The Man In The Brown Robe

    It has to be the most famous cloak in history, and now, it seems, you can own it--- providing you've got sixty thousand pounds to spare.  One wonders if Darth Vader's footprints are still on it.

Phoning It In

    As if cell-phones weren't already responsible for distracting people:

So we've introduced -- in a very responsible way -- adult content that's in behind proper age verification and that's compliant with provincial standards and regulations....  [emphasis added]

I assume "in a very responsible way" means "in a way only a twelve year-old can access," which should have all of those über-protective parents reconsidering the virtues of giving their kids their own phones.  (Actually, Moms and Dads: if they haven't figured out how to do it already, this won't make a difference.)  I can imagine the ad campaign now:  Reach out and touch.... 

You Know... Morons....

    Thirty-three years later, you'd think Mel Brooks' classic Blazing Saddles could be televised uncensored.  But apparently the worry-warts at CMT (Country Music Television) are still worried about the damage that can be done by certain words, and not just the usual suspects like "shit," "faggot" and "nigger."  Among the other offenders: ass, jerking off, and Methodists.

    Remember Madeline Kahn's "Its twoo!  It's twoo!?"  Gone.  Harvey Korman's brilliant litany of ragtags to hire (Rustlers, cutthroats, murderers...)?  Well, everything after and including "bull dykes" got the axe.  The ubiquitous shouts of Bullshit!!?  Gone too.  "Shut up, you Teutonic twat?"  Nixed too.  Even the references to rape ("...people stampeded and cattle raped!") were excised.  Even "Oh, blow it out your ass, Howard" got the silencing treatment.  Oy vey. 

    Now, I'm sure the folks at CMT thought they were doing something right, and, Hell, maybe they were even doing it for Randolph Scott.  (Randolph Scott!)  But taking the cuss words out of Blazing Saddles is like taking "Nazi" and "Hitler" out of The Producers.  You just don't do it, period.  Either you air the whole deliriously vulgar thing or you don't air it at all.  You might as well air Debbie Does Dallas without the nudity.  This coddling, prissy censoriousness offends me--- and I think most sane people--- more than a few peppered "bad" words.  Not just vandalizing a classic, it insults our collective intelligence.  And we've had more than enough of that in the past several years.  Right, Mr Cheney?

Sunday, Blasé Sunday

     Not much of an update, considering there's precious little to report, but a few scattered notes:

• Catching up on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, I've concluded the show has become a study in devolution.  It's rare to see a show retrogress so completely; it has gone from promising to unwatchable in less than a season, and I think it's tied with Family Guy for greatest fall from grace in the past ten years.  The declines of both shows need to be measured with scuba gear.
  
  
•   Managed to see Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower, which is a visual splendour and an intellectual wet-dream for those well-versed in the High Tragic tradition.  You can, quite literally, play "Spot the Reference," with its imitations and intimations of Hamlet, King Lear, Coriolanus and about half the surviving Greek plays, though I tend to think of it, admittedly indulgently, as a cross between the Wars of the Roses with The War of the Roses.  I don't think the film works especially well on visceral or emotional levels, but it is great to look at, the plot's elaborate designs finally less interesting than the technical ones; it's beautiful rather than sublime, striking rather than stunning, but impressive nonetheless.  The spectacular conclusion, unfortunately, borrows too much from the Peter Jackson model--- CGI effects everywhere, with Zhang's assassins resembling Jackson's ring-wraiths, and his soldiers PJ's orcs, in a confrontation that doesn't make a lick of sense, and suffers immensely for its cartoonishness.  (It also ends with a song that's so misplaced as to be laughable.)  But, but, but---- the colours are magnificent, and the imagination of the imperial palace and its finer details is worth the price of admission on its own. 
  
  BTW, it seems film criticism has finally found its new Pauline Kael.  Anthony Lane, eat your fuck me awesome heart out. 
  
  
• Have been watching, as a matter of fact, a number of what used to be called "chop-socky" movies, and I realised that perhaps the biggest difference between the current crop and the ones with which I grew up is the role of women, not so much as heroines, but as equal candidates for slaughter.  Women used to be killed off, if they were, in largely discrete fashions.  These days, though, the trend has swung back to much older ways, by which women were saved for the most horrifying fates, like Lavinia's in Titus Andronicus or that of the eponymous heroine of The Duchess of Malfi.  I don't know what to think about this.  Intellectually, it makes sense that the standards be equal, and that female characters be decapitated, eviscerated, excoriated and generally decimated in the same ways that male characters have been.  So why does this trend disturb me?  Maybe it's just something in my programming, some vestige of chivalry that some would slough as chauvinism.  But I wonder if equal-opportunity bloodshed is really all that equalising, especially when the violence owes more to the Friday the 13th and now Hostel traditions.  There's also something invidiously "do I look fat?" about the question, by which any answer, any response whatsoever, is automatically wrong in at least one way or another. 
  
