Alright, on to the second installment of As Seen On TV, and as I said in the first one I might deviate from TV shows. I’ll go ahead and do that now, but it’s OK because when I saw this movie it was on a TV, so close enough.
We all know the genre of blaxploitation, but did ever wonder where it came from? How did it start? Well, the film that is generally agreed as the originator of the genre is Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a 1971 film written and directed by and starring Melvin Van Peebles (you might have heard of his son Mario, but more on that later).
Sweetback (as I will henceforth refer to it) is the story of a, well I’ll just wikipedia tell it:
A young African-American orphan…taken in by the proprietor of a Los Angeles brothel in the 1940s. …he is raped by one of the prostitutes at a young age. The women name him “Sweet Sweetback” in honor of his sexual prowess and large penis. As an adult, Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) works as a performer in the whorehouse, entertaining customers by performing in a sex show.
From there it’s a story of corrupt cops trying to frame him for murder because they want to pin it on a black guy (they plan to release him afterwards, they just want a fall guy to the pressure off). But the cops also a catch a Black Panther, and when they start beating him Sweetback attacks the cops and flees. From there it’s all trying evade the police while exchanging his sexual talents for help from lady folk.
Sounds like a perfect Glibs movie, but I don’t remember any blackjack. The movie itself may not be that great, but it had an interesting impact on movies that came later.
The film’s focus on urban black culture and themes of black revolution are the easiest way to see the influence, which was Van Peebles’ goal. He gained some influence for his past work in Hollywood, but movies exploring this culture were still seen as too out of the norm. He had been offered a deal from Paramount to make movies, but not this movie. The late 60s-early 70s is when the old Hollywood Studio System started to crumble. Independent films were becoming what was groovy. Going through the studios was no longer the only way films could get made. To this end, Van Peebles financed the film himself (after he ran out of money he got Super Predator Bill Cosby to invest) and worked with a ragtag crew of people within his network. Like when he needed to score the film he hired this little group a friend of a friend knew named Earth Wind and Fire.
On top of writing, directing and starring Van Peebles also edited the film, the style he used influenced films that came later. Even though I work in editing, I’m too technical of a guy, hell I’ll just let wikipedia say it:
The film’s fast-paced montages and jump cuts were novel features for an American movie at the time. Stephen Holden from The New York Times commented that the film’s editing had “a jazzy, improvisational quality, and the screen is often streaked with jarring psychedelic effects that illustrate Sweetback’s alienation.”[8] In The 50 Most Influential Black Films: A Celebration of African-American Talent, Determination, and Creativity, author S. Torriano Berry writes that the film’s “odd camera angles, superimpositions, reverse-key effects, box and matting effects, rack-focus shots, extreme zooms, stop-motion and step-printing, and an abundance of jittery handheld camera work all helped to express the paranoid nightmare that [Sweetback’s] life had become.”[9]
When the movie was released it got an X rating and one of the few theaters that would even show it cut some stuff out. Working to secure that release was another showing of Van Peeble’s hustling to make this movie happen, he had to go convince theaters himself to even show it, at first he only convinced two. But once audiences saw the film and word of mouth spread it ended up making $4.1 million.
Oh, I said I talk more about Melvin’s son Mario. For those of you don’t recognize the name Mario Van Peebles is a B or C list action star but has also appeared in mainstream films with the likes of Clint Eastwood and Wesley Snipes, he even just happened to guest star on an episode of The Cosby Show. Mario’s first role was playing young Sweetback in this film, you know when the character was raped. Yeah, his dad directed him in a rape scene. But once Mario got all growed up he made a movie about his dad making the movie based on a book his dad had written about making the movie. That’s a lot of basing. That movie is called Bad Asssss and relates some of the experiences from making Sweetback and is generally enjoyable, containing re-enactments of anecdotes like these:
Van Peebles and several key crew members were armed because it was dangerous to attempt to create a film without the support of the union. One day, Van Peebles looked for his gun, and failed to find it. Van Peebles found out that someone had put it in the prop box. When they filmed the scene in which Beetle is interrogated by police, who fire a gun next to both of his ears, it was feared that the real gun would be picked up instead of the prop.
While shooting a sequence with members of the Hells Angels, one of the bikers told Van Peebles they wanted to leave; Van Peebles responded by telling them they were paid to shoot until the scene was over. The biker took out a knife and started cleaning his fingernails with it. In response, Van Peebles snapped his fingers, and his crewmembers were standing there with rifles. The bikers stayed to shoot the scene.[6]
Van Peebles had received a permit to set a car on fire, but had done so on a Friday; as a result, there was no time to have it filed before shooting the scene. When the scene was shot, a fire truck showed up. This ended up in the final cut of the film.[6]
When I was in my early 20s, working my first real job for the princely sum of $13.50/hr, I remember the day before the day before payday being the brokest day of the biweekly cycle. I guess the day before payday was easier because thanks to direct deposit, when you woke up in the morning you wouldn’t be broke anymore. But two days out, if you could see the bottom of the peanut butter jar, and you were down to bread heels, that meant that you had two days to regret all the drinks you’d bought for those tawdry, misleading tarts at the bar over the weekend. Or the new video game you’d bought. Anyhow, I looked at our checking account today and, although the balance still has three digits to the left of the dot, I thought, “oh shit, we’re broke”. Not, like, scrounging up a buck from the change in your car or couch to get to work and back broke. Not, like, ketchup on crackers broke. Just broke enough that it causes me anxiety.
Note: The newness of these links is also poor. I think you discussed all of them in the H&H post, but I can’t find any I like better.
Researchers create zombie pig brains. “This is not a living brain, but it is a cellularly active brain.” — So in other words, a politician
From the OMWC/Mexican Sharpshooter realm: While I admire this guy trying to fulfill his wife’s fantasy, I don’t think forcing some dude to bang her at gunpoint is cool. That’s a pretty aggressive cuck.
“Comity,” said Bernie, his jowls set a’tremble, “Comity is what we need in this country. Delicious comity.”
Bret and Martha looked at each other quizzically.
“What is ‘comity?’” an audience member yelled.
“Well, ah, it’s a kind of, I guess, jam, you could say,” Bernie stammered. “Great on a bialy.”
“Bialy?” Martha asked.
“Jewish English muffin,” Bernie said. “All over Brooklyn. Poor people food. Authentic. Covered in sweet, sticky comity.”
“That’s not what ‘comity’ means, Senator,” Martha said, pressing her earpiece.
“I knew a girl with a sweet Jew muffin,” Bernie mumbled.
“Senator?” Bret asked.
“You both make more money than me,” Bernie said, angry, his skeletal finger pointing at them. “I don’t have any money. I’m like a monk. A Jewish monk from Brooklyn. I watched the Brooklyn Dodgers play, you know. The tickets were only a dollar. I bet you fancy Fox New anchors would be angry if you only had to pay a dollar to see a Brooklyn Dodgers game. Let too many of the poor to sit next to you.”
“Senator,” Bret interrupted, “Your just-released tax returns state that you made over a million dollar in income in both 2016 and 2017.”
“Look, I don’t have a dime, OK. Flat broke,” Bernie said. He turned out his pockets and change, lint, old tokens the subway no longer used, half a fortune cookie, and a few one-hundred dollar bills came pouring out. The change bounced and rolled everywhere.
“See?” Bernie said. “Just the change for the washing machine in my building and a little walking around money in case I meet a constituent.”
“You give money to the people who vote for you?” Martha pounced.
“I never said that. Stop putting words in my mouth!’ Bernie shouted hoarsely. He mimed chewing with his mouth open and then stuck out his tongue. It was fish-belly white. “Your words are chewy and taste funny. All I said is that I occasionally give money to my constituents when they need it. I’d never give it to voters.”
“Your constituents are the people who vote for you,” Bret said drying.
“Lies! Lies and comity!” Bernie raged. “I am poor and broke and grew up poor and broke and I’ll be poor and broke forever. Sure, I have millions of dollars. But I wrote a popular book. Maybe you should write a popular book and be a broke millionaire too!”
“Lies! I am the 99%!” Bernie said. He turned to the audience and began chanting “We are the 99%! We are the 99%!” but only a few joined him and they were half-hearted at best.
Bernie turned to the camera and looked directly in it, grimaced and ran a liver-spotted hand through his thatch of hair. The HD cameras in the studio caught the small blizzard of dandruff that settled onto his shoulders and sleeves and lapels and the floor.
“I saw the Brooklyn Dodgers,” Bernie said. “I’m just like you, America.”
This morning I had a Hat-and-Hair dream. Fat, orange Trump was wandering around the Oval Office cleaning up cat vomit, bitching at Pie, and not wearing any clothes. At this point, I think I’m going to sue the other founders for mental anguish, put out my eyes, and join a monastery. Thankfully, my youngest son picked that moment to come into our room and wake me up. Otherwise, my soul might truly have been lost.
Its mating season for gators in Florida, so look out for lots of jorts and oyster boots. (For you non-sportzball fans, the University of Florida’s mascot is the gators, and well, they’re just not fashionable people)
Trump to Whitehouse Correspondants — I’ll go party with the people who are going to make me President again. I’m sure by October 2020, SugarFree will be praying for an upset so he doesn’t have to beat a dead-horse serial for another 4 years.
Dem Presidential Candidate (who isn’t) proposes 2 new Cabinet level agencies – Minitrue and Minikid. Anyone else cynical enough to think the children’s one will end up owning abortion and other “state-paid” infant and child healthcare decisions?
I went searching for hat songs and found… something. The line dancing in the middle part looks like something out of 90s country video. I’m sure that’s culturally insensitive of me.
Hello, and welcome to episode 2 of Woke Charmed! If your brains weren’t bleeding already, they will be by the end of this!
