MORE DISSENT IN THE RANKS
I see from the comments board over yonder that the sound muttering may be rising in the audience about how Doc40 has been getting too grim and political lately. In fact, blanche and some girl may be right. I’m constantly catching myself sounding as though I was on a one note bender of Bush, culture wars, and impending doom. Is this true I ask myself? And back comes the answer: “Of course it is. Lighten up now and again.” But then one of the other voices in my head counters with, “How could it be otherwise? Who the fuck do you want to be? Ryan Seacrest? Yesterday some assholes blew up Madrid.” So thus I wrestle with the dilemma of how to fight the good fight...
(A bloody great spider just walked across the legal pad next to my computer. I shoo it away with a Post-It. Begone child of Shelob.)
...without becoming a fucking bore?
FUN STUFF FOR SATURDAY
Well okay, I thought. It’s Saturday. Let’s get down with the light hearted trivia and see where it takes us. And then I looked around at what there was and found a tip-off on the new David Mamet movie from Henry C. Beck and wadda y’know? The movie is bloody grim and bloody political. Then I find a website called God Hates Shrimp, but that turns out to be political satire – but funny in an Old Testament, exoskeletal kinda way. (http://www.godhatesshrimp.com/)
Which leaves me with Safe For Work porn site which seems humorously to demonstrate how porn will look if we lose the culture war. (http://www.area29.com/sfwporn/)
And then there’s the chance for a sick grin at the expense of the mundanely demented at Group Hug (http://grouphug.us/) where strangers post anonymous confessions, as in...
I slept with one of my best friend's girlfriend. I feel guilty about it, she feels guilty about it, but I would still do it again given the opportunity. She's so hot.
or...
I sniff white out and magic markers all day while at my desk. I have an office job.
or...
I live with three other girls. I like one of them and want the other two to die. I dream of axe murderers breaking down the door and them dying. They are fat slobs who just eat bacon and sound like elephants.
And finally we have Lithium Journals which the is the blog of a strange young man from an “imaginary metaverse” who writes like some seriously depressed 21st century neo-Burroughs and whose work I really dig, while finding it a trifle disturbed and disturbing. (http://lithiumjournals.theoutcast.com/) Here’s a taste...
razors and guns. the coolest fucking bandaids, ever. they will fix you right and proper and when they are done, the only scab left is you.
i am an unwilling survivor of a life i never wanted. i speak to the ghost of the child who died inside my mother months before i was born. she tells me, she says, "luck of the draw." i look at my hand and i see the two jokers, the jack of spades, the queen of diamonds and the king of clubs. the jokers mock and laugh, the jack of spades regards me with mild curiousity. the queen of diamonds looks at me with hatred and contempt while the king of clubs whispers, "fold while you can
BECK ON SPARTAN
As to Bush and the administration– In the new Mamet thriller, Spartan, which I saw the other night, the President's daughter is picked up at a cat house and dragged off to be the plaything of some white slavers in the Middle East. The slavers don't know who she is.
Spoilers:
Val Kilmer thinks his job is to rescue her, but when she ends up dead (somewhere else altogether) he takes it to heart. Why I mention all this is that in Mamet's movie, the Prez is out with her secret service detail getting his horn scraped, leaving her vulnerable. And when she goes missing, the White House fakes her death, more than anything because she's an embarrassment, it's a re-election year, and they could give a fuck if she's getting passed around the camel lads. The woman (secret service) who actually raised the girl says to Kilmer, "These people are savages. They don't even know how many kids they have." There's more of that sort of exposition that I can't remember offhand, but it's a very very nasty picture of politicians in general and the Presidential family specifically. One doesn't often see such a bitter and dismal and probably accurate view of the heartless ruthlessness of the people on top. A bit of a surprise, actually. It's like the church--Bishops and administrators pretending they are unaware of the huge volume of in-house abuses, when dealing with the mold on the human soul is their very raison, venality their stock-in-trade. If it weren't for sin, they'd be out of work. There's no room for illusion on their end. How many confessions do you suppose a priest has to listen to before his faith in human nature, assuming he ever had any, is reduced to compost?
CRYPTIQUE – Smile when you say that.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Friday, March 12, 2004
GRIM AND GRIMMER
I really wish we could be talking about shoes, sex, drunkeness, Captain Midnight, obscure movies, or how great I think my new novel is now I’m reading the page proofs, but everyday the shit piles up, and the atmosphere becomes even more tainted. As Madrid suffers its worst taste of hell since the Spanish Civil War, a link to an excellent site, the Daily Mis-leader, (http://www.misleader.org/) raises the old but still-nagging-and-spectral question. “What did the goddamned president know and when did he know it?”
As President Bush visits a memorial for victims of the 9/11 attacks today, he continues to refuse to clarify dishonest comments he and his national security adviser made denying they had any warning that a terrorist attack was imminent before 9/11. In May 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that [Al Qaeda] would try to use an airplane as a missile." Similarly, President Bush denied having any idea about the threat, saying on 5/17/02, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." The problem is that these denials contrast sharply with warnings the White House did receive prior to 9/11. Specifically, the Administration was warned before 9/11 that Al Qaeda was planning to use airplanes in an attack against the United States and that the terror group had recently considered using airplanes as missiles. ABC News and Dateline NBC reported that White House officials acknowledge that U.S. intelligence officials delivered a one-and-a-half page document to President Bush on August 6th that warned that "bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Those warnings came at the same time that U.S. and Italian officials were warning that "Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the [July 2001] Genoa summit of industrialized nations." These warnings came at the same time top Administration officials were being told to change their own personal flight plans because of "threats." Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines and instead began "traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines" because of "what the Justice Department called a 'threat assessment."8 (To this day, the details of that threat assessment have never been made public.) Similarly, Newsweek reported that the day before the 9/11 terror attacks "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
fidicen, who supplied the link, waxes considerable more agressive...
