Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

I was talking to my roommate’s boyfriend a few weeks ago and he mentioned that he had just seen a band from Jersey. Turns out, it was Thursday. I had seen them for the first time last summer, touring with Taking Back Sunday, and it was an awesome show, and my roommate’s boyfriend agreed. “It’s a shame that was their second to last show.”

Huh?

Turns out, it’s true! The band is on what they’re calling an “indefinite hiatus,” which might not mean they’re broken up, but we might as well lead our lives that way. It really is a shame. People got all wee-weed up recently when At the Drive-In reunited, but as far as “post hardcore” bands go, I was always a Thursday man. So much so, their second album War All the Time made it to my Favorite Albums of the Decade list.

Jersey will rock just a bit less for their passing, but Thursday left us with some awesome tunes, including this one about their home state, off their last album. Listen to a little “Turnpike Divides.”

Anyone with ears to hear understands that Jon Bon Jovi is the greatest poet of this or any generation. Today just so happens to be the 25th anniversary of Slippery When Wet, the album that put Bon Jovi on the road to rock immortality and gave us such cover band anthems as “Living on a Prayer,” “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.”

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand that I march to the beat of my own Tico Torres. In that spirit, here are what I consider to be the two best songs off Slippery When Wet, an album that is almost literally wall to wall hits.

I’d Die for You

Without Love

These guys are from the capital of punk rock: sunny Bayonne, New Jersey. Listen to the Scandals.

I’m working a sorta kinda large-ish project, but in the meantime, here’s a couple cool things that I think you guys would really enjoy!

# A great little essay on dumplings, social networks, and the paradox of cool.

# Here’s Matt Taibbi with a typically smart take on organized labor, using the NFL Players Union, of all things, as his example.

# If you think this isn’t my new favorite song, you obviously haven’t been reading this blog for very long. [Via]

# Some people will be standing in line at the Post Office on April 15. Odds are, I’ll be standing in line at Brookline Booksmith.

If there were a zombie apocalypse, what would you do? What if you just happened to be a huge zombie movie fan, itching for the opportunity to prove your mettle under the most zombierific circumstances? My old Bayonne High School buddy, Sam Platizky, is the writer, producer, and star of Blaming George Romero, a feature length horror dramedy that will attempt to answer these questions and many more. I interviewed Sam during the first week of shooting.

Timmy: So give me the Readers’ Digest version of what Blaming George Romero is.

The official movie poster!

Sam: Story-wise, Blaming George Romero is a movie about four pop culture junkie friends who would prefer a zombie apocalypse to their present lives. So when it looks like there’s been a “zombacalypse,” if you will, they jump at the chance to do what it takes to survive, and on the way they learn that there’s more to living than just surviving

Timmy: We can talk a little more about the content and the zombie genre later, but I’m actually really interested in the process of film making. How are you getting this done?

Sam: I am getting this done because I must be one of the luckiest people on the planet. The camera, I bought, but everything else is coming from some fantastic people. Doug Youmans is our lighting guy, and he has a wealth of his own equipment that he is willing to share with us along with his knowledge and experience. Joey Mosca is our sound guy who came to us with his equipment (boom mic, recorder/mixer, lav mics, etc.) Without them, I would be lost, and the best thing is we all get along really well and we all share a passion for the project.

Timmy: Where did this idea come from?

Sam: Without getting too deep into the twists and turns of the movie, the idea came to me in two parts.

Timmy: No spoilers, please.

Sam: First, I love the zombie genre, but I was getting tired of movies where it seemed like the protagonist had no idea what a zombie even was. They would go through the movie with people dying and becoming zombies and it wouldn’t be until the end that they figured out what the deal was. To me, it seemed crazy. I mean, they must have at least heard of zombie movies, but no, people get bit and are turning into zombies in front of them and nothing. No recognition, no survival instinct. So i wanted to create a zombie movie where the protagonists knew what they were doing. Enter the pop culture junkies

Timmy: That’s funny. As a viewer, you can suspend your disbelief to accept the walking dead, but some chump that doesn’t realize he’s in the middle of a zombie infestation? It takes you right out of the narrative!

