MAC vs HAYES : The Great Oscar Death Applause Race

One of the oddest parts of every Academy Awards broadcast each year is the Death Montage. I understand the want to praise and remember the great actors of Hollywood past who have passed on, but I've never understood why they haven't adopted the "Hold your applause until the end" policy that is so common in life.

Think of the poor bastard who appeared onscreen before Heath Ledger at this year's award show. Probably someone who appeared in a few flicks and maybe you recognized him or her and there was probably a light smattering of applause to be followed a few seconds later by the deafening standing ovation that greeted Ledger. It's always struck me as a little tacky. Have the music swell a bit more, give the more popular ones a little more screen time as they had in life, but in death can't we all say we're even now?

Well whenever a celeb that was in the film field dies, I try and think where they'll place on the applause meter at the Oscars and realized with Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes passing a day apart that those two are a real tough call!

My first thought is Mac will get the big hoorah because not only is he more current (and being in the public's recent mind is a biggie for the applause break - save for those few of Iconic status) but he's current in huge blockbuster films co-starring with Hollywood Elite. Just finally saw Transformers tonight and there he is with Shia (who is being groomed as this generations mix of Tom Cruise/Harrison Ford) and we can't forget his buddies George Clooney, Brad Pitt and the rest of the Ocean's 11, 12 and 13 gang. Just on those four movies alone Bernie has to have box office receipts totalling close to a billion dollars worldwide. Money gets applause too.

So how does Isaac Hayes even have a chance? One word - OSCAR! Hayes won one. 1972 Best Music, Original Song "Theme From Shaft". You pop Hayes' photo on the screen and play that funk that everyone knows and that will be the loudest applause break this year. Pop up a shot of him as Chef from South Park while the "and we can dig it" line comes on and it could be the biggest clapfest ever at the Oscars. Personally I'd give it to Hayes for The Duke Of New York in John Carpenter's Escape From New York. The Duke was so badass he made a nine fingered President Donald Pleasence declare the truth we all know when looking back on his career. He was the Duke and he was " 'A' Number One!"

I'll miss them both, but my palms will pump a little harder for the man who gave Shaft his signature sounds.

Metal Masters - PNC Holmdel NJ 8/9/08

So Saturday was the long awaited Metal Masters show in Holmdel NJ at the PNC Bank Arts Center. It was part two of my buddy Cal's bachelor party. Seven of us packed into a van and traveled on down.

Got there about 5pm, brought out the lawn chairs and the coolers. PERFECT summer concert weather for this one. 70's and we had a nice shady tree to chill under. We sprang the extra bucks for premier parking so we wouldn't have to hike a mile or two uphill to the venue. Around our second beer each at 5:30 on the dot we heard Testament hit the stage.

I definitely think they're the odd man out on this tour. Granted they've been around over 20 years at this point, but I don't give them the legendary status of the other three bands on the bill...and by the looks of the parking lot, most others didn't either. I like them...but with beers costing $7-$9 a pop inside, we weren't about to let the cold ones we had go to waste.

Testament did about 35 minutes and it was about 6:30 when we decided to head in and just as we got to the gates we heard the Mighty Motorhead hit the stage. The classic Motorhead T-Shirt being sold at the show has a motto on the back which sums up the band "Everything Lounder Than Everything Else". Hell yeah kids. Without a doubt Motorhead are raking in the most money on T-Shirt sales on this tour (at least at this stop)...The shirts were all $35 bucks a piece and for some reason they don't sell a Metal Masters shirt with all the bands. Although the fellows in the parking lot after the show do and sold plenty of them for $10 bucks and even a little cheaper if you waited until driving out.

Lemmy and the boys never disappoint, about a 12 or 13 song set which ended strong with classics like Killed By Death, Ace of Spade and a nice long Overkill to wrap things up!

There was a nice size crowd at the show...we did the lawn thing and while it in the center it was packed back to the last blade of grass, on the sides you could get a nice little patch of grass all to yourself (and nice and close to the bathrooms and beer gardens).

Pretty quick set changes between bands - probably 25 minutes and the sky just getting dark when Heaven and Hell (aka Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio) hit the stage. They did a bit over with a set pretty close to what they played when I saw them at Radio City Music Hall last year, one or two new tracks added...a bummer was they didn't come out and encore with Neon Knights which seems to be happening at some of these shows...it's kind of one of their "hits" outside of say Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell so a suprise they don't make sure to play it (especially when they do an extra long version of Heaven and Hell AND Vinnie Appice gets a drum solo?!?!). When you only have a 70 minute set and you have tons of classic tunes you could play, they should be wasting time on a drum solo (although, this being a very beer friendly crowd, the drum solo did go over amazingly well).

Oh...almost forgot...as a little between band fun after Motorhead and before H&H, there was a group sitting about 10 feet in front of us. Well one of them was out of his head drunk and after Motorhead, gets up to go to the john and faceplants HARD. Everyone of course thinks this is funny, but there was a group about 30 feet behind us where one guy was just laughing and pointing. Well we're looking at this dude struggling to get up and he is PISSED so I tell my buddies to watch this because he has fight in his eyes.

He gets up and stomps up the lawn directly towards the guy, but at the last second just turns and goes towards the john.

