One of the most hilarious bits ever done by one of the funniest shows ever made;Mystery Science Theatre 3000 varied from amusing to friggin' murderous, and this is truly brilliant. Of course, they had a lot to work with.
And I can't just leave you Mister B. Natural without adding this; the character was played by a dancer and (oddly...) opera singer named Betty Luster. Betty seems to have been just one more of the gajillion pretty girls consumed by popular entertainment in the Forties and Fifties.
According to Wikipedia, she first turned up as something called "Miss Lake Mowhawk" in '37. (Her IMDB bio says she was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1922, so this seems to have been the Lake Mohawk in Jersey).
She seems to have gone to England for a while in the late Thirties (where she appeared in an early Beeb TV show!) but was back in the States by 1940, and was a chorine on Broadway and Miami Beach and sang at the Philadelphia Opera through the Forties. In 1950 and 1951 she was in Hollywood doing TV work for a game and variety show, and she's known to have been back on Broadway in the mid-Fifties.
(Betty's on the right, in the toe shoes, BTW)
So far as we know Mister B. was her last role. She got married some time in the late Fifties to one Edmund Astley Prentis the Third, who was - get this - a geotechnical engineer! Dude, we effing rock!
At least his obit says his firm, Spencer, White and Prentis Inc. "specialized in underground and underpinning construction. Among its projects were the underground areas of the White House, the World Trade Center and sections of the New York subway system."
So Ned got the hot crossdressing b-natural babe, and she, apparently happily, became his spouse, helpmeet and baby-mama and never trod the boards again.
Instead, she became - I shit you not - a "world-class croquet player".
?????
Did you even know there WAS such a thing?
Yep.
Here's the Nedster himself, croquing away or whatever the hell you call it, from his Croquet Hall of Fame bio.
Oh, and it says there he typically played dressed in "Panama hat, white shorts, white knee socks with red flashers, and the occasional bush jacket" which, frankly, would have been enough put me off my stroke just looking at him, but, then, that's world-class croquet for you - it's a blood sport.
So there's a Croquet Hall of Fame.
And Betty's hubby is in it.
What a world we live in, eh?
Anyway, seems like Ned and Betty were a pretty happy couple. They had four kids, a brace of each gender, and a fistful of grandkids, and lived in croquet-lathered luxury (did I mention that he was also a big-game hunter and one of those sports fisherman that flies around to places where you can catch ginormous fish you can't eat, like marlin, and that they lived in West Palm Beach, which is serious Rich People Land? Did so.) until Ned went to the Big Wicket in the Sky in '97. Betty lived on at their home in West Palm Beach, presumably skinning benjamins off the noobs at the West Palm Croquet Club, for almost fifteen more years until her own death a year ago.
And that was that, the end of Mister B.
You knew you read this blog for stuff just exactly like this, didn't you?
As John Lennon used to say: "So this is Christmas..." Eric Idle...ummm, didn't say it quite that way.
You know how I feel about this whole business. I'm more with Idle than with Lennon.
Mind you, my likes and dislikes don't really matter. We've had Christmas this and Christmas that and Christmas the other damn thing since practically Halloween. But now that we're on the dark side of Thanksgiving, well...
This year is turning out to be interesting, however. The kiddos are caught up in the usual Christmas greed, obediently parroting the gimme paternoster at every huckster on the television. Missy, especially, is turning out to be a sucker for cheap, shiny plastic crap. A commercial for anything aimed at kids, from Benadroos to Bandryl will produce her immediate Pavlovian"IwantthatcanIhavethatwillyougetmethat?" She's not completely unreasonable - there are no tantrums or tears if she hears "no", but through repetition this does not become endearing.
The Peep, who at seven-and-a-half is a more experienced consumer, has opted for quality over quantity and wants only the largest and most costly Lego toys. These, by the way, I am now utterly unwilling to provide to him based on bitter experience. As objects the damn things are fiendishly expensive; as toys, completely worthless, being both heavy and fragile. The disassociated pieces of but the "Republic Attack Shuttle" and the "AT-TE" walker ,now intermingled with a dozen other smaller Lego objects, stand mute witness to this.His grandparents can bankroll his Lego addiction, if they want. I'm getting him a bicycle.
Oh, and he has decided he doesn't want to kill a tree for Santa. He wants to get a fake tree. No pink ones, mind, and it can't be plaid or otherwise obviously "fake-y". But he wants to get a plain green fake tree. And it can't be before...
Christmas Eve.
I'm tempted to go with it just to see what happens. And then dance an antic hay on the ruins. It'd be the Perfectly Awful Christmas.
But then there's being the grown-up thing. Sigh.
Of course, the other inescapable element of Wenceslausery is the sudden metastasizing Christmas specials and Christmas movies and Christmas television episodes.
Don't mistake me; like any kid of the Video Era I grew up with the idea that television, not the angel of Bethlehem, announced the Savior's Birth. I was raised on Christmas commercials, Rudolph, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch (although I am glad that I am too old to have my eyes seared with the awful Ron Howard/Jim Carrey live-action version; talk about a childhood trauma...) as more important to the Greatest Story ever told as the Big Guy from little Galilee. In fact, I would say that my "Christmas" - the ideas and images that made the holiday a reality for me - came from the cathode ray tube rather than the Bible, the church, or the stories.
Perhaps one of my favorite celluloid Christmases is the one in the George Seaton "Miracle on 34th Street".