Sam: Yeah. I guess, on some level, I have just taken the whole notion of zombies for granted. It’s like, “Oh, ok, zombies. Let’s go,” and my characters express that same sentiment, to extremes at times.

The second reason I wrote it was, I had just written a massive WWII horror screenplay that I would never have the budget to shoot, and I wanted to write something reasonable.

Timmy: Wolfenstein 3D: The Motion Picture?

Sam: Haha. Not quite. Its called Langsomer Tod. I’d love to get back to it some day, but right now, it isn’t feasible.

Also, i should mention that I’d just found this website, Indiegogo, for crowd funding, and figured i could potentially use it to help fund the project. Once that was in the equation, the project came much closer to reality.

Timmy: Yeah, I was going to ask about that. I’m on Facebook, and I can’t scroll two inches without seeing the Blaming George Romero logo. How successful have you been in leveraging social media to get this project going?

Sam: Well, “successful” can have a lot of meanings. We haven’t reached our funding goal yet, but I’d say we have been very successful. The word is out there, and we’ve raised one-third of our goal amount. People seem to be interested,

Timmy: This is a good time to mention that i’ll definitely be linking to the Facebook and Indiegogo pages.

Sam: And i thank you for that, sir. We also have our website www.BlameRomero.com, currently being worked on by Brad Resnick and a mutual friend of ours, Jason Goldstein.

Timmy: What do you want to be the end result for this film? Will you be entering into festivals?

Sam: Yessir, that is the goal. Once we are out of post production, we’ll be entering film festivals and trying our luck there. From there it’s a matter of seeing what happens, you know? Whether people take to it, if someone wants to distribute it, or even if it just gets our names out there. In a lot of ways just finishing this project will have been a huge undertaking.

It’s funny, going back to the idea of social networking. We had people interested while we were in pre-production, but I think there may have been the notion in the backs of some peoples’ minds that this wouldn’t get done, but once the first production stills were out after the first day of filming, it was like people realized that this was happening.

Timmy: Sometimes all it takes is a slick-looking headshot.

Sam: Yep.

Timmy: Why a zombie movie? You said you love the genre, but is there anything else to it, in terms of telling the type of story you wanted to tell?

Sam: That is an interesting question. I think its part of the zeitgeist right now. There’ve always been movies, but now there are books like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z. I actually heard a high school had Pride & Prejudice & Zombies on their curriculum! I think it’s definitely something that’s very prevalent right now.

As for why, beyond the fact that its entertaining, I think there is an aspect of zombies that is terrifying, more so than most movie monsters.

Timmy: We could all be zombies, if it came down to it.

Sam: Yeah, and to an extent, we are. Not to get too philosophical, but beyond the basic zombies craving flesh, they’re like a dark mirror to us.

Timmy: Get as philosophical as you want, pal.

Sam: They wander aimlessly, all they do is consume, they aren’t really alive, and I think to some extent, there is a part of that in many people. We shamble through our day to day and never really live. I think that’s pretty scary.

Timmy: Movie zombies, especially in George Romero flicks, are notorious for representing some sort of dark aspect of our own nature.

Sam: Yeah, Romero was great with that. He wanted to tell a story about racism, or society, and he did it with zombies. So much subtext. It’s like a spoonful of sugar: you get the message, but here, have some zombies to go with it. Which is one of the reasons i loved P & P & Z. It’s a classic piece of literature, not changed at all, except there are zombies in it. What a way to get people interested in reading classics.

Timmy: I actually didn’t mind the regular Pride and Prejudice. But I’m an English major. It’s my job to not mind it.

Sam: Haha. I hear you, but for those people who mind it just because they’re intimidated by the year it was written, it’s ingenious.

Timmy: My understanding is that there aren’t any zombies in the movie at all?

Sam: I will say this, without spoiling too much, there are zombies in the movie in one form or the other. However, a good deal of the conflict is trying to figure out whether or not there is in fact a zombacalypse going on.

Timmy: And you’re calling it a dramedy? Or am i making that up?

Sam: Ha, no, you aren’t making it up. I hate labels, sometimes, especially for this movie, but there are aspects of drama and comedy in it. For that matter there are some horror aspects as well. But yeah, dramedy, because some parts I think are downright hilarious, while others are really deep, and (I hope) will make people think.

