Paul Rodriguez - Comedy

Interviewing Paul Rodriguez was a big deal to me. I grew up watching a generation of comics that really influenced my writing, philosophy and style. Sam Kinison, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, Paul Rodriguez, Mitch Hedberg, Eddie Murphy...growing up, these were my heroes, so to talk to one of them was a tremendous honor.

Of course, when I'm interviewing anyone I tend to keep it cool and not honey them up too much. I have to maintain a professional attitude and all that. That way, the person I'm talking to doesn't panic and think they are talking to a drooling fanboy.

Still, I told Rodriguez that D.C. Cab is one of my favorite films and I love his comedy. When he found out I did stand up, he invited me to perform in L.A. at one of the comedy clubs he owns. From a stand up perspective, that's one hell of a career move, so I'm grateful.
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César Estrada Chávez was a Mexican-American civil rights activist and union organizer whose quiet integrity and selfless dedication to the American labor movement improved the lives of workers in California and across the country.

Every year on March 31, we celebrate César Chávez Day to honor a great leader who is still an inspiration and benefit not only to the people he fought for but to anyone who collects a paycheck in the United States of America.

As part of an event to raise funds to commemorate Chávez with a bronze statue in downtown Riverside, actor and comedian Paul Rodriguez (D.C. Cab, Born in East L.A., Tortilla Soup and Ali) will be performing live stand up comedy at the Fox Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Dec. 3. Rodriguez spoke with the IE Weekly about César Chávez, his latest comedy special “Just For the Record” and the importance of honoring a community leader who truly was a man of the people.

For the last four years Rodriguez has been working up in San Joaquin, where he’s the chairman for the California Latino Water Coalition. “I dedicated a lot of that time talking to politicians about a water bond to secure farmland for migrant workers,” he says.

He’s also getting back into comedy with a one hour special, “Just For the Record.” “I talk about how my family got here and my mom and dad,” says Rodriguez. “It’s heading for cable television, probably HBO.”

In addition to his community service, Rodriguez still works in the entertainment business. “I have some commercials going on right now and I own a piece of the Laugh Factory in Chicago, so that keeps me busy.” The comedian likes to work. “You gotta stay busy, or else you get old,” he adds.

He got involved in the charity to erect a statue of César Chávez in downtown Riverside in part because he had known the man since he was a child. “I knew him since I was 12 years old. He taught us how to protest, how to march. He was more than just a union organizer; he was a man who wasn’t trying to be a politician.”

The comedian is honored to promote such a worthy cause. “Chávez was more than just a union leader. He was an honest, humble man. He didn’t have a great fortune. He was a civil rights leader who stood up for people who are the least in our community,” Rodriguez says.

“A lot of those migrant farm workers had to hide and be quiet, like Anne Frank, but he spoke up for them and showed the entire Latino nation that they could change their lives with non-violent protests.”

In Just For the Record, Rodriguez covers a wide range of topics that will appeal to everyone although he doesn’t get too political. “There’s another part where I talk about relationships, and about being in the military.”

Rodriguez admits that for him, comedy is more than just entertaining an audience. “It’s very painful stuff. I more or less did the special because I’m too Latino to go get therapy.”

Daniel B., Nothing But Noise, and Not Bleeding Red - Music

My blog has gotten bigger and bloggier. This is a good thing, but the specter of monetizing hangs over everything, chilling my rosy prospects of not running ads with the cold reality of what the future will bring.

What I mean is, I'm getting 500+ hits a day from all over the world, so now I have to do something like sell ad space and that's a real drag. I appreciate everyone showing up here so you can certainly expect me to spruce up the place and makes sure it's worth showing up for.

As for running ads, I'm certainly not going to put pop-ups on my blog or those irritating hyperlinks that appear like ninjas and force you to go to some weird site where you just know the Russian Mob's best hackers are lurking, waiting to break into your bank account through your email when you hit the button that says, "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO LEAVE THIS SITE?"

Realistically it's probably just going to be something non-intrusive, like a Paypal donation button. Later, my real goal is to only run ads for music companies, films, games and other, similar websites. Shoot, you'd click on a link to the new Thor flick, right? 

Some of you great people have already noticed that I was posting quite a bit, and then suddenly I slowed down. What happened? I'll tell you. My computer got sick on me. It just kept dropping dead, and I lost megabytes of information.

I couldn't figure out what it was. The processor? The motherboard? The graphics card? The OS? It drove me crazy, no, wait, past crazy, I remember at one point I thought to myself, "Dear Lord, if I had a .38 Rossi I would put a bullet in the monitor and a bullet in the tower, just to be sure."

It's called the total geek double-tap.

Eventually, the computer died and I ended up replacing the power supply and then finally refurbishing my entire system. Screw it, I'd lost enough time and work, so it's time to invest.

The fact that it was the power supply really made me feel lame. God, it was like falling for the old electric joy buzzer gag. How did I not figure it out? It was easiest thing, but by the time my small brain put all the clues together, I had already re-installed Windows XP (Vista is the Mark of the Beast) and ran my virus checker twice.

Now I have two computers, side-by-side, and one of them is running Linux Mint 11 so I'm set. They are both connected to a backup server. If one dies, the other is there to take over so no matter what, I can finish that article. 

So that's one reason why the writing slowed. Second, I'm an actor so there's been auditions, callbacks and acting, so my other career, writing, has suffered a bit. It's a good thing...every actor wants to be busy...but it's also a bad thing because the blog suffered for it.

A final reason is that I started working for ReGen Magazine. My first article with them is up, a ReView of Daniel B.'s new album, Not Bleeding Red by Nothing but Noise. I had a great time talking to Daniel B., who is one of the original members of Front 242. He's like the Roy Orbison of industrial. 

