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August 31, 2003

Beautiful, no matter what they say

Everyone's showing the Madonna/Britney kiss picture. But only Moviepoopshoot seems to have the Madonna-Christina shot.

Some general thoughts on the Video Music Awards, which I watched at the same time as Smackdown and thus missed some things like Christina's solo performance, heck many of the performances since I didn't care about them:

-Why get Chris Rock to host and then have him do nothing but introduce people the whole night? His digs at Good Charlotte and Coldplay were welcome, though.

-Points lost by Justin Timberlake: He calls Coldplay "the best band in the world." Props for not saying that aboput *NSYNC, I guess, but Coldplay have yet to show me that they're anything more than third-rate U2 imitators.

-Points gained by Justin Timberlake: Calling his win for Best Male Video over Johnny Cash "a travesty." But then he had to go and claim that somehow he was sharing the award with Johnny. No, punkass -- he OWNS the award. No sharing. You do not deserve that yet. Stay popular for 50 years, and you will.

-Either MTV audiences are stupid, or Ben Stiller is not funny -- no-one laughed at his Cruz Bustamante joke.

-MTV's newfound love of hot lesbian action at awards shows is a good thing. Christina Aguilera in place of the rumored J-lo was a good call too.

-Missy Elliott gets video of the year over Johnny Cash? Heck, she seems talented, and clearly is not getting by on sluttiness like some. But honestly, I don't know anyone who listens to her a lot. Maybe that's my limitation.

-50 cent seems totally inarticulate when not rapping

-Don't tell Metallica to do a medley of cover tunes, and only give them a minute and a half. Come on. "Guns N Roses" (aka Axl and some guys he found on the street) got to do THREE songs last year. Come to think of it, host Jimmy Fallon got lots of funny bits last year, while Rock got almost nothing, probably because he was too mean to MTV artists. Loved when he nailed Justin T. on his situational use of Ebonics.

-Now that the Crank Yanker puppets have been on a major awards show, will it be harder for them to prank people?

-There are many reasons to slam Kelly Osbourne, but those columnists who slam her for probably not knowing who Duran Duran are while presenting them an award, are very likely wrong. She seemed genuinely excited to meet them, and in case I need to point out the obvious, SHE'S ENGLISH. Duran Duran never went away in the UK.

-the post-show was horrible. That one shaved-head guy was clearly so pissed at Cash not winning (don't blame him) that he didn't wanna do his job right, his nerdy sidekick seemed to have no idea how to do the job at all (MTV: hire me instead), and longtime correspondent John Norris is starting to sound like Norm Macdonald impersonating John Norris. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad MTV didn't fire him for turning 30, but he needs to prove that that was anything more than a sympathy call, and I ain't buying it yet.

Overall, not as good a show as last year. But I'm sure it offended Dennis Prager, which is always a good thing.

Posted by LYT at 12:54 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2003

SET REPORT -- UNTIL THE NIGHT

This could be the start of something big. Anyhow, most set reports get written by PAs or something. I'm gonna tell you about my day shooting scenes for my character in this upcoming indie feature.

There were rumors going around that I would play two different characters in the film -- actually, I started those rumors. But they aren't true, not any more. Too much LYT makes the ladies faint too much.

I'm not going to be spoiling much about the film, because I still don't really know what the story is beyond my small part. From what I can gather, it seems to be an erotic drama about a fella (Norman Reedus, whom you probably know best as the stoner sidekick in Blade II, or the co-lead in The Boondock Saints) who encounters an ex-girlfriend (Kathleen Robertson, I believe) and learns that she may or may not have gotten into some really seedy stuff. Russian gangsters are involved somehow. I also know that Theresa Russell and freakishly bronze-skinned Christopher Lee soundalike Douglas Dunning are in the cast as well.

My part involves being at a club that Reedus and another beautiful lady (Sarah Lassez) are at, and hitting on Sarah in an insane and frightening manner (much like the way I approach every woman, or so I'm told). She tries to get Norman on the dancefloor, he declines, so she comes over to scary ol' me, and gives out her phone number, while falling for the line I feed her that my teeth are made of ivory. Later, I dance with her and follow her car for a little bit.

Anyhow, the interiors were shot at a club in Hollywood near my house. The place was empty, but it'll look full onscreen -- though there weren't a lot of extras, they crowded the camera and it will ultimately look like there were many more.

The club has no windows in the main area, so we were basically doing day for night. It was 9 a.m. Norman was mostly required to smoke and drink for most of the scene -- Lipton ice tea played the role of whiskey, unless it ran out, in which case water with a little shot of Diet Coke for coloring would do. Norman was super-friendly, taking the time to talk to all of the crew and the extras. When he found out I'm a critic (Greg the director blew my cover early on, the dirty rat!), he was a little defensive, but then I told him I'd given him great reviews in the past, which is true (check out the review of Floating on this site's "Rants & Reviews" section), and he high-fived me. We got along fine after that, and frankly it was an honor for me to be in a scene with him.

Initially, Greg had told me that Sarah's character was kinda crazy, and I was just some normal guy, surprised to be hit on. That concept seemed to change as we went along. I was directed to get progressively crazier, and I think the footage ultimately makes it appear that I'm a creepy stalker and she's not initiating anything. Cast and crew were alternately amused and terrified by my performance, or so they said.

In the main shot I'm in, Sarah approaches me and we talk, unheard by the camera, so I made something different up each time just to ensure real interaction. Everything from "So, is Gigli really as bad as they say?" to "Ever been to Africa?" I found out later from the imdb that J. Lo's girlfriend in Gigli, Missy Crider, is actually in Until the Night. Not that that means anything -- Missy was certainly not to blame for that film's suckage.

I expected Sarah to be kind of standoffish, but she was really nice, and beautiful. During the dance sequence which followed, she reminded me a bit of one of my cousins. For that scene, I had to dance really suggestively and obscenely around her. Channeling the most lecherous former coworkers I'd ever known, I did so, and at one point accidentally snagged a strand of her hair, sniffed it, then let it go. I hope that makes the final cut, because it was one of those in-the-moment things that seems like it'll work. The make-out scene I was promised never happened, but that may be just as well given her resemblance to my cousin. She had her eyes closed during the dance sequence; I told her I apologize in advance for what she will see when she finally views the dailies.

We did like five takes of the dance scene, and it wasn't a short shot -- needed high energy every time. I somehow threw my shoulder out on take 4, and it's still sore. All for the love of the art.

The actor playing the bartender, who only addressed me as "Ivory," said I was freaking him out during the dance scene. That bodes well, given that he's a conspiracy theorist with nipple rings. I told Greg that my character, previously named "Cute Guy," needed to be called Ivory, and he seemed cool with that. I like it, even though Ivory is also the name of a female wrestler. And a bar of soap.

Greg had initially asked me if I could look really different for another character, so I had planned to shave my head and all facial hair. Woulda been fun, but the shooting schedule required me to continue the "Ivory" character on a subsequent day, with hair. Greg offered me the choice, and I said we should do whatever he best felt served the story, since, as I may have mentioned, I still don't really know what the story is. So the skinhead look will have to wait, and Ivory will return for a driving scene sometime next week.

I left at around 1:30, thanking cast and crew before heading out to see Marci X. Man, that film just sent my buzz crashing straight into the ground.

Posted by LYT at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2003

SARS caused by... Fags! Heeh heeh heeh!

From Movieguide:

"Aside from the medical and psychological evidence on homosexuality and pedophilia, there is the universal condemnation of sodomy in the Word of God...

