Department of Records
The Onion A.V. Club this week provided an unexpected little tribute to Dazzle Ships, the 1983 LP by Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark. Aaah, OMD. I bought this album back in ‘85 or ‘86, on vinyl. I was a fan of the group’s Junk Culture and Crush and was curious about their earlier work. The LP had a neat fold-out cover with holes punched in the striking green/grey design; the import even had a little insert advertising various Virgin products I’d never heard of (back then even the U.K. seemed exotic as any other far-off place). The music inside proved to be both scary and gorgeous, although now the only tunes I can remember were “Genetic Engineering” and the one with cleverly overlapping time code announcements. To a sheltered teen with no prior knowledge of edgier artists like Kraftwerk or Joy Division, it was pretty heady stuff.
Rainbow-Colored Necklaces for Everyone
Scattered advice to people who appeared on this year’s Kennedy Center Honors telecast:
- Aretha Franklin, don’t ever change. I know you looked ridiculous in a giganto brown ruffled boa which made you look like an overstuffed chocolate dessert. Outrageous is what you are, criticism be damned.
- Smokey Robinson, you totally deserved the honor. I just wish we could’ve heard some of your more obscure songs performed, such as “Your Wonderful Sweet Sweet Love” (The Supremes, 1972) or “My Baby Must Be a Magician” (The Marvelettes, 1968).
- Kenny Rogers, what have they done to your face? Please fire the plastic surgeon who bestowed you with a perpetually surprised expression.
- Dolly Parton, you’re starting to look like a drag queen’s impersonation of yourself. I beg you and Kenny to lay off the facework. Otherwise, rock on with your fabboo self.
- President Bush, would it kill you to smile a little? Everybody knows you’d rather be fishing in Crawford, but please look up the word decorum in the dictionary and at least pretend to have some enthusiasm.
- Jessica Simpson, I’m concerned. We only saw a glimpse of you walking onstage after the Dolly tribute. What happened? Oh, that.
- Andrew Lloyd Webber, I know you’re a lowest-common-denominator hack, but you must’ve done something right to get such fabulous performances from Christine Ebersol, Betty Buckley and that Evita woman.
- Reese Witherspoon, you are cute as a button and I love you.
- Stephen Spielberg, thanks for reminding me that one can survive growing up in the stifling suburbia of Scottsdale, AZ.
- Joan Collins and Michele Lee, remind me why you were in the audience? I thought I was watching a nighttime ’80s soap queen reunion for a few seconds there.
- Kennedy Center Honors nomination committee, please get Doris Day’s number quickly before she passes on. At least you got to James Brown in time.
Googie Getaway
A photo gallery showing views of the Disneyland Hotel when it first opened. The stylish planter in the pic below? Fantastic.
Reading Railroaded
Hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday weekend. Ours was jam-packed and too frazzled, but we finally got to relax a little this afternoon after a brunch and gift giving with my family. This year’s theme might as well be Books, Books, Books. I’ll likely write more about these later on (pardon the obnoxious Amazon.com linking). My brother and sister-in-law kindly gave The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962 and Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life by Linda H. Davis off my online wish list. Good friends of ours gave Christopher a fascinating looking book called The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson. I’ll have to borrow that from him someday. Also my s.o. gifted me with a Borders card (which I might use to buy Neal Gabler’s Disney bio) and the neato Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 4 set. C. also got the Mission: Impossible first season DVDs from my parents. And I hung a new/old Joyce Compton 1940s lobby card on my wall. Fun stuff!!
Cartoon Jazz
Pop Matters chimes in on the enduring popularity of Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas and its resonance with people who aren’t ordinarily into jazz (or even holiday) music. The article mentions the fact that Guaraldi wasn’t an exceptional piano player, but his work had a way of being wonderfully evocative — “Skating” immediately puts me in a winter mood, just as “Great Pumpkin Waltz” conjures up an autumnal vibe. The fact that this music ended up on Charlie Brown TV specials makes it all the more wonderful. (via the Sound Scavengers list)
Smiles, Everyone, Smiles
Behold the stupefying fabulousness of the opening production number for the 1986 Miss America pageant. The contestants may have been different, but year after year one could count on getting the same elements from this spot. A jazzy dance troupe gyrates away while the fifty finalists walk around and lift their arms in unison — trying to spot the two or three uncoordinted ladies in the group was always good for a laugh. Glittery hosts (including a pre-Gifford Kathie Lee Johnson in ‘86) are introduced, and everybody sings some thankless original tune with vague lyrics about setting your hopes high and reaching for the moon. The whole thing’s hilarious and not at all borderline scary like the year they did a production number to Prince’s “Play in the Sunshine”. They should’ve done “Dreamgirls”, man!
Vintage Subway Shilling
An eBay seller recently had for sale a great group of vintage advertising cards from the New York subway system. I grabbed the images, cleaned ‘em up, and uploaded them to my Cool Vintage Illustration flickr set. These cards are unusual in that the back sides had portraits and bios of the designers who worked on them — big names like Paul Rand, E. McKnight Kauffer, and Joseph Binder (below). It appears that each designer was given carte blanche to do whatever he pleased, as long as it conveyed the proper “you can’t beat advertising on subway cards” message.
Jeffy’s Crappy Christmas
Is there a piece of holiday television that you haven’t seen in years? Something you’d want to catch again to find out if it’s as good/bad/sappy as you remember? My main choice would be the animated A Family Circus Christmas, first broadcast in 1979. I recall that the special was as inoffensively cute as the comic strip, with a storyline which centered around Jeffy while Dolly, Billy, Barfy and the rest got consigned to supporting roles. From X-Entertainment’s recap of of three years ago, I can also gather that it’s awfully lame. It is here that we can compare what got utilized from Bil Keane’s strip and what didn’t. Dotted-line pathways? No. Billy taking over the strip? No. Ghost of a dead grandparent? Yes.
