BEAT THE CLOCK

We Americans love our Silly Shit. If you doubt that, just turn on the TeeVee any Sunday evening, when you can see the spiky-haired Guy Fieri hosting the latest silly-ass game show, “Minute to Win It.”

The show is simplicity itself. A contestant is given an increasingly difficult series of stunts to perform, with sixty seconds to perform each one successfully. Get the job done and you win prize money; screw up enough times and you go home unhappy. The stunts are fairly uncomplicated tasks, usually involving some sort of physical dexterity or coordination; props are basic items like playing cards, plastic cups, and ping-pong balls. The Philip Glass-like music that plays while the robotic-voiced female announcer explains each task is a surprisingly high-toned bonus.

Of course, all of this has been done before... and on a much lower budget. I’m referring to the vintage TV game show “Beat the Clock,” in which contestants were given sixty seconds to perform various stunts with props that usually consisted of simple household items. “Beat the Clock” was a television fixture in its original run from 1950 to 1961, a time when contestants would actually get foam-at-the-mouth excited about the prospect of winning a C-note. But in American popular culture, everything old shall be new again... and so we have “Minute to Win It.” It’s the closest thing we have to an authentic Japanese game show (except for “I Survived A Japanese Game Show,” which is really a meta-gameshow). To make MTWI more authentic, all the producers need to do is add a liberal dose of Contestant Humiliation. They’d really have something then.

I have no idea whether the show is any kind of success. Given the continuing devolution of the National Taste, however, I suspect the producers are printing money by the ream.

Personally, I’d prefer to watch Guy Fieri in his native Food Network environment, pounding down monster portions of Diner Food and popping his patented Shit Eatin’ Grin at the camera. But that’s just me.

GO HERE. READ THIS.

When you’re too lazy to come up with any Bloggy Content of your own, it’s always nice to be able to fall back on the old blogroll.

Take LeeAnn, f’r instance. Her “Random Thoughts While Watching TV” post had me pissing myself laughing. (PMSL, I believe, is how the younguns say it these days.)

Here’s a sample: “When did Jamie Lee Curtis become the keymaster to the pooping-well gate?” It’s a question I have asked myself many, many times... but never out loud.

Go here and read the whole thing.

TODAY’S ASSIGNMENT

Here is your assignment for today:

1. Make sure you have some Ajax or other comparable cleansing product near at hand.
   
   
2. Go here.
   
   
3. Watch the video all the way through.
   
   
4. Now scrub your raw, pulsating brain with the Ajax. (You will want to do this, trust me.)

Wasn’t that fun?

[I am eternally grateful for the existence of YouTube, thanks to which these little gem-like chunks of Pop Culture Ephemera may now be preserved and enjoyed unto the thousandth generation. Now, please excuse me while I go boil my eyeballs in Clorox.]

REFEREE

It snowed again today in Atlanta - what is that, the third time this year? - and She Who Must Be Obeyed got home at 2:30, the county schools having been let out early. (It doesn’t take a whole lotta snow to make Atlantans piss their collective pants in fear.)


Yes, indeedy: Snow. Again. And in March, fercryin’outloud!

To amuse ourselves, we decided to catch up on our stored TeeVee-Show Inventory. Our digital video recorder is packed with stuff we’ve never taken the time to watch... not a surprising outcome, since in any given week we record about twice as much as we would ever consider looking at. Once every two months or so, we erase most of the crap on the machine and start building a new pile. (Welcome to Television in the 21st Century.)

The show we happened upon was “The Marriage Ref,” which had aired last Sunday evening. Featuring Tom Papa (the nominal Ref) with an advisory panel consisting of Kelly Ripa, Jerry Seinfeld, and Alec Baldwin, the show adjudicates disputes between married couples. Not disputes like “I saw you giving your big-titty secretary the eye,” but disputes like a husband wanting to display his beloved (albeit dead and taxidermied) dog in an alcove in the house, over the strenuous objections of his wife... or a husband wanting to build a stripper pole in the bedroom for his not-too-fond-of-the-idea wife.

I had been looking forward to seeing a show that featured not one, but two of my homies: Baldwin and Seinfeld. And the show was amusing enough, given that it is, after all, Reality TeeVee.

