Or maybe there’s just a No-Terrorist-Combatants-Habitually-Disguised-As-Iraqi-Civilians Zone, if you thought about it for more than half a bloomin’ minute. I know that’s asking rather a lot, and how much more comfy it is to push the auto-play El Racismo buttons on your remote control, but still…

Jeepers Japerz, have you turned into a human hot button?

Said segregated john is located on a US military base! If Satanic al Qaeda has got within a mile this toilet, then heaven help the US military effort.

May I modestly suggest that if that is the concern of the US military authorities, then your directive, viz:

No-Terrorist-Combatants-Habitually-Disguised-As-Iraqi-Civilians Zone

might be more productively posted at the entrance gate of the base.

Unless, of course, there is something of enormous military and/or symbolic value being protected within the sanctum of the base bathroom…

Or am I missing an important American cultural and/or spiritual touchstone here?

Bracks the public servant under Justin Madden’s portfolio – is someone helping steer the big man through to a bigger job?

“NEW DPCD SECRETARY ANNOUNCED
In a bizarre twist it was confirmed late yesterday that the new Secretary of DPCD will be the previous Premier Steve Bracks. Steve has been at a loose end for the last week and a bit. He and Teri conferred over tea the other night, and decided together that it was time for Steve to return to public service and that this new role would provide new and interesting challenges from another side of the fence (there are many sides to the metaphorical fence in my view). Weird, eh? This item makes no sense. Sorry about that.”

And yes, that oddball metacommentary at the end was in the original.

Now playing Nancy and Lee’s greatest hits in tribute. He was a highly original popmeister. For quality if not quantity I’d put him up there with Serge Gainsbourg, Mike Chapman and the young Phil Spector.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2142293,00.html

He produced and wrote “These Boots Are Made For Walking” for Nancy Sinatra among many other great songs (such as “Some Velvet Morning”). A sad loss of a great musical visionary. his last album was released in October 2006.

From the Guardian obit;

Of his cult status, Hazlewood remarked, “Thank God for kids that love obscure things! I never thought anyone would pay attention to those records, and it’s a good feeling. It makes me feel like I really did get to do what I wanted to do.”

About halfway through yet another balls-achingly boring mumbled domestic between John and Mabel, I snapped and started composing a telegram to that nice young Mr Hoover at the Justice Department. “They’re in a cottage in Provincetown!”

Well at least you didn’t watch the “The Serpent’s Egg”. Great nightclub, shame about the movie.

On the whole though I think I prefer Antonioni to Bergman. And Altman to both. Be fun to eavesdrop on the three of them, and Stanley K, catching up in the great editing suite in the sky.

Well, the other night it was cinema night at Fortress Zenger, and for once it was a total fookin train wreck.

WARNING/ACHTUNG/AVISO: the rest of this post will be a lot of blather about old movies, so skip the whole thing if that sort of stuff bores you!

In honor of the passing of grandmaster Ingmar Bergman, we thought we’d screen some of his work. Herein lies a problem, though; upon which I shall now dilate. Everyone present had seen Bergman’s greatest hits many times, so there seemed little point to showing anything from his magical decade, roughly 1955-1966, which begins with the flawless “Smiles of a Summer Night” and concludes with the magisterial and fathomless “Persona”: Ingmar had his ups and downs, and he made sorta-good movies both before and after that period, but for that decade he lived within a magic circle, and everything he did was pretty much perfect. This wasn’t true about the rest of his career.

Which brings us to Cinema Night. Personally I don’t think Bergman’s genius really survived the switch from black and white to color: I think all of his utterly necessary, don’t-miss-this! sort of work was done in black and white, and even his best work in color is just sort of okay. I also don’t think he survived the switch in leading actors from the sublimely theatrical Gunnar Bjornstrand to the “meh” Erland Josephson.

All of which considerations we ignored, and decided to screen one of B’s that none of us had ever seen before: the much-praised (and somewhat notorious, to anyone who’s seen it) “Cries And Whispers” — or, as a South American grad student with a poor grasp of English once described it to me, “Screams and Whimpers.” I think she was on the right track, though.

Bad enough that one is forced to watch the luminous Harriet Andersson undone by time and sickness; but by 1972 or so, Bergman’s fixations had sort of ossified, and we all thought we were watching a bad Bergman parody. Color doesn’t do him any favors either, and by the time of the infamous mutilation scene, the movie was literally booed off the screen by a room full of Bergman fans.

