Apocalypse & Movies & BushCo Posted by Bill Benzon, 05 Sep 2007 05:36 am
More Portents, Signs of the Apocalypse
By order of King George:
The Bush Rules:
I took these photographs while standing on Governors Island, in New York harbor between the southern tip of Manhattan and Red Hook, Brooklyn. This is where Reagan and Gorbachov met in December of 1988, marking the quasi-official end to the Cold War.
BTW, my buddy Tim Perper tells me that the original Gojira has been released on DVD, uncut, without Raymon Burr.
Bill Benzon, WAAGNGNP Minister of Visual Propaganda
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Responses to “More Portents, Signs of the Apocalypse”
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 7:21 am 1. JP Stormcrow said …
Prompted me to read the Wikipedia article on Governor’s Island. Best trivia - Dick and Tommy Smothers were both born on the island in the ’30s.
In the immigration theme, it was the first stopping point for the first Dutch settlers when it was known as Noten Eylant.
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 10:02 am 2. Oaktown Girl said …
Lovely photos as always, Bill.
It’s telling about our current state of affairs that my very first thought when I viewed these images was about US citizens being locked-down inside, like prisoners.
Only a few seconds later did my brain register the irony of the signs vs. the “welcoming symbol” of the Statue of Liberty.
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 4:38 pm 3. James Killus said …
It’s interesting that immigration is one of the issues where Bush is actually far less evil than the majority of his supporters. Of course that is because of the “immigrants as a dagger pointed at the heart of labor” thing, which is to say a corporatist vs populist issue, but it’s relevant nonetheless.
Bush’s main cohort of supporters are so rabidly anti-immigrant that they would really not be satisfied until there are INS squads raiding every house where Spanish is suspected of being spoken, and all the Latinos in the US, (save possibly for the more foam-at-the-mouth anti-Castro Cubans) are deported “back where they came from,” which is to say, Mexico. I’m pretty sure that includes those whose ancestry in California, New Mexico, etc. predates the formation of the Republic.
A friend of mine who is Asian-American once gave his German girlfriend a little demonstration of what the U.S. was really like. They both crossed over a footbridge into Mexico for lunch, then returned. The border guard asked to see his passport. She got waved through–despite her obvious German accent.
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 5:34 pm 4. spyder said …
From last week’s issue of the Tucson Weekly (apropos to this thread i think, especially recognizing that Bush’s own position is {dare i say it} to the left of his major supporters):
The Skinny was so very sad to see the Weekly World News put out its final print edition last week. For more than two decades, we’ve been enjoying how the supermarket tabloid had the guts to out senators as space aliens, chronicle the adventures of Bat Boy and reveal that the newly married couple of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had adopted a shaved chimp.
But there’s still a place to turn to for news bulletins from an alternative dimension: The Arizona Republican Party. Party boss Randy Pullen lives in a world where Mexicans are smuggling guns into U.S. schools and Arizona Republicans stand firmly with President Bush on immigration issues against those no-good Democrats.
Pullen combines these unlikely scenarios with such a weird mix of shopworn political phrases that you gotta wonder if newly arrived press guy Brett Mecum cut his teeth working for The Onion: “Democrats’ politics of hate.” “Surrendering to terror.” “Abysmal record of higher taxes, higher spending.” Really, guys: These are pretty simpleminded loads you’re shoveling.
But Pullen’s serious problem isn’t that he’s eroding his credibility with absurd charges that have zero basis in reality, or that he has a press guy who feeds him a big bowl of frosted cliché flakes every morning.
The real problem is, of course, illegal immigration. Pullen rode into office with the support of the illegal-immigration crowd and turned on both Jon Kyl and John McCain when they gambled on immigration reform earlier this year. That more or less earned him the enmity of the business end of the GOP.
But even for Pullen, there’s a step too far on illegal immigration: The LAW initiative, or Legal Arizona Workers, the hardliners’ wet dream of shutting down any employer who’s busted even once for knowingly hiring an illegal worker. We think that’s a tad harsh, but, hey, we’re not the party of pro-business.
Pullen has denounced the initiative, saying that the new law passed by state lawmakers this year should be given a chance to work.
That’s a dangerous break with what’s left of his backers. Given that Pullen only won the chairmanship by four votes, how much support can he afford to lose?
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 5:34 pm 5. christian h. said …
Bill, thanks for these photos. In particular, thanks for reminding me of one of the grievances of the colonists against King George V.:
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
Of course, that one is closely connected to this:
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Definitely something to think about.
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 7:11 pm 6. JP Stormcrow said …
Speaking of Gojira, I have no idea to what extent this short is still known in popular culture. It was a frequent lead-in to midnight movies back in the day.
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on 05 Sep 2007 at 8:20 pm 7. JP Stormcrow said …
OT (a bit), but via Auguste at Pandagon quite the post at Group News Blog inspired by the Jena case.
