Posts: 162

1. 

   Pimparazzi

   02.Jul.08, 15:22 EDT
   
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   When X17 paparazzi photographer “Dano” describes the night an outraged Britney Spears attacked his Ford Explorer with an umbrella, it’s with an almost child-like glee.
   
   “She was breathing like a bull,” the Mexican-American Angelino told writer David Samuels in a recent cover story for The Atlantic magazine. “It was like smoke was coming out of her nostrils. Then she leaps out of the door screaming ‘Motherfuckers!’"
   
   Ironically, her rage-fueled lapse in judgment (perhaps spurred by being denied visitation with her sons minutes earlier) made Dano a star. His net profits from sales of the photos totaled $400,000.
   
   According to the Atlantic story, Britney-related photos/videos/etc. bring the celebrity-stalking industry over $100 million in proceeds annually -- and that’s just Britney. With Paris, Lindsay, TomKat, and Brangelina in the mix, along with hundreds of other movie stars and socialites, we’re talking astronomical sums of money. Once a highly specialized business, it’s now a piranha pool roiling with opportunists.
   
   Because it is so profitable, chasing celebrities has become a bloodthirsty game. And it may surprise you to know that its most successful players are former pizza delivery drivers, valet parking attendants, and other service industry rejects. The modern paparazzi are not professional, lone wolf photographers, hauling expensive camera equipment from location to location. They are mostly packs of immigrant kids, armed with simple digital cameras and camcorders, who are willing to risk life, limb, and incarceration to bag a “big money” shot.
   
   X17 photographers are the biggest breadwinners in the business, mostly because they are so organized. Francois “Regis” Navarre, himself a Parisian immigrant, owns the company. He and his wife, Brandy, run a stable of 60-70 photographers which they pay, on average, $800-$3000 a week, to bring them fresh celebrity meat daily. They, in turn, sell the pictures and videos (of which they retain full rights) to outlets like Us Weekly, People, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and other national and international media outlets.
   
   The promise of four and five figure bonuses for extra-hot stuff like the Britney head-shaving pics (which were shot by X17’s Luiz Betat through a one-inch hole in the salon’s plastic curtain) keep the paps poised and hungry. Betat is part of X17’s elite Britney-stalking force known as “The Brazilians.” He is loyal to Navarre, who plucked him from a valet parking job. “For sure I get excited, but I don’t have a shaking legs or bullshit like this,” Betat tells Samuels, of taking the famous shot. “You can tell from the first frame that she never saw I was there.”
   
   While all of this sounds uncomfortably Mafioso, the other “reveals” in Samuels’ story are even more disturbing -- particularly when we learn that the informant that tipped-off X17 to Lindsay Lohan’s recent “family therapy session” was her own father, Michael. You can be assured that, like the rest of the company’s "tipsters," he was paid handsomely. Samuels also describes ride-alongs with the X17 paps that involve racing through the streets of Los Angeles like money-drunk Indy car drivers, swerving to the wrong side of the road and jockeying for position while in full pursuit of Britney.
   
   “What the paparazzi have done is developed a lawless society where the rules don’t apply,” Los Angeles Councilman Dennis Zine told Access Hollywood, after proposing a law that would limit the proximity that paparazzi must maintain in regard to their subjects, “(driving) on the wrong side of the street, jumping out of cars at the red lights, swarming the car, you don’t do that.”
   
   Zine says that when Britney is taken, by ambulance, to the hospital, it costs California taxpayers $25,000 just to cover the patrol cars, police motorcycles and helicopter support needed to keep the streets safe as the paps chase her. And while some argue that these actions are protected under the First Amendment, Zine points out that they are also "violating everyone else’s rights, freedoms, and privileges."
   
   In the same story, X17 Vice President Brandy Navarre stated that such a law would mean nothing. “I don’t think it would change things that much,” she says. “I mean, the photographers would just stand back a little more.”
   
   Though there seems to be no viable solution on the horizon, the problem is growing at a thunderous rate. Magazines rarely shell out for “exclusives” anymore as there are rarely any truly “exclusive” photos available – due to the sheer volume of photographers in constant pursuit of celebrity flesh.
   
