Who Are These Jon and Kate People and Why Are They Following Me Around?

Another sign of the apocalypse occurred recently when it was revealed Octomom Nadya Suleman and annoying media whore Jon Gosselin were in talks to do a new reality show together. At best, the Octomoms and Jon Gosselins of the world should be minor celebrities. Sadly, on any given news day these jerks are saturating the media more than many other celebrities with actual talent. Even porn stars have to be skilled at something  to get where they are--have a perverted specialty like having sex with a sock puppet, etc. At least that would be original.  All those morons had to do was procreate. And if you can’t support eight kids on your own or with your spouse or family, don’t expect the media to give you the money to raise them.

Now, the reason these idiots are still famous? Because people are talking and writing about them. Now 99 percent of the people who write articles, message board posts and blog entries like this one deride them and want them to disappear. But admit it, folks, its fun to have jerks like this to make fun of, and of course, they deserve it. Even apologizing to the (soon to be) ex-wife is done in public with a celebrity rabbi, documented by cameras for all the world to see. Would Jon Gosselin have apologized by his lonesome in private without making a spectacle of it?  That's highly doubtful.

But they don’t care. Any publicity is good publicity. It’s the “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.” culture in full bloom. What does it say about America that "reality-dweeb" celebrities and our fascination with them have inundated pop culture for a decade now? It’s like the viewing public are fair weather friends or bullies in waiting. We love to make fun of reality stars, but they always come back for more and get paid for it, either in cash or freebies. But remember Britney's tale. Everyone participated in death pools when she shaved her head, but there were always a few people who said, “Oh, but her comeback will the greatest in history.” Well, Britney did comeback. It certainly wasn’t the greatest ever, but we got to keep her around. It’s that up and down cycle that fascinates the minions. We just can’t get enough of whacking ‘em when they are down and gushing on ‘em when they’re up.

And I can’t wait til the Gosselins or Octomom  take acting lessons and take work away from  talented thespians all in the name of  box-office appeal. It’ll be the most highly touted acting debut since Vanna White in Goddess of Love. But wait-that will involve real effort. I wonder if any of these folks would even put in the requisite practice to be on Dancin With the Stars since they’re so used to their unscripted lives being fodder for every media outlet in America. I kinda feel sorry for the young women that hang around this Gosselin guy, too. Just think…in the ‘60s groupies had the Stones and Beatles; in the '80s Duran Duran, but now they have the Jon Gosselins and other reality show schmucks of the world. It's slim pickins' out there, ladies. Could we just get tired of  the Gosselins and other self-absorbed reality stars so they can fade back into obscurity and take care of their kids sans 24/7 cameras and interviews with the Star? Then maybe the American public could get back to being entertained by, and talking about, people with real talent, substance and/or charisma.

Book Review-Fat Guys Shouldn't Be Dancin' at Halftime

I know, I know. Why are you reviewing a book by a Chicago sports guy on an entertainment blog called The Slums Off Hollywood Boulevard? I was born & raised in Chitown, and before I hit puberty and discovered rock 'n'roll, I was a grade school tomboy who cut class to watch Cubs games. This book brings back a lot of those early sports fan memories for me.

Every city has its local celebrities. These folks are local newscasters, DJs, TV show hosts, athletes and they have a longer shelf life than most national celebs. This type of fame usually doesn’t translate well from one region of the country to another. A local New Yawk type might be too real and down to earth for the surf and suntan crowd in Laguna Beach. Some local icons do cross over to the national spotlight, getting their act known to fans of a certain “niche.”

In Chicago, some of its sportscasters are as famous (or infamous) as its athletic heroes. Harry Caray is the most famous example. Harry even made it to SNL, thanks to Will Ferrell’s colorful impersonation. Chet Coppock, one of Chitown’s longest running sportscasters, made it to the national spotlight several times, as a syndicated sports talk show host and as an announcer for the World Wrestling Federation and the Roller Derby.

After almost 40 years as a sportscaster, Coppock has written his first book, Fat Guys Shouldn’t Be Dancin’ at Halftime. It’s divided into 100 ultra-short, stream of consciousness chapters about every facet of Chicago sports you can imagine. Chet leaves nothing out, even dedicating chapters to Northwestern football, Cog Hill golf course and long defunct (or long ignored) franchises like the Chicago Fire and the Chicago Sting.

