#Technically you don’t have to have seen the monkees to see head . but you know

[bloodenjoyer]

should i watch the monkees show first or watch head 🤨mystery question

actually really good question. You can watch head first and then watch the monkees and then return to watch head again with a new mindset. if you’re crazy

[myplasticadversary]

Idk if ur into this still but im having more Sheatles universe thoughts inspired by the girl monkees post.

You know how George and Pattie never had children? I think this would have negative consequences on girl George somehow like I think people would speculate on her being infertile and talk about how she’s depriving men of fatherhood and it wouldn’t help that she was already one of the weird girls and people would moralize about how she doesn’t understand the gift that is motherhood a lot, especially if we’re going off the idea of John having Julian and suffering with ppd. Like they’d be pit against each other (“even John settled down!”) or lumped together as failures as women especially in contrast to Paul (and Ringo I think). George also seems the most likely in my eyes to get an abortion but also it’s the 60s so it would probably be very dangerous and would have disastrous consequences media-wise if it ever came out. Thinking of Brian being not very helpful in this scenario because he can’t decide whether he wants to support her decision to get an abortion and help her or if he’s too worried about the media finding out.

I’m not sure if Ringo has Zak in this universe but if she does it makes things even worse for John and George because she’s so maternal. Like behind the scenes I don’t think ringo would actually be that great of a mother especially because I think she’d still have issues with alcoholism, but she’d probably have them more in the “wine mom” sense where people laugh about it and don’t register it as a problem , and her media persona is already the mother of the group so people really don’t recognize any of her issues.

I also think in sheatles universe The Beach Boys should also at least partially be girls. In this universe I think they’d have kept their og name the Pendletones, I also think Brian and Dennis would be the women. Dennis would 100% get the Courtney love treatment she’d be seen as a total bitch hated by the media and given she was the only one actually into surf culture I think this would have a negative impact but I dunno how. Once she dies tho she does have a group of dedicated fans who want to understand her and respect her like how Anna Nicole Smith and Marylin Monroe have now. (Also trying to wrap my head around how girl Dennis dating Mike Loves alleged daughter would have gone. Because it’s important to me that that’s still part of the lore that Dennis was having a possibly incestuous relationship with Mike Loves daughter).

Girl Brian… I’m fascinated with the concept of girl Brian. Brian is already so infantilized by the media (partially his own doing but you know), I believe she’d be fairly heavily put into the “born pretty yesterday” trope by the media. The media would 100% oscillate between praising her genius and making her out to be this totally useless attractive face.

I think she’d technically have her mental issues addressed way earlier than the 70s but it would not be productive at all like instead of getting her schizoaffective disorder treated she’d be labeled as hysterical so fast. Oh my god her body would be commented on so much more; people still give credit to Eugene Landy for “saving Brian” (aka starving him so he was thin) it would be soooo much worse in a universe where Brian is a woman people would be making horrible rumors about her like they did to Cass Elliot. People would be more willing to recognize her as having an eating disorder than they do guy Brian but I don’t think it would garner a lot of respect. I can’t see girl Brian getting pregnant tho probably because I can’t see her dating a 14 (15?) year old especially when Murray was their manager he already smacked them in front of fans he would be so much more controlling if he had daughters.

I do think they would all still be seen as revolutionaries in some ways like I do think Brian would still have an unprecedented amount of control over the studio in the beginning and their harmonies would still be considered great but I’m not sure people would find Brian’s falsetto as impressive if he were a girl. Mike Love wouldn’t have to sue for credits on songs because as a man he’d be seen as way more of a driving force than he’s considered today. When Brian cedes a lot of control post 1967 I think there would be a feeling of like “well she had a good run but now it’s time for a man to do a man’s job and actually run things.” I don’t know if there would be as much of a push for the “Brian is back” campaign in this universe because again they’d think it was time for the boys (in this universe Mike, Carl, Al and I guess Bruce) to step up. I also do enjoy the thought of Brian still writing all those car songs considering it’s such a male dominated interest and I do think there would be some sort of talk amongst guy fans of “wow a woman that shares my interests she’s my dream girl.”

