Ratz leaving a sinking ship: the pope resigns

I am an ex-Catholic who takes great delight in making fun of the church because... well, it is so certain it is right, and it isn't. It also pretends to be moral and isn't, and is often about as far away from the teachings of Christ as it's possible to be and not be a Nazi. Oh wait...

I'll get back to the Nazi aspect of this latest pope below (“he didn't want to be – everyone had to join the party back then....”). I'll also get around to the fact that the guy knows more about sex abuse in the church than any other pontiff ever has and did nothing to stop it or to punish (or even just excommunicate) the guilty. That stuff just ain't funny, and this is supposed to be a humorous blog post.

So I'll start with the light stuff and then bring on the heavy material toward the end. First and foremost, the media attention given to the abdication... er, resignation of this high-hatted fool has fascinated me, in that it's always fascinating to watch the news media fawn over a leader who literally exists in a dimension where the past is always present and what “we” say is always right (and everyone else? Why they're ALL going to hell....). The coverage has died down, but is sure to be ratcheted up again when the cardinals do their arcane wizardry (puff of smoke, my ass).

I find it very hard to laugh about the cruel realities of the church, but I can enjoy those who speak about its rampant hypocrisy and its backward-looking mindset – and yes, I do think that the other key religions have their backward-looking, we-are-completely-right-on-everything sects, and I have as little regard for them. I was brought up Catholic, however, so I can personally attest to the stupidity and tunnel vision of that faith.

So what is there to laugh about? Well, there is one humorist who always mocked the Catholic clergy in a pretty friendly way. I'm talking of course about Don Novello, whose “Father Guido Sarducci” character I first encountered on a Smothers Brothers comeback variety series in the mid-Seventies (I believe Fr. Guido first appeared on a David Steinberg LP called “Goodbye to the '70s”).

Father Guido is a priest who talks common sense, a gent who will never be promoted to archbishop or cardinal (that stripe “gets you the good veal in restaurants”), most likely because he's been the “gossip columnist” for the Vatican newspaper for the past 35 years. Novello infused the character with brilliant bits like this one, explaining how we all do literally “pay for our sins”:

He also came up with a foolproof way to learn only the stuff that you're left with after a regular education is over. Novello's routines as Fr. Guido have always been impeccable (that sadly misguided bit at the what-was-all-that-about “Rally to Restore Sanity” excepted); Novello's other work, on the Laszlo Letters book and as a comedy writer, has always been spot-on.

With all the affection I have for the Fr. Guido character, I should be doing a whole mock campaign here to get Signore Sarducci to be elected pope. He reported on the selection of Pope Benedict for the Al Franken radio show on Air America; the segment heard here is actually the weaker of two appearances I heard – his explanation of how the pope was chosen was far funnier (as I remember it, the process included being hit in the head with a hammer), but that particular appearance on Franken's show has not been preserved online.

There you have it – there's one guy in a priest's garb that I do love and have loved for over a third of a century. As for my evolving religious beliefs – that went from agnosticism (a discovery made in Catholic high school, mind you) to atheism – I tend to side more with the angry ex-Catholics who know how to sum up the situation in a pithy way. Guys like George Carlin, who pretty much was the poster boy for an evolving consciousness (evolving away from the church).

George inspired many standups over the years, and one who has professed his devotion and debt to Carlin is Louis CK, currently helming the best comedy series being produced in the U.S. Louis has been directing short films for a few decades now, but one of his finest hours (well, four minutes) is this little item from 2007 about the true “point” of the Catholic church:

Yeah, Louis' contention that the church “exists solely for the purpose of boy rape” may seem like a comic exaggeration – but only a little. I personally never was never raped by a priest, but was taught religion in grammar school by a priest who was arrested on child pornography charges (he was arrested in an alley off Times Square, no shit).

He was not excommunicated, merely shuffled off to another parish. My parish was abuzz for a few days with this “outrage,” but all the crazy people who believed kept believing that the church needed our collection-plate dough and all was soon forgotten. (By the way, he had also been running the parish branch of the Brownies.) A small handful of the priests and nuns I was taught by in twelve years of Catholic school were exemplary individuals; the majority, though, were afflicted with alcoholism, sadism, or flat-out insanity.

