Kevin Marshall's America
"Oh my Gosh, it's Dick Clark!"
Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a portrait drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, you’re automatically entered to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
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On the heels of the news that ABC’s new show “Pan Am” will not feature smoking but will feature a black stewardess despite the fact that they didn’t hire minorities until years later, I’ve uncovered the plot summaries for the first ten episodes of the upcoming season.
EPISODE 1: “Pilot(s)”
The crew is assembled and meets for the first time. After a rowdy all-hours party that explodes in conflicts, they’ll have to put their differences aside to get as many pillows out as possible on the overnight to Portland.
EPISODE 2: “Hiring Freeze”
The crew adds a black stewardess to their ranks. After one customer asks not to be served by her, she shrinks and walks away. A defiant Christina Ricci then gives a grand and stirring speech that changes the hearts and minds of everyone on the plane.
EPISODE 3: “Pan Slam”
The crew meets their toughest customers yet…the men of the WWWF! Guest starring HHH as WWWF champion Buddy Rogers and Ric Flair as himself.
EPISODE 4: “Civil Flight Movements”
The crew meets Martin Luther King, Jr. and wows him with their professionalism. “I have a dream,” he says, “and even then it wasn’t as good as the service I got on this flight!”
EPISODE 5: “Long Way Down”
The crew meets their newest addition, pilot Huey Long. After a rough start, he saves the plane from crashing. His co-pilot, future President George H.W. Bush, puts aside his differences with Long and says “know what, kid? You’re okay.”
EPISODE 6: “She Loves Pan Am, Yeah Yeah”
The girls play Little Richard records for two charming lads for Liverpool and inspire them to form a band.
EPISODE 7: “Bay of Pigs”
The crew, while on a non-stop flight from Miami to Rio, intercepts a radio transmission from the US military. The pilots fly into Cuban airspace, confusing the Soviet radar and thwarting a missile attack, allowing for a peaceful end to the Cuban missile crisis.
EPISODE 8: “Pan American Bandstand”
Dick Clark, recreated with CGI, arrives and tries to woo the girls onto “American Bandstand.” They ponder the possibility, but then decide that their devotion first is to Pan Am. Dick is disappointed but understands, because Pan Am is such a wonderful and progressive and empowering company.
EPISODE 9: “Red Eye”
The crew investigates a murder on the plane and works to uncover the culprit, a KGB spy masquerading as a refugee, with the help of some very special passengers…The Harlem Globetrotters!
EPISODE 10: “X Marks the Spot”
Just to prove that pesky Malcolm X wrong, the crew lands their plane on Plymouth Rock while reflecting on the events of the first 10 episodes.
Now departing for a fantasy world of 1963 that didn't exist: ABC's "Pan Am"
Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a portrait drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, you’re automatically entered to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
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ABC has a new series debuting this Fall called “Pan Am.” It’s set in 1963 and explores the lives, trials, and travails of stewardesses working for the now-defunct titular airline company.
Obviously, the hook is that it’s a “Mad Men” for broadcast and featuring the fairer sex. But as an acquaintance brought to my attention on Facebook (and also Google+ for the six people you know that use it), the producers are drawing a fine line at comparisons, particularly when it comes to some of the less than kind elements of early 60s American society portrayed in the AMC drama.
From CNN:
Although the boozehounds of AMC’s show have never seen a cigarette they didn’t want to light, ABC is stamping out smoking for the likes of the show’s key characters, according to Entertainment Weekly.
….
One other tweak producers are going to work into the time period of “Pan Am’s” plot is to add an African-American stewardess to the crew even though the story takes place in 1963 and the first African-American stewardess didn’t receive her job until the mid-’60s, Schlamme said.
I understand the whole smoking thing, even if I disagree with it. The article linked explains that the show will portray characters who smoke: they’ll have cigarettes in their hands, but they won’t be lighting them up on camera. It’s a cheap shortcut, but one that I’m neither surprised nor discouraged by. Broadcast is an old model with old minds and has different rules, both official and unofficial, by which all shows must abide. “Mad Men” can get away with showing the chain-smoking, heavy-drinking office atmosphere on Madison Avenue at the crux of the swinging sixties because it doesn’t have a haircut in a suit asking them to show immediate ramifications lest they face scrutiny from backward-thinking advertisers and Helicopter Parent advocacy groups.
