Embrace the Suck and Nude for Satan

Well it’s time to stop whining and start dealing with it. As an army sergeant said to someone I know who was covering the build up to the Iraqi war back in 2003 when he was asked how do you deal with all this – the sergeant said “sometimes you must embrace the suck.”

There are so many things that piss me off this day that it’s not worth the effort of writing about them. I know I just erased a page of whiny political stuff. I’m just so tired of it, the bastards and idiots have taken the field and we’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Anyway – dozed through Nude for Satan last night.

Okay now any film that features naked women that I end up dozing off to has got to be a pretty bad one yes?

This was an Italian film made back in 1974 – one of the ways you can tell it was made in Italy (aside from the Italian names and the film de roma bit just as the movie started) was a screen credit for the shoe supplier. And it’s not like, with a name like Nude for Satan the film was going to have a lot to do with shoes.

The first thing we see is a naked women running through the forest – you can tell it’s a 1974 film because the breasts actually move as she runs - it’s a promising start at least.

The film proper begins with a guy driving a VW beetle through a dark and stormy night. He reaches a farm house and pounds on the door announcing he is a doctor (a doctor driving a VW Beetle – damn socialist medicine) and he’s looking for a house. The owner of the house he’s at tells him more or less he can’t get there from here and goes back to bed smiling because he doesn’t have anything else to do with the movie.

More high – well faster than normal – speed driving ensues and at all at once he sees a woman in a white robe at the side of the road. He pulls to a halt banging his head on the wheel – did the European vw’s have that good brakes? He gets out of the car slowly (everybody does things slowly in this film ) and shines a flashlight about looking for the woman in white – he doesn’t see her but as he is looking a car wheel rolls past him (like the ambulance wheel at the end of Airplane) and he sees that off camera a small mini has driven into the ditch (it’s not missing any wheels – we never learn where that wheel came from but considering how little sense this film makes it’s not a big deal) – and that a woman has been injured.

Being a doctor he knows what to do with an accident victim – he drags her out of her car and stuffs her in the front seat of his VW and then slaps her awake – damn socialized medicine again.

So off they drive and then – he leaves her in the car to walk up to this spooky castle on the top of the hill (why walk? I mean he’s walking up a driveway)

After a piece of silliness with a guy that vanishes – the Male lead – named Harry Benson in the film by the way (righttttttttt) starts to wander though the house looking for help – and in one room he finds a guy lying on the floor with a big knife in his neck – after a moment the guy wakes up and starts laughing at the male lead – showing off some missing teeth by the by as well.

Okay now by this point I’m leaving the castle thinking a) I need to get my meds checked and b) let me see about the girl – maybe I could shove her spine around some more and finish the job but no - off he goes wandering about more until he runs into a book that will supply a plot point later on in the film and then the girl he left in the car now seemingly completely well dressed in a 19th century looking thing and mad with desire for him.

We see them lock face for a bit.

Then it seems to be dawn and the girl left in the car is walking up the driveway looking for help – but wait – didn’t we just see her before with the doctor sucking face – bill just relax and have another bong hit – it won’t make anymore sense but you won’t care as much.

So the girl wanders into the same castle – as she does a sinister figure in black wearing a cape appears and disappears from time to time – he might as well be holding up a neon sign that flashes “DEVIL I AM THE DEVIL” on and off but no matter – just take a hit off that bong and off we go.

The girl (female lead from now own) meets up with the Devil who urges her to stay and take a bath (after undressing her with his eyes in a manner that actually makes her clothes come off – Nude for Satan!) – and bathe she does – standing up in the bathtub so we can see that she’s naked – (warning: do not use this film for a nude for Satan drinking game (i.e. when you see someone nude you down a shot – people will be passing out by the ½ way point. ) a servant girl comes up dries her off and then well we cut away before it gets good (nude for Satan but well not that nude).

We then spend a lot of time – wandering in the garden in the house – we see that there is another male lead who is also dressed in 19th century garb who has the real hots for the female lead the same way the ah hah! There are two of them – good and repressed and the other evil and mad for the humpty hump dance – or something – just do the bong – I’m gonna order pizza.

At one point the woman falls down something like a well and ends up trapped – with ripped clothes – not quite nude for Satan but close – in a giant spider web and menaced by the fakest looking spider in the history of movies – worse than the spider in Cat women of the moon or Horrors of Spider Island – granted they were fake looking but at least the legs moved.

The climax of the movie comes when the male lead realizes he’s being tested by his own bad side who ends up with the female lead sitting on his lap in a big chair – she’s of course sans clothing – at which point two other women who are also nude for Satan (I warned you not to make this a drinking game – how about some water?) who dance around – followed by two guys who are wearing loincloths for Satan (for which we give his infernal majesty much thanks) and are painted half red and half blue like they are fans of some soccer team who - they also dance around – all the while Satan is looking on hoping the male lead will join in – it’s about the silliest orgy scene I’ve ever seen – at this point the male lead remembers the book runs to it and finds the devil’s works are afraid of fire – so he tosses a hurricane lamp at them, everything blows up and he ends up back out side by his car with the girl in her car as at the start of the movie – and one assumes folks in the 70’s took another bong hit and said “awesome film dude” and passed out.

The film is so druggy that I think you could just run it muted, play cheech and chong records at the same time and get about the same effect.

Peace, love, please get dressed guys.

Grumpy Monday and the danger of Barbie Dolls

Rainy days and what not –

Not much happening here at world Headquarters – things however look to get busy soon as we being to pimp the band like nobody’s business. I mean I know by the time we get to the actual show we will have lost all common sense and humanity and will think nothing of doing things like:

“Thank you for saving my dog”
“Not a problem madam – by the way our band is having their cd launch party on May 31st”
“Oh I’d love too but it’s my sister’s birthday.”
“Listen lady without my help the dogs a spot of truck tire. Be at the show.”

“Sorry to hear about your loss”
“Why thank you.”
“You know what would get your mind off this, comedy that’s what. By the way our band is having”

“Wonderful collection of china”
“Why thank you.”
“Be a shame if something was to happen to it.”

Sorry rainy days bring out the mean in me I guess. It’s days like this were I have to try and keep my mouth shut – per the enemy below and Insect girl my voice carries even when I don’t think so when I’m in this mood, I have to keep a lid on comments like

“It takes a battleship less time to get out of a harbor” when stand in the CVS pharmacy line who, after the purchase is made slowly and deliberately puts the coins into a special pocket of the wallet, arranges their purchase – puts the bag inside another bag and then waits I guess until the brain recharges enough to get the legs to move.

“Please move like your life has a point.” – said to folks a) walking so slowly you want to punch them in the back of the head because they are in the way and b) also managing to weave from side to side like a slow race car trying not to get passed to the point where the only way to get past them is to blow past them like free safety trying to get to the quarterback.

So I note with great gloom that McCain short of strangling a puppy before each speech will get a free ride from the press because he feeds them and Obama will have by the end of the election to be denouncing the territorial desires of Shaka Zulu. It’s would be depressing enough but guys we really have serious issues to deal with – can we lay off the orange juice bowling his preacher said things that made me uncomfortable stuff.

Well enough – the film Nude for Satan has arrived from Minnesota and I intend to watch that this evening – I desperately need some bad euro-sleaze to get me out of this mood.

