I had the day off on Monday – something that I really didn’t brag about in advance, because I value my safety….can’t have any of my fellow friends or co-workers after me to kick my ass, ya know? But yes, it was the glorious 5 day weekend that is coming to a very sad conclusion as we speak.

Look at me, I’m sad. 🙁

The best part of Monday was that I didn’t leave my house. Not once. Sweat pants the entire day/night. I spent most of the day away from my computer and the internet, with the exception of the early morning time that led to my discovery of male Madonna magnificence as previously shared here.

I’d like to take a brief detour at this point to express how nice it would be if Madonna would stop making music. I wish she would have left my memories at “Music” and “Beautiful Stranger.” Instead, I have some unpleasant Madonna musical memories that came after that I wish I could forget. That thought came to me after I shared the Madonna post earlier, and I just wanted to get that out.

Done.

The bulk of the afternoon found me on the couch watching DVR’d television and DVDs. Kevin Smith has a new “evening with” DVD out, which is awesome except for the fact that I never got around to finishing the last Q&A DVD, and a day off seemed like the perfect chance to take care of that.

What I got from watching An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder, specifically the London portion, is that I love girls…er, women with English accents.

This is not a new development – I’ll point you to the sadly short-lived HBO series The Mind of The Married Man, a weekly dose of genius from creator/star Mike Binder that I loved for the subject matter, and his on-screen British wife, played by Sonya Walger. I just realized that Sonya was also in Tell Me You Love Me – another fave with an even shorter run on HBO….so THAT’S why she looked familiar…ha.

What can I say, I’m not so good with faces….or names either. *sigh*

The new Kevin Smith DVD is called Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith, and features over 5 hours of new Q&A material for Smith fiends, and it is in stores as we speak.

Cheech & Chong:

Were any of you as underwhelmed with Sunday night’s roast of Cheech & Chong on TBS as I was?

Geraldo Rivera, Greg Giraldo, and Tom Arnold were funny, but overall I found myself wishing that I could get the hour back that I spent watching it. I was amazed that with all of the people that Cheech & Chong have worked with over the years, nearly none of them were present for the roast. Where was Lou Adler?

For an example of a good roast – look at the Comedy Central roast of Chevy Chase a few years back – all (or most) of the famous friends/peers of Chase were there. Chase was roasted by the people that were actually there with, and a part of his career – what a concept!

a/k/a Tommy Chong official trailer

On a better note, I can highly recommend a/k/a Tommy Chong to those of you that have Showtime. The documentary puts heavy focus on the legal controversy which led to Chong eventually spending nine months in prison in 2003/2004, but also is an excellent overview of Chong’s colorful career. Richard “Cheech” Marin, producer Lou Adler, Peter Coyote, Bill Maher, and others show up to share their thoughts on Chong’s legal issues/imprisonment, and also their memories of working with Chong. Combined with a ton of unseen archival footage, producer/director Josh Gilbert scores high with a/k/a Chong.

According to a story in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, Gilbert also allegedly ruffled some feathers that led to the seizure of nearly 10,000 copies of the documentary.

The paper later ran a retraction on the item:

An attorney for Spectrum Labs, the company searched on May 7 by federal agents, said that 8,000 to 10,000 copies of a Tommy Chong documentary were not seized in the raid. This story as originally published May 11, 2008 was incorrect.
(Source: Alex Spiro).

The documentary is currently airing on Showtime, and also available for purchase here.

I’ll be going to see Cheech & Chong here in Cleveland in January with my dad – looking forward to it!!

The Rugburns – Me and Eddie Vedder

(extra points to any of you that can make the connection between Cheech & Chong and the song above)

Radio Daze on PBS:

For those of you that read Radio Daze, the book that longtime media personality Mike Olszewski wrote about the history of Cleveland radio, I’ve got some interesting news for you:

The video adaptation of Radio Daze will debut on television tonight (December 2nd) airing at 9:30pm EST on Western Reserve PBS, with encore showings on Friday, December 5th at 9:30pm, and Sunday, December 7th at 1:30pm.

I got a chance to see an advance screening of it, and highly recommend it to all music/radio history buffs. The flick will also be available on DVD at some point.