Things That Matter To People Who Matter

Lost; Vatican City, Las Vegas; G-town Radio; Secret Mommy

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Published: Feb 6, 2007

Finally. I've been waiting, waiting, drinking while I'm waiting, and now Lost is back. I tell you I am not a geek! I haven't been this into a TV series since David Lynch's Twin Peaks. Friggin' phenomenal! This past Wednesday (hopefully) started the chain reaction of answers. Who/what are The Others? (In Philly we say "Udders.") Why are these people still alive? Or are they? If this ending is like last season's, I'm givin' a big FU to the "Hanso Foundation." Or maybe I'll stand up on my couch and applaud. I don't know what to expect! Maybe that's why I'm so addicted? I just hope I didn't waste all the money I spent downloading both seasons on iTunes. I coulda spent it on sumpin' more gratifying — like Flyers tix. Ouch! Too close to home?

F. Rex's ribald, allusive and downright blasphemous graphic novel parodies the excesses of modern capitalist culture as it finds bathos and transcendence in a debased, Vatican-themed Las Vegas casino. With a colorful cast of characters that includes Thomas Carlyle as a down-on-his-luck drunkard, Karl Marx as an overweight vagrant donninga beer helmet, T.S. Eliot as an uptight casino-floor manager, and Jesus as an oppressed janitor, plus a dozen other characters too profane to mention, Vatican City, Las Vegas reads like a version of The Waste Land re-imagined by R. Crumb. Let's hope that Philly's slots parlors don't turn out like this ... though if they do, they might wind up being a lot more fun.

With a fabulous playlist, syndicated news and a few prerecorded shows, G-town Radio (gtownradio.com) is up and running for the whole world to hear. And with a generous promise from neighborhood politician Greg Palmier of a space on Germantown's potentially charming commercial walkway, Maplewood Mall, the station is about to have a place to call home. Right now a computer in Jim Bear's Germantown home cranks out some great sound and a very informative Web site, including a series titled "cutting the cord" — listening to Internet radio without staring at a computer screen. At a recent open-call meeting, potential programmers met and discussed their ideas for the station, followed by Bear's demonstration of G-town Radio streaming out of his cell phone.

With their second full-length LP Plays, Secret Mommy (aka Andy Dixon of Ache Records), who hails from Canada, further pushes the boundaries of electronic music as we know it. Plays doesn't use a single synthesizer, drum machine or any other electrified instrument on the entire work. Instead, Dixon opts to take recordings of sessions he held with a host of musicians, along with a host of odd homemade organic sounds, chop up those recordings, and rework them into shattered pieces of musical fury. The resulting product is a rather entrancing form of sonic chaos.

 

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