Sunday, July 10, 2016
Horrible, just horrible (with very bad poems!)
You know one of those horrible dreams that you can't get out of, and finally you wake up and you're in a horrible dream that you can't get out of, and finally you wake up and you're in a horrible dream that you can't get out of?
Horrible, horrible man at the door
man at the door
man at the door
Horrible, horrible man at the door
Horrible man at the window.
I am on your hand, but
I don't understand.
Who you are or
What that thing is on your head,
Why is that thing on your head.
When your face rots like that,
It makes me crazy,
When your face rots like that,
I feel like I have rabies.
The best meat is here, no, the best meat is here,
It's very clear
to me
That the (very) best meat is here.
I have to smile, oh
I have to smile,
because it makes me
gladsome
Just after a while!
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Hoolihan & Big Chuck - Certain Ethnic Six Dollar Man
Probably better than most H & BC sketches, in that it has a broad silent-comedy kind of feel to it - oh hell, ain't it just hilarious when all his body parts fly off? Yes, it IS! You can't show that sort of stuff any more, or if you do, you can't laugh at it. So laugh!
The Earth Dies Screaming 1965 - trailer
When it comes to campy horror flicks from the Cold War era, less is more: meaning, I never watch them. Watching the trailer is enough, and making gifs from the trailer is even better. That way you get to watch the handful of seconds in the 87-minute movie which have any suspense in them at all.
I did watch these, in their entirety, as a kid, when as a rare treat I was allowed to sleep on the pull-out sofa in the den on Friday nights. There would always be some sort of creature feature on Hoolihan and Big Chuck, a local Cleveland horror movie/comedy show that was one part Ernie Kovacs, three parts smoked kielbasa and - the rest of it, I don't know, I guess it was sort of funny.
Count Floyd on SCTV was a sort of rough takeoff on these locally-hosted quasi-scary shows, usually presenting execreble no-budget horror movies. I noted recently that there is still a show on KVOS ("ME TV!") called Svengoolie - forgive me if I spelled that wrong - which tries to do the same thing. Doesn't make it, but it tries. And I vaguely remember another one named Ghoulardi. Sounds vaguely Hungarian to me (but so was Kovacs. Just a coincidence? I. . . don't. . . think. . . so!).
Though we groaned over these (the "we" meaning me and my older brothers, who often crashed my den party, usually drunk or stoned), the scary-badness of them was always the least interesting part of the evening. In fact, Hoolihan (a Cleveland radio announcer named Bob Wells) and Big Chuck (a big chuck) usually didn't even refer to the movie. They did sketches that were mostly lame, such as a Western called The Kielbasa Kid, and some really transparently Kovacs-esque stuff such as Readings by Robert, a clone of Percy Dovetonsils. At the time I knew nothing about Kovacs except what my brother Walt told me. He worshipped Ernie Kovacs. Almost everyone else had forgotten him. The network wiped all his tapes because they needed them for quiz shows, and because he was so far ahead of his time, his memory fell into a sort of parallel universe sinkhole. (Dying in a gruesome car accident in 1964 didn't help.)
I was astonished to find some Hoolihan and Big Chuck things on YouTube a few years ago, though perhaps I shouldn't have been. Big Chuck went on and on for decades hosting the same kind of local late-night show, though at some point his host changed to somebody named Li'l John, a dwarf (and this was before dwarfs were cool!). Now that I look it up again, there are seemingly HUNDREDS of Hoolihan and Big Chuck videos. YouTube is like those paramecia my brother grew in his bedroom, always multiplying, multiplying. Where anyone gets these things is anybody's guess. Did they work at TV stations in the '60s and pilfer them, smuggle them out under their trench coats, only to blow the dust off them to post them on YouTube?
I recently found out that old commercials and hygiene films and stuff like that is kept in the Prelinger Archives. So maybe there is a Hoolihan Archives somewhere full of Kielbasa Kid episodes, Parma Place soap opera takeoffs, and, of course, Readings by Robert.
Pasta thoughts. Thoughts from the past(a), I mean. And not "paw-stuh" like Amurricans say, no, the PROPER way, which is PAST-a. Of course.
