Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Books are my comfort food!

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

People are weird.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Republicans don’t trust women.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Programming Notes for the Weekend

Open Thread: Programming Notes for the Weekend

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This post is in: , ,

And since at least a couple commentors will be interested — Perry Mason:

… From avid armchair detectives to Supreme Court justices, everyone loves Perry Mason, right? But what did we ever really know about the guy, other than he almost always won his cases? Gardner, who died in 1970, wasn’t inclined to give Perry much of a backstory — believing, perhaps, that too much personality interfered with the formula. Perry was forever right, and could always dig up the evidence to prove his case at the last minute. He’s a classic character, with the all the dimension of cardboard.

That’s why Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald’s superb new “Perry Mason,” an eight-episode miniseries premiering Sunday on HBO, is the perfect lesson in how to update an icon, honoring the character by giving him the emotional depth and complexity that he previously never had.

Don’t get the wrong idea. The Perry Mason we meet in this version isn’t a pushover. As played by Matthew Rhys (“The Americans”), this Perry is a day-drinking (and night-drinking) underemployed private investigator who gets into plenty of unseemly scrapes. He makes his living, barely, by surreptitiously taking pictures of movie stars in flagrante delicto, in violation of moral clauses in their contracts; the studios then pay Perry to make the photos go away.

Perry’s wife (Gretchen Mol) left him and took their young son with her. He clings to what’s left of his deceased parents’ defunct dairy farm on the outskirts of a rapidly expanding — and always corrupt — Los Angeles. He’s also suppressing some pretty intense trauma from his time on the French battlefields in World War I…

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    The Perry Mason thing really bugs me. It’s like the opposite of Endeavour, where care was taken to make the young Morse consistent with the older Morse. There is no way that this Perry Mason evolves into the Raymond Burr character or the Erle Stanley Gardner character. Why bother calling him Perry Mason?

    And I have no interest in revisionism about Della Street! Della Street is perfect!

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    The Metropolitan Opera is featuring two Philip Glass operas this weekend:

    Saturday 6/20 Akhnaten. It’s about the Pharaoh who tried to make Egypt a monotheistic society. This was one of the last Live in HD offerings before lockdown, and it is a total thrill. Just mesmerising and beyond gorgeous to watch. Access it between 6:00 pm Saturday – 6:00 pm Sunday.

    Sunday 6/21 Satyagraha, based on episodes from the life of Gandhi. I’ve heard it on the radio, but have never seen it, and I can’t wait! Again, it’s available for a 24-hour period, 6:00 pm Sunday – 6:00 pm Monday.

    Free opera!

    Just go to MetOpera.org and click.

  6. 6.

    Mike in NC

    My wife is addicted to everything Perry Mason (and Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra). She can’t wait to see the HBO reboot on Sunday.

  10. 10.

    hells littlest angel

    So there are enough baby boomers still alive to support a “new” Perry Mason? I can’t imagine anyone else being interested. The TV show is pretty dumb (although for its time it was probably great). The books are a hoot, but also dumb.

    I understand Gardner was a lawyer, but practicing law bored him, so he started writing these weird lawyer fantasies instead. This was undoubtedly good for anyone who might have become one of his clients.

  11. 11.

    Mike in NC

    I liked the HBO version of Watchmen and will see it again, even though it had absolutely nothing in common with the movie or graphic novel.

  13. 13.

    LeftCoastYankee

    I couldn’t make it through the Watchmen, and it was part of the reason I signed up for HBO during the early pandemic.

    The storylines around Tulsa and the characters from there were awesome and compelling.  It was the jamming it into the (pretty fucking stupid) Watchmen universe which was painful.

    I am decidedly not a comic book fan, and find the whole superhero (or even super-anti-hero) to be tired and unhelpful in our current land of make-believe.  YMMV if you have more patience for that genre, and it could be less uneven for you.

    It’s definitely worth watching the first episode, so maybe you’ll stay hooked.

