Flaming Pablum

The Creepy Turntable Movie Mystery Challenge

Once again, it’s odd how certain things stay with you.

I can’t remember where I was, who I was with or how I old I was when I saw it, but I remember watching a film on television -– a black-&-white mystery, possibly “noir” -– involving a protagonist haunted by a recurring nightmare or vision. In that mysterious scenario, he’s in some clandestine chamber that holds some horrible secret –- a murder, perhaps? The thing that makes it distinctive, however, is that there is music playing -– a strange, lulling, creepy dirge. Again, the protagonist is driven to distraction by this eerie vision, but cannot connect the dots as to where it happened or its significance.

Later in the film, he's at some social function, and there is music playing via an old-time record player. At one pivotal point, a woman near that turntable bumps into it with her elbow, inadvertently changing the speed of the turntable to a slower revolution-per-minute, like dropping from 45 to 33 1/3. When she does this, the music playing suddenly replicates the creepy music in the protagonist’s recurring vision, and he becomes convinced that the clandestine chamber with the horrible secret is immediately nearby.

Like I said, I wish I could cite more specifics, but I cannot. For the life of me, I’ve never been able to figure out the film. Much like the tortured protagonist, I cannot figure out the mystery.

Does this film sound familiar to you?

Weigh in. 

Bud Club

So, yeah, I watched the Oscars last night. I have precious little to say about it beyond that I truly appreciate that "Bohemian Rhapsody" did NOT win the Best Picture award. It was like a decent VH1 movie at BEST. I didn't see most of the other stuff.

In any case, during the course of proceedings, they showed this Budweiser ad featuring Charlize Theron demonstrating her billiards prowess in a bar. Yeah, yeah, ho hum, right? Oooh, she's sexy, etc. etc.

The thing that got my attention was during a fleeting glimpse of the jukebox ... the cover of Miami by The Gun Club...

It is probably the highest-profile exposure the band and the late, great Jeffrey Lee Pierce will ever receive, however brief.

Watch the full ad...

This, incidentally, should you not be familiar, was The Gun Club....

"The Warriors" at 40

I’ve talked about Walter Hill’s “The Warriors” a bajillion times here before (notably here, here and here). In any event, the movie is evidently now 40 years old, which is somewhat staggering.

In tribute, here’s the slavishly overwritten review of the abortive “Ultimate Director’s Cut” I wrote back in 2005 for Culture Catch. Let’s get down to it, boppers…

Ask your average American male in his late thirties about Walter Hill's 1979 film “The Warriors” and in all likelihood, he'll reply with either a robustly barked "CAN YOU DIG IT?" or a strenuously whined "WARRIOOOORRSS....COME OUT TO PLAAAA-YAAAAAAYYY!" I was a paltry twelve years old when “The Warriors” hit theatres in 1979, but even being too young to get in, I can vividly remember the sensation it caused. The movie poster alone was enough to capture my rapt, wide-eyed attention. "These are the Armies of the Night," it screamed, "they are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City."

Preying upon the justified phobia of urban upheaval in a bankrupt, crime-ridden metropolis, Hill's highly stylized depiction of New York City as a violent street-gang battleground struck a major chord with audiences not just in New York, but nationwide. Despite the film's inarguably over-the-top cartoonishness, it was still perceived as a potential powder-keg, resulting in cries for its banning reminiscent of the furor over Stanley Kubrick's similarly inclined “A Clockwork Orange” eight years earlier. Twenty-six years later, “The Warriors” portrays a New York City that is barely recognizable in its desolate, graffiti-ridden squalor. That said, Hill's painterly, apocalyptic vision wasn't especially indicative of late `70s NYC either. Rife with dated lingo, elaborate costuming, and an almost utopian innocence (Hill's gangs are harmoniously integrated and there isn't the slightest allusion to racial strife or drug abuse), “The Warriors,” in its original form, now cannot help but look quite campy and almost quaint. Apart from the odd homophobic and/or misogynist epithet blurted out by James Remar's character, Ajax, there is little to be actively offended by. “The Warriors” strove to display a vista of savage lawlessness, but its power to shock has long since dissipated. But to this ardent fan's mind, that's part of its charm. The failure of the film to achieve timelessness isn't a flaw but rather grounds for its inclusion in a pantheon of great films of a bygone age.

