The November 2016 Spotify playlist is up! While the last few playlists have had themes to them (“Rocktober” and “The Get Down”), this one is back to the original formula, which is no formula. It’s a happy three and a half hour mix of genres and eras, including tracks from Burt Bacharach, Drake, Bette Midler, Massive Attack, Tom Jones, Michael Kiwanuka, Radiohead, Dusty Springfield and many more. Enjoy!!
SPECTRE was not necessarily everyone’s favorite Bond movie. (Personally, I loved it.) But that legendary Day of the Dead scene in Mexico City was arguably the most incredible opening sequence in the entire Bond series, and certainly the most Halloween-appropriate.
Between the nearly three-minute single tracking shot that starts the sequence from the air, onto the ground, through a parade, into a hotel, up an elevator, then into a room… The beautifully costumed principals and extras… The dizzying helicopter action that ensues… It’s stunning.
This is a great time for stand-up comedians and their fans. With more and more comedy specials arriving in the Netflix library by the boatload, as well as the legendary HBO comedy specials, comics have more opportunities to expose more fans to their wares and, thus, entice them to buy tickets to their live shows, which will always be the best way to see stand-up comedy.
When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, our only way to hear about comedians was from Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show or in the early days of cable with Caroline’s Comedy Hour and An Evening at the Improv on A&E. From there, we’d learn about our favorites and buy their comedy albums on vinyl or cassette. I had tapes from Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison, Dennis Miller (when he was still funny), Sandra Bernhard, Joan Rivers, early Comic Relief specials and many more. That was how it worked. It was all about the comedy album.
As much as I love a comedy special on Netflix or HBO, it’s good to get an audio-only comedy fix when you can’t watch, like when you’re driving, cutting the lawn, working out or whatever.
The idea of “Camelot” during the Kennedy years captivated the country. During and after the Kennedy presidency, then Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (later Onassis) continued to capture the attention and admiration of not just Americans but people over the globe. Her strength, her story, and her iconic glamour continue to fascinate us.
The forthcoming film “Jackie” offers an intimate portrait of Mrs. Kennedy in the days immediately following the assassination of J.F.K. as a wife, a mother, and an American icon. A trailer for the film, directed by Pablo LarraÃn and starring Oscar winner Natalie Portman in the title role, was just released today.
My taste in music is a mess. All over the place. Back in the days of my perfectly alphabetized CD collection, I used to say that Barry Manilow was on the shelf between Madonna and Marilyn Manson.
Arnold Palmer, one of golf’s greatest and most stylish legends, died this past weekend at the age of 87. The New York Times’ online obituary on Palmer featured a video interview from 2011 in which Palmer said some of the greatest words I’ve ever heard about the importance of style.
I think I just found my new favorite music video. Directed by Sam Pilling for the song “Nobody Speak” by DJ Shadow featuring Run the Jewels from the June 2016 album The Mountain Will Fall, the unofficial video depicts some kind of negotiation of international importance between the United States and the United Kingdom. Set to the truly fantastic track, the countries’ representatives are in disagreement from go, lip-syncing rhymes at one another as the meeting quickly devolves from discord to fury to full-on chaos. It’s exquisitely filmed, beautifully stunt-coordinated and lots of fun, and it includes inexplicable (but who cares?) cameos from a pig and a rooster. At a time of intense political and ideological strife, the video is making a clear and colorful statement about white male rage. I’ve survived some intense meetings in my day, but this is holy shit crazy. Enjoy.
Two years ago today (September 4, 2014), we lost a legend. At the beginning of that summer, three months prior to Joan Rivers’ death, I received a phone call that changed my life, pitching an opportunity to work for a comedy icon I had admired since her days guest hosting The Tonight Show.
In this episode, I respond to some readers’ reactions to an article about a new affordable automatic tool watch that resembles similar watches on the luxury spectrum. I also share a few anecdotes about how dressing with a sense of occasion served me very well. The last segment is about what Gene Wilder’s performance as Willy Wonka meant to me as a young boy.
“The Get Down” was a warm breeze of late summer fun on Netflix. Against the backdrop of a broke (and broken) Bronx in the summer of 1977, “The Get Down” tells a story at the crossroads of disco and hip-hop. This was a time when New York City was severely in debt and was denied federal assistance to avoid bankruptcy under President Gerald Ford, yielding the famous New York Daily News 1975 headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The Bronx and its residents were really suffering.
The show was created by Baz Luhrmann, who also directed the pilot. I’ve heard from a few friends who had lukewarm feelings after watching the very densely packed first episode, which I completely understand, since watching a Baz Luhrmann project is like eating a really rich, over-sweetened layer cake with frosting made of ecstasy and sprinkled with cocaine, then washing it down with Red Bull. You almost need to chase a Luhrmann movie with an Ingmar Bergman film just to come down. He starts off his new Netflix series, “The Get Down,” with a similar three-ring circus fervor, though it’s not his usual boisterous pageant of bells and whistles. Fortunately for “The Get Down,” the remaining five episodes are helmed by other directors who allow the story to breathe with more finesse and nuance. And it’s a pretty fabulous story.
One of the best best features of the 8-episode show was the music. Wow. Like, fuck me wow. It’s an early-to-mid ’70s aural orgy of soul, R&B, disco and even some rock in a beautiful blend of the popular and the more esoteric. My September 2016 playlist is a curated selection of some of my favorites that appeared in the series.