Wonder Woman meets… The Long Tail!

Yay, it’s the Cathy Lee Crosby/Ricardo Montalbán Wonder Woman TV movie from 1974, online for free (courtesy of AOL Video)!

[Updated: inline video player removed due to errors in certain browsers. Click here to view the complete Cathy Lee Crosby Wonder Woman movie.]

[Updated again, 2 Jul 2010: Wonder Woman is no longer available at AOL (hasn’t been for a while), but you can now see it on YouTube.]

Cathy Lee in this movie was my second TV crush, after Nancy, the irrepressible nine-year-old from the original 1972 Zoom. Ah Nancy, the six-year-old in me yubbearns fubbor yubbou stubbill.

Hooray for the long tail, and — though I thought I’d never say this — hooray for AOL!

Now if only someone would put that other terrible TV movie from my childhood online somewhere: Stowaway to the Moon!

West Wing Story

Washington DC, January 2001. George Bush takes the oath of office. Several hundred Republicans converge on the inaugural ball.

Republicans:
When you’re with Bush
You’re with Bush thoroughly
From your first cute nickname
To your last “not guilty”

When you’re with Bush
Let the liberals scream
We’ve got Congress, the White House, and
The Court Supreme

With grownups in charge
We’ll make Bush our Augustus
Our crimes will be large
The bureau now called Justice
Will be called “just us”

Now here comes Bush
Yeah! And he’s gonna say
Some nonsensical stuff
And a mangled cliché
And a botched, mangled, graceless slang
Cliché!

Some months later, Bush is on vacation in Texas.

Bush:
Can’t be
Hell no
Bin Laden’s due any day
So says my CIA
What do they know?

“He may come cannonballin’ down through the sky”
I don’t know why
They’re saying so

Hell no

It’s all in the PDB
Condi just gave to me
But, man alive

That thing is full of seven syllable words!
That’s for the birds!
Now watch this drive

Will it be?
No it won’t
Need I function?
No I don’t
Them are the facts

Nothing’s coming
That’s for sure
So I can
Keep to plan:
Wipe out all tax

Make a speech, sign a bill
Big state dinner in Brazil
This job’s a snap
Nothing’s coming
I don’t care
What they say
Go away
Time for a nap

Bad news that’s offered
While clearing brush in Crawford
Do not deliver to me

There’ll be no hijacked plane
Nor a big hurricane
Not on my watch
Not on my watch
Not on my watch!

Well guess what: terrorists fly planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field.

Bush:
The most beautiful sound I ever heard
Bin Laden!
Bin Laden! Bin Laden! Bin Laden!

All the beautiful sounds of the world in a pair of words
Bin Laden!
Bin Laden! Bin Laden! Bin Laden!
Bin Laden! Bin Laden!

Bin Laden!
I’ve just been attacked by Bin Laden!
And suddenly that name
Will take all of the blame
From me!

Bin Laden!
I’ll pin everything on Bin Laden!
And suddenly that sound
Will be heard all around
You’ll see

Bin Laden
Say it once and you’re done persuading
Say it three thousand four hundred and sixty-seven times
And Iraq you’re invading
Bin Laden
I’ll never stop blaming Bin Laden

Bin Laden!
Bin Laden!
Bin Laden! Bin Laden!
Bin Laden!
Bin Laden!
Bin Laden!
Bin Laden! Bin Laden!

Say it once and you’re done persuading
Say it three thousand four hundred and sixty-seven times
And Iraq you’re invading
Bin Laden
I’ll never stop blaming Bin Laden

The right loves the way things are going. The left doesn’t.

Neocons:
Check and balance
Peculiar notion
Tends to impede any motion

Always the Congress grandstanding
Always judicial branch demanding
And the factions banding
And the public meeting
And ideas competing

I want enlightened dictator!
Have your democracy later!

I want to reshape America
Let the elite rape America
“Act like a big ape” America
Liberals:
Then will it still be America?

Neocons:
Land of the free and of the brave
Liberals:
Free just as long as you behave!
Neocons:
No man is higher than the law
Liberals:
Except those who feed us that old saw!

Rights disappear in America
Ruling with fear in America
Year after year in America
Neocons:
That’s because we’re in America

Liberals:
I think I’ll vacate the U.S.
Neocons:
No place is in less of a mess!
Liberals:
Maybe in France I can get laid
Neocons:
Maybe in France we will invade!