There was one moment, though, that cracked me up unto the point of breathlessness and tears... and that was when the husband - he of the dead, stuffed dog - observed that the dog, whilst sitting in its little alcove, was giving his wife the malocchio. This is the Italian version of the ayin hara - the evil eye, and the matter-of-fact way in which the husband mentioned it just frickin’ caught me funny.

Whatever. It beats the living crap out of tripe like “The Bachelor,” a show that the Missus refers to disdainfully as “The Trashlor” while watching every single drippy, sickening minute. Gaaaahhhhh.

Hey, now there’s a Marital Dispute that’s tailor-made for The Marriage Ref! “You gonna watch that crap again?!!?”

TWEE-VEE

According to Skippy, the insanely popular Twitter feed shitmydadsays is being converted into a family television comedy. [Just what kind of family, deponent sayeth not.]

Yeah, I did a spit take, too, when I read that. But the beauty part? William Shatner has been cast as the eponymous Dad.

I’m guessing that if an actual network picks the series up, they’re gonna have to change the name. Even HBO, which may have set the land speed record for utterances of the word “cocksucker” during the series “Deadwood,” probably would back off from using the word “shit” in a show’s title.

Now I’m waiting for a teevee producer to come along and decide to make a series out of, say, a blog that features a lot of recipes, cat pictures, and poems about topics like painful rectal itch, tapered stools, and taint warheads. But maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath.

TOUCHDOWNS ’N’ TUNES

Well, it looks like the N’Awlins Saints found the plastic Baby Jesus in their slice of Super-Bowl King’s Cake, confounding the bookies with an upset. But I don’t really give a rat’s ass about the ballgame. I watch the game for the deliriously ridiculous ads... and the elderly Musical Icons they trot out during the halftime break.

Seems to me the best part about watching the Stoopid-Bowl in the last few years has been the overblown half-time shows.

Never mind Janet Jackson and her saggy kalamatunis. I’m talking about Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, and, now, the Who. It’s like musical heaven for old ginks like me.

Tonight, I had the pleasure of listening to a room full of superannuated baby boomers - me among them - rock out to “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” The irony of listening to a nearly 65-year-old Pete “Hope I Die Before I Get Old” Townshend was probably lost on most of us. “Old? Hell, sixty-five ain’t old!”

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing the last three Super Bowl half-time show artists in live concerts over the years - never, of course, at the Super Bowl, but at three different venues in Houston, Texas. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I caught McCartney at the Astrodome in April 1993; I saw Springsteen at the Music Hall in November 1974 and September 1975. As for the Who, I was there when they played the Summit in November 1975 - it was the opening show of their “Who ’76” tour and the very first event in that then newly-built venue. [It was also the loudest fucking concert I have ever heard, before or since.] Holy crap - that was more than 34 years ago! And they’re still at it!

Listen: This final blowout of the football post-season is the quintessential example of American over-the-top panem et circenses. Snazzy graphics, endless ads for beer and cars, and music with fireworks. Lotsa fireworks.

But this year when I listened to the half-time show, I didn’t know whether to feel young or old...

AN EQUIVOCAL REVIEW OF THE MOVIE AVATAR, IN TWO WORDS

It blue.

COMPOSITING

Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

Take a look at this video, and you’ll never trust anything you see on the big screen - or the little screen - again. Ain’t technology wonderful?

Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to Tim Tyson for the link.

BIZARRE MUSICAL CONNECTIONS

I’m always amazed about the bizarre and mystickal connections that reveal themselves through this business of blogging.

Take, for example, Eric (the Straight White Guy) and Dax Montana, fellow members of the loose confederation we call the Jawja Blodgers.

Now let’s select three musical artists, not quite at random: Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and Don Van Vliet, AKA Captain Beefheart.

Those who know Eric know that he is a Tom Waits fan. It’s a bit less obvious to the casual observer, but Dax likes Captain Beefheart. And, of the three, my strong preference is for Frank Zappa... although I like all three.