I've been trying extremely hard to post a little snippet from Hoolihan and Big Chuck called the Six Dollar Man. Very funny, actually, and I may even have posted it a few years ago. Can't gif it because you've got to see the whole thing. So I will past-a it (post-a it, I mean) in the next past-a. Post-a.
You know what I mean.
Hoolihan and Big Chuck opening.
SCTV opening. Compare and contrast.
Friday, July 8, 2016
Hey Venus!
The following excerpts come from a several-years-old article in National Geographic (link to article below).
So it MUST be true! Since when did National Geographic ever steer us wrong?
In any case, I almost don't care if Venus is really Venus - really looks like that, I mean. The photos are so breathtaking that the illusion (if it IS an illusion) is almost enough. And in any case, she's obviously an illusion that moves, meaning there's no photoshopping going on.
Meantime, there's a Facebook page called Venus the Two Face Cat, which to me sounds a little ungrammatical, as if someone was loudly chewing gum when they set it up. But it's fairly up to date, unlike a lot of these things that are abandoned after the initial enthusiasm dies down.
My first reaction to seeing a photo of Venus was "no way". Then I looked her up on Snopes, and by God, they said "true"! And would Snopes ever steer us wrong?
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/chimeracat.asp
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120831-venus-two-faced-cat-genetics-animals-science/
Venus the Two-Faced Cat a Mystery
Famous feline may have different DNA on each side of her body.
By Katia Andreassi, National Geographic News
Venus the two-faced cat is currently the most famous feline on the planet.
The three-year-old tortoiseshell has her own Facebook page and a YouTube video that's been viewed over a million times, and appeared on the Today Show last week. (Watch National Geographic cat videos.)
One look at this cat and you can understand why: One half is solid black with a green eye—the other half has typical orange tabby stripes and a blue eye.
How does a cat end up looking like that? Leslie Lyons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the genetics of domestic cats said she's never seen a cat exactly like Venus.
"She is extremely, extremely rare," Lyons said. "But you can explain it and you can understand it."
Many reports about Venus refer to the cat as a "chimera." In mythology, a chimera is a mishmash monster made up of parts of different animals. A feline chimera is a cat whose cells contain two types of DNA, caused when two embryos fuse together.
Among cats, "chimeras are really not all that rare," Lyons said. In fact, most male tortoiseshell cats are chimeras. The distinctively mottled orange and black coat is a sign that the cat has an extra X chromosome.
But female cats, said Lyons, already have two X chromosomes so they can sport that coat without the extra X. That means Venus is not necessarily a chimera.
To find out would require genetic testing, said Lyons. With samples of skin from each side of the cat, "we can do a DNA fingerprint—just like on CSI—and the DNA from one side of the body should be different than the other."
If Venus isn't actually a chimera, then what would explain her amazing face?
"Absolute luck," Lyons said. One theory: perhaps the black coloration was randomly activated in all the cells on one side of her face, while the orange coloration was activated on the other, and the two patches met at the midline of her body as she developed.
Cat fanciers who are transfixed by Venus's split face may be missing the real story: her single blue eye. Cat eyes are typically green or yellow, not blue. (Take a cat quiz.)
A blue-eyed cat is typically a Siamese or else a cat with "a lot of white on them," she explained.
Venus appears to have only a white patch on her chest, which to Lyons is not enough to explain the blue eye.
"She is a bit of a mystery."
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Dispose of your ugly ideas here
In spite of its satiric and sometimes humorous tone, this blog occasionally slips into the misanthropic. Meaning, "I hate humanity", or at least the jaw-dropping stupidity inspired or revealed by the internet.
This is an example. This photo, obviously a very old one, is doing the rounds right now. It's the sort of thing that draws hundreds, even THOUSANDS of comments from people, and many of them are indignant. "How could anyone say that about an innocent child?" "All children are beautiful!" "It should be against the law to say such things!" etc. etc. etc.
Somebody said "hey, that lettering looks sort of fake", but no one listened. The person was quickly shouted down. What's the matter with you, anyway? Don't you know how to join in on a massacre?
Non-lemmings are rare, as are people who say, "Wait a minute." This was a big wait-a-minute moment for ME, which makes me realize why I'm so often shouted down - no, change that to "ignored".