C'mon, I know you've seen this thing. It may be the biggest Christmas chestnut after "It's a Wonderful Life", and it's certainly less glurgeworthy. It's a breezy confection of a yarn, with Ed Gwenn as the whiskered gentleman that everyone doesn't quite want to believe is really Santa Claus. John Payne makes a sensible good fellow of a hero as Fred the attorney who defends "Kris Kringle", Maureen O'Hara a gloriously mature and completely desirable Doris, the Macy's executive whose little girl Susan is the pivot on whom the movie turns. Susan, played by a dark and brilliant young Natalie Wood, is the perfect center; wise and foolish, cautious and loving, skeptical and credulous. As a kid she's the cool big sister you wish you had, as an adult, the bright, loving little daughter.And, of course, the movie is full of great little bits of work. Gwenn discovering what people with beards shouldn't blow bubble gum. "Susan" is full of inside knowledge on the Macy's Thanksgiving parade she's picked up from her mother, who has organized it for all her young life. The brilliant gimmick that lets Fred "prove" Kris is THE Santa Claus through the inspiration of the overworked mail sorter who convinces his foreman to send "all them Santy Claus letters" to the courthouse.It's practically perfect; gently sentimental without treacle, loving and respecting its holiday without glurge. It's one of the few Christmas pictures I can sit through without wincing.
Oh, and did you know that 20th Century released it in May? Seriously. Weird, yes, but there it is: May 2, 1947. You can look it up.Now this is America. And as you know, here if something works once, that means it needs to be done over. And bigger. With more stuff. And preferably in color.
And that's what happened to "Miracle". Actually, it happened FIVE times; two one-hour television versions in the Fifties, a musical in the Sixties (but all sorts of awful musicals happened in the Sixties, so it wasn't exactly the worst of its type...), a TV movie in the Seventies, and, finally, a theatrical movie in the Nineties.
The 1994 movie version, for some reason, has been in heavy rotation on the usual calbe channel suspects lately; Lifetime, "Family", Hallmark. Its really kind of intriguing, in a sort of true-crime-story way, to see the difference between the America that had just emerged from the abyss of World War 2 and the one that was the Sole Superpower, the Indispensable Nation, the gigantic economic and political colossus then at the height of its power and wealth.The players are all there; Richard Attenborough as Kris, trying to look Gwennishly charming and succeeding in looking merely dyspeptic. Dylan McDermot replaces Payne, looking more intent but less decent. Elizabeth Perkins, whose ability to play vulnerably intelligent women I truly enjoy, does so here and deftly as always. Mara Wilson does a decent job as Susan, although she never manages Wood's luminosity or her skeptical intelligence (which is a problem, because the story calls for convincing the prenaturally adult Wood to feel and love childishly to be a Santaesque labor, whereas Wilson comes off as just a nice kiddo).
John Hughes directs.
That's not the problem.
The problem is that the story was perfectly suited for the sunny, lighthearted good sense of the Forties. The original never felt strained, never lectured, never brooded or pouted. It was a straightforward tale of whimsy, well-told, but with a good-humored wink towards the audience.
The Nineties version has none of this. It is uneven in tone, sometimes childishly callow, sometimes cynical, and adds a disturbingly strong, wildly out-of-place thread of religious piety to the plot, disturbing since the entire story is based on the central reality of that very Anti-Christ of American commercial Christmas, Santa Claus.
I should add that the religiousness comes across to me as rather mean-spirited, not presented as a sort of warm God-fuzzy but rather as a failure on the part of the irreligious. You first encounter it when Fred comes over to have Thanksgiving dinner with Susie and her mom. They don't say grace, you see, and Doris (inexplicably renamed "Dorie" in this one) is made to act embarassed and contrite about it. Because people who don't have God or religion can't really be good people, right?
The tone is very reminiscent of the sort of "Christmas Wars" then being fought at the time the remake was made, and the film shares something of the sour and accusatory tone of the time. Very unpleasant.
The injection of God and worship into the original cheerfully irreligious story is jarring in more ways than just the way it places God and Santa uneasily alongside each other. It rips the wonderful setpiece out of the climax of the story.
Instead of the endless chain of letter-carriers tromping into the courtroom with their bags and bags of Santa letters - proving that the U.S. Post Office believes Kris to be the "one and only" Santa - we have a very strained and badly skewed moment involving the little girl, a Christmas card with a dollar in it (WTF?) and the motto "In God We Trust" circled with hi-lighter.(Don't get it? Me, neither. The film has the trial judge go into some long-winded explanation about how the U.S. Department of Treasury can believe in God with no hard evidence so the people of New York can believe in Santa Claus in the same way (conveniently ignoring such precedent as Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984) in which the Supreme Court held that the motto has "lost through rote repetition any significant religious content" and called it mere "ceremonial deism"). Yeah, yeah, I don't buy it, either. It's crap, and badly written crap, at that).Not content with replacing the best scene in the flick with a pottage of claptrap, Hughes then proceeds to add one last bit of bizarre business. His Dorie and Fred get married (at Midnight Mass, no less, slamming your head against the Jesus is The Reason For The Season wall again in case you forgot the whole "In God We Trust" thing) and then go house-hunting.The house thing is right out of the 1947 original, where city-bound little Susan wanted the Forties American Dream House in the 'burbs for Christmas. In that version the house is the setup for the punchline (Kris really IS Santa, see..?) as well as the Fred-and-Doris kiss-and-let's-get-married-and-be-happy-families that makes the Happy Ending of the story. Fade to black.
In the Hughes version, same setup, except instead of just wanting the house for Christmas Susan had Three Wishes (John Hughes - Brilliantly Original Thinker, eh?); a dad, the house, and a baby brother. When they get to the house, Susan announces that she now has ALL her wishes. Fred and Dorie goggle at her, at each other, then down at Dorie's womb. Booiiiinnng! Santa is like Christmas' Fertility God, see? He puts babies in ladies' tummies!
