Halloween Countdown: October 2 - Mockingbird Lane Blacktop

And so we turn to the age-old question, The Munsters or The Addams Family?

Don't worry, there isn't a wrong answer, just a matter of personal preference.

Both shows were blessed with outstanding casts, but Gomez, Morticia, and company will always hold the place of higher affection in my heart, as the unselfconscious eccentricity of the Addams clan makes for better entertainment in my book. The Munsters, on the other hand, came off as a by-the-numbers family sitcom given a Universal monster makeover. The Munsters hewed close to suburban norms. The Addams Family never managed to realize that they were living outside the mainstream, and wore their freakiness on their sleeves.

(It reminds me a lot of my own blue collar bohemian childhood, which is the likely explanation of my pro-Addams Family bias. There were fewer model train explosions and more shouting in my version, though, and my uncle was less into putting lightbulbs in his mouth as he was into using hand puppets to obscenely proposition stewardresses.)

The one area where The Munsters possessed unquestionable superiority was the theme song arena. As iconic as the snap-accented Addams Family jingle is, it doesn't hold a red wax candle to the crypt-surf instrumental that kicked off the start of each new episode....as well as providing inspiration to generations of deathrockers and horrorpunks to come.

keeps us away from who we're loving

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Friday Night Fights: The Road to (Barbara) Eden

This week's contribution to the weekly free-for-all decreed by the the Master of the Funk Cosmic is jam-packed with crudely drawn, slightly off-model, sitcom-licensed action. Can you dig it, cats and kittens?

It comes courtesy of Dell's I Dream of Jeannie #1 (April 1966). The comic version diverges from the television show in that Major Nelson is portrayed as the sort of guy who frequently goes mano-a-mano with man-eating tigers, killer crocodiles, and harem guards, as opposed to the kind of fellow who has difficulty bluffing Hayden Rorke about why there's an ostrich on his patio.

I was relieved, however, to see that the writers chose to carry the show's strong feminist message over into the comic version...


Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra - Jeannie (from AM Gold: TV Themes of the 60's, 1996) - Featuring lyrics by Buddy Kaye.

That's right, lyrics.

a horse and contract rider approaches

They call me MISTER Ed!
From BitterAndrew's Comprehensive Guide to Films That Don't Exist, But Should:

Equestrophobic southern sherriff Bill Gillespie (Steiger) is forced to team up with Ed (Harvester), a visiting police horse from the big city, in order to solve a mysterious murder in this unusual blending of low comedy and socially aware drama.

Though the film unwisely goes a tail-lifting joke (of five) too far, both leads turn in exceptional performances. Steiger adds an astonishing degree of depth to his character, which a lesser talent might have simply portrayed as a broad redneck caricature. Gillespie's attempts to come to grips with the fact that Ed will only speak in his presence reflect a greater internal transformation where the scales of anti-equine bigotry fall away to reveal genuine feelings of respect and friendship toward his four-legged partner.

As good as Steiger's performance was, Harvester's was even better, being able to convey a wealth of nuanced emotion though such simple gestures as the stomp of a hoof or the flick of a tail. His comedic timing, too, was absolutely flawless (although I'm still perplexed over what appeared to be a length of nylon fishing line dangling from his mouth during the scenes where he speaks).

Harvester would ultimately win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film, but chose to boycott the award ceremony, instead sending playwright Peter Shaffer to deliver a speech about the unfair portrayals of Equine-Americans in the mass media.

Three stars.

Jay Livingston - The Theme from Mr. Ed (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1: From the 50's and 60's, 1990) - There was a time when "domestic fantasy" sitcoms were considered to be the bottom of the televisual barrel, and the most frequently cited example of the mediums will toward banality. This was, of course, before Dance War and Celebrity Rehab hit the small screen and made My Mother, The Car look like high fucking art in comparion. Watching the bitter residue of Jeff Conaway get ointment rubbed on his lower back or watching Jerry Van Dyke get poked in the ass (complete with cartoon sound effect) by a spring directed by a sentient automobile -- I know what I'd choose.

