Dr. Robert Cade at the University of Florida developed Gatorade in 1966. His laboratory potion had the right electrolytes & salts from the start, but it didn’t taste good, so the football players who needed it often wouldn’t drink it. Dr. Cade took home an early batch of Gatorade to his wife, who recommended cutting it with lemon, and thus sports science was changed forever. Sometimes a brilliant doctor just needs a good woman to help him out. Gatorade won QB Steve Spurrier the Heisman Trophy in 1966, and “The Sweat Solution” is one of the best ESPN 30-for-30 shorts.
Arnold Palmer popularized professional golf and invented his own drink, now commonly referred to as an Arnold Palmer– which is ice tea with lemon. There are arguments about how to proportion an Arnold Palmer, but Arnie says it is mostly ice tea with the lemon garnishing the drink. Some people prefer an Arnold Palmer with half lemonade or more, so it allows that flexibility and there are various acceptable preferences.
The most delightful moment in this ESPN 30-for-30 short is when Arnold Palmer reveals the moment he finally gave up and started referring to his favorite drink as an Arnold Palmer. His attributed concoction became so accepted & widespread that every waiter/waitress now knows what an Arnold Palmer is, so he gave up and started ordering it as an Arnold Palmer– laughingly hoping that no one will recognize him. It’s a great lesson in how to handle fame and giving up false humility from one of the most beloved athletes of the 20th century.
With that introduction, I am now sharing a drink I invented, which I have named after myself. An ‘Eric Meeker’ is half apple cider & half high-pulp orange juice. Individually orange juice and apple cider are very acidy, which limits consumability, but surprisingly when these two are combined the acids mellow each other out and you are left with a fruity burst of natural sugar rich in vitamins & minerals your body needs. In this sense it is much better than Gatorade because it is organic. It’s superior to an Arnold Palmer in that it is much healthier, while being comparably delicious.
The Eric Meeker is a 50/50 mixture, and leans no more that 60/40 in either direction. The drink’s inventor says it’s better to have more apple cider than orange juice in an Eric Meeker, and you definitely need high-pulp OJ. Also, apple juice doesn’t work like apple cider. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about an Eric Meeker is its economy & easy mixing, with ingredients that are always available in any decent Midwest food market. The nutrient burst you receive from a cool Eric Meeker will replenish your body with what it needs– and fast.
For years Arnold Palmer didn’t self-reference his favorite drink when ordering it, but I’m skipping past all that. As I’ve learned, it’s a hoot to have invented your own drink, and this blog allows publication of the recipe with all the nuances, so enjoy!
Mind if I show you a little something? I’ve been watching you, to see what the hell you’re up to, and this is what I see…
Caddyshack (1980) is the funniest movie ever. Beyond that, it was the first movie with a modern soundtrack, featuring the music of Johnny Mandel and also containing two hit songs from Kenny Loggins: “I’m Alright” the film’s classic theme song, and “Mr. Night” the caddy pool-party song. This christened a new movie soundtrack style for the decade, which showed-up in features across all genres including: Flashdance (1983), Ghostbusters (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985) & Dirty Dancing (1987) to name just a few.
Caddyshack is about class lines & the differences between country club members and the caddies who serve them. The class bite gets hidden somewhat underneath all the laughs. Danny Noonan represents the young, unmotivated everyman who see little reason to work hard because there is little-to-no reward for him.
Bill Murray delivers the best scenes, often by himself, and they live in golf lore– as every golfer loves Caddyshack. If you don’t laugh with the Caddyshack audience, then that audience is laughing at you. Few comedies can twist you up like that, and Caddyshack sets the standard.
And to clarify a Caddyshack point regarding Donald Trump, he is a real-life amalgamation of Judge Smails & his grandson Spaulding– meaning they are cheaters at golf, not golfers. This is why you have to be careful when someone asks you to kill every golfer on the course.
Rodney Dangerfield & Ted Knight represent the battle of new money vs old money in Caddyshack. Ted Knight never had a better or more memorable role. Rodney Dangerfield was in one other classic comedy, Back to School (1986), which is relevant to this discussion. Back to School is an underrated movie, with a stellar cast including: Sally Kellerman, Ned Beatty & Robert Downey Jr.
Sam Kinison helps students of history appreciate what happens when you give a good answer to a difficult question, but it isn’t the answer the teacher is looking for…
Robert Downey Jr. as Derek Lutz intervenes at his college homecoming rally to “point out that football is a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.” Somewhere very recently, that line got me thinking and helped me theorize Trump-Musk crypto-fascism. This proves the arts & laughter are food for thought & meditation, so take a hike all you elitist fraternity scumbags…
The latest on crypto-fascism: Stablecoins are seen as “low hanging fruit,” so that’s the current top priority for the crypto industry. Congressional legislation in May has multiple crypto bills being circulated, as the financial media is finally beginning to see the priority of crypto in the Trump-Musk administration. Increasingly it is apparent that crypto is a primary economic & foreign policy driver for the Trump White House.
Stablecoins are a way of connecting worthless crypto to tangible assets such as the US dollar, Treasury notes, etc. In short: stablecoins are a gateway to a crypto-fascist billionaire heist of the US Treasury. Not one “stablecoin” has ever held its 1:1 peg to whatever it’s tied to. STABLE & GENIUS are the crypto bills currently being “debated.” Political blowback has already started as the ‘crypto PAC money Democrats’ are starting to sway due to increasing public concerns. Crypto is a political fight where an educated public can really benefit the cause of revolutionary socialism.
