HANG FIRE

Damn, this place is ugly

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:41:44 GMT

Some Shots from my friend Lolita's dock on the Beaufort River:

HappyBirthdayPapa

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:28:15 GMT

Now, go read a book.

HoldFast

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:18:00 GMT

Midway through the 7th of Patrick O'Brien's amazing "Master and Commander" series comes word of a possible 2nd film. Can a perfect cinematice storm come together twice?

Goodnight, Walter

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:46:55 GMT

And that's the way it is...

JustInCase

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:31:20 GMT

I recently got one of those viral e-mails everyone feels the need to forward on into infinity, only this one made me chuckle:

Due to recent budget cuts and the cost of electricity,
gas and oil, as well as current market conditions and
the continued decline of the U.S. economy, The Light at
the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Arrgh, pfffft, aaaack!
Pardon me, I had a brief Bill the Cat moment there.

I don't know about the light at the end of the tunnel, but here's a little ray of sunshine for those of you who are Neko fans and those who are about to be...

I feel better already.

WhatIsTheSoundofChange

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:55:02 GMT

2.8 million hands applauding a new President, a new hope.

1.4 million hands waving a silent "good riddance" to 43 and Iago in his wheelchair.

(Time's up. Get the fuck out)

Farewells and Variations on a Theme

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:52:14 GMT

A couple of notable passings yesterday that have me feeling a bit nostalgic.

Farewell Patrick McGoohan

and so long Ricardo.

You looked mahvelous. Simply mahvelous.

So watching the sequence from "The Prisoner" got me thinking about all the classic themes from '60's shows - a fair share of them, Brit imports. And wouldn't you know it, speak unto youtube and ye shall have them...

So cue the brass and bongos (in no particular order):

The Avengers

The Saint:

The Man From Uncle:

The Wild Wild West:

And the finale....Book 'em Danno

BetterLateThanInWasilla

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:13:40 GMT

Sure this is a bit after the fact, but I've been busy. Seriously. It's still worth reading, and - most importantly - thinking about:

November 14, 2008, 10:00 pm
The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla
By Dick Cavett <http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/author/dick-cavett/>
Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days.

Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will only get Sarah Palin.

I can play a kind of Alaskan roulette. Any random channel clicked on by the remote brings up that eager face, with its continuing assaults on the English Lang.

There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. Phil (so far). If she is not yet on “Judge Judy,” I suspect it can’t be for lack of trying.

What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled “The Victory Tour”?

I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.

I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.

What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?

And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

(How many contradictory and lying answers about The Empress’s New Clothes have you collected? I’ve got, so far, only four. Your additional ones welcome.)

Matt Lauer asked her about her daughter’s pregnancy and what went into the decision about how to handle it. Her “answer” did not contain the words “daughter,” “pregnancy,” “what to do about it” or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer’s query.

I saw this as a brief clip, so I don’t know whether Lauer recovered sufficiently to follow up, or could only sit there, covered in disbelief. If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: “Were you able to hear any part of my question?”

At the risk of offending, well, you, for example, I worry about just what it is her hollering fans see in her that makes her the ideal choice to deal with the world’s problems: collapsed economies, global warming, hostile enemies and our current and far-flung twin battlefronts, either of which may prove to be the world’s second “30 Years’ War.”

Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job?

A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?

Do this lady’s like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?

(In passing, has anyone observed that hunting animals with high-powered guns could only be defined as sport if both sides were equally armed?)

I’d love to hear what you think has caused such an alarming number of our fellow Americans to fall into the Sarah Swoon.

Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word “intellectual” an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.)

Sorry about all of the foregoing, as if you didn’t get enough of the lady every day in every medium but smoke signals.

I do not wish her ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska.

May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance.

But now, as the Brits say, “I’ll be glad to see the back of her.”

********************

Thanks, Dick. But why not let the Palin Effect speak for itself?

It's the Olbermann's turn:

Hats off to the cameraman. He set it up. He framed the shot - and Sarah. Good going, pal. The fact that she's so completely self-consumed and unaware... wow.

VIVA SEATTLE

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:58:50 GMT

I'm stealing this from my pal Beatnik. It just makes me happy and a little homesick, but not enough to actually miss the winter there...