  15. 15.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    If anyone is looking for a memorable way to ring in the Summer Solstice, click on this link https://www.solsticeconcert.com to watch a livestream of Paul Winter’s 25th Annual Summer Solstice concert.  Normally, the concert is held at the Cathedral of St John the Divine https://www.stjohndivine.org but because nothing is normal right now it will be performed in Paul’s Connecticut barn.

    Two things to note:

    First, the concert begins at 4:30 am EDT.  That’s the normal start time for this annual concert, so you can either set your alarm clock for very early Saturday morning or just stay up all-night.

    Second, the concert is performed in the dark.  This makes for a wonderful spectacle inside the Cathedral as the blackness above your head gradually transforms into those amazing stained glass windows as the rays of sunlight grow stronger.  While the transition from night to day obviously won’t be as breathtaking inside a barn, you still have the great music to soak in.

    Let the Solstice countdown begin.

    Happy Summer!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNLbRdoB9Z8

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYlIHI35oak

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUXX3Yp-LlY

  18. 18.

    hells littlest angel

    @LeftCoastYankee: I agree. The whole “superhuman who struggles with moral and existential dilemmas before inevitably whaling the shit out of the bad guy” genre ran out of variations on the theme a long time ago.

  20. 20.

    Gin & Tonic

    Boy, you guys are just asking for Adam to come up here from downstairs and give you what for about superhero universes and stuff.

  22. 22.

    Mousebumples

    @Baud: I think so. We’re just starting (mid ep 2 as I type this) and hoping to finish it off. I’m generally unfamiliar with the plot but it’s been good so far.

  29. 29.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @hells littlest angel: From all the reviews I’ve read, this has more relation to Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart and Noir than any version of Perry Mason.

    I have no memory of the original television show – maybe an occasional late-night episode -, but it started as a soapy radio show (which became Edge of Night on television) with little relation to its iteration with Raymond Burr.

    And besides Matthew Rhys…

    So being a purist means you only know one version.

  34. 34.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    That’s great information!

    According to a Village Voice article I once read, during a performance of one Glass composition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a heckler ran down an aisle shouting “Stop, I confess!”

    I once saw an interview with Glass in which he said if you attend Einstein on the Beach expecting something akin to Oklahoma, you’ll be disappointed.

    Last summer, while walking through Washington Square Park, I saw a guy playing Mad Rush on a grand piano.

    Thanks for bringing back those memories.

  35. 35.

    Nicole

    @Mike in NC: 
    I thought it paid great attention to the graphic novel, although it was crafted well enough that you didn’t need to have read the novel to follow what was happening in the series. It was absolutely the world in which The Watchmen was set, just 30 years later.

    I thought it was just about a perfect season of TV. The most perfect single season of something I’d seen since the first season of Friday Night Lights.

    And I’m not really into sports or superheroes, so go figure.

  36. 36.

    eddie blake

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    you should mebbe not look at it through the lens of the now.

    try jumping back into time to 1986. it was like nothing that had come before.

    watchmen WAS and IS a MASTERWORK.

    ..and the hbo series has much more to do with alan moore’s original piece than you apparently noticed.

    (though i might be a bit BIASED.)

  39. 39.

    Jerry

    Huh. I did not know that the character Perry Mason was actually a Soviet spy. I wonder what Philip Jennings’ mission was with this Mason identity.

  40. 40.

    Redshift

    @Mike in NC: It was a sequel, and it played off a number of events from the original comic book series (though it also had plenty of original content that wasn’t directly derived from that.)

  41. 41.

    joel hanes

    @Wyatt Salamanca:

    Have you ever attended any of his concerts ?

    Nope.  Should have.

    Repeating my late edit to my comment above — you can listen to the iconic song “Icarus”, for free, here.

  42. 42.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: Yes, if you can find someone who has stock. Companies like Specialized, Trek, Giant are all good, but they make their stuff in Taiwan, mostly, and the supply chain is really stretched. $450-550 is about the bottom of their food chain, but decent. If you haven’t ridden in a long time and aren’t 100% sure, I wouldn’t spend a lot more. Maybe up to $600-650 max. Then if you put in some miles and want to trade up, you’ll have some resale value.

