WFMU's Beware of the Blog

80s Action Movie Cliches: The Witty Retort

Last year a friend loaned me his copy of Commando, the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film that may be the most pure and concise example of the manly-man manness that typified the action movies of my teenage years. I had never seen the film before, because during the rise of the Reagan-era Hollywood action hero I was too busy watching David Lynch films and being all arty and shit. Little did I know what I had been missing.

And so, I hit up the video rental store and filled my Netflix queue with nothing but action movies from those formative years (approximately 1983 - 1992, my cut off date being a combination of the influence of Terminator 2 and the rise of Michael Bay, which I think lead to a new era of action films that were more action-effects-explosion driven). For two months my brain was crammed with nothing but testosterone, ass whoopins, gun play, and witty quips. I decided to share a little of what I learned from this experience by putting together a few examples of the best of what the 80s Action Movies really have to offer.

Here is part one of a continuing series, which features a sampling of some of my favorite (and iconic) witty retorts. I'm sure I missed some good ones (and some I held back on purpose for use in upcoming videos), so please chime in with your own favorites in the comments.

If you would like a full rundown of the films of the era, check out the Ruthless Reviews Guide to 80s Action, which was pretty much my bible while submerging myself in the blood and guts and guns and muscles of the Reagan era hero.

SFL Mid-Season Review

The Summer Fun List is one of DJ Kelly’s more genius ideas: Sometime in late spring you make a list of all the fun things you want to do during the upcoming summer, so that the whole season doesn’t fly past without your having done anything fun at all. (This is especially useful for former Midwestern Protestants such as myself, who tend to forget that “fun” is not the same thing as “evil.” Or maybe it is, and that’s why it feels so jolly. But I don’t wanna get all philosophical about it now.) A few weeks ago I was feeling pretty unhappy about something and I drew a big X across the Summer Fun List page and wrote “KILL MYSELF” instead, but I’m sort of over that now, so I figured I’d take another look. Plus, it finally got sunny for three days in a row, and it’s starting to feel a little bit like summer at last. Here’s what’s on my SFL this year:

UConn Puppet Museum
Rosendale (more bees?)
Fireworks
Yankees game
Bruno
Musical Saw Festival
Book Arts Lounge and/or Class
Bacon Retrospective (& other art)

So far, this has not been a particularly successful SFL season. I used to try to go to one Yankees game a year, but now that tickets cost more than I make in a month, I won’t be doing that. And because of Global Economic Change, there weren’t any 4th of July fireworks anywhere near where I live: All the usual displays were canceled. So Sluggo and I went up on a hill near our house and looked down the Hudson toward New York City and saw just the tippy-top of the Macy’s fireworks—we wouldn’t see anything for two or three minutes, and then there’d be a little puff of red light, and then nothing for another couple of minutes, and then some silvery sparkles. Even though I tried as hard as I could, I wasn’t able to convince myself that it was actually “fun.” And I have been SO looking forward to this year’s Musical Saw Festival on Saturday, July 18. I went last year, and it was truly fantastic. I heard Satie’s “Gymnopedie” performed by a musical saw and the Trinity handbell choir, and I am not kidding when I say that it was life-changing. Seriously. It was great, and weird, and great-and-weird, and I have been looking forward to going again for a whole year—and I have an unavoidable conflict that day and can’t go. But you should. It’s in Astoria, it costs only $10, and this year they’re going to try to break the Guinness World Record for “largest musical saw ensemble.” This is a musical event I sincerely recommend for any WFMU Listener, so add it to your Summer Fun List and go.

That’s the disappointments so far, but there’s been some surprise fun, too. Sluggo and I got invited to cocktails at the penthouse residence of an ambassador to the U.N., which was clearly some kind of mistake but we went anyway and had a very nice time. We also went to the “Agitprop!” Book Arts Lounge at the Center for Book Arts, where we talked about Russian constructivist advertising art with polymath poet Mr. Jeremy James Thompson and letterpressed some little flyers that say “Money is No Object.” I got to take the “Brown Bag Bindery” class, too, and built my own piercing cradle, sewing frame, and finishing press. Sylvia Alotta, the teacher, used to be an industrial designer for GM, and has come up with the most beautiful, functional, simple designs for binding equipment. She is my new hero, and almost makes me want to move to Chicago just so I could study with her there. (*Almost.*) Now I’m looking forward to the “Embroidered Bindings” Book Arts Lounge on August 14. Maybe I’ll see you there.

