PopSmart

“There’s no Church of England fundamentalism, you know, like they have Islamic fundamentalism. Church of England fundamentalism is impossible because you can’t have: ‘You must have tea and cake with the vicar… or you die!’ Cake or death? That’s a pretty easy question. Anyone could answer that. ‘Cake or death?’ ‘Uhh, cake, please.’”

— Actor, comedian and occasional cross-dresser Eddie Izzard, who brings his latest stand-up show “Stripped” to Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on Tuesday-Wednesday, June 24-25.

As a PopSmart bonus, here’s the full quote as re-enacted by Lego toys. YouTube features a surprisingly high quantity of Lego-style Eddie Izzard routines.

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While digging around for my recent post on the True Colors Tour, which concludes tonight at Chastain Park, I learned that wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper explained what happened when he (accidentally?) kicked True Colors headliner Cyndi Lauper back in 1985 when she was into the whole Wrestlemania scene. The cool thing is that Piper is seen telling the story at another Atlanta event: the annual International GI Joe Collectors Convention.

It takes awhile for Piper to get to the Lauper incident, but everything’s hilarious …

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I was out of town for the opening weekend of Song of the Living Dead, Dad’s Garage Theatre’s world premiere musical about love and zombies. Instead I saw it last night at a special Thursday fundraiser for, appropriately enough, historic Oakland Cemetery, which is still recovering from the tornado damage from earlier this year.

I’ll write about Song of the Living Dead at length in next week’s issue, but I will say that, for me, the most memorable thing that happened off-stage at last night’s performance was the woman sitting directly behind me who blurted “Oh shit, what’s THAT?!!” when someone (or some thing) began moving through the seats.

Song of the Living Dead fits in with a surprisingly prevalent contemporary vogue for zombies, which you find not only in movies like 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, but all over pop culture and the Internet. I see references to zombies all the time on blogs, and recently noticed a popular meme that goes like this:

“You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have -

[01] one weapon.
[02] one song blasting on the speakers.
[03] one famous person to fight alongside you.”

Apparently weapons and famous persons can be real or fictional. Participants in the meme, wherever it appears, are invited to answer the question in the comments field, or pass it along in their own blogs. It’s fun to play along – my answers are after the jump.

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If you haven’t seen this already, I predict you’re going to see this everywhere. It’s a music video for the song “Toe Jam” by The BPA, a pseudonym for Fat Boy Slim, featuring vocals from David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal. If the treadmill choreography of OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” could turn that clip into a viral sensation, “Toe Jam’s” use of strategically placed censor bars over unclad bodies — check out the “Pong” game should break records. It’s sort of like Busby Berkeley meets Boogie Nights. Not technically work safe — or is it? Catchy beat and fun vocals (and a surprising f-bomb) from Byrne, too:

A higher-res version is here.

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For years, I’ve studiously avoided “Top Chef,” Bravo’s reality chef-competition show — which is unusual for me considering my near obsession with practically all things Bravo reality-TV programming. (And in my defense, I do believe the best of the crop, “Project Runway,” is a multi-Emmy nominee, no?)

But “Top Chef” eluded me for years mainly on the argument that there was really no way for me to “judge” whether or not the resultant work was any good. And so, generally speaking, it all came down to the drama, and even during those unavoidable Bravo marathon screenings of the series — helpful at times, annoying the other 90 percent of the time — I just couldn’t get on board. Until now.

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Dad’s Garage Theatre’s zombie musical Song of the Living Dead (written by Matt Horgan and Travis Sharp, with songs by Eric Frampton) has its world premiere on Fri., June 6. To give you a taste, the playhouse and Cougars Film Group have produced this trailer, and it’s probably the most effective Youtube-ready video clip I’ve ever seen for a new stage play. The actors include Gabriel Dean, Z Gillispie, Megan Leahy, Erin Lorette, Stephen Platinum, Gina Rickicki and George Faughnan (whose preacher song already looks like a classic):

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My review of Kung Fu Panda has hit the internet — and so, too, has one of my favorite scenes from the surprisingly entertaining cartoon feature. The voices are provided by Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman, and it’ll probably make you hungry for dumplings. I recommend you watch the bigger, clearer image here, but this is good enough:

(It’s a lot better than the film’s music video for “Kung Fu Fighting,” Cee-Lo’s presence notwithstanding.)

