Paul Zaloom is best known for his portrayal of Beakman on the comically educational children’s show Beakman’s World. But Zaloom has also established a career on smaller stages with comical puppet shows that address political fears and social anxieties in insightfully funny ways. The most recent addition to his puppet show list is White Like Me: A Honky-Dory Puppet Show, which recently debuted in Vermont and Washington, D.C. before arriving at Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts April 20-22. As he prepares for these shows, Zaloom talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about using junk as puppets, touring the world as Beakman and finding humor in otherwise serious subjects.
A border control agent kicks illegal aliens out of Arizona in "White Like Me." Photo courtesy Paul Zaloom
This is a very new puppet production for you. What can you tell me about it now that you are touring with it?
It is, indeed, brand new. Hot spanking fresh out of the comedy puppetry oven, so to speak. It was inspired by the ludicrous idea of having a show about being Anglo-Saxon – being white, that is. It involves two kinds of puppetry. Toy theater is like a miniature theater that’s projected in high definition on the large screen. What’s funny is I use toys, tools, appliances, junk, tchotchkes and different knick-knacks and crap that animate as puppets in this little play about being Caucasian. All this crap actually looks fabulous in HiDef, it looks just amazing. It’s kind of amazing that you can take this shit and make it look fantastic and cinematic. The proscenium is 16:9, which is the HiDef aspect ratio. So the projection fits right within the bounds of the proscenium.
You often use found objects and non-traditional items in your puppetry. Do you have an assortment of objects you bring with you for this show or do you work with what each venue has?
I bring all the crap with me. It’s all rigged in such a way that it can do the necessary gags. Like I have a dude who needs his arm to jiggle and I have a line and handle attached to that. If I just found stuff on the road, it wouldn’t have the same fabulous cheap production values, which is oxymoronic. With an emphasis on the moronic. Oxymoronic probably means “really clean moron.”
The last show of yours I saw was The Mother of All Enemies, which was mostly shadow puppets. How does this show compare to that one?
It’s probably even more fast paced and in a certain sense it’s more surreal, it’s less literal. The jokes come really fast in this particular one. There’s a lot of sight gags and visuals, playing with scale, there’s some improv if something goes wrong. If there’s a slip of the tongue, I like to take advantage of it and improv. I’m also doing a ventriloquist introduction. I have a ventriloquist dummy, a real old-school dummy, and basically what happens is he’s been packed in a box for 50 years and I take him out and hint him to what has changed in the past 50 years since he’s been in the box. It falls into a conversation about race. So the whole thing is kind of a comedy
Paul Zaloom and his ventriloquist dummy Butch Manly wrangle over race and ethnic identity in "White Like Me." Photo courtesy Paul Zaloom.
about something very serious. The motivation is the fact that Caucasian’s are going to be a minority in 2042 in the United States. So that’s kind of the tent pole this whole thing is built on. What kind of anxiety do we have about that? I think it’s hysterical that white people are going to be in the minority. The tables turn and how are we going to respond? Are we going to dig in and flip out or are we going to be copacetic and accept the inevitable? What’s interesting to me is the comedy about Caucasian anxiety. The purpose of the show is to get people to laugh their asses off about something that’s actually kind of serious. But there’s no message or anything like that.
You also still do the Beakman Live! tours. How often do you do that?
As often as I get the gigs. I know that sounds ridiculous. I’m touring with a new show called Beakman on the Brain and it’s about neuroscience for 6-to-12-year-olds. I’m going to Qatar and Brazil with that show, which I’m looking forward to. That’s a comedy about serious stuff, too. Neuroscience is serious and complicated stuff, but it’s kind of a goofy show that introduces kids to those concepts.
And in both cases you’re using comedy to make people think about things in different ways.
Exactly. The possibility of comedy is to be able to look at things in a different way. It’s like having your mind expanded in a fun way.
A lot of your shows, this one included, involve political and social ideas. Even though there are all sorts of puppet shows that deal with different subjects, a lot of people still view puppetry as a children’s art form. How do you think puppetry mixes with these more serious issues?
