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Friday, June 10, 2005 ( 6/10/2005 07:20:00 AM ) Bill S. A BRIEF PATRIOTIC MOMENT – Courtesy of the smart-tongued gals at Pandagon. As some smart guy once might've noted, any country that can give us Sam & Dave is definitely worth keeping around. . . # | ( 6/10/2005 07:17:00 AM ) Bill S. "I CAN THINK OF 1 OR 2 THINGS TO SAY ABOUT IT!" – I'm not the biggest White Stripes fan – those albums of theirs which I've listened to strike me as self-consciously spotty, though when they're on ("Hotel Yorba," "Seven Nation Army," "Hypnotise"), I can see what the fuss is all about. But Sean Collins' assertion re: the roots rocks entries on Elephant decidedly misses the mark for this listener. "How could anyone voluntarily listen to 'Ball & Biscuit' more than once?" Sean asks. To my ears, Jack White's talking garage blueser is one of that album's peaks, thanx to a trio of screeching wigged-out guitar solos that happily sound like Jimmy Page with Tourette's. (Certainly beats hell out of the band's lame cover of Bacharach & David's "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" – sorry, Jack, but Elvis the C already revitalized that Dionne Warwick classic.) I'm not rushin' out to get the new White Stripes disc – too many other new releases (when's that New Pornographers coming out again?) are competing for a piece of the shrunken Gadabout budget – but Sean's posting inspired me to take Elephant on the forty-five minute trip to Plaza Tire yesterday, and I was surprised by how much the album as a whole has grown on me over time. Still can't stand that damn Holly Golightly duet, though. . . # | ( 6/10/2005 05:51:00 AM ) Bill S. "HE-E-E'S WATCHING YOU!" – After I posted my piece on the Will Ferrell holiday comedy, Elf, my buddy Aaron Neathery decided to keep things festive by posting a Christmas music 'toon on his blog. The piece, "Santa Is Watching You," is a pretty weighty download, but it's worth viewing if you have a fast connection: a risible bit o' Xmas paranoia with a wonderfully cheesy New Wave synth soundtrack. Click on over there, why don't ya? # | Thursday, June 09, 2005 ( 6/09/2005 02:39:00 PM ) Bill S.  MIZ WHITEWALL – Got new tires for the PT Cruiser today, and the reason I’m mentioning it here is to note that I did so at Plaza Tire in Peoria, home to muffler vixen supreme, Vanna Whitewall. The seventeen-and-a-half foot fiberglass statue has both winter (skirt and top) and summer wear (a red bikini) but is never without her high heels – all those years showing off her calves to the passersby on Washington Avenue! A monument of American commercial kitsch, she's appeared in travel ads for the state of Illinois and, of course, also once had a conversation with Zippy the Pinhead. And, yes, there is an autographed photo of the flesh-&-blood Vanna given pride of place in the Plaza Tire waiting area. . .NOTE: The photo on the right is from a cool site devoted to Big Things: The World's Largest Catsup Bottle. # | ( 6/09/2005 06:47:00 AM ) Bill S. UNSUB IN THE SUBWAY – On the basis of its pedigree – co-creators Howard Gordon (X-Files, Buffy, 24) and Tim Minear (Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls) have both created some absorbingly creepy television in the past – I was Cautiously Optimistic about the new summer series, The Inside, yet another grisly crimes procedural. (Remember when network television was actually squeamish about showing dead bodies with their face and hands peeled off? Me neither.) It stars Rachel Nichols as the newest member of an F.B.I. violent crimes task force run by a suitably imperious Peter Coyote and features Adam Baldwin (once again playing Unpleasant Guy) as an unwelcoming team member. First ep debuted on Fox last night, and I'm still remaining c.o., though I wasn't exactly bowled over by the initial results. The show's basic hook revolves around the fact that its heroine, Rebecca Locke, was herself victim of a violent crime in the past: kidnapped as a child and held for months by her abductor, she still suffers posttraumatic flashbacks of the experience. This makes her more attuned to the victims of the crimes she sees than the perpetrators, though it also leads to inconvenient fainting spells. Clearly, she's a woman on the brink, but Coyote's bureau chief is not above ruthlessly exploiting her, much as he had her predecessor, a bi-polar agent