CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

J. Kordosh

Endless Rain Meets Paper Cup

SHOUT! THE BEATLES IN THEIR GENERATION by Philip Norman (Simon and Schuster)

STRAWBERRY HELDS FOREVER: JOHN LENNON REMEMBERED by Garbarini, Cullman, and Graustark (Bantam)

Now that John Lennon’s safely away, writers can finally start in on a definitive Beatle history. And here they come: previous pulp (The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, The Beatles: An Authorized Biography, etal.) has been republished to cash in on.. .excuse me, update... the fab saga, while printing presses do a hundred laps for new histories, tributes, more-excuses-forearliest-known-photo-of-the-Quarry Men, and what have you.

Witness these dissimilar offerings. Shout! is an “ambitious” (Migod, the whole story again?!) history, sort of a rival of Hunter Davies’ Authorized Biography. As a retrospective, it’s good particularly in conjuring the atmosphere of the dingy Liverpool-to-Hamburg-to-Liverpoolto-Evers-to-Chance era. As an authoritative musical statement, forget it, unless you think Sgt. Pepper was The Greatest Musical Event Any One Universe Is Allowed. Like Norman says, “Each decade brings but one or two authentically memorable moments.” Sure, but isn’t somebody supposed to call you up or something?

Despite his obsession with Sgt. Pepper (“a day in 1967, that summer drenched in heat and acid sparkle, when a million heads swam together at the behest of SP... ”), Shout! is fluidly-written and no minor accomplishment of research. George Martin emerges as the most sympathetic figure this time around. We find him patiently listening to Paul McC. hum the horn part to “Penny Lane” while Martin transcribes it into musicwrite or overhearing “inventor” Alexis Mardas tell Lennon that “only a little finance was needed to dispense with the acoustic screens around Ringo Starr’s drums and replace them with invisible yet irnpenetratable beams.” A modem Job, Martin didn’t murder the crooked “Magic Alex” on the spot. What’s more, the Beatles evidently held Martin in some respect, limiting their potsmokfng to the john even in the acid sparkle daze. Hey, you would too if some guy would splice together two different versions of “Strawberry Fields” so that nobody would notice!

McCartney probably comes off looking the worst, being described as “two-faced” by many quotables. Sounds like a bunch of sour grapes over here, though: Nigel Whalley, the Quarry Men’s debut manager is heard to say: “As soon as we let him into the group, he started complaining about the money I was getting, and saying 1 should take less...” Damned right, Paul, and give Ireland back to the Holy Roman Empire, too.

The most fun in Shout! is a continuous put-down of the Stones (e.g., “ersatz Beatles,” “Brian Jones, the group’s.. .only musician of consequence,” “a Beatle-inspired song

unconvincingly titled ‘We Love You’ ”), that they probably deserve. Sure they started working on Satanic Majesties before the megapepper opus. Yep; uhhuh.

But the best thing about Shout! is that there isn’t a whole helluva lot here that hasn’t been blabbed elsewhere. This is a good sign: maybe there’s not much more you can say and we can get on with histories of Beatle histories.

Elsewhere, Strawberry Fields Forever must now be regarded as the penultimate in celeb-iskilled-and-book-is-on-the-standism. I think I had a copy of this thing ten or eleven days after Lennon was shot—and I live in Detroit and nobody mailed it to me. I figure people in New

York were reading it with their morning coffee on I December 9. Despite this mad “publish he’s

perished” attitude, Strawberry Fields is a pretty good news-like read that beats the hell out of all

the dogsmut Lennon-mag tributes that followed. A good Ne wsweek Lennon (s) interview and a

“chronologicalbiography” (i.e., discography,

eventography) are included. This is a book worth owning, particularly since you can read it in 17 minutes.

Whatever the next trend in Beatlebookmania, I privately doubt anyone will ever top Roy Carr and Tony Tyler’s Illustrated Record or Mark Shipper’s whimsical Paperback Writer, which, between them, pretty much cover the roundabout. I guess it all comes down to how much do you want to know about the Beatles with an “a”? Either you know it by now or you might as well be listening to the ersatz Beatles. What does this “ersatz” mean, anyway?... “Silver??”

Donahue — My Story

DONAHUE

(Syndicated)

DONAHUE—MY OWN STORY

(Fawcett)

The Phil Donahue Show is generally what’s called a good see. A typical week’s guests—the world’s biggest mime, a grebe preener, the inventer of the freedom piggybank, a lobal vasectomy specialist and a demonstration of defrosting the fridge with a hatchet and a snow shovel—are peculiar if nothing else and Phil does possess a certain factory outlet kind of charm.