Puppetry has traditionally been an art form for both adults and children. It’s also traditionally been subversive because with an oppressive government, if an actor says something directly you can get into trouble. But if you mediate it through a gibbling doll, the authorities are stupid enough to think that’s OK because it’s not an actor saying it, it’s a doll. There’s a great tradition of political satire and comedy with puppets. It’s only recently that the dominant cultural application has been that it’s kids’ entertainment. But that’s changing in part because of the Center promoting puppetry as an adult thing.
We’re used to 3-D entertainment and million dollar movies, but puppetry’s kind of a return to basics. Audiences really like seeing a bunch of crap gibbled around because it’s sort of refreshing without all the hyper technology and the glossy, well-buffed [stuff] as opposed to the on-the-spot, in-the-moment, goofy, lo-tech charm of it. My shows are relentlessly lo-tech despite the video projection.
Where does White Like Me go next and what do you have going on after that?
I’m going to New York City to do three weeks at Dixon Place starting May 25. I’m taking Beakman to Brasil in June and August and Qatar in November. I’m working on some art projects. One of the things I do is take thrift shop paintings and alter them to my specifications. I don’t paint, I hire a guy named Gregg Gibbs to paint for me. But I just come up with these gags like I found a picture of a building and he painted a whole bunch of clowns in it killing each other, shooting at each other and all this clown mayhem. That one’s called “Never Rent to Show People.” You can’t rent to show people because we’re freaking crazy. There’s about 25 of those and I’d like to make some more of those. I have one where there’s a couple of mountain lions on a cliff, and it’s kind of a corny Western painting. It’s been changed where you see just the fingertips of some guy over the edge of the cliff and his backpack’s there and the cats have blood on their mouths and it’s called “Cat Chow.” That’s just a hobby, but I also want to branch out into making prints myself and doing sculpture just for the hell of it.
With a demented Gothic Lolita look and a spastic goth punk sound, Austin’s One-Eyed Doll is just as much a performance art act as a punk rock band. Fronted by the adorably disturbed Kimberly Freeman, who performs in babydoll dresses and smudged eye makeup (and often pulls a “special boy” on stage to momentarily be part of the act), and anchored by Jason Sewell (better known simply as Junior), this Texas duo has caught the eyes and ears of anime conventioneers, heavy metal headbangers and punk rockers across the country. After opening for Otep last year and having recently concluded its tour with a revamped Orgy, One-Eyed Doll is now on the road with theatrical Japanese punk band Peelander-Z, which seems like a perfect match considering both bands’ love of costumes and rock ‘n’ roll. Having just started this tour last week, Freeman and Junior take a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about their upcoming album Dirty, the differences between playing anime conventions and dive bars, and recording with former WWE Women’s Champion Lita.
I first saw you three years ago at Dragon*Con and have since seen you headline smaller club shows and open for bigger metal acts. Each time I’ve seen you, your show and presentation have been a little bit different. How do you decide what you’re going to do for each show and tour?
Photo by Sydney Frames
Freeman: It just sort of happens when it happens. We don’t really plan for any particular kind of show. It’s just different because of whatever my mood is, usually. This crowd tends to like the silly stuff and the sing-alongs and things like that, so I think we’re probably going to be able to pull out a lot more of the slapstick on this tour, which is awesome. Of course the Peelander-Z crowd is into clowning around and stuff, so that’s cool. We’ve definitely, this past year, played to some more serious audiences. But probably the most lighthearted audience was the Orgy tour and this one. That’s always fun for me to just kind of let go and not worry about it too much.
Before the Orgy tour you toured with Otep and other heavier bands. I can see how that might work, but how would you say these drastically different audiences have reacted?
