The thing that bothers me about the new Pelham 123 is not so much the presence of Washington, but the absence of Walter Matthau.  Besides his uncanny comic ability, there is also the inescapable fact of his appearance.   On screen he was all jowles and dandruff, a ruddy faced boozer with soul in his eyes and a cigarette in his hand.  Good lord that man had a mug!  But alas, his kind are just about extinct. In the coming years, I’m sure there will continue to be many slick remakes of scruffy classics from the 70s – a moment of silence, please, for The Warriors, which will soon be defiled in unspeakable ways by Sir Tony Scott – and each one will only serve to remind us that the beautiful people have, once and for all, vanquished the noble mug.

If there was a Mt. Rushmore of Mugs, besides the one that actually exists (zing, Teddy Roosevelt), the first person I’d put up there would be Edward G. Robinson.  Here was the genuine article, squinty, thick-browed, and constipated, a man who dominated scenes with his muscle, charisma, and wit.  It was his job to cast a shadow on the pretty boys, the matinee idols, to remind us of the different shades of humanity.   Future generations of goons and heavies would owe him everything, including Ernest Borgnine, who also deserves a place on the mountain.  My other favorite, though less well known, is Timothy Carey, whose performance in The Killing is for the ages.

In Hollywood’s hierarchy of angels, I would place mugs on a higher and more esteemed level than the average character actor, for the character actor’s virtue is his total lack of distinction, the ability to move from one role to the next, totally unnoticed.  The mug, however, demands attention.  He can’t escape the facts of his face. The mug is a mug in all situations.  Mugs have lived hard, with verve and tenacity, and even their smallest simian-like gestures bear the burden of experience.  Leading men ring false; the mugs are solid all the way through.

The hierarchy has shifted.  The mugs are dead, or dying, anyway.  Now and then the Cohen Brothers dust one off, and it’s probably safe to say that Steve Buscemi is the last of the mohicans.  The mugs are now played by character actors.  The character actors are now played by leading men.  And the leading men are now played by an endless string of Nordic/Alien hybrids.

When Charles Dickens visited America, he walked the pristine grid of Philadelphia and said, “I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street.”  Similarly, I long for a grim and unforgettable face.  A mug.

Like half the world’s population, I live near a coast, and I know that a souped-up hovercraft would make my life a million times easier, and twice as exciting.  One minute I could zip through the Safeway parking lot, blasting my propellers and inspiring underpriviledged children with my sick hovering moves, and then later, if I wanted to, I could explore some sort of inlet or estuary. Kind of get away from the land for a while, get my thoughts together.  The sun setting behind some reeds and there I am, alone, finally, with “Night Ghost” (the name of my Hovercraft).  You can’t do that in a 2004 Saturn Ion, which is land-specific.  I know this for a fact, because that’s what kind of car I drive.  I paid it off in March and now I want a hovercraft.  But I can’t have one.  Why is it that the general public, which includes me, can’t use hovercraft for anything other than the making of hovercraft promotional videos, like the one shown above? The reason is simple – they are too awesome, and anything that is too awesome belongs to the Military.   Stealth Bombers, Predator Drones, Death Rays – we don’t have access to any of this awesome stuff.  You can add hovercraft to that list.

If the Russian Zubr Class Hovercraft doesn’t get you excited about the possibilities inherent in hover-based mobility, then you’re a pathetic human being.   I’m sorry, but it’s true.  In any case, I can only hope that future generations will learn from our mistakes, and fight for their right to commute to work in hovercraft.  The same goes for jet packs.

(My favorite sixties/seventies recluse, Harry Nilsson, doesn’t really fit into this category, mainly because he was Harry Nilsson – an  exceedingly normal and domestic man with a sense of humor and a sense of irony about himself, who just happened to be a pop genius. Also, a shout to Syd Barrett, who’s reclusion was the result of irreversible damage done by acid.  So much acid.)

By the time Michael Jackson arrived, there was an apparatus in place within the music industry – a business model – to create a star of his magnitude.   In other words, it didn’t happen over night.  Yes, he was a once in a life time performer, but that’s not enough; he was groomed every step of the way by a host of svengalis who knew how to maximize profits.  Eventually, he turned into Wacko Jacko for the same reason that Howard Hughes, Elvis Pressley, Phil Spector, and Brian Wilson turned into their strange and monstrous selves – he could afford it.  The collapse of the music industry means, among other things, that there will never be anyone to replace Michael Jackson.  And I don’t mean his talent; I mean his wealth, the kind of money that allows a deranged man-child to build Xanadu.

(Yes, Prince is still running around, but I’ve always had the feeling that, unlike his reclusive peers, he’s conducting the train, in a gorgeously freaky way.  Of the current crop of pop geniuses, perhaps only Beck, with his connection to Scientology, seems capable of going around the bend, but I doubt it.  Somehow, he has kept one foot in reality, and besides, he doesn’t sell enough records to attain those truly majestic heights of insanity.)

This might change eventually, but for the time being the only people making the big money will be the entertainment syndicates that process overnight sensations like Susan Boyle.  Populism has replaced virtuosity, at least at the top of the charts, and maybe that’s a good thing. If you’re a musician who just wants to be heard, there’s never been a better time.  You can record a song on your computer, post it online, and an hour later somebody in the Ukraine might like it and pass the link on to a friend in Vietnam.  But if you’re a musician who wants to make enough money to live alone in a castle by the sea, then I’m sorry, you’re too late.

This is the point of advertising, of course, and it’s always a sad day when you hear a song you like used to sell vacuum cleaner bags, etc etc, but we’re all sophisticated and past the idea of anything being sacred and to complain about corporate soul rape is to be preachy and sentimental and weak-minded.   I’m as dead inside as anyone else, so it’s amazing when a commercial is so brazenly false and cynical it actually registers in my consciousness, and actually makes me feel something beyond my own smug indifference.  The new McDonald ads make me feel sad, deeply, deeply sad! I’m not even a big jazz fan.  I’ve got a few records and I’ve got a little book with all the old Blue Note album covers, which are the mid-century American equivalent to the illuminated manuscript.  So mainly I’m sad for the true blue jazzbo, if such a thing actually exist.  It’s more likely that this person is a pimply high school math teacher in Wisconsin, than some heroin-crazed vibes player in Harlem, but I want to believe that someone, somewhere, is keeping the flame alive.