WEEK END
After a week of weirdness, I ask myself, should I laugh when I hear Attorney General John Ashcroft has gallstone pancreatitis, “a serious and painful abdominal illness"? Or is that mean?
Mick Farren;s stuff in this week’s LA CityBeat. First up a preview of The Sopranos.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=721&IssueNum=39
And then Andy Klein and I double team the dreary Oscar Show.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=726&IssueNum=39
FRESH FRIDAY LINKS
Our pal hipspinster blogs on Elvis Costello
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
And Belle de Jour, our favorite call girl, weighs in with more of her chic and unique weberotica
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/
JACK ELAM
At the beginning of the week I mentioned being sad at seeing the great character actor Jack Elam on the Academy Awards tribute to those motion picture stars who had died this year. This prompted some correspondence, and now Henry Cabot Beck unearths bits of an old, unpublished interview conducted just before Elam’s death....
ON SAM PECKINPAH
Peckinpah tried-just died--to get me to do-what was the name of the western in Mexico?-(Jenny, his wife, tells him) The Wild Bunch, and I turned him down, wouldn't do it. For a very simple reason. Cause if I did Sam's pictures, we're personal friends, and that means I had to live with him on location. And if I live with him at night it'd mean dinner, poker-he loved to play poker too, and I knew I'd be seeing a lot of him and drinking together, right? I knew I couldn't live through it. I can't drink that much, I can't run, it was just a rowdy life for three or four months, which it's gonna be, so I turned the picture down. It almost broke our friendship up, but it didn't, because later on he came along and made me an awful lot of money on another picture that he did, Billy The Kid-(wife chimes in: "Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid"), in which I had a very small part and made a fortune. I did a cameo in it, worked three days, and he made the studio carry me at full salary for three months. Bought me two Lincolns out of the small change left over.
ON FRITZ LANG:
The only one I was really in, was the one with Marlene Dietrich, Rancho Notorious.He was a character, but he was a gentle-I loved him. We had a great personal friendship which developed. We had an instinctive liking of each other. And a lot of directors I don't like for sour shit, because to be a director, it helps a lot to be a prick, and in this case he wasn't. He was mean, people thought, but he wasn't mean at all. He was brusque, but he was certainly a gentle (?), but he was very very brusque, though, in his handling of people. But he was very kind if he liked you. There was a fellow named Dan Seymour, he was in all of Fritz' pictures-they had a personal relationship, and that's where I met Dan Seymour was on one of Fritz' pictures, course I worked with Dan on other things, anyway I was very honored, I felt honored, because of being invited to a very special dinner at his home one night. He had a home high in the hills over Hollywood with a view for a million miles, you know, looking over Beverly Hills and everything, it was a strange house to me, it didn't go with his character because it was a modern house and it was a catered affair, a very very lovely party-twelve or sixteen good friends of his, and I felt very flattered to be invited because…
I enjoyed the man's company a great deal. He was very very considerate to me personally.
(Rancho Notorious)
We had a lot of fun. We got to match coins to see who got to walk by Marlene Dietrich's dressing room when she was changing cause she never closed the door. I won a couple of times.
I remember Fritz had a couple of problems, seems to me he had a couple of serious problems with the cameraman (Hal Mohr, who also shot Destry Rides Again with Dietrich), because the cameraman's very important in a Dietrich picture and three or four times-cameraman's very important on a Fritz Lang picture because Fritz Lang pictures were big pictures-but I remember that Fritz would line up a shot, he'd walk it through, then you walk away, go to your dressing room, wherever you want to go, and the cameraman and his crew light the set, which takes maybe an hour, or in some cases two hours, then you bring everybody in, you run the scene, then you shoot it. And I know that more than once on a Dietrich situation we'd come back and the scene had been changed, the positions had been changed cause the cameraman had changed the positions. And Fritz would say, "That hurts my shot!" and he would argue. But he had a brusque manner and its definitely a very very strong accent, as I'm sure you know. But Fritz was a very kind man; I liked him very much. And as far as I'm concerned he was a very good director.
(More tomorrow)
CRYPTIQUE – It’s a shotgun romance.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Friday, March 05, 2004
THE DRUMS JUST GOT LOUDER
I'VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED WRITING IN CAPS TO BE A SYMPTOM OF INSANITY. LAST NIGHT I WENT OUT FOR A FEW DRINKS, TOOK A NAP, AND THEN WOKE UP TO HEAR HOWARD STERN PREPARING TO BE TAKEN OF THE AIR BY THE BUSH FCC. CHARGES ARE EXPECTED TO BE FILLED LATER TODAY WITH FINES RUNNING INTO THE TENS OF MILLIONS. I REALY DON'T CARE IF YOU LIKE STERN OR NOT. FREE SPEECH IS BEING PISSED ON FROM A GREAT HEIGHT. HE HAS 18 MILLION LISTENERS AND WANTS GWB BOOTED OUT OF OFFICE. THUS STERN MUST BE TAKEN OUT. THAT IS CURRENT GOVERNMENT THINKING.
