Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

Tonight's episode on Mystery! featured Inspector Robert Lewis, who all of us nutcase fans know as Inspector E. Morse's old partner. The British network ITV did this because the Morse character, who died of complications from alchoholism in 2000, was incredibly popular and they believed that fans were looking for a follow-up.

(I found another review of the program (programme?) here.)

The movie, called, oddly enough, Inspector Lewis, had all of the elements that Morse fans had come to expect. Lewis's wife had died a few years before, plus he still is not over the death of his mentor, thus making Lewis into the same sort of morose cynic that Morse was. In addition, there are "clues" that Morse left behind that relate to his current case. The clues would seem contrived to anyone that did not know the character of Morse. If you know his character, the clues make perfect sense.

Lewis is now in charge, and his assistant is a character named DS James Hathaway, a former seminarian who takes Morse's place as the highly educated more cultured counterweight to the working class Lewis. It seems that Hathaway has taken to Lewis a lot faster than Lewis took to Morse.

The character of Dr. Laura Hobson made a return. The writers had planned a return of Superintendent Strange, but the actor that played him, the wonderfully named James Grout, was too ill to be cast in the show. Strange has been replaced by a woman named Superintendent Innocent (great name for a homicide cop) who doesn't seem to have any use for Lewis at all, and only communicates with Hathaway. The actress playing Innocent is Rebecca Front, who usually does comedies (she appeared in Absolutely Fabulous), but made several appearances on John Thaw's other series, Kavanagh, QC.

As with many episodes of Inspector Morse, Morse creator Collin Dexter makes a cameo as a "scout" (sort of like a RA) at the fictitious Oxford college Lonsdale. Fans of the old series will remember that murders always seem to take place at Lonsdale.

This was a sort of pilot. I don't know if it will be made into a full blown series.


A couple of little details: I saw an interview with the wardrobe guy for the old series. He said that he always made sure that Lewis wore matching shirt and tie and Morse would look disheveled. This was to indicate that Lewis was a family man whose wife would never let him out of the house looking bad, but Morse was a bachelor with no one at home. In last night's movie, Lewis looks like hell. He got back from an assingment in the Virgin Islands with a tropical shirt and a grey jacket over it, and wore that for what he admits was 22 straight hours.

By the way, Hathaway was wearing a grey jacket with a bright red lining. I am only noting that because it bugged me.


Another little detail: Lewis had apparently been gone to the Virgin Islands for a while, and missed out on such innovations as the Blackberry. It made me remember that things have changed an awful lot over the past couple of years.



Morse was an incredibly engaging character. He loved to appear a cynic, but had hope about him that he liked to hide. His bitterness at his own class and his alcoholism alluded to demons that viewers were never quite let in on. He would lord his education over Lewis, and Lewis eventually learned to respond by saying things that he knew would irritate Morse. This movie (pilot, series?) serves to remind us what a great character Lewis was too.



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So, I haven't been good about posting my pictures from the Church's show last Sunday. They played over at the Rialto, with Rob Dickinson (Bruce's cousin!) of the Catherine Wheel opening.

Of course, I got no pictures of Dickinson. I took a couple, but they didn't come out. The flash is useless at that distance, and only serves to get you thrown out of most venues. Ask James Hudson about that one.

Their last Tucson show, so the band said, was back in 1984. I don't think they even had an American release back then. They described the place they played; it had to be Nino's.


The band consisted of the core of Peter Koppes and Marty Wilson-Piper on guitars, Steve Kilbey on Bass and vocals, plus drummer Tim Powles. The drummer that some of you may remember, Richard Ploog who played on "Under the Milky Way" and their other near-hits, left the band years ago.

Kilbey and Wilson-Piper (By the way, Marty Wilson-Piper makes my list of "Best Rock Names That Actually Appear on a Birth Certificate List") bantering. The two of them engaged the audience fairly often, which I'm not used to seeing at a venue as large as the Rialto.

