National Gorilla Suit Day

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

Remember, Darwin is the Reason for the Season!!

Happy National Gorilla Suit Day!

Here is a used book conundrum...

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

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

A Link

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

Apropos of Nothing but

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

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

Flash Gordon Returns?

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

James Brown is dead...

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

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

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

The Revenge of Frank Dell

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

Run Don't Walk...

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

Casino Royale (2006)

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

When it rains and rains...

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

In Passing...

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

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Z

"Monster on Campus" at the Harvard Film Archive Tonight

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

Pick of the Week

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

Haunted Happenings in Today's Globe...

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

Jesus Camp (2006)

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

Brief Encounter on the Red Line Yesterday

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

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

Movies on a Menu in East Arlington has Reopened

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

Tamara Dobson aka "Cleopatra Jones"

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

James Parker has an interesting article in today's Globe

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