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.
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
Peace Love Mamie
posted by Unknown at 10:30 AM
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