There’s a lot of songs in The Beach Boys catalogue that have been rightfully criticized like “I Wanna Pick You Up” or “Hey Little Tomboy” and I dunno if they would be written if Brian was a woman but if they were it would still be criticized but I think there would be a lot of speculation as well or like, was there some form of sexual abuse going on which in girl Brian’s life I unfortunately think probably would have happened.

I also think the implications of Dr. Landy having so much control over Brian in the 70s and 80s being so so so bad like I just frankly think she’d be taken advantage of even more than male Brian. I’m not sure how Melinda saving Brian would play out.

There’s a part of me that thinks Brian would have ended up with Al Jardine (in which case I think things actually would probably have been way better for her because Al doesn’t have a lot of controversies and seems like a pretty stable guy all around). I can imagine the anger on Murray’s part extremely early years if Brian and Al were like high school sweethearts and it seemed like Al was going to provide a stable life going off to be a dentist and then joined back in the band at the last minute. I actually really like the idea of high school sweethearts girl!Brian and Al. Considering they were “America’s band” there’s a lot of PR that could come from that of this perfect couple playing in a wholesome band where they make songs about going to the county fair together, but then Al would probably be given more credit than he actually had (which was admittedly quite minimal). Meanwhile behind the scenes Brian is losing her mind and Al is just not sure what to do with this new “hysterical” version of her. Oh! It would also make a lot of sense for Brian to constantly take Mike and Al’s side later on with decisions about new managers if she was not only scared of Mike but also siding with her husband.

Ooh I hadn't considered girl Dennis! That does kinda make sense though considering from what I understand Dennis was sort of brought into the group as an afterthought for the sake of including him, and as a girl I'm sure she'd be even more of a black sheep. But then on the other hand she'd probably be the most eye-catching of the group as the "surfer babe" archetype, which means I think they wouldn't want to keep her behind the drums lol. And if she and Brian are both girls that could add another layer to the comfort they find in one another as the trainwrecks of their family, while probably also Dennis envying how Brian gets to be more than just the looks and gets at least some respect as a true artist and musician. I don't know if Murry would still be physically abusive to girl Dennis, but I could see it if she's inclined to instigate trouble, and then there'd be the betrayal from Brian and Audree not sticking up for her more.

(No comment on marrying Mike Love's estranged daughter djgdgj it's so insane to me. I could see there being some element of girl Dennis looking like a pervert cougar though)

So I've got a lot of thoughts about girl Brian (and I want to pause for a second to say that you should totally check out the book "Summer Fun" by Jeanne Thornton, which is a speculative alternate history imagining what if the person in Brian Wilson's position had been a closeted trans woman and it explores her journey of discovery coinciding with their version of Smile as she approaches an ambitious project and intends to come out but gets shut down, and it's really moving and earnest. @telephonicsonnyboy turned me on to it and I appreciate that ❤️) and I'm probably gonna put them below a cut right now!

First off, regarding Marilyn. I've decided not to genderflip her and so instead the dynamic between her and Brian is more that Marilyn admires and wants to emulate her musically and Brian latches onto her as a friend because she has trouble relating to other women her age whose lives seem to revolve around their boyfriends or husbands. And maybe Mike gets a bit annoyed at Brian's fascination with girl groups like, "oh yeah why don't you just go be in one then?"

I have thought about her and Al Jardine, and I do definitely believe that the media would make them out to be this sweet forbidden love story, forbidden because her brothers and Murry would've threatened to kick him out of the band if he ever tried to sleep with her. My thought was that she ends up kissing Al just to get it over with and relieved when the sparks aren't there and they can just be friends, but I also like the idea of him being one of her constant on-off flames.

