gimme a break
April 18, 2006
YouTube - Nell Carter - Oldies Medley - Gimme A Break
(Flash required)
I didn't know that Lynne Thigpen could sing. Nell Carter, of course, sure, and Thelma Hopkins who was originally with Tony Orlando and Dawn (oh, shut up), but the Chief from "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego"? Whoda thunk it?
People do -- or did -- knock "Gimme a Break" for being pablum and hokey and mammyish and ... well, just not very good, but it did have a few genuinely fun moments.
A moment (badly recorded, it seems) from the musical that made Nell Carter, Ain't Misbehavin': Off-time, featuring Armelia McQueen and Charlayne Woodard.
And a moment from a musical called "Cindy" (clearly a version of Cinderella) featuring Nell Carter, Charlayne Woodard and Alaina Reed: Ain't No Words.
I wonder sometimes if producers monitor YouTube for some of this stuff, not to go all ballistic and get it removed, but to monitor interest to see if maybe it would be worth putting it out in a better format. I mean, I never saw or heard of "Cindy" before, but the "Sugar Hill Ball" is a pretty good, fun number. I'd like to see what the rest of it was like. For that matter, producers could seed YouTube with clips to see if something would catch on. (And frankly ... "Cindy" had one bitchin' cast!)
Posted by iain at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
chris kanyon coming out
April 6, 2006
Yes, another wrestlling entry, and a day (or week) late and a dollar short besides. Per normal procedure, no comments allowed.
As a sort of preface, the beginnings of this story were floating around about the time the WWE started floating its bisexual wrestler story (wonder whatever happened with that). I declined to comment at the time because, unlike the WWE story, it was unclear what was happening.
In what may just be the weirdest press release of the year, professional wrestler Chris Kanyon comes out as gay. But is he gay or just his wrestling persona? You decide (because he’s kind of a shitty writer and we don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about).
...But ultimately, and probably more sooner than later, I will tell the truth about the sexuality of me, Chris Klucsarits, the man behind the Kanyon character. I am hoping to do so within the next month, but again, I can’t make any promises, and I am determined now to just go with the flow, like a twig in the current of a mighty river. See what life brings me and enjoy the ride.
So, what is it? Is he gay or just playing gay? He claims to be the first openly gay athlete of the five major sports, but, since we’re constitutionally opposed to giving a crap about professional wrestling, we guess we’ll just have to wait a month to find out what his real sexuality is...
Given the deliberate confusion produced, there didn't seem to be any point in paying attention until this settled out one way or the other.
And so it has.
Kanyon says he is gay in real life, explains his timing, discusses his plans
PWTorch.com
March 7, 2006
The following statement was sent to PWTorch.com by Chris "Kanyon" Klucsarits...
Chris Klucsarits, the person who has portrayed the Wrestling character of Chris "Kanyon" since 1992 has come out of the closet.
I revealed myself to be legitimately openly gay this past Sunday in Orlando Florida at the Universal City Walk Hard Rock Live venue, at a national Pay Per View taping after a match with former WCW World Heavyweight Champion, DDP, Diamond Dallas Page, which I believe will air nationally on PPV in April.
Once the date is known for sure, I will post it. WCW was an AOL Time Warner/Ted Turner owned wrestling group named World Championship Wrestling, which aired on TBS and TNT and was ultimately bought by the WWE's Vince McMahon in 2001.
The match went very well, and, the announcement was handled with a tremendous amount of class and respect by both DDP and by the fans in attendance. It was a very emotional night for me, and I am glad I was given the opportunity to do this and I definitely have no regrets at all about anything I have done or said in the past month concerning this topic.
The main reason for the month long ambiguity between the sexuality of the character, Kanyon, and the sexuality of me, Chris Klucsarits, the person portraying the character is as follows: I initially made the announcement of Kanyon, the character, being gay to get the buzz started and to try and get some anticipation built up.
