Friday, February 29, 2008

Milk

Over at Slate, Taylor Clark resurrects memories of one of the last great blasts of 1990s indie rock, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. An excellent little column not just if you like the genre, but if you're a scholar of those mixed-up lives that land in popular music for a brief time, light it up, then vanish into an ether aswirl with madness in its many bright colors. Peter Green. Syd Barrett. Lee Mavers of the La's. Axl Rose.

Add to the list Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel.

By the time Aeroplane came out in 1998, indie had won; but it had also lost, as our increasingly fast turnover culture moved it from revolutionary noise to fodder for advertising jingles in record time. As the inevitable wallow in nostalgia for indie/alt rock is just around the corner--Nevermind shipped seventeen years ago come September--it's nice to see one of its latter-day cult objects recognized.

I mean, this was a concept album about Anne Frank that included banjos.

As with The La's, it remains the only disc put out by the band. In keeping with the myth surrounding these things, Magnum appears to have only performed live a few times ten years, and there's mention of a nervous breakdown, and weeping on stage, and turning up as a drummer or backup singer for friends, and playing "cow object" on someone else's album.

Anyway, the Slate piece provides the very strange true story and the details of the inevitable mythologization.

I owned Aeroplane for about four months, taken in by the hype, initially baffled. But, urged on by my own obsession with Anne Frank (not a joke), I kept listening, and ended up something of a fan, though one might question my commitment, as I sold or bartered the disc in one of my paroxysms of poverty or anti-materialism.

It's been in my Amazon basket for three years or so. But I find myself unable to repurchase it. Because I'm sure it'll bring up memories of a very intense 1998. In fact, that's basically the same reason I didn't buy the La's album for ten years. It's great to have a personal soundtrack. The downside is, it can hurt when the music that once got you through takes you back.

// posted by KC45s @ 9:38 PM

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Buckley annex

A few of the writings floating around the Internet...

It's clobberin' time at Whiskey Fire.

The mighty James Wolcott, a sizzling stylist.

Timothy Noah gives the Slate response.

Jeet Heer via Brad DeLong's blog. A primer on Buckley's complexity and the reasons why his capacity to change his mind and his willingness to piss off his allies made engaging with him a challenge. A taste:
....Buckley did in fact change and renounce racism by the mid-1960s, in part because his horror at the terrorist tactics used by white supremacists to fight the civil rights movement, in part because of the moral witness of friends like Garry Wills who confronted Buckley with the immorality of his politics.... There are a host of other issues on which Buckley moderated his politics. In the 1980s, he said that if he were a black South African he would probably support the ANC, a statement that shocked fellow conservatives. This independence of mind continued to the end of his life. Not too long ago, he admitted that the Iraq war was a ghastly mistake, again annoying his intellectual fellow travelers.

// posted by KC45s @ 8:12 PM

William F. Buckley is dead

Updated and updated.

Note: We do not keep an archive of pre-fab obits here at the Satellite of Love. So this post was written immediately after hearing the news, a real quick-take job done without accessing the real media's pre-fab obits, the better to avoid any temptation to analyze. Trust me, there'll be enough analysis by smarter people on better blogs. In the next twenty-four hours, some will post excellent take-downs and remembrances. Oh, here's a sizzling example now. --Eds.

He kicked down the door and inspired a thousand imitators, towered above them, a figure both charismatic and unique, not to mention hugely talented, capable of jarring turns just when you thought you had him figured out, just as capable of an outrage entirely consistent with the stereotypes he seemed to embody, and to delight in embodying.

William F. Buckley gave conservatives their now-cliched style--a combination of ten-dollar words, debate club smarm, frothing-at-the-mouth baiting and name-calling, and a gift for coining sophisticated labels for crude ideas. Too bad none of them have his talent to juggle these often-contradictory traits. And, God knows, they lack his sense of humor.

I have more than once frightened liberal friends with my admiration for Buckley. Of course I found most of his beliefs backward and horrid, as does anyone with a basic belief that human society can evolve. Buckley took bitter stands against the Civil Rights Movement, spent tens of thousands of words trying to midwife Joe McCarthy through a revisionist rebirth, even memorably came up with solutions for the AIDS problem:

Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals...
It should be noted Buckley later backed off this line of thinking. Unlike his conservative heirs, he didn't try to escape blame by saying, "I was only joking."

I respected that Buckley actually believed what he believed. That he had thought his ideas out tactically; though not so much intellectually, for Buckley's talent lay in organization and getting the message across, not philosophy.

Nonetheless, comparing him to the mob of cheap-shot artists, opportunists, and half-baked intellectual frauds that have absconded with his movement is, to stretch an Elvis comparison, like comparing the dynamic 1950s Presley with tone-deaf laryngitic teenagers with hooks for hands trying to play an electric guitar.

Gardner Kissack (sp.?) first introduced me to Buckley. Kissack taught a mass media class at my high school. I still remember that class clearer than any high school class I ever took, clearer than most of my college courses.

I had only just adjusted to life at a prep school. My first years of high school I spent at a barn that mostly prepped you for life on a farm or on the line at a Chrysler factory or in a series of dead-end job livened up by occasional Saturday night trips to the local jail's drunk tank. And mostly the latter. Not to put down that life. We all want what we want.

In the mass media class we were thrown right into decision making. We designed future covers of Time magazine to get us thinking about current events and learned the Time's strange history in the bargain. Kissack had us creating cartoons, making New Year's predictions, keeping journals of whatever mass media interested us, and he put us through a thousand other projects that turned our voracious consumption of media so inside out we actually learned something. The minute you walked into his class you saw real-life headlines sketched out on the chalkboard, and you started thinking even before everyone had calmed down.

One day, Kissack called an audible. A student had expressed complete ignorance in the name William F. Buckley.

The teacher clearly thought this a hole in our education. For the next fifty minutes, a full class session that I am certain bore no resemblance to the day's lesson plan, Kissack lectured on Buckley, starting with Bill's letter at age six to the King of England, demanding repayment of WWI debts, moving through God and Man at Yale, the brief CIA stint, the National Review, and his glory days as a media figure and conservative insult comic in the 1960s. His PBS show Firing Line was in there somewhere, too, as was his thinking, particularly his then-controversial determination to root out anti-semitism from the conservative movement, a decent (and typically far-sighted) move sometimes overlooked by his critics.

I read Buckley in my college years, and kept up with the National Review, too. Believe me, it was more interesting than The New Republic, the publication I was supposed to be reading.

Buckley still wrote a lot in those years, on politics, naturally, and he had his books on sailing, too--some wonderful writing there.