[I’ll confess that I’m always surprised to find others among my friends and acquaintances who admire the work of Captain Beefheart. He’s not the most accessible artist out there... a bit of an acquired taste, as Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) will tell you:

The first time I heard Trout Mask [Trout Mask Replica, Beefheart’s landmark album], when I was 15 years old, I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony.

Then I listened to it a couple more times, because... a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose: they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I’d ever heard.

It may not be the best album I’ve ever heard, yet parts of it are brilliant. But we’re not talking Top 40 hit radio here.]

These three artists are connected, just as we three bloggers are connected.

Frank Zappa and Don Van Vliet were friends as far back as junior high school, with Zappa later producing Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. Beefheart contributed vocals to Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp” - the second cut on Hot Rats - and later the two would tour together. The Zoot Allures album was one product of that collaboration.

As for Tom Waits, he was the opening act at several Zappa concerts in 1973-74... alas, not at the April 27, 1973 show at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre where I first saw Zappa.

Now: I can somehow imagine Dax enjoying Beefheart. After all, he is full of surprises. Even likes the Mahavishnu Orchestra, fer cryin’ out loud! And from there, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine him enjoying Zappa... or even Waits.

Eric is another story. Somehow, I can’t picture him enjoying Zappa or Beefheart quite as much as he likes Tom Waits. Or the early Tom Waits, anyway.

But I could be wrong. Not only is there no arguing about taste (de gustibus non est disputandum, after all), but sometimes there’s no understanding it, either.

EVERYONE CRAP YOUR HANDS FOR ERIC

Eric Clapton is, by many standards, considered to be among the most talented and influential guitarists of all time.

Apparently, not everybody shares this opinion.

THE NEXT GENERATION

We Red Sea Pedestrians have an expression: “L’dor va-dor” - from generation to generation - that encapsulates the concept of transmitting knowledge and values from parent to child, a concept that is nestled at the core of Jewish tradition.

The concert I attended last night, Dweezil Zappa Plays Zappa, was a perfect illustration... for Dweezil and his band have taken the musical tradition of an earlier generation and have transmitted it unto a new audience, helping to ensure that it continues to live on.

I have written here several times of Project/Object, Andre Cholmondeley’s Zappaphilic band. But this was the first time I had seen Dweezil’s group, which has been touring since 2006. And I was impressed.

It’s no stripped-down operation, for one. Not just one, but two percussionists: Joe Travers, manning a monster drum kit; and Billy Hulting, who has an assortment of other Bangy Stuff, including a marimba and full set of congas. Scheila Gonzalez handles the keyboard and sax, Jamie Kime is on guitar, Pete Griffin on bass, and Ben Thomas provides remarkably Zappaesque vocals. Of course, there’s Dweezil himself, who does a more than creditable job of channeling his old man’s unique guitar talents.

What did they play? This:

• Black Napkins
  
• T’Mershi Duween
  
• Keep It Greasey
  
• Broken Hearts Are For Assholes
  
• Jones Crusher
  
• Peaches En Regalia
  
• Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow/Saint Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast
  
• You Didn’t Try To Call Me
  
• Road Ladies
  
• Miss Pinky
  
• Wino Man
  
• Catholic Girls
  
• Crew Slut
  
• Outside Now
  
• Eat That Question
  
• Cosmik Debris
  
• RDNZL
  
• Willie the Pimp
  
• Muffin Man

The last four pieces comprised the encore. At the end, Dweezil offered the audience a choice between “San Ber’dino,” “Willie the Pimp,” and “Muffin Man”; the overwhelming preference (by voice acclamation) was split equally between the latter two. The band wisely decided to play both. Joy!


Dweezil Zappa. You can tell he’s a chip off the old block just by looking at him.

If you are unfamiliar with these tunes, it’s hard to explain how technically complex most of them are - how many different musical styles, genres, and time signatures get crammed in to a single song - and how much fun it is to hear them live, with spleen-homogenizing bass notes rattling the fillings in your back teeth.

I love this stuff... and the audience at last night’s show - a mixed bag of greying Baby Boomers, twenty- and thirty-somethings, and even some barely postpubescent teens - did too. It’s nice to know that a new generation is not only performing Frank’s music, but enjoying it as well. L’dor va-dor, indeed!

