R.I.P, Sarah Jane Smith. (If only The Doctor’s TARDIS worked for us non-Time-Lords.)
Because DC is very much a company town, the Washington Post must interpret even a Twihard convention through the lens of the local obsession:
…There were absolutely lessons for the political process in this, about “Team Edward, Team Jacob, and inability to compromise.” I was excited. Which was which? The Tea Party is “Team Edward – they’re very one-minded and determined.”
__
What team is Obama? “Jacob.” “Jacob.” “The underdog,” Cara and Leti say. “Had to pull himself up by his bootstraps.”
__
Cara explains that the series is about class struggle. “It’s like ‘Pretty in Pink’ — she ends up with the rich white guy.” Those are the vampires, the Volturi and the Cullen clan, all in buttoned-down white-collar households, from families literally centuries old. “And you have Jacob, wrong side of the tracks. It’s blue-collar vs. white-collar.” One has money and immortality—the other is scrappy and underdoggish.
__
So what does this mean for the budget? Vampires don’t like taxes? “Vampires don’t like taxes is the lesson of today,” Cara confirmed.
(Tongue so firmly in cheek, to quote R.A. Lafferty, as to protrude from the vulgar bodily orifice.)
Hypnos
Well as far as metaphors go, vampires are quite clearly an artistocratic/corporatist class that sucks value out of the productive classes (the workers).
NobodySpecial
Got off work, came home to an unlocked Portal 2. 6 hours later, single player is done.
Awesome ride. The ending is hilarious. Can’t wait for the co-op stuff.
piratedan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9C3tZwDpx4
been feeling old school musically lately and so I thought I would link up this “one hit wonder” (at least as far as us yanks were concerned) that captures a point in time that seems a bit less tainted than these days (yeah I know that can be debated, but hey, cut me some slack, jack)
the video is cadged from that truly iconic music documentary Pop Gear from 1965 with some iconic footage of other bands.
This song has that “british” wall of sound feeling (h/t to the tortured genius Joe Meek) that you either love or hate (or in rare occasions, both), with a little bit of everything for everybody. The trailblazing drumming of Honey Lantree (the first femme who played her instrument in a top 40 song, but I could be wrong on that), the My Three Sons Ernie look of the rhythm guitarist Martin Murray (supposedly Honey’s boyfriend), John Lantree playing bass and doing so in such a way that was decidedly uncool and the secret father of Conan O’Brien singing lead (Dennis D’ell), plus the nifty picking of the lead guitarist Alan Ward (and those smokin’ Burns guitars). Rumor had it that the guitars were given to the band as a promo because of the film.
The stomping rhythm section was created by the band members being recorded stomping on the stairs by the record producer and having that layered in over the music. For 1964, that’s freakin’ awesome!
Amir_Khalid
How apt, for a blog titled ComPost, to look at a Mills & Boon romance with vampires and werewolves, and see a metaphor for contemporary politics.
NobodySpecial
@piratedan: You’re going to make me look at non-Beatles Brit music all day, aren’t you? I feel my body wanting to click the suggestions….
Jim
Hilarious, and bonus points for the R.A. Lafferty reference.
stuckinred
@piratedan: I’m reading Keith’s book right now and there is a funny part where he makes fun of John and Gerry for holding their axes like violins. The Honeycomb’s were right there.
JGabriel
The only thing I got from that Twilight article, given the political views on display, was that Joanne Rowling probably has a lot more political sense than Stephanie Meyers. At least Rowlings aristocratic purists are the bad guys.
.
stuckinred
@NobodySpecial: Click Savoy Brown and Fleetwood Mac before they became a girly pop band!
Alex S.
What’s the vampires’ position on the estate tax?
geg6
I hate to say this but after his interviews with Trump the other day and now Bachmann, I have to throw a little love to the Snuffleupagus. He just pulled out Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth and read it out loud (while showing it to her) and, point blank, asked if she accepted it. She looked like he’d handed her a dog turd, but was forced to admit that the document should end the matter. Made my day.
Bruce S
Here’s a succinct fact to remember as the insanity plays out in Washington –
“72% of (GOP ‘deficit czar’ Paul) Ryan’s claimed budget cuts would go to fund tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich”
http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/04/ryans-private-savings.html
That should be a recurring headline…
Okay, geg6, I’m slow…who did those interviews?
