Today in 1964 — one year to the day after recording their first album — the Beatles made their first U.S. concert appearance at the Washington Coliseum in D.C.:
The number one album today in 1969, “More of the Monkees,” jumped 121 positions in one week:
Today in 1972, Pink Floyd appeared at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, during their Dark Side of the Moon tour.
The concert lasted 25 minutes until the power went out, leaving the hall as bright as the dark side of the moon.
The first gold record — which was only a record spray-painted gold because the criteria for a gold record hadn’t been devised yet — was “awarded” today in 1942:
The number one British album today in 1968 was the Four Tops’ “Greatest Hits”:
The number one British album today in 1973 was Elton John’s “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player”:
Today in 1976, the Memphis Police Department named its newest reserve officer:
Today’s number one single from the number one album, “Blondes Have More Fun,” in 1979 asked this question:
The number one British single today in 1984:
The number one single today in 1990:
Today in 2005, Amy Winehouse won a Grammy, though due to visa problems she couldn’t get to Los Angeles to get her award:
Birthdays begin with TV and movie soundtrack composer Jerry Goldsmith:
Don Wilson, who played guitar for the Ventures …
… was born the same day as Roberta Flack:
Jimmy Merchant sang with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers:
Nigel Olsson played drums for Elton John:
Producer Norman Harris worked with the Delfonics, the Trampps and MFSB:
One death of note today in 1997: Brian Connolly of Sweet:
Today in 1964, three years to the day from their first appearance as the Beatles, the Beatles made their first appearance on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew:
I was reading an entertaining police e-novel, The Cozen Protocol, written by a pseudonymous author who is believed to be a former Milwaukee police officer.
At the same time, a friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that he was watching a John Wayne movie. My friend is a huge John Wayne fan.
Wayne portrayed a lot of cowboys and a lot of military officers. (Plus, regrettably, Genghis Khan.) He portrayed two cops in back-to-back movies, “McQ” and “Brannigan.”
Indeed, it’s easy to confuse the two. Both have ’70s-cool soundtracks …
… car chases during the movie …
… and car chases at the end of the movie:
“McQ” is the darker of the two, with the Seattle police lieutenant battling corrupt cops. Chicago’s detective Brannigan is sent to London t0 pick up a gangster for extradition, only said gangster gets away just before Brannigan arrives. (Otherwise it would have been a really short movie.)
Then again, both movies could be said to have been inspired by two previous movies both set in San Francisco, “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry,” which have cool themes by the great Lalo Schifrin …
… and, well, one of them has a car chase …
… while the other has a human chase that concludes with …
Both Bullitt and Callahan were inspired by a real-life San Francisco police inspector, David Toschi, the lead investigator of San Francisco’s never-solved Zodiac murders.
Wayne reportedly turned down the Dirty Harry role. (Which, had he taken it, probably would have ended the series after three movies, since Wayne died before “Sudden Impact” and “The Dead Pool.”) Before him, Frank Sinatra reportedly turned down “Bullitt.” In each case, it’s impossible to imagine someone other than Steve McQueen as Bullitt or Clint Eastwood as Bullitt’s SFPD colleague Harry Callahan.
The ’60s and ’70s were the zenith of cop movies (related, as you know, to cop TV), particularly movies about maverick cops. I wrote earlier about my formula for TV viewing: Cool car + cool theme music = something I’d watch. That applies to movies too.
Of course, each of these movies takes extensive liberties with police work. “Bullitt,” which painstakingly goes into detail of the investigation of a murder, nonetheless clashes with a politician by hiding his star witness-turned-corpse. Dirty Harry thinks Miranda is a dancer who wore fruit baskets on her head. McQ borrows a machine gun, and Brannigan accidentally tries to destroy London in the process of finding the fugitive gangster.
If you look at Dirty Harry as the five-movie series, the other thing each has in common is, well, eye candy for the male audience, beginning with Bullitt’s girlfriend, played by Jacqueline Bisset (whose character is 10 to 15 years younger than Bullitt, but who cares?):
Dirty Harry was a widower, but Eastwood had then-real-life girlfriend Sondra Locke in “Sudden Impact”:
McQ had Diana Muldaur (who later became the girlfriend of Taos, N.M., Marshal Sam McCloud when McCloud ended up in New York City). Brannigan was escorted around London by Judy Geeson.
The By-the-Book Cop, “the older (and usually whiter) cop, who believes in following the law as it is written, playing by the rules even when the criminal scum they’re after does not. A stickler for procedure, the BTBC is quick to chide their rookie partner for playing fast and loose out in the streets, and when they’re Da Chief, you’ll see them constantly threaten to suspend the loose cannon for their impulsive heat-of-the-moment shoot-first-ask-questions-later behavior. If they deem that the situation warrants it, they may bend the rules slightly, but they’ll never go so far as to break them; they are, after all, honest and incorruptible.”
The Dirty Cop: “Brutal, fascist, and often on the take from the local mob, this cop makes most criminals and prisoners look like…well, saints.”
The Rabid Cop, who “might be casually dirty, or overbearingly self-righteous, or anywhere in between, but they all have two things in common: a reckless disregard for civil rights, and an unwavering conviction that any person they’ve identified as “the perp” really is a perp (regardless of any contradicting evidence) and deserves to suffer. Rules and trials are for the PERMISSIVE LIBERAL ASS-WIPES! In a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, they usually take the “Bad Cop” ball and run clear out of the stadium with it. Likely to enjoy using Torture for Fun and Information.”
Put two of these together (even of the same type), and you get the Buddy Cop Show.