    Important, as was said earlier, is find a bike shop that you can feel good about. In a college town there’s probably a few. Make sure you can bring the bike back in a few months, because cables can stretch, things may need to be adjusted.

  43. 43.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: Yea, biking is really big here and there are a couple of shops with really good reps. I had dinner with a buddy who is a similar size and he’s going to let me try his out. My fear was getting something and finding I can’t hack it. thx

  45. 45.

    Mary G

    I am so much not a comic book or anime fan, but HBO’s Watchmen is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. Regina King is stunning, and the opening episode of the Tulsa Massacre is hard to watch but worth it.

  46. 46.

    joel hanes

    @hells littlest angel:

    The Perry Mason TV show opening theme was outstandingly  dramatic.   The show itself was IMHO anodyne — white professionals in suits, talking to each other in offices.   Even as a kid, I thought that the theme completely misrepresented the show.

  47. 47.

    Redshift

    I thought Watchmen was excellent. I’d watch it again, but I have to be “at” the virtual state convention tomorrow.

    And it wouldn’t be Balloon Juice if there weren’t people responding to a topic in popular culture by telling us how they don’t like it and can’t understand what anyone sees in it…

  53. 53.

    Benw

    I know that heavy metal is not exactly a BJ fav, but I got hipped to Deftone’s White Pony (released 2000) and I’m totally hooked

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Breaking: Trump/Barr just fired the US Attorney at SDNY. On a Friday night.

    Per Rachel. Wow.

    Ali Velshi’s up now and says he’ll continue to follow the story.

  63. 63.

    Feathers

    I rotate through streaming services. I picked up HBO to catch the second season of Big Little Lies. Made it through the first half hour. Had no interest in Watchmen. Thought the comic and the movie were eye-roll worthy male melodrama. Was completely mesmerized by the TV series. Hooked from beginning to end. That rarely happens. Paid for the extra two months of HBO to finish it.

    Was thinking about picking up HBO again for Perry Mason, but the people with screeners on my twitter feed were giving it a thumbs down. Even if you don’t care about faithfulness, apparently it fails as a noir.

    There just seems to be something about the current generation of writers that they have real trouble writing noir. There was so much good stuff in the Reagan era, you would think there would be now, but not really. Hardboiled isn’t pure cynicism. It’s hope that knows there really isn’t a chance of things going right, but tries anyways.  Also, they don’t read Cornell Woolrich. I remember watching a noir-flavored TV episode that went off the rails. I found myself yelling at the TV, “If you had read your Woolrich, this would have been a piece of cake to plot!” Urgh. Probably will catch Perry Mason next time I swing through HBO, though.

    Now to go back to Criterion Channel and finish up on their Columbia Noir series, which is leaving at the end of June. Rewatch of Dark Reckoning on deck.

  64. 64.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    This article came up on my dash today on my phone browser, from some website called “Refinery 29” by an Elly Belle:

    Amy Klobuchar Only Stepped Out Of The VP Race To Save Herself

    After a tumultuous primary season that seems like a distant memory now, candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden is the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) frontrunner, and he’s looking for a running mate.

    As soon as I read this bit, I knew for sure this was a hit piece and not particularly going to be friendly to the Democratic Party as a whole.  Honestly, saying Biden is the DNC’s candidate (horror of horrors!) pissed me off to no end.

    “This is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket, and there are so many incredible qualified women,” she said in an interview. “If you want to heal this nation right now – my party, yes, but our nation – this is sure a hell of a way to do it.” While it could be true that Klobuchar feels it’s best for the position to go to someone who isn’t a white woman,it is likely that Klobuchar’s record precluded her from being VP. The VP vetting process is a rigorous one, and there are parts of Klobuchar’s record that have been under the microscope.

     The Minnesota Senator is coming off of months of scrutiny over her prosecutorial record and her statements regarding the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black Americans. Her decision to step aside is not really a decision at all — and in this moment of uprisings demanding justice for Black people, Klobuchar’s alleged space for a WOC running-mate reads more opportunistic than anything.

    Several months ago, Klobuchar’s record came under fire for the way she handled Myon Burrell’s case, which detailed the potential wrongful conviction of a 16-year-old serving a life sentence. She was the District Attorney in Burrell’s case, and was forced to face a detailed investigation revealed that he may not have even been at the crime scene. As a result of the new reports, the senator had to cancel one of the final campaign rallies in her home state when protestors demanded justice for Burrell. The case gained traction again after Biden claimed that Black voters “‘ain’t Black” if they don’t vote for him in a radio interview, which happened to be the same day that news reports circulated stating Klobuchar was in the vetting process to be his running mate.

    The Burrell case is only one of the points against Klobuchar. Earlier on in the primary process, Klobuchar received public scrutiny for harassment of her staffers, with BuzzFeed News reporting that behind closed doors, the candidate ran a workplace that was “controlled by fear, anger, and shame,” with staffers saying she frequently demeaned and berated them almost daily. It’s an “open secret” in Washington, D.C., that Klobuchar often loses her temper with staffers.

    To the extent that the VP pick matters, Biden needs a pick who is going to boost his credibility with young people and progressive voters. Rebecca Kavanagh, a civil rights attorney, echoed the fact that Klobuchar’s bow out wasn’t about justice for women of color. “Klobuchar is so calculating. She knew she wasn’t going to be picked, so she took herself out of contention to avoid the humiliation and thought she’d gain points by pretending she was doing it for some greater purpose to do with supporting Black women,” Kavanagh tweeted after Klobuchar’s announcement on Thursday.

    Ashlee Marie Preston, an advocate and a Black trans woman, also tweeted after her announcement, saying, “Amy Klobuchar need’s to stop virtue signaling. She’s only saying the VP should be a woman of color because she doesn’t have a chance in hell after it was made known that as a prosecutor she let police officers get away with cold blooded murder.”

    Both Preston and Kavanagh are, of course, referring to Klobuchar’s a record as the top prosecutor for the Minnesota county that includes Minneapolis, where George Floyd died. Even as her state is in unrest and the uprising that started with Floyd’s death isn’t going anywhere at any point soon, Klobuchar released a statement with passive language about Floyd’s death and pro-police sentiments.

    Klobuchar is clearly using the current political moment to dip out of the scene early and save herself more public scrutiny. It remains to be seen how her record will be examined and how she will work to heal her community in Minnesota.

    Virtue signalling! I thought only right-wingers said that shit, but I guess not!

  65. 65.

    joel hanes

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Almost no outdoors.  No car chases.   None of Perry, Paul, or Della are ever in danger of any kind, nor do they face moral quandaries.

    When I used to teach reading, I would tell the kids I was tutoring

    “What makes a book worth reading?  In the books we really care about, we care about the characters — and we care about them because the things that happen in the book change them, change who they are.   That matters.  That’s why we care about the Harry Potter books, but not about Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys”

    No one in Perry Mason ever learns or grows, except the villain of each episode, who gets exposed and (we assume) punished.     The villains are the only people on the show who give us any reason to care about them.

  67. 67.

    Ascap_scab

    Thanks for the blurb on Perry Mason. I will NOT be watching. Why would anyone want to screw with the original? It’s iconic for a reason.

  68. 68.

    Feathers

    @raven: @SFBayAreaGal: Is there a best season of Bosch? Loved the books, but haven’t read the recent ones. Don’t know why I never got started on the series. My Prime ends in July, no more student discount, don’t think I’m going to renew.

  71. 71.

    Origuy

    @joel hanes: I clicked the link; the page has the standard “Was this page helpful?” I clicked the No option, chose Other for the reason, and entered “The Director of the USCIS should be held in contempt of the Supreme Court.” in the text box.

