As good as it gets for a musical. I was force-fed this soundtrack by my parents and learned to like some of the songs!

I’m sure Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee were all ‘faking’ it:

(https://www.wired.com/2011/01/0127apollo-1-fire-kills-3-astronauts/)

Quit pissing on true American heroes. The waste of energy and time is obnoxiously ludicrous…….

Well said Mr. Mond (aka Moon in German). We have schools named after those three heroes around here. My daughter graduated from one of them. In fact every one of our city high schools are named for astronauts or spacecraft.

I have read a couple of Mr. Guyénot’s books and have a lot of respect for his conclusions on the JFK murder. However this moon hoax thing is way over the top. As others have stated before, NASA could not pull off such a lie given the number of people involved in these missions. Most of these astronauts have military backgrounds and all are men of the highest levels of integrity. What about the people in Mission Control? Were they in on the hoax too? It makes no sense. And as someone else stated why would Apollo 13 have been faked? How about Apollo 8 where those guys orbited the moon and were exposed to new dangers? You couldn’t have had Apollo 11 without 8.

Can you imagine what Sinatra thought of this?

Black Sabbath was probably not in Sinatra’s play list. However, an interesting fact is that their esteemed guitarist/composer Tony Iommi has Italian roots through both of his parents and maintains dual British-Italian citizenship.

The great metal band Lacuna Coil is Italian. Look them up on YouTube.

Somebody mentioned the great Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, a group which cannot be ignored. Can’t Take My Eyes Off You took on special meaning after it was used in the great film The Deer Hunter. Valli would dedicate this song to the veterans at his concerts in later years.

I also recommend The Buckinghams with Dennis Tufaro as lead singer. Tufaro continued his career as a solo artist after leaving the band and his later work is outstanding. The last time I looked, there were several live shows of him on YouTube, including covers of many Bobby Darin songs.

I am a boomer and I grew up on the Beatles, with their first hits coming in my early teens, and knowing all the words to She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Love Me Do, but sounds like Sinatra and the big bands were very much a familiar part of the musical landscape, mainly through the radio, and I knew many of Sinatra’s songs too.

Very true. I grew up in Atlanta and we had WQXI-AM which played a mix of rock, R&B and pop. You couldn’t avoid “Strangers in the Night” or even the odd Dean Martin song coming up from time to time. Youngsters were exposed to this music for better or worse.

The radio mixes were often a reflection of the times where television “variety shows” dominated and you could find similar mixes. It sounds quaint today but families sat around the televisions together to be entertained. I know that it was common for adults to become fans of The Beatles, particularly when they got past the initial British invasion stage.

In a way it is sad that everything is compartmentalized today such that we can listen to music on demand. DJs are all but gone along with the concept of a “record album” where one could read the liner notes to learn more about the songwriters and recording personnel.

“In Clarkston, in Dekalb County, Georgia, Bhutanese are 12 percent of the population. What in heaven’s name are Bhutanese doing there?”

The immigrant influx has been present for a long time out there. I was there 25 years ago visiting my brother and went to the grocery story to pick up supplies. It looked like a third world country. I was shocked by what I saw.

After my youngest nephew graduated from Clarkston High School, the family moved out of what had once been a safe area. Just going to the neighborhood gas station had become too dangerous due to stray bullets flying around.

I haven’t listened to very much of Glass’ work to form an opinion. I know that he has a huge body of work. However, one great big mistake was when he was allowed to write a score for the 1931 Dracula film. They have shown this version on Svengoolie from time to time and it is a stinker.

Well said. I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am wipes the floor with most of these broadway songs. I tear up just thinking about that particular song.

I remember back in the early 70’s when Johnny Cash was all the rage. But Merle was the sh*t. Here’s a guy who converted a whole bunch of Grateful Dead fans to his ways at a time when the country was so polarized.

The last time that I got to see The Hag perform was right after Buck Owens had died. Before Merle came onstage, his band performed a long tribute to Buck. A class act.

I don’t wish to disparage Sondheim and his ilk on the occasion of his death. What’s wrong with these songs? Not as good as Swinging Doors but our children are doing musical tributes to these classics in high school. I don’t see anything too subversive in that. Some of America’s greatest music was composed in the Brill Building in Manhattan, music written almost entirely by Jews and often performed by the (usually) black girl groups.

Alas, I was raised listening to these musicals soundtracks and for better or worse know all the words to the South Pacific songs and others. Fortunately, Mom and Dad (who preferred Big Band) did not have the Oklahoma soundtrack. It makes a good joke in Blazing Saddles by the great Mel Brooks.