AMONG THE POINTS IN THE SCARY MADNESS...
SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R KANSAS) HAS BEEN PERSONALLY CONTACTING VIACOM BOARD MEMBERS AND THREATENING THEM, REMOVE STERN OR ELSE.
IF YOU WANT TO CONTACT BROWNBACK HE'S AT...
http://brownback.senate.gov/CMEmailMe.htm
BROWNBACK ALSO LIVES IN A FUNDALMENTALIST CHRISTIAN COMMUNE IN WASHINGTON WITH A NUMBER OF OTHER CONGRESSMEN THAT IS FUNDED BY A RELIGIOUS SECT CALLED "THE FELLOWSHIP".
A REPUBLICAN WHISPERING CAMPAIGN HAS THE SLOGAN "A VOTE FOR KERRY IS A VOTE FOR BIN LADEN.
STERN ALSO RECOMMENDS YOU DO A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR THE BANNED KORN VIDEO
(I'll post more stuff later. Right now I'm listening to the world turn weird.)
I'VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED WRITING IN CAPS TO BE A SYMPTOM OF INSANITY. LAST NIGHT I WENT OUT FOR A FEW DRINKS, TOOK A NAP, AND THEN WOKE UP TO HEAR HOWARD STERN PREPARING TO BE TAKEN OF THE AIR BY THE BUSH FCC. CHARGES ARE EXPECTED TO BE FILLED LATER TODAY WITH FINES RUNNING INTO THE TENS OF MILLIONS. I REALY DON'T CARE IF YOU LIKE STERN OR NOT. FREE SPEECH IS BEING PISSED ON FROM A GREAT HEIGHT. HE HAS 18 MILLION LISTENERS AND WANTS GWB BOOTED OUT OF OFFICE. THUS STERN MUST BE TAKEN OUT. THAT IS CURRENT GOVERNMENT THINKING.
AMONG THE POINTS IN THE SCARY MADNESS...
SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R KANSAS) HAS BEEN PERSONALLY CONTACTING VIACOM BOARD MEMBERS AND THREATENING THEM, REMOVE STERN OR ELSE.
IF YOU WANT TO CONTACT BROWNBACK HE'S AT...
http://brownback.senate.gov/CMEmailMe.htm
BROWNBACK ALSO LIVES IN A FUNDALMENTALIST CHRISTIAN COMMUNE IN WASHINGTON WITH A NUMBER OF OTHER CONGRESSMEN THAT IS FUNDED BY A RELIGIOUS SECT CALLED "THE FELLOWSHIP".
A REPUBLICAN WHISPERING CAMPAIGN HAS THE SLOGAN "A VOTE FOR KERRY IS A VOTE FOR BIN LADEN.
STERN ALSO RECOMMENDS YOU DO A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR THE BANNED KORN VIDEO
(I'll post more stuff later. Right now I'm listening to the world turn weird.)
Thursday, March 04, 2004
I HEAR THE SOUND OF DISTANT DRUMS
And they ain’t Ric Parnell. These are the marching drums of something very unpleasant. Trust me. I’ve heard it before.
I find it easier to believe in evil than coincidence. And I’m really coming to the conclusion that since a rather stupid, but infinitely unscrupulous man suddenly realized that he might not be president this time last year, he is prepared unleash any evil, like a nasty idiot child uncorking ancient bottles without a clue to what corrosive potions they really contain. And this is why we suddenly seem awash in an undertow of fundamental evil? The talk is of anti-Semitism and how the Nazis used Passion Plays to their genocidal ends. Homophobia and godforsaken religion go up like the smokescreens to hide what is really burning. Up on the message board, Blanche wants to know why she (?) should give a rat’s ass about Howard Stern?
(The full Stern/Clear Channel story is told much better by Maureen Farrell on BuzzFlash)...
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/03/far04006.html
Am I paraphrasing Dietrich Bonhoffer?
First they came for Tommy Chong.
Then they came for Howard Stern.
Then they came for the gay weddings.
(The mistreated mateless mother? The mistitled prostitute? Please fill in the rest. There’s going to be eight fucking months of this shit.)
In each case I did nothing
And when they came for me, I found there was no one left to do anything.
Or, in other words, when you’re fighting the good fight, you might find yourself on the line with some real assholes, but protect them and pass the joint or the bottle, because they’re your assholes.
But laugh, if only to keep from crying.
And don’t cry because when it comes to it we have love, laughter, and some mean motherfucker mean-ass magic of our own. If we can remember where we put it.
And talking of laughing
BILL CLINTON FOR VICE PRESIDENT
Writing in yesterday’s NY Times, Stephen Gillers, an NYU law prof got about as funny as a law prof gets. Making the case for Ol’ Boy Bill as VP...
Amid this conjecture, however, one name is conspicuously absent: Bill Clinton.