A couple of things from the passing parade – some nitwit in Iran is warning against the import of Barbie dolls into his country – citing it as an example of increasing westernization or some such. Change a few words around and he sounded just like some folks over here warning about islamofacism. But frankly blue jeans rock and roll and toys are a hell of lot more effective than bombs in dealing with these folks.

And in another story that reminds people that Florida is now the lunatic capital of the united states – the Florida Legislature is considering a ban on the display of fake bull testicles on trucks which is per the report is a trendy accessory on trucks – I guess it goes with the naked women mud flaps or something. Couple of things.

1) People who put plastic replicas of bull testicles on the back of their truck are so obviously overcompensating that it’s not funny and 2) doesn’t the Florida legislature have better things to do with their time?

Ah well. Tomorrow will be better (I hope)

Peace Love Barbie dolls.

This and that and sad kitty pic

Among the things that make me doubt the existence of a supreme being – or least the existence of a benevolent supreme being are things like discovering that Uwe Boll is making yet another film – I mean if there was any real damn karma in the world he would be saying “welcome to McDonald’s may I take your order” in Hamburg somewhere (to be fair the German McDonald’s are a little more interesting that ours – they have beer. But being in Germany they would have to in order to compete yes?)

It is this kind of thing that makes my head explode – there are bums drinking sterno that would make a better movie than this clown – and there are no shortage of talented ambitions and hungry would be directors in the world – toiling away at other jobs waiting for their break – perhaps they wouldn’t do better than Boll but lord in heaven it would take someone who combined the brutal nastiness of Frances Coleman with the utter technical ineptness of Ed Wood , with a bit of the ego of Phil Tucker tossed in to do any worse.

It’s like watching your baseball team limp to the end another rotten year – then watch in horror as the owners higher another utterly clueless nitwit as manager simply because he had managed in the big leagues before.

I mean where’s the sense in that? If all he’s done before is mange to lead say the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates to 90+ loss seasons who the heck would willing take him on.

But all you hear is “at least he has managed in the big leagues”

But not well – again how much worse could someone who didn’t do?

Ahhh

It’s Friday and it’s pretty out and I’m in a windowless cube and that’s making me grumpy.

Meantime – well the primaries roll on and on and on – and I’m getting more depressed – I noticed on one board a ‘senior Clinton strategist’ was talking to a news paper or some magazine claiming that Obama was the one ‘playing the race card’.

Okay – this is a classic attempt to toss sand in people’s eyes by accusing your opponent of being the one doing the wrong thing – witness the ‘liberals are the real racists’ you keep hearing form sobs like Limbaugh (who is disgracing himself in saying he wants riots in the streets in Denver because he thinks that’ll mean McCain will win or something – his thought patterns are not really worth following) during Martin Luther King day.

Frankly if the Clinton campaign wasn’t playing the race card they wouldn’t be talking about the race card – simple as that. It’s like W going around saying there isn’t a recession. He saying it because there is one (and it’s ongoing and we still haven’t reached bottom yet – there are land mines galore in that mess of mortgage loans).

Meantime – with the unerring instinct of worrying about the least important thing in the world – One congressman and some of the right wing chattering heads/bloggers are now upset that the troops can buy copies of playboy and penthouse at Army PX.

Excuse me I have to go hit my head against something.

I’m back. Nope didn’t work. Need to do that more.

Now that’s okay. well not really but it will have to do.

Sweet Jesus on a stick – these are utterly utterly useless human beings – well not entirely they do provide carbon Dioxide for plants to use but that’s abut it.

These guys are getting shot at – or dealing with ied’s and other booby traps every damn day – and a lot of them are snapping under the strain but that’s not a problem – seeing a naked boob well that is a problem.

By the by I was switching around the TV the other day and for a few moments watched a show about booby traps on the Military channel – it was kind interesting – Booby traps really came into their own in the 20th century – but something pissed me off. There was this fat pink guy in a suit (why are they always that? You wonder) who was mouthing off about the traps and saying ‘it’s a weapon of the weak’ with a clear sneer. I mean wft? One of the most prolific users of booby traps was the wermacht in 1944-45 while they were retreating – The Wermarcht was a lot of things – but weak it wasn’t.

I suppose it’s just that guerrillas and the like use them a lot (I remember reading that a large number of casualties in Viet nam were due to booby traps) which again points up the different views of warfare –the western tradition is face to face slug it out and finish it – other cultures not so much so you’ll hear how comments about cowardly tactics and weak and the like.

Well let’s let that go.

Anyway I also read that someone wants to build a theme park in Iraq. Great it’ll be the only theme park in the world were people wait on line for the roller coaster in slit trenches.

Peace Love Sad Kitty

Some Days

You just want to disguise yourself as a coke machine and hide for a while. (check the feet sticking out)

Yes that’s real - apparently in Japan people are a) scared a lot and b) think whoever is after them is really really stupid – it could be a result of all those video games.

But I read dangerous and worrisome things in the news – that aside from all the other problems facing this country all of sudden people are worried about food supplies –there have some scary runs on staples (rice mostly) in places like Costco and Walmarts .

Where there isn’t a shortage here (except maybe rye flour it seems) a) prices of food keep going up and b) there are shortages elsewhere and considering how screwed up everything else is it won’t take much to get people to start stocking up on canned goods and staples like rice.

The rye flour shortage is a result of the bio fuel deal – folks are planting corn instead of wheat because the price is better – one thing it seem ethanol destroys motor oil leading to well things like engine seizures and expensive engine block repair. Great the only alternative to oil this disgrace of government puts major money in is worse than the problem – almost like they planed that.

Which they may have – while I wouldn’t trust W to lead me out of a room with only one door – Dick Cheney has the kind of mind that would do that “Alternative fuels – I’ll show ‘em – all hail king oil!”

Meantime – a Brazilian priest who was trying to set the record for the longest flight by a man tied to 100’s of party balloons is believed lost at sea – I don’t have anything really to add here – the stupid boggles my mind – a) that someone would do this and b) it’s been done before – seeing as there is a world record.

Meantime – some 15 monkeys have escaped from a facility in Florida – this is why Florida makes me nervous – bad enough all the lunatics who live there but you have the chance of turning a corner and being confronted by horde of savage monkeys – the press report says they are no harm to humans but these are the same folks who didn’t think the would escape their home on an island because they didn’t know how to swim so I’d take what they say with a grain of salt.

And last meantime – The producers of Expelled – the Intelligent Design “documentary’ are being sued for their use of John Lennon’s song Imagine by Yoko Ono. They wanted to use the song but knew Yoko would say no so they just did it anyway (which is kind of par for the course for the producers of this flick – they have indulged in several edge of the envelope tactics while making the film – including not telling folks that it was a pro intelligent design work.).

They are relying on a fair use defense which is a pretty slender reed to lean on – true they say their lawyer said it was okay to do this but it is fair to assume that their lawyer came from one of those Fundy-run Law school mills that have supplied the department of justice with so many sub-par personnel.

Honestly I can’t imagine anything that would make Yoko angrier – she has devoted her life to John’s Legacy, that legacy is also a commercial property worth millions and she personally has little truck with the kind of folks who did this film.

Frankly by the time Yoko’s lawyers finish with them I think they would rather have had their testicles crushed one at time by a ball peen hammer wielding lunatic, then have them fed to the squirrels. But they brought it on themselves – I mean a pissed of Yoko Ono is something to be very afraid off – the last time she got really angry she broke up the Beatles.

Well that’s it for today.

Peace Love Hiding from Lunatics with ball peen hammers.

