Hub City (1997)

A pretty good short about Lubbock, Texas, hometown of Buddy Holly. Fifteen minutes. The filmmaker said he was scouting locations for another movie, so we see some interesting spots, often run down, perhaps abandoned buildings. Most are static camera shots of static subjects so it could have been as a filmstrip, but that's okay. With narration about the city, Buddy Holly and his death.

Available on Fandor

I never entirely understood the appeal of Buddy Holly, but I don't listen to music in general so what do I know. I've also never understood what people like about Texas. People who are from there seem to like it. I lived there for a couple of years when I was six or seven. If I had children, I'd never let them attend school there and I would be in constant fear of being railroaded for a crime I didn't commit and ending up on death row, a surprisingly common occurrence there, although the percentage of the overall population wrongfully executed would be fairly small. The United States in general is one big hell hole in that regard.

Scotty Beckett in happier times

Since I wrote about some terrible incidents during Scotty Beckett's sad decline, here are photos of him in what I hope were happier times.

With Jane Powell, Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor.

 

Ishmael Reed on Trump calling Kaepernick a "son of a bitch"

When I was kid we noted that the term "son of a bitch" was an insult to one's mother. Over time we stopped thinking about it. Elderly Massachusetts billionaire John Kerry cheerfully referred to one of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect him as a "son of a bitch". I knew a woman who called her own son a son of a bitch.

But I knew a Southerner who worked at a gas station where he was attacked by a customer. There's no self-serve in this state. He pumped this woman's gas and she became enraged when some dribbled on her twenty-year-old Nissan. As he wiped it off, she called him a "son of a bitch". He took this as an insult to his late mother and called the customer a cunt. She punched him. He staggered and realized he was starting to black out. She was about to punch him again so he grabbed her by the head and threw her to the ground. The woman called the police and whined that he attacked her. A geezer who witnessed it talked to the police telling them the terrible thing he had done.

After the police went, he asked the geezer why he was defending her.

"Never hit a woman," he said.

"She hit me just like a man."

"Never hit a woman," the geezer repeated stupidly.

Don't call people "sons of bitches". Not everyone takes it in good humor.

Which brings me to this. Ishmael Reed writes about the protests now going on in the NFL (read the full article here):

One of the CNN commentators, a Trump supporter, asked why a demonstration that was conducted by Kaepernick spread after Trump’s provocative remarks? Trump has criticized the NFL before. Good question.

Is it because he referred to the mothers of Black players as “bitches,” a taboo in Black culture? Basketball players like Kevin Durant breakdown into sobs at the very mention of their mother’s names. These mothers are often single parents who make extraordinary sacrifices in order that their male children avoid death at the hands of their misguided peers or by the police. When it came time for my younger brothers to be ambushed by the police, a rite of passage that every Black kid has to traverse, my mother warned the two policemen, who were assigned to harass my younger brothers, that she was a domestic servant in the home of the mayor’s family. They backed off. She was a Southerner before she moved to the North and often Southern Blacks relied upon good White people to protect them from racists.

Mother reverence is also something that is fixed in Black tribal memory. Mother’s Day in Black churches is the most important date on the church’s calendar. Booker T. Washington said that for his White slave-owning father, there was no difference between a cow and his mother.

So, calling Black mothers bitches recalls a time when Blacks were bred and treated like animals. Even White feminist pundits, the only women who are acceptable to the networks, didn’t pick up on this angle of the controversy, which adds to the feeling held by Latina, African American, Native American and Asian American feminists that White feminists have little empathy for their issues. Some of the pundits’ comments might be the reason that Blacks are prone to hypertension. Like the ignorant ESPN commentator who told Black sports commentator Stephen Smith, on the twenty-seventh of September, that the police only kill Black criminals, which doesn’t explain why Blacks of all classes are harassed, including a famous Black tennis star, who is currently in court with the policeman, a member of the NYPD, who tackled him. A case of mistaken identity. Even the Bush administration issued a report proving the existence of Racial Profiling.

