Tag Archives: Ronald Reagan

Superman III [1983)

We all battle ourselves.

Self-hate.

Vs. self-love.

Pride vs. self-respect.

A subtle distinction there.

Alcoholism vs. sobriety.

Destructive evil vs. creative good.

But evil itself is created.

Man vs. machine.

Man vs. computer.

Sentient computers.

This is a pretty good movie.

Which gets lazy at the end.

But it is well worth watching.

Because it is iconic.

Richard Pryor really makes this one tick.

Sure, some of the comedy is goofy.

But I also gotta hand it to Christopher Reeve.

He really tapped into an impressive DARKNESS here.

Reeve essentially plays three characters in the film:

-nerdy, clumsy Clark Kent (this is impressive because his portrayal of Clark is so consistent)

-noble, honorable Superman (a suave character who always does the right thing)

-pathetic, angry, bitter, spiteful Evil Superman (Superman’s own opposite–spawned by a sort of “splitting” of Superman’s being)

The new aspect in this film is, of course, this dark side to Reeve’s acting.

And he does it well.

In this film, Clark returns to his hometown of Smallville.

Which brings us to Allison Mack.

And the New York sex cult NXIVM.

Amazingly, Lois Lane doesn’t get abducted in the Bermuda Triangle.

Which brings us to East Palestine.

And a fictional substance called beltric acid.

Which brings us to the Chinese “Belt & Road Initiative”.

The pants in poor countries are always falling down.

Because too skinny.

Hence need belt.

Hey, you can talk shit about the People’s Republic of China, but I got one word for you:  TikTok.

TikTok.

YouTube Music (owned by Google [aka Alphabet Inc.]) BANNED all of my music.

Me.

Pauly Deathwish.

They REMOVED about 700 of my original songs.

And have refused delivery of about 300 more.

It all started with my anti-vaccine song “Crimes Against Humanity”.

From there, YouTube banned every song I have ever put out under my stage name Pauly Deathwish.

That includes simple love songs (what could possibly be questionable about those?).

Where is YouTube/Google/Alphabet headquartered?

YouTube is an American company HQed in San Bruno, California.

Google is an American company HQed in Mountain View, California.

Alphabet is an American company HQed in Mountain View, California.

Google (now a subsidiary) and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) are located in the same building (known as Googleplex).

An American company (probably at the urging of the FBI, CDC, or some other federal agency) COMPLETELY stifled my speech.

I am betting that YouTube/Google was merely a proxy for the American government when it came to my music.

Which is a violation of my Constitutional rights.

Anyone wanna take up my case?
It would have to be pro bono as a MOTHERFUCKER.

Cause I don’t make a cent.

Anyway.

Google (the Americans) banned me.

TikTok (the communist, supposedly-authoritarian Chinese) merely removed ONE of my videos.

I was mad about that video being removed.

So mad that I left TikTok.

But I am back on TikTok (pdeathwish).

Why?

Well, let me tell you about the other companies which have banned me.

And before I do, take a wild guess as to where they are headquartered.

Next is Truth Social.

That’s right, Donald Trump’s social media company (to the best of my knowledge) BANNED me (and my 81-year-old U.S. Army-vet father) from their platform.

AFTER THREE DAYS!

Why?

My presumption is because I publicly questioned Trump about his vaccine stance.

Magically, after three days, my account stopped working.

My dad tried to make an account some time later.

I also presume that he was banned because we share an internet connection.

See how that works?

It appears Trump banned MY WHOLE FUCKING FAMILY because I dared to present some facts from the VAERS system on his precious platform.

Now, I should point out.

i SUPPORT Trump in his current legal battles.

I find the political persecution of Trump to be disgusting.

As a disclaimer, I would add that I want to vote for RFK Jr. in 2024.

Indeed, my intention at this point is to vote for Bobby Kennedy.

N.B.  I voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020.

Where is Truth Social HQed?

Sarasota, Florida.

Truth Social is a subsidiary of Trump Media & Technology Group.

Where is TMTG headquartered?

Palm Beach, Florida.

If we count YouTube/Google/Alphabet as one company and TruthSocial/TMTG as another company, that makes TWO American companies that have banned me.

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China and their flagship app TikTok has not banned me.

Far from it!

N.B.  No other major music streaming platform in the world (besides YouTube Music) has removed ANY of my material (to my knowledge).

Moving on.

The next company (guess where this one is from) to deplatfrom me was Elon Musk’s Twitter/X.

That’s right.

Even the dipshit assholes Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde never permanently suspended me.

They did, however, suspend me “accidentally” (I have the email from them where they admit that as the reason) FOR FOUR MONTHS.

What happened during the time that Twitter suspended me for four months?

A.  the 2020 U.S. Presidential election

B.  the Biden inauguration

After Jack and Vijaya admitted they had mistakenly banned my account, I was back in business.

And I had high hopes when Elon took over.

But he banned me.

For “platform manipulation and/or spam”.

It was a very vague, Kafkaesque accusation.

The platform manipulation part is particularly funny to me.

If I was manipulating the platform, then I obviously wasn’t doing a very good job at it.

Why do I say that?

Because my PUBLIC (not set to private) profile [which I had had for five years] had TWO [sic] followers (even though I think I had made 100,000+ tweets).

My followers were:

A.  Dr. Steve Pieczenik MD, PhD

B.  Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

As for spam, don’t you think one of those two personages would have unfollowed me were I a spammer?

Where is X headquartered?

San Francisco, California.

And it appears to be a subsidiary of X. Corp. (which is also HQed in San Francisco, California).

Taken as one entity, that makes THREE A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N companies which have deplatformed me.

Meanwhile, the Chinese communists accept me.

Enough to let me post.

And my posts are seen.

Well, they get views (anyway).

The PRC has censored me.

But very little in comparison with these three American companies (which totally squashed me).

Why am I whining about this?

Because as an almost-unknown musician, I have very little way to tell the world about my music when major media companies (like YouTube and Twitter) ban me.

The further irony is this:

A.  Trump’s company is called Truth Social.  I came to him with sourced facts from VAERS, CDC, and BMJ.  And my account magically thereafter stopped working.  Permanently.

B.  Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist”.  If you can’t see the irony of him then banning me for nebulous reasons, I can’t paint a more-clear picture for you

There is one last company I would like to mention.

Rumble.

The ostensible “conservative” competitor to YouTube.

Rumble did not ban me.

But they refused my advertising dollars.

For a very small campaign with which I was trying to promote my music.

Why did they refuse my money?

Because my website (the one you are reading) is not “age appropriate”.

Let me translate that for you–I think they meant “you are not conservative enough”.

Where is Rumble headquartered?

Toronto, Canada.

Ok, so we finally found another country where my music is hated (by a small company).

But is my music hated in communist China?

Not if my access to TikTok is any indication.

I should also point out that Facebook has mercilessly censored me for at least the past five years.

So much so that I gave up on that platform.

One of their subsidiaries, Instagram, has also recently given me trouble.

Not allowing me to do this.  Not allowing me to do that.

But I haven’t had the same issue with TikTok.

Where, by the way, are Facebook and Instagram (subsidiaries of Meta Platforms) headquartered?

Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

Instagram is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

Meta Platforms is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

Like YouTube/Google/Alphabet, it is essentially one big company.

So there’s another American company suppressing (probably at the urging of various government agencies) my free speech which should be protected from the hand-in-glove fascism of cozy government/corporate-proxy activity.

Who’s gonna take my case?

I’m not holding my breath.

Which brings us back to Evil Superman.

Who dies by strangulation.

Hell, Superman himself almost even suffocates in this movie.

He gets caught in the Wayne Coyne bubble and it gets a bit uncomfortable for a bit.

Bloke can’t breathe.

But fortunately he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes like Jimmy Page.

We get weather modification.

Weather weapons.

Man vs. weather.

Man vs. machine-controlled weather.

Science fiction?

If you don’t wanna be an evil son of a bitch, you gotta watch out for that low-tar kryptonite.

Pryor is great as a three-star general.

Superman hates himself.

Because he has become poisoned.

Something has come over him.

He changes.

For the worse.

Just a slump (says Ricky).

Coming up on an election year, this was roughly the middle of Reagan’s Presidency.

And it was the decade when computing really fell into the hands of plebes like me.

[though I was not a digital native and didn’t really start becoming computer literate until about 1995]

May 1980:  Pac-Mac released in Japan

October 1980:  development of MS-DOS begins in U.S.

January 1982:  the 8-bit Commodore 64 debuts at an electronics show in Las Vegas

August 1982:  Commodore 64, the best-selling computer model of all time, is released

October 1982:  MIDI standard is published

June 1983:  Superman III is released

October 1983:  Microsoft Word is released

This movie really falls apart when Vera becomes a cyborg.

It is utterly-ridiculous.

I’m just an ole chunk of coal.

But I’m gonna be a diamond someday.

Annette O’Toole is the secret weapon of this movie.

-PD

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Clear and Present Danger [1994)

Donald Moffat as George Bush Sr.

Colombia.

Where drug cartels are called “right wing”.

And there are communist guerrillas.

And a national state apparatus involving military and police.

And an ongoing conflict.

Marxist insurgency?

Yes.

But far more complex.

I’ve a feeling there have been many cynical reasons for “fighting Marxists” down in cocaine-rich Colombia.

Donald Moffat as Ronald Reagan.

A little.

Doddering.

Old.

But dead ringer for Bush.

56 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_conflict

Bill Barr how many years at CIA?

What positions?

DDI?

DDO?

No record.

Gap between General Robert Cushman and General Vernon Walters.

Gap between John E. McLaughlin and Admiral Albert Calland.

Hugh Price, David Cohen, Jack Downing…unclear.

Big gap between Greg Vogle and Elizabeth Kimber.

Sneaky bastard.

Reward.

Stay alive.

Street.

Ambush.

Hawaiian shirt.

Meet in Panama hat.

Cortez is really the killer.

DGI.

Czech.

StB.

Che Guevara in Moscow.

Lourdes SIGINT station.

Paper bomb.

Cellulose.

CIA hacks U.S. Congress.

CIA hacks CIA?

Who dares wins.

Knock knock jokes.

What kind of spymaster would take such risks?

Pieczenik.

 

-PD

 

 

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Histoire(s) du cinéma {Chapter 2(a): Seul le cinéma} [1989]

So here we go again.

They told Beethoven it was a horrible way to begin his 5th Symphony.

With a rest.

It’s unheard.

Of.

Unheard.

Only the players see it.

Only the conductor pays it much mind.

So the first “note” (beat) is silent.

The conductor must give it.

But there are at least two schools of thought on how this is to be done.

First, a conductor might do as they always do and swiftly move their baton downwards to indicate visually that the first (silent) beat is occurring.

The only problem with this is that the symphony players must then abruptly jump onto the very next beat (which is an “upbeat”).

They happen in very quick succession.

Nothing/Everything.

The whole orchestra.

Tutti.

And they get one shot.

To come in together.

Like an attack.

[rest] da da da daaaaaaaaaa

[rest] da da da daaaaaaaaaa

The second school of thought is more practical.

It advises that, in this particular situation, a conductor giving a downbeat is not particularly helpful to the orchestra (because no sounds occur on that downbeat).

Therefore, the conductor motions the orchestra that the UPBEAT is happening.

When the baton (or hand(s)) come down, that is the precise time to make noise.

It is not hard to see why this might lead to a more successful outcome.

For the goal is to have the orchestra stick together.

An orchestra of individuals who are a mere microsecond off from one another creates a sound which is generally not highly-valued in Western music (at least not in the performance of Beethoven).

But this STILL leaves a problem.

The conductor of this second school, whose job it is to try and lead his orchestra to a faithful rendition of this masterwork, is thereby IGNORING what Beethoven wrote (or, more precisely, HOW Beethoven wrote it).

The beginning.

Godard comes back more fit and trim in this episode of his greatest work.

1a is probably the nuke.

1b is a psychological warfare manual (perhaps)

2a returns us to kinetic warfare.

More or less.

With some lulls.

But there is genuine artistry within these 26 minutes.

Like a symphony by Beethoven or Bruckner.

The beginning is weighted heavily.

1a = 51 mins. (the longest of all eight parts)

1b = 42 mins. (the second longest “movement” of the bunch)

The entire first section is, therefore (carry the zero), 1 hour and 33 minutes.

That’s the first quarter of this “ring cycle”.

And it is truly operatic.

So now we are into a bit of a scherzo.

26 minutes.

Now you can see the influence of television.

The “producers” of this film.

Canal+ (French TV channel)

CNC (part of the French Ministry of Culture [and Godard is Swiss!])

France 3 (a French TV channel)

Gaumont (a French film studio)

La Sept (a defunct French TV channel)

Télévision Suisse Romande (a defunct, French-language Swiss TV network)

Vega Films (Godard’s production company at the time)

26 minutes.

