Bad Craziness, Slaps, News and Swedish Monster Movies

It’s Friday and so time for bad craziness

Got on the subway this morning – kinks on the pod – not thinking about much just staring into space really – I was standing – there was a space but it looked too small for me so I stood grooving to the music.

At the next stop – several folks got on – a thin young woman popped herself into the seat – just in front of an older heavy set woman who shoved someone aside in her race for the seat – which was much much too small for her – if she did sit down in it she was going to squeeze the people to the right and left of her – who, being people, would be too polite to say anything – I’ve seen this before.

So anyway the older woman got right in the young woman’s space – I mean right up in it – and said “Can I have the seat please” in a tone of voice that said “give me that seat you bitch”

And then the young woman slapped her in the face sending her glasses flying. Everybody gasped and then after the older woman started yelling (after getting her glasses) the young lady let off a stream of curses (featuring massive use of what we shall call the C-word) and then freely speculated on the older woman’s social life and medical condition. And then the older woman walked up to her – and slapped her face – breaking the young woman’s glasses (just a bit of advice here to everybody – if you hit someone and you’re wearing glasses it’s a good idea to ditch them cause you’ll probably get whacked in return).

After that the whole thing turned into a slanging contest with loose talk of calling the police tossed around. I was starting to sick to my stomach from adrenaline feedback and decided – since it was a nice day outside and I didn’t need this on my way to work (the atmosphere in that car was fucking toxic) so I figured it was time to get the hell outta dodge. I got off at the next stop and had a quiet rest of the trip into work.

Things like this amaze me – how two people can go from not knowing either party exists to hating each other guts is utterly bewildering to me. And over a seat no less. And there are no innocents here – the older woman acted like a bully and the younger completely overreacted to the violation of her personal space.

They need to need to switch to de-calf the pair of them.

In other news the King of Saudi Arabia has in a speech denounced the US occupation of Iraq. Ouch – I think he was the guy holding hands with W back when they visited. That’s got to hurt – seeing as they and the UAE has announced they won’t let the US use their bases if we attack Iran.

Here’s hoping the sailors are okay – still what the heck they were doing in what are disputed waters looking for smugglers of cars is a bit beyond me.

Meantime there is announcement of a huge crackdown in Iraq to counter the surge in violence there – this, of course, comes the day after Lieberman babbled about how things are getting better over there and that the plan is working. You can set your clock to things like this happening every time Joe opens his mouth.

A former member of the Justice department has come out and said that quote: “Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.” Which, while it doesn’t shock cynics and those in the Blogsphere that much (the average reaction has been “duh”) it’s the first time the subject’s been broached in the mainstream. We’ll see the fallout from that. Prior Mainstreams reactions to any hint that the GOP has been trying to gimmick elections has been met with the media people sticking their fingers in their ear and saying “Lah Lah Lah!! I can’t hear you.” Sex and panty sniffing they love to death – a real crisis that could upset their nice lunches and they panic.It’s Friday and time for the bad news dump. You wonder what it is.

Rudy Giuliani has said something to the effect that, if he is elected president he would have his wife sit in on the cabinet meetings because she is so smart. Now no disrespect intended to the current Mrs. Giuliani but aside from learning that she forgot a past marriage (it can happen to anyone) the only time I remember her saying anything, she’s been quoted as saying as how brilliant her husband is. I’m not sure how that would help during a cabinet meeting where you want a frank exchange from time to time.

Sec of the Interior: Mr. President, we can’t do that. Indian land is…
Mrs.: Giuliani: are you saying my husband is wrong? He’s brilliant!
Rudy: Thank you dear.
Mrs. G: he has more brains in his little finger than you have in your entire body. Remember who hired you.
Rudy: thank you dear, that’s enough.
Mrs. G: he is a god among men, a Hercules and he’s fantastic in bed as well, when was the last time you got laid you fat bastard. He does this thing with his -
Rudy: That’s Enough!

And so on.

Little Bad Movie Review:

Terror in the Midnight Sun/Invasion of the Animal People

A Swedish-American co production and the first Sci Fi Film shot in Sweden; it also explains why there haven’t been more of them. It’s dull and lifeless and nothing really happens – there is a space ship and 20 foot tall furry guy who wanders about destroying things then falls (al la King Kong for the female lead and Barbra what the hell were you thinking?) and is then burnt to death by a mob and an early use of a body double in shower scene (cut for the American Release). After that the Space ship leaves. Add lots of footage of Laplanders and people on skis and it all gets rather tedious. It was shot on location so props to them for that but really you wonder why they did this in the first place since the story is so thin.

And, because, I guess, the Americans didn’t think it was god awful enough because they spliced John Carradine jabbering science sounding gibberish – added a weird Barbara having a breakdown because of a flying saucer (and then promptly forgot about it) and then just ran the rest of the film with odd cuts and adding other actors who did talked about nothing and called it Invasion of the Animal people.

It’s not bad enough to make you wonder what the point of existence is but it’s plenty bad.

Weekend plans sleep, a party Saturday night and COH – and work on the 200th post.

Peace, Love, Smack in the face

Post 201

Yeah I know it’s not really but I haven’t had time to watch and or decide on Plan Nine or Manos so you know it will simply have to wait until I can get to it. Hell it’s my blog so back off.

Fun at the open mike last night – Bill pointed out that it was Marlin Perkins Birthday – Marlin was the long time director of the San Diego Zoo and host of the long running TV Show Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom – in which Marlin would Narrate while his much younger assistant - I think his name was Jim would end up waist deep in a swamp trying to wrestle a 20 anaconda into submission. What I remember most about the show was just as Jim was about to get dragged under by the snake – the scene would shift to Marlin in the studio and Marlin would say something like “in the wild the anaconda relies on his strength and his knowledge of the swamp for protection, for us –today we have Mutual of Omaha”

The show ran for years – looking back I don’t understand why it did but hell I don’t get American Idol either.

I’ve been told not to watch Serials anymore – just as well I was watching Undersea Kingdom staring Crash Corrigan – and oh lord was this the gayest thing I’ve seen in a while – lots of bare-chested guys in little shorts – the lead is in these shorts with scales on them – and but one woman to be seen . I mean this is supposed to be in sunken Atlantis – what’s sunken Atlantis without babes in slinky stuff? I mean come on. Ming had plenty babes – as did Fu Manchu.

Then there is this kid Billy who keeps following Crash around and he gets a really creepy expression of pure joy anytime he watches two men wrestle (which happens a lot) and you start to think about a shower – a long hot one.

The crowning touch is when the bad guys have Crash strapped to the front of their vehicle (the juggernaught - its sci fi okay?) and unless Crash tells them what they want to know they are going to ram him into the gate.

“Go ahead and ram” Crash says – considering the way he’s tied up – wearing only little silver shorts with scales – him saying “Go ahead and ram” just doesn’t sound right.

Moving on –

W in an effort to boost support for his – “we’re going to be in Iraq until some else gets to clean up the mess I made policy” cited a blog that said how wonderful things were in Iraq (actually he cited a Wall Street Journal editorial written by said bloggers). Alas for W the blog citied – Iraq the model – is hopelessly compromised as an arbitrator of the truth – and looks very much like a pentagon funded spin site. But it’s telling W what he wants to hear and therefore – it must be the truth. Things are pretty simple in the oval office that way.

A while ago we did the killer sheep song – and in the process started off doing killer Sheep the musical – one of our little problems with the back story was to explain where the killer sheep came from –

Well here’s one possibility from yesterdays Daily Mail:

“Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer. “

(big cut here – want to stay within fair use mind you) Anyway the doc in charge says that in the future:

“The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.”

This is of course, the stuff of stupid science fiction movies - what disturbed me, because what I watch are stupid science fiction movies – is that the good doc is adding human brain parts to the mixture. This can’t be good – the last thing you need is a clever sheep or more precisely a sheep that knows what’s up and deciding that it for one, is not going to end up on the transplant table and is willing to kill.

The Killer Sheep!

In Technicolor!

Busy – more later.

Haven't put up a pic of Diana Rigg in a bit. Like maybe a week.

Peace Love, end of the quarter

Commando Cody and Things

Still not 100% -. getting tired of soup folks.

I notice that the Senate has passed a military approbations bill with a time limit on our deployment in Iraq. The bill passed by a narrow margin and W has announced with some hysteria that he will veto any bill with a time limit and the Senate passed it anyway. It’s not biding like the House’s bill is but there’s that date in there.

