Guilty Pleasure No. 32: It’s So Cold In The D by T-Baby (a.k.a. My Excuse For Not Getting More Accomplished Today)

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m supposed to be writing right now but I can’t get this damn song out of my head…

Oh well — I’m going to try to get something of value written and posted tonight, even if I do have an 8 year-old meme stuck in my head…

WISH ME LUCK!

Previous Guilty Pleasures

A Few Thoughts on …. The Walking Dead 7.5 “Go Getters” (dir by Darnell Martin)

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So far, season 7 of The Walking Dead has been pretty inconsistent.

Often times, I have felt like a lone voice in the wilderness, vainly defending the season premiere and continuing to hope that, at some point, Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan is going to become something more than a one-dimensional caricature.

Like a lot of people, I kind of enjoyed the second episode but, in retrospect, that was mostly because of the weirdness of King Ezekiel and the majesty of Shiva. The episode itself was extremely slow and featured one of those overly sentimental musical montages, the type of thing that never holds up particularly well on repeat viewing.

The Cell … oh, I tried to enjoy The Cell but basically, it was just an hour of Daryl not speaking and Negan doing his Negan thing.

And then there was last week’s episode, which appears to be going down in the history books as the consensus pick for the worst episode of The Walking Dead ever.

So, with all that in mind, I am going to cautiously state that I think that the latest installment, Go Getters, was a definite improvement over the last few episodes. It was hardly a classic. It certainly wasn’t The Walking Dead at its absolute best. But, at the very least, it held my attention for 60 minutes, it seemed to actually move the story forward (as opposed to just being a stagnant portrayal of doom and gloom), and it left me looking forward to seeing what would happen next week. Coming nearly halfway through an uneven season, Go Getters provided just a little bit of hope for the show’s future, telling us, “The Walking Dead‘s not dead and growling in Herschel’s barn just yet!”

Of course, it helped that Go Getters was centered on Maggie, the only one of the main characters who has not left me pissed off or disappointed this season. Following the deaths of Glenn and Abraham, Maggie and Sasha are hiding out at Hilltop Colony. Gregory wants to kick them out, Jesus wants to protect them. Eventually, the Saviors show up and we get to know Simon (Steven Ogg, investing the role with such menace that it’s hard not to wonder how different the season would be if he had been cast as Negan), who is one of Negan’s liuetenants. Simon collects his tribute, humiliates Gregory, and leaves. Meanwhile, Carl and Enid show up at Hilltop, having run away from Alexandria. One-eyed Carl has decided to take revenge on Negan and who can blame him? At this point, he has to know that his red-eyed, sniveling, neutered father isn’t going to do anything…

(Which brings up an interesting issue: we’re supposed to look down on Gregory for being so weak and subservient to the Saviors but really, he didn’t do anything different from what Rick did last week. We’re supposed to give Rick a pass but not Gregory, which doesn’t seem quite right. Gregory may be an ass but, as we should all know by now, nice guys don’t survive the apocalypse.)

So far, each episode this season has featured a different community being harassed by Negan. I’m assuming that these communities are eventually going to come together to take out the Saviors. If that’s the case, I can understand and even respect the deliberate build-up. At the same time, this season is moving so slowly (and has been so repetitive) that it’s hard not to get frustrated when you’re watching on a weekly schedule. One gets the feeling that Season 7 will be better when binge-watched but, for now, I find myself wishing the show would pick up the pace.

But, with all that in mind, I liked Go Getters. I love the fact that Maggie refuses to surrender. Despite all of the terrible things that have happened to her and the people that she loved, Maggie has not given up. She hasn’t turned into a weak shell, like Rick or Daryl. Nor has she retreated to a world of fantasy, like Carol. Instead, Maggie lives, Maggie fights, and Maggie endures. Glenn may be dead but Maggie the Cat is alive.

GO MAGGIE!

Artwork of the Day: Disco Dilemma

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

By Mort Kunstler

Do a google search for “Disco Painting” and this is one of the first images to come up. Entitled Disco Dilemma, it was painted by Mort Kunstler and, according to what I read online, it was used as the cover for the January, 1968 edition of a magazine called For Men Only.

(As my friend, Mark the Australian hippy, once pointed out, Kunstler is German for artist.)