Now I think of Brian as a lesbian who doesn't realize it for a long time because she figures that as long as she's technically capable of being with a guy her attraction to girls doesn't really matter, and I see her eventually entering a romantic relationship with Melinda and coming to terms with herself having that safe harbor. As for her first husband, I imagine him being sort of a Van Dyke Parks type who sees her potential as a groundbreaking songwriter and briefly becomes her collaborator, and she gets pregnant partially on purpose to get out of the stress of touring and have more time to work on her music at home. Of course this backfires when being a mother turns out very physically and emotionally taxing on her, with her husband not doing much to support her because he doesn't see what he's supposed to do.

Also, for sure Mike would be seen as much more of a legitimate collaborator to Brian (and subsequently get in a big dick competition with her husband), but I think also Carl would be a lot more actively creative early on just due to pressure from Murry like, "if your sister can do it why don't you boys ever show some initiative?" So I think Brian wouldn't have been saddled so much with the responsibility of being the Genius of the band, but her being there and playing and writing her own stuff would be significant enough on its own, and I think she'd get a lot of attention from various counterculture and women's lib groups to mixed effect. There'd definitely be criticism of her more traditional expression of womanhood which would put her on the defensive, but overall the recognition would help a lot to boost her ego at least until her mental collapse.

Landy, right. Oof. For the record, I don't want to openly speculate on what he might've done to real Brian (though I will say there's a non-zero chance, considering that when Landy was under investigation he was apparently found to have had a rape allegation with another patient that he'd settled out of court, and in general he gives me the vibe of a controlling gold-digging spouse), but with girl Brian that's especially likely. And then that in turn makes Melinda all the more empathetic and horrified and righteously angry at Brian's fucked up pseudo-marriage with her doctor.

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Quick catching up...I hope.

I saw:

Jingoku- It’s a hell of a movie.

No, really. Hell. Lots of hell. As in around half way through the movie every single character is dead and we follow them into hell. And it’s an unmerciful and unforgiving place to say the least.

The movie follows a college student that gets involved in a hit and run with his demonic pal. Or is the pal a sort physical manifestation of another part of himself? This real world section isn’t close to real, functioning on dream logic, so it’s very possible. When he tries to turn himself in, his fiance dies when the cab they are in crashes. He has a one night stand with a woman he picks up in a strip joint, and she’s the girlfriend of the guy killed in the initial accident. She and the dead guy’s mother have vowed vengeance. Meanwhile the student gets called back home to see his dying mother. His father is openly having an affair while running a retirement home that neglects the residents. Corruption, selfishness, and cruelty abound, and the one bit of light for the student seems to be the daughter of a neighbor that looks identical tp his dead girlfriend. But like I said, everyone dies soon and hell awaits.

Hell, means we go from something of an uneasy dream to full on surreal nightmare. Torture’s abound in a world of darkness and colored lights, where a baby that was never even born can be condemned to an existance of floating down a river forever. Some  images are symbolically troubling, like body parts emerging from the ground or a field of glass like shards, other just flat out bloody as the afterlife is far more gory than their actual deaths.

Very bleak (even if the final image might be seen as a bit of hope) and very good.

Swimming Pool- An English mystery writer, tired of what she’s been doing,heads off to her publisher’s home in France to be on her own to write a while. The one day the publisher’s daughter shows up unannounced. The two women clash, seemingly quite different in nature. The younger woman bringing home one night stand after one night stand for loud and uninhibited sex is just the most obvious example. But then the writer seems to get friendly , but actually is using the girl for writing fodder. When the girl finds out she strikes back by inviting the local waiter the writer had been flirting with to be her next conquest. Something very terrible happens in the night....

SPOILERS (sort of)

The ending was hardly a surprise, since the main character was a writer and what was revealed was just what most storytellers do.  The contrast between the two women is cliched, but considering the nature of what we are seeing it makes sense. No one said the writer protagonist was a particularly intellectual or arty author, just a popular one, so why should what we see be particularly nuanced? Like when reading a book, it can be fun to toy with teasing out the reality behind the fiction. Or in this case I should say “reality” since we are talking about the nature of a fictional writer being the game. 

