A neat little bit on the notation and improvisation. A bit of Approximate and Cosmik Debris. Ruth Underwood is a highlight.
Category: TV
Playboy Interview
Playboy Interview
This one's a downer -- it's May 1993 and Zappa is dying.
The whole thing's on Wiki Jawaka -- just the text, no titties (though the language, as you would expect, is NSFW).
Some excerpts that I think fit the Democratic Convention theme:
Was it surprising that you had fans behind the iron curtain?
Yeah, and lots of people who didn't like me -- like the secret police.What did the secret police have against you?
In Prague, I was told that the biggest enemies of the Communist Czech state were Jimmy Carter and me. A student I met said that he was arrested by the secret police and beaten. They said they were going to beat the Zappa music out of him.
Sometimes you sound like a political candidate. How serious was your plan to run for president?
I wanted to do it. It's a bit hard to mount a campaign if you have cancer and don't feel well.If you hadn't been ill, would you have run?
Yeah. And it's a shame. We got calls and mail throughout the election. Squadrons of volunteers called.If you had run and won, what would President Zappa have done?
I would have started by dismantling the government. At least I would have presented the idea to the voters.Nothing too revolutionary?
In the Beltway and places that have large federal payrolls, the idea wouldn't be too popular, but in other places people would think it's great. One strong selling point is that you could do away with federal income taxes, or at least reduce them to a point that people would have something left at the end of the week. In the end, I think people, in their enlightened self-interest, would consider voting for that.If you dismantled the government, you'd put yourself out of a job.
No, because most reasonable people would agree that we need roads, for instance, and water you can drink and breathable air. Most people realize that there has to be some coordinated infrastructure and a national offense that is commensurate with whatever threat you feel from other countries.National offense?
I mean -- well, what we have now is national offense. We should have national defense.You've said that you're not a peacenik.
Human nature and human stupidity often breed violence. When violence escalates to an international confrontation, you should be able to protect yourself. On the other hand, to plan for it -- like we did throughout the Cold War -- based on badly handled intelligence estimates of the threat to our national security is just stupid. Most intelligence estimates indicated that the Soviet couldn't do shit to us, but they were ignored order to maintain the level of employment and financial activity in the defense industry.Do you think that our recent election was irrelevant?
Yes, because America has to be completely restructured. We have to question every institution in terms of efficiency. I'm serious about abandoning the federal system.Is there any way that it's likely to happen?
Not this week, but I wish people would at least consider it. They think, There it is, we're stuck with it, it will go on forever. It doesn't have to. The Soviet Union didn't go on forever. If you want reform, the people who've been doing a bad job have to get fired. They have to go back to the used-car lot from where they came.Yet you've always pushed people to vote. Why bother?
Even if you don't like the candidates, there are issues that affect your life. Bond issues affect your pocketbook. That's the only real reason for voting. As far as the rest of government is concerned, forget it. The amount of overstaffing, overlapping, wasted energy and pompous pseudograndeur is science fiction. All of it is supported by this universe of political talk shows. CNN is one of the worst offenders on the planet. It maintains the fiction of the theoretical value of the thoughts and words of these inferior human specimens who manage to become Beltway insiders.Do you want to name names?
Do we need to see John Sununu as a talk-show guy? Or, on CNBC, Gordon Liddy or Oliver North? Let's face it: Some of these people are criminals. Why do we need to be presented with them as voices of authority whose opinions are something we should even waste our time with? Why?What do you think is behind it?
It's a whole program designed to modify behavior and modify thinking on a national level. They're happy to take the slings and arrows of the outraged minority in order to keep these voices of stupidity in your face all the time. It's all propaganda.How planned is it?
Completely. It is the residue of the domestic-diplomacy department that Reagan established during the Irancontra days. The idea was to control the news. From that office, a guy would make phone calls and certain journalists would get fired and news stories would get changed. Then it was the obvious control of the media we saw during the Gulf war.So you maintain that the media are no more than pawns?
The media are part of the package. You think really liberal people own those outlets? I don't. Even if they were Democrats, it wouldn't mean anything, because who can tell the difference between those two criminal classes?it sounds as if you are as cynical as ever.
It's hard not to be.Yet you feel it's worthwhile to raise some hell?
Pessimism and the natural instinct to raise hell are not mutually exclusive. Raising hell comes naturally to me. Still, I am not optimistic about what will happen to this country unless some radical change is made. It's going to take more than just firing a few bad guys.
It must have been strange for you when Al Gore was nominated as vice president.
They felt it was a good way to counteract the Dan Quayle-family values nonsense. But why would anybody need to counteract Dan Quayle?They obviously didn't care about your vote -- or the vote of the people concerned about Tipper's ratings campaign.
Not necessarily. Deep in their hearts, those politicos think they're really cagey strategists. They figured they'd get a certain amount of column inches because of Tipper. It was advertising they didn't have to buy.
Downer of an ending for a downer of a theme week and a downer of an election. So it goes.
Tomorrow I'll see if I can't find a funny song to post.
A Reluctant Dukakis Supporter
Arsenio Hall interview, 1989.
"The more he campaigned, the less I enjoyed it." I can relate to that.
And okay, he probably hammers Reagan and Bush harder than Dukakis. But I'm still calling it for Democratic Convention Week.
Happily, most of the interview isn't about politics, and there's a rather neat Bruce Bickford claymation toon at the end.
Serenity
Watched Serenity again. Spoilers for a movie from 2005 follow.
I hadn't actually seen it the full way through since the theater in 2005 -- and that was before I'd watched the series.
It's a decent enough movie, but heavily compromised.
Because Firefly is not a show about big adventures or high stakes. It's a show about a family surviving together.
On that score, Serenity fails. Book and Inara are barely in the damn thing, and the rest of the crew not named Malcolm Reynolds don't fare much better. For a movie that revolves so heavily around River, we get precious little of her as a character -- we see her as sleeper agent, killing machine, and damaged person, but barely a shred of who she actually is. Right at the end of the movie, when Simon and Kaylee are going to bed and River's peeking down at them, not creepy but just a little curious -- that is the most fundamentally River Tam moment in the entire movie. And it's barely there. She's unrecognizable as the same River from the show -- indeed, when I started watching it, I spent most of the series wondering when she was going to start showing off her crazy ninja skills. The answer is "for about three seconds in one episode near the end."
And then there's the MacGuffin.
Speaking of things that are significant in the movie and barely even crop up in the series: the Reavers. They're in two episodes. And yet are fundamental to the plot of the movie.
And the movie revolves around a twist that, really, does not much qualify as a twist.
Was anyone in the audience even remotely surprised to learn that the Alliance created the Reavers? Because, having never watched one single episode of the series at the time, I can honestly say I wasn't.
Indeed, the single most implausible thing in this movie about space smugglers, assassins, and cartoons with subliminal messages activating sleeper agents to flip out and kill everybody is this: two Confederate soldiers are surprised by the existence of a government conspiracy.
Now, here's the thing.
Here on Earth-that-Was, there's a vocal contingent of people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job.
There's a vocal contingent of people who believe that our black President is a Secret Kenyan Muslim -- and yeah, those people are mostly from the region of the country that rebelled against the Federal Government. But they're not veterans themselves, they're people still holding a grudge a hundred and fifty years later.
Hell, the guy from Megadeth is convinced that Obama deliberately orchestrated the shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin as a conspiracy to ban guns.
So yeah, the idea that nobody in the 'verse has ever floated the idea that the Alliance created the Reavers? Never mind faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity on a ship that doesn't rotate, or the sheer number of other ships the Serenity constantly bumps into in deep space -- that's the most implausible thing about this entire mythology.
If anything, Mal and co should have been saying, "Holy shit, those crazy assholes on the Future Internet were right!"
I haven't read much of the followups, post-movie. I picked up the first issue of each of the comic miniseries and couldn't get engaged -- I find it incredibly off-putting when an artist slavishly reproduces the likenesses of actors instead of just drawing the characters.
That said, I thought Serenity: Float Out, by Patton Oswalt and Patric Reynolds, did not commit that sin and was an excellent read. And managed to give a good little send-off for Wash and a little hint of where the story goes next.
I never got around to reading Shepherd's Tale -- it's still on my to-do list; doesn't appear that it ever came out in paperback -- but I do quite like Chris Samnee. I'm told it still doesn't answer the fundamental questions about Book, which is probably for the best; one of the best bits in the movie is where Mal tells Book he'll have to tell his story someday and Book responds that no, he won't.
While Whedon's tendency to leave his biggest mysteries dangling instead of resolving them can be vexing, I think it's good storytelling instinct -- how many stories can you name where a big mystery gets resolved and it's just a disappointment? (For a recent example: that other River, on Doctor Who.)
Similarly, I picked up the first issue of the new Dollhouse miniseries because it was focused on Alpha, and -- spoiler for a TV show from 2010 follows -- the only question dangling at the end of the series that I was interested in finding out the answer to was what happened to him, what made him change. The comic, pointedly, picks up his story after he's already changed, with no explanation.
Joss Whedon, you sneaky bastard.
Maybe we really will get a reunion someday, see what happens next, with the (surviving) cast intact. Whedon's certainly got the money and cachet to do it, since Avengers. But obviously I'm not holding my breath.
Meantime, Nathan Fillion is Castle, and I'm perfectly okay with that.
(Still hoping for that Dr. Horrible sequel, though.)
Progress!
So the Daily Show website, at long last, finally automatically plays the extended version of interviews instead of making you navigate to a separate page to find them and then skip through the first part you just watched. A thing people have only been asking for since, oh, about 2006.
Now if they can just get it to work without Flash crashing twice and playing the same Jack-in-the-Box commercial three times, they website will finally provide a superior viewing experience to just pirating the damn thing.
Interview: The New Music
I'll be honest: I can't tell if The New Music is the name of the show he's on, or just a title the uploader gave this video. But anyway, here's Zappa in a limo talking about his projects, some social views, and, in keeping with the Republican Convention theme, a general disdain for Reagan (though he doesn't have any kind words for Mondale either).
Zappa for President!
(Actually, I'm seriously considering writing in Carter. Four more years!)
Monster of the Week
A couple months back I mentioned I'd been re-watching X-Files on Netflix.
Well, appears I'm not the only one. Via io9, I've just been introduced to Monster of the Week, a weekly webcomic working through the series one episode at a time.
And there's plenty to make fun of -- I've certainly found that the unevenness I remember from the later episodes were actually there right from the beginning. Last night I watched yet another episode that had a strong setup and blew it in the last act. So, Monster of the Week -- to share my enthusiasm and my frustration.
Doctor Who: Ghost Light
Well, by now Who fans have presumably watched the first Pond Life minisode, and the show's coming back on Saturday. So here's another of my old reviews, originally posted on Brontoforumus on 2008-03-28.
The Seventh Doctor era gets a lot of (presumably well-deserved) flack, and some fans blame McCoy and Aldred for the waning quality and ultimate cancellation of the show. Others blame the writers, and Ghost Light seems to vindicate that view, as it shows McCoy and Aldred do a perfectly good job when they have a decent script to work from.
Ghost Light tends a bit toward the confusing and I found myself hitting up Wikipedia to explain what it was I'd just seen when it was over, but that's not necessarily a negative; some of my favorite sci-fi is inscrutable.
It's something of a mishmash of references to such works as The Shining, Pygmalion, and Heart of Darkness, with a dash of Douglas Adams thrown in. But the Victorian haunted-house ambience is suitably creepy, and most of the cast -- creepy housekeeper, insane hunter, lord of the manor who wears glasses indoors, caveman, crazy hooded figure, monstrous angel -- is interesting. The Seventh Doctor comes across as a mysteryman who manipulates Ace to force her to confront fears out of her past, and when he confronts Light in the final act, reminds the audience that he is indeed both ancient and alien. Ace is a far more complex character than most companions in the original series, and paves the way for Rose and Martha to have involved and (sometimes) interesting backstories 15 years later.
All in all, it's better than the Tom Baker/Terry Nation/Douglas Adams Dalek story I watched two weeks ago, and that has to count for something.
$12.99 on Amazon -- worth buying. Or you can stream it -- free if you've got Prime, $1.99 for each episode ($6 total) for a 7-day rental, or, inexplicably, the same price for a purchase.
Neil Armstrong, RIP
I went through an "I want to be an astronaut when I grow up" phase -- most kids probably do. Most of them are probably thinking of Neil Armstrong when they say that.
First human being on the moon, man -- if that's not the coolest thing any human being has ever done, well, it's right up there.
Foregoing Zappa again tonight, but here's some music from another Frank:
Jerry Nelson, RIP
Image via Mark Evanier, who always writes a good obituary.
Going to forego Zappa tonight and wish a fond farewell to the Count, Jerry Nelson.
And old favorite:
CNN has a nice roundup of videos -- the one with Jim Henson as Kermit made me laugh, and, under the circumstances, it's poignant.
Bleeding Cool has a good selection too, spotlighting several of Nelson's other Muppet and Fraggle roles, and MightyGodKing adds Tomorrow, one of my favorite Muppet Show numbers (again featuring both Nelson and Henson).
Thanks for the memories.