Freeman: We cross over into different genres, so we can kind of tour with whoever and usually do pretty well. We can always win a crowd over, but the real serious metal crowds make you prove it before they’ll let you into their comfort zone. We usually only have 30 minutes, 20 on some tours, so it’s a real challenge to figure out the balance of what an audience is going to react to. We usually just feel it out on the spot, but the past couple of tours have been getting a lot easier. It could be just us getting used to being this opening band on these bigger tours. The more aggressive the entire show is, the more resistant people are in general to everyone. And the more rock ‘n’ roll or punk [the show is], the more open they’ve been.
I know back in the day Orgy was a lot more techno industrial rock. But they’re doing their comeback, which I’m real excited for, and they’re a lot more straight-up rock now. It’s really cool. They’re all actually playing their instruments, they’re not doing backing tracks, Jay [Gordon]’s actually singing his songs. There’s a keyboard on stage, but that’s the only hint of ’90s industrial techno. It’s really rocking, guitar driven, heavy drums and cool stuff. That crowd had a lot more girls in it, too, because they’re kind of a hearth throb-y sort of band.
Is that why those audiences were fun?
Freeman: I think that was part of it. I love playing to a lot of girls. I love having a lot of girls in the audience. They were just so chill. I think there were just no expectations because nobody knew what to expect from Orgy, so they had an open mind. That was just a really great tour for us. I really enjoyed it. This one has been really fun so far. It’s hard to tell the first couple of days what it’s going to be like, but I think it’s going to be so fun. The Peelander-Z crew is just a blast and they’re silly and they costume and do skits and the crowd loves to sing along and get into it. Their crowd already knows what they’re going to do. They’re totally stoked about it. It’s really exciting for them. I love seeing people turn into children. And it’s real punk, you know. It’s a punk, pirate-y, easy going crowd.
Like One-Eyed Doll, Peelander-Z is known for playing Dragon*Con and anime conventions. How do those shows compare to playing rock clubs?
Photo by Chad Elder
Freeman: Oh man, it’s such a different world. I’m sure those guys would tell you the same thing. The conventions are their own little mini-universes. Everybody’s in costumes and they’re not exactly a rocker crowd that would go to the dive bar. They’d probably never set foot into a scary punk bar. It’s a really all-ages-friendly, innocent, fun place and it’s a real safe environment. We usually have a stage crew and pretty nice stage and lights and they take care of us and put us into a hotel room. But this kind of tour is a lot more Road Warrior-style. It’s a lot of small bars and intimate settings where you can fit maybe 50 people into the room and the stage is a planks of wood in the corner. They’re willing to pay you in beer, so it’s a totally different world. You’ve got the safe convention world where you have a built in audience of up to several thousand, then you have these dive bars that are dirty, smelly, dark and fun.
And they both fit with the One-Eyed Doll aesthetic in very different ways.
Freeman: Yeah, I think so. I think Peelander-Z thrives in both environments, too. It’s funny because we just got off these more high profile tours onto this short little dive bar tour and it’s kind of refreshing. There’s usually no backstage, there’s certainly nowhere to hide, so you’re right there with everybody. That can be kind of fun. That’s kind of how we used to tour all the time. It’s been a little bit of a refreshing thing and it’s a real no-pressure kind of environment. We’re just playing shows on our way back to Texas. no big deal.
A few years ago you played with a band called the Luchagors, fronted by Amy Dumas, better know to wrestling fans as former WWE Women’s Champion Lita. As a result, she has become an outspoken supporter of One-Eyed Doll.
Freeman: Oh, yeah. Amy is a dear friend ever since we played together in Austin a few years ago. I’m as much of a fan of hers as she is of me. I think she’s great. When I saw her on stage for the first time with the Luchagors, I just totally fell in love. I was like, “I don’t know who this girl is, but we’re going to be best friends because she is awesome!” So we always hit each other up when we’re coming through town. She’s always on the road and we’re always on the road, so sometimes we cross paths. We’d love to do some more collaborating. She sang on one of my songs called “Insecure” for the Into Outer Space album. It’s my electropop dance album that’s just under the Kimberly Freeman name, even though Jason did all the instrumentation and arrangement. We still call it a solo album. I think she has a beautiful voice and she’s such a great performer. She’s been very supportive and we really plug each other whenever we can. I just love having my girl rocker friend. We recorded her parts in less than an hour and she did great.
