for 15 August 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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The JAGged Edge
Haw can "JAG" possibly be sufficiently significant to justify so many (even critical) words ? ? ? <Driker2@aol.com> Salon has daily Big Brother updates. And they're good. This is new new new media. It's the hand that feeds us, and feeds us well. Why don't you just go back to reading the Washington Post cover to cover like you like to and leave us shallow motherfuckers the hell alone? Well fed, Sucksters  You wrote: "You can almost hearing the strains of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" echoing in the distance" Hearing? Twice in one piece it sounds like it's being translated from the Japanese! And JAG beats the crap out of the anti-culture drivel coming from Fox (Rupert). Eric Welch <ewelch@gia.edu> You got some problem with stuff being translated from the Japanese? The Japanese give us all the best stuff. We can almost smelling the sushi right now. Echoing, Sucksters Subject: All the Revolutionaries are on CBS! I think I once saw about 20 minutes of JAG and assumed it was a knockoff of "A Few Good Men." The way you describe it reminds me of the hidebound TV programming that covered Amurrica in the late '60s like a cloud of U.S. Army nerve gas over a Utah sheep ranch. It's the return of "The Glass Teat," Harlan Ellison's collection of columns about TV from 1968 to 1970. Even JAG sounds like a rehash of The New Lawyers (or maybe The Young Lawyers), which starred a young Zalman King, in whom Ellison saw greatness. Could CBS reinvent itself as a reservation for safe TV programs, a living monument to the glory days of the Big Three? Maybe the Tom Reddin Report will be reborn as "Straight Talk with General McCaffrey (or successor)" and Aaron Spelling will remake his 1970 sci-fi howler, "The Love War." Glen Campbell. The Rose Bowl Parade. Variety shows! But who will be the new Spiro? The Global Retirement Village. Who knew? Creamed corn and Jello for everybody! Ralph Ralph's Spoilsport Motors You are definitely a man after The Boob's own heart. The show you are referring to is neither The New Lawyers nor The Young Lawyers, but The Storefront Lawyers, CBS' first serious attempt to get down with the youth culture in 1969. It's a watershed moment in boomer culture, even if the show was a complete bust (although I agree with you about Zalman King - no man who directed Lake Consequence can be all bad.) Eventually, CBS stumbled across All in the Family, and "relevant" sitcomedy was born. JAG would have fit very well on the schedule alongside the shows CBS canceled in its epicmodernization drive, such as The Dean Martin Show, Green Acres, and so forth. You would think they would have picked up on this, and adopted a whole new attitude along the lines you've described. Cute toddlers, stuffy valets, celebrity Roasts. The slogan could be "Mild in the Streets." As for the new Spiro, his name is legion these days; just ask any "impudent snob." yrs, The Boob The American in Me Philip Roth also wrote "The Great American Novel," which literally is an ur-text what with the character Gil Gamesh and all...... Best J. Charles Swift <jcswift@Frictionless.com> J. Charles, The seriously underrated- and-I-don't-care-what-anyone-says- to-the-contrary Roth is guilty of playing the American Card too often, but that doesn't detract from The Ghost Writer, Mr. Swift. No, it does not! Plus, I admire the way he lives: doing push-ups in his shack in the woods and producing PAGES. If only I could get it together like that, I could get some serious, oh so very serious, work-like work done, too. I've gotta get organizized. And I wouldn't make the mistakes he has. I'd call my book American Novel right off the American Bat. The title you remind us of doesn't qualify under the conditions set out in my piece. Maybe if he had called it American Gilgamesh. "The" and "Great," as ironic-pretentious as they are, point to another problem that certain Rothish authors fall prey to. It's a coy psychological quirk that leads to the inclusion of certian words in their titles that indicate how goshdarn great they are, but at the same time how lovable, how huggable, and how downright humble and squeezable, too. Examples are on the very cusp of being unnecessary, so I won't bother. Thanks for writing! Slotcar Hatebath Just across the River from You
Subject: Profound! That's what I said when I read your essay. I remember looking up the number of movies that had "American" in the title a few years back, and it seems like the mess started with Reagan, as did so many messes. Pre 1980 you had relatively few movies that had American in the title, and then, after the election of the motherless swine, we started seeing movies like American Me, American Ninja, American Flyers and American Anthem--a real stinker, that, with ex-Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord in the lead. Possibly the new wave of "Americana" is an indice that Bush will be elected, though it's said his electability is due to the fact that he's confident. Of course he's confident--have you ever seen an idiot that wasn't? I'm so glad you mentioned that wonderful Butthole Surfers track--I've always loved it, especially the part in the middle where they start quoting from the Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing at Baxters" -the Buttholes, masters of one kind of psychedelic gibberish, saluting previous pioneers of it. (Remember Paul Kantner yelling "No man is an island! No man is an island! He's a peninsula.") Keep up the good work, Richard von Busack <regisgoat@earthlink.net> Von B., Don't you mean American Profound! Adding exclamation points to these things can only help. Yes, The Reagan (as Zontar magazine used to call him) certainly ushered in a climate (can you usher in a climate?) that promoted such pointless jingoism. I mean, American Ninja? But stupidity will out, and now we're stuck with titles like those in every medium. Eventually, every other TV show will be called American Something, and then the trend will reverse itself and hibernate until it's American Spring again. It's easy to blame Ronnie, and point to him as the historical reason for all this American Shit. But why so much of it in the last two years? It just goes to show: Clinton, Reagan -- as Alicia Silverstone said in American Clueless, "Whatever." SH
Damn it! And I had just finished my new novel: American American. Oh the horror. I hope the Today show doesn't get wind of your editorial before Oprah picks up my book! And I though I was so coy. Russell Warner <russell@privatecube.privatelabs.com> Russ, Fear not! Let me suggest American Novel. I'm never gonna finish that anyway. You can have it! Use it in your act with American Pride and American Joy. Slotcar
Mr. Hatebath, As with your excellent essay on scare quotes, one hopes that you have stopped another trend in its tracks. You know, these are both Boomer phenomena -- why didn't you point that out? Supposedly ironizing air quotes and empty sarcastic gestures like adding "American" to your title are the bailiwick of the same pony-tailed fuck-heads who are always castigating their juniors for not, like getting involved, man! (Speaking of sarcasm, it was hard to tell: do you REALLY like Lisa Bonet, or were you being flip?) How old are you, anyway, Hatebath? Unlike most of the Sucksters, you're so un-worldweary! Are you a brilliant 15-year-old who's been feigning autism for 10 years so your family would leave you alone, or are you a 900-year-old man who's just been dug up out of a peat bog in Hackensack? I mean, "American Decoy" - that is genius! PS: Terry Colon misspelled "Prejudice" on one of the illos. M. Wilson Del., OH <mattdamon69@hotmail.com> Mr. Wilson, Of course I like Lisa freaking Bonet! Am I not living and breathing? Do I not have a deep appreciation for American acting, on and off American Sitcoms, not to mention American Singing? (Or was it American Lip-synching in High Fidelity? Either way it was CONVINCING.) Why Bonet isn't a movie star on the level of a Suvari is beyond me. I guess maybe she's difficult or something. Probably permanently scarred by the Mickey Rourke-Robert De Niro double whammy she had to put up with on the set of Angel Heart. Maybe it's better that as an American Actress of her generation she never really made it into superstardom. Look at it this way: she never had to kiss Dennis Quaid, Judge Reinhold, or Adam Sandler. And to answer your question about my age, as the exciting Penelope has found out much to her dismay, I'm a horrible combination of a brilliant 15 year old boy and a 900 year old frozen caveman. How'd you guess? And what's with this crap about how the Sucksters are jaded? Don't you read Filler? It's all about hope, Matty, all about hope for a better world. Terry DID NOT spell prejudice incorrectly. That was an arch reference to the dialect humor in such American Novels as Huckleberry Finn. Boy, that one went right over your head. He did, however, spell "camp" wrong. As you can see, it starts with a C and there's no F at the end. American Hatebath (Stay Away from Me)
