Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Wait, what?

Wait. What?

Daily Batman: Futbol americano and Sk8 or die, sort of, edition

Schulz had a long association with ice sports, and both figure skating and ice hockey featured prominently in his cartoons. In Santa Rosa, he was the owner of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which opened in 1969 and featured a snack bar called “The Warm Puppy”.

(the wiki).

Ice-skating is the only sport other than baseball at which I’ve ever instantly demonstrated amazing prowess on the first try. For this reason, I try to talk it up big to everyone I know, but, in a region of California that seldom ever sees temperatures dip below 25 degrees, fahrenheit, it’s an uphill battle.

New feature alert: Inaugural edition featuring major league malarkey

New feature: “What does Jessica Fletcher think?” in which, at the end of an account of events, we ask, “…but what does Jessica Fletcher [of Murder, She Wrote] think?” and she tells us.

I was recently at the Giants ballpark in San Francisco (mad heyos to Panda for making that happen) and had been cruising for a garlic fries vendor who would take a card so I didn’t have to hike down to the ATM. Lingering near a promising concession stand, I nearly bumped in to this man carrying garlic fries. I had noticed him earlier because he was sitting near our section, and I had thought he was attractive. We did the whole “almost ran in to each other, whoops” thing and he smiled.

“Cool. Your glasses are the Giants colors,” he said.

This was where a normal woman, one adept in communication skills with the unfair sex, would take the opportunity to introduce herself, but I wasn’t switching gears fast enough, so I pointed at his fries and said, “Did you buy those here?”

He said, “Yes,” with friendly, expectant body language, but I then blurted out, “Did you use your ATM card?” He gave me a very strange look and said, “Yeah…?” slowly.

I realized that was an oddly specific, even nosy question out of the context of my last five minutes. I tried to scramble for a way to explain, but his friend came up and they walked back to their seats.

I blew the save.

Or did I? Sure, cute boy, but — garlic fries. It was urgent.

…But what does Jessica Fletcher think?

Facepalm. Never good.

Daily Batman: Just Another Auden October

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

(W.H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand. 1962.)

Short-shrifted Mr. A last year and I’m looking to remedy. Welcome to Just Another Auden October.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Open season

Heyo. Get bagging.

Movie Millisecond: the Sandlot

The Sandlot (David M. Evans, 1993).

Since you won’t stop asking*, here are the rules for the Sandlot drinking game.

Take a drink whenever the narrator says, “Pickle.”

Take a drink every time Ham says “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

Take a drink any time the boys speak in unison.

Take a drink whenever Squints and Wendy Peffercorn look at each other.

Take a drink whenever Tommy Timmons echoes Timmy.

Take a drink whenever Babe Ruth is mentioned, by name or by nickname.

Take a drink any time someone spits.

Wendy Peffercorn will take you down to Cougar Town.

I’m not even going to bother listing some of the others we’ve come up with over the years. There is even a version I designed where you pick a character and have character-specific instructions (e.g., drink on “Yeah-yeah,” or, for beginners, drink whenever Bertram actually has a line). But really, I can’t in good conscience even keep going. Those rules are sufficient. Drink lots of water out there, dudes.

Conversely, I also have a long explanation of why this is an excellent model for Christian values and highly suited for use in a parochial school classroom. I’m a complex mirror maze of a woman. Not a “hot mess.” Complex mirror maze.

*completely untrue. it has never come up.

PSA: Gotta keep ’em separated — “Keming” edition

PSA: I would like to impart some valuable knowledge about kerning and keming. Kerning is a typography term used to describe the process of spacing out a font to make it visually pleasing and easy to read.

fig. 1: “keming,” illustrated by me.

When type becomes too narrow, it can be difficult to read and even unintentionally misleading. Sometimes disastrously. This is called “Keming.” The name is damn clever and originated with this guy. See how the ‘r’ and ‘n’ of Kerning might, if crowded, look like “keming”? There you go. Clever.

fig. 2: “keming,” inadvertently illustrated via yimmyyayo.

Do you understand why I am bringing this up?

Keming: Don’t let it happen to you.

Sk8 or die: Infinity edition

via.

Knock-knock: Who’s there? Still alive and quick explanation with bonus preview of coming attractions

via.

Don’t tell anyone I did this but … unannounced hiatus has been due to Lent: wanted to see if I could give up something that was actually hard not to do this year. It is way tougher than diet coke or dessert, from which I’ve also been abstaining. But I didn’t give up smoking or bloody beer — I’m not completely crazy.

In the meantime, a preview of coming attractions:

La Maschera del Demonio/The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday/The Black Mask (Mario Bava, 1960).

Some actual in-depth Mario Bava Movie Moments. It’s a scandal that I only did, like, one. I’m such a hack. Super-sorry. Feel free to browse the complete Movie Moments or Movie Milliseconds category while I’m gone and take a stroll down memory lane.

Even more Men Aren’t Attracted to a Girl In Glasses, Sk8 or Die, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, and Hot Men Bein’ Hot of the Day.

May Flowers — E’s favorite Miss Mays of yore. Pictured below is the lovely and talented Cindy Fuller, Miss May 1959. Other May Flowers will include Dolly Read and Anna Nicole Smith (posing as “Vickie”). Like, are you simply all kinds of psyched?

In the meantime, remember that all the past spotlighted Playmates in the journal’s various projects have now been placed in their own Playboy category for your streamlined browsing pleasure, as well as to make it even more convenient for Hef to one day sue the everloving crap out of me.

Liberated Negative Space is a given.

Haven’t forgotten about the Bond Girls project. Name will be “Naughty Girls Need Love, Too,” because the best Bond Girls are the bad ones. Ow! (Please do not talk to me about Miss Moneypenny. I will clap my hands over my ears and sing the Goldfinger song, and you don’t want to hear that, believe me.)

via.

Milton May: a month of quotes and insights on the antiheroic nature of Satan from that uniquely dogmatic, blind, old-timey charmer, John Milton (Paradise Lost).

And finally, in Teevee Time news, the Simpsons will get their own category, along with screencapped scandalous moments from a mystery shuck-and-jive sitcom of days gone by at which you will just have to guess.

via.

…. And at which you have now guessed, correctly, unless you did a lot of tranqs in the last fifteen to twenty years. Don’t do drugs, kids. Don’t be like Carol Brady. Not ever.

All in all, I’ve been storming along, barbituate-free, like a Lent-observing bat outta hell and I got a lot of dogs in the fire — I’m looking forward to a strong return as soon as Easter has passed. As you can see, I will be back with a bang in a few weeks. This has just been a “can I even do it?” excercise to flex my muscles of restraint.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see a man about a Giants’ game.

via.

Don’t you dare.

Catch you all on the upcoming flip side!

Movie Millisecond: Raging Bull

Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980).

via.

See? Joey La Motta has his own two cents to add about that clock in today’s Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day. (Reference is to the image in the below entry.)

Unlikely G and Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: God bless Bob Barker

(Please do.)

Major happy birthday wishes to superfly dope-fresh Unlikely G, Mr. Bob Barker. Never been a huge game show guy but I love the dude.

American readers might know that Bob Barker, the longest-running host of a game show ever (The Price is Right — one of my sorority sisters cleaned house on that show), ended every episode of his show with the sign-off line, “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered,” a tradition his replacement after retirement, comedian Drew Carey, has continued. Thus I have a long association of spaying and neutering with Bob Barker. It’s an honor most would call dubious but I have a feeling that he would probably be quite happy with it. And today he turns 87!

Top five things you might not know about this gentle silver G:

Grew up on a reservation in South Dakota.

At 73, became the oldest MTV Movie Award recipient, winning Best Fight for his golf-course brawl with Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.

Bowed out of longtime hosting duties for the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants when his request that the organization stop giving fur gifts was denied.

Gave $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation for the outfitting and secret launch of a ship (since renamed the MV Bob Barker) which interdicted the Japanese whaling fleet.

Has two notorious beefs: a) with the Qualla Boundary Cherokee over their treatment of bears in their zoo, the long public fights over which have resulted in Chief Michell Hicks threatening to ban the rabble rouser and PETA from the res; and b) with formerly close pal Betty White over the relocation of an elephant from Los Angeles to a sanctuary in San Andreas.

