If you were a teenager in the early 1990s like moi, you remember the 1992 "classic" movie Encino Man. It was one of those very stupid movies about stupid people doing stupid things that were popular at the time, and all of them seemed to end with lots of people dancing en masse.
Anyway, thirty-one years later, two of its stars have just won Oscars, so it's a good time to remember one of its other big stars, the brilliant comedian Pauly Shore.
Obviously, I'm joking; Pauly Shore's "comedy" was less than brilliant -- then or now -- but, in the early 1990s, Shore had a movie career and his brand of creepy weirdo humor had a moment -- although today it would get you "cancelled" much like Shore's movie career has been since roughly 1996.
And what would REALLY get you cancelled today is this interview Pauly Shore gave with a now-defunct movie magazine in 1994, at the height of his brief stardom. I found it courtesy of previous Mr NYC interviewee Lebeau's Le Blog -- and some of the stuff Shore says in this interview makes you wonder why every women alive isn't a radical militant feminist who wants to kill all men. After reading this interview I wanted to become such a person!
Here are some of Mr Shore's lovely gems about the fairer gender in this interview:
“Girls, basically, run this town because they have the pussy. Especially the hot chicks."
“Now, at a club or something, you’re just gonna meet girls that you fuck … You give them your number, they come over late, they blow you. You fuck them. Whatever. Girls are not gonna be attracted to me necessarily by my looks, but because I’m smart, nice, and sensitive to them. Ninety-nine percent of guys are assholes who treat women very mean.”
“Every girl that I have gone out with has come from a very similar background: all from shitty homes, who don’t know what they want out of life. I keep ’em up, take care of ’em. Kind of a father figure, but these girls are so fucked up. And then, I’m stuck with this baggage on my shoulders.”
“See, guys just like to fuck and get sucked off by hot chicks.”
I told my wife about this and she, quite rightly, said that it was a shtick that was popular at the time (she's the same age as me) but that obviously doesn't hold up today. But for some reason, seeing two of Pauly Shore's co-stars triumph on Oscar night, I couldn't help wondering about their other former co-star who will probably never win an Oscar and what they'd think about his "comedy."
If you scan the NYC radio dial and hit 105.9 FM, you'll land on the city's only classical music station WQXR 105.9 FM. But for nearly 80 years its home was a little further down at 96.3 FM. Back in 2009, when this blog was about 2 1/2 years old, I chronicled the station's historic move up the dial due to its change in ownership.
Between 1944 and 2009 WQXR was owned by The New York Times as a commercial entity. Not only did the station play classical music but it was, as you might imagine, heavy with news. In between the sonatas and interludes, symphonies and overtures, concertos and chamber music -- the whole array of the classical music cannon -- there would be news delivered directly by Times reporters. The station was a high-class, uber-sophisticate mixture of beautiful music and substantive infotainment.
My dad used to listen to this station all the time, and I was introduced to all sorts of great music that a kid my age might otherwise not be exposed to. The hosts were amazing as well: amongst them, Robert Sherman, June LaBelle, and the afternoon guy, a very funny man called Lloyd Moss stood out (he used to joke, during traffic reports, how there was always some overturned tractor trailer in the report that someone must be moving it around the city). There were also lots of special music programs like "First Hearing" (where original recordings of classical music would be played) or "Woody's Children" (which Sherman hosted and that played folk music) or live broadcasts from Symphony Space and the Metropolitan Operas on Saturday afternoons.
As a commercial station, WQXR played ads but they were ads made especially for WQXR. They were very well-produced, and I remember ads for champagne like Veuve Cliquot or B. Smith's or Broadways shows like "Six Degrees of Seperation" or "On Borrowed Time" or high-class restaurants like the long-gone Le 1900.
Then there was the news.
I remember that every morning before I went to school, my dad would be listening to the news on WQXR and there was a special segment called "The Washington Report", a phoned-in segment by R.W. Apple Jr., the Times' long-serving Washington correspondent. (I remember right after the 1992 election, Apple talking about how the Republicans now had "re-find" themselves after their defeat, much like the Democrats in the 1980s.) At 6 PM every night there was a 45-minute news show called "New York At 6" where there would be a 10 minute national report, a 10 minute "metropolitan report" (i.e. local report), and then various Times' critics would do reports on things like theater (Frank Rich), restaurants (Brian Miller), movies (Janet Maslin) and others. My mom would usually be making dinner during "New York At 6" so I'll always associate this program with the smells of cooking. I also remember that each program would start with the announcer stating very proudly, "THIS ... IS ... NEW YORK ... AT SIX!" followed by swelling and soaring music. At 9 PM each night a reporter would then read the headlines from the front page of the next day's Times, a few hours before the paper would hit the streets. Remember, this was before the Internet or social media so broadcasting the next's days headlines was actually a big deal.
