Quartz City

Passing it along from JBR… Take your name and put an album for each letter. Bonus points if you name the band/artist. Don’t repeat what’s been posted before.

C - Country Life - Roxy Music
H - Happy Nightmare Baby - Opal
R - Robot World - Bailter Space
I - In God We Trust, Inc. - Dead Kennedys
S - Street Hassle - Lou Reed
T - Take It From The Man! - The Brian Jonestown Massacre
O - Obscured By Clouds - Pink Floyd
P - Poet Fool Or Bum - Lee Hazlewood
H - Heyday - The Church
E - Eat To The Beat - Blondie
R - Recurring - Spacemen 3

I’ll miss talking with you about cars and radios.

1. The Fall on “Later with Jools Holland.” I kinda liked Holland way back when he was the snarky new wave guy that would randomly show up on MTV’s old “IRS’ The Cutting Edge,” but now he an old smug self-importance Paul Shaffer-type who insists upon inserting his boogie woogie piano into every act on his show. M.E.S. would just murder the guy and the Fall’s performance was indeed great, but my favorite part came at the beginning when all the guests perform together in an attempt to out awesome each other - only the Fall jump up and down like a band of sinister muppets.

2. Mapping Toponymy. Where regional differences in name for topographical features like “hollows,” “coves,” “-burg,” etc. are actually mapped out.

3. The AMT Piranha. As seen in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. The closest thing there was to a Hot Wheels car you could actually drive.

4. Big Bugs. Just what the web site says - giant insectoid sculptures.

5. Wrong Is Right. You want to give this movie more credit than it probably deserves… Middle Eastern shenanigans, dictators who suddenly can’t get the CIA to return their phone calls, suicide bombers, a president who becomes emboldened after being perceived as a wimp, a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and a media who’s only interested in which side will give them the best ratings. Add in the usual supporting cast of 80s-era parody actors (Leslie Nielsen, Dean Stockwell, Henry Silva) and it should add up to a forgotten movie twenty years ahead of it’s time and at least a short list candidate for a “in the footsteps of Dr. Strangelove list.” Well, kinda sorta. After recently watching it for the first time since it was released, it doesn’t seem quite as sharp as I remember it being but dorky comedies like this and Deal Of The Century are a damn sight better compared with the shrill pound-you-over-the-head tone of current war satires like Lord Of War.

Still, bonus points for the sight gag of Sean Connery throwing his hairpiece out of a helicopter at the end. Double extra bonus for casting a young Jennifer Jason Leigh as a child who poisons her parents for a reality show.

There’s been so many eye-croggling terrific pictures of the solar system lately, but this one of Hayabusa’s shadow on asteroid Itokawa is my fave of the moment. I hope the landing comes off OK.

I know I know, the cruise ship pirate attack story is everywhere but I can’t help but mull over the genuine weirdness of it… “21st century cruise ship defends itself from pirate attack with sonic blaster” had to have fallen out of either Philip K. Dick’s or William Gibson’s typewriter at some point.

Anyway, it’s time to yet again revisit the Weekly Piracy Report which is just crying for a Googlemaps mashup.

A couple months ago, the guys at Geek Squad got into trouble because the CHP thought that the Squad’s black and white Beetles looked too much like police cars. Sure, it’s another silly incident that disguises another case of runaway copyrighting (note the CHP spokesman line about “protecting our unique color scheme”), but it reminds me of another story…

Back in the late 1970s there was a San Diego-based pizza parlor called The New York Pizza Department. Nothing particular special or remarkable about the place - I was only there once and I remember the old pictures of NYC on the wall more than the pizza. However, one day the owner thought that it would be clever to use an old black-and-white police cruiser as a delivery car - complete with “N.Y.P.D.” and a pizza-themed city seal on the sides. It was a cool gimmick and I felt bad when the San Diego police killed it but the NY Pizza Department put up enough of a fight for it to become a regional news item all over Southern California.

Nothing on Google yet, but I’m sure someone else Out There will remember the place.

I’m kinda surprised that The Satan Bug hasn’t been namechecked that much in the pantheon of “viral science gone mad” films. The proto-Andromeda Strain elements are all in place: secret underground lab in the desert, government scientists of ambiguous allegiances, hideous threat to Los Angeles (and by extension, the world), and crackerjack performances from all (George Maharis, Anne Francis, Richard Basehart, Ed Asner, and Simon Oakland in front of the camera, John Sturges and James Clavell behind). All in all, a decent thriller about trained professionals doing their job…

However, the real reason to watch this has nothing to do with biological apocalypse and everything to do with desert modernism. Every location could double as a feature house in an early 60s issue of Sunset or Arizona Highways magazine.

Forget the action, I want a DVD release so I can study the architecture. It’s a heck of a lot less expensive than that spiffy Palm Springs Weekend book.