For it turns out (I had to check this with Snopes, but I was pretty sure of it before I checked) that the photo had indeed been doctored, and poorly at that, the sign photoshopped with lettering that looked far too uniform and modern to be original.
Here is the original photo:
The joke? (For yes, there is a joke/point!) It isn't "I hate children", "children are ugly", "let's put our children in the garbage", "'isn't it horrible that people want to put their children in the garbage", "what's wrong with people anyway?", "call Child Protection Services", "Call 9-1-1","Call the police", "I'd like to take that sweet little girl home with me right now and just love her to pieces" (never mind that the picture was taken in 1931 and she long ago died of old age), etc. etc. etc.
The point is, the JOKE is: see, there is a foolproof way to keep children off the grass! Hahahahahahaha. Or even this: perhaps this is the only way to keep children off the grass.
Oh.
You mean - ?
But most people won't admit (or even notice) that they've been bamboozled and fell right into it, causing them to rant and rage that NO CHILD is ever ugly (!!), and that even the ugly ones are beautiful in their own way, just like in the song (though I used to wonder how that applied to Hitler). They will have moved on to the next whatever, bluh.
Do I sound misanthropic today? Perhaps I am. Does the internet bring out the worst in people? I sometimes think it brings out the dumbest. The dumbest of the dumb.
One of the things I tried hard to instill in my children was the imperative to think for yourself. Make up your own mind. Evaluate. Strain out the bullshit. I don't mean constant cynicism. I mean discernment, and there isn't a whole hell of a lot of discernment in internet culture. It's all very well to say, "oh well, it was always like that". That still doesn't make it intelligent, moral, right.
Yes, I said "moral".
Morality is a crusty old thing now, and is always (and negatively) associated with sex. It has nothing to do with conscience and one's deepest, most cherished values and beliefs. It's simply out of date. If some world leader displays an act of personal integrity in the face of moral disintegration or indifference, everyone gasps because it's just so gosh-darned different.
Values are something you find at Walmart.
I can't do much about this, in fact I can't do ANYTHING about this, and if I even write about it I'm accused of being "negative" or a party-pooper. It's just that I'd like to see a little depth, a little substance, without having to go back 100 years or so to find something of value.
But I'm not making this happen, I'm not fixing it, I'm not changing the way things are. So I should shut up! That's the message I get. For God's sake, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all! It scares me to realize how many people actually believe in that.
The prevailing view should prevail. Right? The majority should rule. Right? This is a democracy, so whatever people are saying most often, must make the most sense.
When Trump gets in, I can predict a certain reaction: a flood of protest at first, and then, once the panic dies down and hopelessness sets in, a certain turning of the tide, an "if we can't beat him, join him" attitude. A "let's make the best of this". And, finally, "hey, maybe the guy's not so bad after all."
Comparisons of Trump to Hitler are tired and inaccurate, but they're also useful. I believe that the majority of human beings are followers and want to be told what to do. In times of desperation, they'll follow just about anything, the way baby ducks follow a tractor.
Maybe it's just too unbearable to do anything else.
So what does all this have to do with a picture of a little girl in a garbage can? Figure it out yourself, I'm just too tired to explain it.
Monday, July 4, 2016
When you're 90, you can say any goddamn thing you want!
1 After being told that Madonna was singing the Die Another Day theme in 2002: “Are we going to need ear plugs?”
2 To a car park attendant who didn’t recognise him in 1997, he snapped: “You bloody silly fool!”
3 To Simon Kelner, republican editor of The Independent, at Windsor Castle reception: “What are you doing here?” “I was invited, sir.” Philip: “Well, you didn’t have to come.”
4 To female sea cadet last year: “Do you work in a strip club?”
5 To expats in Abu Dhabi last year: “Are you running away from something?”
6 After accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991: “Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species.”
7 At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965, he said: “Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don’t you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat and save a bird?’”
8 To multi-ethnic Britain’s Got Talent 2009 winners Diversity: “Are you all one family?”
9 To President of Nigeria, who was in national dress, 2003: “You look like you’re ready for bed!”
10 His description of Beijing, during a visit there in 1986: “Ghastly.”
11 At Hertfordshire University, 2003: “During the Blitz, a lot of shops had their windows blown in and put up notices saying, ‘More open than usual’. I now declare this place more open than usual.”