It seems argumentative and counterintuitive to fight, but if I have learned nothing else from the rap world, it is that BAMF’s gotta have beefs, and you must admire someone tenacious enough to keep up an argument with a fellow bad-ass like Ms. White. They are both good people who are genuine friends to animals, and I predict they will patch it up, if they have not already.

So send a big birthday wish in to the universe for Bob Barker, an old school Unlikely G from way back!

Flashback Friday — Advice on friendship, feminine power, and finding your tribe: NSFW Drew Barrymore

This post originally appeared on on November 14, 2009 at 3:15 pm.

“I also love to explore what defines who you are, and friendship, and how you love to rock out with your best friend and cruise and drive and listen to the Ramones and play air guitar, and yet at the same time, they will come and slap you when you’re acting out of line. I love the themes that I put on the poster: ‘Be your own hero’ and ‘Find your tribe.’ Those are two things that are really important in my life.”

(interview with the AV Club’s Sam Adams, October 1, 2009, for Whip It)

“I love empowering women, and I love women that are capable. The one thing that I’m not crazy about are women that feel like they have to be a man to live in a man’s world, or that men have the upper hand. These women have this bitter chip on their shoulder, and that’s not really sexy. I like girls who have got each other’s backs. …

… I don’t like cattiness, either. I hate seeing women be rude to each other. Oh God. I don’t like man-haters, and I don’t like back-stabbers. I like chicks who can fuckin’ rip it up, pull shit off, and want to go for a beer with each other at the end of the day!”

(“Whip It! interview with director Drew Barrymore,” Chris de Salvo, The Scorecard Review, September 30, 2009).

edit: When I posted this the first time, I had not yet seen Whip It. I watched it a couple months ago with Lo-Bo and Miss D and I thought it was great. From a critical standpoint, sure, I’m not stacking it up against Once Upon A Time In the West or The Godather: Part II, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t qualify as “great” in my book. You’re definitely not going to see some special release of it in the Criterion Collection, all fancy with laurel leaves around the names of the writers or anything, but it’s a fun flick whose cast is piled high with my favorite kind of women: flaky, unique, and funny.

It’s got a great noisy riot grrl soundtrack, too. I work out to a lot of songs from it. That’s right, she writes and she takes care of a bangin’ body. Call me.

Sharon Tate’s Actual Life Awareness Month: Day 21 — Working hard for The Wrecking Crew

via beetlebum on the fotolog.

In 1968, Sharon was cast in The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlson, 1969), the latest entry in a series of “Matt Helm,” spy-spoof films, based on the 1960 Donald Hamilton novel of the same name. There had been three previous Matt Helm movies, all starring singer and comedian Dean Martin. Sharon had the pressure of being a featured new player in an established franchise, and critics then were like critics now: they love to bash comedies. So it was a big deal.

via coolnessistimeless on the blogger.

Starring opposite Dean Martin, Elke Sommer, and Tina Louise, Ms. Tate got to make friends with some big names and show audiences her playful, comedically well-timed, blithe side. Though she had played a pivotal role as Malibu in the comedy Don’t Make Waves, the emphasis in that part had still been mainly on her beauty.

via the touching and well-curated SensationalSharonTate blog.

“My dear. You must be very dedicated to your work, to wear such an atrocious wig as that.”

“How very common of you to mention it.”

Wearing glasses and a series of wigs, Sharon got to have fun and be silly on the set of The Wrecking Crew, which must have been an especially welcome respite after the tough work she did for Valley of the Dolls (and the kind of trial-by-fire nightmare that set experience was.) With The Wrecking Crew, Sharon finally got the chance to delve in to the type of light comedy for which she hoped to become known in the industry.

via geminichilde on the tumblr.

