I am severely off-balance entering into this New Year. I appear to have officially joined the Middle-Age Club with my purchase of one of those pill organizers that you ladle each day’s pharmaceuticals into so you don’t get confused. It’s more laziness on my part than any actual fear that I’ll get confused; it’s simply easier to flip open one compartment every morning than five bottles. Not really helping is that the store only had two sizes of these organizers: a little too small and a LOT too big. I feel like I’m cracking open a Casio keyboard to get my pills.
I spent four and a half hours in a dental chair last Wednesday (the assistant was really surprised it took that long, too) with the result that the busted front tooth now has a clunky temporary tooth jammed into its space, while I wait for the crown to be manufactured. The temp actually looks pretty good, and I’m happy to be able to pronounce my sibilants and fricatives without special effort again, not to mention being able to manage the occasional slight smile. Let me tell you, that last two weeks of shows in December looking like I’d been through a bar fight (or months of meth addiction) was pretty nerve-wracking.
And hey, speaking of shows – I started rehearsals for Shadowlands last Tuesday night – yes, the night before the dental appointment, more concealing my deformity from folks – and it is very hard to express just how happy that makes me. I’ve been doing the Mystery Cafe shows for years, but working on an actual show in an actual theater which people will pay to see, during which there will be no clanking of silverware or people leaving in the middle of an act to get another beer… well. That’s heavenly. Going to wind up spending more than I earn on gas and tolls, but I don’t care. This is for my soul.
The drive there and back is providing me with time to catch up on podcasts. It means I will finally get through that five hour ‘cast on the death of the Roman Empire (jeez) and the like. Speaking of such things, my involvement with the Daily Grindhouse podcast continues, and I find I’m digging on doing research again. It’s pushing me into watching more movies, though not quite in line with my New Year’s resolution to watch more good movies. (The relatively high quality of Lethal Force notwithstanding) Having finally scored a bootleg of Kubrick’s first (and disowned) film, Fear and Desire, I finally own the man’s total output, and can embark on my personal project of watching them all in order. It’s shocking how many I have never seen, and the ones I have – well, that viewing was likely a decade ago. Or two. Maybe three.
Note I didn’t do anything so stupid as to resolve to watch nothing but good movies. I have a metric buttload of questionable DVDs I still have to watch. My sleep schedule as usual shot to hell on Saturday, I watched the Ian Richardson Hound of the Baskervilles (again, research) and found it to be a very credible version – in fact, it may be my second favorite after the Rathbone version. I find the Brett version rather lackluster, not even in the running. The Cushing/Hammer version is in third place. I’d love to see the two-parter the BBC did with Cushing; hell, I’d also love to see the four-part TV version with Tom Baker as the Great Detective. Not quite so interested in re-visiting the 1972 American TV version with Stewart Granger as Holmes, even with William Shatner playing Stapleton. I saw it on its first broadcast, rmember thinking it was okay, but just not British enough.
I should take time to mention that Ian Richardson was a wonderful Holmes; many qualities of his performance here were transferred into his Dr. Joseph Bell in Murder Rooms, which is likely the worst title ever for a TV series. The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes is only a little better. Bell is, of course, the fellow Arthur Conan Doyle based Holmes upon, and the four episodes of the series were based – one can only assume very loosely indeed – on the two men’s meeting and subsequent adventures. Well worth seeking out if you’re a Holmes fan.
The Richardson Hound is also worth a look, if only for the surprising breadth of its cast. Brian Blessed as the red herring Lyons, and Connie Booth as his abused wife; Denholm Elliott as Dr. Mortimer, Ronald Lacey as Lestrade, Elenor Bron as Mrs. Barrymore… those are just the ones this benighted Yank could easily pick out. Donald Churchill’s Watson is a bit too much in the bumbly Nigel Bruce vein for my liking, but that’s not his fault – it is a rock-solid Watson all the same.
Hound has always held a special fascination for me, not only because of the supernatural elements, but also because of its position in the Holmes canon. Told as a flashback by Watson, it was written and published after Doyle had infamously killed Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, and before he finally gave up and resurrected the character in The Adventure of the Empty House. Holmes is absent from the narrative for the entire second act, and I begin to wonder if this wasn’t Doyle slyly attempting to wean the public off the Great Detective. In any case, that give rise to one of my few complaints about the Rathbone Hound – Nigel Bruce’s Watson turns out to be pretty competent until Holmes shows back up, and even being in the same room with the sleuth, even is disguise, causes Watson’s IQ to drop by 80 points or so.
Hah. You see? It’s dangerous to get me onto the subject of Holmes. What’s that you say? What about Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows? I didn’t mind it. I enjoyed the first Downey Holmes – it was more of a proper mystery. Shadows was an adventure movie with Holmes as a protagonist. I still greatly enjoy Jude Law’s Watson.
So yes, I don’t actual qualify myself as a Holmes fan – I’m a Watson fan. A good Watson can make me overlook a lacking Holmes, as is the case in the Asylum’s Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (truthfully one of their better mockbusters – but not, by any stretch, a good movie). A great Watson meshes with a great Holmes to create magic, as was the case with Edward Hardwicke and Jeremy Brett, James Mason and Christopher Plummer, Colin Blakely and Robert Stephens (Blakely was the first to show me how wonderful Watson could be), Law and Downey – and let us certainly not forget Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, who have been exhilarating.
"Oh, I SAY!"
I’m sorry Nigel, it wasn’t your fault – the producers wanted some reliable comic relief, and you obliged them, and obliged them well. You just weren’t my – sorry – cup of tea.
And good grief, my simply here’s where I am now has somehow turned into a thousand words on Sherlock Holmes.
It happens.
EDIT: How the hell did I forget Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine? Without A Clue is the shiznit if you’re a Watson man.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
The light is beginning to fade on the last day of 2011 as I write this. I’ve had an awe-inspiring two weeks off at the end of this year, and believe me, I have taken to this like a pig to mud. The fact I can’t sleep for a consistent stretch of time at night? Big deal. The day is mine to nap away. About the most useful thing I’ve done is drive to the grocery store.
Oh, not that it’s been dull, heavens no. I reached another crisis point with my hillbilly teeth (pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but both my mother and her mother had full sets of dentures before they were 30), and was hoping to use those two weeks to have all sorts of dental horrors visited upon myself. No such luck, as my first appointment came, and it was discovered my blood pressure was way, way, too high. As in go to your doctor right now high.
How long had it been that high? Who knows? As one of the millions of Americans without insurance, that’s not a question I can answer. My last checkup was (mumble mumble) years ago (HINT: it is a double digit number). I’ve been blessed with relatively good health in that time, possibly karmic repayment for having spent most of my childhood in hospitals.
In any case, after a week of medication, my pressure is down to acceptable levels, and some anti-cholesterol drugs have been added to my breakfast. I joked on Twitter that since my daily pill intake quadrupled overnight, my breakfasts are now very filling.