I kept reading NR after college. But by then the incoherent ranting wing of the movement had wormed its way into the magazine's pages. I gave it up when the magazine dedicated itself to hating Bill Clinton, and watched with surprise as Buckley's less-talented, opportunistic heirs twisted the movement he had created into a jobs program for the dimwit offspring of Buckley's generation. (Of course, he started the magazine with his father's money, so they came by it honestly.)

He was more important than most elected officials in his time, whether you liked the outcome or not. In the end the bulk of his beliefs--with the exception of his faith in free market economics and related matters--landed in the dustbin of history or are bound for it now, some tested and unsuccessful, others abandoned by his own disciples, a few horrible.

Though celebrated as eloquent, and he often was, Buckley had a dirtier side. Every single thing you hate about the rhetoric of today's conservatives can be found in his works and in the pages of the National Review.

For all that, the Frums and Goldbergs and Derbyshires are ants, piddly unimaginative creatures blindly following the edicts of the hive.

Whereas Buckley led.

Their every thought and word is a copy of a copy of a copy.

Whereas Buckley was an original.

In the end, he devoted his epic life to the doomed idea that one can stand athwart history and yell stop. But history never stops. Change, as the cliche goes, is the only thing you can count on. Buckley really changed nothing. He and the movement he built simply applied a brake, or rather jiggered the transmission to remain in a lower gear.

That feminism won, that Jim Crow is considered an abomination, that gays openly appear on American television, that Social Security has become a part of society's fabric, that his own side massively betrayed his fifty-year project to shrink government--this is a long list of failures.

In recent interviews, he had to claim the defeat of communism was the main goal all along, with the remainder of the conservative crusade glossed over, shrugged off, the stuff of sighs and shaking head. In other words, the unspoken regrets of a political giant inevitably forced by mortality--and reality--to deliver an already-faltering project into the keeping of dwarves.


// posted by KC45s @ 11:23 AM

Friday, February 22, 2008

TV Listings

Swingin' Avengers (7 p.m., FOX) A team-building exercise goes awry when, encouraged to share his feelings, Captain Blueyes (Frank Sinatra) spends the entire session weeping over a woman. Honesty ensues when Staggerman (Dean Martin) dozes off and Periodic Table (Liza Minnelli) is poisoned by her own unexpressed narcissism.

Tyler Perry's The Yodas (8:30 p.m., SCI FI) There's domestic discord when Yoda forgets his wife's 733rd birthday. Determined to make it up to her, yet stay within a budget, the thrifty Jedi master orders a cake from the swamp's newest baker--Obi-Wan Norton. Sample dialogue: "Nice flowers and writing you have--but a bat mitzvah it isn't."

I'm Real Mad and Wearing Sunglasses (7 p.m., BET) Talk-show host Bill Cosby's semi-coherent rants continue in the odd, trademark cadence he used to pitch pudding. Tonight, Bill complains at length about affirmative action, media double standards, Sputnik, and pie.

Cookin' with Agrippina (10 p.m., Food Network) Mushroom recipes from the Roman empress are featured.

Better Red than Dead (8:30 p.m., NBC) Slammed by local health authorities for using trans fats, Rasta Stalin purchases a drum of cooking oil from a Russian gangster. When the substance turns out to be whale oil, Greenpeace arrives in its alternative fuel zeppelin and lays siege to the Kremlin Kafe.

Corporal Kanzi (8 p.m., Animal Planet) The ape on the brink of the human mind lands in hot water when she trades her M-60 for shiny baubles and a tangerine. Sergeant Smigg offers a way out if she'll use her forbidden ape grooming skills to halt a pre-inspection lice infestation in the barracks.

American Idolatry (9 p.m., FOX News) The conservative network offers clueless M.F.A.'s a chance to paint a portrait of the prophet Muhammad. Parental advisory: idolatry, blasphemy, beheadings, brief nudity.


// posted by KC45s @ 7:08 PM

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Fameout V. 2: Faye'd away

Serve It Up With Oscar! week continues.

Ice cold yet brimming with hysteria, a New Hollywood goddess in a Golden Age Hollywood package, inhumanly beautiful, Faye Dunaway arrived as the prophetess of a new moviemaking paradigm. Rescuing Bonnie Parker from an eternity in true crime magazines by reinventing her as a wonder of that unique dimwittiness we call innocence in people who aren't bank robbers, Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde was a vivid part of film history, and not just because the movie used squibs (packets of red liquid) to simulate extraordinarily bloody violence. Though that was part of it.

Talk about a debut. This from someone who failed an audition to be a Bond girl.

Having scored out of the gate, Dunaway settled into name recognition and casual stardom.

She played eye candy to Steve McQueen's jewel thief in The Thomas Crown Affair, and was more convincing playing gorgeous than he was playing suave.

There were also costume dramas, naturally. If the Lord gives you those cheekbones, you better do costume dramas. Dunaway was suited in every way to play Lady de Winter in any Dumas project you could conceive, in fact could've pulled off Richelieu at the drop of a plumed hat. I'm not sure anyone considers her performance in The Three Musketeers particularly noteworthy, but it proved her striking face and supernatural haughtiness could rise (?) to a cartoonish derring-do entertainment that featured Oliver Reed.

That's no small accomplishment. Because, let's face it, Faye Dunaway usually comes across as having the good humor of a hammerhead shark.

After picking up a check for all-star cast-fests like Voyage of the Damned and The Towering Inferno--film historian David Thomsen says she looks "tense and hot" in the latter, which seems an unfair criticism in a movie about a skyscraper fire--Dunaway embarked on a triple-play of films that matches up with just about any streak since the Abbott & Costello Versus... franchise.

In Chinatown she feuded with Roman Polanski, used untold gallons of lip gloss, and turned in the pivotal performance in a movie of such extraordinary complexity--a noir crime drama on the subject of water rights!--that the most miraculous of its many miracles is that it got made, let alone that it became a box office hit. Just an extraordinary film on all levels. To this day it puts most prestige cinema to shame.

In Three Days of the Condor, she played vulnerable again, as she had in Chinatown. The movie's a well-done slice of '70s paranoia, a spy movie for smart people, though Dunaway's really just a supporting piece.

As for Network, well, from Paddy Cheyefsky's pen to William Holden's mouth:

There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.
Though that's a speech rather than dialogue--one of Network's many flaws--you do read it and have to say to yourself, "Damn!"

It was another prophetic film, this one about television. Dunaway was the franchise, a nuclear reactor of ambition, not just letting the ends justify the means but thriving on the means, breaking from work only to range around for a decent fuck to take the edge off, though picking up the phone to cut a deal before the guy on top of her has a chance to catch his breath. In other words, a portrayal of an American alpha male. The William Holden character is a dried husk by the time she's done with him.

