‘Mean Old Jews Who Crucify My Lord’

A holiday classic, by Sister Albertha Harris Lewis.

Label image from TheHoundBlog.

‘Taking a big, meaty crap on the legacy of Peter Sellers’

The Hollywood-industrial complex reports:

STEVE MARTIN urged PINK PANTHER 2 producers to write in an unlikely wedding for his bumbling INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU into the script — because all his films that end with a marriage have been hits.

Clouseau weds Emily Mortimer’s character Nicole in the new comedy after funnyman Martin got his way.

He says, “I said, ‘I have to tell you that every movie I’ve done that ends in a wedding or holding a baby has been a hit.’

“I do believe we’ve taken the Pink Panther somewhere else and, in a sense, made it our own.”

And Martin, who is the fourth actor to play Clouseau on screen, already has an idea for the start of Pink Panther 3.

He adds, “It would obviously open with Clouseau’s honeymoon — him taking Nicole across the threshold and she’s wearing arm pads and a helmet!”

Jesse responds:

It’s funny, right before the end of his life, Sellers had helped write a script for the next Pink Panther movie, called The Romance of the Pink Panther, in which Clouseau finally met the love of his life. Throughout the series, starting with his cuckoldry, Clouseau’s love life had been held up to contempt, and this gave the series a cruelty to it after six outings.

What little I have seen of Martin's Pink Panther movies makes his version of Clouseau seem a clown, which Martin treats with contempt. While there’s no arguing that Sellers’ Clouseau was also a clown, Sellers never had contempt for this or any of his characters. In fact, Sellers’ motivation for the Romance script was not financial at all, but out of true sympathy for the character, and what Sellers saw of himself in Clouseau’s bumbling existence.

There aren’t any comedians like that anymore. I actually think Mike Myers was one of the last ones, but as much as the quality of Sellers’ films spiraled down and his life continued in turmoil, he at least retained the ability to, how did one biographer say it, play “great roles in shitty, shitty movies.” Myers has way more lost sight of whatever original gift he had for great comic characters, replaced with the plasticine grin of Shrek.

Trailer:

The woman they almost lynched

Not to the promised land just yet

I just heard someone on Brian Lehrer’s show on WNYC refer to Barack Obama as “colored.” Uncharacteristically, Lehrer didn’t say anything about it.

Press release of the day: Ramone family endorsements

OK, all you inexplicably still-undecided voters, you now have the final endorsements you need to make up your minds: Linda Cummings, widow of Johnny Ramone, has been hanging out with the McCains and getting props from the Senator’s 24-year-old blogger daughter Meghan, which has prompted the following release from Mikey Leigh, a.k.a. Mitchell Hyman, younger bro of Joey:

“It has been brought to my attention that Linda Cummings, using the name ‘Ramone,’ has recently been in the media joining with the Palin family and the McCains to attempt to aid their campaign for the Presidency. As a President of Ramones Productions, and brother of Joey Ramone, I just want it to be clear that Linda Cummings does not represent the political views of the Ramones. Surely, as for Joey Ramone, the only Ramones song he would sing at a Republican campaign event would be ‘Glad To See You Go!’

I should add that when Johnny stated ‘God Bless George Bush’ at the 2002 Rock&Roll Hall of Fame awards, I realize now that he was on to something. Because if it were not for George Bush and his handling of our country the past 8 years, I doubt so many Americans, including so many highly regarded Republicans, would now be getting behind Barack Obama. So, yes, God bless George Bush for paving the way to Obama.”

The Ramones’ political schism goes way back. Johnny was a staunch Republican, while Joey wrote “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” in protest of Reagan’s 1985 visit to a German cemetery where 49 SS soldiers were buried. Johnny insisted that for U.S. releases the song be called “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down.”

Johnny and Joey didn’t speak to each other for years. Those are committed voters.

Museum of propaganda: 2008 remixes

Museum of propaganda: 2008 remixes

Museum of propaganda: 2008 remixes

(Originals, BTW.)

Museum of propaganda: 2008 remixes

Museum of propaganda: 2008 remixes

Museum of propaganda: Frightening prospect

Museum of propaganda: ‘Learn the facts’

I never knew there was a Racists Black Power Church. If there really was, wouldn’t they at least try to camouflage their name? Like, say, the All-American Equality and Justice God God God Church (Which Is Secretly Satanic and Racist — sssh!).

(Via BB.)

Museum of propaganda: Slave, anyone?

Also appreciated ...

... in the industrial design galleries at MoMA: vintage posters.

Not wild about wartime slave labor, though.

(Via.)

Reminder: Not ALL women are stupid, though they all do smile a lot

This li’l nugget o’ sexism, which ran in the New Yorker on March 29, 1968, is taken from this person’s fantastic vintage magazines collection on Flickr, which reached me via Vintage Ads. I also like this one:

‘Most husbands, nowadays, have stopped beating their wives’

(Via Vintage Ads.)

From the archives: Simon Doonan gets ‘nasty’ on me

Suddenly remembered: The time Simon Doonan wrote an angry column in the New York Observer about my negative review of his book Nasty. In a roundup in the Times Book Review three years ago, I called his book “a memoir of style consciousness and gay life never quite as witty as it pretends to be,” and said that “to hear Doonan tell his story, it’s a wonder not everyone raised in mid-century Reading, England, turned out to be as foppish and superficial as he did.”

Doonan flipped out, lamely playing the homophobia card. “Is ‘foppish and superficial’ some fab new Old Gray Lady code for ‘gay’?” he said of this “daringly un-P.C. stroke of [my] pen.” (The definition of “fop” notwithstanding, his accusation is ridiculous; his sexual orientation has nothing to do with his being a mediocre writer.)

“Instead of reviewing my book or my writing,” Doonan said in the column, “the reviewer, one Ben Sisario, chose to focus on me and what he saw as my underexamined self-image.” Though parts of Nasty are very amusing, it became painful to see that he believes so strongly that he must cover up what he believes is his essential ugliness: “It is your duty not to inflict your innate troll-like appearance upon the people around you and to do everything in your power to camouflage it,” he wrote. This idea is repeatedly called “life-enhancing.” But I found it sad and self-loathing.

I got more enjoyment from his loathing of me — the best thing anyone has said to me, ever, is “fop off!”

Austin service

Austin is a fun town, filled with drunk kids and music blaring out of every downtown door and backyard. It’s also refreshingly hot here: it got to 95 yesterday, and from my first show at 2 p.m. until I stumbled back to the hotel 13 hours later, everyone I saw was covered in a thin film of rock sweat, with breath smelling of cheap beer. (I was lugging my computer around in the afternoon and my sweat layers weren’t so thin.)

But it is so not New York City, a fact reinforced every time I find myself the irritated fast walker on a sidewalk full of people who seem to be strolling, or even just swaying. It’s especially clear in restaurants and, as I just experienced for the second time, with hotel room service.

Me: Hi, I’d like to order some food for Room 918. I’d like the bowl of fruit with yogurt and honey, some orange juice, and coffee.

Room service (young guy, didn’t give his name): OK, you said you want honey with that?

Me: That’s just what it says on the menu. It says fruit with yogurt, dried cranberries and honey.

Room service: I do apologize sir, but we are sold out of honey.

Me: Sold out of honey?

Room service: Yes, sir.

Me: Uh, OK. Just forget about that then.

Room service: So cancel your order?

Me: No, please don’t cancel. Just forget about the honey.

On Thursday night I ordered dinner in my room, with great reluctance. I was tired from my flight and hadn’t eaten anything all day. The great BBQ place down the street (Iron Works; old sign inside reads “general and rectal surgery”) had a huge line and doesn’t deliver, and I had a deadline to meet. So I called downstairs.

Me: Hi, I’d like to order the barbecued ribs.

Room service (lady named Cindy): OK, sir. [Pause.] You say you’d like the Jack Daniels glazed ribs?

Me: Uh, no, just the regular ribs.

Cindy: OK, sir. Just one moment. I’m not seeing that here.

Me: It’s right here on the menu, under “Steak and Ribs.”

Cindy: Just want to make sure I’m on the same page, sir.

Me: Well, the pages don’t seem to be numbered. But it’s the page before all the Jack Daniels stuff.

Cindy: OK. [Pause.] Still not seeing it, sir.

Me: Really? Just a plate of barbecued ribs.

Cindy: We’ve updated the menu recently, sir. Could you hold please, and I’ll check on that.

Me: You know, I’m actually really, really hungry. Could I just put in an order of basic ribs?

Cindy: OK. I’m sorry, you were looking for steak, or ribs?

Me: Ribs. I’d like to order the barbecued ribs. I imagine your kitchen will know what that is.

Cindy: OK, sir, I do apologize for the delay. We’ll get your order up just as soon as we can.

Here’s the thing about being a New Yorker getting frustrated with Texas ways: you get a little ticked off and you know it’s clear in your voice, but the response from the Texan is always friendly and calm. And you feel like an asshole. So when I opened the door, I found Cindy herself delivering my food, calling me “Mr. Sisario,” apologizing profusely, and kindly asking how I was enjoying the festival. I felt like I was the one who should apologize.

But now it’s 35 minutes later and I’m still waiting for my breakfast of fruit and yogurt with no honey. And that ticks me off.