kitsch and clowder

Thanks to Poseidon’s Underworld, a blog dedicated to unearthing forgotten cinematic kitsch, we learn about an obscure but star-studded production of a movie called “The Phynx” by Warner Brothers and the Seven Arts, released to only a few venues in 1970.
It sounds wonderfully dreadful and has an equally byzantine storyline (that’s sort of derivative, hoping to maybe capture some the success that operatic productions like the Beatles’ “Help” found with audiences a few years earlier) that seems to be a light-hearted indictment against Communist Albania, who seems to be systematically kidnapping America’s national treasures in order to lower morale in the West and claim them as part of their own culture. Colonel Sanders is abducted and forced to cook for the Albanian First Lady—Marla Gibbs, Butterfly McQueen and countless other personalities are being disappeared as well and pressed into service as celebrities behind the Iron Curtain.
America’s intelligence agencies meet but are unable to agree jurisdictionally how to proceed, previous efforts to infiltrate the country having failed, and so turn to a “super-computer” called MOTHA (Mechanical Oracle That Helps Americans) for advice. MOTHA suggests quite sensibly that they form a boy-band—the eponymous Phynx—whose members are also trained in the arts of espionage, to take Albania and the whole of the Communist Bloc by storm and liberate their captured compatriots. This looks wacky and deranged but I think just for the sheer number of cameo appearances (the actors and/or their roles of the Lone Ranger, Tarzan, singer James Brown, Charo!, choreographer Busby Berkley and Charlie McCarthy—not the leader of the Communist witch-hunt but rather the ventriloquist dummy), the animated interstitials and musical interludes, it might be worthwhile viewing.

love counts for zero on the court

Via the always marvelous Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a fantastic tournament of tennis matches, as imagined by Medicine Hat sportscaster Felix Harr, godson of author Paul Auster. There are a lot of clever ones, and I especially liked Felix Frankfurter versus Warren Burger, being as they were both US supreme court justices.

catchascatchcan

We had heard beforehand of the unique Russian republic between the Black and Caspian seas called Kalmykia—the only place in Europe where a plurality of the population is practising Buddhists, which is pretty remarkable to learn in itself, but we had never known about the first and still (nominally so, at least) Jewish state (autonomous oblast) called Birobidzhan until listening a really engrossing discussion about it on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Established in 1931 in the Soviet far east, on the border with China, almost two decades before the founding of Israel, the territory partially planned and to a large part championed by Swiss-German Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer. After the Bolshevik Revolution which suppressed religious practises and outlawed private property and put enterprise under the mantle of the USSR, Jewish people, who already faced discrimination and were excluded from many public pursuits and now lost their livelihoods as owners of small businesses. Birobidzhan was advertised as a homeland where they could express their Yiddish heritage (and speak the language, whereas Hebrew predominated in Israel) without fear of reprisal—but as the discussion reveals, it was far from ideal—with cultural labels imposed and thrust upon individuals rather than allowing people to self-identify (which is usually the case in such situations) and the migration seemed more of an expulsion to a harsh and remote land, hardly arable and with no infrastructure. After initially being encouraged to build a community, those members of the “elite” who promoted it and tried to make a success out of the experiment were themselves victims of subsequent Stalinist purges. Be sure to check out the whole fascinating and tragic interview in the link up top.

6x6

ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp: the three decade mystery of the Toynbee tiles that urge mankind to aim for the impossible in order to survive

muchołapka: unfinished and abandoned Nazi construction project in Poland that may be the landing platform for die Glocke or the skeleton of a cooling tower for a reactor

tobacconistas: interesting back to back postings on cigarettes with the taste and aroma of marijuana (but not the high) and lettuce smokes for those wanting to quit

defying the laws of gravity: for what would have been his seventieth birthday, Freddie Mercury has an asteroid named after him

if IKEA made SUVs: a flat-pack all-terrain vehicle

slate and shingle: omnibus of clever chalk board art that drew in more and more patrons