IT’S OFFICIAL

Now that we’ve seen It’s Complicated, the new comedy romp starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin, I can report that it is now official:

Alec Baldwin has become his father.

I’m not talking about the character he plays in the movie. I’m referring to his remarkable barrel-chestedness, coupled with his greying hair. Alec now looks exactly like his Dad used to look, a sort of real-life Fred Flintstone... if you can imagine Fred dressed in 1960’s Modern Suburbanite in lieu of animal skins.

A PLAGUE OF PLAGIARISM

“Whatever has been is what will be, and whatever has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun.” - Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:9

As I was reading synopses and reviews of James Cameron’s new SF epic Avatar, it occurred to me that certain elements of the story were... familiar. And, no, I’m not talking about the obvious parallels between Avatar and Dances with Wolves. I’m referring to the science-fictional underpinnings of the film.

Hmmm, lessee. Crippled guy uses futuristic technology to transport his mind into an alien body, eventually “going native” when he realizes that life as a strong, healthy alien is better than life as a crippled, miserable human. Why, that sounds vaguely familiar! It’s a story that is well-known to any reasonably serious SF reader: Poul Anderson’s “Call Me Joe.”

In Anderson’s 1957 short story, Ed Anglesey, a crippled, bad-tempered scientist uses an electronically-enhanced telepathic link to control an artificially-created lifeform that is capable of living on Jupiter. The story focuses mostly on the psychology of Anglesey and that of the creature (“Joe”) he controls; by the end of the story, Joe has taken over and become self-aware, subsuming whatever is left of Anglesey.

While the plot of Avatar is certainly different, the premise is strikingly similar.

This sort of “kinda-sorta plagiarism” is nothing new in Hollywood. It was an issue with Mike Judge’s dystopian comedy Idiocracy, which bore an awful lot of similarity to Cyril Kornbluth’s cynical 1951 short story “The Marching Morons.”

It was also evident in last year’s short-lived cop series “New Amsterdam,” which looked remarkably just like a teevee version of Pete Hamill’s novel Forever.

And James Cameron himself is no newbie at this. Harlan Ellison, the notoriously prickly SF writer, sued Cameron after Terminator came out, based on certain components of that film’s premise that appeared to have been “borrowed” from a couple of Ellison’s scripts for the old Outer Limits series. In one, “Soldier,” a brutal warrior from the far future is transported back to 1964; in another, “Demon With a Glass Hand,” a man discovers that he is really a robot... sent back to 1960’s Earth from 1000 years in the future after aliens have conquered the planet. Ellison eventually received screen credit.

Look: As Ecclesiastes pointed out a looooong time ago, there is nothing new under the sun. Ideas morph, change, grow, evolve. And anyone who grew up reading science fiction or watching it on the big or small screen is going to have had some exposure to certain storylines. But if you’re gonna use them, you should at least throw a Credit-Bone to the guys who thought ’em up.

SWEET TALLULAH

I’m not sure what started it, but last week Houston Steve and I were conducting a brief review of the life and many (many many) loves of the late Tallulah Bankhead.

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead, those of of a Certain Age will remember, was an actress in Hollywood’s salad days. Not just an actress: she was a Bon Vivant of the first water, a party animal that could make Madonna blush even before she went all Kaballah on us.

She was from a politically connected Alabama family, her father having served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1936-40. [Democrat, of course. Back then, Republicans were thin on the ground down South.] Both her grandfather John H. Bankhead and her uncle John H. Bankhead II served as U.S. Senators; the Bankhead family apparently disliked the exercise of selecting new names for its scions.

[An aside: Senator John (the elder) was a leader in the national highway building movement well before the advent of the Interstate Highway System. The eponymous Bankhead Highway began in Washington, D.C., passing through Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before finally arriving in California. Here in Atlanta, a section of the Bankhead Highway was renamed the Donald L. Hollowell Parkway owing to the notoriety of the old name, a notoriety that arose from the high-crime neighborhoods through which the Bankhead route passed as it headed through the western side of the city.]