As an antidote, we tried to pop in “Talladega Nights,” but that also got booed off the screen within 15 minutes. Next we unwisely chose Warren Beatty’s insufferable and interminable “REDS”. I recall going to see it on a hot date as a teenager (yeah, I was the kind of teen who thought THAT would make for a hot date); we spent the whole movie making out in the back row, and occasionally overhearing some platitude about how leftists were good and everyone else was evil. Yawn.

Should have learned the lesson from back then, but what’s even worse now is what appallingly bad acting there is in that dreck. Booed off screen within 40 minutes. Can’t say we didn’t give it a fighting chance.

After many arguments and bottles of wine, we finally settled down for a full screening of “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” In a way, it was a fitting tribute to the great Ingmar Bergman.

God bless the old fecker. They don’t make ‘em like that any more. Certainly not by the likes of Lars von Trier, who needs to get hisself into a good fistfight in the parking lot of an Arby’s on a warm summer night, or something to wake his lame self up. Meantime I guess we’ll go back to “Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries” and the ineffable “Persona.” God, that one’s good.

Well, the other night it was cinema night at Fortress Zenger, and for once it was a total fookin train wreck.

WARNING/ACHTUNG/AVISO: the rest of this post will be a lot of blather about old movies, so skip the whole thing if that sort of stuff bores you!

In honor of the passing of grandmaster Ingmar Bergman, we thought we’d screen some of his work. Herein lies a problem, though; upon which I shall now dilate. Everyone present had seen Bergman’s greatest hits many times, so there seemed little point to showing anything from his magical decade, roughly 1955-1966, which begins with the flawless “Smiles of a Summer Night” and concludes with the magisterial and fathomless “Persona”: Ingmar had his ups and downs, and he made sorta-good movies both before and after that period, but for that decade he lived within a magic circle, and everything he did was pretty much perfect. This wasn’t true about the rest of his career.

Which brings us to Cinema Night. Personally I don’t think Bergman’s genius really survived the switch from black and white to color: I think all of his utterly necessary, don’t-miss-this! sort of work was done in black and white, and even his best work in color is just sort of okay. I also don’t think he survived the switch in leading actors from the sublimely theatrical Gunnar Bjornstrand to the “meh” Erland Josephson.

All of which considerations we ignored, and decided to screen one of B’s that none of us had ever seen before: the much-praised (and somewhat notorious, to anyone who’s seen it) “Cries And Whispers” — or, as a South American grad student with a poor grasp of English once described it to me, “Screams and Whimpers.” I think she was on the right track, though.

Bad enough that one is forced to watch the luminous Harriet Andersson undone by time and sickness; but by 1972 or so, Bergman’s fixations had sort of ossified, and we all thought we were watching a bad Bergman parody. Color doesn’t do him any favors either, and by the time of the infamous mutilation scene, the movie was literally booed off the screen by a room full of Bergman fans.

As an antidote, we tried to pop in “Talladega Nights,” but that also got booed off the screen within 15 minutes. Next we unwisely chose Warren Beatty’s insufferable and interminable “REDS”. I recall going to see it on a hot date as a teenager (yeah, I was the kind of teen who thought THAT would make for a hot date); we spent the whole movie making out in the back row, and occasionally overhearing some platitude about how leftists were good and everyone else was evil. Yawn.

Should have learned the lesson from back then, but what’s even worse now is what appallingly bad acting there is in that dreck. Booed off screen within 40 minutes. Can’t say we didn’t give it a fighting chance.

After many arguments and bottles of wine, we finally settled down for a full screening of “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” In a way, it was a fitting tribute to the great Ingmar Bergman.

God bless the old fecker. They don’t make ‘em like that any more. Certainly not by the likes of Lars von Trier, who needs to get hisself into a good fistfight in the parking lot of an Arby’s on a warm summer night, or something to wake his lame self up. Meantime I guess we’ll go back to “Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries” and the ineffable “Persona.” God, that one’s good.

Speaking of which JPZ does have a point above. It would be quite unnerving to go for a crap while worrying if you could literally get the shit blown out of you.

This comment has been brought to you by the word “scatological”.