Here’s one of those Car Plays I’m always talking about here. This is the animated version of my friend Terence Anthony’s play, “Choke,” featuring three terrific actors I’ve been lucky to work with a little bit myself (Sara Wagner, Rodney Hobbs, and Bostin Christopher). If you’ve seen Terence’s other cartoon, “Orlando’s Joint,” you know what you’re about to get: really funny, really dark. (Which is why I love his work.) Enjoy!
Oh, surly teenaged girl working counter number four at Milt & Edie’s drycleaning
I am sorry that I’m middle-aged and of no interest to you.
And I’m sorry that I’m at your counter,
But this is where they sent me.
I can see that you’d rather watch Shakira on the jumbo video screen
Above the people who fix hems and sew on buttons.
But I just need my drycleaning.
Please.
I stopped going to Flair Cleaners on the day three teenaged girls fought
Over who would have to wait on me.
So I have nowhere else to go.
And I like it at Milt & Edie’s, I really do,
And I’ve got my checkbook right here,
And I think if Milt were here to see this
My check would be in his hand and you’d be lying dead on his floor here.
So may I have my drycleaning?
Please?
Before things get really dirty?
Some images are so wrong that you just have to develop a deep love for them. The bigger such an image is, the better.
Like Chicken Boy, “the statue of liberty of Los Angeles.”
Like the ballerina clown of Venice, Los Angeles.
And the Circus Liquor clown.
The Circus Liquor clown adorns a grubby liquor store in a tatty neighborhood of North Hollywood not far from my home (which is in a much nicer section, of Burbank, I assure you). Several times over the past 20 years, the clown has successfully lured me into the liquor store, where I’ve found dead flies, snacks coated in dust, and odd old liquors last seen in early adaptations of “Treasure Island.” I may be slow, but even I have finally realized that it’s the clown I love, and he’s best admired from outside the store.
Anyone who has ever visited a circus or, even better, a carnival, knows the relationship between besotted leering clowns such as this and kiddie entertainment. The performers or ride operators are often people surprised to find themselves having come to this, and so they hit the bottle every night — even while operating the Whirl-A-Gig with screaming kids inside. (I have seen this, and I’ll bet you have too.) Bobcat Goldthwait certainly understands this dynamic, as he demonstrated in his misunderstood cinematic classic, “Shakes the Clown.” (Which I recommend unreservedly.)
If you are sadly far removed by distance and circumstance from your own wide-eyed admiration of the Circus Liquor clown, I now present you with good news. 3 Fish Studios in San Francisco has decided to pay tribute to iconic LA images with a series of collectible but low-priced lino-cuts, and they have shown the eminent good taste to include the Circus Liquor clown. Here’s more information about the whole series and where to get it, and just to show you what you should be buying while it’s available, here’s the Circus Liquor clown, made even more sinister via art.
Finally, I leave you with this. The cohort of Circus Liquor clown admirers grows daily. When I shared with my good friend the playwright Ross Tedford Kendall my admiration for the liquor clown, he smartly emailed me this strip from Bill Griffiths. As with so many other fine things in life, Zippy the Pinhead is ahead of the curve.
I guess my refusal to fund the federal Democrats any more until they really do something already has them scrambling in DC. According to the New York Times, Democratic strategists have actually counted the number of Democrats in Congress and have realized that they don’t need any Republicans to pass health care. This is something that those of us with better arithmetic skills figured out months ago.
My “favorite” part of this story (and I use the word “favorite” here with full sarcasm):
[This realization] could alter the dynamic of talks surrounding health care legislation, and even change the substance of a final bill. With no need to negotiate with Republicans, Democrats might be better able to move more quickly, relying on their large majorities in both houses.
Are we paying these guys? Because it beggars the imagination to figure out how they rose to such high stations in life if they couldn’t figure this out until now. If only the Bush/Cheney regime had been so politically clueless.
If I were Barbara Boxer, whom would I hope, wish, and pray to run against in November of next year?
Why, precisely the person who today filed papers to run: Carly Fiorina. Her term as CEO of Hewlett Packard was such a disaster they should’ve renamed the company Hewlett Edsel.
Here’s my favorite line from the story in today’s LA Times:
Fiorina was fired from Hewlett Packard after a rocky tenure marked by lavish compensation, layoffs and a messy merger.
Oh, is that all. Wow. What a great time in the zeitgeist to run with that resume. Perhaps we should add: “And then served as a senior adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign.” With a resume so untrammeled by success, I’m surprised Fiorina didn’t move over to AIG.