The director, however, seems to disagree. In the just released "Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD, Walter Hill takes great pains to re-cast “The Warriors” as a purposely cartoony fable. Perhaps smarting from his studio's refusal to let him cast the gangs as exclusively African-American and Latino and subsequent accusations of the end result's irrefutable campiness, Hill now claims that he purposefully strove for a comic book approach. To this end, Hill has severely re-edited the film to include comic book elements such as paneled segues and even thought balloons. Key scenes are truncated in order to facilitate these effects, diffusing crucial atmosphere and robbing the film of any semblance of dignity.

Prior to this heavy-handed approach, the film's more fanciful aspects were legitimized via passages of genuine tension-building. In the new cut, the film loses cohesion in a spliced-up mess of unintentional self-parody. Yet another unfortunate example of revisionism, "The Ultimate Director’s Cut" of “The Warriors” joins the ranks of the noxious "Greedo-shoots-first" version of “Star Wars.” As DVDs go, this is also a bit of a cheap affair. While the "Special Features" packaging boasts "four featurettes," they essentially comprise one documentary with the same cast of interviewees in four brief chapters. Along with the film's original trailer and a relatively unnecessary new introduction by Walter Hill (laboriously emphasizing the comic book element and force-feeding the viewer, Oliver Stone-style, the narrative's roots in Ancient Greek history), the finished product comes off as strikingly less than "ultimate." To his arguable credit, Hill does offer in his new introduction that he's perfectly fine with some viewers preferring the original version. Since he's given us that option, might I emphatically suggest skipping "The Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD in favor of its original incarnation (released on DVD in 2001) instead. - Alex Smith

Mr. Smith is a native New Yorker who lives in downtown Manhattan with his wife and daughter, works for Time Magazine, and writes for The New Yorker and other periodicals.

One More Chelsea Mourning

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’d love to say I was initially familiar with the signifiance of the Chelsea Hotel because of some of the more celebrated creatives, thesbians and bohemians who periodically resided within its hallowed walls, but much like probabaly most of my generation, I first came to know about the Chelsea because of one individual, and one individual only -- that being Sid Vicious. The now-very-late Mr. V notwithstanding, however, the Chelsea Hotel’s associations run an impressive gamut from literary icons like Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Arthurs Miller and Allen Ginsburg to musical luminaries like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Jim Miorrison, Edith Piaf, Janis Joplin to visual artists like Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe and countless others from virtually every artistic discipline. This list of its more celebrated guests is a veritable “who’s who,” full stop.

As detailed in a few older posts, I was fortunate enough to attend a few parties at the Chelsea Hotel back in the `90s, enabling me to travel beyond its lobby to meander through its storied halls. The last time I was able to do so was in 2010, as detailed here. It was on that occasion that I had the fleeting foresight to have my photo captured within. That’s it below, with me posing portentuously on the stairs, trying to look like a sinister, leather-clad punk, but simply looking like an inebriated, portly dad (guilty as charged, your honor).

Only a couple of years prior to that evening, the Chelsea’s beloved manager Stanley Bard had been abruptly deposed and many of its longtime tenants evicted. Turnovers in ownership started to take their toll. A year or two after my final visit, the Chelsea became entirely impenetrable – its fabled lobby closed and its edifice encased in scaffolding. A new management company promised/threatened that the Chelsea was to be re-imagined as a newly luxurious, bespoke hotel. Whatever remained of the hotel’s old interiors were stripped and gutted as it entered a new chrysalis phase. Patti Smith, some might remember, played an invitation-only event, which managed to rub a lot of people the wrong way, somewhat understandaby.

I actually did return to the building in more recent years. In 2014, there was a Blondie exhibition in a space just to the west of the hotel’s entrance, followed by Dee Dee Ramone exhibit (himself another former Chelsea tenant) a year or so later. But the hotel’s new iteration was still a work in progress, at the time.

But fruition never came. Walk by the Chelsea Hotel today in 2019, and it is still cloaked in a seemingly perpetual state of painful transition. This week, Gothamist posted a lengthy update on the hotel’s long saga and current, sorry state, complete with a frankly heartbreaking slideshow. Click here to see that.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but I’m very glad I got to spend those few evenings there when I did. It’s a damn tragedy that they couldn’t just let it be.

TWENTY Things I Just Do Not Care About

1. "Broad City" ending.
2. "The Sopranos" returning.
3. "Games of Thrones" continuing.
4. R. Kelly's record sales surging in wake of documentary about his predatory sexual exploits.
5. Britney Spears cancelling her Vegas residency.
6. Anything about any Vegas residency.
7. Woodstock's 50th Anniversary
8. Who is going to host the Oscars.
9. Who is performing on "The Masked Singer."
10. Meghan Markle's pregnancy.
11. Jeff Bezos' divorce.
12. Cardi B's parenting tips.
13. What the Fiji Water Girl has to say about her newfound fame.
14. Anything Pete Davidson, Gwyneth Paltrow or Kanye West is saying, doing or thinking.
15. Anything pertaining to professional football in any capacity.
    
