It Came From Wasilla

Don't ask us how, but it makes sense.

A year on, we can’t really blame her — she is who she is. And left to her devices, she would have remained as obscure today as she was a year ago — Bill Kristol’s wet dream, and a long-running GILF joke at Wonkette.

No, it’s war hero turned national terrorist John McCain we blame, a man who, after selling out everything but his houses to the Bushies for two years, decided that, if he couldn’t be President, he was going to take the country down with him.

We remember waking up late that Friday morning, turning on the tube, and catching the announcement midway through. And cringing at that voice. Our mother and godmother are from Juneau, and never in our life had we heard such Valley Girl blather from our Alaskan relations.

The emptiness within, the lack of there there, was also discernable in that moment, although the nation would need a few weeks to catch up with our perception. We felt like Dumbledore at the end of Book 4: the fatal flaw was present at the creation, but it would still take three dark books to see the story through.

We had planned on noting the official anniversary of our latest Long National Nightmare tomorrow, but that’s a lousy way to start a weekend, and the contrast with Camelot Revival coverage is too much for even us to contemplate.

But upon reflection, we like it better this way: the first anniversary of the last day that America was free of Sarah Palin.

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Today is also the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.

Should there be a commemorative coin of an Eagle crying?

@ManchuCandidate: I think we’d do well with a commemorative coin with an image of wolves shooting at helicopters with Stinger missiles – and in the mid-background wolves feeding upon the victims of a crash, splayed out around the flaming wreckage of a downed helicopter.

August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King, jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Perhaps a more a urgent matter to which you might want to give your attention is the following. In the still above, the climactic scene from Singin’ in the Rain in which it is revealed that Lina LaMont’s singing voice is not her own but in fact belongs to Debbie McPerkytits (I cannot remember what she’s called in that movie: I’m not that gay), what is not generally known is that Jean Hagen – who plays Lina – in fact dubbed Debbie’s voice for Would You? I know. You’re going to want to take some time to process that: the woman who seems to be dubbed in fact dubbed the woman who seems to be doing the dubbing.

@Benedick: So, (a) Nojo really has a deep and abiding knowledge of musicals to make a reference I wouldn’t have caught in a million years, and (b) the Walrus was really George, not John or Paul?

/Nabisco slinks away, having name checked the Beatles twice today and once yesterday./

@Benedick: You’re blowing my mind here. It was enough for me to process the fact that Jean Hagen had (has? not sure of her living status) a perfectly normal speaking voice. Who needs to remember Miss Milquetoast as long as you can remember the great Lina LaMont?

“Simply bobby pin back the upper layers of the Raquel Welch’s new Valentine wig style, which is truly beautiful in it’s own right, and let the longer layers fall freely”… and voilà: Sarah Palin.
THE 100% HUMAN HAIR SARAH P. WIG STYLE – READY TO WEAR

@flippin eck: I think she’s gone to her rest. Saw her just the other day in Asphalt Jungle. She did get to say one of my favorite lines ever: I’ve got more money than Calvin Coolidge. Put together! God, but they must have had fun writing that movie!

@The Nabisco Quiver: Nojo and musicals. *sighs*. When he wants to come out we’ll be here for him. It’s not something you can rush. We all have to come out of our own personal closets in our own time.

Walrus? Now you lost me.

@texrednface: I wonder if they do a Michele Bachmann?

@Benedick: @The Nabisco Quiver: But it’s an MGM musical. Part of the parental heritage, which includes Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman.

Although the allusion here isn’t entirely obvious. Palin’s convention speech was written before her selection, and her annotated Facebook posts are purchased from a Kenyan term-paper mill. She only makes sense when someone else puts words in her mouth.

@Benedick: Part of your national heritage, bud.

@redmanlaw: What, Walrus? Alice in W-land? Well, duh. It’s the Beatles, John, George. I don’t know what that is.

@Benedick: “Goo goo g’joob.”

OMG – you only named the dead ones . . .

Ringo was said to be building a house in a fancy desert golf community out on the west side of town here a couple of years ago, btw. Another 60’s music icon who lives here: Michael Nesmith of the Monkees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnpil_pRUiw

@redmanlaw: And indie-movie icon, if I recall Nesmith’s funding of Repo Man correctly.

I’m told Dolenz once shopped at the grocery store in the Sur le Berdoo mountain village where I hid out for a few years. That’s the best I can do.

@Benedick: I’m really impressed by your knowledge about SITR. But then again, I didn’t notice anything about that movie but Gene Kelly’s perfect little ass the first two times I saw it.

@texrednface: I believe we have found Palin’s new nickname courtesy of that website. Palin is a “Glazed Hazelnut” if ever I saw one.

@nojo: Not to mention Head.

I got Jerry “The Beav” Mather’s autograph on a faux reservation somewhere in Tennessee when I was six, can post the pic if there’s ever another jam.

@Jamie Sommers: Wasn’t her glazed hazelnut featured prominently in that post-election biopic, Nailin Palin?

@The Nabisco Quiver: And now that you do mention it, when I eventually reference the Porpoise song, you’ll be the only one who understands.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Oh, I can top that. My dad went to elementary school with Jerry Mather.

@Jamie Sommers: It is a good ass. It’s what it drags along behind itself that troubles one.

@Benedick: Why no like Gene Kelly? I gots to say, for most of my life, I was no fan of dance. Was he a homophobe? I do know he had an agenda, to make dance masculine, to try to create a bigger audience by showing the lowbrow males in the world that its not “sissy,” and boy he was not, and forgive me if this shows some vestige of recieved homophobia, but that masculine dance style of his opened my eyes, so now I can appreciate dance without ever thinking “sissy” ever, no matter how prancy it is.

@nojo: I still love Nesmith for Lucy and Ramona and Sunset Sam.

@Promnight: Not at all, prom, he just was always working too hard and was so cutesy poo I find it hard to watch him. He’s better than Danny Kaye but is afflicted by the same terror of being thought unmanly. The consequence of which is to make him strangely nelly. I think his best film is For Me and My Gal in which he plays a pushy heel. He’s a wonderful dancer and did much for American musicals but I find him almost always boring. (Put down the broom/ladder/fan/sabre/85 yards of chiffon and dance, for Chissakes.) But he was generous. In The Pirate he gives the Nicholas Brothers a fine number and he lets Garland do her thing to wonderful effect. But I never find him an interesting dancer. Not like Astaire or Champion or Fosse. Or indeed Michael Kidd. SITR might be his best movie but even that is crippled by that interminable Gotta Dance ballet-schmalay which was such a big hit it gets repeated in the rest of his films. By American in Paris it has become so bloated it make ALW look subtle.

As for masculine, what’s the issue? Men have always danced. Only men like Kelly ever made it seem an issue. I once saw the skater John Curry arrive on the ice almost naked in a leotard to be greeted by outright hooting derision from the audience at MSG as he began to dance to L’apres midi d’un faune, taking off from nothing to float backwards in a breathtaking, soaring movement that was utterly surprising. By the end of it he had not only silenced but humbled them. Artistry of the first rank.

@Benedick: “Men have always danced.” I personally participate in the Deer Dance and the Buffalo Dance. One of my brothers has been in the Matachine dance. Another is being recruited for the Corn Dance.

There you go. I think we should organize a bus trip to come and see you next time. I, for one, would love to be able to see. I’m not being facetious now.

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