Swing Your Razor Wide, Sweeney!

I enjoyed Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd tremendously, and I plan to grab the video soon after it comes out this week. But I also was glad to discover on Youtube what looks like a close to complete version of the George Hearn/Angela Lansbury version of Sweeney Todd. I remember watching this production on--well, memory fails me but I think it was Showtime--in the early 1980s. It had a profound influence on my literary and theatrical tastes. (Readers of my first published short story "The Knife Man" or the people who saw my senior project at Lawrence can testify to this.)

Here's the opening. It takes some doing, but the rest of the segments are available as well:

SAT Panic Setting In

With the May and June iterations of the SAT approaching fast, worried parents have been ringing my phone and bombarding my inbox looking for help. In business terms, this works out swimmingly for me, but it saddens me that ETS has so successfully oversold both colleges and parents on the predictive power of this test that my students get stuck for months, sometimes years, memorizing vocab lists and test-taking strategies instead of...well...learning stuff. A student who studies for several months physics, or French, or Chinese history, comes away in grave danger of actually knowing something about their subject. Months spent poring over sample SATs ensure that the student comes away knowing a lot about taking the SAT, a skill transferable to nothing.

Of course, hard, repetitive labor in the pursuit of meaningless rewards is a staple of life in the working world, so maybe the SAT serves a purpose in that it prepares students for the more soul-deadening aspects of adulthood. It certainly does say something about our culture that we spend so many billions of dollars to fund an educational enterprise designed to teach students nothing of consequence. But, what the hell. It's a living.

Oh, the Pain! The Pain of It All!

I have a headache that could knock over a clydesdale. Must cheer up...what to do...

A Couple of Hideous Films

To distract myself from the bad economy, the war in Iraq, and my own personal struggles, I watched two of the worst movies Hollywood ever made (and to think, neither one involved Michael Bay).

Let's take the second one first, a film with no conceivable reason for existing except, well, maybe as a stimulus package to keep the Southern California economy going, we have 1978s Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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Janet Maslin, reviewing this film for the New York Times, described it as "a business deal set to music", and I can't dispute her. The object of the game here seemed to be to find as many people as humanly possible to sing Beatles songs, except, naturally, the Beatles. If you ever wanted to watch Alice Cooper, Steve Martin, or George Burns sing a Beatles song, this movie is talking to you. The plot is some nonsense about the band's retrieving instruments that the Future Villain Band (Aerosmith) stole from them, but the plot is no more important here than it would be in a porn movie. It's all about finding excuses, however strained, to sing Beatles covers. And oh do those excuses grow strained. I pulled muscles just following them. I expect that all the checks cleared, and that the cast did okay for their contributions to soundtracks and image sales for t-shirts and assorted swag. But honestly, who gives a shit?

From bad to worse we go. I can honestly say that Concorde, Airport '79 is a better movie than Monster A Go-Go, for this reason. Monster A-Go-Go lacked both a monster and any trace of a-go-go, while Concorde did have a Concorde (or a model of one anyway) and two airports (or models of them anyway). And from the looks of it, the action did take place in 1979. So the film is, if nothing else, a triumph for the Truth in Titling movement.

Here's a clip. It's in German, but you don't need to follow the dialog precisely to delve the multiple layers of insanity and inanity contained in this six-minute sample.



Yes, it's amazing, isn't it? Who knew you could just open the window of a jet at supersonic speeds, stick your arm out, and fire a flare to distract a heat-seeking missile. If only the Air Force had been hip to this, they could have diverted all that money for countermeasures into schools, hospitals, or urban renewal.

Other things I learned from Concorde:

Men appreciate it when their friends, after setting them up with women they fall in love with, inform them that the woman was a hooker.

That if I want to kill the person who could expose the dark secrets of my industrial empire, it is far easier to try to bring down her passenger jet by rigging a missile test to malfunction, getting a rogue pilot to chase the jet with a French Air Force F4 Phantom, and by planting a device which opens one of the plane's cargo doors and decompresses the passenger compartment than it is to hire a professional killer to shoot the one person I'm actually trying to kill in the back.

That heads of corporations who participate in major felonies always sign their names prominently on all incriminating documents.

That small private jets are nearly as fast as supersonic transports. (And to think that Lockheed never included that in the brochure!)

That old women with bladder diseases who get trapped in airplane bathrooms while the plane is spinning are funny.

That airline passengers feel intense loyalty to their flights. Even after someone launches missiles and combat jets against their aircraft, they'll still come back after a day's layover to continue their journey on the same plane.

That there was an era when someone thought a cameo by Charo was a selling point.

Yep. I watch them so you don't have to.

Productivity, Of Sorts

Yet another agent rejected The Ice Age. Knowing I have to fight through this shit doesn't make it easier. I just keep telling myself that it is desperately unlikely that the only three people in the literary universe who admire this book are Charles Johnson, David Shields, and David Guterson. There's got to be one with a press and some advance money and a decent distribution channel to the chain bookstores.

