Sir, there is a stage with your name on it in San Francisco, humble as it may be. Thank you sir. You redeemed television ... for a moment. I even like the damn Aerosmith at the end, and that song only makes me think of strippers and a death in Alameda. God bless you, sir.

-Brickly

Thanks, Tina. I tell you, I don't know how them folks in them chairs sat so still! My entire childhood, this song made me flail about so hard, I often had to hold onto a bedpost. Honest, this song make-a-me crazy!

Also? I would like to thank Tina Turner and Ann-Margret, because when I was in kindergarten, I saw Tommy at the drive-in movies, and y'all 2 women made me gay. Thank you so much. I love being a gay.

What we have here is forty seconds of insane hot heaven:

Whew. Knock me down with a feather! Hell, just knock me down! Please!

If you don't understand how a movie like Tommy can make a pre-pubescent girl into a big old dyke, I can only offer this to your eyes - two bits from Tommy. The first one, my second favorite, highlights The Mother in a penthouse apartment not at all unlike the one I live in now, in fact I am wearing that gown as we speak. One of 9 identical gowns:

I was a baby in Boston and it was raining beans! It should be pointed out to you now that only today did I see any sexual reference as to the pillow, and I am not sure if that's too racy for this blog. Shoot. I can be rather obtuse it seems. (We can skip the part where there's any rational discussion about the bad acting, right? Cool!)

Now, Tina. Oh dear. Dearest Tina ... I think my crib was an Iron Maiden:

I was never supposed to be normal. For that I would like to thank my parents for being so incredibly dumb as to take little tiny children to see movies like this. Yay! You made me gay and weird! Thanks Mom and Dad! You rule!

So what happens to Amoebites (people who work at Amoeba) after they stop working at Amoeba Music and move on in their lives?  And does their time spent at the music store impact or influence them in anyway later on?  These questions and a lot more are answered in this interview (the first in a series) with a former Amoebite, who is now a Brooklynite, named Nick Lesley who worked at all three Amoebas (Hollywood, Berkeley, San Francisco) before moving out to NYC two-and-a-half years ago. In California Nick played in the bands Vholtz, The Oma Yang,  and Felicia & Coctopus with whom he appeared on Amoeba Music Compilation Vol. V on the track "Whiskey Dick." Currently Nick is a student at Brooklyn College, updates several websites, and plays in several bands including Necking whose lineup includes Dong-Ping Wong and Josh Graver. He books shows at the cool Brooklyn living space (Dead Herring House) he shares with other artists (they had a giant show there just last Saturday night). For income Nick now works at a funky, fun  lil spot in New York City's  Lower East Side called the Cake Shop which is part record-store, part cafe, and part music club.  It was there that I caught up with the former Amoebite recently and asked him about  the differences between East and West coasts, about his studies, his music, and his life - before and after Amoeba.

I am a big fan of the 80's horror movie. I spent many hours in the video store making sure I had seen every bad 80's horror movie. However it seems that I missed one. Troll 2 is the name of this amazing movie. I had already seen the original Troll movie starring Sonny Bono and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Which is bad in its own special way. But nothing really comes close to how bad this movie is. To start with, it has nothing to do with Troll 1. There is not even a Troll in the movie. It is about goblins who live in the town of NILBOG.
My friends Josh and Andrew were kind enough to share this movie with me last night. The movie was released a couple of years ago on DVD as a combo pack with Troll 1 and Troll 2. This movie is listed on countless lists as the worst movie of all time and has developed a crazy cult following. They show this movie around the world at midnight screenings. This little horrible movie has somehow become one of the best worst movies ever.
                                                                                                                                                                   
I seriously can not stop thinking about how amazingly horrible this movies was. It is basically about a regular family. A clueless
dad and a slightly crazy mom with their 2 kids. One, an exercise crazed daughter who refuses to let her boyfriend have any friends. The other an awkward son whose only friend seems to be his dead grandpa Seth. For their vacation they switch houses with a weird family in a very small town. The town is basically all goblins but they are able to disguise themselves as humans. Or they are simply both human and goblin. They seem to be led by a Jim Jones type cult leader as well as a witchy sorceress type old lady who is played by a 12 year old girl. The towns people/golbins are all vegetarians and make the guests of the town eat weird green food which turns them into trees which then allows them to remain vegetarians and eat the humans. Somehow, someone thought this would make some sort of sense

While Hillary Rodham Clinton's popularity among Hispanic voters currently leads the Democratic pack by a long shot the "Amigos de Obama" are slowly gaining ground and gradually growing in numbers thanks to such showing of grassroots support for Barack Obama as the recently recorded "Obama Reggaeton" which can be heard here with lyrics printed below (scroll down) - a catchy song that calls upon Mexican and other Hispanic voters to support Obama with a call to "Listen to  gente, es tiempo para algo diferente.. What we need is un nuevo presidente*… Como Se Dice…Como Se llama? OBAMA! OBAMA!"   As clearly outlined in the map (below) posted on the website supporting Obama, 13 million eligible Hispanic voters live in ten states (including California, Florida, and New York) with all but one hosting primaries on or before February 5th. Note that Texas' primary isn't until March. Roughly two thirds of the nation's Hispanic residents live in nine of the states that will hold Democratic primaries or caucuses on or before early February, 2008.


Obama is way behind Hillary in popularity with Hispanic voting Democrats, as recently reported by the New York Times which cited polls (including the paper's own and ones carried out by CBS News) from the past few months which show that about 60 percent of registered Hispanic voters who identify themselves as Democrats have a favorable view of Hillary while a quarter do not. Meanwhile Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, according to the Times "remains a blank slate to many Hispanic voters, polls show, with 40% having no opinion of him. But his aspirational biography could prove a draw as more Hispanic voters get to know him." No doubt "Obama Reggaeton" can only help in this effort.