The Modern March 2012 Vol1 No6

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March 2012 • Vol. 1, No. 6

www.themodern.us

your life in retro

I’m With the

BAND Soviet Baby Boomers The Taxi Taxi The Films of Paul Le Mat

A Salute to the Glorious Groupie

Starship Troopers’ Patrick Muldoon

Pamela Des Barres Mohawks • Pop Rocks • Gia

Bares all (in her writing)

c ntents T h e M o d e r n — Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o In this issue:

The Glorious Groupie Retro Essay: Our Jesse Reinhardt captures the groupie zeitgeist.

Reconnecting: Pamela Des Barres: the former groupie who wrote the definitive groupie memoir is now a creative writing teacher.

The Glorious Groupie Songs: intriguing

examples of the most amazing groupie tunes.

Reconnecting

Patrick Muldoon

With a reprised role on Days of Our Lives, the Starship Troopers vet is still triumphing in the battle of Hollywood. .

Read This Retro Book Soviet Baby Boomers: Donald J. Raleigh’s oral history of Soviet Baby Boomers sheds a white light on the red dawn.

Retro Legacy Thing of Beauty: Gia From humble beginnings in Northeast Philadelphia to therunways of New York and Paris, Stephen Fried’s classic bio examines the short life of supermodel Gia Carnagi.

Retro Sports Back to Retro: The Devolution of Stadiums For the Evolution of Profit.

Plus: Bill’s sports quiz!

Cover photography: Jesse Reinhardt On the cover: Nina Elizabeth, Goldwyn Seigfried

Funny Papers Checks A Go-Go! In the swingin’ Sixties, DC Comics attempts to groovify their cast of characters.

Girlie Action Rumer – the other hot British songstress – is causing whispers stateside.

Don’t Touch That Dial The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show!

On Off Broadway Eve Golden reviews the Encores production of Merrily We Roll Along, and gets a loud bravo!

Grow It/Show It Desiree Dymond reveals her family’s three-generations of mohawks-sportin’ dudes.

Girls Were Girls & Men Were Men Paul Le Mat: The breakout star of the breakout cast of American Graffiti struggles to live up to his original promise.

Low Tech Upgrading to Analog: want to improve your thinking? Take up with a typewriter.

Dig This DVD Bewitched: Is Samantha Stevens a satanic disciple of The Great Deceiver? Could be: she consistently breaks her promise of “no witchcraft” to Darrin.

I Get Around

The New Oldies

Internalize This

Retro Check

Adventures in Modern Sound

Retro Merch

Parting Shot: Witness two TV legends sitting on a famous set and engaging us, while somebody totally irrelevant sits between them and tries to keep up. But we’re not buying.

letter from the editor

You’d Better Shop Around I have become extremely careful not to begin any sentence with “when I was your age,” or “in my day…” However, there is one age-difference issue that I will continue to shout to the mountains as long as anyone under the age of 35 even bothers to listen to me. And that is this: what is was like to work in retail before the digital age.

Actually punching a clock while I was in high school in the late Seventies was as far away from digital as you could get, short of toiling in a little general store on the prairie.

I landed my very first job at age 15 (paying “student wage,” at $2.10 an hour).

Gino’s was a McDonald’s clone but far better. Everybody ate there because its advertising jingle went like this: “everybody goes to Gino’s, ’cause Gino’s is the place to go.” The chain was based in Baltimore but sprouted all over Philadelphia, because even though you can taste the difference between Gino’s and McDonalds, you couldn’t tell the difference in taste between Philadelphia and Baltimore. My paper hat and uniform lasted longer there than I did. They operated an in-house Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, and I developed a learning disability when it came to memorizing the subtle differences among the features of a KFC bucket or a dinner or a box or a thrifty pack (now which one had the coleslaw?).

I quickly shifted to non-food retail, and never looked back (until now). My afterschool job at Two Guys allowed me a smock and hardly any chance to be scolded by a deep fryer. Two Guys was, if you can believe it, a tacky precursor to Kmart. As much as I begged and pleaded, they put me on the “front end,” which meant the cash registers. I would have preferred the record department. Or even house paints.

This is where it gets pre-digital. A typical purchase at Two Guys went something like this: a blouse, a tire, a stapler, a bottle of Sominex, a sprinkler and a blender. All that and a bag of chips.

There were no scanners. There was no beam of light that read a bar code. Instead, we had to peer at the price tag and type it all in by hand, one SKU number after another, plus the department number and, finally, the price. And we had to hit “enter” a lot. If an item was on sale, we may not know it until after we had gone to the trouble to ring it up, and the customer would angrily let us know of our horrible error after the fact (euphemistically called an overring!). The gentlemen were required to wear ties (if you came to work in a ski sweater, you were sent home, as I had personally found out). We were also required to count back the correct change to the customer.

(This is classy, actually. Notice that nobody knows how to do this anymore.)

Following that experience, I worked in what used to be called a “drug store,” where I operated an NCR register that required me to figure out the tax (on taxable items) in my head.

So today, when I see young people “ringing me up” at the store, standing there in jeans and no tie and a TV to watch when things get slow, and lazily dragging those items across a beam of light, I want to tell them about my very own back-in-the-day. If they had to go through what I went through, their tatts would melt.

Ron Sklar Editor

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Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o .

C o n t a c t

Editor • Ron Sklar | Art Director • Jennifer Barlow | Copy Editor • Patty Wall Contributing Writers: Barrie Creedon • Desiree Dymond • Mitch Gainsburg Eve Golden • Dimitry Mak • Mark Mussari • Jack Rotoli • William Shultz Art Wilson

u s :

i n f o @ t h e m o d e r n . u s

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Making Retro sexy for about half a year.

We’ve been around the block a few times, and we’ve only just begun to live. As you can see, we’re sitting pretty, and more awesome retro is in store in our future issues about the past.

In the meantime, kindly check out our off-the-hook archived editions on our home page. Dig the very best of American pop culture.

The Modern is targeted toward 65 million baby boomers and their babies. For advertising info,

email us at info@themodern.us Your life in retro. The past is very now.

read this retro book

Baby Boomers, Soviet Style Donald J. Raleigh’s oral history of Soviet Baby Boomers sheds a white light on the red dawn.

By Ronald Sklar Post World War II, America’s landscape remained unscathed by the physical destruction of war. Its generation to come — known as baby boomers — would arguably be the most coddled, privileged, healthy and entertained in world history.

In contrast, The Soviet Union had tons of dysfunction to sort out after the war. The country suffered more battle and bombing fatalities than almost any other nation on the planet (adding on to the millions who had already died in Stalin’s concentration-camp-like gulags).

Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets remained secretive, competitive and paranoid. Their collective

dream of total, functional communism by 1980 would never come true. Instead, what came — due to stifling bureaucracy, squabbling leadership and an overall feeling of hopelessness — were housing shortages, rampant alcoholism, and corruption at all levels of government, as well as black markets and hypocritical censorship.

However, as the post-war generation of Soviets came of age by the Sixties, they began to slowly thaw their own frozen fates. Young people in The Soviet Union proved themselves to be, in the end, not much different from their Western counterparts. They longed for their own style of music, clothing and fun, The Modern | March 2012

and looked to the off-limits destinations of America and Western Europe for lifestyle cues.

As deliberately anti-Communist western broadcasts like Radio Free Europe and The Voice of America beamed their signals behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet baby boomers began to see, hear — and think — differently.

With the advent of the portable tape recorder (to record bootlegged, outlawed music) and a thriving black market for blue jeans, albums, chewing gum and even drugs, the arrows were pointed in every direction but the sorry one in which they were headed.

By the time Communism fell in the early Nineties, the adult baby boomers were already well on their way to a materialistic and opportunistic culture. The seeds were planted long before the Berlin Wall fell.

Donald Raleigh’s impressive new book, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation [Oxford University Press], shares his conversations with the generation of Russians who told him their incredible stories of turbulent lives and times.

Their determination to feel hope and initiate change despite such oppression is truly inspirational.

For decades, these people remained faceless until now.

We often think of Soviets living twelve to an apartment, or worse. For the baby boomers, how did Soviet housing change in the years after the war?

They experienced a vast improvement. Most of them spent their toddler years in communal flats, which were just horrific due to overcrowding and lack of amenities. [Soviet President] Kruschev then focused on mass-produced housing, to move them out of these communal flats and into smaller, private flats.

Here, the walls don’t have ears. So they saw their lifestyles and living conditions improve. Only later when they traveled to Eastern Europe did they see that their “little brothers” lived much better than they did.

The only way to truly get ahead in Soviet society was through schooling, but that system, as good as it may have been academically, was riddled with bureaucracy and corruption. www.themodern.us

This was all very much a part of Russia: discrimination against Jews, a quota system, the fact that bribery worked. Parents realized that they couldn’t leave their children financial wealth, but what they could do was use their connections to get their children a good education.

The Voice of America was instrumental in introducing the Soviet baby boomers to Western music (The Beatles, for example) and democratic ideology. The Soviet leadership surely despised it.

How did it play out?

I think what is so fascinating is the state’s effort to jam it. The state itself produced a short-wave radio that clever school-age kids could easily fix to bypass the jamming. And they listened! What really appealed to youth was Western music. The Voice of America had The Jazz Hour and played The Beatles. I think that when they first began to listen to the political message was after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), which also corresponded with their entrance into college.

Western youth culture was a powerful influence on Soviet baby boomers, more so than their political leaders had even imagined. How did those kids manage to let the pop culture flow into such a closed and oppressive environment?

They were amazingly adept and clever at circumventing [censorship] so they could do what they wanted to do. It was sort of the same practice they would use in shopping for food and for housing. It was through connections and giving lip service to the official message but doing pretty much what they could and what they wanted to do. For instance, they would make recordings of Beatles music on used chest X-rays. The emulsion would rub off after not too many plays.

Speaking English, I would imagine, would be a huge plus for any Soviet who was looking to possibly work in a capacity, like diplomacy, outside the country.

They opened professional schools [in many languages], but especially English. The schools offered www.themodern.us

an amazingly intense program in English. Despite the Cold War, or maybe because of the Cold War rivalry, the parents encouraged this. So they were not only learning English, but it also made the world smaller. It made it possible for them to listen to The Beatles and read available literature. They glamourized the world abroad.

Soviet television remained, for the most part, very lame. As a result, the youth turned to movies and books for their escape, and had become avid, knowledgeable readers and moviegoers.

Television tended to be about high culture: ballet and concerts. The Soviets were really good at being really bad, so foreign films, especially American films, were always more popular.

They were definitely readers and moviegoers.

As a result of government dysfunction and lack of social change, a cynical attitude permeated this generation, especially as they grew older.

Was this a vital factor in how the system eventually fell?

Initially, they blamed the leaders. The government got rid of Kruchshev [in 1964].

That was huge. Eventually, they went from blaming leaders to actually blaming the system itself.

Even though the eventual fall of the Soviet Union meant a new life for this generation, did it also cause an incredible amount of adjustment and chaos for them?

The impacts of glasnost [a policy of more Soviet openness, initiated in the late Eighties] sort of equaled the playing field. Now, the same information was available to anyone who wanted it. It really shattered their belief system. After the collapse of the Soviet system, the economic situation became incredibly precarious.

The society became democratic and [welcomed] capitalism, but their living conditions became horrible.

Most of them had to retool. What is extraordinary is that nobody saw themselves as victims. Despite the difficulties of the 1990s, they don’t regret the collapse of the Soviet Union. They embraced joining the rest of the world.

March 2012 | The Modern

reconnecting: patrick muldoon

The Days of

Patrick Muldoon’s Life With a reprised role on Days of Our Lives, the Starship Troopers vet is still triumphing in the battle of Hollywood.

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As the intro to one of America’s favorite daytime soaps advises, “like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

For actor/singer/songwriter Patrick Muldoon, this rings especially true. And he’s finding out that no two grains of sand are exactly alike.

He was born and raised in LA, and possibly best known for his role as Zander Barcalow in in the cult-classic film Starship Troopers. That’s if you don’t include his run as the evil Richard Hart on Melrose Place.

Currently, he’s returning to a role that he had originated on Days of Our Lives, that of aspiring boxer Austin Reed (this marks his first return to the show since 1995).

“You get your acting motor going,” he says of working on a daytime drama. “I’m ‘on the bicycle’ now.”

Of the daily intensity of soap acting, which involves merciless storylines and lots of calorie burning for actors’ abilities, Muldoon says, “I just love to act. This job definitely provides the opportunity to do it all the time, so I’m loving it. You’re dealing with this imaginary circumstance. You’re investing in this imaginary world. It’s more hours a day than you are spending in your real life.”