Dunaway thus ruled the mid-late '70s with an Oscar, rave reviews, and a place in at least three films justifiably considered all-time classics. As often happens after a long climb to the mountaintop, Dunaway relaxed a bit. She took the Laura Mars part after Streisand turned it down and led Tommy Lee Jones and a phalanx of character actors into a barely okay horror movie. What she was doing in The Champ with fellow Fameout nominee Jon Voight remains open to speculation.

As she neared that Certain Age when actresses cease getting good roles, Dunaway landed in the phasmagoria that was (and shall ever be) Mommie Dearest. Pitched as a biopic based on a best-seller, impossibly set up to feature Anne Bancroft, in reality the undeclared sequel to Carrie, Mommie Dearest pulled out so many stops it only had one possible destination in our mob culture: status as the Citizen Kane of camp for gay men.

The movie made the worst-of-the-year lists in its day. Dunaway has consistently laid her Fameout at its feet. I would propose that, yes, it's a manic film, but an arguably stunning performance--I mean, Dunaway basically erased a Hollywood legend's forty-year movie career and replaced it with a doppelganger of her own construction.

Anyway, whatever the movie did to Dunaway's career, turning forty probably hurt her more. She spent the Eighties and Nineties as most Seventies icons did: playing out the string.

She appeared as Evita Peron, a drunk against Mickey Rourke (oy, the humanity) in Barfly, a witch menacing Supergirl, another twisted hysteric in The Handmaid's Tale, and then as the star of the most inexplicably green-lighted sitcom in television history. Faye Dunaway! Playing funny! What, did she drown puppies every episode?

(Answer: No. She romanced Robert Urich. From Warren Beatty to Robert Urich must be a dizzying journey. By the way, if you type "Faye Dunaway" and "sitcom" into Google, the universe ends.)

By now she's collected a thousand credits and served on one of the Law and Order franchises, that grim fleet of Love Boats of our time. Like Jane Fonda, she shows up once in a while and you say her name to yourself, having forgotten it. Next time it happens, turn on the DVD player, load up a film from her winning streak, and spend a couple of hours seeing how it was really done.

Breaking It Down

THE GOODS
Influencing fashion and getting artfully machine-gunned in Bonnie and Clyde; looking at the mess of The Great Gatsby and wisely declining participation; playing the victim of John Huston's monstrous father figure in Chinatown; taking Network beyond staginess, forced satire, and outright hysteria into higher realms.

THE FLAMEOUT
Never, ever mess with the ghost of Joan Crawford.

STUNNING FACT
Was married to Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band for much of the 1970s.

// posted by KC45s @ 11:18 PM

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Serve it up with Oscar! For One Dollar More



For the second year in a row, we observe our greatest national holiday--the Oscar telecast--with movie-oriented posts. Allow me one repeat from last year's Serve It Up with Oscar spectacular. It's one of the better posts in the 45s archives. Anyway, who among us is above a reprise every so often? I thank you for your indulging my indulgence.

Growing up in a hundred or so small towns, I never lived near a first-run movie theater. But I did often live near a second-run theater, the kind of places with Jujubees on the floor that dated from the Depression, that doubled as a church on Sunday morning despite showing adult films on selected Saturday nights (no kidding)*, that got Star Wars eleven months after its release.

Such theaters provided an alternative education in film history. Though not exactly a Montessori-level alternative.

Despite our remoteness from anything current or hip, the blockbusters did get to town, albeit on tape-delay. For instance, I experienced the thrill of the Charlton Heston classics Earthquake and Midway in fantastic Sensurround.**

The pleasures were many. I saw the Star Wars trailer before Silver Streak (and never recovered). I went to Blazing Saddles while wayyyy underage thanks to a friend’s parents. (Now it’s shown on the Family Channel!) I think I even saw That’s Entertainment, which wasn’t. Not because I wanted to check out old Judy Garland clips. Probably not even because my grandma asked me to go with her. Just because. It’s what you did. The combination of movies for a buck and long winters can make anyone an omnivorous cinemaphile.

But this was the Seventies, also the dying years of Roger Corman and B-movies and "regional pictures" intended for drive-ins. Now that I think about it, movies built around cars had a prominent place in my viewing habits.

Yea, in the dark, popcorn-strewn theaters of my youth I did watch every movie Peter Fonda ever made, even Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. I was one of the few to waste their parents’ good money to see Paul Le Mat in the existential classic, Aloha Bobby and Rose.

Then there was Eat My Dust, Ron Howard’s debut in the movies, and in hindsight the foundation of the dullest career in the history of major directors. Dust was a run-from-the-rednecks comedy co-starring Diamond Dave Madden, aka Ruben Kincaid from The Partridge Family. Needless to say, I also attended multiple viewings of its descendant, Smoky and the Bandit.

I remember the horror and sci-fi genre best. It may have taken me close to a year to see Star Wars, but Battle Beyond the Stars, a loving ripoff of Lucas and The Magnificent Seven, rolled through in short order, showing the universe what Richard "John-Boy" Thomas could do in an action lead.

A big fave was the Marjoe Gortner epic Food of the Gods, featuring the former boy-preacher in the fight of his life against giant animals, including a rampaging rooster. Later, in true horror movie fashion, he and his allies holed up in a cabin—to do battle with none other than horse-sized rats.

Let's not forget Grizzly—think Jaws, but in the woods. Here was high realism. Midway through the film, a bunch of drunks with shotguns, otherwise known as ordinary Midwestern hunters, head into the forest. Trust me, whatever liberties the director took with bear behavior, this material was dead-on, except that no one boldly carried his case of Bud under his arm. I believe at some point the bear destroyed a helicopter. Or did the shark do that in Jaws II?

Perhaps sadly, then, one of the best periods of filmmaking passed me by. Scorsese and Hal Ashby and Coppola were unknown to me for years, yet I knew Marjoe Gortner’s career backwards and forwards. I was in on Lucas and Spielberg, at least. In fact, I think I saw Close Encounters three nights in a row, or maybe I paid once and stayed for the later shows—you could do that.

It’s not that I was the biggest fan of B-movies. And as an adult, I never had the love of the genre professed by people like Joe Bob Briggs. The theater showed a film. I went. That was all. Even if I could not have any possible interest what was showing, as with Peter Fonda movies. (An attitude shared by more or less the entire human race.)

A lot of the movies were bad and we knew it. As time passed, I developed embryonic powers of discrimination. For instance, I once got into a fight with one of my cousins over whether Airport ’77 (which we had just seen) was better than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I was on Butch’s side. That’s not bad film crit for eleven years-old.

Finally, for those wondering, yes, my parents set some limits. Carrie, being R-rated, was forbidden, and thank God, because I was scared of everything as a kid, and after that hand came out of the earth I would not have slept again until 1983.

