Pop Culture Petri Dish

Work's been clubbing me upside the head so thoroughly that I haven't been imbibing in much pop culture anything lately. Put bluntly, I ain't had the time...With one exception. Unlike most sane working stiffs who actually use their lunch breaks to, you know, relax and eat lunch, I hit the pavement and walk my metaphoric arse off during that precious half-hour. Headphones rest on my noggin, connected to an ancient Discman as I get a lungful of fresh air and an earful of music, old and new. Here's what's been getting the blood pumping (and the feet moving) of late--old stuff division. The Easybeats' biggest claim to fame may have been their international hit, 'Friday on My Mind' (covered by David Bowie on his covers LP, Pin Ups ), but Varese Sarabande's compilation CD The Very Best of the Easybeats proves that classic tune was no fluke. With all due respect to the Bee Gees , the Easys really were Australia's closest equivalent to the Beatles, a Br...

My mom is the greatest. Just saying. Of course, everyone in their right mind should say such things about their mom. But all partisan bias aside, my mom really is the greatest. Anna Prizina grew up in a modest working-class home in Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s. She essentially raised her three siblings on her own in the wake of her father's untimely passing and her mother's mental illness, and was out working assembly-line jobs while still in her teens. She met a blustery-but-loveable serviceman named Gerald Kay, fell in love, and together they built a stable family despite the tumult of military life. She's a sensitive and very soulful woman with kind eyes that instantly make you feel comfortable and safe: That great warmth is probably her paramount gift as a parent and a human being. She taught me a lot about consideration, kindness, humility, and working hard for your place in the world. A devout Catholic, she's one of the few genuinely religious people I know...

On an elemental level, I'm pretty ill-equipped to comment on the life of Heath Ledger, the highly-regarded Australian actor found dead on January 22 at at the tragically-young age of 28. Up until a week before he died, I'd never even seen one of his movies. Being a good pop culture/media sponge, though, I'd followed the man's career from afar for quite a few years. I'd avoided his early breakout movies Ten Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale due to my utter lack of fondness for the genres they represented (synthetic nineties teen comedy and willfully anachronistic MTV-ized period piece respectively). Never got around to seeing any of his other movies, either (though five of 'em, ironically, have been on my Netflix cue for a long time, periodically supplanted by my spur-of-the-moment fetishes for blaxploitation flicks, old-school Japanese horror movies, etc). All along, though, I'd continue to read interviews with Ledger or see him on some froth...

I'll admit it right now: I'm one of those schleps who thinks that every Radiohead CD is a pretty special thing, an honest-to-God work of art that deserves to be respected and admired. I'll also be the first to admit that, carefully-crafted and challenging (in a good way) as their work is, it's hard to, well, really love some of Radiohead's long-players sometimes. So the big news for me re: the new Radiohead effort In Rainbows isn't so much the album's history-making single-finger salute to the Major Record Label Man (right on, gents). No, it's the fact that In Rainbows possesses a heart--and melodic beauty--equal to its smarts. Make no mistake, this British band still takes a decidedly glass-half-empty lyrical stance, and they defiantly continue to hurl melodic and tempo curve balls into their densely atmospheric brand of popular music. Twitchily-charismatic frontman Thom Yorke remains an acquired taste, too. But the band hasn't nursed a disc this...

Two years. Two bloody years. It's some kind of record, I swear. That's how long it's taken me to get around to posting the final chapter of our January 2006 Hollywood visit (here are links to Parts One and Two if you'd like to catch up/refresh). Take heart, dear reader: As a reward for your patience, you'll get some red-carpet frosting on this movie-nerd cake. Rita and I were floored by the preponderance of unscheduled celebs who attended the January 27/28 2006 Collectors' Show besides Ron Jeremy. Other unannounced guests included Joe Dante (director of The Howling, Gremlins , and the controversial Masters of Horror episode,'Homecoming'), character actor Hank Garrett (who we met at the February '05 Collectors' Show), legendary sci-fi author Ray Bradbury (wheelchair-bound but in good spirits visiting close friend Tab Hunter), and actor Chuck McCann , late of The Far-Out Space Nuts and an irritatingly-memorable guest shot on Starsky and Hutch ....

British soul chaunteuse Amy Winehouse's Back to Black was pretty near the greatest thing I heard last year, so when her 2003 debut disc Frank received a proper US issue recently, I snatched it up in an eighth-of-a-heartbeat. Frank really does feel like a dry run for its stone-masterpiece follow-up, but it proves that Back to Black was no fluke. Right out of the gate, Winehouse's acerbic lyrical stance--think Peggy Lee 's and Elvis Costello's love child learning salty sexual bluntness from Peaches --had already emerged fully-formed. Whether she's dissecting a hard-partying club girl with Dorothy Parker straightrazor swipes on the hilarious "F*** Me Pumps" or kittenishly rationalizing a one-night stand to her cuckolded lover on "I Heard Love is Blind," Winehouse's observational and reflective gifts as a writer are staggering. Unbelieveably, she'd penned these intelligent and witty lyrics before she was old enough to even legally buy a ...

As is customary, there are a few things cultivating in the Dish, but for now it's all about the Bacchanalean food orgy that is Thanksgiving. The missus, dog, and I headed south to my parents' digs for a satisfying feast yesterday, and today we'll be having some Thanksgiving orphans over to our place for a second gorge-fest. That means today, in my universe at least, is Thanksgiving Day, too. In celebration and thanks, please find the winning entry in the illustrious 2007 Seattle Opera Hand Turkey competition, magnificently rendered by, um, me. Enjoy (or at least, don't chortle too derisively). The Petri Dish will also ape one of television's grand traditions and direct you to a re-run in lieu of original programming: Namely, this 2005 entry about the greatest Thanksgiving movie ever created: Blood Freak (guess what's gonna be post-turkey-gorging entertainment at the old homestead this evening?). Happy Thanksgiving, and may all your turkey comas be restful, dar...