    ADDENDUM:
16. Anything to do with Coachella -- who is playing it, who has pulled out of playing it, who is sponsoring it, who is attending, etc. 
17. Chris Pratt's faith-based fitness plan. 
18. ANYTHING faith-based. 
19. Marie Kondo's tips for tidying-up. Fuck off, lady. 
20. The most-liked egg on Instagram. 

Return to Dirty Old Fun City

Astonishingly persistent readers here might remember a post from -– Jesus -– five years ago already wherein I documented the doings of an intrepidly obsessed cinephile named Jonathan Hertzberg. Hertzberg took it upon himself to compose something of a master-reel of footage from New York City-centric cinema from arguably the most adventurous era, that being the 1970’s (and into the very early 80’s). This was all culled into a frankly overwhelming video series called “Dirty Old New York a.k.a. Fun City.” The end results were a location-spotting NYC blogger’s dream, …. kind of the cinematic equivalent to the Beastie Boys’ sample-heavy watershed opus, Paul’s Boutique.

When I’d penned that original post in 2013, Hertzberg had only completed, I believe, two installments of the series, and I somewhat churlishly whined that he hadn’t included any footage from Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” Milos Foreman’s adaption of the Broadway musical “Hair” and a host of films from later in the 80’s. At the time, Hertzberg himself wrote in. Here’s what he had to say.

Thank you for words and space you've devoted to my "Dirty Old New York" project! These are fluid pieces and have been updated already a few times with more planned, i.e. "missing" footage could and likely will appear in the updates, like firmware. It's hard to have every wanted film on hand at any moment. I was a bound a bit by availability, quality of footage (rules I broke a few times), and time frame (which I also stretched a bit). In general, I was going for DVD-quality, 16x9 footage from approximately '66 to '84. But, this has stretched a bit into '85. I had to stop somewhere or it would keep going, and I was looking for the gritty '70s-like years for the most part and not the period when the '80s started to look like the '80s as we remember it.

DOWNTOWN '81 appears for a bit in Part I and returns in Part III. SUSAN will likely appear in III. HAIR and KING KONG and some of the others you mention should be in there as well.

Tellingly, it’s taken me five goddamn years to get back on board. In the ensuing half-decade, Hertzberg not only completed his series, concluding with a fifth chapter, but did some specialized cuts as well, concentrating on stuff like recurring character actors, a Super 8 reel of New York footage his father shot in 1969 and other fun stuff, all very much worth checking out.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to embed Part IV of “Dirty Old New York aka Fun City” being that a passage of it enjoyably concentrates on “punk vs. disco,” cannily juxtaposing the strangely parallel exploits of John Travolta’s Tony Manero from “Saturday Night Fever” with Richard Hell from “Blank Generation.”

 

Cool, right, well, click here to go to Hertzberg’s Vimeo page to watch the whole series and then some. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

Bowie's Day

Today is the birthday, of course, of the late David Bowie, who died three years ago this Thursday, … an event the world is still coming to grips with.

A lot has been said since his passing (I memorialized his impact thusly), and his absence continues to be felt. While we still have his enjoyably vast body of work to explore and/or re-discover, there will sadly be no more from the great man.

Every Bowie fan has their own favorite iteration. While I first warmed to his apocalyptic, proto-goth phase circa Diamond Dogs (the first record of his I acquired after appropriating my older sister’s copy of the ubiquitous ChangesBowie LP), thrilled to the post-punk-imbued Scary Monsters and got swept up in the unabashedly populist reign of the Let’s Dance days (hey, it may have been pure pop for the masses who couldn’t get their heads around his earlier work, but it was still fucking marvelous music), I prefer to remember Bowie preserved in the video below, an augmented outtake from the 1981 film, “Christiane F.”

If you’ve not seen it, don’t get too excited about the film, unless you genuinely enjoy gloomy scenes of squalor, drug abuse and sexual degradation in early 80’s Berlin. That all said, the title character (played by the doe-eyed Natja Brunckhorst, who appears in the latter-half of this clip) is obsessed with Bowie. As such, this is a snippet of “the concert scene,” fleshed out and subtly augmented by a savvy YouTuber named Mister Sussex. Sussex excised most of the narrative elements of this clip (i.e. heroin-addled Euro-teens in varying states of despair) and beefed up the Bowie content. I think he did a pretty great job of it, actually.

