There's Sometimes a Buggy

Elise and Dave pick up their Perez/Wolfman New Teen Titans reading series with issues #13 and #14 of the first volume - and find the going a little rough. And yet - the lettercols are alive with sound of praise for issue #8's "A Day in the Lives" and the creators promise to tack their narrative characterward from that point on. Thank X'Hal, because Gar turning into a murderous, misogynist dinosaur; Amazonian blood Olympics; Madame Rouge and General Zahl's accents; Mento's Linus-like devotion to his Mento Helmet; and the Potemkin Village setting of Zandia really aren't cutting it. Even the pre-Morrison Doom Patrol only helps so much. Dedicated to  "Rita! My god - Rita! The most beautiful actress who ever lived." 

 

Audio Credits:

Intro music: Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

 

This week, we find the Gipper playing presidentially-monikered baseball star Grover Cleveland Alexander in The Winning Team. Reagan's Warner Brothers swan song was produced and directed by his old comrades from the B-unit trenches (Bryan Foy and Lewis Seiler, respectively), and pairs him with new studio world-beater Doris Day (#7 box office star in the country that year - and rising). The resulting film treads a fascinating line between inspirational sports/disability narrative and post-war "New Domesticity" woman's picture (with songs!). The winning team, you see, isn't the St. Louis Cardinals - it's Grover and Aimee (as long as she agrees to dream in his direction). It's not all Randian achievement and adulation, however - Reagan channels some real Kings Row style pathos in his portrayal of the beleaguered big leaguer - even winding up on the cusp of Nightmare Alley ignominy at his nadir - and it's up to Doris to reclaim him from oblivion. 

  Things get a bit "inside baseball" as Dave gives in to his lifelong obsession with the erstwhile national pastime, but we also find occasion to discuss millenarian barnstorming baseball squads, 1950s nostalgia for the early 20th century, and grapple with the film's discouraging omission (at the behest of the hurler's widow Aimee) of any mention of Alexander's epilepsy. The filmmakers do, however, delve fairly deeply into the physical symptoms that plagued the pitcher - and ultimately drove him desperately to drink. Also: discover what separates Sylvester from Frank Stallone (at least according to Gareth), hear Romy's reactions to a recent re-screening of In a Lonely Place,  and enjoy the AFI subject tags for Boy Meets Girl (which we forgot to provide in episode 8A).      Cast also includes Frank Lovejoy, Russ Tamblyn (who has had a brush with one of our panelists), Dorothy Adams, and then-current ballplayers Bob Lemon, Peanuts Lowrey, Jerry Priddy, George Metkovich, and Gene Mauch. 
  Relevant Link: How to Act Drunk by Joel Blackledge (Bright Wall/Dark Room)   Outro Song: "Ol' Saint Nicholas" by Doris Day and friends (including Ronald Reagan)  

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"Driving Reagan theme' by Gareth Hedges

Elise and Dave close out their Morrison coverage (for the nonce!) with a look at an uncharacteristically nasty piece of work from the decadent 'Nineties - Sebastian O (with art by Steve Yeowell). 

 

Intro Song:

"Narcissist" by The Libertines

You can always write us at [email protected], or contact us through our Facebook Page or our Twitter accounts @milescoverdale and @rhodaAF709 

We're on all of the podcast delivery services, including iTunes, TuneIn radio and Stitcher, so please rate/review us there, if you can!

Finally, as suggested by listener Jay, here's an Amazon link to Dave's time travel novel, Hypocritic Days (published by Insomniac Press), which is set in the pulp magazine and film worlds of the early 1930s. Please do let us know if you check it out.

