Wish-ship

I only ever saw the first two episodes of Stranger Things and it didn't really grab me. But reading in this column about the fans known as Bylers doesn't surprise me. 

My first exposure to the term "queerbaiting" came through Supernatural. Supernatural, which was on a smaller network for fifteen years, was a horror-adventure show where two all-American boys with frayed psyches and shotguns hunted demons and vampires all over America, almost entirely filmed in Vancouver, BC. Anyway, in the later seasons "Destiel" became a big thing. "Destiel" was the shipping name between Dean (Winchester)―one of the two brothers at the center of the show―and Castiel―an angel who helped them in their fight against evil of all kinds. A number of fans, some of whom had toyed with a brother-brother angle I won't go into right now, had convinced themselves that these two characters should be a couple. Of course Dean was pretty flagrantly heterosexual and in the context of the show getting romantically involved with an angel was always a bad idea. Anyway, the writers made the mistake of acknowledging the fan's desires but never fulfilled them. Resulting in much denunciation.

Fandom is a double-edged sword. These days almost nothing has what would have been considered a big audience in the 20th century. If some of the people who do watch get really involved and talk about your work on social media, that would seem to be a good thing. But in a number of cases they have expectations, and don't like being told no. Look at the world of fanfic. Now some people who write fan fiction may be good writers, or could develop into such. But as a rule it takes what is already a fantastic environment and pushes it further towards simple wish fulfillment. Sometimes this is sexual, which gets all the attention, and sometimes not. But a lot of this stuff is united by an attitude of "I want this to happen, so it will happen."

If, as deBoer says, this approach has been spreading to real world politics, that's not a good thing. Politics is a two-way street. You have to recognize that other people will want different outcomes from the ones you want. If you just expect to be indulged and you don't pay some respect to those who dissent from you, the long term results will be destructive whether or not you get what you want in the short term.

Just get on back to the twilight zone

Something I read a few years ago and am somewhat heartened to see is still online is a blogger's track-by-track review of The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse, which I think on balance is the best Bonzo Dog Band album. She's pretty on-target that the Bonzos were satirizing the popular pretensions of the time, and found a striking and funny way to do so. Most of those pretensions lived on, but what can you do?

I'd add a couple of things. First, it's true that John Lennon adopted some counterproductive attitudes toward Art in the latter half of the Beatles' career. Luckily, something in him knew better than to completely follow through with them. His solo work contains wordplay and quirky musical touches, even if he thought or at least claimed to think that they shouldn't.

Also, the "We are normal and we want our freedom" line apparently comes from Marat/Sade. Love was actually the first band to make use of it, in their song "The Red Telephone".

Language just keeps getting weirder

Here's a sentence you wouldn't have heard fifty, or even twenty years ago. "I just ate an edible." Congratulations? It might be more worth mentioning if you had eaten an inedible.

This is of course a result of cannabis culture, which has expanded since many states started on the road to legalization but which doesn't interest me. As for what they call edibles, even if you can retain the flavor as you add the stuff that contains THC, I'm not sure I'd want to eat anything that could make me paranoid. Or drowsy, beyond the usual. But to each his own, I guess.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕

Rahko is a creature in Finnish mythology. This Rahko being is connected with the moon, but exactly how is a question. 

In one version, he is a thief who was bothered by moonlight, which can perhaps be a nuisance if you are a thief. He decided to paint the moon black with tar. This results in the new moon, and also the face you may see when looking up at the moon. 

In another version, spirits known as kapeet eat the moon, and the Rahko forges a new one out of cow hooves and fat. 

So in the aggregate, the Rahko is responsible for either the moon being there or for it not being there. Or perhaps both. After all, the phases of the moon are cyclical.

What the market will bear

Say what you want about this:

It does prove that the sixties were weird on a level you don't often hear about. Of course when people talk about the sixties, what they often mean is the early seventies, when bands in faded jeans were all over FM radio and All in the Family proved that hippies were just your annoying son-in-law.

But in 1967, it was apparently all about ad men and publicists going down Sunset Strip and trying to convince the freaks that commercials are a real happening, man. There's a bit of the put-on in all this, but it was also real. An actual agency commissioned these skits and songs. From the sounds of it, they even got Thurl Ravenscroft involved. It all adds up to a huge "What the hell am I listening to?"

Purple shoes to fill

Uh-oh.

A Broadway musical of Purple Rain. Huh.

I have affection for the movie, but the story is a little trite. What advantages does it have? Prince as a performer, obviously. Morris Day makes a good foil. There's a good rapport between Prince and the actors who play the Kid's band, the Revolution, who also happen to be Prince's actual band, the revolution. And Clarence Williams III is also an asset as the Kid's troubled father.

Most of these advantages are pretty much impossible to reproduce. Find a guy who looks sort of like Prince and can sing like him, and he still isn't the real thing. Maybe put him in a biopic.

Keys

Johnny Staccato is an odd duck in TV Land. It started in 1959, when Peter Gunn had been on the air for a year, and it seems to have given itself the challenge of out-Gunning Gunn. Thus while one show featured a private detective who hung out at a jazz club and dated the chanteuse, the other had a detective who actually sat in with the band. John Staccato, played by John Cassavetes, was the pianist at Waldo's, alternating with John Williams. Yes, that John Williams. And it was pretty vanguard jazz, aspiring to Dave Brubeck/Sonny Rollins levels of sophistication. 

Cassavetes apparently didn't like the show, which may be one reason why its only season ended in March rather than May. It probably doesn't say much about the quality of the show, since he doesn't strike me as someone who'd want to be tied down to any TV show. He did still direct several episodes.

The quality of the episodes varies, but it has a pretty good batting average. Cassavetes's twitchy intensity was well suited to playing an eccentric gumshoe, believe it or not. They could also pull in some impressive guest stars. The second episode is an entirely obvious murder mystery, but features Martin Landau in a key role, providing a cool to Cassavetes's hot. And yes, offscreen wife Gena Rowlands shows up, in an episode that really drives home how different air travel was during the Eisenhower era.