I'll get back to a semi-regular post when my life gets back to semi-regular. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

FreshAirNotFear

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:48:36 GMT

I'm told something stupendous happened the other night. 'Bout time. Stupendous doesn't get out much these last years.

Adios, Butch

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:18:03 GMT

Damn.

PalinComparison

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:39:41 GMT

I have more business on the GOP ticket than Sarah Palin.

Scary. Potentially a heartbeat away...

Something even scarier, though. Hit some of the talkbacks on any of the sites like Youtube running this video and read the rabid condemnation of Charlie Gibson for asking the question and the irrational defense of Palin's ignorance. Damned left wing liberal media conspirators! Besides, what potential leader of the Free World (cough, cough) needs to know anything about the policy which has defined the last 7 years and will influence the next 30 or more? Really?

A new poll indicates that 80% of white female evangelicals really, really dig Palin's act. And as we all learned in high school civics, if any particular group should steer the destiny of this nation, it's that one. As long as their husbands approve and it doesn't interfere with church.

Which reminds me... (content)

Amen, brother.

Get more Todd Snider

Barracuda

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:30:04 GMT

Sarah, plain and Palin...

Yeah, she's got a plan. God's plan, according to, Palin. And what's with the Amy Winehouse hair?

Palin supports this:

Too tired to rant on this, but I will. This is not my America - not Sarah Palin's America. Not a book-banning America. Not an America built on betrayal. Not an America ruled by slash and burn, screw-you-if-you-don't-see-it-my-way politics. Not an America where ignorant kids who end up in powerful places get to bully everyone else. With bad hair.

Besides, we all know how well things worked out the last time God and Big Oil got together in the White House...

Only Rock n Roll

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:10:01 GMT

Summer, 1978. Myrtle Beach, SC.

By day I spin records at an AM rock station, by night I DJ at a place called Tramps, a cavernous disco run by shady guys from Jersey who seem, shall we say, nouveaux riche. Saturday Night Fever is a lifestyle. Polyester prints and platforms rule. The Bee Gees are maddeningly ubiquitous.

I share a downtown shit hole of a house with four other guys, which I rent from my boss. There is no AC, no screens on the windows and the stove doesn't work. Cockroaches and stray animals come and go like Manhattan party kids. But who cares? We're a block and a half from the beach.

One room is made entirely of knotty pine like an afterthought. Walls, floor, ceiling. We build a bar and call it The Coffin. The house is haunted, as it turns out, but the stereo is always on. Bruce see's a Darkness on the Edge of Town. Jackson Browne is already Running on Empty.

But for us, the summer belongs to the Stones and Some Girls. For two weeks in June The Boys take up residence near the Hilton and fly out to concert dates all over the Southeast.

On a whim they decide to play a date at the 2500 seat Myrtle Beach Convention Center. Through the radio station I get ten tickets. I give one to my best friend as a birthday gift and set up my roommates. We sell the remaining two pair for hundreds of dollars and throw one hell of a post concert party. It is the first Stones' show for all of us and the smallest house on the tour. 6/22/78.

Peter Tosh opens. Jagger joins him for You Gotta Walk (and don't look back).

And then the Whip Comes Down and the crowd goes insane.

We're on our feet on top of our seats for the next two hours. I move more than Bill Wyman. Jagger runs a decathlon. Keith and Ron are guitar gods. Charlie drives the bus.

Later that week I miss a chance to drink with Keith, Ron and Charlie at the Hilton's poolside Banana Boat Bar. I still think of that from time to time. Damn.

I still have that program, though. It's high time I had it framed.

Oh yeah. This is the 30th anniversary of another pop culture phenomenon from that summer...

College.

Hurricane Season

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:25:38 GMT

Sitting here on the banks of the Beaufort River watching the spin-off from tropical storm Fay obliterate the horizon, I'm beginning to feel a little uneasy as she boomerangs around the Florida coast not far south of us. I know what the real thing is like. I covered Hugo 19 years ago. Still, the most surreal experience of my life.

