It’s a shitty bar… more restaurant than a bar really and the food ain’t that great. It’s too far from the subway in the middle of nowhere. There’s a back room, a restaurant, a front bar and an outdoor cafe, but they all have different rules about who can sit there and who you have to buy your drinks from. The drinks are weak and too expensive. On weekends, it’s crowded with assholes desperately shuffling from back room to front door trying to find somewhere where to stand.
I thrilled and honored to go to your birthday party/moving-to-LA party/pre-gallery-opening drinks party, but every time they’re at Half King I have to weigh my priorities of personal enjoyment toward my duty towards our friendship. I like you; I hate Half King.
I redid my portfolio and did a rough front page for my site. I flaked and couldn’t think of a decent cover image or color scheme, so I’ll do it later. Some parts of the design portfolio don’t work either.
I’m seeking an office for my next video project. I am not blessed with a day job at present (nor have I ever been at one long enough to have filming priveleges), so I rely on people on good terms with their bosses would do me the very great honor of helping me out.
To facilitate the massive amount of fame and development deals just around the corner, I have re-exported all my 102 videos and put them on YouTube.
A reliable source told me that all agents and managers on the left coast do all day is watch videos on YouTube to find tomorrow’s stars. The infintesimal improvement from my personal Codec compression and the ersatz Channel102 compression will make all the difference.
I’m biting Jackie Clarke’s credit for introducing all you nerds to Forbidden Zone (1980), which is like the retarded half-brother to similar “high camp” cult film Rocky Horror. Richard Elfman made it as a vehicle to expand on the live cabaret shows he did with “The Mystic Knights of the Oingo-Boingo” (including brother Danny Elfman, who I was depressed to learn is a Scientologist). It features lots of topless women, black face minstrels, 70 year old Jewish man playing a kid and Hervé Villechaize.
Like most “cult films” most of it is boring. Either keep the hash pipe or your remote’s fast forward button close at hand for all segments that don’t feature a musical number. But the musical numbers (and some surprisingly good animation… sort of Fleisher Bros-meets-the-credits-of-You Can’t Do That On Television) are such specifically wonderful weirdness, like this one—
The bald boxers were a performance art (?) act called The Kipper Kids and as far as I can tell, this is mostly what they did (bronx cheers). One of them went on to marry Bette Midler. The “singer” was some kid they pulled in off the street and told him to lip sync to the track, but he got too nervous and just stood there. So then they had the screenwriter come in and do the mouth and they Clutch-Cargoed it on in post. And then the song gets cut off by pert-nippled toplessness… This is Forbidden Zone in a nutshell.
Netflix has the DVD (along with recent interviews with the cast, if you really want to depress yourself), but most of the musical numbers are on Youtube. Look for the delightful profanity(and disco)-laden retread of “Swingin’ The Alphabet” (a number done by The Three Stooges ), the delightful “Pico & Sepulveda,” and proto-”Oogie Boogie” Danny Elfman showcase “Squeezit the Moocher.” (Find the last one yourself)
In a final monument to selling out, I was alerted that the Dilbert cartoon (largely forgotten by pop-culture historians) used the Forbidden Zone’s theme in their opening credits (or Danny Elfman was too hungover to write a theme song and just passed that along) with lyrics and mumbling Sambo-screams edited out.
A friend from college is having major chest-cut-open type surgery and is flying in to Baltimore for it. (It’s only a pre-whatver; the acutal surgery is in May.)
I’m going back to DC this week to wish her well and then staying for the cherry blossoms and the Jesus resurrection. I’m experimenting with taking the Chinatown bus instead of the tres chere Amtrak.