WTF?
Anyway, I don't enjoy the Nineties version enough to sit all the way through it, but it keeps turning up like the mouse the cat keeps dragging inside no matter how often you toss it into the yard. So I've now seen almost all of it mow in bits and pieces.
And between the nonsensical alterations, the strident piety, and the overall dark and charmless tone, the newer version of "Miracle on 34th Street" just seems to me to say something very unkind about us Americans of 1994 and 2010. I know the flaws of the Forties, I know all about the flaws of the people who lived at that time; they were and are my parents.
But it just seems that the sort of people who made that movie were different people than the ones who made the last one, and that based on the difference between the films, the changes that occurred in the people weren't particularly good ones.
Does anyone else find this "tumescent-blue-robot-and-Korean-schoolgirls" thing disturbing?It's from the blog "Gusts of Popular Feeling", where the author discusses Korea's official desire to be rid of those pesky foreigners currently used to teach the lingua anglia of technological civilization to the residents of the Land of the Morning Calm.
We're so used to being the biggest racists on the block that it can be surprising to find other peoples just as prejudiced as we are. But one thing our cultural prejudices do is blind us to the realities of the places and peoples we encounter. The people inhabiting the Korean peninsula have been ferocious fighters for centuries, invaders and conquerors whenever possible, and like most aggressive, self-confident cultures tend to be a leeeetle bit xenophobic.
Whether or not the Korean government succeeds in replacing their foreign teachers with robots, the fundamental nature of people won't change. Many Koreans will always find those funny, pale-faced, rude, noisy, horny outlanders a nasty inconvenience at best.
[This illustration is from "Book of Fools", a photo collection from local artist Nancy Hill. If you have the inclination, you might follow the link and look at her stuff. Much of it is lovely, and worth parting with a dollar for the artistry as well as the good deed of supporting a terrific Portland and Oregon photographer
It's a quirky little book, full of the most mordant images imaginable, from the bleak fool ruling his deluded country, to the fools for love, and the fools and their money. For when have any of us not been a fool in our times and seasons.
But I just love this barefoot fool dancing because, when you think about it, sometimes there's not nothing else you can do but dance.]
There's a lot of idle thoughts floating about the hanger-like cavernousity of my brain. But before I go and write anything further, I have to stop and say this:
If I was a pirate (and why not?) and I was reaving the littoral waters off Somalia (and who wouldn't?), I'd hate like hell to have to face the wrath of the Republic of Korea Ship...MUNMU THE GREAT!!
I understand the great traditions of the U.S. Navy and why our ships are named after things like battles and states and venal, racist senators and nasty, dimwitted, senile actors. But when I contemplate the fear that the foe facing the mighty Munmu must feel...
...I have a certain sympathy for the Honorable John S. Williams (D-Mississippi):"
Whereas the British Sea Monster which we are imitating has been named Dreadnought- an archaic name- this man-o-war is hereby named Skeered O'Nuthin as an expression of our true American spirit; Provided further, that it is hereby made the duty of the first Captain who shall command her to challenge in the nation's name, the so called Dreadnought to a duel a outrance, to take place... in sight of Long Island and that on the occasion of the combat the President and his cabinet... being fond of the strenuous life, shall be entertained on the quarter-deck as guests of the ship and the nation."
So, while I'm just woolgathering...couple of other things.
What is it with people going "outdoors" looking like they were going to the goddam mall? The nice people from the parks service that staff Sabino Canyon make sure you understand that the canyon is a desert. It's HOT. It's DRY. It's SUNNY. They even give you a picture to show you the best way to stay safe and comfortable walking the main access road. Hat, loose clothing that covers you, some trail food, sturdy shoes, sunscreen, water.
So what did we see getting on and off the tram that runs the length of the canyon?
Wifebeaters. Flip-flops. Titty tops. Assgrabbing shorts and babies in little umbrella strollers. Cans of soda pop (if that) and a handful of Cheetos.
Wassup wit dat? Are these people just not bright? Do they not care, or do they think that the real outdoors is like a Disney park where you can duck into Donald's Drink N' Doze if the beer nuts run out or the baby gets sunburned or the little woman blows out a flippy? I mean, it's not THIS bad
but...
C'mon. Are we really that stupid?
Sigh.
And speaking of wierd stuff in public...did you know that public frottage is a real problem in Japan?
Yep. You know what frottage is, right? "Frotteurism"? Oh. Well, okay, that thing where you rub yourself up against someone to provide you or them (or both of you) with sexual pleasure?
Frottage. Frotteurism. Whatev.
BUT. Apparently one of the hazards of the crowded Tokyo (and other big Japanese cities) public transit systems is that anonymous people will...ummm...rub you the wrong way.It's called "chikan" in Japanese, 痴漢, チカン, or ちかん, and is also a common theme of Japanese porn (which, for reasons best know to the Japanese, also involves a lot of "Shibari" - rope-tied women. For some sort of cultural reasons Japanese men consider sex just "enh" but tying your woman up with elaborate rope trusses? Yowza!! Go figure). And the problem is so bad that the Tokyo transit people actually offer women-only cars to keep people's (OK, men's) grubby little hands to themselves.
Damn, people are wierd.
And in the category of "wierd people"?
Republican governors.
Here's some idiot called Sanford, and no, it's not the Fred character from the old sitcom, the GOP gov of South "We LIKE our roads shitty" Carolina, saying - actually SAYING -"What you're doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more money that we don't have and send it to different states, we'll create jobs. If that's the case, why isn't Zimbabwe a rich place?"
