On the 1868 Soldiers’ Memorial in the center of the town square of Santa Fe:

Apparently the word that’s been chiseled out is “savage.”

posted 23 March 2012 in Photos. no comments yet

Where is “Bullet the Blue Sky” set? I always assumed the United States–mostly because of the way Bono keeps saying “Outside is America.” But just recently I tracked on the lyric in Bono’s rap:

You take the staircase to the first floor

And thought it was an amusing Irish mistake–here in the U.S.A., pal, we walk through the front door right into the first floor, the way the founding fathers intended! But if I’m being fair to Bono (which I suppose I should be, since it’s a leap year), the song is about the heavy weight of America in an impoverished country; e.g., “across the mud huts where the children sleep.” (Apparently, it was inspired by a trip Bono took to El Salvador.) America is outside, but it’s not inside–so the song may describe a tesseract.

posted 22 March 2012 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

That was the dullest Academy Awards ever, right? But there were some highlights for me, not least that Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall won the Film Editing Oscar for their work on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo–work that they were kind enough to dissect for me (and the readers of The New York Times). Also, although Melissa McCarthy didn’t win for Best Supporting Actress, she looked genuinely joyful to see her fellow Groundlings heading up to the stage to receive the Adapted Screenplay award for The Descendants (just before Jim Rash stole the show with his impromptu mimickry of Angelina Jolie’s posture). Rock on!

posted 27 February 2012 in Articles, Links. no comments yet

This was, I believe, the fourth issue of Details I worked on as a staffer. (Before that, I was freelancing for it while I worked as a copy editor at a computer magazine; I filed scads of record reviews, and then articles on industrial music, Dinosaur Jr., and Marky Mark.) There were a lot of talented people working at Details (not least the man who hired me, David Keeps), and a general expectation set by editor-in-chief James Truman that we would do smart work, sometimes incisive, sometimes dishy. I was the junior editor in the music section, responsible for the news page, the record reviews, the sidebars, and helping out with some of the features, plus I generally got to write one feature a month. It was an amazing job for a 22-year-old, and my experiences there still inform how I approach my work twenty years later.

I wanted to revisit an issue from two decades ago, and see what grabbed my attention now. So, the February 1992 issue of Details.

The most amusing reflection of its era: an article (by Mark Lewman of Dirt (the Sassy spinoff for boys)) on snowboarding, clearly written as introduction for people unfamiliar with the new-fangled sport.

The spookiest moment: a Q&A Margy Rochlin conducted with Brandon Lee, who died a little over a year later, on the set of The Crow. Specifically:

Q. What drives you crazy?
A. Women and death.
Q. Because?
A. Women, well, that’s self-explanatory. And death because you can’t take it back.

The opening page of the Eyewitness section seems like a fairly obvious lift of the Harper’s Index, but the big newsy photos within still look good. Lineup of the articles in the Style section: snowboarding (as mentioned), cognac, straight women who sleep with gay men, baseball clothes, STDs, the urge for violence, and–this was so Details–Lloyd Cole on corduroy.

Rob Tannenbaum did a great article on his visit to the skeevy, skanky Hedonism II resort.

“This place is not at all what I thought it would be,” he continues. “I expected a supermarket of women. I expected girls would lift up their shirts and beckon you over. But you have to pursue them. That’s not hedonism.”

Opening line of Danny Garcia’s service piece on visiting Miami: “If you like the energy of cities like Paris or London, which were completed hundreds of years ago, Miami is not for you.”

Q&As in the feature well: Rebecca DeMornay, Susan Faludi, Brandon Lee, Emilio Estevez (“The truth is I did lose my virginity in a brothel in the Philippines.”).

The cover story is a typically excellent profile by Chris Heath (or “X Heath,” as his name always got truncated on office memos), of the not especially introspective Christian Slater. Discussing how Slater took up golf after he got sober:

His grandparents–his mother’s parents–gave him a set of golf clubs.

Where are they now?

He looks puzzled. “Grandma’s in heaven, and Grandpa’s in Trenton.”

I meant the clubs.

“Oh. The clubs are in my closet. They’re not coming out, ever. They’re history.”

The comic strip at the back was the incoherent but entertaining Wild Palms, which would eventually become a miniseries starring a miscast Jim Belushi. The two movie articles were on a young Steven Soderbergh (“still freshman-skinny and wearing braces on his teeth”) making his second movie, Kafka, and in a sign of the times, Sony’s efforts to find a movie for Michael Jackson to star in.

