| Pop Culture Gadabout | ||
|
Saturday, February 05, 2005 ( 2/05/2005 08:39:00 AM ) Bill S. TWO MURDERS; TWICE THE PREDICTABILITY – Watching last night's Monk, it's become increasingly apparent that the show’s writers have decided to push that tricky mystery thing aside in favor of more fully concentrating on character comedy. Neither of the episode's two murders had an ounce of surprise – a plotline where increasingly dense police underling Randy Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford) gets conned by fortune cookies was so obvious that the audience went, "Surely, the guy can't be that dumb!" (though, of course, he could be), while the second mystery couldn't even bother to be the least bit puzzling. The interplay between lead Tony Shaloub and the Ted Levin's surprisingly Edgar Kennedy-ish police captain remains amusing, though even here, when our OCD hero tied his temporary bunkmate's foot to the bed, the comedy slipped into such over-the-top slapstick that it violated the series's original premise. At one time, you had the sense that with a little more therapy, Adrian Monk maybe could be reinstated to the police force. Not anymore. And, for the record, I think that Traylor Howard is doing a fine job in the thankless job as Bitty Schram's replacement. Like Schram's Sharona, Howard's Natalie Teeger has the ability to get testy without becoming irritating – and her character has enough of a California vibe to differentiate her from Sharona’s Jersey Girl. Sure wish that she and her boss had tougher mysteries to solve, though. . . UPDATE: Tom the Dog, who also shows up in the comments below, has some choice words over at his place about the season's first two episodes. # | Friday, February 04, 2005 ( 2/04/2005 05:00:00 PM ) Bill S. FROM PILLAR TO POST – After sneaking a ferret pic into the bottom of the previous review, here's a stand-alone pet photo for Friday:  Willow and Xander hanging around the cat post, giving a "Woddya lookin' at, Mac?" to the guy behind the camera. . . NOTE: Comics artist Ned Sonntag shows up in the comments section to this post - with a brief note in praise of Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely's WE3. # | ( 2/04/2005 03:31:00 PM ) Bill S. SIXTY MINUTE MANGA – (This week's episode: Scratch 'n' sniff – and a menacing hand.) As part of a ferret house – with three of the li'l weasels currently living under our roof – it was inevitable that I'd be drawn to Lindsay Cibos & Jared Hodges' Peach Fuzz, the new Tokyopop "All Ages" manga series about a girl and her fer't. The work of American artists who first test-drove the material in Tokyopop's "Rising Stars of Manga" competition, Fuzz tells the story of nine-year-old Amanda Keller, sole child in a single parent household who has just gotten her first pet: a strong-willed ferret named Peach. Told from the PoV of both Amanda and Peach (who sees herself as a kidnapped princess stolen away from her kingdom), the book examines the relationship between child owner and pet in a way that's designed to illuminate both its pleasures and pitfalls. Reading the book, I found myself thinking of children's book author Maurice Sendak's dog training classic, Some Swell Pup, in the way both works whimsically strive to instruct first time pet owners. If Cibos & Hodges come up short matching Sendak's assurance and pronounced sense of play, I suspect we can put that down to their comparative inexperience. On its own amiable terms, Peach Fuzz does a fine job showing readers the Ferret Experience.  The cover to Volume One features big-eyed Amanda as she brandishes her big-headed pet ferret to the reader: at the bottom right of the cover is the scratch 'n' sniff image of a peach ("Come closer! I smell like peaches!" it tells the reader, but, I've gotta tell ya, it smelled more like book to me!), a fun gimmick that I sincerely hope other manga series don't copy. (Battle Royale: "Come closer! I smell like gunpowder!" or GTO: "Come closer! I smell like girls' underpants!") But, I'll ya: anyone who tries to convince you that a de-scented ferret "smells like peaches" is definitely not to be trusted.The books opens with Amanda and her mother, work-stressed Megan, as they're visiting the Super!Pets store in search of the perfect companion animal. After rejecting all the standard house pets as being "too boring," the girl gloms on the ferret cage, even though it has a cartoon sign warning customers that "We bite!" First time she sticks her hand in the cage, one of the inhabitants chomps on her finger. "Are you all like that?" she asks, but when she spies a small girl ferret sleeping, she decides it is the right pet for her. She doesn't realized that the ferret she'll name Peach is too sleepy to be scared – or that once they bring the pet home, they'll be making a commitment to it. One of the smart themes of Peach Fuzz is the way that pets, any pets, can eat away at your budget. The inexperienced pet owners