Wait, sunshine, wait...are you saying that spending fake money, money not backed up by tax revenues, is BAD? Like, Zimbabwean bad? Like the sort of thing that only poor, stupid nigras do?
But...but...how does that square with the fact that your fellow GOP jackholes just managed to spend EIGHT YEARS driving our entire COUNTRY from a multibillion-dollar surplus into a multibillion-dollar deficit (you know, where the outlay exceeds the income? Yeah, turdblossom, THAT deficit) to fight a bunch of land wars in asia and enrich the two-yacht family? To ensure the decline of your country, never mind your crappy little impoverished state, into an oligarchy with more convicts than millionaires?
Can you explain that to us, dummy? Or can you at least draw us a picture of how defict spending to fight moronic wars of choice = good while deficit spending to try and keep people from starving and losing their homes = bad? And why Republicans BELIEVE this mindless drivel, not only since their history in the Depression proved them flat-ass wrong but......now with fifty percent more frottage!?!
Oh, sorry, Dubya. I thought you some weird Japanese guy on a train or something. I see you had important...ummm...business of state to address.
Anyway...you say those are GOOD reasons to just "print some more money". That then it's OK. just so long as you weren't jerking around like some dumb ol' Aferkin nigras trying to, y'know, help stave off A FUCKING DEPRESSION!!!
Jesus wept.
So I needed some good thoughts, and whenever I need that I just head over to "Waiting For Sprout" to check up on brand new mom Kelli and her little Madeline.
Cute? OMFG, we're talking a Cuteness Tsunami! A veritable Black Plague of Cuteness! The Great Awakening of Cutitude! These two are Cute Squared to the Nth Power of Cute!
Joe Bob says: check 'em out!
OK. Done meandering. Back tomorrow with more real thinking. Have a good day and watch your ass in crowded subways. Banzai!
Silent house. Only light from the streetlamps, and that damn security light in the neighbor's backyard that stays on all fricking night. I carry my boots so that my footfalls don't wake Mojo. Children tussled in knots of jammies, blankets, lovies and stuffed toys. How does Missy kick off her ENTIRE blanket without waking up? Tuck it around her - she rolls on her side, sighs, sleeps again. Her cheek is like warm velvet.
Chilly outside, scent of smoke, dew, cold iron. Fog forms on the windshield immediately. Slow rhythm of the night traffic elides me, dark houses, empty lawns. Glare of St. Johns, pale green bridge arching over the broken glass reflections of the Willamette.
Linnton; relict of the mill town useless neon and idle storefronts. Cavern of dark highway spooling out before me. Tire hiss. Forties memories from the radio, brassy beat eight to the bar.
Urbanity retreats; scattered houses in farm and field, sheds and barns ghostly in the yellow gleam of a single sentinal light. Black trees, arching branches pale-lit from underneath like white arms raised in dancing pose.
Cluster-shot of towns: Scappose, Rainier, Goble. Decadent civilization has reached St. Helens with a Starbucks. Hot coffee, dark as sin and bitter as grief and sweet cream steaming in the paper chalice. Into the bigger darkness as the Great River shrugs northwards around the Coast Range.Radio fades in and out, accepts strange crackling invasions from Canada or Montana. The Jesus station is playing militant hymns full of Roundhead passion enveloped in lush harmonies. His blood-red banner streams before, who follows in his train? I can feel Covenanter blood responding, face flushing with the sweet desire to smite the Godless. And here's the news...
Nothing now but dark hills, dark earth, dark sky and the moving tunnel of headlights. Gnat Creek, Clatsop Crest. Single light at Alston Mayger: former home of sour Rick and loving, giddy Mona and wise little Octobriana Marie...lost friends, where are you now? The long hill down into Clatskanie, cold wind from the marshes to the north seeps through the cracked window. Back into the night, long stretch of winding hills, past timberlands, inverted bowl of stars diamond-bright above the ragged sleeve rising south, gleam of the river flowing west, all the compass rose stretching away in the hissing night of empty road and silent forest.
House. House. Two houses, a shed, a motel. Slowing, the road rises winding to meet me, false dawn to the west the lights of Astoria, hotcakes at the Pig n' Pancake, streets slick with washing. I yawn and stretch, and the pink and azure glow behind the hills to the west promises the coming day.
It's been a strange week here at the Fire Direction Center.
1. Migraines are scary things. In the course of 4 hours I went from being married to a strong, vital, funny, sexy, smart woman to being the servant of a blind, insensate thing that burrowed from light and sound and was barely capable of movement and coherant thought. And, of course, our friends and neighbors were terrific. "OHMIGOD!" cried Mary, a friend from daycare, "My husband had a horrible headache and it turned out to be viral meningitis!!!"Ummmm...thanks for that, Mary...
Mojo is slowly recovering, but she still says she feels "hung-over", and she was wandering around this morning in her bathrobe and sunglasses looking like a cute, buxom, white Stevie Wonder with bedhead. Thank God the little peeps have been wonderfully gentle with mommy's "head owie", creeping quietly past the bedroom and refraining from leaping on Mommy like she was a pink bouncy house with legs like they usually do.
Oh, just so you know - the "anti-migraine knife"? The migraine part was a hollow handle with camphor in it, a 19th Century specific for headache. I don't think it was bad enough for...naaah.
2. I can't imagine anything that speaks as eloquently of the destitution of the political life in this, the last stages of our Republic, as the "debates" our candidates have been having.