April 2 was “Liberation Day” when the Trump tariffs were announced. The tariff plan was to declare economic war on the nation of China, along with a cost-of-living & jobs war on the international working class. A side benefit for Trump was the chaos it provoked in the news cycles, which deflected attention away from his hidden crypto agenda. The crypto-fascist plan was for the STABLE & GENIUS bills to already be passed, or at least well on their way by now. But these bills have been “paused” instead. Crypto works best in secret, and the timelines on these events (tariffs & crypto legislation) suggest they were part of a coordinated fascist plan. Any public disclosures & analysis of crypto-fascist criminality damages Trump immeasurably.
Lou, dressing down his troops in Caddyshack: I’m gonna lay it right on the line. There have been a lot of complaints already– horsing around on the course, bad language, smoking grass, poor caddying! You wanna get fired, be replaced by golf carts– just keep it up.
Reuters/Markets headline: Treasuries, U.S. dollar sell off as Trump trade war drives recession fears
In Succession (2018-23) Logan, Kendall, Roman, Shiv & Conner constantly bounce stupid half-baked ideas back-and-forth, always choosing in the end to lean politically to the right towards fascism– and that’s how it ends up.
Two years later, we have in real life with the Trump administration the result of what was depicted in that HBO political drama series. In Succession, the 1%, and especially the 0.01% are clueless & impotent, back-filling their limitations with hysterics & rage. The power of money buys them everything, yet they still aren’t satisfied.
The most likable characters in Succession are the human throw-aways including: Tabitha, Jess, & (my favorite) Karolina. These minor characters are serious people who are intelligent & very good at what they do, but get no respect or love from those they dutifully serve. Without such talent, this parasite class would immediately shrivel up & die. These fictionalized conflicts wonderfully portrayed in Succession are actually real and are happening every day in all the institutions of bourgeois power.
Many of monied class don’t understand where money comes from at all, they simply perceive money as a divine right to be held by themselves. Inform them that money is a congealed expression of the value of human labor power, and the 1% gets hysterical and starts screaming for a fascist strongman.
It’s all very convenient for the puppet-masters of international finance & commerce. Their authority is never to be questioned, along with the 2-party political set-up and elite-biased court system. International law is ignored & attacked by US imperialism to further its predatory ambitions of world conquest and that’s how it is we are told. We are always fighting the evil Russians because of 1917, and we must submit because we are mere mortals compared to our demi-god leaders who are infallible.
The Frankfurt School of post-modernism provides the ideological justification for much of this propaganda, based on pre-fascist philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche in their writings on the “overman-superman”, etc, expressing an admiration for a strongman leader. German soldiers received copies of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra as gifts during World War I, as a conscious attempt by the far right to divert the working masses from the Marxism of Lenin & Trotsky. The social Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’, Malthusianism depopulation, and the rest of this epoch’s pseudo-science are simply genocide-enabling bourgeois rationalizations.
Spinoza & Hegel are the philosophical & ideological influencers of Karl Marx. There is no ‘overman’ or ‘fuhrer principle’ with socialism, as that Nietzsche garbage belongs in the dustbin of history. What we currently have in the White House is a cabal of Nazis who think they can enslave the world and are determined to do so. The popular resistance they face is massive and unconquerable, yet the fascists insist on this fight to the death. The Democrats are aware and doing everything they can in their service of fascism to disarm & misdirect the working population.
The international youth & working class must organize itself independently from existing capitalist political forces, which are all lined-up for battle against the working masses. These hostile camps include the DSA & Greens, the union bureaucracies, and NGO’s/non-profits with their million ties to big business & the military-police state.
The police are of no help to the working masses, in fact they are brought in by criminal corporate & government officials to drive worker leaders out of the factories while arresting anti-genocide student protesters exercising their right to free speech on campus. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a real cop acting heroically, I suppose it happens, but I mostly read about police shooting & arresting people without cause and then being protected by the courts. I wonder why police abuse & terror and legal system corruption is never seriously discussed in the media? A lot of other people do to.
Deep in the Oval Office everyday, fascists are meeting and plotting their next attack on the population. Elon Musk & Stephen Miller appear to have the most influence over Trump at this point, which means anti-immigrant scapegoating, tariff wars & crypto. All these reactionary policies are implemented in a series of chaotic fits, then modified by unexplained zig-zags and walk-backs intended to placate political resistance until the death squads can take over. It’s remarkable to note that Biden-Harris had over a year to question Trump on all this during their election campaigns, but never seriously did so. Now the Democrats are acting surprised by Trump. For the rest of us, it’s like being forced to watch a hideously bad TV show every day.
A final word on acting: I’ve now seen Succession twice all the way through. It’s a beautifully done series on some really ugly issues and probably the best streaming content since House of Cards (2013-17). You certainly have to be in a certain mood to watch & appreciate it. Succession perfectly cast three amazing actors for extremely difficult roles in bringing humanity & likability to deeply-flawed characters in Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin & Sarah Snook. Succession viewers takes turns hating Kendall, Roman & Shiv, while fitting in touching human drama involving the human capital they are wasting & abusing. The Hollywood trap is to romanticize these characters into real life, instead of learning the political lessons, and thus absolving the ruling class from mass criminality.
Human beings & popular culture keeps evolving. What I’ve noticed as I walk through life is how unhealthy much of the American population has become, including (and sometime especially) children. For reference, I’m Generation X and it wasn’t like this when I was a kid. So what are the causes?