The administration hustles the world toward war with Afghanistan Iraq to capture Osama Bin Laden Saddam Hussein.

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld:
Last month, last month
The war began last month
We shocked
And then we awed
And we won

Last month, last month
It only took a month
War is hell —
Hell of a
Lot of fun!

Today, the mission is accomplished
Saddam is out of power
These last throes soon are done

We’ve just begun
There’s more wars to begin
And be won
Next month!

But the Iraq war goes into extra innings. Detainees accumulate in Guantánamo Bay.

Detainees:
My dear Attorney Gen’ral
Ya gotta understand
It’s been a hundred hours
You’ve made us have to stand
We’re cold and wet and naked
We keep on getting dunked
Gen’ral, at politeness you have flunked

Dear Gen’ral Gonzales, we’re very upset
Not habeas nor corpus can our advocates get
Geneva Conventions say what you should do
You should not run this like a zoo
Like a zoo!
Like a zoo, like a zoo
Like a filthy zoo
We’re like animals in some big zoo

My deity is Allah
My skin’s a sandy brown
My uncle is a mullah
In some Mideastern town
I said once Bush was crazy
They came for me that day
Golly gee! They carried me away

Yes, Gen’ral Gonzales, you’re being a jerk
Your experts in the CIA say torture won’t work
It’s simply sadistic and doesn’t make sense
You’re jeopardizing your defense
Your defense!
Your defense, your defense
Your homeland defense
This offense is not the best defense

The trouble is he’s sour
The trouble is he’s smart
The trouble is his power
And that he has no heart
The trouble’s his assistants’
The trouble is his own

Gen’ral, you should leave us all alone!

Gee, Gen’ral Gonzales, we’re hanging by thumbs
And bleeding from our ears because of punctured eardrums
Gee, Gen’ral Gonzales, what are we to do?
Gee, Gen’ral Gonzales,
[waterboarding sounds]!

Everything is going Bush’s way.

Bush:
I feel petty
Oh so petty
I feel petty
And heady
And big
And I’m ready
To imprison every dirty Whig

I feel scary
I feel saucy
And contrary and bossy and smug
It’s amazing
That America is run by thugs

See “commander guy” in that mirror there
Who can that important guy be?
Such a petty face
Such a petty suit
Such a petty smirk
Such a petty me!

I feel spiteful
And vindictive
It is frightful addictive to be
What I am:
Dictatorial, petty me!

Neocons:
Have you met our friend the Decider?
The craziest guy on the earth
Divider and not a uniter
He’s the one who’s your friend if you have some net worth

He thinks he’s in charge
He thinks that he rules
He isn’t in charge
He’s merely a tool

It must be the desk
Or “Hail to the Chief”
Or all the free press
And their false belief

Pay no mind to him
Send for Cheney
He’s the one who is
Really brainy

Simple, unsure
Confused and inbred
Uncouth, immature
And over his head!

At last the Democrats retake control of Congress. They vow a showdown with Bush over funding for the war.

Democrats:
We Democrats won’t have our way tonight!
We Democrats won’t have our say tonight!
Constituents they grumble: go fight
Republicans say “boo” and
They give us a fright

Republicans:
We’re gonna use ad hominems tonight!
We’re gonna make a fool of them tonight!
We’ll make insinuations, then watch
Those saviors of the nation grow wet at the crotch
Tonight!

Democrats and Republicans:
We’re gonna de-bate tonight
But dog-and-pony shows cannot change our course
We’re gonna make clear tonight
Our poor constituents have backed the wrong horse

Republicans:
Well we won’t stop it!

Democrats:
And we can’t stop it!

Democrats and Republicans:
The whole damn country will have buyer’s remorse
Tonight!

The press:
The press is gonna get its kicks tonight!
The press is gonna get last licks tonight!
The Democrats may talk tough. So what?
The status quo’s not threatened. They’re stuck in a rut

The left:
Tonight, tonight
We’ll end this war tonight
Tonight our side at last has its day
Tonight, tonight
They’ll hear us roar tonight
And we’ll make George Bush do what we say
The past six years have seemed forever
Our setbacks have seemed endless
Although our cause is right
Oh pols, hang tight
And into the abyss shine some light
Tonight!