   “Fame is vapor, popularity an accident and riches take wings,” New York Tribune Editor Horace Greely once said. “Only one thing endures and that is character.”
   
   Apparently, character is something Francois and Brandy Navarre have decided they can live without.
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

2. 

   "X-Files" eXcitement

   27.Jun.08, 15:49 EDT
   
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   I didn’t realize how much I missed The X-Files until I watched the latest trailer for the new feature film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. In the two minute plug, you get all the usual accoutrement from the hit TV show:
   
   Haggard-looking, stressed out central character? Check.
   
   Shadowy, amorphous, otherworldly threat looming? Check.
   
   Stark, unnerving backdrop with creepy musical accompaniment? Check.
   
   But when the screen goes black for a moment and you just hear Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny address each other, with studied dispassion, by their character’s last names, that’s when the adrenaline really starts flowing.
   
   Never (in the history of my television-watching career, anyway) has there been a show with the mammoth unresolved sexual tension of The X-Files. I remember staring at the screen during its 1993-2002 run thinking, “FOR GOD’S SAKE MULDER, just put your hand on her leg!” But, alas, it never happened. The emotional dysfunction between the two ultra-foxy agents was every bit as nerve-wracking as the monsters, aliens, and unexplained phenomenon they investigated week after week.
   
   Realizing that I never saw the first X-Files feature film, 1998’s Fight the Future, I added it to my Netflix queue this week. I want to be fully prepared when I Want to Believe hits theaters July 25.
   
   Though I was a fan of the show, my X-Files nerdism wasn't even on the charts in terms of the level of geekdom the show inspired in its loyal minions. For a dose of the real thing, head over to IGN.com where you can find a list of the site's "10 Favorite X-Files Standalone Episodes.” The descriptions alone make me wanna go back and start with Season One.
   
   Do you have some favorites? Tell me all about it ... along with any creative fantasy scenarios that involve Mulder and Scully finally sucking face.
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

3. 

   Did Coldplay Pinch Hit?

   25.Jun.08, 13:03 EDT
   
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   Shaggy Brooklyn rock act the Creaky Boards had a good-natured go at British megastars Coldplay last week when ‘Boards’ singer/songwriter Andrew Hoepfner posted a video on YouTube openly accusing Coldplay main man Chris Martin of pilfering his (ironically-titled) tune, “The Songs I Didn’t Write.”
   
   In the video, which has gleaned hundreds of thousands of views since its June 14^th posting, Hoepfner compares and contrasts his song with “Viva La Vida,” the title track off Coldplay’s new album, which debuted this week at the top of the Billboard charts. He also suggests that Martin was in the crowd when the Creaky Boards performed the track at New York’s CMJ festival in 2007.
   
   Are the songs similar? Yes, definitely. Is it plagiarism? Doubtful. Although this unfortunate statement, attributed to Martin recently by E! Online, comes at a particularly sensitive time:
   
   "We're one of the world's worst -- but most enthusiastic -- plagiarists as a band. We'll try and copy anything but tend to fail, so we come up with something ... that sounds like us -- only through trying to sound like somebody else."
   
   I might be a little more cynical had the same thing not happened to me about 10 years ago. I was feeling cocky about a little 2-and-a-half minute masterpiece I’d penned when I walked into a bar and heard some friends of mine playing what, in essence, was the same tune. When I confronted them about it after the set, the singer informed me that it was a Kinks cover.
   
   Doh!
   
   I don’t think it’s that unusual for music or melody to leave a subconscious emotional imprint. Surely George Harrison, one of the most talented musicians who ever lived, didn’t need to purloin the Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine,” to make a hit record. But, when “My Sweet Lord” came out, it was clear that Harrison, subconsciously or not, had re-written history.
   
   In the case of the Creaky Boards, they certainly have enough of a doppelganger in “Viva La Vida” to make a case. But it appears that Hoepfner and his pals are perfectly content just to have the attention their cranky, somewhat silly, video has brought their way. They’ve even tacked on an amendment stating that Coldplay’s claims that Martin was in London at the time of the CMJ performance must be true.
   
   Hoepfner has told at least one news outlet that he now believes it was Prince Charles that was in the audience that night. Or, perhaps, it was a time-traveling Joe Satriani (whose "If I Could Fly" came out in 2004).
   