I know you surely know about this, but seeing this information go more mainstream is just so tantalizing. I've got to believe Kerry will unleash it at the right time. I mean, where does chimp go when people find out he had a specific warning about planes and terror on 6 August 2001--while he was beginning the second longest commander in chief vacation of all time (one day short of the record) in the midst of a major economic recession and a mere six months into his term, meanwhile his minions went from public to taxpayer-funded private airline travel and both he and his administration vehemently denied they had anything to inform them that plane attacks were pending but regardless have opposed the Attacks Commission every step of the way and continue to stonewall on testimony and documentational disclosure but constantly use images from the attacks to display their unique fitness for four more years of office. I mean, FAWK, you just can't win an election in the face of that? Can you?? I suppose you could always foment terror in Europe throughout the summer and pin it on towel wearing Ay-Rabs, thus creating the specter of fear amongst an already quivering populace of fat, ignorant chickens without actually doing it in Der Homeland itself and inviting more inquiry into one's intelligence failures and regime machinations. I suppose you COULD try that as a last resort, especially if the markets were tanking, gas prices were spiking, and jobs of both collar colors were being exported, with a li'l help from federal tax incentives and programs, to the subcontinent and far east. I reckon it wouldn't hurt either if it helped the electability and powers of your stooges over there. So I suppose you COULD.Though I would still expect you to lose a fair election by at least five points--in the popular vote if nothing else.
AND GRIMMER STILL
I firmly believe, and I wish I didn’t, that WMDs – that’s plain speaking for fucking atom bombs – will soon be on sale for about the price of their weight in cocaine while we're being distracted by gay marriage, radio decency, and Jesus. The following is clipped from yesterday’s NY Times (which is probably illegal, but frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn)...
But all in all, the risks of a nuclear 9/11 are increasing. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if nuclear weapons are used over the next 15 or 20 years," said Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, "first and foremost by a terrorist group that gets its hands on a Russian nuclear weapon or a Pakistani nuclear weapon." One of our biggest setbacks is in North Korea. Thanks to the ineptitude of hard-liners in Mr. Bush's administration, and their refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations, North Korea is going all-out to make warheads. It may have just made six new nuclear weapons. Then there's Iran, which has sought nuclear weapons since the days of the shah, and whose nuclear program seems to have public support. "I'm not sure there is a way to get an Iranian government to give it up," a senior American official said. Finally, there's the real rogue nation of proliferation, Pakistan. We know that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Islamist father of Pakistan's bomb, peddled materials to Libya and North Korea, and we don't know who else. It may be that A. Q. Khan & Associates already have passed bomb-grade nuclear fuel to the Qaeda, and we are in for the worst," warns Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute. It's mystifying that the administration hasn't leaned on Pakistan to make Dr. Khan available for interrogation to ensure that his network is entirely closed. Several experts on Pakistan told me they believe that the administration has been so restrained because its top priority isn't combating nuclear proliferation — it's getting President Pervez Musharraf's help in arresting Osama bin Laden before the November election. Another puzzle is why an administration that spends hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq doesn't try harder to secure uranium and plutonium in Russia and elsewhere. The bipartisan program to secure weapons of mass destruction is starved for funds — but Mr. Bush is proposing a $41 million cut in "cooperative threat reduction" with Russia.
AND TALKING OF RADIO DECENCY
My thoughts about Howard Stern are nailed down in today's LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=740&IssueNum=40
CRYPTIQUE – Nuke ‘em from orbit.
I really wish we could be talking about shoes, sex, drunkeness, Captain Midnight, obscure movies, or how great I think my new novel is now I’m reading the page proofs, but everyday the shit piles up, and the atmosphere becomes even more tainted. As Madrid suffers its worst taste of hell since the Spanish Civil War, a link to an excellent site, the Daily Mis-leader, (http://www.misleader.org/) raises the old but still-nagging-and-spectral question. “What did the goddamned president know and when did he know it?”
As President Bush visits a memorial for victims of the 9/11 attacks today, he continues to refuse to clarify dishonest comments he and his national security adviser made denying they had any warning that a terrorist attack was imminent before 9/11. In May 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that [Al Qaeda] would try to use an airplane as a missile." Similarly, President Bush denied having any idea about the threat, saying on 5/17/02, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." The problem is that these denials contrast sharply with warnings the White House did receive prior to 9/11. Specifically, the Administration was warned before 9/11 that Al Qaeda was planning to use airplanes in an attack against the United States and that the terror group had recently considered using airplanes as missiles. ABC News and Dateline NBC reported that White House officials acknowledge that U.S. intelligence officials delivered a one-and-a-half page document to President Bush on August 6th that warned that "bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Those warnings came at the same time that U.S. and Italian officials were warning that "Islamic terrorists might attempt to kill President Bush and other leaders by crashing an airliner into the [July 2001] Genoa summit of industrialized nations." These warnings came at the same time top Administration officials were being told to change their own personal flight plans because of "threats." Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines and instead began "traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines" because of "what the Justice Department called a 'threat assessment."8 (To this day, the details of that threat assessment have never been made public.) Similarly, Newsweek reported that the day before the 9/11 terror attacks "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."
fidicen, who supplied the link, waxes considerable more agressive...
I know you surely know about this, but seeing this information go more mainstream is just so tantalizing. I've got to believe Kerry will unleash it at the right time. I mean, where does chimp go when people find out he had a specific warning about planes and terror on 6 August 2001--while he was beginning the second longest commander in chief vacation of all time (one day short of the record) in the midst of a major economic recession and a mere six months into his term, meanwhile his minions went from public to taxpayer-funded private airline travel and both he and his administration vehemently denied they had anything to inform them that plane attacks were pending but regardless have opposed the Attacks Commission every step of the way and continue to stonewall on testimony and documentational disclosure but constantly use images from the attacks to display their unique fitness for four more years of office. I mean, FAWK, you just can't win an election in the face of that? Can you?? I suppose you could always foment terror in Europe throughout the summer and pin it on towel wearing Ay-Rabs, thus creating the specter of fear amongst an already quivering populace of fat, ignorant chickens without actually doing it in Der Homeland itself and inviting more inquiry into one's intelligence failures and regime machinations. I suppose you COULD try that as a last resort, especially if the markets were tanking, gas prices were spiking, and jobs of both collar colors were being exported, with a li'l help from federal tax incentives and programs, to the subcontinent and far east. I reckon it wouldn't hurt either if it helped the electability and powers of your stooges over there. So I suppose you COULD.Though I would still expect you to lose a fair election by at least five points--in the popular vote if nothing else.
