"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
The Loved One pitched this link my way last night:
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Seems that last fall, some guy from the usually insufferable United Kingdom posted a rant on FB, calling out a British manufacturer of menstrual pads for lying. To him.
Yep. This chap, named Richard Neill, wrote that all his early life he’d assumed women who were being visited by Aunt Flo were having a bang-up time, running and jumping and grinning like maniacs. At least that’s what he gleaned from adverts (don’t these Brits have a cutesy way with words sometimes?)
By the time he became old enough to hang around with women and they started letting him know when it was time for the Clean-up in Aisle 1, he realized that the sloughing off of the uterine and vaginal linings didn’t signal several days of bliss — either for the sloughee or for any human beings within a several-mile radius of her.
In fact, as many of us who strive not to be fooled by corporate adspeak (read: lying) know, those monthly three-to-five days often — way, way, way too often — are among the the most harrowing of our lives.
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So, Neill called out the Bodyform outfit via social media and — whaddya know? — his post captured better than a hundred thousand Likes. And Bodyform, rather than call for the RAF to bomb the man’s home, decided to have a little fun.
The company produced a slick vid featuring the company CEO (played by an actress) apologizing for misleading the women (and men) of the world (or at least its market share of the orb). The actress-as-CEO looks meaningfully into the camera as she recites her mea culpa. Then she says, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but there’s no such thing as a happy period. The reality is, some people simply can’t handle the truth.” She then tells Richard he’s blown the cover off Bodyform’s efforts to protect men from the truth about women’s beastly time, this over images of men weeping and gnashing their teeth. “You, Richard, have torn down that veil and exposed this myth.”
Aw, hell, watch the vid for yourself. This, my fellow Pencillistas, is creative advertising.
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Funny, no? It makes me wish Barack Obama and the Dems had done something similar when Me Party-ists, Birthers, and other whack-a-doodles started accusing the president of everything from socialism to Manchurian Candidacy to failure to brush his teeth after every meal.
It certainly couldn’t have been less successful than the strategy they’ve used thus far.
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You’ve Been A Naughty Little Girl
More evidence that too many fundamentalist Christians are really sexual fetishists in disguise: There’s a lively group of Obsessive Lovers of An Invisible Friend in the Sky who follow a path they call Christian Domestic Discipline.
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The idea being, the king of the household must maintain order within his cellblock…, er, home, by spanking the little woman now and again.
Many of us — your loyal e-Pencil-weilding correspondent included — don’t dig pain. In fact, I’ve dedicated my life to the avoidance of it. But I’m an open-minded fellow so I say if you need pain to get off, then go get whipped.
The Sanctity Of Marriage
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When it comes to sex, my philosophy is anything goes, as long as kids, explosives, and animals aren’t involved. (The bestial scene is so icky, you know?)
Anyways, who are these CDD folks trying to kid, beside themselves? Not I, that’s fer shur. Correction, they are trying to fool me but I ain’t falling for it.
There can be no reason on god’s green (and purple-y bruised) Earth why a man would feel the need to whip his helpmeet unless he was getting off on it. There, I’ve said it.
And any helpmeet who sticks around for said whipping also must be getting engorged in the nethers when the whip comes down. I’ve said it again.
Yet this gang of CDD-ers insists the Big Daddy-o wants us all to play master-and-slave.
Check out Mobutu Sese Seko’s take on all the premature obituaries for the Tea Party in yesterday afternoon’s Gawker.
The Tea/Me-ers aren’t going anywhere, Seko insists, because they’ve always been here — only under different monikers and flags.
And BTW, this Seko is not that Seko. That one is dead. Glad to clear that up for you.
That Mobutu Sese Seko
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Anyway, Seko quotes extensively from Richard Hofstadter (no, not that Hofstadter, thisHofstadter), whose landmark article in the November, 1964 issue of Harper’s Magazine essentially defined the right-wing-nut movement then and for all time. The article, entitled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” may well have served as a blueprint for the Tea/Me-ers.
That Hofstadter
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It begins, “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.”
Hofstadter goes on to list and define all the conspiracy theorists, psychotics, true believers, anti-Papists, Gold-Standard-ists, Masons, Illuminists, Birchers, and others who, today, might find a comfortable nest within the Big Tent GOP.