Good times for a TV genre that isn’t experiencing as much of those days of our The Modern | March 2012

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lives anymore. Yet, although many daytime dramas are biting or have bitten the dust, Muldoon says that his soap has managed to turn the hourglass upside down again.

“The economics of it is that talk shows and daytime reality shows are inexpensive to make,” he says of daytime television’s evolution away from daytime drama, “so when you have a large cast and lots of writers and a big crew, it’s obviously an expense, and that’s the challenge.

But NBC put their shoulder behind the show. The atmosphere over there is more about excitement than about fear.

They figured out a way to do it economically.

We shoot three weeks out of the month and go dark on the fourth week.

Three weeks on, one week off.

And everybody shows up prepared and ready to go. So we’re not there all

night. It’s a well-oiled machine.”

Speaking of well-oiled machines, Starship Troopers has warped-sped its way into pop culture adoration, and Muldoon is amused by its modern interpretation as opposed to how he perceived it when he was first on the set.

“It was really all of our first movie, really,” he says of himself

“

“I’ve had a history with spider movies,” he says. “You’ll be happy to know that I’m saving New York from giant spiders.”

Playing against evil is nothing new for him — but nothing is more delicious as playing evil itself, as he did in the role of Richard Hart in the original Nineties run of Melrose Place.

“Evil characters are always giv-

I just love to act. This job definitely provides the

”

opportunity to do it all the time, so I’m loving it.

Patrick Muldoon

and his fellow cast members. “We were all green, and we all walked into this $100 million movie that we shot for six months. We didn’t know until the premiere that it was a comedy. That’s how green we were.

We were all sitting at the premiere going, ‘it’s a comedy!’ I think the humor in the movie is what made it a cult classic. And the special effects really hold up well. The movie seems to be more popular these days than it was then.”

In Startroop Troopers, his character did battle against a race of spiders called “Bugs.” He continues his association with spider bad guys in the upcoming Spider 3D. www.themodern.us

en something to do” he says, “and you can have fun with it. You are there to be the obstacle. The audience immediately identifies with the evil character. I love the devices that you use to get in the way. In a way, evil guys are easier to play.”

He’s also is the lead singer of the rock band The Sleeping Masses. In 2009, they released their music video “The Woman Is the Way” which is the end-credits song from the film Powder Blue starring Jessica Biel. But other cities besides Hollywood call for Muldoon’s songwriting talents.

“I’m going to Nashville to cut an album,” he says. “If you are a songwriter, Nashville is like Disneyland.”

It seems that, for Muldoon, there are more Disney days of his life to come.

March 2012 | The Modern

retro legacy

Thing of Beauty From humble beginnings in Northeast Philadelphia to the runways of New York and Paris, Stephen Fried’s classic bio examines the short life of supermodel Gia Carnagi.

By Ronald Sklar In 1986, the fashion world’s first supermodel, Gia Carangi, died of complications from AIDS. It was a shock that made the world reel, at a time when the human race was just barely coming to grips with the reality of the illness (seemingly invincible actor Rock Hudson died a year later). What was even more frightening: Gia was one of the first women in America to die of the disease.

By the mid-Eighties, Gia’s spectacular and as-yet-unparalleled modeling career was long over. She began to self-destruct early on, mostly from drugs and partly from a misguided search for love (she was an avowed lesbian). However, when she first made the scene in 1978, she was something to behold, a “thing of beauty,” as the title of Stephen Fried’s classic biography ironically suggests (Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia, Pocket Books, 1993).

In the shallow, cut-throat business of fashion modeling, Gia was at first a golden child. She was beloved and cared for (while she was on top, that is). Very few of the fashionistas (as Fried first famously termed) kept up with Gia as she began and eventually completed her tragic fall. The business moved on quickly – succeeding supermodel Cindy Crawford was first known as Baby Gia. The publication of Fried’s book in the 1990s – and a subsequent HBO film on her life starring Angelina Jolie – helped fuel the growing interest in this stunning and sad woman.

To this day, Gia’s rags-to-riches-to-rags story The Modern | March 2012

continues to fascinate, from her humble, workingclass beginnings in Northeast Philadelphia to her scaling of the heights on the runways and in the photography studios of New York, Milan and Paris.

In an interview with investigative journalist Stephen Fried, he reflects on the life and legacy of this beautiful, heartbreaking subject. We learn what he has learned, and we are reminded of what her story really means.

Gia was more than just a pretty face. She was a very complex person with as much ambiguity as charm and intelligence. Are you able to describe her to us?

I did my best to describe her in the book, seen through the eyes of the people who knew her. I never met her myself (even though she lived near me for a time in Philadelphia) and I know from talking to others that she was different things to different people — not uncommon for a model, or a woman who didn’t live past her mid-20s. I think those who care about her — and that group grows as people find the book and the HBO film — will continue to try to describe her. I can still only provide the raw material which they will process their own way.

Has your take on Gia changed since you wrote the book?

Not much. I was fascinated by Gia because she was a product of the broken homes and broken promises of the Sixties and Seventies — the fact that she was a model, and people might be more interested in the story of her family, her homosexuality and her battle with self-destructiveness was just an added bonus.

The only thing I probably see a little differently grows out of the changes in the field of psychiatry. When I started telling Gia’s story, in a magazine article in the Eighties, the importance of biological psychiatry was still being explained to Americans. The issues about whether Gia’s problems were from nature or nurture got caught up in the debate between psychodynamics and biological-based mental illness. While Gia had plenty of family problems — her parents’ divorce, her very close but very challenging relationship with her mom — I suspect both I and her doctors didn’t pay www.themodern.us

enough attention to her underlying mental illness. If HIV hadn’t taken her, I suspect she would have responded very well to the newer psychiatric medications and types of therapy. At least, I like to think that.

How did the idea to write the book come about? How difficult was it to uncover the truth about her life?

I knew about Gia because she was from Philadelphia and had been on the cover of Philadelphia magazine when I was just out of college — several years before I worked there. Very few people knew she was dead, and about a year after her death her mother called into a TV talk show about AIDS and told the host, Wally Kennedy, that Gia was her daughter and she had died of AIDS — as a way of encouraging Wally to cover the disease more. Wally and I had done some previous programs together, and he called me and suggested I meet Gia’s mom, that there might be a good story. He was right. I did a long magazine piece on Gia’s life and death and felt when it was done that there was much more of a story than I had been able to tell even in a 15,000-word magazine article.

So, I did a book proposal and was fortunate to get a deal to expand the research and the writing into Thing of Beauty.

How was your experience gathering information and stories from fashionistas?

Well, everybody who agreed to speak to me was great. It took a long time to convince some people — just because they were nervous about talking about AIDS and wanted to make sure that what I was doing would be true to Gia’s life and her memory — but once they agreed to see me, they were very forthcoming, very emotional and very moving. Many of these are people who the public considers to be somehow “shallow” because they work in fashion. I’d say in all my years of interviewing, I never spoke to people as deeply as I did about Gia. A lot of the people who did talk did so because Monique Pillard at Elite, or Francesco Scavullo, the photographer, told them I www.themodern.us

was OK. They had been sources for the original article, and opened a lot of doors. They both loved Gia very much, and both felt they could have done more to save her; they may have been too hard on themselves in that regard, but I think that what they allowed me to do was something that serves as a powerful cautionary tale for a lot of people. They were brave to trust me. My only regret is the people who would not talk to me, but who later read the book and wished they had: especially Gia’s close friend Sandy Linter, who was my holy grail during the research, never did speak to me for the book, but was very kind and insightful when I met her later on.

Before your book, Gia was only known among insiders in the modeling and fashion businesses. That, of course, soon changed. How is Gia perceived by “civilians” who are not involved in the glamour industries? Do they find it to be a Cinderella story, a cautionary tale, or both?

I don’t think Gia could ever be confused with Cinderella; she was way too tough for that.

I wanted to tell Gia’s story so it would be a cautionary tale, to a lot of different kinds of people — the least of which were people in fashion. It’s a cautionary tale about family dysfunction, about substance abuse, about homosexuality, about AIDS, about superficiality, about pain perceived as sexiness. The book was not meant to be about glamour, and my pleasant surprise is that most readers see beneath the surface of the fashion business where it is set.

Your book caused a sensation when it was first published in the 1990s. What was that experience like for you? Did you expect the response that the book received?

I’m not sure it caused a sensation — it got some attention and some good reviews, and that was certainly pretty great, especially since it was my first book. It got excerpted in Vanity Fair, which led to me working there for a number of years — so March 2012 | The Modern

retro legacy I met my editor there, Wayne Lawson, through it, and that was significant; he’s an amazing editor. The movie stuff surrounding it was intriguing. Eric Bogosian was hired to write the screenplay. We spent some time together, which was great, and remain friendly; the same is true for Robin Swicord, the screenwriter hired to replace him. And the entertainment lawyer I hired when HBO ripped off the book, Steve Rohde, remains a friend. The initial response, actually, isn’t really what I remember that much. The more interesting experience has been that years later, people are still reading and talking about the book, and Gia is a cultural touchstone, at least in some cultures. And luckily I’m still writing books.

How did the people in Gia’s life — particularly those who agreed to talk with you — react to your story?

They all seemed relieved that I had told such an emotionally difficult story truthfully and without oversensationalizing it. Only Gia’s mom seemed upset, but that was predictable — any mother reading a book about her dead daughter would be upset, especially if it deviated from her own view of the story.

But, I’ll give Kathy credit; she helped me with the original article and the book, even when she knew that other people would be telling me harsh things about her. I think she felt the book was biased against her—that when she told me a story and somebody else told me another version, that I should have picked hers, or favored hers. Then when the HBO film came out and portrayed her so unfairly, as such a one-dimensional monster, she had a little better appreciation. That I really had attempted to show all sides of a situation that, ultimately, only Gia could tell us what really happened. I’ve remained friends, or at least friendly, with almost everyone who helped with that book. I think they all feel like they went through a powerful experience with Gia when she was alive, and another one as they helped me recreate aspects of her life.

To what do you owe Gia’s fall? Was it her destructive personality, her chaotic family life or the fast-lane lifestyle of the modeling business?

Gia died of AIDS, and only of AIDS. You can’t forget that. If she hadn’t contracted HIV, I’d like to think that all the things that contributed to her “fall” would later have informed her second life as a really interesting, powerful grown-up. The disease stole that chance from her. But, just to be clear, the modeling business didn’t kill Gia and ultimately neither did her family — they just fed her mental illness, and the The Modern | March 2012

cycles of self-destructiveness and self-medication.

We now know what both the modeling business and her family could have done to help her, but we cannot know if she would have been able to stick with the treatment necessary to control her illness.

Had Gia somehow managed to live, where would she be today?

She thought she would be an actress or a photographer, with a career likely interrupted by kids, which she very much wanted. She also wanted to be able to be a lesbian and be married, and I think she’d be delighted to see that is more possible today than it was in 1986.

What did you think of Angelina Jolie playing the title role in the HBO film based on your book? How about Faye Dunaway as Wilhelmina Cooper?

Just so you’re clear: while the HBO film was clearly based on my book, my book was at the time under option to Paramount. So I had nothing to do with the HBO film except to threaten legal action when I saw it. That said, I very much wanted Paramount to hire Angelina Jolie, who my wife and I had seen in Foxfire, to play Gia; I think she did very well with the screenplay she had to work with. Everybody else in the film was OK — it’s not Mercedes Reuhl’s fault that the Kathy character was written that way — but nobody in it made me shiver with recognition of a character I’d spent a lot of time with except Angelina’s portrayal of Gia. The term fashionista has been adopted by the fashion industry and the press. Do you get a royalty check every time the term is used?

I wish. Although, honestly, it’s more than enough that I invented a word that is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s especially gratifying because my wife, the English major, always gives me a lot of grief for making up words in my journalism — the fact that I’m now mentioned in an entry in the OED, one of her bibles, is very amusing to me. Less so to her.

I’m amazed and fascinated that the word caught on, especially since it has come to mean something fairly different than the meaning I created it to have. I used it in the book because there was no other word that described the army of beautifying people who work in fashion shoots — the models, hair and makeup people, etc. And it wasn’t meant to be pejorative, just descriptive of a group of people who work much harder than people realize. But, once something gets out into the culture — a word, a book — you can’t control it. www.themodern.us

retro sports

Take Me Out To The New Ball Game Back to Retro: The Devolution of Stadiums For the Evolution of Profit

By Mitch Gainsburg The concrete-and-wood glorified bleachers baseball and football stadiums of the past have found their way back to the building blocks of the American sports arenas. In the late Sixties and early Seventies when baseball and football salaries were on the rise and free agency was testing the waters, corporate America, the big cities and the sports franchise owners needed to find additional profits to endure the future athlete demands.