We start out in the Generic Science Lab where in our last episode, the demon Taydeus met his foul end. (I forgot to mention this in the last recap, but the spell the girls used to destroy Taydeus was a bunch of garbled “Latin” that Number.6 kindly translated for me: “Your fear of Strong Women will be your undoing.” NOPE, NOT JOKING.) A janitor is mopping the floor and notices some sort of black blob on a nearby tray, which appears to be moving. The blob comes to life, attacking the janitor, going into her chest like it’s going to possibly possess her, then changes its mind, jumping out of her chest, and slithering into an air vent.
The episode then cuts to the sisters’ attic, where they are still sitting around the Ouija board that warned them about Harry at the end of the last episode. Harry appears behind them—apparently whenever they say his name, it summons him. They jabber some excuse and he tells them that he will be on his way, but to please call him if they notice any signs of demonic activity, which includes fog, cold patches, random dog fornication, and presidential tweets. He also notices the Ouija board on the table and tells them they should leave it alone, due to the fact that spirit boards are notoriously vulnerable to demonic manipulation.
…black cats crossing your path, Betsy DeVos wearing pink, three-eyed toads croaking at the moon, PewDiePie releasing a new diss track…
After the title card, Macy begins moving her things into the house, where she is apparently going to be living in their dead mom’s room. Maggie tells her that she’s completely welcome and that it’s not weird for her to take over their mom’s room, and then proceeds to forbid her from moving anything in the entire room. One of the objects Macy isn’t allowed to touch is a vividly painted bong, which apparently Maggie made for their mom when she was eight because they had a perfectly normal childhood. Throughout this scene of sisterly hijinks, Macy and Mel show off their powers while Maggie sulks that mindreading is a sucky power.
Mel then starts telling her sisters what she’s learned about spirit boards in the Book of Shadows. The book says that they’re a legitimate means of communicating with the spirit world, but Macy is still inclined to believe what Harry warned them. Being a Scientist, she decrees that they need to find Objective Evidence about the spirit board’s veracity. The Book of Shadows (or, as Maggie dubs it, “Magical Siri lol I’m a millennial I use technologyyyy”) opens to a page about truth serums. Mel thinks the truth serum is unnecessary because, being Mel, she immediately is jumping to the wrong conclusion. (This isn’t a spoiler, right? Like, we all already know how this is going to go.) She’s on Team Mom Is In The Ouija Board, Macy is on Team Harry Is Telling The Truth, which leaves Maggie as tiebreaker. Maggie sides with Macy, sending Mel into a classic fit of rage.
Macy and Maggie begin working on the truth serum while Mel rages. Maggie decrees that until they figure out whether he’s evil or not, Harry’s code name will be Meghan Markle. Get it? Because Harry is British, just like Prince Harry? Get it? Get it? Is this thing on?
If only I had a cool power like making bongs hover in midair and not just hallucinating that they do while high.
Maggie then puts on a pair of gloves in the hopes of blocking her mindreading powers and heads off to a Kappa pledge event, in which they… are… visiting Mysterious Coma Girl (the witness from the first episode who wasn’t able to testify against Professor Rapey McRaperton because of her coma) in the hospital. This seems like an appropriate pledge event for a sorority that Coma Girl wasn’t even a member of. Regina George immediately zeroes in on the gloves and is a predictable bitch about them. And guess what! The gloves don’t even work. She takes Mysterious Coma Girl’s hand and her mind is filled with screaming.
At the Generic Science Lab, Macy is attempting to steal ingredients for the truth serum when she’s interrupted by Friendzone, who works there I guess? He tells her he’s been added to her team by the new person in charge of the project (I have literally no idea what’s going on in this lab), since Professor McRaperton resigned the day after getting reinstated—how weird, right? So weird. He also mentions the janitor who got attacked by the mysterious black blob the night before, which makes the processor in Macy’s brain start clicking and whirring. She grabs an empty test tube and scrapes residue from the black blob off the air vent.
The scene switches and suddenly… Maggie is making out with her ex-boyfriend? What? Did I miss a scene here? She tells him she needs him for stress-relief sex, but they are NOT back together, all right? But she can hear his thoughts, which makes properly getting off difficult, since his thoughts careen wildly from boobs boobs boobs to some other girl’s chin mole to broccoli farts to I love her so much I have to get her back. Is this truly the inner workings of the mind of an American male? The world may never know.
Gentlemen, please don’t tell me in the comments if this is your internal monologue during intercourse.
Mel is also planning some stress-relief scissoring with her ex, who I guess isn’t her ex anymore. While they work out the details of their lunch date, the Ouija board starts talking to Mel, who it definitely hasn’t figured out is the easiest mark in the house. It spells out “Melly,” which is PROOF! that it’s their mom’s spirit because that was her nickname for Mel! Duh!
Macy goes to the hospital, conveniently attached to the university (have I mentioned that Hilltowne appears to be a college campus, some houses and a police station? That’s IT in the entire town), to check on the janitor. She finds Harry doing some kind of magic to the janitor, which could be shady or innocuous. He explains that he was wiping the woman’s memory about the demon attack at the lab. Macy decides to not tell him about the black blob or the test tube sample.
Maggie comes home screeching about how sex has been ruined for her forever to find Mel being conned by Miss Cleo at the Ouija board. She knows it’s their mom! She knows!! It has to be!!!
This explains a lot about Maggie’s love life.
In a moment of weakness, Maggie decides to sit down and have a chat with the board as well. Macy comes in like, “Dude, what the fuck?” but is interrupted by an arm shooting out from the board and grabbing Maggie around the wrists. Macy uses her powers to launch the board across the room, freeing Maggie from the arm, but also breaking the board. Mel goes predictably apeshit.
While Mel searches through the Book of Shadows for a way to repair the board, Macy tells her and Maggie about the janitor attack at the lab. She says she believes Harry was telling the truth and that the spirit board’s activities could be related to the demon. She wants to show Harry the test tube with the black blob sample. Mel argues that she doesn’t trust Harry (presumably because he’s a cis male) and that she trusts that the board is really their mom. Macy says she doesn’t want to do anything until they give Harry the truth serum, which she has prepared and stored in a silver Thermos. Mel accuses her of being a heartless bitch who doesn’t love their mother. Macy retorts that she is a Scientist who is objective enough to analyze data.
Their argument is interrupted by the appearance of Mel’s girlfriend (Niko), who has brought sub sandwiches and some tea in a silver Thermos.
I BET YOU CAN’T GUESS
She introduces herself to Macy, who sets her Thermos down on the table to shake hands with her. When Macy leaves, GUESS WHOSE THERMOS SHE TAKES???
Maggie says she will also be on her way, telling Mel that she’s going to look for a way to fix their mom’s s—ssssssewing machine! Niko is surprised that Mel is interested in taking up sewing, and Mel coolly informs her that she’s come to realize that not all domestic tasks are oppressive.
Real dialogue alert: That was the real dialogue.
Niko is so pleased by this that she gives Mel a gift: an original 1987 pressing of The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, still sealed in plastic. The reaction Mel has to this is so incredibly fake that it gave me the fits. She instantly recognized what it was (some bitch could give me a sealed ABBA record and it would still take me a minute to figure out what I’m looking at) and was just like, “Aw, you shouldn’t have,” in this fake-ass voice like Britney Spears in “Oops! I Did It Again.” (Once I figured out what I was looking at, you can bet I would be screaming and jumping around clutching my ABBA record to my chest.)
Niko’s pager goes off and she has to return to the station, leaving Mel with her undeserved gift. Mel tells her to bring her handcuffs later (>insert stock “bow-chicka-wow-wow”) and after some more gratuitous lesbian liplocking, Niko leaves with the Thermos.
For whichever one of you was asking about the softcore porn last week
While waiting for Harry to arrive, Macy is on the phone with Friendzone talking about work stuff. Macy comments that it sounds loud on his end and he says everyone is freaking out because apparently the janitor has died. Macy gasps and Harry walks in holding GODDAMN ROYAL DOULTON (but no hand-painted periwinkles) BECAUSE HE’S BRITISH IN CASE YOU FORGOT! THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE A CUPPA! Harry brought china and Macy brought tea in a plastic Thermos.
Meanwhile, at the Hilltowne police station, Detective Niko begins making an ass out of herself during an interrogation. BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING! Such lovable hijinks on this show.
At the college, Macy waits for the truth serum to take effect on Harry. She’s going to be waiting for a while.
At the house, Mel and Maggie are trying to fix the Ouija board. Maggie feels bad that they fought with Macy. Mel doesn’t give a flying fuck.
Mel’s phone rings. It’s Niko, and she’s yelling everything that comes into her mind at the top of her lungs. Mel realizes she must have gotten the truth serum and runs to the station to collect her before she can do any more damage. On their way out the door, Niko yells at a man for sexually harassing his partner (who’s also a man, I guess she figures that gay guys, being cis males, can be sexual harassers too) and at another cop for microaggressing her by assuming she’s Chinese when she’s JAPANESE GODDAMIT!
I HAVE BEEN MICROAGGRESSED FOR THE LAST TIME
Niko then informs Mel that she slept with her ex-fiancee while they were broken up. WHILE THEY WERE BROKEN UP. Mel blows a goddamn gasket and tells her that she doesn’t want that Cure album if it was just a guilt present, and she and Niko break up… again.
(BTW, I am astounded at all that Niko has managed to accomplish in her life. She looks like she’s 23 years old and she’s already a police detective and has been engaged, broken up with that fiancee, and been dating someone else long-term. Talk about an overachiever.)
Back at the house, Maggie has fixed the Ouija board and Regina George starts cuntily texting her. Maggie starts crying and says she wishes her mom could help her. The Ouija board comes to life and spells out Release me.
When Mel gets home, they follow the Ouija board’s instructions and perform a spell that breaks all the mirrors in the house. Their mom’s figure emerges from the board. They embrace, and she asks where Macy is. They say she’s with Harry, and their “mom” tells them that the reason she warned them not to trust Harry is because he’s the one who killed her, and he’s planning to kill them to take their powers.
At the campus, Macy, expecting the truth serum to have taken effect by now, asks Harry if he killed the janitor. Harry evades the question and asks her what she and her sisters are up to. Her phone starts going off with rapid-fire texts from Mel and Maggie telling her to come home now, don’t trust Harry, etc. Harry menacingly grabs her and they apparate to the sisters’ attic.
Harry sees the Ouija board on the table and asks what the girls did. He turns and sees their “mom” standing there. He tries to attack her, but Mel, who learned her social skills from Mags Visaggio, hits him over the head with a heavy object, knocking him cold.
Look at her expression! This is the face of a woman who enjoys inflicting blunt-force trauma.
Their “mom” has a moment with Macy while Harry lies unconscious on the floor. She tells them that the sisters have to retrieve the Prism of Souls, which Harry has hidden somewhere, which is the only thing that can protect them from him. They deduce that it’s hidden inside the antique mirror in their mom’s old office. The sisters hug their “mom” before they leave, and Maggie notices that she can’t read her “mom’s” thoughts.
The mirror has Latin inscribed on the rim. Mel pulls out her phone to translate it, but Macy, without a moment’s hesitation, tells them it means “The only way out is together.” When Maggie and Mel look at her in surprise, she says, “What? I’m a Scientist.” LMAO okay, we must live on Gilligan’s Island where the Professor is an expert in literally everything.
The three pass through the mirror into another dimension filled with thousands of mirrors. They have to find the right one to get the prism and get out. As I’m sure you can deduce, they do this by using the Power of Three. Maggie is hesitant because she’s starting to have her doubts that their “mom” is really their mom, but Mel screeches at her that MAJORITY RULES, PUT YOUR HAND ON THE GODDAMN PRISM. When Maggie still hesitates, Mel grabs her hand and physically drags it to the prism. But this is definitely a healthy sisterly relationship, unlike those goddamn sorori—
Once they have the prism, she drags her back to the house as well, and they come through the front door to find Harry fighting with their “mom.”
It’s not how it looks! We were just playing a riveting game of charades!
It then turns into a classic “who do we trust” situation, with Harry urging the girls to realize that this is not their mother, and their “mom” correcting him, that they are WAMEN, not girls, and that they need to trust her. She reminds Maggie about the eight-year-old bong story, and Harry says that impostor demons are able to read minds, which is how she’s been able to answer all their questions and so accurately pretend to be their mom. Maggie is convinced now that this is not their mother. Macy, who had come around to thinking she was, comes back around and agrees with Maggie. Mel screeches at them that they are crazy, but the impostor demon slips up and says that Mel was always her favorite, which FINALLY convinces the bitch that this isn’t their mom, because their mom didn’t play favorites. Mel takes the knife that’s been supernaturally hovering between Harry and the demon and plunges it into the demon’s heart.
This doesn’t kill the demon, though—it can only be killed by seeing its reflection in a mirror, which conveniently broke when they released the demon. But that’s okay! Maggie and her cell phone come to the rescue! Maggie takes a selfie of the demon, which destroys it. Oh, those uncanny millennials!
In the aftermath, the girls and Harry talk it all over. Harry, realizing that this episode has been unforgivably low on wokeness, tells the girls, “You’re not the first to fall for an impostor demon. I’m pretty sure that’s how Brexit happened.”
HAHAHA! SO FUNNY! WHAT GREAT LINES! WHAT GREAT DIALOGUE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The girls give Harry back the prism, which has the power to take away their magic. Harry is surprised that Mel trusts him, but don’t worry—Mel tells him that even though she trusts him, she still hates him. Good old Mel, that predictably cunty Latina lesbian. We’ve never seen one of those before.
Macy gives Harry the test tube with the black blob residue, which Harry believes is what killed the janitor. Harry tells Maggie that the way to control her powers is to improve her own self-confidence, which will make her own internal voice louder to her than the voices of the others she encounters. The girls agree to no longer make decisions by majority rules, but to only do things if the decision is unanimous.
Maggie gives her sisters some unsolicited romantic advice, and then heads off to the campus where her ex-boyfriend is bussing a table. She breaks up with him… AGAIN.
Macy goes to Friendzone and apologizes to him for something. I’m not sure what she’s apologizing to him for? Since the last time she talked to him was when he told her about the janitor being dead, and it didn’t seem like they were fighting. Possibly for accidentally making a bottle fly across the bar with her rage magic in the first episode?
