Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting

One of the coolest things about 21st-century technology and the series of tubes that we call the interweb is the ability to collect things that would otherwise have eluded us. Take, for instance, comic books.....many of us had stacks and stacks of them as kids, but they were either purged long ago or, if we still have them, it's difficult to justify (as adults) the space required to keep a million back issues of, say, "Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge." We have more important things to take up our storage space now....like the Blu-Ray edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Thanks not only to official releases from major companies, but also the perserverance and dedication of collectors all around the world, it is now possible for us to acquire digital copies of those old comic books, not only our old friends, but also thousands of comics that we never had in the first place. Well, I've been collecting these digital comics for a while now, and today I stumbled across an old friend: The Amazing Spider-Man, issue number 136 from September 1975, when I was a wee lad of just six years old. Let's check it out, shall we?

First of all, dig that incredible cover. Peter Parker and Harry Osborn screaming at each other in red-tinged fury, whilst their alter-egos do battle above them. Is it any wonder that the six-year-old Scott HAD to have this comic? And isn't The Green Goblin just the baddest-ass villain EVER? I mean, look at his bat-shaped flying machine and his Jack-O'Lantern bombs...now that's some serious cool.

On the left here we have the inside cover. We are promised three BIG drafting kits that will be GIVEN TO YOU, so that you can get a HIGH PAY JOB IN DRAFTING!!!!!!!!

But seriously, look at that guy. Reasonable haircut, completely ridiculous short-sleeve dress shirt, tie. I bought this comic to fantasize and being SPIDER-MAN for heaven's sake. Why on earth would I aspire to this guy's job? It really does make me wonder how much business this drafting company drummed up by buying these ads.

Here we have the first page proper of the actual story. NOW we're talking! Check out Peter Parker, and what a sweet life he's got; just chilling in New York City on a Sunday afternoon with a red-hot red-head hottie (and secretly, he's Spider-Man!). This page has completely made me forget that I might get a high-paying job in drafting. I think I'd rather wait for an opening in the superhero department.

And what have Peter and Mary Jane been doing all day? Well, among other things, they caught a "Kung Fu flick." Pay attention; you'll see this again.

Here's an incredible two-page spread advertising a toy I never had: BIG JIM. Again, it's readily apparent that Jim is not in the field of drafting; you'll never catch HIM wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt, no-siree. No, instead Jim does karate chops on wooden blocks, karate chops on red bricks, and has his own martial arts studio.

Holy schnikies, what's up with all that Kung Fu stuff? Was America really that obsessed with it in 1975? I mean, it's not all that our three-dimensional Jim can do; he can also kick field goals, post a mean lay-up and smack grand slams. But clearly, Kung Fu is his passion. Dirty little secret: In my copy of this comic, I have filled in (partially) the crossword puzzle. I wanted to win that Kung Fu studio something fierce; too bad I never entered the contest!

Holy crap! What's this? An ad for KARATE (in letters that look vaguely Asian)? Damn, I guess we were obsessed; this is the third martial arts reference in just the first ten pages of this comic. Surely there won't be any more...............

D'OH!!!! I just made it to page 15...just five pages.....and there's ANOTHER ad, but this time you can do Kung-Fu and Karate (still in the vaguely Asian looking lettering). This one looks cooler, though, because instead of the cheesy red-headed cartoon guy on page 10, we actually have a deadly-looking Asian guy. I'd go with Page 15 for my Kung Fu lessons, that's for sure.

And finally, we get to what was probably my favorite page of the entire book, because it had an ad promising a new magazine for my biggest obsession of the 1970s: Planet of the Apes! Those of you who know me well know that I am an Apes fan of gargantuan proportions (how many people do YOU know that has seen every episode of the Apes Saturday morning cartoon? Yeah, I didn't think so!), and this little ad fascinated me. First of all, it's a great drawing; the agony on the face of the chimpanzee is palpable. But it's also a little mysterious....why does the gorilla have the chimp in chains? What did he do? It sort of goes against the whole ethos of the Apes philosophy, where the apes looked out for one another, and scape-goated the humanoids. It's a small ad, but I think it's still sort of captivating to this day.

