the rix mix

If you find this defensible, I want to hear how. It can't even be apologized for.  Rush Limbaugh is a 61 year old man, wealthy enough to have a private jet, on his fourth marriage (no children), obviously deeply conflicted about sex, with weird fantasies about women at a Catholic university,  & cruelly misogynistic. Look at his facial expressions, his hand gestures,  hear his chortles & snorts. Women disgust him.  Sandra Fluke can defend herself against Rush, with fine legal representation &  a  $5 million defamation of character suit, given her prospects for a lucrative career as a Georgetown Law graduate.

Limbaugh can't be forced off the air altogether.  But if enough national & local market advertisers  withdraw their air spots, Limbaugh's show can become unprofitable in a major market like New York City no matter how large the audience,  &  could be dropped by WABC.

Labels: in the news, media madness, Showbiz

You knew it was coming eventually.

I stop in DD after the library, sit down with my decaf, with a view of the TV, CNN, hope to learn something about Iraq withdrawal, Iran, Honduras, health care bill, maybe a Karl Malden tribute or Al & Franni arriving in D.C.

Freakin' Michael Jackson.

Look, Michael lived under continuous stress for 50 years. For the first 21 or so, the stress was imposed from the outside. But after that the stress was increasingly of his own making. Poor career decisions. Clueless choices in his personal life. A prisoner of his own whims & obsessions. Whatever the doctor did, whatever drugs he prescribed, Michael Jackson wasn't murdered. There's no one else to blame. Not Papa Jackson, not Berry Gordy, although the "values" of those two exploitative men served him badly in the long run. Not his hangers-on & sycophants. Not Liz Taylor or the Sheik of Dubai, his "friends." Not the paparazzi. Doesn't matter who inherits his catalogue, estate & his debts & his test tube children. It's all product. Michael Jackson made product. Sometimes great product, all through his recording career. But he saw it as product.

He wasn't like Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, foundering on a "masterpiece" his damaged psyche wouldn't let him finish.

Michael Jackson had no sooner crowned himself "King of Pop" than three smarter, new megastars, Prince, Madonna, & Springsteen, damned near knocked the crown clear off his head. Hip hop rendered any "message" he had irrelevant. His own sister Janet wasn't messing around.

Which brings me to the opinion I've held for two decades. Following the unparalleled success of "Thriller," Jackson made a decision that revealed his tragic flaw & his Motown indoctrination. Rather than understanding the uniqueness of the achievement, the opportunity it presented, Michael set as his primary ambition the making of an album that would sell bigger than "Thriller." Not a better album. He had no clear idea how to accomplish this feat, & he didn't quite possess all the skills (or vision) he needed to do it. He didn't use the success of "Thriller" to develop his songwriting, to work on a point-of-view, to embark on some dreamed of personal artistic project, to get his life & finances on solid ground, maybe do some psychotherapy to control his demons. He bought a monkey & built Neverland & wrecked his face.

Michael Jackson was one fucked up man. In that regard, he truly did top Elvis. The other King, after a few years of bad movies & non-hits, shook off the indifference & a stifling manager, Colonel Parker, long enough to give us an incredible comeback, a trim figure, & some great records before he reverted to form, missing out on the beautiful support the new generation extended to Johnny Cash & Roy Orbison, & which would have revitalized him yet a third time.

A good king has a capacity for reigning wisely at least some of the time.

Labels: bully pulpit, Elvis Presley, media madness, music, obituary, Showbiz

This bizarre Jon Voight quote from a Repug fundraiser is getting deserved attention:

Obama really thinks that he is a soft-spoken Julius Caeser. He thinks he’s going to conquer the world with his soft-spoken sweet talk. And really thinks he’s going to bring all the enemies of the world into a little playground where they’ll swing each other back and forth. We and we alone are the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression.

And let’s give thanks to all the great people like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, William Bennett, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Dennis Miller, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, John Kasich, Michael Steele, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Thomas Sowell, Victor Davis Hanson, Shelby Steele, Charles Krauthammer, Michelle Malkin, Fred Barnes and so many others. Let’s give thanks to them for not giving up and staying the course to bring an end to this false prophet Obama.

