Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Must-See Cinema: Ferguson: A Report from Occupied Territory 2015

Filmmaker Orlando de Guzman, a native of The Philippines, grew up with a folk saying that "it's better to be with seven devils than one policeman". He went to Ferguson MO in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting, and found that saying still holds true for the black people in and around St. Louis -- this stunning, shocking, eye-opening film is the result of that journey.


While this technically is not true "cinema", it deserves to be seen, near and far, by as many people as possible.

Too bad the people who really need to see it likely won't watch it...

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Exploitation Movies: Assassin of Youth (1937)

The 1930s produced a cornucopia of grindhouse exploitation films (aka "sexploitation" movies), usually disguised as "educational" movies that were ostensible cautionary tales about one social problem or another.

Today's feature is the over-the-top exposé of the evils of marijuana, Assassin of Youth from 1937.

Full movie:


This is one of the classics of anti-marijuana propaganda. Sweet girl Joan Barrie is left her grandmother's fortune, but with an odd morals clause. She has to remain "pure" or she doesn't get the money. This doesn't sit well with her blonde(!) scheming cousin, Linda, who sets out to ruin Joan's reputation so that she can get the money. Odd that the "morals" clause applies only to Joan, but never mind that.

Crusading cub reporter Art Brighton goes undercover to expose the danger of marijuana "right here in River City". We learn that marijuana is the worst drug ever, we are treated to a film-within-the-film lecture by a "noted expert" who lectures us pedantically that the word "assassin" comes from "hashish" (here's the Straight Dope on that) and was applied to a group of paid killers in "Syria and Persia"(?) who smoke the dreaded weed and become robotlike murderers. We are also treated to an overwrought recreation of an insane man's confession that he killed five people -- including his uncle! -- while he was under the influence of the "narcotic weed".

In the festive party atmosphere that surrounds the "kids" in this movie (as usual, a bunch of 25-year-old teenagers), Joan falls in the lake and has to take off her clothes to dry them, Linda "accidentally" sets the clothes on fire, and when they return to town Linda and her boyfriend/secret husband make sure that the town busybody sees Joan wearing nothing. Nothing, that is, but a long trench coat that covers everything.


Along the way Joan's little sister takes a few tokes off of some "reefer", goes into a psychotic breakdown, is subjected to some tsk-tsk-clucking by a narcotics-expert doctor, and lingers on in a semi-vegetative state. The reporter enlists Joan's help in exposing the local dope racket, a comedy scene occurs at the court when the judge is trying to render the will, and everything works out in the end: Art rushes in with his stop-the-presses exposé, Linda is exposed, Joan gets the money, and at the end of the movie she and Art are going to get married.

In short, take away all the drug references and it's just another soap opera.

Also notable, for comic effect: The stoned-out party guy, the town busybody Miss Frisbee and her scooter, and Pop Brady who owns the soda fountain where everyone hangs out when they are not partying. (Even though these are all supposed to be high school kids, we never see the school, never see them in class.)

For what it's worth, the innocent girl/lead character is referred to as "Joan Barry" in all the writeups on this movie, but she is listed as "Joan Barrie" in the credits.

The money shot: When she takes off her wet clothes at the lake we see Joan's white skivvies, and then we see her naked, more or less, in a profile silhoutte. There's also some dancing where the girls raise their skirts to mid-thigh and show some -- gasp -- stocking tops.

Lessons learned: Don't dare take that first reefer. And, since all the reefers presented in these movies look like ordinary cigarettes (nobody hand-rolled joints in those days, it appears), better not to smoke at all. And of course, it goes without saying, don't trust blondes.

Directed by: Elmer Clifton, who also gave us Gambling With Souls and Slaves in Bondage

Taglines: Puff--Party--Tragedy! MARIHUANA - a Puff - a Party - a Tragedy!

Also known as Marihuana and The Marijuana Menace

More reading:

Monday, April 27, 2015

Monday Music Break: FM (No Static At All)

Here's the quintessential jazz-rock band of the 70s and 80s, Steely Dan (which, yes Virginia, was named after a dildo) from the 1978 film FM. It's the title track from the movie, called FM (No Static At All).

Enjoy


A favorite group of mine. I got pretty much all their albums on vinyl, then had to switch to casettes and finally CDs. I am starting to suspect that whole improving-,musical-technology scene was al about selling duplicate copies of albums in the newest and latest formats. Now I have to duplicate them all in .mp3 if I'm going to listen on my iPod. Jeez.