Despite this ad, I didn't get an issue of Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine until number 8, but after that I got pretty much every issue thereafter (except for one issue which mysteriously eluded me, and I didn't know why....until years later when I saw the large-breasted woman on the cover. Now I'm wondering if my mom saw it on the newstands, thought about getting it for me, then thought better of it: "Yeah, I'll just pretend I didn't see this one.").

The Marvel Planet of the Apes magazine was pretty marvelous (all of my original copies are beat to death, evidence of how often I pawed through them), but that's a blog for another day.

But it does make me wonder why on earth no-one did a comic book about the most obvious thing of all, something that would have sold in the millions in 1975: KUNG-FU APES!!!!!

A Date With Death!!

So, it's been more than ten months since I posted anything. One reason is because what I was doing was a LOT of work; not only did I watch the movies that I was writing about, but then I did things like track down the movie poster, other appropriate illustrations, etc. Then, on top of it, what was my feedback? Nothing! Nada! It didn't seem worth it.

Just recently, however, my lovely wife Laura prodded me into getting it going again, and I came to the realization that my blog didn't have to be some sort of massive endeavor every time, and I could just post frequent updates of a much smaller nature. So, here I am!

All of these realizations came at about the same time I acquired a large stack of "pulp fiction artwork"....covers of cheap paperback novels from the 1950s, 60s and 70s.....all of which seemed like perfect fodder to get this thing up and running again. So, without further ado, welcome back to Ape City; now let's check out the cover for THE BLANK WALL.

I decided to start with this one because it has everything. Of course, your eye is drawn immediately to the hottie brunette in her bikini (and yet, check out those Granny bottoms. There's enough fabric there for three or four bedsheets; not exactly hot, if you know what I'm saying). You're further attracted to her because she's got a red shawl or something wrapped around her shoulders.....wha???? Who goes boating in a bikini and a red shawl? But then, of course, there is the DEAD GUY.

How did he get dead? Well, the cover lets us know in awesome purple prose: "PLAYING WITH JAILBAIT EARNED HIM.....A DATE WITH DEATH!!!" Okay, now the bar has been significantly raised. Jailbait? That bikini girl is jailbait? I'm in!

(Before we leave the front cover behind, let me point out my favorite part: the little notice down below that says "Complete and Unabridged." Thank goodness! I know that when this book was originally published in a deluxe hardcover edition (a hand-tooled leather cover published by the Oxford Press, strictly limited to 1000 copies and each signed by the author), there was some concern that the paperback version would be abridged in some fashion. Thank goodness that everyone who can only afford to buy books at the drugstore won't be denied a single word of the genius of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding).

On to the back cover. Damn, this book sounds salacious! "BUT HE'S MARRIED!" it screams in red print. "And twice your age." Seriously, why don't you want to read this?

And there it is, in all capital letters and red print: DEAD. Sex, murder and scandal....everything you want in a novel, right?

I must say that I spent an unusual amount of my childhood browsing around in used bookstores and libraries, and while I always ended up with a Sherlock Holmes book, or an Agatha Christie book, or maybe something to do with Star Trek, these sorts of books were EVERYWHERE, and much of my time was spent wondering about the mysteries that lay behind the incredible covers. I'll never know, of course, but how nice that someone out there has bothered to scan these covers to keep (at least) the artwork alive for a little while longer.

Finally, I must comment on the super-cool Pocket Books logo. I LOVE that kangaroo! She's just having a hoot and a holler reading all of those books that conveniently fit into her pocket. Of course, that ignores the fact that she kicked out all of her joeys and they had to fend for themselves out in the Australian outback, but that's a small point. And finally, we have the reassurance that this is A GENUINE POCKET BOOK. Why is that so important? Was there a rash of bootleg Pocket Books flooding the market in the 1950s?