For example, Canada, which has been ahead of the United States in the road to sinful serfdom, is suffering the fate of those who stew in the juice of their own sin. SARS has marked Toronto as an infected metropolis, while across the border in the United States, the devastation has not occurred. Mad cow disease, crop blights, strikes, and all of the problems plaguing Canada are a perfect example of what happens when people abandon God."

Jesus Christ, save me from your followers!

Am I a bad person?

Don't answer that yet. I know my right-wing readers are already nodding their heads...

I went to the Arclight cafe the other night, because, as a member, I get a $10 coupon good for this week only. The food there is mediocre and overpriced, but with a coupon an entree becomes practically free. I ordered the chicken penne. It came. It was decent. But by the time it came, I wanted a drink.

Now, understand that I have worked both as a busboy and a movie theater concessionaire. My sympathies are inherently towards those in customer service. This is to preface the fact that when the busboy delivered my food, he asked if he could get me anything else. Having been a busboy, I know that this is really the server's job, but hey, he volunteered by asking that question. So I tell him I want one of the "Friday the 13th" cocktails I saw advertised on the way in.

Side note: I'm glad the Arclight's come back around to inventing theme drinks for movies. The ones they came up with for xXx were better than the film itself. I never had a chance to try the Seabiscuit old-style cocktails, but remember being disappointed there wasn't a Blue Crush beverage. In honor of Freddy vs. Jason, they now have a Freddy cocktail, a Jason cocktail, a Nightmare cocktail and a Friday the 13th cocktail. Anyway...

So I tell the busboy I'd like the Friday the 13th cocktail, the one that's basically Kurant, Coke, and Grenadine. He tells me he doesn't know what that is. I remind him of the huge sign on the way in, "You know, the Freddy vs. Jason cocktails?"

"Yes, we have some special cocktails for that."

"I know. I want the one with Kurant and Coke, the Friday the 13th one."

"I don't know which one that is. I'll have to get your server."

He never does. When my server finally stops by again, now that I'm 2/3 of the way through the meal, I ask him for the cocktail. When he actually gets around to bringing it, I'm done eating.

Anyway, total bill is $21.19, $11.19 with my coupon ($8 of which is the cocktail). I was still prepared to give an OK tip, not my usual 20% but maybe 15%, but then I give the server a $20, and he returns with $8 in change (81 cents short), breezing away before I can question. This is what I had a big problem with. I would likely have let you keep that extra coinage of my own choosing, but you dare to take it for granted and you blow it.

So I initially leave a $2 tip. Then I realize that, while that's a bad tip for a $21.19 tab, it's a good tip for an $11.19 one, and he might just think I was careless. Nope -- slow service plus pocketing my coins: He needs to know he fucked up and that I'm stiffing him, though I'm not quite hard-ass enough to leave no tip, since I'm sure he doesn't get paid well. So I left him a single dollar.

Does that make me bad?

Posted by LYT at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2003

Forgotten items

Regarding the Barney's Beanery night on Sunday:

Barney's can suck, especially as relates to their pool tables in close quarters. Avid players can jab you with their cues in all sorts of places, without giving a damn. One guy on Sunday was very considerate (and drunk, so there goes that stereotype), and kept apologizing, while giving us advance warning of his shots. But then there was this total bitch who kept jabbing me, and then when she realized she was doing so made a horrible face at me. Jaye asked "What's happening?" and later said she'd have kicked the bitch's ass if she had known what was going down. I thought about it, but guys can't fight girls except in self defense, and even then they'll get blamed.

Greg Crum insulted my physique. Need to work on it some more, then arm wrestle his ass.

Bars in L.A. need to loosen up. Legal deadline for buying alcohol is 2 a.m. But bars, like Barney's, take this to actually mean "kick everyone out BY 2 a.m." NO. WRONG. Last call should be 1:50. Kick out should be 2:15, minimum, with actual drink sale cut-off time at 2 a.m. Bars like to close at exactly 2, and in doing so stiff the customer of 10-15 minutes drinking time. Bastards.

A taste for Bush

What is it with all the totally hot Republican women I've been meeting lately? I always assumed that a strong independent woman voting Republican was like a gay Republican -- someone acting against their self-interest. Of course, out here it's easier to identify as a Republican if you're merely a fiscal conservative, as the fundamentalist nutjob baggage isn't quite so prevalent. Take a SoCal Republican hottie to the South and she might be horrified at her fellow party members.

Might also be to do with the Dems being so pathetic lately.

Funny, though, that on Luke Ford's site he often complains about meeting women who are too liberal. Maybe he should go to more bars and I should go to synagogues. I have the perfect pick-up line: "Hey baby, wanna sin, agog?"

OK, maybe not.

Posted by LYT at 12:48 AM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2003

John Kerry "French-looking"?

Just reading on Spinsanity that Rush and others have taken up this bizarre line of attack. Not sure I see it. I think of Frenchmen, in the broadest stereotypical terms, as either being aging smokers dressed in black, or stocky types with Asterix mustaches. Kerry looks Eastern European if anything. Maybe he enjoys smoking and urinating to a French extent.

But there is a cleverer tack one could take, if determined to make jokes based on fictititous superficialities. Kerry isn't Irish, and depsite conservative claims to the contrary, has never claimed that he is. If he were, however...it gets funny. See, when it comes to ethnic jokes, the Irish may be the only nation in the world that chooses not to mock another nation in obscene terms, but one of their own counties. That county is called Kerry. So you'll constantly here stuff on the order of "A Kerryman walks into a bar..." Playing on that would be more fun than the weird French thing, which really seems like grasping at straws.

And who do Kerrymen make fun of? The fine people of County Cork.

Stick with me, readers, and you'll learn valuable facts like these on a regular basis.

Three Days...of debauchery

Wow. This weekend was the kind everyone hopes for. Short of one that involves getting laid, that is. Everything else, though...perfecto.

Friday night, Ed returned briefly to town after being up north awhile. It was only for a few days, and he's already back up there, but in the short Angeles window, we quaffed brews, ate pizza, and watched some video footage I really wish I could talk to you about but absolutely cannot. It won't mean much at the moment anyhow, though it will later, I guarantee it. The kind of thing I'm gonna look back on, and one day tell you about when it's safe to do so.

Saturday was Dollar-per-loser, which I dub as such because I suspect it's what Perry Farrell makes off the gate. Drove town to Irvine with Mike, and I played him the new Metallica disc in the car, much as Chris Sivertson had done for me previously -- it takes this kind of word-of-mouth to prove to the diehard metalheads that James and co. really are back. Mike seemed to agree that it was pretty good. We picked up his lady-friend Christina, and headed to verizon Amphitheatre for the show. Parking was actually included in the ticket price for this event, but the only space we could find was by the porta-potties.

I had brought a towel to shield my head from the direct sunlight, but security somehow determined that towels and blankets are a threat to national security. Maybe they think only terrorists wear towels on their heads (and thanks for promoting that image, Charlie Daniels), even though mine was a blue towel with "Born in the USA" written on it. So towel had to be placed back in vehicle, and my head was now unprotected. As with the Metallica show, I would have to buy a shirt to cover it.

This proved to be a harder decision, though. Metallica always have great designs, but Lollapalooza merchandise this year frankly sucked, going for the same kind of retro/thrift store look that the Beck merchandise had had last month. On first pass, I couldn't find anything I liked.

