Did you see Bela Karolyi flip out over Nastia Liukin’s routine during the NBC Olympic gymnastics coverage? (Sorry about the commercial, I’ll circumvent it when I figure out how. Go General Electric!)

Maybe it’s just the mustache…

I’ve always had an irrational hatred of Bob Costas, but am feeling him here-

It couldn’t have been easy being that bald in the 70’s. But the chain jacket helps…
And Jesse Jackson definitely needs to go back to his old look!

So over dinner with some friends the other night (ahem) I became aware of this Japanese man who “got away” with murder and cannibalism in Paris during the 80’s. Issei Sagawa’s is a fascinating case, not only because he wrote about the experience, including a children’s book, but he also went on to star in a Roman Pinky (porn) film. There is a breakdown of those Parisian events and some background on Mr. Sagawa here, but none of this is to be confused with garden variety nyotiamori, which is not eating a woman, just eating off of a woman. Well I guess there is the other kind, eating the fake woman…

Bo Diddley

I’ve only recently discovered this pop psychedelic creation of Guy Peellaert, and haven’t seen any of the actual comics yet. (great, another expensive hobby no one needs: collecting vintage European comics…) And sadly, I sense none will add up to be as cool as this animated sequence, a slow load but well worth it! I especially love the lampoon of the three major western religions included.

When I was 5, I had a crush, and how much more innocent can you get, on a character from one of Syd and Marty Croft’s action/adventure shows “Electra Woman and Dynagirl”. Sure she was the sidekick, second fiddle, but the combination of a woman’s body and those pigtails set my pre-pubescent libido a-flame.

So doing a bit of hack research, I see that Judy Strangis was also a child actor in a ‘63 episode of the Twilight Zone, The Bard, which happened to feature a young Burt Reynolds. A television actress, as she grew up, she appeared in episodes of many classic shows of the day: Room 222, Love American Style, The Mod Squad, a few years later the A-team, though she seems to have retired in the 90’s.

Interesting doc on the history of hacking featuring: phone phreaks, the uncanny power of a piece of plastic from a cereal box, nerds of various flavors (duh), an early ultimatum from the dread ogre Gates, and an attempt to chronicle the moment when pranksters became boogie men.

Sundance channel is running this film and I caught it over the weekend. I can’t recall exactly where I first heard about Punishment Park (1971), but it was fairly recently, and considering the controversy, was surprised to get a chance to see it. Overall as a film, I must say, it’s not all that. But as I’m obsessed with that period in American history, it was something I had to see. Watkins was by chance ahead of the curve in terms of what reality TV has become, but the ideological back and forth between the radicals and tribunal comes off as overstated and cliche, the yelling between the camera crew and cops rather unrealistic (why wouldn’t fascists destroy the equipment and confiscate the footage?), and the “ironic hook” at the end can be seen from a mile off - or more accurately, 50 miles off.
But there is enough substance to keep this from being a “b movie”, despite it’s vague similarity to films of the era like Deathrace 2000, which came out 4 years later, and to be fair, is much more of a fantasy. In some ways, it falls into a dystopian genre with Children of Men, at least in terms of paranoia when viewing The State. Certainly a lot accomplished with a small budget. I’m always interested in films that for one reason or another are pushed off the radar, and now definitely curious to see more of Peter Watkins work.
As a time capsule, two things that are interesting are to look at how relatively naked “the pigs” are when compared with the modern day forces of control. And I couldn’t help but imagine a parody of this film, where various 19-27 year olds are lined to face “the tribunal” in the modern day - how timid they might seem in comparison…”you mean like, no Starbucks OR videogames?!? Dude…” But that’s unfair of course: more accurately the accused, if in fact youths from rejected bourgeoisie backgrounds, would be anti-G8 eco-terror types, and the virile minority man gagged and pinned to the floor would have a lighter skin tone and be talking a more religious jive. There would also be a lot more talk about The Patriot Act than the Constitution, and hopefully that realization sends a bit of a chill down your spine…