Mel calls Niko and…well, she doesn’t need to patch things up with her because Niko doesn’t remember anything that happened while she was under the influence of the truth serum, including telling her about sleeping with her ex-fiancee. Niko just remembers having a fever or something and saying weird things while delirious. So everything’s all good there, easy peasy!
Finally, Macy comes back to the house and finds that her sisters have cleared out the shrine to their dead mother in the master bedroom, allowing the room to become totally her own.
As Maggie takes possession of her beautiful pastel bong, Harry comes zipping in to inform them that the Whitelighter Lab (I guess they have one of those) has analyzed the black goo sample and recognized it as belonging to the Harbinger of Hell, Part 3 of the prophecy from the Book of Shadows (remember—Part 1: Drumpf, Part 2: Dead Mom, Part 3: Hell).
Macy’s face upon learning that there are still 20 episodes left in this season alone.
THE APOCALYPSE IS NIGH! The Harbinger is hunting for a human vessel. It tried the janitor but decided she wasn’t good enough. It’s found a better vessel…
Mysterious Coma Girl.
And that’s it for episode 2 of Woke Charmed! I know this one wasn’t as woke as the first one, but don’t worry: I’ve seen more episodes of this show. There is more woke goodness to come. Just you all wait for the next one, I’m already snickering in anticipation…
Anyway, overall thoughts: Honestly, if the show was like this all the time, I would probably genuinely enjoy it rather than ironically enjoying it. It was extremely predictable, but it was also fun and low on the politics (apart from that goddamn Brexit line). In some ways this show reminds me more of Sabrina: The Teenage Witch (the 90s one, not this abomination) than the original Charmed. While it’s not a sitcom, it’s basically one step above one. It’s campy, it’s cheesy, it honestly doesn’t seem to take itself very seriously (which is why, when it does go full-on feminist, it feels weird and almost like they’re making fun of feminism rather than promoting it). It’s like if Sabrina had an overarching plot about saving the world.
But if all the episodes of the show were like this, I wouldn’t be recapping it for you! Don’t worry, we’ll be back to the woke goodness next week. See you then!
Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what a glorious morning it is for everyone but history buffs and Catholics as Notre Dame Cathedral or as the waiter at the restaurant I had lunch at yesterday called it “some old building” burned almost to the ground. As always with these types of news stories, there are always heroes that emerge.
How’s everyone today? The pestilence is still abiding at my house, with the wife probably having strep and the oldest an earache and light fever. I ran out to pick him up from school because he didn’t quite reach the threshold for having to be sent home, and if I come and get him, I can send him to school tomorrow if he’s better. Hoping the doc has space for me to slide in and get some antibiotics. Honestly, though, with the shit a five-year-old’s fingers touch every day, I’m surprised they don’t have permanent infections.
The Day Trump Broke Cher. By which I mean, arrives at a reasonable conclusion on the limits of the welfare state.
China (who has crossed its borders to attack the US in Korea in the last century) says the US treats Latin America like its backyard. It’s called the Monroe Doctrine and its been in place for a while.
From the funhouse mirror: Sudanese protest leaders demand end of ‘deep state’. I lol’d.
Note: A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)
The Critters
The beasts in question.
You all know what coyotes are. Technically a small wolf and holder of the same ecological niche in North America as the golden jackal in Eurasia, Canis latrans is nowadays ubiquitous across North America, but when I was a kid back on my folks’ place on Bear Creek in Allamakee County, they weren’t nearly as common.
Back in those days (the mid to late Seventies) in those hardwood-covered hills of northeast Iowa, we had a few bobcats around, and occasionally a bear or mountain lion would wander in from Minnesota or Wisconsin. We once even had a small wolf pack move in to the area for part of the winter. But coyotes were a thing of the West, of open prairies. Our primary predators ran more to hawks, owls, raccoons, foxes, minks, skunks, weasels and the occasional feral housecat.
Note one thing some of those critters have in common? Some of them – raccoons, foxes and minks – had fur that was valuable in those days. Hunting and trapping them, along with muskrat and beaver, kept me in pizzas and shotgun shells during much of my mis-spent youth.
Mind you the wildlife picture then was different in other ways. Wild turkeys were being slowly re-established all over the Midwest. When I was a little tad seeing a deer was unusual enough to prompt some excitement, although by the time I was in high school they were approaching their current semi-pestilential status.
And it was around that time that coyotes, those yellow-eyed bastards, started to establish themselves in the area.
Their Arrival
When coyotes came to the area around Bear Creek, they announced their presence with a serenade – sort of.
Lots of city folks seem to think that the woods are silent at night. Ours weren’t. In the summer, up on the tall oaks at the top of the hills and ridges, barred owls would gibber, shriek and wail. Evenings and early mornings whippoorwills would call from the brush, and in the spring, woodcock would peent in the edges of the meadows and do their twittering, corkscrew mating flights. Deep in winter great horned owls and long-eared owls would issue their deep hoots from deep in the darkest parts of the forest.