Having a day and Giant Snails

Work is nuts and there is some confusion at Bob Muir and the Enemy Below Headquarters right at the moment about the gig – hopefully it will be sorted out soon – if not heads will roll and there will be blood in the street. Trust me on this.

For some reason – being exposed as a sexist horse’s ass has made Chris Matthews a bigger star than ever inside the beltway. It’s moments like that you start looking about for a Bastille to storm.

To divert myself last night spent , sorry, wasted, my time watching The Monster the Challenged the World! A 1957 monster film starting nobody in particular and featuring giant radioactive snails.

The story is set in a place in southern CA known as the Salton Sea – a huge body of salt water in the middle of the desert near Death Valley. It has a rather odd history – it was created by accident in 1905 or so when several levees holding the Colorado river in blew their banks and by the time the floods were repaid – it took years – there was this big salt lake where .

Anyway the Navy has a base here and they are testing parachutes by jumping from airplanes into the water with them – testing parachutes seems kind of dicey yes? I mean if something went wrong.

“You see Johnson – your new design had a fatal flaw – a gust of wind and the chute just collapses”
“I see – well back to the lab”
“Yes – oh driver please notify the family of Airman Jones that he’s not coming home.”
“Yes sir.”

So the navy is testing chutes and there is an earthquake and then the guy with chute who lands in the water gets et. As do one of the sailors in the boat who were there to pick him up and then the other sailor in boat dies of fright.

After radio contact is lost the base’s head of naval intelligence is given the job of finding out what happened – he is the male lead – he is also a complete dick – I’m sure that he was called Commander Dick behind his back –so for the rest of this – he’s CD.

CD after chewing out a couple of people for breaking regulations finds the boat – the shriveled body of the guy in the chute, the dead body of the dead of fright guy and a tack of slime on the side of the boat.

He has is assistant take a sample of the slime “Egon, your Mucus” came to mind – they go back to the base and the Lab. At the lab is the Head Doctor and Assistant One and Assistant two along with the female lead a pretty widow with one kid (the stupid child). The stupid child is fixated on rabbits - really outside of Lennie in of Mice and Men nobody chats about rabbits more. This will lead to bad things in the end of course.

The chief along with his group analyze the slime while CD – when he isn’t pacing behind the chief scientist wondering why things are taking so long – suddenly is all warm and tender with the stupid child. The female lead notices and is impressed. There a bit of talk about how nice he is which he isn’t.

Until the mystery is solved the beaches are closed. However one sailor and his tramp girlfriend – you can tell she’s a tramp because she has a neck scarf – go swimming and get et. It moves the plot forward and underscores an important life lesson. Before the girl went to her death she and her mother exchanged harsh words – don’t ever let that happen to you in case someone is eaten by a giant snail. You’ll regret it if that happens.

By this time everybody knows something’s wrong – and assistant one and two dive into the water and they find this beach ball looking thing that they drag up to the surface – then one of them (the one with the pregnant wife – of course) is et by the giant snail.

There is much toing and froing after that. The CD makes time with the female lead (who ditches the morning widow to make time with him) while the rest of the base and the police check with the lock keepers (who operate the locks on the elaborate system of canals in the area) of course the one lock keeper who things the idea of giant man eating snails is nonsense gets et – it’s a pretty effective scene – the lock keeper hears a noise, looks around, turns to face the other way and bang a giant snail is chewing on his head – it’s not the way I’d like to go for sure – but it does depend on the movie convention that the characters can’t see anything that is outside the frame of the picture – which helps in this case - snails (especially giant snails) are not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of things that sneak up on things yes?

The beach ball thing turns out to be an egg with they keep in a pool of cold water to keep it from hatching. (How they know that is not explained). The stupid little girl wanders into the lab (to talk to the bunnies – I’m not sure if I was a parent I’d allow my child into a lab that contained a live giant man eating snail egg but never mind) and of course turns up the heat in the tank (because the bunnies look cold).

The next day the men find the pond where the snails are hiding – they dive in and blow them up (it takes a bit longer but it’s really not very exciting). Afterwards everybody seems falling all over themselves to congratulate CD (why – he’s still a dick – maybe it’s just ass kissing) on how he’s handled it. Then he and the Chief Scientist start driving to the lab – CD calls but the line is busy and he makes a comment on women and phones.

Well the reason the phone is off the hook is that the giant snail has hatched and after having et the bunnies is now trying to eat the stupid child and the female lead.

We cut back to the dudes in the car – CD tries again – the phone is still busy. IT never occurs to them that there might be something wrong – like with the egg. They just drive along; the CD with an expression that looks like’s contemplating the joys of wild sex with the female lead after a full day of monster killing.

They arrive of course – they save the kid and female lead. The CD oddly enough when given the choice between an axe and a fire extinguisher to use on the monster doesn’t pick the axe – and then when the extinguisher runs out grabs a well placed steam hose and scalds the snail to death – which if you add a bit of garlic and white wine means you have escargot for fifty at least.

All told – not as awful as some I’ve seen – just kind of clunky and cheap.

More later –

Peace Love, don’t let anything eat your head.

The stupid and insane continue

This is a real – book – not published by any mainstream company but still that this kind of gibberish can exist out there depresses me beyond words - the sad truth is that cranks are going to be with us always and forever. And the internet alas has given them a new way to reach people – god help us.

As a side note I remember many years ago reading Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke – the book’s story is that Aliens – who look almost exactly like popular representations of the devil – have taken over the earth because human kind is about to make an evolutionary leap that if not overseen could lead to disaster.

Anyway part of the background of the story is how the Aliens gradually over came human resistance – mostly per Mr. Clarke by a combination of waiting them out and rational discourse.

I think you can see the problem I had with this.

As part of the Alien’s efforts – they gave humanity a time machine – where – like a TV set historians could see (with some exceptions) all of earth’s human history – per Clarke this lead to a decline in religion since the truth of the origin of the great religions didn’t live up to their billing.

Never happen – not in a million years. Hell we have people who still to this very day insist that the world was created in 6 24 days and is less than 6,000 years old – which hasn’t been the scientific consensus of the day since the 1700’s – despite mounds of evidence and facts to the contrary.

And really – even if the alien time machine showed Christ dying on the cross and not coming back – remember this would be shown to us by something that looked like the devil – well known as the father of lies – that would be enough to give anybody pause. And forget Islam – there is a massive probation on showing the image of Islam’s founder – again the sense of sacrilege would over come any chance of a change.

Per Buddhism – well since most of what happened to the Buddha under the tree where he obtained enlightenment was internal – there wouldn’t be much to show anyway, just a guy sitting under a tree. No real reason to change there is there?

Anyway – getting back to the anti-wacking off book – the web site has a FAQ bit which has moments of unintentional berserk weirdness.

“I have heard that Masturbation is harmful for health and that it brings specific side effects like: impotence, seminal weakness, cancer of all types, thinning hair and hair loss, fuzzy vision, groin and testicular pain, fatigue and feeling tired all the time. What is the real truth about these alleged side-effects of Masturbation?”

Sweet savior on a stick these people are crazy as an outhouse rat. This is a list out of a 19th century tract.

Cancer of ALL types? I got nothing.

They reply thus:

“These claims are not exactly correct. As we explain in the Stop Masturbation Program, shukra is the food of the body’s hormonal and immune system. So the side effects can be anything of the above depending on the person’s current immune system strength”

Shukra is the name of a Hindu deity in charge of brightness or some such not a hormone – I assume they go into greater detail in the book which I will not buy as much as it might amuse me to use it as a prop in a video.