buy the wrong housing for Peach – and later wind up spending even more to get a decent cage for the ferret – while a trip to the vet proves even more costly. (Neither Peach's owners nor the unsavvy vet realize that ferrets sleep up to twenty hours a day and can be deucedly difficult to rouse.) And then there's that biting bizness: visualizing Amanda's hand as a multi-headed monster that torments her (the "Handra"), Peach nips at it every chance she gets. Because Amanda's mother has threatened to take the ferret back to the shop if it does start biting, the girl attempts to hide it. Of course, Ma Keller isn't so easily deceived. Cibos & Hodges include some standard ferret training tips (having lived with a former nipper, I can attest to the effectiveness of the approach), but they also have fun showing Amanda pointedly mishandle Peaches at every turn. From the ferret's perspective, much of what Amanda does is simply designed to torment her: when the girl inadvertently gives her snacks that are tainted with anti-bite liquid, Peaches is convinced the "Handra" is trying to poison her. "I'll never be able to entirely trust it," the ferret decides at the end of volume one, and you know this'll be an issue in volumes to come. (At this writing, the Tokyopop site is promising at least two more books in the series.) When the two manga artists keep the focus of their book on girl + ferret, Peach Fuzz moves along swimmingly, though a subplot involving Amanda's status as a new girl in school and the young boy who teases her in class is less smoothly folded into the storyline. The art utilizes manga conventions – decorative backgrounds that pop up regardless of the actual setting (in this case, paw prints), characters that can suddenly become more cartoonish to reflect their mood, an unabashed reliance on sound effects (only in manga can "Glance!" be a sound effect) – effectively and simply, befitting its younger audience. The book is not, incidentally, laid out in the "100% manga" style of right-to-left, which makes sense considering the creators are American, though, somehow, I still expected to be reading it back-to-front. When I gave the book to my wife and fellow ferret fiend Becky to read, her first response was, "I thought that manga were supposed to be backwards!"  So maybe Peach Fuzz isn't "100%." But as manga continues to build its fan base in this country – along with a generation of artists who are more influenced by it than they are mainstream American comics – we'll be seeing more works like this. If only a fraction of 'em are done as amusingly and sweetly as this children's comic, then who cares if they're "pure" manga or not? Not me.NOTE: The Friday photo to the right is of our own household nipper – though, for the record, it should be stated that Piglet hasn't latched onto a finger in at least six months. . . # | Thursday, February 03, 2005 ( 2/03/2005 09:09:00 AM ) Bill S. "SHE STARTED LISTENIN' TO THAT FINE, FINE MUSIC!" – Beaucoup Kevin is passing along a music meme that I thought I'd play along with:
( 2/03/2005 04:41:00 AM ) Bill S. THEY ALSO SNUCK A ZAP! AND POW! INTO THE STORY – I really and truly am heartened by Stan Lee's legal victory against the forces of Evil Corporate Marvel, yet watching the man on 60 Minutes Wednesday, I still felt the urge to regularly shout at the television – not just when the show gave him sole credit for creating the Marvel Universe (we've seen that lazy misconception more than once when it comes to stories about the venerable comics writer). When Stan Himself – years after Marvel's shabby treatment of artist collaborator Jack Kirby – tells us that before his recent lawsuit he'd always considered Marvel a good company because "we always did the right thing," all I can do is sigh over the power of selective memory. And lament CBS's seeming unwillingness to hold this nice old man accountable for his own revisionist spin. . . UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Mark Evanier has one of the first takes on the 60 Minutes story, while Nik Durga and Franklin Harris also weigh in and find CBS' story wanting. Later in the morning aftermath, reporter bloggers Heidi MacDonald and Tom Spurgeon also contribute some choice thoughts. # | Wednesday, February 02, 2005 ( 2/02/2005 05:09:00 PM ) Bill S. EVER GET THE URGE TO BOWDLERIZE YOURSELF? – Okay, I pitched an easy one to Larry Young yesterday with the capper to my White Death review. And Larry, bless his plug-happy heart, swung. (It's the opening item on his February 2nd posting.) One day after posting it, I was considering loppin' that sentence off the piece (it doesn't really add anything to the review itself), but now that I see it's a part of the AiT blog, I'm letting it stand. . . # | ( 2/02/2005 02:01:00 PM ) Bill S. "ALL ACROSS THE ALIENATION" – This month's offering of Robert Christgau's "Consumer Guide" has been posted on the Village Voice site, and I note with interest that