Funny how those moderate Republicans who two decades ago put out the call for the party to become a Big Tent might react had they known it would be one equipped with padded walls.
The Tea Party, according to Seko, sells doom — and in this holy land, doom has always sold well. “These guys,” he writes of the Tea Party, “can sell an apocalypse of anything.”
Once you’re finished with Seko’s take, wait a couple of days for Rick Perlstein’s Monday debut offering on his own The Nation blog. He says pretty much the same thing.
(And, believe me, I feel for Perlstein: There’s nothing worse for a writer than for another writer to beat you to a topic or a bon mot or a brilliant conclusion.)
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THE KING OF AMERICA
Here’s more required reading for you. Bill Wyman writes in last week’s New Yorker about Michael Jackson’s life and his place as the ultimate crossover pop artist. Jackson, Wyman writes, virtually became America.
Anyway, doesn’t it seem as though we’ve pretty much forgotten Michael Jackson since all the folderol over his death petered out?
Lost in all the oceans of ink and streams of electrons devoted to the King of Pop’s reputed sex life is the fact that Jackson achieved what hundreds — nay, thousands — of black pop and genre musical acts strove for since the mid-1950’s. That is, pure, total, and unadulterated acceptance by white America.
Wyman deftly weaves Jackson’s physical metamorphosis in with his ongoing assimilation into the mainstream. He became white at the same time he was becoming white.
Wyman also apparently buys into the notion that Jackson died a virgin. That is, he not only never had government- and religion-approved sex with a woman, but he never actually had sex with all those little boys. Nevertheless, his non-orgasmic peccadilloes with pre-adolescents were unforgivable — or so goes that train of thought.
In any case, read the piece.
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WYMAN TALES
A little anecdote about this Bill Wyman — and then a little anecdote about that Bill Wyman or, more accurately, his band, to follow.
This Bill Wyman was the music critic for the Chicago Reader for much of the time I was writing for that one-time indispensable alternative weekly. In the late 1980s, a pretty and talented woman named Alison True was in the process of climbing the ladder at the Reader, an ascent that eventually saw her become editor, a position she held for nearly 20 years.
Alison True
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Alison True had blue eyes, dimples, light brown hair, and was tough as nails. Trust me, I once overheard her set some boundaries, fortissimo, for a recalcitrant immediate underling in what they thought was the privacy of the fire stairs at the Reader’s North Loop headquarters. “This is my paper,” she roared, “and we’ll do it my way!” A few moments later, she passed me on the way back to her office and flashed me a dimpled smile hello. You have to love a boss like that.
From 1983 through 2002, I was part of the sizable stable of Reader freelancers. Occasionally, we’d get together for a mixer or at a party thrown by some common acquaintance. At each of these, we’d ask each other if Alison True was going out with anybody, as if she’d deign to mix with the likes of us. No one could ever offer indisputable confirmation of her availability.
Then one Saturday night at a party thrown by jazz maven Neil Tesser, we freelancers watched, agape, as she entered, hand in hand, with Bill Wyman. Trust me again, Wyman rarely let go of her hand throughout that night. None of us blamed him. All of us loathed him from that point on.
Now, then, the other Bill Wyman. My old pal Eric Woulkewicz, as unique an individual as can be imagined happened to be walking down Milwaukee Avenue one late summer morning.
Just to give you a picture of the man that was Eric Woulkewicz, he once went for an entire several-year stretch with nothing in his wardrobe but second-hand jumpsuits and Aqua-Sox. Also, at this time, he lived in an old dentist’s office on the Near West Side, complete with reclining chair and spit fountain. A true friend, he offered me sleeping accommodations in the dentist’s chair one time when I needed new digs in a hurry.
He once concocted an idea that he was certain would keep him rolling in dough for the rest of his life. He owned two junky vehicles, a sedan and a Plymouth minivan. Making sure neither ran out of gas was, at times, his primary occupation. He planned to equip the sedan with a camouflaged pinhole camera and have it trail the van on a drive through Skokie, at the time a suburb notorious for its police officers stopping cars driven by black men for no good reason other than their color. He would drive the sedan and his friend named Mustafa, a large black man with waist-length dreadlocks, would pilot the van. Eric was banking on the Skokie cops pulling Mustafa over for no reason. Then, Eric would present village officials with photos of the stop and demand a cahs settlement, which he and Mustafa would split.