We’ll see what happens now – W has talked tough in the past but when confronted has folded like a cheap suit – with one exception – Iraq so I’m not sure what he will do other than stage another pout fest on TV. He’s predictable that way.

Iran is changing their story about where and how the British Sailors were taken. Which figures – we don’t have the monopoly on self deceiving lying scumbags. The radicals there has used W’s hostility to strengthen their hold on power in the Iranian government and I suspect this part of that effort– they may have miscalculated – simply because W is stupid enough to push the button.

Anyway spent yesterday watching Radar Men from the Moon – one of the last Republic Serials (1952 for Pete’s sake) which featured Commando Cody in his flying suit - which I have to admit I think looks cool. It was great fun, the special effects were, considering the time and the fact Republic had a budget of about 11 cents for this picture, pretty good – heck of a lot better than the TV Superman of the same era for one thing, and it just ambled along at a nice clip – Commando Cody although brave wasn’t much for thinking things through so he kept getting himself in bad scrapes – which of course is what you want from a serial hero. The story such as such things are is that the men on the moon are trying to take over the earth and as a first step weakening our defenses via a campaign of sabotage. Mindless and all in good fun.

Still a few things:

Cody’s ‘flight suit’ was the helmet and a leather jacket with a jet back strapped to his back – how he was able to traipse around the moon (which looked a lot like the desert east of Hollywood by the way) without oxygen and a real space suit isn’t explained. Also one hopes that he had some kind of protection in his pants other wise his butt was going to get charbroiled every time he flew from the jet exhaust.

Speaking of which the controls (located on his chest) simply have on/off fast/slow and up/down. How he could go left or right was never explained.

Also – since Commando was a big time government op or some such, would it be too much to add a holster to the damn suit? Every time he went out to fight the baddies (of which there were exactly three – some guy from the moon and two thugs – the budget as tiny here) he sticks his pistol in the suit’s belt – what is with that? You got a guy in space age rocket suit for Pete’s sake.
And how about some security? The bad guys were able to walk in on Cody and his crew several times – at least put a lock on the door or hire a security guard.

The low budget shows mostly in that there are only about 4 bad guys – two thugs (one played by Clayton Moore – yes the lone ranger and you have no idea how weird it is to hear him say things like “stick em up” or “you should’ve plugged the driver” or “there’s a man in flying suit chasing up – step on it” in that voice. You kept waiting for ‘High Ho Silver away!” or “Tonto I need you to go into town”.) The moon man head of earth operations and the head of the moon men (with some other folks in space suits which were probably the same two guys over and over again). Which leads to another problem – Cody, while brave, needs to learn how to fight – he and Ted (his assistant) kept getting the shit kicked out of them by Clayton and the other thug during the fight scenes. Cody – Martial arts – it helps.

Watching the episodes back to back you saw how the serial makers would just utterly and absolutely cheat on the cliff hanger endings – my favorite one was where Cody and Ted were trapped on the moon in a cave and are menaced by lava flood – they reach the end of the cave – Dead end! However next episode Cody says to Ted “Let’s take that branch of the cave over there” and Ted says “No! Since we can’t live together, I want to die here with you now! Take me! I’ve always loved you!”

No, of course he doesn’t say, that he just follows Cody out the cave.

The other one is where the bad guy leaves Cody’s Female (Joan) assistant in a plane – it looks like the plane will crash – both her and Cody (who flies in) realize the controls have been jammed – horrors. Then next week Cody says “here put on this parachute” and Joan says “No! Take me now! Let us die together in ecstasy! I’ve always loved you!”

No she doesn’t do that – she puts on the parachute – and you have to figure the evil thug – who also had a parachute – at some point went “D’oh! I left the other parachute in the plane!”.

And the end was just the end. The bad guys – who had been as resilient as cockroaches until now – drop like flies. The threat is averted and Cody doesn’t have to go back to the Moon – which doesn’t make a lot of sense since the reason the Moon Men wanted to attack the earth hasn’t changed.

Anyway more later – it’s a busy week. We are coming up on my 200th post (sweet Jesus - like the next one) on Blogspot and I figure I should do something special for that – and I’m torn between Manos the hands of fate or Plan Nine from Outer space – so to my readers – the pair of you – which one? please let me know.

Peace, Love, take me now.

more pics

Pics - Finally

Voyage to nowhere

Well I didn’t get the damn pics up – a project to this evening or tomorrow because between my pathetic home dial up system, the size of the pics and blogger the system would blow up before I could get anything up.

Still we got to hear Robots Took My Man sung, as intended, by a woman, many thanks to Erin for use of her voice in this matter and my apologizes for destroying one attempt at the song by completely losing it and falling to my knees in utterly helpless laughter at the when you hit the big-musical-high-point-of-the-song-but-in-this-case-it’s-so-silly-you-have-to-laugh-moment. Which means I guess the song works.

It’s moments like this that make me realize how much I want this silly project to get on stage – at least once. I need to see this sung on stage in front of an audience and listen to/watch their reactions, granted by this point in the show (it comes towards the end) folks will be expecting something, but we hope not something so out of place and insane as Robots took my man one of the few songs where the score includes a break for a tourette's moment.

We do hope such things.

It’s kind of frightening that we really only have two more songs to do here – the one that looks to be the hardest is the most conventional – an ensemble piece right at the start which is going to hard to write because a) it’s massed voices and that can be tough and b) compared to the other stuff it’s going to be utterly conventional in language and form. (We’ve got a bit of a start on the other song –a duet no less - those MF Sheep in this MF town – imagine that sung with at kind of Sinatra big band swing feel)

Meantime in the real world – it has to be bloody awful feeling to be Alberto Gonzales these days – everyday you wake up and there are more vultures preached on the head board looking at you with glee. This morning it was announced that some more GOP Senators were backing away from Al and edging him closer to that moment when he is tossed under the bus. I always wonder just how that came to be the phase of choice used when a former politically ally or appointee or even close friend is to use another phrase fed to the wolves to keep someone of more importance safe – ( the boss taking one for someone lower is never heard of, ever, there in Beltway land, so they don’t have a slang term for it) – throwing someone to the wolves came from Russia were out in the great Russian plains in winter hungry wolves would start chasing a sled – and if the horse or horses pulling said sled got tired – well first the bags and stuff went over the side, followed by whoever was, in the instant, judged expendable. I’m not sure how throwing someone under a bus is about a similar situation – clearly in the current case Al is going to take on for the team to shield the higher ups.

Meantime here in my town there is a big dust up over the rather extensive spying the NYPD did before the RNC convention in 2002 on groups that were coming to the city to protest. And with most things like this – especially when carried out in secret under the barest of oversight, it became a bizarre hunt for enemies with NYPD undercover cops wasting their time and the city’s money by spying on such threats as the street theater team “billionaires for bush” – a reason given for such a wide spread spying – no it wasn't wide spread paranoia - was the concern about so called – sleeper cells of terrorists who would, after acting like law abiding citizens for years would suddenly wake up and wreck havoc.

Uh-huh. Right. Bunky let me explain to you something about being a sleeper agent – one they require a lot of time and effort to install – you either have to plant or recruit someone years before they are going to be needed. The Soviet Union had those kind of resources not the damn Al Qaeda hiding in the damn caves and two – a sleeper isn’t going to do anything that would call attention to himself or his cell prior to being needed and hence would not pal around with say left wing groups or environmentalist groups cause that is, as we just fucking saw, exactly were the police go looking.

Now they are asking that additional records be kept secret saying the newspapers “fixate upon and sensationalize them.” Which I interpret as “we got caught and it’s going to look even worse when it turns out we were spying on Green Day”. You always need someone in government to say “Well what if this gets out what then?” to avoid moments like this.

If this is what the city was doing what about all the others? Folks like the NSA who have a tendency to play very fast and loose with the rules – I have to imagine it got very crowed in the building across the street from say Greenpeace.

“Who are you with?”
“FBI?”
“Oh they’re in room 316 – they’re sharing it with that nice man from immigration”
“Immigration”
“Yes, they didn’t have any room for him in 416 – that’s the Homeland Security”
“Oh”
“And the CIA has the room next to them”
“Oh”
“And the military has rooms 511, 512 and 513”
“So”
“And the NSA has the basement”
“Ah”
“It’s so good to see all of you here.”
“Keeping us safe from the terrorists, really if you can’t kill a dolphin once in a while what’s the point of having a free society?”

