Lucy in the sky with Diamonds

I know I haven't done any bona fide posts recently. But hopefully this can keep you satisfied until I have some more time. Enjoy

Mike Tyson

In case you weren't already aware that Mike Tyson is a superfreak, check this out. Only a couple of brief comments on this.

First, Bobby Brown is pretty clearly on something, probably coke, but this isn't surprising in the least. Thinking about it, it would have been much more surprising were he completely sober.

Second, Mike Tyson has either been clobbered in the head a few too many times or he was born "touched". The surprising part is that he's not actually drooling on himself. In any case, he should be riding the short bus.

and then there's Maude.

Thirty or so years ago, Bea Arthur (of Golden Girls fame) was a legitimate actress on Broadway. This album is from her 2002 one woman show On Broadway: just between friends. Despite her legitimacy as both an actress and a stage singer, this album clearly still gets categorized as camp. It's camp status is confirmed on the first track where Bea Arthur spends nearly three minutes telling us her favorite recipe for leg of lamb, including how to make her special "mayonnaise-like mixture". For the record, Bea likes her lamp "slightly pink". She's also mad for Japanese eggplant, which she cuts horizontally, smears with olive oil, salt and pepper then puts under the broiler.

The rest of the album alternates between her singing various songs, mostly Broadway standards, and her telling stories from her Broadway and television career. This is the last show of an old actress getting ready to die.

Despite her deep, gruff voice, she's a remarkably good singer. It would have been fun to see her in her Broadway heyday. She sounds like what she is, a fun, old, woman with attitude. Sadly it also comes through that her career is, at this point, over and she's reminiscing about past success.

The stories are an absolute riot. She talks about when she started acting in the 40's and 50's and when she was more established in the 60's and 70's. The time spans involved are really brought out when she talks about being in the original production of Fiddler on the Roof with then child-actress Pia Zadora. In another story she describes Angela Landsbury as a "tall patrician beauty". This is shocking for those of us who grew up with Landsbury on Murder, She Wrote. Of course, by the time of Murder, She Wrote, Landsbury was already very old. Or when she says "I remember in 1956 when I had to join Equity...".

One of the funniest stories is of her dealing with network censors on the Golden Girls. Apparently in the first episode, Blanche introduces her date of the evening to Sophia. He complements Sophia saying how young she must be. When the man leaves, Sophia says "The man is a douchebag". This was censored. I've recently noticed that "douchebag" has become the insult d'jour. Golden Girls then, it seems, was a good 20 years ahead of its time.

However, my favorite story involves two men, a mother and a soup ladle. I'm going to make you go buy the album to hear the story. Other stories include, Tony Curtis fucking his first movie star, why "there's a little of the homosexual in all of us...", how furniture sales is like prostitution and why you shouldn't accept a blowjob from a nun. Yeah, it's a bit bawdy in places.

Between the musical theatre numbers, the Broadway stories and stories about gay men, every gay man should own this album.

It's on it's way

After a brief hiatus, the next album is on it's way!

Shatner disappoints

I watched part of the Emmys last night. Apparently they were doing this "Emmy Idol" thing. 4 or 5 different celebrities performed musical numbers and you could vote on who you liked through the website or via SMS. Unfortunatly, due to TiVo conflicts (gotta record Family Guy) and my own distaste for sitting through three hour long award shows, I only caught Shatner's performance.

Given that Shatner has recorded two full length albums, you'd think he could have done something a little more than read the Star Trek intro and then stand there while some (apparently famous) mezzo-soprano sang the melody to the Trek theme song.

Apparently not. Accordingly, he lost the competition, beaten out by Donald Trump and that woman who plays Karen on Will & Grace.

The best part was after the result was announced, the camera shot to Shatner who had a look of utter shock on his face. The man is a comedian at heart, I swear. On the upside, Shatner picked up his second Emmy.

Yeah, I'm lazy

I know, I didn't review anything last week. There are two reasons for this. First, I'm lazy. Second, I had to pay my student fees, so that cut into my campy music budget. Write your local Wisconsin legislator and ask them why we have to pay several hundred bucks despite having been promised a "full tuition waiver".

