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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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June 28, 2003
Mel Brooks ain't right
It wouldn't do to let the day pass without noting Mel Brooks' birthday. Born June 28, 1926, Mel turns 77 today. Woo-hoo!
It's tough to pick ONE funniest movie from his catalog. In the last couple of years his first movie, The Producers has been in the ascendency because of the Broadway version. Zero Mostel romancing the old women does rate pretty high. Most importantly, for pure comic wrongness, you really can't beat Springtime for Hitler.
On the other hand, for a farmboy raised on maybe one too damned many cheesy Westerns, I may have to pick Blazing Saddles. The de-construction at the end as they find themselves fighting their way out of the old West onto a Hollywood movie set was just brilliant.
Then, of course, there is Young Frankenstein. Thank god for "Abbie Normal" providing the brain. Mr. Brooks obviously is most Abbie Normal.
One thing we should all be able to agree on, however: Mel Brooks is the funniest sumbitch to ever make a movie. As Mel said, "It's good to be the king."
Blazing Saddles Photos, page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
posted by Al at 6/28/2003 11:29:00 PM
Richard Rodgers is rock rulin!
Richard Rodgers was born 101 years ago today, June 28, 2002 in Long Island, New York.
Richard Rodgers may have been the greatest composer of the entire Broadway tradition. He had a heller career with his original lyricist Lorenz Hart. Besides a zillion other hits, they wrote "My Funny Valentine," which is a career worth of achievement in itself. Oh, yeah, and also from Babes in Arms, a ditty called "The Lady Is a Tramp."
After he broke up with Hart though, Rodgers really hit the big time. His first collaboration with his new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein was a little thing called Oklahoma! that greatest ever musical blast of optimism, debuting smack in the middle of WWII. Naturally, I particularly favor the pure parodic self-pity of "Poor Judd I Dead," particularly the Rod Steiger performance in the 1955 movie version. Famously, Rodgers said he wrote "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" in about 15 minutes. Yowsa!
Oh, but of course they were just getting warmed up. Carousel, The King and I, State Fair, South Pacific, and The Sound of Frickin' Music (uh, emphasis added) were yet to come, including "Do Re Mi" and "My Favorite Things."
He was just that damned good.
posted by Al at 6/28/2003 11:28:00 PM
June 27, 2003
Lester Maddox was a good ol' boy
Lester Maddox, famous segregationist and former governor of Georgia, died Wednesday, June 25, 2003 at age 87.
He became notorious in 1964 for standing in the doorway of his chicken restaraunt with a pistol, flanked by crackers bearing ax handles to keep black people from entering. Ax handles became his big symbol.
In 1966 he beat, among others, Jimmy Carter to become governor of Georgia.
Fun detail: he later opened a restaraunt/gift shop in Atlanta where he actually sold signed ax handles. Except for the part about being stupid and evil, I must admit that I appreciate his pure gall.
Well, the old dude's dead, so how to pay tribute? Randy Newman, of course.
In "honor" of Lester Maddox, then, let us conclude with a Randy Newman song from his classic album Good Ol' Boys.
"Rednecks"
Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well he may be a fool but he's our fool
If they think they're better than him they're wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that's where I made this song
We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down
We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down
CHORUS
We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we're keeping the niggers down
Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down
posted by Al at 6/27/2003 05:59:00 PM
Lester Maddox, Strom Thurmond and Dante
As it happened, Strom Thurmond died just a couple of days after Lester Maddox, another of the most infamous racist Southerners of the Jim Crow era. I'm sure Satan had, as Marcellus Wallace would say, "a couple of hard, pipe-hitting niggers ready to go to work" on them when they arrived.
Thinking about it, though, Lester Maddox maybe wasn't quite as bad as Thurmond. Maddox was evil enough, but he seemed to have some honesty and integrity. He just didn't like black folk, didn't want anything to do with them.
Strom Thurmond, on the other hand, was a career politician- unlike Maddox- and used the race issue purely as a vote getter. When the societal wind started blowing the other way, why he was all in favor of black folks. He hired them for his campaign staff. Turns out he didn't care that much about black folk one way or the other. How much more evil is it to be that hateful with people just to get some votes?
Worst of all, however, was that punk-ass George Wallace. His whining apologies really, really didn't impress me. He didn't really mean all those mean things he said. Well why'd you say them, then?
I'd guess that Maddox is roasting somewhere a couple of rungs higher in hell than these other two, or at least he would be if I were playing Dante. Maddox went to his grave unapologetic for his views. He was a hateful racist, but perhaps he would escape exacerbating charges of demagoguery.
posted by Al at 6/27/2003 03:44:00 PM
Captain Kangaroo's birthday
Bob Keeshan was born June 27, 1927. Happy #76 to Captain Kangaroo.
Now, Fred Rogers was a fine man with a perfectly good show, but Captain Kangaroo was my guy as a young child. Mr. Rogers probably was more socially relevant or something. He probably did more to calm the nerves of children in crisis and such.
The Captain, however, made for a much more fun time. The pranking on the Captain particularly entertained me. He played the indulgent uncle who could take a joke. The images of the ping pong balls raining down on his head- and his reaction shots- that always thrilled me.
I note that apparently there are no videos of Captain Kangaroo available. Thus I end up having to list The Stupids movie as the top thing available with Keeshan. How wrong is that?
OK, looking closer, I have found a couple of minor VHS items, but it ain't much of a representation for such an icon of childhood.
posted by Al at 6/27/2003 03:42:00 PM
June 25, 2003
George Orwell's 100th birthday
George Orwell was born 100 years ago today, June 25, 1903.
He wrote 1984 and Animal Farm, surely two of the greatest literary considerations of the psychology of totalitarianism ever.
Animal Farm particularly stands out as a classic to me. It comes presented as a children's book, cast as a parable with talking animals. Many people automatically consider it simply an adult book because of the heavy themes. However, the language and the construction in fact will work pretty well for even a fairly young reader. Tough topics, but broken down into reasonably small bites.
He was also, seemingly at odds with this, an avowed socialist for at least part of his life.
Yet at the same time, a realist. �When someone has dropped a bomb on your mother, there is nothing for it but to go and drop two bombs on his mother.�
He also wrote the classic and beautifully dispassionate essay "Politics and the English Language." This should be required reading for both English and civics classes. This essay explains the abuse of language for political demagoguery better than any other writing ever.
I wonder where Orwell would have come down on invading Iraq. Good commie liberals will assume that he'd have been against our invasion of Iraq. Yet this same guy was responsible for the "two bombs" quote. He would certainly have been highly conscious of the particular rhetorical manipulations of all sides, careful to distill essential facts while dispensing of the loaded terminology. Did we "liberate" Iraq, "conquer" Iraq, "attack" Iraq- or were we liberating, conquering, or attacking the people of Iraq, the Hussein regime?
Mister, we could use a man like George Orwell again.
posted by Al at 6/25/2003 02:56:00 AM
June 24, 2003
Clarence Thomas OWES Maureen Dowd
Goddam, but I'd like to get close enough to bring the pimp hand down on Maureen Dowd. From her column:
He [Clarence Thomas] knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race.
Bitch absolutely thinks the liberals OWN every negro in the country. Any high level position comes with personal consideration. It would be impossible to get into Yale Law School much less the Supreme Court without anyone noticing that you're black. Because there is affirmative action, therefore every black person who has any high achievement has been someway around it, and therefore must support the continuation of the racist practice.
Of course, her necessary premise is that blacks are inferior. Black people only ever achieve anything because of the gracious help of white liberals such as herself who support affirmative action. Unless they can somehow pass for white and hide their African heritage, there is no possible way for a black person to achieve anything without being indebted to Maureen Dowd et al.
Black people OWE her and her liberal friends. She continued "maybe he is disgusted with his own great historic ingratitude." Justice Thomas should feel gratitude to Ms. Dowd. Oh, thank you, great caring white person.
Or to put it differently: Honk off, bitch. I don't owe you a damned thing.
I'll have Dick Gephardt's head on a platter, please
"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day." -Richard Gephardt, June 22, 2003
This pretty much calls for trashing the constitutional order, far worse than anything Geoge W Bush would ever think to try. Why aren't people calling for Gephardt's resignation from congress? This is really just AMAZINGLY atrocious, yet has caused barely a blip.
By the way, the context was that he was addressing a Jesse Jackson audience, promising to ignore any outcome in the Michigan affirmative action case that might have come out "wrong." The money quote here comes in the 45th minute of the C-Span video.
posted by Al at 6/24/2003 06:57:00 PM
Libertarian Party foolishness
I've supported the Libertarian Party my whole adult life. I have never in life voted against a candidate of the party, and have been an LP candidate now thrice.
Nonetheless, I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with some statements of the national office and chair. I generally don't think they're taking our nation's defense seriously, and I am particularly unhappy with Chairman Neale's presumptions to unilaterally make policy statements on behalf of the membership with no obvious authority to do so. The foolish nature of some of those statements makes it that much worse. Recently they hit something near to a new low in utter goddam stupidity in a press release. Let's just look at the whole text of this release:
For release: June 20, 2003
===============================
For additional information:
George Getz, Communications Director
Phone: (202) 333-0008
E-Mail: Pressreleases@hq.LP.org
====================================
Pull the plug on Congressional inquiry
into Iraq's weapons, Libertarian Party says
WASHINGTON, DC -- Congressional hearings into the Bush administration's
claims about Iraq's weapons program are a waste of time, Libertarians
say, because the public already knows that presidents routinely lie or
exaggerate to justify waging war.
"Surprise! It appears that another U.S. leader has manipulated facts
and exaggerated threats in order to whip up war hysteria," said Joe
Seehusen, executive director of the Libertarian Party, which staunchly
opposed the invasion of Iraq. "Do we really need a congressional
hearing to discover that politicians are adept at using words as
weapons of mass deception?"
Prompted by the continuing failure to find chemical or biological
weapons since Baghdad fell on April 9, the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence is holding hearings into the accuracy of the Bush
administration's prewar claims about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. Over the past several weeks Bush has been stung by
allegations from intelligence officials and others that he misused
intelligence data to justify the war.
But congressional hearings are utterly pointless, Libertarians say,
because they will only tell Americans what they already know.
"History is replete with examples of U.S. leaders lying our country
into war, so why should we expect this war to be any different?" he
asked.
A few specific cases:
* In 1898, the U.S.S. Maine blew up off the coast of Cuba, killing
over 250 U.S. sailors. Although most historians believe it was an
accident, Congress used "Remember the Maine" as a rallying cry to
declare war on Spain.
* In 1964, two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin reported being
fired upon by the North Vietnamese -- an attack that in reality never
happened. Yet President Lyndon Johnson used the incident to win support
for a Congressional resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam.
* In 1990, President George Bush Sr. perpetrated the infamous "babies-
being-pulled-from-incubators hoax," which claimed that Iraqi troops had
invaded a hospital in Kuwait City, ripped babies from incubators and
shipped the incubators off to Baghdad. After the war it was determined
that the story had been fabricated by a Washington public relations
firm that had been paid $10.7 million by the government of Kuwait.
With such a track record of presidential deceit, it's disingenuous for
Congress to pretend to be shocked by another misuse of intelligence
data, Seehusen said.
"Perhaps Congress is hoping that these hearings will shield them from
responsibility for a war that didn't have to be fought," he noted.