Timmy: A lot of zombie movies are like that.

Sam: Yeah, I think they are unique in that respect. It’s another reason to utilize the zombie.

Timmy: Tell me about the cast. I know these folks, but my readers don’t.

Sam: They are a great bunch of people. The four leads are myself, Robert Lise, Loarina Gonzalez, and Dan Gregory. I have worked with Bobby for about 11 years now. He’s one of my closest and most trusted acting friends. Within the last two years, he actually started gravitating towards directing, so while i wrote the part of “Bobby” for him, when it came time to find a director, Bobby became that as well.

Loarina is his girlfriend, who we both met acting in college. She is really terrific. Very subtle in her delivery, but very powerful too. And Dan only recently started acting, although I’ve known him since high school. After working with him on a film last year, I wanted to write him a role in this movie.

The rest of the cast is rounded out by my brother, Isaac, who is an amazing actor; some of my former teachers from college, Anderson Johnson and Adria Firestone; and some other wonderful actors I have had the pleasure of working with before: Chris Lucas, Christina Garced, Ramy Shedid, John Trigonis, Eva Visco, and a few more. I just filmed a scene with Christina yesterday, and watched it tonight. Every take was hilarious. I love working with these people, and I love watching the results.

Timmy: I’m a writer, and I’m constantly entrusting my stuff to editors who are responsible for the finished product. How much easier does it make your job when your director is a trusted friend

Sam: It’s very relaxing. I can take a step back and just trust him, you know? And at the same time, if we disagree, we can go from screaming at each other over the smallest thing to actually getting a better product because of the argument. And no hard feelings, because we’ve just been doing this for so long.

Timmy: It’s a beautiful thing.

Sam: It really is.

Timmy: Day of the Dead is my favorite of George Romero’s movies. Explain to me why I’m not crazy.

Sam: Haha. I cannot do that. Night of the Living Dead is my favorite. Followed closely by Dawn. Day is good, but it always struck me as the black sheep of the Dead family. I think the setting being so drastic is what does it for me. Why is it your favorite?

Timmy: That drastic-ness, I think, is the key. It explores a logical extreme of what would happen if the zombies inherited the earth. It’s more a big picture movie than Night or Dawn.

Sam: Hmmm. I see where you’re at with that. I just don’t agree. However, if you want logical extremes and big pictures, I can’t recommend Max Brooks’s World War Z enough.

Timmy: What’s that about?

Sam: It is about a guy interviewing survivors in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, and their stories from all over the world and all different people at various stages of the apocalypse. It’s so well thought out.

Timmy: I’m putting it on the list. You’re in the middle of filming. How is it going?

Sam: We are two days in. It’s going really well. We all work well together. The first two days were fairly simple shoots, though. We have some more difficult ones up ahead.

Timmy: Where are you shooting?

Sam: Bayonne, NJ mostly, but also Blairstown, Stewartsville, Weehawken, Jersey City. All in NJ.

On the set.

Timmy: Blairstown. Home of Camp Crystal Lake, no?

Sam: You are absolutely correct! I went there with some friends a year ago, and we found this great area. We’re going to use it next week.

Timmy: If I was going to film a horror movie, it’s one of the first places I’d think of.

It might be time to wrap up. I’m giving you free rein for plugs, promotions, boastful claims, acknowledgments, whatever you want.

Sam: I have to say I couldn’t do this without a terrific cast and crew, our amazing supporters who have donated to www.indiegogo.com/Blame_Romero, and even our fans on Facebook and Twitter who help spread the word. They are the best of the best. I hope people stay with us throughout the production because it’s going to be one hell of a ride. And I want to thank you, for the opportunity to spread the word to more people.

Timmy: We Bayonnaise have to stick together.

Sam: Hell yeah we do!

Remember way back when I was writing about Frankie Valli? And I promised I would put up a post about Nicole Atkins? Here you go!

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know how much of a weakness I have for turbo foxes with guitars, but Nicole Atkins is almost in a league by herself. We’re dealing with a voice crafted by God Herself and handed down to a singer in the greatest state in the world, New Jersey! I had a real hard time picking out a song to highlight here, because they’re all so enchanting. Please feel free to explore her entire catalogue. But first, listen to this live rendition of “Together We’re Both Alone.”

