Song Of The Summer 2006

wow, it was 1988 when we were having out house renovated and i was listening to pour some sugar on me repeatedly on my boom box and loving it. i don't think i have been into a summer song since then... maybe EMF, i think i liked that song.

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stereogum Music examined through the prism of pop culture.

Song Of The Summer 2006 By scott on MP3 Today NY Post places odds on which tune will be crowned this year's Song Of The Summer. "A summer hit has to have a unique upfront hook, a great beat, and it has to sound great in a car," says Jim Kaminski, who works in marketing at Tower Records. "You'll find yourself singing along even if you hate it." They asked for Stereogum's 2 cents, so I threw some "Smiley Faces" at them, assuming the regular suspects were already covered. And I'm so over that Paris Hilton song. Here's the Post's breakdown: Nelly Furtado and Timbaland - "Promiscuous" ODDS: 2-1 Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy" ODDS: 3-1 Justin Timberlake - "Sexy-Back" ODDS: 3-1 Beyonce with Jay-Z - "Déjà Vu" ODDS: 3-1 Jessica Simpson - "A Public Affair" ODDS: 4-1 Shakira and Wyclef Jean - "Hips Don't Lie" ODDS: 5-1 Luther Vandross - "Shine" ODDS: 6-1 Tony Matterhorn - "Dutty Wine" ODDS: 7-1 Gnarls Barkley - "Smiley Faces" ODDS: 7-1 Christina Aguilera - "Ain't No Other Man" ODDS: 8-1 The Strokes - "You Only Live Once" ODDS: 10-1 My money's on Timberlake. He's bringing sexy back ("you motherfuckers watch how I attack"). This site is streaming a whole 17 seconds. For FutureSex/LoveSounds, Timbaland hooked Timberlake up with some phat hooks. "What Goes Around Comes Around" contains "an A hook and a B hook," the singer tells Rolling Stone. "Somebody once said to me that when John Lennon found a hook for a song, he'd make it the verse. That's what I was going for." He should relay that pointer to Stephen Malkmus. Last year around this time NY Daily News gave us an incomplete scorecard of summer songs since George Michael ruled FM. This year the Post gives us a monster list. 50 Years Of Summer Songs 1955: "Rock Around the Clock," Bill Haley & His Comets 1956: "Hound Dog," Elvis Presley 1957: "Love Letters in the Sand," Pat Boone 1958: "Summertime Blues," Eddie Cochran 1959: "See You in September," the Tempos 1960: "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini," Brian Hyland 1961: "Runaway," Del Shannon 1962: "The Loco-Motion," Little Eva 1963: "Surf City," Jan & Dean 1964: "I Get Around," the Beach Boys 1965: "California Girls," the Beach Boys 1966: "Summer in the City," the Lovin' Spoonful 1967: "Groovin,' " the Rascals 1968: "Jumpin' Jack Flash," the Rolling Stones 1969: "Hot Fun in the Summertime," Sly and the Family Stone 1970: "In the Summertime," Mungo Jerry 1971: "Brown Sugar," the Rolling Stones 1972: "School's Out," Alice Cooper 1973: "My Love," Wings 1974: "Rock the Boat," the Hues Corporation 1975: "One of These Nights," Eagles 1976: "(Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty," KC and the Sunshine Band 1977: "Margaritaville," Jimmy Buffett* 1978: "Hot Blooded," Foreigner 1979: "My Sharona," the Knack 1980: "Funkytown," Lipps, Inc. 1981: "Jessie's Girl," Rick Springfield 1982: "Jack and Diane," John Cougar Mellencamp 1983: "The Safety Dance," Men Without Hats 1984: "The Reflex," Duran Duran 1985: "The Power of Love," Huey Lewis and the News 1986: "Venus," Banarama 1987: "Here I Go Again," Whitesnake 1988: "Pour Some Sugar on Me," Def Leppard 1989: "Good Thing," Fine Young Cannibals 1990: "Vogue," Madonna 1991: "Unbelievable," EMF 1992: "Jump," Kris Kross 1993: "Whoomp! There It Is," Tag Team 1994: "All I Wanna Do," Sheryl Crow 1995: "Fantastic Voyage," Coolio 1996: "The Macarena," Los Del Rio 1997: "Walking on the Sun," Smash Mouth 1998: "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It," Will Smith 1999: "Livin' La Vida Loca," Ricky Martin 2000: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Baha Men 2001: "Bootylicious," Destiny's Child 2002: "Hot in Herre," Nelly 2003: "Crazy in Love," Beyoncé 2004: "Yeah," Usher 2005: "Hollaback Girl," Gwen Stefani So 2006: who's it gonna be? And don't rule out new Outkast!

oh, ted leo

i really dig that ted leo.  why did it take me so long to give him a real chance?  and those pharmacists.... yeah.

another book incident

today i was talking to one of the other people i go to school with/ works in one of the places that i work. i noticed that we were reading the exact same book. i was on page 129 and he was on 196. strange indeed.

edit: it's not the book mentioned in my last post, it was the mysteries of pittsburgh. just to be clear that he is not in the running for the "Most Boring Person In the World".

the most boring girl in the world

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Originally uploaded by amyr.

someone told me two days ago that i was the most boring girl in the world. all for reading a book about copyright, little did they know that i had a john grisham novel behind the bookjacket. tricky.

no such luck

so, bookmaking got cancelled since there were not enough people enrolled. i think i totally jinxed it by even talking about it... drats.

mysteries (and memories) of pittsburgh

last week, someone brought this article to my attention. immediately, i thought of my friend susan. susan and i met at my job in dc; her then boyfriend had attended cmu so she was familiar and liked the burgh. she suggested mysteries of pittsburgh to me, and i think even loaned me the book. i loved it. i then began reading the other chabon books and like them as well. susan became my constant lunch buddy for more than 4 years, where we were commiserate about the mediocrity of many of the people around us. susan always said, when will it be cool to like school, meaning when will other people realize that it is actually cool to dig your job and appreciate the work you have chosen to do by actually doing a good job. it's something that we often found ourselves discussing. i'm not going to go into the details, but i attended susan's memorial this weekend in dc, a week or so after she had died. so, when i thought of telling susan about the filming of mysteries of pittsburgh, it was really the first time i had the realization that i would not be able to tell her. a terrible feeling. i have held out on writing this post for more than a week now, not knowing what to say or how to say it. i guess i finally figured it out.

Film notes: Chabon's 'Mysteries of Pittsburgh' will film here

Friday, June 09, 2006

By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh will play itself -- in all of its Cloud Factory, Lost Neighborhood, Checkpoint of Too Much Fun glory -- in "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." Unless something unforeseen happens, the movie will not be the one that got away.

	Suzanne Hanover Max Minghella, recently of "Art School Confidential" has been tapped to star in "Mysteries of Pittsburgh." Click photo for larger image.

In April, there was doubt that Pittsburgh would land the movie version of Michael Chabon's novel, but the production company found ways to cut costs, with the help of the city, county and state.

If "Mysteries" had gone elsewhere, it would have been a psychological, moral and financial blow. Chabon told the Post-Gazette at the time, "Look, it's in the title, right? I really hope and pray and wish that it can be worked out."

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who also is adapting the novel, will be in town this weekend scouting locations for the film.

It will star Max Minghella, an up-and-coming actor who is the son of "The English Patient" director Anthony Minghella. He will play the lead alongside previously announced actors Peter Sarsgaard and Sienna Miller.

A star of "Art School Confidential," Max Minghella was George Clooney's teenage son in "Syriana" and the religiously rebellious brother of the champion speller in "Bee Season," also featuring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche.

"I think that we feel pretty confident that Pittsburgh is giving us every reason to make the movie in Pittsburgh. Our issues are more just pleading the financing for the movie now, which we're in the home stretch of," Michael London, CEO of Groundswell Productions, said by phone.

"It's more like when we shoot in Pittsburgh now than if we shoot in Pittsburgh," London added. He has shaved the budget to $6 million to $7 million and hopes to start shooting in early September.

"The city and state were very aggressive in terms of what they offered to us, so part of the scouting trip is just to talk about the nuts and bolts and make sure that we can take advantage of everything they've talked about. It's kind of a fact-finding mission just to be sure that everything that's been discussed we can actually make concrete."

London, who wasn't flying to Pittsburgh on this trip, said the production had been discussing hotel costs, crew rates and the state's grant initiative, which can return 20 percent to a production company.

Vicki Dee Rock, the head of physical production for Groundswell who was production accountant on "The Silence of the Lambs" here, said help was being provided on a number of fronts, from financing the scouting trip to securing office space at very little charge.

Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, said yesterday, "We're thrilled. It's been an exciting process to have the governor's office and county executive's office all step forward to offer them much needed assistance to secure the filming of 'Mysteries' in Pittsburgh, where it belongs.

"We're hopeful that this will bring even more opportunities for more cooperation from these entities to have even more work in the region. Pittsburgh's been fortunate to have some of the lowest union rates in the country," and that, coupled with a change in incentives, could lure other projects.

Starting July 1, the state will offer outright grants rather than tax credits to filmmakers, a change that should make Pennsylvania more attractive in an increasingly competitive world.

The state will provide up to a 20 percent film production grant. Sixty percent of the total expenses of a feature or TV movie, TV pilot or episode must be incurred in the state, and some expenses are eligible (construction, lighting, wardrobe, for instance) and others (marketing and music rights, for instance) are not. The pool of money will be capped at $10 million a year.

"Mysteries" is a coming-of-age story set almost entirely in the East End. It's about a character named Art Bechstein, a University of Pittsburgh economics graduate spending the summer working in a bookstore.

The novel put Chabon on the map and held up a new mirror to the city for natives and newcomers alike. Among the book's most vivid descriptions is the "Cloud Factory," where a building spits out "these great clouds, perfectly white and clean, white as new baseballs."

No details yet on who will handle local hiring or casting.

gidget is everywhere

i have been blathering lately about gidget all around. i started and finished the original book on friday, told michele and then she found this article....

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-gidget17jun17,0,7800238.story

Surfer girl, forever

The woman who inspired 'Gidget' rides a wave of surf nostalgia.

By Hugo Martín
Times Staff Writer

June 17, 2006

THE 18-year-old surfer girl with the sun-bleached hair is breathing heavily and turning bright red as she approaches her idol, a diminutive grandmother who is signing books after a lecture on surfing history at UC San Diego.

Tears well up in the girl's eyes when she comes face to face with Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the plucky surfing icon known to the world as "Gidget."

"You are my hero," the girl stammers.

Zuckerman has been bouncing around the country lately, making public appearances at surfing museum openings, surfing contests and beach festivals. But this is the first time she can recall anyone getting emotional at meeting her.

Minutes earlier, Zuckerman was bubbling with enthusiasm before an audience of 50 or so, including rosy-cheeked college kids and gray-haired surfers in Hawaiian shirts. She pranced among the blown-up photos that chronicled her life. There she is with Sandra Dee. That's her on a surfboard in Malibu. Here she is with her father reading the "Gidget" book.

But when the sobbing surfer girl calls her a hero, Zuckerman is dumbfounded. Gidget a hero?

To the outside world, she was that sassy teenager whose fun-loving exploits in Malibu 50 years ago were the basis of the "Gidget" books, movies and TV shows. To the surfing world, she was the novice wave rider who exposed surfing's subculture to America's mainstream. And to a handful of purists, she was the reason California's best surfing spots have been overrun by pushy kooks and annoying wannabes.

What's all this hero talk?



Her first ride

It's the summer of 1956 and a spunky 15-year-old tomboy from Brentwood wanders along the beach in Malibu when she comes upon a group of sun-baked men in cutoff jeans, hanging around a rickety shack made out of palm fronds and driftwood.

She asks if she can borrow one of the balsa-wood surfboards that lean against the shack. She never surfed before but is eager to try. The men consider this short-haired pixie and agree to loan her a board in exchange for her lunch, two peanut butter-and-radish sandwiches.

Later, when she returns from the surf, one of the surfers calls her "Gidget," a fusion of "girl" and "midget." The girl doesn't protest. It means she is accepted into the gang of surfers with names like Moondoggie, Bubblehead and Beetle. She was the Gidget.

At home, she spills her excitement onto the pages of her diary:



June 24th, 1956.

Dear Diary:

I didn't do too much but go to the beach. I didn't think I'd have fun but I met Matt [Kivlin] and he took me out on his surfboard. He let me catch the waves by myself and once I fell off and the board went flying in the air. I didn't get hurt at all…. I hope Matt will take me surfing again.



She excitedly tells her father about her vagabond surfing friends. How they live for nothing — not nice cars or stylish clothes — but to surf. She tells him about the lingo they use to describe how "jazzed" and "stoked" they get when they catch a "bitchin" wave.

The girl's father is a Hollywood script writer who decides to write about this odd surfing subculture. In six weeks, he produces his first book, a fictional tale called "Gidget." It becomes a phenomenon in 1957, outselling Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." Two years later, Hollywood releases the "Gidget" movie, starring Sandra Dee, followed by two sequels and a 1965-66 television series starring Sally Field.

Suddenly, everybody wants a part of the fun-filled beach life depicted in the "Gidget" movies, the subsequent "Beach Blanket" spinoffs and the sentimental Beach Boys tunes.

Back at Malibu, hordes of surfers pack themselves shoulder-to-shoulder on the breaking wave, evidence that Gidgetmania has changed surfing forever. Moondoggie and the rest of the gang are uprooted when lifeguards demolish the palm-frond shack. Even Gidget is turned off to surfing when she returns from college to find Malibu overrun with newcomers.

"There were too many boards," she says, remembering the scene. "Too many surfers."



'Gidget haters'

It's an overcast weekday when Zuckerman, now 65, returns to the scene of the crime, Surfrider Beach in Malibu. The waves are flat and only one surfer remains, a teenage girl who lugs an oversized surfboard out of the water. The girl trudges past Zuckerman, barely glancing at the 5-foot-1 surfing icon sitting in the sand in a pink hat and matching blouse.

Zuckerman points to a small cove near the pier. This is where Gidget learned to surf. A few other girls surfed Malibu back in 1956 but not many. Gidget, still tan and energetic, occasionally surfs but only when the water is warm and the waves are gentle.

She points to a sand heap near a white brick wall. That is where Zuckerman hung out with surfers like Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy, Bill Jensen, Mike Doyle and half a dozen other surfers at the palm-frond shack.

And that is where "Tubesteak" dubbed her Gidget. The rest is surfing history.

"She started that whole thing," says Tracy. "Back then, surfing was a West Coast thing but Gidget was nationwide. You can walk into any bar in Peoria, Ill., and mention that name, Gidget, and they've heard of it."

So when places like Surfrider Beach, San Onofre and County Line became overrun by throngs of surfcrashers, some surfers blamed Gidget. She was an easy target. Some "Gidget haters" didn't know or care that Gidget was a real person.

Fred Reiss, a 51-year-old surfer from Santa Cruz, wrote a novel in 1995 about a surfer who returns to Malibu 30 years later to kill everyone involved in the "Gidget" movie for ruining his surf spot. The book, "Gidget Must Die," was a cheap shot but Reiss says the story was rooted in the real-life resentment many surfers felt toward Gidget.

"I worked at a Santa Cruz surf shop for seven years, and I met most of the legends, as well as tons of guys from the '60s period, and nearly all of them said, 'Gidget ruined surfing,' " he says.

But Gidget has legions of fans who insist she has been unfairly blamed for a surfing craze that was ready to explode anyway because of advances in surfboard technology and a counterculture movement that reshaped the country in the late 1960s and early '70s.

Dick Metz, a lifelong surfer and founder of the Surfing Heritage Foundation in San Clemente, says those who blame Gidget don't know their surfing history.

At the time of the "Gidget" movies, he says, the popular balsa-wood longboards were being replaced by shorter, lighter polyurethane foam shortboards. The new, easily maneuverable boards, he says, were a big reason surfing caught fire in the 1960s.

"The change of materials was going to change the sport," he says. "I don't care if there was a book or a movie."

Zuckerman's father, Frederick Kohner, wasn't the only one to profit from Gidgetmania. Locals like Miki "Da Cat" Dora, Johnny Fain and Mickey Muñoz got paid to perform the surfing stunts for the "Gidget" movie.

"Some people want to blame Gidget. How about blaming Hollywood?" says Jerome Lynne Hall, the UC San Diego anthropology professor who invited Zuckerman to speak at his surfing history course.

As for Zuckerman, she shrugs off such criticism. After all, how could she foresee the popularity of the "Gidget" books, the movies and, ultimately, the surfing lifestyle, she asks. She was just a kid trying to fit in somewhere and she found that place among the surfers.

"I was as innocent as the day was long," she says.

When she left for college in 1958, Zuckerman left surfing behind. She married a Yiddish scholar, moved to Pacific Palisades, raised two kids and worked as a teacher and later a part-time restaurant hostess. When reporters called to ask if she was the original Gidget, she would answer, "Yeah, so what? Why does anyone care?"

But now the surfing world does care.



Getting her due

In the last few years, Zuckerman has been the honored guest at pro surfing competitions, surfing museum openings and surfing festivals. In 1999, the bible of surfing, Surfer Magazine, named Zuckerman the seventh most influential surfer of the century. Two years ago, she was dubbed "patron" of the Rip Curl Malibu Pro Women's Championship Tour.

"To most of the public, she was the first girl to surf," says Marty Thomas, a spokesman for Rip Curl, the surfing and snowboarding company that invited Zuckerman to the event.

Gidget's resurgence has come during a nostalgic phase in the surfing world. In the last decade, veteran surfers have opened surfing museums, filmed surfing documentaries and published commemorative surfing magazines. Maybe the renewed interest in longboards in the late 1980s spurred old-school surfers to feel nostalgic for the early days. Maybe the deaths of several surfing pioneers, such as Dora in 2002, forced the surfing world to reconsider its history.

Whatever the reason for the look back, in surfing's rear-view mirror, Gidget has gained respect as a surfing pioneer who helped break surfing's gender barrier.

Debbie Beacham, the 1982 women's surfing champion, taught herself to surf on a used surfboard she bought at a garage sale in Coronado after watching Sally Field in the "Gidget" television series.

"It seemed so mysterious and different and nobody did it where I was from," Beacham says.

"There's a lot of good that came from Gidget," says surfing hall of famer Jericho Poppler Bartlow, who co-founded the Women's International Surfing Assn. "She made girls realize they could do something that was considered just a man's thing."

After her visit to Surfrider Beach, Zuckerman stops by Duke's, a warm seaside restaurant in Malibu where she works twice a week as a hostess. The place is named for Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimmer who spread the gospel of surfing to Australia and America in the early 1900s. A black-and-white photo of a 15-year-old Gidget in Malibu shares the wall with grainy photos of Duke poised on a giant balsa-wood board.

Customers routinely wander around the restaurant gazing at the photos. When they stop at the picture of Gidget, Zuckerman rushes over.

"That's me," she announces.

The customers give her a quizzical look.

"I'm the girl on the beach," she says. "I'm Gidget."

Then she leads them to a table and recounts stories from the summer of 1956 and that little shack on the beach.

hades vacation

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Originally uploaded by amyr.

i dig the stills. a lot. also, when they play the theme to kids in the hall when they come out on stage, i really dig that.

random issues

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Originally uploaded by amyr.

a few things to report.
1. i saw a show about the basillica tonight, apparently the vatican states what is a basillica and what is not.
2. i heard someone say that they bought a pair of bike shorts used yesterday. note: they were also wearing the shorts therefore i am guessing that as gross as the issue of used bike shorts is, the issue of used unwashed bike shorts is way worse.
3. i think i messed some stuff up at my placement yesterday. i don't feel so good about that.
4. i need to make a 3 minute speech about something this weekend, suggestions? i was thinking i could just totally make something up, like i am one of twelve children.
5. i got a ton (like 37 or so) free stills pins at the show. how could i have forgotten to mention that.....
6. dennis leary beat the garbage out of ryan o'reilly last night on rescue me. additionally bonnie brae was played in the aftermath.
7. broccoli slaw mix (i.e. slaw mix that is made from broc. stems rather than cabbage) is fantastic. it stays nice and crisp and is apparently high in fiber, good for you. i never even knew such a thing existed until this week.

there was a rapture, so i can never see you anymore

Twilight Singers: Keyboard
Originally uploaded by Lalitree.

(i dug this photo even though it was from another show, i had to use it, her other photos were good too, check them out in flickr...)
so i think everyone knows i went to see twilight on friday night in dc. i have seen afghan whigs/ twilight a ton of times now, but still i get this total crazy feeling when i get to go to the show, ya know? anyway, i love going to shows period, i love all of it. i like travelling to places i haven't been to see bands (part of my upbringing? maybe....) i dig seeing bands who i haven't seen before, although there is that dissapointment at times when you see a band that you can't get into, so i love it all. plus, you guys all know of my sick sick sick love of greg dulli- it's so wrong. i have been into him since i was about um, 14 or so, i don't think it will go away at this point....

so, the show was at the 9:30, a beautiful prime venue. i met d in dc and we went to fado for drinks and pub fare before, getting to the club earlier than we expected (read: we were the 5th and 6th in line, feeling lame the whole time, until we got a f-ing prime spot in the club). we stood at the far corner of the balcony (angel: where we were for the last queens show, far right balcony: it wasn't the same w/o you at the show!) prime spot for various reasons, 1. no one can really stand behind you, you have a good spot to sit and not get blocked on the view or worry about some one who doesn't know the rules of going to a show to step in front of you.

i made a list of a few things i had to cover in the blog (how non-spontaenous of me....)

1. opening acts. i think i had seen jeff klein before. ok. a bit mellow for the way i was feeling. ok, afterhours. whoa. i can't even begin to discuss this. 1. you can spot the italian band walking around before the show. 2. they had this one song where one of the guys played sax, like tenor sax (don't think i didn't look that up on google images, i did...) and they came out into the crowd and then another guy danced with some girl. insane. also, the one guy had beautiful hair, long and well conditioned. yeah. i will check them out more i think. italian rock music. super popular in italy. nuff said.

2. where does greg dulli get those pants? are they tailored? there always the same.

3. d and i spied greg watching the opening acts, on a rolling desk chair, strange. i imagined that he was just catching up on some computer programming before the show. i'm stopping, you guys don't want me to tell you all the insane things i wonder about people....

twilight was phenominal, greg wasn't chatty at all, which is so not like him, he seemed very business like with the music so i can't really complain that he didn't sit up there and talk shit for hours on end. the band was awesome and during one song greg pulled this girl d and i had met in brooklyn a few years ago up on stage to dance with him, she looked totally in awe. also, it was bizarre to see greg sans guitar dancing. they played for a long time, two encores, one with fountain and fairfax (i think it was a shout out to michele, right?) and then the obligatory faded.

saturday was a bit more low key- not to say that i don't totally adore the stills. d and i headed to spices before, reliving my time in dc, eating wonderful veggies with tofu in ginger soy sauce, delish. i was amazed that there were soooo many young kids (i mean like get dropped off by mom young) at the show. i met one of d's coworkers, lots of fun.

headed to trader joes on sunday and then back home. started back to work today; this week will be long and tiring- i can feel it.

to hold you over...

i saw this link on summerskiss about twilight photos, i did not take a camera to the dc show, so sorry, no photos to share, but these are pretty decent....

it should be illegal

have you seen that new commercial for att where it shows the evolution of computer voices including famous robots like KITT, etc it's wrong on so many levels. and it makes me want to freak out on such a high level..... (sorry, is it insane that now you can find ANY video on the internet?)

he's a scumbag don't you know.

i watched the season premier of rescue me the other night, it was good, not just for the "ryan o'reilly" factor, i dug the show. i'll keep watching....

i am taking a book making class starting in a few weeks. i hope it teaches me all the crazy bookmaking things i have in my head.

dc tomorrow, twilight tomorrow night and then stills on saturday. just like the olden days when i would be able to go to shows due to 1. location 2. having cash money.

i'm back to one of my old jobs on monday. work 5 days a week from now on, i need to make better money so it should be a good deal.

apparently vans will be making a descendents edition of the old school tie vans soon. can you believe????

i'm out.
oh, and michele, where the f are you? i know you read this beotch, but you don't call, and after that bs statement i made to my class a few weeks ago about you????