After all, the greatest mystery in blogging is, "Why do 361 people comment about a link to a silly piece about 'X-Files," but no one comments on my 4,700-word reflection on the the Council of Chalcedon and the hypostatic union?"
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Ways To Watch TV Without Paying An Arm And A Leg For Cable Or Satellite Welcome to the readers of The Consumerist! Thanks for stopping by to check out my post on saving money on your TV bill, and don't forget to sign up for free daily RSS updates, or for updates via email! Don't forget to check out some of our best articles on...
Was shamelessly stolen from this wealth of goodness:
I have lots of Shatner goodies around. I'll see what I can dig up to share.
More serious and thought-provoking posts coming soon but the silliness is all that is helping me hold onto my sanity during this current season of the work crazies.
It was very sad to wake up this morning to news that Soupy Sales (83) had died after a long illness. Soupy was one of my childhood TV heroes. He was responsible for shaping my warped sense of humor and he inspired me to work in television. Growing up in the "golden age" of TV kids shows is something that I really cherish. Back then kids were able to relate to real people like Soupy, Sandy Becker, Sonny Fox and Chuck McCann, not just watch politically correct cartoons, as kids do today. My earliest memory of Soupy Sales was watching his daily show, Lunch with Soupy Sales, which came out of Detroit at noon and was seen on the ABC network. Like many pre-school kids around the country, I sat in front of the TV and ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk, along with Soupy. Of course, for dessert there was the mandatory Jello, which Soupy always jiggled in front of the camera.
Soupy's genius was that he broke down the 4th wall and the studio crew became part of the show, antagonizing and heckling him, along with his puppet pals, Black Tooth, White Fang, Hippy and Pookie. Soupy was also the first to do a kids show that really wasn't just for the kids. There were always jokes and inuendos intended for the huge number of adults who watched the show, some of which got Soupy in hot water. Who can forget Soupy's visit from a stripper and the infamous "little green pices of paper" incident?
A great big BOO to WNYW Fox 5 in New York. Channel 5, which used to be WNEW, was home to The Soupy Sales Show in the 1960's. This morning, Good Day NY barely mentioned Soupy's death except to say that he had died and he used to tape his show in the same studio.
Fortunately, I had the chance to meet Soupy once when I was working on The Sally Jessy Raphael Show back in the late 80's or early 90's. Soupy was a guest along with Adam West (TV's Batman), Bob Denver (Gilligan) and Russell Johnson (The Professor) from Gilligan's Island. Soupy was very nice and autographed one of his record albums for my wife.
Stealing a phrase from my current TV boss, Wendy Williams, Soupy will always be a "friend in my head." It is heartening to see that "Soupy Sales" is trending on Twitter this morning. It's fun to read the Tweets from his many fans.
If you're a Soupy Sales fan too, you should read this wonderful article from today's Detroit Free Press by Tim Kiska, who does a great job tracing Soupy's career from his early days in Detroit and through the various incarnations of The Soupy Sales Show. A quick search of YouTube will bring you a treasure trove of clips from Soupy's shows. I'm going to post two good ones here. First is a great interview with Soupy by Bill O'Reilly and the other is an extended clip from The Soupy Sales Show featuring Soupy Sez and his hit song, "Do the Mouse".Here's a bonus video of Soupy and the stripper I found on YouTube. The clip first shows what was seen on air and then shows an alternate version featuring the naked stripper behind the door. You've got to admit this was pretty ballsy stunt to pull on a kids TV show in the 60's. No one could ever get away with something like this today.
I'd love to hear your comments and memories of Soupy.
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Madonna and me
THIS IS SO LONG!
(...that's what he said.)
I'm a little over 30 minutes into my Madonna video-watching marathon (thanks to the new, just-shy-of-complete-so-as-to-be-totally-infuriating 2-DVD set, Celebration). I started with Disc 2, as I'm less familiar with her later work, and was eager to rediscover gems I'd unfairly dismissed, and learn where I'd been wrong. I skip over "Ray of Light," because, well, it's hideous. I land on "The Power of Goodbye," and after 30 seconds, I'm seized by anxiety. I feel a weight on me, like my body's been hijacked and there's attempt to force something out of me. I flash back 12 years ago to my freshman year in college. I feel sad, I feel remorseful, I feel like the power of goodbye has nothing on the power of regret. This feeling that the wind, or maybe my soul, has been knocked out of me only intensifies as Madonna broods around under a blueish filter in a fabulous house on a fabulous cliff, and then on a fabulous beach, solemnly crooning words that are as painful as she is pained: "Your heart is not open, so I must go / The spell has been broken, I loved you so..." I'm seeing her drama. I'm raising it.
If this sounds gay to you, welcome to my point.
Despite its one-sided nature, my relationship with Madonna is more complicated than just about any of my personal ones. I'm lucky to get along very easily with my family, and I otherwise do not suffer fools. Shutting out people that prove toxic or time-wasting is easy; if you follow pop music like I do, shutting out Madonna is not. Even when she isn't riding the wave of an omnipresent hit, her shit hovers, provoking at least an eye roll or two (remember "American Life?"). Even while viewing her with disdain for a good part of the past 15 years, I have found her fundamentally irresistible on a visceral level. I can't not feel something for whatever she does, be it good, bad or...well, that's it, really.
Partially because I do find pleasure in being proven wrong and discovering something I'd been closed off to, and partially because I've noticed myself softening on Madonna in recent years, I decided to take the opportunity in reexamining her that was offered by the release of Celebration both in its double-CD and -DVD formats. Taking in the second half of her career (as designated by the chronological DVDs, which split the halves between Erotica and Bedtime Stories), proved eye-opening and at times painful, but the first half was shocking as well for the memories it elicited. I guess I'd repressed them to resolve with my evolving hatred, but I fucking loved this woman from an extremely early age. I remember being completely transfixed by the "Material Girl" video, virtually praying to the gods of MTV to play it when it wasn't on. I remember worrying about her toes being hurt when she kicked the pole in the "Borderline" video, or watching "Lucky Star" before there was even MTV and they played those weird syndicated music video half hours on TV. I remember being the only person on the dance floor of my cousin's Sweet 16 party in 1985, singing "Holiday" with desperation to the onlooking crowd. We needed a holiday. Why was I the only one who could see that? I remember attempting to hog the camera with an "Open Your Heart" lip sync rendition as my father filmed something that I can say with certainty now, from an objective if not quite fully recollected point of view, was just barely more interesting (a birthday party of my toddler sisters or some shit). I remember learning about what patchouli was via the scent of Like a Prayer. I remember dancing in my parents' room to the Dick Tracy soundtrack/inspired-songs collection/whatever the fuck that was -- all of it, not just "Vogue." I remember sneaking into Truth or Dare with a friend who was too much of a clod to play it stealthy - he jumped over some seats and got us thrown out of that theater and into the one we'd actually bought tickets for, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. (Incidentally, I never stopped loving Truth or Dare. I watch it whenever I find it on TV, and I pine for a DVD rerelease. I'll still take the masturbation scene over "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" any day.) I remember being in school and crawling out of my skin with antipation on the day Erotica was released, because I knew it was waiting for me at home, thanks to my mall-going mom. I remember singing "Secret" at my friend Jessica's Sweet 16 party in high school, not caring whether people were going to call me a fag, because whatever, they were going to anyway.
Indeed, from around the time of "Vogue," and probably before, I was aware (and made aware and remade aware) of how gay it was to like Madonna (this despite having the vaguest of vague awareness of Paris Is Burning, thinking it was about gay people in French hell or queer arson or something). I get angry when I think of how complacent I was in the face of steady gay bashing from the time I was in second grade through high school, but I do credit myself for not caring what people though about what I thought about Madonna. I just went right on loving her loudly and singing her even louder.
I guess she was something of an outlet to my repression. I didn't come to realize that I was gay, I was told it constantly, everywhere I went. Gay was bad bad bad bad, according to everyone, so I was determined not to be that even through my college years. I really related to Whitney when she told Oprah that part of the reason she stayed with Bobby Brown so long was to show up the very vocal naysayers. People could talk all they wanted, but I wasn't going to let anyone determine my identity. I guess instead of exploding on them, I restricted myself. It was self abuse to such an extreme that during my teens, I would steal Playgirls (and Hustlers, since there were always a few dudes in there) from my father's drug store (I worked there), jerk off to them, and consciously tell myself, "You are straight, Rich. Straight." If this had the effect of shaking the soda bottle of my psyche, Internet porn put me in a fucking centrifuge. I can almost relate to the religious zealots who hate me on principle, since I lived through years and years of rejecting reason for faith in the absolute impossible.
Loving Madonna in the midst of all this was no coincidence. People wonder what attracts gay men to her and the larger-than-life women of her ilk. I think some of it has to do with the fact that when you are gay, there are really no restrictions on taste -- you can enjoy the girliest of girly things because what are people going to do, call you a fag for liking something? They already have. But that's more circumstantial that specific. More to the point, I think gay men take an active interest in Madonna, because when whipped into her entertaining frenzy, she seems so free. While masculinity is so often defined by restraint (Sports have so many rules! Real men don't cry!), iconic women like Madonna are characterized by their lack of it. They're allowed to put it all out there, to be as emotional as they want (maybe they aren't always praised for it, but they don't receive questions about their womanhood or death threats as a result). For those of us who feel repressed in any way for being what we are, the Madonnas of the world offer a vicarious thrill, an exuberance in one's identity. It's something to aspire to.
After Evita, things changed. As fixed on delusion as I was, it was becoming harder and harder to ignore my homosexuality. Like transubstantiation, it didn't make sense (Incidentally, I also stopped going to church entirely around this time, though I had been raised Catholic). My freshman year of college at NYU, Ray of Light came out and I dismissed it on the spot, now wary of the gay association. Paradoxically, a few months after the release of Ray that I attended by first gay-oriented event, the 18+ party Curfew at Twilo. I went with a girl because (don't laugh) there was some Tori Amos-themed giveaway going on (OK, you can laugh). You can't even imagine how confusing this was for me. I mostly avoided eye contact with everyone entirely, except for these two guys that came and sat across from us, repeatedly asking if we knew where they could get ecstasy. I was 19, at a gay party with a girl, fixated on my shoes. I can't believe they asked for E, when all signs pointed to K-hole.
Anyway, some dub of "Sky Fits Heaven" played that night (I recognized it because my Freshman year roommate -- gay, of course -- owned Ray of Light). The song just felt so...definitive. As much as I distanced myself from this world, my arms were only so long and so strong, and I kinda always knew that. I remember the dub being mostly instrumental, but one couplet that remained in tact was, "Think I'll follow my heart / It's a very good place to start." I didn't want to face it, but I could barely argue with it. I loved that song from that second on, and it remains pretty much the only thing that I fully adore from Ray of Light. (Though, obviously, in its ability to take me back to that feeling of closeted hopelessness, "The Power of Goodbye," has a place on my heart, as well.)
But those are exceptions -- I mostly disliked everything else through Confessions on a Dance Floor, which came out years after I finally did. (Biggest regret of my life: I didn't so much as kiss a guy until my last semester of college. I could have had so much fun, though given the fact that it wasn't until I was 25 that I realized I was mortal, I also could have put myself in grave danger. Maybe things worked out for the best?) Even though I still don't like Confessions (whatever good ideas Stuart Price has, he compresses into this hissing brick of sound), and even though when I lashed out about it on this blog, so many years ago, it was mostly in response to what I perceived as the thoughtless adoration from my online gay brothers, there were still some kind of unresolved issues with my sexuality going on that were coming out in my bashing. I didn't like Madonna because I wasn't one of those gays (despite the myriad other gay shit I loved and gushed about gaily). What nonsense. But, you know, self-acceptance is a process. I like to think that I'm finally there, but I also look forward to a time in the future where I look back and realize that I didn't even know the half of it at this point.
If Madonna is my barometer, as she has been all my life, I'm making strides. I enjoyed Hard Candy. Despite my tendency to grind my teeth whenever she aspires any kind of meaningful discussion, I loved what she had to say about Michael Jackson at this year's VMAs. Via Celebration, I've even gone back and learned to appreciate stuff that I'd turned up my nose at previously. I understand why I hated "Frozen" at the time of its release -- it sounded instantly dated, with a percussive rattling not unlike Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy," from 1991, which was not a good look in '98. Now if something came out mimicking that sound, I'd fucking flip for it. (Ray of Light, as a whole, does strike me as entirely too po'faced -- it's forced maturity at the expense of fun, which is kind of a sucky thing for pop music to be). Indeed, Madonna's rep as a pioneer still boggles my mind, as she repeatedly was behind trends (she cut her new jack swing album in '94, dabbled with trip-hop in '98, incorporated French house into her sound in '00, did the very electroclash thing of constantly referencing Giorgio Moroder in '05 and didn't get around to working with Timbaland and Pharrell until '08). On the other hand, "Die Another Day" now strikes me as way ahead of its time -- it's Autotuned electropop that would have no problem fitting in (and being better than most of) today's Top 40 programming. I even enjoy "Hung Up," now (the "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" sample is genius), although Stuart Price's lisping mess of percussion is infuriating.
As I've come to value the importance of logic and reason (to an almost zealous extent), I realize that when it comes to Madonna, there is no need for extremes. I can handle adoring "Everybody," and hating "Sorry" (and "Don't Tell Me" and "Hollywood" and most of True Blue and Like a Prayer) without feeling particularly conflicted. I can admire Madonna's seeming fearlessness and engagement with the unfamilair without fully giving myself over to her (to do so, I think, is to invest more in opportunism and the importance of popularity than I'm comfortable with). See, right now, I'm all about aspiring to balance. Madonna has allowed me to see myself, again and again, and as recently as this post. It turns out that she's meant more to me than I've wanted to admit, to the point where the prospect of hitting "Publish" is making me uneasy.
But fuck it. Here's to freedom
October 07, 2009 in Dance music all night long, Gayness | Permalink
Much has been squawked about "Saturday Night Live" and its most recent opening sketch, in which cast member Fred Armisen portrays a beleaguered Barack Obama conceding broken campaign promise after promise.
I thought Ed Rollins' commentary was on the money:
Humor with some truth in it is always dangerous. Make no mistake, a drumbeat of belittlement can damage a president.
President Gerald Ford, a gifted athlete, could never overcome the image of a bumbling, clumsy man who banged his head constantly after the hilarious portrayal of him by Chevy Chase. The senior Bush, George H.W., was brilliantly played by Dana Carvey, and more viewers remember our 41st president as the goofy, inarticulate caricature than as a serious man who served his country in many positions.But the real question being debated on cable TV because of the "SNL" parody is this: "Has the media's love affair and honeymoon with President Obama ended?"
Great question, Ed. As his own network illustrated, "SNL" has effectively forced that answer since the Ford administration (though, perhaps CNN made its point too well). Anyway, I said earlier today on Facebook that "I suspect liberals will hastily lash out at this while convervatives wrongly praise it, but [the Rollins piece] is about the fairest assessment I've come across [of] Obama in office to date." Judging by the sketch going viral overnight with the media pundits on patrol, that may very well be the case. Not having a heckuva lotta patience for punditry, I shan't posit a pun; however, I do have one beef with last Saturday's opener.
That being? Fred Armisen. He's mildly amusing, meaning: not that funny. None of his recurring characters are all that memorable, and how he parlayed "Aqua Teen" into a coveted repertory role is beyond me. His Obama impersonation is below average, garnering chance laughs at best thanks to sight gags and what I assume to be a merciful studio audience. Still, it's a presidential spoof and that's what SNL does well. Or does it?
As Rollins stated, Chevy Chase's portrayal of Ford was plain stupid. Darrell Hammond's Bill Clinton was more silly than funny, and never matched the sheer genius that was Phil Hartman's study of Slick Willy. (Note to Hammond: leave already.) And while nobody questions that Tina Fey pummeled Sarah Palin or that Comedy Centrail derailed the "Straight Talk Express," I'm not so sure that Lorne Michaels can make or break a presidency like he once could.
Whether you agreed with the message, the sketch was weak. In my humble opinion, Hulu is the real hero. Sans video sharing, the segment would've rolled over like Liberty, a reference far too old for today's technorati.
In the old days, 30 Rock commanded a presence at the polls. Anymore, they'd need to hire a modern day Sterling Cooper.
Or Rollins. After all, he canvassed for a Kennedy.
After a long day of traveling I'm back home, bringing with me a bag full memories and discs full of photos. This one, however, comes courtesy of one of the "purikura" (no idea how this is actually spelled) booths in Harajuku.
Here my niece Mallory and I are lost in a Tokyo fantasy. Like my bling?
Sent from my iPhone
