Still phoning it in. This post is originally from last year, but I took out the stuff about the Wonder Woman project (later aborted because when it comes to her I’ve got the attention span of a baby gnat). This year I’m needing to let go of my anxiety about a job with an amazing non-profit for which I interviewed last Friday and I Really, Really, Really want. So the advice still stands!
“Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable, let’s prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
(Douglas Adams.)
Let go and get in that “jump!” frame of mind. Eff the ineffable, indeed, and don’t let all the shit that doesn’t matter get in the way of the shit that does.
Happy Fourth of July — ‘scuse me while I slap on my Wonder Woman wunderoos and conquer the world! Scheduling a Daily Batman, maybe a Girl of Summer and then I will catch you on the flip.
This post originally appeared on June 24, 2010 at 6:26 p.m.
Maybe “well” is subjective …
If anyone but my Asia Argento plays Lisbeth Salander in an English-speaking adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I will put my hand through a blender. I pictured her the entire time I was reading.
Finished Girl With the Dragon Tattoo over a sleepless night that lead to one uneasy stretch of light snooze cut short by sudden bouts of vomiting. I found it very absorbing — the book, not the violent gut spasms from who-knows-what combination of stress and inattentively poor personal care — but it caromed briefly in to a few areas for which I was not wild. Still it all hung together in the end and I recommend it without reservation. Then I ended up reading a particularly pulpy and breezy Ross Macdonald mystery from the 70’s whose title I have already forgotten even though it kept me company for several hours.
See? Lots of people have insomnia and go on to have perfectly normal Summers! The Shining (Kubrick, 1980).
I only remember that I’d picked it up a few months back along with a couple 70’s editions of Zane Grey at my preferred comic store, which, besides selling comics and related games and accessories, also carries a small inventory of used, cheapo books and spotty collections of memorabilia depending on what luckless local nerds have either died or lost enough money to place their treasures in hock. I snatched up the Greys and this Macdonald book a few months ago because I dug the kind of blocky-schlocky look to the lines of the cover art.
The Underground Man — that’s right. Decent enough title, I guess.
The phrase “blew my mind” was used repeatedly in the book to refer to literally taking too much acid and suffering brain damage and prolonged schizophrenic episodes triggered by hallucinations, which usage I thought was a handy demonstration of the evolution of slang — in the book it was suggestive of overdose and possible fatality, but you can see how it developed over time the more benign definition it has now in the sense of changing one’s worldview in a feller-than-the-usual-pace-of-educational swoop, while still somewhat referencing the phrase’s original intent.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968). He swar to gar for all his life that whole sequences of this film were not planned to look like an acid trip, to which anyone who has ever done acid says, “Sure.”
The Macdonald book wasn’t the worst thing ever and some of the slangy shenanigans and quaintly dated rough talk in it wet my palate for some Hammett. I never re-read Red Harvest until October (red HARVEST, get it?) but I also brought down with me from Portland The Dain Curse and the Op’s short-story collection and could give one of those a spin. Think that’s what I’ll do tonight.
Actually maybe Hammett is only the appetizer. Know what? I think I will try to squeeze in L.A. Confidential before I have to pick up Tommyknockers. I usually, though not maniacally, like to read that closer to Christmastime because of the whole Bloody Christmas scandal that sparks so much of the action, but I’ve been self-auditing through all these long sick waking nights, and by setting this bookfoolery in to print I have come to see that I’ve got some really fucked-up and compulsive reading habits which are even perhaps the least of my worries and so I feel like rebelling against myself in this small thing to test the waters of making Change happen. I’m going to do this because I can.
Synchronicity — just dug out Red Harvest and the quote on the front cover is from Ross Macdonald, the author whose pulp I read this morning. Wild way that the universe is telling me I’m on the right track? or subconscious self-affirmation from whatever part of my brain has been looking at that (quite kickass) Red Harvest cover for the last four years?
I can’t say for sure. Either way, tell that girl from Canada that it ain’t ironic.
I think hidden underneath a lot of teachers are very sexy women.
(Andie MacDowell).
I know I have been a total slug about posting lately and the last time I did that was because I nearly croaked, but fear not. This time it’s nothing so dire, and is good news instead. I’ve been scrambling to get my shit together to make this whole substitute-teaching my Scamps thing in to a full-time gig, and I felt that I had to put all my fire under that. I was busy being well-dressed and using my gracious telephone voice while applying to a credential program, throwing my hat in the ring for an open position at the private school where I teach, and sending out queries for letters of recommendation — my least favorite thing to do on the planet. I don’t just burn my bridges: I dynamite them in my wake and launch the ashes in a coffee can in to space and I sow the land around where the bridge used to be with with salt and then I seek out the bridge-builder and I rough him up and cut out his tongue in front of his family. You cannot imagine how horrible I am at looking back, seriously.
And I’m even worse at admitting I need a favor. I’d rather drink bleach then ask for help. I’m working on all this, honestly.
But now it’s basically all in other people’s hands so I’m back.
It was recently pointed out to me during my absence that even though I like plenty of comics and link them to literature and artistic tropes all the time in conversation, I don’t focus much on anything except the Bat on this journal. That’s true. It’s lazy and misrepresents the entirety of my interests. I’ll work on remedying that more often. I’ll try and throw something up today as an example.
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!
When her feet fly over the gopher holes and hummocks, past the tangle of chokecherry bushes and the edge of the marshy slough? In that difference she runs out of herself, out of her skin. Into freedom.
And then there are the dishes.
(Aritha Van Herk, In visible ink: crypto-frictions. The Writer as Critic III. Ed. Smaro Kamboureli. NeWest Press: Edmonton, 1991. 159-60.)
Normally when you see this quote, it is incompletely cited and quite chopped up to read, “She runs out of herself, out of her skin. Into freedom.” Go ahead and google it and you’ll see what I mean. The lines are very optimistic when taken out of context; when viewed in the passage’s entirety as originally intended by Ms. Van Herk, not so much, yes?
There are always dishes. There is no way around it.
Despite proudly embodying the female geek who doesn’t do it for the attention nor as an excuse to wear body paint to Comic-Con, and resists getting pigeonholed into gender-based stereotypes of any kind, I have always disliked Wonder Woman with a strength bordering on disgust, when by rights you’d think I’d be a loyal fan. Thing is, when it comes to neuroses and the inside scars that cover us all, I’m quite the nutritious and delicious bowl of grape nuts: my shit is complicated (a complete part of your imbalanced breakfast!). Let me re-run a former post as an explanation.
This post originally appeared on July 4, 2010 at 9:54am.
Never liked Wonder Woman, tried to explore it and gave up, but that article from yesterday’s Daily Batman got me questioning why once more I have this antipathy toward her. I think it’s because she is flat-out frankly powerful and balls-out aggressive, and for some reason that leaves me cold. Because I’m not like that? Or because I want to be? Going to work it out. Got to get back in to that “Jump” frame of mind!
“Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable, let’s prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
(Douglas Adams.)
Happy Fourth of July! Scheduling a Daily Batman, maybe a Girl of Summer and then I will catch you on the flip.
/end former post
Again: HATE.
So — I’m done with my thinking, have assembled research materials, and am ready to start a project wherein I explore the character and my response to her and try to extrapolate some meaning from those explorations.
Final note: it turned out funny but please let’s not go mentally gutter-trolling in re: the “sixty-nine” days. That’s not representative of the sex act but rather a day for every year the character has been around. I know it is titillating, but, hey, I didn’t tell her to first appear in December of 1941, in which month we will conveniently end the project. Synchronicity: it’s What’s For Dinner! It is also an album by The Police!
I never liked Wonder Woman, tried to explore it and gave up, but that article from yesterday’s Daily Batman got me questioning why once more I have this antipathy toward her. I think it’s because she is flat-out frankly powerful and balls-out aggressive, and for some reason that leaves me cold. Because I’m not like that? Or because I want to be? Going to work it out. Got to get back in to that “Jump” frame of mind!
“Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable, let’s prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
(Douglas Adams.)
Happy Fourth of July! Scheduling a Daily Batman, maybe a Girl of Summer and then I will catch you on the flip.
If anyone but my Asia Argento plays Lisbeth Salander in an English-speaking adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I will put my hand through a blender. I pictured her the entire time I was reading.
Finished Girl With the Dragon Tattoo over a sleepless night that lead to one uneasy stretch of light snooze cut short by sudden bouts of vomiting. I found it very absorbing — the book, not the violent gut spasms from who-knows-what combination of stress and inattentively poor personal care — but it caromed briefly in to a few areas for which I was not wild. Still it all hung together in the end and I recommend it without reservation. Then I ended up reading a particularly pulpy and breezy Ross Macdonald mystery from the 70’s whose title I have already forgotten even though it kept me company for several hours.
See? Lots of people have insomnia and go on to have perfectly normal Summers! The Shining (Kubrick, 1980).
I only remember that I’d picked it up a few months back along with a couple 70’s editions of Zane Grey at my preferred comic store, which, besides selling comics and related games and accessories, also carries a small inventory of used, cheapo books and spotty collections of memorabilia depending on what luckless local nerds have either died or lost enough money to place their treasures in hock. I snatched up the Greys and this Macdonald book a few months ago because I dug the kind of blocky-schlocky look to the lines of the cover art.
The Underground Man — that’s right. Decent enough title, I guess.
The phrase “blew my mind” was used repeatedly in the book to refer to literally taking too much acid and suffering brain damage and prolonged schizophrenic episodes triggered by hallucinations, which usage I thought was a handy demonstration of the evolution of slang — in the book it was suggestive of overdose and possible fatality, but you can see how it developed over time the more benign definition it has now in the sense of changing one’s worldview in a feller-than-the-usual-pace-of-educational swoop, while still somewhat referencing the phrase’s original intent.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968). He swar to gar for all his life that whole sequences of this film were not planned to look like an acid trip, to which anyone who has ever done acid says, “Sure.”
The Macdonald book wasn’t the worst thing ever and some of the slangy shenanigans and quaintly dated rough talk in it wet my palate for some Hammett. I never re-read Red Harvest until October (red HARVEST, get it?) but I also brought down with me from Portland The Dain Curse and the Op’s short-story collection and could give one of those a spin. Think that’s what I’ll do tonight.
Actually maybe Hammett is only the appetizer. Know what? I think I will try to squeeze in L.A. Confidential before I have to pick up Tommyknockers. I usually, though not maniacally, like to read that closer to Christmastime because of the whole Bloody Christmas scandal that sparks so much of the action, but I’ve been self-auditing through all these long sick waking nights, and by setting this bookfoolery in to print I have come to see that I’ve got some really fucked-up and compulsive reading habits which are even perhaps the least of my worries and so I feel like rebelling against myself in this small thing to test the waters of making Change happen. I’m going to do this because I can.
Synchronicity — just dug out Red Harvest and the quote on the front cover is from Ross Macdonald, the author whose pulp I read this morning. Wild way that the universe is telling me I’m on the right track? or subconscious self-affirmation from whatever part of my brain has been looking at that (quite kickass) Red Harvest cover for the last four years?
I can’t say for sure. Either way, tell that girl from Canada that it ain’t ironic.
Originally posted with a few less pictures on September 29, 2009 at 4:58 pm.
A confession: I ♥ Irish boys. I don't care if they are actually, legitimately from Ireland in their own generation or of some murky Irish extraction and descent — it's like I have a natural magnetic draw to them.
“My Mom, she’s from Ireland, coached tennis in Nigeria when she was a Missionary and turned me on to it when I was young.
La la la, “from Ireland,” la la la, “missionary,” la la la, “turned on.” That’s what I heard. Heyo!
The Tao of Steve (Jenniphr Goodman, 2000). Please note Guinness harp tattoo.
The first role in which I ever saw Donal Logue (that I knew of at the time) was as sexy genius mathematician Gunter Janek in the film Sneakers (Phil Alden Robinson, 1992), who is first shown giving a lecture but later ends up banging a hot slavic blonde chick on a desk in grainy but glorious black and white. Wowee! I, too, flip for geeks, and did from the earliest age, so I hella dug that scene (I’m kind of a voyeur from way back; try to think of it as a charmingly quaint quality rather than a creepy one) and I am not ashamed to admit that it stuck with me for years. Here he is as Gunter Janek rocking a number theory lecture on codebreaking:
“Once a film is made and it exists, someone somewhere is going to watch it and that is kind of the magic of it all.”