The Palin-Biden "debate" was a joke, what with the utter incompetence of Gwen Ifil to ask anything of substance or follow up on anything else, particularly Palin's blatant refusal to answer questions on subects that she should have been prepared for but clearly knew nothing about.
But the two presidential sideshows have been ridiculous, too, with the parade of talking points and unrefuted spin and outright lies - albeit mostly from the now-desperate McCain, looking ever more like a whacked out bus station psycho missing his meds - that served, possibly, to inform someone who managed to completely miss the preceding nine months of campaigning.
That these pathetic freak shows have been accepted as a legitimate part of the campaign is a telling observation on the barrenness of our national discourse. Its one thing to be lied to by fools. Its quite another thing to demand that you be lied to and treated like a fool. Another thing entirely.
3. And, speaking of loathesome campaign bullshit,
I can't believe that Sarah Palin's "John McCain knows how to win a war" wasn't treated as a laugh line.
Last time I checked, when the enemy shoots you down, they are generally conceded to have "won" that particular encounter. Got it? You shoot them, you won. They shoot you, they won. So by cratering that rice paddy with his aircraft, John McCain did about as much to "win" the war he fought in as George B. MacClellan. But I suppose that you could stretch the incident to represent McCain's having done his bit to take out a $40,000 North Vietnamese antiaircraft missile by...ummm...flying his $2.5 million dollar aircraft into it.
Reminds me of the throwaway bit in the original Rocky where Mick (Burgess Meredith) notices that Rocky has a chintzy new pre-fight dressing gown with an enormous meat packing logo on the back,
and asks what his fighter got for being a walking shill for his brother-in-law's employer.
"I got duh robe" mumbles Rocky
Meredith looks at him with a saddened, pitying expression, and, in that perfect sarcastic gravelly Meredith voice sneers: "Shrewd..."
4. Why are so many Hollywood movies so dopey? At home with Mojo Monday I caught about half of "The Truth About Cats and Dogs". Now I have to confess having something of a thing for Janeane Garofalo; I love her smart, snarky sense of humor and her dark, smouldering intense beauty.
I can't think of a man who WOULDN'T at least give her a moment's attention at a bare minimum. But for the entire picture to work she has to come off as a completely insecure dummy who won't level with Ben Chaplin (who plays the required hunk) about who she really is. The picture is clever and has a bunch of funny moments and Janeane is utterly, deliciously oofy, but that just made it all the more irritating because of the hokey premise.
When Steve Martin made his version of Cyrano at least he had the excuse of the freakish nose. But Garofalo is a luminous delight. The plot's insistence on her insecurity and fear makes her look stupid, and it's hard to be sympathetic with a dope. You just want to shake her character, and that, for me, just kills the picture.
5.
While we're on the subject of Hollywood and movies that don't tax your brain, Turner Classic ran a 1951 gem called "Take Care of My Little Girl", in which we are introduced to the lovely and frivolous "Liz Ericson", played by one of my more favorite classic Hollywood actresses, Jeanne Crain.
Callow Liz goes off to MiddleWestern U. because...well, a less kindly fellow might suspect it's to earn her "MRS" degree. Because she must, must, must pledge "Tri-U", the sisters of Upsilon Upsilon Upsilon being ONLY the most socially desirable, best dressed and popular girls on campus.
Oh, and they sing.
Of course, our little heroine's eyes are opened by the petty and vicious acts of her "sisters" and she ends up in the arms of "Joe" (Dale Robertson), the handsome senior who represents what my father, good Phi Kappa Psi that he is, would have called a "GDI". She returns her pledge pin and rejects the shallow, immoral lifestyle of the Greeks, with their chichi styles and their singing. Oh. Did I mention they sing?
Anyway, Jeanne is lovely, Robertson is manly, the slinky Jean Peters is delightful as the Eeeeevil Queen Bee of the Tri-Us (expand the picture above to really appreciate Jean's comittment to authenticity in her pictures: the shot is a publicity still from her first feature, the utterly awful "Captain from Castile". As terrible as the picture is, Jean is terrific, and note the genuine 16th Century leg hair on Jean - she's wild and positively woolly. And this in the Fifties, mind you, when it was every American woman's duty to shave, pull, depilate, slash and burn every single exposed follicle - God forbid that one of the Mad Men or Cocktail Nation Weenies got the idea that women had, y'know, like, actual body hair!) and the whole thing is good campy fun on the way to being a "scathing indictment" of the campus Greek system.
So "Take Care of My Little Girl" is a total hoot without being as irritatingly dumb as "TTAC&D". Catch it if you can.
6. It's sad to admit, but when it comes to pumpkin pie, the recipe I still like the best is on the inside of the freaking Carnation evaporated milk can.
It's a goddam 1950's artifact (and evaporated milk has got to be the Devil's diaper gravy, anyway, right?) and combined with frozen pie crust has GOT to be bad for you. But I love the stuff. It's memories of childhood autumns in Chicago with the cold wind whirling the fallen leaves outside, cider and pumpkin spices and a warm woolen blanket and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the black-and-white TV inside.
None of my kids or Mojo likes the orange squash as pie. So I am forced to make the whole thing and eat it myself.
Sad, really. But in a good way.
7. Cats must have very odd little minds. Nitty has been sitting next to the laptop (enjoying the hot fan exhaust, I suspect) licking herself with concentrated effort for a solid ten minutes. And yet, I've seen her unable to do the same thing for more than a second or two. It's like there are two cat brains in there; one with an infinite patience and painstaking attention to detail, the other like a dandelion puffball. You never know which one is in charge at any given moment.
