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Friday, November 01, 2002 ( 11/01/2002 10:05:00 AM ) Bill S. “YOU AIN’T GO FRIENDS ON THE LEFT: YOU’RE RIGHT! YOU AIN’T . . .” I’m curiously following the recently initiated anti-war-w./-Iraq blog, Stand Down, not just for the arguments but because blogmaster Max Sawicky is touting it as a collective of left and right-leaning writers whose main slab of common ground is the belief that this proposed war’s a foolhardy enterprise. It’ll be interesting to watch how long this coalition stays intact. (Insert joking ref to Israeli govt. here. . .) # | Thursday, October 31, 2002 ( 10/31/2002 04:27:00 AM ) Bill S. GORIEST ISSUE EVER! – Ahead of the holiday, Bongo Comics released its eighth annual issue of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror – and unlike this year’s TV Treehouse, you don’t have to wait ‘til after Halloween to enjoy it. Over the years, this annual anthology has pulled a variety of comic writers & artists from outside the usual pool of Bongo regulars. The offerings may be variable (much like the television anthology). But you can usually see the comic folk having fun with ‘em – which can be plenty entertaining by itself. This year’s book has a particularly solid lineup, however: Ty Templeton and Scott Shaw! both turn in strong comic tales (I’d give the edge to Templeton), while Hilary Barta along with Gail Simon and Jill Thompson offer poetic pieces that are inventively rendered but suffer from sporadic awkward scansion. (Sorry, the former English teacher in me is coming out.) Neither piece is as lame as the TV series’ version of “The Raven,” though. As a bonus, the Matt Groening/Bill Morrison cover is a tribute to Bert I. Gordon’s grade-z giant flick War of the Colossal Beast. Now, that's Really and Truly Frightening. . . # | Wednesday, October 30, 2002 ( 10/30/2002 09:57:00 AM ) Bill S. WHAT MAKES JACK RUN? – You can tell it’s gonna be a rough day for Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) from the opening sequence. Midnight in South Korea, and we’re coming on the end of a protracted electroshock torture/interrogation: the victim has plastic baggies on his bare where it looks like melted toe jam has pooled. When he gives out a final essential piece of info (“It’s today!”), we camera over to some grim lookin' white guys sitting outside the interrogation room. One of ‘em sez it’s time to phone the president. These, you quickly realize, are the Good Guys. Meanwhile, it’s 8:00 a.m. in West Coast America, and former assassination target/current president David Palmer (Dennis Hasbert) is out fly fishing with his son. Last season’s Hillarie Macbeth, Sherry Palmer, is temporarily out of the picture. Which right away tells you how enlightened the country has grown: not only is it ready to elect a black president, it's elected one who is separated from his wife. Palmer gets word from his weaselly underling (Timothy Carhart) that a fundamentalist terrorist group called Second Wave has brought a nuclear weapon into L.A. They plan to detonate said device within the next (you guessed it) twenty-four hours. Paging Jack Bauer! In the year since his marathon sprint against evil Serbs, Jack has quit the Counter Terrorist Unit and apparently devoted most of his time to growing an Al Gore beard and moping. Periodically, he opens a drawer, pushing his gun aside to pull out a family photo and gaze at the image of his dead wife & estranged daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert). When men lose their spouses in stuff like this, they mourn forever a la Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon loony; when women do, they’re like Kim Delaney’s character in C.S.I.: Miami. Three months to grieve than it’s back to business. Daughter Kim, while still grieving, has also done some maturing: from last year’s petulant party girl to the “best nanny ever” for a well-to-do L.A. family. Things aren’t entirely rosy for our gal, though. Very quickly (the instant he tells Kim she has a “nice body” once his wife has stepped out of the room) we learn that corporate Dad is an abusive scuzzwad. By the end of the ep, we know Kim’ll once more be on the run in the doom-laden city. The timing seems more contrived (last season’s Kim-in-peril plot tied into the Big Baddy’s plans, after all), but perhaps we're missing something. Jack gets coaxed back to CTU, which now is run by former rival George Mason w./ one of Roseanne’s kids sitting in on the meetings. One look at the scruffy Bauer, and Mason is ready to toss this burnt-out case out on his ass. But NSA (and the president) want Jack because he has prior connections to Second Wave. When our hero hears of the nuclear threat, his first impulse is to phone and tell his daughter to skeedaddle. But since much of this show’s suspense is predicated on missed or