Also over the weekend I discovered that Roger Corman while as a director is pretty dull, and tedious, a much worse film could be made of his ideas – this came from watching Zontar The thing from Venus – which is almost a shot for shot remake of It conquered the World. While the world is filled with shoddy bad remakes that one took the cake – I have no time today but I will be comparing the two films (god help me)

One film I can talk quickly about is Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women – another Roger Corman ‘classic’;. The year before this was made he had chopped up a Russian Sci Fi film - Planeta Bur into Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet – and then I guess because he decided he hadn’t done the film justice in some way – he cut it up again this time splicing footage shot by Peter Bogdanovich (his first directorial credit) featuring Mamie Van Dorren and a bunch of other women in pants and halter tops made of fake scallop shells. The film goes like this: You see the footage from the Russian film (something about a voyage to Venus by the way) then you see Mamie (who I think was made the leader because she has the largest breasts) and the women, the Russian footage, then Mamie and the girls and so on until the end of the film. During the film – Mamie and the women communicate only via Telepathy i.e. overdubbing I can only assume a) the film they shot with was silent and b) none of the women in the film could act a damn.

During the film nothing happens – the astronauts drive about Venus, they end up underwater, they wander here and there (while Peter narrates) and then they leave. Yeah there are some problems with creatures and rain and their Robot who breaks down in the middle of a lava field but when the film ends you just wonder why they bothered to make it. ( I don’t know about the Russian original, I’m not sure I want to) unless they thought it was a way to meet women (casting call) I can’t imagine why on earth this film was done.

More soon.

Peace Love Mamie

Fridays and things

Nothing much going on at work – it’s a Friday however I expect things to get mad later in the day.

I’ve never been a big fan of Fridays – yeah I know there is the ‘thank god its Friday’ thing (and a bad disco movie if memory serves (no I won’t do that one – I draw the line at disco - really) but in my personal experience Friday is when a lot of people realize they haven’t done anything all week and panic completely disrupting everything. The worst are the hours from 2-5 cause you know that somebody is going to show up with a complicated problem that needs the input of 8 people and the approval of 2 more and has, just has to, with out question, be done by the end of the day or fate will be dire.

It never helps to see that the paperwork you are looking at is usually three weeks old.

Out in the word there is much stuff.

There has been some kind of incident in the Persian Gulf where Iran has taken prisoner or taken into custody 15 British sailors who the Iranians claim were in Iran’s territorial waters. It just happened so no real details are known – and of course rumors will fly. I am hoping this doesn’t turn out to be the Iranian Gulf of Tonkin moment.

Karl Rove has been popping up like a whack a mole all over the Attorney General mess – the latest is that he pushed to get an aide of his appointed Attorney General in Arkansas (where Bill Clinton was from).

I remember back in the day, there was an effort by Richard Nixon’s boys to use the IRS to punish political enemies. This is worse – it looks like the justice department was being made or was made into an arm of the GOP. (combine this with the suspension of Habeas corpus and those overseas prisons and you have everything the Russians had except putting the prisoners to work in the mines in Siberia – now of course folks will say the white house wouldn’t use its power to take out political opponents but as of right now there is precious little to prevent them other than perhaps a worry they might get some bad press if they disappeared a Senator – that’s not that reassuring)

As I said I’ve been listening to the Who – and well the early Who are problematic – Pete was still finding his voice as a song writer a lot of these songs sound like they were written because Pete felt he had to, there’s a paint by numbers aspect to his early ‘pop’ tunes (esp. the sad love songs) – and Rodger was vocally under wraps singing way too high in his range to generate any power – and the band just didn’t sound like The Who – yeah it was Pete, Keith, John and Roger but the well bite was missing – save for My Generation and some of the singles most of the recordings are very very well tinny almost watery – they remind me for some reason of the weak mix on the first three Blue Oyster Cult albums. And some stuff just doesn’t work – like the second side of the Who Sell out – the first side recreating the sound of Pirate AM radio works – the second – not so much (weaker songs for one thing I mean Rael? What the hell were they thinking? At least Pete snatched a bit from it to use in Tommy.) And Tommy is a pretty thin mix as well – however that was I’m thinking because they needed to be able to play this live – add too much stuff and they would be SOL .

It’s why life at Leeds – even in its original vinyl format was such a shock – at lest to anybody who had only heard the band on the radio – on stage everything with the Who went to 11.

More later.

I have as far as movies are concerned an ration of complete shit is heading my way Eye Creatures, Zontar thing from Venus, It’s alive, Year 2889– oddly enough they are all the work of Larry Buchanan who did the horrible Curse of the Swamp Creature. I didn’t intend that to happen it was just the whim on Netflix.

After that – provided I survive – my second Ed Wood review – Bride of the Monster. God help me.

Peace Love Tor Johnson

Albatross! and Robots

Before I get to what I’m talking about a few things.

Pictures are turning into a pain in the butt but I promise they will be up by the weekend.

Sen. Inhofe is a witless old tool who seems to think that if it gets cold in Buffalo there is no global warming. That he is a senator who was actually elected and didn’t win the damn thing in a lottery drawing is deeply depressing.

I suspect that the Attorney General scandals are going to get worse. Saw something to the effect that another AG is saying that their case against several tobacco companies was interfered with by people from Washington – where tobacco companies contribute a lot of money.

I don’t know quite how deep the rot is, but I suspect it’s pretty appalling.

The Time magazine cover is weird – it seems the gist of the argument they make is that the GOP has abandoned the principles of Ronald Reagan by their embrace of the right wing theocrats and religious hacks and deficits and big government.

I see that glue sniffing at Time Magazine continues to be a major problem. The current GOP is RR’s misbegotten child – all his talk about smaller government, and doing for yourself applied only to the poor – he poured money into the defense industry helping to create the bloated corrupt creature that abounds in billion dollar jet contacts to well connected firms but somehow doesn’t have enough money for body armor for the grunts. He also got right into bed with the Theocrats for example I remember him jabbering nonsense about living in the end times so Time’s hand wringing over the fact the theocrats are either bughouse crazy or hypocritical frauds is just silly- they have always been that. And as far a deficits well Clinton took care of those not Bush Sr or Ron.

Anyway on to other things – Last night the Enemy Below was as one would say hors de combat so after a bit I decided to go by myself. My idea was actually to do some covers – songs that I like but don’t get to perform much these days since they don’t fit (or mostly don’t fit) into the Bob Muir and the Enemy Below band. For the record the songs were Norwegian Wood, Ring of Fire and Werewolves of London (okay the last one would fit – kinda)

The open mike was fun really – one of the better ones, hell even the Tiny Tit with the beard was good – and that’s a first. He just strummed his guitar and jabbered about the folks at the mike and to my shock he was funny as hell. There was another guy – Cedric (I think I’m awful with names) and Jesus can that man sing – I swear to god last night women were about to start tossing their underwear at him. Actually I’m not jealous - I’m in a comedy band I’m not going to get underwear tossed at me unless we announce we want it because we are making a quilt. (Zappa did that back in the 80’s)

However there were a few bumps – someone – whose stuff I like did a cover of Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight. [STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING] and there are not words enough in the English language to explain just how much I fucking hate that fucking song. So that was a bit of a downer for me.

The damn thing is a piece of by the numbers hackwork by a guy who really can do a lot better but has fucking coasted since derck and the dominos. Jesus I’m happy you finally got to nail Patty Harrison but for Christ sakes why include us in on the damn thing? I don’t fucking care. Really. And the number of times I have heard this at weddings makes me want to scream. It’s like it’s in the contract – you have to play Wonderful Tonight when you book the hall.

I hear that song and I have evil and violent fantasies of banging Eric’s face into a brick wall and screaming:

“Just shut up! Just – bang – shut – bang – the – bang – hell – up! Go back on heroin – do something but stop doing – bang – this- bang – lame- bang – ass – bullshit – bang - you self impressed jagov – bang.”

At this point I let go and Eric, his face a bloody mess slides to the ground.

“And you can’t sing either” I say and after a few kicks to the ribs – I’m off.

For full disclosure it took me years to give Reggae a listen simply because I hated Eric’s version of I shot the sheriff so much.

