MV3
When I think of the music and video programs that shaped my taste and colored my adolescence, three come to mind. You’ve got your Soul Train, with its glossy funk; you’ve got your American Bandstand, with its clean-scrubbed Top 40. And then, some of us had MV3.
Part video dance party and part “live” performance, MV3 was an extension of L.A. new wave way-station K-ROQ FM (106.7) and its aim was to reflect what “you are really watching, listening and dancing to”. 
Unlike MTV, the syndicated show was on broadcast TV, and therefore limited to one hour . Hosted and anchored largely by Richard Blade, MV3 gave emerging California bands like X, Romeo Void, Berlin, Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, and Missing Persons, as well as many UK new-wave/post-punk groups, a stage on which to lip-sync to the after-school set. On any given episode sun-kissed mall-rats and rebels in Rude Boy regalia would be bopping side-by-side to Italo-disco one minute and electro-goth the next. Of all the DJs and VJs from the station or show, Blade crossed-over most successfully and was featured in the TV show “Square Pegs” an the movie “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” – which, was filmed at our High School – making the Brit and his taste in music that much more impossible to escape.
Whereas I can imagine the Soul Train and American Bandstand kids turning out OK, my instinct and experience lead me to wonder what became of some of those “cutting-edge/modern rock” types mirror-dancing to Pleasure and the Beast’s “Dr. Sex”.
The Apartment
Quite by coincidence, I found myself in bed on a chilly night with a bit of a flu after another week of slugging it out in the mobile media trenches, juggling interviews at the likes of NBC and Fox and cranking on editorial deadlines. Scrolling through the list of serial killers, supermodels and ghost hunters on my Tivo, I was pleasantly surprised to find not one but TWO Billy Wilder flicks on tap – “Some Like it Hot” and “The Apartment.”
In light of our current political scandal, there’s something tres apropos about watching Jack Lemmon pimp out his “Apartment” – and his soul – in one of the sweetest, saddest NY movies ever made. Life for an ambitious Upper West Side bachelor working in Midtown hasn’t changed much in 40-some years. “I’m in bed already and I’ve taken a sleeping pill,” says CC Baxter, before throwing a trench coat over his pajamas and clearing out so his higher ups can have their way with his domain. The sight of Lemmon sitting on a Central Park West bench in the middle of the night is just one among many, too many scenes, zingers and insights that capture the neverending New York hustle and make “The Apartment” an enduring classic.
Shirley MacLaine’s character may seem a bit dated, “melodrama-wise”, until one considers the Myspace confessions of Manhattan’s Downtown It Girl Du Jour – “Kristen.” If you’re not careful, as our former Governor learned this week, “In the end, you wind up with egg foo yung on your face.”
The best last line in cinema may very well be “Nobody’s perfect,” at the end of “Some Like It Hot”, but the final moments of “The Apartment” come pretty damn close. Lemmon greets MacLaine at the door, a popped bottle of champagne foaming in the threshold, the dashed misfits sit down for a game of cards on the couch and he tries to make her acknowledge his obvious love for her. Cute and coy as any heartbroken pixie can be, she turns to him and says – “Shut up and deal.”
Cue music, fade out…
Gui Boratto: Like You
My interview with Dj, producer Guillherme Boratto is up on Resident Advisor.
Up next – Kelley Polar on Earplug; after that Jamie Lidell.
Enjoy.
Gui Boratto: Like you
Kompakt’s man from Brazil is an unlikely candidate for techno stardom, writes Jorge Hernandez. There’s hope for us all yet.
NY Gov Goes Down: Client 9, meet Girl 6
Or, the Emperor has no clothes…
Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
Published: March 10, 2008
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
ALBANY – Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.
The wiretap recording, made during an investigation of a prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP, captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.
Artemisbell Du Jour
We were having a bad day at the office, then we stumbled upon Artemisbell dancing in her living room to our old Hi-NRG collection, and suddenly life was good again.
I Love Lucid
File under: Barbie Mariposa and the Glittering Goo. Stream of subconscious glimpses from a lucid dream…
summer camp, family resort, all ages
i overhear news that someone’s spreading herpes to girls
i walk out of my room – there is a row of young girls sitting in line waiting for – ?
i feel guilty and panic
i try to say something to my family who’s there, instead i run because the hysteria is turning the camp into a lynch mob
i find a fence, jump it, run up some stone steps into the woods and adjacent railroad tracks
no trains are coming so i run through through the woods to the nearest town
i find a bed and breakfast to stay in, but i hear people talking about the pandemic up at the camp, so i leave and hitch a ride
a couple of guys with guns pick me up and give me a ride, without asking questions
while we’re driving and they’re quiet, in my dream-head in the back seat, i can hear what everyone at the camp is saying and thinking and how they plan to catch me – i think “new jersey, connecticut…new york is the first place they’ll look for me…”
we come to a highway off-ramp, the car pulls up next to a big, new, yellow pickup truck – its flatbed walls are covered with dripping honeycombs. i am distracted by the glittering goo…wondering – how does that work?
i get out of the car, because the two guys with the guns are scaring me
i wander along the highway intersections and end up in a flop house with a group of junkies
another guy, 2 girls and i pair off into couples and go upstairs to have an orgy
upstairs, i’m thinking, i can’t do this, i can’t give this chick herpes even if she is a junkie
as she undresses, i start to wonder why i’m having sex with women anyway – when did this start?
the other couple starts to make out, then stops – the guy says he’s the one spreading the herpes,
they continue to have sex anyway, the girl i’m with changes her mind
relieved knowing it’s not me, i run downstairs and out of the house
i run into the group from the camp who is calm now and heading to a fancy lodge with a tropical theme
we come up escalators into a big hall with modular leather seats
as we’re sorting out where to sit, i turn and start talking to the group i was hanging out with at the camp…”how ’bout here?”
I wake up, pee, turn on the TV to an episode of a cartoon called “Barbie Mariposa”: ” A butterfly fairy and her friends must find an antidote for their poisoned queen…” The fairy says, “This time, I promise I won’t oversleep.”
Stuff White People Like
Ok, I give in.
I posted a comment: White people like LISTS.
And Rehab.
And Subtitles.
And Heath Ledger.
- Oh, too soon?
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