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The sets of some TV shows are Potemkin villages, just realistic enough to pass muster with the cameras on one side. Others are incredibly detailed simulacra: the most impressive ever, for my money, was the sprawling installation at Cinnecitta Studios for the HBO show Rome (more on which some other time soon). When I visited […]
posted 3 November 2008 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet
I’ve got a new piece up at the the Barnes and Noble Review: this one’s a short assessment of a long graphic novel, Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button. (To read it, scroll down to the bottom of the page, past Felix Dennis and Gorgeous George.) While we’re on the subject of comics: it occurs to […]
posted 29 September 2008 in Outside, Reviews. no comments yet
As of last night, I’m back from the desert, and after many showers, I think I might have actually removed all the alkaline dust from my body. But I’m not counting on it. While I was gone, the Barnes and Noble Review published a brief take of mine on the soundtrack album to Passing Strange, […]
posted 3 September 2008 in Outside, Reviews. no comments yet
It turns out my longer article about Trent Reznor is also up on the Rolling Stone website now. During the interview, Reznor briefly had to excuse himself with a bloody nose. “Are you sure you’re clean?” I teased him. He laughed. “That’s what I think of too: people are going to think I was doing […]
posted 13 August 2008 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet
The new issue of Rolling Stone has two articles by me; one of them, a profile of guitarist/producer Ry Cooder, is available online. It turned out Cooder and I had a friend in common: the most excellent Mr. Jalopy. Two footnotes on the piece: the turkey sandwich was, indeed, excellent. And the last paragraph might […]
Possibly the most clichéd place possible to do a celebrity interview is at the Chateau Marmont hotel. I’ve done quite a few there, many of them with people who are Los Angeles residents and use the place as the equivalent of a conference room. Lily Allen, as it happened, was actually staying there. Before we […]
posted 6 August 2008 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet
Trent Reznor: shorter than I expected. Also funnier than I expected. I recently interviewed Reznor and attended a dress rehearsal for the current Nine Inch Nails tour; it was very cool and trippy to be seeing a full-on rock show in a mostly empty basketball arena. (The Forum was abandoned by the Lakers about a […]
posted 4 August 2008 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet
As you might remember, last month I visited Mötley Crüe in their rehearsal studio and accidentally broke international celebrity-gossip news. I was actually there to report an article about the band prepping for their summer tour, which is now available online at the Rolling Stone website. Much to my surprise, the four people in the […]
I was delighted to hear Snoop Dogg’s country-rock track “My Medicine” getting played on our local alternative-rock radio station; it was one of the oddball standouts of his latest album, Ego Trippin’–which I reviewed a few months back for Rolling Stone. I originally had cooked up a much longer version of the Sonny and Cher […]
The second season of everybody’s favorite new TV show, Mad Men, starts July 27 on AMC. I recently visited the show and saw the capacious set of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency: the desks had IBM Selectric typewriters, the ashtrays were filled with lipstick-stained cigarette butts, and the secretaries were wearing tight dresses and foundation […]
posted 30 June 2008 in Outside. 2 comments