Democrats:
The Democrats will lose the vote tonight!
We do not want to rock the boat tonight!
The press might say we’re causing gridlock
So let’s just help the Bushies to run out the clock

The left:
Tonight, tonight
We’ll end this war tonight

Republicans:
We’ll paint ’em soft on defense!
We’ll make ’em sit on the fence!

The left:
Tonight our side at last has its day

Democrats:
Let’s hope this all goes away

The left:
Tonight, tonight
They’ll hear us roar tonight
And we’ll make George Bush do what we say

The press:
We’ll gonna snark it tonight!

The left:
The past six years have seemed forever
Our setbacks have seemed endless

Republicans:
They can’t stop us

Democrats:
We can’t stop them

The left:
Although our cause is right

The press:
We’ll keep our narrative whole tonight

The left:
Oh pols, hang tight
And into the abyss shine some light

Democrats:
We’ll disappoint them tonight

Republicans:
We’ll give no quarter tonight

The press:
Bread and circus tonight

All:
Tonight!

The Democrats fold like a wet taco. The left is deeply dejected.

The left:
There’s a place for us
Online, a place for us
Point your browser and log in on
Dailykos.com

There’s a place where we
Commiserate and we
Try to picture how things should be
Try to take down the GOP

Online
Online
We’ll find a new way of leading
We’ll find a way of succeeding
Online

The left sees one hope remaining.

The left:
Gore, Gore
Albert Gore
Please run, Gore!

Gotta do it
Step up to it
Hear us implore, Gore!

Don’t sit out
‘Cause there’s no doubt
You’d come out ahead

Join the fray
‘Cause that’s the way
The Republicans will fill with dread

Gore, Gore
Albert Gore
Jump in, Gore!

Throw your hat in
Rivals flatten
Do not ignore, Gore!

Run, man, run
So that we can stop the war, Gore!

We’re crying out for
Al Gore

As Bush’s poll numbers sink, the complicit press finds itself on the ropes.

The press:
A man like that who’d wreck the nation
Provides reporters with sensation
We must be spoon-fed
Please keep us spoon-fed

A man like that makes our job easy
And even though you think it’s sleazy
We must be spoon-fed
Please keep us spoon-fed

He tells us what we are to write
He tells us what we are to think
So we can spend
Less time on work
More time on drink!
With a wink and nod, boys!
With a wink!

A man like that wants only one thing:
To leave the rest of you with nothing
“If you can’t beat them, you’d better join”
We could not win
And so we joined him
And so we joined…

The left:
Oh, mainstream media, no
Oh, media, no

That is a craven policy
It’s bad for our democracy
You hear my words
And know they’re true
There’s no excuse
You’re obtuse!
You media are obtuse!

Tell the truth!

You should know better
You went to school, or so you said
You should know better

We have this land and it’s all that we have
That, and laws that we must cleave to

We live here, we vote
We’re all in the same boat
We and you

We have this land and it’s all that we need
That, and laws, but they need us too

They’re only as good
As they are understood
And that’s why we need you

Inform, inform the elect’rate
With real facts
And nuance
And truth!
With the truth!

The press:
The press is
Old news
Now bloggers fill our shoes
The press and the left:
The blogs are our life!

Sgt. Pepper party

It was twenty years ago today my friend Nathaniel had a big “It was twenty years ago today” party in honor of the twentieth anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He had just hired me as a summer intern. He passed around party invitations that amazed me with their creativity and erudition. The party itself was great hippie fun.

To mark the occasion, I just sent him a message that read, in part: “I think it’s awesome that Paul McCartney is sixty-four now that it was twenty years ago today that it was twenty years ago today that it was twenty years ago today that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play.”

Mother, May, I

Not that long ago, I wrote:

Now if we can just get out of April […] Our May calendar, it need hardly be said, is becoming alarmingly full of things pre-empted by April events. I dread the prospect of our new in-joke being, “In June.”

If I had known what May held in store — the death of my mom, the collapse of the Democrats, and in a little twist of the knife, the sudden closure of Sushi Ya in Palo Alto — I would have wished for April to go on and on and on.

May, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

August 5th, 1977

[This post is participating in the Star Wars 30th Anniversary blog-a-thon.]

May 25th, 1977, was not an especially significant day for me. I was aware that some science fictiony thing called Star Wars had just opened, and I even saw a brief clip in the film-review segment of that evening’s news, but somehow, despite being a nerdy ten year old, the idea of seeing Star Wars held no appeal for me.