The multi-purpose stadium was created as venue which would serve both football and baseball as well as any additional event needed to serve 75 to 100,000 “paid” spectators. These structures were durable, huge, concrete, circular, modern-day coliseums, also known as “cookie cutters,” since they all really looked alike. Venues like RFK in Washington, Veterans Stadium in Philly, Fulton County in Atlanta, Busch in St Louis, and the River Front in Cincinnati, just to name a few, all catered to multiple events as well as homes to both NFL and MLB teams.

So, the money has changed the way we view our live sports today. Sports is entertainment and if you want to see the show, you must pay to see the stars.

And they get expensive. Most of these multi-purpose stadiums were owned and operated by the city municipally and the teams had leases. That meant sharing proceeds with the city and having little control. That wasn’t working for the owners. They needed more profit coming from the venues and most of all, the vendors.

Today, the franchises build their own venues to cater to their team, raking in all the profits that benefit complete ownership. There is no lease to the city, only rental profit from others. Stadiums are designed to retro the relics of the past, to bring back the closeness that was lost with in the cookie cutters of the Seventies. Two things stand to differ between then and now: the cost to advertise on a bleacher and when it rains, they just close the roof.

Reaping additional profits? Well, that’s an understatement. Million-dollar investments are now worth billions of dollars and counting. These venues look the part of a retro park from the golden age The Modern | March 2012

www.themodern.us

of baseball and the heyday of Dick Buckus, but are nothing more then food courts that just happen to have a ball game going on. Truthfully, what earns better then fans gorging themselves with overpriced food, so-called beer and watching a sporting event while sitting on billion-dollar bleachers.

Mitch Gainsburg (a.k.a. Cashy the King),hosts The Sports Goombahs radio show and webcast, 10 p.m.

Thursdays on WBCB, 1490 AM, Levittown, PA. Streamed live @ www.thesportsgoombahs.com

retro quiz

We’re crazy, we tell ya For March Madness. Analyze your own Madness here.

By William Shultz

1. What Ivy League school was the last team to make it to the NCAA Men’s Final Four and what year?

2. Who has won the NCAA Basketball Men’s championship the most times?

3. What were the years that the NCAA Final Four started for the men’s tornament and the women’s tournament?

4. Who has won the NCAA Basketball Woman’s championship the most times?

5. Who has scored the most points in a single game in the tournament?

1. University of Pennsylvania, 1979. 2. UCLA, 11.

3. Men’s 1939, Woman’s 1982. 4. Tennessee, 8.

5. Austin Carr of Notre Dame. 61 Points, 1970

retro essay

The

Glorious Groupie You come a-rockin’, they come a-knockin’.

Ever since the first caveman banged a tree branch against a rock, there was a entranced cavewoman who followed him back to his cave.

Groupies have been around long before the advent of rock and roll (just ask Frank Sinatra, via Ouiji board), but the groupie identity as we know it today was signed, sealed and delivered by Elvis, The Beatles, and eventually Led Zeppelin and even Justin Beiber (yes, all of these acts listed in the same sentence).

Groupie girls have gotten a bad reputation,but advocates like Pamela Des Barres, who wrote a bestselling personal memoir on the subject, have bleached some white into the tainted label.

Times may change, but girls loving boys who make music is just life.

Photography by Jesse Reinhardt | www.jhrphotography.com Makeup: Parminder Singh Hair: Melissa Mika Model Credits: Male model Goldwyn Seigfried Female Models Nina Elizabeth, Faina Reinhardt

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reconnecting: pamela des barres

quickly. She became BFFs with such hot buds as Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Paige, Keith Moon, and on a non-musical note, Don Johnson.

However, Pamela is careful to define groupie in a way that is not universally understood.

She explains, “A real groupie is a girl who loves music and wants to hang out with the people who make it.

That’s what a groupie is and that’s all that a groupie is.”

Although the title has gotten a bad name to the point of it branding as scorching as a scarlet letter, Pamela has a theory.

“It turned into a negative slur a long time ago by jealous people,” she says. “And by people who don’t understand and people who have sexual hang ups. It’s the same old thing in this country. People are so uptight sexually. That kind of thing will always shake people’s feathers, anything to do with sex. So groupies get a bad name.”

She says that her experiences with rock stars did not necessarily equate to becoming friends with benefits.

“A lot of groupies don’t even have sex with the bands,” she says. “A lot of times, they just hang out with them. We used to take them shopping and just take care of them, as friends a lot of the time. They’re out there on the road, and lonely.”

“The easiest type of writing for me is to write about myself,” says writing teacher Pamela Des Barres, whose 1987 memoir about being a rock groupie, I’m With the Band, is now considered a pop culture classic.

Her ability to write about herself is no small task. After an aborted attempt to become an actress, she drifted toward the swinging Sunset Strip of Sixties LA. Her love of rock singers morphed into close relationships with many of them, intimate and otherwise. After being introduced to the likes of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa (for whom she eventually nannied his children, Moon Unit and Dweezil), she was on her way to writing her own private and ultra unique rock-and-roll history.

“I kept diaries from the time I was a young girl,” she tells me. “I always knew my experiences were important and historical and revelatory and revolutionary. My diaries were copious, thank goodness. It really helped me remember in much more detail.”

Her diaries, as well as her little black book, filled

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reconnecting: pamela des barres Although groupies have been a part of the music scene since before and after Pamela’s day, she thinks that the climate may have changed.

“I think it’s kind of different now,” she says. “[Rock stars] bring their wives and kids now.

On the road [back in the day], they were lonely and bored and we actually supplied them with a lot of friendship and fun and necessary hang time.”

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guys around. And it was mostly women anyway. So I decided to mostly focus on the women’s classes, and it’s just been the most rewarding thing ever. All age groups, but you have to be 18 to come, and I get all kinds of women from all walks of life. Mainly music lovers because most of them are fans of mine. There is word of mouth and also other girls bring their friends.

They are music-loving kindred spirits who connect on this very

I miss their company, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Keith Moon.

All the GTOs, there are so many of them who are gone. I wish they were

”

still here.

A lot of her friends and associates have since passed on, including some of her group mates from The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously, an all-groupie group formed by Frank Zappa).

“I miss their company,” she says of Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Keith Moon. “Graham Parsons was like a brother to me.

All the GTOs, there are so many of them who are gone. I wish they were still here.”

Since making a name for herself as a groupie, she has established a career as a writing instructor, with an emphasis on memoir writing for women. Although she mostly works out of Southern California, she has lately taken her act on the road.

“When I first started about twelve years ago,” she says, “I had unisex classes, but I found women, especially, would clam up with the The Modern | March 2012

Pamela Des Barres intrinsic level and we become good friends. It’s not just a writing class.

I call it groupie therapy. It has a lot to do with women connecting with each other.”

She teaches her students the tricky business of writing from personal experience, and how to convey intense feelings and memories into effective prose.

“It’s all about feeling safe and comfortable,” she says. “I think everybody can write. It’s just a matter of doing it. And believing you can do it. So I help them believe they can do it. I give them three assignments a week and we read them aloud: first kiss, first concert, first lover, your relationship with your mother, a childhood incident that stuck with you. It’s endless. Crazy.

I have girls who have come to class for several years, so I have to keep coming up with new stuff.”

She has also written addition-

al memoirs about her life experience, including Take Another Little Piece of My Heart – A Groupie Grows Up (1992), Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon (1997) and Let’s Spend the Night Together – Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (2007). She is currently working on a book about spirituality, and introducing a vintage-inspired clothing line called Groupie Couture.

“Through the years, everybody is asking me where I got my clothes,” she says. “The GTOs were incredibly flamboyant and unique visually. We caused a riot everywhere we went because of our clothes. We just wanted to stand out. During that time, all of us just loved old clothing of the Twenties, Thirties, and the Forties. And we could find it very easily in thrift stores back then, maybe for a couple of dollars. We decked ourselves out in boas and sequins and rhinestones, long chiffon gowns and velvet. I still like to dress that way. I always loved feminine vintage clothing, just beautiful, flattering, soft, sexy clothing. I found [business] partners who want to do it with me. And also I’m With the Band t-shirts and underwear.”

Softly subversive, and branding it too! It’s all part of the rebel spirit that still dwells comfortably within Pamela.

She says, “I pissed off a whole lot of people who actually hadn’t read [I’m With the Band]. They were just appalled that I would be a groupie and admit it and write about it. That upset people.

“All my heroes are people who have pissed other people off. Pissing off the masses is a great, wonderful, important thing to do.”

For more information about Pamela, go to www.pameladesbarres.com www.themodern.us

Funny Papers

Checks A Go-Go! In the swingin’ Sixties, DC Comics attempt to groovify their cast of characters.

By Jack Rotoli When I first discovered comic books, Normandy Mart in Northeast Philadelphia sold them at thirteenfor-a-dollar. That was less than the twelve-cent cover price, but I would never know that as the comics’ covers were sliced off; I didn’t care. I anxiously looked forward to weekly drives up the boulevard with my dad for a new batch.

I loved sitting on the patio during the summer reading my comic books.

My hands may have still been sticky from my mom’s peanut butter and chocolate milk lunches or the ice cream truck, but I didn’t care about that either. I was catching up on the latest adventures of my favorites. Now, an adventure featuring Casper and Hot Stuff, Richie Rich or Little Dot may have lasted eight panels, or perish the thought, a second page! I had a few ‘grown up’ comics, some Superman, or that red-haired, man-about-town, Archie.

Eventually, I graduated myself to new comics when I rode my bike to 7-11 for a Slurpee. WOW!!! NEW SUPERMAN???!!! AND BATMAN TOO!!!! And they had covers!… like seeing a shabby friend in a new suit! From then on, I was hooked.

I discovered back issues when a trash collector handed me two issues of DC’s Adventure Comics. I stuffed them in a bush as I was walking back to school after lunch. Sister Mary Lex Luthor would never permit such rubbish in the classroom. I ignored the entire afternoon of lessons and fretted over whether or not my comics were still safely hidden in someone’s hedge. Fortunately there they were, and I The Modern | March 2012

picked them up on my way home.

Continuing the weekly purchase of new comics, at the same time I actively pursued back issues when I could find them at flea markets and trade shows.

Nothing was more exciting than re-discovering an old comic as I replaced the coverless copies I had from Normandy.

The most visually distinctive period in DC Comics’ history to me is the late Sixties’ Go-Go Checks.

Introduced in 1966, the fashion statement was designed to make DC’s line of titles stand out as the newsstands got more crowded. With a new groovy and snappy banner, established heroes got a makeover. Superman continued his neverending battle, while Adam West and Burt Ward “Powed” and “Zap-ed” their way into America’s living rooms. In one case of art -imitating-life-imitatingart, Batman himself tuned in to watch in the August issue. DC cashed in on the continuing British invasion with Scooter, the hippest cat of all.

Even Sgt. Rock and the combat-happy Joes of Easy Company carried the new checkerboard into heroic World War II battles as U.S. servicemen fought the ever-escalating conflict in Viet Nam. Black-and-white checks made a comeback in the Eighties and the MTV generation, and again seem to be working their way into popular designs, but I will always associate the pattern with DC’s Sixties comics — and as much as I hated seeing it in the last panel of the comic… “continued next issue.”

Jack Rotoli is an artist and writer living in Pennsylvania. www.themodern.us

the great groupie songs

The Glorious

Groupie Songs Groupies are often the muse to rock stars.

Here are some amazing examples.

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Since man first realized that he could gain notice by taking advantage of the musical cadences of his voice, there have been women around who would sleep with him because of it. Try and find a rock star who says they didn’t get into music to get girls — you’ll either find a woman, a homosexual or a liar.

Groupies have been companions, muses, band-aids (thanks, Cameron Crowe!) and fringe benefits in the world of rock stardom for as long as there has been rock stardom. They have also sometimes crossed the line and inspired the art they love so much. They will give their body and soul just to be a part of the scene.

Below are some classic platters which were inspired by these ultimate fans.

“Ruby Tuesday” – The Rolling Stones

Though “Ruby Tuesday” is arguably considered the most famous groupie song of all time, there is a controversy about whether or not this song is actually about a groupie. This controversy has been fueled by its writer, Keith Richards, who has told very different stories of the song’s inspiration over the years. In a famous 1971 Rolling Stone interview, Richards insisted that he wrote the song about a groupie he had once known. Over the years, he has changed his tune, though, and in his recent autobiography, Life, he suggested that it was actually about an old girlfriend named Linda Keith, who left him and broke his heart. Richards apparently ended up writing this song about their breakup with fellow Stone, Brian Jones (though as was standard for the band, Richards and Mick Jagger ended up getting co-writing The Modern | February 2012

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credit; even Jagger openly acknowledges he did not have anything to do with the writing of the song.) As Richards later explained, “That’s one of those things — some chick you’ve broken up with. And all you’ve got left is the piano and the guitar and a pair of panties.” I certainly won’t be cynical and suggest that statement

could describe either an ex-girlfriend or a groupie. Nor will I mention that chances are good that Keith Richards doesn’t even remember what he was doing in his glory years. www.youtube.com/embed/OsvijRwJA9E

“Superstar” – The Carpenters

Four decades after the Carpenters topped the charts with it, the true meaning of the song “Superstar” is somewhat forgotten. This is due to many factors, including the white-bread reputation of the Carpenters and a later series of covers by male artists, particularly Luther Vandross. However, not only is “Superstar” a song about a groupie, it is particularly scandalous in the fact that it is the rare example of a lyric actually told from the perspective of that groupie. The song was originally written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell for the late Sixties supergroup Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. (Those friends included Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, George Harrison and Dave Mason.) The song was recorded as “Groupie (Superstar)” and released as the B-side of the 1969 single “Coming Home.” Backing vocals on that version were provided by a relatively unknown singer named Rita Coolidge. When Coolidge and Russell joined Joe Cocker’s star-studded Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, Coolidge talked Russell into letting her perform the song in concert. Her live performance of the song, now simply called “Superstar,” was released on the Mad Dogs and Englishmen live album. A young, mostly unknown New York singer named Bette Midler heard the song and put her spin on it on The Tonight Show (a full two years before her debut album The Divine Miss M). This was where Richard Carpenter learned of the song and became determined to arrange the song to his sister’s style. Ironically, Karen Carpenter was aware of Coolidge’s version of the song and was not really a fan — though she grew to love it once she heard her brother’s changes.

However, to keep it more in the Carpenters’ middle-of-the-road image, Richard insisted upon changing the lyric “And I can hardly wait to sleep with you again” to the much safer “And I can hardly wait to be with you again.” (Cher, who had also recordwww.themodern.us

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the great groupie songs ed the song before the Carpenters, had also made that lyrical change on the insistence of her husband and partner, Sonny.) Still, the Carpenters were fully aware of the song’s true meaning and were not totally trying to subvert it – that was more a residual effect of the band’s rep. In a 1972 interview, Karen Carpenter explained her connection to the song, “I’ve seen enough groupies hanging around to sense their loneliness, even though they usually don’t show it. I can’t really understand them, but I just tried to feel empathy and I guess that’s what came across in the song.” www.youtube.com/embed/Jgs8zeKegs4

“Super Freak” – Rick James

He had more than his share of problems over the years – including drug addiction, jail time and an early death – but in 1981, it was a good time to be Rick James. He had critical acclaim, money, power and women throwing themselves at him. James’ biggest hit ever, and still his defining song, is this classic. “Super Freak” is James’ super-funky ode to “a very kinky girl” who “loves the boys in the band.” In other words: yes, a groupie. At the time, James was known to partake liberally of the perks of stardom — the wine, the women, the drugs and the song that flowed his way. His career never quite exploded in the way that his Street Songs album promised (which contained “Super Freak” and one of his other standards, “Give It to Me, Baby”), but the groupies were still around as the glitter faded. Then the song got a renewed life in 1990 when M.C. Hammer blatantly sampled the music for “U Can’t Touch This.” (Essentially, Hammer just rapped over the instrumental track of “Super Freak,” but sadly there were no groupies in his version of the song.) The hard living eventually caught up with James, and he was jailed for kidnapping and sexual abuse, apparently brought about by a week-long cocaine binge. This was finally the shock therapy that James needed to clean up his act.

In 2002, a fresh-out-of-prison and newly clean-andsober James looked back at the craziness of his glory days in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle.

“I had $20 million in the bank, girls are following me all over the fucking place, people call my name everywhere I go. What would I change? And then one day you get onstage and you see two little girls who look like they are 11-years old sticking their tongues out and pulling their bras down and you quit touring. That’s what happened to me.” www.youtube.com/embed/QYHxGBH6o4M

“What’s Your Name?” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

The Southern rock group wrote this song about a groupie they picked up in a hotel bar, eventually getThe Modern | March 2012

ting into a fight with the girl’s boyfriend and taking her upstairs to party after getting kicked out of the place.

“What’s Your Name” was a true story – sort of intensified. First of all, it did not take place in Boise, Idaho – that was a nod to lead singer Ronnie Van Zant’s little brother Donnie, whose new band 38 Special was starting their first tour in that city. The song was actually written in Miami by Van Zant and bandmate Gary Rossington – with a little help from legendary Stax Records guitarist Steve Cropper (of Booker T & the MGs and the Stax house band) and producer Tom Dowd. It was about a one-night stand with the nameless groupie, though stories vary whether the bar fight that is discussed had to do with her or just happened to be on the same night. The song was the first single for the band’s 1977 Street Survivors album, which came out a mere three days before the tragic plane crash that killed Van Zant and band members Steve and Cassie Gaines. www.youtube.com/embed/_qXsO-axQWM

“Dirty Diana” – Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson would not seem to have been the type to partake in groupies, but he was all too familiar with them. That’s why for his fifth number-one single from his multi-platinum album Bad, he decided to do a rock-and-roll ballad about a particularly aggressive groupie. When it became popular, people thought it might be about his friend Diana Ross. Others guestimated that maybe the song was some sort of offbeat tribute to Princess Diana. (The late princess, though not the subject, apparently loved the song.) At the time, Jackson explained to Barbara Walters that the song “was about certain kinds of girls that hang around concerts or clubs, you know, they call them groupies. I’ve lived with that all my life. These girls… they do everything with the band, you know, everything you could imagine.” Not surprisingly, with Jackson’s reputation for shyness and possible distrust of women, in the song he is resisting the temptress — unlike most musicians who would have wallowed in the attention. Jackson also said more than once that his classic hit “Billie Jean” was also based on groupies he had run across when he was young. www.youtube.com/embed/yUi_S6YWjZw

“She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” – The Beatles

Since they were the biggest band in the world at the time, it only stands to reason that the Beatles would run across groupies. In fact the band’s groupies even had a special name — Apple Scruffs — because they would stake out at Apple Studios hoping to run across the band. George Harrison wrote a song called “Apple www.themodern.us

Scruffs” which was on his All Things Must Pass album.

McCartney tells a story of one day when some Apple Scruffs broke into his house, tried on his pants and stole a picture. He claims he was not there when it happened and some of the scruffs have agreed with his story. Of course, like so many of these songs, there is a difference of opinion on what really happened. Michael Pinder of the Moody Blues swears that the song was actually based on the experience of his bandmate Ray Thomas, who one night had a groupie indeed climb in through his bathroom window and spend the night.

They had told McCartney the story the next day and Pinder claims that was where the cute Beatle came up with the song title. www.youtube.com/embed/4yobA-zDpa8

“Plaster Caster” – KISS

Of all the songs about groupies, there are few that are written about a specific groupie. “Plaster Caster” is named after one of the most infamous groupies in rock history. Cynthia Plaster Caster (born Cynthia Albritton) is not only a legendary groupie, but also an artist with a very… umm… eclectic palette. As you may have guessed by her “name,” her art form is sculpture.

More specifically, she has made a career of getting plas-

ter casts of famous musician’s penises. Eventually she expanded her repertoire, adding both filmmakers’ penises and female musicians’ breasts to her catalogue of casts. Even she admits that she started it as just a clever excuse to have sex with the stars. Her first taker was Jimi Hendrix, and after that Cynthia was able to eternally capture the junk of most of the biggest (no pun intended) stars of rock-and-roll history. Frank Zappa was so amused by her art form that he ended up subsidizing much of her work. Eventually, Cynthia was able to put together a whole group of Plaster Casters.

Ironically, none of the members of KISS, who wrote the musical tribute to this unique groupie, ever actually “posed” for her. However, they were well aware of her work. Gene Simmons told Ken Sharp in the book Kiss: Behind the Mask, “Groupies have had a major influence on my life. They’ve kept many a cold night’s chill away. I love groupies and I like the concept of groupies. I think it’s wonderful when women want to give themselves to you. That’s magic. They don’t want to be taken out to dinner. They don’t want jewels. They don’t want anything. They just want to give you pleasure. In return, they want a slice of the fantasy, something they can tell their friends about.” www.youtube.com/embed/Vz-cJogytGs

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girlie action

Rumer Abounds

By Jay S. Jacobs It’s a pretty good time to be a strong-voiced retro British songstress. Adele just cleaned up at the Grammys, and now America is welcoming Rumer, who has been huge in her UK home for over a year. Rumer’s debut album, Seasons of My Soul, was released in the rest of the world over a year ago — about the same time as Adele’s 21. While Adele luxuriates in Sixties and Seventies soul, Rumer’s music tends to be a bit more low-key, bringing to mind such songwriters as Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Rumer’s voice, a strong and yet intimate instrument, has been constantly compared to that of Karen Carpenter and has spawned such impressive fans and collaborators as Elton John, Jools Holland and Burt Bacharach.

The album was greeted by rave reviews (five stars in MOJO, four in Q) and terrific sales, going gold in England. It spawned the hit singles “Slow,” “Aretha,” “Am I Forgiven?” and a cover of David Gates’ Seventies hit “Goodbye Girl.”

Seasons of My Soul has finally gotten a US release just last month. In fact, it reached number one on the iTunes album sales charts after her recent appearance on the TV show CBS Sunday Morning. Her British follow-up album, Boys Don’t Cry — a group of covers of songs by Seventies male songwriters — is due in April or May, with a US release planned for next year.

We caught up with Rumer while on her American tour, to find out a bit about her influences and musical upbringing.

You were born in Pakistan, but moved to England as a young girl. What are some of your first musical memories?

When I first moved to the UK, I got obsessed with Judy Garland. Judy Garland was on the TV when we landed. I watched every single movie. I just became transfixed by her. She was my role model in life. I wanted to be like that.

What was the first record you ever bought?

I bought Tracy Chapman’s Crossroads, her second album, on tape when I was about eight. I wanted the first album, with “Fast Car” on it, but they didn’t have it at my local Five and Dime. But I [already] had Judy Garland’s Greatest Hits. I wouldn’t have bought that — that would have been lying around the house.

What was the first concert you ever saw?

It was a local band called Suede.

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What music do you put on when you are in a bad mood to cheer you up?

I listen to stuff like The 5th Dimension or the Mamas & the Papas. Or 101 Soul Classics. I kept buying these songs from iTunes, it was from the same compilation.

So I was just like, “I’m going to just buy this 101 Soul Classics.” Got lots of great, soulful stuff on it.

What song can automatically make you cry when you hear it?

It’s always different. Some live Laura Nyro stuff. That always kills me. Whatever I’m feeling at the time, if some song just connects to that. … I’ve been listening to Rufus Wainwright. I was listening to his song “Dinner at Eight.” That was really emotionally beautiful.

What record would you say you have listened to more than any other in your life?

I’ve listened to Joni Mitchell’s Blue too much. I can’t listen to it again. I actually have listened to it too much.

What song do you most wish that you had written?

Probably something like “Just a Little Lovin’.” [Written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and recorded by Dusty Springfield].

You did a song as a tribute to Aretha Franklin, which I found interesting because her style is very different from yours. How did Aretha influence you as an artist and even just as a fan?

She has an amazing soul. My life has always been about music and faith, because my family was Christian and we played in church. My brothers and sisters played in church and sang hymns and everything else. Music was very much a part of that. For me, music and spirituality, hymns and prayer were always the same thing.

Listening to Aretha Franklin feels really warm and familiar. It’s like prayer.

I read that you said that your song “Take Me As I Am,” which has a gospel feel, was inspired by Laura Nyro, while “Thankful” was more like Joni Mitchell. Do you enjoy being able to channel your influences in your songwriting?