Coincidentally, I'm midway through James Lee Burke's The Tin Roof Blowdown, the latest Dave Robicheaux outing and Burke's unflinching take on Katrina. What makes it so completely terrifying is that Burke only invented the characters. The rest of the stuff is real and it is grim. Really grim. I highly recommend it. And for those of you yet to be indoctrinated into Robicheaux's world, what are you waiting for?

Meanwhile, the Idiot-in-Chief is due back in the Big Easy today to blow more sunshine up local asses as the Katrina anniversary nears. Must be all the no-bid Halliburton contracts. I'm just burned-out on flinging anymore vitriol his way. His "administration" stands on its own.

Then again...

40 years prior to Katrina, Betsy smashed across Florida and Louisiana. She is the reason the Corps of Engineers built the levees which failed catastrophically in 2005 - a levee system for which The Moron cut nearly all repair and upgrade funding in spite of clear warnings. Following Betsy, LBJ was on a plane within hours, wandering around shelters with a flashlight and a very nervous Secret Service detail. Bush was too busy with his apparent favorite pastime (outside of assassinating Constitutional rights and starting unwinnable wars) -clearing brush - to be bothered with the greatest natural disaster in American history.

Pray NOLA doesn't take another hit while the Russians are still fucking around in Georgia...

ThisGuyWalksIntoABar Pt. 1

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:12:51 GMT

Yep, it's that small!

I believe in recycling. And it occurs to me that there are a lot of old jokes laying around out there that we could dust off and re-tread like a cheap set of Walmart tires. So here goes:

Bill O'Reilly walks into a bar with a a duck on his head.
The bartender says, "Hey how'd that happen?"
And the Duck says "Beats me. It started as a wart on my ass and grew from there."
rim shot.

Be sure and try the veal!

Jammin' Me Redux

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:58:36 GMT

How 'bout an updated remix, Tom?

Back in '87 T.P. was suffering from the insufferable overexposure/hijinx of various celebs--

Take back Vanessa Redgrave
Take back Joe Piscopo
Take back Eddie Murphy
Give 'em all some place to go

Apparently Piscopo took it to heart and hasn't been seen since. You can leave Eddie on the list (Meet Dave, Beverly Hills Cop 4, anyone?). Mylie Cyrus/Hannah Wyoming goes to the top of the list. There is no escape from the latest toothy bit of mouse merchandise. Her image is ubiquitous. It's fucking creepy, man. Rodney Dangerfield put it best, "the last time I saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it." Yep.

Who's next?

McCain/Obama? Absolutely.

W and DICK? No Doubt.

Washed-up rock stars and "reality" TV, American Idol and all of it's Satan spawn, Talk Radio (and all of its Satan spawn - you know who you are).

Congress.

What and who else?

And Hooters Caters State Dinners...

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 02:48:11 GMT

Watching W and the Frump at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, it's painfully apparent to the largest audience on the planet that there is not one fucking presidential molecule in this dip shit. He's splayed all over his seat like a frat boy at a Longhorns game (with a dad on the Board of Trustees), knees jerking - is he texting? - while the Frump ignores him as she sits bolt upright, eyes straight ahead, disgusted expression. Ignoring him.

Wow.

Forgot how dumb this bastard really is? Reminder:

Two terms. Two. The scariest thing about that piece of video isn't the absolute certification of W as a bona fide member of the LCD Club, it's the "wooohoooo!" reaction of his staff. Obviously used to this bullshit. And enjoying it.

So, where's DICK?

F*CK FOX

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:43:01 GMT

Hey, there's plenty of room for the Fox logo, too!

The Murdoch Propaganda Machine (sometimes referred to here as Fox "News") and the leading corporate reason for growing worldwide obesity and early death (your toddlers call 'em Mickey D's!) give us one more reason to fear the creeping reality of satires like Thank You for Smoking, A Clockwork Orange and RoboCop. Yeah, RoboCop. It's OCP.

Consume and be happy and content.

In the meantime I'll buy this for a dollar:

YouJustHaveToWatch

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:06:46 GMT

I'm all over Hellboy II for a whole lot of reasons I won't go into...again. Not the least of which is Ron Perlman finally getting his due - even under 50 pounds of prosthetics. Which makes this even funnier...

boo-ya, indeed.

HBII opens 7/11.