Here in Cableville, you can catch him about ninety-two times a week, and I must confess upfront that I usually see four or five shows, sometimes with the sound on too. It’s partly because I like local Chicago commercials like Stanley Weatherproofing’s cryptic, "If you can slip a dollar bill under your door, you might as well!” blurb, and partly due to the level of competition at this hour: Alice, Card Sharks,

Over Easy, Yoga and You and Las Vegas Gambit.

What’s left to say about Phil at this late date?

Mucho. Nobody in the entire history of boredom has received as much good press as Gray Eagle,

most of it glad-handed like a hot Pulitzer. This has helped the Donahue Myths to grow into monsters: 1. All women love him 2.He’stotally objective 3.Great dad 4.Sane Catholic 5. Tender fuck ad bloatum.

Does thatgive him the right to holler ‘Cooties!’ in a crowded theater? Do DingDongs have gizzards? N-O, Rho. Tackling an institution like Donahue is about as popular as using infants for landfill, but us typists have to pay for our breakfast nails just like real people.

First, his good points. He can really swing a mike!

Okay, now the bad. Mr. Mario gets himself into more trouble asking questions than anyone since Karen Silk wood. He loves playing the devil’s advocate to both sides of the issue at the same time, which in some quarters is considered about as valuable as donating your breath to science.

When that trick doesn’t work, he goes to over-qualified ridiculous leading questions. “We all know that erasable ink is a bigger threat to mankind than Hitler, Stalin and John Davidson combined,” he’ll say. “Now 1 ask you—are you sure you want my autograph?”

The big whitehead’s blatant manipulation of the studio herd is as patronizing as it is boring. On one recent show (hot topic: should agrisexuals be allowed near the winter wheat?) he asked his victim, “Why is it alright for pigs to sleep with their parents and not humans?”

“Because they’re animals, she replied looking at the host as if he were a stain on the counter of a greasy spoon.

“BUT ARENT WE ALL ANIMALS?” he bleats with that idiotic I-got-you-nowgrin on his face. All across America, disgusted viewers register a massive “who cares?” on the Nielsen Richter.

The oF chalk-brow especially enjoys treating the studio audience like a crew of pokey teens with the collective SAT score of a meat thermometer. Not that it seems to bother them very much. A hanging jury if ever there was one, these hopelessly inbred suburbanites are there either to engage in applause contests or moo some unrelated opinion just to see how their lips look on TV. Phil eats it up—he’s not going to be satisfied until they pull out machine guns and seal clubs and start killing each other. Then he’ll wipe the blood off his mike and say, “Don’t you think you’re over-reacting a little bit?”

Maybe it was his upbringing. In his fiendish self-promotion of an autobiography, Donahue relates how he was forced to endure tap dance lessons, fistfights with Binky Burt, meeting Richard Nixon, working in a steel mill full of rats that wanted to steal his Twinkies (honest) and, of course, the Catholic Church. Not being of that persuasion myself (I worship Angela Cartwright) no doubt interferes with my ability to feel guilty about his life, but still—this guy’s the Kelly Tripucka of broadcasting so it couldn’t have been that bad.

His “story” does offer a few insights, such as his tendency towards goosebumps in awkward situations (including a mining disaster), the sorrow he felt when his pet feather died, his attempts to reason with a one-armed dentist and how it feels to get smooched by Sammy Davis Jr.

The accounts of his battles with management blackmail and censorship do score a few Rep points. A special section on various stations’ official reasons for banning certain shows includes The Birth of a Baby (“too graphic”), Reverse Vasectomies (“too educational for women”) and Masters and Johnson (“Rickkept saying ‘weenie’”) right on up the Today Show’s recent rejection of a segment on penile implants because “we don’t like to discuss sex at that hour of the morning.” Take that, Genya Ravan!

That brings us back to the other reason I watch Phil: he has the same birthday (12/21) as I do. Are we not soul brothers? ’Course, when I was still trying to eat my crib, he was out learning about pubic hair and horizontal backseat driving. Then again, when our boy goes up to that big Astrodome in the sky, I’ll still be happily slobbering gruel and watching Match Game 2000.

Don’t miss the show next week, when Phil’s guests will include: the author of the Bobby Sands E-Z Weight Loss Plan, the Chief of the Orlando Muckfire Dept., William Conrad making wine from fish, the stunt tetim from the new basketball flick None On None and film critics Edouard Dauphin and Jeffrey Morgan, who will discuss what Marilyn Monroe really meant when she said ‘‘Show me your fish” to Robert Mitchum in River Of No Return.