And the beat goes on...

Sunday, April 26, 2015

The "No Spin" Zone? Really, O'Reilly?

Our old buddy Bill Orally is at it again. He says that the two female supreme court justices, Ginsburg and Kagan (you know, the ones with the unspeakable "lady parts"), have to recuse themselves from that so-called Gay Marriage case, since they both have officiated at same-sex marriages. That makes them "not impartial" to the issue... As if officiating at an "opposite marriage" wouldn't have the same effect the other way?

Sidebar: Since Clarence "Official SCOTUS House Negro" Thomas officiated at Rush Limbaugh's marriage to wife number three -- or was it four? -- maybe he ought to be impeached for subverting the whole "one man one woman" God-intended concept of marriage. Divorce is one of those Biblical judgments that will be visited on the divorced sinners. Catholics still kind of believe that, Clarence. Maybe you were busy with "other priorities" when you were an altar boy (he is Catholic, you know) and missed that lesson. I fear that God will not judge you kindly for that.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, which is BillO the serial lying hypocrite. It's fine if he believes that justices who have spoken out on a particular topic -- even though neither of the "ladies" on the supreme court have actually commented on the particulars of this or any other same-sex marriage case -- should recuse themselves. Everyone's entitled to an opinion.

Or -- stop the presses! -- maybe two diametrically opposed opinions. Way back in 2006, when Antonin "Tony Quack-Quack" Scalia made a speech in which he quite clearly indicated which way he would rule on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case pending before the court.

Billy the Liar said that only the "nutty left" wanted Scalia to recuse himself, even though it was quite clear which way he would rule in the case.

No spin zone? Really, O'Reilly? Maybe it's because you are the center of the universe, and you don't spin. Everything revolves around you.

Or maybe it could be the PTSD that you caught from some random slut of a loofah mitt back when you were "in a war zone, okay?".

Donations for Nepal

Please donate to Unicef for earthquake relief in Nepal.
They experienced a 7.8 earthquake with much loss of life, over 2,000 people. Click to be taken to the UNICEF page where your dollars will help the suffering children of Nepal.

Your charitable dollars are tax deductible. Please send something now! Even $5 will help a starving and cold child in that far off place.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Saturday Poetry Slam -- "To His Coy Mistress"

Introducing a new feature, the Saturday Poetry Slam. We'll see how this goes...

As many of you know, I was an English major in college. What led me to that was a lifelong love of literature, and I figured I could get a degree for just reading stuff I was going to read anyway. I had actually kind of forgotten about how much I liked poetry until recently, when I started revisiting some the poems that had struck my fancy or my psyche or my emotions way back in the salad days of my youth.

Which led me to this classic from the mid-1600s, "To His Coy Mistress",
by Andrew Marvell. On re-reading it, I am amazed once again at how SO not-old this sounds, even though it was written over 300 years ago!

You will note some familiar phrases in this poem, I'm sure. They have served as titles of books or movies, in the last century especially.

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
       But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
       Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Friday, April 24, 2015

The Relocation Camp at Manzanar -- A Look Back With Ansel Adams

The great American photographer Ansel Adams was famous for his landscapes, especially his photos of Yosemite National Park.

But it isn't so well known that in 1943 he went to the wartime Japanese-American "relocation camp" at Manzanar, California, and took a series of photographs there. Now, thanks to the SFGate website in San Francisco, we can take a look at 61 of those photos.

Be sure to click them up to full-screen size.

These are good companion photos to my Book of the Month for March, The Train to Crystal City, even though they deal with a different camp. Things weren't all that different in any of those concentration
relocation camps.

I'm Back -- Tanned, Fit, Rested and Ready

Well, since it's been raining like a sonofabitch here all week, I'm lying about the "tanned" part. Probably on shaky ground with the "fit" as well...

Anyway, thanks to all of you for the birthday wishes. Now that I've had some time to settle into being 70, it's not all that different from 69. Age is just a number, they say.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Now I am a Septuagenerian

Today is my birthday. I am 70 years old.

Fuck, where did the last 70 years go? I just learned -- without having taken advantage of it, nudge nudge wink wink -- that for the last decade I was a SEXagenarian... Damn!

Well, you know the old saying. "Time's fun when you're having flies..."

If 60 was the new 50, then obviously 70 is the new 60...

