Last night, with less than two hours’ notice, a friend called an offered me his second ticket to that night’s Coldplay concert. I didn’t hesitate in accepting once my wife gave me the go-ahead. I don’t attend many concerts, so it was nice to see an act I liked for free, especially when I had decided against buying tickets earlier since they started around $75.

Fiona Apple opened for them, miserably. Talented though she may be, she is a crazed, twitching, emotional mess with zero stage presence, and I couldn’t wait for her to finish her set. In marked contrast, Coldplay’s non-stop, two-hour performance was animated, highly visual, dynamic and – if you’ll excuse the term – rocking. Judging from that show, they’re well on their way to being the next U2.

But here’s my whole reason for writing: Why spend that much money if you’re just going to text-message your friends the whole time? Because that’s what all the young’uns around me were doing. At least when they weren’t taking blurry photos of the stage with their camera phones. And of course, I had the grand luck to be seated behind The Girl Who Knows All the Words and Wants to Let Everybody Know about It, Especially Chris Martin. Kids, I know you’re excited to be out on a school night away from Mom and Dad so you can smoke and share a beer, but this is Coldplay. It’s not exactly cutting-edge hipster material.

Good Lord, I am old!

On this very site recently, someone asked, “Who would want a He-Man DVD?” The answer: My kids!

HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: SEASON ONE, VOL. 2 is Brentwood’s second box set to collect the beloved ’80s Filmation animation series, here with 32 full-length episodes. Unlike my brothers, I was a little too old to catch the He-Man fever in its day, so I don’t hold the nostalgia for it that so many do. But my undiscriminating kids enjoyed the heck out of it, and I found it enjoyable in small bits, partly just because of the wonderfully weird color scheme of the fantasy-land backgrounds.

You know the drill for each and every episode: The evil Skeletor throws some obstacle in He-Man’s way, and by the power of Grayskull, He-Man overcomes it in a manner of minutes. Lessons are learned, toys are sold. It was unremarkable for television, but influential for children’s television, and one of the documentaries on the extra features addresses that, as well as the limitations writing for a kids’ cartoon in terms of what was and wasn’t allowed.

The extras are really what sets this box set apart from other cartoons which get a cursory release at best. Here you’ll find storyboards, scripts, TV spots, character profiles, trading cards (one by Gilbert Hernandez!?!) and the almighty interviews. If MASTERS was appointment viewing in your youth, it can be so again.

In anticipation of what is sure this season’s finest horror-comedy about alien slugs, Universal Pictures wants you to put together your own trailer or TV spot for the film SLITHER. Just go here, engage your mad editing skillz and you could win $25,000, of which you will pay 10 percent. Thanks to Louis for the link.

Character actors with first names starting with the letter “D” are dropping like flies! Following Don Knotts and Darren McGavin, Dennis Weaver has died of cancer at the age of 81.

A former track star at my alma mater (the University of Oklahoma), Weaver had a huge career in television thanks to his role as Chester on GUNSMOKE and then later starring in MCCLOUD. But to me, Weaver was never better (nor had better material) than in the made-for-TV movie DUEL, directed by a then-unknown Steven Spielberg. It remains one of the five best films Spielberg has ever made, and certainly Weaver’s finest hour-and-a-half.

Saturday night I was invited to attend the Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists annual awards banquet as a guest of the Oklahoma Gazette, where my cover story “FOOTLOOSE: The OKG True Hollywood Story” was to receive some kind of award recognition. (Astute Hitch readers will recall a longer, more error-ridden version of it appearing in the current issue as “FOOTLOOSE: The Hitch True Hollywood Story.)

The trip turned out to be worth the 220 miles and eight-hour investment because – to my surprise – the article took first place in the newspaper entertainment feature category. I got a shiny new plaque, which greatly impressed my 5-year-old daughter, who said excitedly, “Hey! It says Rod Lott on it!”

The last award I won was for column writing. It, too, was for first place. It was back in 1993. I am on a roll.

As if Don Knotts wasn’t enough, we lost another longtime character actor this weekend when Darren McGavin died yesterday at the age of 83.

Everyone knows McGavin as the cranky dad from A CHRISTMAS STORY, but in my heart, he’ll always be Carl Kolchak, the hat-wearing, monster-hunting investigative reporter from the ’70s cult series KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. Interestingly, the Associated Press obit completely fails to even mention this credit. He’s one of those guys who I liked in everything I saw him in, from the Disney movie NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN of my youth (co-starring, interestingly, Knotts) to being BILLY MADISON’s dad. Hell, even his role as the general in the ill-fated, straight-to-video CAPTAIN AMERICA. He will be missed.

THREE’S COMPANY. THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG. THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN. THE PRIVATE EYES. When I was a kid, Don Knotts equaled comedy. He died Friday at the age of 81.

Knotts, of course, is best known as Barney Fife from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. So much that our local newspaper today carries the headline “BARNEY DIES,” which is fairly insulting since that wasn’t his actual name. In summary: Don Knotts was a cool guy, despite Mr. Furley’s apricot ascots.

