Katrina And The Waves, "Walking On Sunshine"

I can't hear this song without thinking of High Fidelity.

From 1985, here's Katrina And The Waves with "Walking On Sunshine."

Enjoy!

Yes, Some Of The Roses DO Have Thorns

You could feel the excitement through the computer screen two days ago. It started with one status update, then another. There was a celebrity in our city. Our city sees a fair share of celebrities but mostly when they are really sick and not at all in the mood to chat with the locals.

This celebrity was spotted at WOW (Workout World) and as far as I could tell from the status updates on Facebook, people were hanging out outside the building, waiting for him to emerge. I can only imagine what the people who were already working out inside thought.

I was tempted to wake my sleeping toddler and drive to the other side of town for my chance to see him. My teenage self reminded me I had a Poison poster hanging on the back of my bedroom door that I may or may not have kissed a few times.

But apparently I've matured at least a little. I let my sleeping toddler lie.

But I can admit I'm a little jealous of those people who met and hugged and took photos with Bret Michaels (who was on his way to Sturgis) two days ago.

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I Want To Be Charlie!

Paramount is releasing a video based on the cinematic masterpiece Top Gun:



I'm just hoping there's some secret "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start" cheat code that lets you do the super menacing Iceman tooth chomp!



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The Fall, "Victoria"

We played this last night on our special 120 Minutes edition of Culture Brats Radio.

From 1988, here's The Fall with "Victoria."

Enjoy!

TV Review: VH1's Money Hungry

VH1's Money Hungry is a reality TV show that pits ten pairs of overweight contestants against each other to see who can lose the most weight. Yeah, you've heard this song before. But what makes this different from other weight-loss shows like The Biggest Loser is, in addition to not having that scary intense Jillian on their show, you put your money where your mouth is on Money Hungry. The winning team will receive $100,000 at the end of the series, but each team had to put up $10,000 of their own money to appear on the show.

Genius move, VH1! Way to cut down on the production costs!

If you think the team that loses the least amount of weight is the one that goes home each week, you've never seen a show on VH1 before. There is a competition, some sort of physical challenge, and the team that loses this event is placed on the chopping block. The remaining teams then vote for another team to join the event's loser on the chopping block. The team on the chopping block that loses the smaller percentage of weight is the team that goes home.

Like a lot of VH1's reality shows, there are certain contestants that seem to be on the show just to be in front of a camera. But like a lot of VH1's reality shows, Money Hungry still rocks. While it's the television equivalent of junk food, it's still pretty satisfying.

Copeland Connection

Have you ever sat in your room and listened to a song by the Cure while you cried your eyes out about the woeful state of your teenage life?

Did you ever jump up and down at a small club while singing "We Got the Beat" while your Madonna knock off rags held your hair off of your face?

I KNOW at least one of you drove to the liquor store in college with your equally underaged and anxious roommates screaming the words to the Smith's "Headmaster Ritual" or "Girlfriend In A Coma".

Or maybe you spent your youth in small clubs watching bands that were destined to become supergroups (R.E.M., The Police, Squeeze) play small venues on their way up the rock and roll ladder?

Anyone get swept up in that mid '80s/early '90s whirlwind vortex that was Athens, Georgia? R.E.M.? The B-52's?

Yeah, well I was sucked into it when my own BOYFRIEND and his band moved from New York down to this indie artist haven where you could rent an apartment for as little money as you could scrape up from between your couch cushions.

Everyone was too thin, had poor hygiene, and spoke with a lilting southern drawl that put you to sleep. My loud, fast-talking New York twang was like a jolting air raid siren that upset and frightened the natives.

If you've done any of these things, you can thank a Copeland.

Yes, that's right.

You probably have no idea how much you said and did during your youth that was directly or indirectly influenced by a Copeland.

Stewart, Ian and Miles.

IRS, FBI, and the real CIA. Oh, and don't forget The Police.

This influential family had a hand in discovering, cultivating, and breaking most new talent that came out of the late '70s and the '80s.

Sometimes I suspect that we would all be living in mud-thatched huts and collecting rain water for drinking had their father not been building and destroying nations while holding the reigns over at the CIA. I feel safer knowing that his fingerprints are all over the blueprint of society but whatever.

I once joked that Sunday brunch with this clan must be rife with oneupmanship.

Can you imagine ordering your Eggs Benedict while firing off your list of things accomplished?

Copeland genetics make it virtually impossible to fail so you'd have quite a bit to work with and you'd list your achievements in rapid fire succession before someone cut you off and outdid you.

Operas, an entire era of new wave music, concerts, the best band in the whole world, the Sting brand, belly dancing, polo, soundtracks, percussion, books, world domination.

So anyway, next time you open a bottle of pinot grigio, stop for a moment and give a "thank you" toast to the Brothers Copeland and all they have quietly added to your world.

