Christmas FKB

Not a Christmas show, but very much in the Christmas Spirit: "Bud the Philanthropist" from April of '57.

Krazee

Maybe the funniest character in maybe the funniest cartoon series ever -- her full name is Goo Goo Ga Ga and she is IN-sane.

"Go Goo Go" from November of '05.

God Speed

John Glenn, RIP.

Friendship 7.

The following year, two months before Dallas, at the United Nations:

National Security Action Memorandum 271, 10 days before Dallas:

MEMORANDUM FOR

The Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

SUBJECT: Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters

I would like you to assume personally the initiative and central responsibility within the Government for the development of a program of substantive cooperation with the Soviet Union in the field of outer space, including the development of specific technical proposals. I assume that you will work closely with the Department of State and other agencies as appropriate.

These proposals should be developed with a view of their possible discussion with the Soviet Union as a direct outcome of my September 20 proposal for broader cooperation between the United States and the USSR in outer space, including cooperation in lunar landing programs. All proposals or suggestions originating within the Government relating to this general subject will be referred to you for your consideration and evaluation.

In addition to developing substantive proposals, I expect that you will assist the Secretary of State in exploring problems of procedure and timing connected with holding discussions with the Soviet Union and in proposing for my consideration the channels which would be most desirable from our point of view. In this connection the channel of contact developed by Dr. Dryden between NASA and the Soviet Academy of Sciences has been quite effective, and I believe that we should continue to utilize it as appropriate as a means of continuing the dialogue between the scientists of both counties.

I would like an interim report on the progress of our planning by December 15.

The proposal died 10 days later.

Glenn Redux

Pure exhilaration, from Phil Kaufman.

Comandante, Farewell

Two from Oliver Stone.

Comandante (2003)

Looking for Fidel (2004)

Men and Not Men

From March of '16, upon the arrival of Obama in Havana:

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

Tourism today, in large part, consists of viewing the delights of our landscapes and tasting exquisite delicacies from our seas, and is always shared with the private capital of large foreign corporations, whose earnings, if they don’t reach billions of dollars, are not worthy of any attention whatsoever.

Since I find myself obliged to mention the issue, I must add - principally for the youth - that few people are aware of the importance of such a condition, in this singular moment of human history. I would not say that time has been lost, but I do not hesitate to affirm that we are not adequately informed, not you, nor us, of the knowledge and conscience that we must have to confront the realities which challenge us. The first to be taken into consideration is that our lives are but a fraction of a historical second, which must also be devoted in part to the vital necessities of every human being. One of the characteristics of this condition is the tendency to overvalue its role, in contrast, on the other hand, with the extraordinary number of persons who embody the loftiest dreams.

Nevertheless, no one is good or bad entirely on their own. None of us is designed for the role we must assume in a revolutionary society, although Cubans had the privilege of José Martí’s example. I even ask myself if he needed to die or not in Dos Ríos, when he said, “For me, it’s time,” and charged the Spanish forces entrenched in a solid line of firepower. He did not want to return to the United States, and there was no one who could make him. Someone ripped some pages from his diary. Who bears this treacherous responsibility, undoubtedly the work of an unscrupulous conspirator? Differences between the leaders were well known, but never indiscipline. “Whoever attempts to appropriate Cuba will reap only the dust of its soil drenched in blood, if he does not perish in the struggle,” stated the glorious Black leader Antonio Maceo. Máximo Gómez is likewise recognized as the most disciplined and discreet military chief in our history.

Looking at it from another angle, how can we not admire the indignation of Bonifacio Byrne when, from a distant boat returning him to Cuba, he saw another flag alongside that of the single star and declared, “My flag is that which has never been mercenary...” immediately adding one of the most beautiful phrases I have ever heard, “If it is torn to shreds, it will be my flag one day… our dead raising their arms will still be able to defend it!” Nor will I forget the blistering words of Camilo Cienfuegos that night, when, just some tens of meters away, bazookas and machine guns of U.S. origin in the hands of counterrevolutionaries were pointed toward that terrace on which we stood.

Obama was born in August of 1961, as he himself explained. More than half a century has transpired since that time.

Let us see, however, how our illustrious guest thinks today:

“I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people,” followed by a deluge of concepts entirely novel for the majority of us:

“We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans,” the U.S. President continued, “Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners.”

The native populations don’t exist at all in Obama’s mind. Nor does he say that the Revolution swept away racial discrimination, or that pensions and salaries for all Cubans were decreed by it before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old. The hateful, racist bourgeois custom of hiring strongmen to expel Black citizens from recreational centers was swept away by the Cuban Revolution - that which would go down in history for the battle against apartheid that liberated Angola, putting an end to the presence of nuclear weapons on a continent of more than a billion inhabitants. This was not the objective of our solidarity, but rather to help the peoples of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and others under the fascist colonial domination of Portugal.

In 1961, just one year and three months after the triumph of the Revolution, a mercenary force with armored artillery and infantry, backed by aircraft, trained and accompanied by U.S. warships and aircraft carriers, attacked our country by surprise. Nothing can justify that perfidious attack which cost our country hundreds of losses, including deaths and injuries

As for the pro-yankee assault brigade, no evidence exists anywhere that it was possible to evacuate a single mercenary. Yankee combat planes were presented before the United Nations as the equipment of a Cuban uprising.

The military experience and power of this country is very well known. In Africa, they likewise believed that revolutionary Cuba would be easily taken out of the fight. The invasion via southern Angola by racist South African motorized brigades got close to Luanda, the capital in the eastern part of the country. There a struggle began which went on for no less than 15 years. I wouldn’t even talk about this, if I didn’t have the elemental duty to respond to Obama’s speech in Havana’s Alicia Alonso Grand Theater.

Nor will I attempt to give details, only emphasize that an honorable chapter in the struggle for human liberation was written there. In a certain way, I hoped Obama’s behavior would be correct. His humble origin and natural intelligence were evident. Mandela was imprisoned for life and had become a giant in the struggle for human dignity. One day, a copy of a book narrating part of Mandela’s life reached my hands, and - surprise! - the prologue was by Barack Obama. I rapidly skimmed the pages. The miniscule size of Mandela’s handwriting noting facts was incredible. Knowing men such as him was worthwhile.

Regarding the episode in South Africa I must point out another experience. I was really interested in learning more about how the South Africans had acquired nuclear weapons. I only had very precise information that there were no more than 10 or 12 bombs. A reliable source was the professor and researcher Piero Gleijeses, who had written the text Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, an excellent piece. I knew he was the most reliable source on what had happened and I told him so; he responded that he had not spoken more about the matter as in the text he had responded to questions from compañero Jorge Risquet, who had been Cuban ambassador and collaborator in Angola, a very good friend of his. I located Risquet; already undertaking other important tasks he was finishing a course which would last several weeks longer. That task coincided with a fairly recent visit by Piero to our country; I had warned him that Risquet was getting on and his health was not great. A few days later what I had feared occurred. Risquet deteriorated and died. When Piero arrived there was nothing to do except make promises, but I had already received information related to the weapons and the assistance that racist South Africa had received from Reagan and Israel.

I do not know what Obama would have to say about this story now. I am unaware as to what he did or did not know, although it is very unlikely that he knew absolutely nothing. My modest suggestion is that he gives it thought and does not attempt now to elaborate theories on Cuban policy.

There is an important issue:

Obama made a speech in which he uses the most sweetened words to express: “It is time, now, to forget the past, leave the past behind, let us look to the future together, a future of hope. And it won’t be easy, there will be challenges and we must give it time; but my stay here gives me more hope in what we can do together as friends, as family, as neighbors, together.”

I suppose all of us were at risk of a heart attack upon hearing these words from the President of the United States. After a ruthless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years, and what about those who have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers blown up in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and coercion?

Nobody should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science and culture.

I also warn that we are capable of producing the food and material riches we need with the efforts and intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire to give us anything. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, as this is our commitment to peace and fraternity among all human beings who live on this planet.

Who Needs the Beatles?

Famous Red hunter interviews the greatest Red of the 20th-century.

Revoluntionary

Forgive My Grief

The greatest revolutionary leader of the 20th Century is dead.

Fidel Castro embodied with burning passion the values of communion, courage, joy, humor, compassion, sorrow, remembrance, true justice and -- perhaps most important -- HONESTY. Comandante Castro, for all the Cold War nonsense regarding East vs. West and North vs. South, was the greatest Christian leader of his time: Christian in fact, in deed, in thought -- rather than the vampires and their minion who have so degraded the term.

How many people throughout history have been blessed with the guts, strategic brilliance and cunning to become their nation's leader? And blessed with the deep sympathy and understanding of the powerless, the weak, the sad? Castro was also one of the great political intellectuals of his age and one of the great political historians. (Imagine the United States being led by a combination of Malcolm X and Noam Chomsky.) Comandante Castro was a man who could have used his power to be just another exploiter, pimp, or baboon -- instead he chose to be a protector of all those needing protection. And yes, by any means necessary. Yes -- any means! Why give up the weapons of violence to the scum of the earth?

In the Big Dark of the American End of Empire, it is very easy to feel a daily despair. Think of Castro: his humor, outrage, faith, brilliance, and total honesty. One example:

    "The fascists stop at nothing. They try to find the weak spot. They invent the most ridiculous lies. They try to create terror and unrest among the people by telling the most outrageous lies. Their appeal is always to the gutter instincts: hatred, fear, racism, economic insecurity, selfishness, ignorance. They feed off of keeping people stupid. They resort to every method they can think of. And what do fascists do when their own institutions no longer guarantee their domination? How do they react when the mechanisms they've depended on historically to maintain their domination fail them? They simply go ahead and destroy those institutions, without a moment's look back. The fascists stop at nothing."

In body, Comandante Castro has passed from us. In spirit, courage and passion -- he will live forever.

Viva Fidel! Venceremos!

The Way We Live Now

From the Playboy Club, San Francisco, May 1970, the great Mort Sahl on Nixon/Agnew, JFK, CIA, Jim Garrison, Kent State, and that most cowardly brand of collaborators -- Hollywood Liberals.

State of Grace

She returns us to an age when Americans could look up to screen visions and ghosts with awe, wonder and appreciation. Unlike our current dreary marketeer non-cinema where almost all releases seem calculated to squash anything that might stir envy in the iron hearts of the narcissistic and the mediocre. After all, anyone can be Jennifers Aniston or Garner.

Who can be Kay Francis?

As a comedienne she was almost as great as Lombard. And sexy as hell. Her liquid voice is as languorous, warm, and dark -- dark as dark blood -- as are her movements. Eyes which are clear pools of light, reflecting how much love is coming toward her. Yet she was boxed in, mostly playing two types: a woman dying young; or an uptight Professional -- doctor, reporter, fashion editor, pilot(!) -- before her time. Or both. So her wit is mostly wasted. Within these types she is often the normal partner left for someone more exciting. Who would ever leave Kay Francis? (All nods to Lubitsch, but certainly not for Miriam Hopkins.) Besides Trouble in Paradise (1932), her only great film, she was rarely lucky with directors.  A (bad) Vidor, two with Borzage, several with Michael Curtiz. Otherwise, hacks.

Perhaps because she is echt Deco, she cannot be placed outside the 1930s. She is too still and melancholy for screwball. And even her late 30s works -- Confession (1937), King of the Underworld (1939) and In Name Only (1939) (how in the world can a movie with Grant, Lombard, and Francis be so dull?) -- stiffen her up. Yet even there (most everywhere), when betrayed or spurned, she lapses into a sort of somber exclusion, away from the world, away from the movie, a curious communion with forces only she feels, a sort of mystic, dark state of grace. She is a miracle. There is no one else like her.

* * *

We all know Trouble in Paradise, so let's look elsewhere. Tay Garnett's One Way Passage (1932) is a sort of pre-code, early talkie version of Tristan and Isolde, almost ruined by the non-comic antics of Frank McHugh. Almost. William Powell is a death row inmate recently escaped from San Quentin, at last caught up with in a Hong Kong bar, and incarcerated aboard a ship heading back to San Francisco. Kay Francis is on the ship, with her doctor; she is dying. Via some nice story turns -- and a moving subplot causing Powell's SF detective jailer (Warren Hymer) to also fall in love -- we are given Francis at her most ardent and beautiful. Strange and amorphous, she yearns through the trouble like a warm, glowing cloud blown in the middle of a storm. And Powell is worthy of her.

Bred in the Bean

'Though the plot turns on a $25,000 contest prize -- big moola in 1940 Astoria, Queens -- no one in Preston Sturges's Christmas in July is defined in the least by money. They aren't defined at all. Milkmen, barbers, bakers, cops on the beat, working-class barmen and pool players, nurses, laundrymen, bootblacks, the kitchen help, taxi drivers (of the most non-Scorsesian sort). Salarymen and their secretary girlfriends. Radio announcers and company Presidents. If judged, judged by how good they are at keeping the craziness going. At times almost achingly tender toward the "poor," the movie's classes don't exist. Hardboiled and sweet-natured, here no one takes anything from anybody and no one means anyone any harm. (In this way would Sturges cover the class waterfront -- working here and in The Great McGinty, upper in The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story, middle in Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero, all three in Sullivan's.)

Dick Powell and Ellen Drew are the middling center of the Sturges whirlwind ~ dervishes captured and spun by Victor Milner's brilliant black-and-white (at times figures seem set in relief like reverse etchings on a silver pot) and Ellsworth Hoagland's blistering editing, in what seems like a race to steal the picture: Demarest as Bildocker, Pangborn the announcer (in such a warm and elegant radio studio), Alexander Carr as store owner Schindel, Harry Hayden as Mr. Waterbury, Ernest Truex as Baxter, and (the winnah!) Raymond Walburn as Dr. Maxford. ("Maxford House -- Grand to the Last Gulp") And Sturges lets the supporting players in on the game: Maxford's pretty secretary (Kay Stewart), Dick (Rod Cameron) the Baxter office wag who starts the plot (and who looks lots like John Candy's kid brother), the neighborhood cop (Frank Moran), Mr. Schmidt and Mrs. Schwartz, Sam the colored floor-sweep (Fred Toomes).

A 65-minute world of slogan contests in which everything happens. From 1940 -- an astonishing year for American movie comedy, on the cusp of world war: Christmas, His Girl Friday, The Great Dictator, My Favorite Wife, The Bank Dick, Philadelphia Story, Remember the Night, The Great McGinty, Shop Around the Corner.

And how 'bout that Davenola!

Great Vibrations

Bobby Hutcherson passed on August 15th at the age of 75. Ken Laster with a beautiful 90-minute farewell (beginning at the 11:30 mark) to the supreme vibraphonist in all of jazz.

Mailer on the Clintons

A lion speaks of pigs past and future (and other things), from March of '98.

LSP x 2

Why has Lumpy Space Princess been so ignored during the last few seasons of Adventure Time? ~ seasons clearly taking a perverse pleasure in putting Finn the Human and Jake the Dog further and further away from places, characters, and situations which made the show something beyond oddball: community, the adoration of quirks and uniqueness which comes of friendship, Finn’s love life, Jake’s new fatherhood, Marceline, Tree Trunks, Princess Bubblegum. The recent seasons have been pretty much all oddball. Few of the major characters surrounding Finn and Jake have been featured. What has been featured are curious figures we have never seen before (or will see again): James Baxter the Happy Horse, a large tree, the forever screeching Earl of Lemongrab, Finn’s hat, the Great Bird Man (not Chris Anderson), and a place called Puhoy. Almost no members of the Candy Kingdom or its many lovely princesses. And no LSP.

She's the funniest and dearest character on a very funny and dear show. With her pale-purple and lumpy body and star-implanted forehead, her Valley Girl personality and voice, she loves to eat almost as much as she hates her parents. She is lonely and needy and always cute. And very obsessed with her ex-boyfriend Brad.

Whom we meet in “Trouble in Lumpy Space,” where LSP accidentally bites Jake’s leg, causing him to turn into Lumpy Jake. So Finn must save him as LSP and her BFF Melissa only care about making it to the weekly Promcoming Dance.

My favorite episode in the series is “The Monster”: LSP runs away from home, joins a pack of wolves (who at last figure out she’s not a wolf and try to eat her), escapes the pack, finds a tiny village with lots of crops, eats all the crops and so is proclaimed a monster by the tiny villagers, sees the light and returns home.

Lucky parents.

Belated 90th

Steve Allen, Burt Lancaster, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Tony Williams and lots of smoking: "All Blues" from 1964.

Miles at 90.

In the Land of the Pygmies

     The dead, of course, cannot defend themselves against the exploitation of their lives and activities for utterly rotten purposes. Inevitably, President Barack Obama took the occasion of Muhammad Ali’s death to present an unsuspecting public with another example of his almost supernaturally sinister hypocrisy and cant.

    In a statement, Obama asserted that Ali “stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.”

    As though Obama, the ideal president for spies, policemen and investment bankers, would know anything about “standing up” and “speaking out” when there might be a price to pay. Has this individual ever taken a single step, twitched so much as a muscle, without ensuring himself well ahead of time that it would find approval with the powers that be?

    It is a remarkable commentary on the putrid state of the media and public intellectual life in America that Obama can make such an astounding statement without anyone calling him to order. The US president praises Ali for being prepared to go to jail—this from the relentless, vindictive persecutor of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden! Dead and buried opponents of imperialist war are so much less threatening!

    “Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it,” asserted Obama, the dispatcher of drone strikes that terrorize entire populations, the presider over “kill lists” that spell incineration for men, women and children in various parts of the globe.

    One element of Obama’s statement did ring true: his obvious astonishment at Ali’s willingness to sacrifice career and income for principles. This speaks to a wider and genuinely disturbing problem: how is it possible that we are forced to look back to the 1960s for examples of political courage of this kind?

    The United States has been at war with the rest of the world for a quarter-century. During that time, innumerable athletes, actors, musicians, artists, scientists and others have received honors at the hands of Bill Clinton, Bush and Obama, each president guilty of policies leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings or more. Not a soul, as far as the public is aware, has turned down an award, spoken out at the White House or generally repudiated honors from one of these blood-soaked administrations.

-- David Walsh

American

Compare this man (and his time) with the 21st-century BrandLetes who stuff their mouths full of cash while keeping them shut tight as the US devolved into the corporate totalitarian war state it so proudly is today. Beyond his heroic stance -- throwing away his heavyweight title and risking years in prison -- to not participate in the US genocide in Southeast Asia, Ali died without ever allowing his beautiful image to be used in a piece of market pimpery.

Man and King: 1942 - 2016.

Galant' Uomo

He was the first.

Mark Lane 1927 - 2016

Killjoy

I've bled Laker Purple-and-Gold since before they traded for Shaquille O'Neal, since before they drafted Magic Johnson, since before they traded for Kareem Abdul-Jabber, since Jerry West was the head coach and not the general manager. And I know I say this for all true members of Laker Nation: good friggin' riddance to Kobe Bean Bryant. Just as Kobe Bean -- the Almighty One -- hung a "good riddance" sign on the backs of Shaquille, Phil Jackson, Glen Rice, Rudy T, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash, Dwight Howard, Robert Horry, Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Horace Grant, Andrew Bynum, Trevor Ariza, Jordan Hill, Josh McRoberts, Jodie Meeks, Ed Davis and Jeremy Lin as he shoved them all out the door. (Not to mention all the great and good free agents who would never consider playing in L.A. if it meant sharing the same space as Bryant.) He was a tight-ass, a bore, and he sucked all the joy from what was the most joyous franchise in American sports history.

Now let's open the windows.

Girl

Stan Getz and the Gilbertos 60 years on. . . .

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