My friend Miss Manytitles has arranged for me to attend a free screening of Bruno with her this week, but the movie I’m really looking forward to seeing is ROBOGEISHA. Here's the trailer, so you will want to see it too. OMG, I have to see it! My Grammy Carlton used to say, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings,” and when there are movies like Robogeisha in the world, I think she was right.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

"You all know me. You know what I do for a living."

Hello, Chris T. here. I'll be filing in tonight for Shut Up, Weirdo in the old Aerial View time-slot, 6 - 7 PM. What's the topic? "Chris T'.s Bargain Bin". With our current economic crisis on everyone's mind, my wife Janet and I will help you save a few bucks while having a few yucks...

Man, how often in life do you get to use the word "yucks"?

I'd also like to get just one person to re-enact the greatest scene from the greatest Summer movie of all, the Indianapolis speech from JAWS. I'll provide the music and sound effects, you channel your inner Captain Quint. Here's the speech:

Aboard the Orca:

Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) - "You were on the Indianapolis?"

Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) - "What happened?"

Quint (Robert Shaw) - "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

Wild Oates: A Conversation With Warren Oates' Biographer

          

Writer Susan Compo recently authored an enormously entertaining Warren Oates biography and Oates fans who have not yet read the book can look forward to it with great anticipation.  For my money, Warren Oates: A Wild Life is the finest biography since 1998 when Ronnie Pugh's Ernest Tubb biography hit the shelves.  The book offers a richly-detailed and definitive portrait of Oates' intriguing life and career and upon finishing it, I decided it might be interesting to talk to the author about Warren Oates and how she came to write the story of his life.  I'd like to thank Susan for sharing several unpublished Oates photos (including above right, showing Oates in makeup for The Brink's Job) and for indulging me while I fumbled through my Brian Lamb impersonation.

Oates died of a heart attack in 1982, but if he were still with us he'd celebrate his 81st birthday on July 5.

Greg:  Let's start things off with a question about the title of your book, Warren Oates: A Wild Life.  Who chose that title?

Susan Compo:  The publisher, as happens sometimes in the book world.  I had Wild Oates, but they just didn't go for that.

(NOTE: I didn't want to see a good title go to waste, so I borrowed it for this post).

Don Dohler Double Feature – The Alien Factor and Fiend

The Alien Factor (1978) is so archetypal of 70s ultra-low-budget sci-fi/horror that it almost seems like a SCTV parody of the genre. Loaded with awkward blocking and long snatches of blandly delivered expositional dialogue, its strength is in its simple charms: a few good ideas, some amusing characters, and enough money-shot visuals to inspire 100 great screen captures. These folks clearly worked hard on the monsters—one of which has anatomically built-in platform heels—and in general, your entertainment will come from the earnest and colorful visual effects and primitive, in-camera and stop-motion techniques. Make no mistake, The Alien Factor is eyeball-pleasin'; the title sequence alone should be canonized as some kind of holy representation of 70s goodness. If I seem to disparage The Alien Factor, it's only because Dohler's next feature goes straight to the heart of my aesthetic nerve centre. 

Everything that The Alien Factor may lack in sophistication is more than made up for by director Don Dohler's next movie, Fiend (aka Deadly Neighbor, 1980), a genuinely creepy, witty and highly original living-dead scenario. In the film, a mysterious alien force, an ethereal red-glowing flying thing, for reasons unknown to us, reanimates (or possesses) a buried corpse, and the combo adds up to one nasty character, an intense sadist named Mr. Longfellow. The trajectory is quite unpredictable, as our zombie pal takes over an empty house, opens a music school (!), and generally irritates his neighbors (whose somewhat banal interactions also provide their own amusing little subplot, especially as the length of the wife's hair keeps changing from scene to scene.) And oh yes, there's Longfellow's murder/sustenance rituals, which also consist of shouting and stabbing at photographs of his victims (and a lot of black candles.)