   Ouch! Trumped by the corny metal guitar wizard!
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

4. 

   Gone to the Dogs

   21.Jun.08, 12:17 EDT
   
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   If you dug up deceased billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley and fished out her heart, you might find a steely little ball of ice-cold lead. Her reputation as a tyrannical harpy is known far and wide.
   
   That said, the news that her 9-year-old white Maltese, “Trouble,” will only be awarded a portion of the $12 million trust promised the little precious upon Helmsley’s passing (which came last year) is causing me something of a moral dilemma: It’s Leona’s money. She should be able to leave it, incontestably, to anyone she wants – including her dog. But $12 million to a pet that doesn’t even have the opposable thumbs to spend it? At least Bubbles would be physically capable of slapping a fat stack on the checkout counter at Pet Supplies Plus.
   
   A New York City judge declared this week that Trouble will have to scrape by on $2 million, as the remainder of his inheritance is to be donated to charity. This is undoubtedly a more practical and morally responsible way to dispense with $10 million. But I’ll bet Helmsley is throwing fireballs all over hell right now. And, in some respects, I can hardly blame her. It seems pretty clear that, in life, she had a healthy disdain for humanity. Should she be expected, in death, to support it by way of an altruistic legal judgment?
   
   Things being what they are, what do you think Trouble (who can probably be expected to live another 6-9 years) should do with his remaining windfall? I’m especially interested to hear from our knower of all things cute, furry, and charitable, Celeste Fraser Delgado.
   
   For the rest of you, whadda you think – diamond encrusted pooper scooper or lifetime supply of filet mignon? We don’t want Trouble to squander his birthright.
   
   And if, like myself, you're pretty sure Helmsley was a crazy old bat, check out this very amusing AOL collection of outrageous wills. Some of them make her look downright sane.
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

5. 

   It Could Happen

   18.Jun.08, 13:17 EDT
   
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   Kristine Fergusson is fondling a red silk, floor-length strapless gown with a paralyzingly sexy beaded ruffle across the bust. She made this marvelous mantrap with her own two hands.
   
   “Honestly, how many opportunities are you going to have to wear something like this around here?” she says, casting her gaze across the well-manicured lawns of suburban Detroit. A profoundly talented, self-taught couture and costume designer, Fergusson knew when she began fabricating her wondrous creations, nine years ago, that venues were limited. “It’s Michigan, what can you do?” she says. “I have my kids (four of them), so I can’t just pick up and move to New York or LA.”
   
   Little did she know that LA was coming to her.
   
   This summer, Michigan legislators passed a series of bills that, among other things, promise filmmakers who bring their productions to the state a 40% refundable tax credit. That break gets boosted to 42% if the film is shot in core cities. To qualify, they must be willing to spend a minimum of $50,000. But there is no project cap, no annual cap and no “sunset” (meaning that the terms cannot be altered without going through the full process of the law). There are other incentives as well, designed to employ Michigan residents and create a skilled film industry workforce in the state.
   
   Fergusson, 33, who’d stuck her toe in the pool by doing freebies for low-budget projects like Bite Me: the Movie, has seen an exponential leap in the opportunities to work. She says that, since the tax bill passed, her phone has been ringing nonstop.
   
   “It’s allowed people like me to do this – to really do it, instead of just pulling the ‘weekend warrior’ thing and trying to work your day job,” she says. “Every day you hear about something else shooting here.”
   
   Fergusson is currently working (for pay this time) on two projects shooting in the Detroit area and says there are more on the way.
   
   “Everybody’s really happy and excited,” she says. “We realize that this is not going to become Hollywood. Everybody’s going to come here for the tax breaks, make their films, and leave. But as we get bigger projects (Clint Eastwood is rumored to be eyeing Detroit for his next film) and they make it to the screen, hopefully that will change.”
   
   States that have passed similar bills, along with low-interest and no-interest loans for filmmakers, have seen prodigious results. Connecticut saw an astonishing leap in filmmaking revenues (from $1 million to $300 million) a scant six months after passing a 30% tax credit in 2006.
   
   And in these days of bloodthirsty paparazzi, there are other attractive elements to filming outside of Tinseltown.
   
