Sighted on the Minuteman Bike Path last night in East Arlington

at about 8:30pm...a small tow-headed boy wielding a teensy tiny butterfly net methodically attempting to capture one of the many many lightning bugs that were flickering about.
Behind the wee lad stood his two obvious parents grinning like circus clowns, the father reverently clutching the traditional glass jar with a perforated lid.

Add in the "Tom Sawyer" style bib overalls and the picture becomes complete.

Despite the rain

the grand fireworks show on the Esplanade look great last night...came across vividly even atop Robbin's Farm in Arlington some seven miles away from the action.
Is it me though, or are they getting closer and closer to outright mushroom-clouds over the Back Bay every Fourth of July?
The pyrotechnics, especially the traditional big finish seemed more akin to the Bikini Atoll tests this year...

The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

The best thing I can say about this movie, is that it is nowhere near as tedious as "The Incredible Hulk" or as pretentious as "Daredevil".
But that of course is faint praise indeed. This time the famed superheroic quartet must get the nigh-omnipotent extraterrestrial Silver Surfer away from the planet before he summons his master "Galactus" and the Earth is consumed like a cosmic cocktail weiner.
And in the midst of this, Sue Storm (an inert but beautiful Jessica Alba) has gone all Martha Stewart whilst planning her perfect wedding to Reed Richards (a baffled Ioan Gruffud).
At a sparse ninety minutes the film has no time to get boring but hits no heights either. Michael Chiklis as "The Thing" and Chris Evans as "The Human Torch" are really the best part of the film and do their best to bring a Marvel Comics feel to the movie. Therein though lies the whole problem, two of the four actors are up for it, the other two range from banal (Gruffud) to outright bad (Alba...who seems to have less dialogue this time around, maybe she has problems spouting the requisite techno-babble who knows?). Frankly if Sony wants to start making some money here, they should decorously drop Gruffud and Alba from the sequel and start anew with Chiklis and Evans and include some decorous actress with talent to bring in the requisite star quality. Think of it as a "Marvel Two in One" for the big screen...

Sighted on the Fellsway Yesterday

A lone guy on roller blades, blithely skating along right in the middle of this major thoroughfare. Utterly oblivious to the fact that the Fellsway has no breakdown lane and twists and turns dangerously making it tough for cars to see this poor shlub if the conditions are right.
Seemed like a laid-back way to commit suicide if you asked me.

"Love's Labor's Lost"

The Actor's Shakespeare Company is throwing a sort of Elizabethan's Mad Tea Party with this, the Bard's deceptively frothy comedy of manners and identity headlined by the one and only Johnny Lee Davenport a noble veteran of Shakespeare and Company and one of the region's best journeymen classical actors.
The cast was tight, the jokes well timed, but the show's outre dependence on a five person ensemble makes the play more of a showcase for individual players and their powers of sheer memorization rather than a coherent whole. I get this feeling a lot whenever a small cast executes a huge play, that the whole mishaugas is mostly about getting the right hat and wig on and hitting one's mark just in time.
It's not so much "stunt casting" as "stunted casting".
Still it was funny, Johnny Lee was particularly good as Don Armando the farcical Spanish Knight, Sara Newhouse shone as the Princess of France and let me just give a nice loud shout out to young Khalil Flemming as the scene stealing page Moth.
Overall I give er' three out of five.
I just wish A.S.P, would give up on this "All Male Titus Andronicus or All Female MacBeth" and give us Shakespeare that is "all good".
:)

I have a new heroine

her name is "Rags to Riches", she can't leap tall building with a single bound or swing from a web, but she sure can shut down the boys at today's Belmont Stakes. Won by a dainty little nose, first Filly to do so in a hundred and two years!
Pretty amazing race, Tod Pletcher the owner was over the damn moon.

Whoops stu-pid meee-ee...

According to David Abel in the Boston Globe that mysterious "tracking ship" tied up on the Black Falcon is the "BEM Monge", a French telemetry ship that has tied up looking for some R & R.
I got those sailors in civies right, but my tin ear for languages ran true, I thought they were Russian.
The above linked article sez the French sailors on liberty are given $290 and the night off to explore Boston. Fair enough, I hope they enjoy themselves, but as soon as those poor boulevardiers taste what passes for domestic wine here in the USA they'll haul up the anchor and make flank speed back to Calais.

Is there a "Tracking ship" tied up on the Black Falcon in South Boston?

Damned if I can figure this out!
I saw some sailors clearly on R & R walking up Drydock Avenue at 5:30pm this evening spouting what sounded like Russian.
When I boarded the Silver Line BMIP and came round the dog-leg what was docked at the pier but an old fashioned "tracking ship" festooned with huge satellite dishes and under guard with the usual anti-terror gimmicks in place.
Scanning dishes that big strike me as only being useful for tracking satellites and manned spacecraft..I could be wrong about this, but why is a Russian space tracking ship tied up in Boston?
Can anyone give me the low down?
Never seen such an odd looking vessel in all my years as a low level clerk in the insurance industry.

Sighted on Drydock Avenue in (Romantic) South Boston

The liner "Norwegian Dawn" in in drydock at the moment, gettin' painted & polished and generally spruced up.
The topmost deck, some five stories up all told, has an open air basketball court where yesterday morning sundry persons were blissfully & actively shooting hoops about 8:15am.
Nothing like a fast pick up game of b-ball before a tedious day of vacuuming and bathroom scrubbing or whatever the hell they do over there.

Notes on a short weekend getaway to Barnstead New Hampshire

I passed by a boot-n-tack shop on Route 28 in Allentown that was tarted up in garish frontiersman regalia looking all the world like the Ponderosa's guest house.
I came to the conclusion that New Hampshire is never more ridiculous than when it tries to pass itself off as cowboy country. This is a bizarre long standing theme in the otherwise sensible Granite State.
Anyone out there ever gone to "Six Gun City" in Jefferson N.H?
This is an inane but fun theme park dedicated to the notion that Big Sky Country commences a hour or so west of Rumford Maine.
Okay all kidding aside, Sparky's Sub Shop in Rochester NH makes a hearty Italian grinder and the vistor's center on Route 93 North in Rockinghams NH us staffed by the nicest most helpful people west of the Vistula.
***
Massachusetts drives though, are still classic massholes in extremis.
I watched with fascinated horror as the remains of a backyard grill with propane tank slid off the back of a truck speeding north on Route 93 in North Reading. The driver in question slowed down long enough to assure himself that his debris did not kill me and was now merely littering the breakdown lane before speeding up and shooting over the horizon.
OY!
Mike Dukakis and Deval Patrick are right!
We all need more rail travel in Massachusetts, we'll never learn how to drive!

Cardullo's in Harvard Square

keeps a flat screen television in it's show window and shows the Red Sox game some evenings to passers-by complete with audio piped in via discreet speakers.
The crowd watching last night's loss was pretty sparse and is indicative of Harvard Square's cruel decline as a destination...a few bums, a couple of boulevardiers, the usual long haired old ladies and a pair of EMT's lounging next to their ambulance without a care in the world.
Didn't quite know what to make of that, guess there wasn't much happening in Cambridge by way of pain and misery last night.

Spider-Man III

Serious comic book fans will note that despite being one of Marvel's A-List super heroes that the proverbial webspinner suffers from a decidedly second rate rogue's gallery. From Electro to The Vulture and on to the The Lizard they are, by and large a shopworn collection of one-note freaks.
So when it came to write Spider-Man III, clearly Sam Raimi threw caution to the winds and dug right down to the bottom of the barrel to dredge up MORE if not better antagonists for the title character. This is how we end up with such tedious hacks as "The Sandman" (Thomas Haden Chuch channeling Jim Nabors), "Venom" (an entirely superfluous Topher Grace) and James Franco's "Goblin Junior" or whatever the hell they called him....an unpromising bunch to be sure.
Local pundit Jon Haber has sensibly opined that when screenwriters start shoe-horning multiple supervillains into a script it is a time to worry as easily written excess has now supplanted mere creativity.
To me though, the real villain here, the one Spider-Man cannot beat, is hubris, that firm belief that with a cast this good producers can indulge anything sans reproof.
Sadly, this is not the case, at two hours and twenty minutes Spider-Man III feels like a ponderous three and a half hours as we wearily trudge from villain backstory to villain backstory and on to the completely joyless action climax.
This is disquieting to watch, generally the Spider-Man franchise has been impeccably cast from the git-go with strong thematic notions to underscore the and move the action. Here though, the vague notion that poor Peter Parker has been seduced by Spider-Man's popularity is burried under tons of treacly dialogue, witless brawls and bizarre continuity errors. I won't even try to discuss Spidey's new black uniform it's origin or it's ultimate fate...I don't have all night and it wouldn't make a lick of sense the second time around anyway.
Personally I think McGuire and Dunst should take a hint, cash their checks and move on, the franchise has nowhere to go but down.