I don’t do it consciously. But “Take Me As I Am”… that Laura Nyro and Labelle album [Gonna Take a Miracle] was a big influence, because that was the only song on [my] album that had the backing vocalists on it. An album like [Mitchell’s] Hejira gave me permission to write a song like “Thankful,” which is a structureless www.themodern.us

poem set to music. I’m not doing it on purpose. I just feel that it is possible to do things differently.

Before Seasons of My Soul was even released, Burt Bacharach got a hold of a copy and decided he had to write some songs specifically for you. How did you find out he was a fan, and what has it been like working with one of the greatest songwriters of the last 50 years?

It’s an incredibly humbling experience. Quite extraordinary. I find myself trying to remember it. I can’t even believe it. It was fantastic. I think he just heard there was this new chick on the block and he wanted to pitch me a song for the album. The album was already done, so the songs that he was pitching weren’t going to fit. So I recorded one of them for a special, with “Alfie” as the B-side, and released it as a special Christmas CD and 7-inch.

You do a cover of David Gates’ “Goodbye Girl” on Seasons of My Soul. You also recorded covers of “Come Saturday Morning” and the Beach Boys’ “Warmth of the Sun” on the “Aretha” CD single, plus, like you said, you’ve done “Alfie” and some other Bacharach songs live. And, you have the Boys Don’t Cry CD coming. As a songwriter, do you find it easier or harder to perform someone else’s songs?

It’s a joy. It’s like an actor. If you’re an actor, you wouldn’t say, “Oh, no, I only perform my own plays.”

Or my own films. You wouldn’t, because you restrict your development as an artist. I love to write music, but I love to sing other people’s works, because it gives me an insight into their emotional world. It helps me understand the human condition.

Jay S. Jacobs is the author of the books Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits and Pretty Good Years: A Biography of Tori Amos. He is also senior editor and founder of the pop culture web magazine www.popentertainment.com.

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March 2012 | The Modern

don’t touch that dial

Supreme Magic In the 1960s, the Supremes became a staple on The Ed Sullivan Show

Watching The Ed Sullivan Show on a Sunday night was a national pastime for more than two decades — from 1948-1971. After he introduced Elvis Presley to wildly receptive viewers in the mid-1950s, Sullivan knew that there was no stopping the popularity of youth music. People called it rock-and-roll back then — and throughout the 1960s, Sullivan served up a veritable feast of rock and soul acts.

From the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, from the

It would be the first of 15 appearances for the trio on Sullivan, who became so fond of the Supremes that he simply referred to them as “the girls.” The arc of their appearances reflects the evolution of their career. By their second appearance — singing “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You” — the three ingénues were already turning into worldclass entertainers.

In 1966, the trio offered up a rocking live version of the Motown classic “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart,” but it was what came afterwards that began

Doors to the Temptations, rock acts served as a major draw for Sullivan on his hugely successful variety series. We would sit through the mouse puppets and the juggling plates just to get to the rock acts.

On December 27, 1964 Sullivan — and the world — fell in love when three young women from Detroit stood together around a microphone to sing their third consecutive number-one hit: “Come See About Me.” In that early black-and-white clip of the Supremes, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard — with their bouffant wigs and charmschool stance — delivered a soulful pop performance.

to define the Supremes’ performances on Sullivan.

Following the driving soul hit, Ross stepped back into line with Wilson and Ballard and with some divine harmony and classic choreography they delivered the standard “More” (Theme from Mondo Cane).”

There had been Chantels and Shirelles, Marvelettes and Ronettes, but there had never been anything like the Supremes. Without missing a beat, the three slipped from the backbeat of Motown into a sexy read on the Andrews Sisters. Over the next four years this became their formula on Sullivan: sing a hit and then deliver a classy performance of a

By Mark Mussari

The Modern | March 2012

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standard or a show tune.

In 2008, Mary Wilson told me: “It was not difficult to learn that stuff — Berlin, Waller — we started singing it early on. That’s who we wanted to be. What was difficult was probably learning the rock-and-roll.”

Other powerhouse performances followed. In 1967 — Flo Ballard’s last performance with the group on Sullivan — the trio delivered a rousing version of their hit “The Happening.” Later, they performed a medley of show tunes: “Mame/Second-Hand Rose/Thoroughly Modern Millie.” At the end, the audience applauded wildly.

No other group emerging from the rock era had ever been so versatile. Later in 1967, in Cindy Birdsong’s first appearance with the trio, the newly named Diana Ross and the Supremes performed the Motown hit “In and Out of Love,” followed by

be their greatest performance on Sullivan, the girls brought down the house with an intricate medley of Fats Waller tunes. Later that year, on a special Sullivan tribute to composer Irving Berlin, they sang a medley of dozens of his songs — even joined by Broadway stalwart Ethel Merman at one point!

The visual impression of the Supremes meant as much to their success as their music. As time went on, Ross moved from the elaborate wigs and exaggerated expressions of her early performances into a glamorous entertainer. The writing was on the wall for her solo future. Meanwhile, Wilson drew our attention with her natural beauty and elegant dancing. Slowly, she was becoming the Supremes (and she and Birdsong would appear on Sullivan with a new lead singer, Jean Terrell, in 1970).

In their final appearance on December 21, 1969 — almost five years to the day of their debut on Sul-

Rodgers and Hart’s classic “Thou Swell.” Later in the same program, they joined their brother group the Temptations in a medley of each other’s hits.

In 1968, the group easily shifted gears between the socially conscious soul of “Love Child” and a medley of “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” They tap-danced with canes and top hats to the latter — Ross even tripping at one moment on national television.

By 1968, the Supremes were no longer a youth group (although Ross and Wilson were only 24 at this time). Two medleys exhibited their undeniable showmanship and musicianship. In what may

livan, the trio closed with their last hit with Ross on lead: “Someday We’ll Be Together.” At one point the three women line up closely — as they used to do in their earliest performances. Despite all the stories of resentment and incriminations, at one point if you look closely you’ll see Ross and Wilson move in closer, apparently clasping hands.

They had to feel it. Three girls from a housing project in Detroit had conquered the world with their grace and talent. Thank you, Ed Sullivan.

www.themodern.us

Mark Mussari, a freelance writer and translator, writes frequently about art, design and popular culture.

March 2012 | The Modern

on off broadway

Sondheim Rolls Along The Encores! Series gets a loud “bravo” for Merrily We Roll Along.

By Eve Golden Merrily We Roll Along — the 1981 Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical recently revived for New York’s Encores! series — is like a raisin muffin. There is a lot of sweet muffiny goodness — but you still have to contend with all those goddam raisins.

I think it’s time to stop referring to Merrily as a “flop,” though it famously opened and closed like a camera shutter during its initial Broadway run. The show has been endlessly revived since, worldwide, and has long outlived its flop reputation. But it is a … well, problematic show.

Merrily follows its characters backward through time from bitter, middle-aged successes in 1976 to fresh-faced kids in 1957. This had been held by some critics as the play’s fatal flaw, but I think it’s the saving grace. The final 1957 scene is heartbreaking; had it run forward chronologically, it would just have been a forgettable, run-of-the-mill musical tragicomedy. The real flaw is — oh, dear, one doesn’t like to say nasty things about the great Sondheim or even that nice Mr. Furth — much of the book and the music is … raisins.

Some of the songs are, of course, terrific, notably “Old Friends,” “Not a Day Goes By,” and a cute Vaughn Meadery-comedy number, “Bobby and Jackie and Jack.” Some numbers, though (despite the gentleman sitting behind me who bellowed “BRAVO! BRAVO!” into the back of my head after every number) were not terrific (“Franklin Shepard, Inc.” and “Musical Husbands,” I am looking at you). As for the book (the “script,” for you non-theater types), it veered between genuine wit and heartbreak, and scenes and lines that ka-thunked onstage like a dead ox (you see, now I have gone from raisins to dead oxen, so I am a fine one to talk about writing).

The Modern | March 2012

But you cannot criticize the artsiness of the score; Sondheim saw to that by including an evil philistine producer who burbles foolishly about the need for toe-tapping, hummable tunes. Well, call me Phyllis Stein, but I like toe-tapping, hummable tunes.

The cast, though, came through with flying colors, each and every one. The star of the show was puppy-eyed matinee idol Colin Donnell, who is so adorable in the current Anything Goes! revival (though, seriously, he needs a better headshot for his Playbill bio).

Although Merrily is ostensibly the story of three friends, it really follows Donnell’s character, shallow, sell-out Broadway composer Franklin Shepard. Everyone else is secondary at best. There’s his annoyingly naïve, idealistic friend and lyricist, Charley (Lin-Manuel Miranda, star and composer of In the Heights); hard-drinking novelist Mary (Celia Keenan-Bolger, in a nice, tough, Patsy Kelly/Pert Kelton performance); as well as Franklin’s two wives, his little son, and various hangers-on and associates. The evening’s real star turn — deserving every BRAVO! hollered into the back of my head — was Elizabeth Stanley, playing Franklin’s second, glamour-puss, wife. She was funny and tart and had the comic verve of a 1930s screwball comedienne.

Stanley also got to wear the evening’s best clothes, including a gray salt-and-pepper dress and coat ensemble that I nearly slipped backstage to steal from her dressing room (costumer Ann Hould-Ward? Call me! I’m a size 8.).

What I really found depressing about this show — and yes, I am the sort who can find something depressing about a YouTube video of kittens — was the sheer display of talent onstage. Any one of the chorus, I’ll bet, could have taken over the leads and been knock-outs. Too much talent, not enough roles. You how the world was bowled over when Susan Boyle opened her mouth and sang on Britain’s Got Talent? www.themodern.us

No one in New York blinked — seven out of ten people you meet on the street can sing that well, and the other three can write or sculpt or dance. That’s why they are in New York.

Up next at Encores! are Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1955 Pipe Dream, in March, and the 1949 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in May. Encores! tends to revive shows from the past 70 years — I really wish they would delve back a little further.

What would I give to see a revival of Watch Your Step (1914), or Miss Innocence (1908), or Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway (1906)!

Wants to send you to a

Yankees game Baseball Santa Claus offers FREE sports tickets to those New Yorkers who may not otherwise have the means to attend. The tickets are awarded through an essay contest that asks why you think you deserve the free tickets.

Answer as best you can, and that sweet booty may be coming your way in time for spring.

Eve Golden, who wrote The Bottom Shelf for Movieline in its 1990s heyday, has written seven books on film and theater history. Her biography of John Gilbert will be published next year.

internalize this

Your Mouth is Invited to a Three-way!

by Ronald Sklar When Handsome Harry and Cutie Katie hook up, there is no telling what may happen. At least they are protected, though, with Activated Gardol (it foams!).

Remember, fellas: whenever you enter a room, always wave a salute to the crowd EXACTLY like Handsome Harry does.

Obsess on this ancient commercial jingle — as we do — today!

Promoting: • Literacy and education • Paying it forward • College scholarships • Great memories! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QrF a3tDwvY&feature=player_embedded

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March 2012 | The Modern

www.baseballsantaclaus.com

grow it/show it

Three Generations of Mohawks

By Desiree Dymond Sorting through my grandmother’s old photo albums one afternoon, I found a picture that sparked my interest. The picture was of my grandmother, with my father, aunt and uncle, on an old ferry boat going from the lower to the upper-peninsula of Michigan.

This was around 1952, before the five-mile-long, historic Mackinaw Bridge was built. In all its black-andwhite picturesque glory, my grandmother’s Fifties hair was blowing perfectly in the breeze. My young father and aunt grimaced, as small children of that era often did, in the sunlight before the old vintage

own. His was different from Uncle Jim’s. He had a longer style, horizontally pointing straight off the back of his head, in a slick 1990s update. This image is immortalized in a 1992 picture of him. He’s in his old leather jacket, leaving the living room of our childhood home on his way to some important business involving the underworld of the Michigan skateboarding scene. Noting the similar vibe as my uncle on the ferryboat picture, I wondered what kind of punk-rock story was being told that I couldn’t hear. Is there some sort of family legacy that I am not aware of? For days, I pondered the reasons for their statements in appearance.

camera of my grandfather. There was a passing ship in the background, a few other travelers enjoying the scenic view of the short journey. Then there was my Uncle Jim. He must have been around twelve-years old. He stood there, hands in his pocket, slouched in the vogue of another time, sporting a rad Mohawk that seemed to transcend the idyllic 1950s style of the photo. Soon I was obsessed with his misfit hairstyle within a conservative family, and even more conservative decade.