There is also this:

Do I need special equipment?

Huh? Like what a special spiked cage for Mr. happy (they had such things in the Victorian era). You don’t need any special equipment to jack off other than a willing right or left hand – hell you don’t even need baby oil.

I can’t get these people – at all. But I don’t get a lot of people.

In other notes – tomorrow is the PA primary and we’ll see what happens. I’d like very much for Obama to do well and finally close the deal on the nomination – but I’m afraid that won’t happen and it will drag out to the convention and the floor fight over the delegates from MI and Florida (which just happen to have Clinton delegates – because Obama didn’t run in either because the DNC said the delegates wouldn’t have a vote at the convention) which will just wreck the whole damn thing.

Had a nice weekend – had an unexpected Friday off – went to the Met saw the Gustave Courbet exhibit – (that’s his picture above – he looks a bit like Buster Keaton to me for some reason – I might use this as my blogger id pic I kind of like it). After that I walked to 59th’s though the park where New Yorkers indulged in the New Yorker’s spring worship ceremony – go to the park take as many clothes off as you can without the cops getting upset and laying on a blanket. I thought I was going to go snow-blind from the glare coming off so much exposed pale white flesh. It was a good day.

Well back to the mines.

Peace Love Snow-blind -

Debate nonsense and the Devil Girl

I did not see the debate but per some folks on the sphere who watched it (and bless them for subjecting their poor tiny brains to that gibberish) it was an atrocity with the press coming off as the maximum stupid. Obama per the conventional wisdom came off badly as he ‘sounded annoyed’ about questions about why he doesn’t wear a flag pin, why he hasn’t shot the pastor of his church and the crooked Chicago councilman, and the guy from the weather underground, with why he is such an out of touch elitist. At least they didn’t ask him why he has such a foreign sounding name – or maybe they did.

This is what the courtiers of the press are thinking about when Iraq continues to be a bloody mess, the economy is shedding gears (yesterday’s jump in the market is only a sign that nobody is more gullible than wall street – it’s also a sign of bear markets that people grasp at good news) with housing starts collapsing, the sale of new houses the one thing that has been keeping this house of cards going mired in doldrums that will take months if not years to recover from, problems with trade, jobs, a sitting president making lunatic statements about Iran (when he’s not kissing the pope’s butt – and what the hell is with that? I mean respect sure but this is overboard) and still trying to NOT do anything about climate change, along with the hideous news that the White House okayed Torture – and this is the shit that is on the minds of the reporters.

While is a truism that there isn’t much difference between the two – there are some and if these guys had done any damn homework they would have known them (especially with regard to health care – and it wouldn’t hurt to ask them about their feeling on regulation of financial companies considering McCain’s grand plan seems to be a) cut more taxes and b) let the folks that got us into this mess in the first place free reign.

Well why not – it’s not like that policy has been a real disaster – at least not for anyone important.

Anyway – before I blow a gasket and start sharpening up a pike all the time trying to decide who’s head should be stuck there –(I mean that would be a tough decision – all those people and only one head to take, better not think too much of that.) on to other matters.

Saw a few minutes last night of a old film I like very much “the loved one” which is a 1965 black comedy about death and funerals in LA – while I know now that it’s a common complaint about Hollywood from the right wing that it hates America – which it doesn’t, maybe if it thought about America for more than 30 seconds it would hate America but Hollywood thinks only about money and itself – but back in the mid 60’s a series of films came out – that if they were released to day would cause a firestorm – The Loved One, Lord Love a Duck and A Thousand Clowns – each pictures America as a horrible inhuman paranoid profoundly stupid place filled with loud dumb people and timid fools all obsessed with trivia and fame.

The very first scene in The Loved One the Male lead arrives from England where he is questioned by the security guard looking at his passport – upon learning that the lead is a poet the guard starts looking for his name in the big binder book containing the undesirables (all the time commenting on the damn beats and the male lead’s ‘Beatle haircut.) So it struck me that actually most of the 20th and 21st century we’ve been just like we are now – ignorant paranoid lunatics with only rare breaks in the madness – maybe the 20/s and the 60’s. It was a depressing thought.

Anyway the film world also notes the death of Hazel Court (pictured) who was in several British sci-fi and horror films – among the good ones – The Masque of the Red Death and The Raven and among the bad ones – The Devil Girl from mars.

She did not play the Devil Girl, she was the female lead in that clunker. In that film an alien from mars dressed like a B&D mistress and armed with what looks like a walking walk in freezer lands in Scotland to find men to take back to mars. There is a shortage of men on Mars and her mission is to take back men and have the make Martian babies with the Martian ladies.

Why Scotland – other than to keep the number in the cast down there isn’t much of a reason – I think they say the ship when off course somehow – but really why didn’t the woman just land in Florida or cancoon during spring break – she’d have had to use her walking freezer to fight them off . Of course nowadays she would have landed in Nigeria and had people apply via e-mail – ‘you have been selected to mate with Martian woman please supply us with your name address and bank account numbers so we can send you the cash prize.’

And so on – but she picks Scotland – the one place in the world where the men are more repressed and sexless than in England .

It’s weird and it’s bad and it’s slow and based on a stage play.

Well other things to do


Peace Love Devil Girls.

Beltway Chatter and our CD!

Quiet at the office today – and yet not in the mood to get anything at all done. Spring I guess. It’s bright and sunny and I want more.

I notice that after much talk about how much better Iraq is – it seems that it’s not that much better.

One of the good, if painful, things that Obama’s candidacy has revealed is the not so latent racism that lurks in the corridors of power. A GOP member of the House of Representatives said he didn’t want “that boy’s” finger on the button – which well he’s from the south they really can’t help themselves sometimes the poor dears. While this has sparked an outcry – I’m sure Obama has been called worse.

Meantime the press seems absolutely utterly convinced that the bitter comment will be forever linked with Obama. At least if they have anything to do about it. And they are surely working as hard as they can.

I can’t tell you just how insane this feels – we have a war, a hideously corrupt and lawless executive office that freely admits to spying on Americans and torturing people it doesn’t like, a tottering economy, and deep structural problems like the Climate, our country's rotting infrastructure, the pernicious effects of the increasing concentration of wealth in the upper 5% and this claptrap along with bowling is what the press talk about.

And now the bitter thing isn’t even about what Obama SAID – it’s all about a weird caricature created by the chatterers “isn’t horrible that Obama said that the heartland is bitter” they said” Yes it is horrible” “yes he has proven he is so out of touch” “yes and he bowls poorly too.”

This is they aren’t giving John McCain doughnuts and coffee.

Sometimes you just despair – and sometimes you wonder what is keeping Madam Defarge and the guillotine.

“I don’t understand why they stormed the Bastille – it’s a real mistake that the Sans-culottes have made here.”
“Yes their racialism is surely off putting to the vast majority of Frenchmen.”
“Yes I don’t understand why they hate France so – they are out of touch with the everyday wine and cheese French man.”
“It’s really Louis bashing hysteria.”
“A kind of mental condition.”
“Yes at least that’s what it seems to me. I was talking about this with my footman and he finds much of what they say far out of the mainstream.”
“Indeed. What? Oh. I understand there is a huge angry mob outside the studio so we’re going to cut to commercial and then run for out lives.”

