Posted in celebrities, mad men, Television, Uncategorized, tagged mad men, mad men season 5, mad men's vincent karthesier, pete campbell, pete campbell mad men, pete campbell vulture interview, vince kartheiser vulture interview, Vincent Kartheiser, Vincent Kartheiser interview on June 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“I think it’s a testament to the writing over the last five years that they’ve built animosity in our audiences towards a character that has done some pretty despicable things and, at the same time, who has lived a life in a perfectly moral way.”
I haven’t done a gratuitous Pete Campbell post in awhile. I was too busy being completely absorbed by Mad Men’s Season 5. Here Vincent Kartheiser defends his shattered, sneaky alter ego to Vulture.
Posted in celebrities, music, Musicians I've Known and Loved, Seattle, tagged cobain death, cobain ten year anniversary, courtney love, grunge, happy birthday kurt cobain, kurt cobain, music, seattle music on February 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
April 5, 2004
Kurt, we hardly knew ya
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally
Ten years after his death, the singer-songwriter who inadvertently created “grunge,” caused flannel to appear on NYC runways and became One Of The Most Important Rock Stars Of All Time is still attracting the kind of media attention that he hated.
Kurt Cobain had always been the quintessential anti-rock star. Unhappy with his fame once it extended beyond Seattle (“I don’t like my fans anymore”), he was accused by his record company of purposely trying to make Nirvana’s second (and last) studio album, In Utero, non-commercial. If that’s true, he failed: track after track became hits and are radio staples even today.
His music and persona were the perfect ironic counterpoint to the kind of attention the band began to draw after their first major-label release Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the charts and had frat boys trying to figure out what “a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido” meant.
Homeless kid, high-school dropout, roadie, junky. He seemed like an accidental superstar, yet his bandmates claim that Cobain was ambitious. He wrote a song per night, made them practice for hours every day and was a taskmaster in the studio. He was quoted as saying that when the other two-thirds of Nirvana didn’t like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” the first time they heard it, he made them play it hundreds of times in a row.
Here we are now
Entertain us
Like most people, I hadn’t heard of Nirvana before Nevermind. My boyfriend at the time lent it to me and dismissively said that the lead singer was a heroin addict. The music just sounded like noise to me, so I listened to it again. And again. I couldn’t have guessed that I was hearing the sound of the new mainstream. My relationship with Nirvana far outlasted the one with the boyfriend in both length and significance.
Despite a career that easily places him in the company of Dylan, Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, Cobain has a puny four-CD catalogue and a career that spanned just two-and-a-half years in the public eye. He has an output-to-legacy ratio that rivals James Dean’s, although he is more likely to be compared to John Lennon.
I’m so ugly
That’s okay ’cause so are you
We’ve broken mirrors.
Like Lennon, Cobain had the gift for being angry without being off-putting and for expressing intimate emotions that spoke to the masses. He also married Courtney Love, a woman who surpasses Yoko as most unpopular wife in rock & roll history. Loud, obnoxious, consistently out-of-control, Love continues to make Cobain look like even more of a misunderstood waif than his vulnerable, wrenching vocals do.
Well I swear that I
Don’t have a gun
I remember driving home from my job at UCLA when KROQ delivered the news that the body of a 27-year-old male Caucasian was found in a Seattle home, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The body was thought to be Cobain’s. I felt heartsick, although not at all surprised. It’s typical of the exploitation Cobain routinely attracted that the electrician who discovered his body immediately phoned a radio station rather than the police.
It seems that his world is as tumultuous in death as it was in life. A lot has happened with him just in the two-and-a-half years I’ve lived in Seattle. Courtney gave his private diaries to her lover and he wrote a bestseller, there was a bitter legal battle over Nirvana’s songwriting royalties (complete with an open letter to fans from Kurt’s mom and the rest of Nirvana, David Grohl and Krist Novoselic, trying to have Courtney declared insane). Of course there are the continuing rumors that his death wasn’t a suicide.
Just because you’re paranoid
Don’t mean they’re not after you
A hurricane of bizarre conspiracy theories has been twisting around Courtney Love for the past decade. A Seattle detective said that with all the drugs Cobain had in his system, he wouldn’t have had the strength to lift a gun, much less be able to pull its trigger. Although he was the perfect victim since his tendency toward self-destruction was so public, it seems far-fetched to think that someone could get away with murdering the most famous rock star in the world. Maybe to some people, thinking that his death wasn’t a suicide somehow makes it more palatable.