For sure, advertisers targeted Gen-Xers during Saturday morning cartoons and any other children’s programming available back then– before cable & satellite TV. Then MTV, ESPN & TNT/USA came along and advertiser targeting became even more nefarious & precise. It is now a consumer fact that Gen-X and beyond craves Cocoa Puffs, Captain Crunch, Fruit Loops, Lucky Charms, Hostess snacks, Cheetos, Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, McDonald’s & Pizza Hut. Kids my age were bombarded with millions of ads, while today’s internet kids see tens-of-millions of ads by adulthood.
So how do you control your junk food urges when watching TV or browsing the internet? To start, we must define junk food for everything it is. Junk food is a craving we can’t ignore, but it is a health-buster so it must be tamed. It’s all about correct identification, then finding substitutes & compliments.
For instance, after a certain point ice cream becomes a junk food. Everyone loves ice cream, but it’s a gut-buster, so I substitute cottage cheese in my diet and that handles my ice cream craving in most instances. I still have ice cream in my freezer for when the craving becomes the food I eat, I just eat a lot less of it since I substituted cottage cheese. Since cottage cheese can be boring by itself, it needs a compliment for it to be a sustainable substitute. I use jelly/jam or fresh fruit and that compliment gives the variety needed to sustain cottage cheese in my diet. That keeps the waist & ass leaner, while lowering the diabetes risk.
Rule #1 to a healthy diet is: Eat whole fruits & vegetables as staples. Peanut butter is a super-food that goes well with just about anything. So is milk, eggs & real cheese. This reduces meat consumption, while giving your body the necessary protein & good fats it needs. Remember that fresh is best and what is available depends on your geography. Learn to adapt– regionally, seasonally & economically.
For example if you juice cucumbers as part of your regular diet, and suddenly cukes aren’t available or become of poor quality, you must find an alternative source of juice & veggies. Fresh cucumbers are a super-food so making up the difference in lost nutrition will require a major re-adjustment to the fruits & vegetables in your diet.
I’ve mentioned super-foods a few times already, which is a generic term for nutrient-dense foods that give you health. Green peanuts & citrus are super-foods available in the southern latitudes of North America, while apples & cabbages are examples of super-foods that should be worked into a regular northern latitude diets. Consider juice or cider for citrus & apples if not in the native latitude. Understand that apples get mealy in the south due to extreme heat, so they are only super-foods when grown in the north.
Junk food is least damaging if it is consumed when all the body’s nutritional requirements have been met. Be honest with your deepest cravings and find a healthy alternative, particularly in the cereal aisle of your grocery store. Cereal is junk food, but Cheerios, Raisin Bran & granola are among its healthiest forms and can be substitutes. For me, Cheerios satisfies my potato chip craving and my stomach thanks me for it. A bowl of cereal with milk kills a lot of junk food cravings for candy bars, cookies, etc.
A hot air popcorn popper kills the corn meal junk food (Cheetos, etc) cravings. Eliminate bread & pasta from your at home diet, these starches are huge gut-busters, so only consume them when eating out. Substitute and find compliments. Vegetables need creamy dippers to encourage consumption, etc. You need to cover all your junk food cravings with always-available substitutes, otherwise these cravings will ruin your body & physical health. This is one of the most difficult challenges in modern life and one of the most important GenX lessons to learn.
Yesterday, a former US government official, Mike Benz, published an article on the USAID program to integrate imperialist messaging into popular music. Among those prominently named are: Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa & (of course) Pussy Riot. Also discussed in the piece are 22 rappers from around the globe, who have visited the US State Department over the years and been trained to write lyrics that dovetail with US imperialist interests.
The argument that USAID is necessary to fight global hunger, advocate for democratic rights, etc, is a fraud– a cynical concoction of Western intelligence. Trump/Musk are shutting down the notorious CIA fronts of USAID & the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) because of it’s fake left bias, which the fascists despise.
This has nothing to do with democracy, as Trump/Musk seek to reshape US intelligence in their Nazi image. Note that “Trump/Musk” and “intelligence” is an oxymoron.
It was a convenient starting point for the Trump/Musk government wrecking ball because so many people recognize this imperialist corruption. Only a few well-paid rainbow warriors (pic above) have protested the shutting down of USAID & NED. Perhaps the State Department can coax one of these celebrity assets into writing lyrics about the unfairness of this defunding. Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair,Vogue, etc, would give it a great review– for sure. That’s their job.
“Celebrities who can be trained to spread desired messaging” is the exact State Department phrase which became the title. These trainable celebrities are fascist collaborators & sympathizers. The irony is that most of these puppets weren’t fascists to start, but the Black Hand has corrupted them and that’s the Faustian deal one must make to become a celebrity. These iconic defeatists see no hope, no path to fight Trump/Musk, taking all their political cues from the CIA Democrats. These trained celebrities who learned nothing from history are Vichy France.
Vichy collaborators were paraded though the streets of liberated Paris with swastikas drawn on their foreheads, while the women also had their hair shaved-off for giving aid & comfort to the Nazis from 1940-44. The population of France lined their streets to spit upon & hurl verbal abuse at these fascists, seething with revolutionary anger & class hatred of the bourgeoisie. Fascism, which flows out of imperialism, is the bitterest enemy of democracy and that’s the lesson of WW2. The masses of the world still hate Nazis, and it is this retribution of the international working class that historically awaits celebrities trained to spread desired messaging.