Another tale of pop culture geekiness: Christopher was telling me about how, when helping with the handing out of gifts to co-workers last week, he did a flat “ho ho ho”. Right away I recognized it as the metallic, monotone “ho ho ho” from Ned Flander’s rooftop Santa in The Simpsons‘ pilot episode! Unfortunately none of C’s co-workers caught that reference. We’re just too hip for this world.
Queen of Queens
Salon on Perez Hilton’s Gay Witch Hunt. I’ve checked out PerezHilton.com a few times, and honestly … I don’t get it. A bunch of downloaded paparazzi pics with childish writing scribbled on top. This is hugely popular? Go Fug Yourself does basically the same thing, but at least the G.F.Y. people are funny. And I stronly disagree with Hilton’s m.o. that outing celebrities is a public service to the gay community. Mostly it’s nasty and intrusive — although the tabloid press thinks otherwise, even celebrities deserve to have private lives.
Monster Mash
Right now I’m lovin’ the cover design on Criterion’s forthcoming multi-film set Monsters and Madmen. The illustrations on this and the individual titles look like they were done by some currently hot comics illustrator, but I can’t think of the name. Anybody know? Regardless, anything with Boris Karloff might make for a great rental. Another design-y link: one weblogger’s choices for Top 5 Movie Posters of 2006 (via UnBeige).
Tower’s End
The Washington Post on the final weeks of Tower Records. Despite the reporter’s Old Fogeyishness, I can relate to the fact that a sense of discovery is lost with the closing of these stores. The Tempe, AZ Tower Records location was my favorite hangout during my student days. I’d bike there just about every week in high school, then in college it became easier since the store was located just steps away from the Art building at Arizona State University. Mostly I’d just thumb through the albums (and, later, the CDs), study all the neat artwork and compile a mental list of stuff I’d want to own. The Tempe store later relocated across the parking lot to a larger space in the same strip mall, but the funky ambience wasn’t the same. Then they moved way across town. More recently I’d try to visit the Phoenix location, but they never had anything I wanted and the place seemed kind of sad and run-down. The experience was disillusioning. I prefer to remember the good old Tower from the ’80s and early ’90s. So here’s a fond farewell from another customer.
Christmas with Barbara Stanwyck
Did you ever have to double-dip on the Holiday shopping? I bought my mom the DVD of Barbara Stanwyck’s 1946 comedy Christmas In Connecticut, but Christopher needed a quick gift for his boss so we ended up buying two. That’s okay, it’s a fun movie — and I’ll forgive it for being probably the least Christmassy Christmas film ever made. Stanwyck plays a Martha Stewart-like domestic doyenne. The comedy begins when her editor (Sidney Greenstreet, less intimidating than normal) invites an ailing soldier (handsome Dennis Morgan) to stay at Stanwyck’s home for the holidays. Problem is, Stanwyck’s “perfect wife and mother” image is a fake and the woman has to quickly come up with a picturesque Connecticut abode, a husband, and a baby before Morgan catches on to her ruse. The excellent supporting cast includes personal fave Joyce Compton as the sweetie-pie nurse who sets the plot in motion. If you can’t get the DVD (which is pretty bare bones, including just a trailer and Warner’s heavy-handed short A Star in the Night), Turner Classic Movies will be showing this on Chrismas Eve.
Another not-quite-Christmas Stanwyck I would recommend is 1940’s Remember the Night with Fred MacMurray. Although not on DVD yet, the film has some of the sweetest Yuletide scenes ever captured on film. Our Barbara plays a paroled shoplifter under the care of D.A. MacMurray. Circumstances force the duo to spend the holidays at MacMurray’s childhood home with his mother (Beulah Bondi doing her usual “sacrificial mom” bit). I can remember watching this on the old American Movie Classics channel and being enchanted by the performers and the gorgeous b&w cinematography. Catch it on TCM on December 17th.
Wii Are the World
I’ve read JD’s impressions, then Kris’ post, then I saw the commercial embedded in the TiVo. Now I want a Nintendo Wii. This comes from someone who hasn’t played a home videogame system since the Atari 2600. It looks like Nintendo’s doing the right thing by appealing to a broader audience who aren’t into the hardcore gaming scene — and those interactive controllers look like tons of fun. I’m not typical, but I prefer simple and engaging gameplay over fancy-shmancy graphics — and first-person games make me dizzy. As a bonus, I love the console’s creamy, Mac-like design. Maybe it’s time to save some pennies and wait a year or so for the price to lower (I didn’t say I wanted it now).
Into the Groovy
I got reactions of both thrill and nausea watching the first 10 minutes from Make Your Own Kind of Music, a 1971 TV variety special starring Herb Alpert, The Carpenters, Al Hirt, Mark Lindsay, and The Doodletown Pipers (via Patrick). Enjoyed the Sesame Streetlike opening, the alphabet theme is nicely carried throughout the show, and the guys all wear giant stiff lapels that look as if they could put someone’s eye out. And Karen Carpenter sure could rock those drums. TV variety shows from that period have all sorts of queasy “old/new” moments, such as this clip of Doris Day singing “Day by Day” from Godspell alongside some hippieish musicians.
New in the Store: Holiday Reindeer
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Cafe Press Store update (mainly since sales there have been, shall we say, tepid) — but we now have a few products with this cutely attired reindeer made in time for the holidays. I did the illustration for our Christmas cards this year, and liked it so much I decided to have them printed in color instead of the usual hand-tinted b&w. The enterprise set me back more than a few bucks, but the cards turned out nice. Now we gotta send ‘em.