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on 06 Sep 2007 at 1:17 pm 8. spyder said …
On the subject of immigration, media, and so forth, i was referenced this book today (and was shocked i hadn’t paid attention to it before). Of particular note is Chapter Three. Autopsy of a Rat: Sundry Parables of Warner Brothers Studios, Jewish American Animators, Speedy Gonzales, Freddy López, and Other Chicano/Latino Marionettes Prancing about Our First World Visual Emporium; Parable Cameos by Jacques Derrida; and, a Dirty Joke
and i quote from the opening piece:
It goes without saying, but I highlight it for you anyway, that this book-length peripatetic sampling of defamatory “Mexican”/Latina/o portraitures has not been fashioned in a political or aesthetic vacuum. Like Native Americans, African Americans, and Irish Americans (just to name a few indicted ethnic “flavors” from this century alone), Latina/o Americans have represented a subject[ed] population—that is, until quite recently, they have not contributed to mainstream, mass cultural textual and cinematic representations of their own communities; even when they have contributed, said acts of art have not dominated gallery space at MOMA or rollicked box office tills from Tulsa to Portland to Texarkana.
One has only to remember how Tarzan films, Zulu Technicolor extravaganzas, and blaxploitation feature films (remarkably enjoying a renaissance in cinema art houses of late) like Mandingo (1975, directed by Richard Fleischer and produced by noted schlockmeister Dino De Laurentis) concretized notions of the African and the African American “savage” to sense that this is true. And not least interesting, with specific regard to Mandingo, is the way said film, a guilty pleasure of a screening if there ever was one, fuses violence and sexuality, a copulative combo that will become familiar to us in the pages of our Tex[t]-Mex odyssey.
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on 07 Sep 2007 at 12:17 am 9. Porlock Junior said …
(Hey, maybe I can post this! The first time I tried previewing it, I was told to enter the magic number I saw, which I had done in the first place. So I disabled proxies, backed up to where I had written the posting, and tried again — except the magic number had freekin disappeared entirely from the window. Shift-Reload didn’t help — beyond losing my text, which this time I’d had the sense to save elsewhere before mucking with this. Then I did a (Mac) force-quit on Firefox and let it restore my sessions; made a quick test of Preview; and restored my text, which I’ll now complete. Yeah, parturient montes, nascitur ridiculus mus, but at least I’m beginning to narrow down the procedure for making a posting happen.)
Christian h puts up a couple of excellent quotes, but one has to correct a misprint: George the Third. George V was a much better fellow, with a really neat beard and not driven mad by porphyria.
And speaking of film classics, Bambi brings back probably the only time I’ve actually seen this classic, at an animation festival in Berkeley, probably at the Elmwood in its great days (1970s). Memorable because it showed another classic that I think has utterly disappeared: Thank You Mask Man, an animation over a Lenny Bruce routine. I would really like to see that one again.
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on 07 Sep 2007 at 4:54 am 10. christian h. said …
Third, Fifth - what’s the difference? Both are odd numbers, I say! Anyway, thanks for the correction, of course its III.
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on 07 Sep 2007 at 5:02 am 11. JP Stormcrow said …
Memorable because it showed another classic that I think has utterly disappeared: Thank You Mask Man, an animation over a Lenny Bruce routine. I would really like to see that one again
Ask and sometimes you shall receive:
And today’s YouTube was yesterday’s obscenity trial. Here is testimony about the underlying sketch from one of Bruse’s trials:
**Bruce testified in the Jazz Workshop trial in San Francisco about the Lone Ranger sketch. Prosecutor Ronald Ross had this exchange with Bruce:
Ross: Well, specifically, you are talking about…the unnatural act between Lone Ranger and Tonto…
Bruce: Yes…What’s the most ridiculous thing that the Lone Ranger could do? We assume that it’s completely incongruous…He wants the Indian…To perform an unnatural act. It is silly, you know…
Ross: In other words, your were not trying to say anything about the unnatural act, then? In other words, it was just for incongruity, then? Was it trying to raise a laugh from the audience? Was that its point?
Bruce: What do you want from me? Tell me–
Ross: Just your answers.
Bruce: I didn’t–I didn’t want to encourage anyone in the audience to be perverse or perform an unnatural act. -
on 07 Sep 2007 at 12:21 pm 12. spyder said …
Third, Fifth - what’s the difference? Both are odd numbers, I say! Anyway, thanks for the correction, of course its III.
Damn man, i thought you were doing that on purpose, presupposing that George the IV was none other than Daddy Bush (and cabal leader extraordinaire for more than 45 years), and Georgie Porgie Cheney and Pie was George the V. Now you admit it was all a mistake, rather than a clever GNF styled parodic plum. The appropriate quotes from the Charges section of the Declaration of Independence apply of course to the current King, who like the III may also be seriously insane.
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on 09 Sep 2007 at 10:41 pm 13. Porlock Junior said …
Thank you, thank you. Shoulda known it would be somewhere out on the InnerTubes. Now if I can capture it fast enough before it gets recalled…
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on 10 Sep 2007 at 9:58 am 14. Oaktown Girl said …
Porlock – I saw a lot of movies at the Elmwood in the 70’s. Did you know the Elmwood just completed a remodle/makeover a few months ago? It was closed for quite some time while undergoing the renovation.
I remember Bambi vs Godzilla from when I was a little kid. It was the rage of all the “big kids” (teenagers). My thought at the time was “amusing but overrated”, but I didn’t possess a way to express that sentiment. Besides, I knew if I did, they would just say I didn’t “get it”, so why bother.