Which brings us to my home turf, the music section. There’s lots of record reviews that I have no memory of editing (lead review: The Shamen). There’s news items that I barely remember writing (I retain a vague impression of having drinks with Jody Watley). Features on Bill Graham (his last interview), Marc Almond, Big Daddy Kane, and Primal Scream (Bobby Gillespie to Sylvia Patterson: “What’s my gold shirt made of? Heh, heh. Rock ‘n’ roll.”). I wrote a sidebar on the heights of various rock stars: it was misery to research and not that interesting once it was on the page.

Oh, yeah: I went to Germany to write about Nirvana, traveling with them from Berlin to Hamburg to Frankfurt (with young photographer Juergen Teller, who ended up being a big deal in his own right). I had gotten an advance tape of Nevermind and been raving about it at a high enough volume that I got the assignment when the album started to rise in the charts. (I also had an advance copy of the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video–one day when we were closing an issue, I gathered up the junior editorial staff once an hour on the hour. We’d all go to the conference room, watch the video, and then return to work, convening again an hour later.) When I read the article now, there’s a lot that makes me wince, mostly stemming from my inexperience, but there’s also moments that make me happy, like Kurt Cobain writing a response to some misogynist graffiti: “You will be strung up by your balls and submerged into a vat of razor blades and sperm.” Or the story of Smith College’s radio station playing “Teen Spirit” 67 times in a week, including one spin by a reggae DJ. Or Dave Grohl sifting through garbage on the floor of the club after the show, looking for jewelry. Or Grohl meeting Martin Chambers of the Pretenders, with this aftermath:

Dave notes that since he actually liked the Pretenders, he found the situation much less awkward than the time he looked offstage in Vancouver and saw Loverboy’s drummer pumping his fist and saying, “Go, man! Go!”

Good times.

posted 23 February 2012 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

“He’s one of the funniest improvisers ever,” Seth Rogen told me, speaking of Danny McBride. “But he gets frustrated if you laugh during his take more than ten times, which I constantly do.” For my article on the saga of McBride, and his epic journey from motion-control cameraman to star of Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and Eastbound  & Down, pick up the new issue of Rolling Stone (the story’s behind a paywall on the website, I’m afraid). McBride was as cool a dude as you might hope for. “I never got pissed at Seth,” he insisted. “I was just in character, trying to fuck with his head.”

posted 22 February 2012 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

This New Year’s Day, I woke up early and went to Padadena for the 123rd Tournament of Roses Parade. Of the many marching bands, this was my favorite:

That’s a Japanese high-school band, almost all girls, from Kyoto Tachibana. Aside from their general awesomeness, they sounded different from American marching bands, which made them stand out from the lumpenband effect. Similarly cool: the Royal Swedish Navy Cadet Band.

posted 17 February 2012 in Photos. no comments yet

My history of Doritos was a story a year in the making; it required a trip to Texas to see the flagship Frito-Lay plant and some detective work to track down the snack’s then-96-year-old inventor, Arch West (who has since died, alas). But you can now read it on the Maxim website, with or without a bag of chips at your side. And if you prefer your snacks extruded, I can tell you that my visit to the Frito-Lay plant exposed me to a ridiculously delicious thing I will probably never taste again: warm Cheetos, fresh off the production line.

posted 14 February 2012 in Articles, Links. no comments yet

When I started writing up the 1988 countdown, I never imagined the artists would be dying on us as I did it. Well, although I wasn’t deeply fond of “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”–it was no “I Will Always Love You” (which, really, was in a class by itself)–I still respect Whitney Houston’s instrument, and I’m sorry she’s gone. And I’m glad that because of her, Nick Lowe has financial security.

posted 13 February 2012 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

Photographed last week at the Orange County Museum of Art (in their “State of Mind” retrospective, part of the “Pacific Standard Time” extravaganza). The work, by Paul Kos, was first presented in 1970.

posted 27 January 2012 in Photos. no comments yet

With the Oscar nominees being announced today, may I offer you the interviews I’ve done with some of them? I spoke with George Clooney (Actor in a Leading Role, The Descendants; Screenplay, The Ides of March) in 2005, around the time of Syriana. Just a few weeks back, I got Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (Film Editing, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo) to break down a Dragon Tattoo sequence. And in September, I had lunch with Melissa McCarthy (Actress in a Supporting Role, Bridesmaids); I’ve just added the complete text of the resulting article to the archives. All of them were delightful people–so I am counting on them to crush their rivals without mercy.

posted 24 January 2012 in Archives, Articles. 2 comments