The Pop Culture Addict’s Blog

…cuz I have a damn fine cup of coffee to go with it – none other than David Lynch Signature Cup brand coffee. He’s been giving out samples here and there at screenings of Inland Empire. I have enough to finish off a couple of pies with it.

So I put in the time to see David Lynch speak at Barnes and Noble on 1/11/07 at Upstairs at the Square. You can listen to the entire interview here: David Lynch and Au Revoir Simone interviewed by Katherine Lanpher. I got there at 5:30pm for a 7pm start and barely got a seat. I wasn’t even able to sit with my fellow PCA who had arrived before me. They were like, please sit where we ask you to sit, but it was okay because I got a seat on the aisle in the back where I had plenty of room. And I appreciated the organization of the event considering it was SRO.

I had never heard of Au Revoir Simone but they were a perfect match for David Lynch. They definitely had a Julee Cruise/Angelo Badalamenti vibe although they were straight outta Williamsburg. They looked like they hung with Sofia Coppola’s crowd. You can check them out at MySpace or aurevoirsimone.com.

David Lynch was amusing and talkative. He really conveyed his love and support of the arts. He went to art school first before becoming a director. He told a story of how his dad tried to convince him to stop working on Eraserhead because it didn’t seem like it was going anywhere. David Lynch was smitten with the music of Au Revoir Simone which was cute. When asked to give them advice by the host, he said they shouldn’t change a thing and to always stay friends and not let others tell them what to do. The book itself is very slim and briefly written. But I guess he’s been doing yoga for years and believes in meditation as a means to ideas. Anyway, you can also listen to a podcast with him on Amazon Wire. Go to amazon.com and search for it. Oh, I just remembered what I was thinking about: it was interesting to hear him speak of his work because he doesn’t believe in dvd commentary and he doesn’t believe in chapters on dvd’s either because it artifically breaks up the work. He certainly is unique.

I wanted to say how pleasantly surprised I was while flipping through the latest issue of Nylon, which I guess is a fashion magazine. A friend gifted me with it and I’ve been reading it for a year but never quite pinpointed its genre. Anyway, I had been carrying it around with me to read through when I had a moment and I was just passing time, not really able to concentrate on much more than the photographs when I came across an interview with Sondre Lerche. So cute. The article consisted of high praise for his upcoming album Phantom Punch, citing the title was inspired by the Sonny Liston- Muhammed Ali match when Liston seemed to fall and be knocked out before connecting with Ali’s punch.

A fellow PCA clipped an interview with Jason Mraz from the 10/06 issue of the musician’s union mag. It was cool to read about him in the context of other professional musicians talking about writing, performing and touring. I never thought of him as a union guy but I guess that’s how it goes in the business. I totally agree with a sentiment of his about trying new things because if you keep at it, years from now, you’ll probably be decent at it and be able to have a lot of fun with it. He was specifically talking about how he didn’t learn to play guitar until he was 18. I recall that he wrote in his blog that he was approaching surfing the same way. He’s starting at 29 but when he’s older, he’ll be better at it and be able to have a good time with it.

Other random pop culture thoughts…did I already mention my newfound guilty pleasure in the CW’s Beauty and the Geek? I’m just waiting to see what happens between Jennylee and Nate! And I guess this is the last season of Lost. I think that will be fine. I’m a fan but I have faith the writers will wrap things up in a memorable way. I’m sure I mentioned I’m also okay with the end of The OC although I love the Ryan/Taylor romance. Oh, I watched the first ep of Dancelife on MTV, Jennifer Lopez’s reality show. I’m hooked. They are amazing dancers. I’m totally riveted by their movements. Those four hours of 24 did not disappoint although I can’t believe this show is on network tv during primetime. Parents, turn on your blockers. But I’m okay with cable channels like HBO being more permissive. Rome rocked. How’d you like when Servilia went to pay her condolences to Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia and she spit in her face? And Polly Walker plays Atia’s conniving self so well. I’m constantly horrified and entertained by her actions and words. I guess survival was the name of the game.

Music-wise, I’m a Gwen Stefani fan and like her trying new things. I think the song she wrote with Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane, Early Winter, sounds like a Keane song with Gwen Stefani on the vocals. I like it but I’m distracted by the Keane-ness of it. Maybe if I didn’t know before I heard it, I could just appreciate the song. It’s a silly reaction because many songs are sung by artists other than the songwriters. I think I’m just too into Keane right now to have perspective. I’m totally into Christina Aguilera’s Ain’t No Other Man. It’s a fantastic song – the arrangement, the performance. Love it. Even though people are really digging Justin Timberlake right now, I’m still on the periphery of jumping on board. Maybe it’s the overkill of it all. On the other hand, even though she’s been called a copycat of many, including Gwen Stefani, I’m digging Fergie. She has good producers who give her good beats and her lyrics make me laugh. She’s so over the top. No, I don’t necessarily want 10 year old girls emulating her but as someone old enough to know better, I like her music.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention a surprisingly good play experience I had recently. I know live theater is the most difficulty thing to pull off. But this play, Frank’s Home, was very satisfying in all aspects – the writing, the acting, the chemistry, the sets. Peter Weller played Frank Lloyd Wright in his later years. It was even more interesting since I had taken an extensive tour of one of his houses during the past year so the info about him and the impact of seeing his work was still relatively fresh for me. He had a lot of personal issues and was notoriously unlikeable. There’s that age-old question, do you have to like and respect the artist in order to like and respect the art? You can think about this while I go eat lunch!