Bad thing, of course, is my dentist then went on her holiday vacation, and the horrors begin the day after I return to work, and start rehearsals for a show that opens in late January. Sigh.
But let’s talk about some good things, okay? Back in October, I came into a little money. Great considering how much the dental adventure is going to take (remember, no insurance. And in my experience, dental insurance ain’t all that great, anyway). I had enough left over to do something I’d wanted to do for a long time: buy a TV made this decade.
Timing couldn’t have been better, really. Those fancy-pants LCD HDTVs have been getting cheaper and cheaper. I found one at a price point I could tolerate – so good, in fact that I bought a Blu-Ray player, too – and though I hear things about “Buyer’s Remorse” I have to report that is a totally alien concept to me.
In other words: Holy. Crap.
I’m not a complete idiot. The first thing that was watched on this new TV was Dancing With The Stars. I shake my head sadly to admit this, but my wife is addicted to reality TV. Using ethical ju-jitsu, though, I managed to use that to my advantage.
(A brief side-trip: During her Thanksgiving break, she indulged in her once-yearly watching of “her soaps” and related to me, with great relish, how one actress whom she had long considered the epitome of loveliness was, in fact, a wretched creature of acne scars and layers of pancake makeup)
Needless to say, this has rekindled my too-long dormant love of movie-watching. I had meant to watch many more during this long break, but hey, you know… napping. Getting the crap scared out of me by doctor folks. And God help me if I should get in the way of Dancing With The Stars.
The God Help Me part is especially cogent when you consider the first full-length movie I sat through in Blu-Ray was Green Lantern. I, along with several million other people, hadn’t seen it in the theaters. Now, admittedly, as it was my first HD movie experience, there probably some halo effect, but: I thought it was okay. Not terrible. I watched the extended version, which apparently put back a lot of Act One character development absent from the theatrical version. Flawed, to be sure – the worst offense being that each and every character is a dick. I came closest to identifying with Tomar Re, and when your most sympathetic character is a dude with a talking fish head, there are problems.
I didn’t keep a real record of where I went from there, but I’m pretty sure the next stop was a Blu-Ray Scott Pilgrim or Punisher: War Zone I picked up used from various local outlets. The Criterion Blu of Seven Samurai was a probable improvement over the movie’s opening day condition. One of the things I definitely put days aside for on the break was the HD extended versions of the Lord of the Ring movies which were simply stunning.
I’ve been relying on a lot of foreign films these days:
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a kung fu film noir directed by Tsui Hark and starring Andy Lau as the title character, who is freed from prison by the Dowager Empress on the eve of her coronation because people are spontaneously combusting. Why was Dee sent to prison, why, for treason against the Empress, of course. Interesting, convoluted story, but the HD transfer does, sadly, render (heh) the CGI even more obvious.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is one I’d heard a lot about, and saved it for Christmas Eve. It’s very odd and completely novel, but promises more than it finally delivers. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, though.
The Last Circus I found disappointing. When a box is splashed with verbiage like “Cult Status Assured!” and “The Most Insane Movie I Have Ever Seen” you are expecting some high weirdness. I won’t argue that some of the stuff is indeed weird, but… it wasn’t what I was expecting. Hell, I’m not even sure what I was expecting. There are parts I am still chewing over in my head.
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen was another sad disappointment. It’s a sort of sequel to the Bruce Lee Fist of Fury (in the US, The Chinese Connection), or better the Jet Li remake Fist of Legend (mainly because Chen survives in that version). Chen Zhen does return after fighting in France, taking on the Japanese occupying Shanghai again. At least, when the plot allows him to. Donnie Yen is our current Asian martial arts superstar, and it seems that director Andrew Lau is trying to see how much movie he can put between fight scenes. That Chen steals a movie costume and thus fights as what is undeniably Kato from The Green Hornet is… I’ll be kind and say it’s an odd choice.
I also recorded a couple of podcasts with The Daily Grindhouse site, only one of which is currently available, about the really, really good zero-budget action movie spoof, Lethal Force. That one, I can recommend. The other Blu-Ray I got because Geoff was so effuse in his praise was Intruder, which is a slasher, and I hate slashers. Intruder, alas, did not change my mind. Oh, and this trailer is spoiler-iffic. You been warned.
And now I’ve been informed that the downstairs bathroom is broken and we are down to one bathroom with two houseguests for the weekend. Good thing I’m on blood pressure medication. Too bad that medicine makes me pee a lot.
But – let’s be positive. That also means that in one week, I’ve lost ten pounds in water weight.
So Happy New Year, everybody. Here’s hoping 2012 is a good one, all our problems can be solved with pills, and the Fifth World is a definite improvement.
Well, that was a very, very busy September. Busy enough that, in a pattern that goes back – well, the rest of my life – once my body caught the slightest whiff of any time off, it declared, “Aha! Well, here’s the physical collapse you’ve been putting off all summer.” The fact that the body started it two days early didn’t help matters much. The Saturday night show was achieved largely by dint of Dayquil and chutzpah. The show must go on, you know.
So Sunday? I was pretty sick Sunday. I took Nyquil that night (alright, store brand whatever) and woke up a couple of times the next morning, dehydrated as hell. Drank some water, went back to bed. All in all, I slept some 14 hours, and felt better for it. Which is good, as I was behind in everything, Work, The Secret Project. All behind.
Yes, I am involved in a Secret Project. I can’t tell you anything about it, because it’s Secret. Duh. Don’t be silly.
Oh, the Huge Manatee!
This is entirely different from my other project, which is trying to get Animal Planet or possibly Nickelodeon or Disney interested in my new TV reality show, Those Fucking Cats. The show was conceived when I began wondering how our cats were gaining entrance into my bedroom, although the door was closed. Turns out the younger cat, Tubby (who was named Eva until she ballooned to the size of a manatee) was simply hurling her bulk against the door until the latch mechanism gave way, allowing the older Hideous Mutant Cat (named Nicodemus, with polydactyl claws and a propensity for eating plastic wrap) to get inside, knock everything off every level surface, and – I swear to you – leaving one of those extra claws embedded in the mattress exactly where I will sit down. Those Fucking Cats.
I bought a new doorknob to replace the ancient one Tubby had managed to jimmy and tried to replace it Sunday before I completely collapsed – this after a couple of nights of barricading myself inside my bedroom, using a suitcase and a wooden table. And let me tell you, there is something beyond annoying about hearing a small thump thump THUMP against your door at midnight as a confused furry manatee tries to gain entrance to its new kitty wonderland) Anyway, the doorknob I bought had a defective latch mechanism anyway, so I didn’t have a door so much as a slab of hinged wood with a hole in it. I gave up and let the little monsters sleep in the room with me Monday night. They are, at least, fast learners, and have figured out that when you jump on the fat guy in the bed, he tends to wake up screaming, thrashing, and hurling whatever is on top of him against the nearest wall. So I slept pretty well that night.