Ah nightmares and vengeance fantasies.

Meantime Joe Lieberman said, on fucking television no less, that asking if Obama was a Marxist was a good question, and while he backed off on calling Obama a Marxist, that hasn’t stopped the rest of the chatters. Considering that Obama campaigned for Lieberman this is pretty dirty pool on Joes part but hell he’s trying to become McCain’s running mate – which I don’t think John is going to buy – even though he’s the one person in DC who makes John look young.

The CD has arrived at Bob Muir and the Enemy Below HQ’s and I’m damn impressed – I can listen to it more than once without cringing at my voice – that’s something I have to tell you.

And lord does the band sound good. Like real good – considering we did most of the recording in two days – we sound fantastic – just amazing really. Looking forward to the cd release and the gig there. We really like the Luna a lot. While we had played elsewhere before – the first Luna gig gave us a real sense of just how good this band can be and where it could go.

Need to get some stuff done.

Ms. Rigg - it's been a while.

Peace Love CDs!

An okay gig, a Shop and Monday thoughts

Had an okay gig last night – wasn’t the best we every played but we were still the best band in the house. I let myself get distracted a bit more than I should have by business affairs and that the woman running the door was a complete Jerk and nasty to boot.

We also wandered into a real no bull shit bondage outfit shop which – although amusing on some level – leather and vinyl corsets and boots - also creeped me out a bit – mostly the people running the shop – there were heavy weird damn vibes running off of them – which I guess is to be expected.

Honestly I just feel the whole bondage thing involves a heck of a lot of work to accomplish the goal – not that it’s wrong if two or more consenting adults want to get into this (and the existence of this shop shows there are more than six people into this) go for it – still it looks like a lot of effort (and I wonder about the upkeep cleaning the stuff and what not – this isn’t the kind of stuff you want your drycleaner to see.

Meantime while I wasn’t looking – Obama seems to have broken the one rule you can’t break while running for president – speak the truth. In talking about Pennsylvania he mentioned that folks there were bitter.

I’m not sure why all the hoo ha here – with survey’s showing that 81% of the population thing things are not going well, with consumer confidence at an all time low – one assumes that a few folks are going to be bitter – some maybe even mad as hell.

After news of this came out – the village went into its hysterical clutching pearls and staggering towards the fainting couch all the while shouting that Obama was an ‘elitist’ and out of touch with working class Americans.

Now most of this shouting was done by pink white men in suits who the last time they talked to someone making less than 60,000 a year was either telling the limo driver what airport they were going to or yelling at the makeup person.

I haven’t see a lot of it but there was a scene in the cable series John Adams where he has just arrived in France and after being treated like an imbecile by Ben Franklin – dines at one of the many Salons or what not in Versailles and finds himself surrounded by the cream of the French aristocracy – who look like death in their white face paint and endures a series of fatuous questions by folks who are not looking for answers but seeking to gain praise among their own for their questions.

And this is what we have now fat pink well feed men and women talking in low tones about Obama’s bitter remark this mind you in a week where the president of the united states has admitted that he authorized the torture of prisoners, where the news from Iraq got worse and the president said he was going to leave the solution to the next guy, where war drums – this time about Iran were being beaten again by the same bastards that gave us Iraq – where the economy was starting to shed jobs whole sale – this this is what the coverage was focused on – was Obama being condescending and elitist by saying folks were bitter.

I for one can understand Fox news doing this – it’s their damn job as the media wing of the gop – but it killed me to see Hilary try and run with this – it was a painful reminder of how far she has fallen – she has nothing positive to say anymore just trying to score points off of what is an invented outrage. Torture she doesn’t say a word about. This she does.

And if anything her comments about how she has never seen anybody bitter in PA came across as amazingly condescending – it had the “I see the happy peasants working in the field and I hear their songs at night and know we all hope for a better tomorrow.” It just seemed rank with narcissistic self congratulations.

I remember back at the start of this campaign – one of the first questions out of the mouth of I think Tim Russet to the assembled GOP midgets running for office was ‘how to recapture the optimism of Ronald Reagan’.

It’s this fetishism of optimism that simply boggles my mind – especially when it is used as a screen to avoid seeing the mountain of problems facing us in the coming years. It’s not an optimism that we can solve problems – it’s a denial that the problems exist in the first place.

But what really disturbs me is that after W said that yes he did authorize torture the response from these same pink folks so concerned about the feelings of poor folks was nothing. A shrug of the shoulders. One commentator writing about Chris Matthews currently the cover boy of self indulgent pundit class called Keith Oberman cynical which is jabbering nonsense – Oberman isn’t cynical he’s outraged – the cynics are the ones jabbering about bitterness and that Obama is weird because he drinks orange juice (instead of what? Gin?).

Sometimes I get the awful sense that we’re just doomed – all of us – because all of us are guilty of this atrocity either by action or silence.

Well I think that’s enough gloom for a Monday

Peace love cute kittens.

Spring Fever, My Stuff, and a Sequel

Feeling a lot o spring fever just now – it’s warm and I’m sleepy and just want to sit somewhere it’s sunny and bit warm – watch people play in the sun and doze off until it’s time for me to go home and nap – alas I won’t really be able to indulge my inner indolence much – one I’m trying to keep at the gym, two we have rehearsal Saturday and a gig Sunday and well my apt is all cluttered (and it looks like it won't be sunny either).

I really have to toss stuff – bite bullet and get rid of the vhs tapes I have – I haven’t watched one in months now – of course now that I think about it I start to get like weird panic attacks inside my head . I’m sure it’s the same for other clutter bugs – you don’t want to make a mistake tossing something so you keep it – though why you are keeping it is only not to feel that you are making a mistake tossing it. Why for me that reason is stronger than the feeling I’m making a mistake holding on to them is beyond me.

The emotion reminds me of a story my dad told – in his younger days he worked doing advertising for GE – back when GE had their own advertising agency and even radio station – this was before Jack Welsh decided that the money could be put to much better use by giving it to Jack Welsh – He was one of the first CEO’s that turned running a company into something more like an episode of supermarket scramble where you dashed about with a shopping cart stuffing as many things into the basket before your time ran out – that Jack didn’t manage to destroy GE in the process was simply because he was the first one to do this – those who came after him learned from his example.

Anyway my dad had written a sales brochure for use with a GE industrial product and by bad luck they were shipped to the wrong warehouse. When dad found out where they were he called the head of the warehouse and had the following conversation.

“So you have the brochures?”
‘Yes”
“So can you send them to X (the other warehouse)?”
“No I can’t.”
“Why not?”
‘Because then I wouldn’t have any.”
“But you’re not supposed to have any anyway they’re for someone else.”
“But if I send them there I won’t have any.”

My dad – who was never a patient man – ended the call and started going up the ladder – it took him a surprisingly long time to find someone who could tell the Warehouse guy to send the brochures to X.

The point of that pointless drivel is that I’m got a little warehouse manager like that guy in my head that worries about me tossing my VHS copy of the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (I have a DVD as well – and I think you can get this over the web as well now).

It’s sheer madness.

Speaking of which – Hobgoblins 2 is apparently done and ready for direct to video release. I really shouldn’t fuss much – with all the madness in the world that there is that Rick Sloane got money to do another film is a pretty minor outrage – of course there is the minor personal nit that I can’t get Bikini Zombies (or it’s sequel – Bikini Vampires) made – but Rick Slaone keeps making films. It’s a dark and mysterious world in many ways.

