You think there really is more obesity?

Well, so, Christmas came late for us. My family was a bit scattered, celebrating with in-laws and grandchildren in one case and creating a home-like environment for local jazz musicians in another. It was the morning after our Xmas that my brother railed against processed foods. It was the cause of mass obesity in the United States!

I disagreed. "Look at Tarzan," I told him. Johnny Weissmuller gradually getting flabbier. Or Elmo Lincoln, the fat guy who was the first movie Tarzan, (actually the second or third Tarzan since baby Tarzan and pre-teen Tarzan appeared in the same movie before him.) Lincoln really was an ape man, I told them. They had to shave his body hair for the movie.

Then there was the old serial Darkest Africa featuring chubby Manuel King as Baru the Jungle Boy.

Are people really more obese now, or were fat people considered healthy-looking back then? Women were more curvaceous up until the British Invasion. British youth, rendered dangerously thin by wartime rationing that continued into the 1950s, came to the US and people wanted to be willowy like them. But there was a time when big fat guys looked strong.

via GIPHY

By the way, they've started a new thing to make actors look more muscular. They discovered that, rather than making them build up more muscle, it was easier to get them to lose body fat. They're no more muscular than they used to be, but now they look sinewy and all their muscles are visible.

Look at old pictures of Charles Atlas. He didn't even have visible stomach muscles. It's because he wasn't some kind of freak with no body fat.

Acting for a Living: How to Act Outside Hollwood by Roy McCrerey

I bought this book for my sister-in-law for Xmas. She's working as an actor in Portland, Oregon. Recently, she's done two movies and a commercial.

I read half the book before I wrapped it up for her, and it was interesting. It argues that you can earn a pretty good living as an actor if you have to good sense to stay out of New York and Hollywood.

Every major city has production companies---they all produce commercials, industrial films, have local theater, there's local movie production and now states give tax breaks luring Hollywood productions to their cities. They all need actors, and there's not a glut of them like there is in Hollywood.

The author McCrerey said he had a much easier time landing roles in Atlanta than he did in New York, the gigs actually paid about the same and Atlanta had a lower cost of living.

He mentions one case---who knows if this is true, but there was an actress in some remote area in the South. There was a single production company in the area. But she was the only actor who lived around there so she starred in every one of their productions and earned a nice living.

In Hollywood, the younger you are, the greater your chances to succeed. Outside Hollywood, people often take up acting when they're older. There's some old guy here, a former realtor, who I keep seeing in commercials.

I don't know much about acting. I know that acting schools are often very bad. There was a bit of acting advice he gave that I found interesting---the author said to read a lot, preferably aloud. I suppose it lets you practice sounding natural while uttering other people's words. Other than that, he seemed to think you can get along fine without training. Just act natural.

I've been telling people to head North instead of South. Go to Canada, not Hollywood. I don't know if this is actually good advice---I don't know what the movie and TV industries are like up there now. It's not that easy to immigrate to Canada. But no one listens to me anyway so I feel I have total freedom in giving advice.

It seems like Hollywood or New York offer only massive success or utter failure. The odds against you in either place seem almost insurmountable. I've never understood musicians or comedians who think they have to go there. Every city has a music scene.

Robert Altman started as a director making industrial films in Kansas City, Missouri, his home town. A local businessman hired him to direct a feature called The Delinquents which was released by United Artists.

Max Landis, obviously a rapist

He doesn't look like a rapist.

We got us another one. Max Landis. Son of child-killer/director John Landis who has reportedly been covering up his son's sex crimes.

John Landis, you may recall, directed a segment of The Twilight Zone movie. He included a scene where actor Vic Morrow carried two kindergarteners in the middle of the night under a helicopter hovering overhead with explosions going off around them. Landis decided that the best way to film this would be to have Vic Morrow try to carry two kindergarteners under a hovering helicopter with explosions going off around them in the middle of the night. The helicopter crashed on top of them killing all three.

John Landis had the bad taste to show up at Vic Morrow's funeral:

A thin, bearded man was coming down the aisle, seemingly unable to walk without assistance. He was supported by a woman and another man (Mrs. John Landis and George Folsey, Jr., the production manager of the "Twilight Zone" movie). The bearded staggerer was "Twilight Zone" director, John Landis.

His stooges helped him to the lectern and he began a rambling eulogy --unplanned, unrequested, unwanted and shocking to Vic's family and friends. His mere presence at the funeral was offensive to them. He did this, presumably, on the advice of his attorney.

The most obnoxious remark he made, among many, was that he was "proud to have directed Vic in what Vic, himself, considered the best performance of his career."

John Landis was charged with manslaughter but got away with it. He was acquitted. This was in 1982. The public was so offended that a movie director could get away with murder that prosecutors began a crackdown on celebrities in Hollywood.

According to the Daily Beast

John Landis's son, Max, is now a screenwriter of sorts. According to The Daily Beast:

Netflix’s first blockbuster movie, the $90 million fantasy-actioner Bright, is a steaming pile of orc shit; a nonsensical garbage pile featuring elves, orcs, a checked-out Will Smith, Chicanx gangster stereotypes worse than those regrettable “Homies” figurines (a trademark of its director David Ayer), and a slow-motion shootout set to Bastille...

You might want to just read The Daily Beast article since that's all I'm quoting here. They report that women on social media are making allegations against Max Landis:

Written by a psychopath who sexually abused and assaults women, right? Cool

— Anna Akana (@AnnaAkana) December 22, 2017

Sometimes men who commit sexual assault are talented screenwriters and their work comes with baggage.
other times, they’re Max Landis.

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

Folks were mad that a Pepe Le Pew movie was being made because who needs a movie about a rapist skunk but at least it meant max landis could switch from cringe fiction to finally writing his autobiography and writing what he knows

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

It probably has been an open secret for so long because it’s hard to talk about the seriously fucked up shit he’s done when you say his name and everyone within earshot has to seek medical care from reflexively rolling their eyes so hard they sprain. you can’t control it.

