainbows and happy thoughts!!



• Last week on Joan of Arcadia: Hilary Duff. Next week on Joan of Arcadia: Haylie Duff. About to be deleted from my TiVo Season Pass list: Joan of Arcadia.



• Robert De Niro recently told a reporter (Salon link, registration or day pass required) that he and Martin Scorsese were thinking about a sequel to Taxi Driver. "We're planning a sequel built around the character when he is older," he said. Yeah, that should be great. That shouldn't be an abomination which tarnishes the memory of the original at all. Look at how well-received and universally beloved all those other years-later sequels of cinematic masterpieces are: The Two Jakes*, Texasville, Return to Oz, The Odd Couple II, The Godfather: Part III, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, Psychos II and III. Unparalleled triumphs all!

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*I was actually in The Two Jakes, as an extra. The scene on the golf course was filmed at the Ojai Valley Inn, where I worked as a busboy when I was a teenager. I played a waiter -- promotion! I'm one of those tiny dots in a white jacket roaming around the outdoor dining area in the background. And I was great. The movie itself: it wasn't horrible, but lord was it unnecessary.

TV: Battlestar Galactica

I'm stuck in my crazy little town again today; the one way out of town that has been cleared of mudslides is now in danger of collapsing, so my fifteen minutes commute was three hours and counting this morning (and I even left an hour early!), with at least another hour and a half ahead of me, when I turned back and went home. I would've gotten to the office, probably worked three hours, and then left at 1PM to try to get a jump on the three or four hours commute back home. Which just isn't worth it. (Fortunately my boss agreed.)

Good thing I've got TiVo! And plenty of TV to write about. For example: the new version of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel.

I loved last year's mini-series, the precursor to this new continuing series. But when I recently spoke with a friend about it, he said, "Dude, they turned Starbuck into a chick!" And I had to say, in essence, "Well, you know what? I do not have any allegiance to Dirk Benedict. I have no reverence for the sanctity of the character's original depiction. It's not like they replaced Orson Welles with Pauly Shore. It's Dirk freakin' Benedict." In fact, I will go farther (and pregnant women or those with heart conditions may want to look away): the original series sucked. It sucked ass.

The only reason anybody liked it at all when it first came out was because Star Wars had debuted the year before, and fans were hungry for more science fiction, however they could get it. And even in that frenzy for more space opera, how crappy was that crappy knock-off? I'll tell you how crappy: it only lasted one season. Most people don't seem to remember that. It was cancelled after one lousy season. You know why? You know why? Because it sucked! Come on! I just said it! Stay with me, here! (The less said about the attempt to reprise it two years later, as Galactica 1980, the better.)

So yeah, a chick is playing Starbuck. And I really like her. Her name is Katee Sackhoff, and she was on a great Richard Dreyfuss show a couple years back called The Education of Max Bickford. (Although I will admit I may be alone in that opinion, since, like the original Galactica, it too was cancelled after only one season.) She's more than convincing as the charismatic, tightly wound, self-destructive Starbuck, and has an appealing tomboy-sexiness to her.

That's not nearly the only change from the original. Boomer's a chick, too. And the series is much darker in tone, with Commander Adama (a great Edward James Olmos performance) and President Laura Roslin (an equally great Mary McDonnell) having to make incredibly difficult choices to insure the survival of the human species -- such as, in the mini-series, abandoning dozens of refugee ships that couldn't keep up, or, in the new episodes, firing on one of the refugee ships that may (or may not) have been infiltrated by the Cylons.

And, oh yeah, the Cylons. They're not "chrome toasters" anymore. (Or at least, those aren't the ones we primarily see.) No, the Cylons have perfected a model that perfectly replicates a human being. Fanboy reaction: "That's worse than making Starbuck a chick! Now there are Cylon chicks!" Again I say: I could not be less concerned about the change. It's a change for the better, in my eyes. It makes for a more interesting story. The stakes are higher, the intrigue is greater. Especially considering one of the main cast members, Boomer, is a Cylon sleeper agent. Who appears to believe that she is really human, and who is fighting as strongly as possible against her subliminally programmed impulses to sabotage the Galactica.

Also interesting are the changes made to the character Baltar, who, in the original series, was an active traitor to the humans, and who was basically the leader of the Cylons (if I recall correctly). Here, Baltar is a duplicitous weasel, but mostly he's a dupe. He was having an affair with a Cylon agent, and gave her access to the planetary defenses of the human colonies (net result: the near destruction of the human race. Oops!). Now he's working with the President, while constantly scheming his way out of being discovered as the accidental key to the Cylon invasion. Also, before they parted company, the Cylon implanted a chip in his brain; now Baltar sees and hears her as if she were right there, whispering in his ear at all times. Kind of like Scorpius did to Crichton on Farscape. Only, you decide who had the better deal. Here's Scorpius:


And here's the Cylon known as "Number Six" (played by Tricia Helfer):


Tough choice.

The first two episodes of the new series have met the high standards set by the mini-series. I was wondering how they'd be able to sustain the story, now that we've moved beyond the devastation of the human colonies, and established the search for the mythical thirteenth colony, "Earth." But these episodes have successfully maintained the tension, the paranoia, the high stakes, and the interesting character arcs. And they have smartly split the action between the Galactica and the refugee ships in space, and a survivor fleeing from the chrome toaster-type Cylons on one of the old colony worlds, who has been befriended by Boomer (who is also still on the Galactica. See, there are only twelve different models of the humanoid Cylons, but there are multiple copies of each).