Funny thing, I don't FEEL like I am 70. Not that I'm any kind of expert on what 70 is supposed to feel like, or look like. My father was dead by the time he was my age. It seems like pretty much everyone I knew growing up ended up dead before they were 70.

I don't get why I was spared. It's like one of those dystopian sci-fi movies I am so fond of, like I Am Legend (2007), which also appeared as The Omega Man (1971) or The Last Man on Earth (1964), based on the classic sci-fi novel I Am Legend by the notoriously-paranoid Richard Matheson.

Except not everyone around me is a zombie/vampire/etc.

Wait. I take that back. When I look around and see how many people still vote Republican, I know that I am surrounded by zombies. Or vampires. Or morons. Or something.

Anyway, throughout my 60s I kept remarking on the fact that when I was growing up, people who were in their 60s back then were old. As in Fucking Old! I kind of thought it was just a matter of perspective, like when you were younger than about 10 or so, the years seemed to just creep by, summer vacation was so looong that you were more than ready to go back to school when it was over, just for the novelty, and it took forever to get from one Christmas to the next. But now I am no so sure. Better medical care, better pharmaceuticals, better nutrition, a better lifestyle, better movies, better ... something...

Actually, I think it's all the preservatives that they've been putting in our diet. They not only preserve your food, they also preserve your body. Two hundred years from now, if you dig me up you'll find that I am still that same buff-looking 30-year-old studmuffin that I still see looking back at me when I look in the mirror... Of course now he is kind of peeking around the shape of some old man that I don't know, but he's still there!!!...

All this attention I've been paying to myself and my aging process has inexplicably tired me out. I think I'll be taking take a few days off.

Monday, April 20, 2015

The World's Oldest Profession -- in Modern Vietnam

When I went back to Vietnam in 2008, I went in naively believing that prostitution was illegal and that it would no longer be the kind Wild-West-Everything-Goes attitude I had experienced as a young soldier 40 year earlier.

In fact, things were pretty quiet on the sex-for-sale front in Hanoi. I had only one approach and offer, a really cute little slip of a girl who sidled up to me on the street about ten o'clock at night and asked in a quiet sotto-voce, "Would you like ...mahsshage...? I figured that prostitution still existed but was being run on the q.t., a sort of sub rosa approach to the world's oldest profession.

I asked her a few "journalist" questions, engaging her long enough to look around and see her "guy" idling on a motorcycle a half a block away, looking like he'd leap for a chance to rip my lungs out. I did find out that a blow job would be $40, only eight times what it would have been 40 years earlier. But those 1968 prices were for Saigon, and we were a long way from there. Finally I had to turn her down and she left kind of crestfallen, as though I had personally snatched the $40 out of the mouths of her children. And maybe I had.

But when we got to Saigon Ho Chi Minh City it was Katie Bar the Door! Every tourist hotel in our price range had a small bar attached to it, and those bars were literally crawling with nice, good-looking Suzy-Wong-type hookers. There I learned that most of the girls were sort of freelancers, who worked for the bar itself, and the bar owner took care of the bookkeeping and the protection. Blow jobs had gone up to 60 Dollars, so it doubled the inflation rate to twelve times the going rate back In The Day.

I was -- am still -- happily married at the time and I figured that She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed would not accept my actions as legitimate historical research -- "Please, dear. I had to do it. For my art! For Science!" So I did not take the opportunity to sample the local wares. But I did lean that prostitution is much more prevalent, much more open in Ho Chi Minh City than anywhere else in Vietnam., The cops? They get paid off for looking the other way when not actually providing security for the girls. It all seems to work out well, even though prostitution is still technically illegal there.

Which is why I found a current article in Cracked so interesting: "No Fat Tourists: 5 Rules of Life as a Prostitute in Vietnam". Read it for an eye-opening look at the World's Oldest Profession being conducted in a "Communist" Country. I put quotes around that since it's kind of hard to see a culture that operates almost fully on consumption, has huge advertising billboards along every highway, and has its own stock market as a "communist" country...

Monday Music Break: Warren Zevon, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner (1978)

Here, from his Excitable Boy CD is Warren Zevon with "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner":


"Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", ostensibly the story of white mercenaries in Africa in the mid-1960s, was the last song that Zevon performed live, on the Dave Letterman Show just before his untimely death in 2003.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Aaand... Here Is Why Dick Cheney Is NOT Going to Miss Jon Stewart

Check this out, in case you missed The Daily Show yesterday:


Fuck, that is both brilliant comedy gold and incisive -- the incisivestTM -- political commentary, all wrapped up in one delicious ten-minute bite of meat-wrapped chocolate-dipped snark!