Mr. Clinton's strengths would compensate for Mr. Kerry's weaknesses almost perfectly. Not only is Mr. Clinton the most talented campaigner of his generation, but he is also a Southerner —and since 1948, when Harry S. Truman chose Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky as his running mate, every successful Democratic ticket has included a Southern politician. Besides, people might even pay to watch Bill Clinton debate Dick Cheney. So why not? The first objection, the constitutional one, can be disposed of easily. The Constitution does not prevent Mr. Clinton from running for vice president. The 22nd Amendment, which became effective in 1951, begins: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."
No problem. Bill Clinton would be running for vice president, not president. Scholars and judges can debate how loosely constitutional language should be interpreted, but one need not be a strict constructionist to find this language clear beyond dispute. Bill Clinton cannot be elected president, but nothing stops him from being elected vice president.
True, if Mr. Clinton were vice president he would be in line for the presidency. But Mr. Clinton would succeed Mr. Kerry not by election, which the amendment forbids, but through Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which provides that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, his powers "shall devolve on the vice president." The 22nd Amendment would not prevent this succession.
FROM THE EMAIL – WUSA
Doc40 regulars will remember how Clear Channel’s media manipulation raised recall of the old Paul Newman movie WUSA about a radio chain with Nazi ambitions. 00SOUL firms up the background, and also makes some powerful recommendations of culture worth consuming in these trying times...
Not to get pedantic or literary on y'all, but "WUSA" was the film version of Robert Stone's "Hall Of Mirrors," which is -- along with Nelson Algren's "Walk On The Wild Side," Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer," and John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy Of Dunces" -- one of the four best novels about New Orleans extant. Aside from the right-wing politcal machinations that you already noted, Stone's book is notable for its opening sequence sporting possibly the finest first-person point-of-view from inside the drowning mind of a drunk that's been put to paper.
Stone is also notable for writing "Dog Soldiers," which became "Who'll Stop The Rain" when it was made into a similarly excellent film. Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, and Michael Moriarity starred in this amazing-it-got made tale of the Stateside moral corruption spawned by Vietnam.
He followed this with "A Flag For Sunrise," a bone-crushing indictment of America's '80s policies in what is obviously El Salvador. Still waiting for the film version of that one ...
After that came a good, but not great Hollywood novel and a couple of others that we still haven't read. But for the opening trio alone, we nominate him to the status of "hipster saint."
CRYPTIQUE – Are you ready, boots?
And they ain’t Ric Parnell. These are the marching drums of something very unpleasant. Trust me. I’ve heard it before.
I find it easier to believe in evil than coincidence. And I’m really coming to the conclusion that since a rather stupid, but infinitely unscrupulous man suddenly realized that he might not be president this time last year, he is prepared unleash any evil, like a nasty idiot child uncorking ancient bottles without a clue to what corrosive potions they really contain. And this is why we suddenly seem awash in an undertow of fundamental evil? The talk is of anti-Semitism and how the Nazis used Passion Plays to their genocidal ends. Homophobia and godforsaken religion go up like the smokescreens to hide what is really burning. Up on the message board, Blanche wants to know why she (?) should give a rat’s ass about Howard Stern?
(The full Stern/Clear Channel story is told much better by Maureen Farrell on BuzzFlash)...
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/03/far04006.html
Am I paraphrasing Dietrich Bonhoffer?
First they came for Tommy Chong.
Then they came for Howard Stern.
Then they came for the gay weddings.
(The mistreated mateless mother? The mistitled prostitute? Please fill in the rest. There’s going to be eight fucking months of this shit.)
In each case I did nothing
And when they came for me, I found there was no one left to do anything.
Or, in other words, when you’re fighting the good fight, you might find yourself on the line with some real assholes, but protect them and pass the joint or the bottle, because they’re your assholes.
But laugh, if only to keep from crying.
And don’t cry because when it comes to it we have love, laughter, and some mean motherfucker mean-ass magic of our own. If we can remember where we put it.
And talking of laughing
BILL CLINTON FOR VICE PRESIDENT
Writing in yesterday’s NY Times, Stephen Gillers, an NYU law prof got about as funny as a law prof gets. Making the case for Ol’ Boy Bill as VP...
Amid this conjecture, however, one name is conspicuously absent: Bill Clinton.
Mr. Clinton's strengths would compensate for Mr. Kerry's weaknesses almost perfectly. Not only is Mr. Clinton the most talented campaigner of his generation, but he is also a Southerner —and since 1948, when Harry S. Truman chose Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky as his running mate, every successful Democratic ticket has included a Southern politician. Besides, people might even pay to watch Bill Clinton debate Dick Cheney. So why not? The first objection, the constitutional one, can be disposed of easily. The Constitution does not prevent Mr. Clinton from running for vice president. The 22nd Amendment, which became effective in 1951, begins: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."
