Fatherhood 2000

I always thought Bill Cosby's stand up on his kids was f'ing LAME. Louis CK's edgier take I dig mucho.






PS - Dane Cook sucks ass. Big Time.

Velvet Jones and Oscar ?

Congratulations to Eddie Murphy, my personal favorite comedian for landing a Golden Globe and an Oscar Nomination for Dreamgirls, (which I haven't seen yet).

It's been a long time coming in a career of high's (48 Hours) and lows (Pluto Nash) but for Mr.Robinson, aka Axel Foley, aka Gumby, DAMMIT! playing a James Brown/ Marvin Gaye hybrid is the performance of his lifetime.

To Eddie Murphy, the F-YOU man! Heeeeh, heeeh, heeeh!

Gino's Back to Party!

It's Friday folks and Gino's stylin' and profilin' to go hit the clubs! Check out his shoes! Will Martin Scorsese please stick this kid in a movie already!

I love this lil'dude.

Wetback English

These are the type of Infomercials I'd like to see. For my Border Buddy's friend in during his first military tour of duty, CRUZ.

Gene, Gene, The Dancin' Machine

I love this guy. I remember watching THE GONG SHOW as a kid and being floored by the wackiness that ensued during that 1/2 hour show hosted by none other than Chuck Barris.

I don't usually get starstruck but when I was a Page at NBC I hung out with Gene Gene the Dancing machine who was working the Tonight Show and he told me stories of the Gong Show. Man I was in heaven. What a cool guy. I even did my impersonation of him of when I was kid dancing like him. He laughed, and probably thought I was retarded. But what I loved most of all was that he was the anti-cool, and people loved it.

Unfortunately diabetes caused Gene to have both legs amputated from the knees down but that'll never stop the pure joy of watching a big dude dance his ass off without a care in the world.



P.S. F-Danny Terrio, and Dance Fever. Gino the Ginny's got your number.

Mom, What's for Breakfast?

Gino The Ginny's favorite Cereal...

JOE LAMPONE III

Since Joe E Rocco's not blogging lately, I'd fill in his absence with found future footage of his son, JOE ROCCO III. I love Joe like a Bro, but I love his kid even more.

How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked by the PD

GRIND 2007

Happy New Year folks! In a 4 months Tarantino and Rodriguez bring us GRINDHOUSE which happily looks like all the crap I used to watch with my father on 42nd Street... I'm glad these types of films that both the commercial and elite film buffs normally would snub their noses at, are finally getting their due.

Maybe Dyanna Thorne or Sybill Danning will finally now get their shot on INSIDE THE ACTOR'S STUDIO, and The films of Enzo G. Castillari (Great White, 1990's Bronx Warriors, and The Inglorious Bastards, the title of the WW2 Tarantino script) will get the Criterion treatment.

Kurt Russell welcome back to badassville!

Hail to the Chief

Once again I was going to blog about ROCKY BALBOA and what a good movie it is, and how I'm glad Philly's being used in Hollywood;but alas, another death overshadows the pop culture topics of this blog, and I can't in good conscience not mention the passing of the 38th President of the United States, Gerald Ford.

Quite simply he was the first US President I ever saw live and in living color as he addressed my High School way back in 1987, at the time being 16, I casually dismissed the viewing not realizing how priviliged it was to be in the presence of even one ex-President of the US. He wasn't an overbearing or really charismatic presence, but he did command a sense of calm, which coincidentally reflected the main purpose of his Post Watergate Administration. He did pop the auditorium as a student asked him what he thought of the current crop of Jingoistic action films, most notibly "Rambo"...He paused, and said directly that the only show he liked watching was the sitcom "Kate and Alley" which provoked warm laughter in the room. As for the rest of the powerhouse questioning that most of the eggheads at my school kept asking him in regards to Foreign affairs, the Nixon Pardon and other events during his administration i don't remember, but of course the TV one always stuck.

The only other I saw live was his successor, President Jimmy Carter whom I saw as I was working on the Tonight Show about ten years later. That show was pretty cool to be working at live and yeah,also being ten years older and a little wiser I have to admit feeling somewhat patriotic to be in Carter's presence.

I also think that was the same year The Simpsons aired an episode where at the end of it Gerald Ford moves in next door to Homer. The joke being that Ford was a klutz. Furthermore, President Ford's clumsiness did provide the fodder for all of Chevy Chase's pratfalls on his only season on Saturday Night Live, the irony being that Ford was a total jock in his youth. I bet that Ford had the CIA (he was on the Warren Commisson for the JFK assassination) tamper, and destroy Chevy Chase's film career in retaliation. Now that's funny.

Rest in peace, Mr.President.

HEEEYYYY OWWWW! Keep it Funky Forever now....

This started off as a very positve review of ROCKY BALBOA, but after a searching the web for pix, I saw on CNN that The Godfather of Soul James Brown had passed away at 73 years of age.

The dude changed R&B, Funk and Soul.

I remember buying his "Greatest Hits" as a kid and "Slaughter's Big Rip Off" with the hit "The Big Payback" later on when I noticed how cool the Blaxsploitation genre was, however it was the "Live at The Apollo" album that really got me hooked.

Let's not forget his performance in THE BLUES BROTHERS and ROCKY IV. Classics

I guess he's getting funky now with Sid Barrett, Hendrix, JohnDenver and Jerry Goldsmith somewhere.....with John Bonham on Drums.