But the bad news is that I can't post it here. ReGen Magazine is paying me the big bucks so I'm fine with following the rules, which means that I have to post a link to the article instead of putting a copy on my blog. Here's the article, I hope you like it. Once my InterView with Daniel B. goes up on their website, I'll post a link to it there, too.

ReGen Magazine is a solid website and the editor really knows what he's doing. All the industrial/electronica information you could want is on that site, so now you know where to go for all of your mechanical musical needs. 

Wordsmith - Music

Baltimore rapper Wordsmith is another talented emcee in a long line of musicians who make rap that hits your soul by way of the cerebrum,  combining stylized vocals with hard-hitting hip-hop to deliver an album you could either place next to your Arrested Development and KRS-One LP's or between Frank Herbert's Dune and Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure in the philosophy section of your personal library.

The album, King Noah, is Wordsmith's third solo project, dedicated to his latest, greatest personal success, an already highly respected, much-anticipated son known as Kingston Noah Parker.

As a result, King Noah is both a solid rap album reminiscent of the old-skool productions that form the bedrock of modern first rate, intelligent hip-hop and an illuminating walk around the mindscapes of a musician, father and philosopher as he weaves words and music to make an LP with a positive message both to his son and to the youth of America.

I use the term "positive message" not because it's a literary cliche' (technically, The Lord of the Rings has a "positive message" about chucking jewelry into volcanoes) but because you can't help but feel good as the album opens up with the title track, "King Noah" where Wordsmith tells his own newborn son how he feels just after the boy's birth.

"July first, 2011 during the one o' clock hour. That's when my son, Kingston Noah Parker was born," he says, beginning a 4 minute, 20 second combination of insight into Wordsmith's own personal, spiritual perspectives and a shout out to the hopes he has for his own future generation.

"Only peace and love can be the centerpiece," is only a small part of the message Wordsmith has for his son, which is vastly different from the usual creed most rappers give about their greater access to prostitutes, big bank accounts and firearms.

Don't get me wrong, I love N.W.A. and I'm bowing down with Westside Connection. I don't judge the players, I just play the game, too. But hearing the joy and wonder in a father's voice as he speaks to his son about the power of peace and benevolent persistence is about as positive as it can get, without the usual mechanical sound of a 9mm being locked and loaded, or just gunshots in general.

Wordsmith's music boasts a production value that's crisp and crystal clear. There's craftsmanship in each track. You can hear the quality not just in his third album's rhymes, rhetoric and lyrical ability but also in the cool beats and swank samples. Without going into too much detail, the record is born vintage and best appreciated on a sound system that does it justice, with a bass you can feel in your backbone five blocks away.

It's hard to believe the young artist began his career just a hip-hop, skip and jump ago with his first album, 2007's Vintage Experience, which featured tracks like "The Next Level Experience" where the rapper delivers lyrics with both authority and aplomb that speak of the harsh reality of how hard it is to make it in a rap industry that grinds out the good along with the goons.

Another writer wrote that Wordsmith is a thinking man's emcee, but a lot of rap has a rep for being think man's music. Back in 1993 Arrested Development wrote songs that got you thinking with their album, 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... which practically required a history text in one hand and a genuine appreciation for the subtle nuances of inner city slang in the other.

There were also groups like De La Soul who composed songs like "Me, Myself and I" that were more philosophical than boastful. By the time KRS-One wrote "Self Destruction" a lot of other hip-hop artists knew that young black America needed to wake up, and rap was a good alarm bell to do it with.

That's not to say that Wordsmith wastes words by preaching to the proselyte about what the herd has heard before. He's better than that. Maybe it's because when the tracks on King Noah open up with his own personal message to the youth, there's no arrogance or ego.

When he talks about the evolution of his career in "Music for the Masses" he wants his son to understand the responsibility even a successful musician has to the world with the ethics he practices. "On My Job" warns of the evils of money, but reminds us all that while labor is bitter, dreams are sweet. "With you being a Parker man," he says, "one thing you need to know is we work hard."

"Generation X," the third track, is not only about the importance of leadership but how the world really needs good leaders with solid ethics, not just powerful ones, which is the same sentiment expressed by Yamamoto Tsunetomo hundreds of years before, when he penned his own treatise in order to inspire young professional warriors to act with honor.

When you read books like the Hagakure or Dune, there's a similar feeling that you get when listening to rap albums by artists who don't just want to make a fast buck, but want to make something that's a bedrock for a better society.

The authors of those books wrote about relationships between father and son, one generation to the next, emphasizing not only the virtues of a previous generation but the importance of virtues, which transcends generation, genre and geography.

Wordsmith has a message that preaches traditions like honesty, integrity and loyalty, but with the same experienced, strategy-laden advice Duke Leto Atredes gives to his son Paul Atredes in the science-fiction ultramasterpiece known as Dune, an awesome literary menhir full of advice that contains philosophies that parallel Wordsmith's own experienced observations.

Both men want their sons to make their mark upon the world, to attain power, but with the patient wisdom that only comes from loving benevolence and selfless, transpersonal commitment. That's a beat we all need to rock to.

King Noah won't put you to sleep at the wheel like some sort of recorded dissertation, though. Wordsmith has brought on A-list talent to make this album happen including artists like ELiM, Phil Ade and K. Sparks. The album has jazz-laced beats, innovative rhythms and enticing samples mixed with honest, poetic lyrics about racial profiling, dealing with haters, enduring the blues and going after your dreams combined with an excellent production by Centric, Capish, Certified, Rednaz Beats, Strada, DJ Eclipse and Benny Rome. To hold the LP is to have a handful of iron-strong, anvil heavy hip-hop. My advice is to invest.

King Noah will be available on June 19th. You can follow Wordsmith on Twitter right here. You can like him on Facebook right here.