Whatever else Neil Gaiman had intended to talk about with fellow writer Michael Chabon onstage at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco Thursday night, it was upended by the death of his close friend, the English fantasy writer Sir Terry Pratchett.

"It was a horrible morning," he said, describing how he learned of Pratchett's death that day from his wife, Amanda Palmer.

"I was so pleased that she was the one of us who had gone onto her phone first... and that I got to hear it from a human being," he said. He spent more than half of his stage time sharing intimate recollections of his longtime friend, captured in the video, below. That they had shared a fascination with death was not morbid, but almost comforting, in the end.

Gaiman, author of such works as American Gods, Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane and his newest, Trigger Warning, and coauthor of The Sandman, a graphic series, met Pratchett "30 years and one month ago" in a Chinese restaurant in London, he recounts, where he was to interview him for a small English magazine called Space Voyager.

"It was that weird thing where you realize that the VENN diagrams of your minds match; you share headspace."

The awareness must have been mutual, because after that meeting, the more established Pratchett would call him when he was writing to bounce ideas off Gaiman.

"My phone would ring and I'd pick it up and 'Ere,' he'd ask; 'What's funnier?'"

After writing, Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in the late 1980s, Gaiman hatched an idea for a fictional work written in the classic British humorous style. He wrote the first 30 pages or so and sent it to friends, including Pratchett, for feedback. Then, he was offered a deal to write a graphic series based on the character of the Sandman for DC Comics. Gaiman was deep into Sandman when he got another call from Pratchett. Pratchett wanted Gaiman to either sell him the idea and the opening, or to start co writing the piece with him, "because I want to find out what's going to happen next," he said, according to Gaiman.

"I told him I would write the book with him," Gaiman recalls. "Because I am not stupid."

Pratchett was already established as a fantasy writer; with The Carpet People and the first volumes of his Discworld series, he was on his way to becoming Britain's best selling author of the 1990s.

"It was like Michelangelo phoning and asking if you want to paint a ceiling together," Gaiman says.

Gaiman described how he collaborated with Pratchett on what would become the apocalyptic comic novel, Good Omens. In a time before email and texting, Gaiman explains, their method was to talk on the phone every day for about an hour, make each other laugh, come up with great gags, talk about what they were going to do next, and then hang up and race each other to write "the next bit." After long days and nights working on The Sandman, Gaiman would plunge into Good Omens in the early hours of the morning. By the time he awakened in the afternoon, there would be a phone message from Pratchett, usually dangling a challenge. They were complementary partners in writing, and the book was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

By way of tribute, Gaiman reads aloud "a good bit," his first public reading of Good Omens since he and Pratchett went on tour in 1990.

The disease that claimed Terry Pratchett's life on March 12, early-onset rear brain Alzheimer's, gave him a chance to mount the steed of an important cause, as if confirming the Queen's decision to knight him in 2009.

"He did something huge and noble," says Gaiman, "which was that after his diagnosis he went public, and he went loud."

Having fought for years for his work in the fantasy genre to be taken seriously, eventually winning critical attention, he used his stature to raise public awareness about the pittance that has gone towards Alzheimer's research as compared to cancer research, which has seen so much progress towards cures as a result.

Then, Pratchett took another risk.

"Incredibly bravely, he decided he wanted the right to die at the time of his own choosing," Gaiman says. Since assisted suicide is illegal in Great Britain, Pratchett decided to do what he could to change the law.

He wrote brave angry articles, he made a fantastic documentary. As it was, he died naturally. He didn't get to do the good death that he wanted, and I don't know that he would have done it, but he wanted the right to do it.

A writer to the end, Pratchett at least wrote it the way he wanted. Gaiman describes Pratchett's last tweets, posted by his assistant Rob, on his Twitter account.

"AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER," he posted at 3:06 p.m., recalling the figure of Death he had explored in his works.

"TERRY TOOK DEATH'S ARM AND FOLLOWED HIM THROUGH THE DOORS AND ON TO THE BLACK DESERT UNDER THE ENDLESS NIGHT," followed at 3:07 p.m..

And finally, moments later, "THE END."

"I miss my friend, I miss him so much," Gaiman says, welling with emotion.

Then he interrupts that trajectory. "But let me tell you a nice story about Terry," he says brightly.

And he does. It's a fantastic story. And you can watch it here, between 25:04 and 28:29.
Further anecdotes follow. As they will, forever.

"The stories we tell each other, the gossip we pass, and the media representation of events shape the meaning of our lives." - -Rachel Godsil, Brianna Goodale, Perception Institute

The story of the brutal and untimely death of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson of Marion, Alabama, has been referenced in speeches, history books and news articles since that tragic day in 1965. But, when stories are told by a member of that community as in Ava DuVernay's Selma film portrayal, the power of those authentic stories can touch hearts, open minds, mobilize masses and create opportunities for healing.

In the past two years, some of our nation's most influential movies and television shows have dealt with racism and bias. From Fruitvale Station to Selma, Scandal to House of Cards, celebrated writers, actors and directors have brought these issues to the mainstream. This has all been accompanied by a drumbeat crescendo of news and analysis that goes beyond specific incidents to examine the roots of these issues and the trends that reinforce them.

For those of us who work for racial equity and healing each day, this is an encouraging trend and an opportunity, especially given Hollywood's historical lack of support for people of color in front of and behind its cameras. As writers and producers become more diverse, they bring their own experiences, relationships and networks -- resulting in well-crafted storylines with recognizable experiences.

These important pop culture moments may seem separate from our day-to-day lives, but stories matter. Research from the Perception Institute says that "culture plays an important role in reinforcing implicit bias, increasing our racial anxieties and undermining conversations about racial equality and opportunity." And we also know that accurate, honest pop culture narratives can successfully combat stereotypes.

In just the past few weeks, the hit shows Scandal and House of Cards have addressed issues of race, while the 87th Annual Academy Awards became the subject of criticism for failing to include any black actors or directors and few others of color. On Scandal, we witnessed the gripping tale of an unarmed black teen fatally shot by a police officer and a father's anguish when sitting over his son's body calling out "He didn't carry a knife" repeatedly to an ever-growing crowd. The protagonist, Olivia Pope, hired to help diffuse the situation, speaks truth to the police chief when he starts to ready the riot gear: "There is a dead child lying in the street in front of their homes. What would you do if there was a dead child, a child you knew, lying in the street in front of your home? The fact that they stand in groups and say things you do not like does not make them a mob ... it makes them Americans."

In true television fashion, justice comes swiftly when we learn that the knife was planted but not before the officer reveals his biases in a rant: "The truth is, those people in Rosemead have no respect for anything or anyone ... Brandon Parker is dead because he didn't have respect, because those people out there who are chanting and crying over his body, they didn't teach him the right values."

Those last few minutes say so much, an officer classifying entire swaths of a community, making a claim that a young child threatened his safety -- and having that claim not be questioned, the chief having to be reminded that those gathered and grieving have the right to do so. It's difficult for me to imagine how any viewer no matter what race would not have been moved by the pain generated in those moments. Importantly, if the media were able to capture the stories of parents, families and communities mourning the needless deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Gardner, Weinjian Lu, Rafael Ramos, Deah Shaddy Barakay, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha and countless others, change might come about more swiftly.

Yet another timely example was how House of Cards used one its lead characters -- the powerful and confident White House Chief of Staff "Remy" -- to depict the horror, shame and powerlessness felt by so many men of color in the face of police bias. In a telling scene, Remy was pulled over by local police without apparent cause, arrested and slammed onto the hood of his vehicle just blocks from his post at the White House.

The trend is showing no signs of slowing down. The reactions to the Justice Department's recent investigations, and the most recent high profile police killing of an unarmed black teen show that these issues will remain a part of the national conversation. Those reactions will continue to shape the stories we tell.

For five years, my colleagues at the W.K Kellogg Foundation, other foundations, our grantees and communities around the nation have generated tangible examples of what change looks like when people have the space to heal and work together for a better world. We embrace those who tell unvarnished stories about the impact of biases, the rich contributions of all people of color, and the benefits of an inclusive playing field. Pop culture is a forum where people are both entertained and enlightened. It simultaneously reflects the culture and pushes it forward. Let's harness these moments by leveraging your water cooler conversations, social media platforms or mealtime discussions to highlight the impact of our unique stories. We can reimagine and refocus the narrative about people of color in this country, fostering a dialogue built on the equal and inherent value of all people, particularly men, women and children of color.

I'm one of those "glass half-full "critics when it comes to Taylor Lautner. Film after film I hope he'll pull a Sally Field, who went from The Flying Nun and Gidget to Sybil and Norma Rae. Would Abduction or Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 reveal the young man's inner Laurence Olivier? No, sadly. The lumbering hunk remains just a lumbering hunk in those two. Prize-winning pecs and abs plus a cute smile were what the glamor boy's fans had to settle for.

"Well, maybe Tracers will be his Wuthering Heights," I was murmuring as I scooted onto the subway last night, heading for a midtown screening room. I should have known better. I should have checked out the director's CV before hoping for the best.

The Barcelona-born Daniel Benmayor had previously helmed a Schweppes commercial with Hugh Laurie and two deodorant ads, which would make you think he could avoid creating malodorous art. There was also the feature Paintball, of which Reel Film Reviews notes: "a progressively unwatchable disaster that doesn't seem to possess a single positive attribute, which is actually kind of impressive in its own way, admittedly."

Tracers, which probably could be edited down into several fine antiperspirant commercials, isn't that ghastly because it's filled with dozens of stuntpersons utilizing parkour, a discipline that Wikipedia notes includes "obstacle courses, running, climbing, swinging, mantling, vaulting, jumping, rolling, quadrupedal movement and the like." And who doesn't like to see folks nearly break their necks every 10 seconds, especially Taylor, when he's actually performing the stunts called for.



Here our boy plays Cam, a high-school dropout with a bad haircut who's served time in prison for minor robberies and so forth. With his sentence up, he's now employed as a bicycle messenger and lives in a garage beside his deceased dad's muscle car that's in need of much bodywork. Well, this could be the start of a sweet life, except Cam has borrowed $15,000 from a Chinatown gang that will vaporize his landlady and her winsome skateboarding son unless Cam pays up.

Luckily, at this point, Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos), a lovely lass in a hoody, falls off a car she's jumping on and lands on Cam and crushes his bike. It's love at first pileup, and our hero soon joins Nikki's crew of parkour aficionados who are criminals for hire.

Where can this all lead to besides a major craving for ibuprofen? Are you now asking yourself whether Cam and Nikki will have one slightly steamy sex scene so we can view Lautner's pecs for a few minutes to block out screenwriter Matt Johnson's dialogue? Will Taylor get to walk on his hands, ride a bike down numerous staircases, and get punched in the stomach by a muscular, tattooed baddie? And will the finale be more vapidly gnarly than everything that preceded it? Of course.

But Taylor does smile before the end credits roll, and that's enough to make the bluebirds chirp, the daffodils bloom, and the hornets sting. There is a cinema god.

I came to Cambodia because of a movie: Rithy Panh's The Missing Picture, which won the Cannes Certain Regard prize last year. The film, the story of the director's search for the lost images of his childhood under the Khmer Rouge, was so powerful that I immediately contacted the director by Skype for an interview and six months later I bought a ticket.



One in every four Cambodians was murdered during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, between 1975 and 1979. The Missing Picture tells the story of the genocide through a child's perspective, using clay dolls to recreate the director's memories and interspersing these personal scenes with actual footage. Rithy is the baffled adolescent doll dressed in a red shirt. The clay dolls -- including his father, mother and rocker brother -- are intensely human, with great emotional anguish in their carved faces. A clay Rithy fishes in a stream, with dejection etched in his eyes, while a vivid green rice field sways in the wind. Another doll has a screaming expression as her child dies. Indeed, the clay dolls seem to have more feeling than the people we see in the footage, in which both soldiers and victims seem eerily complacent, ready to shovel and bear heavy stones on their backs, as if animals.

The use of immobile dolls, with a narrative voice over of man remembering his boyhood in hindsight, is a brilliant move. The narrator's personal memories -- his humanity -- is the only way outside spectators can enter into this eerily incomprehensible world of evil. We are taken by our child narrator's persistent question: "why"? We are privy to his imaginative soul, wishing things would be otherwise. The child-narrator floats in outer space, towards a magical moon, inspired by the Apollo mission he has seen on television, and then lands back on earth, where he digs graves for cadavers.

The question of why -- the true missing image -- lasts with the spectator long after the film ends. So much so that I booked a ticket to Cambodia to find out -- and to find Rithy Panh.



My first introduction to Cambodia was dust. I choked in the dust of the flat fields I passed, alongside the Angkor temples, every morning as I took a rickshaw to a school outside Siem Reap, to teach theater to a class of children. The brown dust floated in visible particles. I soon followed the usage of other travelers: a white mask over the face. My kindhearted rickshaw driver Pisel saw me choking and swung to the side of the road and bought me one.

The children loved the stories I read to them (with Pisel's help translating). They squealed at the story of "Piggy Pie"; they acted out with joyous waving arms the dismayed baby bear discovering Goldilocks. Hearing a story, I learned, was new for them. Books were rare in the classroom. At break-time, Pisel, my rickshaw driver-cum-interpreter, smeared white bread with sugar paste and gave it to them to eat. They ate the long loaves with hunger.



My students did not teach me anything about the Khmer Rouge past -- which ended (at last) shortly before they were born, in 1998. It was not clear they knew much about it. Up until recently, the Khmer Rouge history was not taught in Cambodian schools. The director of the NGO I worked for explained to me that governmental policy was to keep the history at bay so as not to stir up anger. "The people today in town are the descendents of either the Khmer soldiers or their victims. Both live together side-by-side. Hence we need to forget," she said. "Otherwise the generations will continue to seek revenge."

