Dr. Frank's What's-it

Press Play

I flipped through and watched a bit of all the rote, canned Reagan retrospectives that were flooding the TV yesterday. TV news was well-prepared for this; everybody had been sitting on the copy for the last ten years, waiting for the opportunity to break it out. Talking heads had been rehearsing their recitations of the copy in front of mirrors for years. And it showed. My own feelings and thoughts about Reagan, his presidency, and my own formative years which coincided with it, are complex and contradictory, not sufficiently explored or analyzed by any means. Maybe one day I'll delve into it and produce my own copy. I'm not much of "tribute man" myself. Yet for Reagan Remembered content, I much prefer Michele's genuine, personal, unpretentious, unrehearsed encomium to anything else I've seen so far.

UPDATE: Matt Welch has another good one, which more or less squares with my own experience.:

And so it was that when the old fella said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I laughed at his blustery naivete, as I did whenever he uttered the phrase "Evil Empire." Needless to say, I was wrong about that, and he was right, and I'm still ashamed about it.... For Californians between the ages 35 and 50, he just towered over our lives; Nixon was a piker in comparison, despite the spectacular flameout. Judging his life inevitably means re-examining our own. Since I don't have the time or inclination to do that just now, I'll leave it to the Culture Warriors.

Mao-y Wow-y

Somehow I stumbled on these pages of "Maoist" music and movie reviews from the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Just reading at random was good for half an hour or so of decent amusement.

The primary consideration in these reviews is whether the work in question needs to be banned immediately as soon as the party seizes power; or whether, on the other hand, it is sufficiently harmless that its banning can safely proceed at a more leisurely pace. The first pass will, theoretically, leave a small chunk of pop culture more or less intact.

But make no mistake; ultimately, very little will be spared, and they've got the censorship and book-burning machine all fired up and ready to go:

When we disapprove of something we mean to ban it upon seizure of state power... The party has yet to approve a specific percentage of films and music that it believes should be banned. This will be a task of a future party congress. Judging from reviews done so far, I would guesstimate it appears that MIM would ban 95% of existing performing arts culture.

But they have their prioirities, as I mentioned. "In the first round of censoring music," they write, "either by outright banning or revision, we will have to focus on the outwardly sick and misogynist music..." Thus, the Cars will be spared the first round of censorship. The Police, too. "Promotion of the romance culture" is bad, but not that bad. It can wait.

The Rolling Stones' Hot Rocks doesn't fare so well, though: "some of the songs on this album are near the top of the list 'To Be Censored Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.'"

This would include most of the girl songs (er, make that, wimmin songs) I suppose. But other Stones songs do get the MIM seal of approval, such as Sympathy for the Devil. You know, because it "is talking about wars and assassinations." Of course. Furthermore:

another song with a positive spin to it is "Gimme Shelter" which is about war, rape and murder. It's hard to make out the first word of what Jagger is saying: "War, children, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away." While Jagger constantly puts down adult wimmin, his attitude toward children is more correct, at least with regard to war and drug-dealing...

One random thing I love about these reviews: the continual use of the word "Persynal," which sounds like a great name for a psycho-tropic or anti-anxiety medication, but is actually, of course, an attempt at a gender-neutral spelling for "personal." Syn of a butch!

Another random thing I like: even the reviews of the music at the top of the "to be burned" list have "buy it from Amazon" links. Take that, Imperialist Swine!

The movie reviews are every bit as awesome. Check out A Bug's Life (which they fault for not realizing its full potential as an allegory contra U$ Imperialism); and The Lord of the Rings (in which a quotation from Chairman Mao identifies the true heroes of the story: Boromir and Saruman!)

The final scene of Spiderman, in which Peter Parker ultimately chooses superheroism over love, presents, for the Maos, "the most important political message in the movie":

This is the asexuality that MIM praises as a superior romantic practice.

Oh, and I almost forgot: even though much of the Jagger/Richard songbook will be summarily erased from our cultural memory by whatever means necessary, there is at least one rock song that the Maos like more or less unreservedly, or at least with enough enthusiam to reserve a permanent place for it in the saving 5%, out of bounds for censorship. "Fortunately for us communists, we agree with its message." That would be "Stairway to Heaven," babies and gentlemen. Asexual slowdance! Ah, it makes you wonder...

There's lots more where that came from, believe me. Read 'em while you still can.

Pump Up the Silence

Coupla funny letters to the Guardian, via Norm Geras.

The first is a bitter complaint about "the silence in your pages over the current dissent in Britain" from one John Pilger. The mind reels.

Here's the second:

When I first bought the Guardian, the only requirement was a CND badge and good intentions. Then I had to start eating muesli and wearing sandals. Now my newsagent wants proof that I don't watch Friends.

Imagine there's No Heaven, No Sun, No Bible, and No Cake

Here's a pretty good anecdote to put in your "silly school stories" file, if you've got one. A teacher is reprimanded for explaining the scriptural allusion in a line from The Merchant of Venice, and is instructed by the principal on the proper response in situations when a student asks a question whose answer might entail mentioning religion: "just tell him you don't know."

