CD Review: That's Why God Made the Radio

Every professional review I've read so far has started the same way: "I really didn't expect to like this album, but..."

I must admit that despite being a big Brian Wilson fan, I felt the same way. When I heard the Beach Boys play "Do It Again," recently to promote this album I thought, "We don't need another album of the Beach Boys covering the Beach Boys."

Their live performances on talk shows also scared me a bit.

But it's all new material, they sound amazing and it's possibly the best Beach Boys album since...dare I say it..."Pet Sounds?"

I'll have to listen to it a few more times, but it's all there, the '50s harmonies, the songs of surf and sand from the early albums, the introspection from the late 60s albums. And yet is all sounds new. Brian's in top form.

This is one of those albums that are best enjoyed while bicycling through the park, or turning down the lights and putting on the head phones.

Even the critics who didn't like the CD still liked the last three songs, but the standout for me is "Strange World," a hook-laden song ready for the radio. And ironically, sounds least like a Beach Boys song. It's a cross between "Life in a Northern Town," and Depeche Mode.

The Boys did something no one expected, once again provide a soundtrack for summer.

Gay Green Lantern first reaction

I haven't read the book yet so I probably shouldn't say anything...and I've been telling anyone who'd listen that the JSA has to leave the past behind in favor of a new start...but...

Making GL gay just seems like an act of trendiness rather than an act of good writing.

Think about 1986. The Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot. Dr. Light, Dr. Mid-Nite and Wildcat were each replaced with minority women (Asian, black, Hispanic respectively). Remember? Of course not. It seemed like a good idea for about an hour, then all three characters disappeared and were forgotten within months. No further thought was put into it than, "Hey, I have an idea, let's replace B-listers with minority women." Then the thinking stopped.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

It is hilarious reading comments from people who say putting a gay character in a comic book will turn children gay. I've been reading comics for 40 years and I still can't fly!

TPB Review: Supreme

I complain a lot that comic books today lack a sense of wonder, and worse, fun! Alan Moore thought the same thing when he was writing Supreme for Image. Supreme was Moore's homage to the Weisenger-era Superman. After starting the trend of gritty, realistic comics in the '80s, he was in the '90s almost apologizing. Making them fun again.

Each issue started with a modern-day story, then switched to a thematically linked flashback drawn in the style of the silver age, and for an added touch, printed on intentionally yellowed paper. How cool is that? For a half hour you were ten again reading from a big stack of silver-age comics. Then the modern story would wrap things up.

I loved they got 1960s Supergirl artist Jim Mooney to do the flashback Suprema story. I was in comic nerd heaven. If only they could have gotten Curt Swan to do an issue.

The books are available in trade paperback. Go! Pick them up!

The funniest show you're not watching

I didn't intend for this blog to review children's entertainment, but having two monkeys, that's what I see mostly.

With that in mind, if you're not DVRing Phineas and Ferb, start! It's kind of a buried treasure on the Disney Channel. Your kids already watch this, but you should give it a try.

It's like the Simpsons in that you can watch it with your kids and you'll both be entertained for different reasons. Also like the Simpsons, its long runs allow running jokes and hilarious self-referencing. The more you watch, the funnier it gets.

Phineas and Ferb are two little boys who wile away the summer days completing colossal backyard projects. Making a beach (complete with ocean and calypso band), a ski lodge with slopes (with the aid of an icee maker), water parks, time machines, etc. Everything manages to self-destruct or get disassembled before mom comes home. Building the project usually involves a musical montage. Once I saw the Bollywood musical parody I was hooked.

It's all very silly and the humor is very subtle. While riding a roller coaster climbing skyscraper heights, Phineas tells his passengers, "In the event of an emergency, your seat cushion can be used as a tombstone."

There's a tattle-tail sister, a mad scientist and a pet platypus who is secretly a spy, but I don't want to confuse you. Check it out.

When Great Directors Make Awful Movies

Here's the entirety of "Dr. T and the Women:"

Overprimped women in the waiting room of their gynecologist stomp their high-heels saying, "But I just have to see Dr. T now!"

Cut to Richard Gere in his office stressfully rubbing his temples.

That's the whole freaking movie.

Actually there is a little bit about his wife having adult onset Manic Pixie Dream Girl disease which is OK when you're 18, but tragic when you're 50.

And Helen Hunt is there. Of course she is. She spent the 1990s playing the girlfriend of men twice her age. Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen(!), Mel Gibson. If Sean Connery made one more movie, I'm certain she would have been the leading lady.

And in the end, Richard Gere's car gets sucked into a tornado and drops him off at an Indian reservation where he delivers a baby. See! He's going back to his roots! It's deep!

The Most Depressing Film of All Time

In Pennies From Heaven, Steve Martin plays a failing sheet music salesman in the Depression who squanders a loan from I think his wife's family, leaves the wife for a grade school teacher, gets the teacher pregnant and then leaves her. She gets fired and winds up being a prostitute and Martin ultimately gets falsely convicted and hung for the murder of a blind girl.

Throughout this, the cast breaks out into 1930s-era gay song and dance numbers.

Get it? It's contrast! Every character is miserable, but when they fantasize, they're happy! Catnip for film critics.

Can you imagine the executive meeting for this movie? At some point, someone asked, "Sounds good, but who's going to play the heartless bastard?" And then someone else had to say, "I know, let's get the funniest man in America!"

Meanwhile the marketing executive was gaping in horror. There would be no way he could sell this film, and when it flopped, he'd get canned.

In one painful scene, Steve Martin's wife is trying to get him to stay. "I'm wearing lipstick!" she offers. Martin says "So what."

"On my nipples!" She then takes off her top, she has lipstick on her nipples and Steve Martin gets aroused...because, obviously this is his fetish, and no decent man would have this fetish...and he had obviously asked her to  do this, ..and ..and..the audience just squirms deeper into their seats.

I actually took a date to this movie. Afterward we decided it was best to break up because seeing each other again would just bring back painful memories of this film.

Actresses who deserved better

Spending my formative years watching entirely too much TV from the 1960s, I've been fascinated with that small pool of actresses who got that thankless job of being the hero's great love interest for one episode before getting killed by either rustlers, klingons, or an incurable disease...then...never being mentioned again!

Susan Oliver, Mariette Hartley, Diane Baker, France Nguyen. All beautiful, talented actresses, most with Broadway credentials, and all in this rotation to be Jim West's or Jim Kirk's or Little Joe's girlfriend. This pool of talent was so small, some of these actresses would show up two or three times in the same series playing different characters each time.

The tragedy is, they were always the girlfriend, when most could have been the lead in her own show. With the exception of Honey West, I don't think there were any shows with a female lead.  A woman as the lead doctor/lawyer/police detective/spaceship captain wouldn't happen until the 70s. (the 90s in the case of spaceship captain).

Anyway, this is a good site to go to for pictures of and comments on these actresses of the 60s and 70s. Search for "Yum"