Echo & The Bunnymen - Bring on the Dancing Horses (from the Pretty in Pink OST, 1986) - Albums That Meant Something, Mini-Version: Back in the early months of Maura's and my relationship, we and my ever-present punk rock pal used to head over to Maura's house after classes to hang out in her den and engage in some basic cable channelsurfing -- poking fun at the Club MTV audience, getting a whiff of uncured nostalgia from USA's Cartoon Express, and so forth.

Shortly before the end of the Spring 1992 semester, the three of us sat through a TBS showing of Pretty in Pink, and we had a blast enjoying the retro vibe while bitching about the film's pro-yuppification message.

The next day was one of Maura's work days, which meant that it was up to my friend and me to entertain ourselves, which usually meant walking up Mass Ave from Central to Harvard, checking out the used vinyl stores along the way, and grabbing some Cafe Aventura pizza at the end of the trip. This time, though, my friend had unspecified "plans" to attend to and left me to fly solo.

I did, though in a more purpose-driven fashion than usual, figuring that I'd pick up a used copy of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack (the songs and good memories were still fresh in my head) then try and meet Maura at Alewife Station, as it was where I caught the bus back to Woburn anyway and a stone's throw from the hotel where she was working at the time. Imagine my surprise when I stepped onto the Alewife concorse and discovered my punk rock pal already waiting there.

It was nothing compared to his surprise as his stammered out some excuses about medical appointments and hoping to run into me and so forth. As much as I hate rushing to judge, something about his language and mannerisms stunk worse than Alewife Brook's shopping carriage-filled waters in late August. After a few minutes of stilted conversation, Maura arrived, though circumstances prevented me from directly asking her if she had any knowledge about what the hell was going on.

It turned out that she didn't, and it wouldn't be revealed to her until the following Sunday evening. That was when my so-called pal, high on John Hughes's brand of sentimental melodrama and unrealistic expecations, showed up on Maura's parents' doorstep to profess his love for her (and be shot down in the brutally blunt manner for which my other half is reknowned for).

So, yeah. "Bring on the Dancing Horses" is a lovely bit of alternapop, and perhaps the finest track Mr. Echo and Friends ever recorded. It also induces an almost inperceptable reflexive grimace whenever I listen to it. This is why I've strenuously lobbied to have all teen romantic comedies labeled with a "MCABIDF" warning -- "May Cause Absurd Behavior In Deluded Fools."

(One final note: If you happen to live in a Super Tuesday state and are disgusted as much as I am by the slate of candidates, "Bamboo Harvest" would make a perfect choice for a spite-in -- I mean "write in" -- candidate. The poor palamino has been dead for thirty-eight years, but I still have more confidence in his leadership skills than in any of the current roster of clowns.)

12 Days of Christmas - Day 9: 20 minutes into the Christmas future

Today's installment of Armagideon Time's ill-conceived holiday countdown features a heartwarming piece of retro-futurism in the form of Max Headroom's 1986 single:

Max Headroom - Merry Christmas Santa Claus (You're A Lovely Guy)

Lovely, isn't it? It makes me want to twitch my head and weep virtual tears each time I listen to it. I'm no expert in audio issue troubleshooting for futuristic artificial intelligences, but it seems to me that Max's sysadmins could probably clear up that stuttering problem by uninstalling the sound card drivers, disabling the onboard sound from the BIOS menu, then getting the updated drivers from the manufacturer's website.

Despite the character having reached a toxic level of overexposure in his mid-eighties heyday, I still retain a certain fondness for Max. As a synthetic personality for a synthetic age, he not-quite-successfully tread a very thin line between satire and symptom of that era's style-over-substance ethos, making subversive wisecracks one moment and serving as a pitchman for New Coke the next.