  72. 72.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Feathers:

    I rotate through streaming services.

    Do you know about OVID?  I just discovered it myself a few days ago.

    “OVID.tv will provide North American viewers with access to thousands of documentaries, independent films, and notable works of international cinema, largely unavailable on any other platform.”

    https://search.ovid.tv/other/about/whoweare.html

  73. 73.

    randy khan

    @joel hanes: 

    So that’s not what it says.

    It criticizes the decision (incorrectly) but doesn’t say it will be ignored. The part about merely delaying the President’s action is pretty much a statement of what the decision does: It says that the Administration has to start over and come up with a real justification this time. My guess is that these folks won’t be able to do that in a few months because they’re not at all competent, but that’s all the decision requires of them.

  77. 77.

    Fair Economist

    @Wyatt Salamanca:

    According to a Village Voice article I once read, during a performance of one Glass composition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a heckler ran down an aisle shouting “Stop, I confess!”

    I think I’ve told this anecdote before, but I’ll rerun it.

    Some years ago, my son was always complaining about my music (I have pretty eclectic tastes.) At one point he had a fit about some world-music inflected electronic music I was playing in the car (Aral, a pretty tame album) and just kept complaining and whining about how “weird” it was. So I said “I’ll show you weird music” and put on Einstein on the Beach. I played it through twice over the next week as we were driving around for various reasons. (For those not familiar with Philip Glass, it’s the least “accessible” of his operas, and quite long at 4 hours.)

    He’s never complained about me playing weird music since. Other than that I have always tried to accommodate him and avoid more experimental stuff when he has to listen to it.

  78. 78.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @joel hanes:

    That’s why we care about the Harry Potter books, but not about Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys”

    Eh, to be fair, the Hardy Boys get into plenty of danger. Same with Nancy Drew. They just don’t change very much because that would interfere with the formula.

    No one in Perry Mason ever learns or grows, except the villain of each episode, who gets exposed and (we assume) punished.  The villains are the only people on the show who give us any reason to care about them.

    This will probably go over your head, but I feel that’s the exact same thing with the Sonic the Hedgehog games. There’s almost no continuity especially within the last 10 years and the games’ tone have become way too focused on comedy, to the detriment of the plot of each game. There’s no real stakes to speak of and practically no worldbuilding since Sonic Unleashed. It’s mainly an over-correction to the understandable negative reception Sonic 06 got. Instead of taking itself too seriously, the series doesn’t take itself seriously enough, imo.

    On top of all of this, flanderization has set in (honestly longer than 10 years ago, probably since Sonic Heroes in 2004) and many characters have become shadows of their former selves. Knuckles got the worst of it. He went from being a socially naive (due to being isolated) Guardian of the Master Emerald, sometimes rival of Sonic to a dumb meathead who’s very gullible.

    The ancillary media has almost always been better than the games themselves in terms of story and characters. The Archie comics did a very good job of balancing comedy and drama without being too edgy or melodramatic, while doing interesting things with the characters, including Sonic himself, who can be a bit of a clown in the games. The setting actually felt lived in and the characters had backstories and developed

  79. 79.

    piratedan

    @joel hanes: Noir movie theme for a semi-noir series, feels like you’re getting set up for some gritty/seedy realism that never gets delivered.

  80. 80.

    sralloway

    @hells littlest angel: War babies maybe, but few boomers. It was one of those programs that bridged the rado-tv gap. I’m 70 and Perry Mason at 12 in 1962 was not must-watch tv. Saw it a few times but there were other shiny objects for us to watch.

  81. 81.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Fair Economist:

    Legit thought you were talking about the Counting Crows song at first and I thought, “Wait, what’s so weird about it?” and then I read on. Phillip Glass was the same composer who did the soundtrack for “The Truman Show”, one of my favorite movies. Glass is very talented just based on his work for TRS.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    As Balloon Juice’s premier Perry Mason scholar, I am doing a shocking 180. Based on the reviews I have seen, I am going to watch the HBO series—with the caveat that I understand going in that it has nothing to do with Perry Mason except the name. It sounds like it could be a good noir series, and I can (possibly) accept it on those terms. Relevant comparison would be the Tom Cruise Reacher movies, which are pretty good in spite of the fact that Tom Cruise and his character as written have only the flimsiest connection to the character in the novels.