On a bad note re Iraq

Nobody is going home.

That’s the message from the White House. If you don’t get killed or wounded during this tour (15 months - not 12 like the geek said – that will only apply to troops that come into country in August and well that’s a long time from now) we’ll ship you back again until you do get killed or wounded.

It’s a pretty nasty world out there – all the more reason to nap.

Peace love Hobgbolins

Mets Win, Missing Aussie Football, real monsters and Sunshine

Well that’s better.

I’m not going to make this a Met’s blog – there are far too many good ones already out there and besides The Enemy Below and Insect Girl are passionate Yankee fans – I’m not sure if the rest even care that much about the baseball – as mad as I am for it.

I’m not sure if I really really want to get the in demand baseball package for my cable – well yeah I do –despite the fact I’m going to find myself up at 2 in the morning unwilling to go to bed until the A’s and Mariners finish the extra inning game I just stumbled onto in the 11th inning

Along the lines of sports - I kind of miss Australian league football – it used to be broadcast on the Fox Sports channel (which is now the Fox Soccer Channel so they don’t broadcast other sports like say Rugby or Australian League football – which they broadcast at 3 in the morning most of the time (live feed from Australia don’t ya know).

It’s a pretty odd game, it’s played in the winter in Australia on the cricket grounds – mostly the game consists of trying to run bouncing the ball about – punting the ball to some one on your side who then gets a chance to punt it to someone else or punt it thru the goal posts – there are two sets – one scores 6 the other wider ones score 1 – scoring tends to be pretty high – just looked at one score it was 78-122. But the real attraction of the game of course is watching guys collide in mid air trying to get the ball – for some reason I found the herky jerky stop start of the game – combined with the odd violent collision to be very relaxing when I couldn’t sleep – but as I noted Fox Soccer Channel doesn’t put these games on anymore – anymore than the rugby – which I also miss.

Well meantime in the news – it seems that torture done by the CIA was licensed and supervised by high level administration officials namely Dick Cheney, Ashcroft, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powel among others – would sign of on who to torture (at the CIA’s request it seems) and sometimes what means to use.

A few things – one the abc story tries to make this sound less horrible than it is by citing some arrests of high ranking Al Queda Operatives (one of the dozen or so number twos running around their) now the only deal here is that these folks saying this are the ones who were in charge of the torture themselves so they aren’t going to be saying it didn’t work and the are silent on a disturbingly large number of folks who were guilty of nothing but still got treated like they were Ben Ladden’s number one guy.

The other thing here is one very prominent name is missing from the list of “principles’ as they were called – yep – the president of the United States wasn’t at these meetings – either because they wanted that plausible denial bit or they just told him to go play with the pencils while they made up their mind because he’s too damn stupid (I suspect it’s a bit of both).

Monsters in expensive suits is what they are.

Meantime – the Florida legislature – in a bit to make everybody nervous as hell when they are out shopping have voted to allow employees to bring their guns to work. Remember that when shopping – the clerk making a hash out of your order may be a sullen underpaid angry clerk – but instead a sullen underpaid heavily armed angry clerk. And considering the tensions between workers and management at various big box stores I expect to be reading about fire fights between management and disgruntled Wal Mart employees in the future “I will not stock the Neal Diamond albums in the rock albums set”

Meantime in China I have read they are thinking about taking the guns away from distressed police officers and cops undergoing romantic or other personal problems. This just seems common sense. You really don’t want people in the mist of an emotional crisis to be going about heavily armed.

Speaking of which I saw that Charlton Heston died a while back – no note if a gun was pried from his cold dead fingers – sorry couldn’t resist.

It’s the first really really nice day of spring so I’m just going to stop and go outside for a bit – I think I’ve got the hook for robot Butt Sex but I need to work it a bit before I present it to the band.

Peace love writing songs in the sunlight

Bad Last Home Opener

Well there are some high level meetings or some such going on here – has made for a weird level of tension here at hq.

But that’s not what I want to write about – soooooo – off we go.

Well the Mets, in true Mets fashion managed to cock up their last home opener at Shea - to begin - the pitching wasn’t very good – especially the relief pitching – as a starter Perez was shaky but the rest were just awful – in the dreadful 7th inning they managed to go to 3-2 on something like 6 straight Phillies hitters in a row. Just god awful really.

But the hitting wasn’t much better – while David Wright managed to give two balls a ride they went to the deepest part of the Stadium and were caught – and other than Delgado’s massive home run they were suffering from what I’ve heard called “third hit blues” you know where say the first guy gets an out – then the next two singles and then well – if your team isn’t doing well it’s a pop up followed by a strike out or if they are really doing badly – a double play ball. It’s where the amzain’s seem to be stuck at this moment.

And the fielding was a bit spotty as well – what with Delgato hitting Utley in the back with a ball trying to turn a double play – (Utley probably needed a couple of aspirin after the game – he was also hit by a pitch 3 times – 4 is the record by the by) and there some passed balls as well, all of which seemed like a throwback to the Mets of the 60’s when thrown balls steadfastly refused to land in gloves on a regular basis.

In all the team played like they had spent the night swilling cough syrup – maybe they were pressing too hard maybe they had partied to much the night before – maybe well I don’t know maybe all their cycles were down on the same day – whatever the reason the result wasn’t a lot of fun for the faithful.

And the mood got sour quick in the upper deck – there were any number of fights (always a sign things are going bad on the field) that required the cops and security people to spend a lot of time running up narrow steep stairs and dealing with angry drunk people. Not fun for them I’ll tell you.

But there was even a big fight in the field level seats which was different – Most Shea fights are in the upper deck - for what seems pretty straightforward class reasons – if you can afford an field level box you’re smart enough to know that punching the obnoxious Philly fan in the face is not the right option (as tempting as it may).

All in all a pretty ugly day at the big Shea – not the ugliest however – that remains the opening day in 1995 after the end of the 1994-95 baseball strike – it was a late April night game – Shea was well over ½ empty (I even got a field level seat that year) and the mood of the crowd was that of a mean drunk at a dive bar looking for an excuse to hit someone in the mouth – I walked very carefully that night – even the normal bumping into each other that happens at games could start something like making sparks while standing in a knee deep pool of gasoline.

Not the idyllic day I had been looking for drenched in nostalgia and soft feelings but you get what you get in baseball and there is always tomorrow or next year.

Still it kind of stunk.

The new Stadium looks almost done (I’m sure there is a lot of work to do) and is quite lovely to look at. Still it’s a weird thing looking out of Shea and seeing the new Stadium right there – the old view was parking lots and chop shops - I’m oddly reminded of the Last Tom Baker Doctor Who where all during the show he was being trailed by a ghostly figure in white which in the end turned out to be the new re-generation of the Doctor himself (if you’re not a Doctor Who fan this won’t make a lick of sense but what the hell) – it’s weirdly what it felt like. I also wonder what Citi field being there is going to do the typically strong winds that swirl around Shea’s outfield (Typically they blow in – one of the things that made it a pitcher’s park).

Still busy so this will have to do. We have a show on Sunday and then we spend the rest of the time banging the drum for the CD release – more details to come.

Peace Love Opening Days

Busy, No C.O. Random Shea Stuff and Brain Bleaching

Sorry for the light blogging I’ve been busy

I’ve noticed that a large part of people’s work these days is doing reports of the work they did. It seems kind of pointless on some level – is doing a report about the work you did really work or just some sinister trick by the man to grind you down.