the Dean of Rock Critics has firmly placed American Idiot in his "Dud of the Month" slot. Nails the disc for being politically superficial – which, of course, it is – and for being culturally woebegone – which, of course, it is, too. But having lived with Idiot on the road for over a month now (took it on several extended work-related road trips), I've fallen even more firmly in love with it. If alienation is one of punk rock's most enduring bedrock themes, than Green Day's newest catches its sound perfectly. Even the more obvious numbers, like the much-played ballad "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," are so hooky and emotionally straightforward that I surrender to 'em. Sorry, Bob, but we're gonna have to agree to disagree. . . # | ( 2/02/2005 01:58:00 PM ) Bill S. "IF MEN WERE ANGELS" – Unlike those bloggers who already knew what they were gonna think about it long before it happened, I remain both heartened and wary by the election in Iraq. Fareed Zakaria, a writer who was both supportive of the need to topple Saddam Hussein and smartly critical of the way the administration has handled it, has what appears to be the most measured take on this week's election. (It originally appeared in the February 7th issue of Newsweek, but is also available on his own site.) In it, he lists three conditions necessary for a stable liberal (as opposed to "illiberal," a distinction that has nothing to do with the liberal/conservative dichotomy in this country) democracy and offers his view on just how well Iraq meets those conditions. Valuable reading. . . # | Tuesday, February 01, 2005 ( 2/01/2005 12:57:00 PM ) Bill S.  "MAD BASTARDS AT THE FRONT" – It's winter, time to hunker down and catch up on your reading, so I've been digging into the small pile of AiT/Planet Lar books that, for one reason or another, I haven't read yet. First up – and it seemed appropriate for the last weekend in January – was Rob Morrison & Charlie Adlard's White Death. Set during World War I on the Italian Front, the book concerns a cast of Italian soldiers as they wage battle along the Trentino mountain range. Amidst this bedraggled crew we meet Private Pietro Aquasanta, an Italian rifleman who initially was conscripted to fight for the Austro-Hungarians but now fights for the other side (we first see him killing one of his former comrades), and Sergeant-Major Orsini, a hardnosed career soldier who think nothing of fragging a lieutenant who wants to retreat. Orsini looks to Aquasanta with suspicion. "Kill them. Kill us. Anything to survive," he sneers disdainfully. "How can you trust a man like that?" And perhaps the mad s.o.b. has a point.The book follows these two through a series of grueling battles (with temporary respite at a military sanctioned bordello) and is unstinting in its depiction of the horrors of war in the winter trenches. In this, Morrison & Adlard are following in the paths established by Harvey Kurtzman and the EC artists in Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, though EC-era Kurtzman never would've been allowed to show us soldiers using urine-soaked rags for protection during a gas attack, let alone give us a full-blown whorehouse sequence. The book's title battle detail, the use of mountain avalanches as a weapon of war, would've certainly fit the EC war comics, though, as would Morrison's vision of the essential ruthlessness of war. Adlard's art, rendered in charcoal and chalk on grey paper, is effectively moody during the quiet moments and grimly chaotic in the battle scenes, though at times I found it difficult telling individual characters apart. This doesn't much damage the story any more than the fact that you don't know who's who in the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan does either – what matters is how well writer and artist convey the madness of combat, where individuality is a luxury few can afford. And in this, White Death is a success: though the details may be a bit more explicit, at heart it's a good-old-fashioned gritty war comic. In an era where the most basic facts of warfare are shielded from the public – when even the sight of coffins is considered disruptive to American support of the war – it's telling that one of the best places to get the scoop on the hard realities of combat is in a graphic novel. I sure feel dumb for having taken so long to read this book. . . # | Sunday, January 30, 2005 ( 1/30/2005 04:32:00 PM ) Bill S. "TAKE A CHA-CHA-CHA CHANCE. . ." – Birthday greetings to Fred Hembeck, who (unless I missed it) is keeping coy about his age and shares a birthday with the obviously older Gene Hackman and with founding member of the Jefferson Airstarplaneship Marty Balin. (I missed Johnny Bacardi and Tegan's birthdays earlier in the month – so belated best wishes to 'em, too!) I remember first "meeting" Fred when he was drawing & lettering personal zines for a comics fandom amateur press alliance all the way