The blog for the cult Manhattan cable-access TV show that offers viewers the best in "everything from high art to low trash... and back again!" Find links to rare footage, original reviews, and reflections on pop culture and arthouse cinema.
Carl Ballantine, the first great “comedy magician,” died this week at 92. His obits spoke about how he popularized the art of doing a terrible magic act (I vividly remember the drapery “made by mother” which proclaimed him “World’s Greatest Magishen”). Ballantine was a staple on Sixties variety and talk shows, but was best known as a regular on McHale’s Navy for the four seasons (1962-’66) that it was on.
The most interesting note in the obits was that he transformed the act from an early one in which he was billed as “the River Gambler” (Riverboat?), doing straight card tricks. Take a glimmer here at someone’s wretched but priceless VHS recording of his misbegotten magic act off some special hosted by Peter Graves (could this have been “Circus of the Stars”?):
Ballantine performed the act for over 50 years, and revived it for countless TV shows including the dreaded Eighties Cosby show and Donny and Marie (and yes, I realize that with my Mackenzie Phillips entry and this one, I’ll now have linked to Donny and Marie clips twice in one month….):
One of those oddities that YouTube is populated by, a nightclub puppet act that had a “Ballatine the Great” puppet:
And here’s a scary TV history, the Charles Nelson Reilly Saturday morning kids show parody, Uncle Croc’s Block, on which Ballantine guested as “Sherlock Domes”:
British TV documentaries about the lives of celebrities routinely offer excellent “frames” for their biographies, which often include a portrait of the locale the subject lives/lived in (the Brits are heavy on context, and cities provide the most picturesque sort of context), or an “essay” on the impact the person’s work has had. In the links below, British documentarians tackle two of the most talented singer/songwriters alive, two gents who have always had name recognition but have never had Top 40 singles (except in the case of one “novelty” success….). The subjects are Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen. The Newman docu is a fan’s love-letter to Randy, who acts appropriately cranky and off-handed during the interview segments; the fan in question is Jon Ronson, who wrote the book that inspired the new movie The Men Who Stare at Goats and directed the documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes. The docu, found on the World of Wonder site, is called “I am, unfortunately, Randy Newman”:
The portrait of Leonard Cohen isn’t as blissfully musical as Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, but it does supply a good short-form intro to the cult of Leonard and its acolytes (of whom I am one). I recently sat in the nosebleeds at Madison Square Garden to see Len, and he gave one helluva show, offering three hours of solid classics (and the deft handling of a very fine hat).
It’s Halloween again, my FAVORITE holiday of the year (fie on Xmas). And since I’ve mostly paid tribute to film and music items relating to horror and the Halloween holiday on the show and in this blog, this time out I thought I’d raise a candle to the genius of the creepiest artist of the E.C. Comics group, Graham Ingels.
Nicknamed “Ghastly,” Ingels was, along with Jack Davis, the most “extreme” E.C. artist. But where Davis was cartoony, Ingels really seemed to relish sketching the shocked facial expressions, ominous landscapes, and decomposing corpses that were frequent parts of the stories he was chosen to illustrate. Among the things I’d like to present to honor him are two scans I made of his biography. First, the official one that came out in the 1950s (reprinted in one of the wonderful, invaluable Russ Cochran reprints). Click the image to enlarge.
Then there is a sort of update, a biographical sketch of him provided for a later reprint, which notes he didn’t like to acknowledge his connection with E.C. later in life; it is noted in other online bios that he finally did, in his last few years. Click to enlarge.
And in case you’re looking to read a whole story illustrated by Ghastly, there are two that have been scanned by the good souls over at Insane Journal (great name!). First, a most appropriate tale called “Halloween!” from Shock Suspenstories #2. Read “Halloween,” and celebrate the holiday in style!
And you can’t get any further-out than the really sick “Horror We? How’s Bayou?” It remains one of the most extreme exercises in ugliness that brilliant horror scribe Al Feldstein (who is owned very many royalties and residuals by his student Stephen King) ever came up with. How can you resist reading one of the sickest stories E.C. ever came up?
I should acknowledge where I my E.C. “fan-addiction” sprang to life again: at the local paradise of low-priced, perfect-condition cool books and comic-related stuff, Drougas Books (known to NYers in the know as “that awesome bookstore on Carmine St. with the long Lefty name I can't remember”).
Some of my favorite Ghastly covers, starting with the most atmospheric and subdued to the more lurid lovelies:
2009 stands as the 40th anniversary of a whole raft of things, from the moon landing to Woodstock to the Manson murders. Among the many things that began in ’69 was the television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which I and many of my confreres became addicted to back when it started appearing on American TV.