misunderstood communications, she naturally doesn’t listen to him. So much for the returnees: yet another concurrent subplot involves an Angeleno family planning a wedding. Sister of the bride Kate (Sarah Wynter) has been looking suspiciously at her imminent brother-in-law, a Middle Easterner named Reza. Turns out said old-fashioned boy may have ties to a terrorist organization. Is Kate being xenophobic or does she have reason to worry? Reza is marrying the boss’ daughter, so should we also be suspicious of Kate’s widower father? It’s a mess, alright, and we can happily look forward to things getting messier. CTU mole Nina, for instance, has yet to make an appearance, though we’re promised one, while you just know that president Palmer’s great bitch ex(?)-wife (Penny Johnson Jerald) will be back gumming up the works. Wanna bet she’s connected somehow to that unctuous aide Eric? Sutherland’s Jack is grimmer and even quicker-on-the-draw than he was before: faced with a smirking pedophile/murderer with ties to an imprisoned terrorist, Bauer doesn’t bother to question him, just pulls out his gun and shoots the bastard. When Mason protests, Bauer sneeringly declares that the CTU head is afraid to get dirty, is unwilling to do what needs to be done. (Mason, perhaps recalling that Jack tasered him last season, doesn’t reply.) Clearly, Bauer’s meant to be an exemplar of tough, take-no-prisoners heroism. A model for the War on Terrorism. On the basis of the season debut, the second year of 24 can’t help but suffer in comparison to its first: the need to place its time sensitive crisis in L.A. for the second time, for instance, sure smacks of convenience. (What? No one wants to bomb Chicago?) Still, for all its credulity-stretching construction and need to pace each “real time” ep with fresh cliff-hanging crises, the show remains unique in its movie-like capacity to pull you with its harried characters. Don’t know how they’re gonna manage to carry this off a third season, but this year, I suspect the series is covered. Last night’s premiere was presented around a dubious network decision. Sponsored “interruption free” by Ford, who presented a lengthy two-part commercial on the front and back ends, the ep ran straight. This wreaked havoc with the show’s so-called “real time” construction, since episodes are timed to take commercial breaks into account. As a result, our “real time” drama ended about seven minutes before it should’ve. Bet this really stressed any OCD viewers in the audience. But, then, sustaining audience anxiety is what it's all about. NOTE: For another take on the season premiere, check out Eric & Dawn Olsen's piece at Blogcritics. # | Tuesday, October 29, 2002 ( 10/29/2002 11:13:00 AM ) Bill S. “DARKNESS AIN’T MY FRIEND” – Some bands sound like fall. Which is why this writer took his cassette tapes of Aussie alt rockers the Go-Betweens' Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane on separate days this weekend to the dog park. Both tapes were perfectly suited to walks on the kind of chilly, overhung days I was facing. Over its span as a group, the Go-Betweens have had several lineups: their peak is the one repped by these two elpees, with Amanda Brown adding suitably gloomy/beautiful violin and more to guitarist/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan’s takes on bruised romance. As a singer, Forster is the type of moaner who’ll occasionally get you wondering if the Walkman hasn’t stretched your tape: not as extreme as legendary suicide Ian Curtis, perhaps, but still plenty dour. McLennan comes across a trace lighter, but only until you start listening to his lyrics. Lovers Lane is the most pop-tinged album from the group to date (that’s including its recent fine reunion disc done in collaboration w./ members of Sleater-Kinney), so you’ve gotta figure it’s my favorite. In songs like “Love Goes On!,” “Streets of Your Town,” “Was There Anything I Could Do?” the band pulls the tension between arty lyricism and accessible memorable songcraft tauter than you’d think feasible – and makes it work. Melancholy, always aware of the surrounding darkness, yet cautiously optimistic, the Go-Betweens do baroque rock for an audience that knows how the rock fantasy can betray you but wants to tentatively give into it, anyway. Like I noted: a great fall soundtrack. # | ( 10/29/2002 09:26:00 AM ) Bill S. “HOLD ON TIGHT TO YER DREAMS . . .” – A week and half ago, I suspended caffeine drinking for a while: like a med holiday for someone on psychotropic drugs, this is something I periodically feel the need to do. Caffeine is my drug of choice. Never really did tobacco; gave up drinking and more counter-cultural mood enhancers fifteen-plus years ago: I’d taken a position of responsibility at work that meant I was on-call 24/7, and I couldn’t afford to be, well, indisposed. But