Brandon's Buzz

Brendan James — “The Fall” (from Brendan James) —

Lord Jesus, if this sultry, sweltering Saturday morning is a sneak preview of what this impending Centex summer is gonna look like — quite literally, my shirt is wet enough to wring out — I think I’m gonna hide in a hole and not come out until mid-November, when it will once again to be cool enough to at least open the front door without choking on humid, heavy air.

Demi Lovato — “Heart Attack” (from Demi) —

Where in blue hell did this thing come from? A former Disney Channel princess who hurled herself up to the big kids’ table last year with her smash single “Give Your Heart a Break” and a lauded stint as a judge and mentor on Simon Cowell’s otherwise misbegotten Americanized version of The X Factor, Lovato lunges back into the spotlight — in full-blown bitch goddess mode (which, shockingly, fits her like a satin glove) — with this smashing about-face. Hey, Christina and Britney: y’all had best be keepin’ both eyes on this gal, because she is clearly playing for keeps.

Elton John — “I Swear I Heard the Night Talkin'”
(from To Be Continued. . . ) —

A couple of years out yet from one of the classic comebacks in pop music history — 1992’s grand The One — and still seemingly struggling a bit with his sexuality (or, at least, with the public ramifications of same), Sir Elton caps a half-decade of flying (fabulously) under the radar by turning to his chief therapist — lyricist Bernie Taupin, duh — to help him come to grips with the demons of desire in this unheralded gem from a career-capping box set.

“I’m okay, though. Trust me.”

— openly gay MSNBC newsman Thomas Roberts on Monday’s Morning Joe in the LMAO moment of the day, responding off-the-cuff to an earlier news story — which the clearly amused host Joe Scarborough continued to make light of for the remainder of the show — in which actor Michael Douglas apparently revealed to the UK’s Guardian that his recent and devastating bout with throat cancer was incited by a virus he contracted by performing oral sex on his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones. (By the by, Joe’s response to the above comment, once his hearty belly laugh subsided: “Yeah, he’s the only one on this set not sweating right now! Sittin’ pretty, are ya?” PS: The wickedly funny playback of this madcap exchange can be seen here.)

Moby — “We Are All Made of Stars” (from 18) —

A and I spent our Memorial Day last Monday taking a relaxing, leisurely, music-filled drive up into the Texas Hill Country, with stops as far-flung as San Saba, Lampasas and Killeen. But the highlight of our journey was a layover in Llano, Texas, a quaint li’l burg roughly a half-hour north of Fredericksburg that, I quickly surmised, had rarely hosted the footfalls of gay men prior to last week. (This conclusion wasn’t difficult to reach based solely on the looks we got from the fine folks at the town’s Dairy Queen, who sized us up with the same scrupulous scrutiny one might reserve for a pair of stranded Martians who missed the last shuttle back to the cosmos. And to be fair, we wouldn’t have even attempted to grab some grub at the DQ, but A has this slightly psychotic notion that the only time he is allowed to eat chicken strips is while he’s on a road trip, and I had a hellacious hankerin’ for a dipped cone, so the Queen was the only available eatery that checked all the aforementioned boxes.)

The best part of our day (for my money, anyhow) was a visit to Llano’s local Alco store, which, even though I live in a reasonably metropolitan city and thus have easy access to a multitude of stores and shopping experiences, is always such a supreme treat. If you’ve ever patronized an Alco, then you know exactly where I’m coming from on this, but if you’re a newbie: it’s essentially a Wal-Mart in miniature, selling everything from sheet sets to school supplies to clothing to luggage to household tools to Blu-Ray players to the latest Pistol Annies CD, with perhaps a greater concentration of kitschy home decor items that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on Earth. A quick visit to Alco’s website informs me that they operate over two hundred stores, mainly in smaller cities (populations between five and ten thousand) strewn across the nation’s heartland clear from Idaho to Florida, and if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of one, you should pop your head in and take a look around. Even if you end up purchasing nothing, you’re sure to find the store’s offerings fascinating, and you never know what you might find.