Tallulah was never considered - least of all by herself - a great beauty, but her sharp wit, smoldering looks, and husky voice gave her sex appeal that few others could match. Coupled with her astonishing sexual voracity (did someone say “coupled”?), these qualities made her downright legendary.

It takes a certain degree of unselfconsciousness - nay, downright chutzpah - to show up at a party completely nude... or to drop trou and take a whiz in the midst of a conversation with the First Lady... or to respond to Chico Marx’s elegant pick-up line (“You know, I really want to fuck you.”) with a quick “And so you shall, you old-fashioned boy.”

Other classic Tallulah quotes:

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

“They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.”

“I’m as pure as the driven slush.”

“I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.”

“Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know - I’ve been using it for years.”

“I was raped in our driveway when I was eleven. You know darling, it was a terrible experience because we had all that gravel.”

“I’ve tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic. And the others give me either stiff neck or lockjaw.”

(To a group of Salvation Army band members who were passing around a tambourine to collect money, and to whom she had just given the then-extravagant sum of $20) “There, dahlings, I know it’s been a rough winter for you Spanish dancers.”

(To a priest carrying a smoking censer) “Darling, I love your drag, but your purse is on fire!” [this one pointed out by the inestimable Velociman]

“I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock. If I’m late start without me.”

Next time you see Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, pay close attention to Cruella deVil, the film’s antagonist. The character’s outsize personality was modeled on that of Tallulah B herownself.

Ahhh, they don’t make ’em like Tallulah any more.

DOO DOO DOO DOO

No, this is not a Crapblogging Post.

If the name Marius Constant - the guy who made the above title a part of our popular culture - does not ring a bell, how ’bout this one? Rod Serling.

“Ah!” you say as the recognition dawns. That all-too-familiar theme music...

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance; of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.”

It was fifty years ago today that “The Twilight Zone” made its debut on CBS. The network suits were nervous: selling them on the idea of an anthology show grounded in science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural was a difficult undertaking, but somehow Rod Serling succeeded. The rest, as they say, is history.


Still photo from “The After Hours,” a first-season TZ episode starring Anne Francis.

The show’s original run was five years. The familiar Marius Constant guitar-and bongo “doo doo doo doo” musical intro didn’t appear until Season Two, replacing the first year’s eerie Bernard Herrmann theme.

I’m pretty sure my first exposure to the show was during its fourth season, the one season in which the episodes were a full hour long. And I remember how I felt that little frisson of terror from time to time, as the scarier episodes bumped up against my tender fifth-grade sensibilities.*

I loved it.

Plenty of now-recognizable names were in the credits. Some were relative unknowns when they were on the show; others were popular character actors. Burgess Meredith. Agnes Moorhead. William Shatner. Robert Redford. Ed Wynn. Jack Klugman. Jonathan Winters. Fritz Weaver. Martin Balsam. Charles Bronson. Martin Landau. Buster Keaton. Dick York. George Takei. Nehemiah Persoff. David Opatoshu.

Many of the original episodes - there were 156 in all - seem dated now, even the stuff of parody. That’s to be expected when a show has infiltrated the popular culture as deeply as has TZ. But many still hold up well... even some that have an all-too-well-known trick ending. And there has never been anything else quite like it, not even the brief two-and-a-half season revival in the mid-1980’s.

So tip a glass in salute to Rod Serling’s fifty-year-old brainchild. Somehow or other, I don't expect “Lost” to be celebrated - or even remembered - in like wise half a century from now, do you? And I’ll bet you can think of a few favorite ’sodes - tell us about ’em in the comments!

And now for that Twilight Zone moment: Rod Serling was born on Christmas Day in 1924, almost 85 years ago. He died in 1975 at age 50... the same age reached today by his famous creation. Doo doo doo doo!

*Note: SWMBO avoids watching The Twilight Zone to this day, mainly on account of one episode that scared the crap out of her when she was a little girl.

THE MARVELOUS WORLD OF DISNEY

Marvel Mouse comes to save the day.
Jack Kirby-style Mickey Mouse by Craig Yoe, via a link at Super Punch.

