Ali G Cohen

In almost reverse order, I finally caught Sasha Baron Cohen’s first movie, Ali G Indahouse.   He plays a “rapper” from Staines (small town outside London) who somehow manages to get elected to the House of Commons.  One of his “homies” (fellow rappers), Ricky C, is played by Martin Freeman (aka Bilbo Baggins from the newest “Hobbit” movie); David Carlton, the cynical MP who leads him into Parliament is played by Charles Dance (aka Tywin Lannister from “Game of Thrones”), and finally Rhona Mitra, the sultry lawyer from early seasons of “Boston Legal”, is here as Carlton’s seductive assistant. Borat has a small role in the film.

            Ali G himself is somewhat amusing – although Staines is as far away geographically as it can be from L.A., he still acts like rapper and has a feud with the East Side (of Staines) rappers.  Noticeably absent from the film, though, are his trademark “interviews” with unwitting subjects.  From what I understand, some of the subjects are “in on” the joke and just go along with it, others are genuinely clueless.  Anti-semites are a favorite target.

Borat.  For those of us like myself who’ve never watched his Ali G show, here was an opportunity to see the “embarrassing interview” shtick in action.  SBC plays a horrendously obtuse Kazakh TV reporter who travels to America in a misguided quest to win the heart of Pamela Anderson, the buxom star of “Baywatch”.  He’s accompanied by a large, hairy, bear-like manager, Azamat.  Along the way he conducts his usual interviews, typically expressing outrageously racist and anti-Semitic statements in the hopes of luring his subjects into agreeing with him and adding their own idiocy to the mix.  In Bob Barr’s case, he simply tricked the 2008 Libertarian candidate into eating cheese made from human breast milk. 

Bruno.  SBC abandoned Borat, who had gotten too well known, and veered off into even stranger weirdness with “Bruno”, a flamboyantly gay character whose goal was to become the “most famous Austrian since Hitler” (aside from Arnold, of course).  Naturally, this persona offends and annoys a lot of people.  He gets a focus group to review his pilot TV show (much of which involves him flagging his penis around) and of course they’re not impressed or amused. 

            One group member remarks that “the only way that guy is going to be famous is by making a celebrity sex tape”, prompting Bruno to attempt – unsuccessfully – to seduce Ron Paul (Libertarian candidate from 1988 – what is with SBC and Libertarians??) in a hotel room.  As petulant as always, Paul stomped out of the room, leaving Bruno with his scented candles and music in the darkness.

            In another scene, Bruno winds up in a house full of swingers in the middle of an orgy, although he himself does not participate.  Although the offending couples are pixilated out, what they are doing is still quite obvious to anyone with an imagination.

The Dictator.  Finally SBC returns to straight (!) humor and hits it out of the ballpark.  He plays Admiral General Aladeen, the dictator of the fictional country Wadiya (obviously based on Qaddafi).  His own general, played by Ben Kingsley, manages to depose him with a double during a visit to the UN in NYC.  Suddenly beardless Aladeen has to get help from a lesbian vegetarian who he met protesting his regime outside the UN.  What I like is that this humor is not from interviews, instead it’s ridicule of Third World dictators.  My favorite part was him stumbling into the “Kill Aladeen Restaurant” in “Little Wadiya”, NYC, and running into all the dissidents he thought he’d had executed (who in fact were simply exiled by his general). 

Cohen is not always the main star of the show; he’s had a fair amount of substantial supporting roles in movies (briefly): 

Hugo: he plays the stationmaster in Paris, a quasi-nemesis to the main character, a young boy named Hugo;

Talladega Nights: a gay NASCAR driver who knocks Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) off the top of the racing standings;

Madagascar: the voice of King Julian, yet another flamboyant animal

Sweeney Todd: a competing barber who becomes Todd’s first victim.

I found most of these minor roles more fun to watch than “Borat” or “Bruno”, so it depends on your tolerance for his type of humor – which is undeniably clever even if can be somewhat annoying.  Enjoy.

Jimi Hendrix

Long overdue!  But only now have I rounded up what could reasonably be considered a definitive JH collection:  his three studio albums, Band of Gypsies, his posthumous release, and two live albums.

Most of us mere mortal guitarists have to study chords, scales, and tablature and practice constantly to achieve any meaningful competence on the instrument.  Straying from that path will lead to noisy cacophony.  A few lucky souls are/were blessed with abundant natural ability, an intuitive understanding of how to make the instrument sing.  Jimi Hendrix was one of those.

