Song Remains The Same ...

Is it already the end of the "weekend?"

The quotes are due to the fact that for the last few weeks us pages must WORK ON SATURDAYS. Okay, let's not gloss over this, it friggin' sucks! Sure, our bosses might say, it's more hours. Yeah, we get paid 9 friggin' 50 an hour. I'd prefer my saturdays be free, thank you very much. All this work explains why for the last few Sundays I have been dead tired and have little to no will to do anything productive. It's difficult to even keep straight all the stuff I mean to do. There's so many emails, phone calls, resumes, legal stuff, etc. etc. etc. how can anyone possibly manage it all?

Last week at NBC was just a bear to get through. It was ridiculously hot all week, which made working at the Tonight Show a real test of endurance. Also, I was ticketbox head for three days last week (counting last Saturday) which I can't say I really enjoyed. However, there were a few highlights, one of which happened Friday ...

Because ROBERT PLANT was in the house! You know, Robert Plant, of Page and Plant, of ...

LED ZEPPELIN!

Oh, you don't know? To that I say WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I was in utter disbelief through much of Friday while working ticketbox, as among the throngs of people coming to NBC, a staggeringly small amount had any real familiarity with ARGUABLY THE GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL BAND OF ALL TIME. Among my fellow pages it was no different. I was just in complete shock at this. Led Zepellin is one of those bands that seemingly every kid or teen should discover at some point and realize their greatness. Hell, I remember The Onion doing a mock news article a while back poking fun at how each new generation discovers the band and thinks it's some big revelation, when they are in fact only catching on to what most others have known about for years. The headline was like "Local Teen Discovers Cool New Band - Led Zeppelin." or something like that. But honestly, it is mind boggling. On Friday of this week the talentless and dumb as a doornail, soon to have her own behind the music special Jessica Simpson will be on, and yet for some inexplicable reason people will actually CARE. WHO GIVES A CRAP? These people should be lined up and forced to listen to some real music and bow before the rock god that is Robert Plant, who at one time was regularly singing, as Jack Black and Tenacious D called it, the "best song in the world." Rock and freakin' roll.

Anyways, Plant kicked ass. The first song he did for the show was a little muddled sounding, a bit uneven. But the second one, a new song like the first, was a classic sounding, pulsating, rocking little number that got the crowd pumping their fists and cheering and flashing the devil horns like it was 1979. Plant even broke out some vintage mic-twirling maneuvers, and didn't let his advancing age stop him from dancing around like he was on some legendary drug induced hallucinigenic trip through the Mines of Moria. Rocking.

Also, I SHOOK HIS HAND - AND - I TALKED TO THE VOICE OF LED ZEPPELIN HIMSELF! I WAS FACE TO FACE WITH THE MAN WHO SANG STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, BLACK DOG, AND DAZED AND CONFUSED! During my lunchbreak I watched his rehearsal in NBC's midway area, and suddenly he was done and walking right towards me and the other priveleged few who were watching. A bunch of crew-guy types shook his hand and relayed all these old timey stories like "yeah man, you rock, I saw you play in Vegas when I was DJ'in at this little place on the strip ..." So there I was ... in the words of Dio, the last in line. I stuck out my hand and said "Hey, I'm a big fan." And that was about all I could muster before The Man himself smiled, thanked me, and walked off to do those things that rock n' roll legends do. Still, that was, easily, the biggest thrill I've had at NBC in a long, long time.

And there I was at work trying to explain to my coworkers and other random people why this was so awesome, as if I was talking about some obscure indy band or something. WAKE UP PEOPLE, this is ONE OF THE MOST LEGENDARY FIGURES IN MUSIC EVER, SO GO AND BURN YOUR NELLY CD'S AND GET WITH THE BY-GOD PROGRAM!

Moving on ...