Unacknowledged comedies happen because media bias becomes so influential that many viewers can’t comprehend what they are watching. You have to have intelligence to recognize the humor in an unbelievable situation that is presented & promoted as deadly serious. This is how camp & cult classics come about in film. Chuck Norris rightly belongs in this camp. The Chuck Norris movies from his classic period, 1979-1985, are his only watchable films, proving there are limits to badness which an educated viewer shouldn’t go past. I’ll stay within the era to illustrate some Chuck Norris laughs you may have missed & why.
To start at the beginning, Chuck Norris was a middle-weight kick boxing champion when few people followed the sport. Before that he was in the US Air Force, which clearly shaped his views on politics. Chuck Norris trained under Bruce Lee, and got his film break when he was a fight villain in Return of the Dragon (1972), written, directed by & starring Bruce Lee. This film, also known as The Way of the Dragon, was made in Hong Kong and has been widely dubbed into English. Not even Chuck Norris’ voice survives, as this movie deserves subtitles with no dubbing to hear Bruce Lee’s authentic voice in Chinese, along with the rest of the characters, but a dubbed version is still worthwhile because it’s really about the Bruce Lee fight scenes. If you ever wanted to see Chuck Norris get killed in a fight, as he deserves, then watch Return of the Dragon.
Enter the Dragon (1973) was produced by Warner as a US release in English and was Bruce Lee’s final completed film. After Bruce Lee tragically died in July 1973, Chuck Norris began boasting in the media that he was an equal of Bruce Lee in fighting & developing in his own system– which clearly wasn’t true. Jackie Chan, along with billions of Asians who love martial arts, have taken fierce exception to Chuck Norris for this. It’s helpful to know that when watching Chuck Norris movies.
Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do revolutionized hand-to-hand fighting, training, philosophy, etc; while Chuck Norris’ limited & brutal kick-boxing style– didn’t. He was an early world champion when no one cared, and those who did were watching Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger in body building, were the earliest true-action movie stars– meaning they could really do it. Before them it was guys like Sean Connery, who could act, but weren’t athletes.
Chuck Norris can’t act, but he can do action. Chuck Norris sorta filled the action movie void that fans were craving for before The Terminator (1984) & Rambo (1982 & 1985) took over. The first classic Chuck Norris comedy is A Force of One (1979), definitely one of my favorites from him. This is low-budget work from American Cinema, shot over the Christmas holidays, as it keeps referencing itself as a Christmas movie but by the end it hardly feels Christmassy. It feels like a raw martial arts action movie, with no acting talent except Clu Gulager. In the trailer for this movie, he is called “Clu Gallagher” which should give the viewer an idea about the attention-to-detail in A Force of One.
Other comic delights include the guy who later played Angel Fernandez who got chainsawed to death in Scarface (1983). Here he is one of the cops that gets his neck broken by the masked karate killer terrorizing Los Angeles. In his lone encounter with Chuck Norris, he says, “We’re gonna comb the west side, then meet some Colombians at the Sun Ray Motel about two keys of ya-yo. Catch you later.” I least I think he says that, and when I do I laugh.
A bad movie means you must press the riff button in your head. That means it’s now okay to speak out loud as the movie is running, because the movie isn’t holding your attention, it’s insulting it. The original MST3K (1989-99) taught us that.
In A Force of One, it’s a good thing we have Chuck Norris ready to teach these amateur LA cops how to defend themselves. Keep in mind, this is presented as hard hitting reality action on film. Another thing about Chuck Norris movies is that you don’t want to be his best friend, buddy, or police partner– because you will get killed. It happens to Chuck Norris’ step-son in A Force of One, and it’s all about revenge & vengeance from there. No sorrow or regrets as a step-father from Chuck Norris.
Jennifer O’Neill breaks that stereotype by living, but she is completely useless, unable to do the required stunts believably, and can’t act. She’s semi-pretty but clearly fading due to anorexia & the Hollywood lifestyle. At the climactic end, when Chuck Norris has unmasked the karate killer and they are having their fight-to-the-death amongst ex-US Special Forces soldiers, Norris is finally really to deliver the deathblow when Jennifer O’Neill screams, “NO!” Chuck Norris backs off and turns his back to his deadly foe, which almost gets him killed but Chuck Norris is so amazing at martial arts that he karate kicks his way out of that and then kills the bad guy. The credits roll over their awkward embrace for several minutes.
Another scene that deserves recognition is when Jennifer O’Neill is recruiting Chuck Norris, and takes him to see a 15-year old girl who has run away from home and become a prostitute. No explanation as to why she keeps running away from home, only that her parents are wealthy and therefore provide a loving home, but to their horror their daughter is now a junkie. Chuck Norris hates junkies. Before being led into the young prostitute’s room, we see her being fondled by a middle-aged white man, who runs out as the lady cop busts through the door… and Chuck Norris lets the pedophile john go [!]. Our hero, ladies & gentlemen. Chuck Norris then glares unsympathetically at the young girl, until her Hispanic pimp struts in and starts barking orders. There’s nothing Chuck Norris hates more than a loudmouth Hispanic pimp, so THEN he moves into action. Got that?
A Force of One has Christmas tinsel, wreaths, etc, in half its scenes, yet it somehow never feels like a Christmas movie, even when a Salvation Army brass band is playing holiday music to the public. And yet it is a Christmas movie. This movie lets you have the debate with other viewers, which is also part of the comic charm of A Force of One. I’ll leave it to you to watch & decide for yourself. FYI, I say it is a Christmas movie.
