Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch Sends Cancer Treatment Update To Fans
The Beastie Boys’ ailing Adam “MCA” Yauch has sent an email to fans on the group’s mailing list updating them on his condition and assuring them that “things are moving along.”
Yauch announced on July 20 that doctors had found a cancerous tumor in his left salivary gland, as well as a lymph node in the same area. The Beasties subsequently postponed the planned Sept. 15 release of their new album, “Hot Sauce Committee Part 1,” and canceled all scheduled live performances, including festival dates at All Points West in New York, Chicago’s Lollapalooza, Outside Lands in San Francisco, Osheaga in Montreal and Austin City Limits in Texas.
In the new note Yauch wrote that he’s “rapidly recovering” from surgery to remove the cancer that took place about a week and a half ago and returned home after just one night in the hospital “to relax, have home cooked food and hang out with the family.” Yauch said he’s also been avoiding pain medications which would slow his healing. He’s now preparing for “the next line of treatment,” which will be a seven-week course of radiation that should start “in a few weeks.”
Yauch said he heard about or watched on YouTube the various tributes paid to him during last weekend’s All Points West, including Coldplay’s Chris Martin playing a solo piano version of “(You’ve Got to) Fight For Your Right (to Party)” and Jay-Z busting a bit of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” “Good shit,” Yauch wrote, “and I heard Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) wore a “get well MCA” armband, and that Q-Tip gave a shout out too…Very kind of them.”
Yauch concluded that he “just wanted to thank them and everyone else who sent positive thoughts my way. I do think that all of the well wishes have contributed to the fact that my treatment and recovery are going well. Much love back at all of you!”
Yauch’s initial message revealing the cancer said that doctors had caught it early, but there’s been no official word on how advanced the disease is. Yauch did not say when he planned to update fans again.
The full text of Yaunch’s note reads:
hey all,
hope you are doing well.
so i’m about a week and a half out of surgery now and rapidly recovering from it. i haven’t taken any of the pain meds, which supposedly speeds along the healing process, or should i say, taking them slows it down. anyway, i spent 1 night at the hospital after the surgery. the hospital was too crazy to get any rest so i headed home to relax, have home cooked food and hang out with the family.
i’m pretty well detoxed from the anesthesia that they pumped me up with to keep me under for all that time. that took several days to get out of my system. my neck and jaw are still pretty stiff from the surgery, but it gets better everyday. had the stitches out this past monday… so things are moving along.
but no sooner am i on the mend from this first torture than are they lining up the next one. the next line of treatment will be radiation. that involves blasting you with some kind of beam for a few minutes a day, 5 days a week, for about 7 weeks. that will start in a few weeks…
saw the jay-z cover of no sleep, and the coldplay one of fight for your right from APW on youtube. good shit. and i heard karen o wore a “get well MCA” armband, and that q-tip gave a shout out too….. very kind of them.
just wanted to thank them and everyone else who sent positive thoughts my way. i do think that all of the well wishes have contributed to the fact that my treatment and recovery are going well.
much love back at all of you!
adam
Day: August 5, 2009
Spinal Tap ‘Unwigged’ Tour Coming To DVD
he trio behind Spinal Tap and the Folksmen has set a Sept. 1 release date for a DVD of their recent concert tour.
“Unwigged & Unplugged: An Evening with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer” features an entire 35-track performance filmed at their May 31 show at the Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee. The show features Spinal Tap material from the film “This is Spinal Tap” and the albums “Break Like the Wind” and this year’s “Back From the Dead,” as well as some of the Folksmen tracks from the Guest-written and -directed “A Mighty Wind.” Guest, McKean and Shearer were joined on the tour by “Back From the Dead” producer CJ Vanston as well as McKean’s wife Annette O’Toole, who co-wrote “A Mighty Wind’s” Academy Award-nominated duet “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.”
The DVD contains the concert only, with no extra material.
“It’s a great way to present these songs,” Shearer, who wrote liner notes for the DVD, told Billboard.com during the tour. “We had done this a couple of times in just very casual and almost accidental situations…and people seemed to enjoy it. So it was in the back of our minds, ‘Well, one of these days we’ll do more of that.’ ”
The trio wanted to do something to commemorate this year’s 25th anniversary of “This is Spinal Tap” as well, Shearer said, and not necessarily go out with “a full-on Spinal Tap tour.”
“We’re not big fans of repeating ourselves,” he explained. “And in terms of the state of the economy, it wasn’t the time to be going around with three semis worth of stage stuff and charging people 75 bucks to see us be Spinal Tap. So we thought, ‘Let’s do that other thing now. That’ll be fun.’ ”
Shearer said the nature of the tour also allowed the trio to showcase the Spinal Tap and Folksmen material as songs rather than the character vehicles they are in the films.
“When we’re up there up there doing it as ourselves, our heads are in the place of being musicians,” he explained. “When we’re up there as characters, when we do performances as Tap or as the Folksmen, then there’s that other layer of, ‘Yes, we’re doing this as musicians but we’re doing this as the other musicians, not as ourselves. So we might make different choices or play differently based on how we think they would do it.
“But when we’re doing it as ourselves, there’s no place to hide. This is us playing these songs that we’ve written, and this is our best effort at playing them.”
‘At the Movies’ co-host turnover is announced
NEW YORK ñ After a year of getting slammed for their performance as film critics, “At the Movies” co-hosts Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz are getting their tickets punched.
Replacing them next month on the long-running syndicated series will be film critics A.O. (Tony) Scott of The New York Times and Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune, ABC Media Productions announced Wednesday.