Eric even had a name for the camera-equipped van — the Freedom-mobile. Sadly, the scheme never got off the ground.
So, on the late summer morning in question, Eric was walking down Milwaukee Avenue and just as he was passing the Double Door, a hip live music venue near the North/Milwaukee/Damen intersection, he saw someone taping a handwritten sign up in the window. It read, “Rolling Stones tickets on sale at noon. $7.”
The Double Door, Chicago
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Eric asked the guy what it was all about and was told the Stones were to kick off their 1997-98 worldwide tour in Chicago with an impromptu gig at the 475-capacity venue, just a lark on the part of the mega-band. Eric figured, hell, even if it’s all a scam, tickets are only seven bucks apiece. So he decided to wait until noon when he was the first person in line to buy two. The line, by that time, stretched around the block.
Oh, it was the real thing. Eric proceeded to sell his pair of tickets for $1000, a 14,2oo-percent return on his investment.
The wise financial strategem allowed my pal Eric Woulkewicz to keep the gas tanks of his junky sedan and Plymouth van filled for months.
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UPDATE ON THE CHIEF
Looks like Chief Keef isn’t gracing the streets of upscale Northbrook, Illinois after all. At least not as a citizen thereof.
Chicagoans held their collective breath as news trickled out earlier this week that the under-aged hip hop star had purchased a home in Northbrook.
Now, a Cook County Juvenile Court judge has ruled there is no credible evidence CK has taken up residence in the heretofore white haven from the dark inner city. A move by Chief Keef would have amounted to a violation of his parole for the crime of being way too hip hop.
“Radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.” — Bob Edwards
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THE CHRISTMAS I BECAME KING FAROUK
The transistor radio just might be the coolest consumer electronic product ever invented.
Think of it, the kids of the early ’60s were able to carry, for the first time in human history, music in their pockets.
One Of Humankind’s Crowning Achievements
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The iPod is merely a refinement on that earthshaking development. The smartphone can’t begin to compare, since it forces its possessors to communicate with Mom & Dad, among other insufferables.
I was eight years old in the fall of 1964. I’d seen the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show the previous February and was hooked. They were young and mop-headed and fun. I must admit I had no particular love for any one of their endless string of hits, but they opened up the Top 40 charts for me.
Because of them, I discovered the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, Martha and the Vandellas, and The Four Seasons, all of whom I liked much more. Wherever I saw a radio –the ungainly kind that plugged into the wall — that landmark year, I turn it on and fiddled with the dial until I could pull in WLS or WCFL, Chicago’s rock ‘n roll stations.
Martha And The Vandellas
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The thing I studied most that year had nothing to do with math or science; it was Dex Card’s Silver Dollar Survey. Card was the new afternoon DJ WLS had hired early in 1964 to position itself even younger and hipper than when it had originally gone to all rock ‘n roll four years earlier. Each afternoon he’d play, in order, the 40 songs on his Silver Dollar Survey compilation of Chicago biggest hits.
Dex Card At A WLS Record Hop
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I appeared faithfully every Friday afternoon after school at Frank’s Dime Store on North Avenue to pick up my fresh new copy of the tri-fold Silver Dollar Survey. For the rest of that day, I’d devour the thing, memorizing the position of each song on the chart.
By the way, it had taken WLS a few years after the big 1960 format change to really catch on. A lot of people who lived within range of the station’s clear channel, 50,000-watt signal were farmers. WLS could be pulled in on a good day from Minneapolis to St. Louis, Louisville to Cincinnati and Detroit. That covered an awful lot of plow-pushers. And at first, all those farmers were mightily ticked off that WLS had replaced shows like “The Prairie Farmer” and “Barn Dance” with stuff like “Alley Oop” by the Hollywood Argyles.
The rock ‘n roll DJs, including Dick Biondi (The Wild I-tralian), Clark Weber, and Art Roberts, gamely hung in there, waiting for the right break — and it came with the arrival of the Beatles in the US in the winter of ’64. Next thing anybody knew, WLS and its big competitor, WCFL, were the hottest stations in town.
