Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
* The Planet of the Apes musical on The Simpsons—Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! Starring Troy McClure—may have been the show’s high-water mark. “I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z”? That’s just amazing.
* When it comes to post-apocalyptic movies, my taste isn’t especially sophisticated. I like Mad Max: Fury Road. I like the Apes movies. I like Zardoz.
“Oh,” you say. “What’s Zardoz?”
It’s nothing much. Just a little sci-fi flick. It starred Sean Connery, who you might have known from his role as James Bond, in films such as Dr. No and From Russia with Love. Where he looked like this:
Anyway, after leaving the Bond franchise, Connery branched out creatively and in 1974 he played the role of Zed in Zardoz, where he looked like this:
There, there. It’s okay. Have I scarred you for life? Good. Let this be a reminder that the 1970s were the worst period in American history, an era during which every thing and every one was debased. No one denies this.
So, Zardoz.
If you can believe it, the thigh-high man-boots and the red banana hammock and the porn stash are only the beginning of the crazy in Zardoz. There’s a flying stone head and mind weapons and, oh, just go head and watch the trailer. You know you want to.
Can un-see it, can you? Zardoz.
* Pursuant to our . . . discussion? . . . of Tesla, I’m reminded of this classic Russ Hanneman scene from Silicon Valley: “These are not the doors of a billionaire, Richard!” There’s so much right with this scene, from the music on Hanneman’s radio to the way he circles back around to insult Richard a second time. Silicon Valley doesn’t always have its fastball working, but when it does that show is phenomenal.
But Tesla is a great company. An amazing company. A company so wonderful it will make your head spin. It makes complete sense that Tesla—which sold 80,000 cars last year, and lost money doing it—has a market capitalization larger than BMW (which sold 2.4 million vehicles at a profit) and GM (which sold 10 million vehicles at a profit). This is perfectly reasonable and just another example of why capitalism is the best and you should never, ever question the wisdom of markets.
* We didn’t have time to get to it on the show, but an interesting article popped up this week alleging something that lots of people had long suspected: That Steven Spielberg secretly directed Poltergeist.
The story is basically this: For contractual reasons having to do with E.T., Spielberg, who had written Poltergeist and was producing the movie, wasn’t allowed to direct it. So he decided to take his producer credit, direct the film anyway, and give the director credit to his buddy Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre who was just happy to be hanging around the production.
* We’ll be back next week with an in-depth look at the Dunkirk disaster. (yswidt?)