Enough time for eight 30-second commercials.

Arriving precisely at a sum total of 30 minutes’ programming.

It’s generous (no doubt owing to the fact that this was educational programming).

If you look at the true running time of an American half-hour sitcom these days, it is roughly 21 minutes of what you want to see.

The other 9 minutes are reserved for at least 18 30-second commercials.

In the tradition of James Joyce.

The pun.

Which Hitchcock so admired.

…and the Oscar goes to.

Oscar Wilde.

Irishmen in France.

The recurring scene from Salò…

Julius Kelp.

Literary history vs. cinematic history.

Godard has a curious frame which reads, “Your breasts are the only shells I love.”

It is a line from the poet Apollinaire.

[tes seins sont les seuls obus que j’aime]

But I must say, the exciting parts here are the “booms”!

The fighter jet exploding in midair.

Bernard Herrmann’s music from Psycho juxtaposed with scenes from Disney’s Snow White…(1937).

The agitation of Stravinsky.

Cluster chords on the piano.

Godard’s voice fed through an Echoplex.

And, just as in 1a, world-class editing!

Let me be clear.

EDITING is what makes Histoire(s) du cinéma the greatest film ever made.

It’s what makes F for Fake the second-greatest film ever made.

And what makes Dog Star Man the third-greatest film ever made.

It is more pronounced in Histoire(s) and Dog Star Man.

Orson Welles’ “editing” (montage) in F for Fake is done more at the story level.

It is a juxtaposition of content.

The Kuleshov effect with ideas rather than images.

[more or less]

Godard’s camera-pen makes some of its boldest strokes in this episode.

It rivals the 1a excerpt involving Irving Thalberg.

Which brings us to a very important point.

Godard CHOSE to use the concept of “double exposure” (two images–one on top of the other–but both seen to a greater or lesser extent) to ILLUSTRATE the subject and title of his greatest film.

Though it runs 266 minutes, that amount of time STILL wasn’t enough in which to lay out the history of cinema.

So images needed to be doubled up.

Tripled up.

Simultaneous to that, words needed to be spoken.

And furthermore, DIFFERENT words than those being spoken NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN ON THE SCREEN.

If you are not a native French speaker, you will probably need to have the subtitles on when viewing this film.

Which gives you A-N-O-T-H-E-R visual stimulus which must be taken into account.

Yes.

This film should be mandatory viewing for fighter pilots.

Practice your OODA loop here.

Observe.

Orient.

Decide.

Act.

Constantly looping.

If you want to survive in this jungle of meaning.

Night of the hunter…

Klimt.

Fred Astaire.

James Dean.

Burt Lancaster.

It’s all true.

That weary look.

From Hollywood.

It’s all true.

Which brings us to value (that thing which capitalism so gloriously creates…far more efficiently and in much greater abundance than with any other economic system).

“What is the value of knowing how to read this film,” you ask?

Just this.

It allows you to know how to read the complexity of the world.

It is a brain teaser.

With an infinite layering of meaning.

Like Finnegans Wake.

Joyce’s masterpiece should be the only required reading for a codebreaker.

Or a codemaker.

Take heed, National Security Agency.

Your curriculum needs adjusting.

Assign only Finnegan.

And reap your gains.

And what of Histoire(s)?

Its most direct application would be for analysts.

Whether they be Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, or  INSCOM.

Know how to read the image.

Know how to analyze the video.

You must think outside the box.

Sudoku the fuck out of your employees.

And thereby fight crime and keep hostile actors in check.

Which is where we musicians come in.

To analyze the phone call.

To make sense of the audio…from the video.

It cannot be taught in a bootcamp.

It has to be loved.

Nurtured.

If you had one analyst like Godard, you would have a super-soldier equal to an entire special forces unit.

The trial of Joan of Arc.

Not to be confused with her passion.

Laurel and Hardy.

Gustave Courbet.

Marcel Duchamp.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Which brings us to a very delicate situation.

What is the President planning this weekend?

And with whom is he planning it?

If Ronald Reagan was an actor (and he was), then how much more talented is Donald Trump in getting a reaction with his lines…and his gestures?

HIS lines.

HIS gestures.

Accordion music.

Munch’s vampire.

A President who has been attacked from ALL sides UNRELENTINGLY for nearly four years.

And now finds himself in the midst of the hottest biological/psychological/economic war in recorded history.

Where complexity reigns.