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That’s where I come in. Starting in September, 1964, I began badgering my mother to get me a transistor radio for Christmas. Ma gave me her stock-in-trade response, “What are we, the Rockefellers?”
She’d alternate between that and “Who do you think you are, King Farouk?”
King Farouk Would Have Had A Transistor Radio
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I had no idea who King Farouk was, but I assumed he was filthy rich.
Generally, once she’d invoke either of those titans of wealth, I’d know that whatever I was asking for was out of the question. She had, after all, grown up during the Great Depression and that experience mixed in with her own innate neuroses and compulsions caused her to squeeze a dime so tightly that Roosevelt turned blue.
But this time, I would not take no for an answer. I hammered her seemingly daily, often earning a whack to the side of my head for my troubles.
Besides, Ma never saw Christmas as a time to bestow trivial gifts like toys and such on us. Every Christmas eve, I’d unwrap her Sears gift box full of underwear and socks and then lie to her, telling her they were great. I’d be excited over the gifts my sisters Fran and Charlotte would give me, like Tonka trucks and big 64-crayon boxes of Crayolas. But not Ma’s.
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At school, all my friends would gush about their new toy cranes and Erector Sets. Then they’d ask me what I got. The first year they asked, I responded honestly: “Well, my Ma got me underwear and….” I had to stop there because my friends’ howls of laughter were drowning me out.
By the time Christmas rolled around in ’64, I’d grown past Tonka trucks and crayons. I wanted — no, craved — the Rolling Stones and Martha and the Vandellas. I was growing up.
So, that Christmas eve I was decidedly less excited than I’d normally be. We feasted that night on the usual Sicilian Christmas Eve table of the Seven Fishes. My fave, then as now, was the calamari in red sauce. I’d let the tentacles dangle out of my mouth and try to force my sister Charlotte to look, at which point she’d threaten to withhold her gift from me that year. I’d stop forthwith.
At about eight that evening it was time to open the presents. I felt as though my childhood was past because I really didn’t care all that much about the whole thing. The previous year, for instance, I’d gotten a James Band 007 attache case, complete with code book, false IDs and a Luger that shot plastic bullets. Now that was a Christmas gift. The week between that Christmas and New Year I’d even written out my will in case I’d be killed in the execution of my duties as a spy. I recall folding it up and hiding it in the 007 breast pocket wallet that came with the attache case.
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Now, at the jaded age of eight, nothing short of a transistor radio would do and since I wasn’t going to get it….
My brother Joey called out, “To Mike from Ma and Dad.”
He handed me the present. It was small, about ten inches by six inches, so it wasn’t the usual underwear and socks. I didn’t even tear the package open as I’d always done in the past. This time I carefully opened it, rather like a fussy old aunt who found it weirdly imperative to preserve the wrapping paper for next year.
The moment I saw the picture on the front of the box, I screamed, actually screamed, as if I were being tortured by Auric Goldfinger.
“Why No, Mr. Bond. I Expect You To Die!”
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There it was, my transistor radio.
The Rolling Stones and Martha & the Vandellas were now mine. All mine.
I slept with that thing, the earphone attached to me, for the next three years until I got my second transistor radio. I quickly arrived at the point where I couldn’t get to sleep without the sound of music in my right ear.
“Women are all female impersonators to some degree.” — Susan Brownmiller
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SHE♥S A GIRL
Do American women really want pink cars?
I suppose there are those who do, but do enough of them crave advertising the fact that they have the XX chromosome that it’s worth it to Honda produce millions of the new pink Fit She♥s?
Haven’t we gone beyond this stuff?
BTW: that’s precisely how Honda’s styling the new model’s name, with a cutesy little heart rather than an apostrophe. Ick. And another thing, what would be the purpose for an apostrophe in that position anyway? The whole thing is a mess, I tell you.
Pink Car? Flowers In Hand? Proof She Has A Vagina
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Terrifyingly, the new Fit She♥s have windshields designed to minimize facial wrinkles (I’m not making this up) and the AC system helps prevent bad skin.
Oh, you gals!
Back in the early 70s when women’s lib was becoming sort of acceptable, Phillip Morris Company marketed Virginia Slims cigarettes. They were longer and narrower and had pretty little packaging.