Anyway it came up my time to sing – I was wearing an Eight Man T-shirt which unfortunately sponsored a question about it from someone and I went into full geek lecture mode – that is jabbering like a magpie about the history of 8th man on TV that it was the first Japanese Anime cartoon to be shown in the US and so on until someone mentioned Gigantor which led, to my eternal shame, me signing the Gigantor Theme song:

“Gigantor, Gigantor, Gigannnnntor
Gigantor’s the Space age Robot
He’s at your command
Gigantor’s the Space age Robot
His power is in your hand
Bigger than Big, Stronger than Strong
Quicker than Quicker, Taller than Tall
Ready to fight for right
Against Wrongggggggggg”

This is me an nutshell: I don’t remember people’s names, I don’t remember birthdays, I forget to call people who care about me, but I can sing, at the drop of hat, the theme song to a cartoon show that I didn’t especially like, one I last saw maybe 40 years ago. It’s like I’m some kind of geek savant minus the savant part. You hit a button and out it comes – me, the one writing this, the one who no longer wonders why I don’t date, I have nothing to do with it – it’s like a tape is played and I’m just a bystander.

And that, oddly enough isn’t the albatross I’m talking about.

After I finished embarrassing myself with that – I started to say “well normally I play with the Enemy Below but seeing as he’s not here I figured…”

At which point a young woman (who’s name I completely blank on) said “Sing that song”

“Which song?” I asked.

“The eyeball song” she said.

“Eyeball song?” Then someone figured out what she was talking about.

“Stacy” someone else yelled “sing Stacy”, then another woman yelled the same thing.

“That’s it “the first woman yelled “that song has been in my head all week”

So what can you do? I sang Stacy – felt a bit odd alone but as I was doing so (and you people who sang along – you are going straight to hell) I realized that this song is going to be the band’s albatross hanging around our necks forever. Granted it’s nice to have a song people want to hear – and last night someone called it the greatest song they have ever heard – what is with these people? What’s scary with that is this is the second time someone's said that – but you can feel trapped by this too. We are looking to move on to areas of weirdness and dysfunction yet undreamt – but if people keep yelling Stacy what the hell are we do to?

Well enough – pics are of 8th man, Gigantor and the Monty Python Albatross sketch.

Peace, love, seabirds

So it's Spring and the who what?

And it’s said this is the time when a young man’s fancy turns to, well okay I’m not young anymore and it’s still cold and I’m the kind of mood that views a budding romance in my life with the same enthusiasm I’d have for a toothache so the less said in this direction the better.

And so it begins - this from AP:

“WASHINGTON - A House panel on Wednesday defied the White House and authorized subpoenas for President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove and other top aides, setting up a constitutional showdown over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.”

I would object to use of the word ‘defied’. What this House panel has done is simply use the powers invested in it by the constitution of the United States. It is only W’s I am the decider lord god king of all I see mind set that made this into a crisis.

The House (and we will see about the Senate) has decided not to agree to the absurd conditions that * and his cronies had set for talking to Karl Al and dear old Harriet – i.e. not in congress, not under oath and no transcript can be made. As the New York Times pointed out – why set these conditions if you weren’t trying to hide something. And these people lie, a lot, like all the time, every damn day so not having them under oath and without a transcript to review makes no sense. Fortunately this is not the same congress that when it (slowly and unwillingly) investigated the run up to 9-11 allowed W and Cheney to testify together (onlookers were thrilled that W continued to speak while Cheney drank a glass of water) and so the Subpoenas.

Anyway this will mark the first time W and his gang of clowns has been confronted by something with legal consequences – you don’t answer a congressional subpoena you go to jail. And it could get even nastier – Nixon got in deep for refusing to answer a subpoena from the House and we all remember what happened to him.

So we are going to have yet another fight about executive privilege – however it looks like, and this is not surprising, W and his boys have expanded this idea to where his aides don’t ever have to testify under oath if they don’t wish to – whereas the existing definition of executive privilege is that there are things you can’t ask X about Y not that you can’t ask X any questions at all. And furthermore, Y needs to be linked to affairs of National Security, real national security like war plans and stuff like that not where the vice president is eating today.

This is going to be tough and it is going to take a while – we’re right up to the Supreme Court on this and the stakes are pretty damn high – checks and balances that sort of thing so stay tuned. After all we are dealing with a group of people who think W can have people tossed into jail, their genitals smashed with a hammer and then be held without charge for as long as they want (In Soviet Union called this the Gulag by the way) if that is the desire of the President.

Some other notes on this – WH Press hack Tony Snow was read an editorial he wrote in ’98 trashing Clinton’s claim of executive privilege in re Monica – which was stupid by the way – he of course claims this is different and in some ways it is – for one this is about things important to the future of the Republic like preventing the Attorney General’s office and the department of Justice from being some kind of half assed NKDV and the law being used against the president’s enemies not blow jobs (nothing against blow jobs).

A bizarre note about all this is that at the press conference W expressed sympathy for the dismissed Attorney Generals. Like he didn’t have anything to do with it.

And for those with memories the magic number 18 showed up – this time it’s the number of days gap in the e-mails the Justice Department dumped yesterday – no e-mails between 11/15 and 12/4 of last year (when all the dealing went down) like we weren’t going to notice and ask questions? Yeesh.

Netflix is pretending the films I sent back haven’t gotten there yet – however I do have a film in reserve “voyage to the planet of prehistoric women” which was pretty much bolted together like some Frankenstein monster

The Enemy Below can’t make the open mike tonight while I’m temped to go and do a few covers just to see if I still can I might just make myself a nice dinner tonight and watch a good movie for a change or listen to music even. (While I like the coffee shop – you do need a break from time to time, it’s been like we’ve been living there for a while now)

I had been listening to a lot of classical music over the winter – not sure why but there you are but as spring gets here I find myself putting on the Who of all people – starting with their first album (and whoever told Roger he could sing a James Brown song, you were wrong) let you know what I think as I get to the end.

Peace, Love, People try to put you down

And the Wheels

Just keep popping off – the current betting is Al “Waterboard” Gonzales will not be attorney general much longer – perhaps by the end of this week. The Justice department has issued some 3,000 e-mails that are involved with the AG firings and you have to suspect somewhere in that pile lurk a grenade or two.

One of the things that has changed with the internet is that as we speak there are 100’s of people going over each and every e-mail – and communicating with each other what they find. This is something new in the world meaning you really can’t hide things deep in a pile of documents.

The fact that both Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich are showing up on television and scaring children is proof that not only do you have to plunge a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart – you need to cut its head off and stuff its mouth full of garlic – check out Stoker’s Dracula for details – otherwise they walk the earth again.

Mets do not impress me in spring training. Still I need to get a new cap – my blue and black one from the last year died the death.

I remember when they brought out the new caps and shirts – I was standing on line to get the new blue and black cap when the woman in front of me said “I don’t like it, it could become a gang thing”

“They are going to have to play better.” I said – they went on to lose about 90+ games that year.

Boss out sick so this may be a bit shorter than normal – I’m passing on his messages from home to other folks – remember back when you were sick you were sick and that was it? Hell I’ve answered e-mails on vacation.

Curse of the Swamp creature sucks – and sucks rockets – it seems to be more of a quote MST3K not so much of a movie as a movie loaf – you have a mad scientist who is hiding in the swamps trying to make a monster – actually some kind of amphibian thing. He keeps failing and dropping off the bodies into the alligator pit.

Right off a couple of things – one – Gators, even a lot of gators don’t eat that much (there is a scene later with the Mad Scientist – hereinafter MS feeding them fish as well) – a good sized human being is going to keep a lot of them in the full reptile doze mode for a long time. And two, the question comes, why the hell is he doing this? Does this even make any damn sense at all? Would even a mad scientist do this? Granted madness explains a lot but really what’s the flipping’ point? But that’s B movies for you.

And then in a weird bit there is a sub plot involving an oil man who is killed in a seedy hotel room by the red neck boyfriend of the bad girl – she, boyfriend and I guess the owner of the hotel dispose of the body and plan to hook up with the oil Geologist who is coming in by plane. It is agreed that the Bad Girl (BG from now on natch) will pretend to be the dead oil guy’s wife (huh?)

No I don’t get it either – there is something about oil but it doesn’t make sense – I think it was just a way to get the BG and the redneck boyfriend out into the swamp – with our lifeless hero John Agar. (Barry the Geologist) and a useless guide.

Actually despite having the lead role in the credits – John (Barry –whatever) doesn’t do much, actually he doesn’t do anything at all. So we won’t be dealing with him much.