"Keep in mind that last October, 296 Representatives and 77 Senators
voted in favor of a resolution supporting the invasion of Iraq. So
every one of these individuals is just as responsible as Bush for the
consequences of that decision -- and convening a hearing won't change
that."
Seehusen acknowledged that it may be too early to say definitively that
Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
"But if such evidence does turn up, two serious questions remain,"
Seehusen said.
"One, did the weapons exist in a sufficient amount to pose an actual
threat to the United States? The fact that Saddam declined to use WMD
even when the destruction of his regime became imminent is a strong
indication that they did not.
"Two, even if Saddam did have such weapons, would he have used them to
attack the United States if a U.S. strike against Iraq were not
planned?
"At the very least, Bush's claims about Iraq seem to have been
exaggerated, and at worst, completely untrue.
"The way to avoid unnecessary wars in the future is to demand the truth
before the war -- rather than holding congressional hearings after the
war."
First of all, the headline is not true. The "Libertarian Party" didn't say jack squat. I doubt there was any vote from the national committee on the issue, and I wouldn't be much impressed even with that. There certainly was no kind of vote of the party membership involved. This comes from just a couple of people in the national office presuming to speak on everyone else's behalf. Speaking for myself and the Franklin County, Indiana Libertarian Party, I can tell you they do NOT.
Nor did the party oppose the invasion of Iraq. The last time the membership got together was our national convention in Indianapolis in 2002. I was there, and there was no vote to oppose the invasion of Iraq, or anything like. [I was, however, pleased to vote with the vast majority in opposing the creation of the new cabinet office for Homeland Security.]
Worse yet, the content of this statement is just assinine, whoever is saying it. The main point seems to be that we should not bother to hold hearings about the WMDs that we expected to but haven't found. According to these people, we should just cancel hearings and assume that Bush et al were just lying.
What kind of nonsense is this? There are LOTS of questions that need to be asked, for lots of reasons. Did the president actually fabricate reports of WMDs, or purposely severely misrepresent intelligence reports? I find this highly unlikely, but these would be real impeachable offenses. Was our intelligence SO bad as to be totally unreliable, telling Bush that Hussein was ass deep in biological and chemical weapons when he wasn't? We and the congress definitely need to know about that.
Or perhaps the problem goes the other way; that is, maybe the problem is that Hussein had the stuff, but we just haven't found it. I'm inclined to believe this, and it presents considerably worse problems than thinking that he didn't. Even the French dirtbags conceded that he had the stuff. Hell, he used it on his own people.
Alright, then where is the stuff? Enquiring minds damn sure want to know. Are there just tons of WMDs sitting right now in Iraq right under our noses, and we're not smart enough to find them? That's not good. Has a bunch of this stuff been whisked out to Lebanon, or (Rand forbid) distributed to third parties?
We need to find some answers here. This absolutely requires congressional investigation. It might make the president look bad, or it might justify him. At some point, I say screw him. It's not all about Bush. We've got much bigger problems than one politician.
The one thing we obviously better NOT do is drop the matter. We have to follow through on this crucial issue. Anyone who says otherwise just isn't being serious or responsible.
Baloo's birthday
Born June 24, 1904, Phil Harris would be 99 today. He's also one of our Hoosier heroes, born in Linton, Indiana. He was an active bandleader and actor, with movie credits going back to the early 1930s.
He became best known, however, for his work in Disney films. He had just a perfect voice, rough and manly, but playful. His iconic, immortal personnae came as Baloo in The Jungle Book. Particularly, he is the voice of "The Bare Necessities," which certainly rates as one of the top ten Disney songs ever.
He also took centerstage in some sly racial pride as J Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats. As all us lame white boys know, "Everybody Wants To Be a Cat."
Somewhat lesser known, he was Little John in the 1973 Disney animated Robin Hood. This got him the lead vocal on the really outstanding and underappreciated original Roger Miller song "The Phony King of England" which takes mockery of Prince John downhome to New Orleans.
posted by Al at 6/24/2003 06:43:00 PM
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