8. I wish that all those ads using scantily clad, painfully thin women to sell stuff would just come right out and say what they want you to think will happen if you buy their crap. Like this (Warning - NOT safe for work!):
Note that the original image went viral on the Internet, long story. But is this all that much skeevier than one of those commercials where the guy puts on the cologne or takes the "male enhancement" or gets the new car or whatever and is suddenly attacked by women who want to have his babies?
I think that Mennen or Enzyte or Accura should just do a spot that has a naked woman rubbing their product on her body (difficult with the Accura,I know, but bear with me) as the voice-over says: "Our product will make women have sex with you, regardless of how disgusting you are." Fade to black.
No shit, if I was 16, I'd have gone out and robbed a bank to buy an Accura. Robbed a fucking bank. I'm totally serious.
9.
Why is rain so enjoyable to watch and soothing to hear, yet the moment you're caught out in it, it sucks enormous pipe?
Oh, and, for the record? When we set out the new rain barrel, Mojo looked it over and noted the attachment to feed a second barrel in series. "Who needs two rain barrels?" she quipped.
Second day of rain?
Barrel's full.
10. I finally got to watch the last half of the U.S. Women's National Team vs. Brazil in the Olympic gold medal game. Tragic. Tragic. I usually love Julie Foudy as a color commentator, but for this game I kept hearing her going on and on about what a back-and-forth game it was, and how the U.S.'s grit and will to win were keeping the game so close and kept I looking at the screen and thinking, Loudy, you have GOT to stop drinking sterno, it makes you babble and you can't see for shit.The Samba Gals knocked us on our ass, and only inhumanly great goalkeeping and pure damn luck kept them from winning in regulation time. The U.S. lost the game in the 71st minute only Hope Solo stuck out a hand. For 90 minutes the Brazilians were robbed, denied, unrewarded for their great play...soccer can be a cruel game sometimes, and this was one of the times.
There were two teams on the field that night two months ago, a good team and a great team and they both won a medal. But the team that won the gold wasn't the great team and the medal the great team won wasn't the gold.
Extra Credit. I couldn't resist: here's our own Doctor Farley, "accredited Apocalypse Specialist", to help us through the coming economic hard times. Hat tip to Bob Lefarkins of Lawyers, Guns and Money. Ahem:
Dear Dr. Farley,
In view of the impending financial distress, I'm worried about my cats. Should I stock up on cat food, or will it be available in post-apocalypse America?
Thanks,
Worried in Dubuque
Dear Worried in Dubuque,
No. You should concentrate on stocking up on firearms, clean water, and canned goods. Cat food will most certainly not be available in post-apocalypse America; any housecats will only be a drain on your resources. Your cats should be eaten at the first opportunity, followed by the eating of any surplus cat food. Most such food is edible by humans, and while you may be tempted to "fatten up" your cats, much of the energy in the cat food is lost when its eaten by the cat.
Yike!
But, hey - my wife is Christmas shopping. Christmas! Shopping! In October! And has rearranged the interior of the refrigerator! What does this mean? Is it the Apocalypse? Is she bored out of her skull after having been home sick for a week? Are they the same thing?
I was just thinking today that I must be becoming an old curmudgeon because I'm starting to see the world as a collection of things I don't understand; stuff that to me is inexplicably popular, that lots of other people seem to luuuuurve but I stand there scratching my ass wondering "Is it me, or...?" Stuff like...
Sarah Palin. We've had eight years of repeated Three Stooges routines because we elected a mook that is 1) badly educated and warn't too gud at thinkin' to begin with, and 2) has the intellectual curiousity of a torpid sloth, yet 3) has no doubt of his "gut" and is convinced he's right - makes decisions based on his beliefs and not on outside facts. This has succeeded so well that the man's approval numbers rival a homicidal Great White Shark. So we want to elect another Christopathic, intellectually vapid, slogan-spouting, badly-travelled and poorly educated bush league goober...why?
I don't understand.
Segways. I just don't understand.Why not walk? It'd be faster and you could wear lederhosen and not look as dorky.
Segways as law enforcement tools.
Huh?
I mean, how slow are the crooks in China, anyway?
I reeeeeally don't get it.
Hummers. While we're on the subject of transportation, what the fuck is with the crazy appeal of these road monsters? Remember, I've driven the Original, the "Ultimate War Machine" that all these donut-chomping fightin' data compilers WISH they were ramming down the highway to Fallujah instead of tooling between Vancouver and Oregon City on their way to their first coronary.IMO they're a clumsy, underpowered, uncomfortable, badly-made and breakdown-prone diesel hog that compares unfavorably for off-road fun with almost any civilian 4WD including the original army 4WD, the Jeep. I liked my old M151A1 quarter-ton a whole lot better, and it cost me less than $100 a fill-up at the old Mogas tank out behind the 2/187th Motor Pool. Plus their outsize wheelbase makes them slide in and out of the ruts in the interstate. Get a fuckin' Jeep, dummy!
I don't get it unless it has something to do with compensating for a small pecker.
Playing the lottery. "Lottery games are not for investment purposes"...WTF!!?? If it was designed to make YOU money, they'd make you run the thing. Once in a while, fine. But $10, $20, $30 bucks a week? They must think you're stupid. Seems like every so often they're right...I don't understand this beyond "you can fool some of the people...".
Beets. Starving in central Europe?
OK, fine.
Doing well enough in north Portland? Are you kidding me?
And beet borscht - is there any food worth getting outside of that comes in pink?
And kid food doesn't count; kids will eat anything. Except for beets.
...
Hunting cougars.
