John Bender is Dead - he's spilled his last can of paint in the garage

John Hughes wrote, directed and otherwise made a bunch of movies in the 80s that pretty much defined adolescence in that decade.

They rang true for me as well, though I ostensibly played my adolescence out a decade before that. Of course, I claim a certain prepubescent Dorian Gray sensibility to this day and may even be suffering from DG Syndrome (if I'd known, I'd have had it treated).

Like many, 16 Candles and Breakfast Club are my two favorites Hughes flicks. Though it isn't as well known, I also really loved 'Some Kind of Wonderful': Mary Stuart Masterson, wailing on her drum set, pining for the post-Mask/pre-Pulp Fiction Eric Stoltz who only has eyes for Lea Thompson. And 'Pretty in Pink' - classic. Hughes also wrote Lampoon's 'Vacation' and 'Uncle Buck' (great stuff) but also afflicted us with 'Home Alone' and the 'Flubber' remake (let's not talk about those in the eulogies, okay?). Still, it was the middle-class suburban teen comic joy and crises of a particular time and place that he put an indelible stamp on.

All-in-all, there aren't many writer/directors who defined a genre more than John Hughes. Just as Hitchcock owned mystery and suspense, Hughes was 80s teen angst.

School's out. The 80s are now truly over. And to underscore that, Grandpa Steve Tyler broke his shoulder falling off the stage, presumably trying to get up out of his rocker to sing. Sorry, Steve: if I'm old, you're old.

But let's get down to what the media really want to know: How would Michael Jackson have felt hearing about John Hughes death? Perhaps Larry King will have Germaine on to give us a take on MJ's favorite John Hughes movie.

Boy, it was a bag-o-laughs watchin' the boys and gals in Congress do the final preen, howl, mumble and let-go-my-ego tango prior to the Sotomayor vote. Both sides of the aisle outdid themselves in hot air, purple prose and piles of steaming horseshit. Watching CSPAN this evening (and then some of the highlights on the Daily Show) was truly entertaining. That's where my head is at.

Bringing my thought process (process?) full circle, I wonder if Sotomayor could fairly and impartially judge a John Hughes movie contest? Or would her viciously racist and radical latino-only agenda come to the fore and compel her to keep writing in La Bamba even though didn't have a hand in that? I'm sure some variant of that is on the minds of the right wing bozos bouncing around Congress. Actually, that's probably too reasonable for most of that ilk.

We all know what a melting pot of humanity a Hughes film festival would attract, given the rainbow of diversity threading through that jumbo DVD box set (if by rainbow, I mean white, Anglo-Saxon upper middle class suburban Chicago teenagers). Some were tall, though. And some short. At least shorter than the taller ones.

Hughes was about as white bread (and white bred) as they come. Which makes him compadres with most of the Supremes (Thomas included, let's be frank now - I'm sure he's rockin' Barry Manalow and Perry Como on the iPod, occasionally getting 'ethnic' by slipping in some Bee Gees).

Will Sonia be able to deal with movie night at the courthouse? I think she needs to come clean here.

Random Thoughts, Trivial Drivel

Kim and Bill go to Cabbage Castle
I see Lil' Kim and Billy the 'C' are breaking kimshi in Pyongyang. A few glad handing photo ops, a 'my wife is ...' dirty joke with wink-wink delivery, a free happy meal gift certificate or two under the table and, bam! Those journalists are on a plane home!

Meanwhile, Hillary looks on with a bemused, pained smirk. Is there no way to duck that shadow?

Lil' Kim's a publicity whore and a propaganda panda and this should fill his coffers for a good long while. Point to Dear Leader.

Joe Jackson Gives Grandkids the Gift of His Absence
That's today's obligatory Jackson headline across the news aggregators and to my mind a pretty colossal understatement. This is a guy that was pushing some website venture of his to a reporter the very day they found his son dead. Class.

I caught the headline from the corner of my eye at work and my first thought was 'Is She Really Going Out with Him'/'Steppin' Out' Joe Jackson? Grandkids? Damn, Joe's not that old is he? Then I came back to Earth and caught my mistake. But 'Sunday Papers'/'Beat Crazy' Joe Jackson is indeed plenty old enough for Grandkids. So, for that matter, am I. Shit.


Russian subs patrolling off East Coast
Ha! We fell for the whole 'cold war is over' masquerade, the central-committee-is-no-more charade. These guys are crafty devils. Hopefully, our boys can knock the rust off the ol' creaky SOSUS arrays, kick start the trusty Manual Morse listening posts and point 'em at the Olenegorsk-San Antonio De Los Banos Bear-D flight corridor. The red menace is back, baby, and we missed ya something fierce! Give me a 'U', give me an 'S', give me an 'S', give me an 'R' ...

Spam
I'm fascinated by the subject lines in spam. All the come-ons and teasers in various states of lucidity and purpose and grammar. It gets more interesting the more of it there is, as each needle attempts to polish its gleam amidst the growing haystack that is internet-scale email traffic.

Out of the hundreds that are caught by my filters (and the dozens that aren't), there are usually at least one or two a week that catch my eye.

Mainly, I'm interested in the thought process behind the face of the proposition, the subject line. Perhaps more than anything, spam is a microcosm of humanity (the light and the dark, the banal and the twisted).

To wit, 'Mandy Brewer' lets me know that "You can be ugly and stupid as long as your shaft is big." Classy, to the point with an economy of words. 'Mandy' clearly know how to laser in on 'her' target demographic. If only software vendors could be so direct. In the end, they pretty much say the same thing, it just takes them sssoooo llloooonnnggg to get to the punch line.

It's a matter of economies of scale, I guess - 'Mandy' is just working the long end of the long tail - ya hit enough people in enough different ways, somebody's head's gonna eventually spin in your direction.

And right next to Mandy in the spam bin is 'six ways to manage your relationship with the CIO' from the Tech Republic.

Of the two, which one most qualifies as spam? Which one was more useful? Me, I'm still undecided. Ugly and Stupid, you say?

Impotence, Dr. G, Manson, Mary Louise and Rush - Rush?

Monday, Monday.

Man, I'm getting so sick of the pharmaceutical industry wacking me up side the head with a wet sack of shit every night.

I don't remember "E.D" ads alongside Geritol and Sominex and Old Gold Smokes as a child. You just knew Ward Cleaver didn't need some little pill in order to satisfy June (or to satisfy Miss Landers, for that matter). Christ, even Floyd the Barber could buzz his clippers without turning to Wyeth or Pfizer and he lived in Mayberry where Otis the Drunk was often as good as it got.

After the bad soft porn music, sickly knowing glances, and dockers-commercial-grade male bonding sing-along, you have 10 minutes of hard Harry reciting disclaimers of the side effects: ruptured eyeballs, total loss of bowel control and irresistible compulsion to sing Elvis tunes. They could just shorten it all by saying, 'may cause you to morph into Elvis - symptoms include asking Nixon for a DEA commission, cravings for fried banana and horsemeat sandwiches and passing out for long periods on the shitter (where "long periods" are defined by the company as indefinite).'

When did everyone in the world suddenly become inflicted with impotence? Or was that always the case and the world used to deal with it the old fashioned way - violence and scientific discovery? Ironically, advances such as Viagra were likely only possible because the scientists were impotent and had to focus their energies elsewhere.

Click. Click. Click. Gotta escape these commercials.

Hey, Dr. G got a new one tonight - she is visiting the construction site of her new morgue. Looks like it'll be some sweet digs, perfect for crackin' open cadavers.

Click. Click. Click.

Look who's in the news - that ol' ratings grabber from way back, Charlie Manson!

Charlie is 74 and it was 40 years ago today that he sent his little tripped out, brainwashed demented hippie crew off to slaughter Sharon Tate. He is looked upon as, along with the Angels at Altamont later that year, the catalyst for the downfall of "the 60s", shitting on and helping ultimately kill all that was good and innocent and hopeful about that time. That bestows way too much on this punk. Manson was a two-bit little hustler and is hardly responsible for the whole disco-coke-me-me-me vibe of much of the 1970s much as I'd like to stick him with that tab.. He certainly should ante up for some of that mess but he doesn't deserve the notoriety that you just know he craves.

I've gotten some chuckles out of the "news" interviews shitheads like Geraldo attempted with Manson, thinly disguised ratings ploys that a freak show like that naturally brings on. But in the end, he was really just a cheap jailhouse con man who got handed the grifter's golden chocolate bar in the mix of disaffected youth, psychedelics, easily misinterpreted music, and isolation from 'normal' society that the late 60s in California presented. And I'm not knocking any of those things, only those that would exploit it. He was as much a part of the 60s as Vlad the Impaler. He just got 'luckier' with the timing.

Click. Click.

10pm. Time for Weeds. Mary Louise is Topless! But not in a good way! Wait a minute - isn't that an oxymoron? No, that's Rush Limbaugh, and he does not belong in this paragraph, can't-resist-similes are not an excuse.

Wow, enough for the evening. The paint once again is dry.

Geithner's Swimming with Sharks at the Deep End of the Car Wash

Tim Geithner may turn out to be the best Treasury Secretary in American history.

But might appear to be the worst.

I'm watching him on This Week, doing his usual sort of interview, looking vaguely pained, uncomfortable. I recognize the expression. I wear it when I haven't taken a shit in several days. He has it when he has to talk to people.

Most guys that are geniuses with crunching numbers hate having to explain their process.

Unfortunately, cabinet secretaries are first and foremost communicators.

They should know just enough about their area of responsibility so as to not sound completely stupid on the Sunday morning talk circuit, but not a lot more is necessary. They can hire plenty of brilliant technical experts. And have a primary brainiac who acts sort of as their Chief Operating Officer while the secretary does the Chief Executive Officer hand waving that plays well to the shareholder/taxpayer audience, as well as to congress and other layperson decision makers.

I think the roles of CEO and COO are instructive here. The CEO should be all about vision and long term 'strategy' and communications. The COO gets it done.

Now you might say, "But the President is the country's 'CEO' and the cabinet secretaries are his 'COOs'." It's an easy but ultimately false analogy for something as large and diverse as the US government.

Well, not really a false analogy but rather more an incomplete one.

A better take is that of wholly owned subsidiaries, each of which runs a sufficiently large and, more importantly, different line of business. Each deserves its own strategy and vision guy: a CEO.


Generally, for a large company, if you have one person playing both roles, he or she better be of two divergent but brilliant minds or there be wolves, blood and slow death likely lurking in its future.

But back to Geithner. All nerves and jittery gestures and hemming and hawing. I've seen the same mannerisms from those that knew finance and numbers down deep in their bones. Idiot Savants. Of course, I've also seen it from plain Idiots. Does "middle America" know the difference? I'm not sure I do. And there's the rub.


But fuck all that. It's miserable thunder/lightning/rain, the Sunday morning news-talk shows are finito, and I'm grooving to the Retro channel's showing of Car Wash ('workin' at the Car Wash ... workin' at the Car Wash, yeah! mmmmmm Car Wash, yeah!'). I'd forgotten all the great appearances in this cheeseball romp. George Carlin! Ivan Dixon from Hogan's Heroes! Richard Pryor! Otis Day! 'Professor' Irwin Corey!

Shark Week on Discovery Channel's in full swing. No Quint to be had there so it can only be so good in my view. Quint (or rather another of Robert Shaw's variations of Quint) is alive and well and slightly more articulate in the person of Romer Treese in Flix's repeated airings of The Deep, also currently running just down the dial from its aforementioned Sudsy Soulful musical 1970s brethren. One of the first "adult" movies I was allowed to go to as a newly minted teen, I recall digging the Louis Gossett Voodoo witchdoctor riff in the Deep, many years before he'd be brow beating Officer and Gentleman candidate Zack Mayo-nnaise. And of course Jackie Bisset was the bee's knees of slightly older, hot woman at the time.

Anyway, time to shake the 1970s out of my hair and head out for a run: the storm appears to have broken.

Lithium

Interesting flick on IFC from a couple of years ago that I hadn't caught before: Last Days - a Gus Van Sant fictional take on the last days of a Kurt Cobain-like character. Young Samuel from Witness all grown up has a role as one of his friends/bandmates. "This gun-of-the-hand ... Touch not the unclean thing and be ye separate, sayth the Lord. Now go do your chores, Samuel." Love Witness! But I digress. Great scene in Last Days with Young Samuel (Lukas Glover) inviting Mormon missionaries into the house, then offering them booze before pouring a drink himself while he listens to their rap. No movie can be bad with the Velvet Underground's Venus in Furs prominently featured!

Speaking of Cobain, Saturday Morning on Comcast Sports Channel is Infomercial Nirvana!

I learned in short order that Arthritis is a national epidemic threatening to eradicate America's youth and that some $19.95 Vitamin D extract was their only hope. Do you know what Vitamin D does for you?? Everything, apparently!! Do it for the Children! Didn't catch the name of this miracle cure before switching back to Last Days.

But I checked back often.

The Insanity Challenge was next: "We don't want to rip you off - we want to get you ripped."

Followed by "how do you get rid of your unwanted Gold and make some money?" Yes, that's always been a problem of mine. Lately, this seemingly straightforward (and seemingly nonsensical) query can be aptly applied to multiple areas of my life (in at least one area, inadvertently making good sense indeed). CashForGold claims they can help. Not likely in the way I need.

This channel even has regular commercials between the infomercials.

And hey! You can now have a perfectly manicured lawn with the Worx GT trimmer! You'll never have to struggle with setting the trim. Not with the Worx GT and its "double helix line"! And powered by a lithium battery. No more hassling with Gas and oil! Gas gets on your clothes and if you enjoy a fine cigar while working outdoors, no more worry about lighting yourself on fire or blowing you and your household to kingdom come! Say you're an alcoholic landscaper? Aren't you tired of the dangers posed by gas-powered equipment with your high BAC, dangling cigarettes and the ever present possibility of passing out on top of the stuff? Fret no more! And Ladies, you don't have to wait around for the husband to get home to trim up the bush because it's so easy! Still, that sounds kind of dangerous to me.