And once in the swamp the whole oil thing is dropped – we don’t know what was going on, or anything, the plot thread just wanders into the depths of the swamp to die.

There is much toing and frowing and padding and more padding – the MS uses his lab assistant (who had a momentary attack of guilt about using humans as subjects) as his next experiment – which gets him in bad with his wife – (relationship problems abound when you are a mad scientist) – at some point Barry, the useless guide, BG and the redneck boyfriend show up – there is talk – The wife shows up and talks the MS boasts about his shower – there is a very very fake voodoo hoodoo woo woo dance starting up nearby – The lab assistant dies (and is fed to the gators who by now must be saying “oh no not now I’m completely stuffed – really”) and the MS decides for reasons I’m not even going to try and understand, to use the bad girl as his next subject. The wife objects and is locked in a closet – Barry sleeps – the redneck wanders off to watch the dancing and decides to later rape one of the dancers, she eludes him and he dies in the quicksand – yep quicksand (maybe that's were the oil subplot ended up). A mob al la Frankenstein gathers at the MS house, the useless guide is shot, Barry wakes up, the MS urges his creation to life – it lives – Barry gets the wife out of the closet and then they go outside and confront the MS and the creature - who we haven’t seen before because it is just sooooo damned goofy you can’t help but laugh (see above - ping pong ball eyes I mean really). There is a weird confrontation between the wife and the MS as they fight for control of the creature (who looks real confused as they each yell at it things like “kill kill” “look what he did to you” ) Barry looks like he woke up and doesn’t say much – the creature decides to take out the doctor by tossing him in the alligator pit and then tosses itself in the pit and then the film ends with Barry and the Wife flying off in a small plane. Why? Damned if I know maybe they hooked up after the end of the action we saw who the hell knows and why care anyway – that’s what makes these films hurt you want them to make sense and they don’t, not a bit. The film is tedious and dull and badly acted and badly shot and sits on your head and bounces up and down and makes it hurt.

Then they roll the credits.

Last note – turns out the song on Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster was by the Scottish cult band the Poets who issued a few singles in the 60’s and vanished – how it ended up in that dog of a film is beyond me.

Peace Love Ping Pong Balls.

No pics yet & bad movies & bad memories

No pics just yet –

Okay between the St Patrick’s day – Where I ended up drinking too damn much (and this was a surprise how?) and the Geek crack that is City of Heroes (up to level 17 for le Bug of Blue – like this means anything to you folks) – I didn’t get much done band wise – including downloading the pics from the gig – which will be done this week. Promise.

Might have someone to sing “Robots took my man” as in Female type person – she also has done some acting in musicals.

This one more scary thing about all this – I make an off hand comment to the Enemy Below about making a musical out of our songs – He says this is great idea, lets go with it of course now we needed somebody who put write charts and there is Spenser and after we say hey we need a to hear a woman sing this song to see if it works and someone comes up and says “hey let me try – I’ve been in musicals - I’m in one right now”

It’s a little scary – I’m so used to things not working that I keep waiting for that shoe to drop. It’s a bit like the one time there was girl I was interested in (this was quite a while ago – before I just gave up completely) and I asked if she’d like to maybe have coffee sometime, she said “sure” and I was completely stumped for a reply. I mean like not even able to make plans – I muttered something like “great” then wandered away in a kind of mental daze where my head was saying “huh? What did she say? Yes? What does that mean? What the heck was that all about? That didn’t go at all the way I expected it.” and never followed up. She was probably insulted, as would I be if someone said hey lets get together and then never said a damn thing after that.

Well enough of my self esteem issues for today – we will of course revisit them later – it’s not like they are going anywhere.

Now up to 21 films from the Monster Times list of the 50 worst Monster Movies ever made – After Journey to the center of time I watched Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster and Curse of the Swamp Creature. I will give Curse a more through going over tomorrow – it deserves it but Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster is a film that probably took less time to make than it does to watch what with the use of stock footage.

The story such as it is – involves a robot Astronaut who build by one Dr. Adam Steele (Adam Steele sounds to me more like a name you get when you do one the quiz to get your porn star name) who is played by James Karen who did all those Pathmark ads in the 60’s and 70’s – hey it’s a living. Meantime there are aliens hovering about blowing up missiles – one Alien (name Dr. Nadir – which I’m sure is exactly were the screen writer felt his career was at that time) looks like a gay uncle Fester Addams with bug Vulcan ears. The aliens are lead by their queen who manages not to show any expression at all during the entire film – which is impressive seeing as this is years before botox came into common use.

The evil aliens are blowing missiles up – including the one with the hapless robot in it – he crashes somewhere in Puerto Rico – where by a stunning coincidence the rest of the movie is set and then is damaged again by an Alien ray gun attack – the aliens, except for Nadir and the Queen wear astronaut suits – I can only assume someone found a bunch cheap – and wield ray guns that look a bit like hair dryers from the era.

So the robot is damaged (he looks a bit like two face – on side is supposed to be melted – it’s pretty fake looking) and wandering around Puerto Rico strangling people and in one case chopping them up with a machete (way to create sympathy for him guys).

Meantime the Aliens – who keep a monster who looks like someone in a shag rug with an ugly mask on in a cage – have landed and spread out looking for women – their planet needs women (al la Mars Needs Women and The Mysterians) – which is merely an excuse for actors to wander around and chase women in bikinis. Side note: I really really hate this damn plot idea – it makes no sense scientifically (come on guys DNA? Do you ever read anything other than movie mags?) And is just stupid.

Adam Steele and the female lead – who oddly enough is sweet a bit on the robot – search for the Robot on a motor scooter (budget I guess) while a completely bizarre romantic ballad by the Poets – I have been unable to discover if these Poets were the same as the band The Poets from Scotland who made a few singles and then vanished into cult band oblivion about this time (I don’t think so the Poets were supposed to be good) – but whoever did it – it and the travelogue scooter trip are major pieces of padding.

There is toing and froing and then all the plot points come together at the Aliens space ship – the robot (repaired by Alan Steele) saves the female lead and all the other women captured – fights the Space Monster in the Afghan Rug and the silly mask and then with one of their hair dryers the Robot blows up the ship, the gay uncle fester Vulcan the queen the rest of the aliens and himself while the female lead cries and we see stock footage of something blowing up.

And then because it wasn’t boring enough the first time, we have more shots of Alan Steele and the female lead on their scooter. And we get to hear the song again. And I wonder if trying to see all these films is as good an Idea as I thought it was.

Well I’m kind of committed now. So on to Curse of the Swamp creature and photos.

It’s the 4th anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq. There are not words for how depressing that is. The only folks that have done well from this are the oil folks – there prime asset went from costing $18 a barrel to $56 a barrel and they didn’t have to do a damned thing.
Hat tip to Greg Palest over in England for pointing that out. He remembers (and I did not) W’s stirring words to the Iraqi people as the invasion started

“Don’t destroy your oil wells”.

Yep – that what was on his mind as the war started. Went out of his way to say that too.

Happy Monday

Peace Love, you sure you want to have coffee?

Sometimes it all makes sense

Sometimes I wonder why I do this stuff – but not last night.

It was a nice set last night – granted the weather stunk – rain sleet and cold biting wind – but this band seems cursed to have bad weather when it does its gigs – we keep ending up playing the coldest days of the year, the hottest, in pouring rain – sometimes you start to think someone is trying to tell you something. But Spencer, Tim and the Enemy Below all just rocked. I’m soo damn lucky to be in this band, I can’t say that enough.

So anyway the gig was great great fun and thanks for coming in such rotten weather and thanks to Magic Marker Karate Co. for doing such a great set after us and their fans for listening to us as well.

Pictures this weekend.

Next gig is at the 169 Bar 4/13 – 8:30 details to come.

Weather god awful – looks like it is going to stay rotten for a day or so – and make the St Patrick’s Day parade another exercise in damp cold freezing – luck of the Irish I guess.

It seems like Gonzalez advised W on whether to shut down a dept of Justice Inquiry on that program of Warrantless domestic wiretaps – after he learned that he was very likely one of the targets of that investigation.

W shut it down by the novel method of denying the investigators security clearances to do their job – something that has well it was never done. Like ever.

This to my layman’s eye looks suspiciously like obstruction of justice – and I suspect that Albert (“mistakes were made”) will be heading to one of those right wing think tanks real soon.

