EPISODE #380: BEER
The Who — “Happy Jack” [acoustic, ALTERNATE THEME]
The Clancy Brothers — “Beer, Beer, Beer”
Jimmy McCracklin — “Beer Tavern Girl”
Hank Williams — “There’s a Tear in My Beer”
Slothrust — “Keg Party”
ZZ Top — “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers”
Cadallaca — “Two Beers Later”
Karl Hendricks Trio — “After Four Beers”
The Just Joans — “Five Beer Bottles”
Gene D. Plumber — “A Six Pack and You”
The Replacements — “Beer for Breakfast”
The Victoria Lucas — “Beergasm”
Young Fresh Fellows — “Beer Money”
Stray Cats — “Lookin’ Better Every Beer”
The Wave Pictures — “Beer in the Breakers”
Jack’s Aquarium is proudly recorded in Hoboken, NJ.
Aquarium Playlist, 4/28/20
Aquarium Playlist, 4/7/20
EPISODE #377: MONKEYS
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Elliott Smith — “New Monkey”
The Feelies — “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)”
Boozoo Chavis — “Who Stole My Monkey?”
Beastie Boys — “Brass Monkey”
The Miracles — “Mickey’s Monkey”
Robert Plant w/ Patty Griffin — “Monkey”
Iron & Wine — “Monkeys Uptown”
Bruce Springsteen — “Part Man, Part Monkey”
Young Fresh Fellows — “Broken Monkey”
The Individuals — “Monkey”
XTC — “The Smartest Monkeys”
Daniel Johnston — “Like a Monkey in a Zoo”
Gorillaz featuring Dennis Hopper — “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head”
Chuck Berry — “Too Much Monkey Business”
Jack’s Aquarium is proudly recorded in Hoboken, NJ.
Aquarium Playlist, 3/17/20
EPISODE #374: ST. PATRICK’S DAY DAY 2020 (GREEN)
The Who — “Happy Jack” [live, ALTERNATE THEME]
Booker T. & the MG’s — “Green Onions”
Chris Stamey — “14 Shades of Green”
Amy Rigby — “Apple Green”
The Reivers — “On Green Dolphin Street”
The Garment District — “Soon We See Green”
Dolly Mixture — “Grass Is Greener”
Colleen Green — “Green My Eyes”
The Cramps — “Green Fuz”
Joni Mitchell — “Little Green”
Gorillaz — “O Green World”
Tom Waits — “All the World Is Green”
The Mountain Goats — “Pale Green Things”
Jack’s Aquarium is proudly recorded in Hoboken, NJ.
The Plot Against Hoboken Jack
AN OPPORTUNITY CAME UP AND I THOUGHT OF YOU! read the e-mail’s subject line. My spam radar went off but, no, the sender was totally legit: Gail Solomon, VP of communications at my beloved Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation. Evidently, a casting agency had contacted her, looking for a white, caucasian, double amputee (check, check, and CHECK!) for the upcoming HBO miniseries The Plot Against America, based on the Philip Roth novel.
I read the forwarded attachment:
LITTLE ROBERT (Male, 25-55, Caucasian)
A double leg amputee, Little Robert calls out ball scores while begging for money in downtown Newark. He is a neighborhood fixture, friendly with our story’s protagonist…
2 lines
Neighborhood fixture? Baseball? North Jersey? Jeez, even without the amputation, that sounded an awful lot like me. (Plus, I always feel like I’m about a week and a half away from begging on the streets.)
I emailed the casting associate, telling a bit about myself — that I wasn’t an actor but was very comfortable performing — and attaching a full-body photo. Her assistant replied quickly, inviting me to read for the role on Thursday, June 20, 2019 in midtown Manhattan.
“Prepare a slight New Jersey accent,” she wrote. Again, not a problem. My friend Karen even says that I talk differently, very Jersey, around the guys at Delfino’s Pizza.
I opened the attached scene (or “sides,” as we call them in the biz):
—————-
EXT. BAKERY/BROAD STREET/DOWNTOWN NEWARK – DAY
HERMAN and PHILIP walk to the bakery, as LITTLE ROBERT, legless, calls out ball scores on the sidewalk.
HERMAN
How you doing, Little Robert?
LITTLE ROBERT
How’re you, Herman?
HERMAN
Boston keep pace?
LITTLE ROBERT
No, they dropped one to the Yanks. Chicago beat ’em five-two.
HERMAN slips the man a nickel and a dime. PHILIP stares at the LEGLESS MAN.
—————-
This was so incredibly exciting! I googled the miniseries — costarring Winona Ryder and John Turturro! Oh, how I’d laugh with Winona about the insane crush I had on her in college. And I’d tell John about my hilarious shenanigans with his son on WFMU. Ah, but I only had two days to get ready. I picked out my most 1940s-looking outfit — tan button-down shirt, plain black shorts — and incessantly ran my lines in a slight Jersey accent: How’re YOU, Herman? No, they dropped one to the Yanks. Chicago beat ’em five-two.
On Thursday a little before 11:15 a.m., I arrived at a shabby, nondescript New York office building. No lobby to speak of, just an uninterested security guy behind a podium. I took the elevator to the second floor and found what I believed to be the correct door, though there wasn’t a sign for the agency. Opening it, however, I saw the sort of casting waiting room I recognized from TV and movies: several suited guys sitting around a low coffee table. I scanned the room and noted that everybody but me had two legs. Score!!
There were two clipboards on the coffee table; I signed in on the one for Plot Against America. Turns out every other dude was reading for the part of newsman Walter Winchell. I filled out my name, role, agency (blank), and — first time I’d seen it — preferred pronouns.