NobodySpecial
@stuckinred: Dunno about Savoy Brown (Actually, I probably do, I’m just a little brain-rusty right now, but I own copies of every Fleetwood Mac album prior to Peter leaving, including the ‘Live in Chicago 1969’ one.
What can I say? Every day I have the blues….
Bruce S
What happened with Jeffrey Sachs – he was a total douche-bag and helped tank the post-Soviet Russian economy as I recall with his “shock therapy,” but I come across articles by Sachs that make sense these days.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-wall-street-journ_b_851285.html
Nicole
Anne Laurie, thank you for front-paging Elisabeth Sladen’s passing. I loved her as a little girl, watching the reruns of her episodes of Doctor Who back when it was only on PBS, and I loved that she got to play the character again, now in her late 50s, as the star of her own children’s show. Early Sarah Jane Smith was a clumsy attempt by male writers in the early 1970’s to portray a feminist (thankfully, the character grew over time); the 2000s Sarah Jane Adventures was wonderfully feminist purely through the strength of its premise- an older woman still fighting aliens and saving the world. For a few more years a lot of us could still pretend we were going to be Sarah Jane when we grew up.
dlw32
I’m very sad news about the first entry — the passing of Elisabeth Sladen.
She played my favorite Doctor Who companion, Sarah Jane Smith. I started watching Doctor Who with the 3rd Doctor just as Jo Grant was leaving and Sarah Jane joined up. I loved Jo too, but they were so different. Jo was there mostly to say “Yes, Doctor” or “What is it Doctor”. Sarah Jane was an investigative reporter who infiltrated a UNIT base for a story.
Many thanks Elisabeth for the years of Sarah Jane fun!
Bruce S
One more “open thread” thing, since I’m sitting here with insomnia – The new Paul Simon album – So Beautiful or So What – is among his best ever, which is a high bar IMHO.
Southern Beale
Seems some secret British memos between oil companies and the government were released and, well, funny story! Seems the Iraq War was really all about oil after all! I know, y’all are SHOCKED.
stuckinred
@NobodySpecial: YES!
stuckinred
Needle and Spoon Savoy Brown
JPL
@geg6: I saw that interview and you are right it made my day also, too. Mini-Sarah also said we should talk about other issues but could only state that things were bad. She did not state what she would do different. I think the repub candidates have painted themselves into a corner because it’s hard to run on tax-cuts after spending time talking about the deficit.
Emma
The first thing to be grateful for this morning is that my new office is very private, because I would hate to have to explain why I’m crying over an actress I never met. But for women like me, geeky Doctor Who fans who were teenagers or young adults when she came along, she was outside the mold: a heroine whose job wasn’t to stand around looking pretty and needing to be rescued. It wasn’t quite the feminist ideal, but she made the role grow. And when I saw her again in the new Who and in her own Sarah Jane Adventures, she was the heroine I wanted to be: in her fifties, filled with memories but no regrets, and still fighting.
Lis Sladen made all that possible. It feels like a friend died.
Chris
@JGabriel:
To the extent that there were politics in Harry Potter, I’d say she got it almost completely right.
Chris
Wow, reading on into the link:
Huh. Well, the GOP’s the party that throws hysterical tantrums when it’s out of power, adopts policies of obstruction uber alles no matter what the consequences are for the country, openly declares “I hope he fails” about non-GOPers in office, fantasize about going Galt when they feel the country doesn’t “respect” them enough, and rally masses of people around the argument “it’s our country not theirs and we want it back” whenever their party loses the election.
I’ve only seen one movie and never read the books, so I can’t comment on if the Team Edward description’s accurate. But it’s pretty much the antithesis of the GOP. They’re Team “She’ll Be Happy With Me Or Not At All.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Alex S.: I don’t think that estate taxes matter much to the undead. Quality health care to ensure a healthy food supply, now that’s another matter.
Walker
@NobodySpecial
Played coop split-screen with the wife last night. It is pretty good.