After Alien Factor, Dohler must have learned a lot about shot framing, suspenseful editing, and economy of dialogue, such that Fiend is elevated from being merely a visually charming, colorful oddity like its predecessor, to being an aggressively weird and disquieting horror tale. I'd also be remiss not to mention that both of these films feature a melodic, burbling synthesizer score (The Alien Factor by Kenneth Walker; Fiend by Paul Woznicki), so well done and so evocative of the time as to give me a super-warm fuzzy. See the My Castle of Quiet blog for a downloadable cinelogue audio excerpt from Fiend.

It's obvious that despite challenges of budget, Dohler and his crew worked hard to try and make good, entertaining movies, and, at least with Fiend, came pretty close to some metaphysical horror fan's ideal. Dohler is something of a legend, especially in his native Baltimore, and now I see why. Many thanks to James for the loan of the two-in-one DVD (released 2005), and for insisting that we give these bent pictures an eyeball.

Another Don Dohler film, Galaxy Invader, can be viewed or downloaded for free here via archive.org. There's also a well-reviewed and relatively new Dohler documentary, released on DVD earlier this year.

Full Dedication Alvaro (video, mp3)

I first stumbled across Alvaro Peña-Rojas (probably better known as ALVARO - The Chilean with the singing nose, and former collaborator of Joe Strummer in The 101ers) on the Nurse With Wound list and finally managed to get ahold of a CD copy of his mind-blowing 1977 solo debut album Drinkin My Own Sperm. Now some German filmmakers (Hans Kotter, Jochen Hägle and Christian Zschammer) made a documentary about Alvaro, who is living in Konstanz, Germany, and still going strong. Here is the trailer for Full Dedication ALVARO, with English subtitles.

There is no DVD available yet, and all the screenings are taking place in Germany, but I am sure it will make its way around the world eventually. For now, here is one of the tracks from Drinkin My Own Sperm as MP3.

MP3: Alvaro - Palido Sol (MP3, featuring Cathy Williams)

Also, don't forget to check out the live set Alvaro did on Brian Turner's show in 2003: [ Playlist | Real Audio link ]

My Castle of Quiet Radio, Premiering Tonight

After a sabbatical of over ten years, where I was immersed in vital and dangerous field research, I'll be returning to WFMU's weekly airwaves tonight at 8 p.m.

I'm in search of ossuaries, graveyards, gothic cemetaries, horror-film festivals and vampire clubs interested in hosting live, remote broadcasts. 

Live playlist available here.

Drag Me to "Drag Me to Hell"

I love reading Wm. Berger’s blogposts about horror movies. They all sound so awesome, although I don’t know if that’s because they really are great films or if it’s just that Wm. B’s fine, fine aesthetic sensibilities make everything he presents sound better than it is. I can’t watch them to decide for myself, since I can’t get foreign films where I live upstate. When I want to see a horror movie, I have to go see whatever’s playing at the Regal E-Walk 13 over by the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

A couple of weeks ago that was Drag Me to Hell, the new Sam Raimi movie starring the guy who plays the Mac in those Mac/PC TV commercials. I dragged Dr. Colby along to see it with me because I thought, “Well, it’s Sam Raimi, how bad can it be?” Pretty bad, as it turns out. Really bad, actually. In fact, the more I think about it, the more bad I think it was. It was like if Disney made horror movies. It was like watching a 99-minute-long commercial for a new coat. After we saw it, Dr. Colby told me that Rom people are unhappy with the portrayal of Gypsy stereotypes in the move, and I’m not surprised. Heck, I was offended by the portrayal of the Plucky Iowa Farm Girl stereotype. Not to mention the Mysterious Hindu stereotype and the Mexicans in the Back of a Pick-Up stereotype and the Rich Wasp Parents stereotype and, I dunno, the Sacrificial White Goat stereotype. On a scale of zero to $12.50 (the cost of a movie ticket here), I’d give it maybe $2.50. Bad.