Winky on Rocky Jones, Space Ranger

Winky, second from the top. Posing with a space ladder.

I should quit doing this, but I turned on a movie to put myself to sleep last night. It was called Menace from Outer Space. They just strung together episodes of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, an old syndicated TV series from the mid-1950's.

25-year-old Scotty Beckett played Rocky Jones' sidekick, Winky. I don't know why they gave him such a stupid name. Beckett had been a Little Rascal for a short time then became a prominent child actor in Hollywood. He was friends with Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall. As an adult, he became a drunk and a gambler, but refused to pay gambling debts or repay loans. He was arrested after an armed robbery at a hotel. He was found passed out drunk in the hotel basement with a gun but not the money.

Because he didn't have the loot and the clerk couldn't positively identify him, Beckett was charged only with possession of a weapon. He got out on bail and fled to Mexico with his wife and 3-year-old son. They ran out of money. He used his acting ability to pass fake cashier's checks from a nonexistent bank to local merchants. When Mexican police tracked him to the hotel where they were staying, he tried to sneak himself and his family out. Police spotted him and Beckett and the cops got into a gunfight. Luckily for all involved, no one was killed.

Beckett spent four months in a Mexican jail before being sent back to the United States where he plead guilty to the weapons charge and was given three years probation. He must have felt pretty stupid running off to Mexico when all he got was probation anyway.

But, of course, that ended his role on Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Kind of weird that Winky was such a tough customer in real life.

Shooting in Las Vegas

I was awake late last night watching the news from Las Vegas on RT. At that stage, in the immediate aftermath, they were reporting twelve dead. I thought, well, it could have been so much worse. I didn't hear any more about it until I got home from work and, my God, it was much worse.

ISIS claimed responsibility but police say the guy had nothing to do with them. Is ISIS taking credit for things it has nothing to do with as a matter of policy or do they really not know?

The killer's father had once been a 280 pound escaped bank robber who was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He (the father) ran a Bingo hall near here while he was hiding from the law.

Gun sales dropped once Trump became president. Gun nuts honestly believe their own nonsense. They thought Obama was going to take away their guns so they bought all they could while it was still legal. Stock prices for gun manufacturers have gone up now. Mass shootings are a boon to the gun companies.

Guns are for morons. The reason pawn shops are full of them is that nobody needs them. They cost a lot and they're of no use to anyone so they're the first thing you get rid of. Who do they think they're going to shoot?

V.J. Jerome, The Negro in Hollywood Films, 1950

A link to the pamphlet, The Negro in Hollywood Films, by V.J. Jerome published in 1950. Jerome was chairman of the National Cultural Commission of the Communist Party, USA, at the time. He was the first person to be questioned by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in Hollywood.

https://archive.org/details/negroin00jero

He discusses and is critical of some then-recent films, Pinky, Intruder in the Dust, Lost Boundaries and Home of the Brave as well as earlier, blatantly racist movies. Mentions the fact that, for some reason, American movies about the Civil War were almost all pro-Confederate.  

Lousy royal children

"Do you like this new Royal Baby? The first one was OK I guess but I don't like the new one. This new Royal Baby is an asshole."

--MST3k's Bill Corbett on Twitter

The English are finally starting to attack the royal family again.

“When Prince George goes to school, they [the media] look at his jumpers and, you know, £150 ($200) for a jumper, that’s a food bill for a family of four for a lot of people and that’s outrageous and people are outraged by that,” the Sunday Express quoted Anti-monarchist Dent Coad as saying.

“We had all the media attention recently when Prince George started school," said Labour counciller [sic] Ken Ritchie. "We don’t know if he will grow up to be as bad as his grandfather or maybe his great grandfather. Or that he will be as bland as his father. All we know is that at some stage George will be king, unless we change the system or unless he has an unfortunate illness or accident.”

This was reported by Fox News, outraged that anyone would criticize the royal family. They were inexplicably defending a literal welfare queen and her chronically unemployed spawn.