So is “I am a potato” the new “the cake is a lie”?
gnomedad
@JPL:
I’ll second Bruce S’s request: what interview?
gnomedad
@Omnes Omnibus:
The undeath tax?
gil mann
I’ve got all the Baker-Sladen eps on tape (I’m sure it’s purely a function of when one discovered the series, but for me he was THE Doctor and she was THE companion), and while many of the show’s trappings don’t hold up all that well without the nostalgia factor, their performances/chemistry remain unimpeachable.
Today “The Hand of Fear” shall be watched with new poignancy. And 40oz of tea shall be brewed that some may be poured on the curb in honor of my dead homegirl.
low-tech cyclist
@Jim:
Another Lafferty fan here. So make that ‘double bonus points.’
NobodySpecial
@Walker: I just got done with my first session of co-op. I feel dumb as a potato, that’s for sure.
zzyzx
@gil mann: Hand of Fear was the first ep I watched back in the PBS days. My mom figured I’d like it and called me in. Little did she know that I’d still be watching it decades later.
I watched the ending of that last night along with her scenes from The Five Doctors and the first part of the new series 4 two parter.
piratedan
@NobodySpecial: it could have been worse I suppose, I could have linked up a Tremeloes tune ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n03g8nsaBro
Cacti
What metaphor can we glean from the following…
White-skinned love interest sparkles like a diamond in the sun, never gets sick, never grows old.
Dark-skinned love interest has the power to turn into a hairy, smelly animal.
kindness
Happy 4-20 everyone.
marv
New to the site, via Krugman (Krugman!). I’m an old schoolteacher in a remote northern part of one of the states where schoolteachers are under assault from dirtbag Republican governors who probably never got laid till they were about thirty and have issues. (How old? First Grateful Dead concert in 1971.) And today is a snow day. Snow day on 4/20? There is a God!
NobodySpecial
Hmm. That narrows it down to only about 30 states or so.
Nicole
@zzyzx: I first discovered Doctor Who on PBS about a month after my mom died, and it was my weekly escape. Five or so weeks after I started watching it, they air The Hand of Fear and I was pretty bummed. Though, props again, to the BBC. Not only did 1980s American TV not feature women doing cool things unless they were in bikinis, they also didn’t have goodbye scenes. Totally blew my mind. Thank goodness, two stories later, entered Leela the badass (albeit one in a leather leotard) or I might never have recovered from so much female loss in one summer.
Though I still resent Buck Rogers for never explaining what happened to Dr. Huer.
Walker
@Nicole:
Then you must really resent Space: 1999. No attempt at continuity between the two seasons.
Nicole
@Walker: I never saw it. Probably just as well; that’s the sort of thing that would have left me livid.
Is it any wonder I didn’t date in high school?
marv
@NobodySpecial:
That’s what I was thinking. Untraceable, right? You don’t have to be stoned to get “the fear” these days. Truer words were never spoken than the old maestro’s second definition of paranoia – coming into full possession of the facts.
Ab_Normal
@Walker: Oh, $DEITY, Space: 1999. Tried re-watching a few years ago when I was off work for hand surgery. Season One, okay, I can keep my disbelief floaty. Not even v1codin could rescue Season Two…
Phoebe
@piratedan: Thank yooo! I love that shit. And then I got sucked into this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYWr_HOvMNM&feature=related
But
It is awesome in every way, but Motown was doing stuff like that all the time, rattling chains and all matter of hijinx for their songs. I really think the whole electronic takeover of instruments has been a horrible underreported unnoticed pestilence across the planet. It’s certainly true of middle eastern music, which had huge orchestras of fantastic musicians up until the 60s, all replaced by the crappy synth. But what it’s done to R&B in particular is jaw dropping. The only thing listenable now is (some) hip hop — because they use samples of real instruments!
Gary Numan and Kraftwerk are exempt from my screed; they never tried to sound like other instruments.
Ok time to go be productive. Luvya.
Phoebe
@piratedan: Oh FIE upon you! But that was freaky; I’ve heard that since forever and completely pictured them looking like the Beach Boys. And come to find they look like degenerates. The nerve. The exact opposite happened when I finally saw what the Troggs looked like, specifically here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6__s2-iytA0
I laughed until my stomach hurt.
Ok NOW I’m going to be productive.