WQXR also had an AM station. During the week WQXR AM would split off and broadcast a cooking show, a story hour, and a odd comedy show form the BBC called "My Music." You can hear all about that here:
The station was a real jewel.
But then, in 2009, as the financial crises and vagaries of the newspaper business bore down on the Times, the "paper of record" decided to sell WQXR. The powerhouse public radio station WNYC decided to buy it and then turned it into the non-commercial entity it is today, moving it up the dial to 105.9 FM. So the good news is that WQXR still exists and NYC has a thriving classical music station. But the old WQXR 96.3, the WQXR of my childhood that was so great, is long-gone. Here you can listen to its sign-off and remind yourself that, in NYC, everything always changes eventually.
Last year I interviewed the great entertainment blogger Lebeau of Lebeau's Le Blog.
Little did I know then that Mr. Lebeau had never been to NYC before but, recently, he made his first trip to our fair city and, as always, he blogged about it brilliantly. Read it about here!
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and Pete Seegar taught us well: "To everything there is a season ... a time to live, and a time to die ... a time to break down, and a time to build up ... a time to mourn, and a time to dance ... a time to keep, and a time to cast away ... and a time to every purpose ... turn, turn, turn ..."
The yin and yang, the ups and downs, the hopes and dreams realized and dashed, the constant churn -- or turn -- of existence is something that you only begin to fully appreciate as you age. Life is never a permanent up or down escalator. In fact, as we get older, accepting this constant "to everything there is a season" fact of life -- and not just accepting but cherishing it -- is what makes the craziness and vicissitudes of aging bearable.
It's a basic tenet of survival -- things happen, things change, sometimes for better, often for worst, but they are inevitable. Accepting them with grace is a greater part of wisdom.
Of course, in this day and age, there are lots of people who either can't or won't accept what the Bible and our greatest folk singer taught us. They go in the opposite direction -- trying hopelessly, miserably, quixotically to reclaim their youths, reclaim their pasts, reclaim times gone by. They express this in both harmless and harmful ways, like reveling in cultural nostalgia (harmless) or voting for Trump (harmful). F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about this yearn for regression in his last, brilliant line of The Great Gatsby: "So beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
In NYC, we see this "turn" all the time, in ways both big and small. Concurrently, we also see the desire, in varying ways, to recapture the city's past.
For example, the neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn: this area has a rather bi-polar identity, as both the ultimate liberal hipster mecca and the home to the very conservative Orthodox Jewish community. But did you know there is highly Italian part of it? It's fading away, and the people there seem to accept that their neighborhood and the times have changed, as this article and its amazing photographs demonstrate.
Two recent deaths also show how people in our past made the city's present and future turn for the better. I love reading about New Yorkers like this because, without them, our city and its culture would be poorer. Genevieve Oswald created and curated the dance archive at the public library for more than 40 years. And Henry Stern was the Parks Commissions off and on for almost 20 years (from 1983-2001), the longest serving and probably most imaginative commissioner since Robert Moses.
*Side note: I tried interviewing Henry Stern for this blog several years ago. I emailed him at an organization he ran, and got a rather weird message in reply that I didn't understand -- it wasn't an outright rejection but it certainly didn't read like an acceptance. It was more like, "If you call this number, something might happen but don't expect it." I never did call. His was one of a few interviews that just never quite happened.
Anyway, they were both great New Yorkers, they made it "turn" for the better. May they RIP.
Moving on ...
I was a teenager in NYC in the 1990s. As much as I'd like to say it was a special time and place to be young, it sure didn't feel that way at the time. Honestly, I was a complete loser (unlike now, where I'm only a partial loser), and back then I had no money, no girlfriends, few real friends, and lots of school work. Le ugh.
However, as the 21st century so far has given us 9/11, two endless wars, more and more mass shootings, more and more man-made natural disasters, the financial crises, and Trump, it's easy to look at the last decade of the 20th century as some of kind of "end of innocence" even though it really wasn't. In recent years, there have been movies about being a teenager in the 1990s, both in NYC and elsewhere, including The Wackness from 2008 and more recently one called Landline (I actually went to high school with the person who made it but didn't know her). This article is about these movies and their 1990s nostalgia is both misplaced and yet totally understandable (also, this year is the 30th anniversary of the classic NYC romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally which, in many ways, was a '90s movie even though it came out in the last year of the 1980s).
