Kevin Smith and the Not-So-Friendly Skies
As a longtime fan of his films, a follower of his Twitter feed and a Smodcast listener of two years standing, I know two things for certain about Kevin Smith: he documents his life and interests with a kind of breathtaking detail that mere journal writing cannot remotely touch, and crossing this man is a terrible, terrible idea.
This weekend, it hit the wires that Smith, the director of “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” and the upcoming “Cop Out,” was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Burbank when the flight crew determined he was too heavy to fit in one of their seats.
In the hours following the flight, Smith sent out a flurry of Tweets from his popular Twitter account, @ThatKevinSmith, castigating the airline for ejecting him from the flight when he claimed he could easily pass the “arm rest test,” meaning he could fit between armrests in the seat.
According to Smith, he is not to the point where he cannot pass that test.
“I’m way fat, but I’m not there just yet,” Smith Tweeted.
Southwest Airlines issued an apology to Smith titled “Not So Silent Bob” on blogsouthwest.com:
First and foremost, to Mr. Smith; we would like to echo our Tweets and again offer our heartfelt apologies to you. We are sincerely sorry for your travel experience on Southwest Airlines. As soon as we saw the first Tweet from Mr. Smith, we contacted him personally to apologize for his experience and to address his concerns on both Twitter and with a personal phone call.
Smith normally books two seats as a comfort measure and, as he mentioned on a 1 hour, 27-minute edition of Smodcast (proudly NSFW), his semi-weekly podcast, he flies Southwest for flights within California or to Las Vegas and generally buys two seats as a preference because they are inexpensive.
One frequent comment on Twitter was the suggestion that Smith was using the incident to drum up publicity for “Cop Out,” the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan police comedy opening Feb. 26. In one of a series of candid Tweets on the subject, Smith told his 1.7 million Twitter followers that this was hardly the case.
“Sometimes it baffles me how little people think things through,” Smith wrote. ’Free publicity!’ = 200 new articles declaring I’m fat. Yay, me. Epic win.”
Anyone who listens to the enthusiastically profane Smodcast understands that it is nearly impossible to insult Smith about his physique: he is completely self-aware and often refers to his fitness level with deprecation. More important, this is a fine indication that in the current media environment, any discourtesy can reverberate and result in a corporate communications disaster and crashed Twitter accounts.
Static, Episode 34: Blackwatch Studios
Video of the Day: Wild Beasts, “We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ on Our Tongues”
Wild Beasts deliver more ’80s art-pop-influenced atmospherics on this latest track from last year’s Two Dancers.
Skin-Bashing and Polka with Steven Drozd at ACM@UCO
Photos by John Clanton
When Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd spoke Wednesday night during a master class for students of the University of Central Oklahoma’s Academy of Contemporary Music, the first music heard was not grand symphonic psychedelia or crashing hard rock.
It was polka.
Drozd, 40, is the second prominent musician to speak at ACM@UCO’s master class series. Roger Daltrey appeared in October.
During the onstage discussion moderated by ACM@UCO president and Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker, Drozd spoke at length about his career with the Flaming Lips, including discussions of the band’s 1990s “boom-box” experiments, the rock bands and musicians that heavily influenced him, and his work writing orchestral scores for soundtracks.
But Drozd started off the two-hour session by talking about his earliest musical influence: his father.
He received his first exposure to music from Vernon Drozd, who led a polka band called Vernon Drozd and the Texas Brass and recorded several songs in the late 1960s. Sitting behind a drum kit on stage at the Tolbert Theater at Stage Center, Steven Drozd dialed up a song on his iPod Nano and started pounding away with a decades-old recording by his father.
“Right? That’s my dad,” Drozd said as the crowd of approximately 150 students cheered. “It’s a song called ‘Juarez, Mexico’ that was recorded in 1969.”
From those beginnings, Drozd said his father helped him put together his first drum kit.
“I remember my dad bought me a little toy drum set when I was about 5, and I tore it up in just a couple of days,” Drozd said. “But I loved it, and I think my dad saw that and thought, ‘Maybe there’s something here.’”
Two years later Vernon Drozd bought his son a bass drum, a snare drum and a cymbal.
“He said, ‘If you practice and get better at this and you stick with it, I’ll get you a drum every couple of months, and you can just keep adding to your drum kit,” Drozd said. “So a couple of years later, I had a full drum set.”
Vernon Drozd, who would later play saxophone with the Lips on PBS’ “Austin City Limits,” went on to hire his son to play drums in one of his cover bands in the early ‘80s. Steven was 11 at the time when his father’s regular drummer in a band called Soft Touche didn’t show up. It was the start of a career.
“My dad called from the VFW hall or wherever they were playing that night in a panic,” Drozd said. “He told my stepmother to tell me to pack up my drums and get my butt down there. And that was it — I played with the band that night.”
Video of the Day: St. Vincent, “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood”
St. Vincent - "Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood"
st. vincent | MySpace Music Videos
StaticBlog would post a St. Vincent video under virtually any conditions, but this one featuring Fred Armisen and (former Sleater-Kinney) Carrie Brownstein in their feminist bookstore shtick is weak sauce. Music video should enhance the song, not pull the viewer away from it.
Planet 46 Launches New World of Entertainment News
StaticBlog readers are encouraged to go visit Planet46.com to check out our latest concept: a portal for daily national showbiz stories written by NewsOK’s entertainment staff. The idea for Planet 46.com was pretty simple: to provide a more national focus for entertainment reports with appeal that expands beyond our statewide readership.
Monday through Friday, Planet 46 will offer a new story each day. In the coming days, readers can see my analysis of the fallout from NBC’s Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien shakeup, a DVD/Blu-ray focus on the release of Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” a look at Mel Gibson’s comeback thriller “Edge of Darkness,” and Gene Triplett’s appreciation of the first two “Godfather” films, now debuting on Blu-ray.
Planet 46 was conceived by Matthew Price as a way to expand our reach to new audiences — ones that might never have seen our work via NewsOK or The Oklahoman, updating every weekday with fresh reports. What I’m looking for from StaticBlog readers, especially those from our area, is some feedback on how it reads as a general-interest entertainment site. Keep in mind that we’ve only just started piling stories into the site, but Planet 46 will soon be bustling with life.
Best Super Bowl Ad of the Night
Static, Episode 33: Ryan Lindsey and Broncho
Interview
“Short Fuse”
“Pick a Fight”
“Insert Coin Here”
Video of the Day: Jonsi, “Go Do”
This is the first video from Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi Birgisson’s new solo disc, Go. Behold the intelligible lyrics!
Static, Episode 32: Chase Kerby
Interview
“My Woman and I”
“Crazy”
“Good Morning, I Love You and Good Night”