OK, Connery!!

So, what's the absolutely worst spy movie starring Connery? Obviously, it's Never Say Never Again, right? Or maybe Diamonds Are Forever?

No, sorry. The worst spy movie ever made starring Connery is Operation Kid Brother.

What? You've never heard of Operation Kid Brother? And you call yourself a James Bond fan?

Truth be told, it's not a James Bond movie. Oh, and it doesn't star Sean Connery, either. No, it stars his little brother, Neil Connery. Uh oh, I smell a bad movie.......

So, here's the story: sometime in 1966, an Italian film producer got the idea to cash in on James Bond mania, and make a cheapo spy spoof (which, of course, were all the rage at the time). Obviously, however, getting Sean Connery, riding high as Agent 007, was an impossible task.

They found out, however, that Neil Connery, Sean's little brother, was just sitting around Edinburgh doing nothing, so if they couldn't have Sean, then Neil it was!!

What makes Operation Kid Brother so notable, however, is the fact that the producers actually got veterans from the real James Bond movies to be in it. The heavy hitters, of course, are Bernard Lee (who played M, Bond's boss) and Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), but the film also features Adolfo Celi (the bad guy in Thunderball), Anthony Dawson (who is shot by Bond in Dr. No) and, probably the hottest Bond Girl of all time, Daniela Bianchi (who was famous for her role in From Russia With Love).

So, we've got a Connery, we've got some real Bond actors, we've got a great movie, right? If you think the answer is yes, then you've missed the point of this blog!

What went wrong with Operation Kid Brother (which was apparently known by several other titles, such as O.K. Connery. That's a new movie rule: A movie's quality is inversely proportional to the number of titles that it has)?

Well, to begin with, Connery's character isn't a spy. He's a plastic surgeon. Seriously. And the brilliant name that they came up with for his character? "Dr. Neil Connery." No, seriously.

He gets drafted into some sort of secret spy agency against his will, and after that all sorts of hijinks ensue. Such as? Well, I wish I could tell you, but this movie was so blindingly bad, I lost track of the plot, such as it is, about ten minutes into the film. It appears as if some sort of nefarious evil group wants to hijack some sort of nuclear stuff, blah blah blah. All I know is that this nefarious group is a direct ripoff of SPECTRE from the Bond films, right down to the secret meeting in an opulent European location, which begins with a creative assassination of a team member that didn't do his job. Thunderball, anyone?

Other than that....uh, I don't know. It's just a mish-mash of Adolfo Celi being forced to wear unimaginable things, hot Italian girls kicking the bejesus out of henchmen (I swear to God, there is a scene where all the Italian hotties dress up as sort-of kitty-cats (they actually look more like skunks) and climb onto a truck that is advertising a club called the Wild Pussy Club. I couldn't make this stuff up, even if I wanted to. And I don't.), Neil Connery being bland and Daniela Bianchi running around with nothing to do.

Oh, and did I mention that Dr. Neil Connery, surgeon extraordinaire is a hot shot.....archer? Yes, that's right....the big climax of Operation Kid Brother features Connery and Celi trying to kill each other with bows and arrows. That does not make for exciting cinema.

What a shock: this travesty of a film is not available on DVD (although I've heard that it was the focus of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, so it may not be difficult to track down at least some sort of a version of it). But's here's the irony: the soundtrack CD is easily available! How on earth did that happen? Mostly because one Ennio Morricone was responsible for the score....and an annoyingly catchy score it is, too (which does borrow heavily from the late, great John Barry, natch). Apparently, the tapes were thought to be lost forever, but someone found them....so Morricone collectors can revel in the full score for this magnificent piece of crap. Funny how things turn out like that.....