Chester isn’t one of those sportscasters who just rattles off statistics. He’s a genuine Chicago sports character himself, just like Ditka and the’85 Bears. Chet praises and lambasts local execs, coaches, fans, and other sportscasters in his indefatigable, rapid-fire style, which translates surprisingly well to the page.

Pro sports are part of the entertainment biz and Chet dissects the good, the bad, and the ugly with pithy observations. In one example, about Cubs player turned sportscaster Ron Santo, who is given to malapropisms and once had trouble pronouncing the word fuchsia on-air, Coppock writes, “Ron and the English language haven’t had that dinner they’ve been talking about.”

There’s a section called “You Call These Sports?" Here Coppock reminisces about covering the Indy 500, the WWF, the original Roller Derby and other sports of questionable repute. (Yes, Coppock was there during the halcyon days of the T-Birds and the Pioneers. As proof, there’s a YouTube clip of a very young Chet interviewing Joan Weston and Tonette Kademas.) About the current Windy City Rollers team, he says “The old roller derby was a con, a play for laughs. The Windy City Rollers, so help me Midge “Toughie” Brashun, are completely on the level. The fact is, they beat the living hell out of each other and generally go get loaded.”

The “Fat Guys” of the title refers, in part, to half-time entertainment at Chicago Bulls games these days. Apparently, the Bulls have funny dancing fat guys as half-time entertainment in addition to the slim, female Luvabulls cheerleaders. Fat Guys is a fast and fun ride through four decades of Chicago sports history.

Book Review: I, Doll: Life and Death with the New York Dolls by Arthur "Killer" Kane

It’s hard to believe the New York Dolls remained an obscure but highly coveted rock curiosity for almost three decades. If you listen to the seismic activity in the New York Dolls camp since the surviving members reunited, the amount of media coverage, and the kudos from young kids and their Moms, Dads and Grandpas, you'd think they were the aging glam rock equivalent of over-saturated reality TV stars.

But from the time Morrissey reunited the remaining band members for the Meltdown festival in 2004, the reunited 2York, I mean New York, Dolls have blazed into music consciousness at an accelerated pace that makes up for the initial confusion and shunning they received from the world at large the first time around.

What with two brand new CDs of original music released since 2006, DVDs, concert tours, and renewed interest in the tiniest detail of the band’s heyday. Not to mention indefatigable Johnny Thunders nostalgia, that’s been going on forever. Lech Kolwalski has edited several versions of the unreleased (and heavily bootlegged) JT documentary Born to Lose. Kowalski’s biopic though, deals mostly with Thunders post-Dolls music (and drug) career.


The Dolls original bass player, the late Arthur “Killer” Kane, the sweetest and least flashy member of the band, insofar as a tall, lumbering guy in platform boots, boa and sparkly tube top can  be considered  unassuming. Kane was the subject of the 2005 documentary New York Doll, and now his posthumously released memoir I Doll: Life and Death With the New York Dolls is now available from Chicago Review Press. As far as I can tell, Arthur wrote the book without a ghostwriter, and he has a breezy, conversational writing style. Some of his recollections are hazy-the passage of time can further dim events that occurred in a drug and alcohol stupor in the early ‘70s. (There are a few pages of editors’ notes at the end of the book to correct factual errors).

It’s refreshing to read a first hand account about the Dolls first 16 months. They go from being an underground hit at the Mercer Arts Center in NYC to play Wembley Arena in London during those 16 months. They rush from a celebrity studded party in London to a hotel and find original Dolls drummer Billy Murcia dead, O.D’ed in a bathtub. They create their first costumes from vintage clothes and even sew some of their own stage clothes from scratch. They get sloshed on Newcastle Ale and ambling drunkenly though a gig on their English tour, getting so loud and obnoxious in their natural Manhattan habitat that fellow bar patron David Bowie skitters away into the night. And of course there are the drugs and groupies…

Arthur’s widow Barbara adds a foreword and an epilogue to the book. Her marriage to Arthur was full of ups and downs; when he was drunk or angry he was physically abusive; once he even beat her up and tied her up with a telephone cord.  Arthur died from leukemia in 2005, a few weeks after the Meltdown reunion concert. Barbara notes in the epilogue that Arthur blamed his problems (and the demise of the Dolls, in part, on singer David Johansen Arthur refers to him as "our singer" instead of by name in the book. Anyone who saw New York Doll knows the story of how Arthur was jealous of the outgoing and outlandish Johansen.