Things in NYC and the world have "turned" since the 1990s -- in some ways for better (the smartphone, the smoking ban, lower crime, Barack Obama) and, obviously, for worse. I know for me things have actually "turned" for the better, but even I sometimes looked back misty-eyed at the Clinton era.
And in understanding how the times "turn", no New Yorker explains not only history but power -- and how people in power made history -- than Robert Caro. Author of the Robert Moses tome The Power Broker and the Lyndon Johnson series, Caro has just published a book about his working life (literally titled Working). His advice to aspiring historians? "Turn every page." Turn over the pages, the materials, the people, the metaphorical rocks of the past to understand how our present was formed and how we are forming our future.
NYC, like the world it exists in, turns forever -- and it is we who do the turning.
I just finished the fourth season of the Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle -- a wonderful comedy about the classical music world of NYC -- and was saddened to find out that this season is the last.
Amazon cancelled the show last month -- along with lots of others.
I didn't blog a lot about this show but it was an incredibly funny and warmhearted look at an industry (classical music) struggling to survive in the crazy world of 21st century culture and NYC. The characters were wonderfully realized, the writing was sharp, the stories were heartfelt, and it was a great look at a slice of life, a little world, in NYC. It was a show about artists, people who love what they do, and are willing sacrifice for it. It was a show about triumphs, disappointments, love, and everything else. It was wonderful.
Most of all, it featured Bernadette Peters and Malcom McDowell, still going strong after decades in show business. It had a great cast.
And now it's gone.
It's gone because Amazon, after firing its previous programming chief in a #MeToo moment, hired a new person who's decided to cancel shows like Mozart (small, sophisticated boutique shows about real people and their struggles) in order to spend roughly a $1 billion to re-imagine Lord of the Rings. Apparently, Amazon wants its own Game of Thrones, its own Stranger Things, it's own big-time cultural buzzy hit. It wants a blockbuster.
Le sigh.
Forgive me, but can Amazon really do a better job with LOTR than Peter Jackson did with his movies? Does the culture really need or want this? And while I'm a HUGE fan of GOT and enjoy Stranger Things, I loved that Amazon had all these funky, small, literate shows -- like Mozart, Transparent and One Mississippi. These were original, groundbreaking, history-making shows, shows that truly pushed the art of television forward.
But business is business, and this was probably inevitable. Still, it's disappointing. So let's just appreciate that for a brief, shining moment there was a place where shows like this could thrive.
And, like all good things, like all great moments, they come to an end.
If you’re a pop culture junkie, then you probably have lots of varied, interesting, and odd questions about the movies, music, and TV you consume.
What happened to that great actress or actor? Was this movie a hit or a bomb? Did this movie win any big awards? Why was a sequel made to this – or not? Was this band a one-hit wonder?
That’s what makes Lebeau’s Le Blog so great – it’s a pop culture junkie’s dream, answering all these questions and lots, lots more. He takes popular culture and puts it into historical and social context, does deep dives into the careers of your favorite performers, and generally just has lots of fun telling us all about our favorite entertainment. His most popular feature is “What the Hell Happened to” where Lebeau reviews the ups and downs of the careers of actors and actresses that once burned bright, then dimmed. Another great one is “Nope Not a 1-Hit Wonder” which shows how impressive the careers of many so-called “one hit wonders” truly were.
It’s a fun, great blog and LeBeau was kind enough to answer Mr NYC’s questions about his blog and pop culture – and how #MeToo is changing both. He also tells us about some of his own personal favorite pop culture. Briefly, tell us about Lebeau's Le Blog and what inspired its creation? Where did you get the cool name for it? I had been blogging for quite a while before I started Le Blog. It was something I fell into by accident. Even before I knew what a blog was, I maintained a website and contributed to other sites. Basically, it was an extension of my hobbies. I started my first blog to promote a project I was working on with some other guys. The project was my idea, but the blog wasn't. It was completely new territory for me at the time and I had no intention of continuing the blog after the project was over. That project caught the attention of a guy who was starting a comic book blog and he asked me to be a contributor. I said "why not?" and spent a few years writing about comic books for his site. As it turns out, the founder eventually left the blog and we contributors took it over.