Stay What You Are

2) Saves the Day, Stay What You Are (2001)

When I was in grammar school and high school, I was obviously into listening to music, but not really in a way beyond listening to what was on the radio. (For Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun’s younger readers, a radio was an electronic box that received signals through the air and transformed them into music. [For Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun's older and well, my-aged readers, did anyone else always have a blank tape in the stereo, and go home immediately after school and listen to the radio until dinnertime, and record all the songs you liked {except you'd always have to time it so you didn't include the insipid DJ chatter at the start, so even though you had eight tapes and they all had Blink 182's "Dammit" on it, none of them had the guitar riff in the intro. Does} anyone remember] that?)

Long story short, I listened to plenty of music, but none of it was stuff that wasn’t at or near the top of the alternative rock charts, so I never had the type of punk-rock, emo outcast, let’s-go-to-a-local-band’s-concert-at-the-American-Legion-hall musical youth that a lot of people I know had. Which is a shame, because I would have loved to have checked out a Saves the Day show in some dingy parish center in Bloomfield, plugged in, playing tunes from Can’t Slow Down, maybe dancing next to some skinny Northern Jersey emo chick with dark eyeliner and some metal in her face. Who knows how things would have turned out!

Stay What You Are is a bit of a departure from Saves the Day’s first two punkier albums. The lyrics and melodies are a little more subdued. (I say this, but then you listen to a song like “As Your Ghost Takes Flight,” with such lyrics as “The last time that I saw you, August of ‘99, / I should’ve had my hammer and a few rusty spikes / To nail you on a wall and use bottles to catch your blood / And display you for the neighbors so they know your time had come.” So, you know, take my judgment with a grain of salt.) The first track, “At Your Funeral” (which includes my favorite bassline in all of rock music), sets the tone for the upbeat nature of the album. I say “upbeat” in a strictly musical sense, as the lyrical content sways from angry (the aforementioned “As Your Ghost Takes Flight”) to depressed (”See You”: And I’ll wear glass shoes and plastic wrap. / No, I’ll just wear my insides. / You want to know who I really am? / Yeah so do I) to ecstatic (”Firefly”: We’re up and we’re out and we’re yelling through the streets / and I’m out of my fucking mind) to despondent (”All I’m Losing Is Me”: The moon hangs like the blade of an axe tonight, / And it’s poised to drop sometime soon enough / On this dump truck where I lie mixed up with the morning’s trash) to whistful (”Nightingale”: I’ll have to walk a thousand miles just to find the ground deserving of your feet). It’s all couched in (relatively) peppy melodies, the value of which can’t be overstated: no matter what mood you’re in, there’s a song on this album that’ll make you feel better, or at least validated. (And if you’re just in the mood for some good tunes, then you’re in luck.)

Signature track: “This Is Not An Exit”

One time, I asked my ex-girlfriend what her favorite color was. (I don’t mean to keep bringing her up on this blog, because Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is most certainly NOT that kind of blog. It just so happens that this particular anecdote that includes her as a foil is the best way for me to introduce a point I’d like to make about Saves the Day.) Anyway, she looked at me like I had 10 heads. “What do you mean, favorite color,” she asked. “I like a lot of colors.” My favorite color is green. I figured everyone had a favorite color. Everyone had favorite colors when were kids, right? It’s how you knew what ball to pick when you played mini golf, or which kinds of M&Ms to save for last when you had a whole handful. I was left feeling like I had missed the boat on opening my heart to new colors.

And then I wondered if people feel the same way about songs. They have to, right? If a person can’t commit to a color (and I’m limiting “color” here to like, the rainbow and its reasonable offshoots. I don’t want to hear any “I like #F600FF” nonsense in the comments), how could they possibly commit to a song? I don’t know how it works. But I do know that “This Is Not An Exit” is my favorite song.

