Was haben wir hier?

Those with a keen eye and a knowledge of botanical things might be able to recognize.

Es wohnt nach der Strasse von meine Haus, aber ich bin keine Mann genug, es zu versuchen.

That's what we call Cali-deutsch.

Don Juan and Carlos can tell you about the flower.

Forgettably Essential

I recently went to the Long Beach Comic Convention, and while I did find a book I was looking for, I also found a special gift for my brother. I was going to try and keep it a secret. It's a DVD, and since it wasn't shrink wrapped, I figured I should watch it. After watching it, I realize I have to speak about it somewhere in my collection of blogs, and it seemed to fit here. Also, I don't think Shipping Magnate Gonzo, younger brother of the Chef, doesn't read this site.

Here's a shot of the DVD case:

Yup, that's the goddamned Holiday Special, the most godawful piece of crap produced with the name "Star Wars" attached to it, and that's saying something.

Most hard core fans try to ignore this program,and even the actors regret doing it. George Lucas himself had nothing to do with it, and, in the picture of the reverse of the DVD jewel case below, they have Lucas quoted as saying: "If I had time and a hammer, I'd track down every bootleg copy and smash it..."

This copy has some bonus features: the "Troops" parody of "Cops", which has its moments. The "Hardware Wars" was funnier than I remember, and the "Lost Auditions" was actually from MAD TV, and SNL.

So, in 1978, just a year removed from Star Wars and two years to go still before Empire Strikes Back, someone who had enough power over the rights of the intellectual property, decided to put together a variety show style Holiday Special revolved around the Star Wars universe.

It's been roundly criticized by fans of the Star Wars universe, fans of variety shows, and even slack jawed yokels who spend hours staring at the tube.

It does, as any hard core fan can tell you, actually have the first appearance of the strangely popular bounty hunter Boba Fett. So, while it would be most helpful to pretend that it doesn't exist, the fourteen minutes of animation from Nelvana Studios is necessary for Boba Fett's existence.

I thought, you know, I should watch this sucker. I'd be a more complete fan. Nevermind that I don't really consider myself a fan so much anymore.

Let me start with an all-caps warning, from the critical eye that just watched this "special": IT IS FUCKING EYES BLEEDINGLY AWFUL. I do thing that every fan should have to sit through it, but they should be forced to have a gravity bong rip before hand, or only after a six pack or something.

I kept notes as it went on and on and on. It opens with Han Solo and Chewie sitting at a lame remake of the Millennium Falcon cockpit, dodging imperial fighters, all the while Han promising he'll get Chewbacca back to Kashyyyk, his home planet, in time for the "Life Day" celebrations. The opening scene is fast paced and jerky looking.

Then the "Holiday Special" credits roll, and we see who the guests are to be, and afterwards we're introduced to Chewie's fam: his wife Mala, son Lumpy, and father Itchy. They have some other, real, names I guess, but those are all we really hear, and then only by humans.

And then we get the Chewbacca family for eight minutes, all growls as they do housework, and then Grandpa Itchy gave the boy Lumpy a tape to watch, and we get four minutes of the lamest Cirque du Solei crap to a horrible instrumental disco inspired track. Ugh, already it's worse than bad.

Around the 12 minute mark we get Mark Hamil's appearance. he's working on his X-wing, or something, and he shows concern for Chewie and Han not being there yet. See, they're still off fighting, or running, or whatever.

Then we get to watch as Malla watches a cooking show, with what looks like some guy in drag and blackface, and who eventually gets an extra set of arms, and it is really awful. It goes on and on, isn't funny but you get the feeling it should be, and all the while Malla is showing she can't cook? Maybe? She's at least having trouble with the recipe, or the pace of the show's chef is setting. It seems to go on forever, but it may be just about six minutes, which feels like an eternity.

Maybe the cartoon is next, but it could just be more of the Chewbacca family growling around their treehouse. At one point Grandpa sits in a chair and puts his head into hair a dryer thing from a salon and he's subjected to a psychedelic show, and we're subjected to another glittery light show, and then signing. It's a young and pretty black girl with some kind of plastic stuff on her head where hair might be.

At the 37th minute we finally see Leia, who's also nervous about Han and Chewie not being back, but at least the human trader has stopped by the Chewbacca residence; he can translate. After the picture phone call, the imperial gaurds show up, and at some point, around minute 45 one guy sits down to watch a fucking video. It's actually a long Jefferson Starship disco era absurdity.

Now you ask yourself What the fuck is wrong with me for staying with this garbage this long? Somehow we make it to minute 69...over an hour of this shit, and we're in a tavern on Tatooine. Who's the bartender?

Bea Arthur.

Beatrice Fucking Arthur is the bartender in the bar on Tatooine. Bastards should've opened with this; you've got me. Some dill-hole is trying to woo her, then the imperial guys send out a picture wall message that a curfew has been instilled on Tatooine, and she has an effective way of getting the drunks to leave: she starts singing. Oh good gravy, at minute 77 there's Bea Arthur singing in a Star War, er, project.

That cartoon was kinda cool...a planet with a surface like bubblegum, and Boba Fett at first saving Han and Luke, but turning out to be a big douche. I dunno. Check it out on YouTube if you really want to see it. It's an interesting look at late 70s Canadian animation.

Just when you think it should be over, guess what: Princess Leia sings the words to a song about Life Day and Peace to the main John Williams score, the dam theme score, if you can call it that. She sings the theme song.

And it still isn't over yet, as we get part of the Life Day ceremony, because Chewbacca and Han made it back safely at some point where I guess I was making another gin and tonic. No, I remember it now; it sucked like everything else.

I once wrote a piece about Troll 2 and this Holiday Special is much, much worse.

"Hardware Wars" almost makes up for it. Seriously...almost. Where the Holiday Special is long, plodding and awful, "Hardware Wars" is short, fast-paced, and actually genuinely funny.

Look out Brother Gonzo, it's coming to you sooner than you think!

Springy Clothespins or the Other Kind?

The title of this post refers to the church's marquee explaining that particular day's sermon in the third episode of the fourth season of The Simpsons, "Homer the Heretic". I thought that would be a good title for two reasons: it is another one of the beautiful absurdities associated with the show, and the particular storyline covers America's aversion to going to church and how it's relevance comes into question.

To start a conversation or debate about clothespins means you have either too much free time or a specific neuroses. And what do we call those "other kinds"?

In the episode, Homer is bothered to get out of his warm bed and put on his lousy church clothes. When his pants split, he decides to go back to bed, refusing to go to church. While Marge and the kids suffer through the sermon inside the freezing hall--the heater's broken--Homer hangs out at home, turning up the heat, watching football, and realizing how little he needs going to church in his life.

That's the main metaphor here: convenience and comfort are the motivating factors keeping Homer home, and are the tempting factors facing the churchly masses in America. Homer does what they, I imagine, would like to do if they either allowed themselves, or were allowed to do: skip the whole thing and stay comfortable at home watching football (or whatever).

I get the feeling the masses reluctantly go to church when they do, and Homer represents their base desires. The important thing here is that church has lost its relevancy for Homer, and those masses. With a sermon like the one described on the marquee, and adorning the title of this post, about fucking clothespins, how can anyone consider it relevant?

To me, that's the important discussion in this episode: reconciling the problems that American "believers" have with how they cultivate their relationship with their deity.

I've known Hindus who don't have a place to go to "worship" on a weekly basis, rather they have a daily ritual they perform. I've worked with Muslims who took their time everyday to go do their prayers, much to the sneers and muffled cursing of the Christians also working there.

Homer, though, is mostly selfish and thoughtless, and lets his slovenly ways get the best of him, accidentally setting his house on fire while he naps on the couch.. The religious forces come to his rescue (Christian, Jewish, Hindu), and his return to church in ensured.