While I practically busted a gut from laughing while I was watching it, it also drove up my blood pressure to dangerous levels, from the wrathful rage I harbor for Dick Cheney.

The guy is a bully and a thug and an über-hypocritical asshole. He is also a Republican -- but I repeat myself.

How can someone consistently be that out of touch with who he is and what he has done? That new heart didn't do anything for him except keep him needlessly above the dirt. But, if you are doing the work of The Devil, I guess you don't really think about that stuff...

Here's Why I'm Going to Miss John Stewart

When John Stewart leaves The Daily Show sometime this year, this is the kind of thing we are going to miss:


I'm not at all sure that the new guy can deliver this kind of acerbic commentary on the American political scene. I wish him the best of luck and I will give his show a fair chance. But I gotta tell ya, I'm major-disappointed with Larry Wilmore's show. I hope Trevor Noah will be able to pull it off.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

If It Sounds Too Good to be True...

... it really isn't.

According to an email making the rounds, fellatio decreases the risk of breast cancer for women.

Yeah, sounds legit!

Everything, except the name of the "scientist" who "discovered" this breakthrough:  Dr. B. J. Sooner...


Well, That Backfired

It's clear that Washington State's own Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Blithering Idiot), like most Republicans, lives in a different reality, on a whole other planet.

If you recall, she was the "official" Republican Party anti-Obama ranter after his 2014 State of the Union. During her rebuttal, she brought up one "constituent" of hers, someone she called "Bette from Spokane" who had an enraging tale of woe regarding the Affordable Care Act.

According to this Wonkette story, "Bette from Spokane"

... was kicked off her wonderful health insurance and would have to spend $700 more a month for a new plan under the ACA. Except none of that turned out to be true: Bette’s old “affordable” plan only covered catastrophic care, with a $10,000 annual deductible — though it did include four (4) free office visits a year. And the replacement plan she complained about to McMorris Rodgers was one of the priciest plans offered by her insurer when it canceled her junk insurance — Bette didn’t even bother looking on “that Obama website at all,” because it was communist, although she’d have found several options providing better coverage at the same price as her junk plan.
No one really knows what happened to "Bette from Spokane" -- or if she was even a real person -- but that didn't stop Little Cathy from her vituperative rage against Obamacare. Even though that same trick didn't work for Ted Cruz a year ago, Little Cathy forged ahead and asked her many Facebook followers to help her expose the evil that is Obamacare:
Whether it’s turned your tax filing into a nightmare, you’re facing skyrocketing premiums, or your employer has reduced your work hours, I want to hear about it.
Please share your story with me so that I can better understand the challenges you’re facing: http://mcmorris.house.gov/your-story/
And share they did! People flooded her Facebook page with "stories of how they’d finally gotten insurance after being denied due to pre-existing conditions, or how their previous private plans covered practically nothing, or how they were healthcare workers who were seeing a lot of new patients who otherwise might have gone to the ER for unaffordable care. Oops."

Actual Facebook screen captures show these responses, too numerous to adequately quote here. Take a look for yourself.

You gotta wonder about the sanity of the Republican Party in general. Is Obamacare perfect? No, but it's the best we've got right now, until we can put Medicare for All into effect.

And that's why it's important to elect Democrats next year. Send the Republican Party where it belongs, into the dustbin of history.

And before you ask, yes that means voting for Hillary Clinton. If we have to. Just to keep another Bush out of the White House...

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Must-See Cinema: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948

This week's must-see cinema feature is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1948, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Bruce Bennett.

Trailer:


This happens to be one of my very favorite movies of all time. It was based on a 1927 book of the same name (terrific book as well) by the odd mystery-man of American letters B. Traven, and has the dubious distinction of being the likely source for the well-known phrase from the late 60s and early 70s, "don't Bogart that joint". In a famous scene from the movie, one that used to be routinely edited out for television, Bogart and Walter Huston are sharing a "peace pipe" (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) with a bunch of Indios and Bogart says something to the effect of "Why are we passing this around? Why doesn't everybody just have his own?"