AND GRIMMER STILL
I firmly believe, and I wish I didn’t, that WMDs – that’s plain speaking for fucking atom bombs – will soon be on sale for about the price of their weight in cocaine while we're being distracted by gay marriage, radio decency, and Jesus. The following is clipped from yesterday’s NY Times (which is probably illegal, but frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn)...
But all in all, the risks of a nuclear 9/11 are increasing. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if nuclear weapons are used over the next 15 or 20 years," said Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, "first and foremost by a terrorist group that gets its hands on a Russian nuclear weapon or a Pakistani nuclear weapon." One of our biggest setbacks is in North Korea. Thanks to the ineptitude of hard-liners in Mr. Bush's administration, and their refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations, North Korea is going all-out to make warheads. It may have just made six new nuclear weapons. Then there's Iran, which has sought nuclear weapons since the days of the shah, and whose nuclear program seems to have public support. "I'm not sure there is a way to get an Iranian government to give it up," a senior American official said. Finally, there's the real rogue nation of proliferation, Pakistan. We know that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Islamist father of Pakistan's bomb, peddled materials to Libya and North Korea, and we don't know who else. It may be that A. Q. Khan & Associates already have passed bomb-grade nuclear fuel to the Qaeda, and we are in for the worst," warns Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute. It's mystifying that the administration hasn't leaned on Pakistan to make Dr. Khan available for interrogation to ensure that his network is entirely closed. Several experts on Pakistan told me they believe that the administration has been so restrained because its top priority isn't combating nuclear proliferation — it's getting President Pervez Musharraf's help in arresting Osama bin Laden before the November election. Another puzzle is why an administration that spends hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq doesn't try harder to secure uranium and plutonium in Russia and elsewhere. The bipartisan program to secure weapons of mass destruction is starved for funds — but Mr. Bush is proposing a $41 million cut in "cooperative threat reduction" with Russia.
AND TALKING OF RADIO DECENCY
My thoughts about Howard Stern are nailed down in today's LA CityBeat...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=740&IssueNum=40
CRYPTIQUE – Nuke ‘em from orbit.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
THE ELVIS FACTOR
I’ve noticed over the last ten days or so, I’ve heard mention made of something called the Elvis Factor in reference to the presidential election. I will confess these references did not come at a time when I was paying any more than subliminal attention, and I can only imagine it was some pig-benighted columnist or TV news show casting for an angle, and remembering Bill Clinton.
Yeah, in the world of politicians where all things are relative, Clinton had plenty of Elvis. You only had to watch him get down with an Abyssinia Baptist Church. Both the dead Kennedy Brothers had some Elvis, but it tended to bring out the lone gunmen. I could write a whole lot about the Elvis Factor and probably will sometime, but suffice for now to say that it’s an intangible that makes girls adore and crowds act irrational. The discussion is totally spurious, however, because, trust one who knows, J.F. Kerry doe not have the Elvis. The best he might come up with is a Mt. Rushmore Johnny Cash if he smiled now and again, and the caught-on-mike aside when he called Bush “crooked” is going exactly in that direction, and I doubt it will hurt him at all.
Bush on the other hand comes in with an Elvis negative deficit. He might even be the anti-Elvis, I meditated long and hard trying to conjure a singer with whom Bush might be equated, but the best I could come up with was Andy Griffith’s malignant shitkicker in Elia Kazan’s 1957 A Face In The Crowd. Or is that too easy? Some days I have trouble seeing GWB as human. He seems more like a toxic plush monkey animated by a Chuckie Demon. And that’s a hell of a long way from Graceland.
SOME GIRLS DISSENT
some girl writes...
so i was rooting around on the internet, vaguely feeling dissent re your last doc40 post and seeking something to back up my half-baked notions that the people are not as dumb as you think they are (or as w thinks they are), but and instead i stumbled upon some links on the
drudge report (useful, that; despite him), including this article on the latest congressional action re "obscene" broadcasts.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43113-2004Mar9.html)
i found this part to be interesting:
Perhaps most controversial will be an amendment by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) that would impose a moratorium on rules passed by Congress late last year that allow for some media organizations to get larger. The amendment, which passed on a 13-10 vote, directs the General Accounting Office to study the relationship between indecent programming and media consolidation before the new ownership rules can take effect.
indecent programming -- ya mean, like fox news and jerry springer and stuff? huh. of course it would take so-called "public outcry" (try religious-right complaint campaign instead) over "indecency" to get them to look at media consolidation. nevermind thought monopolies and the lack of a true spectrum of viewpoints/lifestyles/etc. represented in mainstream media/entertainment (cable or no) -- THAT'S no cause for concern. and no doubt people who have to do business w/media companies -- production companies, say (at least the ones not already owned by a media conglom), or bands -- also get screwed. but...hey, too bad. that's the market. and the market, as we know, is always right. (hah.)
(Doc 40 notes – Which would seem to be a veiled way of linking some kind of “decency rating” to the ability of media corporations to acquire new radio and TV stations. Its obvious application under the Bush FCC would be to hamper the competition, and give Tom Hicks and Bush’s other pals at Clear Channel a clearer path to become the American right’s corporate Ministry of Truth.)
some girl resumes...
finally, at least there's still SOME highly ironic insanity in the world (instead of just boring old horrible insanity):
from Newsday...PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- A videotape of an underage girl exposing her breasts is not child pornography, a judge decided Tuesday in a criminal case against the producer of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series. Joe Francis, 30, and several of his employees were arrested at Panama City Beach while filming during spring break last April. Bay County sheriff's deputies charged Francis with racketeering related to prostitution and other crimes, based largely on videotapes of girls under 18. Many of the 43 counts he faces hinge on what conduct is considered illegal or pornographic. "This ruling shows that the entire fabric of that claim is wrong," said defense lawyer Aaron Dyer of Los Angeles. Dyer said he expected the ruling to undermine at least 90 percent of the case. Circuit Judge Michael C. Overstreet made his decision in ordering that defense lawyers be allowed to copy tape confiscated during a search of Francis' rented condominium last spring. Prosecutors had tried to prevent the copying on grounds the videotape showing a girl "flashing" her breasts was illegal child pornography. Florida's child pornography law makes the depiction of "sexual conduct" illegal and defines that term to include physical contact. There was no physical contact in the video. State Attorney Jim Appleman did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Prosecutors contend Francis and his video crew enticed girls they knew were underage to expose themselves. The defendants deny the allegation and say the girls had lied about their ages. Francis owns Mantra Entertainment Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif., which produces and distributes the videos.