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

I’ve been holding in this shit for years as more friends have accrued “max landis stories” bc it wasn’t my place and him & his dad are powerful figures so naturally going against that is terrifying for survivors so I’m SO glad people are finding out what a piece of shit he is.

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

I hope each one of his teeth break individually.

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

my last encounter with him was watching him tell my friend on the night that her ex beat her up that since she’s gotten abused before she should figure out what she’s doing to cause all that drama for herself and not to reach out to friends about it on social media

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

I hope this means I don’t have to avoid more cool parties that I know he’s been invited to too because life is too short to deal with someone who is like if a gross uncle and cocaine had a baby and the baby was also a rapist

— questionable rat currency (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017

The article goes on to quote Max Landis from an interview with Shelby Sells:

...wherein he alleges that an extra on one of his films tried to pursue him, so he gave her his number “because i was like, why not? maybe i’ll hook her up with one of my friends.”

“Women who are throwing it that easy—they’re not doing it because they think i’m cute, they’re doing it because they need some kind of validation. i’m a tiny, tiny bit successful, but in the scale of things you’re gonna fuck me for no reason? i don’t see it. i’m not on that level. i’m not a rockstar—i’m not in a band, you’re not going to be in my video. the only thing you could get from fucking me is getting to fuck me, and if so, lucky you,” said Landis. “i guarantee that’s not what any of these chicks who just throw it at me really want. granted they’ll have a wonderful time, but it’s weird. being a single guy in LA is fun as fuck and i love it. the fact that everyone here is so good-looking is intense and good and rewarding. something about everyone around you being a little bit better looking, it puts you in a good mood. i don’t feel bad or superficial for saying that. i’m also attracted to ambition and there’s a lot of that out here. but yea being a single guy in LA is great. sorry it took me so long to answer that question.”

Later on in the interview, Landis expounded on an ex he says he “gave a crippling social anxiety, self-loathing, body dismorphia, eating disorder to.”

“i mean you can’t really give someone any of these things, but the seeds of these things were there inside of her. we were in such a sort of unfair, fucked up relationship—not the kind where there’s a lot of yelling and screaming—the actual relationship was very nice and loving, but i was so fickle about her body. i’m not shy, i would just blurt out shit all the time. she ended up completely changing how she dressed and how she looked for me. that chick will never talk to me again,” Landis said.

Topless Ukrainian "feminist" in Vatican City

Alisa Vinogradova

A topless woman was sent by the feminist group Femen to steal the Christ baby from a Nativity scene in the Vatican. The place was full of tourists and the "sextremist" called Alisa Vinogradova obviously wasn't being inconspicuous about it. She had "God is woman" written across her chest, but they didn't say what language it was in.

I hope this was a mistranslation, but according to the Femen website:

FEMEN encourages women to follow the example of the movement and kidnap babies from religious denominations, thus, stating their right to use of their own body!

A while back, Femen tried to rile up Muslims in France by marching topless through a Muslim neighborhood. The Muslims didn't care. France may not be the right country for topless protests.

They didn't sound very outraged about it but Femen is now demanding that the would-be thief be released and that the Catholic church leave women alone and denounce pedophilia. Which is pretty good advice in general.

Overhead shot of model of I Love Lucy set

I always wondered how this worked.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Don't have much to say, but on this joyous occasion I didn't want to have "Two Guys Commit Suicide" as my last entry on this blog.

I'll just share a few Xmas tweets by J Elvis Weinstein, the original Tom Servo:

Trump didn't bring back "Merry Christmas" but he did remold it into a snarky, defiant phrase.

I don't know precisely what this refers to. Not really a Christmas thing:

Did the Ewoks eat all the dead stormtroopers in the forest after the battle? 

It could take several days for me to become confident what day of the week it is again. 

I bought my wife an O. Henry book for Christmas and it turns out she just sold her eyes.

My wife was raised with the superstition that you NEVER cut paper after dark. She lives by it to this day. She's fine if I do it though. 

Jesus is trending. Phew, it's his birthday.

Thanks for coming, Little Drummer Boy, no really, there's nothing we'd like more than you playing your drum here in the maternity ward

Two guys commit suicide

I live in what I consider to be a perfectly safe neighborhood. But there was a shooting a block away a few days ago. No one was injured. The cops were looking for two young men aged 23 and 19 who were suspects in a series of thefts and robberies in the area. The older one was from Illinois. I assume the younger one was, too.

They left the area and were 120 miles north of here. A SWAT team surrounded the apartment they were in and the two committed suicide. News reports didn't provide any detail but, at some point, they had been present when someone was murdered. I don't know if they were suspects in that crime.

I googled their names. The older fellow had been on the track team in 9th grade and the basketball team in 8th grade. He had an assault conviction at some point as a juvenile. When he was 18, he and a friend were arrested for series of thefts and robberies. They stole iPads and iPhones which they resold. When he was convicted, he was ordered to pay over $10,000 in restitution to his victims. He was also ordered to stay away from the University of Illinois campus. He may have been drawn by the university here hoping to get his hands on all those electronic devices the college students all seem to have.

He also had a conviction for a driving thing. For damaging property, resisting arrest and "escape". He had done this when he was 19 and was sentenced for it at 21.

I found his MySpace page. There was nothing there except a song by "Tyga" he had listened to.

There was no information at all on the younger kid.

Well, poor devils.

Bryan Singer's friend Gary Goddard, plus Danny Masterson

How do these guys find each other? You'd think that child molesters would be so intent on concealing their crimes and their perversion in general that they'd never know who their fellow pedophiles were unless they met in prison. But director Bryan Singer and producer Gary Goddard somehow became friends. They were both sued a few years ago by one of their victims who eventually dropped the suit.

Gary Goddard and kids performing The Music Man.