No problem. Bill Clinton would be running for vice president, not president. Scholars and judges can debate how loosely constitutional language should be interpreted, but one need not be a strict constructionist to find this language clear beyond dispute. Bill Clinton cannot be elected president, but nothing stops him from being elected vice president.
True, if Mr. Clinton were vice president he would be in line for the presidency. But Mr. Clinton would succeed Mr. Kerry not by election, which the amendment forbids, but through Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which provides that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, his powers "shall devolve on the vice president." The 22nd Amendment would not prevent this succession.
FROM THE EMAIL – WUSA
Doc40 regulars will remember how Clear Channel’s media manipulation raised recall of the old Paul Newman movie WUSA about a radio chain with Nazi ambitions. 00SOUL firms up the background, and also makes some powerful recommendations of culture worth consuming in these trying times...
Not to get pedantic or literary on y'all, but "WUSA" was the film version of Robert Stone's "Hall Of Mirrors," which is -- along with Nelson Algren's "Walk On The Wild Side," Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer," and John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy Of Dunces" -- one of the four best novels about New Orleans extant. Aside from the right-wing politcal machinations that you already noted, Stone's book is notable for its opening sequence sporting possibly the finest first-person point-of-view from inside the drowning mind of a drunk that's been put to paper.
Stone is also notable for writing "Dog Soldiers," which became "Who'll Stop The Rain" when it was made into a similarly excellent film. Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, and Michael Moriarity starred in this amazing-it-got made tale of the Stateside moral corruption spawned by Vietnam.
He followed this with "A Flag For Sunrise," a bone-crushing indictment of America's '80s policies in what is obviously El Salvador. Still waiting for the film version of that one ...
After that came a good, but not great Hollywood novel and a couple of others that we still haven't read. But for the opening trio alone, we nominate him to the status of "hipster saint."
CRYPTIQUE – Are you ready, boots?
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
THE DEATHSTAR
The matter of the November contenders is now settled, and short of a lone gunman or some other external intervention, it will be Kerry v Bush when the time comes. And that may well be the next problem. With 245 days to go, the Bush machine and the Bush money have months to throw anything they like at John Kerry, and almost unlimited resources with which to manufacture the ammunition. I would be foolish to pretend that the Bush campaign will be anything but a political Deathstar, a massive, obscenely funded juggernaut, that is formidable, although not by any means invincible, because, as we all know, to blow up a Deathstar, all one has to do is fly along the correct trench under heavy fire and drop the bomb in the right vent or conduit. Maybe not easy, but not impossible, given courage, fortitude, and a suitable supporting cast of reliable and friendly androids
It’s late at night, am I’m aware that I risk going down in an welter of mixed metaphors, but if the last ten days have proved anything, it’s that we not only have to tackle the Deathstar itself, but also all of its related rabid dogpacks who cannot be defined as part of the Bush machine, but are all working to the same concerted, corporate, and essentially fascist agenda. We have just seen a combined counter-attack by these allied interests, a laying of smoke to allow the Chimp Boy to cover himself after the massive floundering that set in following his disintegration on Meet The Press. Clear Channel, the religious right, and Mel Gibson have spun the focus to redundant debate over gay marriage and all the incipient homophobia contained therein, the nonsense over Janet Jackson, Jesus, and the negation of Howard Stern, when all attention should really have been centered on the electorate's coronation of John Kerry, and the primary Deathstar soft areas, like the scary economy, and the quagmire in Iraq. Tomorrow Bush will launch a full Deathstar cash attack with TV ads in seventeen states designed to take the gloss off the Dem primaries. The long haul to the presidential election is not going to be easy, and definitely not pleasant, but it's so crucial fucking crucial we have to hang in for the long summer haul. No ruptures in the Force, okay?
BUT CHEER UP
Seems like there might just have been Martians a billion years ago.
FROM THE EMAIL
Fidicen pays tribute to Jack Elam (and we run his letter in full, even though Doc kinda likes Clint Eastwood.)
Good on ye for saluting Jack Elam. I thought I was the only one who knew who he was. His death saddened me much this year and I will give the pretentious silly twits at the 'Academy' (ha) a pass from further bombast for acknowledging him in death in a way I assume they never did in life. What a putrid thing, the Academy Awards. Whoops, more bombast. When I am King, all awards will be banned, from the Nobel on down, except for those in sports, which is in fact about winning in the first place. For "artists" to participate in awards programs is to betray everything that is art but then again Hollywood is not art at all. So why not just give the awards to the highest grossing productions in each category? That would be honest. I might even watch that, even though I hate almost every movie I see now. I thought Mystic River a piece of shit, one of the most overwrought and manipulative, hate filled and cynical bids for box office gross I ever endured. I grew up in that area and know people not unlike those characters, but the film was absurd, an insult to anyone who ever tried to write or tell an honest story. Fuck Eastwood. You want treachery? Intensity? Woozy, booze soaked hard assed men trying to get ahead in a wicked, corrupt world? Watch Jack Elam in Pat Garret & Billy The Kid. Now there's a film that's honest even when it lies.