12 To deaf children by steel band, 2000: “Deaf? If you’re near there, no wonder you are deaf.”
13 To a tourist in Budapest in 1993: “You can’t have been here long, you haven’t got a pot belly.”
14 To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”
15 His verdict on Stoke-on-Trent, during a visit in 1997: “Ghastly.”
16 To Atul Patel at reception for influential Indians, 2009: “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.”
17 Peering at a fuse box in a Scottish factory, he said: “It looks as though it was put in by an Indian.” He later backtracked: “I meant to say cowboys.”
18 To Lockerbie residents after plane bombing, 1993: “People say after a fire it’s water damage that’s the worst. We’re still drying out Windsor Castle.”
19 In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”
20 “I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.” 1987
21 On the Duke of York’s house, 1986: “It looks like a tart’s bedroom.”
22 Using Hitler’s title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1997, he called him: “Reichskanzler.”
23 “We go into the red next year... I shall have to give up polo.” 1969.
24 At party in 2004: “Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!”
25 To a woman solicitor, 1987: “I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit.”
26 To a civil servant, 1970: “You’re just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you.”
27 On the 1981 recession: “A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone’s working too much. Now everybody’s got more leisure time they’re complaining they’re unemployed. People don’t seem to make up their minds what they want.”
28 On the new £18million British Embassy in Berlin in 2000: “It’s a vast waste of space.”
29 After Dunblane massacre, 1996: “If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you going to ban cricket bats?”
30 To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: “If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”
31 On stress counselling for servicemen in 1995: “We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun. You just got on with it!”
32 On Tom Jones, 1969: “It’s difficult to see how it’s possible to become immensely valuable by singing what are the most hideous songs.”
33 To the Scottish WI in 1961: “British women can’t cook.”
34 To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: “It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.”
35 To Cayman Islanders: “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”
36 To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”
37 At a WF meeting in 1986: “If it has four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”
38 “You ARE a woman, aren’t you?” Kenya, 1984.
39 A VIP at a local airport asked HRH: “What was your flight, like, Your Royal Highness? Philip: “Have you ever flown in a plane?” VIP: “Oh yes, sir, many times.” “Well,” said Philip, “it was just like that.”
40 On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”
41 To a fashion writer in 1993: “You’re not wearing mink knickers,are you?”
42 To Susan Edwards and her guide dog in 2002: “They have eating dogs for the anorexic now.”
43 When offered wine in Rome in 2000, he snapped: “I don’t care what kind it is, just get me a beer!”
44 “I’d like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.” 1967.
45 At City Hall in 2002: “If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.”
46 On seeing a piezo-meter water gauge in Australia: “A pissometer?”
47“You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.” To matron of Caribbean hospital, 1966.
48 At a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002:“So who’s on drugs here?... HE looks as if he’s on drugs.”
49 To a children’s band in Australia in 2002: “You were playing your instruments? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?”
50 At Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme, 2006. “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”
51 On how difficult it is in Britain to get rich: “What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.”
52 To Elton John on his gold Aston Martin in 2001: “Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car, is it?”
53 At an engineering school closed so he could officially open it, 2005: “It doesn’t look like much work goes on at this university.”
54 To Aboriginal leader William Brin, Queensland, 2002: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
55 At a Scottish fish farm: “Oh! You’re the people ruining the rivers.”
56 After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat – from Gallic chef Regis Crépy, 2002: “The French don’t know how to cook breakfast.”
57 To schoolboy who invited the Queen to Romford, Essex, 2003: “Ah, you’re the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then?”
58 To black politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, 1999: “And what exotic part of the world do you come from?”
59 To parents at a previously struggling Sheffield school, 2003: “Were you here in the bad old days? ... That’s why you can’t read and write then!”
60 To Andrew Adams, 13, in 1998: “You could do with losing a little bit of weight.”
61 “Where’s the Southern Comfort?” When presented with a hamper of goods by US ambassador, 1999.
62 To editor of downmarket tabloid: “Where are you from?” “The S*n, sir.” Philip: “Oh, no . . . one can’t tell from the outside.”
63 Turning down food, 2000: “No, I’d probably end up spitting it out over everybody.”
64 Asking Cate Blanchett to fix his DVD player because she worked “in the film industry”, 2008: “There’s a cord sticking out of the back. Might you tell me where it goes?”