Peter Koppes on keyboards. The band members switched roles on some songs. For example, Koppes took over vocals on the song "A New Season" (one of only two songs from Starfish that they played), Powles switched to keyboards at one point and Wilson-Piper played drums!


Kilbey, looking a bit like Bono. Natalie will dispute that one, I'm sure.

Wilson-Piper taking lead vocals on "Tristesse," the only song I recognized off of Heyday.

Koppes, who at one point became angry about his guitar not being in tune. He stormed off the stage, he yelled at the crew (I didn't actually hear him yell over the music...just saw the gesticulation), before rejoining the band later.

The show was pretty mellow. Their songs are already pretty mellow anyhow, but as you see, the only electric guitar on the stage was Kilbey's bass. It probably would have been better in a smaller venue, but I don't think anyone in that crowd complained.

As far as the set list goes, many of us stopped following the band after Priest=Aura, their last album to have decent American distribution. But you have to remember that they have had ten albums since then. Most of the songs were off of the newer albums, but they did a latin-flavored cover of "Metropolis," "A New Season," "Tristesse," and, of course, "Under the Milky Way." They also reached back all the way to their first album, 1981's Of Skins and Heart, to do "An Unguarded Moment."

The band also performed a song that Kilbey wrote with the recently deceased Go-Betweens singer, Grant McLennan.


Wilson-Piper commented that Calexico would be proud of the way they did "Tristesse." Most of the songs on that album have a bit of Joeyburnsisimo, so I can see that. It also gave us locals a chance to go "Hey, they mentioned our band..." When they play Oakland, I bet Wilson-Piper says "I bet Heavenly States would be proud of that..."


Kilbey commented on the heat (they are from Australia, it's not like they have a problem with "hot"), and complained about George Bush. He also asked how many Republicans were in the audience. Only two people raised their hands. Ain't Tucson great?


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I went ahead and took down my "World Cup Standings" thing from the left hand column. I notice how none of you asked how Italy came in second to third place Germany.


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It looks as though Campo Bravo have broken up. Mark Matos has a long ramble on the band's MySpace page with his reasons. It sounds like the biz just got to be too much for him.

Matos still promises to play a scheduled date at Plush on September 2, and seems to hint at a continuation of the group with only him, Ryan Egleston and Dimitri Manos.

Campo Bravo earned plaudits and comparisons to Howe Gelb and Neil Young, and seemed on the verge of a Calexico-level breakout. It's too bad, really.

NOTE: When I first posted a picture, I posted one from an old Weekly article that I got when I googled. It turned out that the pic was of some other alt-Country band called the Mendoza Line. Like Mendoza, I'm batting really low right now.


Tonight! Luminarios, Van Christian, Gun Runners, Nelly y Javier, Bruce Halper and Stefan George will be playing at Plush in a benefit for Billy Sedlmayr.

It looks like Billy Sed himself may take up the guitar for a bit too.

Sedlmayr is a seminal figure in the local music scene, being a founding member of the Pedestrians, the first "Punk" or "Indie" band in Tucson. He was in the first line up of a little band called the Giant Sandworms, which dropped a sylable from their name around the same time he left the band. He has Hepatitis C, for reasons that you can divine from his having been a seminal figure in the local music scene.

I'm usually not one for these sorts of benefits, you know, musicians playing a show for their friends. In this case though, this guy was incredibly important to the cultural scene in Tucson, so I can see the enthusiasm to help. It's only five bucks, right?


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Those of us that are not that good at playing guitar like to poke around on the various guitar tablature sites to pick up some ideas about how to play, or fake, some of our favorite songs.

The quality of some of these "tabs" is questionable, heck, calling some them tablature can even be questionable too. Tab sites are also notorious for being larded up with pop-ups, even viruses and spyware.

So, you find a couple of decent tab sites, you stick with them.