Goddard with one of his victims.

Goddard's being accused by several kids he worked with of child molesting and there's another lawsuit against Singer. I hope to heck we'll be rid of those two.

Danny Masterson

Long Island Scientologist Danny Masterson from That '70's Show has been accused of multiple rapes. I don't know if he falls into the same category as the other Weinstein-era accusees---did he ever wield enough power in Hollywood to keep accusations against him hushed up? He may be an accused serial rapist Scientologist who just happens to be an actor.

Scientologist Danny Masterson thinking about rape.

Trump water drinking thing

 

Something weird and infantile about how he needs two hands to drink anything.

But, imagine the reaction if Trump had done this. It was fifty years ago this week that LBJ gave a bust of himself to the Pope. Didn't Nixon give the Queen of England a photo of himself? Trump could be worse.

A Christmas Story Live a few days ago

I must be getting old because I kind of liked A Christmas Story Live. I was never that excited about the movie.

One critic attacked it for not being much different from something shot on videotape. What's the point of a live TV show if it could just as well be done on videotape? But then he also attacked it for having a few fumbled lines.

I'm on the west coast so what I saw was what they used to call "live on tape"---it was on videotape but they didn't edit it as if it were live. It was dark out when the show started here, but it was daylight in California three hours earlier when the outdoor scenes were performed.

There was much greater chance of humiliating failure when they did Peter Pan Live with all that flying. They should have had a few understudies ready in case one or more actors were injured. I'm not sure what they would have done. Years ago, Jackie Gleason dragged himself offstage with a broken leg and Art Carney was left to end the show.

T.J. Miller

I never heard of this guy but he's apparently a monster. And he majored in psychology.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/silicon-valley-star-tj-miller-accused-of-sexually-assaulting-and-punching-a-woman

A Christmas Story-Dragnet double feature

You know what would make a good double feature with A Christmas Story? The story of Ralphie who desperately wants a BB gun for Xmas?

The 1950's Dragnet Christmas episode, "The Big .22 Rifle for Christmas" episode. A few days before Xmas, an 8 year old boy is missing. There's blood outside where he was playing and a .22 caliber shell casing. And it turns out he had gotten into his presents and found the rifle his parents were giving him.

"What's it all prove, Joe?"

"You don't give a kid a gun for Christmas."

The NRA was outraged. They launched a letter writing campaign against the show. Jack Webb forwarded the letters to the chief of the LAPD who publicly affirmed that it was idiocy to give guns to children.

Sarah Palin's idiot son, Track, arrested

Man, I'm almost sorry Sarah Palin didn't become Vice President. Her son, Track, was arrested for forcing his way into his parents' home. Palin's husband, Todd, was waving a gun around but it did him no good. Track began beating him. As the cops arrived, Todd and Sarah were leaving the house in separate cars. Track called the police "peasants" and told them to put down their guns. They arrested him and took him away.

Track had previously been arrested for punching his girlfriend and for being a drunk with a gun. His mother referred to that arrest while campaigning for Trump. She claimed that Track has PTSD and thought that Obama was somehow to blame.

I'd have some respect for the Trump children if they were more like him.

Former child actor turned nudist star

I watched an old British movie produced by the Children's Film Foundation in 1953. Took place mostly in Gibraltar. A Navy cadet who was probably 13 or so uncovers a plot by foreign agents to poison the monkey population there. It wasn't bad, but it was a children's movie.

I looked it up online. The kid who starred, Roy Savage, didn't appear in any other movies until ten years later. When he was in his 20's, he starred in a number of nudist camp movies made in Florida. I watched a 39 minute movie called Naked Complex. An athletic young man with a black belt in Judo has a pathological fear of women. When he wins an auto rally, a woman gives him his award and kisses him and he passes out. He goes to a psychologist for help and he takes him to a club where we see a couple of skimpily clad women dancing.

When news that he fainted earlier hits the newspaper, he flees in shame ends up on an island of naked women who keep tying him up. I didn't follow the plot.

Surprisingly little nudity. There are shots of the naked ladies from the shoulders up. The male lead has a brief butt shot at the end.

Makes me wonder how the poor kid ended up where he did and what became of him after that.

A while back, photos were published of Prince Harry cavorting naked in a hotel room. Apparently he freely commutes between Afghanistan and Las Vegas. A British woman commenting on the Royal Family noted that this was common among Brits who had gone to boarding school. They're used to hanging around naked. So Roy Savage probably was either a nudist or a boarding school alumni.

Dustin Hoffman again

More and worse accusations against Dustin Hoffman. He's accused of exposing himself to a 16-year-old friend of his daughter and forced his hand down a woman's pants while making Ishtar. Why would anyone do that?

I heard somewhere that he went for several years without working in Hollywood and he claimed that it was because he talked about someone----spread gossip or rumors or just factual information about some powerful person and was shunned for a time, but I don't know when that was. He seemed to have been working steadily looking at imdb.com, although some roles weren't very impressive. But now I wonder if something else got him shunned.

I sided with him against John Oliver, but Hoffman's a monster.

From Variety:

Thomas was 16 years old and a high-school classmate of Hoffman’s daughter Karina at the United Nations International School in New York when she met the actor in 1980. An aspiring actor, she had spent a Sunday afternoon with Karina and Hoffman walking in Manhattan — visiting the Drama Bookshop, where, she said, Hoffman bought her a copy of Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story,” and eating dinner at Jim McMullin’s on the Upper East Side, where she had veal piccata for the first time. They also visited the San Remo on Central Park West, where Hoffman, in the midst of a divorce from his first wife, Anne Byrne, was buying an apartment. Hoffman showed Thomas and Karina the apartment, which was being renovated while Hoffman stayed at a hotel near the house that he and Byrne had shared.

“This was at first one of the greatest days of my life,” she said. “One of my idols was spending time with me and talking with me respectfully.”

