Will They Call It Pottersville?
Okay, I don’t really care that much for J.K. Rowling, but how cool is the projected Harry Potter theme park, set to open at Universal’s Islands of Adventure in 2009? Those artist renderings are way cool.
Goodbye Charlie
Charles McNulty of the L.A. Times remembers Charles Nelson Reilly, drawing parallels between Reilly and Paul Lynde and going into his considerable theatrical career. As a child, I had an intense liking of Reilly on Match Game and Lynde on Hollywood Squares. Years before I had any inklings on what being gay meant, these two gents impressed on my young mind that it’s okay to be different. And that’s a wonderful legacy to have. R.I.P., C.N.L. (via ArtsJournal)
The Harriet Files
I have to admit to harboring a weird fascination with Harriet Klausner, Amazon.com’s most prolific book reviewer. She’s a self-described speed reader who logs in multiple reviews each day, mostly appearing on the day a book is published. She never fails to give a book four or five stars, claiming to skip out on analyzing books she doesn’t enjoy (which kind of boggles the mind, really). Paging through her summaries, it’s apparent that this woman never met a contrived chick-lit paperback, Nascar romance or vampire-themed mystery she didn’t like. All of her reviews follow the same formula: two paragraph plot summary (likely paraphrased from the book’s back cover) followed by one paragraph of superficial affirmation. Her reviews read as if hastily speed-written, filled with faulty grammar and run-on sentences galore. Many have questioned whether Ms. Klausner actually writes all that stuff, but I imagine her as some kind of obsessive-compulsive lone nut scribbling away on whatever cheezy Harlequin Romance comes her way: “Must … stay … numberone … ”
All this has developed an interesting new wrinkle since Amazon allowed customers to comment on the reviews, lending a delicious “meta” quality to the whole thing. In Harriet’s case, each review comes with a discussion where a small pool of Harriet-defenders butt up against the Harriet-haters. And, tellingly, her reviews now routinely get voted “not helpful” on the prinicpal that no one should take this bald-faced shill seriously. The Harriet backlash is now in full swing, folks. There’s even a weblog devoted to her (and Amazon’s other megareviewers), The Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society. It must be noted that Ms. Klausner is closing in on her 14,000th Amazon book review. Scribble on, crazy book lady!!
Military Style Hare Cut
Happy Memorial Day. In honor of our fighting men and women, let’s watch Bugs Bunny, fat Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig shilling war bonds to the tune of Any Bonds Today? Because nothing says “patriotism” like Bugs doing an Al Jolson impersonation:
The Mystery of Bag X-13D
If anybody is curious about Doritos flavor X-13D, packaged in a plain black bag with “All American Classic” as your only clue, the chips taste exactly like a McDonalds cheeseburger. Eating them reminds me of the amazing scientific advances which allow mankind to put so many different flavors in a nondescript orange powder. You get a little bit of a hamburger taste, the vinagary tang of ketchup, and even an essence of pickle. It’s a bizarre taste for a tortilla chip, but worth a one bag purchase. I don’t think we’ll be buying more, however (photo from taquitos.net).
Over in the frozen food aisle, I also took a chance on Dreyer’s Take the Cake ice cream. Tastes just like yellow cake with candy sprinkles and a ribbon of atomic blue frosting. Let me specify that the ice cream itself is yellow cake flavored and it in fact contains no yellow cake. Like the Doritos, it’s weird but actually pretty good. This is one of five limited edition flavors Dreyer’s is putting out with a hackneyed American Idol theme, and just like A.I. you can vote on your favorite. Last time I checked, Take the Cake was leading the pack with 33% of the votes.
Can you tell I was allowed to go grocery shopping without the s.o.?
Lesley Affair
My pal Patrick recently added to his LiveJournal a neato bootleg compilation from 2001 called Love Her By Name: A Lesley Gore Tribute. Most of the selections are contemporary to Miss Gore’s ’60s heyday, although there are a few stunning newer numbers such as Rasputina’s coffeehouse-feminist take on “You Don’t Own Me”. I loves me some Lesley, whether they’re cover versions or not!
On a similar tip, I just finished my own mix of underrated Giorgio Moroder productions — Play Me Moroder 79-84 (no download unfortunately). Ironically the hardest song to track down was Irene Cara’s “Why Me?”, a top 20 hit from 1983.
Richard Amsel’s Sparkle and Shine
Richard Amsel is one of my favorite illustrators from the ’70s and ’80s. Amsel first came to prominence when, as a college student, he won a contest to illustrate the poster for Barbra Streisand’s Hello Dolly. His portrait of Bette Midler on The Divine Miss M has become an icon of album cover art. He also did plenty of magazine covers (like this Time issue with Lily Tomlin from 1977), but it’s his movie poster designs for which he will be best remembered. His work has a bit of an Art Nouveau influence, but the main thing I associate with him is the realistic yet flattering softness in the famous faces he paints. It’s a look so unmistakeable that I can tell an Amsel without even seeing his stylized signature in the corner.
Amsel succumbed to AIDS in 1985. Check out more of his work at The American Art Archives (including a rather appalling example of a beautiful poster made into a crappy DVD cover).
Lost Weekend
Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend arrived from Netflix last week. I kind of half-heartedly put it on my queue since we’ve seen a few of Godard’s other films (we didn’t enjoy all of them; My Life to Live is probably the best). After some more research, however, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for trenchant ’60s social commentary and put it back on the mailbox to be replaced by decidedly lighter fare in the form of Kate & Allie’s first season. A few years ago, a similar thing happened when we rented The Pianist. The movie sat around for at least two weeks before we decided it seemed too heavy going, and so back it went. A little part of me feels guilty about these things, but to be honest we constantly watch a lot of different films — heavy and light — so a few small episodes don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
Have you ever rented a movie, only to return it unseen?
Howard Pierce Desktop Patterns
Thought I’d share these nifty patterns I made back in 2000 — try them out for a cool “Desert Modernism” look. These are based on photos we took of the roofline borders on sculptor Howard Pierce’s home in Joshua Tree, California. The talented Mr. Pierce, who died in 1994, made his name designing whimsical ceramic figurines of animals. Some photos of Pierce’s public sculptures in Joshua tree can be seen here. Enjoy!
Boob Tubing
It always happens to me. The major TV networks have all announced their Fall schedules, and the two new shows we chose to watch — Jericho and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — have both gotten the axe.
Actually, Jericho was more Christopher’s show and I just went along for the ride; its lousy but watchable dramatics called to mind Fox’s short-lived Reunion from the 2005-06 season. Like disaster movies of the ’70s, most of its appeal lied in speculating which character would die next. I wasn’t too surprised about the demises of shopkeeper Gracie (they always kill off the over-40 women first) and whiny April, but Gerald McRaney’s death in the final episode came out of nowhere. With the citizens of Jericho rallying to defend themselves from a neighboring town at season’s end, CBS sure left loyal viewers in the lurch. And that leaves a lot of pissed off people to wonder why the network decided to put a (gag) reality show about a bunch of children running their own town, Lord of the Flies style, in its time slot.
Jericho was one thing, but it’s the inevitable bye-bye of Studio 60 that leaves me truly saddened. Here was a smart, crackling drama that started out brilliantly, then as it moved along the cracks started to show (painfully unfunny show-within-a-show skits) until Aaron Sorkin resorted to putting his characters in awful, stock situations (Danny and Jordan stuck on the studio rooftop!). Viewers complained that it was insufferably smug, but I’ll take smugness any day over the escapist pablum that dominates network TV. More than anything, I admire Sorkin (whose shows I’d never watched before) for daring to criticize the system from within. We need more entertainment like that, but while Studio 60’s corpse rots away our airwaves are filled with the likes of Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? Guess it’s back to watching Frontline, American Experience and old movies on TCM for me.
Book Review: Fly Now!
Consumer note: although
Fly Now!: The Poster Collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is published by National Geographic, it doesn’t contain a single nature photograph (the closest might be a ’70s poster showing a flock of flamingos). What it does have are dozens of gorgeous American and European poster designs from the glory years of air travel in the early- to mid-20th century.
The concept behind this book is simple: posters are presented chronologically alongside a brief history of where the aviation industry was at the time the poster was made. Early chapters on ballooning don’t quite jibe with the rest of the book (which primarily focuses on passenger-based air travel), but otherwise it’s a smooth ride. Joanne Gernstein London’s accompanying text is dry but very informative, giving historical context and commenting directly on the posters on display. It’s a relief that the words don’t exist on a separate plane, so to speak, from the corresponding posters.
As you might guess from the Deco-style cover, the bulk of the artwork dates from the years between World Wars I and II — a great period for both air travel and poster design. Interesting to note how the marketing on these posters changed throughout the years: early posters stressed the safety of air travel to a still uncertain public, the post-WWII era boasted about the technological advances in aircraft design, while in more recent years the destination (rather than how to get there) served as the main point. Relatively recent airline industry deregulations may have made traveling by plane a more mundane experience, but this book serves as a neatly designed reminder of a more exciting and romantic time.
Fly Now! is currently available from National Geographic Books. Order at Amazon.com
here.
Dino-Maintenance
A maintenance worker tends to Disneyland’s Primeval World exhibit in 1966, part of the UCLA Department of Special Collections searchable index of photos from the Los Angeles Times and Daily News. For old L.A. aficionados, this one’s a must-see. Another site that one could spend hours poring through, great! (first spotted on The Blackwing Diaries)
Dollops of Sunshine
Here we go again — I found another cool/old record weblog while doing some research. This time I was trying to find info on ’60s singer Julie Budd, one of whose songs was included on a Sunshine Pop mix made by my friend Ion (Yesterday’s Sunshine, excellent and if you email me nicely I might be able to share a copy). It was during this search that this page popped up as part of Waxidermy, a site which reviews old vinyl of every genre as long as it’s sufficiently obscure (and having a weird cover photo apparently helps, too). Occasionally they share mp3s; the two songs by Ms. Budd are nice examples of that rare crossover between Broadway style razzle dazzle and psych-pop.
Advance to the Next Screen
Cartoon Brew linked to an excellent article on educational film strips recently. The Creative Pro piece explains how those old filmstrips basically kick the butt of today’s PowerPoint presentations in terms of conveying information in a concise manner, illustrated with many wonderful images which made me feel like a third grader again. Try not to scroll through the article without uttering a “beep” before clicking the browser down a screen.
Jesus in 12″ or Less
Where have I been? In the long and sticky process of finding artwork for every song in my iTunes library. While searching for info on a old, campy LP by preacher John Rydgren, I came across the weblog Heavenly Grooves which presents downloads on all sorts of home grown religious recordings from the ’60s to the early ’80s. I used to come across a lot of intriguing looking albums of this stripe in my thrifting days, but never bought any of them ’cause, well, they’re all about Jesus. At least with this weblog you can try stuff out without the risk of losing 99 cents! I hope they post more white bread vocal group LPs, preferably the ones where the ladies sport mile-high beehives on the cover.