Original Another Kind of Distance artwork by Lee McClure

We conclude our acclaimed "Ronald-Reagan-appears-for-two-minutes-as-a-radio-announcer" series with Boy Meets Girl (1938), a Hollywood satire/"crazy comedy" adapted from the smash Sam and Bella Spewack play. Directed by Warner comedy ace Lloyd Bacon, the film certainly has its charms, but James Cagney and Pat O'Brien are playing roles originally intended for Olsen and Johnson - 'nuff said. The star duo's destabilizing antics are cribbed from the career-limiting capers of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, opening up a fertile discussion of Hollywood labour practices during the second half of the Great Depression. We also get to spend a little more time with Dick Foran in a parody cowboy role (this time, a highly paid one) and meet the magnificent Marie Wilson (Judy Holliday avant la lettre). Don't forget Ralph Bellamy! He's in the mix too, as a line producer with delusions of intellectual sensibility. 

  Among the other topics of discussion on offer: Gene Autry's Cowboy Code, the PATSY Animal Actor Awards, the Childs' restaurant chain, vintage vegetarian satire, and a consideration of an alternate timeline in which Penny Singleton spelled the Gipper in the Governor's Mansion and, ultimately, the White House.  

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Abandon all hope of a grant, ye who enter here! Take a one-week one-shot detour through Grant Morrison and Philip Bond's Kill Your Boyfriend with Elise and Dave. Also: Elise gets autobiographical (fortunately, not about killing any boyfriends) and another fine Todd Murry letter prompts us to discourse at length upon Emerson, superhero comics scholarship circa 2004, and Gnosticism.    

  Intro Song:

"Detroit Valentine" by The Red Aunts

You can always write us at [email protected], or contact us through our Facebook Page or our Twitter accounts @milescoverdale and @rhodaAF709 

We're on all of the podcast delivery services, including iTunes, TuneIn radio and Stitcher, so please rate/review us there, if you can!

Finally, as suggested by listener Jay, here's an Amazon link to Dave's time travel novel, Hypocritic Days (published by Insomniac Press), which is set in the pulp magazine and film worlds of the early 1930s. Please do let us know if you check it out.

Original Another Kind of Distance artwork by Lee McClure

Tropic Zone may not be much of a film, but it proved to be a hell of a conversation piece for your Bonzo panelists! We delve into the afterlife of the WW2-era "Good Neighbor Policy", the sadly stunted career of co-star Estrelita Rodriguez, the relationship of this 1950s A-minus Pine-Thomas production to Warner Brothers' Cagney-Sheridan-O'Brien extravaganza Torrid Zone (1940), and, above all, the economic Imaginarium of American corporate and paramilitary meddling in the affairs of Central and South American countries during the 20th century.

Tropic Zone presents its banana-based battles in strangely depoliticized and context-free terms - so depoliticized and context-free, in fact, that Romy, Gareth, and Dave could not agree at all on any of the stakes of the various conflicts depicted and referred to in the film. Was Ronald Reagan dislodged from his initial two-term Presidency of Bananas by leftist guerrillas or CIA backed death squads? And how about the film's central struggle against the evil Lukats? Is this a serious proletarian uprising? Or just a way to solidify Rhonda Fleming's "benevolent" despotism over the fictional nation of Puerto Barrancas? If this was a real country, the answer would be fairly obvious, but here on the island of populist fable, you're free to read the events in just about any way you want (at least until the climactic charge of the United Fruit Company gunboats). 

Also: Gareth and Romy argue over the probable cause of humanity's imminent self-immolation.    

Outro Music:

"I'll Always Love You" by Estrelita Rodriguez

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Intro Theme:

"Driving Reagan" by Gareth Hedges

Elise and Dave decommission this leg of the podcast with a discussion of We3's fateful finale, in dialogue with written pieces by Jog, John R. Parker, Patrick Meaney, and David Brothers. 

Also: another talk-provoking letter from Todd Murry (much of it keyed to this fine essay on the grimness and grittiness that preceded Watchmen.)

 

Intro Song:

"Wild Bore" - Mika Miko

You can always write us at [email protected], or contact us through our Facebook Page or our Twitter accounts @milescoverdale and @rhodaAF709 

We're on all of the podcast delivery services, including iTunes, TuneIn radio and Stitcher, so please rate/review us there, if you can!

