[caption id=”attachment_1244” align=”alignnone” width=”500” caption=”Billy Squier in a pensive moment…complete with Coke endorsement.”][/caption]

Years ago—sometime between Weird Science _and _Iron Eagle III—I heard this movie line:

“The human body is a fascinating specimen. 99% of it may be operating perfectly, yet if that remaining 1% is defective, the body dies.”
Or something like that. The actor may have been Donald Pleasance, and he may have played a detective. Standing over a corpse. Surrounded by police tape and murmuring cops. Or it may have been David Warner, and he may have played a doctor. Standing over a corpse. Surrounded by test tubes and murmuring lab techs.

But I’m not here to talk about 80’s character actors. I’m here to talk about arena-rocker Billy Squier, he of the crunchy riffs and throaty whine.

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Just released earlier this week, Sky High, by DJ Benzi and Plain Pat features remixes of 18 well-known Kanye West tracks, including “Good Morning,” “Champion,” “Get ‘Em High,” “Love Lockdown,” and “Stronger.” The tracks on Sky High were plucked from all four of Kanye’s albums (The College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, and 808s & Heartbreak) as well as Estelle’s Shine. After giving this mixtape a couple of listens, it definitely ranks above some of the other Kanye West remix albums floating around out there. The best tracks on the mixtape are A-Trak’s remix of “Get ‘Em High” and “Stronger” as well as Discotech’s remix of “Homecoming,” which features Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

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In passing, I had heard of the man who had walked across the Twin Towers on a tightrope. I racked it in my brain along with equally bizarre feats: the guy who crashed down Niagara Falls in a barrel, Evil Knievel jumping sixteen cars on his motorcycle, David Blaine being David Blaine—they’re all there together. I already knew the outcome; he made it across. It’s interesting and all, but I was skeptical of Man On Wire, a feature length documentary that focuses entirely on a single fleeting moment. Does the tightrope walker, Philippe Petit have a drug addiction and in his recovery realizes that he must fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a circus performer? Is he doing this as a means for funding an expensive surgery for his terminally ill child? Is it an extreme method for conquering his fear of heights? How is filmmaker James Marsh possibly going to engage me with ninety-four minutes of tightrope walking, and what melodramatic background story was he going to try and scam me with?

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As we get set to address a new millennium, science and technology are becoming the new weapons of change, and who better to arm you for the future battle than BILLY IDOL.

—From the 1993 press release for Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk album

I’m bringing cyberpunk back. Well, sort of.

The cyberpunk movement was such an inconsequential niche that even hipsters turned away their fake-eyeglass-clad eyes and sauntered with ironic nonchalance to more lucid forms of early 90’s nostalgia (flannel, leggings, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.). But cyberpunk deserves better. Well, sort of. And not by way of William Gibson, Phillip K. Dick, or hacker/phreaker/Johnny Mnemonic-wannabes. By way of Billy Idol. Yes, _this _Billy Idol:

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Jetcomx’s newest kid on the block, Marlene Boyette, recently had a chance to sit down and chop it up the Renaissance man himself, Mick Boogie. By deejaying A-list celebrity events across the globe, producing sick mixtapes AND running a successful clothing store, Mick brings new meaning to the term “motivated”. By the time the interview was over, he had me feeling like I may need to step MY game up. Check it…

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