Mainstage bands were all pretty good. Rooney I'm not really familiar with, but they sounded OK. Donnas were fantastic, with great stage presence, and fantastic hooters visible even from the far-up seats we were quarantined in. Jurassic 5 were very impressive -- since I saw the movie Scratch, I appreciate the art of turntabling a lot more, and they have two guys in that band who are virtuousos, along with three great rappers. I see a CD purchase in my future (gotta listen to Vanilla Ice's new one first, though -- I picked it up for $5. It's entitled "Hot Sex," yes really).

Perfect Circle sort of fulfilled the obligatory goth quotient. Audioslave impressed the skeptical Mike. I was just wowed to see Chris Cornell, who's a huge rock star in my book. I didn't realize quite what struggles he'd been through -- claimed not to remember most of Lolla '96, and to have been en route to self-destruction when the ex-Rage guys hooked up with him for Audioslave. Since the band only has one album, they padded out there second-to-last billed full set with covers and some Chris Cornell solo stuff -- this included Chris pulling a volunteer from the pit to sing whatever he wanted. The guy freestyle rapped, and didn't rhyme (WWE star John Cena is a better rapper, and that's saying something!), but it was fun to watch. I was sorry there were no pyros for the finale, since the Cochise video is nothing BUT pyros, but alas.

And Jane's Addiction -- well, they were pretty tight. Weird for a metal band that they didn't make you feel like head-banging -- it's more seductive and hypnotic. Hard to believe how long they've been around -- the pre-show audio included 1984 tunes like Grandmaster Melle Mel's "White Lines" just to let us know. I remember telling my Mom how weird it was for Jane's Addiction to be played on classic rock radio. Naturally, her response was, "What's Jane's Addiction?"

I like "Been Caught Stealing" much better live -- the canned dog barks always bugged me on CD.

Oh, and I did finally get a shirt I liked. One booth that sold almost exclusively shirts with some varaiant of "fuck" on them had a shirt reading "Fuck me, I'm famous." That's my motto, so that's how I covered my head for the day.

Second stage was not something I attended this year -- Jackass' Steve-O was supposed to headline and did not show, which made me sad. Probably busy stapling his testicles together or something.

I had wondered if they'd maintain the atmosphere of the previous years -- let's just say it's as commercial as it was ever accused of being -- commercials even played on the big screen between bands. But liberal activist groups still got their booths: Tom Morello's hard-lfet Axis of Justice, peta2, fuel cell efficiency booths, and the anti-smoking truth.com had a significant presence. Fistfuls of free gum were being handed out. I don't chew gum cuz of my TMJ, but I have a lot now -- you need any, gimme a call.

Coolest booth was the "Paint your tits!" tent, where women could get airbrushing on their upper body, and ever afterwards get away with walking around topless because the paint could technically qualify as clothing somehow. I'm all for that. Christina could not be persuaded.

Most uncool -- the legit tattoo booth specializing in freehand designs. Anyone who goes to a concert to be tattooed is an idiot. Ditto anyone who gets spontaneous tattoos. I love tats, which is why I believe in taking them seriously, and this ain't doing it. Many cool tats were being showcased by shirtless peeps, though. Always fun to look at. Wings of every description are popular on the shoulder blades. Somewhere, lots of bells must be ringing.

On the way out, the "fuck" T-shirt booth marked all their stuff down, so I bought a "Fuck Bush" shirt. Might get me in trouble if I wear it to a Press Club party someday. Beauty is it'll remain good for the entire Bush family in all their future political ventures.

On the way out, we took what looked to be a shortcut, but actually led into this vast lot full of empty new cars. Like stumbling onto a supervillain's stash or something. The path kept getting further and further away from where we needed to be. I quipped that it felt like the opening of House of 1,000 Corpses part 2. Mike climbed up a dirt mound and yelled "Wolverines!" I was impressed by the reference. The path did eventually lead back to civilization, but only after much self-doubt.

Sunday night was Jaye's second birthday party at "Marnye's" Beanery. It was emotional going there, and if you understand the sentence immediately preceding this one you'll know why: my last party at Barney's was a farewell for a friend whom I would never see alive again.

Big turnout this time, but I won't list everyone, because I don't know everyone's name. I will say that some of us did karaoke. I was pissed, having prepared "Ice Ice Baby,: that it was no longer in the book, so I signed up for Beck's "Loser" instead, and I was called first from our group. The machine fucked up early on, but they wouldn't restart, so I had to pick up in medias res (English teachers, aren't you proud of me using that phrase?), but think I did a decent Beck impersonation, with some added crotch grabbing and such. Not helping me was the fact that the lyrics were wrong: "soy un pardidor" was written "so, open the door." As a tribute to the track I most wanted to do, I did conclude with "Yo man, let's get outta here, word to ya mother." Matt's a big Beck fan, so the fact that he complimented me means something, I hope.

I don't remember the exact order, but one of the guests Jaye seems to have a crush on did a damn good "Pretty Woman," and Greg Crum got down with KC and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight." Matt S. was never called on, but he was feeling off-color anyhow. When Jaye took the stage for "Crazy,: she blew the house down -- no-one in the bar expected a legit rock star. The fact that Jaye didn't try to deny she was good, as would be characteristic of her, is a very good sign, I think. (sadly MIA on this night: Kevin Ford doing Whitney Houston, which rules the roost)

My body seemed to be processing beer faster than I could get drunk off of it, so at last call I slammed two Jack-and-Diets, which kept me fucked up for the next several hours, as we went to Angela and Kevin's place to watch outtakes from Kevin's long-delayed, finally-gonna-be-released Jane's Addiction documentary. In addition to the docu, there was enough footage left over to do a separate feature focusing on drummer Stephen Perkins, which will be available exclusivley online at Perkins' and Kevin's official websites (link to Kev's coming soon here). Angela shared some anecdotes about famous people she's worked with, but I'd say discretion is best here, so I'm not gonna repeat any of them.

Angela and Kevin's cat actually has a clue. It got on the couch beside me, we looked in each other's eyes, then it went to the opposite end of the couch and sat down. Most cats like to torment me with my allergies -- this one seemed to have a live and let live philosophy. But that could be my drunkenness projecting.

Also shown was a rap video featuring Kevin's alter-ego Skip Lotem. I can't get it out of my head. "Skip Lotem's on the rise/surprise/look in my eyes/I'm the shit and you're the flies!" Genius. Kevin burned me a CD of alternate Jane's Addiction takes. Have not listened yet, but look forward to it.

Angela actually offered to drive me home, which was very kind. And Jaye and Suzanne opted to come along on the brief ride. Car fulla fine ladies, awww yeeeah. My only focus was on staying conscious, though. I kept myself awake I while afterwards reading Entertainment Weekly's lame fall preview issue. By this time it was about 5:30 a.m. God, I love that I actually have friends now.

[ Tue Aug 19, 12:20:57 AM | Luke Thompson | edit ]

Possibly the world's worst Quizno's

That'd be the one opposite Canter's on Fairfax. Slow as fuck. Then the sandwich goes through their "oven-toaster," still comes out cold. They wrap it to go when I wanted to eat it there. There's no lettuce on the sandwich. Here's where it gets priceless (dialogue more or less exact)

Me: Doesn't the smoked turkey come with lettuce?

Employee dude: I dunno, dude, I didn't make that sandwich.

Me: I mean in general, doesn't it usually have lettuce on it.

Employee: yeah.

Me: Can I get some lettuce on mine?

Employee: You mean the Sierra smoked turkey?

Me: No, the regular smoked turkey

[blank stare]

Me: This is my sandwich. It has no lettuce. Can you put lettuce on it?

Employee: OK.

That done, I sit down to eat at a double-table. While I'm eating, one of the employees moves half the table that some of my stuff is on. Then he starts spraying Windex all over the place, which smells so strongly it makes my sandwich taste like Windex, psychologically.