After I had my kids, my entertainment budget shrank ‘cause I had to pay for things like diapers and daycare. Comics books are an expensive hobby, but they have nothing on kids. Since I wasn't reading comic books any more, I really didn't have much to contribute to that site. So I thought about starting up my own blog to talk about my other interests. I played around with some names, but I really couldn't come up with anything I liked very much. I decided just to call it what it was. For readers who knew me from the sites I had contributed to, this was my blog. Part of that came from the fact I had no real plan for what the blog would be about. All I knew was that it was mine. If readers liked my writing, they could follow me over to Lebeau's Blog. I stuck the Le in the middle because I liked the sound of it. The repetition of the L's and B's just sounds funny to me.
At the time, I had no intention of having contributor's so it made sense to me to stick my name on the thing. Looking back, the contributors have become such an important part of the site that I deemphasize "Lebeau". I really consider it to be "Le Blog" but I haven't completely dropped my name from the title because it is in the site's domain. I love your features like "What Might Have Been", "Franchise Killers," and, of course, "What the Hell Happened?". How do you go about choosing what movies, franchises, and careers etc. to profile and how to compile them? A lot of it is just a matter of what interests me. I figure if I find something interesting, there are other people out there who will share that interest. Late in the year, I start setting up a schedule for the next year. I go through and look at anniversaries of movies and that will inspire a lot of ideas. If a movie flopped five years ago, I'll leave myself a note that it might make a good Franchise Killer. But there also has to be a story. I need a hook or it's just another flop. What are some of your favorite movies, franchises?
Like any movie fan, my answer to that changes. The movie I have probably watched more than any other is Jaws. I can watch the original Jaws over and over again even though I know it by heart. I'm not a big fan of sequels so I wouldn't say I am a fan of the Jaws franchise, but the original is something I keep going back to. Today, I don't think anything compares to Marvel's mega franchise. They are the envy of every other studio in town with good reason. Their success really can't be duplicated, but everyone is trying. I also have a fondness for the Bond franchise because it's the granddaddy of them all. Anyone who reads the site can see where my interests lie. Who are some of your favorite actors/actresses? Twenty years ago, I would have had an answer to this question. These days, movies are no longer star-driven like they used to be. There are actors and actresses I like, but no one who can sell me on a movie based on their name alone. I think any halfway decent actor can be good in the right role and the best actor can be awful if they are miscast. The best actors tend to be the supporting players whereas the movie stars get by on looks and charisma. With very few exceptions, I wish all of the WTHH subjects well. I am rooting for most of them to succeed with the exception of Steven Seagal. The Bill Cosby/Harvey Weinstein, etc. revelations have certainly revealed a dark side to show business (even though many of us knew it was a sleazy business to begin with). Tell us your thoughts about it and how it's affected Lebeau's Le Blog? Has it affected your enjoyment of popular culture in general? I think Weinstein himself was involved in several WTHH actress stories. I plan to spend time over the next year writing that into several articles now that it has been revealed. If you follow WTHH you know that the career span of your average actress is a lot shorter than it is for most actors. Partially, that's American sexism. Once an actress hits 40, the opportunities dry up. The #MeToo movement showed just how bad the problem is within the industry. All I can do is root for the good guys. I will support good projects and good people. I am disappointed in a lot of people who turned a blind eye to what was going on. If I remember correctly, the actress Sean Young responded to your "What the Hell Happened" profile of her. Have you gotten a lot (or any other) responses from the people or fans that you profile? What's the some of the craziest feedback you've gotten, either from the industry or from fans? Sean Young is the only actress who reached out directly regarding WTHH. We have had some interactions on Twitter. Mira Sorvino liked something I tweeted a while back. A reader named TMC has tweeted articles to other celebs some of whom objected to the mild profanity in the series title. I get that. We have had a few celebs drop by the site and comment on an article. Director Neil LaBute was downright chatty in the comments section of an old Movieline article. I have also had some people claiming to be friends of celebrities reach out to me. Someone offered to fly me out to Hollywood for a premiere if I would take down the WTHH article on an actor who apparently thought it was hurting his career. Another person claimed Val Kilmer knew about the site and was not amused. If that's true, my apologies to Mr. Kilmer and anyone else who takes offense. It's all meant to be in good fun. Just curious: your blog has been viewed over 12.5 million times. Who makes up your (huge) fan base -- and have you ever given an interview before? The majority of traffic on any given day is from Google searches. Most of them, sadly, do not stick around. I am always trying to build up a loyal base of readers. I try to make the place feel like a community as much as possible. I love it when people reach out. I want everyone to keep coming back.
This is the first request I have had for an email interview. I did a guest spot on a podcast several years ago. I am not a very in-demand interview subject I guess. What do you see as the future for Lebeau's Le Blog? As you know, I recently moved the site to a self-hosted platform. This has been a whole new world for me. It's a grand experiment that will evolve over time. I have always tried new things and discarded what didn't work. I imagine I will keep on doing that. Some traditions will keep going, but change is the only constant. I am focusing on doing things to get readers more engaged. I think we're going to have a lot of fun. Any last thoughts? Thanks for reading. Hope you have as much fun blogging as I do. See ya around!
Thank's Lebeau!
Although I consider myself to be the quintessential New Yorker, I did leave town for four years to go to college. College happened to be in the Gateway City, otherwise known as St. Louis, in that great swing state of Missouri. How interesting then that I should come across another New York City blogger who happens to be from ... St. Louis! Thus I introduce you to the genius behind the Midwesterner's Guide to Living in New York City and ask him to compare and contrast the two cities. What made you leave St. Louis for New York City?
Pretty long and complicated answer but cutting to the chase I was bored. In fact I can sum up pretty much why I do anything with those three words. Any decision I make in life usually stems from the fact I was bored with whatever I was doing before. Why did you start your blog? In an all honesty no bullshit answer I wanted to get a blog I had created on Gawker. I know it is probably not cool to admit that but that is the truth, I had no aspirations that someday I would get a book deal or become a famous internet personality. I used to read Dan Murphy (Daily Dump/[redacted]) and Rob the Bouncer's (Club Life) blogs and wanted to have my own little niche like they did. Dan Murphy is an excellent writer and Rob the Bouncer has interesting stories to tell and I did not feel I particularly had either of these qualities. Fortunately I drink a lot and urinate in places I should not, and can make a good Star Wars reference so it only took me three weeks to reach my lofty goal. I considered quitting right then, and probably should have.Are you right at home in NYC or a fish out of water? I think everyone that moves here is a fish out of water for the first 18 months. I think it takes a solid year and a half to finally feel like there is a sense of knowing what you are doing. Then one day things that were once intimidating are not anymore and things that were fascinating are no longer fascinating. It just becomes "The place I live" and it takes a trip somewhere else to realize again what a wonderfully horrible place this is.Let's compare the two cities: I found the pace of life in St. Louis to be a little slower than NYC but I didn't find them to be that radically different. How would you compare them? I think the differences are quite huge. In one city you have to be constantly on guard, trouble will find you if not careful. I mean you can be walking on Broadway and your getting stared down by everyone that passes because they peg you as an outsider and the next thing you know your wallet is gone. Thank God I left all that behind and moved to New York.You're a big sports fan, and both St. Louis and New York are big sports town. Tell us your thoughts about sports and sports fans in both cities. I disagree, I do not think either city is a big sports town. St. Louis loves baseball but too many people are caught up in the hype that we are the "Best Baseball city in America". I mean people are holding up signs at games that say "Baseball Heaven U.S.A.". Give me a fucking break. Have you seen the Cardinals projected lineup for this year? Baseball Heaven? More like Baseball Purgatory.
New York on the other hand is too fair-weather. Too many Jets fans that "also like the Giants." I do know some native New Yorkers that are very loyal to their team but the average guy that lives in New York is not from here originally. These people move here and declare themselves Yankees fans though they could not tell you the difference between Claudell Washington and Kevin Mass. I will give credit to the people that pick the Mets as their new team, at least they are not just jumping on a bandwagon. If it is a bandwagon it is a very sad and poorly crafted bandwagon that breaks down before it ever reaches Oregon
One thing I loved about St. Louis was Ted Drews frozen custard. Are you a fan and do you think it would be a hit in NYC?
Yeah it is OK. I think I was six years old or so the first time I ever had it, of course my Grandfathers hype machine was in overdrive telling me how wonderful this stuff was. By the time I actually tried it I was expecting the equivalent of eating "Le Coeur de la Mer", when in reality it was just ice cream. I am sure it would do fine here, probably better in the summer than in winter. That is my prediction.
Any plans to move back to the Midwest?
No.
Any final thoughts?
I want to thank you for asking me to do this. It is an absolute honor to be interviewed by a publication as respected as The Economist. Well Mr NYc is not quite The Economist but a blogger can dream. Thanks!