[News Item: Walt Disney Co., the world’s biggest media company, outflanked Hollywood competitors while enhancing its film lineup with the $4 billion acquisition of comic-book pioneer Marvel Entertainment Inc. (credit Bloomberg)]

The clubhouse was in an uproar as the new members filled the meeting room. It took a full twenty minutes of jockeying, shoving, negotiating, and wheedling before everyone found a seat.

Then followed the traditional opening call-and-response:

Phone: Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me?

Antiphone: M-I-C-K-E-Y   M-O-U-S-E!

As soon as the cheers began to die down, Mickey pounded the gavel. “This meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club will now come to order,” he announced. Despite its squeakiness, his voice conveyed years of authority... authority that, on occasion, had demanded enforcement. Pegleg Pete, standing by the door with an ominous-looking club in his hand, caught Mickey’s eye and winked, receiving a barely perceptible nod in acknowledgement.

“First item on the agenda. Will Donald please read the minutes of the last meeting?”

Fifty sets of eyeballs rolled heavenward almost at once. Everyone had already received the minutes by e-mail, but this was Mickey’s cruel whim... to make everyone listen to the Duck quack them out, word by painful word. The aftereffects of a laryngectomy, undergone in late 2006 to excise a fast-growing vocal cord sarcoma, only made it worse.

A hand shot up, a heavy steel hammer clutched in its fist. “I move... that the minutes be approved... as written!”

“Thor, you can’t make a motion to approve the minutes... you Marvel guys weren’t here last month.” Christ, thought Mickey. All that drama. Those italics! And the guy was as dumb as a sack of Mjolnirs, at least in his Thor identity. Yeesh.

Goofy made the motion in place of Thor, and Minnie seconded. A quick vote ensued and the minutes were accepted.

The rest of the meeting proceeded without issue, except for one near-fracas that got started when the overhead lights kept reflecting off the Silver Surfer’s metallic skin and shining in the Hulk’s eyes. Only the tag-team intervention of Snow White and Cinderella prevented a violent incident.

As things began winding down for the evening and the closing ceremonies began, the “toss Mickey in the air and catch him” ritual was more exciting than usual, as the new members of the Club took their places. The Hulk was a little overenthusiastic on the third toss, and Mickey sailed straight up through the skylight a good two hundred fifty feet. But Reed Richards - Mr. Fantastic himself! - averted possible disaster by whipping out an elastic arm, catching the Mouse, and depositing him, slightly shaken, safely on the ground.

Memo to self, Mickey thought. Wait until the Hulk reverts to his Bruce Banner persona. Then, have Pegleg Pete kick the crap out of him. The Dwarves can help - they’re masters of the “padlock in the athletic sock” trick.

As the clubhouse emptied out, Mickey, still a little shaken from his unexpected aerial adventure, fell into step alongside Donald, Goofy, and the silent Pluto. There was a certain amount of comfort in being there with the Old Guard, the cadre that had been together since the bad old days of the Three Little Pigs Putsch back in ’32. The Mouse, the Duck, the Dawg, and the Dog.

They walked silently for a while before Goofy spoke. “Shore is different with all those new guys. H-hyuk!”

“Yeah,” said the Duck. “But some things never change. Did you see the way Princess Ariel was eyeballing Ben Grimm? Musta thought he was some kind of animated chunk of coral.”

“She’s gonna have to go through Beauty to get to him,” observed the Mouse. “She had him in her sights since she first got the news about the merger. And I gotta admit, the ‘Beauty and the Thing’ angle might be worth following up on. Look into that, willya, Goofy?”

“Shore, Boss! Hu-hyuk!”

Mickey rolled his eyes. I love him like a brother, he thought. But why does he have to be so damned stupid?

In the gathering darkness, a few hundred paces behind Mickey and his Old Guard friends, Doctor Doom trudged along beside Spider-Man and Captain America.

“I care not that he now styles himself ‘Marvel Mouse’! As sure as I breathe, I shall not continue to vow fealty to a filthy rodent!” he hissed from behind his sinister-looking metal mask... the very mask that had inspired George Lucas as he created the immortal Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

“Cool your jets, Doc,” said Spider-Man. “The walls have ears... and around here, the trees probably do as well. Ix-nay on the edition-say!”