What I'm most amazed at is that everyone else was leaving money in the tip jar. Never has a tip been so little deserved.

Posted by LYT at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2003

Unrelated Thoughts

Is there something embedded in human DNA that kicks in once you become a parent and makes you unable to grasp the concept of time zones? If I had a dollar for every time my Dad has asked "What time is it there?", usually after calling me at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, a time period he should realize after 18 or so years that never correlates to consciousness on my part...

But speaking of lack of consciousness, also described as a "blackout"...

How about that east coast power blackout, eh? (segues rule!)

I think this could seriously bite Bush in the ass whether or not he had anything to do with it, much as the less dramatic blackouts in Cali are a key factor in the Gray Davis recall. It happened on Bush's watch, and was more than just a one-state thing, therefore it feels like a federal matter whether it actually is or not, and it affected a lot of people personally, who will remember, and want to blame someone.

If Bush's policies led to it, he's screwed. If they didn't, he nonetheless can be painted as someone who did nothing to prevent it, and let it happen. I don't know if it has to do with tax breaks for the rich or not, but if the Democrats can make that link, it's a big chink in the "strong leader" armor Bush has built up in the public eye. Al Qaeda likely couldn't have caused this big a blackout if they had tried.

Long live the King

Matt King, that is, celebrating his birthday today, as befits his name, in Vegas.

I utterly depend on Matt for the maintainance of this site, among other things. So if you enjoy what you see here, or even if it aggravates the crap out of you but you find yourself compulsively reading nonetheless, show some birthday love on the message board for the man who indulges my whims and ego by making this thing happen.

Posted by LYT at 12:44 AM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2003

Wankity Wank

Another press club party everyone else will write about. Should I bother?

Not in much detail, I don't think, but maybe some. The venue was Wacko! a store that used to be on Melrose Ave., and when it left there, I knew Melrose well and truly sucked. Hard to believe when I first visited LA in '86, it was the coolest street in town. I took the Subway and got off at Sunset/Vermont. The subway's deceptive -- it moves fast, but you have to get to the station, which in theory is close to me, but in practice is uphill all the way so it takes a good 30 minutes to get there from my pad.

The new Wacko's much bigger, and has a gallery in the back. It is also pretty much the perfect store. Looks a bit like my apartment, in fact, only with more books. I'd come everyday if I lived nearby, but it isn't close to anything else I like, so who knows how often I'll be by. Their toy selection is as good as that at most comic book stores -- they seem to be hooked up to Diamond Distributors. Also lots of books on alternative culture, as well as wrestling biographies, history of punk rock, childrens' books about bowel movements, tattoo design templates, large insects and arachnids under glass, inflatable junk, wacky Christmas lights...good stuff. I think I have some colleagues in the journalism field who literally get all their ideas from just looking around in here. I won't name names, yeahhh, uh-huh.

Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey was debuting his new book of poster art from mid-century pulp fiction (I forget the exact timespan, but the bad guys in all the pictures are Nazis). I kinda dug the art, but found it a tad redundant -- the other exhibits there were more fun, dealing as they do with more surreal and depressing subjects. I'm no art critic, particularly -- my dad is, and I doubt any of it woulda been his speed. But his tastes are retro.

Seing as how most journalists are drinkers and freeloaders like me, most everyone left as soon as Adam was done talking to head for the "after party" at some place in Silver Lake where the bartenders specialize in fresh squeezed lime juice. I forget the name of the place, and it's late, so I'm just not gonna look it up right now. I stuck with water for a while, still recovering from Jaye's party.

Good chips and guacamole, but was this all we were going to get? No. More food came out eventually, but it was mostly pretentious crap. Earth to chef -- no-one who's not a vegetarian likes raw cucumber unless it's pickled, so putting shrimp on cuke slices is just a bad call. Ditto cucumber on pizza, even California pizza. And meatloaf? Come on. No-one eats that; it's something your mom forces you to eat.

Only item that really made the cut for me was a potato slice topped with a slice of chicken and slice of grilled pepper. Eventually I got bored enough to try the booze. Good (and cheap) Midori sour. Average (and pricy) Mojito (there's a place on the Santa Monica Third Street Promenade that does these the best, with unrefined sugar).

As Luke Ford points out on his write up of the evening, it's hard to talk about the people there because you know they'll read it and get back to you. So I think I was getting come-on vibes from at least one older woman, maybe more, but no names shall be named -- not sure I remember them anyway. Don't worry, Suzanne Mantell my former editor, I'm not talking about you. Good to see you again though.

And I finally got to meet the famous Moxie, who's every bit the bombshell I heard described. Also there was a tattooed midget in the house, and Dr. Susan Block. Plus some chick with shirt nearly all the way open and a face tattooed in her cleavage -- I guess she loses the right to angrily tell guys to look her in the eyes, eh?

Patio Pundit told me some useful blog stuff but I forgot it. Will try to recall come the morn. I need to link him.

Wacko had all the Terminator 3 action figures for $16 a pop. That's only a good price if any turn out to be super-rare.

UPDATE, 7:15 p.m. the next day: Been reading on a few other blogs that some of the press club members invited to the gallery either didn't attend or left quickly because they were offended by the content. This honestly would not have occurred to me. I would say it's just my youth showing -- David Poland, in attendance last night, unofficially dubbed me "the voice of Hollywood youth" -- except apparently one of the offended was 14.

But not that many people have gotten around to writing detailed accounts of the evening. Guess it's a good thing I sort of did.

Posted by LYT at 12:43 AM | Comments (1)

August 14, 2003

Kicking it old school

Now that was a party. Staying awake to greet the dawn, and in the middle of the week, no less. Very draining, but worth it.

In celebration of Jaye's birthday, a dinner was held at Canter's. As usual, because I take the bus and allow extra time, I showed up first, wearing the T-shirt Matt gave me for my birthday which says "F*ck fear" on the front and "Drink beer" on the back. Homeless people love this shirt, and usually give me props after only seeing one side of it. When they see both, they're ecstatic.

I got Jaye an Angelina Jolie action figure, because she's one of the many women I mentioned before who would go lesbian for Angelina. It was hard for her to accept it, though. Jaye does lots of things for other people, including many who don't deserve it, but try to do something for her and it's a challenge to persuade her to go along with it sometimes.

Angela (not to be confused with Angelina, though the two were in a movie together once) and her twin brother Joe and boyfriend Kevin show up next. Kevin is a beautiful man I'd consider going gay for if he weren't both straight and taken. Also he's a smoker and that just turns me right off. But if a lot of preposterous hypotheticals were in play...

I pass around my May DVD to get a few signatures. Angela draws stitches on the picture of her face.

Also showing up: Matt S (I know many Matts), Casey, Steeples, Chris S, an attractive lady named Suzanne whom I'd never met before, Dave and his girlfriend Leilani.

Everyone likes the dyed-black hair I have for Until the Night. I don't particularly, so it's hard for me to take a compliment about it.

At a certain point, we notice a film crew is in the house. As I find out later, they're filming a Rodney Bingenheimer segment for VH-1.

I guess all the servers were fixated on Rodney, because it was hard for us to find one. Casey even got up and explicitly asked for service. Finally, a guy comes around with water. After he takes our orders, an older waitress comes by and knocks one of the glasses of water over onto the table. Service remained spotty throughout -- at one point Joe asked for a second beer and the server told him he'd have to get back to him because he was too busy at that moment. It wasn't like Joe was flagging him down or anything -- the guy was actually at our table.