But a black stewardess is just wrong. Why? Because Pan Am wouldn’t allow it.
“Mad Men” strives for authenticity. One of the show’s producers famously removed apples from a scene because they were the modern, plump, genetically modified ones we’ve become accustomed to, and not the smaller ones that you’d find in 1963. However, the obsession over details doesn’t just maintain accuracy of the time period for the sake of semantics or aesthetics. There is a very clear message in there and the behavior of characters and injustice of the period do have consequences, despite the fact that the lifestyle and fashion is celebrated so loudly by those purporting to be fans of the show.
The apples aren’t just about apples. When the white employees or Sterling Cooper enter an elevator or otherwise encounter a black employee, the awkwardness is jarring and intentional. The black elevator operator says nothing, but the shot is framed to put him in the center. The viewer is forced to ride this scene out with little to no dialogue between the characters, giving us a moment to pause and reflect on the inequity of the times. Even the drinking and smoking is shown to have consequences. In particular the show focuses quite a bit on alcoholism, with many subplots and characters facing serious ramifications from excessive drinking. More are coming next season as Roger Sterling, among others, are seeing their personal demons and trespasses catch up to them. Unfortunately, it’s done in an artful and subtle way, so it’s missed by many and doesn’t hit them until it’s too late. Which is the whole point. Anybody who glamorizes or otherwise sees the show as a celebration of the time period either hasn’t been paying attention to the show itself or is completely out of their minds.
“Pan Am,” on the other hand, will simply introduce a black stewardess who wouldn’t get hired by the company in 1963 because they only accepted white stewardesses. At one point, I’m sure they’ll beat people over the head with a message of racial justice by having the stewardess (or more likely one of her heroic white counterparts) put some bigot in his or her place. It’ll be hacky and self-defeating, artistically and culturally speaking. More importantly, it will ring hollow to the viewer and the opportunity to convey an important message about where we were, where we are, and where we’re headed will be lost.
The problem with people who strive to be “politically correct” is that they’re often anything but. Case in point, a television program will debut this Fall that celebrates a bygone era of a hideously racist and culturally destructive airline company that was equal parts a symptom and perpetuator of social injustice. Instead of calling them out on it and pulling the veil behind the revisionist white-washing of American history, they’ll be lauded for something they didn’t do and given credit they don’t deserve.
In short, a shamefully racist company from 1963 will be given a break, because television producers in 2011 don’t want to offend.
Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a portrait drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, you’re automatically entered to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
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NOTE: I’ve decided to chronicle my extended five-day weekend in New York because why not?
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I had been in New York less than twenty-four hours, but I was already dreading having to go back. I love everything about it, warts and all. But I will say one thing: cell phones have ruined this city. I used to barely be able to keep up with pedestrian traffic down here. A moment’s hesitation in certain parts of Manhattan would make you an obvious and shamed obstruction. Now, with smart phones providing a seemingly limitless number of distractions, I’m finding myself having to dodge and dart around thin, young, rank dullards staring downward into an abyss of useless information and preoccupation. Ten years ago, moving down 3rd Avenue would have been akin to competing in a power-walking race. Now it’s more like a tedious game of frogger, except if I jumped into traffic there’d be less people in my goddamn way.
I didn't realize when posing for this photo that I intended to f*** this sandwich. But apparently I did.
I woke up at the crack of 9:30am on my second day. First thing I had to do was get a memory card for my Blackberry so I could take videos on my phone of my one-year-old nephew Caden, who I was seeing (briefly) later that afternoon and was going to spend time with on Sunday and Monday.
After a morning of errands and writing, I met up with an acquaintance for lunch. We’d only met in person once before, where we both attended a painfully awkward short film festival back in the Capital Region. The entries were terrible, but at the same time you had to be careful not to have too much fun tearing it apart lest the filmmaker be sitting on a blanket five feet from you.
Kristin had moved down to Brooklyn some time ago and was in the midst of a “gap year,” waiting tables while she searched for something better than what she was given when she first moved down. I have no doubt she’ll find what she’s looking for in her field. She’s an incredibly friendly, committed, and charismatic woman with a strong work ethic and gorgeous eyes. Naturally, she’s seeing someone.