I was hoping to sign with Vince McMahon's WWE or Spike TV/ Jeff Jarrett/Panda energy's NWA TNA wrestling group before making the official announcement that I, Chris Klucsarits, the person playing the wrestling character Kanyon, was gay, so that I could possibly get more attention/publicity for the company I was working for, and on the flip-side, that the announcement itself would get more publicity/attention by doing it thru one of the 2 promotions. And, if I did not get signed to a contract by the 3-5-06 PPV taping, than it was always my plan, from the beginning, to make the announcement at that taping....
[...] So, 3-5-06 came, I had no contract with the WWE or TNA, so I decided to officially make the announcement that I, Chris Klucsarits, the person who has been playing the wrestling character of Chris "Kanyon" since 1992, was in fact a legitimate homosexual. In doing so, to make things finally less confusing, the entire sexual history, sexuality and sexual preference as well as the wrestling career and wrestling history of Chris Kanyon and that of Chris Klucsarits are now identical, they are the same. From this point on, anytime I refer to myself here I will be referring to both Chris Kanyon and Chris Klucsarits, unless I otherwise note it....
Gay in the Ring
By Ross Forman
Special to Outsports.com
March 31, 2006
Chris Klucsarits is the real name of Chris Kanyon, a pro wrestler who’s shined under the national spotlight since 1995. Kanyon has worked for the three major domestic federations: now-defunct World Championship Wrestling (WCW), World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and Total Nonstop Action (TNA)....
[...] Klucsarits wrestled worldwide for WCW until its final days in March 2001. In May 2001, he joined the WWE, where he worked until February 2004. He wrestled for Total Nonstop Action (TNA) in late-2005.
So why now? Why come out now?
“The time just seemed right,” he said. “I’ve come to terms with it and want to help others.
“People cannot say I’m just doing to make a name for myself; I’ve already made a name for myself. I’ve already accomplished almost every one of my goals in wrestling. I wanted to hold championship belts in the major federations, and I have. I wanted to wrestle at Madison Square Garden (in New York City), the mecca of the sports world, and I have. The only professional goals I have not obtained yet are: be the World Heavyweight Champion and wrestle at or headline a WrestleMania.
“Coming out isn’t about me. This is, hopefully, about helping others, especially kids, who are struggling with their sexuality. I want to be a role-model to them, someone they can look up to.” [...] Since coming out, Klucsarits said it’s been “no big deal” among the wrestlers he’s long been friends with. He has not had any negative responses from other wrestlers, “at least not to my face,” he said.
Klucsarits said since coming out he’s “a million percent happier,” and is appreciative for all of the overwhelmingly supportive fans who he’s spoken with and others who have e-mailed him. “I want to help people who are struggling with their sexuality, especially kids. I want to be a role-model,” he said. “I hope someday being gay is thought of in the same sense as being left-handed … no big deal.”
It will be interesting to see if he can achive those other goals. From what little I've heard, the WWE business side isn't necessarily particularly gay-friendly, and he would have to get back into the first rank of wrestlers with their help and cooperation. Unfortunately, in terms of the public face of wrestling, there's the WWE, and there's everyone else. That said, per his piece for pwtorch.com, that he was gay doesn't necessarily seem to have been an issue for the WWE; it was more a matter of timing.
At the moment, Kanyon/Klucsarits seems to be having difficulties with the TNA, not because he's gay -- he says they've been very supportive on that front, although NBC Universal and SpikeTV seem to be very twitchy on the whole thing -- but because he's publicly disclosed aspects of what seems to be a minor contract dispute, as posted at his www.myspace.com/chriskanyon weblog.
There's also a rather interesting dispute taking place in the Outsports.com forum thread dedicated to discussing the article, which has spread out into other aspects of wrestling and the storylines related to that. The viewpoint of someone inside wrestling, even a gay man, of some of these things seems to be very different from that of people outside wrestling. And, honestly, I understand how you could interpret things the way he does; it's perfectly reasonable. It's kind of interesting to watch the debate; he never seems to get all that exercised over the things people say to or about him, or about wrestling. He just patiently (and sometimes at great length) answers their objections.
I hope he can get the contract he wants/needs. As noted, I don't watch wrestling all that often, but it would be kind of nice to just know that he's around and able to make a living doing what he clearly loves and wants to do, and gets to more or less be himself while he's doing it.
Posted by iain at 02:18 PM
downloading....
April 3, 2006
Six major studios plan to begin selling movies over the Internet today that buyers can download and keep for watching at any time. Until now, the only downloads the studios have offered have been online rentals, which can be watched only for a 24-hour period — an idea that has not caught on with consumers. But the high prices and technological limits of the new permanent downloads suggest that they may not be an instant hit. New movies will cost about $20 to $30 to download; older titles will cost as little as $10. The downloads will be available on the same day that the DVD is released — quicker than rentals, which are put online about 45 days later and cost $2 to $5.
The studios hope that more people will want to own digital copies of movies, just as more people pay to download songs than sign up for online music subscription services that require a monthly fee. Download sales have been discussed for several years in Hollywood, but the studios have been spurred to action by the success of television programs sold through Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store.
"The Internet has really come of age now, and it is a viable method of distributing our content," said Rick Finkelstein, the president of Universal Pictures, a unit of NBC Universal, who noted that the studio's sales through iTunes have been much greater than he expected. Moreover, Universal's research showed that the majority of those downloads were watched on computer screens, not video iPods, indicating that people are willing to watch video on their PC's.
Starting today, nearly 300 films will go on sale through Movielink, which until now has been largely an online rental site. Movielink (owned by Warner Brothers, a unit of Time Warner; Sony Pictures; Universal; MGM; and Paramount, a unit of Viacom) will offer films from all of its owners and from 20th Century Fox, owned by the News Corporation. Another movie site, CinemaNow, will start selling downloadable versions of about 75 movies from Sony, MGM and Lions Gate, which owns a large stake in CinemaNow. Curt Marvis, the chief executive of CinemaNow, said he was talking to other studios about selling downloads. Apple, Amazon.com and other online retailers are also busily trying to cut deals with Hollywood to sell downloads, according to several studio executives. In general, the studios want to make downloads available on largely the same terms, in as many places as possible.
"We are talking to a lot of people, and hopefully our movies will be on many other sites shortly," Mr. Finkelstein said.
For now, these movie downloads are a bit cumbersome, and the studios have limited the way they can be watched. A movie will need about 1 gigabyte of hard-drive space and will take an hour or two to download using a high-speed Internet connection. CinemaNow will allow the movies to be played only on a single computer. Movielink will allow the movie to be copied onto a DVD, from which the movie can be downloaded to two other computers, but it cannot be played on a conventional DVD player. Nor can the movies be copied to Apple's video iPod or the much less popular handheld video players that use software from Microsoft. The studios expect to permit downloads to portable devices later this year.
For now, it is difficult but not impossible to watch the downloaded movies on a television. Some computers, like those using Microsoft's Windows Media Center, are designed to be connected to a television in the living room....
It will be interesting to see how this works out.
What I wonder is what download model the studios are using. iTunes, Napster, and audible.com (for audiobooks) all use a model that allows you to use the service itself as your library, retaining records of what you've purchased, and allowing you to download as many times as you need, as long as it's always to a previously authorized computer. I would also assume, regardless of subscription model, that the downloads encode some sort of information that identifies purchaser.
Another issue, and one where they may have been misled by television over iTunes, is that those television shows are inherently designed to be disposable. They're cheap, you usually know that they will be released on DVD later, and if somehow you lose the file or it gets damaged or destroyed, you've only lost $1-$2, nothing to get too exercised about.
Yet another issue: frankly, I'm not sure that I want to use a gigabyte of space on my computer harddrive to keep a movie. And if I'm going to copy it to a DVD -- for all that I might be able to put more lower resolution files on a DVD to get up to four movies per disk -- honestly, I'd rather just buy the DVD. You can get full video quality, you know it's going to play on your PC or your television (all things being equal), and frankly, it's just easier. iTunes and Napster are making a bunch of money from people who aren't technophobes, but who just don't want to be bothered with hauling out their cassette or record player, doing all the wiring needed to connect it to the computer, learning and using the software, and then finally digitizing the music.
Not that I think downloadable movies aren't an idea whose time has come; I'm just not quite certain that this model is quite the idea that it's time for.
Posted by iain at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)