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Wednesday, October 06, 2004 ( 10/06/2004 02:13:00 PM ) Bill S. "WE'RE ALL GONNA GET LAID!" – So now Rodney Dangerfield has passed away, dead at 82 of a heart attack. I liked the man in his better movie comedies (Caddyshack, from whence came the memorable closing quote above; and Back to School) as well as his mordantly apt stunt casting in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers – even if I wasn't that big a fan of his stand-up, which was too frequently one-note and redundant. (His optimal format was probably a short block of time on a variety show like Ed Sullivan.) Still, the man's HBO shows from Dangerfield's were the first place that I recall seeing a lot of then-young stand-ups (Tim Allen, Sam Kinison, Rita Rudner . . .), who were probably helped by having the Dangerfield imprimatur attached to 'em. And, as a former English major who once was Hot for Teacher, I really really liked his scenes with Sally Kellerman in Back to School. . . # | ( 10/06/2004 08:24:00 AM ) Bill S. "YOU'RE EITHER AN UNTOUCHABLE SAINT. . .OR VAMPIRELLA!" – The newest issue of Amazing Spider-Man's been getting loads of fannish flak over the past week – as late & former kinda nice girl Gwen Stacy has been handed a new dark Secret Past. (Or has she? . . .) I'm personally suspending judgment on this hearsay story 'til scripter JMS concludes the full arc, but that didn't keep me from chortling over Tim O'Neil's sardonically telling Pop Culture Shock remix of AS-M #512. # | Tuesday, October 05, 2004 ( 10/05/2004 09:42:00 AM ) Bill S. THE LADY IN THE WHITE, THEN BLACK, BRA – Remembering her audience stunning role in one of my favorite movies of all time (Hitchcock's Psycho), I'm saddened to read about the death of Janet Leigh. Looking back over her filmography this a.m., I was happily reminded of how many other movies that I love feature Leigh performances: the original Manchurian Candidate, Touch of Evil, Pete Kelly's Blues, The Fog, even the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie. A classy grown-up American movie actress: with each year, they seem rarer and rarer. . . # | ( 10/05/2004 09:30:00 AM ) Bill S. BLANKNESS ABIDES – For some strange reason neither the spiffy Pixel Décor purple background gif nor the Gemini Giant photo in my sidebar are consistently showing up today. Don't know the cause for this weirdness, except I'm fairly certain it's not Blogger's fault this time. . . # | ( 10/05/2004 07:37:00 AM ) Bill S.  "THE LAUGHS COME HARD IN AULD LANG SYNE" – Of all the improbable stories in the improbable history of pop music, the history of Brian Wilson's SMiLE remains unique. Originally begun in 1966 when Wilson was chief-cook-&-bottle-washer for the Beach Boys, SMiLE was long considered one of pop-rock's great crash 'n' burns. A concept album built upon the studio wizardry and proto-hippie worldview that had yielded one of the band's biggest hit singles, "Good Vibrations," SMiLE was created in collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, an eccentric L.A. music figure known for crafting alternately whimsical and opaque Joyce Lite lyrics, as a song cycle with thematically connected themes and leitmotifs. A daring move for a band that was primarily thought of a singles machine: Sgt. Pepper had yet to hit the stores, so it's hardly surprising that the rest of the band didn't know what to make of this musical soufflé. Unsupported by his family (the Beach Boys being largely a family act), overindulging in drugs, Wilson ultimately suffered a breakdown, scuttling the project.In an attempt to salvage things, an album filled with "comedy" cuts and underproduced dribs of SMiLE material was released as Smiley Smile, with only one full Parks/Wilson collaboration, "Heroes And Villains," on the platter. Over the years, other snippets of the aborted work would appear in Beach Boys records, rarely as full tracks ("Surf's Up" being the notable exception), more often as part of other songs (as when backing tracks for SMiLE's "In Blue Hawaii" were used for Sunflower's "Cool Cool Water"). Occasionally, hints of what might've been surfaced on bootlegs and as CD bonus cuts – a more extended version of "Heroes And Villains" was attached to Capitol's two-fer reissue of Smiley Smile/Wild Honey, for instance – but for many hard-core Beach Boys fans, endlessly replaying their old albums and sighing about lost chances, the uncompleted SMiLE was the Great Abandoned Album. Now, of course, Brian – away from his old group – has revived his work, with the help of Parks and fannish power poppers like the Wondermints. Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (Nonesuch) the cover cheerily announces, and, surprisingly enough, the guy actually delivers on his promise. From its opening acapella sighs to its trailing Theremin, SMiLE shows us what was in the "young and often spring" man's mind. The results are everything that his admirers would hope to hear. The disc opens with "Our Prayer/Gee," which blends one of Brian's trademark wordless vocal harmonies with the Crows' doo-wop classic "Gee" (other clipped bits of Americana songwritery that'll appear: "You Are My Sunshine" and "I Wanna Be Around"), then segues into the extended version of "Heroes And Villains." With the help of musicians that he'd earlier assembled for a concert tour of a finished Beach Boys classic (Pet Sounds), Wilson effectively reinvigorates his old band's sound, while, placed in their original context, Parks' lyrics achieve their own quirky flow. (Separately settled on a disc like Surf's Up, surrounded by the rest of the group's more plain-spoken lyrics, they stuck out like a geek wallflower at the high school prom.) If at times, Brian's vocals betray a hint of psychotropic slurriness, this only adds to the whole work's evocativeness and helps to sell the songs. When Wilson sings about a ruined life momentarily lifted by song and the sight of playing children, you believe him. The album as a whole is structured as three movements: the first, which includes "Heroes and Villains," conjures up the early California frontier (with a nod toward blue Hawaii) and the atrocities committed in the name of American expansionism ("Look what you’ve done to the Church of the American Indian"); the second, which opens with the previously underdone "Wonderful" and caps with "Surf's Up," evokes childhood innocence and the adult quest for redemption ("Come about hard and join the young and often spring you gave") while the third section shows Old Man Wilson as he attempts to build a healthy life for himself within the 60's counter-culture. (That it ended in failure only adds to the piquancy.) The last ends with a slightly more deliberate version of "Good Vibrations," which has some of the single's more physical lyrics ("The way the sunlight plays upon her hair") replaced by more spiritual ones ("And she's already workin' on my brain.") In between, composer and producer Wilson continually throws aural surprises at the listener: pennywhistles and tiny jokes (as when he follows the classic torch line "I want to be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart" with the sound of tools being used in a workshop); front porch instrumentation and hints of Tin Pan Alley; gorgeous harmonies, tempo shifts and an instrumental meant to conjure up the Great Chicago Fire. This last reportedly so freaked a hash-smoking Brian back in the 60's that he was convinced his recording had sparked a series of California brush fires. (A fraction of a few backing tracks showed up on Smiley as "Fall Breaks And Back to Winter," but that only gave a hint of the sonic chaos Wilson had created.) Listening to it now, you can almost imagine he was right. Heard today for the first time, SMiLE benefits from its status as a work of Sixties Madness: its multi-colored use of grizzled Americana is tinged by its slightly sad counter-cultural associations. And in a period where the actions of the sixties keep re-emerging as fodder for nasty political debate, Parks & Wilson's magnum opus provides a wholly unexpected slice of musical relief. Quintessentially beautiful and loopy, an unmatched creation that sounds as fresh today as it would've if it'd come out on schedule, SMiLE is a pop work like no other. When most pop or rock folk revisit projects from their youth, the results are typically dire. Leave it to nutty ol' Bri Wilson to successfully beat the odds. . . UPDATE: Fred "Catch A Wave" Hembeck has a sweet personal piece about his reactions to the new SmiLE in his October 5, 2004 (sorry – no permalinks!) posting. UPDATE II: This album definitely brings out the best in its admirers: as proof, check out Johnny B.’s heart-felt appreciation. # | Monday, October 04, 2004 ( 10/04/2004 01:45:00 PM ) Bill S. AND WHO KNEW BALTIMORE'S FINEST WERE ALSO FANS OF THE POGUES? – Haven't mentioned the third season of The Wire yet, and I've been criminally lax in not doing so – because on the basis of its first