Flashback Friday: Chester Cheetah

~ lobablanca

Just as in horror movies, there are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive an advertising campaign. Sex, of course, sells almost anything. Unless you’re marketing to children. Then you should probably find another route. That’s where animal mascots come in. Mascots like today’s furry, fluffy Flashback Friday special guest: Chester Cheetah.

I’m a sucker for a cute animal mascot. I’ve admittedly been charmed by the likes of the Snuggle Bear, Spuds Mackenzie (which included an incident at school in which I was told I either had to turn my Spuds T-shirt inside out or risk being sent home on suspension; I guess Baptists aren’t Bud Light fans), the Coca-Cola polar bears, the Taco Bell chihuahua, the Cadbury Egg Easter bunny, the Puma puma…it’s slightly embarrassing how easily I can be manipulated by a cute advertising mascot.

But Chester Cheetah was sort of the icing on the cake for me. A big, finger-dying, fake cheese, fatty, fried cake. I loved those strange little color-not-found-in-nature orange doodles of puffy cheese crunch. They were always my favorite part of the Frito-Lay variety snack packs that my parents would buy for me for my school lunches. I haven’t had Cheetos in years, but I still salivate like a Pavlovian princess whenever I see a bag.

Adding Chester as the mascot to this already beloved snack food? Well, I can’t say that it was a stroke of genius in my case. I was already driving my parents crazy for bags of Cheetos. Chester didn’t really increase that pestering. However, I do remember drawing Chester on my school books and lusting after Chester-approved merchandise like school supplies, T-shirts, posters. I do believe there was also a Saturday morning cartoon and a couple of video games. I didn’t experience either, but I loved those silly commercials. They were always the same, apparently running from the same playbook used by Wile E. Coyote and the Trix rabbit: Chester sees Cheetos, wants Cheetos, tries to get Cheetos, fails. He then delivers catch phrase accompanied by goofy sound effect. Don’t believe me? Watch:

In addition to “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Cheesy” and “The Cheese That Goes Crunch,” I also remember Chester using the line “Dangerously Cheesy.” Probably not a good catch phrase for a food snack that would soon come under fire for turning American children into unhealthy little pork balls.

I don’t think that Chester Cheetah has ever officially been retired by Cheetos. He just stopped appearing in television commercials for a while, but he was still around in print advertising and packaging. However, back in 2008, Cheetos decided to revamp Chester for the television market. This time, though, he wouldn’t be a whimsical children’s mascot.

These commercials instead targeted the original children of the Chester Cheetah generation: my generation. Chester changed from a cartoon into a puppet and apparently became a fake-cheese-induced delusion that encouraged Gen-Xers to wreak orange-fingered havoc on those they felt had somehow maligned them. The commercials encouraged us to join the “Orange Underground.” I never liked these commercials. They were extraordinarily creepy and lacked any of the kitschy charm that Chester used to possess. Not even the future Guild Queen herself, Felicia Day, could save this campaign for me:

Yeah, no thank you. Oh, and stay the hell away from my laundry with your Oompa Loompa fingers.

DVDregs: The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

~ lobablanca

Considering the current state of secret sins now stripped bare within the Catholic Church, you’d think that a movie called The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys would be about something completely different than it is. However, there is not one mention of the abuse that I’m sure many have assumed would be present in a movie with such a title. This isn’t Sleepers after all.

Instead, this is a quirky independent film based on a novel written by Chris Fuhrman. Unfortunately, this was Fuhrman’s only novel, as he died of cancer not long before Altar Boys’ 1991 publication. I have read the book and remember being pleased by the fact that it and the movie, while sharing fundamental similarities, are quite different in complementary ways. I wish I could be more precise. However, it’s been almost 10 years since I read the book, so I would definitely need to re-read it to speak more precisely about such things.

The story springs from Fuhrman’s semi-autobiographical memoir of growing up in a small Southern town in the 1970s. One of the things that I immediately identified when I watched this movie for the first time was that they filmed in a small Southern town where I spent many an adolescent summer. I know it’s a silly thing to latch onto in a movie, but there were so many scenes in which I recognized where the actors were…places that held happy memories of my own. I think this fact became an unexpectedly large point in this movie’s favor, even before the story began to really take form.

Beyond this, however, it’s a pretty straight-forward coming-of-age tale with some unique twists that are at times quite disturbing and quite spectacular. Francis Doyle is a 14-year-old boy who attends the St. Agnes Catholic School with his best friend, Tim Sullivan. To stave off boredom, Tim unmercifully harasses the headmistress, a wooden-leg-sporting nun named Sister Assumpta, and Francis longs for his first crush, Margie Flynn. Francis and Tim come from disparately similar troubled families, although in the film Tim’s home life is far more emotionally brutal, and so they escape from reality into a fantasy world that aspiring comic artist Francis draws for them.

This fact leads to one of the more delightful twists offered by this film. Rather than taking the trite and over-abused Wonder Years-esque voice-over route, this movie uses animated sequences to transition between scenes as well as to reflect how Francis is dealing with some rather dark and heavy moments in reality by processing them through his fantasy world. Add to this the fact that the filmmakers brought in comic artist extraordinaire Todd McFarlane to handle all the animated sequences and you get animated sequences that are brilliant in how they reflect and translate moments from reality so beautifully.

They also provide one of my favorite moments/transitions in the movie. There’s a scene where Sister Assumpta drives by the boys on her moped, her habit flowing behind her in sharp contrast against the dusky light. The moment, from an objective standpoint, is quaint and whimsical: a nun on a moped at twilight. McFarlane, however, carries that innocent moment immediately over into his animation, transforming Assumpta into the highly subjective image that Francis and his friends see when they think of the sister: the villainous Peg Leg, her habit whipping menacingly toward the screen as she roars away from us on her motorcycle and spins around to face us. Her face is shrouded in darkness by her habit, her eyes white slits sans irises or pupils, giving her visage a hideous, demonic cast. It was such a simple yet highly effective transition, and is one of the first glimpses we as an audience get of Francis’s fertile and slightly twisted fantasy world.

I’d rather not delve much deeper into the complexities that arise throughout the story, because this is a story best experienced without any knowledge to spoil twists that are at times predictable but sometimes startling. I will say that this is a somewhat unevenly paced story, both in its novelization and subsequently in the screenplay, but there are moments of brightness and brilliance, of darkness and delight that salvage it from spiraling into the purgatory of irredeemable cinematic schlock. Plus, the cast is fantastic: Emile Hirsch, in what I think is one of his first big screen appearances, plays Francis, while Kieran Culkin plays Tim. Both do a remarkable job in their respective roles; Hirsch displays a remarkable emotional depth in his performance and this younger Culkin plays truculent quite well, although he does have a bit of what I call “Christian Bale feral weasel mouth” that I found a bit distracting.

Jena Malone portrays Francis’s crush, Margie Flynn, a young girl with a horrifying secret that contributes amply to the movie’s darkness. She is a complex creature well beyond Francis’s level of understanding but desperate for his earnest attempts to accept and comfort her. Malone’s portrayal of Margie is suitably portentous, as I had expected. Malone is an actress I am quite surprised has not broken into the Hollywood elite yet. I first saw her in another book-to-movie adaptation, Bastard Out of Carolina, which makes Altar Boys look like Alice in Wonderland. Malone played the eponymous character of that movie. She was 10 years old at the time of filming (which many considered quite scandalous because of the graphic and disturbing nature of many of her scenes), and I don’t think many adult actors with years of experience could have given a more moving performance. I really hope Malone continues to seek out films that challenge her. I suspect she has the makings of another Jodie Foster or Meryl Streep.

Speaking of Jodie Foster, she appears in this movie as well, as Sister Assumpta. I make no bones about this: I adore Foster. To me, her career is representative of how you play the Hollywood game correctly. I own more movies from her oeuvre than any other actor, and I’ve seen one of her Oscar-winning performances more times than I’ve seen any other film (what do you think of that, Clarice?). It was delightful seeing her as the “baddie” in this film, at least in the minds of Tim and Francis and their friends. This evil side of her character really shines through in her voice-over work for the animated sequences (actually, all of the actors recorded remarkable voice-over contributions for McFarlane’s animations).

My least favorite part of Foster’s performance? How she makes a Kevin Costner-esque accent faux pas that is rather noticeable and, I’m sorry to say, unforgivable from an actor of her caliber. The first time we see Sister Assumpta, she speaks with a slight Irish lilt. Because, you know, all nuns apparently have to be Irish…even ones from the American South. However, in subsequent scenes, the accent simply isn’t there. Did the director decide partially through the film that he didn’t want Foster to sport the accent anymore, and they didn’t have time to go back and redo that first scene? Or did she just wake up one morning and forget that she wanted Assumpta to be Irish? Either way, it irritated me in that ridiculous way that such ridiculous nit-picks do. Still, Jodie Foster in a nun’s habit delighted me for inexplicable reasons.

Probably the only other immediately recognizable name in this film is Vincent D’Onofrio, who appears as Father Casey, a somewhat bedraggled, smoking, swearing, Magic Eight Ball-consulting priest and only semi-positive male role model in the entire film. He’s really not in the movie long enough to make much of an impact, but it was great seeing him in a far less jarring role than the last time he appeared in the DVDregs.

DVD Special Features: The special features are an interesting mix of how to do things right and completely botch things when preparing materials for DVD release. The commentary track, which features director Peter Care and screenwriter Jeff Stockwell, is a rather banal offering. It’s not that they sound ignorant or disinterested. In fact, they seem quite engaged in discussing the various aspects of this film that they feel might be of interest to listeners. I fear, however, that I am becoming anesthetized to the whole concept of the feature-length commentary. I found that my attention wandered massively several times while listening. Care has a lovely English accent, which is quite mellifluous on the ears, and Stockwell is very passionate about giving the utmost respect to Fuhrman’s original work while still making it his own and making it film-friendly, but I don’t imagine this is a track I would ever want to revisit.

There’s a Sundance Channel-produced show, Anatomy of a Scene, which I thought at first would be a typical sunshine-pumping featurette. Instead, it was just as its title indicates: the anatomy of a particular scene from the movie. The director, screenwriter, producers, editors, and actors break down a particular moment in the movie, give you details about how it was filmed, and then put it all together into the final shot at the end. Along the way, you also get other tidbits of information about the film in general. It’s kind of a truncated version of the director commentary, but slightly more interesting.

The DVD also gives you the option of viewing just McFarlane’s animated sections together, which I thought was a nice touch. You can also view the opening credit illustrations one at a time, which I guess is interesting but a bit tedious.So, too, are the production notes and biography sections. Not to be churlish, but I prefer to read books and watch DVDs. I don’t like when the two mix and I have to read my bonus materials.

Then you get your deleted scenes. Still haven’t found any scenes from this section that didn’t deserve to be deleted. There’s a second featurette, which is where the sunshine-pumping comes in, along with a series of interviews with various members of the cast and crew. I found these two things to be duplicative and a bit confusing as to why they weren’t just combined into one longer offering. Seemed like a bit of poor bonus material preparation to me. Finally throw in the theatrical trailer, the television spots, as well as some DVD-ROM features that for some reason wouldn’t play on my computer and you’ve got a predictable bonus buffet with some tasty morsels hidden among some rather bland, warmed-over mush.

Final Verdict: This is a first, denizens. I’m still undecided as to what I want to do with this DVD. Obviously, my life has continued to go without giving this movie much thought beyond buying the DVD and then never watching it. But sitting down and watching it now, even with its somewhat lackluster special features, has left me feeling both glad to have revisited this story and torn as to whether or not I’d really want to let it go. I still see the potential for discovery in additional viewings. Plus, seeing those filming locations that are so ingrained into my memory still makes me smile. So I’m going to give this one a temporary reprieve. Those dangerous altar boys can stick around a little longer in my collection…just as long as they give Sister Assumpta a break every now and then. I’d rather not have an irate nun roaring through my collection on her moped.

All The Leaves Are Brown, And The Sky Is Gray…

~ lobablanca

This lyric has been stuck in my head for days now. Stuck to the point that I feel as though I need to put it down, here in the lair, to rid myself of its haunting presence. I’m not even a fan of The Mamas and The Papas. All I know about them, really, is that Cass Elliot did voiceover work for a guest role on “The Haunted Candy Factory,” one of my favorite New Scooby Doo Movies, and Michelle Phillips played Jenice Manheim, Captain Picard’s love interest in the first season TNG episode, “We’ll Always Have Paris.”

[Talk about the useless flotsam of geek life…]

So why this lyric from a song I don’t even have on my iPod? The season is changing. Wispy white tendrils against cerulean sky now shift to casket-colored cloud cover, perforated by random slivers of diffused sunlight. Mornings are tinged with a chill that is slow to burn away and quick to return come dusk. I think all those triple-digit summer scorchers are now nothing more than a memory.

Early morning sunlight is now almost another summer memory, darkness still slumbering even when my alarm goes off. Every morning, I stumble in a sleep-clumsy haze through the dim stillness, my usual avian serenade now fallen silent. The birds have hatched their young and the nests are empty.

My already clockwork-precise ablutions must be even more hurried, as now I’m racing against the additional school-year traffic: parents hitting the road early to drop off der kinder, and buses galumphing along like wounded wildebeests, belching diesel and halting all passage as they slow to consume surly school-bound passengers. My autumnal commute always increases in length and misery.

Usually, I’m not this maudlin about the changing of the seasons. This year has not been a “usually” kind of year. I think it’s the rapidly dwindling evening light that’s affecting me the most. Post-dinner walks are edging ever closer to the fringe of total darkness. Soon the cold and the dark will be more than I’ll care to fight. My sneakers will remain stationary and I’ll no longer have the ability to outpace the thoughts from which I’ve been running all summer.

One of the most wonderful things about an East Coast autumn is the firework-bright color shift in the foliage: a timpani of bottle rocket red and flames of sparkler orange, bombastic bursts of yellow. Landscapes like a painter’s palate, splashed with frenzies of bright and bold.

Summer’s unmerciful heat, however, has left its mark on many of the trees in our neighborhood. Dull brown leaves have already dropped, their dessicated husks scraping and rasping beneath our shoes. I worry that the painter’s palate has dried out too much this year. Fireworks may have been postponed due to the heat.

There is always a silver lining, though. October is just around the corner, home of my favorite holiday of all. No matter what age I am, I will always love Halloween. No longer for the costumes or the candy, but for the scares that inevitably accompany its arrival. Cable channels love thematic programming, which means lots of terror-ific viewing to frighten and entertain me on those cold house-bound days.

Halloween is as far as I can think right now. The rest of the holidays are too much, too close. Too everything that I’m not ready to bear.

And there, denizens, are my thoughts expunged. Lyrical demons exorcised? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps it’s time I finally added some Mamas and Papas to my playlist. Now I must return to the daily grind. Things are a bit overwhelming at work right now, which is why I have been so absent of late. Never fear, though. I shall return in a more regular capacity soon enough.

Until then, here’s a photo that always cheers me up. It’s a rejected publicity shot of Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine (Okay, who is surprised right now that it would be a Star Trek photo? No one? Good). It’s from the rare photo section of TrekCore.com. I don’t really understand why it was rejected, as I think it’s one of the best photos ever taken of Ryan as Seven. Gorgeous chiaroscuro treatment and a classy accentuation of those parts of her that held her to her Borg past while downplaying those parts of her that made her salaciously Human (especially in those skin-tight catsuits!). That’s probably why this photo was rejected. Not…er, titillating enough. Ah well. It’s still beautiful. Whoever the photographer was, they should be very proud of this composition. It’s absolutely wonderful.

Flashback Friday: “Goodbye Earl”

~ lobablanca

(I know, it’s not that far back a Flashback Friday today…but this is for all of those who are right now waiting for the moment when they can finally say “Goodbye Earl” to the latest hurricane sweeping up the East Coast. Soon, my shore-dwelling denizens! Very soon!)

Oh, those Dixie Chicks. Even before they were stirring up trouble with anti-Bush comments that knocked them from their status as country divas, they were treading hot water. One of the first times they rattled the cage? With the song “Goodbye Earl.” This third release from their second studio album, Fly, tells the story of two best friends, MaryAnn and Wanda, who get away with killing Wanda’s abusive husband, Earl (it also irritates me for its lack of proper punctuation in the title…but I think that’s just me).

[Loba Tangent: As if there wasn’t enough black humor all throughout this song, the Chicks released a single of “Goodbye Earl” with their own cover of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” as the B-side song. Oh, those clever girls.}

When “Goodbye Earl” came out in 1999, I remember varying degrees of “panties-in-a-wad” syndrome from several groups, including an interesting argument regarding an assumed racism on the part of stores and radio stations that willingly sold or played songs like “Goodbye Earl” or other songs from the country music genre that propagated murder as a solution while banning and condemning similarly themed songs from the rap music genre.

That’s an interesting argument, but one that doesn’t completely hold water in my opinion. While it is true that murder is being proposed as a solution both in “Goodbye Earl” and in songs like Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” one is proposing it as a solution for escaping an abusive husband from whom Wanda is unable get protection via the “proper authorities.” The other is promoting random violence against any officer because of misdirected anger over police brutality. Ironically, both focus on the failures of the police to “protect and serve,” as is their credo.

I do agree that there is a certain bit of disingenuous disdain directed toward songs like “Cop Killer.” If you listen to this song, there is definitely a recognizable level of black humor taking place. Of course, you have to wade through a morass of overwrought obscenity and pedantic lyrics to get to it. To me, that’s the true failure of this song in comparison with “Goodbye Earl”: Where the latter is composed of clever lyrics that take on a dark and frightening situation in humorous but provocative ways, the former is just a pathetic, juvenile rant against something that deserves a far more intelligent argument against it.

Police brutality, just like domestic violence, should be addressed, but putting out a song with lyrics as “profound” as “Die, die, die, pig, die”? Sorry, but that just gets a FAIL. Guess I’m guilty of extreme snobbery when it comes to clever versus insipid writing. Also, I’m related to a former police officer who came as close to being killed while on duty as any of us would ever have preferred her to come. To hear a song that promotes the random killing of anyone wearing a police uniform really doesn’t sit well with me, regardless of the attempted black humor behind it.

Well, there you go. A little Dixie Chicks history and some armchair sociological blathering to boot. I guess I should at least post the video to the song now, eh? This is one of my all-time favorite music videos from one of my all-time favorite bands. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s got recognizable actors, and it’s got happy, adorable dancing Dixie Chicks. With banjos. And a zombie. Seriously, what’s not to love?

Restoring Sanity

~ lobablanca

There’s definitely something rotten in Denmark, denizens. But don’t say that to these TEA baggers. They’ll start lecturing you about how Denmark is one of those evil Socialist countries. And Socialism starts with an S…just like Satan. Who is obviously Obama, because he is trying to turn America into a Socialist country by wanting things like universal health care so that American families don’t go through the horrors like my family has gone through at the hands of Capitalist doctors who, when they no longer saw the profit in treating my mother, sent her home with the instructions to my father that he should “let nature take its course.”

Obviously, this is a touchy subject for me. But I think it should be a touchy subject for anyone possessing even a shred of reason. Think about what happened here in D.C., denizens. On the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, we witnessed what could quite possibly be considered a nail in the coffin of that dream. And I’m speaking about both rallies, which were each divisive in their own ways. Beck and his predominantly White followers versus Al Sharpton and his slightly more diverse but still predominantly Black opposing rally (and neither side seeming to get the sad irony of the situation at all). How could anyone look at these events and for an instant believe that King’s dream could be anything but close to DOA at the feet of Abraham Lincoln’s monument? His vision was for a blending of colors, a coming together of beliefs, opinions, ideas. Judge me on the content of my character, not the color of my skin.

Somewhere along the way, we became incredibly derailed.

Beyond the issues of race, however, is the offensiveness of the wording of Beck’s clarion call to his brainwashed masses. Restore America. Restore Honor. Turn America back toward God.

What does all of this mean? Making certain that you’re allowed to continue to make second-class citizens of fellow Americans for the “crime” of not conforming to the questionably translated beliefs of your unproven god? Or that you be allowed to deny something as basic and deserved as good health to those who cannot afford it…not because they’re not trying but because they can’t find the work they need to give them access to health care. And why is that? Because politicians have unilaterally, and in many instances bipartisanly, sold out the American blue-collar worker by allowing corporations to outsource jobs to the lowest bidder. Whatever it takes to make sure they win the most at playing this Capitalist game, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. Damn the blue-collar workers as well.

So stand around like little sheep, spewing your Beck-prepared and Palin-approved jingo dingo lingo while wearing your Communist Chinese-made American flag shirts and hats and fanny packs, waving your Communist Chinese-made American flags, sitting in your Communist Chinese-made American flag folding chairs (but keep damning Cuba for its evil, evil Communist ways!). Wrap yourself in Old Glory and hide your true purpose behind the stacks of dead soldiers you conjure in your liturgy, never once mentioning the erroneous and debatably felonious war (started by your last president to hold office…you know, the same president that drop-kicked us into the middle of this ever-widening sea of debt with his “fiscal conservative” spending sprees and his unending wars) for which they were killed. Stand up and spout the Pledge of Allegiance when the lemming call comes for you to do so.

Never mind that the pledge was written by a self-acclaimed Christian Socialist. See? There’s that evil “S” word again. The pledge’s author, Francis Bellamy, believed that the tenets of Christianity and Socialism were interrelated philosophies. I wonder how long Bellamy could have stood on stage at yesterday’s rally before Dreck’s…sorry, I mean Beck’s bleating hordes booed him off.

I bet they would be more forgiving of Bellamy, however, if they were allowed to do his original salute for the pledge. The original salute wasn’t placing your hand over your heart. It was instead quite similar to what would soon enough become famous as the Nazi salute. Ironic, isn’t it? Okay, probably not. It’s all good, though, just as long as you slap in “under God” thanks to all that jingoistic McCarthy panic of the 1950s. And click your heels together while you say it. Then you’ll be back home in your Communist Chinese-made Republican utopia.

I wish I could give this more thought. Wait. No, I don’t. I still don’t quite understand what has happened to us as a country. But I must admit that I am losing a great deal of respect and hope for us all. And it has nothing to do with restoring honor, whatever on earth that is code for this time. It’s about my continued wish for restoring intelligence, reason, and integrity, traits that have become almost completely extinct on both sides of the fence, both among the politicians and the people.

It’s been a very long time since I felt anything more than apathetic disdain toward the downward spiral of stupidity being propagated in this country. I have to say, though, that this rally has sparked within me a great deal of anger and disgust. And fear. Fear that we are locked into goose-stepping toward utter brainless chaos, led to the slaughter by our emotions since it’s obvious that we sacrificed our intelligence a long, long time ago. Does anyone else feel the same as I do? Could there possibly be as many people as me, as equally upset and afraid at how easily we as a country can be manipulated by those who have motives far more sinister and ulterior than the patriotic pabulum that they spoon-feed their followers? What if we all got together and rallied in Washington? Could we make a difference?

BookBin2010: War on the Margins

~ lobablanca

Something quite serendipitous occurred thanks to my review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I received an e-mail from Libby Cone, a radiologist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who happened to have published a book similar in scope to Shaffer and Barrows’ book. Cone’s book, War On the Margins, also dealt with the Nazi Occupation of the English Channel Islands, this time focusing on the residents of Jersey rather than Guernsey. She asked if I would be interested in reading her manuscript and posting a review, whether good or bad, here at the lair.

Of course, as I stated in my review of Shaffer and Barrows’ book, I was slightly embarrassed by the fact that I had never heard anything about this particular aspect of World War II, never had any clue that the Nazis had ever gotten so close to England as to actually occupy the islands in the English Channel. So I was very interested in reading Cone’s account of this historical event.

War on the Margins, although in some ways a companion piece to Shaffer and Barrows’ book, is quite different in approach. Whereas the previous book has a certain degree of whimsy (as one would expect from a book with such a whimsical name), Cone’s novel is austere in its approach to its subject matter. Perhaps it is because I am naturally drawn to darker and more severe tones, I think I preferred this approach slightly more than Shaffer and Barrows’ book. While I think that embracing a certain degree of whimsy helps to make difficult topics a bit more palatable, I also think that there are some things, particularly those things that are entrenched in the more horrific truths of our global history, that shouldn’t be sugar-coated.

Cone presents her story directly, providing very little padding to protect us from the events that transpire within her book. I did find that the writing style was a bit…institutional. However, I realized once I was finished and reading the acknowledgments toward the end of the book that this actually grew from Cone’s thesis for a master’s degree in Jewish Studies from Gratz College. Although the text has obviously been massaged to sound more like a literary work rather than a scholastic work, it still reads very much like a thesis in many ways.

Another thing that I didn’t realize until the end of the novel was the fact that many “characters” throughout the story were real people. For example, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, two of the protagonists, were real people. Their love was real, their resistance was real, and what they endured at the hands of the Gestapo was real as well. To be honest, I think this information should have appeared toward the front rather than the back of the book. Knowing that Lucy and Suzanne were real made their stories so much more impactful.

Regardless, however, this is a strong novel, replete with a mostly healthy balance of historical information as well as personal accounts of what the residents of Jersey survived at the hands of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. I do believe that it is still predominantly an academic effort (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely something to keep in mind if you are tempted to approach from a purely fiction viewpoint), but I also think that it’s a strong historical offering about people and an event that time should not forget.

Final Verdict: I’m very glad that Libby Cone contacted me with her manuscript. I found this to be another enlightening glimpse into a bit of world history that I only recently discovered. I will be keeping this manuscript as part of my collection.

Flashback Friday: The Carol Burnett Show

~ lobablanca
I'm so glad we had this time together...

Running on CBS from 1967 to 1978, The Carol Burnett Show was a wee bit before my time (well, except for those two seasons I watched from my playpen with my Clifford the Big Red Dog).

Thank the prophets for reruns. Every weekday evening on TBS (and, of course, after my homework was finished), I had the opportunity to laugh myself into oblivion at the genius comedy antics of Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, and Vicki Lawrence (sometimes the reruns that I saw would feature Lyle Waggoner, but I don’t think I ever saw the season that had Dick Van Dyke in it). More than just a comedy variety show, Burnett and her cast mates were amazingly adept at tapping into popular culture and lampooning it with inimitable style. Nothing was safe as they burned through spoofs of television, movies, commercials, music…anything was fair game.

My favorite part of the show, however, wasn’t necessarily the proper, rehearsed routines. Oh no. I loved the mistakes. The goofs and gaffs that typically would find their way onto show blooper reels, but with Burnett’s shows, they sometimes made their way on air. Why? Because they were hilarious. Sometimes even funnier than the “correct” skits. I’ve found a couple on YouTube along with a longer blooper reel. Surprisingly, YouTube has quite a few clips from The Carol Burnett Show, which I think is really cool. It also makes up for the fact that the show hasn’t been released in its entirety on DVD. Yet.

Burnett attempted to revive her variety show back in 1991, this time on NBC. Unfortunately, the era of variety shows had long since passed. It’s quite a shame, though. I remember this new show being funny. Not quite as good as her original run, but still able to provide solid laughs. Like the following skit, which of course would appeal to me. Not only is it a spoof of Star Trek, but it features Andrea Martin, who would later go on to play Quark’s mom on DS9. What is there not to love about this?

The Face of Modern Sedition

~ lobablanca

SEDITION: Incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.

During a recent visit to see my father, we had an interesting conversation concerning politics (as we are wont to do; I don’t think I’ve ever had a prolonged conversation with him in which politics didn’t become part of the discussion). He pointed out something concerning recent attitudes within the Republican party, especially these darned TEA baggers, that he believes is cause for concern. It’s one of those “those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it” scenarios that he believes isn’t being taken as seriously as it should be taken, especially by the politicians in power right now.

He reminded me about my own country’s history (which I admittedly don’t pay as much attention to as I should) by pointing out that one of the leading instigators behind the American Civil War was Abraham Lincoln’s election as president. Before Lincoln was even sworn in, 11 Southern states declared they were seceding from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. Outgoing president James Buchanan and Lincoln both declared this secession to be a rebellion.

Sedition.

That moment in our history led to the pitting of American against American, and ended with more than 600,000 dead and more than 400,000 wounded. Hard to believe that fewer than 200 years ago, we were “refreshing the tree of liberty” with the blood of our own.

Ah, there’s a frightening quote being bantered about by Republicans. Back in 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

[Loba Tangent: I wonder how these “Moral Majority” Christian conservatives within the Republican party feel about Jefferson’s stance on religion. He is, after all, the same person who wrote things like, “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear,” and “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” Ooh, or how about this one: “If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market.”]

So we have people like William Kostric, the gentleman pictured to the right. In 2009, he attended a protest outside a town hall meeting on health care reform in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He carried a sign that read “It is time to water the tree of liberty.” In the center of this sign is visible the snake graphic from the Gadsden flag, which stated beneath the snake, “Don’t Tread On Me.” Kostric had a loaded 9mm gun visibly strapped to his leg. President Obama was in attendance at this meeting.

When interviewed by Chris Matthews, Kostric didn’t think it was “a relevant question” to be asked why he brought a loaded gun to a presidential meeting. I’m not going to post a link to this interview, because I honestly found Matthews’ combative interviewing style to be appalling, but I do find Kostric’s response disturbing. As a former student of literary analysis, I was taught to look for meaning in many forms, including symbolism. And I have to say, there is pretty clear meaning in the image of someone strapped with weaponry holding a sign about watering the tree of liberty (especially knowing how that quote ends in bloodshed), standing outside a location where the President of the United States is in attendance.

Regardless of what I think of Obama as President, I find this kind of behavior frightening. I find the feigned innocence, like Kostric’s comment that Matthews was asking irrelevant questions about his gun-toting antics, to be even more frightening.

Especially when similar sentiments surface in the speeches of people running for political positions. People like Sharron Angle. I’ve been keeping tabs on her for a while. She is a TEA Bagger currently trying to unseat Harry Reid as one of Nevada’s U.S. Senators. She’s said some pretty…interesting things throughout her run for Reid’s seat.

Things like she’d like to see the complete elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. Or that the separation of church and state is unconstitutional. Or that unemployment benefits have spoiled Americans from wanting to go and find real work (although she’s also on record as stating that it would not be her responsibility as a U.S. Senator to bring jobs to Nevada, which currently is the state with the highest unemployment rate, at more than 14 percent).

However, it’s her stance on the Second Amendment of the Constitution that worries me the most. During an interview with Lars Larson, Angle is quoted as saying the following:

Our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. In fact, Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.

Second Amendment remedies? It’s time to water the tree of liberty?

I don’t care how much Angle backpedals regarding her Second Amendment remedies. I don’t care how irrelevant Kostric thinks Matthews’ questions about him toting a loaded weapon outside a presidential town hall meeting might be. Both of these people have put forward imagery and ideas that translate to one thing: armed uprising against the government. Bloodshed.

Sedition.

Am I reading too much into these instances? I don’t think so. I think these things were said or performed in the hopes that people would analyze them and find meaning in the inferences. Do I think there are enough people in this country willing to answer the call for an uprising? I honestly don’t know anymore. I recently read a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center on a group that calls itself the “Sovereign Citizens.” Begun back in the 1970s, now more than 300,000 people claim to be members. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Sovereign Citizens movement is:

…a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who have adopted a right-wing anarchist ideology originating in the theories of a group called the Posse Comitatus in the 1970s. Its adherents believe that virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate and they seek to “restore” an idealized, minimalist government that never actually existed. To this end, sovereign citizens wage war against the government and other forms of authority using “paper terrorism” harassment and intimidation tactics, and occasionally resorting to violence.

“Occasionally resorting to violence.” Such as when father and son Sovereign Citizens killed two police officers during a traffic stop in May of this year.

Perhaps this is the ultimate way to destroy America. Terrorists need do nothing more than sit back and watch us destroy ourselves. Seems like we’re already on the way there. I can only hope that reason is still strong enough to prevail. Admittedly, though, I’m really beginning to wonder…

Flashback Friday: Chevette

~ lobablanca

From the Angry BloggerTM archives:

With all love and respect to Sammy the Wonder Car, I wish I still had my very first car. Well, it wasn’t really mine. But it was the first car I drove. It was a 1980 Chevrolet Chevette. Metallic blue that was the same color as a Smurf…thus the nickname “SmurfMobile.” Dark blue vinyl seats that could fry the skin right off your ass if you were unfortunate enough not to find parking in the shade in the summertime. Rear wheel drive that fishtailed in a snowstorm like Moby Dick on speed. With four cylinders, 85 was its top speed (but only if you liked the feel of a car getting ready to vibrate apart beneath you).

We traveled everywhere in that car when I was a kid. Family vacation time came around and it was me, my first dog Bear, and the cooler, all on the backseat. The hatchback would be loaded as would be any other spare spot that could store a bag, a blanket, a pillow, or anything else. We drove to Florida every year in that car.

Ah, those were indeed the days. I saw huge swaths of the East Coast, from Maryland all the way to Miami, from the windows of that little blue Chevette, which looked very much like this:

I’m still amazed at the mechanical genius of my father, and how he kept that Chevette road-worthy for more than 20 years. Not just road-worthy, but able to make the circuitous vacation journey of often more than 2,000 miles every year.

He was even able to keep it up and running for the terror of my early driving years. I nearly ran him down with that little car while he was resetting the cones for my abysmal attempts at parallel parking. It wasn’t my fault, really. My foot slipped. My arms were tired. I thought I was in Drive rather than Reverse. Yadda, yadda, excuses, excuses.

[Loba Fun Fact: Parallel parking is actually one of the easiest things in the world to master. In a car with power steering. The Chevette lacked this simple feature, which meant A LOT of steering wheel turning. I think it might actually have been easier to just get out, pick the little fart knocker up, and place it down into the parallel spot. Gave me a sweet bit of arm muscle though.]

I did, indeed, learn how to drive in the Chevette. I learned the basics, learned how to drive in the the worst that an East Coast winter can dish out, learned that back roads are most awesome at night at 70 mph and that rear wheel drive is best for making donuts in the snow (also learned that some things shouldn’t be shared with parents until well past the age of adult independence and that your teenage years are the time to do things like these because courage and youthful stupidity both often go hand-in-hand and disappear with the passage of time).

The Chevette was also the official mascot car of my high school senior class. My friends and I zoomed up and down the roadways, going to games, heading to the mall, meeting up for weekend trips to Sizzler (ew…there’s a Flashback both I and my digestive system could do without ever having). I picked up more Little Caesar’s pizzas in that car to sell during lunch breaks than could feed an entire tailgate party at FedEx Field. I’m willing to bet, in fact, that wherever the Chevette is today, it still smells of pepperoni. I also once fit my entire senior class in the SmurfMobile (also lovingly dubbed the Blueberry NerdMobile). Of course, there were only eight of us, so maybe that’s not so impressive.

Even though it’s been more than a decade since my dad donated it (more than likely for scrap), I still not only carry around happy thoughts about our Chevette but also my set of keys, which still hang on the same rack as Sammy’s key. Now that’s love, I tell ya.

That little Chevette was by far one of the favorite parts of my childhood. It carried me to all the places I loved the most: to spend time with family and friends, to visit magical vacation destinations…even making sure that I got to high school and college classes so that I could move ever closer to that seemingly elusive-at-the-time finish line for dependence known as “adulthood.” It was a great little car that, by the time we released it to greener pastures, was jam-packed from bumper to bumper with happy memories born from the steady stroke of rubber on asphalt and the wind whipping through our hair.

Here’s a cute little spoof commercial for the Chevette that gives you some great shots of this little wonder car.

And this video is for my dad, who always wanted to drop a V6 into our Chevette for reasons that eluded me at the time. I get it now though.

Freedom to Breathe

~ lobablanca

Whilst visiting my dad and his siblings this weekend for a combined August birthday celebration, I saw the following poster hanging on the wall beside the kitchen telephone. It’s something that my dad found while he was sorting through some papers from my grandparents’ belongings.

Isn’t it the grooviest thing you’ve ever seen? Especially considering that it was printed by the Government Printing Office, which admittedly isn’t renowned for its awesome artistry. But this fairly screams “I was designed in the 60s!! I’m groovy and far out!”

Dig it, man. Dig it.