What caught my attention is the list. There isn't one elected Repug legislator on it, & although a lot of the names support only Repugs, they're actually unaffiliated celebrity ideologues. Voight's entire little speech was crazy. But since one would have to be crazy to speak at a Repug fundraiser.... I feel a Catch-22 in there. & to think this guy is a great actor, father of Angelina Jolie, & the brother of Chip Taylor - composer of "Wild Thing" & "I Can't Let Go." He also claims to be friends with Hillary Clinton. Oh well, Voight used to be a celebrity leftist - more left than me - & then just flipped over, a neurotic thing. Voight says the the younger him was influenced by "Marxist propaganda." How come I knew what was Marxist propaganda & he didn't? Maybe because I've written stuff I knew was no better than propaganda. My poetry teacher said it's alright to write propaganda for a worthy cause provided you understand that's what it is. Voight is still a sucker for propaganda, & a mouthpiece in a terrible cause, & a stinking liar. Being a fine actor doesn't make him wise. Some actors are notoriously stupid, or notorious assholes, or both.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, count the yoyos, culture, Showbiz

I used to finish work at 9 pm Saturdays, as often as not it was like a weekday evening for me, I drove home, made supper, switched on the tube, & watched part of Walker, Texas Ranger while I ate. It was a strange show, made weirder with guest stars like Gwen Verdon, Paul Winfield, Lee Majors, Gary Busey,"Macho Man" Randy Savage, drag performer RuPaul. I couldn't decide if it was deliberately weird; seemed unlikely it was that way on purpose. Chuck Norris struck me as an actor - like Chuck Heston - who rarely had a handle on the whole picture. The bad guys always lost, kicked into submission, of course. Twice, once in real time & once slo-mo. Often, a woman's honor or a child's innocence was being protected. It was a western where the Hero rode a pickup & his sidekick a sports car.

Now Chuck has ideas about becoming President of Texas.

When I appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show, he told me that someone had asked him, "Do you really believe that there is going to be trouble in the future?" And he answered, "If this country starts to spiral out of control and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country (which it would have under I think the Republicans as well in this situation; they were taking us to the same place, just slower), Americans won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up." Then Glenn asked me and his listening audience, "And where's that going to come from?" He answered his own question, "Texas, it's going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that Chuck?" I replied, "Oh yeah!" Definitely.

It would be unfortunate if he tried to reinstate slavery, or steal land from Mexican-Americans. But as long as Texas doesn't have nukes, & they let us remove all our planes, tanks & guns & other federally-owned stuff, & paid us for the real estate, I don't see Texas posing much threat, they'll be too busy down there guarding all their borders. Don't know what they'll do about Austin. Maybe declare it an open city & move the capitol. We can revoke George's citizenship, too.

*Also Osama bin Laden.

Labels: count the yoyos, Showbiz

The pipe organ is an obsolete instrument. Both church & theater organs have great performers & devoted fans, but the pipe organ has been a sideshow in the musical circus for over 200 years, a fact not an opinion. Contemporary composers specializing in organ are known mainly to organists, & most are themselves performers composing first for themselves. There is always a market for new liturgical music & hymn settings, less so for concert pieces. The instrument endures because organ music endures. You want a pipe organ, there are at least 100 companies that will build you one.

Repertoire is the weakness of most theater organ albums. The theater (or "civic") organ's heyday ended in the 1940s. Before then, there were pipe organs everywhere; movie theaters, skating rinks, dance halls, stadiums, restaurants, Elks Clubs, even high schools - Atlantic City High had a marvelous organ. The theater organ always had a nostalgic quality. Beginning with the pipe organ restoration movement in 1950's, nostalgia became the main attraction. Theater organs were preserved, restored, & played to recall an earlier era; they are historical artifacts. When you attend a theater organ concert you hear oldies, light classical, patriotic songs & marches, novelties, maybe a few recent show tunes. They're fun concerts, I recommend them, but theater organ recordings exist mainly as souvenirs to demonstrate the qualities of the organs & skills of the organists. Theater organs are difficult to master - no two are exactly alike in design or sound, & the best performers today are virtuosos - most are part timers - who travel around America & Europe giving audiences what they want: a Trip Down Memory Lane with some corn & razzmatazz, on precious instruments local theater organ societies put lots of money & work into saving.