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Hercules Against the Moon Men- Herc the wanderer (cousin of Groo the slow of mind?) ..er...wanders to a place where long ago a something from space went whamo. Since then the beings in the mountains have called for human sacrifices. Now the evil queen (there are a lot of them around) has decided to be in a cahoots with the poorly masked dudes to gain ultimate power....bwahahaha! Can our hero help the local rebels? ummmm..you do know wandering heroes usually win don’t you?

Sadly the movie is boring and the SOL gang failed me this time. It’s odd to say that a movie where they have riffs referencing Doctor Who, Jim Henson, The Monkees and Woman in the Dunes didn’t make me laugh much. 

Truthfully there was a bit too much of my least favorite kind of joking. I find “this actor looks like that actor” gags mostly space filler, especially since they are usually straining themselves to find a resemblance. Worse, the  fact the guys find male anatomy repulsive gets on my nerves. If a guy wears a skimpy outfit, or the camera catches their crotch or backside, the guys moan loudly “Ugh! NO ONE wants to see that!” but if it’s a gal the bots get to be on the verge of another kind of moaning as they almost say “Hubba Hubba!”. Personally I believe in equality of sexual exploitation. If male anatomy is gross, then female anatomy of gross. If female anatomy is sexy, then male anatomy is sexy. (example:  either make cheerleaders an equal mix of male and female ALL in short skirts, or get rid of the sexualized teenage females jiggling at the sidelines of high school sports)  So yeah, dudes, we get it. You are uncomfortable with anything that hints at the sexualization of make bodies in the way you find female bodies acceptable. But you know, SOME of us don’t mind a bit of male flesh now and then and find female flesh boring as hell.

Anyway, I dunno. The whole thing just feels sort of tired, like it was made late in a season or something. Dull episode for me.

I Spy- No. Ugh. I mean.....UGH! Awful!!!!!

A boxer, of the super obnoxious egotistocal type, gets recruited to help a sad sack spy get an invisible plane. Possibly someone stole it from Wonder Woman, I dunno. The boxer refers to himself constantly in the third person, and it’s even more irritating than when Elmo does it. In fact I reached a point where I threatened to stab myself with my sculpting tool if he said his own damn name one more fucking time! The question is, did I actually go through with it, or did I stab the chair? (Poor chair!)

See, back in the 1960s I Spy was one of the tv shows my parents watched, so when Mom saw this movie for a couple of dollars at a store checkout she got it. She remembered the show fondly, but didn’t look at the box. I had to break it to her that this was actually a movie staring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson. Since she knew the show and I didn’t I figured it would be interesting to see which of us liked it more.

Neither. It’s just plain bad. Really bad. I thought this movie was horrible. Mom was down right disgusted. 

If I liked the original show this would be up there with the Land of the Lost or Wild Wild West on the “movies that make me want to punch the film makers for what they did to my show”. ** Probably the top of the list, since at least with those two films there were some technical aspects that were nice. Sometimes you just have to wonder why they have made so many movies based on old shows when they haven’t bothered to either respect the original or gone off and just used it for inspiration for something new. If you are going to just coast on old affection for a property then at least have the decency to act like you liked the original. And since it’s stupid to expect fans of shows decades old to heat up the box office, maybe you should instead work on trying to make something, oh I dunno....good. Half the movies on MST3K have better scripts!!! And even that one I grumbled about above was more fun. This was actively annoying. 

**In case you are wondering, I’m actually usually pretty forgiving about these things. For instance, the  Tim Burton Dark Shadows movie or that notorious Avengers film (Steed and Mrs Peel, not Iron Man and Captain America) entertained me despite not capturing the spirit of their sources.