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The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the 40th anniversary of which is remembered today, was the first historical moment that had any kind of resonance with me. There remain only fragments of it: plopped on my family’s living-room floor while my family, including my Massachusetts-born father, watched the news coverage. I knew something bad had happened, and I think I remember it being Kennedy’s murder, but mostly something bad. But the more vivid memory came days later, on our way down to South Florida for a summer vacation, when my dad lost it and yelled at us in the back seat while we were playing with each other. His anger and grief had overcome him. That emotion resonates and stays with a person over the years.

That’s history for you, especially when you’re young. Sometimes you only remember swatches of moments, and images. Four decades on, RFK seems to live on in a variety of those swatches. Like his speeches, whether on the campaign trail or after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, in which he did his level best to tamp down on the violence sure to come …

Kennedy, like his brother John, has endured a rather spotty interpretation on film (but for the excellent “American Experience” documentary). He was portrayed with surprising timidity by Linus Roache in the 2002 TV movie, RFK, which failed to capture but a lick of his charisma and depth of feeling. My favorite portrayal comes from Martin Sheen, who at various times has portrayed both brothers but was brilliant in the 1974 TV movie The Missiles of October, about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. (I can barely remember how Steven Culp portrayed him in Thirteen Days, which was more a vehicle for Kevin Costner as a presidential aide than anything else.) Last year brought us RFK Must Die! The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which raises new questions about whether Sirhan B. Sirhan (still serving a life sentence in a California prison) actually pulled the trigger.
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Last week I talked to Mark McKinney in advance of The Kids in the Hall’s “Live As We’ll Ever Be” evening of sketch comedy coming to the Cobb Energy Centre on May 24. It wasn’t easy picking out which “kid” to interview, because they’re all highly talented writer-performers, even though they seldom shine as brightly in their side projects as they do all together. Here’s a reprise of McKinney’s most memorable recurring characters.

“Mr. Tyzik”

Also known as the “I’m crushing your head!” guy, the vaguely Eastern European nutjob is one of the most familiar figures in the Kids’ rogue gallery of regulars. His battle with the “I’m pinching your face!” guy is similarly amusing, but I like the elaborate “rehab” cliches in this one. Incidentally, I asked McKinney if the character, who frequently appears in extreme close-up, “works” in a live show like their tour, and he said “He does work live! You have to come see how!”

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One of the pleasures of Son of Rambow is the way it captures the childlike excitement of making home movies, and attempting to film an epic in your own back yard. Since digital movie cameras are so cheap and easy to operate, home movies are significantly easier for young people to make now than 25 years ago (roughly the time Son of Rambow takes place). Amateur recreations of classic films can be superficially funny, with their jerry-rigged production values, but they can also contain an element of tenderness — they emerge as awkward but sincere declarations of love.

A vogue for home movies seems to be moving through the film business. In addition to Son of Rambow, Be Kind Rewind from earlier this year made a running joke of amateur recreations of popular movies, including RoboCop, Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy and Rush Hour 2.

Possibly the crowning achievement in 1980s-era home movies is Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. From 1982-1989, three teenage boys in Ocean Springs, Miss., filmed a shot-by-shot remake of the first Indiana Jones adventure. The “Adaptation” was rediscovered in 2003, won praise from Steven Speilberg himself, and has received charity screenings around the country. Reportedly Paramount Pictures is developing a film based on the boys’ experience in (re)making the film. The first 10 minutes are on Youtube, and while it won’t be mistaken for the real thing, you can appreciate the pains they took to emulate the original film.

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