Things I learned from this film:

1. Just because your brother is charismatic and awesome doesn't mean that you are.

2. Just because you were once in a James Bond movie, that does not guarantee that you will make good movies for the rest of your life (take that, Tanya Roberts!).

3. Evil villains really are lucky, since so many of their nefarious weapons involve a person standing RIGHT EXACTLY IN THAT SPOT. One foot to the left, and your hidden shooting speargun gadget is absolutely worthless (so, if you're a spy, just keep moving).

4. If you're a world-famous composer with over 400 film scores to your credit, at least a few of those movies will be absolute crap.

Monkey See, Monkey Die

Do you have one of those "guilty pleasure" movies that you know just suck, but will always be a part of you (and if so, what is it? Let me know!)? I have many, but very few loom large in my heart like the late Dino de Laurentiis' 1976 version of KING KONG.

In late 1976, I was seven years old (going on eight), and was a prime target for the marketing machine that was behind KONG. A full year before STAR WARS perfected the art of selling movies to kids, the KONG machine was in full motion, and you couldn't go anywhere late in the Bicentennial year without seeing that image above plastered on anything and everything (I still have two KING KONG Slurpee cups!). Probably one of the savviest marketing moves was the inclusion of a free T-shirt iron-on inside the January 1977 issue of "Family Circle" magazine....thanks to mom, I had a King Kong T-shirt in just a few minutes...awesome!).

Of course, the most incredible indication of how everyone got snookered into Kong-mania in late 1976 was how the marketing machine actually got brand-new starlet Jessica Lange onto the cover of TIME magazine. No wonder they never did at STAR WARS cover, after getting scammed by the Kong publicists into promoting their movie!

But it wasn't the cover that was awesome....incredibly, the article inside featured a series of shots showing Kong feeling up Jessica Lange...including a shot where her top has dropped off and YOU CAN SEE HER BOOB! In TIME MAGAZINE! It was an incredible moment for a seven-year-old boy (probably for a few 37-year-old boys, too!). I wonder how many hundreds of parents thought they were doing their little sons a favor by letting them look at the new TIME magazine that had the story about the monkey movie, only to find that that issue disappeared into the nether regions of the son's room, never to be seen again. From what I found on the internet while I was researching this blog entry, I am certainly not the only 40-something male who fondly remembers the October 25, 1976 issue of TIME.

Okay, okay, but what about the MOVIE? Well, I recently went back to it, and found that it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared, but unfortunately it's about a giant gorilla's arm-length away from actually being a good movie. Jeff Bridges is magnificent as the earnest young anthropologist, Charles Grodin is suitably slimy as the villain, and there ain't nothin' wrong with a 27-year-old Jessica Lange in her first movie. The problems are two-fold: the script (by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., he of the "Batman" TV series fame) brings the story into the 1970s, but unfortunately with very mixed results. There's some nice post-modern irony (Charles Grodin refuses to believe in a giant ape, so Jeff Bridges points to the massive destruction done to the jungle and asks "What do you think did that, some guy in a gorilla suit?"), and it's nice to see subtle changes like how Kong climbs the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building.

On the down side, you have things like how Lange's character is, thirty-five years later, an absolute caricature of a 1970s dippy chick (she asks Kong what his astrological sign is, and calls him a male chauvinist pig), and the 1970s special-effects are frequently not-so-special.

On the other hand, the portrayal of Kong is pretty magnificent. Instead of the stop-motion brilliance of the 1933 original, you literally did have "a man in a monkey suit." Makeup-artist extraordinaire Rick Baker designed a very convincing Kong costume and played the King himself. Unlike the CGI effects that Peter Jackson used for the third version of the film, Baker's human emotions really allow Kong to become a sympathetic character in his own right (which, ironically, was also accomplished in 1933 with the stop-motion puppet).