A part of me wonders if that date is correct. Did they have discos in 1968? To me, this seems more appropriate for 1978 than 1968. Just check out that ascot on the bearded man over on the far left side of the picture. (The bearded man, incidentally, bears a vague resemblance to Charlton Heston. Heston famously wore a similar ascot all through Soylent Green.) According to Wikipedia, For Men Only published from “at least the 1950s to the 1970s,” which is pretty damn vague for the internet’s go-to source for information. Wikipedia also states that it started out as a “men’s adventure” magazine before going pornographic in 1970. Personally, I just think it’s amusing that there actually used to be a magazine called For Men Only. Is that a threat or a dare? If I found an old copy of For Men Only and I opened it, would it lead to some sort of Ark of the Covenant-style divine retribution?

(“CLOSE YOUR EYES! DON’T LOOK AT IT!”)

Well, regardless of when this was actually painted or if I would even be allowed to be in the same room as the actual magazine, here’s Disco Dilemma!

(Speaking of disco, be sure to check out my reviews of Skatetown USA, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Saturday Night Fever, Prom Night, Staying Alive, and Thank God It’s Friday!)

(And remember…if I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby….)

(…’Cause we’re living in a world of fools. Breaking us down when they all should let us be. We belong to you and me…)

Music Video of the Day: Touch Me (I Want Your Body) by Samantha Fox (1986, dir. ???)

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

After doing those six music videos from 2016, I thought I would get one point across that I really couldn’t when I was only talking about Starving by Hailee Steinfeld. I do know that Steinfeld has done at least a couple of other music videos where she did a thinly disguised child version of Cyndi Lauper’s She Bop, a couple of MTV Unplugged looking music videos, and one for Rock Bottom that was more appropriate for her talents. My point below stands regardless.

Hailee Steinfeld:
-19 years old
-A song that is of a sexual nature.
-A music video that asked her to express her sexuality onscreen.
-A low-budget looking music video.

Samantha Fox:
-19 years old
-A song that is of a sexual nature.
-A music video that asked her to express her sexuality onscreen.
-A low-budget looking music video.

There is one big difference though.

As much as Steinfeld tried to look sexy in Starving, it still felt like a 19 year-old acting. That made it an uncomfortable experience to watch compared to something like Rock Bottom. Samantha Fox on the other hand was fully capable of expressing her sexuality. There’s a very good reason for this difference.

When Steinfeld was 16, she was just coming off a hiatus after True Grit (2010) to make an appearance in a few movies. When Fox was 16, she was posing topless for the British tabloid The Sun. She continued doing that until 1986 when she started a career in music with this song. That makes a big difference when you are asking a 19 year-old to get in front of a camera as themselves in a sexual manner.

I would have picked out Naughty Girls Need Love Too, but that was made two years later–even if it is a better song with a better music video. It has Fox appearing in a more revealing version of an outfit Tiffany wore in I Think We’re Alone Now. It also had her pushing a man’s head downward toward her crotch while saying “we can get busy my way” after putting his head against her breasts while wearing a Debbie Gibson hat. There’s plenty more in there including her being nude that implies she is in the middle of sex near the end of the music video.

However, it’s not like this music video doesn’t have its fair share of sexual stuff going on. The song is about searching for a man. The title comes right out and says she is looking for a guy, not for love, but to feel his body. There’s the moaning. There’s the drum that has white stuff springing off of it. There’s the guitar that is played like it is a penis. There’s the crowd of people all trying to get a piece of her. There’s the photographs as a reference to her modeling career. There’s the line: “Like a tramp in the night, I was begging for you, to treat my body like you wanted to.” The water flung by the fan into the body of one of the band members to cool him off that she does by accident. There’s the guy she pulls from the audience.

The point is that throughout the music video I believe this is all in Fox’s wheelhouse. It wasn’t fair to Steinfeld to ask her to try to do this stuff in Starving. If you must take her in this direction, then have Steinfeld cut her teeth doing sex-lite music videos along the lines of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth before dumping her into Samantha Fox territory.

Fox hopes to re-release this song soon and return to modeling by posing in Playboy according to The Mirror. I don’t watch reality television, but she was on the British show Celebrity Big Brother this year.

Enjoy!