The ads for the smoke were everywhere. You’ve come a long way, baby, the brand’s tagline, became part of the cultural landscape.
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But that was then. Sassy women were fresh and exotic — that is until they started making noises about earning the same salaries as men — then they had to be squashed. Just a few years later, Phyllis Schlafly and her gang of upright simians successfully stymied the Equal Rights Amendment. Before the decade was out, women’s lib became a couple of dirty words.
Somehow many females in this holy land got themselves elected to Congress and even were named CEOs of big corporations. Heck, there are more female university students than male in the United States today.
And, mirabile dictu, they’re not just going to college to look for husbands.
So even though the wording of our Constitution was never changed to accommodate one half of our population, women seem to be making big strides, even if the Right Wingers and Christian fundamentalists would like them to make little pitti-pat strides in bare feet.
I feel uncomfortable around anybody who needs to blare to the world what shape their genitals are. Suffice it to say I don’t keep company with any woman who’d be hot for one of these pink cars.
In fact, it was The Loved One who insisted on black when we bought our then-new car a few years ago. She’s cool by me.
Who Am I To Argue With The Loved One?
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INNER CITY BLUES
So, our friends in the Bloomington Common Council last night OK’d the plan to build a 168-room Hyatt hotel on Kirkwood just west of the Courthouse.
Yeesh. I smell a pile of Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Coldwater Creeks popping up around that area quicker than you can say gridlock.
Bloomington Tomorrow?
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This ain’t Memaw and Pepaw’s Bloomington anymore.
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FREEDOM! WELL, A LITTLE BIT
In the lead-up to last year’s scheduled NATO and G-8 summits in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez, cooked up a law banning the recording of cops doing their jobs on the city’s public streets.
Protesters and civil liberties advocates screamed to high heaven that the new law would allow the cops to act with impunity during rallies and marches. It would be, they feared, 1968 all over again.
Reporter & Protester, Bloodied By Cops During The ’68 Convention
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Rahm and Alvarez, whose position is analagous to that of Chris Gaal here, figured they’d be protecting the identities of cops who might subsequently be targeted at their homes for retribution or merely for the hell of it.
It’s possible. Problem is, whenever public officials or law enforcement officers are allowed to work in secrecy, they tend to do things that they really need to keep secret. Like clunking people on the head with their nightsticks.
A Convincing Argument
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So, what’s more important? Keeping cops safe in their homes or keeping citizens safe from the cops?
I know where I stand. Police work is a dangerous business. You take your chances when you take the oath. That doesn’t mean anyone who messes with the home or family of a cop isn’t a stinking rat. But we have laws to protect any citizens — including cops — from criminal attack.
We always have to be vigilant against the chilling effect of authority and tyranny on public speech and demonstrations. That trumps most other considerations.
And guess what? The US Supreme Court agrees! Huzzah!
The Court, still dominated by Reagan/Bush/Bush conservatives — believe it or not, refused to overturn a lower court ruling yesterday that Emanuel and Alavarez’s new law was too broad and unconstitutional.
They Got It Right This Time
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Next time there’s a mass demonstration in Chicago — or anywhere else in this free country — protesters will be able to record the doings of the cops, just in case the boys in blue have an urge to dent some skulls.
[A Note: The NATO summit was eventually moved to another location where organizers wouldn’t have to worry about mass protests.]
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FOGIES
In other Supreme Court news, the Rolling Stones now are older, on average, than the nine members of the highest court in the land.
Early Humans
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And that includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in March will celebrate her 169th birthday. She is the only living human to have attended both inaugurations of Abraham Lincoln.
The team of mathematicians who calculated the astronomical figures have said they did not take into consideration the fact that Keith Richards has lived the equivalent of hundreds of years. Had the Richards factor been added to the algorithm, the math geeks say, the average age of the Stones would have exceeded that of the ancient redwood trees of California.
The Loved One sent me the link last night and, to say the least, it takes my breath away. Couple that with conservative guru Richard Viguerie saying Mitt Romney lost because he didn’t hammer it home that Barack Obama is a “radical” who is out to destroy our holy land and you get the gist of the angst Tuesday’s election caused much of the nation.
