GoldbergBlog

Easy Riders, Raging OMFG

I haven’t been able to tear myself away from Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”.  I probably should have read it years ago but after reading “Down and Dirty Pictures”, I felt that not only would I not gleam a lot of new information from “Easy Riders” but that Biskind’s over-indulgence in gossip would make it a less-than-worthwhile read.

Just for those who don’t know, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” is about the rise and fall of Hollywood’s Second Golden Age and how directors like Coppola, Scorsese, and Ashby, drugged out and narcissistic as they could be, challenged and transformed what American movies could be before studio supremacy returned once more with the coming of blockbusters “Jaws” and “Star Wars”.

But it does provide me with what I want which is the how and why behind great motion pictures.  However, as predicted it provide the gossip in no short order.  It’s undoubtedly juicy but at times I feel like I don’t really care that Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving had a rocky relationship and I don’t need another paragraph of Biskind’s dimestore psychoanalysis.

But then I get to a passage like this:

“Probably loaded on booze and ‘ludes, Snider blew Stratten’s head off with the shotgun, and then placed her prostrate on an exercise bench (later referred to in the press as a “bondage machine”) and had sex with her corpse.”

WORTH IT.

Why You Should Be Reading SCOTT PILGRIM

From the latest issue, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe”:

Best Hobo Names

In his book, The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman (if that name sounds familiar, he’s a correspondent for The Daily Show and he’s the PC in the “I’m a Mac” commercials) lists 700 hobo names. Here are my favorites:

Hobo Zero
Peter Ox-Hands
Slow Motion Jones
Prostate Davey
Huckle Smothered
Doc Aquatic
Thundertwine
Extra-Skin Dave
Honey-Bunches of Donald
Thermos H. Christ
Half-Albino Alejandro
Taxachusettes Glenn
Colin, That Cheerful Fuck
Mister Torso, the Legless Wonder
Unconditional Gavin
Ned Gravelshirt
Magnetized James
Harry Coughblood