Rico Gagliano

The Busted Megaphone

Rico Gagliano
In Born on the Fourth of July, Tom Cruise plays Ron Kovic, a proud Marine sergeant who becomes an anti-war activist in 1967, after a Viet Cong bullet severs his spine. The real-life Ron Kovic looks more like Burl Ives minus 200 pounds; white-haired, kind, yet irrepressible, the uncle you......
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Your Time Is Now

Rico Gagliano
Photo by Megan Gaynes CINERAMA at the Troubadour, September 27 U.K. songwriter David Gedge disbanded his semilegendary noisepop group the Wedding Present five years ago, and he's been patiently weaning fans onto Cinerama ever since. No minor task -- where the Weddoes favored layers of frantic guitar, Cinerama mines cosmopolitan......

Naughty Nick

Rico Gagliano
In an upcoming episode of cable channel Nickelodeon’s animated series Invader Zim, the show‘s titular delusional alien sets off an explosion inside a ”time field.“ Thing is, it’s a little explosion; eventually dangerous, yes, but for now expanding verrrry sloooowly. It‘s an apt metaphor for the labor battle that’s been......

The Squats of Amsterdam

Rico Gagliano
I’m standing in a hailstorm on a November morning in Amsterdam, reading the black-stenciled words on a storefront window: BEAUTY AND PAIN. An apt description of this city, where dapper street vendors sell tiny skewered pancakes in the shadow of Anne Frank‘s last home, and where swans cut a graceful......
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Ecstasy Without Fear

Rico Gagliano
My friend Elena has a Ziploc bag stuffed with red-and-white tablets. The Bay Area dealer who sold them to her says they‘re pure MDMA -- otherwise known as ”Ecstasy“ -- and she’s inclined to believe him. ”The stuff coming out of the Bay Area is really good right now,“ she......
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Porn Again Geeks

Rico Gagliano
LA Weekly Art Dept.Names in this article have been changed. IF THE COMPUTER NERDS BEHIND THE GeekLust live-streaming video Web site aren't your typical pornographers, they've chosen a stereotypically porno location for their first shoot: a downtown loft smack in the center of a deeply damaged neighborhood, the kind of......
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Porn for Propellerheads

Rico Gagliano
Names in this article have been changed. BOBBY FETT LIVES IN AN AIRY APARTMENT IN Hollywood. His room is a riot of nerdy pop-culture memorabilia. The two Stars -- Trek and Wars -- are well-represented, bookshelves loaded with miniature Yodas and Kirks. Fett is particularly pleased with a Chekov figurine......

Downloading

Rico Gagliano
It has become a familiar routine: The nation’s lawmakers — obsessed with sexual mores — expend considerable time and taxpayer dollars poring over sordid affairs — all to no avail. But we’re not talking impeachment here; we’re talking Internet — and the latest wave of popular but futile assaults on......