Etymology sites will inform you, pedantically, that the phrase comes from Bogart's habit of holding a cigarette between his lips, but I think that it too general, and that the most reliable theory stems from this scene in this movie.

Anyway, the film centers on a group of ne'er-do-well hangers on, barely existing on the scrappy edges of expat life in Mexico, who luck out and find gold -- a lot of gold -- in the mountains. Fred C. Dobbs, the Bogart character, representing Mister Average Man, allows his lust for gold to color his reality, with tragic results which were predicted by The Old Man.

The name Fred C. Dobbs kind of took on a life of its own after the release of this movie, to the point where it made an appearance as the name of a character in, of all things, the television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and M*A*S*H.

Other references to the movie occur regularly, featuring  the famous line, "I don't got to show you no stinking badges!" Even if you've never even heard of this movie, you will recognize that line.


Directed by Walter Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Huston's own father, John Huston. Huston fils won two Academy Awards (Directing and Adaptation) and Huston père won Best Supporting Actor. The film was nominated for Best Picture but lost to Hamlet. Old B. Traven himself, in disguise as his agent Hal Croves, was present for most of the filming.

Watch for a young Robert Blake as the kid who sells Bogart a lottery ticket early in the movie, and a cameo by John Huston himself as the rich American in the white suit that Bogart keeps begging money from in the town square.

More reading:
  · The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on the IMDB.
  · The Treasure of the Sierra Madre  on Rotten Tomatoes
  · The Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- Rent it on Netflix

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Exploitation Movies: Reefer Madness (1936)

The 1930s produced a cornucopia of grindhouse exploitation films (aka "sexploitation" movies), usually disguised as "educational" movies that were ostensible cautionary tales about one social problem or another.

Today we have the granddaddy of all exploitation moves, and certainly the most notorious. It's the celebrated Reefer Madness from 1936.

Full movie:


It has all the usual stuff -- 25-year-old high school students smoking the dreaded "reefer", hooked on it by nefarious members of a well-dressed gang who maintain an apartment "dope house" where the kids can come and take a break. It doesn't take long for things to fall apart -- as usual in these movies -- and we see in rapid succession the "violence" that marijuana is so well-noted for. A hit and run in a teenagers car is followed by an accidental shooting of the teenager's sister, while all the time we cut to shots of the piano player, "Hotfingers", getting more and more frantic as the dope hits him, and then even more insane when it wears off and he is desperate for his "fix".

It's so perniciously difficult to control because it grows wild in every state, we are told by the stern narrator, and for the addict, it is worse than heroin!

As a casual observer, I was struck by the amount of marijuana smoke being exhaled. It looked quite cinematic with the lights behind it, but nobody ever seemed to inhale it. It must have been some good shit if they all got that high just from a mouth hit.

The money shot: No nudity, but it's a treat to watch Hophead Ralph turn rapidly into rank, raving insanity from the effects of his addiction to marijuana.

Lessons learned: Don't take that cigarette, even if the person offering it looks trustworthy. Don't trust people in suits maintaining an apartment just for high school kids to hang out. And of course, the big boss of the dope ring has a mustache.

I first saw this in a smoke-filled art theater in Isla Vista CA, just off the UC Santa Barbara campus in 1974. The smoke was so thick that you could barely see the screen, and the audience was so loud with its catcalls that you could hardly hear the dialogue.

Directed by: Louis Gastner. The original move was a straight informative documentary-type presentation intended to "warn the children" until our old buddy, Dwain Esper got hold of it. He recut it to make it seem more salacious and bring in better box office on the exploitation circuit.

This is the film that went missing for 30 some years, until was rediscovered in the spring of 1972 by the founder of NORML, Keith Stroup, who found a copy of the film in the Library of Congress archives and bought a print for $297. It became an instant hit among the youthful college student hippie-types of the world. and it also ushered in a new Golden Era for exploitation films in general. It was named by film critics as one of the worst films ever made -- and when you look at the list, that is some impressive company..

Taglines:  SEE youthful marijuana victims - what actually happens! Sin - degradation - vice - insanity! Tell your children! Women Cry For It - Men Die For It! The Sweet "Pill" That Makes Life BITTER! Adults Only! Drug Crazed Abandon! 65 years later, audiences are still hooked! It's Public Enemy, Number One!

Also known as Tell Your Children (Original title), Dope Addict, Doped Youth, Love Madness, The Burning Question

More reading:
   · Reefer Madness on the IMDB
   · Reefer Madness on Rotten Tomatoes

Monday, April 13, 2015

President Dick Cheney? RUFKM??!!