Such ambiguity was to be expected, I suppose, from a faulty personality simulation based on an investigative reporter from a cyberpunkadelic future, especially one created (by the same people who did the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" and Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" videos) using a be-latexed Matt Frewer and 1980's video editing wizardry with the purpose of hosting a UK Channel 4 music video program. According to a 1985 interview with one of Max's creators, the original intent was to weave the sci-fi backstory in segments between the music videos, but the concept proved too unwieldy to manage and was spun off into a separate project.

As is usual with my retrologistic obsessions, my affection for Max Headroom is best kept at nostalgic arm's length. The specials and miscellaneous host appearances starring the character simply feel dated and only interesting as historical curiosities. My first exposure to the Circle Jerks came via a Cinemax showing of one of the specials, where the band's "Junk Mail" (or a lousy cover of it) was used as a bumper for a "letters to the host" segment. Max's Christmas Turkey special (which includes a performance of today's holiday track) features appearances by "Saint" Bob Geldof and a very Auntie Entitized Tina Turner, and mostly serves to remind me that, yes, 1986 really was that long ago.

The British TV movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, still holds up pretty well after all these years, and is a minor classic of the presciently quaint genre the kids call "cyberpunk." (One of my more fortuitous popcult finds was a copy of the oversized and photo-heavy "novelization" of the film, purchased at a dollar store in the early 1990's.) The film also featured a great synth-instrumental end theme courtesy of Ultravox's Midge Ure. I had planned to post the theme, but the extraction program I use keeps distorting the sound beyond use.

As a teen, I loved the American Max Headroom television series, which was based on the film but featured different actors (except for Frewer and the lovely Amanda Pays). Having watched it again when it played on Bravo a few years back, I found it to be rather flat and oddly preachy -- the kiss of death, given the cynical basis of the cyberpunk genre. (I could honestly live happily without seeing another attempt to directly reference Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in a quasi-serious work of sci-fi. The novel only really succeeds as a broad parable, where the threshold for suspension of disbelief isn't as high as it is for similar elements used as ongoing plot points in a less abstract piece.)

To be fair, it's a case of the series being of its era and excelling in that stratified context. Compared to then-contemporary fare like Small Wonder or Full House, the American Max Headroom series seems like high art, and Grand High Poobah of Cyberpunk William Gibson's praise for the show makes a lot more sense. Viewed today, isolated from 1987-88's topographical map of banality, it resembles nothing so much as Lou Grant if filmed by Ridley Scott.

Special bonus: Since I'm already on the subject of Max Headroom, and I doubt I'll ever do another post about it, I figured I might as well toss in Max's other bright shining musical moment:

Art of Noise - Paranoimia (from a 1986 12" single; collected on Best of Art of Noise, 1997)

stinking to high heaven

Yesterday was supposed to be a good day.

Despite issues at work, despite the frustrating commute, despite the time lost while Maura fixed the filter for the koi tank at her parents' house, despite all the other little slings and arrows of everyday petty hassles, I went though the required motions with a gleam in my eye and a spring in my step. Why? Because it was Thursday, which per our domestic tradition, meant getting Chinese takeout and sitting down for the only block of network TV shows I actually look forward to: The Office, My Name Is Earl, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia -- two anticipated season premieres, and three full hours of all-new episodes, through and through.

Between arriving home from work and settling down couch with a heaping plate of sweet and sour chicken, there were a handful of essential tasks to see to, mostly centering around animal care and feeding. I was eager to get my share of these obligations out of the way as soon as possible, wasted no time in leashing up Adeline, our beagle-boxer mix, for her nightly walk. It was the tail end of twilight, but I figured there was still enough light in the sky to chance a walk down to the end of the backyard, which is Addy's preferred spot for doing her business. It was one of the worst fucking mistakes I've made in a lifetime of dubious decisions.

We exited the back door in our usual fashion, Addy pulling hard on the leash and me doing my damnedest to keep my arm from getting yanked from the socket. It's something I've gone through at least a thousand times, only last night there just happened to be a fairly large and rather irritable skunk on the back steps. Skunks are pretty frequent visitors to our house on the hill, but they usually come late at night to munch on any kibble left in the feral cats' bowls. They've grown used to the our presence, skedaddling to the far side of the driveway when we step out onto the patio or take out the trash. We've even given names to some of the regular visitors: Frank Skunktone, the microencephalic Peanuthead, and Limahl (named for the huge fluffy white stripe on his head and back).

