Alec Hanley Bemis

From Cheese to Backyard Wrestling

Alec Hanley Bemis
Rick Mahr walks into a built-to-impress bar on the Sunset Strip called Mirabelle. He’s wearing designer jeans, a streamlined, beige leather jacket and matching tassel-free loafers. He has a 5 o’clock shadow, more likely a function of a particular grooming philosophy rather than the result of having just rolled out......

Mr. Fantastic, Superduper Star

Alec Hanley Bemis
“Dude, what’s up? It’s Mr. Fantastic! Yeah, fuck you too. Dude . . . Sorry, I don’t even know if I was allowed to say that word. Let me rewind that. Yeah, beep you too. Was that better? Cool. Give me a call back. Of course, it’s now the day......
article placeholder

Like a Cancer

Alec Hanley Bemis
Photo by Byron Cohen/ABC Q: Why does Britney Spears sell so many millions of albums? A: Because the public is horny and depressed. —Neil Hamburger, telling it like it is There are three varieties of not funny: things that are plainly not funny (these days, almost anything having to do......
article placeholder

Stay in Character

Alec Hanley Bemis
BRIGHT EYES at the Henry Fonda Theater, April 10 As a sign of just how much the fortunes of underground pop music have changed, I'll introduce a term that would've been an oxymoron three years ago: indie-rock heartthrob. Conor Oberst (a.k.a. Bright Eyes) is just that. The singer-songwriter's humble beginnings......
article placeholder

Are 'Friends' Electro?

Alec Hanley Bemis
Photos by Gregory Bojorquez LADYTRON, SIMIAN, MOUNT SIMS at the Henry Fonda Theater, March 8 It's 1980 all over again: scary nukes; Middle Eastern strife; a crazy Republican in the Oval Office. All I could see for miles at this show were leg warmers and fishnets, hot pink tops and......
article placeholder

Sandblasted Standards

Alec Hanley Bemis
Photo by Susan Anderson TORTOISE, THE MOUNTAIN GOATS at the Henry Fonda Theater, February 23 The French Jewish chanson singer Serge Gainsbourg at a Nazi rally. Lawrence Welk doing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. Backstreet Boys headlining Lollapalooza. A more unlikely bill could hardly be imagined than underground success stories......
(function(r, d, u) { var s = d.createElement(r); s.async = true; s.setAttribute('data-cfasync', false); u += '&cb=' + Date.now() + Math.random(); s.src = u; var n = d.getElementsByTagName(r)[0]; n.parentNode.insertBefore(s, n); })('script', document, '//engine.laweekly.com/?221982862');
article placeholder

Nouvelle Cuisine

Alec Hanley Bemis
Je ne Sais quoi: We arrived in Paris on a cool Friday night in December, accompanying an American rock band on their first European tour. We got there, appropriately, at the stroke of midnight, and zoomed past narrow girls, red lights, the river. When we arrived at the apartment of......
article placeholder

A Thousand Teens Bloom

Alec Hanley Bemis
Photo © Glen Friedmanw.burningflags.com) I LIKE AVRIL LAVIGNE, THE FOO FIGHTERS AND Jimmy Eat World as much as the next guy. I love punk rock! Yet something was lost in translation as the scrappy punk I grew up on took center stage in American rock. Where once there were accidents......
article placeholder

Speed Freaks

Alec Hanley Bemis
Dave Eggers’ first fiction, You Shall Know Our Velocity (Y.S.K.O.V.), is aptly titled. There is an excitement to the novel -- a speed -- that you will not find outside of a Tom Clancy thriller. Eggers seems so eager to get (us) into this book, its first 100 or so......
article placeholder

Baseball at the End of the World

Alec Hanley Bemis
All of a sudden young-adult fiction is the thing to do. A disparate lineup of authors, from literary-fiction factory Joyce Carol Oates and horror writer Clive Barker to the Floridian parodist Carl Hiaasen, are bringing out books for an audience far younger than their norm. Leading the way is Michael......