Evel Knievel

Thanks to apeshitquaterly for the video and it's description, which is as good as the clip:

While in Las Vegas, Nevada, to watch Dick Tiger fight a middleweight title fight, Knievel first saw the fountains at Caesar's Palace and decided to jump them. To get an audience with the casino's CEO Jay Sarno, Knievel created a fictitious corporation called Evel Knievel Enterprises and three fictitious lawyers to make phone calls to Sarno. Knievel also placed phone calls to Sarno claiming to be from ABC-TV and Sports Illustrated inquiring about the jump. Sarno finally agreed to meet Knievel and the deal was set for Knievel to jump the fountains on December 31, 1967. After the deal was set, Knievel tried to get ABC to air the event live on Wide World of Sports. ABC declined, but said that if Knievel had the jump filmed and it was as spectacular as he said it would be, they would consider using it later.


Knievel used his own money to have actor/director John Derek produce a film of the Caesar's jump. To keep costs low, Derek used his then-wife, Linda Evans, as one of the camera operators. It was Evans who filmed Knievel's famous landing. On the morning of the jump, Knievel stopped in the casino and placed a single $100 dollar bet on the blackjack table, which he lost, stopped by the bar and got a shot of Wild Turkey and then headed outside where he was joined by several members of the Caesar's staff, as well as two scantily clad showgirls. After doing his normal pre-jump show and a few warm up approaches, Knievel began his real approach. When he hit the takeoff ramp, he felt the motorcycle unexpectedly decelerate. The sudden loss of power on the takeoff caused Knievel to come up short and land on the safety ramp which was supported by a van. This caused the handlebars to be ripped out of his hands as he tumbled over them onto the pavement where he skidded into the Dunes parking lot. As a result of the crash, Knievel received a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist and both ankles and a concussion that kept him in a coma for 29 days.

In Defense Of Hugh Hefner

What sort of man reads Playboy? Men like me and this guy.


You may have seen that I had a letter published in the November issue, a point of great pride. However, my favorite part was left out. It read as follows:

Thanks for republishing that "What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy?" ad. It looks very nice framed on my wall. I've gone to bat for the cultural value of Playboy many times. The picture of this swinging cat and lady in tow sums it up: It's for the distinguished gentleman.
Your pal,
Rocko Jerome



You see, Playboy isn't for snickering frat boys or drunk girls gone wild. It's not about making mistakes. It's about making decisions. It's about behaving like an adult. It's also about 138 pages, roughly only 25 or so feature pictures of naked women. The rest are articles about high living and the only insightful, in depth, cut-the-shit interviews that exist in modern publication.

You know the old chestnut routine of some yutz saying "I get it for the articles" followed by a housewife or somebody saying "Yeah, right," cue the laugh track? It's a real dope who is only in it for the pictures. It's 2011 and I can't turn around without tits in my face. Who needs Playboy unless you're going to read it?


I feel dread and consternation for today's youth. The first time I saw an attractive nude woman it was at age 10 and it was in the Playboy that my friend had bogarted away from his pop. I don't recall exactly who the lady in question was, my head was spinning. I just remember there were pages and pages that had to be rifled through full of text that were greek to me. Politics, sports, cooking, clothes, cars, the implication was clear:



This is for adults. When you can read and understand this, you might be able to earn the company of women like this.


I made it, Hef. Thanks for everything.

Raymond Taylor and Wheel Of Fortune

In 1993 Raymond Taylor's dream came true. He made it on Wheel of Fortune. And this shit happened.

How is "Walk" a "thing?" Wasn't "Mild Sauce" a pretty good answer? Was Raymond stealing Sajak's glory? Can you see the lust in Vanna's White eyes? What happened after the camera's stopped rolling? Well, as you might guess, it's a sad story if you give a shit.

Raymond tried to hang around after his run was up. "I wanted to have a life with the show, I loved the show enough to be a part of it." Enough so that he had to be ejected from the set on 4 separate occasions. Finally, it came to the point that production offices were closed because of "concerns that Taylor may be in the building." Charges were filed.


Over a chicken dinner, Raymond told a reporter "I just want to work for the staff, and I didn't know where to go. I said: hey, give me a job. I know everything about TV." Guess Raymond just didn't have what it takes.

So what's the deal? What's he on? Crack? PCP? Is he tweaking? According to someone claiming to be Raymond posting on bojangles.com, "I have autism not a crack addict thank you."

Is it true?

Does it matter?

Here's hoping you're well, Raymond. Keep on keeping on.

Update on April, 24 2012:
Sad news to report. Unless an anonymous user on youtube is playing some strange game of trickery, Raymond Taylor no longer walks the Earth.


