TheModernOct12V1N12

Our 1st Anniversary Issue (you got that right!)

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October 2012 • Vol. 1, No. 12

www.themodern.us

your life in retro Jenna DewanTatum Steps Up

Say , g n i h t Any

Jeff Dye We’re listening The Year in

Dermot

Tony Lo Bianco Channels La Guardia Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend The Other Genius Behind Pee Wee’s Playhouse Tommy MacDonald Hits The Nail on The Head Smash Mouth: Return of the All Stars Famke Janssen’s

Ladies’ Hats • The Blob • The Munsters

Foreign Affair

c ntents T h e M o d e r n — Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o In this issue:

Headliner

Dermot Mulroney

This Hollywood survivor tells us about survival in Southeast Asia while making his newest flick, Trade of Innocents.

Here and Now

Jenna Dewan-Tatum Mrs. Channing Tatum creates her own dazzling spotlight.

This Old Modern House

Tommy MacDonald

On OffBroadway

The star of PBS’ Rough Cut says that creating furniture from scratch is can-do.

Tony Lo Bianco

Reconnecting

The acclaimed actor returns to portray Fiorello La Guardia in Off-Broadway’s The Little Flower.

Wayne White’s Playhouse

Girlie Action

Famke Janssen The Holland native achieves her own American Dream with Bringing Up Bobby.

The brilliant creative mind behind Pee Wee’s Playhouse and other cultural landmarks continues to pop our eyes.

Pod People

Alison Rosen Adam Carolla’s awesome sidekick gets her own podcast — and it’s an instant hit.

Picker/Grinner/Lover/Sinner

Smash Mouth: The All-Stars Return: Go play Smash Mouth’s new album.

Independents

Michael Garbe: The actor (and doctoral candidate) appears in a powerful film that wins the top prize at five film festivals.

So Modern, It’s Scary

Blob Fest: A splotch? A blotch? When in Phoenixville, PA, be careful where you step.

Halloween Costumes

These outfits were shoddily made, but they had soul.

Funny Papers

Jeff Dye: With a hosting stint on MTV’s Money From Strangers and a growing following, Jeff Dye’s career goes boom!

The Great Forgotten

Boom Box Songs: These classic gems rock it to the boogity beat.

The Feminine Mystique

When Will Ladies Hats Come Back?: Longing for this amazing long-gone style.

Boardwalk Empire

My Lost City, Part 2: More thoughts on the decline of Atlantic City – before its rise like a phoenix.

Heartbreak Hotel

The Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital: Now one of New Yorks favorite “haunts.”

Dig This DVD

Internalize This

Retro Merch

Before They Were Stars

Parting Shot: Jackie Gleason pimps Nixon in ’68. Little did he know.

letter from the editor

Der Kommissar’s In Town I attended college during the Eighties, and it was really fun. It was fun for all the regular reasons, but a unique part of that fun was Eighties music.

The overnight pop morph from the mopey previous decade was palpable; you could sense the evolution in your ears, thanks to the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1980, CDs in 1982.

The technological change came at warp speed — and we’re still riding it today.

The fresh musical spirit — New Wave, the return of rockabilly, disco graduating into the less-reviled “dance music,” the dawn of rap and hip-hop — radiated energy, creativity. It was alive.

Most of it was corporate, for sure. The record companies were trying to make money again. They finally got it right after years of slumping sales. Of course, we know now that they got it right for the very last time.

Eighties music was sleeker, more “technical,” less raw. Some dismissed it as mindless (as some always do), but they were wrong. It was inspired.

The biggest contribution to the sea change, of course, was MTV. Debuting in 1981, it remained a fresh, new novelty for several years afterward. In fact, friends would come to our off-campus apartment (we had cable!) just to be able to marvel at the experience of round-the-clock music videos. Watching those films convinced us that we were not just experiencing art, but a new art form. We laugh like hell at these same videos today, but at the time, they felt like serious artistic horsepower.

MTV Veejays — their faces as new as the stars they reported on — kept us informed of the latest happenings, and we devoured the news of new albums and comings and goings as if it really mattered. And it did.

It was new, modern. The annual MTV Awards showed us our pop stars as freewheeling, rambunctious and naughty, acting unpredictable on cue; we were living in a fun, chaotic Mad Max future. Anything went.

Cyndi Lauper visited Johnny Carson. Then Boy George. It was disorientation of the highest order. One music critic predicted that Lauper would have longer staying power than Madonna, and we figured he knew what he was talking about because he was in print. Billy Idol, with his snarl and shock of white hair, looked like he could kill you if he had the chance. Members of A Flock of Seagulls appeared as if they touched down from another planet. Peter Gabriel’s mind for making videos seemed like it was touched by the hand of God. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album was released at the end of 1982, and it completely owned 1983.

Everyone loved it, even parents and grandparents. Even frat boys. It boomed from boomboxes and shook the walls at frat parties.

Aside from Jackson, most of these acts seemed like they were here to stay, but they turned out to be one-hit wonders. At this point, everything was starting to move too fast, but little did we know how fast things would move in another decade or two.

Like most fun, Eighties fun was over more sooner than later. It was replaced by the cynicism and grunge of the Nineties, which was actually fun in its own Debbie Downer way. Still, fun is fun, and even today, where everything is scattered in chaos and the record industry is dead, you have to take fun where you can find it. And we do.

Ron Sklar Editor

m dern

Contributing Writers: Desiree Dymond • Jay S. Jacobs Barry Levy • Jack Rotoli • Jacqueline Kravitz Strauss Art Wilson

Editor • Ron Sklar Art Director • Jennifer Barlow Copy Editors • Patty Wall, Jay S. Jacobs

Director of Photography and Video Harley Reinhardt • Harleyhallphotography.com

the

Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o .

C o n t a c t

u s :

i n f o @ t h e m o d e r n . u s

These items aren’t for everyone — only the sexy people.

You are as impulsive as you are sexy — and you know it.

Say Anything John Cusack joint – cheap!

Rough Cut – Woodworking with Tommy Mac How To – cheap!

The Munsters – The Complete First Season

My Best Friend’s Wedding

DVD – cheap!

Special Edition DVD – cheap!

All Star – Smash Mouth Hit song – cheap!

In Your Eyes Peter Gabriel joint – cheap!

headliners

Dermot Mulroney This Hollywood survivor tells us about survival in Southeast Asia while making his newest flick, Trade of Innocents.

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Take a look at Dermot Mulroney’s imdb. Holy crap, it goes on for miles. It may not have occurred to you until this very moment, but this cat has worked steadily in the movies since Reagan was President. Go ahead, name somebody famous — yep, he’s worked with them: Julia Roberts. Paul Newman. Leonardo DiCaprio. Jane Fonda. Steve Buscemi. Even Emilio Estevez.

For three decades, he has brought his own gravelly gravity to film, often cast as the Cracker Jack prize in a rom-com, or a determined suburban dad (in Gracie), or a no-account like Dirty Steve in Young Guns, but he is never the same character twice. Ever.

Granted, he’s had every opportunity to phone it in and coast on his steady in-demandness, but he doesn’t play that game.

“I try to be real good every time I take on a role,” he tells me. “That’s what’s half the fun.”

Even when that fun is no fun at all, like the subject matter of his latest project, Trade of Innocents. In it, he

plays a human trafficking investigator in Southeast Asia. Heavy drama for sure, but another battle won for the brave actor, who again courageously stumbles into unknown territory.

“I have to admit that at first I didn’t know anything about child sex slavery,” he says. “So I looked into it right away and recognized what kind of massive problem it is. It blew me away. When I saw the script, I knew I had to do it.”

Directed by Christopher Bessette (director of The Enemy God and the documentary Niagara: Thunder of the Waters), the film deals with the engine of guilt, and how it drives the characters in ways that will not let them return to Start.

It co-stars Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino, playing Mulroney’s wife, whose character is grieving for the loss of her own young daughter under a similar devastating consequence.

“She’s one of our finest actors,” he says of his co-star.

“And on top of that, she’s been around the world with the UN and other organizations.” True that: she was named

as Goodwill Ambassador to combat human trafficking for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The haunting film won “Best of the Fest” at the Breckenridge Festival of Film and Best Picture winner at the International Christian Visual Media Festival. The Huffington Post called it “unflinching” but “with a glimmer of hope.”

“There are so few films that have touched on this,” Mulroney says. “It almost has pop appeal, but it couldn’t www.themodern.us

October 2012 | The Modern

headliners be darker material. It’s a strange and effective combination.”

The steamy jungle of Thailand was only the next career layover in a series of globetrots. Previously, he was in icy Canada filming the The Grey.

“I finished shooting The Grey in February and went right away to Thailand finishing this movie.

Back-to-back days in between shooting those two

movies. We were based in Vancouver, British Columbia but the scenes of the storm and the plane wreck were in Smithers, British Columbia. That’s 595 miles north of Vancouver. I went from one extreme to another: 35 degrees below zero in British Columbia and then to Thailand where we are easily shooting in 100 degrees, 105. It’s half the fun to have wild experiences like that.”

He’s also a man on the road earning a living for his new family (he has two young daughters), with The Modern | October 2012

long jags away from home.

“Thank goodness for Skype,” he says.

Mulroney came of age in Alexandria, Virginia, and attended Northwestern University, graduating in 1985. He started working as an actor in Hollywood almost immediately after that, first in melodramatic TV movies (The Drug Knot, Sins of Innocence). It wasn’t long before Young Guns (1988) and Longtime Companion (1989) placed him higher on the goto list, and he was immersed in a lifetime of steady work. It’s an actor’s dream, but not a dream that he conjured from the beginning.

“I was so dedicated to the idea that having a shot as an actor in Hollywood was impossible,” he says.

“My Plan A was to learn film and to hopefully become a cameraman or cinematographer. I was taking acting classes, but I was also studying film, so I was learning how to pull cable and load film and be involved in making movies. And it happened anyway.”

His turn as Michael in the 1997 smash hit My Best Friend’s Wedding established him as the romantic leading man: handsome yes, but also grounded and smart. The funny, ironic script won millions of repeat fans and accomplished two tasks: it knocked the romantic comedy on its ass while showing that Mulroney could be that guy’s guy who women love.

It was the anti-rom-com.

“That’s what was genius about that movie,” he says. “That’s why it’s had the life it’s had. It was exactly the opposite of what you thought it was going to be. That’s so hard to do in the movies. Sometimes the simplest idea is the best.

“She doesn’t get the guy. It’s that classic, classic portrait of the sad clown, and yet you’re looking at Julia Roberts! I watched it again about two years ago, and I couldn’t believe how dark and edgy it was.

It has qualities that you’ve never seen in any other movie. It was really smart.”