In short, I'm a big fan of this new Galactica in a way I never was of the old one. If you can stomach science fiction at all, it's more than worth checking out. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I can't imagine 2005 being a year in which this won't be one of my top two or three favorite new shows.

BOOKS: Lowered Expectations

I think the missing ingredient in better enjoying the two books I read this week is lowered expectations.

For example, the first book was called Heroics for Beginners, by John Moore. It's a comic fantasy; not quite Terry Pratchett, more like Robert Asprin, or Craig Shaw Gardner. Light comic fantasy. How high could my expectations have been?

Well, back in college, I read a book by John Moore called Slay and Rescue, and it was very funny indeed. I decided this author was going to be one to keep an eye on for frequent entertainment. I figured he'd be cranking out two or three books a year, like the above-mentioned Asprin or Gardner. Or Pratchett, even. Instead, he didn't publish another book until Heroics, twelve years later. After twelve years, I thought, this had better be one hell of a book.

It was all right. It's about a prince who has to infiltrate an Evil Overlord's fortress with only the Handbook of Practical Heroics (kind of a Heroes for Dummies) to guide him. It's often hilarious in its deconstruction of the villain's obligations to tradition (he has to learn a menacing laugh, and shake his fists in the air in the pose called "milking the giant cow"), and the roles his lead minion and sexy assistant play (the minion is supposed to be tricked and the assistant seduced by the hero; things go wrong when one hero tricks the assistant and seduces the minion). It's a quick, funny, enjoyable satire of heroic conventions. But I might've liked it more if I hadn't been waiting twelve years for it. Hopefully Moore's next book will be out before 2016.

The other book is Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away. I picked it up at the used bookstore after reading an online review raving about how hilarious Bryson was; further, at the store, the owner (I think) told me Bryson was far better than David Sedaris. (Then again, he also told me, in Comic Book Guy-like earnestness, that Bryson was for smart people and Sedaris was not, even after he had asked me if I liked Sedaris and I had told him yes. That's the new ownership of Ojai's Bart's Books, folks: douchebaggery on parade!)

Bryson is no Sedaris. Bryson is not even Dave Barry. He's neither as incisively brilliant nor as gut-bustingly hilarious as had been suggested to me. But he is smart, and he is funny. He's a comedic travel memoirist, is perhaps the best way to describe him; he's written about the Appalachian Trail, and small-town America, and of course England, where he spent those "20 Years Away". I'm a Stranger Here Myself collects the columns he wrote on his return to the U.S., and is filled with many sharp and funny observations about American life we natives have grown to take for granted, like the surprising (to him) benevolence of Post Office workers toward their customers, or the general over-emphasis on signs and rules. In one passage, he ignores a "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign:

After a couple of minutes, the hostess... came up to me and said in a level tone, "I see you've seated yourself."

"Yup," I replied proudly. "Dressed myself too."

...She sighed. "Well, the server in this section is very busy, so you may have to wait a while for her to get to you."

There was no other customer within fifty feet, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I had disregarded a posted notice and would have to serve a small sentence in purgatory in consequence.

I'm enjoying this book a lot, and will most likely seek out other books by Bryson, but I think I'd have an even higher impression of him if I hadn't had my expectations raised.

Lowered expectations, by the way, are also key to the enjoyment of this blog.

Ojai Film Festival

My lovely hometown of Ojai, CA has just concluded its annual film festival. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to see any movies this year, but I did get a chance to admire the wonderful art done for the Festival's poster and catalogue, by Ojai's own Sergio Aragones (click the picture for a larger view; you can see Sergio, sporting his trademark handlebar mustache, in the middle of the page, slightly below and to the right of Peter Pan).


(My posting of this art, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I just sent an email to Mark Evanier -- regarding a minor factual error in a recent Saturday Night Live-related post of his -- and am hoping that my posting art by a close friend and collaborator of his will make him view my blog with a favorable eye. Nothing whatsoever.)

I have a small anecdote about my experience volunteering for the Ojai Film Festival a couple years ago. Wanna hear it? Too bad:

I was manning the information hotline at Ojai's Tourist Board. Which was hardly a hotline; for the little work I had to do, it was a tepidline at best, probably even a frigidline. I wasn't getting a lot of calls, is what I'm saying. But then I got a call from Rich Thorne. (No, you're not supposed to know who he is. I'm about to explain it.)

"Yeah, I'm Rich Thorne," he said, after I answered with "Ojai Film Festival Information, how may I help you?" "I'm one of the filmmakers. Where do I pick up my filmmaker's pass?" This was a pass that would let him into all the private parties, screenings, etc.

Well, by remarkable coincidence, I already knew Rich Thorne was one of the filmmakers. The evening before, I had seen Mother Ghost, which he had directed, and which was written by and starred Mark Thompson, of L.A. (and nationally syndicated) radio's Mark and Brian. It was a surprisingly touching short film, about the main character's coming to grips with his mother's death, and was packed with stars I can only assume were doing Mark a favor out of personal friendship, from (the always sexxy) Dana Delaney, to Charles Durning, to Garry Marshall, to Kevin Pollak and beyond. I was a little thrilled that I had the director on the phone.

"Oh, I saw your movie last night!" I said with sincere enthusiasm. "Mother Ghost. I thought it was really great. And the audience really loved it, too. Good, good stuff."

And without a pause, without a single iota of acknowledgement of the compliment, as though I hadn't even spoken, with undisguised impatience and dismissiveness, Thorne said, "Yeah, look, where do I get the pass?"

So I told him. And I silently filed away the new knowledge that, for certain Hollywood types, the "thank" in "thank you" is only four letters long, and begins with "f".