THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD – DAVID BOWIE - MERCURY SR 61325

Somehow it seems that it is during my occassional moments of paranoid fantasy that all the strange social phenomena that the media-systems funnel into my (and your) sensibilities drift together to form a disturbing, but somehow coherent whole. With paranoia (a word I don’t especially like, but I need something a bit stronger than skepticism) providing a fresh frame of reference, and with fantasy freeing the imagination to deal with the myriad possibilities that the rigidly logical mind habitually filters out of consideration, the multifarious ripples and currents that cross the pools of American life are seen to be interrelated, not necessarily in a strict cause-and-effect partnership, but in some less rigorous, mysteriously ordained pattern.

A prime example of this sort of thing is upon u$ at the present moment: I’m. sure wfe are all aware of the great shuck that is being pulled on the people of this country—the attempt to institutionalize Middle America by giving it its own aesthetic, in the form of sentimental, warmed-over melodrama. The whole Love Story Hype, grandiosely dubbed “The Return to Romanticism,” can be seen as nothing but a concerted push by the media (or somebody) to inject into the bloodstream of the society a bland numbness whose only relief comes in the form of tearful fantasies involving the sad fates of those who do such foolish things'as contracting mysterious and terminal diseases. Were the tripe-hype to fully succeed in permeating what little there is of American culture, we would see a society whose lack of vitality would be the ideal Vehicle for the preservation of existing institutions.

But has anyone noticed that there is a corresponding push, more low-keyed, less extreme, taking place on the other side of the fence? Everywhere we turn our ears we are being told that hard rock is on the way out; that groups are no longer the thing, here in the year of the solo artist, the singer/songwriter/troubadour; that soft-rock is the coming thing,' so mothball your boogie shoes, sit back in the flickering candlelight and float in profound reverie to the verses of James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and if you must tap your foot, for God’s sake, put on the Seals and Crofts. Please, don’t construe this as an attack on this school of artists: Their music is pleasant, they make valuable statements, they are good poets, and their work certainly deserves a place in your record collection. I doubt that it is their fault that they are being used, converted into markers in a strange public relations game. What the manipulators don’t understand, fortunately, is that, .ideally, the counter-culture thrives on diversity, that in the true head’s head there is room for Mahler, Ayler and Leadbelly, for The Who and The Stooges, as well as for Taylor, Mitchell, et. al. Nonetheless, the push is on, and there is the danger that the more susceptible of our number will succomb to the blandishments of the tastemakers. So stay on your toes.

All this is by way of introduction (a bit lengthy, I confess) to David Bowie’s second Mercury album, The Man Who Sold the World, a record that you can fall back on when you find yourself wavering in your own defense of the hard rock idiom. What Bowie does is very convincingly demonstrate that it is possible to combine an intelligent, personally revealing, emotionally compelling, musically" varied statement with an overwhelming, uncompromising hard rock style. That he brings it off as well as he does is strong testimony not only to his own talents,' but to the viability and far-reaching potential of knock-down drag-out rock ‘n’ roll.

With that time-honored and apparently unbeatable combination of guitar (Mick Ronson), bass (Tony Visconti, who also produced), and drums (Mick Woodmansey), plus his own acoustic 12-string, occassional piano (Visconti again) and some, notable unintrusive Moog synthesizer bits (Ralph Mace), Bowie quickly latches on to a level of intensity that he doesn’t relinquish for the duration of the album. In terms of raw, all-out electrical energy, you could do worse than compare much of this record’s music with early Who, with Hendrix’ Experience, with The Kinks, or with any other of your fave-rave British gut-rock-makers. There is that same insatiable drive, that cathartic dam-burst of released tensions. Make no mistake; these guys can play.

The mix is low and muddy, with Bowie’s heavily-strummed 12-string and Woodmansey’s constantly crashing cymbals painting a solid background almost completely devoid of open spaces. The bass, besides providing the necessary bottom, is a constant source of excitement with its swoops, slides, upper register doodlings and overall inventiveness, while the Procol Harumesque lead guitar is literally that, a lead guitar, serving as a backbone with its damped strums, filling in holes with two and three-note riffs, echoing melody lines, and screeching into the spotlight for some solo segment whose spectacular slop and enthusiasm more than make up for any lack of technical virtuosity. Ronson knows what .rock ‘n’ roll guitar playing is about. In this formidable array, Bowie’s rather unusual voice finds a narrow but comfortable niche, from which he doesn’t have to scream (though he usually ends up doing so) to be heard. It’s a thin voice, but not fragile—it could hardly be so, the way he puts out for the 40 or -so minutes—direct yet remote, smooth but not polished. It has an anguished edge to it that is ideally suited to ! the disquieting nature of his music.