To wit: while ambling through the housewares section in the back corner of the Llano store, I ran across what is quite literally the gayest pillow I’ve ever seen. Oversized and made of a soft and fuzzy velvet-like polyester blend (or so the tag tells me), this pillow is adorned — liberally — with rainbow-colored glitter and star shapes. A was instantly mortified by the pillow’s ostentatiously loud fabulousness, but I was immediately entranced, and though he tried in vain to convince me I didn’t really need it, it quickly found its way into my basket. The poor cashier lady was visibly trembling as I laid it upon the counter for her to ring up; it was as though: a) she really had never seen a gay person in her lifetime (see: my postulate in the first paragraph above), and b) she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the idea that someone would actually have the balls to walk into her store and purchase this pillow.

I’m madly in love with this furry, grandiose glitterbomb, and though it has yet to find its final resting place inside my home one week on — A is a bit intimidated by its relentlessly cheerful, cosmic facade and has absolutely barred it from the bed — I have no doubt that whichever sofa it ends up gracing, it will live out its days there with fierce, freakish grace. (If you’re wondering what exactly a gay pillow looks like, please allow me to direct your attention to the photograph below. May it suffice to say: if gay heaven doesn’t look something like this, to paraphrase ol’ Hank Jr., I’d just as soon stay home.)

“I love [Adele], because she’s like, ‘I do music.’ And I feel like that mentality got lost in, like, ‘Look what I’m wearing, look how crazy I can be!’ She plays her cards perfectly, I think. That’s what music is, right? Just write a song. Write the world’s favorite song. There’s a piano, give me the microphone, thank you, good night.”

— Grammy-winning superstar Bruno Mars, expressing admiration for his fellow award poacher Adele to Entertainment Weekly‘s Leah Greenblatt.

Blake Shelton & Trace Adkins — “Hillbilly Bone”
(from Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton) —

So, that big ol’ barbecue feast that was originally supposed to take place the weekend before last got delayed until last Friday night, but rest assured: the brisket was lean and juicy, the turkey was fabulously moist, and both A’s and my hillbilly bones were tickled but good by our rather rare smoked meat throwdown, which was well worth the wait. (PS: No peacocks were harmed in the creation of this blog post.)

The Airborne Toxic Event — “This is London”
(from Such Hot Blood) —

Dialing way back on the overblown percussion and ersatz edginess that liberally littered their massively disappointing second record, Mikel Jollett and his band are back on track big time with a terrific third effort, which is anchored by this ethereal, string-drenched gem, a quietly haunting (if slightly melodramatic) tale of love, lost youth and pub-stumbling chaos across the pond.

Katy Perry — “Peacock”
(from Teenage Dream [The Complete Confection]) —

True story: on my way home from work Sunday night, I stopped by our favorite local BBQ joint to pick up several heartstopping pounds of various classes of meat (and a quart of cole slaw and a loaf of bread, just to even out the prospective plates to be created from this meal). I did this because, earlier that day, A had put the notion in my head that this should be our dinner, and he is such a ginormous carnophobe — quite literally, he says endearingly wacky things like “I’ve only had three salads this week!” on a regular basis — and he of course had the great fortune of setting up house with a native Texas boy who wholeheartedly believes “hamburger” is one of the four main food groups (and who, natch, believes that lettuce is meant to be nothing more than a crisp, pretty garnish for said hamburger), so whenever he suggests a meal that in any way involves beef, I tend to leap at the chance.

It being the evening of Mother’s Day in the heart of the Lone Star State, I clearly should have been able to predict that the joint would be a mob scene. And indeed, when I stepped inside, I immediately caught sight of a line of folks easily numbering eighty to one hundred, all of them waiting patiently to be fed. I put myself at the back of the line for the moment, but it quickly became clear, after standing there for five full minutes and not moving a centimeter, that no barbecue would land on my plate that night.

Dejected, I headed back out into the parking lot and toward my truck, where I immediately caught sight of a whole new bizarro quandary: while I had been inside sorting out my dinner options, completely out of left field, a living breathing peacock — I swear to Jesus this is the truth! — had emerged and was standing directly before my pickup sniffing my passenger side headlight. It wasn’t difficult to foresee the dilemma awaiting me, as there was a young, goofy couple — each of them clutching their smartphones like they were out to win a prize — standing behind the beast and repeatedly snapping pictures.

I slipped around the cars that were parked next to my truck and came around the side in order to enter my vehicle, praying that I could get inside without being attacked by the damn bird, all the while hoping that the sound of my truck cranking up would startle it enough so that I would be able to make a clean getaway without having to make the ultimate Sophie’s Choice: would I be forced to run over the peacock in order to be able to get home, or would I be forced to sit there and wait until it decided on its own accord to move the hell out of my way? Making matters worse: the aforementioned couple had seen me enter my truck (read: I now had fucking witnesses capable of testifying about whatever choice I would end up making), and the idiot male half of the twosome had begun flailing his arms about like Icarus and yelling, “There’s a peacock in front of your truck! Hey, a peacock! In front of your truck!” I waved back to indicate that I was, in fact, fully aware, and he resumed snapping his photographs, happy as a clam.

I sat there cooling my heels for a couple of minutes, pondering the idea that only in Austin, Texas is foolishness like this even remotely capable of coming to fruition, when suddenly, to my immense relief, I saw the bird’s head slowly start to bob up and down, and his body begun to strut toward the other side of the parking lot. Then I realized what he was walking toward: three more couples had converged on the scene, camera phones in all hands, now blocking my exit entirely. Seemingly left with no other easily identifiable options, I, too, decided to join in the fun: I rolled down the window, grabbed my iPhone, and snapped my own damned picture, which you can see below.

(The wrap-up on the above story: after three or four minutes, the peacock strolled away back toward the wooded area behind the restaurant, without ever fully revealing his evidently impressive plumage, and all the formerly enthralled photographers headed back to their cars and drove away. As for me: dinner that night was grilled chicken, baked mac and cheese, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, and garlic toast, all courtesy of A, who very generously tossed this glorious meal together at the very last minute. Our barbecue feast is slated to occur later this week, on a day yet to be determined, and you’re all invited.)

Mariah Carey — “Almost Home”
(from Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful) —

The industry is (rightly) going nuts over Miss Mariah’s triumphant new collaboration with red-hot Grammy nominee Miguel, which is impacting top 40 radio in a big way this week, but I’m still scratching my head wondering what exactly happened with this delightful piffle. On the face of it, in terms of Oz-related film themes, attempting to follow up no less a universally beloved cultural touchstone than Judy Garland’s pristine “Over the Rainbow” just seems like pure folly, the least enviable task in the whole of modern music history. Smartly, Carey and company — including a mystifying five (!) co-writers — chose to flip the script, delivering a soaring, thoroughly harmless uptempo anthem which instantly re-establishes her as a relevant pop star. (True, “Home” is loaded with those trademark vocal trills that made Carey an icon two decades and change ago, but with the surprising electronica-inspired flourishes — courtesy of Norwegian production team Stargate, best known for their Grammy-winning work with the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna, and countless other pop tarts — buried deep within the music’s mainframe, this tune wouldn’t have sounded at all out of place on radio playlists next to Tegan and Sara — who have most probably already locked up tight this year’s single of the year derby with their fabulously fun breakthrough smash “Closer” — as spring turned to summer.) I have no credible intel on if mainstream pop radio just turned this one down flat, or if Island Def Jam blocked Disney from pushing this, knowing they had the Miguel duet in their back pocket — and if someone out there reading this knows the whole story, please share it with me — but no matter: in the daunting Oz canon, there’s no song like “Home.” It’s a lovely, eminently listenable, (almost) brilliant gem.

Counting Crows — “Start Again”
(from Underwater Sunshine) —

Some sixteen months ago or so, on a glum and gloomy Friday the 13th, I lay curled up like an inconsolable baby on my living room couch and wept like a dejected puppy watching what I truly believed were the final episodes of my all-time favorite television series, ABC’s classic soap opera One Life to Live, a show I had watched more-or-less daily for twenty-four of its forty-four years. (You may or may not recall my tear-stained love letter to my beloved Llanview-ites, which I wrote with drenched eyes, heavy heart, and gritted teeth on that final, ferociously wrenching afternoon.)

But just as nobody is ever really dead on soaps, rumors of the series’ demise turned out to have been greatly exaggerated: last week, One Life blew back onto the airwaves — alongside sister soap All My Children — via a groundbreaking online venture spearheaded by maverick production company Prospect Park, who have committed to at least a year’s worth of half-hour episodes of each program which are streaming on Hulu and Hulu Plus (and — new revenue stream alert! — which are available for download from the iTunes store.)