For additional information on the family that made your exsistence possible, here is a reading list:

• Stewart Copeland, Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo and Pygmies Stewart Copeland
• Ian Copeland, Wild Thing (The Backstage, on the Road, in the Studio, Off the Charts Memoirs of Ian Copeland)
• Miles Copeland, The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics
• Miles Copeland, The Game Player
• Miles Copeland, Beyond Cloak and Dagger: Inside the CIA

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Peter Gabriel, "In Your Eyes"

From 1986, here's Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes."

Enjoy!

Top 17 John Cusack Roles

This week we thought it would be fun to rank our favorite John Cusack roles. Did your favorite make the cut?

17. Bryce, Sixteen Candles
16. Adam, Hot Tub Time Machine
15. Dimitri, Anastasia
14. Capt. John Gaff, The Thin Red Line
13. David Shayne, Bullets Over Broadway
12. John Kelso, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil
11. Jake, Must Love Dogs
10. Student Jack, Shadows And Fog
9. Jonathan Trager, Serendipity
8. Hoops McCann, One Crazy Summer
7. Ed, Identity

TV Review: True Blood

A disclaimer up front: I'm pretty sure that, as a straight male, I'm not the target demographic for True Blood. As far as I can tell, the show is positioned for female viewers who like their vampires grittier than the ones in Twilight's sparklefest romance and gay viewers who identify with creator Alan Ball's analogy of Vampire as Marginalized Minority Figure.

("Too bad for you," my wife says. "I'm Queen of the Remote on Sunday nights. Now be quiet and watch the naked vampires have sex.")

I like True Blood's overall premise, which has held together well since the series began in 2008. In the fully-realized world of the show, everyone in the country knows about the existence of vampires, and as a result, there's a lot of sly commentary about Undead civil rights. The show is winking at us as it draws a parallel to current struggles in the gay community, and it's cleverly done. (A church sign in the opening credits shows the message "God Hates Fangs.") While the actual characters are running around doing their thing, there's a lot of fun happening on TV sets in the background, as vampire lobbyists spar with conservative talk show pundits.

But now that we're more than halfway through the third season, it's what's happening with the centerpiece couple in the foreground that's starting to feel tiresome: we've got Sookie Stackhouse, a human (Anna Paquin) and Bill Compton, a vampire (Stephen Moyer). Over the past three seasons, their relationship has basically involved a lot of a) running around in the swamp looking for each other and b) forlorn gazing. Plus a lot of sex. That's pretty much it. And that's why the episodes tend to blend together for me.

It's all very Buffy/Angel, plot-wise. Hot blond girl with psychic powers pines for brooding, do-gooder vampire. Except for the sex part. Because there's a lot. Plus violence. (Which is why we all pay for HBO in the first place, right?) The violence is sublimely visceral. In Buffy's world, vampires exploded into powder when staked or beheaded. Here, they dissolve into truly fantastic, stringy gore. It may just be old shredded cheesecloth dipped in strawberry jam, but it looks awesomely grotesque. And the aforementioned sex is plentiful. Various characters within the ensemble are always bumping into each other and saying, "Hey! Have we had sex yet? No? Well then let's get a move on!" Watch the last ten minutes of the most recent episode (Aug. 8th), and you'll see some particularly impressive all-nude grindage.

There are other plots in play -- Season One's mystery serial killer, Season Two's orgy-loving evil Maenad, and the current season's Vampire/Werewolf political power struggle -- but it's all just meant to frame the Sookie/Bill romance. Which is wearing thin. I'm tired of hearing Paquin squeal "Bill!" and Moyer growl, "Sookeh..." (or, when the fangs are in, "Sssshhhoookeh..."). After two and a half seasons, True Blood's writers owe us more.

("Whatever," my wife says. "This show has more male bare asses per minute than anything else on TV. Now hush.")

P.S. One thing this show has going for it: best opening credits ever. Great song by the lurky-voiced Jace Everett, and images of the Gothic South that creep me out way more than anything that’s actually happened on the show itself.

All We Wanted Was His Amazing Face

I used to be a pretty big Weezer fan. I thought their first two albums, Weezer (a.k.a The Blue Album) and Pinkerton, were brilliant efforts; I still listen to them both on a fairly regular basis. But they lost me after Pinkerton; of the five albums they've put out since, I'm only familiar with a handful of songs.

In fact, it wasn't until yesterday that I found out Weezer's releasing a new album this year - September 14, four days before my thirty-*cough* birthday. (Just sayin'.)

The album is going to be called Hurley, and yes, this is the cover.


Says Rivers Cuomo, "I just loved this photo of Jorge Garcia - it just had this amazing vibe. We didn't want to do a fourth self-titled record and we knew people would refer to it as 'the Hurley record' even if we left it without that title, so we just called it 'Hurley.' No words are on the cover because all we wanted was his amazing face."

AWESOME. Or, as Hurley himself would say, Dude. Awesome.

"Memories," the first single from Hurley, was released today:



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