|
 June 3, 1998 In this issue: |
 Chance
the Gearhead As
it is in Heaven Five
of a Kind Bellbottom
Robotics Manifest
Density |
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So
Ana Voog performed here
in Las Vegas two weeks ago - at the Luxor - but the Passenger can't
be bothered with her canny mix of face paint, nudity and pithy pop-techno,
alluring as it may be to the average male child. However, between
almost listening to Voog, seeing the trailers for that new Jim Carrey
flick over and over, and hearing an interview with that brazen JenniCam
diva on NPR, the swanky gearheads of Department Lemur are firmly convinced:
we need live cameras to document our lives, around the clock. See
us dispatching the Nerf Cannon at our rivals! Mixing our microbrew
with the requisite antifreeze! While admiring the cut of our collective
jib! I'll just bang out this pop culture report while they measure
my head, to see if it'll fit on your rinky-dink monitor. |
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I
WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER
It's amazing: even when confronted with the mysteries of the universe,
we still want to know where the bathroom is. Ask
An Astronaut puts the question to such galactic high-rollers
as Buzz
Aldrin and Story
Musgrave, with predictable results ("The details are left
to the imagination, but there's really nothing gory in the reality,"
says Aldrin. "Sort of like a long camping trip, you're glad to have
a hot shower at the end"). James
Lovell discusses the truthful particulars of the Apollo
13 mission versus Hollywood's version, Kathyrn
Thornton details the dangers and pleasures of an average
spacewalk and Ronald
Parise thinks of taking his family along on his next trip
out. Photos and movie files round out what is probably the most
informative space-exploration site out there. |
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WE
ARE FAMILY
Hey ladies! The Parker
Quintuplets may very well be the girls of the Passenger's
dreams: they love Sly and The Family Stone, collect stock photography,
know lots of cool drink recipes, hate Richard Dreyfuss and have
a good bead on what makes the universe tick. The Spice Sibs? Bite
your tongue clean off. Just a quick trip through the deliciously
individual worlds of Kate,
Jane,
Eve,
Doris
and Juliet
will put a grin on your face that no force on this planet could
remove. And the best thing about the Parker Quints? They only exist
in the mind of one fabulous human being, Emi
Guner, who is either a storybook whiz-kid or a textbook
schizophrenic. Either way, the Passenger is thoroughly charmed and
hazy, gin-enhanced visions of Jane Parker will haunt my dreams hereafter. |
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THAT
CURRENT TASTE
The Moog
Cookbook takes all the overblown rock songs we've been forced
to endure since Nixon - everything from "Whole Lotta Love" to "Black
Hole Sun" - and reinterprets them on the glorious Moog sythesizer,
just as Walter (now Wendy) Carlos did with Bach back in the day.
Turning Boston's "More Than A Feeling" into a nutty rave number,
REM's "The
One I Love" into back-seat funk and Weezer's "Buddy Holly"
into something you can actually listen to was no mean feat, and
the Passenger is completely willing to acknowledge the spacesuit-garbed
duo as the new kings of space, time and all dimensions. This band
approximates the divine. No fooling. |
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CINEMA
PATHETIQUE
On "Attack of the 60-Foot Centerfold": "The sex part, Brobdingnagian implications aside, just isn't any good." On "Howard The Duck": "I'd like to say it worked better on paper ... Paper that someone spit on, tore in two, fed to a small Skipper Key and then was thrown, dog and all, into the heart of a nuclear furnace." The bent visionaries behind Oh The Humanity! The Worst Movies on Earth have actually watched these and hundreds of other stinkers. More than once. And kinda liked them. Speaking as someone who makes a point of watching crappy movies every Thursday, you need this site almost as much as you need Anthony Lane and Janet Maslin: even the absolute worst films of all time - like the "Bloodfist" series, this week's pick - have a curious poetry about them, a way of insinuating themselves into your cultural vernacular. Put that in your Merchant/Ivory and smoke it down to the filter. That's enough for now; my public awaits my streaming video debut. That clicking sound you hear is their teeth - they're shaking like a bunch of old drunks in giddy anticipation. By this time next week, I'll be on Letterman or I'll be incarcerated. Either way, I'll be seeing you! Cheers!
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