In fact, scary films in general were out, unless, bizarrely, the monster in question was an animal, though (with typical lack of consistency) they refused to let me see Jaws, despite much begging, probably because when my mom went, she spent 2/3 of the movie nervously smoking cigarettes in the lobby with a friend. Adding to my need to see the film was that I personally knew a kid who peed his pants when the head popped out of the sunken boat. Others in the neighborhood instructed me that we could not tease the guy because the accident was justifiable. Holy shit! I thought. A free pass for pissing your pants! This movie has to be great!

Today, I wish I could wander into a film totally without preconceptions, uninfluenced by pre-release hype or the poster or the knowledge Owen Wilson is about a .200 hitter. Of course, you can graze the movies, even Wilson’s movies, when it costs a buck a ticket. At ten dollars, seeing a film has to count.

I miss that weekly or semi-weekly visit. Not out of nostalgia, but because I want to be surprised, want vicarious thrills and bizarre journeys into other worlds. Really, and I say this from experience, even a totally fake giant rooster can spark your imagination.

----

* My grandmother and a Male Friend once decided to take in a Saturday night film. According to the marquee, the theater was showing a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. This series of so-called comedies—kind of like Green Acres with more animals and less surrealism—dates from the 1930s. If you're interested, an entry shows up on Turner Classic Movies in the 4:30 a.m. slot on occasion. Anyway, Granny and her Friend paid their dollar apiece and took a seat. It wasn't exactly a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. It was a porno film. I’m not sure if it was a takeoff (humpin' in the barnyard, etc.); or if the theater hung fake old posters to fool the authorities. Though she professed she had to leave the theater immediately, Granny loved to tell this story, it always killed her, and I have to say, God rest her soul, I wonder if she didn't stay. For a little while at least.

** It was the sound system Heston was born to use. For those who don’t remember, Sensurround promised to make your seat shake. Literally. The theater provided the quaking effect by cranking up the speakers to full volume. Some gimmick. You didn’t even get cheap 3-D glasses. Our theater, being old, didn’t have very good sound, so to get even the illusion of quaking you had to sit in the upper balcony near the speakers and experience the dizziness related to your inner ear being damaged.

// posted by KC45s @ 7:00 AM

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

A lusty tale of love and Eliot-influenced symbolism

Today blogger and Berkeley prof Brad DeLong laid down a challenge:

[W]rite the worst blurb you can imagine for the best book you can think of.
Somewhat missing the point, as I always do, I actually wrote the worst back cover copy for the best book I could think of, at a moment when I had finished a chapter on a kids book, yet was still dazed from listening to The Best of Bread (minus "If," a truly dire song). My offering:

He was a stunning mystery man. A soldier in the war. A bootlegger. The owner of a pink tuxedo. When he gazed across the water at the light on the pier he knew he had to have her. Daisy Buchanan was a child of privilege, pampered and waited upon, as comfortable on a divan as she was at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Once she had loved and lost, stolen away by the brusque and mustached Tom Buchanan, a lusty master of horses with a car in every garage and a smouldering mistress who refused to share him. When these forces collide, there will be death, drinking, and someone's out-of-control lawn will get trimmed.

Set against the no-holds-barred debauchery of the Roaring Twenties, The Great Gatsby is sure to captivate you. Astonish you. And, yes,
there will be a quiz.

My favorite, from another commentor:

Poor Russian student kills pawnbroker and gets sent to Siberia by wily detective. Some weird tubercular girl goes with him; meanwhile, a bunch of people get drunk at a funeral they can't really afford.

// posted by KC45s @ 11:32 PM

Best prophets of 1975

The People's Almanac may be the zenith of the concept known as "study hall reading" or, as adults say, bathroom reading. Weighing in at 1,478 pages, the Almanac presents innumerable topics yet rarely demands a reader digest information in a form longer than one page—perhaps more pertinent to our attention-deficit culture now than in the mid-1970s, when it was published.

Such a giant book invites reading at random. For that reason, it was a long time before I looked at the book’s first page.

The Editors chose to lead off their project with predictions by psychics and scientists of the day. They mentioned the track record of each and then asked those surveyed to peer into a future that, for those of us living in a four-dimensional world amidst the illusory construct of linear time, is the recent past or the present. Some used a crystal ball. Others relied on informed speculation in that groovy Futurists' way that was so popular in the Seventies.

As many of the predictions concerned world-shattering events, we asked Dag Banners—the World’s Only Apocalypse Advice Columnist™—to offer the commentary. Part One, featuring psychic predictions, appears here; I'll analyze what the futurists and scientists had to say in an as-yet-unscheduled Part Two.

Malcolm Bessent
Bessent was trained at the College of Psychic Science in London (!) Considered one of the most gifted psychics on record, he died in 1997.

Prediction: rising water levels will make New York City uninhabitable sometime between 1976 and 1980

Dag Banners: Perhaps he misread his tea-leaves, for if he meant between 2076 and 2080, we're right on schedule.

David Bubar
In 1975, Mr. Bubar, a Baptist minister, was indicted for conspiracy to bomb a rubber factory in Connecticut. He had been the psychic advisor to a leader of the alleged conspiracy.

Prediction: Americans will embrace a mass fitness program in the 1970s.

DB: Like you, Banners remembers the jogging craze of the time, the foundation for the cardio-vascular fascism that now has bicyclists insisting on equal rights in traffic. I grant Mr. Bubar got this prediction correct, though he later ruined a perfectly good psychic manifestation when he predicted that social drinking would come to an end.

Prediction: Throughout the 1980s, intuition and clairvoyance will invade the private lives of Americans. Psychics will hold important government positions.

DB: This is obviously true, as I point out in my 1997 book, "Is Your Head Your Own?" (Survive! Publications, $25.00)

Criswell
A gregarious fellow, and obviously deranged, the TV psychic filled almost two pages in the Almanac. For the record, Criswell also predicted a deluge would drown New York City in 1980. He died bone-dry in Los Angeles on October 4, 1982, aged 75.

Predictions [given separately]: From 1975 to 1978, the devil will rule the earth. In 1976, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. will join a Common Market. In March of 1976, the Government of the U.S. will give almost all of New Mexico back to the Indians.

DB: My friends in the End Times arm of the futurism/apocalypse business insist that the Devil will rule the Earth for seven years. Given this is the only thing they agree upon, and as I am respectful of their degrees from not-yet-discredited colleges in Arkansas and South Carolina, I must side with them. But does Criswell covertly suggest the diabolical origins of the Common Market? Ah, intriguing, yes? Move the letters around and NAFTA spells ... FANTA.

Prediction: On February 11, 1981, a foreign power will attempt to bomb the U.S. with atomic weapons. The attempt will fail, but fifty people in Vermont will be killed.

