It was 10 years ago this week that Phil Hartman died. We won't rehash the circumstances of his death, though, because that's not why we're here. We are here to pay tribute to the immensely talented man, who lives on through his outstanding work on Saturday Night Live, NewsRadio (40 episodes of NewsRadio are online), and The Simpsons. Here's a small sampling of some of our favorites, courtesy of Hulu and YouTube.

"The Sinatra Group"

"Cooking with the Anal Retentive Chef"

Perot and Stockdale

Clinton hits McDonalds

"Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!"

The tour guide scene from So I Married an Axe Murderer.

- Ryan Stewart

BAD TIMES
5 years ago
May 16, 2003 | Dan Kennedy called for “tougher standards” in journalism in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.
“Yet by purging Blair, it would be wrong to think that all is now well at the Times, or in journalism. Tougher standards are needed. We all deserve better. I was struck by a comment that Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center...at Harvard’s Kennedy School, made to USA Today. Jones noted that in the Times’ self-examination, the family of former POW Jessica Lynch and others said they were well aware that Blair had falsely claimed to interview them...But they didn’t complain to the Times because they didn’t expect any better of the media. ‘They didn’t say, ‘Holy cow,’ this is somebody who is clearly unscrupulous.’ Instead, their response was to shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Hey, what did you expect?’ ’ Jones was quoted as saying.” Read Full Article

GOOD RIDDANCE
10 years ago
May 15, 1998 | Matt Ashare presented the 1998 BMP award for Best National Act to Radiohead.
“For a band whose career in the US was launched in 1993 with the kind of perilously catchy...single that can easily kill a band's career by marking them as a one-hit wonder, England's Radiohead have truly come a long way. Sure, ‘Creep’ was great the first dozen times you heard it, but you can't blame Thom Yorke for not wanting to sing it anymore...Johnny Greenwood hated the song so much from the get-go that he tried to muck it up with those cacophonous false starts on his guitar...But Yorke, Greenwood, and the rest of the band refused to be defeated by success, returning in '95 with The Bends (Capitol), a disc...with absolutely no ‘Creep,’ a disc as complex as ‘Creep’ was simple...

“The Bends in all its convoluted glory was really just a twisted prelude to OK Computer (Capitol), which arrived last summer with nothing resembling a workable single and very little in the way of a coherent lyric. Majestic probably doesn't begin to describe the operatic scope of the album, but it's not a bad place to start...So now some of the same critics who wrote the band off after ‘Creep’ hit the charts are holding Radiohead up as modern-rock saviors, which they probably are.” Read Full Article

SELECTIVE LISTENING
30 years ago
May 16, 1978 | After having had bad experiences with living arrangements due to his musical pursuits, pianist Paul Raeburn seemed to have found the perfect situation.
“Not too long ago, I thought I had solved all my problems. I had an apartment to myself (no roommates to worry about). It was on the second floor (not too difficult to get the piano in and out). And the downstairs neighbors never complained. I could never quite understand why they never complained, but I was happy to let the matter rest.

“In fact, so tolerant were the neighbors that they allowed several people to enter the apartment one weekend when I was away and help themselves. When I returned, I found that the burglars had chopped a large hole in the door, upended the dresser, pried into a locked metal file cabinet, strewn clothes and books everywhere, and the neighbors, bless their hearts, had never said a word. Stereo, television, tape recorder, typewriter, piano amplifier...had been removed. Miraculously, the piano stood in the center of the living room. (I don’t blame the thieves for not taking it—I know how difficult it is to get it down the stairs.)” Read Full Article

THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-SHOTS
35 years ago
May 15, 1973 | George Kimball pointed out the differences between those folks sitting in the grandstand and the clubhouse and those in the infield at the Kentucky Derby.

“If you are a Governor or a Mayor or a Newspaper Editor or a Kentucky Colonel or if you just happen to have a lot of money or happen to be on intimate terms with somebody who has a lot of money or even somebody whose family once had a lot of money then you will wind up in the grandstand, the clubhouse, or in one of those boxes near the finish line which run about $50,000 for Churchill Downs’ 50 yearly racing days but which are rarely used save on Derby Day...

“If, on the other hand, you (a) have developed a tolerance for claustrophobia, (b) loved Woodstock, (c) have an aberrant penchant for attending spectacles you are unable to see, (d) drink a lot, and (e) don’t have the money or the connections for a seat, you will end up in the infield.”

Just yesterday we got a weird email from Zebbler, a/k/a Peter Berdovsky, whom you will perhaps remember as the naked hippie/video artist responsible for last year's terrorista art uprising Cartoon Channel-funded movie stunt that had Boston's Finest mistaking lite-brite boards for IEDs. The email mentioned that a) hey, it's the one year anniversary of Mooninite Madness! (TM), and b) Zebbler is still broke. He also threw us his resume, which is actually so impressive that we're thinking about hiring the guy. In any case, we find it hard to believe that it's pure coincidence that we awoke today to the sudden appearance, just around the corner from us at Fenway Park, of a Mooninite tribute depicting Zebber-as-Mooninite.

In any case, above and below are some pictures of the stunt, and -- provided the cops don't make us look like hillbillys by freaking out again -- we wouldn't be mad to see this become an annual public-art tradition.

Mooninite, oh, Mooninite, you seriously rocked our faces off with your daring neon stare, cool 'tude, and box-like figure.

See!

[Photos by Kevin Banks]

TOUGH LOVE
5 years ago
January 31, 2003 | Michael Bronski remembered the tough-as-nails, gay journalist Sarah Pettit.
“I DON’T KNOW that I’d say I enjoyed working with Sarah Pettit. One of my first dealings with her was in 1993, when she was the arts editor for Out magazine. She called me on a Monday to ask for revisions on a piece I’d written. She needed the rewrite by Wednesday. I told her that I’d do my best but that my lover, Walta, was having brain surgery on Tuesday. A shunt was being placed in his cranium to drain fluid that was building up because of an AIDS-related infection...When I was finished, she paused and said, ‘Well, that excuse might work in Boston, but it won’t fly here in New York.’