In good weather, I sometimes wouldn’t sleep indoors for weeks at a time. In the summer I rarely came in the house at all, except maybe to grab my dinner plate to take out to the picnic table. I often slept in the big tree house my Dad and I had built up in a big box elder hanging over the creek. No little kid’s tree house this, but a big, enclosed, screened-in thing holding a double bed and a small end table; it was even wired for electricity. That’s where I spent many a summer night, listening to the owls and the whippoorwills. And that’s where I was the first time I heard a coyote howl.
Over forty years have passed but I still remember it very well. It was maybe an hour after sunset, and I’d been lying in the tree house, reading something or other and listening to a whippoorwill call across the creek. That’s when I heard it, a yapping howl coming down through the woods from one of the meadows.
The tree house.
That first coyote song only lasted a few moments, with one coyote answering the first until down the road my brother’s old farm mutt started barking at the noise. The coyotes fell silent, but I wasn’t the only one that had heard them.
The next morning, I climbed down from the tree house and went inside looking for breakfast to find the Old Man at his usual morning spot at the table with his coffee. “Did you hear the howling last night?” I asked.
“Coyotes,” he agreed. “They’ll be hard on the grouse and turkeys,” he predicted.
He was right. Wild turkeys are big enough to resist a coyote after their nest, but our ruffed grouse population started to suffer almost immediately after coyotes started moving in; the prairie wolves were hard on the ground-nesting game birds’ efforts at reproduction. But that first morning, with the memory of that howl still fresh, my teenaged mind immediately turned to face another problem: Come winter, how best to gather prime coyote pelts?
The Problem of Control
Come early winter when pelts are prime, I looked to my tools for harvesting same. I had a pretty good string of traps and a new Marlin .22 Magnum rifle that was a real tack-driver. Also, in the tool kit was a selection of predator calls, wood and plastic calls intended to imitate the sound of a rabbit, bird or mouse being slowly eaten alive.
My traps were by far the more productive means. All my efforts at predator calling over the four or five years I’d been trying it at that point had yielded precisely two gray foxes, while my trapline yielded a regular supply of muskrat and raccoon pelts, and occasionally a fox or mink. In those days, green muskrat pelts were going for from two to four dollars, while a raccoon would net you from twenty to thirty dollars. A prime red fox would grab you fifty bucks if it was in good shape – serious money for a fifteen-year-old country kid in the mid-Seventies. A mink would get you that much, maybe ten more if it was a big buck with prime fur.
One time when I was in town selling off a half-dozen or so muskrat pelts, I asked the old man who bought furs from farm kids all around how much he’d give for a coyote pelt.
“Prime winter pelts?” he looked thoughtful for a moment. “Not in as much demand as fox, but, oh, I suppose forty bucks or so.”
My intentions for the local coyotes.
That was enough to get me interested in taking coyotes. Problem is, that would prove easier to imagine than to do.
That first fall I took a good look at my trap string with coyotes in mind. Most of my lot was #1 and #2 long spring and coil spring traps. A #1 is great for muskrat and a #2 will take a raccoon or fox, but I needed a #3 for coyotes, so the next time I went to the fur buyer I sunk the money from a couple of raccoon pelts and a few muskrats into three #3 coil spring traps. I took them home, boiled them, let them gather a little patina (traps shouldn’t be shiny) waxed them and started thinking about how to trap coyotes.
I tried the works. Pit sets and cubbies baited with carp from the creek or squirrel guts; trail sets, scent lures. All I netted were raccoons.
I tried wandering the hills with predator calls and rifle, finding good places to hide and calling. I tried every predator call I had, every variation on a call I could think of. I tried to make every call sound as though blood was literally dripping, but the coyotes obviously saw through that.
In those years I didn’t yet appreciate how canny a little song-dog could be. But while I couldn’t call coyotes with any success, some other folks in the area were learning the art.
How It Was Done
Spring came soon enough.
It’s important to remember that in those years I was, probably because of some misdeed early on in my career, sentenced to serve Monday through Friday in a tedious occupation called “school.” “School” was supposedly preparing me to be a functional adult but was mostly seriously cutting into my hunting and fishing time.
So, it was a Saturday afternoon that found me wandering around the countryside between several of my favored fishing spots when I stopped in at the little village of Highlandville for some gasoline and a bottle of pop.
Old Myron Petersen, who ran the general store in Highlandville, was familiar with my efforts to take coyote pelts, and so asked me how the winter’s effort had gone.
“Nothin’,” I admitted. “Can’t trap ‘em, can’t call ‘em.”
Now it happened that on this afternoon, ensconced on the old bench on the decking in front of Petersen’s General Store, was an old man whose name slips my mind at this distance in time but who I do remember was a cousin of the expansive Hamill clan who owned great swathes of farmland in Winneshiek and Allamakee counties. I noticed him paying attention to my admission of failure, and he spoke up as I started down the stairs to my truck.
“You can’t call coyotes?” he asked.
“Never had any luck,” I admitted.