On the other hand, I went to see The Toxic Avenger Musical, and really liked it. And usually I hate musicals. I never understand those radio commercials for big Broadway shows, where they give you a sample of someone screeching (“Ah could be his lahf's com-pan-yun … anywheh but wheh we a-h-h-h”) and then expect you to pay $110 to go hear more. But we sort of got enmeshed into going to the TAM, which was $50 and fun. The play follows the movie pretty faithfully, and the music was written by a guy who plays keyboards with Bon Jovi (okay, but it’s an improvement over Andrew Fucking Lloyd Webber), and the wee little cast of 5 or 6 people can all sing and dance and act—incredible!—and they work SO hard to entertain the audience that eventually they even won over Sluggo. There were plenty of tasteless blind jokes, and various drag characters, and the sets were great … it was all good. So if you have the dough and you like plays and musicals and what-not, I definitely recommend The Toxic Avenger Musical.

Finally, a friend lent us the DVD of the movie Black Sheep, a rather comical “horror movie” about genetically altered flesh-eating zombie sheep in New Zealand, written and directed by Jonathan King. Who? Yeah, I never heard of him. And they didn’t have the money for all sorts of computer CGI stuff, so they used the most genius puppets and models and all, done by Weta Workshops (who did the Lord of the Rings movies). Lots of sheep farting and blood and explosions. It was quite jolly, and Sluggo and I enjoyed it, and it didn’t cost any bloody $12.50 either. Jonathan King wins, and Sam Raimi loses, and that’s all there is to it.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and don’t forget to make up your Summer Fun List before it’s too late.

Morgue Story & The Dead Outside

Of the films I saw in the San Francisco Roxie Cinema's 6th annual Another Hole in the Head festival, two features stood out high above the lot: the Brazilian horror/comedy Morgue Story (Sangue, Baiacu e Quadrinhos), and the almost static, post-plague survival drama from Scotland, The Dead Outside (trailers viewable at those links.) These are two very different films, to be sure, but they share two significant common ingredients: an empowered, gutsy heroine, hell bent on survival (these chicks are neither skinny, nor do they shriek and fall down when running); and a visual and color palette that distinguishes the story immediately as its own universe. (Sadly, I left town the night the tantalizingly Mother's Day-esque Run! Bitch Run! premiered; anyone who's seen it should feel free to chime in with their thoughts.)

Morgue Story is a taut, clever and grisly horror comedy with an Evil Dead II-like dual sense of calamity and humor that leaves nothing off the, uh, slab. When Ana, a successful graphic novelist (who has nonetheless lost at love, and whose most famous character is a "living dead") ends up not-quite-dead in the morgue, she runs afoul of a sleazily efficient, God-fearing necrophiliac coroner. Also in the mix is a self-effacing cataleptic, who looks like Lux Interior's younger, paler brother and may just be an (albeit weak-willed) ally for our heroine. The three spar off verbally and physically as the English subs fly by, unpredictable shifts of power occur, and you find yourself reacting with equal measures of laughter and revulsion to the fairly graphic scenes of necrophilia. Everything is shot in grey, green and sepia tones, the washed-out institutional colors perfectly underscoring the essences of death, depravity and sickness. This is the only film I saw in the whole festival where the crowd immediately erupted in enthusiastic and unanimous applause at the conclusion. That tells me the world needs more necrophiliac comedies—or at least this one.

Come see The Dead Outside expecting buckets of blood and non-stop zombie action, and you will be disappointed. The Dead Outside is more the zombie-film equivalent of listening to your favorite Oval LP, which turns out to be not at all a bad thing. Moody and hovering, with an excellent soundtrack that veers from drony buzz into gentle piano melodies, The Dead Outside reads like a side tale to 28 Days Later if directed by Atom Egoyan. As with Morgue Story, the action here centers on an unconventionally attractive heroine, a hard-boiled, chip-toothed goth girl who's slaughtered her own family in order to survive, and is played with resonance by Sandra Louise Douglas (who seems destined to flash her violently blue eyes on bigger screens.) The danger in The Dead Outside is less in the infected that keep getting stuck in the barbed wire outside, than it is in the minds of the survivors who must live out the daily drudgery that is post-zombie-plague existence. Again, the expectations of horror purists may be let down here, and the film also loses minor points for dropping critical exposition to the lack of subtitles (it's been a long time since I saw Teenage Fanclub, and my Scots is rusty.) Though The Dead Outside does have a few scenes of seat-jumping zombie action, that won't be why you remember it. Its muted blues and greens, and matter-of-fact realism, tell a very atypical and understated horror tale.

P.S. - I'll be returning to weekly broadcasting on WFMU this summer, after a ten-year hiatus. Tune in for the premiere of My Castle of Quiet, Wednesday, June 24, at 8 p.m. ET.

A Proposition for Robert De Niro

From markmaynard.com.

Amy Lockhart - Shrivelled Creatures and Cut Paper Animations

Amy Lockhart's is a Canadian artist and filmmaker. Her art-brut drawings and paintings are playful, reminiscent of Lee Godie, squishing figures into awkward tube shapes and detailing the fleshy fold-overs. Her most recent animation Walk for Walk continues this grotesquerie into a stream-of-conscious parade of licking, skipping, and merry-making.

"This 16mm film was created using over 1,000 hand painted cut-outs and paper puppets with paper backgrounds. I recorded the sounds in an isolation box I built in my living room, out of cardboard, insulation and drywall." The soundtrack is also an astonishing collage of unexpected Foley sound and warbly electronics. You can view more animations, including her collaborations with Marc Bell, on her blog.

Please Stop

Stop comparing me to Angelina Jolie! It’s a lack of creativity on the media’s part. Just because I have dark hair and tattoos? That’s as far as the similarity extends. I’m sure she has no idea who I am. If I were her, I’d be, like, “Who’s this middle-aged Westchester housewife that’s going to be the next me?” I don’t want to meet her—I’d be embarrassed. I’m not the next anyone.

Next post: Please stop comparing Sluggo to Brad Pitt.

sweet emotion, the films of Claire Denis

I have this awful habit of gushing affection whenever I run into one of my heroes.  Worse, it's the sort of affection that strangers don't take kindly too.  It's not exactly a King of Comedy moment, but some of the looks it engenders suggest I need to rephrase my adoration.  I was at a Lincoln Center event for the films of Claire Denis when I bumped into the filmmaker in the hall outside of the bathroom.  I immediately blurted out " I love you,  errr... I mean I love your films."  She was gracious and warm in a rather un-French way.  Of course it made me love her more, errr... I mean her films.

     Last month the DVD for my favorite Denis film: "Nenette et Boni" was released.  From the opening shot, this film like all of her films, sucks you in to the hypnotic pace.  The soundtrack is an actor in this film as much as any of its cast and the cinematography compels you to participate, instead of allowing you to be a voyeur sitting in the dark.   Agnes Godard is her flawless cinematographer and the soundtrack is written by Tindersticks. 

     Claire Denis was born in Paris to parents who were living in Africa.  Her father was a French official in colonial Africa, constantly moving house every two years, more interested in being nomads than colonizers.  Her first film "Chocolat" in 1988 described that odd inbetween-ness that she felt growing up in a country that she knew was not her own, but never really knowing the birthplace that was on her passport.  All of her films float in a new France that is essentially a blend of ethnicities, most of which, in some way holding a tenuous tie to France's past.  Using some of the skills given to her by the accomplishments of the French New Wave, Clair Denis makes metaphors into stories that unfold in a language of gestures.  Her films defy the spoken word that was the stranglehold of the Nouvelle Vague.  Another fellow post new wave director, Andre Techine, also employs the loose narrative of inbetween-ness in many of his films.

By the way, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith was the most gracious of hosts to my unwarranted affections when I bumped into him on the streets of Soho in the early 90's.  He was palling around with Lenny Kravitz and a gaggle of babes with babies on their hips, but I just wanted to personally thank Aerosmith for standing up to the National Endowment for the Arts.  A show at the MIT List Visual Arts center had recently had $10,000 of NEA funding revoked due to a sexually graphic exhibit and Aerosmith stepped in to make up the difference.  Steven smiled one of those massive smiles and said "You're very welcome".  His lady friends weren't so agreeable.