Thus we arrive back at the soon-to-be ex-Benedict, a man who served in the Hitler Youth and who, according to many, was “complicit in child sex abuse scandals.” To quote a Guardian article from last week, Pope Benedict (according to David Clohessy, the executive director of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests) “read thousands of pages of reports of the abuse cases from across the world. He knows more about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups than anyone else in the church yet he has done precious little to protect children."

Back when he was just Cardinal Ratso Ratzinger, the Pope was put in charge of investigating sexual abuse problems in different countries (among them Ireland and the U.S.; as Pope he also ignored major cases in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria). In each case, the perpetrators pretty much got off scot-free. To quote the Guardian one last time, I cite Jakob Purkarthofer, of Austria's Platform for Victims of Church Violence, who says that "Ratzinger was part of the system and co-responsible for these crimes."

So this pope is not a good, moral human being, he's a bureaucrat and administrator. And therefore I felt that the monologue and sketch about him from the first season of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle needed to be online. The series in its entirety was up on YT at one point, but now exists only as small shards.

One would think the Comedy Vehicle sketch about Pope Ratz would be up online, though, since it interestingly enough links the Pope to Jimmy Savile. Lee and his producers are not accusing the Pope of pedophilia at all – the gag is that Il Papa wanted his strikingly garish red shoes and received them thanks to Jimmy Savile on his “Jim'll Fix It” TV series. But yeah, it seems like a fascinating link to make anyway, between a man who made a habit of molesting young folk and another gent who did nothing to stop the abuse he heard about.

Savile is played by the master Scottish comedian-provocateur Jerry Sadowitz, who did material on Savile being a pedo way back in the late Eighties – that material (less than two minutes worth) got his CD “Gobshite” completely pulled from distribution.

Lee also devises a commercial use for a likeness of Benedict's horrifyingly mean-looking face. (Those racoon eyes, man, those eyes....). Please enjoy:

Note: some of the illustrations in this piece came from http://www.gospelaccordingtohate.com/

Can’t Control Himself: Deceased Artiste Reg Presley

I wanted to do a tribute to Reg Presley upon his death, but the single best paean to his band the Troggs, and to Reg’s own sexy growling vocals, was already written by Lester Bangs in 1971 — it can be found in the book Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung from Vintage, which I urge you *go out and buy* right now.

Lester starts the piece by “calling out” his readers: “…You can talk about yer MC5 and yer Stooges and even yer Grand Funk Railroad and Led Zep, yep, all them badasses’ve carved out a hunka turf in this town, but I tell you there was once a gang that was so bitchin’ bad that they woulda cut them dudes down to snotnose crybabies and in less than three minutes too… They not only kicked ass with unparalleled style when the time came, they even had the class to pick one of the most righteous handles of all time: The Troggs.”

Lester’s article runs a mammoth twenty-seven fucking pages in the book (it originally appeared in a mag called Who Put the Bomp), and it is quite possibly one of the best-ever rambles by a rock critic about one of his fave underrated bands (oh, except for every other blissfully indulgent piece by Lester about yet another one of his favorite criminally underrated bands). The title of said piece? Why, “James Taylor marked for death” (with a short but effective plan to off “sweet baby” JT).

Lester left us three decades ago, but his writing is just as vibrant and enthusiastic now as it was then — and please don’t blame him for the thousands of pop-culture critics who’ve attempted his style without having consulted his sources (the Beats and innumerable poets) and without having a millionth of his talent. Reg Presley was equally unique, although he at least got 71 years to share his rare talents (and singular preoccupations) with us.

Presley died a week back in the same town he was born in, Andover, Hampshire. Lung cancer claimed him, after a series of strokes had only slowed him down (he was still on tour in Dec. 2011 when he got the cancer verdict). Here he is singing one of the Troggs’ best slow numbers “Love Is All Around” in 2009.

Reg (original last name Ball) came from a working class background and worked as a bricklayer until he was SURE that Troggs were actually taking off (i.e. had entered the charts). He had only one wife and remained married for half a century with two kids — a very normal life for one of the nastiest-sounding dudes to wield a mic in the mid-Sixties.

What Bangs taps into in his tribute to the band is the raw tone that the Troggs had. Their best songs have a provocative “garage” sound that set them apart from a lot of the other British invasion bands — the Stones probably were the only British group that bested them in terms of sounding over-modulated and legitimately nasty while selling lots of records (the Kinks and Who were far too well-produced acts with terrific lyrics front and center).