Insult to Injury

Gordon Scott, my favorite "obscure" Tarzan actor has died in Baltimore Maryland. He was the biggest Tarzan (biceps like granite), also the first to speak normal English and the first Apeman to film one of his films in Africa.
He will be missed.

Joseph Zamparelli Sr. R.I.P.

It is my sad duty to report that our artist-in-residence's father died last week after a long illness.
If "Mister Zee" was angry or unduly fussy in life, he had a right to be as he was caring for a profoundly ill wife for over thirty years. His devotion to duty set the standard for the rest of us. He was no breaker of proverbs, he will do well in the life after this one, he was passionate he was steadfast and we will not see his like on this breathing Earth again.
So g'bye Mister Zee...kiss Peggy for us and put in a good word for the boys in the back room, we are gonna need it.

I saw the "Fenway Samurai" at work on Friday Night

it was entirely unavoidable, it was a Sox-Yankees smackdown on TV so the Summer Shack in the aforementioned Fresh Pond was full of happy howlin' louts. I even saw the big much discussed eighth inner surge, but being completely ignorant of the basics of baseball, I had no idea what was going on...save only that the crowd was happy with the Red Sox latest acquisitions from Japan.
Frankly, if it doesn't have boxing gloves or a horse's tail, I dunno a thing about it.
What th' hell, everyone was pleased with the last minute victory...I can't criticize hard work in desperate circumstances.
Baseball gets a big hard sell here in America, but I don't get what all the hoopla is about. Ball players stand around in the hot sun, seemingly thinking deep thoughts while they wait interminably for someone to score. A man could compose an opera in the time it takes to actually catch something in the outfield.
Football on the other hand is a chatty sport, or so it seems to this perpetual outsider, armored brutes stand around gabbing away in endless huddles or else get complicated instructions from the coach at the sidelines...and that is only after guys go in and come out to further add fuel to the eternal palaver.
Then there is twenty seconds of serious carnage, then it's back to the tawky-tawk.

The Ninety Nine in Fresh Pond has closed!!!!!!

This is a catastrophe in extremis, where will Arlington drink now? Oh sure in certain restaurants, you can order a drink with your meal, but where to go for a little nightcap at the end of Route Two???
With the loss of the Ground Round, we are down to the Summer Shack (Which is nice but is primarily noted for it's family seafood dining) and the Bertucci's at Alewife Station.
Slim pickin's if'n yew asked me.
This is a cultural setback for Arlington, nothing left for me to do but join the Sons of Columbus, the Royal Order of Osiris or The Imperial Order of Icemen.

Sighted on the Red Line this morning

A brief case toting, dignified,nigh lawyerly looking young woman wearing a stylish black over coat, black nylons and white galoshes decorated with multicolored polka dots.
Presumably, she had something a little flashier to wear on her feet once she got to the office.

The Actor's Shakespeare Project: Titus Andronicus

Is being presented down on JFK boulevard in Harvard Square until April 22nd. The venue is normally a retail space and yet seats one hundred comfortably...the conversion of the space to full time theatrical use is hearby urged by Channel Zero owing to the cruel fall off in cultural attractions in Harvard Square these last few years.
As for the play itself it is skillfully staged, all the performances are uniformly strong, Robert Walsh's Titus is particularly well played between the twin poles of the character's foolish devotion to duty and his resultant homicidal dementia. Ah but Shakespeare loved his duty loving soldiers (Othello) and foolish old men of power (Lear) didn't he?
If there is a general problem here it lies in the script which is not one of the Bard's best relying as it does on a climax that wouldn't be out of place in a "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequel. Contrivances aside it is always and everywhere Shakespeare's language & potent themes that elevate the mediocre into the marvelous.
And if there is the specific criticism it lies in director David R. Gammon's decision to cast men in the plays two major female parts. Despite the use of male actors in Elizabethan theater, it's always come off as a sort of "stunt casting" option in most modern revivals of Shakespeare. I've seen it down a half dozen times in various plays and of the lot I can clearly say it made a real difference in one case that being Celia Madeoy as Petruchio in Shakespeare and Company's gender reversed version of "The Taming of the Shrew".
It worked that time because the actress was tres formidable and fully invested into putting over a somewhat labored idea.
Here it's just sorta predictable.
Be that as it may it is still an good production of one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays. One hopes A.S.P> can find a way to bide a while in Harvard Square.

THE DRIVE INS ARE OPEN! THE DRIVE INS ARE OPEN!!

(The 2007 Drive In Diaries...part 1)

Thank the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!
Where else, after all, can we see fraudulent nonsense like "300" with a light heart?
I mean thank ghod I saw this film at the Tri-Town saturday night, my guffaws and catcalls might've annoyed a multiplex audience.
Honestly, Gerard Butler as the Spartan King Leonidas prances around in a black spandex posing sack, red superman cape and spouting truculent gibberish that would gladden only the chickenhawkish hearts of a Dartmouth Review alum.
This is when the stouthearted and preposterously pumped Greek warriors aren't giving their special college yell...they do this seemingly every ten minutes.
Ah but did you know the Spartans at Thermopylae went down to glorious annihilation fighting masked zombies,asssorted gruesome freaks and what looks like "The Incredible Hulk"?
Look THAT up in your Herodotus!
Such is the alleged vision of director Zack Snyder.
oh the battle scenes are great, the gouts of gore arc thru the air in slow mo like raindrops in a downpour, the cinematography suggests one of Frank Frazetta's "Conan" paperback covers come to oily life, but the dialogue is wooden and inane along with the dessicated plotline.
As for the sturdy myth of heroic annihilation stick to "They Died with Their Boots On" or John Wayne in "The Alamo" if you are an itchy wingnut.
Otherwise can't wait to see Tarantino-Rodriguez's "Grindhouse" opening this month, the previews promises a film worse than "300" in almost every way!
Tallyho!
Another drive in season has begun!

As the USS Donald Cook puts out to sea

a curious scene is played out on the Silver Line's SL#2 this evening. The bus picks us up in front of Drydock # 27 and speeds down Black Falcon Avenue, makes the dog-leg to Northern Ave and then blithely roars past a good nascent twenty passengers milling around the bus-stop.
Not so much as a by-your-leave even.
But then it gets even stranger, the driver pulls up to the very next stop and lets on a single solitary well insulated passenger, just as the doors whooshed open the cheery electronic voice intoned "Please report any unattended packages or suspicious behavior to the bus-driver".
Which put me in a quandary, how can I report the bus-driver's suspicious behavior to...the bus-driver? I mean whassup with dissin' the twenty on the sidewalk for the lone hammerhead one stop up?
I wanted to stand up, wave my battered paperback copy of "Lolita" overhead and announce "I...am an aesthete...I have taste decorum even, and this bus is operated by a driver of pronounced and morbid caprice!! I demand a detailed explanation!! An alibi, a little sonnet perhaps...but please for the love of the late muses, why didja blast past those twenty back there??"

Alas I did nothing, it was late I was tired if Al Queda or the Winter Hill Gang were in on it, I couldn't figure out their plot.

Can You Help This Man?

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.

National Gorilla Suit Day

Tomorrow is National Gorilla Suit Day, that immortal holiday that celebrates our common descent from the terrestrial flesh eating apes of prehistoric Africa.
But now today, certain book worshipping fanatics are trying to turn our RIGHT to celebrate Darwinism by donning crude ape regalia into some de-evolutionized xianized costume semi-holiday like Easter or the Liberace's Birthday!
DON'T LET THEM PREVAIL!!!
PROUDLY don your gorilla suit today and CELEBRATE the UNDENIABLE fact of our anthopoidal ancestry!!!

Remember, Darwin is the Reason for the Season!!

Happy National Gorilla Suit Day!

Here is a used book conundrum...

Why can't I find a second hand copy of Ian Fleming's "Moonraker"?
I've tried the Bookrack in Arlington, The Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square, the Raven Bookshop on JFK Blvd, WebHead Enterprises in Wakefield...Bearly Read Books out in Sudbury and Annie's Book Swap in two different locations.
I mean what is the difficulty here? It used to be a common Signet paperback with a dull green cover, now pffft! Can't be found.

I know it's out there first hand, but i refuse to spend so much on such an ubiquitous paperback.

A Link

to a Superman fan-film theatrical trailer I happen to like.
It is, courtesy of Youtube.

Apropos of Nothing but

I would pay good money to see some Diana Ross Wannabee, immaculately coiffed and perfectly turned out get up on American Idol and belt out Ray Steven's Guitarzan.
The trick is, she'd need a good singing voice...cuz it's just funnier that way.

Speaking of American Idle (a show I don't normally watch), anyone out there think Paula Abdul will finally experience delirium tremens live on on the air tonight?
And just where do the D.T.'s end and American Idol begins anyway?

Flash Gordon Returns?

The Sci Fi Channel is conjuring with a revival of the classic depression-era space hero.
Generally I'm liking the idea, Flash's core concept never gets old, Yalie athlete crash lands on hostile alien planet with co-dependent girlfriend and wise Jewish scientist, proceeds to conquer all and sundry with his two fists of iron.
Buster Crabbe fit Flash to a "T" back in the day, lets hope for a similar casting coup.
Anyway, if Sci Fi can polish a turnip like Battlestar Galactica, who is to say they can't infuse Flash Gordon with new life?

James Brown is dead...

as is Former President Ford, then again could Jerry execute a perfect leg split at age 70 live on stage?
Could the late President shimmie?
Shuck and jive?
Were his back up singers even comely looking?
We think not.
Ah but James Brown, he had class, the man practically invented funk and threw down major contributions in many other areas of pop music...and did it all with a sort of frantic grace.
Hell James Brown was too graceful, being as he was a physical and musical marvel well into his seventies, his supergenarian act no doubt inspired the grey haired remains of the Rolling Stones and that ghostly aged hobo Bob Dylan to keep tourin' and tourin' and tourin' and tourin'...
If ye' ever wanna see James Brown triumph over adversity rent AIP's "Ski Party" (Starring Dwayne Hickman, Frankie Avalon, Deborah Walley and Yvonne Craig)...the standard pop music interlude has The Godfather of Soul decked out in a hideous Christmas sweater bopping his way thru "I Feel Good".
The man triumphed over that and so much more, rest in peace good sir.

Brief collision between an eighty five year old man and Comedy Central

The All-Highest (y'know...dad) fell asleep in front on the TV the other night. My mother being a sound sensible woman, stretched out next to him on the coach and likewise snoozed away.
Soon enough, the frantic soundtrack to "South Park" awoke them...my father stirred and grumbled "What is this?"
My mother rejoined "it's South Park its a cartoon".
My father looked at his watch and muttered "Nine fifteen at night and there are cartoons on? Are the kids still up?"

The Revenge of Frank Dell

Wasn't gonna blog on the whole Michael Richards affair.
However upon reflection the whole horrific mess strong resembles Lenny Bruce's old "Palladium Routine".
In it, 3rd rate comic Frank Dell thinks he has never hit the big time because he has never played a "classy room".
Accordingly, he forces his agent to get him a booking at London's prestigious Palladium Theater.
And course, having puffed up his narcissism to Hindenburgian proportions, Dell bombs on the London stage tasteless jokes about motels and all.
Desperate to extract some reaction from his Mount Rushmore-like audience and sodden with flopsweat, Dell howls "***k Ireland" into the microphone precipitating a riot in the theater and his expulsion from the U.K.
Like Frankie Dell, Michael Richards simply lost control of his audience.
Accordingly he became desperate for control, for laughs, for whatever he didn't have at that moment and needed so badly.
Better to set off a riot than to depart the comedy stage beaten and in silence so it was for Bruce's Frankie Dell and so too for Michael Richards.
But what I wanna know is this...was Michael Richards new to stand up comedy or something??
Did he get up on stage on a dare for Open Mike Night.
I mean good Ghod, the weakest wannabe at the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square knows how to deal with hecklers in a swift detached and surgical fashion. It is like the first skill nascent comics learn.
So what happened with Michael Richards then?
The whole sorry assed mess speaks volumes about his character and volumes more about his lack of preparation and professionalism.

Run Don't Walk...

to the Harvard Film Archive (Quincy Street Cambridge) for the "From the Tsar to the Stars" festival of Russian Fantasy and Sci Fi films. The schedule is stupendous, can't decide where to begin, but I will be at tongiht's screening of The Amphibian Man.
Ptushko's "Ruslan and Ludmilla" is also quite tempting.
Check it out, this is the sci fi event of the year IMHO.

Casino Royale (2006)

Is about as close as the franchise has yet come to the ruthless amoral 007 Ian Fleming described in his original James Bond novels.
Trust me, this is not Roger Moore and his submautomobile.
Daniel Craig is not quite as classically handsome as his predecessors but he has a lean hawk-like visage and the best squinty "I-mean-it" look since the salad days of Sean Connery's icy scowl.
Sadly the film had to excise the original cold war context, but much of the book's plotline is maintained including a brutal torture sequence that has to be seen to be believed.
So yeah, Craig will do well in the role, my only question is are they now gonna dial back and start remaking some of the old titles? I can easily see Craig headlining "The Man with the Golden Gun" or even another go at "Moonraker".
I read somewheres, that Casino Royale's plotline (Bankrupting a spymaster at the baccarat tables) was based on a real incident in Ian Fleming's stint as the wartime chief of staff in British Intelligence. Apaprently, they discovered that certain Gestapo agents like to gamble in Monte Carlo with the Third Reich's funds, Fleming proposed sending in a sharper to fleece them at the gaming tables and thus disrupt the Nazi spy apparatus in the south of France.
The plan was never approved, but it makes for a good spy novel and equally good movie.

When it rains and rains...

you have a much better chance of remaining dry by simply standing out in the open amidst the downpour than you do by seeking shelter in the Alewife T Station's parking garage.
No joke, that steel and concrete edifice leaks like a heavily depth-charged German U-Boat.
I mean thick rivulets of rainwater come cascading down out of random cracks and holes in the ceiling....one is soaked well and thoroughly within minutes of entering the garage.
Makes ya wonder if the damn thing is really safe....

In Passing...

We note with sadness that Channel Zero's de facto Chief of Staff and Artist in Residence, Joseph Zamparelli's mother Margaret "Peggy" Zamparelli died last Thursday after a thirty year fight with Alzheimer's Disease.
She was nursed and cared for at home for all that time by a matched pair of heroes better know to all as her husband Joe Sr. and son, Joe Jr.
Alzheimer's is a catastrophe, it relentlessly reverses the parent-child relationship and piteously obliterates the spousal tie.
That was the world inhabited by the Zamparellis for thirty long years.
Nothing less than love of a pure and acute type could motivate anyone to such sacrifice and devotion given the nature of the challenge and the inevitable outcome.
For it is usually the case that persons in Peggy Zamparelli's nigh comatose condition are remanded to the care of a nursing home and the easy neglect that comes of a fast failing mind and personality.
Not so in the Zamparelli house, they leased a hospital bed, brought in home health aides, kept up bright chatter around Mrs. Zamparelli's slowly failing self and never ever gave up.
Their devotion to duty is an object lesson to the rest of us, that love cannot survive without sacrifice. It is the willingness to bear burdens of the heart, that make us human and humane.
I never really knew Peggy Zamparelli she was already incoherent and in decline by the time I got to know Joe Junior.
However I am well acquainted with, and in awe of, the love and loyalty shown her by her husband and son.
My Late Aunt Agnes (also an Alzheimer's sufferer) once opined that we start with family, add friends and suchlike but in the end, we end up with family again.
So Peggy goes from us, with love and with her family.

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Z

"Monster on Campus" at the Harvard Film Archive Tonight

Details hyar:
Serious b-movie cineastes will recall Arthur Franz as a moon faced character actor who somehow became a leading man in more than a few science fiction movies of the 1950's.
Franz' best moment as an actor was playing the disturbed lead in "The Sniper" (1952).
Here he is directed by Jack Arnold who had all but single handedly ignited a second golden age of horror-science fiction films at Universal in the 1950's.

Pick of the Week

F.W. Murnau's silent classic "Faust" a triumph of German expressionist cinema on the order of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" izzat the Regent Theater tomorrow night at 8pm.
Details hyar:

Haunted Happenings in Today's Globe...

The Boston Globe's metro section today has a pretty good article on various alleged ghost sightings down in the Dighton area.
Occasionally the otherwise staid Globe can digh down deep and offer up some harmless fluffy nonsense.