“Could be that you’re not doing it the right way,” the old man said. “Using store calls?”
“Yup.”
“See, that’s the problem. I’ve called in a few coyotes. Yessir, called in a few. Just use a big blade of grass.”
“Bullshit,” I opined.
“Nope. No bullshit. I can show you, if’n you want.”
I looked to the west. The sun was growing low in the sky. Not a bad time to be set up to calling predators. Now, in early summer, pelts wouldn’t be worth anything, but at least I figured I might learn something. Still, I was skeptical. “All right,” I said. “but I don’t think you can do it.”
“Well, boy, you want to put a bet on that?”
We agreed on five dollars, a not-insubstantial bet in those days. After securing Myron Petersen’s permission to walk through his timber to a big meadow at the top of the hill, I suddenly remembered that my tack-driving .22 Magnum was back at the house.
I wasn’t completely unarmed. Before we set out, I opened the truck’s toolbox and extracted the one firearm I had with me that day, an old replica .36 caliber ’51 Colt Navy. I loaded the gun, belted it at my waist, and off we went.
It took maybe half an hour to get in place. “Set yourself down there,” the old man pointed, “just behind them raspberry brambles. I’ll be right behind you here.” He sat down with his back against a big oak tree on the edge of a large meadow. What he did next was remarkable.
After a moment’s careful study of the tall meadow grasses around him, the old man pulled off a long, broad strand. He ran it between his work-hardened old fingers a couple of times, stretched the blade tight in between his two cupped hands, raised hands to mouth and blew.
A piercing, awful shriek resulted. He blew a prolonged blast, then another.
“Now we wait a spell,” he whispered. This was something I was familiar with; patience is essential in hunting and fishing.
We waited maybe fifteen minutes. I was beginning to doze when the old man let out another horrible shriek with his grass blade, startling me almost upright.
This went on until it was growing dark. The cardinals, always the last birds go to roost, were chirping their good-nights in the woods, when I heard the old man let out a sharp hiss. “Look there,” he said, “over t’the right.”
Where the tree-line curved around the big meadow to the right, a big dog coyote stood maybe a hundred yards away, eyes, ears and nose focused on our position.
The old man let out a quiet, subdued squeak with his grass blade.
The big dog coyote trotted maybe another thirty yards closer, all his senses focused. I raised my head a little to get a better look; he saw the movement, tensed to run…
…it was a long shot, but it was all the shot I was going to get. I jumped to my feet with the speed borne of youth, yanked the old Navy .36 from its holster and loosed three booming shots at the coyote as he swapped ends and made for the horizon. When the black-powder smoke cleared, I saw the coyote disappear into the woods, ears and tail held high, running well, unscathed.
After the old man finally stopped laughing, he looked at me with a big grin, “Well, boy,” he demanded, “ya aint’ forgot that bet, have you?”
I hadn’t. I handed him a fiver; we walked back down to Petersen’s store, where old Myron and his wife Esther were sitting on the front deck awaiting the outcome. They’d heard the shots and were amused to hear of my three clean misses. The old man took my five dollars, bought a twelve-pack of Miller High Life from Myron, and disappeared into the dark. I stowed the old Navy sixgun back in the toolbox, climbed into my truck and went home. I never did kill a coyote in northeast Iowa.
As It Stands
Colorado has a lot of coyotes. As I’ve grown older, pests though they can be at times, I haven’t tried hunting them. I enjoy hearing them sing at night when I’m bumming around in the mountains (to evade suspicion I usually describe my woods-bumming as “hunting” or “fishing” to make it sound like I’m doing something worthwhile), and I find their quick-witted, adaptable presence in my stomping grounds something to be appreciated.
I like coyotes. They’re great survivors. They may well be around after we’re gone. And from my brief experience trying to hunt and trap them, I can sure see why.
Yes, I’m sure you were expecting Banjos and hence I am a severe disappointment. Along with it being Taxes Are Theft Day. Well, suck it, Cupcake, you’ve got me doing Links this morning, and the it’s the annual reminder of how viciously government is sucking away your lifeblood. Can’t be helped.
And what are Old Man Links without some curated birthdays? For one, the only mathematician who had an NFL team named after him, Leonhard Euler; Jew-hater and famous splitter, Johannes Stark; painter of heroic images, Thomas Hart Benton (who, oddly and coincidentally, SP and I were talking about last night); Steve Buscemi-imitator and all-around fun guy Nikita Khrushchev; patron saint of libertarian psychiatrists, Thomas Szasz; and hero of the 1966 World Series, Willie Davis.
On to actual news. Sorry for the paucity of Team Red bashing today, but they have wisely been quiet and allowing their enemies to destroy themselves.
Old Guys Music features someone I’ve tossed out here from time to time, Brett Newski, playing a unique style of punk folk. I love this guy’s music and it pisses me off that he’s playing near our now-former IL home and not here on this year’s tour. Anyway, great song and great performer.