The end result is that Cobain has left behind a bipolar legacy. On the one hand, his suicide felt like a betrayal to a lot of people — a Seattle music professor accurately pointed out that it would have been less devastating if he had just overdosed. On the other hand, he is arguably the most important musician of the last 20 years.
When they first appeared, Nirvana was given a lot of accolades for sounding fresh compared to the hair bands who were their contemporaries. It’s over 10 years later and they still sound fresh, but this time it’s compared to all the bands who managed to rip off their sound, but not their songwriter’s talent.
Rest in peace, Kurt. I hope your Leonard Cohen afterworld is what you wanted it to be.
Posted in celebrities, mad men, Television, tagged amc television, don draper, mad men, mad men between takes, mad men season 5, pete campbell, roger sterling, television on September 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Jon Hamm relaxing between takes
Posted in celebrities, mad men, Television, wtf, tagged 2011 emmys, emmy awards, emmy nominations 2011, mad men, mad men 19 emmy, mad men's christina hendricks, mad men's vincent karthesier, nick offerman emmy snub, pete campbell mad men, vince kartheiser on July 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Emmy nominations came out this morning.
Argh. Vince Kartheiser who plays Pete Campbell on Mad Men got shut out again. What does he have to do to get nominated for an Emmy?
Although Christina Hendricks finally got nommed and Mad Men got nineteen nominations total (including Best Lead for Hamm and Moss, Best Supporting for Slattery, Best Guest for Ida Blankenship and a crapload of artistic nods including two for writing). Yay! Come back, show!
Oddly am pulling for Matt Damon as Best Guest Actor on 30 Rock. He’s really good in that role.
Nick Offerman was not acknowledged in the extremely competitive Best Supporting Actor category for his amazing work as Ron Swansen on Parks & Rec, but he can console himself with the fact that the James Franco-hosted Academy Awards got nine nominations.
It puts things in perspective.
Posted in celebrities, movies, music, tagged beiber, bieber, Bieber brat, bieber CSI, bieber helgenberger, justin bieber, Movies, music, never say never justin bieber, never say never movie, pop stars on May 20, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Until last night I didn’t know anything about Justin Bieber except for his haircut. (Pro tip: Having a mop-top hairdo and starting your band name with a bee-sound will equal fan mania such as the world has never seen.)
I always get a sense of people rolling their eyes about the Biebs, I guess because he’s a teenybopper and so insanely popular.
As usual what gets lost is the music.
I wanted to know more about him, so I watched Never Say Never, a quasi-documentary about his career leading up to a landmark performance at Madison Square Garden that sold out in 22 minutes.
I was surprised at how gifted he is. He’s an amazing drummer and guitar player, and of course can sing and dance. He started out as a street performer and on YouTube, and you don’t get much more merit-based than that. No, I am not joking. You can dislike his music or his persona, but you can’t argue with them–they weren’t manufactured; they were elected by popular vote.
Bieber himself is extremely engaging and seems to have fairly decent people around him, although I was appalled by his vocal coach who said he sometimes whines about not being a normal 16-year-old. She basically tells him to can it, because “this is your normal.” Yikes, he’s just a kid. An incredibly rich and famous one, true, but everyone should be allowed whining time, especially a teenager.
I would have liked to see an actual bratty, age-appropriate meltdown (but with power and money) in the film, but sadly none was forthcoming since Never is nothing if not promotional.
That doesn’t stop people from looking for bratty behavior, though. According to the HuffPost:
Bieber made his fictional TV debut with a two-episode arc on “CSI” last year, and according to co-star Marg Helgenberger, the kid who played a troubled teen was, off-camera, a trouble-making teen.
“I shouldn’t be saying this but he was kind of a brat [on the set],” Helgenberger told French Magazine Le Grand Direct Des Medias.
“He was very nice to me,” she continued, “but he locked one of the producers in a closet.”
Bieber had this–very mature–response via twitter:
“it’s kinda lame when someone you met briefly and never worked with comments on you. I will continue to wish them luck and be kind.”