I also sent the publisher of my novella, "Escape Velocities", the second part of what will eventually be the next book, concerning the misadventures of the adult Derrick Raleigh. He'll either love it, or it'll offend the hell out of him. We'll see.

At the end of everything, I think I can pronounce Let Us Sit Upon The Ground to be a success. It got some media attention, and a couple of hundred people or so took it home with them, one way or another. I've stopped advertising it. I need the money for other things, like being alive.

Update: According to Google, I actually got 448 listeners just from Podcast Alley. I don't have the figures for the other feeds, but combined with Apple, it might just have gotten into the four figures. Not bad for a guy whose budget could be conveniently measured in cents.

The Sorrow and Pity Party

A few days back, bitterspice told me about a conversation she'd had with her sister in which her sister said she wanted Hillary Clinton to win on March 4th because she "hated" Barack Obama. She never came out and explained what bothered her so about Obama, but she really wanted Clinton to win and was angry that Obama was in the way.

All this struck me strange, but I guess that's where things are now. Clinton supporters are unable to fathom why anyone would turn her away for Obama, and Obama supporters are so caught up in their own feelings of inspiration that they're offended when they see anyone who isn't similarly impressed. Speaking as the supporter of a long line of primary losers--Edwards, Clark, Edwards, Harkin, Jackson, Hart, and Kennedy, I have but one thing to say to those in one can't who can't conceive of supporting the Democratic ticket if their candidate isn't on it: get over yourselves.

When the Washington caucuses came along, I hunted down the location and voted for Clinton. I was in the minority in that room, as usual, but I was fine with that. I certainly didn't despise the people on the other side. Theirs was a passion I didn't share, but if it came down to Obama vs. Insert Torturing Right-Wing Creep Here, Obama's easily my guy, and I'll listen to his inaugural speech with as much hope for the future as the last seven years will allow me to have. Besides, now that I'm done with voting, I figure I'm out of it. I'm content to let people who still have a vote decide where to go from here.

But, as James Wolcott pointed out today, other people can't seem to handle this simple idea:

The Sorrow and the Pity Party

Look, I understand the knocks against Hillary Clinton, truly I do. There are no flaming arrows fired her way that I haven't seen traverse the air before, no bill of indictment drawn up containing charges with which I'm unfamiliar. Reciting her sins and liabilities has become a familiar refrain, but if it's the Gregorian chant you live by, if you find Hillary Clinton such an insupportable choice for the Democratic nomination that you prefer to suckle your pride and idealism rather than soil your conscience should she be at the top of the ticket, fine, have fun with that. But, please, I beg of thee, could you at least spare the rest of us your longwinded, preeny, pious dirges?

"I have, in sorrow, come to the conclusion that should Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee, I will not cast a vote for president. I live in Virginia, which she has no realistic chance of carrying, so perhaps it takes little courage for me to make that decision, should it be necessary. But given that I am politically active, that I teach government to adolescents, that I encourage them to participate, it is truly in sorrow that I find I must make this decision.

"I will try to explain, if you care to keep reading, why I have made this decision."

Explain, the Kos Diarist proceeds to do, for numerous earnest, soul-searching paragraphs.

There's more. Read the whole post.

My feeling has always been that if you can't bear the thought of messing up your nice, clean soul with the muck of real-world politics, then maybe political engagement isn't the hobby for you. It's not nice out there. People say mean, cruel, backbiting things, and sometimes they even fib a bit. And if you want to use the political system to get anything done to help people without power (a hard enough trick to pull off in any political culture), then you need to attract the attention of a cruel, backbiting, ruthless bastard whose interests coincide with your desires. In Star Trek terms, yes, everyone likes the Good Kirk, but he can't live without the Evil Kirk.

I voted for Hillary, at least in part, because I respect ruthlessness in politicians. I was an Edwards guy to start with, but he didn't last long enough for me to vote for him, and Hillary seemed the one willing to go to war to get the things Edwards talked about done. Maybe Obama can be more effective, but I don't know that he has the steel for it. He strikes me as a man who fears making enemies. Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he, like John Kennedy, really does have an enforcer's mentality underneath the idealistic patter. But I'm broke and need health insurance that actually pays for things, so when the caucus came to town I didn't feel as if I could work on the if-come. That's why I voted the way I did.

Still, other Democrats have other priorities. I respect that, and wouldn't think of telling anyone what to do. The animosity between the two camps seems misplaced. This isn't, after all, the Stalin-Trotsky split or anything. Hillary and Obama are politically very close to each other, so much so that they have to strain to find things to argue about. They're close in another way too, though, which Obama supporters might want to consider before they get too carried away.

If Obama is to make it to the presidency and survive in it, he's going to have to be every bit as ruthless as Hillary, or the opposition and events will consume him. To accomplish anything worthwhile, he'll have to do things that will put stains on his shining armor. He'll have to do things that offend the moral sensibilities of his supporters. The Corleone family will never be legitimate. Our Evil Kirk will never be exorcised. That's politics. That's life. Accept it or walk away, but spare everyone the wailing and gnashing of teeth. This country's in too deep for us to waste time striking poses of moral innocence.