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fancoloredglasses · 5 years

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Superfriends, or Justice Lite

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(Thanks to Tommy Retro’s Blast From the Past)

While most born after 1980 mainly know television animation as a marketing tool, in the late 60s to the mid 80s, cartoons were used to keep the kids quiet on Saturday mornings so the parents could sleep in.

In the early 70s, National Publications (later known as DC Comics) decided cartoons would be a good way to introduce their characters to kids and planned a Justice League cartoon. The only problem is that in the 70s, the FCC didn’t want violence in children’s programming (that’s why all the Looney Tunes on CBS were edited to not show how many times Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Wile E. Coyote were blown up over the years), so instead we got the kid-friendly Superfriends.

The problem is that despite the fact that the writers could never decide if the Superfriends were the Justice League, a subset of the Justice League, or something else entirely. Superfriends called the Hall of Justice “the hall of the Justice League” in the introduction, while Challenge of the Superfriends actually called the group the Justice League of America, but in the show still called then the Superfriends.

For some reason, the first two series (Superfriends and The All-New Superfriends Hour) had “Junior Superfriends”.

(Thanks to Superfriends Wiki)

First was Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog. These were an obvious attempt to nab the Scooby Doo crowd. None had actual powers (though an early episode showed Marvin hovering)

(Once again, thanks to Superfriends Wiki)

Then came the Wonder Twins (Zan and Jayna) and their space monkey (because of course you needed an animal for comic relief) Gleek. The twins had powers, though Gleek’s power was being super annoying.

The lineup of the rest of the Superfriends (with the occasional guest star appearance) was as follows

Superman He has all his classic powers (pre-Crisis), but he’s severely nerfed since childrens’ programming won’t let him punch giant space monsters

Batman & Robin No Robin was never part of the Justice League, but for some reason he was part of the Superfriends. Gone was their fighting prowess (no violence, remember?) and detective skills, relying more heavily on whatever deus ex batshit they could pull from their utility belts than they did in 1966.

Wonder Woman Granted, this was pre-Crisis and therefore Princess Diana wasn’t yet a demigod, but even as far back as the Golden Age Wonder Woman was on-par with Superman. Yet all she does i catch things with her Magic Lasso and fly around in her Invisible Jet (I never understood how this was supposed to be stealthy, as everyone could see her inside the plane) with...

Aquaman Oh...my...god. Superfriends turned the King of the Seven Seas into a fucking joke! All one has to do is see the Jason Momoa film (or his Death Battle vs. Marvel’s Sub-Mariner) to see how awesome Arthur Curry should be, and all he does in Superfriends is talk to fish.

There were a number of guest stars from the Justice League (as well as original characters designed to add diversity (even if Apache Chief was a bit racist-y)), but we’ll get to those later.

After The All-New Superfriends Hour, the rest of the Justice League joined the main crew for Challenge of the Superfriends in which the JLA Superfriends take on their arch nemeses, who have formed the Legion of Doom!

(thanks to World Wrestling Entertainment)

No, not that Legion of Doom...

(once again, thanks to Superfriends Wiki)

This one!

The lineup for the Superfriends (and their corresponding Legion members) are...

Superman (Lex Luthor, Bizarro, Toyman, and Brainiac)

Batman & Robin (Riddler and Scarecrow)

Wonder Woman (Cheetah)

Aquaman (Black Manta)

Green Lantern (Sinestro)

Hawkman (Solomon Grundy) another character who suffered, since apparently all he would do was fly

Flash (Captain Cold and Gorilla Grodd)

Apache Chief (Giganta - originally a Wonder Woman vilain, her origin was altered) One of three “ethnically diverse” characters created specifically for Superfriends, his dress and Tonto-esque mode of speech bordered on racist. His super power was he could grow to 50 feet tall (I hope he wore something under his loincloth or the people he was busy saving would get a show...)

Samurai (none) The second “ethnically diverse” character, he didn’t sound sterotypically Japanese, but had more of a midwest accent. His super power is he could control the wind.

Black Vulcan (none) And here we have the third. Hannah-Barbara wanted to add Black Lightning (an actual Justice League member) to the lineup, but DC was having legal issues with the character at the time, so Black Vulcan was created instead. His super power was the ability to conjure lightning (and make it physically solid somehow...? There are examples of Black Vulcan making a cage out of lightning bolts, for instance)

The Challenge episodes followed a similar formula: Someone in the Legion (usually Luthor) came up with a plan to destroy the Superfriends “once and for all”, only for some deus ex bullshit near the end of the episode allows the Superfriends to win, though the Legion escapes

After a re-hash of The All-New Superfriends Hour (renamed The World’s Greatest Superfriends), we saw Superfriends: The Legendary Super-Powers Show. This series saw the debut of Darkseid as a villain, as well as two new members of the Superfriends (with Aquaman and the Wonder Twins being written out)

El Dorado Yet another “ethnically diverse” character (this one Latino) created for the series. He could create illusions and teleport.

Firestorm Poor “Flame-Brain” replaced the Wonder Twins as the show’s comic relief, though he showed a lot more competence than any of the Junior Superfriends (it was also a nice touch that they kept Martin Stein as Firestorm’s psychic mentor)

This series also marked the point in which Superfriends “sold out” and was modeled after modern children's’ programming. While no one would deny that National Publications/DC Comics (as well as their competitor Marvel Comics) used their animated shows to boost comic sales, and there were certainly toys marketed as tie-ins to Superfriends, this was the first time the show was tied in to a toy line at the onset. Toy manufacturer Kenner made a line of action figures called Super Powers that were marketed alongside Legendary Super Powers as well as the next series...

The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians saw a shift in not only the name of the group (they were no longer called the Superfriends, but...well, I’m sure you can guess), but also animation style (a bit more realistic) and tone (less campy and more serious, just in time for Crisis), including the first televised depiction of Batman’s origin. The writers no longer cared as much for “ethnic diversity” as Samurai was the only one of the four still on the show, though Cyborg from the Teen Titans joined the cast.

Now that the exposition is out of the way...

The series was written for pre-teens, and even my young self had a few instances where, if I was allowed to swear, I’d call them on their bullshit. For example, Wonder Woman once snuck onto a blimp by opening a hatch in the top of the balloon!

I will be looking at specific episodes in the future (though will likely mostly ignore the shorter adventures prevalent in All New and World’s Greatest. If anyone would like to see certain episodes features, be sure to let me know (can’t guarantee I’ll actually review them, but I’ll enjoy(?) rewatching them)

#dc comics #superfriends #Fan Colored Glasses

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samosoapsoup · 3 years

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Women designers in history

In a world that largely fails to properly recognize the millions of women who lead the way in many fields, here at Webflow, we want to do better for the design community.

Here are fifteen women who have made lasting contributions in their creative fields, whose careers and work should serve as an inspiration to everyone.

1. Paula Scher

“The goal of design is to raise the expectation of what design can be.” - Paula Scher

Paula Scher’s work unleashes the hidden potential of typography. Through positioning, scaling, and space, she takes the tame lines of letters and makes them eclectic. This imaginative rendering of typography, combined with her bold yet tasteful use of color, makes her work instantly recognizable.

Paula’s first major role was working in the music industry as a designer for CBS Records and she would later move on to Atlantic Records. During her tenure in the music business, she would create album covers for such artists as Charles Mingus, Boston, the Yardbirds, and other notable musicians.

Her experience designing album covers would inform the widely recognized work she did for New York’s Public Theater. Where theater is often associated with a stuffy seriousness, she pioneered a branding identity for them that reflected the creative spirit of their productions. The posters she produced for them buzz with the energy of rock and roll and hip-hop.

A good designer can capture — in a microcosm of space — the essence of what makes something unique. Whether it’s on the space of an album cover, a poster, or the cover of a book, Paula’s designs balance experimentation with practicality to communicate messages in a way that captivates. Paula is still a working designer — check out more of her work over at Pentagram.

2. Ray Eames

“What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.” - Ray Eames

Ray Eames’ roots were in abstract painting, and she was an active member of the art scene in New York during the 1930s. A common criticism of abstract art is that it’s an amorphous mess, lacking any sort of cohesion. But looking at Ray’s paintings shows that, early on, she understood how shape, form, and color worked together.

Her talents in creating visual harmony would serve her well with the work she did with her husband, Charles, in creating furniture and other industrial designs. Ray was a true polymath, whose work as a designer, painter, and filmmaker all display attention to detail as well a high level of artistry.

There’s something timeless about all the work Ray was involved in. From the functional beauty of the chairs she produced to the abstract symbol patterns she crafted for textiles, even those with an untrained eye can recognize the talent behind her designs. She embraced a sense of modernism that has never gone out of style.

3. Louise Fili

One of the things Louise Fili does best is synthesize classic typography in new and unique ways. We can see traces of where she draws her inspiration, but her sense of inventiveness and imagination takes typefaces to places that are uniquely hers.

This flair for typography can be traced back to her time at Pantheon books. She was an art director there for 11 years and designed almost 2,000 book covers. That time spent on looking and arranging text gave her a chance to develop her own typographic sensibilities, as well as give her a keen eye for clean design.

Louise is still designing today. She heads her own agency in NYC and is still creating book designs that have a classic elegance and a slick sense of modernism.

4. Elizabeth Friedländer

Elizabeth Friedländer was born in Berlin, Germany in 1902. As someone of Jewish descent, hostility in Germany and the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws of 1935 forced her to flee from her home country. Though she only got to spend a short amount of her young adult life in Germany, she managed to become the first woman to create two typefaces — Elizabeth-Antigua and Elizabeth-Kursiv — for Bauer Types in 1927.

After Elizabeth left Germany, she spent much of her time as a designer in England. She worked across various mediums including book covers, packaging, prints, and typography. She had a talent for patterns and texture, which can be seen in much of her work.

From book design for Penguin to counterfeit Nazi documents and materials for the British black propaganda unit of the Political Intelligence Office — she did it all.

Elizabeth’s work is an example of how the creative spirit can shine through, even during some of the darkest days in history.

5. Zaha Hadid

Born in Iraq in 1950, Zaha Hadid was one of the most prominent Iraqi-British architects in history.

She studied mathematics and later went on to the Association School of Architecture in 1972. Though she was adept at the analytical skills that came from her education, she found something lacking in standard architectural illustrations. She developed an approach to loosen up these rigid lines and tapped into the expressiveness of painting to inform her work. We can see this duality — where formality meets artistry — in the curves and lines of her architectural works that can be seen worldwide.

Her professional accomplishments are many. She was the first ever woman to land the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which she received in 2004. Her buildings are undulating waves of glass and concrete, melding into the landscape, instead of the unmoving straight lines of more conventional architecture. Some of her most famous creations include the Broad Art Museum, the Guangzhou Opera House, and Galaxy SOHO.

6. Susan Kare

“Good design’s not about what medium you’re working in, it’s about thinking hard about what you want to do and what you have to work with before you start.” - Susan Kare

Susan Kare’s contributions to design shaped how we interact with computers today. Her work in creating icons for the early Macintosh brought what was once a sterile and cold piece of technology to life.

Susan put much of her time into developing her skills in the fine arts — she pursued sculpture in undergrad and in graduate school. Though her focus was in the malleable medium of clay, she learned graphic design as an intern in high school and would continue to land design gigs in her adult life. Her skills in these two different artistic pursuits — one tactile and the other visual — would be her guide in her work for Apple.

Susan created digital-based icons that reflected the real world. Macintosh’s scissor symbol was instantly recognizable as something used to cut. Instead of boring symbols, she wanted users to feel a personal connection with the machines they were interacting with.

If you’re on a Mac right now, look at the symbol on the command key. This icon was created by Susan. Derived from a Swedish symbol representing “special attraction,” any designer will see the brilliance in this small clover-shaped knot.

Susan has had a long and varied career as a designer, having also worked with Pinterest, Facebook, Intel, and IBM.

7. Bea Feitler

Bea Fetier was a Brazilian graphic designer who worked at the zenith of magazine publishing. At 25, she became an art director at Harper’s Bazaar. She held this role for 10 years, pushing its identity in a more modern direction. After her stint at Harper’s Bazaar, she was the art director at Ms. Magazine, whose feminist-empowering philosophy aligned her own beliefs.

Her work from the late 60s and early 70s captures an aura of excitement and experimentation that seized the art world. Before her death in 1982, her design skills touched Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, as well as album covers, advertisements, and posters.

Bea was one of the first women in design to give a voice to feminism through her work, showing that graphic design can be more than just an arrangement of text and visuals, but that it can help challenge societal norms and push forward change.

8. Deborah Sussman

Environmental graphic design places a focus on how people interact and process physical spaces. It relies on understanding how disciplines like graphic design, interior and exterior design, and architecture intersect to create spaces that are more than pedestrian experiences.

Deborah Sussman has had a prolific career as an environmental graphic designer for the last thirty years. She’s most famous for the work she did for the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles. She developed graphics and signage with a distinct visual language that helped visitors attending.

Whether you’re creating an Olympic Village or a website, both need to have a user experience that’s both engaging and easy to navigate. Looking back on her work has many valuable lessons for designers today.

Unleash your creativity on the web

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9. Cipe Pineles

Cipe Pinele brought fine art into the world of publishing. As the art director for publications such as Mademoiselle, Vogue and Glamour, she commissioned artists to create custom illustrations and other visuals, elevating these magazines from generic consumerism, into artworks of their own right. Her skills as an artist and graphic designer helped her find the appropriate artists who would give these publications a sense of distinction.

She is credited as being the first woman to land the role of art director for a major mass-market publication. Her influence can still be seen in high fashion today.

10. April Greiman

When computers became a viable way to create art and design in the early ’80s some were skeptical of this emerging technology. Others, like April Greiman, saw new dimensions in artistic creation that could be opened up, and jumped into this new medium. April was an early adopter of this brand new way to design.

As a part of the CalArts faculty and a member of the design department, which she joined in 1982, she took advantage of the technology available at the school. It allowed her to experiment with digital and video equipment. She used this technology to innovate new ways of creating designs.

This poster titled “Iris Light” was one of April’s most notable pieces. She took a 35mm photograph of a video image that was displayed on a monitor. The end result was silk-screened, bringing together both old and new technologies for something fresh and exciting.

Forward-thinking designers have a way of seeing the potential in technological advancements. April is an inspiration to any creative for embracing change to help one evolve in their work.

11. Marian Bantjes

Marian Bantjes draws from a deep pool of inspiration in creating stylized lettering, heady patterns, and rendering designs that defy conventions. She spent a decade as a typesetter in book publishing, fostering uniformity and cohesion in her work. Though there’s a strong sense of structural undertone in her designs, there’s an organic feeling and warmth to her creations.

After spending time as an agency cofounder, she now works on her own as a designer and writer. She continues to create work marked with her modern, yet hard-to-classify artistic sensibilities.

12. Margo Chase

We always love hearing stories about those whose paths took a turn or two before landing on their current career. Who would have thought that the woman responsible for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer logo earned her BA in biology?

Margo planned on becoming a veterinarian, and in an effort to boost her GPA for grad school applications, she took an illustration class. It was here that she found her calling as a creative. After graduation, she was accepted into the medical illustration program at UCSF, ultimately discovering that it wasn’t the best fit. She would then move to LA where she started her design career as a freelancer.

Outside of the work she did for Buffy, Margo has also worked with high-profile clients like Pepsi and Procter Gamble. She also worked in the music industry, creating album cover artwork for Prince, Madonna, and Selena. Her personality and flair for typography can be seen across all of her designs.

13. Debbie Millman

“Visual storytelling utilizes both language and art to pass on the essence of who we are.” - Debbie Millman

Debbie Millman isn’t only skilled as a designer. She’s also an artist, writer, and speaker. She also launched the first-ever design-focused podcast, Design Matters, in 2005.

Along with her impressive career as a designer, Debbie is also an accomplished author. She has authored six books touching on various facets branding and design. She’s also an illustrator, whose work has appeared in a variety of publications including Fast Company and The New York Times.

With an impressive skill set, Debbie is a multidisciplinary wonder woman, showing that it’s possible to be successful in a variety of creative realms.

14. Carolyn Davidson

Carolyn Davidson found her way to a career in design after taking a design course as an elective at Portland State University (PSU) in 1972. Her major was journalism, but she enjoyed the class so much that she soon switched to graphic design, earning a bachelor’s degree.

While still a student at PSU, Carolyn had a chance encounter with Nike’s co-founder, Phil Knight, who was an accounting teacher at the time. That encounter led her to a career at Nike, where she would eventually design one of the most widely recognized brand logos in history: the Nike Swoosh.

She started her career at Nike doing grunt work, churning out visual materials for meetings. She eventually moved up, creating marketing collateral, and was tasked with coming up with a logo for a new line of shoes. She came up with a couple different ideas, and the swoosh was chosen. She was paid $35.00 for her work at the time. Phil Knight later gave Carolyn more compensation in the form of Nike stock — 32,000 shares, to be exact.

The Nike swoosh is a simple symbol, but it’s effective in communicating motion — a pure display of Carolyn’s genius as a designer.

15. Muriel Cooper

“Information is only useful when it can be understood.” - Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper began her career as a designer in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publication office. She had a simple job, creating and printing flyers for the office. In the 40 years that followed, she continued working for MIT, where she became the first design director at MIT Press.

Similar to April Greiman, Muriel was another designer who embraced digital technology in its early stages — but she also saw the challenges that technology posed. She was brilliant at figuring out how to navigate the complicated nature of digital technology, using it effectively in her design work.

Her Bauhaus-inspired design graced many covers of books that MIT published. She also created the iconic MIT Press logo, with its minimalist row of lines reminiscent of a row of books.

Muriel is a great example of someone who stayed curious her entire career, whose expertise grew, and who stayed ahead of design trends.

Giving women the recognition they deserve

Women have existed at the top of creative fields for decades. Though much has changed in favor of design becoming a more inclusive space, there will always be room for more awareness and appreciation.

Pear Weerawong, Webflow blog https://webflow.com/blog/women-designers-history?utm_source=iterable&utm_medium=email

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plusorminuscongress · 4 years

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“The Most Mysterious Woman…” Identified!

“The Most Mysterious Woman…” Identified! By Neely Tucker Published June 29, 2020 at 09:41AM

The photo that stumped readers for years. She looked so familiar, yet no one could identify her.

Cary O’Dell at the Library’s National Recording Registry is the maestro of our ever-popular Mystery Photo Contest. He’s back with big news.

It was a mystery that I was beginning to think would never be solved.

You’ll remember, dear readers of our Mystery Photo Contest, the dark-haired actress in the striped shirt. The pensive gaze off camera. The dark eyes. Her identity had flummoxed us for so long I eventually nicknamed her “The Most Mysterious Woman in the World” last December.

Half a year later, kids, we announce this mystery is SOLVED!

Our heroine in alive and well and still working in the film and television industry. She was identified by James Owen, the only reader to match the face to the name in a couple of years of online guesses. He was nearly as excited as I was when I let him know the news: “Very cool! Happy to help!”

And our mystery woman’s name is – wait, don’t you want to hear the story first?

Most of you know of my ongoing search to put names with some of the unidentified movie, TV and music photos we found within a very large collection of press stills acquired by the Library a few years ago. We posted many of these unidentified faces in our Mystery Photo Contest and you guys have been terrific at tracking them down. Among others, there was Cynthia Lynn, she of “Hogan’s Heroes,” and Esther Anderson, the Jamaican actress and film producer.

But one of the most puzzling of all was that soft-focus photo of the young actress coolly looking off to her right, posed before a blurry background. Guesses poured in. Her secret to anonymity seemed to be that she so resembled so many other actresses of the late ’60s and early ’70s that she looked like everyone and no one. When I sent the photo to Tina Sinatra — a popular guess — she said, “Yes, we all looked alike at that time with our Marlo Thomas hair.”

Some of the other guesses that readers ventured: Marlo Thomas herself, Paula Prentiss, Celeste Yarnall, Dana Delany, Sherry Jackson, Kim Darby, Lucie Arnaz, Stephanie Zimbalist, Susan Saint James, Barbara Parkins, Bonnie Bedelia, Diana Canova, Lynn Loring, Katharine Ross and Linda Harrison.

I reached out to all of these women over the past couple of years. One by one, they all said some variation of, “Nope. Not me.”

But after our December “most mysterious woman” post, new guesses flooded in. I went back to work. Some of the very gracious actresses I contacted after reader suggestions: Mary McDonnell, Gail Hire, Anne Archer, Katherine Justice, Sabrina Scharf, Jody Miller, Maureen McGovern, Samantha Eggar, Jennifer Salt, Pamela Tiffin and Lesley Ann Warren.

You guessed it: Zilch. De nada. Nothing.

Then there was that guess from James Owen. I had dutifully fired off an email to the actress he suggested. And, on a recent day, I got a response. I clicked it open.

“That’s a very nice photo of me,” wrote Wendy Phillips. “Thanks. I hadn’t seen it before.”

Yes, in fact, I did almost fall out of my chair.

After I read that line several times over, I immediately replied: “ARE YOU KIDDING? That’s you?! Could you call me?”

Wendy Phillips today. Photo: Courtesy Wendy Phillips.

Brooklyn native Wendy Phillips began her career in 1975 at the age of 23, starring in the critically-acclaimed TV adaptation of “Death Be Not Proud” (opposite Robby Benson). She’s been working ever since. The Internet Movie Database counts 89 credits over the past 45 years, including the big screen’s “Bugsy,” “I Am Sam” and “Airplane II.” On TV, she has starred in “Promised Land,” “A Year in the Life,” “Falcon Crest,” “Home Front” and “Big Love.” Her most recent role was appearing in two episodes of CBS’s “Seal Team” in 2018.

In our conversation, she said she thinks our mystery photo was taken on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot. “It wasn’t unusual to be pulled off a soundstage by a photographer or the press department and be made to quickly pose and get a picture, kind of on the run,” she said. “The funny part is I remember the outfit because I hated the sleeves.”

She continued: “I am pretty sure it was from a pilot I did called ‘Love Tapes.’ The original script was called ‘They’re Playing Our Tapes’– ugh! It was made by MGM and then got tied up in legal battles between the executive producer and the studio. It finally aired in 1980 as a TV movie.”

The pilot never took off, but it wasn’t from the lack of talent. It featured several female TV stars of the era — Loretta Swit (better known as Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan from “M*A*S*H”), Mariette Hartley (lots of westerns and those great Polaroid commercials with James Garner) and Jan Smithers (Bailey on “WKRP in Cincinnati”).

Of our epic search for her, I said, “We tried to make you Barbara Parkins and Dana Delaney….”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Dana and I had a similar look, were a similar type; she and I and Erin Gray were always auditioning against each other.”

She was quite amused by our lengthy search and cheerfully noted the photo was far from the best likeness of her. I would like to thank her not only for solving this mystery but also for her good humor that went along with it. And I would like to thank James Owen, the one (and only one) who suggested “Wendy Phillips” in the first place.

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covid19updater · 4 years

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COVID19 UPDATES 03/29/2020

MORNING UPDATE (0835):

Italy: In italy looting has started on supermarkets and many have no money to buy what food is left. Law and order falling apart there. LINK

Rhode Island: Rhode Island's governor calls to quarantine New Yorkers to prevent the spread of COVID-19 LINK

Alabama: A nurse in Mobile, Alabama getting her message out. LINK

Maryland: Tonight, Maryland has experienced a tragic COVID-19 outbreak at Pleasant View Nursing Home in Mt Airy. Multiple state agencies are on the scene and working closely with the local health department & the facility to protect additional residents and staff who may have been exposed.

California: The Los Angeles Police Department says 24 of its employees have now tested positive for #coronavirus.

US; Trump reverses course: On the recommendation of the White House CoronaVirus Task Force, and upon consultation with the Governor’s of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, I have asked the @CDCgov to issue a strong Travel Advisory, to be administered by the Governors, in consultation with the........Federal Government. A quarantine will not be necessary. Full details will be released by CDC tonight. Thank you!

Thailand: King of Thailand “self-isolates” with his harem and servants. LINK

Maine: On Maine island, several people with guns allegedly cut down tree to block driveway and force quarantine LINK

California: 25 year old with no underlying issues dies from COVID19. LINK

California: Coronavirus ICU admissions double overnight in California LINK

NYC: Some 20% of the 4,500 NYC ambulance workers, EMTs, paramedics and supervisors are out sick

Massachusetts: A second inmate at the Middlesex County Jail & House of Correction in Billerica, Massachusetts has tested positive for the Corona Virus. Expect this number to dramatically increase.

Germany: Number of confirmed Covid-19 #coronavirus cases in #Germany rises to 52,547 and death toll reaches 389 - Robert Koch Institute

China: CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: CHINA REPORTED 693 IMPORTED VIRUS CASES FROM 42 COUNTRIES AS OF SAT, WHICH SHOWS THERE'S STILL POSSIBILITY OF A SECOND WAVE OF INFECTION IN THIS COUNTRY: OFFICIAL FROM NATIONAL HEALTH COMMISSION - GT

RUMINT/ANALYSIS: There have been 70,000 new cases added today since I first woke up, to right now when I'm going to bed. At some point this coming week early on we will be going to 100k per day every day. That still is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what April will look like. March was...the last month worldwide that will resemble the old world. April will be a month of massive human drama. The entire month filled with stories that...we have not seen in our lifetimes. It will be difficult to keep up as Covid-19 sweeps through Brazil and India, and wreaks further havoc throughout Europa and the US. Canada and Russia will look like the US does right now, the middle east and Asia will explode in cases etc... Just endless, every single day from worse to worse. The blame will be shifted onto those who failed to act or to take this threat seriously in February and March. It will be a hostile, threatening landscape full of tension and people already wearying of their confinement. Supply chains, distribution and the start of chaos will be seen towards the end of April in a way that is quite clearly showing where we will be heading in many areas of the world. There is no scenario where we do not enter a martial lockdown of civilized nations in April, if we do not, then it devolves our way of life permanently. The last hope is to absolutely enforce strict, militarily enforced quarantines and support of the supply chains and economies as the health care systems become overwhelmed. We won't be able to keep up with this in April. April is the month we fight, we give it our all, bring the full weight of the riches and the systems and the people to bear against this, only to realize, too late, that it won't be enough. It can't be enough because we did not act when we had the chance to. Not with enough leadership, not with enough public participation or awareness, with too many lies. The time to get ahead of this in any meaningful way to minimize this scenario, is behind us, not ahead of us. What is ahead of us is the age of paying the price. I don't want to think of what May is going to look like. March is almost done, and it was the last month where society as a whole resembled the one it left behind. We are entering uncharted waters in April. Stay safe, purge your inner nothingburger, now, and overreact. Anything less is underreaction. That's my nightly long ass post. Time to sleep well, in what little time we have left where a night like this can be had among civilized men.

UK: BREAKING - Unlike Trump, the UK is reportedly furious at China and believes it may have 40 times more coronavirus cases than it claims. Beijing faces a "reckoning" once the #COVID19 crisis is over.

Switzerland: The Swiss death toll has risen by 235 in a day to 257,Reuters news agency quotes the country's health agency as saying.

AFTERNOON UPDATE (1513)

US/World: 38 sailors have now tested positive for Covid-19 aboard aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt: U.S. officials Early last week the first three cases were discovered. Pentagon said Saturday 112 U.S. Navy sailors have coronavirus worldwide — 34% are aboard the aircraft carrier.

RUMINT (Switzerland): BREAKING - Confidential situation report in Zurich leaked: the "most likely development of the situation" is that the #COVID19 pandemic can not be contained. Therefore, the measures would have to be further tightened & "massively extended" - beyond the summer holidays.

DEBORAH BIRX: NO U.S. STATE OR METRO AREA TO BE SPARED BY COVID-19

CONNECTICUT: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based on the urging of President Donald Trump has issued a 'domestic travel advisory for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut' due to the high number of coronavirus cases there.

US: FAUCI SAYS 200,000 U.S. VIRUS DEATHS POSSIBLE; ESTIMATE FLUID

NYC: New York mayor: City will run out of supplies in 1 week Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio says that his city will run out of critical medical supplies - including ventilators - by next Sunday, 5 April. "Here in New York City, it feels like a wartime environment," he told CNN. New York has become the epicentre of the US coronavirus outbreak. Across the state, at least 52,000 people had tested positive as of Saturday - more than one third of the cases across the country. At least 728 people have died, 672 of them within New York City. "This is going to be a long crisis," de Blasio said. "We should get more girded for the sheer timeline here."

New York: New York curve accelerating beyond one model. LINK

Singapore: SINGAPORE IN A VIRUS BATTLE THAT IS INTENSIFYING, Prime Minister TELLS CNN

Germany: UPDATE: The finance minister of the German state of Hesse, Thomas Schäfer, apparently committed suicide in despair about the scale of the state response required to tackle the #coronavirus crisis, initial investigations suggest.

US: Dr. Anthony Fauci predicts 'millions' of U.S. coronavirus cases, more than 100,000 deaths LINK

Louisiana: New Orleans streets are overtaken by RATS as tourists stay away from the hotspot city and Louisiana is hit by 3,315 coronavirus cases and 137 deaths. The rats have been forced to surface in order to find whatever scraps they can...The city says it’s ramping up its use of rat bait in commercial areas, starting with rat traps on the sidewalks and bait into the catch basins on Bourbon Street. Along the Crescent City's famous Bourbon Street, its bars and music venues are all closed to comply with social distancing rules. 'I turn the corner, there's about 30 rats at the corner, feasting on something in the middle of the street,' one local restaurant owner told CBS News. Extermination crews have now begun to leave poisoned bait in the gutters along with rat traps in an effort to curb pests.'There are pathogens in these rodents. Fortunately, we don't see many of the health outcomes. We don't have very many disease cases that are actually related to rodents. But the potential is there,' New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said during a press conference.

RUMINT: Heard something interesting from my daughter who is a floor nurse...they have one floor of her hospital dedicated to suspected covid19 patients, they sent some nurses from her floor up there to work (pulled to cover shifts)...They thought it was best if people took turns working in that unit? So the whole hospital has a better chance to get infected? Also...this hospital has some VIP club for VIP patients that get fed special gourmet meals...so the nurses that work on the covid19 floor get to order food off the special menu. She works with a nurse whose husband works at the water treatment plant...somehow workers at the water treatment plant were exposed, but their jobs are too critical so they got each worker their own RV to live in and they have to remain on site. And this...the nurses on the regular floors were told not to wear masks because it scared the patients...also they are running short of PPE.

Maryland: “56% of all the people that have been hospitalized in Maryland are under 60. They’re not just folks from nursing homes that are in their 70s and 80s,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan warns on @FoxNewsSunday

UK: An NHS doctor, 55, is first confirmed UK hospital frontline worker to die from coronavirus

US: BREAKING - The reaction of the United States to #COVID19 is the worst in the world. The updated trajectory shows that dark times may lie ahead.

Italy: [RTRS] 29 Mar -ITALY DEATH TOLL FROM CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK RISES BY 756 TO 10,779 ON SUNDAY - OFFICIAL ITALY'S TOTAL NUMBER OF CONFIRMED CORONAVIRUS CASES RISE TO 97,689 FROM 92,472 ON SATURDAY - OFFICIAL

UK: UK RESTRICTIONS COULD LAST 6 MONTHS LINK

World: FROM 600 000 TO 700 000 cases IN 1 DAY

Russia: BREAKING - Moscow declares a **self-isolation regime** for all residents irrespective of age from tomorrow on amid the worsening #COVID19 outbreak in the city. Residents will only be allowed to leave their homes with a special permit issued by the city’s government.

Indiana: BREAKING: Indianapolis declared an emerging hot zone by the Surgeon General.

France: France: 292 deaths and 359 new patients admitted in ICUs in the past 24 hours.

Nigeria: NIGERIA'S BUHARI ORDERS 14-DAY LOCKDOWN OF LAGOS AND ABUJA Combined population = 20 million

US: Michigan and Louisiana are becoming virus hot spots — their governors warn supplies are already running out

EVENING (1930):

US: Joe Diffie, ’90s Country Music Star, Dies of Coronavirus at 61

Italy: "In Italy, authorities have conceded that their coronavirus death toll did not include those who had died at home or in nursing homes. Similarly in France..."

Louisiana: 30 inmates and staff at Oakdale federal prison in Louisiana have tested positive for coronavirus, and one inmate has died

DC: BREAKING: CAPITOL POLICE officer tests positive for coronavirus. Source says the officer had been assigned to the House chamber.

UK: Rationing begins in UK. Customers limited to take just one item each of essentials such as milk, bread and eggs.

US: SINGER-SONGWRITER JOHN PRINE IN CRITICAL CONDITION WITH SYMPTOMS OF COVID-19

NYC: BREAKING: The death toll has jumped by nearly 100 in NYC since this morning's update. There are now 776 COVID-19 deaths in the city.

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papermoonloveslucy · 6 years

Text

LUCY AND FLIP GO LEGIT

S4;E1 ~ September 13, 1971

Directed by Coby Ruskin ~ Written by Bob Carroll and Madelyn Davis

Synopsis

Lucy takes a temp assignment with Flip Wilson in order to answer his fan mail. When she is caught sneaking into Wilson's office to ask him a favor, she gets caught and fired. The favor is to appear in a community theatre production of Gone With The Wind – as Prissy.

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carter), Gale Gordon (Harrison Otis Carter), Lucie Arnaz (Kim Carter)

Guest Cast

Flip Wilson (Himself) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey as Clerow Wilson Jr. in 1933. He was a comedian and actor, best known for his television appearances during the late 1960s and 1970s. In the early 1970s, Wilson hosted his own weekly variety series, “The Flip Wilson Show.” The series earned Wilson a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards, and at one point was the second highest rated show on network television. Wilson also won a Grammy Award in 1970 for his comedy album “The Devil Made Me Buy This Dress.” In January 1972, Time magazine featured Wilson's image on its cover and named him "TV's first black superstar." According to The New York Times, Wilson was "the first black entertainer to be the host of a successful weekly variety show on network television.” Wilson had met Lucille Ball a year earlier on a Los Angeles broadcast of “The Tonight Show” as well as an episode of “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Perhaps Wilson's greatest creation was the sassy Geraldine Jones, whose catch phrase was “The devil made me do it!” Wilson died in 1998.

Kim Hamilton (Jane, Flip Wilson's Secretary) did more than 60 television shows and films during the 1960s and ‘70s alone. She was in the film To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. She made two appearances on “My Three Sons” in 1963 and 1964 – both featuring William Frawley (Fred Mertz). Hamilton has the distinction of being the first Black actress to appear on TV's “Days of Our Lives.” She also was seen on the soaps “The Guiding Light” and “General Hospital.” Hamilton died in 2013 at age 81.

The secretary's first name is never spoken aloud. Hamilton provides the DVD introduction to the episode.

Starting with this episode, Coby Ruskin, who had directed two previous episodes, becomes the regular director of “Here's Lucy” and will direct nearly all (65) future episodes.

20 years earlier, when "I Love Lucy" began, the word 'pregnant' could not be said on television, but is spoken freely in this 1971 episode parody of 1860's Civil War era -- an ironic comment on American censorship.

This is the first episode of season 4 and the first without Desi Arnaz Jr. as a regular cast member. Despite being the season premiere, Craig's absence is not explained. Later in the season we learn that that Craig is off at college.

Starting with season 4, “Here's Lucy” switches production studios from Paramount to Universal.

Starting with this episode, “Here's Lucy” aired one hour later (still on Monday nights) and was no longer in competition with “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.” The show's new lead-in was “My Three Sons” starring Fred MacMurray, entering its 12th season on CBS.

This episode also introduces a re-orchestrated and slightly faster theme song. With the departure of her brother from the cast, Lucie Arnaz now has a title screen to herself in the opening credits.

This episode was first aired on Mel Torme's 51st birthday. Torme played the role of Mel Tinker on several episodes of “The Lucy Show.”

Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis return to the series’ rotation of writers and the show is given a tremendous boost. Not only is logic reintroduced into the storylines, but the relationships between Lucy and her co-stars become more natural; Harry and Lucy begin to show each other more affection; and Kim is allowed to mature out of the typical teen stereotype. Unfortunately, the pair only contributes a little over one-third of the Season Four scripts.

Although it is never explicitly stated, Flip Wilson and his office are preparing for his weekly television variety show.

Between the The Three Musketeers and Gone With the Wind, Flip Wilson spends the entire episode in costumes. The Three Musketeers is a historical novel by Alexandre Dumas. Set in 1625–28, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although d'Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately, he befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age—Athos, Porthos and Aramis—and gets involved in affairs of the state and court. The novel was filmed and staged dozens of times, with the most famous being a 1943 film starring Gene Kelly. A 1935 version featured Lucille Ball in a small, uncredited role.

For the small screen version Flip is rehearsing Rock Hudson is Anthos, Andy Williams is Porthos, Flip says he is the ‘token’ musketeer. Actually, he would be Aramis. Hudson had appeared on a 1955 episode of “I Love Lucy.” To make Lucy prove she is not Andy Williams, she sings the first three notes of “Moon River,” a song that became Williams' theme tune.

On the telephone, Jane talks to someone named Mr. Rayfiel about taking some paperwork to mimeo. Howard Rayfiel was a Production Executive for “Here's Lucy” from 1970 to 1972.

When Lucy returns to Wilson's office in disguise as a Musketeer, Wilson thinks Lucy wants another autograph for trading purposes: two Flip Wilsons for one Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby was another African American comedian who had great success in the late 1960's and 1970's.

There is a record album standing up on the desk titled “The Devil Made Me Wear this Dress” by Geraldine Jones. This Flip Wilson comedy album was sold in 1970 and won a Grammy Award in the comedy category.

Gone with the Wind was a historical novel written by Margaret Mitchell in 1936 but set in the deep south during the Civil War. The book was translated into one of the most famous films of all time in 1939 starring Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara.

Prissy was played by Butterfly McQueen and Melanie was played by Olivia de Havilland.

Like most of the top actors in Hollywood, Lucille Ball had an audition for the role of Scarlett O'Hara. Although Lucille Ball did not get cast, actors who did get roles in the film and later worked with Lucille Ball included: George Reeves (Superman, ILL), Olin Howland (Mr. Skinner, ILL), Irving Bacon (Mr. Potter, ILL), Shep Houghton (HL), Alberto Morin (ILL), and Hans Moebus (ILL & TLS).

Harry has joined Encino Players, a little theatre troupe that has cast him as Rhett Butler in a capsule stage version of Gone With The Wind. As the curtain goes up, the soundtrack plays the sweeping and iconic “Tara's Theme” from the film, which was written by Max Steiner.

Under her cape Prissy has on an Abraham Lincoln t-shirt. When Scarlet asks if that's a photograph of President Lincoln, Prissy replies “Well, it ain't Ray Charles!” Ray Charles was a singer-songwriter who had great success during the 1960s. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.

In return for appearing on “Here's Lucy,” Lucille Ball appeared on “Flip” (aka “The Flip Wilson Show”) in an episode that aired just three days after this "Here’s Lucy.”

Lucille Ball's protege Carol Burnett, who appeared frequently on “The Lucy Show” and “Here's Lucy,” did a famous parody of Gone With The Wind in November 1976. In the sketch titled “It Went with the Wind,” Carol played Starlet, Harvey Korman played Ratt Butler, Vicky Lawrence played Sissy, and Tim Conway played Brashley. Not coincidentally, earlier in the month the film was shown for the first time on television.

The dress worn by Lucille Ball in the Gone with the Wind sketch was previously worn by her in episode “Lucy and Arthur Godfrey (TLS S3;E23). It also appeared briefly during previous year in "Lucy and Carol Burnett" (S3;E22).

In “Lucy Writes a Novel” (ILL S3;E24) Lucy Ricardo says “My novel may turn out to be another ‘Gone with the Wind’!“ She compares Ricky to Rhett Butler and herself to Scarlett O'Hara.

Lucille Ball not only got to play the role that went to Vivian Leigh, but she also played Clark Gable (wearing a mask) during “Lucy Meets Harpo Marx” (ILL S4;E28) to convince near-sighted Carolyn Appleby that she hobnobbed with celebrities.

Kim Carter had a poster of Clark Gable on her bedroom wall in “Lucy and the Andrews Sisters” (S2;E6).

“Lucy and Flip Go Legit” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5

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jonathanbogart · 7 years

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Electroshock: Anarchic Mediterranean Pop and New Wave

Part three. Twenty-one songs, 1981-1987, from Italy and Greece. Here's the YouTube playlist. Tracklisting below, “liner notes” below the cut.

Jo Squillo Electrix, “Africa”

Diaframma, “Tre volte lacrime”

Diana Est, “Tenax”

Litis + Trik, “Fáka”

Matia Bazar, “Elettrochoc”

Alberto Camerini, “Bip Bip Rock”

Roberta D’Angelo, “Noce di cocco”

Lena Platanos, “Ti Néa Psipsína?”

Denovo, “Niente insetti su Wilma”

Nada, “Amore disperato”

Tullio De Piscopo, “Stop Bajon”

Dreamer and the Full Moon, “Sandrina”

Marcella Bella, “Nell’aria”

Garbo, “Quanti anni hai?”

Ivan Cattaneo, “Quando tramonta il sol”

Aphrodite Manou, “Nykteriní Ekpompí”

Litfiba, “Elettrica danza”

Skiantos, “Ti spalmo la crema”

Giuni Russo, “Alghero”

Metro Decay, “Mavros Kyknos”

Melodrama, “Kyrie Eleison”

Electroshock: anarchic mediterranean pop and new wave

If I thought mainstream French pop was relatively unaffected by the radical shifts in Anglophone rock and pop fashion, Italian pop is even more so: many of the popular Italian ballads of the 1980s were virtually indistinguishable (save for details of production) from what lyrical Italian composers were turning out a hundred years previously. As (arguably) the birthplace of the post-medieval Western European music culture, Italy generally takes an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it attitude toward its cultural heritage, an attitude wholly at odds with American notions of generational revolt or ripping it up and starting again: operatic singing remains a populist form, and mainstream Italian rockers tend to sing in a theatrical Billy Joel vein rather than with a fuck-yr-conventions sneer.

But this mix isn’t just Italian: there’s a thread of Greek running throughout. Although combining the two Iberian nations makes geographic and linguistic sense, and expanding Francophonie beyond France is obvious, throwing Italy and Greece together is extremely unintuitive, unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool classicist. Inheritors of the two oldest unbroken (though hardly unchanged) cultures on the European continent, the descendants of the ancient Roman and Hellenic empires had, by the penultimate decade of the twentieth century, been through a lot. Specifically, they had both slid precipitously from their midcentury postwar peaks of economic expansion and cultural export: Italy thanks to the Anni di piombo, or years of lead, in which both far-left and far-right terrorism, assassination, and thuggery cratered popular support for politics of any kind (enabling the rise of Berlusconi’s entertainment-empire kleptocracy), and Greece thanks to a far-right military junta that overthrew a center-right government and gave fascism a home on the otherwise Communist Balkan Peninsula. By the early 80s, both the Anni di piombo and the junta were spent and democracy was returning, but everything was still disorderly, even anarchic, politically and culturally.

Which is where this music comes in. The avant-garde in both Italy and Greece identified deeply with the European project, which means that much of their most modern music was sung in English, both in imitation of UK and US innovations, and because everyone else in Western Europe (save for France and Spain, where ancient conflicts with the British Isles led to a sort of linguistic protectionism) was doing the same. Between the endless fountains of italo-disco aimed at the general Euro dancefloor market and the austere post-punk acts on tiny labels reissued by “minimal wave” enthusiasts today, it can sometimes feel that almost nobody was singing in Italian in the 80s except for sensitive singer-songwriters, leftover prog burnouts, and cracked-voice divas with massive power ballads. The same was true in Greece, except more so: the midcentury art-folk forms éntekhno and laïkó were still so dominant that almost anyone who wanted to engage with modern international sounds did so in an international language.

But beyond the glossy outer wall of Italian pop, as celebrated by such events as the annual Sanremo Song Festival, there were multiple anarchic rock and pop scenes competing for attention, gigs, and recording time. The Italian rock scene was hugely fragmented: although Milan remained the center of the culture industry, as it has been for centuries, each city had its thriving underground scene, with Florence, Naples, Sicily, Bologna, and even Rome represented below. Below a certain level of hitmaking status, the differences between shiny italo-disco and weirdo pop melted away: although some synth experimentalists encountered a hardline anti-synth stance among post-punk scenesters, just as many punks ended up making goofy hairspray records as ever remained true to the imagined spirit of ’77. Italy was perhaps the place where the distinction between disco and punk was collapsed most often: both let unlikely performers queer their image and ignore the mainstream, and both were animated by throwing whatever was at hand against the wall to see what stuck.

Enough generalizing, though. Here are twenty-one songs, fourteen in standard Italian, one in the Neapolitan dialect, one in Church Latin and Greek, four in modern Greek, and, sigh, one in English because the hell with it, my mix my rules.

1. Jo Squillo Eletrix Africa 20th Secret | Milan, 1982

One of the few female voices to emerge from the original punk boom in late-70s Italy, Giovanna Coletti had fronted the all-girl band Kandeggina Gang before recording an essential post-punk record, Girl Senza Paura, in 1981 as the leader of a band named after her punk moniker Jo Squillo. “Africa” was the follow-up single: identifying and foregrounding the latent colonialism in acts like Bow Wow Wow and the Slits, it was apparently dedicated to Nelson Mandela, but Squillo’s cartoonish yelps and the “tribal” rhythms are still patently offensive as representations of Africanness. The lyric, however, is as righteous a left-wing post-colonial solidarity message as anything Europe produced in the 80s, which made it even weirder when Squillo went solo, dove into synthpop, and the “Africa” single was repurposed as a B-side called “Voo-Doo.” Colonialism always wins.

2. Diaframma Tre volte lacrime IRA | Florence, 1986

This song, with its brightly strummed guitars, is about as upbeat as the long-running Diaframma, who brought Joy Division levels of somber bleakness to the Florentine post-punk scene, ever got: and its title translates as “Three Times the Tears.” Singer Miro Sassolini’s stentorian croon defined this gothic era of the band; when guitarist Federico Fiumani, the band’s songwriter, took over in 1989, they became a more traditionally punk act, and are still active today.

3. Diana Est Tenax Ricordi | Milan, 1982

Although she sometimes turns up in italo-disco compilations these days, Diana Est was neither an anonymous vocalist nor a dance-pop starlet. Her small, rather unsteady voice, her androgynous, semiclassical fashion, and punk-turned-balladeer Enrico Ruggeri’s overtly intellectual lyrics — the chorus to “Tenax” is in Latin, a paraphrase of Terence — made her slender discography (three singles in as many years before she quit the music business in disgust) a cult favorite among Italian pop fans. She is now a professional antiquarian, and by all accounts much happier.

4. Litis & Trik Listeía Columbia | Athens, 1982

The mononymic Litis had been kicking around the Greek rock underground since the late 60s, hopping from folky ballads to vaguely progressive bands and back again. When he hooked up with muso combo Trik in the early 80s, the result was a loopy, weird art-punk record that is both compulsively listenable and one of the high points of the Athens new wave. “Ληστεία” (Robbery), a bop-along jam about petty crime and the hypocrisy of the petite bourgeoisie who demand it be prosecuted, was their biggest hit, if the handful of local television appearances that have been uploaded YouTube qualify.

5. Matia Bazar Elettrochoc Ariston | Milan, 1983

Both the most forward-thinking band in Italy in the early 80s and one of the all-time European pop acts, Matia Bazar started in the mid-70s as a Eurovision-friendly soft-rock group in the ABBA mold, with Antonella Ruggiero there to look pretty and sing sweet choruses. But after keyboardist Mauro Sabbione joined in 1980, they gave themselves a new-wave makeover, experimenting with rhythm and texture, and Ruggiero’s elastic, four-octave voice commanded center stage. There were a solid half-dozen Matia Bazar songs recorded between 1981 and 1985 that I considered for this mix: “Elettrochoc,” with rhythmic patterning not a million miles from what drum ’n’ bass would be doing with the “Amen” break a decade later, and Ruggiero using her whistle register as casually as Mariah Carey, is only the most futuristic of their songs by a small margin. After Sabbione left in 1985 to pursue more experimental work, they dumbed it down slightly and had the biggest hit of their career. Ruggiero would quit the band in 1989, going on to explore classical and world music forms, but Matia Bazar has continued their pop chancery, not unsuccessfully, with a revolving door of singers; the drummer is the only original member left.

6. Alberto Camerini Bip Bip Rock CBS | Milan, 1981

Born in Brazil to Italian parents, Camerini’s first musical efforts were pop-Brazilian melodies for the Italian market. But during the new-wave craze of the early 80s, when anything with a broad enough hook seemed like it might have a chance, he had his biggest success with novelty singles like “Rock & Roll Robot” and “Tanz Bambolina.” Very much in that vein, the unabashedly silly “Bip Bip Rock” is a love song between a harlequin and a computer set to a Buddy Holly shuffle: its gender-playing parent album, Rudy e Rita, is a minor masterpiece of bubblegum pop kitsch.

7. Roberta D’Angelo Noce di cocco Suono | Rome, 1983

When she burst onto the scene in the mid-70s with caustic, unconventionally melodic story-songs about prostitution and feminism, the 20-year-old conservatory-trained D’Angelo seemed poised to be an Italian Joni Mitchell, or maybe even Kate Bush. But label shenanigans, her restless, exploratory bent, and lack of commercial success meant that this, in 1983, would be her last single: a B-52s-y song about a coconut co-written and performed with skittery Roman art-funk collective Bu Bu Sex. When she performed it on television, she also proudly plugged the serialist piece for piano and clarinet she had composed for the B-side: perhaps it’s no wonder that for the last thirty years her nerdy enthusiasm and musical rigor has been expressed in music teaching, where she is beloved (and active in YouTube comments).

8. Lena Platonos Ti Néa Psipsína? Lyra | Athens, 1985

Kate Bush is also a predictable comparison for Greek composer Lena Platonos, the daughter of a concert pianist who studied composition, then started to make her own art music, got sidetracked by synthesizers, and ended up closer to Laurie Anderson (only more popular), murmuring her fractured, elusive poetry over her own experimental synth programming. “Τι νέα ψιψίνα,” from her 1985 album Galop, is about as close to pop as she ever got: the title literally translates “What’s New, Pussycat?” but it’s no Tom Jones cover: abstract, political, metaphysical, and Greek to the bones, it’s a gorgeous highbrow punctuation to the sillier elements of this mix.

9. Denovo Niente insette su Wilma Suono | Catania, 1984

Speaking of which: Sicilian band Denovo, with their XTC-inspired hydraulic sock-hop rhythms, sliding pitches, and “way-hey”s, have one of the goofiest sounds in this mix. The title song from their debut EP, this song is a comic piece of macabre: the title translates to “No Flies on Wilma,” and it turns out to be, of course, about Wilma’s funeral. However, the saxophone-led middle eight adds a McCartneyesque lyricism to the herky-jerk, foreshadowing the more varied melodic career Denovo would go on to have.

10. Nada Amore disperato EMI | Milan, 1983

The capacious mainstream Italian music industry loves few things more than a comeback, and when singer Nada Malanima, who had had her first success as a teenager in 1969 but had not been in the public eye for years, had a smash hit with the subtly pulsating “Amore disperato” (Desperate Love) in 1983, it was a song the whole country could get behind, even new-wave sourpusses. Nada’s low, assured voice, with its calm ah-has and careful reaches for high notes, is an undemonstrative rarity in Italian pop, and her portrait of kids falling for each other in a nightclub then losing each other is all the more effective for never sounding desperate itself.

11. Tullio De Piscopo Stop Bajon Bagaria | Naples, 1984

A jazz drummer and session man who had played with everyone from Perez Prado and Astor Piazzolla to Gerry Mulligan and Richie Havens, Tullio de Piscopo was perhaps the only middle-aged Italian hip enough to pull off a rap-inflected single in 1984. That the groove is such a monster doesn’t hurt — acid jazz as a concept more or less starts with this record, and it was massively influential in the Chicago house scene as well — and the half-rapped, half-scatted lyrics in his native Neapolitan celebrating the arrival of spring gave it a timeless, otherworldly quality that a more dominant literary language like Italian might have missed entirely. I would be surprised if I was introducing this record to many people for the first time, but it startled me with its beauty, all seven minutes of it, and I knew I had to include it.

12. Dreamer and the Full Moon Sandrina EMI | Athens, 1984

My general rule with these European mixes has been not to include music in English, partly because the sensual qualities of the different languages are much of the point for me, and partly because I’m intentionally stepping off the familiar Anglophone paths: I began these mixes cross about Spanish and Portuguese pop being neglected, and I’ve continued it cross about all local languages being neglected. That said, the minute I heard “Sandrina” I was charmed to within an inch of my life: Dreamer and the Full Moon were probably the most successful new-wave band in Greece, and their entire catalog was conducted in English: this, their biggest hit, takes traditional Greek rhythms and instrumentation and makes a lovely lovelorn rock song out of them.

13. Marcella Bella Nell’aria CBS | Milan, 1983

Like Nada, Marcella Bella had been a regular performer on summer festival stages since the 1960s: unlike her, she had never really spent time in the wilderness. The product of a musical Sicilian family (her older brother Gianni was also a pop singer and producer, and co-wrote “Nell’aria”), she had been a solidly popular singer for a decade when the billowing, helium-light “Nell’aria” (In the Air) became not just one of the big hits of the year, but perhaps the Italian hit of the 1980s. It had legs: I remember hearing it in Guatemala in the early 90s, where it sounded perfectly contemporary alongside blissed-out records from Madonna, Cathy Dennis, and P.M. Dawn. Bella’s featherweight voice, replicated endlessly, and the throbbing heartbeat rhythm make it eternal.

14. Garbo Quanti anni hai? EMI | Milan, 1983

Easily the most successful “new wave” artist in Italy, in the sense of being frankly imitative of British sources, the singer born Renato Abate took the same approach to the Bowie of the Berlin Trilogy as Gary Numan did (i.e. making it the foundation of an entire career in music), but where Numan absorbed Bowie’s cold remove and sci-fi premises, Garbo absorbed the political concerns and cabaret longueurs. His first single, “A Berlino… va bene” (In Berlin… It’s Okay), was a sensation, but my fondness for this later hit (tr. How Old Are You?) cannot just be attributed to the fact that Antonella Ruggiero sings unmistakable backup: it’s a small masterpiece of mood, as Garbo’s prematurely mature voice (he was twenty-five!) wrings every drop of reserved pathos out of a lyric about aging out of sexual desire.

15. Ivan Cattaneo Quando tramonta il sol CGD | Milan, 1984

I’m not sure any one- or two-sentence biographical sketch can do justice to Ivan Cattaneo, one of the most essential Italian musical performers of the late 70s and early 80s. He embraced the schlockier elements of both disco and punk early on, creating a flamboyant, polymorphous persona who sang about Batman, homosexual love, and zebras with outrageous zeal. Starting in 1982 he embraced ’50s and ’60s pop, recording cover albums of classic hits with modern pop sheen, but when the market didn’t respond, he quit pop music to explore painting, multimedia projects, and digital art. This (tr. When the Sun Sets) was his last single for a long time, a hiccuping electro-Beach Boys gem that still makes time for carnality.

16. Aphrodite Manou Nykteriní Ekpompí Lyra | Athens, 1984

One of the most popular exponents of éntekhno, or Greek poetry set to traditional music, Aphrodite Manou (born Aglaia Dimitriadis; her sister Maria was even more popular) had been singing others’ compositions for over a decade when she released a 1984 album of her own songwriting. “Νυχτερινή εκπομπή,” the title track, which Google wants to translate “nocturnal emission” but means “Nighttime Broadcast,” is a lovely fusion of modern soft-rock reverie and classic Greek music, as the violin swirls around her modern lyric about driving around in a Volkswagen listening to rock music, and falling in love with someone in the next car over who drives away forever. Perhaps the Greek equivalent of a country singer using contemporary production techniques, her melodies are timeless but stick in the head.

17. Litfiba Elettrica danza Contempo | Florence, 1984

The other great Florentine rock band of the era (along with Diaframma), Litfiba has gone from strict post-punk dourness in the early 80s to stadium-filling political anthems (rather like U2; and indeed charismatic frontman Piero Pelù is rather reminiscent of Bono). “Elettrica danza,” a retelling of Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris in violin-scraping funk-rock form (replacing the tango with the cha-cha), originally appeared on an EP named for their cover of David Bowie’s “Yassassin,” in case their art-rock cred was in any doubt.

18. Skiantos Ti spalmo la crema CGD | Bologna, 1984

One of the most controversial Italian acts of the late 70s, Skiantos were as much anarchic comedy troupe as ska-punk band, with singer “Freak” Antoni’s unnecessarily aggressive vocals, dadaist lyrics, and live performances that sometimes included no music at all. By the mid-80s they had mellowed considerably, and “Ti spalmo la crema” (I Rub the Cream on You, a double entendre about applying sunscreen at the beach) is almost a Madness song — except hornier, as befits Italian stereotypes.

19. Giuni Russo Alghero Bubble | Milan, 1986

Sicilian singer Giuni Russo was never an entirely comfortable fit with the summery, beachy songs she kept having hits with throughout the 80s: her untrained but powerful voice sometimes overwhelmed lightweight pop songs like “Un’estate al mare” or “Mediterranea,” and it wasn’t until she changed labels in 1986 and took more control over the sound of her music that she found the perfect combination with “Alghero.” Still a summery, beachy song — it’s about a vacation romance on the Sardinian coast, don’t tell mama — the inventive throwback production finally catches up with her voice. She would get artier and more experimental in the late 80s and 90s, but I love her summertime blues.

20. Metro Decay Mavros Kýknos Creep | Athens, 1984

Probably the most high-profile Athenian new wave band to stick to Greek in their lyrics, Metro Decay was still very much a cult act: one single and one LP in an austere early-Cure mold, and that was it. But they’ve had a long afterlife, as every generation of Greek rock fans rediscovers them. The opener from their LP, “Μαύρος κύκνος” (Black Swan) is a typically melodic dirge, as Antonis Maniatis croons about trauma, entropy, and poetry.

21. Melodrama Kyrie Eleison D.E.A. | Florence, 1987

After leaving Matia Bazar, synth wizard Mauro Sabbione formed the more industrial Melodrama with avant-garde contralto and choreographer Cinzia Bauci, with whom he has worked on and off under various names for the last thirty years. Melodrama only produced a handful of records as a coherent act in the late 80s, as Sabbione found himself in demand as a session musician and Bauci’s theater career took precedence, but this forgotten twelve-inch ZTT-ish setting of traditional liturgical prayers. punctuated ominously by assorted ecclesiastical vocabulary, precedes similar experiments by the likes of Enigma by years.

I swear I have not been trying to make these mixes happen once a week; it’s just that they really have been coming together that quickly. (And sure, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time since April swimming around in the raw materials for them.) Anyway, the next one, whenever it happens, will be heading in a more northerly direction, and finally leave the Romance languages (and my linguistic comfort zone) behind for good.

#my mixology career

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cambriomusic · 4 years

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Mike Small Interview

Mike Small is a musician from Toronto, Canada. He was a founding member of the Meligrove Band, and now plays bass for a number of bands. CamBrioMusic.com is delighted to present the following interview. It has been condensed for length considerations.

Cam Brio (CB) = Thanks so much for making the time to be here. How did the documentary about the Meligrove Band come about?

Mike Small (MS) = We were playing a show and a group of students wanted to interview us for a video project. We had a lot of fun with them, and not long after they contacted us again and wanted to make a full-length documentary about a band. They ended up capturing a year of some bad stuff that happened with us. We had our bus break down in Florida and we were stuck in Orlando for a week. They weren’t able to come down and shoot that part. We had two bus breakdowns during the overall time of filming, and I think they composited them both into one story for the sake of continuity. It was December 2010 when we were stuck in Orlando, and we didn’t know when we’d be able to leave. The bus breakdown shown in the movie was in Reno, Nevada. In Montreal we had a belt snap on it. Eventually, we sold it to a soccer team. (laughs)

CB = In the documentary, a lot of Toronto-area bands cite the Meligrove Band as an influence, how did it feel to hear that?

MS = It’s weird, but some if it we already knew because bands tell each other that kind of stuff. I remember at the Montreal festival where we met the guys from Tokyo Police Club, their keyboardist Graham came and sat at our picnic table in the band area and told us what an influence we were on them. The very first comment on our band’s Myspace page, when we had that about a million years ago, was teenaged Graham saying, “I’m going to have a band and get huge, and we will let you open for us.” (laughs) It came true.

CB = Who are some of your musical influences?

MS = A lot of my early bass playing life comes from Paul Simonon from The Clash. Around that time too, I would say Klaus Flouride from the Dead Kennedys. Mike O'Neill from The Inbreds was an influence, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to figure out his fun chords. At some point I got really interested in the Neil Young album “Harvest.” The bassist plays grooves only on the kick drum, and was otherwise staying out completely. The bass becomes a physical presence that controls the volume of the song. Before listening to “Harvest” I would just play constantly on our songs, but when bass players do that songs have no dynamics. But now I find that with bass, not playing is a part of playing. You’re deciding what the dynamics of the songs are. A lot of bassline ideas come from me walking around with the new song I had to play on, in my head. I’d go home and try to figure out what I was hearing in my head. Then I’d go and record and change it around again, that’s generally the process. Two other guys who influenced my playing are Robert Sledge, who played in the Ben Folds Five, and Derek Tokar, who led the Toronto band Radioblaster. Both of them played a Gibson bass with a Russian big muff distortion pedal. They got me into really fuzzy bass you could play on high strings and sound almost synthy, and I definitely put that to use on almost every Meligrove album and anywhere else I could get away it with. (laughs)

CB = Funny connection here, I went to the same high school as you. Did you play a lot of school events?

MS = Yeah, in a sense. Before the Meligove Band formed, I didn’t know Jay or Darcy at all; they had their own band. Meligrove started because the band backing the school choir had all graduated, and the teacher who ran the choir knew that the three of us played instruments, so she approached us to take over. Then the three of us became the school liturgical band, before we were the Meligrove Band. When grade 12 ended, their bass player was leaving so they asked if I would start playing with them. Are you familiar with Sandy from the band Fu*ked Up?

CB = Yeah, for sure.

MS = She went to the same high school and had her own punk band called SNI. If I said no to Jay and Darcy, they were going to ask Sandy to play in the band next. In a sense, Sandy has me to thank for being in Fu*ked Up. (laughs) So when high school ended, that’s how I joined the band. I remember that the three of us went to a Treble Charger concert at the Opera House and that was the first time we all hung out. Side note: I’ve become a freelance bass player for hire. Do you know Rich Aucoin the East Coast singer?

CB = Don’t think I know him.

MS = Well, he sent me a message asking if I would play a bunch of shows with him starting in Ottawa in two weeks. I said yes, and my first show with him was at the Ottawa CityFolk Festival. We were in this arena and there was an outdoor stage next to it. Bush, Live and maybe Our Lady Peace were playing, and I don’t really like Live but they were a lot of fun. (laughs)

CB = Did you ever play with The Cybertronic Spree?

MS = No, but I did make their website. For a while they were getting a different friend to appear on stage as “Weird Al” Yankovic with them. At their very first show I was their first “Weird Al.” They play the ‘80s Transformers soundtrack and there’s a “Weird Al” song on it, that’s why they get someone to play him. Did you see that Kickstarter they did that got over $100,000?

CB = I missed that one.

MS = They asked for something like $15,000 to make an album and they raised way more. They planned to roll all that money into their live production, and were going to go on a huge tour this summer but obviously now can’t. Right before this Kickstarter they were going to play the Gathering of the Juggalos and asked me go to and be their tour manager and merch person. It didn’t work out, but right after that discussion they did this massive Kickstarter. If they ever ask me again, I know they can afford me. (laughs)

CB = In the Meligrove Band you guys always seemed to do your own thing and not try and find into a particular “music scene.” Did you actively try and stick to your own style?

MS = Yeah, I would say that’s accurate.

CB = Do you think that sticking to your own style helped the band’s longevity?

MS = In a sense, yeah. Often in a band your longevity is decided by the public. If in the popular imagination you are an example of a certain style and then that style falls out of favour, you kind of get dragged down with it. I think a lot of music scenes can emerge in an organic social way. A scene may center around an arts school, for example. Where we grew up there was an arts high school and the teenage music scene there was amazing. When we started trying to play in Toronto, we didn’t know anyone and had to exist outside of those social connections. We also always took a while to write songs and record albums, so if we followed trends then the trend would be long gone by the time we put something out. We may have been influenced by things that were current in an organic way, but we never sat down and said, “this is what’s hot right now, so let’s do it.”

CB = Are the other guys in the Meligrove Band playing in other groups now?

MS = Brian and Darcy have a band together. They recently put their album on Spotify. The band is called Quite Nice. Jay has been writing music. He’s been mixing a band’s record and it sounds awesome. He actually mixed the last Meligrove album all by himself. It’s my favourite sounding record we made. I was playing in a live karaoke band for a little over two years. That was really busy, around 3 – 5 gigs a week and a 4-hour set on stage. I have a garage rock band called MAX that’s with Dave Monks and Nick McKinlay. We’re just finishing up an album right now. I have this band called Bankruptcy and we had finished an album and were sitting on it for a while, unsure of how to put it out. We put it online, and then one day later a record label contacted us and wanted to put it out on vinyl. We deleted it to give it time to get pressed. We were supposed to get out and play this summer, but it’s too bad that now we can’t now.

CB = Who are some of the bands you’re listening to right now?

MS = It’s rough because I was playing live karaoke until last fall and it messed with my taste in music. I had to keep track of over 400 songs because we didn’t know what people would choose to sing. So I was constantly listening to a playlist of our repertoire, keeping all 400+ songs fresh in my mind, hardly ever listening to anything else. Lately I’ve been more into The Inbreds. I got this fun ‘70s synth record called “Plantasia.” It was sold in some plant shop in the ‘70s in LA and was reissued last year. The idea is that it’s scientifically engineered to make your plants happier. It’s really just some synth nerd getting stoned and having fun with his synths. It’s hilarious and really fun to listen to. I really like that Neil Young is dipping into his archival stuff and releasing really nice records of shows from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Two months ago I listened to “Enter the Wu-tang” for the first time and I couldn’t stop listening to that for three days. (laughs)

CB = Do you have any favourite concert films or music documentaries?

MS = I liked one called “Last Days Here.” It’s about the guy from Pentagram. They were this young, promising, Sabbath sounding band in the early ‘70s. Now, he’s in his 60s living with his parents and he’s got a lot of problems. If you think of some people you know who’ve kept trying music for too long and then extend it over an entire lifetime into old age, that’s what this movie shows. There is a concert film I love, it’s Canadian, and called “This is What 110% Smells Like.” It’s about B.A. Johnston. He’s pretty much lived on tour in Canada almost constantly since around 2004. There’s a great Globe and Mail article calling him “the new Stompin’ Tom Connors.” We took a pay cut to play a show with him in Sudbury. We drove him to Toronto from Sudbury so that he could take the bus to Hamilton. More recently, B.A. made a TV show about Hamilton as a tour guide. I know it’s fictional, but I recently watched “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and I loved it. I remember when “Walk the Line” the Johnny Cash movie came out I hated it, and felt lonely about it. I feel like “Walk Hard” makes fun of all the stuff that I hated about “Walk the Line” when it came out, and I thought, “wow, I’m not alone.” (laughs)

CB = Did the Meligrove Band play last year?

MS = Yeah, we played two songs at a Sloan tribute show. The band The Golden Dogs organized it. I asked if I could join them on bass for a couple of songs, and they came back and asked if the Meligroves would get back together to play. To my surprise everyone was immediately into it. We were just one small part of the show, but it felt really good.

#Michael Small #The Meligrove Band #Interview With Musician #Tokyo Police Club #The Inbreds #Fu*ked Up #Rich Aucoin #The Cybertronic Spree #Sloan

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themastercylinder · 5 years

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For those who grew up as horror fans in the 1980s, invasions of killer monsters intent on devouring nubile young flesh were a popular stock in trade. With an entire generation of young filmmakers raised on the Cold War thematics and situations of alien invasion films of the ’50s and ’60s on TV, balanced with a steady intake of harder-edged violence and gore from late-’60s and early ’70s genre revolutionaries, the combination of creepy, icky things from out of this world and Tom Savini-style grue was a natural progression. Aliens weren’t just out to take over our planet or shoot you with ray guns—they wanted to eat you too, and in as messy a way as the budget would allow.

Storyline

Two campers are nearby when a meteor falls to Earth. When they investigate, they are attacked and eaten by a bizarre life form that emerges from the crashed rock.

A house near the crash site is the home of Sam (James Brewster) and Barb (Elissa Neil), and their two children, college student and budding scientist Pete (Tom DeFranco) and his younger brother Charles (Charles George Hildebrandt), a monster movie fan. Visiting are Aunt Millie (Ethel Michelson) and Uncle Herb (John Schmerling). When a rainstorm sets in, Sam goes downstairs to check the basement for flooding and is eaten by the bizarre monstrosity. Barb suffers the same fate when she goes looking for him.

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Pete sets up a study date with classmates Ellen (Jean Tafler), Frankie (Richard Lee Porter), and Kathy (Karen Tighe). Uncle Herb, a psychologist, wants to investigate Charles’s interest in the macabre, and he holds a brief interview with the boy before he falls asleep in the living room. Aunt Millie heads over to her mother Bunny’s (Judith Mayes) house for a luncheon with her retired friends. When an electrician arrives to investigate a circuit breaker malfunction in the basement, Charles dons a costume and goes down to scare him. There, he discovers the basement is infested with slug-like creatures feasting on the electrician’s and his mother’s remains, guarded by their huge mother, the monster from the meteor crash. After realizing that the eyeless creatures react to sound, he stands silently, escaping his parents’ fate.

Meanwhile, Ellen and Frankie have discovered one of the tadpole creatures dead on the way over to the house, and deem it unlike any animal on Earth when they dissect it. Science fiction fan Frankie hypothesizes that the creature could be from outer space, but hard-nosed scientist Pete dismisses that theory. At Bunny’s house, Millie arrives and they prepare the luncheon, unaware that the spawn have infested the house. When her guests arrive, the spawn creatures emerge and attack them. The women fight back and manage to escape in Millie’s car.

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Back at the house, Pete, Ellen and Frankie seek out Uncle Herb to get his opinion on the creatures, only to find him being devoured by the spawn. As the adult creature emerges and charges them, they run upstairs to barricade themselves in Charles’s bedroom. Charles distracts the adult by turning on a radio, which it eats, causing an electrical fire which burns it. Pete and the others then see Kathy arriving and pull her into the bedroom just in time to save her from the beast. The teens decide to head for Pete’s bedroom, where there is a phone to call for help with, but as they emerge, the adult creature pounces on them. Pete flees to another room and from there onto the roof; Frankie and Kathy run up to the attic, while Ellen stays in Charles’ room. The creature easily breaks down the door, bites Ellen’s head off and devours her body. Peter returns through the attic window; but traumatized after seeing Ellen’s body, he becomes unhinged, fighting with Frankie to open the attic door, which attracts the creature.

Meanwhile, Charles has concocted a plan: he has filled a prop head with explosive flash powder, with a frayed electrical cord trailing behind to act as a fuse. He arrives in the attic before the creature can attack Peter and the others, spurring the creature into devouring the prop head. However, the cord proves too short to plug into an outlet. One of the spawn creatures appears and attacks Charles, but gets in the way of the adult when it lunges at Charles and ends up being eaten. Now that the monster is distracted and its mouth close enough, Charles manages to get to the outlet, igniting the powder and blowing up the adult.

With the threat revealed, a massive hunt is mobilized. Policemen and townspeople go around killing the alien spawn and burning the remains. Millie returns to the house to care for Pete and Charles as best she can, while Frankie and Kathy are taken away in an ambulance. That night, a lone patrolman stands guard outside the house. His contact on the CB radio is confident that the spawn has been wiped out, but then the patrolman hears a low rumbling, and sees the hill by the house lift up, revealing a fully-grown spawn of colossal size.

Back Story

In terms of this combination, 1983’s The Deadly Spawn was a pioneer. Filmed on a shoestring budget around $25,000, the film tells the story of a houseful of people under assault from alien creatures breeding in the basement, which are basically mobile, worm like stalks terminating in giant mouths full of rows of razor-sharp teeth.

John Dods, who co-wrote the film’s original story and served as director of special effects, recalls the origin of the Deadly Spawn. “Ted Bohus, our producer, called me up one day,” says Dods, “and said, ‘Hey, let’s make ourselves a monster movie.’ The only problem we had at that point was, we didn’t have any money. But our friend Don Dohler in Baltimore had managed to finance and make a film called The Alien Factor, and had managed to sell it to television, and even make a profit. So Ted figured, and I agreed, why couldn’t we do the same thing?”

Neither Bohus nor Dods were entirely without experience at the project’s outset; in fact, Dods is quite well-known (famous, almost) among semi-pro filmmakers as the producer-director-writer-animator-designer of a series of short films featuring Grog, a delightfully primitive critter who was briefly featured in the TV special The Making of The Empire Strikes Back as an example of the stop-motion animator’s art. Bohus, a genuine SF fan and former fanzine publisher, may not have had much producing experience, but he did achieve the goal of procuring financing for the project, and he assembled a crew that included some of the best young film making talent in the East: Dods; makeup artist Arnold Gargiulo musician Ken Walker to score the film, along with Paul Cornell and Michael Perilstein; and renowned fantasy artist Tim Hildebrandt, who served as executive producer and made several special contributions to the film’s effects and designs.

The Deadly Spawn design by John Dods

While the acting and the directing of The Deadly Spawn is only passable at best the work of these four gentlemen make the film watchable-and even highly enjoyable, for those of us who like the idea of face-eating mutant creatures from out of space. For, in the time-honored tradition of low-budget monster cinema, the play is not the thing; the “Thing’ is the play. It is Dods’ hell-raising title creatures, and the havoc they raise in a New Jersey suburb, that gives this film its singular charm.

Dod’s first order of business was his collaboration with Bohus on a story, which served as a key tool in obtaining investors; this story was later fleshed out into a somewhat flabby screenplay by director Doug McKeown. Dod’s second task-and one that turned out quite a bit better–was the design and construction of the film’s highly unpleasant stars. “We wanted something really frightening,” says Dods, “and since this was over two years ago, we were probably a little influenced by Alien. I decided to give it a lot of teeth, because, to me, that says that it’s going to bite you. So taking that to an extreme, we gave it a whole lot of teeth-three heads full of them. We did a number of toothy sketches, discussed them with the director and so forth; I did one more version, which I later sculpted in clay, and that seemed to strike everyone as pretty awful in the right way.” The adult creature was built, along with various other required bits and pieces, over a two month period, by Dods with technician Greg Ramoundas.

Interview with Ted Bohus

Ted, how and when did The Deadly Spawn get started?

BOHUS: In October of 1980 extrapolated an idea from a news story I’d read. I imagined a dormant microbe or spore inside a meteor, which crashes in an isolated area (it had to be an isolated area, because the budget would not let us put it down in New York City!), comes alive and starts eating everything in sight. Eventually it ends up in a family’s basement and starts producing, or should I say, reproducing various sized offspring. The “tooth-heads” eventually invade the house, and the surrounding area.

How are the spawn finally destroyed?

BOHUS: Wait a minute now…I can’t tell you that! But I will say that the young boy in the film (played by Tim Hildebrandt’s son), finds a way to destroy some of them.

Deadly Spawn is an independent production. How did you find backers to finance the film?

BOHUS: A friend of mine is studying to become a doctor. He and a few other friends put up the initial starting money. Since then Tim and Rita Hildebrandt and another friend have become involved.

How did you meet the Hildebrandts?

BOHUS: I met Tim and Greg Hildebrandt at a convention about four years ago. We started talking about painting, science fiction films, Disney and how we are all still 15 years old. Actually, after the first meeting, I only stayed in contact with Tim and Rita. Periodically we all got together to watch films or talk. When I mentioned the film to Tim and that we were scouting locations he said, “Hey I’ve got an idea! Why don’t you use our house?” So we did. And we used his son too! And Rita, and the neighbors.

How did Charles Hildebrandt get the part of the young boy?

BOHUS: Well he didn’t get the part just because he was Tim’s son. Charles is a natural actor. No fear in front of the camera whatsoever.

Back to the Hildebrandts. Is Greg also involved in this film project? I thought the Hildebrandt Brothers always did everything together.

BOHUS: No. Tim and Rita are the only Hildebrandts involved in this project. Tim and Greg have split up and gone their separate ways. I think that the Clash of the Titans poster was their last work together.

What about the new Atlantis calendar?

BOHUS: That was also done before the split.

Artistic differences?

BOHUS: I think Tim wants to get more heavily into filmmaking at this point.

Will Tim be doing the poster for The Deadly Spawn?

BOHUS: I think so. He’s already done up a few roughs-I’d like something with a 50’s look.

You mean Big Monster and Girl in Trouble?

BOHUS: Exactly! Tim’s also working on a miniature for the film.

How did you locate the actors?

BOHUS: All the actors and actresses are professionals- put ads in the New York trade papers asking for actors willing to work for a small percentage, and described the parts.

How many responses did you get?

BOHUS: Well, I expected about 60, but got over 400! Some from as far away as Miami! | Weeded them down to about 100. Then I took the resumes to our Director, Doug McKeown, and our Effects Director John Dods. We narrowed them down to 50. Gave 40 screen tests and picked 12 people.

You mentioned Director and Effects Director. Do these people also work on a percentage?

BOHUS: Everyone on this film is working on a percentage.

How did you find them?

BOHUS: John Dods, I’ve known for many years. He’s mainly known for animating the Grog cartoons, but I brought him in to work on all parts of the film, not just the effects.

Ted Bohus’ original concept art for the main creature.

Did he design the creatures in the film?

BOHUS: We both had ideas about what the “Spawn” should look like…possibly three or more snake-like heads, plenty of teeth, slimy. I was trying to design something with a man in a suit but John said no, it would be better just to have this enormous form with heads and teeth. A big mechanical creature. He went off and a few days later brought over some designs. We went through them and rejected some. He went off again and this time hit it right on the head.

Who is directing?

BOHUS: Doug McKeown is a filmmaker that John Dods knew for many years. He recommended him for the job.

What about the crew?

BOHUS: Lighting, sound, construction, all the crew except for our Director of Photography are local guys I’ve known for years. They’ve been making films since high school.

How long have you been in production?

BOHUS: About eight months.

You kept a crew and actors together for eight months?

BOHUS: We love making movies.

What do you hope to do with the film after it’s finished? Do you have any leads at this time?

BOHUS: A few. Most companies are waiting for the entire film to be rough cut. There’s a booming market out there these days, with HBO going 24 hours, overseas sales and a lot of new countries getting into the movie market. Plus video tapes and discs.

So the film has a pretty good chance of being sold quickly.

BOHUS: If it’s a good product, it’ll sell’ fast:

Do you sell a company all rights or can you sell it yourself overseas and to HBO?

BOHUS: That depends. I can sell the film outright for one sum and they can sell it to the other markets. Or if you have a lot of contacts you can sell it yourself.

Each market can be a different deal then?

BOHUS: Yes.

After this film is sold would you like to get right into another one?

BOHUS: Yes, of course. I’d like to show the film companies what we can do with a low budget and hope they would back us on the next project. Don’t forget, we have everything right here. We create the stories, write the screenplay, do storyboards, artwork, special effects, music, the whole thing! We can turn in a finished product completely on our own.

Do you think that the major companies will like that?

BOHUS: We want to make a good product, an entertaining film, for a decent budget and make a name for ourselves. If what we’re doing is good we’ll get lots of work.

What do you think of The Deadly Spawn? Is it a good film?

BOHÚS: I think it’s a good, fast paced, entertaining film. The science fiction, horror, thriller, whatever you want to call them, films of today (with few exceptions) are too slow. If you’re going to the movies to get scared or see monsters you have to wait through twenty minutes of baloney to get to see fifteen seconds of effects.

I know what you mean, some films drag on and on and center everything around one or two effects scenes, while the rest of the

film is totally boring.

BOHUS: Exactly!

Do you have any other projects in the works?

BOHUS: Yes, I’d like to work with John and Tim on a project called Bing’s Thing. It’s a science fiction musical comedy-horror film. (Chuckle) Also, I’m getting treatments ready for four other films. One’s a U.F.O. story with a twist. One’s a science-fantasy. Another is similar to Journey to the Center of the Earth, and explains Big Foot and U.F.O.’s.

When do you expect to have The Deadly Spawn finished?

BOHUS: I hope within two to three months.

Tim Hildebrandt paints the artwork for the Deadly Spawn poster.

An Interview with Tim Hildebrandt

The Hildebrandt name is one that is usually associated with the big Hollywood megabuck spectaculars such as Star Wars and Clash of the Titans. How did you come to be involved with The Deadly Spawn which is a modestly budgeted horror/thriller?

HILDEBRANDT: Well, I’m a personal friend of the producer Ted Bohus and the special effects director John Dods. When they began work on The Deadly Spawn I was caught up in their enthusiasm for the project and wanted to have something to do with it.

What is your function on The Deadly Spawn?

TH: Well right now I’m building a “mystery set” outside in my barn in conjunction with John Dods. It’s a miniature landscape but it involves something that the producer doesn’t want revealed as yet.

How is a low budget film able to afford building even a miniature set?

TH: We’re low budget by Holly-wood standards certainly but you can still get good results without spending a lot of money. I did a 3M Company TV commercial which involved building miniatures. To give you an idea of what Hollywood people want to do this kind of work, John Dykstra wanted, I believe, somewhere in the vicinity of a couple hundred thousand dollars to pull off an effect that actually could be pulled off for $5,000-$10,000 at the most.

It’s been said that when you have a lot of money, there is a tendency to do things in the least efficient way!

TH: Exactly! If you go back to the old Hollywood days and the old serials such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers some of those effects men were told the night before that they had to have certain effects or sets ready. They would look around and see what they had in the way of available materials: a football helmet would become a space helmet. To make something out of nothing that to me is more fun than having a lot of paraphernalia at your disposal.

So on The Deadly Spawn you rely more on ingenuity and resourcefulness than on mega-bucks?

TH: That’s it in a nutshell.

People associate the name Hildebrandt mostly with fantasy illustration, The Lord of the Rings calendars, for example, but your involvement with film goes way back.

TH: It began in my parent’s garage when I was a teenager, 1954 or thereabouts after having seen War of the Worlds by George Pall was slightly impressed by the special effects. My brother Greg and I took eight months to build a miniature city—like the one in the film. This was when we were in high school. We’d come home at night in the middle of winter and spend hours making detailed windows and carving bricks in the plaster walls. Then we blew it up using powdered magnesium, filming it in slow motion on an old Keystone regular 8 movie camera. A couple of scenes were used by the Jam Handy organization as part of a film on the San Francisco earthquake. Jam Handy is an industrial film producer and I worked for them primarily doing cell animation. I never actually wanted to be an illustrator. My prime objective was to be an animator for Walt Disney.

You sound as though you’re well known ventures into fantasy illustration have been a diversion from your main passion.

TH: Yes, actually, I look at it that way. You asked before why I got involved in The Deadly Spawn. I just wanted to get my hands into a film; I wanted to make something to hold onto a camera light, to be part of it, somehow.

You and your wife Rita are functioning as executive producers on the film.

TH: Which, simply put, means we put money into the film.

Your son Charles has a featured role in The Deadly Spawn.

TH: Let me tell you about my son Charles . . . he kills the monster! Charles plays a 12 year old horror film buff who likes to frighten people by appearing in a puff of smoke (powdered magnesium) as a monster. At the climax of the film Charles feeds the monster a “head” full of powdered magnesium and blows it to pieces.

You allowed your house to be used as a location for some sequences in The Deadly Spawn. What is it like to have a film crew marching in and out of your house carrying equipment—and monsters up and down stairs?

TH: I enjoyed it—being around all that activity. It was a very messy film. The monster is coated with thick slime before every take and there’s lots of blood in the film. One scene involved the Uncle who is discovered in a room infested with little spawns who are chewing him to pieces. I had a white carpet in that room, but needless to say, it had a lot of red in it by the end of the shoot. The company we took it to for cleaning did a double take when they saw it.

Did anything amusing happen during the shooting?

TH: Well, I saw the director pull his hair out a few times—I thought that only happened in the movies!

I understand that you were approached to do design work on the Disney/Paramount production Dragonslayer.

TH: Years ago, yeah. But I was in the middle of trying to sell Urshuraka novel I wrote with my brother and Gerry Nichols—as a film. We came quite close, but the short side of the story is that it was just too expensive to do. Joseph E. Levine for example saw the Urshurak presentation. He applauded, turned to us, slapped the arm of his chair and said “Well, that’ll cost $145,000,000 to make!” We thought he was joking but he meant it literally.

Urshurak—like most of your previous work was a joint venture between you and your brother Greg—”The Brothers Hildebrandt.” Up until painting the Clash of the Titans poster you worked together, usually both of you contributing to each painting. There has been a split between you two and now you work alone. What happened?

TH: It was not a friendly parting of the ways. At the time it happened I was working on a very important piece of work with my brother—production design for the forth-coming motion picture The Beast of Krull to be directed by Peter Yates. I was on the job for a month. One day I was informed that I was off of the project and that Greg was to continue … let’s leave it at that.

So at this point we don’t know if any of the design work in The Beast of Krull will represent your efforts.

TH: Right, I won’t know until I see the film.

Is it true that members of The Deadly Spawn film crew have found their way into one of your current projects?

TH: Yes, I’m painting a 1983 fantasy calendar for the TSR people, who make Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games. It’s called “Realms of Wonder.” Crew members posed for various characters; our cinematographer Frank Balsamo became a dwarf; John Dods posed for a monster and a wizard (in the same picture!); and our production coordinator Kathy Vent posed for a mermaid.

What are your other current projects?

TH: Well, I consider The Deadly Spawn to be my prime project. But I’m also doing two books with my wife. One is the “Fantasy Cookbook” to be published by Bobs Merril Company. And we’re doing an adult picture book on Merlin the Magician. I’m also discussing other projects with the TSR people—they’re very good to work for.

Would you like to be involved with film in the future?

TH: Yes, in the area of production design, in creating the look of the film. I like to build miniature sets—and I’ve always wanted to do a matte painting.

Douglas McKeown and Mother Spawn

Director/screenwriter Douglas McKeown

A bio of you says you started a theater in your house at age 9.

DOUGLAS McKEOWN: When I was in sixth grade, I did a makeup inspired by The Curse of Frankenstein. There were maybe 15 people sitting in the basement facing a table I was lying on with a sheet over me, and on cue I sat up, the sheet slipped off my face and a kid in the audience screamed, “Shit!” and fell off his stool. Well, that did it; I was hooked. I can still see the expression on his face. So I kept making plays about monsters, and shanghaied kids from the neighborhood to be in them even my mother had to step in once at the last minute and suit up as the Monster for my spin on Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Guess who played the Wolf Man! That show ended with a castle cave in that caused so much smoke and dust, the audience had to flee up the steps to keep from choking to death

My other extracurricular activities included showing off severed fingers in boxes or staging bloody stabbings and murders by the side of the road for the benefit of passing motorists. I was privately doing more and more realistic makeups and sneaking out after dark to make “appearances.” I know there are grown adults out there who still have nightmares about their childhood run-ins with a growling, hairy creature running past an open window or a maniac in a cape jumping off a roof, or some shapeless thing they couldn’t quite make out scratching at the back door. When I was 17, I filmed myself as the Phantom of the Opera on 8mm, and sort of turned quasi-professional. I got a makeup scholarship in college and started designing makeups for the theater department’s productions while majoring in English and studying film,

What, spawned The Deadly Spawn?

McKEOWN: In 1980, I was directing a play at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre in New York when I got a call from John Dods, whom I had known for a long time. He said he’d met a guy at one of the horror conventions, Ted Bohus, and they were thinking of making a horror/sci-fi-type movie, and would I be interested in joining them? John and I had worked together in the 1970s; I’d enlisted him to create some effects for a house of horrors I designed at the Jersey Shore boardwalk, and before that he’d helped me create animated titling for a documentary film I made with students. We’d also worked together on successful stage productions for the high school I taught at. During our first meeting out in New Jersey, the two guys told me they were going to be co-directors of the film, but they needed someone to “direct the actors.” I said I’d never heard of a job directing only the actors, so I said no. However, I would be willing to take on the job of sole director of the film. So we agreed to that: Dods would direct the effects, Bohus would produce and I would direct.

Then, when I found out they had no script, treatment or storyline beyond “a monster comes from space and eats people.” I said I would also have to write the screenplay, or it was no deal. They also agreed to this-a little reluctantly, I thought. The three of us would collaborate on the story, but I would do the script.

Could you give us some primary inspirations behind the creature design?

McKEOWN: We talked about Alien and Jaws and used the term “eating machine” a lot-a creature that was mostly teeth. The “mother spawn,” as we started calling it—or her-gradually took shape in Dods’ basement studio in New Brunswick. The creature prop looked amazing even before it had any flesh on it. This was all Dods’ work, topped off later with a luridly detailed paint job by Tim Hildebrandt. In fact, you could say Dods was the mother spawn, he was so intensely into his creation. I even overheard him talking to it once when he thought no one was around.

The ’80s had a lot of independent, low- to middling-budget monster films, but The Deadly Spawn is pretty intensely gory for when it came out. Was that always the intent, or just a happy accident?

McKEOWN: Let’s call it happy intent. At one of our early production meetings, we discussed going for an R rating, because in the low-budget arena it would actually be a draw rather than a drawback, and we wanted to make as big a splash as possible. Nudity was suggested, but I nixed it. I think it’s always ridiculous and obvious that whenever characters are about to be carved up in a movie, they happen to strip down and get in the shower first. I thought, why not extreme violence? I actually said, “Let’s rip the mother’s face off.”

Now, I personally was not a big fan of bloody, gory movies—which is surprising, I know, given my predilections as a child. It’s just that I had come to appreciate mood, atmosphere, subtlety in movies suggested terrors more than overt ones. But this project definitely called for going as far as possible-taking the audience over the top beyond disgust, to actual laughter even. A big laugh in the theater can be as potent and as valid a release as a scream. I definitely -heard those kinds of laughs when The Deadly Spawn played in 1983. Especially in the vegetarian luncheon scene, which has been called “disturbing” and “hilarious” at the same time.

There’s an interesting contrast between the two lead brothers, in that one is a scientific rationalist and the other, much younger boy engages in imaginative escapism via horror films and nostalgia. Was this a planned-out element of the film?

McKEOWN: Planned. Charles is the brave and resourceful hero, the one who stands in for me as a kid with horror-movie obsessions. He just lives contentedly with horror all the time in his own little world. The hero idea came from one of those nights when I was 11 or 12, running through the woods done up as the Wolf Man, and had a revelation. Here I was in full makeup, hair glued on my face, fangs, the works, and I suddenly realized that I was completely unafraid of the dark, or of being alone or anything at all, really. And that was because I was the monster. I understood monsters from the inside. Of course, I knew I couldn’t invest the character of Charles with all the details from my life. I was hoping the audience would get the idea that this little imaginative world of his had actually prepared him for the challenges he was about to face.

I wanted the older brother, Pete, to be locked up in his own narrow paradigm, and his relationship with Charles-teasing his younger brother about the monsters-to find its equivalent in the more adult verbal sparring he was going to have later on with Ellen. She turns out to be open to the more imaginative possibilities of life; they inspire her scientific curiosity. Pete, on the other hand, is completely closed to the imagination, science to him being a cold, inflexible discipline. I figured their opposite outlooks would make the sparks fly between them. Too bad their kissing scene comes on so abruptly in the final film. It was supposed to be better set up by a scene we had shot first that had them sort of flirting with each other. Somebody made the decision later, when I wasn’t on board, to cut that out. I keep talking about how much was planned, and it’s true, but you can only plan so much. The biggest x factor is always the individual actors’ performances and personalities. They bring indefinable values that nobody can plan for, and I couldn’t have been happier.

A huge isolative element in the plot is the fact that, until the end, the house is basically stormbound. How hard was it to plan around the weather during shooting?

McKEOWN: I had the idea from the start that it would be raining all through the film for a couple of reasons. I thought the mama creature from the meteorite would thrive on Earth right away, growing quickly as soon as it rained, because, like all life, it flourished in water. And then its offspring would flourish and grow and proliferate like the brooms and buckets in [Fantasia’s] The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And plot wise, I figured a lot of rain could mean a flooded cellar, so there’d be a good reason to bring the doomed parents down there at the outset.

Douglas McKeown

But the main purpose for the rain was technical. I knew that with our low-to-no budget, it would be extremely hard to maintain a convincing continuity in clothing, settings, lighting, etc., especially if we would be shooting piecemeal over the weeks and months. So I thought that if we made it one long rainstorm, a real rainy day all through the film, we could have that steady drumbeat of ambient sound on the soundtrack, and that would help convince the audience subconsciously that everything was happening on the same day.” And if it shouldn’t happen to rain on a day we were scheduled to shoot, well, how hard would it be, I asked myself, to point a garden hose at the scene for exterior shots, or simply aim it against the outside of a window when we shot the interiors?

As it turned out, it was annoyingly hard to do. It so happened that in the winter of 1980-81, New Jersey experienced probably the worst drought on record. Here I was making a film with rain all through it, and it never rained. It actually became illegal to use garden hoses, so someone was always keeping a lookout for the cops during scenes like the one where Pete is up on the roof in the-fake-rain.

How did the Hildebrandts come to be involved in the movie’s production?

McKEOWN: Tim was already on board as an executive producer, I think. Once I came up with a story centering on a family, he offered his house as the main location-although I’m not sure his wife Rita knew what they were in for! And when I met his son Charles, I realized a major casting problem was solved. Not only was Charles the right age [for the character bearing his name) and very intelligent, he was psyched for it—and he would be no trouble getting to the set in the morning, since he actually lived there; he just had to wake up and get in costume. A very lucky break! Tim was incredibly easy to work alongside, understanding and patient and just all-around great to spend time with. Not to mention that his extraordinary artistry added immeasurably to the look of the creatures and the film as a whole.

What have you been up to since The Deadly Spawn?

McKEOWN: Oh, life after The Deadly Spawn has gone on just as before, with me collaborating on stage shows by directing or designing and making props, costumes and scenery, taping short documentary videos and writing scenes, sketches, the books to musicals, short stories, even a nightclub comedy act at one time. And then there’s acting, which I still do from time to time. First and foremost, though, I’m a filmmaker, and I would like nothing better than to direct another feature. Stranger things have happened.

After all these years, what’s your perspective on The Deadly Spawn?

McKEOWN: That’s exactly how it is, a perspective of many years. In some ways, the film is like one of NASA’s Mars rovers—supposed to do a limited job for a limited time, but then, amazingly, turned out to have this incredible staying power. Put another way, I sometimes feel like the parent of a wayward child who grew up. You know, when she was young she screwed up, disappointed me, got in with the wrong crowd, but then over time she proved her worth, was admired and loved by the outside world. I finally had to stop threatening to disown her. And now I really appreciate her best qualities instead of fixating on all her flaws, which is what I used to do. The flaws were really mine, anyway. And of course, I don’t forget that I wasn’t her only parent!

The Deadly Spawn (1983) Retrospective Part One For those who grew up as horror fans in the 1980s, invasions of killer monsters intent on devouring nubile young flesh were a popular stock in trade.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

The Justice Department just indicted a Republican representative from New York; Argentina could become the most populous country in Latin America to legalize abortion as Congress gathers to vote.

Rep. Chris Collins Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Republican Rep. Chris Collins was arrested by FBI agents and charged with insider trading on Wednesday morning. The New York representative, who was “one of President Trump’s earliest and biggest supporters,” is accused of sharing insider knowledge on a pharmaceutical company with his son. [Vox / Jane Coaston]

Collins’s son Cameron, and his son’s future father-in-law, Stephen Zarsky, were charged with insider trading as well. The three men allegedly tried to cover up the scheme and were also charged with lying to the FBI as a result. [NBC / Erik Ortiz and Jonathan Dienst]

Collins, the representative for the 27th District in upstate New York, is on the board of Innate Immunotherapeutics. He is also one of their largest shareholders. Collins tipped off his son, who tipped off Zarsky, when an Innate drug trial failed. They subsequently saved more than a combined $768,000. [Wall Street Journal / Nicole Hong and Kristina Peterson]

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that Collins will be removed from the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the subject of a “prompt and thorough investigation by the House Ethics Committee.” [US News & World Report]

Geoff Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that Collins “cheated our markets and our justice system” and “acted as if the law didn’t apply to him.” [The Hill / Sylvan Lane]

Collins was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump during the 2016 election cycle. He then held weekly meetings with members of Congress to garner more support for the president. [CBS]

Collins’s lawyers are “confident he will be completely vindicated and exonerated” despite evidence against him that is reportedly substantial. The evidence includes logged calls and texts with his son immediately after receiving the Innate news (while he was attending a congressional picnic, no less). [CNN / Erica Orden and Maegan Vazquez]

The indictment comes at a time when the left is working to turn the narrative that Democratic politicians are part of the Washington “swamp” back on Republicans. Collins has inevitably given the Democrats a load of ammo. [Washington Post / Renae Merle and Mike DeBonis]

The news, but shorter, delivered straight to your inbox.

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The Argentine Senate began its session to decide whether to legalize abortion on Wednesday. The historic vote isn’t expected to wrap up until early Thursday morning. Argentina would be the most populous country in Latin America to legalize abortion if the bill passed. [AP]

Multiple senators have pulled their support from the bill. Still, it’s unclear which way the vote will go. [NPR / Colin Dwyer]

President Mauricio Macri personally opposes abortion. But he said that it was up to Congress to make a decision and that he would sign the bill if passed. Some believe he is using the bill as a way to distract from Argentina’s economic troubles. [Reuters / Hugh Bronstein]

Abortion is legal in the country when a woman’s life or health is at risk or in cases of rape. But women who don’t fit into either category are forced to seek out abortions in secret. Human rights groups estimate that about 500,000 women are getting under the table procedures. Eighteen percent of all maternal deaths were due to illegal abortions in 2018. [NYT / Megan Specia]

Pope Francis, who called abortion “the white glove equivalent of Nazism,” hails from Argentina. The southern Latin American country is deeply religious. [BBC / Katy Watson]

The feminist movement has surged in Argentina. The country has its own version of the #MeToo movement called #NiUnaMenos, meaning “not one less” (woman hurt by or lost to gender violence). One million women are expected to rally outside of the Argentine Congress on Wednesday as #EsHoy, meaning “it’s today,” trends on Twitter. [The Guardian / Uki Goñi]

Activists believe that, no matter the outcome, a vote on abortion is a win in and of itself [Vox / Emily Stewart]

“Hurricane Kanye” will sit down with Jimmy Kimmel for his first real interview since announcing he was a Trump supporter (if we don’t count the TMZ tirade). The rapper and fashion designer disappointed and angered many fans in late May when he pledged his support for the president. [Complex / Eric Skelton]

Does your child’s dreaded bedtime routine fill you with bouts of anxiety? Disney has launched a new, toll-free “Sleep Shop Hotline” that enlists Mickey Mouse and friends to explain some bedtime routine etiquette and wish your testy offspring a goodnight. What’s parenting without a little “Disney magic,” right? [CBS Philly / Matt Yurus]

SpaceX lent a helping hand to Indonesia’s National Institute of Aeronautics and Space program on Tuesday. Elon Musk and his company launched a space booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to send an Indonesian communication satellite into orbit. [AP / Marcia Dunn]

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has added a category at the Oscars for “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film.” Is retroactive justice for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 out of the question? [The Verge / Bijan Stephen]

“I have found that the only way to give feedback without triggering white fragility is not to give it at all.” [Robin DiAngelo in her new book, White Fragility]

Neon is fading. [YouTube / Johnny Harris]

For more behind-the-scenes and updates when new Hong Kong episodes are released, sign up for the Vox Borders newsletter today.

Exclusive: Pompeo told North Korea to cut its nuclear arsenal by 60 to 70 percent

Twitter’s stance on Infowars’ Alex Jones should be a moment of reckoning for users

4 winners and 3 losers from the August 7 primary and special elections

The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend. Here’s how to catch the spectacular show.

Crazy Rich Asians isn’t about money, it’s about entitlement—and that’s a good thing

Original Source -> Collin’ for an indictment

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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cowtowncrimeblog · 6 years

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Affluenza, a portmanteau of affluence and influenza, is a term used by critics of consumerism. It is thought to have been first used in 1954 but it gained legs as a concept with a 1997 PBS documentary of the same name and the subsequent book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (2001, revised in 2005, 2014).–Wikipedia

Ethan Couch’s court team may not have originated the term, but he’s the poster child for “Affluenza.” Just google “affluenza teen” and his face pops up along with his crimes and punishment, or lack thereof. Most people can tell you that he’s the rich kid who got away with killing someone while driving drunk, but there’s a lot more to this story and I’m going to explore it in my first every two-part article.

Couch, a juvenile at the time, was sentenced to probation for killing four people in Intoxication Manslaughter, igniting a firestorm of criticism, controversy and intense scrutiny. What was it about this case that brought so much attention? Was it the absurd buzzwords? The perception of purchased justice? Or was it Ethan himself, the very picture of wealthy privilege? Was it his lack of remorse? The callous disregard for the lives he destroyed? Or was it the terrible nature of the crime?

THE CRIME

Daylight view of the wreck.

Sunday, June 16, 2013 was Father’s Day, but not for Ethan Couch. The 16 year-old was out with his friends for a good time. At sixteen, he had moved out of his parent’s house and into a large home of his own. His father built houses and had built this one. The house was party central for kids. Couch and a group of other teens had already been drinking when they tried to buy more beer at a Burleson Albertson’s Grocery Store, but were refused for being underage. Undeterred, Couch stole two cases of beer from a Wal-Mart. The party had to continue.