David Bowie, in this album, constructs an interior landscape, a world of images where reason and madness become disturbingly relative terms, where fantasies grow flesh and go through their eerie paces. To his credit^ he doesn’t just indulgently trip off with his imagination, but keeps it all linked up in a shifting but somehow regular relationship with what has come to be known as the “real world,” thereby vesting his writing with the black mentality from one of criminality to one of revolutionary purity. That he has been so successful in himself, is evident in any reading of the book, no matter how superficial.

His analysis of the prison system in California, in the manner in which he demonstrates its bizarre parallel with typical American life, is little short of totally brilliant. But more important is hisl transformation from a merely political thinker into a true revolutionary, one who is guided, as Che Guevara once said, “by feelings of great love.”

Jackson is a member of the Soledad Brothers, from whence the book takes its'title. The Brothers are a group of prisoners in Soledad Penitentiary who have been framed up on thoroughly bogus charges. On January 13, 1969, after a thorough “skin search” for weapons, seven blacks were sent into the Soledad exercise yard. Shortly thereafter, a fight broke out; cohvict/witnesses claim that a tower guard proceeded to open fire on the black convicts without any warning, whatsoever. Three black convicts were killed; one of them, shot only in the leg, bled to death on the concrete floor because the guards would not allow him to be removed to the prison hospital. The Monterey County Grand Jury, in a decision handed down three days later, ruled the murders “justifiable homicide.” A half hour later, a white guard (not the one who fired the shots) was found beaten to death. All the convicts on the wing where the killing took place were put into isolation; three days later. Six days later, three of them were accused of murder S Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, and George Jackson. All three men are black.

Two hearings took place without any legal representation for the accused, and the third was represented by counsel only because Clutchette managed to smuggle a note to his mother. With the help of Huey P. Newton and a state senator, the lawyer was obtained and the legal defense of the Soledad Brothers began.

Jackson’s narrative (in letters written to his parents and close friends over the last six years — the first four years’ letters were lost, though described by Jackson as “very bitter”) delineates the reasons why he has been tried. Because of his politics, George has spent roughly 75% of his time in the slammer in solitary confinement — “isolation”, they now call it. He was consistently denied parole because of his political stance, he has been sorely abused both mentally and physically, with what amounts to the most barbaric sort of torture.

And yet, one never has any impression but that George Jackson is an innocent man, in prison behind a rap that would never have had a white man in for more than eighteen months, and accused of a murder he didn’t commit solely because he is a black revolutionary.

There is a sequel to the Soledad tale. In late July of 1970, George was shipped to San Quentin. On August 7, his brother Jonathan, then 17, entered the Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael, singlehanded, whipped out a satchel full of shotguns, handguns and aq, assault rifle ^ he left the courthouse with three black convicts he had armed and five hostages. On their way out, Jonathan shouted, “FREE THE SOLEDAD BROTHERS BY 12:30.” Twenty minutes later, all four of the black persons involved were dead.

There is no better way in which George Jackson’s brilliance can be described, nor any better way to sum up what Jonathan Jackson’s actiop was all about, than to quote the final letter of this book:

“We reckon all time in the future from the day of the man-child’s death.

“Man-child, black man-child with submachine gun in hand, he was free for a while. I guess that’s more than most of us can expect.

! “I want people to wonder at what forces created him, terrible, vindictive, cold, calm, calm man-child, courage in one hand, the machine gun in the other, scourge of the unrighteous — ‘an ox for the people to ride’!!! ....

“I can’t go any further, it would just be a love story about the baddest brother this world has had the privilege to meet, and it’s just not popular or safe — to say I love him.

“Cold and calm, though. ‘All right, gentlemen, I’m taking over now.’

“Revolution,

George”

Sometimes you want to scream all the energy out of you. This book does that. I’m too moved by that letter to add anything else.