The Soviets are always given a pass, the US is the bad guy.
You never see any mainstream films (or very few) which show the evil which was going on in that country. All you hear is Nazi, Nazi, Nazi. US leadership was correct to keep the Soviets on the short lease.

Klaus Fuchs was a traitor along with so many others who never payed the ultimate price for their espionage. It will be the same way in the future with Jonathan Pollard, who is a hero in Israel.

The Cuban Missile Crisis spooked both JFK and Krushchev. The both realized that unless the more aggressive element in their governments calmed down that we would have nuclear war.

Daniel Ellsberg’s “Doomsday Machine” is a compelling read and as stated in the podcast will scare the crap out of you. But we should never forget the evil of the Soviets.

Well said. My opinion as well.

The problem with Connery is that he tired of the role. The first 3-4 films were by far the best. Then the filmmakers started injecting some really stupid characters like “Jaws” and Southern stereotype lawmen. Recent viewers of Bond conflate the latter Connery Films with the great early films (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball) and should be sure that they view those first films before forming a final opinion. Bond/Connery was an idealized role model for young men in a time when the need for artificial sensitivity was not a requirement.

The Bond music has always been top-notch, even as the franchise aged. John Barry gave those early films a cool edge. Watch for “Beat Girl” on YouTube for more of Barry, who appears in that little gem with his band. I kept waiting for Amy Winehouse to sing one of the title songs but alas she didn’t quite make it. Adele’s Skyfall was superb.

Interesting evaluation of the HIV pandemic. It jives from what many other people have observed regarding dangerous sex. You do sound a bit bitter regarding the ascendance of women but I’d be lying if you weren’t speaking the unspoken words of many of us. Now, it’s all about victimization. Were a married man to passively engage in various gentlemen’s club activities these days he would be accused of contributing to the victimization of the dancers rather than simply blowing off some steam.
Reminds me of the recommendations of Dr. Jekyll’s faithful butler Poole (Edgar Norton) in the 1931 Frederic March classic:

Poole : You should go out, sir. London offers many amusements for a gentlemen like you, sir.

Dr. Jekyll : Yes, but gentlemen like me daren’t take advantage of them, Poole. Gentlemen like me have to be very careful of what we do and say.

My guess is that Dr. Paul knows how the game is being played but is enough of a realist to understand that a man like him would be totally cancelled were he to be as vocal as he might me.

Sooner or later the dam is going to burst.

Excellent.
Every house should have a Robert Crumb coffee table book!

Brilliant piece. The notion of butt plugs for covid is as good as any other idea.

We’ll have to get Trevor Lynch to give us the low-down on the Heart Plugs!

My thoughts ‘zactly! Thanks.

If anything that the last four years has shown us is how powerless the President can be in the face of the deep state, media, special interest groups, etc.

I can’t see a whole lot changing other than the fact that the populace has now been sufficiently brainwashed to turn this country into East Germany.

“In the US, the populists of Trump did not get much from his first cadence. A possible solution would be the integration of left populists and right populists, of Trump taking Tulsi Gabbard as his VP or at least as Secretary of State, of Trump giving every American citizen medical care as in Europe, of him providing quality education free, of him taxing billionaires and supporting workers. Such a ticket would be unbeatable. ”

A great idea. Just include defending the borders, law and order, and US jobs (for real). And fixing infrastructure, something Republicans Inc. don’t wish to hear about. Our cities are an embarrassment. Adding Tulsi to the mix would also be great but people need to make choices: It’s the US or the rest of the world. We can’t pay for all of the world’s poor, not at this rate.

This country is in a world of hurt. “Regular Americans” (as Archie used to say) can’t afford an education so we have to import you-know-who to do the work. Why can’t we simply fix this country for its citizens, show a bit of empathy for those Americans who really want to work but can’t afford the tuition? Pitting the races against one another is getting mighty old.

Received an “unsafe” pop up warning tonight for this site. Never happened before.
You probably already know. We know what’s going on.

Another great review, food for thought, lots of tidbits we didn’t know.
Admittedly, my initial attraction to FWWM was my attraction to Sheryl Lee in all her blonde glory. (For more, I recommend “John Carpenter’s Vampires”). Time flies; I believe I have this on VHS.

The often ignored “Wild At Heart” is a very watchable Lynch film with lots of wit and not the usual dose of darkness and mental “what does it all mean” challenges. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern put on a very good show in this one and the film never gets bogged down. It is really a “light” film by Lynch’s standards. Cage doing Elvis is priceless.