Addy caught sight of the skunk and the hound side of her family tree -- bared teeth, eager yawlps, slobbering jowls and all -- manifested in full force, while I tried in vain to being her to heel. The skunk made a brief, bold stand before turning tail and making a beeline for the safety of the bushes. At first, I thought we'd made it though the worst intact, that the skunk held off on spraying due to our longstanding relationship based on mutual tolerance and wary respect. Those hopes were soon dashed as the wave of concentrated stink washed over me.

Addy got the worst of it, sprayed square in the face and mouth. I was protected by the high ground of the back steps, but the contact stink was still strong enough to cling to my clothes and person. In the space of a few seconds, my much-anticipated plans for the evening went down the crapper. The rest of the night was spent giving Addy repeated washings with de-stink solutions and sprayings down with the garden hose. The sweet and sour chicken and crab rangoons were cold by the time I got around to eating them, and my enjoyment undercut by the lingering aroma of skunk stink.

I still laughed out loud a couple times during Sunny, though.

Pete Thomas - Funky Skunk (from Let's Boogaloo, Vol. 3, 2006) - As opposed to "Fuckin' Skunk," the subject of several freestyle acapella rants I performed yesterday evening.

Loudon Wainwright III - Dead Skunk (from Album III, 1972) - That's the problem this new-fangled modern age -- Where are this generation's Top 40 hits about roadkill?

The Panzant Brothers - Skunk Juice (from SuperFunk: Rare Funk From Deep In The Crates, 2000) - Another illustration of the unholy alliance between funk and skunks.

Y'know, even after the events of the past twenty-four hours, a warm glass of skunk juice still seems more appetizing than a cold bottle of Mountain Dew Game Fuel (brought to you by Halo 3, a Bungie Studios production presented by Microsoft).

stay just as far from me as me from you

I usually make it a point to avoid getting caught up in the entertainment industry’s orgies of self-congratulation otherwise known as award shows, but Maura, who has an inexplicable fondness for celebrity gossip, decided to watch last night’s Emmy Awards pre-show and ceremonies on the TV in our bedroom, where I was working on some projects at the computer desk. It’s been a while since I have had to bear witness to the proceedings, but I don’t remember the Emmys being as off-putting and just plain awful as they were in the largish chunk of the show I was subjected to last night.

Maura’s answer to that observation was to simply say, “Well, FOX is broadcasting them this year” and that they “must have gotten the urge to tart them up a bit.” That does make sense, I suppose, but still doesn’t explain the decision to go with a theater-in-the-round format for the presenter’s platform. Shakespearean history aside, theater-in-the-round, where the action happens on a center stage surrounded by the audience on all sides, is extremely awkward in practice (in terms of costume/set changes and blocking) and I suspect largely predicated on maximizing seating at the expense of any audience members stuck facing the wrong direction. The center stage did have a very sci-fi portal built into the floor for entrances and exits, but there was a sense of confusion among the presenters and award winners about exactly who or where they should be looking at while speaking. (The presenters, at least, had the teleprompter to focus their attention upon.) Only Lewis Black, delivering a welcome rant about small screen infoclutter, seemed to have a grasp of the logistics of a 360 degree delivery.

I did my best to concentrate on my PC monitor’s screen while my wife shouted out comments about the winners, losers, and the abundance of horrible fashion choices, but a few things did manage draw my gaze into the Emmy abyss:

- Tony Bennett – The first time the pop legend won an award for some special I didn’t remember at all, I felt a bit sad that the rest of the production staff ate up so much of the allotted “thank you” time, leaving Mr. Bennett only enough to give a brief call-out to his wife. Then the special won a second award, and I was forced to rethink my previous position, as the venerable crooner delivered an extremely awkward and gushy love letter for Target Stores (who sponsored the special) using terms best reserved for hagiographies. Hey, I appreciate the deals the superstore gives me on Dr. Pepper and toilet paper, but I wouldn’t go as far as nominating the chain for sainthood.

- The Jersey Boys’ tribute to The Sopranos – The big WTF moment of the night, and the most disturbing, as cast members of the Broadway show badly lip-synched to overproduced renditions of “Walk Like a Man” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” while clips from The Sopranos played on the arena’s monitors. The desperate stink of contrived irony was thick in the air as the pretty boys mimed along to a sappy pop ballad while the footage from the series showed Drea de Matteo’s character being executed by mobsters. Classy, indeed.

The whole fascination with mobster/Mafia mythos leaves my cold, quite frankly. The Aislin Silva case and having seen (from a window of a southbound subway train) forensic investigators unearth corpses of the Winter Hill Gang’s victims from the shores of the Neponset River tell me all I need to know about the type of people who make a living though organized crime.

- TEK-NAU-LOW-GEE – “What did the last Neanderthal say to the first Cro-Magnon?” The various academies that award the Emmy’s decided to acknowledge the march of technological progress in a most goofy manner by having Masi Oka from Heroes teleconference with the MySpace dude in order to present an award for “Interactivity in Television” or other buzzword-laden nonsense. The award was given to Joel Hyatt and a very puffy-looking Al Gore for their Current TV venture, which is like being the only person in the world who makes robotic hamsters being given an award for excellence in making robot hamsters. Shit, I’d have given the award to the creator(s) of Comcast ON DEMAND. There’s some interactivity with a purpose.

Also on the “token nods to tech” front, who came up with the idea of showing clips of the nominees on iPods, high-end cell phones, and other “hot” media playing devices via over the shoulder POV shots? The video may have been indecipherable, but the brands and makes of the devices were clearly discernable.

- Your Best Interests at Heart – I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more effective ipecac than last night’s speech by the outgoing president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which (with accompanying montage of Bob Hope entertaining the troops and Live Aid footage) praises all the Good Work^TM done by folks in the industry, in particularly American Idol's use of poor African children as a self-serving empathy sink and the voyeurism-posing-as-a-cause of yet another made-for-cable documentary about junkies.

Good deeds are good deeds, regardless of ulterior motives, but I’m not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the same industry that gave us Kid Nation, According to Jim, and Past-His-Prime Rocker Ogles Attention-Hungry Women Rock of Love. Feel free to assuage whatever vestiges of a conscience you’ve got left, folks. Just don’t expect me to feel all warm and fuzzy over your onanistic back-patting sessions. I’ve seen your real face, TV industry, and it looks like a meth addict’s after a week of withdrawal pains. Who do these people think they are? Target?

Judging from today’s post-mortems of the Emmys, the FOX-i-fied version of the award show landed with a sickly wet thump ratings-wise, which I’m sure the firms who bought advertising time must be really thrilled to hear. Given the state of the ads shown, I’d say it’s a case of poetic justice, with extra scorn heaped on Macy’s, whose marketing message was “We sell loads of overpriced celebrity-licensed crap.” (Usher has a fragrance for sale? Seriously? WTF, buying public.) McDonald’s also rolled out the big guns of adorability with an ad featuring a poppin’ and lockin’ moppet munching on the new healthy not as unhealthy Happy Meal. However, its effectiveness was completely undermined by its length, which came in a just a hair over the total runtime of the uncut version of von Stroheim’s Greed. (First Law of Marketing: A little breakdancing kid goes a long way.)

FOX took the opportunity to aggressively pimp its properties, both current and forthcoming (and based on what was shown they must have received a federal grant to provide work to unemployed alums of Everybody Loves Raymond), but the net effect was just another annual session of the “which one of these dozen shows will survive past mid-season” game. (Inside tip: Bet on the one with the most appeal to the lowest common denominator. That might be tricky, given that it’s FOX, but it should narrow the field a little.)

Mission of Burma - Academy Fight Song (from a 1980 single; collected on the Signals, Calls, and Marches CD reissue, 1996) - Not the Academy of Television Arts and Science's fight song, which is still being hashed out as the composers try to think of more words that rhyme with "pander." It's just as well, since few tracks can touch this lovely bit of locally grown post-punk.

Brenda Lee - Nobody Wins (from The Definitive Collection, 2006) - Certainly not the viewing public in the case of last night's Emmys, but Miss Brenda Lee is here to ease your pain.

Orbital - Pay Per View (from The Altogether, 2001) - Sometimes it's the wisest viewing (or listening) choice.

we’ll pass out on the couch

Our first TV in the new house was an ancient LXI 15” model that I happened to have lying around. It was intended as a placeholder for the cable guys to check the connection with when they did the installation a couple weeks prior to my future wife and I moving into the house. I set it up on a table (with a sign saying “this is where the TV will be”) in the approximate location of where the real deal would go when we finished the move. When I stopped by the house that evening to check their work, it was in the opposite side of the living room, with a meager eighteen inches of cable connecting it to the jack. My wife and I spent our first night in the house. Halloween 2004, sprawled out awkwardly on the couch, squinting as we watched The Phantom of the Paradise on one of the Encore channels. From such irritating circumstances do fond memories spring.

We did get the problem rectified in short order, and it wasn’t long before I had my “real” TV, a Sharp 25”, set up in the proper place and digital cable-ready. Sadly, the cathode ray honeymoon lasted less than a month before the picture tube made a most curious “pop,” accompanied by the smell of burnt plastic. It happened on a Saturday morning, while I was trying to get in a couple hours worth of Killzone before my wife got out of bed. Resigning myself to the situation, I headed off to Sears and picked out a shiny new, yet affordable, 27” JVC TV -- which even out of the box filled the entire backseat (and then some) of Super Lumina, and I drove home from the mall with the driver’s seat pushed all the way forward and my knees touching the steering wheel. All was well again, sort of.

Even though I chose that particular model based on how its picture quality compared to other sets on the shelf, it wasn’t long before we started noticing certain issues it was having in the brightness/contrast arena. They weren’t terrible at first, but over the course of the next thirty months got progressively worse, to the point where certain games or movies became completely unwatchable. For example, one of Maura’s favorite films, Donnie Darko, became Pichie Blacko when viewed on it. I checked the internet for any info about the problem, but only ran across a lot of computer chair jeremiads and dubious-sounding solutions involving solid state trepanning procedures performed with a screwdriver and a high risk of accidental electrocution. (what u nd 2 do is poke sumthing sharp btwn the cracks in teh back of the case an wiggul it around it wurked perfect 4 me after that. -INSERT ANIMATED ICP GIF SIGNATURE HERE-)

Even though it became increasingly apparent that something must be done, I held off on replacing the set because:

- we agreed the next TV would be hi-def
- the prices for those sets were still rather high
- my budget didn’t have a lot of flexibility to absorb a big box purchase

(In the household division of finances and labor, things electronic and mechanical fall under my bailiwick, alongside all things automotive.)

Recently, though, I made it to the end of Super Lumina’s loan payment book, thus freeing up a considerable amount of cash per month, and an anticipated bit of car repair was deemed unnecessary, wiping out a planned expense I had already budgeted for. Also, Maura’s annual October marathon of horror film viewing was coming up, and she made it clear that she wasn’t going to deal with watching an almost completely black screen for an entire month. My (self-serving, I admit) argument that "the best horrors are the unseen ones" fell on deaf ears. So, last Monday I checked out my go-to place on the internet for cheap electronics and found a decently priced 32” diagonal RCA LCD HDTV, ready to ship once I hit the “place my order” button.

The notification of purchase said the TV was going to arrive on Friday. I’ve ordered many items from the same firm in the past and their ETA estimates have almost always been spot on, but Maura was still a bit paranoid because of infrequent delivery mixups involving our street and an identically named avenue running parallel to it two blocks over. (Only in New England, I tell you.) I used her paranoia to set up a big surprise reveal. The TV arrived while she was in town with her friend, and each time she called home to see if it came, I told her it hadn’t, even as I was testing connections and fiddling with various picture and sound options. By the time I came to pick her up at her parents’ house her rage had reached near nova intensity, calling down curses on everyone in the distribution chain.

