Foreigner – "Urgent" (1981)

That's why you call me 

In the middle of the night

I’m going to talk about my burgeoning friendship with hot young actor Tanner Kalina in just a moment.

But first we need to discuss a bra Groupon that I’m getting daily e-mails about.

I subscribe to Groupon, Living Social, and several other online deal-of-the-day marketers.  Each day, I get an e-mail from each one of them offering me discounts on local dining and drinking, travel, entertainment, health and beauty services, and so on.

For days now, I’ve been getting a Groupon offering me a “mystery bra deal” – a randomly selected set of six bras pulled from Groupon’s “vault of treasures.”  

The cost?  Only $19.99!  (That’s only $3.33 per bra – or only $1.67 per you-know-what!)

It seems like a good deal.  (Groupon says the value of the deal is $149, so $19.99 is a very significant discount from $149.)  But not for me, even though Groupon titles these e-mails “Recommended Deals Just for You.”  

You see, I’m a man.  And since I don’t suffer from gynecomastia – that’s “man boobs” to those of you who didn’t take three years of Latin in high school – I have very little need for bras.

I suppose I should keep a couple in a drawer just in case a female visitor to chez 2 or 3 lines forgets to pack one.  After all, I keep a spare toothbrush, some shampoo, and a bottle of aspirin in the guest bathroom for forgetful guests, so maybe having some extras bras around would be a good idea.

If I were a woman, would this Groupon “mystery bra deal” appeal to me?

I confess that I don’t know much about women’s attitudes towards bras.  I would think that most of you ladies are fairly picky when it comes to choosing your foundation garments, and wouldn’t want to buy your bras sight unseen – even if you could save a few bucks.  But I could be wrong.

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Richard Linklater, a hot chick, and Tanner Kalina
at the "Everybody Wants Some!!" premiere

Which brings me to Tanner Kalina, the young actor whose performance in the new Richard Linklater movie, Everybody Wants Some!!, is the talk of the town.  (I have to think he is up to his neck in hot chicks these days.)

You can click here to read my 2 or 3 lines post about that very appealing movie, which is my favorite comedy of the year by a wide margin.  

Somehow, Tanner saw my tweet about that post and hit the “like” button.  You bet that caught my attention.  After all, it’s not every day that a future Brad Pitt says something nice about 2 or 3 lines.

Tanner Kalina in "Everybody Wants Some!!"

I followed up my post about Everybody Wants Some!! with one about Linklater’s 1993 movie, Dazed and Confused.  When I tweeted about that post, I mentioned Tanner’s name in the tweet, hoping to reel in this very large celebrity fish.

It worked – Tanner “liked” that tweet as well!

I figure there’s more than enough flattery in this post to get Tanner to follow 2 or 3 lines on Twitter.  But if he doesn’t, you can best believe I’ll keep kissing up to him until he does.

Young Mr. Kalina plays Brumley, one of the freshman baseball players who is shown the ropes by his older teammates when he arrives at college the weekend before fall classes begin.

In this scene, Brumley learns the proper way to apply cologne as today’s featured song plays on the soundtrack:

Kalina was well-qualified for his Everybody Wants Some!! role.  He was a three-year starter and two-time all-district selection at Jesuit College Prep high school in Dallas, and went on to play Division I baseball at Houston Baptist University. 

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“Urgent” was a #1 hit for Foreigner in the summer of 1981.

In other words, Richard Linklater screwed up by including it on the Everybody Wants Some!! soundtrack, because that movie takes place almost a year prior to the release of “Urgent.”

By the way, the saxophone solo on “Urgent” is performed by Motown great Jr. Walker (of Jr. Walker and the All Stars fame).

Foreigner's Lou Gramm

Lead singer Lou Gramm had a really bad perm when this song was recorded.  (So did I.)

Click here to listen to “Urgent,” which is a really bad song.  

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Steve Miller Band – "Living in the U.S.A." (1968)

Where are you goin' to?

What are you gonna do? 

(Good questions!)

Richard Linklater’s delightful new movie, Everybody Wants Some!! – it’s title is taken from the name of a Van Halen song – has a wonderful soundtrack that includes disco, country, punk, funk, and classic rock songs.  (You can click here to read what I said about that movie in a previous 2 or 3 lines.)

The spiritual predecessor to Everybody Wants Some!! is Linklater's 1993 movie, Dazed and Confused, which was named after the last track on side one of Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut album – perhaps the greatest rock album from start to finish ever recorded.

The music on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack isn’t as varied.  In that movie, Linklater stuck mostly to artists whose music was popular on album-oriented rock stations in the seventies – Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Foghat, ZZ Top, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Steve Miller.

Steve Miller was born in Milwaukee in 1943.  His parents were the best man and maid of honor at Les Paul and Mary Ford’s wedding.  Paul encouraged the very young Miller to continue practicing the guitar.

Steve Miller and Les Paul in 2000

When the family moved to Dallas in 1950, Miller attended the fancy-schmancy St. Mark’s School with Boz Scaggs.  The two attended the University of Wisconsin together and formed a band that played at a few clubs in Madison.

Miller left college without earning a degree and moved to Chicago, where he played with Muddy Waters, Howling’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, and other blues greats.  After stops in New York City and Austin, he loaded up his VW bus and drove to San Francisco, where he hooked up again with Boz Scaggs and formed the Steve Miller Band in 1966.  

I bought Steve Miller’s Anthology album – which included today’s featured song, “Living in the U.S.A.” – in 1973, when I was a junior in college.  It’s a two-record compilation with tracks from five of Miller’s first seven albums.

After releasing Anthology, Steve Miller took a sharp turn in the direction of Schlocktown.  Over the next five years, he cranked out big radio hits like “The Joker,” “Take the Money and Run,” “Rock’n Me,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Jet Airliner,” and “Swingtown.”  Those songs weren’t exactly bad, and they weren’t exactly good.  

What they were exactly were hits.  Everyone of them made it into the top twenty, and two made it all the way to number one.

I’ll stick with “Living in the U.S.A.,” thank you very much.  It’s loose and chaotic and sounds like everyone involved in recording it had a great time.  It opens with a recording of a drag racer’s engine and closes with one of the great random lines of all time: “Somebody give me a cheeseburger!”

Click here to listen to “Living in the U.S.A.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Van Halen – "Everybody Wants Some!!" (1980)

Ev'rybody wants some!

Baby, how 'bout you? 

A lot of rock ’n’ roll bands have a shortage of superego and an oversupply of id.  But there has never been a band with a greater ratio of id to superego than Van Halen.  

Richard Linklater’s newest movie,  Everybody Wants Some!!, was named after one of Van Halen’s best records.  

It's the best college movie of all time – which is not surprising given that Richard Linklater also directed the best high-school movie of all time, Dazed and Confused.   

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Everybody Wants Some!! takes place at a fictional state college in Texas.  It's the weekend before fall classes begin, and there's really nothing much for the newly-arrived freshmen and the returning upperclassmen to do except get drunk and hook up.

The movie focuses on the members of the college’s baseball team, who live together and party together.  Linklater went to Sam Houston State on a baseball scholarship, and I’m assuming that many of the characters and incidents in the movie are based on his experiences.

Richard Linklater in 1980

There’s plenty of sex, drinking, and jock shenanigans in the movie, but on the whole the guys are rather sweet.  There’s not a single bully or sexual predator in the whole bunch.  Given that he was a college jock himself, it’s not surprising that Linklater humanizes the athletes rather than presenting them as low-IQ, high-testosterone clichés.

Click here to watch the trailer for Everybody Wants Some!!

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Everybody Wants Some!! is set in 1980.  Linklater is a stickler for getting the details right, so the clothing, hairstyles, music, and other period aspects of the movie are perfect.

For example, Linklater insisted that a Farrah Fawcett poster in one character’s dorm room be replaced.  “Fawcett was ’77, ’78,” he said.  “By ’80, it’s a Susan Anton poster.”

Susan Anton

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From Jacob Hall’s review of the movie:

Everybody Wants Some!! is more party than plot.  Remarkably simple and straightforward, there is no traditional narrative here and no three-act structure here.  Linklater, who also wrote the screenplay, simply asks the audience to tag along with a group of young college baseball players as they live it up the weekend before classes start.  Not much occurs, but everything happens.

Hall’s review gets to the heart of what makes Richard Linklater different from most of his peers:

Richard Linklater is defined by his empathy.  Few filmmakers love their characters quite as much as he does, and his affection fills his low-key dramas and broad comedies alike.  Linklater’s affection for the young men at the core of his new film, Everybody Wants Some!!, is evident in every frame.

Richard Linklater on the set
of Everybody Wants Some!!

One thing I really liked about Everybody Wants Some!! is that I didn’t recognize a single one of the young actors and actresses in the movie.  That made it so much easier for me to believe in the characters than if Linklater had cast the same hot young actors that we saw in the latest vampire and comic-book-hero movies – guys like Taylor Lautner and Chris Hemsworth and Channing Tatum and Zac Efron.  

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My favorite scene in the movie is at the very beginning, when five of the players crowd into a Chevy Monte Carlo and cruise the parking lots of the girls’ dorms while singing along to the Sugarhill Gang’s classic early rap song, “Rapper’s Delight.”  (You can click here to watch that scene.)

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If someone had taken a video of me watching Everybody Wants Some!!, it would show me grinning like an idiot for an hour and forty minutes.  I wish the movie had been twice as long.  There were no jokes to speak of – I can’t quote a single funny line to you.  But it was sooooo much fun to watch.

I don’t know if women will like this movie as much as I did.  I don’t really see it as a guy’s movie, although it’s about a bunch of jocks who spend most of the weekend getting drunk and high and trying to poke every babe they see.  It’s as far from a Will Farrell or Seth Rogen comedy as it could possibly be.  (THANK GOD!)

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The last part of the movie focuses on a budding romance between two adorable freshman – a baseball pitcher played by Blake Jenner (no relation to Bruce and Kris – thankfully) and a theatre-dance major played by Zoey Deutch (the daughter of Lea Thompson).

Zoey Deutch and Blake Jenner

Maybe they will remain a couple, or maybe they will quickly move on to other girlfriends and boyfriends.  I’d like to think that each of them will remember the time they spent together with great fondness, no matter what happens.  

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The soundtrack of Everybody Wants Some!! doesn’t disappoint.  It’s a mix of new wave, disco, country, and hard rock – everything from the Knack’s “My Sharona,” to Devo’s “Whip It,” to Chic’s “Good Times,” to ZZ Top’s “I’m Bad (I’m Nationwide),” to M’s “Pop Muzik.”

Last but certainly not least, the soundtrack includes “Everybody Wants Some!!”  Click here to listen to that track, which was released on Van Halen’s 1980 album, Women and Children First.

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: