Mark your Calendars!

It is Official, the Bad Poets Society returns to the Spiegel Auditorium at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education Friday October 23rd at 8pm...admission a paltry $5 for a cornucopia of the world's worst verse! Once again we are deep in the throes of our research ceaselessly dredging poetry that makes last year's poesy look like freakin' Sophocles by comparison!
Don't miss it, now in it's tenth year (or so) of genteel substandard poetry mongering!

Harvard University (AKA "Big Red")

has apparently sanctioned the creation of a "signature clothes line" under the trademark "The Harvard Yard".

The clothes look patently retro-ridiculous, i think one of those belts in the link above may well be a necktie...And the model looks like a recovering skinhead. Oh course that isn't his fault, the very God Apollo himself would look like a buffoon in that gear.

Moreover other than mere money why would Harvard University want to get in on a racket where Miley Cyrus and SpongeBob Squarepants are the biggest most profitable players?

The best movie I've seen so far this summer

Is Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker", a story of an adrenaline-addicted bomb disposal technician wandering the wastelands of Iraq in search of his next big ass rush. The rest of the guys in his squad are on the brink of fragging this poor driven schnook since his style inevitably takes everyone to the brink of destruction along the way.
To be sure it IS an action movie, a war movie even...But one with taut dialogue, great acting and a unique combat setting.

For years now I'd written off Kathryn Bigelow as an interesting artistic failure, Near Dark was great but she had serious plot plausibility issues in her two subsequent police procedurals "Blue Steel" and "Point Break".
Here at last though, she seems to have found her genre and a cast (Of unknowns no less) who can put the script over sans worry or woe.
Clearly I underestimated her, looking forward to her next film.

Wouldn't it have been funny if...

Sir Paul McCartney had opted to sing some of Neil Innes Beatles' homages instead of his usual Fab Four repertoire? It has to be cheaper for McCartney to sing those Rutles songs than the mad phat royalties he has to pay to SONY on his own music!

Twelfth Night (Shakespeare & Co)

Tina Packer is a sorceress, a conjurer, a Doctor Frankenstein who got it all right in the end. patiently year after year, from behind the granite fastness of the Berkshires she has found the artists, inspired the directors, built the audience and secured a venue. A home in other words, fit for the immortal bard of Stratford on Avon, year after year nigh un-noticed the little old ladies from Long Island and Hudson Counties, the hep families, the debased aesthetes like me stream into Lenox imbibe the years's offerings and then leave heartened, fortified and ready for any deed.
This year Jonathan Croy a long standing member of the company directs a hi-freakin-larious version of "Twelfth Night, Or What You Will". This is the sort of comedy that S&C can execute in their sleep but don't think that means the company is resting on their laurels, trust me they do this sumbitch up big. Kudos to exuberant scenery chewer Elizabeth Raetz as Olivia, otherwise a Lovelorn Duchess who chases girl-disguised-as-boy Viola with all the subtlety of the Coyote's pursuit of the Road Runner. In her they have a actress with a deft talent for comedy, both the clever repartee and the well time pratfall she is a keeper believe me. Merritt Janson's Viola is no slouch either, cute, winsome, blessed with impeccable timing and a face seemingly carved by the Gods of Theater for shameless mugging, another keeper to be sure.
Ah it just did my heart good to see Johnny Lee Davenport (AKA "Mister Thunder and Lightning") up on the big stage of the Founders Theater, sure he did double time in smaller supporting roles but he is a treasure to the legit theater, a big confidant stentorian ahhhhctorrrr who has no fear whatsoever of making a fool of himself in search of big larfs. For such as these did Shakespeare take pen in hand all those centuries ago.


In fact Twelfth Night is clearly Jonathan Croy's love letter to the imperial glory days of Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes' animated shorts...I can pay it no higher praise, sell the house, sell the spouse, sell the kids, make flank speed to the open sea, whatever it takes to get to Lenox Ma. to see Twelfth Night, you will not be sorry.

Nothing in the way of posts lately

haven't been doing much since my Dad fractured his hip and ended up in a Rehab Hospital...mostly been trotting over there most nights to see what I can do.
He is making good progress but eighty-eight is eighty eight so it's fair to say things won't be the same after this.

Am I the only person in the world who thinks that

Michael Jackson's "We are the World" is one of the most grotesquely narcissistic songs ever written?
And then there is the music video, one hundred of the music industry's best and brightest all giving themselves a nice loving rhetorical hummer right there in color on camera.
Honestly, Michael Jackson co-wrote the lyrics, so you just know the original draft was entitled "I am the World".
***
Okay chill, I KID, I kid because I love...I love to kid. Sure a lot of money got raised for famine relief but a lot of egos got buffed and polished as well...just sayin'.

Still...I forgot how Ray Charles' voice just soared over that mishaugas, gives me chills even today.

A Ghoulish moment on the Red Line

Reading the unexpurgated text of Michael Jackson's Last Will and Testament, courtesy of the Boston Metro. The will itself is about as much fun to read as a well executed Bill of Lading.

Star Trek (2009)

Kudos to J.J. Abrams for figuring out that Kirk, Spock and McCoy et al are characters in the end that can played again and again by the right cast.
And it is in the casting that the new Star Trek franchise is the strongest, Chris Pine finds Captain Kirk quite easily without recourse to any of William Shatner's iconography, Zachary Quinto's Mister Spock is a post-Nimoy revelation and I expect great things from Karl Urban's Doctor McCoy.

Too bad the script is such a paint by the numbers affair with a bloodless villain and storyline that heavily recalls "Star Trek Nemesis" (2002), the last gasp of the Next Generation's run in feature films.
in truth I begin to think that there are no more Star Trek stories left to tell the franchise has soldiered on thru FIVE television series a stack of films, thousands of awful paperbacks...Honestly is there any creative water left in the well?
As long as the writers and producers are fixated on recreating the whole space battle motif behind "The Wrath of Khan" then I suspect they'll get maybe two more sequels out of this admittedly impeccable cast before they hit another creative wall.
Then again they might get something cool going, but they have to lay off all the "Master and Commander" in outer space stuff and try boldly going somewhere new and different.
Maybe do some exploring when is the last time anyone did any of that in a Star Trek franchise?

Sean Penn has apparently dropped out of the Farrelly's Brother's proposed Three Stooges picture...

Am I the only blogger on Ghod's Green Earth who is appalled that a charmless collection of goyim are all champin' at the bit to play the fabled middle stooge??

The fact that anyone is reviving the Stooges at all is a strong indicator that the end times may be upon us.

As funny as the old Columbia two reelers were, the whole filmography was factory output.
Who the hell wants to remake factory output anyway?
Frankly, it is a mere accident of American Culture that the Stooges are such cultural icons today since their colleagues at Columbia from Sterling Holloway to Buster Keaton and the sadly forgotten Charlie Chase all did equally worthwhile work at the time.
Hell as far as I am concerned, that Curley's replacement Shemp who also had his own series of solo two-reelers did his best work alone!

Notes to a screening of "Land of the Lost" at the Tri Town Drive In

Will Ferrell is never gonna rise above being Will Ferrell, Chaplin was the Tramp, Jerry Lewis was the Kid, John Belushi was Bluto...Ferrell is ....well a the same clueless egomaniac in every film....Ron Burgundy over and over again.
And what the hell, the public loves it...I can't say much thought for opening a can of satiric whoop-ass on a minor Saturday Morning sci fi show like "Land of the Lost" constitutes some great comedic departure for all concerned...On the other hand I laughed more than I thought I would (which seems to be my half hearted refrain this summer), and the movie did look great on that big-ass outdoor screen.
Speaking of which I must report with some anger that someone tossed a rock thru the screen at some point last week leaving a small hole in the lower right hand corner.
Nothing too huge mind you, but just enough to mar what is otherwise a fresh looking screen.
Hopefully it will be fixed soon as vandalism like that should not be tolerated.
if Governor Patrick wants to be re-elected by a wide margin next year he ought to come out hard for a law making it a felony to vandalize Drive In screens...Venues like the Mendon and the Tri Town are rare and should not be subjected to this kind of abuse.

"Mine that Bird" is my pony in today's Belmont Stakes

lacking a horse as a triple crown contender, then the only game in town is jockey Calvin Borel's improbable bid to beat thirty odd steeds to the roses.
And besides, if Borel will win it'll mean something to him, he will turn somersaults in the saddle it'll be fun television at least.

Notes to a screening of "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"

Of everything you could think of, who'd a thunk Ben Stiller would end up a family film star??
Well, I snark and I shouldn't as I laughed a whole lot more than I expected at the above movie, that is pretty damn amazing considering that the director, Shawn Levy has a long rap sheet composed of lame sequels.
Let me also single out Hank Azaria who is particularly hilarious with a real gift for redeeming mediocre material. His pouncey evil Pharaoh character neatly bookends his more heroic "Blue Rajah" routine from the unjustly overlooked "Mystery Men". I wish someone would write him some a-list material, th' man has a real talent for comedy.
Oh and forgive my Geek Bona Fides but I'd swear that Amy Adams' sexy tomboyish Amelia Earhart characterization could easily serve as a audition to play Cousin Pat Savage in a notional Doc Savage motion picture?
But the real good news is that the Tri Town Drive in out in Fitchburg has recently repaired and power-washed it's GIANT outdoor screen giving new life to this last of the almighty outdoor movie venues. If you have a big budget action comedy or fantasy film you have to see this summer, honestly it's worth the mishaugas to see it at the Tri Town...it's like they have a whole new screen....hell I'm in love all over again.

Sat next to a woman on the Red Line from Alewife this morning

who was delicately sipping her morning coffee out of what appeared to be an old fruit jar.

So from that I deduce that we haven't quite hit rock bottom in this recession.

A Proclamation:

That hereafter the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend be known henceforth as "Squalus Day" set aside as a remembrance of all those members of the United States Armed Forces who died during peacetime.

They too, paid the ultimate sacrifice and the Commonwealth is hereby encouraged to remember those soldiers and sailors in their thoughts and prayers.

Duly proclaimed under my authority as a Marshal of the Commonwealth (self anointed) on this day the 24th of May in the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Nine.

Long Live the Republic
Long Live the Commonwealth

My new Hero(ine)

Rachel Alexandra, the filly what just won the Preakness, first time in eighty five years a girl-horse has won that race and from the post position of doom, unlucky #13.
Calvin Borel, that shameless showboat with the golden gut for picking winning long shots, rode her to glory and back, he is still playing to the crowd as I write this...Just an amazing run, man and horse.
Oh and Mine that Bird (the Derby's improbable 50 to 1 winner) came in second finishing in the money and dispelling all that "lucky fluke" snarkage quite nicely.
Great race, of course, my horse Pioneerof the Nile" ran in the opposite direction when the bell rang...but that is triple crown par for the course with me. I couldn't pick a winner if one horse was running.

If the Green Line (Inbound) from Copley to Park Street

ran any slower during afternoon rush hour, alert science minded riders could actually visually discern Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in action.
Ever since that cockamammie accident last Friday night, the T's response has been to slow down the Green Line to the point of suspended animation. Honestly what are these Morlocks thinking? One of these days service levels will decline to the point where passengers will mutiny and attempt to seize the train, trolley or bus...mark my words on this.
I've said it before and I will say it again, I rode passenger trains from Tallinn Estonia to Leningrad at the height of the stagnation days under Yuri Andropov, and you could set your watch to those sonsabitches!
For that fact, I was in NYC last week I rode the #6 train and N train and spent precious time languishing stopped in tunnels for "schedule adjustments".

50 to 1

It is always a victory for the rest of us when an obscure horse with an unknown trainer lands in the roses at the Kentucky Derby. Such is the case with "Mine that Bird" a race horse bought for $9,500.00 and taken to glory by jockey Calvin Borel who is still whooping like Geronimo and playing to the crowd even as I write this.
My horse..."Hold Me Back" (a reputed mudder)...Lived up to his name...i'm not sure he even left his stall when the horn blew.

Th

Hope Endures, Pride Detonates...

In the current issue of the Boston Phoenix,Trent Othick, producer of "A Bronx Tale", has denounced Boston Phoenix critic Carolyn Clay's review of his play calling for her replacement and bequeathing her "Our Asshole Critic Award".
It is to say the least a very very hot-headed letter to the editor.
I think we can rest assured that Ms. Clay's review was perfectly spelled, copy-edited and no doubt signed with dignity by the critic in question.

Which just goes to show, you can connect the dots to perfection and still end up getting flamed.


Z

Health note

If walking a nine mile hike on the Minuteman Bike Trail then one ought to refrain from taking any potent anti-histamines before hitting the asphalt. You'll make good time unmolested by coughing or snuffling for an hour or so, but thereafter your gait will devolve into a stagger that would do justice to a "Night of the Living Dead" audition.
The consequences of which were, everyone gave me a wide berth on the last three miles back to my car.

Heard in the Arlington Street Green Line Stop last night

A single mournful violinist bowing away at the end of that long Orwellian hallway. Beautiful music, and yet another anonymous contribution to the cause of civilization deep in the cavernous redoubts of the MBTA.
I knew not his name nor even his favored on line pseudonym but that didn't change the restful and soothing nature of his playing.
Frankly without anonymons like this, society could well board up the shop and decamp for the caves.

Watchmen (2009)

is Zack Snyder kidding or something?

I mean, he didn't so much adapt the beloved graphic novel as his simply transcribed it to the big screen, complete with casting that slavishly replicated the original character designs.
Or rather, Snyder simply paged thru the trade paperback and used to post-it notes to high-light his favorite scenes...The ones he was desperate to execute on film.
The result is a sort of peppy wax-works show with atomic explosions and such.
I will give Snyder credit though, he did try to purge Moore's original ending of it's almighty clunkiness, he didn't succeed but he did try which means he put a little more thought into the project than mere toadying reverence.
I think the problem there is, Moore probably wanted to really blow up the rather nasty civilization he'd created with a nuclear war in the end and for some reason, either he was compelled to generate a happy ending or else his nerve failed him for once. So instead we are stuck with a shopworn "Outer Limits" routine that does read or film particularly well.
Generally I liked the cast though, even if Alan Moore's dialogue sounds leaden when spoken, I guess it was meant to be read in the comic book format exclusively.
I used to think that Alan Moore's aversion to film adaptations of his own work was intolerable egomania of a kind, now I think he is justified in keeping his distance.
Otherwise the man has a touch of Hemingway to his work as it does not adapt well to film.
Well, what does it matter anyway?
Wasn't the damn thing executed on paper back in the 1980s and executed well?

Nothing says class quite like a

maroon dress fez, tassel and all. Such as the case last night at the Shriner's Auditorium in Wilmington where the Boston Roller Derby Dames went all up in a four hour extravaganza featuring the Boston Massacre versus the Philadelphia Liberty Belles in the Main Event.
The Boston Phoenix has been sporadically covering the Boston Roller Derby Dames since their inception in 2005, so at long last I decided to see what th' hoo-ha was about.
Alas and alack the Massacre got well...massacre'd by Philly, nevertheless I'm thinking women's roller derby may well become my new athletic passion if only I can suss out the sport's scoring matrix.
Some will criticize the sport's lavish use of provocative and anonymous pseudonyms for both the players and the referees (expl: Krushpuppy, Pussy Venom), but I say the audience, all seven hundred of them are anonymons as well so far as the players are concerned...so everyone is in on the conspiracy.
And all this for but $16.00 with a bar attached and lavish opportunities to meet the players if that is your groove...you don't see that kind of fan friendliness on Lansdowne Street.
And believe me, these women are real athletes, they are taking hard spills and high speed collisions all on a concrete floor....so if it is raw courage you are looking for, the Shriner's Auditorium is a good place to start.

Gave my seat up to an elderly blind woman

on the Red Line this morning. She blithely sat down, produced a flute from her bag and began playing tunes all the way to Park Street Station, which is where I got off.
For all I know she'll rehearse sans worry or woe in that subway car all the way to Braintree.
I didn't know her name, she was a complete anonymon to to me, but that of course didn't alter the general high quality of her playing.
J'es a thought for the day, thass all.

Where else but during a Transit Police sweep of

"bags-n-parcels" at Alewife Station can one enjoy the slightly loutish spectacle of three florid faced MBTA coppers pawing gingerly thru a lady's purse?

Springtime in Menotomy...

As soon as the buds come out on the trees, you can safely throw out your alarm clocks.
There is no need, none....the sweet airs if spring itself will waft you out of bed.
For when the snow melts and the thermometer hits fifty degrees, the landscaping companies inevitably roll in at 6:50am EST and start up with the blowers, and hedge-trimmers and sundry noise makers. And if that ain't enough they'll hire a few high school drop outs to beat on empty oil drums with lug wrenches.

I tells yuh it is enough to put the steam back in a man's step.

The Red Line in full screech mode is quieter than my street right and it'll stay this way right thru June at least. Everyone is intent even in these recession wracked times on transforming their arid backyard strips into something akin to the Peterhof.

The Superheroine Monologues (April 10th thru the 26th at the Boston Playwright's Theater)

There are times when you really wanna believe in a play very badly especially a play about A-list super heroines...and after all who doesn't like Wonder Woman and Batgirl?
Well liking certain characters isn't the same as doing well by them. So I guess local writer-performers John Kuntz and Rick Park deserve kudos for at least trying to do something different and zany with a disparate group of well know comic book super heroines. I just wish the result was less labored.
It is a well worn set up, this time a bunch of super heroines, (Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Storm from the X-Men etc etc) regale an audience with their real story, the heartbreak, the self revelations, the pain the anguish and all the usual gags about lip gloss, period piece jokes and lingering crushes on Shaun Cassidy.
The show is sad to say, wildly uneven to say the least, with Elizabeth "Catwoman" Brunette, Amanda "Lois Lane" Good-Hennessey and Shawna "Wonder Woman" O'Brien as the show's stand-out performances.
In fact, I suspect Ms. Brunette to be a successful clone of Julie Newmar...I mean the resemblance is that close and as for Ms. O'Brien if a Wonder Woman feature film ever gets off the ground, she deserves an audition she is that good.
The rest of the cast has to get by on being merely excellent in every way...too bad the writing disappoints on a irritatingly regular basis...cuz these actresses are in there punching away with gusto. In particular I'd like to do a quick shout out to Christine "Phoenix" Power and Jackie "Supergirl" McCoy who never flagged for a moment despite being saddled with some very dubious material in their monologues.
Yes indeed this is a soft-R-rated show with heavy use of lesbianism, homosexuality, mommy-daughter conflicts and OCD to sell the drama and set up the laughs. By the time poor Melissa "Batgirl" Baroni takes to the stage you can tell the writer's are playing a tangled game of "connect the Big Ticket Problem to the heroine", as a consequence the show bogs down, a lot.
This is a shame, because the show does have good quota of laughs but the need to be...relevant and or contemporary just kills things time and again. For example an attempt to orientate Catwoman's origin with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy simply imposes a tasteless graceless moment into an otherwise su-freakin' perb performance by Elizabeth Brunette.
By the time we stagger to the epilogue spotlighting an older careworn Wonder Woman (now played with panache by the Bette Davis-esque Maureen Aducci) everyone was checking their watches and shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Moralizing and gags (however funny) about the Incredible Hulk's man-junk just don't mix.
Costume roles are tough, either you bond with the costume and sell it hard or you feel like a horse's ass in your cape and boots, let the record show all these women owned it from start to finish.
I wish to stress, this was a great cast in every way, I can pay these women no higher compliment than to note that we'd love to get any of them to read at the next bad Poets Society....cuz their individual charisma came thru loud and clear. All I can say is, Cheryl Singleton, are you available in October??

And if Rick Park and John Kuntz (who have talent by reputation so I am told) are serious about this script they could easily cut the whole mishaugas down to a very tight and much funnier 75 minutes sans worry or woe.
Think on it guys, that cast you have is one in a million.

"Milk" (2008)

Sean Penn is one of the finest actors of our times...but he does drive me crazy. For every misbegotten project like "All the Kings Men" (Three limeys and kid from New Jersey playing Huey Long's gang...I mean you do the math) he will scintillate in something like "Milk" the story of the rise and untimely death of San Francisco gay-liberation pioneer Harvey Milk.
That is by all measures a difficult role, and ghod bless Sean, he tackles it head on, he needs to kiss and fondle other men, screw it he'll do it without a second thought. There are TONS of men on the A-list in Tinseltown who would flee such a role the way a vampire flees the cross...I can't imagine George Clooney taking those kinds of chances, and hell I LIKE George Clooney.
Well in this case, Sean stands alone in his characterization as one of American Liberalism's lesser known martyrs, because he is fearless Harvey Milk's best qualities come thru loud and clear...the faith in deomcracy, the desire to live outside the closet sans reproach, the compassion, the talent and the zeal. All of that would've never come thru at all if the homosexuality was underplayed or worse simply botched...Sean got it right and for that he deserves all his plaudits.
But Sean, for the love of Ghod steer clear of dreck like "The Assassination of Richard Nixon".

"Coriolanus" at the Somerville Armory

At last an Actor's Shakespeare Project production I can wholeheartedly endorse...no gimmicks, no caberet casting, just good solid acting top to bottom Benjamin Evett scintillates as the title character a bloodthirsty mama's boy general exiled from Rome who turns on his former patrons til mother dearest (a top notch Bobbie Steinbach) talks him out of it with tragic consequences.
All in all I have no complaints save the fact that the initial hand to hand combat between Coriolanus and his mortal enemy and future "ally" the he Voscis General Aufidius is reduced to a somewhat childish noise-making contest enacted in a cage that sildes around the stage on rollers.
But it's a strong performance-centric show...Coriolanus isn't a very sympathetic character, he berates the Roman commoners like they were farm animals and refuses to put any of his virtues in their service leaving them prey to the manipulations of the cynical tribunes.
And when push comes to shove, who does he defer to, his loudmouthed mother who pleas for mercy are only eloquent enough to get Coriolanus killed.
Y' know I don't think Shakespeare liked his Romans, Caesar is a tyrannical stiff, Titus Andronicus is self satisfied jerk, Marc Antony is self destructive and Coriolanus...well he is fatally immature sez I.
One suspects, Shakespeare was trying to warn his own era about the perils of imperial politics...I just don't think the Bard thought much of the Roman overclass.

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

The mighty mighty Tri-Town Drive in up in Lunenberg is firing up this weekend with a killer combo of Paul Blart Mall Cop and Grand Torino....knockabout comedy and Clint Eastwood, the very essence of the drrive in experience!

Things can't be all bad if the Drive In's still endure, patronize them frequently this summer!!!

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Ron Howard is fundamentally a director of hope. Maybe it's all the apple pie he ate at the craft table on the set of "The Andy Griffith Show"...who know?
But he has an Obama-esque sunny-side up artistic disposition that is for sure.
So credit him for some irony when he can a former Dracula of the stage and screen, Frank Langella as disgraced US President Richard Milhous Nixon in a film detailing his fateful duel with TV interviewer David Frost in 1977.
Both men are strivers you see, Frost (played by chipper chirpy Michael Sheen) wants to use the legitimacy of a Nixon interview to burnish his record and improve his negotiating position with the tv networks.
Nixon is bored and humiliated in retirement, he longs for vindication even if it is nothing more than artfully avoiding any admission of criminal wrongdoing on the air.
Langella's heavy awkward performance anchors the film he makes even Nixon's undeniable cunning seems somehow maladroit....Tricky Dick can out-manuever but he can't really ever convince anyone and so he goes stumbling on and on never a pratfall nor can stand upright either.
Frost of course, initially can't get a handle on Nixon until one night Tricky Dick calls up in a serious drunken funk railing against the elites and the liberals who looked down on him, all his life.
And in a moment, Frost gets it, Nixon the middle class striver derives nothing but pain from all his striving, he hates cajoling people, he has no time for frivolity....he is a misanthrope in short.
Frost on the other hand, glories in his striving, the whole Nixon interview is another rung on the ladder to glory...one loves it, the other loathes it.
Left alone, he'd be fine, pushing himnself into the public arena yields up only Watergate....
And so armed, Frost at last gives Nixon the great confrontation with the phantom liberal elite he so vocally loathes and forces the old man to something akin to guilt.
For this, Nixon thanks him later on, and dubs Frost a "worthy adversary"...indeed what some men will do to avoid playing cribbage on the porch once retired.
Can't say that Frost/Nixon is Howard's best film, indeed I'm not sure he is truly touched with greatness but here at least he got outside his favored genre and delivered up something different.

Sighted on the Red Line this morning...

a hugely pregnant blonde calmly & expertly knitting a pair of blue socks...guess she knows the gender thass all I can say.

On a second reading of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

At some point in your life, you need to re-read Twain. Melville can survive on one reading if you know what to highlight...but Twain is a great misleader of youth and must needs a perusal in middle age to see if he holds up.
After all, he rules the high schools of this great Republic....Huck Finn in particular is assigned reading all over the nation.
tom Sawyer is still a god-damned funny book, you really do get the impression of Tom at loose ends in what amounts to a barbarian camp in pre-civil war Missouri. Riddled with superstition, poisoned by slavery, debased by revealed religion the mythical town of Saint Petersburg is the last stop before the wasteland.
And there in the middle of the street, stands Tom Sawyer that boyish American Sigfried, bound and determined to wring all the diversion he can out of a deadbeat hayseed village.
Mostly he succeeds in between the inevitable beatings from his school-master, his aunt, the local clergy etc etc.
Tom like Clark Kent and the aforementioned Sigfried is an orphan, instead of being raised by woodland elves and dwarves, he has to put up with his Aunt Polly's lackluster supervision, mostly he pays it lip service and goes on his merry way as much as possible.
Still and all that, you get the impression for all his adventures real and imagined, nothing much will come of Tom. Defiant though he is, in the end, time adulthood, revealed religion and superstition will combine to make a dreary clod of him. He has peaked in boyhood.
Huck Finn on the other hand shows growth potential thru-out the nominal sequel. Originally he is a somewhat cowardly sidekick for Tom, by the time though Huck escapes his tyrannical drunken father and takes to the river with Jim the runaway slave he is a veritable American Ulysses in fine fettle and ready for any deed.
Tom is a pretty interesting kid, but he'll grow up to be a fairly nondescript man, Huck on the other hand comes from the American frontier wasteland and is one his way to being a adult and even a hero.
What unites the books is the paucity of worthwhile adults, in Tom Sawyer they are all scolds and fools in Huck Finn they are all crooks and even killers.
No wonder Huck flees down the river, he is shedding off civilization...he even gives up any pretense that Jim might be inferior to him and openly conspires to deliver the negro to freedom...purely out of friendship and a heroic devotion to a higher duty.
The books are both wonderful in short....they survive a middle aged re-reading nicely. To Mark Twain western literature in the 19th century owes a lot, he broke the hold of ponderous empire worshipping English Prose with it's doorstop dimensions and gaseous rhetoric of sheer nullity. Twain's dialogue crackles and his characters burst thru the page, everyone else at the time was writing by the yard, Twain wrote for the ages.

In Defense of Eliza....

IF you can believe it, Nancy Frankin in the March 2nd issue of the New Yorker, dismissed Eliza Dushku (star of "The Doll House" on Fox Friday nights) as an honors graduate of "The Royal Academy of Cleavage".
Stuff and nonsense!
Why the young lady has a long honorable legacy in Hollywood devolving from the first action heroines of the movies, Pearl White and her sistas in the silent serials. Those women had gumption, they drove trains, crashed airplanes and got their backsides out of danger all by themselves for the most part.
Those were the empire days of the serials, all the heroes were women and a muli-talented self reliant lot they were too.
Those serials made millions and the Nancy Franklins of the era dismissed them all as decorous trash....not realizing genres were being created, walls were coming down.
Yup there is a touch of Linda Stirling and even Cynthia Rothrock in her DNA, all ballsy dames whose first and best instinct was to bust heads sans demure.
I do not know if "The Doll House" will be any more successful than "Tru Calling" her other lamentably unsuccessful series...but I do know that in a well run republic we ought to have have Eliza Dushku gunning a Harley Davidson thru a boardroom filled with thugs and brutes, blazing away with pearl handled revolvers and howling like Slim Pickens atop the H-Bomb all on a weekly basis.
Couldn't care less about the set up, just wanna watch Eliza D. bash thugs and brutes over the head with a candelabra.
Is THAT so much to ask??????

Whoever was driving the 84 bus inbound today...

deserves a freakin' service medal of some type. Damn bus pulled up at the corner of Park and Wachusett in deep in the hills-n-hollers of Arlington Heights, picked up all comers and relentlessly trudged down the Route 2 access road to Alewife....got there safe and sound and in a reasonably timely fashion...I mean who knew?!!!!
When things go wrong on the T, you wanna smack Dan Grabauskas upside the head, when things go right, you wanna kiss the driver....all things considered I recommend neither impulse to my readership.
Now if only I can avoid the dreaded "snow route" outbound tonight...if I can I need face only the two hours needed to dig out my house.
Fun times indeed...ghod I wanna move to the Baja!!!!

If...

The late Heath Ledger does win a posthumous Oscar tonight for playing Batman's old nemesis "The Joker" to perfection last summer...it'll be as much about his tragic death AND Hollywood's penchant for method driven portraits in dementia as it'll be about the actor's own ahrd work and devotion to the craft.
Conservative commentators will predictably blow a gasket over another film pyscho winning an Oscar...which is true but then again a generation ago lugubrious historical epics with wax-work performance styles ATE Oscar statues for breakfast.
Time passes new cliches replace old ones.
To me, it's just interesting and possibly a little liberating that a performance in a comic book adaptation merits such an award...we've come a long way from Flash Gordon haven't we?

Believe the Hype....

It really is a bravura performance from Mickey Roarke as a washed up grappler Randy the Ram Robinson in "The Wrestler".
Granted the script is nothing new, but all the performances are taught and realistic....Roarke in particular paces his performance so very carefully thru the film that in the very end you see just why his character is so hopelessly self destructive...and it's not because of drugs or booze or anything else, Randy the Ram never grew up...he opted for a very violent and childish form of fame (pro wrestler) and when went it went south, it is no wonder he can't reconnect with his daughter hold a job or escape his fate in any way.
Oh and kudos to Marisa Tomei (damn that girl just doesn't quit on herself) and Evan Rachel Wood, nothing phoney about either performance.
If Mister Roarke cops the penultimate bookend on Oscar night, then he will deserve it no question.
Oh and his feud with Chris Jericho sounds fake and I mean that in a good way.

Seen on CNN...

a short feature news story on how business owners are turning to astrologers and astrology to survive the current recession.
In fact, the captioned soothsayer in the story was referred to as a "LICENSED astrologer".
Never mind the fact that astrology is nothing but a bad understanding of planetary dynamics married to primitive notions of prognostication...what I wanna know is HOW does one become LICENSED in a spurious pseudo science like astrology?
ANd morever, forget the poor small business owners who go in for this rubbish, WHY doesn't CNN take a few minutes out of it's relentless 24-7 schedule to investigate the "licensing" of astrologers?
HUH?
HUH???
HUH????

Inaugural Memory...

I listened to the inaugural festivities on a small portable radio today in my monastic cubicle at a giant otherwise un-named insurance company.

When Pastor Rick Warren recited "The Lord's Prayer" (or as we Catholics call it "Da Our Faddah")...one of my co-workers slipped into my cubicle, piously inclined his head over my radio and forcefully repeated said prayer with preacherish intonations.
He barked out a hearty "Amen", thanked me for the use of my space in prayer and went about his business.
For once I was nonplussed, stammered "Oh...anytime, it's what I'm here for...


:D

"Valkyrie" (2008)

I think I finally have Bryan Singer figured out.
Regardless of all the super-hero films, he very badly wants to be a latter-day Alfred Hitchcock. He has all the elements here, Nazi villains, a suspense driven caper and the usual collection of kibbitzers at the edge of the action.
And if that is Singer's ambition, then clearly Tom Cruise wants to be a sort of end-times Cary Grant a minimalist forced into the crucible of great events. Such is the plot of Valkyrie which features a stoic heroic Cruise as the real life Colonel Claud von Stauffenberg who came within an ace of assassinating Hitler in 1944.
As I said, Cruise is a minimalist and that suits the flamboyant material nicely, he seethes a bit but declines to play the crusading martyr. I think that was a good decision on his part, the story is dramatic enough in all it's particulars.
THe rest of the cast is tight and for once, a American film ends on a suitably unhappy note...right down to Stauffenberg being stood up against a wall and shot.
Being a stylistic descendant of Gary Cooper it was scene that Cruise was aching to play all his professional life and what the hell he does it justice.

Definition of an odd scene...

Sitting in the Bedford Mass Whole Foods Market eating one of their salads and reading Dr. Joseph Goebbels' diaries.
Such is a lazy Saturday for your humble narrator.

The Quantum of Solace (2008)

Daniel Craig has a real future as James Bond. He is the coldest and least complicated 007 ever, in the tough-guy department he is up in Sean Connery's orbit which is an icy ruthless trajectory indeed.
he is none too handsome, but like Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood Craig has an almighty "I-mean-it" look that was made for the movies.
Moreover, in his love-hate-relationship with M (Judy Dench the series other casting coup) you get every sort of tension right up to the doors of King Oedipus' bedroom.
But for the franchise to survive someone has to insist on more coherent scripts, I can do without the gadgetry and the labored quips but the alternately grunted and panted dialogue from "The Quantum of Solace" is a serious bring-down. The plot is more or less a direct sequel to "Casino Royale" with 007 still on the trail of Vesper Lind's employers/killers. Much is made of his quest for vengeance although that was more or less the link between "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "Diamonds are Forever"...so even revenge is nothing ne for 007.
Alas as far as this film is concerned, who the villains are and why they wanna corner the world's supply of fresh water is bore and a trifle. best I can determine it's a conspiracy of more evil businessmen, ho-hum.
The action set pieces are fun, but without a plot and without a real plan for the character it is all for naught.
Joseph Zamparelli Jr has idly proposed that the film-makers ought to revisit some of the less well adapted novels for inspiration..."Moonraker" perhaps or certainly "The Spy Who Loved Me" both of which were camped to death back in the daze of Roger Moore. They have the right Bond now what they lack are the right scripts.

Jerry Lewis at High Noon

If you are like me, and you think that Jerry Lewis is never more fascinating than in the last ten seconds before his blows his stack, then RUN do not walk to Wienerworld.com where you can find a precious single episode of Jerry's legendary 1963 variety series.
It was two hours long and done live without any sign of a script with a distinctly nervous Jerry Lewis acting as host (and occasionally as house singer) in a Jack Paar style format before a live audience.
It is to say the least a bold improvisional experiment and a crackpot whim rolled up into one interminable and poorly blocked package.
What exactly gave Lewis the notion to do such a long show live is a complete mystery. No doubt he had a bracing faith in his own ad-lib abilities going back to his partnership with singer Dean Martin. Maybe Jerry was envious of the largely improvisioned rat-pack shows which was then packin' em' in at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.
Ah but back in the day Lewis had Martin to anchor the act and give pacing and direction to the younger comics's many flights of fancy. And if that didn't work, Dean would sing and give everyone a break from Jerry.
Wisely, Jerry didn't work alone on this show opting for a dour Phil Foster as his one air sidekick, serious TV buffs will recall Foster's star turn as Penny Marshall's father on "Laverne and Shirley". Here though, Foster is simply a glowering ethnic foil who looks like he'd dearly love to bust a chair over Jerry's head. Their on air banter has all the charm and ease of hostage negotiations in Beirut.
Moreover in one hundred and three minutes not ONE comedy sketch can be seen, not one, Jerry's signature format and it is not being used at all. Frankly the artistic decisions as they play out on air seem demented.
So of course the show was an expensive flop, already cancelled at the time of this particular broadcast a fact that Lewis shares with the audience about every ten minutes as the program trudges on and on.
A bitter patina invades the whole program despite a glittering roster of guests including soprano Patricia Munsel, Sam Cook and a pre Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay who was trying to the convince the whole world that he was both crazy and invincible in the lead up to the legendary fight with Sonny Liston.
That particular interview with Jerry is a veritable wince-fest, Lewis is in a manic state by this point in the program and inadvertently he makes Clay looks judicious and wise as he the host rants on and on about the boxer's blustery showmanship.
Ali would later read a poem prophesying neatly his victory over Liston, it is the program's only truly funny moment in a hundred and three minutes of bug eyed mishaugas.
In short a mess my friends...very much a mess.
But it is also a lonely sign post to his career, already Jerry had completed his best film "The Nutty Professor" and would begin a long and ultimately unsuccessful search for a new comic persona to supplant his tired "anthro-child on crack" act. He and the zeitgeist were rapidly parting company never to reunite, and this program is a good indication of how badly Jerry had misjudged his audience's taste and patience.
Lenny Bruce had a great routine about a schleppy goyisher comedian named Frank Dell who thought he'd reach the big time if only he could play the Palladium Theater in London. Of course he bombs but on his last night drenched in flop sweat he starts shreking "Kill the Irish" at the audience causing a riot and his own deportation from England.
It is that kind of flop sweat I got off of Jerry in this DVD, trapped on stage, no script, the audience glaring at him and all he can do snarl at Phil Foster or lecture a bemused Muhammad Ali on "showmanship" the very quality his own damn show was lacking.
I heartily wish that all the episodes of this unique TV series were available on DVD< there is much to be learned from all of them.

Thanks Dan (Grabauskas)

From Clarendon Street in the Back Bay to Arlington Heights in ONLY two hours and fifteen minutes tonight!!!!
The sadistic and glacial pace of the Red Line was one thing, but you topped yourself with the giant cluster-f*ck traffic snarl in the Alewife station parking garage...sheer genius, I didn't want to eat dinner at a normal hour or go to the gym tonight or anything. I'd much rather sit in my freezing cold car burning my personal gasoline WAITING for forty plus minutes to clear the usual exit bottlenecks Fresh Pond.
One harsh lesson I have to learn and then re-learn every damn winter, and that is one good snowstorm and the MBTA is knocked for a loop like a deadbeat jobber...and the grim litany of slow-downs, stoppages and plain old crapulous service lingers for weeks at a time.
Thanks Dan, I could have WALKED to Alewife faster save for the prospect of contracting frostbite on this freezing cold night!

Happy freakin' holidays from the MBTA, cattle bound for the slaughterhouse have better expectations of timeliness.

"Zack and Miri make a Porno" (2008)

D'ye know what I like about director Kevin Smith?
He is so charmingly naive about almost everything.
FORGET the New jersey posturing and the casual vulgarities, Smith really thinks Jay and Silent Bob live rich full lives, he truly believes that the Plenary Indulgence has a power in this world and beyond, Ben Affleck as a single father of a young daughter? A slam dunk in every way.
And fat guys in general...like Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen as long as they can pump out the snarkage they will never want for beautiful feminine companionship...honestly what color is the sky in Kevin Smith's world?
And in the end it is sheer belief that sustains "Zack and Miri make a Porno" in which a tubby vulgarian played by Seth Rogen convinces his rare hawtie room-mate BFF Elizabeth Banks that they can stave off eviction and homlessness by producing and starring in their own amateur pornography.
All that is missing is Tinkerbelle and the fairy dust.
Oh it is a funny movie by all means, with a strong supporting turn from Jason Mewes who proves he can handle himself outside his "Jay and Silent Bob" persona, that kid could have a real career on his hands if he starts making good creative decisions sez I. The rest of the cast including Clerks alum Jeff Anderson all caper and spew expletives with great assurance...but the film's central conceit, that the only way to woo and bed your life partner is by co-producing a stroke flick with her is blissfully and even idiotically innocent.
I laughed and enjyed this film greatly but I truly dread the day when Kevin Smith is finally horsewhipped by reality, some ineffable will be lost that day.

Bettie Page, RIP

Sometimes it is best to believe the legend...Bettie Page had a hard life regardless of the pleasure her bondage and cheesecake pictures gave two successive generations. Three divorces, a long stay in a mental hospital and allegations of childhood molestation....sad stuff really.
On the other hand, name a single American Icon that had a such a vigorous cultural revival while languishing in what amounted to a padded cell?

I'm glad she was able to derive some income from the sudden renewal of interest in her cheesecake days, so many other pin up girls from that era got bupkiss.
Ah but Bettie was special, an early avatar of the still un-studied phenom of "geek erotica", fetish models, erotic comics, pornographic anime and a host of other fringe sexual interests that impact and then bounce off the mainstream quite regularly. She ha the god fortune to enjoy a vigorous revival when geek culture was becoming a big business in America.
Bettie, despite her many bondage photo shoots back in the 1950's would probably be one of the tamer items in that notional geek erotica catalogue. this would account for her ubiquitous presence on the internet from the git-go...fetishy enough but still fully dressed for the most part...a million primitive web pages were launched under the banner of the above photo.
Well rest in peace Bettie, hard times or not you are an icon whether you like it or not...hope someone mourns you as a person though.

There is HOPE for America yet!

At a sci-fi con down at the Hyatt in Cambridge today, Story Musgrave, a retired astronaut with a ludicrous amount of flight-time logged onto the space shuttle, drew longer and more appreciative lines than did Star Trek veteran Robert Picardo or Peter Davidson, an all-up honest to ghod BBC "Dr. Who"!
And I wouldn't call Musgrave an a-list astronaut-celeb either...he was not presented with the opportunity to walk on the moon or anything like that. He merely toughed out the long slow roll out of the shuttle and flew that bad baby...a lot!
Of course the close proximity of Nerd Valhalla, M.I.T. helps...

A last word of thanks to everyone that made

the bad Poets Society '08 such a success 'd scandal this year.

Joseph Zamparelli Jr our director and nominal "celeb" reader.

And our readers:
Gene Doucette (Poetry Captain)
Sarah Bazydola
Colin Buckley
Julie Dapper
Janice Gobert
Diane Statkus
Mike Statkus

You guys rock the Bad Poets Society completely we are much in your debt...even if we will never pay you.

:D

At last Julia...

n about twenty four hours, the Bad Poets Society goes down for about the eight time since its inception back in 1996. Curiously I am not riddled with the usual anxieties...I've been up and down so much with this program down thru the years that I've become immune to its special brand of mishaugas.
One particular issue that crops up from year to year is who is gonna be the "anchor poet"?..that is a particular "known" bad poet whose works we can showcase three or four times in the course of a single program. We mostly do this to highlight the apex predator bad poets out there it also fills up four or so spots that would otherwise need to be taken research-heavy "new" bad poems. So it is an intellectual economy measure of a sort.
This year, I was SURE the anchor poet was gonna be a woman, the front runner being Julia Moore the infamous "sweet singer of Michigan" a profoundly inept and humorless poetess whose work compares with that of Scotland's William Topaz McGonagall on the poetical crapulence scale.
Alas, Julai didn't make the cut this year, she favors VERY LONG poems, almost too long for our purposes...but I'll keep digging for more of her work and keep proposing her for other shows, she'll make it someday. However to make the occasion I'd like to post some of her song lyrics her for the delectation of the hard core faithful:
Leave off the Agony in Style


Come all ye good people, listen to me, pray,
While I speak of fashion and style of today;
If you will notice, kind hearts it will beguile,
To keep in fashion and putting on style.
Chorus --
Leave off the agony, leave off style,
Unless you've got money by you all the while,
If you'll look about you you'll often have to smile,
To see so many people putting on style.
People in this country they think it is the best;
They work hard for money and lay it out in dress;
They think of the future with a pleasant smile,
And lay by no money while putting on style.
Chorus --
Some of the people will dress up so fine,
Will go out in company and have a pleasant time.
Will rob themselves of food, perhaps, all the while,
Sake of following fashions and putting on style.
Chorus --
I love to see the people dress neat and clean,
Likewise follow fashions, but not extremes;
Some friends will find it better in future awhile,
To lay by some money while putting on style.
Chorus --
Gentlemen on the jury decides the criminal's fate;
I pray you turn from wickedness before it is too late;
Sad, indeed, would be your friends to hear your name reviled,
Better be truly honest though putting on style.
Chorus --
Leave off the agony, leave off style,
Unless you've got money by you all the while.
If you look about you you'll often have to smile,
To see so many poor people putting on style.

Julia A Moore

You can see at once what makes Julia so special, she is sooo humorless so earnest so primitive in her rhyming scheme...any time a poet starts shaking his or her finger at hemlines and too ornate hats, you know you have a winner. Like McGonagall, Moore favored song lyrics with a particularly puritanical tone. As funny as these are to read it is almost impossible to imagine anyone singing such a joyless hectoring screed.

Meanwhile the balloon goes up on the Bad Poets Society tomorrow night please join us...

THE BAD POETS SOCIETY

Don’t Miss this Unique Festival of Inferior Rhymes!

Friday November 21st at 8pm
The Spiegel Auditorium
56 Brattle Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge Ma.
www.channel0.blogspot.com
Admission: $5 cheap!!!

November IS Bad Poetry Month!!

College Songs...

This is one of those odes to dipsomania that made the Ivy League great and feared. the author is unknown and the sentiments are appalling even by the standards of the Turn of the Century.
Dartmouth always had a reputation for barbarism, even back during the depression if they were playing the Crimson at Harvard Stadium sensible mothers would keep their daughters off the streets til the last train left for Hanover NH on Sunday night.
back in High School I used to work as a ticket-taker at Harvard University stadium, I think Dartmouth used to cram every oaf they could lay hands on and ship them down for the game to act as a sort of cheering section of cave dwellers. I once passed thru Hanover NH on a Sunday morning, the frats were already deep into the hair of the dog what bit them.
Like I said, barbarians....
Well I will let you all read it and see if you agree.

A Son Of A Gun
(Anon)
I wish I had a barrel of rum
and sugar three hundred pound.
I’d put it in the College bell
and stir it ‘round and ‘round.
Let ev’ry honest fellow
drink his glass of hearty cheer,
For I’m a student of old Dartmouth
and a son of a gun for beer.

I’m a son of a, son of a, son of a,
son of a gun for beer.
I’m a son of a, son of a, son of a,
son of a gun for beer,
Like ev’ry honest fellow I like my whiskey clear.
For I’m a student of Old Dartmouth
and a son of a gun for beer.

And if I had a daughter, sir,
I’d dress her up in green;
I’d put her on the campus
just to coach the freshman team.
And if I had a son, sir,
I’ll tell you what he’d do
He’d yell, ‘To Hell with Harvard!’
like his Daddy used to do.


Gee that last stanza is CLASS all the way isn't it?

Anyway let me again note, as vulgar and bizarre as the above lyrics are, they were not nearly enough to merit inclusion in this year's Bad Poet's Society.
Which of course convenes in but forty eight hours or so...tell your friends...

The Bad Poets Society
Friday November 21st at 8pm
The Spiegel Auditorium
56 Brattle Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge Ma.
www.channel0.blogspot.com
Admission: $5 cheap!!!

Boston's Best Kept Aesthetic Catastrophe now in it's eight or maybe ninth year....
November IS Bad Poetry Month!!

More Presidential Free-verse....

Given the recent hotly contested election I decided to stick with a theme tonight a present another campaign speech cut-up, this time from Lyndon Baines Johnson. Ole' Lyndon could be a real scenery chewe on the stump, some of his harangues at the outset of his political career compare favorably to the exquisite bluster of the late Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long. Alas though when they flipped on the kleig lights Lyndon would put on his dignity act which was something akin to a Houston undertaker with a few too many deadbeat stiffs in the cooler. Much of his best Texas sized bombast is therefore lost to us...but this little gem uttered late in the midst of his 1964 Presidential campaign captures for a moment the grand Johnsonian style.

A short idyll from Lyndon Baines Johnson

"Ah jus' wish
we had as good a chance
for rain down home
as yew have here.
We have been cakin' our old cows all summer,
and we are almost out of pears down there".

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, September 25 1964

And again I note with all due humility as weird and incoherent as the above quote is, like ALL bad poetry it made perfect sense to it's "poet". And I'd also like to point out that the above "text bite" wasn't "bad enough" to merit conclusion in this year's Bad Poets Society.
To hear all the really appalling dreck we dredged up for this year drop on by...

The Bad Poets Society!!!

Don’t Miss this Unique Festival of Inferior Rhymes!

THIS Friday November 21st at 8pm
The Spiegel Auditorium
56 Brattle Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge Ma.
Admission: $5 cheap!!!

November IS Bad Poetry Month!!

Five days and counting til the Curtain goes up on the Bad Poets Society...

Still so much to do, flyers to drop, readers to finalize and of course last minute publicity...tons of details really. After eight years this event gets no easier to organize, I am however surprisingly free of pre-show anxiety. I figure I've already hit rock bottom with this sumbitch the worst has already happened.
Below is a Burroughsian "cut up" of various key sentences from Warren Harding's inaugural address in March 1921.
Harding was such a maladroit writer and speaker I've always thought that his stumblebum syntax would make a great free-verse found-art poem According I post herein for the first time "The Love Song of Warren Gameliel Harding:

My Countrymen:


Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring.

one ambiguity,

I can vision the ideal republic, where every man and woman is called under the flag for assignment to duty for whatever service, military or civic, the individual is best fitted; where we may call to universal service every plant, agency, or facility, all in the sublime sacrifice for country, and not one penny of war profit shall inure to the benefit of private individual, corporation, or combination, but all above the normal shall flow into the defense chest of the Nation.

one ambiguity,

There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports.

one ambiguity,

With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order.

one ambiguity,

This is not selfishness, it is sanctity. It is not aloofness, it is security. It is not suspicion of others, it is patriotic adherence to the things which made us what we are.

one ambiguity,

I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.