Kane’s dislike for Johansen and managers Leber/Krebs overshadows some of the antics and narrative at times. As a firsthand look at the inner dynamics of one of the most infamous and influential bands of all time, I Doll is intriguing. A good read for hardcore Dolls fans and other lovers of early New York punk/pre punk.







Disclosure: I was provided with a free review copy of this book by Chicago Review Press.

Music Review: The Essential Janis Ian

Singer/songwriter Janis Ian, best known for her 1975 hit “At Seventeen” began her career as a child prodigy. For the next 40 years, her songs dealt with everything from domestic abuse, coming out as a lesbian, the Holocaust, teenage alienation and incest, along with ballads about loneliness and love.

The Essential Janis Ian provides the travelogue for this journey. Ian picked all the songs on this two-disc compilation. With over 30 albums dating back to 1967, alternate versions, unreleased demos, and live performances, she had a huge amount of work from which to choose. This set from Columbia/Legacy traces Ian’s career from her first tumultuous hit as a teenager to the quieter, more introspective tunes dealing with topical issues and lost love in the decades that followed.

Essential’s first CD covers Ian’s work from her teen years to the early 1990s. The first song is a demo recording of “Hair of Spun Gold,” which Ian wrote when she was 12. There is a wistful, folk tale quality to this coming of age saga. “God & the FBI” was inspired by J. Edgar Hoover and his buddies spying on her left wing parents. “Silly Habits” has a swinging piano and jazzy vocals. Ian’s early work didn’t get the airplay of other folkies and troubadours of the time like Joan Baez , Pete, Paul and Mary or Bob Dylan, but she certainly was a vital part of the folk movement, due to one song in particular.

Her first success was with the controversial tale of interracial romance “Society’s Child.” The song, produced by Shadow Morton (Shangri-las, New York Dolls), was so taboo many stations refused to play it. “But, honey, he’s not our kind’, Ian sings, mimicking a mother forcing her daughter to break up with her boyfriend. This song was so controversial when it was first released; a radio station was burned down for playing it. Her initial record label, Atlantic, considered the song too volatile for public consumption and shelved it. Verve then released it, and “Society’s Child” became a top 20 hit in 1967.

After the whirlwind success of “Society’s Child” Ian faded into the background for awhile to “find herself” and recover from dealing with sudden onslaught of fame and controversy at such a young age. In 1973, she returned with the album Stars. It’s most famous song, “Jesse,” a tender love song about an absent paramour, was popularized by Roberta Flack, and later recorded by Shirley Bassey and Joan Baez, among others.

Ian didn’t become a household name herself until 1975, when her album Between the Lines spawned the hit “At Seventeen.” Both the single and album version are included on this collection. "At Seventeen" the theme song for alienated teenage girls everywhere. And where else could you hear poetry like "in debentures of quality / and dubious integrity/ Their small town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise / wham payment dot exceeds accounts receive at seventeen..” on AM radio.

But all Ian’s musings are not bleak. The hopeful twang, harmonica and all, of “This Train Still Runs” looks at the bright side of getting older. Night Rains, her last album of the 1970s paired her with early electronica kingpin Giorgio Moroder for the disco-pop anthem “Fly Too High,” her most upbeat and commercial single (It was more successful in Europe and Australia than the U.S.). The sweeping and majestic “Love is Blind” is the only offering from the poignant Aftertones. 

The second disc contains songs unfamiliar to the causal listener; since there are no radio hits included.  By the early ‘90s, Ian had her own label Rude Girl, and most of the songs on this disc are selected from those releases. There’s “My Tennessee Hills” (with Dolly Parton on second vocals), a lovely ode to Appalachia. The melancholy “Some People’s Lives” dissects the ways people live in emotional squalor, while “Stolen Fire” brims with percussive verve.

The lyrics here stand on their own as sheer personal and emotional poetry. While Ian’s work (and certainly her personal stance) has always had a liberal political bent, the romantic songs included on Essential are applicable to anyone’s love life, regardless of gender or sexual proclivity. There’s an inclusive, humanistic appeal to her messages.

Ian has a sense if humor, too. She once guested on Howard Stern’s show, strumming a spoof of “At Seventeen” about Jerry Seinfeld and his young girlfriend. A snippet of the song was also famously used on The Simpsons. Her autobiography “Society's Child” is now available, and you can read more about Janis Ian’s life and music on her website.