Yet, in just two weeks in Siem Reap, I heard plenty of stories, all told in the same flat unemotional voice of the narrator of The Missing Picture. One roadside chicken seller told me about his parents "disappearing" one evening. The owner of a guesthouse told me how she had been dragged to a ditch to be executed for stealing a mango, but somehow survived and woke up in a pile of leaves. "I did not steal that mango!" she said. Later, in the town of Batambong, my guide to the Killing Caves, an affable man named Sammy, said that his mother had watched her two daughters starve to death, after her husband was shot in the head and then took Sammy, at that time a baby, and walked barefoot for weeks to the Thailand border to save him.

"She must have been depressed all her life!" I said.

"Oh I don't know," my guide shrugged. "She never spoke about her feelings. What was the point? It was normal. Everyone has a story like that."

I realized the power of Rithy Panh's film when meeting other tourists in Cambodia. I was searching for missing images. Most of them were heading for the Angkor Wat temples and the beaches on the islands. One Italian young man on a boat cruise past the "floating villages" asked me to remind him who Pol Pot was. Another tourist said she had come hoping to see "exotic Asia" and picturesque villages with old women in great straw hats selling fish in the markets.



The "why" of what happened persisted.

I learned many theories. The most revelatory: the influence of the United States in causing the Khmer Rouge to come to power. During the Vietnam War, the US bombed the corridor in Cambodia used by the Viet Cong to move supplies. The four years of B-52 bombing left 250,000 Cambodians dead, and others confused and shell-shocked, accustomed to a chaotic violent world. Thousands became refugees. Meanwhile, their venerated king left the country for China.

"That was very important, the departure of King Norodom Sihanouk," explained a World Bank economist, who happened to be sitting next to me on the bumpy bus ride to Phnom Penh, my last weekend in the country. "The peasants were desperate, vulnerable, uneducated. They were extremely poor. They worshipped their King, like children worship a god. The country was ripe for a new leader who could restore order and national pride." Pol Pot, the Marxist upstart, promised the return to the times of Angkor, the period of glory in the Cambodian past (six hundred years ago), when the Khmer kingdom dominated south-east Asia (the only time it did) and had the wealth to create those famed majestic temples spiraling into the heavens, each sandstone stone carted miles by an elephant. During the Khmer Rouge period, ironically, these temples went to ruin.

As for the World Bank economist, he spent his childhood in a refugee camp. Now he works on the problem of water: few homes in the villages have running water. Instead, the peasants collect rain water from the roofs, which is unsanitary. Each house I glimpsed out the bus window had a large cistern in the yard.

I arrived in Phnom Penh. I saw the Killing Fields, a quiet oasis of grass and trees and ditches, where people had been shot in masses and buried. I saw the tree where babies were whipped across the trunk until death. I saw the former high school turned prison, Tuol Sleng S21, now a museum, where thousands were tortured with iron weapons. The photos of the victims line the walls, one after another, men, women and children.



It is humbling to see how easily a whole country can turn south: how fragile humanity is.

I found Rithy Panh in his office on the second floor of the Bophana Center, an NGO he created in 2006. The Bophana Center is an audio-visual resource library with a vast data bank of films and tapes on the Khmer Rouge past, including international news reports, documentaries and fiction films made by amateur filmmaker King Sihanouk himself. It is also a training ground for aspiring young Cambodian film directors, with its own production studio.

On the walls were awards and diplomas the director had earned, including -- I learned with surprise -- an honorary doctorate from the university I teach at in Paris.

"Bienvenue!" Rithy Panh said.

I recognized in him the sensitivity and intelligence I had seen in his film. He leaned across his dusty, book-filled desk to speak to me.



"I created this center to provide a space for Cambodians to be able to learn about their history," he told me. "It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future. Today, Cambodians are reluctant to think about or learn about the past. They want to put it behind them. Nobody wants to see my films. They have heard all the stories already. But in ten years, they will be interested, and they will want to learn."

He noted something I had observed myself in my teaching in Siem Reap: "One great problem in Cambodia today is education. There is no book learning culture in Cambodia. People do not read. The children do not read in school. Educators must come up with a policy that meets the great need for knowledge: using modern audiovisual methods that the young can connect with. This is especially important since 60 percent of Cambodians are under 30 years old. "


One sign in the Killing Fields reads "Do Not Step on the Bones"

The phone rang. A group of international journalists wanted to meet the director, in the restaurant of an elite hotel in downtown Phnom Penh.

He shook his head and declined. "What's the point of meeting?" he confided. "Just to exchange a few words and take pictures? If they were really interested in what I am doing, they would come down here to my office, and visit Bophana."

He excused himself to go off for a shoot for his next film, up on the rooftop. The cameras were waiting. In this new film, he will take personal objects -- anything around him -- and spontaneously muse about the object live on camera. He picked up a pen on his desk, and turned it in his hands, to demonstrate. "See, every object has history," he smiled. "Even a pen. I will see what comes up from speaking about them."

His personal memories are as strong as ever.

I yammer.

You noticed.

I will attempt short 'n' sweet here today. Lord knows, verbosity is just a paragraph away.

I did not start my column here at The Huff (that's what I call it around the orifice... no, I don't) to review books.

I just wanted to tell the world of my gorgeously pointless life as a musician cum rock star fantasist. Ego the size of Senator Tom Cotton's... maybe just as stupid.

But, nice people started sending me books (for free!). I started reading them. Made me wanna tell all ya'll about 'em. Yeah, I'm from north Brooklyn.

Ken Sharp, who I met through this column, has sent me something like five books. I've dug them all enough to write 'em up. What can I tell you, oy, he's done it again. Hey, if a guy makes YOU two separate chapters in his book on the early days of KISS ("Nothin' To Lose"), you're gonna be predisposed, nomesane. Thank you for the infamy, Mr. Sharp. It is simple fact that every Ken Sharp oral history/interview book I've read has been one huge bag of potato chips.

This one...

Play On! Power Pop Heroes: Volume Two is available exclusively from http://www.ken-sharp.com/power-pop-v2/index.html

Back in October 2014, I wrote up Volume One.

It sold out. It. Sold. Out.

Look at this (partial) just-psycho line up of acts featured in Volume Two: Cheap Trick, Flamin' Groovies, XTC, Bay City Rollers, Squeeze, Rick Springfield, The Ramones, The Sweet, The Hudson Brothers, Dwight Twilley, The Rubinoos, The Babys, Todd Rundgren's Utopia...

Dig that off-the-chart diversity!

Dayummm! On point, Ken! Oh! Do I sound like Guy Fieri? Yuck.

Hey, wanna see Ken's all-officlal-like bio? Sure you do... It is impressive.

"Ken Sharp is a New York Times best-selling author who has penned more than 18 music books, contributes to a variety of national music magazines, works on music documentaries and has done liner notes for releases by Elvis Presley, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Small Faces, Santana, Cheap Trick, Raspberries, Eric Carmen, KISS, Hall and Oates, Jellyfish, Heart and others. In addition to the Play On! Power Pop Heroes series, his books include Starting Over: The Making of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy, Elvis: Vegas '69, Nothin' to Lose: the Making of KISS (1972-1975), Elvis Presley: Writing for the King, Sound Explosion: Inside LA's Studio Factory with the Wrecking Crew, Overnight Sensation: The Story of the Raspberries, Play on!: Power Pop Heroes, Reputation is a Fragile Thing: The Story of Cheap Trick, Kooks, Queen Bitches and Andy Warhol: The Making of David Bowie's Hunky Dory."

I'm not sure where the lines between 'interview' and 'oral history' and 'societal history' are drawn, but, Ken doesn't give a fuck.

Virtually every interview in Play On! Power Pop Heroes Vol. I & II really borders on pure Time Capsule. You relive these guys' lives with them... and all that was around them. Power(Pop)fully evocative.

It's hard to detect Ken's magic, other than being prepared on what you'd call a scholarly level. He approaches a Flamin' Groovy the way Doris Kearns Goodwin would prep of POTUS Barry O.

Ken WANTS TO KNOW... and we all benefit.

Whether it's an act's linear 'and then, and then...' history, their songwriting process, their gear, their gigs, their recordings, their break up, their reformation, whatever... Ken gets around to asking. It helps enormously that Ken is a guitarist who sings and writes and records songs he wrote. He comes to these rock 'n' roll musicians from the inside, one of them. I know from my own little forays into interviewing... I have, among others,interviews with Ian McLagan (RIP, you swine), Kenney Jones, and Paul Rodgers up here @ Huff Post. I know firsthand that musicians open up to other musicians in a different way. Much more 'you get it' relaxed and forthcoming. And you're damn right I used Ken's work as my blueprint for every interview I've done.

For me, personally, in Volume Two, as in One, I find the unexpected subject (Rick Springfield?!) or the barely known (Blue Ash, anyone?) even more fun than a Cheap Trick (their interview is exhaustive!) or an XTC.

Whoa! I almost missed this...

Buyers will receive over 90 tracks of incredible bonus music (over a $90 retail value) of rare, unreleased and live music from Rick Springfield, Glenn Tilbrook (Squeeze), Chris Difford (Squeeze), The Babys, Dwight Twilley, The Flamin' Groovies, Shoes, Artful Dodger, Blue Ash, Piper, The Rubinoos, The Records, The Hudson Brothers, Duncan Faure (Bay City Rollers), Kasim Sulton (Utopia), The A's, Ian Lloyd (Stories), The Toms, The Flashcubes and Richie Fontana (Piper). In addition to those artists, there will be out of print and rare tracks from Jellyfish, The Posies, Tommy Keene, Hawks and many, many more...

So, I promised not to yammer... I'm off to read the Bay City Rollers chapter (saw 'em live in 1976... brought my Tartan scarf... they rocked!).

Two words... Sold out!

Magnificent! We all knew the story, yet director Kenneth Branagh still had the audience eager to see it unfold as witnessed by the applause at the end of this masterpiece. The regal sets, bizarre costumes and jaw-dropping special effects make this fairy tale almost a reality. Lily James, the beauty from Downton Abby, is perfect as Cinderella.

Her dark brows juxtaposed against her pale complexion and blonde locks give her expressions heightened impact. She is simply splendid while Cate Blanchett, as the evil Stepmother, terrifies and yet gets the biggest laughs when her delivery is spot on. Richard Madden as the prince has all the right moments, but his pitter-pat appeal is a tad short for a prince of one's fantasies. Kenneth Branagh directs with perfection and gives long moments between the prince and Cinderella. These moments allow them to fall in love in lingering romantic silence.

And how nice that the four mice were spared. I so feared the evil stepmother would do them in with her adorable but evil cat, but the cruelty in this film is kept to a minimum. Perhaps there could have been more. Cinderella does not suffer as much as she did in my memory. Her suffering seems to be replaced by her need to forgive and to be kind. Opposite from a selfless Ella are her stepsisters, Drisella and Anastasia who are played respectively by Sophie McShera and Holiday Grainger with bubbly enthusiasm.

But the highlight of the film is fairy god mother Helen Bonham Carter who steals everyone's thunder when she turns a pumpkin into a gold chariot with the mice as horses and lizards and ducks as Cinderella's entourage. Together they drive her golden pumpkin a la mode to the ball given by the king. The purpose of the ball is to find a bride for the prince whose heart is spent pining for a young lass he met in the woods while hunting. He never learned her name. But as we all know this lass was Ella, who later is dubbed Cinderella due to nights sleeping by the fire while its cinders leave smudges of charcoal on her face.

Branagh's direction begins slow and small and builds to a crescendo and climax guaranteed not to let your fantasies down. The stellar cast is so well coiffed in period fairy garb that some are barely recognizable. Stellan Skarsgard, as the Grand Duke, is a nasty piece of work and good at this, while Derek Jacobi, who plays the king, spreads wisdom and concern with each utterance.
After the palace ball the prince combs the countryside looking for the beauteous spirit who stole his heart, but who left her glass slipper. When, lo and behold, he has been among the palace's caped and masked troops looking for the mysterious Cinderella. As the king's guard searches for her, captain, Nonso Anozie, plays good while the Grand Duke plays bad cop. These two work well together and add gravitas at a moment when the ho hums could have set in.

Writer Chris Weitz keeps the dialogue active and modern, but not cutsie or filled with clichés. My only criticism is that the prince lacked a tad bit of sensuality which could have made him more charming. But leaving the theatre the applause warmed my heart and I left with memories of the goodness and kindness of a Cinderella who never grows old.

The League and The Kroll Show have established Kroll as a big-time comic. But his latest movie, which premiered at this year's South by Southwest festival, is a straight drama. Adult Beginners is about a man -- Kroll -- leaving his life behind to move in with his sister and find himself. Heavy stuff for an actor more known for his boorish caricatures.

"It's more of a dramedy than what I've done," Kroll told What's Trending in the Samsung Blogger Lounge at SXSW. "And yet it feels not dissimilar to what I was doing in a weird way on The Kroll Show. Whatever character I'm doing I'm trying to play to the height of that person's emotional honesty."

"The movie is about me, I'm an entrepreneur and the bottom falls out of my business." Kroll said. Losing everything, his character has to move in with his sister, her husband, and their three-year-old child. "I become their nanny."

Kroll, who has twelve nieces and nephews, felt a connection to his character on Adult Beginners.

Speaking to the name, Kroll said, "It's about people who are adults on paper, but in reality they're still kids in a lot of ways and they're still figuring it out."

Kroll's new turn as an actor is bittersweet for fans of The Kroll Show which is ending this year.

"It's a weird thing when you decide to end a show." Kroll said. "It's very nice to have people want more, and it was a great experience."

"I'm a very serious actor now and I want to be sure people understand that about me," Kroll said with a grin.