This time around, the complaints seem to have come from hysterical Christian parents rather than from hysterical atheist-secular activists but, really, doesn't it all come down to the same thing? Thank God (sorry) I'm not a teacher. Or a student. Or a parent. Or a poet. Or a religious/anti-religious fanatic. It would just drive me crazy. Best to stay out of the whole thing.

(You can color me impressed that they're even bothering to attempt reading Shakespeare in schools these days. But maybe it's an old anecdote.)

In other news, a primary school in Derby, UK, has attempted to ban "threats to the well-being of children" such as home-made cakes and sunny weather. The latter rarely comes up in England, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. In a sun-related emergency, though, teachers are instructed to use only spray-on suncreen so as to avoid physical contact, rubbing, etc. Not that I wouldn't enjoy a future where God is dead, the sun don't shine, all food arrives shrink-wrapped direct from the factory, and all human contact is from a distance, in spray-form... come to think of it, it's a Utopia we've pretty much almost achieved, though the whole sun thing remains a real problem here in California. Spray ya later...

Police on Their Backs

I suppose I'm as amused as anyone about the story of the 35-year-old member of a Clash cover band who was investigated and questioned by a Special Branch officer because he texted lyrics from the song "Tommy Gun" to the wrong person. (He intended to text them to the singer, but made a mistake.) It's funny.

The text was: "How about this for Tommy Gun? OK - so let's agree about the price and make it one jet airliner for 10 prisoners."

OK, so whatever they were up to, 'twasn't terrorism. But what were they up to? Maybe just trying to figure out how the lyrics go, which isn't all that easy with Clash songs.

Nevertheless, and right or wrong, I choose to believe they were trying to get into their roles as fake band members, pretending that they were actually writing the song. It's so much better that way...

What He Said

Mickey Kaus:

Note to Kerry: I like Biden too. He'd be a better candidate than, say, you. And he has that moving story about his coal mining ancestors! But he's still a loose cannon, no? ... And I suspect that to this day he still doesn't know how much of his 1988 stump speech was lifted from Bobby Kennedy...

Rock Therapy - Johnny Burnette Trio

Sometimes, listening to certain pop songs can actually pull me out of low-level depression. I'm not talking a vague or subtle change of mood: I mean a slight, but quite real, mental change that I can almost feel physically. There's like a little internal click, and I'm doing slightly better than I was before. One song is not sufficient, but a combination of a few in a row can be quite powerful.

I can't analyze all the ins and outs of how or why this can happen. It has to do with past associations, of course, but I don't think that's the whole story. Some of the songs on my rock therapy list have far more numerous negative associations than positive, partly owing to the fact that they have been used as rock therapy so often at various low points in my fragile emotional life. Sometimes I wonder whether the sounds themselves, rather than context or content, are as big a factor as anything. I don't know. Maybe it's just that anything that can stir any sort of reaction-- happy, sad, bitter, silly, lovely, excruciating-- within one's cold, dead soul results in an improvement, just because there's something happening in there. As I mentioned before, when I was trying to figure out why "Celebrated Summer" always provokes a big emotional response despite the fact that I don't really understand it, I'm not that interested in analyzing the phenomenon. I just enjoy, and make use of, the mystery.

Sometimes whole albums can do it for me, just as they are. I've listened to the Village Green Preservation Society album to cheer me up and simultaneously make me miserable so many times since I was around 12 that it's like a mechanical ritual now. I put it on and hardly realize I'm doing it. Or I stop as I'm putting the record player arm down and think to myself: look what I'm holding in my hands-- I must be kind of depressed now. And it turns out: I am. I used to have a tape that I would take on tour that had the Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight, Invisible Hits, and the first four songs of Can of Bees: I would listen to the tape on my walkman over and over. That tape, exclusively. It lulled me into a comfortable trance, which is a precious, precious thing in a tour van. I still love listening to those albums, but touring is a state in between reality and whatever its opposite is, so they always make me feel a bit "liminal" even in my living room.

Some albums I have decided only to listen to on those (pretty rare) occasions when I am feeling ebullient, unaccountably happy, content and well-adjusted, so that they won't get tainted by darkness and will always "work." (Captain Beefheart's Safe as Milk and Robyn Hitchock's Respect are at the top of that short list. I put on Safe as Milk just the other day when my brain was really enjoying itself: I guess it's like recharging a battery.) I know I'm a strange, messed up, weird little man. Maybe you are too, though.

Anyway, there are certain songs from different albums that can "work" in combination if you listen to them in a lump. Like you're flirting with yourself and making yourself a mix tape. I thought about it and here are 50 of them. 25 or so can fit on a CD (if you leave off You Doo Right, which is like 25 minutes long.) I'm not saying they're The Greatest Songs Ever Recorded (though many of them probably are); or that they necessarily represent the "best of" anything except effective rock therapy; they're not even necessarily my "favorite songs" though I guess many of them kind of are. On a different day, I might come up with a different list. But I just put them on an iTunes playlist on this relatively grim, hopeless morning, and I "clicked" at around Roll Away the Stone. Yes.