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I recently had a marathon viewing of Rome Season 1 on HBO On Demand. So addictive with incredible sets, great writing, involved action sequences with a good mix of history and trashiness to keep it all moving forward. Again, not for impressionable youth or the faint of heart. But war is gorey and gritty and it was especially so back then. Also, they had such hard lives except the nobles. I like how the nobles lounge around even when entertaining company. There was one scene that really made me laugh. Mark Antony is taking a nap in the middle of the day while his servant sits next to him doing his work for him.

I can’t wait for Season 2 to start on January 14th. Unfortunately, we will only get 10 more episodes of this show as HBO has deemed it too expensive to produce. Those sets of Rome were built from scratch in Rome.

A joint production between HBO and the BBC, ‘Rome’ was created by John Milius, William Macdonald and Bruno Heller. The series is shot throughout Italy and boasts the largest standing film set in the world, comprising five acres of backlot and six soundstages at the world-famous Cinecittà Studios. (http://www.hbo.com/rome/about/)

Apparently David Milch of Deadwood fame first talked to HBO about a series he wanted to do set in the Roman Empire. But HBO was already in the middle of producing ROME. So David Milch said, I have another idea about the Wild West. Deadwood is another show I keep meaning to watch but haven’t quite organized myself to do yet.

My latest musical indulgence, aside from listening to a lot of John Mayer, including his EP The Village Sessions only available at independent music stores such as Newbury Comics, and awaiting Sondre Lerche’s Phantom Punch due in the US on February 6th, is going through Andy Partridge’s official bootlegs packaged as Fuzzy Warbles. I’ve also recently discovered an amazing series of interviews with Andy Partridge at MySpace XTCFans. And it is probably redundant for me to mention I am also enjoying Jason Mraz’s most recent live album, Selections For Friends. In particular, I like the EP which is the opening set comprised of I don’t know how many songs all in a row without a break lasting about 34 minutes. I saw this tour and was impressed that I barely knew any of the songs. I liked that. It’s nice to be surprised by a favorite musician.

EDIT: Actually, you can get the John Mayer EP at Amazon now.

And I wanted to add, in light of the news that REM will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, here’s my plug for Life’s Rich Pageant which I’ve been listening to almost daily. It is the first REM album I ever heard and I must say it is much better than I remembered it to be. Also, I let me give a respectful nod to James Brown who always has a place on my iPod. Hit me!

I’m looking forward to the return of Psych on USA on Friday, January 19th. It is a funny show. I like the idea of being able to train your eyes and mind to be so aware and astute. I’m equally fascinated by the idea of how London taxi drivers learn the knowledge. I read that their brains are actually bigger in the area where memory is stored. Isn’t that amazing? Wouldn’t it be great if US cab drivers also had to undergo the same training? I’m sure you’ve had the experience I’ve had where you are totally telling the cab driver where to go because they have only the vague-est, if that, idea of how to get to your destination.

EDIT: I found a couple of articles talking about a study involving a group of London taxi drivers. Let me find a good quote. The following is from the BBC News, Tuesday, 14 March, 2000:

Cab drivers’ grey matter enlarges and adapts to help them store a detailed mental map of the city, according to research.

Taxi drivers given brain scans by scientists at University College London had a larger hippocampus compared with other people. This is a part of the brain associated with navigation in birds and animals.

The scientists also found part of the hippocampus grew larger as the taxi drivers spent more time in the job. “There seems to be a definite relationship between the navigating they do as a taxi driver and the brain changes,” said Dr Eleanor Maguire, who led the research team.

She said: “The hippocampus has changed its structure to accommodate their huge amount of navigating experience.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/677048.stm

Here’s another one from The Guardian, March 14, 2000:

They have The Knowledge by name, and the knowledge by nature. London taxi drivers – that rare breed who can scoot down an obscure sideroad, perform a three-point turn on a postage stamp and recite the complete works of Richard Littlejohn all at the same time -are today revealed by scientists to have bigger brains.

London researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious US journal, that they scanned the brains of 16 right-handed London cabbies and found that in all cases, the size of a region of the brain called the hippocampus was millimetres larger than in a comparable group of 50 ordinary right-handed men who did not drive taxis.

The hippocampus is closely associated with spatial memory – where the brain keeps its maps. London taxi drivers, famous for knowing routes between thousands of places in the city, spend two years assembling a detailed map which they file away in the memory.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,232196,00.html

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