Monthly Archives: March 2010

Mar122010

Friday Evening Videos: “Cherry Bomb”

I hadn’t really planned on turning this “Friday Evening Videos” thing into a regular feature, but I find I’m having fun with it — tapping into my adolescent fantasies of being the next Johnny Fever perhaps — so I think I’m going to run with it for a while.
This week, I’ve got something a little different to show you, and it requires more background than usual. It’s a music video, yes, but it’s also a promotional piece for the upcoming feature film The Runaways.

I was only vaguely aware of the real-life Runaways until about six months ago; I knew they were the band that Lita Ford and Joan Jett had belonged to in their younger days, and I had an impression that they were teenage girls performing in lingerie, but that was about it. Then I started hearing about this new biopic (SamuraiFrog is doing his part to spread the word), and, around that same time, I spotted a greatest-hits collection at my local library. I gave the disc a spin for curiosity’s sake, and I liked most of what I heard.

If you don’t know, The Runaways were a short-lived, all-female rock band formed in the mid-1970s. They were indeed teenagers at the time, and their lyrics and visual style all played off the dark fantasy of underage, oversexed young girls giving the finger to the world and proving that they were every bit as debauched as their male counterparts. (I have no idea if they were really like that, or if it was all a carefully manufactured marketing gimmick. If they were a more recent band, I’d say it was an act — I tend to be pretty cynical about media these days — but back in the free-for-all, sexual-revolution ’70s, who knows?) In those days, female musicians tended to be a lot more demure, a lot more mellow musically speaking, and a lot more into victimhood — think of Carly Simon, Roberta Flack, Karen Carpenter — so a group of trash-talking, hard-rocking chicks was a genuine revolution. The Runaways are often credited as an influence on later all-girl bands such as The Go-Gos, The Bangles, and The Donnas, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Madonna took a lot of her trampy early look from them as well.

Musically, I found the stuff on their hits collection a little primitive, the sort of borderline-competent playing and simplistic lyrics you’d expect to hear coming from the neighbor’s garage on a hot summer afternoon. And yet… there is something compelling about their sound (which is somewhat reminiscent of early KISS), and several of their songs are insanely catchy. I especially like the ones that reveal a bit of vulnerability and even innocence lurking under the hard edge, songs like “Wait for Me” and the heartbreaking “Waitin’ for the Night.” But of course it’s the rowdy, bad-girl stuff that they’re best known for, and in this video — all footage from the movie — we’re going to hear their signature tune, “Cherry Bomb.” As unlikely as it sounds, Dakota Fanning is playing lead singer Cherie Currie, and I believe this is really her singing; Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart plays Joan Jett:

And now just for fun, here’s the original song as performed by the real Runaways:

Compare and contrast, kids!
The Runaways opens nationwide on April 9. Honestly, this and Iron Man 2 are about the only movies I’m looking forward to at the moment. My thanks to SamuraiFrog for finding the clip…

Mar112010

Sharp-Dressed Man

I ducked out of my office for a few minutes this afternoon to grab a sandwich, and while I was walking the mean streets of Salt Lake City, I happened to encounter a guy who is sadly all too exemplary of people’s fashion sense these days.
He had a full beard, but a shaved head, so his sideburns rose up alongside his ears and then just… stopped. He wore an Army-surplus field jacket; knee-length cut-off jeans with frayed leg openings; and black athletic shoes with what appeared to be black Lycra leggings, or possibly pantyhose. And he didn’t appear to be homeless, either. He was striding along as happily and confidently as any runway model.
Now… I have an allergy to neckties, I don’t even own a suit, and I’ve long maintained that I was lucky to be born well after that era when men couldn’t leave the house without a hat. But there are days when I really wish I saw fewer people who looked like my chrome-domed-but-bearded friend and more who looked like this:

Whatever happened to elegance, people? Or dignity? Or just plain looking in the mirror before you leave the house? I think I’m going to go watch North by Northwest now and try to drive the image of those weirdly freestanding sideburns from my head…

Mar102010

In Memoriam: Corey Haim

Corey Haim around '87 or thereabouts...

No disrespect intended, but I wasn’t much of a fan of the actor Corey Haim. I was a couple years too old and had one Y chromosome too many to share the enthusiasm of the Tiger Beat demographic for him and his partner-in-crime, Corey Feldman. In fact, I can recall seeing only one of his movies, and it’s the same one everyone else saw, The Lost Boys. Oh, and also a nearly forgotten but sweet little movie called Murphy’s Romance, in which he played the son of Sally Field.
Still, if you had any awareness at all of pop culture in the late ’80s, you had to know who he was. He was as much a part of the texture of that era as jelly bracelets and Aqua Net, a familiar and likable-enough presence hovering somewhere in my peripheral vision, if not somebody to whom I paid a lot of attention. So, being the huge bleeding heart that I am, I felt genuinely bad when I learned a couple years ago just what a wreck he’d made of himself after the Awesome ’80s melted down into the Ironic ’90s. Yes, I admit I was an occasional viewer of The Two Coreys, a squirm-inducing reality series that revealed the grown-up Corey Haim as a bloated, dissolute, unhappy man who barely resembled the apple-cheeked kid in the photo above. I didn’t see a single episode of that show in which Haim didn’t reminisce about The Lost Boys, obviously his personal high-water mark, and I found — somewhat to my surprise — that I had a great deal of compassion for the former teen idol whose career and life peaked before he was old enough to buy cigarettes. I’ve struggled enough to find my own path in life that I feel for anyone who is so visibly lost as Haim appeared to be.
When I heard the news of his death early this morning of an apparent drug overdose… well, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Frustration, perhaps, at the pointless waste of a life. I certainly wasn’t surprised. It seems an inevitable and perhaps even an appropriate outcome for this particular life. Corey Haim, like so many others who are given everything at an early age by an exploitative industry that has no conscience and then have it all cruelly snatched away again, seemed to be happy only when he had the public’s attention. And nothing grabs attention like the final flicker of a burnt-out star.
Haim was 38, two years younger than me. For anyone else, I’d say he had a lot of years ahead of him; in this case, though, I think it was the years behind him that mattered most. At least to him. I may be guilty of frequent and maybe even excessive bouts of nostalgia, but — in spite of how it sometimes appears on this blog — I’m not spellbound by my past the way this poor slob was.
I’m sad for him and his inability to find some way to move on, but in a weird way, I think I feel even sadder for Corey Feldman, who has always been so closely equated to his costar, so interchangeable, that he reportedly felt the need to tweet that he wasn’t the one who had died. (His Twitter feed appears to have evaporated; at least, I can’t find it to confirm this.) I can’t imagine the sorrow he must be feeling tonight. And I can’t help but wonder what effect this might have on him. I hope I won’t be writing another of these entries for the other Corey anytime soon…

Mar102010

We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby…

Spotted an interesting story over at NPR last night about the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II, whose primary role was to ferry freshly minted warbirds from the factories where they were made to the airbases where they would be dispatched overseas. The idea was to free up male pilots from mundane flying duties so they were available for combat missions.
My Loyal Readers know that I’m fascinated by the aviation exploits of that era, so naturally I’ve heard of the WASPs, but I confess I really didn’t know much about them until today. They have a pretty awesome story, and I advise all of you to click that link and “read more about it,” as the old TV PSAs used to say. I’ve been reading more about it all day during my odd moments of free time, and I’m frankly amazed no one has made a big feature film about these ladies yet. Incredible anecdotes abound. But perhaps the most striking detail I’ve gleaned from various articles about them is the casual sexism these women confronted nearly every step of the way.
We take women in the military more or less for granted these days. There have been female support pilots flying cargo and tanker planes as long as I can remember, and women fighter pilots for least a decade now (in the U.S. services, anyway — other nations had women flying combat long before we did). But in 1942, there was a debate over whether women could even physically handle a warplane. (To be fair, this concern wasn’t without warrant. The big bombers, in particular, demanded a lot of upper-body strength to operate; I’ve read that the joke used to be that you could always tell a B-24 captain because of his overdeveloped left arm, acquired through wrestling with his controls during 12-hour — or longer — missions.) The military didn’t want to expend any extra resources training women pilots from scratch, so basic piloting licenses had to be earned on the ladies’ own dime, before they signed up. (By contrast, male recruits could come into the AAF without ever having touched an airplane.) Their parachutes weren’t even properly fitted to their bodies, because they were designed for male pilots. And for the 38 WASPs who died in service to their country, there were no funds to ship their bodies back to their families and no flags for their coffins, because they were technically civilian volunteers. The WASPs would be classified as such until the mid-1970s, ineligible for veteran benefits and unrecognized by history until that time.
But in spite of all this crap — or maybe because of it, because they had something to prove — the WASPs prevailed. They mastered every type of U.S. aircraft used during the war, from light trainers to high-speed fighters to the lumbering bombers I love. When male test pilots complained that the new B-29 Superfortress was a deathtrap because of various developmental problems, a pair of WASPs demonstrated that it could be flown safely, and repeatedly. (It was likely male egos, as much as anything, that led to the disbanding of the WASPs in 1944… the menfolk figured the war would be ending soon, and they didn’t want the competition for aviation jobs.)
Do you get the idea that I admire the hell out of these women? Well, you’re right. I am inspired by stories of people who are constantly told they can’t do something, for whatever reason, and who then proceed to excel at it, usually to the utter consternation of those who put them down. And my antennae always go up when I get wind of some chapter of history that’s been largely neglected.
This morning, these awesome ladies finally got their due, as they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor our government can bestow. Of the 1,100 women who served as WASPs, only about 300 are still alive, and roughly two-thirds of them were present at the award ceremony, along with family members of all the others. living and dead, who couldn’t make it.
It’s about damn time.
Incidentally, if you like that picture up there at the top — one of the most famous WASP-related images, I believe — check out a related NPR article for some gorgeous and rare color photos, all shot by one of the WASPs named Lillian Yonally. This one of a PT-19 at sunrise is breathtaking…

Mar082010

Expectations

Last Friday, one of my coworkers — a bright guy in his mid-twenties whom I quite like, but often struggle to find common ground with — asked if I knew when Clash of the Titans was coming out.
“Sure,” I replied, “the next time I go to my video cabinet and get the DVD.”
Big laughs ensued. The kid was talking, of course, about the upcoming remake of the Ray Harryhausen classic, while I was playing to my usual curmudgeonly, remake-hating persona.
Well, this humorous bonding moment led to a discussion of the original film, which my colleague had never seen, and he asked me if I’d recommend it. I told him yes, but qualified my opinion by advising that if he thought he might want to give Clash a try, he needed to keep in mind that it was a 30-year-old movie that was originally made for 12-year-olds. You see, I’ve been down this path before; I know how younger people usually react to the stuff I grew up liking.

Mar052010

Friday Evening Videos: “Fly to the Angels”

I was a commuter student when I was at college; that is, I lived at home on the south end of the Salt Lake Valley and drove back and forth to the University of Utah every day, a 50-mile round trip, for five years. I had my reasons for doing it that way at the time, but in retrospect, it wasn’t the greatest idea I’ve ever had. I certainly wouldn’t do it again, if I could live those years over. I spent way too much time on the road, and I missed out on too many of the social aspects of college life.
Even so, I do have some memories of those years that don’t involve driving or classrooms. My class schedules often had lengthy periods of free time built into any particular day, especially during my freshman year, and I managed to explore the campus pretty thoroughly during those gaps.
One of my favorite spots was a sort of lounge in the student union, a section of the main dining area that was elevated a bit above the rest of the room, and which boasted a big-screen TV, one of the old-fashioned rear-projection models that were about the size of a bank vault. Nine times out of 10, it was tuned to MTV… and this was back when MTV was still playing actual music videos instead of The Real World or whatever the hell they run nowadays. I spent a lot of time in that lounge… studying, watching girls, meeting friends, vegging out. That was the place where I developed a taste for coffee and bagels with cream cheese.
There are a handful of videos I very clearly remember watching on that massive old dinosaur of a television, songs that instantly remind me of what it felt like to be 18 and filled with vinegar and romantic notions. The soundtrack of my late teens, and the last few moments of my wide-eyed innocence. Here’s one of them…

Slaughter-Fly To The Angels
Uploaded by SirDroopy. – See the latest featured music videos.
Yeah, I know… hair metal. It’s supposedly the nadir of western civilization, mind-numbingly stupid and terminally uncool. Whatever. I’d still rather listen to this stuff than all those mopey guys from Seattle who drove a stake through the heart of real rock and roll. And this particular video includes a gorgeous old airplane and automobile, which is probably the reason why it’s stuck in my head all these years. I have no idea what kind of car that is, but I think the plane is a Lockheed similar to the one Amelia Earhart was flying on her final expedition.
Watching this again after all these years, I’m struck by how damn young the lead singer looks. I remember thinking back in the day that all those guys in the rock bands were so much older than I was… they were adults out there doing grown-up stuff, and I was just a stupid, punk kid. Or so it seemed then. I now realize that a lot of them weren’t much older than I was, and they all look like stupid punk kids to me now. Even the ones with enviable hair.
Incidentally, the leader singer of this particular band of punk kids, Mark Slaughter, has done some interesting things in the years since “Fly to the Angels.” He’s now a voice-over artist who worked on Animaniacs, among other things. That same series also employed Jess Harnell, who’s currently singing his heart out for the awesome (and very hair-metal-ish) Rock Sugar, which I wrote about a couple weeks ago. The entertainment industry is very small sometimes.
And I’m just babbling, killing time here at the office until Mr. Slate pulls the tailfeathers on that little dinosaur-bird. I think I’m going to get out of here… enjoy the music, folks. And if I don’t manage to blog again for a couple days, enjoy the weekend, too. Savor the few minutes of real life you can manage to snatch before The Man drags you back into whatever veal pens you’re locked in during the week…

Mar052010

Kirsten Dunst: Akihabara Majokko Princess

Remember that photo of Kirsten Dunst in some kind of anime-inspired outfit that I posted a few months ago? If you’ll recall, it supposedly came from a music-video shoot in Tokyo’s famed Akihabara district. Well, the finished video has finally leaked out into the InterWebs, and, despite the best efforts of the corporate copyright Nazis to get it taken down, there are still copies floating around. Like this one, courtesy of the esteemed SamuraiFrog:
(Be warned before you hit “play” that there are manga-style cartoon boobies in this, so some people might consider it NSFW and/or offensive.)

I’ve found in my online wanderings that Kirsten is something of a binary proposition: people seem to either really like her or they really do not. Her detractors tend to become especially fixated on her uneven teeth, for some reason. Personally, I think she’s adorable, teeth and all. Not conventionally pretty, perhaps, but she’s got something that works for me. I especially like that sultry eyebrow-lifting thing she does sometimes — you can see it in this video at about the 2:37 mark. Is that TMI? Probably…
Anyhow, as you saw in the opening title card, this video was directed by McG, the guy responsible for the most recent entry in the Terminator series as well as those two Charlie’s Angels movies a few years ago; the producer, Takashi Murakami, is a Japanese artist who works in a variety of media. My understanding is that the video was played on an endless loop at the entrance to Murakami’s recent “Pop Life” exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.
Now, you may wonder what the heck a mid-list starlet in a blue wig singing a 30-year-old one-hit-wonder has to do with an art exhibition. I’ve read that it supposedly articulates the cliche’d Japan of Western imagination, i.e., Murakami’s notion of Anglo-American stereotypes about his native country’s pop culture. Or some damn thing. The really important point is that it gives us an excuse to see Kirsten Dunst in a blue wig and a really short skirt singing one of the most terminally catchy tunes of the ’80s, The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese.” Which is really not about masturbation, as the old urban legend we all heard in middle school claimed. At least, The Vapors say it’s not about that, and they oughta know, right?
Damn, she’s got long legs… and there’s that eyebrow thing again…

Mar042010

What Is Success, Anyway?

The following sentence, gleaned from the endless flood of material that’s been flowing through my inbox the last couple of days, is perhaps the most fabulously inane bit of copy I’ve ever encountered:

[The device] will make a successful sound when successfully entering data into a field, and will make an unsuccessful sound when the scan does not successfully enter data into a field.

What the hell is a “successful sound,” anyhow? Is it one that owns a big house on the east side and a summer cabin up in the Uintas? One that skis in Vail every other weekend, and drives a black Escalade that never seems to have mud-splashes on the rear quarters?
What does a successful sound actually, you know, sound like? Is it like a bell? A chime? A bird tweet? The contented sigh of a bikini-clad teenage girl sunning herself on a hot summer day? For that matter, what does an “unsuccessful sound” sound like? The first thing that comes to my mind is the truncated raspberry sound at the end of the opening credits for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Which tells you an uncomfortable lot about my mind, probably.
Lest you think I’ve pulled this sentence out of context for comic effect, let me assure you that this is the only line in the entire document that addresses these rival sounds. There is no further description — or even mention! — of them.
I think I’m done at the office for today. I’m blowing this pop stand and heading for home… ibuprofen and whiskey await.

Mar042010

Busy Busy Busy…

It’s pedal-to-the-metal at the office this week, and I’ve been almost as busy at home with a little — okay, a big — renovation project that I’ll elaborate on another time. In the meanwhile, let me entertain you with this really awful sight gag/pun based on the unexpected juxtaposition of popular music and typography (whoever came up with this has a sick, sick mind):

We can thank Sullivan for this horror show.
And now back to the regularly scheduled grind…

Mar022010

Congratulations to a Friend

I’d like to give a quick kudo to my friend Diane Olson, who I mentioned in passing during last week’s lengthy pity-party about my gout.
Diane is a copywriter at the ad agency where I work, but before that, she was a journalist and a staff writer for Catalyst magazine, a Salt Lake alternative monthly. She had quite a run there, stirring the muck, sticking it to The Man, earning a number of awards, and even having a creepy Silkwood moment or two while investigating what really goes on at Utah’s infamous Dugway Proving Ground. (Trivia note: Stephen King was inspired to write The Stand after he heard about some of the scary crap that happens out there.)
These days, Diane’s only work for Catalyst is a regular column called the Urban Almanac, a monthly compilation of timely factoids about what’s happening in the natural world right outside our patio doors, as well as tips for how readers can improve their gardens, their diets, and their connection to something more authentic than the suburbs. I know Diane gets a lot of satisfaction from her column, but she’s often said she’d hoped to do more with her writing (a familiar lament among us word-slinging types).
Just last week, quite out of the blue, as they say, she got a message from her editor at Catalyst; it seemed that someone from a local publishing house was trying to track her down. They want to turn Diane’s Urban Almanac into a full-blown book, an illustrated hardcover, no less. Whereas the Catalyst version is region-specific for SLC, the proposed book will be more global (or at least national) in scope… and they want it by October.
Diane is understandably over the moon about this, especially the way it just fell into her lap during something of a low moment, and I’m very happy for her myself. (Also a little jealous, but we won’t tell her that.) I’m already on the list for an autographed copy. And who knows… depending on when the finished volume hits the stands, it may make my Christmas shopping much easier this year!