Lady Gaga - The Real Deal

I usually don’t pay much attention to the “musicians” at the top of the Billboard charts nowadays since, well, most of ‘em ain’t musicians but lukewarm retreads from American Idol or Sing Your Ass off or one of those brain dead but here to stay reality shows. It’s been rather hard, however, to totally dismiss Lady Gaga.  A quick glance at a photo of her in an outfit made from Kermit the Frog dolls makes you do a double take even if you've never heard her music. Britney didn’t even wear something that wacky that when she was batshit crazy. Hell, Madonna didn’t do that during her most outrageous reinventions. So I did a little fact-checking on La Gaga out of curiosity. It seems Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (she’s Italian, like Madonna),  is more than what meets the eye. No, I'm talking about those hermaphrodite rumors, either.

Before recording her first album, Lady Gaga:

*was a staff songwriter for  Interscope Records and Akon’s Konvict Record Label. She wrote songs for the  Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears, among others
*sang in Lower East Side clubs with a performance artist named Lady Starlight
*attended New York University

Not the usual mass-manufactured pop bimbo the music industry has hoisted upon us this decade. Only time will tell if Lady G’s songs eventually concern themselves with more arcane references than “a disco stick” On Saturday Night Live last week, she managed to wear a gyroscope and heels, play piano and belt out a ballad. Girls can play "dress up" and be  real musicians, too. You can do both. Now this is the fully-rounded role model younger women pursuing a mainstream music career should emulate. Well, except for the Kermit the Frog costume.

Music DVD Review-Anita O'Day:The Life of a Jazz Singer

Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, and Ella Fitzgerald have outlasted all other female jazz singers in the pantheon of musical consciousness. Ella was famous for her scat singing. Billie had heartache down, exhibiting intense pain and longing in her delivery,while Sarah Vaughn had a smooth mainstream appeal, even garnering a pop hit with “Brokenhearted Melody”.
Most other female jazz singers are known only to hardcore jazz aficionados. Some of them turned into pop punchlines, like Martha Raye. But there was one pure survivor of the jazz life, Anita O’ Day. And her story is chronicled in the documentary Anita O’ Day-The Life of a Jazz Singer. This 92 minute film by Robbie Cavolina (O’Day’s manager at the time of her death), and Ian McCrudden examine O’Day’s career, which spanned six decades. Full of performance clips and interviews with jazz experts, O’Day's friends, and her peers, the film reveals a real tough cookie, a feisty character the viewer can like even if “Cowboy Bebop” is the only bebop you ever heard of before watching this documentary.
O’ Day, a perky Chicago-girl with lots of freckles and no uvula (due to a botched childhood tonsillectomy), rose from making money in walkathons as a teen, to becoming a jazz singer performing with the likes of Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton, and Duke Ellington. She was playful, coquettish and a bit bossy, in one clip from a TV show she directs the musicians into a trio for an improvised version of “Let’s Fall in Love.” She was arrested for marijuana possession and did jail time, and this branded her the Jezebel of Jazz. Anita was no coy songstress. Her forte was bebop, swing and improvisation, she was about the rhythm baby. O’ Day called herself a song stylist, improvising and using lots of quick eighth notes in her renditions.
Her first popular song, performed with Krupa's orchestra, was the novelty “Let Me Off Uptown”. It broke racial taboos, when she bantered onstage with African-American trumpet player Roy Eldridge. The effervescent O’Day held her own onstage with Eldridge, and Eldridge would later grumble “she's upstaging me!" Given the racial climate of the times, this was a bold move, and the pair had to sneak out of some theatres in the South.
The documentary interviewees, which include director John Cameron Mitchell, are in awe of her talent, sure, but on the flip-side, there’s an ex-manager who says O'Day was paid $2500 week for non-stop touring at one point and saved not a penny. Where did the money go? “(The money) went into her right arm, her left arm and for the care and maintenance of (drummer and companion) John Poole” says the manager. The longest relationship in her life was with aforementioned drummer John Poole, who introduced her to heroin.

