November 13th, 2006

Chris Keeley

Now, Poobah here is the king of the Pygmies,” Mr. Hall yaps. The crowd comes closer

Now, watch as Poobah eats the fire

 

The King of the Midway, Ward Hall, upper left, and, clockwise, some of his associates: Diane Falk, a sword swallower; Pete Terhurne, known as Poobah; Chris Christ, Mr. Hall’s business partner; Vicki Condor, left, the Four-Legged Woman, and Chelsea Ramer, a fire eater; and Red Stuart, the Human Blockhead

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/us/13album.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Step Right Up, Ladies and Gents, to See the End of an Oddity
By CHARLIE LeDUFF

YORK, Pa. — Ward Hall, the King of the Midway, has perpetrated perhaps his greatest illusion. He has risen from the dead. He has collected up his big top, rustled up the midget, dusted off the rubber fetuses and beat it back out on the road. Once again, he is the geriatric front man of the last traveling freak show in America.

Retirement just didn’t sit right.

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Chris Keeley

Poor fellow. If Pussy Galore showed up, he’d pour her a saucer of milk.

Vesper is a Bond woman—a Bond Lady of Shalott, I would say, with all the sufferings of the world reflected in her dark-shadowed eyes. Her skin is paper-pale and her lips are vampirically red, as if she hadn’t slept in a hundred years, although, whatever has been keeping her awake, it isn’t sex. She is the only woman with whom 007 partakes of coitus uninterruptus, and even that takes two hours to bring off.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE
by ANTHONY LANE
“Casino Royale.”
Issue of 2006-11-20
Posted 2006-11-13

Who said this: “It is interesting for me to see this new Bond. Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the center of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.” The speaker is Mathis, a kindly French liaison officer in “Casino Royale,” Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, published in 1953. More than half a century later, we are back with “Casino Royale,” No. 21 in the roster of official Bond films, and we are back with Mathis. As played by Giancarlo Giannini, who was recently seen having his intestines removed in “Hannibal,” he is pouchy, affable, and dangerously wise, and his presence hints that this new adventure will not be an occasion for silliness: no calendar girls, no blundering boffins, no giants with dentures of steel. The same goes for hardware, with rockets and gadgets alike being trimmed to the minimum. It is true that Bond keeps a defibrillator in the glove compartment of his Aston Martin, but, given the cholesterol levels of the kind of people who drive Aston Martins, a heart-starter presumably comes standard, like a wheel jack. Whether Bond has a heart worth starting is another matter.

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Chris Keeley

Moreno is a man of average size who often dresses in the modest uniform of Californian skaters: Dick

On “Saturday Night Wrist,” the band returns to the exultant mood of “Deftones,” its near-perfect fourth album. The first single, “Hole in the Earth,” is a miniature apocalypse, alternating between billowing rapture and fearsome pounding.

Moreno is a man of average size who often dresses in the modest uniform of Californian skaters: Dickies pants, a short-sleeved work shirt, and Converse sneakers.

HEAVY WEATHER
by SASHA FRERE-JONES
Deftones’ new album.
Issue of 2006-11-20
Posted 2006-11-13

In the late eighties, two teen-age skateboarders, Camilo (Chino) Moreno and Stephen Carpenter, met in Sacramento and began talking about music. Carpenter, who liked aggressive heavy metal, had been hit by a drunk driver while skateboarding and had bought an elaborate guitar rig with money he won as a settlement. Moreno was a fan of the morose British band Depeche Mode and the Washington, D.C., hard-core punk pioneer Bad Brains. Eventually, he joined Carpenter’s new band, Deftones, as the lead singer. (The name is a pun on “def,” a term of approbation in hip-hop, and “tone deaf.”)

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