Directory of Lost Causes

Please, YouTube, restore the clips! You know, the puppet dance version of Tall Paul, My Blue Muu Muu, all that good stuff. I feel so lonely now it's gone, and I can't do any online shopping for a while yet.

I've been meaning for some time to write a review of the film Beach Party. Actually, it's been a while since I watched it now, so it's hardly fresh in my memory. Also, I've probably got some work coming in any minute, so, all in all, I'd like, if possible, to keep this short and sweet.

I'm not going to give all the Wikipedia crap about the background of the Beach Party film series. I'll start, instead, by saying that the film is excellent. So, if you're short of time, too, you need read no further. However, to go into details: The film starts with Dolores (Annette Funicello) and Frankie (Frankie Avalon) - and here I'm reminded of the way Sid James (almost) always played a character called Sid in the Carry On series - driving along some coast road with a stretch of golden beach in the background, and a couple of surfboards on the car's back seat, singing the best song ever written, Beach Party Tonight, which can be heard in all it's glory here. For some reason that I haven't worked out, Dolores and Frankie seem to be driving around in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Anyway...



Soon after they arrive, the two starry-eyed young lovers are strolling along by the surf anticipating the wonderful time that they will soon be having here on the beach and in its environs. Frankie avers that, "The one thing I've studied this semester is you." To this, Dolores replies, with a mischeivous twinkle in her eye, "Well, I hope you don't flunk." Poor simple Frankie looks confused. The girl's got something up her sleeve.

It seems Frankie was planning for them to have a beach hut all to themselves, presenting such a situation to Dolores as romantic. Of course, what 'romantic' means in this case is that, being the red-blooded teenager with a forty-year-old's haircut that he is, he is hoping to advance their relationship to its next stage by doing unmentionable things with and to the winsome Dolores. Fully aware of this, she has invited all of their friends to stay at the hut, too, much to Frankie's vexation. He should have known she's not that easy! There ensues, throughout the course of the film, a battle between Frankie and Dolores, with each trying to make the other jealous by showing interest in other parties. In the end, inevitably, and quite suddenly, they realise that they were both being silly and they both love each other and so on, which really brings us more-or-less back where we started and renders the whole 98 minutes entirely pointless. I'm afraid I've given the entire plot away, but you probably knew it anyway, as some deep race memory embedded in the very cells of your body.

Much is made, of course, of "today's pagan rites", which basically means lots of very mature-looking teenagers dancing around in swimwear between monolithic circles of surf-boards. The quaint voyeuristic aspect of this depiction of pagan rites is legitimised in an interesting way. The anthropologist Professor Robert Orwell Sutwell (Bob Cummings), is observing these rites from his own beach hut through a telescope and with the use of bugging devices. He has a long brown beard that looks like a disguise (but turns out to be real), and at first has about him more than a vague suggestion of a peeping Tom. There is something rather humorous in this - a middle-aged academic 'studying' scantily-clad teenagers (perhas as Frankie wanted to 'study' Dolores) for the sake of his next book. And that humour, of course, gives the viewer the excuse to peep over the Professor's shoulder and through his lens. In doing so, they are merely 'laughing at' the professor.

