Failed Pilot

     Stay tuned for an .mp3 per day and new pages. One page will be dedicated to Earles and Jensen news and promotainment. Another page will offer a static dumping ground for unpublished or outdated writing, and will eventually include all of The Cimarron Weekend back issues in .pdf format. It’s time for failedpilot.com to embrace Y2K.

     “Burn Baby Burn,” a Law and Order rerun airing right now as part of today’s marathon, features Jamie Hector (”Marlo” from The Wire) and “The Brother” from another planet, Joe Morton.

      Any readers catch last night’s Assy McGee episode? Funny stuff. Back in early ‘06, I thought I was being funny when I wrote this scenario (posted on Scag Winesack’s now-defunct Cracked.com blog):

    Over the course of the previous evening, I managed to consume a half gallon of Popov, eleven Lortabs, plus the six-pack of Bartles and James that I boosted from a neighboring, unlocked boat. Around four in the morning, I yanked a banker’s box out of closet; spilling files, loose notes, and photographs all over the damned floor. The Cleveland case. No closure. I needed closure. Amy Cleveland found my number in the book, and tried for weeks to get in touch, partially on account of the number terminating at the payphone on the dock, a payphone shared as a main contact for the other 138 semi-retired private investigators that live at the marina. I am not part of the cell phone revolution. Unluckily for the both of us, I picked up the ringing phone on the way out one day. If memory serves, and fat fucking chance with that one, she wanted me to find her sister.

I kept rummaging through the piles of mostly irrelevant detritus, stopping dead at photocopy of the sister’s driver’s license. This is what sucked me in. Tara Cleveland. She looked exactly like the daughter that I didn’t have.

Care to watch the best roc doc in years? No excuses. Unless your time or desire is sorely lacking, shoot on over to Pitchfork TV for a free viewing of the Tad documentary (the title is horrendous; I will not type it). Warning: Subject is not of the insane/eccentric/difficult/recluse/cobweb-crotch (well, that last one….) ”outsider” variety, nor will (INSERT INNOCUOUS AND/OR EXTRANIOUS ”BADGE-OF-APPROVAL” / “EXPERT” TALKING HEAD HERE) be popping up to offer any pearls of wisdom. Thurston Moore = Kim Thayil in this one and hipster street cred flies out the window. Tad was never absurdly overrated, overrated, or respected too much outside of Brits/friends and regional colleagues/pre-Nirvana Seattle, so I’ll have to look elsewhere for the tedious, exploitative, forced, or dubiously-angled shit that puts me to sleep halfway through most roc docs. I never listened to Tad “back in the day,” but I do now (6 - 7 songs, moderate rotation, past three weeks). It won’t kill you to watch a fascinating story about regular dudes that probably paint houses or tend bar these days, not to get all “everyman” on your ass. It also happens to be a great snapshot of a lost era (musically and chronologically) that will be overlooked by taste-making revivalists, full of heart, and presents another got-fucked-by-the-majors story (I’m a predictable sucker for those).

Block out some time; it will only be around (in this form) for a week.

Take a look!

From Now (I was unaware of our growing audience amongst feminists!) Magazine (written by Tim Perlich):

When my buddy Mike (1) told me he was putting out a new collection of prank phone calls some dudes from Memphis (2) had put together, the concept of a Southern Jerky Boys getting their yuks at some unsuspecting store clerk’s expense didn’t seem like a side-splitting threat (3).

To my surprise, the Just Farr A Laugh disc was quite funny without resorting to a Crank Yankers-level of lowbrow vulgarity or ruling out mockery altogether. Instead, Andrew Earles and Jeff Jensen successfully subverted the whole prank call format (4) by creating a cast of believably bent characters and then employing their arcane knowledge of pop culture to concoct stoopidly clever set-ups that are always funnier than the responses (5). Listen to some sharpie trying to unload an entire run of the Smith & Smith (6) TV series on Betamax tape and a Jackson Browne “Lawyers In Love” painter’s cap on a serious antique dealer on the two-disc Just Farr A Laugh, Vols 1 & 2 (Matador) anthology and you’ll get the idea (7).

However, two and a half hours of RuPaul’s personal assistant, Michael Anthony’s whiskey-bottle bass and David J’s old flatmate might be too much of a goofy thing (8). www.matadorrecords.com.

-Tim Perlich

1. Who?

2. One dude from Memphis, one dude from Brooklyn

3. Understandable.

4. Why thank you! And yes, we did!

5. No, no, no, not always.

6.  “Simon and Simon”

7.  Get a little closer to the idea by going HERE, then ADD US!!!

8. We can AGREE TO DISAGREE on that one, sir!!