CRYPTIQUE – Beans, beans, spinach, beans...
The matter of the November contenders is now settled, and short of a lone gunman or some other external intervention, it will be Kerry v Bush when the time comes. And that may well be the next problem. With 245 days to go, the Bush machine and the Bush money have months to throw anything they like at John Kerry, and almost unlimited resources with which to manufacture the ammunition. I would be foolish to pretend that the Bush campaign will be anything but a political Deathstar, a massive, obscenely funded juggernaut, that is formidable, although not by any means invincible, because, as we all know, to blow up a Deathstar, all one has to do is fly along the correct trench under heavy fire and drop the bomb in the right vent or conduit. Maybe not easy, but not impossible, given courage, fortitude, and a suitable supporting cast of reliable and friendly androids
It’s late at night, am I’m aware that I risk going down in an welter of mixed metaphors, but if the last ten days have proved anything, it’s that we not only have to tackle the Deathstar itself, but also all of its related rabid dogpacks who cannot be defined as part of the Bush machine, but are all working to the same concerted, corporate, and essentially fascist agenda. We have just seen a combined counter-attack by these allied interests, a laying of smoke to allow the Chimp Boy to cover himself after the massive floundering that set in following his disintegration on Meet The Press. Clear Channel, the religious right, and Mel Gibson have spun the focus to redundant debate over gay marriage and all the incipient homophobia contained therein, the nonsense over Janet Jackson, Jesus, and the negation of Howard Stern, when all attention should really have been centered on the electorate's coronation of John Kerry, and the primary Deathstar soft areas, like the scary economy, and the quagmire in Iraq. Tomorrow Bush will launch a full Deathstar cash attack with TV ads in seventeen states designed to take the gloss off the Dem primaries. The long haul to the presidential election is not going to be easy, and definitely not pleasant, but it's so crucial fucking crucial we have to hang in for the long summer haul. No ruptures in the Force, okay?
BUT CHEER UP
Seems like there might just have been Martians a billion years ago.
FROM THE EMAIL
Fidicen pays tribute to Jack Elam (and we run his letter in full, even though Doc kinda likes Clint Eastwood.)
Good on ye for saluting Jack Elam. I thought I was the only one who knew who he was. His death saddened me much this year and I will give the pretentious silly twits at the 'Academy' (ha) a pass from further bombast for acknowledging him in death in a way I assume they never did in life. What a putrid thing, the Academy Awards. Whoops, more bombast. When I am King, all awards will be banned, from the Nobel on down, except for those in sports, which is in fact about winning in the first place. For "artists" to participate in awards programs is to betray everything that is art but then again Hollywood is not art at all. So why not just give the awards to the highest grossing productions in each category? That would be honest. I might even watch that, even though I hate almost every movie I see now. I thought Mystic River a piece of shit, one of the most overwrought and manipulative, hate filled and cynical bids for box office gross I ever endured. I grew up in that area and know people not unlike those characters, but the film was absurd, an insult to anyone who ever tried to write or tell an honest story. Fuck Eastwood. You want treachery? Intensity? Woozy, booze soaked hard assed men trying to get ahead in a wicked, corrupt world? Watch Jack Elam in Pat Garret & Billy The Kid. Now there's a film that's honest even when it lies.
CRYPTIQUE – Beans, beans, spinach, beans...
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
WIN ONE FOR THE BEAST
This is surely too good to pass up. I can only hope it presages the Rapture and all these bloody (and I use the word advisedly) fundamentalists will vanish straight up their own apocalypse. From AOL...
ROME, Ga. - Tickets at one movie theater screening Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ are being deemed decidedly unholy. The number 666, which many Christians recognize as the ''mark of the beast,'' is appearing on movie tickets for Gibson's film at a Georgia theater, drawing complaints from some moviegoers. The machine that prints tickets assigned the number 666 as a prefix on all the tickets for the film, said Gary Smith, owner of the Movies at Berry Square in northwest Georgia. The 666 begins a series of numbers that are listed below the name of the movie, the date, time and price. “'It's from our computer and it's absolutely a coincidence” Smith said. '”It has nothing to do with the film company or any vendor. It's completely in our computer.”
To paraphrase the old radio serial, The Shadow, “Where evil lurks in the hearts of men, the computer knows.”
JACK ELAM RIP
One of the few redeeming moments in the otherwise mind-numbing 2004 Oscar show was when poor dear departed Jack Elam appeared in the role-call of the dead, in a tiny clip from his epic cameo in Once Upon A Time In The West, in which he traps the fly in his gun barrel. With his one glass eye, he was my all time favorite western character actor, and teenage skanky role model, and if you don’t know who he is shame on you.