Rick Johnson

Massage Your Neck, Sir?

by Edouard Dauphin

The hand is quicker than the eye. Hands across the water. Reach out and touch somebody’s hand. Willie and the hand jive. A bird in the hand is worth your bush. And now The Hand, a new horror movie starring handsome Michael Caine. (Sorry, but this review is being typed by disembodied fingers with a mind of their own!)

The plot: (stop me if you’ve heard this) A cartoonist, unhappy in his marriage, loses his drawing hand in a freak car accident caused by his wife’s rotten driving. His career threatened, his life suddenly in shambles, he becomes angry and vengeful. Soon he’s got a list of enemies as long as your arm. (Oops, sorry again.) That’s when his severed hand comes in—it decides to go on a murderous rampage that should win the boring film violence award hands down. (Apologies once more.)

Caine, who most recently looked pretty silly lounging around in women’s underwear in Dressed To Kill, seems equally bemused minus a right paw. Returning a few days later to the scene of the auto smashup, he searches a nearby field for the missing mitt, looking not unlike The Dauphin trying to locate his keys out on Leroy Street after an all night drinking session at the Ukrainian Social Club.

Caine has no luck. The manual appendage eludes him, even though we in the audience can see it clearly and, for some odd reason, hear it breathing on the soundtrack. Finding only his signet ring, a$12.95cheapieifleversawone, he gives up the hunt, washing his hands of the whole mess. (A thousand pardons.) Next time we encounter The Hand, it’s crawling laboriously off through the countryside and you gotta laugh. With its tottering pronged wobble, it resembles a baby lobster on Stavadex.

Relocating to California, Caine takes a teaching job at one of those “continuing education” colleges that seem to flourish in that land of fruits, nuts and Eagles. You know the type of school—you can major in Contemporary Pillow Furniture and minor in Creative Roller Skating. They’re for students who don’t have a real grasp on life. (I AM SORRY!)

Teaching Basic Cartooning, Caine fits right in and wastes little time shacking up with Annie McEnroe, one of his dumber students—her fa vdrite comic strip has to be B, C.—who just may wind up with an A minusforthe course. “I’m the old fashioned type,” she tells Caine coyly,taking off herblouse. “1 like to make it in bed.” Yeah, she’s that boring.

And she falls victim to The Hand. That’s right, folks, this pesky little claw has somehow managed to get from Caine’s former home in Vermont all the way out to the West Coast.

Guess it just hopped on a 747 and stowed away in someone’s hand luggage. (You must forgive me!)

Others are brutally killed and Caine continues to lose his grip. (Beg pardon!) As he slips further into madness, no one will lend him a hand.

' (Excuse please.) This review is over. I’m throwing up my hands. Or maybe I’m just throwing up. On a scale of ten, give The Hand one finger. Skip this flick—it’s nothing but a hand job.

☆ ☆ ☆

A year ago in this column, we hailed Friday The 13th, a nasty, mean-spirited gore film capable of inducing heart attacks among members of the audience. It went on to become a classic. With its 13 blood-drenched killings,

Friday qualified as a true Drive-In Saturday Vomit-O-Rama and richly deserved our Good Lousekeeping Seal Of Approval.

But that was last year. 1981 brings the inevitable sequel, Friday The 13th, Part2, (pretty catchy title, eh?) and it’s so awful that if you do have the misfortune of going to see it, you’ll probably ask for your money back. You may even ask for last year’s money back, just on principle.

. “The body count continues” goes the ad copy for this bomb and it’s true that another dozen New Jersey camp counselor nurds bite the dust. See, they’ve returned to the vicinity of Camp Blood, the scene of earlier carnage, totally unmindful of any danger that might be lurking there. Of course, they’re residents of Springsteen Country (New YorkCity’s Canada) so that’s the kind of idiocy you expect.

What you don’t expect is that they’ll be killed in exactly the same ways and with the same predictability as their predecessors. A machete in the head, spear through the chest, barbed wire garotte looped around the neck, etc. Sure, it all sounds like fun but you’ve already seem this movie. This isn’t Part 2—it’s Part 1 cloned!

They’ve even had the balls to leave the way open for yet another sequel. If so, next summer we may just have to forget about asking for refunds and just burn the theaters down. Skip this Xerox effort and go to Camp Blood yourself!