Vocalien Voices

Bobby Driscoll: Peter Pan's Lost Angel

2005-05-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

Peter Pan is not thought of as a mortal but he once was. Not just a mere figment of the imagination of writer J.M. Barrie, his earthly name was Robert Cletus Driscoll and he was born March 3, 1937 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But to millions of moviegoers he was simply known as "Bobby" Driscoll, a child actor of the 1940s and early 1950s who appeared in film classics such as Song of the South and Treasure Island.

Bobby Driscoll first appeared before the public in the 1944 feature Lost Angel and the film's title couldn't have been a more appropriate name for a biopic of his brief existence.

The Disney studio saw limitless promise in Driscoll's talent and screen presence and made him the first child actor signed to their roster. Netting money for Disney, Driscoll was honored with his own celebrity star on Hollywood's notorious "Walk of Fame" for his role as "Jim Hawkins" in the 1950 film edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island. Having entered the arena of universal fame directly on the springboard of his 1949 appearance as "Tommy Woodry" in the film noir classic The Window (for which he received a special "Outstanding Juvenile Actor of 1949" Oscar as well as a Golden Globe Award), Disney had great hopes for the freckle-faced young actor.

But with the monumental success of the Disney empire, the advent of television and the hiring of other child actors for venues such as The Mickey Mouse Club, and Driscoll's fading childhood elfishness, the studio soon forgot their former meal ticket. Even Driscoll's phenomenally on-target duties as the voice for Disney's 1953 animated Peter Pan extravaganza was not enough to save him from screenland obscurity.

Of his own celluloid obsolesence Driscoll is quoted as saying: "They carried me on a satin pillow, then dumped me in the garbage." Driscoll, who had been a straight "A" student at the Hollywood Professional Actor's School, began his spiral when, upon reaching puberty, his voice changed and he developed a severe case of acne. The fickle film studios began to bypass the adolescent Driscoll in favor of a new crop of fresh-faced kids.

In 1956, while still in his teens, Driscoll married Marilyn Jean Rush and the couple spawned three children in quick succession. But even prior to parenthood, Driscoll had begun experimenting with drugs, beginning with marijuana and graduating to speed and heroin. Chemical dependency soon led to brushes with the law and Driscoll spent time in California's Chino State Penitentiary.

After his parole from prison, Driscoll, divorced and on the skids, ended up in mid-1960s New York City in the company of artist Andy Warhol and his en tourage. Through his association with the Warhol crowd, Driscoll met filmmaker Piero Heliczer, and appeared in an experimental film, Dirt. Shot on 8mm the film is now considered by many to be an underground classic.

On March 30, 1968, just four weeks past his 31st birthday, Driscoll succumbed to a heart attack and died alone in an empty tenement apartment off Tompkins Park in Greenwich Village. Initially unidentified and buried in a pauper's mass grave in Potter's Field, on New York's Hart Island, Driscoll's true identity was discovered a year later after his mother implored Disney studios and police officials to conduct a thorough search.

(Bobby Driscoll's alter ego...who also never grew up)

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: The Universal Singer

2005-04-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

Impassioned, spiritually militant, a fierce crusader, and an intuitively talented electronic painting artist and eclectic singer extraordinaire. Academy Award winner Buffy Sainte-Marie, born February 20, 1941, on the Piapot Reserve, Saskatchewan, Canada, has lived multiple lives in one. Orphaned as an infant she was adopted by a part MicMac (mostly white) family and raised in Maine and Massachusetts.

Earning a degree in Oriental Philosophy, a teacher's degree and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts (all from the University of Massachusetts) Sainte-Marie is ever the instinctive teacher. Achieving fame in the early 1960s for both love songs and protest songs, her tune Until It's Time for You to Go was recorded by Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Sonny and Cher, and over 200 other musicians worldwide. And her song Universal Soldier (which has again become timely) became the anthem of the Vietnam war protests.

In 1968, Sainte-Marie founded the Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education, whose Cradleboard Teaching Project currently synthesizes educational curriculum between Native American and mainstream children in Canada and the U.S. computer technology and a progressive reinterpretation of Native Studies.

In 1972 Sainte-Marie scored a top 40 pop music hit with the impassioned rocker Mister Can't You See, backed with the mysterious tune Moonshot, an early ode to alien abduction. She also spent five years as a cast member of television's Sesame Street during the 1970s. Continuing to scale the musical heights, Sainte-Marie won an Academy Award Oscar in 1981 for the song Up Where We Belong from the Richard Gere/Debra Winger movie An Officer and a Gentleman.

An incredible series of annual creative triumps began in March, 1992 at the Canadian JUNO Awards, when Sainte-Marie established a new category: "Music of Aboriginal Canada". The following year, the city of Paris, France named her "Best International Artist of 1993". And in 1994, Sainte-Marie received the Lifetime Achievement Award in her home province of Saskatchewan from the Saskatchewan Recording Industry Association. The Canadian Recording Industry Association inducted Sainte-Marie into the JUNO Hall of Fame in 1995, and continuing her "roll" in February, 1996, she received a second Lifetime Musical Achievement Award from First Americans in the Arts in San Francisco.

Currently Sainte-Marie resides in Hawaii and commutes to continental North America where she teaches digital art and music as Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts at several
colleges. She continues music production from home using her Macintosh computer as a recording instrument (playing most of the musical instrumentation herself).

Coincidence and Likely Stories, Sainte-Marie's combeack album of the early 1990s, was the first documented use of the internet to deliver a music CD via modem. (Digitally recorded at her home in Hawaii and delivered to Chrysalis Records studio in London, England 1989-90).

Saine-Marie's album Up Where We Belong received the 1997 JUNO Award for Best Music of Aboriginal Canada. She also won a 1997 Gemini Award (Canada's version of an Emmy) for performancing in her (third) television special, Up Where We Belong, beating out competitors Celine Dion and Alanis Morrisette.

Having taken up the art of digital painting in 1984, hers were the first large scale (8x9 feet) works to be shown in noted galleries, including the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Institute for American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe. With such a full list of accomplishments, Sainte-Marie restricts herself to thirty concerts a year in order to devote full time to the Cradleboard Teaching Project.

In 1997 Sainte-Marie was presented with the Louis T. Delgado Award as Native American Philanthropist of the Year for her Cradleboard Teaching Project. She was also given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Indian College Fund and is an Officer in the Order of Canada, the highest civilian Canadian honor.

STEVE CALDWELL: The Fabric of THE ORLONS

2005-04-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

Steve Caldwell (born November 22, 1944, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) has the distinction of being one of the few men to have been a solo male vocalist in an otherwise all-female singing group. His group, The Orlons, were major hitmakers for Philadelphia's Cameo-Parkway records in the early 1960s.

Originally called Audrey and the Teenettes, the Orlons formed in the late 1950s at a Philadelphia junior high school. The group consisted of Audrey, Jean, and Shirley Brickley, Rosetta Hightower, and Marlena Davis. When the Brickley sisters' mother refused to let Audrey (who was thirteen) sing with the others she and sister Jean left the group. After some time the personnel changed and the group took in Steve Caldwell as bass while Rosetta became the lead singer of the reformed group.

Calling themselves the Orlons, they performed locally around Philadelphia. On occasion the Orlons would appear with a group from Overbrook High called the Cashmeres. Leonard Borisoff, who performed under the name Len Barry, was The Cashmere's lead singer. When Barry's band changed it's name to the Dovells and put five songs in the top forty, Barry brought the Orlons to his record label, Cameo-Parkway.

The Orlons signed with the Cameo-Parkway label and by 1961 they had their first big hit. It was a song written by Dave Appell and Kal Mann titled The Wah Watsui, the first top forty song for the Orlons. The song, about a "dance made-a for romance", made it to number two on the national charts and became the first in a string of hits for The Orlons.

The Orlons followed their dance song success with two records that went to the top five, Don't Hang Up and South Street. They also were invited to sing background vocals on records made by the other stars at Cameo-Parkway, including Dee Dee Sharp and and Bobby Rydell. Two more top forty entries followed for The Orlons in 1963, Not Me and Cross Fire!.

In 1964, Steve Caldwell left the group to pursue a career as a music producer. Marlena Davis left and Rosetta Hightower married an English musician and also exited the Orlons. Audrey Brickley joined the group in 1964, but by then the spotlight was fading for The Orlons..

The Orlons disbanded in 1968. Steve Caldwell went on to work in the Philadelphia Public School system for many years. Horrendously, Shirley Brickley suffered a gunshot wound during the robbery of her apartment and died in 1977, at age 32.

In 1988, Steve and Marlena reformed the group and preserved the original flavor of The Orlons until she passed away in 1993. Currently, the Orlons consist of Steve, Jean Brickly Maddox, Audrey Brickley and Lillian Washington Taylor, who had been with the group in the '70s.

The Attack of the 50 Foot Movie Review

2005-04-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

(Allison Hayes stops traffic...literally!)

One of the shortest Sci-Fi films of all time featured one of cinema's tallest heroines. Clocking in at a sparse 66 minutes, director Nathan Juran's 1958 cheapie, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is big on both feminism and physique.

West Virginia native Allison Hayes, a former Miss America contestant (as Miss Washington, D.C.) is titular titaness Nancy Archer. Nancy experiences gargantuan growth after several contacts with a towering space alien who resembles Dwight Eisenhower.

Nancy drunkenly relates her initial close encounter to her adulterous husband Harry (William Hudson) who views it as an opportunity to swindle her $50 million inheritance by having her committed to an asylum. Harry, who is doing the Funky Chicken with town tramp Honey Parker (former Playboy centerfold Yvette Vickers), agrees to accompany Nancy on a UFO search in the desert.

(William Hudson examines Allison Hayes' non-50 foot foot)

When the mountainous Martian indeed appears, a harried Harry abandons his skepticism and his wife as he flees to Honey's side. Meanwhile, radiation causes Nancy to grow into history's tallest feminist, even as sexist images of her bursting out of her clothing dominate the screen.

The riotous rampage in which Nancy savages the city streets looking for hapless Harry is classic camp fare. Several times vexed viewers see this monolithic mama walking in the same pattern with the scene reversed against different backgrounds. Hilariously, the only correlation between Nancy crushing the nightclub where Harry and Honey are hiding and the mayhem within the building is the appearance of a giant papier-mache hand.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is one of the first films to address a wife's stand against spousal abuse. Despite its obviously absurd storyline and inane imagery, Attack can be termed a proto-feminist film. Its controversial conclusion in which Nancy puts a final and fatal end to hubby Harry's hijinx is raw and radical.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman has been honored in the form of several remakes, including a 1993 made-for-TV venture starring Daryl Hannah and director Fred Olen Ray's 1995 spoof Attack of the 60- Foot Centerfold. Neither of the latter-made flicks captures the seedy simplicity of the original, whose atrocious special effects serve only to enhance the revenge theme.

Long before actress Farrah Fawcett doused her mate with gasoline in 1984s The Burning Bed, Allison Hayes became an unlikely feminist forerunner when she thundered across the silver screen in a bed sheet bikini and put the literal squeeze on hateful Harry.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is a capriciously crummy cult classic which, in just over an hour, delivers space aliens, UFOs, an Amazonian avenger, and the demise of a Playboy centerfold. But, more importantly, this trashy tome works brilliantly as an ode to the end of male chauvinism.

(Allison Hayes searches for a better movie script)

Rotogravure Revelations: The Artistry and Agony of Diane Arbus

2005-04-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, it can be permanently infused by the will of the beholder as well. Certainly this was the case in the masterful humanist works of photographer Diane (pronounced Dee-Ann) Arbus.

Born on March 14, 1923 in New York City, Diane Nemerov's vision of the world was emotionally conditioned by her affluent Russian-Jewish parents. Her father, David, supported the family via his upscale clothing store, Russek's of Fifth Avenue, which he owned. The precocious Diane embarked on a "serious" relationship at age 14 with Allan Arbus, four years her senior. The two were wed just weeks shy of Diane's 18th birthday. Their first daughter, Doon, was born in 1945 when Diane was 22, and Amy nine years later, when the marriage was crumbling.

Allan, who had studied photography at the New Jersey Signal Corps photo school, was the first to teach Diane the basics of the craft. The couple launched their own business as fashion photographers, with Diane tending to duties as stylist and portfolio promoter. It was not until 1956 that Diane began working independently of her husband.

Studying further with noted photographers Richard Avendon, and most importantly, Lisette Model (her chief mentor) in 1959, Diane experimented with stylized portraitures. According to information posted at http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa110600a.htm, Diane's technique diverted from that of Models: "Photographically, both favoured medium format cameras that gave the standard square negative for the 120 format, but while Arbus always printed it full frame, often with messy edges to emphasize that it was uncropped, Model used often radical and dramatic cropping to give an impression of closeness to her subjects. Arbus interacted with her subjects to achieve a similar closeness, while Model usually worked candidly, manufacturing it later in the darkroom."

Diane chose people on the darker fringes of society as her subjects: "Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Lke a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatifc experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."

(A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, NY (1970)

In 1963, and again in 1966, Diane received the Guggenheim Fellowship bringing her to the attention of John Szarkowski who paved the way for her first wide-range public exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964. The reactions to her work were mixed, swathed in controversy, serving only to spotlight her irreverant, oft-resplendently garish disregard for prescribed boundaries of tastefulness. Choosing to work exclusively in black and white, Diane's photos captured sublime moments of panic and desperation in each subject (even those smiling and seemingly joyous), as if she commanded the lens to unearth individual pathologies and psychoses.

(Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, NYC. 1962)

Diane began teaching photography at prestigious schools including the Parsons School of Design in New York and Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts but in 1970 she
emerged from behind the camera to be scrutinized by the public's eye when a portfolio of 10 photographs created her first series of limited editions.

Existential isolation often permeated Diane's photos as evidenced by the following description of a particular work: "Her picture of 'Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I, 1963' has a bleakness that is frightening. Empty wall, empty carpet, empty ceiling are emphasized by the wide-angle view and their dull grey. The tree, loaded with baubles and tinsel, neatly wrapped presents in large boxes spilling around its base and out along the wall, appears to have been trimmed by a few feet to fit below the ceiling. To its left is a table lamp, with a shade that appears to be still in a plastic wrapping, to its right a clock in the centre of a large thin-pointed star (what should be on top of the missing top of the tree.) A TV set with a blank screen, and on it another clock. Levittown was the ideal American suburb, founded in 1947, described as 'a template for the way the American middle class would settle into the second half of the 20th Century; it was the setting for David Riesman's seminal 1950 study The Lonely Crowd."

On July 26, of 1971, Diane Arbus ended her life by swallowing a lethal dose of barbiturates and slitting both her wrists. She was at the top of the art world, directly engaged in the exploration of the limits of photographic art. Perhaps if the camera could have looked into the depths of Diane's psyche and reflected back to her what lay hidden she would have chosen differently.

(Girl in a Shiny Dress, NYC. (1967)

Following her death, Diane Arbus was the first American photographer to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, in 1972. And in the absence of Andy Warhol, the late iconizer of pop imagery, film director Steven Shainberg (Secretary) is currently working with Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman on Fur, a widescreen Diane Arbus biopic (co-starring actor Robert Downey, Jr.) scheduled for release in late 2005. In the instance of the life of Diane Arbus it is only fitting that the photographer becomes the visual subject.

(Diane Nemerov Arbus as a child)

Norma Tanega: Still Walkin' Her Cat Named Dog

2005-04-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

It wasn't exclusively folk and it certainly wasn't puerile pop. When the tune Walkin' My Cat Named Dog graced radio airwaves in the burgeoning Flower Power-era of 1966, California-born vocalist Norma Tanega was singing more about attitude than the actual routine of pet-rearing.

Born January 30, 1939, in Vallejo, California, of Filipino heritage, this acquisitive Aquarian had the good fortune of parents who encouraged her leaning toward music and artistry. Seeking work as a graphic artist, Tanega moved to New York City during the early '60s. A self-taught guitarist, Tanega found herself attracted to the poetic and activist musings of folk music and struck up friendships with youthful folksingers Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton, who encouraged her to continue her won songwriting and performing.

Tanega was not necessarily seeking a Billboard hit record when she signed to the fledgling New Voice recording label but when Walkin' My Cat Named Dog reached a respectable #22 on the national top 100 (and in the United Kingdom as well) she found herself cast by critics in the same obscure Folk-Pop mold as single success artists Shelby Flint, and Bob Lind. In fact, in most music historian circles, Tanega is regarded under the cliche moniker of a "one-hit-wonder" artist in light of the fact that her feline/canine tune was her only chart entry.

WALKIN' MY CAT NAMED DOG

I'm walkin' all around the town
Singin' all the people down
Talkin' around, talkin' around

Me and my cat named Dog
Are walkin' high against the fog
Singin' the sun
Singin' the sun

Happy, sad and crazy wonder
Chokin' up my mind
With perpetual dreamin'

Driftin' up and down the street
(Driftin' up and down the street)
Searchin' for the sound of people
(Searchin' for the sound of people)
Swingin' their feet, swingin' their feet

Dog is a good old cat (dog is a good old cat)
People what you think of that
(People what you think of that)
That's where I'm at, that's where I'm at

Happy, sad and crazy wonder
Chokin' up my mind
With perpetual dreamin'

---- Instrumental Interlude ----

Dog is a good old cat
People what you think of that
That's where I'm at,
That's where I'm at, that's where I'm at

All but disappearing from the field of commercial music following her promising 1966 hit debut, Tanega attracted minor kudos for the hit record's B-Side, I'm The Sky, as well as her 1977 "comeback" record I Don't Think It Will Hurt (accompanied by an RCA LP of the same name).

Tanega appeared as a commentator in the 1999 TV documentary Definitely Dusty, a film biopic of superstar singer Dusty Springfield. Film director Serena Cross (who also produced and directed the Jeff Buckley music biopic Jeff Buckley: Everybody Here Wants You) included Tanega in Dusty's movie because of her close, lengthy friendship with the late Springfield. Tanega co-wrote Morning Lyrics, with musicians Nana Cayammi, and Gilberto Gil, for Springfield.

COME FOR A DREAM

Come for a dream,
come and love in the sun,
come and stay just as long as you may.
We're in love for today.
Sunny love may not stay.
Love may be glowing fantasy but love is free.
Come for a smile,
making love in the sun
my kaleidoscope rainbow begun.
Sunny love making fun,
sunny love making one.
Magic sensation in the sun, come for a while.
Run away from sorrow,
run away tomorrow.
One special day,
warm and dazzling we climb a tree,
making love in the sea.
Sunny love, come and be,
sunny love, you and me.
Imagination is the key, sing me away.
Run away from sorrow,
run away tomorrow.
Come for a dream,
come and love in the sun,
come and stay just as long as you may.
We're in love for today.
Sunny love may not stay.
Love may be glowing fantasy but love is free.

In 1996 Tanega served as co-performer (and drummer) on an LP, with musician Mike Henderson, called Hybrid Vigor which can be found on the website of five-member progressive rock band Djam Karet.

Hybrid Vigor (track list):

1. Samba For Lucca (6.46)
2. Sheltering Sky (4.43)
3. hybridVigor (2.51)
4. Sticks And Stones (3.34)
5. Secrets Of The Old (5.25)
6. Chuck-A-Bo (4.54)
7. Men Who Tread on The Tiger's Tail (4.25)
8. Rain (4.34)
9. Salamanca (4.05)
10. Wild Meditation (7.28)
11. Salad Bowl Blues (3.55)

West Virginia Wide-Screen Wackiness: Mothman Menaces Movies

2005-04-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

What happens when you take modern-day monster mythology out of mothballs and make a major motion picture? The same thing that occurs when space aliens listen to the music of John Denver. You end up with The Mothman Prophecies, a film which combines Creature Feature scariness with television's X-Files.

Mothman, a seven-foot-tall, gray-skinned, red-eyed, batwinged horror is the subject of real-life 20th Century folklore. The beastie first appeared in the towns of Salem and Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on the night of Nov. 14th, 1966, scaring residents and reputedly kidnapping and slaughtering a dog.

When Silver Bridge, connecting West Virginia with neighboring Ohio, collapsed on Dec. 15th, 1967, 50 rush hour motorists plunged to their deaths in the Ohio River. Citizens of Point Pleasant felt that Mothman was responsible for the tragedy.

(Silver Bridge, site of suspicious highway tragedy)

Multiple UFO sightings were reported that night, fueling conjecture that Mothman, a tall, humanoid creature with wings and neon-red eyes, was actually a space alien living in Point Pleasant's McClintic Wildlife Preserve.

Director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road), who chose the city of Kittanning, Pennsylvania to double for Point Pleasant, West Virginia, enlisted the services of top-notch actors Richard Gere and Laura Linney in Mothman's flight to the silver screen.

Gere, who owes nods to X-Files veteran David Duchovny, plays Washington Post reporter John Klein, whose wife dies of a brain tumor following an unexplainable auto accident possibly caused by Mothman. While driving to research his late wife's legacy of Mothman drawings, Klein is mysteriously "transported" to Point Pleasant, 400 miles from his Virginia destination.

Point Pleasant police Sgt. Connie Parker (Linney), becomes entangled in Gere's mystery when she shows him witnesses' sketches of Mothman and he sees that they are identical to his late wife's drawings. What ensues is an eerie, shivery film which keeps the viewer one step ahead of the actors but always at least a faint heartbeat behind the flapping wings of the Mothman.

The Mothman Prophecies may not be Academy Award material but it does mark a noted and welcomed return to the classic movie convention of a "good clean scare." Without relying on gore, graphic violence, or loud, trumped up sound effects, Mothman is a return to a more Hitchcockian atmosphere of noirish suggestion. Of particular note is the film's conclusion, which will undoubtedly cause a seasoned film veteran to think of director Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now.

If you find yourself experiencing conjunctivitis after viewing The Mothman Prophecies don't chalk it up to the dimly lit atmosphere of a darkened movie theater. Just remember the experience of 18-year-old Mothman witness Connie Carpenter, who said that she had pink eye for over two weeks after her car was chased by Mothman at speeds of nearly 100 mph in 1966.

And don't forget the words of late singer John Denver: "Country roads, take me home to the place that I love. West Virginia, mountain mama…" Or maybe that should be "mountain Mothman?" Sometimes I think John Denver and the Mothman were one and the same, but you can decide for yourself as The Mothman Prophecies is out of the cocoon and on DVD for all to gape at. But don't look directly into Mothman's eyes when you push the pause button or you may be teleported to the wilds of West Virginia (and forced to attend the annual Point Pleasant Mothman Festival).

26 MOTHMAN SIGHTINGS:

01 Sep 1966 Several adults Scott, Miss. Man-shaped object maeuvering at low altitude.
01 Nov 1966 National Guardsmen Armory, near Camp Conley Rd., Point Pleasant A large, brown man-shaped figure on limb of tree.
12 Nov 1966 5 male adults Cemetery near Clendenin, WV. A flying, brown human-shaped object.
15 Nov 1966 2 married couples TNT Area near old power plant, Point Pleasant, WV. Large gray man-shaped creature with blazing red eyes 10' wing span. Pursued witnesses' auto.
16 Nov 1966 3 adults 3 children TNT Area near "igloos" Tall grayish creature with glowing red eyes.
17 Nov 1966 Teenaged boy Route 7, near Cheshire, Ohio Gray man-shaped creature with red eyes and 10' wing spread pursued witnesses' auto.
18 Nov 1966 2 firemen TNT Area Giant winged creature with red eyes.
20 Nov 1966 6 teenagers Campbells Creek WV Gray man-sized creature with red eyes.
24 Nov 1966 2 adults, 2 children Point Pleasant Giant flying creature with red eyes.
25 Nov 1966 Male adult Highway passing TNT Area Gray man-like being with red eyes and 10'wingspread. Pursued auto.
26 Nov 1966 2 male adults, 2 children Lowell, Ohio Four giant brown and gray birds with reddish heads 5' tall, 10' wing spans.
26 Nov 1966 Housewife St Albans, WV Gray creature with red eyes, taller than a man standing on lawn.
27 Nov 1966 Teenaged girl Mason, WV Tall, gray man-shaped being with 10' wingspan and red eyes. Pursued auto.
27 Nov 1966 2 teenaged girls St. Albans, WV Gray seven-foot tall creatures pursued witnesses (who were on foot).
04 Dec 1966 5 pilots Gallipolis, Ohio, airport Giant "bird," appeared to be plane at first. Long neck reported. Estimated speed: 70 mph.
06 Dec 1966 Mailman Maysville, Ky. Giant birdlike creature in flight.
06 Dec 1996 2 adults TNT Area Giant gray man-like figure with glowing red eyes.
07 Dec 1966 4 adult women Route 33, Ohio Brownish-silver man-shaped flying creature with glowing red eyes.
08 Dec 1966 2 adult women Route 35, WV Shadowy figure on hilltop, two glowing red eyes.
11 Dec 1966 1 adult male 1 boy TNT Area Man-shaped figure, gray, flying over-head at great speed.
11 Dec 1966 Adult woman Route 35, WV Huge gray creature with glwing red eyes, flew past car.
11 Jan 1967 Housewife Point Pleasant Winged being as big as a small plane flew low over Route 62.
12 Mar 1967 1 adult woman Letart Falls, Ohio Large white flying being with long hair, 10' wingspread, passed directly in front of car.
19 May 1967 1 adult woman TNT Area Flying creature with glowing red eyes approached hovering luminous object and disappeared.
02 Nov 1967 Adult woman TNT Area Giant gray man-like figure gliding swiftly at ground level across field.
? Nov 1967 4 adult males Chief Cornstalk Park, WV Witnesses claim to have encountered a giant gray figure with red eyes wihile hunting. They were so frightened they never thought to raise their guns.

The Slits: Up Yours Vocals/Palmolive Percussion

2005-04-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

(Left to right: Viv Albertine (guitar), Ari Up (vocals), Tessa Pollitt (bass), and Palmolive (drums)

Long before the under-age sexualia of female rock vocalists such as Bow Wow Wow's Annabella (Lwin), and The Runaways (Cherry Bomb), and long after the pristine pop of the likes of Little Peggy March (I Will Follow Him), or Marcie Blaine (Bobby's Girl), punk princesses Arianna Forster, Paloma Romero (a native of Spain), Viv Albertine, and Tessa Pollitt, collectively known as The Slits, became poster girls for adolescent artistry and aggression.

14-year-old lead vocalist Forster, known as Ari Up, first led the band to infamy on March 11, 1977 in Harlesdan, England. Romero's association with Joe Strummer of The Clash was instrumental in the group's stint as the opening act for the Clash's White Riot tour of 1977. The original lineup, which included Kate Korris on drums, and Suzi Gutsy on bass, brought a feminist sensibility to an otherwise male-dominated (The Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks) arena. Korris departed the group to form her own female aggregate, The Mo-dettes, and Gutsy joined a group called The Flicks. Owing certain nods to a certain faction of The Sex Pistols, Slits members Forster and Romero (known as Palmolive) had previously collaborated with Sex Pistols badboy Sid Vicious about forming a co-ed band called The Flowers of Romance.

The first primal cries of the band's sound were characterized by what has been termed as "a stuttering, stumbling rhythm pounded out with grim determination by Palmolive and accentuated by Tessa's thudding, reverberating bass; choppy guitar chords on maximum fuzz (and always ever-so-slightly off-key) scratched through the racket at irregular intervals like jagged shards of cut glass; and undulating over the whole live, solid mass came Ari's signature wobbly, screeching wails and yelps."
No doubt the amazonian cacophony was aided and abetted by the fact that band member Pollitt had previously been a member of a band called The Castrators.

Palmolive exited the band before they landed a recording contract with Island records in 1978. Inducting a male member (pun intended) named Budgie (who later joined Siouxsie and The Banshees) the Slits released their first album, Cut recorded at Farm Ridge Studios under the direction of reggae producer Dennis Bovell.

The 1978 documentary film The Punk Rock Movie features super 8 footage of the Slits taken by indie filmmaker Don Letts who later became The Clash's tour manager and eventually graduated to the ranks of a band member in the acclaimed music group Big Audio Dynamite. The Sits appeared in the movie with celebrated performers such as Billy Idol, Sid Vicious, Debbie Juvenile, Wayne County (before his noted sex change), and Siouxsie Sioux (Janet Ballion).

The Slits left the Virgin label after the departure of Budgie who replaced by Pop Group member Bruce Smith in 1979. The unstable, erratic nature of the band brought further personnel changes, inclduing brief interludes with noted jazz musician Don Cherry and reggae musician Prince Hammer. Though their sound was becoming more cohesive and focused, the group was nearing its end. The release of singles such as Man Next Door and a signing to the CBS label which yielded the album Return of the Giant Slits (with a decidedly African musical influence) did not bring total commercial breakthrough.

Interestingly enough, Slits member Paloma Romero, who wrote their songs Shoplifting, Number One Enemey, and New Town, transcended the entire bohemian scene. Leaving both punk music and its screaming psyche for spiritual and religious pursuits in Spain, India, and the United States, Palomive now happily resides in Massachusetts as a Paloma McLardy, a church-going wife and mother of three (Sandy, Marcarena, and Hannah).

The Slits, through their attitude toward music as a form of personal expression, were instrumental in helping to shift public consciousness regarding the freeing of the female ego to act with full license in mainstream society.

(img src="http://www.punk77.co.uk/graphics/slits/wendybare.jpg">

SLITS DISCOGRAPHY:

IN THE BEGINNING (FREUD 057)

TRACK-LIST:

Vindictive
A Boring Life
Slime
Newtown
Love and Romance
Shoplifting
Number One Enemy
Number One Enemy (acoustic; guest vocal: Nina Hagen)
In The Beginning
Newtown (Hi-Fi)
Man Next Door
Grapevine
Typical Girls
Fade Away
In The Beginning (Hi-Fi; guest vocal Neneh Cherry)

The Flaming Carrot: Don't Eat Your Vegetables!

2005-04-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

(UT-ter heroism, Flaming Carrot-style...)

His most frequently spoken word is "Ut" (which is the first note in the diatonic scale, from Medieval Latin, from the syllable sung to this note in a medieval hymn to Saint John the Baptist). He shoots first and sometimes never asks questions later. Certainly not your garden-variety vegetable, yet in a sense organic and decidedly original, this symbolic human-plant mutant fights crime and puts an "A" for assualt in Vitamin A. With a bemuscled man's body, a grotesque, over-sized orange carrot-mask head (with a flickering torch atop), and green flippers on his feet ("in case I have to swim"), the Flaming Carrot is the world's most unique super-hero.

Comic book artist Bob Burden, a 1952-born Buffalo, New York native, graduated from the University of Georgia (Athens) in 1976 with a degree in journalism. An existential poet with a propensity for maniacal metaphor, Burden describes his herbal anti-hero as "more a force of nature than a traditional, coherent, erudite sleuth. His appearance harkens more mystery than sense, not unlike a random face on a totem pole of some extinct race." Combining idiot savant gallantry and primal stupidity with a polarity of zen brilliance (Flaming Carrot once vowed "to hit someone so hard that there'd be blood on the moon that night," and when asked why he fights crime his response was "I needed the exercise"), this vegetable vigilante strikes fear in the hearts of anyone of criminal ilk in the Palookaville section of his hometown, Iron City.

The Flaming Carrot's true identity is unstated and the rumored origin of his merged personas stems from having lost his mind after reading 5,000 comics in one sitting. Burden said in the comic book's letter columns and in subsequent interviews that the Carrot does have a secret identity. Burden has said he would reveal the Carrot's secret identity to any correspondents who correctly guessed it.

Always equipped with an ample supply of Silly Putty and Pez dispensers, his allies include the famous inventor Dr. Heller, a potato bug, Uncle Billy, the Shoveler, Mr. Furious, Screwball, Bondo-Man, Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, and an array of young, buxom women (dressed in halter tops and ultra-tight cutoffs). These motley maddies often accompany the Carrot in his feisty forays against enemies such as alien swingers, clones of Hitler's dead feet, The Man in the Moon, and recurrent visits from a deadly dead dog.

According to the folks at www.rotten.com "The Flaming Carrot's world is plucked from a poetical dream - but not a grand mythic Lovecraftian dream; more of a rambling, free verse, absurdist dream in which one thing leads inexplicably to another, and everything you encounter is familiar, except it's not. (i.e., "We were in my apartment, except it wasn't my apartment. My high school music teacher was dancing on a table, except she wasn't my high school music teacher and it wasn't really a table").

Unlike certain other superheros whose boy sidekicks lend suspicions of homoeroticism, Flaming Carrot has a decidedly heterosexual libido. Extremely sexual women are drawn to him despite his ongoing dementia and create perfect compliments to his bizarre machiso. Socially Flaming Carrot comic storylines are retro-conventional, harkening back to an idealized era when people were friendly and uncomplicated, the stuff made of poetic imagery from a bygone era. As desrcirbed by the www.rotten.com writers, Flaming Carrots' world is "A rambling, free verse, absurdist dream in which one thing leads inexplicably to another, and everything you encounter is familiar, except it's not. (i.e., "We were in my apartment, except it wasn't my apartment. My high school music teacher was dancing on a table, except she wasn't my high school music teacher and it wasn't really a table.")

The Flaming Carrot first appeared in an edition of Vision comics in 1979. When Flaming Carrot Comics debuted independently in 1984, it was an overnight sensation among what has been termed as "a certain class of socially stunted young adults". The mid-1980s marked a period of experimental and independent books that redefined the superhero genre. Part of the underground charm of Flaming Carrot Comics is that the series never achieved the mainstream success of its contemporaries, such as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but its stylistic influence and allegorical anomalies allowed for an element of surrealism in comic book storytelling (Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, and Keith Griffen's Justice League).

There are unanswered questions from the original series: For example, the Flaming Carrot awoke with a mysterious speaker implanted in his chest after a three-day drinking binge. The speaker activates to transmit mysterious instructions, as well as "special insights, secrets of the universe and race track tips." The Carrot does not know who implanted the speaker, or what, if anything, they want from him.

The Flaming Carrot is also a singer, having appeared with bands such as Sexface. One of the songs he performed was "Hello, I Love You." He also sang "Volare" and "Georgy Girl," a testimony to his pop music persuasions and general bad taste. In Issue #20, Flaming Carrot is seen with two old friends, rock groupies "from long ago, when the scene was psychedelic, star-spangled hippies, electric guitars and Flaming Carrot was known by a different name." Herein lies inferences to his actual identity. In one of his rare past reveries, Carrot says: "I had it all once... The marbled dream of a golden age... And I threw it all away... I had fame and fortune, love and glory, fast cars, popcorn and sunny days forever.. My art and craft was strong and full of laughing eyes and lightning...But I was writing words in water with a stick..."

The current adventures of Flaming Carrot (in his brand new series from IMAGE & DESPERADO) find him even deeper in Dali-esque dilemmas as he solves the mystery of the pygmies in the woods who are constructing a giant ear out of French bread. The newswoman, who Flaming Carrot seduced to avoid bad press and character assassination, flies into a rage when she learns of his date with a two-headed woman. The singing zombie runs amok, killing a man in a computerized dog suit, and...Flaming Carrot pops some bubble wrap.

As Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden says of his cartoon oddling: "He's a simple, child-like hero with a great carrot on his head, flames coming out the top, and flippers. He is "Zen stupid," whatever that is, and solves his crimes with violence, fun, and completely illogical deductions. He has no super powers. When he's in a spot he blasts his way out in a hail of gunfire and destruction."

(any resemblance to carrot-headed superheroes is purely coincidental)

Is the Flaming Carrot headed for Hollywood? Apparently not in the near future. The series was optioned as a movie property but never left the storyboard. A subsequent Bob Burden project, Mysterymen, was made into a largely unsuccessful Ben Stiller movie. Flaming Carrot, despite his comic book alliance with the Mystery Men, did not even make a cameo appearance in the film. For now, this hero of American illogic and the working class will continue to wage war and spout zen ptolemics from the rooftops of the cartoon canyons in Palookaville.

'Cause Baby It's Yew: Little Otik

2005-04-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer proposes a unique solution for infertile couples too poor to adopt. Wooden it be lovely if you could simply dig up a tree stump, give it a nice bath, dress it in frilly baby clothes and faithfully read it the story of Pinocchio each night?

That's what's at the root of Little Otik, Svankmajer's 2000 entry into the arena of surrealist cinema. Childless couple Karel (Jan Hartl) and Bozena Horak (Veronika Zilkova) undertake some creative pruning and shearing when Bozena decides to "raise" a human-shaped log that Karel presents to her as a joke. Karel soon regrets his gift-giving when Bozena wills the inanimate object to life.

Adapted from a Czech fairy tale (Otesanek), this admittedly twisted tale soon branches out into the realm of the botanically bizarre when it becomes evident that Otik is anything but a vegetarian. Developing a taste for meat, Otik proves his bite is worse than his bark when he eats the family cat and a postman.

Dark humor takes seed and foreshadowing falls like timber when ill-fated social worker Bulankova (Jitka Smutna), seeking permission to view Otik, assures "I won't eat him." And the vines of deceit and delusion really become Oedipally entangled when Karel returns home one afternoon to discover Bozena suckling the sociopathic sapling.

Karel confines the bestial baby to the basement in an attempt to starve it to death, but young neighbor girl Alzbetka (Kristina Adamcova) intervenes, secretly feeding Otik. Alzbetka believes that Otik is the real-life manifestation of a character in her favorite fairy tale book and that it is her duty to care for the tempestuous tree. After all, technically, how can a man-eating plant be classified as a cannibal if it isn't eating its spinach? But eventually, after Alzbetka tells some pretty hollow fibs to protect Otik, she learns the meaning behind funk-master musician Bootsy Collins' warning "If you fake the funk, your nose will grow."

Combining stop-motion animation and live action, Otik seems a direct descendant of Audrey, Jr., the flesh-eating venus flytrap from The Little Shop of Horrors. Or perhaps, in darker fashion, Otik is a distant cousin of the monstrously mutated fetus of director David Lynch's 1977 Horror/Fantasy Eraserhead. In Lynch's lurid tale, the baby in question figuaritvely consumes the lives of its depressed parents, whereas Otik literally does so. One could even draw insidious parallels between wacked out mommy Bozena and the Log Lady of Twin Peaks.

In case yew didn't know, Yew trees are extremely poisonous. Many cattle have died from chewing them. So don't try eating little Otik. And pre-Christian Druids considered Yew trees to be sacred and often built their temples near them. They definitely would have rooted for Alzbetka.

I think that I shall never see, a baby as lovely as a tree? Great yews from little acorns grew? Okay, so this film may not be The Velveteen Rabbit, but there is still something perversely pleasurable in seeing dead wood assume humanoid life because of a mother's love. And don't forget all those jokes about "morning wood"! Then again, this flick may just leave you stumped.

("It's a boy! I think I'll name him Ed...Ed Wood")

Candy & The Kisses: The 81 Scores 100%

2005-04-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

Imitation is the sincerist form of flattery...usually. That is until the imitator surpasses the original. That's exactly what happened when an obscure young soul trio named Candy & The Kisses scooped Motown with their recording of a signature '60s dance tune called The 81.

New York sisters Beryl "Candy" Nelson, 16, and Suzanne Nelson, 17, formed a singing group called The Symphonettes, with their 17-year-old cousin, Port Richmond High School student, Jeanette Johnson. Their first studio work, as unbilled session singers on vocalist Ernestine Eady's The Change, brought them to the attention of producer Jerry Ross who signed the trio to the R&L record label in 1963. Though a stellar effort, Candy & The Kisses' initial release, A Good Cry, failed to chart and the threesome slipped back into the shadows of no-hit-wonders until two enterprising Philadelphians, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, brought the group to Philadelphia's Cameo Records.

Gamble and Huff, hoping to cash in on a new dance craze (there seemed to be one just about every five minutes in the early '60s), spawned by a Martha & The Vandellas recording called In My Lonely Room, quickly penned a lively, bombastic song, The 81 (the inexplicable name of the new dance). Candy & The Kisses emerged from the Cameo Records studio with a 2 minute, 33-second gem which they simply hoped would be a hit. Little did they know they had just laid down a dance classic that would be remembered over forty years later.

The 81 opens with a rapid, two-chord plinkety-stringed guitar riff, immediately followed by an egaging cacophony of booming horns and driving drums which borrow, merge, and transform the beginning of the (Martha & The Vandellas) tunes In My Lonely Room and Heat Wave. Pure Motown sound all the way, even down to Candy's powerhouse, Reeves-ringer lead vocal ("There's a new dance goin' around they call The 81") which led many to assume it actually was Martha Reeves. The sound pouring from radios and turntables coast-to-coast was an innocently infectious brand of dance-line spontaneity that made it almost impossible for a listener not to take to the floor. What Candy & The Kisses achieved under the tutelage of Gamble and Huff, was an effect which equalled Motown's most danceable recordings, including the dynanism of the blockbuster hit Dancing In The Streets.

Failing to recreate the success of The 81 with either their next recording, Soldier Baby (Of Mine (a cover of an unreleased Ronettes' song), or Shakin' Time (recorded live in concert), the group attempted to score under the alias of Honey Love & The Love Notes (releasing We Belong Together b/w Mary Ann). Disappointed, Candy & The Kisses left the Cameo label, spirited away by Scepter Records producer Florence Greenberg (who had achieved mega-success with top female act The Shirelles).

Keep on Searchin', Candy & The Kisses' first Scepter release, brought the group into contact with the legendary team of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who penned the tune along with Josephine Armstead (a former member of The Ikettes). Despite the superlative songwriting and production skills of Ashford and Simpson, who supplied Candy & The Kisses with enough material to fill an album, the group failed to recreate the magic of The 81.

The one-hit-wonder moniker, when applied to Candy & The Kisses, is only technically accurate. Artistically the trio soared with soulful gems like Are You Trying To Get Rid Of Me Baby and Out In The Streets Again, as well as masterful renditions of The Last Time (a hit for The Rolling Stones), and Tonight's The Night (a smash for The Shirelles). The group continued on until 1969, recording pure soul, such as If You Love Him b/w Oh No, Oh No, under the name Sweet Love.

Though Candy & The Kisses will go down as a footnote in the Billboard charts of the 1960s, The 81, which scores a 100+ esthetically, esconces them as major contributors to the evolution of pop, soul, and dance for time and eternity.

CANDY & THE KISSES DISCOGRAPHY:

The Change (Junior 994; 1963) (unbilled backing as The Symphonettes)
The 81* b/w Two Happy People (Cameo 336; 1964)
Soldier Boy (Of Mine) b/w Shakin' Time (Cameo 355; 1964)
We Belong Together b/w Mary Ann (Cameo 380) (billed as Honey Love & The Love Notes; group also included singer Harriet Laverne)
Keep On Searchin b/w Together (Scepter 12106; 1965)
Out In The Streets Again b/w/ Sweet And Lovely (Scepter 12125; 1965)
Baby Baby You b/w Beg Me (Scepter 12125; 1966)
Tonight's The Night b/w The Last Time (Scepter 12136; 1966)
Chains Of Love b/w Someone Out There (Decca 32415; 1968)
If You Love Him b/w Oh No, Oh No (Mercury 72415; 1969)

2001 compilation tracklist on the Sanctuary/Castle label:

The 81 (2:33)
Two happy people (2:18)
Soldier baby (of mine) (2:31)
Shakin' time (2:31)
Keep on searchin' (2:30)
Together (2:15)
Let love win (2:08)
Smokey Joe's (2:10)
Sweet and lovely (2:31)
Out in the streets again (2:04)
The last time (2:15)
Tonight's the night (2:25)
Are you trying to get rid of me baby (2:40)
You did the best you could (2:02)
I'll settle for you (3:19)
Lookie, lookie (what I got) (2:03)
All you gotta do (2:20)

R.L. Stine: He Still Gives Us Goosebumps!

2005-04-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

("I loved the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling is a real hero of mine. I never missed that show. I think it was a big influence on me")

It came from Ohio! At least that's how horror fiction author R.L. Stine describes his origins in his autobiography of the same name. Robert Lawrence Stine was born on October 8, 1943 in the relatively tame city of Columbus, Ohio. Raised in the tranquil setting of suburban Bexley, Ohio, Stine attended Cassingham Elementary School, and graduated from Bexley High School in 1961. His earliest writing efforts consisted of adventurous stories he would create for his own amusement, many of which were confiscated by disgruntled teachers.

After graduating from the University of Ohio, where he had been editor of the school's humor magazine, The Sundial, Stine moved to New York City, writing under various pen names such as Eric Affabee, Zachary Blue, Jovial Bob, and composed works like 101 Silly Monster Jokes and Bozos on Patrol, as well as becoming editor of Bananas Magazine. Stine's first solo publication was the decidedly non-creepy How To Be Funny, An Extremely Silly Guide, in 1978.

During the 1980s, Stine ventured into the field of horror fiction with the publication of Blind Date, a terror tale for teens. In 1986, Stine created a teenage horror fiction paperback series, FEAR STREET, published by Parachute Press. The success of FEAR STREET spawned three spin-off series. Then the literal hand of fate grabbed Stine's prolific pen in 1992 when he devised GOOSEBUMPS, a spooky line of paperbacks for ages 8–11. Originally intended to be a six-volume venture, beginning with the short paperback novel Welcome to Dead House, the series, totalling 62 volumes and the sequel series Goosebumps 2000, has sold over 250 million copies. The success of the books has propelled Stine to much-envied status as the world's best-selling author (ahead of fellow horror-meister Stephen King).

Due to the monstrous popularity of Stine's books, a Goosebumps television series, filmed in Canada, began a successful four-year, 52-episode run on October 27, 1995 (just before Halloween). A 1995 epidsode of the Goosebumps television program, adapted from Stine's Cuckoo Clock Of Doom, won the Writer's Guild of America Kid's Choice TV Award for screenwriters Dan Angel and Billy Brown. With a production tally of eighteen top-notch children's television features, executive producer Deborah Forte, brought a professionalism and polish which dignified the on-screen adaptation of the Stine books.

GOOSEBUMPS TELEVISION EPISODES:

SEASON 1 (1995-1996; 19 Episodes In Season 1)

The Haunted Mask, Part 1 (Originally Aired 10/27/1995)
The Haunted Mask, Part 2 (Originally Aired 10/27/1995)
The Cuckoo Clock Of Doom (Originally Aired 11/3/1995)
The Girl Who Cried Monster (Originally Aired 11/10/1995)
Welcome To Camp Nightmare, Part 1 (Originally Aired 11/17/1995)
Welcome To Camp Nightmare, Part 2 (Originally Aired 11/24/1995)
Phantom Of the Auditorium (Originally Aired 12/1/1995)
Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (Originally Aired 12/8/1995)
Return Of The Mummy (Originally Aired 12/22/1995)
Night Of The Living Dummy II (Originally Aired 1/12/1996)
My Hairiest Adventure (Originally Aired 1/19/1996)
Stay Out Of The Basement, Part 1 (Originally Aired 1/27/1996)
Stay Out Of The Basement, Part 2 (Originally Aired 1/27/1996)
It Came From Beneath The Sink! (Originally Aired 2/2/1996)
Say Cheese And Die! (Originally Aired 2/9/1996)
A Night In Terror Tower, Part 1 (Originally Aired 2/25/1996)
A Night In Terror Tower, Part 2 (Originally Aired 2/25/1996)
The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp, Part 1 (Originally Aired 5/17/1996)
The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp, Part 2 (Originally Aired 5/17/1996)

SEASON 2 (1996-1997; 25 Episodes In Season 2):

Be Careful What You Wish For (Originally Aired 8/10/1996)
Attack Of the Mutant, Part 1 (Originally Aired 9/7/1996)
Attack Of the Mutant, Part 2 (Originally Aired 9/7/1996)
Bad Hare Day (Originally Aired 9/14/1996)
The Headless Ghost (Originally Aired 9/21/1996)
Go Eat Worms (Originally Aired 9/28/1996)
You Can't Scare Me! (Originally Aired 10/5/1996)
Revenge Of The Lawn Gnomes (Originally Aired 10/12/1996)
Ghost Beach (Originally Aired 10/19/1996)
Attack Of The Jack-O-Lanterns (Originally Aired 10/26/1996)
Haunted Mask II, Part 1 (Originally Aired 10/29/1996)
Haunted Mask II, Part 2 (Originally Aired 10/29/1996)
Let's Get Invisible (Originally Aired 11/2/1996)
The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight (Originally Aired 11/9/1996)
Monster Blood (Originally Aired 11/16/1996)
More Monster Blood (Originally Aired 11/16/1996)
Vampire Breath (Originally Aired 11/23/1996)
How To Kill A Monster (Originally Aired 2/1/1997)
Calling All Creeps (Originally Aired 2/15/1997)
Welcome To Dead House, Part 1 (Originally Aired 6/29/1997)
Welcome To Dead House, Part 2 (Originally Aired 6/29/1997)
Don't Wake Mummy (Originally Aired 7/12/1997)
The Blob That Ate Everyone (Originally Aired 7/19/1997)
Night Of The Living Dummy III, Part 1 (Originally Aired 7/20/1997)
Night Of The Living Dummy III, Part 2 (Originally Aired 7/20/1997)

SEASON 3 (Ultimate Goosebumps; 1997-1998; 22 Episodes In Season 3):

A Shocker On Shock Street (Originally Aired 9/6/1997)
My Best Friend Is Invisible (Originally Aired 9/8/1997)
The House Of No Return (Originally Aired 9/13/1997)
Don't Go To Sleep (Originally Aired 9/20/1997)
Click (Originally Aired 9/27/1997)
An Old Story (Originally Aired 10/4/1997)
The Barking Ghost (Originally Aired 10/11/1997)
One Day At Horrorland, Part 1 (Originally Aired 10/25/1997)
One Day At Horrorland, Part 2 (Originally Aired 11/1/1997)
Werewolf Skin, Part 1 (Originally Aired 11/22/1997)
Werewolf Skin, Part 2 (Originally Aired 11/22/1997)
The Haunted House Game (Originally Aired 12/6/1997)
Awesome Ants (Originally Aired 2/7/1998)
Bride Of The Living Dummy (Originally Aired 2/14/1998)
Strained Peas (Originally Aired 2/21/1998)
Say Cheese And Die - Again! (Originally Aired 2/28/1998)
Perfect School, Part 1 (Originally Aired 4/11/1998)
Perfect School, Part 2 (Originally Aired 4/11/1998)
Chillogy, Part 1: Squeal Of Fortune (Originally Aired 4/25/1998)
Chillogy, Part 2: Strike 3 ... You're Doomed (Originally Aired 5/2/1998)
Chillogy, Part 3: Escape From Karlsville (Originally Aired 5/9/1998)
Teacher's Pet (Originally Aired 5/16/1998)

SEASON 4 (1998-1999; 8 Episodes In Season 4)

How I Got My Shrunken Head, Part 1 (Originally Aired 9/14/1998)
How I Got My Shrunken Head, Part 2 (Originally Aired 9/14/1998)
The Ghost Next Door, Part 1 (Originally Aired 9/28/1998)
The Ghost Next Door, Part 2 (Originally Aired 9/28/1998)
Cry Of The Cat, Part 1 (Originally Aired 10/31/1998)
Cry Of The Cat, Part 2 (Originally Aired 10/31/1998)
Deep Trouble, Part 1 (Originally Aired 11/16/1998)
Deep Trouble, Part 2 (Originally Aired 11/16/1998)

A droll yet quiet man, Stine remains humble regarding his success, preferring to focus on writing. None of his teachers were space aliens, and to quote Stine himself (from the www.scholastic.com website): "“I’ve never turned into a bee – I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life. When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books. For example, one Halloween my son, Matt, put a mask on and then had trouble pulling it off. That gave me the idea for The Haunted Mask.”

One of the most thrilling tributes Stine has received occurred in October, 1997 when GOOSEBUMPS HORROR LAND at Walt Disney World MGM Studios opened. "What a thrill! I went down to Florida for the grand opening. We had 1800 people there. From now on, a live GOOSEBUMPS show will be performed 5 times a day and there is a GOOSEBUMPS fun house with a scary hall of mirrors and a place to have your photo taken on a GOOSEBUMPS cover. What a thrill to have GOOSEBUMPS in the same place as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the Muppets," Stine said in a 1997 Scholastic Magazine interview.

It has been an ominous 13 lucky years since the Goosebumps books crawled from the crypt and R.L. Stine is busier than ever with Nightmare Room, and Mostly Ghostly, his newest youth-oriented fright series featuring titles such as Let's Get This Party Haunted, Ghouls Gone Wild, and Little Camp Of Horros, as well as single-volume titles like The Haunting Hour: Chills in the Dead of Night. And despite being born in October, the month of Halloween, Stine does not cite the pagan holiday as a major source of inspiration. "Halloween was a painful time for me when I was a kid. I wanted to be something scary, but my parents bought me the duck costume. I was so embarrassed! We were very poor and I couldn't buy a new costume every year. So I had to be a duck for years."

It may be a paradox to use the word "safe" in this context, but unless he is eaten by a blob, attacked by a feverish werewolf, or becomes one of his own mutant creations, readers can expect a dizzying and dastardly plethora of perversion from R.L. Stine for many full moons to come.

To contact R.L. Stine you may write to him at: Scholastic, Inc., 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

P. J. Soles: Riff Randell To The Rescue

2005-03-30T11:19:00.001-08:00

("I think these pictures of me are like totally too small...like TOTALLY!")

For many fans of the 1978 feature film horror classic Halloween, actress P.J. Soles, in her role of "Lynda Van Der Clok", totally made the movie...like TOTALLY!

Pamela Jayne Hardon (now you can see why she chose to use the last name of her first husband as her professional moniker) was born on July 17, 1950, in Frankfurt, Germany. Her father, a native of Holland, worked for an international insurance company, thus P.J.'s formative years were spent largely in Belgium, Morocco, and Venezuela (which accounts for her fluency in Spanish).

P.J. was attracted to the acting profession as a child after participating in elementary school plays. According to an interview conducted by the staff at Fright (www.iconsoffright.com) "I played the witch in "HANSEL & GRETEL", and my dad made a special magic wand with a lightbulb at the end with a battery and a switch... my first real prop! It was a night performance, and we had a huge fake oven that they pushed me into, and my little brother who was only three thought that was the end me and he started screaming. I was very proud of my performances, because I beat out an eighth grader for the coveted weekend shows."

While attending Briarcliff College, P.J. wanted to become the first woman ambassador to the Soviet Union. But after the early death of a sibling P.J. didn't want to sacrifice years of her life in academia and so she left school. A secondary influence in her decision to leave college came with a visit to the Actors Studio in New York City. During P.J.'s Manhattan years she was married to musician/composer J. Steven Soles. The marriage ended when P.J. moved to Los Angeles to work in TV and movies.

Deciding to keep her professional/stage name as P.J. Soles, P.J. found herself among hundreds of actors auditioning for directors Brian De Palma and George Lucas in their joint casting session for Carrie (1976) and Star Wars (1977). P.J. readily secured the role of the pert, backstabbing busybody "Norma", in De Palma's 1976 blockbuster horror film Carrie, which led to the filming of Our Winning Season (1978) in Georgia where she met actor Dennis Quaid. P.J. and Quaid were married in 1978 in Texas (on a dude ranch).

In the 1978 cult classic horror film Halloween, P.J. portrayed "Lynda Van Der Clok" (the last name springing from director John Carpenter's appreciation of P.J.'s dutch heritage) and earned the nickname "The Totally Girl" from her insertion of the word "totally" into just about every line of Lynda's ditzy dialogue. P.J.'s supporting stint in Halloween outshines nearly every contrived teen victim horror movie supporting role in cinematic history as she TOTALLY steals the show with lines such as "What's the matter, Bob, can't I get your ghost?" as the demonic Michael Myers disguises himself in a bedsheet, complete with Lynda's late boyfriend's glasses draped over his head. No doubt, everyone associated with the seven Halloween sequels which have followed over a span of 25+years, can thank P.J. Soles for helping establish this series as a landmark of horror cinema.

Well I don't care about history
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school
'Cause that's not where I wanna be
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school
I just wanna have some kicks
I just wanna get some chicks
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school
Well the girls out there knock me out, you know
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school
Cruisin' around in my GTO
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school
I hate the teachers and the principal
Don't wanna be taught to be no fool
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school

In 1979, P.J. Wowed cult director Roger Corman who cast her as the lead actress in his teen musical satire Rock 'n' Roll High School, which was a vehicle for the wildly popular recording group the Ramones. P.J.'s Rock 'n' Roll High School character, Riff Randell, is a kitchy combo of counter-culture/hyper-hormoned teen. Randell, who is obsessed with the music of the Ramones, would rather see them in concert than attend school. She pens the tune Rock 'n' Roll High School (("I just wanna have some kicks; I just wanna get some chicks"), for the Ramones. They love the song, become honorary Vince Lombardi High School students, and help Randell take over the school (which is finally blown to smithereens during a police raid). The film became one of the quintessential rock 'n' roll rebellion films of all time largely due to the engaging performance by P.J. Soles. P.J.'s vocal rendition of the title track was included on the soundtrack LP and later she was invited to sing the song onstage with the Ramones themselves.

(Vince Lombardi High's most vivacious vixen belts out the title tune Rock 'n' Roll High School during gym class)

Through her works in Halloween and Rock 'n' Roll High School, P.J. attracted the attention of top mainstream film directors such as Howard Zieff, who cast her as "Pvt. Wanda Winter" in the 1980 Goldie Hawn military comedy Private Benjamin, and Animal House director Ivan Reitman, who employed her services as "Stella" in the 1981 Bill Murray military comedy Stripes. When she and Quaid were divorced in 1983 P.J. continued appearing in numerous television and film roles, eventually marrying Skip Holm, the stunt pilot on The Right Stuff (1983). The marriage lasted until 1998 and produced a son named Sky (born in 1983) and a daughter named Ashley (born in 1988).

Horror fans heralded P.J.'s cameo appearance as "Madge Cronin", the overbearing mother of a crippled school student in the 1997 horror flick Uncle Sam, as her "return" to the big screen and to the genre which has given her cult status. The Cronin role, which lampoons her earlier turns as military characters in Private Benjamin, and Stripes, gained the attention of indie director Darren Stein who cast her as "Mrs. Purr" in the darkly comedic 1999 teen comedy/crime film Jawbreaker, starring alongside Rose McGowan, Pam Grier, and the ever-quirky Carol Kane.

(A Riff Randell ringer listens to the sounds of Local H)

A "second cult-comeback" occurred for P.J. when the music group Local H put out a 2004 P.J. Soles tribute LP (of sorts) entitled Whatever Happened To P.J. Soles?. The album also includes an individual track simply titled P.J. Soles.

"I think of PJ Soles
And wonder where you are
I never see you anymore
Where do you think they go?
All the fallin' stars
Heaven doesn't know you like I do"

The Whatever Happened To P.J. Soles? album cover features a mockup of the bedroom of movie character Riff Randell and a model passably posing as P.J. Soles from the film Rock 'n' Roll High School. According to writer Tom Bastian at www.decapolis.com: "Local H has moved away from their post-grunge alt-rock sound and has settled in on a sound that’s a little more pop, a little more produced, yet still holds those elements of classic rock that many of the bands towards the end of the grunge era were incorporating." The changes are an attempt to honor the musical styles of the late 1970s period in which Rock 'n' Roll High School was filmed.

"I’ve always been a big fan of hers. Most of the movies she’s been in at this point have a cult following. It’s just something in the air that I tuned into," says guitarist/singer/bassist Scott Lucas when asked why he wanted to immortalize Soles. Enamoured with the bouncy actress since Rock ‘N’ Roll High School, he decided that maybe it was time she was honored.

"We [drummer Brian St. Clair, the other half of Local H] decided to name the record that before the song was even written," he says. "The concept came way before anything else. It’s probably easier to just write something and figure out what the song’s about later, but we knew exactly what we were looking for. We HAD to go for it." Whatever...a word that has become signature for an extended generation (running about 14 years now) which snarks at past pop culture. Note that the title of the Local H album is not WHAT EVER (two separate words) Happened To P.J. Soles?. So now we all TOTALLY know what happened to P.J. Soles. Whatever.

PJ SOLES FILMOGRAPHY:

The Second Line (2005) (announced) .... Celia Paulson
Death by Engagement (2005) (post-production) .... Mrs. Starkington
The Devil's Rejects (2005) (completed) .... Susan
Kept (2001) .... Celia
... aka Playback (USA)
Blast (2000) .... Deputy
Mirror, Mirror IV: Reflection (2000) .... Annika's Mom
... aka Mirror, Mirror 4: Reflection (USA: MIFED title)
Jawbreaker (1999) .... Mrs. Purr
Uncle Sam (1997) .... Madge Cronin
Little Bigfoot (1997) .... Carolyn
Out There (1995) (TV) .... Religious Nut
The Power Within (1995) .... Mrs. Applegate
... aka Power Man
Shake, Rattle and Rock! (1994) (TV) .... Evelyn Randall
Soldier's Fortune (1992) .... Debra
... aka Soldiers of Fortune (USA)
Alienator (1989) .... Tara
B.O.R.N. (1988) .... Liz
... aka Merchants of Death
Saigon Commandos (1987) .... Jean Lassiter
Sweet Dreams (1985) .... Wanda
Listen to the City (1984) .... Sophia
Innocent Prey (1984) .... Cathy Wills
The Other Woman (1983) (TV) .... Mary Louise
Sawyer and Finn (1983) (TV) .... Becky Thatcher
The Awakening of Cassie (1982) .... Cassie
Stripes (1981) .... Stella
Private Benjamin (1980) .... Pvt. Wanda Winter
Soggy Bottom, USA (1980) .... Sharlene
... aka Swamp Rats
Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) .... Riff Randell
Breaking Away (1979) (as Pamela Jayne Soles) .... Suzy
Old Boyfriends (1979) .... Sandy
Halloween (1978) .... Lynda
... aka John Carpenter's Halloween (USA: complete title)
Zuma Beach (1978) (TV) .... Nancy
Our Winning Season (1978) .... Cindy Hawkins
Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (1977) (TV)
The Possessed (1977) (TV) .... Marty
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976) (TV) .... Deborah
Carrie (1976) .... Norma Watson
Blood Bath (1976)
Sport (1976)
"Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" (1967) TV Series .... Unknown (1973)

MISCELLANEOUS CREW:

Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest (2003) (TV) (still photographer)
Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) (singer)

PRODUCER- filmography

B.O.R.N. (1988) (associate producer)
... aka Merchants of Death

APPEARING AS HERSELF:

Scream Queens: The E! True Hollywood Story (2004) (TV) .... Herself
Stars and Stripes 1 (2004) (V) .... Herself
Stars and Stripes 2 (2004) (V) .... Herself
Super Secret Movie Rules: Slashers (2004) (TV) .... Herself ("Lynda" - Halloween)
... aka SSMR: Slashers (USA: short title)
Halloween: A Cut Above the Rest (2003) (TV) .... Herself
Acting 'Carrie' (2001) (V) .... Herself
'Halloween' Unmasked 2000 (1999) (V) .... Herself

NOTABLE TV GUEST APPEARANCES:

"Knight Rider" playing "Ellen Whitby" in episode: "Out of the Woods" (episode # 4.14) 17 January 1986
"Hardcastle and McCormick" playing "Ellen Styner" in episode: "Something's Going on on This Train" (episode # 3.4) 14 October 1985
"Simon & Simon" playing "Martie Collins" in episode: "Our Fair City" (episode # 4.10) 29 November 1984
"Airwolf" playing "Ellie" in episode: "HX-1" (episode # 2.8) 10 November 1984
"Cheers" playing "Julie" in episode: "Rebound: Part 2" (episode # 3.2) 4 October 1984
"Simon & Simon" playing "'Crazy Susan' Sackwell" in episode: "D.J., D.O.A." (episode # 3.2) 6 October 1983
"The Blue Knight" playing "Minnesota" in episode: "Upward Mobility" (episode # 2.3) 13 October 1976

(Lynda explains to Michael Myers why she doesn't want a neck rub: "I can't believe it! We have three new cheers to learn in the morning, I have to get my dress ready and my hair done in the afternoon, the game is at six, and the dance is at eight! I'll be totally wiped out! Totally!")

Mud Season Movies: The Incredible Melting Man

2005-03-26T14:02:00.000-08:00

It's mud season in New England. It's that time of the year when cars become mired in the slippery brown slime earth of spring's thaw. And, as ice-covered riverbeds become burbling streams and the last traces of snow disappear, what better way to celebrate than by watching the 1977 sci-fi/horror film travesty The Incredible Melting Man?

Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) should have studied astrology before agreeing to head a flight to study Saturn's rings. If he had, he would have learned that Saturn is the planet of sorrow, restriction, and heavy duty karmic crap and he might have aborted the mission. At the very least, West should have brought along a bottle of Coppertone, as he discovers when a solar flare causes his skin to begin liquifying.

Looking more like an acne-infested teen than a member of NASA, West is confined to a military hospital upon his return to earth. Doctors try to cure West's oozing cellular degeneration, but not before he goes mad, kills a nurse, and escapes.

Somehow West's survival instinct gives him the knowledge that he must devour and absorb the blood and tissue of healthy humans in order to temporarily halt his decomposition. Following his carniovorous dietary standards, West spends the rest of the film's 86 minutes stalking unsuspecting victims.

As West's flesh drips and plops and he performs hideously lurid liposuctions on various victims, his best friend Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning), searches for a cure. Too bad Nelson doesn't realize that West's brain is turning to Cream of Wheat faster than a coke addict's collapsing nostrils.

The Incredible Melting Man made its auspicious debut during the disco era of the late 1970s, a time when the 1950s were being regurgitated in television sitcoms such as Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Following the nostalgia trend, Melting Man borrows heavily from flicks such as The Creeping Unknown (1955), First Man Into Space (1959), and The Slime People (1962).

Melting Man director William Sachs managed to employ the talents of some future heavy-hitters, such as special effects wizard Rick Baker (The Howling) and film director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) who is featured briefly as a victim named Matt.

Sachs, himself, achieved cult status with the 1980 sci-fi silliness of Galaxina, which starred Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratton who achieved posthumous notoriety after being murdered by her psychotic husband.

Predictably, the plot melts away into trashy goo along with the title character as there is literally no further storyline other than West's gratuitous gross out. Campy dialogue, such as that of character Judy Nelson (Ann Sweeney), "I have never seen such a feeble excuse for a search in my life!" and "He's getting stronger as he melts!" create a perfect puddle of cult classic cream corn.

So, prop your muddied sneakers on the nearest coffee table and pop The Incredible Melting Man into your VCR or DVD player and get down and dirty (literally) with this cult favorite.

As for this writer's unsolicited suggestion to improve this movie muck called The Incredible Melting Man? Replace the soundtrack, dialogue and all, with a recurrent loop of British synth-pop group Icicle Works and their '80s tune I'll Stop the World and Melt with You.

Secret Saucer Symphonies: Unidentified Flying Discs

2005-03-24T19:21:00.000-08:00

(The girlfriend of Donald Woods departs earth)

The myriad conspiracy theories of suppressed information regarding an alleged 1947 flying saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico are common knowledge. But how many intrepid ufologists are aware of the alien abduction rumors surrounding an obscure, dirge-like rock 'n roll record in mid-1950s Los Angeles?

Music producer Max Feirtag had only earthlings on his mind when he founded California-based Flip Records in 1955. Releasing an impressive 10-year string of 45 RPM discs, Feirtag's roster included the oddly anachronistic Death Of An Angel. Performed by R&B artists Donald Woods & The Vel-Aires, Death Of An Angel dealt with the demise of a teenage girl. Recorded as a droning, funereal lamentation (with melodramatic weeping and the lead vocalist's expressed desire to join his consort: "I want to be beside her, but I'm afraid to die"), the song was considered controversial because of its end-of-life/would-be-suicide theme. Deemed unsuitable for commerical airplay in the hackneyed halcyon of Father Knows Best mid-'50s sentiments, the record was pulled from radio station playlists.

DEATH OF AN ANGEL

My baby's gone
And left me left me all alone
My baby's gone
And she left me all alone
So alone, I want my baby home

I still remember
The day she went away
That was the day
My angel me left me to stay
Oh, no, no, I want my baby home

I know that she is gone
Ooh-ooh-ooh?
[weeping]

That was a death
Of an angel, don't know
Why, oh, why
I want to be beside her
But I'm afraid to die
Oh, oh, oh I want my baby back home
I want my baby home
I know that she is gone
But still I want her home

Don't leave me

[weeping to FADE]

As if the banishment of Death Of An Angel from the airwaves was not enough of a blow to the record's commerical prospects, the song became an all-pervasive pariah when the Flip disc was flipped over. The B-side was a tune with the seemingly existential title of The Man From Utopia. In actuality the song was a tongue-in-cheek nod to a service employee at Utopia Cleaners on 97th Street in the Watts District of Los Angeles. A rumor evolved that The Man From Utopia was about a space alien who had kidnapped and murdered the girlfriend from Death Of An Angel. Listeners backed their claim with the "evidence" that the name of the girlfriend had been revealed in the lyrics "Mary Lou, big fool" in The Man From Utopia. Further it was asserted that the alien assault theory derived from Death Of An Angel was based on a true event.

Despite the late 1955 re-release of Death Of An Angel on the Tiger Era label (Tiger Era #5065), complete with disclaimers regarding an alien abducition theme, the song had been dealt a mortal blow. A plethora of science fiction films, such as Invaders From Mars, It Came From Outer Space, Target Earth, and The Man From Planet X, which had melded synonymously with the political paranoia of McCarthyist madness, reinforced listeners' pulp fiction rumor mill. Death Of An Angel vanished into the dusty, back-shelf realm of junk shops. Subsequent releases by Donald Woods & The Vel-Aires, with titles such as Stay With Me (Flip #309), and Heaven In My Arms (Flip #312), served only to further the belief that Death Of An Angel was a tale of murder and marauding Martians.

Londis Carpenter, an amateur entomologist from Cass County, Michigan, posted an internet article on June 6, 2004, in which he states that he is certain that he remembers hearing two very different reasons why Death Of An Angel was pulled from the airwaves back in the 1950s. "The story I remember hearing is that this song was about a girl who was killed in an airplane crash. The airplane had allegedly collided with a UFO, causing both air vehicles to crash. It was rumored that the Catholic Church had succeeded in having the song banned because the church insisted that angels couldn’t die, making the song blasphemous."

(An apostolic catholic Martian with a fetish for Gidget look-alikes)

Had Death Of An Angel beem released in 1970, with more lavish instrumentation (and perhaps an even more over-the-top display of despair), it might have been a top 40 hit, as was DOA (Dead On Arrival), a blatantly morose song by Fort Worth, Texas-based metal rockers Bloodrock. A grand guignol gore-fest in which the lead vocalist portrays the youthful, dying victim of a plane crash, the song proved successful enough to spur the band on to two LP releases and a bit of cult status.

In the course of the storyline of DOA, the listener is told "We were flying along and hit something in the air." Rumors abounded that the airborne mystery object was a ufo. What had worked against Death Of An Angel in 1955 proved the sales point for 1970's DOA. Despite the fact that the DOA
plot line could be linked directly to the real-life mid-air collision of two college sports team planes, a determined public preferred the spacecraft theory.

DOA

Laying here looking at the ceiling
Someone lays a sheet across my chest
Something warm is flowing down my fingers
Pain is flowing all through my back

I try to move my arms and there's no feeling
And when I look I see there's nothing there
The face beside me stopped it totally bleeding
The girl I knew has such a distant stare

I remember
We were flying along and hit something in the air
I remember
We were flying along and hit something in the air

Then I looked straight at the attendant
His face is pale as it can be
He bends and whispers something softly
He says there's no chance for me

I remember
We were flying along and hit something in the air
I remember
We were flying along and hit something in the air

Life is flowing out my body
Pain is flowing out with my blood
The sheets are red and moist where I'm lying
God in Heaven, teach me how to die

I remember
We were flying along and hit something in the air
I remember
We were flying along and hit something in the air

(wailing ambulance siren surrealistically slows to a stop as the vocalist dies)

Despite the legends that have been grafted onto songs such as Death Of An Angel and DOA, there have been scores of legitimate flying saucer rock songs, albeit most of them in the vein of fluffy humor. Two of the most notable ditties, Mopity Mope, a 1961 Philadelphia Doo Wop knock-off, by the Bosstones, about a space visitor who lands on earth to dance at a record hop, and The Martian Hop, a 1963 novelty tune by New Jersey duo the Ran-Dells, scored popularly on top 40 music charts but failed to incite rumors of impending alien invasion. Perhaps if the dance-crazed denizens from darkened space had disintegrated a few bobby-soxers doing the Mashed Potato we could establish a connection to Donald Woods' long-lost Mary Lou, but for now any spaced-out speculations surrounding Death Of An Angel and DOA will remain just stories from the stars.

UFO/ALIEN SONGS OVER THE DECADES:

ANCIENT BROTHERHOOD -- UFOs in the Rain Forest
ARTHUR & FRIENDS -- UFO Song: The Buster
ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS -- U.F.O. Attack
BELZER, RICHARD -- UFOs
BERRYHILL, CINDY LEE -- UFO Suite
BORIS THE SPRINKLER -- UFO
BOSSTONES -- Mopity Mope
BOX TOPS -- Flying Saucers Rock & Roll
BRAGG, BILLY, & WILCO -- My Flying Saucer
BRAVE COMBO -- Flying Saucers
BUCHANAN & GOODMAN -- Flying Saucer Rock 'N Roll
CAUSEY WAY -- U.F.O.
CHARGED PARTICLES -- Spaceships
CHOCOLATE WEASEL -- Flying Saucers
CROSSTOPS -- U.F.O. & the Trucker
DOGBOWL -- Flying Saucer Over Mongolia
DR. JOHN -- Spaceship Relationship
DUDLEY & THE DOO-RYTES -- U.F.O.
11th HOUR BAND -- UFO Alert
ELIN -- UFO Beobachtungen
ERIC’S TRIP -- Spaceship Opening
FAIR, JAD, & YO LA TENGO -- Texas Man Abducted by Aliens for Outer Space Joy Ride
FLECK, BELA, & THE FLECKTONES -- UFO Tofu/Flying Saucer Dudes
FLYING SAUCER ATTACK -- Flying Saucer Attack
FOOF -- UFO
GOODMAN, DICKIE -- Flying Saucer Goes West
GROOVY GHOULIES -- 50,000 Spaceships
GUIDED BY VOICES -- Hardcore UFOs
GURU GURU -- UFO
HAGEN, NINA -- UFO
HALF JAPANESE -- UFO Expert
HAWKWIND -- UFO Line
HICKS, BILL -- Flying Saucer Tour
HOUSEY DOINGZ -- Flying Saucer
HUSKER DU -- Books About UFOs
INTRUMENTAL WISH -- Flying Saucer Attack
J CHURCH -- UFOs Will Crash
JFA -- Turkey in the UFO
KYUSS -- Spaceship Landing
LaBEEF, SLEEPY -- Flying Saucers Rock & Roll
LAWRENCE, SID -- The Answer to the Flying Saucers
LENNON, SEAN -- Spaceship
LITTLE WALTER -- Flying Saucer
MADIGAN, KATHLEEN -- UFOs
MARKETTS -- Out of Limits
MELLOTONES -- Flying Saucers
MISSILES -- The Space Ship
MORONICS -- Flying Saucers
NIXON, MOJO -- UFOs, Big Rigs and Barbecues
PARKER, GRAHAM, & THE RUMOURS -- Waiting for the UFOs
PHOTEK -- UFO
PINK FLOYD -- Saucerful of Secrets, A
PUMPKIN UGLIES -- Flying Saucers of Rock & Roll
PUNK LADY -- UFO
RADIATORS -- UFOs Exactly
RAN-DELLS -- Martian Hop
REZILLOS -- Flying Saucer Attack
RILEY, BILLY -- Flying Saucer Rock and Roll
ROBERTS, JR., AL -- UFO Rock and Roll
ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT -- UFO>UFO>UFO
SABALON GLITZ -- Ufonic
SOLID SENDERS -- Flying Saucer
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION -- Spaceship
SPOOZYS -- Cone Shape U.F.O./ Invasion of the Flying Saucer/ Russian UFO
SPOT 1019 -- UFOs Are Real
STRAYCATS -- Flying Saucers Rock & Roll
SUBURBAN LAWNS -- Flying Saucer Safari
SUGARSMACK -- Bring on the UFOs
TECHNOMAJIKAL -- UFO Attack (Ambient Version)
TELESCOPES -- Spaceships
TORIES -- Spaceships in the Sky
TRANSISTORHYTHM -- UFO
TURNER, JESSIE LEE -- Little Space Girl, The
UNDISPUTED TRUTH -- UFOs
UFO OR DIE -- UFO or Die
VENTURES -- War of the Satellites
WEDDING PRESENT -- UFO/Flying Saucer
WILLIAMS BROTHERS -- Flying Saucer Blues
WOODS, DONALD & THE VEL-AIRES -- Death Of An Angel
WOOLEY, SHEB -- Purple People Eater
ZMRZLINA -- Lovely UFO

Moon Songs:

ACEN -- TRIP II THE MOON (Kaleidoscopiklimax)
ALIEN SEX FIEND -- Trip to the Moon
BARNES & BATNES -- Don't You Wanna Go to the Moon?
BIG DIPPER -- Lunar Module
CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN -- The Day that Lassie Went to the Moon
DUMP -- Living on the Moon
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA -- Ticket to the Moon
GERBER, TONY -- The Lunar Crossing
GREATER JAMAICA -- Moon Invaders
HUNTINGTON CADS -- Lunar Luau
HYPNOTIC BASS -- Trip to the Moon
KALEIDOSCOPES -- Moon Inhabitants
KING, JONATHAN -- Everyone's Gone to the Moon
LOVE & ROCKETS -- Holiday on the Moon
MARTIN, TRADE -- We'll Be Dancing On The Moon
McAULIFFE, MARIA -- Lunar Patio
McGEAR, MIKE -- The Man Who Found God on the Moon
MUIR, JOHN -- The Moon Men
NORTH, ALEX -- Trip to the Moon
ORANGE GOBLIN -- Lunarville 7, Airlock 3/ You’ll Never Get to the Moon in That
PAMELA, LUCIA -- Walking on the Moon
PHANTOM ROCKERS -- Trip to the Moon
POLICE -- Walking on the Moon
ROXETTE -- The First Girl on the Moon
SAINTE-MARIE, BUFFY -- Moonshot
SANDERS, FELICIA -- Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)
SAVAGE GARDEN -- To Moon and Back
T-BONES -- Everyone's Gone to the Moon
VAUGHAN, SARAH -- Destination Moon
XTC -- Bike Ride to the Moon

Fancydancing Leaves No Reservations About Native American Cinema

2005-03-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

(Clockwise L to R: Gene Tagaban, Sherman Alexie, Michelle St. John, Evan Adams)

"The only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians watching Indians on TV." Wry wisdom from Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a pivotal character in the 1998 Miramax movie Smoke Signals.

So, what happens when a Native American poet becomes a film director and creates a story about Indians that will inevitably be viewed on TV by Indians? In the capable hands of writer Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, the product is profound, not pathetic.

In the Indie film feature The Business Of Fancydancing, Alexie's 2002 directorial debut, he thoughtfully probes the complex social structure of interpersonal relationships within the community of the Spokane (Washington) Reservation.

Fancydancing focuses upon the spiritual awakening of Seymour Polatkin (Evan Adams), a young, bisexual, Native American poet. Seymour has successfully assimilated into urban white culture as a token Native American pandering to the cliché guilt of his white-liberal readership.

When Seymour returns to the "rez" for the funeral of his friend, Mouse (Swil Kanim), a suicide victim, he is forced to confront his own lost heritage. Reconnecting with his childhood companion Aristotle Joseph (Gene Tagaban), and former girlfriend Agnes (Michelle St. John), a half-Indian/half-Jewish teacher, Seymour questions his cynicism and lack of allegiance to his roots.

Accenting Seymour's struggle with acculturation and tugging on his conscience is his white lover Steven (Kevin Phillip), who proclaims "I'm your tribe now." The relationship proves the victor as Seymour's struggle between two worlds ends, albeit insightfully, with his departure from the reservation.

The Business of Fancydancing is fashioned after director Alexie's first book of poems and short stories and remains true to its context of non-linear narrative. Lead character Seymour's writings are used as voice-overs and even appear as text on the screen, artfully blending the drama and romantic comedy of the storyline.

Fancydancing dares to look beyond the usual cavalcade of cultural stereotypes. The film neither exalts nor trashes Native American history, such as the Indian-U.S. government clash at Wounded Knee and the subsequent plight of imprisoned Indian martyr, Leonard Peltier.

Alexie chooses to step into a more intimate and dimensional portrayal of the Native American as an individual struggling with questions of personal identity. The end result is a richness and depth that has previously eluded the silver screen depiction of Indians.

In keeping with the honesty of tensions that do still exist between Native Americans and whites, there is a flashback of brutality wherein Aristotle Joseph coerces Mouse into joining him in an assault upon a stranded white motorist. However, the scene is used as much for imagery and character establishment as it is for sensationalist reaction.

Removed from the Caucasian romanticizing of films such as Dances With Wolves, or the hideous abomination of old John Wayne western epics in which Indians were portrayed as mentally deficient savages, The Business of Fancydancing stands as a testament to Native American selfhood.

So, when the Indians of Fancydancing eventually appear on HBO or the Independent Film Channel, the only thing that will be pathetic is the clueless attitude of any viewer who is still hankering for the lawn-jockey days of John Wayne's cowboys versus the Italian "Indians".

(Ari's review of Seymour's poetry is decidedly unfavorable)

Tanita Tikaram: Ancient Heart/Holographic Voice

2005-03-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

("My eyes are just holograms...")

Vocalist Tanita Tikaram was born in Munster, Germany on August 12, 1969, in-between the last polarized throes of the Flower Power era, three days after the horrific August 9th murder of actress Sharon Tate by members of Charles Manson's Sphan Ranch commune, and three days before the legendary August 15th Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, New York. Perhaps the timing of this soul's arrival marks a potential turning point in the creative consciousness of humanity. Certainly that would seem evident upon listening to the sumptuous, self-penned poetics inherent in Tikaram's 18-year, 8-album musical spanse.

Tikaram's ethnicity, maternally Malaysian and paternally Fijian/East-Indian, has contributed to the rich, wide-ranging stylization of her works. From the somber origins of Twist In My Sobriety (the soundtrack to a masterful, award-winning, sepia-toned video featuring compelling vignettes of impoverished Native Americans), the premiere track from her multi-million-selling 1988 CD debut Ancient Heart, to the eclectic variances of Finnish and Latin-inspired melody on 1998's Cappuccino Songs LP (with a darkened, eerily atmospheric cover of ABBA's The Day Before You Came), Tikaram's caramel-coated voice traverses cultural boundaries effortlessly.

(stirring imagery from the 1988 video Twist In My Sobriety)

All God's children need travelling shoes
Drive your problems from here
All good people read good books
Now your conscience is clear
I hear you talk girl
Now your conscience is clear

In the morning I wipe my brow
Wipe the miles away
I like to think I can be so willed
And never do what you say
I'll never hear you
And never do what you say

Look my eyes are just holograms
Look your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety

We just poked a little pie
For the fun people had at night
Late at night don't need hostility
The timid smile and pause to free

I don't care about their different thoughts
Different thoughts are good for me
Up in arms and chaste and whole
All God's children took their toll

Look my eyes are just holograms
Look your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety

Cup of tea, take time to think, yea
Time to risk a life, a life, a life
Sweet and handsome
Soft and porky
You pig out 'til you've seen the light
Pig out 'til you've seen the light

Half the people read the papers
Read them good and well
Pretty people, nervous people
People have got to sell
News you have to sell

Look my eyes are just holograms
Look your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety

The brooding, melancholy infused in Tikaram's earlier works was hardly the stuff of pop teenage angst. Moreover it evolved from an innate, ongoing seriousness and a sense of alienation brought on by the sudden advent of worldwide fame at age 18. "When I was still a teenager, I made a debut album that sold almost 4 million copies, visited city after city, staying in top hotels, performing and promoting my songs in over two dozen countries. It sounds glamorous - and in many ways it was - but I was lonely, all my friends were at college and not part of my universe. It was very hard to relate to what was happening. It was almost like I was sleepwalking through it all."

Outside the realm of musicianship, Tikaram has indugled her interest in acting and film, appearing in director Monika Treut's Taboo Parlour, a segement of the 1994 Lizze Borden-helmed drama Erotique (a fictional, pre-Vagina Monologues quadrant of feminist vignettes about sexuality). The much-lauded original version of Twist In My Sobriety has been recently featured in the 2001 Bruce Willis Crime/Comedy Bandits, and Tikaram was also the title track vocalist for the 1997 french feature-film drama Marion.

The interim between the 1998 release of Cappuccino Songs and Tikaram's spirng, 2005 LP Sentimental, has seen collaborative work with other musicians such as Ashley Beadle, Asian Dub Foundation, and Moodswings. Previously, during a quasi-sabbatical after the release of her third album in 1992, Tikaram had collaborated with the Bronte Brothers on their album The Way Through The Woods, and soloist Christie Hennessy on his LP Lord Of Your Eyes. "I want to discover new things, music I wasn't brought up with. In Paris I hear a lot more world music. On Radio Nostalgie in Paris they play an English record followed by a French one, and I do like French pop. I also love Abba and Fleetwood Mac. I listen to everything - to things I don't understand, like Chab Khaled and Paolo Conte because I think their music is sexy. I have a very dark voice so I am always trying to find ways to lighten things up."

Sentimental is Tanita’s sixth studio album and features 10 new songs and a unique vocal collaboration with Nick Lowe who sings on two of the tracks. “I wanted to get back to things I had forgotten, fundamental ideas about keeping things simple and interesting and looking at how the voice sits with other instruments”, says Tanita, “Ideas I felt I lost but which maybe I just knew naturally when I was seventeen." The track listing includes ‘ Play Me Again’ and ‘My Love',‘Don’t Let The Cold’, ‘Every Day Is New’, and the concluding track, ‘Heart In Winter’.

In the fickle, pop perceptions of consumerism, Tikaram faded away in 1998. With the release of Sentimental it is Tanita's opportunity to reincarnate before the public eye. It is a different day, an impatient, tense, superficial age, but Tikaram sounds and appears to be up to the stuff of successful reinvention and her optimism reflects her eagerness to take on the challenge. "They (the cuts on Sentimental) are very human songs I hope. I like to think that by the end of a track a listener can imagine me winking at them, smiling.” The 18-year-old who began with a hit song wrapped around cross-cultural visions of indigenous suffering has returned at the ageless age of 35 to pluck the chords of full-gamut human emotion.

TANITA TIKARAM ALBUM DISCOGRAPHY:

ANCIENT HEART (1988)Reprise 25839
Good Tradition|2:49
Cathedral Song|2:51
Sighing Innocents|3:31
I Love You|2:45
World Outside Your Window|4:52
For All These Years|4:52
Twist in My Sobriety|4:50
Poor Cow|1:5
He Likes the Sun|5:26
Valentine Heart|4:04
Preyed Upon|5:03

THE SWEET KEEPER (1990)Reprise 26091
Once and Not Speak|4:44
Thursday's Child|3:
It All Came Back Today|6:00
We Almost Got It Together|4:01
Consider the Rain|5:15
Sunset's Arrived|5:06
Little Sister Leaving Town|3:57
I Owe All to You|4:30
Love Story|3:17
Harm in Your Hands|6:28

EVERYBODY'S ANGEL (1991) Reprise 26486
Only the Ones We Love|2:53
Deliver Me|3:58
This Story in Me|3:14
To Wish This|4:20
Mud In Any Water|3:46
Sunface|3:55
Never Known|2:44
This Stranger|3:12
Swear By Me|3:23
Hot Pork Sandwiches|3:52
Me in Mind|3:25
Sometime With Me|2:54
I Love the Heaven's Solo|2:51
I'm Going Home|3:42

ELEVEN KINDS OF LONELINESS (1992)Reprise 26835
You Make the Whole World Cry|3:37
Elephant|3:58
Trouble|3:55
I Grant You|2:31
Heal You|4:26
To Drink the Rainbow|3:19
Out on the Town|3:16
Hot Stones|2:59
Men & Women|3:08
Any Reason|3:36
Love Don't Need No Tyranny|4:59
Way That I Want You, The|3:44

2 METER SISSIES, VOL. 1 (Various Artists) (1991)Varagram VCD 474722
Track: Little Sister Leaving Town|3:48

LOVERS IN THE CITY (1995) EastWest 5409-8804
I Might Be Crying
Bloodlines
Feeding The Witches
Happy Taxi
My Love Tonight
Lovers In The City
Yodelling Song
Wonderful Shadow
Women Who Cheat On The World
Leaving The Party

THE BEST OF TANITA TIKARAM (1996) EastWest 0630151062
Twist in my sobriety
Cathedral song
world outside the window
Good tradition
Love don’t need no tyranny
Little sister leaving town
Only the ones we love
You make the whole world cry
Trouble
Wonderful shadow
Men and women
I might be crying
Happy taxi
My love tonight
Lovers in the city
And I think of you - e penso a te
Twist in my sobriety (tikaramp radio)

THE CAPPUCINO SONGS (Mother) 1998 537 227 -2 MUMC 9801
Stop Listening
Light up the world
Amore Si
Back in your arms
The cappuccino song
I don't wanna lose at love
The day before you came
If I Ever
I like this
I knew you

SENTIMENTAL (April 20, 2005)
Something new
Play me again
My Love
Don't shake me up
Everyday is new
Love is just his world
Don't let the cold
Forever
Got to give you up
Heart in winter

Koyaanisqatsi: Cinema In Balance

2005-03-23T20:38:00.000-08:00

Meaning "life out of balance/life of moral corruption or turmoil" in Hopi, Koyaanisqatsi is film director Godfrey Reggio's non-narrative 1983 cinematic indictment of Western society's destruction of the environment, as well as a mesmerizing movie masterpiece.

What unfolds upon the screen is an 87-minute vision of urban blight juxtaposed with resplendent images of nature. Utilizing the earth as its canvas, cinematographer Ron Fricke might lead an unsuspecting viewer to erroneously conclude that the film's intent is to solely contrast creation with metropolitan artifice.Skyscrapers, as replicants of western U.S canyons, reach imploringly to the heavens, seeking answers from God. The frozen expressions of scurrying city-dwellers, captured as the camera momentarily stops, suggest the spiritual impoverishment of deadening technological dominance.

The incisive musical score by avant-garde composer Philip Glass provides Koyaanisqatsi transcendent strength. Dirge-like organ music gradually becomes repetitive musical incantation. Dark bass vocals suggestive of Gregorian chant are punctuated by church-like arpeggios as the word "koyaanisqatsi" repeats hypnotically.

Visually Koyaanisqatsi is sumptuous and staggering. Clouds whisk across New Mexican deserts, sunbathers recline against the backdrop of a foreboding nuclear plant, and the majesty of Arizona's Grand Canyon prevails over New York City high-rises. An aura of mystery evolves. The music courts and compliments each turn, never faltering.

Travelers rushing in and out of Grand Central Station, interwoven with choked traffic on the Los Angeles freeway and stock footage of an exploding rocket evolve into a kaleidoscopic ballet of filmic frenzy.A particularly humorous yet unnerving scene shows a row of sausages canned on a rapid-fire production line juxtaposed against humans racing down escalators. In contrast, lingering shots of rocks, clouds, and desert terrain, generally serene, convey a sense of isolation and mystic presence.

Military aircraft no longer in use, an outdated United Airlines logo, obsolete computers, and even Pac Man, date the film. However, the power of the movie's warnings about human destruction of the earth has not faded with its 1980s pop culture imagery.It is remarkable that a film as abstract as Koyaanisqatsi succeeded commercially. Grossing $50,000 in its first 10-day trial run, the filmmakers managed to land distribution with the independent company Island Alive. Koyaanisqatsi was followed by the sequels Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi and the shorts Anima Mundi and Evidence. The United States Library of Congress deemed Koyaanisqatsi "culturally significant" and in 2000 selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Director Reggio himself is an anomaly. The 6' 6" native of New Orleans entered the Christian Brothers Teaching Order at age 14 and later became interested in Buddhism. Reggio also was employed as a grade school teacher, worked with Santa Fe street gangs, and eventually founded the Clinica de la Gente.

Filmmakers would do well to follow Reggio's storytelling style and to heed the warning stated in the Hopi prophecy, which translates as:

"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.
Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs
spun back and forth in the sky.
A container of ashes might one day be thrown
from the sky, which could burn the land
and boil the oceans."

A paraphrase of the Hopi prophecy is in order: "If directors continue to produce commercial junk they will invite disaster."

Perhaps if Hollywood stops polluting the silver screen, we can avert nuclear annihilation. At the very least, we might achieve some artistic balance and wipe out the stifling influences of movie monstrosities starring the likes of Britney Spears.

(Film director Godfrey Reggio prepares for a sequel to the Katsi trilogy)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pine Ridge Post-Script: The Assassination of Anna Mae Aquash

2005-03-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

She would have turned sixty this year, but in the temporal world of human affairs she will ever be remembered as a vibrant, impassioned thirty-year-old mother and political activist. Born Anna Mae Pictou on March 27, 1945, in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Canada, Aquash, a full-blood Micmac Indian, became in death an enigmatic symbol of the sorrowful savagery which befell South Dakota and the entire Native American community in the 1970s.

Francis Thomas Levi abandoned a pregnant Mary Ellen Pictou in 1944, leaving the expectant mother to support her new baby on the skills of a third grade education. Anna Mae was born into a life of abject poverty and disease (suffering from tuberculosis of the eye and lung) but spared a childhood of emotional deprivation when her mother married Noel Sapier, a Micmac traditionalist, in 1949. Sapier moved the family to the small Micmac settlement of Pictou's Landing, Nova Scotia, where he taught Anna Mae the value of Micmac heritage while working farmhand jobs and creating native craftworks. The positive paternal influence proved to be short-lived when Sapier died of cancer in 1956.

Unable to cope with the loss of her husband, Mary Ellen impulsively married Wilford Barlov, a Micmac from a neighboring reserve, and abandoned Anna Mae and her older siblings. Needing to earn money for survival, and thus unable to remain in school, Anna Mae became a mirgrant farmhand, harvesting potatoes and berries, before moving to Boston with her boyfriend, fellow Micmac Jake Maloney, at age 17. By the mid-'60s and married to Maloney, Anna Mae had given birth to two daughters, Denise and Deborah. The family eked out a living while honoring the roots of their Micmac heritage, guided by Jake's step-uncle, one of the remaining traditionalists.

In 1968 Anna Mae, who had separated from Maloney, supplemented a factory job by working for the Boston Indian Council helping young, urban Native Americans struggling with issues of self-esteem and alcohol abuse. Hearing of a rights protest planned by AIM (American Indian Movement) leader Russell Means, Anna Mae felt strongly moved to participate. The protest entailed demonstrating against the "official" version of Thanksgiving by converging on the Mayflower II, a reconstruction of the Pilgrims' vessel.

Following her first taste of overt political activism, Anna Mae moved her daughters to Bar Harbor, Maine, where she taught in the Teaching and Research in Bicultural Education School Project (TRIBES). The program sought to equip the upcoming Native generation by combining standard, cross-cultural classroom curriculum with Indian history and practices. The effort proved very successful but was discontinued in 1972 when program funding was cut. Returning to Boston, Anna Mae attend Wheelock College and worked at a daycare center in the predominantly African-American Massachusetts community of Roxbury. When recognized for her work in Roxbury with an offer of a full scholarship to Brandeis University, Anna Mae declined, preferring to continue her work in the African American and Native communities, a decision that would prove fateful as cultural and personal influences converged in her life.

Meeting Nogeeshik Aquash, a Chippewa artist from Ontario, Anna Mae found a partner who embodied her sense of Native community combined with her personal needs as a woman and mother. Together they raised Anna Mae's daughters and became staunch activists, marching in Washington, D.C. during the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties.

The following year, in April, 1973, the couple's sense of duty was aroused by the fervor stirred when AIM occupied the settlement of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which had been the site of an infamous massacre of Minneconjou Sioux by General George Custer's regiment of the Seventh Cavalry. The purpose of the Wounded Knee sit-in was to take a stand against the corrupt administration of tribal chairman of the Oglala Sioux, Richard "Dick" Wilson. Anna Mae and Nogeeshik participated in the occupation of Wounded Knee by getting food and medical supplies to the squatters. According to biographical information posted at http://www.nativemetiswomenscouncil.com, "they camped at Crow Dog's Paradise, the home of medicine men Henry Crow Dog and Leonard Crow Dog. Later, inside one of the stores at Wounded Knee, Anna Mae would help deliver Pedro, the first son of Mary Brave Bird, who would soon marry Leonard Crow Dog. On April 12, 1973, Pictou married Nogeeshik Aquash in a traditional Lakota (Sioux) ceremony presided over by Nicholas Black Elk and Wallace Black Elk."

Following the siege at Wounded Knee, in which the U.S. government indicted AIM leaders Dennis Banks, and Russell Means, Anna Mae participated in the Menominee Indian seizure of an abandoned Alexian Brothers Catholic Monastery in Gresham, Wisconsin. The incident, designed to protest the termination of Menominee federal Indian status, galvanized Anna Mae's Indian Rights militancy and placed her squarely in the F.B.I. spotlight of suspectetd subversives.

1975 proved to be the turning point for Aquash. She spent time on the Native frontlines of the American west, first with AIM security chief Leonard Peltier at a conference in Farmington, New Mexico designed to aid Navajos in their protest of mining in the Four Corners region, and then at Pine Ridge to organize security for Lakota protestors. Conjunct with Anna Mae's stay in South Dakota, two F.B.I. agents, Jack Collier, and Ronald Williams, and a young Indian, Joseph Stuntz, were killed when violence erupted on June 26, 1975, at Wounded Knee.

In September, 1975, Aquash was arrested during a raid on the Rosebud Reservation. Anna Mae jumped bail and fled to the Port Madison Reservation in Washington state. Near the Idaho border, Aquash was again arrested while attempting to leave the reservation by van. Extradited to South Dakota to face charges from the raid at Rosebud, as well as federal charges of transporting and possessing firearms and dynamite, she again fled on November 24, 1975. It was the last time any of her friends or family would see her alive.

Anna Mae's badly decomposed body was discovered by a Lakota rancher on the edge of his property near Pine Ridge. The autopsy, performed at the Pine Ridge Public Health Service cited the cause of death as "exposure", and due to the state of the cadaver's deterioration she was initially listed as a "Jane Doe" and buried anonymously, but not before her hands were cut off and sent to Washington in a further effort to ascertain identity. A week later it was determined that the hands belonged to Anna Mae Aquash and after exhumation and re-examination of the corpse
the death was officially ruled a homicide when a .32 caliber bullet hole was discovered at the base of the skull.

Burial services were performed at the Pine Ridge Reservation in March, 1976, presided over by a tribal medicine man. Anna Mae's body was wrapped in a traditional star quilt and more than one hundred people braved the bitter winter weather to pay homage to the woman whose tombstone is marked with the words "Women Warrior at Wounded Knee." Anna Mae has since been honored in literature in writer Johanna Brand's The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash published by Lorimer in 1978, as well as in the words of Native American folksinger Buffy Sainte-Marie in her song Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee:

"My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she'd died of exposure
Loo loo loo loo loo"

After 29 years and countless speculation about who was responsible for the death of Anna Mae Aquash, a federal jury, in Rapid City, South Dakota, convicted Arlo Looking Cloud of the first-degree murder of Pictou-Aquash. In December 2003, John Graham was also arrested in Vancouver as an accomplice in the killing of Pictou-Aquash. It has been speculated that Anna Mae was silenced because she knew intimate truths about the identities of those responsible for the deaths of the F.B.I. agents at Wounded Knee in 1975.

Perhaps the most incisive eulogy to the life and works of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash can be expressed in her own words of steely indignation and commitment: "These white people think this country belongs to them. They don't realize that they are only in charge right now because there's more of them than there are of us. The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedy-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians."

The Erotic Elysium of Jennifer Charles

2005-03-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

Her countenance is the breath you feel upon your neck as darkness swallows your soul. She would slay a succubus with a whisper, the demon's victim taken as her lover. Waking becomes the nightmare which steals you from the blessed meadows of death's sweet dream. Words like smooth fingers born of smoke undress your psyche, exposing wanton desire. A lotus blooms and drowns in bloody tears, salty steam wafting from sanguine droplets. Departed spirits rise from the dust of deceased lovers as she telepaths her unspoken intention: "I want to bleed your cedar."

If actresses Traci Lords (Cry-Baby, Blade) and Juliet Landau (Ed Wood, "Drusilla" of TV's Buffy The Vampire Slayer) birthed a daughter together she would look like sultry songstress Jennifer Charles. Charles, a Washington, D.C. native born on November 15, in the year of the surrealist torch singer, was raised in an eclectic, free-thinker's household. With a vamp vocalist mother and a jazz-loving dee-jay father, Charles, nursed on the musical influences of Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and Trouble Funk, as well as classic standard soloists such as Anita O'Day, and Mel Torme, has developed a tuneful terpsichore which is searingly sensual yet wholly uncategorizable. Part Lydia Lunch, Diamanda Galas, and Deborah Harry, Charles' steamy repertoire also conjurs references to David Bowie, Cocteau Twins, and Kraftwerk.

Charles spent her high school years at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts after which she pursued a BFA in drama at New York University. According to Charles' own bio at http://www.elysianmusic.com/residents.html, during this period she acted in off-off Broadway theatre, played in a band in college called Prayer Box, started doing readings of her poetry at places like St Marks Church, Dixon Place, and X Funeral Home. She also occasionally did strange jazz gigs, curated a performance series at The Knitting Factory, performed with Negativland, worked with the homeless back in DC in a project called Voices From the Street, narrated by Martin Sheen, worked as an artists model, and improvised as a bartender.

Teaming with guitarist Oren Bloedow, a master musician who has worked with the iconic Brian Wilson, enigmatic experimentalist John Zorn, Dog's Eye View, Jewel, and the Lounge Lizards, Charles co-founded the group Elysian Fields, a smoky, sensual, yet virginally smooth, existentially lonely-at-midnight come-hither band which made a stunning mid-1990s debut, a self-titled MCA EP (Elysian Fields), much-lauded by alternative college audiences as well as the fickled fanzine followers of everything fantastique and trendy. One could easily picture the group's music heard as the soundtrack to the film noir features of the 1940s and 1950s.

Blessedly, the talents of both Charles and Bloedow (who appeared as a band member in the 1992 film documentary John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards Live in Berlin) originate from a creative core timelessly untouched by "fifteen minutes of fame" epithets. Lest listeners think Charles' brand of hypnotic vocal hypersexualia (what some have termed as a "musical wet dream") is a studio-derived performance prop or a consciously contrived play-act, one wave of the voluptuous vibration emanating from Charles' vocal chords should be sufficient evidence of her erotically empathic effect. In the song Rolling (from the 1996 Elysian Fields CD Bleed Your Cedar, an ode to a lover's sexual intentions, the lyrics seem to breathlessly evolve from the singer's driving desire and pervasive passions:

I wanna steam you open
Wanna swim your ocean
We would fly
I wanna suck your motions
Exorcise devotions
Never die
And growing you inside the star's eye
You fascinate the loops with open belt
If dreams were we
I'd be the sea
And you're some crazy fisherman
Your line's on fire
You're caught in my tide
Your sky's exspiring
You're rolling again
I wanna let you see it
Wanna truly free it
You and I
I wanna bleed your cedar
Until it gives me fever and I'm high
And knowing you, you'll ride the far side
You liberate the moon from it's hung shelf
If dreams were we, I'd take the lead
You're down on your knees
The wave is rising
A blink is all you need
Now you're inside me
Rolling again

With the release of their 2000 LP Queen of the Meadow, Elysian Fields' classically-inspired, pre-Goth sensibilities enticed listeners into a darkly enchanted mystic dimension of supplication and release. Instead of surrounding and enslaving the audience, Bloedow's instrumentals deconstruct claustrophobic notions of subservience, creating a perfect foil for Charles' allure as passive dominatrix extraordinaire. Waxing grim reaper poetic ("Never be ashamed my love, our hearts are open graves") Charles transmutes death's darkness into promised plateaus of rebirth. The title track, Queen of the Meadow, illustrates the mythic joy of an emotionally vampiric relationship:

I'm in league
With the queen of the meadow
I'm in league
With the queen of the meadow
I bring her stars to feed her thirst
I bring her seed to swallow
She rides bareback through it all
And whispers by the willow
The queen of the meadow
With her widow?s heart she sings her song
To the stars she carries on
And it?s peaceful in her loving arms
Peaceful in the meadow
Peaceful in her loving arms
Peaceful in the meadow
I'm in league
With the queen of the meadow
And as the sun I rise upon
The pastures of her charms
Riveted to her mystery beds
Drawn to her fragrant sorrow
The queen of the meadow
With her widow?s heart she sings her song
To the stars she carries on
And it's peaceful in her loving arms
Peaceful in the meadow
Peaceful in her loving arms
Peaceful in the meadow
And I'm burning in her fiery fields
And I'm sleeping in the meadow
And I'm burning in her loving arms
The queen of the meadow

Trancing in the twilight of feral pheromones and romantic madness, Elysian Fields's most recent release, Dreams That Breathe Your Name (2004), features the track exotica of such cuts as Narcosmicoma, and Shrinking Heads In The Sunset. Langorous but not lurid, after a decade of collaborative development with Bloedow, Jennifer Charles, flowing with energy of the kundalini, has transcended the confinement of typification, floating artfully and intelligently through the dreamscape of universal libido.

Rectifying Reggie: Archie's Arrogant Arch-Rival

2005-03-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

("Mantle the Magnificent" on the prowl)

He's the "Rogue of Riverdale High School", that ribald, rich-kid rat with the recurrently randy smile. He plays guitar better than Greg Brady, and his band, The Archies, which had the longest-running #1 pop record, Sugar Sugar, in 1969, is more famous than Josie and the Pussycats. Having been 17 since 1942 he's America's oldest and most famous high school junior, and though sometimes raunchy and repugnant it's time to redeem the reputation of Reginald Mantle III.

Texas-born, raven-haired Reggie, the thorn in the side of all-American redheaded boy-next-door Archie Andrews, first stormed pop culture's spotlight when he appeared in Jackpot Comics #5 in 1942. Reggie's arrival in Riverdale (the fictional representation of Meredith, New Hampshire, home of Archie illustrator Bob Montana) was oddly ambiguous. A character named Scotty, clearly Reggie's ringer, wants to induct Archie into Riverdale High's Philomathian Club but the gesture of friendship turns out to be a front for the appearance of Scotty's twin/doppelganger, the mighty Mantle. Reggie's endless scheme to steal the affection of Archie's girlfriend, Veronica Lodge, is evidenced by his cameo appearance in the same issue as he chauffeurs the brunette beauty about town.

Archie, who had first appeared December 22, 1941, in issue #22 of MLJ Magazine's Pep Comics as a cartoon counterpart to filmdom's Andy Hardy character, is an affable, somewhat bumbling kid who could charm the cookies off the plate of any grandmother in smalltown America. His dating status personnifies the wet dream of every red-blooded teen male with his juggling of affection between vampish Veronica Lodge, a sophisticated snob, and pert, athletic, blonde Elisabeth "Betty" Cooper. Archie needs the intrusive envy of Reggie to steer him from the complacency and boredom of his effortless popularity.

Born under the sign of Aries, Reggie is the consummate competitor. Egotistical, narcissistic, self-smitten, Reggie constantly admires his wolfishly debonair good looks in a pocket mirror. An accomplished athlete and impeccable dresser, with never a hair out of place, triumph and perfection are not enough for this would-be future fraternity president. No one can trust him. Reggie is the classic trickster archetype, placing the perverse pleasure of petty practical jokes ahead of social status. Perhaps this is because of the ego-syntonic structure of Reggie's homelife where father Ricky Mantle is a wealthy publishing magnate while mother is depicted as anonymous, unemployed, and without a distinct persona.

Despite his caustic, sassy, wisecracking air, Reggie is not an elitist. Given his family's community standing and bank account he could choose to treat Archie and the gang as penniless plebians. He gravitates toward their unaffected modalities, drawn to the earthiness of middle-class suburbia. Unlike Veronica, who holds her debutante breeding over the heads of her poorer peers, Reggie, albeit annoyingly, tries to assimilate. His stint as lead guitarist in The Archies seems motivated by fun rather than fame (he already has the fortune).

("Hey Ronnie, wanna come over after school and see all my beautiful self-portraits?")

Ever the derisive devil, Reggie is also a daredevil when it comes to dating. Periodically he puts the moves on Midge Klump, the cutesy gal pal of dimwitted Moose Mason, a likeable and very large lummox who could make mincemeat of Mantle with the tap of his pinky. Generally though he's content with vying for the affections of Veronica and Betty, and usually just to irk the amiable Archie. Reggie's number one love is Reggie, and he never lets anyone forget it.

Reggie's cocky contribution to the entire Archie world helped turn the comic book into a daily newspaper strip in 1947, with artist Montana still at the illustrating helm, along with series creator John L. Goldwater. Eventually "Mantle the Magnificent" (his chosen moniker) acquired his own self-titled monthly comic book.

According to archivist Don Markstein at Toonopedia, "starting in the 1960s, the Life with Archie series experimented with adventure-story motifs. "The Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E." placed him and his friends in the world of Bond-style high-living secret agents, and in "Pureheart the Powerful", they were cast as superheroes. The latter series, which included Jughead as Captain Hero, Betty as Superteen and Reggie as Evilheart, was awarded its own title in 1966. Archie As Pureheart the Powerful lasted six issues, and its second-order spin-off, Jughead as Captain Hero, ran seven. All of them, as well as the original Life with Archie appearances, are now considered high-grade collector's items."

Prolific pop recording artist Ron Dante owes a huge chunk of his career to Reggie and the crew. Dante, along with singer Andy Kim, fronted for Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones, while songwriter Toni Wine covered the Betty and Veronica duites. A series of 45RPM Archies records followed on the Calendar and Kirshner record labels, including the wildly successful bubble gum classic Sugar Sugar, which was the top Billboard pop tune of 1969.

Reggie has also been recognized and revered in the realm of computer technology, with a protocol search engine, designed to troubleshhot Internet bugs, named after him. The system, which also incorporates Reggie's pals Archie and Veronica as separate search engines, was designed and implemented in 1990 by McGill University students in Montreal.

Alice A. Bailey: Of Heaven, Hell, and The Hierarchy

2005-03-08T14:50:00.000-08:00

Orthodox Christianity is not the usual breeding ground for ribald occultism. But when matters of the soul intervene, the linear human mind can be confronted with greater dualities than those posed by the traditional religious concepts of heaven and hell. No mortal being of the 20th Century knew this better than Alice A. Bailey, an evangelist who reluctantly became a swami's scribe.

Alice A, Bailey, born Alice Ann La Trobe-Bateman, on June 16, 1880, in Manchester, England, was birthed into a wealthy, conservative Christian family. Her initial spiritual tenure, religiously dogmatic and fixed, clashed with her acquistive, probing intuion. The home environment, cloistered and strictly supervised through her father, an engineer, was one of adherence to authority and compliance to the prescribed social etiquette of a proper, aristocratic young lady. A pensive, moody child who grew to question the tenants of her Christian upbringing, Alice attempted suicide several times prior to the age of fifteen.

On June 30, 1895, while her family attended church, Alice was confronted in her home by a mysterious turban-bedecked gentleman. Though shocked at the stranger's sudden appearance, she listened as he spoke. In her book The Unfinished Autobiography, Alice described the incident as follows: "He told me there was some work that it was planned that I could do in the world but that it would entail changing my disposition considerably; I would have to give up being such an unpleasant little girl and must try to get some measure of self-control. My future usefulness to Him and to the world was dependent on how I handled myself and the changes I could manage to make. He said that if I could achieve real self-control I could then be trusted and that I would travel all over the world and visit many countries, "doing your Master's work all the time"... He added that He would be in touch with me at intervals of seven years apart." When the man vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, Alice concluded that he was a manifestation of Jesus Christ, thus inspiring her to seek a life of evangelical service.

Alice's duties as a missionary for the British Army took her to India where she met her first husband, serviceman Walter Evans whom she married in 1907. Emigrating to Hollywood, California, the Evans family expanded as Alice gave birth to three daughters. Walter Evans became an Episcopalian minister while Alice grew active in the Theosophical Society, an esoteric spiritual order founded by occultist Helena P. "Madame" Blavatsky. Blavatsky's teachings involved the concept of spirituality as a hierarchical network of enlightened masters.

Alice felt that she had a personal calling to Theosophy after recognizing a painting of Kut Humi (a spiritual adept oft-cited by Blavatsky) as the man who had appeared to her in her home in 1895. What was even more remarkable than pin-pointing the identity of Alice's enigmatic visitor was the fact that she discovered he had died before she was ever born. As if this were not enough to boggle the mundane mind of a former evangelical Christian, Alice found herself the subject of telepathic solicitation by a living Tibetan master named Djwhal Khul who first contacted her in 1919 to "employ" her as his psychic secretary.

Following the dissolution of her marriage to Evans, who left to preach Christian gospel in Montana, Alice met and married Foster Bailey, a lawyer and fellow Theosophist who had no issue believing in Alice's link to Kut Humi and Djwhal Khul or grasping the enormity of her life work. Together they founded the Arcane School in 1923, just one year after Alice started the Lucis Trust Publishing Company. In an article entitled The Arcane School - Its Esoteric Origins and Purposes, Foster Bailey wrote "This visit of the Master was for the purpose of implanting in her physical brain consciousness the essentials of the pattern of her life as it was to unfold. She was strong enough to have knowledge of the program of service to which on the inner plane she was already pledged and consecrated and the essentials of which were the chosen program of her own soul. She was at this time a senior disciple in the ashram of the Master K.H. (An ashram may be thought of as a center of living spiritual energy in the group life of the Hierarchy.) As the years have slipped by and I have learned to profit by the teaching I have personally received from her, I have come to understand better what a senior position in an ashram necessarily involves. This position is the key to all the work that she did. There are many factors involved, some of which we can speak of now. Through the teachings of the Tibetan many have learned much about these things and others share with me the knowledge of certain essentials that constitute our esoteric background as a group."

The work referred to by Foster Bailey entailed the telepathic transmission (from Djwhal Khul or D.K., his more familiar and veiled reference, to the mind of Alice A. Bailey) of nineteen esoteric books bearing such titles as A Treatise On Cosmic Fire, The Externalization of the Hierarchy, The Reappearance of the Christ, Glamour: A World Problem, and The Consicousness of the Atom. Many of the Bailey books came into prominence after the Flower Child era of the late 1960s when occult bookshops became en vogue. Each edition, published by Bailey's own Lucis Trust Company, is presented with a plain blue cover upon which the title of the volume appears along with the triangular insignia for the Arcane School. Bailey also composed four books entirely of her own creation, including The Unfinished Autobiography, which she was writing at the time of her death on December 15, 1949.

Controversy notwithstanding, fundamentalist Christians, and enraged Jews have decried Bailey's works as Satanic and anti-semitic. The root of the word "Lucis" in Lucis Trust's name is derived from that of Lucifer, which means "The one who brings light." Originally called Lucifer Trust, the name was ammended because of its misrepresented association with the Biblical Lucifer, or Devil incarnate. Bailey's Hebrew hot water results from excerpts published in Esoteric Healing in which it is written "Their religious history has been built around a materialistic Jehovah, possessive, greedy, and endorsing and encouraging aggression..." and "Today [1949] the law of racial karma is working and the Jews are paying the price [for evil done in past lives], factually and symbolically ..."

Nonetheless, Bailey's collaborative volumes are prime fodder in the field of New Age literature, with numerous Alice Bailey study and discussion groups in existence throughout the world. The basic premise of hierarchical spiritual evolution combined with the assertion that non-tangible souls as well as creation itself can be drived from gradated rays of light, each governing a period in human evolution, has proven compelling for many students of ancient wisdom.

Even the basic structure of astrology is revamped in the Bailey writings:

Perhaps the best summarization of Alice A. Bailey, the corporeal human entity, was expressed in her own words as she wrote of her astrological birth sign of Gemini in The Unfinished Autobiography: "Gemini people are also supposed to be chameleon-like in nature and changeable in quality and often double-faced. I am none of these, at least, in spite of many faults and it is possible that my rising sign saves me. Leading astrologers, to my amusement, to assign different signs as my rising sign - Virgo, because I love children and cooking, and "mothering" an organization; Leo, because I am very individual (by which they mean difficult and dominant) and also very self-conscious; and Pisces, because that sign is the sign of the mediator or the intermediary. I am inclined myself to Pisces, because I have a Pisces husband, because my very dear eldest daughter was also born in that sign and we always understood each other so well that we frequently used to quarrel. Also, I have definitely acted as an intermediary in the sense that certain teaching which the Hierarchy of Masters wanted to get out to the world during this century is contained in the books for which I have been responsible. Anyway, no matter what my rising sign, I am a true Gemini subject and that sign has apparently conditioned my life and circumstances."

The Rapture: Doing The Cinematic Limbo Rock

2005-03-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

The DVD cover claims that The Rapture goes where few films dare to go. Straight to heaven. Or, for lead character Sharon (Mimi Rogers), straight to hell. Well, almost. The technical definition of "rapture", according to Webster's is "A state of experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion" or "A mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things." The latter context relates to the end-of-the-world musings purported by fundamentalist Christianity.

For Sharon, a disaffected phone operator ("Business or residence?"), robotically tied to a soulless job by day, and an emotionally deadening nightlife of detached promiscuity (picking up nameless couples for sexual escapades), the end of the world is an every day event. An anonymous voice, timed for delivery as she gives out phone numbers to a blank public from a darkened cubicle, Sharon is modern day apathy incarnate.

Several of Sharon's co-workers form a secretive enclave, whispering amongst themselves. Overhearing the group speaking of their dreams of a smooth, seamless pearl whirling in a luminous void, Sharon finds herself drawn to them. Summoning up her courage and putting on a casual air, Sharon approaches the clique, only to be rebuffed: "You haven't seen the pearl. You can't fake it." The group explains that these are the last days of the earth as they allude to the guidance of "the boy", a young, black religious prophet whose visions predict the advent of armageddon.

Two christian missionaries visit Sharon's apartment and she plays along with their intentions, revealing her underlying hedonism. When the evangelists proclaim “You have to believe [in Christ]. If you don’t, you go to hell," Sharon unabashedly announces "“Well that doesn’t seem fair.” Sharon responds ascerbically when she again questions her furtive co-workers. “There are five billion people on the planet. There’s I don’t know how many religions. Why does some god of some little country of the Mediterranean have to be the god of everyone? Isn’t that a little arrogant? I mean really! The Buddhists get along OK without Jesus Christ. The Hindus get along OK without Jesus Christ. The Muslims seem to be getting along OK without Jesus Christ.” The co-workers' curt response is "But none of them are saved."

Returning to her clandestine nightlife, Sharon plunges into despair. After a round of personal degradation, an attempted suicide, and visions of the pearl, Sharon seeks salvation via religious conversion. Approaching a former sex-partner, an atheist named Randy (David Duchovny), she extends rebirth to rescue. Randy tosses aside Sharon's newfound spiritual insights with terse skepticism. "The world’s a disaster. We have no power to make it better. You hate your job, you hate your life, but you want to feel special. Instead of letting me do that, you’re rushing off to something that's not even there...It's just a drug. You’re in pain. Instead of doing heroin, you’re doing God.” Nonetheless, Randy yearns for human connection, the two become romantically involved, convert to Christianity, wed, and give birth to a daughter, Mary (Kimberly Cullum).

Following Randy's murder at work by a disgruntled employee, Sharon flees to the desert with Mary, recreating Christ's forty days and forty nights spiritual quest. Certain that the second coming of Jesus is imminent, mother and daughter pitch camp and wait for the apocalypse. Befriended by patrolman Deputy Foster Madison (Will Patton), who provides blankets and candy, Sharon remains detached, staunch in her affirmation that the Rapture is near. As their resources dwindle and it becomes clear that the earth's life-span has been extended, a desperate Sharon steals food from the drive-up window of a burger joint. When Mary suggests that she and her mother simply die and go to heaven to be with Randy, Sharon says "Let's give God one more chance."

Disillusioned, embittered, exhausted, and feeling utterly abandoned, Sharon views her situation as hopeless and shoots Mary in the back of the head. When Deputy Madison stops Sharon as she speeds down an interstate at 100 MPH and asks where Mary is, Sharon breaks down, tearfully explaining that she had to kill her because as a murder victim she would be allowed into the kingdom of Heaven. Conversely, according to Sharon's assessment, she could not take her own life (though she nearly does) as suicides are not allowed through St. Peter's Gates and she must wait out her time to be judged during the impending final hour or face an eternity without a heavenly family reunion.

It is at this juncture that director Michael Tolkin could have taken a rationalist's way out by passing Sharon off as a religious zealot gone mad. Surely the dreams of the pearl, the belief in the words of the child prophet, the religious conversion, and the ultimate collapse of faith are symptomatic of a bi-polar personality in need of Zoloft. But the apocalypse indeed arrives and The Rapture lifts all, including Sharon, toward judgement in a mid-realm Purgatory.

Criticism of sparse Special Effects aside, the minimalist depiction of the apocalypse is aptly mysterious and foreboding. Sharon, who stops her ascent to Heaven through sheer self-will, finds herself in a literal void where she must pledge loving allegiance to God or face an eternity in limbo. When Mary's spirit appears to Sharon and Foster, the child asks "Do you love God for giving you the gift of life?" Foster answers in the affirmative and promptly vanishes as his soul is transported to Heaven. But Sharon, ever defiant, questions God by asking Mary "Why should I love a God who would allow me to destroy the one thing I loved the most in life?" Sharon's implication that humans are God's toys, consigned to blind faith, is bolder than most earthly feminist contention. And the consequence of her final decision reaches the historical core of theological debate.

It is surprising that the Religious Right did not seek to have The Rapture banned as it could be considered the ultimate in cynical anti-religious propaganda, a sort of pedantic paganist blow to the Christianity of Mel Gibson. The Passion Of The Christ plays on the viewer's agonized emotions as aroused by the sight of Jesus's sadistic torture at the hands of his executioners, underscoring the temporal impact of salvation through martyrdom. The Rapture depicts the brutal but unsuccessful bludgeoning of the human spirit's right to challenge the rules of the soul as decreed by the Creator. Thus in Passion Of The Christ the martyrdom of a spiritual entity, while in The Rapture, the martyrdom of a human entity. Technically imperfect but ideologically compelling, The Rapture poses paradoxical questions about the ultimate questioning of authority.

(Mimi Rogers enjoys the company of a pre-X-Files David Duchovny in the 1991 Fine Line film The Rapture)

Shelby Flint: Liquid Silk Angel

2005-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

Shelby Flint still has an angel on her shoulder, and she may have a slew of lucky pennies and four leaf clovers, but her greatest charm of all is that she possesses a voice of liquid silk.

Born September 17, 1939, in North Hollywood, California, Flint, whose name may not be household common, is as seminal a part of the world music scene as Alicia Keys, U2, The Beatles, or The Rolling Stones. Superstar folk-singer Joni Mitchell paid homage to Flint in a recent Mirabella Magazine interview by stating simply, "I started off copying a girl named Shelby Flint." Mitchell was referring to Flint's 1961 pop hit Angel On My Shoulder, an ethereally soft, lilting tune which displays the naïve-yet-alluring idealities of a young woman who saves lucky pennies, four-leaf clovers, and who wants "a love that lingers and is stronger through and through."

Renowned Jazz critic Leonard Feather describes Flint as a "technically flawless performer with a pure sound and a wide range." As testimony to this statement, a review of Flint's career-to-date shows that she has recorded albums in the folk, pop, disco, and jazz genres and has performed with musicians ranging from Chick Corea and Al Jarreau to jazz purists like Tim Weston and Gregg Karukas.

When Flint began her recording career on the Valiant record label as a teenager, she had already mastered classical piano and acoustic guitar, having studied both since the age of six. Her lyrical balladry on the song House of the Rising Sun in 1963 preceded the rock hit version by the British group The Animals by one year.

Flint's foray into the world of film yielded a voice-acting stint as "Laine" in the 1978 television special Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas In July, as well as theme songstress for 1973's The Borrowers, 1977's The Rescuers, and 1978's The Islander. Flint has also stretched the angel wings of her talent as a set dresser on the 1994 feature film Payback.

In 1981, Flint's work in the areas of jazz, latin, and R & B music won her a NARAS "Most Valuable Player" nomination and opened the door to an on-going focus upon jazz. In 1982 Flint released an album entitled You've Been On Mind upon which she demonstrated her skills as a vocalist and instrumentalist, accompanying herself on her Fender-Rhodes guitar.

Flint's most personal work has been in collaboration with Producer/Guitarist Tim Weston. Their 1992 Jazz album Providence features tracks such as The Lady Weeps a sweetly passionate cry for the end of racial tension in Los Angeles. Interestingly, Lady incorporates a paraphrasing of Flint's earliest work Angel On My Shoulder in the lines "Angels we have heard, angels we have known." The angels in this instance refer to victims of hate crimes.

Currently Flint tours on the Jazz circuit, appearing in festivals in areas as diverse as Monterey, Maui, Florida, Catalina Island, Delaware, and Europe. Truly this musical icon has become the angel on contemporary music's shoulder.

Harpers Bizarre: Surrealist Sixties Soundwaves

2005-02-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

They were the spawn of a musical mixed marriage between the surf-tune genre and bombastic psychedelia. Simplisitcally underrated and miscast under the moniker of "Sunshine Pop", Harpers Bizarre was a complex, eclectic experiment which succeeded in enhancing the top 40 sound.

It started with The Tikis, an early '60s Santa Cruz beach band comprised of Ted Templeman (drums/vocals), Dick Scoppetone (guitar/vocals), Dick Yount (bass), and Eddie James (guitar). The Tikis released a string of amiable, surf-oriented songs and rode the wave to Warner Brothers when San Francisco disc-jockeys Tom Donahue and Bob Mitchell, sold their recording label, Autumn, in 1966. Adding drummer Jon Peterson of the pop-rock group The Beau Brummels to the lineup allowed Templeman to become the definitive frontman for the group.

Warner Brothers producer Lenny Waronker, having scored a hit, Sit Down I Think I Love You, with another former Autumn band, The Mojo Men, decided to revamp The Tikis' style to further access the burgeoning flower pop sound. After hearing Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme lp, Waronker set out to expand the duo's 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) and tailor it for The Tikis. Concurrently, the transformational influences of The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, and the incorporation of classical riffs, such as those used by the baroque-jazz Swingle Singers, were subliminally infiltrating the entire pop music industry.

Session musician Leon Russell (who later became a hit soloist in his own right), was called in to assist Waronker and The Tikis on their recording of 59th Bridge Street Song (Feelin' Groovy). The result, an elaborate 18-piece flute and string arrangement, with Tikis Templeman and Scoppetone on vocals, so transformed The Tikis' sound that it was decided that the group would change its name. After discarding suggestions such as The Power Struggle, The Bells Of St. Mary's, and The Atchdiocese, an ad agency executive proposed the name Harpers Bizarre, an exotic spin on the spelling of the popular magazine of the same name.

Harpers Bizarre's version of 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) floated to the lofty (and ironically appropriate) peak position of #13 on the Billboard charts in April, 1967, competing successfully with powerhouse acts such The Beatles, and Aretha Franklin. Following the group's first success with the Van Dyke Parks'-penned Come To The Sunshine, a perky piece of pop perfection which incorporated a Roaring Twenties bounciness, Harpers Bizarre transcended the one-hit-wonder shroud and became recognized as established hitmakers.

When considering the inevitable lp which followed Harpers Bizarre's first triumphs, producer Waronker aimed at upping the ante of camp quotient as regards material while retaining musical depth and purity. The group's squeaky-clean vocals proved to be the stuff of pristine pop parody when wrapped around the musical compositions of songwriter Randy Newman. Happyland, which tells of an imagined return to the idyll of summer street fairs of the 1890s, carried a deliciously sardonic edginess. In Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear, which tells the tale of a self-styled carnival act involving Smith and his pet bear, one can easily see Dumbo's circus act usurped by the evocative ursine imagery.

Continuing the successful rumble-seat-era atmosphere invoked with their first lp, Harpers Bizarre named their second album, Anything Goes, after their hit version of the Cole Porter tune. The Templeman/Scoppetone/Perry Botkin, Jr. arrangement played like an old-time Vaudeville comedy act, complete with sassy, kazoo-like whistles and player piano melodies.

Fluffernutter, fruit, and far-away fairy tale days were not the entire underbelly of Harpers Bizarre's works. Taking Native American jazzman Jim Pepper's classic peyote chant Witchi Tai To, and Rhythm and Blues artist Eddie Floyd's hit Knock On Wood, Harpers transformed each into mysterious, ethereal, choirlike odes to vision quests and sensuality.

After a short run in the sunny days of Summer Of Love pop, Harpers Bizarre disbanded in the early '70s. Ted Templeman stayed on at Warner Brothers, becoming an established producer working with artists such as Nancy Sinatra, Captain Beefheart, The Doobie Brothers, Little Feat, Van Morrison, and most notably Van Halen.

Today, the musical legacy of Harpers Bizarre is that of unique contribution to one of pop music's most experimental and individualistc creative Camelots. Adapting and integrating musical styles from earlier eras, unlike the oft-uninspired sampling and deadeningly repetitive drum machines of today, Harpers Bizarre helped move the music world through the post-pop-era of the Beatles and the British Invasion. Fluffy yet multi-layered, sweet but not saccharine, Harpers Bizarre's top 40 is the Bach and Beethoven of 20th Century hit music.

Jimmy Hatlo's Idiosyncratic Inferno: He Did It Every Time

2005-02-23T19:56:00.000-08:00

(Jimmy Hatlo proving that where there's smoke there's fire....Hellfire!)

Squeaking perverse sexual inuendo past McCarthy-era comic strip censorship boards was not a feat the average commercial cartoonist could successfully tackle in America during the 1950s. Unless, of course, the artist's name was Jimmy Hatlo. In 1953, and again throughout most of 1958, a supplemental panel accompanying Hatlo's hugely successful They'll Do It Every Time, appeared weekly in major U.S. newspaper publications. The cartoon subtext, entitled Hatlo's Inferno, depicted the future torments of souls sent to Hell for committing "sins".

Individual Inferno panels featured depraved depictions of punishments for such criminals as an annoying viewer rapidly changing the channels on a television set, or an unmindful train conductor blocking traffic by driving his train back and forth at a raiload crossing. The mortal no-no's were met with oft-bizarre and sadistic consequences, such as the channel changer, chained to a construction crane, being slowly dipped in and out of a vat of oil. To save himself from being eventually smothered he had to try to switch off a big screen TV as it flicked from channel to channel. In the foreground, a large, brutish, orange devil announced to a Hades Sightseeing Tour of human visitors (Dante's cartoon counterparts) that the victim would not succeed as the "off" switch was just beyond his reach. Of course the sinner is clad only in skimpy white boxers (after all, it is supposed to be Hell). But lest you think that nudity was never "shown", it was sometimes implied (always with a devil or an object standing in just the right position to cover the subject's unmentionables). The train conductor met an even more dastardly demise. With one arm and leg chained to the back of a conductor's train car and the other arm and leg chained to another conductor's train car, the hapless, boxer-clad sinner screamed in pain as the cars began to pull away in opposite directions. Jaunty red devil conductors in each car looked back at the victim and smiled evilly as they pulled a rope which allowed the train whistles to blow.

The most amazing thing was that this feature ran on SUNDAY, the day of Judeo-Christian worship. The idea was that somehow these panels were humorous and they tied in with the concept of spiritual punishment in the afterlife for indiscretions during mortal existence. At the height of its success in the late '50s, the series was named "Best Panel" by The National Cartoonist's Society.

James Cecil Hatlo was born in September, 1898, in Providence, Rhode Island, under the sometimes prudish astrological sign of Virgo. But Jimmy Hatlo was anything but a prude. On February 5, 1929 Hatlo, a sports cartoonist, first introduced the comic strip They'll Do It Every Time, a tribute to the peevish paradoxes and pratfalls inflected on everyday innocents by the boorish crackpots of society. The strip, which first appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin, was distributed nationally in 1936 by King Features Syndicate and still runs today, forty-two years after Hatlo's death.

(They'll Do It Every Time panels were created from suggestions sent it by readers; often they were accompanied with a cartoon figure of the artist giving a "tip of the Hatlo hat")

In the mid-1940s, owing to its immense popularity, They'll Do It Every Time became part of the mutoscope card series. Sold from vending machines for around two cents apiece, mutoscope cards were the forerunners of risque playing cards. Generally the subject matter focused upon naively suggestive cheesecake drawings of young women. The cards, printed on heavy illustration board, have endured through the decades and are oft-sought items on venues such as E-BAY. Hatlo's mutoscopes are among the most lasting and prized examples of the line.

Not without an affinity for straight humor, Hatlo took one of his recurring They'll Do It Every Time characters, Henry Tremblechin, and created an ongoing strip. What evolved was a wildly popular character named Little Iodine, Tremblechin's ever-mischievous daughter. The Little Iodine strip became so sought after that it evolved into a self-titled comic book a la Archie and Dick Tracy. In 1946, a Little Iodine feature film, directed by Reginald Le Borg, and starring Jo Anne Marlowe as Little Iodine, was released. In the movie, Little Iodine, the original Problem Child, tries to break up her parents' marriage, and put the axe to another young couples' romance. In the end she has a change of heart but not before wreaking total havoc. Interestingly enough, actress Irene Ryan, who would go on to fame as "Granny Clampett" in the Beverly Hillbillies TV series, portrayed Little Iodine's mother.

(Little Iodine at the piano...no doubt playing off-key...)

The year 1955 saw Hatlo's Inferno expand beyond its Sunday supplement size as an entire Avon paperback edition containing many of the earlier panels. The cover, extremely suggestive for a mainstream 1950s cartoon, depicted a naked nurse being chased through Hell by a pack of lusty, naked, syringe-wielding red devils. The needles, positioned near the devils' crotches, were aimed at the nurse's bare buttocks (which along with her breasts, were delicately covered by the steam).

(Nancy Nurse about to be nailed by naughty nogoodnik denizens of the inferno)

The inferno panels, which included sexual suggestiveness, nudity, near-nudity, brutal murders, maiming, and basic maleficence of all kinds, managed to appear under the guise of hokey humor and raunchy retribution. The series ended in 1958 when Hatlo decided to abruptly discontinue Hatlo's Inferno. Hatlo died on December 3, 1963, in San Francisco, and They'll Do It Every Time, the less sadistic but just as vengeful ode to payback for obnoxious individuals, continues its run helmed by artist Al Scaduto who took the strip over from Hatlo's successor, Bob Dunn.

The 4400: Sober Sci-Fi Sans Spielberg Sophism

2005-02-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

(People who inexplicably vanished over a sixty year spanse during the 20th Century, emerge un-aged from an orb of light which lands on Mt. Rainier)

When Joseph Force Crater, a respected U.S. court judge, disappeared without a trace on August 6, 1930, and became one of history's most famous missing persons, no one theorized that space beings were the culprits. It was concluded that syndicated crime figures had provided Crater with a new pair of cement shoes and had taken him for a swim. Having gone missing some seventeen years before the noted 1947 UFO sightings of pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mt. Rainier, Washington, the American public had not yet developed sufficient awareness of the possibility of extraterrestrials visiting earth to connect Judge Crater with the conspiracy theory lore associated with alien abduction.

Crater undoubtedly descended the ramp from film director Steven Spielberg's mother ship when it landed at Devil's Tower, Wyoming, in 1977. In an unabashedly sanitary nod to other-worldly benevolence, the aliens of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind are forgiven their intrusion upon the lives of myriad, unsuspecting humans, via intimations of unexplained altruism. Besides, they had really cool space crafts, and the little, asexual beings' tall, spidery leader, who looked to be a warm, kindly sort would never resort to the forced impregnation of human women or even the slaughter of South Park cattle. And Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), an Indiana telephone lineman who became "sunburned" and telepathic after his first UFO sighting, got to be the chief guest aboard the mother ship, presumably learning secrets that even the world's scientific leaders were not invited in on.

The USA Network television series The 4400, follows the thread of speculation surrounding mysterious disappearances straight to the core energy of the mother ship, wasting no time thumbing its nose at Spielberg's smarmy pretenses. A quixotic meteor is on a calamitous crash course with earth. As military intervention inexorably fails (in the form of avenging missiles), earth's leaders passively wait out imminent annihilation. The writers, Ira Steven Behr, Rene' Echevarria, and director Scott Peters, obviously versed in ufology history, place the point of impact at Mt. Rainier in the state of Washington. But instead of an apocalyptic explosion, a psychedelic ball of light, emitting an intense flash of energy, descends. Instead of childlike, doe-eyed space aliens, 4400 humans, missing over an individually varying 60-year spanse, emerge from the orb intact, unaged, and without memory of where they have been. The tone is somber, non-celebratory, and rife with passive hints of suppressed trauma.

Contemporary society, rendered paranoid by the New McCarthyist era of terrorism, does not welcome the returnees with open arms. Agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch), and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie) from the Department of Homeland Security, are deployed to interrogate and socially reintegrate the returnees. Baldwin, the Fox Mulder of the 21st Century, linked personally to the event through his nephew Shawn, a returnee, and his son Kyle, who has been in a 3-year coma since being repelled and left behind by the light, is intent on answers. Skouris, a sober but not humorless nor unattractive scientist, pragmatically sets out to unravel the mystery. Early suggestions of attraction between the two emerge after Baldwin's collapsing marriage is revealed.

The most enigmatic returnee is eight-year-old Maia Rutledge (Conchita Campbell), an unnervingly intuitive child taken while picking flowers in the 1946 California woods. Maia, whose family long since died, is placed with idealistic foster parents, but soon returns to government custody after a series of accurate predictions frighten the couple. Philosophically resigned to her sense of displacement, Maia exudes an air of knowing, suggesting she may remember where she went and what she did in the twinkling that encompassed 48 earth years. And unlike child actress Dakota Fanning's turn as the hybrid alien/human child Allison Clarke in the 2002 Spielberg-produced TV mini-series Taken, Campbell's unaffected characterization of Maia never exceeds the bounds of believability.

Orson Bailey (actor Michael Moriarity, familiar as a regular on TV's Law & Order), a successful lawyer who disappeared in 1979, returns to find his beloved wife Elizabeth (Sheila Paterson) a dying Alzheimer's patient. As his anger and rage escalate, Bailey finds himself possessed with horrifying telekinetic powers which he cannot control.

Richard Tyler (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), a black soldier involved with a white woman vanishes in 1951 during his stint in the Korean War. Tyler comes back to find himself inextricably emotionally linked to his courtesan's granddaughter, Lily Moore (Laura Allen), also an abductee. Moore, perhaps the most plaintive returnee, is rejected by her husband, who has remarried and who refuses to tell their 12-year-old daughter of her existence.

The deepest strengths of The 4400 lie in its discplined narrative arc and the emotional substance of its characters. Without the ongoing mythology surrounding the question of what the returnees endured while missing, the storyline would itself vanish into another, very predictable dimension. Hence no convenient little humanoids landing in the streets and back alleys of Seattle (where most of the returnees, who instinctively remain near where they reemerged, choose to stay).

Although The X-Files spin seems staged and distracts from the humanist coil of The 4400, the collective plight of the returnees, played out in the lives of key characters, is compelling enough to override the unnecessary science fiction artifice. Just as in "real life", the government, ever the watchdogs and militant do-gooders, is the most boorish element in what is otherwise thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking fare.

(the 4400 wander The Mall of America...)

Betty and Barney Hill: From Bedrock to The Beyond

2005-02-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

(Betty and Barney Hill with Delsey, 1961)

Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple from the pre-Civil Rights city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, like their cartoon namesakes Betty and Barney Rubble of the stone-age town of Bedrock, were probably no more equipped than their animated counterparts to grasp the concept that flying saucers and invaders from space could be real.

Like Greek God Atlas's seven daughters who morphed into the constellation of Taurus, Betty Hill also transformed into a heavenly star. Hill, born Eunice Elizabeth Barrett, June 28, 1919, in the rural New England hamlet of Newton, New Hampshire, became, along with hubby Barney, born July 20, 1922, in Newport News, Virginia, one of the most high profile, self-professed UFO abductees of the 20th Century.

On September 19, 1961, at 10:15 P.M., while returning from a Canadian vacation with their beloved dog Delsey, two hours of the Hills' memories were erased after the couple stopped at Indian Head, a remote resort area in Thornton, NH just off U.S. Route 3. The Hills, whose vehicle had been pursued by an airborne light, watched the luminous object through binoculars. When they saw that their stalker was a flat, pancake-shaped craft, rimmed with windows from which humanoid occupants stared back, the couple jumped into their car and sped away. Or so they thought.

Returning home to coastal Portsmouth, NH, the Hills gradually began to realize that they could not remember what happened to them during a two-hour period of their stop at Indian Head. Nightmares in which the couple found themselves aboard an exotic aircraft, surrounded and medically examined by other-worldly beings, disturbed the sleeping and waking hours of the Hills' lives. After receiving confirmation from Major Paul W. Henderson, of Portsmouth's Pease Air Force base, that a mysterious flying object appeared on radar over New Hampshire the night they stopped at Indian Head, the couple sought medical help through Boston-based psychiatrist/neurologist Dr. Benjamin Simon.

What emerged from numerous hypnotic regression sessions Simon conducted with the Hills became a landmark in alien abduction research as well as fodder for a thoughtfully written book from which a plausible made-for-TV movie emerged. Connecticut author John G. Fuller (who wrote the Incident At Exeter, which recounts multiple ufo sightings in the town of Exeter, New Hampshire in the fall of 1965) chronicled the Hills' close encounter of the third kind in his book The Interrupted Journey, giving world-wide exposure, and considerable credence to the couple's unnerving recovery of their repressed memories.

In the 1975 Universal Studios film The UFO Incident, acclaimed performers Estelle Parsons, and James Earl Jones, portrayed the Hills. The driving force behind the movie's production was actor Jones himself, who, having read Fuller's book, was eager to play the role of postal worker Barney Hill.

(Estelle Parsons, as Betty, and James Earl Jones, as Barney, wonder where Fred and Wilma are...)

While aboard their abductors' craft, Betty recalled being shown a "star map", which she was later able to draw after receiving post-hypnotic suggestion from Dr. Simon. The map, recreated in a 3-D model in 1966 by Marjorie Fish, a school teacher and astronomer, was later studied and enhanced by Professor Walter Mitchell of the Ohio State University, thus enabling the various points to be identified as Zeta Reticuli.

Barney, who was a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and the Rockingham County (NH) Community Action Program, died of a cerebral hemmorhage on February 25, 1969, fueling speculation amongst ufologists that his early demise was attributed to the medical examination performed on him by his captors.

Betty, a career social worker specializing in the field of adoption and foster parent training, who had became the grande dame of ufology, died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on October 17, 2004. Her desire had been to shed a positive light on the alien beings she encountered that long ago September night, but as times changed and interest in the subject became campy and commercialized, Betty, whose head was in the stars but feet planted firmly on the ground, grew tired of the unsought celebrity and plethora of claimed abductions. ''If you were to believe the numbers of people who are claiming this, it would figure out to 3,000 to 5,000 abductions in the United States alone every night,'' she said. ''There wouldn't be room for planes to fly.''

(A black cat with space alien eyes watches Betty and Barney from inside a Halloween pumpkin)

The Musical Mirth of Meri Wilson: "Hey Lolly, Lolly"

2005-02-13T19:22:00.000-08:00

Sappy, insipid, and Smile Button-semi-sweet as the '70s were, occasionally the corn was cute, even quixotically quirky, without being condescending. Such was the case in the charismatic confection of a frisky, fingers-did-the walking 45 called Telephone Man, novelty vocalist Meri Wilson's (the OTHER Meri Wilson; note the spelling of the first name) opus delicti to an amorous assault on the local AT&T lineman. The tune peaked at #18 on the Billboard charts in 1977 and earned Wilson the legacy of being one of Dr. Demento's favorite artists of all time.

Wilson, a military brat, was born June 15, 1949, in Nagoya, Japan, and was raised in Marietta, Georgia, where she studied piano and flute as a child. Continuing in the field of music, Wilson earned her BS in music from Indiana University and later garnered a Masters Degree in Music Education at Georgia State. After completing her roster of academics, the performing bug took her to Dallas, Texas, where she became a successful jingle singer, eventually writing the sexually suggestive yet simplistic and savory Telephone Man, which would enroll her as an official member in pop culture's fifteen minutes of fame club, and even bring a Boomer Castleman/Jim Rutledge-produced LP into manifestation.

After a hearty yet fruitless attempt at a follow-up to the one-TRICK-pony success of Telephone Man, the derivative Peter The Meter Reader, which failed to chart significantly, Wilson retired from entertainment. As the married Meri Edgemon, Wilson became a school teacher, working as a choral director in the Georgia public school system.

In 1995, with her children sufficiently raised, Wilson again opted for the entertainment world. Reigniting her talent as a songwriter, Wilson/Edgemon updated Telephone Man, transforming it into a latter-90s tune called The Internet Man, which appeared on a self-titled album released in conjunction with her revamped music career.

Sadly, the return to the limelight was short-lived. Wilson died in auto accident on December 28, 2002 when she lost control of her car on Highway 377 in Americus, Georgia during an ice storm. At the time of her death, Wilson/Edgemon was president of the Americus Arts Council and the Civic Chorus and had just arranged and directed the music for the "Cotton Patch Gospel" performance at the Rylander Theatre, receiving a state award for the project.

Telephone Man
Meri Wilson
(Wilson)

-Peaked at #18 in 1977 and was her only hit
-Sold over a million copies
-A "novelty" song
-Produced by Boomer Castleman and Jim Rutledge of "Bloodrock"

I went to my apartment on a Monday at one
A-singin' do lolly, lolly shicky bum, shicky bum
Started movin' in it on a Tuesday at two
A-singin' do lolly, lolly shicky do, shicky do
Wednesday at three I called the phone company, singin':
"Hey baby, put a phone in for me"
Thursday at four he came a-knockin' at my door, singin':

"Hey, baby, I'm your telephone man
You just show me where you want it and I'll put it where I can
I can put it in the bedroom, I can put it in the hall
I can put it in the bathroom, I can hang it on the wall
You can have it with a buzz, you can have it with a ring
And if you really want it you can have a ding-a-ling
Because-a hey baby, I'm your telephone man"

Can you believe that? And then he says:

"Now when other fellas call ya tell 'em how it all began"

Well...can you imagine?

My heart began a-thumpin' and my mind began to fly
And I knew I wasn't dealin' with no ordinary guy
So while he was a-talking I was thinkin' up my plan
Then my fingers did the walkin' on the telephone man

Singin' hey lolly, lolly
Hey lolly, lolly
Hey lolly, lolly
Get it any way you can
Right? Ha ha ha, so...

I got it in the bedroom, and I got it in the hall
And I got it in the bathroom, and he hung it on the wall
I got it with a buzz, and I got it with a ring
And when he told me what my number was I got a ding-a-ling

A-singin' hey lolly, lolly
Hey lolly, lolly
Hey lolly, lolly
Just-a doin' my thing

Ha, ha...I've never done anything like this before!

The DSS Duo: Elwood Norris and F. Joseph Pompei

2005-02-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

Elwood "Woody" Norris, California sound entrepreneur

George Bernard Shaw once described the works of Mozart as "The only music yet written that would not sound out of place in the mouth of God." Yet even as the mezzo-soprano is about to project the peak solo of Solitudini Amiche, thirty ringtones blaring the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake to Snoop Dogg's Up Jump The Boogie, explode throughout the Met and even the creator himself cannot resist answering the phone. And as disabling as this would be to high-strung, operatic artists and their crusty, consumer-conscious audiences, only two mere mortals, Elwood "Woody" Norris, a technological God from the ever-innovative state of California, and the even more Juno-esque-sounding F. Joseph Pompei, of "Technology Row's" Watertown, MA-based Holosonic Research Labs, have the indisputable solution to this auditory dilemma: Directional, or as it is known in its more Sci-fi-named commercial identity, Hypersonic Sound.

Using an ultrasound transmitter to project a laserlike beam of focused audible sound, HSS enables a listener standing in its pathway in a particular space to tune in to multidimensional waves that only they can hear. Norris and Pompei each assert that their respective version of Directional Sound is the premier source for its commercial marketing and use. Imagine a busload of 25 tourists, each with a transfixed look of satisfaction, listening to separate pieces of music, without screeching walkmans or the use of headphones. Apply this scenario to the dilemma of obnoxious ringtones blaring in public and the mezzo-soprano can finish her Solitudini Amiche solo without incident. But how many audience members apparently mesmerized by the viking-horned vocalist's coloratura are actually listening to her?

Loudspeaker manufacturers, such as Meadowlark Swift, Spendor S5e, and Focal JMIab Cobalt 806, beware! Your commercial days may be numbered! Visualize a crowded convention trade show, the din of meshed noise as speaker systems blat multiple, distorted messages pertaining to products on display (or even lost children separated from parents in the rush of the crowd). Now imagine that tumultuous cacophony replaced by thousands of beams of sound directed concurrently through space yet enabling only those at each display to hear the singular sounds of that exhibit.

HSS founding fathers Norris and Pompei are as focused and yet different as the sound gradients directed by their systems. Norris, a 65-year-old self-styled pioneer and sound savant with no college degree or intricate scientific background, honed his formal education while working as a radar technician in the U.S. Air Force. Earning million of dollars as a maverick inventor who has created various audio devices, such as a hearing-aid-sized FM radio, a line of flash-memory voice recorders and car audio systems, and several models of cell-phone headsets, Norris purports to have been working on HSS systems for the past decade. Persistent, driven, and highly intuitive, Norris claims to have invested $40 million in his research and development of Directional Sound.

Pompei, a 30-year-old academician, with an electrical engineering degree from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a master's degree in Psychoacoustics from Northwestern University, has worked for the world-famous Bose loudspeaker company in Framingham, MA. and is the creator of the Audio Spotlight System. It was during his educational stint at Northwestern that Pompei began devising ways of converting silent ultrasound into a vehicle for producing audible sound. While working on his PHD at MIT, Pompei developed his HSS system, Holosonic, which works by pointing a spotlight of sound at a human recipient and basically linking them, via the beam, to the sound itself.

The danger of abuse of the developed HSS systems is already evident. "Harrassment Technology", wherein innocent civilians could be subjected to unwanted noises that emanate from the air around them, such as annoying bird calls, or fabricated human voices (such as mock police commands to "pull over" or "Stop or I will shoot!") has already occurred via cruder variations on the same technological theme as Norris and Pompei's accoustical heterodyne.

Pompei, interviewed by author Roland Schulte at the Interference.com forum on the web says that there are practical advantages to the Hypersound Systems. "The applications that are the most interesting are the utilitarian, the workhorse applications. The most interesting ones are the ones that permit the use of the sound in a place you normally couldn't. That's an interesting concept for people to understand, a nice quiet environment. They want it both ways, a quiet room and a quiet environment, but they still want to add sound without losing the background. The Audio Spotlight lets them do that, which is great for galleries and retail stores and other kind of solutions. I find those applications tremendously interesting."

Does this mean the ultimate end to commercial sound distortion? Will segments of music be shot through the air at concerts to emphasize a guitar riff or a vocal excerpt kaleidoscopically like light shows of yesteryear? If you accompany a friend with certain tastes to a Britney Spears performance and you wish to listen to the sultry tones of Madeleine Peyroux instead, just lean a little to the side and immerse yourself in that invisible beam just to your left. Much better.

F. Joseph Pompei , MIT's Maestro of Directional Sound

R&B from The Twilight Zone: Nolan Strong & The Diablos

2005-02-13T13:17:00.000-08:00

Singular, resonant guitar notes, like the ponderously slow, nightmarish ticking of a clock in an ominous film noir, presage urgent mystery. A zombified base vocal insistently chants the word "wind...wind...wind...", melding with an ethereal, phantom tenor which escalates and glides eerily in a lonely summer breeze. It is 1954, one year before Rock and Roll begins its ascent to the heights of fame, and Michigan songsters, the Diablos, create an interstellar R&B masterpiece, The Wind, an ode to the denial of lost love.

With exotic titles such as Adios, My Desert Love, and Hold Me Until Eternity, The Diablos helped tiny, homespun Fortune Records, begun in 1947 by songwriter Devora Brown, become a landmark of the Detroit music scene. Owing to the superlative high tenor of lead Diablo Nolan Strong, Fortune Records scored its third national hit, The Wind, considered to be one of the all-time masterpieces in black vocal group harmony.

Strong, inspired by the silky tenor of Drifters vocalist Clyde McPhatter, was born on January 22, 1934, in Scottsboro, Alabama, and was one of the premier musical influences on a youthful, pre-Motown Smokey Robinson. At the age of 16, Strong assembled the first Diablos grouping, consisting of himself, Willie Hunter, Quentin Banks, Juan Guitierrez, and guitarist Bobby Edwards, while attending Detroit's Central High School. With the advent of newly emerging Rock and Roll, as the Diablos booked on-going gigs throughout the mid-western and northeastern U.S., group members Banks and Guitierrez were replaced by musicians Jim Strong (Nolan's brother) and George Scott.

Because the Diablos had achieved notoriety prior to the insurgence of Rock and Roll and they hailed from a record label which could not compete with the promotion given to rising stars like Chicago's El Dorados, or nationally known artists such as Little Richard, The Moonglows, or Etta James, they never achieved their deserved commerical stature. Their majestic creation, The Wind, was covered by New York Doo-Woppers, The Jesters, who, in 1960, eclipsed The Diablos' version in terms of airplay and popularity. Times had changed and although the Jesters' version of The Wind was considered critically inferior, a new generation of listeners, many of whom did not know of the Diablos, were exposed to the Jester's version via the myriad rock and roll radio stations which had not existed in 1954.

Though the Diablos never achieved nationwide hit record status on Billboard and their name was changed to that of the Velvet Angels when some of their material was re-released in the early '60s, they remain as legends of the R&B and Doo Wop world because of the haunting intonations infused in their 1954 classic The Wind. Nolan Strong, whose soft, agile, fawnish voice sounded like a past-life Michael Jackson, died at the relatively young age of 43 in 1977 but his legacy continues on more than a quarter of a century after his death.

When Colors Speak: Ken Nordine's Jazzy Jingo

2005-02-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

("Stare with your ears")

One might wonder what the first sounds were to emanate from the mouth of Kenneth Edward Nordine when he was born on April 13, 1920 in Cherokee, Iowa, a small burg in the northwestern corner of the Hawkeye State. Nordine emerged in the public ear in the early 1940s as a radio announcer for the Chicago Blackhawks ball team. His resonant, deep brown base deliveries proved so popular that Nordine soon found himself doing commercial voice-overs for outfits such as Levis jeans, and Taster's Choice coffee. The compelling quality and clarity of Nordine's vocals proved to be money in the bank for any companies which hired him.

Comfortable with the advent of television broadcasting in the 1950s, Nordine developed a cultishly popular late-night Chicago program called Faces In The Dark in which he would read the works of Balzac, Lovecraft, Poe, and Guy de Maupassant. Conjunctly he hosted a weekly music series called Jazz Showcase which, no doubt, influenced the development of his own original writings into spoken word recordings set to a backdrop of playful jazz.

Nordine's TV stint attraced the attention of Dot records' A&R head, musician Billy vaughn. Vaughn enlisted the wort-meister as spoken accompanist on a piece called The Shifting, Whispering Sands, combining Nordine's Beat poet banter with Vaughn's ethereal instrumentation. The collaboration proved popular with commercial audiences and Vaughn brought Nordine back to add spoken poetry to plush-stringed standards. The result, an easy-listening LP called Love Words, catalyzed a measure of creative rebellion, from which sprang Nordine's legendary 1957 album Word Jazz, a cleverly verbose, visionary string of jazz-accompanied commentaries on the mangled, mundane pathologies of contemporary society.

Having unintentionally created a spoken-word classification and becoming the first victim of its stereoptypification, Nordine was called upon to recreate his success with Word Jazz, followed up with Next!, Son Of Word Jazz, and Word Jazz Vol. 2. The enervating effect drove Nordine back into the world of commercial voice-over work where he unexpectedly discovered his next measure of creative development.

In 1966, while working as an announcer for Fuller Paint Company, Nordine smashed the boundaries of commercialism with a full-spectrum recitation on the abstract, sensate qualities of color. What evolved was Colors, a critically-acclaimed, 34-track album which personnifies colors as living entities. Crimson is described as frenetic and driven, while magenta is flighty and playful. Blue yellow, and green engage in a turf war of sorts until they realize that they are all part of one another. Exotic hues and tones, such as cerise and nutria, vie for equality with the primary colors as age-old fables are woven into the storyline construct.

With each excerpt running around two minutes or less, the auditory effect for impatient, attention deficient American audiences, is one of near-instant gratification. When rarely lauded colors such as sepia, and ecru take a bow, the charismatic incisiveness of Nordine's words, coupled with lilting, throw-away jazz riffs, engages rather than alienates the novice listener. It is the complete synthesis of full-sensory stimulation.

Continuously sought and revered in avant-garde circles, Nordine became readily accessible to the public during a second broadcast career on National Public Radio's Word Jazz 1/2 show in the 1980s, acquiring a new generation of college-age fans and listeners who had missed his genius during the first few exposures. It was during this period that long-time admirers, the Grateful Dead, devised a plan involving Nordine's talents.

In 1991, Grateful Dead soundman Ken Healy, placed Nordine in a recording studio with Jerry Garcia, mandolin master David Grisman, pianist Howard Levy (of The Flecktones), Grisman band musicians Joe Craven and Jim Kerwin, and singer Tom Waits. The result, a recording called Devout Catalyst, was nominated for a 1992 Grammy as Best Spoken Word Recording. What followed, a series of public performances in such locales as Chicago, San Francisco (the 1992 San Francisco Jazz Festival), brought the direct public exposure and attention that Nordine had long deserved.

Nordine's career has also entered that cavernous expanse known as the film idustry, with appearances in such movies as the 1950 instructional short Developing Your Character (as "The Announcer"), 1967's Fearless Frank (as "The Stranger"), and special sound effects work on the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist. But Nordine's most enjoyable self-professed contribution to the viewing experience was on the small screen when actor Fred Astair danced to the poet's work on the 1959 TV special Another Evening With Fred Astaire.

Nordine's own commentary on current project shows a tireless, unflagging energy ever intent on reinterpreting audio-art. "I’ve been working on these things called “Maybe the Moment”, which is an attempt to resurrect moments of time. The idea of “seizing the moment”, you know, to see how you were. But actually, the moment is like a bird in your hand that flies off in a blur. It’s that type of realization that time is probably just dimly remembered. I don’t know where that part of the brain is? Do you? There’s a little section there somewhere where all these things are stored in a strange way. Of course, if you’ve had any experience with Alzheimer’s, you’d see what a sad thing it is when cognition slips away. “I’ll never forget What’s-His-Name.” They really fall apart. Well, part of life, I guess, is falling apart. There was a great sculptor that nobody thought was great because of his subject matter. He made sculptures that would fall apart. They were strange Rube Goldberg-type things. And what would happen, right before your very eyes, over a period of, say, a month, the sculpture, because of the eccentricity of its motion, would fall apart. I guess what happened was that they [the art dealer] were trying to sell the damn things. But it was disconcerting to them, because by the time they found somebody who was interested in the thing it had fallen apart."

Currently, at age 85, Nordine is as active and wordy as ever. His 2001 CD release, A Transparent Mask, made with long-standing keyboardist-friend Howard Levy, recorded at the renowned Nuyorican Cafe in New York, is a 20-track testimony to Nordine's boundless energy and pursuit of artistry via the marriage of the spoken word and jazz. And a recent charity benefit appearance at Chicago's Metro, with legendary lady rocker Ronnie Spector (of the Ronettes), musicians David Amram, Graham Parker, Ivan Neville, and the Mekons' John Langford, enlists Nordine as one of the most ageless entertainers of the live performance circuit.

Ken Nordine Discography:

1955 - Passion in the Desert (FM) / 1963 (FM)
1957 - Word Jazz (Dot) / 1967 (Dot) / 1983 (MCA)
1958 - Son of Word Jazz (Dot)
1958 - Love Words (Dot) / 1959 (Dot)
1959 - My Baby (Dot)
1959 - Next! (Dot)
1959 - The Voice of Love (Hamilton)
1960 - Word Jazz Vol. 2 (Dot)
1966 - Colors (Philips) / 1995 (Asphodel)
1967 - Ken Nordine Does Robert Shure's Twink (Philips)
1968 - The Classic Collection: The Best of Word Jazz Vol. 3 (Dot)
1971 - How Are Things In Your Town? (Blue Thumb)
1972 - Ken Nordine (Blue Thumb)
1979 - Stare With Your Ears (Snail) / 1988 (Snail)
1984 - Triple Talk (Snail)
1986 - Grandson of Word Jazz (Snail)
1990 - Best of Word Jazz (Rhino)
1991 - Devout Catalyst (Grateful Dead)
1993 - Upper Limbo (Grateful Dead)
2001 - Transparent Mask (Asphodel)

Guest Appearances:

1955 - The Shifting Whispering Sands - Billy Vaughn (Dot)
1957 - Concert in the Sky - Teddy Phillips and His Orchestra (Decca)
1958 - Sounds In Space (RCA Victor)
1961 - Radio Rebus (US Army)
1968 - H.P. Lovecraft II - H.P. Lovercraft (Philips) - "Nothing's Boy"
1997 - Fun for the Whole Family - Lord Runningclam (Bottom Heavy) / 1998 (Moonshine Music) - "Faces in the Night" and "Flibberty Jib"
1998 - Sound Museum - Towa Tei (Elektra) - "The Sound Museum"
2000 - A Dub Plate of Food Vol. 2 - DJ Food (Ninja Tune)
2000 - Kaleidoscope - DJ Food (Ninja Tune) - "The Ageing Young Rebel"

Compilation tracks:

1959 - Deejay's Choice: 25 Top Album Performances on Dot (Dot) - "My Baby"
1959 - Excerpts from the Original Soundtrack of Another Evening with Fred Astaire (Chrysler Corp.) - "My Baby"
1965 - A Child's Introduction to the Classics (Childcraft/Wing) - "Barber of Seville"
1973 - Original Early Top 40 Hits (Paramount) - "The Shifting Whispering Sands, Part 1" w/Billy Vaughn
1989 - Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films (A&M)
1991 - Train of Thought: Stories, Music & Eclectic Audio Entertainment, Vol.1 (Com Audio) - "Mr. City"
1992 - The Beat Generation Box Set (Rhino) - "Reaching Into In" and "Hunger Is From"
1993 - A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute (Koch) - "A Cage Went in Search of a Bird"
1994 - Incredibly Strange Music Vol. 2 (Asphodel) - "Flesh," "Green" and "Yellow"
1995 - All Day Thumbsucker Revisited (Blue Thumb/GRP) - "Roger"
1995 - Chop Suey Rock (Hot & Sour) - "Hot" as Ken Nordine and His Kinsmen
1995 - Monster Sounds And Boppin' Tracks (Marginal) - "Strollin' Spooks"
1997 - Closed On Account of Rabies: Poems and Tales of Edgar Allen Poe (Mercury) - "The Conqueror Worm"
1999 - The Annoying Music Show's The Annoying Music Show CD
2000 - The Annoying Music Show's The Annoying Music Show Holiday CD - "Ken Nordine Says Jim Nayder's Name"
2002 - The Best of the Beat Generation (Rhino) - "My Baby"

Related recordings:

194? - Incredible But True Radio (Columbia)

Kate St. John: Beyond the Academy of Dreams

2005-02-08T19:59:00.000-08:00

It is near midnight and time to turn off all the lights in your home. Ignite a trio of candles in your gadroon-border candelabra, close your eyes and reflect upon the day. Now the night comes stealing in as a whispering breeze ushers the ghostly melodies of a female chanteuse, alternately warbling in French and English. The lilting vocals gently intermingle with a seductive oboe chased by the jaunty rippling arpeggios of a Concerto DA-10 accordion. The incongruity could prove wrenching or at very least, frivolous, but is instead soothing, spirited, lulling, the notes wistfully enticed by the glorious vision of a doe-eyed, flaxen-haired nymph. The alabastrite clock chimes twelve times as the indescribable night transports you to an earlier day of Salvation Army bands and children's lemonade stands. Hey-oh-ma-ma-ma, hey-oh....

Vocalist Kate St. John, a classically-trained oboist, enjoyed a brief foray into latter-day New Wave pop in 1987 when she, as one third of the aggregate known as The Dream Academy, scored a hit song with Life In A Northern Town, an elegant paean to the childlike innocence and violent disillusionment of late 1963 ("...in Winter 1963 it felt like the world would freeze, with John F. Kennedy and the Beatles..."). Equally as adept and comfortable playing saxophone and accordion, St. John's musical arena is nearly universal, ranging from jazz to classical and the Chanson style of a French bygone era.

Creating live experimental music with Steve Nieve's Pink Orchestra and the Waldorf Salad Orchestra, St. John visited the world of film soundtracks, writing little symphonies for silent films conjunct with her duties as a member of the Dream Academy. St. John, never the audacious diva, is humbly at home as premiere spotlight performer, be it vocalist or instrumentalist, yet equally content as an accompanist for such artists as Van Morrison, Nigel Kennedy, or as director at the Barbican for Nick Drake.

In 1992, St. John's album The Familiar, brought her into collaboration with innovative musician Roger Eno, leading to a business partnership and the birth of the avant-garde Channel Light Vessel collective. The group subsequently released two critically acclaimed CDs, Automatic, and Excellent Spirits.

St. John's continuing evolution as a vocalist soared to higher realms with the release of her decidedly romantic solo album Indescribable Night, upon which she sings, swanlike, affectionately, and plays myriad baroque instruments. Following this artistic triumph with the equally enchanting Second Sight, St. John balanced her successful singular efforts producing two albums for Russian musician Boris Grebenshikov and his band Aquarium, winning Best Russian album of 1995.

In April 2004 she was a featured artist in Hal Wilner’s Nino Rota/Fellini tribute concert at the Barbican. Also at the Barbican she performed as a member of The Magic Bullets, the group of musicians directed by Tom Waits for a production of The Black Rider directed by Robert Wilson, in May 2004 and continued this work in San Francisco August-October, 2004, at the ACT theatre and in Sydney, Australia January 2005.

Jackie Joseph: A Delightful Dumpette

2005-02-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

A vocalist, a television weather girl, an animal rights activist, the co-founder of a support/recovery group for divorced wives of Hollywood stars, a chorus dancer in The Billy Barnes Revue, a member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild, a strong proponent for adoption, and queen of the Horror film dingbats! This rambling resume belongs to eclectic character actress Jackie Joseph, a California native born in Los Angeles on November 7, 1934.

Joseph, who has appeared in 16 feature films, proliferated the small screen with guest-starring stints in 36 television series, had recurrent roles in another 13, and written for the television series Barnaby Jones, is best known for her big screen role as bubble-brained flower shop hostess "Audrey Fulquard", the original Miss Malaprop of the legendary 1960 B-Horror/Comedy flick The Little Shop of Horrors whom the film's "creature", a man-eating hybrid venus flytrap named "Audrey Jr." was named after.

In an interview with writer Tom Weaver for The Astounding B-Monster archives, Joseph explained her job interview and duties as a Los Angeles TV weather girl. "There was a different girl for each day, and I was Miss Monday. On Monday you'd go in, and no one would be there to tell you how to do it. They stuck me in front of a camera and said, "Okay, be a weatherperson," and what I did amazed them. I said, "There are small craft warnings, so if you have a small craft, you better warn it!"

It was this innocent, unflappable spontaneity that endeared Joseph to Little Shop of Horrors director Roger Corman. "I think the quality involved in all of this was an innate ... well, rather than just saying stupidity, let's say innocence. That appealed to Roger Corman. I heard Roger say afterwards that the quality he wanted in Audrey [Joseph's Little Shop character] was sincere innocence. Audrey just believed everything that was put in front of her. (Which isn't a bad thing -- I have to defend that, because I tend to be someone who believes everything that's put in front of me!)"

With roles ranging from a salesgirl who waits on Elvis in the 1958 feature King Creole, an on-going role as "herself" in comedian Bob Newhart's first television series in 1961, to that of an interviewer in the 1977 made-for-TV film Sex and the Married Woman, Joseph has not been limited by her legendary two-day film shoot for Corman. In fact, she is quite grateful for the cult status that has accompanied the "Audrey" persona and for the opportunity to work with actors such as Mel Welles, Jonathan Haze, and Dick Miller. "Dick Miller and I played husband-and-wife [Mr. and Mrs. Futterman] in Gremlins, and I like that they resurrected Dick and me in Gremlins 2. I was sure we were really wiped out pretty good in Gremlins, the first one -- I mean, if you're run over by a snowplow or a building comes down upon you ..."

In 1985, Joseph co-founded The Ladies Club aka The Hollywood Dumpettes (the name parodying that of many of the vocal girl groups of the 1960s), an organization comprised exclusively of the ex-wives of celebrities. The organization provides psychological support services, legal counsel (in the form of handing out phone numbers of reputable divorce lawyers), career advice, and business networking. As club president, Jackie recalled "I went to a Hollywood function where a member's husband was being honored as 'Family Man of the Year.' He gave this incredible tribute about 'I could not have done it without this amazing wife who I love so much,' and that night he moved out."

In December, 2003, Joseph, divorced since 1977 from actor Ken Berry, married David Lawrence. From support group president to dingbat and dumpette, Jackie Joseph (who received only $500 for her work in The Little Shop of Horrors), despite her current marital status, remains the film world's most amiable feminist.

Nighmare Nuances: A Preference For Patchen

2005-02-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

"I am the world crier and this is my dangerous career...
I am the one to call your bluff, and this is my climate."

The words above are that of the late Niles, Ohio-born poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen, an angst-ridden humanitarian and literary auteur who lived with the chronic pain of an incurably dislocated spinal disk, the result of an accident at age twenty-six. For Patchen, his literal Achilles Heel symbolized the microcosm of the world's continual psychic imbalance. A surgical mishap in 1959 further crippled Patchen leaving him all but bed-ridden until his death on January 8, 1972 in Palo Alto, California.

A certain fate as a steelworker in Ohio's "Industrial Valley" was circumvented by a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin where Patchen briefly entered the Alexander Meikeljohn Experimental College, followed by a short stint at the Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas.

Patchen, assisted by his wife Miriam Oikemus, an artist, anti-war activist, and Smith College graduate, whom he married on June 28, 1934, published 43 books of prose and illustrated poetry. Disavowing commercial stereotypification as a Beat Generation writer, Patchen personally focused on widening the realm of experimental poetry by creating picture-poetry, and later, poetry-jazz (orating against a background of jazz music provided by Allyn Ferguson and the Chamber Jazz Sextet). Oft-termed "4th dimensional realsim" or extra-sensory theater", Patchen himself preferred the following explanation: "The poet should resist all efforts to categorize him as a painted monkey on a stick, not for personal reasons alone, but because it does damage to poetry itself."

"In the footsteps of the walking air
Sky's prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe..."

In Patchen's jazz-poetry recording The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves, the title line is spoken preceding a riotous explosion of instrumentation which is in turn followed by deliberated, staccato instructions to "Wait...wait, wait..." The frenzied music score played by the Chamber Jazz Sextet undulates urgently until Patchen cries "Now!" (the obvious culmination of the act of murder, perfectly rendered in word, music, mental imagery, and emotion). The words in written context, are staggered on the page in consonance with the vocal delivery.

As an extraneous note of interest (and one that Patchen might have found stifling and denunciatory), Kenneth Patchen was born under the free-spirited astrological sign of Sagittarius on December 13, 1911. Natives of this starred-enclave are oft-noted for their refusal to be stereotyped or mainstreamed, thus we have a writer who, in the midst of grand abstraction, is one of the only poets of his generation not to abandon the idiom of twentieth-century verse.

The Artist's Duty

So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame
To extend all boundaries
To fog them in right over the plate
To kill only what is ridiculous
To establish problem
To ignore solutions
To listen to no one
To omit nothing
To contradict everything
To generate the free brain
To bear no cross
To take part in no crucifixion
To tinkle a warning when mankind strays
To explode upon all parties
To wound deeper than the soldier
To heal this poor obstinate monkey once and for all

To verify the irrational
To exaggerate all things
To inhibit everyone
To lubricate each proportion
To experience only experience

To set a flame in the high air
To exclaim at the commonplace alone
To cause the unseen eyes to open

To admire only the absurd
To be concerned with every profession save his own
To raise a fortuitous stink on the boulevards of truth and beauty
To desire an electrifiable intercourse with a female alligator
To lift the flesh above the suffering
To forgive the beautiful its disconsolate deceit

To flash his vengeful badge at every abyss

To HAPPEN

It is the artist’s duty to be alive
To drag people into glittering occupations

To blush perpetually in gaping innocence
To drift happily through the ruined race-intelligence
To burrow beneath the subconscious
To defend the unreal at the cost of his reason
To obey each outrageous impulse
To commit his company to all enchantments

KENNETH PATCHEN

You Don't Nomi: Martian Music/Venusian Vocals

2005-02-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

The Internet Movie Data Base lists performance artist Klaus Sperber's birthday and birthplace as January 24, 1944, somewhere in the Bavarian Alps of Germany. But the late Sperber, who redubbed himself Klaus Nomi, professed to be from a futurist time and place other than the planet Earth. Indeed, with a visage suggestive of Klaatu in white-faced Kabuki makeup, personal contact with Nomi was an experience beyond that of a close encounter of the third kind. Nomi lived the fictional intimations of other artists, such as the German synth-pop band Kraftwerk, and set the standard for a brief sci-fi androgyne phase in the career of music icon David Bowie.

With the 2004 release of film director Andrew Horn's Nomi Song, a cosmically crafted documentary focusing on Sperber's brief life, viewing audiences can meld with the virtual unreality of Nomi's ethereal presence and transport themselves back to the New York East Village New Wave club era of the late '70s/early '80s. Whether transmuting pop tunes, such as multi-ranged '60s superstar Lou Christie's Lightning Strikes, effecting a shattering counter-tenor flight through traditional opera, or robotically warbling an original number, such as Simple Man, Nomi eschews enigmatic loneliness and an other-worldly persona that proved him anything but a simple man.

Like his misunderstood 1950s counterpart space emissaries, such as Klaatu, who brought an edict of peace through pacifism in the 1951 blockbuster film The Day The Earth Stood Still, or The Stranger From Venus, who romanced Klaatu's human girlfriend (Patricia Neal) during his 1954 peace pilgrimage to earth, Nomi emerged from the earthly veneer of Sperber, to bring a message of salvation through song. Yet as awed as audiences were by Nomi's Orwellian oddness, most treated his concerts as surrealist spectator sport, failing to grasp the quavering pleas for intimacy which fluttered and sparked beneath the Dietrich dominance and Garboesque aloofness.

In the end there was no Gort to this alien's minstrel Klaatu. No giant robot which could return mortal life to the dead or enforce the rules of sane behavior via threatening rays from a faceless countenance. Nomi himself, or perhaps the vestigial traces of the human Sperber, succumbed to yearnings for earthly fame and abandoned his backup band and co-performers for the commercial artifice prescribed by recording companies which sterilized his originality. At the nadir of Nomi's public appearances he even opened for the camp-metal band Twisted Sister during a particularly degrading outing at a New Jersey nightclub. And having split his persona in two, Nomi the nebulous shooting star became the victim of Sperber, the gourmet pastry chef, the spurious sex-a-holic, who contracted AIDS during one of his truckstop outings. With knowledge of the new disease scant, and the panic induced by the term "Gay Cancer", friends avoided contact with Sperber, who spent his last days
in the isolation of a hospital ward.

Black-glossed beestung lips, space vampire facade, geometrical plastic tuxedos, angularly coiffed hair, mechanically darting glances, this coy Mephisto with a bit of The Devil Girl From Mars, inaccesible to human definition, escaped the dreary annals of MTV stereotypification, but only by leaving the earth via a profoundly nihilistic death.

The Girls From Glenwood Avenue

2005-02-07T16:43:00.000-08:00

(Top: Kaye (McCool) Krebs; Bottom left to right: Midge (Bollinger) Neel and Bonnie (Long) Walker)

What do Pennsylvania, pretzels, and pixies have in common aside from the obvious nod to alliteration? Just ask residents of Hanover, Pennsylvania and they will undoubtedly cite the founding of Snyder's of Hanover, America's premiere pretzel producers since 1909, and the Pixies Three, a trio of high school girlfriends who became one of Mercury Records' top recording acts in 1963 with the songs Birthday Party and Cold, Cold Winter.

Kaye McCool, and Debby Swisher, who began performing as amateur street vocalists while still in grade school, enlisted the talent of schoolmate Midge Bollinger to round out their crisp harmonies. They dubbed themselves the Pixies after a popular hairstyle of the era and began working venues throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1961, with the full support of their parents, the Pixies appeared on television's Ted Mack Amateur Hour in New York City, where they covered singer Annette Funicello's pop hit Tall Paul. With Debby on lead vocals, the girls flashed pert smiles, accompanied themselves on ukuleles, and became America's sweethearts as they effortlessly swept the viewer voting and won the competition.

In the tradition of homespun groups such as the Ronettes, who wore heavy makeup and dressed in a style which suggested they were older than their junior high school ages, the Pixies worked up a repertoire of cover versions of the female pop hits of the day, such as Kathy Young's A Thousand Stars, and appeared in various venues, including Tony Grant's Steel Pier, and selected Philadelphia nightclubs. Eventually they were approached by Mercury Records producers John Madara and David White who often scouted for new talent in area clubs. Madara and White gave them their business cards and promised they would call, but when the Pixies failed to hear from them, the determined group drove to Philadelphia where they sat in the Mercury Records office until they were granted an audience. "We sang a dance tune of the day, Pop-Pop-Pop-Pie, which had been a hit for a girl group named the Sherrys, " explained Pixie Kaye Krebs (the former Kaye McCool). "Even though we got the words wrong, and Madara and White had written the tune, they liked what they heard and we were signed to the Mercury label."

When the Madara and White-penned Birthday Party was released as Mercury #71230, the Pixies' name appeared as the Pixies Three to avoid legal conflict with an already existent Baltimore teen girl group called the Pixies, who had rights to the name. The record soon blasted its way into the Billboard Top 40 with the 45's B-side, Our Love, a loving tribute written by Pixies Three member Kaye Krebs for her boyfriend and future husband, fellow Hanoverian Gary Krebs. The more commonly remembered 442 Glenwood Avenue, a boppy ode to teen house parties, did not fare as well on the charts, peaking just outside the Billboard Top 40 due to the fact that the disc was a two-sided charter, sharing ranking with the A-Side tune Cold, Cold Winter, a Spectorian-styled mover designed for competition with Darlene Love's Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Such were the naive days of pop music in 1963 that a 45 record could not easily place both of its sides as hits without causing confusion amongst dee-jays and the record-buying public!

Although it was Debby Swisher's lead vocals which had championed the group's status as winners on The Ted Mack Amatuer Hour , it was the voice of Pixie Midge Bollinger which became the signature lead, even prior to the group's pop success. Thus when Birthday Party, Cold, Cold Winter, and 442 Glenwood Avenue became hits it was Bollinger's warm, pleasing tones heard on lead vocals. When Bollinger left the group to pursue her own civilian aspirations in 1964, Swisher assumed the lead vocal reigns of the Pixies Three, scoring successes with a cover version of the 1954 Crows' tune Gee,and the California surf-inspired Summertime U.S.A. Alternate Pixie, Bonnie Long, a talented high school comrade from Hanover with considerable experience as lead vocalist for several Hanover-area bands, became a full-time member of the group and enjoyed the limelight as the Pixies Three toured with pop/rock icons such as the Four Seasons, Dionne Warwick, the Dave Clark Five, and the Rolling Stones (on their first American tour!).

As pop music yielded to the influences of the British Invasion of the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, and countless other bands, the Pixies Three, like many of their girl group contemporaries, tried valiantly to produce hits, with little success. Despite a prolific and highly creative recording output, the listening public had turned away from the girl group wave of the early '60s, and groups such as the Murmaids, the Secrets, the Ronettes, the Exciters, and the Pixies Three, were not as sought after. The Pixies Three disbanded in 1965 after an all too short run in the spotlight, but little did they realize it would not be the last the lovers of their sound would hear from them...
(GLENWOOD GIRLS PT. 2, coming soon)

(From left: Debby Swisher, Kaye McCool, and Bonnie Long circa 1964)