Remarkably, he was active for only a brief, narrow window of time in the late 1960s and only released three studio albums in his lifetime:  Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland, plus an official live album from his post-Experience band, Band of Gypsies.   Shortly after his death, his unreleased studio material was released as Cry of Love, then in 1997 combined with the remaining material gathered up as First Rays of the New Rising Sun.  Arguably his most important live work was the Monterey pop show in 1967, and of course Woodstock in August 1969.  He could count on Mitch Mitchell on drums – both Experience and BoG – but replaced Noel Redding on bass with his Army buddy Billy Cox in BoG.

He had a troubled childhood in Seattle – his parents divorced, and his mother died when he was very young.  Hendrix joined the Army in 1961 as an alternative to prison (he “took the black”, as it were) but was never enthusiastic about being a soldier, preferring to play guitar.  Hardly surprisingly, he was discharged in 1962 – leaving him free to develop his musical talents and career.  His most notable job was playing for Curtis Knight, which resulted in a recording contract which later caused him considerable legal problems.

Chas Chandler, the ex-bassist for the Animals, saw Hendrix play in New York City, and brought him to London in 1966 to form The Experience with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding.  Once he reached London, and thanks to Chandler’s contacts among the A-listers of the contemporary music scene (Clapton, Townsend, etc.) who could quickly recognize his talent and vision, Hendrix’ career took off.  Are You Experienced was released in the UK in May 1967, in the US in August.  His appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in California in June 1967 was essentially his big break.

Axis: Bold as Love followed in December 1967, and then the double studio album Electric Ladyland in October 1968.  As with the Scorpions' sometimes provocative album covers, I made sure to get the European version of the CD with its bevy of nude women on the cover.  His live career was capped by the legendary performance at Woodstock, for which he was the headlining performer paid the most, going onstage at 9 a.m. on the final day of the festival for a meager leftover crowd of 25,000. “The Star Spangled Banner” was neither the encore, nor premiered at the festival, but most closely identified with that concert appearance.  To satisfy his Curtis Knight duties, he released Band of Gypsies in 1970 (March in the US, June in the UK).  Finally, in September 1970, he died in London of an overdose of sleeping pills – “death by misadventure”. 

Hits.  Practically all of the first album, “Little Wing” from Axis, and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and  “All Along the Watchtower” (Dylan cover) from Electric Ladyland,  “Red House” is remarkable – it’s a standard blues song which sounds like it was written by Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, or Willie Dixon, but is Hendrix’s own original.  Hendrix was a better guitarist than songwriter:  his best and most famous songs are certainly good enough in their own right, but don’t match the quality of those by the Beatles – around whom Hendrix ran circles as a guitarist.  It’s too bad Hendrix and Lennon-McCartney never wrote a song together.  If you thought “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (Beatles + Clapton) was good, imagine what such a match would have produced. 

But this also ignores the fact that more so than most other musicians – almost all of whom, with the 800 pound gorilla exception of the Beatles – consider themselves to be “live artists”, Jimi Hendrix truly was a live artist.  Playing the guitar with his teeth, setting it on fire, etc. all the theatrics rolled into one man, yet this was in addition to his own immense natural talent, not a stage crutch to hide mediocre or nonexistent talent.  With Hendrix you got it all.

Guitars.  Although Hendrix has played left-handed guitars, e.g. a Gibson Flying V, he’s best known for flipping regular right-handed Fender Stratocasters over and stringing them left-handed.

Heirs.  A few notable guitarists have essentially become the musical heirs to Hendrix’ legacy:  Frank Marino, Robin Trower, and Uli Roth.  Of these, Marino seems to deviate the least from Hendrix or add anything of his own.  Despite being Hendrix clones, however, their original material is as interesting and fun to listen to as Hendrix’ own material.  

Vinnie Jones

Yes, another book completed, Vinnie Jones’ Vinnie: My Life, the story of an English football star turned Hollywood actor. 

He grew in a part of England I don’t recognize (Watford).  He did odd jobs and had various scrapes at school.  He wound up playing soccer (aka football) in England in the 1990s.  The teams he played for were Wimbledon (now long gone from Premier League), Leeds, Sheffield United, Queens Park Rangers, and Chelsea.   Like Black Sabbath and the Beatles playing in Hamburg, Germany, early in their careers, Jones played in Sweden for a short time.  Of these teams, he’s most associated with Wimbledon, for the most part a 2nd division team.  Unlike Beckham, his football career never took him to a world stage, so he's known as a football player in England and - to the extent he's known outside the UK - as an actor everywhere else. 

While playing in England he developed a bad reputation as a dirty player, which of course he denies completely. On one occasion, in an effort to get Paul Gascoigne to back off from behind him, he grabbed “Gazza’s” balls.  He’s been sent off 12 times – including once in the first 3 seconds of a game.