We thought, oh well, the old psychout move...well five minutes later we hear a little commotion and turn around there's drunk guy...now light on his feet due to the empty bladder taking a swing at laughing boy. He connects and they roll down the hill. A friend jumps in and pulls one of them off and hits the other and THEY going rolling down the hill....and so on and so on. And there's NO SECURITY (there was maybe 4 security guards working the whole lawn) So there was a good 5 or 6 minutes of this tag team type fighting. It's probably on youtube as I saw some people phone filming it. After the first two minutes I'm not even sure if the initial drunk asshole was involved. But oh boy was it fun to watch... Who doesn't love a good fight involving out of shape drunk shirtless sunburned 80's metal dudes...I know I do!

But other than that, it was a cool lovefest. Everyone complimenting everyone else on the obscure cool vintage shirt that abounded (I actually saw a dude sporting a T.T. Quick shirt! Although a favorite was a guy with "Disco STILL Sucks" - Me...I was rockin my new "Motel Hell" shirt from the early 80's horror classic)

Back to the music. Priest hit the stage probably about 9:30 one a track of their new album, but for those there to hear the classics, they need not worry as it was almost all classics after that! Eat Me Live, Rock Hard Ride Free, Dissident Agressor plus of course the hits like You Got Another Thing Comin' and Breakin The Law (although suprisingly no Living After Midnight). Metal Gods, an Amazing Painkiller (it boggles the mind that Halford can sing that intense song as good as ever and the guy must be 60 right?!)

I've seen the priest a good number of times and they were fantastic once again. I'm sure they'll headline their own tour in the Fall after this (and hopefully come back to the local civic center again) and I will be there. I still hope for the day when they throw Freewheel Burning back in the set, but I have to say, they dug out a bunch of nice golden oldies they hadn't played in a while for this tour, so my hopes are up.

Next show - Probably two weeks from now...same venue...Crue Fest

Rambo and his 80's metal hair

Rambo is a miserable 60 year old living in Thailand.

Now I always dug John Rambo, and sure he was a loner...but his first line in the film, about 10 minutes in is:

"Fuck You"

His second line, about five minutes later, is:

"Fuck The World!"

Goddamn Johnny, did you ever hear if life gives you lemons make lemonade?

The thing is there's an obvious solution. EVERY Other male in the film, which takes place mainly in the steamy jungles of Burma, has a nice closed cropped haircut. Sure they're sweaty and dirty and probably stink to high heaven like JR, but they're not wearing a thick sopping mop on their heads.

A buzzcut will do wonders for your attitude in 1oo degree heat and 100% humidity.

How's the movie, c'mon, you already know if you want to see it, it's Rambo. In this one he joins up with a group of mercenaries to rescue some holy roller group from Colorado from an army of 100 savages. Much more believable than when he took on the entire Russian Army in the last film, although the violence in this one looks video game silly. Every exploding head or limb or full body (and there are plenty of them) looks like a giant water balloon filled with blood getting popped.

Go see it...it's a good one to tide you over until (I have my fingers crossed) Over The Top 2 comes out.

After the movie I went and got my haircut. That was my weekend.

Fuck The World!

I can't leave Manhattan without my 8-track

So I went to see Cloverfield and I dug it with two exceptions.

About half way through the film when I decided I did indeed dig it, I wondered how many critics would describe it as "Blair Witch Project on Acid." Well I just did a quick google and there were well over 600 hits when you search on Cloverfield Blair Witch & Acid. Granted those are not all reviews, but there's easily dozens...why do things like this annoy me so?

As for problems with the movie, I won't go into the plot one bit. Sure there's some plot problems and things that just wouldn't happen, but what bugged me throughout the whole film was a technological glitch.

As you've seen in the commercial, much like Blair Witch Project, it's supposed to be a straight unedited showing of found footage that a character in the movie shot. Before showing this footage a top secret government title screen states the film about to be shown was found on an SD Memory Card. Great. That makes plenty of sense....so what's the problem?

About 20 minutes into the movie, one of the main characters, Rob, sees his friend Hud filming everything. Rob realizes Hud is using Rob's video camera to film and asks Hud if he removed "the tape" that was in there or if he's filming over it. Hud doesn't know. See "the tape" that was in the camera showed a day Rob taped a month earlier that was one of the best days of his life. Throughout the movie you see bits and pieces of this day from a month earlier whenever the characters stop the camera for a while. They evidently leave a little space before they hit record again so you'll see the madness in New York, then 20 seconds of Rob a month earlier being happy. If a video camera that used video tape was being used, this would be fine and expected. But it's not...it's an SD Card!

Now I have a fancy new camera that uses one of these memory cards (Do they even make cameras anymore that take video tape?). When I start recording a month after the last thing I recorded it has this nifty way of NOT recording over my old stuff. It creates a new file to record the new segment. If the card is full it will ask me if I want to delete something, not just start recording partially over the file.

Yes I realize I sound like I'm nitpicking, but once I noticed this it bugged me every time I had to watch another 30 seconds of Rob's happy day from a month earlier! It also bugged me because the happy day footage adds NOTHING to the film and almost seems like it's in there as 15 minutes of filler to bring the movie up to a reasonable length.

But again, don't get me wrong. I'd recommend this film. It will be as much fun as listening to 90 minutes of your favorite tape on your Sony Walkman cassette player!