(Via.)

—Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks), Mad Men Season 3, Episode 4: “The Arrangements”

(Via.)

(Via.)

(Via.)

—Neil Postman, “The News,” Conscientious Objections

For more, see http://exergian.tumblr.com/.

(Via.)

“He makes his home near Washington National Cathedral in an apartment so disheveled that he allows only close friends inside. There is no bed (he sleeps on a pallet), no bookshelves, no couch, nor much to sit on other than a kitchen chair. He does not have a car, a driver’s license or any mechanized means of transport, not even a bicycle. He has no cellphone, no DVD player, and his Internet connection is sporadic. Though he loves movies and trash daytime television — in particular, those judge shows — he has only a 10-year-old, 13-inch TV and has never had cable. He has never been to a sporting event. He has no deep romantic attachments. He says his closest friend has been Lil Coyne, an elderly woman who for 20 years lived down the hall from him in an apartment building in Alexandria. She died this summer at age 90.”

(Via.)

Last week I was watching TCM in the middle of the afternoon when Get Yourself a College Girl (1964) came on. It’s a Beach Party clone, one of those mindless ’60s movies where girls wear bikinis almost exclusively and everyone dances the Watusi.

Though I’ve never felt any particular affection for the genre, I literally couldn’t stop watching Get Yourself a College Girl. I found myself feeling a bit like Giles De’Ath (John Hurt) in the criminally-underrated Love and Death on Long Island (1997) when he stumbles upon the work of Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley), star of such B-movies as Hotpants College 2 – i.e., inexplicably finding great depth and beauty in kitsch.

The film is easy to dismiss, and as dismissals go, Howard Thompson’s 1965 New York Times review is a classic: “Get Yourself a College Girl deserves – and gets here – a one-line verdict: idiocy strictly for the birds. Or maybe the Animals. They’re in it, if anybody cares.”

On one level, Thompson may have been right. The movie isn’t available on home video, which suggests maybe nobody does care. (If you want to watch it, you’ll have to wait until TCM airs it again.)

The film’s plot – such as it is – revolves around a demure college student named Terry (played by 24-year-old former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley) who is paying her way through college by writing provocative pop songs.

There’s some interesting stuff to be found here about academe, nascent second wave feminism, and race (e.g., the scene in which, in order to show the Senator Morrison character’s fuddy-duddy point of view, shots of white American teenagers dancing are intercut with stock footage of African “savages” jumping around).

Perhaps the most notable thing about the film, however, is its music. Indeed, after watching it, I felt compelled to buy a used copy of the soundtrack (which, as luck would have it, was released on compact disc in 1992).

Produced by Sam Katzman (who was also responsible for Rock Around the Clock [1956]), the movie features performances by The Dave Clark Five, The Animals, Stan Getz, the Jimmy Smith Trio, The Standells, and Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys with Roberta Linn. As perhaps the definitive overview of the film puts it,

Get Yourself A College Girl features not just a great list of starring musical acts, but an extensive one: in addition to a performance of the title number by Mobley, we’re treated almost every ten minutes [to] … a wonderfully broad array of acts, running the gamut from two variants of the British invasion, to Latin-flavored jazz, to early garage rock, and even Las Vegas-type lounge.

The Dave Clark Five’s appearance is noteworthy because it’s apparently the first time a British rock & roll group appeared in an American 1960s pop film, but it’s the Stan Getz Quartet featuring Astrud Gilbero’s performance of “The Girl from Ipanema” that’s the real show-stopper. It may even be “the single finest performance of the entire Beach Party genre.”

In true Giles De’Ath fashion, however, it’s the stupid, sexy title number by Mobley that captivates me the most. Have a listen.

—Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

—F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper

Posted in sex, TV ]]> http://submittedforyourperusal.com/2009/04/17/the-women-of-twin-peaks/feed/ 0 Matt Thomas rs-588-october-4-1990-the-women-of-twin-peaks http://submittedforyourperusal.com/2008/09/22/james-wolcott-on-mad-men/ http://submittedforyourperusal.com/2008/09/22/james-wolcott-on-mad-men/#comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:11:01 +0000 Matt Thomas http://mattthomas.wordpress.com/?p=370 Continue reading →]]> Everybody and their mother has fallen head over heels for this show. Here’s a rare dissenting view: 

It’s a critic’s darling groomed for greatness despite long inert spells in each episode that leave everything opaque, as if recognizable human behavior would be vulgar coming from such immaculate mannequins. It has a seductive look, a compelling mood, a cast that could have been carved from a giant bar of Ivory soap, but zero grasp of the elastic optimism and vigor of the Kennedy years, the let-go spring of release after the constriction of the Eisenhower 50s. Even the exuberant pop music on the soundtrack is used as a counterpoint to the characters’ enclosed meanness and malaise. The more explaining and self-examination that series creator (and former executive producer of The Sopranos) Matthew Weiner does in interviews and post-episode commentaries, the muddier everything gets. Is he aware that Sterling Cooper is the most incompetent, uninspired ad agency ever to blight Madison Avenue? Meeting after meeting adjourned until the next meeting because Draper’s dimwit team can’t rub two sticks together to spark a decent idea. I don’t mind Mad Men as a mild narcotic, but the raves it’s received smack of self-congratulation, as if its fans in the press and online were fondling their own taste buds. It’s fetishistic praise, better left to the movie critics and their blurb libidos.

Prior to watching the show, I thought of the women’s struggle in the workforce as a problem perpetuated by male bosses. But Mad Men demonstrates just as much tension comes from the other women, who, either jealous or comfortable with the status quo, don’t want to see Peggy get ahead. Secretaries wield an enormous amount of power in office politics.

Thematically, Mad Men keeps getting richer and richer.

(Via The Moment.)

What is your daily reading diet? I start with two newspapers: the L.A. Times and the Santa Barbara News Press. Then I re-read what I’ve written the previous day. Then I work. When that’s over, I do something physical: yard work, hiking, swimming, snorkeling. Then I make dinner, read, maybe watch a movie, sleep. This last is important: I need my rest, as we all do; and I sleep well, you’ll be happy to know, as a result of having a clean conscience.

—T.C. Boyle, USC Trojan Family Magazine, Winter 2006

Related Reading: “More on Hitchens’s Apartment.”