If you haven’t yet seen the documentary genius that is MURDERBALL, you can do so for free (assuming you have cable) when A&E runs it on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. That’s just before the Academy Awards, at which this quadriplegic-rugby film will compete with those damn penguins for Best Documentary Feature.

In my humble opinion, this is the one that deserves to win. I laughed, I cried, I was riveted. Hell, it was one of the five best movies I saw last year, fiction or non-fiction. Of course, on A&E, you’ll likely be denied the clips from the instructional video that demonstrate how quadriplegics have sex, but even without that, MURDERBALL is still a must-see.

Coca-Cola has introduced a new carbonated, citrus-flavored “energy beverage” called Vault. Since I tried it yesterday, I know why they chose the name Vault: Because it tastes like rust. Well, not rust exactly, but it sure wasn’t good (like a poor man’s Mountain Dew MDX), had a nasty aftertaste and gave me a headache. To add insult to injury, I didn’t receive any rush of energy off it, either. All in all, I went zero-for-three on their tagline of “The Taste. The Quench. The Kick!”

In other Things That Aren’t Good for You news, Taco Bueno no longer offers tamales, which really bummed me out yesterday.

Sometimes when I’m at line at the post office, LIVE WITH REGIS AND KELLY is on the TV in the corner and I can stare at Kelly Ripa for a few minutes. It always makes me think I should TiVo it just for the Ripa, but then why go to the trouble now that “Kelly Ripa Gone Wild” exists? It’s a two-and-a-half-minute comp of clips of Kelly dancing and gyrating and tossing her hair and slapping her ass and rubbing her woman parts all over Regis Philbin. Where does she get all this energy? Is this girl on speed? And does Reege have the best job on television? No. He has the best job, period.

So on Valentine’s Day, my 8-year-old son got some newfangled bubbles made of silicone or something that allows you to catch them on your finger without popping them. Unfortunately for us, he caught them on that finger.

In 1967, a film came along with little fanfare, yet rocked the world, was embraced by a generation, won awards and became a classic. That film was THE GRADUATE. It was not, by any means, the film I’m going to discuss instead: GALLERY OF HORROR.

This may be the single worst horror anthology film ever made, and that includes DEADTIME STORIES. Standing alongside a backdrop of a castle, John Carradine introduces five tales of supposed terror. But the only shaking going on will be from your belly laughing. Words cannot adequately convey the sheer ineptitude of every painful minute of this one, but if you have any familiarity with director David L. Hewitt (of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME and MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY infamy), you’ll know what to expect: something that should’ve been on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000.

Here are mercifully brief descriptions of each story:
• “The Witches Clock” – Dumb married couple moves into spooky house, finds old grandfather clock that has powers, causing Carradine to show up at your door.
• “King Vampire” – A vampire kills people.
• “Monster Raid” – A scientist invents a drug that turns him into a zombie when his assistant (who’s banging his wife) injects him with too much of it.
• “The Spark of Life” – Professor Lon Chaney Jr. and two med students bring a dead body back to life with electric shock.
• “Count Alcuard” – Jonathan Harker visits the castle of Count Dracula. It’s just like the Bram Stoker novel, except – and I’m just going to go ahead and spoil it for you – Harker turns into a werewolf in the last five seconds.

It’s in GALLERY’s “twist” endings that make this film so hysterical. Each segment is anywhere from 10 to 18 minutes long, but seem like twice that length. However, they’re worth sitting through just to see the bad twists. Actually, scratch that – no, they’re not. If you rent this DVD, skip to the next chapter and then rewind to about a minute previous so you can just see the ending. Repeat four times, and you’ll have saved yourself 76 minutes worth of time and still get all the entertainment value out of it that I did. The one for “Clock” is pretty sweet, too, when all of sudden the clock stops and the three actors onscreen throw their hands up and scream as fire is superimposed over them.

The film liberally cribs footage from one of the Roger Corman Poe films, which only makes GALLERY look even worse by comparison.

I don’t even know where to begin. But you must see FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY, because your life is not complete until you have seen a James Bond 007 spoof starring a Filipino midget.

This 1979 oddity stars pint-sized Weng Weng as Agent 00. In a film like this, plot is really insignificant and just gets in the way of the novelty of all the dwarf antics, but it involves him protecting some hussy who gets shot at “two or three times a week” (!) from a criminal organization whose boss communicates with underlings via a round, lighted fashion mirror. The movie doesn’t so much have a story as much as it does an endless cycle of Weng Weng infiltrating, fighting and running away, but I’m by no means complaining. I wish it were three hours long, because I never tire of seeing the little guy sliding around on the floor shooting and (especially) his signature move of punching dudes in the balls. Seriously, this film has more nut trauma than the JACKASS box set.

True to the 007 franchise, there’s the requisite scene of the agent being given handy gadgetry to help him on his mission. Because this is a Filipino film, however, the crafty inventions are pretty much limited to a blinking ring, a pen and some X-ray specs, which Weng Weng immediately tries out on the agency’s secretarial pool. He even gets some authentic lovin’ from the woman he’s trying to keep alive, though we’re luckily spared from the true monstrosity of that sight. He knew he had an in when she told him, “You’re petite, like a potato,” because that’s what the ladies like.