who disastrously went off her meds. The set-up's more than a little improbable, but if we could buy Spooky Mulder in the basement of the F.B.I. Building, than I guess we can stretch here, too. The premiere had its suitably atmospheric moments, but also suffered from the same how'd-they-know-to-do-that contrivance that has also regularly plagued 24 (a show that Gordon has had a major hand in writing/producing). When Coyote's Webster (a.k.a. Web, because of the way he keeps his agents ensnared) publicly cans Rebecca on the platform of the L.A. subway for not following orders, it's pretty obviously designed to lure the killer out after the seemingly abandoned agent – but how'd he know that Becky would so patently disobey orders in the first place? Oh, that's right: smart & sensitive F.B.I.ers never follow orders in a pinch – they're as prone to disrespecting their superiors as Jack Bauer is to torturing suspects. . . Ultimate verdict: not bad for a summer series (and with a new season of nip/tuck still in the distant future, we need to go someplace for our summer gory makeup fx fix). But they're gonna need to tighten things up considerably if they expect to keep me watching all the way through August. # | Wednesday, June 08, 2005 ( 6/08/2005 02:48:00 PM ) Bill S.  "AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR ME TO STEP UP AND PROVE MYSELF." – Though the front cover shows the two embracing happily, it actually takes more than half the book for the romantic leads of True Story Swear to God: This One Goes to Eleven (AiT/Planet Lar) to physically get together – and, even then, it's only for the space of one chapter. Reprinting seven issues (#5 – 11) of writer/artist Tom Beland's amusing and open-hearted autobiographical comic book, Eleven charts the "real-life romance" of Tom and Lily, the woman who’ll eventually become his wife. (Unlike the one-page strips that comprised 100 Stories, which moved hither/thither through the cartoonist's life, the path of Eleven is much more straightforward and focused.) In the period covered in this volume (some time during the Clinton Administration, since we get contemporary refs to Monica Lewinski), the two are still tentatively carrying on a long-distance relationship (having met in the first True Stories collection, Chances Are) – Tom in Napa, California; Lily in Puerto Rico – and wondering if either will take the scary step necessary to make their relationship a closer thing. As we already know from 100 Stories that the two will get together (for that matter, the back cover photo of the older husband & wife kinda gives the game away, too), it's not exactly a spoiler to reveal that the book ends with the image of Tom leaving his childhood California home to a new life in a strange land. The primary focus of this book is on those events that'll lead to his making this momentous decision.First up is a "category four" (sorry, Nigel, it doesn't go to eleven) hurricane, which hits San Juan and drives our hero frantic with worry. "I used to make fun of the Weather Channel," he writes at one point, "and now here I am on my sixth hour of watching it. . .learning about hurricanes." The first four chapters/issues primarily focus on Hurricane Georges – switching from the anxious Tom to Lily and her friends as they batten down and weather the storm. Beland's cartoony style is surprisingly effective during these sequences: he deftly utilizes large Kurzman-esque lettering to convey the house-rattling sounds of the storm and beautifully conveys the wet intensity of the hurricane with a progressively more intense swirl of wind and sideways raindrops. No wonder Tom is beside himself with worry, we think, as we see a panel of silhouetted trees bending sideways – and driven to futile superhero fantasies of swooping in and pulling his sweetie out of the chaos. But even when the storm abates, the distance between the two proves a burden. On a plane trip to California, bad weather strands Lily in Texas, stealing a day of her visit with Tom and leaving her with no choice but to sleep on the airport floor. It's this last which prods Tom into "seriously contemplating" moving to Puerto Rico (though it's a topic that both he and his family are shown discussing earlier in the book), but every step forward in life – as Beland reminds us repeatedly – comes at the expense of something else. After a single chapter devoted to