CRYPTIQUE – Let’s get real, real gone for a change.
I’ve noticed over the last ten days or so, I’ve heard mention made of something called the Elvis Factor in reference to the presidential election. I will confess these references did not come at a time when I was paying any more than subliminal attention, and I can only imagine it was some pig-benighted columnist or TV news show casting for an angle, and remembering Bill Clinton.
Yeah, in the world of politicians where all things are relative, Clinton had plenty of Elvis. You only had to watch him get down with an Abyssinia Baptist Church. Both the dead Kennedy Brothers had some Elvis, but it tended to bring out the lone gunmen. I could write a whole lot about the Elvis Factor and probably will sometime, but suffice for now to say that it’s an intangible that makes girls adore and crowds act irrational. The discussion is totally spurious, however, because, trust one who knows, J.F. Kerry doe not have the Elvis. The best he might come up with is a Mt. Rushmore Johnny Cash if he smiled now and again, and the caught-on-mike aside when he called Bush “crooked” is going exactly in that direction, and I doubt it will hurt him at all.
Bush on the other hand comes in with an Elvis negative deficit. He might even be the anti-Elvis, I meditated long and hard trying to conjure a singer with whom Bush might be equated, but the best I could come up with was Andy Griffith’s malignant shitkicker in Elia Kazan’s 1957 A Face In The Crowd. Or is that too easy? Some days I have trouble seeing GWB as human. He seems more like a toxic plush monkey animated by a Chuckie Demon. And that’s a hell of a long way from Graceland.
SOME GIRLS DISSENT
some girl writes...
so i was rooting around on the internet, vaguely feeling dissent re your last doc40 post and seeking something to back up my half-baked notions that the people are not as dumb as you think they are (or as w thinks they are), but and instead i stumbled upon some links on the
drudge report (useful, that; despite him), including this article on the latest congressional action re "obscene" broadcasts.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43113-2004Mar9.html)
i found this part to be interesting:
Perhaps most controversial will be an amendment by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) that would impose a moratorium on rules passed by Congress late last year that allow for some media organizations to get larger. The amendment, which passed on a 13-10 vote, directs the General Accounting Office to study the relationship between indecent programming and media consolidation before the new ownership rules can take effect.
indecent programming -- ya mean, like fox news and jerry springer and stuff? huh. of course it would take so-called "public outcry" (try religious-right complaint campaign instead) over "indecency" to get them to look at media consolidation. nevermind thought monopolies and the lack of a true spectrum of viewpoints/lifestyles/etc. represented in mainstream media/entertainment (cable or no) -- THAT'S no cause for concern. and no doubt people who have to do business w/media companies -- production companies, say (at least the ones not already owned by a media conglom), or bands -- also get screwed. but...hey, too bad. that's the market. and the market, as we know, is always right. (hah.)
(Doc 40 notes – Which would seem to be a veiled way of linking some kind of “decency rating” to the ability of media corporations to acquire new radio and TV stations. Its obvious application under the Bush FCC would be to hamper the competition, and give Tom Hicks and Bush’s other pals at Clear Channel a clearer path to become the American right’s corporate Ministry of Truth.)
some girl resumes...
finally, at least there's still SOME highly ironic insanity in the world (instead of just boring old horrible insanity):
from Newsday...PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- A videotape of an underage girl exposing her breasts is not child pornography, a judge decided Tuesday in a criminal case against the producer of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series. Joe Francis, 30, and several of his employees were arrested at Panama City Beach while filming during spring break last April. Bay County sheriff's deputies charged Francis with racketeering related to prostitution and other crimes, based largely on videotapes of girls under 18. Many of the 43 counts he faces hinge on what conduct is considered illegal or pornographic. "This ruling shows that the entire fabric of that claim is wrong," said defense lawyer Aaron Dyer of Los Angeles. Dyer said he expected the ruling to undermine at least 90 percent of the case. Circuit Judge Michael C. Overstreet made his decision in ordering that defense lawyers be allowed to copy tape confiscated during a search of Francis' rented condominium last spring. Prosecutors had tried to prevent the copying on grounds the videotape showing a girl "flashing" her breasts was illegal child pornography. Florida's child pornography law makes the depiction of "sexual conduct" illegal and defines that term to include physical contact. There was no physical contact in the video. State Attorney Jim Appleman did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Prosecutors contend Francis and his video crew enticed girls they knew were underage to expose themselves. The defendants deny the allegation and say the girls had lied about their ages. Francis owns Mantra Entertainment Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif., which produces and distributes the videos.
CRYPTIQUE – Let’s get real, real gone for a change.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
DOC40 ALMOST TAKES THE DAY OFF
Goddamn ninety degrees again in LA. The local sun-bunnies chirrup about how lovely it all is, but Newton the cat is still put out and I feel decidedly unwell, while the state of my art makes me attend to a barrow-load of pointless details. I was planning to write at least the start of an analysis of the Elvis Factor in modern politics, but I frankly I don’t have the strength. Thus I leave you with the following, so no ones goes away empty handed...
A SHAGGY DRUNK STORY
From MSNBC – DWPP – Driving While Pre-Pubescent.
This, thanks to a California man who had a few too many. His one smart move: he did not drive while drunk. It was downhill from there, however. First he put a 14-year-old girl behind the wheel but he later gave a 10-year-old girl a shot at driving. When a cop pulled over the swerving car, he found the three of them, the 10-year-old behind the wheel, and beer bottles at the feet of the adult male, Lionel Cerda. Cerda said the two girls were relatives and that he was teaching them how to drive. While the 'relative' part of that story appears to be true, Cerda's driving lesson did not impress the officer. He was charged with DWI, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and child endangerment.