FROM THE EMAIL
Lordmarm writes from Texas
There's no explanation for Houston. It just is. Elron, Bush, the listis endless. See the latest Harpers for a fun piece on Repuglican fund raising in that fair city. But it's not all corruption and oil. Get your ears around Jandek (http://tisue.net/jandek/) if you want a truly alternative vision of that eldritch city. You've never heard the blues so desolate and scary and horrible. But the execution capital of the free world is Huntsville, about an hour's drive north nof Houston. According to the city's website (http://www.huntsvilletexas.com/) "there's something for everyone in Huntsville!" And don't miss this:http://www.txprisonmuseum.org/ for sheer ghoulish weirdness. There are plenty of anti-execution protest sites online. There are usually people with banners outside the gov's mansion here in Austin. But we're not really Texas -- but I guess that'll change now that Tom Delay's redistricted us and turned us into a suburb of effin' Houston...
CRYPTIQUE – Did the lights flicker?
This is surely too good to pass up. I can only hope it presages the Rapture and all these bloody (and I use the word advisedly) fundamentalists will vanish straight up their own apocalypse. From AOL...
ROME, Ga. - Tickets at one movie theater screening Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ are being deemed decidedly unholy. The number 666, which many Christians recognize as the ''mark of the beast,'' is appearing on movie tickets for Gibson's film at a Georgia theater, drawing complaints from some moviegoers. The machine that prints tickets assigned the number 666 as a prefix on all the tickets for the film, said Gary Smith, owner of the Movies at Berry Square in northwest Georgia. The 666 begins a series of numbers that are listed below the name of the movie, the date, time and price. “'It's from our computer and it's absolutely a coincidence” Smith said. '”It has nothing to do with the film company or any vendor. It's completely in our computer.”
To paraphrase the old radio serial, The Shadow, “Where evil lurks in the hearts of men, the computer knows.”
JACK ELAM RIP
One of the few redeeming moments in the otherwise mind-numbing 2004 Oscar show was when poor dear departed Jack Elam appeared in the role-call of the dead, in a tiny clip from his epic cameo in Once Upon A Time In The West, in which he traps the fly in his gun barrel. With his one glass eye, he was my all time favorite western character actor, and teenage skanky role model, and if you don’t know who he is shame on you.
FROM THE EMAIL
Lordmarm writes from Texas
There's no explanation for Houston. It just is. Elron, Bush, the listis endless. See the latest Harpers for a fun piece on Repuglican fund raising in that fair city. But it's not all corruption and oil. Get your ears around Jandek (http://tisue.net/jandek/) if you want a truly alternative vision of that eldritch city. You've never heard the blues so desolate and scary and horrible. But the execution capital of the free world is Huntsville, about an hour's drive north nof Houston. According to the city's website (http://www.huntsvilletexas.com/) "there's something for everyone in Huntsville!" And don't miss this:http://www.txprisonmuseum.org/ for sheer ghoulish weirdness. There are plenty of anti-execution protest sites online. There are usually people with banners outside the gov's mansion here in Austin. But we're not really Texas -- but I guess that'll change now that Tom Delay's redistricted us and turned us into a suburb of effin' Houston...
CRYPTIQUE – Did the lights flicker?
Monday, March 01, 2004
MORE PORNO SPAM POETRY
Last Sunday, (February 22nd) Doc40 ran the first piece of poetry created by online porno sites masking their content from the latest generation of spam blockers, parental controls, government surveillance, and god knows what other manifestations of online moral enforcement, by using unintelligible scrambled and cutup text around the crucial hotlink to the site being promoted. I was intrigued by the way in which it resembled the cut-up works created by William Burroughs and Brian Gyson.
Here’s some more.
There is, however, another less noble reason for running more of this stuff today. As I warned yesterday, when I turned command over to Henry CB, I spent Sunday working with Andy Klein on a blow by blow account of this year’s Oscars (which turned out to be a tedious, time consuming, waste of electrons), and the full account hilarious will appear in next weeks LA Citybeat. But, in the meantime, I’m beat. It’s been a long weekend of work.
This more another found verse...
THEIR MUSHY LIFE
She , The i l there
half n t also squeezing
The run a sports also scrawny.
On , smooth n m the in
I flashlight it king-sized the mom s
a the her, there wet special
I need I chasing m t are want.
Are which, Or apple t t is left The nice.
On sickening, It super human
v b he motherboard The rubbing the dropping.
427 wheel,
Their mushy is life on phone
Their mushy life
d g ghetto v c country
he anyone earth it molecule
The present.
The present.
The present.
firebreak minsk audobon
discriminatory freemen mit limb arsenic
discriminatory freemen mit limb arsenic
And if you think all this is stone crazy, there another site who takes a slightly different approach to the same concept
http://www.sperare.com/spam_poetry/blogger.html
MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE
Two of our very best cyberfriends have new blogs posted...
Hipspinster reflects on eerie coyote kill and human rage
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
And belle de jour also writes poetry and goes shopping with her mum who’s going to a lesbian wedding
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/
CRYPTIQUE – Burn the envelope, please.