“I love telling this story — which always shocks people — because it epitomizes Sarah’s complexity. While some might have found her remark insensitive, I took it as she intended: a form of humor that people — mostly gay men — use in an attempt to make the horror of AIDS emotionally manageable.” read full article

INDOCTRINATION STATION
10 years ago
January 30, 1998 | Lucky duck Mark Bazer scored a free ticket to the movie, Orientation, playing at the Church of Scientology.
“After a complete tour and a brief conversation with an L. Ron expert..., the Guy [film’s narrator] laid it on the line. ‘You stand at the threshold of your next trillion years. You can either live them in shivering darkness or in the light. The choice is up to you.’ Then we met some happy Scientologists. A plumber, a lawyer, an accountant and . . . an actor. It was Vinnie Barbarino himself. ‘What has Scientology helped me with?’ Travolta asked, grinning. ‘A better question is what it hasn't helped me with.’ Next up: Kirstie Alley. ‘Without Scientology, I can honestly say I would be dead.’ In other words, we have Scientology to thank for Veronica's Closet.” read full article

A.I. GORE
20 years ago
January 29, 1988 | In the weekly column “Spurious,” the Phoenix concluded that then-inconsequential presidential candidate Al Gore might be part cyborg.
“Beginning to end, the performance of Al Gore, who is acting more and more like the Manchurian candidate. Take it from me, when an extemporaneous speaker says that he has ‘10 reasons’ for supporting or opposing anything, and then ticks off all 10, he has either been uploaded with data or else he is just making everything up, a good bullshitter, and could keep on adding to the list all day long. In Gore’s case, however, there remains another disturbing possibility — that his wife, Tripper, or whatever her name is, is actually controlling him with the same high technology she uses to decipher rock lyrics. My vote is that he’s programmed. When Gephardt joked that Gore was acting ‘more like Al Haig than Al Gore,’ it took a full five seconds — a full ‘five Mississippis’ — for Gore to smile. The only explanation is that there was some system malfunction, or that he was on tape delay.”

LITTLE DEVIL
25 years ago
February 1, 1983 | Alfons Heck described what it was like growing up a member of the Hitler Youth.
“My days in the Hitler Youth were happy ones...: I was young, and I was becoming a fanatic. My grandparents, who raised me, were apolitical people whose farm was better off under the Nazis. My father...and my mother had moved away from the farm to run a family business...Once...when he visited and saw me preening in my uniform, he told me I looked like a little clown. Certainly he never had my blind faith in the Fuhrer. For my part, I thought his point of view was simplistic, out of touch with the truth about the Reich: after all, he had never been to high school...He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944...but was released...He lived to tell me what a fool I had been.” read full article

"Gee, too bad the article isn't as good as the illustration." Illustrators have heard this from editors since the first stick scratched in the dirt. Boston-area commercial artist and graphic-novel illustrator John Garcia routinely equaled or out shown his collaborators.

He died a few days ago. He was a phenomenal talent, and he shouldn't pass simply like the lone Pony Express rider galloping away into the dark night from one of his drawings.

John loved 'Cowboys and Injuns' (Native Americans now), owl-hoots and varmints, the whole Western genre. He knew the number of buttons on a cavalryman's tunic. He told stories with pictures. He also had to bring home the bacon, so he drew TV storyboards, scripts for ads. His work was brilliant. See for yourself at www.garciagrafix.com. His art will be bright in your mind forever.

Most important, he was as generous as a soul could be; it's near impossible to find a person with such a giving spirit. He was the phone call that rang in my darkness, the man whose characters always seemed to smile even as the arrows and bullets flew. At the end of the film To Kill a Mockingbird, as Gregory Peck walked out of the courtroom after failing to dowse an injustice, a wise man, segregated in the Southern courtroom, told Gregory's child that a great man just passed. John Garcia passed. An exceptional man who was more than an exceptional illustrator has passed into that dark night.

_Roger Jones

Holday cheer!

CBS is rolling out the super sexiest/weirdest Chistmas/Holiday(??) schedule ever (see below). A Ricky-Martin-meets-Rudolph-under-the-push-up-bra sort of thing... 

A spinning spiral of pouty models, The Bumble, and The Island of Misfit Toys. Who looks better in faux fur? Who is Heidi? Who is Seal? Are they characters? Are they real? Are they Santa's TV elves? Haphazardly scheduled bring us holiday cheer and loathing.

Tuesday, December 4th (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT): Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Tuesday, December 4th (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT): The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
Friday, December 7th (8:00-8:30 PM, ET/PT): Frosty the Snowman
Friday, December 7th (8:30-9:00 PM, ET/PT): Frosty Returns
Friday, December 7th (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT): Movies that Rock (a celebration of music and film!)
Friday, December 21st (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT): 9th Annual A Home for the Holiday with Sheryl Crow
Saturday, December 22nd (8:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT): Elf

From the inbox:

"We pass over most lines that are presented to us, but we stocked Art Terror by local artist/MassArt grad Gordon Riker immediately because of it's distinctive and intelligent designs. He was killed this year in a bike accident at age 22. I got together with his brother Andrew (he runs local dance party Paper) and Project SF, and hung Gordon's last works and painted a tribute mural.   

This Friday, Sept 7, 6-8pm at Bodega we'll hold his final art show, and will be releasing his last designs for his Art Terror line.   All proceeds will be going to Gordon's Art Terror Foundation."