riding the echo down

i'm not a music reviewer by any means. in the past others have encouraged me to write about music i enjoy, since i do like reading reviews whether i agree with them or not - i remember spending hours on progarchives and places like this one guy's website where his rating system didn't use stars or numbers but something that iirc was derived from math or something? i can't find it again unfortunately* - and i'm also very interested in the history/production of a given album and following connections to find cool music by relatively obscure artists (bobb trimble, anyone?), but it's difficult for me to actually write my own reviews because, well... i know i'm not getting the same auditory information as most other people. but here's an unorganized attempt (pitchfork this certainly ain't) so let's see how it goes - aiming high by starting with steely dan even if it means retreading well-trodden ground lol.

apparently steely dan's discography has been experiencing a re-evaluation lately and i had no idea - only found out when i was browsing reviews of donald fagen's solo albums the other day and fell into a rabbit hole. (this brand-new book focusing on the characters in the band's songs sounds interesting and i'll have to see if i can get it from a library first or something - the illustrations are a cool idea, but the author's "don't do drugs, kids" comment at the end of the interview is annoying enough to make me not want to buy the book sight unseen lol.) i grew up mostly hearing about the band as a punchline the same way a lot of other '70s stuff was made into the butt of jokes during the 1990s/early 2000s and never actually listened to them until last year, entirely by chance. i asked my parents recently about their memories of the band and they both said that they remembered some songs being radio hits but didn't have strong opinions either way. they didn't have any of the albums in their record/cd collection when i was a kid even though they did have a fair amount of jazz music. at any rate i'm glad i finally introduced myself to steely dan - i've tended to prefer music with tightly-crafted lyrics that invite closer reading and/or are dense with references&meaning, and steely dan's work fits right in. distinctive voices also tend to feature a lot in my favorites and while i wouldn't put fagen on the same level as orbison/nilsson/mercury/darnielle/etc, he's still recognizable enough for me to hear 'I.G.Y.' on a recommended-for-you playlist and be like, huh, this sounds like steely dan and then look up the singer's name for an oh-shit moment lol.

my favorite of steely dan's albums at this point is the 1980 "gaucho" which, in addition to having a rather notoriously tortured production history, is apparently also their most divisive. some people feel it's too polished and/or too simple compared to earlier work... can't speak to the "polished" sound but if it is relatively simple then that's to its benefit imo - makes it easier to follow what individual instruments are doing so appreciation comes faster. wall-of-sound can be fun but it typically takes me several listens to figure out what i'm even hearing. (thinking about how long it took me to appreciate masato nagai's "wild drive"....)

thematically it feels like a spiritual companion to pulp's "this is hardcore" and that's probably why i'm drawn to it more than the other albums - i've been a big pulp fan for a long time and still go back and forth on whether i like "this is hardcore" or "we love life" best, but i've not found anything else that really reminds me of the latter. "gaucho" and "this is hardcore" have similar themes of dissolution and longing, with less defiance than in the earlier albums from either band. the songwriters for both tend to simultaneously make fun of and empathize with their seedy male subjects - but they're not necessarily asking the listener to sympathize. their lyrics are more aimed at reminding us that we're all capable of being terrible to each other in one way or another, and that beneath the fucked-up actions there's still a person there who's hurting. sometimes, anyway. other times it seems like they're just having fun writing about creeps, and i can dig that too! both titles are also almost concept albums, tightly wrapped around a unity of sound and theme that each band's earlier (or later!) albums don't quite have, which is another thing that makes the overall listening experience that much more rewarding imo.

steely dan continued to revisit these themes, of course - 'things i miss the most' from "everything must go" is a real fucking earworm with their signature sensitive-yet-sardonic lyrics - but "gaucho" as a whole is so laser-focused that it comes across like a collection of short stories by raymond carver with more of a sideways sense of humor. and i'm seeing now that there's some who class carver as "dirty realism" and that midnight cowboy is considered a great example of the subgenre, which tracks since i adore both the herlihy book and the schlesinger film.... i don't know if steely dan would fit the literary definition here but there's a definite throughline with regards to subject matter that i find interesting.

anyway, back to the music: this is a short album, easy to listen to all the way through in sequence as intended, though i can also understand why people might not enjoy that experience much. to continue the short story comparison, it's a bit like flannery o'connor - great in individual doses, but if you sit and read a full collection of her in one go then you might find it a bit repetitive after a while. (not my personal opinion! one i've seen other people express, though, including people whose opinions on writing i tend to respect even when we disagree.) so imo if you only listen to one from this album, make it 'hey nineteen'. i'll talk a bit about each track below, including why that one is my favorite.

( you gotta shake it )

in my hellsing server we were discussing the possibility of watching the polish film "hellhole" (2022) together so i checked to see if it was available anywhere or whether it'd need torrenting, and learned that there was a 1985 film with the exact same title but a wildly different plot summary. my partner and i decided to watch it because we were both intrigued by the outrageous premise and also the fact that one of the characters was played by a famous ex-evangelist preacher (i want to see the documentary about him, "marjoe" from 1972) and boy oh boy what a ride.

i've watched a couple exploitation films before but i feel like i'm never prepared for the reality of them, lol. the true star of the movie imo was ray sharkey playing an Evil Leather Punk who went by the nom de guerre of silk - he was so fucking funny and over-the-top he made even the relatively boring parts of the movie worth it. (i'm sorry, as somebody who's mostly interested in men i'm very particular about the type of woman i find attractive..... if you like seeing lots of conventionally attractive women get in fights, naked or otherwise, and have erotic drug-taking scenes together then this is the movie for you by a mile.) i say "relatively" because tbh i found the whole thing fascinating in an anthropological way, but idk if it's a movie i'd recommend unless you also enjoy watching exploitation movies for what they say about the people involved in the production. it also has vibes of re-animator and i was amused to realize they came out the same year. it'd be interesting to read an argument connecting movies about medical malpractice vis-a-vis innovation to the visibility of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

i want to see the other things sharkey was in now because he was incredible. marjoe was good too, though his performance was more restrained than sharkey's (which isn't saying a lot tbh but he played it more normal). every time they said his character's name, dr. dane, i had to do a mental double take haha. i also liked mary woronov - she has a very striking face and she owned the role she was given. it was fun discovering i'd seen her before in "the house of the devil", though she would've been much older in that one. i'd like to see more of her movies some time when i have the chance.

speaking of movies, though, i want to do another danepost soon. i think it'll be bear island, since that was on the last poll, unless people would prefer to read about the national lampoon movie.... or i might do the "control of inmates" short since i might already have all the screenshots necessary for that. if you have a preference for some reason, let me know in the comments!

huge huge HUGE thanks to tempural for helping me troubleshoot the video embed coding in this!


(happy pride demon month, here's a new round of homosexuality from yours truly. i even made a new icon for the occasion <3)

the other day i had the bright idea of searching the wayback machine for "lawrence dane" - i've searched the internet archive's website on a regular basis but never thought to do a text search in the wayback machine itself, and was curious whether i might be able to find anyone else talking about him on old sites. (when i explained this to my partner they laughed and were like "no, i think you're the only one who's ever cared this much" lol.)

the first result for my search was lawrencedane.com which would have been quite the coincidence if it wasn't him - going through the site captures it became clear the domain had been taken over by spam squatters before going down entirely, so i went back to the beginning. the domain was registered in 2002, and an early crawl revealed that it had indeed likely been his personal website. but it was mainly based on flash, so i couldn't view it on a regular browser - my only confirmation was a string of text at the bottom of the broken content that read "photo gallery / credits / biography / contacts / what's new".

after some trial and error that night i got the archived captures to be functional! i tried the ruffle extension and it worked long enough to load the home page and verify it as dane's site, but refreshing the page somehow broke the extension so i had to use a portable flash-friendly version of firefox kindly shared via reddit here. that worked much more reliably and i was able to take screenshots of a 2003 crawl - and record the flash animations, lol.

