The biggest laughs coming out of Al Franken’s senate campaign aren’t coming from the candidate.

Franken is being attacked about “Porn-o-Rama!,” an eight-year old parody he wrote for Playboy about a fictional virtual reality sex research facility. Bestiality and three-ways are part of the studies.

I never read the story, but it can’t be as hilarious as the fake offense Franken’s fellow Minnesotan Rep. Keith Ellison claimed to take.

“I have to ask myself, can I explain it to my 11-year-old daughter? I’d have considerable difficulty,” Ellison told the Associated Press.

Really, Keith? If it ever came to that, I’d think you’d have a tougher time explaining to your little girl’s mother why you left your old Playboys out for the kid to read.

Dan Snyder’s wheezing theme park chain, Six Flags, has announced the lineup for its 2008 summer concert series.

There ain’t a Jonas Brothers in the bunch this year, but the biggest name is Good Charlotte, the Punk for Dummies act from nearby Waldorf, Md.

While their music, tattoos and makeup don’t set them apart, their offstage antics keep the Madden Brothers in the tabloids. Anybody who’s been in a grocery store checkout line knows that one Madden fertilized a Nicole Richie egg and the other is among Paris Hilton’s latest, um, true loves.

But the most interesting band for locals in the Six Flags roster is the Newsboys, a faded Christian rock act out of Tennessee.

Like the Maddens, it ain’t the music that keeps these ‘Boys interesting: The Newsboys record for InPop Records, a goody-two-shoes Nashville label that is quietly owned by goody-two-shoes ex-Redskins QB Mark Brunell.

Perhaps giving the Newsboys work is Snyder’s way of apologizing to Brunell for putting him out of it in March. In any case, it’s a good bet there will be zero overlap between the Good Charlotte and Newsboys crowds.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

You know the fifty-color fliers and postcards good neighbors leave on your windshield? The ones inviting you to those exclusive afterhours parties and special events? The ones that would make Luther Campbell nod in approval?

While I’m not sure who actually responds to this spam and goes to these things, I do know that they constitute an annoyance. How many of these cards have I tossed into the backseat of my car? Too many!

It’s not a shock that people have complained. Southwest residents have been up in arms over them for a while. They’ve started calling them “Booty Cards.” Kinda perfect.

And they got Councilmember Tommy Wells‘ attention. After months of effort, Wells—along with the D.C. attorney general’s office—has been able to at least banish one company from distributing them. Wells, in a press release, calls this a “partial victory” for Southwest residents—and D.C. citizens in general.

Although he considered them pornographic, Wells knew he couldn’t fight them on indecency issues. Instead, his office went after the company over the trash they produce. A smart move!

-”This is just one battle in a much larger effort,” explains Wells’ Chief of Staff Charles Allen.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re reading this blog post, we want to see you tomorrow night.

You’re invited to celebrate the Best of the Nation’s Capitol at Washington City Paper’s Best Of D.C. Ballot Party at Lounge 201.

Here’s what you get: Free drinks, free hors d’oeuvre, free conversation with other people who you may or may not like but you can at least make fun of. Plus: An opportunity to cast your votes for the best places and people in the DC Metro Area. Votes for the Best Of D.C. will be tallied on March 27th and the results will be showcased in the City Paper Best Of Issue, hitting newsstands April 18th! Best Of categories include Food and Drink, Arts and Entertainment, Goods and Services, and People and Places.

Categories, shmategories–just come and have a beer and exercise your right to vote.

Best Of D.C. Ballot Party
THIS THURSDAY! March 20th, 6-9p.m.
Lounge 201, 201 Massachusetts Ave. NE (at 2nd and D Street NE–one block from Union Station)

Free drinks!
Free food!
Free balloting!

or vote early online and have more time for the free drinks and food.

Questions? Email aaustin [at] washcp.com.
See you there.

After writing this week’s Cheap Seats column about the bizarre impact the movie “Remember the Titans” has had on the historical record of Alexandria, I came across a September 2000 story apparently from the L.A. Times posted on the personal website of Gregory Allen Howard. Howard is the screenwriter of “Titans,” and also the author of this L.A. Times piece, which goes over the process that led to the movie being made.