  
• The Canuckistani media are going wild with polls suggesting that Maher Arar's settlement from the Canadian government is too costly (read in: costing them too much).  It makes me wonder what these people would think they deserved if they went through even half of what Mr Arar did.  I suspect an egregious amount would become a paltry sum very quickly indeed.
  
  
• From torture to tortured analogies, let's put this assertion up on a crucifix and see if anyone cries.  (If so, Idiocracy will definitely prove prophetic.)  On the other hand, this might afford an exceptional opportunity for people to cease using the Lord's name in vain; "Thomas H. Cruise" would suit our profane purposes much more effectively, don't you think?  Especially, ahem, the vain ones.  Ah, little TC in a prospect of glowers.....

Enough for now.  Monday looms, and frankly I haven't been drinking enough.

A Rare Vindication

    Every now and then, a government does something right.   Or, at least one government does. 

    Let's hope--- against hope, probably--- that Mr Arar's vindication proves merely the first formal disputation of the sickening policy of rendition.  Let's hope, too, it cautions people against flip and insidious allegation; the ease with which you accuse should always be directly proportional to what you're willing to pay if you're proven wrong. 

    Frankly, I think the Canadian government is getting off easily here, and that Mr Arar might well consider making an application to the World Court in Den Hague, even if the Bushies likely wouldn't recognise its decision.  It'd serve at least to illustrate their extraordinary disdain for international law.

    Worth singling out from The Star article: 

    "Canada fully understands, appreciates and shares the United States' concerns about security," said Harper. "However, this government – the government of Canada – has every right to go to bat for one of its citizens when the government believes a Canadian is being unfairly treated by another country."

Normally, this would cause Captain Obvious to roll his eyes to the tune of "No shit, Sherlock."  These days, though, there's a  peculiar comfort to it. 

It's A French Sign Of Loathing

    Some amusing bits herein.  Reminds me of the days when I deigned to date (well, kinda-sorta) and would incur the ire appropriate for my flippancy.  Remember getting, as they say, in Right Royal Shit after making the mistake of entering a bathroom immediately after my then-involvement had used it.  "Hey!" she said, eyeing my response to the unnatural waft.  "My Gawd," I said, "Coventry should have been so well evacuated!" 

 

    As you can imagine, I spent most of the rest of the night apologizing--- less for the remark, than for observing that, yes, women are capable of noxious emanations, too.  Of course, I was wrong about that.  Oh so wrong.  Women issue nothing but the sweetest odours.  All the perfumes of Arabia....

Eating Pussy, Unopposably

    At the risk of seeming cat-obsessed, I have to say that this is pretty impressive.  Thumbs?  Thumbs?!?  I don't need no stinkin' thumbs....

 

    Reminds me of the days when Trouble used to open cupboards and rip his way into Pringles containers to get at his food. 

Spamalot Redux

    Just discovered some non-spam emails headed round here have been getting unceremoniously dumped into my spam folder, which means that (agh!) even more of you may be waiting for responses from the Ever-So-Rotten McDoctor.  My apologies; so much for ever getting caught up on anything. 

 

    Been, beyond tending to minor aggravations unworthy of report, going through Kurosawa again, particularly Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Kagemusha.  One, I'm sure, can never watch too many samurai pictures, much less Kurosawa ones.  As I write this, Hitchcock's North by Northwest is playing in the background, with that brilliant score of Bernard Hermann's issuing vibrations everywhere.  It remains a staggeringly good movie, perfectly cast, and a marvel of comic timing.  All of us should age so well. 

Where It All Began

    For my Canadian readers, tonight at 8 the CBC is airing its adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel The Robber Bride, starring Mary-Louise Parker.  Much as I'm reluctant to endorse anything connected to Ms Atwood, the film does (should, anyway) afford the opportunity to glimpse one of the Not-So-Good Doctor's local watering holes, providing the scene or scenes shot there didn't land with an enormous thud on the cutting-room floor.  Actually, a few of my readers may recognize it, too, after their own tipsy experiences there, which may or may not have ended with lullabies, rooftop dancing or *cough cough  * Other Stuff.  Those of you that haven't been there can at least see the place of most of the Not-So-Good Doctor's blotto experiences--- and, in fact, the place which first bestowed YT with the (albeit unoriginal) moniker "Doctor J." 

