True Showbiz Tales #5: One of my first paying gigs post high school was as a voice actor in a Sonic audio drama/podcast. I expected it to be some furry crap, but… it was the opposite of that. An extraordinarily stoned free-wheeling comedy in which I had to play most of the "canon" characters and improvise freely.
I…

Ever hear the remix "Sweet Slim Shady?" It mashes up "The Real Slim Shady" with the proto-AC/DC stomp of "Sweet Transvestite" from "Rocky Horror." It's a better backing track than the actual Eminem track has.

Leia remained unsatisfied!

The last one and a half albums by My Chemical Romance, when they ditched their post-hardcore and emo leanings and started to move towards dance-punk and J-pop inspired slightly psychedelic "comic book rock," sound like the beginnings of a band that would be remembered forever. Instead they had a minor sex scandal and…

She used to be a bikini model. She is now somewhat… ageless. She could be a poorly preserved thirty or an extraordinarily well-preserved ninety. Good for her, but wanky-time material, probably not.

They kept trying to remake the film with Hugh Jackman, but studios couldn't find a way to make the plot's sympathy towards spousal abuse (explicit in the case of Billy and Julie, implicit in the case of Enoch and Carrie) more palatable. They also wanted to write the script in an actual New England dialect, as opposed…

Always nice to see Mara Wilson in things, but it would be nice to see her in better things. She seems dedicated to her position as voice artist and culture commentator as opposed to stage and screen actor, but it would be nice to see that intellectually gifted, sexually polymorphous ray of ironic sunshine get a true…

Was it the Takarazuka Revue? In Japan, for whatever reason, all-female musical theatre is a huge trope but they still perform traditional American and British musicals.

It's that Hamilton-chic thing.

Goats, especially baby goats, seem like such lovable creatures. And yet, in the Bible, they're a running analogy for the worst kinds of people. What's wrong with goats, especially in contrast to the not-dissimilar sheep? Goats get a bad rap! #InnocentUntilProvenGoaty

For years, I have joked with my GOT watching friends that the show was going to have to stall for time to catch up some plots, and we'd get filler arcs like "on this week's episode… Jon Snow makes pizza."
Cut to Sunday, when Jon has just punched Ramsay into a flattened, bloody pulp, and my friend Kay says, "Well… that…

Around that time, ABC tried a "One Saturday Morning" block which scrambled its time and lineups over a two-hour block with interstitials and sketches, so you had to watch the whole two hours, instead of just tuning in to your favorite show at its designated half hour.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one of the most good-hearted, tolerant television shows I can think of. There's a huge amount of diversity, but no one feels like a stereotype or a cliché, and even though plenty of jokes are tossed around, there's no neurotic or mean-spirited edge to it that even a lot of "progressive" sitcoms…

She's fine, actually. It was just a routine thing, came up completely clean. My mother's side of the family has a perverse sense of humor, so the night before, everyone came up for a "farewell party," complete with a "Rest in Peace" cake and nice new clothes "she can wear in her coffin."
I've got a dark sense of humor…

Is this a musical, or the track listing of an unreleased album by The Clash? The last track is a dub version of "Two Hundred Dollars."

True Showbiz Tales #4: When I played Nicely-Nicely in Guys and Dolls, I became frustrated with how the show is about gangsters, but nobody really commits any crimes. I made the decision that Nicely was a pickpocket, and subtly committed petty thefts in every appearance onstage.

Last summer I drove my mother to her colonoscopy, which, thanks to a recently upgraded insurance program, she was having at a luxury spa. Given that she would be all sorts of messed up on meds when it ended, I had to hang around in the "receiving lounge" of this place.
God, what a creepy location! Imagine an old…

I like the double-disc version of his greatest hits: "Strictly Commercial/Strictly Genteel." You get the best of the wacky provocateur Zappa on Disc 1, and the best of Zappa the composer and experimental artist on Disc 2.

"Run Like Hell" shows a much clearer disco influence in its beat. Instead of the "boots-and-cats-and-boots-and-cats-and" rhythm, it's a straight four on the floor stomp augmented by hand percussion, a classic disco rhythm track.

The irony is that Pink Floyd's disco appropriations, "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" and especially "Run Like Hell," combine the black and gay sound of disco (and the black sound of blues, with Gilmour's bluesiest solo) with a semi-ironic Neo-Nazi message.