From 1976 to 1979, CBS ran a Johnny Cash Christmas special every year—it must have been a significant Christmas tradition in many homes (alas, not my own). For those who remember Cash as the ultimate rebel par excellence, these specials make for some interesting viewing. During the 1970s Cash experienced a slump in record sales, and during this period he was a familiar face on TV, appearing as a guest star on Columbo and Little House on the Prairie and doing commercials for Amoco.

In these specials, the sentimentality of the occasion can’t be ignored, so Cash gamely refashioned himself as a family-friendly country music TV host. We’re far from the middle-finger Johnny Cash or Folsom Prison Blues; there’s a decent amount of corny levity to be seen here. You might say that this is the closest that Cash came to a figure on Hee Haw (of course, he appeared on Hee Haw as well).
 

 
Of course, June Carter Cash is every bit as present as Johnny—the emphasis here is charmingly on family, and many of June and Johnny’s wide-ranging clan of relatives are featured, especially in the 1976 and 1979 specials, which were taped in Tennessee.

If you find yourself inundated with cheesy Christmas songs in every retail establishment you dare to enter, you can surely improve your life by dialing up The Johnny Cash Christmas Special, with its mix of Christmas classics and country-western fare, in their stead.

Taped in Nashville, the special that kicked it off is the most homespun of the bunch. The entire second half of the show is framed as an expansive musical visit around the Cash family hearth. Earlier, Johnny and June join Tony Orlando for “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” and (back at the hearth) Barbara Mandrell, several years before she and her sisters got a show of their own on NBC, engages in some ass-kicking steel guitar wizardry before singing “A Beautiful Morning with You.” Billy Graham ends with a downbeat sermon.
 

 
The 1977 edition may be the strongest from a musical perspective, or maybe it’s just my own bias in favor of rock over country. There’s scarcely any humor sketches, which would predominate in the next two years, and the core of the show is dedicated to three of rock and roll’s most venerable heroes, all associated with Sun Studios, just as Cash himself was. In rapid succession we get Carl Perkins singing “Blue Suede Shoes,” Roy Orbison singing “Pretty Woman,” and Jerry Lee Lewis singing “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” before Lewis essays a reverent rendition of “White Christmas.” Then the three of them and Cash come together to sing “This Train Is Bound For Glory” in a tribute to Elvis, who had died just a few months earlier. Also, Johnny spends a good chunk of the show wearing Army fatigues (!).
 

 
The 1978 Johnny Cash Christmas Special, like the 1977 edition, was taped in Los Angeles, and it shows a little. The guests include Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, and Steve Martin, who as a budding superstar is given a fair amount of time for his hijinks. The high point is probably Cash and Kristofferson singing the latter’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” together.
 

 
It’s not news that DM is very Andy Kaufman-friendly, so it was something of a shock to hit play on the 1979 special and see none other than Kaufman himself in the opening bit. For this version of the special, Cash returned to Nashville, and the presence of an appreciative Opryland audience is a blessing. Kaufman scarcely strays from his Latka character, except when he does a completely straight version of Elvis Presley’s “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” It’s well known that Elvis loved Andy’s impersonation; here’s a fine chance to see it.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Johnny Cash Sings Austrian Jams
Shit-hot: The PERFECT Johnny Cash set from German TV, 1972

 
Chris Lilley, the creator of the brilliant Australian comedy Summer Heights High, is back on US TV screens right now with Ja’mie: Private School Girl on HBO, a mockumentary comedy following three months in the life of Summer Heights High and We Could Be Heroes star, queen-ultra-mega-bitch Ja’mie King.

Having watched the whole series, which wrapped up in Lilley’s native Australia last week, I can attest that while it starts off slowly, it gets better and better, building up to a cracker of a final episode. Private School Girl has already come in for a lot of slack from some US critics, (in particular this bizarrely scathing review from the AV Club, which lobs in a wholly unwarranted and unqualified “transphobic” slur against Lilley, the kind of casual misuse of language that makes the author seem idiotic) but to these eyes and ears it’s nothing short of brilliant, a pinpoint accurate piss-take of teenage bitchery and the shallowness of youth.

By her very nature, Ja’mie King is a polarizing character, lacking any shred of warmth or sympathy, so it’s understandable how she can divide audiences and critics alike. But liking Ja’mie is not really the point, is it? For me, one of the biggest, and most disappointing, flaws of modern satirical comedy is the gradual humanizing of central anti-hero characters. Malcolm Tucker (played by Peter Capaldi) in The Thick Of It is a good example. A British political spin doctor, Tucker is literally the embodiment of all that is wrong with politics and the current democratic process in the UK, yet over the course of four series and one feature film, the audience was gradually asked to drop the “hate” part from “the character you love to hate” and to root for Tucker, even as he, and the system he represents, makes our lives demonstrably worse.