A long-time champion of independent, small films, Mulroney has also lent his talents to such gems as the now-classic surreal comedy Living in Oblivion (“It sticks around. It sticks in your head.”) and the acclaimed 2001 sleeper hit Lovely & Amazing. In addition, he’s made memorable TV appearances on Friends (as Rachel’s nemesis) and recently on New Girl (as an older love interest).

“It’s always changing,” he says of his career. “I’m definitely in a great place now. I was also in a great place when I started. But I had ebbs and flows. I’ve had creativity block and opportunity. These things are never the same.”

Good to hear, Derm! Your acting roles may always vary, but don’t ever change. www.themodern.us

independents

Michael Garbe The actor (and doctoral candidate) appears in a powerful film that wins the top prize at five film festivals.

By Ronald Sklar You may have missed "West of the Moon" when it took a wild ride on the film festival circuit in 2011 (taking first place at five of them). It also made a reckoned-with force out of director Brent Bonacorso (he’s since been compared to Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton).

With the film available on iTunes, the non-festival world has a chance to experience this amazing cinematic trip, with lead actor Michael Garbe bringing power to an already intensified story about memory and dreams.

Based on The Colored Monster Has No Mouth by Roger Omar, the film interprets the book’s collection of children’s essays and ties it into a linear story. An old man (Jacob Whitkin) recalls the circumstances that, as a young man (Michael Garbe), led to his having a grenade as a heart and a monkey inside his head.

The narrative is based on a series of interviews with children about their dreams. The result on film: surreal beauty and strange truth.

Queens, NY-native Michael Garbe is now a doctoral candidate in social welfare (and still acting), but he comments that his experience on the film was similar to that of a journey of fulfillment.

He says, “It was for me the project that gave me the real acting experience that I feel is so difficult to come by, especially in Los Angeles. I did that movie for minimal pay, and had an amazing time doing it. In the same year, I did a TV commercial in which I only worked for thirty minutes and made a really good amount of money. It was such a letdown for someone who wanted to act. I get this paycheck, and it’s big, but there was no fulfillment.”

Garbe should know, as he was going through a dark night of the soul while in LA. This stretched out to many a night, often drowned in alcohol — though no longer.

However, the film’s plot, while universal to begin with in its own unique way, was especially relatable for him.

“In its most simplistic explanation,” he says, “it’s about a love across generations. It’s different versions of the same person dreaming. It’s about a longing for something lost. I think what most people are looking for when they consider something lost, but still hope to find, is that one word, which is love.”

Garbe’s demons shared an apartment with him in LA, and then traveled back East with him. www.themodern.us

“I suffered from depression and anxiety for years,” he says, “because there was my inner true self trying to claw its way out of who I thought I was. You blanket your true self with protections based on fear; you have to strip away these blankets.”

However, once back in New York, everything just “flipped around,” according to Garbe. He says, “There was a always a voice inside of me telling me that there was a purpose for my suffering, that there is a reason I’m going through it.”

True that, as his spiritual awakening happened slowly,

“

I’m only understanding now what I am capable

”

of achieving.

Michael Garbe

but definitely happened. Garbe credits it to a connection with a divine intelligence, which, he says, “gave me proof that what I am experiencing is transformational rather than suffering.”

Now a doctoral candidate and a man in search of meaning, he sees his future, for the first time, as wide open. It is an achievable dream on the level of the beauty of the film in which he starred.

“I’m only understanding now what I am capable of achieving. I have an internal strength that I’ve never felt in my thirty-three years of life. It’s an internal strength that I’ve derived purely from myself and not from any external facet — just a deep faith that there is nothing being thrown at me that I’m not capable of handling, that I’m being guided.”

For more of the film, click here: www.westofthemoonthefilm.com October 2012 | The Modern

Jenna DewanTatum B y

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J a c o b s

When former dancer and model Jenna Dewan took the female lead in a low-budget dance movie called Step Up, she knew it was going to change her life. She just had no idea how much.

At the time, Dewan was better known as a dancer than an actress. She had toured with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy and starred in videos with Ricky Martin and Justin Timberlake. Then, with her first movie, a tiny horror film called Tamara, the gorgeous Dewan became an internet sensation.

However, Step Up took it to the next level. Not only did the movie become a huge hit, spawning three sequels (and counting), but Dewan fell in love with her leading man, a little-known actor named Channing Tatum.

Six years later, Dewan and Tatum are happily married (she has changed her professional name to reflect that fact) and acting together for the first time since. 10 Years is an ensemble piece about a group of friends going home for their high-school reunion. Dewan plays Tatum’s long-time girlfriend, an outsider who meets all her boyfriend’s buddies as well as the ex for whom he still has complicated feelings (played by Rosario Dawson).

Dewan-Tatum also recently won a coveted role on the second season of the hit series American Horror Story, opposite Jessica Lange and Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine.

The day before 10 Years opened, Dewan-Tatum gave us a call to chat about her movie and her life.

What were you like in high school?

I was a very ambitious high schooler. I was a diehard dancer. All I wanted to do was move to LA and become a professional dancer. Every weekend I was at dance competitions trying to win as many scholarships The Modern | October 2012

www.themodern.us

here and now and awards as I could. I was a very passionate child and passionate teenager. I was involved in cheerleading and had a lot of good friends. I grew up in a small town in Texas, so I had a real Varsity Blues high-school experience. I had the best of both worlds, to be honest. I had a wonderful high school with really good friends, football games and clean fun. Then I had my passion that I was working towards 24/7.

This is the first time you’ve worked with your husband since Step Up, and obviously your relationship has changed substantially. What was it like acting with him again?

It was really fun and easy. There is a natural ease between Channing and I. These characters had been together for a long time. They really love each other. We just injected a little drama in, to give something unexpected and different from Step Up. Rosario [Dawson] plays his high-school sweetheart. We made a conscious choice to make it not all roses, to have some drama and see that unfold on the screen. As for working with Chan, it was pretty easy and wonderful. We’d laugh in between takes. We had a lot of fun. A lot of it was improv. It was a really good time.

One thing I liked about 10 Years is while they all are trying to be crazy like the past, most of them are actually rather mature. What was it about Jamie Linden’s script that attracted you?

I’m a personal fan of The Big Chill and throwbacks to early Eighties and Nineties movies — movies that had big ensemble casts, lots of stories that intertwined. I love those movies, so to me it was a no-brainer. I wanted to do it immediately. Jamie is a really smart writer. I was excited to work with him because I thought that he would give us the confidence and freedom to improvise a lot.

He really did.

Jess was an outsider to the group, having not gone to the school or known these people. Did that make the character interesting?

It was an interesting dynamic, especially because I have done that before. I’ve definitely accompanied somebody I’ve been with somewhere where I didn’t know anyone. I moved around a lot as a kid — every two or three years — to a new city. So I’m very familiar with the feeling of not knowing anyone and having to go in and make friends.

The film is strongly about nostalgia for the past. What makes you feel nostalgic?

When I hear certain songs that remind me of my dance competitions when I was a kid. Cheesy Nineties www.themodern.us

songs — Black Box and C&C Music Factory. Stuff like that makes me immediately go back to dance competitions. When I walk through the MGM Grand in Vegas, it reminds me of our national dance competitions. We were always there when I was a kid, every year. Little things like that. Little memories. Smells can bring me back. There was a perfume called “Beautiful” by Estee Lauder I used to wear, that my first boyfriend gave me.

That will bring me back immediately.

Step Up was an important movie for you because you met your husband, but it was also your biggest hit to date. What was the movie like to make?

It’s so special. I grew up with movies like Dirty Dancing. That was my favorite movie ever. I can watch it over and over and over. People come up to me and say, “Oh my God, I’ve seen Step Up 700 times.” That’s what actors dream of. We want to be a part of something that can affect people on a mass level. That is a huge, huge accomplishment to me. And of course, I met my husband. (laughs) That is the prime reason that I think that movie happened. It will always be a special memory to me.

What else do you have coming up?

I have American Horror Story, the second season, starting October 17th. I play opposite Adam Levine. We play newlyweds. And there you go. (laughs) That’s about all I can say because I’m sworn to secrecy.

Jay S. Jacobs is senior editor and founder of the pop culture web magazine www.popentertainment.com.

October 2012 | The Modern

this old modern house

To m m y M a c D o n a l d

hits the nail on the head The star of PBS’ Rough Cut Woodworking with Tommy Mac says that creating furniture from scratch is can-do, even for those who think of themselves as can’t-don’t.

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“I’m trying to broaden the horizons of what has been shown on television for woodworking,” says Rough Cut host Tommy MacDonald, known to his growing legion of fans as Tommy Mac. “I just want to continue to broaden people’s expectations of themselves when they go to do some woodworking, so they really can do any of this stuff.”

The popular PBS how-to program enters its third season this fall, and Tommy Mac isn’t surprised that the fine art of woodworking has caught on with old die-hards with calluses as well as curious newbies with carpal tunnel.

“I really and truly believe that if you really want to dedicate the time doing this type of work, you’ll be able to do it in some capacity,” he says.

Those are pretty much fighting words for an oldworld New England guy who normally takes his sweet old time and hones his craft. But now he’s stepping up for season three, and a whole lot of woodworking fans are clamoring for more. In order to teach out loud what’s in his head, MacDonald has to think and work at buzzsaw speed, yet maintain his usual stamp of quality and slow-good attention to detail.

“It’s very methodical,” he says of the craft. “It’s kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You really need to start in one spot and end up in another. I bet Type A guys would really get wrapped up in the whole process, as long as you aren’t agonizing over all of the small things that you don’t really need to agonize over. I think the more you do it, the more you realize that the things that you agonize over in the beginning don’t amount to a hill of beans six months or a year down the road.”

A life-long resident of Canton, Massachusetts (with a New England accent not heard on PBS since the days of Zoom), MacDonald polished his passion for woodworking since middle-school shop class. www.themodern.us

“My dad was a civil engineer,” he says. “He couldn’t do woodworking to save his life, but he had nine kids and we were always paneling and doing drop ceilings.

We were always fixing cars. He could make miracles out of a couple of nuts and bolts and bubble gum and elastic.

My dad was definitely MacGyver, for sure.

“I had six sisters and two brothers. I was second to last, and I was fixing all my brothers’ and sisters’ cars, fixing whatever was broken around the house. I was kind of my dad’s helper. I got to the point where I ended up doing all the stuff.”

By adulthood, he was a full-fledged carpenter (with a union card), improving homes all over the area. By the mid-Nineties, he worked on Boston’s Big Dig, but an on-the-job injury and a shoulder separation forced him to set his career sights elsewhere. That’s when he found furniture making.

Since then, MacDonald has had his work showcased at the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, The Concord Museum, and Doric Hall in the Massachusetts State House.