Even better is the masterpiece “Lost Highway”, a film which will give you nightmares and almost predicted the hell which awaited Robert Blake who was playing one of his last roles. The first time that I watched this one (on VHS), I had to re-watch it the next day just to attempt to make sense of things.

As mentioned by others, the sense of man’s duality is an overt theme here. This film is all about wickedness. Like most of Lynch’s work, the soundtrack glues things together and this film in particular does that with the great Angelo Badalamenti, Barry Adamson, Bowie, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails (Reznor produced the soundtrack), and Marilyn Manson all playing very creepy music. Very 90’s if you like that kind of vibe. I have just about worn out my CD of this soundtrack.

Love your reviews, Mr. Johnson. Twin Peaks takes me back to the 90’s and my obsession with all things Lynch and the great magazine “Wrapped In Plastic”. How far we have fallen since those times!

This piece is a very good take on TP and I am awaiting your thoughts on the Season Three. Although far from perfect, Season Three gave many of us weirdos something to look forward to. I especially liked Lynch’s musical ending to every episode. I still get chills remembering the anticipation of who or what would be performed.

We need more David Lynch today!

I haven’t read all of the comments but I would like to find a source for your “Guide To The Movies” after it has been censored/banned/burned by our friends over at Amazon.

Believe me, you don’t want to live in a world where everyone is on coke because it is available without any stigma or danger in purchasing.

I maintain that there are many people who have never tried such things but would get hooked immediately given the opportunity. What did Woody Allen say, something about coke being God’s way of telling you that you have too much money?

Ugh, this is sad.

Coach Saban participated in a BLM march in Tuscaloosa and I was crushed. I hope he was misled (severely) but I’ll be damned if I’ll subject myself to this bullshit every Saturday if this is how it is going to be.

It is sad to see so many athletes being used, just as they were back in 1968 when Harry Edwards pressured black athletes who were in the Olympic Games in Mexico City (recall Tommy Smith, John Carlos and the black fisted gloves). Early in 1968, some black track and field athletes received death threats regarding competing in the white man’s track meets. We don’t know what kind of peer pressure is going on right now but it must be overwhelming.

House vote link should be https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h182

Roger that.

The question is whether the brainwashed, brain-dead populace will offset those of us who recognize the lunacy of the Democrats. People keep saying how the President has “divided” us but I don’t get it. It is the Democrats who are trying to divide the country. I’m sure that Trump will tell it like it is at the upcoming “convention” but the brain-dead populace will instead believe the lies coming from the Hollywood elites and their favorite athletes.

This disgusting thing has been the reticence regarding the lawlessness in US cities on the part of American leaders, save Trump. No balls, they all want the black vote. Period. To hell with the rest of us. Trump betrayed by his own cabinet and military “leadership”.

If Trump loses the election, watch for his version of the Samson Option.

We have a Sec. of Defense, Chair of the JCS, and other generals who have stated that their forces WILL NOT be used to quell the riots. And a President who should’ve fired the whole lot of them for such insubordination and treason. What does that tell you? This is a coup, plain and simple.

Well said Ron.
I just wish they would build that stinkin’ wall. You gotta stop the bleeding.

This is essentially a news blackout.

More evidence of “the fix is in” as far as Truth is concerned. It is like “Idiocracy” and “1984” combined. Screw ’em. These guys took over our local newspaper, laid off a bunch of great writers including my friend’s wife. Like I said, screw ’em. Nobody reads them much anyway. The idea is to give us the most shallow version of what is going on out there.

Anyone with a brain in their head is not being fooled. Who the hell owns al.com anyhow?

Watch the women’s events at international track and field meetings. The Slavic women are not only beautiful but they kick some serious ass athletically. Makes one forget about all of the hatred which we have been taught.

Another excellent essay Mr. PCR.
That book about Dahomey and the Slave Trade seems unavailable. I’ll keep searching for it.

Another good book is “Complicity”, about the North’s complicity in slavery during the 18th and 19th centuries. All of those cotton mills.

When you’ve grown up in the South and endured all of these slurs you eventually tire of all of the hypocrisy.

Why do we spend billions of dollars to “protect” the Middle East while we cannot protect our own borders and our cities? We are the laughing stock of the world. And the next generation just doesn’t give a damn.

My German grandmother used to say “this wouldn’t have happened under Hitler”. Well I say (about these riots), “this wouldn’t have happened under Reagan!”

F-ing bastards.

Great essay. This is why I no long watch this stuff. It’s gotten to where anything current sucks so badly that it is not worth the effort. Those clips were painful to watch.

