Unfortunately, I didn't get around to listening to Mike Malloy's Xmas show until after the holiday, but the anonymous version of "O Holy Night" that he played that evening was so toxic, I think it'll get its message across even a few days after the fact. Hell, it's so bad, its smell may last until next Xmas. Anyway, you can listen to it here-- don't miss it. (Note: File size is large-- 1.6MB-- but it's worth it.)

 

Ghost Comics #9, 1953, featuring a classic bondage pose, one of Dr. Wertham's favorite topics.

With this last cartoon, we bid farewell to dear ol' Ev.

Although C. Montgomery Burns appears to be well into his second century by now, the man who provides that old dastard's voice-- along with a dozen or so others on The Simpsons-- is a mere 60 today, which means that he now begins his seventh decade in show biz.

At an age when most of us are finishing sixth grade, Harry was already a seasoned pro in both radio and TV. He acted with Barbara Stanwyck on The Lux Radio Theater and was a regular cast member of The Jack Benny Program during its final years. (He was a member of Jack's scout group, The Beverly Hills Beavers.) He also appeared as young Jack on an early episode of Benny's TV series and-- his last TV work until the '70s-- he was in the pilot for Leave It to Beaver. (Beavers seem to be the recurring motif in Harry's early days.) Also, he got to hassle Lou Costello in the first scene of Abbott & Costello Go to Mars.

I became a fan of Harry's in the '70s, even though it took awhile before I really knew who he was. He was a fourth of a very funny radio troupe called The Credibility Gap (I still have both their albums), and worked on the faux talk show America 2-Nite with Martin Mull and Fred Willard. (He once did a character who was the president of the Tom Snyder fan club, and his imitation of ol' Tom was countless times better than Dan Aykroyd's.) I especially loved his work with Albert Brooks-- he co-wrote Albert's first feature film, the innovative Real Life, and A Star is Bought, one of the funniest comedy albums of all time, where Brooks tries to come up with a track for every existing radio market, from talk to classical. (For the latter, they wrote lyrics to Ravel's "Bolero". such as "There'll be no pregnancy here/I'm as potent as a warm glass of beer.")

You know the rest: This is Spinal Tap, 14 years of The Simpsons, all the way to A Mighty Wind this past summer. (Harry's final moment in Wind was probably its funniest, and that's saying something.) My favorite of all his recent projects, though, continues to be his one-hour radio program, Le Show. It's a throwback to "casual" broadcasting, like the shows of Jean Shepherd, mixed with some of the best audio comedy being done. (His on-going soap-opera Clinton-something was the main reason I wanted Bill to be elected for another four years, because the series would continue, too.) In the past two years, however, Shearer's humor has become even more pointed, and he did great programs after both 9-11 and the beginning of the war in Iraq. He closed the 9-11 show with a chilling quote that I heard nowhere else, from an unnamed Army General regarding the attack on the Pentagon: "We never thought of that."

So happy birthday, Harry, and may you have many more. Now, as Monty would say, Get to work!

A more recent picture of Mr. Shearer, from the webpage of photographer Paynie.

I'll be around this week and next, but I know that a lot of you won't be, so I'm using that as an excuse to take it easy, quiz-wise, for the rest of the year. The blog will still be partially up and running, but we'll get back to the quiz in a couple of weeks. Sincere thanks to the people who have participated every week, and I'll see you all soon.

Counter-clockwise, from top left: Spike Lee, John Canada Terrell, Tommy Redmond Hicks, and Tracy Camilla Johns

I've gotta say, I'm not very happy to see that She's Gotta Have It, Spike Lee's first feature and last week's mystery movie, will soon be old enough to vote. (It was released in 1986 but filmed in '85.) It's hard to believe that this little gem can be so old now, or that I'd still find it necessary to tell people about it, but of all Spike's films, this is the one that remains relatively unknown. (It's also the only one of his movies not available on DVD, which doesn't help.)

But I didn't have to tell the following quiz winners about it: Wayne A. Palmer, Mike Everleth, Peter Schilling Jr., E. Yarber and Hank Parmer. Congrats, men-- your 40 acres and a mule are on their way!

Dark Mysteries #18

Don't worry, I'm not going to trash Luis Bunuel's 1967 erotic masterpiece, which gave us Catherine Deneuve at her loveliest. Belle de Jour is a film for the ages, one that can be watched repeatedly and still seem fresh. It is truly a thing of beauty.

The original American trailer for it, however, is another story. Put into the hands of Allied Artists, a company that made American-International look like a bunch of lit majors by comparison, the film was treated like a typical soft-focus Euro skin movie, with dubbing to match. Remarkably, there was no music in the film, so AA chose some Mantovani-like schmaltz for the preview-- listen to how the theme improves with repetition, as well as how it comes to a screeching halt whenever they add a snippet of talk. Also notice the natural-sounding way the voice actors have with Bunuel's translated dialogue ("So, it's the rough stuff you need, huh?").

One can't help wonder what the '60s drive-in audience thought of Belle de Jour after a preview like this. Expecting to see something wild-- maybe even a nipple!-- they were instead treated to one of Bunuel's typically surrealistic films, with an ending that must have caused a lot of horny teenagers great befuddlement, to say nothing of countless cases of blue balls. But don't blame the movie-- blame this trailer. (Note: File size is 400K.)

   
"Hey, kid-- got any pills?" Rush "Monobrow-in-Broadcasting" Limbaugh, from arguably happier days in his alter ego as the dashing Jeff Christie.

Give his handlers their due, they have kept continuing news of Rush's personal and professional crash and burn to an absolute minimum. (His attorney is Roy Black, who defended William Kennedy Smith on rape charges-- at the time, Limbaugh said on-air that the Kennedy family knew Smith was guilty, which was why they hired Black to represent him.)  Back from a gruelling 30-day detox at a place that uses yoga and horse-assisted therapy, Limbaugh is back on the air acting like nothing ever happened, and won't. Unfortunately, he's probably right about the last part.

Still, the story is too colossal to bury completely, and a few tidbits have surfaced since his return. Besides his continuing legal woes (narcotics traffiking, money laundering), he's now being investigated for "doctor shopping"-- from one pharmacy alone, Rush got 2,130 pills in a five-month period. Almost as soon as that news hit the fan, a memo from his network was leaked to the New York Daily News concerning how to put a happy face on the Limbaugh mess, the better to protect their #1 cash cow. Even his filthy rich Palm Beach community has been in the news regarding their celebrity neighbor, and they don't like being made to feel  guilty by association. And this week it was reported that Limbaugh and his lawyers are trying to keep his medical records sealed, so the world won't know exactly how depraved his drug use really was. Personally, I can't wait for the next episode of this soap-opera, which I like to call Rush to Hell.

(One bit of news that has been overlooked is that Rush made the top of the list for the new annual award, Yutzes of the Year. Click here to listen the inner thoughts that won him the honor.)

Ann Coulter's idiotic statement that liberals now have a drug user that they can hate (they already had one, Ann: George Bush Jr.) can, I think, be turned into an intelligent question for Limbaugh's fans: Why is this guy worthy of  sympathy, forgiveness and freedom, but others who committed his crimes-- and according to the way you people vote, you consider his behavior criminal-- should be scorned and thrown in prison?  To use an expression that Limbaugh himself has used to justify all his bigotries and lies, where's the intellectual consistency there? (Pretty high-falutin' words, by the way, coming from a guy who flunked out of college in his first semester.)

Those of us who despise this phony asshole are already fuming over how he will undoubtedly walk away scot free from all of this, avoiding jail sentences that have been doled out to millions of others over the past 20-plus years, the majority for offenses less than his. Most of the people in U.S. prisons are there for breaking drug laws, and I'll bet that a lot of guys in those facilities would love to meet Rush.
 
We can remind ourselves, however, that even if Limbaugh evades incarceration, the life he's led for the past several years must have been smaller than any actual jail cell. I wonder if he didn't suffer from the same guilt over the despicable things he's said and done that Lee Atwater apparently did at the end of his life. So he turned to hard drugs to kill the pain and became as hooked as anyone ever has, and the chances are good that he's probably already taking them again, rehab be fucked.

Now, branded as a hypocrite and criminal, facing one possible prison sentence after another, and-- worst of all-- of no use to the political powers to which he sold his soul (in order to get, ironically, the life he has now), his world will become even tinier, and the loneliness and self-loathing he'll feel will be even worse than when those feelings drove him to dope in the first place.

Good.