caffeine, now, that’s something else again. When I got paged in the middle of the night (a monthly occurrence back then), first thing I’d grab after pulling on my pants was a can of Mountain Dew. But every once in a while – when the tolerance has climbed to a level where five or six cups of joe in the work day are insufficient, when I find myself getting snappier and less patient with co-workers and friends, when I find myself waking up in the middle of the night to worry about money – I feel the need to go cold turkey. Doesn’t stop those late night angst binges, but it helps with everything else. First night of this cleansing process was a bear, of course. I had a major headache by prime time that just wouldn’t quit. When I woke the next a.m., I found I still had it, only it’d eased in intensity. By the end of the second day, it was thankfully gone, though I still vaguely felt like I was on the verge of a serious cold. At work, I’m a major coffee guzzler: sitting at the computer or out in the field, I tend to reach for the Dunkin’ Donuts mug regularly. Currently it’s decaf, but I know it’s only a matter of time before I return to the leaded stuff. Some addictions just ain’t worth abandoning altogether. I enjoy the taste of coffee – with some sort of whitener and real sugar. I’m by no means a coffee snob: I can drink Folger’s or Maxwell House just as readily as I can a coffee house’s private blend. I agree with Bill Griffith, who once in a “Zippy” strip basically described Starbucks as MacDonald’s for the pretentious. But since I’ve also been known to devour a Big Mac, that critique isn’t as damning for me as it might be for someone else. Bottom line: I like the lowly coffee bean no matter how it’s packaged. Excuse me, while I go for another cuppa decaf. # | Monday, October 28, 2002 ( 10/28/2002 04:32:00 AM ) Bill S. DEM OLD DEBBIL DEMONSTRATIONS – Lotsa coverage and commentary on the new crop of anti-war demonstrations in both the media and blogland, but you should probably be wary of spending too much time analyzing all the speechifying. Having spent part of my wasted youth covering both left and right demonstrations, I can say it’s pointless getting too bent-out-of-shape by the arguments being made during demo displays. Big crowds equal slogan politics: emotion-laden appeals to the already converted and simplistic sound bites. Plus, the people look goofy. It’s one of the reasons I’ve also given up watching political conventions. Spend too long watching the teeming cavalcade of true believers in any party, and you’re likely to swear off voting for life. It’s great to be in a mass of folks who pretty much agree with you; it’s depressing as hell to watch that selfsame group from afar. It’s like seeing a bunch of teenaged boys chest-thumping at the mall; watch too long, and you’ll find yourself despairing for the future of humanity. As for this month’s anti-war demos: there remain, as far as I can see, good arguments against just storming into Iraq (some of ‘em made by our own intelligence community). But you’re probably not gonna hear them in a setting where volume and quickly parsed ideas are more important than rigorous debate. Demos are first and foremost about attendance figures (which is why the media’ll frequently underestimate the actual stats for controversial ones). In a very practical way, what’s said is a lot less important than the measurable display of a large number of citizens in opposition to government policy. # | Sunday, October 27, 2002 ( 10/27/2002 08:27:00 AM ) Bill S. 13, COUNT ‘EM, 13! – Watched the remake of Thirteen Ghosts on HBO last night: a short and efficient li’l film without much in the way of, how you say, scares. But you could also say the same about the William Castle 3-D cheapie from which it was derived. One good grisly effect (featuring a lawyer who has the misfortune to be caught between a swiftly sliding glass door) can’t compensate for a script that doesn’t even bother to give all the eponymous spirits their own distinguishing back stories. (So what is the deal with that big grown-up baby, anyway?) Lots of the lingering shots of the big glass haunted house where father Tony Shaloub and family are trapped, though. At one point I found myself imagining how Adrian Monk'd be driven to distraction by all the smudgeable glass walls. One other noteworthy dif' between the new 13 and its remake: where the first version gave us a villainous lawyer whose duplicity isn’t revealed until the flick’s climax, the remake lets us know the guy is a slimewad from the start. The original was released in the era of Perry Mason, so scripter Robb White could get away with fooling us into thinking that our young legal eagle (played by Martin Milner long before Adam 12) was on the up-and-up. Nowadays, we’re conditioned to suspect lawyers reflexively. . . # | ( 10/27/2002 06:53:00 