Jesus Camp (2006)

This would be Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary portrait of Pastor Becky Fischer the smiling hellfire preacherette who runs a summer camp program (ominously dubbed "Kids on Fire") for aspiring Christian Revolutionaries.
Films like this are always disconcerting, especially when we see impressionable children being drilled into mindless book-worshipper with a pronounced tendency for the entirely pagan veneration of George Bush's mortal person.
There is a great deal of christian rock, rap, television, cartoons and even religious heavy metal music all sorts of noisy distractions designed to wrap children up in an alternate god-centric culture.
This can be scary to watch to the unwary.
I however wonder if these kids who are being trained as religious zealots (in part to meet the fanciful threat of Islam aroused and militant) are really gonna stick with it? For the most part the range in age was from eight to about twelve, I'd love to see a follow up some ten years down the line to see if they are really so righteous, truculent and simple minded come age twenty.
Because lets face it, revolutionary christianity with all it's authoritarianism and hatred for the separation of church and state NEEDS all this manipulative sound and fury to survive.
Why?
It is to say the least a narrow minded, bossy, bleak and inhumane faith predicated on the promise of predestined life after death, a pledge that can revoked at any time on the whim of some wowser witch doctor.
So it stands to reason with theology demanding much and returning so little, there is desperate need to keep the kids in a perpetual religious fervor otherwise they might calm down enough to stop and think as to WHY the Pastor Fischer needs so many expensive techno-toys to preach her angry aggressive gospel.
Or else start watching Harry Potter DVDs.
Pastor Fischer may herself come across as a New American Cromwell screaming up a new generation of roundheads, but her speaking in tongues routine is strictly syllable by syllable out of Bob Tilton's book of religious nonsense.
She has a old message, i don't expect it wear well over time.
The other interviewees, the youth pastors and revivalists, looks fidgety and scared sometimes, they talked a good game about huge evangelical voting blocks but didn't seem convinced of their own omnipotence. Truth is, the serious fundamentalist sects have a problem with kids falling away as they grow older just like all the other denominations. Nothing in the fire of their faith seems to guarantee a successful lifelong conversion.

Brief Encounter on the Red Line Yesterday

I'm sitting there for seemingly an hour from South Station to Alewife, reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged".
Just before we get to Alewife the women in the next seat looks me in the eye and sez "THAT!" (pointing to my weighty paperback, a veritable bestselling doorstop) "Is my FAVORITE book in the whole world!"
And she smiled brightly and guilelessly.
To which I replied "Hmmmmmmphhhh" with a noncommital smile.
This was a polite way of saying Atlas Shrugged is interminable claptrap in extremis, written by a spiteful counter-bolshevik and features a heroine who apparently wants to copulate with a diesel locomotive.

A is always A folks, unless you are talking the Chinese alphabet....

Movies on a Menu in East Arlington has Reopened

under the sole leadership of Eddie Shaw.
I was there last Saturday and bought a few items just to get things rolling again.
Everyone should drop by spend some cashola and say hello to Eddie.
The link on the right will take you to their website with directions and everything...

Tamara Dobson aka "Cleopatra Jones"

died last week after a long battle with MS. Not a good actress, but nonetheless loaded with charisma and a steely willingness to do serious action scenes. Along with Adam West and Burt Ward, she holds the rare honor of having kicked Shelley Winters' villainous ass.
Ms. Dobson will be missed, she had style and class, six foot two and rarin' to go is how i'll remember her.

James Parker has an interesting article in today's Globe

on the rise and sudden expiration of "Dianalatry", the cult of the late Lady Diana Spencer, the one time Princess of Wales. Parker reports that by 2002 and the Queen's Jubilee, the Cult of Diana, which ran white hot in the Fall of 1997 had all but dissipated for a variety of reasons.
Now speaking as myself though, I can recall a few lingering cultish tributes to the Lady Diana from my own trip to London in the summer of 2002. Notably in the National Portrait Gallery there was a HUGE six foot by six foot lush portrait of Diana located directed across a hallway from a considerably smaller portrait of Queen Elizabth II with her notorious corgi dogs.
Felt like a rebuke to the current monarch over there in every way.

The curtain falls on another Drive In season...

The Tri Town is running for two more weekends before seasonal closure as is the Mendon Twin Drive In.
We went to see a triple feature at the Tri Town this weekend, The Wicker Man (bad), The Covenant (trite) and The Protector (incoherent but fun). The two horror films were inconsequential but Tony Jaa the Thai boxer has a future in kung fu movies.
Check out the links at the right to see whats playing this weekend.

Why stop at remaking "All the King's Men"?

Why not re-write the book as well, get rid of all that power and ethics stuff and make it into a straight action-adventure piece a'la "Tom Clancy's Op Center" or "The Poseidon Adventure"?
Okay, I'm being sarcastic.
By way of full disclosure, I haven't seen the new film yet, I will of course at some point (out of reverence and concern for Robert Penn Warren's original novel) but Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet & Anthony Hopkins will have to go a ways to erase memories of the 1949 original.
I mean the cast is headlined by a Yankee and THREE Brits to cover the life and times of a southern demagogue, as my old co-worker the grouch would exclaim "What rubbish!"

I can see doing Huey Long as a fictional character, the late Kingfish lent himself to dramatic caricature but since "All the Kings Men" was done right the first time, why hash it out all over again?
John Dos Passos' "Number One" whuch is also a scherzo on the Life of Long has yet to be adapted, for that fact, Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" deals in a Huey Long's seizure of power in Washington DC....both are waiting in the wings for some enterprising producer to option.

Give some other scribblers a chance for Hollywood immortaility whydoncha?

Mickey Hargitay is dead

Hungary's greatest bodybuilder-actor has slipped off for that big soundstage in the sky.
Serious psychotronic film fans will recall his starring role in "The Loves of Hercules" with his then wife the ever ripe Jayne Mansfield...a perfectly mediocre peplum vehicle (enlivened by a ludicrous looking mechanical prop dragon). He also starred as a superfit sadist in a near perfect horror-sex-exploitation film called "The Bloody Pit of Horror".
So long Mickey, you had class.

Hollywoodland (2006)

Sterling comeback vehicle for Ben Affleck as George Reeves, television's first Superman and a famous alleged Hollywood suicide in 1959.
Adrien Brody as the sleazy PI hired by Reeves' mother to investigate basically turns in a gape-mouthed Sean Penn impersonation, it's nothing new and does no harm to his career either.
The film played to a nigh empty house last night in Lexington, but that is no great impediment to Oscar buzz, the only thematic issue in Hollywoodland is the lack of decisive resolution to the whole suicide versus murder debate over Reeves' untimely death.
I myself tend to land lightly on the murder-manslaughter side on things. The whole controversy will never be resolved though, all the principle witnesses and suspects are long dead and buried.

Sad news...

"Movies on a Menu", East Arlington's "DVD Coffeehouse" has closed it's doors for good. Eddie Shaw and Brad Chapman were kidn enough to host several Channel Zero video programs during their 18 months or so of operation and we are very grateful for their interest and patronage.
Channel Zero wishes them well in all their future endeavors.

Meanwhile, once again, CZ is homeless kids...homeless! We got no place to show our obscure TV shows and offbeat feature films.
Frankly we are beginning to wonder if the sun has set on repertory film & video screening in the Hub?
It has been a wild ten year run we've had with a lot of great films, but the next five years heralds the rise of a "down load culture" that means pretty much nigh everything will be a few clicks of the mouse away.
How can teensy Channel Zero compete with that?
Should we even try?
This doesn't mean Channel Zero is shutting down, hell no!
But it does mean we might wanna start concentrating on events like the Bad Poets Society.
Maybe we need to concentrate less on reviving other people's stuff and more on creating out own original material?
Still, I'd hate to miss out on screenings...so many movie's we'd like to bring to the Hub.
But decent patient and worthwhile venues in the Cambridge-Somerville area have become as scarce as hen's teeth.
Any thoughts?

Final bad Poets Society Note

we had a certain cute couple at the show Sunday night who took time out to tell me that their first date was at our 2001 Bad Poets Society at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education (convened a mere four days after 9-11.
Well, you guessed it, they are engaged now and plan a 2007 wedding.
You just get everything with the Bad Poets Society, laughter, a good time, a little education about poesy AND true love!