  However, it seemed to have led to his being tapped for a few English movies:  Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch.   I’ve seen both of these and they’re… OK.  The high point of the first one was a Bren gun; the second had Brad Pitt.   In each he pretty much played a bad-ass tough guy.  These led to his being cast in the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, with Nicholas Cage and Angelina Jolie.  For the life of me I can’t remember his role as The Sphinx.

In fact, while he seems to brag about being a big Hollywood movie star, partying with the A-listers in Beverly Hills, I don’t see any evidence that he’s headlined a major US film in his own right as the lead role, although he has done the Burt Reynolds/Adam Sandler role in Mean Machine, a British remake of The Longest Yard.  Mainly he’s mid-level characters: Swordfish, a ManU hooligan in Euro Trip, Juggernaut in X Men: Last Stand, and Freddie the Dog in Madagascar 3. 

Although he puffs himself up in his book quite large, I still find him an intriguing guy.  I’ll make it a point to see more of his films again. 

B-29 Bomber

I’ve gotten addicted to those “combat missions” books available at steep discounts at Barnes & Noble.  I’ve already written about the B-17 and B-24 bombers, the most common US bombers of World War II, and recently I picked up a third volume, B-29 Combat Missions, by Donald Nijboer and Steve Pace.  Unlike the B-17 and B-24, I can’t claim to have any uncles that I know of who flew the B-29.

The B-29 is most famous for being the bomber which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, thereby ending World War II with Japan’s surrender.   The Enola Gay, the one which bombed Hiroshima, is on display at the Dulles Annex (Udvar-Hazy Museum) out near Dulles Airport.  Unfortunately, you can’t go into the bomber – or any of the others.  I can understand not flying around, but not getting inside?  Someone, at some museum, should set up a display bomber, whether it be B-17, B-24, or B-29, set up to allow visitors to actually get inside the plane.  I suppose at this point the planes are too rare to allow that.  Anyhow.

Due to the vast distances, mostly over water, which these planes had to travel, a very long range bomber was needed for attacks on the Japanese mainland.   Boeing developed the B-29 starting in 1942, and rushed development and production so that when operations began in June 1944, the ”bugs” were still not worked out.  In fact, B-29 losses due to engine failures and other such “snafus” exceeded losses inflicted by the Japanese; of 414 losses, 127 were due to enemy action.  A B-29 crew was more likely to be killed by the plane itself than the enemy.  During WWII a total of 3,970 B-29s were built at various plants across America.  

In addition to its higher range and payload, the B-29 also had some innovations.  The cabin was completely pressurized, and the turrets were remote controlled, allowing a much lower profile and higher accuracy.  In terms of bombing accuracy, however, the Norden bombsight was not as good as commonly claimed.  At high altitude, and with unpredictable weather and a strong jet stream, bombing Japan was hit or miss.  Sometimes they had to bomb by radar (visual sighting being the optimal method assuming the target could actually be seen).  Ultimately they decided that precision bombing was not going to happen, so the better solution was lower level night attacks focused on general areas.

Japanese cities were primarily built with wood at this time, making them particularly vulnerable to incendiary attacks.  B-29s would strike at night, with the bombardier simply dropping bombs on whatever target was not already on fire, which was simple enough to execute and remarkably effective and devastating.  Tokyo was hit especially hard.  B-29s also took part in supply missions and rescue operations.

Reaction.  Just as the aircraft carriers were, B-29s were subject to suicide attacks.  But Japanese resistance was not very impressive, least of all compared to the Luftwaffe’s night fighter forces.  Japan’s top fighter ace, Saburo Sakai, lamented the consistently negligible impact the Japanese interceptor forces had on the B-29 raids.   The B-29s were more likely to have to ditch because of unreliable engines or the planes running out of fuel, than because of damage caused by Japanese fighters or flak.

  

Korea.  The B-29 served in the Korean War too, operating from bases in Japan.  However, once the MiG-15 came into operation, B-29 missions had to be done at night, as the MiGs would slaughter the B-29s.

 Engine.  The Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone.   This was an 18 cylinder radial engine, with the cylinders in two banks of 9, and a supercharger.  Total displacement was 3,347 cubic inches, but only 2,200 horsepower, or .65 HP/cubic inch.  This would be like a 350 cubic inch V8 putting out 230 HP – with a supercharger.   My L98 put out 240 HP in stock form (1992 model year), without a supercharger, though with EFI and electronic ignition, neither of which were available to aircraft designers in the 1940s; GM automotive engineers were able to achieve 1 HP/cubic inch in the late 1950s without forced induction.  Due to the tight clearance between the cowl (engine cover) and the cylinders, which were air-cooled, the engines had a bad habit of overheating, and the magnesium cases burned at extremely high temperatures, making them extremely difficult to put out.