Would you stalk, shoot and eat a pussy cat? You want some fries with that cougar? Why the hell would you kill something that's not a) tasty or b) has an even chance of killing you first?
I don't understand this at all, and I love to hunt stuff I can eat like duck, pheasant and deer. You want me to go after a cougar? Make me single and available and put me on a barstool next to this cougar.
Rrrrrowr!
... And this?Don't even BEGIN to understand...
Republican Economics. Let me get this straight; the guy who runs Lehman Brothers is a tool. He's just run his company into the ground. The guy who cleans the toilets at Lehman Brothers may very well be an Einstein of Toilet Cleaning, a maestro of the shiny porcelin bowl, a terrific worker and top of his profession. With Lehman heading down that very same toilet, the CEO is going to leave with his multimillion dollar salary and tons of other goodies that will ensure that, enormous fuckup that he is, he can live like minor royalty even if he never works again. The toilet guy may very well never work again, either, but he will have to eat fucking cat food to do it. I don't understand: why is this OK with John McCain, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and their friends?
And that's just off the top of my head.
How about you? Are you starting to feel this way, or is it just me, having my first long-lasting Senior Moment?
This is my version of my Wednesday "stuff that interests me" post, only it's Thursday. OK, I'm off by a day. It has been a hard week and that not over yet. Cut me some slack!
Anyway, I ran across this little website while reading about "Operation August Storm", the Soviet flattening of Japan's Kwantung Army that occured sixty-three years ago this summer in what is now the Manchurian part of the People's Republic of China.
The site is well worth a visit, if only to remark on the wonderful and strange way people experience what life visits upon them.Our narrator, Kiuchi Nobuo, was a - I'm guessing - private soldier in the Kwantung Army in 1945 when he went into the bag with about 600,000 other Japanese, many of them just kid conscripts. Transported to Siberia, Nobuo and the other prisoners found everything from hardship and death, sickness, work, play...even friendship and, as difficult as it may be to understand, love.Even long after the young man returned to Japan he seems to have treasured this time, and his memories of it. While I know that the combination of grinding work, bad food, careless Soviet bureaucracy and the apalling weather must have made Nobuo's life a misery, the cartoons he draws to memorialize his captivity are...well, happy. Almost cute, with a fine eye for the combination of tragedies, indignities and comedies that accumulate in life at the far edge of human decency.So I don't want to editorialize about this; I have no deep thoughts or serious intents about it. I simply enjoyed the author's loving memories of a time long ago, and I hope you take a moment and visit his site, because I think you will, too.
I went out to do some work today in a place called Fairview Village out in east Portland. The funny thing is that I was the field geologist for this site over ten years ago - I walked the then-fields and -woods with a tracked excavator trailing behind me digging test pits for the future - now existing - development.
I have been responsible for a lot of crap development over the years: Subway stores, cell towers, animal shelters, even a prison. But Fairview is one I have always felt good about, a great idea well realized.
But the visit today reminded me of a funny story relating to this place. The original site had a large area that was underlain by a virtual pavement of immense basalt boulders ripped from the Columbia Gorge by the vast Missoula Floods. This area was untillable, and the farmer had left it in timber.
The forest cover made it delightful for Portland's urban pioneers, and the homeless camp inside the woods was one of the biggest I'd ever seen. The litter was truly stupefying. Clothes, food, auto parts, over 100 woodstoves...the excavator and I picked our way through a wonderland of debris.
And among the debris were scattered individual pages of a paperback novel. Not just ANY paperback novel. This was one of those paperback novels, the ones with the cartoon of immensely-endowed women in deshabille on the cover. The kind newsstands used to sell back in the corner, next to "Juggs" magazine.
The forest floor was littered with torn pages of this thing. As we travelled about we accumulated about a chapter, enough to get the gist of the thing, anyway. Let's just say that the main characters were a woman...and a gorilla...and leave it at that, shall we?
So, anyway, when I sat down to write geotechnical report the "Surface Conditions" portion read something like this:
"...and a thick understory of swordfern, snowberry, rhododendron and blackberry canes. An extreme variety of man-made debris was observed on the ground surface including soil and rock excavation spoil, wood (including dimension lumber), brick, metal, plastic, cloth and household items, paper, several automobile bodies and scattered individual pages of a grossly salacious and pornographic novel entitled: 'Rajah'."
I knew that he'd got to that section when my then-boss started laughing so hard I heard him through the door to his office.
Bear with me. I've been thinking about art, creators and creativity.
Somewhile back I posted a classic Warner's cartoon by director Chuck Jones. And talked a little about Jones, and his great forerunner Tex Avery, the real creator of the modern screwball cartoon for grownups. (I really want to talk more about these guys and their influence in a later post. Outside of Japanese anime, where you see a cartoon character in pop culture today, you're seeing Tex Avery.)
Anyway, then another adoptive mom - I'm not going to link to her because she enjoys her private little niche of the 'net - posted a picture her little girl drew on the Etch-a-Sketch and compared it to the work of Joan Miro.
And that got me thinking: why is it that most Americans can identify the work of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and not Joan Miro and John Cage?Should I think that this is a Bad Thing? A Good Thing? Or just what it is, a change in the seasons of public taste and popular culture?
And that, in turn, got me thinking about why we think of some things as "art" and others as merely "pop culture", and the connection between the two.
I've always had a great affection for the pictures and sounds we gorge on in the modern world. To an extent undreamed of before the electronic age we are surrounded by and move through and in a world of images. Our lives have a soundtrack, if we wish it, often composed and played by others. Never in human history have pictures and music been so inescapable.