Captain America nodded. “Spidey’s right, Doc - we all feel the same as you do. But let’s get the, ahhh, lay of the land before we make our move, OK?”

Doom grumbled his reluctant assent.

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any more of that Latverian brandy, would you? I think we all could use a drink.”

WOODSTOCK: FORTY YEARS ON

It’s hard to believe, but as of this weekend it has been fully forty years since those legendary Three Days of Peace & Music... & Adventurous Pharmaceuticals, & Mud, & Shit, & Nudity, & Alfresco Fucking... that was the Woodstock Music & Art Fair.

The “Music & Art Fair” was not, in fact, held in Woodstock, but rather at White Lake, in Bethel, New York. Max Yasgur’s dairy farm would never be the same... especially after something on the order of 400,000 people congregated upon it to hear thirty-four different musical acts.

There were some big names there: Janis Joplin, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, Crosby Stills & Nash, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone... and the Incredible String Band, one of my personal favorites. Plenty of well-known acts - Jethro Tull, the Moody Blues, and Bob Dylan among them - elected not to appear; most later regretted their decision when the sheer magnitude of the event became known.

Remarkably, given the size of the crowd, only two people died - neither by violence. One was a heroin overdose, the other a concertgoer who got squished by a tractor that accidentally ran over him as he slept. It would be another year before the Peace & Love scene would turn ugly at the infamous Altamont festival.

One of the performers at Woodstock was the amazingly twitchy Joe Cocker. I’ve never seen Cocker in person, although I once saw John Belushi do a spot-on impersonation of him at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, during the 1973 National Lampoon Lemmings tour. Belushi would later do that same impression on SNL... onstage with Cocker himself. Hysterically funny.

Alas, I did not go to Woodstock (a fact that my brother, the Other Elisson, was unaware of until only yesterday), although I know several people who did. Probably just as well, because now I can simply sit here in my comfortable suburban surroundings, click a button, and enjoy Joe Cocker’s vocal stylings (and amazing twitchery) at my convenience. And you can, too!

It’s almost as good as being there. Maybe better, because this clip provides a helpful running translation of some of Cocker’s less intelligible lyrics. Plus, no shit or mud!

THE BREAKFAST FUNERAL CLUB

John Hughes, 1950-2009.

John Hughes, Hollywood writer, director and producer of some of the most popular comedies of the 1980’s and ’90’s, died yesterday of a heart attack at the age of 59.

Meryl Yourish has written a fine tribute here. As Meryl notes, Hughes created his own genre of Teen Movies, in the process launching the careers of a veritable army of actors, including Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, John Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, and Bill Paxton.

If I had to pick my favorite John Hughes movie, it’d likely be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in which Matthew Broderick frequently broke the fourth wall and spoke directly to the movie audience. But others like The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles are still fun to watch. While Home Alone, his greatest commercial success, is much more formulaic, it still has its moments.

In Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Steve Martin’s profanity-laced rant at the rental car counter (and Edie McClurg’s response) will elicit a rueful laugh from anyone who ever had to travel for a living.

Light a candle for the late, lamented Mr. Hughes. In fact, light sixteen of ’em.

COVER BOY

Bruce Springsteen graces the cover of Time, August 6, 2002.

The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey, that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again, I just can’t face myself alone again
Don’t run back inside, darling, you know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty but, hey, you’re all right
Oh, and that’s all right with me

- Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road”

I hope I die before I get old...

- The Who, “My Generation”

It was springtime of 1973 when I first heard of the Bard of Asbury Park, a young man yclept Bruce Springsteen who had just released his first album - entitled, appropriately enough, Greetings from Asbury Park - that January.

Greetings was no commercial success; not by any means. While a few critics praised his folky, poetic lyrics - going so far as to compare him with Bob Dylan in a few instances - most dismissed him. But for me, that first album was a revelation. From the exuberant wordplay of “Blinded by the Light” to the Van Morrison-like “Spirit in the Night,” from the bitterness of “Lost in the Flood” to the urban grit of “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” there was something fresh and powerful in every song.