three episodes, this hard-nosed urban crime series continues to be the best thing in HBO's current lineup. Don't think that some of the show's supporters have been entirely helpful in terms of getting new viewers to try this show: read some of its critical plaudits and you get the sense that it's pretty damn opaque, teevee's equivalent to the opening chapter of Sound and the Fury, say. Yet, sit down and follow a couple of episodes and you can quickly get up to speed on the show's richly entertaining collection of well-drawn characters and intertwining plotlines. Still, if you're really nervous about jumping in, Salon has recently posted an invaluable up-to-date guide to the show. (If you don't subscribe to the webmag, you need to sit through a quick, relatively painless ad.) So now you've got no excuse for skipping this great series. . . # | Sunday, October 03, 2004 ( 10/03/2004 11:03:00 AM ) Bill S.  "I DO CATER TO UNUSUAL AFFAIRS" – "Nothing So Appalling in the Annals of Horror!" the ads proclaimed – and, for once, this wasn't hype. When Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast premiered in 1963, it was the first of its kind: a low-budget gore film that treated blood, viscera and severed body parts like they were naked breasts in a nudie movie. (Lewis, not surprisingly, had started out in the exploitation industry lensing nudies.) A surprising success on the drive-in circuit, it led to a new career direction for Lewis, who quickly cranked out a series of splatter cheapies (2000 Maniacs, Color Me Blood Red, The Wizard of Gore, etc.), ultimately changing the look of horror cinema forever. The candy-colored blood in George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead would probably not have been possible if Lewis hadn't earlier painted the town of Miami overly bright red.Feast is one of those movies that's frequently discussed among film geeks and gorehounds (John Waters even cites it in his early career memoir, Shock Value), though it's not been widely seen by most regular folk. With good reason: by any critical measure, the flick is a piece of crap. Directed quickly and with actors so unstudied that one of 'em has to read his lines off his palm (while his buddy carries around a notepad that he pretends to write in, but you know he's really using it to jog his memory), packed with Playboy playmate victims who behave so awkwardly in front of the camera that their killings almost seem a mercy, and centered around a hammy blue-haired villain whose every evil pronouncement is punctuated by a campy trilling organ, the movie's only lure is its extreme and thoroughly unrealistic goriness. (When it first came out, the horror fan magazine Castle of Frankenstein branded it "amateur night at the butcher shop.") I recently re-screened this cheesy movie landmark in its Something Weird DVD incarnation. It'd been years since I'd first viewed it, and I was certain that the pic couldn't be as awful as I remembered it. If nothing else, watching it again made me feel better about the quality of my long-term memory. . . The flick revolves around Egyptian caterer Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), a specialist in "exotic foods" who by night is a serial murderer. It opens with one of his killings: a buxom young blond in a bubble bath, with a book entitled Ancient Weird Religious Rites on the tub, is stabbed in the eye by Ramses who suddenly appears in the bathroom. Like the killers in 80's era slasher pics, Ramses has the ability to instantly show up anywhere and get away quickly even though he walks with a severe limp. The madman chops off one of his bathing victim’s legs (we're treated to a lingering close-up of its bloody stump), dashing off with the dripping appendage. He returns to his shop, where he has a large bubbling pot and a gold-painted manikin doubling as the statue of an Egyptian goddess. (No, it's not Kim Cattrall.) The Miami police (Thomas Wood and palm-reading Scott Hall) are stumped. Though Fuad has performed his atrocious murders without wearing gloves and just plain stumping around the crime scene, we're told he's left no clues. "Well, we're just working with a homicidal maniac, that's all," detective Pete deduces, but despite such Sherlockian insight, the caterer quickly gets away with two more murders: lopping off the top of one young girl's skull so he can swipe her brains and then yanking out the impossibly long tongue of a second. (Reportedly, a sheep's tongue was utilized for the second