DB: Speaking of Vermont… Banners agrees—in theory—with the plausibility of Mr. Criswell’s prediction. In the psychic business, one must offer the occasional go-for-broke vision in order to grab headlines and cover one’s ass. I do it myself. Given local population dispersal patterns, a nuclear explosion in Vermont would be unlikely to vaporize more than 50 people (and as many moose).

Prediction: In 1985, polygamy will become legal in North Dakota.

DB: Though I prefer not to provide details, let me say that (1) I believed this in 1983, and (2) never trust sisters named Arlene and Bev.

Prediction: In 1985, a Caucasian woman, called the Lady of Light, will become leader, first of the Orient, then of the world. Under her leadership, men will become slaves and women will hold the power. War will end; the world will become a near-paradise. Her end will come after she is raped in Africa, then dies in childbirth.

DB: Banners senses here a projection by an extremely unhealthy personality.

Prediction: On October 18, 1988, a meteor will hit London, almost destroying the city.

DB: Almost?

Joseph DeLouise
A Chicagoan, the former hairdresser never finished the eighth grade, but has appeared on radio, TV, and in newspapers predicting the future. As far as can be ascertained, he never predicted floods in New York City.

Prediction: The Caribbean will be a hotbed of revolution. During the unrest, pirates will capture a large ship.

DB: A large pirate ship. Yes. The world will tremble.

Berkeley Psychic Institute
In January of 1974, seven psychics banded together to make group predictions. Participant Cynthia Lester still lectures and claims thousands of clients. Google has not heard of the other six.

Prediction: Late in 1976 or in 1977, there will be revolutions in India. New Dehli will suffer famine or natural disaster, "a lot of people dying."

DB: Predicting disaster in India? Daring.

Prediction: On May 26, 1977, there will be the start of a short war in the area of Labrador, between Greenland and Russia, over fishing rights. Nuclear torpedoes will be used.

DB: Forgetting for the moment the doubtful existence of nuclear torpedoes, this scenario defies even the unreality of psychic prediction by forgetting that Greenland is administered by Denmark; and that the Danes, though the scourge of the Medieval Age, are not a nuclear power. Heed Banners, psychics: there is no pride in being wrong, but please, friends, don't be stupid.

Doctor N.
This anonymous physician/psychiatrist based many of his predictions on a future world war. Alas, without it, the bulk of his visions could not hope to pan out. But he managed one outside the war scenario.

Prediction: The next president will die after a 12-year term.

DB: Dr. N. should put away the tea leaves and look at Article XXII of the Constitution. Banners predicts he will slap his forehead.

Malachy O'Morgain
This famous Irish seer predicted all of the popes dating from 1194 until the end of the Church (and thus of the world). Not as easy as you think for someone who died in 1148.

Prediction: The man to follow Pope Paul VI will "fall to his enemies."

DB: John Paul I did die in mysterious circumstances after serving just thirty-four days as pontiff.

Prediction: The next pope will be named Gregory XXIII.

DB: John Paul II was, in fact, a stage name. Real name? John Paul Lipschitz.

// posted by KC45s @ 7:08 AM

Monday, February 18, 2008

Cleanin' out my closet

Here at the Satellite of Love, we are enduring another of those catastrophic temperature drops that take us from a day when the snow and ice melt to an evening expected to bottom out at about zero degrees (Kelvin, from the feel of it). Even the drainage channel next to the golf course is frozen, and this is a ribbon of water festooned with warning signs that one should not swim, drink, fish in, indeed even touch the water. I have spent my brief time here expecting it to catch on fire.

This being the suburbs, next to no one shovels their sidewalk, because next to no one walks. The exception to the former? Churches, bless them. The exception to the latter? Me, because men with medical degrees have told me to exercise or suffer unpleasantness related to my balky digestive system.

By this time of year, the average Illinois ice patch has become as hard as titanium. Reinforced by multiple (near-record) snowfalls, with just enough above-freezing days to create water that then re-freezes in sub-zero air, these ice patches defy salt, pick-axes, and TNT.

So, as I walk to deal with my large intestine, I risk breaking some needed bone, perhaps my femur, perhaps my hip.

I am glad the churches manage to chip away down to the cement. Their zones of icelessness allow me to take eight steps free of the intense concentration necessary to stay on my feet in front of the million-dollar houses I pass on my route.

Fucking suburbs.

• While microwaving Vienna Beef brand mini-bagel dogs, I learned that the mini-bagel dogs emit a loud whistling after twenty-eight seconds on the HIGH setting. Just so you know.

• One of the better blogs I've come across in recent memory, that is, in the last week: Stuff White People Like.

For the record, while I am very white--in fact, I am bright pink, additionally I am frightening Germanic when I have short hair--I don't like sushi; don't know what poor people need, because I am too busy trying not to be poor; dread being locked in a room with National Public Radio or David Sedaris (or both); would break my neck if I snowboarded; have never attended a writer's workshop despite being a professional writer; and find gifted children aggravating as they know all the trivia I struggle to retain ten minutes after I read it.

I do, however, like wine and breakfast places. And Sarah Silverman, but only if the volume on the TV is turned down. All the way.


// posted by KC45s @ 11:25 AM

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Saturday music moment: "Slow Dog," by Belly

Does anyone remember Belly? One of Tanya Donnelly's twelve bands, a modest hit-making machine that put on a pretty good show in its day, if you liked that indie rock all the kids was listening to. Contemplate this golden oldie from 1993ish and feel free to groove around the house in a dance way. You'll be glad you did.


// posted by KC45s @ 4:06 PM

Friday, February 15, 2008

Programming note

TV Listings and normal blogging to return next week, when all the queries and manuscripts have been put safely in the mail.

// posted by KC45s @ 3:07 PM

Thursday, February 14, 2008

I live with Bud Selig on an army base....



Reader Mark H. has the last word on the Clemens steroids fiasco:

PETTITTE
Roger, what do I do now?

CLEMENS
Andy, you were always interested in politics, in history. I remember you talking about Hitler back at the Cansecos.

PETTITTE
Yeah, I still read a lot. Aside from the Bible.

CLEMENS
You were a member of the New York Yankees organization, who dreamed up how the teams should be organized, how they based it on the old Roman Legions, and it worked.

PETTITTE
Yeah, it worked. Those were some great teams. We was like the Roman Empire. The Yankees was like the Roman Empire.

CLEMENS
Yeah, they were once. You know, in the Roman Empire, when a plot against the Emperor failed, the plotters were always given a chance to let their families keep their fortunes.

PETTITTE
Yeah, but only the all-stars and future hall-of-famers. If they got caught taking HGH or steroids, all their estate went to the Emperor. But if they just went home and killed themselves, up front, nothing happened.

CLEMENS
Yeah, that was a good break. A nice deal.

PETTITTE
They went home and sat in a hot bath and opened their veins, and bled to death. Sometimes they gave a little party before they did it.