As a side note I don’t even think there is anybody you can call the man anymore – Well Dick Cheney but even he seems more like he’s going along with the flow of some out of control machine rather than making any real decisions – it’s the scene in Apocalypse now where there a base under constant fire where they build a bridge everyday and every night the bridge is destroyed by the Viet Cong and NVA and there is show with playboy bunnies and the entire time Martin Sheen is trying to find the C.O. until he figures out – there is no commanding officer – the whole thing is on auto pilot.

And that’s what it feels like here in the us of a these days (I’m not alone in at least thinking something is damn wrong – last survey show 81% of general public thinks things are bad and getting worse – the other 19% you don’t trust with string.) we’re just off the rails and nobody’s in charge or even thinking about steering - all we have are people fighting over who has the best seat in the hand basket.

Well that said – we have rehearsal Sunday and then another gig the next Sunday the 13th – it’s strange even when I was solo I’d always try and have a gig on or near April 15th for obvious reasons, glad I’m keeping up the tradition.

Opening day will soon be upon us – The Mets opening day that is – we’ll see what the year holds – Pedro getting hurt sure as heck didn’t help but well Santana is going to be a big help – provided he doesn’t’ get hurt and last years melt down is well last years melt down – Atlanta seems to be the hip pick these days but their pitching staff is even more brittle than the mets – heck 3 games in and their bullpen was overworked – not a good sign.

Going to opening day yes – again – it’s like my 22nd opening day and it’ll be the last one at Shea Stadium – it was never a ball park the people loved like say Wrigley or Yankee Stadium or Fenway or Ebbets field - it was a place you went to see the Mets – constructed in the early 1960’s it was one of the dual use stadiums that were popular at that time - the Jets until the 1980’s called Shea home as well – If you ever wondered why you were sitting on a corner of a field level seat when you were looking in at home plate from Shea – that’s why – at one time the lower field level seats were on rollers and they would be moved to allow a football field to fit more comfortably into Shea. You can look it up – until the Giants moved to Jersey they played their games at Yankee Stadium whose dimensions required one end zone to be only Nine Yards deep - ah the old days yes?

I take my eye off the news for a minute and I miss things like the head of Formula One racing has been caught – on tape – with hookers while dressed as a Nazi playing ‘concentration camp games’ I don’t know what the hell that is but I feel the need to bleach my brain after reading that. It’s the kind of thing you read in fiction – really who the hell goes that far over the top in pursuit of getting one’s rocks off? Again it isn’t about sex really – if he wanted to get laid there are far far simpler ways to do that – it’s power again. Pretty damn sick as well – ugh more bleach for the brain.

Meantime – to nobody’s real surprise our trained Iraqi forces turned out to be less effective, far less effective than advertise. Once again we read that about 1,000 Iraqi troops and Policemen simply quit rather than join in the attack – taking their weapons with them mind you as well.

Great

Meantime – meantime – it looks like we’re going to have a nasty floor fight for accreditation of the Michigan and Florida Delegates – Hilary’s side is saying this is allow the votes of the people there to be heard – especially since the only pledged delegates from either state are hers. I’m beginning to really really dislike her and her tactics. It’s cheap and underhanded and god haven’t we had enough all of us?

Anyway back to the making of the lists of things I have lists of.

Mets girl drawn by Rob Ullman.

Peace Love where’s the C.O?

A Rut, A Dull Phantom, Random Notes and Airbrushed nipples

In bit of a rut – need to go or do something different with myself – I’m just working, going home watching something and going to bed – my mind is starting to remind me of a bored panther pacing it’s too small cage – which is not good. So I need to break out a bit - still this line of dialogue from the old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip comes to mind

Hobbes: “well do what comes naturally.”
Calvin: “Every time I do that I get sent to the principle's office”

Watch/fell asleep to The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues which is yet another in these long list of nothing films made to have something on the screen before the main picture came on at the drive in. As best I can remember – and again I did doze off – an older scientist has discovered some kind of weird deposit of Uranium offshore of some oceanographic institute – which consists of as far as we can tell – The Secretary’s office, the older Scientist secret lab of bad stuff and the wall of spear guns – the wall of spear guns was damn odd – unless a lot of people went spear fishing at lunch or something – then I could see having them that handy other wise it made not sense.

The rather small cast includes the Scientist’s lovely daughter – The male lead (also a scientist also played by Kent Taylor of the Blood Island Films) the Federal agent, the Professor’s sinister assistant, the blonde female spy, the Sheriff and the Janitor – there are some folks who’s main job is to get killed by the Phantom – who is a pretty stupid looking monster who hangs about the radiation source and kills anybody who comes to close by boat.

And it looks like the town only has the one boat. A rowboat no less. Where very very very white people – who really just glow – get in the boat with scuba gear and then wrestle with the monster – or some such.

Like a lot of these films not much happens for long stretches of time – the Scientist (who discovered the radiation source and then used it to make the monster) talks in vague weird generalities about the claws of science (which boiled and dipped in melted butter might be quite good – but just about anything broiled and dipped in melted butter is pretty damn good) grabbing him and not letting him go or the price that must be paid for progress. Nobody finds this kind of talk suspicious as the bodies (and the one boat) keep washing up on shore.

Meantime the Fed, the Male Lead and the Sheriff are trying to solve the mysteries of the bodies – (The Male lead also spends his time chatting up the Scientist’s daughter so he’s got a full plate).

And then there is the Scientist’s sinister assistant George who has made a deal with the blonde lady spy. He spends most of his time lurking about in the bushes near the beach spear gun in head (taken from the college’s ‘wall o spear guns’) he takes a pot shot at the Male lead and the fed and then later he kills the secretary (for no real reason that anybody can understand expect to toss a red herring into the mix)

In the end – the elder Scientist (after a ship blows up – man takes a lot of convincing) decides that maybe having a highly dangerous radiation source guarded by a mutated monster close by is not in the community’s best interest and goes to blow it up and in the you could see it coming from the beginning of the film ironic twist the Scientist is killed by his creation and then the stuff blows up – while the fed, the Male lead and the Scientist’s daughter look on from the beach. (Both guys are wearing suits which considering their unbearable whiteness when they were in bathing suits is a blessing) and the Male lead gives the ‘he tampered with things man was not meant to know” speech as the credits start to roll.

At least I think that is what happened as noted I did nod out a couple of times.

Overall not much to justify watching the damn film in the first place – the monster looks pretty damn goofy but he’s not on stage enough and he doesn’t really do much except over turn the same small row boat about 6 times.

Random Neural Firings:

The recently released John Yoo memo that justified torture is among the most appalling things ever issued by the United States Government (and by extension us) we stand revealed as a thug nation – not that they didn’t know – the White House tried to keep this memo secret not because of security concerns but because it’s in their eyes embarrassing – it’s not embarrassing it’s horrific but they have no souls.

Meantime in an unrelated story kind of – Obama went bowling in PA and some folks don’t think he looked manly enough doing it. Why is anybody talking like this allowed anywhere near a microphone? We’ve already see the damage done by the press’s obsession with some kind of manliness test – we got W who can bench press more than I can but has been, per any objective measure a total fucking disaster. And we’re doing this again?

And what the hell is Lieberman doing hanging around with McCain all the time? And what seems to be happening is that he’s picking up McCain’s mistakes – recently talking about Al_Quedia in Iran – which is like Ian Paisley joining the Jesuits – not going to happen, is not happening and never will happen.