AND MORE BUSHWHACKING
President Bush's re-election campaign says it will ask the Federal Election Commission to investigate a Democratic-leaning group that will air $4.5 million worth of TV ads against Bush, beginning Wednesday. The Media Fund's initial two-week ad run in 17 competitive states will include commercials that criticize Bush's policies and priorities, and mention the president by name. Financed in part by billionaire George Soros and headed by former Clinton administration adviser Harold Ickes, the group expects to raise tens of millions of dollars to run ads this election year.
OH YEAH, AND...
Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Danielle Keough (Lisa Marie’s daughter with Danny Keough) just signed with a modeling agency, and will be the new face of Dolce and Gabbana.
CRYPTIQUE – The Velcro is pre-cut.
Goddamn ninety degrees again in LA. The local sun-bunnies chirrup about how lovely it all is, but Newton the cat is still put out and I feel decidedly unwell, while the state of my art makes me attend to a barrow-load of pointless details. I was planning to write at least the start of an analysis of the Elvis Factor in modern politics, but I frankly I don’t have the strength. Thus I leave you with the following, so no ones goes away empty handed...
A SHAGGY DRUNK STORY
From MSNBC – DWPP – Driving While Pre-Pubescent.
This, thanks to a California man who had a few too many. His one smart move: he did not drive while drunk. It was downhill from there, however. First he put a 14-year-old girl behind the wheel but he later gave a 10-year-old girl a shot at driving. When a cop pulled over the swerving car, he found the three of them, the 10-year-old behind the wheel, and beer bottles at the feet of the adult male, Lionel Cerda. Cerda said the two girls were relatives and that he was teaching them how to drive. While the 'relative' part of that story appears to be true, Cerda's driving lesson did not impress the officer. He was charged with DWI, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and child endangerment.
AND MORE BUSHWHACKING
President Bush's re-election campaign says it will ask the Federal Election Commission to investigate a Democratic-leaning group that will air $4.5 million worth of TV ads against Bush, beginning Wednesday. The Media Fund's initial two-week ad run in 17 competitive states will include commercials that criticize Bush's policies and priorities, and mention the president by name. Financed in part by billionaire George Soros and headed by former Clinton administration adviser Harold Ickes, the group expects to raise tens of millions of dollars to run ads this election year.
OH YEAH, AND...
Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Danielle Keough (Lisa Marie’s daughter with Danny Keough) just signed with a modeling agency, and will be the new face of Dolce and Gabbana.
CRYPTIQUE – The Velcro is pre-cut.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
FEAR EATS THE BRIAN
Fear is the mind killer. – Bene Geserit maxim
It’s a campaign of fear and consumption. – Marilyn Manson
I know your deepest secret fear. – Jim Morrison
I have been wishing lately that FDR had never coined the phrase “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” It would be so useful right about now. I finally saw one of the Bush TV commercials, and it was so plain that the name of the game is now going to be fear for the whole of the election. Eight fucking months of unrelenting trepidation psychology. That much was clear to my, by now, expert eye. So far, other anti-Bush commentators have raged against Bush’s lack of taste in using images of national tragedy to make his pitch. (See Jimmy Breslin below.) I find myself a little beyond that. Taste isn’t even on the radar. The ads are straight subliminal massage. Scientology should be so deft. Expensive and slick, the Bushites have their hand right in the pants of the numbed of the nation. Horrible scary threats – foreign and domestic – abound, and George, and only George will protect us. George is deep-selling himself as what cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls the Strict Father model with the added plus of God as his corner-man.
That I see George as more performing simian that warrior patriarch, and have real problems with those grown-voters who might buy such a clearly nonsensical and nursery illusion should probably disqualify me from further comment, and maybe I should accept my sensei-status and fuck off to a cave. What worries me, however, is that, for this strategy to succeed, the electorate have to be reduced to an infantile near panic. This is clearly the plan of the cognitive scientists of the right and the post-Orwellian consumerists who are getting their fat consultancy cheques from the Bush campaign
The knee-jerk reaction to the Bush psycho-strategy is obviously to fight fear with fear. I rumble of corpo-fascist take-over and warn that “if we don’t defeat Bush in November, there may not be another election.” But is that the way to go? If the battle – and the larger culture war – is being fought between the cognizant of the coastal margins and the willfully stupid of the interior, how sensible is it to play on the fears of the cognizant? Do we really want to go the same route and infantilize the only ones who may have a clue what’s happening? But then again, how the hell does one get across a radical, positive, hopeful, maybe even utopian sales-job in a climate of abject terror of terror itself?
Does this require some discussion? The comments board is over there, or, better still, write byron4D@aol.com for longer postings.
You might also notice that I have used quotes from Frank Herbert, Marilyn Manson, and Jim Morrison at the head of this post, wondering also what might be found in the annals and rhetoric of our own culture to counter all this ugly and bloodily judgmental religion. Are we ashamed of our own poets of resistance, or afeared they will antagonize the dumb and dumber?
I hope this can be the start of something productive. If you agree, please mail it around...
JIMMY BRESLIN
Breslin, as a columnist, was one of my early-scribe heroes. Fidicen sent me a link that indicates he’s still rocking there at NY Newsday. Here he is on the Bush commercials. Just a snippet, hit the link for the full story
In his first campaign commercial, George Bush reached down and molested the dead.
But this only in keeping with both Bushes. George Bush, Sr., had the badge of officer Eddie Byrne, who was gunned down in South Jamaica, and he stood up at Christ the King High School in Middle Village and held it up and said he would have this badge on him forever. Some chance. Bush then led high school girls into insane cheers for the death penalty.
Now, right off, this second George Bush came up with the badge of a Port Authority cop, George Howard, who died. He was from Hicksville. His mother gave Bush the son's badge. When Bush came back to the trade center a year later, he reached into his pocket and whipped out that badge and he had a tear in his eye. What makes it worse is that this George W. Bush acts like he's entitled to treat the remains of a dead man like a souvenir. Now he shows a commercial with dead bodies, or body parts, covered with an American flag being taken through the smoke and flames of the world trade center attack. It caused people who had lost family members in the attack to complain about using the dead or parts thereof being used for a politician's gain.