But she wasn't a tragic figure like Billie Holiday, or an unapologetic hedonist; rather, O’ Day just seemed to fall into addiction by mistake and stay there for almost 20 years, but it proved barely a glitch in her day-to-day career. There were no long respites in rehab; she just kept performing. And it didn’t affect her shows. O’ Days most heralded performance is documented in the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day. Looking demure in a wide-brimmed hat, black and white dress, opera gloves, glass slippers, she sang "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Tea for Two" while high on heroin. It didn’t harm her performance though.
Anita O’ Day kept singing, recording and touring, despite alcoholism, heroin addiction, backstage rape, abortion and nearly every other part of the jazz life. O' Day finally kicked heroin in 1969. In the early ‘80s, Anita, now a pant-suits wearing woman in her early 60s, appeared on the talk show circuit to pitch her autobiography High Times, Hard Times. When astonished interviewer Bryant Gumbel recites the long list of her sordid experiences, she responds, “But that’s the way it went down, Bryant”. O’ Day was an existentialist, for sure. She has that feisty attitude right down to the interview clips filmed shortly before her death in 2006.
O' Day even made a comeback in her 80s, singing to young fans at Manhattan’s Iridium Jazz Club and touring Europe. There are clips from her last tour, in 2004, shots from the recording of her 2006 album Indestructible. O’ Day remained quite an endearing character in spite of her drug addiction and all her poor life choices. It was a long, tough journey from Jezebel of Jazz to the spunky old lady playing the horses at Santa Anita, but O’Day survived the jazz life to live to a ripe old age, unlike many of her contemporaries.
The film includes 90 minutes of extras, including full musical performances and full interviews with O’ Day and others. The documentary itself is somewhat scattered, jumping from partial musical clip to interview to montage and back again. You sometimes get the feeling there was so much raw material to work with that the director didn’t know what (or when) to edit. The DVD includes a 32 page booklet with a chapter from Anita’s autobiography High Times, Hard Times, and essays by James Gavin (Chet Baker’s biographer) and Wall Street Journal jazz critic Will Friedwald.

DVD Review: Bad Ronald

In the 1970s, particularly the halcyon years 1971-1975, many made-for-TV movies attained mythical status among kids and teenagers. The grindcore salaciousness of drive-in movies couldn’t be replicated on the small screen, so a blood- and boob-free version of B movies hit such venues as the ABC Movie of the Week. They dealt with serious issues like runaways and the generation gap (Maybe I’ll Come Home In the Spring with Sally Field), reform school (the infamous Born Innocent with Linda Blair), or devil/horror fantasies like rampaging Zuni fetish dolls (Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black). Through the years, these made-for-TV quickies have gained popularity, even with the younger generation who’ve only heard of the films and never seen them. There’s even a Facebook application called Made for TV Mayhem. 
 
In Bad Ronald (available from the Warner Brothers Archive Collection), B-movie favorite Scott Jacoby plays the title character, a geeky kid who lives with his bossy, doting Mom (Kim Hunter playing an understated version of Mama Bates). Ronald has the hots for a neighbor girl, but she prefers football players, and consistently spurns his requests for a date. He encounters one of her sisters and accidentally kills her after she insults his Mommy. In a panic, he buries the body, then runs home to Mom for advice on what to do next. Mom and Ronald fashion a hidden compartment from a second bathroom. Mom keeps watch over Ronald, bringing him meals, insisting that he exercise, and encouraging him to pursue his artwork. Ronald draws figures from a fantasy world he calls “Atranta”, weaving complex storylines about maidens and warriors.
Mom goes off for a gall bladder operation. She says she'll be back in a week. She doesn't make it. The next voice Ronald hears is that of real estate salespeople getting ready to sell the house. Soon they show prospective buyer Mr. Wood (Dabney Coleman) the house, along with his wife and three daughters. They all love it, except for one suspicious daughter. She finally relents to her parents and siblings and reluctantly agrees to go along with the purchase.

Now the fun begins. Ronald takes to peeping on the girls. Of course, there are realism problems, such as “How could they miss the flushing of the toilet in the hidden bathroom?” and “How does he take showers?” (watching a made for TV movie requires one to suspend disbelief for 90 minutes). The premise keeps things creepy; just thinking about a gawky, disheveled murderer hidden behind the walls of your house is unsettling.
Younger viewers used to a faster and bloodier pace in horror films might wonder what the fuss was about because Bad Ronald is merely tense and the momentum builds up slowly. There’s the snooping neighbor lady who is always peering through the back door window at the right time, and the progression (or is it regression?) of Ronald’s fantasy figure artwork to foreshadow the film's ending. Ronald has created a psychotic Lord of the Rings-type plot featuring the girls in the house, their suitors, and his macabre revenge fantasies.

Entertaining but a little dated, Bad Ronald has a medium “ick” factor that will keep you watching despite its flaws. Jacoby and Kim Hunter are psychotic but not overtly so, and the ‘70s furnishings and fashions will elicit a chuckle or two. Bad Ronald is part of the Warner Archive Collection of previously unreleased cult favorites and black and white classics.