It took her about five minutes to notice the new TV, at which point she shouted something that could have either been “What?!?” or “You bastard!” Pointless mind games make our love grow stronger. (That’s actually kind of true, as it lets me indulge my inborn predilection for emotional manipulation without causing actual harm.) Maura loves the TV, and also loved that fact that in setting it up I did not fall back upon my standard “fire and forget” methods of leaving the packaging and tools lying around everywhere when I was finished. I even carried the old TV up to the attic, an expenditure of manpower that my forearms, lower back, and shoulders are still in the process of paying off.

The funny thing is I don’t even watch that much TV. That’s not some highbrow declaration of snob superiority, but a simple statement of fact. Sitting and watching something on the small screen doesn’t come natural to me anymore, for some reason. Apart from a handful of shows I watch with the wife and the occasional movie, if I have the TV on, I’m either playing videogames (on weekend mornings or vacation days) or have it set to the Retroactive punk/new wave/alternative digital music channel while I’m reading or trying to write something.

My empirical experience has been that folks whose parents wouldn’t allow them to watch television as children generally possess a higher degree of fuck-up-ed-ness than those whose parents didn’t make such a high moral stance about the boob tube. Besides, if television fare ever met the lofty bar set for it by shallow and disdainful intellectuals, they’d just raise their minimum acceptable standards. Elitism isn’t utopian; it’s oppositional. (“Being unappreciated by the vulgar masses” is a selling point unto itself.)

I’m not arguing the merits of Who Wants to Be Mediocre? (hosted by Johnny Pabulum) or the Let’s Laugh at Toothless Rednecks Getting Arrested or Yelling at Each Other show, but any mass medium worthy of the name is going to butter its bread with the lowest common denominator. It’s simple economics; watching an overindulged harridan throw a pre-nup nutty on Bridezillas taps into a far more pervasive entertainment need than sitting through three hours of interpretive dance numbers based on Maya Angelou poems ever could. One could argue that statement is a merely an indictment of the underlying issue, but the truth is that there will always be a wide audience for bear-baiting, no matter what guise it presently wears.

Kursaal Flyers – Television Generation (from a 1977 single; collected on DIY: Teenage Kicks - UK Pop I 1976-1979, 1993) – Poised at the intersection of punk, pub rock, and power pop, which is a very interesting place to be, all said – a paradise of killer hooks and quirky humor. Upon the band’s dissolution, drummer Will Birch went on to form the acclaimed power pop outfit, The Records.

Front 242 – Television Station (from Official Version, 1987) – Comes in like a lion and out like incidental music from an 80’s teen film. Or, as my friend once said about Ministry’s Twitch LP: “It sounds like the music they play in Tello’s.” (We’re talking circa 1991 or so.)

I was in Tello’s not too long ago with Maura while she was looking for a blouse to wear to last weekend’s wedding. They had a box of nipple coverings for sale at the register. I also saw a really nice crushed velvet men’s suit jacket I’d have bought in a second if they had one in red.

Pulp – TV Movie (from This Is Hardcore, 1998) – I’m still not entirely convinced that this isn’t some lost Pink Floyd/David Bowie collaboration, dusted off and presented by Jarvis Cocker and company as a prank.

The best TV movie ever? Bad Ronald, of course.

Black Flag – TV Party (from the Repo Man OST, 1984) – First punk album I ever bought. Listening to it gives me flashbacks to sitting on the Revere Beach seawall in middle of February with the cassette version playing in my off-brand Walkman. Why was I hanging out on the beach in the wintertime? Beats the heck out of me.