The role also required some action and stunt work, another familiar feature to Sharon after working with former Mr. Universe Dave Draper in Don’t Make Waves (trampoline scene coming soon). In The Wrecking Crew, she was called to do fight scenes. None other than superfly jam-master BAMF to beat all BAMFs, a one Mister Bruce Lee trained Sharon for her part as Freya Carlson, Mr. Helm’s comically nearsighted and klutzy assistant. Joe Lewis was also a consultant on set and Chuck Norris had a cameo in the picture.

via geminichilde on the tumblr.

Playing Freya Carlson really was a departure for Ms. Tate, and one she was proud of. Tina Louise (Gilligan’s Island) and Elke Sommer (A Shot in the Dark) nailed down the voluptuous vixens — though they, too, gave great comedic lines — and Sharon got to shine in a chiefly buttoned-up, jokey ingenue role.

“Sharon Tate reveals a pleasant affinity to scatterbrain comedy and comes as close to walking away with this picture as she did in a radically different role in Valley of the Dolls.”

(The Hollywood Reporter, review of The Wrecking Crew, 1969.)

Judo … chop! Nancy Kwan as Yu-Rang takes an elbow to the head.

“It just so happens that I know where Yu-Rang hangs her kimono!”

” … I bet you do.”

Dean Martin raved about Sharon’s performance in all the on-set promo interviews, making it clear to one and all that he considered her not only a close friend but a major upcoming talent.

also via coolnessistimeless; more candids of Sharon and Dean there with lovely commentary.

Mr. Martin had played Matt Helm in a total of four movies to rocky critical acclaim but decent audience numbers (typical comedy reception), but, after Sharon’s death, he emphatically dropped out of The Ravagers, a planned fifth installment in the series whose title even appeared in the end credits for The Wrecking Crew. The film was shopped around but eventually abandoned and never made. The Wrecking Crew is the last in that series.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: E’s notes from the All-Star Game

So I try not to bring it up here because I am such a baseball psycho and if I were to start, I fear the whole blog would be in quick order given over entirely to ball, but I actually watched on television the MLB All-Star Game and fell in to my old habit of taking notes during. I will bore you only with the page where I passed my Tipping Point — which is to say I enjoyed too much beer during commercials to do after a certain time anything other than yell at the ‘casters and any players who incurred my wrath through sloth, gluttony, or other Deadly Sins. The following is my 3rd page of notes, which occurred somewhere around the 5th-6th inning.

By me, of me, for me. Click to enlarge.

In case you need transcription of my dreadful scrawl which makes even the hastiest of doctors wrinkle their brows, it runs like this:

“Sprint Commercial EVO 4G ‘firsts'” (started strong showing great inventions through mankind’s history but then depressed me with how much fucking garbage the 20th century with its built in obsolescence and rapid shedding of outmoded technology has wrought upon the earth — fields of smashed crt televisions and busted hi-fi systems)

“Eyebrow guy — name?” to which I later appended “BRAUN” (dude is cute)

“hole in defense by 2nd, wtf?!?” (this in reference to balls getting past the AL infield and inexcusably eluding my boys, the normally slick-as-shinola Robinson Cano and you-may’ve-heard-of-him-No-Big-Deal Derek Jeter; clearly the only explanation is a gypsy curse.)

“David Wright is still g.d. adorable as hell” (hate the Mets —sorry Jon Stewart— but I love tiny-but-mighty Wright)

“does our radar gun go to 100?” “um — yes.” (conversation between idiotic commentators; of course the gun goes to 100 and up, you fucking idiot and as an aside, just because you are paid to comment does not obligate you to talk incessantly)

“The Things We Make Make Us, Jeep with robots really?!?” (this in reference to a particularly heinous Jeep commercial featuring assembly line robot arms that I think was intended to uplift the ingenuity of man and our sovereign genius or something but inadvertently took the opposite effect for me.)

He may be metal and small and not judge you at all but to me your robot friend is merely the harbinger of the Terminator apocalypse. You can’t fool This Guy!

Batter uuup!: Joan Jett edition

via sapphoscloset, very cool queer style blog, check ’em out!

Vintage Joan Jett lookin’ all kinds of pimp and ready to hit that shit right out of the park.

Please remember that Joan still looks THIS GOOD:

That right there? Is what a motherfucking rock star looks like. Hell yes! I said goddamn, Joan Jett. Haters to the left.

