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So I was hanging out at Asian Porn Videos the other day, just minding my own business with my alter ego embedded in an undulating cylinder of polyurethane, when I noticed for the first time a link that allowed me to...
Flag as inappropriate
…my video of choice at that moment. This is the same Asian Porn Videos
that I blogged about in this space not so very long ago; the one that offers, among its other many sundry
delicacies, the avant-garde piece “Japanese with Mouth Full of Cum Licks Guy’s Face.” It also features a series starring a pride of Japanese chicks who like
to cheer each other on as they take turns fellating a thrice-worthy gentleman (which I thoroughly endorsed), and another series
in which men in public places discover a mysterious stopwatch that can
freeze time, allowing them to have their way with all the time-frozen females
they find around them (which I found too creepy even for my rather catholic
tastes).
That said, I must confess that I was skimming a new installment in the latter series—the earlier episodes had left so many unanswered questions, don’t you know—when I discovered the aforementioned link that said
Flag as inappropriate
At the precise moment of the link’s discovery, I was witnessing a man undressing
and probing two friendly convenience store clerks as they smiled vapidly
in suspended animation, and it was wrong, just so very, very wrong. Still,
I couldn’t bring myself to click the link. I mean, it’s not as if the scenario
would inspire any real-life perverts to go out and wreak havoc with a time-suspending
stopwatch. And after all, we live in a day and age now where evidence mounts
that watching fantasy porn of this type actually soothes savage beasts
and reduces sexual assaults. On top of which, both of those clerks were wicked cute.
But the whole sorry episode got me to wondering: On a site that actually
offers a movie in which dozens of free-range Japanese girls are herded around a spacious ranch, what on earth could possibly be regarded as “inappropriate”?
There must be something that would cross the line, I figured. After all,
even Satan, during his tempestuous affair with Saddam Hussein, declared
certain behaviors “just not appropriate.”
Since it’s August, after all, and I owe the world a post, I set about cobbling
together my little list of the 10 things that I would flag as inappropriate on the Asian Porn Videos website
1. Karl Rove offering political analysis.
2. Raymond Burr delivering his rendition of “Windmills of Your Mind” on The Sonny and Cher Show *
3. This
4. And this
5. Clutch Cargo cartoons with creepy live-action mouths and mumbling Eskimos
6. Anything Shamwow-related
7. Apparently unironic paeans to Kim Jong Il (Or “Kim Jong the Second,” as Jesse Helms used to affectionately call
him.) I mean sure, he’s Asian and all. But still…
8. Evidently sincere paeans to minstrelcy
9. Inadvertent paeans to minstrelcy
10 Really, though, it’s hard to top this:
* Before this episode aired in early February 1976 I discovered a notation in TV Guide to the effect that guest Raymond Burr would be performing “Windmills of
Your Mind.” It would be an understatement to say that I was excited. The
prospect of the stolid, panda-eyed Perry Mason star bursting into song spoke to something deep inside me. One of the
few TV sets to be found on our dorm floor was promptly commandeered, a
supply of weed and Hauenstein beer was laid in, a kegger and a chest-boxing
tournament were postponed. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
If it’s February and you’re in Mankato, Minnesota, your entertainment options
are few and far between.)
“You’ve got to come over and watch this with us,” I implored more than
one seldom seen old friend. “It’s Raymond Burr! On Sonny and Cher! And he's going to sing! And get this—it’s “Windmills of Your Mind,” for the love of God!
The big night arrived. We suffered through an grueling skit in which Sonny
portrayed an Alzheimer’s-afflicted Sam Spade. We tolerated an insufficiently
naked Cher caterwauling her way through “You Make Me Feel Brand New.” We
gritted our teeth through another skit featuring Sonny as the Lone Ranger
and Cher as Tonto. Finally, just before the final commercial break, the
dorm-room crowd growing restless to the point of rebellion, Sonny and Cher
read vapidly from cue cards their precooked introduction to “Windmills
of Your Mind.”
I sort of knew something wasn't kosher from the introduction. No video
record of the introduction (nor of the performance itself) survives, to
my knowledge, but to the best of my recollection, both Sonny and Cher emphasized
the marvelous way that Raymond Burr “did” a song. Not “sang” a song, mind
you, but “did” one. The word “unique” was bandied about rather freely,
as I recall. My heart sank. A murmur of unease wafted over the throng packed
into my friend Arnie’s room like a fart in a lunar module.
Raymond Burr sat on a high stool dressed all in black, a turtleneck swathing
his burly neck, a hollow-eyed stare plastered onto his puffy face. Behind
him sprawled a monochrome, arachnid-themed set, all black drapes and cobwebs.
“Like a circle in a spiral,” Raymond Burr then said—yes, said, not sang—“like a wheel within a wheel.” He paused to add, “Never ending
or beginning” before muttering “on an ever spinning wheel.”
And so it went, the chunky, vaguely sinister actor glaring balefully first
at Camera One and then at Camera Two as he croaked on and on through his
lines in exactly the same prickly monotone that he employed when cross-examining
a hostile witness, showing no inclination whatsoever to burst into song,
until he concluded: “Like the circles that you find…in the windmillsssss…of
your miiiiiind…” as the camera slowly zoomed in on his broad, waxy face
until dissolving into a gray blur and the orchestra crescendoed into orgasm
and members of the studio audience, whose young children were no doubt
being held at knifepoint just offstage, erupted into rapturous applause.
No, there are not a lot of entertainment options at one’s disposal in February in Mankato, Minnesota, but there was not a person in that dorm room who could not have hit upon a half dozen ways he might have better spent that hour than waiting for and then being grossly disappointed by Raymond Burr’s performance of “Windmills of Your Mind.” I will not bore the reader with the ungracious remarks which old and dear friends heaped upon me both during and after Burr’s read-through, or recitation, or whatever you might call it.
It is a humiliation that I carry with me to this day, some three and a
half decades later, even as Raymond Burr’s corpse deservedly rots in some
neglected grave. And that is why I rank his performance of “Windmills of
Your Mind” as a thing that would actually demean and debase Asian Porn
Videos.
In conclusion, God bless the United States of America, and fuck Raymond
Burr.
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