Ask musicians to honestly talk about their work, and they'll likely admit that talent only takes you so far.

Liz Longley can attest to that. After more than 11 years of carrying around ambitions heavier than an overstuffed piece of excess baggage, it took a double date with fate and Lady Luck to join a waiting list of performers as Nashville looks for the next Mr./Ms. Write.

Now signed to a prestigious label that's releasing her self-titled album Tuesday (March 17), anything is possible for Longley, who's on her way in a minivan filled with hopes, dreams, songs and three male touring band members.

Conducting a mid-February interview while enjoying a smooth ride on a New England highway to a show that night in Plymouth, New Hampshire, the outgoing 27-year-old momentarily fell silent while pondering a choice that -- until now -- she's never had to make, even theoretically: If you had to pick either singing or songwriting, what would it be?

"Oh, my gosh. That's a really hard question," she said, quickly recovering to add, "I would choose singing. I consider them both to me the two most important forms of expressions in my life. But I can get into someone else's songs, and the emotion of their songs, just as easily as I can get into my own. If it resonates with me, it resonates with me. Anything that resonates with me is a joy to sing."

On this new album made two years ago, produced by Gus Berry and crowd-funded by Kickstarter, Longley coolly displays that skill with personal works of art written as far back as 2009. Joining the Sugar Hill Records roster in December gave her a fresh start, and she is ready to introduce herself -- along with songs old and new -- to audiences who are lining up to catch this up-and-coming performer.

After making a record that meant too much to release on her own, Longley found a booking agent (Peter Loomis at New Frontier Touring) and a new management team (7S Management in Denver, headed by Chris Tetzeli). With most of the pieces in place, the launching pad was a three-song private concert for about 10 people attending a board meeting at the Franklin Theatre south of Nashville in August 2013.

That where's Sugar Hill general manager Cliff O'Sullivan met Longley, then said, "I want to sign you."

Hitting it off with him, then the label's team, she said, "It took a while to get everything sorted out, to get the contract done. That was the most time-consuming. ... And ever since I've been with their team, they've just been kicking butt. It was worth the wait. ... They've done some amazing things already. And we're already talking about the next record and starting to record that this year. We just want to keep the ball rolling."

The family that plays together
Patience is a virtue, but it doesn't always stick around. Longley has wanted this since she was 14 or 15, singing along to a karaoke machine and having "every little note" analyzed by her dad. Supportive parents who were musically inclined raised Liz and her younger brother Robert on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Bob and Rosemary Longley let their daughter pursue her dreams ("I value their opinions more than anyone," she said), long ago putting aside their own artistic aspirations to team up for a career that continues today -- after 30-plus years -- as owners of Longley Insurance Agency.

Bob Longley learned an instrument from his father, who was an Army bandleader/trumpet player with a drill sergeant mentality, making his five children go to their rooms nightly to practice what the cool kids wouldn't -- tuba or bassoon, for instance.

"So my dad thought that was totally normal to do with my brother and I," Longley said, adding that Robert became an artist who is studying at the New School in New York City. "At first, we hated it but now I'm so grateful that he enforced that. My mom always wanted to be a singer. She's super-musical but she never pursued it, so all the pieces are there and I think because neither of them got to make it their life's work, they really encouraged us to."

After learning to play the piano, Longley said she went through some "super-nerdy" years at Downingtown High School West, where she took up the clarinet and became drum major of the marching band.

But writing and singing her first song, called "Bye Bye Baby," and receiving a standing ovation from a couple of hundred people in the school auditorium convinced a wide-eyed ninth-grader what to do with her life. She was just 17 when Naked Trees signaled her recording debut.

School daze
Earning the requisite training, voice was Longley's instrument of choice as she majored in songwriting and graduated from the only school on her wish list -- Berklee College of Music in 2010.

"I'm really, really, really glad that I got into Berklee because it certainly changed me as a songwriter, as a singer, as a musician, and just made me ready for the real world," she said enthusiastically, imagining just how many professionals got their start there. (Aimee Mann, Paula Cole, Diana Krall, Gillian Welch and Susan Tedeschi are among the Grammy-winning alumni).

Mentors like college professor Livingston Taylor, younger brother of James Taylor, were go-to gurus. Then there was what Longley calls "one of the coolest experiences I could ever imagine," spending a week with 11 other students getting schooled by John Mayer, another Grammy-winning alum (class of '98).

As the professional wannabes took turns doing live versions of songs they had written and originally posted for him to hear on their MySpace pages, Mayer would counsel them.

"I got so nervous I didn't know what the heck to play for him," Longley excitedly recalled. "So I played this song (called "Queen," available on 2009's Somewhere in the Middle) that was kind of new. ... But he gave me advice on how to restructure it and where to change a chord. And then the next day I remember we were in the studio and he came in and it was a morning where we're all just like eating our breakfast and he was like spinning around in his studio chair and started singing one of my songs that was on my MySpace page (that still exists) and it was just unreal to hear someone like John Mayer singing back one of my songs, saying he couldn't get it out of his head. I think I cried right on the spot. ... I had to text my mom right away."

While fellow students such as Kiesza, Karmin and Charlie Worsham were able to succeed on varying levels, Longley enjoyed the college experience so much, she said, "You can never know enough. You can never play music enough. If I could afford it, I would do it all over again and just keep learning."

Instead, she followed the path of other Berklee alums. First, though, she put out three "official" records starting with Take You Down in 2007.

Collision course
Winning the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival songwriting showcase in 2009 and the BMI John Lennon Songwriting Scholarship Competition (in 2010 for "Unraveling") happened while she still lived in the East. Then Longley moved to Nashville in 2011 -- and ran smack-dab into a writer's block as thick as a brick wall.

"I cowrote a lot of songs (including "This is Not the End" on the new album, also heard on the Season 6 finale of Army Wives), but as far as writing alone, I was really stuck," she said. "I just wasn't focused and I wasn't inspired. ... I just wasn't feeling it."

Longley found collaborating during the first four months in Nashville "an amazing way to meet people," and cowrote 40 songs during that period. "But at the end I felt kind of like depleted and lost in my own writing," she said. "And that's really when I kind of went into the whole writer's block thing. But now I'm back to cowriting and I love it, I absolutely love it. It's changed me in my own writing and made me, it's made me ... I don't know how to describe it, but basically during my writer's block, I would try to write and I would be really hard on myself. And I wouldn't get anywhere. And when you're in a cowrite, you usually want to walk away with a song. You have to learn to push through those moments where you're like, 'I don't know if I like this. I don't know what I think of this.'

"It's kind of helped train me to do the same thing when I'm alone. Definitely, when I feel like I can't write and I can have a great cowrite, I feel reinspired to do better in my own writing."

She also got help from a book titled The Artist's Way that was given to her last April by friend and former Berklee student, Johnny Duke, a guitarist who has worked with Little Big Town and has been part of Longley's touring band that has included Eric Jackowitz (drums) and Brad Shapiro (bass). Guitarist Brian Dunne was scheduled to join the second leg of the tour.

"I started journaling right away," Longley said after reading the self-help guide to higher creativity written by Julia Cameron. "And it broke down all my walls and made me realize that I was unhappy and had to change a lot in my life to get into a better place where I would be inspired every day. And I had more songs in those couple weeks that I was reading the book, more song ideas than I knew what do to with. So it just totally changed everything for me."

Digging into her past
Calling herself an over-sharer who keeps no secrets, Longley at the end of this interview did reveal a previously undisclosed but lighthearted experience that likely had nothing to do with her malady, but -- looking back -- could be construed as a foreboding omen by some amateur psychologist.

Before her family moved from nearby West Chester to Downingtown when she was 8, Longley buried a pencil in her yard.

"I always thought I would move back to the house I grew up in, but I never did," she explained. "But I wanted to see how long the pencil would last and if I came back if it would still be there. The next time I visited, it was still there."

Despite occasionally returning to West Chester, Longley never looked for that pencil again. Not that she needs it now.

Treasured moments
While slowly trying to do the write thing, it's possible that finding the Midas touch by revisiting past experiences has been more challenging than discovering buried treasure. The sincere sensation that flows though "When You've Got Trouble," which "came out in one good cry" in 2009 in her bedroom at the Downingtown home her mom and dad still own, doesn't happen everyday.

"It felt like it wrote itself," Longley said of the number that appeared on 2010's Hot Loose Wire. "And it was probably 10 o'clock at night and my parents were probably getting ready for bed and I knocked on their door and I said, 'Can I play you a song I just wrote?' And we all sat on their bed and I played it for them and we were all crying by the end. And I knew that ... I mean that meant something to me that it moved them. ... One moment where I make my parents cry, I'm like, 'OK, this is something special.' "

Caught in the throes of relationship highs and lows while working on her latest album, those feelings get captured intimately on "Out of My Head," "Bad Habit" and the dreamy "You Got That Way," her pretty pop sensibilities and luscious lilt to an expressive voice suggesting Sarah McLachlan more than Sara Watkins.

Then there's the emotionally uplifting "We Run," written in memory of a cousin in the armed forces who was planning to return home to enter the Marine Corps Marathon with his father, retired Col. Tom Manion.

After Marine 1st Lt. Travis Manion was killed in Iraq on April 29, 2007, Longley's uncle still ran the marathon, crossing the finish line with his son's entry number proudly pinned to his shirt. Longley went on to enter her first marathon as a tribute, and other family members continue running for Team Travis and other fallen soldiers.

While numbers like that hit so close to home, Longley contends there is no single track that encapsulates who she is today, saying, "I think it would be too hard to fit one person into a song."

Yet the fan with eclectic tastes relies on plenty of invaluable influences, ranging from Cole ("one of my actual heroes") to Eva Cassidy ("my heart melted the first time I heard her") to the Weepies ("one of my favorite duos"). Duly inspired, she is eager to share new material on the road, while also performing monthly shows with featured guests on Concert Window.

Longley recently yielded a crop of at least six songs ("I'll take all I can get," she said, laughing) and is particularly proud of "Only Love This Time Around," her cowrite with Michael Logen.

This time around I'll be open /
This time around I will not fear /
This time around I choose forgiveness /
Only love this time around

"We were talking about near-death experiences and people who have said they've gone to the other side and come back and what they've seen. And not necessarily saying that it can happen but saying if that did happen, how would you live differently?" Longley said. "No matter what kind of mood I'm in, it makes me feel ... when I get to play that song onstage, I'm completely ... it reminds me that I'm lucky to not only be alive but to be doing what I love to do every night and sharing music with people that seem to care and seem to want to listen."

For an introspective artist who no longer hangs with the new kids on the writer's block, Longley seems ready, willing and able to make the most of her lucky break.

Publicity photos by Alyssa Torrech. See Liz Longley's solo performance of "Only Love This Time Around" on Feb. 7 at the Lancaster Roots & Blues Festival:

By nearly every measure, Disney's new live action Cinderella is a success. It took in $70 million over its first weekend domestically, attained an admirable 83 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from critics, and grabbed an impressive "A" CinemaScore from moviegoers. Having seen it this weekend, I can give it high marks for both entertainment value and its efforts to preserve the ancient tale. But success is not only measured by riches and accolades obtained, but also by opportunities lost.

The marketing term "positioning" refers to the unique and important benefit that a product, brand and/or franchise delivers to a target audience. In a positioning sense, Cinderella might be said to be a rags to riches story of a neglected young girl forced into unjust servitude but who unexpectedly finds her prince... which inspires every girl to dream that she may find her prince, too. The missed opportunity in the above positioning statement, and in the current Disney film, is that it targets a primarily female audience. So it was not surprising that females reportedly accounted for a whopping 77 percent of the film's audience on Friday though it eased to roughly 66 percent on Saturday and Sunday. On average, then, I suspect that the female/male split will be roughly 71 percent/29 percent (for arguments sake). Sitting in the audience this weekend, I saw no young boys, though I did see several fathers which may have accounted for much of the male audience figures. I also saw an ocean of moms toting their beautiful little princesses, some of whom were adored with crowns and Cinderella dresses. So cute!

But in this day of classic story reinventions, where the Wicked Witch of the West is remade a hero (in the Broadway musical Wicked) and where Rumpelstiltskin is reinvented as both the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and the crocodile in Peter Pan (in ABC's Once Upon a Time), Disney had the opportunity to broaden Cinderella's appeal to a male audience, particularly to young boys, while retaining female interest. But the storytellers did not.

The reinvention would have begun with the film's title. The Cinderella title is so associated with a female protagonist finding her prince, that many boys would not consider Cinderella to be a must see film. In an earlier stroke of genius, Disney changed the name of its film Rapunzel to Tangled to entice a male audience, and it worked. Girls still knew it was the story of Rapunzel, but boys felt comfortable showing up, too, which resulted in a more favorable 61 percent female/39 percent male split according to reports. More than name alone, Tangled inserted an active male protagonist in an action-oriented storyline, far more so than Cinderella's more passive prince and action-less narrative. If Cinderella had been reinvented, not just retold, with a gender neutral title (keeping the character's name of Cinderella, of course), and with a more active prince placed in an action-oriented narrative, it would have had the potential to make more money and bring more enjoyment to a wider audience. Interestingly, the male villain in the current Cinderella film, the Grand Duke, was ripe for an action-oriented confrontational battle with the prince, but it never happened. As a result, there wasn't even an action-oriented scene in the current film that could appear in advertising to entice boys.

