Everything smells like smoke again. 
I love the San Fernando Valley, don’t get me wrong; but every fall the Santa Ana winds kick up and with them, a couple of arsonists. The smoke has been so bad this weekend that today in my voice acting class, everybody got the same direction - better breath control, and don’t [...]

Bulletin! Via Daily Variety:
For his next directing effort, Steven Soderbergh is plotting a 3-D live-action rock ‘n’ roll musical about Cleopatra.
He is courting Catherine Zeta-Jones to play the Egyptian queen and Hugh Jackman to play her lover, Marc Antony.
The $30 million “Cleo” will be shopped for financing and distribution within the next two weeks. Greg [...]

I just got this email from the estimable Mr. Cheese.
Dear American Citizen:
In most states, today is the deadline for voter registration. Take 3 minutes and register to vote TODAY.
Please visit loungethevote.com to register, and let’s lounge the vote.
If you’ve ALREADY registered to vote, then take those 3 minutes and visit shop.richardcheese.com and buy a [...]

“Don’t download this song / even Lars Ulrich knows it’s wrong.”
-Weird Al Yankovic, “Don’t Download This Song”
What’s with Metallica and digital music? First they drag Napster to the ground and kick the hell out of it, and now their fans are complaining that iPods make their music TOO LOUD.
“Death Magnetic” is a flashpoint in a [...]

There’s a bit of cliched movie dialog that people often quote: “That’s so crazy that it just might work.” Implicit in this quote is the admission that most likely the idea will crash and burn, because it’s f****ng crazy.
This is why I’m not all that disappointed in the Los Angeles Opera’s presentation of THE FLY, [...]

Just a reminder - I got tickets to tomorrow night’s Dorothy Chandler Pavillion performance of THE FLY, an opera based on the Jeff Goldblum horror movie from the eighties. I will see it and then review on Monday.
I’m uniquely unqualified to be writing about this too. I know little about opera and less about modern [...]

So I post my blog entry, go out to the Karaoke bar for a glass of merlot at a Rick Astley song, and when I get back, Richard Cheese has responded.
As I expected, he’s a thoughtful and well-spoken guy. I won’t quote the letter in full but I will give you this, because it’s important.
i [...]

“How can anybody dislike cheese?” - H.P. Lovecraft, 1931
How indeed. Last week I talked about my adventures (or singular lack of them) in Las Vegas at the New Media Expo. The high point of the trip for me was the Coverville 500 concert, a big revue show that was held in a ballroom at Bally’s. Coverville [...]

This past weekend saw the spectacle of the New Media Expo in the sleepy desert community of Las Vegas, Nevada. Four years ago it was the Podcasting Expo and it was held in Ontario, CA, which really is sleepy. You’d think that the racier location would take some of the smell of geek off the [...]

Remember those old movies about the music industry which portrayed it as being controlled by cold, powerful executives who tallied the rise and fall of talent with prescient, God-like powers? “Kid, you got something,” they’d say to the young, talented protagonist. “Stick with me, and we’re gonna go all the way to the top.” And, [...]