Onward, Christian Soldiers (video)

Manfred Mann vocalist Paul Jones covers the hymn Onward, Christian Soldiers. This clip is taken from the 1967 film Privilege by Peter Watkins, a pseudo-documentary set in near-future (i.e., the 70s) Britain, about a pop star whose career is controlled and manipulated by Church and State.

A CAMP (f/ Nina Persson of the Cardigans) LIVE tonight - with HD Video!

Wow, you know, every once in a while, things really just turn out pretty awesome, like this performance from A Camp that will air tonight on Sound and Safe.  Four perfectly-rendered pop songs - including a cover of Eddie Noack's weird and wonderful "Psycho" - done by my favorite singer in the world, Nina Persson, with husband Nathan Larson (of Shudder to Think) on bass, and Niclas Frisk (of Atomic Swing) on guitar.

We got some really nice HD video of the songs - check out a preview here, for the song "Love Has Left the Room." 

Thanks very much to Tim Smith and Jacqueline Castel for shooting the video.

Tune in tonight to hear all four songs and to see all four videos.  Also keep an eye on the Free Music Archive for MP3s of the set.

A Camp kicks off a North American tour at Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night.  Their new album Colonia is out now.

ISSUE Project Room's 6th Anniversary Party

On May 19th, Brooklyn's excellent non-profit performance space, ISSUE Project Room, will be celebrating their 6th year of kicking ass and taking names in the experimental music, film, literature, and art scenes (and also on the Free Music Archive).

The 6th birthday party/benefit for ISSUE Project Room takes place at Galapagos in Dumbo Brooklyn (16 Main St), and WFMU's own Fabio will be representing on the ones and twos. Other notable highlights on the bill include:

- The Pinch of the Baboon (JG Thirlwell, Ed Pastorini, Oren Bloedow and Ben Perowsky)
- Elysian Fields
- Mountains
- members of Excepter
- “Straight and Narrow” (1970), Film screening by Tony Conrad with soundtrack by John Cale and Terry Riley
- Robot Movie by Jim Sharpe with Soundtrack by Lary Seven

On top of this, IPR will reward a prize to the person who shows up in the best Holy Mountain-inspired costume, so you know there's potential for this party to be way better than Halloween. Purchase tickets here, and you'll get $10 off if you use the promotional code fidelio - have fun!

Dorks, Blue-Tang, Mr Wonka, Sprocket Man, and Awkward Families

My "Awesome Internet Images" folder has been filling up lately thanks to these sites.

Designer Logan Walters loves him some Wu Tang, but hates him some Wu Tang album cover art. And so he dipped into the history of Blue Note and is working on remaking all the Wu Tang albums in that legendary style. (Via Animal New York)

Another nice design project is Spacesick's "I Can Read Movies" series in which 70s book covers meet classic geeky films.

 

The University of Nebraska library offers up an online archive of government produced comic books. This includes everyone from Charlie Brown to Captain America to Wonder Woman and Superman pitching various public service announcements. But it's the lesser known projects that really grabbed my interest: WISHES & RAINBOWS, a trippy kids story from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; THE STORY OF BANKS, in which a group of hippie teens learn how to use a bank; the EC style drug scare comics HOOKED and TEEN-AGE BOOBY TRAP; and the truly lame superheroes SPROCKET MAN (he rides a ten-speed and carries a giant gear shift) and RAY CYCLE: RECYCLING SUPERHERO (he's from Connecticut). (via Slog)

If you like to make fun of your childhood self for loving computers, Star Wars, and all things nerdy, you can put your own photos up for all to see on Dork Yearbook.

More embarrassing than an airing of your kiddie laundry is the world of Awkward Family Photos. Take a break from Mother's Day and see what some truly uncomfortable family situations are like via the site that kicks the Olan Mills love up a notch.

 

The best one of all is NSFW, and therefore, after the jump....

Never to Take a Burt Reynolds Bitchslap Again

Dom DeLuise has left us at 75.