The decades of Star Wars mania that were soon to follow did such a thorough job of entombing my pre-Star Wars mentality that I can’t even construct a plausible theory to explain my disinterest, let alone remember the actual reason. A big-screen space adventure should have hit me right where I lived, and later, of course, it did, in a very big way. Could there really have been an earlier version of me that was immune to the prospect? In any event, the opening day of Star Wars came and went almost completely unremarked.

For the next many days I was subjected to my friend David‘s ravings about the film. He’d seen it on opening weekend with his dad. I regarded his lavish praise with skepticism. I knew David was also heavy into “hard SF,” to which I, a confirmed Trekkie, had not yet graduated. He had never been able to interest me in his sci-fi novelettes or his hex-grid sci-fi boardgames, which all seemed the same to me, lots of galactic-conquest-this and enslaving-races-that.


Well-thumbed

Before long, though, I could not escape the Star Wars phenomenon and decided to check out… the novel. I picked it up at the bookstore and was immediately hooked! I must have read it twice in one week and was determined to see the movie immediately. But it was too late: the summer had come and it was time to go to Monticello!

When we were in “the country” during the summer, my dad stayed in the city to work and came up to be with us on the weekends. While he was away, we were without a car. The bungalow colony where we stayed had everything we needed, so we never missed it — except that without a car, we couldn’t get to the movie theater at the Jamesway mall, where Star Wars was playing.

Each weekend that summer I pleaded with my parents to take us to see the movie, but there were always other things to do and never enough time. Meanwhile I read and re-read and re-read the book, and my parents tried to placate me with related Star Wars items like the LP of the music. Being surrounded all summer by a day camp full of kids abuzz about Star Wars, they were small comfort.

Finally, on the first Friday in August, my dad arrived from the city a little earlier than usual and announced, “Let’s go see Star Wars!” The drive from Sims Bungalow Colony to the mall could not have been more than five miles, but it seemed to take forever. Waiting for the movie to begin I fairly vibrated in my seat, possibly hyperventilating. Two hours later my parents reported, with equal measures of amusement and alarm, that they had not seen me blink once since the movie began.

I’d lost my Star Wars cherry and life was never the same. As soon as we were back in Forest Hills after the summer, I made my way to the Continental theater on Austin Street to see it again. And then again a week or two later.

By fall it was still playing, but I began to worry about the day it would disappear from the theaters. I hatched a scheme to tape-record the audio of the movie. I fit my Radio Shack cassette tape recorder inside a shoulder bag. I got fresh batteries. I got blank cassettes and took off the cellophane in advance — I didn’t want it crinkling when the time came. I put on my watch, said “Seeya tonight” to my folks, and sat through three consecutive shows of Star Wars at the Continental.

During the first show I used my watch to locate silences in the film during which I could flip or change my tape. During the second show I recorded the audio, deftly ejecting, flipping, and changing cassettes (all surreptitiously inside my shoulder bag, as I had practiced at home) at the times I’d marked down. And the third show was for — what else? — just being able to sit back and enjoy the movie.

A week later I did the exact same thing in order to have two recordings. The crappier one would serve as a backup. Of course they were both crappy, but they were good enough to listen to again and again, the way most other kids listened to their favorite records. In no time I had memorized every word, every note of music, and every sound effect. Where other kids would go around singing their favorite songs, I would recite Star Wars.

I must have driven my family and friends to distraction, but they were all very tolerant, even supportive — surprisingly so, in retrospect. I was not quite as bad as the character in Diner who compulsively quotes The Sweet Smell of Success to anyone and everyone rather than actually talk to them. But I was close. Fortunately I was still a few years away from trying to get laid.

Thirty years later I still remember the movie with near-perfect fidelity. When I read about Edward Copeland’s Star Wars blog-a-thon to commemorate the film’s 30th anniversary, I asked myself, “What can I contribute that’s more than just another reminiscence of the first time I saw Star Wars? What’s left to say that I haven’t already said?”

Then I saw Charles Ross’s One Man Star Wars show and thought, “I can do better!” That gave me my answer; and here it is. I whipped it together in a few hours with Audacity, Transcode, and a very cheap microphone. I apologize for the terrible “tape hiss” and the strange audio artifacts. I’m no sound engineer — and as this makes clear, I’m no voice actor either. I have a new appreciation for what Charles Ross does on stage — though I do think I nailed Mark Hamill’s reading of, “Are you kidding? At the rate they’re gaining?” And all of Chewbacca’s lines.