As globalization magnifies each twitch of activity.

And this same President STILL finds himself under attack from the same “bad actors” who have unremittingly assailed him.

As in peacetime, so in war.

These enemies of the state.

Masquerading as journalists.

And their masters above them.

Straight from the latest conclave.

“…two if by sea.”

 

-PD

 

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Häxan [1922)

One of my ancestors was hung for being a witch.

Susannah Martin.

1692.

When I speak of it or think of it, it gives me chills.

It.

What?

No, she.

As Danish director Benjamin Christensen makes so clear in this masterpiece.

Häxan is Swedish for “witch”.

Our film was released by Svensk Filmindustri:  a Swedish film production company which still exists to this day.

Thus the Swedish title.  And the Swedish premier(s) in 1922.  And the Swedish intertitles.

The Danish would be Heksen.

Swedish, Danish, English…

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

This is the horror of religion.  The horror of irrationality.  Violence against women.  Abuse of the elderly.  Mistreatment of the mentally ill.

Christensen’s film is a masterpiece precisely because it combines the clarity of modern thought with the mists of medieval superstition.

It begins almost as a documentary.

Unlike me, he lists his sources.

But then the film takes on a life of its own.

As if the director was not quite sure whether to dismiss superstition outright.

As if some dark Freudian specters were haunting his deliberate phantasmagoria.

It was meant to be a lucid montage.

But the letters became transposed.

Lucid, Lurid.  Live.  Evil.

Miles Davis had it right.  And Howlin’ Wolf (by way of Willie Dixon) [not to mention Howlin’ Pelle].

Svensk Filmindustri.  Founded a mere three years before Häxan.

Only fitting that the parent company (Bonnier Group) should have its roots in København.

Because Benjamin Christensen is brilliant as the Devil.

And now for the juicy stuff.

Not Hell, but Hellerup.  Denmark.

Birthplace of Stine Fischer Christensen (ooh la la!).

But we’re mainly interested in ASA Filmudlejning.

Or are we?

An unfinished symphony of horror.

…eine Symphonie des Grauens

1922.

Possessed by self-punishment.

“More weight!”

And even more wait.

Tom Waits for no man.

I was tricked.

Must have been needles and pins.  Voodoo.

He can’t even remember her name.

Ripped my heart from my chest.

Call it punk rock.

Moloch.  Bohemian Grove.

If it’s all a bunch of bollocks, then these blokes are just bluffing, right?

-Bechtel

-H.W.

-Warren Christopher

-George Creel (investigative journalist and propagandist)

-Harlan Crow (this guy…son of Trammell Crow…buddy of Clarence Thomas [more on him later]…Thomas, who gave Crow the Bible of Frederick Douglass [what the fuck?!?]…Crow…owns at least one painting by Hitler…Napoleon’s writing desk…the Duke of Wellington’s sword [ca. 1815]…but weirdest is his Alec Trevelyan (006) / Janus sculpture garden which includes such spoils of war as Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Marx, Mubarak, Tito, Ceausescu, and Guevara)

-Draper

-David Gergen (of course)

-Inman

-Kissinger (naturally)

-John Lehman (9/11 commission)

-Henry S. Morgan (cofounder Morgan Stanley)

-Reagan (Owl’s Nest)

-George Shultz [sick]

-Tony Snow [“]

-Caspar Weinberger

Weaving spiders come not here.

 

-PD

 

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SNL Season 1 Episode 19 [1976)

The show was really rolling by this point.

The sets are more elaborate.

The budget seems to have increased.

And the humor is worth it.

The cold opening (I’ve avoided that term for the first 18 episodes) is a killer.

Chevy Chase (of course) as Ronald Reagan…prefiguring the stilted-hip of Bill Clinton on Arsenio Hall by a decade and change.

What we learn…Chevy can actually play the organ.  Some nice B-3 licks.

But the killer is Garrett Morris’ priceless contribution.

Like a silent film actor, Morris takes each condescending, racist jab from Reagan and grows more and more outraged…in such a believable Miles Davis kind of way (if we ignore the alto sax he’s holding).

What a start to a great episode!

Morris is in another high-art bit of humor later…for the fake donation solicitation Fondue Pots For Namibia.  Yes, it sounds like the title of a Zappa song (or perhaps Captain Beefheart), yet it is Saturday night variety show humor from 1976 at its best.  Bloody genius!