We met up at her apartment and had lemonade on her roof. Her place is in a less scenic block that rests right on the Western edge of Park Slope. What it lacks in exterior aesthetics, though, it more than makes up for in the view from her roof. She took me to a specific spot where, when you sit down, you get a straight-on view of the Statue of Liberty. It must be a Hell of a sight in the evening.
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So Hideous, My Love... live at The Acheron 8/4/2011
Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a portrait drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, you’re automatically entered to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
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It used to be that weird things would happen when I visit New York City, but as I get older, that’s not the case. On the other hand, I do make some adjustments that are out of character for me. I become much more confident, adventurous, awake, and far less self-conscious.
Being in a city where everyone’s as hot, cramped, and sweaty as you are will do that to you.
The ride to New York gave me a headache that didn’t go away until two hours after I’d arrived in Manhattan. The bus was scheduled to depart at 10:30am. I knew I was in for a long three hours from the onset, when the two women sitting directly across from me started loudly complaining about the fact that the bus was a mere five minutes late in leaving. From 10:31am onwards, they announced the time every minute on the minute until the bus departed. Thirty minutes later, they consumed the smelliest sandwiches known to man in spite of the sign that explicitly stated there was no eating allowed on the bus. This sign was also ignored by another man who, just when the smell started to dissipate, unleashed his own smelly sandwich. From the smell and what little I could see, I’m guessing it was an onion and baby food wrap that he made from ingredients found in a dumpster. After stuffing his face and fouling up our bus with an atrocious scent, he gave loud and detailed investing advice to an elderly woman sitting next to him. Because when you need sound financial strategies, forget Charles Schwab: take it from the guy riding the Megabus on a Thursday morning.
The bus ride was three hours of obnoxious voices, smelly sandwiches, and a child that cried and screamed for the duration while the mother sat next to her tuning her out (because holding or consoling a child is just too much intimacy for some people). It was still early on Thursday afternoon and everyone I knew was still at work. I passed the time at a cafe that was also a small software company that also lent out space and time to people to produce multimedia. It was a strange space, cold and not all that alluring, but I had my bags with me and no shortage of time to kill. For the hour I was there, a flat screen television on the far wall was frozen on an image of Will Smith looking down with his eyes closed and a smirk on his face. I imagine he was thinking about how wonderful his life was, even if the scene the still was taken from called for acting of some kind. After an hour of Smith’s imagined self-aware smugness, I got a phone call from Bobby.
I knew Bobby from college, where he was both a confidante and a partner in crime. I met him through our college’s pathetic excuse for a student newspaper, The Promethean, which was staffed with very good people that were terrible writers. The articles were fluff, authored by individuals who weren’t shameless per se in their friendly associations with their subjects, because that would imply some awareness that expressing it in a newspaper article itself was a mis-step. You couldn’t fault them too much for it. They were students at a small liberal arts college nestled in a high-end residential area of Loudonville, NY, where most of the student body was studying business, specifically Marketing Management. of studies was on business. To expect the staff to exhibit constructive or thought-provoking material was a fool’s errand.
Madame Tassauds has unveiled its latest celebrity wax approximation: Jennifer Lopez.
I think.
…
Now, I’m not a J-Lo fan. I’ve never bought an album and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie she’s in where I thought “good actress.” But I don’t hate the woman. Same can’t be said, apparently, of whoever it was that molded this wax statue of her.
I was telling a friend of mine a story this past weekend and he called me a “living horror,” after which I thanked him and we hugged as our eyes welled up. Now, however, I think I may have to cede that distinction to this wax statue. Some would say it’s not living, but take a look at it and tell me that thing doesn’t come to life at night and murder people.
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Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a b$15 donation gets you a portrait crudely drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, as little as $5 automatically enters you to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
Image by photosbyae via Flickr
According to ESPN, Alex Rodriguez might be in trouble for his participation in illegal poker games. It must be pretty serious if if ESPN of all places is reporting on it, since MLB is a business partner on fairly good standing with them.
From the article:
CHICAGO — Major League Baseball is taking “very seriously” the allegations that Alex Rodriguez took part in some illegal, underground poker games, one of which reportedly turned violent, and he could face suspension if his participation in the games is confirmed.
“We’re talking to people involved in the investigation and we’re taking this very seriously,” said an MLB executive who spoke to ESPNNewYork.com on condition of anonymity. “Because he had been warned about this before, I would say a possible suspension would be very much in play.”
