Amoeblog

Remembering Cory Smoot

Posted by Kelly S. Osato, November 3, 2011 11:23pm | Comments (5)
Cory Smoot August 25, 1977 - November 3, 2011
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I sometimes have difficulty recalling birthday celebrations but I'll never forget my fourteenth as it was without a doubt the heaviest of them all. It was 1991 and basically still heads and preps all the way, socially speaking, and if you rolled with the heads yours was most likely a metalhead. That year my birthday party pretty much resembled any old home-spun celebration save for the fact that I obtained permission from my mother to invite my friends over to jam as loud. and for as long, as they liked. To this day I cannot fathom what my mothers thoughts could have been while she watched my friends and I bang our heads along to deft renditions of Slayer's "Seasons In The Abyss" and Megadeth's "Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" wrought by the likes of a then thirteen year-old Cory Smoot and friends, the sheer multitude of amplifiers and other necessary equipment crammed into the tiny den guaranteeing almost certain instant deafness. I can say I have never ever experienced a bang-over as intense as the useless lolling-melon that hung from my sore neck and shoulders for days after that singular house party thrasher.

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Though time has put quite the crook between the Cory I knew then and the Cory who was found dead this morning on GWAR's tourbus - a band he's been lending his sick licks, shreds and metalhead essence to for the last decade as lead guitarist Flattus Maximus - I feel an obligation to pay proper tribute to his memory. I do this not just because he was a homie from way back nor for the fact that he's managed to impart his humor and wizardry to our most notoriously messy hometown band but simply because Cory's technical prowess and musical influences heavily informed my tastes from an early age.

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Nothing Mean About These Reds: GWAR meets Joan Rivers!

Posted by Kelly S. Osato, April 25, 2010 01:54am | Post a Comment
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GWAR or Joan Rivers, at the moment I don't know who I love more. GWAR has always been near and dear to my heart as hometown RVA homeboys, familial connections notwithstanding, and as general criminal art-students against society, popularizing songs with lyrics like "this is your ass/ and I'm in it" and proliferating blood-stained concert tees as "you had to be there" tour souvenirs (including, ladies, your white undergarments which will forever be a faded shade of pinkish-red a.k.a. your "GWAR bra"). Like the fiercest of Drag Queens wielding a gaudy bauble of accessories, milady Joan Rivers, on the other hand, never fails to hypnotize me with her keen wit, fathomless fashion sense, talk show know-how and Dot Matrix/lady-robot realness in Mel Brooks' Spaceballs; I'm pretty sure I've loved her my whole life. But what happens when Gwar meets Joan Rivers? The answer is: everyone wins! Don't you just love that she thanks God for GWAR's Scumdogs of the Universe CD release and that she dressed from head to panty-hosed toe in rich reds. This is how I prefer to spend my Sundays, ya'll. Check it out:

(In which Job goes to the theatre.)

Posted by Job O Brother, February 12, 2008 11:28am | Comments (1)
‘Sup.

A few days ago I got to see Joan Rivers’ new show “A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress,” playing at the Geffen Playhouse until early March.

I’ll be honest, I went with the promise of meeting her after the show and I really wanted to see that face up-close.

I walked into the lobby and noticed that everyone there fell in two categories: grey-haired, elderly people who slowly moved in pairs of two, and young, muscled men in tight shirts who traveled in cliques, glimmering with hair product. Since I fit in neither group, I was a little suspect, and kept a watchful eye.

Things were downright Fellini-esque in the lobby. Amidst the geriatrics and the pretty boys was a mini red carpet on which two heavily made up “TV personalities” enthusiastically gushed to a single video camera. Now, living in Hollywood, I’m accustomed to red carpet springing up in places and thwarting me from a normal walk to get groceries, but these two – though in the middle of everything – seemed mostly oblivious to what was happening in the lobby. In their reality, they were covering the Golden Globes. I almost wanted to approach them and make sure they weren’t lost.

“Are you looking for your awards ceremony, little girl?”

I opted instead to knock back a double scotch and find my seat.

Once inside the theatre, things became clear. Projected on a screen over the stage, there were the two TV Personalities, now (thanks to the magic of blue screen technology) with a backdrop of outdoor, daytime, pre-awards show pageantry.

I watched them. The volume was low and there was buzz from the audience, so I couldn’t ever hear what they were actually saying, yet they managed to keep a constant, effervescent dialogue going between them. Considering the reality: they were just two people in the lobby of the Geffen Playhouse, surrounded by old folks and WeHo’s – this feat was equal parts impressive and unnerving. Ultimately though, I thought it was illuminating, and a smart insight into the “production” that goes into red-carpet production. It’s these announcer’s jobs, after all, to suspend their natural reactions and interpretations of events and instead, develop the spectacle an event must be in order to satisfy the public and the sponsors.