(you can turn off the loop if enabled with a right click, or view a still image here. the video appears a little small here because i had to fight with dreamwidth to get the embed working, so the screenshots represent the dimensions of the site more accurately. you can also open the video in a new tab to view it at the correct scale.)

( further documentation and discussion behind the cut )

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 4/5

he's not the main antagonist - that would be lloyd bochner's character - but his scenes take up a fair amount of the runtime and he opens and closes the episode as well. it's a nice performance too, appropriately intense but not hammy. also, this episode has one of the most bonkers death scenes i've seen him do and that gives it a full extra point on the worth-it-for-dane scale. like i knew he was gonna die but the way it happens.... i've never seen anything like it elsewhere in such a serious context lmao. maybe i'm just sheltered?? a clip of the scene is included at the end of this post so you can judge for yourself. (uploading the whole episode privately to youtube for autocaptions was a bust because of copyright bullshit, so i paid for captions, but it seems as though very short clips are fine so there's that at least. a dane cut wasn't necessary imo since he's in it enough and the rest is interesting enough especially when lloyd bochner is there.)

the plot: two men are working together as diamond thieves at the behest of someone who knows where and when diamonds will be in transit and thus easy to steal - an inside man. dane plays one of the thieves and lloyd bochner plays the inside man. (they were together again in 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' a couple years after this, though they don't interact as much in that.) dane has something of a homoerotic relationship with his robbery partner, played by a fellow named clyde ventura* - we're given to understand that they met in prison and promised each other that they'd buy a ranch together when they had the money, among other intimate little details, and they seem to be peers but dane cares more about the welfare of his partner than one might expect for the average heist team. (dane could have been fun in an episode of leverage but i digress.)

on the one hand, this show was written in partnership with j. edgar hoover and his top fbi agents, which, yuck. but on the other, the screenwriters give the "bad guys" a surprising amount of depth in this context and it seems pretty clear to me that we're even meant to find the situation somewhat tragic. at least, dane gives us a performance good enough to help us believe he genuinely cares about his partner and the pathos of that carries the episode. the narrative ends pretty abruptly and i wished they'd had the space to dwell a bit on how bochner's character is treated versus the working-class thieves, but at the same time if this was produced under hoover's watch they probably weren't allowed to go that far.

while i was starting to draft this post i was reminded of his performance in his first episode of the virginian (aired 1968) and how he feels less natural there compared to this fbi episode. at first i was thinking oh he must've started hitting his stride in 1969 but no, he was very good in yerma and in his episode of jericho (both aired 1967) among other roles. really makes me think that it comes down to the director, something i think i’ve touched on before - with the right director he can be phenomenal, but that isn’t consistent enough to make someone a star. a shame, because he really does do a decent job with the material he's given in this episode.

since this was a procedural show it’s difficult to find newspaper reviews for individual episodes, but there’s a fansite for the show - that site’s rating for this episode is a B and i think i agree. if you enjoy the style of police procedural that's heavier on investigation than on action, it's a solid episode. if you don't enjoy police procedurals at all, well, understandable. but perhaps you can at least enjoy how cute dane is in this one.

movies i've seen for the first time recently that i can remember/may want to revisit soon somehow:

• god told me to (1976) - watched this a couple months ago, actually, but it's stuck with me. such a great little microcosm of a specific slice of the 1970s. also interesting to compare with the current general attitude towards gun murders in the usa..... and it had really fun devilman vibes though there's no actual connection i know of.
• crimes of passion (1984) - mostly watched this because "fucked-up preacher man with some kind of sex addiction" is right up my alley. also i was curious about ken russell's later work. it's pulpy fun and anthony perkins really owns the movie. doesn't feel as inspired as some of russell's other work that i've seen, but still some great visuals.
• speedy (1928) - a charming love letter to both the then-dying and then-evolving versions of new york city, albeit a very white love letter. interesting to compare its depiction of the city with movies like god told me to or the taking of pelham one two three (1974 version, natch).

also rewatched showgirls (1995) and was introduced to the idea that it was intended as satire. if so, the satire misses the mark imo because there's no clear target. pick one and stick with it if you want the commentary to be clear; the rest will follow. it also doesn't help that mclachlan felt like he was in a different movie, lol, and gershon's character felt more developed than the main character. when discussing this with my partner i was comparing it to midnight cowboy (which itself isn't satire but still very much a social commentary) and hope to show that to them soon because they haven't seen it before. it's been a long time since i've watched/read it myself so i'm looking forward to the chance to spend time with those characters again.

i'm also hoping to show them lynch's dune, since it's on the criterion channel through the end of this month. i've seen it once before but want to check it out again now that i know what to expect and won't be totally blindsided by dean stockwell showing up (and no i still haven't seen the new version, though not for lack of interest. just...hasn't worked out for various reasons).

honorable mention goes to the curse of inferno (1997). what a strange movie. in places it's a similar kind of strange as showgirls, with actors seeming as though they're in different movies despite sharing a scene. in a way it's almost as ripe for a cultural studies focus as god told me to, though it does need the additional context of knowing who pauly shore is and his career trajectory.

i also finally put together the dane cut for of unknown origin and now that i'm in a better mood i think i can rate the movie more highly, lol. i'll try to work on that post soon.

gotta catch up on my inbox/reading page again but for now, since this was fun last time:





i know i keep stalling on the national lampoon movie but.... i just did a post about an unfunny comedy i really don't want to do another one so soon lmao.

i might do a write-up of the 1965 short 'control of inmates' before any of these just because it's less than 30 minutes and the story behind it is kinda cool, and/or i can revisit 'happy birthday to me' for a more positive assessment like i said i would months ago orz. wish i had more time to devote to all this.... and i also gotta navigate calling the cbc to pay for some more videos. it's bullshit that apparently i can't use relay to make outbound international calls. fuck deaf people with any international business or friends i guess. but they might be able to call me? i'll have to see if they're willing to work with me on this, lol, or if i need to recruit a hearing person to help out. tedious, but it should be worth it in the end....

yoinked a custom mood theme off ye olde livejournal (source post here). i used to have a really cute one of kawamura takashi from prince of tennis on my lj but it seems to have been nuked. thanks photobucket. at least this one is fun too.

watched a japanese horror film last night with the english title of "bloody muscle body builder in hell" on shudder. entertaining little thing - only an hour long - and very clearly a love letter to the evil dead film(s). seemed as though there were also some oblique references to reanimator but i could be wrong.... then again, decapitating someone with a shovel is pretty specific, isn't it? ditto a foot attached to another limb vis-a-vis bride of reanimator? or am i just Uncultured? at any rate i had fun, even if the movie did a couple things on my "thanks i hate this" list wrt things that keep me awake at night.

i really don't like jerky head movements, especially if they're at an unnatural speed, and i also don't like sudden loud noises/music cues at a specific pitch. the latter is related to my inability to tolerate a very specific kind of throat sound, lol, because for whatever reason my hearing aids just. cannot process it in a way that sounds organic to me. nope. cannot do it. (yes, i've watched the original grudge movie, yes every single fucking time that sound happened i just turned off my h/as until i was told it was over. No Thanks.) i'm also pretty susceptible to visual jump scares, even if i can guess they're coming, and when the movie ends with one.... wonderful. super nice. won't keep me awake at all.

other than that the movie was really enjoyable! the practical effects were so fun, as were the stop-motion/painted animation bits, and i loved how i could feel the passion in it all. would i watch it again? PROBABLY NOT LOL. but i'll definitely recommend it to others!