Your results may vary, of course. But it's cheaper than Paxil and has no sexual side effects. That I've noticed anyway.

Fifty songs:

Continue reading "Rock Therapy - Johnny Burnette Trio"

Kitchen Fresh Chaos

Yesterday, when I was on BART headed into the city, there was an unusual announcement on the loudspeaker. The 19th St. and 12th St. stations in downtown Oakland had been "temporarily closed because of civil unrest." The train was to stop at those stations to pick up passengers who were stranded, but no one was to get out.

I spent the rest of the evening wondering what it had been about. Was I missing the revolution? Was my apartment building going to be standing when I returned? What color were our uniforms and hats going to be, once the new boss finally had replaced the old boss? What kind of mustache would he have? Would there still be porn? Bourbon? Candy?

Well, it turns out that the civil unrest began, as these things so often do, when a mob started looting a chicken vendor's van. Then they moved on to the Wendy's. Sorry I missed it. I guess they have one of these snack-driven riots every year, and I missed the last one as well. Viva la revolucion...

Guardian Follies

Gary Farber catches a classic piece of dead-pan reality-warp from the Guardian's John Sutherland. Fritz Hollings's and Charlie Rangel's much-discussed mischievous, administration-baiting "draft the rich kids" bill (S89 and HR163), clearly intended as a marginally clever prank rather than a sincere proposal, is quoted at length and treated as an imminent civil catastrophe. I mean, as though it hadn't died in committee on the day of its tongue-in-cheek introduction a year and a half ago, and as though it had anything whatsoever to do with the administration or the real world. (Will there ever be a serious attempt to reinstitute the military draft? Who knows? It would be extremely risky politically, and I kind of doubt it in present circumstances. But in any case, this bill isn't one, as even John Sutherland could have figured out if he'd wanted to.)

By the way, Sutherland laments the lack of media attention on this ("the fourth estate has failed the American public and continues not to do its job"-- how's that for a news flash? No way...) I suppose he wasn't around to see Rangel yukking it up like a stand up comic all over the news talk show circuit back in early 2003. I was: he killed on O'Reilly. Note to fourth estate: more like this, please. Gary's got the hilarious details.

I think I finally feel like the outside matches the inside

I don't know if you've noticed the spam that turns up in the comments of this and other blogs. These messages plug all the usual stuff: Viagra, Cialis, Propecia, home refinancing, Blousant, on-line casinos, penis enlargement, "gay animal sex," etc.

It used to be quite a problem here, but now that I have Blacklist in effect (thanks to Michele and Dean, once again) it's pretty much under control. Now the occasional item will slip through, but the urls can be blocked so subsequent messages with the same urls won't appear.

At first, most of the messages would tend simply to be url-heavy pieces of text that went something like: Viagra! Get Viagra! You need Viagra! Viagra here! Viagra! Viagra! And did I mention: Viagra! Others would just have some random words like some of the email spam you get.

Then, for some reason, they (I mean: the folks in charge of this enterprise) started to try to make the messages sound more like what I suppose someone somewhere imagined people would actually leave as comments on blogs. Example: "those is very interesting stuffs. I'm agree to disagree. nice discussion." And the url, sometimes listed in the comment form where I would have entered doktorfrank.com, and sometimes included in the message as well, would be something like lolita-incest.xanax.org.

I can't imagine the smallbreast-solutions.com folks get too many orders for BustPro from readers of this, or any other blog, no matter how much spam they attempt to unleash. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Well, anyhow, this is just a long-winded way to introduce the text of a recent piece of spam left on the comments, with an on-line casino url. It kind of cracked me up, though I doubt I could explain exactly why:

Hello. Did anyone see the swan the other night? Those women looked awesome.

Sometimes I notice stuff

Does the DMV have people whose job it is to examine requests for personalized license plates and screen out risque or mischievous ones? I'd heard that they do, but if so some must slip by them sometimes because yesterday in Oakland I saw a fancy Mercedes that said "BUKAKE".

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I want to believe...

UPDATE: As Georgina points out in the comments, the relatively benign photo of "Tony Clifton" down towards the bottom of the pseudo-Andy blog has been replaced by some extremely gross images. Resist the urge to scroll down. You don't want to see them. Trust me.

UPDATE II: According to commenters brave enough to check it out, the gross pictures have been replaced with the stolen pictures. Somehow, though, I find I'm no longer very interested in this topic.

And therein lies the tail

So if you're not doing anything this evening you might want to stop by the Cafe du Nord for this:

Sharing picaresque tales of love and longing are technology and sex scribe Annalee Newitz, literary agent Arielle Eckstut; comedian Kamau Bell; retired wine cork salesman Whitey Broughton; writer Jamie Berger, plus erotica writer Simon Shepphard....

Sounds pretty spicy. I'll be the opener, playing a solo acoustic set at around 7pm.

By the way, there are few more covers of MTX songs posted on the MTX website. Check out a "We are the Future People of Tomorrow" by the Barbecuties from Germany, and a nice version of "Hitler" by a guy/guys calling themselves Fly by Night, plus a couple of "You're the Only One"s.

See you tonight, maybe.