Dave Marsh

SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL edited by Robin Morgan; Vintage; $2.45

Sisterhood Is Powerful is an ominously long book — 602 pages. It doesn’t have a trippy or very energetic cover. Only the women’s liberation symbol, and bold red lettering. The book has been reviewed in a few straight papers, and the editor was guest on many — but all second-rate — talk shows. No big hype. Nobody is going to read this book because all of her or his friends are reading it, or because anyone calls it a handbook for revolution. Unfortunately, they are not and no one does. But anyone who is curious about Women’s Liberation definitely should pick up Sisterhood Is Powerful. Borrow it. Buy the book for $2.45 (all profits go to the women’s movement). Or follow editor Robin Morgan’s advice and rip it off.

The book is really different from the rash of bad books about good political events being published lately. Most of them seem to be printed to make bread for the publisher and make a name for the otherwise-a-nice-guy author. Sisterhood is different. It’s the only collection of the current writings of the women’s movement. Most of the articles never would have been published individually because they are not saleable commodities. Most of them aren’t funny; few of them are long or involved enough to be sold as “classics” or “incisive works”. Most of the writers you’ve never heard of.

Sisterhood is also unique in that most of the contributors saw putting together the book as an action, not a chore, or obligation or ego trip. Women did all of the writing, all of the editing, all of the design, and all but small parts of the production. That’s a first. Women who had been asked to publish their contributions elsewhere before the book was completed refused to do so. And, according to Robin Morgan, everyone who worked on this effort came closer together through it, became even more aware of how they are screwed in more ways than one, and found in this book one way to deal with their oppression. Not experts on the movement, nor spokesmen for it, then, but sisters committed to the feminist movement and to truly collective activity.

Like the women’s movement itself, this book combines very personally written articles with hard analysis. In the personalized articles, I always found situations and feelings familiar to me, familiar to most women. Reading these was like sitting in a rap session, just talking, not being taught or teaching. Authorship was irrelevant because it could have been anybody. For example, the book’s dedication is, “For FAITH, my mother. With Love. Finally.”

The women’s movement has often been accused of having “lost its sense of humor”. Well, it takes itself seriously, it takes its oppression and its struggle seriously. There are few really funny pieces in Sisterhood Is Powerful. For ironic humor and the “Yippie tendencies” in some parts of the movement can’t help but show through.

SCREWEE (Society for Condemning the Rape and Exploitation of Women, Etc., Etc.) puts it all down in a Great Historical Document:

When in the course of the

progressive dialectic of history it

becomes necessary for people oppressed by caste to off the nuclear family which stabilizes the capitalist, imperialist, military complex economy which of necessity and by its very natute causes the writing of male-oriented reformist, revisionist, opportunist; adventurist papers, a decent respect for the opinions of our sisters in struggle compels us to assume the responsibility of the vanguard. The Women’s Liberation Caucus within the Youth International Party, being through a rigorous analysis of the thoughts of Mao, Susan B.> Anthony, Che, Lenin and Groucho, considers itself bound by the historic necessity of becoming the vanguard party of the progressive women’s revolution because we fly higher .. .

Sisterhood is divided into five sections. “The Oppressed Majority: The Way It Is” has articles about how women are fucked over in straight, “legitimate” roles; marriage and motherhood, professions, secretarial work, academia, welfare, factory work, church work, and the law. Women in each of these places wrote about and interpreted their own experiences. Women’s liberation ideology is strong but not belabored in each. Rhetoric is conspiciously absent, probably because the oppression is real and the rhetoric is unnecessary. I especially recommend “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood” (I’m neither married inor a mother) because it really lays out the degradation behind a lot of familiar household routines. It also has a few killer pages about the verbal isolation of most women.

‘‘The Invisible Wo me n : Psychological and Sexual Oppression” talks about the woman who is getting old; anti-body odor hysterics perpetuated by the media; the psychological theories claiming woinen to be inherently dependent, neurotic and overridden with “penis envy”; the physiological report that claim women have less sexual driw and sexuality than men; the fucked-up culture that thinks it can control lunar disease but can’t come up with a safe means of birth control; the making and unmaking of a hooker; the Lesbian; and sexism in literature, particularly that written by Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller.

There is a section written by' wpmen who are doubly oppressed; bLck women, high school women, chicano women, Chinese women. Again each is good, authentic, not over written; I’m especially glad that there’s a short statement to black brothers on birth control by the Black Women’s Liberation Group from Mt. Vernon, N.Y. These sisters are very aware that birth control and abortion can be — and in large cities of colonized nations often are — used as tool of genocide. But they remind us all, black and white, men and women, that this is no simple:

“It takes two to practice genocide, and black women are able to decide for themselves, like poor people all over the world, whether they will submit to genocide. For us, birth control is the freedom to fight genocide of black women and children . . . Poor black women in the United States have to fight back out of our own experiences of oppression.”