WALLY LANDO RETURN ENGAGEMENT

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:56:48 GMT

For those of us still mourning George Carlin...

Jerry Seinfeld's piece in the NYT

and a little something extra special (hey, Roy!) from NBC and SNL. In tribute to George, the network will run the original 1975 debut episode hosed by GC this Saturday night.

Hey, WRBJ, we finally get to see how the whole damn thing went down... 33 years later.

Trivia: One of the first fake commercials (an SNL institution) was for a triple bladed razor, "because you'll buy anything." Apparently, we will and do..

WALLY LANDO HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:13:48 GMT

DAMN.

October 11, 1975.
New York City.

I'm in Manhattan for the very first time attending a high school journalism conference. There's a bunch of us, including my best friend Roy and my quasi-girlfriend at the time, Bib. We are all of us fresh off the turnip truck.

But that's another story.

The point here is that during a tour of 30 Rockefeller Plaza we're treated to a few minutes in NBC's cavernous Studio 8H to eavesdrop on the final rehearsal for something called "Saturday Night" scheduled to debut later that evening. There's George Carlin horsing around with a bunch of scruffy looking kids who can't be much older than us. Looks like a college drama class only with more chaos. Another guy's trying to keep things focused, but it's like herding cats. Lorne Michaels was just a kid, too. They're all kids - Radner, Curtain, Chase, Belushi, Morris, Belushi and Akroyd.

Our tour guide tells us to come back and hang out around the skating rink about 10 pm. We might get lucky and get picked to see the show. Roy, Bib and I make it in. I don't actually remember going up to the studio or how the audience was seated, but as we come to our senses we realize we're on the edge of the runway where Carlin was rehearsing his monologue that afternoon. There are stages scattered around the studio. The audience is buzzing, stage hands, floor managers, camera operators, prop people are all over the place. At some point this incredibly skinny, hawk-faced kid comes out to "warm us up." He does about ten minutes - none of which I can recall in detail - but because I'm a kid right off that turnip truck, I do remember it's the filthiest stuff I've ever heard, and therefore, great.

I am still a Richard Belzer fan.

The house lights dim, a voice counts down, then something happens off to the right on one of the smaller stages we can't really see, and somebody yells "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" The raggedy Tin Pan Alley band recruited right off the street during a musicians strike blasts away, and we're officially part of Broadcast History.

And then I'm eye level with Carlin's feet, looking up at one of my idols and at my friends - we must be in a dream.

And so we were. It all still seems very surreal. I talked to Roy last night after we got the news about Carlin's death. Neither of us have very sharp recollections of that night. I remember bits and pieces.

I vividly recall Andy Kaufman's "Mighty Mouse" routine.

He's on stage directly across from us and no one makes a sound for what seems like an eternity. I'm sure half the audience just doesn't get it.

Janis Ian and Billy Preston are the musical guests. Ian performs the suicidally depressing "At Seventeen" and something I don't remember. Preston does "Nothing from Nothing" and something I don't remember. I do remember Carlin makes faces at Ian and cracks her up just before the end of the break and her cue. The stage manager scolds him like a child, "cut it the fuck out, please George. It's a serious song." Carlin reacts like he's been slapped by a nun.

Bedlam breaks out after the wrap. I'm standing near Lorne MIchaels when somebody runs up with a huge bouquet of roses and gushes something like "we nailed it! We nailed it!"

We all walk with a copy of George's new LP, "An Evening With Wally Lando, Featuring Bill Slazo" which we secretly listen to over and over again in the school darkroom. If only they'd known...

I haven't seen that first show in many years, but I know we're still there at Carlin's feet. We're still 17 years old, gawking up at this subculture icon, wrapped up in an historical moment the significance of which we were blissfully ignorant.

Somewhere in the great beyond - against everything George believed (or didn't) - I'd like to think he's yukking it up in the celestial Green Room with Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor - maybe Freddie Prinze - waiting to go on Carson.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -- George Carlin

Ain't It A Crime

Fri, 30 May 2008 20:31:05 GMT

Speeding Ferraris! Racing Cigarette boats! Grown men in pastels with guns. Jimmy Smits explodes! And a still cool - yes, cool - Phil Collins tune! Plus Russ Ballard hears "voices".