Fast forward to 40 years later. My older brother, Dave, leader of the local skateboarding group in Southwest Michigan, was sporting a Mohawk of his

Uncle Jim was a career military man, and the “golden child” of his family. According to my aunt, he never got into trouble, and was somewhat of a family peacemaker. This is completely opposed to my brother, who, as a teenager, rebelled and triumphed. He was the first black sheep of my core family, with nobody else being able to even hold a candle to his misgivings. The epic struggles and melees between my parents and brother filled my early adolescent years with enough drama to leave a marked impression on us all for life — a persona well matched to the social stigma of Mohawkwearing youths.

My brother and uncle share similarities as well.

The Modern | March 2012

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They both left home at a young age, and are both the oldest child. They both have one child of their own, a boy. They are both natural, unassuming leaders. And they both share an extreme hairstyle.

Fast-forward twenty more years, to my little sevenyear old nephew wearing a Mohawk. I began jonesing for a picture from my brother immediately upon hearing the news. He prefers to wear his spiked hair straight up, and unshaven at the sides, otherwise known as a fauxhawk. Over the phone, I asked my brother what the reason was for his extreme hairstyle, in hopes for an answer to the mysterious family Mohawk trend.

Surely a seven-year-old could not hold back a secret from me. All I could hear was my nephew screaming in the background, “I don’t know.”

Was I not cool enough to just get it? How could no one be able to deliver the answer to me in this seemingly cosmic coincidence taking hold of several generations of the first-born males in the Dymond family?

I emailed my Uncle Jim, now retired and living in Texas, to find out the truth about his hairstyle choice at age 12. By then in my own fantastical mind, I’d built this up into an iconic-rebel status.

His answer was not what I’d expected: “The hair style? No, I don’t think anyone was thinking about hairstyle for boys back then. We went to a barber in

the south end of Saginaw (MI), and that’s how he cut our hair. Mom always wanted it cut short to save on going back to the barber too soon. We didn’t have a whole lot of money back then and I think a haircut cost about 25 cents… not sure. Hairstyle for boys didn’t really get a lot of attention until the mid 1950s when Elvis got popular.”

So despite all my speculation of there being ties between the generations, the fact that my uncle’s haircut was unplanned crashes all my grandiose family conspiracy theories. The coincidental hairstyles were completely independent of each other, with this further baffling me as to why I still find myself chasing a mystery to which I’m not even sure of the question. It was the voice of the 1950s barber that I needed now.

The unknown barber… probably a World War II veteran. If only I could travel back in time and find out what the driving force was behind his radical styling of an unquestioning generation of boys’ hair.

Desiree Dymond is a model, singer/ songwriter and blogger residing in New York City.

Attend the

Nina Menkes film retrospective at the Anthology Film Archives To celebrate the release of her sixth feature film, DISSOLUTION, we are pleased to present this comprehensive retrospective devoted to independent filmmaker Nina Menkes, whose films comprise one of the most haunting and impressive bodies of work in contemporary narrative cinema. Anchored by daily screenings of the new film, an unusual take on Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, the series encompasses all of her feature films, as well as two shorter works.

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org Anthology Film Archives 32 Second Avenue New York, NY 10003 • (212) 505-5181

girls were girls & men were men

Paul Le Mat The breakout star of the breakout cast of American Graffiti struggles to live up to his original promise.

By Jay S. Jacobs How did Paul Le Mat not become huge? The guy was smart, handsome, and a good actor. In 1973, he burst into the American consciousness like a supernova due to his breakthrough role as John Milner, the sensitive tough-guy hot-rodder in American Graffiti. It is still considered one of the iconic roles of the Seventies.

On the heels of that performance, he won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. But sadly, while Le Mat has had a long-running and fairly impressive career, he had to watch from the sidelines as many of his Graffiti co-stars became much bigger than he ever was.

Of course, he got into acting in a roundabout way.

His first exposure was through a high school drama teacher at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California. He was a shy kid, so the acting helped him open up. Le Mat went to colleges in the San Diego area, never sticking around long enough to get his degree. He joined the military and became a decorated Vietnam war veteran — earning the National Defense Medal and the Vietnam Service Medal. He then took up boxing, winning the LA Diamond belt, welterweight division, and the Southern Pacific AAU boxing Championship in 1972.

But it was American Graffiti that truly shifted his life into gear. Suddenly, his star was on the rise. He was married to a beautiful and powerful woman — Suzanne De Passe, the Motown Records exec who became a TV and film producer. The sky was the limit. But none of it turned out as expected.

Le Mat may have lost his boyish good looks, but he still works to this day — though usually in cheap, straight-to-video horror films. He also makes guest appearances at nostalgia shows and speedways. Occasionally he’ll get a supporting role in a prestige project like American History X, Lonesome Dove: The Series and Big Bad Love. He’s also written a few novels, which so far have not been published, but are available on Amazon Kindle. It’s a legitimate living and he’s still working doing what he loves, which is more than many actors his age can say. Still, it seems a bit of a waste; you always expected so much more of the guy.

It’s sort of reminiscent of the scene towards the end of Graffiti in which Le Mat takes McKenzie Phillips to The Modern | March 2012

an auto graveyard and shows her all the remnants of cars wrecked by the local racing legends that were cut down in their prime. All that promise was snuffed out to a hunk of mangled metal. John Milner realized that there was always someone younger and faster on your tail and sometimes it’s an accomplishment to just make it out alive.

Perhaps one of his other characters summed it up the best. Sometimes the little guy doesn’t get all that he dreams of, Le Mat acknowledged, as Melvin Dummar in the film Melvin and Howard. But hey, you know what? He was still part of something great. Howard Hughes sang his song.

So just to remind you of a talent that never quite got its due, here are some of Paul Le Mat’s finest characters.

John Milner – American Graffiti and More American Graffiti It all begins and mostly ends with John Milner when most people think of Paul Le Mat. And the role was so vital and nuanced that perhaps that is understandable. John Milner is a prototype — the beginning of a character type that has been prevalent in film and fiction for the nearly 40 years since American Graffiti roared onto movie screens. He is the aging, sensitive tough guy — a good-looking local hero who realizes that his time is coming on faster than a speeding racer and soon he is inevitably going to be left behind. Le Mat captured the pathos of that position, mining the good humor and the emotional drama of the role. As he cruises up and down the local streets in his souped-up 1932 Deuce Coupe, Milner has to fend off competition (in the form of a young, unknown Harrison Ford), the cops, a twelve-year-old girl with a crush (played by Phillips) and most importantly, time.

His friends are moving on with their lives, he realizes, and he’s still stuck in the same place. The less said, the better about the 1979 sequel More American Graffiti, but as bad as that movie was, Le Mat still had some fine moments in it. We watched John Milner ride off into the sunset — gone — but never forgotten. www.youtube.com/embed/ip5Z_2vUEpM www.themodern.us

Melvin Dummar – Melvin and Howard Proof, if any is needed, that Le Mat wasn’t a onehit wonder. This wonderful movie was the second film by an upcoming director named Jonathan Demme. (Le Mat was also in Demme’s first film, the acclaimed Handle With Care, a.k.a. Citizen’s Band.) Melvin and Howard told the real story of Melvin Dummar, a normal guy who met a disheveled old bum on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The old man claimed to be reclusive multi-millionaire Howard Hughes. Dummar humored the guy, tried to get him to go for medical help, drove him into the city and gave him a little money. A few years later, when Hughes died, a mysterious “Mormon will” showed up naming Dummar as one of Hughes’ beneficiaries for $156 million.

Le Mat anchored a film that also included an amazing Oscar-winning turn by Mary Steenburgen (as Dummar’s on-again/off-again wife) and an Oscar-nominated Jason Robards (as Hughes). www.youtube.com/embed/xS7s6YkVKEI Mickey Hughes – The Burning Bed Le Mat’s co-star, Farrah Fawcett, received most of the accolades for this acclaimed TV movie. However in its own way, Le Mat’s character was just as hard to pull off as Fawcett’s more showy victim role. As a monstrous wife-beating husband prone to fits of violent rage, Le Mat oozed menace and unpredictability. It’s not easy to drop the mask of civilization so completely, but Le Mat was able to do it seamlessly and show the animal inside.

At the same time, he was able to project the façade of everyday decency and niceness that Mickey used to originally win over his wife. The role could have been image suicide, but Le Mat was able to pull it off, and if not make us feel for his vicious character, at least gain a slight understanding of him. Unfortunately, he may have been a little too good at this role. Despite winning a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actor for the part, after allowing himself to be seen in that harsh light, his career never really recovered. www.youtube.com/embed/AhB-qjIWYZg Bobby – Aloha Bobby and Rose This mostly overlooked film was Le Mat’s followwww.themodern.us

up performance after Graffiti. Le Mat took advantage of his cruising experience from that last film in order to play a guy in modern-day (circa 1975) Los Angeles who drove his vintage ’68 Camaro up and down the Sunset Strip. Le Mat played the title character of Bobby, a down-on-his-luck mechanic who fell for a local fast-food waitress named Rose (Dianne Hull). The two dreamed of life in Hawaii, but a botched robbery and an accidental shooting make them fugitives. Made for an insanely thrifty $60,000, the picture ended up being a pretty big moneymaker, but then quickly disappeared from public consciousness. The movie was not perfect and the storyline sometimes makes little sense, but it was too good to be as little remembered as it is now. www.youtube.com/embed/1N4U-96PSKY McMahon – American History X It’s been rare in the last decade or so for Le Mat to get a role in a truly acclaimed film, however this drama about neo-Nazi skinheads is probably the best film he’s been a part of in almost thirty years. Mixed in an allstar cast including young actors like Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Fairuza Balk and Ethan Suplee — as well as such vets as Stacy Keach, Elliott Gould and Beverly D’Angelo — Le Mat’s role in the film is small, but he makes a big impression.

Alex Whittaker – Puppet Master This Child’s Play rip-off was one of Le Mat’s first ventures into cheesy horror.

It was also one of the first movies that went straight to video when a planned theatrical release was scrapped.

However, it proved surprisingly popular on video, eventually spawning nine straight-to-video sequels.

Le Mat was one of three psychics who visited the spooky mansion of a puppeteer (played by William Hickey, a mere four years after his Prizzi’s Honor Oscar nomination). Turns out his little puppets were more lifelike than you’d expect — more limber and more homicidal. After dreams of killer puppets, leeches and dancing couples, Le Mat’s Alex is certain he has found the secret behind these magic puppets — but has he? Who knows, and it doesn’t really matter. However, this film did open the door to the latest chapter of his career. I don’t know if you could call that a good thing, but as made-for-vid chillers go, Puppet Master isn’t bad and was certainly more popular than most. www.youtube.com/embed/YbnAnr0boH8 March 2012 | The Modern

low tech

Upgrading to Analog Want to improve your thinking process? Take up with a typewriter.

By Barrie Creedon With all the bells and whistles available for creating documents via computer, why would anyone go back to using a manual typewriter, which has almost none?

Mike McGettigan, owner of Trophy Bikes in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, is of the opinion that the lack of bells and whistles is a good thing.

“The typewriter slows me down,” he says. “We think The Modern | March 2012

in sentences again. On computers, it’s ‘delete delete delete copy,’ and you lose track of your own thinking process.”

He’s not alone in that assessment.

“A few years ago, I got back into manual typewriting,” he says. “I saw [a typewriter] I liked, like a Hermes Baby or something, and just bought it. Then I started to delve on the Internet, and found that there was already a typosphere — an existing group of people who love typewriters. And then I had one, and then two.

“One of my favorite writers is Paul Auster, and he uses an Olympia SM 9. He wrote this book called The Story of My Typewriter, and at the end of the book, he goes something like, ‘Cars, this, that, pencils, notebooks – all thrown away. Only this is still stuck here, the damn thing has never broken down. It’s the only possession I’ve had since age 25 that’s never broken down, and it stutters out its old familiar music…’

“So I had to get an SM 9, and an Olivetti Lettera 32 because Cormac McCarthy has one of those. Then I started doing problematic things, like, I typed a letter on the beach. ” Didn’t sand get into the typewriter?

“You blow it out,” he shrugs. “The thing about typewriters is that they have massive amounts of clearance in their mechanism. They’re not finely made like a watch. A typewriter is a clunky machine, and you can often fix things on them yourself.”

When asked about the first Type-In, McGettigan rewww.themodern.us

calls sitting in his bike shop on a slow day in the fall of 2010.

“I was thinking, ‘Hippies have love-ins, unions have sit-ins, so why not have a Type-In?’ So I put it out on the typosphere and sent flyers to 25 English departments, 25 poetry departments, and 25 thrift stores.