A Force of One was a minor box-office hit, so a bigger budget was allowed for The Octagon (1980). This is Chuck Norris’ best movie because there is so much talent helping him out. Never again would a studio invest in Chuck Norris like The Octagon, which features three leading ladies with whom he has dinner, and two get killed. It’s ninjas this time, as his disgraced Japanese half-brother is the arch-villain, Seikura, who trains terrorists in the ninja style which is silent but deadly.
An echoplex effect box is used on Chuck Norris’ voice to great effect. Chuck Norris never has much to say, and has trouble when he does, so an echo effect adds weight & importance to his dull words. This will teach you the value of good production… production,,, production. The real star of The Octagon (as a comedy) is Art Hindle, Norris’ best friend [!] in the movie. Art Hindle’s passion & energy in The Octagon were never duplicated in any other performance by him. Art Hindle gives everything in his limited imagination & ability in The Octagon, and that’s all you can ask from an actor. I firmly believe Art Hindle’s tour du force performance is the key to a true understanding of The Octagon.
One of the most ridiculously funny premises of Art Hindle’s character, AJ, is that he’s a martial artist. Not once in this movie do we see him training, or fighting. We mostly see him talking, getting drunk, and striking out with the ladies. We see him get captured easily as he reaches the perimeter of the octagon terrorist training camp. When AJ gets slaughtered at the end, The Octagon approaches great comedy. Art Hindle has no fighting skills, yet he keeps mouthing off to Chuck Norris like he’s a martial arts Jedi. Great comedy, as Art Hindle steals every scene he’s in, all the way to the bloody end. AJ is the glue & guts that gets Chuck Norris to the Octagon, otherwise he’d still be sittin’ on his ass. It’s this kind of vicarious pleasure that make action & comedy fans want to watch again & again.
Lee Van Cleef is in The Octagon, and he is delightful as a FBI anti-terrorist named McCarn, also known as McWho. Interestingly, Lee Van Cleef would become a ninja master himself in the short-lived TV series The Master (1984), which later got Mistied. Lot’s of tough talk here with Lee & Chuck, pretending to understand global politics, etc. There’s a fat Jew who bankrolls Seikura’s ninja terrorist camp, a greasy boxing promoter hassling Chuck Norris to return to the ring, and finally a wealthy & beautiful heiress who is a fundraiser (& victim [!]) of this ninja terrorism due to her high political principals– or something like that. Chuck Norris movies are always vague with these details on economics & politics. The important thing is that Chuck Norris is ALWAYS ready to kick some terrorist butt, just point him in the right direction and remember– he works alone.
He says it a lot, “I work alone,” but I think it’s really the opposite– people don’t want to work with him. Just consider it. In Invasion USA (1985) Chuck Norris is now with Golan-Globus. No decent leading actresses wanted to work with Chuck Norris anymore, as that was death on-screen & for a career. And just as Joel & the Bots riffed in the opening credits for Time Walker/Being From Another Planet (1982), Melissa Prophet’s career went nowhere. Very prophetic indeed.
Several comedy notes need to be made for Invasion USA to be watchable. Near the beginning, when Chuck Norris is wrangling a gator with his Native American buddy [!!], he doesn’t knot the rope around the alligator’s snout, so it sheds the rope and snaps at John Eagle as it is going into the cage. Not helpful, Chuck, and his soon-to-be-dead buddy lets him know.
The opening scene of Invasion USA is Golan-Globus at its worst, as Richard Lynch playing a Russian terrorist leader Rostov, disguised under a US Coast Guard flag, machine guns a crew of apparently stranded Cuban refugees. After everyone on board is dead, a hatch is opened and hundreds of kilos of cocaine are revealed inside. The poor refugees were really drug smugglers! Except, if you really had hundreds of kilos of coke on a boat manned with 30+ people there would be guns, a mechanic to fix the engine, a working radio, etc. You certainly wouldn’t be drifting helplessly in the ocean. Disgraceful Golan-Globus anti-immigrant propaganda, so push the riff button right away on Invasion USA and make it a comedy.
Like A Force of One, Invasion USA is a Christmas movie. Maybe not as much, but it is. A little girl asks he daddy if she can place the star on top of the outside Christmas tree before Rostov blows up her home and everyone in it. There’s Christmas music in the neighborhood just before this villainy. This leads to an interesting production note on Invasion USA, as this demolition was done in an Atlanta neighborhood that had been annexed for an airport expansion, so Golan-Globus was allowed to blow up those homes for real, not some fake Hollywood explosion which you often see. It’s quite striking to watch.
Richard Lynch as Rostov, convincingly plays a Russian terrorist mastermind who is haunted by Chuck Norris and maniacally shoots his enemies in the genitalia. But even he has a few friends to help him. Chuck Norris works alone, and he makes that clear to the government agent with whom he meets in south Florida to accept the assignment of saving the United States. Chuck Norris closes the scene by walking away from the agent in mid-sentence and sticking him with his dinner bill. I think that’s supposed to be funny, but it actually reveals something else.
Apparently in Invasion USA, the entire US Navy & Coast Guard were napping when Russian terrorists landed on a Miami beach under cover of darkness, then loaded themselves into trucks and scattered across America to spread terror and destroy our way of life. A teenage couple necking on the moonlit beach are slaughtered by Russian reconnaissance, otherwise they may have notified US authorities and foiled the terrorist invasion. Often these foreign terrorists disguise themselves as police while massacring civilians, and this leads to people not trusting the police. Chuck Norris will battle these evil foreigners to restore the image of the police as benevolent & friendly civil servants.