65 “People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.” 2000.
66 After hearing President Obama had had breakfast with leaders of the UK, China and Russia, 2010: “Can you tell the difference between them?”
67 On students from Brunei, 1998: “I don’t know how they’re going to integrate in places like Glasgow and Sheffield.”
68 On Princess Anne, 1970: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”
69 To wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident, 2002: “Do people trip over you?”
70 Discussing tartan with then-Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie last year: “That’s a nice tie... Do you have any knickers in that material?”
71 To a group of industrialists in 1961: “I’ve never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing.”
72 On a crocodile he shot in Gambia in 1957: “It’s not a very big one, but at least it’s dead and it took an awful lot of killing!”
73 On being made Chancellor of Edinburgh University in 1953: “Only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education.”
74 “I must be the only person in Britain glad to see the back of that plane.” He hated the noise Concorde made flying over Buckingham Palace, 2002
75 To a fashion designer, 2009: “Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?”
76 To the General Dental Council in 1960: “Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I’ve practised for many years.”
77 On stroking a koala in 1992: “Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.”
78 On marriage in 1997: “You can take it from me the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.”
79 To schoolchildren in blood-red uniforms, 1998: “It makes you all look like Dracula’s daughters!”
80 “I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.” 1988.
81 To female Labour MPs in 2000: “So this is feminist corner then.”
82 On Nottingham Forest trophies in 1999: “I suppose I’d get in trouble if I were to melt them down.”
83 “It’s my custom to say something flattering to begin with so I shall be excused if I put my foot in it later on.” 1956.
84 To a penniless student in 1998: “Why don’t you go and live in a hostel to save cash?”
85 On robots colliding, Science Museum, 2000: “They’re not mating are they?”
86 While stuck in a Heriot Watt University lift in 1958: “This could only happen in a technical college.”
87 To newsreader Michael Buerk, when told he knew about the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Awards, 2004: “That’s more than you know about anything else then.”
88 To a British student in China, 1986: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll go home with slitty eyes.”
89 To journalist Caroline Wyatt, who asked if the Queen was enjoying a Paris trip, 2006: “Damn fool question!”
90 On smoke alarms to a woman who lost two sons in a fire, 1998: “They’re a damn nuisance - I’ve got one in my bathroom and every time I run my bath the steam sets it off.”
America my friend
And so once
again,
My dear Johnny,
my dear friend,
And so once
again you are fighting us all,
And when I ask
you why,
You raise your
sticks and cry, and I fall,
Oh, my friend,
How did you come
To trade the
fiddle for the drum,
You say I have
turned,
Like the enemies
you've earned,
But I can
remember,
All the good
things you are,
And so I ask you
please,
Can I help you
find the peace and the star,
Oh, my friend,
What time is
this
To trade the
handshake for the fist
And so once
again,
Oh, America
And so once
again,
You are fighting
us all,
And when we ask
you why,
You raise your
sticks and cry and we fall,
Oh, my friend,
How did you
come,
To trade the
fiddle for the drum
You say we have
turned,
Like the enemies
you've earned,
But we can remember,
All the good
things you are,
And so we ask
you please,
Can we help you
find the peace and the star,
Oh my friend,
We have all
come,
To fear the
beating of your drum
Joni Mitchell
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Every cat has his day: Browser's triumphant return
Library Cat's Job Is Saved
July 2, 2016 12:43 AM ET
Barbara Campbell
How could you evict that little face? Browser the public library cat has been
reprieved and will stay on the job in White Settlement, Texas .
Here, he sits among a group of children being read to. John L. Mone/AP
Why the city council of White Settlement,Texas ,
decided to fire Browser, mascot and rodent hunter of the public library is not
clear, but the vote two weeks ago was 2-1 to banish Browser. Friday, under an
avalanche of complaints, the council members decided unanimously that Browser
could stay.
Browser got his job six years ago when the library had a problem with rodents. By all accounts, he was a big success and nestled into library-goers hearts.
The Dallas Morning News elaborates on Browser's job:
"Like most felines, Browser spends a good deal of time napping, lounging and sneaking out the door — but he also attends the library's GED classes and has an honorary diploma, the library says. And each year, the library sells a calendar full of pictures of Browser as a fundraiser."
