Thursday, March 26

Late night TV: caught some “Moral Orel,” an old offering from the Cartoon Network. I can imagine the pitch: “It’s just like that Davey and Goliath stop-motion Jesus-freak cartoon no one saw but we all remember from a Simpsons parody, except its about Islam! Dad’s a flaming imam, and the kid’s a wanna-be suicide bomber, sort of like how Bobby Hill wants to be a prop-comic. They see every aspect of life through the narrowest of theological prisms, and every show ends with the hint of pedophilia.”

Execs shift in their seats, stare into their coffee -

“Oh, just kidding, it’s about Christians.”

It’s a fascinating show, because it has little to do with actual Christianity. It’s all about what some people need Christianity to be so they can feel superior to its practitioners. I doubt Christians would be offended, any more than an American would be offended by a Soviet cartoon that shows Mickey Mouse in a top hat arranging a lynching in Times Square. Whatever, friend.

Hah: just checked the wiki.

Rod Putty is the minister for the local church and wears a very obvious toupee. He is a very lonely and bitter individual who is held in both high esteem and disdain by the citizens (case in point: his house is egged on Halloween). His disdain for God often finds its way into his sermons, and he has a coffee cup in his office stating “I hate my boss,” though sometimes it says “…and then you die.” His resentment stems from being a prematurely balding virgin. Putty has also displayed some racist tendencies . .

Ohhhkaladokalee, then.

Worked at home all day, wrote a ton, scanned much – although I have to keep reminding myself, scanning is not working. Scanning is gathering the materials for working. If they remade Metropolis they wouldn’t have a sweaty damned prole lashed to the settings panels of the scanner, desperately adjusting them as the program demanded.

If you’ve seen Metropolis – and I recommend only the recent version, which will soon be replaced by another version with more lost footage, until someday the entire movie, all six non-stop years of it, will be released in the form of 30 TB hard-drives, complete with director commentary (he’s dead, but they laid a mike on his tomb and recorded ambient noise for two hours) and an alternate ending version where the Robot Girl runs away with Rosie the Maid. Well, it was the Weimar era.

There will be more today, but not for now. Busy and behind. One of the reasons I redid the Bleat as a blog, incidentally, was to give me more freedom, save me from turning out a giant block of copy at night when I had other things to do. Today I spent a lot of time on the novel, and it’s going to be that way for a while.  If you just pop in once a day, there are things below you may have missed. For that matter, let’s have an open thread on a subject broached below in the Teeth & Gams entry. Here’s an ad I got from the paper. Guess the date.

It’s from 1939, which is why I copied it off. She looks quite un-thirties. Granted, she’s emerging from the shower, and hence has the unstudied hair so favored by later generations, but it’s rather fetching. Perhaps it’s me.  Standards of beauty change, though – the heroine of Metropolis seems plain by current glamour standards:

At the same time, though, in the same country, they had the startlingly modern Louise Brooks, who I suspect would be catnip in any era:

I can’t think of anyone from the silent era who seems so alive, even over the distance of  eight decades. (Yes, that’s a menorah behind Miss Brooks. It’s from “Pandora’s Box.” She’s a woman of loose morals, and perhaps the menorah is intended to tell us why. Oh those crrrazy Germans.)

So: name someone considered Smokin’ in the past whose appeal seems mysterious today. Or, if you like, someone whose appeal is undiminished. No need to confine this to female pulchritude.

One more thing: Lance Lawson Thursday over at buzz.mn. See you ASAP.