As a side note that Watergate era phrase “mistakes were made” reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strip – in the strip Calvin’s parents are standing with faces of mixed shock and anger at discovering Calvin has completely trashed the living room. Calvin, Hobbes in one hand, baseball bat in the other says “mistakes were made.” End side note.

Meantime just who’s idea it was to fire the attorney’s is starting to be a very embarrassing question and everybody, including Karl Rove are pointing at someone else like that

Watched Journey to the center of time (making 19 the number of movies from the monster times list of the 50 worst Monster Movies ever made) I’m not sure why they bothered to make a film – I mean they could have just put a picture of the actors up on screen and played a tape recording of them speaking their lines for all the action. There are huge swaths of time were neither the camera nor the people were moving. And the dialogue was full of pseudo scientific gibberish “make sure the circuits remain open” – so what don’t close them? Right Not a problem. “We’re getting interference from our laser but we are tacking”

And oh yes Lyle Waggoner, a long time Carol Burnett troop member has a scene that he can’t recall with any fondness – he’s an alien but it looks like the director said okay get the worst haircut you can find then paint yourself silver and toss sliver glitter on your hair. It looks hideous.

Well more later – work beckons. And the weather is getting worse.

Peace love, ice storms.

Weather and stuff and singing

Well something’s up – I don’t know what but something is up

Enough paranoia – time to complain about the weather.

After a few nice days – tonight it will be cold and if it’s not raining it’s going to be snowing and if it’s not snowing, it will be sleet. Yes I know it’s not quite spring yet and yes I know as the folks at the weather channel like to tell us March is a transition month but really could it have killed the universe to wait one more day before shifting back to winter? We play tonight – at the Waltz and instead of the balmy temperatures of the last few days anybody coming out will have to brave sleet snow and rain.

Quickly noted in the news – the man identified as Al Quieda’s number 3 (there have been a plethora of Number 2’s so at least this is new) has, according to the Military has confessed to masterminding, well, everything from 9/11 to the shoe bomber. I find it amazing that he didn’t confess to stealing W’s daughter’s purse in Argentina.

Listen kids, I don’t mean to skeptical but dig - He’s been in held in Gitamo for years – and while the defense department and the CIA have already said they don’t torture – what they don’t consider torture would get them hauled up in front of The Hague if they were foreigners doing this to Americans. Now in addition to torture being immoral and something that still makes me sick to my stomach to think we, the good guys and if one believes some of the commentators on the right defenders of western civilization itself – are doing the wire to the body parts bit – and twisting and spinning to make insist we aren’t torturing.

Now they said they didn’t torture this guy. Right. If not him (the number 3 man at Al Quieda), why did they go to such lengths to justify torture? Why twist yourself into knots to get the right to zap someone’s testicles and then not do it? Really. That stretches credulity to the breaking point.

My real problem with the confessions is this – torture is not much good for getting information – that is real information you can use – what it is good for - and why Hitler and Stalin and the Inquisition we so fond of it – is in extracting confessions. During the witch trails women confessed to sleeping with Satan, flying on broomsticks and withering crops. They didn’t do that, but they said they did to stop the torturer from breaking each bone in their hands with a mallet or stretching them on the rack or crushing their legs with rocks or – well the mind of man is pretty inventive –the point being at some point the victim will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear. It’s why, in normal courts, confessions extracted under duress are simply tossed but why say Stalin used them so much.

So you have to wonder here how much is true and how much he just made up to tell the CIA something they wanted to hear in the first place. This has two outcomes: One – as a source this guy’s usefulness is zero since he’ll babble anything people want to hear now and Two) because this guy’s confessed to all this crimes the push to investigate the crimes goes away – hey we got the confession yes? So what if maybe it’s not true and that the real perps are free and clear, he confessed right?

Meantime, back in DC – the magic word ‘subpoena’ has been mentioned in connection with the Attorney General’s mess. And Sen. Sununu – the son of John Sununu the guy W fired on behalf of his dad – just took the chance to stick the knife in and say that Gonzales should be fired. This is going to get worse.

What’s going to make it worse is the fact that the DA’s were fired because they resisted using their office as a political weapon on behalf of the GOP and the White House – which even for people appointed at the pleasure of the President is asking them to do something beyond the pale.

Well enough politics – god it’s getting messy no? Let’s see what the hearings show.

Baseball comes apace – the Mets haven’t been tearing up the league much but I’m not sure that’s a good or bad thing - I don’t like it but I’m a fan I want them to win each game.

Pretty good open mike last night – Tim got to see the beast in live action and I have to complement him for keeping a straight face when I put the wrestling mask on and did the ‘Hannibal lector’ part of “I’m Sorry”. It tends to effect people.

We have a gig coming up after this one tonight so if you can’t make this one do not despair – there is another on the way.

Had a quick talk about maybe at some point doing an internet pod cast – it could be fun spinning some favorite songs like oh

“TV Set” – the Cramps
“Cheepnis” Frank Zappa
“Gay Bar” Electric Six
“Pin head” Ramones
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha” Napoleon XIV. (Love this to death).

Later

Peace Love – see you tonight.

Work and Firesign

Well happy news on the job front – our company isn’t doing well so we will have to toss some more virgins into the volcano – sorry reduce operating expenses. While at one point I can understand this – the fact is once again when I sit at my desk and look up I can see the working man’s version of the sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

Somebody tell me again why I shouldn’t have tired to be an artist full time when I was wondering what to do with my life? Oh that’s right security. You’ll have a job, you can do the other stuff anyway – this way you’ll be secure.

Uh-huh right.

Once again I’m forced to contemplate not the possibility of quitting my day job but the possibility of my day job quitting me. So once again there’s that sword over my head.

And while we’re at it – let us reexamine the story of the sword of Damocles. In the original story Damocles is a member of the court of Dionysius I the Tyrant (they were a bit more honest in those days about titles) of Syracuse (circa 400 bc or so). At one point he said he envied Dionysius his power and good fortune – Dionysius said he would allow Damocles to see what it was like to be king one day and Damocles – visions of wine and nubile girls (or boys the stories vary – this was ancient Greece) agreed.

So the next day Damocles sat at the king’s seat ready for debauch – at some during his meal point he looked up and saw hanging above his head a very very sharp sword held by a single horse hair. All at once he lost his taste for being king and beat a quick retreat.

This has often been presented to show the perils of power and the importance of understanding everything comes at a price – however in the modern age, it’s more realistic to have everybody else have sharpened swords above their heads while the king sits amused at the fear generated along with the occasional string break and resulting scream. Really look at say W or Dick Cheney or the president of a large firm – will they ever have to worry about making ends meet? Wonder about keeping a roof over their heads? Feeding their families? Of course not – such worries are for the little people not the great.

Well before I turn into a raving Marxist – and I’m not - my favorite Marx is Groucho not Karl – let’s leave this. Still I hate it when your working day includes being worried about your job.

Listening to the Firesign Theater again – great spoken word stuff – not laugh out loud but deep surreal and funny in tickle your brain way and unlike a lot of comedy albums they can stand up to dozens of listens. Tonight at the open mike I will be wearing a t-shirt with one of their catch phrases (also the title of their 3rd album) on it “Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers” which sums them up fairly well.

Some of their other album titles are –

In the next world, you’re on your own”

“How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?”

“I think we’re all Bozos on this bus”

“Everything you know is Wrong”

The last may be my favorite of all – full of aliens who eat moss, a comet, new age jokes and fried eggs (you have to hear to understand) it’s one of my desert Island disks.

So Shoes for Industry compodre

Other notes: Bad movies on the way.

Again we’re playing a set tomorrow at
Waltz-Astoria
23-14 Ditmars Boulevard
Astoria, New York 11105
718.95.MUSIC

9 pm

$7 min. (they have nice cheese cake by the way so this isn’t a real sacrifice).

Peace, Love, I spell my name Danger

Starbuck's rant & the mess in DC gets worse.

I saw in net that the chairman of Starbucks is worried that his stores are losing their soul.

To which have to say Huh?

Maybe I’ve never been in the right Starbucks or one of the older ones but sweet mother of mercy what the hell is he talking about? He’s worried that the store design is sterile – well no shit Sherlock where hell have you been the last ten years? The god dam things have sprung up like fucking mushrooms where ever there was a foot of land and they all look alike – soulless burger kings with more expensive food and expensive coffee. And sorry pal the coffee isn’t all that. In fact your breakfast blend (which the stores in NY seem to make it a point not to carry) was the first blend I could drink without getting that bitter burnt taste in my mouth which I don’t recommend. I drink coffee black with some or no sugar – I don’t drink milkshakes with coffee in them –which seems to be most of what makes starbuck starbucks.

