Tuesday, August 30, 2005

New Orleans

Don't have anything profound to say here, except that the Red Cross is accepting donations for hurricane relief now...

Weekend Round-Up

Spent Sunday afternoon co-hosting the monthly video meeting of the Doctor Who New York group with Jen, thereby fulfilling my geek requirements for the month. Had a lovely time drinking ginger beer and eating entirely too many brownies with everyone, watching two episodes of the new series as well as two episodes of everyone's favorite super-obscure Britcom, Spaced (brilliant shows, both of them!). Certainly it was the social event of the season (as noted on no less a web presence than the message board of Outpost Gallifrey itself) with the added benefit of finally forcing me to clean the apartment for the first time in...well, entirely too long at any rate.

Not only that, but I now have enough leftover brownies, cookies, beer, tortilla chips and salsa to last well into 2006. As God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again!

But speaking of the DWNY group, my friend Jeff Cioletti and I have been "volunteered" to edit our first foray into the world of the fanzine, my first editing work since the heady days co-editing the alternative newspaper The Pundit in Kirksville, Missouri back in the early Nineties. So, all you prospective writers out there in Whoville who have been sitting on that unpublished article about the symbolic use of color in the John Nathan-Turner era or a newly-finished short story in which the Fourth and Seventh Doctors team up to fight the Chumblies on Platform One, now's your chance! Send any inquiries or submissions to me at my special DWNY e-mail address: autobeatnik@dwny.org. Deadline is October 1.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Good Grief! I get the Sci-Fi Channel!

It's been almost literally months since I've sat down to watch TV at home: too many unwatched DVDs on my shelf and too little free time. I still get cable because reception is so bad in my apartment (and every now and then I'll want to watch something - like PBS' recent Bob Newhart biography), but I only get the most basic package, giving me the broadcast channels, the public access channels, NY1, one of the C-Spans and a bunch of those weird channels that don't actually seem to show anything except photos of the Capital or block text that scrolls across the bottom of the screen.

So, it was with no small surprise that I flipped on the TV this weekend to find the Sci-Fi Channel suddenly in my meager line-up. Hooray! No longer will I be Mansquito deprived! Reruns of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the afternoon? There for the watching! When my co-workers say, "Did you see that episode of Stargate CSI last night?" I can say: "Why, yes I did!" (Well, I could if I actually watched Stargate: SVU. Or if my co-workers watched it. I mean, someone must be watching it, right? They do show it an awful lot...)

But all snarkiness aside (and considering some of it's programming choices, Sci-Fi deserves all the snarkiness it gets), I should point out that they have been showing the new Battlestar Galactica and reruns of Firefly, both of which I've been watching regularly thanks to Jen's much more impressive cable package. (She gets The Cartoon Network, too!) And they're both extremely entertaining, so I've got to give the network at least a little begrudging respect - but only a little (they are the ones who gave us Chupacabra, after all!)

Thursday, August 18, 2005

That Rabbit's Dynamite!

I dreamed last night that I was attacked by the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Fortunately, it didn't hurt me - it just leapt at me and bounced off a couple times.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Terry Gilliam's Flying Circus

And the good times have been rolling this week, starting with the monthly Doctor Who New York party on Monday, followed by Big Lou's polka extravaganza later that evening (playing to a larger audience than I had expexcted - polka lives in NYC!), and continuing with a live appearance by my filmmaking idol, Terry Gilliam, who screened his newest film The Brothers Grimm at the Learning Annex last night.

The film itself was more of a mid-range Gilliam film, not quite reaching the lofty heights of Brazil or The Fisher King but better than Jabberwocky or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The opening sequences are by far the weakest aspect of the film; they rush past in a cascade of fantistic imagery, looking great but not really resonating because the characters haven't been set up properly. It isn't until the movie is well underway, slowing down enough to really let us get under the skin of the Brothers Grimm, that it really begins to get good.

And good it remains, resulting in an entertaining piece of Hollywood fantasy; more intelligent than most, but more conventional than I might have hoped. (Now Tideland, Gilliam's next movie coming out in a couple months...that looks like it could be fantastic...)

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Big Lou the Accordion Princess

I know that for a blog called "Polka Trip", there's very little polka action going on within these pages. That's not surprising because sadly there's very little polka music to be found in New York City. (The closest is the Bayway in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a great place to be sure, but hard to get to for someone without a car).

Ah, but every once in a while we are graced by a true Polka Princess - Big Lou the Accordion Princess! She'll be playing at the Rodeo Bar next Monday, August 9, dishing out her wonderful blend of good spirits and bouncy music to the poor, deprived citizens of New York.

Never seen Big Lou myself, but her story is an inspiring one (as related in the San Francisco Chronicle article here), and her CDs are a ton of fun. And, come on -- you gotta love anyone who covers the Shmenge Brothers' "Cabbage Rolls and Coffee"!