CLEMENS
Don't worry about anything, Andy.

PETTITTE
Thanks, Roger. Thanks...

// posted by KC45s @ 11:27 PM

Monday, February 11, 2008

Scheider RIP

Roy Scheider is dead.

So, unfortunately, is my Mac, so I cannot rescue my voluminous Scheider writings (done for another website).
Still, some improvised comments are needed.

Roy Scheider had the good fortune to peak during a time that valued his assets. From the end of 1960s until about 1978, an unconventional looking guy could get lead parts in films. Directors wanted intensity and realism, even in their extras. A guy like Scheider provided. In addition, he came along at a time when Hollywood screenwriters an unending number of New York cop roles--a part Scheider played so well in The French Connection and The Seven-Ups that it brought him to the brink of being typecast.

He wasn't a big, imposing guy. Scheider had something of a dance background and, before that, an actual boxing background, and that's a job where you dance or else. Cosmopolitan called him "lithe," and they knew from lithe, God knows.

But he had an interesting face. The broken nose, from the boxing days.

A lean expression, at once ascetic and predatory--a face born to play an Inquisitor.

The face always seemed to be sweating, too, as if the urban jungle he prowled in kept his fight-or-flight response at constant high alert.

Finally, he must've been born with that cigarette dangling off his lip.

Scheider also offered an excellent voice. The obits called it authoritative. It certainly had timber and control, an unusual combination in the Method-soaked Seventies, when Dustin Hoffman and Richard Dreyfuss were being nasal and chatty all over the place, and Warren Beatty had perfected his I'm-constantly-in-a-state-of-post-coital-befuddlement stammer.

Having done Shakespeare--did he smoke the whole time as Mercutio?--he got a break playing a pimp in Klute, and soared into the A-list character actor crowd as Gene Hackman's partner in The French Connection. He played a few other parts and then, of course, played another cop, this time a New York City transplant with a shark problem.

Scheider had the hardest work in Jaws, unless you count the guys who controlled the mechanical shark. While Dreyfuss played the wise-guy and got all the snappy lines, and Robert Shaw delivered the classic U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue, Scheider had to hold the film together, underplaying against a ridiculous plot while shouldering an adult's responsibilities--as police chief, as a father--on an island (and in a movie) mostly inhabited by boys.

If Scheider slips once, it all falls apart. Because the very thin veneer of realism, and I use the term loosely, would wash away, leaving a cartoon offering cheap shocks but no genuine menace, no rooting interest in the final confrontation.

He never slips.

By the end of the Seventies he escaped the police force, though not New York, and ruled in All That Jazz.

But his window of opportunity was closing.

Robbed of the lead in The Deer Hunter by a contractual obligation to do the dumb-ass Jaws sequel, Scheider passed through All That Jazz and, alas, ended up in a sea of so-so films, doing what he had to do, no doubt hoping something better waited around the corner. He played Hoffman's spy brother in Marathon Man and takes the movie with him when his character dies. In the 1980s, he battled the similarly-brilliant-and-wasted Malcolm McDowell in Blue Thunder while also taking a side trip to outer space with Helen Mirren in 2010.

Character parts and the submarine show soon followed.

Unlike your Burt Reynoldses and Richard Dreyfusses, Scheider didn't undermine his own career. After reaching his peak with All That Jazz, he looked around to see Hollywood rejecting anything in the realm of gritty realism. Including him.

After all, the early-mid '80s was a dismal period for American film, as it was for American music. Promising careers like Voight and Travolta were chewed up, Hoffman and Jack Nicholson meandered into an odd semi-retirement, and Beatty followed them after putting Reds in the can. Dreyfuss, Julie Christie, Reynolds, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, John Belushi, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, James Caan--it was carnage.

I wish he'd done more, that he'd had the opportunities. No doubt he did, too.

// posted by KC45s @ 11:04 PM

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Saturday music moment: "There's a Spy in the House of Love," by Animal Logic

Better known as Stewart Copeland's band after the Police. More bands should reference Anais Nin, yes?


// posted by KC45s @ 1:32 PM

Friday, February 08, 2008

TV Listings

Swingin' Avengers (8 p.m., FOX) Bubbles Kahuna (Don Ho) revs up his dreaded Tiki Torture Totem and confronts the super-team with its greatest fears: The Voice (Tom Jones) is isolated from the screams of his fans and weakens unto death; Staggerman (Dean Martin) faces his arch-foe, Cold Turkey; and Dr. Groovy (Sammy Davis, Jr.) must share a small restaurant booth and an inept waiter with Captain Blueyes (Frank Sinatra).

Better Red than Dead (8:30 p.m., NBC) A Hollywood producer casts reggae sensation Melva Paisley (playing herself) in a musical feature called Rasta-bout. Rasta Lenin, fresh off a triumph in a summer stock production of Love That Battleship Potemkin!, wins the coveted role of Paisley's manager, but conflicts arise when he insists on changing his role from grubby carnival kingpin to traveling socialist liberator.

David Caruso's Sunglasses (7 p.m., CBS) The star of the hit series CSI: Miami gets a variety show. Tonight, David Caruso's Sunglasses sings "Abraham, Martin, and John" and welcomes TV magician Criss Angel and teen sensation Mylie Cyrus. Special appearance by David Caruso.

Bibliophilic Gladiators (9 p.m., Bravo) Balzac clouts "Sugerboy" Hemingway with a mutton leg. Unavailable for preview.

Corporal Kanzi (8:30 p.m., Animal Planet) When the platoon breaks curfew, Sgt. Smigg orders the ape on the brink of the human mind to write Hamlet on the company typewriter. A weekend in the stockade ensues when Kanzi instead comes up with the book and music to South Pacific.

World Hellholes: India (7 p.m., Discovery) Officer Padma Nerru shoos the trash-eating tigers of Marjapoor from the Dumpsters (few though they are) of Calcutta. Meanwhile, rhesus monkeys strip her jeep, trade the tires for produce, and pelt local pedestrians. Hundreds are slain.

// posted by KC45s @ 12:51 PM

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Cover me

For the past forty-eight hours I have labored to put together a synopsis and cover letter for a novel. You might say to yourself that "forty-eight" is a lot of hours to spend on something the printer spits out as ... three pages. Double-spaced.

That's a reasonable thing for you to say. No argument.

The fact it takes forty-eight hours, and sends one into the depths of despair, is Reason #14 you should never ever let someone you love become a writer. Please. I know many of you have young children now. You're perhaps hoping they become precocious readers. You may even be of a bent that dreams of a child with artistic ability. Let me tell you, from inside the artistic life, that to encourage such hopes constitutes child abuse. So stop now. To express my own strong feelings about this, I intend to kick off the world's first campaign to promote illiteracy, with George W. Bush as spokesman. Just as soon as I finish the cover letter.