A door to our right would open, a woman emerged and read the next name off the clipboard, and the next fella went in that room. The space was so small that even through the closed door you could clearly hear each audition: “GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AND ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA.” I started to get depressed, thinking how there were rooms like this full of actors all over New York, and L.A., and London, etc. etc. etc., every single day, and only one person was getting each part.
However, as I watched the actors being so supportive of each other — I guess they’re all aware of the daunting odds they face — I was cheered by this genuine camaraderie. One guy leaving said to everybody, “Break a leg!” to which I replied, “Hey!!!” Then we discussed his wife who is missing an arm.
Now it was my turn. From movies, I expected a long folding table with three people behind it, one guy with a beard. But this is Manhattan, so it was a small room, with only one woman (the casting associate) and a video camera. Knowing I wasn’t a professional, she patiently talked me through the process. Said we’d film my lines twice. For the second one, she suggested slowing down a little, which I did. (How’re… you… Herman?) When we finished, she said, “You could totally be an actor!” which really made me smile.
She told me they’d let me know either way, and as I left the office, I was feeling really good about things. I’d enjoyed the experience (plus it hadn’t taken nearly as long as I’d guessed), I learned a whole lot, and, to be honest, I kind of liked my chances of getting the part. As a bonus, I knew exactly where I was going for lunch: Shorty’s near Port Authority. I wished good luck to the remaining Walter Winchells, and headed down to the lobby.
As I approached the security stand, though, my heart sank.
There, in a wheelchair, staring at his phone, was a big burly guy, way above-the-knee double amputee, no prosthetics. There was, like, nothing there, leg-wise. “Motherfucker,” I thought. Now that’s an amputee. I was completely crushed. The part was his, I could just feel it.
Still, a voice inside my head said, “Camaraderie, camaraderie, camaraderie.”
So, I slowly walked toward my fellow actor, stood before him, and with a smile on my face said, “Well, I’d tell you to break a leg, but….”
But he didn’t look up from his phone; didn’t react at all. I noticed something in his ear, ear buds or a hearing aid, maybe? I stood there helpless, my joke floating listlessly in the air. I looked at the security guard for a smile, a grimace. Nope, he might as well have been on display at Madame Tussauds. So I cut my losses and walked out onto the grey summer streets of New York.
I never did hear back from the casting agency. The shooting period — July 3 to September 6 — eventually passed, and the miniseries debuts tonight, so I am fairly sure I didn’t get the part. (And I do understand; back when my job involved hiring people, we absolutely intended to inform the losing candidates, but it just wasn’t a top priority.) I’ll definitely be tuning in; Little Robert appears in Episode 4. I’m curious to see if it’s the wheelchair guy, but I’ll be happy for whoever is in the role. We actors have a certain camaraderie.
Aquarium Playlist, 3/10/20
EPISODE #373: WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH 2020
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Kelly Hogan — “Dusty Groove”
The Just Joans — “Who Does Susan Think She Is?”
Algebra II — “Steel Trap”
The Manhattan Love Suicides — “Things You’ve Never Done”
Standard Fare — “Philadelphia”
Aretha Franklin — “Prove It”
The Carter Family — “Single Girl, Married Girl”
Maddox Brothers & Rose — “(Pay Me) Alimony”
Tammy Faye Starlite — “Taken”
Laura Cantrell — “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”
The Muffs — “Lucky Guy”
Screaming Females — “Hopeless”
Opal — “She’s a Diamond”
Mazzy Star — “Fade Into You”
Control Top — “Office Rage”
Jack’s Aquarium is proudly recorded in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: VHYes
4 stars out of 5
In the grand tradition of The Kentucky Fried Movie, SCTV, and Too Many Cooks comes… VHYes. This anthology of 80s pop-culture spoofs is the feature-length debut from director/co-writer Jack Henry Robbins. Two of the executive producers, who also appear in the movie, are Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, coincidentally the parents of 30-year-old Jack Robbins. The young man has clearly inherited not only creative talent, but a love of the absurd.
The film — using the word “film” loosely, as it was recorded solely on VHS and Betamax — does have a plot of sorts. It’s Christmas 1987, and young Ralph’s family gets a video camera. Eager to experiment, Ralphie accidentally starts taping over his parents’ wedding video, with both home movies, and late-night shows and movies taped off the TV.
Some familiar faces pop up in bigger recurring roles: Thomas Lennon as a home-shopping host, Lennon’s Reno 911 co-star Kerri Kenney as a Bob Ross-esque painting instructor, and Mark Proksch (who I used to think was Rob Corddry’s brother) from What We Do in the Shadows and The Office as host of a pseudo-Antiques Roadshow. The musician Weyes Blood also appears in a very amusing segment.
Ralphie (a nod to A Christmas Story?) is played by Mason McNulty. He’s fine, maybe a little annoying as child actors sometimes are. I was more impressed with Ralph’s BFF Josh, portrayed by Rahm Braslaw. The young man has soul.
As a devotee of 1987, there are a scattering of anachronisms that jumped out at me. There’s a picture of Dennis Rodman with neon-yellow hair, which he didn’t start doing till the 90s. Antiques Roadshow wasn’t known in the U.S. till 1997. Conversely, there’s a jokey reference to Betamax, which was already mostly irrelevant by ’87. And Ralphie looked more like a 70s kid to me than an 80s kid.
OK Boomer, that’s pretty minor stuff; so how was the movie? With any anthology project, it’s going to be hit-and-miss, but VHYes has a lot more hits than misses. There is some very, very funny and very clever stuff, well-conceived and well-performed. Young Robbins definitely captures the spirit of the 1980s. Perhaps more importantly, he includes a few quieter, more reflective scenes that perhaps point to a promising future as a dramatic filmmaker. I am certainly looking forward to more work from Jack Henry Robbins.
Jack Silbert, curator