There’s no such problem with Ja’mie. She starts despicable, and she ends despicable, as befits a character who is so self-absorbed. See for yourself”. Here is the first episode of Private School Girl, in full, via YouTube (US only):
 

 
Even beyond the social satire inherent in making a mockumentary about modern teenage girls, to me Ja’mie King stands out as a feat of incredible female impersonation. I can’t think of another drag character on TV that is just so on point, from the language and vocal intonations to her subtle (an not-so-subtle) mannerisms and constant hair-fiddling. It’s simply uncanny, and the cognative dissonance of that face playing that part (as well as the abandonment of drag clichés like too much make-up) simply adds to the comedy. Lilley must know a lot of teenage girls to have that physical language so down.

Fans of camp and subtle observational humor will find a lot to like here. And let’s face it, Ja’mie appeals to the spoilt teenage brat and screaming diva in all of us, traits which have already made the character a budding gay icon (even though it will come as a surprise to many that Chris Lilley himself is not gay.) With that in mind, I would like to present my own Private School Girl tribute track, in a typical CVNT TR4XXX vogue-house style, featuring some of the best disses and bitchy quips from the show: 
 

 
Lilley is also prepping a new Summer Heights High spin off series centered around beloved bad boy character Jonah Takalua which promises to be more empathetic than cold-hearted Ja’mie, and hence better or worse, depending on which way your taste lies. We can judge that one when it comes out, but for now, let’s revel in the epic bitchery of Private School Girl.

To get you in the mood, and for readers outside the US, here’s a jaw-dropping DVD extra from Summer Heights High, a four minute scene of Ja’mie trying to convince her mother, via mobile phone, to come and pick her up from school. Presumably this is all improvised, and just goes to show what an incredible character actor Lilley is:
 

 
This just ain’t right… Here’s a skintight spandex Santa Claus bodysuit that can be yours… It’s available to purchase at Rubie’s Costume Company. I can’t find the price for this scary-as-shit leotard on their website, but someone needs to use this in a Santa horror flick, stat!

Via Laughing Squid

 
Earlier this week Paul Gallagher introduced us to “Kate Bush, comedian”—so why not end the week with “Kate Bush, fitness guru”? All right, I’m overselling it a little, but it’s true that in August 1981 the “extravagantly brainy spiritual sexpot,” as Robert Christgau once termed her, was featured in a segment on Looking Good, Feeling Fit, a U.K. show dedicated to well, looking good and feeling fit.

Interviewer Richard Stilgoe caught Bush while prepping for her bombastic and kinetic “Sat in Your Lap” video with dancers Stewart Arnold and Gary Hunt. As Stilgoe notes, the trio tried out the same strenuous dance routine “at least eight times while we filmed it from different angles.”

It must be admitted that Stilgoe indulges in some inane repartee, such as when he asks, “Now, in the music world there’s a lot of late nights, high living and things, and yet you do not have pimples, spots, and all the things that the rest of us get if we stay out late at night, how do you manage that?” For her part, Bush remains steadfastly humble and sensible throughout, insisting that she does indeed get spots, “everyone gets spots,” and advising viewers of the importance of using the right creams to protect your skin.

Considering that her athletic performances were as integral to her art back then as her bewitching music, it’s no surprise that Bush was in such excellent shape—as she allows at the segment’s close, “I don’t think I’m a healthy person. You see, I dance because I want to dance, not ‘cause I want to keep fit. And it’s just a sort of side thing that I happen to keep fit at the same time. I really like what I do and that that’s what it’s all about.”
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Kate Bush, comedian
The terrifying beauty of Kate Bush

 
Long after her forced retirement from acting, dancer-model-actress Maila Nurmi painted portraits of herself in the role she invented: the original Vampira. In her late seventies and eighties she sold these paintings through an L.A. art dealer and on eBay, along with autographed memorabilia. She made very little money to speak of as Vampira and was not remotely well off in her later years. Because she didn’t drive, she stopped painting when she moved to an artsy neighborhood that had no art supply stores within walking distance.

 

 

 

 
Nurmi relished her iconic image as the pioneering TV horror movie hostess for KABC-TV Channel 7 in L.A. in 1954, a regrettably short-lived gig, and Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. She championed the integrity of the Vampira character despite understandable resentment over her shabby treatment by the entertainment industry and countless campier and sluttier imitations.