In reality, by 1985 the Reagan/Bush administration had organized a federal response to the Cocaine Cowboy violence in Miami which had plagued the community for years. The DEA, FBI & Pentagon were now coordinated with local police in their efforts to secure the US border in Florida from well-organized Colombian drug cartels. Before that, any mass invading force trying to establish a Miami beachhead would have to take it from the Colombian & Cuban drug gangs. All that reality makes the action & motivations in Invasion USA comically unbelievable.
When waiting in a hotel room for the US government to take him into custody, as part of his master plan to flush out Rostov and end the reign-of-terror, Chuck Norris is mindlessly watching TV in bed when he takes his finished chewing gum out of his mouth and sticks it to the picture on the wall behind him while not taking his eyes off the important television programming he is watching. If I had to choose one scene that defines Chuck Norris as an actor & unintentional comedian, that could be it.
But my favorite scene in Invasion USA is when Chuck Norris is patrolling the Miami streets vigilante style in his souped-up truck. He’s looking out the window with barely concealed contempt at the human refuse he despises, when a working girl steps off her corner and yells to him, “Fuck you, asshole!” It’s the best line in the movie.
One final point on Chuck Norris is that in every movie I’ve discussed, and those I haven’t, he’s always Chuck Norris. His character name & profession are irrelevant. Can you name another actor like that? You kinda have to go back to Buster Keaton & Charlie Chaplin for that. In other important respects Chuck Norris evokes Joe Don Baker in Mitchell (1975). Chuck Norris never served in the Vietnam War, although he likes to make you believe that he did, and thus is credentialed to speak as a veteran soldier. He isn’t. As far as being an actor goes, Chuck Norris is in a category by himself when it comes to action-comedy as a genre– an unintentional-comic force of one.
There’s a lot of fake political art out there: sophisticated propaganda that broadcasts liberal values to a liberal audience. Pussy Riot’s performance of A Punk Prayer (2012) occupies that pole: focusing on feminist-LGBT rights, while maintaining an explicitly anti-Putin line that dovetails with an undying support for the fascists in Kiev. It’s strictly identity politics & anti-Putin propaganda for these CIA cut-outs known as Pussy Riot.
Staged in brightly-colored balaclavas to conceal their identity, while punching & kicking the air in ‘punk defiance’, these feminist, pro-war phonies have existed under the protective wing of western imperialism for over a decade. A Punk Prayer is nothing more than a provocative publicity stunt by a bunch of imperialist-backed puppets. After such a time, what is the balance sheet on their popular influence?
First, no one knows any songs by Pussy Riot. No kids have Pussy Riot content on any of their playlists, or seriously recommends their music. No members of Pussy Riot play any musical instruments or have any songwriting chops. No one can even name all the band members, or how they met, etc. Everything about Pussy Riot is shrouded in mystery. All their songs lyrics & political statements come straight from Langley, VA & the US State Department. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon about Pussy Riot is they are so well known in the media, without having any real fans– or content.
Pussy Riot’s western support is entirely from a wealthy political class & the fake corporate media. Since being mercilessly exposed as nothing more than anti-Russian propaganda by myself in the late 2010’s, Pussy Riot were branded “foreign agents” by the Russian government at the end of 2021, confirming my political & artistic analysis. As a musical artist, these imposters never fooled me, as I smelled a rat with Pussy Riot from the start.
At this point in history, Pussy Riot now labels itself an “activist art collective”, because they are obviously not a band or even musicians. Their “concerts” are a joke— instead of performing music, they talk about their feminism/lesbianism at length, then chant anti-Putin vulgarities while dumping water on the crowd. In 2020, Pussy Riot was online promoting a fake tour that didn’t exist, due to venue lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Promoting Pussy Riot as ‘punk’ is no longer tenable, as all they do now is issue NFT crypto and promote US State Department propaganda through their website Mediazona. Here’s a cozy photo of Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, with Antony Blinken in 2022.
Mediazona is a US-supported media propaganda outlet focused on anti-Putin opposition, founded by Nadya Tolokonnikova & her Pussy Riot cohorts in 2014. This has become Pussy Riot’s primary vehicle for “activism”, since their musical “popularity” has waned due to inconvenient facts coming to light. Once again, can you sing (or even hum) a single Pussy Riot song? Do you know ANYONE who can?
Pussy Riot has become a world famous “act” with no recognizable content. That’s quite remarkable, and reveals much about the state of art in today’s world. The art market has become completely corrupted by big money to the point where there is no art– only dressed-up propaganda narratives packaged as ‘art’.
In 2012, Nadya Tolokonnikova was listed as Time Magazine’s ‘100 Women of the Year’, while also receiving the LennonOno Grant for Peace. In 2019, Tolokonnikova received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from Rhode Island School of Design – for being a “powerful voice in the fight against tyranny,” while The Guardian ranked her #4 in Best Art of the 21st Century, for her Punk Prayer video. In 2023, Nadya Tolokonnikova was awarded the Woodie Guthrie Prize, rendering that honor meaningless while muddying the name of that great original folk singer. And so it goes, as Hillary Clinton is a big fan of Pussy Riot.
Kathleen Hanna was The Punk Singer (2013), the unmistakable voice of Bikini Kill, the last great rock band (in this artist’s opinion). What happened to Bikini Kill is what happened to the entertainment industry overall. Kathleen Hanna embraced Pussy Riot around the time her (long overdue) documentary was released on Netflix, so clearly her support for Pussy Riot helped with the movie distribution. For what it’s worth, The Punk Singer is a good documentary film and that’s what happened to Bikini Kill & rock music.