“This must have struck a sentimental chord with journalists. The Type-In was from 2:00 to 5:00, and by 2:05 we have people from CBS News, United Press International, a photographer and a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer, a writer from The Philadelphia Daily News, and someone from The Associated Press, and behind me there are only three people with typewriters.

“I had a flop feeling, and so I start talking to the first [journalist] and the next one, as I’m making up my philosophy of typewriting — I’m from South Philly, so I’m a B.S. artist. So I say all these things, and when I turn round it’s a dozen people, and twenty typewriters, and it’s a hell of a racket.”

An event offering a letter-writing competition, a speed typing contest, and the opportunity to swap your typewriter for someone else’s is not exactly Lollapalooza, but it garnered an impressive amount of coverage.

“We got written up in over 100 newspapers by the AP,” he says, “so soon — BOOM! — Type-In in Phoenix, Type-In in Boston, Type-In in Basel, Switzerland.”

McGettigan’s second Type-In, entitled ‘Son of TypeIn,’ was held this past December. However, Type-Ins are not his only low-tech enterprise.

For the winter season, when the bicycle business is slow, Trophy Bikes has in it a small “pop-up” shop called Midtek, offering manual typewriters, fountain pens, boom boxes, Filofaxes, and Polaroid cameras and film.

The MidTek philosophy is “Privacy, Proficiency, Permanence.”

Privacy, he explains, is what you get when you send a hand-typed letter. Unlike sending the letter via email, it won’t get aggregated by Google or Yahoo, it won’t show ads, and it’s of no value to a marketer, the government, or anyone other than the sender and the recipient.

Performance and permanence are what you get when an item has been engineered to last, and not as a place holder for the next must-have upgrade, which in turn is a place holder for the one after that.

He says, “At home, I have two dead Palms, a Treo, and an iPod, and they’ll never be functional again. My www.themodern.us

March 2012 | The Modern

typewriter will work as long as I can get the paper, and ribbons are still being made in Mexico and Texas. You can even re-ink ribbons. But most machinery today is made to fall apart.”

The most expensive typewriter in the MidTek shop dates to 1924. And it works just fine.

Beyond the purely functional, there is another benefit to the low-tech.

“An iPhone or an iPod sits there downloading,” he says, “and when I want to write something, it’ll go ‘How about Angry Birds?,’ ‘Wanna bid on something?,’ ‘Hey, Kim Kardashian fell...’ When I turn on AOL, I see twenty stupid links and ads. The typewriter doesn’t distract me. ” For more on Type-In, manual typewriters, and the typosphere, see Mike McGettigan’s blog: www.phillytyper.com, Barrie Creedon lives and writes in Philadelphia, PA.

m dern the

Check out past issues of The Modern.

Simply click on the covers!

Your life in retro. The past is very now.

retro tech

Adventures in Modern Sound

By Art Wilson Having only a 45 RPM record changer in the family and a keen interest in the music on the pop charts, I only bought and collected single records. But my tastes expanded when, in the mid-Sixties, FM radio was adding classical, jazz, nostalgic, and educational programming. I got hooked on the local FM jazz station, and fanatical about the Brazilian Bossa Nova fad.

I was ready to purchase 33 1/3 LP albums. So in my college years I brought home our first, and very basic, stereo component system. I started my record album collection with the jazz LP, Boss Tres Bien by The Quartet Tres Bien.

Long-playing record albums had already been available featuring classical music, show tunes, “beautiful music,” and spoken word/comedy. But now, pop, folk, and rock were growing more creative and artsy.

The British Invasion gave us an explosion of albums.

Everyone couldn’t wait for the latest Beatles release.

I entered the Army for two years right after college. I had to decide what to do with my musical gear

The Modern | March 2012

and growing record album collection. I placed my initials on every album cover and loaned them, for safe keeping, to a young female friend. But I packed up my stereo system and took it with me.

The first year I was stationed in Virginia, and then California. It was 1967, “The Summer of Love,” an ex-

I served my second year in Vietnam. In addition to the war, the advancement in electronic entertainment marched on.

The New Oldies citing and innovative time in music. My album collection continued to grow, away from home.

I served my second year in Vietnam. In addition to the war, the advancement in electronic entertainment marched on. By this time, Japan’s products had become respectable and led the industry — Sony, Panasonic, Sansui — not to mention the cameras.

We G.I.s in Asia had the perk of buying from Pacific Exchange, based in Japan, selling the state-of-the-art gear at half-list price. We could pick it up at the base PX store, or have it shipped to us, or to home.

I stocked up from this candy store. My Sony AM/ FM/Short Wave portable table radio was a constant companion and appears in several of my pictures throughout the years. It plays with a great tone, even today. It’s just missing the handle and a knob, and has a few dents. I bought and sold (or traded away) a complete portable turntable stereo, my first open-reel tape recorder, and an early Sony mini-TV. Shortly after I arrived home, I received, from Pacex, my Sansui stereo receiver, Sony tape deck, and Pioneer speakers.

In the U.S., radio formats were specializing. One genre, commercial “Underground” FM, was free form, and the deejays played their choice of album cuts. I recorded as much as I could of “air checks.” I acquired a second play-only tape deck and dubbed the segments and songs that I would keep.

The radio talk show format was gaining popularity, and I became a loyal listener. In previous years I would listen to late night New York talk show geniuses like Jean Shepard and Barry Farber. Now there was local talk with hosts having varied views and styles.

Radio stations used tape cartridges for ease of storage, organization, and use. These were for short audio spots, eliminating the need to thread open tape reels. This was modified, in two formats, for the consumer – the 8-track cartridge and the cassette.

The 8-track housed a stereo tape in a bulky case that was shoved into the slot of a player. It looped four times to a different playback head to play a complete album or program. Every time the loop started again, there would be a thump and a slight break in the sound. Some decks also recorded on blank tape.

The 8-track format didn’t stand the test of time.

The cassette is a self contained two reel system in an enclosed plastic case playing mini-sized tape at slow speed. This achieved great acceptance and success.

There’s more to come in the saga of changing physical electronic audio formats.

Art Wilson is a Philadelphia-based musician, teacher, software specialist and retired chemist. www.themodern.us

March 2012 | The Modern

DJ Dimitry Mak He calls ‘em out. To the dance floor we run.

Le Tigre | “Deceptacon” An electro-clash/indie/hipster/post-riot grrrl (or a thousand other sub-genres) classic, in 2000-2002 you couldn’t go to a party without hearing this or Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away.”

Kelly Clarkson | “Since U Been Gone” Simply the greatest pop rock song of the last 15 years.‘Nuff said!

Beastie Boys | “Get It Together” – “Sabotage” Obviously the big single off Ill Communication, but this was probably my favorite track from that album.

Add Q-Tip to the mix and a Eugene McDaniels sample and you’ve got a winning combination. If I had to choose a runner-up track from this album, it would have to be “Alright, Hear This,” if only for the Graffiti Rock sample.

Phil Collins featuring Philip Bailey | “Easy Lover” It’s one of those songs that makes you feel like a world without this song is not a world worth living in. I can listen to this song on repeat for hours. It just doesn’t get old for me. Philip Bailey’s falsetto vocals just make this track that much sweeter. I mean, I could write a whole new paragraph about Earth, Wind, & Fire, but we’ll keep it short here.

Outkast | “Spottieottiedopaliscious” This song just makes me wanna bounce.

Easily one of the most recognizable horn hooks ever and the fact that they’re not a sample makes it even that much better. There is a Genesis sample thoughout, so this is Phil Collins’ second entry on this list (go Phil!). Also, can we get a new Outkast album SOON?

Follow DJ Dimitry Mak here www.facebook.com/djdimitrymak and here www.twitter.com/dimitrymak

dig this dvd

Bewitched

The Complete First Season (1964–1965)

Sony 2006 Is Samantha Stevens a satanic disciple of The Great Deceiver?

Could be: she consistently breaks her promise of “no witchcraft” to Darrin.

By Ronald Sklar When Bewitched premiered in the fall of 1964, it was so high-concept that during its first few episodes, it needed a narrator to tell us that Samantha was a witch. This introduction was delivered ironically, informing us that she was supernatural and yet just like us, using favorite sixties comfort-food buzzwords as “typical suburban housewife” and “All-American girl.”

However, it was the powerful charisma of Elizabeth Montgomery that allowed her to stride the two worlds, and she expertly rode that broom into permanent pop-culture bewitching belovability.

The magic struck an immediate chord: the show was a hit from its very first episode, and was the second-most-watched program on television (after Bonanza). Viewers, increasingly tired of the same old living-room comedies, now had a fresh coat of paint to watch dry. The series’ writers — still bound by preThe Modern | March 2012

All In the Family convention – managed to take it up at least one notch.

That fall, the TV suburbs were dominated by a Martian, a living doll, identical twin cousins, oilrich hillbillies, two sets of monster families (and a year later, a genie and a talking car). However, it was Samantha Stevens who set the tone for what a supernatural sitcom should be, and the friendly formula would follow for decades (think Charmed and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch). That recipe is heavy on the normal and the likable, light on the satanic darkness.

Still, the show is both a shining example and a hapless victim of its genre — every episode ends in a passionate kiss and the swell of a full orchestra, but it also delivers on much deeper levels. Ultimately, though, it’s weighed down by no-no’s.

The plot, as we all know, is infuriating: man marries witch; same man insists that wife refrains from using her natural-born powers so that the couple could live a “normal” life. Ha ha. As a result, we are robbed of some intensely intriguing storylines and amazing possibilities for the sake of sitcom shenanigans. Entire theses have been written on Darrin’s fear of Samantha’s power, and his desire to control it and contain it. This may be, but had Darrin been more curious and more open to play, we would have been left with a far more interesting premise.

The writing is determined to be moralistic and honorable and given to easy, repeatable conflict: witch gives up her magical life in order to live humbly with the mortal she loves. The writers delight in the fact that Samantha uses her brains – not her nose — to get herself out of sticky situations, some even caused by magic gone awry. We as a nation, however, are affectionate but not always amused. We want to see her conjure herself into a tizzy. Instead, what we get is mild trickery: a man gets turned into a dog. George Washington is sitting on the barcolounger. Been there, etc. www.themodern.us

Subversion, however, comes in strange forms.

Although it’s never really officially noted, Samantha is rather lax in her promise to refrain from witchcraft. We see her during the day, zapping up a pool in the backyard so she could take a quick dip; we see her snap clean her dirty dishes, magically fold her laundry, and have a quickie lunch with her mother in Paris. This is not the same young wife who takes a vow of non-witchcraft in front of her husband. “Maybe I can taper off,” she resolves to herself in the very first episode, but she never truly does, and we realize that she is ultimately what witches have been accused of for centuries: a deceiver.

In fact, she breaks rules quite recklessly, with little or no remorse. When Darrin pays too much attention to a televised baseball game, Sam creates an impromptu rainstorm, which causes a postponement of the game. Even in the opening credits, an animated Samantha transforms herself into a cat, and then back into herself (a trick that would bring intense disapproval from the “real” Darrin).

She says to her mother, “I promised Darrin no witchcraft, and no witchcraft is what he’s going to get.” This is wholly untrue. Her promise is conditional at best.

Meanwhile, we see Darrin slowly realize that he married into more than he bargained for. He wonders — more often than not — if he can truly trust his new bride. If anything good or bad happens to him, he contemplates uneasily if his good or bad fortune is as a result of witchcraft. He also wonders about his wife’s true age, and ultimately, his own mortality.

We can’t help but feel Darrin’s pain, yet at the same time, we wonder about his ability to deal with his own trust issues. He drowns them in alcohol, which in the Sixties was seen as cute and funny.

In the beginning, witchcraft is a scary and incomprehensible thing. He says to his wife nervously, “You’re telling me you took a live person and turned him into a dog?” However, like anything else, her powers become ordinary and less shocking as the series goes on. By the end of the run, we’ve seen it all before. (But we never tire of watching actors get www.themodern.us

“frozen” in place!).

Still, Darrin can’t help but wonder if he was under a spell when he fell in love with Samantha — bewitched, to use the correct term. It’s not entirely unlikely — while Darrin naps, Samantha and Endora literally change his facial features to see if they can improve upon them. This could be the ultimate in ego bruising from which an insecure man may never recover.

We know next to nothing about Darrin (he’s from Missouri and he served in the Army), and we know even less than that about Samantha (we can only guess about her past life, which was long and presumably privileged and colorful).

