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Some time ago, my lovely friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) twiec5tose directed me towards a Radio 4 documentary about the great archive that still exists of Lux Radio Theater [sic] dramas, broadcast weekly to millions of Americans from the mid 30s until the early 50s. This species of soap opera saw weekly recreations of the big films and plays of the day, contracted to fit within a one hour show, subtracting further time for Lux Soap commercials. The plays often featured the same great studio stars who'd appeared in the films or stand-ins who might be just as or even more talented and famous. It was hugely popular and a very big deal in the pre-TV world. I loved the documentary. Then cherielabombe told me the archive was all available as podcasts. Whoopee! I have since spent the last couple of months, slowly and delightedly, working my way through the available downloads.  The format was always the same. From 1936 to 1945 (the Glory Years), each was hosted by the great Cecil B. deMille himself (or a very occasional stand-in such as Leslie Howard). I've heard Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Greer Garson, Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Merle Oberon, Loretta Young and Ronald Reagan. I've heard that Joan Crawford did appear but haven't heard any of hers yet. After the exuberant introduction from Mr deMille (I very much enjoyed their production of Sunset Boulevard btw), there's Act 1. Then a short skit advertising the glories of Lux soap. There is huge play on euphemisms like "daintiness". Women are reassured that they are already almost perfect and then torpedoed by suspicions that they might just not be "dainty" enough. It's the 1930s and 40s equivalent of all the Bad Breath? ads that plague the internets. Occasionally there are letters from soldiers serving in the Pacific claiming that Lux Soap keeps them dainty when doing some jungle fighting and other such joyous things.  The War years commercials are the best. It's all about how "Lux-ing" your threadbare undies will make them feel like silk and last forever. No Trades Descriptions Act ever applied! Then you get Act II and another gap for an interview with some hairdresser or costume designer. This is usually some fairly senior backstage studio technician whose work, whether it's lighting or cobbling or photographing foodstuffs, always turns out to be considerably enhanced by using Lux Soap. One Christmas broadcast contained instructions for filling your house with false snowflakes made of Lux Soap. Sounds messy! Then you get the last Act and, finally, a quick interview with the stars. They also turn out to be huge fans of Lux Soap and owe their complexions and careers to its blessings. It was all live and that adds to the charm. Even the best actors fluff lines and just keep on going. The interviews are often agonisingly stilted as scripted jokes fall flat or some ingénu(e) is overcome in the presence of the great deMille. Everything is squeezed into a one hour slot and so, when you're listening to a film or play you know well, you really notice the gaps. The Wizard of Oz without many songs (and without benefit of Munchkin), was bizarre. Classics like Now, Voyager or Stella Dallas can seem truncated, if you've watched them a hundred times. I howled at the end of Stella Dallas nevertheless even though I was, embarrassingly, listening to it on the iPod on a packed commuter train back from Croydon at the time.  There are hundreds of shows and only now, after a couple of months of heavy Lux Radio Theater rotation am I approaching the end of the archive. They will still upload fresh ones for me every so often. You might expect lots of "women's pictures" and you do get lots of romantic comedies and melodramas ( The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Casablanca, The Front Page). But you also have swashbucklers and thrillers ( The Maltese Falcon, The Petrified Forest, The 39 Steps), children's films (such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves), and biographies ( The Life of Emile Zola or Young Edison). It's a camp Radio Cornucopia! Thank you to Hollywood, thank you to twiec5tose, and thank you to cherielabombe! Having exhausted that archive with such relish, from www.botar.us, I'm now going to have to find a replacement trove of listening pleasure. Wonder if there's a Mercury Theater archive of podcasts online? 
After being dazzled by La Streisand's take on Ne Me Quitte Pas on BBC1 Friday night, here's Discofied Divas Squared from 1979, the year I graduated, became a nurse, and Thatcher came to power. ( And )
Last night I posted the song Miracles by Jefferson Starship as My Favourite Record OF ALL TIME!™ and my good buddy, cherielabombe pointed out that she really liked it but she was 4 years old when it came out. What a four year old made of the lyric I'm not sure, when it seems to be all ladies and gentlemen doing filthy things to one another with ecstatic results, including some rude words and noises slipped in which the censors possibly missed. So I thought of what songs I had liked myself at the age of four. ( 1960! )
Happy memories of Edinburgh University, halls of residence, student life, being young and dumb and full of vigour!