Finally, as suggested by listener Jay, here's an Amazon link to Dave's time travel novel, Hypocritic Days (published by Insomniac Press), which is set in the pulp magazine and film worlds of the early 1930s. Please do let us know if you check it out.

Original Another Kind of Distance artwork by Lee McClure

 

If Wyoming Steve Gibson didn't exist, those darned culture industry stupidity profiteers would've had to invent him. What's that? He doesn't exist? Hot damn! The Gipper takes a back saddle to Dick Powell once again in 1938's COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN, a film that (as contemporaries were quick to observe) did absolutely nothing for any of the talented people involved in its creation. 

  An elaboration of the (white) cultural appropriation narrative popularized by earlier Powell vehicles like BROADWAY GONDOLIER, this lower-drawer Lloyd Bacon musical comedy does derive a bit of satiric energy from Warner Brothers' obvious contempt for all things rural and countrified, but the film's central conceit (that people will put up with - and possibly even laugh at - 90 minutes' worth of Dick Powell running screaming from squirrels and barnyard fowl) is so catastrophically misguided that most viewers will have fallen off this irritating bull long before its Gender Panic Rodeo finale.    Can a movie with Priscilla Lane, Ann Sheridan, James Stephenson, Pat O'Brien, Granville Bates, Hobart Cavanaugh, Elisabeth Risdon, Dick Foran, Dick Powell, and Ronald Reagan be all bad? 12-year old Dave would never have believed it, but...  Try watching this one under hypnosis and see if that helps.  
 

Now is a time for choosing. Choose RED TIME FOR BONZO!

 

Outro Music:

"Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride" performed by Dick Powell & Priscilla Lane, music by Richard A. Whiting & lyrics by Johnny Mercer

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Intro Theme:

"Driving Reagan" by Gareth Hedges

Join Dave and Elise as they tumble down a munitions-blasted rabbit hole into Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's We3!

Also:

Morrison, Lynch, and general culture talk in response to a fine letter from Todd Murry!

Pertinent Links:

Todd talks Marvel's Secret Wars and mega-events

Elise talks Portrait of Jennie

Dave's first impressions of We3 #1 (from 14 years ago....)

Intro Song:

"Wild Bore" - Mika Miko

You can always write us at [email protected], or contact us through our Facebook Page or our Twitter accounts @milescoverdale and @rhodaAF709 

We're on all of the podcast delivery services, including iTunes, TuneIn radio and Stitcher, so please rate/review us there, if you can!

Finally, as suggested by listener Jay, here's an Amazon link to Dave's time travel novel, Hypocritic Days (published by Insomniac Press), which is set in the pulp magazine and film worlds of the early 1930s. Please do let us know if you check it out.

Original Another Kind of Distance artwork by Lee McClure

In yet another cinematic variation on the Earp legend, some John McCain-Republican types enlist the Gipper to clamp down on the wrong kind of vice and chicanery in Cottonwood, Arizona. Reagan is aided in the quest by a pair of blond brothers (Alex Nicol and Gilligan's Island's Russell Johnson) - one of whom gets himself involved in a rather tiresome romance with destined-to-fail bombshell Ruth Hampton. The film boasts an extremely tense lynching scene, good chemistry between its protagonist and co-star Dorothy Malone, and a refreshingly nihilistic take on the hoary "civilizationist" tropes of the genre. If only Dutch's authoritarian musings had been this world-weary on the campaign trail!    Bonus: Romy and Gareth go through the entire list of American Presidents (to date) in search of "Big Dick Energy".      

Now is a time for choosing. Choose RED TIME FOR BONZO!

Follow us at:

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Follow Romy on Twitter at @rahrahtempleton

Follow Gareth on Twitter at @helenreddymades

Follow David on Twitter at @milescoverdale

 

Intro Theme:

"Driving Reagan" by Gareth Hedges