The new Planet of the Apes movie appears to be quite disturbing. [Warning: Spoilers]
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Steve Martin At The Hollywood Bowl
In our seats, waiting to hear him play banjo with a bluegrass band and Edie Brickell. Then, the fireworks.
[Saturday-morning update]
What a great show. I hadn’t realized how seriously Martin had gotten into his music in the last few years. He’s equally adept at both bluegrass fingerpicking and clawhammer, and he and Brickell did some beautifully spooky songs in the latter style. He also hasn’t lost his comedic touch. “It’s always been my dream to play the Hollywood Bowl on the 4th of July. Call me crazy, but I feel that, as I step on this stage, I’ve taken a big step in that direction.” (Paraphrase).
Only disappointment was that the show wasn’t long enough, and the fireworks (accompanied by a medley of Sousa tunes from the Air Force Band of the Golden West, ending with the classic Stars and Stripes Forever) less spectacular than I’ve gotten used to in recent years, but still well worth the money and effort to attend.
[Update a while later]
One other thing. Paul Simon made a guest appearance, and sat in for a song.
American Culture
I can’t imagine what is going through the minds of people who take pictures of their junk at all, let alone send it across the ether.
What Is Liberty Island?
The Publishing Business
I have to agree with the commenters, though. The publisher doesn’t mind taking a bath on Her Highness’s “best seller.” It’s just a way to avoid campaign-finance laws.
Bill Watterson
…(briefly) returns to the comics page.
Mad Men Ads
Lileks (who has finally replaced the irreplaceable Jasper with a new puppie) has thoughts on the decline of advertising and the suckitude of the early seventies:
What’s the opposite of nostalgia? What’s the word for an exaggerated dislike of a particular time? I know I am nostalgic for things I did not experience, and only see through the pop-culture elements left behind, which communicate incomplete and occasionally misleading messages. But I have antipathy for things I experienced at the fringe of adolescence – not because it was a bad time, or I didn’t like them then, but because they seem now to be the products of a culture that was getting cheap and lazy; it was full of gimcrack baubles turned out by an exhausted system that tried to adapt to the times, but had no strength to put forth any ideas or uphold any ideas that went before. The period from 1967 to 1975, with some stellar exceptions, was just a horrible time for everything, and you can reduce it all down to one middle-aged balding dude with wet hair plastered over his head in brown polyester pants and a mustard-yellow shirt approving one thing after the other because the kids will go for it.
That’s a generalization. Somewhat. But. I’ve said this before: “Mad Men”’s exploration of the late 60s somehow avoids the fact that advertising in that era was horrible. Compare an issue of Life magazine from 1968 to its 1958 counterpoint – it’s as if style, color, art, romance, seduction, adulthood, and bright-eyed joy had been drained from the world. The ads weren’t about the product anymore; the ads were about the ads.
[Yes, I know it’s not fresh material — I’d gotten behind on my Bleatage.]
Ghostbusters
Why it’s the most libertarian Hollywood blockbuster of all time:
How many Hollywood blockbusters involve private businesses as the heroes and government regulators as the villains?
Dickless would certainly fit in well with the current EPA.
The End Of Captain Video
It’s OK, though because now we get reviews of Captain America:
It begins with a reprise of the fist-fight, which is a bit dismaying; does this mean we won’t get a new fist-fight? The elements of any serial are the Suddenly Important Piece of Technology, a fist-fight, a car going off a cliff, gunplay, and certain death faced by the hero or the Gal Friday. The best episodes have all of them; most have two.
Anyway, Gail was saved, as usual, by selective editing; Cap manages to stop the blade before she’s bisected, leaving everyone too shaken to ask why there was a guillotine in a box factory in the first place.
Well, everything that has gone on before is dropped like a hot poker; Maldor says “it’s time for the next phase of the operation,” suggesting that they’re no longer into using high-powered scientific inventions to steal art and precious metals. Rest on their laurels? Not our Maldor! He wants to go after Henley, the Oil Magnate, who’s never been mentioned, but “he also was a member of the Mayan expedition that discredited me.” As if we remember that from six weeks ago. As if the fact that all the members of the expedition are dying off except the one guy who they discredited wouldn’t occur to, oh, MAYBE THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY WHO IS ALSO CAPTAIN AMERICA.
Maldor sent Henley an extortion note, confident he will show it to Captain District Attorney, and by bugging Captain District Attorney’s apartment, Maldor will know what he is doing.
Because if there’s one thing you want when committing blackmail, it’s the constant involvement and attention of the District Attorney.
As only Lileks can do it.
The Space Movement
Is it moribund, and losing ground?
I’m not sure it matters, except to the degree that it influences government policy. Ultimately, it’s going to happen privately, if the government doesn’t prevent it. The flaw of past thinking of the movement was the notion that NASA was going to lead the way, and that it would need more money to do so. It’s pretty clear that that was never a realistic possibility.