Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor
Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.
That’s a bit of a clunky article title I’ll admit. But it’s definitely search engine friendly, so cut me some slack. Tonight Janet, Bryan, Jennifer, Betsy, Bo, Mark and I went to see the Hip play in Boston. And it was amazing.
I’ve seen Downie solo twice, and this was the fourth time I’ve seen the Hip – honestly don’t think the man has ever put on a better show. With me present. 3 encores, energy like nutty bananas. Great time. These Canadian cats have a lot of life left in them.
The man is 82, afterall, but I’m not ready to see him shuffle off this mortal coil just yet. Nor am I lobbying for a Meet Wally Sparks or Ladybugs sequel. But Rodney Dangerfield has been one of my very favorite comedians since I first saw Easy Money on network TV way back in 1983. It’s one of the funniest comedies ever conceived and I’m frequently shocked at how few people have seen it.
At first it looked like his heart surgery had been a roaring success. And I also heard Adam Sandler and a bunch of other actors and comedians had been to the hospital to visit him – but apparently he’s not actually doing so hot. So pull together folks, and send Rodney some good vibes today.
Monty : [about his Mother-In-Law] She says I drink too much, I smoke too much, I gamble. I mean she’s right, but what can I do? I got no… what’s the word…
Nicky : Class.
My friend and associate, Atlanta’s Boston Blogger (that’s a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it?) just sent me a link to Fenway Park’s Webcam. You have to refresh it manually, but it works. Very cool stuff.
I’ll admit it – I am a peripheral, fairweather baseball fan. But if the Sox are doing well, I start watching. Last night’s game against the Yankees was amazing. Here we go – I hope they don’t break our hearts again. Who am I kidding?
I met my new roomates, Mardi and Betsy, for drinks at Tiernans last night. Where they then proceeded to tell me an interesting story about my cat, Boss.
Choosing new roomates is a very stressful process, to say the least. Luckily, apartments in the North End of Boston are in high demand – so there’s never any shortage of willing candidates. But once they’re in you want to be as hospitable as possible, for a while anyway, as they settle in and get used to everything. This is made infinitely more difficult, however, if your pet frequently vomits in their room.
I’m going to keep this piece about my cat short, as I would actually like to sleep with a woman again some day. But I’ll say this. Boss has puked in Betsy’s shoes. Twice. Maybe this is a sign of affection in the cat kingdom. But I feed him, and he’s never done it to me. He’s actually in her room right now, perhaps waiting for her to come home and take of her shoes.
When I visited South Africa in 97, we were encouraged by our host to always check our shoes for scorpions before we slid our feet into them. But this… this is on a whole ‘nother level.
Appetizer: How are you today?
Fine, thanks. Fair to middlin’. Not too shabby. Hanging in there. Can’t complain. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Dreaming up new ways to torture prostitutes before I kill them.
Soup: Name 3 television shows you watch on a regular basis.
Trailer Park Boys (shocking), Blackadder and Saturday Night Live. TPB I have discussed to death on here, so I’ll spare you – just this one time. Blackadder is a brilliant Britcom from the eighties which launched the career of Rowan Atkinson – more commonly known as Mr. Bean. Bean is predominantly physical comedy, a’la Chaplain or Keaton, wheras Blackadder is sharp, biting, dry, verbal humor all the way. I admire the way in which Atkinson was able to create such a polar opposite character in Mr. Bean – and have great success Stateside, but I wish more Americans knew about Blackadder. BBC America airs it regularly and I always TiVo it.
SNL has never had a bad season as far as I’m concerned. If I hear one more person say “It’s not funny anymore” I may go postal. Granted the early eighties were touch-and-go at times. They said the show was dead circa 1990 when Lovitz and Carvey left… enter Mike Meyers, Spade, Rock, etc. They said it was dead circa 95 when Farley and Sandler left… enter Will Farrell, Norm Macdonald and Colin Quinn. Just have a little faith and the show always bounces back.
The biggest rebuilding year for SNL was 1985. The ratings had gotten so bad that Lorne Michaels swapped out the entire cast cast when NBC insisted on pulling the plug for good otherwise. Goodbye Anthony Michael Hall and Terry Sweeney – hello Mr. Hartman. The rest is history. Thanks, Phil.
Salad: What’s the scariest weather situation you’ve experienced?
A blizzard in 1990. Driving back from a ski trip in Killington with Jason and Aaron Thelen. Jason took over driving from his father who was having a hard time seeing through the snow. We would have pulled over, but we were on 128 with no exits in sight. Jason is behind the wheel about 2 minutes before he loses control of the Dodge Caravan which does a 360 over 2 lanes of traffic. Looking out the window of a spinning car, that you happen to be in, is really fecked up. Try and imagine it for a second. The car stopped rotating in the exact direction it had been in when it started – and we just kept movin on down the road like the friggin’ idiots that we were.
Main Course: If you could wake up tomorrow in another country, where would you want to be?
Too many variables here. I could wake up in a dumpster in Fiji, or a luxury hotel suite in Russia. Do I have a way home? Am I hallucinating? Was I partying on the Rolling Stones’ private jet the night before, or was teleportation part of my Hogwarts 5th year final exam? Is Hermione in the dumpster with me? Please say yes.
Dessert: What do you usually wear to sleep?
Seamus Britt.
What the hell is going on here? Forget about the Poltergeist curse – three of the founding members of the Ramones have all died untimely deaths in the last three years. First Joey (49), then Dee Dee (49) and today Johnny (55)!
The lights have come up on the Blitzkrieg Bop. Rock n’ Roll Radio is off the air. It’s low tide on Rockaway Beach. Tragic. I’m done.
I’ve always hated my crummy domain name. It’s actually a subdomain, hence the annoying dot between David and Pye that’s been confusing and throwing people off for 5 years. The clunky and hard-to-remember david.pye.com has gone the way of the dodo, and you’re now loving life at:
I have redirects in place at the old site that should automatically send you here, but that site will close down in a few months – so update your bookmarks!
I’ll also archive the old, grey site somewhere in the background too. But from now on, the blog will only be updated here at the new site. Why the change? I accidentally let davepye.com expire last month, and it was quickly snapped up by a woman in Florida whose husband shares my name. I emailed her in a panic and pleaded with her to give it back to me. I fully expected her to ask me for an extortionate, cyber-squatter sort of amount for it’s return, but she took pity on me and sold it back for the $20 she’d spent to register it. Thank you, Kimberly Pye. You’re a doll.
Anyhew, I took it as a sign, bit the bullet and moved everything over to the new domain last night. I hope you enjoy it, and I know it’ll be easier to remember. My email will be changing accordingly too, from david@pye.com to dave@davepye.com – so please update that info as well.
I hate moving day. Welcome to the new digs.
One of my current pissah-projects is the redesign of a humor site based around the term Masshole, kid. For those of you who don’t know, simply put – a Masshole is a resident of Massachusetts. But it’s deeper than that, you cawk. You can’t just move here from Poughkeepsie and start referring to yourself that way. Massholes aren’t created on the fly, kid – they’re either born or Boston bred over many beer-and-sox-soaked years, dude.
We’ve come up with a lot of funny stuff for this site so far, and I can’t wait to roll it out to everyone in a few months. In the meantime, dig this:
I found a local T-Shirt company who are quietly making nifty Masshole T-Shirts some of you might want to know about. If you’re a certified Masshole, love the feeling of 100% cotton t-shirts against your body and have been looking for something in a Fenway/Highway 93 green, check them out, kid.
Kid on Bus: What are you gonna do today, Napoleon? Napoleon Dynamite : Whatever I feel like I wanna do, gosh!
I didn’t like this movie until I actually saw it. Several friends asked me to go see it with them, but I declined. I thought I had it all figured out based solely on trailers I’d seen – nerdy guy in midwestern town gets picked on by jocks until somehow managing to overcome his nerdy hardships and win over the girl in the end. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much what happens, so I was right to an extent.
But what surprised me about the film was that at first glance the Napoleon character is totally unlikeable. He’s abrasive, grumpy, rude and living in a fantasy world to boot. A fantasy world chock full of Scottish wizards, bow staff battles and sweet jumps. He’s mean to his grandmother, his brother, his teachers, the school nurse and even a Llama named Tina. But when new student Pedro arrives at the school, Napolean befriends him immediately and he lightens up a bit.
Napoleon Dynamite : Who are you gonna ask to the dance? Pedro : That girl right there. Napoleon Dynamite : Summer Wheatly? How the heck are you gonna do that? Pedro : Build her a cake or something.
“Build” a cake they do, and things start looking up for Napoleon on the social front – but every movie needs conflict, and when a girl enters the picture there are falling outs left right and center. Napoleon, through the discovery of an ancient dance lesson video, bails his friends out of a few tough situations and ultimately wins the day. And by the end of the movie you just love the kid.
Totally unformulaic, original, funny and with more heart than Ann and Nancy Wilson – I highly recommend this movie. It’s bizarre cult following has led the movie studio to reintroduce it around the country in wide-release. Go see it, GOSH!
Deb : What are you drawing? Napoleon Dynamite : A liger. Deb : What’s a liger? Napoleon Dynamite : It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed… bred for its skills in magic.
Construction of my parent’s new house in Portland, Ontario Canada is now off to the races. To have the keys to an actual physical house that belongs to my family after 5 years of parental trailer transient behavior is going to be absolutely wonderful.
This is actually the back of the house, which faces the Big Rideau. Those tall windows above the back door will look out onto the lake, but there are enough trees on the property that there’s still an element of privacy. We can see the lake, but the lake can’t really see us. And that’s good -because I’ve been rather worried about pirates.
The top floor has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, and I think there will be another bedroom somewhere on the first floor. My father is skeptical, but I see a lot of potential for the basement. We could easily turn it into a bar and maybe even fit a pool table or at least a dartboard down there. There’s also a garage separate from the house that has a loft which I want to see turned into a bunkhouse of sorts. The best part of having a place like this is being able to entertain – and entertain we shall. But never pirates.
Here’s another one of the photos Nick sent me. It’s Ray-Ray in my room at 113 Janefield in Guelph, Ontario – circa 1996. 3 years after this photo was taken, I would return to this house to visit, and find the room painted blue with mirrors all along one of the longer walls. To my dismay, I learned that Venditti had rented the house to a “boy band” and my room had become the rehearsal space. Fer f*ck’s sake.
But at this point in time, it was very much my own. And I thought I’d dissect some of the overabundant decor (keep in mind this is just one wall out of four).
Left to right. Well, there’s Ray-Ray. That’s a Shining poster above his head along the wall with the window. It’s my favorite scene in the movie, when Nicholson is drinking at the bar with the ghostly tender. “I’m the sorta guy who likes to know who’s buying his drinks.” As we move right, you’ll notice 4 Star Wars cups that I got at Taco Bell. Those were always really big with chicks I brought home. The R2D2 to the right of the cups is remote control operated, and I think I got it for Christmas in 1977.
The flags along the top of the room are Players Light promos that I stole from The Brass Taps. Then there’s the enormous Smiths poster behing the entertainment center. Speaking of the Smiths, further to the right are every one of their CD box covers pasted on a bristol board. I was a little obsessed for several years. Then you have the enormous Queen is Dead poster that I always loved.
Above the CD covers is a picture of JFK lodged between 2 more Lush CD boxes. God, they were a great band. I got to see them live once when they opened for Jane’s Addiction in 1991 at the Wallace Civic Center in Fitchburg, MA. Picture of Elvis and a Jerky Boys bumper sticker above that. If you’ve never played Jerky Battleship – do yourself a favor. Suede postcard.
The bookcase – stuffed kangaroo I got in Australia, Gorilla mug I got in Malaysia and stacks of CDs on the top. Books. Huge pile of Cliffs Notes top shelf to the right. And people wonder how I got through University. Bottom shelf, Movie Quotes board game. I think the box of trivial pursuit-esque cards is probably still in the office of the Brass Taps. Further right – metal Walker Muffler sign with John Madden on it. Illegible Sean Connery Goldfinger poster, and a Jamiroquai one below it.
What an interesting little time-capsule. If you’re still awake, frig off.
There was a cat in a cage on the Subway this morning. He wasn’t by himself – his people were with him. Woulda sucked if he was alone, cause again he was in a cage and he’d be pretty much f*cked. He was orange and white and mewing incessantly.
I have always had this gift with cats. I can pick up even the wildest of felines, and I have this secret hold that I do where they’ll always just go limp and relax. Might also have something to do with the finger in the butt.
Anyway, I made eye contact with the cat. It stared at me for a bit, cried out again briefly and then shut up. I didn’t hear him mew again for the rest of the ride. Maybe my steely gaze intimidated it. Maybe word has gotten around the water dish that I violate the odd cat with my pinky.
My own cat, Boss – I’ll admit that I have one as I’m comfortable with my sexuality – is remarkably obedient. He comes when I call him, does tricks, yaps incessantly and loves people. He’s like a dog. Or Bryan Whitely.
But I’m good with the cats.
Appetizer: What movie soundtracks do you own?
Lost Boys. Guys and Dolls. Rushmore. Big Lebowski. But the best movie soundtrack of all time is The Blues Brothers.
Soup: How much cash do you usually carry with you?
Next question.
Salad: Are you more comfortable around men or women? Why?
Both. Because I’m well adjusted.
Main Course: What is the most mischievous thing you did as a child?
I had this awesome treehouse. My Dad built it out of two mainframe computer crates. Then he put siding on it and built a deck on the top. It was phat, even in ’81. There were many games of doctor up there with Kathy H. Otherwise, I was a pretty good kid. Oh, and I killed a lot of frogs there, too.
Dessert: Who is the funniest member of your family?
Me. The quizzlet sucks this week.
As my friend Mike would put it, my favorite ‘fish-wrapper’, The Boston Globe, decided to run like the wind with a story which apparently proved that some of Bush’s military files were concocted recently – and then made to appear as if they were written in the 1970’s.
The jist is this: Accusations of forgery can be proven because certain documents were printed with “proportionally spaced fonts” that did not come into use “for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90’s.” Clutch the pearls!
What a scandal. This changes everything. In fact, Katharine Q. Seelye from Free Republic goes a step further: “I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively.” That’s quite an accusation, Ms. Seelye, but it sounds like you’ve done your homework and unearthed a real administration-killer here.
That is if IBM hadn’t actually introduced the proportionally spaced typewriter in 1941.
Keep digging, kids. You’ve got, oh, 54 days left until November 2nd.