    Also, based on the previews and promo shots, Matthew Rhys’s fedora is too goddamn big!

    On another note, last night on the lesser, Brit-centric PBS station here (WETA-UK), I saw a rerun of the Inspector Morse episode where his Christian name is revealed. Toward the end of the episode (“Death Is Now My Neighbour”) Morse’s female friend guesses it in a pub, based on clues that he has reluctantly given her through the episode. Lewis arrives just in time from getting a round of beers to hear it too, and Morse is mortified. He says, “Why aren’t you both laughing?” Lewis, with perfect deadpan delivery: “You poor sod.” And scene. Nicely done.

  83. 83.

    Aleta

    (Post)

    The Trump administration announced Friday night that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman … will be leaving that job.

    (AG Barr said Tr.) plans to nominate the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, for the job.

    Berman’s office has been conducting a criminal investigation of President Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in a campaign finance case that has already led to charges against two of Giuliani’s associates.

    While the Senate considers Clayton’s nomination, Barr said, the job will be filled by Craig Carpenito, who currently serves as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Carpenito will take over the job on July 3, Barr said.

    …
    Berman’s office has a long tradition of charting its own course on high-profile cases. The office has filed campaign finance charges against two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, accusing them of conspiracy and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.

    People familiar with the case have said investigators are scrutinizing Giuliani’s consulting business and eyeing donations made to America First Action, the main pro-Trump super PAC set up by his advisers and allies after his election, as well as a nonprofit affiliated with the super PAC.

  84. 84.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    For me, the most infuriating thing about this 2020 race is that despite Trump’s monumental, unprecedented corruption and stupidity he’ll still receive tens of millions of votes in November. This sewer rat deserves nothing less than the most crushing, humiliating defeat in the history of presidential elections.

  85. 85.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Fair Economist:

    I like your story.

    I think Duke Ellington put it best when he said there are only 2 kinds of music: good music and bad music.  I try to be as open minded and receptive as I can to as many different musical genres as possible.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    @Feathers:

    I caught it too late to mention it here, but there was a good Japanese gangster movie on TCM last night: Pale Flower (1964). I think it’s available on Criterion. . . . Yep, trailer here.

  93. 93.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    I confess to never having watched a single episode of Perry Mason.

    Can anyone recommend any favorite episodes or episodes that include notable cameos with actors or actresses before they achieved major stardom?

  96. 96.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    FYWP.

    That trailer is kind of weird. Might be an original Japanese one from back in the day. Didn’t really represent the movie, to my mind.

  99. 99.

    Rokka

    @joel hanes: I came up with an even more dramatic theme 25 years ago called Harry Mason for a show about Perry’s less than reputable private eye brother. So my idea gets stolen by some HBO psychic and they’ve changed it to Perry which makes no sense at all. I’m going to try to send them the theme in case they continue next year.

  101. 101.

    prostratedragon

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    … Akhnaten Sat–Sun …

    OO-OO-OOH!

    Heard part of the live broadcast this past fall, and WOW! I’d been thinking it would be a shame if they didn’t list it for these quarentine streamers, but then this is also the organization that somehow failed to record Bluebeard’s Castle with Jessye Norman and Samuel Ramey.

  102. 102.

    mad citizen

    Dying thread, but anyway: I watched (rented) the movie Miss Juneteeth tonight via Prime.  It’s a little slow paced throughout but I can recommend it.

  103. 103.

    Mike E

    Kids stealin’ some garden gnomes at the NC Capitol…those rascals!

