The Mental Nomad Podcast: Podsafe music from all over the world. Pod Across America: A journey across America, one state at a time. And other feats yet to be revealed.
Again, I'll be including both iTunes and Amazon links at the end to all of her appearances available for sale through one or both of those outlets. Your purchases would be much appreciated. I'm also experimenting with Amazon's Video on Demand widget here (at the bottom, just below the Paypal donation button); try it and let me know what you think.
Name:Piper Perabo Hometown: Perabo was born in Dallas and raised in Toms River, N.J., and is a graduate of Ohio University, according to her Wikipedia profile. Her not-quite-traditional beauty stems from her Portuguese and Norwegian ancestry. Best Known For: Perabo currently stars on the new USA Network spy series Covert Affairs. Other major works include playing the elder daughter in Steve Martin's two Cheaper by the Dozen movies and a starring role in the film Coyote Ugly.
She's also appeared in an episode each of House and Law and Order: Criminal Intent and done a number of smaller movies. Humble Beginnings: I think it can be summed up by saying she appeared in the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. That left her nowhere to go but up, really. (Though Beverly Hills Chihuahua could have easily suggested a drop off the radar, better things have followed.)
Obligatory Edgy Stuff: It's not really all that edgy to play gay characters, not if you're living in the 21st century. She's played at least a couple: Lost and Delirious saw her in some pretty steamy love scenes with Canadian actress Jessica Pare (most recently seen in Hot Tub Time Machine, and who really deserves her own entry here), and Imagine Me and You was a more chaste romantic comedy that saw her bride-to-be fall for a florist played by Lena Headey (of later 300 and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fame). Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: Perabo's a beautiful woman with a gift for playing smart, quirky, sometimes insecure characters who win you over quickly, but her appearance in the generally not-so-great indie horror film Carriers let her play the sort of darker, more selfish character, she did so well in Lost and Delirious.
Our strange and savage neighbors to the north (in Canada) mark today as the Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval -- which probably means they're plotting against us, or rather that today's when they ADMIT they're plotting against us, because really, when are they not? It's also Independence Day in Peru and Ólavsøka Eve in the Faroe Islands -- you'd better make sure you sent your Ólavsøka cards already.
(Ye Olde Podcaster has no idea what Ólavsøka means, but the strange letters amuse him, and there was no reason to mention Guam in today's intro. So we'll repeat it once more: Ólav-to the friggin'-søka. ... OK, onward.)
Birthday babies on this date included British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889); Volunteers of America co-founder Ballington Booth (1857-1940); English Unitarian and children's author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943); former American first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994); American musician Mike Bloomfield (1943-1981) and English musician Richard Wright (of Pink Floyd, 1943-2008); Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis (born in 1945); Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez (born in 1954); American actress Lori Loughlin (born in 1964); actress Elizabeth Berkley (photos NSFW due mainly to the film Showgirls, born in 1972); and Canadian actor Dustin Milligan (born in 1985).
Deaths on this date include French poet Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655); Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741); German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), who in latter years sang for the hair-metal band Skid Row; French Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794, he lived by the guillotine and died by the guillotine); American theologian and abolitionist Edward Beecher (1803-1895); English biologist and Nobel laureate Francis Crick (1916-2004); and British fantasy author David Gemmell (1948-2006).
Survivors of the English ship Sea Venture -- which had been bound to Virginia -- settled in Bermuda this day in 1609. Gender disparities led to romantic rivalries among these hearty settlers, leading to the invention of the first Bermuda love triangles -- think Grey's Anatomy, but with poorer hygiene.
The 14th Amendment was passed this day in 1868, guaranteeing due process of law and acknowledging the citizenship of African Americans.
Miami, Fla., was not incorporated until this day in 1896? Wow, Ye Olde Podcaster figured it had been around a lot longer than that. (I guess you learn something new every day, but rarely from reading this.)
The set of prehistoric remains called Kennewick Man was found in Washington state this day in 1996. This revived ancestor of humanity -- so like us! -- now records country music under the name Toby Keith.
Week two of this new series puts the spotlight on Gangstagrass, the country-rap hybrid whose Emmy-nominated song "Long Hard Times to Come" provided the opening music for FX's TV series Justified.
Today's spotlight is on an actress whose name sounds vaguely Native American, which is one ethnicity NOT mentioned in her bio: Her father was of Dutch and Irish descent, her mother South Korean, according to Wikipedia.
Name:Moon Bloodgood Hometown: Anaheim, Calif., according to her Wikipedia profile Best Known For: Her highest-profile appearances so far have been in Terminator: Salvation and a recurring role in the third season of Burn Notice. Other work includes the short-lived science fiction dramas Daybreak (alongside Taye Diggs on ABC) and Journeyman (alongside Kevin McKidd on NBC), plus a one-off in the first season of Fox's Human Target.
She will start in the Stephen Spielberg-produced science fiction series Fallen Skies on TNT in 2011 alongside former ER doc Noah Wylie. Humble Beginnings: The former Laker Girl and model did a few TV appearances on shows such as Just Shoot Me, Fastlane, CSI, North Shore and Monk and played "Gorgeous Woman" (good casting) in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! before landing a regular role on Day Break. Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: Her work in Journeyman in particular showed her to be more than just a pretty face and a rockin' body. The pathos she brought to her time traveler character was tangible -- just as McKidd was starting to lead two lives, you found out over time that his believed-dead ex-girlfriend had been through all the same times of experiences before she even met him.
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Two of these in the same month? Wow, sounds like a comeback to me...