"He wasn't a crackhead! In fact, he was a very intelligent man. A bit different and a tad eccentric, nonetheless a gentle soul. The people that knew him understood him. RIP Raymond E Taylor 2/27/44 - 2/27/2010"

Happy trails, Raymond. May the road rise to meet you.

Peter Falk and Scared Straight

"This program contains coarse street language..."

"...verbally molest the young boys with homosexual taunts..."

He of course will best be remembered for Columbo, but I'll always know him as the narrator of Scared Straight. This should be a cult film with midnight showings around the world where people dress as their favorite lifer or young punk. For me and a few old friends, it's a complete classic. We would watch it before we went out drinking, after we got back from being out drinking, the next day after a night out drinking. I can quote most of it off the top of my head at any moment. The things these guys say are like poetry. You could watch every John Wayne, Quentin Tarantino, whatever you want to watch with tough guy dialogue, none of them have shit on Scared Straight.

Do yourself a favor and watch it here.

Gene Colan

Just received the sad word that Gene Colan has died.

Gene was one of those comic artists who had a style that was absolutely immediately recognizable. His work resonated with a certain realism, a certain grit, but he could still do the fantastical and mystical just as well. My first introduction was in a Giant Size Holiday Treasury Edition thing Marvel put out in the 70's. I'll never forget it, my best friend in the 4th grade gave it to me (still in the Rocko Museum Archives, as you can imagine).

The story was very simple. It's Christmas Eve, and Natasha Romonova (The Black Widow, portrayed by Scarlett Johanson in Iron Man 2) receives a call from Ivan, her friend and adviser. He's picked up a Flower Child hophead who was out to off himself, and they try to save this kid from himself but it doesn't work, he dies, and it's Christmas. Might have been my first sad Christmas tale, and to this day, his take on Black Widow is the one that I gravitate to the most.


But the thing that made it snap, really made it stick out and make me remember it vividly for over 20 years, was in the way the art expressed mundane details in ways that made them work, made the exciting. Reading stories by Colan, it was like watching a movie, with all the details real life will show your eye from an image created by a camera. Good comic book storytelling isn't in pin-ups. It's not a series of dramatic poses or melodramatic battles or shocked faces. It's in the movement of the figures. If an artist can make a woman hitting "play" on her answering machine and zipping up her jacket compelling, than they are good.

Gene Colan was very, very good.

You can see more here.

Bryan Ferry and In Your Mind

Bryan Ferry took a break from Roxy Music in 1977 to make arguably his best and certainly his most underrated solo album, In Your Mind.

Filled to the brim with catchy pop songs, this sucker is loaded up. Commonly found in cut out bins and used stores, this thing is a diamond in the rough. Ferry was writing consecutive, purely happy tunes for maybe the only time in his life. perhaps because he was happy at home with Jerry Hall. That was about to go bad, and turn his carefully constructed world topsy turvy. But for this moment frozen in time, 1977 was kind to the Electric Lounge Lizard.

Elastica

Sexy.

Sleek.

Smart.

Sassy.

Plagiarists.

Well, who's perfect?

Elastica was one of the most compelling bands of the 1990's. More here.

Captain Marvel

Here's an excellent series of articles about one of the greatest comic book characters ever created, and one very dear to my heart, Captain Marvel. His anniversary came and went and I didn't notice. I'm not good with dates. I'm sure he'll forgive me, we've been friends since I was 9.

The Bellfuries

When The Bellfuries came on the Rockabilly scene in or around 1998 they were an absolute breath of fresh air. The Country end of the spectrum was greatly overpowering the R&B, and it started to hurt my Soul. Western Swing is allright but that Hollywood Cowboy act doesn't move me. I heard of this band from someone who knew a butch from a dog, and he told me I would like them if I could find the tune Mr.Locomotive. I did, and he was right. Ann Arbour DJ Del Villareal got a burned CD in my hand with that tune on it, and I did the twist in my living room the very first time I heard it.



I saw the band live in Louisville very shortly after that, it was the first Rockabilly gig I was really keen on going to in awhile. The audience looked the part, but the scene was strictly that-a scene. There was a small handful of people who bothered to pay attention to the band, the rest preened and talked amongst themselves and yelled at each other across the room like the show on the stage was there as background sound in the movie about their lives no one was shooting.

Now, this sometimes happens. But The Bellfuries felt like a step forward, like they were ahead of a curve that would never catch up, and like just a few similar bands before them, they would face disregard that didn't even bother to be derisive. I love the Rockabilly Scene, it's the only mass of people I've ever felt at one with, but the disdain sometime shown towards artists more "avant garde" than performing re enactments of obscure old film footage has been occasionally frustrating. The first night I saw The Bellfuries was one of those nights.

The next time I saw The Bellfuries, however, it was in a room full of people wigging the hell out, and it was at the Oneida Casino festival of 2001, the greatest Rockabilly Event that ever happened if you don't count Alan Freed's tours. So- there you go.