You might conclude from what you’ve read that movies and TV shows that depict police are less than realistic. But there is a TV series in another country just waiting for some American producer to make. Lowbrow? Probably. Destined to be hugely successful? Undoubtedly.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present …
… “Alarm für Cobra 11 — Die Autobahnpolizei,” which “combines the dead-serious tone and high production values of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation franchise with car stunts worthy of Michael Bay or The Dukes of Hazzard. Nearly every episode has at least two or three frenzied chase sequences and at least one multi-car pileup. … Think about it. A petrol-exploding, collaterally-damaging, bullet-spurting take on the legendary hardcore profession of… writing traffic tickets.”
So? you ask. Here’s the thing: This series has been on German TV since 1996.
National Rifle Association president David Keene has a surprising statement for those who do not know American history:
“You know, when you go back in our history … the initial wave of [gun-control laws] was instituted after the Civil War to deny blacks the ability to defend themselves,” Keene said.
“It’s the reason, for example, that Condoleezza Rice says, as far as the Second Amendment is concerned, ‘I’m an absolutist.’ Because she remembers her house being surrounded by neighbors with firearms to protect them from a white mob back during the worst days of the civil rights struggle.” …
“Guns are tools,” Keene continued. “Guns are something that can be used for good or for ill. It’s our contention in this country that history shows that in most instances, guns are used for good — to protect people and families.”
Those same people ignorant of history do not know that the groups who went through the South to get blacks the right to vote that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed them were usually armed. They had to be. The Ku Klux Klan was armed, after all.
I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin program Friday doing the 8 a.m. Week in Review segment. (Prerecorded Steve will also be on at 9 p.m.)
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Ideas Network can be heard on WHA (970 AM) in Madison, WLBL (930 AM) in Auburndale, WHID (88.1 FM) in Green Bay, WHWC (88.3 FM) in Menomonie, WRFW (88.7 FM) in River Falls, WEPS (88.9 FM) in Elgin, Ill., WHAA (89.1 FM) in Adams, WHBM (90.3 FM) in Park Falls, WHLA (90.3 FM) in La Crosse, WRST (90.3 FM) in Oshkosh, WHAD (90.7 FM) in Delafield, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, KUWS (91.3 FM) in Superior, WHHI (91.3 FM) in Highland, WSHS (91.7 FM) in Sheboygan, WHDI (91.9 FM) in Sister Bay, WLBL (91.9 FM) in Wausau, W275AF (102.9 FM) in Ashland, W300BM (107.9 FM) in Madison, and of course online at www.wpr.org.
Before that, you can go to the new Right Wisconsin website and read my explanation of how Wisconsin is a conservative state, in a nonpolitical sense, and how that affects conservative political efforts.
You might find another post of mine at Right Wisconsin soon. Or not.
You’ve heard the law school phrase, “Good cases make bad law.”
Might Sunday’s Superdome blackout during Super Bowl XLVII make good law? (Assuming there is such a thing, that is.) From The Hill:
The Super Bowl power outage could fuel interest in energy policy debates that have been on Capitol Hill’s back burner in recent years, a top lawmaker said.
“I think it helps to perhaps kick-start the debate,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
“I think it raises an awareness. Unfortunately for us, most of us take energy for granted. It’s just always there,” Murkowski told reporters on Monday morning, moments after she unveiled a sweeping energy policy blueprint. …
“We have got this immaculate conception theory of energy. It just happens. The lights turn on, it’s the temperature we want, until it’s not, until it becomes inconvenient, it interrupts our game, it interrupts what we are doing, and then all of a sudden it is like, ‘well wait a minute, what it going on here, where do we get this stuff from, how could it not be there and be reliable,’” the Alaska Republican said. …
Her plan — which she hopes will inform a series of bills — touches on everything from electricity policy to oil-and-gas production to biofuels and more.
Its many recommendations for the electric power sector include reexamining regulations that Republicans allege will constrain coal-fired power generation.
The plan also includes calls to boost information-sharing to thwart cyberattacks against energy infrastructure and toughening criminal statutes for cyber crimes; various proposals to bolster transmission infrastructure; support for biomass-fired power, hydropower and development of small modular nuclear reactors, and many other proposals.
“We should aim to use energy more wisely, but that is not a substitute for production, or for measures that will increase the reliability of our systems and supply,” Murkowski said in a speech Monday morning to a conference of state electricity regulators.
Energy is required to power the economy. The idea that you will grow the economy and use less total energy is simply false. (No society in the history of mankind has ever downsized itself to prosperity.) Using less energy to save yourself money should be sufficient incentive to use less energy, not some sort of government stick (car fuel economy standards).
The best way to achieve energy security, however you define that, is to be able to generate energy from as many different sources as possible. That kind of strategy insulates you from price shocks in, for instance, gasoline, fuel oil, or natural gas. Those prices are set worldwide, but increasing domestic oil production makes the U.S. less subject to the whims of OPEC, particularly if, in the “Arab spring,” OPEC governments unfriendly to the U.S. are replaced by governments even more unfriendly to the U.S.
Many conservatives are reflexively opposed to “green energy.” I am not one of them, but I do not believe “green” energy is superior to other forms of energy. I’m not necessarily opposed to the tax breaks the green energy has been getting because I am opposed to taxing business. I am opposed to penalizing other forms of energy to promote green energy, however. (The Obama administration’s weak-dollar policy has the side effect, unintended or not, of driving up gas prices.)
The more sources of energy we have — coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, biomass — the better off we are.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 