i also rewatched tommy recently, i don't remember why now - something about a conversation with pendulumscale and wanting to show it to them just so they'd have that context - and i did NOT realize that fucking father grandier is in it! i didn't recognize him when i watched the devils even though i'd seen tommy first (same director!) but it was kinda surreal this time around knowing the actor. he doesn't do a bad job in tommy at all, though i do think he gives a better performance in the devils. but when i was watching tommy with whim i realized that i didn't remember the latter half of the film at all. it just isn't as compelling once it gets into the cult narrative, which is a bit ironic imo considering that ken russell apparently agreed to direct because he liked the cult element. it just falls apart narratively imo, and that might be partly due to how it handles disability. it was really weird the first time around, and let me tell you it's even weirder the second time around because i was more sober and could tell they weren't even trying to use british sign language. yas qween use crips as props more! groundbreaking!!1 everything before tommy gets his sight/hearing back is great visually so idk wtf happened after that. (yeah there's the revival church scene in the first half but that felt a little less yikes to me personally because of the context, with his mother trying to ~cure~ him and it being framed as misguided, vs the context of the scene where tommy's preaching to the disabled people because...??? idk why that was necessary to include lmao)

i do remember whim making a couple comments to the effect of "if i were high right now this scene would probably be amazing" and y'know what? they weren't wrong. but even high i was like :| at some of it lol. maybe i just don't find exploitation narratives interesting when they move into religious territory, or when they use disabled people as visual props? like, i love iscariot in hellsing, they're my favorite part of the whole thing, but my interest is in the characters rather than the exploitation aspect. hm. Food For Thought, i suppose.

was gonna start taking screencaps for my next dane review (a good idea at the time/find the lady, per that poll i ran a while back) but got sidetracked uploading the custom mood theme. that took longer than i thought it would! while in adhd hell yesterday when trying to work from home i found some mixed/positive reviews for those movies so that was interesting, since until now i'd only seen bad ones. thank you [redacted local library] for providing premium access to newspapers.com. do be sure to check out your local library's database offerings in case they have free access for a database you'd find interesting/useful! the website kept 404ing when i tried to follow results for two specific papers, which was very frustrating because one of the results sounded like it included him discussing why he switched from zahab to dane, but oh well. i sent in support requests so we'll see what comes of that.

i did see that shudder has castle freak, but whim wasn't interested in a more serious movie and jeffrey combs/barbara crampton being in it wasn't enough of a sell, alas. hoping to watch it tomorrow with a good friend who's a combs stan - their enthusiasm is infectious. speaking of reanimator&c - check out this super cool post by tempural about an artwork i commissioned from them. i love hill/west and jumped at the chance to get a valentine's day commission from them because i love their art and knew they'd have fun with the premise of my request. i wanna write more hill/west this year! fuck the people on tungle who get mad if your gay reanimator ship isn't danbert. it isn't my fault david gale is mega sexy!

anyway, time to log into eso and dick around in advance of the elsweyr event starting next week. my absolute favorite expansion... next post of mine on here should be a review of find the lady. pray for my adhd. thanks.

i talked a lot about lawrence dane in 2022 without actually taking the time to explain why him of all actors. granted, the posts in my rituals tag get into most of it, but the snowflake challenge made me realize it'd be a good idea to have it all in one place instead of spread out across reviews&c. that way i have a nice little introduction to link at the top of the review masterpost!



lawrence joseph zahab was born april 3, 1937 to two lebanese immigrants in a town in quebec, canada, and raised in ottawa. he grew up very involved in his community - playing high school football, emceeing local events, trying out impersonations at talent shows, and eventually acting in community theater. he was the youngest of six children and his father died suddenly when he was just finishing high school. since he wasn't the oldest son and therefore didn't face the same expectations to care for his mother and sister, he had enough freedom to travel and pursue his interest in acting. he started out credited as larry or lawrence zahab but switched to using lawrence dane as a stage name during the mid-to-late 1960s, when he began focusing on television and film productions outside of canada. in his private life he seems to have always gone by larry. he had several friends, most notably canadian icon gordon pinsent, but stayed a bachelor most of his life; he appears to have been largely single or only had short-lived relationships until 1995, when he wedded a woman named mary laurel macintosh in las vegas. they stayed together until his death of pancreatic cancer on march 21, 2022 and they don't seem to have had any children, but by all accounts he was a lovely uncle to his extended family of nieces and nephews.