Some curious factoids: Bowie & Co. are lip-synching here, but doing it masterfully. Then again, footage of Bowie reading aloud from a phone book would be damn compelling, too, as far as I’m concerned. Secondly, evidently the wide crowd shots meant to imply the expanse of a concert stadium were allegedly lifted from footage of an AC/DC show -– and in the final, released version of “Christiane F.,” there’s even a wide shot wherein AC/DC fleetingly appear –- were the editors on heroin, too?

Thirdly, the Bowie footage was purportedly shot not in Europe but in New York City, somewhere. Based on the grey curtain backdrop, I’m speculating if it wasn’t shot in the confines of the Upper West Side club, Hurrah, where the video for “Fashion” was later shot. Anyone?

While other mitigating factors arguably mire its excellence -– like the fact that this version excises most of the slowly building intro and/or that arguably lamentable guitarist G.E. Smith appears (he later of “SNL” notoriety and also an inexplicably right-leaning wingnut who played this song at the RNC in 2016, seemingly oblivious to its frothy references to the occult and cocaine), it captures a certain period of Bowie’s elegant majesty perfectly. From his signature profile to his popped-collar James Dean jacket, he is the quintessence of cool, here.

It's too late to be hateful.

Whigged Awesome: Whither the Upper Crust?

Upon hearing the disheartening news that The Upper Crust had decided to put their royal selves on “indefinite hiatus” recently, I dialed up some of the fabled Boston band’s finer recorded moments over the holidays, which led me to finally view the 2004 documentary about them (see below).

I’ve mentioned the Upper Crust here a few times, usually in relation to since-shuttered venues like Brownie’s. They were among a coterie of bands like The Unband, Nashville Pussy, The Candy Snatchers, The Pleasure Fuckers and The Lee Harvey Keitel Band, to name a small few, that my friends and I would regularly go see live back in the mid-to-late 90’s, usually at venues like The Continental, Tramp’s and the afore-cited Brownie’s, although I want to say I remember a gig The Upper Crust played on The Frying Pan, a disused barge-turned-live-music-venue, wherein the vessel actually caught fire during the performance. If memory serves, the Upper Crust manfully kept playing as the ship fleetingly burned.

If you’re regrettably unfamiliar, The Upper Crust were originally a quintet who played a high-decibel variant of heavy garage boogie ala AC/DC, whilst dressed like aristocratic fops from the 18th century. While that sounds slavishly gimmicky, the single element that set The Upper Crust well apart from similarly high-concept novelty bands like Dread Zeppelin or Clowns for Progress was the undeniable fact that they wrote great, hilarious, hook-laden songs and they actually fucking rocked. Resplendently bedecked in their signature powdered wigs, pancake makeup, ruffled shirts and platform shoes, The Upper Crust looked endearingly ridiculous, but completely delivered in the rock --- or roque department.

Don’t believe me? Enjoy….

I was undeservingly privileged to see the band perform a number of times, but it always remained to be seen if they were ever going to take off beyond the confines of the then-still-burgeoning punky East Coast rock circuit. I would routinely insert tracks of theirs on mixtapes (remember when we all still made those?) for friends, extolling the band’s myriad merits. In time, however, our little show-going gang started to splinter off and get married (myself included), and then the venues started to close and Manhattan itself started to seem less and less like a place that the Upper Crust and similarly inclined bands would ever find a place to play. Jesse Malin's been doing his damnedest to stem that tide, via endeavors like Bowery Electric and Coney Island Baby, but Manhattan just isn't the same place it used to be ... which fucking sucks. 

As such, I was sad to learn that the band was finally hanging it up. I walked by the old shop in SoHo that lead singer/guitarist Nate Freedberg (stage name: Lord Bendover) was running, but it no longer looked to be a going concern. Then I learned of the documentary. Already fourteen year old by this point, the film tells a decidedly less cheery tale. While amusing that one of the original members went onto become a speech-writer for President Clinton, the stories of intra-band acrimony and conflicting aspirations seem all too familiar. To my mind, the Upper Crust SHOULD have been a bigger deal. The added oddity that drummer Jim Janota (stage name: Jackie Kickassis) is an avowed gun-nut only makes the story stranger.

As I understand it, the band members are all pursuing other musical ventures these days (check out Nat's doings here), but one hopes they might yet again reconvene. I would go see them again in a heartbeat.

Herewith “Let Them East Rock”….