“Up From Sexism: Emerging Ideologies” contains seven excellent, analytical pieces. None of them are really hard to read, but they require a little thought to really understand what’s being said and where it comes from. There’s a piece called “The Grand Coolie Damn” about sexism in radical political organizations. It talks about the pig and little ways that men seem to retain control even in movements truly dedicated to the liberation of all people; how a man in control often manipulates organizations by persuading workers that they are a part of a “we” that is never really out of his control. But it doesn’t pretend that women might not dothe same thing. Because of sexism, only men are in these positions to begin with, and these men are extremely reluctant to relinquish these positions of control to a real collective. Men especially should read this article. There’s also an article by a beautiful black woman lawyer working with revolutionary groups in New York. It’s called “Institutionalized Oppression vs. the Female’* and is so rich in ideas about black and women’s oppression and liberation that it defies summarizing. Read it.

There seems to be very little to criticize in Sisterhood Is Powerful. Its length is a virtue, for its 602 pages represent more than 70 articles. At least twenty will mean something important to most readers, and each can be read whenever you feel like it. The articles are genuinely .not egotistically written. This book is not a shuck. The only criticism I would make is that most of the articles are written by women from middle-class backgrounds and a few of them by women who — except for their militant feminism — are very much a part of “the system.” This seems to be a symptom of the society more than a fault of those who did the book.

Yet real responsibility must be placed where it belongs, not on those who worked on the book, or on the many, many women whb are building the broad-based militant movement which Sisterhood Is Powerful accurately represents, but on those structures which sisters, together powerful, will bury.

Penny Puhl

Originally published in The Seed.

BLACK NATIONALISM AND THE REVOLUTION IN MUSIC by Frank Kofsky; Pathfinder Press; S2.7S

As with any medium, what determines the worth of any endeavor therein is the manner in which it approaches its audience, and the effectiveness with which it does so. This book is a quandry; certainly, it is a book about what I personally find the most significant musical development of the last ffteen years, more significant (musically) in many ways than even rock ‘n’ roll.

And yet, upon concluding it, one can only wonder to whom the author was addressing the manuscript; on the one hand, it restates the obvious too frequently to be for the hard-core new music freak, and on the other it presumes too intimate a knowledge of the music for the novice.

Kofsky, himself, is probably the single individual most qualified to write a book about the New Black Music, aside from its creators themselves (and maybe Richard Walls or Bob Palmer). On the other hand, there are two considerations that hamper him:!) his status as a member of the academic community, which lends to a much-footnoted, fairly stiff work and 2) his politics. That is, I have no quarrel with Kofsky’s politics, I think that they are the proper politics to have, in many respects, but he tends to be a little too dogmatic to be fun to read.

The political criterion, then, for this book is well-fulfilled but the artistic one tends to lag. In terms of content, however, the book is excellent if one is willing to search. The Introduction, of course, is exactly that, for both the present volume and for a socio-political analysis of Black Music.

Of the three chapters in part one, however, the most successful is “The Blues People of LeRoi Jones”, which is at once a critique and extrapolation of Jones’ definitive (with the second volume, Black Music) work.

The rest of Part One, however, is largely valueless for those who don’t spend a large part of their lives associated with the music. “Critiquing the Critics” is exactly the kind of presumptuous statement that I find most offensive; the reader is presumed to be familar with the literary framework out of which Ralph J. Gleason, A. B. Spellman or Leonard Feather operates and it is simply not the Case that most readers of music publications pay that much attention to the writer. On the contrary, most magazine pieces (jazz or rock or what have you) are oriented to subject matter; the critic, unless he is as controversial as a Kofsky, a John Sinclair or perhaps a John Mendelsohn (I could hardly find three other faves of mine whose names you might be expected to recognize), is a virtual nonentity. And if you are aware of that, then you are also aware of everything Kofsky says about them — how Gleason and Feather and Down Beat in general did their very best to destroy the emergent works of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, how they have consistently taken racist tacks in their writing, subtle those (at)tacks may be. I can’t disagree with him, only wish that he had somehow found a better vehicle to do it.