The abrupt change reflects a move back to the show’s quarter-century-old roots after a year its detractors dismissed as lightweight and too fast-paced.
Lyons, a Hollywood reporter and film critic for the E! network and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” took particular heat for hobnobbing with Hollywood insiders and allegedly seeking blurb glory in movie ads.
“We tried something new last season,” said Brian Frons, who heads up the Disney unit that oversees ABC Media Productions. The departing co-hosts “did everything we asked of them, and they have been complete professionals.
“However, we’ve decided to return the show to its original essence ó two traditional film critics discussing current motion picture and DVD releases.”
Scott and Phillips seem to follow in a tradition of critic co-hosts that reaches all the way back to the show’s first incarnation in 1975, a local effort called “Sneak Previews,” which paired rival Chicago newspaper film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.
The incoming Scott has spent nearly a decade as a film critic at The New York Times. He was the Sunday book critic at Newsday and a freelance contributor to publications including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Review of Books.
Phillips is the film critic of The Chicago Tribune. He has written about entertainment and the arts as a staff writer and critic for the Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune, among other publications.
The pair, who in the past have both appeared on the Chicago-based “At the Movies” as guest critics, will take over when the new season begins the weekend of Sept. 5 (check local listings for day and time).
In an interview Wednesday, the departing Lyons said he looks back on his year with the show with satisfaction and no regrets.
“I’m extremely proud of the work Mank (Mankiewicz) and I did on the show,” Lyons said. He has been able to put complaints about him into perspective, though he did take exception to “malicious” attacks leveled by those who “hide behind a computer screen.”
In a separate interview, Mankiewicz said his soon-to-be-former co-host “took most of the heat” directed at the show, “and I think it was unfair and mean-spirited.
“But we’re film critics ó and we can’t really go ballistic when people criticize us,” he reasoned. “I loved working on the show, all of it. It will sound hokey, but it really was an honor to continue that broadcast legacy that Roger and Gene created.
“I have worked on TV a long time,” he added, “and I know nothing is permanent in television.”
Categories
12598 – Promoting the Mother Corp.
CBC denies The National is moving
CBC’s senior programming brass has a secret plan to move the public broadcaster’s flagship nightly news program The National from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. to make room for more prime-time entertainment programming, an industry watchdog group says. The plan was strenuously denied yesterday by Kirstine Layfield, the executive director of English network programming.
Ian Morrison, a spokesperson for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting lobby group, told the Star the new prime-time shows may not be Canadian and that The National may be reduced by 30 minutes.
The shorter news program would save the cash-strapped broadcaster several million dollars in costs traditionally attached to the nightly newscast, usually hosted by Peter Mansbridge.
Layfield, through a spokesman, called the Friends alert “absolutely false” and “a baseless rumour.” She demanded it be removed from the watchdog’s website, friends.ca. She added that CBC’s fall schedule, yet to be made public, will contain more Canadian content, not less.
Morrison remains unconvinced. “Very reliable, trustworthy sources at the highest levels in the CBC tell us The National move will definitely be happening sometime in the fall, maybe as early as September,” he said. “The CBC board of directors hasn’t been told of the plan.”
What might happen to The Hour with George Stroumbolopoulos, which at present follows The National at 11 p.m., is open to conjecture, Morrison added.
“It doesn’t make economic sense to swap the two shows, since The Hour, even in an earlier slot, is unlikely to draw an audience larger than 175,000, while The National currently has 800,000 viewers.”
Categories
12597 – I wanna go!!
Second City taps celebrity alums for 50th anniversary bash
As part of its upcoming fiftieth anniversary, Chicago’s Second City comedy theater will host a one-night-only Chicago reunion of the cast of the iconic SCTV comedy series, featuring personal appearances by Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Martin Short and Dave Thomas, Second City is to announce later today.
There will also be special guests at both live SCTV shows, which are slated for Friday Dec. 11 on Second City’s mainstage at 1616 N. Wells St.
Also expected to perform on stage and/or sit on panels during the anniversary weekend: Jim Belushi, Jeff Garlin, Alan Arkin, Dan Castellaneta, Tim Meadows, Jack McBrayer, Tim Kazurinsky, Richard Kind, Fred Willard, Dick Schaal, Scott Adsit, David Rasche, David Steinberg, Robert Klein and many others. Invitations have also been sent to other powerful Second City alumni, including Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Rachel Dratch, Steve Carell, Mike Myers, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.
Many of those high-wattage stars are expected to show up for special alumni shows slated for Sat. Dec. 12 on both the mainstage and the attached e.t.c. stage. Panels on various aspects of Second City and the history of the theater and its art will take place all weekend.
All of the shows are billed as benefits for the Second City Alumni Fund (a fund that supports former Second City employees who have hit hard times) and thus will command a hefty but yet-to-be-announced ticket price. Tickets are not yet on sale, but they will be available to the public.
SCTV Canadian sketch-comedy show, originally an offshoot of Second City’s Toronto company, was created by Bernie Sahlins and Andrew Alexander and aired in syndication throughout Canada and the U.S. Alexander is the current proprietor and executive producer of the Second City.
The December event will feature the entire original SCTV cast (along with Short, who joined the show in its fourth season), with the exception of the late John Candy. Short, who joined the show in its fourth season, will take Candy’s place.
“This is like a high school reunion with all the good and bad friendships, the love of your life – ex-girl- and boyfriends and the teachers you loved and hated,” Alexander said, in an e-mailed message. “The extra pounds and grey hair. It will be a blast.”
For more information, visit www.secondcity.com/50.