That’s exactly my formula (ground up charcoal, sulfur, drugstore potassium nitrate)! But it never exploded, only fizzled. That’s OK, we had “other things” which did explode!

Great article by Fred. Brought us all together (mostly).

Like others, my Dad encouraged me with Lionel trains, Gilbert chemistry, Knight and Heathkit electronics, and amateur radio. Ended up being an engineer like many of the others on this thread, with a vein for political dissent.

The big thing was the freedom, kids roaming around freely, riding bicycles for miles, boys being allowed to be boys. We could organize a sandlot baseball or football game with only a few phone calls. Today, kids have helicopter parents who micro-manage everything. I almost NEVER see kids out in the neighborhood. They’re all inside getting fatter or else the fortunate ones are chauffered around playing expensive sports, with the parents attending every practice. The amount of money which a family must pay out these days to have their kid in sports is ridiculous and there are many kids who have never played baseball. Ridiculous.

Thank you for posting this. “The Boxer” is so profound and brilliant, appropriate for the insanity of today and what it does to us. This song is about 50 years old and it seems that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

I hope some of the Manichean mindset folks on this website will consider the source of this work. I swear, I don’t see how Ron puts up with some of the hateful crap espoused here by commenters.

FWIW, check out Alison Krause’s most excellent version of “The Boxer” and “Graceland” on YouTube.

Excellent video. Thanks for posting this.

Thank you. This business about obsession with order being some kind of pathology is absurd. So I suppose most of us engineers are autistic.

Thanks for the review. This film was on my bucket list and your review motivated me to finally watch this great film.
Audrey Hepburn has charmed me to death.
However…the part at the end where she released the Cat made me lose a lot of sympathy for Holly. Of course we knew all along that they would get the Cat back. It was as if the Cat was a metaphor for her lack of commitment or belief in something tangible. I gotta read the novel though. Things change so much in the screenplay.
Perhaps Capote’s original preference of Marilyn for Holly would have been more credible. Hepburn had just too much class to have credibility as a hillbilly gone to New York.
Holly was definitely not marriage material.

This.

Dead is dead. Don’t blame the Allies for withholding supplies to the Germans. People were worked half to death, not allowed to reproduce, and had their natural lives shortened signifcantly. Is this not genocide?

Even David Irving himself has stated that after years of research he has concluded that several million Jews died as a result of such internments and Einsatzgruppen.

I really wish that unz.com wouldn’t use the N-word in the title of an article. This is inflammatory to some people and will add further reason for the Powers That Be to close down this excellent web site for “hate speech”. Just stop it.

The President has a way with words and perhaps he is over the top and insensitive. But the statistics do not lie about Baltimore, Chicago, and other cities. Sadly, this discussion turns into yet another pissing battle between the political parties with the real issues not being addressed. Hell, the only reason Baltimore was even mentioned was not in the context of urban renewal but the plight of the Central American people at our southern borders.

Why don’t the Democrats give a damn about our own American cities and people? It is the ugly truth that they do not wish to discuss. Why won’t anyone discuss the dreadful out of wedlock birthrates, the breakdown of traditional parental roles and responsibilities among mothers and fathers of all races?

But there is no end to the rending of garments when it comes to non-Americans entering our country illegally and their treatment by ICE.

Similarly, why haven’t the Republicans taken up the cause for solving this problem? You can make the case that they have but they have been met with resistance every step of the way by the Democrats who only want hand outs instead of real solutions, no go zones instead of safe cities. The President has been resisted in his efforts to bring jobs back to the USA and reducing the influx of illegal immigrants who compete for limited jobs with the US poor of all races.

Our politicans on all levels are showing no leadership in solving these problems.

Thank you.

Granted, the Germans had Wagner, expressionism, Leni Riefenstahl and cool uniforms. I once watched a documentary about WW II re-enactments and everyone wanted to be the Nazis! David Irving was even there signing autographs.

The Germans were screwed at Versailles but it doesn’t excuse the utter brutality of the Nazis. Not one bit. Cold-blooded murderers. We have intelligent people here on this forum and I don’t see why these murders don’t trump Germany’s revenge for Versailles.

People need to go to the Axis History Forum and go through the long thread called “Beheadings in the Third Reich”. This gives a glimpse at the horror. It was WORSE than we have been taught.

I just don’t see how people excuse the Nazi “work camps”. Yes, they had some brilliant scientists and would’ve had even more if they hadn’t run off the Jewish scientists.

I am a long time reader of Paul Craig Roberts. He is one of the few sane ones out there but he is imbibing this revisionist Kool Aid a bit too deeply.