We're left with the final image, that inconclusive conclusion of this conversation: Homer asleep and snoring in the church. Everything's okay as long as you show up?

What a poor lesson.

Old School Sampling/Appropriation

Hip Hop artists started sampling the rhythm tracks from older R&B, funk, and early rock and roll songs to  create new pieces of music. Most people in this country have come into contact with one form of sampling or another.

In an older time certain aspects of making music, and making songs, was to use other people's musical pieces, and by "use", I mean to basically steal them. In a way this appropriation is a kind of sampling, and since music is collaborative and things can be done to change riffs and beats just enough to not be legally actionable, most artists seemed to have just said, salud, good for you, nice song.

The Keith Richards and Eric Clapton both started as white English guys ripping off American blues musicians, so there's a grand history to that sort of thing.

A song that is such a cultural touchstone for America, and was made by Americans, has in itself a rich legacy of appropriation. I speak of The Doors' "Break on Through (To the Other Side)".

The opening drum beat is a modified samba beat. The samba sound was reaching the States from Brazil around this time, and to use it in a rock song was as novel as it was radical. Instead of the brush on the snare-drum, John Densmore hardened the sound to make it a little more rock sensible by using a stick lightly on the cymbal.

The Ray Manzarek's organ starts, and the bass, being played by his left hand, is basically a repeating four note beat lifted directly from Ray Charles. Hearing it by itself it's pretty obvious.

Robby Krieger, on guitar, played a slightly modified riff of the driving part of "Shake You Money Maker".

String those components together behind Jim Morrison's words, a positive message about resistance and self realization, and you end up with an American classic.

Quintessential or Not, Two LA Movies

I was originally title this "Two Quintessential LA Movies", but the more I thought about it, one I felt less and less was quintessentially Los Angeles. They were made eight years apart and both are beloved by certain elements as cult classics.

The first is from 1976, and it is generally called an underrated action film before that genre really became a thing. It's taut, suspenseful, has lots of shooting, and was made by John Carpenter. I'm talking about Assault on Precinct 13.

For some reason this is considered an LA movie. I know it was filmed in LA, and certain neighborhoods are seen before the siege starts, but it doesn't really address LA things. It's not a bad movie, and maybe because I'm not from the Southland I can't understand.

It's basically Rio Bravo mixed with Night of the Living Dead, where the zombies have guns with silencers.

The zombie hoards that lay siege to the last-day-open police station are actually well-armed punks and gangsters. Why they assault the station is left to your imagination, or, is it really because of the guy who's daughter is shot? Probably, but that meaninglessness of it all is central.

A couple of notes: the soundtrack is composed and played by Carpenter himself on a synthesizer, and it captures the eras burgeoning digital dread. It was originally to be called The Siege, and then something else, before an executive changed it himself, thinking Assault on Precinct 13 sounded more ominous. The only reference to 13 made in the entire movie is early on, when the closing station house is referred to at "Precinct 9, District 13".

It's low budget and taut.

The second movie, from 1984, is much easier to call "quintessentially LA". The music captures the LA punk scene perfectly, the locales used for the shoot show off the underside of Reagan's America and Reagan's Los Angeles, and alienated youth takes centered stage, and shares it with an alien in a trunk.

I'm talking about Repo Man. An early vehicle for Emilio Estevez, his father figure was played by Harry Dean Stanton, and the cris-crossing lives of Los Angeles repo men make for great fun when intersecting with a scientist going mad from radiation poisoning hauling an alien corpse in his trunk.

You see the LA river in a car chase scene; you see the boonies in their home office; you see a neat homey atmosphere at Emilio's house. The '80s LA punk rock blares mostly the whole time, and all food and drink commodities are branded exactly the same: white packaging with blue lettering.

I remember the first time I saw the movie was on VHS cassette, and it wasn't new anymore, but when the end credits roll, I was inspired. Instead of the usual coming from the bottom and rolling up, the credits in Repo Man cascade slowly down from the top of the screen to the bottom.

Even the credits are punk rock.