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I wrote on Facebook the other day, “Personal to Republicans like Karl Rove & Glenn Beck and everybody who thinks the nation is gonna collapse now that Obama’s been reelected: Get hold of yourselves, people!”
It does seem on first blush that many Republicans and Me Party-ists and Libertarians have become opera singers and drama queens about an event that occurs every four years.
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While driving The Loved One to work this morning, I said something on the order of, These people are lunatics. She had a flash of equanimity, though, and pointed out that we’d be singing a very similar tune, only with different lyrics, had Romney won.
She’s right.
Then again, I thought of George W. Bush “winning” the 2000 election. I could have consoled myself by saying, “Well, it’s only four years, we’ll get ‘im next time.” The problem was Bush bollixed the Afghan War and then tricked the nation into the Iraq War. Whatever my worst fears were about Bush at the time of his “victory,” those misdeeds far exceeded them.
I don’t expect Obama to manufacture evidence to whip up war hysteria. The thing that petrifies the Right is his willingness to spend dough on social services.
Even if he bollixes that agenda big time — say he creates some useless, bloated federal authority overseeing the health care system — it still won’t come close to comparing with a couple of wars that have thus far cost hundreds of thousands of civilian and military lives.
So, on third thought, yeah, the people wailing and gnashing their teeth and predicting apocalypse — literally — over another four years of Obama are pretty much lunatics.
By the way, Sagan’s signature line, “billions and billions”? He never said it. He revealed that tidbit in his book entitled — what else? — “Billions and Billions.”
Sagan’s early passing was a great loss, especially in this era of anti-intellectualism and distrust of science. On the other hand, we’re not totally adrift — the big boss at the Hayden Planetarium, Neil de Grasse Tyson, is a worthy successor. He only needs a signature line — that he never said.
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FIRE
Now the news comes that a half dozen Tibetans have set themselves on fire in recent days to dramatize their unhappiness with the Chinese, whose Communist Party has been convening in Beijing.
That makes a total of some 60 Tibetans who’ve lit themselves ablaze in the last two years.
Buddhist Nun Palden Choetso Immolates Herself Earlier This Year
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Make no mistake, The Chinese are a bunch of bullies when it comes to Tibet. For that matter, they’re bullies in just about every issue, foreign and domestic, they address.
Is it my Western mindset that causes me to think it’d make more tactical sense to, I don’t know, set fire to the enemy rather than yourself?
Is suicide ever called for in a political dispute?
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2000 LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME
Psychedelia, baby!
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Friday, November 9th, 2012
LECTURE ◗ IU Maurer School of Law — “The Transnistria Conflict: Not Frozen,” Presented by Matt Rojansky, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment; Noon
LECTURE ◗ IU Ballantine Hall — “Latin America and China: Primary Goods, Populism, and Political leverage,” Presented by Andrae Marak of Governors State University; 12:30pm
LECTURE ◗ IU SoFA — “Artists’ Books: When the Goblet Becomes the Wine,” Presnted by Bill and Vicky Stewart of Vamp & Tramp Booksellers; 4:30pm
“I am leaving soon. and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly.
“The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure.
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“Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them.
“We of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all the planets and for the complete elimination of aggression.
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“The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked.
“At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk.
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“The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more profitable enterprises.
“Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works.
“I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.
“Your choice is simple: Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.
Here’s where, today: The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-6pm
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A HALLOWE’EN MESSAGE
Oh, baby, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” remains to this day one of my top ten fave movies of all time.
Michael Rennie was so cool and suave as Klaatu, the emissary from another planet. And Gort, the robot! Good heavens, he scared the bejesus out of me when the movie would air on TV on a Friday night. As a kid, I’d run out of the room when Gort would appear. That huge, faceless head! That massive body! The laser that shot out from his visor!
But I couldn’t bear to miss a single second of the movie so I’d tiptoe back into the living room and peek around the corner to see if Gort was still on the screen.
Gort
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The thrills of childhood are so visceral and immediate.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized Klaatu had a message for humanity. And later I read that the whole movie, adapted from a short story by Harry Bates entitled, “Farewell to the Master,” was a modern-day allegory for the arrival of a messiah.