Jaye got a surprise birthday cupcake, but in keeping with her refusal of gifts would not eat it. I managed to pressure her to take at least a small bite before slicing it up and passing it around.

The lousy server kept taking stuff away, like the water pitcher. We were trying to kill time until Al showed up, who wasn't going to get off work until 10. None of us had his phone number, and Jaye was trying to plot elaborate ways of getting a message to him that we were blowing this joint. By about 10:30 we'd pretty much given up, but then Al finally showed up. At least three different people seemed to argue amongst themselves as to who got to drive me. I feel so special. Al won. We stopped at Rite Aid on Sunset to buy booze. All out of bourbon, surprisingly, but there's a 1.75 liter bottle of J&B scotch that's almost half-price. I grab that and some Pepsi Vanilla. All the other party participants were impressed with the scotch but intimidated too, because I don't think any of them drank any except Jaye, who had less than a shot.

The party continued at Ed's place. Ed is not in town at the moment, but Jaye uses his place as a refuge when he's gone. In this case, it became a party pad, as it often does anyway. Curiously, many of the smokers felt the need to step outside, even though Ed's pad is thoroughly imbued with secondhand smoke under most normal circumstances.

Susanne struck up some tunes on an unplugged guitar, and I think impressed us all with her voice. Jaye would take over later, and she is of course a rock star.

At around 3:50 or so, it was just me, Jaye, Joe, and Matt. Matt planned on getting up at 6 for his work, so he decided to attempt to grap 2 hours' sleep. Jaye wouldn't let me go until it was light, because she said she had a bad feeling -- sometimes those bad feelings coincide with death, so I honored it. With everyone else turning in, me and Joe start watching Commando, starring our governor-to-be. Good stuff, totally '80s down to the cheesy rock song that ends the film, with the refrain "Somewhere! Somehow! Someone! We fight for love!" The opening titles, with Alyssa Milano shoving an ice cream in Arnie's face as he grins like a doofus, are priceless. This was Arnold's He-Man phase -- he rips out car seats with his bare hands and lifts telephone booths above his head. Matt awoke at 6 just in time for the end credits.

Shortly afterwards came dawn's light, so I left too. Pulling a Max Mohr, I took the scotch.

Heat is on

It's hotter in London now than was ever recorded in the 20th century. In France, unprecedented numbers of people are dying from the heat. Unused to these conditions, those countries don't have air conditioning as a common fixture. Temperatures in the London Underground are higher than is legally allowed for the transportation of cattle.

Here in L.A. it's a typically hot August (as opposed to last year's atypically cold one), but it's much more humid than usual, bringing more bugs and allergies than I'm used to.

Tell us again, Mr. President, why you think global warming's just an unproven theory.

Posted by LYT at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2003

BIG NEWS: LYT TO APPEAR IN A FEATURE FILM

I've been in one feature length production before -- Billy Logue's Hollywood 5 -- but that film has not been seen beyond major cast and crew; even I haven't seen it!

This new film has a distribution deal, and will definitely come out on DVD if nothing else. It's called Until the Night, and stars Norman Reedus (Blade II, The Boondock Saints) and Kathleen Robertson (Splendor, XX/XY). It's the feature directing/writing debut of prolific Pathfinder Pictures producer Greg Hatanaka.

My role is small, but it does have dialogue. Anyone who remembers my former coworker Jack Jacobson's appearance in Nurse Betty -- it's about that big a role, which is to say not big, but appearing in the end credits if I'm lucky. At any rate, you'll be able to watch me in your very own home, which I find quite exciting. The rainbow hair will not be making an appearance -- I am doing something called "playing a character," apparently.

Passion Fruits

As a fan of both movies and theology, I think something needs to be said about Mel Gibson's upcoming Jesus flick The Passion. Right-wing conservatives who've seen it love it. Jewish leaders who've read a leaked script say it's anti-Semitic. I have some advice for both:

IT'S JUST A MOVIE

Mel has said he wants it to be the most historically accurate Jesus movie ever. So far, it looks like that isn't the case. But so what? Neither this movie nor any other will be 100% accurate, because movie cameras were not around at the time of Christ. Any reenactment is by definition an interpretation.

Now, based on footage leaked to the internet, it doesn't even look like the film will be 100% scripturally accurate, as it depicts a female Satan character. Been a while since I read up on this, but I believe all the biblical references to Satan that invoke any gender are male. This would be consistent with the patriarchal emphasis of the culture at that time. If you want to get revisionist about that, well then you have to allow for revisionism in other aspects as well.

Anyhow, my larger point here is that whether or not you think Jesus was God, or even perhaps don't think he exists and hate all references to the church, the Gospel is still a damn good story, ergo a good basis for a film. A divine supernatural being manifests himself as flesh among lessers so that he can walk among them, reach out to them, and allow them to torture him to death in a manner that ensures their eventual redemption. If that story were set on another planet and didn't use the words "Jesus" or "God," I bet most of the Christ-haters would flock to see it in theaters.

Mel Gibson's father is a right-wing nut, and even though we don't know whether or not Mel's quite as crazy, I do know based on a Playboy interview he gave back in the '90s that he doesn't believe in evolution. I could care less whether he respects the Pope or not. That's a dead issue to anyone except Catholics.

But why wonder or worry if a religious film will promote its director's religious views? Of course it will, and I can't imagine anyone would expect otherwise. Any movie based on Holy Scripture will have a religious message. It's far more troubling when you get movies like Battlefield Earth which claim not to have any religious propaganda at all in them, yet are made by religious zealots from a book by the religion's founder. Or even seemingly innocuous kiddie fare like Agent Cody Banks, in which the CIA is made to look like a bunch of harmless overgrown kids, and nuclear disarmament is posited to be a bad thing.

Jesus, as a character, did not have a "Religious Right" agenda. I know it's easy to forget that, but there is no record of him saying anything about gays or abortion. He did condemn the rich, prefer the company of outcasts, predict the overthrow of the establishment, and refuse to condemn the payment of taxes to Rome. That shouldn't offend liberal secular humanists.

I will be interested to see what rating the film gets. I know when it comes to labeling "offensive" music, the PMRC has a Christian bias -- Danzig II: Lucifuge contains no profanity, but bears the PMRC warning label for explicit lyrics anyway. Presumably, it's for the anti-church lyrics, which may offend but don't really qualify as explicit. The MPAA seems to think along similar lines to the PMRC, so what I'm wondering is whether The Passion, despite clearly being graphically violent, will get a PG because it's the story of Jesus.

Bottom line: Boycotting a movie because it may offend some people is stupid, whether it's a right-wing Jesus flick or a Larry Clark juvenile delinquent tirade. Albinos boycotted The Matrix Reloaded because of the ghostly Twins, who weren't even actual albinos but rather rogue computer programs emulating supernatural beings.

Just do what I do. Let the movie come out, then talk shit about it after you've seen it.

Yaaar!

More on that antipiracy ad in movie theaters: I just noticed that the painter complaining about piracy is wearing a ball cap with an image of an eyepatched skull and crossbones.

Even if this was deliberate art direction, it sorta subtly undercuts his point, don't you think?

Posted by LYT at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2003

My name on the big screen

Yes, it has happened. If you've been to an arthouse theater recently, you may have seen the trailer for OT: Our Town. If so, you've seen my name on the movie screen. I've been a fan of this film since seeing it last summer and I'm proud to have my name associated with it in the form of a review quote.

Really cool to see my name on the screen, and in the same week that I'm in Newsweek too!

