R.I.P. Don Cornelius (1936-2012)
Don Cornelius checked himself out, it would appear.
See him here — doin’ it to death — with Mary Wilson in the Soul Train line dance.
Not my super-heroine persona,
but I am thinking that somebody should assume the mantle of The Sanitizer.
Harry Potter and the New Year at Hand
Just finished the marathon, a little while ago. Potter was Becky’s call, her birthday is the 31st. Doing such over New Year’s eve/day has been a tradition for four or five years. Potter won. In case you wonder. Ho-hum.
We said good-bye to our guests and watched an episode of The Riches. Only 20 episodes to watch, but it is delicious.
I don’t know what to expect of 2012, but I hope to lift my ass off the couch and start moving around tomorrow.
Sign of the Times (and the Place)
Half a dozen Russian speakers, all under thirty, packed up their car after a weekend rental of one of my neighbor’s cottages here in the Driftless Regional Resort Region. A few may have glanced at me as I scrabbled in the dirt, digging up buried money and muttering, “I am uncovering my wealth.”
Sign of the Times
I just got chided by my 91-year-old mother for not being on Facebook more often.
Charles Coleman, the celluloid adventurist
Coleman, 47, is film programmer for Facets Multimedia.
One thing being lost is the art of conversation, of people seeing a movie and then actually having a good talk afterwards. — As told to J.R. Jones.
Man, does this put me in mind of my friend Charlie’s thoughts re: the “hidden cinema” he frequents in Buenos Aires.
dear clusterflock
Funniest .xxx domain name.
quote out of context
And then, obviously, because I am perverse, I was put off it by its ubiquity and other people’s enthusiasm. Others’ loss of perspective about its merits made me lose my own. Maybe I was trying to lower the average human opinion of the oeuvre closer to what it deserves by artificially forcing mine well below that level. Incidentally, this is where the parallels with my view of football end: even if that were a struggling minority sport only played by a few hundred enthusiastic amateurs, I would still consider it an overrated spectacle that lures vital funding away from snooker.
hat tip: Sarah
Photo Out of Context
Artifice and foam rubber
In fact, so much artifice and foam rubber is often used to create the sexually alluring woman that it’s sometimes difficult to know where the lady ends and the foam rubber begins.
Via dangerous minds by way of Roger Ebert.
Hollywood Villains and America’s Societal Fears
It’s not a comprehensive essay by any means, but the trends of Hollywood’s villain ethnicity and motivations as a reflection of American societal fears is fairly fascinating.
America’s collective unconscious has always been reflected and amplified by the portrayal of Hollywood villains. If you want to understand the big picture broad strokes of America, there’s no better place to look than Hollywood’s action genre fare.
That’s the case starting with Birth of a Nation, which is considered by many to be the first modern cinematic masterpiece. That 1915 movie by D.W. Griffith, also known as The Clansman, featured an uncontrollable ex-slave, who’s essentially portrayed as an animal on the prowl for a piece of white female flesh.
Strangely, it is the Ku Klux Klan that are the heroes of that picture.
Dear Clusterflock
Anybody out there attending Comic-Con?
(Photo via Peteski)
Quote out of Context
“I am really sad because this is sad, and this means there’s nothing to look forward to. Nothing.”
Super 8
I’ve been asking in various places about recommendations for movies that are highly entertaining and well crafted, like the first two Ocean’s movies and the Bourne movies. Last night we saw Super 8, and it fits this genre perfectly. It’s like one of the good Spielberg movies from my childood, set in the era of my childhood. I’m sure that was part of J.J. Abrams’ intention. Anyway, what are movies you’ve seen that fit this description? (The second link will show you what has been suggested so far.)
Las Reinas Chulas: “Que Suave Patria”
Please don’t turn aside take a look even if no hablas español (not even dumbass texan spanish).
¡Las Reinas Chulas reglan!
Dozens of plastic foam heads rain onto the stage. Four drug traffickers in fringed jackets and sparkly pink cowboy hats bat them into the audience with toy AK-47s. All the while, the cast croons, “Let them slit our throats, let them pack us up . . . let them not ask any questions, let them not investigate.”
This is cabaret, Mexico style. Las Reinas Chulas, or the Beautiful Queens, parody drug violence in a show the women first produced in 2005 and that still fills nightclubs around Mexico, including a performance in the tourist town of Taxco this weekend.
WE ARE THE PEOPLE, AND WE ARE OUTSTANDING.
6. Intangibles (15 points): This is everything else about the candidate — a swirling jambalaya of all that makes a musician essential: smarts, chemistry, sexuality, drug use, infidelity, insanity, a bizarre origin story, a propensity for crime, memorable dance moves, inappropriate joking about fatal diseases, their personal taste in guitar strings, a strident unwillingness to sell out, a charming willingness to sell-out immediately, high-profile ownership of dragon pants, involvement with the H.O.R.D.E festival, involvement with Farm Aid, involvement with Hear ‘n Aid, boating accidents, cult membership, nonmembership in the Cult, emaciation, obesity, a willingness to wear neckties for promotional photographs, a willingness to compose the theme song to That Thing You Do!, a willingness to collaborate with Bob Ezrin, a checkered history of collaborating with Lenny Kravitz, anachronistic facial hair, and/or the inability to be the person in the band who is not Joe Walsh.
Chuck Klosterman introduces the Rock VORM, the Gross Rock VORM, the Adjusted Rock VORM, and the “Real” Rock VORM stat.
From The Annals of Creepy
The Public School shared this collection of frighteningly creepy portraits of vaudeville-era ventriloquists with their dummies.
Just look at that thing and tell me it isn’t going to murder you.
Protein Synthesis Dance
Thanks to Paul B., who says, “Don’t ask me about the biology. And remember, 1971 really occurred in the late ’60s. Downside: No music credits.”
Gay Superbowl…
Anyone else planning to watch?
Mr. B.’s Vegas Posse
There, on the left.
Siam vs. Mexico
From The Saddest Music in the World. Guy Maddin (2003).
“The singers are giving us a sad peek into child burial customs ‘down Mexico way’.”
“The Mexican mama is being very firm with her dead infant.
“Now go away, she wails
You are dead
Don’t sneak in at night
to nurse from my breast
That milk
is only for the living
“To Canadian ears, that may sound harsh.”
For those who hate musicals…
…you might become a believer. So certainly NSFW.
May 23, 1934
This day in 1934 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow was shot dead by Texas officer Frank Hamer and his posse on a back country road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
It probably weren’t much like in the movie.
Cooper’s and my friend Allen was just writing to tell about the 1936 Texas Centennial, staged in Dallas.
“One of the attractions which impressed my father, who at that time was 13, was the bullet-riddled death car of Bonnie & Clyde.”
How Archivists Helped Video Game Designers Recreate the City’s Dark Side for ‘L.A. Noire’
Earlier this week, video game enthusiasts and fans of L.A. history cheered the release of Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire, a police procedural game noted for its faithful reproduction of Los Angeles circa 1947. To recreate a city now hidden beneath 64 years of redevelopment projects and transformed by age and expansion, production designers with the game’s developer, Team Bondi, consulted several Los Angeles area archives.
Disney applies for ‘Seal Team 6′ trademark
The Walt Disney Co. has applied for a trademark on the name “Seal Team 6,” the name of the unit of specially trained Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan earlier this month.
(Eh, thanks, Allen.)