Brenda: How do you go from this tranquility to that violence?
Sonny Crockett: I usually take the Ferrari.

I miss the '80's. Where the hell are my Wayfarers?

remACCELERATEs

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:00:21 GMT

The first time I saw REM they were playing the long-defunct Monteray Jack's in Five Points in Columbia, SC. They set up against the back wall of this Mexican restaurant/bar and this phenomenally skinny kid mumbled indistinct lyrics with his back to the audience while the rest of the band struggled to find some sort of middle ground.

Luckily, they got better. Although I'm certain the band's level of success still baffles a lot of people.

After Bill Berry's departure things just weren't the same. The last several records were mediocre at best, utterly forgettable at their worst. In the words of an old radio rat from long ago, I'd given up the boys from Athens for dead. Musically speaking.

I'm happy to be proved wrong.

The new disc plays like resurrection. Accelerate is not only a return to form, it's quite possibly among the band's best work. Caught their "Austin City Limits" gig the other night and they looked and sounded like a band having fun...

And crafting some damn fine and timely tunes:

DamnU: GeorgeLucas

Wed, 28 May 2008 17:36:22 GMT

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Numbskull:

Swinging from vines with monkeys. This is what we waited 19 years for, George? Swinging from vines with monkeys?

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

SPOILERS BELOW

Dear George,

Please, please, please hang it up. You're done. Just go away. Crawl back into your secret holographic Volcano lair beneath Skywalker ranch and digitally replace all the actors in the original Star Wars trilogy, whydontacha? There is nothing - no thing , no aspect of character, story or plot that you get anymore. And as for that old bugaboo, the suspension of disbelief, well, you need it to work on some level even in a fantasy/action/sci-fi flick, you unconscionable dip shit. Forget the atom bomb sequence and the spaceship and evil, crystal-based, dimension-traveling aliens. You've got a car load of people going over three - count 'em, three - huge waterfalls and emerging at the end as though they were climbing out of a Malibu hot tub or a the log flume at Disneyland. As a matter of fact, no one loses so much as a button in this movie. There is no grit.

And the swinging with monkeys. Hey-Zeus Marimba! The freakin' monkeys! George, did I see an Ewok in there somewhere?

Moron. You insinuated cute into an Indiana Jones movie. At no point, on any level, under any circumstance is there ever, ever, ever any fucking thing cute about the Indiana Jones franchise. Nada.

Steven, Harrison, I feel your pain here. The Beard owns the Man in the Hat, after all. He's got the final say. But he threw away the Frank Darabont script for this?

Tell 'em about it, Frank:
"Steven was very, very happy with the script and said it was the best draft of anything since Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's really high praise and gave me a real sense of accomplishment, especially when you love the material you're working on as much as I love the Indiana Jones films. And then you have George Lucas read it and say, 'Yeah, I don't think so, I don't like it.' And then he resets it to zero when Spielberg is ready to shoot it that coming year, [which] is a real kick to the nuts. You can only waste so much time and so many years of your life on experiences like that, you can only get so emotionally invested and have the rug pulled out from under you before you say enough of that." (on his rejected script for Indiana Jones 4)

I'm bettin' there weren't any monkey-swingin' shenanigans in that script. I'm bettin' there was plenty of grit and not a fraction of cute. Spielberg called it the "best thing I've ever read." Holy shit, George. There's a basis to toss it in on the slag heap along with all those other drafts by all those other A-list writers while you took 19 years to sign off on this abortion.

Steve, Harrison, in high school this is where you'd take him out behind the gym and beat the shit out of him until he promised to hand over that Darabont script and butt the fuck out of the next one. Please. He's already on record saying he doesn't give a shit about the fans and that in the next one Indiana Jones will be a secondary character as he hands off the franchise to Shia Cantspellhislastname.

Huh? "Mutt Jones and the Dark Hole of Charisma"? You came up with the name "Mutt", too, didn't you George?

And while we're skirting the issue of casting, couldn't you find an actor who bore some kind of physical resemblance to HF? Or at the very least a tall actor? This kid's got talent, but He's never going to convince anyone he can fill Harrison's considerable boots.

I'm probably not finished on this, but in the meantime, imagine Shia pulling this off: