Archive for Deborah Lipp

Bubba and the Comedian

October 11, 2006 / / 2 comments

So about six weeks ago I saw this standup comic while I was on a cruise. The crowd was mostly African-American. (Actually, it was too dark to see the crowd, but when he said “How many sistahs are here?” he got a huge round of me! me! type applause. Definitely a majority.)

So he does a Dubya joke. He gets a weak laugh, maybe half the crowd or less, and a smattering of boos. Then he starts to do a Clinton joke (by which I mean, he gets as far as “Well, at least Clinton isn’t President anymore, he…”). A huge eruption of booing. I mean, stop in your tracks, can’t finish your joke kind of booing.

I guess it’s true what they say about Big Dog being the first black President of the U.S. I tell you, it was heart-warming.

Marshalling everyone into straight lines

October 10, 2006 / / 2 comments

Garrison Keillor wrote a brilliant piece in The Funny Times, on the attacks on Nancy Pelosi, California, and San Francisco. Here’s the money quote:

People who want to take a swing at San Francisco should think twice. Yes, the Irish coffee at Fisherman’s Wharf is overpriced…but the Bay Area is the cradle of the computer software industry, which continues to create jobs for our children. The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco. There may be a reason for this. Creative people thrive in a climate of openness and tolerance, since some great ideas start out sounding ridiculous. Creativity is a key to economic pregress. Authoritarianism is stifling. I don’t believe that Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard were gay, but what’s important is: In San Francisco, it doesn’t matter so much. When the cultural Sturmbannfuhrers try to marshal everyone into straight lines, it has consequences for the economic future of our country.

Nice. Smart that someone ties the scary nasty gay gay California free gayness to Silicon Valley and economic growth. Because Keillor’s right, they are related. Just like living a fearful, repressed life full of hatred is tied to a lack of creativity. And I also like not standing there with our tails between our legs when they talk about our wild lifestyle. Fire both barrels, sez I!

(I left my cross-post in San Francisco.)

Monday Movie Review: Network

October 9, 2006 / / 3 comments

Network (1976) 10/10
Howard Beale (Peter Finch), a news anchor with declining ratings, is fired. The next day he announces, during his newscast, that he intends to blow his brains out on the air. A sensationalist programming director (Faye Dunaway) decides that Beale should continue on-air, and he is given a show as “the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.” Directed by Sidney Lumet.

Network is a satire of a medium that nearly defies satirization. Fortunately, screenwriter Paddy Chayesfsky was up to the task, and the movie holds up even today. Stand Network next to Broadcast News, which takes its characters less seriously and its comedy less black; they’re both saying the same thing, that news is not news when it’s on television, it’s entertainment, and that has repercussions. James L. Brooks‘s movie is concerned with what that does to news, while Lumet’s is concerned with what it says about entertainment, and what entertainment means to us anyway. Network predates and predicts reality TV and lurid freak-of-the-week talk shows, but its aim is wider. Network is skewering not just TV, but the way that TV makes us think.

Standing beside the dark comedy of the TV show itself (Sybil the Soothsayer, anyone?) is the relationship between fired news producer Max Schumacher (William Holden) and Diana Christensen (Dunaway). Each scene between them is played as a television scene, each line of dialogue is either about television, or sounds like a television script. Until the end, they speak entirely in cliches, and in self-awareness about the cliches, and in network lingo. Diana, Max finally realizes, is television. She has scripts, not experiences, and is numb to real feeling.

The screenplay is as smart as smart gets. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” “You have meddled with the primal forces of NATURE!” “It’s not a psychotic break, it’s a cleansing moment of clarity.”

Network has long been called a writer’s movie. But it doesn’t suck for actors, either; three of whom won Academy Awards. (The brilliant William Holden was nominated in the same category as co-star Peter Finch, who won posthumously. It’s impossible to compete with a corpse.)

The film is sharply funny, full of witty flourishes, and yet works as drama as well. Despite the satiric nature of the relationship between Diana and Max, they are genuinely moving together, and Dunaway’s Oscar was well-deserved.

I first saw this movie in 1976, and, other than a few very famous clips, hadn’t seen it since. I find it remarkable that, after thirty years, some scenes were still vivid in my memory. Network is like that; it paints a strong and memorable picture.

As a postscript, have you noticed how the darkest, most portentious, most dystopic movies of the past are now being described as “timely”? Sorta fucking miserable.

(I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to cross-post anymore!)

Cutest spam ever

October 8, 2006 / / Comments Off on Cutest spam ever

I get a lot of comment spam trying to sneak in as a regular comment, so a lot of it says things like “good site!” and “helpful info, I learned so much” and all this crap. In fact, “good site” is a moderated phrase.

Anyway, a spam comment came up in the moderation queue that just said:

Very good site! I like lesbians!

Me too, Mr. Spam Guy, me too.

How Do You Communicate?

October 7, 2006 / / 2 comments

You Communicate With Your Ears


You love conversations, both as a listener and a talker.
What people say is important to you, and you’re often most affected by words, not actions.
You love to hear complements from others. And when you’re upset, you often talk to yourself.
Music is very important to you. It’s difficult to find you without your iPod.

Update on the Ultimate James Bond Fan Book

October 6, 2006 / / 2 comments

A lot of people are asking, and believe me I want to give good answers.