Many thanks to the kind persons

who made the Bad Poets Society a stark reality on Sunday.
Stephannie Workman
Amanda Rotondo
Diane Statkus
Zoe Swenson
Gene Doucette (poetry captain)
Colin Buckley
Jimmy Tingle (our friendly neighborhood bartender and celebrity reader)
and
Joseph Zamparelli Jr our long suffering director.
As hard as it is to mine the poetry and get it down to a tight 39-42 item it is really you guys that bring this strange and mannered event to vibrant life.
Jon Haber and I are much in your collective debt.
Sunday night's program might not have been a big financial success, but it was a blockbuster in creative esthetic terms.
Quite frankly my ibggest worry going into "BPS '06" was that it was an irony-heavy event very much a creature of it's time which was the mid-1990's.
Like a good episode of "Friends" it was funny (or so we hoped) but would it still work in these fractious times?
The answer to that is a resounding yes...energy like that doesn't permeate a room on the echo of shows done back in 1998.
So we are definitely going to do it again, hopefully in April (National Poetry Month, doncha' know...wait'll they get a load of US!)
Meanwhile we do have some marketing and publicity issues to resolve with respect to BPS, all suggestions are welcome.
Take care, the best has yet to come.

BPS Reader Gene Doucette

(Also our Poetry Captain for 2006) blogs on the subject of last night's stellar event.
I'll post my own thoughts on BPS '06 tonight (hopefully).
:)
Otheriwse it was a good show all around many thanks to Joe Z and all our readers.

Last Bad Poetry Entry...

Gene Doucette, a veteran BPS reader from the infamous CCAE "Carriage House Reading" on September 14th 2001, has been doing some blogging on our behalf in the lead up to this evening's Bad Poets Society.
Check out the link on the right.
Gene has consented to be our "Poetry Captain" for the 2006 bad Poets Society, an entirely honorary sinecure that we created back in the day in a fit of sheer hubris.
The rank resembles that of being President Pro Tempore of the US Senate, no real power attends on the position, but if the President, the Vice President and the Speaker of the House all turn up dead or inelligible, the Senate's Presiding Officer moves into the White House.
Anyway we calculate that the chances of that happening are one in five thousand in DC or in Somerville.
:)
There is still time to get your tickets on line for the Bad Poets Society, use the link on the right to Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway or else ring up the box office at 617-591-1616.
Otherwise lets have a good time tonight, after all this was five years in the making.

Local sources of bad poetry,

Alexandra Ellwood, an MIT graduate and a smart one by all accounts, has her own bad poetry page.

Meanwhile we are down to the last forty eight hours before the show, there are still leaflets to distribute and other tasks to be executed. Anyone who wants to reserve a ticket now can go here:

Or else call....
Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater
255 Elm Street, Somerville, MA 02144
Toll-Free Tickets: (866)811-4111
Box Office: (617)591-1616

Remember this is not an open-mike even, the venue is handicapped accessible and the joint even serves booze during intermission!

An indescribable feeling...

up on the marquee of Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater in Davis Square, nestled amidst the bright blinking lights is "The Bad Poets Society" Sunday 9-10".
Meanwhile a feeling of nostalgia steals over me, the Bad Poets Society has come a long way since its origins at the now defunct Liberty Cafe in Central Square back in April of 1996.
In those days we were deeply enamored with the poetry of one Captain Jack Crawford, a puritanical frontiersman and contemporary of Wild Bill Hickock, George Armstrong Custer and Buffalo Bill Cody.
We will leave it up to you to see if Captain Jack's poesy still rates as "bad poetry".

Good on line resource for the so-called poetry of Julia Moore

the self proclaimed "sweet singer of Michigan" can be found here:
Purists will recall Moore as the closest American approximation to a bad poet on the order of William McGonagall.
Like the Scottish "Illyricist Maximus" Moore had a thing for disasters and a massacres as well as a pronounced interest in prohibition politics.
Her "song" "Leave off the agony in style" is a sort of whining rebuke to the American woman of 1918 and remains a special favorite of ours.

Meanwhile reserve your tickets good and early for the Bad Poets Society, exploit the link and do it on line...or else call 617-591-1616.

I got a big welcome on Saturday at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop

(6 Plympton Street Cambridge Mass, just round' the corner from the Harvard Book Store on Mass Ave) they seemed duly intrigued by the idea of a Bad Poetry Reading.
Left off some flyers and talked the event up in grand style.
Anyway they do stock Kathryn and Ross Petras' seminal volume Very Bad Poetry which serves as an excellent introduction to the whole realm of substandard poesy.
The store also has website which is well worth checking out for all your good poetry needs as well.

Bad Poetry and Bad Poets

Our experience has been that a classically bad poem marries a trivial or dubious topic to an effective if superficially solemn technique. Generally speaking though, the most common example of bad poetry tend to revolve around a lofty subject hobbled by inept execution. James McIntyre (Canada's bizarre "cheese poet") would exemplify the former notion, while "all up" bad poets like William McGonagall and Julia Moore would be examples of the latter category.
Truly bad poets, the Edgar Guests, the William McGonagalls, the Amanda McKittrick Ros's have a curious consistency throughout their writing careers their first works are as reliably laughable as their last.
A classically bad poet in our experience, never grows or changes, their poesy remains a battered limping thing all the way.
So when it comes time to categorize this type of material it's important to note the difference between a bad poem that comes out of poor subject matter chosen by an otherwise able lyricist and material generated by a lifelong hack.
Both produce "bad" material by our light but descend to those depths by different means.

OT Star Trek Note...

this is interesting....

Can't see where they go with this, if it is done cheaply & badly it'll alienate the fan-base...if it is done wellit raises the question as to where do they stop?

Seamus Cooney!

Not a house hold name, but he does have a website that archives some excellent representative examples of bad poetry.

Serious aficionadoes will find, among others, Theophile Marzials' classic "A Tragedy" which for sheer Middle School goofiness has yet to be equaled.
Marzials was a strange one, even by the standards of the bad poetry genre. We discovered him in 1997 (I think) and "A Tragedy" was considered sufficiently stand-out to be Charles Laquidara's opening poem at the second annual Bad Poets Society that year.
The rest of Marzials' output though, is rather more weird than bad...lots of densely populated run on lyrics...sound effects and sundry pre-James Joyce blather.
We were sorely disappointed to discover "A Tragedy" was really something of an aberration in his otherwise steady and obscure output.
Marzials who wrote incessantly had nothing else that compared to the mirthful clitter-clatter of "A Tragedy".
The moral of course is, not all bad poetry is produced by Bad Poets.

McGonagall Reconsidered:

Author Gord Bambrick argues that William McGonagall (prithily known as the worst poet in the English language) might've been spoofing us all.

Wanna buy early tickets to the Bad Poets Society?

Just try this link and look for our event on September 10th, 2006 (7pm).
Meanwhile we've got all the poetry picked out and sorted into "appropriate" categories...39 poems in total. We'll be blogging a bit more on the general topic of bad poetry over the next ten days as we lead up to The Bad Poets Society.
This is also Channel Zero's tenth anniversary...anyone out there recall our tiny beginnings as a film-video franchise downstairs at the Liberty Cafe in Central Square.
Look how far we've come...maybe what four or five miles?
:)

Special Announcement: The Bad Poets Society is Returning!!!

YES! Because you demanded it! Back in Boston after a five year hiatus!

Channel Zero and Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater Present

The Bad Poets Society!

Mankind’s Worst Poetry from The Age of Shakespeare to the Modern Age!

With Special Guest Reader: Jimmy Tingle!

Poe, Shakespeare, Longfellow. Great Poets are eternal. Alas, none of them will be an appearance anywhere near the Bad Poet’s Society, a loving tribute to the world’s worst verse from the inept poesy of Scotland’s William McGonagall to the lyric dementia of Nick Kenny a poet in love with the US Navy.

Jimmy Tingle, Somerville’s One Man Renaissance will kick off the festivities with his own special reading!

Don’t Miss this Legendary Festival of Inferior Rhymes!

Sunday, September 10th, 7pm
Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater
255 Elm Street
Davis Square
Somerville Ma. 02144
617-591-1616
Admission: $10 cheap!!!

Off to the Drive In tonight I think...

"Mys Super Ex-Girlfriend" and "John Tucker Must Die" are on a double bill at the Tri-Town making this, my pick of the week.
The Tri-Town Drive In's vitals can be found by using the handy link on the right.
Sadly I never did get to see "Superman Returns" at the Tri-Town (I dreamt of parking dead center at the eight post dead center in the first row)...but this particular double feature makes up for that nicely.

Scriptwriting stories such as this

just make me cringe

Krypton doesn't explode?
Jor El commits suicide in order to visit Kal El in limbo?
I mean...the mind boggles at the vulgar thoughlessness of each and every successive version of the proposed Superman revival.
Thank Ghod for Bryan Singer thats all I can say...

Heard another good one...

President Ford once paid a visit to Eastport Maine home of the Passamaquoddy Indians. He allegedly asked Tribal Chief Joe if he had any advice for the President of the United States.
Joe allegedly replied: "Watch your immigration policy. We didn't do so well with ours."

I heard a good joke the other day...