Mark Berry of SFX Magazine described Vampira’s glamorous allure:

Before encountering the infamous film director with a fetish for angora, Maila Nurmi, the Finnish-born artiste beneath the famous black wig and hemorrhage-red nails, created a phenomenon with her Vampira persona in 1954. Her iconic gothic style, sardonic wit and incredible hourglass-figure made her the ghoulish fantasy of guys and ghouls across the globe, despite appearing on a TV show that was only broadcast to the Los Angeles area. With a venomous stare that would wither a black rose, the voluptuous vamp would emerge every week from thick, dry-ice fog to the sound of creepy organ music. Vampira would silkily perch upon a skull-encrusted chaise-lounge, and in a sexy, Marlene Dietrich drawl, introduce old horror movies like White Zombie and Island Of Lost Souls. Between reels, she would recite weird poetry, drink poison cocktails and chase her pet spider Rollo around set.

A tongue-in-cheek recipe for the Vampira creation is attributed to Nurmi:

2 oz. Theda Bara (vamp, vamp)

2 oz. Morticia (morbid Victorian)

3 oz. Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard)

4 oz. Tallulah Bankhead (the voice, dahling)

2 oz. Marilyn Monroe (demons are a ghoul’s best friend)

3 oz. Katherine Hepburn (Victorian English)

2 oz. Bettie Davis (mama, baby)

3 oz. Billie Burke (dilettante)

3 oz. Marlene Dietrich (singing voice)

8 oz. Bizarre pin-up

Add 3 lizard eggs, 2 mothballs and a glass eye from a pygmy. Shake vigorously till steaming.

Until her death in 2008 Nurmi was quite approachable, giving interviews regularly in her L.A. neighborhood and graciously interacting with her devoted horror and Goth fans (including the original Misfits lineup with Glenn Danzig). There is a lot of wonderful interview footage in Kevin Sean Michaels’ 2006 documentary Vampira: The Movie . Nurmi’s friend R.H. Greene’s documentary Vampira and Me was released last year.

Below, Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira, talking about her artwork:

 
The blog Include Me Out informs us that the Barbican in London is showing William Klein’s 1958 short “Broadway at Night” as part of its current Pop Art Design exhibition, which runs through early February.

Klein’s mini-masterpiece, which clocks in a tidy 10 minutes, represents the cross-pollination of two admittedly related movements that took manufactured Americana as the starting point for a rethinking of aesthetic categories: Pop Art and La Nouvelle Vague. It’s difficult to imagine a major art movement today embracing corporate insignias in such a guileless manner. From today’s perspective it’s fascinating to see such artistic firepower elevating the likes of Sgt. Bilko, Little Lulu, and Mr. Peanut, all of whom can be glimpsed in “Broadway at Night.”

The movie has scant documentary value—girded by a moody, rambunctious, and percussive bebop score by Maurice Le Roux, it’s a formalist work first and foremost, finding beauty in the off-kilter patterns created by the pulsating light bulbs and other visual elements of the Great White Way. Naturally, this isn’t the Broadway of 2013, which isn’t half as charming.

The French opening scroll says something akin to the following:

Americans invented jazz to console death, the star to console woman.

To console the night, they invented Broadway.

Every evening, in the center of New York, an artificial sun rises.

Its purpose is to announce shows, to advertise products, and the inventors of these advertisements would be astounded to learn of the most fascinating spectacle, the most precious object is the street transformed by their signs.

This day has its inhabitants, its shadows, its mirages, its ceremonies.

It also has its sun…

“Console woman,” huh? Only a bunch of men could have written that, and a glance at the credits confirms—likewise revealing the participation of two future greats of the nouvelle vague movement, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker. This movie must have had quite an impact in its day. Orson Welles said, rather grandly, that it was “the first film I’ve seen in which color was absolutely necessary.”

This is a movie that cries out for its individual frames to be converted into stills, so I offer a few of those below.
 

 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
And You Are There: Damon & Naomi’s collaboration with Chris Marker
William Klein’s Mister Freedom

 
In June 2009, a group of Britain’s leading actors gathered to perform a celebration of the work of playwright Harold Pinter, for one night at London’s National Theater. The cast included Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Gina McKee, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Irons, Kenneth Cranham, Susan Wooldridge, Michael Sheen and Henry Woolf. Jude Law and Penelope Wilton had to dash from their matinee performance of Hamlet to take part. The quality of this ensemble gives an idea of the respect with which Pinter is regarded.