But I am part of the problem. I never bought their album, although I heard it plenty. Among my friends it became an instant classic for parties and driving over any stretch of distance and it was spoken of very reverently.

Well, now it's back. They mounted a successful campaign on Kickstarter. Follow this link to find out more.

Dan Clowes and Ice Haven

Daniel Clowes is a cartoonist who created a comic called Eightball, probably best known for the coming of age story Ghost World. I'm a great fan, but Ghost World was certainly my least favorite work of his. I didn't feel much sympathy for the characters, which might say more about me than the author. I found myself wanting them to lose and be unhappy.





Suppose I could be forgiven, as most of Clowes' work ends up being about people who can't get it right to the degree that you expect that. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes dramatically, a Clowes character is almost always one that is emotionally adrift. Clowes takes the entire concept of stories told with sequential drawings to a new level. These are elusively moving exposes of the foibles of mere mortals, drunk on pop culture and self-obsession. He understands our funny way of being both stupid and brilliant, and his work can confound, amaze and electrify you all at once.


My favorite of his is Ice Haven. After many years of experimenting with different styles, Clowes finally developed a story which allows him to use his wide variety of stylistic flourishes all to tell one story. Clowes can do cartoonist work as well as he can do starkly realistic illustrations, and here we have a cohesive Little Epic told in a series of seemingly unconnected comic strips that would make the most amazing Sunday comics page ever if they were laid out as such. A work of real genius.

The Big Man

The world is a sadder place already.

Elvis Presley and That's The Way It Is

I like this better than the 68 Comeback, which means it's my favorite Elvis on video experience. But only the Extended Version. In this version, you get to see Elvis the musician building and directing his show, working with the musicians in his employ, a glimpse at Elvis as the person behind the personae. You then see what amounts to a full production of the best concert E had in him, way before the stage show became kitsch. It's beyond "Rock'n'Roll" or any inane genre classification, it's simply American Music all in one synthesis presented for your entertainment. The original version, however, shows just Elvis goofing off during the rehearsal period, falling out of chairs on purpose and making bad jokes. During the actual show we get footage of scary freaky fans babbling nonsense between the presentation of each song. This was the version in theaters in the 70s and the only one the general public saw until 2001. Compared to the original version, the Special Edition is revelatory. You see Elvis as much more than the caricature, the butt of a million jokes and lame impressions. You see here the phenomenal talent that's been tragically eclipsed by the crassness of the product Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE (TM)) has shoveled on us for 50 years.

David Ruffin and The Elegant Groove

"I'm always mindful of the groove, but why can't the groove be elegant?"
Van McCoy


By 1975, things looked a bit dire for David Ruffin. He had left or been ousted from The Temptations in 1968, and after a slew of solo records that only yielded a couple of hits, he was in a corner. The records had been great, but the times had left him behind. In his absence, the Tempts took on Psychedelia and Funk to great success while Ruffin had stuck to the ballads and upbeat R&B that he had down. It was time for a new groove. It was time for Van McCoy.

Charles Burns and Black Hole

Best known for his freaky disturbing portraits of serial killers, monsters, Devils, and one particularly close to my heart of Elvis sweating in Hades, Charles Burns is one of those comic book artists that I don't find embarrassing at all. His work has turned up in the New Yorker, on cola cans, and you might recall Dogboy from Mtv's Liquid Television, if you remember that. If you saw ever saw anything he touched, it's unlikely that you forgot it.


With such an emphasis on the grotesque and the strange, you might not expect that the guy would have a cohesive, human story in him. He certainly does. Black Hole is about high school kids in the seventies who are suffering a sexually transmitted disease that leaves each of them disfigured. An allegory for the loss of innocence both personally and on the horizon culturally, as the free love culture between the pill and AIDS would soon be over.


Cinematic and thrilling. Two words you don't normally find in reviews of "alternative comics," but Burns did it here. It's the kind of thing that burns into your memory and will never leave. These characters will not leave you alone until you finish the book, every short chapter at a time, until you see who pays for their sins and who makes it out. And it certainly delivers. You should buy it, read it, and study it.

I wish I could say that there were more like Burns, but there truly isn't, and he works slowly and methodically, so there's not so much out there of his work. Before Black Hole there was Big Baby, since Black Hole there's X'ed Out, but neither holds the weight of this one book. It will almost certainly be his magnum opus. So start there. Or here, as it were.

Didn't You Know You'd Have To Cry Sometimes?

Imagine you're like 16 years old and you just got your heart shattered. You have to go to school tomorrow and see your little boyfriend or girlfriend with somebody else. You can't talk to anybody about it, not even your parents. Your vocabulary doesn't have words yet that communicate what you've got burning up inside your chest. Jealousy, anger, sorrow, shame, guilt, stuff that's news to a kid. But you've got this Gladys Knight 45...


