JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The ducktail, the Jewfro, the Colonel Sanders’s evil twin, and now the terrifying Fifth Beatle moptop on Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men—Joel and Ethan Coen have gone where few hairstylists dare to go. Visit the Gallery of Hairstyles in Coen Brothers movies.

The New York Times review of Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador (The Bet Collector), which opens in Manhattan this week.

Down and Out and Running Numbers in The Rougher Precincts of Manila
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Much like man’s best friend, the rough-hewn Filipino movie “The Bet Collector” chases its protagonist from step to step, misery to misery, all but nipping at her heels. . . .

I still like the NYT review of Maximo Oliveros, which described it as “shot on commercial-grade digital video by someone playing the maracas.”

My last interview with singer-songwriter Ely Buendia was in 1994. I figured that two bands, one coronary, and a digital revolution later, it was time for an update

Jessica: The Julie Taymor movie Across The Universe features the songs of The Beatles. How would you feel about a movie musical featuring the songs of the Eraserheads?

Ely: They should call it Across the University Avenue.

Bald Hairdressers and The Afterlife of Porkchops, in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Things I might’ve known before I signed on to manage a rock band, that could’ve helped me stick around longer than four months, or at least feel less useless.

(1) If the band was already famous before you joined them, you’re parsley. You’re there to make it look like they have a manager and therefore cannot be messed with, but you’re not actually going to manage anybody.
(2) If you are a fan and consider it a privilege to breathe the same air as the band, you probably won’t be contradicting them much. Later, when they’re comfortable enough around you to fart in your presence, you will reassess your definition of “a privilege”.
(3) You work for the rockstars; you are not a rockstar.

A hotel room in San Francisco, California, April or May 1997. My roommates have gone off to visit relatives and I am alone and stationary for the first time in weeks. It’s two in the morning and I’m drifting into unconsciousness.

The phone rings.

I ignore it. I need my sleep. I just spent a few hours chasing half the band and two roadies up and down Haight-Asbury. They wanted to be photographed next to the street sign, like The Beatles during the Summer of Love. Then the guys scattered. We arranged to meet at the van in a couple of hours. This simply meant that in two hours I would look for them in every store on the street, prise them away from whatever was holding their attention— using force if necessary—and bodily drag them back to the van. Okay, I’m exaggerating— half the band was very well-behaved—but what’s the point of reminiscing about the experience if you can’t make it sound more dramatic than it really was? I don’t have any stories of cars being driven into swimming pools or TVs being thrown out of closed windows, so hyperbole is all I have.

Two hours later the guys piled into the van with minimal wrangling, which was weird. On the drive back to the hotel the vocalist stared enraptured at the billboards. “They’re breathing,” he whispered in awe. One roadie stretched out in the back seat and cried, “Help me, I need a guide, wala na akong maintindihan!” Apparently some old hippie at Haight had offered to open the doors of perception for the band, you know what I’m saying? The business manager and I had a discussion with the promoter, who wisely said he would lock the new friends of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds into their suite.

The blasted phone won’t stop ringing. I pick up. “This is the front desk. Are you with the band that’s staying in this hotel?”

“Yes, I’m their manager.”

“You better come down here,” the man said. “One of your band members is in the lobby, taking off his clothes and howling.”

I throw on a jacket and dash downstairs in my pajamas. True enough, the guitarist is walking round and round the fountain, keening like an old woman at a wake. How he got out of their locked suite, I have no idea. I call him. He runs away, shrieking. Through the glass doors I see a police car coming. I’m not sure if they’re coming for our half-naked guitarist or for someone else, but I take off after the topless howler. As the flashing lights of the police car draw closer and closer, half the band arrives from dinner with their relatives—rhythm section, good timing—and they chase the guitarist. They catch him and hustle him out through a side door and into the van where no one could hear him scream. Arrest averted.

For the record, I still love the band and listen to their albums. To rip off the ending of one of my favorite books: “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Ricky goes to a music store to look for a CD.

Ricky: Do you have the album by Feist?
Salesperson: Yes sir, the Sfice Girls.

Here’s a serious topic: Who was your first crush? I thought mine was Parker Stevenson of The Hardy Boys, but that was in a giggly, “Let’s braid each other’s hair” way. The crush who actually triggered puberty was Warren Beatty, whom I saw on TV in Splendor In The Grass. I had already seen a couple of Woody Allen movies by then, and I said, “Oy.”

My gay friends’ first crushes were: Matthew Laborteaux in Little House On The Prairie, a seatmate in the second grade, Joe Hardy of The Hardy Boys—the fictional character but not Shaun Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, the guy in James At 15, and Johnny and Scott of Sigmund and The Sea Monsters, except that we couldn’t remember which one was Johnny and which one was Scott. Then Carlo remembered that he had a crush on Gulliver in the cartoon series The Adventures Of Gulliver (only loosely based on Jonathan Swift’s opus), and it turns out we all had a crush on Gulliver. Making a cartoon character everybody’s first crush.

“Didn’t he have a love interest in that cartoon?” Ricky asked. “A tiny Lilliputian girl? What was her name?”

“Flirtatia,” I said. “You know, I worried about that relationship. I mean, how were they supposed to even kiss?”

“Me too!” everyone cried.

Later someone walked past the restaurant carrying a tiny dog and Noel asked, “What happens if a Doberman mates with a teacup chihuahua?” And everyone chorused: “Gulliver”.

Our first crush explains A Lot.

In Confessions of a Technophobe, Joe Queenan asks: Why are so many dramas and thrillers now set in the past? Is it because, in a world of mobile phones, satnav and Google, suspense is impossible?

Good point:  The sight of an actor sitting before a computer googling his enemy doesn’t really raise the tension. However I can think of at least four movies in which technology is thrilling: Infernal Affairs (covert texting), and the Bourne movies.