Over the past few months, the Music Publishers Association has threatened legal action against some of the better known tab sites. They probably have a point. Take My Song Book, the site with the most comprehensive tablature (mostly because they are actually recognizeable as tablature by your guitar teacher). My Song Book's tabs are actually files in a program called Guitar Pro, which allows a user to not only read the tablatures, but translates into a regular musical staff, and will even play the song. Yeah, this one probably crosses a few legal lines.

Other tab sites, such as Guitar Tab Universe and OLGA, have user generated text files that are for the most part incomplete and at best only give clues as to how the song actually gets played. I wouldn't be entirely happy if I worked hard on a song and some numby posted the chords on the internet a few hours after I released the album. However, given how derivative so much of our music is ("Without the internet, I never would have guessed a I-IV-V7 progression!"), it seems a bit disingenuous for publishers to accuse a music geek of creative theft.

The arguments of the sites are that they are just like a guitar teacher who tabs out a song for a student. They are even trying to drum up grass roots support for their cause. The fact that they are essentially "publishing" though is the big difference for the MPA's lawyers. Unless, maybe, the MPA will go after the teachers too...


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Japanese-American actor Mako has died. He became interested in acting while in the Army in the 1950's. Dismayed with the lack of decent roles for people of Asian descent, he founded his own theater company. Many credit his activities with opening up Hollywood for Asian actors.

He was one of the "usual suspect" Asian American actors that showed up on programs like Hawaii Five-0, M*A*S*H and Kung Fu. His demeanor and distinctive voice brought a dignity to all of his roles.

Years ago, a friend turned me on to Samurai Jack. Big as day, there was Aku, the "Shape Shifting Master of Darkness" that sent the hero into the far flung future; you couldn't mistake that voice. It made a very cool cartoon that much cooler.


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I flipped on KFMA tonight, just in time for them to start a song. I heard a introduction that I recognized, but I thought, no, can't be.

It was a cover of the Genesis song "Land of Confusion" by Disturbed.

By the way, the song is performed with no apparent irony.

I never thought the song was that good in the first place. Why bring it back twenty years later? Are Disturbed so creatively bankrupt that they can't summon up their own relevant lyrics and now they have to turn to, of all people, Phil Collins for inspiration?


If you are going to cover Genesis, make it something interesting like "Return of the Giant Hogweed" or "The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging."


One thing that bugs me about the song: the line "My generation will put it right." Written and sung of course by boomer Phil Collins. This baby boomer smugness was eclipsed later when Billy Joel released "We Didn't Start the Fire."


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My brother noted that I said nothing about the death of Mickey Spillane. Well, he should get his own blog.

Tom would probably want me to note that before he wrote his breakthrough, I, the Jury, he wrote for Timely Comics (the company that later became Marvel). The most famous character he worked on was the Human Torch.

After serving in the Army Air Force, he returned to civilian life and comic books, writing a character called Mike Danger. The character was a bust, so he wrote him into a novel, which sold poorly in hard cover. But, he got a publisher to sell the book as paperback only, and the legend of Mike Hammer was born.

Spillane's Mike Hammer was the first two-fisted-take-no-prisoners-play-by-his-own-rules detective (thus the title of his first novel). This means that every bad cop buddy movie and silly shows like Renegade, Hunter and T. J. Hooker can be laid at his feet. Don't hold this against the man though.


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Can you be called a "former" anything when you only had the job two weeks ago?

Well, Former National Team Coach Bruce Arena has now been named coach of the New York Red Bulls, or Red Bull New York...I haven't figured out which one I am supposed to call them. It was so much easier with their old name. I just called them "those jackasses."


Can Arena make them a winning team? Despite the knock against the team, they actually had two winning seasons. That's right...two out of ten. Way to go!

They haven't won anything though, no MLS Cups, no Open Cups, no Supporter's Shields. When they make the playoffs, they crash out in the first round.


Their poor performance has been despite being given break after break by the league.