Our Lady J is celebrating 20,000 hits on Pink Prada Purse on YouTube. Let's add a few more!
Another absolutely splendid Duckie!  We went down to Peckham to have food and drinks and fun with some friends, at an event organised to exploit the presence upon these shores of a friend from Iowa. Despite the torrential downpour that suddenly broke over us, we all managed to make it to ( Duckie )
Sun, 13th Sep. 2009, 20:30
District 9
Went to the pictures this afternoon, an appropriate entertainment for a day that had proven suddenly autumnal. Saw District 9, a South African sci fi film. It's great! It explains very little and shows you a great deal of fun stuff.  Like all the best sci fi, it takes themes from contemporary culture and presents us with metaphorical teasers. On the surface, this one is about race, about the othering and subjugation of millions of people. It's about the ways that political oppression is sustained and how easily we can all be hoodwinked by the powerful. It has so many more delicate touches in it too. It works on every level, I think. The cinematography is great (it reminded me hugely of City of God), the sound is great (the click language of the aliens, the incidental music) and the effects are very well managed. The 'prawns' make the Cylon centurions look clunky and robotic. But the main thing is that it's a rattling good story that moves along at a fair old lick, and you can't predict every turn of the plot, right up until the ending where much is tantalisingly unresolved. I admired the ending very much. And the central figure of Wikus van der Merwe is played by a guy who's apparently never been in a film before: Sharlto Copley. He does a great job. You like him, he's funny, but even from the first he is seamlessly inserting crude racist epithets into everyday exchanges and he's no mindless mass-market Hollywood good guy. I'm sure there's lot more to say but have to go cook some prawns.
Fri, 11th Sep. 2009, 14:47
Hear, hear!
Like London buses, you wait for a blog post for ages and then two come along at once! I am in the middle of several jobs but waiting for something to happen in every case before I can proceed further, so shall use the time to muse here.  I wanted to say a word about ( audiobooks )
Thu, 10th Sep. 2009, 14:54
Resurrected!
My dear partner has recently posted to his blog after a gap of some many months. Shamed by his sudden industry, I shall do ( the same )
Mr Bula has pictures of the mini aliens!
I <3 Mike Patton, and to judge by coverage of the Brixton Academy reunion tour last week, he's just as gorgeous now as he always was.
Look at the alarmingly young Jon Stewart introducing the Afghan Whigs (and a very young, slim Greg Dulli there too). I saw these guys live three times in the 90s and played this album relentlessly.
Seasonal! Evokes some very happy childhood summertime memories.
Obvious, I know. First of the Gang to Die was his encore at his hometown 50th birthday gig. It was blindingly good.
Eurovision! Looking forward to the customary Eurovision party this evening down in fabulous Peckham (bittersweet this year because there will be no B this year) and so here is my very favourite Eurovision song evah! Came second in the competition two years ago and I love it still, listen to it on the iPod all the time: Verka Serduchka with the 2007 Ukraine entry Danzing Lasha Tumbai. Love the frock. Love the hat. Love the glittertwinks performing on either side.
Weekly weigh in: 97.1kg. Lost 3.4kg in a week. Usually do lose quite a bit in the first week on the Atkins torture. Not bad at all considering I've been eating like food was going out of fashion (though not any of the starchy stuff that Atkins disallows) and drinking gallons of booze. Have been doing only a gentle and fairly short routine when at the gym but I have been to the gym every day, except for Tuesday. Encouraging! Keep it up, Porkboy! No thai curries! No thai curries! No thai curries! 
A lot of synchronicity this past week - random mentions of this song and of Beck then I listened to it on youtube the other day then Adam and Joe played it this morning for Black Squadron's listening pleasure. Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey-neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin on a termite
That's chokin' on the splinters
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why dont you kill me?
(get crazy with the cheese whiz)See, I'm not prejudiced against Scientologists...
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