What does this equate to in dollars and cents? The average theater ticket price in the United States is roughly $8, which means the $70 million at the first domestic weekend box office represented roughly 8.75 million moviegoers. If Cinderella's female/male split is truly 71 percent/29 percent, this equates to roughly 6.21 million females and 2.54 million males. If Cinderella had been repositioned, created and marketed in a way to retain its female audience but attract slightly more males as Tangled did for a 61 percent/39 percent split, the total audience might have grown to 10.18 million people (6.21 million females it already had, plus a revised 3.97 million males). That 10.18 million person audience at $8 each would have resulted in a first domestic weekend box office of $81.4 million. Hence, Disney may have left roughly $11.4 million on the table over the first weekend compared to its $70 million dollar box office, which equates to a 16.3 percent increase. If the current film eventually makes $800 million at the worldwide box office over its entire run (assuming it's on a slightly better trajectory than Maleficent), that 16.3 percent increment suggests it could have made an added $130 million worldwide. If Disney's take is about half after deducting theater owners' fees, the amount Disney might eventually leave on the table is $65 million. And this doesn't take into account added boy-related markets that includes toy lines, role play items, video games, publishing, and apparel. These numbers are guesswork, but they demonstrate the dramatic implications of smartly positioning a film to obtain a slightly broader audience. Had I applied the audience split reportedly achieved by Disney's live action Alice in Wonderland (55 percent/45 percent female to male), the increased box office for Cinderella resulting from an even larger male audience would have been staggering.

As a marketer, strategist, story consultant, and sometimes novelist who specializes in entertainment, I can both cheer the accomplishment of Cinderella and be disappointed at the opportunity lost. No matter the success, Disney left money on the table.

It's the home of some of rock and roll's most sacred and iconic artifacts, like Michael Jackson's white glove, Elvis' jumpsuits and Jimi Hendrix's guitar. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, is home to over 10,000 items of music history like these -- but who finds them? Who assembles them? Who gets to reach out to globally famous acts and ask them for their stuff?

Associate curator Meredith Rutledge-Borger came to the Hall after earning a degree in cultural anthropology and theater as well as a stint at a nearby historical society. She started in 1999 as a visitor service representative, which served as "a good way to learn the museum from the ground up," she said. She now gets to collect rock artifacts for exhibits like "Paul Simon: Words & Music and Right Here, Right Now," with a variety of contemporary artists.

Travelzoo recently spoke with Rutledge-Borger about finding Beyoncé's outfits, keeping Alice Cooper's decapitated head, and what artifact she'd take home if she could.

Travelzoo: In the last 15 years or so at the Rock Hall of Fame, what have you helped put together?

Meredith Rutledge-Borger: The first major exhibit that I worked on was our John Lennon exhibit. That was in 2000. I was lead curator on our "Women Who Rock" exhibit in 2011. Some highlights ... the Lennon exhibit was really a dream come true, as was "Women Who Rock."

Both of those were pretty incredible experiences. I've pretty much contributed to every exhibit, period, that we've done, first as a curatorial assistant and now I'm assistant curator.

TZ: You also helped curate the current Beyoncé collection - when you are arranging something like that, how do you go about asking an artist for their stuff? [laughs] How do you reach out to them and say, "Can we have your clothes? Can we have your notes?"

MRB: Very humbly. Very humbly. Usually, we'll reach out. Specifically with Beyoncé, it was after her Super Bowl performance. We had been trying to reach out to make a connection, unsuccessfully, for a while. I guess I just got lucky. [We] called at the right time and specifically asked for the Super Bowl outfit. They said, "Absolutely. We'd be happy to do that. Not only that. We'd actually like it to be a little bigger than that."

We were like, "OK. Thank you very much."

TZ: From there on, do you just look through a person's career and think, "I would like if there's sheet music associated with this one song, if there are master tapes from a studio, if there's something from a music video"? How do you build that?

MRB: We cast a really wide net. Depending on the artist, we generally try to ask for specific things because we usually get a much more positive response when we have something specific in mind.

Other artists are much more...spontaneous, let's say, and will say, "I don't have that," or "I'm not interested in giving you that, but I do have this, this, this, and this." It's on a case by case basis, but very generally, we cast a really wide net.

TZ: Is it harder to curate something like the Lennon exhibit that you worked on? For someone whose career traveled through so many different paths, where there's so many items that could be available, do you choose to focus on a particular part of someone's career? Or is it up to someone to try and get on the phone with Yoko Ono and ask for a shirt or a pair of glasses?

MRB: Again, it's very much a case by case basis when we're dealing with an iconic artist, like John Lennon, or a group of iconic artists, like with our "Women Who Rock" exhibit. We take into consideration what's available. For instance, in "Women Who Rock," there's not a lot of Billie Holiday stuff around. There just isn't a lot.

If we're dealing with somebody like Stevie Nicks or a new artist like Alicia Keys or Janelle Monae, there's more to choose from. We have to strike a balance between what's out there, what we want, the story that we're trying to tell, and how these things illustrate the message.

TZ: You work with a lot of acts to build collections and tell their story. Do you also get a lot of artists who just come to visit the museum? I imagine there are a number of artists who come to just see the exhibits.

MRB: We sure do. We extend an invitation to every touring artist that comes to the city. A lot of them take us up on it and are, by and large, really thrilled to be here. Sometimes we forget that these people who are in the business are fans themselves. They're thrilled to see this stuff up close and personal. It also really gives them impetus to want to be a part of what we're doing. Of course, who wouldn't want to have their stuff alongside their idols?

TZ: Do you have a special behind-the-scenes private experience that they get, or do they just get to show up, walk through the door, and hang out with everybody else?

MRB: Depends on what they want. Some people are happy to be out with the public. Other people, just for security concerns, would prefer to have something after hours, in private.

TZ: Once the new inductees to the Rock Hall of Fame are announced, does that kick your job into high gear? Do the two sides speak to each other? Like when they say, "Green Day is going to be in," do you have to start building collections that go along with each inductee?

MRB: Absolutely. Yes. We're always working on something here. When it's not new inductee season, we have a major exhibit to put up. We have our "Right Here, Right Now" exhibit, which is ongoing. When the new inductees are announced, yeah, we immediately switch into collecting mode, go out there, get on the phone, get on a plane, and go get the stuff.

TZ: How big is the Hall of Fame's collection? Is there anything that isn't on the floor, that you think is really cool or you really like that you have or anything like that?

MRB: We have a collection of about 10,000 items. At any one time, there are about maybe 6,000 out on the floor. We do have an appreciable amount of artifacts that are in storage at any one time.

We try to rotate things just to not only keep the collection fresh for repeat visitors or just for visitors in general, but also just for conservation purposes, it's better to keep an artifact in optimal conditions, in our storage area. Even though our galleries are light, temperature, humidity controlled, storage is better [laughs] just because there's less light.

It's just more secure, in general. Just to keep things fresh and for conservation, we rotate things out. Some things that are in storage that I really enjoy...Storage changes, as I say, because we do rotate things, but currently, we've got some things. I'm a big Beatles fan. We've got Ringo's collarless suit that we've got in storage. I love it just because it was Ringo. It's a beautiful thing.

We've got lots of instruments that are off exhibit. We've got this wonderful head -- it's Alice Cooper's head. It's the guillotined head. It's so lifelike and gory and hilarious. It's a really wonderful thing. It's one of my favorite things.

Also, Dionne Warwick is one of my favorites. We have a dress of hers that I just love to look it just because [laughs], again, it's Dionne's, you know? It's a pretty cool thing.

TZ: Do you guys have a standing wish list or a top 10 list of things that the museum would like to acquire but hasn't been able to yet?

MRB: We absolutely do have a wish list, mostly of artists, not necessarily specific things. It's artists that we would like to connect with, that we would like to either improve our collection on or initiate a collection on. There are some inductees that we haven't really been able to make a connection with. We're constantly changing that out.

We have a Collections Committee that meets. We talk about who are the artists that we want to target. We're constantly working to build the collection because we're a relatively young institution. To really be taken seriously as a museum, we really need to build our collection. We're working hard to do that.

TZ: Are you guys forced to listen to nonstop rock and roll and classic rock in the office, or do you ever break it up with jazz and classical?

MRB: [laughs] We can listen to whatever we like. A lot of times, it's silence because there's music playing in the museum at all times. In our offices, sometimes it's nice to be able to just sit and chill.

TZ: If you had carte blanche to take anything in the museum home with you, what would it be?

MRB: Wow. I don't know. I think Janice's Porsche is probably the thing that I would want to have just because it's so cool. [laughs] It's just so cool. [laughs] It wouldn't get very far.

TZ: Do you play any instruments?

MRB: I play a little guitar.

Karl: Do you or any of the other musicians on staff ever get to indulge in playing some of the instruments that you guys have?

MRB: No. We don't. We don't. We did have an employee band that performed around. It was a lot of fun, but no, we do not. [laughs] We do not play the instruments.

TZ: Is that the on the record answer?

MRB: It's frowned upon. [laughs] Hey. I'm a curator.

-- Karl Klockars is a producer at Travelzoo and based in Chicago. Travelzoo has 250 deal experts from around the world who rigorously research, evaluate and test thousands of deals to find those with true value.

One of my favorite blog features, unexpectedly, has been my occasional series of interviews with musicians traveling through Pittsburgh. I'm not a huge live music fan, but I do enjoy the chance to engage performers around issues that matter to my readers. And those encounters have in turn given me a greater appreciation for live music performances. Read my conversation with Joe Stevens and my reflection on Sleater-Kinney.

Eli Conley came to my attention through a conversation with a mutual friend. I was immediately struck by his words and his awareness of the issues that matter to me. Then I listened to his music. I had to talk with him and he was gracious enough to make some time for me.

Sue Kerr: Tell me about your first visit to Pittsburgh and your most vivid impression of our City.

Eli Conley: When I was in college at Oberlin, I spent a lot of time driving back and forth to Pittsburgh because my boyfriend at the time, Noah, lived in Squirrel Hill. One time we were driving together near Duquesne and we got stopped by the police at a drunk driving check point. Noah and I are both trans, and he had only recently started taking testosterone, so a lot of people read him as a teenager even though he was 29. I remember the cop looked at his license and was very surprised to see that he was born in 1977. He asked Noah if he'd started shaving yet! We laughed nervously as we drove away, relieved that the cop had been so surprised at his age that he didn't notice the big "F" for female on his license.

That's the biggest moment that sticks in my mind, but I also remember lots of good times in Pittsburgh. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but there was a Chinese place right around the corner from where Noah lived that had the best vegan dumplings. I'm going to have to find it when I come back to play in April!

Kerr: Are there any Pittsburgh performers (based here or born here) who influence you?

Conley: I actually just saw an amazing ballet in San Francisco the other day set to the music of Philip Glass. It was called Hummingbird, choreographed by Liam Scarlett, and it was very angular for a ballet. I don't know that I would say my own music is influenced by Philip Glass' compositions directly, but he's certainly had a profound impact on American music as a whole, and that probably seeps in even for roots musicians like me. I'll admit I had to do a little research to answer this question, and I discovered that so many visual artists who I love are from Pittsburgh, including Romare Bearden and Mary Cassatt, as well as queer artists like Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, and of course the writer Gertrude Stein.

Kerr: You mentioned the epidemic of violence against the trans community, especially trans women of color. How does your music contribute to the cultural shift that's necessary to stop the epidemic?

Conley: I'll admit that despite taking part in Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremonies over the past ten years, it has only been in the past couple of months that I have become aware of just how frequently queer and transgender people of color are murdered. That for every name and story I know, there are so many others I don't. Reading the Pittsburgh Lesbian just now in preparation for this interview, I was so saddened to hear that Andre Gray, a Black gay man from Lawrenceville, disappeared in October under troubling circumstances and his family has not been able to find out what happened to him.

Being a white, professional class, trans man means that this is not something I have had to know in my bones. I could choose not to see it if it felt too painful to look. But I see it now.

Queer and transgender people of color have been resisting violence and organizing for liberation for as long as there has been oppression. Black queer activists like #BlackLivesMatter founders Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza and the women of Millennial Activists United in Ferguson are leading the movement to end state violence against Black people. Black queer people and transgender people of color took the podium at the national Creating Change conference recently to demand that mainstream LGBTQ organizations take concrete action to end the murders of LGBTQ people of color. A movement is growing.

I think it's important to remember that we all have a choice. In this moment, will we white LGBTQ folks focus only on the issues that impact us directly? Or will we stand with Black people and other people of color for an end to anti-Black racism and white supremacy in all its forms, understanding that no one is free while others are oppressed?

I think we all have roles we can play in building a more just society, starting where we are. I'm in a trio with two other queer songwriters called Sugar in the Salt, and we've put together several benefit shows for Ferguson organizing. I helped organize a Black Lives Matter singing flash mob in a mall where I live, and I'm working on a song about police violence, the finality of death, and the power of people acting together for justice. It's not done yet, but hopefully it will be by the time I come to Pittsburgh. I believe that the more people who take action, the more the culture will start to shift, and artists are an important part of that.

Kerr: You come from Virginia Appalachian country. Pittsburgh is often described as the "capital of Appalachia" -- do you see any commonalities in terms of LGBTQ culture?

Conley: I grew up in Richmond and Ashland, Virginia, which are in the central part of the state, but my dad's family has been in Appalachia for many generations, so I definitely have deep roots there. I think one thing about LGBTQ culture in smaller places like the small town where I grew up and even smaller cities like Pittsburgh is that LGBTQ people have to learn to connect across difference. I've lived in the Bay Area for the past seven years, and if I wanted to I could attend a gay sci-fi book club, play at a queer open mic and go to a queer dance party every week! There are things about that that are great. I'm very thankful to be able to make my living leading singing classes for LGBTQ people and allies, for example. But it can also lead to insularity and not knowing how to connect with people who are different from you. When I've lived in smaller places, it's caused me to build community with LGBTQ people who are different from me because there just weren't that many of us. And it caused me to build strong relationships with straight people as well. I definitely experienced that visiting my college boyfriend in Pittsburgh, seeing how broad his community was.