For the rest of the book is excellent, really. The chapter on “Jazz and the Cold War” is weak, in that it too seems directed at too limited an audience; only regular readers of Jazz and Pop and Down Beat can make sense of much of this. Even they are liable to be bored.

On the otherhand, there is Kofsky’s discussions with various members of the Coltrane Quartet, including the master himself. This is excellent, the meat of the book. Kofsky also shines in two of the other pieces in the later section of the book, “A Different Drummer: John Coltrane and the Revolution in Rock” and “The Career of Malcolm X”.

Generally, where Kofsky is considering the music, with its political attributes, rather than super-imposing, often rather artificially, his politics upon the music, the book is excellent. It could almost be a textbook for the classes which must be popping up on the New Black Music in Black Studies curricula.

Real Good Shows this Year, Real Good

Audie Murphy Jr,

The show’s the thing and there’s no business like show business, without shows what would TV be? It would just beunfilled hours to wile away doing something else like drinking be*a or going to the movies. So shows are always good and this year’s latest crop is just about the very best ever. The last one half as good was the one when Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was on for the first time. It’s still on in fact but it’s only reruns and you’ve probably seen them all so you’re gonna wanna see some of the new ones. Which is a good idea.

Storefront Lawyers is mighty good, there was one episode called “Where Are You At?” Both the prosecuting attorney and the defense had hair like BOBBY VINTON. There was a girl

As a general volume, this one may be very difficult. But for anyone who has discovered the beauties inherent in John Coltrane (who Kofsky treats with unusual respect, almost with reverence and quite rightly so), Ornette Coleman and their successors — all of them much farther out, I would judge, than Miles Davis, who is the current “trend” — this can be extremely valuable as an educational device. On the other hand, those with little background in the music would be well advised to start with Le Roi Jones’ two books (both of which are available in paper-back editions, probably from Delta), Blues People and Black Music.

Dave Marsh

lawyer chick too and she did a remake of the famous old bribery and sneakery plot with the prosecuter, or it might’ve been him tricking her. But whatever it was it all went down so smoothly on account of what the two guys looked like (Bobby Vinton so it was just a couple of teddy bears talking turkey: therefore nbt an ounce of dishonesty because they looked like Bobby Vinton). That’s one of the greatest gimmicks for softening and renewing old plots TV has ever seen, bringing in the personification of Dowdy fabric softener and it works real good. The chick was useful for something else too. This cop says to her (they’re rounding up a pack of Chicanos and everybody in a room’s getting locked up for possession of one

gun), “Get out of here” even though one of them’s her client. Finally she uses the wiles and guiles her sex is famous for to get only two of em arrested and the woman among them freed (“If they see a lady getting taken off to the pokey there’ll be a riot” and the coppo agrees).

Meanwhile a different channel at the same exact time was “Lady at the Bar” on Men from Shiloh. Not only was the bar not a booze bar but a law bar but it was also another lady law tale. It had Greer Garson starring as the broad in her FIRST TELEVISION APPEARANCE now that Vivien Leigh is dead. She uses her womanhood to snatch Doug McClure out of the hoosegow and wouldn’t y.a know it: Doug has himself a big, bushy mustache and it’s the wild and wooly Old West even though he never had one in the New West.

Meanwhile the DA on Storefront Lawyers is a young fascist like off those old George Nader posters, it’s a real 40’s show. It could have Esther Williams with her mighty fine legs and thighs and she wouldn’t even have to be the bathing beauty anymore, she wouldn’t even have to be the secretary anymore like Barbara Hale on Perry Mason, she could be the lawyer today! Ain’t that progress! But she couldn’t be tough, because Sheila Larken’s already got the role, shucks. But she could be a guest gal lawyer somewhere like on Young Lawyers.

The latest of that one, “The Glass Prison”, was an indictment of parole systems that deny men their civil rights. Aaron (Zalman King) tried to change the restrictions that made life unbearable for a musician paroled on a dope rap. The cat was not allowed to associate with anyone who might be connected with those terrible drugs — including fellow musicians and his own wife. A tough mother of a story but Lee J. Cobb gummed it up something awful. How could he not, after all he’s Lee J. Cobb and you know what that means. He oughta stick to cases he knows something about, like parking tickets and stolen rugs.