When he was urged to start a video podcast to demonstrate step-by-step woodworking, he didn’t even own a computer. But he learned fast, and before long he was on television.

“I’m striking a chord with a lot of people on television because I’m pretty damn good at what I’m doing, but I’m not the expert,” he says. “I’m just another guy in the shop trying to figure out a really good way to make something that I want to build.”

Yet with the TV series, he was able to sand off one finished product after another, with a huge following doing the same at home. MacDonald is eternally appreciative for the opportunity to share his passion with a national audience.

“I’ve had some pretty tough times along the way, so I’m really grateful just to be here,” he says. “I got into a car accident when I was twenty-years old, and it really almost killed me, so every day I wake up and I feel like I’m on borrowed time. For me personally, it’s just an honor to be a steward of the craft, and I’m doing my best not to mess it up. I have a really good family that’s not afraid to www.themodern.us

knock me down a couple of pegs, if my head gets too big.

I’m just lucky to be here, man, I’m just blessed. Honestly.”

For those about to carve, McDonald says that focus is key, and not being afraid to goof up. That is a given (even for him).

“The mistakes you make are instantly clear,” he says.

“You’re like, ‘Oh, I get it,’ and then you have to try to fix your mistake or pick up another piece of wood. Overall, the material is pretty inexpensive, even if you are paying fifteen or twenty bucks a board foot. The amount of time that goes into these projects is where all the money is.”

However, once you get into the groove, you’re grooving with the best of them.

“If you have the passion to do it, and you’re willing to stay on the learning curve, you can achieve anything,” he says. “What I do is an acquired skill. If you just spend enough time and have the tools, you can get pretty good at it. It’s like anything. I don’t cook, but I know that if I stayed in the kitchen long enough, I would learn how to cook something. If you really, really want to do it, you can do it.”

Find out more about Tommy and Rough Cut: www.thomasjmacdonald.com

October 2012 | The Modern

Wayne White’s

Playhouse The brilliant

creative mind behind Pee Wee’s Playhouse and other cultural landmarks continues to pop our eyes.

By Ronald Sklar The Modern | October 2012

www.themodern.us

reconnecting

You may not know him by name, but you know him as that guy behind the scenes responsible for blowing your mind. Wayne White is an artist, art director and puppeteer who is the creator of all the non-human characters on the Eighties masterpiece Pee Wee’s Playhouse (Pee Wee excluded). As well, he was the art director for such award-winning music videos as The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” and Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time.”

A recent documentary on his life and work, called Beauty Is Embarrassing, had recently hit the film circuit to resounding praise. These days, he has found great success as a fine artist, whose work is shown all over the world.

Here, White talks with us about some of the finer points of his animated journey.

On life’s sweet irony I had this crazy puppet show idea, doing puppet shows in people’s garages and at keg parties. Everybody thought I was insane to do that. Yet, lo and behold, it was the greatest career I ever had and it made me the most money. I bought a house and raised two kids from this crazy puppet show notion. I could have failed at so many things but I’ve been so lucky in my life.

On alienation Being a Confederate punk rocker is definitely a part of me. I was the perfect age. I was about 21 when punk really hit. I was the perfect candidate for picking up on that vibe. I was a huge rockabilly fan to begin with, and punk and rockabilly share a lot in common: drums, bass, guitar, and stripped-down rock-and-roll. It gave me an outlet for that defiance that I’ve always had since I was a teenager. I always felt like an outcast and a misfit. I didn’t have any support system. I was an angry young man and punk fit my idea of things. I went from a long-haired hippie to short-haired punk.

On staying true to one’s dreams I had a one-track mind about being an artist and drawing pictures. I had to defy a lot of people’s ideas about common sense and playing it safe by taking a riskier path.

On his influences I take the South with me everywhere I go. It’s a place www.themodern.us

that nurtured me. It’s where I’m from, whether I like it or not. Specifically, I think it very much influenced my sense of humor, which is very important to my work. I always say my mission is to bring humor into fine art.

The South has a very specific kind of humor. It is a wry, dry humor, an understated approach. Also, the South has a sense of defiance. We’re rebels. Nobody understands us. We revolted against the federal government.

The sense of being a rebel and an outsider in the general larger culture of the United States has always been a part of me. I always thought of myself as an outsider, that defiant personality.

On collaborating with Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) He was an incredible person to work for. He had a lot of power in 1986. He told CBS exactly what he wanted to do. He surrounded himself with really good artists. Not Hollywood hacks, but kids who had never worked in Hollywood before. He knew the power of crossing over genres, using real artists instead of standard industry types. He gave me complete freedom, and that was the power of the Playhouse. It was a downtown New York art project that happened to make it onto national television.

On what Paul Reubens was really like in person It was hard for me to imagine what he was like before I met him. That’s the power of that character [Pee Wee]. It’s really hard to separate the illusion from the reality. As a person, he is a really thoughtful, low-key, deep-voiced, laidback kind of person — exactly the opposite of the high-strung, has-to-be-the-center-ofattention Pee Wee character.

On what it was like on the set of Pee Wee’s Playhouse It was my first time working on a national TV show. We were so hard at work. We did it in a downtown New York loft. It just felt like a really hard, lonely job. It was a struggle to give birth to the Playhouse.

There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of do-overs — lots of staying up all night. We were this insulated little band of downtown New York artists. We really didn’t think of the larger world at all. We were doing it for ourselves. We weren’t doing it for a nation of children. So when it started taking off like that, it was very surprising.

October 2012 | The Modern

reconnecting On creating the classic Smashing Pumpkins music video “Tonight, Tonight.”

The song is beautiful. It really is. To tell you the truth, I’m not a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan. I don’t like their harder stuff, but that song itself is haunting.

Before I even heard the concept, I knew the song. I had a love of the antique and the 19th century. I was doing a series of American history paintings that were very traditional, of civil war battles and steamboat scenes.

It’s that melancholy, antique kind of vision. It was so satisfying to see my paintings become these giant sets.

I must say that Peter Gabriel is the nicest rock star I’ve ever met. He’s a perfect gentleman, with exquisite manners. He treated me like an equal. Again, he was a great boss, just like Paul Reubens. He let me do my thing. He respected me as an artist. That shows through in the video. I can’t remember him saying no to anything, and he’s quite a visual artist himself from his days in Genesis. When the artists create something out of love, it shows. The world really needs that.

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I’m slowly starting to realize what an impact everything I have done has had, especially on

On his future work I’m very excited about the new phase of my career, doing largescale commission work. I’m negotiating now with my hometown of Chattanooga to do a big outdoor public works sculpture — one of my paintings coming to life in the beautiful Tennessee landscape. It’s a big prominent word sculpture. So that’s a new phase of my career. I’m excited about that.

the thirty-something

On realizing his place in pop culture I’m slowly starting to realize generation. I am what an impact everything I have done has had, especially on the delighted. thirty-something generation. I am delighted. I mean, who wouldn’t Wayne White be? I’ve worked very hard for 30 years, and it’s often been alone, without any feedback at all. Just getting it out there, through the On working with Peter Gabriel on his advances of the Internet age — it’s all coming back to “Big Time” music video: me and to put it simply, it makes me feel incredible.

I got that job because the video was directed by What artist wouldn’t like this kind of payback? I’m Stephen Johnson, who directed the first season of Pee just part of a continuum, and I’m glad to be such a Wee’s Playhouse. He hired me to be the art director. strong part of that continuum.

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Wayne White’s Video Playhouse Watch the Smashing Pumpkins gorgeous video,“Tonight Tonight:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOG3eus4ZSo

The Modern | October 2012

Watch the stunning Peter Gabriel video,“Big Time:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0FBi5Rv1ho

www.themodern.us

so modern, it’s scary

Blob Fest A splotch? A blotch? When in Phoenixville, PA, be careful where you step.

By Jack Rotoli Every summer, sci-fi fans, horror fans and, well, movie fans from around the country and around the world, converge on a suburb of Philadelphia to celebrate its favorite son. The tiny hamlet of Phoenixville, and its landmark historic Colonial Theater, roll out the red carpet and welcome followers of the reddest of movie villains — The Blob!

From the days of the independent movie houses (a rarity in the midst of today’s corporate and studio mega-plexes), the Colonial Theater is the sole survivor of the three iconic shooting locations featured in the movie. Long-gone are the Downingtown Diner and Jerry’s Market in Royersford; the Colonial owes its continued survival and on-going restoration projects to member donations and events like Blob Fest.

During the weekend-long festivities, there are continuous showings of The Blob, a street fair with music, classic cars, and vendors of all things nostalgic and Fifties and horror kitsch. There’s also a costume contest for those true, die-hard fans willing to brave the Delaware Valley’s notorious heat and humidity.

And don’t forget the Blob Ball and an aluminum foil hat contest. The coup de gras, however, actually takes place on the first night of Blob Fest, when the Friday night movie audience reenacts the classic scene of running out into the street. Illuminated by the neon marquee, the Blob’s prospective victims explode from the theater entrance, some in retro attire, some not, some going this way, some that, some performing a personal little screen test, and every one of them laughing.

An entry fee donation offers fans a guided tour.

They see the mezzanine lobby with its polished wooden railings and spectacular mural. They also get a peek into the projection room and the balcony. Also, the son of the director, Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr. (yeah, Jr.), was on hand to regale fans with trivia and display props left over from production. Finally, tourists have a chance to meet the actual Blob in living color.

In fact, The Blob was made in the era when computers were the stuff of science fiction. Long before www.themodern.us

CGI, when special effects truly were reliant on low budgets and plain-old ingenuity. The villain of our feature, a creature from outer space who thrives on the consumption of hapless humans, was made of red-colored silicone and has been in the care of movie collector, Wes Shank, since 1965. The movie ends with a question mark, daring viewers to guess whether the Blob froze to death in the Arctic but may return one day. In the meantime, The Blob is alive and well in a white five-gallon painter’s bucket. It plans to return to Phoenixville for years to come.

Jack Rotoli is an artist and writer living in Pennsylvania.

October 2012 | The Modern

pod people

Adam Carolla’s awesome sidekick gets her own podcast — and it’s an instant hit.

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Keeping up and matching wits with the entertaining hyper vigilance that is Adam Carolla is not a job suited to just anyone. His daily complain-fest (available for free on iTunes) is the most downloaded podcast on the planet, and for good reason: it’s funny, it moves fast and it is never, ever boring. That’s thanks to Carolla’s opinionated brilliance, and his willingness to share personal and professional issues (parents, kids, show business, LA, airports, cuisine) with his devoted following of millions of obsessive, devoted Corolladdicts.

Like the boxer he once was, he’s quick on his feet and thinks fast. Between breaths, though, is where Alison Rosen speaks up. She’s heads Carolla’s news desk (i.e., reading top stories from an iPad).