This Mondo Macabro DVD also features a wacky kung-fu film called CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER, which I haven’t watched yet. I’m still trying to recover from the Weng Weng experience. Long may the little guy reign.

The French are just as sick and twisted as we are, and not just because of their reluctance to bathe. The proof lies in HIGH TENSION, an ugly but largely effective gore-strewn horror shocker, now available in an unrated cut.

It’s a simple film to describe: A young woman named Marie accompanies her friend Alex to her family’s farm for the weekend. In the middle of the night, a serial killer arrives and slaughters them all except the girls. He takes Alex for a souvenir, but Marie overcomes her fear to try to get her back.

There was a lot of talk about this film’s big twist, but I had it figured out beforehand. It was easy; all I had to do was ask myself, “What would be the worst possible explanation?” Lo and behold, that’s the one they threw out, and it is a total, complete cheat, which is really too bad, because it sells short the very intense first half. It’s dark and disturbing enough that I wouldn’t want to watch it alone at night with all the lights off, and seeing very graphic depictions of what the killer does to Alex’s parents is unsettling – something you can’t say about many horror flicks these days.

Then they had to go and ruin it with that “twist.” Until then, though, HIGH TENSION is a gruesome, nasty little splatter film that plays like a combination of Hitchcock and Argento. With a message that appears to be “Steer clear of lesbians.”

If your iTunes library lacks that presidential feeling, we have your solution. Three Northern California songwriters are currently about midway through a month-long project to write and record 42 songs about every President of the United States of America from George Washington to Bill Clinton. Songwriters Christian Kiefer, Jeff Pitcher and Matthew Gerken are all simultaneously working on the project and are posting the songs (an average of two a day) here.

“It seemed an important idea,” said Pitcher, who presented the initial idea to Kiefer late last year. “Utilizing the ‘golden cows’ of American history as the subject matter of contemporary songs was interesting enough to pursue, and inviting the others into the project helps keep everyone on their toes.”

The trio has tentative plans to release the completed 42-song cycle as an album late this year.

Even though we may not always show it.

Every Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided, should begin with an unhealthy donut. Today was “Dads & Donuts” day at my kids’ elementary school, which means you have to wake up that much earlier to get your kids to school a little earlier in time to line up for a free carton of milk and a donut from Wal-Mart. This is the third year I’ve attended this momentous event (which my kids treat like it’s Christmas), and I was pleased to see that for the first time ever, the school offered an alternative flavor to glazed. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart apparently coats their chocolate donuts with chocolate glue.

But, hey, it’s Valentine’s Day. I roll with the punches. I gave my body some love (not that kind) by going to the doctor for a checkup and he said he didn’t even need to check my prostate unless I wanted to. Not a fan of the anal probe, I declined. That alone should make it a good day, but then my lovely wife gave a nice watch for a gift. And honey, I hope you love the ring that you bought on your own and then told me it was your Valentine’s gift I got you. Happy Valentine’s Day!

In the horror film THE CAVE, there are prehistoric monsters in … wait for it … wait for it … wait for it … a cave! A group of unlucky people find this out, in one of those “who’s that again?” kinda casts that includes that one guy from 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, that black guy who’s not Taye Diggs, the main girl from COYOTE UGLY and the Korean guy from LOST. But this movie is so boring that I couldn’t bring myself to sit through it all. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen it all.

“Scott Stapp Gets Married, Arrested”

Remember Tab? You know, that cola drink in the pinkish can that the fat women on your block drank in the 1970s? Coca-Cola has just relaunched Tab, but as an energy drink. That alone piqued my curiosity enough to try one this weekend, although the can looks like a prop from QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY.

It tastes like … well, Tab. Or at least what I remember Tab to taste like, which wasn’t very good. And I certainly didn’t get any caffeine boost off of it, so my morning was as lethargic as ever.

Coca-Cola also has the Full Throttle energy drink, which we told you tastes like motor oil, but they’ve recently introduced a new flavor, Full Throttle Fury. Since a sugar-free option was available, I tried that yesterday. Though the can is flaming red, the liquid itself is orangy orange. And it tastes pretty good, like a fizzy orange soda. I had to down both of the can’s servings to feel its alertness effects, though. Ah, the sacrifices I make for not drinking coffee like everyone else.

“Microvision,” the first-ever music video from the Hitch-approved band American Boyfriends, is complete, cool and available for your eyeballs now.

Hitch’s own “DVDemented” columnist Richard York is the bald guy playing the guitar, and contributor Chris Sharpe helped put it all together. Even if I didn’t know and love those guys, I’d still say the video is impressive, sporting some terrific animation and effects. I still think their album is excellent, and you can download some songs from it here, including “Microvision” (but for my money, “Supergirl” takes the cake).

Now if they’d only follow up with that second album…