Reg developed other interests as the years went on. He patented an automatic fog-warning device (!), but it was only after his patent expired that it was used at Heathrow. He also became obsessed with UFOs, crop circles, lost civilizations, and alchemy. His 2002 book on these topics was called Wild Things They Don’t Tell Us. (I imagine Lester would’ve been pleased and amused by all this.)

“Wild Thing” was obviously the single biggest Troggs hit, but Presley didn’t write that one (Chip Taylor did). He did, however, write the very memorable “Love Is All Around” and “With a Girl Like You.” The line “your slacks are low/and your hips are showing” from “I Can’t Control Myself” got the song banned from BBC Radio.

Here the Troggs perform “With a Girl Like You” (a lipsynch) on French TV, standing in front of posters of James Brown, Elvis, Brando, and Dean:



The Troggs singles were very well-produced and grungy as fuck, but their vintage live performances were also pretty damned garage. Here they perform “I Can Only Give You Everything” for a live, screaming crowd:


In his epic Troggs tribute, Bangs goes off on these lyrical rambles about what the Troggs’ most carnal-sounding songs were really about. He imagines “I Just Sing” as a come-on sung by a depressed teenage boy on a date, “Give It to Me” as pre-feminism ode to giving pleasure to one’s partner, and “66-5-4-3-2-1” as being a nasty countdown to orgasm.

Those are Lester’s own discursive takes on these tunes (prob composed under the influence of Romilar, or an upper, or a particularly bright moon), but the Troggs’ best singles did seem particularly “possessed” of a kinky fervor:


The Troggs fit snugly into the category of “garage rock,” but they did also take excursions into psychedelia, despite the fact that Reg and his mates weren’t drug-oriented (they drank — and Reg once noted he smoked up to 80 cigs a day at his worst). Here is their trippiest hit, “Night of the Long Grass”:



The Troggs performed together on and off for four and a half decades, but their time in the limelight was waning by the end of the Sixties. At that point, they had an argument in a recording studio that became the infamous “Troggs tapes” (the plural is incorrect but it’s always used).

Presley later said that they were kidding when they were having that “fuck”-filled discussion, but the tape was heavily circulated in the Seventies, becoming a favorite among rockers and fans alike, to the extent that it is said to have “inspired” This Is Spinal Tap. I’ve never found the recording all that funny (it’s just an interesting chronicle of guys who liked to curse cursing), but there is one line that remains: drummer Ronnie Bond declaring that for a song to be good, you’ve got to “put a little fairy dust over the bastard.”



One of the hands-down best latter-day Troggs song was this nasty little item written by Reg — which does perfectly reflect Bangs’ views on the band being a bunch of sex-crazed muthas. It’s a killer and is very rarely heard:



Given my cinematic preoccupations in the Funhouse, the only way I could end this piece clip-wise is with a moment that makes me deliriously happy every time I see it. Two of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s three early shorts exist, and I am very glad he (or his mother?) preserved “Das kleine chaos” from 1966.

The film shows RWF’s debt to Godard and also to American gangster cinema. Its plot concerns three bored young people who decide to rob a rich woman. At the end when they discuss what they’ll do with the cash, Fassbinder devilishly smiles and says “I’m going to the movies” and then the Troggs absolute-killer “I Can’t Control Myself” plays as they run out to their car and ride away.

Music was always an integral part of Fassbinder’s cinema — I’d argue that the composer Peer Raben was perhaps his most seminal crew member, next to his cinematographers. He also used pop-rock from many countries, from Elvis and Janis to Kraftwerk. This sudden, unexpected use of the Troggs is the first example of his perfect use of music in his films, and I can’t recommend the short highly enough as a result — esp. if you like watching people who act like they’ve seen a lot of old movies, as with Godard or Mean Streets. The bit in question kicks in at 8:13:



I can only close out with Lester’s words about Reg’s voice (which he said was linked to “groin thunder” – Bangs was nothing if not a coiner of brilliantly picturesque terminology). Again, this comes from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, published by Vintage:

“Reg Presley didn’t have the Tasmanian-devil glottal scope of an Iggy, but he did have one of the most leering, sneering punk snarls of all time, an approach to singing that was comprised of equal parts thoroughly digested early Elvis, Gene Vincent and Jagger… the best way to describe it would be to say that he sounded raspy and cocky and loose and lewd.” Amen.