An hour later, just before midnight, Couch was behind the wheel of his father’s red Ford F-350, speeding down Burleson-Retta road, going 70 down the unlit, two-lane road in a 40 mph zone. Blood tests would later reveal his Blood Alcohol Concentration to be a .24, three times the legal limit for an adult. He also had Valium and marijuana in his system. He had left the party with a seven other teens and was heading for a store.

Just 400 yards away, four adults were grouped around a disabled car. Breanna Mitchell’s SUV had blown a tire and two women who lived nearby, Hollie Boyles, 52, and her daughter Shelby, 21, had come out to help. Breanna, 24, was a chef at a private club. It was her dream job even if it meant she was coming home late at night. The blown tire made her swerve off the road and hit a mailbox. She knocked on the Boyle’s door and called her mother, Marla. Marla was also Breanna’s best friend. She calmed her daughter and told her she was on her way to get her. “I love you, Mom. Please hurry,” Breanna urged.

In a driveway, two boys waited inside a car. Brian Jennings, 41, a youth minister had also stopped to help. He was on his way home from his son’s graduation and had been giving rides to two pre-teen boys. He left them inside his white, Silverado pick-up as he went to check on the women.

Couch lost control of the truck, veering of the roadway and slamming into Breanna’s SUV and then into Jenning’s truck with the boys inside. Momentum slung Jenning’s truck into the roadway where it stuck an oncoming car. Couch’s truck flipped before coming to rest against a tree. The group of four standing around Breanna’s SUV were flung 60 feet in the air. None of them survived the impact. In that one, alcohol-soaked moment, four people were dead.

Clockwise: Brian Jennings, Breanna Mitchell, Hollie Boyles, Shelby Boyles

Sergio Molina also made a mistake on July 13th. The 16-year-old was a bright, popular soccer player on the night he went to a party at his friend Ethan’s house. After playing beer pong and drinking shots, he got in Ethan Couch’s truck with a group of kids. Six fit inside the cab, but there wasn’t room for everyone. Molina and another boy climbed into the bed of the truck. Molina was thrown from the truck in the crash and suffered a devastating head injury. He cannot walk or talk and requires round the clock care.

After the crash, Molina’s family appealed to the Couches for assistance. Molina’s family wasn’t well off, not like the Couches. Molina didn’t have insurance and after a month, he was sent home from the hospital. There was no money for rehab or other care. They refused and told the family “call a lawyer.”

The family did call a lawyer, ultimately receiving a 2-million-dollar settlement. But as a Washington Post article (links in Source Notes) mentions, early treatment of a head injury is key. His mother was left to wonder what would have happened if he had been treated for longer than a month. She had to quit her job to care for her son who can only blink yes and no in response to questions.

Sergio Molina and family. Photo credit: CBS DFW Local

The other boy in the bed of the pick-up, Solimon Mohmand, was severely injured, with internal injuries and broken bones. Both the pre-teen boys in Jenning’s truck were wearing seat belts at the time of impact and both survived. The door was jammed shut, forcing them to crawl out a window. Lucas McConnel, 12, suffered only minor physical injuries, but he witnessed something that would traumatize even the adults there. Bodies were everywhere, bleeding and moaning. Someone was screaming. He located the bloody body of Brian Jennings, his pastor and friend. The people in the oncoming car they had struck would also survive as would all seven passengers of Couch’s truck, but with varying degrees of injury.

Lucas McConnel, Photo credit: KXAS

Jenning’s truck

Marla Mitchell was still on the phone with her daughter when she heard the sickening crunch of metal. Marla arrived to the accident scene and frantically ran in the direction of the wreckage. Couch staggered to her, slurring his words. “You don’t want to go that way. There’s nothing good happening over there.” She would later recall the chaos in the dark as she frantically looked for her daughter

Eric Boyles was stunned. How could his wife and daughter be gone, just like that? They had only stepped out into their own front yard.

THE TRIAL

Because he was a juvenile at the time, the 323rd Judicial District Court of Tarrant County had exclusive jurisdiction over Ethan Couch at the time charges were filed. He was charged with four cases of Intoxication Manslaughter. The first question the TC Criminal District Attorney’s office (TCCDA) had to grapple with was whether or not to ask the judge to certify Couch to stand trial as an adult. Texas Family Code Section 54.02 sets out the rules for when a juvenile court waives its jurisdiction and transfers the accused to an adult court.

There are two types of certification, one is for when the person is still a legal child (under the age of 17); the other is for when the person was a child at the time the offense was committed, but is an adult at the time of adjudication. If you’re at all familiar with this story, you know that the first type is what applied the first time they dealt with Couch, but the second type would be relevant later. Contrary to what you might think watching the news, very few juveniles are certified. It’s typically only done for the most serious felonies such as murders and sexual assaults. These are also the types of cases likely to get news coverage which can skew the perception. The cases you already know about are the ones most likely to have a juvenile certified.

Ethan Couch attending juvenile court with his mother, Tonya Couch in front and his father, Fred Couch behind him. Photo credit: WFAA

In Tarrant County, the number of juveniles certified is generally in the single digits. If the TCCDA Office wants to certify a juvenile, he must be at least 15. They file a petition asking the judge to certify the juvenile. The judge first orders a complete diagnostic study. Once that is done, the judge next conducts a hearing weighing the factors listed in Section 54.02(f) to weigh the safety of the community against the welfare of the child. Playing heavily into the decision are the sophistication and background of the child, previous criminal history, and the likelihood of appropriate rehabilitation of the child. I’m not sure I’ve seen a juvenile certified for Intoxication Manslaughter before. That’s because it’s a crime of negligence rather than intent and substance abuse issues seem appropriate for rehabilitation.

Former Judge Jean Hudson Boyd

Juvenile justice is a like walking a tightrope. Given what we now know about developing brains, when do we choose adult consequences over more youthful ones? I know it isn’t an easy decision. Prosecutors chose to leave Couch to the juvenile system. There was an added issue, that the person who has the final decision on certification is the judge. At the time, the sitting judge was Jean Boyd. For over 20 years, Judge Boyd made those decision as judge of the 323rd District Court. She was known for favoring long probations and being very stingy with certifications. Prosecutors knew they didn’t have a realistic chance of her certifying Couch, but they did hope to convince her to send him to a Juvenile Justice Corrections Center. If the name Richard Alpert sounds familiar to readers, he is considered the foremost expert on vehicular homicide in Texas and was the prosecutor on the Chante Mallard case which I covered in “Depraved Heart: The Killing of Gregory Biggs”.

Richard Alpert

Riley Shaw

As they were gearing up for trial, prosecutors Richard Alpert and Riley Shaw received word of a not-so surprising development. Given the overwhelming evidence, Ethan Couch was going to plead guilty before the judge and hope for the best. It was a tactic that had always served him well in the past. That’s right. He had a history of alcohol related offenses.

February 2013, just five months before the fatal crash, a Lakeside police officer found Couch peeing in the parking lot of a Dollar General at 1 am. In his truck was a naked 14-year-old girl, beer, and a 1.75-liter bottle of Grey Goose. D Magazine describes the exchange as follows:

The officer asked the clearly intoxicated 15-year-old Ethan what he was doing. Ethan replied, “What’s it look like I’m doing?” Tonya was called to the scene. The officer’s microphone captured the conversation between the mother and son. “By the way, I didn’t know you snuck out,” Tonya says. “What do you mean, I snuck out?” Ethan says. “I told you I was—”

“Well you’re not going to tell your dad that after you go out drinking and doing this,” she says. “I drank one beer,” he says. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

Couch was cited for minor in possession. He appeared with his mother Tonya Couch. She paid his fine and he was ordered to attend an alcohol awareness program and perform community service. He did neither. Not one single hour. Again, Tonya would claim this was her fault for not understanding. During civil litigation, Tonya was asked about the girl. She shrugged it off. She didn’t know who the girl was or how she got home and she didn’t care. Ethan was her only concern.

This incident just underscores Couch’s history. He acted out and one or both parents covered for him. If one parent punished him for something, the other one came along and bailed him out. The family dynamic was toxic. When Ethan Couch was 9, Tonya and Fred Couch divorced. The divorce was extremely hostile, fueled by Fred’s temper and Tonya’s self-medication with drugs and alcohol. Ethan Couch became his parent’s pawn. They fought one another over him, used him to get back at one another, rarely keeping the visitation schedule. Both used money to buy his affection. He had anything he wanted: a motorcycle, a four-wheeler, a pool, the best education money could buy. He was a good student, but his parents did nothing to encourage it and even interfered.

At 13, Ethan was driving his new truck to school. A concerned principal called the parents. Fred Couch shouted her down, exclaiming that Ethan was the best driver he knew. He threatened to just ‘buy the school’ if they complained further. Then he transferred Ethan to a ‘home school’ program. It’s unclear if he ever graduated.

Fred first found Ethan passed out from drinking rum at the age of 14. He was angry because Ethan wouldn’t be around to shoot off fireworks. Tonya denied knowing her son was still drinking, but Ethan’s girlfriend at the time, named “Starr,” testified to drinking with Ethan and Tonya just a week before the crash. Ethan was also using other drugs, especially cocaine.

If Fred did try to take something from Ethan in punishment, Tonya would swoop in and give it back to Ethan. Ethan learned how to game the system from an early age, pitting his parents against one another to get what he wanted. He saw his parents engage in extremely risky behavior. Fred was once cited for driving 95 miles per hour and was known to engage in road rage incidents. Tonya wasn’t much better. She was once charged with reckless driving for running someone off the road.

True to form, the parents purchased the best legal team they could find for Couch, attorneys Scott Brown and Reagan Wynn. Both attorneys were Board Certified in Criminal Law. Neither one comes cheaply. Reagan Wynn was also one of the attorneys on the Chante Mallard case.

Scott Brown

Reagan Wynn

The parent’s also employed an expert, a psychologist, Dr. G. Dick Miller. On Dr. Miller’s advice, Ethan Couch was sent to rehab. The family chose Newport Academy, a luxurious facility in California with equine therapy, cooking classes, basketball, swimming, mixed martial arts lessons, massages, and a matching price tag of $450,000 per year. Against Dr. Miller’s advice, the parents checked Ethan out and brought him home after just 62 days and $90,000.

Newport Academy, Photo credit: Newport Academy website

Dr. Miller also testified at Couch’s trial. Prosecutors had made some compelling arguments. They pointed to Couch’s repeated reckless behavior, his wild party lifestyle, and his utter lack of remorse. No one had ever heard a word of apology from Ethan Couch. It’s common for defendant’s to testify at punishment if they have pled guilty. There is little to be gained by keeping silent. They do better if they cry for the judge, express remorse and sorrow. Couch did neither. It leads me to wonder if he was capable or if the attorneys knew how he would come across: as an arrogant spoiled brat.

Neither Fred or Tonya Couch testified. Instead, the defense cleverly diverted attention. They put Fred and Tonya, and their parenting on trial. The judge heard from former teachers about how Ethan was a sweet boy with obnoxious, indulgent parents. They heard from friends, family, and a social worker who examined him during his parent’s divorce. And they heard from Dr. G. Dick Miller.

Dr. Miller was the star witness for the defense. He talked about the lack of parental supervision, the lack of discipline and the entitlement Couch was raised with. His parents had treated him like an adult since he was a child. He was taught that the golden rule meant “We have the gold, so we make the rules.” Then that word just fell out of his mouth. “You might say the boy was suffering from affluenza.”

The attorneys insist he never said that word in any of their meetings and Dr. Miller himself has said he regrets ever uttering the word, but it was out there and it stuck like duct tape. Ethan couldn’t really understand right from wrong because he had never been taught to. He was too privileged. That was the argument.

Although the prosecution pushed for the maximum sentence of 20 years, pointing out that Youth Correctional Facilities were geared towards rehabilitation, Judge Boyd sentenced him to 10 years probation. Family members of the victims and the survivors were stunned. The slap on the wrist felt more like a slap to the face.

But buzzwords aside, probation was probably always in the cards for Ethan Couch. The juvenile justice system is slanted in favor of probation. Judge Boyd was known for giving multiple probations to offenders and repeatedly changing the conditions for infractions instead of revoking probation. The Family Code does say that removing a child from his home is the last resort and all other measures should be exhausted or impractical. In fact, for misdemeanors, probation is the only option.

The Couches gave every indication that they would be involved in their son’s rehabilitation. They even agreed to pay the cost of Ethan’s treatment in the Newport Academy. Likely Boyd was persuaded by this argument. Other articles have pointed at other Intoxication Manslaughter cases where Boyd sentenced youthful offenders to time in custody, but I’m wary of comparing cases. Sometimes it’s like apples and oranges. The facts can be different and each situation should be treated as unique. I’m not a fan of mandatory sentencing laws. But those articles do point out how juveniles whose parents can afford to pay for in-patient treatment centers were more likely to be granted probation by Judge Boyd. Money can by you freedom in the system, whether juvenile or adult and that is a fact.

I’m certain Judge Boyd thought she was doing the right thing, giving Ethan Couch a chance at a fresh start. But Couch was still doing what he had always done, trying to game the system. Appearances count. And while he looks like a clean-cut, harmless kid while heading into court, this is the real Ethan Couch from his Facebook profile, looking like every scruffy bro in a muscle shirt with his hat turned backwards, the kind of rich brat that parents worry about dating their daughter.

Next week in part two of “Wrecked”, I’m going to talk about the aftermath the judge’s ruling. What happened with civil cases? What led to Ethan and Tonya Couch’s famous run to Mexico and what happened down there? I’ll break down all the legal wrangling that led to Ethan’s incarceration and talk about what is likely to happen in the future to the “Affluenza Teen” and the parents who created this manipulative, narcissistic monster.

Source Notes:

An excellent article from D magazine:

https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2015/may/affluenza-the-worst-parents-ever-ethan-couch/

ABC 20/20 episode on Couch:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/affluenza-dui-case-happened-night-accident-left-people/story?id=34481444

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/22/for-victim-of-affluenza-teen-ethan-couch-a-life-of-paralysis/?utm_term=.c139fc50d269

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mom-affluenza-victim-ethan-couch-crash-scene-article-1.2495385

http://www.crimemagazine.com/“affluenza”-uproar-ethan-couch-case

Wrecked: “Affluenza” Teen Ethan Couch Affluenza, a portmanteau of affluence and influenza, is a term used by critics of consumerism. It is thought to have been first used in 1954 but it gained legs as a concept with a 1997 PBS documentary of the same name and the subsequent book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (2001, revised in 2005, 2014).--Wikipedia…

#Affluenza #DWI #Ethan Couch #Juvenile Justice #Murder #Tonya Couch

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