by Fred Topel
“I hope one day Poison will make another record.”
– Bret Michaels
Reality TV rarely represents anything viewers would recognize as actual reality. The Bachelor uses real people but puts them in a dating pageant that never seems to result in any actual marriages. Survivor drops them on an island where no one’s life is actually at risk, and it’s just a popularity contest in the end.
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by Ryan Stewart
“Are we the monsters?”
– Gareth Edwards
David Spade once had a stand-up bit about how audiences shouldn’t have to cut a movie slack for having a low budget, since ticket prices are all the same. Monsters, a new indie sci-fi film made for $15,000 – less than Kevin Smith’s Clerks – passes the high-expectations test with flying colors.
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by Nicole Powers
“I don’t like taking any cock out.”
– Johnny Knoxville
The new Jackass feature film is spectacularly shitty – in an awesomely gross kind of way. And because it’s shot in 3D, the excrement literally comes flying right at you, giving the MTV-rooted franchise the opportunity to connect with its audience in a whole new, and yet familiarly meaningless way.
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by Blogbot
“You either can do it, or you can’t.”
– Destin Pfaff
Destin Pfaff came into the business of love reluctantly. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the power of attraction, or the institution of marriage. (For the record he’s engaged, and the happy couple have a 7 month-old son.) It’s just that a career in sales didn’t appeal, and it never really occurred to him that one could make a living — and a good one at that — selling access to something that most people hope to find for free, namely a soul mate.
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by Ryan Stewart
“I’ve been defeated by hecklers many times.”
– Patton Oswalt
There are only a handful of comedians whose album releases qualify as cultural events, but Patton Oswalt is one of them. Tracks from his new CD, My Weakness is Strong are already being dissected by comedy enthusiasts in coffee shops around the country and picked apart on social networks like Twitter for the exquisite one-liners, the acutely-lobbed political grenades, and moments of inspired lunacy that compare to his memorable tangle with a screaming heckler on his last album, Werewolves and Lollipops. That CD, released during the death throes of the Bush administration, was widely hailed for its stance of supreme indignation and undercurrent of soul-weariness that mirrored the national mood at the time, and cemented Oswalts reputation as a comedian who loses no ground by going topical and getting angry.
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by Nicole Powers
“I don’t want to be culturally irresponsible.”
– Janeane Garofalo
“I do try like hell to not be ashamed. But, sometimes I am, I have to admit,” says New Jersey-born comedienne, actress and activist, Janeane Garofalo. We’ve been talking for close to 45 minutes – mostly about TV, politics, the media, and the toxicity of contemporary pop culture. As I switch the tape recorder off and the conversation winds down, we briefly discuss what Garofalo herself turns to in order to unwind, which is the source of her current state of angst.
“Sometimes I fall dreadfully short, behavior-wise, activity-wise. Sometimes I’ll watch bad television, sometimes I’ll read crappy magazines and I’m ashamed, because I’ve done it,” she admits. The New York resident, who recently released a new stand up DVD entitled If You Will, is currently living outside of her comfort zone in a Los Angeles hotel while filming the Criminal Minds spin-off Suspect Behavior (which also stars Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker).
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by Nicole Powers
“I’m just going to have to accept that maybe I’m funky.”
– Sia Furler
Having come to the attention of the KCRW-listening, latte-sipping music intelligentsia thanks to her turns with English post-trip-hop outfit Zero 7, for a while Sia was inadvertently defined by what was initially intended as a very limited, no-strings-attached guest spot with the lush lounge combo. Thanks to the success of Zero 7’s debut album Simple Things (2001), and their follow up release, When It Falls (2004), and the numerous international tours that followed, Sia’s personal brand became synonymous with the downtempo pigeonhole Zero 7 prominently occupied.
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