Howard’s script is uplifting and entertaining; his newspaper story is astonishingly wrong and phony. It’s full of errors so blatant that Howard, had he done even a fraction of the research he claims to have done before writing the “Titans” script, had to know they were errors as he was typing them into his L.A. Times piece. It’s as if he wrote the article to justify the historical inaccuracies in his movie.

Howard writes here that Alexandria consolidated “three segregated [high] schools…two black and one white” in 1971 and that George Washington and T.C. Williams High Schools were “all-black.” Wrong. All three of the city’s high schools were integrated , and majority white (Hammond overwhelmingly so) when the consolidation took place. And according to Alexandria school board’s statistics for the 1970-1971 school year, GW was 51.4 percent white/47.7 black; T.C. Williams 75.4 white/22.2 black.

The schools in the movie script, however, were all-black or -white.

Howard’s L.A. Times piece also asserts that racial unrest hit Alexandria in the summer of 1971 after a kid was murdered in an convenience store.

In real life, the shooting happened in the spring of 1970. The riots in Howard’s movie, however, happened in 1971.

Howard also wrote the script for “Glory Road,” a feature film allegedly about the 1966 NCAA basketball finals, which matched Kentucky and Texas Western. I’ve always been interested in that game, but never saw the movie. Now I’m scared to.

But it’s one thing to make things up for a script. Newspapering is allegedly a whole different ballgame. How did the L.A. Times let this crap run unchecked?

And what’s the statute of limitations on running corrections, anyway?

It’s probably a function of being exposed to Chariots of the Gods? at way too early an age, but I’ve always had a soft spot for conspiracy/occult/UFO crap. I’ve watched Loose Change at least twice, own a handful of Scientology texts, and have spent way too much time reading about Madame Blavatsky. One of my all-time favorite bookstores is Fields Book Store in San Francisco, which is stuffed with tomes on channeling, “I AM,” Eckankar, and every other stray bit of untraditional spiritual thinking you care to name. If you believe that Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard had aliens build the pyramids that will house the shadow government once the missiles launch on August 13 at midnight, Fields probably carries a couple of magazines on the subject.

I don’t believe in a bit of it, but I get suckered into this stuff the same way some folks fall for fantasy baseball, and for the past few months my crazy-talk needs have been well served by WUFO-TV (Ch. 49). Launched with little fanfare in November, the channel is, as founder Michael Gravino told DCRTV, a home for the “alternative knowledge genre featuring programming which comes to you direct from the authors, researchers, producers, and reporters.” In other words: low-quality video of UFO conferences featuring even lower-res images of alleged spacecraft.

And much more: Since the holidays I’ve processed a lot of information on crop circles, military testing facilities, revisited the rock-on-Mars-that-looks-like-a-dude’s-head theory a few more times, and heard an argument that a hieroglyph of a snake on the wall of a pyramid tunnel may, in fact, be an image of an early light bulb. (Centuries before Edison!) Tune in now: Coverage of NASA’s secret missions starts at 2:30 today.

I loved meeting and learning from cut man Chris Ray for a column I wrote for this week’s issue. Not only because he’s a swell guy and toils in a realm that fascinates me, but also because the conversations got me to seek out one of the most famous spilled-body-fluids clips in movie history: the “Cut me, Mick!” portion of the first and best chapter of the “Rocky” serial.

When it comes to jarring scenes from my ’70s adolescence, this one ranks right up there with the first shark attack in “Jaws” or the title character in “Carrie” taking a bucket of blood on prom night or poor Linda Blair throwing up on a poorer priest in “The Exorcist.”

It all seems so cartoony now…

Now, they’re not. I think if they were a little less dorky, and threw cooler parties, they might have a little more success.

Compare photos from last weekend’s dork fest throw-down, The Final Countdown: Ended of an Error (Heh, heh. Get it?) …

…to my old man’s mug shut.