    Protesters remove 2 Confederate statues from Capitol, hanging 1 from Raleigh lightpost

    [They] pulled down the bronze soldiers on the 75-foot Confederate monument at the state Capitol Friday night, then hung one by its neck from a streetlight and dragged the other to the Wake County courthouse.

    Earlier, about 7:30 pm., protesters had wrapped yellow rope around the necks of the figures, but police intervened. Officers removed the ropes and then cleared out after about a half hour, letting protesters mount the base of the 125-year-old monument.

    As a protester climbed the base to where the statues stood, another group approached the scene and tried to convince people not to take the statues down, leading to physical skirmishes.

  104. 104.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Jesus Christ. Geoffrey Berman, the SDNY USA, just issued a statement stating that he learned that he was being removed WHEN HE GOT THE PRESS RELEASE FROM THE DOJ. Says he has absolutely no intention of resigning.

    Just fucking amazing. Jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, head-spinningly amazing.

  105. 105.

    Fair Economist

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Glass is very talented and has been tremendously influential. It’s his brand of minimalism which has become embedded in popular music. My son does rap beats which are just one 2-bar melody played forever, with varying off-beat drums added. Very Glass.

    That said, Glass was initially VERY experimental. His first music might be 10 repetitions of an arpeggio, followed by 11 repetitions with a slight change, repeat for 10+ minutes. That doesn’t get played much anymore. Over time he’s become more accessible with longer repeat units, traditional melodies, and more extensive changes and for some time his music has been popular with the general public. But Einstein on the Beach was his very first opera, and significantly more repetitive and less melodic than even the next, Satyagraha. Even people who like later Glass often don’t like it.

    That said, EotB has the most philosophcally profound aria I’ve ever heard, perhaps in all opera (“I was in prematurely airconditioned supermarket”). It’s just a spoken recitation of an insipid text, over and over about 20 times. I didn’t get it in my recorded version, but in the live performance the actress delivered every repetition with different inflection and emphasis – and it changed the meaning every time! With a totally inspid text. It was mindblowing. Afterwards I listened to my recording and realized that performer did it too, but very subtly.

  106. 106.

    prostratedragon

    @joel hanes:
    California had the death penalty, frequently enforced, during the years of the original Perry Mason. Therefore, the theme song is a dirge.

  107. 107.

    rikyrah

    Breaking on @MSNBC: U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman has just released a statement saying, "I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was 'stepping down' as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position."— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 20, 2020

  109. 109.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @laura:

    Thanks, that’s a cool list!  I had no idea that Dick Clark had any acting credits in his resume.  I definitely want to check out that episode along with the ones including Robert Redford and the Star Trek alumni.

  110. 110.

    Feathers

    @Steeplejack: Thanks, I added it to my list. Hard to keep up with all the great films on Criterion Channel. I love Nikkatsu films and haven’t made my way through all of them, so this wasn’t on my radar yet. Did not realize Ebert gave it four stars and put it on his great films list.

    Don’t currently have cable (or a job) so cannot justify the $50+/month to get myself hooked up with TCM.

    Did you catch The Warped Ones? That is one of the most f-ed up movies ever made. The best description of it is that they watched Breathless and then went on a meth bender and made the entire film without ever falling asleep.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    The Perry Mason thing really bugs me. It’s like the opposite of Endeavour, where care was taken to make the young Morse consistent with the older Morse. There is no way that this Perry Mason evolves into the Raymond Burr character or the Erle Stanley Gardner character. Why bother calling him Perry Mason?

    Oh man, sorry that I am coming late to this thread. When I was a kid, my mother loved the novels and the TV show, and I found that I absorbed a second hand awareness of the tv show. I re-watched a chunk later on cable TV. Have not watched the new show, and the description of it annoys me. There is this weird thing that some movies and TV shows insist on doing.

    I enjoyed but had mixed feelings about Star Trek Picard, but it bugged me that every main character had to be burdened with a cliche dollop of trauma or angst. Every single one. And they seemed to have overloaded Perry Mason with this. I don’t recall the original having much of a back story at all. But angst ain’t the same as complexity. And the description of some of the crap that they came up with the new Perry Mason comes from third rate adaptations of second rate detective novels. Hard pass on this one.