Anyway, I'm currently trolling eBay for stuff to buy. If you see something cool, post a link.

Hulk RULES!

"Oh my God." That's what you said when this came up in your browser, right? Your reaction is appropriate, perhaps even understated. If my officemate didn't hate me for working on this blog in the office before, I'm fairly certain he does now.

It appears that the goal of this album was to take all of the forms of music popular in the late-80's and early-90's and ruin them. On this album, the Hulkster raps, he rocks, there's even a song that sounds vaguely like a cross between Heart and Culture Club. It's difficult to write about this album without just quoting a bunch of lyrics. The lyrics really do speak for themselves as I imagine that most readers of this blog are more than capable of imagining the type of hokey 80's-esque background music and third-rate vocals that go with the words.

The first song informs us with a rockin' beat that Hulkster's In the House. This has quite possibly the most inane lyrics I've ever heard. The writers of this song should be informed that "room" doesn't rhyme with "move". Really the song speaks for itself. Add some generic guitar riffs and you've got the idea.

I can feel it in my feet
We're moving to the beat
Hey ho hey ho, come on let's go
When the going gets tough, the tough get rough
Hey ho hey go, come on let's go
We're rockin down the house
The band is playing loud
We're blowing of the roof
We're gonna rock and roll

The second track, He's American Made, seems appropriate to the mood of the country today. That is to say, mindless jingoism. While there are things that make me proud of my country, Hulk Hogan is not among them. Despite the fact that "he's got the stars and stripes running though his veins" and "he wears the heart of his country on his sleeve". The best line, of course is, "He'll fight for your freedom if you really believe". If only Rowdy Roddy Piper were the greatest threat to our freedom, we'd be all set. Unfortunatly, I don't see the Hulkster taking on Al Qaeda anytime soon, although he did defeat the Iron Sheik, so who knows?

Yes....he raps, complete with flygirl background vocals and the valley girl intro (a la Baby Got Back). Hulkster's Back is really the only example we need as to why pro wrestlers shouldn't be given a microphone. The problem, of course, is that Hulk Hogan is white....very white. Thus he has the rhythm and rhyming capability of his ancestors...that is to say, none. "Oooh. Look at that vein in my tricep" he raps as the background vocals sing "Check out the pythons baby, the Hulksters back."

I have no idea why Wrestling Boot Traveling Band exists. A song about the travels of a band that existed for one (very bad) album and, to my knowledge, never toured, seems pointless.

While the pro-family, anti-drug message of I Wanna be a Hulkamaniac is inspiring, I'm not sure being a Hulkamaniac is what we should be encouraging our children to aspire to. Remember, always swim with a buddy, work real hard and always study.

By far the most disturbing, perhaps to the point of being offensive, song is Hulkster in Heaven. This piece is about a dead child. Yes, a dead child. The story goes that a young Hulk fan was invited to sit in the front row at a match (match? ok. performance) in the U.K. During the show the seat was empty, apparently the young fan had passed on. Here we hear the Hulk mourning that young fan. The line that really sums up this song for me is "When the Hulkster gets to heaven, we'll tag up again. The world just lost another Hulkamaniac". Perhaps here in my academic, culturally isolated (one might say, bourgeois) life, I'm too far detached from the common man to understand how or why anyone would find this song appropriate. But it does fill the "sappy ballad" slot on our list of late-80's musical forms to ruin.

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to part of an Amazon.com user review I read of this album. The user writes "Looking at the cd booklet and listening to the songs, you can tell Hulk and Jimmy had a lot of fun recording this cd and put their hearts into it, for better or worse. That does count for something. " I must disagree. As I told some undergrads in an Introduction to Programming class I was a TA for a few years ago, it doesn't matter how long it took you to come up with your answer, or how hard you worked, it's still wrong, and you still fail.

I rank this album as "worse than Fabio", since at least Fabio didn't try to sing.

I haven't decided what I'll write about next week. Leave comments with suggestions.