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Reporting the news to Carolla is akin to poking a big bear with a stick. You are going to get a reaction, and it’s often unpredictable, dangerous, and so angry it’s funny. She also puts her two cents in when needed, going the twelve rounds with Adam and making it look effortless (it’s not).

“It doesn’t feel brand-new anymore,” she says of her day job, which she’s had since January 2011, “but it does still feel like I’m learning. I feel like I am a big part of the show, and I know that listeners have a relationship with me as well, but I always want to be there to help Adam make the show that he wants to make.”

The California native is immediately likable; smart, funny, knowledgeable and personable, and balances Carolla like 60 milligrams of Cymbalta. But www.themodern.us

is he really the man we hear on our iPhone? Or is he just playing Adam to the tenth power?

“He’s the same guy,” she assures us. “It’s not an artificial version of him. It’s just a more ampedup version of him. [Off the mike], he’s all different percentages of the same dynamic.”

With the immense popularity of The Adam Carolla Show, it would only be a matter of time before Rosen was awarded her own podcast, called Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend (available for free on iTunes). In contrast to Carolla’s show, Rosen’s one-on-one talks with guests get deep fast, sometimes even ditching the funny for the serious (not that it’s not ever seriously funny). The gift Rosen has in spades: getting people to let their guard down and open up, even the most superficial and dark people on earth: comedians. Recent guests, who shed some surprising emotional baggage, included comedians Jeff Dye, Andrew W.K., Bobcat Goldthwait, Marc Maron and Chelsea Peretti (it’s still not too late to hear these joints in the archive).

Nothing was off-limits in their chit chat (which was more chat than chit), from parental issues to former lovers.

“I have always been very inquisitive and curious about people,” she says. “My tendency, when I am talking to people, is to draw them out. I worked as a journalist for years and I did interviews. So maybe in the course of that, I’ve honed my technique a little more.

But people say I am a good listener. And I tend to remember a lot of details about them.”

Part of what charms the snakes out of the basket is Rosen’s willingness to open up about herself as well, with an unabashed look at her own insecurities and shortcomings, of which she claims there are many (she even features a segment of the show entitled “Is it just me, or everyone?” For example: Do you feel pressure to buy the hair products your hair stylist recommends to you?).

“I’m very open with myself,” she says, “and I’m very honest with the things that I struggle with, vulnerabilities or things that confuse me. Because I am that way, I think that it might encourage the guests to be open about what they are struggling with too. I think people can pretty quickly tell from my tone that I like to talk about deep stuff. I’m not judgmental at all, and I think people feel that.”

The show captures a mood, a vibe that couldn’t be www.themodern.us

matched on terrestrial radio or talk TV, further proving the solid future and increasing logic of podcasting.

“I really think that podcasts have replaced books for a lot of people,” she says, “in the sense that the ideas that you are listening to really get into your head. It’s almost as if these are your own thoughts that you are having, these ideas that are penetrating your brain — as opposed to watching TV or a movie, where you are experiencing it but it is less intimate.

It’s the slow unfolding of an idea. It’s just a slower pace and it is more contemplative.”

Her podcast is striking a chord and growing its audience weekly, and Rosen holds the connection together steadfastly.

She says, “Part of the human condition is feeling

“

I think people can pretty quickly tell from my tone that I like to talk about deep stuff. I’m not judgmental at all, and I

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think people feel that.

Alison Rosen

alone and feeling like a freak. Everyone walks around feeling insecure, feeling like any exchange they just had didn’t go exactly as planned. They could have been smoother; they could have been funnier. But people are so busy pretending that they don’t feel that way or that they shouldn’t feel that way. So that’s what I do on my podcast: that thing that you do that you feel is just you – no, that is everyone. Whatever kind of freak you are, you are much more normal than you realize.”

A friend indeed.

Subscribe for free to Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend on iTunes, or alisonrosen.com Subscribe for free to The Adam Carolla Podcast on iTunes, or www.adamcarolla.com October 2012 | The Modern

girlie action

Famke Janssen

By Jay S. Jacobs Famke Janssen’s American dream keeps mutating.

The striking actress moved from her native Holland in the mid-Eighties and became an in-demand fashion model. However, Janssen was always obsessed with films. She quickly segued into that world, getting a breakout role as a gorgeous assassin in the James Bond film GoldenEye. She followed that with an eclectic series of parts in the X-Men series, Deep Rising, Rounders, The Wackness and Taken.

Still, Janssen has always longed to work behind the camera. Bringing Up Bobby, her debut as a writer and director, takes a look at a Ukrainian con woman named Olive (Milla Jovovich) trying to raise her son on the run in rural Oklahoma. A couple of weeks before the film opened, Janssen gave us a call to discuss her labor of love.

What inspired you to write Bringing Up Bobby?

It was about being a foreigner in the US. I came twenty-plus years [ago] to the US. I distinctly remember when I first came to New York. I had the feeling I was in a movie. I’d seen New York in movies all of my life growing up in Holland. My ideas were formed by films and were completely wrong and not in keeping with the reality of what America and New York were. I was petrified to leave the hotel I was staying in. Turns out, I stayed in the Upper East Side in one of the fanciest areas of Manhattan. But I didn’t know that at the time. I’d seen Al Pacino running around with guns, shooting people. So every time somebody would put their hand in their pocket, I thought they would pull a gun out. It seems absolutely idiotic now, but it just shows how strong the influence of film is on people. Especially on foreigners, because a specific type of movie makes it across to other countries, which is mostly bigstudio movies, and they tend to be violent.

I’ve lived in NY for a really long time. Of course it is not really like the rest of the US. It’s very different, almost like its own little country. It wasn’t until I went to Oklahoma, where my boyfriend’s family is from, that I was reminded of that feeling of how much of a foreigner I still am. Oklahoma is really different from anything The Modern | October 2012

I know. It’s deeply religious, very conservative. I felt I had to censor myself in a way that I never had to growing up in one of the most liberal countries in the world, Holland. It brought back all these feelings of what it was like the first time I came to the US. On top of that, visually it reminded me so much of the movies I had loved for so many years, like Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Bonnie & Clyde, Paper Moon and Thelma & Louise. I thought about what if this woman from another country comes to Oklahoma and she’s there with her little son. There grows out of this an amalgamation of many different things.

Bringing Up Bobby had the vibe of a Seventies movie.

There were two influences behind the film.

Films from the 1930s, which I personally watch obsessively, and films from the 1970s. Those are my two favorite eras in film. That became its own unique thing with Bringing Up Bobby. I wanted Olive to feel like she was a Thirties movie star.

Obviously the title is very similar to Bringing Up Baby.

Yes. The title came last, but it was because I’m obsessed with Cary Grant. I’m obsessed with all movies from the 1930s. I love all the screwball films. I love how strong women were in the films. I don’t mean strong as in hard, I mean female protagonists often carried the movie even more so than the men. They were allowed to be glamorous, beautiful, funny, quirky and silly. All things that I feel we’ve lost in modern cinema. So, I keep turning back to films like Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, The Awful Truth and those types of movies. They played a very big influence in the making of Bringing Up Bobby. Ultimately, when I was looking for a title and I had called my boy Bobby, I thought that Bringing Up Bobby was perfect, because Bringing Up Baby is one of my favorite movies. It all worked out that way. But Milla [Jovovich], I made her watch movies from that time to understand where her character would have gotten her influences in how she acts and what her ideas about the United States are in addition www.themodern.us

to that love for Seventies movies, and a lot of foreign movies, too. French movies were influences.

Why do you think people are so intrigued with con men and women?

A lot of those stories seem very American for us foreigners — movies like the ones I mentioned before. You see those a lot still in life. There was a big story in The New York Post. I live in New York and The New York Post is something we all read, whether we dare to admit it or not. There was this story about Sante Kimes, this woman and her son [who] conned their way through the years. This was not long ago. These stories happen. I guess they feel cinematic.

How did it feel getting on the other side of the camera?

A dream come true — I’ve been wanting to do this for so long. I wrote, directed, produced and starred in a short fifteen years ago. I wrote a screenplay years ago that got accepted into the AFI [American Film Institute] Film Writing program, but at the time I got cast into the Bond movie [GoldenEye]. After years of struggling, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep acting. I thought, “I’m going to go into the writing/directing world.” Then, I finally got cast in the Bond movie and I thought, “I need to take this opportunity now.” That catapulted my career in a different direction. But all along I’ve been wanting to do it, it’s just that the right opportunity never came about — the right script. It wasn’t until five years ago when I started exploring this idea that all the pieces of the puzzle came together. This became my opportunity and chance to do it. Now I really have the bug. I’m very busy acting at the moment. I’m shooting Hemlock Grove and I have Taken 2 and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters coming out. I’m putting together my next movie that I wrote. I’m going to direct that one. I’m very, very excited about the prospect of doing it again.

Jay S. Jacobs is the author of the books Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits and Pretty Good Years: A Biography of Tori Amos. He is also senior editor and founder of the pop culture web magazine www.popentertainment.com.

on off-broadway

Tony Lo Bianco The acclaimed actor returns to portray Fiorello La Guardia in Off-Broadway’s The Little Flower.

Sometimes it’s so damn good, it’s meant to be revived — not just the play itself, but the lead actor perfectly channeling the main character. In this case, it’s Tony Lo Bianco reprising his Emmy-award-winning performance as former New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia in The Little Flower. The off-Broadway production at the Dicapo Opera Theatre is adapted from Paul Shyre’s 1984 play Hizzoner!

“He was a diminutive little guy, but it was his spirit that always excited me,” Lo Bianco says of the beloved mayor. “It’s his honesty, the sacrificial life that he led. It’s his inspiration, his feeling and compassion. He spoke and fought for the people of this country.”

Of Italian/Jewish heritage, La Guardia (nicknamed “Little Flower”) was the rare

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Big-Apple Republican who appealed to the vast diversity of the metropolis. He stood a mere five-feet tall, but his outspokenness and unorthodox governing style became the stuff of New York legend (major airport named after him? Check!).

Lo Bianco adds, “When he became mayor in 1934, he cut his salary in half, and it’s not because he was a rich fellow. He came from very meager means.

He was just a fellow who cared about making things right. He became kind of a symbol for America during its worst times. He was a fourteen-year Congressman, and during those times, he introduced things like the five-day, 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, regulations on banks. He was really an innovator.”

wants to send you to a

Yankees game Baseball Santa Claus offers FREE sports tickets to those New Yorkers who may not otherwise have the means to attend. The tickets are awarded through an essay contest that asks why you think you deserve the free tickets.

Answer as best you can, and that sweet booty may be coming your way.

“

I was always fortunate to get a job. I was fortunate to have been from Brooklyn and to have surroundings that made me understand the human

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condition.