Last Sunday, (February 22nd) Doc40 ran the first piece of poetry created by online porno sites masking their content from the latest generation of spam blockers, parental controls, government surveillance, and god knows what other manifestations of online moral enforcement, by using unintelligible scrambled and cutup text around the crucial hotlink to the site being promoted. I was intrigued by the way in which it resembled the cut-up works created by William Burroughs and Brian Gyson.
Here’s some more.
There is, however, another less noble reason for running more of this stuff today. As I warned yesterday, when I turned command over to Henry CB, I spent Sunday working with Andy Klein on a blow by blow account of this year’s Oscars (which turned out to be a tedious, time consuming, waste of electrons), and the full account hilarious will appear in next weeks LA Citybeat. But, in the meantime, I’m beat. It’s been a long weekend of work.
This more another found verse...
THEIR MUSHY LIFE
She , The i l there
half n t also squeezing
The run a sports also scrawny.
On , smooth n m the in
I flashlight it king-sized the mom s
a the her, there wet special
I need I chasing m t are want.
Are which, Or apple t t is left The nice.
On sickening, It super human
v b he motherboard The rubbing the dropping.
427 wheel,
Their mushy is life on phone
Their mushy life
d g ghetto v c country
he anyone earth it molecule
The present.
The present.
The present.
firebreak minsk audobon
discriminatory freemen mit limb arsenic
discriminatory freemen mit limb arsenic
And if you think all this is stone crazy, there another site who takes a slightly different approach to the same concept
http://www.sperare.com/spam_poetry/blogger.html
MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE
Two of our very best cyberfriends have new blogs posted...
Hipspinster reflects on eerie coyote kill and human rage
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/
And belle de jour also writes poetry and goes shopping with her mum who’s going to a lesbian wedding
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/
CRYPTIQUE – Burn the envelope, please.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
IDOL INDECENCY
Hard day Saturday, out doing serious legwork on a project in progress, and then up bright and early to join the great Andy Klein for the CityBeat Oscarwatch. Thus you ain’t going to be hearing too much from me probably until Monday. But, here at Doc40, unless, like the other week, I get myself incapably hungover, we try to deliver, and thus I turn over command on this fine leap year extra Sunday to my old pal, Henry Cabot Beck, co-conspirator, NY Daily News film critic, and one-man guitar picker in the late lamented Tijuana Bible (see Funtopia music).
Henry, you have the con,
(Farren has left the electron stream.)
WILLIAM HUNG
Yeah, well the obvious truth of American Idol is that Cowell is all attitude and no taste, and the function of the talent show is to find the best cruise ship or theme park or TV jingle singer. They will never discover the next Etta James or Wicked Pickett or Slim Gaillard, which is why William Hung is the real hero of the hour, and his popularity a great implicit condemnation of the entire stupid process. By the way, there must be a zillion William Hung websites now. He's become the internet/TV equivalent of the novelty song, the Flying Purple People Eater or Alvin and the Chipmunks of our time. America really loves its mutant culture, though not as much as it should, I don't think. All hail Bubba Ho-Tep.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/shebangs.html
JAILHOUSE GAY WEDDING
(Only Beck could come up with this perverse spin -- MF.)
There's a wedding goin' on, up in cellblock #9 Once the dust settles, and Arnie gets on board, I'll be looking forward to the first prison nupitals in Folsom or Quentin. I expect the wedding song will go something like:
Number forty-seven said to number three:
You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.
And I'll be checking the papers for that gay shotgun wedding, when Clem's kin makes Buford take them sacred vows on accounta that night, back at the holler, when he made Clem squeal like a pig. As for GWB, I figure he's against gay marriage cause he's a tad nervous about outrunning Earthquake McGoon on Sadie Hawkins' Day.*
(Today is Sadie Hawkins Day, isn’t it? – MF)
WUSA
Farren wrote yesterday: I wonder how many of you recall an old Paul Newman film titled WUSA, in which Newman, a alcoholic DJ, who carries his martinis with him in a sharp aluminum Thermos, goes to work for a fascist radio network dedicated to an American dictatorship...
A great, rabid left wing picture, like Aldrich's Twilight's Last Gleaming, and, I suppose, M*A*S*H. I haven't seen it in years. There's also a 1975 picture by West Wing TV director Jeremy Kagan about an upper-class revolutionary, played by Sissy Spacek, called Katherine that I remember being good enough that they cut it for subsequent airings. More and more I miss the seventies. Don't get me started.As for Mel Gibson, it helps to think of The Passion as one might a lesser but no less feverish picture by Ken Russell or Alejandro Jodorowsky or even Kenneth Anger. Of course the hype, controversy and the marketing (all the same thing) pull it out of that arena a bit, but at its heart it's a curious vanity movie that only fervent old school Catholics and blood-of-the-lamb evangelicals will really respond to. Some fetishists, I suppose, as well (one definition of fetish is "an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion "), but there are far nastier films in the world, like Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, which was put together by Pasolini, who made that other famous Jesus movie, The Gospel According To St. Matthew. Oddly enough, Pasolini is also credited for the story on an all-Chinese animated version of Jesus' life, Yesu (1998), even though he was murdered in 1975.