Kerr: Joe Stevens was here in September and comedian Ian Harvie has been here twice in the past two years. I think they may have been the first openly trans male performers to book shows here. Whom else in the queer music/performance scene should we book in our local venues (of any size) and why?

Conley: I definitely recommend the band My Gay Banjo from New York/Philly. I think they played in Pittsburgh sometime in the past couple of years, but they're another musical act who are unapologetically gay and unapologetically country. Geo Wyeth is a Black trans musician and performance artist from New York whose music I just adore. Years ago a friend of mine gave me a burned CD of some of his early songs when he was going by the name Novice Theory, and I listen to his newer album Alien Tapes a lot. A couple of other queer performers I love include Imani Henry, Naima Shalhoub, Namoli Brennet, Humble Tripe and Ellis. I encourage you to look them up if you don't already know them!



Kerr: I'm particularly drawn to the song "When God Sets His Sights On You" -- please tell me more about it.

Conley: I wanted to write a song about the complexities of being a queer kid in the South that didn't give simple answers. I tell the story of a young queer woman and who lives with her single mom. She comes out about having a girlfriend and her mom freaks out because she believes the teachings of her church, that homosexuality comes from being possessed by demons. But before she has a chance to get used to the idea and come around, Jean steals her truck and runs away. The song shows them both grappling with how to reconcile their spirituality with queer sexuality. I think that's a question that a lot of queer people raised in more fundamentalist spiritual traditions have to face -- how can I be true to who I am and stay connected to my tradition, if I still find parts of if resonant? I wasn't personally raised in any particular spiritual tradition, but I grew up around a lot of queer kids who were wrestling with those questions.

Kerr: Who was the first LGBTQ person that you met and how did that impact you?

Conley: Several of my mom's cousins are lesbians. I'm not sure when I actually realized that their "friends" were their partners. It was kind of an open secret in my family. I think everybody knew they were romantic partners. I remember when I was a kid the partners would come to family gatherings, but wouldn't pose in the group family pictures like other people's spouses. I remember being at a family event when I was in my teens and talking with one gay cousin who actually worked for the Washington Blade, which is a gay paper. She teased me about a boy I was friends with and when I told her he was gay, she shushed me. I was hurt. I was hoping that we could connect about being queer, but I think we were from different generations and had different comfort levels with talking about our sexuality around our family. Of course, now she sends me lots of articles about queer stuff. I think my coming out as transgender to my whole family in my early twenties opened up space for us to connect as adults.

The first trans person I knew was actually my high school best friend. I remember being totally amazed that it was possible to identify as a gender other than the one you'd been assigned at birth. He was someone who'd known he was male from the time he was very small, so our experiences were very different. For a long time I compared myself to him and decided I couldn't possibly be trans, because my experience didn't fit with the whole "born in the wrong body" narrative the mainstream media likes to present in the way that his did. But by the end of high school I had started identifying as neither a man nor a woman but genderqueer, and he was one of my staunchest supporters. He was one of the first people to start calling me Eli. I'll always be thankful for his example, helping show me that there were gender possibilities I hadn't dreamed of.

Kerr: Past or present, favorite LGBTQ character in television, film or literature?

Conley: I'd have to say Jess Goldberg. When Leslie Feinberg passed, I re-read Stone Butch Blues and was struck by the power of the story. I love the way it shows Jess making mistakes and learning and striving to hold onto tenderness even through all of the abuse. And I love the way that Leslie wove in threads of so many different social movements of the era, even when Jess Goldberg wasn't actively involved in them. It's really an incredible book.

Kerr: What is one simple thing a reader can do to support the LGBTQ community?

Conley: Find out about people of color-led LGBTQ organizations in your community and volunteer, donate money, support them however you can. One organization you might connect with in Pittsburgh in Project Silk, a program for African-American and Latino young men and African-American and Latina young transgender women between the ages of 13 and 29.

Thank you, Eli, for talking with us. You can learn more about Eli by visiting his website and following him on Facebook. His most recent album, At The Seams, is available for purchase via iTunes and bandcamp.

Eli performs in Pittsburgh on April 15 at Biddle's Escape in the Regent Square neighborhood.

The big day is finally here! Today I make my Dancing with the Stars debut live in front of America. The energy level is high backstage and everyone is hustling and bustling to get ready for tonight's show. It's been a complete whirlwind - the past few weeks have just flown by. My dance partner, Derek Hough, and I are based in NYC, and have both been balancing our own individual projects in addition to traveling back and forth from NYC to LA. While doing DWTS, I am a full-time student in my junior year at New York University and Derek is starring in a brand new show, "New York Spring Spectacular," at Radio City Music Hall. Our rehearsals have been a lot of fun, and while our individual commitments have made juggling our schedules quite a challenge, we have tried to use what little time we have had together to keep things focused... we share a lot of laughs including moments where I step on Derek's toes or bump into him!

The art of dancing is completely new to me! Even though I am a gymnast who has performed on the world's largest stage (The Olympics!), it is still nerve wracking to prepare to step in front of America doing something I have never done before - and doing it with a partner. I am sure a lot of people think that being an athlete might be advantageous in this competition, but truth be told there is a huge learning curve for me. For so many years I have competed alone out on the floor so to have a partner is a complete game changer. After all these years of only having to concentrate on my own movements, trying to synchronize choreography is tough. I am starting to realize that I basically need to start from scratch because dancing is so different!

With that said, it has been such an enjoyable few weeks of testing myself and really doing something that is completely out of my comfort zone. Derek and I are so excited for our first dance. He is a great teacher and is very open and receptive to my ideas. We were actually even able to incorporate certain aspects of my gymnastics style into the routine, which was pretty cool. The journey so far has given me an enormous appreciation for the professional dancers who are tasked with teaching us all such intricate dances. It takes so much patience on their part.

On top of perfecting each dance, every week we are also responsible for our costume design. From my years of performing, I know just how important music and costumes are...they truly make or break the performance. Setting the tone is so important! You have to find a way to connect with the audience and make them feel as if they are a part of your performance. As for the costume designs, this is a process that I am involved in every step of the way. I know that a lot of young girls look up to me, which is truly such an honor, and a role that I take very seriously. I want to represent myself through my costumes, making sure the way I look on the dance floor each week best portrays me. I hope that when viewers see my costumes this season my love of fashion and my personality shines through. I know that if I feel confident in my outfit and comfortable with the music selection, it will allow me to give the best performance possible and be proud of myself.

I am so grateful to have this opportunity and am looking forward to sharing my journey with you each and every week through my Huffington Post blog. I hope to have your support and votes! Please send good thoughts my way and vote for me by calling: 1-855-234-5604

Wish me luck, America... I hope to make you proud!

Fifty Shades of Grey is a hilarious movie. I was going to write profoundly hilarious but nothing about Shades is profound. It's an erotic sado-masochist fantasy in which the audience, according to reports and my own quick look around the cinema, is mainly young people including a lot of couples, thus a lot of young women. There are also some middle-aged people, lots of them women who may be there with girlfriends -- social strength in numbers. Why young men want to see Shades is obvious: raging hormones and a hope, stimulated by internet porn, that their women may get interested in a practical way. Women, the young and middle-aged alike, may see it because, according to Freud and opinion poll experts, fantasies of bondage are age-old among the second sex. In the end, however, Shades is not as gripping as its reputation.

The actor who plays the hero, or anti-hero, Christian Grey, looks like a buff mix of Jim Carrey and Louis Jourdan, the French 50-70s heart throb. He was hard to take seriously as he attempted to personify a 27-year-old billionaire with a supremely-confident, cold, penetrating, dominating look. At any moment it wouldn't have surprised me had he morphed into Rubber Man with his mad grin or the romantic hero breaking out into Gigi with a tender smile. The actress who plays Anastasia Steele (the last name is a tip-off) is a cross between the face and physiognomy of Jane Birkin (mother of Charlotte whose father is French bad-boy Serge Gainsbourg) and the eyes of French actress Sophie Marceau in her ingénue days. Anna is, believe it or not, an undergraduate senior. She alternates instantly between a still-virgin valley girl (she says, "theenk you" when in this mode) and a wise-beyond-her-years, game-for-almost-anything steely woman of the world, like Marceau's role as the daughter of D'Artagnan in Revenge of the Musketeers.

Christian is the dominator. However he's not a fundamentally bored European sophisticate who plays sado-masochism as an aesthetic game. He's in earnest (i.e. American), a psychologically-traumatized straight-shooter who tells Anna up front that he "never sleeps overnight with anyone," never makes love, "only fucks." (I was about to burst out laughing when I sensed no one else was.) The enigmatic title is then explained when he blurts out, I'm like this "because I'm fifty shades of fucked up." Surprise to him, the dramatic arc shows him to be implacable but not far-enough gone not to be touched by the love of a sincere woman.

As for the eroticism: it comes in two boxes. One is the bondage as such, S&M, which appears only after an hour or so. There are altogether three or four modestly explicit scenes of nothing more than whuppin' while a lot of unused tools hang on the walls. The other box is the eroticism of the bondage. Here Anna, hands tied up and thrown over her head, sometimes double-knotted to a bed post, writhes, bites her lip and breathes hard to a rising musical background of Passion of Joan of Arc, as things happen to her (previously she gave up her virginity in a rather believable romantic moment several days before the other stuff gets going). One of these things involves tickling her tied up with a peacock feather (sic). Again I gulped down an urge. The nudity tells a lot about the film's daring. Over an hour the audience is given several minutes of Anna's breasts and nice side views of her nakedness but no genitalia. Women are objectified but modestly; the men are shot from behind and nobody's groin appears in public. This is Playboy Magazine 1950s eroticism, exciting enough as it was at the time for high-school boys growing up in the Midwest. Shades is not even close to Bertolucci's commercial sexualized break-out film Last Tango in Paris (1972) in which really a lot of Maria Schneider was on objectified display but Marlon Brando's equipment remained sheathed from prying eyes.

In the overall scheme of things what indeed is going on in Shades? Deep down it's a Cinderella story, Cinderella in bondage. Rather than kissed by a froggy Prince she's made to sign a contract for submission with rules and regulations, including the compulsory 'this will stop anytime you say.' An added trope of Pygmalianism appears: Christian is teaching Anna to explore her sexuality, somewhat as Rex Harrison taught Julie Andrews to speak proper English in My Fair Lady. In other words, it's Pretty Woman-plus; or, if Bunuel's Belle de jour is a comparison, then half a step. (No one forgets that spot of blood close to the bourgeoise lady of the day, Catherine Deneuve.) We intuit the underlying theme in that the contract for S&M includes one evening a week to spend as "normal" people, eating dinner out, going to the movies and so forth. The immediate normal thing to do then occurs. They close dance like Bogie and Betty, or Richard and Julia, on the marble floor of his hi-up penthouse to a Frank Sinatra record (sic). As against Shades' version, anyone looking for real S&M depiction should consult the classic French scandal novel, The Story of O, or the grainy, sincere black and white porno films before commercial depravity set in.

It's not only Cinderella and Pygmalian. There's also Grey's James Bond-ness. He's a master of gadgets. He flies Anna up in a helicopter and takes her on a hang-glider, suggesting that she herself give the order for release from the drag-plane, which Puts Her In Charge of her thrills in this high-wire act. The 007-ness of it all overflows when Grey orders a drink, not a Bond martini but a gin-and-tonic, with a certain hard-to-find- gin "if you have it," and if not then Bombay Sapphire. We're in America for sure. In fact it's Seattle. Grey's bespoke suits don't quite work and he tends to look like a Men's Warehouse TV commercial. In fact the viewer's suspicions that Shades is middlebrow American were raised from the first moment when -- my heart sank -- the song played over the titles was "You put a spell on me."

The moment of truth in the film is the last frame. Anna has become irremediably furious at Christian for having flogged her six times on the rear end with a whip (that transforms metaphorically into a belt. The root of Grey's sadism, we see, is that he was beaten with a belt by his alcoholic, drug-addicted mother until the age of six when she died). Anna at this point hash enough. Why does he want to see her like this, naked and beaten, to treat her like this? Is he really incapable of human feeling? Isn't he ready for the genuine love of a good woman? Apparently not, or not quite yet but something is afoot.

Anna stomps off into the elevator, leaving her dominator in the dust. Christian, suddenly desperate, emoting with the truth, runs after her but she relents not, the elevator door closes and she is gone. She's put him in his place. She's turned the tables on Christian. Now she's in charge, he's the dominated one. Put differently, Cinderella, through her good-willed attempt at bondage, becomes a feminist. Bondage, dialectically, sets you free. Shades shows that we Americans are still incurable optimists. The only problem is that we aren't told what happens to Christian now that he's been hit with romantic kryptonite.

(Ironically, as we say, the new movie version of Cinderella is showing simultaneously at the cinema I attended.)

I didn't sleep last night. Granted, I've had a history of insomnia, so it is not unheard of for me to stay awake until five or six in the morning. Last night, however, was not that sort of aimless wakefulness. No, it was extravagant and intentional.

Last night, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly leaked on iTunes a week in advance of its planned release (it has since been removed), and I sat up listening. Once. Then twice. Then three times. By the time I noticed the sun sneaking under my blinds, I'd combed the album over seven times, and yet it still felt entirely new, revealing unseen inscrutabilities with each repetition. It's a testament to Lamar's skill as a writer and composer that this never felt tiring or frustrating. Rather, being baffled by Butterfly felt like a sort of gift: The chance to watch something mysterious and masterful unfold itself, taking a series of increasingly vital forms before wiping the slate clean and starting creation all over again. Seven days and then a flood. Seven days and then a flood. Each listen a new and lively world.

After all those replays, I can be certain of only one thing. To Pimp a Butterfly is a masterpiece, fulfilling, defying and exceeding expectations simultaneously.

