entertainment

All Mozart, All the Time

In celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday, Swedish Radio launches an internet radio channel dedicated to the music of the maestro. A total of nearly 400 pieces are being rotated, 24 hours a day: symphonies, concertos, sonatas, masses, serenades and divertimenti, trios, quartets and quintets, plus a large selection of arias, duets and almost all of his operas. I’ve been listening to it all morning.

A Three Doc Night

I watched three short documentaries last night.

The first film was a documentary about the rise and fall of Rollen Stewart, the rainbow man. You may not recognize the name but if you’re my age or older, you might remember his rainbow hair dancing around at every nfl, nba, mlb game in the late seventies. The Rainbow Man/John 3:16 was a strange dude who also liked to smoke a lot of dooby. His meteoric rise to semi-fame flew straight into a becoming a born again Christian after being groped by a bunch of professional cheerleaders (huh?). At this point he started to hang his John 3:16 signs (For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life) everywhere he went, which was wherever there was a television camera. I remember him more for the giant John 3:16 signs made of bed sheets than and only have foggy memories of a dancing prism with an afro. Like lots of born again’s (George Bush Jr. comes to mind), John’s grip on reality started to slip and he decided that the rapture was just around the corner. Well, desperate time call for desperate measures and he ended up taking a maid hostage in a downtown Los Angeles hotel and smoking more weed (no harm to the maid). He has since been sentenced to life in prison. It was a really interesting film with too much stock footage from Hard Copy tha ultimately ended up being sorta sad.

Rollen Frederick Stewart courtesy of Sports Illustrated Still Image from the film "The Rainbow Man / John 3:16"

The second film I watched was The Making of ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains’ about the cult favorite Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains which I have never seen but now desperately want to. If anyone knows how to get a hold of this movie please contact me. The original movie starred young 14 year old Diane Lane, and was her first film. Other notable actors included member of The Sex Pistols, members of The Clash, the lead singer of The Tubes, and Black Randy and his band, The Metrosquad. Needless to say, there were all sorts of drugs, sex, and rock and roll happening all over the set. Good times! I’m dying to see Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. It looks like one of the best and one of the worst movies of all times. Here is a youtube clip I found.

The third documentary I watched was Pie Fight ’69 which was a weird, eight-minute, documentary about a pretty weird event. The film consisted of footage lost since 1969 of the notorious ‘pie-fight’ incident at the San Francisco Film Festival. Two dozen costumed radicals descend on the fancy black tie & red carpet festival with one fully laden pie truck and six cameras in order to wreak havoc. The coolest thing about this was the term “soft bomb” which seems like the 1969 version of a “flash mob” with political intent (what in the late sixties didn’t have political intent?).

Of Montreal

I went to see Of Montreal (one of their better songs can be found here) last night. I had to coax myself out though. It was raining like crazy and I knew I wouldn’t be home till sometime after midnight (my head ended up hitting the pillow at 1:20. ugg) and I was just feeling generally lazy. But I went and it was worth it.

The show was held at the Larimer Lounge. This is the first time I’ve been there and it was hardly a lounge, more of an ordinary dingy bar – in somebody’s basement. Something akin to the 15th Street Tavern. The stage was a smallish platform backed by black sheets nailed to the wall. It’s small and smoky and intimate and I can’t decide if I liked it or not. However the lounge does have a great schedule including Essex Green, Dressy Bessy (they were in the crowd last night) and Mates Of State in the next couple of months.

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