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Anthony Perkins
It sometimes seems impossible to believe that Perkins began his career as a dream boat matinee idol. At least that was the plan. It didn't last long as, despite his gangly, boyish looks, it became increasingly clear that he excelled at nervous, neurotic types particularly uncomfortable around women.
Few, if any in Hollywood could claim such an idiosyncratic screen image as their meal ticket. Thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, there was no turning back for Tony, both forever imprisoned in the skin of Norman Bates, and also blown up into an immortal pop culture icon. Bates became bigger than Perkins. It was a double-edged sword, or perhaps double-edged kitchen knife that he would grapple with for the rest of his life, not unlike Leonard Nimoy and Mr. Spock.
But even within the narrow furrow of nervous and/or psychotic weirdos, Perkins did a lot of good work. There was the twitchy Chaplain in Catch-22, the deranged dupe to an even crazier Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison, even the over-the-top killer priest with the serrated dildo in the silly Crimes of Passion with Kathleen Turner.
In the end he surrendered to Bates, dusting off his equivalent of the Spock ears - the stammer, the feminine swish in the hips as he goes up the stairs in the old house, the love of fine cutlery. Why not? Bread, butter, etc. - the ol' meal ticket. His work in the original Psycho arguably still stands as the best performance in any Hitchcock film - an amazing amalgamation of actor and character, left alone by the director to improvise, layer, and embody. He just ran with it.
His own conflicted sexuality may have made a mess of his head, but there had to be something in this struggle, this double life that made him the perfect Norman Bates.
"I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch."
Is it Time for an Adam and the Ants Reboot?
By all rights, long defunct pop/new wave band Adam and the Ants should be ripe for a comeback. With their saucy pirate look and love of dangly accessories, many pop culture pundits have been expecting it for some time. The pairing of their 1982 hit, "Goody Two Shoes" with Diet Coke in a recent TV advertisement has not only taken the world by storm, but has found the erstwhile dress-up rockers an entirely new, fresh young audience.
But in today's world, "comeback" has become a bit of a dirty word. With outfits like the Police and Springsteen and the E Street Band playing to half-empty stadiums and repelling fans with their bloated and creaky appearance, it may be time to rethink the entire concept.
Bands such as Adam and the Ants, never quite able to break through to massive mainstream success, would be wise to take a cue from Hollywood where the reboot - read "do-over" - is currently the latest craze, with everything from Incredible Hulks to Dark Batmans not being remade, but "re-imagined" in an effort to pump new life into decidedly dead concepts. Indeed, a seemingly never-ending cycle has begun; reviving, failing, reviving again, and in the process scoring a few million off the fantastically gullible youth market whose bold mantra reads, "Leave your brain at the door. Again."
For instance, the much-hyped Terminator Salvation, now tanking spectacularly at the box office, is already creating reboot buzz, the new code for, "Let's just pretend that didn't happen." More than ever, amnesia is in. And yet it could be argued that one hit like the aforementioned Batman reboot justifies everything. And either way, people really like saying "reboot."
So, with a huge demographic now accustomed to seeing new actors in familiar roles and expectations lowered to dizzying new depths, a music industry in full slump mode seems a natural fit. And when you’ve got a consumer base that practically demands multiple versions of everything, it’s business time.
Adding to the temptation, the original band need not even suit up, simply sitting back as their younger, sprier, and perhaps grittier new counterparts slog it out on the reboot trail. Spared the humiliating sneers of "sell-outs" and "pathetic whores," the once fresh-faced old-timers thusly enjoy both the fruits of success and the low maintenance of obscurity, largely left alone to continue being historical footnotes - forgotten mental cases, drunks, lard-asses, and general shadows of their former selves - all the while raking in that sweet, sweet reboot loot.
Once the ball gets rolling and the branding starts sizzling, the possibilities are endless, the opportunities juicy. All those bands that missed the gravy train and despite every calculated effort to sell out, got only a mouthful of the scummy skin. Kajagoogoo, Ultravox, Siouxsie and the Banshees - the list goes on. (Oh, Kajagoogoo – where art thou?)
And keep in mind that there was a time when failure to achieve media-saturating mega-stardom was strangely acceptable. In fact, not being played fifty times a day on MTV or appearing every night on ET was seen by some as a sign of quality, even integrity. But of course, that's all changed.
The reboot has shown us that nothing need ever be left alone. Death doesn’t even have to be a factor. Who wouldn't like to see a Jeff Buckley reboot? Clearly, it's an idea whose time has come.
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Okay, maybe the whole torture thing is actually worse than Gordon Campbell.
Fire Ironing
Why would somebody throw a perfectly good iron in the fire? I've never understood that - the one thing that's going to flatten your clothes and you just go and heave it onto the logs. What a senseless waste.
In my case it's more like pizza-pockets in the microwave. The kind that explode - because all of the pizza-pocket commercials I've seen seem to dictate that these tasty chunks of delicious chemicals should literally detonate in a volcanic eruption of scorching tomato paste and scalding, white-hot cheese, destroying not only the interior of your mouth and parts of your face, but possibly your house.
But I may be overstating it. I'm working on some very cool projects, some to be unveiled soon.