In many ways, Kendrick's latest record is a study in interruptions: disruptions compounding on one another with increasing tension and fury. There's a sense of the unfulfilled, moments of beauty and anxiety cut short, and then forced to recreate themselves, to adapt. But, like Lamar roared in the untitled track he premiered on The Colbert Report back in December (which does not appear on this record), nothing here dies. It just multiplies. For the clearest example of this, a listener can look to "i," which appeared as a single in the fall, and sits as the fifteenth track on Butterfly. The album version of the track is, however, entirely different, a new beast with new rhythms and intentions. When "i" first premiered it was billed as Lamar's pop-iest song to date -- a paean to self-love riding the buoyant crests of an Isley Brothers sample. It was bouncy without being light and warm without being dishonest. The darkness that thundered out from the cut's fourth verse felt organic, but still out of place. When "The Blacker the Berry" premiered months later, the two tracks were placed in opposition to each other almost immediately.

Now, however, the pair don't seem all that different. "i" has been recast, with Lamar bottling a live performance that deteriorates into shouting, swallowing up the song as it was previously understood. Within the muddle, Kendrick calls out to the crowd, asking, "How many n*ggas we done lost?" Soon, he begins to freestyle, harnessing the seemingly casual confidence of the original song and transforming it into something unabashedly revolutionary: "N-E-G-U-S -- definition, royalty." The collapse and conversion is breathtaking and unexpected. While the track echoes from the very outset, with each passing minute that space between Kendrick and the listener feels vaster. Unlike most live tracks, "i" doesn't seem interested in creating intimacy. It's comfortable holding fans at a distance, asking them to do the work. It breathes air into the room even as it sucks it out. It feels both spacious and claustrophobic. Most of all, it feels alive: The song's two versions conversing vibrantly, asking one another what their writer is trying to say, and how he should say it.

"King Kunta" too- -t he album's third track, which leaked this past Friday -- finds itself a platform for disruption. The song begins with an announcement -- "I've got a bone to pick!" -- before gradually growing and hastening atop thickening orchestrations. In the middle of a chorus, however, the background cuts out. "By the time you hear the next 'pop'" a voice intones, "the funk shall be within you." Then, a pop. Then, Kendrick finishing his thought. Then the bass roaring up once more to swallow the silence. It's a perfect transition, and especially powerful in the context of the song, the chorus of which refers to the slave Kunta Kinte, whose foot was amputated as punishment for his attempting to escape captivity. "Everybody wanna cut the legs off him," Lamar raps. The track, too, for a moment, seems halted. Yet, it quickly pushes forward, speeding up once more in defiance.

This seems to be the central anxiety of Butterfly: What still stands in the way of black Americans, what remains determined to kill them. How do we survive this? The record asks. As such, every interruption is a reminder, a demonstration of the course that so often is imposed upon young black men. It's impossible not to reckon with this in some way in the wake of 2014, which came to be defined by the discussion over the publicized murders of Tamir Rice, Mike Brown and Eric Garner. The former two didn't live to see age twenty. Black life, Lamar then argues, is haunted by the potential for disruption. Always lurking is the notion that a life building momentum may be suddenly and randomly derailed, cut short. His latest album is a distillation of this and a rebellion against it. It is consistently terminated, only to spring to life once more.

This all makes the record's twelve-minute closer "Mortal Man" especially fitting. For the first five minutes the track moves forward as a celebration of community, invoking Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Moses, asking how long anyone can hold on and stay committed to the fight ("When shit hit the fan, is you still a fan?") What attempts to silence and destroy will you endure?

But, then, it slowly winds down under the sounds of Lamar describing his own doubts and self-loathing. It's prayerful and searching, seemingly stretching into the void to some unnamed "you." But then the void speaks back, the evermore responds. And it is Tupac Shakur. And the two men joke and jab at one another and talk shop. "How long do you think it'll take before n*ggas be like, I'm fighting a war I can't win and I want to lay it all down?" Lamar inquires. "In this country a black man only have five years when we can exhibit maximum strength," Shakur explains. "'Cause once you turn thirty, it's like they take the heart and soul out of a man."

It's a beautiful mission statement for the record: A fight against death and silence, and a preservation of an energy and a drive to fight. It leads into Kendrick's own lengthy explanation of the metaphor of the album's title, but what struck me most is what happens just after that. Lamar's speech builds over the sounds of fitful jazz, writhing, dancing horns. "What's your perspective on that?" Kendrick asks. Only the sounds of those instruments. "Pac," he calls out, "Pac?" Then one last time, just as the music cuts out, so that that name feels like one last note, a punctuation. The conversation has been disrupted much as Shakur's own life. It is a violent, mournful ending. Yet, when I first heard it, my mind raced back to "King Kunta." "By the time you hear the next 'pop,' the funk shall be within you." Spreading out from the ending of that track is the world that Kendrick fought to capture and describe, in all its glory and rage and tragedy, and "funk." The interruption suggests death, but here it seems to leave room for rebirth. So, when the album started up again, I felt myself at ease. From a jumble of eerie static, the first words of "Wesley's Theory" materialized: a joyous, tuneful affirmation. "Every n*gga is a star."

To Pimp a Butterfly is a maximalist record in the purest sense. It is bursting at the seams, every song stuffed with emotion, contradiction, longing and debate. It is furious and celebratory and mournful and funny. It explodes and rebels, creates and destroys, grows and flowers and stretches out in all directions. Knowing how little of it I feel I have understood feels like a wonderful promise. It feels like an honor. The chance to re-listen, to hear the world made new again, is one of the many immutable beauties of art. It is one that Kendrick has captured perfectly. To Pimp a Butterfly may be interrupted but it will not be stopped.

A few years ago, in one of life's truly happy accidents, I was introduced to a descendant of one of the world's great artists at an opening in Washington, D.C. The next thing I knew I was in Europe sitting around a conference table with other members of the family who shared the famous name. It was an extraordinary visit, and one of the most interesting days of my life.

As someone who writes about art (or tries to, at least), I was transfixed listening to these very normal people talk about their very abnormal ancestry and its effect on their family members. I got to thinking about how very important these people are, how wonderful it is that they are among us, and how much they can teach us.

My new friends gently rebuffed my requests to go public with this extraordinary experience and though I haven't given up on wanting to help them tell their story, I don't think it's going to happen. For they know the price of being "out there" -- from misconceptions about family fortune to surrender of privacy and the ability to forge their own way -- and they just aren't up for it. And while it's a shame, I can't say that I blame them. At all.

Last week when I read that a relative of the late Andy Warhol was venturing to make Uncle Andy, a documentary about him "from the family's perspective," my imagination -- and because this is something I've spent a lot of time time thinking about, my heart -- was immediately captured.



So I reached out, of course, and found myself in a fantastic conversation with one Abby Warhola: 30-year-old granddaughter of Paul, oldest of the three Warhola brothers who passed away in January 2014. Abby lives in Pittsburgh, where most of the Warhola clan can still be found, with her partner Jesse and their 7-year-old daughter, Veva. And this is what she had to say about her project and her family:

CJ: Hi Abby! Where are you now and what are you doing?

AW: Hello! I'm at my grandmother's house, Anne Warhola, Andy's sister in law, who will be 91 this May. I stay with her three nights a week to help out. She is one of my favorites and I love interviewing her. She pulls no punches when talking about Uncle Andy and jokingly refers to him as being a pain in the ass...

CJ: You sure she's joking?

AW: (laughs) I guess it depends on her mood. They had a typical brother-sister relationship.


Anne Warhola with her late husband Paul.

CJ: What's it like being a Warhola, anyway? When did you first become aware of your interesting Uncle Andy?

AW: Well there's never a dull or quiet moment when one of us are in the room! We are a very close-knit family who laughs a lot. I think as a whole we are a really eccentric and creative bunch. I don't know if I was ever unaware, but once the Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh, my life really changed. I had the chance to meet some of his famous friends, including Dennis Hopper, Lou Reed and Pee Wee Herman. It was pretty exciting.

CJ: The news of your film project has really caught fire in the last few days. Are you surprised by the reaction?

AW: For us, it has been a very surreal experience. It really confirms just how popular Andy has become. Within a week, the story was all over the world. I guess nothing is surprising when you're talking about people being interested in Andy Warhol!

CJ: What do you do in real life? Is this your first film project?

AW: I do a little bit of everything. Primarily, I'm a photographer, but I'm also a designer and a letterpress printer. While I do shoot video, 16mm and super-8 film on various smaller projects, this is my first feature-length film.

CJ: So you are the one getting the attention at the moment, but this is actually a collaboration between you and your partner, Jesse, right? Tell us a little about him.

AW: Yes, Jesse and I are working on this together. He is a visual artist with a background in film. Jesse was really the one to push the idea of turning my family's story into a documentary. I'm a little too close to it all, and honestly never thought it was something to pursue. It wasn't until we started capturing these interviews that I realized how interesting my family really is.


Jesse, Abby & Veva

CJ: What made you and Jesse decide that now was the time? What does the broader Warhola family think of it?

AW: We've been filming for several years, but it wasn't until my grandfather passed away in 2014 that we decided to push the project into a feature-length film. When his footage became finite, we felt the urgency to preserve it and create something bigger to honor both my grandfather and Uncle Andy's legacies. My family is very supportive of the project. They are excited that someone within the family can finally share their unique story.

CJ: Is the museum or the foundation involved in any way?

AW: The Andy Warhol Museum has been very supportive! We have done some interviews and hope to work with them further. Since they are non-profit, they are unable to provide any financial support to commercial projects. The foundation has never had a relationship with the Paul Warhola family. Andy's other brother, John Warhola, was involved with the foundation and Paul was not included in that relationship. Still, it is our understanding that the foundation was created to provide grants for contemporary artists, and since this film is about Warhol, it doesn't fall within their guidelines of support anyway.

CJ: Tell me a bit about John and Paul. What did they think of their brother's fame?

AW: Well, I can only speak for my grandfather, Paul. I didn't really have a relationship with Uncle John. My grandfather might have been the proudest big brother in history. He absolutely loved telling Andy stories and actually saved every newspaper and magazine clipping that he saw.


Paul & Andy

CJ: My impression has always been that there was a real distance between Andy and his family. Is this correct?

AW: It was never that Andy was distant to his family, he just kept his two worlds very far apart. The family visited him in N.Y.C. about once a month for nearly three decades. Whenever the family would visit, he was very strict about them not visiting the Factory, or letting them see his more adult "colorful" films. He was protective of them and enjoyed their presence in the privacy of his home.


Warhola clan, circa 1945, Pittsburgh

CJ: What's the family's general take nowadays on things like Silver Car Crash recently selling for over $100 million?

AW: I don't think the incredible numbers his paintings go for now fully compute with us. The family is very proud of what Uncle Andy has achieved, but at this point his global stardom has stretched beyond anything we could have ever imagined. It's wild to think that just one of those paintings could have changed my entire family's life for good...

CJ: You've launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the film. Talk about that and why the decision to crowdfund?

AW: There's a few things that appealed to us about Kickstarter. Raising funds this way empowers us to be completely independent and tell the story the way we know it. Another great aspect is the exposure you get from launching a campaign. We can say that the coverage on the project has truly blown us away. If anything, Kickstarter is a wonderful platform for getting the word out and discovering the people who are willing to support the project.

CJ: There is quite a bit out there at this point about Andy and his legacy -- books, films, what have you -- do you have any particular favorites?

AW: I actually haven't read any books about him. I like to look at his picture books though. For instance I think Shoes, Shoes, Shoes is really just great. I loved Basquiat. David Bowie was my favorite Andy ever.

CJ: That movie was really great, wasn't it? Some say that they never saw Andy happier than when Basquiat was in his life. And, yes, Bowie nailed it! And you should read Holy Terror by Bob Colacello. I'll send you a copy!

AW: It really was a great! And please do send me a copy! I've heard from my uncle that it is a really great read.


Andy & Jean-Michel Basquiat

CJ: Speaking of Colacello, are you working with anyone from the Factory days on the film or is it strictly a family affair?

AW: So far, Billy Name and Gerard Malanga have graciously contributed their photography, most of which is from the Factory days. Great iconic Andy images. We intended to speak with them and others who were close enough to Andy to know how he lived outside of the limelight and factory scene. However, we feel that it will be the family's stories that will reveal a layer to Warhol that has not yet been shared.

CJ: What is there to tell about Andy that hasn't been told? What kinds of things can we look forward to learning and whom will we see in the film?

AW: Well it's no secret that Andy was very guarded and trusted few people, and rightfully so, considering the many nefarious characters who were looking to gain something from him. The family was this small circle of people that Andy could trust and rely on for support. When he was shot in 1968, his eldest nephew Paulie took care of him during that time and recalls the way that experience profoundly changed Andy. It is within these stories that you begin to understand what made Warhol such a complicated and fascinating person. Without giving away too much about the film, we can say that the family's memories touch on everything, from the good, the bad and even a bit of the ugly.

Uncle Andy: The Andy Warhol Family Film from Warhola Films on Vimeo.

CJ: So when is the Kickstarter deadline and do you feel like you are on track to raise what you need?

AW: The deadline is April 2nd at 6 p.m. eastern time. We currently have over $35k which is an encouraging start, but there still a long road ahead to achieve our goal of $175K.

CJ: I've noticed there are some wonderful and probably highly collectable rewards that come with different sponsorship levels as well. Discuss.

AW: Yes! This is the first time that the public has an opportunity to purchase Warhola family art! Much of the Warhola family shares this rare artistic talent. We are offering original silkscreens by Paul Warhola, and his works have been featured in galleries around the world. Since his passing there is only a limited number of these available. My Uncle James, who is known for Garbage Pail Kids, Mad Magazine, numerous Sci-Fi covers and illustrated children's books, has offered signed copies of his books and even an original watercolor painting. My mother Madalen has contributed her beautiful Pysanky Ostrich Eggs, which she creates in the honor of the Warhola family tradition. My family is very proud of their Rusyn heritage and these eggs are truly one of the highlights.