One theater organist refused to become musically irrelevant in the 1950s - his name was George Wright, & he was only in his thirties. He had been organist for a number of years at the famous Paramount Theater in New York (that organ is now in Wichita), & on network radio, jobs that had required not only the playing of oldies & novelties, but also Hit Parade pop songs, & he had cut many 78's. He was a flamboyant artist, brilliant performer, interesting arranger, musically broad-minded. He moved back to California in the early Fifties (at some point he became staff organist for the soap General Hospital). There he hooked up with Richard Vaughan, whose home studio contained the pipe organ from Chicago's Paradise Theater. Vaughan had the expertise to make first rate recordings of the instrument using the new multitrack magnetic tape. Wright made a deal with Vaughan to record LPs on Vaughan's small indie label, Hi-Fi, in return for having control over what he put on those LPs. He included all kinds of music on some 20 Hi-Fi albums, a something for everyone approach. The albums sounded great & sold very well - millions in all. Two of his very best LPs were recordings of the scores from South Pacific & My Fair Lady. There were many well known theater organists, & innumerable pipe organ records were produced in the Fifties & Sixties, some intended to test the limits of record player speakers, but George Wright was one of the few theater organists who really thought of himself as a contemporary pop artist, & marketed himself as one. He didn't change the course of pop music - rock & roll did that. His albums were designed to have wide appeal. Turns out they had lasting appeal, too. Many of his albums for Hi-Fi were remastered for the digital era.

With its collectable jacket of George sitting at a Wurlitzer on a beach raising a tropical toast to three island beauties, George Wright Goes South Pacific was one of the better pop "concept" albums of the Fifties. Like DJ Allan Freed, George might have said he never played a song he didn't like - he plays them all that way, but he clearly loved the music from South Pacific. In fact, all Richard Rodgers tunes sound good on a Wurlitzer. I have my theory of why this is so (almost needless to say, no American has composed better waltzes). By taking on an entire Broadway score, George challenged himself to run some songs through the Wurlitzer one wouldn't expect to hear on the beast.

George Wright plays Overture from South Pacific. (RealAudio, from LP)

Labels: music, Showbiz, WFMU

Kept flipping to channel 4 trying to catch Jimmy Page playing at the Olympic closing ceremonies, & each look brought a different nightmarish image, Busby Berkeley staging a totalitarian pageant in Hell. At last, Leona Lewis rose out of something resembling a London bus with spinning umbrellas on the side, & she appeared to have a long metal pipe connected to her vagina. Then Jimmy Page ascended to the roof of the bus & they performed "Whole Lotta Love," an early Led Zeppelin song about having sex during an LSD trip.

This much I'll guess: The Brits won't spend forty billion dollars in 2012, shut down their ports, enlist a million "volunteers," & destroy Tibet.

I watched what interested me & was easy to find, mostly volleyball, some BMX biking, whatever was on late if I turned on the TV late & it was worth seeing. But the Olympics don't interest me as such. They're a frightening glimpse of the "New World Order" in which nationalism & idealized bodies are celebrated with a tribal religiosity not so distant from the Olympia of Leni Riefenstahl even as the event becomes subservient to international corporatism. They call this peace?

Misty May, Kerri, Shawn, & Michael had to compete on behalf of some nation or not compete. But many of the non-American track & field athletes could have waved their American college pennants along with their national flags. The Cuban volleyball teams are authentically nationalist, just as the old Soviet hockey players were technically members of the Soviet Army. The Gold Medal American women's basketball team came together just weeks before the Olympics, some WNBA players went back to their home countries. Michael Phelps' mom & other Olympic parents would have worn corporate logo clothing if not for rules against it. That may yet change until everything & everyone get plastered with ads like at NASCAR. Aiming for the Olympic is lifelong gamble, the odds are hugely against it, & it's expensive in America to reach the level where one's costs are defrayed. But the payoff ... global superstardom.

Labels: Showbiz, sports, TV

Labels: culture, obituary, Showbiz

Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara are to come to the West End next year in a musical version of Gone With The Wind.

The new adaptation will be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn - who returns to the New London Theatre, where he launched Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats in 1981.

In a statement, Sir Trevor said he was "drawn to the challenge" of adapting Margaret Mitchell's vast, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for the stage.
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It tells the story of southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, whose idyllic lifestyle is shattered when President Lincoln's demands to end slavery trigger the American Civil War.
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Producer Aldo Scrofani said the musical would "remain true to Margaret Mitchell's original story and characters while also revealing its relevance to our lives today".

Just what theater needs: A pro-slavery musical. Not the slightest bit relevant except in a negative sense. Gone with The Wind sucks even as a love story. With her Ashley Wilkes obsession, Scarlett O'Hara was never worth Rhett's alpha male libido. It'll cost millions for the special effects to burn Atlanta on stage. The BBC writer manages in one sentence to get the history horribly wrong. The South instigated the War. They justified it as preemptive, just like Bush with Iraq. When he took office, Lincoln opposed only the extension of slavery beyond the states where it already existed. But wealthy Southern plantation owners & real estate speculators looked greedily at the prairie states & California the way American oil companies covet Kirkuk & Basra.

Labels: Showbiz