With the exception of Dorian Lord’s fabled mansion (which is now a sad shell of its formerly sprawling, gloriously grand self), the sets of One Life 2.0 — which had to be completely reconstructed from scratch, since ABC spitefully ordered the originals destroyed shortly after production had wrapped — are meticulously faithful renditions of their predecessors, and a large chunk of the show’s criminally cool cast — led by the peerless Erika Slezak, and including Hillary B. Smith, Robin Strasser, Jerry VerDorn, Bob Woods, Roger Howarth and Kassie DePaiva (who own 12 Daytime Emmys and roughly a zillion nominations between themselves) — have signed back on for this revolutionary reboot effort. (In addition, though she has since left the writing team, the opening scripts are being co-written by the fiercely fabulous Susan Bedsow Horgan — a not-infrequent visitor to Brandon’s Buzz Radio, and the woman who nurtured this show through its true glory years in the mid-1990s.)

It remains to be seen how this wickedly bold programming experiment will play itself out — Prospect Park has signed on for a year initially, and though we all pray this venture is a blockbuster success that makes those fops who run ABC rue the fucking day they ever decided to divebomb their entire daytime lineup in one fell swoop, just between you, me, and the lamppost, I’m having more than a little trouble figuring out how these folks are even going to get close to recouping such a massive monetary investment — tens of millions of dollars for each soap, and that’s not even counting the costly advertising blitz that has heralded these two shows back to the big time — by relying solely on the brave new frontier of online content delivery. But no matter: even if it is just for a year in the end, I can’t even begin to express how thrilling it is to again be able to revisit my fictional Pennsylvania pals for a spell each day, and to get a bit of real closure on a Life that found itself snuffed out long before its time. Second chances rarely come more well-deserved.

Elton John — “Little Jeannie” (from Greatest Hits 1970-2002) —

Even casual visitors to this site figure out fairly quickly that I am a massive soap fan, and for that, we can happily blame my maternal grandmother, who quite literally arranged her entire life around CBS’ forty-year-old classic serial The Young and the Restless. (Don’t think I’m kidding about that, either: she owned a catfish restaurant in the Texas Panhandle when I was a kid, and she opened the doors at 12 noon everyday, for the sole reason that her favorite soap came on at 11am and she could watch it while doing all her prep work for the day to come.) Her favorite character: the indomitable Katherine Chancellor, the alcoholic rich-bitch busybody played with inviolable grace and grit for nearly the entirety of Restless‘ run by the legendary Jeanne Cooper.

Cooper passed away yesterday morning at the age of 84, following a couple of years of steadily declining health and a brutal month battling a nasty infection that required multiple hospitalizations, and while the news was not exactly a great surprise — particularly if you’ve been following her son Corbin Bernsen’s regular Facebook and Twitter posts, which have kept her fans up to date on Jeanne’s condition — the loss is a staggering one for the increasingly insular world of daytime television. (Ironically, Cooper’s final Restless appearance — which was taped six weeks ago or so, just prior to her penultimate hospital stay — aired just last Friday, and fittingly, her bittersweet closing scenes were with Jess Walton, whose character, Jill Fenmore, has been the bane of Katherine’s existence since Nixon was in the White House.)

It seems silly to sit here and type a sentence like: I regarded, in a funny and wholly real way, Mrs. Chancellor as something of a surrogate grandmother. Although, it’s quite true that Katherine — and Cooper — managed to outlive both of my own biological grandmothers, and it’s equally true that Cooper could forever be counted on to shoot it straight, in the great matriarchal tradition, packing her hard-won sage wisdom into every syllable of her dialogue, no matter how soapily inane it may have been. (Indeed, if you allowed her dishy, divine memoir — Not Young, Still Restless — pass you by last summer, it’s just out in paperback, and you should run not walk to the closest bookstore: the tome loaded with fabulous stories about her experiences as a contract actress during Hollywood’s golden age, as well as tales about her triumphs and tragedies as an Emmy-winning soap queen. When she spills some delicious tea about the time her daffy co-star Kate Linder — who has portrayed Katherine’s hapless housekeeper for more than three decades — supposedly tried to get Cooper fired and usurp her onscreen position as lady of the manor, you’ll be rolling off the sofa in fits of laughter.) Fare thee well, madam; my daily visit to Genoa City isn’t gonna be the same without you, gal.