Yes, I’d call that desk sex scene some undeniable Hollywood magic from that there ol’ Dream Factory. Thank you to everyone involved in bringing that to life, you have my gratitude forever, all of you! Truly.
At the Los Angeles premiere of DreamWorks’ Monsters vs. Aliens, 2009.
Next, Donal turned up for me in “Squeeze,” the first Eugene Tooms episode of the X-Files. You know, the liver-eating dude with the yellow eyes and the bendy-flexi skeleton? Semi-immortal (time will tell) and came back later in the series? Donal Logue played Agent Tom Colter, Scully’s colleague who calls her in on the Tooms case to begin with, and looks mighty hot doin’ it.
Agent Tom Colton: Okay, if he wants to come and do you a favor, great. But make sure he knows this is my case. Dana, if I can break a case like this one, I’ll be getting my bump up the ladder. And you, maybe you won’t have to be Mrs. Spooky any more.
(“Squeeze.” The X-Files, Season One, Episode 3. Original air date September 24, 1993.)
He’s done a string of wonderful movie parts and television appearances, so many that I think I just may have to continue this another day! I will leave you with the following shots to titillate you.
This is the first time I’ve ever been jealous of the company Kelly Ripa keeps…
“I’m not a comic book guy. I’m pretty fascinated with the subculture though and I do think that the world of comic books is such a natural transition into film.”
You’d think I’d be sorry to hear that he is not a guy who is much of a one for comics, but I could not care less. Donal, I forgive you. You go ahead and star in any movie you like, comic-based or not. I am helpless to resist buying a ticket. Eskimo kisses!
During the 2006 Austin Film Festival, catching up on some King of the Hill.
I was taking a break from yardwork to make lunch and my daughter was dancing around me swinging something little and slappy on a stick at me. This exchange followed:
Me: Dude! Quit hitting me with that.
Kidlet: (continues trying to hit me)
Me: What even is that?
Kidlet: (stills long enough for me to see it is a miniature U.S. flag on a thin wooden dowel)
Me: Oh, no. That is not — (starts hitting me again) — Hey! Not okay! The flag is NOT a weapon!
Kidlet: The flag IS a weapon! (holds up the dowel end and mimicks stabbing the air Psycho-style)
“American Headache” via the awesome broken spectre on the tumblr.
Tomorrow is Flag Day here in the United States and while I am wary of overdoing it in an oppressive way such as our founding fathers would not have favored and accidentally sewing the seeds of jingoism, I do expect informed respect for patriotic symbols, especially the flag. (See my vitriolic Memorial Day entry for expansion on the issue of this inner conflict and dislike of corporate co-optioning of patriotism) Guess I’ll use it as a jumping-off point to explain to her about flags and traditions, etc.
Steve McQueen.
I did a good, short unit on the National Anthem with the Scamps. Maybe I’ll dig that out of my current tutoree’s textbook when I see her this week, since her mom muscled the school library in to letting her take all her books home for the summer (I’ve said it before but the woman is literally a bulldozer in pumps; it is all I can do not to submissively pee when she enters a room). I remember some of it.
via hellobaltimore Did You Know? The giant flag about which Francis Scott Key wrote seeing wave over Fort McHenry at the end of the Battle of Baltimore was made in just about six weeks by Mary Young Pickersgill, with the aid of her mother and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Caroline, along with her nieces and two freed African-American houesmaids. They were commissioned by Major George Armistead to make the largest flag ever to be flown over a fort up until that time — the apocryphal story goes that he told the women he wanted to make sure the British could see it. The flag is presently going through a restoration to the tune of 18 million dollars right now in preparation for its centrality to the new, redesigned Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
A widow with a spine of steel, Mrs. Pickersgill was one of the first independent female business owners in America. She successfully negotiated contracts for her flagmaking business with the United States Army and the Navy. She was also a passionate humanitarian, being notable in town for “color-blind” hiring in her sewing shop, with a special bent for women’s issues: she founded the Impartial Female Humane Society, which provided school vouchers for young girl children of any race or religion to be educated, along with the provision of networking and employment to their single mothers.
The More You Know.
Flag kicks from Converse. Chux are cool, yes, but please remember they are owned by Nike. I’m just sayin’.