Now that the Republican Clown Car is getting more and more riders, it's apparently time to insert the most tragically laughable candidate of all: Dick Cheney.

Yes, you read that right. Over the weekend George "I'm-not-a-liberal-but-I-play-one-on-television" Stephanopoulos asked his "round table" guests, who is the "most promising Republican" who is not already in the race for the White House in 2016. "Most promising Republican"??? Yes, really.

A surprise nomination: Dick Cheney! 

According to the rightwing eminence-grise and always-wrong Billy Kristol, “If they get to nominate Hillary Clinton, why don’t we get to nominate Dick Cheney? I mean, he has a much – he has a much better record. He has a much better record.” (I can almost hear the schoolyard "if she gets it then we get it, it's not fair!" whine)

A record of what? Encouraging Baby Doc Bush to invade the Middle East in a new Crusade? Pimping lies to the media about the totally "there can be no doubt" non-existent connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda? Expounding in mightily-grave tones about the mysteriously-vanishing weapons of mass destruction that Saddam had, then didn't have, then had again, then put onto Greyhound buses or something and shipped off to Syria where, presumably, they've now fallen into the hands of ISIL/ISIS, who inexplicably have not yet deployed them (am I the only person who's been paying attention to this shit...)?

Okay, by now everyone knows how I feel about Dick Cheney. But a President Dick Cheney? It boggles the mind. I'm really not ready for another Clinton, but if it's another (even if "another" means "the original") Cheney... Well, given my outspoken hatred for the man, it's probably best if I start looking for some foreign clime that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the United States.

Not that it will matter much. It's a simple task to "disappear" someone off the streets of any urban area, anywhere on the globe, and whisk them away to an unknown location for "enhanced interrogation".

If, by some weird happenstance, the next president is Dick Cheney, WASF. Just remember I said that, after I vanish into seemingly thin air...


Monday Music Break: The Rabbit of Seville and That's Opera Doc

To keep the opera theme going for a third week, I proudly present Looney Tunes The Rabbit of Seville from 1950, starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.



The Barber of Seville was the very first opera She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and I saw at Seattle Opera's McCaw Hall many years ago. Naturally, I was especially interested in seeing how it compared to "the original" (i.e., this version). My verdict? Not bad, but a lot longer...

Sorry about the kind of odd-looking colors. This was the best one I could find. It has all the zany anarchy of a regular Looney Tune cartoon, with the added bonus of music from the overture to the Barber of Seville. It is hilarious, one of the best cartoons in the Looney Tunes catalog. I never get tired of watching it. And, interestingly enough, in 1950 no one panicked when a little bald guy with a gun started shooting at a rabbit on the stage -- it really was a different time. So different that barber shops such as the one suggested in this cartoon hardly exist any more. I think there are maybe one or two old-school barber shops left in my whole county.

The only other time that the great Chuck Jones and his group of brilliant animators tackled opera again was in 1957 with What's Opera Doc? where they take on Richard Wagner and primarily Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung):


I guess it was too hard to animate a 6-minute short set to opera music and make it conform to the traditional Looney Tunes visual craziness, so we are left with only two examples of what could have been an incredible body of musical parody masterpieces.

To the people that turned them into an Internet-friendly format and posted them on YouTube: Thanks, guys! Now  we'll have them forever!

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Vermont to Capture 70s Counterculture

In another story, I see that the Vermont State Historical Society is collecting memorabilia and other things for a projected museum piece on Vermont's hippies and the 70s Counterculture.

Aside from peace signs and food cooperatives, the 1970s influx of longhaired youth to Vermont brought experimental communes to the hillsides and social activism, as well as drug use and fears of a hippie invasion.
Now the Vermont Historical Society is collecting stories and artifacts in a two-year study to document the lasting influence the decade has had on the state. It's holding forums around the state for people to tell their stories, good and bad, about that era in Vermont.
"The hippie generation is not just drugs, sex and rock and roll, as we all can attest to," Ann Taylor, 63, said at a forum last week in Burlington. "What I truly love is that we were involved politically, back to earth. We care about nature, we understand the wellness concept and what that is."
Sounds like fun. I can't wait to see the final product Of course actually getting to Vermont might be a problem for an elderly shut-in on a fixed income...