Police Academy film series bannger

I’ve been promising something relating to Police Academy for years. It’s much bigger than I planned

Been a while since I posted anything new, and it’ll be a while longer. If you’ve been here before you might have noticed that I’ve updated the design of the site and I’m now going through it and fixing broken links and whatnot. Just to post something (sort of) fresh, I’m recycling a comment I made on a Police Academy post at The AV Club six years ago. I know, you’re thinking, “A comment?!? Seems like a pretty half assed thing to repurpose!” It’s not; the comment is about 1300 words of objectively deep insight. I was intending to write a thesis further expanding on the those ideas, but never did.

The poster for the documentary, What an Institution! The Story of Police Academy
In the 1980s, women had no torsos.

So, why this? Why now? Last month, I became an Executive Producer on the documentary, What An Institution! The Story of Police Academy. I’m the guy who spit out 1300 words off the top of my head on Police Academy, what did you expect me to produce? “A reboot,” you say. Sure, I’d love to, but I doubt that AT&T is going to replace Academy Award winning auteur Jordan Peele with little old me. I’m not really doing any of the heavy lifting on the project, that’s being taken care of by director Gary Smart and the team at Cult Screenings UK with assists from Paul Maslansky and Adam F. Goldberg. Shooting starts this week, so keep your eyes peeled for What An Institution! in 2019. Until then, enjoy this: Continue reading →

The Truth About Dr. Jekyll title card

The Truth About Dr. Jekyll

The Quad Cinema is showing Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde as part of their Hammer Films retrospective, giving me another excuse to recycle some old material, a clip that was recycling old material to begin with. Back in 2006, I produced a video podcast (before the format had really been established or anyone knew what it was) called Potluck: Substance Over Style. The person I was supposed to interview backed out last minute, so I had to come up with an episode on the fly. I pulled out some old videotape of my mom, a couple of other old tapes and some digitized public domain film and put this together. By the way, my mother has never even seen Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, believe it or not.

 

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Remember that time I was a puppeteer?

Ten years ago this weekend, I was the host / emcee of The New York Infringement Festival, a series of plays and one person shows held over Labor Day weekend in Greenwich Village. Someone (I forget who) had created this large puppet called Bushiva to parade around Washington Square Park. I don’t know if they had any specific performance planned, at least, I wasn’t given any direction when I was asked to help operate the puppet.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that weekend, and if you remember, the initial government response to the crisis was far from adequate. Consequently, there were a lot of activist groups and politically minded individuals demonstrating when we arrived with this giant George W. Bush head. I decided to give Bushiva a voice right there on the spot and started fielding questions from pedestrians, offering satirical commetary on the policies and practices of our then president.

I’m not sure who shot and edited the video below, which was posted to YouTube some years ago and I came across recently. Even though the general public’s questions prompting the responses aren’t included, you can still get the idea. It would be great to have a look at the raw footage since I’ve never seen it, but I’ll take what I can get.


If the embedded video doesn’t load, click to watch
Bushiva at YouTube.

me & Mom at Impact Wrestling

A quick note to all my wrestling peeps

If you’ve been reading smile’s Wrestling Magazine at Flipboard, thanks for checking it out! I started the magazine because there’s already a lot of coverage of wrestling online but I wanted to focus on some of the things that mainstream media doesn’t: the indie wrestlers touring all over doing house shows, the many women who are overlooked or marginalized and the actual lives of wrestlers as people instead of the larger than life cartoons the general public seems to perceive them as.

me & Mom at Impact Wrestling
me & Mom at Impact Wrestling

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything because I’ve been busy (I explain in more detail here). On the TiVo, I have a couple of weeks worth of WWE & TNA shows, a few weeks of New Japan & PWS & a Lucha Underground to catch up on besides the YouTube stuff I subscribe to. Since I haven’t watched the shows, I haven’t been reading wrestling news because I want to avoid spoilers. I haven’t even kept up with local shows lately. I’ll be getting back to it, but in the meantime I want to thank you all for your patience and support! Keep reading and let me know your thoughts.

Temporal Shift

It’s been a while, the longest while since I started this blog in fact. I got an email from Google last week letting me know that the site wasn’t mobile friendly anymore, so I logged on to fix it, and saw that I didn’t post anything at all here in 2014. I’ve still been online, just sharing my thoughts in other places like Twitter, Facebook and commenting on various other sites. I’ve added links to the menu above so you can check them out if you’re so inclined. I haven’t even really been that active on those places in the last few months because I always seem to be out of time.

In the years since I’ve started this blog, the amount of things available to fill my free time has grown considerably. I’ve upgraded my TiVo to a modern unit that’s capable of recording six channels at once. There’s shit on there from last year, entire seasons of shows that I haven’t got around to watching because there’s not enough time in the day. I still haven’t watched The Knick, Extant, or Gang Related (which I just learned was cancelled when I looked for the link to the show, that’s what I get for trying to avoid spoilers); I haven’t watched Halt And Catch Fire either and they added it to Netflix already, so I might as well delete those and make space for shit I won’t get around to watching until Christmas.

TiVo Screenshot
Yes, those shows are actually on my TiVo.

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A still from the music video of the song “Sorry” by the band, “Nerf Herder"

Sorry

My Song Of The Day subscribers may have inadvertently been sent one of my recent MoviePass posts because it was tagged incorrectly. Here’s a song to apologize.

Though Nerf Herder is probably best known for providing the theme music for the Buffy The Vampire Slayer television series, this was the song that initially blew them up (at least in California) and most likely got them the Buffy gig. This shit was all over the radio when I was on the West Coast back in late ’96 – early ’97, and it always stuck with me, because it’s genuinely funny. Happy Thanksgiving (if you’re in America, otherwise, Happy Thursday)!


If the embedded video doesn’t load, click to watch
Nerf Herder – Sorry at YouTube.

MoviePass Review Banner

Beat the Clock & Buy Advance Tickets with MoviePass

The title says it all, doesn’t it? In this video, I explain and demonstrate how to get around MoviePass‘ Countdown Clock and why it works. This doesn’t violate MoviePass Terms Of Service, either; I explain that towards the end, but once they get hip to this, I’m sure MoviePass will make some changes. Most ironic is that while MoviePass may not be too thrilled about this video, it’s the smoothest MoviePass transaction I’ve ever recorded. Seriously, I wonder how many MoviePass users have ever checked in and got their ticket that fast.


If the embedded video doesn’t load, click to watch
Beat The Countdown Clock and Buy Advance Tickets with MoviePass at YouTube.

I can’t front, I’m feeling pretty Damian Sandow-ish right now, but this is so face palmingly simple that I’d honestly be amazed if I was the first one to come up with it. You’re welcome.

Please be sure to check out the other articles in my series on MoviePass: