When you're alone, and life is making you lonely...

you can always go-- "Downtown"!...an excellent zip-code, a wunnerful weltenschaung, a spectacular new movie produced written and starring Joey Dedio, a canny bi-coastal thespian and running buddy of my onetime protege Vin Diesel, which premiered last night at the Apollo Theater with a free screening...and a gritty, searing no-holds-barred account of homeless people surviving on the mean streets of Manhattan it was, excellent cast sparkling through the on-screen schmutz throughout, particularly lovely young Latina actress Flora Martinez and former gamine the veteran French trooper Genevieve Bujold...last time I was up at the Apollo was many many moons ago to see the Beastie Boys get boo'ed off the stage (triggered by Mike D's ill-advised comment/falsetto'ed JB impression: "The Apollo Theater!!! Ah feel jus' like James Brown!!...Please Please Please Pleeeeeeez!") --which caused a shit-storm of scorn and mass obloquy to rain down on the Boys' heads from the unamused patrons of colour there, Beastie boys bolting off the stage shortly thereafter...

Downtown on the Bowery Friday night Gods and Monsters played our collective heart out with a white-hot set sparked by the last-minute surprise appearance of Jerry Harrison, who was in town taking his daughter round to look at colleges...Ernie rustled up a keyboard for Jerry to play from Jonathan Kane at the eleventh hour-- and we slam-dunked maybe the best most intense and powerful set as ever we played as a 5 piece. with Jerry laughing and loose, on message and on fire, we premiered quite a few new songs as well and I will tell you that the set ranked up there as one of the top 5 greatest Gods and Monsters hits since I started the group in 1989...the walls of the Bowery Poetry Club shook, the stage threatened to give way, Jason Billy and Ernie and I were inspired to new heights of instrumental madness and derring-do with Jerry there to goad us on--and hey you can check a clip of us live performing our new anthem "Swamp Thing" on Youtube, which you can view here--taken from our forthcoming new live at CMJ CD/DVD which Jerry is putting the finishing touches to with a 5.1 surround sound mix, show was filmed last November at the Bowery Poetry Club--the new disc should be out in the fall, stay tuned...

Other fun stuff: Monday night met up with one of my oldest and dearest pals tres erudite film and music critic/savant and all around Good Guy Glenn Kenny (one of the certifiable Knowledge Brothers--had a whole column named after him in fact: "Ask Glenn!"), and his radiant bride of nearly a year Claire Elizabeth at the good old Cafe Loup (nee the Bells of Hell, former 70's rockrit watering-hole--cue "Hell's Bells" as sung by Mae Questel in the 1934 pre-Hayes Code nearly nude Betty Boop toon scandale "Red Hot Mamma")...good to relate that Glenn more than survived the recent bloodletting at Premiere magazine and indeed is happilly thriving at Premiere Online, big guy was full of good cheer per usual and gossip galore, just back from the Sarasota Film Festival and soon off to Cannes (where Elli met Brian...but that's another story)...Claire looked even more smart and beautiful if you can believe it than when she marched down the aisle last summer to the strains of "Our Love Is Here to Stay" as performed by yours truly... and it sure as hell looks that way--congratulations Glenn!

... had a delicious dinner up at my pal the Czech UN Ambassador Martin Palous' luxurious townhouse/official Czech ambassador's residence last week, pretty incroyable 5 story upper Eastside domicile replete with swimming pool, sauna, mirrored bathrooms galore (apparently a swinging 70's former Japanese brothel bought by the shrewd Czech govt. for a song some years ago and nearly completely refurbished)--not to mention an elevator, butler, cook, roof garden, garage: a 7 storied building to die for--and a day later I went uptown to the east 80's for a Czech fashion show at the Bohemian National Hall, a benefit for Unicef, where lovely semi-nude multi-hued models of colour strutted their stuff draped in diaphanous eleganza courtesy of crack Czech designer Libena Rochova of Studio LR to ominous doomy electronica in the elegant desuetude of the old Hall itself-- and where in the back in a side room myriad homemade dolls were on sale the proceeds of which were going to Unicef-- including a fetching doll called "Eve" complete with dreadlocks and curly pubic hair (not the real deal, of course... but as they used to say about Beatlemania, "an incredible facsimile"--wooly bully, indeed--those naughty Czech designers!).

The Czech National Theater--one of the finest theastrical ensembles in the world-- is appearing onstage at the Bohemian National Home starting this weekend--and you should make it a point if you're in New York to be there...

Bye for now!

xxLove

Gary

PS The great Czech madman, poet, and Plastic People lyricist Egon Bondy, whom I wrote about back in October (check the entry titled "Bondy...Egon Bondy") just passed away, there was an excellent obit in the Times which you can read here.

PSS and Sopranos fans, please check out Virginia Heffernan's blog here.

PSST and go see "Grindhouse", if only for my pals' Bill Moseley and Udo Kier's cameos in the fake Rob Zombie "Werewolves of the SS" trailer in the middle...despite what you may have read, I think Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" was the superior film of the diptych--I count his "Desperado" and "From Dusk Till Dawn" as among my alltime favorites (so he's had some duff films since then...this one's a real return to form)..."Death Proof" was fun-- but why did Tarantino feel free to exempt himself from the fake film glitches and dirt-marks that lovingly marked the other film and trailers? Because his stuff is Art--and the other contributors, not?

A bit high-handed, that...