   “The movie stars like that they are made to feel very welcome here and get left alone,” director of film at Louisiana Economic Development, Chris Stelly, told The Detroit News earlier this year. His was a flagship state, launching a 25% tax credit for filmmakers in 2002. “Brad Pitt can walk down the French Quarter and, while folks wave at him, he doesn’t get mobbed.”
   
   For Fergusson, an artist struggling to maintain her integrity in Michigan’s devastated economy, the benefits are obvious.
   
   “I love getting to make things and then seeing what I come up with on screen,” she says, “and I can finally get paid to do it. That’s a really big thing.
   
   “I have a need to create – and this allows me to do it.”
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

6. 

   Dance Fever

   13.Jun.08, 14:47 EDT
   
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   Friday the 13th is upon us, but it’s hard to imagine anybody having worse luck than Stacey Gayle of Queens, New York.
   
   In 2005, at the age of 22, Gayle started experiencing sudden and inexplicable epileptic seizures. Numerous tests failed to produce any reason for the episodes and medical treatments proved ineffective. It was summertime in New York and, as usual, music was booming from stoops and street corners all over her neighborhood. Eventually it began to dawn on Gayle that, every time her brain and body would seize, Sean Paul’s hit dance track “Temperature” had been playing in the background.
   
   And it wasn’t just “Temperature.” Rihanna’s ubiquitous “Umbrella” and Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” were also sending her into uncontrollable convulsions. Eventually, even the drums in her church choir and the ringtones on cell phones would bring on an attack.
   
   "Life just turns upside down when you take music out of it,” Gayle told Scientific American in an article about her condition that ran earlier this week. “I remember sitting outside of stores in the mall and crying because I can't even go shopping or sit in a restaurant and eat."
   
   When it was revealed to Gayle that the only possible solution to her problem (a rare affliction called “musicogenic epilepsy”) was brain surgery, she balked. Treatment would require removing a part of her hippocampus -- the area of the brain responsible for emotional memory and retention of past experiences. Doctors warned of the potential for partial memory loss and Gayle opted out. She retreated to her former home in Canada and attempted to live “music free.” After months of being homebound and depressed, she finally gave in.
   
   Doctors used “Temperature” to induce seizures in Gayle, hooking up electrodes to her brain to locate the distressed areas. In the second surgery, performed last October, a small egg-sized portion of her brain was removed. Since then, Gayle (who emerged from the procedures with no side-effects) has been able to jam out 100% seizure-free.
   
   It’s hard to imagine what life would be like without music. And, take Gayle’s word for it, it’s a lot more pervasive in our culture than we may think.
   
   "Trust me," she says, recalling her predicament. “Music is everywhere.”
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

7. 

   Pot, Porn and Prose

   11.Jun.08, 12:53 EDT
   
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   When a well-meaning friend gave me a copy of Henry Rollins’ spoken word version of Get In the Van in the mid ‘90s, I was obliged to listen. I was respectful of Black Flag’s contribution and figured if Rollins (who was moving into punk rock “elder statesman” status by this time) had bothered to record his observations, he must have something interesting to say.
   
   Wrong. The singer’s laborious, self-serious tone and plodding narrative were excruciating. How could you take something so ripe with possibility (a touring punk band on the road) and turn it into such a heaving bore?
   
   Hank could’ve used a tip or two from porn writer, pro-wrestling aficionado, punk rockist and publishing renegade (Screw magazine and High Times, among others), Mike Edison. On his new disk, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go (the audio companion to his memoir of the same name) Edison peels through a litany of life experiences with a joie de vivre that makes the title swell with authenticity.
   
   Backed by the Rocket Train Delta Science Arkestra (which includes postmodern bluesmaster Jon Spencer, who produced these seven tracks) Edison’s aggressive, humorous delivery alone will seduce you. This guy does have fun everywhere he goes -- I believe it.
   