CJ: Fantastic. Thank you for your time, Abby. This sounds like a very special project and I really wish you and Jesse the best with it. Keep us posted, ok?

AW: Absolutely. Thank you so much! We really appreciate you taking the time to hear about our project!

James and Jesse talk about the film. Music by Lukas Read from Warhola Films on Vimeo.

Photos courtesy of the Paul Warhola Family.

NBC's Undateable kicks off its second season soon, and the cast was on hand with What's Trending at this year's South by Southwest festival to give us the scoop.

"It's not a show about a bunch of people out dating people," creator Bill Lawrence is quick to clarify. "We kind of hope it's like Cheers a little bit."

Similar to that Boston-based classic, Undateable centers on a group of friends who spend much of their time in the same bar.

There's also singing. "Way too much singing for a sitcom," according to Lawrence. (If you haven't already watched the above interview, 1:30-2:00 is a beautiful -- or beautifully annoying if you're Chris D'Elia -- musical breakdown.)

Keeping with the theme of dating, the conversation turned to Reddit. A popular ongoing thread on the massive "front page of the Internet" is about redditors' worst dating experiences. D'Elia and the rest of Undateable took turns reading out the worst of the worst.

We won't spoil it. But one of the worst involves human scabs that may or may not have ended up in a date's soup. Undateable indeed.

photo courtesy D. Baron Media

A Conversation with Wyclef Jean

Mike Ragogna: Wyclef, how is the recoding coming on your next album Clefication going?

Wyclef Jean: Well, it's going great. We're definitely not finished yet, though. As musicians, we are constantly just writing music every day in the studio. Then once in a while we get an itch to put out a body of work. For me the itch came back after I ran for President of Haiti and went through the fire and came back home. I went to Stockholm and spent some time with Tim Bergling. We went into the studio in winter and we just started recording. It's really just two producers and two writers, when you break it down to the genesis of what it is. We got in and in the course of like three days we wrote twenty songs. That was just the start of the process for the body of work that will turn out to be Clefication. The name really came from Avicii. Every time I'm in the studio they're like, "Yo, give us a little more Clefication!" So Clefication is like the swag of Wyclef. It's the human application to the music. I play all the instruments live in real time, and there's a certain swag that I do to my voice, little things like Marley used to do. They call it the Clefication. I guess Clefication is the human music application.

MR: Though you're not finished recording the album, Afro Jack, DJ Khaled, Emeli Sandé and other popular musicians already appear on Clefication. How do you invite your guest cast to the project? Is it simply calling up your friends and saying, "I think you're right for this?"

WJ: When I put albums together it's like making an audio film. Every generation has a modern day story that they're trying to tell. Within Clefication I'm trying to tell the story of life, love, happiness, ups, downs; it's like a film script. I just look out there and think of people. DJ Khaled and I go way back, so I knew that for a certain sound that I'd need he and I would have to get together, based on our past experiences working together. I spent a lot of time in Amsterdam with Afro Jack, so I understand the movement of what he does and I always wondered, "What happens if you put a Wyclef acoustic guitar against an Afro Jack record?" Emeli Sandé is just hands down one of the greatest vocalists and writers of all time, in my personal opinion, so I've been dying to get together with her. I just felt that her ability to write and sing and transform is different.



MR: You've already given us a taste of the album with your performance of "Divine Sorrow" on the American Music Awards. What was it like coming back to debuting work in such a large "win-or-lose" kind of format?

WJ: I always think I'm very fortunate, but when I came into the music business one thing I learned from Quincy Jones is that the music game is like a marathon. The game doesn't really start until now and this is what determines if you're going to be around or not. The AMAs were cool for me because my daughter is nine, she doesn't know who the Fugees are, she just went back to school and got to tell everybody her daddy was on the American Music Awards. I have to stay cool for my daughter, no matter what happens. Dads have always got to stay cool for their daughters. [laughs]

MR: You went to Europe for a couple of years to get a little creative inspiration, right?

WJ: Yes. It's similar to when Marley went to England and hooked up with Chris Blackwell and started using a lot of that country stuff inside the reggae. Inspiration is all over the world. I think sometimes to get inspired you have to move around. I just wanted to go back and forth to Europe, there was a lot of things that I was listening to in my head that I wanted to convey. I spent a lot of time going back and forth.

MR: You joined Ash Pournouri in Sweden, right?

WJ: Yeah. The kind of swag that Ash Pournouri has reminds me of a Chris Blackwell, he's just younger. His spunk for music, his passion for music is there. When I sat with Ash, who's one of the executive producers of this new album, he was like, "Yo, you know the 'Clef brand is the music brand. When you come to Europe I just want to put you in a room with a bunch of cool kids who are doing what you're doing in Europe and are great friends of yours." I definitely credit him to starting a process of what would carve out eventually to be a more focused body of work as opposed to just another record, you know what I mean? That's how I hooked up with Avicci.

MR: And Clefication went to PRMD, the label that you and Ash and Avicci are on, right?

WJ: Yeah, the beautiful thing about Clefication is that it's coming out on HEADS Music and PRMD. There's two little independents, one is HEADS Music which I think is brilliant. They actually came and recruited me, which I love, because they have a lot of young acts that they wanted me to produce. I love the idea of the combination of what HEADS Music is doing. Their CEO is very brilliant, her name is Madeleine Ellison. She came to recruit me for production. Ash came and was like, "Yo, let's do an album," but she came and was like, "Yo, I have all these acts, I need you to do what you did for Destiny's Child and all of them." I was like, "Wow, this is a great marriage." So I did the deal with HEADS Music/PRMD Distribution 88, that's Warner's.

MR: You've produced, written songs, recorded, and even entered politics, especially by running for president of Haiti. Do all those pursuits come from the same place within? How do you fulfill yourself in each of those categories? Are they sometimes done at the expense of each other?

WJ: That's a great question, it's never really been asked like that. I definitely think it's real hard. How do you go about poli-sci one day talking about world events and policy and trade and then the next day, you're like "Divine Sorrow." The thing is, in my subconscious mind, even if you go back to the Fugees days, I've always called our music "Policy Music." We do stuff that makes people dance, but it always has a subtitle in the back of it. It's definitely not an easy thing, juggling it all at the same time, but I just feel like you can't just sing. When we listen to John Lennon or Bob Marley, it's up to us to push the policies forward. For me, it'll always be a mixture of both. When I saw the movies of Fela Kuti I identified with a lot of parts that were similar to how my life is; running for president, defying the system and how it comes at you like they're going to take your throat out. For me, it's all part of the same thing. I never want my legacy to be, "Oh, this is the guy who came from Haiti and just made people sing and dance." I really don't think that's what people will remember in a thousand years. I think people will remember the work that was done.

MR: You always put so much into your personal projects and those you produce for other artists. Do you feel like it's your mission to just kick everything up as far as you can every time?

WJ: Yeah! The genesis of what I do comes from me as a composer. As a composer or a maestro, when you stand in front of the orchestra, the job is to push them as far as they can go so that it's the best thing that the audience has ever heard. I definitely crack the whip in the studio, but I have a certain psychosis of how I work with each artist.

MR: Let's look at Haiti. What would you have done if you'd been elected president?

WJ: Well, in Haiti, my first focus was, "What are our two greatest assets at the time?" One was human capital. The majority of the population is a youth population, which means that you could put them back to work. The other asset that I feel like we naturally have is the soil. The idea of importing and exporting was a situation I felt would work. Setting up agri-banks. We're only an hour outside of Miami; anything that we wanted to grow we could grow in that climate. I think that between the soil and human capital we could have put a lot of people to work. Even when we talk about education, what's up with the kid who's like sixteen or seventeen years old who's not in school or not interested in it? How are you going to get him engaged? He's human capital. There are different schools you can set up that are not your traditional institutional school. Plumbing school, engineering school, trade schools. This is some of the stuff that I felt could help put situations in gear.

MR: Do you contribute to a few of causes behind the scenes?

WJ: Yeah, today, they still call me the kingmaker. They're like, "We don't understand it, man, you could be up here in two seconds and tell us what's going to happen in Haiti before it even happens." I'll always be part of Haiti. I came from that country to America, but the thing about the American dream is you have to give a piece of that to someone.

MR: Do you find yourself sometimes having to choose between working on musical projects and working on social projects?

WJ: Yeah, definitely. I put my whole career on hold to go back to Haiti and help my country. That's part of my absence. I didn't leave because I was on the bottom of the charts and couldn't write music, you know? I was like, "Okay, I just wrote the biggest pop song in history, now let me take a few years off and help the people." It's the same with Bono. It's not an easy balance, but it's something that's in our consciousness. It's something that's natural to what I believe. Service is very important to me.

MR: How does it affect your creative process? Does it slow it down at all?

WJ: No, it's still the same. The first single, "Divine Sorrow," we partnered up with Bono, who's a good friend, and we started to talk the whole single idea with the Red campaign after going to Africa and seeing the initiative. We decided that we would partner up with Red and the Global Fund and make one hundred percent of that first single go toward the Global Fund to raise awareness of HIV. It's not just one cause, it will always be many causes. Okay, yeah, it's Haiti, but in the same way if you look back at the Fugees, we were there at Rock The Vote, we were there at Concert For Tibetan Freedom. For me it's the human aspect of us and the natural obligation. Each one teach one. If one falls, the other helps them rise. That's not really within a music space or a social space, it's within a mankind space, whether we're talking about the falling of Rome or the rise of Africa or the rise of Europe, whether we're talking about it through sports or music or books or philosophy, it's all the same concept. Are you going to do more than just write that philosophy? Are you going to be Sigmund Freud? Are you going to give them something extra?

MR: When you look at Ferguson, SAE and beyond, what are your thoughts?

WJ: Well, I think there are a few things happening. I think the trust between communities and their law enforcement has been lost. Another thing that's happening is, it's not like it has not been here before, but with social media and people constantly having cameras now it's quicker to get it to the forefront. When you're like, "Man, what happened?" It's because what you're seeing now is being transmitted through the internet, but imagine when those cameras were not there. This is an issue. We can't run from the idea of, "Do we still have a race problem?" The key is that the majority of us are not racists, but that little racist notch is trying to say, "That is America," and we're saying, "No, that is not America." There are parts of America that has to be worked on. I was not surprised by what happened at the SAE fraternity, but it's that someone caught that on tape. Those guys wouldn't be saying that if they knew they were being recorded, but once again, for them to say it somebody had to instill that hatred in them. These are the things we have to fight against.

MR: There are many who feel socially-minded artists should just "shut up and sing." Do you feel the atmosphere has gotten better for artists who promote causes these days?

WJ: Definitely. I think social media has really helped that. It has given people a voice, and lets us hear other voices aside from the radio. I think social media has made it a little easier to communicate and convey your message.

MR: Do you think you've educated or influenced some of the acts you've been involved with?

WJ: When you're an actor you're inside of the film and you sometimes don't get a chance to look back and think about it. I think I'm just in that wave right now of moving forward and hoping people move with me.

MR: Wyclef, what advice do you have for new artists?

WJ: If you really want to do this, you have to watch the movie Whiplash. That's a good movie minus the slapping in the face. Multiply that movie times one hundred thousand and that is the music business. That is the music business. If you decide you're going to be inside of this music business, you have to be ready for the rise and for the fall. The only thing that's going to keep you inside the music is originality, and you constantly have to be passionate about it. The first thing is the passion. If you have real passion and somebody says you suck, you've got to be more passionate to do better. If you don't have real passion and somebody says you suck, you're going to be ready to quit. Make sure that you're ready for this arena if you want to be in the music business.

MR: Cool. You're going to be performing at South By Southwest, right?

WJ: Yeah, I'm definitely going to be headlining Pandora hip hop night, I'm going to also be bringing some HEADS Music artists, it's going to be very cool.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne

******************************


photo courtesy Anderson Group Public Relations

A Conversation with Bravo's Kirk & Laura Knight

Mike Ragogna: Kirk and Laura, you are the ultimate power couple with combined success that borderlines obsession, starring in Bravo's Newlyweds: The First Year. In order to make this merger work, what are some of your biggest compromises?

Kirk Knight: Our lives are extremely busy and we can easily get wrapped up in everything outside of the relationship. We make a conscious effort to make time for one another every day, without distractions. Compromise is one of the major components to a successful relationship. The key is to find balance in the relationship while not compromising yourself. Tall order for most people.

MR: What are some past habits, issues, possessions or lifestyle elements that either needed major compromise or to be jettisoned after the marriage?

KK: I am extremely analytical and my business has required me to make decisions quickly that I believe are right. When I make these decisions in business I am not seconded guessed, nor do I like to be. Sometimes that can bleed into my relationship, where I may be short and come across righteous. In a relationship, you really need to listen more to your spouse and come together as a team to develop the best decision for your marriage.

LK: Before dating Kirk, I was always independent as an adult. It took time for me to think in terms of we instead of I. Accepting that element of a relationship brought us closer together as a unified front.

MR: It's pretty much a given that "reality" shows are not exactly that. To what degree are you okay with the cameras being in your faces, recording the daily joys and dramas? And doesn't that affect the intimacy of your marriage, especially at a time when you need to explore more depth in your relationship?