Thomas’ parents — her father was the U.N. ambassador from Liberia — were supposed to pick her up at the restaurant. But, according to Thomas, Hoffman suggested that the three of them wait at the hotel where he was staying and leave a note for Thomas’ parents with the maitre d’ saying they had gone to the hotel. After the three arrived at Hoffman’s hotel room, “Either Karina or Dustin suggested that [Karina] should go home” to Hoffman and Byrne’s house nearby, Thomas said, “because it was a school night and she had homework. So she left, and I was left in the hotel room with him alone.”
Shortly after Karina departed, according to Thomas, Hoffman went to the restroom. She heard the shower turn on. “I was just sitting there waiting for my parents,” Thomas said.

After several minutes, “He came out of the bathroom with a towel at first wrapped around him, which he dropped,” Thomas said. “He was standing there naked. I think I almost collapsed, actually. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do. And he milked it. He milked the fact that he was naked. He stood there. He took his time.”

Hoffman eventually put on a robe and sat on the bed, according to Thomas, who said that he then asked her to massage his feet. She complied.

“I didn’t know what to do in the circumstance,” she said. “I didn’t know that I could say no, so I did it. And he kept telling me, ‘I’m naked. Do you want to see?’” Thomas said that she pretended not to hear Hoffman as he made suggestive comments to her.

...
 
On a third visit, Kester said, she was in the control room with her boyfriend and a male engineer while Hoffman recorded the vocal track for one of the film’s songs in an isolation booth. A window between the control room and the booth, Kester said, made Hoffman visible to those in the control room from only chest level up.

Hoffman, Kester said, was struggling with his vocals, and the two men in the control room were making technical adjustments to compensate.

“He was in the recording booth, and he was like, ‘Send Melissa in here. I’m bored. Send Melissa in here,’” said Kester, who characterized the atmosphere as joking. She went into the booth with Hoffman.

“He may have been being flirtatious, but it wasn’t to the point of being obscene, because my boyfriend’s there,” Kester said. “Then they get ready to do another take. I’m standing there, and it’s kind of a small room, and he grabs me, so we’re both facing out so we’re both facing the people in the studio. I’m thinking that it’s kind of flirtatious and funny, like he’s holding onto me, because I’m going to help him sing better. I felt awkward. It’s a little weird. He’s hugging me while he’s singing. But ha ha ha, it’s all a joke. My boyfriend is right there.”

Hoffman continued with the take.

“And as he’s doing that, he literally just stuck his fingers down my pants,” Kester said. “He put his fingers inside me. And the thing I feel most bad about is I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there. I just froze in the situation like ‘Oh my god, what is happening?’ It’s shocking when that happens to you.”

Kester said that she made an effort not to react for fear that her boyfriend or the other man in the control room would know what was happening. She estimated that Hoffman kept his fingers inside her for 15-20 seconds, until he finished the take. Then she moved away from him.

“He kind of laughed,” she said. “Then I just ran out of there, and I sat in the bathroom crying. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ I felt like I’d been raped. There was no warning. I didn’t know he would do that.”

Kevin Bacon, Death Sentence, 2007

In Death Sentence, Kevin Bacon plays an insurance executive whose son is killed by a gang initiate. The police arrested the killer and they were about to go to trial. The father was the only witness and decides to let the killer go free so he can hunt him and down and murder him. He brutally beats the young fellow before accidentally stabbing him. I guess the killer did get hit by a car earlier and may have been at a physical disadvantage, but I don't think I would set out to commit a murder and just assume I could kill a grown man with little more than my bare hands. I'd bring a gun just in case.

The other gang members figure out who did it and try to kill Bacon and later go after his family.

Bacon's character is surprisingly healthy. He runs and runs and runs in one sequence. No middle aged man can do that. Can you imagine Walter White doing that?

I thought I saw an homage to Taxi Driver at one point.

Based on a novel by the guy who wrote Death Wish and directed by the degenerate who made Saw.

With John Goodman, Aisha Taylor.

Morgan Spurlock

Gloating drunken rapist Morgan Spurlock.

You know who else is a rapist? Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made the hoax documentary Super Size Me. He ate nothing but McDonald's for a month and claimed to have suffered dire health effects. Strangely, no one has been able to duplicate his results. A couple of people who tried--who ate nothing but MvDonald's for a month--found they actually lost weight and lowered their cholesterol.

Spurlock has now jumped on the #MeToo bandwagon claiming that, in college, a young woman read a story in a short story class saying he raped her.

What? No! Good lord! That's not what happened! he said when he heard about it.

,,, In my mind, we’d been drinking all night and went back to my room. We began fooling around, she pushed me off, then we laid in the bed and talked and laughed some more, and then began fooling around again. We took off our clothes. She said she didn’t want to have sex, so we laid together, and talked, and kissed, and laughed, and then we started having sex.

… and then she started to cry. I didn’t know what to do. We stopped having sex and I rolled beside her. I tried to comfort her. To make her feel better. I thought I was doing ok, I believed she was feeling better. She believed she was raped.

You remember when universities were suggesting that students actually ASK before playing their dirty numbers on one another? Remember how ridiculous everyone thought it was? Turns out it would have saved Spurlock and his ilk from becoming rapists. They thought they were being spontaneous when they were actually molesting girls who wanted to be left alone.

Spurlock goes on to brag that he was unfaithful to all his girlfriends while also coming off as a sensitive because now he understands.

Or is it because I’ve consistently been drinking since the age of 13? I haven’t been sober for more than a week in 30 years, something our society doesn’t shun or condemn but which only served to fill the emotional hole inside me and the daily depression I coped with. Depression we can’t talk about, because its wrong and makes you less of a person.

I've heard people talk about depression, and I don't know anyone who would tolerate a 43-year-old drunkard. Who does this idiot hang around with?