I have published a fair number of books. But like the ham actor who still wants to be a Shakespearean, I keep aiming to be An Artist. Or, barring that, what Stephen King calls a writer in the business of "making sausage." (He may actually say "salami." I can't find the ^%&$*!# book to check.)

In a sense this represents progress, because I've started to accept I'm geared toward sausage/salami (like King I hope it's good sausage/salami) rather than foie gras. This doesn't surprise me. One cannot sanely aspire to Remembrance of Things Past. Anyway, due to that stressful relationship between me and real life, my brain is now mostly rewired to make Money rather than Art. I don't even think artistically. Just writing clearly is hard enough. My ambitions have shrunken like a deflated balloon on hot pavement.

If time in the hospital does one thing, it allows you to think. There's nothing else to do. During that time, and since, I've concluded--had no choice but to conclude--that I lack the tools. Not writing ability. That I have. But you need more.

You need will.

You need an adventurous spirit.

You need a personality able to chat up ordinary strangers and convince extraordinary strangers that it's worth their time to talk to you. You need, in other words, to be either charming or a pain in the pass.

I have/am none of these things. It's a stone drag, if I may quote Mike Nesmith.

I'm never going to write my DDT microhistory because I don't have the guts to call the people I need to call for interviews. I'm never going to write my sprawling eco-novel because I'll never tramp across the U.S. for six months (or more) doing the on-the-spot research on plants and animals.

I know this now. Though, I admit, tomorrow I may forget.

Finally, let me add one more requirement. The most important one.

You need faith that it's going to work out.

Faith is the key.

It's more important than practice. Believe me, if your child wants to write--or paint, or dance, or some other damn-fool impractical thing--he or she will pursue it. My dad screamed at me in indignation for hammering on my typewriter when I should've been playing outside. I chose to hammer, anyway, all on my own, no encouragement to buoy me and no teachers to force me. I was probably twelve or thirteen.

Don't get me wrong. Provide the mentors, lessons, or what-have-you. Do your child that enormous favor. Definitely.

But don't forget to try to make them believe. Even when your first instinct is to say, "If you concentrate on painting, you'll starve!" Because threats of starvation didn't deter me, and I'm not the most stubborn guy in the world by a long shot. Tell them it's hard, sure. It's a long way to the top, if you want to rock and roll. But reaffirm, daily--hourly--that if they want it, really want it, they can have it.

Teach them to believe.

Because when you lose faith, you wonder--you spend your life wondering--why you have so little to show for the hours that've passed. And the day comes, maybe in the hospital, when you track back through the days and years, and it horrifies you.

// posted by KC45s @ 9:23 PM

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Cleanin' out my closet (briefly)

Most excellent, as if Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Iron Maiden could be anything else.

Flight of the Conchords on YouTube. Search now. I highly recommend "Business Time." Water spurted out my nose, I swear. Though most of the selections on offer are wonderful. If my elderly computer wasn't crashed by video or even thoughts of video I'd provide a link. Sorry to be lame. Update: No, wait, here it is.

A terrific remembrance of the late, great, and probably-already-reincarnated Maharishi. It'd be cool if he came back as a relative of mine. Or as a shark. Actually, shark would be cooler.

I've done a touch-up on the Turntable, in honor of Blogroll Amnesty Day.

A long and frustrating twenty-four hours. Back to regular posting tomorrow.

// posted by KC45s @ 8:22 PM

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

The Banners Way: I Regret to Say I Again Cannot Be Your President At This Time

Friends,
Today many of us vote in presidential primaries. I, Dag Banners, would like to take this opportunity to personally apologize for not running for our country’s highest office.

Like you, I feel that our national situation requires the kind of leadership Dag Banners can provide. And indeed for months I have bided my time, waiting to see which candidates would emerge, and how they matched up against me. As we move into mid-February, I still ponder the possibility of riding in on horseback and carrying off a brokered convention.

A unity candidate. A hero. A man without qualities, in a time when such men have THE inside track to become those fantastic brand names we call Contemporary American Politicians.

Furthermore, I see my beliefs in keeping in perfect lockstep with the political party that most enjoys lockstepping. How, you ask?

• Banners not only thinks the world will end soon, he also believes this to be a desirable state of affairs. For, as longtime readers know, my motto is “The End Times Don’t Have to Be Bad Times™.” (This replaces my old motto, “Yes, YOU Can Be The Man in the Blue Turban.”)

• As further proof of my ideological bona fides, let me add that I have a long history of not only advocating Armageddon, but insisting you PROFIT from it.

• Like many a great statesman, I have contemplated what our country needs since my younger days. Long ago, I gave up the easy life of painting Frank Frazetta artwork onto the sides of vans throughout southern Indiana in order to travel this Great Nation and learn its Wisdom.

I admit I was initially concerned with the typical shallow interests of youth in the 1970s—money, the faked moon landing, girls. But I came around to the deeper level of contemplation that led to my now-classic first mimeographed newsletter, “The Posse Comatatis: Not a Venereal Disease.” The success of that humble $.95 publication (now for sale for $9.95 in this summer’s SURVIVE! With Dag Banners Catalog, bulk rate available) led me to my career selling large, colorful combs to Caucasians—the financial breakthrough that was the foundation of my present-day entrepreneurial empire.

• So as you see, Banners is also a small businessman’s friend. Another bona fide in my favor!

Unfortunately, I am prevented from voting because of a past felony conviction. While unable to lay out the details of the case due to the terms of my parole, I can hint that it involved rogue agents of the Internal Revenue Service, Burmese mail order brides, and the purchase of a decommissioned submarine for the Contras.

Surely this proves the ideological trustworthiness of Banners even more.

What it doesn’t do is grant me the kind of full pardon I need to vote for myself on a ballot. And I am under no illusions. I would need every vote.

Thus, I apologize sincerely for being unable to serve as Your President. As you exercise your democracy this February 5, dream of the day when Banners can vote for himself on a ballot—so that I may serve you and the United States of America.

Dag Banners is an author, think tank founder, entrepreneur, proud former Amway distributor, and the world’s only survivalist advice columnist. His column appears regularly.

// posted by Dag Banners @ 1:09 PM

Monday, February 04, 2008

Note

Well, some combination of Blogger and my suck-ass computer ate my political post.

I guess it wasn't meant to be.

See you tomorrow.

// posted by KC45s @ 12:56 AM

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Support Blogroll Amnesty Day

I like blogging because it reminds me of zines.

Back in the 1990s, the zine was the hipster-alternative-people's media craze, with attention from the New York Times, how-to books from publishers, and its own bible called Factsheet Five. Having participated in alternative media here and there, I dove in with my own zine, got to where I sent out about 75 per month, printed from my Mac Color Classic and copied at the Kinkos on Lincoln Avenue and bound together by me on what passed for my bed.