Oh, some like it hot, but I like it really hot

Did anyone else catch NBC’s live-action remake of the Rankin-Bass stop-motion animation classic, The Year Without a Santa Claus, last Monday night? Wow, was it lousy. It took me back to the days when Fred Silverman, desperate to placate Gary Coleman and keep him on Diff’rent Strokes, greenlit several mind-numbingly trite TV movies featuring the sassy, cherubic child star, abetting the network’s cash-hemorrhaging nosedive during that era. Can Supertrain 2K7 be far behind?

Based on the talent involved, and the utterly batshit promo that popped up on YouTube, I was holding out hope that if the remake wasn’t going to be good, at least it would be delightfully terrible in a campy sort of way.

It couldn’t even manage that level of inspired incompetence, and ended up being merely boring and stupid. Carol Kane and Harvey Fierstein, two actors who can usually be counted upon to deliver the goods, were utterly wasted in their roles as Mother Nature and Heat Miser. I’m not sure what was going on with Fierstein, who spent his time onscreen trapped in a limbo between total scenery-chewing madness and simply phoning in his lines. The guy has won several Tony awards and seemed like a great choice for the part (although I would have went with Tom Bosley), making me suspect a degree of directorial or network interference at work. Or maybe he realized how ludicrous the project was and went into thespian cruise control.

The final product turned out to be a sappy, yet generic Hallmark Channel “family” movie with non-matching tissue grafts taken from the original, stunt casting (as the 90’s Batman movies have shown, never a good sign), and a sickening amount of product placements. Seriously, a bound volume of the special’s product placement agreements would be thicker than a complete five borough set of the New York City white pages.

The scheduling of the special also baffled me. 9:00 PM on a Monday night? Not 7:00 PM on the Sunday before Christmas, which would have made more sense for a remake of a children’s holiday special? The strange time slot makes me wonder if NBC’s target demographic for The Year Without a Santa Claus wasn’t children, but instead grownups around my age who have fond memories of the original. If so, it was a move boldly poached from superhero comic book publishing’s realm of diminishing returns, which limps by through pandering to a graying fanbase. I’m not going to start bitching about NBC “raping” my childhood, like many obsessive comic fans accuse DC and Marvel of doing. It’s not a matter of “how dare you!” More like, “why’d you even bother?”

Now that I’ve gotten my token rant out of the way, here are today’s musical selections: The original Heat Miser and Snow Miser themes from 1974 and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s medley version from 2004. Nothing says “Merry Christmas” quite like high camp lyrics and music lifted from a Gypsy Rose Lee performance.

George S. Irving – Heat Miser (from Nick at Nite: A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, 1977)

Dick Shawn – Snow Miser (from Nick at Nite: A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, 1977)

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy – Mr. Heatmiser (from Everything You Want For Christmas, 2004)

Halloween Countdown: October 29 – atmosphere you could have cut with a knife

Occasionally, when I’m really bored, I’ll read the fan reviews of shows I watch over at TV.com. I was skimming over the various comments regarding Showtime’s Masters of Horror, and was struck by one recurring criticism of the show: not enough gore = not horrifying. While I have several minor gripes about the series, mostly regarding the wildly erratic quality of the anthology’s installments, the level of gore never factored into my criticisms. If anything, the show’s blatant efforts to maintain a minimum splatter quotient have hampered the various creators’ attempts to tell their stories effectively.

The obsession with gore being necessary to horror puts me in mind of those kids I knew in junior high who used to quote Alice Cooper lyrics as they crafted facsimile Freddy Krueger gloves in metal shop. True horror is more than the adolescent transgressive appeal of graphic bloodletting, as today’s track clearly demonstrates. It makes a great companion listen to the thematically similar “Frankie Teardrop” and “Teen Love.”

Rhoda Dakar and The Special AKA – The Boiler (from a 1981 single, collected on Stereo-Typical: A’s, B’s, and Rarities, 2005) – Rhoda Dakar was previously a member of the all-female ska act, The Bodysnatchers, which later mutated (sans Dakar) into the poppier Belle Stars ("Sign of the Times"). This track, believe it or not, made to #35 on the British charts.