He also writes about the star bucks experience –well my typical experience at starbucks is waiting on line then trying to get the bored or overworked or some times just as fucking dumb as a bag of hammers person behind the counter to take my order (and no matter how many times I’ve done this the whole ‘Grande’ bullshit strikes me as, well bullshit – I usually say ‘the middle one” rather than say ‘Grande’). Then after your order you have to FUCKING WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT FUCKING DAY to get you coffee if you’ve ordered anything more complicated than black coffee so you can leave. There is no time to linger over the coffee cause shit man you have an hour for lunch and you just wasted 25 minutes standing on line and then waiting for them to make you your coffee.
And there is never anyplace to linger as the tables are all taken by students who have every book and notebook they have ever owned scattered over two tables as they continue to work their term paper (their efforts handicapped by the fact they have been up for three days in a row by this point) or one of the 15 guys with a cup of coffee and a lap top – who is typing and at the same time talking in a loud voice on a cell phone – usually one of those Borg looking things you put on your ear – typical corporate bafflegab

“Yeah”
Pause
“Well I told him that would happen if he did that.”
Pause
“Well I’m not putting that fire out.”
Pause
“No.”
Pause
“I said no. I said no before this project started. And after it started and I’ll be saying it after the project is done.”
Pause
“Yes then too.”
Pause
“Well I told you what the problem was earlier.”
Pause
“No I’m not telling what the problem is now; I’m telling what the problem was then. The problem has evolved.”
Pause
“And yes it will kill”
Pause
“Especially if you poke it with a stick. What where they thinking?”

And so on -

Oh my.

And fasten your seat belts kids – thing are about to get really really interesting.

The firing of those US attorney’s scandal has now reached into the White House. It turns out that as the 2nd W administration was going to begin – Harriet Myers, W’s personal well whatever I don’t know chief legal advisor and designated ass kisser suggested that they fire all 93 US Attorney’s and replace them with, one presumes, loyal operatives – why fire them otherwise?

Per the Washington Post what happened next was:

“That proposal was immediately rejected by Gonzales as impractical and disruptive, Justice officials said, but it led (Kyle) Sampson to send an e-mail to Miers in March 2005 ranking all 93 U.S. attorneys. Strong performers ``exhibited loyalty'' to the administration; low performers were ``weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.''; a third group merited no opinion.”

– So the attorney’s were all evaluated and seven were canned - one after some GOP big wings from New Mexico talked to Rowe, and apparently the president himself.

So Attorneys who – let’s be bloody honest here okay – who preferred to follow the rule of law and do their jobs rather than lean on the White House’s political opponents – they got canned and then via a sneaky addition to the ‘patriot’ act (and lord was there ever a bill more poorly named) the Attorney General was able to appoint interim attorneys with out confirmation by the Senate insuring that the new attorneys were either craven W loyalists or unqualified political hacks – or knowing the W administration they are both.

The whole thing speaks of a pretty damn blatant attempt to channel the activities of the District Attorneys along political lines – indeed articles suggest that it’s far more likely that a democrat will get investigated by the feds than a repub – and Krugman noted in a column that just before the last election in New Jersey the NJ District attorney announced they were investigating the Democratic Senatorial candidate, an announcement that got a lot of play while the investigation went nowhere after the election.

This is going to get worse. It always does with these people.

In other painful subjects – it turns out I’ve seen exactly 18 of the Monster Time’s 50 worst monster movies ever made. I don’t find that an acceptable number.

So on their way from Net Flix are Frankenstein vs the Space Monster – and Curse of the Swamp creature – which will – assuming I survive make it an even 20.

More pain later.

Peace, Love, Back coffee no sugar – to go.

Random Neural Firings

It’s Monday – I’ve written too much about A*P*E to have actual thoughts so some things from the passing parade.

It’s cold and dark a lot in Finland – it does things to people:

HELSINKI (Reuters) - A Finnish member of parliament is aiming for re-election by campaigning with a translation of his Web site into Klingon, used in the TV series "Star Trek."

The web site – for those with an interest is http://www.kasvi.org/ –

It’s hot and humid a lot in El Salvador – that does things to people:

“JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found bound, drunk and nude, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Two weeks ago, El Salvador police found Tsurie Raphael in the yard of his residence, tied up, gagged and drunk, Israeli media reported. He was wearing several sex toys at the time, the media said. After he was untied, Raphael told police he was the ambassador of Israel, the reports said.”

I’m fairly sure that right after Tsuire said he was the Ambassador of Israel – the cops said whatever is the Spanish language version of “right, and I’m Marie of Romania” and tossed him in the squad car. Yeah they were probably reamed when it turned out he was the ambassador of Israel – but really what were the odds?

A case of rats leaving the ship?

“WSJ - DUBAI -- U.S. oil services giant Halliburton Co. will shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, Chief Executive Dave Lesar said Sunday”

So why are they doing this?

One possibility:

“Federal investigators said last month that Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.”

I’m not sure what the legal ramifications are here but it has to be harder to prosecute an overseas company than it is a US Corp.

Now mind you the $10 BILLION in contractor waste and overcharging (read fraud and theft) is the amount they are willing to admit – and remember each and every dollar of that comes either from taxes that people paid or money the government borrowed that will have to be paid back via taxes.

Meantime (I mean it’s hard to keep up with these guys) – troops are being sent back to Iraq who are still suffering from injuries – it isn’t clear how many but if you ever wondered what fingernails scraping the bottom of the barrel sounds like – this is it.

Newt admitted that he was having an affair at the very moment he was pushing for Clinton to be impeached because he had an affair. While this news would if it was about a normal person would be a head exploding example of sanctimonious hypocrisy not usually seen outside a novel by Charles Dickens – with Newt, you kind of expect these things.

Robert Gonzales has found himself – because he is dumb – in the middle of the storm over the White House firing regional federal D.A.’s because or what looks like crass political motives. He is apparently the one who told W this was okay to do, but again this isn’t surprising - before he became Attorney General his job was telling president “yes you can do that” whenever the president wanted to do – torture, kidnapping, violating laws, he may have changed offices but as he didn’t change jobs.

The only thing that will top Walter Reed (and eternal shame on the congressman from Georgia who tried to suggest it was the wounded troops fault the place was a mess) would be the discovery that they’ve been dumping the dead troops into mass graves to save money. And given this crew – I except to read that news soon.

The really depressing thing about W and his crew in the government is that I can add a new verse to our protest song “Ethelred the Unready” every damn week.

Anyway:

We’re playing Thursday March 15th at the

Waltz Astoria Coffee shop
23-14 Ditmars Boulevard
Astoria, New York 11105
718.95.MUSIC

There is a $7 minimum per person. It should be a very interesting session more relaxed than our usual 13 songs no waiting treatment – some of the songs – per the enemy below have interesting back stories which we plan to share.

Hope to see you there.

One of my favorite pics of Diana Rigg

Peace, Love, No Apes.

Vampire News and (oh god) A*P*E

Before moving on to the Blog topic proper – the utterly awful A*P*E – I saw this floating around in the net via Lawyers Guns and Money:

“Deceased Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who died in captivity in Haag last year standing on trial for War Crimes in a UN War Crimes tribunal, still seem to haunt the Serbian nation.

Recently his grave in the eastern Serbian town of Pozarevac was desecrated in a bizarre incident, when Serbian vampire hunters in accordance with old folklore and tradition wanted to make sure the late president remained dead, and drove a three-foot wooden stake into the grave and through his heart.”

Wow. I mean wow. Still considering who Milosevic was and what he did – I assume who ever did this probably figured well – better safe than sorry.

Anyway on to the movie. I’m in the prefect shape for it, I’m tired – I was up too late last night and the damned time change has me feeling like I’m jet lagged and cranky – and I don’t want to see another human being for a bit – so it’s best I’m doing this to.

Okay once you pop the DVD in (assuming you are foolish enough to actually watch this damned thing) you will see the title A*P*E – no I don’t know what the hell the asterisks are for – they never explain it during the film, like ever. I assume they must have thought it would look cool but hell and damn it is annoying right out of the box. What is this all about you wonder and you get no answer at all. While in life you get no answers really to the big questions –why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Does it have a point? You kind of expect an answer to why the damn title for the film is A*P*E. That’s a pretty small question in the scheme of things. Yes?