The Boxer campaign will doubtless act down-in-the-mouth about the prospects of squaring off against what they’ll play up as the fearsome and well-financed Fiorina. But secretly they must be licking their lips.
There are two games coming out next month that I’m eagerly awaiting. One is, of course, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. In which, finally, I will have to choose sides in the Marvel superhero civil war. Until now I had been an innocent bystander. One of the differences between video games and comics: the former makes you an active participant.
That, naturally, is the main lure of video games, which takes me to the other game I’m anticipating, The Beatles: Rock Band. I play Rock Band often. Just last week my adult niece Lisa was in town, and she and I and my three kids formed The All-Wochner Band. We broke up even faster than Milli Vanilli, and were about as talented (especially when I was on drums). The highlight was watching my 6-year-old son, microphone in hand, unhesitatingly belt out “Eye of the Tiger.” The lowlight was me crashing and burning on one of my beloved Nirvana songs. My failure was so complete that after three abortive attempts I blamed the song. I carry the shame with me. This is all great fun, but in no way compares with the vicarious thrill of reimagining yourself as one of the Beatles. This is as close as almost all of us will get (some others of us form Beatles cover bands, sentencing themselves to a lifetime of out-of-date haircuts). I long to sing “I Am the Walrus,” a song that I once theorized, in a paper I presented to the right-wing evangelical religious high school I attended, was an indictment of God. I’m also interested in taking a whack at “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road.” I hope they’re both in the game. (Kinda doubt it about the latter.)
If the main attraction to this game is the idea of sitting in as a faux fab four, I have to wonder two things: 1) Who would choose to be Ringo? On its face, this seems unanswerable. It’s almost a twist on the old Groucho Marx line: You wouldn’t want to play with anyone who would want to be Ringo. And 2) Given that these remain almost assuredly the most famous four faces of the past 50 years, why aren’t their avatars a better resemblance? George looks close, but Paul and John don’t. Judge for yourself. Here’s the “Ticket to Ride” video from the game, coming out on the cute release date of 9/9/09.
And here are the human versions lip-synching to the same hit video. You’ll note how much more like the real Beatles they look here. And by the way, check out John’s mug to the camera at 1:39, as he lets us in on the little secret that they’re lip-synching, or George’s knowing look later on. That sort of clowning was essential to the Beatles, and I hope it made it into the game too.
The LA Times reveals the artist behind the Obama Joker image I revile — and he doesn’t like how it’s being used either.
How bad has the credit crunch been? Let’s just note that Steven Spielberg couldn’t get credit.
The other day I got a phone call from a woman soliciting money for Democratic Senate campaigns. Without her knowing it, she had made the mistake of calling me shortly after I had attended that town hall on health care, and after I had read with shame in the L.A. Times just how many thousands of people, many of them middle class, who had shown up for a day of free medical treatment at a special outdoor clinic because they couldn’t afford health care.
Here’s how our conversation went:
Her: I’m calling on behalf of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. We’re asking you to please help make health-care reform a reality by making a donation today. You know, we can’t do it without you. Could you pledge $200?
Me: Why not?
Her: Oh, wonderful. Thank you.
Me: No, why not? Why can’t you do health-care reform without me?
Her: Excuse me?
Me: You say you can’t do health-care reform without me. And I want to know why not.
Her: I don’t understand.
Me: It seems to me that Democrats control the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and in the Senate they have a filibuster-proof majority. So what do they need me for? More specifically, what do they need my money for? They should just do it.
Her: Yes, don’t you want us to keep the pressure on them?
Me: Sure. Get off the phone and call them! That’s what I’m doing! I’m emailing them and I’m calling them. I don’t know why they don’t just pass it! They hold all the levers of power in their hands! Why they would need two hundred bucks from me is a mystery. Tell them to pass it!
A friend of mine who has done telemarketing tells me that he’s sure that after that call, the caller went into the call leader’s room and asked for talking points to counter future such responses.
While they’re figuring out their response, here’s mine: No. No more money to federal-government Democrats until they do what they said they were going to do. If Arlen Specter now wants to be a Democrat, he needs to act like one. If Dianne Feinstein wants to retain the D after her name, she needs to vote like one. In the meantime, I’m not sending another nickel to any of them.
I just drank that last beer you left in the refrigerator. And you’re right, Smithwick’s is a pretty good beer. Just for the record.