Name: Ellen Page Hometown: Halifax, Nova Scotia, up in Canada, according to her Wikipedia entry Best Known For: An assortment of indie films (Juno, Hard Candy, The Tracey Fragments, Whip It, Smart People) and big-screen blockbusters (X-Men 3, this summer's Inception), playing herself in commercials for networking solutions by Cisco, and signing on for an HBO original series titled Tilda alongside Diane Keaton. Humble Beginnings: Page started acting at age 4. After school plays, she did a Canadian Broadcasting Co. TV-movie called Pit Pony at age 10 that was spun off into a TV series. She also garnered notice for her work on the science fiction series ReGenesis as a teen. Obligatory Edgy Stuff: She's one of our strange and savage neighbors to the north, but a particularly cute one, so that dulls the edge of the Canadian menace a bit. And apparently she's prone to walking and talking in her sleep, Wikipedia says.
More seriously, if you approach the film Hard Candy thinking it would be anything like Juno, you're going to be in for a very big, twisted surprise. Ye Olde Podcaster thinks she'd be a perfect pick to play a twisted, psychologically complex Catwoman alongside Christian Bale in a future Christopher Nolan Bat-film -- and given his tendency to use the same actors in multiple works, her featured role in this summer's Inception probably raises the odds of her donning the Catwoman suit substantially.
It's not as crazy an idea as it sounds: Yes, she's 13 years younger than Christian Bale, but given that Hollywood cast Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones as sexually bantering cat burglars in Entrapment, their age difference is really a non-issue. Picking the kid from A Knight's Tale and 10 Things I Hate About You to play The Joker worked out pretty well, at least in cinematic terms, after all. Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: She's a lovely lass with what seems like a bit of an old-soul quality to her, and she's equally well suited to searing psychological drama, mind-bending science fiction and quirky character comedy. Her politics mix pretty well with mine.
And hell -- she got me to watch an entire episode of SNL for the first time in more than a decade.
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Today is Liberation Day in Guam, National Day in Belgium and Racial Harmony Day in Singapore.
The Manliest Damn Things You'll Read All Day:Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in the Springfield, Mo., market square this day in 1865, an event considered the first Western showdown. And Jesse James (having embraced his bad-boy image after his humiliating divorce from Sandra Bullock and, apparently, the invention of the time machine) and the James-Younger gang committed the first successful train robbery of the Old West in Adair, Iowa, this day in 1873.
Notable births on this day include French astronomer and Starfleet captain Jean Picard (1620-1682, plus apparently some time travel and an English accent), American writer and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), comic actor Don Knotts (1924-2006), actor Edward Herrmann (born in 1943), British director Tony Scott (born in 1944), President of the United States on Ideal Earth Paul Wellstone (1944-2002), American cartoonist Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) and English singer-songwriter Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens, both born in 1948), American comedian and actor Robin Williams (born in 1951), crime novelist Michael Connelly (born in 1956), comedian Jon Lovitz (born in 1957), French actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg (born in 1971), American model and actress Ali "Hot Doritos Girl" Landry (born in 1973, some images NSFW), actor Josh Hartnett (born in 1978), and actor Rory Culkin (born in 1989).
Deaths on this date include Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), American politician, military officer, orator and "The Great Agnostic" Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), English actor Basil Rathbone (perhaps most remembered for playing Sherlock Holmes, 1892-1967), American astronaut Alan Shepard (1923-1998), TV and film composer Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004), and Japanese-born American actor Mako (1933-2006).
Stuff, nonsense, hit songs, you know the drill:
Herostratus (Greek for "redneck," it seems) set fire to Ephesus' Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, this day in 356 B.C.E. He didn't try to dodge responsibility -- hell, no, he bragged about it. The Greek leaders executed him and forbade mentions of his name, attempting to deny him the historical immortality he sought.
High school biology teacher John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution (science in a science classroom? the horrors!!!) in Dayton, Tenn., this day in 1925. For the crime of being right, he was fined $100.
The Sex Pistols debuted on the British music television show Top of the Pops this day in 1977.
The world's lowest temperature reading was registered this day in 1983, a balmy -89.2°C (-129°F) at Vostok Station in Antarctica. In related news, the world's lowest intelligence reading is being registered right now in the collective "mind" (note the quotation marks) of the Tea Party movement.
The spotlight today is on Gordon Bell (aka the Artist Formerly Known as Gustav Bertha), whose new album The Lost Art of Penance should already be in your music library; we'll feature a couple of songs from this album, plus a couple of previously unplayed tunes from his Gustav Bertha days. (And his birthday's Saturday!)
Nina Nastasia: "You're a Holy Man" (from Outlaster)
(Total play time: 1:12:18)
The 1920s recording of "Makin' Whoopee" is credited here to Eddie Walters, but that could be a mistake on behalf of the label (Van Up Records, of whom I can find little information online other than the fact they seem to specialize in recordings from before WWII) and/or Promonet ... the song was first recorded in 1928 by Eddie Cantor, and to my ear it sounds like it could be Cantor on this track, having also listened to a couple of performances of that tune by Cantor at YouTube.
"The Fence" and "Some Escape" were released as a virtual single and B-side (remember those?) at Noam's Web site. The title of today's show is a reference to episode 42, which honored Gordon (then recording as Gustav) on his birthday a few years ago. His Web site has all his albums available for sale, plus some freebies and the Way Past Bedtime podcast mentioned in today's show.
Tracks 4, 5, 8 and 14 came from the IODA Promonet and may be downloaded for free below as long as their promotions remain active; the remainder came from Music Alley or, in the case of Gordon Bell's work, are played with his permission.
Week two of this new series puts the spotlight on 
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The spotlight today is on Gordon Bell (aka the Artist Formerly Known as Gustav Bertha), whose new album The Lost Art of Penance should already be in your music library; we'll feature a couple of songs from this album, plus a couple of previously unplayed tunes from his Gustav Bertha days. (And his birthday's Saturday!)
"You're a Holy Man"
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