Guess I should have saved all these flag facts for tomorrow, but I figured I had better strike while the iron of my interest was hot — I know what a fickle creature I am, and by tomorrow the flame of my curiosity about flags, Mrs. Pickersgill, and the history of the women’s movement would have died down to embers at best.
This is a tattoo on the arm of an Illustrated Man which is of a very ancient and hip little meme — the so-called Sator square.
Earliest records of the Sator Square date from Pompeii. M-m-much, much, much, much more (please read that in a combination of Ray D. Tutti from Baron Munchausen and an old school Max Headrome voice) than just your “standard” palindrome, the Sator Square reads the same backward, forward, in rows, and in columns, evinced by the above unfortunately irrevocable tat which can only be removed by expensive, skin-altering surgery, and below, in the defacement of a wall.
There are several translations of the playful-but-persistent square phrase, of which I will only reproduce the one I like best.
“The sower, Arepo, holds the wheels [of the world’s machine] at work.”
Parantheses mine. I’m just suggesting the prospect of a wide definition from the standpoint of a popular metaphor, here, is all.
(ugh! lame, lame caption — unlike this one right here which cures cancer and enlarges penises — call me for your super-official and 10,000% legal prescription!)
There is no “Arepo” of any note who sows or does anything else in the mythology of any proposed countries of origin for this meme, so it’s been assumed since time out of mind that Arepo, like the “she” of “she sells seashells by the seashore,” is referred to in the phrases of the square only for the purposes of making the wordgame pleasing and symmetrical.
Scene.
edit: “It’s actually a tattoo on the lower left lumbar region of an Illustrated Woman.” Please do read the comment from Fafner for up-to-date fact-checks if you plan to re-blog. Accuracy is cool, good for the skin, and it brings good karma!*
*Karma sold separately — and use witch hazel to enhance good skin effects. But still!
Girls Like A Boy Who Reads … comics! Thought it was time for some rare female fan service up in this piece — wink-wink. You’re welcome. Photo via iheartbatman on the tumblr, very cool bloggy-blog.
If you must get a tattoo, I will not make too much noise over this one, chitlins.
This shot pretty much fires “awesome” on all six cylinders; if I had a gun to my head and someone was like, “You HAVE to get a tattoo to prove you believe in at least one thing, E, or we will kill the people you love most!” I would frantically shout back, “Okay, okay! — I assume I will never stop thinking a t-rex sporting a monocle with top hat and balloon bouquet is pretty great, so, fine — tattoo that on my untouched milky skin, you fiend!” and be pretty much okay with it. (Seriously, my skin is caramel-macchiato-con-skim-leche-fine paradise. You will probably never experience it. What is that like, suckaaaa?)
Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo — Forbidden Zone (title song)
Forbidden Zone (Richard Elfman, 1980) starred the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, later to be renamed just Oingo Boingo, wild gypsy cult genius Susan Tyrell, Viva — Warhol’s Blue Movie Superstar, believed to be the first non-anonymous performer to have sex on screen — and Hervé Villechaize, better known as Tattoo (“Zee plane!”) on Fantasy Island, as the king of the Sixth Dimension. Also, award-winning composer Danny Elfman plays Satan.
It is a wonderful, unforgettable mess. It begins with a title card informing us that, while on a mission to retrieve some heroin from the basement of one of the vacant homes in the Los Angeles basin where he also makes his living as a slumlord, a pimp named Huckleberry accidentally discovered a portal to the Sixth Dimension, which, once he cleaned the drugs from, he then sold to the Hercules family, who are the main Earth-side characters in the film.
(The frog is named Bust Rod. Later, he has sex with a topless Princess. He is pretty fly for a frog. Think about it: when is the last time you banged a panties-only Princess? See? Fly.)
“Oey vey — the Yiddishe Charleston!” Gene Cunningham and Virginia Rose play Ma and Pa Hercules, although Cunningham is credited under his actual name only as playing the role of the pimp, Huckleberry Jones — for his role as Jones’ tenant, and pere to the Hercules clan, he is listed as Ugh Fudge Bwana.