However, it's round about here that I began to be surprised by the tenor of the film. I already had the film mentally pegged as the American equivalent of the Carry On series, a kind of 'Carry On with a suntan'. Therefore, with very British expectations to the fore, I was fully imagining that the Professor would be secretly rubbing his hands together lecherously while his delectable assistant Marianne (Dorothy Malone - lovely name), was not looking, and planning, all the while, with revolting and lip-smacking prayers to a Priapic deity, by hook or by crook, to find some way past the elastic in the waistbands of the swimwear of his subjects. But no. It was not to be. At one point in the film, the Professor saves Dolores from the unwelcome attentions of a leather-clad ruffian by the name of Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck), by using some ridiculously esoteric karate move to paralyse him. Dolores is impressed and conceives a liking for the Professor. It is even unclear whether she is carnally attracted to the man, or whether she merely wishes to use him to make her hotheaded boyfriend jealous. (Perhaps a mixture of both.) However, even when she seems to offer herself to him in all her swimsuited glory, he acts like a perfect gentleman and, self-contained, with no sign of regret, though rather fondly (but not fondlingly) like an affectionate uncle, demures. This is where my surprise began. The Professor was actually a really nice guy, and sincere in his work. I was impressed that the makers of the film had the chance to depict this man as a sad old pervert, but decided to go the other way and show him as a man of intelligence, integrity and many other admirable traits, despite being too dense, in his professorial way, to realise that his sassy assistant has the hots for him. And this is basically why the film is excellent. If this had been a British film, the Professor would have turned out to be rather a dank sort of character, with a moist handshake, who secretly beat his mother with a fescue, or perhaps was beaten by her, and who had gravy stains on his underwear. But in Beach Party everyone was clean and nice and healthy. Even Eric Von Zipper was nice, in a way, since he was too bumbling in his bullying ever to do anyone real harm. His running joke was to call his underlings and his enemies "You stoopid", the joke being, of course, that he was the stoopidest of all. It wasn't actually a very funny joke. In fact, it's more like half a joke than a whole joke, perhaps because the comic timing was never quite right, but you can't have a film like Beach Party without a few limp running jokes (limping jokes) in them. It wouldn't be right.

Almost everything about the film is excellent. The colours are of those almost hand-tinted variety you find in films of the late fifties and early sixties. Even when the jokes aren't funny, they're lively enough to be fun. And the hipness is ridiculously quaint. The Professor, in his anthropological way, wants to blend in with the culture of his subjects, and tries to pick up and utilise their slang. One example of this is the word 'hooting', which I can honestly say I'd never heard before (probably because I'm not hip enough). Apparently it means something like 'great', 'cool', etc. I believe it's Dolores who explains the word to the Professor, whose response is something like, "Yes, I see. 'Hooting', no doubt derived from the word 'hoot', to give voice to excitement, express enthusiasm and so on." Dolores looks at him as if she's never thought of this, and says sweetly, "I think you're real smart." Of course the funny think is the way the joke here has become kind of... telescoped? At the time the joke must have been how dusty and archaic the Professor was. Now, the word 'hooting' itself sounds dusty and archaic. And the same principle applies to the swimwear. Not a thong in sight! Thank god. In one scene Dolores comes to the Professor's hut to escort him to the beach, and she is dressed in her swimwear. The obvious implication is that she's wearing something sizzlingly hot, in contrast to the Victorian-looking item worn by the Professor, apparently presented to him by the fire department of Tokyo. However, even Dolores's bathing suit here, to contemporary eyes, appears designed to protect one's modesty. Actually, it seems there really is something in this. I do believe I read a quote somewhere - which I cannot now find - that Annette said the things she wore in the Beach Party films were more revealing than anything she would normally feel comfortable in. Whether that is true or not, it does appear that Walt Disney extracted from her a promise never to wear anything on film that was so revealing as to expose her navel. This promise was, in the end, broken on more than one occasion. (Ah, this appears to be something definitive on the subject.)



Having said that, there are one or two aspects of the film that I find questionable, irritating or ho-hum, in a minor way. To be honest, the character of Frankie is something of a 'low point' for me. Brash, earnest teenage nice guys (with enough of naughty about them actually to still be one of the guys) just aren't interesting. Also, I noticed, perhaps more with interest than annoyance, that the, errr, scarlet woman, to whom Frankie turns his attention in order to provoke Dolores's jealousy, Ava (Eva Six), "a prime asset at any party", is European, anticipating a pattern seen in later films such as American Pie that depict European women as decadent and of questionable sexual morality, in contrast to good, wholesome American women who won't let you study the contents of their underwear until you have graduated from the wedding ceremony. Apparently. And... maybe that's it, actually.

Oh, and it's got a cameo appearance from Vincent Price. That's a good thing, I mean.

I should also point out, in conclusion, that I quite like dank, too, but it's nice to have a change from that sometimes, and watch films about nice people being generally nice, if a little misguided in a farcical kind of way here and there.

No no no no no no no no no no no no!!!

I can't stand it.

I've just discovered that my favourite ever Youtube clip has been removed.