Unfortunately, the publicity machine really dropped the ball in this respect. Producer de Laurentiis had commissioned the construction of a real 40-foot animatronic ape which, unfortunately, looked comically ridiculous and unbelievable. But if you believed the publicity hype at the time, you were led to believe that it was this incredible machine that did all of that acting and emoting, not the genius of Rick Baker. When KONG was given a special technical Academy Award for the achievement of the giant ape, it was hotly disputed and several people actually resigned from the board of the Academy! Poor Rick Baker....in the credits, he only gets thanks for something stupid like "special contributions," when in fact he's responsible for 99% of what makes Kong so appealing.

And that giant mechanical ape that was constructed with so much fuss and expense? It's in the movie for less than a minute, and only in long shots. Looks like everyone knew that idea was DOA. But the scene that it appears in? It's the NEW YORK DEBUT of a 50-foot gorilla, sponsored by a major oil corporation. That's a reason to rent out Shea Stadium, right? Yikes. No, instead it's set inside a janky little stadium that looks more appropriate for (and holding about as many people) as a 4-H junior rodeo in Kalispell, Montana. A super-weak climax for a movie that obviously spared no expense, other than setting the movie's ending in the Evel Knievel Stunt Stadium.

Other highlights: Some of the special effects are cool (Kong's rampage through Manhattan would make Godzilla green with envy), the score by uber-composer John Barry (he of James Bond fame and fortune) is magnificent, and there's plenty of secondary stars here for B-movie lovers (Rene Auberjonois, John Agar, Julius Harris).

Is it the best KING KONG? No way, not by a long shot; that title goes to the 1933 original. But its pleasures are many, its downsides few (but enormous), and it's definitely worth your time, at least once.

Things I learned from this movie:

1. Jessica Lange looks super-hot, even if she is getting blown dry by a giant gorilla.

2. Can a 50-foot gorilla actually leap from one skyscraper to another? Probably not, but I don't care because it looks freakin' awesome!!

3. If you are riding in an elevated subway car as a gigantic gorilla rampages throughout New York City, do NOT look like Jessica Lange!

Friday, November 17, 1978 was one of the most anticipated days of my nine-year-old life. Why? Because The Star Wars Holiday Special was on TV that night, that's why!

Although Star Wars had premiered 18 months before (back in May of 1977), it hadn't gone away; no siree Bob, not by a long shot. If anything, Star Wars-mania was at a higher pitch in 1978 than it was in 1977, as an endless parade of Kenner toys, Marvel comic books, etc., etc. kept me entertained all through the magnificent year of 1978.

But this was something huge. Back in the days before home video had penetrated into mainstream America, there was only one way to see a movie: In the theaters. Oh, sure, you could catch a movie on TV, but they were frequently sliced and diced (ABC did some horrendous things to the James Bond movies), or split into two parts (which happened more often than you would think). And there was no way in hell that a movie as big as Star Wars was going to be on TV anytime soon.

And that's why The Star Wars Holiday Special was such a huge, huge deal: we were actually going to be able to see our favorite characters in our own living rooms! How awesome is THAT?

I had no idea that I was about to see what is arguably the worst thing ever shown on American television.

The show opens up quite promisingly: Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew reprise their roles as Han Solo and Chewbacca, and they're in a lot of trouble; thanks to the magic of stock footage from the actual movie (which looks HORRIBLE; you'd think that with the blessings of George Lucas behind this project, they could get spaceship footage that didn't look like a fifth-generation bootleg), they're being chased by Imperial ships, but Han promises Chewie that he needn't worry; he'll get him home in time for Life Day, don't you worry, pal. Of course, I wondered at the time: "What is Life Day?" Apparently it's a non-denominational, non-offensive holiday that Wookies celebrate that won't offend anyone in America. Or something.