McDonald's one advantage

A few years ago, my brother-in-law's sister was in town with her boyfriend. They were from the other side of the country, so they drove around the state seeing the sights. And being too sophisticated to eat fast food, they ate every meal in a pretty good restaurant and, as a result, when it was over, they felt horrible having gorged with huge amounts of food at every meal. It was terrible.

If they had gone to McDonald's now and then, they could have had a dainty meal once in a while. A little 99 cent hamburger and small fries, for example.

But now, thanks to Spurlock, you can't eat a $3 lunch without being lectured about how terrible you are.

For a time they were droning on about "pink slime". What they called "pink slime" was the result of a process for getting more beef off cows so they could slaughter fewer of them. That seems like a GOOD thing, but not to the outraged NPR set. They didn't even say anything about it being bad for you----they just didn't like how it looked.

Roy Moore wins the White vote

Roy Moore lost, but he got most of the White vote in Alabama. 72% of White men and 63% of White women reportedly voted for him.

It's time to start making fun of White people in Alabama again.

If Roy Moore wins...

...at least we'll be able to openly ridicule the people of Alabama. Think of all the cruel stereotypes of the South we've had to suppress all this time out of some confused sense of tolerance. Think of the snake-handling churches, the child brides, the backwardness and stupidity. The outhouses. The chain gangs.

Meanwhile, we've had one president after another from the South because simian pro-child molestation White Southerners won't vote for no Yankees. That's why we ended up with the pervert Clinton, a right-wing Democrat who destroyed the labor movement, and George Bush. Why we suffered through Al Gore's campaign. Gore has been accused of sexual assaulting masseuses.

Gore, by the way, explained in a speech how he would gone about invading Iraq in a slightly different way. Democrats jumped on this and claimed it showed some vast difference between him and Bush, Jr.

12-year-old bride in Florida. You can get married at 12 but have to be 18 to file for divorce.

What is wrong with those fucking English?

Think of the horrors these children were subjected to!

I read a comment online one time. An English guy said that when he was in school in the '60s or '70s, he forgot his "PE kit"--his gym clothes--so he had to go to PE class in his underwear.

"Sure, I believe that," I thought sarcastically. I assumed this was some weird but not terribly interesting British masochistic fantasy.

Then, last night, I did a news search on an unrelated topic. I had read something about Louis CK's perversion so I did a search for "shame based" and what came up was an article from a few days ago in an English newspaper about how children in what those people call a "primary school" were forced to take part in physical education in their underwear because they didn't have their "PE kit".

A critic in the local school system said it was a 1960's "shame based" English thing.

I'll never doubt the British again when they talk about how perverse their schools were.

David and Lisa (1962)

It was the first movie quote I remember remembering. I went around repeating it dramatically when I was four or five years old:

"Don't touch me! Don't you know touching can kill!?"

That's what I remember saying, but I didn't have the quote right. It was from the movie David and Lisa (1962) and it was "You touched me! You fool, you touched me! You want to kill me? You fool! You want to kill me? You want to kill me! He touched me! Touch can kill! ...Touch can kill!"

I don't know if it was cute or really disturbing that I went around saying that. The movie is about teenagers being treated for mental illness.

The Crying Game (1992)

How long has it been since Siskel & Ebert died? Because Roger Ebert was mad at Gene Siskel for giving away the shocking surprise in this movie. It may not have been such a surprise to Gene. When you already know what it is, it seems pretty obvious and it may have been obvious to him.

I'm watching this thing for the first time. I didn't really know what it was about---something about the IRA and a lady who's actually a man.

I was pretty much on the IRA's side in Northern Ireland. Catholics were plainly a persecuted minority. The British put an end to non-violent civil disobedience there when they massacred Catholic Civil Rights marchers on Bloody Sunday. British soldiers were cheering as reports came in about how many people were killed. The IRA paid them back in kind. The IRA's first action in Northern Ireland was fighting a gang of armed Protestants trying to burn down a rectory after trapping the priests inside.

I was on the IRA's side but I'd stay away from those guys. I don't know how Catholics in Northern Ireland felt about them.

The Republic of Ireland was no picnic either. Catholics writhed under the Catholic jackboot.

Was that scorpion/frog story a new thing when this movie came out? Because it's just annoying now. It's too long. They need a short version.

The final message of the movie seems to be that revenge killing really is a solution to at least some problems.

Ed Wood vs. Herschel Gordon Lewis

Dramatic moment in Herschell Gordon Lewis's Linda & Abilene.

Look at Plan 9 From Outer Space. It had a lot of plot---four storylines that all come together in the end. It had plenty for the actors. Everyone had a lot of dialog, it had Bela Lugosi emoting. They put a real effort into it and it was just terrible.

Contrast this with the equally crappy films of such auteurs as Herschell Gordon Lewis. His movies were simply excuses for a series of sex or gore scenes, and they were kind of entertaining in their way.

One time---did I write this before?---I was watching one of Lewis's movies, The Psychic, with a friend. I was surprised he wanted to see it. He wasn't into bad movies.

The movie, which Lewis wrote but didn't direct, would have a scene of the psychic appearing on stage or on a talk show, then a scene of him having sex. That was the whole thing. Psychic scene, sex scenes, psychic scene, sex scene, psychic scene, sex scene, for 80 minutes.

My friend started fast forwarding through the sex scenes and just sat through the scenes of the guy mumbling on talk shows.

"Most people would fast forward through this stuff to get to the sex scenes," I told him.

He said that those particular sex scenes were unappealing.

My point here is that if you're making a movie and you have little money and probably not that much talent or ability, don't put much effort into it and you'll do just fine.

Dylan Farrow attacking Woody Allen again

Mia Farrow with "close friend" and child rapist Roman Polanski and fellow adoptive mother Joan Crawford.

Woody Allen has another movie coming out, so, of course, Dylan Farrow has attacked him demanding to know why Louis C.K. is being shunned (at least for the moment) and Woody Allen isn't.