Whether it works or not...and perhaps it doesn't..let me nonetheless note, this poem was not considered bad enough to make the final cute for this year's Bad Poets Society. Take that as your benchmark.

Pick of the Week:

"It's a Gift" starring the great man hisself W.C. Fields screens at 8:45pm.
It's part of a "Tribute to Gerald Peary" thang...shee-it that is fine and all, but when is someone gonna execute a tribute to John L. Galligan?? I've written thousands of pages of criticism, revived fundamentally un-revivable films ("Hercules in the Haunted World, "Black Belt Jones", "The Gorilla" starring the Ritz Brothers to name but three) as well found new audiences for all kinds of titles AND presided over the Bad Poets Society, the COOLEST poetry reading Metro Boston no-one has ever heard of!
C'mon...anyone?
Anyone....?

:D

My Last Seven Movies:

In reverse order:

Appaloosa (2008) directed by Ed Harris starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Rene Zellweger, Jeremy Irons and lance Henricksen. Great cast foiled by a languid pace....watch for the man-love between Harris and Mortensen, who ought to make more westerns IMHO, they were born to the saddle, just forget the elegaic pacing willya?

Hangmen Also Die (1943) Directed by Fritz Lang. Trust Fritz to create a "Gestapo Police Procedural" around the assassination of SS Reichsleiter Reinhard Heydrich by Czech partisans. Alas fun though the film is, Brian Donlevy's partisan assassin drag's the film down...worth a look though.

Religulous (2008) directed by Larry Charles. Two things you need to remember about Bill Maher, he is an agnostic and he put Ann Coulter on the map. Take what he says with a grain of salt although the film's anti-religion slant is a nice counterweight to all those lugubrious xian dramas Kirk Cameron is throwing out there.

Righteous Kill (2008) Starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Al and Bob are NEVER more watchable than when they slum in idiot fodder for the money...never they can make the pulpiest cliche'd dreck look like freakin' Ibsen. i want them both to start making "Friday the 13th" sequels soonest.
Also this was the last film screened at the Tri Town Drive in rumored to be closing for good this year....if so it was a righteous send off.

The Story of Mankind (1957) Directed by Irwin Allen Heaven puts man on trial for being nasty and war-like Ronald Coleman and Vincent Price play defense and prosecution respectively and otherwise wander thru Warner Brothers' stock footage looking for the truth...TERRIBLE dreck enlivened by a cameo from Dennis Hooper as Napoleon and Bobby Watson's last Hitler impersonation.

If I had a Million (1932) Whacky millionaire gives stranger a million in cash to spend as they wish, WC Fields and wife buy a fleet of cars to terrorize the streets of Los Angeles. The Fields vignette is freakin' priceless....trust me on that.

Shelf Life (1993) D. Paul Bartel hard film to summarize, depicts a typical day in the life of three overgrown children who live in a bomb shelter in the erroneous belief the Russians nuked America in 1963. VERY weird, ought to be given wider release on DVD..."It's Mighty Car!!"

I think the late Edie Adams must have been Nietzsche's proverbial super woman

I mean consider her record, AFTER her husband Ernie Kovacs died in 1961 she discovered he owed the IRS a quarter of a million in back taxes...any other self respecting chanteuse would have packed up and gone bankrupt in style.
Not Edie though, she put herself thru night school learned accounting and paid the whole debt off sans any help.
AFTER Ernie Kovacs died, she moved heaven and earth to make sure she retained primary custody of his children from a prior marriage...all attempts to challenge her primacy in this area ended in abject failure th' lioness wasn't gonna give up her cubs.
AFTER Ernie Kovacs died Edie found out the videotapes to his many many tv programs (he was a pioneer in the early use of videotape) were being wantonly erased by thrifty TV networks. Accordingly she booked herself onto cruise ships, stooged for the Rat Pack in Vegas made an endless string of movies all so she could generate the scratch to BUY back Ernie's work from the broadcasters. What we have of his programs today is directly the result of Edie's one woman campaign to preserve her late husband's legacy back in the 1960's.
Whotta woman....

I guess it is only AFTER bad stuff happens that we find out if we are any good at all.

Shaved my beard off Friday morning...

it was grey, even turning white at the roots...being all of eighteen years old my beard could have gone down to town hall and registered to vote.
Time for a change...right now though I am in "beardless denial", every guy I know who shaves his whiskers goes thru a paranoid stage where they immediately wanna grow it back poste haste..."shavers remorse" as it were.
A week later though they are all like "Beard? What beard?"

I don't care what anyone sez...

The Queen Elizabeth II is a freakin' ship...it has class, dignity, character and is as sleek as it was when it was commissioned in 1969. Those other so called cruise liners that tie up at the Black Falcon Terminal here in South Boston, are nothing but bloated Motel 8's dropped down on a boat's keel.
And they have MERMAIDS painted on the sides...vulgar and tasteless.

Anyway, Farewell to the QE2...class all the way, who'd a thunk the real Queen Elizabeth the Second would outlive the ship named in her royal honor?
The house of Windsor has some long-tailed genes lemme tell yuh.

Mark your calendars...

The Bad Poets Society RETURNS Friday November 21st at 8pm at the Spiegel Auditorium of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education...admission a paltry $5 for a cornucopia of the world's worst verse!
We are so deep into our bad poetry research it is appalling, the stacks may be huge but we are always open to any recommended substandard poesy....


Watch this space for details!

Pick of the Week

"Major Dundee" a pre-"Wild Bunch" Peckipah western is screening at the Harvard Film tonight at 9:15pm...and it stars that monolith of man, Charlton Heston. A very tempting offering to say the least.
And the Tri Town Drive in has a superb double feature this weekend, "Death Race" (a re-make of Corman's "Death Race 2000") with "Tropic Thunder, certainly the funniest movie I've seen all summer. The only complication is the weather forecast, a tropical storm is supposed to blow thru tomorrow and that makes the drive in a chancey propostion, but day-um that line up is worth checking the weather channel for updates I think.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Who knew Tom Cruise harbored such gruesome anti-semitic notions?

As "Les Grossman" studio chief for Ben Stiller's overblown Viet Nam war epic, Cruise is bloated, vulgar and a sort of Jewish sasquatch gone mad on power.
Man can he cut a rug though....
Hitler used to dismiss the Jews as "cunning semi-apes", clearly this is the image Cruise had in mind when he was getting in character to play Grossman.
Yeesh the man still resents all those arguments Spielberg gave him over the merits of psychotropic pharmacology on the set of "War of the Worlds".

***
Well what of it, the movie IS gut-busting funny, as Brandon T.Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Jack Black , Robert Downey Jr and Stiller all essentially play extreme parodies of themselves as a motley team of a-list actors forced into a firefight with a jungle Southeast Asian drug gang.
Got to hand it to Stiller this time, normally he is a comic narcissisist a'la Jerry Lewis this time however he cuts in his co-stars for a big piece of the humor-action...this is a big artistic step forward for him bringing Ben that much closer to the land of the Gods lorded over by Chaplin and WC Fields.
Particularly enjoyed Jack Black who seems to have decided that his character (a beefy gross out comedian) was nothing more than the sort of actor he'd be if he had made easy-money career choices. In that light, when you see the film pay close attention to the trailer one of Black's faux-comedies...
As for the beef with the developmentally disabled, the r-word gets used freely in this film but only as signifier for the toxic self worship of A-list Hollywood actors.
My only regret is that I did not see this at the Drive In, woulda been well worth it.

Othello (Shakespeare & Co Lenox Ma.)

RUN don't walk to see "Othello" out at the S&C's "campus" in Berkshires!
As the Bard's A-list tragedy's go, Othello can be a problem, most productions telephone in the race angle and just let the modern sensibility do the rest. As far as casting goes, you have to hit a trifecta, a strong but not ludicrously bombastic Othello, an Iago who doesn't come off as "Dr. Zachary Smith" and a Desdemona who isn't a bimbo in a whimple.
It is much harder than it looks believe me.
None of that is at issue with S&C's current Othello it is a strong production all the way through.
John Douglas Thompson was born to the part in the fashion of the late Paul Robeson, he is confident, soldierly, manly but fatally cursed with credulity when faced with Iago's subtle Venetian trickery. Most actors when they are called to fake an epilectic seizure, Othello's fugue of despair and jealousy, would come damn close to looking foolish...not Thompson though, he looks like he is dying down there on the floor.
Michael Hammond is also seemingly born to play Iago, full of false good fellowship and a sort of blankfaced false loyalty...Othello is simply no match for him when it comes to this sort of conflict.
And then there is Merritt Janson's Desdemona, as clueless and guileless as her poor husband...like Iago she tries a few subtle tricks of her own to get Cassio back into Othello's favor, and for her favor she ends up dead. Janson plays it straight up the middle and wisely avoids the easy path of dimwitted Elizabethan victim.
After the show I ran into a few old friends from my drudgework days at IBM, one of them had never seen Othello before and asked "Is it always a thru the wringer type experience?"
I replied "It is when done right".
Trust me, S&C's "Othello" is done right...I haven't seen the Moor executed at this high a level since Johnny Lee Davenport played him at the old S&C "Stables Theater" at the Mount.
Orson Welles once opined that all good theater is "written on the air" so make tracks for Lenox my friends whilst the air is still good.

If Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment

ever got the contract to produce the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, the final product would much resemble the spectacle put on by the People's Republic of China friday night.
The "runner" on the flying harness looked pretty awesome until I remembered that poor Owen Hart fell to his death using a similar aerial gimmick at a WWE show oh so many years ago.
Oh and there would be more bra-and-panty fights...all staged under the noses of the world's leaders.