Darrin covers his blurting out that he’s in a mixed marriage by saying, “I’m English and she’s Norwegian.” Similarly, Samantha faces bigotry when contemplating telling the world what she truly is (her aunt advises her: “You’d better take out lots of fire insurance,” referring to witches being burned at the stake). In the spirit of this civil-rights era, the witches contemplate a non-violent march to protest witch-discrimination at Halloween. Sounds a bit cutesy, but this was powerful stuff in its day.

It’s meant to be adorable that Darrin is so in love with his wife that he will put up with a mountain slide of crap, including a literal mother-in-law from Hell. Endora (played with relish by Agnes Moorehead) looks down her nose at “mortals” (called in this first season “humans” and “animals” and eventually toned down to “mortals”).

She barely shows him a smidgeon of respect by constantly effing up his name: Daniel, Durwood, Dumbo, Dobbin, Derek, Darwin. This being the golden age of mother-in-law jokes, the humor was probably more potent during its first run. “Mortals are their own worst enemies,” Mother observes about her son-in-law’s creed, but that doesn’t stop her from playing with him like a cat cornering a mouse.

Endora — worldly, bigoted, cranky and potentially dangerous — accuses her daughter of slumming, marrying beneath her (and in a mixed March 2012 | The Modern

dig this dvd marriage, no less), and giving up a life without boundaries, “trading it all for a quarter-acre of crab grass.” We actually can’t help but see her point, and wonder how much more interesting the show may have been had the writers not worked so hard to take the high road.

“Mortals don’t seem to know how to do anything too well,” Endora later observes, though she never admits that the playing field is not level.

One of this first season’s many highlights is a visit

from Samantha’s drama-queen father, played by the Shakespearian actor Maurice Evans. He and Endora were television’s first separated couple, yet when they get together you’re watching heavy acting at its finest. ”Maurice, control yourself,” Endora purrs like the first lady of the American theater, as her estranged (and strange) husband telepathically shatters glass when he learns that his daughter married a mortal.

The original desperate housewife, Gladys Kravitz (played in the first two seasons by the Don-Knottslike Alice Pearce), is another tragic figure. We laugh at her mistakenly witnessing Samantha’s witchcraft and miserably failing to prove it to her hapless husband and to the world. But she knows; she sees.

“Abner,” Mrs. Kravitz screams after spying a cat transform into a sexy lady, “there’s a woman in a fur coat lapping up the milk!”

Her husband, Abner (underplayed brilliantly by George Tobias), is at the ready with her “medicine,” which must be a form of liquid heroin, and is supposed to keep her tranquilized. Gladys knows what she sees, but the devil never gets his due.

Abner longs to spend his retirement reading the The Modern | March 2012

newspaper and practicing the flute (and why does he sit around the house in a shirt and tie?). We wait for Abner to actually see what he needs to see so that all of us can get some closure, but instead — like on all sitcoms — we are trained to expect the expected.

“Your kitchen is so uncluttered and it’s after six,” Mrs. Kravitz notices nervously of Samantha’s housewifery, sniffing for clues about this mysterious new neighbor, and in every single case — with no exception — getting an eyeful of evil.

The series takes place in the heart of Sixties suburbia, which, in and of itself was a new, magical and strange place for many Americans at the time (the series’ original title was The Witch of Westport). Sam is adjusting to Morning Glory Circle almost the same way millions of housewives were adjusting to their split-levels. In a supermarket, a demonstrator of an electric garage-door opener says to Sam, “How’s that for magic?” “Not bad!” Sam replies, truly impressed.

In an age in which being a hausfrau was status quo, Sam wears the label like a blue ribbon. Her mother complains, “Samantha, you’re acting like a typical suburban housewife!” “Thank you,” Sam replies proudly, actually taking it as a compliment.

Another magical, often-misunderstood aspect of modern life is advertising, and although we are told that Darrin is an account executive for McMann and Tate, we also see him writing copy, creating illustrations and generating quaint ideas that wouldn’t rate as a passable ad for Penny Saver. It’s the real Mad Men: TV characters are drinking hard liquor in the office in the middle of the afternoon.

Is Darrin the creative genius we are constantly being told he is? Take the Pepsi Challenge: a poster for a dress company goes like this: “He’d Like to Hold Your Hand When You’re Wearing a Dress From…” (based on the biggest hit of that year, The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” but how would we really know that now?). This is a world filled with old white men, but with no CEOs or marketing directors: all clients are from family-run businesses. For instance, Castor Soup Company is actually run by Mr. Castor, and so on.

Says boss Larry Tate about one client: “He goes through ad agencies like women go through new dresses.” On a second look at Larry, we find that he is deliciously amoral (anything for the sake of winning a client — “I’ll buy that,” he says of Darrin’s latest idea, “until you think of something better.”). At the beginning of the series only, Larry is painted as an adulterer, making unwholesome moves on women while faithful wife Louise waits at home. We also get a glimpse into his psyche when he confides in Darrin www.themodern.us

about his seven years in analysis: “When the doctor told me not to come back because I was cured, I felt rejected.”

Before the show was an instant hit and brought in millions of dollars for its struggling network, execs were at first nervous that the series would suggest that Samantha and her family were Satanists (at least one reference to Lucifer and Beelzebub are mentioned in this first season, but never again).

Sam, however, is careful to celebrate Christmas and to perform mitzvahs (she helps orphans and misunderstood children); everything Jesus would do. We should probably not pay too much attention when she tells us that her birthday is 6/6.

The series’ first season deals brilliantly with sensitive subjects: mortality, bigotry, and infidelity. Not bad, considering that the show was essentially working with network constraints and limited to the most vanilla of situations. Still, it’s TV Land: men feel free to punch each other in the face when the spirit moves them, and couples drink like fish (even Louise Tate, who is pregnant, yearns for and gets a stiff drink).

The situations can get surprisingly sexual, although it’s Morse-coded to us. For a short stay, the house next door is occupied by the stunning Pleasure O’ Riley, who puts Darrin to the fidelity test. Only a few episodes later, her even-more-stunning sister, Danger O’ Riley, moves in as well, and plays with Darrin’s resolve, to Endora’s delight. These babes cannot hold a candle up to Samantha, who says, “Hello, Danger,” to the neighbor as if it means more than just a mere greeting. Sam is unflappable.

In addition to sex, we get politics (but only as far as stumping for a city councilman, which is safe enough, and tiresome too. Also, she exercises her civic duty by campaigning for a traffic light on Morning Glory Circle, thereby letting us know she’s a good witch).

Elizabeth Montgomery owns the role and the series from Scene One. With her cat-that-ate-thecanary smile, she effortlessly commands, steers and navigates, totally in charge. She is not afraid of what is unknown to us, the way everybody else is, so she puts us at ease.

We also get Paul Lynde in a pre-Uncle-Arthur role (he plays a loser driving instructor), but the seeds are already planted. (Sam: “Would you like to join me in a cup of coffee?” His response: “Do you think we could both fit?”) Sam’s relatives keep coming – mostly uninvited, and the only one Darrin seems to have tolerance for is the ancient, bumbling Aunt Clara (played by Marion Lorne, and you either love her or hate her, but try loving her.). www.themodern.us

March 2012 | The Modern

This DVD is colorized for your protection and/ or your outrage. You are being pandered to because you are not sophisticated enough to appreciate the art in its original, black-and-white form. About two decades previous, colorization was a major sore spot for true video affectionados and other hopeless nerds. However, the computerized color here is so vibrant and the lighting so subtle and amazing that you can screw the original black-and-white. You do get a choice, but watch it this way, for more magic.

retro check

w

Patty and Cathy Lane’s Turn Ons One pair of matching bookends, different as night and day. Of that much we’re sure, knowing their retro checklist.

Cathy

    

Zanzibar Berkeley Square Minuet Ballet Russe

Patty

  

Brooklyn Heights Rock and roll Hot dogs

Crepe Suzette

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQTqKcojrVY

retro merch

Jay S. Jacobs

Pop Rocks It’s a candy. It’s a science experiment. It’s a munition.

By Jay S. Jacobs Finally, we were able to not just taste the flavor of our food exploding in our mouths, but to actually feel it too.

It was the perfect candy for the fizzy Seventies.

Actually, though, Pop Rocks were invented two decades earlier, in 1956, by scientist William A. Mitchell, who worked for mega-corporation General Mills. Essentially it was a carbonated candy made up of sugar, lactose, corn syrup, flavoring and (science nerd alert!) carbon dioxide gas. It was the CO2 that gave Pop Rocks its unique fizzing, popping sensation.

As The Science Guy would map it out, the mixture of ingredients were boiled together and then the CO2 was added at about 600 PSI. (No, I don’t know what that means, either.) The carbon dioxide forms small bubbles in the candy.

When the candy mixes with saliva, it melts, and releases the bubbles of gas with a series of little bangs and pops.

Pop Rocks were finally detonated on the public in 1975, when they were released to candy counters in orange, cherry and grape flavors for the whopping price of $0.15 a packet.

They became a sensation. Then, they quickly inspired an urban legend. Poll anyone of a certain age and they will have heard the story that fatally linked the candy with child actor John Gilchrist, who played Little Mikey in a legendary commercial for Life Cereal. (“He won’t eat it. He hates everything.”) However, according to the tale, Mikey hated everything but Pop Rocks. Unfortunately, it seems that the candy www.themodern.us

was just a gateway snack for him. So one day, as the legend goes, he decided to add to the thrill by mixing his Pop Rocks with Coca-Cola. According to the story, his head exploded, David Cronenberg-style.

(Other variations of the fable involved his stomach bursting.).

Of course, it wasn’t true; there is less carbon dioxide in Pop Rocks than in a can of soda, so even mixed together there was not close to enough to cause an explosion. Besides, Hollywood still pulls Gilchrist out periodically for “Where Are They Now?” specials. He is very much alive (he works as a lawyer in New York) and he still has a head.

With this odd bit of negative publicity, General Mills went into spin mode, taking out ads, mailing letters to school principals and creating an open letter to parents – all to assure people that their product will not blow up their kids.

By 1983, though, declining sales and the candy’s very short shelf life caused General Mills to discontinue Pop Rocks.

Other companies have revived the brand periodically over the years.

However, recently, there has been a little explosion of interest in the little popping candies. In 2006, Dr. Marvin J. Rudolph, who helped usher the rocks from lab to candy counters, wrote a history of the food called Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America’s Revolutionary Candy. The brand has also been revived by an Atlanta company called Pop Rocks, Inc., who have made this favorite retro treat again available — though a bit harder to find — for pop fans all over the world.

Jay S. Jacobs is the author of the books Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits and Pretty Good Years: A Biography of Tori Amos. He is also senior editor and founder of the pop culture web magazine www.popentertainment.com.

March 2012 | The Modern

modern marketplace

Crazy 4 Cravats!

Jack of Arts

We’re fit to be tied by this swinging cyber-tie shop. Check out the merch and see which tie best suits you. www.etsy.com/shop/Crazy4Cravats

See Jack of Arts for all of your vital, urgent and/or most important purchases: mousepads, refrigerator magnets, pet clothes, coasters and MORE! http://www.zazzle.com/jack_of_arts

I get around

Hey, Taxi!

Len Shiller’s Brooklyn garage contains this classic (and now retired) New York chariot: The Checker Cab. Checker Cabs like these were busy on screen as well as on the road — driven by such legendary characters as Travis Bickle and Phoebe Buffay.

1980

1976

Taxi Driver

1977-82

The classic sitcom Taxi.

The Modern | March 2012

The Blondie video “Call Me.”

1988

1986

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Scrooged

1990s

1989

Friends

Major League

www.themodern.us

parting

sh t

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPYWL3dkRQY Poor, mousy Judy Carne. Her Love on a Rooftop won’t survive, and it shows.

She’s hopelessly lost between Elizabeth Montgomery’s smooth, finishingschool charm and Marlo Thomas’ deliberate adorableness.

History will show us that Carne has no business sitting her sorry ass on that couch. She’ll make her mark only a few short years later, as the “sock-itto-me girl” on Laugh In. Here, she attempts to explain that she’s not really going anywhere, and don’t we know it. In fact, we’re not sure what the hell she’s saying.

Marlo makes a game attempt to sum up the Thursday night lineup, as though it is akin to brain surgery or an SAT comprehension test.

Ultimately, she just figures “eff it” and simply lays down the law: leave your TV tuned to ABC starting starting at 8:30 and in color and no harm will come to you. Sold!

Ronald Sklar