Goodbye to Stormy 2018

Technically, there are still a few days left of 2018, but for all intents and purposes, it’s over. As such, time to dust off this old thing. Let’s have at it.

What did you do in 2018 that you'd never done before?
Travel to the Middle East. Partake of Black Pudding. Submit a stool sample. Not all on one day, mind you.

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My plans for the inevitable “Dry January” were stymied by the arrival of the bomb cyclone. We’ll see what happens this year.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Friends of mine had children. No one in the immediate family.

Did anyone close to you die?
In the beginning of the year, my childhood friend Danny passed away. I wrote a few posts about it. Still hard to believe.

What countries did you visit?
I went to Lebanon in August (with a stopover in Paris) and England in November.

What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?
A responsible adult in the White House.

What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory?
I’m going to say September 12, which was significant for me in that it was both my organization’s company-wide Town Hall meeting (for which I orchestrated video coverage and content) in Nashville, Tennessee and the date of Killing Joke’s New York stop on their 40th Anniversary tour. I’d taken pains to arrange it so I could actually do both, but those plans collapsed, as discussed in histrionic detail here.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I’m proud of my continuing ascent at my place of work. The work I do is recognized and appreciated. That’s a nice feeling. Here's hoping I can sustain in 2019.

What was your biggest failure?
My little family has sorely outgrown our living space, but we have yet to find a working solution.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Well, at one point, I had a scare with a tick. Then I developed a wicked case of Montezuma’s Revenge (read: traveler’s diarrhea) following the trip to Beirut. Then there was a sort of mystery condition that prompted a few invasive and uncomfortable tests (see stool sample answer above), that revealed nothing and went away as mysteriously as it had arrived. I’m sure you’re sorry you asked, now.

What was the best thing you bought?
Airline tickets for London to see the close of Killing Joke’s 40th Anniversary tour.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Christine Blasey Ford

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Brett Kavanaugh, Matthew Whitaker, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, Mike Pence, Lyndsey Graham.

What did you get really, really excited about?
Traveling to Beirut. Traveling to London to see Killing Joke.

Where did most of your money go?
Tuition for my kids’ schools.

What song will always remind you of 2018?
“Never Fight a Man with a Perm” by IDLES

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I’d say I’m about the same. I’m worried about a few things, but overall am content with how things are going on a personal level. On a grander scale, 2018 was a year of constant incredulousness, shock, disgust and shame over the Trump Administration.

Thinner or fatter?
Certainly fatter.

Richer or poorer?
Feeling the latter in the wake of the holiday season. We’ll see when those Amex bills arrive.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Relaxing with my wife and kids.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Wasting time on social media. Arguing about politics with certain folks.

How did you spend Christmas?
Spread over Quogue, Manhattan, Brooklyn and West Chester, PA.

Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
No earthly idea.

Did you fall in love in 2018?
Was already in love.

How many one night stands in this last year?
Zero. Happily hitched.

What was your favorite TV program?
I quite liked “The Bodyguard.”

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I continue to hate Trump and his cronies and his supporters. 

What was the best book you read?
Without question, the “Beastie Boys Book.”

What was your greatest musical discovery?
From eons passed, I discovered that great collaboration of Robert Fripp and David Sylvian, and a band I’d entirely slept on called The Oblivians, who are amazing. I also became somewhat enthralled by two newer bands, specifically IDLES and Daughters, as I mentioned here.

What did you want and get?
I was finally able to see Killing Joke on their 40th Anniversary tour –- TWICE, no less (Oxford and London)

What did you want and not get?
Regime change.

What were your favorite films of this year?
I quite liked “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, which was a refreshingly smart, very New Yorky film. I suppose I liked “Avengers: Infinity Wars,” but all those Marvel movies are starting to blur together for me.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned an unseemly 51, and had a small celebration with my family.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Trump’s impeachment, indictment and incarceration.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?
Embarrassing Dad With a Band T-shirt Problem

What kept you sane?
My lovely wife and children.

What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I normally don’t have an answer for this, but I’m going to say Hayley Atwell. She’s close to perfect.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Fuckin’ take your pick.

Who did you miss?
Pete Shelley, Stan Lee, Mark E. Smith

Who was the best new person you met?
Three of my wife’s cousins in Beirut, who are all totally excellent.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018
Never lose your sense of humor, regardless of how bleak and dire things get.

Song lyric that sums up 2018
Not a current song, but from World Party’s “Ship of Fools,” this feels kinda accurate…

We're setting sail to the place on the map
from which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
by the light of the crosses that burned.

Christmas Eve 2018

Here's to a festive Christmas Eve to you and yours....