Maybe it's because there was a single accusation against Allen 25 years ago that was reported to police the day after it allegedly happened and because it was thoroughly investigated by law enforcement and dismissed. The New York Department of Social Services investigated for 14 months and dismissed it saying there was "no credible evidence". Because Mia Farrow had pretty obvious reason to make a false accusation. Because there were witnesses present, including Dylan's brother, Moses, who say it didn't happen and couldn't have happened. There was a massive amount of reporting on it that went on for years. No one ignored the accusation. They read about it and didn't buy it.

The Farrow clan claims that the only reason Allen wasn't prosecuted was that it would have been too traumatic for Dylan, but then they never shut up about it. They never let her forget it. Mia Farrow's book about it was made into a TV movie. They didn't think THAT might be upsetting to Dylan?

I don't like Woody Allen. I wish they'd stop making me defend him.

Franken announces he will resign in disgrace

Remember many years ago on Saturday Night Live? Al Franken and Tom David did that recurring skit, The Franken and Davis Show. Like they were a comedy team with a TV show.

In one of these things, Tom Davis came out and told the audience that Al Franken had an inoperable brain tumor and was on his last legs and he asked the audience to laugh at all his jokes. Franken comes out, acts like his mind is gone and keeps using the same punchline on all the jokes.

After this was broadcast, SNL got a letter from a viewer. He had a friend who had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He wasn't trying to cheer him up exactly but trying to bring him out of his deep depression. He suggested they turn on Saturday Night Live. And that was when that Al Franken bit came on.

Franken was the comic genius behind that and the breast cancer skit.

To hell with him. A rich boy who went to an exclusive prep school which got him into Harvard. I understand why Democrats like him, but why do they like him so much?

Living like a Communist

Hanging around at the dacha.

I took a cut in hours at my job. I was only working six hours a day. Then the place cut everyone's hours in half so I'm down to three hours a day, and it's actually kind of nice. I'm not using my free time as wisely as I might, but I've lived within my means for years and am at a stage of life where I don't even like spending money and don't make crazy impulse purchases.

In the Soviet Union, people worked short hours, they had six weeks vacation a year and, as I understand it, they didn't work terribly hard when they were at work. At least this was true during the Brezhnev era. Nobody got fired. In Consumer Capitalism, people are motivated to buy crap they don't need and wouldn't even want if they hadn't been manipulated into it. In Communism, people wanted free time.

Comsumer capitalism, of course, is destroying the world. We have Global Warming which may kill us all. We're in a period of mass extinction and we may be wiped out, too.

There's the theory that the super rich know full well that much of the world will become uninhabitable. The reason they're accumulating so much wealth now, more than they could possibly need or enjoy, is that they want to be sure that they will be in control of whatever parts of the world are still habitable.

Jerusalem

Now that the racist monster Donald Trump has given them what they've been demanding for years, American Jews may start to catch on that there's something hideously wrong with their depraved indifference to the lives and the rights of Palestinians. Think of how YOU would feel when you realized that Trump shares your prejudices.

Am I the only one who remembers all the crap about the Soviet Jewry? They were outraged that Soviet Jews, like everyone else in the USSR, couldn't emigrate freely. Palestinians have been imprisoned for years in Gaza, not allowed to leave. On top of that, they've been under blockade, starved, bombed, slaughtered, and the Zionists and their supporters think nothing of it. Do they have any principles at all?

Calls for Al Franken to resign

The Democrats will claim "the moral high ground" on the issue of sexual assault only to find the GOP has left the morality battlefield completely.

---J Elvis Weinstein

Franken with fellow Zionist Harvey Weinstein.

Is this really such a good idea? The Republicans don't care about any of that stuff. They're fine with pedophile Roy Moore among the Senate pages.

Michael Dukakis loved taking the high road and look what happened to him. He wouldn't defend himself or attack Bush for quite a while during his campaign. Clinton did the opposite and responded instantly to every attack.

Are there any conspiracy theories about Franken? There was Russ Baker, a bit of a nut, who reported that the Republicans were behind Anthony Weiner's teen sexting scandal and there were paranoid claims that Russia was somehow responsible for it.

Franken is a right-wing Democrat and a terrible imperialist. But I doubt he'll be replaced by anyone good.

Still, what the hell is wrong with that guy? He couldn't restrain himself while running for office? Is groping strangers really that great?

There are reports that he'll resign today. He tweeted that he hadn't decided yet. Whether the reports were accurate or not, they put pressure on him to resign.

Trump moving embassy to Jerusalem

 
For years US presidential candidates have said they would move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but only one is dumb enough to actually do it. And it turns out that Trump security adviser Michael Flynn met with the Russian ambassador at the behest of the Israeli government who wanted to stop a UN Security Council resolution about illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The Israelis were spying on the US government and found out that Obama wasn't going to veto the resolution. The Zionists wanted to delay it until Trump was in the White House so he could veto it.

Turns out that Trump was colluding with Israel. It shouldn't come as a surprise, the way they all grovel at AIPAC's feet. We'll see if any Democrats condemn Trump for this.

Dustin Hoffman vs John Oliver

John Oliver attacked Dustin Hoffman over the sexual harassment allegations against him. They were on stage in a panel discussion at a Tribeca Film Institute event for the anniversary of the movie Wag the Dog , and I dare say, Dustin Hoffman came out on top.

As a rule, comedians have an advantage in any debate because they can gloss over holes in their arguments with jokes. Take the jokes away from a comic and all you have left are the neuroses that set him off in the first place. In this case, Oliver couldn't crack any jokes.

Hoffman correctly pointed out that it didn't take much to convince Oliver that the accusation was true. Oliver said he believed it because, he said, she had no reason to lie. He knew nothing about her. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't.