Antonio Valdez was a student activist and a protester, and he dated some foxy ladies (including my mom). His parties in Portland in the late 60s and 70s were legendary, and perhaps notorious. I’m horrified, of course. But I have to admit he’s cooler than this guy.

If you’re like me, the holiday season can get pretty stressful. Sure, social gatherings are fun, but trying to make chit-chat with all those family members, business contacts, and new acquaintances can be a real chore. Not this year. A friend of mine picked up a fun little ice-breaker at a church rummage sale that might help us out. I give you “Ungame”:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve exhausted myself trying to facilitate polite conversation between children, gray-haired women, and mustachioed dudes in vests. Thank goodness for Ungame. Shall we play? Go on, you start. Yes, you in the vest. Pick a card:

Thanks for sharing. That was fun, non-threatening, and non-competitive. And don’t we all know a little bit more about hitchhiking now?

Hey, little one, it’s your turn. Go on:

Hmm. Well, that’s a little bit heavy, isn’t it? Why don’t we just put that card back in the deck. Maybe we’ll tackle that one later, once you find out what “suicide” means. Go on, Grandma, it’s your turn. Tell us:

That’s certainly topical. It’s alright, pick again. With Ungame, there are oodles of topics to choose from. How about this one:

I suppose there’s no harm in rehashing the will again, just to be sure. Oh, don’t feel down, Grandma. It’s just a game. Pick again:

Thanks for playing, Grandma. What do you say we pull one last card and call it a day?

I think we all learned a lot about each other today.

In September, Brad Pitt visited the Washington Post’s newsroom apparently to research his upcoming role in the Washington investigative reporters drama “State of Play.” Then, around Thanksgiving, he dropped out of the film, which is also set to star Edward Norton, Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman and Robin Wright Penn. Well, according to Variety, Russell Crowe has just stepped into Pitt’s old role. Here’s the film’s synopsis: “Crowe will play a politico-turned-journalist who spearheads his newspaper’s investigation into a killing that leads to a fast-rising pol (Norton). The journalist faces two conflicts: he once ran campaigns for the pol and was his confidante; the journalist develops a romance with the pol’s estranged wife (Wright Penn).”

Tyler Green’s excellent Modern Art Notes points to an interesting post at daddytypes.com, in which Greg Allen describes a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art with his three-year-old daughter. There, they collide with a docent attempting to explain Clyfford Still’s painting 1951-N to a group of middle-schoolers:

“Who wonders why this is here? Who wonders why it’s even art?” She waits and waits for sheepish hands to keep rising.

“Well, there are curators–do you know what that is? art experts who study and know what art is important enough to be in a museum–curators and art historians and other experts who say this is art, and even if it doesn’t look like it’s about anything and it doesn’t make any sense, you just have to bear with it sometimes.

Allen blows a gasket about all this, finding this attitude destructive to inquisitive minds. But though the docent’s shut-up-and-take-it condescension is clear, this attitude routinely gets dispensed to adults too, even by Smart People. Over the weekend, NPR’s All Things Considered featured a brief story on James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in which poet Paul Muldoon argued, in essence, that you may as well give up trying to understand the damn thing and just try to appreciate it as a sort of music. Why it’s OK to just bear with it with Finnegan’s Wake but not with Still isn’t quite clear to me, but then I haven’t pondered either very closely.

Maybe this is just the tyranny of the middlebrow, but Muldoon and that docent were at least engaging with the art in question. Howard Stern, however, recently reacted to avant-jazz as if he’d just touched a hot stove. And then called in his buddies to make wisecracks about how fuckin’ stupid the fuckin’ stove is.

The Silverdocs festival just announced that next year’s festival will take place between June 16 and June 23—two days longer than this year’s event. That’s more dates, but not more documentaries. The press release explains:

SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival announced today the expansion of the Festival by two days and the addition of venues to meet demand for SILVERDOCS offerings following last year’s higher demand for shows and increase in industry participation. The Festival will run from Monday, June 16 through Monday, June 23, increasing from a six-day to an eight-day event, with the last day ‘Best of the Fest’ screenings to provide passholders and local audiences an additional opportunity to catch the award winners and most popular films. SILVERDOCS will continue to program 100 documentaries, but the number of screenings per films in the program will increase.

