while I couldn’t be happier with the musical selections for this week’s program, I am saddened, nay, personally devastated that not one of my alleged friends bothered to send me the clip of Fox LA weatherman Adam Krueger paying homage to Disturbed’s “Down With The Sickness” last February.   It’s bad enough that we don’t take climate change seriously in this country,  it also sucks that I have surrounded myself with jackals, serial-users and Punishers With A Capital P, none of whom took the time to forward something that is not merely relevant to my interests (ie.  weather and The Disturbed) but crucial . 

This week’s episode was recorded just a stone’s throw from East Village Radio’s 1st avenue storefront though I don’t understand why anyone would be throwing stones at the station’s HQ.  Surely it would be more efficient just to bang on the gate?  Despite a multitude of changes, this can still be a pretty tough neighborhood - for instance, I was scheduled yesterday to meet with Bobby Steele in order to launch a competitor to John Joseph’s “Fear City” walking tour and it turns out the person I’d been sending money to on CashApp is not actually Bobby Steele but rather someone operating out of a boiler room on the other side of the world.  Which I suppose is a good learning lesson for all of us (but especially me) — if you’re going head to head with the cadillac of walking tours, you’d better bring more to the table than the Yugo of walking tours  (particularly if it turns out the Yugo is really named Hugo and couldn’t tell A7 apart from A24).  

I don’t like to talk about this very often but when i was a young adolescent, the Unification Church tried (unsuccessfully) to recruit me.  I don’t know if it was a matter of my being an usually difficult personality to break down or perhaps it was just that the snacks at the Jews For Jesus meetings were so much better (who buys RC Cola and realistically expects to brainwash anyone) but either way, I did not end up selling flowers by the side of the road.  Which brings me to present day and a memo from East Village Radio mgmt requesting my presence in NYC next for a “team building exercise”.  I’ve got some experience here and the rhetoric sounds suspiciously like something that will have me selling flowers by the side of the road.  And that’s ok, I’ve never been a team player before and maybe it’s time I started.  If do happen to see me selling flowers by the side of the road, please keep in mind a) the flowers don’t sell themselves (if they did, they would be the smartest flowers of all time) and b) I CANNOT CUT YOU A DEAL. 

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but apparently there are online tools —  artificial intelligence, if you will, that enable anyone to replace Perry Farrell in Jane’s Addiction with “The Shield”’s Michael Chiklis.  I know, you’re saying to yourself, “nothing’s shocking” but trust me on this, the results are positively chilling.  I realize we’re in an era of new singers being drafted in for touring purposes (strange no one has floated Chiklis as the new vocalist for The Smiths) but I don’t think any of us are fully ready for the vast implications.  Please try to enjoy this week’s program while the world continues to get exponentially worse with each passing second. 

Though today is a dark day in U.S. history, it is my fervent hope that at the very least you can use a morning of reflection to seek out timely bargains like the one above. After you’ve finished listening to the program, however, otherwise it’s just inappropriate. In the meantime, can anyone source of pic of Rudy Giuliani at Ground Zero in full Yankees uniform brandishing a shovel? 

farewell : Lester Esser, Daved Hild, Villano V

Episode 223 comes to (ostensibly) live from the 2024 Venice Film Festival and you’re probably wondering what sort of person travels 5600 miles in order to record an internet radio program.  Well, the joke is on you because I traveled 5600 miles to be here for the world premiere of “Sucking Is Our Business (And Business Is Kind Of Slow) : The Hollywood Vampires Story”. But as it turns out, the joke is on me, because the Hollywood Vampires movie did not in fact make it into the festival and this kind of bad intel has left me holding the bag.  And not the good kind of bag, i mean the sort of leaky bag that needs to be disposed of.  What sort of unscrupulous persons would knowing deceive a Hollywood Vampires superfan and how do they live with themselves?

There are few things in this world I find nearly as galling as fake columns. Phil Mushnick’s comes to mind, but color me fully educated this time because I was not previously aware the National Gallery had a Sainsbury Wing. I’m not sure how far down the art ladder you have to drop before encountering an Iceland or Poundland Wing, but over the course of the next few days, I intend to find out. In the meantime, however, death to false columns 

with this week’s internet sensation aka Anonymous Five Year Old’s “46 Instances Of A Child Screaming Into A Microphone” we are forced (at least i am) to recount the best (and worst) prior examples of children-in-bands, stunt or otherwise.  Old Skull didn’t have a happy ending (and with the Missing Foundation lineage, they didn’t necessarily have a happy start, either).  From afar it seems like things worked out ok for Hanson, but if “Slapshot” came out in 1977, i don’t understand how they were kid in the ’90’s.  Redd Kross is probably the gold standard,  Prussian Blue somewhat less so.  Harley Flanagan - PEAKED EARLY.   the 1-800-Kars-4-Kids Band - also peaked early (though perhaps not as early as Harley.   So they’re not all gonna be as great at Tom Ardolino’s ‘Unknown Brain’  (which in retrospect, I wish I’d played instead of “46 Instances Of A Child Screaming Into A Microphone”)

due to illness last weekend, I was unable to attend my local arena’s presentation of The Misfits & Rev. Horton Heat and I’m told this was the first music event of it’s sort to feature voter suppression booths in the lobby (ie. if you announced your intention to vote, you’d be promptly punched in the face several times).  I mean, fuck, this is the entertainment world Michael Stipe is coming back to.  But it’s fine, I stayed home, did not get punched in the face and I got to fully concentrate on this week’s program and while doing my du(d)e diligence on the Northside Kings’ fella’s book for kids (“A Child’s Guide To Beating Up Danzig”, or something like that) I learned the same publisher is responsible for an Adrenalin OD coffee table book. I don’t know why you think I’m making this shit up.  
 
 (above : in the unfortunate and unlikely event the Adrenalin OD coffee table book were pulped, it would probably look like porridge)

good morning, friends.  I am presuming you've read of James Dolan's plans to bring a digitally restored version of "The Wizard of Oz" to his monument of greed and avarice known as THE SPHERE at a cost of some $80 million dollars.  It's a ghastly idea to be sure, but let's OPEN THE PHONES and mull over some other cinematic options that might succeed in immersive form?  Perhaps the original cut of Tinto Brass' "Caligula"?  How about "Troll 2"?  Any fans of "Santa With Muscles"?  Really?  None?  But really, let's hear your suggestions, my call-screener had to pick up his kids from camp.