So few words in this entry, so many king-size cusses.

The Voice of the Internet Judges Good Ol’ E.

“The Voice of the Internet judges Good Ol’ E”

Voice of the Internet: Hello, E. I am the Voice of the Internet and I am here to judge your journal.

Good Ol’ E: Fuck a bunch of Voice of the Internet. You’re not going to make me apologize for anything.

VOI: We’ll see. Let’s start: Your blog lacks a strong male figure.

GO’E: Your mom lacks a strong male figure.

Look out: Jessica Rabbit will hit you with a purse, next three miles.

VOI: Yes, and I have often wondered if this is part of what lead her to abandon me and be a drug-shooting hooker who is not one of the ones with a heart of gold at all. So thanks for reminding me, Miss Apology-Not McInsensitivepants.

GO’E: Shit. Okay, well, still I must say that is a totally forced insult name, even with allowances for being made up on the fly and under duress.

VOI: I have difficulty making up insult names, on the fly or otherwise, because I have short-term memory loss as a result of a head injury from being dropped as a baby.

GO’E: That explains a lot.

Ir♥sh boy Gabriel Byrne for the priest picture because why not?

VOI: Oh? It happened when my grandmother dropped me upon hearing the news of my underground-decommissioned-firetruck-racing father’s accidental decapitation when he was saying Mass because he was also a priest on top of racing. Though I was only a few weeks old, my grandmother was holding me since, as I have just mentioned, my mother is a drug-addicted hooker who abandoned me. Does that “explain a lot”?

GO’E: Okay, actually no, because what the mothership was a bedamned underground-decommissioned-firetruck-racing priest even doing with a drug-addicted hooker? And how do you race a firetruck?

VOI: He accompanied a negotiator to a police standoff with my mother in a motel room, a standoff which was over of course drugs and hooking, and my father succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and I was conceived. I don’t know how you race a firetruck* because my father it seems was the only one and the knowledge died with him that awful day in Mass when he was decapitated by accident.

GO’E: If he was the only one, then was it like a beat-your-own-best-time thing or else who did he firetruck-race against?

VOI: We don’t know. They have never come forward despite the reward.

GO’E: I am getting straight up interested despite my own damned self. What reward?

Just pretend Gabriel Byrne is behind the wheel in the cab.

VOI: My grandmother has posted the offer of a reward to anyone with information about my father’s firetruck-racing, as we did not know about the secret racing life he led until after his death, when we discovered an embroidered “Four-time Underground-decommissioned-firetruck-race Winner” robe** in his effects. When she passes on, which will be soon because she has recently been diagnosed with cataracts —

GO’E: Not typically fatal.

VOI: — plus liver, stomach, and ovarian cancer —

GO’E: Shit. Sorry.

VOI: — then in accordance with her wishes, I will add to the reward fund with any leftover money after we settle up the estate. I anticipate that the reward will go as high as about $3500.

GO’E: Huh. I need to say: for being the Voice of the Internet, you are awfully fucking pretty specific.

VOI: You really say cusses a lot.

GO’E: What the what? After all this shit, you’re going to try to bring me down with some motherfucking ridiculous chump change criticism like that? “You really say cusses a lot.” Like, dude, how even old are you?

VOI: I am ten and I can’t say I am appreciating your king-size cusses.

GO’E: Oh, effing cheezits. This is going all kinds of not well. Heck. Know what? I’m sorry.

VOI: So the Voice of the Internet wins? Against you?

GO’E: Dude. The Voice of the Internet wins the whole dad-blessed thing against Good Ol’ E for alwaystimes, okay?

And……..scene.

*for the record you underground race decommissioned firetrucks the way you race regular cars ‘cept you do it a-way out in the country at this quarry behind my friend’s stepfather’s ranch and you better believe you run the sirens THE WHOLE TIME it is the fucking shit sorry kid but only a king-size cuss will do for how much of the fucking shit firetruck-racing is: all of the fucking shit okay so pass it on but try to keep it underground.

**He actually won five times but they don’t know it because he left that robe in a truck stop in Tulsa. Total bummer cause he loved that thing.