In time it got to where I received strange zines in the mail. Some invited me to send mine to an address; others just appeared, their photocopied pages bursting with dadaist poetry, political rants, and tales of found objects. Others I ordered on my own--the brilliant Beer Frame, with its reviews of unusual consumer products, and the oft-hilarious Thrift Score telling me what was available at thrift stores if one looked closely.

Zines faded, to be replaced in my reading habits by blogs.

The first blog-like object I remember reading belonged to a friend of mine. At his invite I contributed news stories about chimps and whatnot. I met Dag Banners at another.

Soon I came across one of the liberal world's ur-blogs, Media Whores Online, an alternately funny and bitter critique of political media in general and America's oldest Ritalin-needy preschooler, Chris Matthews, in particular. In those days finding liberal writing outside old barns like The Nation was difficult indeed. MWO filled a vacuum. Hell, I still miss it.

Inspired by MWO, I considered doing something similar, to help pick up where zines had left off. I'd never heard the word "blog." But I followed politics and especially the media-politics connection. Writing about it seemed like second nature. I occasionally did so on friends' sites already.

Just think, had I started in 2000, I could've become Atrios!

Of course, blogging on politics day in and day out would have killed me by, oh, June of 2003. If not through depression, then rage. Reading about politics every day is harmful enough. You think the White House has aged George Bush? You should see how George Bush in the White House has aged me.

On the whole, then, I chose right. I prefer being alive.

Blogs are the bee's knees nowadays. The mastermind behind Daily Kos works for Newsweek and shows up on TV; the excellent-if-intense Glenn Greenwald vaulted to the bestseller lists and Salon; and the biggest blogs get hundreds of thousands of hits per day.

Thousands of lesser-known bloggers are surfing the same curl. For my part, I never expected a readership beyond my friends (good thing, too). I seldom deal with politics or anything of substance, I lack the mojo to do original reporting of any kind, and the writing is all over the place since I gave up concentrating on music. That is not the way to go about building a successful, much-hit blog.

But I'm digging it my way.

At the same time, I also dig that there are a lot of interesting bloggers off the beaten path. A surprising number, to be honest. It gives me hope for literacy, at least until I turn on the TV and see American Gladiators.

One of the blogs I link to and have enjoyed for awhile, Jon Swift, is running a campaign to bring attention to these unknown (or lesser-known) bloggers. Being a small-d democratic sort, I am all about helping to boost new products into the marketplace of ideas. I myself wish I had more time to trawl the blogosphere because I know there's some sharp stuff out there.

Anyway, I want to do my part. For awhile, zines turned into a genuine community. An odd community, asylum-like, but it had a vibe, or rather about ten thousand vibes. I've been happy to see blogs pick up those signals the last seven or eight years. And I want to do my part beyond the links on the Turntable at the right.

So this post is a long, meandering way of saying: Support Blogroll Amnesty Day.


// posted by KC45s @ 12:01 AM

Friday, February 01, 2008

Change of flight plans

Tonight I intended to write a political post on the current presidential scrum, with thoughts on the relative virtues of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and a side trip into the latter's blessed state as a man young enough to be removed from the unending culture wars fought and re-fought by the vanguard of Baby Boomers (a theme inspired by the email of a friend).

There would have been insight. Flights of rhetoric. Possibly links from blogs with higher readership.

Then, this afternoon, I briefly turned on the TV to see the weather. As I scrolled through the channels during the commercials I came across Jimmie "J.J." Walker playing a saxophone and smoking a doob in an airplane bathroom while the trout-mouthed Martha Raye, she of the 1980s dentures commercials, tried to get in to do her business.

I had alighted on The Concorde: Airport '79, the last of the Airport sequels. Naturally, my thoughts of Democratic politics were stopped cold.

In just ten minutes of viewing--I swear it wasn't a minute longer--I drank in an all-star cast that began with John Davidson and ran through the Hollywood B-, C-, and D-list to Alain Delon, Eddie Albert, and (inevitably) Charo. It being an Airport movie, George Kennedy had also signed on. This time, his character was not just fixing the plane but stunt-flying the motha Luke Skywalker-style as terrorists led by Robert Wagner fired experimental missiles at the titular Concorde.

Though I have only the smallest knowledge about aeronautical engineering, I feel confident saying the Concorde probably wasn't built to take supersonic barrel rolls. Fortunately, the editing distracted me from these technical details, for every time Big George rolled her the film cut to the chaos in the cabin, where everyone screamed and grabbed their saxophone and turned upside-down in the best airplane disaster movie fashion.

What's great is that I'd swear the editor dropped the same shot into each cutaway. This black briefcase kept flying out of a guy's hands over and over and over.

I guess when you're paying a cast like that, you have to save money somehow.

Bonus post-conclusion feature: the all-time 45s and Under cast for an Airport movie featuring only those from Airport movies, starring (in order of billing) Charlton Heston, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bissett, Karen Black, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, the villainous Robert Foxworth, and Eric Estrada, plus Jimmie Walker toking in the can while back in the cabin Helen Reddy tries to fight her way through the scenery chewing devastation wrought by Jerry Stiller, Darrin McGavin, and Sid Caesar. Special appearance by the mom from Leave It to Beaver.


// posted by KC45s @ 6:18 PM

TV Listings

Corporal Kanzi (7 p.m., Animal Planet) The ape on the brink of the human mind earns the enmity of her platoon with the instinctive prowess at craps native to all of her tool-using kind. To win back friends, Kanzi picks a fight with Sergeant Smigg, but backs down when she cannot frighten the NCO with hooting and panting.

Corporal Kanzi (7:30 p.m., Animal Planet) Marching practice descends into chaos because Kanzi cannot walk upright. Parental advisory (obscene military marching chants).

Swingin' Avengers (8 p.m., FOX) When a mysterious sorceress named Wicca Basket returns to Neon City, The Voice (Tom Jones) suddenly finds himself pursued by a pile of mean-tempered sensible underwear.

Better Red Than Dread (8:30 p.m., NBC) The opium of the masses causes problems when Rasta Stalin declares himself the reincarnation of Haile Selassie and insists the staff worship him and his new crock pot. Meanwhile, Rasta Lenin butts heads with hairy apparatchiks after the city tows his Yugo delivery van.

I'm Real Mad and Wearing Sunglasses (7 p.m., BET) In this hour-long special, host Bill Cosby is joined by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for lengthy complaints on topical issues. The subjects of tonight's anger: black people and hip-hop lyrics; black people and crazy expensive athletic shoes; black people's optimism; black people and plate tectonics; black people.

// posted by KC45s @ 10:42 AM

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