back in the eighties (feel old yet, guy?) In the years since, he's consistently been an entertaining and far-ranging fan of comics and other, to paraphrase Mark Evanier, necessities of pop life. Have a great day, Fred! # | ( 1/30/2005 12:12:00 PM ) Bill S. "AIN'T GONNA RAIN, NO MORE, NO MORE" – My buddy Aaron Neathery, a talented commercial cartoonist with a knowledgeable love of old movie comedies, recently sent me some tapes with fare from the early thirties. First on the list was Rain or Shine, an early Frank Capra talkie that Aaron knew I'd enjoy because of my love for old circus/sideshow material. (There's even a sideshow fat lady – Ethel Greer – who appears in the movie for several extended gags, including what must've been a painful one where she's called to fall off a wagon into the mud twice: what a trouper!) As an example of the Capra filmography, Rain won't be confused with any of his later populist landmarks (though there appears to be, interestingly, an anti-union message imbedded in the film). But it does provide a fun document of old-fashioned circus and vaudeville. The pic stars Joe Cook, a brash-mouthed comedian who could also juggle and do a decent balancing act, as Smiley Johnson, manager of a struggling traveling circus called The John T. Rainey Show. The tissue-thin story (co-written as a stage play by James Gleason, a comic character actor who must've played a million cigar-chomping detectives in 30's and 40’s movies) revolves around Johnson's attempts to stave off attachment and bankruptcy – as a duplicitous ringmaster attempts to hasten the show's demise so he can buy it out from under naïve circus owner Mary Rainey (Joan Peers). There's a subplot involving a romantic triangle between Smiley, Mary and a vacuous male ingénue named Bud (William Collier Jr.), which mainly serves as an excuse for Smiley and his two comic stooges to invade a high society dinner party and act up. The interplay between the personable Cook and his comic foils (Tom Howard & Dave Chasen) comprises at least half the film. Howard plays a feedstore owner named Shrewsberry (at one point comically misremembered by a too-briefly-seen Louise Fazenda as "Dingleberry") who is perennial victim of Cook's double-talk; when he attempts to duplicate Cook's patter on someone else, he winds up losing even more money. Chasen is a Harpo Marx type who rarely speaks. But when he does, it provides a good object lesson as to why Harpo never let words pass from his lips: every time Chasen talks, he comes across more mentally deficient than pixyish. There are some funny bits within the Cook & Howard interplay (Howard: "I get along better by myself – I'm like Lindbergh!") but it's not enough to hold the film together. In the movie's conclusion, when the ringmaster has riled the circus performers into striking (just because they haven't been paid in three months!) as a show is about to begin, Cook and Chasen do an impromptu performance for the crowd (with a black roustabout played by Clarence Muse sitting in for the striking band on calliope). This allows Capra time to film extended footage of Cook's on-stage performance – balancing on a ball, juggling, doing wire work – with Chasen providing physical slapstick to punctuate each routine, and it's rather delightful. There's even a phony escaped gorilla routine (shades of National Gorilla Suit Day!) inserted into the proceedings. Unfortunately, that nasty ringmaster gets the crowd worked up over not seeing a complete show, and a riot between public and striking circus performers erupts, resulting in a conflagration that burns down the show. There's a thrilling rescue where Smiley saves Mary by climbing on top of the flaming tent (and then passes her on to her young man Bud), and the movie ends with the entire circus in ashes and our manager sitting with a cigar. Howard reappears for a final round of banter, then the movie inexplicably ends with the image of Clarence Muse's character once more playing calliope and a cut to a shot of the circus wagons rolling through the rain and mud, while a sprightly instrumental version of "Singin' in the Rain" (which was also used to open the picture) plays on the soundtrack. The viewer is left wondering: so is the circus back on the road? How'd that happen? A fly-apart comedy, in other words, but watchable in its ramshackle way. Headliner Cook only had one more starring movie role in him, though apparently he had a substantial career on stage and radio until Parkinson's Disease felled him too early. Stooges Howard and Chasen didn't make much of a splash in movies either, though the former was moderately successful as a game show host on radio, while the latter went on to open the long-running and legendary Hollywood eatery, Chasen's Restaurant. Wonder if Ethel Greer ever ate there? (Next Up in Aaron's Selection of Old Comedies: the movie that introduced the Three Stooges to the moviegoing public, Soup to Nuts.) # | |
|
|