Both Klaatu and Jesus brought a message of peace to humankind. Klaatu, while he roamed the streets of Washington, DC, took on the name Carpenter — Jesus was a carpenter. Klaatu was killed by the 1951 version of the Roman centurions and he was brought back to life so he could deliver his word.
“Carpenter”
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Who knew?
Anyway, I was irked when the remake was announced a little more than five years ago. The original version, directed by Robert Wise, was still good enough for me. And then when I heard that the insufferable Keanu Reaves would play the lead, I vowed I’d never watch the remake. I’ve kept that vow.
And, you know, Gort was played by a real man named Lock Martin. In one scene, Gort carries the female lead, Helen Benson, played by Patricia Neal, into the spaceship. The problem was Martin, himself a breathtakingly tall individual, was oddly weak and so unable to carry Neal. The crew had to rig a system of wires to support Neal while Martin pretended to carry her.
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“The Day the Earth Stood Still” was scored by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann, who also handled music for “Citizen Kane,” “Psycho,” and “Taxi Driver.” Herrmann employed sophisticated (for his time) overdubbing and used odd and even bizarre instruments including two theremins, vibraphones, glockenspiels, and a celesta, among others.
The Theremin & Its Inventor, Lev Termen
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The effect was an aural weirdness that was perfect for the film.
Oddly, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was shut out of Oscar nominations for pictures made in 1951, not even gaining a technical nod. But there’s no shame in that: Red Buttons once won an Oscar but Cary Grant never did.
One more thing. Klaatu was shot in the opening sequence of the movie. He’s taken to Walter Reed Army Hospital for treatment where the doctors are stunned that he’s healed himself using a salve he’d brought from his home planet. While the doctors discuss Klaatu’s advanced pharmacology, they light up — right in the hospital! Such simpler times.
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Now, which movie do you think I’m going to pop into my DVD player tonight?
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THE SCARY THEREMIN
How cool is this?
I dug up some audio of the two paleo-technogeek musicians playing separate theremins in a recording session for the score for “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Their names were Dr. Samuel Hoffman (he was a foot doctor by day) and Paul Shure.
The theremin was played without actually touching the instrument. The player would wave his or her hands in front of a couple of antennae. With no frets, keys, or any other material devices to control pitch, volume, and duration, the theremin was extremely difficult to master.
The Rolling Stones’ musical adventurer, Brian Jones, played the theremin on “Their Satanic Majesties Request.”
Let’s listen to Hoffman and Shure lay down tracks during post-production for the movie.
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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.
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Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
VOTE ◗ The Curry Building, 214 W. Seventh St.; 8am-6pm
STUDIO TOUR ◗ Brown County, various locations — The Backroads of Brown County Studio Tour, free, self-guided tour of 16 local artists’ & craftspersons’ studios; 10am-5pm, through October
LECTURE ◗ IU Memorial Union — “The Future of Urban Education in the US: Where Is It Going?”, Presented by Eugene White, superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, and David Harrs CEO of The Mind Trust; 2pm
MUSIC ◗ Cafe Django — Regal Rhythm Halloween Show, Plus costume contest; 7pm
Anyway, at the Summit of the Americas Obama is rolling over with his legs in the air, hoping the right wing will scratch his belly. He’s standing firm against the legalization of drugs even as other national leaders in the Western Hemisphere call for an end to the war on drugs and their legalization.
Personal message to the President: Barry, baby, the right ain’t gonna scratch your belly even if you claim you made love to your wife once with a hunting rifle in the bed, you want to outlaw Mexico, you’re turning the keys to the White House over to Pat Robertson, or you’re getting your daughters fitted for chastity belts.
Forget playing to them, Mr. President; play to us, the folks who fantasized that you equal change.
That’s all for me today. I’ll step aside for that sizzling library chick RE Paris, who’s done some fab research on marijuana, the laws governing it, and our weird, weird relationship with it. (BTW: guess what date Friday is.) Take it away RE.
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re: ARTS & LETTERS — AMERICA’S FAVORITE ILLEGAL SUBSTANCE
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“Il est dangereux d’avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.”
(It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.) ~ Voltaire (1752)
Member from upstate New York: “Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?” Speaker Rayburn: “I don’t know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it’s a narcotic of some kind.” (Marihuana Tax Act Hearing, 1937)