It's the one, you know the one, where Annette Funicello is singing Tall Paul and the presenter guy is pretending she's a string puppet that he's manipulating with poles, when it's really her standing behind the stage in front of a black background in black clothes except for the tiny white dress and body hanging from her neck, and she has her hands in the shoes of this dress/body thing and she's moving them so that it makes her look likes she's really tiny and dancing to the music and doing impossible things like kicking both legs up at the same time without falling down.

I can't stand much more of this.

This song has been waiting for me to discover it:



It's like lying in bed during the day having your hair stroked whilst watching a budgerigar hop around in a cage in a holiday home bequeathed to you by your grandmother, hearing through the half-open French windows the sound of waves gently breaking upon white sand and feeling your left leg go dead just as a yorkshire terrier jumps up onto the crocheted blanket covering you with a small, damp impression of weight and makes a limp, abortive attempt to seize some of the heavily iced wedding cake still on the bed on a paper plate near your hand that you can't eat because it's slightly too sweet before he gives up, pretends just to be nuzzling your hand, and curls up next to you with a strange little doggy sigh, and you ask your nurse to draw the curtains not realising that this will block your view of the passing stranger who would otherwise be destined to become the love or your life, settling down, obliviously, like the terrier, as your nurse proceeds to read you the next chapter of Little House on the Prairie. Kind of.

Yesterday I wrote a little about the Monkey's Paw principle of the universe, which one might describe, if one has a pathological need to rhyme things, as the 'Universe Perverse'. Briefly stated, this principle is that, contrary to, or further than, the lyric of the Rolling Stones that declares "you can't always get what you want", actually, you can never get what you want. To quote, as is my wont, from William Burroughs, "How long does it take for a man to learn that he does not, cannot, want what he wants?"



I'd like to explore this principle further today with an illustration provided by Annette Funicello, in the song The Monkey's Uncle's Paw, to which I posted a link recently. Despite the brash and upbeat surface of the song, a look at the lyrics reveal it to be an intricate piece full of implied tensions and secret trapdoors of unexplored obsession. In terms of our theme for today - wishes and how they never turn out the way you want them to - the most important line must be, "And I wish I was the monkey's aunt". Not a particularly unusual line on its own, the kind, in fact, to be heard in every other pop song since 1963 (when sexual intercourse began). However, juxtaposed with the previous line, "I love the monkey's uncle", it takes on new and complex significance. We must approach this with care.



First of all, let us ask, why "the monkey's uncle"? If the monkey's uncle is, in fact, a monkey, why not simply, 'I love the monkey'? We cannot discount, in this case, the possibility that the word 'uncle' was included for rhythmical and metrical reasons, however, the relation, so to speak, with 'aunt' suggests that this is no accident. Is the monkey's uncle, then, not a monkey himself? Is he some kind of Lovecraftian Arthur Jermyn figure? Such a hypothesis is supported by a line elsewhere in the song which runs, "Call us a couple of missing links". However that may be, after stating her erotic love for 'the monkey's uncle' (Uncle Arthur?), Annette proceeds to wish that she was 'the monkey's aunt'. "What a nutty family tree!" she exclaims later. Indeed. If she and the uncle are siblings of different parents then no blood relation is necessarily implied, and this may, in fact, be the scenario painted in the song. Is such a scenario accidental, or are there esoteric reasons behind its surface pattern? If so, it would not be the only part of the song to present a cryptic aspect. Another example comes in the surprise scene of the wedding:

[BB:] Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa
[Annette:] On the day he marries me
[All:] What a nutty family tree!
[Mike:] A bride!
[Brian:] A groom!
[BB:] A chimpanzee!

And there is the peculiar denouement, the twist in the tail, if you like - who is the mysterious chimpanzee? What does this enigmatic wedding guest desire? The twist in the tail here is that there is no tail. The chimpanzee cannot be the groom's nephew (the eponymous monkey), since he is not a monkey, but an ape. Has he come, like Mr. Mason in Jane Eyre, to interrupt the wedding with the revealing of some dark secret? Or is he an indication of just how nutty the family tree is becoming?