For example, only three world cup winners have played in MLS (Youri Djorkaeff, Branco and Lothar Matthäus), and all were mysteriously allocated to the New York team. The team has also included international greats like Roberto Donadoni, and when speculation hit that Zinédine Zidane and David Beckham may play in MLS, guess which team they talk about them going to?

Interestingly, Donadoni couldn't lead the team to anything above mediocrity. He then returned to Italy to help AC Milan to a Serie A championship.

They have also had big US stars, most notably Tab Ramos and Tony Meola. Ramos notoriously underperformed for the team. In this year's draft, the first pick was going to be Marvell Wynne, everyone knew it. Strangely, a last minute trade was made so the newly rechristened Red Bull New York could pick him.

They have had some fantastic coaches too. Their first was former New York Cosmos coach Eddie Firmani. Carlos Alberto Parreira managed to win a World Cup, but couldn't lead this group of otherwise decent players to a winning record. International coaches like Carlos Quieroz and Bora Milutinović couldn't do it either. In fact, Milutinović led the team to the worst record of any non-expansion MLS squad, ever.

So what is the deal? No matter who they have playing, who they have coaching (Arena is #11), or what they call themselves (three names so far!) they suck. What is up with that?


At least Kenny Arena can finally get that start. Oh wait, he got traded to Arena's old team, DC United, and dropped from sight.


Revs fans, of course, are already awaiting the moment when Taylor Twellman, rejected by Arena for the World Cup squad, puts two or three in against the Red Bulls. They play them two more times this year.

Sam's Army had a song for Arena called "We Are Part of Bruce's Army." Already, Ed Lova has rewritten the song:

We're no longer part of Bruce's Army
and we'll beat him for the league
it'll really shake him up
when Taylor lifts the cup
cos New England has the greatest football team

This was one written by fans after we tanked in the World Cup:

We're not part of Bruce's Army
We're all leaving Germany
Cause we really stunk it up
At the fuc**n World Cup
And we're all going home in a week

Any word on whether Arena will try the 4-4-1 formation here? That one actually works in MLS once in a while. Especially when your star players are awake.

He will actually not start coaching until August. Will they be so far down in the standings by then that he won't be able to get them in the playoffs?


By the way, one press release noted that Arena has one cap, a game against Israel over thirty years ago that the US lost 2-0.


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Lt. Jim Dangle while observing Officer García on a sting:

He does a horrible Mexican. Almost sounds like a Pollack.

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I just caught another Hummer ad. This one featured a mother and child who are bullied out of their turn on a slide at the playground. The mother then buys a Hummer and now she can be the bully.

You've come a long way baby.

Their motto is, apparently, buy our vehicle, and you can be an asshole.

The ad is not available at the Hummer website. However Slate reviewed a Hummer ad a while back that had a similar theme.


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This morning, they issued a "Severe Heat Warning," now they just issued a "Severe Thunderstorm Warning."

Welcome to Tucson.


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Saturday, I ended up missing Loveland (not to be confused with Sugarland), but I caught the Sand Rubies. For some reason, the audience was all stuck behind this invisible barrier about twelve feet from the stage. Nobody, nobody, wanted to get up close to the band. This may be more due to the age of the fans now. Those of us who used to get up close to the stage and "RAWK," just don't do that anymore (see, look at how I slipped in the song reference there...) because our younger days doing that have given us tinnitus (what?). After the third or fourth song, people seemed to realize that they could, in fact, walk up to the stage without getting electocuted.

Things were a bit sloppy, but so what? Once again, I knew the lyrics better than Dave Slutes did, which may be more of an indication of my pathetic life than anything about him.

I ended up with a bunch of pictures of Anna Rosales, who, I only found out this week spells her name with two "n"s...MySpace, that's how. No, this isn't some sort of stalker weirdness. The fact was, I spent most of the show in a spot about seven or eight feet from her part of the stage. This also means that I got fewer decent shots of Rich Hopkins and none of Bruce Halper.












Anna played in her bare feet. It was hot out and who wants to play in heels anyway?


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