On the Red Line from South Station Tonight

I could've gotten to Alewife faster if the MBTA had the foresight to hitch up our train to a team of oxen.
No joke, I was a young man when I boarded that train full of naive' hopes about overcoming "switching problems in Davis Square", decades later we limped into Alewife liked the starved survivor's of Stalin's GULAG.
Honestly, the T compares unfavorably in almost every way to the Moscow Metro which I actually rode back in the early eighties. As I recall the schedule was reasonably dependable for the harried communist commuter. And that was Andropov's USSR we are talkin' about, seething with torpid deadheads and party hacks...yet somehow the damn trains rolled.
Can't say as much for the MBTA wherein daily one is exposed to the perils of premature senility from the slack-assed pace of the Red Line.

Channel Zero Returns Sunday March 4th at 2pm!

In which we will be screening:
Jerry Lewis (Yes THAT Jerry Lewis!) as "The Jazz Singer" (1959)

Jerry stars as a popular nightclub singer whose worldly success alienates his
stern father the Rabbi in this rare live television production. See "Le Roi du
Crazy" in a early dramatic role!

Jerry Sings!! (No...Really!!)

Sunday March 4th, 2pm
Eddie's Movie Cafe aka Movies on a Menu

148 Massachusetts Avenue
Arlington Ma.
781 316 8668
Suggested donation $5 (Maybe!)

Pick of the Week

"Invasion USA" (1952) one of the best cold war paranoia films ever made screens tonight at 9pm at the Harvard Film Archive.
If watching Russian Paratroopers machine-gunning US Congressmen is your thing, then this is a definite take-in. Other films danced around the myth of a Soviet Dominated America, Invasion USA fearlessly depicted the whole fantasy down to the last detail.
DAMN I wish we had screened this at Channel Zero!

Remind me never again to doubt Arlington's own "Book Rack"

majestically nestled at 13 Medford Street next to the Regent Theater in the beating heart of Arlington Center...cause' they damn well had a used copy of Ian Fleming's "Moonraker"!
The joke is on me though, I checked out the Book Rack orginally two weeks ago, and didn't find what I was looking for. But I was down in the Center today and decided to give them another try, on a second pass I discovered they kept the whole 007 bibliography in a separate bookcase.
Dopey meee!!!
Well what the hell, I paid $2 for my paperback (Barnes and Noble in Burlington wanted FOURTEEN U.S. DOLLARS for the same damn story new, outrageous!!)...and departed with a light springing step.
I'll re-read it, as soon as I'm done with Spitz's bio of the Beatles, Harold Lamb's biography of Genghis Khan, Frederic Wakeman's "The Hucksters" and a couple of those old Ballantine "History of WW2" trade paperbacks that I stumbled over.
Yeah I know, I read a lot of books...well there is nothing for it, I have an hour commute in both directions on the notoriously wheezy and unreliable Red Line every day...nut'n ta do but get caught up on yer reading.
Anyway, The Book Rack is a place of happy miracles, check out their website atwww.book-rack.com

Moonraker...found!!

Meanwhile up in orbit

U.S. Astronaut Sunita Williams quietly sets the women's record for spacewalking...some twenty nine total hours of which seven were tacked on in one marathon session outside the International Space Station this week.
Lets remember that achievement as the chattering classes go to work on Lisa Nowak and her bizarre alleged attempt to kidnap a rival for a fellow astronaut's affections.

Crazy Astronauts in Love

It occurs to me that if this story was a movie coming out this friday starring say Nicholas Cage and Nicolle Kidman...directed by ohhh I dunno Frank Oz from a script by Nora Ephron, you'd just pass that bad baby by as the most desperate contrived nonsense imaginable.
And yet here we are, Astronaut Lisa Nowak allegedly tries to kidnap a rival for the affections of another astronaut after a wild ride cross country complete with diapers and disguises.
Forget it, David Lynch would have to direct this one.

Britannicus at the A.R.T.

excellent execution of Racine's Roman drama depicting the final days of the son of the late Emperor Claudius before his murder at the hands of the infamous Princeps Nero.
Liked Kevin O'Donnell quite a bit in the title role he plays it honest, unassuming and fearfully unaware of the malevolent forces arrayed against him. Alfredo Narcisco's Nero is a familiar depraved type...artsy and homicidal. Kudos to Joan MacIntosh as Agrippina, Nero's nasty stage mother who fears her darling boy has unknotted her apron strings and stolen off on his own.
The A.R.T. for once toned down, the odd even inexplicable artsy flourishes that usual characterize a revival like this were nowhere to be seeen.
That my friends was a welcome discovery to say the least.
There were times in other shows, where the trapeze artists and Balinese finger dancers all seemd closer to second house vaudeville than modern theater at it's most sublime.
No if there is a problem with "Britannicus" it lies in the text, Agrippina spends most of the play as a cold calculating dominatrix before turning unconscionably credulous in the third act.
But...credit to Ms. McIntosh she plays thru it all with aplomb.
The play however was great and runs thru this week, well worth the effort to see it.

Moonraker Blogging second weekend...

Moody street in Waltham let me down, Back Pages Books had exactly nothing in the way of Ian Fleming while More than Words Bookstore had both "Octopussy" and "You Only Live Twice" on hand the requisite title was still nowhere to be found.
This is taking on the entirely overdone elements of a bad Melvillian metaphore...the little green Signet paperback in place of the fabled White Whale.
I could just go to the damn library...but at this point, my blood is up and I must prove it can be found the old fashioned way!

Appropos of nothing...

You'd think after five years of "American Idol" they'd a run thru the nation's backlog of tone deaf freaks and giddy no-talents.
Sadly based on a cursory viewing of the show on Monday night, this does not seem to be the case.
And is Paula Abdul finally in rehab yet?
I mean girlfriend is cutting it a bit close with respect to her liver's long term prospects.