Which brings to mind the best of the courtroom shows to date: Divorce Court. It’s the only one that’s any good because it’s the only one where it’s the same every day, no use in getting involved in a different story every time. That way you’d have to pay attention and why bother? Why let the story take over your mind for half an hour (a good amount of time, much better than 60 minutes) when you can just let it be on without bothering you at all? The only two plots are adultery and husband not having a job, the husband always wins except when he doesn’t have a job, in which case the alimony is usually higher than the job would’ve been. The latest one was about this girl’s father who talks her husband into some adultery by hiring a /whore to seduce him (the father paid her so he gets it for free) but he doesn’t admit it until the end of the half hour and they send that one to a marriage counselor and nobody gets the divorce. It’s the only law show where they do the ordinary dull cases every time, a moderate dose of a mere level of mundane reality etc.

One thing they don’t got, though, is judge shows. They got governor shows though, one that started last year and is still on, The Governor arid J.J. (which might be due for death because of the J.J. since all the people dying these days have J’s in their names so watch for this one to get the axe). They’re already giving it second-rate status by what they did the day after the elections by substituting a real governor show for it. They had The election results summary instead of "it including Rockefeller, Reagan, Hruska, L. Romney and all the other winners and losers: why replace I Love Lucy (pure unfettered fantasy) with the mere reality of political data?

Like there’s a goddam fuckin too much HIGH PRESSURE MERE REALITY across the tube from channel to channel and from morning to dawn. More news shows than ever, more live interview type late nite shit instead of late movies, more documentaries all the time. It’s not even a matter of well their particular reality is a bogus reality, it’s just that it is more than anything else the rejection of a fantasy in favor of a reality and who wants that? TV’s the last bastion of high-in-dung bogushood so to mess with that is really locking up the public and throwing away the key: STAMP OUT NEWS AND JOHNNY CARSON (and Dick Cavett and Merv Griffin and David Frost and Mike Douglas and 60 Minutes et cetera)!

Scoey Mitchell whomped his producer in the face and so after a few more weeks he’s not gonna be the star any more of Barefoot in the Park. That’s a crying shame because in him the networks have themselves the first official show with a genuine TOM. Julia wasn’t even a Tom but Scoey is/plays one. The one that he plays is a lawyer or a law student or something and he’s got a white boss or law firm guy or faculty head or something and this time Scoey said “Out of sight” and whiteso said “Right on” and they had a tenant strike or something. The landlord turned out to be Sugar Ray Robinson playing himself as the landlord of 8 buildings whose manager handled the buildings for 5%. Manager man wasn’t doing shit so they went up to the Sugar Man who still has processed hair (it’s real good and why did James Brown ever abandon it, he looked a heck of a lot better when he had it, same for B. B. King). He settles everything himself and he’s the best actor to hit the screens since Broderick Crawford. He was pretty good in Candy, remember? He won’t be on next week so you can throw the show in the garbage can, even Nipsy Russell as Honey is no bed of roses.

You can stick em in the ashcan two by two but don’t forget to include The Odd Couple, the first major league kike spectacular since Molly Goldberg. Is Tony Randall a yiddle? If not he’s a swell actor, as A-okay as Rosalind Russell was in Majority of One, she came off as Italian and German rather than Jewish only about every ninth sentence. Jack Klugman’s greatest actorly job to date is what he did in the Bromo Seltzer commercial where he showed how it works faster than waiting for the Alka-Seltzer to dissolve, that was very, very convincing and as Oscar on this show he ain’t as good, no sir. It’s also the first double divorce show, they never had a single divorce show because that way they’d have to have him as either good or bad and they’d have to play sides in the very serious question of marriage, divorce and courtship. With two divorcees it’s easier to do cause there’s always symmetry and sides vary without having to be thought out as (conceptual) sides. However there’s a lot less cunt than in the movie, and less cock too.

Naomi Stevens as Rose was in the guest cast on Room 222, a 2nd year program which might just graduate soon. It’s not gonna get closed by bombs and that’s good cause that means there’ll be more and more open school week episodes like the one where Rose is supposed to be a Jew but she does it like an Italian and the principal’s supposed to be a mocky too but he’s a Greek. Once in a while she’s Irish. The kids in the class about immigration enjoy her piss-shit dull story about her own immigrational experiences along the line as a foreigner, those kids deserve a zero in imagination and a hundred in patience with asshole parents.