Hi Slotcar, interesting essay. Over the last year I've been pretty surprised by the "US transgenerational embrace of the song [American Woman]". I could understand why Kravitz could sing it with conviction, but as for the rest of the public, I assumed Americans were finding some kind of subtle meaning in the song that I couldn't perceive. It never occurred to me that "people don't listen to lyrics", which seems to explain the phenomenon much more succinctly. You asked the question, 'If the "American Woman" is a simple substitute for America, and the song's "me" represents Canada, how can one "stay away" from the other?'. Of course, no western country, least of all Canada, can "stay away" from America in a cultural sense, which I suppose lends an element of pathos to the song. I always took it as a simple anti-Vietnam War diatribe, futilely railing against the apparently seductive (and destructive) potential of rabid US jingoism. I suspect Burton Cummings knew full well that yelling "stay away" wouldn't halt American influence. Then again, perhaps without that song NAFTA would have come into being a decade earlier... Jeremy Smith <jbrentonsmith@hotmail.com> Hey, Smith, I don't need your war machines and I don't need your ghetto scenes, OK? Lay off with the heavy duty politics. You're making my head hurt, man. I just want to groove. A quick perusal of Burton Cummings's CD booklet notes in the Buddah rerelease of the American Woman LP proves one thing conclusively, however: Burton doesn't know a goddamn thing, and he now lives in LA, not Canada. If all Americans could listen to The Guess Who's acoustic intro to "American Woman" in the full-length LP version of the song, they'd be too depressed about their fellow Man to do anything. All that rabid jingoism would be a thing of the past. Kravitz's version may be enervating, but nothing can beat that intro (repeated at the end of the album just to rub your face in it) for outright lameness. Wow, is it bad. Listen to THAT and stop worrying about NAFTA. If that LP was a hit with the people who grew up to give us NAFTA, then Canadians and Americans need to get together right now. As those people get older, NAFTA is going to be the least of our worries. Yours, Slotcar Hatebath
Slotcar - Interesting essay, and definitely a trend that's becoming all encompassing in modern cultural (ultimately watering down something that's "Already been watered down all she can be watered" to paraphrase groundskeeper Willie on the Simpsons). A couple of examples you don't mention but that buttress your points. James Ellroy's 1995 "American Tabloid," a portrait of all that was filthy and corrupt in our country during the "Leave It to Beaver" era. Also, John Steinbeck's little known, but remarkable collection of essays: "America and the Americans." Probably speaks most closely to what your piece is talking about, as Steinbeck laments the destruction of the experiment that was America due to an apathetic populace. Worth checking out, if you can find it. Take it easy, Bob Dunn Green Magazine <RobertD@GreenMagazine.com> American Bob-- Ellroy's excellent novel was, as you point out, released in 1995, and I was trying to restrict myself to stuff from the last two years - and stuff that's on its way. But you're right: as with Roth, Ellroy is another admirable author who succumbed to the quick jolt the patriotic adjective can deliver. In the '70s, a decade pretentious in a different way, these things would've had the one-word portentous title: simply Tabloid, or Pastoral. Paul Schrader was in the forefront of this shift - not American Taxi Driver, but, yes, American Gigolo. Thanks for writing in from Green magazine. Can you lend me $10,000? Or would it be easier to get $100,000 out of you? Slotcar Hatebath
This may well be the mother of all American titles. American Toenail is a noir mystery with horror undertones, its director and cast inexplicably fallen into complete obscurity. It is a black and white B movie from the early fifties depicting the tribulations of the son of an eastern european immigrant family in the midwest. The young man goes to the big city (Chicago?) to find fame and fortune, leaving his family back in a squalid little farm lost on the prairie. The opening scene has our hero trimming his toenails in his cheap hotel room, when some fancy suited individuals come knocking on his door, mistaking him for the room's previous occupant. The rest of the film has him fleeing from his relentless and rather kinky-sadistic pursuers, who use bloodhounds and a single, large toenail fragment found in the hotel room to hunt him down, hence the title. Such grotesque titles probably didn't go over well back then, so it is no great surprise that this otherwise interesting little gem has been utterly forgotten. It is similar in tone and texture to The Respectful Prostitute and Los Olvidados. Heinz Hemken <heinz@dna.com> Sorry, Heinz. Arthur Penn made that movie in 1965. It's called Mickey One. If only it had been more like Los Olvidados. Good luck with the American Genome or whatever you're working on over there. When you do graph the whole thing, I bet you'll find that it's more ominous, somehow, that other genomes. More charged. More rugged, sure, but more threatening, too. You'll see. Thanks for readin' and writin' in- Slotcar Hatebath
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