Then one day, reports the Fort Worth Star-Tribune:
"Declaring that 'City Hall and city businesses are no place for animals,' Councilman Elzie Clements led what Browser's fans call a sneak attack ...
"The agenda item was listed only as 'consider relocation of Library Facility cat.'"
Council member Steve Ott is quoted as expressing concern about people who might be allergic to cat dander. As Mayor Ron White tells it, according to the Associated Press, the cat was targeted in retaliation when a city worker was denied permission to bring a puppy to city hall.
Browser's supporters began a petition drive, and of course the Internet got involved, and more than 1,000 messages from around the world later, the council voted again unanimously to keep Browser.
He'll probably issue a statement of thanks to his supporters at some point but at the moment, his Facebook page isn't available.
Why the city council of White Settlement,
Browser got his job six years ago when the library had a problem with rodents. By all accounts, he was a big success and nestled into library-goers hearts.
The Dallas Morning News elaborates on Browser's job:
"Like most felines, Browser spends a good deal of time napping, lounging and sneaking out the door — but he also attends the library's GED classes and has an honorary diploma, the library says. And each year, the library sells a calendar full of pictures of Browser as a fundraiser."
Then one day, reports the Fort Worth Star-Tribune:
"Declaring that 'City Hall and city businesses are no place for animals,' Councilman Elzie Clements led what Browser's fans call a sneak attack ...
"The agenda item was listed only as 'consider relocation of Library Facility cat.'"
Council member Steve Ott is quoted as expressing concern about people who might be allergic to cat dander. As Mayor Ron White tells it, according to the Associated Press, the cat was targeted in retaliation when a city worker was denied permission to bring a puppy to city hall.
Browser's supporters began a petition drive, and of course the Internet got involved, and more than 1,000 messages from around the world later, the council voted again unanimously to keep Browser.
He'll probably issue a statement of thanks to his supporters at some point but at the moment, his Facebook page isn't available.
Cover your eyes: it's Equus
I made the mistake of watching Equus last night, the whole thing this time. I’ve bailed on it at least once, and I should have bailed on it again: it's heavy, dark, oppressive, and totally sickening at the end. In essence, it's one long monologue by Dr. Martin Dysart (played by a pockmarked, dead-eyed Richard Burton), a disaffected child psychiatrist who treats an adolescent boy (Alan Strang) who has blinded six horses for no reason anyone can determine.
The original Broadway play does NOT “show” the horses being blinded, but dramatizes and narrates it, which would be much more effective. Even Roger Ebert in his review from 1977 said he could not watch that part, and I even had to mute the sound. I didn’t like the boy at all – didn’t even care about him, dull, snotty-nosed kid without a single thought in his head. I soon became bored with all his self-created travails.
And what was it about – how horrifying sex is? How religion destroys sex, how religion is sublimates sex – WHAT? Some say it was about, gasp, horrors, homosexuality, which might still have had some punch as a forbidden topic back in 1973 when it was first staged. Analysts to the stars like Mildred Newman (How to Be Your Own Best Friend, a bestselling masterwork of psychobabble) were still trying to "cure" it :"We've heard all kinds of success stories", she claimed, probably referring to Tony Perkins who later died of AIDS. But such sexual "deviancy", as it was known then, has no punch left in it now.
In the film version, Richard Burton is impossible to engage with. The many extreme closeups of his face are like a lunar landing, deeply pitted and utterly cold. On Broadway, the part was originated by Anthony Hopkins (who would have handled it better, though he’s still pretty stony), followed by Anthony Perkins, Leonard Nimoy, and maybe one other underappreciated Hollywood has-been. Along with that snotty-nosed git of a boy, I found it similarly hard to care about Burton’s character. In a rut? DO something about it, for God’s sake – have an affair with a girl or a boy or a PATIENT even. Get arrested! It would at least be a change of scene, wouldn’t it? No kaopectate needed. That reference gave me a good laugh, but it was the only time I actually felt something.