You also have a new album coming out called Dirty. When will that be out and what else can you tell me about it?
Freeman: We’re pressing a new vinyl record. It’s being manufactured right now and as soon as we get back from this tour we’re going to have the first proof to check out. So it’s coming out really, really soon. We’re going to release it vinyl only, at least at first.
Junior: We recorded it at Sylvia Massy‘s studio in northern California called RadioStar. It’s this old art deco theater that’s filled with all this classic gear from the ’60s and ’70s that we’ve always wanted to work on. It was just the kind of environment that inspired a more classic sounding album. At the time, we had planned to record a real shiny, super-produced, radio-ready rock album, which we did. But at the same time we both were like, “Man, we want to use all this cool gear to record something more like Black Sabbath or Pink Floyd. Sylvia was so cool that she basically let us stay there and do whatever we wanted. After the first couple of weeks of recording, she realized I was also a producer and knew what I was doing with all of her gear. So she just let me do whatever I wanted after that and we were like, “Yes! We’re going to record another album.” We wanted to approach Dirty kind of the way they recorded back in the day, so we recorded most of the guitar and drums live together.
These days almost every song you hear is recorded to a metronome, so there’s a click track keeping the tempo and everybody plays to that so it’s the same tempo throughout the song. A lot of our songs, the way Kimberly writes them, the tempos gradually speed up and slow down and are really alive. We just wanted to capture that live feeling and not do it to a metronome. We played the songs together live, so they have that feel of how we do it at a show. Then, of course, we were like, “Well, crap. We’re going to have to release that on vinyl if we really want to do it right.” So we pretty much just stayed in the analog domain, but we’ll eventually put it out as a download and CD. In that sense, I think it’s a lot different from our other releases. But I think it’s also just a darker, moodier type of album. We usually have lots of ups and downs, but this one’s pretty much all downs.
You often tour with a third member known as Mister Swimmy Socks the Goldfish. Has he been involved in the recording of this new album?
Junior: He usually just tours, although he is on the Dirty album on a song called “Weed” that’s named after the town we recorded in. But he didn’t play bass, he played banjo on that song. He’s actually a really awesome banjo player.
Are you playing anything from Dirty on this tour?
Photo by Denise Borders
Junior: We’re playing a few songs, yeah. Actually, there are a couple of songs from the Monster album that we re-recorded for this album. They just have a different feel when we play them live now, so we wanted to capture the new feel of those songs. So a couple of the songs on the new album are classics that we play live all the time anyway.
Freeman:You want to be our guest [at a show]?
Absolutely. Do I have to earn that by performing in some way?
Freeman: Well if you would like to, I would consider you for a special boy. But that’s up to you. It’s volunteer only.
I guess we can talk about that at the show.
Freeman: Awesome! Make sure to grab us before the show.
When UFC 141: Lesnar vs. Overeem got under way on Dec. 30, 2011, it seemed the biggest news that would come in the aftermath of the main event would be who the number one contender to Junior dos Santos‘ UFC Heavyweight Championship would be. But as we all now know, it would end up being Brock Lesnar‘s last fight in an Ultimate Fighting Championship octagon (allowing his recent return to WWE).
As this Ultimate 2-Disc Collection shows, UFC 141 offered a lot of hard-hitting mixed martial arts action well before the heavyweight main event was even close to getting underway. The first disc features the main card, which begins with a featherweight bout between former Ultimate Fightercompetitor Nam Phan and the undefeated Jimy “The Kid” Hettes. Though Phan takes it all three rounds, Hettes dominates the entire fight, extending his streak to 10-0 via unanimous decision.