Daily Batman: Big Chief Talks-With-Fists

via batmanpunchingpeople on the tumblr.

If you know the provenance of this panel — like, its backstory and the issue in which it appeared, etc — please, please don’t tell me. I want it to stay exactly like this. Because this? Is gold.

William Blake Month: Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: “The Tigers of Wrath”

Berlin, Germany

The quote comes from “Proverbs of Hell,” a chapter in William Blake’s gnostic text The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The book has been interpreted as an anticipation of Freudian and Jungian models of the mind, illustrating a struggle between a repressive superego and an amoral id. It has also been interpreted as an anticipation of Nietzsche’s theories* about the difference between slave morality and master morality.

(the wiki)

*cf: in particular Nietzsche’s camel – lion – child model of human thought and behavior as outlined in Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen / Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (1883-1885).

Portions of this post appeared originally on December 5, 2009.

Seek the headwaters of the river of pain

Got a lot on my mindgrapes, more than I expected to. I’m just a little black raincloud, hovering over the honey tree. Stuff has been sneaking up on me. Tricksie feelings of Ways About Things hiding and falling out of every closet I open up.

Going to do some State of the State assessment tonight and find out what condition my condition is in, in the best ways I know how. Friendohs, beer, maybe some World Cup or something on the television. Get a feeling of security and normalcy while my wheels are turning. Send vibes and I’ll catch you on the flip!

The Girls of Summer: China Lee, Miss August 1964

Dazzle your friends with correct pronunciation! Say “China” so it rhymes with “Tina,” not the clinical term for bajango.

Photographed by Pompeo Posar.

During Spring Fever!, in the post on Gwen Wong, I mentioned Ms. Lee and promised to give her a post all her own in the future. Happy to say that the future is now.

Ms. Lee is a real trailblazer and true intellect. She was the first Asian-American Playmate of the Month. Not lovely Gwen Wong, and not PR (name removed at model’s request).

Extremely athletic, bright, witty, and outspoken, China (née Margaret) was totally busting up stereotypes well before it was chic to do so. Get it, girl!

Like past-spotlighted comic genius Laura Misch Owens, China Lee began as a Bunny in New Orleans before winding up at the original Chicago Playboy Club. Due to her winning combination of unique looks, well-above-average intelligence, and friendly, talkative nature, she quickly worked her way up to Training Bunny.

As the Playboy empire expanded and Hef opened Clubs in other cities across America, China got to travel and show new Bunnies — and club managers — the ropes all around the country.

Her teaching duties take her to a different location with every new Playboy Club opening — a job which suits her peripatetic nature to a T.

“If I had to describe myself in one word, it would be ‘active,'” China says. “I love to roam, and I love to keep busy!”

(“China Doll.” Payboy, August 1964.)

“Despite the fact that I’m always on the go, success has come to me without my seeking it. I didn’t even apply for my Bunny job — I was discovered in a New Orleans hairdresser’s shop.”

(Ibid.)

Ms. Lee was quite the jock at this time, enthusiastically describing the various sports she participated in:

High on her sports agenda is softball: Last season she pitched and won 12 games (“My windmill pitch is unhittable”), leading the New York Bunny softball team to the Broadway Show League championship.

(Ibid.)

Screeeee. What?! The NYC Club Bunnies had a softball team in a league?! And they were champions? Anyone with more info and especially pictures needs to be my hero and send it along, stat! That sounds wonderful and fun beyond anything the imagination can conjure.

Like icy-eyed Finnish novelist Kata Kärkkäinen, Miss December 1988, China Lee cheerfully reported in her interview that she traversed traditional gender/sports lines not only with that killer windmill pitch but also by handily mopping the floor with the competition at bowling.

“Miss August is also a pin-toppling bowler (she ran up a 217 at the age of 13), prize-winning equestrienne and jumper, expert swimmer and ping-pong player, as well as champion twister of all Bunnydom.

(Ibid.)

Twister like the party game or twister like “Shake it up, baby, now, etc,” with lots of cheerful shimmying around a dance floor? I’m guessing the latter. Seems more her speed!

