Knicks Pull Off Stunning Game 2 Finals Win

Rocky Allen RIP

Well, this is sad. Longtime radio DJ Rocky Allen has died at the age of 71.

Rocky was an old-school DJ who worked all over the country, eventually coming to the late 95.5 WPLJ FM in NYC in the early 1990s. Rocky had two stints at WPLJ in the 1990s and 2000s, and also did time on 77 WABC AM radio. He was a good natured, sweet man with a great voice.

And I worked for him! 

Well, not really -- in the summer of 1994 I was an intern at WPLJ (as I've blogged about before) and logged his show a few times. He was always very nice to me the few times we spoke and it was a good hang at his show. 

In fact, when I was logging his show, I met Pat Morita from the Karate Kid movie series. He was visiting the show one day to promote The Next Karate Kid and he shook my hand by saying "Hi, I used to be a movie star." Rocky and Pat talked about how Pat's new co-star, a young lady named Hillary Swank, was really talented -- and a few years later she'd win two Academy Awards. 

Another memory of working with Rocky Allen: the dude was funny, much funnier off the air than on. During commercial breaks and when songs were playing, he and the staff would tell wild, hilarious jokes and stories. I remember ...

... one of his producers telling us about going down to visit his girlfriend in Florida and found her banging another guy. 

... Rocky's sidekick, Blaine Ensley, looking at a newspaper and, referencing the then-Paula Jones lawsuit against then-President Clinton, asking me, "Do you think Bill showed that chick his weenie?" I had no answer for that nor did I think he really wanted one, although it was obviously a foreshadowing of things to come.

... and from Rocky himself. He once hosted a short salon with me and the guys in the studio about whether or not not "fat chicks" gave "better blow jobs." Rocky did not believe that weight was necessarily proportional to skill (and Rocky himself was very fat so he could and should have advocated for this "position") but the other guys were convinced -- overweight ladies were more talented at this particular activity. So these days, whenever I see fat ladies, I think of Rocky and the gang and smile.

RIP, Rocky. I'll miss 'ya. You were a mench

Culture Uncovered!

One of the reasons I love history is that it's the gift that keeps on giving. There's so much of it, and so much to learn, that as much as you know or think you know, there's always more .. and more ... and more ...

I love learning about people who lived in the past who might not have been the most famous and powerful people of their times but who nonetheless lead interesting lives that sometime intersected with history. And as we get older, we start to see how much of our lives have also, at very times, intersected with history. 

And sometimes history can be wacky ... literally.

Recently I came upon some cultural history that, for decades, has been suppressed but that recently has become freely available ... thanks to YouTube. And boy is it wacky! 

In 1975 the Maysles brothers made the classic documentary Grey Gardens about Edie and Edith Beale, the reclusive cousins of Jackie Kennedy who were living in squalor in the Hamptons. But it turns out that a couple years earlier, in 1972, Jackie Kennedy's sister Lee Radziweil and her then-boyfriend, the photographer Peter Beard, went out to the Hamptons to visit the Beales and filmed them.

The result was a documentary that came out in 2016 called That Summer, and it's a fascinating, new look at these two legendary eccentrics in a context that is both familiar from Grey Gardens yet also humanizes them more than that documentary did. This was a part of the past that we thought we knew but, once this footage was uncovered, we literally saw and learned even more about these two cultural icons. 

And then ... there's Martin Lawrence. Yes, in the early 1990s, Mr. Lawrence was the star of his hit sitcom Martin! and he was on top of the world. Naturally he was invited to host Saturday Night Live in 1994 and, uh, let's just say that he brought a bit of a "Def Comedy Jam" mentality to the whitest comedy show on TV. He did the usual monologue and it went off the rails when he started talking about the recent John Wayne Bobbit case (the guy who got his weiner cut off) and then it becomes about Mr Lawrence's beliefs about the important of feminine hygiene.

It was so raunchy that it was edited out of the West Coast broadcast and all subsequent broadcasts. But, uh, well, now we can see if for ourselves. And it's naaaaasty! But it's a piece of forgotten cultural history that is now uncovered (you can see the edited and unedited versions below).