Anyway, here's audio of their exchange:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFc6yUqWPRU

Vito Russo, John Wojtowicz, two documentaries

I watched two documentaries, one about Vito Russo, the gay activist who wrote The Celluloid Closet about gay characters in mainstream Hollywood movies from the silent era to the 1970's.

The other was about John Wojtowicz, that horrible little man who Al Pacino portrayed in Dog Day Afternoon.

It turned out that the two were connected and they used the same video clip in both documentaries.

There was no real, serious drive for same-sex marriage in the '70's. Activists considered it out of reach and not all wanted it. But the guy in charge of the New York City Marriage Bureau started mouthing off. There was a church that was marrying gay couples, and he said it was illegal and suggested they may raid the place.

In response, there was a protest against the Marriage Bureau. The protest included an anouncement that Russo would marry his boyfriend and that Wojtowicz would marry his transexual boyfriend who went by the name Elizabeth Eden.

I don't know where Wojtowicz's money came from. He bought a thousand dollar wedding gown for Eden. Eden only needed a couple thousand dollars for the sex change. The cost of the wedding gown, the guns and maybe the used getaway car would have covered most or all of it. Wojtowicz bragged that he got a couple hundred thousand in the robbery, so that was overkill.

Wojtowicz accomplice in the robbery, Sal Naturale, had just turned 18. He was adamant about not going to prison because he had been in jail before and had been raped. He wanted money so he could get his little sister out of foster care. He was a teenager and 27-year-old Wojtowicz got him killed.

The gay rights movement immediately distanced itself from Wojtowicz, of course. It was a non-violent movement and the last thing they wanted was to be associated with him.

I saw Russo at the university here speaking about gays in cinema and showing film clips. I knew most of it already having read his book. But I don't remember if he mentioned Dog Day Afternoon.

The Wojtowicz documentary, The Dog, and the Vito Russo documentary Vito are available on Fandor.

Things I didn't know about Garrison Keillor

For one thing, his real name is Gary.
 
And this from Newsweek magazine:

This is the first time Keillor has been accused of sexual misconduct, though his romantic habits have previously gotten him in hot water. The creator of the radio program A Prairie Home Companion, which aired from 1974 until Keillor retired in 2016, has been married three times. Throughout his life, his romantic entanglements have been the subject of public controversy, especially because he reportedly had a habit of beginning new relationships before ending the one he's in.

Keillor has been married to Minnesota Opera violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson since 1995, and the two wrote a young adult novel together in 1996. The novel, The Sandy Bottom Orchestra, follows a teenage musician named Rachel as she navigates high school. Their daughter, Maia, Keillor's second child, graduated from high school in 2016. In 2015, the local Minnesota press reported that Nilsson and Keillor were considering moving out of the state to live full time in their Manhattan apartment.

...

Before Nilsson, Keillor was married to Ulla Skaerved, a Danish woman whom he initially met as a teenager when she attended Anoka High School in Minnesota with him as a foreign exchange student. After becoming reacquainted at a reunion, Keillor and Skaerved were married in 1985. Keillor filed for divorce in 1991.

Many Prairie Home Companion listeners reported being disgusted by Keillor's account of wooing Skaerved. At the time, Keillor and Margaret Moos, a producer on Prairie Home Companion, had lived with each other and dated for years. Fans of the show felt protective of Moos.

One listener told The New York Times, "In Minnesota, it was like 'gag me.' Here he's just bailed out on this woman who'd helped make him famous, then he had the bad taste to coo over this new love on the air." As The Times described it in 2002, "He spoke beautifully of [Skaerved] on the radio, but his Minnesota public, loyal to [Margaret Moos], was not entranced."

In fact, the backlash was so swift that Keillor shut down his radio show "in a huff" and moved to Denmark with Skaerved. When he returned to U.S. in 1989, he launched a new radio show, The American Radio Company.

After divorcing Skaerved in 1991, Keillor returned to Minnesota and reportedly tried to "mend fences" with the audience that had once rejected him. In 1993, the Star Tribune published a scathing open letter from ex-wife Skaerved. "A celebrity like yourself keeps building on the illusion that he is still married to the Dane he married some years ago," she wrote. "The truth is that the marriage ended two years ago, when you moved in with another woman." Presumably, Skaerved was referring to Jenny Lind Nilsson.

 

Garrison Keillor denounced

Here, from Counterpunch.com, is a pretty good political denunciation of Garrison Keillor. Written by Nick Pemberton.

You can read the whole thing here.

From the article:

Keillor has painted an awfully innocent and peachy picture of his homeland. He of course hasn’t been that innocent and peachy. His homophobia is well documented. As is his lawsuit against his neighbor. He literally sued his neighbor for building an addition to her own house. Does this remind you of anyone? He also called Congressman Keith Ellison a “lackluster Black Muslim.” For such a happy-go-lucky guy he has always been a pain in the rear.

His defense of funny buddy Al Franken now has comic timing. He wrote a really obnoxious piece in the Washington Post defending Franken. It dragged on and on, hoping to distract the reader with its mundaneness, a classic Keillor formula. It seemed to complain about the name change of a Minnesota lake that was formally named after John Calhoun. The lake is being renamed for the Dakota people whose land was stolen and whose people were murdered, the new name being Bde Maka Ska. Keillor’s complaint was that the new name would be too messy and confusing. This was the same argument he had against gay marriage. Anything outside of the Lake Wobegon world is just too much for poor Gary to handle. 

A typical Prairie Home Companion show is just dreadful. The whole premise is that Keillor and his clan had a great life so they really could just focus on the trivial. And did they ever! Now this was far from Seinfeld’s show about nothing. This show was about something. This was a show about a perfect white world with Keillor at the center. He could grab some fine musical guests (no pun intended, only assumed!). But he would always sing over them. And he was such a bad singer. He had no sense of it either. His fuck-ups were seen as humorous though because he was a thoughtful white guy and what would we do without him?