Very little is made in the “China Doll” article of the fact that Ms. Lee was not exactly your garden variety gatefold WASP model. There is no deliberate, faux-innocent oversight of her heritage in some effort to prove super-open-mindedness, either, which I also consider a point in the magazine’s favor. A good balance is struck.

A native of New Orleans and the only member of her family of 11 not now in the Oriental restaurant line, China says: “Though I was born in America, my folks still follow Oriental ways: They speak the old language, read the old books, and follow the old customs. In this sort of environment, the men dominate and females are forced into the background. I rebelled, and I’m glad I did.”

(Ibid.)

Ms. Lee does not denigrate “Oriental”* tradition, merely comments on the aspect of that traditional environment that displeased her and from which she walked away. It’s done in a respectful and confident way. Very cool.

*When people use this word now it kind of makes my eyes itch for a second. I feel like it’s so high-handed and colonial. It’s like when people say “colored.” The original word meant no offense and is way better than a racial epithet, but we have even better ways of expressing that now, you know? It is a long-running joke with me, Paolo, and Miss D because we all lived in the Bay Area in the ’80’s when “Oriental” and “Hispanic” were leaving the vogue vocab in favor of more specific, group-elected terms. So when we see “Oriental” restaurant or “Hispanic” lawyer on a sign, we all eagerly point it out to each other the way hillbillies’ kids laugh at their grandparents for saying “Worsh.” (I can say that because I am one.)

After her Playboy appearance, Ms. Lee kept her ebullience and poise and continued to make friends and influence people. She is the dancer in the credits of Woody Allen’s first film, What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, a part which she supposedly lobbied very hard for with Allen, who was a friend of hers. The film itself is a farcical redubbing of the Japanese movie International Secret Police: Key of Keys; in Allen’s version, the intrigue surrounds the case of an egg salad recipe. China performs a striptease at the end credits for Allen, who plays himself, several dubbed voices, and the projectioner screening the film.

Here is a link to the clip of her dance on the youtube.

Ms. Lee also appeared on television series such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and alongside Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate in 1967’s beach movie Don’t Make Waves. The publicity campaign for Don’t Make Waves was of unprecedented size and ubiquity — though the film failed to live up to MGM’s box office expectations, the cultural impact was still very lasting.

As an example, the character Malibu, played by sunny and curvy Ms. Tate, is generally cited as the inspiration for Mattel’s world-famous “Malibu” Barbie, and several Coppertone tie-in ads for the film are still reproduced in text books for marketing classes. I will go deeper in to Don’t Make Waves in August, during Sharon Tate’s ACTUAL LIFE Awareness Month.

Ms. Lee dated Robert Plant for a while, but ultimately she settled with political comedian, activist, occasional Kennedy joke-penner, and all around cramazing dude, one of the Comedy Greats, Mort Sahl.

Sahl’s influence on aspects of comedy from modern stand-up to The Daily Show is basically immeasurable. You have probably seen Fred Armisen on SNL perform a political comedian character he created named Nicholas Fehn who is not a send-up of Sahl, himself, but rather a send-up of Sahl’s admirers who can never quite touch the master. It’s the guy with the pullover sweater and Armisen’s own glasses, an army surplus coat and a light brown longish wig, who shows up on the Weekend Update with a newspaper in his hand and tries to make jokes of the headlines but can never quite finish his sentences: this using the newspaper as a jumping-off point for humorous discourse was a trademark move of Sahl’s.

China and Mort Sahl married in 1967 and remained together until their divorce in 1991. They had a son, Mort Sahl, Jr., who passed away in 1996. R.I.P. to him and condolences to both of them. I’m glad I got to share about some really cool, interesting people in this post. I’m feeling more upbeat than I was. Thanks for coming along!

I suspect that cover is another Beth Hyatt/Pompeo Posar pairing. Note how the pose and her dress make the trademark, cocked-ear bunny silhouette, mirrored by the small logo sketched in the sand by her right hand. It’s similar, though not as racily sexy, to the rear shot one they did where her dress was open at the back and the straps snaking around her shoulders formed the ears. This time it’s her legs and kicked-off shoes. See it?