As noted in the article, this isn’t Rodriguez’s first brush with gambling. His bad habits when it comes to games of chance have been an open secret in the MLB for years. The Yankees and even MLB Commissioner Bud Selig himself have both warned Rodriguez in the past to distance himself from the activities.
While it would seem harmless outside the context of professional sports, the concern professional is that access to illegal high-stakes poker games gives bookies and other undesirables who might try to shave points fix games access to high-profile active players. Pete Rose, one of the best and definitely the hardest working player of his or any generation, is still serving a lifetime suspension that has prevented from getting his rightful spot in the Hall of Fame due to his gambling associations.
According to sources, Rodriguez was present at a game straight out of a bad Jason Statham movie: coke everywhere, a sketchy billionaire, and a fight breaking out after one player lost half a million dollars and refused to pony up the cash.
Obviously there’s a deeper issue personally with Rodriguez when it comes to this stuff. He makes an ungodly amount of money playing the game he loves and is a highly valued member and cover boy for the top franchise in all of professional sports. What on Earth could be gained, on the surface, from an illegal poker game? Why would he take such a substantial risk, especially when he’d been warned already in the past? Possibly the same reason why Rose did: gambling addiction.
Cue the conspiracy theorists who will now point to Rodriguez’s poor performance in clutch situations as evidence that he was in collusion with bookies.
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Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a b$15 donation gets you a portrait crudely drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, as little as $5 automatically enters you to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
If you donate $15 to Special Olympics of New York between now and the end of August, I will personally create a crudely drawn portrait of you.
They’re crude, but endearing.
So far the portraits alone have raised over $100! Here are some more I’ve done recently:
Nathaniel:
Sean:
The Troy Record’s Siobhan Connally asked me to do one of recently departed family member and companion, Madeline J. Dog:
And you can have one too for just a small $15 donation. GET EXCITED.
For more information on my Stuntraising efforts and the Over the Edge fundraiser as a whole, click here
There’s an ointment of that.
But the real news is that I went to the front page of the Times Union for news and…well, actually got it. No SEEN gallery or any of that other chicanery, which has its place but should never be front and center the first thing you see.
Now, Stubby Clapp? That suits me just fine.
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Myself and two others on my team are looking to rappel off the Crowne Plaza Hotel in support of the Special Olympics of New York! Have you donated yet to our cause? Your donation can get you baked goods, a portrait drawn by yours truly, and much more. Plus, you’re automatically entered to win a $25 Target gift card! Give a little, get a little. Click here for more info.
New XFE Lightweight Champion and Amsterdam native Tom Marcellino (from his Facebook page)
A quick follow-up to the info I received last week regarding local fighters and former High School classmates Tom Marcellino, Manny Millan, and Mervin Rodriguez competing on the same MMA card for the XFE promotion in Atlantic City.
The local fighters went 1-2 on the night. Rodriguez lost a decision to tough 155-pounder Brian Jackson, while Millan put up a valiant effort but ultimately succumbed to the always dangerous Brian Kelleher.
Marcellino, on the other hand, was not only victorious but walked out with the promotion’s lightweight championship.
On behalf of myself and my readers, who are supporters of MMA and long to see local fighters get the chance to show their skills in their home state (one of only a handful that still does not regulate the sport), I congratulate Tom, Manny, and Mervin on a job well done. Even though only one of you walked out with a title that evening, you all entered the cage as you left it: as sportsmen and warriors.
For full fight card results, visit XFE’s website.
IN OTHER LOCAL COMBAT SPORTS NEWS: Local boxer Mike Faragon (24-5, 14 KO) will take on Ira Terry LIVE on ESPN in the opening bout of Friday Night Fights starting at 9:30pm. Mike Rivest has more info on his Boxing in the Capital Region blog.
Tomorrow night is National Night Out, an event held across the country to encourage community awareness, cooperation, and safety.
Local writer/advocate Kim M. is helping put together the North Central installment, which will be held in the park at Seventh Ave (between Ingalls & Middleburgh). The event runs from 6pm until 9pm and features plenty of fun games, prizes, activities, face painting, golfing, a dunking booth, a portable bowling lane, and most importantly cookies and ice cream along with plenty of other treats and refreshments.
Kimmie has more information over at her All Over Albany SOAPBOX installment from this past Sunday.
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