FROM THE EMAIL
(From Roger)
Following this with interest, thank God (or Mel Gibson!) it's not got here to the UK (yet ?)
What is spooky is that our old mate Orwell says it all in 1984.
"Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it."
Well if they get there way and remove all the filth..it'll be back to browsing National Geographic in the public library...with airbrushed copies of Health and Efficiency* changing hands on the black market....
* For you Americans, Health and Efficency was an earnest, small-format nudist mag that featured naked people playing tennis, and doing bad Isadora Duncan dances. It was much resorted to by desperate English schoolboys of the late 1950s, who believed that the only person on the planet having two person sex was Elvis Presley -- MF
CRYPTIQUE – Yeeee doggies!
Hard day Saturday, out doing serious legwork on a project in progress, and then up bright and early to join the great Andy Klein for the CityBeat Oscarwatch. Thus you ain’t going to be hearing too much from me probably until Monday. But, here at Doc40, unless, like the other week, I get myself incapably hungover, we try to deliver, and thus I turn over command on this fine leap year extra Sunday to my old pal, Henry Cabot Beck, co-conspirator, NY Daily News film critic, and one-man guitar picker in the late lamented Tijuana Bible (see Funtopia music).
Henry, you have the con,
(Farren has left the electron stream.)
WILLIAM HUNG
Yeah, well the obvious truth of American Idol is that Cowell is all attitude and no taste, and the function of the talent show is to find the best cruise ship or theme park or TV jingle singer. They will never discover the next Etta James or Wicked Pickett or Slim Gaillard, which is why William Hung is the real hero of the hour, and his popularity a great implicit condemnation of the entire stupid process. By the way, there must be a zillion William Hung websites now. He's become the internet/TV equivalent of the novelty song, the Flying Purple People Eater or Alvin and the Chipmunks of our time. America really loves its mutant culture, though not as much as it should, I don't think. All hail Bubba Ho-Tep.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/shebangs.html
JAILHOUSE GAY WEDDING
(Only Beck could come up with this perverse spin -- MF.)
There's a wedding goin' on, up in cellblock #9 Once the dust settles, and Arnie gets on board, I'll be looking forward to the first prison nupitals in Folsom or Quentin. I expect the wedding song will go something like:
Number forty-seven said to number three:
You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.
And I'll be checking the papers for that gay shotgun wedding, when Clem's kin makes Buford take them sacred vows on accounta that night, back at the holler, when he made Clem squeal like a pig. As for GWB, I figure he's against gay marriage cause he's a tad nervous about outrunning Earthquake McGoon on Sadie Hawkins' Day.*
(Today is Sadie Hawkins Day, isn’t it? – MF)
WUSA
Farren wrote yesterday: I wonder how many of you recall an old Paul Newman film titled WUSA, in which Newman, a alcoholic DJ, who carries his martinis with him in a sharp aluminum Thermos, goes to work for a fascist radio network dedicated to an American dictatorship...
A great, rabid left wing picture, like Aldrich's Twilight's Last Gleaming, and, I suppose, M*A*S*H. I haven't seen it in years. There's also a 1975 picture by West Wing TV director Jeremy Kagan about an upper-class revolutionary, played by Sissy Spacek, called Katherine that I remember being good enough that they cut it for subsequent airings. More and more I miss the seventies. Don't get me started.As for Mel Gibson, it helps to think of The Passion as one might a lesser but no less feverish picture by Ken Russell or Alejandro Jodorowsky or even Kenneth Anger. Of course the hype, controversy and the marketing (all the same thing) pull it out of that arena a bit, but at its heart it's a curious vanity movie that only fervent old school Catholics and blood-of-the-lamb evangelicals will really respond to. Some fetishists, I suppose, as well (one definition of fetish is "an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion "), but there are far nastier films in the world, like Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, which was put together by Pasolini, who made that other famous Jesus movie, The Gospel According To St. Matthew. Oddly enough, Pasolini is also credited for the story on an all-Chinese animated version of Jesus' life, Yesu (1998), even though he was murdered in 1975.
FROM THE EMAIL
(From Roger)
Following this with interest, thank God (or Mel Gibson!) it's not got here to the UK (yet ?)
What is spooky is that our old mate Orwell says it all in 1984.
"Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it."
Well if they get there way and remove all the filth..it'll be back to browsing National Geographic in the public library...with airbrushed copies of Health and Efficiency* changing hands on the black market....
* For you Americans, Health and Efficency was an earnest, small-format nudist mag that featured naked people playing tennis, and doing bad Isadora Duncan dances. It was much resorted to by desperate English schoolboys of the late 1950s, who believed that the only person on the planet having two person sex was Elvis Presley -- MF
CRYPTIQUE – Yeeee doggies!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)