The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book is about to go into a second printing. The first printing was an exclusive, shipped to Barnes & Noble, and given front-of-store table space in their 120 biggest stores. Woo hoo!

Unfortunately, there were some things that had to be left out of that printing. The main thing is that the second printing will have a rather lavish index. It will also correct some typos and a handful of factual errors. (See, that’s the thing about writing late at night; instead of a typo, you actually type the wrong actress’s name. The whole name. In the wrong movie.)

The second printing was scheduled to be out in stores by October 1. You may have noticed that October 1 has come and gone, and this isn’t an announcement about oh thrill oh joy the second printing is here. My poor editor has discovered that a lavish index has some drawbacks. Mostly in her ability to sleep at night. This is a highly specialized project, and almost impossible to farm out to assistants who aren’t super-familiar with it. So she’s suffering alone. As did I.

The revision should go to the printer on Tuesday the 10th, at which point, it’s just a matter of printing it. Don’t forget, though, that black ink takes longer to dry. (The black ink is soooo pretty, though.)

Several people have asked me if Amazon will be shipping the first or second printing. I honestly don’t know. I thought the first printing was an exclusive to B&N, but someone told me last week they saw it in Borders. So I can’t be certain.

Once the second printing is out, I will have copies available for autographing if you’re willing to pay the extra shipping cost.

In the meantime (shameless plug), you can shop at my James Bond Store.

Unfortunately for us all, the plans are to be changed

October 6, 2006 / / 7 comments

Today (Thursday, actually) is the Gang of Two’s birthday. One year old today! La!

The plans included

  • The purchasing of charming birthday chapeaux
  • The photographing of the Gang, wearing said chapeaux
  • The changing of the blog subhead to read “cats” instead of “kittens”

Instead

  • I can’t find the thing to change in the template
  • I forgot to buy hats
  • The batteries in the camera died
  • When the batteries were recharged, the Gang was exceptionally non-photogenic
  • And I do mean “exceptionally”
  • Eventually I figured out it’s not in the template, it’s in WordPress, so that got done.

So. Happy Friday.

Things that happen to pressure cookers

October 5, 2006 / / 10 comments

Here’s my take on the whole Foley thing: It’s not a coincidence.

It’s not a bizarre coincidence that the co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children is also a pedophile. And it’s not just a coincidence that it’s mostly (not exclusively, but mostly, and by an impressive margin) Conservatives who are being knocked down like tenpins by sex scandals. Yeah, part of it is that power corrupts, and the consolidation of power that has increased dramatically in Washington these past five years has been massively corrupting, particularly of Conservatives.

But it’s not just that. It’s that it’s built into the system.

When you suppress, suppress, suppress, you create a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers only do the one thing, yet everyone is all suprised by the explosion. In terms of psychology, you generally only suppresssuppresssuppress when you have something serious that needs suppressing, and you generally only blame everyone else for being a perv when you need to avoid blaming yourself. It’s called “projection.” Look it up.

These Conservative freaks with their constant and intense fascination with Teh Gay and Teh Sex and Teh Dildoes, who want to make laws about my bedroom and yours, my marriage and yours, my orgasm and yours, what do you think is on their minds? This morning, while I was deciding if I should go back to using an alarm clock, and thinking about a writing project, and making coffee, and thinking about t-shirts (I swear by the Goddess, I was thinking about t-shirts), the Foleys and Dawn Edens and Santorums and Fred Phelpses of the world were thinking about gay gay naughty gay sex with boys how naughty how gay I must write a column to denounce that oh look I have a woody.

That’s how it works.

Two things: (1) If you’re a sick motherfucker, you have a higher tendency to denounce everyone else for being a sick motherfucker. (2) If you have natural, normal urges, ’cause you’re, lemme think…human, that you suppresssuppresssuppress, those urges, when inevitably expressed, won’t be expressed in the nice, normal way they started.

I’ve written about this before. Suppression is not only a bad model, but it’s had a good long test run, and people should have figured out by now that it’s not working.

Welcome!

October 4, 2006 / / Comments Off on Welcome!

To the many visitors who have been coming over from the Big Fat Carnival. Thanks for stopping by. Stay a while.

Call for Change

October 4, 2006 / / 7 comments

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a MoveOn event called Call for Change. I’ll be doing this again in a couple of weeks, and I highly recommend it. I had a lot of concerns about doing political phoning, and every one of those concerns was answered.

  • First, it was fun. I was meeting other political progressives in my area, and you know, it’s relaxing to just bitch about the state of this country without clenching for the inevitable counter-attack.
  • Second, it was well-organized. There was very little figuring out what to do. Everything was provided for us in a clear and understandable way.
  • One thing that bothers me is, as a New Yorker, I’m in the bluest of blue states. So there’s the preaching to the choir factor. Well, MoveOn had us phoning into a swing district. I have free weekends on my cell plan, so the fact that I was calling Pennsylvania didn’t bother me, and I was reaching an area where there was an opportunity to make a change.

The calls were non-confrontational. We were essentially gathering phone numbers of Democratic and potentially-Democratic voters so that get-out-the-vote calls could be made nearer election day. When we reached conservatives, we were instructed to thank them politely and hang up. Meanwhile, for the undecided and ignorant, we were feeding them the Democratic name and the idea that they could vote for him.

The whole thing took about three hours on a Saturday afternoon, and I was done by six. So…easy! I recommend the experience.

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