She could (and still can) do it all. The ballads roar with emotion and the uptempo tunes move your bones, and no matter what, she makes you believe that she's down with to the Nitty Gritty and ready to steal you away from your mistreating girlfriend. The kind of voice where you sing along and think you can really do it like she can, until you park your car and turn off the stereo and actually hear yourself cauterwalling. Because Gladys makes you believe.

Magic Sam and Give Me Time

Give Me Time! It gets no more intimate than this, you and Magic Sam together in his living room while his kids play in the next room. A recording perhaps for posterity or demos for a record never made come to us as a chilled out session for a rainy Sunday.

Thing about Magic Sam was that he was such a great singer, uncommon in Bluesmen. He could've gone to Motown and been Marvin Gaye (or at least Edwin Starr) but it was the Blues and not the Rhythm that moved him. His voice never sounds more pure than here, so this is a real treasure.

The video attached is from a tune not on this album. No samples from Give Me Time exist on youtube and I'm not into uploading (I'd have no idea where to start, anyway), so you might have to take a leap of faith and buy it on my recommendation. My first copy was on cassette and came from a sort of lean-to "store" up in Chicago. It was wrapped in plastic and the old guy who ran the joint made sure to tell me a time of four "This is brand new, now." Out in my friend's car, we found that it had been played halfway through and then resealed. it played fine and we had a good laugh, cruised around the southside with the windows down and the stereo way up.

I Am Shelby Lynne

I Am Shelby Lynne was the album she always had in her, but proved elusive until she had the right producer and time to make it. Nashville had chewed her up and spit her out and she nearly got herself dead by misadventure along the way, but luckily for us she did not and lived to make a record about it. Sort of a sonic exorcism. The beginning and middle crank the angst, but don't be scared, because by the last couple of numbers you and Shelby find the happy place. Catharsis never sounded so nice.

Mommie Dearest

The only instance I know where you can have ridiculous camp and stunning realism in the same movie, as there's little doubt that life with the Crawfords looked and felt like this. It's amazing, it's classic, and if you like this movie on some level, you and I would probably get along. Great date movie.

Summer of Snake

They say that on the internet, Content is King. So this Summer, this site is going to see a real upswing in new material. Starting now, I'm going to shoot for a post a day every weekday until the end of August. Can I get it done between cookouts, floating around in other people's pools, trips to the movies, and working for a living? We'll see. It's not exactly Rocket Science.

What's already sending me for the season is the new X-Men movie, which was better than anyone expected. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a property like that is for it to get put in a corner. Since Fox bought the movie rights to the X-Men stable of characters over a decade ago, Marvel has gone on to rule Hollywood and establish their own movie making brand, now owned by Disney. You might've heard about that. Anyway, Fox made this flick without much help/editorial influence from above, and since the last two in the series weren't so hot, they let the filmmakers (which include Bryan Singer) get experimental. Which means it could've easily been terrible. There's a feeling the people in charge said "This is probably our last shot at this and they expect us to fail, let's knock this shit out." If you're a fan of the series or into 60's swinging cool and Spy-Fi, you should go.

And now, a word from Eddie Cochran.

See you back here tomorrow. We'll talk about one of my favorite movies ever.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Major Feat. Not a bum note here. She can rap like she's singing and sing like she's rapping. Few can match the gravity of Lauryn Hill. When she says something in a song you'd better believe it, and she's got plenty to say about gender politics you don't often get in popular music. I miss her making new music as she basically retired after this, but admire her for dodging fame and all it's trappings to raise her kids out of the public eye. She could leave no greater Manifesto behind her.

Pulling

3 single women in their 30s struggle with abject misery as the content of their character evaporates more and more with each sordid new detail of their lives, burying them under the passing of time.

It's hilarious.

It's relateable. It's unique and striking, even though it's one more show about unlikeable yet still somehow likable people in uncomfortable situations. Perhaps it's the times. I'll just say it's the scripts and the acting.

And you'll never think of anyone named "Karen" the same way again. That's her on the right, lighting the smoke and wearing those shoes. She's not the main character, but she's certainly the (anti)hero(ine) in my book. A hard drinking, foul mouthed, acerbic, cranky, and hard living school teacher, who burns through men quicker than her cigarettes? Be still my beating heart.

Tay Zonday is Too Big For You

First off, it's Summer, and pretty much everywhere, it's gonna be hot.



Watch that about 15 times? Awesome. Now remember Chocolate Rain? Tay Zonday, one of the first to suffer/benefit the 15 minutes of dubious youtube fame? Well, you might've missed his follow up, and that would be too bad. Because it's a pretty nice jam.