Adam Baran

Click below to see the single most amazingly bad video I have ever seen, for Michael Jackson’s older sister Rebbie’s 1984 hit single.  Trust me, this is unreal - a woman that turns into a tiger, a Cobra that shoots 80’s laser beams from its eyes, a group of tuxedoed rejects from Madonna’s Material Girl video doing a strange line dance resembling the arms of the Centipede, it’s like the director saw Diana Ross’s video for Pieces of Ice, which I posted HERE some time ago - and decided, “You know what, I don’t think they went far enough into crazy town.”  The lyrics are insane too - “When the centipede is hot, you’re bound to feel the fire.”  It’s all too, too wonderful. 

REBBIE!

Sometimes I find it strange that in New York everyone seems to be reading the same books on the subway every morning.  There’s a whole cultural Barnes and Noble “Personal Favorites” thing going on on the L Train in the AM.  For a while the admittedly excellent The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Nifenegger was on top, along with Life of Pi.  But these five are the champs right now, as I see it.

5. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - Usually this one is being read by the type of girls my friend Bill calls aggresively ugly, or by Wall Street Types who live in Williamsburg.  Either way the amount of people reading this exponentially increases as you head into Brooklyn or the Financial District.

4. The Road  by Cormac McCarthy- I know, I know it’s an Oprah’s Book Club pick, but who in New York watches Oprah?  This is all about No Country for Old Men shining the light on McCarthy’s overwrought (for me at least) writing. 

3. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer - I had to hide my head in shame on the subway when I read through this bloated jerk off of a story that was probably better when it was in magazine article form.  Luckily, I had found it in the trash outside my building and so that’s where I returned it to when I finished it.

2. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - I have no idea what this is, but it looks dreadful. And every thirtysomething woman I see seems to be reading it. 

1. Love in The Time of Cholera - I have no idea why I see someone reading this book on the subway at least 3 times a week.  It happened again this morning - and as I check it looks like the book’s number 8 on the NY Times bestseller list.  I have resisted reading it for so long because of this.  I hate to do things that everyone else is doing.  Is Love in the Time of Cholera’s resurgence an example of perenial subway reader fave Malcolm Gladwell’s (The Tipping Point, Blink) idea of stickiness? 

Hooray! Will the musical theatre industries’ plundering of HBO afternoon classics for the purposes of entertaining the slowly aging generation X auds ever cease?

First there was Footloose, and Hairspray, and then Urban Cowboy, and then Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, all of which I used to watch on a semi-daily basis back in the day. Next came Xanadu, and now Cry-Baby. There’s also a Teen Witch musical (awesome), Evil Dead the Musical, and now comes….

MASK, the Musical. Based on the Eric Stoltz/Cher movie about a kid with a giant deformed face who learns a thing or two about life and love. I cannot wait to see this on broadway. I used to crack up with my friends imitating the scene where Rocky Dennis tries to explain colors to Laura Dern’s blind girl character. I’d take a rock and give it to them and say - “This is red.” My friends would shout back “I see it!” I wonder if the musical uses any of the Jens Lekman songs he recorded as Rocky Dennis, about the film.

FROM PLAYBILL:

PHOTO CALL: Movie-Turned-Musical Mask Hits Pasadena Stage
By Ernio Hernandez
20 Mar 2008

The Pasadena Playhouse stages the new musical Mask, which is inspired by the 1985 film.

Richard Maltby Jr. directs the show penned by the picture’s screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan (book), Barry Mann (music) and Cynthia Weil (lyrics).

“Mask is a musical based on the true story of an unusual looking boy and his unconventional biker mother. She shows him how to embrace life. He shows her how to choose it.”

Allen E. Read stars as Rocky with Michelle Duffy as Rocky’s mom Rusty, Greg Evigan (”My Two Dads,” Jesus Christ Superstar) as Gar and Michael Lanning as Dozer.

Here’s my top ten of HBO films that still need to be made into a musical:

1.  Mannequin

2.  Just one of the Guys

3.  Who’s Harry Crumb?

4.  Summer School

5.  That movie with Molly Ringwald where she gets pregnant.  Also Breakfast Club is a no-brainer.

6.  Gremlins 2: The New Batch

7.  Big Trouble in Little China

8.  That episode of the after-school special type program where the bulimic girl kept the jars of puke in her bedroom and they try to get her help but she dies at the end.

9.  Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10. Barbarians at the Gate

“Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showin you?” - Diana Ross, Theme from Mahogany

So I turn 27 years old today. Feels okay. It’s the beginning of being in my late twenties. Weird!

You betta call me!

I have never been so upset that I missed anything that went on in New York more than this show that happened last Thursday and I never even heard about it - and I hear about everything! I swear I’m ready to walk into the ocean over this one and never look back.

That’s right, TWEED, who have been doing fractured classic camp plays for years, usually starring drag queens like Sherry Vine, Candis Cayne or Flotilla DeBarge, apparently did a whole number on one of my, and most other gays’ favorite Woody Allen picture, Interiors!

Does anyone know if this was really a one-time only for this or maybe if it will be performed again somewhere else? I missed Tabboo!’s show too, and am bummed over that, but not nearly as bummed as I am about this. Rats!