His second album, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, had more of an R&B flavor, but the basic ingredients - teen angst and urban life counting heavily among them - were still there, and the music was, in some respects, even more powerful. Critics, by and large, liked this sophomore effort, but it still managed to flop.

Born to Run, Springsteen’s third album, was no flop. With the push of rock critic-turned manager Jon Landau (“I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen”) favorable advance word-of-mouth, and extra impetus from a five-day gig at New York’s Bottom Line, Born to Run was released in August 1975 and became an immediate success.

To many people, Born to Run is Springsteen’s finest work. And maybe it is. To me, it lacks the gritty charm of his first two albums, and it feels just a bit overproduced. But there’s no denying the power and emotion of several songs, including “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road.” I confess to having been in the habit of coming home from work every day and cueing up “Thunder Road” on the turntable, which I would then play at wall-cracking volume. Strangely, not one of my neighbors (I was living in an apartment in Houston at the time) ever complained.

With the release and huge popularity of Born to Run, Springsteen became a media darling. Both Time and Newsweek featured him on their covers on October 27, 1975; critics and fans alike gushed praise.



If you had ever seen a Springsteen show, you would have had some idea of what made him a standout rock performer. I saw him perform twice at the Houston Music Hall, once in November 1974 and again in September 1975 (the latter a part of the Born to Run tour), and unto this very day I don’t think I have ever seen another performer with his sheer energy. All of that energy went directly into the music, too; none of that stupid-ass pyrotechnic stuff. Pure rock-and-roll of the first water.

* * * * *Fast forward about thirty-four years.

I still listen to ol’ Bruce every so often, but it’s mostly his older stuff. 1984’s Born in the USA, one of the most popular albums of all time, struck me as being overblown and bitter. The teen angst of his earlier work had been replaced by a world-weariness that seemed to suck the joy out of the songs. Which, of course, was the point.

But as a measure of just how much time has passed since I first became acquainted with Springsteen’s music, I will note, with some degree of Rueful Amusement, that Bruce Springsteen is, this week, once again a Cover Boy. But it’s not Time, Newsweek, or Rolling Stone this time.

Here ’tis:


Bruce Springsteen, AARP’s latest Cover Boy. (No, this is not a Photoshop.)

Yes, indeedy - the AARP magazine! You see this show up on the newsstand or in your mailbox, and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore. Sign of the times, I suppose.

(sigh)

Now, for extra credit: What should be more depressing - Springsteen appearing on the cover of the AARP magazine, or the fact that I have a subscription to same?

Update: Yet another demonstration that we live in a small world abounding in Strange Coincidence. This morning (8/14) I was breakfasting with our usual Minyan Gang when one of the boys whips out his iPhone, upon which is stored Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions album... which, by pure coincidence, happened to be in my car’s CD player at that very moment. But that’s not noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that this fellow’s cousin Larry was the drummer in the Seeger Sessions band. How bout dat?

A MODEST PROPOSAL...

...to solve the two most critical issues that plague the estate and family of the late Michael Jackson.

Those issues? What to do with Jackson’s three offspring, and how to deal with the mountain of debt that he left behind.

The children - Prince Michael Joseph, 12, Paris Michael, 11, and Prince Michael II, a.k.a “Blanket,” 7 - have never known a normal life. They have no real friends; they have never attended a day of school. They have been zealously guarded and protected all their lives, in what was perhaps the most rational act of their colossally famous daddy.

A little normalcy might be just the ticket for them. They need to be part of a loving family, a family that resides somewhat closer to the mainstream of American life.

And the debt issue? Various sources place the estate’s red ink at about $500 million. There are enough assets in the estate to pay off that debt, but to do so would require a massive liquidation in a difficult economic environment. Not the best answer... but an answer must be found. And I have one.

My modest proposal?

Auction off the children on eBay. Use the proceeds to pay off the estate’s debt.

They’ll have to be sold as a single unit. Separating them would be cruel and inhumane. Plus, they’re probably worth more as package deal anyway.

Any prospective buyers would need to be carefully screened. We don’t want these kids ending up as sex slaves in a Saudi brothel - we want ’em to have warm, welcoming homes.

Preferably very far away from Grandpa Joe.