An old Indian chief sat in his hut on the reservation, smoking a ceremonial pipe and eyeing two U.S. government officials sent to interview him.
"Chief Two Eagles" asked one official, "You have observed the white man for 90 years. You've seen his wars and his technological advances. You've seen his progress, and the damage he's done."
The chief nodded in agreement.
The official continued, "Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?"
The chief stared at the government officials for over a minute and then calmly replied, "When white man found the land, Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, women did all the work, medicine man free, Indian man spent all day hunting and fishing, all night having sex."
Then the chief leaned back and smiled, "Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that.

I just blew $16 on books...

Damn, that was tomorrow's lunch money, but they were worth it; "The Reformation" and "The Renaissance" volumes of Will & Ariel Durant's history of western civilization.
Their research holds up a good fifty years later and the writing is pithy and accessible.

Mickey Spillane is Dead....

the heaven's shake.

Ahhhh...but Mickey was a giant in his day, he invented the violence for violence sake's "men's action" genre and made millions from it.
He was also popular literature's most ludicrous anti-communist zealot (at least until the advent of Allen Drury) reaching his zenith in "One Lonely Night" in which detective-visigoth Mike Hammer roars up and down Manhattan island gunning down reds with little or no concern for the so-called Bill of Rights.

Mickey was a former comic book writer and it really really showed in his preposterously arch tough-guy dialogue. In "The By-Pass Control", secret agent protagonist "Tiger Mann" explains to the reader the intricate differences between a "dame" and a "broad".
Howlers like this abound in almost every single book Spillane ever wrote.
However as I said, he made millions at the writing game, bought himself a mansion in the Carolinas, did beer ads and even played his own creation "Mike Hammer" in the cult film "The Girl Hunters"(1963).
Still and all that, Mickey's greatest contribution to popular literature might have been by proxy; the legend goes that Ian Fleming read "I the Jury" on a flight to Jamaica and instantly decided he could write better thrillers than that!
Thus was born James Bond 007, an incomparably better written slaughterer of reds and sundry villains.

Even if the books were laughable, I think Mickey is somehow having the last laugh on us all.

If Aristotle defines happiness as the full use of one's powers along the lines of excellence, then surely, money, mansion and all, Mickey was a happy man.

The Governor was on the TV last night...

looking plainly sweaty and terrified in the wake of the partial collapse of one of the connector tunnels and the death of Milena Del Valle.
But then, he ought to be scared.
He uses those tunnels all the time to zoom off to Iowa and New Hampshire where he does naught but slag and disrespect the Commonwealth.

The Second Best Action Movie This Summer:

the sinecure firmly belongs to Pierre Morel's "B13" a martial arts showcase for "parkour" practioner David Belle. The plot such as it is, is ridiculous, Parisian Bureaucrats in the near future plot to level overcrowded slums with a neutron bomb. Ah but all this is a hook upon which to hang Belle's superlative acrobats and fighting finesse. Alas,"Parkour" is hard to describe it makes free use of the natural space in the hand to hand fighting sequences...to me it comes off as "Jackie Chan played straight" and man oh man does it look GREAT on the big screen. Trust the French to completely upend the martial arts movie genre in one fell swoop.
Honestly I haven't gotten as big a kick out of a martial arts movie since I saw "Armour of God Part II" at the Museum of Fine Arts all those years ago...

Looking forward to more from Belle and his associates, "parkour" has endless potential to reignite a currently moribund genre.

Job Search Note...

It is particularly depressing to see a job for which I interviewed some two months ago now once again being advertised in the Boston Sunday Globe "Help Wanted" section and on Boston.com career's page.
Yup the only thing worse than that, is to see TWO jobs I've interviewed for in the past three months being simultaneously advertised in the Help Wanted section of the Sunday Globe.

The Esplanade Fourth of July Blogged...

Why in God's Holy Name would CBS send a feelgood shitkicker like "Dr. Phil" to MC our annual Boston Pops Concert and fireworks display???
I couldn't care less what this bumptious sumbitch thinks of our pyrotechnics!
Oh he has a high Q-rating, well who cares he is a played out hack liken unto the "big" musical guest Steve Tyler and the mortal remains of Aerosmith.
That having been said, the display itself gets incrementally more spectacular every year despite the network's insistence on starting LATE in order to fill up three hours of traditionally low rated TV time.
Well, what the hell, the Boston Pops never lets us down even if the whole thing has been unmercifully commercialized by the big TV network contract.

Superman Returns (2006) spoilers:

"Superman Returns" is less a movie and more a sort of cinema sacrament what with all the religious imagery director Bryan Singer crams into the scenario. The Man of Steel in classic fallen angel style plummets from the sky not once but twice and adopts a crucifixion pose at one critical moment.
Well what of it?
This is a film over fifteen years in the making with dozens of appalling scripts and demented casting ideas on its rapsheet (Nicholas Cage as Superman anyone?)...These worshipful vignettes are a sort of benign pay off to the serious Superman fans who have suffered much anxiety on the road to the Multiplex this weekend.
So let me say this, it is a good film, at times a great film, Brandon Routh is a superlative Superman who can but get better with time, Kate Bosworth is a fine Lois Lane and Kevin Spacey's Luthor is ruthless and evil sans recourse to camp.
The film's real strength though is an internally consistent script, the dirty secret of the 1978 movie is that the screenplay was a horrific mess held together by Chris Reeve, Margot Kidder and director Donner's common desire to stave off the descent into pure Adam Westian farce.
This time some thought has gone into the scenario, the film takes up five years after the events of "Superman II", Kal El has left Earth for mysterious reasons of his own and come back to discover Lois Lane is now a single mom and world has forgotten him.
Public approval being Superman's real source of energy, Big Blue goes to work stopping crimes, saving people and reminding all and sundry of his overall ubiquity & usefulness.
As Superman recovers his street cred, Lex Luthor has quietly heisted some Kryptonian crystals out of Superman's Fortress of Solitude and is conjuring with creating his own pseudo-continents.
Yup you have that right, for some reasons even after twenty eight years, the writers can't come up with a better master plan for the mad scientist than yet another sci fi real estate swindle.
oh well...no film is perfect.

Clark Kent meanwhile is heartbroken to see that Lois is engaged and utterly disdainful of her prior fling with the Last Son of Krypton.
Or is she?
Because lets face it, Lois can no more drop Big Blue than peanut butter can ditch wonder bread...Its fated that the world's most dysfunctional couple will hook up once again just prior to all hell breakin' loose.
***
The flying sequences are amazing in this film, Bryan Singer really got value for that $204M price tag.
The action set pieces move the plot forward at a good clip and support the emotional sub-plot nicely. Singer has called this one "a sort of chick flick" to the extent that Superman is trying to recover his humanity and put his Kryptonian heritage in context...That's the high concept in a nutshell.
Much is being made of Brandon Routh's superficial resemblance to the late Chris Reeve. They look a bit a like, but while Reeve was an actor with a nigh beatific smile (and a face that could cloud over in an instant in wonderfully dark ways, check out Superman III to see this), Routh has these tragic eyes and a good "I-mean-it" squint to back things up.
***
The film's most intriguing issue lies in Jason, Lois Lane's five year old son who adds little to the plot other than to illustrate the notion that the reporter has "moved on" in Superman's absence.
Well, other than the fact that his is Kal El's son from Lois and Superman's brief fling in "Superman II" a point that is a sort of open secret with the aud til the very end.
Given the fact the kid has little to do in the film other than get kidnapped by Luthor one wonders why he is included in the scenario at all?
I suspect Jason exists to prompt a marriage proposal from Clark in the inevitable sequel...Otherwise Superman is a very absent dad and that might be a bit much for today's audience.
After all, Lois & Clark are married in the comics and a wedding does make a good sub-plot for a sequel.

And believe me, there will be a sequel.

Today Marks the 130th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Custer's storied defeat at the hands of the Lakota Souix out in the Dakotas.
We do love our epics of defeat here in the West, from Thermopylae to Waterloo down thru the Seventh Cavalry's sabres glittering in the sun on the bluffs above the Little Big Horn.
Custer has had strong popularity in multimedia as well...from Thomas Ince's 1912 film "The Death of Custer" down to "Little Big Man".
The weirdest film incarnation of the boy general is still under the tutelage of dependable Hollywood hack Sidney Salkow who directed not one but two "pro Indian" westerns about the Little Big Horn. "Sitting Bull" (1956) with J. Carroll Naish in redface as the mighty medicine man and "The Great Souix Massacre" (1965) featured red haired Darren "Kolchak the Night Stalker" McGavin as the only honest man in Custer's command. Both were about as historically accurate as a Ned Buntline dime novel and both suffered from an excess of naivete' about the position of Native Americans in the modern USA.
But what the hell, they are an attempt to break with past proactice no matter how silly or bumptious they may be.

