Tuesday, January 01, 2013

2013: A SPACE-FILLING ODYSSEY:

play this year backwards and you can hear the strains of "Deux Mille Treize, Année érotique." though that's not Jane Birkin singing.  i think it's Depardieu in a dress.

Resolutions aren't my bag.  They never work.  Ever.  So this is not a resolution, nor a plan, nor a project, nor a ephron, just a, lessee, ah, a notion:  to contribute some kind of content of some description to this sad l'il weblog-au-mine every single day this year and presumably beyond.  Whether I have anything worth sharing or not.  Like now.  This counts as content, right?  I believe it does.  Great.  Done.

Of course, I could also share one of my favorite moments of music-on-television, one I come back to regularly just to bask in its infernal glow.  It's a moment that has only gained in infamy over the years, but I don't see the big damned deal - regardless of what the tabloids and the rest of the gutter press said about it, the slamdancers (Ian MacKaye's in there somewhere, as allegedly is John Belushi just out of camera range, a real missed opportunity if you ask me) don't seem all that out of control.  Check out the quick overhead shot during the performance: the audience in the front rows look slightly bemused but hardly terrified at the so-called "riot" taking place mere inches in front of them.  It's all showbiz.  But it is one of the moments that made the first half of the seventh season of Saturday Night Live, the period where Dick Ebersol tried to rescue it from oblivion and Michael O'Donoghue tried to make it burst into flames, such a bracing, unnerving experience, the best moments of which still crackle with tension thirty-plus years later, and it's still a kick to watch.  So here you go - from October 31, 1981, Fear on Saturday Night Live.  The hell with black-eyed peas and red underwear - I'm watching this every January 1 to start the annum right.  Happy New Fear.

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