Since we're off to Kashyyyk for Life Day (okay, we didn't know the name of the planet then, but we know it now!), of course we have to meet Chewie's family, and we do: wife Malla, son Lumpy and father Itchy. Awesome, right? After all, Chewie was the coolest character in the movie, and now we get to see more Wookiees! Actually, what we get to see is three people wearing shag carpeting, puttering around a tree house and honking, screaming and whining. For ten minutes. I kid you not: A full ten minutes of a nationally-broadcast television special was conducted entirely in Wookiee. Even as an eight-year-old, I knew that was not good.

Lumpy turns to his oh-so-high-tech-for-1978 Commodore 64 and conjours up an entertainment program, and this is where the wheels well and truly fall off. What Lumpy watches is a 3-D prototype of Cirque de Soleil, run by an absolutely fabulous bearded dancer in green leotards. How campy and gay is this sequence? Let's just say that if Rip Taylor and Elton John threw a lavish Pride Party on Fire Island, Lumpy's dancers wouldn't be invited because they were too over-the-top. Now that's gay.

Speaking of Rip Taylor, Malla is getting worried about Chewie, so she contacts one of his friends who might be able to shed some light on his situation: Luke Skywalker! With R2-D2! Awesome, right? No, sorry. A particularly color-blind makeup artist apparently loaded a whole bunch of makeup into a T-shirt cannon and fired the whole thing into Mark Hamill's face. He's wearing more makeup than all of the Kardashians combined, and a prettier woman I have yet to see. We're only 15 minutes into this thing, and it's already so bad......

Well, Luke can't help, so Malla wastes another five minutes of our life by calling her best friend Art Carney, who is apparently some sort of merchant somewhere. After painfully putting small children through Art Carney's deadly "funny schtick" (was he ever funny? Certainly not in 1978 he wasn't) and some more poor-quality Star Wars footage of Darth Vader that James Earl Jones overdubbed to make it relevant to this show, we finally hit the first commercial break.

Thankfully, the surviving videotape of this show preserves most (if not all) of the commercials, and they're generally more interesting than the show itself.

Okay folks, we're 20 minutes into this thing.....hang on, and we'll make it through the whole show, but it's going to take several blog entries. There's no way I can take it in all at once. I couldn't even do that in 1978.

Ram On

It must be hell to be Paul McCartney. No, I don't mean the millions of dollars, the unparalleled fame or being a living legend. I mean that it must be hell trying to come up with a setlist for an entertaining concert!

Let's get this part out of the way right now: This is a fantastic show. McCartney's voice is stronger than it's been in years (probably because he's not inhaling the poisonous vapor that emanates from Heather Mills any more), the band is rock-solid and no-one - no-one- on this planet knows how to work a 20,000-seat arena better than Paul McCartney. He obviously loves his job.

But back to the setlist. I'm just guessing here, but I would say that maybe 50 percent of the people at the Pepsi Center last night had probably never seen Paul before. They probably knew most of the Beatles songs, and maybe one or two of his solo hits. And Paul knows that. And that's why he is always going to play "Hey Jude," "Yesterday" and "Let it Be." Can you imagine seeing Paul McCartney and not hearing "Let It Be"? Blasphemy!

I, on the other hand, have seen Paul McCartney five times now. That means that I have seen five performances of "Hey Jude," "Yesterday" and "Let It Be." And that doesn't count the dozens (hundreds?) of other shows that I've heard, but didn't actually attend. Would I be considered a heretic if said that I'm getting a little tired of those songs?

And so, there's the other dynamic Paul has to work with: the hardcore fans who are sick of "Get Back," and are longing for something more eclectic. And that's where I think Paul succeeded rather brilliantly. Last night, I heard "Ram On," "Venus and Mars" and "Mrs. Vanderbilt." Quick! How many of you out there know those songs? Exactly. Would I be considered a heretic if I said that I enjoyed "Ram On" way more than I enjoyed "Hey Jude"?

