Definitely Not L.A.

Sylvester Stallone will be in Southfield tonight for a screening of “Rocky Balboa,” due out December 22nd, that’ll benefit Detroit’s historic Kronk Gym, home to Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns and Jack “Von Bondie this” White, among other legendary Motor City brawlers.

“Balboa” is Stallone’s long-imagined final chapter in the saga of the big palooka from Philly with a heart of gold (and, at this point, turtles of dust) and, word has it, a welcome return to the gritty realism of the first pictures in the series.  In other words, you may pity the fool who didn’t bring him back for a cameo, but Mr. T is nowhere to be found.  (And don’t get me started about Dolph Lundgren in “Rocky IV,” or I must break you.)

I’ve not seen the movie and the press tub-thumping is only beginning, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict 3 of the following 4 plot points will actually be in there:

* Rocky is coaxed out of retirement for title bout with younger, stronger champ

* Spectral image of Burgess Meredith urges Rocky to stick to high-fiber diet

* Montage devoted to Rocky’s training culminates in run up Philadelphia Museum of Art stairs, quick edit before Stallone reaches for oxygen

* Rocky dies

I hope that last one’s not spoiler-ific–again, I’m only guessing here–but I toss it in there knowing that Stallone and MGM are using some of the same folks who promoted “Passion of the Christ” and last year’s “Narnia” movie so successfully to the “faith-based” community to help get out the word that this is a family-friendly movie about a fellow seeking redemption by pummeling his fellow man into unconsciousness.

Whether that truly hints at “Balboa’s” big finish, we’ll all find out in a few weeks (or earlier, if you read reviews with spoilers) but I’ll confess I’m rooting for the big lug.

Rocky, too.

Stallone has managed over the years since he was pretty much the highest-paid actor in Hollywood to maneuver the inevitable ebb of his box office power without resorting to the straight-to-video, cookie-cutter hack jobs of the Van Dammes and Seagals of the world.  Sly was terrific in 1997’s “Cop Land,” and he even made me giggle as the big bad in the disappointing third “Spy Kids” movie.  He’s tried the reality show route–at least it was boxing–and had his own magazine for about 3 days, but for the most part it’s seemed to me as if he’s been trying to get the Rocky and Rambo sequels made.  (Rambo’s up next, with production ramping up reeeeeal fast if “Balboa” makes some serious coin.)

So here he comes, with “Rocky Balboa” probably causing him to draw some eerie parallels between his real life and his reel life. 

Based on the response in the theaters I’ve been in when the “Balboa” trailer cues up that ascending, unmistakable Bill Conti “Rocky” theme–dum-da-da-da-da-dum-da-da-da-DAAAAA–I’m thinking Sly’s going to surprise us and sport that shiny belt again soon. 

Blues guitar legend Robert Lockwood Jr. passed away last Tuesday at the age of 91 in Cleveland, his adopted hometown, after suffering a brain aneurysm and stroke.  He’s survived by his wife Mary and 4 stepchildren from his first marriage and 4 from his second, as well as legions of fans and admirers.  His funeral will take place tomorrow.

Probably best known for his connection to Robert Johnson, who, the standard take on the tale goes–I recall Lockwood having his own version–taught him how to play guitar, Lockwood’s storied career paralleled the undulating relevance of blues music itself. 

He served as inspiration and mentor to a young B.B. King, was a key player during the heyday of Chicago’s Chess Records, and served as sideman to the greats before spending the past few decades performing as a soloist as well as front man for his own group.  Lockwood was the winner of 2 W.C. Handy Awards, the blues equivalent of the Oscars and Grammys, and in 1995 he was the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship award.

I’ll try not to bog the blog in heavy-osity, but I had the great pleasure–honor–of helping to bring Lockwood and his touring band to Monroe to headline the library system’s “An Evening of Sin and Redemption” concert during Black History Month (February) 1999.  He turned in a mellow, fairly low-key set of blues and jazz that, honestly, didn’t exactly whip the crowd at St. Mary’s into a frenzy.  He sat on his stool a bit off-center stage, directing his band while tossing off one riff after another that had the guitar geeks camped out down front shaking their heads and making that “we are not worthy” gesture. 

(Lockwood did hit the stage right after Toledo’s Queens of Harmony turned the auditorium into a revival tent without the dust clouds and bugs with a set of rompin-stompin’ gospel, so I always believed the wily old dude chose to not to try to compete with the ladies in the matching dresses, instead doing his own unique thing.)

The climactic jam on “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” with Lockwood leading his band, the Queens, New York’s Guy Davis and Saffire’s Ann Rabson in an epic rendition of the standard that closed the gap between blues and gospel and jazz, remains one of my favorite Monroe County blues memories with plenty of stiff competition.  (Ann Rabson recalls that night as the night she impressed Lockwood enough to forever compliment her whenever their paths crossed afterward–”You play the [excrement] out of that piano!” he told her.)

I wish I had a good insider story to share about Lockwood’s performance in Monroe–I do remember being contractually required (and happy) to have a big bottle of Hennessy waiting for him in his dressing room–but things tend to get a bit nutty backstage at these big gigs and there’s never enough time for much of anything beyond basic logistics.

Each time we lose one of our blues series alumni, like Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, or Johnnie Johnson, I’m reminded how precious the time I–and we, if you saw them perform–get to spend with them, onstage or off, needs to be.  

Meanwhile, I’ve been imagining Lockwood walking into that great juke joint in the sky and opening up his guitar case…  

Friday’s Golden Globes balloting deadline heralds the start of the movie industry’s awards season: three months of shameless campaigning, ruthless self-promotion, and air kissing like it’s Pictionary night at Clay Aiken’s.  All this foofaraw snowballs toward the big tasty Kahuna Burger, the Oscarcast on February 25th, and I can’t hardly wait.

The Golden Globes have magically, mysteriously morphed into a real player.  (Capital P on that if you’re a Tolkin–no e–or Altman fan.)  The awards themselves are still dreamed up by a silly small number of foreign journalists (which makes it easy to schmooze them all and get yourself a nomination or award, the legendary Pia Zadora’s 1982 trophy the most notorious) and used to be as legit as the made-for-TV Dick Clark production it was…erm, is?  These days, though, the GGs are a stepping stone to Oscar, a delicious opportunity to practice your earnest, teary-eyed speech about the Art, and one of the key indicators of who’s gonna be riding Oscar’s wild horses across the finish line.

The ceremony itself is still Oscar’s boozy half-sister from Gatlinburg, with champagne flowing like Britney’s latest bad weave at every table, but the crushing impact of legitimacy has tamped down the hate-myself-for-watching fun of gawking at stars acting like seniors at prom with a six of Blatz getting lukewarm in the limo.

But we’ll still watch–I will, anyway, and you’re invited if you want to swing by and heckle along. 

An Inconvenient Truth, the “global warming movie” starring Al Gore and his PowerPoint of Doom, has been out on DVD for a couple of weeks now, and, while it’s not exactly threatening to slingshot past Cars to take Billboard’s Top DVD Rentals crown, it’s well worth a look-see.

Pollyanna here recalls seeing it this summer and thinking it was a film, or the film, that would actually change the world.  (And not quite in the way I took the slight success of Little Man as a sign of a looming Apocalypse.)  The case Gore makes for at least starting to consider consulting the Magic 8-Ball to ask about forming a task force to begin pondering the slightest chance that we’re screwing something up is so compelling, so cut and dried, that I imagined that by now we’d all be swept up in a mondo-globo plan to turn the tide and give future generations their own opportunities to find out what’s in that last shiny briefcase.

(And I’m man enough to admit that I didn’t exactly walk home from Royal Oak after seeing the picture.  In fact, I think my first words after hopping in the car were “Yo, crank the air.”  But I digress.)

We all know now how that turned out.  I saw a Humvee with a Phish bumper sticker on it last night on I-94 on my way to the Cadieux Cafe, and that’s not a line from a Don Henley song.

Even free of the handlers that lodged the knotty pine in his lockbox during the 2000 campaign, Gore is more than likely the reason why the movie didn’t shove us all toward carbon neutrality.  He’s compromised as a messenger–by the media, by the zeitgeist, whatever–no matter how hard he tries to depoliticize the issue of climate change.  (He invented it, right?  Yeah.  And Condi Rice is a cyborg sent back from the future to install Skynet, that’s cool.) 

So I’ve spent the few months since An Inconvenient Truth’s theatrical release wondering who could, or could have, delivered Gore’s case without the baggage that comes from being Al Gore?

Someone who ain’t got the partisan taint, who’s taken at face value and not as Chicken Little?

The easy answers: Bill Gates?  Bono?  Oprah?  Tom Hanks?

All of them, after forming a Justice League of Do-Goodery?  (With Lindsay Lohan, TV’s lovable Webster, Emmanuel Lewis, and Air Bud as their wacky youthful sidekicks?)

Barack Obama might have it in him.  I’ve seen a lot of rock stars electrify a crowd, but no one’s created the buzz before during and after an appearance like he did before my very eyes last summer.  But he’s not quite there yet.

I posed this question to a friend last night and he suggested Bill Clinton–the post-Presidential model.  Good pick, but again there’s the baggage.  Oh is there the baggage.

Here’s your cue to chime in, teeming masses.  Which public figure hits the heavy bag of unconditional credibility with the most gusto in 2006?  Who do you trust most to break the bad news, or inspire you to do stuff that could require sacrifice?

Apparently it’s not Katie Couric.  Anyone else?

Like me (sorry ’bout that) and looking for a new gig?  (This daily grind of blogging is having its way with my hairline and freedom to properly maintain what I’ll humbly call the finest Bob Barker retirement countdown clock site in the universe.) 

Feel all mushy inside with the knowledge that, as always, the goverment’s got the answer.

I noticed the other day that the CIA is running adverts on 89X, the alternative (whatever that means these days) radio station I keep on in the car to underscore the self-delusion that I’m not closer to AARP membership than I am to being the 89X target demographic.  The CIA ad bobs high in a sea of laser hair removal and ladies-free-before-10-pm jingles, and I wonder how many listeners set down their Starbucks to write down contact info.