On Sunday, Mark Opsasnick spoke at Cameron Perks Coffeehouse about his latest book, The Lizard King Was Here: The Life and Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia, concerning the dead Doorsman’s school days at George Washington High School. Three of Jimbo’s classmates showed up to testify: Randy Maney, Bill Thomas, and Stan Durkee.

Randy called Morrison a “great writer”; Stan called him a “great intellectual.” But among such revelations that Morrison “hated rock ‘n’ roll” as a teen—preferring poetry and Kerouak Kerouac, and opted for thriftwear as opposed to the “Gant shirt” crowd—Bill Thomas related an alarming tale of a Morrison encounter—in 1991.

While taking his son Brian to baseball camp in Arizona, father and son stopped at a cafe in Flagstaff that curiously featured a photo of Morrison in its ad. Mentioning his personal connection to the rock god apparently freaked the waitress out, for she immediately left and surreptitiously made a phone call. Moments later, a hairy, shaggy, bum-like personage slipped quietly into the cafe and sat in the booth behind the Thomas’ with his back to Bill. Son Brian insisted that it was Morrison. Bill resisted turning around, and when he did—the ghost was gone.

Though Bill Thomas offered the tale somewhat reluctantly and with a shrug, as if he didn’t really believe it, he says his son still insists the apparition was Morrison. The story does give hope to those who have kept the Doors on the charts 36 years after the “official” death. (To that end, Rhino has just released yet another best-of collection.)

If true, it could be bad news for the Soft Parade. But you can still get your Lizard King fix when “the world-famous Doors tribute show” plays the State Theater this Friday, Oct. 5.

CORRECTION: Due to an error by poster Dave Nuttycombe, this post originally mispelled the name of Jack Kerouac.

These are pictures of my sister on her way to her senior prom. (Go, Richard Montgomery Rockets!) Why she wore her hair that way I don’t know. (She’s not happy that I found the photo.) It was certainly not her usual style. I don’t think it was anybody’s style.

Until May of 1977, when Star Wars debuted at the Uptown Theater. My sister graduated in 1972. Obviously, the character of Princess Leia was inspired, in part, by Patti Nuttycombe.

For more evidence, let’s turn to page 146 of the paperback edition of Dale Pollack’s biography Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, the Creator of Star Wars:

“George had been waiting since childhood to see a romantic-fantasy-adventure story set in a distant time and place….When he finished editing American Graffiti in February 1972, Lucas went right to work on his idea.”

So the script began the same year as the photo. Interesting, yes? I’m still investigating how Lucas or designer Ralph McQuarrie found their way to a high school in Rockville. Perhaps they were searching for Dagobah locations. Maybe Patti’s date, Dave Traynor, gave them a tip. Haven’t seen him around lately. But, really, the picture speaks for itself. Ipso facto, case closed.

So, George, reach into that big bag of money you sit on all day while you’re dreaming up new ways to ruin the franchise and toss some coins this way. Don’t make me get out the pictures of my slow cousin, Binks.

For those of you who’ve tired of reading the re-hashed rehashings of last night’s hookups on Late Night Shots, I offer an end-of-summer pick-me-up from New York City: Park Avenue Peerage. The blog is the unlikely product of James Kurisunkal, a college freshman from the Chicago burbs who began cataloging the photos and antics of the New York deb set before he’d even set foot in the city. Now, of course, he’s a media darling, with an internship at New York magazine and a kiss on the cheek from a real life deb.

The gossip reported on the website is impressive in its detail and insiderishness. But all the minutia makes my ears bleed. Do I really care that Dabney Mercer, an ascendent socialite, gets jokingly called a “shiksa” by her friends since she’s dating a Jew?As usual, the comments are the real gold.

And, I must say, these pampered ladies look better than the booze-glowing blondes on LNS.