"Bush is afraid to let us see the dead being brought back from Iraq," one fire fighter said yesterday.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/columnists/nyc-bres0306,0,4578571.column
CRYPTIQUE – Would Adam or Steve please pick up the white courtesy phone?
Fear is the mind killer. – Bene Geserit maxim
It’s a campaign of fear and consumption. – Marilyn Manson
I know your deepest secret fear. – Jim Morrison
I have been wishing lately that FDR had never coined the phrase “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” It would be so useful right about now. I finally saw one of the Bush TV commercials, and it was so plain that the name of the game is now going to be fear for the whole of the election. Eight fucking months of unrelenting trepidation psychology. That much was clear to my, by now, expert eye. So far, other anti-Bush commentators have raged against Bush’s lack of taste in using images of national tragedy to make his pitch. (See Jimmy Breslin below.) I find myself a little beyond that. Taste isn’t even on the radar. The ads are straight subliminal massage. Scientology should be so deft. Expensive and slick, the Bushites have their hand right in the pants of the numbed of the nation. Horrible scary threats – foreign and domestic – abound, and George, and only George will protect us. George is deep-selling himself as what cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls the Strict Father model with the added plus of God as his corner-man.
That I see George as more performing simian that warrior patriarch, and have real problems with those grown-voters who might buy such a clearly nonsensical and nursery illusion should probably disqualify me from further comment, and maybe I should accept my sensei-status and fuck off to a cave. What worries me, however, is that, for this strategy to succeed, the electorate have to be reduced to an infantile near panic. This is clearly the plan of the cognitive scientists of the right and the post-Orwellian consumerists who are getting their fat consultancy cheques from the Bush campaign
The knee-jerk reaction to the Bush psycho-strategy is obviously to fight fear with fear. I rumble of corpo-fascist take-over and warn that “if we don’t defeat Bush in November, there may not be another election.” But is that the way to go? If the battle – and the larger culture war – is being fought between the cognizant of the coastal margins and the willfully stupid of the interior, how sensible is it to play on the fears of the cognizant? Do we really want to go the same route and infantilize the only ones who may have a clue what’s happening? But then again, how the hell does one get across a radical, positive, hopeful, maybe even utopian sales-job in a climate of abject terror of terror itself?
Does this require some discussion? The comments board is over there, or, better still, write byron4D@aol.com for longer postings.
You might also notice that I have used quotes from Frank Herbert, Marilyn Manson, and Jim Morrison at the head of this post, wondering also what might be found in the annals and rhetoric of our own culture to counter all this ugly and bloodily judgmental religion. Are we ashamed of our own poets of resistance, or afeared they will antagonize the dumb and dumber?
I hope this can be the start of something productive. If you agree, please mail it around...
JIMMY BRESLIN
Breslin, as a columnist, was one of my early-scribe heroes. Fidicen sent me a link that indicates he’s still rocking there at NY Newsday. Here he is on the Bush commercials. Just a snippet, hit the link for the full story
In his first campaign commercial, George Bush reached down and molested the dead.
But this only in keeping with both Bushes. George Bush, Sr., had the badge of officer Eddie Byrne, who was gunned down in South Jamaica, and he stood up at Christ the King High School in Middle Village and held it up and said he would have this badge on him forever. Some chance. Bush then led high school girls into insane cheers for the death penalty.
Now, right off, this second George Bush came up with the badge of a Port Authority cop, George Howard, who died. He was from Hicksville. His mother gave Bush the son's badge. When Bush came back to the trade center a year later, he reached into his pocket and whipped out that badge and he had a tear in his eye. What makes it worse is that this George W. Bush acts like he's entitled to treat the remains of a dead man like a souvenir. Now he shows a commercial with dead bodies, or body parts, covered with an American flag being taken through the smoke and flames of the world trade center attack. It caused people who had lost family members in the attack to complain about using the dead or parts thereof being used for a politician's gain.
"Bush is afraid to let us see the dead being brought back from Iraq," one fire fighter said yesterday.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/columnists/nyc-bres0306,0,4578571.column
CRYPTIQUE – Would Adam or Steve please pick up the white courtesy phone?
Monday, March 08, 2004
HEATWAVE
The temperature hit the 90s in LA yesterday, and the same is expected today. This may sound wonderful to those of you just emerging from winter, but, believe me, it's weird. The cat is pissed because he still has his thick Himalayan winter coat, my metabolism feels like it’s been worked over by Paulie Walnuts, and I know for sure this is yet another symptom of global weather patterns lurching into dangerous chaos. The owl, hooowever, is still out there. (See yesterday.)
MONDAY, MONDAY
For Monday morning I would also offer the following snip from The NY Times.
To the extent that companies can squeeze another drop of blood out of their existing work force, they're doing it. Eventually you reach the point where there's no more blood to be given, but we haven't reached it yet. – Joshua Shapiro, an economic researcher in New York.
MEL THE MERCILESS
Also in The NY Times, culture columnist Frank Rich takes another crack at Passion and Mel Gibson, and how much money can be made from big screen bigot garbage, and how the whole trough of cash his movie actually is making has rendered Mel acceptable to a lot of people who should know better (including, I noticed, Roger Ebert)...
With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson's film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who on "Hardball" called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."
If "The Passion" is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Mr. Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own — in America anyway. The one ugly incident reported on Ash Wednesday, in which the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church posted a marquee reading "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus," occurred in Denver, where the local archbishop, Charles Chaput, had thrown kindling on the fire by promoting the movie for months. Whether "The Passion" will prove quite as benign in Europe and the Arab world is a story yet to be told.
For the full story...http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/arts/07RICH.html?th
(you may have to register, but it’s free)
AND FINALLY J.F.KERRY
I just discovered that John Kerry supposedly once dated Morgan Fairchild. Since I have to support the cat anyway, that fact kinda makes it easier. My own mini-tribute to Ms Fairchild can be found on the live version of "Screwed Up" on the Deviants Human Garbage CD. (see Funtopia--Music)
CRYPTIQUE – You don’t need no ticket, you're just forced on board.