Tony Lo Bianco

Lo Bianco knows a little something about innovation himself. Born in Brooklyn, he made a name for himself in blue-collar roles, especially in the Seventies, with the NBC series Police Story and the film classic The French Connection.

“The French Connection was my second film,” he says. “I was always fortunate to get a job. I was fortunate to have been from Brooklyn and to have surroundings that made me understand the human condition. That’s the story of my life, actually: watching and learning and pulling from history. If I walk down the street, to me, the street is my teacher.

History is also your teacher, and the further back you can go, the richer your warehouse will be. Life to me is the biggest teacher of acting.”

Get tickets! Click here: www.tonylobianco.com/The-Little-Flower.html www.themodern.us

October 2012 | The Modern

Promoting: • Literacy and education • Paying it forward • College scholarships • Great memories!

www.baseballsantaclaus.com

picker/grinner/lover/sinner

Hey, Now: The All Stars Return Go play Smash Mouth’s new album.

by Jay S. Jacobs Smash Mouth was one of the huge bands of the late Nineties, knocking hits out of the park with "Walking on the Sun," "All Star" and their cover of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer." However, after the September 11th attacks, the band's good-time party vibe became a harder sell in a more introspective radio world. Now, with a new line-up, Smash Mouth is rejuvenated, delivering their first new album in six years, Magic. The CD takes the traditional Smash Mouth sound and brings it up

The Modern | October 2012

to date surprisingly well. Right before the release, we talked with lead singer Steve Harwell about his new album, his band and his musical loves.

What are your first musical memories?

Sitting, playing my grandmother's piano when I was a kid. Then I discovered Elvis. My parents thought I was a little crazy, but he changed my life when it came to wanting to be an entertainer. I couldn't get enough of him on TV — his music. Imitating him on the holidays in front of the whole family, making a jackass of myself.

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After Elvis it was David Lee Roth. Between those two, they are the whole reason that I'm in this business.

What was the first record you bought?

You're killing me right now. Probably Van Halen I. Mom and Dad had all the Elvis records, so I didn't have to buy those.

What was the first concert you ever saw?

Van Halen, 1980. I was a kid.

How did the band come together? You had been a rapper previously?

In my first record deal I was in a rap group. I didn't really care for it — made a whole record and don't even have it, to tell you the truth. That was in the early, early Nineties. I wanted to be a front guy for a rock band.

My manager was managing another rap kind of Beastie Boys group that Greg [Camp] and Paul [DeLisle] were in. So I was like, I'm going to steal these two guys. I kind of bullied Greg into joining the band. (laughs) I started the band in 1994 and have been doing it ever since.

What music do you put on when you are in a bad mood to cheer you up?

There's nothing wrong with some good AC/DC. Stone Temple Pilots. The Cult. Depeche Mode. The Cure. Yaz. I like a lot of the older stuff, because I used to be a total mod, too. Basically, there is nothing really current. If there is anything current that I listen to, I listen to a lot of country.

What song can automatically make you cry when you hear it?

I'll tell you which one. "Out of Love" [from the new Smash Mouth album Magic]. (laughs) Shit, I cried in the studio singing it. It was an emotional day. It came out in the end.

What do you listen to when you are in the mood for romance?

Probably just porno music. (laughs) No. You know what I used to really be into? There was a band called P.M. Dawn. That was a good lovemaking album, right there.

What record would you say you have listened to more than any other in your life?

Back in Black [by AC/DC]. Or Van Halen II. "Beautiful Girls" would be a perfect cover for you guys.

We used to play it live. I've talked about covering that, actually. www.themodern.us

On your new album Magic you cover “(Don’t You) Forget About Me.” The band has done covers before — like “I’m a Believer,” “Can’t Get Enough of You, Baby” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” How do you choose a song to cover?

Can we make this better? If we can't make it better or make it our own, why do it? One of our reps over in the UK — we were partying and he goes, "Dude, take this cassette." I'm dating myself right now. "Can't Get Enough of You" by ? & the Mysterians. I had that cassette for probably a year-and-a-half. I finally put it on. I'd never heard it. I was like, we have to record this song. "I'm a Believer" was a last minute thing for the Shrek movie. They had tried to get EMF or somebody to cover it and it came out like crap or something. "Why Can't We Be Friends," we've always been a fan of that song. The Breakfast Club has always been one of my favorite movies and "(Don't You) Forget About Me" has always reminded me of summertime.

We recorded that song over six years ago. That song's been in the archives for a while.

Do you have a record you're ashamed to have in your collection?

No, because I was also a total closet hair rocker, too. Ratt, Cinderella, White Lion, BulletBoys. All those bands, I was really into, man.

What song do you most wish that you wrote?

That's a fucking great question. I would have to say "The Lady in Red" [by Chris DeBurgh]. I love that song.

What is it like knowing that several of your songs, particularly "All Star," have had such long rides?

It's funny, because you really realize how big something is when you're walking into a Chili's and it comes on when you walk in. To be able to turn the radio on and hear "Why Can't We Be Friends?" or "Can't Get Enough of You" or "Then the Morning Comes." They are all still being played. But "All Star," "Walking on the Sun" and "I'm a Believer" are the ones played the most. It's nice to have that amount of songs and be able to get that reaction. People always ask me if I ever get bored of playing these songs. I say, would you? Once again I'm not trying to date myself but it's cool to go out and to have our young fans bring their kids to the show. To have people I've met over the years bring a photo of them with me when they were kids, and now they are 20 years old.

That's the cool part about music. The special part for me is to be able to build that interaction with our fans over the years and see how much it affects people's lives.

October 2012 | The Modern

photo essay

g n i h t y n A Say

Jeff Dye

We’re listening With a hosting

By rights, he is way too good looking to be funny, but there he is, that adorable Jeff Dye, making us laugh as if he was your typical plain-Jane standup.

He was a top finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, then he embarked on a 50-city comedy tour with the other show winners. Comedy Central happily handed him his own special, and TBS invited him to perform at its comedy festival in Chicago. He was a regular on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (as the funny guy who suggested ideas to the interior decorators) and he took top prize at the Giggles Laugh Off in his hometown of Seattle.

Currently, he can be seen as host of MTV’s hilarious hit Money From Strangers, making everyday people do wacky things for dollars (think of it as a longer, greedier, more perverse version of “what would you do for a Klondike Bar?”).

“It’s all done in fun but it’s a little bit more pesky,” he explains. “We don’t get corny, like on other shows, where they say after the prank, ‘oh it’s just us!’

We just get the jokes out of it, and then we go on to the next one. We don’t ever try to show you how they are feeling. That always seems like a waste of time.”

Translation: Money from Strangers does not have the same emotional depth as Candid Camera. Or the pathos of a Punk’d.

“When Ashton Kutcher would come out, it would seem a little selfcongratulatory,” Dye says.

In its second high-rated season, Money From Strangers takes to the streets of New York and makes winners out of losers, rigging them with recording devices and making fools out of fools who fool people. Dig: a contestant walks into a comic book store, portraying a comic book nerd; via secret electronic rigging, Dye (from a remote location)

stint on MTV’s Money From

Strangers and a growing following,

Jeff Dye’s career goes boom!

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photo essay instructs the contestant what nerdy bon mots to say to the unsuspecting store manager (and it isn’t pretty). Said manager gets spooked, creeped out, and, with televised hostility, throws the contestant into the street. The contestant wins, and so do we.

“We’re going to try a lot of different things,” Dye says of the current season. “We will have a little bit more money, so we will try to up the technology a bit.”

Being on the streets of Manhattan is quite an adventure for the laid-back Seattle boy, who sees every mean street as a happy hamlet for comedy potential.

“I love New York, but I don’t know if I necessarily fit in,” he says. “New York is a little grumpy. I’m a smiley guy. I like to talk to people. I’ll say ‘hi’ to strangers. I’ll always chat up somebody. New Yorkers

are confused by my chattiness.”

Not the first time that Dye has been a fish out of water.

During his stint on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, he was asked to do the impossible, literally, by suggesting interior designs that would surprise, stimulate and tug at heartstrings.

“As far as building a house or designing a room, or color schemes, I know nothing,” he says. “I’ve never even built a book shelf. So it was weird that they had me on the show. I had a great time, doing my best. The only backfire is that it’s such a nice, sweet, good-hearted show.

It was all these kids and moms. Real church people who would start coming to my stand-up comedy show.”

Uh, no, Dye works a bit too blue to have an audience like that. Granted, he’s no Lenny Bruce, but live stand-up is where his heart truly lies. While in New York for the taping of the show, he performs, practically every night, at NYC’s famous Comedy Cellar. He continues to hone his skill and tweet his pretty head off (his followers are growing into the many thousands). Still, under the good looks and the charm and the funny churns the typical insecurities of a typical stand-up comedian.

“I’m a late bloomer,” he says. “Girls were not itching to get with me. I didn’t have a lot of friends as a little kid.

I grew up real poor. I had a lot of hair. Nobody taught me how to dress. I looked like shit. I had to get a personality first. And I had to learn how to comb my hair.”

How you like him now, America?

Modern Channel One Exclusive:

Watch Jeff share his retro passions! click

here

Hey NYC, S MILE!

photo essay

Turns out

I ’m a llergic to cats, b ut only wh en I ea at them.

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g n i l l e p S is dum

I really hop e

R o s s ends up wi th Rachel

the great forgotten

Boombox Songs

The boombox – or the ghetto blaster — or whatever you wanna call it — was the needed accessory for status-conscious music heads in the Eighties. It was like having a whole home stereo that you could take with you — though not too far, them things were heavy.

Pumping the bass, flashing the lights, drowning out passing pedestrians’ ability to think of anything other than your musical choices, they showed up on street corners, in parks, on beach boardwalks and in the ’hood. Not only were they musically stylin’, but carrying one of those huge things around kept you buff.

Eventually, speaker technology got better, personal players got smaller and CD Walkmen and iPods killed the mighty boombox, but what a shoulder ride it had.

It’s hard to say what exactly constitutes a boombox song — is it a song about boomboxes or just one with maximum bass and groove to really pound out of a stereo the size of a case of Forties? But you know one when you hear one. Below is our completely subjective list of some of our fave jams for boombox nation.

single was “Electric Boogaloo” from that movie’s strangely titled sequel Breakin’ 2 is Electric Boogaloo.

Unfortunately, that song didn’t hit the public like Ollie & Jerry’s first jam and the partnership split, apparently realizing that there was indeed some stoppin’ them. www.youtube.com/embed/8x5JqZNYpRQ

“Breakin’ — There’s No Stoppin’ Us” — Ollie & Jerry

“In Your Eyes” — Peter Gabriel

Ollie & Jerry were Ollie E. Brown and Jerry Knight, former members of Ray Parker, Jr.’s early band Raydio. Their hitmaking collaboration did not last long — after this song became a hit in 1984 they released just one more single before breaking up, never even completing an album together.