(To watch the OT trailer on your smaller computer screen, complete with my quote in it, go HERE and click on "Download the Trailer")

While waiting for the bus back from the Sunset, some guy leaned out of his car and yelled "Sucks to be you!" at me. It most certainly does not. If you only knew...

Going to Metallica all day today. I'm psyched, now that they're good again.

"Ooooh, we Durst'nt, we Durst'nt, preciousssss..."

New topic for discussion: Why do people hate Fred Durst so much?

I'm not a huge fan. I understand why someone who doesn't like metal, or nu-metal in particular, would dislike him. But this man seems to inspire as much invective as Courtney Love in her heyday (yes, it has passed).

I spent 8 hours today at the Summer Sanitarium tour, fetauring Metallica, limbizkit, Linkin Park, Mudvayne, Deftones. Everyone booed loudly every time limbizkit's name was said aloud. But they loved Linkin Park, so it can't be a nu-metal bias.

To his credit, Durst made the best of a bad situation, constantly mentioning Metallica to get a cheap pop, and in the meantime invite the crowd to give him the finger. His little "support the troops" video montage may have been a misstep.

So why is he so hated, even among metal fans? Is it because he looks like a tattooed fratboy, yet sings whiny tunes about being picked on? Is it the stupid hat? Is it his dumb lyrics -- surely not, because many acclaimed songs have dumb lyrics ("She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah"). His singing voice is decent and distinctive. He may be a total asshole, but so was Axl Rose.

I wanna know. I'm not looking to defend him; I just want to know why people single him out for special hatred amongst his peers. Please, if you hate Fred Durst, post somewhere on the message board your thinking behind that conclusion. I won't necessarily disagree.

As for the performances -- limbizkit I thought did OK. Mudvayne should never have ditched their makeup gimmick. Deftones sound amazing but aren't exciting to watch. Linkin Park play like headliners, and have a great stage set, which makes me wonder why their T-shirts are so boring.

And Metallica are masters of puppets. The best at what they do. Interestingly, no songs from the controversial "Load" album made it in the set, and only one from Re-Load ("Fuel"). That, and the fact that recent MTV documentaries gloss over that period and the ill-fated Lollapalooza headlining slot, makes me think even Metallica realize they made a few missteps there.

St. Anger, frankly, feels like the real follow-up to the black album. And Robert Trujillo plays better than Jason Newsted, in my opinon, and has more stage presence.

Posted by LYT at 12:33 AM | Comments (0)

August 8, 2003

Tidbits

Aint it Cool has an image of the CGI Garfield from the new live-action movie. Is it too early to call it next year's Gigli?

Also, for those who, like me, have been having trouble with Friendster.com -- it's been mutating like a virus. First it stopped working on IE. Then it stopped working on Netscape. But after cleaning out the cookie cache on Netscape, it works again. Thanks to JBL for staying on top of the game on this one.

Da ba dee, da ba dah

Saw one of the greatest rock shows ever tonight -- the Blue Man Group. I know they're prefabricated, and feature none of the spontaneity of the spirit of rock n' roll or whatever, but so were the Monkees in their heyday. Blue Man Group, are honest-to-god the KISS of the new millennium, not in genre but in terms of sheer concert spectacle that covers all the old cliches but makes them fun, and even adds new twists. Plus Blue Man Group's music is better than KISS ever were. Sorry, guys -- the spectacle was cool, but Gene and co. have never been masterful musicians.

Just see Blue Man Group when you get a chance. I can't imagine anyone absolutely loathing the show, except perhaps uptight music snobs who hate anything on a major label. As performance art it's fantastic. Back in the days of Tato Shots, if I had had the money and the talent the Blue Man show is what I would have tried to do.

Openers Venus Hum were pretty good too. And bottom of the bill was Tracy Bonham -- didn't she used to be big? Interestingly, her set had several cover tunes by possibly superior female artists.

"Dat Blue Man Group...Dey're just rip-offs of da Smurfs!" -- Homer Simpson

Al B. Bach

I wasn't gonna say anything about our governor-to-be, because everyone else already is. But someone over at Emmanuelle's site posted THIS LINK, and it really needs to be shared with the world.

Just click. You'll see.

Posted by LYT at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)

August 6, 2003

Britney nekkid!

Not actually showing much, but nonetheless, DAMN.

Also: they look real.

Moment of silence, please

58 years ago, the city of Hiroshima, Japan, experienced the first nuclear bomb. Think 9-11 was bad? In one second, the equivalent of 10,000 9-11s happened (can you even conceptualize that?) and in the ensuing years, even more deaths occurred as a direct result.

Many Democrats and Republicans idolize Harry Truman. I never can, for his hand in one of the most evil acts of the 20th century.

I don't care how bad Japan was. I don't care if we'd have lost more soldiers' lives without it. We targeted civilian populations, and destroyed their environment for years to come, as well as the unborn fetuses and lives of those who remained. If you would justify this, you have no moral high ground from which to decry concentration camps, chemical/biological warfare, and torture. We also unleashed a weapon that still threatens to destroy all life on earth.

Facetious question for Bush fans: Since we were in fact developing weapons of mass destruction, did that give Japan the right to pre-emptively attack at Pearl Harbor?

Use of weapons that inherently target civilians and the environment is a war crime in my book, and certainly worse than Saddam torching Kuwait's oil fields.

I don't hate America, before you ask. But I do despise what we did on this day. And like the Jews who speak of the Holocaust, I hope that we Never Forget.

Posted by LYT at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)

August 5, 2003

Things I learned at Comicon, part 2

-It's OK to go walking around as a Stormtrooper, or Jango Fett, or be an underage girl in anime fetish outfit, or a beautiful breasted chick wearing nothing above the waist but two vertical strips of black tape. However, if you are a rainbow-haired film critic waiting in line for a Keldor action figure raffle ticket, and someone hands you a free "got milk?" sticker, and you paste it to your forehead because that seems like the thing to do at the time, then wear it there for the rest of the day...people will give you strange looks.

-Palisades Toys' Kim Mattison is officially the most desirable woman in the world. An odd choice given the number of fetishistic woman warriors in abundance, but this woman is a beauty who doesn't seem to know she's a beauty, and that jacks up the appeal factor even more. THIS INTERVIEW confirms her coolness, while also unfortunately confirming that she's married (and offering a picture that makes her look less hot, too). Damn. Read the interview, and if you decide you're a lot like this person, marry me.

-on the male side of toy collecting, Art Asylum's pseudo-rock-star-of-sculpting Digger has often come off as arrogant in interviews, making obnoxious comments like telling fans they need to get laid more. having met him, though, I can say that context is everything. Digger's a sarcastic New Yorker with working-class roots, and much of what he says is intended as humor. Irony doesn't always read well in online interviews. He called my hair "fuckin' sick," and if you're a certain age, I should probably explain that that's a good thing.

I asked Digger whatever happened to the third Art Asylum Eminem figure that never came out -- it was going to be Eminem as "Marshall Mathers," clad in black with D12 ski hat and crowbar, and his car slowly sinking into the lake. Digger revealed that Eminem's management actually pulled back on it because they were afraid of overexposure; later, when 8-Mile came out, Digger tried to get it made again, but said they "couldn't get on the same page." He seemed burned out on products that reflect celebrity likenesses, and more into simple shapes, like the Lego-esque MiniMates.

