Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       Peter was the first to leave the group and the Monkees had to find a way to carry on. Even though they had been put together as band for a sitcom they had become a real band.  After the show went off the air, Davy Jone, Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz put out a couple more albums in 1969. In the 1970 the Monkees album Changes  just had Dolenz and Jones.      In 1986 MTV and Nickleodeon started airing the old series and there was a renewed interest in the band. Tork rejoined Jones and Dolenz touring once again. In 1987 the three released a new Monkees album called Pool It! . All four did get together for an album in 1996 but this imagining would have them get together two years earlier.       I chose three songs from Tork's 1994 solo album Stranger Things Have Happened , the title song, "Sea Change" and "Tender Is". Dolenz put out an album called Broadway Micky.  I had to include his cover of Harry Nilsson's "M...

          In the 2010's Louis C.K. was riding high. His FX series "Louie" won Emmy awards, his comedy specials did well and he was getting parts in big movies. He then wrote, directed and starred in I Love You, Daddy. It premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, got a distributer, trailers were shown on tv in anticipation of a big theatrical release for November 2017. Then...two women came forward with allegations of, shall we say, "inappropriate conduct". Allegations that C. K. then confirmed. It was found that this had been going on for a while and the film was immediately dropped.        I think I first saw the trailer when he was hosting SNL. At first, I thought it was a parody of films by Woody Allen, another director who has had his share of allegations. Who knows when or if the film will be released. A year after his fall from grace C.K. returned to stand-up comedy to mixed reactions. I LOVE YOU, DADDY Official Trailer...

  This is a "what if" album for Jefferson Airplane for 1971. Fans might be saying "they already released an album that year called Bark ." Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady had started a second band called Hot Tuna and in 1971 put out a second album that also had Papa John Creach. He put out a self-titled album that year that had Kaukonen and Casady on it as well as Jefferson Airplane drummer Joey Covington, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick. Kantner and Slick released Sunfighter . It looked like enough material for another Airplane album to have been released in 1971.  From Hot Tuna's First Pull Up, Then Pull Down  I only used "Been So Long". I had hoped to use more but the sounds of the live audience made it hard to fit in. From Papa John Creach  I pulled "The Janitor Drives a Cadillac" with Covington on drums and Grace Slick doing vocal and "Jet String Rock" which had Casady, Kantner and Kaukonen. The rest of the songs are from Sunfighte...

  Boxing Helena   is a film written and directed by Jennifer Lynch about a doctor wo becomes infatuated with a woman and after he is in an accident amputates her arms and legs so he can keep her with him. This post is not so much about the bizarre movie as it is about unusual lawsuit that came from it. In 1991 Kim Basinger read the script and was intrigued enough to want set up a meeting with Lynch. After talking to the screenwriter Basinger agreed to be in the film. Now that a big name was attached preproduction was started. After her agent and other people she admired in the business told her it would be a mistake, Basinger backed out. That was when Main Line Pictures, the producers, sued her for breach of contract. Even though it was a verbal contract they contended that when she pulled out before shooting they lost nearly $6.4 million in potential domestic and foreign sales.  Basinger lost the case, had to file for bankruptcy and the film was made with Sherilyn Fenn a...