Some of the more elaborate skits are guest host Madeline Kahn as the “bride of Frankenstein” singing Leonard Bernstein’s “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story.  Howard Shore and band are great in this skit (especially pianist/vocalist Paul Schaffer…of future Letterman fame).

Another amazing skit involves Dan Aykroyd as Richard Nixon.  Rounding out this bizarre, vast set piece is John Belushi as Henry Kissinger.

Now for the bad.  Carly Simon is godawful in her first prerecorded number “Half a Chance”.  I mean, really godawful.

What is apparent over the course of the show is that Madeline Kahn was a much better singer than Carly.

At least Simon somewhat redeems herself on the ubiquitous “You’re So Vain”.  It’s obvious Carly had talent.  She has a great, soulful voice.  Not sure what the problem was on “Half a Chance”.  Perhaps it was the cheesy, out-of-tune, canned backing vocals.  Also, the song is a clunker.

Alternately, I could listen to the line “…clouds in my coffee” from now till eternity.  It has that 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle vibe to it which is truly profound…the transcendental moment of spotting a microcosm in the mundane.

As The Mighty Favog said, “Talk to me…”

 

-PD

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In Like Flint [1967)

It all started with Errol Flynn.  Flynn, accused of statutory rape by two under-age girls in November 1942 was defended by (among others)  the American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn.  That’s right:  ABCDEF.  One member of the organization was William F. Buckley, Jr.  Ah Buckley…not the heroic Bill Buckley who died in Beirut (after helping to expose Project MKUltra).  Nay, we speak of the harpsichord man.  The Knight of Malta (like Ronald Reagan). 

In 1943 (that is, the next year) the Buckley in question would go from ABCDEF (Z.O.W.I.E. anyone?) to being a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  After a short stay, he entered (?) WWII out of U.S. Army Officer Candidate School and soon enough (at war’s end) was at Yale and in the loving arms of Skull and Bones (being a member in good standing). 

Buckley was recruited by the CIA in 1951.  The story goes that he served just two years, but strikingly one of those two was back in Mexico City as a “political action specialist” in the Special Activities Division under E. Howard Hunt.

Now there’s a name…  Hunt, along with G. Gordon Liddy (what is it with these guys and first initials?), engineered the first Watergate burglary on behalf of President Richard Nixon and his administration.  That is to say:  in 1972 the President of the United States of America’s “people” broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.  In on this whole thing was another fellow keen on the aforementioned self-referent nomenclature:  L. Patrick Gray (the acting head of the FBI at the time).

This immense tangent serves to set the stage for what is not really that great a movie:  In Like Flint.  Yes, the phrase is thought to have originated in reference to good old Errol Flynn (the demigod [not to be confused with demagogue] of our friends the ABCDEF).

All of this is to say that the “plot” of In Like Flint is beyond fanciful (and utterly jaw-dropping in its dated sexism).  Yet, every day the machinations of strange organizations with nefarious plans swirl around us in orbits mostly unnoticed.

I must say that I preferred the direction of Daniel Mann’s Our Man Flint to the staging here of Gordon Douglas.  Don’t get me wrong:  there are some priceless moments herein.  At one point James Coburn utters the phrase “an actor as President…” (as if the whole thing seemed too preposterous to be real).  Of course the U.S. would go on to actually have an actor as President when Reagan assumed the position for the majority of the 1980s.

The tape recorders in hair dryers idea bears a spooky resemblance to what the other Bill Buckley observed at McGill University in Montreal (under the horrific guidance of Dr. Ewen Cameron):  that is to say MKUltra. 

More light-hearted is Coburn’s hilarious “dolphin talk” near the top of the film.  Fans of The Illuminatus Trilogy will doubtless find this particularly poignant. 

Spy Chief Framed As Libertine…  This brings to mind the strange case of Gen. David Petraeus.  In the film, intelligence (?) chief Lloyd Cramden is stoned and dethroned in just such a manner by a junta of which Gen. Carter is head.  Once again Flint shows his boundless talents (including a stint as hypnotist and another as a ballet dancer).  Rahm Emanuel would surely be proud.  Leave it to the polymath Flint to deduce female cosmonauts from a cardiograph (80 BPM) on Earth. 

Coburn as a Cuban is definitely a knee-slapper.  And there is plenty of eye candy (as in the appropriately-named Operation Smooch).  All in all this is great downtime for spy and enthusiast alike.

-PD 

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