Nicolas Cage, RAGE, 2013, stunk

Watched a terrible Nicolas Cage movie called Rage. Originally called Tokarev. Brutal violence. Weird Nicolas Cage overacting. He played a terribly unappealing character anyway. I didn't care that his horrible daughter was killed.

Nicolas Cage is a former organized crime guy turned legitimate businessman. He's still a horrible, horrible person. His daughter is kidnapped and he figures it was by the local Russian mafia who he had robbed years earlier. After his daughter is found dead, he and his former criminal associates go out to find who did it. They investigate by murdering people. I don't know how this is supposed to lead anywhere. The Russians in the movie at least have the good sense to speak to people before murdering them.

I don't know if I'm giving it away here, but they sort of stole the ending from The Limey (1999).

It was set in Mobile, Alabama, but it was so generic it could have been anywhere. I don't think there were even any Southern accents in it.

To give it a sense of location, the Russian criminals should have used a snake handling church as a front for their operation. Or maybe an alligator farm. It could have shown racist groups from the '60's evolved into mafia-like gangs. It could have had chases through the flat, treeless countryside in old American cars. They could at least have had banjo music with bass harmonica.

Man, that was a bad movie.

I'm probably missing the point of sexual harassment

There was middle aged David Sedaris who joined a nudist camp just so he could write an amusing story about it. Nudism was out of fashion and the nudists were old and surprisingly conservative, but he found that if you're going to be naked with other people, it's an advantage to be the youngest one there.

With that in mind, it might have made sense to me if 75-year-old Charlie Rose had frolicked like a young nymph in front of a bunch of 98-year-olds as if to say, "I have the body of a 60-year-old!" But why on earth would he walk around naked in front of college girls? I don't understand sexual harassment. Do these guys LIKE feeling old?

I thought that Anthony Weiner's sexting showed the dark side of physical fitness. He was in pretty good shape. No wonder he wanted to share photos of himself. One of the twins from the Disney channel (an adult by then) had been working out, had lost weight, and pretended to be humiliated when photos he took of himself in the bathroom mirror were leaked to the world.

But why did a repulsive swine like Harvey Weinstein want starlets to watch him take a shower? I think it's fair to call him a "repulsive swine". Look at him. If you scoured the internet, you could probably find some message board somewhere for self-loathing people who find his physical type attractive. If he wanted someone to watch him take a shower, he should have sought them out and left normal people alone.

What did Dustin Hoffman do to Justin Henry?

Meryl Streep with possible fellow victim Justin Henry.

Dustin Hoffman "helped" Meryl Streep with her acting in Kramer vs. Kramer by slapping her in the face before an emotional scene. Justin Henry was seven- or eight-years-old. You don't think he needed even MORE help with his acting? He did a lot more crying in the thing than Meryl Streep did.

What did that monster Dustin Hoffman do to Justin Henry?

The Dinner (2017)

Here's a scene from The Trip--the longer, TV version--in which Steve Coogan does an impression of Richard Gere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3YH5USzz14

It wasn't a slam against Gere, but I suppose it might have made it awkward when Coogan starred with Gere in The Dinner (2017).

I watched the movie knowing nothing about it. I do that a lot. I find plot developments more surprising than I probably should, but it makes them more interesting.

Steve Coogan plays a former teacher forced to quit due to mental illness. He has a wife (Laura Linney) and teenage son (Charlie Plummer). His brother played by Richard Gere is a member of Congress. He's married and has two teenage sons, one white, and an adopted black kid. Rebecca Hall plays his wife, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick and Miles J. Harvey play his sons.

The two couples go to dinner together to figure out what to do about their sons. They committed a horrible crime and posted video of it online. They haven't been caught yet, but the parents have to decide what to so.

It's frustrating to watch people trying to deal with the obnoxious mentally ill character.

I haven't read the novel by Dutch writer Herman Koch, but I wonder if it was more ambiguous than this movie. The parents or at least the mothers keep saying that the boys are "good boys" who made a mistake.

"You would have done the same thing," the son tells his mentally ill father which might be a clue as to what's wrong with them.

Maybe a reason you should have more than one child. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

It could be a double feature with Barbet Schroder's Before and After. Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson play parents whose teenage son is accused of murdering his girlfriend. They don't know if he's guilty. When the father comes home and tells his wife he got rid of some evidence, she points out he may have destroyed evidence that their son was innocent.

Coogan does a very good American accent. It starts with him in voice-over and I didn't recognize it as his voice at first.

Available on Netflix.

Jim Nabors RIP

You know how Sergeant Carter would make Gomer do 50 or 100 push-ups? It bothered me for a time that Gomer Pyle could beat me up. I started doing push-ups. A friend of mine who had just been kicked out of the Marine Corps said it was easy. You just do 100 push-ups a day. Not all at once. You do as many as you can. Then you do more. And later you do more until you get to a hundred and, in a fairly short time, you'll be able to do a hundred all at once.

I got to where I could do thirty or forty and decided that was good enough.

He inspired me to be physically fit up to a point.

Jim Nabors has died at age 87.

Matt Lauer vs Brian Williams

I ate at a restaurant which I don't usually do. It was a place favored by elderly working class people. A couple sitting nearby were discussing Matt Lauer. The wife thought that The Today Show was the last people trusted, by which I think she meant that it wasn't blatantly biased as far as party politics went. They compared and contrasted Brian Williams with Matt Lauer. Would you rather have an abuser or a liar?

I should eat out more.

There was that one time I ate lunch at a Pizza Hut. A large extended family was eating there. Several tables were lined up. The family matriarch spoke in a European accent I couldn't identify. She said that all the places they lived had ghosts. One night, the family was in bed. They heard someone walk to the bathroom and close the door. They lay there waiting for them to come out and go back to bed, but no one came out again. Finally, one of them yelled, "Get out of the bathroom already so we can sleep!" But no one answered. Because it was a ghost!