The recent events in Iraq proved a) we’re not in charge of anything there b) Iran is. Which alas proves that the country that won the US/Iraq war was Iran.

And lastly proving America is simply insane – a poster for some Wrestling show was put up in Orlando – a big one. But there was something odd about the Wrestlers – somebody had airbrushed the nipples. Apparently someone in the Orlando city government has told the wresting folks that they didn’t want the posters to be too proactive and I presume the poster folks in a sprit of better safe than sorry when dealing with lunatics had the wrestler’s nipples covered up - not that they thought the sight would send Orlandoans into a frenzy of desire but knowing there are people out there who live to be offended and make trouble.

The world thinks were a band of heavily armed lunatics – and can you blame them?

Peace, Love. Small row boats

Not Everybody Thinks We're Great

Bound to happen the odd bad gig – it was just a quick show up at an open mike/showcase deal at (redacted by suggestion of people who are smarter than me – not wanting to burn bridges – there is a part of me that rather enjoys the sight of a bridge merrily burning away – so much so that I will at times make the lame joke “we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”)

However upon later review - I can name some names – the 507 bar in Brooklyn – It’s a nice looking little place where we saw the only other comedy rock band in New York as per CD baby – and during that time the woman behind the bar mention a kind of showcase they were doing Sunday – and we decided what the heck – we need the exposure. It wasn’t going to be a formal gig no ads and the like since we have the gig on the 13th just The Enemy Below and me doing some older songs old school – just the two of us.

Anyway things took a turn for the huh as the evening wore on - there were too very fine music acts on first – they played for a bit and then the trouble started.

I’m not sure who this clown was but – If you going to be the MC of something well have an idea of what you want to say – at first he was kind of amusing but then well I think he started to free associate in a kind of Freud/Jungian way – and his resentment at growing up not a rich kid started to show along with I think a trouble romantic history – he made a couple of funny jokes about masturbation and dildoes and the like but then started snarling something like ‘there’s no need for you to cheat on your man get a dildo” it wasn’t a joke there was a lot of anger and pain in there enough to make him pretty off putting.

So then after the two good acts we had some kind of weird folk singer who – due to the microphone level (more on this later) we couldn’t hear a word she was singing – which may or may not have been a good thing but you know performances guys – after that we were supposed to go up and play for our 15 minutes of fame – and well first some one grabbed the weird folk singers guitar (and I’m sorry but I didn’t catch her name so all I have is weird folk singer) and sang well as about a pointless a song as you can come up with – I think it was a love or not in love with you song but for the life of me I couldn’t tell – he seemed to be praising a woman but for all I know if could have been his stock portfolio (not likely being what the market’s been doing lately but ….)

Anyway after that the MC got back up again and for what seemed a small eternity talked about his hard childhood. Now I remember reading years ago that one comedian said that the one crucial thing anyone who wanted to be a comedian had to have and that was an unhappy childhood. This part our MC managed to have covered. However he seemed to have not understood the crucial distinction between venting and making a funny – for example he talked about how all the rich kids got Starter Jackets (there was a fad a while ago that I missed) but he didn’t get his until years later. What you do is say something like: “I am the Lizard King” no sorry wait a second – okay here something like “remember when Starter Jackets were big (wait for applause) back then in my school all the rich kids had them. We couldn’t afford a starter jacket – I had to settle for the benchwarmer t-shirt.”

Okay now it’s not that funny – but at least it’s an attempt to make fucking joke – not the lashing out that was taking place on the stage – and what it was doing to the audience – there were more than a few on-my-god-is-that-the-time looks at watches and cell phones (and it’s so easy to fake a cell phone call these days you know?) before scrambling out of the bar as quickly as the could without running.

So we ended up waiting guitars in hand for this guy to finish what I started to call ‘his therapy session” (The enemy Below didn’t like me saying that – and I can understand – I am not always a very nice person and sometimes I really don’t care what other people are thinking – esp when I’m a little chessed off. Which I admit I was.

Anyway finally the other MC reminded the guy ranting on the stage that there were other people going to play – he mercifully didn’t mispronounce my name – which most folks do when the first see it but forgot the enemy below.

Than we had to get another mike up – which took a bit time – by which point nobody knew who or what was going on. And then we started up – we didn’t plug in but that was okay since when the creepy folk singer sang plugged in we couldn’t hear her vocals.

What I didn’t know was that as far as the venue was concerned that was a feature not a bug as the instant I hit the punch line of Sex with Me – somebody turned my mike down so that the only way I could be heard was to bellow everything – which took away from the subtle interplay or just the simple dynamics of the soft set up louder punch line.

But we just shrugged our shoulders and carried on – I didn’t think people were hearing us because we didn’t have any of those ‘did he just say that’ moments we usually get either that or they didn’t think we were funny.

Which always remains a possibility – what someone thinks is hysterical won’t register at all with someone else. I remember popping the DVD of “A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum” to play for my cousin figuring he’d find it as amusing as I do – it’s a long time favorite of mine – over the top yes but with Zero Mostel Phil Slivers and Jack Gilford in the cast how could you not laugh?

Well my cousin didn’t – not even a smile – finally after ½ hour in when the Husband makes the joke about his Mother in law “102 years old and not a single organ in working condition” which didn’t get a smile I switched it off. It was an object lesson on how personal humor can be.

But that really wasn’t the case here as we ended by doing someone else – the two young women to our right who could hear us loved the song (a lot more women like it than guys we’ve found over the years) and frankly after 2 years we have a decent grasp on what works and what doesn’t on stage okay?

And then we were cut off by the MC of the MC’s saying it was 15 minutes.

Only problem was that it wasn’t 15 minutes – we had done 4 songs – the longest of which is 3 maybe 4 minutes - but we had cut the solo on that since nobody was paying any attention anyway.

Again we’ve been doing this long enough to know 15 minutes – to sum up – Sex with Me is 2 minutes long, No promotion is 3, Rat Dog was 2 and Someone else was maybe 3:30

11 minutes – at the most – but we were cut - normally in things like this you get signaled that you have one song left. But that was simply in keeping with the strange insider chubbiness frat boy BS that was this place at this time.

So we packed our cares and woe without them getting to hear Stacy but considering the acoustics they wouldn’t have heard Stacy anyway so fuck them – went to the bar next door for drink and decided that the day after the ice melts in hell is when we do something like that again there.

Meantime – we have a gig at the Annex on the 13th and we’re going to go back to Kenny’s Castaways when they have their open band night – and this time we’re going to take the whole crew (or as many as can come) and see what happens there. Wouldn’t mind playing a gig at Kenny’s’ nice space and the food is pretty good too.

One last note – I think it was Reagan who got the bright idea of coming out to the mound to throw out the first pitch but can we stop this please? You’re the president of the United States you’re already the most important person there (except when the game starts) is your ego in such a need of feeding that you have to stand on mound as well? Give it a rest – toss the ball in from the box seat like everybody else - FDR, JFK Ike et al. And they didn’t have to worry about looking stupid by not reaching the mound either.

And re opening day – not bad for the mets – some sqwaked about how weak the Marlins were and that it wasn’t a fair test for the Santana but 1) you pitch the games as the come and 2) you want to contend the first thing you have to do is beat the weaker teams – a lot.

Well enough a win to start the season can never hurt

Peace love Play Ball!