June 1st is the birthday of legendary screen goddess Marilyn Monroe. She would have been 82 today.
"We think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards." - Norman Mailer, 1973
"I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic. Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul." - Marilyn Monroe
Funny girls in a limo, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Tina Fey.
A long time ago, some idiot (probably a male comedian) said women just aren't funny. Maybe he was right back then, when female comedians like Phylis Diller and Joan Rivers still roamed the earth, trying to claw their way into the primordial boy's club. Yes, they were horrible. Diller did one joke over and over, and Rivers was about as funny as a root canal with a brutal hangover. Of course, most of the other Jurassic Borscht Belt comics weren't all that funny, either, if the truth be told. With a few shining exceptions, that shtick got old fast.
Amy Poehler, funny girl on Saturday Night Live.
Nowadays, there are plenty of hilarious women out there. And cute. Funny and cute is a deadly combination, and I'll admit a certain weakness for it. My girlfriend is funny and cute. Commanding such twin superpowers, a woman can destroy all that is wrong with the world with a fast one-two combination. It seems so, anyway. On a bad day, it's just a sucker punch to the kidneys.
Tina Fey is a riot. In my opinion, the star and creator of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock can do no wrong. She leads a cute and funny pack that includes Sarah Silverman, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Amy Sedaris, Wanda Sykes, and Kristen Wiig. Who am I forgetting?
There is a good article about these new funny women in this month's Vanity Fair, and the advantage of reading it online is you don't have to hoist all those slick pages and smell the perfume ads. Then again, you might like that. You're sick. Anyway, the article is here.
There are some great interviews with hot female comics here.
Diablo Cody won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Juno, a witty little movie and my favorite coming of age/teen pregnancy film of the year. You know, cool soundtrack, sassy dialog -- snarky with a heart. The story behind the story is Diablo Cody's meteoric rise from stripper and phone sex partner to Oscar winner, and sure she's sexy, but she's also whip-smart, and wrote a screenplay that didn't follow the tired old formulas that insist on a bump every ten minutes, and "plot points" that you can set your watch to. I got a kick watching this quirky oddball in a leopard skin mu-mu snake her way through the gowns and opulence of Hollywood and grab the gold. Or brass, or whatever it is.
This interview is a year old, when she was flogging "Candy Girl," a book she'd written about her experiences "stripping for Joe Sixpack," as she puts it. The other screenwriting award went to the Coen Brothers for their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men," which also won an Oscar for Best Picture. If you haven't read McCarthy, read the Border Trilogy (starting with "All The Pretty Horses") or dive in to the darkly brilliant "Blood Meridian."
The amazing Al Green. This is an early Valentine's Day gift, a special one-two punch of pure love and soul wrapped in a snappy 1970s jacket. There is nobody like Al. Coming after heroes Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and James Brown, Green embodied sweet soul music that was more silken than gritty, and, like Cooke, a combination of Sunday gospel and Saturday night club, the sacred crossing paths with the profane. Conflict makes a story, right? Currently, the Reverend Al gives Sunday services in Memphis, but this clip should take you back to the sweet sexy sinful Seventies. Can you dig it?
Teaserama! This cheesy movie trailer advertises a burlesque film from 1955. Innocent by today's standards, this "shocker" contains several famous striptease queens of that bygone era, including Tempest Storm and Bettie Page. Perhaps as a reaction against an all-out, no-holds-barred porn industry that leaves little to the imagination, burlesque is enjoying a resurgent popularity! Called Neo-Burlesque, or New Burlesque these days, the emphasis is on naughty and humorous rather then raw sex.
Flight of the Conchords follows a two-man neo-folk band from New Zealand living in the New York trying to make it big in music. They're desperate and talented, and they travel in and out of musical numbers, spoofs, and derivative masterpieces such as this sexy nugget of hot-buttered soul, "Business Time." We wish them the best.
June 1st is the birthday of legendary screen goddess Marilyn Monroe. She would have been 82 today. 