gore effect.) The machete-wielding Ramses is collecting body parts in sacrifice to the Egyptian goddess Ishtar (not the last time that this poor deity'll be attached to a lousy movie), and he's selecting his victims through a book club he's created for his own dire uses. All of his victims have the same Weird Religious Rites hardback in their apartments, though when one survives long enough for the police to question her, she says that the killer chanted, "All for Eat-ar!" Which doesn't say much for that gal's ability to retain what she's read. At the same time, Ramses is hired to cater a birthday party for Suzette Fremont (blond former Playmate Connie Mason), who shares an interest in Egyptian mythology and is the girlfriend of policeman Pete. The two attend an Egyptology lecture where they’re told the story of the titular Blood Feast: a ceremony for Ishtar wherein beautiful long girls are slaughtered and fed to the attendees, climaxing with the killing of a high priestess who becomes the living incarnation of Ishtar. Though Pete is one of the two cops hearing the dying "Eat-ar" declaration just a few hours after attending the lecture, he doesn't immediately make the connection – not surprising in a police force that apparently hasn't heard about fingerprints yet. By the time he puts two and two together, it's the next day and time for Suzette's party. Will the police arrive in time or will Suzette join her sisters in slasher victimhood? Oh, why bother trying to drum up any suspense? (The movie sure doesn't.) Playmate Connie survives. Feast climaxes with a thoroughly laughable foot chase sequence – with the elderly, gimping Ramses improbably keeping ahead of a quartet of strapping policemen, only to meet his bloody death in a trash compacting garbage truck. (Ever aware of irony, Lewis has one of his pursuing cops note, "He died a fitting death. . .") Cut to a shot of the statue of Ishtar crying blood: a poignant finish to this groundbreaking slice o' trash cinema. Most serious horror fans were indeed appalled by Lewis' flick when it premiered, though in the drive-in – where much of the audience probably wasn't even listening to the dialog and only coming up for air long enough to catch glimpses of the slow tracking shots of bloody young girl corpses – it was a relative hit. Included on its Something Weird DVD package is the 60's era trailer for the movie: it doesn't provide a single hint about the movie's plot, just collects shots of every blood-spattered corpse and grisly killing in the flick. That's Blood Feast, distilled to its essence. # | Saturday, October 02, 2004 ( 10/02/2004 09:26:00 AM ) Bill S. LAWYERS, CRIBS & MONEY – Not much to say about UPN's new Taye Diggs series, Kevin Hill, which we caught Friday on its second broadcast. It's heartwarming fluff – well-played heartwarming fluff (Diggs is smartly cast as the hound-dog lawyer with the heart of marshmallow) – that would probably find a larger audience if it were part of one of the Big Three's mid-primetime lineup. Basically a male version of the Diane Keaton vehicle, Baby Boom (though with the added cultural resonance you get putting a buppie male in the role of single parent), it looks to be the kind of series where you could skip several weeks' worth of episodes, return and still be diverted for an hour. Solid, if unsurprising teevee fare, in other words – but, damn, that baby sure is cute! # | Friday, October 01, 2004 ( 10/01/2004 11:31:00 AM ) Bill S. "BIKINI GIRLS WITH MACHINE GUNS" – Been working on some longer writings for other venues, so let's just stick to some simple bullet-pointing here today, okay?
Background Music for This Round: Cramps, Stay Sick (has anyone out there heard the new two-disc release of early Cramps marginalia, incidentally?) # | ( 10/01/2004 06:48:00 AM ) Bill S. JUST A STONED SLACKER, THAT'S ME – I flowed in and out of the presidential debates last night, more so I could get the jokes on The Daily Show than out of expectation that I'd learn anything new about or from the candidates. DShow anchor Stewart and company came across pretty smooth – and, yes, funny, too – on their live follow-up to the Bush 'N' Kerry Show. But Rudolph Giuliani certainly looked like a big poop in one of the DShow's two post-debate interviews, chiding Jon for making a joke about Poland being part of the U.S.-led coalition. Rudy, do you know what network you're on? It's Comedy Central: they make jokes there. . . # | |
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