Lily's visit, the story concentrates on Tom's telling his boss and family (sister Susan and best bud brother Joe) that he's leaving. Though the cartoonist arguably emphasizes the point one too many times beyond even the demands of a serialized story, the theme remains valid: leaving a world you've known most of your life ain't easy. Even the most positive life steps involve giving up something. If Beland occasionally oversells his hero's thoughts and feelings, it's in the service of believable emotions. The cartoonist is not afraid to be sentimental, but he's also observant enough to detail the way most American males (and many women) leaven such emotion with competitive quips and put-downs. Just when you think Beland's gone too far with this heart-on-my-sleeve-comix bizness, he pulls in a slice of comic reminiscence (like the story about how he refused to pay for air conditioning in his car) or quirky character detail (like Lily’s histrionic response to cool California temps) to keep us more cynical s.o.b. readers with him. The approach generally works, though I've gotta admit the cartoonist nearly lost me with an irrelevant debate on the subject of Napa Valley roadwork. Still, there are more small moments that succeed: Tom sarcastically chewing out a slipshod photog at work as he stresses out over news about Hurricane Georges, Lily discussing being the subject of a comic strip with her friends ("Does he draw you with gigantic breasts?" one asks), brother Tom teasing both the family dog and the visiting Lily, Tom's taking Lily to a comic book shop to test how she'll respond to the experience. It's these well-realized delineations of true-story-swear-to-god character that get us pulling for our real-life romantics – and have this reader wondering just what'll befall Tom & Lily on his first days as an American emigrant in San Juan. . . # | Tuesday, June 07, 2005 ( 6/07/2005 03:35:00 PM ) Bill S. "GUT-SHOT ROCK 'N' ROLL" – So I'm listening to the new Go-Betweens album (highly laudatory review to ultimately follow), and I'm playing "Darlinghurst Nights" and puzzling over what sounds to me like a lyrical reference to Frank Peretti. Why would these guys sing about a crappy hack religio-horror novelist? I wonder, but, then, I read the lyrics booklet and realize instead that Forster & McClennan are really singing about Aussie rock writer and musician Frank Brunetti. So never mind. . . # | Monday, June 06, 2005 ( 6/06/2005 11:25:00 AM ) Bill S. MAN-O-MAN-O-MANOS – For those who've periodically pondered the indescribable moviegoing experience that is Manos: The Hands of Fate (like: what the hell were they thinking, anyway?), the June 10, 2005, issue of Entertainment Weekly is well worth latching onto. Dalton Ross' "The Worst Movie Ever Made" backtracks to 1966, that fateful year when not-so-humble El Paso fertilizer salesman Hal Warren decided that he could make a movie just as well as anyone in Hollywood. Turns out Hal was wrong, of course, but for those of us who discovered this once obscure Tarnished Turkey on MST3K and wondered where the hell it came from, Ross has the sordid goods. According to his article, filming of this ramshackle low-rent feature was characterized by tons of improvisation plus a hefty amount of sixties excess. To the surprise of no one who's actually seen his performance, it appears that John Reynolds, the actor who played deformed manservant Torgo, was stoned through most of the shooting. Only cast members to get paid for their performances were the actress who played the little girl Debbie (the lucky girl got a shiny red bicycle) and the German Shepherd who appears menacingly throughout the flick (and was fed for his thespian efforts). This weekend, I happened to catch a documentary on Trio based on Peter Biskind's history of American moviemaking in the sixties & seventies, Easy Riders/Raging Bulls, and 'round about the time that the subject directors' egos started getting out of control from excess fame-&-druggery, I began viewing Manos' writer/director in a slightly different light. Sure, the movie's awful, but its badness is honestly earned and utterly removed from the least bit of artistic pretension. When you get down to it, I'd rather watch a cheesy li'l Texas drive-in picture one more time than to have to sit through a 2nd showing of New York, New York. . . # | |
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