Hello Kitty...

    Cutest thing you'll see this week.  All together now:  Awwwwww.....

Just Givin' It Away

    Just a brief note here, as I have to catch up on email today and tend to other items silly and bizarre demanding my attention.  As some of you may have noticed, I've added a ticker for the website Giveawayoftheday.com, because it offers some neat little commercial applications, registered et al, for free for those that (you guessed it) download them on the day they're being made available.  Today's programme is Crystal Player, which is a pretty damned good little media viewer: versatile and smooth, it does all of the stuff (and then some) that Windows MP does, with none of the exasperation, intrusiveness or knuckle-dragging slowness.  It's definitely worth the minute to download if you're running some version of Windows. 

 

    Perhaps more later if time & energy allow. 

A Chip Off The Old....

    Quote of the week, courtesy Helen Mirren, after the Brass Ball Awards:  "You know when an Essex girl has an orgasm, she drops her fries." 

 

    Defamer, btw, finds this surprising.  "He," if the pronoun fits, has obviously forgotten Caligula.  (As for me, would that I could.)  But, FRIES?!?!?!?  Welcome to Linda Tony Blair's England.

No, Mister Bond, I Expect You To Die!

Feel free to come up with your own captions for this inexplicably sinister little darling. 

Read about the long overdue measure finally taken in his regard here. 

The Puff That Screams Are Made Of

     Words most likely to verify a double-standard:  "There is not a double standard."  

     I know a lot of restaurant and bar-owners who'd love to sue the government for the expenses they incurred for coverting their smoking areas and eventually removing them.  Which, I'm quite sure, many of them will do if the government doesn't reverse this awfully convenient and self-serving exception. 

A Little Slow

     Clod ever am that I (how's that for syntax?), it seems I'm intolerably behind on my correspondence.  My apologies to those waiting for replies, and surely looking at this blog indignantly and thinking, And the bastard still hasn't answered me yet!  I know, I know; I assure you, much contrition pends, shortly but surely.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

Hanging From His Arm

     So much for those bulging muscles.  (Strong enough for a man, but made for a....?  Dick Armey unavailable for comment.... Welcome to the world of Pumping Iron....)

Coming Through Slaughter

     Ya know, this makes me wonder how a certain someone's doing. 

Kiefer Madness

       Beginning this morning by trying out Windows Live Writer, in which this entry is being composed and which is so far giving me all the indications that it will have a very short life on my computer.  Typical of a Windows product, it slows my machine down to a drunken crawl (a mere stagger would be too much to hope for), and even with the much vaunted Microsoft techies behind it, I'm so far discovering Outlook Express was more versatile.  I hate editors that can't handle simple tabs right off the bat; but ones that leave their operations unclear send me into minor fits of fury because they guarantee greater fits of fury in the future. 

     The big story today, I'm assuming (barring Castro shuffling off this mortal coil), is the clamour surrounding the first four episodes of 24.  The nattering nabobs of Net-nuttery are going wild with the typical expressions of shock and guffaw:  They killed Curtis!  A nuke went off!  Valencia got pwn3d!!! w00t!!!  I'll refrain from noting the pernicious perspicacity of the lot, though you've surely already inferred my response.  I have to say, however, that I'm surprised by the surprise:  24 is as conventional as a sonnet, and significantly less predictable, so the hullabaloo seems to me to disprove the notion of audience savvy.  Five seasons through, with only two nuclear "problems," you had to know this season the producers had to detonate a nuke for real this time.  There was no choice.  They had no way left to ratchet up the stakes, to show audiences This Season Really Matters.  And after last season's frontal assault on its long-standing cast, you had to know a familiar figure was going to get iced in the early on.  It's the great poker lesson: the further on you go, the greater your raises have to be for them to have any significance, and 24's other raises were all used up.  It had to go nuclear; it had to continue feeding its familiar company to the slaughterhouse.  Had, had, had.  How appropriate.