“There’s No Stopping Us” was the theme to the popular breakdancing movie Breakin’. Their only other

We said a hip. Hop. A hip-hip-hop.

These joints rock it to the boogity beat.

B y

J a y

S .

J a c o b s

“I Can’t Live Without My Radio” — LL Cool J

Some dudes sing love songs to women. But LL Cool J (meaning Ladies Love Cool James, don’tcha know?) had the women. He didn’t need to patronize. Okay, he did. His “I Need Love” is widely considered to be rap’s first love ballad. Still, he may need a woman’s love, but he can’t live without his radio.

Therefore we get this ghetto jam, a romantic mash note to a major appliance and the ultimate in boombox love. www.youtube.com/embed/qqw2uby0dzc Arguably the most iconic boombox in pop culture ironically played one of the least boombox-worthy songs in history. “In Your Eyes” gained boombox immortality in the movie … Say Anything, when a love-struck Lloyd Dobler (played by John Cusack) forlornly stood outside the window of Diane Court (Ione Skye), held his radio over his head and played Gabriel’s hit ballad at full volume. With music Lloyd could say what he couldn’t say in person. Strangely, the song was pretty much the eclectic Gabriel’s first unabashed love song (and one of the few that he ever wrote.) Its delicate, romantic structure made it seem like an odd choice for boombox placement.

Still, the image stuck. The song had been a big hit just a few years earlier, but the prominent placement in the movie returned “In Your Eyes” to the pop charts. And ever since, misty-eyed women have been fantasizing about their guy being so torn up by them that he shows up with a ghetto blaster under their window. www.youtube.com/embed/Zrzr4R3LpsQ

“Word Up” — Cameo

Hey pretty ladies around the world, listen to this jam pounding out of a boombox and tell all the www.themodern.us

October 2012 | The Modern

the great forgotten boys and girls. Cameo leader Larry Blackmon, the funk-master with the most radical hi-top fade cut in Eighties R&B, set the wheels of steel a’turning with this ghetto blaster master course. www.youtube.com/embed/MZjAantupsA

“(You’ve Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” — The Beastie Boys

The B-Boys loved the mighty boombox — there is one front and center on the cover of their Solid Gold Hits compilation. The heavily parenthesized “(You’ve Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” was the Beasties’ biggest solid gold hit, their personal credo and their mission statement. Kick it! www.youtube.com/embed/eBShN8qT4lk

“Gimme Hope, Jo’anna” — Eddy Grant

Five years after he rocked down to Electric Avenue, reggae-rocker Grant gave the boombox a social conscience with this heartfelt anti-Apartheid anthem. The Jo’anna in the title was short for the government in Johannesburg, South Africa. Apartheid was ended just a few years after the song’s release.

Coincidence or more boombox magic? You decide. www.youtube.com/embed/bNNfAuMq-M0

“Where Are You Baby?” — Betty Boo

When you think “hip-hop,” you don’t normally think of white British birds who stole their stage name from a Twenties cartoon character (though this Betty dropped the “p” from the Boop.) Still, this was one of the most infectious rap jams of the late Eighties and became a huge hit in every country in the world other than the United States. Plus, it gets brownie points for being the song which a young Jennifer Connelly roller-skated to a boombox version through an abandoned Target store in tight black jeans and a white t-shirt in the otherwiseforgotten John Hughes film Career Opportunities.

Fun trivia fact: her skate was cut short when she was threatened by a thief brandishing a gun, played by this month’s Modern interview subject Dermot Mulroney. www.youtube.com/embed/1X3me4UiAGc

“Fight the Power” — Public Enemy

In Spike Lee’s joint Do the Right Thing, the explosive climax revolved around the police beating of Radio Raheem (played by Bill Nunn), a tough ghetto sage whose prize possession was his super-sized The Modern | October 2012

boombox. The song that was almost always blasting from that ghetto blaster while dude was still alive was the defiant call to arms “Fight the Power” by acclaimed rappers Public Enemy. And, yes, backing up leader Chuck D is indeed Flavor Flav, long before he became a VH-1 reality show joke. www.youtube.com/embed/2WHe5fxS3dA

“Justified and Ancient” — The KLF featuring Tammy Wynette

The KLF was a short-lived, eccentrically brilliant dance-rap band from the UK. They had odd alteregos as the JAMMs (The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu), who were Dr. Who-obsessed druids who traveled the world in a boombox-equipped ice cream van. Their song “All You Need Is Love” was more specific to the boombox craze, because they created their own giant ghetto blaster that they called a pyramid blaster — literally built in the pyramids.

However, I’m gonna go with “Justified and Ancient” because the JAMMs dragged along a slightly befuddled country music legend Tammy Wynette for the ride… and it actually worked! It’s one of the most insane — and insanely catchy — jams (no, not JAMMs) to come out of the boombox nation. www.youtube.com/embed/RPjggN-KByI

“Boombox” — The Lonely Island

The Lonely Island is Saturday Night Live comedian Andy Samberg’s hysterical musical alter-ego.

In “Boombox,” Sandberg pulled in singer Julian Casablancas from the Strokes to go on a mystical musical journey with him and his magic boombox.

Together they travel the world, using their powerful magic boombox to change people and affect their lives with harmony and love. As they roam the world, the power of the ghetto blaster makes city commuters dance, makes businessmen dance and makes old people have sex, which even they have to acknowledge was pretty gross. www.youtube.com/embed/8yvEYKRF5IA

“Stereo Hearts” — The Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine

The boombox continues to live on in this popular recent hit celebrating the power of old-school stereo equipment. The song starts with a sweetly sung bridge by Maroon 5 leader Adam Levine, who asks you to allow him to be your stereo. The lead GCH Travie McCoy continues the vibe, comparing himself to a boombox for his lady’s heart. www.youtube.com/embed/T3E9Wjbq44E www.themodern.us

the feminine mystique

When Will Ladies' Hats Come Back?

Longing for this amazing long-gone style.

By Jacqueline Kravitz Strauss How I used to admire women who wore hats. In fact I still do, but they’re not seen very much anymore. Maybe at Easter time, but even then, we live in such a casual world, people just don’t want to dress up the way they used to. People today prefer shorts and tees even on holidays. What would be the occasion to wear a beautiful hat? Baseball caps, now that’s a different story!

But I just wish I could wear a hat…any hat!

Whenever I’m in a store that sells them, I love to try them on to see if I can find one that will flatter me, but I’ve never found one that does. Whether it’s the “picture frame” type, cloche, or beret, I haven’t met a hat yet that doesn’t make me look ridiculous!

As a child I had many an Easter bonnet. They were always the woven straw kind with flowers in the band that tied in the back and hung down onto my shoulders. Every year, mother would take us shopping for a new dress to wear for the holidays, along with a new pair of black patent leather “Mary Janes.” My sister and I were dressed by our mother like proper little girls whenever it was a holiday, and on weekends if we visited relatives, even down to the white gloves! We’d get new spring coats, in the spring, and dressy fall coats in the fall. Our spring coats were always a pastel color. Our fall coats were always in brown tones. I remember one in particular was a riding coat. I wore that with jodhpurs and a bowler hat. I remember hating that getup. I always preferred the frilly “girly” outfits to looking like I’d just gotten down off a horse.

When we stayed at the seashore, bathing suits were our daywear, of course. But when the evening came, we’d always walk the boards in our best clothes. mother and dad, she in a dress, he in a suit or sport coat and slacks, would stroll the wooden-slatted path, meeting up with friends and relatives. Mother tried not to let the tip of her high-heeled shoes get caught in the spaces between the boards. Some clever entrepreneur came up with the idea of rubber protecwww.themodern.us

tors for those high heels which saved many a woman from an embarrassing fall and possible injury, while making a small fortune for his invention, I’m sure.

On the weekends, the ladies wore their mink stoles, and those hats! Those beautiful hats that must have made the “everymoms” feel like movie stars. Just the way I wish I could feel today. If I could only find the right hat and the place to wear it!

Jackie Strauss is a Philadelphia-based writer who is married with children and grandchildren, and who enjoys spending her Saturday nights on the all-nostalgia talk show Remember When on WPHT 1210 AM along with co-hosts Steve Ross and Jim Murray.

Copyright ©2012 Jacqueline Kravitz Strauss All Rights Reserved

October 2012 | The Modern

boardwalk empire

My Lost City, Part 2 The slow and agonizing death of Atlantic City, before it would rise again like a phoenix.

By Barry Levy It could be said that Atlantic City’s decline began during the noon hour, local time, on Tuesday, December 5, 1933. That was the time and the day that Utah — of all places! — became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution that repealed the Eighteenth. The country’s almost 14 yearlong experiment with Prohibition had a dramatic effect on the seaside resort that billed itself as “The World’s Playground” but the slide would take more than forty years to bottom out.

New Jersey’s largest shore town was the Las Vegas of its day. What happened there stayed there and the real money-making draws included gambling, bootlegging and prostitution, activities which were, technically speaking, illegal. Atlantic City didn’t really have an exemption from Prohibition, only a nodding acquaintance at best, an uneasy arrangement at worst. In early December 1933, however, it permanently lost its status as a wide-open watering hole in somebody else’s idea of a buttoned-down desert.

The Modern | October 2012

Founded as an island resort in 1854 by a railroad and some flinty-eyed mainland-dwelling locals who used the buggy thickets and sandy swales for grazing land, the town never really deserved the Victorian gentility to which it laid claim by the nineteenth century’s end. But it was a pleasant-enough myth and well into the 1950s one dressed up for an evening stroll or rolling chair ride on the Boardwalk; adult sunbathers in skimpy swim-suits were chased from the ‘Walk during the day; perching on the ‘Walk’s iron railing to watch the passing scene quickly brought a scolding policeman; and at 9:30 each evening, a city-wide fire siren signaled the curfew for anyone under 16.

Other things, too, marked the town’s anachronisms and pretentiousness: just for starters, Atlantic City was effectively a segregated town. Although African-Americans provided a disproportionate measure of the muscle and sweat needed to sustain its lifeblood service industries, they shared little in the profits. The large black neighborhood was sharply defined, north and south, by Atlantic Avenue and the bay and, east and west, by the

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Inlet and the train station at Arkansas Avenue. The black beach was at Missouri Avenue and was called “Chicken Bone Beach” by everyone; whites didn’t go there and blacks didn’t go anywhere else along the oceanfront.