Matthew Bright plays Squeezit, one of the film’s protagonists and classmate to Flash Hercules and the lovely and talented Miss Susan B. Hercules, aka “Frenchy.” Frenchy is arguably the lead character of Forbidden Zone, and her journey into the Sixth Dimension is the impetus for the majority of the film’s action. Oh, my stars and garters, could Squeezit possibly be a reference to masturbation?? Perish the thought. Bright also shares writing credits for the screenplay.
At the time the movie was filmed, Marie-Pascal Elfman (nee Saboff), who plays Frenchy, pictured above and below, was married to Richard Elfman. She is the mother of Bodhi Elfman, who is Jenna “Dharma” Elfman’s husband. Jenna and Bodhi met waiting on line to audition for a Sprite commercial.
Ms. Saboff Elfman served not only as the star of Forbidden Zone but was also responsible for the majority of the sets, which she designed and erected inside two separate sound stages. The Expressionist sets feature dice motifs, forced perspective, and stippling. They were mainly painted by hand on to paper which she then hung all around the sound stages, changing the backdrops as scenes required it.
Some examples of the animation sequences and production design. The design was heavily influenced by pre-WWII cartoons and the work of Max Fleischer and the Fleischer Brothers’ Studios, the best examples of whose animation you probably know being Betty Boop and Popeye. Together with a soundtrack that, besides original songs performed by Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and “the Kipper Kids,” featured music by Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker, the movie’s design and feel really harkened back to the 1930’s, despite dealing with weirdo modern wonderfully cultish themes.
The picture takes a dim view of a) Los Angeles and b) the sad state of public schools. Well-viewed, picture (well shone, Moon), but I think the movie’s overall Expressionist, 1930’s cartoonish artistic glory is really not intended as a plot-driven vehicle for social commentary so much as it is an endless parade of visuals that will stick with you for life. Any knowing send-ups of modern convention are virtually coincidental. The movie is like an acid trip through a Hollywood backlot. The number “Swingin’ Through the Alphabet,” from which the above screencap comes, was inspired by the Three Stooges short “Violent is the Word for Curly.”
…A respectful fan asked Mr. Elfman “What the fuck were you thinking?” Elfman replied that he was trying to capture on film the spontaneous creative energy of his legendary band “the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo.” In the 70s they performed all kinds of crazy performance music theater, a kind of tripped out cabaret in L.A and NYC.
“Frenchy” lands in the Sixth Dimension and King Fausto falls in love with her. This makes Queen Doris, played by Susan Tyrell, understandably upset. So she has Frenchy thrown in prison. Don’t you wish you could do that to people? “Send her to jail.” “Um, what’s the charge?” “She looked at him.” Very Red Queen and yet legitimately reasonable. As Psycho McJealouspants, proud holder of a degree in Flipping the Fuck Out (minor in Coming Unglued with special concentration in Keying Your Car) from Sex-Makes-Me-Crazy State University, I totally approve.
The animation was done by John Muto, who at the time was virtually an unknown. He has gone on to work on some of my favoritest movies, including Night of the Comet, Heart and Souls (I am a sucker for Robert Downey, Jr. every time), and Wilder Napalm (as a closet pyro, that movie is so hot to me).
For my money, one of the main reasons to watch is the Princess, here, but that’s just the type of predatory, untrustworthy, ulteriorally motivated person I am.
Outre freaky musicals are fun to watch and fascinating as cultural artifacts, yes, but can we not also agree that way cool as well are tiny blondes, and when they are topless, so much the nicer for us all?
I am unafraid to make that statement. I also like lemon meringue pie. I consider the preferences of equal harmlessness. Alert the media.
The insane “Kipper Brothers” [do] a mad musical number as boxers which involves punching themselves and blowing raspberries, and evolves into a Rumba sung by a fat kid with a Mr. Ed talking mule superimposed mouth effect, and the adorable Frenchy dancing with Mr. Bust Rod.
(MacDermot.)
Actor Hervé Villechaize was the only actor with a paid salary. (the wiki)
Getting paid to get yelled at by your ex-girlfriend is I guess better than having to do it for free, yes?
TW: The Kipper Kids, who, for those who don’t know, are notorious, diaper-wearing, soccer-hooligan, lip-farting performance artists.