Alias Atlas Carnegie

The whole Clark Rockefeller affair puts me in mind of a old Simpsons' episode wherein Homer decides to legally change his name as he now shares nomenclature with a idiotic comedy relief character on TV. Before settling on "Max Power" he conjures with "Hercules Rockefeller" among other odd monickers.
SO I dunno obviously "Clark Rockefeller" is an alias, but I suspect a Homer Simpsonish turn of creativity here from "Hercules Rockefeller" to "Clark (KENT) Rockefeller"...subtle big guy, real subtle.
George Orwell once lamented the decline of the "good old fashioned english murder" usually executed in a locked room with plenty of clues to bedevil Scotland Yard. Orwell was incensed that such good solid Sunday afternoon sport had been superceded by gruesome anatomical mayhem of a low and crude sort.
Here in America, kidnapping once the province of the Symbionese Liberation Army and Hollywood celebrities also degenerated into the sordid weapon of last resort in U.S. divorce cases.
Ah well at least the kid is okay and got to see Baltimore's upscale waterfront.



But frankly the man looks like a freak, you wonder how the hell dubious dingbats like this ever get to the altar to begin with.

Pick of the Week

Clearly "Danger Diabolik" at the Brattle Theatre tonight and tomorrow...best high camp euro-thriller you can see this weekend for the money.

The Dark Knight (2008)

A lot of sequels simply suck it up and server more of the same in larger more expensive quantities, excess of this kind has sunk the hardiest of film series, think of the "Indiana Jones" canon if you doubt me.
And then occasionally, some sequels go deeper, harder, crazier even, here "The Bride of Frankenstein" can be enrolled with honor, also "The Dark Knight".
Oh don't get me wrong, the film has it's problems, the plotlines are too numerous, the script writers all decided for some inexplicable reason that The Joker's first outing HAD to occasion the creation of Batman's other nemesis, Two Face no matter how badly this marred the storyline...and as usual the film has something akin to three very shrill climaxes.
But...the acting is uniformly excellent thru out, nobody so much as winks at the camera once...nothing is held and not one false or smug note was sounded.
Everyone out there in cyberspace is going into ecstatic convulsions about the late Heath Ledger's performance (very much a bookend to Max Shreck in "Nosferatu" or Anthony Hopkins' as Hanninbal Lector) as the Joker...but let me just note that Aaron Eckhart comes within an ace of stealing the show as Harvey Dent (The future Two Face) and Gary Oldman's Police Chief James Gordon plays it as a worn flint of man...the grand batman freakshow has only just begun and already he is overwhelmed.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes the inevitable love interest is right in there throwing haymakers in a role previous phoned in my Katie Holmes.
The diff between the two performances is stark and simple, Gyllenhaal rides a beast called talent while Holmes has a cute show pony called "celebrity".
Alas and alack amidst all this stellar wattage, Christian Bale's Batman is merely fine in every respect, angry tough, stoical and full of coiled doubts as to the efficacy of his mission even as he goes on and on busting heads....hard to outdo the competition this time around.
It is indeed a violent and even nihilistic film DON'T bring the kids this is at last as dark and as brutal a Batman as the popular cinema can tolerate. There is no Robin, No Batgirl and only the faintest scintilla of hope.
Appropriately we saw it at the Tri Town Drive In, the biggest remaining outdoor screen in Massachusetts and for setting alone it was worth the $17 per carload price. We even managed to "part the clouds" so to speak and dodge a savage thunder storm just before the film started.
Drama indeed.

Pick of the Week

hands down it has to be "The Dark Knight" at the Tri Town Drive In in romantic Leominster tonight...on a strong double bill with "Get Smart".
Sure, the Mendon Twin Drive In is cozier with better amenities, but the Tri Town's HUGE outdoor screen is made for super hero actioners like "Batman the Dark Knight".
Check out the link to the left, hell gawd willin' and da creek don't rise I'll be there.

"an Old Fashioned Chinese Fire Drill" (apologies to all the Chinese persons out there)

went down at the Alewife Red Line station today.
A simple disable train had as usual backed the T up to North Cambridge but just as the matter was straightened out...the starters went completely to pieces, offloaded everyone on Track B's train and put them on the Track A train, as that was "the next one out". These passengers were then packed in like sardines and thus were fuming when the train they'd just exited then blithely pulled out of the station.
The MBTA made it up to us though, we were treated to a fifteen minute delay interrupted by a bleating voice on the PA insisting this was an "Ashmont Dorchester" train.

Twice a week now it seems the Red Line treats me to a spectacles like this, either symphonies of delay and torpidity or service ineptitude to do no credit to teachables at the Fernald School.

Hancock (2008)

"Hancock" WANTS to be great movie, not just a summer blockbuster but a real film with a heart and a story. Alas the script is a clumsy somehwat underwritten mess, half comedy half superhero opera with a definite "Spiderman" motif none of which ever exceeds the sum of it's parts.
As such the movie is at best an "interesting failure" enhanced with a strong plot twist at the forty five minute mark. In fact that plot twist is too damn strong and really felt like a desperate last minute re-write of the screenplay.
Honestly, I had a flashback to "Ratfink a Boo Boo" there fore a minute.
Mind, you Will Smith as a maladriot dipsomaniacal superhero, "Hancock" is great as usual but not even his formidable charisma can deliver the film.
Jason Bateman sort of scuttles around the edges as Hancock's appallingly naive' PR guy and the plot never quite gets around to generating appropriate villainage (vitally important in today's superhero genre, it is the diff between "Superman II" and "Catwoman").
As for Charlize Theron, what can I say? She must have demanded a huge pay day for a role that any "Smallville" actress out on haitus could've execute in their sleep.
But what the hell, they tried to do something different that much is clear, and I'll give Will Smith big props for bringing back solid film acting to the sci fi film genre after nearly a generation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's graceless one dimensional performance style.

"My Son John" (1952) reviewed (briefly)

The HFA was kind enough to screen this 1950's anti-communist rarity a few weeks ago, indeed I think I've been waiting a full fifteen years to see it as it is unavailable on VHS or DVD or anything...hell even my favorite video bootleggers don't have it!
Well for once it was worth it, Helen Hayes plays a coying somewhat deluded middle class mom who slowly discovers her bright Ivy League educated son, the rising man in the State Department is in fact a Soviet Spy.
Unlike a a lot of the other anti-communist movies of the era, "My Son John" delves into the whole notion of Ivy League perfidy, that well educated young men were themselves vulnerable to KGB recruitment. Senator Joe McCarthy helped put this cliche on the map when he went after Secretary of State Dean Acheson and some of the allegedly bright young men around him back during the Korean War.
It's a sort of red-baiting soap opera enlivened by a strong performances from Hayes and the title star Robert Walker who died before shooting concluded. This required the director, Leo McCarey to use stock footage and out-takes from Hitchcock's "Strangers on the Train" to finish off the final reel! This is why "John" must deliver his final recantation before the graduating class of his alma mater via tape recorder complete with beatific spotlight on the machine as the late spy drones on about the possibility that they grads themselves were already under KGB surveillance.
Why this film isn't more generally available is a mystery to me....hell they don't make em' like this no more.

Pick of the Week:

The Brezhnev era Russian 'western" "The White Sun of the Desert" (1969) which screens today at the Coolidge Corner today at 1pm. Legend has it the director simply imbibed all the Joh Ford iconography and then simply exported the whole western setting to the Russian Civil war complete with bandits and wild tribesmen and a stern hero on horseback.
Should be interesting.
(In Russian with English subtitles)
Let the record show though, that when Channel Zero was in residence at the Coolidge Corner Theater, we were the first to start screening contemporary Russian cinema as a means to excite the interest of Brookline/Brighton's sizable Russian expat population.
We did well with it and were looking around for new titles to screen when we were tossed out. Nice to see the Coolidge Corner has taken up with the notion.

George Carlin is dead...

the heavens do quake.
I can recall with the simplest nostalgia that dozens of guys I knew growing up slavishly imitated Carlin's tone, inflection and demeanor...he was a very common influence for a lot of high school kids growing up in the 1970's. For all his irreverence (and that was a consider component of his personality) Carlin was an ubiquitous presence on television for years, yes he hosted the first "Saturday Night Live" but does anyone else remember his guest appearance as a DJ on Welcome Back Kotter?
Well...as Lenny Bruce once famously observed, "I'm a hustler, as long as they are willing to give, I'll tak!e".
And of course Bruce's shadow falls long over George Carlin's career it was Lenny's free form act that inspired Carlin to go solo and start really pushing boundaries on stage.
There however, the two men diverge, Lenny ultimately destroyed himself, whilst the tide of his career dropped Carlin safely down in Malibu sans appreciable damage to his sensibility.
At least until last night when the squarest of square maladies, heart disease took Carlin's life at age 71.
Should satirists die in bed? Or is that just their secret fantasy?

"Pick of the Week"

Clearly it is "My Son John" seminal anti-communist McCarthy era film that was coincidentally Robert Walker's last film.
Helen Hayes plays the cloying mother to a nice young man who just might be a Soviet Spy!!!
For some reason "My Son John" has never been released on VHR or DVD nor does it circulate on the bootleg circuit making it an authentic rarity from the 1950's.


"My Son John" screens at 9pm tonight at the Harvard Film Archive 24 Quincy Street in the teeming heart of Harvard Square Cambridge.

Grace Note in Fresh Pond

Like a damn fool I accidentally left my huge trade paperback copy of "The Impossible Mencken" (a compilation of his newspaper columns)behind at Whole Foods in the Fresh Pond Shopping Center.
Sure enough I went back after supper and some kind soul had left it at the customer service desk, no fuss no bother no theft more importantly.
So kudos to Whole Foods it is patronized and run by honest people.

Sure enough...

Swarms of little blonde girls from the suburbs came lopin' thru Alewife Station this morning clutching trade paperback Harry Potter books bound for Harvard's Commencement wherein JK Rowling is scheduled to speak.
More than a few were being escorted by beaming parents...I guess they though hooking school to attend the augustan proceedings at Harvard constituted extra-curricular educational enrichment.
Still and all that, maybe I'm an old cuss, but I just can't see JK Rowling making much of an impression as a commencement speaker at Big Red. She is quite literally standing on a platform where George Catlett Marshall once proclaimed a new world order...what will Rowling discuss? Broomstick aerodynamics?