Thus, I counted myself lucky that I was among the folk who attended the reunion of the five surviving members at the Ziegfeld Theater — which was oddly foreshadowed by a reunion of four of the members the night before on The Jimmy Fallon Show, and a quick interview of three of them on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which actually constituted the only time they were asked serious questions, and gave (semi-) serious answers. The event was the official American premiere of the Eagle Rock documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth, which by this time has aired on IFC, and which I’ve viewed in both versions. The shorter one (a two-hour cut made for British theatrical release, purportedly) is actually the better of the two, unless you are a fan like myself who likes all the sordid details, and who is willing to sit through heaping chunks of the feature films in order to get background info.
I felt the documentary shone when it found the Pythons rhapsodizing about their heroes, who all happen to be folks who should be better known by the American public: Spike Millgan and the Goons; the Beyond the Fringe group, especially the blindingly brilliant Peter Cook; the Bonzo Dog Band (the single most important link between Beatles/’60s and Python/’70s, and many of the participants would agree on that). That Was the Week That Was (which I’ll readily admit is the entry in this list I know very little about); and humor-mag pioneer Harvey Kurtzman. All the lionizing goes on in the first episode of the series (except for a juicy bit about how Spike Milligan beat the Pythons to the punch with his wildly surreal Q series in the second episode). The third episode proved equally compelling, supplying info about the personalities of the six Pythons.
“Disguised as a normal person” (thanks, David Steinberg), I covered the Ziegfeld Theater reunion for the trade magazine Video Business. Here is my account.
I don’t often blog about local politics, but when I do it’s never because I’m happy. In this case I’m extremely unhappy that Michael Bloomberg, GRB (Greedy Rich Bastard), will more than likely be re-elected as New York City mayor next Tuesday for a variety of reasons. The foremost reason, of course, is that he’s a GRB. I am a registered Democrat — not that I love the party, but because I wanted to participate in the primaries, and being an Independent for so many years essentially meant nothing; as with voting for third-party candidates, it’s a great idea, but this country’s vision is far too narrow to allow for difference, never mind dissidence.
In any case, I’m a registered Dem, and thus have been pissed off that my mailbox has been literally flooded with mail from Bloomberg’s campaign, telling me how his opponent, Bill Thompson, represents “politics as usual.” This is a great strategy, often used by the party in power (especially if they’re right of center): accuse the opponent of being exactly what you are, so you sometimes throw the public off so much that a percentage of them believe it. Bloomberg has run this city for eight years, and yet somehow voting for him will be voting for change. Good one, “Mayor Mike.”
In the meantime, we have a barrage of mail and TV ads telling us how Bill Thompson is a terrible candidate, and why we should vote for the same old same old in order to be really progressive. This New York Times article notes that Bloomie has spent more of his own money than other candidate in U.S. history. If I was forced to say something charitable about Bloomberg, I believe the only positive thing I could come up with is that he is not a loathsome, repellent individual like his predecessor Rudy Guiliani. No, Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire and this is an experiment he’s been carrying on. The name of the experiment? "Make NYC more comfortable for the rich and tourists." Both groups have received many boons during Bloomie’s past two terms, and they will no doubt be the only important individuals during his third.
The hauteur Bloomberg conveys when he speaks can't be hidden. He could be read like a book during his debate with Thompson earlier in the week: “why am I being forced to stand here with this man?” This AMAZING montage of Bloomberg being a haughty prick pretty much illustrates his attitude toward the “rest” of the populace — if you thought him calling a reporter a “disgrace” for daring to ask about term limits was a wonderfully revealing moment, check out the “silence” he enacts when someone’s tape recorder is dropped during a press conference (he is a bitchy little cuss, isn’t he?):
The most puzzling part of the equation is the old saw that NYC is a liberal city. We do indeed have a lot of really bright progressive minds hangin’ ’round, but what has sadly hit me over the past few years — even despite the election of Barack Obama, whom I support — is that this is a conservative country broken up by pockets of enlightenment. The fact that no one woke the fuck up during the eight-year reign of the moron who previously held the presidency, and said, “hey, you there, get the hell outta here!” is underscored by the fact that “liberal NYC” has now had 16 years of conservative mayors (one repellent on all levels, one smarmily self-satisfied and content). And it will no doubt be 20 years, unless a lot of folks like me who are disgusted by the b.s. “improvements” (need we say Bloomberg Beach again?) and amazed by how things really aren’t better in any way, shape, or form (have ya ever ridden a subway that was not that one a day that Mikey takes as a daily publicity stunt?), vote the GRB out of office.
Carl Ballantine, the first great “comedy magician,” died this week at 92. His obits spoke about how he popularized the art of doing a terrible magic act (I vividly remember the drapery “made by mother” which proclaimed him “World’s Greatest Magishen”). Ballantine was a staple on Sixties variety and talk shows, but was best known as a regular on McHale’s Navy for the four seasons (1962-’66) that it was on. 