Sometimes a parent gets to be a grandparent and that’s what befell Danny Thomas’ TV life so he could get to do Make Room for Granddaddy so his buxom daughter Mario wouldn’t get all the glory in the family. The big excitement was to have been the return of Angela Cartwright to the limelight now that puberty is in full bloom for her. Manny of Stalk-Forrest predicted she’d be a piece of ass but instead she’s going thru that “awkward period”! At age 16 or maybe more. Plus she’s got herself some false eyelashes (they’re called “false” instead of “fake” according to the dictionary) so she’s getting split down the middle by appeals from about 3 age setups: let’s wait and see if anybody on the show gets to do some splitting of her too. Her face is ■ sort of like an improved Liza Minelli and she also looks like Pier Angeli (hey could she really be an Italian?) Danny’s the same excellent bucket of dud as always except now he’s sportin some real righteous sideburns. He’s another Desi Arnaz in retrospect, always getting his tux ready for show biz. Sid Melton is now the shortest guy on the show and the only good thing about Marjorie Lord is her eyes look like Lillian Roxon’s.

The story was all about driver’s ed, that eternally relevant youth problem (even revolutionaries gotta learn how to drive, right?) and Angela Cartwright’s the one who wants to take it. Pops tells her only a father should teach his daughter stuff, including driving instruction. Part of the instruction is highway safety, and granddaddyo blows it again. Doesn’t he know that environment is what matters? And the environment involved in highway safety is of course highway, not living room chair with a plastic steering wheel like they used to give 3-yr-olds to imitate the drivers in the family. Imitation and ' education are two different matters as anyone beginning with Socrates will tell you. So it was doomed to flop and it would’ve if he hadn’t interjected some in-context seriousness in the situation by buying her a motorcycle helmet (bikes are so-o-o-o-o-o good so her driving would necessarily have to improve even if only on a 4-wheel vehicle): so many mixed metaphors that I almost had to roll over and die because the poetry was so thick! And thick in the prick department was Danny who shone thru like Alan King and Jack Weston (but Jack Weston’s better than the other two put together).

Dan August stars the star of Skullduggery. George Maharis? No, Burt Reynolds. This particular outing Dan (Burt) got himself pilloried. The pillorer was a TV commentator whose daughter got herself offed in a homicidal murder. Dan’s investigation was called inept so old Max Winslow took it on himself and this show ain’t half bad. Mod Squad has always been the bad news of the decade in private eye circles because it was a decisive step towards the pre-77 Sunset Strip days of detective shows. Plus it didn’t have a single teenager with as much interest and vitality as Kookie had so it was a terrible disaster and somehow it’s still on. On the other hand Dan August has Burt Reynolds who used to be married to Judy Carne and in fact it’s a good (post-A/annix) show all around. It’s not nearly as good as Skullduggery but that would be a hard one to pull off because that movie just might be the greatest ape picture since Mighty Joe Young! Did you know that both King Kong and Mighty Joe Young had Robert Armstrong in them? He’s not in Skullduggery and he’s not scheduled for a guest appearance on Dan August but somebody else was. That somebody was named — I’m not lying — Alexandra Hay (she played Eadie Parker on the show) and altho Hollywood is famous for its great fake names and that’s where TV is done nowadays that may be the easiet put-together new fake name of the century. If it wasn’t taken from Alejandro Rey (late of The Flying Nun) then where was it taken from, a birth certificate?

Matt Lincoln welcomes back the return of Vince Edwards, the rags-to-riches bleached blonde wrestler-lifeguard (hey wrestling is only on UHF these days, it’s no longer acceptable on AM television) who is one of the undisputed titans of the air. His old Ren Casey did what no other show ever did for the doctor: popularize the shirt. If you take a peek backwards you’ll realize that Richard Boone’s Medic never did that, nor did Doctor Kildare, nor did The Nurses. On one of the last Casey episodes there was a two-parter that finished up the next week on a newcomer called Breaking Point about a headshrinker. The mind was explored on it and it was always sick, sick minds that were involved, only the craziest numbers in the universe like the guy who played the clarinet and hated his father and hid in the barn. The show never lasted, neither did Ben Casey but Vince is back with — of all things — another show exclusively about mental cases! Could it be there’s more far-fuckin-out flipped-out tripped-out individuals in the world today so there’s a need to portray their plight? Could it be? It could but more likely this particular show is a response by concerned Freudian-Jungian -Horney an-Adlerian practitioners over the overuse of downs to cure the ills of the mind. Archetypes are always better than pills and they make lots better visual effects (remember the scene that Dali did in Hitchcock’s Spellbound, which — incidentally — TV’s Steve Allen composed the theme song of?); pills make good effects too but yoq can’t show an acid bummer every week. This week it was about a retard who was living with hippies as a mascot. Could it have been a warning that the psychedelics lead not only to the birth of retards and other such monstrosities but that, once born, those mutants are in for hell? If it was it missed the mark, the symbolism musta got lost around the second reel. Not as good a show as educational TV newsreel-documentos about retards learning to sell hotdogs at Coney Island dog stands but maybe that’s only this week. I sure hope so, there’s a whole wide wonderful and exciting trip to be had thru the cosmos of the human psyche!

