Amoeblog

Promises, Promises

ain't nuthin but a link thang, baby
In my most recent blog post (excluding whichever blog post I've written after this blog post) I mention providing a link to my interview with the glorious Sandra Bernhard. Well, honeychild, you just read right past that link.

If you've never seen her film Without You I'm Nothing, I cannot recommend it enough. That is, if you're into things that are so effing rad. Also worth watching is the film that made her famous: The King of Comedy, a dark comedy directed by Martin Scorsese and also starring Robert DeNiro.
 

Sandra Bernhard*, Jenna Fischer, Chelsea Handler and Wanda Sykes
as Amy Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan and Lil Kim;
from a Vanity Fair pictorial on women in comedy.
Photo by Annie Leibowitz

*I think it's worth nothing that Miss Bernhard is the only one playing herself in this photo.
Posted by Job O Brother on November 19, 2008 at 10:08am | Comments (2)

CAUTION: FLAMMABLE!

fire
The view from my window. That store in the middle is Linda Thai - they have great food.

*Cough, cough!*

Hello! Greetings from *cough* Hollywood!



Sorry about the grey ash everywhere. It’s from the fires. And the heat. Strange, isn’t it? To be in the middle of November and planning your day around which businesses have air conditioning? (Amoeba Music, by the way, has air conditioning.) This is how we do winter in LA: pretend the blazing heat is an Arctic chill and those flakes of ash falling from the sky are snowflakes.

Also, that fat man laughing loudly on Sunset Boulevard is Santa. Nevermind that you’ve never seen Santa throw-up in the gutter and scream that the government put wires in his cereal. This is how we do winter in LA.

*Cough, cough* Word.

I must admit, I kind of like the way the air smells when Los Angeles is consumed in hell-fire. Kind of like everything’s hickory smoked. Kind of delicious, and reminds me of Christmas gifts of Hickory Farms, like you might find a smoked and dried Pasadena nestled in a box of fake grass, next to some strawberry candy. Sounds good, right? Who wouldn’t want to spread a little smoked Pasadena on a poppy-seed cracker? Maybe add a sprig of dill. Mmm!
meat gift
The last seven days – we’ll call it a week for short – have been packed with all sorts of activities. Let’s start with the most improbable of them:

Posted by Job O Brother on November 18, 2008 at 11:37am | Comments (1)

DE NIRO'S RUPERT PUPKIN CHARACTER STILL RINGS TRUE

"The King of Comedy"
 

In the Paul D Zimmerman-written and Martin Scorcese-directed 1983 film "The King of Comedy" Robert De Niro brilliantly plays the character of celebrity autograph hound, aspiring stand-up comic , and extremely wannabe star Rupert Pupkin who so desperately wants to achieve success in showbiz that he goes to such extremes as stalking his idol, a late night talk show host named Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis), and eventually ending up kidnapping him with assistance from an equally deranged celebrity hound, Masha - played to perfection by Sandra Bernhard.

If you have not already seen this movie, I recommend you do. It is available on DVD and should be found at each of the three Amoeba Music locations.  I hadn't seen it in many years and just recently  re-watched it and enjoyed as much as the first time I'd seen it.  Although not in a feel-good movie kind of way. To me watching "The King of Comedy" is like some horrible car accident that you don't want see - but at the same time cannot pull yourself away from. In it De Niro is the car wreck as he so effortlessly plays the desperate and totally delusional Rupert Pupkin character to a tee that he has you cringing in your seat as you witness him go to such lengths to convince the world of what he imagines his life to be - or to soon become. Most engaging are the scenes when the ever obsessive Rupert  indulges in elaborate fantasies in which he imagines himself and the talk show host, just hanging as the best of colleagues and friends.

Continue reading
Posted by Billyjam on October 10, 2007 at 06:48am | Post a Comment

(In which Job hero worships.)

I just received my copy of Playboy Magazine in the mail. Stoked!

No, no… don’t get all shocked. I’m not a subscriber. Who can afford magazine subscriptions? Not me. And if I could afford a magazine subscription, I would choose National Geographic over Playboy. I mean, National G gets you way more pix of naked women for your money.

Before you start second guessing that you clicked on the right blog, I’ll explain myself. While I’m known to ogle a pretty gal now and again, the reason for my purchase is for one woman in particular: Sandra Bernhard. 

You just reacted one of three ways:

1.) You groaned a little. You don’t understand why this woman is famous; you don’t “get” her stand-up comedy and your knowledge of her is mostly confined to vague recollections of shenanigans with Madonna and, oh yeah, she was that lesbian character on “Roseanne.” You fall into the category of person we’ll term “Plebeian.”

Posted by Job O Brother on July 29, 2007 at 02:48pm | Comments (1)