The temperature hit the 90s in LA yesterday, and the same is expected today. This may sound wonderful to those of you just emerging from winter, but, believe me, it's weird. The cat is pissed because he still has his thick Himalayan winter coat, my metabolism feels like it’s been worked over by Paulie Walnuts, and I know for sure this is yet another symptom of global weather patterns lurching into dangerous chaos. The owl, hooowever, is still out there. (See yesterday.)
MONDAY, MONDAY
For Monday morning I would also offer the following snip from The NY Times.
To the extent that companies can squeeze another drop of blood out of their existing work force, they're doing it. Eventually you reach the point where there's no more blood to be given, but we haven't reached it yet. – Joshua Shapiro, an economic researcher in New York.
MEL THE MERCILESS
Also in The NY Times, culture columnist Frank Rich takes another crack at Passion and Mel Gibson, and how much money can be made from big screen bigot garbage, and how the whole trough of cash his movie actually is making has rendered Mel acceptable to a lot of people who should know better (including, I noticed, Roger Ebert)...
With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson's film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who on "Hardball" called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."
If "The Passion" is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Mr. Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own — in America anyway. The one ugly incident reported on Ash Wednesday, in which the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church posted a marquee reading "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus," occurred in Denver, where the local archbishop, Charles Chaput, had thrown kindling on the fire by promoting the movie for months. Whether "The Passion" will prove quite as benign in Europe and the Arab world is a story yet to be told.
For the full story...http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/arts/07RICH.html?th
(you may have to register, but it’s free)
AND FINALLY J.F.KERRY
I just discovered that John Kerry supposedly once dated Morgan Fairchild. Since I have to support the cat anyway, that fact kinda makes it easier. My own mini-tribute to Ms Fairchild can be found on the live version of "Screwed Up" on the Deviants Human Garbage CD. (see Funtopia--Music)
CRYPTIQUE – You don’t need no ticket, you're just forced on board.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
OWLS AND WHISPERS
Last night, or, to be more precise, yesterday in the predawn, when the black turns to a submarine grey-blue half-light of urban gris-gris, a huge full moon loomed bright and dangerously white behind the jacaranda trees, and a weird sound started that was clearly a bird-call. Woo-woot, woo-woot, woo-woot, woo-woot. Loud, fast and rhythmic; perhaps a warning, quite as insistent as any raven on any bust of Pallas. And the local crows (cousins of the raven), who normally own the predawn – picking in the gutter for edibles and shiny objects, while wishing they had hands so they could start a civilization – looked nervous and uneasy. Meanwhile Newton the cat was at the balcony door, furry and staring with wide blue eyes, at full DEFCON-2, because he didn’t like the noise any more than the crows did.
I went to look, but saw nothing. An owl, my inner country-boy suggested? It sounded like an owl, but can owls survive in the bladerunner eco-disaster that is LA? Aren’t the rodents all toxic? Have the owls adapted? I later emailed a friend of copious knowledge, to see if an owl was possible. She responded that they had been reported, both heard and seen, although she herself never had.
I felt perversely pleased. An owl, a bad moon setting, antsy crows, and a watch-cat on alert, they all seemed like a timely message that, before I got too involved in all tomorrow’s structural conspiracies, I must never forget that the wild places of Poe and Lovecraft lurk very close to surface, and are maybe at par with any other given reality at the point of transition from day to night. And that may really be where my strength should be drawn.
FROM THE EMAIL
fidicen rants and leaves a handy link as to how Bush may hope that the capture of Bin Laden will win the election for him.
Fuckin' A Mick, how sad it has been for me to watch this massive crime family response the last two weeks to the events of January and early February and the lack of even astute observers in putting two and two together. I think fluoridated water really does block the questioning faculty. Something keeps the populace impeccably docile and its not just teevee and junk food and the old Marxist standardbearers. You didn't even mention the Haiti and Venezuela "products." An unstable world even beyond the towelhead realm along with an immoral left is the campaign recipe. Hence Iraq may be allowed to descend into civil war, or even encouraged to do so (and perhaps indeed that is what has been happening there lately) because the cost vs. benefits of that scenario are more favorable than what has been happening or certainly allowing them to have elections and actually, god forbid, pulling the troops out. Iraq on Iraq violence to replace Iraq on Yank violence while the news shrieks of homos copulating with each other via multiple inputs six ways to Sunday legally on American flag bedsheets while western hemisphere nations fragment violently in 'military' coup d'etats. "Stand firm Amerikka! Only the Smirking Chimp can save us now!!" Be right up the old Grand Oil Plan alley.
Achtung: http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/000037.php
There will be no self-pity in the ranks – William S. Burroughs
MORE JACK ELAM
The second part of Henry’s lost Jack Elam interviewette. See yesterday for a full explanation.
YOU WERE IN AN AMERICAN GUERILLA IN THE PHILIPPINES THAT FRITZ LANG DIRECTED
Are you sure that he directed American Guerrilla? Holy shit I had no idea…that was a long time ago. We shot that motherfucker in the Philippines. I had just finished Rawhide. And I was under contract with the studio-that was it! And I hated 'em. I hated that picture because I had nothing to do in it and they made me, because I was under contract, they made me stay with the picture over in the Philippines for months! And I don't think I worked three days! If you ever look at the picture, maybe three days. Was that Fritz?
AND MOONFLEET, TOO
Moonfleet I do remember because we shot that at MGM, everything on the stage, and I was doin another picture at MGM, a Tarzan picture, one with Vera Miles. Gordon Scott was Tarzan, I remember. And I was doin that picture and Fritz was doin Moonfleet at the same time at the studio and he insisted that I work in Moonfleet, so I wasn't in much, whatever it was, he said, it doesn't matter. You can go do the other picture, they won't miss you-there was a bunch of us, a whole bunch of pirates, you know, and he said I can shoot the shot around you, don't worry, and I did the two pictures at the same time. I'd stay on the Tarzan picture cause I was the main heavy, and I always had something to do, he's say any time you're not on there, I want you on the set over here at Moonfleet. That was strictly a gift courtesy of the friendship of Fritz Lang. I had a wonderful relationship with Fritz Lang. Absolutely. Without any question. Of course I didn't work with him that much-we're talking three pictures. There's some directors I did 15, 20 pictures with. But I was with him enough to know that I liked him. I worked from one end to the other, from the really heavy to the sidekick, the bearded old sidekick. I had a lot of fun in the Willie Nelson picture Where the Hell's That Gold? We got along like twins. We did two pictures together, the last one was basically just him and me, and we agreed on one thing, in the picture we sang together, in that one, we did a duet when we were in jail, and we agreed when that was over, he said, "I think Jack, you better let me do the singing," and I said, "Well, you fuckin well better let me do the acting."