Keeping it rrreal....and rrrepresenting....a true BLACK musician who worked his ass off and used real instruments.

God bless you James, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS !

Wishing everyone health, happiness, and well....watch....

VIVA LA SNAKE!

Kurt's back playing a psycho stunt driver who runs over hot women in "DEATH PROOF" directed by Tarantino....

Thank god someone's gonna kick Snake's ass into high gear ! Now the taste of yesterday's post has finally left my mouth.

WTF?

Underdog- THE MOVIE (2007) Thurs.8pm on TBS. Starring Snoopy, MacGruff the crime fighting “Take a Bite Outta Crime” Dog, Jet Li as a Martial Artist with a Dog Collar, and Nicole Ritchie as a Bitch. Underdog fucks a bunch of Pound Puppies (doggie style) while trying to save the day, and spawns a litter of superpowered dogs who shit all over New York City. Jet Li plays a Dog sensei who teaches the superpowered pups martial arts, while Bob Hoskins screams at him from outside a cage. Look for the classic finale where Snoopy final kills that goose stepping asshole the Red Baron!

Featuring the hit single “Dog Wienniez” by Snoop Doggie Dog

Directed by the Spawn of Satan, Michael Bay. 88mins.

PLAYDATE

I did this short in 1992. Quite honestly it was one of the best shooting experiences I ever had. Plus I improvised most of it while shooting.

Practicing the same "deal goes down wrong" in just about most of my shorts makes it really easy.

Thanks again Keegs and Lori, and kudos to Kenny and Stephanie!

The original YOUTUBE link is right here:

PLAYDATE

SCARY MOVIE

I bought MONSTER HOUSE on a whim, while shopping for more important items like food and baby stuff, and even tried to cover it up with the missus by saying that it belonged to the customer ahead of me and somehow ended up with our stuff.

MONSTER HOUSE creeped me out, and that's not easy to do. The story's simple enough- a kid JD sees that the neighbor's house does some creepy things, goes to investigate it with his best buddy Chowder, and a spunky red headed girl (who reminds me of my wife) named Jenny. Without over hyping this thing, this is as good as it gets, and I found a Halloween movie for my family that'll never get stale. It's the sort of movie like ELF, or Moulin Rouge that I went to with a gut feeling, and thankfully got rewarded with some geniune good old fashioned Hollywood magic.

Kudos to Zemeckis and Spielberg who seem to still have small doses of genius in them.




Shelley got animated.

Frank Miller's "300"

Read the story as a kid.* Reread the Comic book. Saw the trailer at Comicon. For a movie starring "The Phantom of the Opera" and wickedly directed by the Zack Synder who kicked ass with the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, this shouldn't disappoint.


*300 Spartans (and 700 Thespians) fought the Persian army at the Battle of Thermapylae over four days and took out 50,000 men, before dying in battle themselves.

What a bunch of badasses!

$27.1 MILLION DOLLARS

Willem De Kooning's Untitled XXV sold for $27.1 Million Dollars a week and a half ago. I don't pretend to love most post modern art, being a Comic book fan boy I really liked Roy Lichenstein's work and Jack Kirby's 1960's pencil renderings of Marvel Superheroes were really my style. But $27.1 for that? C'mon... I understand he's a post modern "action" painter who's contemporaries include Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers and Mark Rothko (I actually did like art history) but this particular piece I don't think merits the money. Untitled XXV was sold at a Sotheby's/ Christie's auction along with Warhol's Mao which fetched $17.1 million. No wonder art thefts are on the rise... Remember "The Scream" was stolen 21/2 years ago, and Tom Hanks ripped off the Mona Lisa recently too.

I mean if this = $27.1 Million, then I think that a large canvas Roger Deacons' 1970's Yes Album cover from the RELAYER album should = $5 million. Or a Frank Frazetta "Berzerker" (on the Molly Hatchet album) should = $10 million. I could really never figure out how to judge the modern art market at all, because so much of it is subjective. Renaissance Art I understand. Rembrandt I understand. Picasso's Pre Cubist era I like mucho.

But artists like Mondrian (the Partridge family bus pattern dude) make me want to puke.

I will admit that I do get a kick out of Jackson Pollock's work though, as he threw that paintbrush on the canvas while listening to Jazz, which explains a lot of his work. Furthermore he threw a lot of his cigarette butts into the canvas tells me he seems a lot like Denis Leary if he was a painter. So I think I'd get along with the guy. But even Pollock would tell you that you were full of shit if someone offered you $27.1 Million for his work.

So why the hell am I writing about a painting? Because it's on my desktop here at work and it reminds me of what my head feels like a this job somedays.... and the 27.1 million reasons I wouldn't mind finger painting for a living.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2006

"...dogs and cats living together......MASS HYSTERIA!" - Dr.Peter Venkman, Ghostbuster.

LOCK AND LOAD

Denis Leary rules -

From THE NEW YORK POST :

November 20, 2006 -- DENIS Leary had the crowd howling the other night at a New York Comedy Festival performance at Avery Fisher Hall. Leary sang "The Mel Gibson Blues" with such lyrics as, "I like to drink, I like to drive / I like to think that all the Jews got out of the Holocaust alive / My name is Mel, and can't you tell / I like tequila/I like a bagel, and I like lox / I've worked with Jews all over Hollywood, from Paramount to Fox / They kinda smell, they're goin' to hell / I like tequila."


PS- Dane Cook is overhyped, and sucks.