Error in today's Sunday Globe Arts Pages...

therein it is asserted that Shakespeare & Co NEVER staged "Hamlet" in its long residence in Lenox Ma. That is a clear mis-statement, I myself saw Shakespeare & Co put on "Hamlet" in the Stables Theater back when they were at the Wharton Estate. It was an a stripped down version for the High School circuit, but trust me, S & C did Hamlet fer sherr.

The Seer Zamparelli

Had lunch with Joe Zamparelli (Channel Zero's long suffering artist in residence) on Friday. He airily predicted that the Belmont Stakes would descend so deep into maudlin sentimentality that a live remote would depict the injured thoroughbred Barbaro in his stall at the Equine Hospital "watching" the race on TV.
Sure enough in the interminable lead up to yesterday's race we were treated to a live remote of a portable TV set up in Barbaro's stall so that the mighty horse could "watch the race".

Now if only Joe could get back to me with those damned powerball numbers.

Kathy Griffin's "My Life on the D-List" returns to Bravo this week...

How much d'ye suppose she charges to withold certain celebrity names from her stand up act?
Okay that was harsh speculation and I have no proof of the practice...but when you wallow in raw gossip hush money usually follows as night follows day.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Am I the only person in the world who thinks Sir Ian McKellen looks like a horse's patoot in that cockamammie helmet he wears as "Magneto"?

With the reliability of an unloved season we have laid at our feet yet another X-sequel which delves into a paranoid US Government's attempts to forcibly "cure" the mutant population, the resurrection of Famke Janssen's Jean Grey character and the usual show down between Magneto's evil mutants and Patrick Stewart's posse of good guys aka "The X-Men".
Got all that?
The film is otherwise a bit of a shuck and jive, James Marsden's performance as the tormented Cyclops amounts to a ten minute cameo, Janssen has about two lines of dialogue in the whole film and as usual Patrick Stewart's "Professor X" vanishes out of the plotline at the forty five minute mark.
Apparently the scriptwriters for X-3 had the same problem as the creative team for the previous films, they inevitably write Stewart out of the action because his character is a omnipotent telepath whose powers ought to be able to thwart any opponents attempts at subterfuge.
In practice this makes Professor X seem to be the most powerful and yet useless superhero in modern cinema history.
This being the case most of the film is carried by the histrionics of Sir Ian McKellen (who chews the scenery like a starving man) along with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry who are starting to look really really bored with all this x-mishaugas.
And why shouldn't they?
The script simply recycles most of the last two film's pay off scenes loaded up with even more leaden dialogue....I mean no wonder Famke Janssen looks so confused and dishearted.
Much as I jab at the X-Men (they aren't my favorite superheroes overhyped and overexposed as far as I'm concerned) it is at the core an uncommonly well-cast franchise...all the actors are talented enough for the particular creative challenge of a big comic book based film.
So it annoys me to no end when the producers, writers & director end up making such a dreary unremarkable film.
But this being a big summer for super heroes the film will no doubt make millions but its a sad creative comedown and shrill bore overall.

Isn't Superman an Illegal Alien?

I mean think about it.
He has no passport, no green card plus his foster parents clearly lied repeatedly and possibly under oath to secure his adoption as a baby.
Am I alone in thinking under the rules being proposed (nay bellowed) by Representative Tancredo and his ilk in congress Kal El is deserving of nothing but deportation back to Krypton's star system?

Now maybe if he admits to any crimes committed on US soil, pays back taxes, is willing to leave the country and re-enter at the back of the line (Behind such other heroic wetbacks as Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman) THEN we can let him back in.
Anyway he has been stealing work for native born heroes for years, I think the House of Representatives should investigate WHY Warner Brothers and DC Comics are CELEBRATING this illegal immigrant as a paragon of virtue.

Poor Barbaro!!!

Broke his leg out of the gate at the Preakness now his life hangs in the balance. That was an awful thing to see last weekend. Currently there seems to be some post operative optimism out there but not much. Barbaro's career as a racer is over hopefully they can save his life for the stud farm.
This situation pains me as I've always regarded horse racing as reasonable family entertainment despite the gambling and chintzy atmosphere. Kids can grasp who wins and who loses easily and the excitement is fairly wholesome.
Well...except when one of the horses comes up injured like that...then the whole thing takes on a sad morbid cast.
I once saw a horse euthanized at Suffolk Downs, its a humane procedure but utterly sobering in every way.

So here is to Barbaro!

I hope & prey he can survive this thing.

Dr. Who (Sci Fi Friday nights 9 pm) just keeps getting better and better

Christopher Eccleston is at the top of his game and Billie Piper in particular seems destined for membership in a very exclusive club of supporting actors who keep stealing the big show.
In the ultra-chic TV Sci Fi Division this would include such luminaries as Jonathan Harris,Jan Merlin (Tom Corbett Space Cadet, look it up kids), Leonard Nimoy, Julie Newmar and Allyson Hannigan.
A merry collection of players indeed.

Preakness Today...

Can't suss out the field as yet, only nine ponies this time as opposed to the twenty horse cavalry charge we saw at the Kentucky Derby.
Predictably, the sports punditariat is hyping Barbaro as the next Secretariat. They do this ALL the time and it always ends the same way, either in tears in Maryland or in defeat at the Belmont Stakes.
Today's horses are faster than the ponies of 1979, faster yes but they lack the stamina to capture the triple crown.
So I'm thinking maybe Barbaro was a fluke aided and abetted by his long layover from his previous race. He has had but two weeks down time since the derby so I'm wondering in my ignorant amateurish way if he can pull off anothe coup?
Brother Derek has a great starting position and all the bona fides, but he ran so damn poorly in Louisville.
No, I might MIGHT go with SweetNorthernSaint....good starting position reasonable odds he might make two plus two equal victory.

The curtain falls...

The first season "Here Come the Brides", a late 1960's bit of western piffle starring David Soul and then teenybopper pop star Bobby Sherman was released on DVD yesterday.
The show itself only lasted two years and is chiefly noted for it's boisterous feel-good themesong and a guest appearance by the late Sifu Bruce Lee.

The great days of film and tv revivalism are drawing to a close my friends. If obscurities like "Here Come the Brides" can land in the "new arrivals" rack at Tower Records then how soon before Ros Serling's "The Loner" or Richard Mulligan in "The Hero" show up?

The dump it all on DVD movement strongly inhibits Channel Zero's ability to revive and screen such rarities and obscurities. I mean, why drop by Movies on a Menu or the Coolidge Corner Screening Room to watch Bruce Lee's sole appearance on "Here Come the Brides" when you can buy the damn series for thirty bucks?
The very definition of obscure and rare is being relentlessly changed by this phenomenon.

This doesn't mean that Channel Zero is going out of business, but what we do, will have to change because the market is changing and the screening zeitgeist is changing.

Floyd Patterson is Dead...

The heaven's shake.

For better or worse, the late champion was a sort of flight-test for the modern heavyweight fighter. He was fast and light like Muhammed Ali but he also built his rep on punching well above his weight.
Neurotic and given to melancholy he had to be the first boxer whose mental state was a major consideration in all pre-fight commentary. The New Yorker's AJ Libeling devoted reams of copy describing Patterson's eccentric training methods (The champ napped, he napped alot!) and personal worries.
For all his mental agony, Floyd's real problem was he had a classic glass jaw. That prototypical slacker Ingmar Johansson found it in 1959 and practically pounded on Patterson like a ten penny nail.
And yet, neuroses and all, Patterson came back a year later to beat on Johansson like he was an old tin bucket.
Patterson had class...when he wasn't worrying himself into a state of the screaming bedspins.
Alas his 1960 comeback is now completely forgotten in the relentless press of his two humiliating losses to Sonny Liston. A lot of people burdened the champ with expectations that he'd stop Sonny's brutal drive for the championship belt, and alas Floyd just couldn't deliver.
He tried a third time to come back but ah... Muhammed Ali was in the other corner, twelve rounds later it was all over for Floyd.
Still and all that, there was nothing low about him, he kept pushing and striving deperate to live up to his potential, a small man in a business that favors big beefcake he hung in there to the last.
He died of cancer and was suffering from Alzheimers as well. New york State found him a sinecure on the Athletic Commission and in more lucid days he could talk up the sweet science with some enthusiasm.
Ali owed a lot to Patterson's mixture of a middleweight's speed and a heavyweight's stopping power...he'd never admit it, but he does.
And the next time we roll our eyes over Mike Tyson's emotional issues, well, jsut remember Floyd brought a lot of his problems into the ring as well.