Not my favorite rock tune. Not my favorite song of the decade. My favorite song. It’s not that other songs aren’t good. It’s just that I like this one the most. That’s why you’re reading about this album, plain and simple. All of its songs are very very good, and one of them is my favorite. And, at the end of the day, if the hook sets in the bottom of our lungs, we’ll rip it out and lick the blood off with our tongues.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand my intense love for my home state of New Jersey. But I can’t muster much love, or even civility, after the goddamn farce that occurred in Trenton today.

That’s right, precious readers: the Garden State joins such luminaries as Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Utah, and Mississippi as a state that can’t muster the courage to extend basic civil rights to its citizens.

You all know that this sort of thing fires me up. It bothered me when California voters defeated gay marriage. It bothered me when Maine did the same. But you know what? That was California and Maine. New Jersey should be held to a higher standard. We’re smarter than those people. We’re richer than those people. But now? In the vital metric of extending the most basic human rights to oppressed minority populations, New Jersey is in league with the most backwards, bigoted, fearful, and ignorant states in the Union. I don’t think I’ve ever been more ashamed of the state I love so much.

Here’s a roll call of which New Jersey senators voted yes and no. I’ve had a lot of critical things to say about Bayonne’s senator, Sandra Cunningham, but at least she had the good sense to do the right thing. As for Nick Sacco, I’ll see him in hell.

Then again, at least Sacco is on record with his villainy. How about the three nebbish, callow Democrats who abstained? Like Stephen Sweeney, who is somehow about to become Senate president. “Senator Stephen M. Sweeney . . . said publicly that he thought voters would look unkindly on the Legislature if it pushed for a social issue at a time of economic suffering. Senator Sweeney did not cast a vote on the measure on Thursday.” What the hell does economic suffering have to do with anything? There’s no one in the New Jersey Senate that can look in the mirror and say “New Jersey’s horrific economic condition isn’t my fault.” And now they’re going to blame their own feckless incompetence for further displays of spinelessness? What a joke. And fuck Gloucester County.

I’m honestly having a hard time mustering outrage any more. I’m not going to say I’m good at it, but I at least try to make an attempt to see things from other people’s perspective. But seriously, what does a fat, straight, moron have to fear from two men getting married? What does someone who never has to worry about visiting her spouse in the hospital, or inheriting his wife’s property when she dies, or having her union recognized for what it is, have to worry about two people who love each other enjoying the same civil rights as the rest of their fellow citizens?

And what does a state legislator have to fear from a horde of ignorant bigots? Criticism? A tougher reelection? Give me a break. Do your fucking job. This isn’t a political issue, so I have no fucking patience for political calculations. This is about recognizing the fundamental humanity of gay people. As I said earlier, the line between the right side and the wrong side of history is stark. Dick Codey, (God bless the man, he should be the governor right now) said it best: “One day people will look back and say, ‘What were they thinking?’ And, ‘What were they so afraid of?’”

Who fucking knows, senator. Who knows.

To do the right thing, that is. The New Jersey state senate will be considering a gay marriage bill in the coming week, with a vote possible late in the week.

There was a bit of scuttlebutt after the recent gubernatorial election that some Democratic lawmakers were uneasy about going through with the gay marriage bill. You see, outgoing governor Jon Corzine is in favor of marriage equality; incoming governor Chris Christie has promised to veto any such bill. And, you know, this is politics, so it would be unseemly for a Democratic legislature to do anything that would appear like they were trying to pass a bill at the eleventh hour before the opposition took control of the State House. Because it’s more important for Democrats to reap the rewards that come with decorum and proper comportment than actually, you know, do their fucking jobs.

Here’s the thing: at the end of the day, nobody CARES what manner good bills are passed in. And about this there can be no debate: a marriage equality bill is a good bill. Not just good, but entirely necessary and overdue. This isn’t some routine appropriation. This is civil rights. Please, New Jersey, do NOT fuck this one up.

Or, in other words, make New York look stupid for not doing the same thing last week. As Daily Intel says:

How would a huge defeat for same-sex marriage on Wednesday create momentum for the bill’s prospects, and not against them? Maybe it’s the irresistible opportunity to show New York what a progressive Northeast state with balls looks like.

N.J. cockroach contest predicts Corzine will beat Christie in governor’s race
1:12 PM Aug 20th from twitterfeed