The next day I felt much better, went to work, got a little caught up, returned the doorknob and got a new one, went grocery shopping, and replaced the doorknob to the dismay of Those Fucking Cats. Ta Dah!
So. I’m trying to ramp back up on The Secret Project. Met my work deadline. I’m no longer running audio for City Council meetings, and I have to say that’s sort of like missing episodes of a soap opera you only had on in the background anyway. I’ll miss the catchphrases and the extra money, but that was one of the things that contributed to the collapse.
Also, I’m likely cutting back to only one show a week with my murder mystery dinner theater; the owner made an odd decision, earlier in the year, to do not one, but two of those twofer deals, Living Social and Groupon. Just one of them would have been bad enough, but oy. Both assured her there wouldn’t be that many sold – and of course there were – and certain other assurances were made. The best screw-up was when the Groupon salesman, in the comments for our offer, contradicted Groupon’s own terms of service, and told customers that the Groupon covered gratuity and the like. So we got to tell several hundred people that he was lying.
Parallel to all this, I was reading a webcomic by Kevin Church and Paul Salvi called [The Line], which is about a restaurant, and in their current storyline, they are dealing with the fact that their owner/chef, an autistic cocaine addict, has entered into an agreement with a similar outfit (the arc starts here). [The Line] has kept my boss sane in the intervening month, because the stories about the entitled louts who feel they are entitled to everything because they clicked on a two-for-one coupon are all true. I am sort of used to dealing with people who have never seen an actual theatrical performance before. These folks however – I’m not sure they have ever dined anywhere more upwardly mobile than Denny’s.
Now, to be sure, most of the folks were decent sorts who enjoyed the show, and only some of them treated the show as if it were the TV in their family room, and it was perfectly all right to have a conversation at normal volume with the person across the table. We always gotten those. But we were getting a lot more of them.
Well, by doing shows on Friday and Saturdays, were able to move most of them through, and now the coupons have expired. (Best thing so far: “I have this Groupon, and it expired yesterday. Can I use it in November?”) This means we’re likely slipping back to one show a week, and this – like not doing City Council – means less money.
Hence, I need to get back up to speed on The Secret Project. And remember, call up Animal Planet and demand to know why they’re not showing Those Fucking Cats.
There, I can produce 1000 words of bitching and moaning, just like anybody else.
Wow, I know I like to say “Feast or famine” a lot to describe my professional life but jeezum crow give me a break.
Currently: gearing up for this season’s news at my regular job. From September through December, I’ll be producing a four-minute video every week. That’s my mornings right there. Then shows Friday and Saturday night. 7 to 8 evenings per month running audio for the live broadcasts of various city functions (though the guy I replaced on these is out of the hospital and may be easing back into those duties).
That’s my basic work template. I stay busy. I get bills paid, sometimes even on time. But I’m always looking for more, because, hey. Things need doing. Dental work. Car’s eleven years old. I haven’t had a check-up in 14 years. Home repairs I am in no way qualified to even attempt.
You know. Life’s Rich Pageant.
The last couple of years haven’t been good for my workflow. The beginning of the year marked an upswing when I contracted to help write a book that was an ethics training course disguised as a choose-your-own-adventure novel. I eased back into prose writing, eventually wondering why I wasn’t writing for myself anymore. The major problem being I don’t want to write something that’s not in at least some respect original, and I’m pretty dry at this point. There’s the germ of a novel I’ve been trying to tease out for more than a decade and it just ain’t coming. So I decided I’m going to do the obvious thing, and swing at it for NaNoWriMo, and see what happens.
Well, what happens is that work starts coming out of the walls.
First, the people for whom I wrote that ethics novel are gearing up for something later in the year (or early next year) which would involve writing an episodic short novel entirely int he second person and avoiding personal pronouns. I like a challenge as much as the next guy, but that really sounds like some thought experiment you read about on Boing-Boing.
Then, the guy who gave me my start in video production has an interesting idea he wants to run by me, and yes, it is interesting, and yes, it is something I’d be interested in doing. The idea is developing rapidly, beyond my ability to keep up with it and still keep my regular juggler’s balls in the air. He calls, wondering why I’m not inundating him with excited e-mails.
This morning: I had agreed to do a small role in an ongoing film project in which my wife is involved. One of the other actors has gotten hospitalized, and they need someone to do the role this Sunday. Am I available? Am I a quick study? Can I do this?
I’m very tired. The wife’s cat has made it his hobby to see how loud a noise can be produced at 4:00am, with whatever props are available. I need to be digitizing video, but my eyes won’t focus. There are many things I would rather be doing right now. Memorizing lines for Sunday are an “A” priority right now, but so is an excited e-mail or two. Sleep would be good, probably with the Horrible Mutant Cat safely locked in a padded cell. I’m fooling myself, however, as I what I really want to be doing is continuing my re-read of Powers.
Powers is a comic book (me, reading comics. Fancy that!) by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming that I got hooked on about issue 6 or so after passing it over repeatedly because I found Oeming’s art “too cartoony”. Frankly, I still do, but I can’t imagine the book without it now, and his panel layouts are often incredible. But what has always made it for me is Bendis’ dialogue. I love his dialogue, and people may whine about his tendency to “decompress” stories, but bah phooey on them.
Powers is a police procedural taking place in a city where there are super-heroes and villains; our protagonists are two homicide detectives who specialize in cases where people with powers wind up dead. The series has twists and turns a-plenty – some of which, predictably, pissed off readers – and now it’s being turning into a TV series. During the run-up to that, the book has come out less and less frequently, so it’s time to re-visit it.
That seems to be the mood I’m in, once more: re-reading an entire series and seeing what I get from it, years after the fact. I did this a few years ago with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Scott McCloud’s Zot! and Jeff Smith’s Bone. Those are all amazing, and I got a lot more out of enjoying them as a whole rather than serialized story. After Powers it looks like I’ll be revisiting Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher, which is, shall we say, unique, and I’m now crawling through used bookstores and my collection to drag together a complete run of James Robinson’s Starman.
After the movie-watching orgy of T-Fest, I’ve found it hard to get it up for another movie, but last Saturday I finally got to see Troll Hunter, which is the best Blair Witch Project I’ve ever seen. Comparisons between the two are going to be more than inevitable, but Troll Hunter has humor and likable characters on its side. That and the fact that you get to see something, but that’s just being mean about Blair Witch‘s zero budget. It would probably be nicer to call Troll Hunter a better Cloverfield.
Anyway. Rather be home right now reading funnybooks. But when hasn’t that ever been the case?
T-Fest was a small B-movie festival started by myself, Chris Holland of StompTokyo, Ken Begg of Jabootu, and Sandy Petersen of Call of Cthulhu (and a ton of other games); we did it because we wanted a reason to get together in the Summer, after the New Orleans Worst Film Festival ceased operations. The first, tiny iteration was in a hotel meeting room near me in Sugar Land; after that, Sandy was able to wrangle venues for us in the Dallas area, so my dream of minimal travel time was quashed, but big deal.
This year Chris couldn’t make it, and I did. Sandy and Ken have apparently been putting together something called “Tween Fest” in the Spring, but my getting-away time is limited, holding down two and a half jobs as I do. I try to make the big one in July/August as often as I can.
The other character in this tale, offstage through much of it, but always making its presence felt, is the frankly unrealistic heat of this Summer. We had been sweltering in 103 degree days here in Houston, so of course I drive up to Dallas where I can enjoy 108 degree days. I have done stupider things, but not recently. The air conditioner in our meeting room was not cutting it when we arrived in the morning, and lading in 30+ movie nerds didn’t do much to help. Sweat was never running into my eyes, but it wasn’t, shall we say, ideally pleasant.
Good God, the things I will do to watch bad movies with people of a similar bent.
Now, Ken had begged off (pun not intended, but…) of any movie choices, as he claimed to have been monopolizing the Tween Fests. This left Sandy and I with three choices apiece. I wound up supplying a bit more than that, but let’s not get ahead; I think I have a bit of reputation at T-Fest of being a nice guy. I rarely bring things that put a big hurt on the audience. Probably the worst thing I ever brought was Mystics in Bali, and even that was exotic enough to take some of the sting out. The year before when the copy of Mystics I had brought turned out to be Region 2 and unplayable, I whipped out Sugar Hill, which was warmly received. I brought Island of Lost Souls and Dinosaurus. I like entertaining people.
So, when the original schedule started being rearranged, I was a little nervous that one of mine was up first: The Deadly Mantis, which cannot truly be called lively. One of the things I want to do before I kick off is watch this movie with a stopwatch in my hand and finally determine how much of it is stock footage. I reckon it at 50%, as a rough guess.
This is pretty much classic late 50s Universal programmer claptrap: competently made and entertaining. It’s no Them!, but it is a nice enough Giant Bug movie, and at less than 80 minutes, a good warmup for the day’s anti-festivities.
I also had the next movie, which was to be the 1983 Sandahl Bergman version of She, which has absolute bupkiss to do with H. Rider Haggard’s novel. In a post-apocalyptic world, She guides a couple of guys to… something. And on the way they do… stuff. Hell, I’m not even sure the reels are in the right order on this custom DVD I have, taken from a VHS with a strong picture. The costumes were basically pulled from everybody’s closets and, seemingly, by raiding the costume departments of colleges or local theatres and using everything. Football helmets with swastikas painted on them, Italian Renaissance jester costumes, wetsuits, you name it. It’s like some half-assed comic book Jack Kirby came up with while he had the flu. Like I said, a good, stable picture, but not strong enough audio to continue watching. Which is too bad, as people were getting off on the WTF nature of all this, and they never got to see this guy: (whom I could only find en Espanol. Sorry.)
So we resorted to my backup movie: The Lost Empire. (Intriguingly, Ken had also brought a copy of that movie, just in case).
Yes, remarkable as that may seem, it is a Jim Wynorski movie with an actual budget, possibly in the tens of thousands of dollars. It is entertaining trash from roughly the same period as She – both were released in 1985 – and honestly, Empire is a lot more fun, if infinitely more disposable. And in case you were wondering, yes, that is Angelique Pettyjohn in that one fight scene.
Please note that the Youtube uploader added the fight music from Amok Time himself.
Here’s the thing: Lost Empire runs a lean (one might even say economical) 85 minutes, while She is a much more turgid 106. We were clipping along at a good pace, and had time to spare. Sandy slipped in an episode of Ultraman (the original TV series, which I think is Ultra Q, and if it isn’t, someone will tell me soon), concerning Blowhole Monster Gamakujira, who likes to eat pearls. This (of course) makes the sole female member of the Science Police very, very angry (“It is a woman’s wrath!”). Most notable for Ultraman not doing anything particularly useful, and for the Science Police literally ramming a rocket up Gamakujira’s ass and shooting him into space.
Youtube, alas, has failed me here.
Sandy next cued up Sh! The Octopus, which I believe he also mentioned was the movie his father singled out as “the scariest movie ever”. I was looking forward to this, as I had only heard about it before, and it did not disappoint, even though I was not sure what to expect. It is basically a spoof on “old dark house” movies, particularly those modeled on the play “The Gorilla”, which had been made into a movie umpteen times by 1937. It is also a spoof that feels like it is directed by David Lynch, as it has a dreamlike and frequently nightmarish quality throughout (appropriate, given its denouement), which I was not expecting in a comedy. It also stars Hugh Herbert, who is that comedian who keeps going “Woo hoo hoo!” in really old Looney Tunes.
Still running ahead of time? Well, says Sandy, here, have the very first episode of the 1966 Batman series, featuring Jill St. John and the Batusi.
And then it was finally deemed time for Sandy’s annual B-movie quiz. This year, the subject was Mad Scientists. The posters for 30 science-fiction/horror movies was shown. The goal: write down the name of the Mad Scientist for each one. This is harder than you might think, as none of the Mads was named Pretorious or Mabuse. In a gesture of munificence, the last poster actually was Frankenstein. I got 4 and one-half correct. High score was 6 out of 30. Brutal.
Dinner break at the nearby Twisted Root Burger Company. Delicious food. I was tempted by the idea of a deep-fried hot dog, but I’m also getting old enough that I don’t think pouring grease into my arteries is a good idea. Instead, I wrecked other parts of my body with a peanut butter shake.
I dropped my wife off at our cheapass hotel (truthfully, she did make it almost 30 minutes into Deadly Mantis…) and returned to find that the ungrateful wretches had started my third movie, The Super Inframan, without me. Though, as Scott Hamilton pointed out via Twitter, it wasn’t like I don’t have that memorized.
Inframan is Shaw Brothers’ sole entry into the Kamen Rider-style Japanese superhero market, which is a pity, because there is not a single frame of this movie that does not please. The monsters are creative, and… well, that’s really all we need, right? The monsters are cool and they all know kung fu. The fact that Inframan is played by Danny Lee, who 14 years later would play loose cannon cop Li opposite Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo’s The Killer, just makes it better.
They couldn’t have started the next movie without me, noooooo, because Sandy Petersen is a monster who decided to unleash H.G. Lewis’ children movie Jimmy the Boy Wonder upon us. To those who have not experienced the mental disconnect necessary for this event, allow me to explain. H.G. Lewis is the director who graced us with such fare as Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, and The Wizard of Gore. He made two children’s movies. This is one.
In Sandy’s defense, the other one is even worse.
The Jimmy of the title is a boy who wishes time would stand still so he wouldn’t have to go to his first day of school. Unfortunately, he does this at the exact time that such a thing can happen each year. So Jimmy has to take a giant Christmas tree ornament to the Clock At The End Of The World (which is located in Coral Gardens in Florida, for all you Nude on the Moon fans), all the while pursued by the evil Mr. Fig, who, um… well, we’ll let him explain it.