Don't know if you've heard this anecdote, but when they were shooting Once Upon A Time In The West, they were having a hell of a time trying to get flies on Elam, so they gave up and broke for lunch. They discovered that all the flies were hanging around the watermelon at the lunch table, so they went and smeared watermelon juice on Elam's face, and got the shot.
CRYPTIQUE – Black is the color and nine is the number.
Last night, or, to be more precise, yesterday in the predawn, when the black turns to a submarine grey-blue half-light of urban gris-gris, a huge full moon loomed bright and dangerously white behind the jacaranda trees, and a weird sound started that was clearly a bird-call. Woo-woot, woo-woot, woo-woot, woo-woot. Loud, fast and rhythmic; perhaps a warning, quite as insistent as any raven on any bust of Pallas. And the local crows (cousins of the raven), who normally own the predawn – picking in the gutter for edibles and shiny objects, while wishing they had hands so they could start a civilization – looked nervous and uneasy. Meanwhile Newton the cat was at the balcony door, furry and staring with wide blue eyes, at full DEFCON-2, because he didn’t like the noise any more than the crows did.
I went to look, but saw nothing. An owl, my inner country-boy suggested? It sounded like an owl, but can owls survive in the bladerunner eco-disaster that is LA? Aren’t the rodents all toxic? Have the owls adapted? I later emailed a friend of copious knowledge, to see if an owl was possible. She responded that they had been reported, both heard and seen, although she herself never had.
I felt perversely pleased. An owl, a bad moon setting, antsy crows, and a watch-cat on alert, they all seemed like a timely message that, before I got too involved in all tomorrow’s structural conspiracies, I must never forget that the wild places of Poe and Lovecraft lurk very close to surface, and are maybe at par with any other given reality at the point of transition from day to night. And that may really be where my strength should be drawn.
FROM THE EMAIL
fidicen rants and leaves a handy link as to how Bush may hope that the capture of Bin Laden will win the election for him.
Fuckin' A Mick, how sad it has been for me to watch this massive crime family response the last two weeks to the events of January and early February and the lack of even astute observers in putting two and two together. I think fluoridated water really does block the questioning faculty. Something keeps the populace impeccably docile and its not just teevee and junk food and the old Marxist standardbearers. You didn't even mention the Haiti and Venezuela "products." An unstable world even beyond the towelhead realm along with an immoral left is the campaign recipe. Hence Iraq may be allowed to descend into civil war, or even encouraged to do so (and perhaps indeed that is what has been happening there lately) because the cost vs. benefits of that scenario are more favorable than what has been happening or certainly allowing them to have elections and actually, god forbid, pulling the troops out. Iraq on Iraq violence to replace Iraq on Yank violence while the news shrieks of homos copulating with each other via multiple inputs six ways to Sunday legally on American flag bedsheets while western hemisphere nations fragment violently in 'military' coup d'etats. "Stand firm Amerikka! Only the Smirking Chimp can save us now!!" Be right up the old Grand Oil Plan alley.
Achtung: http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/000037.php
There will be no self-pity in the ranks – William S. Burroughs
MORE JACK ELAM
The second part of Henry’s lost Jack Elam interviewette. See yesterday for a full explanation.
YOU WERE IN AN AMERICAN GUERILLA IN THE PHILIPPINES THAT FRITZ LANG DIRECTED
Are you sure that he directed American Guerrilla? Holy shit I had no idea…that was a long time ago. We shot that motherfucker in the Philippines. I had just finished Rawhide. And I was under contract with the studio-that was it! And I hated 'em. I hated that picture because I had nothing to do in it and they made me, because I was under contract, they made me stay with the picture over in the Philippines for months! And I don't think I worked three days! If you ever look at the picture, maybe three days. Was that Fritz?
AND MOONFLEET, TOO
Moonfleet I do remember because we shot that at MGM, everything on the stage, and I was doin another picture at MGM, a Tarzan picture, one with Vera Miles. Gordon Scott was Tarzan, I remember. And I was doin that picture and Fritz was doin Moonfleet at the same time at the studio and he insisted that I work in Moonfleet, so I wasn't in much, whatever it was, he said, it doesn't matter. You can go do the other picture, they won't miss you-there was a bunch of us, a whole bunch of pirates, you know, and he said I can shoot the shot around you, don't worry, and I did the two pictures at the same time. I'd stay on the Tarzan picture cause I was the main heavy, and I always had something to do, he's say any time you're not on there, I want you on the set over here at Moonfleet. That was strictly a gift courtesy of the friendship of Fritz Lang. I had a wonderful relationship with Fritz Lang. Absolutely. Without any question. Of course I didn't work with him that much-we're talking three pictures. There's some directors I did 15, 20 pictures with. But I was with him enough to know that I liked him. I worked from one end to the other, from the really heavy to the sidekick, the bearded old sidekick. I had a lot of fun in the Willie Nelson picture Where the Hell's That Gold? We got along like twins. We did two pictures together, the last one was basically just him and me, and we agreed on one thing, in the picture we sang together, in that one, we did a duet when we were in jail, and we agreed when that was over, he said, "I think Jack, you better let me do the singing," and I said, "Well, you fuckin well better let me do the acting."
Don't know if you've heard this anecdote, but when they were shooting Once Upon A Time In The West, they were having a hell of a time trying to get flies on Elam, so they gave up and broke for lunch. They discovered that all the flies were hanging around the watermelon at the lunch table, so they went and smeared watermelon juice on Elam's face, and got the shot.
CRYPTIQUE – Black is the color and nine is the number.
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