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1971)

After years of only marginal interest on my part (plus a few more years of the DVD kicking around in my Netflix queue) I finally got around to watching Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small. I'm an enthusiastic Herzog fan and have seen many of his films and enjoyed them tremendously, but for some reason the notion of this one had never been terribly compelling to me. An "uncompromising allegory about the consequences of imprisonment and rebellion" and a "powerful statement about the repercussions of ostracism," as the Netflix sleeve tries to convince me? Perhaps. And perhaps my hero just wanted to show little people parading around with a live monkey tied to a cross. Los Olvidados shot from waist high. Visions of a "profound nightmare." Acknowledged, Herzog did take very good care of his actors.

In the commentary on the DVD, he says that he "fear(s) chickens because they are so stupid." The word "gloom" also comes up a lot, which, when he says it, sounds like "gluume." Herzog also says, "It's not that the midgets are monstrous, and that was a misunderstanding" ... "Some of the fiercest opposition ... was from the dogmatic left, which believed that this film depicted, was somehow, ridiculing and depicting the world revolution, which was failing, and was ending in destruction and catastrophes." Watching Even Dwarfs... with the director's commentary track rolling turned out to be the least ambivalence-producing experience for me, as it often happens that I find Herzog the lunatic, Herzog the creative force of nature, to be even more interesting than his films. Either way, Even Dwarfs... is filled with some arresting and beautifully photographed images. If you've visited my full-time Web home, My Castle of Quiet, you know that I appreciate a good DVD screen capture—so here are a few of my favorites from EDSS:

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up with String

Observe and Report. Dr. Colby has a way of rating movies on a scale of 0 to 12.5 dollars (because that's how much a movie ticket costs in Manhattan), and on that scale I give Observe and Report $25 because I liked it so much I saw it twice. The first time I went with DJ Kelly, and the nice ticket lady gave us tickets to Obsessed by mistake because she just could not believe that a couple of dames like us, out by ourselves on a Friday night, were there to see a dark, violent, completely incorrect comedy. (Which might describe Obsessed too, I guess, except that in that case it wouldn't be intentional.) On our way out of the theater, DJ Kelly stopped, considered carefully, and then said, "That was the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen." And she liked O&R.
So then I went to see it again with Sluggo, and he liked it too.

I'm not recommending this movie to anyone, though, because I can see how other people might not like it. Dr. Colby herself went to see it because I said it was good, and at first she gave it $2, but then she started adding a a little more here and there, like an extra $1 for the portrayal of the alcoholic mother, and she ended up giving it about $8 in the end. Still not a ringing endorsement. And if you're the sort of person who bursts into tears when someone says, like, "hospital clown" or something, you should not see it at all. But if you're curious about how a typical summer raunch-fest movie could strip away all the cliches and get down to the brutal rock-bottom awfulness of people's lives--and still be hilarious--this is the film for you. It's definitely the film for me--it might be my new favorite film ever.

The Nytpicker. It's not Lies of Our Times, but it's short and funny and free. And a couple of days ago they figured out that New York Times is an anagram for Write, Monkey. (I put the comma in because it bothers me too much to leave it out.) It's at www.nytpick.com.

The Local—Sweden's News in English. I check out The Local whenever I can remember not to keep calling it The State. (I don't know why I do that.) I finally bookmarked it so it doesn't matter what I think it's called. Swedish news is pretty warped. Last year there was a happy article about all the shop-window Christmas displays that featured penises. And without their sports reporting, I would have been completely unaware of the fact that Sweden had a fantastic come-from-behind, sudden-death OT  6-5 victory over the U.S. in the World Ice Hockey Championships last week. In fact, I wouldn't have even known the World Ice Hockey Championships were happening, unless the U.S. had won, in which case it would have been on the front page of, like, the New York Times. And then Nytpicker would have found something wrong with it.  www.thelocal.se

Numismaticism Update: The Guam quarter is out! Although I haven't seen one yet. But it features both the latte and the flying proa! And the Martin Van Buren gold-colored dollar is out, too, but, um ... you know. No flying proa there.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.