I'm afraid that I'm wandering off into speculation now. Let us take the other fork in the road. What if the monkey's uncle and the monkey's aunt were siblings to the same parent? Is this not the true implication of the "nutty family tree"? As well as expressing a desire to break the bounds of the taboo proscribing inter-species love, in her passion she wishes she could add to this transgression the transgression of incest. However, inter-species love and incest are mutually exclusive taboos. One is the taboo that results from the lovers being too far apart on the great family tree of life, and one the taboo that results from them being too close together. Our Annette wishes to have both at once! And who can blame her? Such is the nature of human desire. How long does it take for a very talented singer and actress to learn that she does not, cannot, want what she wants? She wants a family tree so nutty that the closest relatives are also the furthest away. Can such a thing be?



At this point I'd like to suggest the resolution to this conundrum by means of a further complication. I wrote in my post yesterday that "I'd very much like to be Annette Funicello". What if, right? What if, Annette became the monkey's aunt and I filled in the position that she had just vacated? It sounds like a dream come true. But I'm sure you already know what would happen. As Annette I would find myself gazing enviously at the monkey's aunt as she carried on her incestuous relationship with the monkey's uncle, scornful of the world's regard. Annette as the monkey's aunt would find it no longer so extraordinary to be in a relationship with the monkey's uncle, despite the novelty of incest, and also the possible novelty that Uncle Arthur was a monkey-human hybrid, because she would now be in her own primate world, and the glamour would have vanished. And what would have happened to the consciousness formerly inhabiting the monkey's aunt? That's anybody's guess, but perhaps she would have migrated to my former mortal habitation, and I can tell you, I'm pretty damned sure that she'd be disappointed with that.



What can I say? It's a depressing world.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind me going on about Annette Funicello so much. I mean, which would you prefer, for me to go on about Annette, or for me to go on about Morrissey? Or, if you like, you could have both.

I suppose you're wondering, if you're particularly dense, what the attraction of Annette actually is. Am I being ironic? Well, of course not. In one of the Annette clips on Youtube, someone has left the following comment:

Annette was so bloody cute! How could anyone not have adored her? These must have been the days, now all we have is Britney Spears

To which someone has replied:

I agree!

It wasn't me, but it could have been.

She even manages to laugh faintly but almost convincingly at Frankie Avalon's utterly abysmal joke about sand boxes.



So, I suppose that my attraction is precisely (?) the attraction that Annette herself has towards the monkey's aunt. If I were ever actually to meet Annette, I imagine that I would be invisble to her, since I exist on an entirely different frequency. She is one of those people who makes me think it's a very strange planet indeed that is home to both of us. Maybe it's something like matter and anti-matter. If they actually come together the universe implodes or something ridiculous like that (someone correct me here). And, I'm sure that's exactly what would happen if I were ever to meet, on the same frequency of existence, Annette Funicello. Wishful thinking?

Have I mentioned that I hate my blog?

I did start writing my Address to the Nation, but it's currently in suspended animation (hey, that could be the opening couplet of a song). I think one of my main problems with it is that I have so far - and I don't how I even got onto the subject - called Damien Hirst a cunt in it about three times, and I'm not sure that's really called for. Hmmm. Then again, I'm tired of being nice. Not that I ever have been.

It's much easier to express my current feelings about life the universe and everything exclusively through YouTube clips. For instance, this:

I've noticed recently that, at least if one goes by the images that are left to us, the female half of the human species reached the zenith of beauty in the era of silent films. Witness:

Everything has come downhill since then. But even going back as far as the sixties, you can measure the difference in general classiness.

But, apart from blurting out things that you regret ever saying, another disadvantage of blogs is that it leaves you with less to share in private with the one or two people you actually manage to keep in touch with consistently. No one can say, delighted at the discovery of an out-of-the-way shared passion, "Hey, I didn't know you were an admirer of Annette Funicello's hair!" Instead, you broach the subject and they say, "Yeah, I read it on your blog."

And this is exactly what my current life in Wales is like:

Well, when I say exactly like that, what I mean, I suppose, is more like a cross between that and this.

Finally (perhaps really finally), I'm all for having a laugh, but I have come to learn the meaning of a phrase that a friend of mine used in conversation many years back, when he referred to someone as being, "pathologically incapable of taking anything seriously". I saw a headline about the endangerment of penguins recently that read something like, "Penguins in p-p-p-p-peril."

Is it obligatory to have some naff joke in every single headline ever written?