G' bye Floyd, say hi to Joe Louis and other departed titans for us willya?

If you are in Downtown Crossing on a weekday

and at liberty (as I am these days) then definitely swing by the Brattle Book Shop on West Street. Their daily outdoor booksale (in the adjoining empty lot) is a thing of wonder with top prices on hardcovers reaching an affordable $5. Most tradepaperbacks can be had for $1 to $3 dollars maxiumum. If you were a penurious local undergraduate, then this might be a way to secure some assigned readings at prices below the campus bookstore.
I've been buying disparate volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's History of Civilization here as I have gaps in the collection.
Trust me, you'll buy something in this lot, there is just too much temptation.

Job Search Anecdote

I was all dressed up in the financial district yesterday morning for a job fair up at 28 State Street. I came out of the State Street Orange Line stop and there at the top of the stairs was Sixty State Street in all it's red rock glory standing there just as insolently as it was when I was a mail clerk in a law firm on the nineteenth floor some twenty five years ago.
A wave of nostalgia for my mildly mis-spent youth washed over me and I exclaimed "Good God I'm back here again!"
Well this dapper legal-looking city gent in front of me spun around with an expression of the utmost solicitude he said "Are you lost? Do you need directions?"
I assured him that I was only having a little moment of deja vu he smiled, waved and walked across the street.
Now that I think of it, you just don't always get that kind of immediate engagement and courtesy here in chilly New England, let alone Boston's financial district.
Hope that fella had a good day.

Plaintive Cry...

The Boston Phoenix has its "Best of Boston" out this week. Once again they've bestowed laurels on East Cambridge's own "Video Oasis" as the best video store in Metro Boston.
This is the second time they've singled out Dennis Arruda's store for plaudits, and in truth the praise is well deserved. Dennis has a great store with a great collection of horror, sci fi, adult, and martial arts films.
BUT!
Let the record show that Jon Haber and I discovered this store back when we were writing "Its All True" and gave him our won "Best in Boston" award three years running back when Bob Dole was a headliner.
They are only catching up to where we were back in 1996....

On a Second Viewing of "The Son of Frankenstein"

In some ways, this is the last great film of the original Universal Studios based horror cycle of the 1930's. It was certainly the last horror film with a lavish A-level budget and it shows in the lighting, decor, SPFX and vast sets.
The story is a familiar one, Victor Frankenstein's son returns and revives his father's dormant monster in a bid to prove his father's genius.
In fact young Wolf Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) seems locked in a sort of Freudian death spiral with the unquiet shade of his father, a matter symbolized by the monster and all his lumbering symbolism.
This is a great looking film, Castle Frankenstein is a sumptuous German expressionist feast to the eye including a sulphur pit and what appears to be a walk in fireplace!
Alas the story is all but undone by an over-ripe hammy performance from Rathbone ably assisted by Donnie Dunagan the screechy child actor playing the scientist's toddler offspring.
Ah but the supporting players are a veritable gathering of the Gods!
Boris Karloff in his last performance as the monster mimes perfectly the brute's existential angst, Bela Lugosi gives the performance of his career as the wily hunchbacked peasant Ygor and Lionel Atwill plays it icy straight as the one armed police inspector.
If only the sequels were this good...but alas they declined in quality. Karloff passed the role of the monster on to everyone from Lon Chaney Jr to Glen Strange. Apparently Boris correctly deduced that from here on in, the monster would end up the uninteresting stooge of various other characters.
Lugosi at least seems to be having the time of his life playing the evil peasant and former grave-robber it is a performance that belies the notion that Bela was only good for playing bloodsucking aristocrats.
Currently "The Son of Frankenstein" is available as part of a DVD "Frankenstein Collection" set from Universal. If you have the scratch it is a worthwhile acquisition, there are plenty of extras plus the "Ghost of Frankenstein" (featuring another star turn from Bela Lugosi as Ygor) and the "House of Frankenstein". One can Watch the whole series come apart despite valiant efforts from reoccuring players Lone Chaney Jr., Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi.

"Failure to Launch" (2006)

Hey if my old man wants to hire a hooker to get me to move out of the house, he is welcome and even encouraged to do so.
Okay so maybe the movie isn't all that explicit, Sarah Jessica Parker's character DOES primly explains to Matthew McConaughey's exasperated parents that she "never" sleeps with her clients as she beguiles them to move out - For a PRICE!
Hell, any experienced streetwalker will tell you the secret of the business is selling the sizzle not the steak.
What kills me is, McConaughey and Parker do have chemistry together in a complete freakshow that otherwise deftly mixes two taboo subjects, guys who live with their mom's past 20 years of age and prostitutes...
I just have this mental image that the script had to ahve been written for say Jennifer Anniston or Sandra Bullock...they both reached page ten of the script and howled into their cel-phone simultaneously "SHERM, THEY WANT ME TO PLAY A WHORE????!!!"
And so thus that is how Sarah Jessica Parker at the tender age of forty five
got her big break as a romantic comedy ingenue.

If you are up in Amherst New Hampshire

then definitely check out Mori Books 141 Route 101A Amherst NH (603 882-2665 or www.moribooks.com). This is an old fashioned used bookstore with volumes piled up on the floor and bookcases that stretch to the ceiling...tons of everything is in evidence. The children's book collection is especially delicious with a pronounced emphasis on old Stratemeyer Syndicate series like "Dave Dashaway" or "Don Sturdy". They've also got a nice selection of the old "Big little Books" (those seem hard to find, though I'm no collector) and an excellent biography-history section with a nice stack of the old Ballantine Books "Our Violent Century" series.
I myself grabbed off a copy of Leo p. Ribuffo's "The Old Christian Right" which devotes an entire chapter to the life and career of Massachusetts' own Native Son, William Dudley Pelley, screenwriter, fascist and spiritualist extraordinaire!
So believe me, this is a good used books, Richard Mori, the owner has his head on straight.

The Rise and Rise of Captain Schoolgirl...

Cheap and crazy sometimes trumps lavish and maudlin...and then there is the iconic lunacy of “Captain Schoolgirl”?
Where to begin?
The independent comic book or the DVD?
The comic created by one “Fernandito” revolves around a goth girl who is a freshman at a local catholic high school. She does not fit in as is often the case and to confront her own alienation she doodles up an alter-ego the sexy Captain Schoolgirl who prances around in parochial uniform righting wrongs or some damn thing.
The Captain’s comic book depiction is a mite unfocused, she is both upholder of the status quo (a punisher of tardiness) and a great subverter of the catholic high school zeitgeist all at the same time.
There is something to be said for this, parochial schools are the last frontier in the American Teenage Firmament, they are seldom depicted realistically nor parodied with any kind of wit or insight.
The DVD on the other hand is a sort of straightforward satire drawing on such puerile fare as Filmation’s old “Secrets of Isis” Saturday morning show. The comic’s framing device and some of its satiric edge is accordingly dispensed with. The main conceit is that is this a normal episode of a mythical TV show called “Captain Schoolgirl” with clips setting up conflicts from previous shows and a nominal cliffhanger ending.
The tone of the whole enterprise though, is bracingly cheap and feckless, with strong performances from the title lead (alas her name is off the credits) and her sidekick “Dunceboy” (Sean Pridgeon) who reminds me of Jon Heder from Napoleon Dynamite. The story such as it is revolves around a bullying new kid and Captain Schoolgirl’s attempts to ward off the advances of the lecherous Reverend Mooney (Shane Scott both bearded and smooth shaven) and defeat the local Queen Bee Cheerleader (Jules Hartley). Imagine an ABC after school special as executed by William Burroughs and you’ll have the whole show figured out very nicely.
Where the DVD fails though, is in some details, ergo Captain Schoolgirl is the only pupil who wears a uniform, her male classmates for the most part are garbed in trashy street wear. For the record, when I was at a catholic school in North Cambridge it was suit coats and ties every day.
Ahhh...but for a labor of love shot over a few days “Captain Schoolgirl” has class and a sort of charm.
One hopes the production team can find time to produce more episodes before their nominal lead actress takes off for Hollywood, she is that good in my opinion.

Captain Schoolgirl's blog, DVDs & Comics can be found Here and or here.
Well worth the trip IMHO.

So Katie Couric is going to become the Prime Anchorperson on the CBS Evening News?

Ahhhhh....CBS knows that Katie Couric ISN'T really fifteen years old right?
She just acts and is made up to look that way.
Hope someone clued them in...