    ETA. The best thing about the new Morse show was his boss, Inspector Thursday. The development of Morse was inconsistent to my mind, and I kinda lost interest when I saw that they had lifted the plots of a couple of episodes from other works.

  112. 112.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @laura:

    Where is the accountability when the law ceases to exist?

    Trump truly believes that he is the State and the Republicans in the House and Senate are nothing but a bunch of bed-wetting, thumb-sucking cowards.

    The people attending Trump’s rally in Tulsa tomorrow are more delusional than members of the Church of Scientology and the Unification Church.

  114. 114.

    prostratedragon

    @Wyatt Salamanca:  That is a handy list; I was trying to think of some, and recalled only Redford and a couple of others. But I’ve seen them all at some point. Dick Clark, and the episode he’s in, are quite good. I also liked the one with George Takei, which has somewhere in it a little premonition regarding him. And, were James Coburn and Louise Fletcher on the list?

  115. 115.

    stinger

    @Wyatt Salamanca: I don’t know the episode names or numbers, but Bobby Troupe of Emergency! and Peter Breck of The Big Valley make appearances. Troupe was a jazz pianist and so is his character on Perry Mason.

  117. 117.

    Brachiator

    @joel hanes:

    No one in Perry Mason ever learns or grows, except the villain of each episode, who gets exposed and (we assume) punished.     The villains are the only people on the show who give us any reason to care about them.

    That’s kinda the point of the Perry Mason tv show and novels, and certainly the point of good mystery novels. We want to see an interesting villain taken down.

    “What makes a book worth reading?  In the books we really care about, we care about the characters — and we care about them because the things that happen in the book change them, change who they are.   That matters.  That’s why we care about the Harry Potter books, but not about Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys”

    And yet Mason, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew were all extremely popular and successful series of novels. What you see as a bug is actually a feature.

    Different genres satisfy different needs.

  118. 118.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    One thing am looking forward to is the release date to be announced single season Young Wallander on Netflix. No previews yet available but it can be added to the Netflix queue now as an upcoming item, so maybe not too long to wait.

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Contains my second favorite glass composition, Funeral of Amenhotep III. #1 shall forever be The Photographer; the piece which introduced Glass’ work to me. Blew me away when “A Gentlemen’s Honor” came up on the car radio, so much so I had to pull over ASAP to give it my rapt attention.

  122. 122.

    NotMax

    Give me Warren William’s more, um, earthy Perry Mason any day over Raymond Burr’s bowdlerized version.

  124. 124.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @prostratedragon:

    I don’t recall seeing James Coburn or Louise Fletcher on the list.

    @stinger:

    Thanks for those suggestions.

    I was unaware that this blog had such a large contingent of Perry Mason fans.

  125. 125.

    frosty

    @raven: A friend of mine figured out an arrangement to play the Peter Gunn theme solo on acoustic. Man, his left hand was all over the place as the thumb was hitting the frets for the bass. I only saw him play it twice.

  126. 126.

    Steeplejack

    @prostratedragon:

    James Coburn was in two different episodes. Got murdered both times, I think.

    Other stars (some not so big) who appeared on Perry Mason: Barbara Bain, Ryan O’Neal, Joanna Moore (O’Neal’s future wife), Harvey Korman, Keye Luke, Ellen Burstyn (as Ellen McRae), Stacy Keach, Estelle Winwood, Jackie Coogan, Gary Collins, Brian Donlevy, Fay Wray, Mary Ann Mobley, Wendell Corey, Cathy O’Donnell, Victor Buono, Adam West, David McCallum (just on MeTV last night!), Gary Lockwood. That’s off the top of my head.

    Ray Collins, who played Lt. Tragg, was in Citizen Kane! He played Boss Jim Gettys. And executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson was a former actress whose credits include My Man Godfrey, Stage Door and My Favorite Wife.

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