     There are, supposedly, four more little nukes out there in 24's universe, of which I suspect two more will go off; there are, give or take, only a few more long-term characters to be thrown to the lions, and at least two more of them will be.  (Though likely not the new President, the show having gone to that well once too often; my bets are on Aaron, the stoically-decent Secret Service agent extraordinaire, and the ever-scowling Chloe, just to piss off all of her fans out there.)  In the meantime, expect the expected.  A few noticeable but decidedly minor actors will show up, and get killed off.  There will be a mole.  Someone at the very top of the power structure will be involved in the conspiracy.  Perimeters will be formed, and broken.  One or two Muslim characters will prove themselves heroic, to tonic charges that the show's Islamophobic.  Jack will suffer.  Jack will have to kill at least one more close "friend."  Even more people will be wounded in the thigh, as if to evidence the show's Fisher King neurosis.  Chloe will pout, commanders will be incompetent, lovers will be seperated, and cell-phones will prove once more the show's most important props. 

       Further to wit:  Cynics will wonder how Jack can get around Los Angeles without once getting caught in traffic, how his superiors can ever dare to question his judgment, and how on earth Jack Bauer can have more lives than a Hindu cat.  Churls will wonder why the producers couldn't get the obvious choice to play Jack's father, and why major events always seem to happen at the turning of the hour.  Girls will wonder, idly to their great relief,  if they could still find bearded Kiefer hot or not.  (Boys, conversely, will cross their fingers for the return of Mandy, the show's occasional villainess, and Jack's eminently but malevolently sexy counterpart.)  And smart critics will wonder how the show can keep running at its frenzied momentum for the remaining years of young Kiefer's inexplicably long contract with FOX.  (How do you raise when you've already gone all-in?  You buy more chips, even if you're not allowed to do that, natch.)  I know I'm in the minority when I write this, but I will anyway: the show ran out of credibility three seasons ago, but it soldiers forward with its increasingly berserkered fervency to keep its exceptionally-punditocratic audience enthralled at any cost. 

     Necessity, we're incessantly reminded, is the mother of invention, and in the television world it's the mother of convention.  It's also the mother of desperation.  And that's what I saw writ large, like a revealing watermark, beneath 24's return.  Which makes me think two things:  that, yes, Mandy will be back, if Mia Kirshner can be lured back to reprise the part; and that sooner or later we'll see Jack kill the President, whomever he might be at that point and of course played by a Canadian, so he collapses, ambiguously, on the detonator of a nuclear bomb.

      A little too Bridge on the River Kwai?  And you know what that would be:  "Madness!  Madness!"

Six Degrees of Reverberation

    It's a small world:  Dave Barry reacts to Bob Dylan quoting Dave Barry--- on playing Van Morrison with Stephen King and Bruce Springsteen.  (And Mr Morrison has said that "Gloria" was just Bo Diddley.")  What goes around, comes around--- just about midnight, makin' ye feel so good, makin' ye feel alright....

 

    Key quote:  "...and the crowd would scream as only truly receptive booksellers can scream."

 

    SIDENOTE:  Because I never did write those notes on James Brown's passing, check out Rolling Stone's tribute here.  Writes Gerri Hershey, "James Brown leaves a cultural wake as wide as his dear friend Elvis did."  Actually, no.  Brown's was wider-- much wider-- than the one Elvis left.  He had only one peer as a genuine musical, to say nothing of racial, trailblazer, and that was Ray Charles; everyone else belonged to the second tier of significance at best, including Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Guthrie, Sinatra, Dylan, Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and yes, eventually Van Morrison, among others, all of whom became genre-definers in their own ways.  But Brother Ray and Godfather James belonged to an entirely different apogee, in the same way that Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson twained the invention of the modern American literary voice. Some re-invent image or melody or style or technique; it's the few, the very very very few, who reconceive rhythm, and its relationship to meaning, as (much as) we (ever) understand it.

The Land of Milk and Honey

 

    Not sure whether this idea is the result of inspired madness or lunatic brilliance, but as the line goes, it's probably a little from column A and a little from column B....   

 

    If you want a few really ripe larfs, I recommend reading up on some of the relevant "history."  (Click the pic for the Wiki entry.)  It all sounds like something out of an Ealing comedy, complete with the delicious irony of the mailing address being the UK proper;  too bad Alec Guinness isn't around to savour it all. 

 

    And, BTW, for those of you that want to "impress people and make friends...."   

