You guys, there was no avoiding a post about The Worst Witch on The Critical Condition. As you may have noticed, Doug Strassler usually posts here every Friday, but I got in touch to let him know that I would ALSO be posting today… about The Worst Witch. And it turns out that’s what he was going to write about, too. I’ll be damned!

But really… why wouldn’t we write about it? It’s seriously one of the greatest Halloween movies ever made. First aired on television in 1986 and based on the series of books by Jill Murphy, it tells the story of young Mildred Hubble (Fairuza Balk), the worst witch at a veddy proper school for British witches. Mildred gets teased and struggles in her potions class, but thanks to her potential, sweet nature, and supportive friends, she helps stop a group of naughty witches from taking over her school. (p.s. — You can find the entire movie on YouTube.)

If you think that sounds like another popular story about magical British kids, well… we’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me stress how charming this movie is. Placed in relief against the mile-a-minute, sass-and-attitude style of most contemporary children’s fare, The Worst Witch plays like a gentle, affirming reminder that kindness and determination will bring you everything you need. And I realize that praising the film for its wholesomeness pretty much turns me into Gramps McGee, shaking my cane at the nasty dancin’ on my television box, but there it is.

Of course, the sweetness is not the only reason to love The Worst Witch. It’s also also a camp masterpiece.

I mean, seriously. You’ve got Diana Rigg vamping around as Miss Constance Hardbroom, the coldly disapproving professor who makes Mildred’s life miserable. You’ve got Charlotte Rae obviously having the time of her life as she plays two roles—Miss Cackle, the friendly British headmistress, and  Agatha, Miss Cackle’s nasty twin sister, who wants to take over the school, has pink hair, and is inexplicably Southern. Like… how in the hell did Agatha get that drawl? Did she cast come kind of cornbread spell that she couldn’t shake?

You’ve also got Mildred’s pet cat Tabby, whose meowing sounds are provided by a human actor. You have not lived until you’ve heard some guy making angry cat noises as Tabby falls off Mildred’s broom.

More than anything, though, you’ve got Tim Curry as The Grand Wizard (no KKK reference intended, I’m sure.) The Grand Wizard is not only the world’s finest magician, but also a sex symbol who makes the girls, Miss Hardbroom, and Miss Cackle swoon. Curry just oozes Sexy Eyes every time he’s on screen, and it’s delicious.

He also performs the following song, which is so sublimely wonderful that I almost topple before it:

Sweet mother of heaven, have you ever seen or heard anything better than that? Ever?

You have not. Because no one else has ever had the courage to ask you if you’ve seen his tambourine. No one else had made such use of 80s music video production.

Now that we’ve enjoyed The Worst Witch on its own, I’d like to take a look at its legacy. Won’t you join me in reflecting on the later films and books that owe this movie an enormous debt?

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Last week, I had such a good time reflecting on the number one single, album, and movie of that week in 2000 that I’ve decided to expand the project. For the couple of weeks, I’m going to look at the top ten movies or songs of a particular week… in the past.

Does that make sense? I’m finding it hard to explain this idea.

So… for instance, this week, I’ll be revisiting the top ten songs from this week in 2002. Next week, I’ll look at the top ten movies from a particular week in the past.

The point is to see how the songs and films have aged. It’s always interesting to reflect on whether a work of art is confined to its exact moment.

But enough intro. Let’s dig into the Billboard Hot 100′s top ten songs from this week in 2002!

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You may have heard that Mel Gibson was fired from The Hangover 2, partly because some of the cast and crew didn’t want to work with him.

I can certainly understand not wanting to shoot scenes with a misogynistic, anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic jerk who verbally abuses his wife and publicly calls for the murder of critics who don’t like his Jesus movie.

But I’m still struck by the fact that Gibson got the boot.

For one thing, why Mel and why now? As many have noted, Mike Tyson is in the first Hangover, and he bit off a man’s ear, for God’s sake. Would the cast and crew have protested him if they’d had the box office clout they enjoy now? And if Mel’s lunacy is such a problem, then why is Charlie Sheen still on TV?

And okay, sure, you could argue that Sheen, unlike Gibson, is anchoring the very popular Two and a Half Men, and that success is louder than whoring and domestic abuse. But to use a slightly more correllative example, why didn’t anyone walk out on 30 Rock when Alec Baldwin was cast? At the time, he hadn’t had a successful project in years, but he had been publicly outed as someone who left voicemails telling his teenage daughter she was a “rude, thoughtless pig.” Why have we all collectively agreed to let that one slide?

Is it because Gibson’s lunacies have become too numerous and offensive to overlook? Is he, like Lindsay Lohan, such a freakshow now that the only story anyone wants to ingest is the story of his demise? Is that why his fellow actors felt emboldened to protest him and, just as importantly, why the media feels emboldened to report the story? Because seriously, you know actors get other actors kicked off projects all the time… we just don’t hear about it.

I’m inclined to agree with Frank Rich, who wrote in July that the reaction to GIbson’s “I hate my girlfriend” tapes reflected not only the end of a star, but also the end of the Religious Right’s power. The Tea Party has shifted the language of conservatism, and many of the former leaders of the Religious Right have died, retired, or been exposed as secret purchasers of male whores. Their oxygen-depriving influence on national debate is therefore waning and/or mutating, so a public figure like Gibson, whom Rich notes was buoyed by the Religious Right when he released Passion of the Christ, can no longer be protected by them.

All of which means, ultimately, that people don’t have to feel required to work with Mel Gibson. He’s not a box office draw, really, and he doesn’t have culturally powerful supporters. In his present state, he is at the mercy of others, and if people don’t feel like giving him mercy, then he’s out of a job.

At least… that’s how it seems to me tonight… but honestly, I’m just starting to think through this story. What do you guys think?  Why is Mel Gibson suddenly being shunted aside? What’s making this happen, and why are we hearing about it?

I know Mark doesn’t watch, but are there a lot of Mad Men fans out there? I’ve seen the show from its 2007 bow on, and while my love for it has always remained a conditional one, I loved this past season – the series’ fourth – which just concluded this week. And even though show creator Matthew Weiner left things on a more muted note than last season’s finale, there’s still plenty I want to talk about. Check out my thoughts below, and let me know if you agree or disagree.

I know Don Draper (nee Dick Whitman) is a dapper guy. He dresses stylishly, drinks classically, beds a wide array of attractive women, and is played by a very handsome actor. But here’s the thing: Don is an asshole. He lies to everyone, ignores his kids, and blows company-saving accounts to save his own hide. And let’s not forget that in Season One, the abandonment of his estranged brother helped trigger his suicide. We’re not supposed to like him. But because his character has become so iconic, and because Jon Hamm, the incredible actor who plays him seems so darn likable, we do. As much as I adore this show, I’ll never love Don; he’s too cruel and dangerously self-absorbed. But this season, Weiner and Hamm made me do something better: like him.

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According to Billboard, the new number one song in America is “Like a G6″ by Far*East Movement featuring Cataracs and Dev. If you haven’t heard it, well… hmm. Let’s just say that I don’t get it.  I can walk pretty far down the electronic road, but this song is one robotic mile too far. But whatever. I’m about ten years too old for it anyway.

I wonder, though, if “Like a G6″ will hold up in 2020. In ten years will anyone feel good about it? It’s too soon to tell, of course, but it’s just the right time to look back at the biggest hits of 2000 and see how they’ve aged. Join me as a I revisit the number one song, album and movie  from this week back in 2000, when the world was innocent, Clinton was still president, and we were closer to Crystal Pepsi than we were to Pepsi One.

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Y’all know me. I try to live atop the cresting wave of the zetigeist. But sometimes, a hooker gets busy on her corner, you know? That’s why I didn’t get around to seeing The Social Network until just a few days ago.

And let me ask you: Has any movie been more hyped this year? Sure, Inception got a lot of props, and people were stoked about Toy Story 3, but based on the way the media and many of my friends have talked about The Social Network, I thought the love child of Jesus and Orson Welles descended to earth on a film canister made of gold, tossed us this movie from within the folds of His fragrant robes, and then ascended into the clouds whispering “I’ve friended you, I’ve friended you, I’ve friended you.”

One of my co-workers, for instance, referred to this movie as the new Citizen Kane. New York and Entertainment Weekly ran breathless cover stories and created fawning videos. And according to Metacritic, out of 42 reviews, only one was less than a rave. (Ironically, this lone holdout was also in New York magazine. I love David Edelstein.)

As for me? Well… I’m with Edelstein and Roommate Joe. I find the movie disappointing. Yes, David Fincher’s direction is striking and several of the performances (especially Andrew Garfield’s as Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin) are admirable, but on the whole, everything seems phony. From the dark-and-disconnected score to Jesse Eisenberg’s oh-so-quirky performance to the smug writing, the film is determined not to  feel anything, risk anything. It stands at a cynical remove from Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and everyone else, letting you know in the first scene that we should go ahead and feel superior to everything we see.

The movie makes Zuckerberg a robot, and as Edelstein notes, it makes his adversaries cartoonish buffoons. It makes Sean “Napster” Parker, played with verve by Justin Timberlake, into an archetypal devil on the shoulder, promising paradise when he knows he’s in hell. It makes them into characters we’ve seen a squillion times before.

Worse, The Social Network condescends to its audience with cheap flattery. It takes the posture of a cool, intelligent piece of art, but in reality, it reduces a massive subject to two basic tropes—everyone wants money, dudes create stuff so they can get laid—and then encourages us to accept those statements as gospel. You know, as if they encapsulate the phenomenon of Facebook, the reality of a young billionaire, and the internecine struggles of the technological elite.

It serves this reduction so that we will feel good about ourselves. It’s empowering to be told we “get” these people, especially since they created a computer program that most of us use every day. It’s flattering to be told that “they” are all maladjusted losers, and that “we” are sophisticates who have the right to contemptuously assess their lives.

But at the end of the day, that makes the film itself the devil on the shoulder. It’s telling us that we’re awesome. It’s inviting us to feel proud and hip for agreeing with its oversimplifications. It’s giving us permission to glance at an issue and feel that we’ve really explored it. That may make The Social Network popular, but that does not make it good.

So… yeah. That’s my reaction. I’m fully anticipating that most everyone will disagree with what I just wrote, but that’s okay. At least we can discuss it on this website, this piece of social media, which I assure you I did not create because I wanted to bang some hot dude.

By DOUG STRASSLER

Singer Patty Smyth occupies a special piece of real estate in my music-loving heart. Those who know her might know her best as the lead singer of Scandal, an 80s pop-rock group with two hits that are both so good – “Goodbye to You” and “The Warrior” – I still can’t decide which one is better. Each time I listen to one, I’m convinced that’s the best song. Until I hear the other. (I was beyond obsessed with “The Warrior” when I was five. The video, the song… everything. I bought the 45 single, and the record sleeve to that single is now framed and hanging in my apartment. Seriously. It’s right by the entrance to my bedroom, just above the framed sleeve to the “Material Girl” single.” — Mark)

Scandal was a minor league version of female-fronted bands like Blondie and The Pretenders, but husky-voiced Smyth was an absolute pro. That’s why Van Halen initially approached her to replace the departing David Lee Roth. She turned it down, opting for a solo career. However, it wasn’t until her eponymous second album (pictured above), released in 1992, that she scored an out-and-out hit.

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Even if you haven’t seen the Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys—which is the latest from Chicago writers Kander and Ebb—I think you’ll get a kick out of this story I just wrote for TDF Stages, the theatre magazine I edit by day.

Two of the show’s stars, Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo, took me inside their process for creating their characters. It’s fascinating, because they play a pair of minstrels who become all of the white characters in a story about the racially motivated trials of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 20th century. Essentially, these actors are required to embody both characters and a metaphor, and they were really specific with me about how they do it. (Turns out, they have very different approaches.)

(Some of you might know Domingo from his roles in Passing Strange and The Big Gay Sketch Show. Let me tell you that he’s just as good in this show.)

Pink and Kanye West have been among my favorite artists for years now, so it’s high times for me right now. Both of them have new singles, which means new joy in my life.

Well… in one case it does. Upon closer listening, it turns out that one of these fresh jams is pretty good, and one of them is a full-fledged Disasterpiece.

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I love The Amazing Race. I truly do. But last night’s episode was off. And maybe a little ignorant.

Mild spoilers ahead… but I won’t tell you who won or lost.

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