   It doesn’t hurt that Edison, former drummer for NYC’s Raunch Hands, is an excellent writer. The sheer poetry of what he does keeps this from being your run-of-the-mill “been there, done that” one-handed chest beater. Muscular diatribes against former High Times editors (whose eyes “look like hemorrhoids from years of staring down the length of a water pipe”), Jews for Jesus (“Salvation is one thing I’m not going to be buying wholesale”) and Condi Rice (“martini glass tits chilling in the breeze”) are painterly in the same way the William S. Burroughs’ Dead City Radio was painterly. Even a relatively routine tale of Ozzy Osbourne’s road crew boosting weed from a High Times photo shoot becomes an adventure when Edison sinks his capable hooks into it. And the tracks, mostly composed by the man himself, burble intensely under the weight of his hefty verbiage.
   
   I only have two complaints: 1.) It’s not long enough. 2.) The third offering, GG Allin Died Last Night, lionizes pudgy douchebag GG Allin. Edison is an infinitely more fascinating character than singer/provocateur Allin, who used to peddle his crap out of a briefcase in front of the head shop where I worked. Yes, he ate shit and got beat up a lot -- so what? I’d much rather listen to Edison take on Jesus, George W. Bush, and Hulk Hogan. His intellect, spoon-bending way with words, and prodigious output over the years constitutes a more pervasive threat than Allin’s desperate, clichéd histrionics.
   
   The writers/spoken word artists who can chronicle smut culture without boring your ass off or turning it into the literary equivalent of a "devil girl" tattoo are few and far between. Edison gets my full endorsement. Pick up the CD, get your hairy palms on the book and, in the meantime, check out this ridiculous vid of the man and his famed ChroniCaster guitar. The video crew (gagging with laughter) is hilarious.
   
   Wendy Case is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Arts & Entertainment.

8. 

   The Tao of Bo Diddley

   06.Jun.08, 12:56 EDT
   
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   Well, it’s been four days now since the passing of Bo Diddley and I’m still not over it. I realize that we all gotta go sometime, but I think I secretly hoped that Bo would live forever.
   
   In some ways, he will.
   
   I saw Bo Diddley perform in my junior high auditorium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 1976 and it changed my life. Period. He was a big dude, dressed all in black. He swore so much that my mum made us (my little brother and I) leave, but not before he ripped through some choice material – most notably, “Hey, Bo Diddley” and “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover.” I was mesmerized.
   
   Nearly 30 years later, I would share the stage with Bo Diddley at Little Steven’s Underground Garage Festival on Randall’s Island in New York. The Stooges were there. So were the New York Dolls, the Dictators, the Strokes, Nancy Sinatra and a number of other influential artists. But it was Bo’s presence that sent that shock of schoolgirl adrenaline through my forty-year-old body. I’d been in love with him since sixth grade – and there he was, right in front of me.
   
   Also coursing through my veins on that occasion was a significant amount of tequila – so, when I saw Bo being assisted onto the back of a little golf cart backstage, I ambushed him with a big kiss.
   
   He was great that day. Stupendous. And I will forever be grateful to Steven for providing me, my mates, and anyone who saw him at the festival, with the opportunity to bask in his infinite coolness.
   
   About the most useful thing I can do at this point is share some of the things I’ve learned from Brother Bo. They call him “The Originator” for a reason – there was never anyone like him, musically or aesthetically, before. And though everyone from Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stones to the Dolls and Stooges themselves aped his style, there will never, ever be anyone like him again.
   
   The quotes below are from George R. White’s awesome biography, Bo Diddley: Living Legend. Get your paws on it, if you can. White stands back (way back) and lets Bo tell the story himself. The man is effin’ hilarious. Beyond his obvious musical tutelage, here’s what I’ve learned from Bo Diddley:
   
   1.) Don’t let the bastards grind you down
   Bo was the first African American musician ever to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. When a crabby Sullivan referred to him as a “black boy,” Bo let ol’ stone face have it: “I don’t give a shit about Mr. Sullivan! Who’s Mr. Sullivan? He don’t talk to me like that! I didn’t call him no name!”
   
   2.) Any job that’ll pay you is honorable work
   “I’ve done somethin’ of everythin.’ I’ve even been a latrine cleaner ... I don’t frown on any kind of job. If you take the job, it’s a good job. If you’re getting paid for it, it’s not a sucker’s job. It’s paying your bills, you’re eatin’ – bottom line."
   
   3.) Make a statement
   Bo’s homemade square guitars were his trademark, but he’d try anything to get people’s attention. He even covered one