Oh well hope the rain lets up.

Picks of the week

Clearly it is tonight's double bill at the Harvard Film Archive, The Shaw Brother's Five Deadly Venoms with King Boxer both martial ars classics.
I'm definitely in for "King Boxer" tonight at 9pm and hopefully I can see "The 14 Amazons" on Sunday.

Sighted at Alewife Station this morning

A real live nun.
Elderly to be sure but walking to the trains sans assistance.
Hell they are all elderly these days, nuns and priests...not sure where they get any of them anymore.
Good lord I think it has been thirty years since I've seen a young nun (under the age of fifty I mean)and I went to parochial schools where nuns did swarm freely.
I guess it is a sign of the times.

Redlining on the Red Line....

In case Dan Grabauskas is wondering, if there is a debilitating fire at Downtown Crossing, then it does indeed take about ninety minutes to walk from South Station to Central Square in Cambridge minus some drag time due to an untimely downpour on the Longfellow bridge.
Not that I minded, I got a chance to walk thru the financial district and relive my days as an ill-paid messenger for a great metropolitan corporate law firm. Hell it awakened in me a passionate desire to work downtown once again, the smell of money is ever in the air and the women are prettier all around.
As I walked past the State House I idly conjured with the notion of dropping in unannounced on my state representative and perhaps scouring his office for the inevitable hidden bottle of bourbon.
The plan foundered when I couldn't recall if the Great and General Court was in session moreover I didn't feel like hiking across the Common to find out.
At City Hall I ruled out knocking on Tom Menino's door to see if he had a spare bicycle or scooter I could borrow and at Beacon Hill I had to fight back the urge to hump up to Louisberg Square to see if Senator Kerry wanted to grab a slice at the Hi-Fi Pizza in Central Square.
Nope I just tromped over the bridge singing the occasional show tune on the way.
My days in college theater stood me in good stead tonight, I know a LOT of show tunes for a mangy old straight guy as at the time I thought I might have to hike all the way to Alewife.
Finally caught a bus in Central Square and made it home a mere three hours after leaving Drydock Avenue in South Boston.
"We MUST do this again some time!" I gushed to the MBTA starter in Harvard Square.
He got it, he laughed.
Frankly though, I've made better time in the midst of apocalyptic snowstorms.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

When Steven Spielberg runs out of ideas, he tends to dial back to an obnoxious infantalized view of family life a'la "Hook" or worse "A.I."
When George Lucas runs out of ideas (which is pretty damn often), he tends to recapitulate certain favored action set pieces from his earlier films, the interminable light saber duels that climaxed ALL the Star Wars prequels for example.
So when these two men collaborate in an identical state of idea-less torpor, the result is "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".
Otherwise known as a two hour long snoozer that drags poor Karen Allen out of an undeserved retirement and then frantically tosses communists, "Chariots of the Gods" rubbish and an AWFUL performance from Cate Blanchett into the pot to spice up something that went flat years ago.
Mind you, I think it's good to acknowledge that Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones is now pushing sixty in a the post WW 2 America, it's even nice that his leading lady is more or less his own age (Karen Allen) but Jesus this film both frantic and dull a waste of both actor's time in every way.
Meanwhile up in the production office, both producers indulge their worst tendencies, Spielberg trots out "Indy-as-a-man-who-needs-a-family" nonsense while Lucas just restages his favorite car chases like a model train enthusiast gone mad on crack.
The result is junk and not even fun junk, it was enervating junk.
Granted "Crystal Skull" isn't as bad as "Temple of Doom" but it is nevertheless a film that will in time dilute and dim the charms of the original "Raiders of the Lost Ark" very nicely indeed.
Hell why all the "Indiana Jones" sequels anyway? I mean other than the fact that Hollywood's greed usually favors short money and proven commodities?
The more I think on it, the more I realize that the original "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was a freak of nature, a strange hybrid union of Republic Serial's pacing and relentless focus on action enhanced with A-List actors and SPFX...it's inherently ephemeral nature (all speed all sound no depth) meant it could never really perpetaute itself as a series of films.
Not that George and Steven haven't tried and tried and tried....
Honestly, skip this one it's a joyless motion picture in every way.
However with all due respect, let me note that last night the Mendon Twin Drive In was PACKED like a sardine can with families intent on seeing this film...and all during a summer season where gas prices may hit $4 a gallon as well. So some good came of it for the fine people behind the Mendon Twin Drive In.

In my Capacity as a Marshal of the Commonwealth

I hearby decree May 23rd 2008 as "Squalus Day" and enjoin all citizens in Massachusetts to recall in their thoughts and prayers those service-persons who died during peacetime.
They made an equal and ultimate sacrifice, they should be remembered.

Long Live the Commonwealth

Long Live the Republic

My gym

is located in a hotel on route 128...lots of wedding receptions happen there, baby showers etc.
Last night a certain tony suburb's High School senior class had a graduation dinner for the class of '08.
The young ladies were all "dressed to the nines" (as my old man would put it) in dresses and heels, floral prints, make up the whole schmeer.
The young men however were uniformly clad in untucked button down shirts, sneakers and a smattering of baseball caps.

The gap in expectations was immediately and vividly apparent.

Class all the way kid, class...all...the...way.

:D
Kidding congrats to all grads this year, stay safe.

An MX Missile named "Big Brown"

My Ghod but my horse roared down the track like a corvette gone mad on crystal meth! Honestly, race horses are renowned for their stoicism but I swear I saw looks of consternation and raw amazement on the equine punims of the competition!
Yes, Big Brown has won the Preakness easy thus setting up dynastic triple crown hopes for the Belmont Stakes in three weeks. Watch the hype on that, it'll be toxic and ludicrous I promise you.

Meanwhile is it some sort of regulation in thoroughbred horse-racing that each owner has to have a skinny bottle blonde wife in a preposterous hat with two uneasy step kids by her side?
I mean this must be like ALL Preakness owner's home situation in a nutshell.

JK Rowling to speak at Harvard's Commencement on

June 5th 2008.
Given the way Harvard Square went nuts when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was released we can no doubt expect to see co-eds tarted up in "sexy schoolgirl" gear and rest of the graduating class sporting Harry's trademark national health spectacles.
Maybe even a Dumbledore or two, false beard and all.

Frankly, Ms. Rowling is an odd choice from my perspective...I mean she is standing where once George Marshall proclaimed the western alliance and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn denounced the USSR.

We have lived thru interesting times, and now these are the consequences.

Iron-Man (2008)

Is a plain fun movie all the way thru, billionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) assumes the identity of the high-tech armored Iron-Man to track down who is selling his own weapons to terrorists.
Frankly the plot is entirely incidental, it is akin to more coherent and worthwhile version of Ang Lee's "Incredible Hulk" storyline. Mostly it works by not falling into the pitfalls blazed by "Daredevil, The Fantastic Four, the aforementioned Hulk etc etc.
Where Iron-Man rocks most excellently is in the solid casting, Downey, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges play it absolutely straight up the middle, no mugging, no vaudville turns and no pretentious rubbish either.
This is important in a film about a crimefighting billionaire who uses an electromagnet to treat his cardial shrapnel wounds and features Gwyneth Paltrow outrunning a fusion explosion in strappy high heels.
Nope, Marvel has a winner here, my only question is this; How can Tony Stark operate sorts of computers and high tech design gizmos without everything wigging out from the powerful electromagnet implanted in his chest?

Idle thought on having been exposed to the "Speed Racer" trailer in Burlington last night....

Think of the millions of dollars Hollywood has devoted to convincing us that Christina Ricci is a sex symbol and a talent of the first rank. Cankles? A spoon face and uninspired performance technique...RUBBISH mere triffles, Christina is a STAR howls Tinseltown.
Her publicist must have unusual powers of persuasion thass all I can say.

The Titicut Follies (1967) directed by Frederick Wiseman

This is a nasty little movie.
But an important one, it holds a mirror up to the casual cruelty and indifference of the staff at the Bridgewater State Mental Hospital circa 1966.
Hell it did too good a job, a judge slapped a gag order on the film citing patient privacy a concern that also prevent most of the citizenry of Massachusetts from seeing what sort of crude lowlifes had infiltrated the hospital's guards and orderlies.
We are talking about a cruel bunch of oafs here, paunchy, balding, ill-educated, prone to gruesomely teasing the inmates complete with the beady gaze one associates instantly with a patronage pay-triot.
if you want to see what a state senator's cousin or nephew looks likein his natural habitat, see this movie.
Local film critic Paul Sherman deserves maxi-kudos for reviving this film down at the MFA this weekend.
As part of the self generated publicity for his new book "Big Screen Boston" Sherman is also screening various Boston-centric films around town during May and June.
The stand out of the lot is "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" a local crime noir classic starring Robert Mitchum that has yet to be released on DVD or VHS for that matter. It is playing at the Coolidge Corner June fifth, and is well worth the effort....I strongly recommend attendance and buying Paul's new book for that matter it is a very well researched work.

Big Brown wins the Kentucky Derby...

blew past the competition like an MX Missile on Crack.

Finally!!!

I backed a winner!

After years of triangulating the stats, playing the stable, playing the jockeys, betting on the weather and consulting the I-Ching, I went with a big brute and 5 to 2 favorite who hated losing.
And all from a lousy post position as well.

A doff of the old hat as well to the late Eight Bells, euthanized after breaking both front ankles in the straightaway....condolences to his backers, jockey and all those who wanted him to win.

Am I the only person on the internet who recalls

when Iron-Man was a knee jerk anti-communist?

Beating up the Viet Cong, quoting Lyndon Johnson...bashing spies etc...I mean Iron-Man was a commie-smashing icon for a while there. Then one day roundabout 1965 Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Stan Lee discovered how well Marvel comics were selling on campus and he threw out all the "Better Dead than Red" stuff.