Maybe it’s a period piece, I don’t know – after all, this is Peter Shaffer, who wrote Amadeus, and that was a very long time ago. But the lines are just too flowery for normal speech – nobody talks that way or even thinks that way. (And we all know that going on and on about Greek mythology means you're actually a flaming poof.) It was self-consciously “beautiful”, verbal fireworks, real oooh and ahhh stuff, which I despise. Oh my God, how moving! Oh my God, how powerful! Makes me sick. How I hate writing that calls attention to itself.
It's a cheap trick.
Anyway, I was going to bail at several points, and should have. Or keep it for another day, which means never - I would have deleted it. Then I kept looking at the time left and looked up the length in my movie book (TCM leaves 20 minutes or so between movies for endless fawning over 95-year-old legends of the screen). I had half an hour left and trudged through it, literally covering my eyes when the blinding scene came, and muting it. I refused to watch or listen. Now I still feel a little bit sick and have a hangover or aftertaste which is pretty awful. Is that “art”? Art is supposed to unsettle as well as entertain, but I'm not sure it's supposed to unsettle your stomach to this degree.
A little backnote. I remember, ages ago, reading (or reading parts of - it was essentially unreadable) an attack on Hollywood by former producer Julia Phillips, who managed to devastate/alienate everyone in her path. It was called You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, a good description of her own self-created fate.
I only mention it here because it talked about her relationship with Tony and Berry Perkins. She attended a performance of Equus on Broadway with the couple, starring I'm-not-sure-who (but I think it was Hopkins, the originator of the part), and said that when Tony embraced her he "felt her up": "highschoolhighschoolhighschool," she commented, later pronouncing Equus "a crock of faggot shit".
BTW, "Lunch" (as it became known) was considered career suicide for a woman who often inspired the urge for homicide amongst her cohorts. This is an excerpt from a surprisingly long Wikipedia entry:
On its release most critics agreed that the book was both scandalous and career-ending. (Even with a quarter of the 1,000-page original manuscript excised, it took lawyers at Random House fourteen months to approve it for publication. Lewis Cole, in The Nation, described it as being "[not] written but spat out, a breakneck, formless performance piece...propelled by spite and vanity".Newsweek's review called it a "573-page primal scream", while one Hollywood producer said it was "the longest suicide note in history".In the 2003 documentary version of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, based on Peter Biskind's 1998 anecdotal history of New Hollywood, Richard Dreyfuss recalled his initial fury at Phillips' revelations, before more circumspectly listening to "a little voice inside my head [saying] 'Richard, Richard, the truth was so much worse'." Despite Phillips' criticisms of Steven Spielberg in the book, Spielberg nevertheless invited her to a 1997 screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a way of "keeping his friends close and his enemies closer."
The "career-ending" thing is a little ambiguous. Do they mean HER career, or the careers of those people she so savagely, publicly eviscerated? Why did she hate everybody so much? If the book was so suicidal, why is 85% of the Wiki entry dedicated to it? Why is she remembered far more for the memoir than for anything else? I also have a sneaking suspicion that people would be far more upset if they were left out of the book. Nothing is more devastating than being ignored by Julia Phillips.
Her feud with Erica Jong was legendary, and there are quite long passages in Lunch where she trashes her. Erica gets her revenge in more than one of her books, depicting her as a ball-crushing, narcissistic bitch in one of her novels (the one after Fear of Flying, whatever it's called) and having another go at her in one of her memoirs, insisting the two of them kissed and made up while Phillips was in the death-throes of cancer. In this scenario, Phillips apologized to her profusely - but we'll never know what really happened. Let's not forget that Jong primarily writes fiction.
With such a histrionic cast, it's all pretty good theatre, I'd say. Much better than the psychological clinker that is Equus. It's a bummer, folks. If you do watch it, fast-forward over the horse-blinding part. Or just put your hands over your eyes.
Post-thoughts. This is a tiny clip of Daniel Radcliffe's go at Alan Strang. I wish it were longer. I do like the idea of stylized, abstract human/horse figures, as it both takes away from the horror of watching actual horses have their eyes gouged out, and brings the horse/boy relationship uncomfortably close. These creatures are like centaurs in reverse. Not half-horse and half-human, but mostly human with a horse's head and impulse-driven brain. Sublimely beautiful, yet grotesque. Just the way the actor shakes the horse's head is eerily natural. I guess Equus was just one of those stage plays that got lost in translation.
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