Nostalgia Rides The Rails For Christmas

The MTA is running some vintage trains for the holidays on special excursions.  Unlike previous rides where the special trains ran once for a extra fare of $20, this year you can ride one of the old R1/9 cars for the price of a regular fare swipe.

The trains will be running on the 6th Avenue line on Sundays from 10AM-4PM.   Also the MTA is even putting some vintage buses into service as well.  You can catch one on 34th Street in Manhatan and other lines throughout the city.  For details on these trips to the past, you can check the MTA website for lines and depature times.

It's Oscar Season....Brace Yourself

Oscar season is ramping up in the next few weeks as studios big awards campaigns go into full swing.  The major contenders right now seem to be "The Kings Speech", "The Kids Are Alright" and "Toy Story 3", if Disney gets its way.  Anyway, this video is a great spoof of all Oscar-aspiring movies and their oh-so-familiar trailers.  Check it out...

NetPix: Bored To Death, Season 1

I haven't had a good NetPix in a while as I haven't really seen any good movies on DVD.  I've been mainly watching a lot of TV in my queue.  But a newish show that I recently saw was last year's freshman season of "Bored To Death".  This HBO series starring Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifanakis and Ted Danson, is one of the funniest shows I've seen in quite a while.  It's unique brand humor treads that fine line between the sublime and ridiculous, like the original "Seinfeld" did though in a much more subdued manner.

The series is centered around a Brooklyn writer named "Jonathan Ames" (who also happens to be the real-life scribe behind the show) who becomes an amateur detective after placing an ad on Craigslist.  It's a simple setup for some complicated story lines which often lead to hilarious shenanigans.  My favorite episode was one in which Jonathan attempts to retrieve a married man's sex tape and enlists his friends for a long, loopy night of adventure in New Jersey. Ted Danson, playing a magazine editor who is a bit of a senior stoner, is fantastic as he yearns for adventure after tiring of his wealthy, A-list, Manhattanite existence.  It seems that he, more than Jonathan, is the one who is bored to death.

Another charm of the series is its mixture of real-life and fiction, especially when it comes to the Ames character.  Jonathan is very much a TV doppelganger for the author's publicly stated interests and obsessions, such as boxing, Brooklyn and beer (or wine or vodka).  There is even an interesting collaboration with Zach's character, who is a graphic artist, which mirrors Ames' work with Dean Haspiel on their incredible graphic novel "The Alcoholic".  The show's focus on Brooklyn is unique as well, with a number of famous (Brighton Beach) and not so famous (Prisoner's Monument) local spots showing up and looking gorgeous.  The show is a true love letter to the BK and all it's quirky charms.

Season 2 just finished its first run on HBO recently.  It almost makes me want to get cable so I can watch it on-demand.  Almost.  I am dying (ha) to see what happens to this happy gang in the next go-round.

We Interrupt This Program...

It was 47 years ago today that a live broadcast of the soap opera "As The World Turns" on CBS was interrupted at 1:40pm.  What followed was the first audio report out of Dallas, Texas about an assassination attempt on President Kennedy.  It is riveting stuff and truly, as they say, the first draft of history.

The announcer is not Walter Cronkite and his voice is uncertain.... he even stumbles a couple times as he clearly reads copy that he just ripped off the wire.  The soap was interrupted twice more during it's half-hour broadcast as more details came in, like the number of shots, the fact that the Texas governor was wounded, and a report of assassins on the infamous grassy knoll.  What is most striking about these early reports is how clear it is that the president's wounds are grave. There is even the inclusion in the third bulletin of a Secret Service agent reportedly saying, "he's dead."

While we're all familiar with Uncle Walter's official video pronunciation of Kennedy's death roughly an hour later, I had never seen/heard these live bulletins before. A friend posted them on FB and they are worth watching today as, once again, we remember a president who was shot down in his prime.

A Blast From The Future--New Video By Massive Attack

In stark contrast to yesterday's blast from the video past, today I have this new clip for a song by Massive Attack.  This is one of the coolest CGI-style music video's I've seen in a while.  Truly stunning visuals.  Watch and be amazed...


Massive Attack-Splitting the Atom-directed by Edouard Salier from edouard salier on Vimeo.

All Fall Down-A Blast From the 80's Past

I finally got my YouTube account back after much confusion over at Google when they merged gmail accounts with video accounts.  Oy.  Anyway, after a few months blackout, I am celebrating my return to YouTube with this lost gem of the 80's that was suggested to me...."All Fall Down" by Five Star.  Google may not know how to merge my accounts but they do know my musical taste!

So...Five Star was a funky British girl group, all of them related, with a lead singer who had braces.  Their big hit sounds suspiciously like a slower jam of the Jets "I've Got A Crush On You" but, then again, there was a sweet sameness to this brand of '80's funky pop.  Also, I remember loving this video because of its more handmade rotoscoping which was in contrast to that other super-slick animated video taking 1985 by storm.  Enjoy!

Former AT&T Commercial Guy Matt Bush Is Kinda Cute

If this guy looks familiar you may recognize him as the weird kid in the AT&T Rollover commercials from a few years back.  His name is Matt Bush and he has been a busy little actor since then, starring in a few feature films (an summer romp set in 1985, "Adventureland") and TV pilots.  Now one of his shows has gone to air and it premiered last night on TBS.  It's called "Glory Daze" and is about a bunch of guys starting college in 1986.  So what...is Matt Bush the look of the 80's or something?

While the music was awesome as they cranked out the hits of my college years ("Girls On Film"!), the show was somewhat lackluster.  However, things got slightly more funny whenever Matt showed up to say something weird or do something crazy.  Unfortunately, he was not cast as the lead but more of a goofy sidekick, a Jewish kid named Eli who gets incredibly stoned in the pilot.  But his best moment was the introduction of his character.  In one of the show's many nods to 80's films, Eli is shown dancing in his underwear ala Tom Cruise in "Risky Business".  I know.... not a highly original idea but Matt made the most of it.

The scene is the second up in the preview clip below. Anyway, you will surely be seeing more of Matt in the future, hopefully on shows that are a little more interesting than this retro rehash.

The Queens Midtown Tunnel Is Getting Old

Some of New York City's bridges get a lot of fanfare and even fireworks when celebrating big birthdays.  But yesterday, the Queens Midtown Tunnel, that workhorse of a road that carries an average of nearly 100,000 vehicles a day into the city, turned 70 and almost no one noticed.

Well, one person who did notice is Ben over at Second Avenue Sagas.  He had a nice little write up about the history of tunnel and the story of its construction.  One interesting fact was that the tunnel had its original brick surface until 2001 when it was entirely repaved.

The Queens-Midtown Tunnel, which brings cars from the city directly to the famed Long Island Expressway, has previously had one big moment in the spotlight.  It had a starring role in the original "Men In Black" movie asTommy Lee and Will famously sped out of the city on its roof. It was surely the fastest commute in the tunnel's long, congested history.

A Pastor In Georgia Comes Out With Pride

In recent years, there have been some dramatic scenes of religious pastors, shamed by private behaviour that has suddenly been made public, being forced to admit their sexuality to their congregations.  Being pushed out of the closet is never pretty, even if it may be somewhat deserved for preaching homophobia.  But here's something different: a pastor who comes out by choice and does so with eloquence and dignity.

James Swilley, who founded and runs a mega church in Georgia with his ex-wife, recently came out to in a Sunday sermon.  The reason?  He was compelled by the rash of gay suicides and his ex-wife's prompting to live his preachings.  What I love most about this CNN interview Swilley gave on Sunday is how straightforward and direct he is in his answers, especially when it comes to some annoying Twitter questions about the Bible.

This is a man of faith who is also gay.  And guess what America...there of many of them out there.  This brave man just decided to speak his truth.

A Real Life Mystery On FOX's "FRINGE"

One of my guilty pleasure TV shows is FOX's "Fringe".  It's a compelling sci-fi show that sometimes deals in real world science and scientific mystery.  Last night's episode, was about a unexplained phenomenon called "Number Stations".

Since the late 1940's, these shortwave radio stations have been broadcasting a seemingly random list of numbers for anyone to hear, usually those with a HAM radio. There are thousands of enthusiasts around the world who listen to and track these odd broadcasts but no one has been able to crack their code.  For years the rumor was that these stations were broadcasting the secret messages of spies during the Cold War.  But the Cold War is over and the numbers stations persist. No government has officially ever admitted to using numbers stations.

The explanation on "Fringe" last night had something to do with agents from an alternate universe giving longitude and latitude clues about where to find pieces of an ancient, buried doomsday machine that, if re-constructed, may likely destroy this universe.  Cool, right?  But if you'd like a more real explanation, I found this CBS News report on YouTube which has some interesting details and a more in-depth report on NPR.