And don’t think Jews were welcome everywhere, either. Even though the city had a significant Jewish population, including prominent business people and many professionals, there were well-known hotels which were assiduous in turning away would-be guests of the Hebrew persuasion. Italian-Americans, too, were concentrated in a low-lying section back by the bay-front that flooded often enough to be called “Ducktown,” whose bakeries and The White House Sub Shop were the city’s delights. The WASPs and the money of whatever persuasion segregated themselves into the “down beach” towns of Ventnor, Margate and Longport.

But Atlantic City was a place for hucksters and hustlers. Anyone with a gift for attracting a crowd and selling them cheap kitchen gadgets, speed boat rides or trick playing cards could earn enough between Memorial Day and Labor Day to live through the winter. Also drawing in the Boardwalk strollers to play “Banko,” one of the many variations on the illegal Bingo. Then, come fall, they would lean on state unemployment benefits, return to college or move operations to Florida until May. One long-time Boardwalk enterprise employed a silent “mechanical man” who strutted stiffly on the boards in front of the Haddon Hall arcade until he could lead a crowd

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of gapers into the gallery for the pitch by his confederates and the shills. The worst thing that could happen in season was a run of rainy weekends that would keep the “Shoobies,” day-trippers with their lunches packed into shoe-boxes, from coming down the shore on one-day excursion train tickets. The harshest rebuke that Amos, an otherwise very gentle handicapped man in his forties and a perennial employee of Steeplechase Pier, could hurl at an offending concessionaire was, “Rain on you!”

But what would the child I was know — or care — about political machinations and official corruption, the business leaders over forty years whose ineptitude or short-sightedness failed to reinvest profits to update facilities? Would I even as an adolescent have understood that people increasingly traveled by private car rather than by train and could set their own schedules and destinations as a result? They didn’t need to come to the shore to escape summer heat in the cities because air conditioning and swimming pools were everywhere by the early 1960s. For the same expense — or less — people could fly off to the Bahamas or California. What passed for entertainment in Atlantic City was simply and increasingly passé?

The 1964 Democratic convention was a public relations disaster for Atlantic City; the commentators opined and the television cameras confirmed the view that the town was a seedy, degenerate seaside slum and it only got worse as the Sixties wore on.

Ocotber 2012 | The Modern

boardwalk empire Crime rates soared; seniors were effectively prisoners in their homes; abandonment and arson fires followed until much of the north Inlet neighborhood looked like a war zone. A sweeping urban renewal project yielded only “Pauline’s Prairie” over a significant portion of the south Inlet and now, more than forty years later, there’s been no construction on large tracts except for parking lots.

Just before the Memorial Day weekend in 1972 came a devastating psychological blow to the city as the moribund and shuttered Traymore, once the city’s pride and icon of local propriety, was imploded into a pile of rubble.

The public schools were dismissed early so the kids could go and watch!

And now, almost eighty years after the hour that commenced its decline, almost a century since its heyday,

Atlantic City is again beset with day-trippers. They come on charter buses from cities between Baltimore and New York City and are picked up at street corners in smaller burgs no better off or more promising than their seaside destination. They don’t pack their lunches in shoe boxes anymore because they’ve been promised discounted buffet meals and plied with coupons to reimburse them the nominal fare they paid to board the bus. They’ve been seduced into cashing their unemployment or social security checks in hopes that somehow, however improbably, they’ll get lucky.

To them, as that Steeplechase Pier employee, Amos, used to say to those who had a kind word for him, “Sunshine on you!”

Barry Levy now lives in the Pacific Northwest but he’ll always have “sand in his shoes.”

internalize this

Gomer Pyle Sings!

Jim Nabors psyches us out with his intense warbling.

Here’s the “Heart-Touching Magic of Jim Nabors,” but even more importantly, here’s the brain-twisting disorientation of seeing Jim simultaneously not be Gomer Pyle AND wearing a leisure suit. Goll-ly.

“America’s Romantic Recording Star,” as the announcer asks us to now call him, sings “Help Me Make It Through The Night” because he knows how tough this will be for us.

He also sings “You Don’t Know Me,” and we really don’t, do we?

We’re informed that he is not only loved by millions, but by countless millions.

Good news for Jim, but not good news for the Census Bureau.

Obsess on this joint — as we do — today! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I04P04eefcA

The Modern | Ocotber 2012

www.themodern.us

so modern, it’s scary

Bargain Halloween Costumes These outfits were shoddily made, but they had soul.

By Jack Rotoli Take the world’s flimsiest rubber band, staple it to the thinnest plastic, don the ‘flame-retarded’ jumper, and you can conquer the world! Our vintage Halloween costumes would get us laughed out of even the worst parties today, but when we were seven or eight, they were enough to transform us into anyone, or anything.

At the height of the space age and Apollo missions, I had an astronaut costume, with foil ink details silkscreened onto the blue jumper. Twodimensional buttons and bands of golden glitter decorated my sister’s majorette costume, complete with a twirling baton. Her mask featured ‘life-like’ hair — that was really just fuzzy ink printed down the sides of the face.

Sometimes the printing on those vacuform masks would be off register and the eye-holes or mouth would be printed slightly off to the side. We still didn’t care! Even with the mouth hole, or nose holes, those masks still got hot, even in the colder autumns we were used to.

When I was a kid, these costumes fired the imagination, no matter how cheap they may appear today compared to their almost theaterquality counterparts.

Halloween costumes were designed to be anything, not just the merchandising from Hollywood’s latest blockbusters.

Just look at these vintage selections. One box says, “All your favorites! … a black cat, a giraffe and www.themodern.us

‘Ghostie Skeleton.” Who can resist a marketing guarantee like “More Treats in a Collegeville Costume!”? and all for a buck or two… the original retail prices for these classics. Who wouldn’t want to be a giraffe for a night? I had a monkey costume and plucked a plastic banana out of my mom’s dining room centerpiece to complete my look.

These were one-shots, and intended to be thrown out on November 1st, but some moms traded ’em like we did baseball cards and comic books. We didn’t care if it was from last year — we probably didn’t even know — they were new to us. Now they rekindle memories of going from house to house, filling up a pillowcase on a cool moonlit night. Happy Haunting!

Jack Rotoli is an artist and writer living in Pennsylvania.

Ocotber 2012 | The Modern

wish you were here

Here on Roosevelt Island The Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital is now one of New York’s favorite “haunts.”

By Desiree Dymond Years ago, I decided to take a bit of a different tour of NYC with my brother, who was visiting from the Midwest. He’d found out about one of the most haunted locations in the city, just a subway ride away from my apartment: the abandoned ruins of the Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital. Way back in the day when the smallpox epidemic was sweeping through the city, this is where they sent people to either recover or die. My brother and I knew we must get ourselves to this location.

We hopped on the E train armed with video cameras and just our wits about us. That’s all that would keep us safe from a possible 200-year-old smallpox infection or ghostly assault. After wandering around the small island, lost, we finally happened upon a fence that read “no trespassing.” We figured this must be it since we had reached the southern-most tip of

The Modern | October 2012

the island. With a lifetime’s experience of doing illegal things, my brother quickly informed me that it was safe to enter — no cameras and no cops to be seen anywhere. Impressed with his skills, I followed him as he crept through a hole pulled back in the fence next to the sign. What came next was a long path leading through some trees. The outline of the city across the river, with the sun setting as its backdrop, was breathtaking. We traversed the path wondering if we were even going the right way. Knowing it was going to be dark soon heightened our awareness of the possible dangers of our illicit adventure. As we made our way further down the path, we came upon another broken fence, and behind it were the ruins we had sought out: the old Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital. We scouted the perimeter. There was a tall hill to the right of the building, so to our delighted terror, we were completely concealed.

I pulled out my video camera for my brother’s commentary on the hospital.

“So what do you think of the smallpox hospital, Dave?” I asked, to which he replied, “It’s super spooky and mega haunted.”

With the insane bravado of his latter statement, my brother decided to make his way through the second treacherous fence enclosing the perimeter of the decayed hospital. He walked right in, and stood under the broken-down entrance and turned around and looked at me. I snapped a picture. He started waving for me to come in. I told him I’d just hang back and watch him explore.

Then I thought the better of it. Hanging around the outside perimeter of a haunted hospital, alone, at sunset? I cursed myself for getting into another precarious situation, which by this time had become the standard in my life’s history. I decided to go in. I slid through the broken fence and slowly walked towards the hospital entrance. My brother was already making his way in.

I called for him to wait up. He led the way as we made our way through the littered ruins, banned from visitors.

There was noticeable paraphernalia of others making the same journey as we had: strewn-about empty beer cans, potato chip bags, and discarded packs of cigarettes. www.themodern.us

We came upon a particularly creepy part of the hospital as we turned another crumbled corner and felt a ghostly chill in the air. We both felt it. I looked straight up and could have sworn I felt some sort of

energy hovering in the air above me.

“This is it,” my brother said. I agreed, with chills running up my spine as he pulled out the joint we had prepared earlier. We had a seat on the rubble and contemplated its collapse upon us and thought about what a glorious death it would be to die in that spot, while smoking with the for-sure ghosts that were chillin’ with us at the moment. They could just take us right there and no one would ever know what happened to us.

Then the paranoia set in. I didn’t want to die right there and then. What were we doing, sitting in this haunted hospital anyway, at dusk, waiting for our new friend, Death, to change his mind and decide to kill us? Freaked out, my brother and I quickly left the hospital as darkness was creeping in through the skyline across the river. Outside the first fence, we made the mistake of turning back to look at the hospital one last time, and that set our brisk walk, away from our possible graves of a moment ago, into a full on blazing run.

So anyway, yeah, we both made it out alive.

Desiree Dymond is a model, singer/ songwriter and blogger residing in New York City.

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dig this dvd

The Munsters: The Complete First Season 1964 (Universal–2004)

Mockingbird Lane mocks suburban conformity.

By Ronald Sklar Other than the Seavers on Growing Pains, was there ever a more shockingly grotesque suburban TV family than the Munsters? America’s automatic response, of course, is The Addams Family, but don’t even go there. Sure, the Addams were creepy, kooky and altogether ooky, but they were far from grotesque. The Addams were harder to peg: were they simply bohemian? Were they otherworldly, or just bafflingly eccentric? The Addams were a puzzlement — the Munsters didn’t hint, nudge or snap their fingers cryptically — they were the real deal.

Not to deny Gomez and Morticia

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their props. Although the Addams did what they could to give a very-much-needed “up yours” to conformity, it was the Munsters who turned the kitchen table on boring-as-white-bread breeder comedy and knocked it on its fat ass. Their first season is now available on DVD, with all 38 (count ’em! 38!) episodes of sheer brilliance (including the neverbefore-seen, thirteen-minute pilot, in color, originally meant only for network executives!).

It is an understatement to say that screening these episodes in adulthood is even more joyous and meaningful than the hours you spent as a youth watching them on UHF. The passage of time has only served to deepen the meaning of what it’s like to be the odd man out and not give a shit.