I have read Hitler’s War and 4 of the 6 volumes of Churchill’s History of WW II. I have also read many of Mr. Irving’s books. Being an American, I do remember which side we fought for and honor their sacrifices as well as the German youth who suffered similar fates for the Fatherland.

Western civilization was all but annihilated and I place the blame squarely on Hitler and the governments of the UK and France, not Churchill. The UK and France let the Germans re-arm, contrary to the intent of the post WW I agreements. Churchill was out of office, so this was not on his watch.

People should take the time to read Churchill’s history to better appreciate what the Brits were up against and how bravely they fought and died. It is popular in the US for us to say that we pulled their collective asses out of the fire. What a bunch of crap. Yeah, there may be some hyperbole in the Churchill legend but so what? Yes he was an imperialist, as were we in the USA.

I am always suspicious when Hitler is defended. I am 1/2 German (US Army father) and had two uncles who fought in the Wehrmacht, one MIA. I am proud of my German heritage but no fan of Der Fuehrer. My mother was in the Hitler Youth and lived in Berlin where she saw it all. She and her family survived bombings by the US and UK but also the onslaught of the Soviets at the end of the war, a story suppressed by our media. I grew up hearing these stories and about concentration camps (“work camps”: bullshit) . I heard how the SS prevented Jews from shopping at my grandfather’s tobacco store, how they expected to receive the finest wares. I also heard about how his Jewish customers disappeared. The family was “black listed” after the war as they were reported for listening to banned radio broadcasts. The penalty was the guillotine and they were lucky to have survived.

I never, ever heard a good word said about Hitler from the first-hand acccounts of my mother except for one quip from my grandmother who bemoaned the Turkish immigrants who came into Berlin much later and would terrorize and rob Germans who were paying their respects to the dead in the cemetary: “This wouldn’t have happened under Hitler!”

C’mon guys…
amphetamines

Just totally spot on. This is the sad reality we face today. And we all know it.

Props to Martina. Common sense. Who gives a rat’s ass who she might sleep with?

Ebert was never any fun, always trying to over-analyze every damned thing. Siskell typically nailed it when it came to the net/net of a film.

I am OK without understanding the “meaning” of Lynch’s work. Hell, people are still trying to “understand” Twin Peaks and the rest. It really doesn’t matter that much as long as we are entertained.

I think my own personal fav is “Lost Highway”. Excellent film and soundtrack, total mindf**k. The Robert Blake angle turned out to be so ironic.

By the way, this is quite a refreshing diversion from most of the other dreary threads on this website.

While important, the criminality aspect is not the entire picture.

I like the US ethnicity profile like it is. Foreigners do not have the right to break into our country and change that profile.

Total heaviosity (as Alvy Singer might have said), at least for 1970 AM radio. OK, you had to have been there.

This little episode ruined any chance of Bernie winning over the non-Communist voters. I guess this is what things will be looking more and more like as the new Democrats come to power.

So sad that a great American and athlete like Ashton Eaton has to be characterized as an “unusual looking first generation cross”. He isn’t exactly a household name but deserves to be, given his athleticism (2012, 2016 Olympic Gold Medalist in the decathlon), good looks, and accomplishments. I guess he wasn’t marketable to the extent of other athletes who embrace controversy and self-aggrandizement. I hope Ashton and his beautiful wife retired Canadian heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton (bronze medal 2016) have beautiful children.

Not at that moment, but if you are of that period of time, we certainly did that from time to time. Little kids like us knew more about these players than most of the adults because we bought the baseball cards and studied the statistics! Of course, we sure as hell wouldn’t waste a Mantle, Mays, or McCovey card on the bicycle tire spokes!

It looked like the ball was going over his head. Of course, Mays would have scored the winning run. Not even comparable to anything which happened Wednesday night between Houston and LA.

Here it is, Thursday morning and I’m paying the price for staying up late and watching that Dodgers game last night.

I remember the 1962 Series finale quite well as it was quite an exciting experience for an 11 year old boy. The film clip doesn’t do justice to the drama however and doesn’t really give a good picture of Richardson’s catch. As I recall, the ball was almost over his head but he managed to get his glove up in time. Being a Yankees fan and having just been given a case of the “Willies”, I was pumped and went outside and immediately rode my bicycle as hard as I could around the neighborhood to blow off the tension! (Back when it was reasonably safe to actually ride a bicycle around the neighborhood).

Thanks for fixing the problem. It was failing on IE 11.413 but seemingly only for this particular article.