AM ) Bill S. BOOMERLY REMINISCENCE DEPARTMENT – Reading about the fiftieth anniversary of Mad was a readymade spark for my deadly nostalgic tendencies. I discovered the magazine Mad in my late elementary school years: several guys in my Vernon, Connecticut neighborhood were avid comic book readers, so it was preordained we’d eventually glom onto it. First issue we read and passed around contained a parody of “West Side Story” entitled “East Side Story.” My parents were Broadway musical lovers (they played as many soundtracks as they could fit in an afternoon every Sunday), so I immediately seized on that article. It was a satire of the U.N. and international tensions with Russia. Didn’t understand most of the jokes (as a kid, all I knew about then-premier Nikita Kruschev was that he was Bad). But I liked the way I could sing the parody lyrics to Bernstein’s music. Mad became an instant sensation among my crowd, but at first I wasn't allowed to openly bring a copy of the mag into the house. My folks were the type who checked the “Catholic Legion of Decency” listings before letting me or my sister go to a movie, so you can bet they wanted to check out this magazine before letting me buy it. Scanning through an issue in the drugstore, my father quickly pronounced it “dirty” and unsuited for his impressionable son. It was nearly two years before I could openly read the mag around my parents. My folks finally lifted the ban as a reward for getting a good grade in fifth grade Penmanship (poor handwriting had long been my one big academic failing): at the end of the school year I’d lifted my grade from a “D” (told ya it was bad) to a “C+.” First thing I did after I proudly brought home that report card (to heck with those “A’s” in English, Math and Social Studies – I got a passing grade in Penmanship!) was remind my folks about their promise to let me buy Mad. Over the next few days I carefully brought out all the copies of the magazine – and paperback reprints – I’d been hiding in my bedroom. Had all of the early Ballantine pbs (now being reprinted in $9.95 trade editions) stuffed in the space behind my dresser drawers; the magazines were under the dresser and bed. Years later, I asked Mom if she ever knew about my secret cache. She was nice enough to let me hold onto my illusions, though I suspect, considering what a compulsive cleaner she was, she’d most likely found one of the hidden mags, checked it out for herself and decided that it all wasn’t such a big deal. In my crowd, the Ballantine (The Mad Reader, Mad Strikes Back, et al) reprints of the Kurtzman comic book Mad were the hot ticket items. We’d read the word balloons of our favorite stories out loud and laugh at ‘em, giggling as much at their comic rhythm as their content. With the exception of radio parodies like “The Shadow,” Kurtzman’s comic was ridiculing things we knew (Superman, Mickey Mouse), while some of the points that magazine Mad was making remained obscure. Some of our confusion would clear as we grew more aware of current events, but some of it remained because we were looking for meaning where it didn’t exist. When artist Antonio Prohias first appeared in the mag, editor Al Feldstein made a big deal about Prohias being a Cuban exile for a series of anti-Castro cartoons. We combed his “Spy Vs. Spy” strip for some semblance of anti-communist sentiment, but we never found it. If it was there, it remained part of some private symbolism known only to the artist. I followed Mad through junior high and into high school. But by the time I was ready to graduate for college, the magazine had lost most of its relevance for me. It was 1968, and I’d already discovered such Kurtzman offspring as Gilbert (Wonder Wart Hog) Shelton in the pages of Help! and sundry car magazines. The “usual gang of idiots” was about to be supplanted by a group of cartoonists at least twenty years younger and more attuned to the times: a year before Bob Crumb had put out his first Mad-inspired head comic, Zap, and once I caught up with that, there was no turning back. Bought an occasional Don Martin paperback, but that was it. That “dirty” magazine that I’d once hidden ‘neath my bed was nuthin’ compared to what the undergrounders were about to send forth. Still, they probably wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t grown up on Mad. Michele Catalano, writing about the anniversary on Blogcritics, states that Mad taught her satire and sarcasm. The latter is easy for boys of a certain age – but at its best, the mag gave us targets to direct our native inbred mockery: toward the phony, cliché and illogical. Many of us most likely would’ve gotten there on our own in time. The triumph of Mad was that it taught us where to aim our scorn & skepticism several years ahead of schedule. # | |
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