The amazing performance of Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster (a role he went to his grave regretting) is literally breathtaking. His body language, keen sense of ironic humor and perfect delivery of ghoulish one-liners in a child-like, alive manner should be a vital visual aid of acting coaches until the end of time. His ability to make comedy happen while handicapped by major-league movie makeup and prosthetics is an under-appreciated miracle; his comic timing is as perfect as a Swiss clock. Gwynne’s story is a sad one: the actor is so damn good that he is literally trapped in the role (however, toward the end of his life, he was able to find his big footing again, particularly as the judge in the excellent My Cousin Vinny).

Yvonne DeCarlo, as wife Lily, reportedly took the job only because www.themodern.us

she needed the money, but made the character work because she didn’t camp it up. Despite the wig, the makeup and the get-up, she played the role straight, and she worked a marvel. Al Lewis, as Grandpa, made use of 1001 facial expressions, and nobody seemed to purely enjoy working a role and living it for years afterward as much as Lewis. To watch an actor this good relish a role that delicious does your heart good.

Of course, we never quite know what Grandpa is: werewolf? Dracula? Usually, the description changed to fit the content of the episode (and while we’re at it, why did Lily call her own father “Grandpa?”).

The seemingly uncomplicated role of Marilyn (played for the first lucky thirteen episodes by Beverly Owen and then taken to the finish line by Pat Priest) is thought provoking. We all appreciate the irony that Marilyn is the “plain, awkward one,” but the actual character herself is so breathtakingly exquisite, so loyal and true, that we can’t help but stare and be distracted by her perfection.

The one weak link in the series is that the writers never really gave Marilyn enough to do; situations featuring her at the center would have been the most fascinating — far more interesting than her dates scrambling over the wall and into their cars after glimpsing Uncle Herman. Unfortunately, all Marilyn has to do in most cases is say, “What do you mean, Aunt Lily?” or “Why do you say that, Uncle Herman?” Sadly, her psychology would have been the most intriguing to unravel, but it was unexplored.

We see less of Eddie (underplayed nicely by Butch Patrick) than we may have remembered as children.

He actually logged very little screen time (probably due to child labor laws), and his character was almost an afterthought. However, his total idolization of his father, whom he adoringly called “Pop,” made for a sweetness that is all but gone from the current TV landscape. Actually, his lack of pretension is refreshing, especially when compared to today’s TV childwww.themodern.us

monsters, most of whom are far less realistic and far more unappealing than Eddie could ever be.

The razor-sharp depiction of an oddball-butoblivious family stuck in a Pleasant Valley Sunday in Status Symbol Land still ferments like a fine wine.

The roadblocks that you think will stand in your way of pure, unadulterated enjoyment only serve to enhance your experience: black and white broadcasts, a generic laugh track, awkwardly re-recorded dubs when the actors are outside, stale references to Sonny Liston, Pat Boone, and Richard Burton, the occasional Lucy-type schtick-ala and the depressing set won’t get in your way.

You only have to hear Lily say, “Herman is the level-headed one in the family,” or Herman say, “People are dying to get in [to the funeral parlor]. It’s because of their new layaway plan,” or Grandpa say, “There is no sense in putting the hearse before the horse,” and you know that you’re home again, at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

It’s prime-time Poe. By 1964, the year both The Munsters and The Addams Family debuted, there was nowhere else for the nuclear family to go on television. After more than ten years of befuddled dads mistakenly eating the pie that was meant for the bake sale, America had had it (both on TV and off). Little did they know that the culture itself was about to shift into overdrive, much like the wicked Munstermobile (half hearse and half hot rod). Little did Middle America know that neighbors far weirder and more macabre than the Munsters were about to move next door, but the simmering of revolution got its start on national television. Most of the results of the cultural change didn’t make it onto the network schedule for another ten years, but the seeds were already planted on the wild side: cuddly castaways, oil-rich hillbillies, identical cousins, and suburban witches, genies and Martians were passively-aggressively subversive. Ozzie and Harriet, Hazel, the Andersons and Donna Reed were given their walking papers. It was now midnight on TV, ruled October 2012 | The Modern

dig this dvd by the occult. Unfortunately, the basic plot lines did not change — the bake sale pie was still eaten by mistake, only now it was done with special effects.

Ironically, The Munsters was brought to us by the good folks who created the most mainstream of all TV families: the Cleavers of Leave It to Beaver.

However, this isn’t so difficult to comprehend. Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly, who once gave us June Cleaver vacuuming in her pearl necklace and evening dress, now served up Lily Munster vacuuming with the dust coming out of the vacuum cleaner. That writing and production team must have relished every minute of it, giving the middle class the middle finger. And how refreshing it must have been to see a family that consisted of mom, dad, son, niece and grandfather. Hard to believe these days, but a family

before they were stars

Yep, that’s Nick Nolte Hey, a dude has to make a living.

In 1972, Nick Nolte picked up some modeling jobs while waiting for his big break, which would surely come. Here, he’s pimping for h.i.s jeans, and for Clairol’s Summer Blonde (nod your head to a stillunknown Sigourney Weaver, sitting next to him and almost as blonde.

It really works!). Like all of us, Nick can take a good picture as well as a bad one (but we won’t run his mug shot).

The Modern | October 2012

dynamic like that actually contributed to the Munsters’ weirdness back then. Still, as “frightening” as the Munsters were supposed to be, their use of polite language and good manners is more shocking by today’s standards than their mere appearance.

Their language is filled with pleasantries you almost never hear anymore, including “Good day,” “I beg your pardon,” “Pardon me,” “I’m terribly sorry,” and “charmed to make your acquaintance.” The fact that this type of respect is all but gone from today’s world (both on TV and off) is the scariest fact of all.

Controversial subjects were still taboo on TV at this time, but Mosher and Connelly were still able to sneak in a few zingers: when Leo Durocher watched Herman hit a baseball about eight miles, he said, “I don’t know whether to sign him with the Dodgers or send him to Vietnam.” And when Herman lost his job at the funeral parlor, Grandpa told him, “You should be on Skid Row, but with President Johnson wiping out poverty, you’ve got nowhere to go.” Sexual innuendo was light years away from TV comedy, but the widow Cartwright next door (played by Jean Willes) seemed to get her freak on for Herman once the initial fright wore off. We can only imagine what went on in that lonely mind of hers.

The series was often enlightened by TV’s dependables, including Paul Lynde as the nearsighted Dr. Dudley, Harvey Korman and Gavin MacLeod (appearing more than once in various roles), and a one-time but mind-blowing performance by powerhouse actor John Carradine as Mr. Gateman, the owner of the funeral home in which Herman worked. Also in the first season was the classic episode in which The Standells performed at a beatnik party. (No surprise here that The Standells are considered the grandpappies of punk rock, making themselves right at home on Mockingbird Lane.)

Upon their departure, they say to the Munsters, “We really dig you people,” and Grandpa replies, “Someday, we’ll return the favor.”

Lily, at first, was not hep to the fact that The Standells were their guests. She confides worriedly to Herman, “What will the neighbors think when they see all these weird people coming and going from this house?” Continuing her lack of openness to change, she says to Herman upon entering a nightclub, “Let’s hope it’s not one of those beatnik joints.

If there is anything I can’t stand, it’s weird people!”

Of course, the funniest part of any Munsters episode is the very end of the closing credits, which features the hilarious disclaimer “any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”

Bullshit. The Munsters are us. www.themodern.us

Jay S. Jacobs

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Boomboxes Now what you hear is not a test.

By Jay S. Jacobs Whoever it was who said that size doesn’t matter obviously never had a boombox.

In the world of ghetto blasters, size was all that mattered. It was sort of like the urban equivalent of what an SUV is to suburban family men now — music as a symbolic penis substitute. The bigger one you have, the more you are gonna rock people’s worlds.

Even the various nicknames for this fairly innocuous piece of stereo equipment were surprisingly aggressive and testosterone-charged. Boombox. Ghetto Blaster.

JamBox. The Brixton Briefcase. Okay, maybe not that last one, although with a little imagination that could be an interesting stage-name for a British professional wrestler.

The first boomboxes came in 1969 courtesy of Philips Electronics, the Nederlands-based manufacturer that is still huge in the home entertainment field. Philips unleashed the boombox with the non-threatening moniker “Radiorecorder.” When the radiorecorder was released, its selling point wasn’t the ability to blast a city block with thumpin’ bass; the real big deal for it was that it was the first time that people could tape record from the radio without a bunch of cables.

By the early Seventies, the boombox had caught on in Japan, but again it was not for the reason that the boombox eventually kicked it. For the Japanese, size did matter, and they liked the ability to get high quality sound in a relatively small package.

The boombox immigrated to the US in the midSeventies as Panasonic, JVC, Marantz, Sony, Sharp and GE all jumped to the new technology. They exploded in urban areas like New York, LA, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington and Philly. The boombox had an additional selling point for the stoops of the ’hood, they were relatively compact, very loud and ran on batteries (often as many as ten D batteries). That lack of an electrical outlet and plug was huge for outdoor use.

As soon as they became urban status symbols, they became more complex, more powerful and just plain bigger. All down the streets you could pass a group of lazing teens, pounding the bass at volumes that could make your fillings hurt. Finally, there was a way to forcibly impose your musical tastes on your whole neighborhood. The kids were over the moon.

But, like so many technological love stories, the www.themodern.us

world’s affair with the mighty boombox ended badly. A perfect storm of opposing forces conspired to end the ghetto blaster’s brief reign as King of all stereo equipment. The Bose Company created and perfected much smaller, high-quality speakers. The cassette format died out due to the popularity of the CD and eventually digital downloads. Also, the fact that they were extremely popular in black and Hispanic communities (thus the Ghetto Blaster moniker) made the authorities a little twitchy. A boombox could draw a potentially unruly crowd, so city governments started banning them in public places.

Then Apple introduced the iPod and put the final nail in the boombox’s coffin.

However, for a brief shining moment, the boombox was a beacon and a symbol of musical dominance. And a symbolic penis substitute.

Jay S. Jacobs is the author of the books Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits and Pretty Good Years: A Biography of Tori Amos. He is also senior editor and founder of the pop culture web magazine www.popentertainment.com.

October 2012 | The Modern

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_C9vGEJXTU America Needs Dick! That’s the urgent message that influential superstar Jackie Gleason has for us in 1968. For all his money and success, Gleason is concerned where the country is going in the next four years.

Little did he know that before Nixon’s term was up, the Watergate scandal would cause the president (of whom Gleason speaks so highly) to resign in disgrace. In the meantime, though, Gleason has us convinced, hogtied and happy. Vote for Nixon, and in ’69, we’re going to the moon. Bang, zoom!

Ronald Sklar