-After the first two toy panels, I realized that anyone who asked a question got a free toy, so I was sure to ask at the last panel. Fortunately, I had a good one. It was a panel focusing on toys that never got made, so I asked NECA's Randy Falk how they got the Hellraiser license away from McFarlane. Briefly synopsized, this is the deal: McFarlane was not being quite honest when he claimed that the rights were all tangled up. Miramax has the rights, but they wanted to sell Todd on a whole line of Miramax toys which included Hellraiser. Todd was vaguely interested, but they wanted too much money. Later they came back with an offer for just Hellraiser, but Todd only wanted Pinhead, and when he didn't get him, made the Tortured Souls toys instead (Randy says neither Barker nor McFarlane actually designed those toys, but just signed off on them, which would contradict the interview I DID WITH BARKER AND MCFARLANE a few years back. When Randy and other McFarlane sculptors jumped to NECA, which had yet to do a decent action figure line (remember those crappy Suncoast-exclusive Beetlejuice toys?), he made the pitch for a Hellraiser line and an offer, after which Miramax took that offer, and pitched it to every other toy company again. Turned down by all the majors, and Todd only wanting Pinhead, they came back to NECA. The line has been a huge success, and now Todd is planning a third series of Tortured Souls said to be more Hellraiser-like than the unsuccessful series 2 (which I liked, but didn't sell well).

-Jerry Macaluso of SOTA/Plastic Fantasy had a great anecdote about the porn star toys. Ron Jeremy, the first male in the line, came in to do the 3-D RealScan, and disrobed right there in the SOTA office without being prompted, at which point Jerry had to point out that the scanner was next door. For the scan, Ron needed to get it up, but was having difficulty, so he started fluffing himself. Jerry told him not to worry, they can sculpt it. So Ron gets in, gets scanned, and says "That's it?" Jerry answers in the affirmative, and Ron reaches out to shake his hand. Jerry considered whether or not it was worth it, and decided not to shake. On hearing this anecdote, Toy Biz's Jesse Falcon, without missing a beat, says that Ian McKellen did the same thing when he came to get scanned for the Gandalf toy.

Digger, who seems to have some kind of rivalry going on with Jerry, insists "I don't think you dissed him, dude. You shook his hand."

-Every toy licensor at the con has tried to get the H.R. Giger license at some point or another. Jesse Falcon had a hilarious impersonation of Giger (a lisping Swiss-German accent with a high voice) handling a Toy Biz figure and asking "Iss diss plaster of paris?" Jesse: "No, it's polyvinylchloride." Giger: "Ah yeth, plaster of paris."

Randy Falk mentions that McFarlane sent a sculptor over to Giger's Swiss castle to get his approval. For three days he had to sleep in an attic on bare boards with no electricity and the stench of cat urine (Giger's house also has a working train and images of his dead girlfriend in every room, apparently). Only after three days would Giger even see the sculpts, and he ultimately didn't approve them.

Digger mentioned that Giger had pitched as toys "bullet babies," cuddly fetuses wearing goggles encased in a bullet.

Sideshow toys now has the license, but none of them were on that particular panel. Digger cites Giger as an example of why you should never meet your idols.

-Given all the flack Mattel's JLA toys have taken for warping and falling over easily, it was amusing to see on Sunday that most of teh JLA figures in their display case had indeed fallen down.

-toy protos on display always look better than the real deal. Hand-painting is the major factor. That said, the cartoony-lookign prototypes of the Masters of the Universe Snake Men look a lot better in person than in pictures. Still a bit more cartoony than I'd like, but so's the whole line. New He-Man variants look cool, but I'd like them better if they were actual new characters. As a kid, I preferred more characters to endless hero variants -- are kids today really the opposite?

OK, that's enough for now. But there is still more coming...

Religious Left

An excellent, pro-Christian, biblical refutation of virtually every aspect of the Religious Right's dogma can be found HERE.

(link courtesy, natch, of the Right Christians)

Green with anger

Anyone else catch Tom Green's show last night? I've never seen a host get so pissed off and immediately lose all interest in a guest as Tom did with Jackyl singer Jesse James Dupree. Dupree, known for using a chainsaw as a musical instrument, came out with saw whizzing, and carved the word "Tom" into the front of Green's desk, before sawing off a corner of it and throwing it into the audience.

Granted, this is not civilized behavior. But given the number of times Tom has performed various acts of destruction and vandalism to his parents' house and property, he doesn't have quite the moral high ground that he made it seem.

Still, I've never seen Tom so genuinely pissed. Even when people bring up "Freddy Got Fingered." He gave a half-assed performance in a music jam session he was scheduled to do with Dupree, walked out on it, then insulted the shit out of Dupree after he left, and smashed a Jackyl CD with a hammer. You won't see that on Leno. And Letterman never reacted this way even towards Crispin Glover and Madonna. Very strange to see Tom Green, of all people, in full anti-anarchy mode.

Just one more reason to keep watching. Tom may have been pissed, but I'm sure in time he'll realize it made for great TV. Here's hoping they don't delete it from reruns.

Posted by LYT at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)

August 4, 2003

In the spirit of that great Arab-American Casey Kasem

It's the Top 40 lies of the Bush administration!

All I need to know about life I learned at the San Diego Comicon, part one

OK, time to write this shit down before I forget it. I'm gonna eschew any kind of linear narrative, as all hope is lost for that at this point. Here are some things I learned:

-No matter how big and crazy the Con is, it will always be bigger and crazier the following year. Brian estimated the size of the exhibition hall to be about half a mile long. Brian is sometimes prone to exaggeration (virtually every movie he likes -- which is most movies -- isn't just good, it blows him away!), but I think he's about right. Corollary to the above rule: when you know you'll be walking back and forth across a mile-long hall for four days, don't buy a pair of brand new insoles the day before.

-Cans of soda at the Con cost $2.50. But there's a Ralphs just two blocks away. Brian is a genius for bringing a cooler full of drinks every day.

-To park in the convention center, you must show up at least two hours prior to opening. If you do not, an otherwise very fortunate friend of yours doing the driving will blow a gasket and determine that his luck has run out for good. What you do in those two hours in a city where nothing else is open yet is your problem.

-Convention exclusive action figures are either plentiful or damn-near impossible to get. Mattel's exclusive Keldor and Batman figures were super-hot, and were apportioned via a lottery, though you could only get one or the other, not both. Basically, the lottery worked a bit like Ticketmaster's wristband policy -- later in the day, a start number would be drawn, and everyone after that number could buy a figure. Scalpers waited like Mr. Slugworth at the end of the line, offering to buy the figure off you for $50. I didn't get Keldor first day, but me and Brian both got one the next day. Keldor, by the way, is He-Man archenemy Skeletor prior to the skull face, and he comes with three interchangeable heads -- humanoid, skull, and face-melting-in-green-flame. Guess which one looks the coolest.

As much as folks complained about this policy, it paled in comparison to the awful way SOTA handled the Lara Croft movie toy exclusives. 75 exclusives, first come first served, on Thursday and Friday mornings. Friday morning I was at the doors when they opened, ran to the SOTA booth, and still didn't get one, because all the dealers who had early access got there first. Adding insult to injury, they ran out of even regular Laras by end of Thursday, and Wetsuit Laras Friday. I got the wetsuit one, but really wanted the other as a birthday gift for a friend. Lesson: Buy what you really need the first day. I spent so much that first day, though.

McFarlane and Hasbro simply bring excessive quantities of their stuff, which is the way to go. Everyone who wanted a silver Boba Fett got one (after a long wait, but still), and McFarlane is never short on exclusives. This year, no exception. Plenty of min-Spawn/Miracleman sets.