Yet, in an odd fashion, we are utterly disconnected from art and music, especially what we think of as the "High Arts", in a way that a moviegoer of Avery's and Jones' would, I suspect, have found shocking. Most of us know nothing of contemporary art, music, and literature. Many of us are also unfamiliar, or worse, contemptuous, of the "classic" great works that helped create the very Western culture we swim in like fish.
I suspect part of this is the very nature of our electronic society. Faster and more ephemeral than ever, we have little time or patience for the older forms. And the immediacy of the electronic arts leaves less for the traditional arts to say. Here's a good example: in 1808 when Goya created his series of sketches and paintings centered on the horrors of the Dos de Mayo his vision was the only way people outside Spain had to imagine the frightful events and picture the lives and deaths of the Madrilenos.But today we would see the images on CNN or Channel 2 news and have been glutted with the frightfulness long before Goya had a chance to touch us.
Still...that doesn't explain the widespread loss of affection for and interest in the High Arts. People sitting in a dark moviehouse in 1950 had newsreels and radio and TV...but think of the kind of knowledge that they needed to really get a laugh out of "What's Opera, Doc?"It's more than just the fat white horse and Bugs in Valkyrie drag; part of the funny is knowing that in the Wagner original Siegfied DOES have a "speaw and magic hewmet", and the conventions of Wagnerian opera. Few of Jones' viewers were hard-core opera fans. But they needed SOME degree of understanding of, and affection, or at least respect for, classical opera, to really "get" the gag. Jones had to know that, too, to have made making his art worthwhile.
But, if you dare, look at the latter-day descendants of Bugs and Elmer in the only profitable Warner's cartoon since 1959, 1996's"Space Jam". The only references in this...unfortunate...thing are to OTHER pop culture icons: Nike, "Pulp Fiction", Disney. It's culturally "dead", self-referential, capable of being fully understood by a kid who has read nothing but cereal boxes and watched nothing but ads and basketball.
Then think back to the John Cage piece I embedded above. Does "4'33"" touch you emotionally? Does it reach you on a really visceral level? Or do you sit there thinking to yourself, consciously working to find meaning in it? Or, worse, are just amused or contemptuous of it as a bit of nonsense? It's art, or a sort, but an art so rarefied and disconnected and self-absorbed as to have lost its ability to reach all but the smallest of self-selected audiences. Try and imagine a Bugs Bunny cartoon that uses 4'33" as a reference point. Hard, isn't it? The thing is so difficult to encompass, and yet so insubstantial, that it almost parodies itself. It, too, is "dead" in a way.
(I have to stop here and tell you a story about this piece. Someone named Batt, best known a "Womble" in Britain, apparently wrote a silent piece that ended up in court as plagarized from 4'33". Mr. Batt had two great quotes about this: first that his was "...a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds." The former-Womble also claimed that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Hesettled out of court. Heh.)
So let's agree that "Space Jam" is trash: fun but disposable, commercial crap. But I'm going to suggest to you that 4'33" is trash, too: twee, affected and oblique, you sit in front of it, cough, scratch your ass and walk away, untouched. Much of modern art, particularly painting and sculpture, and huge job lots of modern classical music seem to have this same problem. They are just lost, jealously treasured by a small coterie, disconnected from and disregarded by the rest.
So where does this leave the art and music we hear and see all around us?
This may seem insane, but I'm suggesting that Chuck Jones might be our Goya, the Coen Brothers our Miro.
I'm honestly suggesting that some of what is our "pop culture" IS going to turn out to be our Art. That, much as Mozart was the highest expression of the folk music and popular drama of the 18th Century, Bob Fosse may turn out to be the Mozart, Goya and Nijinsky of our day.
So what do you think?
And with that, let me feast you on one of Fosse's greatest: the "Come Fly With Us" scene from All That Jazz. I wouldn't be my Big Gay Son's Big Gay Dad if I didn't tell you that this is one of my favorite scenes from one of my all-time favorite movies. Pure. Fucking. Broadway. Dance. Genius. "Now Sinatra will never record it..."
Some would say in more than just one way. But I deeply appreciate the props, y'all.
I still need to think about what this blog is all about, what I'm doing with it and where I want to go. (Which always makes me think of my old boss, Dave Newton. He wanted a vision statement and, by God, didn't he get it, goofy "We love it!" crap and all (for the thousands of bucks he paid Bill Simonds' wife, the numbnuts...) I've always been sorry he didn't include my comment about the whole "let's craft our vision statement like a beautiful ship to sail our company away to our dreamlands of fun and profit" bullpuckey in it somewhere: "When you're pulling an oar on the slave deck it doesn't really matter whether you're rowing to Dakar or Disney World, now, does it?")
I write this thing because I enjoy it. I'm sure glad that there are some Blue Blazes out there that enjoy an occasional visit here with Team Banzai, though.
"You can check your anatomy all you want, and even though there may be normal variation, when it comes right down to it, this far inside the head it all looks the same. No, no, no, don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
and...
"Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
Did I mention that I like Brooke McEldowney's style?I think I enjoy this particular strip on a number of levels: first, there's nothing that says "I love you" like a footrub; second, I get a chuckle out of Amos' contrast between "marriage" and being "...fused only by our sweaty passion for each other..." (I think we know where he stands on the whole "Mother, he proposed! I'll never have to have sex again!" thing); and last, you could write a dense, allusion-studded, thorny diatribe on the whole business of marriage-versus-civil-unions, "gay rights" and who gets to decide who is a couple or not...but then again, you could just draw a cartoon where one lover points out to the other that no matter what label you slap on it, the staid marriage and the sordid fusion quite often lead down the same path, to the same place.