New leaked documents show Reuters’ and the BBC’s involvement in covert UK FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] programs to effect “attitudinal change” and “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” alongside intel contractors and Bellingcat… As a UK FCO contractor, the Zinc Network said it was “delivering audience segmentation and targeting support” not only to Meduza, but also to Mediazona, a supposedly independent media venture founded by two members of the anti-Kremlin performance art group Pussy Riot. One of Mediazona’s founders, Nadya Tolokonnikova, shared a stage with former US President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Foundation’s 2015 conference. The following year, Tolokonnikova trashed now-imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, claiming, “He’s connected with the Russian government, and I feel that he’s proud of it.”
For the record, Julian Assange is a heroic journalist, beloved by hundreds-of-millions worldwide, who was unjustly persecuted by the imperialist governments of the US/UK for years over phony sexual assault claims, for the crime of telling people the truth about government-approved war crimes, etc. Pussy Riot attacks Julian Assange (and anyone else who speaks for the oppressed masses) for inspiring revolutionary thinking & action. As reactionary puppets of imperialism, Pussy Riot reeks of provocation.
This Extended Play project began in Sanford, FL before the COVID-19 pandemic, as a collection of ‘swan song’ singles. With the release of “The Electric Cat” this project is complete and has been re-named Extended Play Singles. Cover photo, artwork & production by Tom Pearce. It is now available on your favorite streaming platform.
I’m also pleased to announce that Magnified (2012) has been re-released onto the major streaming platforms. It’s very complicated how these songs are put up and then later disappear, but that’s a reality of the modern mp3 streaming market. Platforms for upload & distribution change their policies, get bought out, go out of business, etc. Independent artists are constantly being taken down, moved back, marginalized & de-platformed to make more room for Beyonce & Taylor Swift.
The current artistic situation is untenable, and talented artists in every sphere: music, film, arts & literature are being squeezed out in favor of mediocre corporate phonies. This is why popular music, film & culture are at such a low level. There is no money for real artists. The idea of Trump and his billionaire class cronies, including all the Democrats, is to silence & destroy all the artists. Everything from Trump’s anti-immigrant racism, to the #MeToo campaign’s false feminist hysteria is meant to divide oppressed workers with ignorance & false political narratives.
No serious artists are allowed to perform anymore, and the list of blacklisted talent is staggering. It began with Kevin Spacey being witch-hunted with false sexual assault allegations in November 2017, as the #MeToo campaign instantly became known to the world. Every bourgeois media news outlet was part of this reactionary feminist campaign to attack prominent artists such as Kevin Spacey, and effectively remove them from the entertainment industry. Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, and countless others have been ‘cancelled’ by the #MeToo campaign, which is an identity politics prong of the CIA Democrats overall offensive on the working class.
Until there is revolutionary change in global society– meaning our economics & politics– there can be no substantial art & culture allowed into the mainstream. Only more football. All significant art taking place today is happening ‘underground’, meaning outside the corporate sphere. Thus, underground art is cut off from a mainstream breakthrough by every tentacle of monopoly capitalism & imperialism.
Those performers advocating for political reforms, while defending the Democratic Party, are lazy liberals. As proof: What impact did they have on Election 2024? The fascist Donald Trump steamrolled the imperialist flunky Kamala Harris, and now the Democrats & corporate media are looking forward to working with Trump in attacking the working class. On that, they are always united.
For real artists, the art is about the art. It’s not a vehicle to make money or a pathway to “stardom”. It’s about what you put into it and how it affects people– including yourself. It was fun to make this music, and certainly worthwhile, but when you’re all out of songs and no one in control will let you have the stage, then you move on to something else. That’s what I’ve done.
The music still lives, and that’s the point. As long as people care about music, film & art, it will live on. I had ideas I needed to express to the world in musical form and I hope it will inspire listeners & fans to do the same in their own creative way. That’s all an artist can do.
Preface: I feel this is my last original song. As a creative artist you eventually reach a point where you are out of songs, call it burnout or whatever, but it’s a natural process. You can’t be innovative as an artist forever. All are eventually overtaken by the next wave of revolutionary artistry and the new energy it creates. It’s similar to an athlete retiring, you have to accept it and move on.
In music this means if I return, it will be as a legacy act. That means no new songs, just fan favorites to make the paying audience happy. When you are a revolutionary artist, you have a chip on your shoulder and aren’t always willing to meet those fan expectations. Instead, you are challenging fans to meet YOUR expectations. That limits the fan base, but makes it more fanatical. It’s about deeply influencing those few who get you.
As a legacy act you are accepted, loved & paid, so it’s easier to return the love to the fans. Legacy acts only happen when there is money, and since that never happened for me, I’m not holding my breath. The political climate is still too reactionary for artists such as myself to be allowed venues that could connect us with a mass audience. Neo-McCarthyist witch hunting & blacklisting rule bourgeois politics & corporate mass media. MeToo, BLM, and fake ‘anti-semitism’ campaigns are CIA Democrat ‘big lies’ meant to intimidate & silence any genuine leftist opposition to capitalist imperialism.
My influence is still exerted as a blogger. Perhaps the most revolutionary thing I did in my musical artist career was creating this blog. No other artist (in any genre) has written as prolifically on so many subjects. The internet & social media made it possible, and my creative & effective use of these platforms has changed how people approach them. Blogging is now an artform. It is much easier to write an essay than it is to write a new song, so I’ll continue to express myself as an artist through blogging. Thank you to all fans for your continuing support!