This week at work:

It's that time again - new pages! Oh boy, what will this new class bring to the table? I thought by this point I'd long have gotten an assignment and be pitching my script ideas to the NBC brass, but oh well, I guess it's my destiny to show these new kids how it's done. Luckily tommorow should be a good show, as one of my faves from those angst-ridden days of middle school, Alanis Morisette, will be playing on the Tonight Show. Now I already saw her play one of her new-school accoustic versions of songs from Jagged Little Pill a few months back on Ellen ("One Hand In My Pocket"), so I'm curious to see what song she'll do this time. Although I doubt it's a likely candidate, I'd love to see her play "All I Really Want", easily my most enduringly favorite song from that album.

The Weekend that Was:

Pretty busy this weekend. Friday went out with some pages for dinner at BJ's Bar and Grill in good old downtown Burbank, and then saw Bad News Bears. Saturday I trekked over to Santa Monica to partake in the birthday festivities of fellow page Diane "The Explosion" Panosian, who in her own words wanted her b-day to be celebrated in the only way befitting her -- insanely! Haha, I'll leave it at that.

And what'd I think of THE BAD NEWS BEARS?

- The movie turned out to be pretty funny, though I was surprised to find that it was a nearly scene by scene remake of the original version. Billy Bob Thornton was great, and the cast of kids was top notch as well. However I did feel like the movie had some pacing problems, and the climactic championship game seemed to go on and on forever. While the simplistic structure and plot worked in the original, it felt dated and slow here. On the other hand, there were plenty of good laughs and a lot of the one liners delivered by the kids and Billy Bob were gold, and Greg Kinnear was also in top form as the rival coach. I'd say this is one that's better suited for kids, but the language and adult humor might put off parents from bringing younger children to see this. Odd how this version is actually toned down from the 1980's orginal, yet still seems pretty shocking in an age when most kids' sports movies follow the clean-cut mold of The Mighty Ducks and other such Disney-ified fare. This is definitely a movie about dirty, foul mouthed, punk kids, and for that you've gotta appreciate it, even if the concept is nothing new, just one that's been gone for a while. Still, I would definitely rank this below School of Rock on the Linklater-directed kids comedy scale, as that movie was just bursting with energy and freshness while this one really felt like a remake of a concept that has since been done to death. Very funny at times, but slow at others, Bad News Bears is definitely worth checking out to see a kids' sports movie that for once is as rebellious in its nature as the badly behaved kids whose stories it tells. My grade: B

RANDOM STUFF:

- Daaaaaaaaaaamn, this weekend's season-finale episode of Justice League ruled it. Suffice to say any fans of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's seminal animation work from throughout the last fifteen years owes it to themselves to check out this episode, which ties together threads from nearly every DC Comics'-based animated series created by these two. Amazing, amazing stuff.

- Mediocre Family Guy tonight. It was paced so that nearly every quickly-cut scene was immediately followed with one of the show's trademark random cutaways. The Stewie-Brian office subplot was funny, but only highlighted the disjointedness of the A-plot. Note to Seth McFarlane: scrap American Dad and concentrate on making Family Guy great again.

- I find it funny that the LA Times carries Joel Stein's weekly opinion columns. I mean, I think the guy is a hilarious writer, but his columns have no place in the op-ed section of a major news publication. Put him back in Entertainment Weekly where he belongs, and get rid of Stephen King, who clearly has little interest in writing about pop culture on a regular basis.

- Too funny that The Island made only 12 million it's opening weekend - that's terrible! Maybe now the studios will stop giving these big movies to Michael Bay, who in my opinion has made exactly one truly entertaining movie - The Rock, while being mostly responsible for utter crap like Armageddon, one of my least favorite movies of all time. Now I still kinda want to see The Island out of curiosity, but I have a feeling that, like I Robot, it's going to be one of those movies with a cool concept where it could have been much, much better in more capable hands (in the case of I Robot - I blame the writing, studio interference and casting of Will Smith, not the director, Alex Proyas, who is great).

- And that's all for now. New pages, get ready, you have NO idea what you're in for ...