 

The Pharisaic Hypocrisy Of Theory

    In a word:  Hallelujah.  If I still had any real reason to care about this sort of thing, I'd write a Dreiser-length supplement to it, but I don't so I won't.  (Me, snarky?  Neh-ver....)  I will, however, mark off this section for special consideration:

Until literature departments take into account that humans are not just cultural or textual phenomena but something more complex, English and related disciplines will continue to be the laughingstock of the academic world that they have been for years because of their obscurantist dogmatism and their coddled and preening pseudo-radicalism. Until they listen to searching criticism of their doctrine, rather than dismissing it as the language of the devil, literature will continue to be betrayed in academe, and academic literary departments will continue to lose students and to isolate themselves from the intellectual advances of our time.

In the immortal words of Jake Blues, "Yes!  Yes!  Jesus H. Tap-Dancin' Christ!"  Okay, he's no Reverend James, but this gets my hands clappin'.  Now if only I could do a cartwheel....

All This And Andy Rooney

    Ah, yes, I have been negligent, leaving this blog un-updated since Christmas Humphrey's Day, the only day of the year you're allowed and even encouraged to Bogart that joint.  I had meant to write something fuller on the legacy of The Hardest Working Man In Showbusiness, but leaving the update so long in the making it hardly seems necessary now; you've probably been bombarded with pieces doing the same, so I'll let the task pass.  So, instead, a few bits and pieces for your amusement, bemusement, and/or contusement.  (No such word as contusement you say?  Well, blast ye then.  Snort.)

• Those of you running programmes like Blog Torrent whom are also interested in Old Movies might find your fill of neat Out-Of-Copyright material at this site.  It offers some interesting curios and even a few minor classics, including Nosferatu, The Little Shop of Horrors, some Buster Keaton shorts, the Spencer Tracy Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Leslie Howard's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms, and that bizarre Roger Corman proto-horror film called The Terror, which features Jack Nicholson as (believe it or not) a Napoleonic soldier going up against Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.  This should prove a site to watch:  in the next several years, a lot of classic movies will fall out of copyright into the public domain. 
  
      Also of interest, BTW:  Bluebeard, starring a young, or young-ish, John Carradine, sire of all those other Carradines and one of the great, gaunt character actors they just don't make anymore.  He had one of the great voices for the movies (many nicknamed him simply "The Voice"), and he starred in some of the best--- and some of the very, very, VERY worst--- movies ever made, including Les Miserables, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, Jesse James, Blood and Sand, The Kentuckian, The Court Jester, The Ten Commandments (as Aaron), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Shootist.  He was also the great-granddaddy of the horror-movie stars that eventually came to include Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing.  I point all of this out because, and this is a rare thing to say, he was an actor for whom there is no modern heir or equivalent.  Sometimes I wonder if there's be a market out there for me just to teach courses on the great character actors....
  
  
• It seems the Vatican is suddenly and not a little oddly prizing Oscar Wilde.  There are only about a dozen puns to be made here, all of which I'll surprise you by leaving alone. 
  
  
• RK already ran with this article on his blog, but the central issue (to me, at least) warrants calling it to your attention here, too.  The issue?  The spinelessness of the French intellectual establishment, which, like its North American counterpart, prefers to cluck in disapproving qualifications rather than affirm the importance of unmolested free speech.  Evidently Voltaire's been re-written; the establishment will not only disapprove of what you say, but it will defend to YOUR death your right to say it.  This timorousness is more than disgusting.  It is, in fact, a tacit collaborating with the terrorists of intellectual freedom, an endorsement by indifference.  Vichy-ssoise anyone?  *Harrumph*
  
  For what it's worth, I'm sure the North American academy would have respond no better.
  
  
• Which reminds me:  the less I say about this article, the better, right?    Sipping a bit from some leek and tater soup of my own, I'd like to aver that all women in positions of authority are sage, wise and benevolent, and never ever make the same mistakes we scumbag men have made and continue to make every second of the waking day.  Right? Right right.
  
  
• And from the "Oh-My-Gawd" file, this story gives new meaning to the term "dead letter office." 
  

And finally, over here, my old friend Zelda wondered, "What do you get someone who is turning 99?"  "A calendar," she and her good hubby decided, which has to be an unintentionally diabolical mixed-message.  Ms Barrett Browning comes too comically to mind:  How do we love thee, let us count(-down) your days....      (We shall but love thee better, indeed!)  It's better than a stop-watch, anyway. (One could riff on this for ages: Gone In Sixty Seconds? "All this and Andy Rooney!")

 

    Then again, cold-hearted bastard that I am, I might have been tempted to give an egg-timer, with the note, "Remember when it only took three minutes to get ha---"  Er, um, never mind.