-70% of women would go lesbian for Angelina Jolie. Ms. Jolie's appearance was the celebrity highlight, and women were swooning over her. Much as I like her, I seriously think she'd be too much woman for me. This is a lady who makes movies, works for the U.N., maintains wildlife preserves in Namibia and Cambodia, is a full-time mom, and likes dangerous stunts. Too much. I shall love her from afar. Also, if you ask her to autograph a body part so that you can get her signature tattooed -- she will say yes.

-Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's upcoming fantasy movie Mirror Mask has a production budget of just $4 million, with McKean doing most of the effects on his computer. From their panel, I learned that one can easily afford to depict a city crumpling like a sheet of paper, but obtaining a classroom full of children is out of the question on the same budget.

Okay, that's all for now. To be continued...

Posted by LYT at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)

August 3, 2003

Humor Me

It's about this time of year that I (and probably many of you) get sick of film critics (except a select few). Even some of those whom I like, personally and from a reading standpoint, have to give this tired spiel in every review about how studio movies suck and this has been a wretched year and thank God for some really boring French film that just came out and has lots of jazz on the soundtrack. Then the obligatory "I hate blockbusters!" bit. I don't doubt that they genuinely feel this way; I just wonder how relevant a critic is if he or she uniformly loathes the very type of movie preferred by the masses. Wonder why Harry Knowles and all these online guys are so popular? It's because they like the big movies, and folks are going "Finally someone gets it!"

I don't have to remind most film critics about the end message of Sullivan's Travels. But for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I can illustrate with a personal example.

Today I saw three movies: Seabiscuit, Dirty Pretty Things, and Legally Blonde 2. Guess which one I walked out of feeling uplifted and happy?

Seabiscuit I nearly walked out of, period. After a pretty good start, it becomes the total formula sports movie, but in an obvious way. I'm probably not quoting with 100% accuracy, but lines of dialogue in the film include "It's better to break a man's leg than break his heart" and "People think we took a broken down horse and fixed him up. We didn't. He fixed us." Gotta also love those brief positive references to President Roosevelt's socialist worldview.

Dirty Pretty Things became an interactive experience. Through no fault of the film (more likely the fault of two beers) I began having trouble staying awake at about the same time the lead character has a similar problem. Scenes where he gets jolted awake by the phone jolted me awake also. So I missed a bit in the middle, but got the gist. Good film, but at times a slow starter.

Legally Blonde 2 worked exactly as the first one did for me. Trifling stuff I'll probably never remember (save the abhorrent references to a homosexual agenda, of course), but it made me happy. I often come out of movies sad, so bravo to Reese (lest you think I'm a sucker for a perky hottie, I loathed Sweet Home Alabama).

One neat thing about the Grove -- I got different trailers in front of every single film! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mann Chinese. Did get the same commercials, though, for Miramax DVDs, the LA Times, and Sprite Remix. Plus this new antipiracy one, which sparks off a whole new tangent. (Ironically, the liberal pro-piracy screed Pirates of the Caribbean was the only sold-out show)

This antipiracy ad features a set painter talking about the movies he's worked on, and saying film piracy hurts the lower-rung folks like him more than it does producers. Fine and dandy, but why show us this? Mainstream U.S. audiences are not the problem. I'll explain:

I know maybe two people who've claimed to download movies off the net. In most cases, it's movies they would not have paid to see. Those folks who downloaded the Hulk workprint went to see the finished film anyway in most cases. Why? Because it's an effects-heavy film, and the bootleg's effects weren't done.

These internet bootlegs are made by people with access. And I don't mean to press screenings (which frequently have airport-level security these days, more than they did right after 9-11). No-one with any standards buys bootlegs made by someone with a camcorder in a theater, and no bootlegger with any sense tapes such in a major theater anyway. The only person I ever knew who taped a movie on his camcorder went and saw that same movie 4 times in the theater anyway, and didn't sell the tape to anyone.

No, the only kind of piracy that is likely to hurt financially is a high-quality digital copy, and those don't get made by casual moviegoers -- most likely they get made way before the exhibition phase, or duped off prints in other countries with laxer security. Leave the rest of us alone.

And to all you audience members who clap for the lowly set painter in the ad -- when was the last time you sat all the way through the end credits as these lower-tier folks get their brief, well-earned moment of glory on the big screen? I'll answer that: for most of you, it's never. How do I know? Because I do sit all the way through 90% of the time, and I don't see many of you when the lights come up. Hypocrites.

Posted by LYT at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)

August 2, 2003

Wolfgang Suck

I didn't think I'd have to walk all the way to the Sunset 5 from my house, but it turned out that way. I knew I'd have to walk as far as Rocket Video to return the Tim Blake Nelson movie. Figured from there I get the Santa Monica #4 to Crescent Heights. This plan, however, was foiled by a broken traffic light at the always-busy intersection of Santa Monica and La Brea. With the equivalent of a four-way stop now in place, it seemed that walking would be faster. Onward to Sunset.

Sunset Blvd., or the MTA folks in charge of it anyway, has some curious ideas about transportation. Given that this is a popular and famous street (how many of you non-Angelenoes have heard of it and its famous "Sunset Strip"?), you might think it'd have several bus lines. And it does. But for the most part, THEY ONLY RUN DURING THE WORK-DAY. After about 8pm, boy, you're out of luck. Maybe all the folks who own pay parking lots on the strip are rich lobbyists who consistently thwart any kind of convenient transport that doesn't make them money.

Anyway, I realized it'd be faster, yet again, to walk the rest of the way. So I did.

The plan was to have a belated birthday-esque dinner at Wolfgang Puck's, one of my favorite places. I did dine, but much to my dismay they've changed the menu. Not just changed, mind you -- deleted 75% of it, though they kept most of the stupid pizzas (done better at CPK these days anyhow). NO more pad thai. Nothing Southwestern or cajun. No main course salads. Just something like 7 entrees, which break down more or less as steak, ribs, burger, pork chop, piece o' fish, piece o' more expensive fish, veal. The cocktail menu is gone entirely.

I had the Greek salad, which inexplicably contains rare Ahi, but that's why I ordered it -- it's the only thing left with rare fish in it. Also the calamari app, which sucks now -- they replaced the outstanding ginger curry sauce with a mustard that tastes like the stuff McDonalds serves with McNuggets. Also, apparently Puck thinks that nothing goes better with fried squid (oops...just grossed out Luke Ford there!) than a heaping helping of sliced cucumbers in spicy dressing. The cocktail menu may be gone, but the bartender there did remember how to make a June Bug.

I knew I'd not be back here again, so I ordered both desserts that I liked the sound of, both of them pie. Not a slice, mind you, but a round, mini-pie in both cases.

I hate the new menu. Fuck Puck. Until they change it again, I can't call this my favorite eatery any more.

Picked up the "May" DVD at Virgin, where it's selling well, ranked at #11. Last time I talked to Lucky, he said he'd pay me back, because I traded him two LYT-shirts for the promise of this disc a while back.

I was feeling kinda bummed. I'd been subtly dissed in print earlier that day (not that people aren't allowed to do that -- it was just a bit of a cheap shot). The restaurant thing was depressing. It even turns out my Virgin frequent buyer card has an expiration date. I don't buy there frequently enough to make ten purchases in three months. Once the new Best Buy comes in, I doubt I'll buy anything at Virgin again ever.

But the evening was redeemed. The movie I saw, Northfork, turned out to be really good. Best Polish Brothers film so far. Fans of Neil Gaiman or David Lynch owe it to themselves to check it out. Then on the way home, I was recognized by a couple of Arclight employees. Old New Times LA fans, it turns out, but they hadn't made the connection.

Posted by LYT at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)