The group of actors then presented a selection of extracts from Pinter’s plays, writing and poetry. The set was simple, with the cast remaining seated on stage throughout. The evening of celebration opened with Stephen Rea reading “Death,” written and published in 1997, the year Pinter’s father died. This was followed by an excellent selection from the playwright’s writings, notable amongst which were: Douglas Hodge’s reading of the playwright’s memoir “Mac,”  a comic tale of his early career in repertory theater with the famed Irish actor Anew McMaster; David Bradley eking out all of the comedy and pathos to the character of the tramp, Davies from The Caretaker; Colin Firth also delivers superb performance as the character Aston, talking about his electro-shock therapy, from the play; while Janie Dee and Michael Sheen in Betrayal, and Jude Law and Indira Varma in The Lover, bring out the strong sexual tensions inherent in both plays.

Filmed for BBC’s Arena, Harold Pinter: A Celebration is a remarkable piece of theater.
 

 
MetalMachineManiac’s YouTube channel is stuffed to the gills with top quality live Lou Reed concerts. It’s a treasure trove of great music. Shows dating from the 1970s to performances from recent years. No solo Reed era is under-represented and there are dozens and dozens of full shows (and often individual songs as well).

I could post so many great shows, but here are a few notable selections from the 1970s…

Live in Sheffield, September 9th, 1973

Live In Stockholm, 1974. This one is positively amazing.

With Doug Yule live in Providence, 1975. One of the single best live Lou Reed shows, I’ve ever heard. As one of the YouTube commenters points out, “the band is like the Max’s Kansas City-era Velvets with a saxophonist.” Yes it is.

Here’s something complete different, a 1973 set with The Moogy Klingman Band.

Below, the Rock and Roll Animal interviewed at the Sydney Airport, 1974:

 
On this episode of the VH1 documentary series Totally Obsessed, which I think ran in 2004, Fred Willard hosts a segment on Dennis Avner, self-styled “Stalking Cat”—he appears to have had his name legally changed—who underwent an ambitious series of body modifications (tattoos, implants, piercings) in a largely successful effort to become a feline-human hybrid. Avner passed away under mysterious circumstances in 2012. 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Avner spent time in the Navy as a sonar technician. According to his obituary in Modblog, he “identified strongly with his feline totem animals and in what he told me was a Huron traditional of actually adopting the physical form of ones totem, he transformed himself not just into a tiger, but a female tiger at that, blurring and exploring the gender line as much as the species line.”

As the Seattle Times reported in 2005, “He has had all his teeth removed and replaced with tigerlike dentures and fangs. He has had his lip split to resemble the mouth of a cat. He has six stainless-steel mounts implanted on his forehead and 18 piercings above his lip to which he can attach whiskers. He has had nose and brow implants, and silicone cheek, chin and lip injections. The tips of his ears are pointed. And he has so many tattoos they almost cover his body.”

I confess that I find the segment difficult to watch. On the one hand, I’m glad that Avner/Stalking Cat was able to pursue the life he wanted—on the other hand, one has to wonder about the possibility of body dysmorphic disorder or some other form of mental illness and a chosen life of exclusion from most of life’s offerings. It appears that he did have close friends who supported him, including but not limited to the furry community and the body modification community. 
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Fernwood 2Night: The Great Lost American Comedy

 
In 1979 disco was at its peak—even if this particular group of baseball fans didn’t necessarily agree—and really, the only place for it to go was down. One canary in that coal mine was the release that year by A&M Records of The Ethel Merman Disco Album, a project that none other than the reflexively generous Allmusic.com has termed “absurd.”

Not that they’re wrong. Merman was 71 years old at the time of the album’s release; while her willingness to bend with the youth trends is ultimately admirable, it was always going to be an uneasy fit. Merman’s vocals and the background disco noodling scarcely interact, which makes this all the more interesting as a curio. There was a time when vinyl collectors became frantic to get a copy of this LP, but the Internet seems to have calmed that down—you can now get a copy on eBay for $20.

“There’s No Business Like Show Business”

 
“Everything’s Coming Up Roses”

 
“I Get a Kick Out of You”

 
“I Got Rhythm”

 
There’s more of the same on YouTube, which I’m sure you don’t need my help to find.

In this clip, Ethel shows Leslie Uggams and Imogene Coca (whom she calls “an idiot”) a thing or two about the true meaning of Christmas on A Special Sesame Street Christmas, from 1978:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Ethel Merman of the apocalypse’: Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke’s mind-blowing Faustian bargain