Update: I just found this online: the General Cinema feature-presentation “snipe,” which preceded my first viewing of Star Wars at the Monticello Twin Cinema. As far as I know, I only saw this “snipe” that one time, but its jazzy tune was seared into my memory and I’ve been humming it from time to time ever since. God, I love the Internet.

Update 2: The YouTube copy of the General Cinema snipe is gone but can still be found here.

Tuiling around

These days my evening reading is Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and my daytime “reading” is a free audiobook of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (read superbly by one Marc Devine).

In last night’s reading, Vonnegut’s hero, Billy Pilgrim, was wandering behind enemy lines near Tuileries in France. And on this morning’s drive to work, Huck Finn’s narration mentioned the flight of Louis XVI from Tuileries Palace.

Never heard the name Tuileries before; now twice in twelve hours from two sources with no particular connection to each other and no particular reason for me to be reading them both now other than random chance. Crazy.

LASER: Likelihood Abatement by Synchronicity Exceeding Reality

  • 9 May: My mom dies.
  • 10 May: I help my sister start going through my mom’s apartment. Among the few items of interest I manage to find amidst thirty-five years’ worth of accumulated clutter is the December, 1966 issue of National Geographic, whose article, “The Laser’s Bright Magic,” about the invention of the laser, made an enormous impression on me when I was young. I also find the presentation I gave in fifth grade based on that article.
  • 11 May: Theodore Maiman, inventor of the laser and central figure in the aforementioned National Geographic article, dies.

Red airport, blue airport

Moblogging now from Minneapolis-St. Paul, where I am again connecting to another flight for my last leg home. And now, an observation:

At my previous layover in Detroit (yes, this one is a three-legged trip), there are CNN news monitors all over the terminal. The recorded security announcements about keeping your belongings with you begin with a woman’s voice stating, almost apologetically, “Due to heightened security restrictions…” And in the bookstore under “Fiction” there was a whole shelf filled with Kurt Vonnegut novels. Having finished and enjoyed Jailbird recently, I was eager to start on his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. The bookstore had many Vonnegut titles but not that one.

Here in the Twin Cities, it’s not CNN that appears throughout the airport but Fox News, which operates the magazine and candy concessions. The security announcements begin with a booming man’s voice declaring importantly, “The Security Level as established by the Department of Homeland Security is Orange.” And the bookstore contains no trace of Kurt Vonnegut, a favorite nemesis of conservatives.

I’m just sayin’.

Mom’s considerate timing

Moblogging from JFK, on my way back home after a very strange and sad week.

I flew here one week ago to help out with my mom. We knew she was in trouble, healthwise, and we knew she was pushing her luck for the umpteenth time by refusing (out of laziness, weariness, or resignation) some proportion of the medical care she needed. We knew that one day her luck would run out.

The point of my visit was to help my sister help my mom. Suzanne had been shouldering most of the burden as usual and needed a break. She had a big week coming up at work. I was extremely busy too as usual but arranged to come for one week. As it turns out, it was just the right time, and just the right amount of time, to

  • have a final few coherent interactions with my mom;
  • get her to the hospital;
  • be there when she died;
  • make a lot of calls to friends and relatives;
  • go through her house and pick out the few things that I wanted; and
  • attend her moving and ultimately joyous funeral.

Now here I am, headed home exactly on schedule, no muss, no fuss. As I said, strange.

Overtime over

Six years ago, my mom, an elderly diabetic, developed a massive infection. It was nearly septic, and she was at death’s door. Thanks to the extensive and deft surgical intervention of one Dr. Rifkind — who was certain my mom would not survive — she not only recovered, but lived long enough to become a grandmother, twice. She lived long enough to see her children succeed in their professions. She lived long enough to see her grandsons become great friends (like her own children before them) and begin growing into exceptional young men. In other words, she lived long enough to see her legacy assured. But she did not live long enough to suit me.

This afternoon, a brilliant May day, my mom died. This time it was an infection that did turn septic, among other serious complications. Holding her hand at the end, in the same hospital where she gave birth to us, were me and my sister. Her final words to us — late last night, the last time we saw her conscious — were “I love you.”

The eventful extra time she had was a miraculous gift, for her and for me. She shared a lot of joy she might have missed. But it was not enough. There was more joy to share.

My world grew a little lonelier today. I will miss her.