Next is a light heavyweight fight between Belarusian veteran Vladimir “The Janitor” Matyushenko and Sweden’s Alexander “The Mauler” Gustafsson. Unlike the previous fight, this one ends about halfway into the first round when Matyushenko runs into what would otherwise have been a Gustafsson jab, giving The Mauler an opportunity to pummel his opponent into a TKO victory.
The third bout shows Johny Hendricks making short work of one of UFC’s most celebrated welterweights Jon Fitch with a surprising knockout punch only 12 seconds into the first round. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the co-main event, a lightweight fight between the cocky and aggressive Nate Diaz and bull rider-turned-fighter Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.
Nate Diaz (right) earns his victory over Donald Cerrone in UFC 141. Photo by Donald Miralle
Unlike most of the other fights on the card, there seems to be a legitimate dislike between Diaz and Cerrone, which only adds to the excitement. And it’s not often that you see a UFC fight go all three rounds, let alone two on the same card. But Diaz and Cerrone not only take each other to the limit, they also put on a display that earned them both Fight of the Night honors. With Cerrone taking Diaz off his feet several times and Diaz landing numerous hard punches and kicks, this one really could have gone either way. But in the end it’s Diaz who walks away with the win via unanimous decision.
The main event pits the highly decorated Dutch powerhouse Alistair Overeem making his UFC debut against former UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar. This being Lesnar‘s first fight back since not only losing the title to Cain Velasquez, but also after overcoming his second bout with diverticulitis, it appears as if Lesnar is back in fighting condition. The fight gets off to a solid start, with Lesnar opening up Overeem just over his right eye early on. With the crowd solidly behind him, it soon becomes apparent that Lesnar is not 100 percent when Overeem lands a kick to his gut that sends Lesnar reeling in pain. Overeem takes advantage of this opportunity and lands numerous shots to Lesnar’s body to attain a TKO victory in the first round. After the fight, Lesnar shockingly announces his UFC retirement.
Alistair Overeem lands a kick to Brock Lesnar in his UFC 141 victory
Also included on this two-disc set are the Countdown to UFC 141, which provides some background on all the fighters and fights on the card, and the weigh-in show, which shows a bunch of muscular guys stripping down to their underwear to weigh-in for the fights. The weigh-in offers additional insight into some of the fights, most notably the Diaz/Cerrone encounter since Diaz was forced to work off an extra pound before entering the octagon.
The second disc also features five action-packed preliminary bouts, all of which go all three rounds and come down to very close decisions. It also includes a behind the scenes package and the Ultimate Insider, which provides even more looks at what UFC fighters do leading up to their matches.
As a director, French filmmaker Luc Besson has been responsible for contemporary action and sci-fi classics like Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element. As a producer, he’s given us the Transporter series and Taken, movies that are as visually attractive as his earlier works, but focus more on stylish action than plot and character development. Lockout, a futuristic action movie co-written by Besson and directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, falls into the latter category, with hardly any attempt to create characters that are at all interesting.
Snow (Guy Pearce) is a gun-toting badass in "Lockout"
Set in the not-too-distant future, Lockout stars Guy Pearce as Snow, a government agent who has been mistakenly convicted for the death of another agent. Despite his innocence, the evidence is stacked against him and it looks as if there is no way out for him. That is until the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) ends up trapped on a space prison where hundreds of hardened killers, rapists and other vagrants have been awakend from their pods. Snow (played with a mix of Mark Wahlberg’s bravado and Johnny Depp’s swagger, with a hint of Bruce Willis’ badass attitude) is offered one opportunity to redeem himself by going into the space station, rescuing the president’s daughter and returning her unharmed. It’s clearly a daunting task, but since Snow is such a badass with nothing to lose (and actually has something to gain if he can track down one particular inmate), of course he’s up for the challenge.
From there Lockout becomes one sci-fi derivation after another, which is all a lot of fun to watch, but not all that stimulating otherwise. Matrix-like chasm of slumbering bodies? Check. Prisoners waking up from cryo sleep a la Demolition Man? Check. Strong female character forced to standup to overwhelmingly testosterone-y odds in very Alien-like settings? You got it. And Although Snow proves to be a noble antihero and his female antagonist-turned-sidekick is also a surprisingly spry fighter, they end up relying on enough convenient coincidences that it starts to feel almost as bad as Armageddon (especially in a scene where they basically skydive from outer space, safely re-entering Earth’s atmosphere only to parachute to the surface, landing with less impact than they’d have had from jumping off a bunk bed).
"Let's skydive into the Earth's atmosphere!"
Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly much worse movies out there, especially in the sci-fi/action genre. But I guess even with his more recent productions, Besson has still been able to apply his touch even if it’s not as overt as when he has more control as a director. But this time it hardly feels like he was involved very much, even though Lockout is based on a concept he came up with and, like most of his other films, was at least partially written by him. And even with the legitimate acting skills Pearce brings to the movie, it still almost feels like a Syfy original or straight-to-DVD release. Let’s just hope the tagline for his next movie is “from the director of The Fifth Element” instead of “from the producers of Taken.”
Lockout. Directed by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger. Starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace. Rated PG-13. www.lockoutfilm.com.
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a century since The Three Stoogesbegan inflicting their farcical physical comedy on America via episodic short films and other avenues. For some, the idea of Hollywood even considering trying to recreate that vaudeville vulgarity is like a
Moe (Chris Diamantopoulos) puts his pals Curly (Will Sasso, left) and Larry (Sean Hayes) in line.
proverbial slap in the face (or poke to the eye or kick to the groin, replete with cartoonish sound effects). But if there’s anyone who could possibly recreate the Stooges brand of slapstick for today’s viewing audience while maintaining the ideals that made it funny the first time around, it’s the directing duo of the Farrelly brothers, who were clearly inspired by a similar aesthetic when making movies such as There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin.
In The Three Stooges: The Movie, Moe, Larry and Curly are back (played by Chris Diamantopoulos, Will & Grace‘s Sean Hayes and MADtv‘s Will Sasso, respectively), this time as three orphans who arrive unceremoniously via a tossed duffle bag. Even as kids, the trio (looking like smaller versions of the childlike adults they will become) is oblivious to the mayhem that follows them around the orphanage, giving Sister Mary-Mengele (played with appropriate absurdity by Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Larry David) fits. Since no one wants to adopt these three dim-witted rascals, Moe, Larry and Curly find themselves still causing chaos at the orphanage well into adulthood.
Anxious to see the Stooges (Sean Hayes, Chris Diamantopoulos, Will Sasso) go, Sister Rosemary (Jennifer Hudson) leads a joyful farewell sing-a-long.
When news comes that the orphanage will soon be shut down, the Stooges vow to come up with the money to save it. With an encouraging song from Sister Rosemary (David Otunga‘s baby mama Jennifer Hudson) to send them off, the Stooges are dragged (quite literally) into the real world, fitting in about as well as Will Ferrell’s Buddy did in Elf. It doesn’t take them long to clumsily stumble into Lydia (a bosomy Sofía Vergara) whose plot to off her rich husband unwittingly becomes the Stooges plan to quickly come up with the money to save the orphanage. Through a series of slapstick mishaps, the Stooges find themselves causing comedic chaos in a hospital nursery, woob woob woob-ing their way into upscale parties and even joining the cast of Jersey Shore (where Moe becomes a star for using his sarcasm and violent ways on Snooki and The Situation).
Though there’s no explanation as to why the Stooges look and sound like they are from the time period of the original trio, it really doesn’t matter since it just adds to the overall absurdity. In a world where sledgehammers to the face and lobsters in your pants are funny instead of fatal, the anachronism of the characters serves to further retain the nostalgia of the original show. I just wonder, assuming there will be a sequel, if we’ll ever see Shemp join in the mayhem.
The Three Stooges: The Movie. Directed by Peter & Bobby Farrelly. Starring Sean Hayes, Will Sasso and Chris Diamantopoulos. Rated PG. www.threestooges.com.