KK: The cameras are filming for just over a year, but we also have a couple cam, which allows us to film moments that the film crew cannot. This really gives an added perspective to sharing with the public. When doing a reality show, you truly need to make the decision to share and open up your life for the public to see--this includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. We discussed doing the show in great detail before we agreed. Ultimately, we believe in our relationship and the foundation we have created. The cameras can affect your relationship if you are not prepared for the reality of filming a yearlong reality show. Laura and I do really well with the cameras being there, but we like excitement and are very much risk takers. The intimate moments may be interrupted at times, but for the most part we live our lives--it just happens to be in front of an entire film crew. We still have our private time or at least until our sex tape is released. The sex tape is being released in 2015.

MR: Might this television aspect actually be part of what contributed to the success of your marriage?

KK: We embrace adventure and where most people would get stressed, we shine. I think our relationship is successful because of who we are as individuals and most importantly who we are together. I believe each adventure we encounter will ultimately help us to grow and strengthen our relationship.

MR: What do you make of the show's success?

KK: I can't say enough about the show--it is intriguing and exciting. I was a fan before we did the show and I love watching the joys and challenges couples face when merging their lives. Filming for 12 months is not that typical for a reality show. This series really gets into our lives and shows our trials and tribulations. There will be a lot of people that can relate to what our first year brings. Many will be shocked and I believe all will be intrigued.

MR: Is there any major evolution in the way the show is being shot since the first season? Any huge surprises coming?

KK: We have some major decisions and roadblocks in front of us. I believe some of these issues will leave the viewers in tears, some will have them laughing out loud and others may just have them in shock. Through the good and the bad, we encounter a lot of relatable issues that couples across the country have either faced or will be faced with during their first year of marriage.

MR: What advice would you give to other reality show stars or newlyweds in general?

KK: Before making the decision to be on a reality show, you need to have a strong relationship and be comfortable with who you are as individuals and who you are as a couple. Communication is key and the largest part of communicating is truly listening and hearing what your partner is expressing.

MR: Any plans after the show wraps? Rumor has it you're working on razzd.com right now plus an app to go along with it.

KK: Razzd.com is a website and mobile app (available in the app store) that allows people to argue regarding any topic or headline. This is how the site works... One person records a video explaining their side of an argument and challenges someone else, who in turn records a video with an opposing view. Then the videos go live for the public to comment and vote on who they believe is right. After 3 days, the person with the most votes is declared the winner.

After each episode, Laura and I will be "Razzing" each other on the main topics we have gone through on the show so the public will be able to vote on who they believe is right and wrong.

People love to be heard and want to voice their opinions. Everyone in this world, while in an argument, has said "if you ask anyone they will agree with me" - well now you can ask everyone. We have all wondered who is right and who is wrong and now we can finally find out. I want everyone to get their chance to share that. Razzd.com is more of a podium for people to express themselves, challenge each other and be entertained, while deciding who's right and who's wrong.

MR: Sorry to ask this, I mean no offense by it, but what happens if one of the couples don't make it and want a separation or divorce? Is the show prepared for such obstacles? 

KK: Having your lives exposed to national television for a year is going to capture the couples at their best and worst. This may ultimately add to a level of stress that may contribute to a relationship deteriorating. Problems are magnified and scrutinized to a much greater level when shown to a national audience. Couples may not survive and in such an event the viewers will witness their downfall. Every relationship has its trials and tribulations--some will survive and some will not.

******************************


photo courtesy Fifteen Minutes Public Relations

A Conversation with Bar Rescue's Jon Taffer

Mike Ragogna: Jon, you¹re the host of one of Spike's most popular shows, Bar Rescue. Why do you think that is?

Jon Taffer: They enjoy the transformation and I hope the no bullsh*t attitude that it takes to get the transformation.

MR: What originally got you into mixology?

JT: You know I started attending bar in college and I have gotten a lot of customer contact and the energy of the bar. I can¹t tell you that I love mixology per se. I love the bar business. By which mixology is a large part but I love music just as much, I love neighborhood bars just as much.

MR: What are your personal favorite drinks and how do you doctor them for your personal taste?

JT: I am surrounded by the best mixologist in the world so I get to try to the greatest products and recipes. I tend to lean towards scotch, I tend to prefer "Godfather," however I have an extensive bar at home and sometimes I'll play around with juices and flavored vodkas and stuff myself and have some fun. And dare I say, yes, I have played with fluffed marshmallow vodka and liked it, there it is, I put it out there.

MR: You've helped elevate the success rate for several bars, thus the series title "Bar Rescue." When and how did you see the need for such a position and what has your level of success been?

JT: I know the level of success based on independent websites that track it. It's about 80%. And when you consider that every person on Bar Rescue tells you they are weeks from closing, I am proud of that outlook. In fact, I challenge anybody to do it better. I never knew there was a need for this, I got into this because it was an entertaining television show. Once I started doing it, I realized, wow I am actually changing people's lives. Then I realized there is a need to do it and I realized I had a need to do it, I was the right person to do this. I can actually get through to people and connect with people in a special way. This show has taught me that and now it is hard not to do that if the opportunity is given to me. The emails that I get from them, the phone calls that I get, notes that I get on how they bought a house, this and that, is very inspiring to me.

MR: I bet you're not surprised by how popular the show is.

JT: I am surprised, I thought I'd do a pilot and go home, honestly. Then I thought I'd do season one and go home. Now, I've finished 85 episodes. Last week we were consistently one of the top cable shows in our time slot. And one looks at the ratings to see how successful we have been, and how long it's lasted. What really surprises me is how often the episodes are watched and demographics of our audience. Which is almost 50% female.

MR: What are some of the techniques and suggestions that you offer? What's the most common cause for a bar's lack of success and is it easily reversible?

JT: You know I've said this before, it's the only answer I have for this, and its "excuses." People blame the economy, the president, the congress, their neighborhood, construction, the weather, they will come up with a hundred reasons why they failed today. Yet in that exact same situation somebody else is making money. So their excuse is bullsh*t. Accepting that excuse would make me a contributor to their bullshit so I don't. Everybody who is failing, is failing because of themselves. Period. And it's up to them to change it. Don't blame it on anyone else, only blame it on yourself and that will change the course of anyone who is failing. If you own your failure, you'll own your success.

MR: What's been your best Cinderella story to date?

JT: A few come to mind. Spirits on Bourbon. Their sales are up over a million dollars a year.

The Barbershop Chair does over $50,000 a month. They sell 16,000 Resurrection cocktails every month. They had to buy a warehouse in Baton Rouge to store 80,000 mugs. Moon Runners. That was a family that was really in trouble. Now, the rest of the bar is doing great, family is doing great, they bought a house and they are opening a second location.

MR: You've been known to get up in people's grills to emphasize points. From your perspective, what is it in your various approaches that makes the difference in a client's success or failure?

JT: I have to get through, you know other people have said to them, the same things that I am saying. I am not the first person to tell them that the bar is dirty. So I use pride. I try to appeal to their pride. If that doesn't work, I use fear. What's going to happen when you lose your house? Where's your family going to stay? If that doesn't work, then it's boot camp time. I beat the sh*t out of them till I get through candidly.

MR: How has Bar Rescue's affiliation with Spike benefited the series beyond demographics?

JT: First of all, I love working with Spike. They have given me the freedom to do the show with honesty and based on reality. Nothing is scripted. Nothing is preplanned. The trust that Spike has placed in me is special. As an end result, because of Spike's trust in me, and their support of the show, we are able to provide the most authentic reality show on TV and I believe that is what drives our success.

MR: What advice do you have for those in the hard beverage industry?

JT: Look at me, I started as a bartender and had no formal college career. This is an industry that unfolds unbelievable opportunities to anyone, in any education level, with any background. If you really want it, I believe you can have it and I also believe that this is the greatest industry in America. I do.

MR: What¹s next up for you and the series?

JT: I am very excited about TafferTV and BarHQ. What is next for the series is that for every episode we try to raise the bar. You know, we have mixed up the format, we try to find bigger challenges, and bolder opportunities, and it's working. The show has gotten more popular, more bars are submitting to be rescued, which has given us a bigger pool to choose from, which is allowing us to wind up with even more compelling episodes.

Tonight I'm joined by rapper J. Cole, who is widely considered one of the most talented storytellers of the new Hip-Hop generation. As popular with the public as he is with critics, each of J. Cole's three studio albums has reached #1 on Billboard's Top 200 chart. His latest and most personal project to date, entitled 2014 Forest Hills Drive, is a reflection on how a boy from North Carolina discovered his life's purpose.

In the clip below, J. Cole opens up about one particularly significant track on the album, "Love Yourz."

For more of our conversation, be sure to tune in to Tavis Smiley on PBS. Check our website for your local TV listings: www.pbs.org/tavis.

The Walking Dead creators Robert Kirkman and David Alpert stopped by What's Trending to get fanboyed by Burnie Burns. The hit show's producer take about the expanded Walking Dead universe, and how each piece of the universe is its own unique experience from the show. Even more, the producers talk about a potential WALKING DEAD MOVIE! Are they going to put the wheels in motion for a Walking Dead movie to go into production?

Roosterteeth's own Burnie Burns was on hand to hear all the latest from "The Walking Dead" producers.

"It's cool. Every form of 'The Walking Dead' provides its own unique experience," Kirkman said. "You get your own set of characters, your own locations, your own separate adventures."

"We try not to look at different media as licensing," Alpert added. "We look at it as an expansion of the universe."

Speaking of expansion, what about that Walking Dead movie?

"We're very happy to have a successful TV show, very thanksful," Kirkman said. "I think movies are neat, but I don't think there are any real plans to do that right now."

He added that everyone involved was "aware that might be a possibility someday."

"Does anybody want a Walking Dead movie?" Alpert asked. "If people tell us that they love it maybe they can start a hashtag #walkingdeadmovie."

The light of the music festival is illuminating the world. Most festivals offer a melting pot of musical genres drawing a large and multifaceted audience. While the goal of many of these events is to grow, some prefer to remain at a smaller capacity. Desert Hearts is growing in acclaim but not in size. In this interview with Desert Hearts founder, Mikey Lion, we discover his inspirations, history, and personal mantra.

Morena: The rise of the music festival is exponential. Is your goal to continue to expand or to remain small and intimate?

Mikey: I would say 99% of the festivals out there are trying to go bigger and bigger every time by cramming as many people into them as they can but this is pretty much the exact opposite of the philosophy behind Desert Hearts. Even though the land that we throw our festivals on can easily hold 4-5 thousand people, we capped ticket sales at 2000 so we don't lose the intimate vibe of the festival. There are hundreds of other festivals out there that offer a variety of music across multiple stages. I think what makes Desert Hearts so special is that we focus 100% of our energy around our "one stage, one vibe" philosophy. Seventy-two hours of non-stop house, techno, and love has created a vibe and a culture that is unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Morena: Tell me the story of Desert Hearts. Who is the core team and how was it created?

Mikey: Back in 2010, myself, Marbs, Deep Jesus, and my little brother Porkchop had just graduated college and returned home to North County San Diego where we started throwing a party called Jungle. At the time the house music scene in San Diego was almost non-existent so we were thrilled when we came across a party called Moonshake that was ran by our soon to be partner Lee Reynolds. At that point our crews kinda collided and merged together when we were asked to DJ a renegade desert party by our next soon to be partner Christopher Kristoff. It was during that party that we all realized how amazing it would be if we all teamed up and threw a desert party together. Desert Hearts was born in November of 2012 as we and 200 of our closest friends voyaged out to the Mojave Desert for what would be the most epic weekend of our lives at that point. Six months later our second Desert Hearts Festival brought in close to 900 people and that's when we realized we had something more special than any other thing out there.

Morena: If you repeated a mantra everyday that represented your spirit and perspectives, what would it be?

Mikey: House, techno, and love. We are all Desert Hearts.

Morena: What role does the desert play in all of this? What does this landscape evoke from you?

Mikey: Whether we gather in the desert, mountains, or forest, we always want to take our festival off the grid and away from typical society. Not only is it incredibly beautiful and spiritual being engulfed by nature, but it adds to the vibe and the experience when our festival goers can't be on their phones uploading pictures, checking e-mails. One of the main goals of Desert Hearts is the stripping away of societal norms so people can truly be in the present moment and express themselves in any way they choose.

Morena: What kind of ambitions does the Desert Hearts team have in store?

Mikey: I think the festivals we organize in Southern California will always be our bread and butter, but I think our newly launched City Hearts parties are how we're going to be able to bring that same festival vibe to different destinations around the world. Our brand is growing at an exponential pace and we've already thrown sold out parties in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The next step is taking our City Hearts parties to the East Coast, Mexico, and beyond. No matter where you are in the world, if there's a market for underground dance music in your community, we want to bring our message of house, techno, and love and share it with you.

Morena: What musicians have inspired you?

Mikey: My three biggest musical influences have been the Wu-Tang Clan, Daft Punk, and Pink Floyd. Hip Hop has always been my background growing up and ultimately what got me into DJing. I kinda see the Wu-Tang Clan as a model for what we're doing now. Our Desert Hearts Crew runs deep with DJs so using them as a model has really allowed us to grow as artists, individually and as a crew. Seeing Daft Punk live at Coachella 2006 was the exact moment that I changed from a hip hop DJ to a house DJ. I had never heard music that good and it was at that moment I knew I wanted to make people dance for the rest of my life. And Pink Floyd is just Pink Floyd...

Morena: Are there any artists you hope to see on future Desert Hearts lineups?

Mikey: Lee Burridge, Damian Lazarus, Seth Troxler, and Super Flu are all names that really come to mind. These are DJs and individuals who have proven countless times that they have a passion for life, music, and love. They go to Burning Man, they promote love, acceptance, and spirituality, and they are constantly pushing the boundaries in our scene. We want headliners who want to engulf themselves in the Desert Hearts experience and really become a part of our family. The best example from our current spring festival headliners are the girls from Blond:ish who requested to camp and stay with us for the duration of the festival. As if we didn't like them enough already.



Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mikeylion
Website: http://www.deserthearts.us/