As we were entering the Pepsi Center, I was, as I always do, grumbling about McCartney. He's a diva (whose late arrival kept us waiting outside in the hot sun for an hour), he's a lazy performer, he's always playing "good ol' Paulie" when in fact he's a calculating schemer, etc., etc., etc. Two minutes into the first song, however, I had a grin stretched from ear to ear, and all was forgiven. And at the end of "Here Today," his mind-blowing tribute to John Lennon, I was weeping like a ten-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert.

So, yeah. Like Laura said, much of the show felt......familiar, and not in a good way. From a purely musical perspective, I'll take a "without a net" free-for-all by the Grateful Dead guys any time, any place. It's more interesting.

But for just pure, unadulterated emotional kapow!......there is no-one better than Paul McCartney. For better or for worse, he truly is the very best there is.


Special thanks to the Denver Post for their amazing photograph from last night's show, which I borrowed quite freely. Please do not sue me! I'm not trying to steal your stuff; I just wanted a nice illustration from last night's show, and your photographers got some great ones.

Get Thai'd!!

So, it was the summer of 1985, a moment in time that, with rose-colored glasses, was absolutely glorious. I was 16, had a car and the world truly was my oyster.

Earlier that year, a very unusual song had peaked at #3 on the Billboard music charts: Murray Head's "One Night In Bangkok." I liked it from the moment I heard it (it was way different than the Bruce Springsteen/Prince/Michael Jackson stuff we were getting day in and day out), but I didn't think too much about it. That is, until..........

One day on the radio, after the song had finished, a disc jockey came on and said: "Who the hell knows what that song is about?" Well, anyone who knows me knows that that's like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and from that moment on I was determined to find out what "One Night In Bangkok" was all about. I listened very carefully to the lyrics, but finally had to resort to a trip to the music store to find the sheet music. And I discovered a whole bunch of weird things.........

First of all, it's from a musical called Chess. I thought that was sort of interesting enough, but guess who wrote the musical? That's right! Benny and Bjorn, the two "BB"s in ABBA! Are you kidding me? Although I totally get ABBA now, I think this information might have soured me on the song back in 1985!

A closer listen to the song reveals some incredibly clever lyrics. It turns out that the narrator (Murray Head) is on his way to Bangkok for a world-class chess tournament, but the background singers want him to indulge in the....um, pleasures that are to be found in Bangkok. But he'll have none of it ("The queens we use would not excite you").

But it's much more than just the world's only song about sex and chess; it's full of incredible puns as well. My favorite line? "Tea, girls, warm and sweet. Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite." Incredible! A pun on how both the tea and the girls are warm and sweet, and then a very nice pun on "Somerset" and "some are set." And that's not just some random crap; it turns out that the very famous Oriental Hotel in Bangkok really does have a "Somerset Maugham Suite"! Check it out:

http://www.famoushotels.org/article/698

Of course, with such playful lyrics, it's not hard to imagine that some people could get them wrong; I'll never forget my friend Derek van Westrum laughing at the line "I hit my kids above the waistline, sunshine!" I didn't have the heart to tell him that it's actually "I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine." Oops.

One other unanswered question about this record: Murray Head? Who?

Well, the esteemed Mr. Head has been on the fringes of music and acting for decades and, before "Bangkok" was best known for performing "Superstar" from Jesus Christ Superstar. But there's an even more interesting "Scott Raile" connection: it turns out that Murray Head's film debut was in an interesting little British film from 1966 called The Family Way, which featured a score by none other than Paul McCartney. As my poor wife will tell you, The Family Way is one of my favorite pieces of McCartney music, and gets played often.

And, as if it couldn't get any weirder, it turns out that Murray Head is actually on the cover of the album Stop Me by the Smiths, which is actually a still from The Family Way! Circles within circles within circles.......

So there it is: More than you ever wanted to know about an obscure minor hit from 1985 that you've forgotten all about. Go check it out again, though! Here's YouTube video that spells out the lyrics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmaJ4G6qhM8

And here's the original Murray Head video, with the orchestral intro that was trimmed off of the single:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9mwELXPGbA&feature=related