I give the kid a lot of leeway. I know adults whose behavior at work is much worse than locking people in the closet as a prank.
Posted in celebrities, movie reviews, movies, music, oldies but goodies, wtf, tagged actors, Blood Out, Bob Calhoun, Movies, salon, The Doors movie, Val Kilmer, Val Kilmer Blood Out, Val Kilmer Doors movie, Val Kilmer Jim Morrison on May 1, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Val Kilmer
If you’ve never seen The Doors, you should definitely see it for his performance as Jim Morrison (he does his own singing, too). He was also good in Heat and really cute in Top Secret!, a spoof that put him on the map.
According to his website, he thinks nudity is inappropriate, even “innocent” nudity.
I think I’m intrigued.
Posted in celebrities, tagged elizabeth taylor, elizabeth taylor dead, elizabeth taylor died, RIP Elizabeth Taylor on March 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Aw. Loved her.
From the L.A. Times:
During a career that spanned six decades, the legendary beauty with lavender eyes won two Oscars and made more than 50 films, performing alongside such fabled leading men as Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and Richard Burton, whom she married twice. She took her cues from a Who’s Who of directors, including George Cukor, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, George Stevens, Vincente Minnelli and Mike Nichols.
Long after she faded from the screen, she remained a mesmerizing figure, blessed and cursed by the extraordinary celebrity that molded her life through its many phases: She was a child star who bloomed gracefully into an ingenue; a femme fatale on the screen and in life; a canny peddler of high-priced perfume; a pioneering activist in the fight against AIDS.
Some actresses, such as Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman, won more awards and critical plaudits, but none matched Taylor’s hold on the collective imagination. In the public’s mind, she was the dark goddess for whom playing Cleopatra, as she did with such notoriety, required no great leap from reality.
Posted in author-ity figures, celebrities, Cinemas, Dating Amy, Internet shenanigans, movies, oldies but goodies, tagged cyberbegging, Dating Amy, internet beggars, internet panhandling, let me stay for a day, phnom penh cinemas, ramon stoppelenburg, the flicks cambodia, the flicks phnom penh on March 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I first found about about my friend Ramon Stoppelenburg when we were both Internet panhandlers in the early part of the decade. My site of course was Dating Amy, his was Let Me Stay for a Day.
Let Me Stay was a pretty amazing project–Ramon’s goal was to travel around the world for free and it took off immediately. His site caught the attention of the media and had millions of hits, which garnered the Dutch native 3,577 invitations from 72 countries. I think he visited about 24 of those countries.
Ramon and I are both too lazy to write this blog post, so from wikipedia:
The travels took Stoppelenburg through the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, South Africa, Spain, Australia and Canada. Coverage by international media[1][2] and the number of visitors to the website allowed Stoppelenburg to have everything sponsored: his website, clothing, camera, backpack, shoes and even his airline tickets.
As I correctly predicted just recently, once a cyberbeggar, always a cyberbeggar: Ramon is back to his Internet begging ways. Sort of. He wants to buy The Flicks cinema in his new home of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It looks like he’s already raised a few grand. He is a good guy, so help him out if you have an extra dollar or two.
If you’re thinking of trying Internet begging, there is one caveat: To be successful you have to be born on December 20 as Ramon and I both are.
Posted in celebrities, gossip, Television, tagged charlie sheen being replaced, television, two and a half men on March 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I pride myself on not taking easy shots at people, especially if they’re in trouble, so I haven’t mocked Charlie Sheen much. I think he’s actually a really gifted public speaker and probably a smart guy. I hope he gets help.
Anyway, the gossip columns say there’s no way the network is letting the incredibly lucrative Two and a Half Men go, but are just going to replace Sheen. That sounds right to me.
Here are the actors they’re rumored to be considering:
John Stamos
Jerry O’Connell
Christian Slater
Jeremy Piven
Donny Osmond
Brad Garrett
Dennis Miller
Emilio Estevez
James Spader
Matthew Broderick
Judd Nelson
Anthony Michael Hall
Macaulay Culkin
David Faustino
Will Arnett
Dane Cook
Rob Lowe
Andrew McCarthy
What do you think? It’s hard to believe some of the more movie star-ish ones would take a job on a really badly written sit-com (and is Macaulay Culkin old enough? They want a forty-something.)