Production notes & AI
After Tom recorded this song, we discussed artwork ideas, as usual. In real life the Electric Cat has died and I have no pictures, only images in my memory. I suggested a cartoon image, and that’s when Tom replied by suggesting an artificial intelligence (AI) app he had started using. There’s a learning curve which must be negotiated, but the result is this AI-generated image for “The Electric Cat”.
AI created a hyper-cartoon image for me (from no pictures) in just a few hours of email back-and-forth with my producer. Hyper-realism is a genre of art where the painter paints to exquisite detail. It takes a long time to complete a large canvas because every square inch is filled with painstaking detail. It’s extraordinary to look at, but often lacks soul or an important overall theme.
AI can produce images to a hyper-realistic level that display lifelike characteristics. AI doesn’t get offended and throw a hissy fit when I (the client) don’t like something it presented. In the hands of a learned technician, AI can do whatever you ask in a relatively short period of time. You just need to know what you want and how to communicate it.
These AI apps are much deeper & more powerful than photoshop, etc, which is how most pop art has been created for decades. This AI app took an idea (seed), and after Tom tweaked parameters & fed in descriptive details, developed it into what we wanted. In the past, I gave Tom ideas (or images) and let him run with them. He usually came back with something great and that was it. I learned not to expect anything in particular, because he’s not a graphic artist who can deliver exactly what I want from scratch. You have to be really gifted to do that, and neither of us are apt in that field.
AI apps replace (supersede) the efforts of entire marketing & art departments at major labels & studios such as Sony, Warner & Disney. Artificial intelligence has that power. AI can now take this Electric Cat image and mutate it into pop art quickly & cheaply, rendering high-quality, marketable images on demand. It’s almost too easy, and that’s the danger. Andy Warhol would smile, wryly.
If the song (or album) is a winner, artists now have the ability to create iconic artwork using AI. This solves a lot of problems for independent acts who don’t have access to major label resources. AI (in everyone’s hands) levels the playing field on that front, and opens up a world of new ones. There is a class of people who don’t want creative working people to know this.
AI is a big reason for the current entertainment industry & tech sector jobs bloodbath, for the reasons I’ve outlined above. Used in expert hands, artificial intelligence convinces you immediately. My experience happened to every Hollywood producer, director & entertainment industry bigshot upon being introduced to AI. In the future you are going to see more & more AI-generated content in music, film, TV, art, etc. It’s already started.
In music, Brian Eno has been an AI innovator, which is par for him. Ever since his first experiments in ambient music (early electronica) in the 1970’s, Eno has been a pioneer of self-generating, perpetual technology: first in music, then in images & film. Those who have led the way should be listened to the most, so no discussion of AI media use, potential, ethics & pitfalls can be closed until innovators such as Brian Eno have their say & are respected.
I’m a newbie, as this is my first foray into AI as a creative tool. I’m mostly watched, giving input to Tom as needed, and observing the results of the process while asking questions as they arose. I’m not a techie, so I don’t know the app or how it works, etc. Ask Tom about that. For me it’s all about what AI can do, and when I see these-type results, I get excited. Producers now need to add ‘AI skills’ to their technical arsenal. These are the people who will replace all those who are getting pink-slipped. Honestly, I’m in favor of eliminating this parasitic layer of entertainment industry mediocrity. All they do is siphon money & influence away from the original artists who create all the cultural interest in the first place.
This experience has instilled awareness about what the technology is, and raised practical questions about its ethics. I believe the artist is ethically bound to tell their audience about any AI-generated content. Educate fans & be 100% honest about its use– no exceptions. It’s easy to fool a naive audience into thinking that you are better than you really are by having AI-generated content in the music, etc. Only full disclosure earns respect in this field, and cheaters must be ruthlessly exposed as phonies. Fans have a right to know, and always feel betrayed when it turns out they have been duped by charlatans.
Beyond that, AI can be harnessed & used limitlessly to enrich & simplify our lives. AI is a tool for human use and has enormous potential to help solve all of our most difficult problems. The technology itself is neutral. It comes down to who controls it that determines its destiny. That will be determined by class struggle. The mission of artists is to enlighten humanity. Using AI creatively & openly for the benefit of all is now part of that.
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The Electric Cat
Silently stalks & prowls throughout its habitat The Electric Cat
Those crazy dogs got burs in their fur again. Drat! Why can’t they be more like that…? Electric Cat
Silky & slinky with claws & a bite, lookout for that!
I give it food & love, it purrs by my side. I love that Electric Cat
At its best and at rest, always respect that Electric Cat
Felinus Electricus, a miniature Indian tiger cat It’s all that The Electric Cat
———
Recorded 01-12-2024 in Eustis, FL by Tom Pearce
Production & AI artwork* (see notes) also by TomP at Last Minute Productions
On the morning of Friday, October 4, 2024, Facebook disabled my account. I have since been unable to access my personal page, artist page, or dentist page. Facebook has given me no reason for this. Facebook emailed me an ‘account recovery code,’ but allow me no link to use it.
This is how big tech jerks you around when they are censoring you. I’ve sent Facebook multiple messages through email and their service page, but get no response. It’s all AI bots & attack algorithms on their end.
I’ve received messages from friends who wonder why I’ve disappeared, did I de-friend them, etc? Facebook deletes me whenever they feel I’m too effective on social media. Facebook is controlled by the CIA Democrats, so I have no idea when/if I will return.