The CIA’s also working the online recruiting angle–there’s a bunch of kid-friendly Flash fun at the official site, and now there’s a zippy personality test complete with retro Austin Powers-y graphics.  (”Myth #2: Everyone Drives a Sports Car with Machine Guns in the Tailpipe”)  Because my file can’t be thick enough, I of course took the test (from my home PC, which probably disqualified me for clandestine operations) and learned I’m a “Daring Thrill-Seeker,” in spite of aching for a job that involves reading a best-selling novel. 

I suppose none of this 21st Century recruiting should come as a surprise beyond that it took so long for the CIA to get with the program.  America’s Army, a government-funded FPS, has been available as a free download for years, and David Gergen and Doris Kearns Goodwin consulted on Hypocritical Gasbag, that fun-filled Congressional simulator site.   

I’ll let you know if the results of my online CIA testing inspire a rookie NOC with the Chinese character for “tranquility” tattooed on her lower back to show up on my stoop with a free Taking Back Sunday CD and offer I can’t refuse.  The eagle flies at midnight. 

As decreed by the International Blogging Council (diggin’ the root beer, fellas) in Oslo, noob bloggers have 36 hours from an initial blog post to publish the entry outlining “intent, introduction, and mission.”

(Truth be told, between the IBC’s stringent regs and the ground rules laid down by the Evening News blog overlords–”your daughter will be returned to you unharmed after 6 months of blogging without the use of any of the 632 words on the attached list“–it’s already feeling a little claustrophobic at DNLA HQ.)

Hopefully you’ll find this the blogosphere’s embodiment of “a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”

8 seconds on the pop culture bull, if you will.

Blogs that garner my attention amble from the sublime (www.stuffonmycat.com) the practical (www.oscarwatch.com) to the ridiculous (www.blogsmonroe.com/musicjim), and hopefully this one will fall nowhere in between.

During the intense negotiations that led to its existence–Sam Bernstein, you da man–”turf” was discussed–what will it cover? Movies? Books? Flesh-eating viruses? Thus far, no barbed wire has been strung across the pop cultural sandbox, so expect a film review here–Deja Vu’s a sturdy, satisfying thriller with the best supporting actor (New Orleans, post-Katrina) of the year–a 5,000-word encomium to “The Herculoids” there, with the occasional careen into silliness purely for the sake of being silly.

Qualifications? Umm…erm…well, that’s on the to-do list.

Enjoy. Participate.

And assume it’s a joke if it leaves you scratching your head.

I’ve seen Jerry Seinfeld do stand-up a few times.  During the sitcom’s heyday, his live act was prone to interruption by clever knee-slappers from the audience like “Say ‘Hello, Newman’!” and “Where’s Kramer?”  (Lately, clever knee-slappers of Seinfeld’s own like “What’s the deal with multibillion-dollar hedge funds, anyway?” leave us in stitches.)  Seinfeld patiently responded to the latter in a tone somewhere between exasperation and edification: Kramer is a fictional character.  Played by an actor.  Who’s not here tonight.  Meanwhile, I’m the real guy, and I’m right here in front of you.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard or read more about Michael Richards, that actor, in the past week than you have since “Seinfeld” left NBC desperately trying to lasso a new cash cow.  For those who’ve been distracted by Thanksgiving preparations and that whole war thing, Richards was doing his stand-up act (who knew?) when he clumsily retaliated against what I guess were bored audience members.  Opting out of “Up your nose with a rubber hose,” Richards unleashed an endless barrage of racist tripe.  Thanks to the ubiquitity of camera phones (with video!) the outburst was recorded for posterity and has been all over the airwaves and the internets.  It’s safe to say that Michael Richards is no Lenny Bruce, no Richard Pryor, no Sam Kinison, and no Sacha Baron Cohen when it comes to laying bare our ongoing issues with race.

Once the story broke, Richards got up on the good foot of celebrity remorse and apology with an appearance on the Letterman show (backstopped by Seinfeld himself, who looked as comfortable as I do when I flip the dial and come across prostate surgery on one of those gory E.R. shows on TLC) that half the live audience (who’d yet to hear what the hell he was apologizing for) thought was a bit and chuckled over until Seinfeld chided them.  Richards is now reaching out to the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton for absolution and probably learning the hard way (like finding yourself saying “now, I’ve got a sense of humor, but…”) that if you find yourself muttering “now, I’m no racist…” you may want to consider a long, hard look in the mirror. 

The media was quick to draw parallels between the Richards flameout and Mel Gibson’s recent PR debacle and subsequent remorse roadshow, but I prefer the approach that caught my attention this morning when it was reported on FNC: Tom Green (all together now: WHO?) has the stone (and free time…lots of free time) to use his blog to urge us all to “leave Michael Richards alone.”  

When the best you can get is sympathy and understanding from the star of “Freddy Got Fingered,” it’s time to bask in those fat residual checks ’till the inevitable reunion show.