Todd Rundgren and I were just reminiscing over the episode on Ozzie and Harriet where Oswald tells the kids they’ll get ten bucks as soon as they’re as tall as him. Those were the days when the life span was still increasing and health was in the air and birth control was due to abstention and condoms. Papa Cowsill came later and he was blessed with several scrawny brats who turned out to be pret-ty talented in their own right and certainly merited a show for -their family. They never got it except for one special which was a parody of Ozzie & Harriet. Only fiction was allowed to get the big talented family show this year and it turned out to be The Partridge Family. Partridges come from eggs and at the beginning of the show that’s what they have animated on the screen, an egg with a partridge coming out! Procreation is what the show’s all about! But no illicit love at all, even though one of the shows had GROUPIES on it. One of the bastards had a junior high groupie hot for his scrotum but he fought her off. Shirley Jones is the mom and her real-life hubby is Jack Cassidy but not the one in the Airplane so she’s already got some peripheral connection with MUSIC. There was one where gramps (played by Ray Bolger) tried to bridge the generation gap by performing “Bye Bye Blackbird” on stage with the kids and they tried to discourage the old fart but to no avail. So it was no surprise when he stole the show and everybody cried for joy. But not me, I wasn’t fooled, I knew this show wasn’t worth watching. Why’d I watch it? So I could write this review.

Headmaster’s about a doper who’s a chess master and tours the world on a magic carpet made of cellophane So that you can see him from down below. No it’s not, it’s about a head of a teaching place played by Andy Griffith who detests both grass, fornication except during marriage, and gambling. He doesn’t like children who drink in the (form either and will have no compunctions about notifying their family. How come there’s never a school show where the kid isn’t there because of a family sending him or her there but because he or she ran away (and so is a runaway) to go there and ma and pa don’t know his or her whereabouts? That’s a good question, they’ll probably do it next week, ideas are so scarce and since they couldn’t get Dick Van Dyke for the show they got his brother Jerry (almost as good). Claudette Nevins is Andy’s wife and his name on the show is Andy (Jerry’s name is Jerry, they save money by keeping the original names so they don’t get nobody flubbing their lines when they can’t remember the names). Jerry had a date and it was with a lovely English teacher played by Maureen Arthur: no he didn’t fuck her, thus jeopardizing his friendship with Mr. Straitjacket himself, old Headmaster. So at the end they were still friends, perfect for faculty-administration harmony but not much of a subject for the kids to jerk off about! How come no stories about stained sheets at the linen exchange time?

How come Monday nite football is the best thing on that’s new? Well it only is when it is, the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati game didn’t even get the players listed in TV Guide. And Howard Cosell oughta get his face shoved all the way down a swift toilet bowl as emcee (Don Meredith is better), all he was ever good for was telling Floyd Patterson he didn’t have to cry when Floyd was wearing a Groucho Marx fake glasses-andmustache after Liston beat his ass. After Floyd went under the carpet there was nobody for Howard to inadvertently insult and hurt, every other sports figure was just too wise for him. I have the feeling that before the season’s out Don’s gonna step on Howard’s pud because Howard don’t know nothin, period. He never even knew boxing but he did post-fight interviews on the Wednesday nite fights and wasn’t even good at that. He doesn’t even dress well, he doesn’t even know what a draw play is, but he DOES RESEMBLE A SMALL-POTATOES VAMPIRE WITH FLAPPY EARS. But why mutilate the afflicted and the stupid and the ignorant? God created them too and not for nought. He created Howard Cosell to make a wife and kids happy somewhere, and I’m sure he somewhere does.