By the way, the musical guest for Martin!'s episode was the Canadian band Crash Test Dummies. They had a huge hit at the time with the song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm", and it's a rather bizarre contrast to have had an aggressive black comedian host like Martin Lawrence with a superwhite band like Crash Test Dummies. 

While we rightly think we're living in bizarre times, when you uncover the cultural of the past, we should realize that the bizarreness was there all the time. 

Review: "The Rocky Horror Show"

Let me be honest: The Rocky Horror Show is not really my kind of show. I've seen the movie, and enjoyed it, but let's just say that I'm a Square and this is not a show for my kind. But when you have friends and family who are most definately not Squares, ya go.

And I did. And I enjoyed it!

Back up: both the show and the movie are the brainchild of a man named Richard O'Brien who wrote and first staged this show in 1973. The plot is about a young stranded couple who, on a dark and stormy night, knock on the door of a strange house and get sucked into a world that turns out to be ... otherwordly. Great songs, and tranvestites, and all sorts of funky stuff ensues and it's a great time.

Silly as the show is, this current new Broadway production is very well done -- especially Luke Evans as the mysterious Frank-n-footer and Stephanie Hsu as the impressionable young Janet. Rachel Dratch, once of SNL, is brilliant as the Narrator, and the whole case, you can tell, is just having a great time. 

The show is a wild good time -- even the audience gets into the act, and many were dressed as transvestites (!). So while The Rocky Horror Show ain't exactly  South Pacific or Gypsy or Hamilton, it's still a memorable classic, and this particular staging of it is very well done. 

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The Ed Sullivan Theater Goes Dark

Stephen Colbert signed off The Late Show last night and now, after 33 years, one of the big 11:30 PM talk shows is gone. I attended a taping of the show back in 2018 and blogged about it at the time.

It's sad to think that all of the talent and energy I saw that day is now gone. Colbert and this show deserved better but the monsters who now run CBS decided, in the most cowardly way possible, to censor him for political reasons.

So it goes.

The Late Show ran for all 33 years from The Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway and 53rd Street. The theater was, in many ways, the first sign of the theater district and the entire Times Square area. When you came upon it you it was like the theater was welcoming you to the cultural heart of NYC -- and America.

I didn't spend a lot of time in the theater district as a kid but I remember that when I was there I would pass The Ed Sullivan Theater which, at the time, had a big black and white marquee. It would announce various taping for various shows -- including the 1980s sitcom Kate & Allie. Often the theater would lie empty and it looked a little run down. It just seemed to sit there -- it's amazing history as the place where Ed Sullivan changed the culture with the Beatles and numerous other artists long in the past.

Then, in 1993, it found its second life.

David Letterman started The Late Show that year and it once again became a massive cultural hub, basically the nerve center for NYC cultural hub. I was in high school at the time and it was really exciting! The theater screamed "New York!" to the rest of America -- and the rest of America loved it. 

And now it's all over.

The Ed Sullivan Theater is once again just sitting there empty. It's gone dark. So far there are apparently now plans to use it for anything again. That would be tragic. It's a beautiful space in the heart of Manhattan and it let it wither would be criminals. But since our country is being run and owned by criminals, I don't hold out hope.

Light a candle for the Ed Sullivan Theater. It needs the love.

NYC: The Movie Theater

Summer in NYC is always busy and wild, lots always going on. But one of the best things is that there are lots of free outdoor movies all over the city that friends and family can enjoy.

The most famous one is the long-running free outdoor movies in Bryant Park: I've seen A Streetcar Named Desire, MASH, and others there since I was in high school.

But there's lots more free outdoor movies around town including in Central Park, Riverside Park, the Intrepid and the other four boroughs. It's a cornucopia of cinematic goodness. 

Here's a list of links to all outdoor movies around NYC this summer. All you need is a blanket and water -- and seeing a movie on the big screen with lots of your fellow New Yorkers is so much better than being alone with a streaming service!

LIRR Strike ... Over!