Look, I had to sit through four of these damned musical numbers, you can do one.
Jimmy is reportedly 69 minutes long, but because that little bastard stopped time, it seems to be six hours long. It is not helped by some strange padding; Lewis bought a then-unfinished French cartoon, reportedly The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird, re-dubbed it, and edited it into the middle of the movie as a “story” told to Jimmy by Aurora, his distaff Virgil in this guide to the Inferno. I am hoping that the sync on this print used in the Something Weird DVD is off, otherwise Lewis and crew (Lewis is apparently the voice of the Captain of the Cats) just didn’t freaking care that it looked like lines were coming out of the wrong mouths. Never mind attempting to lip sync.
A couple of years ago, when Sandy showed Nightmare City, a joke petition demanding that he never be allowed to choose another movie was circulated. This time, the petition was bypassed and we went into full-blown lynch mob. He quickly defused this by showing the infamous kung-fu sex scene from Chinese Torture Chamber Story. He then squandered that good will by following it up with Neil Sadaka’s “Do the Jellyfish” from Sting of Death.
This was followed by the final battlescene from the Turkish Rambo clone, Rampage (Did you know? Rocket launchers go “toont!” when you fire them? And spare rockets litter the ground, like in a video game?), a clip from the Mexican demon movie, Don’t Panic, with unfortunate subtitles (“Do you believe in Stan?”), and the remarkable dog vs cat kung-fu scene from 1000 Year Cat.
Once again, we were running ahead of time, so I was able to slip in an old favorite: Dark Intruder, a failed TV pilot from 1965. It starred Leslie Nielsen, still in his leading man days, as an occult detective in 1890 San Francisco. In this episode, he’s investigating a series of murders: each victims is savagely slashed, apparently by claws, and a carving is found at each murder scene. The movie has a brief mention of Lovecraftian gods, and flirts with them several times over this course of its brief hour run.
In the past, I’ve been pleased to show movies that have not yet had a DVD release, which, within a year or two, actually got one. Chamber of Horrors at the very first T-Fest, Island of Lost Souls (which is getting a Criterion release in October, for Pete’s sake.) I kinda hope this carries through on Dark Intruder. As Ken points out, a set of failed TV pilots for occult detective shows would be most welcome: Dark Intruder, Chamber of Horrors, the Louis Jourdan Fear No Evil and Ritual of Evil, Dan Curtis’ The Norliss Tapes, Gene Roddenberry’s Spectre…
But that’s enough fantasizing about good things, it’s time to face the hard, cold reality of bad things, like the last movie. We always try to finish out the festival with a movie featuring a T Rex, or at least a dinosaur. (The “T” in “T-Fest” stands not only for “Texas”, but also “Tyrannosaurus”). And this year, the movie was The Mighty Gorga. This was theoretically Sandy’s choice, but Ken supplied the disc. Monsters, the both of them.
Anthony Eisley plays a down-on-his-luck circus owner who journeys to Africa to meet up with a guy who is tracking down a giant gorilla. In this case, Africa is being played by California, a zoo, and parts of Bronson Canyon. There is a giant gorilla (with hideous expressionless doll-like eyes) on a rocky plateau, worshiped by curiously Caucasian natives.There are more words in this movie than in your average dictionary, the “Talk is cheap, action costs money” taken to an extreme. So many words that several times John Woo style gunfights with nerf darts broke out in the audience. One unfortunate lady caught a dart in the eye. Once she recovered, she returned, gamely, but was soon begging for someone to shoot her in the eye again. Both eyes, preferably.
Back when Hong Kong movies hit in the early 90s, there was a lot of talk about “The Scene”, that one segment of a Cat III movie, the one thing you sat through an hour and a half of dreck to see. Like when I was assured that you sat through 90 minutes of Evilspeak and Clint Howard’s naked ass just to see the Carrie rip-off ending. Well, Mighty Gorga is like that. You sit through static dialogue scenes and endless rock climbing (yes, there is rock climbing) just to see the T Rex, in a very bad process shot, shouting “RAR rar rar rar!” while someone shakes it to make the jaw move. I have no idea why Youtube will not satisfy me with the T Rex’s best scene, but here is the “fight scene” that follows betwixt Rex and Gorga:
That is apparently director David L. Hewitt in the Gorga suit. Later on, our heroes run into a stop-motion creature from Goliath and the Dragon; luckily for them, it stays on its side of the poor process shot.
And then, praise God, the sweetest words in the English language: THE END.
A fun time, a good time. Sandy, with his showing of Jimmy the Boy Wonder, has opened a very dangerous door, I must say. On the other side of that door lurks The Wonderful Land of Oz and The Magic Christmas Tree, If I were a meaner person. Or Mr. Fig.
Haha, remember when I was trying to add a new post every day here? It was hilarious, how soon that ran aground on my policy of “If you have nothing to say, don’t say it.” I talked about comic books quite a bit in those days. It being the Internet, I was of course told that such posts were not very interesting, so would I please go back to making fun of bad movies or bitching endlessly about my Hated Job. Well, I lost the Hated Job, blogging time was mostly taken up by job searching, and at least Bad Movies, like The Poor, will be with us always.
The new WordPressy version of the blog didn’t fare too much better. There was an “Okay, I can do this weekly” ethic for a while there, but honestly: I work hard to make my life as seamlessly uneventful as possible. I get my excitement from movies and literature, thank you. The idea of Real Life Adventure gives me hives. I do not travel well. I could go political – God knows there’s enough grist for that mill, particularly these days – but there are lots and lots of people doing that, and doing it well. Don’t want to be a part of that particular wall of noise.
Ideally, I should be talking about stuff that I know something about, and at this point, that’s a) bad movies; b) comics; c) the workings of city-level politics. The last would mean nothing to anyone not living in this burg; I do, and it’s boring as hell to me. I’m going to a small bad movie festival next weekend, so there will be some reportage about that. But right now, dammit, we are going to talk about funnybooks.
The latest thing causing nerd dismay is the reboot of most of DC’s title to #1 in September, a reboot that involves dropping years of continuity and skewing the characters to a younger, apparently grittier and meaner venue (I don’t think I’ve seen one smile on any of the preview art). All this seems to be tied in with the alternate-universe FLASHPOINT event, which is something I grew bored with and stopped reading one issue in. That the reboot does not seem universe-wide makes my head hurt. Sorting the signal from noise is daunting, and I suppose that, eventually, all my questions will be answered (like, what does this mean for Batman Inc?); but in my usual, selfish way, this reboot sucks if only for two reasons: It has meant the cancellation of Birds of Prey and Secret Six.
I believe Birds of Prey will be continuing, but without the guiding light of either writer Gail Simone or leader Oracle; in fact, a somehow-healed Barbara Gordon is returning to the role of Batgirl (and Simone is writing that), so… nah. Not excited.
Add to this the fact that I checked out a Gotham Central trade from my library this week and am once again being blown away by the quality… and we have (finally) the subject of this week’s mental perambulations. Were I Straw Boss of the Universe, there are certain comic book series that would go on forever.
Firstly, you should know that, under this scenario, there would have been no more Superman comics published after All-Star Superman.
(Even if one of the reboot titles I’m actually looking forward to is Grant Morrison’s return to the character)
1) & 2) Birds of Prey and Secret Six – Oh, what a surprise, am I right? You have your typical comic book plots in both these titles, but the stories are, themselves, astoundingly character-driven. Team books live and die on the social dynamics of their members, and the nuances each individual brings to that dynamic. There was never any doubt that each character in these books was a different person, with different goals, strengths, and weaknesses. The books largely deal with legacy characters, and damned if Simone didn’t take a bunch of B and even C-listers and turn them into vital, engaging individuals. Secret Six is going to be especially missed, with its cast of misfits finding itself – much to its dismay – becoming a (somewhat still dysfunctional) family. The character of Bane, largely a joke since he snapped Batman’s spine in Knightfall, was revitalized as a major player in the book’s final arc. Birds of Prey was very much a rumination on friendship and camaraderie. Both of these titles deserved to go on forever.
3) Gotham Central – one of the poster children for This is why we can’t have nice things. Written by Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker, this was a police procedural comic set in – obviously – Gotham City. The concept of everyday police work in a city with a metahuman population is a strong one – Powers remains one of my favorite books – and this series hits all the right notes. Batman is a fleetingly-seen figure, befitting his status as a near-urban legend, but his very existence casts a very large shadow over all proceedings. A large cast is well-handled, and the stories drive with all the power of a really good Law & Order episode. It was a major critical hit, but sales were never really there, and the Major Crimes Unit was dismantled during Infinite Crisis. This series deserved to go on forever.
4) Grimjack – I will brook no argument here. Grimjack was the finest comic book ever made by the hands of man. Imagine Raymond Chandler in a city where magic and science work (but not necessarily in the same time and place), where time and space travel are possible, and your protagonist – a world-weary, aging soldier of fortune – can find himself involved in any genre – including, memorably, a funny animal cartoon – and you have Grimjack. Writer John Ostrander seemed to make it a point to piss off readers every ten issues or so, but damn, the man can tell a story. Read it from the beginning and you find yourself enjoying a well-plotted novel that was cut off way too soon when publisher First Comics went under. Ostrander managed to bring it to an end of sorts, but he had plans far beyond we got. There have been a few new issues of Grimjack over the years, but these were all in prequel territory; I doubt we’re ever going to get to see Grimjack in Hell, or the Grimjack twins. This makes me sad, because Grimjack deserved to go on forever.
5) & 6) Nexus and The Badger – Two more casualties of First Comics’ implosion. Nexus, by writer Mike Baron and artist Steve Rude, was Space Opera writ large; Space Ghost without the annoying teen-agers and space monkey. The title character, aka Horatio Hellpop, is granted almost unlimited power, but must – driven by life-threatening dreams – seek out and execute mass murderers and tyrants in the galaxy. Nexus’ origin was a mystery slowly teased out over the early series, then Hellpop abdicated his role and powers, leading to a series of substitute Nexuses (Nexii?) that drove the story. The cover pictured here is to the magazine-sized black-and-white premiere issue. I bought that first issue because of the Paul Gulacy cover, but was immediately won over by the script and Rude’s simply phenomenal use of zip-a-tone screens. I’m not kidding here, the man’s use of different layers of dots and dashes made the B&W art gorgeous. I was sad to see it turn to a color comic after three issues. The second or third issue of the magazine-sized series had a flexi-disc with an audio dramatization of the story, which was a pretty gutsy move.
The Badger, also written by Baron, took it’s ad slogan quite literally: “Put on a costume and fight crime? You’d have to be nuts!” Norbert Sykes is a martial artist and Viet Nam vet who suffers from multiple personality disorder. His dominant personality is The Badger, a costumed avenger who really likes beating up street thugs and people who mistreat animals (he can also talk to animals, it seems). The Badger stories were a lot more free-form and fun than the strait-laced Nexus stories, and both series had a large cast of interesting and engaging characters. Both series had limited series released about 2008-2009, but hey. They deserved to go on forever.
7) Savage Henry and 8 ) Those Annoying Post Brothers – The order of those two should be reversed, since Henry is a spin-off of Post Brothers, but I profess a greater love of Savage Henry, which actually rather surprises me. I first encountered Matt Howarth and his creations in Heavy Metal magazine in the late 70s, during a period when I found the magazine actually readable, as opposed to “Gee, these are nice drawings of tits.” This was the serial Changes, which introduced Howarth’s world of reality-level-hopping denizens of Bugtown: the extremely formidable Ron and Russ Post, and their experimental rock group the Bulldaggers, which included in their line-up the real-life synthesist Conrad Schnitzler, and the Lord Cthulhu. Savage Henry was their guitarist, and had a series of his own, which guest-starred more actual musicians from our limited reality, like Wire, Moby, Clint Ruin and The Residents. These books were full of heady stuff, madman riffs, and actual, honest-to-god science fiction, which spun off into other Howarth series like Particle Dreams, Konny and Czu and Keif Llama, Xenotech. One of my prized possessions is a mini Howarth did in the day called The Mighty Virus, which is an alien comic book, translated into InterLac and as I recall, three other alien languages (none of which is English). Hell, go to Howarth’s site and give him money for stuff. It will be worth it. Needless to say, both series deserved to go on forever.
There are others – limited series that I loved but came to a planned end. I realize that in many of these cases, the creators have grown and gone on with their lives, and in some cases might not even want to go back to their babies. At least one other favorite from my old days – American Flagg, by Howard Chaykin? I looked in on it a few months ago. It has not aged well, with me. Could Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen have kept Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. going beyond its ten issues? I would have loved to find out.
A bright spot in all these ruminations is Starstruck, The Series That Will Not Go Away. Writer Elaine Lee and artist Michael Kaluta keep bringing it back,over and over again, expanding its universe a bit more every time, and thank God for that. Its wry science-fiction universe universe is a breath of fresh air every time. Dense, funny and literate, and I have loved Kaluta’s art forever.
Well, here we are, over 1700 words later. I have changed nothing, and now I need to go to lunch. Likely a good thing that I am not Straw Boss of the Universe.
There is a moment in the life of any pet owner – forgive me, “animal companion” or whatever is popular and correct these days – when you realize your furry friend is not going to be with you much longer. This is not my first time to this dance. And yes, every time we lose one of our furry friends, I am emotionally devastated and swear off ownership forever and that lasts a few months.
Mavis the Pug Dog has been with us for a decade now. I look at photos of her from her first days with us,when we had first adopted her, and her mask and ears are dark black. They are now almost totally gray. She snuffles and snorts and hobbles through the house. Her skin allergies are worse than ever. She smells bad. She still loves sitting in my lap while I watch movies, hoping I will scratch her butt. I usually do.
Thinking about it, of course, makes me sad. Then I also watch her shuffling and grunting, and think, “Poor old thing.” Then I also wonder if the students at the community college where I work see me shuffling around and grunting, and if they think “Poor old thing.”
Unlikely. If I’m lucky.
I’m probably not that lucky.
It’s interesting: I’ve spent so much of my life writing and acting, and a key element of those two disciplines is observation. The changes in my body over the past decade, as youthful injuries starting taking their tolls, have been… interesting, I suppose. Whenever I meet up with old classmates, I am endlessly fascinated by what age has wrought, what it has changed, and also what it has not. The person inside remains basically unchanged. It’s the spacesuit that’s wearing out.
…Well, this got rather dark rather fast; all from that “poor old thing” anecdote that I thought was fairly amusing. I’m stopping short of saying stuff like “I know I don’t have all that much time left, and seeing where this country is goin’, I don’t much care, by jing!” and shaking my cane at all you young hooligans.
So I’ll shift gears and mention that Barnes and Noble is currently having their – annual? I just know it’s happened before, old age and memory, you know – 50% off Criterion DVD sale. I limited myself to two – which would net me free shipping – and therefore picked up the recently-released Kiss Me Deadly and a disc I had lusted after for most of that aforementioned decade: Gimme Shelter. I’m listening to its commentary track as I write this, directors Albert Maysles, Charlotte Zwenn, and utility player Stanley Goldstein. That could be the reason for the cloud hanging over this entry. Gimme Shelter, though it didn’t intend to, documents the death of the 60s. They pretty much shambled around until around ’72 or ’73, but the fact Altamont didn’t play out like Woodstock was the rifle crack from the grassy knoll that put paid to a lot of idealism.
But imagine how much darker this would all be if I were listening to Kiss Me Deadly.
Ha, Maysles just mentioned that some people would say the 60s didn’t really end until the early 70s. I am vindicated.
Okay, movie’s over now. I suppose also seeing the Stones so freaking young didn’t help much, either. As either Goldstein or Maysles pointed out during the movie, you look at all those people in the audience and realize they’re 30 years older now – 40, actually, the disc came out in 2000 – and wonder.
Remind me to watch some uplifting movie this weekend. Lie to me, Hollywood. I’ll love you for it.
My brain’s been increasingly muddled of late, so this is probably going to be even less focused than usual. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, as I just checked my biorhythms and my intellectual curve is plummeting down toward the bottom of the graph. Yeah, I check my biorhythms. Not religiously, but they do seem accurate when I do.
Through a series of happenstances, unrelated events, smoke and mirrors – you know, the usual – I have become the go-to guy for the audio at city meetings. I know my way around a sound board well enough, and apparently I work cheaply enough, so I am currently up to my waist in city-level bureaucracy and politics. Which is not where I thought I would spending my adult life.
There is an astounding amount of sturm und drang even at that level, and not where you’d think. The drama and conflict is all over at the School Board meetings, maaaaan. Problems addressed at the City Council often seem to go the route of beating the dead horse until it is liquefied and poured into bottles; the best example of this occurred a couple of nights ago, when, and the tail end of the City Engineer’s presentation, an old subject was brought up by a council member.
Can you see me waving?
This likely sticks with me because it is centered where I work: at a suburban branch of Houston Community College. I work in a nice building that houses the math and science departments. It has a large parking lot behind it for the students, a smaller lot in front for faculty and staff. Some student eschew the lot in back to park on the city street that runs alongside the complex to the west – it puts them a little closer to the building. Not significantly closer, just a little closer.
There have apparently been complaints about this from local businesses. This is kind of odd, as the city streets are generally wide enough to accommodate this sort of thing. I go down this road every day on my way to work; yes, there are cars down each side of the road, but there is still room for two lanes of traffic. Unlike in my neighborhood, which has rampant street parking, and if two cars are going opposite directions, one has to pull over and let the other pass. That isn’t the case on the street in question.
Then, I guess I’m not driving a big UPS truck or other similar large vehicle. I do see the local police out there occasionally, because some of the students are stupid enough to park in front of fire hydrants.
But the resurrection of this complaint prompted a half-hour digression while various solutions to this problem were brought up and most were shot down by the City Attorney, whom I am beginning to recognize as a bastion of sanity. There was a phrase I heard during an NPR story, “This is a solution in search of a problem,” and that covers the discussion in spades.
Eh. Then again, what do I care? I get paid by the hour.
The Solution In Search Of A Problem came from an NPR story on the recent Supreme Court decision to reject a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. This decision has prompted a out-gushing of oh-the-horror this-is-the-end-of-civilization dogs-and-cats-living-together hysteria I am used to seeing from right-wing outlets but this time it was coming from liberals and even people whose opinions I normally respect. Besides the whole Freedom of Speech thing, the law should have been stuck down because it was a totally unnecessary piece of legislation. There is already a rating system for games, and retailers follow it. I have stood by and watched a Blockbuster clerk tell a clueless parent what the M rating meant on a Grand Theft Auto game, much to the chagrin of the disappointed child next to him.
This was an easy target, low-hanging fruit for a legislature to point to and say, Look, I’m protecting your children. Now shut up for a while. Rejection of the law does not mean that it is okay to sell or rent these games to minors; it means that there is already a regulatory system in place for that and it was not needful for the government to invest time and money in enforcing it.
That is likely the most conservative thing I am going to say all month.
I would, however, like to know how many people who are squealing about the law’s rejection are also loudly complaining that the gummint needs to stay the hell out of other things.
I got on Google+, and I am pleased to report that it is nice and quiet there. Then, I’ve put about seven people in circles. I like the ability to decide who I want to see posts from, and who will see my posts. The fact that I could put some of my Facebook friends into a “Right-wing Bigot” circle and allow them to blither freely into the aether without adding to my migraine is priceless. And the fact that I would wind up in a “Liberal Idiot” circle would be quite alright, as I would never know.
Whoops, make that eight people. Keith Allison of Teleport City just made the scene.
I actually wrote a review and made a post at Attack of the 50 Foot DVD this last weekend. Trying to make it at least a twice-monthly thing, my newfound fame as an audio operator allowing. Need to find the time this weekend to finally watch 13 Assassins.
In closing: an interesting experiment is unfolding across Twitter and Facebook – Karen Barley is an attempt to tell a horror story across social media. Her Tweets are collected at this website, which also has links to the Twitter and Facebook accounts. Interesting stuff, occasionally hitting the right low-budget creepy note.
Well, the 4th of July Parade (held on the 3rd of July) was, as predicted, a dreadful ordeal. Setting up cameras in the heat, moving the camera back into the shade so the electronics wouldn’t cook, walking back and forth from the cameras to the air-conditioned control center. At one point when I checked, the heat index was 111 degrees. The nice thing about control being air-conditioned was having that place to retreat. The bad thing about it was it necessitated running a lot of cable. Cable we did not possess or even own, as it turned out. Could have been prevented by moving control out to the heat with the rest of us, but that wasn’t going to happen. By the time the Parade actually began, we had six out of seven cameras online, which was a minor fucking miracle. The Parade itself was rather underwhelming, but the fact that we managed to pull our part off carries with it a certain feeling of accomplishment.
I wasn’t needed for the actual 4th of July broadcast, which was very good, since when I got up Monday morning I couldn’t put any weight on my bum leg. So I spent most of the day with my leg up, searching out episodes of Mythbusters I had not yet seen on Netflix Instant. For America.
I knew it was going to be like that. I knew there was a fairly good chance that the 3rd would be the day that either crippled me permanently or outright killed me. (As I write this, it is the 6th. I was able to come to work without the cane, and I am not dead. I attribute this to my willingness to sit down as much as possible and let the enthusiastic younger employees do all the work) Therefore, I bullied all my compatriots into a Crapfest on July 2nd. I had no shows that weekend, a financial problem but not an emotional one, as I’m also pretty sure I might have murdered or at least maimed a few drunken audience members.
This still almost did not happen; Dave called about 2pm to inform us that he had a clogged drain problem affecting his whole house. A Crapfest canceled by plumbing problems? My irony gland was throbbing. A quick visit by a plumber, though, and we were underway only an hour later than planned.
While we got settled down, food was set up and cooked, I trotted out my three disc This Is Tom Jones set, which was not crap by any means. Tom Jones is a hell of an entertainer and these selections from his 1969-1971 ABC variety series… well, here is a taste:
That is a bare minute and a half out of a set that lasts some fifteen minutes at least. The very first show has The Moody Blues, Mary Hopkins (“Those Were The Days”), Richard Pryor and Peter Sellers. One episode. We went on to episodes featuring The Who, and, as seen above, that luminous appearance by Little Richard. The eps always end with Jones in a concert setting, sweating and singing his heart out.
Well, it’s kind of hard to force yourself to sit through crap after that, so rather than ease us in, I went for the throw-the-patient-into-some-cold-water treatment, and an episode of Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, of which there appears to be only five episodes anyway. Enough to run each afternoon for a week, and sell some action figures.
There is a real desire evident to make this the Chuck Norris equivalent of GI Joe; Chuck and his troops have far-ranging authority in his fight against an organization of super terrorists. There is a lot here to work with, and some day I should do a full review.
Food still not ready? Time for some Birdman!
Birdman is one of the lesser Hanna-Barbera superheroes, frankly (I still have no idea who this BIRMAD might be…). He got a complete season DVD set due to the Adult Swim Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law series, and since The Other Dave was a big fan, I brought it. We watched two Birdman stories and one of The Galaxy Trio shorts, and I remember nothing about them. Except Birdman constantly shouting “BIRRRRRRRRRRDMAN!” because he was very conscious of his branding.
Thank God, the fajitas are finally cooked, and now it is time for a movie. Dave was foiled when he discovered that Netflix had removed his choice, Jaws The Revenge, and instead trotted out Jack The Giant Killer. The musical version.
Jack was a fairly infamous attempt to imitate the success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, right down to hiring its two leads, Kerwin Matthews and Torin Thatcher, and its director, Nathan Juran. Columbia threatened a lawsuit, and in an attempt to recoup their investment somehow, the producers had to change Jack into something 7th Voyage was not: a musical. But not by bringing back the actors and shooting additional footage, noooooo. There was already a leprechaun in a bottle (an ‘imp”, if you believe the script), who spoke in verse; that’s a natural for some music. But the rest…
It is best to simply let this version speak for itself, as it were. Jack is trying to sneak into the evil sorcerer’s castle to rescue the princess:
If anything, we thought this version of Jack needed even more musical numbers. It was very, very bizarre, easily the high point of the evening. Having created and uploaded that clip, I am becoming obsessed with the idea that seems to be Thurl Ravenscroft providing the basso side of that duet.
By now, Rick was positively vibrating to complete the Ginger Trilogy by watching Girls Are For Loving. I have a longer review of it here, but suffice to say: It ain’t no Abductors.
There is a lot more money invested in Girls, and perversely, the movie suffers for it. There is a general bid for respectability; Don Schain (or, as I prefer to think of him, Mr. Cheri Caffaro) really wants to do a Dr. No-style movie, but doesn’t have the chops. The sleazery is there, though not enough to salvage the flick for Ginger fans. Ginger is sluttier than ever – no, that’s not fair. Caffaro is playing a Liberated Woman, 1973-style, and that means being bewilderingly frank about engaging in the carnal act. Yeah, I still miss the 70s. You youngsters missed out on all the good stuff.
As alluded to earlier, Girls is not a very good movie. Not that this is a requirement for Crapfest, but it is largely bad by dint of being boring, which is bad for a Crapfest. Cheri sings in this one – she’s undercover as a lounge act – and sure enough, just as someone says, “I liked her better when she was taking off her clothes,” she switches to a strip-tease number. There is a Ginger movie struggling to get out, but it’s lost in an ill-defined plot by the anti-Ginger to get rich. Even the nudity seems to be somewhat toned down. This must have really frustrated the grindhouse patrons familiar with the Ginger brand.
Finished up with Five Fingers of Death, which Rick and I both claimed we had watched before, but Dave claimed we had not. Not that it matters – it’s a good flick, and I needed some winding down time to sober up for the drive home. Paul and the Other Dave had already wussed out. Wusses.
So I faced the grueling Next Day with something approaching some peace in my heart and a song on my lips. “A spectacle! A spectacle!”
And hey, speaking of shows – I started rehearsals for Shadowlands last Tuesday night – yes, the night before the dental appointment, more concealing my deformity from folks – and it is very hard to express just how happy that makes me. I’ve been doing the Mystery Cafe shows for years, but working on an actual show in an actual theater which people will pay to see, during which there will be no clanking of silverware or people leaving in the middle of an act to get another beer… well. That’s heavenly. Going to wind up spending more than I earn on gas and tolls, but I don’t care. This is for my soul.
I should take time to mention that Ian Richardson was a wonderful Holmes; many qualities of his performance here were transferred into his Dr. Joseph Bell in Murder Rooms, which is likely the worst title ever for a TV series. The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes is only a little better. Bell is, of course, the fellow Arthur Conan Doyle based Holmes upon, and the four episodes of the series were based – one can only assume very loosely indeed – on the two men’s meeting and subsequent adventures. Well worth seeking out if you’re a Holmes fan.
drfreex.com 