his most well-known roles are as braedon keller in scanners (1981) and as lt. preston in bride of chucky (1998). he was a not-infrequent guest on american television in the '60s and '70s, and he was in a handful of early john candy films. if you're a canadian over the age of 30 or 40, you've likely encountered him on television at some point, whether in a drama, sitcom, or advertisement.

( what's so interesting about this guy anyway? )

so that's lawrence dane! as always i'm happy to answer any questions you might have, or to just fawn over him together lol. thanks for reading ^^

what a busy winter holiday season. not busy in terms of socializing (covid precautions...) but i had to finish up edits for the magazine publication and then i got a fair amount of personal writing done. nothing quite completed yet, but since they're both xmas/nye-themed i'd like to have them done by the end of this month, lol. i've also been enjoying playing elder scrolls online again - my laptop finally stopped being able to run it back over the summer, but after i built a new pc it runs so fucking smooth it's a whole different experience. still trying to figure out why my pc keeps rebooting instead of staying asleep but it's not a huge problem yet, just a pain in the ass.

it was tough spending yet another batch of holidays away from my family, since i am on good terms with them, but i'm still trying to find a new job that'll put me close enough to make day trips feasible. at least i could do some things online with them, and watch things together with friends via discord. finally got around to seeing the first episode of our flag means death and it was honestly just as funny as people made it out to be. i'll have to watch more soon. i also bought my partner a single by a local musician for hanukkah (we only exchange gifts on the first night) and it was cool comparing how it sounded on our record player to when we've seen him perform it live.

one really nice holiday treat (for me, anyway) was a new ebay listing for a press photo/lobby card i hadn't seen before. the seller also had a listing for the scanners lobby card with dane on it, but they only do reproductions so i hadn't felt like it was worth buying. this new photo, though, hasn't been posted anywhere else and it was covered in watermarks so obviously my only choice was to buy it (and grab a copy of the scanners one while i was at it). i don't know why this seller won't just list the original because it's not like anyone else would want it lmao. nobody likes running (1979)...or if they do, they don't like it for dane. i get the impression that he might've had a scene or two that were cut from the final production, or from the version of the movie i found anyway, since i also have a press photo of a scene that i don't remember seeing in the movie. i have a lot of press photos/lobby cards, lol.


i call this my "panorama of dane" because my mother and her friend, during their teen years, were obsessed with joel grey in cabaret and went to all these stage performances of his and collected various memorabilia that they called their panorama of joel. there's a polaroid of them displaying their panorama and it was really a quite impressive collection, lol, much larger than what i have. i should put these in frames at some point, but i'd have to get a custom frame for a lot of them so that isn't happening (yet). the main thing was just having something nice to look at when i'm shackled to my telework desk. there's a couple other photos i could include but i'd have to get them printed. other than those i thought my collection was finished, especially since none of the lobby cards for nothing personal includes him, but, well... i look forward to potentially being proven wrong yet again.

i'm not going to make any new year's resolutions - i just want to write more and finish another story with an eye towards publication. signed up for the ygorarepairs reverse minibang and might try to sign up for other fan events, but one thing i'd like to do this year is keep my goals realistic so i don't try to take on too much. i also want to do more dane reviews/research! there's one i started drafting last year and i'll have to finish it soon so we can ring in the new year with a short film where he has like three sex scenes within 20 minutes. it's so much...........

here's hoping everyone's new year is off to a good start!