This beats Saturday morning cartoons all to hell. All that was missing was a Billy Mays tribute block.

Time to head out to the driving range and later taking the bike down to Ridley Creek park. Preparing the body mentally for the pain to follow ...

'The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes! ... Sarah in the Sky Wolf Hunting!'

The Guru did some more channeling of the Neocon Nico of the North Wednesday, this time putting the beat into her bewildering tweets.

"From sealife near lush wet rainforests to energy housed under frozen tundra atop permafrost,God most creatively displays His diversity in AK."

Yeah - you say it!

"Great day w/bear management wildlife biologists; much to see in wild territory incl amazing creatures w/mama bears' gutteral raw instinct ..."

Hey, cats! Dig T.J. Kirk's rhythms, jazzing up our Queen Half Baked Alaska's techno-patter, jazzercising through a landscape of stupefyingly incoherent non sequiturs.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Ddddrummm. Yeah!

An overwhelming compulsion drove me back through time to groove on Shatner's greatest hits and those of his Vulcan Hipster friend, Lenny Nimoy. Nimoy was Burroughs to Shatner's Ginsberg. Or maybe Kerouac to his Cassidy.

But they dominated a medium wholly apart from the fringes of the literary world: they were musical giants of a type we'll likely never see again.

'Spaced Out' is in many ways the greatest album ever made.

Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Strummer and Jones, Iggy and Bowie, Leiber and Stoller, Rogers and Hammerstein, Edina and Patsy, The Captain and Tennille, Regis and Kathy Lee, Milli and Vanilli. All unquestionably great musical partnerships, but Nimoy and Shatner tower above them and stand alone.

'Mr Tambourine Man? Mister .. Mister ... Mister Tambourine Man?' Indeed, Bill. Keep looking, you'll find him. And Lenny, what about you? What's that you say? If you had a hammer, you'd hammer every morning, you'd hammer every evening? It's hammer time, Leonard. Live long and prosper.

The Chef, Doktor Murray, Bubbles and the Viking rappin' offspring: it's Bhatti-time!

Boy, the Moonwalker's ghost has got some legs. The dead just won't die. A natural metamorphosis from black to white to translucent to spirit. And now a Norwegian Rapper (!?!) might be Michael's son?

'Gunnhild Jean is not my lover ...' or maybe, 'Isn't it Good? Norwegian Wood ...'

We've got his Doctor Feel Good Conrad Murray and one of Dr Murray's accusers, MJ former private Chef Douglas Jones, continuing to make 'news' while Omer Bhatti (not very Scandinavian sounding) is in the odd position of claiming that he's not Jackson's kid. Neither Hammer nor Chuck D. nor the members of 'A-Ha' were available for comment.

Who claims MJ paternity to this MC Viking then? Jackson's wacko daddy-o, Joe (played with absolute dead-on brilliance by Welcome-back-Kotter's Freddie 'Boom-Boom' Washington in the 1992 tele-bio). Joe probably wants to pawn off MJ's massive debt onto some unsuspecting 'heir'.

'Gunnhild Jean is not my lover ... Dad says I am the one .. the kid (says he) is not my son - eyoo, yoo, yoo.'

Chef Jones probably knows. According to MSNBC, the only one that truly knows is Elizabeth Taylor (Big Mama Taylormade, as she was known to the Jackson inner circle).

Boy, they're really digging into MJ's apparent drug of choice, Diprivan. Sure, he gobbled up Xanax like it was going out of style. And shot up Demerol regularly. But he needed a bit more to "mellow out". He practiced what is known in the with-it crowd as 'going on an anesthesiologist's holiday'.

Ya know, I used to think when Michael wore that surgical mask out in public that he was just being creepy. Now, though, I think he was just being 'sly'. Kind of letting other cool cats who were in the know that he was 'tuned in' (or in his lingo, 'pre-op').

It's very much a burgeoning movement, like the rise of psychedelics in mid 60s just when guys like Lennon and Dylan first latched onto to what was then an 'underground' movement and helped to spread its message worldwide: tune in, turn on and drop out. They took to wearing tinted sunglasses ('tea shades'), facial hair (which wasn't common outside of beatnik circles at that time) and wearing colorful, flowery clothes, flashing the peace sign. All this implied first weed and then acid and other hallucinogens.

Likewise, Michael's surgical mask says, 'Yeah, man - I'm on the operating table - how 'bout you?' Meaning 'I'm on a permanent anesthesiologist's holiday - are you hip? are you pre-op?' Or, bluntly, I shoot Dipravin. It's not 'tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out', it's 'pre-op, shoot up, knock out.' He was the Timothy Leary of General Anesthetics.

Of course, I could be reading too much into all this.