RE: Yes. The Kipper Kids. You know, it’s Presley, Sinatra … the Kipper Kids. Great vocalists can do so much with a number.
(DiGiovanna.)
He wrote, directed, produced, choreographed and generally supervised all aspects of “The Forbidden Zone.” It took 21 days on a sound stage scattered over ten months – including a number of weeks in a garage with animator John Muto. Elfman’s wife, Marie-Pascale Elfman designed and painted the paper sets (with help from Villechaiz) and co-starred Elfmans 29-year-old brother, Danny (leader of a musical ensemble known as Oingo Boingo), wrote the striking music and played Satan.
Chicken: You know the chickens are always ready to help you any way we can. But as you know…
Squeezit: What can chickens do?
Chicken: Precisely.
Squeezit thinks he is a chicken. It’s a problem a lot of boys have.
The cast includes Toshiro Baloney, The Kipper Kids, Viva and someone called Ugh Fudge-Bwana. “This is actually a phonetic spelling of his name, which is Swedish and difficult to pronounce,” explained Elfman. (Ibid.)
“Call it a bizarre comedy with music. If I could describe it better, I’d be a journalist,” said Elfman. He might be. Elfman is certainly documenting some aspects of modern American culture, however idiosyncratically. This movie does indeed defy more specific quantification. (An hour-long earlier version entitled “The Hercules Family” was refused by numerous distributors as “Being a threat to national security.”)
(Ibid.)
Oh, my god, Elfman fed that dude for the Herald-Examiner so many lies and half-truths. What a trip. It’s cracking me up.
After escaping the septic tank, Flash and Gramps come across a woman who tells them that she was once happily married to the king, until Doris stole the throne by seducing her, “even though she’s not my type.” The ex-queen has been sitting in her cell for 1,000 years, and has been writing a screenplay in order to keep her sanity.
(the wiki)
Tuscon Weekly: Aside from the Kipper Kids, the biggest star in the movie was Hervé Villechaize, who plays King Fausto. How did you get him?
Richard Elfman: Matthew Bright was his roommate. His ex-girlfriend was (Forbidden Zone co-star) Susan Tyrrell. Herve and Susan were already exes when the film was being shot, and periodically, they’d have tremendous fights. And it was comic/tragic, because she had a voice box from the Lincoln repertory, you could hear her from 2,000 yards away. And Herve had a small voice, so you could hear him squawking and hear her yelling.
(“Intestinal Fortitude.” DiGiovanna, James. March 31, 2005. Tuscon Weekly.)
The truly bizarre Forbidden Zone features among its wealth of surrealistic imagery the late Hervé Villechaize as the libidinous king of the sixth dimension; expressionistic production design that would drive Dr. Caligari to distraction; and Richard’s brother Danny, more recently the composer of virtually every modern film score you truly enjoy listening to repeatedly, as a Cab Calloway-fetishizing Satan – all of whom live in the basement, sort of, of the extended Hercules clan.
(“I Know That Voice.” Savlov, Marc. July 30, 2004. Austin Chronicle.)
Far different from the brother Danny-fronted Oingo Boingo of “Weird Science,” this multi-Elfmaned project (alongside Danny there’s Richard’s wife, Marie-Pascale Elfman, as heroine Frenchy) is a genuine curiosity, part vaudeville act, part borderline softcore raunch, and completely, utterly weird in the best sense of the word. (Ibid.)
Following the film’s color release on DVD from Fantoma and Legend Films, it was announced that a sequel was in the works. With an allegedly slated release date of 2010, Forbidden Zone II: Forbidden Galaxy has the following imdb summary, written by Richard Elfman himself.
Ma and Pa Kettle leave the depressed Dust Bowl with their kids, Stinky and Petunia, and drive their old jalopy down to Crenshaw in South-Central Los Angeles. Stinky is a hyper-active 12-year-old; Petunia is a lumbering 13-year-old; Ma is a corn-cob pipe-smoking inbred, and Pa is a craven, drunken carnival geek…with a bad disposition…even before his carnival job folded after the last dust storm. Together, they hope to find a better life in California. Unfortunately, the little shack they rent has a basement connected to the Sixth Dimension, ruled by a horny midget king who is growing an army of dead zombie babies…to take over Earth.
The Thought Experiment 