Well be that as it may, once the credits roll the film begins and your depression starts up. We see a toy boat in a water tank , riding high – like it was empty very high.

Anyway we have a very slow conversation between two sailors talking about the big (36 ft) ape they have in the cargo hold. They talk, again slowly, about things that maybe might have been interesting for us, the audience to see, the capture of the ape and what not – and any explanation of where in god’s name the ape came from. But no that would be cheating. In a better movie I would guess this was intentional on the part of the director reminding us of the primal mysteries of life – but not here. Besides 36 foot tall apes being rare on the ground a little explanation is deserved.

But no matter – barely do we learn of the ape in the hold than the ape (who nobody was watching I guess – hell why bother right? What could go wrong?) wakes up and punches a hole in the deck of the ship (or toy boat – whatever, it is, sadly, not the fakest thing in the film) and then the ship explodes – now either 36 foot tall apes explode upon awakening or they stored the ape in the same hold as that shipment of Nitro they had.


Either way the ship is gone and the ape is free – then the ape – and lord it’s a fake looking ape suit – not as bad as the mighty Gorga but mercy there is nothing as bad as that – but it looks more like dyed lambs wool than fur and the mouth doesn’t move much at all either. So it’s pretty fake.

So we have the fake ape swimming towards somewhere when it has a fight with what is very clearly a dead shark – the guy in the ape suit had to stand waist deep in water wearing a very heavy and very wet ape suit and then got to pretend to fight with a dead shark – and fight with the dead shark and fight with the dead shark. Ed Wood in Bride of the Monster at least had the damn sense not to make Bela spend too much time moving the arms of the giant octopus that was supposed to be eating him at the end of the film. Not here – since there isn’t much of a real story here – ape comes ashore in Korea gets killed – there has to be some, actually a lot of padding – tons of padding – you could equip a damn hockey goalie with the padding this film has.

So after the fight with the dead shark – the ape comes ashore and pretty much without a by your leave starts busting up the place – again we don’t know why – we don’t know anything about this monkey but off it goes destroying things – it then wanders off – it does that a lot.

The scene shifts and we are at Seoul Airport – we are in Korea – where a blond woman who is not Faye Wray is coming off a plane wearing a pair of those very big 70’s style sunglasses the ones that pretty much covered your head. (Alas this is not the worst fashion crime in this film) She is a famous actress come to Korea to make a movie – she is met at the airport by the Male lead (a reporter – that it matters) who is in love with her – there is some kind of disagreement problem whatever with the relationship – they are both jerks. No that’s not it – they come across as jerks but per the movie it’s that she is an actress and he’s a reporter and they can’t marry because she has a career that is important to her (it is odd how weird these arguments sound to someone listening to them in 2007 –things have changed somewhat yes?)

After some tedious banter “can I come tuck you in?” type stuff that made me write AAHHHHHHHHH on my notes. The woman who is not Faye Wray (here after NFW to save my typing skills) goes to be.

Meantime the ape has wandered into a small farming village in Korea – which, I don’t know but you’d think if they would have wanted to show Korea off – it’s a Korean production but the village looks so poor and run down that you wonder why North Korea invaded in the first place.

At this point a loud and obnoxious American Colonel enters the picture. He will yell stupid things the entire film and take up smoking –that’s about it. There is supposed to a bit of comic relief between him and his aide but the dialogue is so off the mark my notes read “did they improv this shit?”

There is some padding with some kids breaking into an abandoned children’s playground – and is there anything as creepy as that? Really. And they see the ape – this takes what seems like hours but really doesn’t’.

The ape walks away from the screaming children – I guess they want sympathy – so why the hell did he wreck the oil refinery when he came ashore?

There is some stupid business with a shake – the ugly and angry colonel makes a joke about Kong and then the ape crashes into the filming of a Korean kung fu epic – this time the people instead of running off – they try to stop him with kung fu weapons – which doesn’t work very well – this was apparently shot in 3-D (god help us) so this part features arrows coming right at you. And then in the dumbest thing so far in the film – some actors grab a log battering ram and run at the apes ankle – it’s doesn’t go over well with the ape.

And Jesus who would really do that? I’m confronted with a 36 ft tall HOSTILE ape and I’m not between it and my nearest and dearest – I’m say an actor on a set – I’m outta there write me when production starts again guys.

As the ape wanders away he comes up upon yet another shitbox farm village. Now to show his inner gentleness he steps over a cow rather than squashing it – trouble it is a plastic cow a very very fake looking plastic cow – I swear there is a key to wind it up on the side we don’t see in the movie.

The next scene shows an unexpected danger to hang gliding – you’re flying along and suddenly there you are face to face with a giant ape – granted this doesn’t happen often but I think hang gliders (and where did that sport go? Have people found another way to kill themselves these days?)

Then the most hideous fashion crime of the 70’s comes into view – the male lead has changed into a denim leisure suit – it’s awful – full disclosure – I thought they were awful when people were actually wearing these things so this isn’t just looking backward thinking here.

There is some nonsense with the NFW acting in a movie – and now the Male lead (hereinafter denim man) warns her that the Ape is on the lose and heading for Seoul.

Scenes of evacuation follow (my notes say “how many of these little shit-box towns are there in Korea anyway?)

Back at the film the movie action requires NFW to run through some gates and she does so right into the hand of the ape.

My notes at this point read “this movie is never going to end is it?”

We now see troops loading on choppers – the ape is holding a Barbie doll – it looks that way anyway – this film actually got the Korean and US army to be in it – doesn’t anybody read scripts? Good god. They find the ape, they fight – it is very very boring – at some point Denim guy rescues NFW from the ape (he had put her down to fight the helicopters – not so much fight as wave its arms around aimlessly) and then after the last helicopter crashes – the ape flips the bird – it’s the only reason to really see the film and with the magic of the DVD – you can go to about 53 minutes into the movie – watch the ape flip the bird the pop it back in it’s netflix box and send it back (I wish I had done that).

Denim guy takes NFW to the home of a friend in the police force – these is some weird dialogue in the car between the two – with NFW making oddly calm comments about Denim guy’s driving. Frankly I’d been a) gabbed by a 36 foot ape and toted around like a Barbie doll then rescued during a huge gun battle I would be more likely saying things like “SHIT FUCK JESUS! AHGGHHHHGAAAAAHHH!” or just whimpering quietly before I went into shock – not doing banter.

At this point my notes read – “ I have a headache”

The rest of the movie involves the ape looking for NFW by tearing up Seoul – (again there is a scene of evacuating Seoul - people running around in slums now as we in an urban environment - the notes read “is all of Korea a slum or a shithole?” there are incidents involving a bar girl and an very ugly and fat American and some people playing pool but there is no point to them or to life either and I still don’t know why they called it that.

At the 1 hour mark I wrote 20 minutes to go - then “totally pointless sequence” a couple of times – I’m not sure but I think it had to do with the wife of the Korean cop (where NFW was hiding out) playing with a puppet to the amusement of her kids for a good five minutes – now I love puppets but even for me 5 minutes of just a puppet gets old real fast.

So the ape finds NFW – they wander out of Seoul and then there is the endless final fight were the ape fails his arms about – or tosses rocks at tanks when then burst into flame – I don’t know much about tanks but if a rock hitting it – even a big rock – makes it burst into flame you have the armored equivalent of a ford pinto.

There is an attempted tender moment near the end of the fight scene were the ape looks down at the NFW and it looks like it sheds a tear but it could be the actor is just sweating through the suit – at this point the denim guy once again rescues NFW and off they run while the Korean and Americans shoot the unholy shit out of the ape – the ape spits blood and then dies.

In the fist of two huh? Moments the bitter American colonel shouts “let’s see him dance for his organ grinder now!” No I don’t have the faintest idea what he’s talking about. Not a clue. But there it is in the movie. Life is a senseless farce isn’t it.

Then as the ape spits blood and dies – NFW cries and denim guy says “he was too big for a small world like ours” and just what the hell does that mean?

And why the hell did they take him off his island – really – you expected those people to show up at some point during the film “Hold on that ape’s our property” but no – we just fade to the credits and I realize I’ve written 2,000 words on a terrible movie.

I need a life.

We have a gig on Thursday March 15 – at Waltz Astoria – in Astoria – I’ll put up the details tomorrow just consider this a reminder.

Peace love Organ Grinders and right back atta ya.