The Games

So that’s it.  If you are living in the United States, NBC has shown how the world has come together as one, once more in the spirit beauty and peace of the Olympic Games. They have shown us how we’ve been able to compete with one another and against one another and we have come out with a few scars and some heartache, but also with the ability to celebrate the memories and the heroes and the ideals of what makes life worth living. We’ve seen threats to security largely dismissed or at least controlled, but then what did you expect, 007 was there.

You know, I bet Betty Windsor, who has now become the ultimate Bond Girl, must have waited almost 50 years to say, “Good evening Mr. Bond,” on film. That’s probably a decade or 2 longer than I’ve been waiting to say, "I expect you to die Mr. Bond," in my best Goldfinger accent while looking like Yaphet Kotto wished he had  looked like when he did Live And Let Die….sorry but you can’t be humble when you’re doing or talking about being a Bond villain. But I’m starting to digress.

Apart from the usual corporate prostitution that our friend Mitt perfected in Salt Lake City, there was very little scandal this time out at the events. In fact the only thing I can think of was the guy from St Kitts or somewhere who got sent home for sleeping with his wife or the 4 badminton teams that were dismissed from the Games for deliberately not playing at their best. Actually the badminton thing was almost unforgivable. I would have been highly pissed as a spectator to have gotten tickets to one Olympic event that I could probably get into for the rest of my life and see a team play with less athletic skill and ability than my 60 year old Aunt Sally with her rheumatoid arthritis. Instead I’m just highly pissed because I remember the absolute joy of playing badminton as a child. I remember hitting the shuttlecock into the air as fast and as hard as I could and just watching how it would hover as it cleared the net giving me time to figure out who on the over side would lob it back and where I would have to be for that rapid gut wrenching volley to begin in earnest. It was like chess with a racket and a net; you always had to think at least 3 or 4 moves ahead.

The thing with the Olympic Games is that I end up watching things that I would never ever do or watch in real life.  Not the running or the swimming or anything with a stopwatch, but gymnastics. I’m not talking about the regular gymnastics where I know I could rip out my shoulder from its socket in say the rings or snap my neck from doing the vault, but like the floor exercises where you see the little girls run jump and leap…and then you see them run jump and leap… and then they run jump and…you get the picture. At least I hope you do because I don’t. But worse still is the competition with the little girls with the ribbon and the hoops. What the Hell is that and what does it mean? But I watched it. I watched it all. All being provided by our good friends at NBC for my, our, viewing entertainment even though it was 5 hours after the fact.

I won't mention the inane droning on by the NBC correspondents about things people already know about or their apparent lack of interest in non-US athletes other than those with the initials UB or even their failure to even grasp the significance of Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Tim Berners-Lee to the worlds of design engineering and information exchange; but I will say that they have an uncanny ability to turn any world event into just another version of Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve and that must be an achievement in and of itself.

But you know, if I’m still around 4 years from now….well.

As The Vultures Circle.

I was going to just to do one blog concerning Black History Month. It was probably going to be about how Phyllis Hymen made love to me in the Blue Note in New York and she didn't even know that I existed. But it probably isn't a good time right now due to the recent circumstances. Instead I'll try and think of something else and figure out a way of seeing how it relates to me.

Until then, lets all try to figure out why people on TV are so crass. Or...have they always been that way and it's taken people like Jon Stewart and his gang to point it out?

The Daily Show
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Misfits

Nothing political that I want to get into, so a bit of fluff.

For some reason I can't seem to get enough of Misfits. It's a show that has no social morés worth talking about, played by kids that you know if you met in the street you would cross the road and with a script that doesn't make any sense about 70% of the time; but I've seen all the episodes and I love them. Maybe that says more about me than about anything else.

Hmm.....I shall have to think about it.

Don Cornelius

You’ve got to be shitting me, Don Cornelius is dead? The legendary writer, producer and host of Soul Train has been found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound? Well fuck me! Hmm…

Well I suppose this is where I should speak about all the good things that he brought to American television, black entertainment and world music. This is the part where I droop my shoulders and lift my head to the sky and relive and feel the warmth of childhood memories. I think of the joy of watching his show every Saturday morning, listening to the many artists who would perform. From black to white, from young to not that old, from R&B to pop, you were never disappointed by who was there. They gave their all as they lip-synched to their own hits wearing clothes so tight that sometimes you could tell the religion of the men and which of the women had had boob jobs or were in need of one. I remember watching week after week and finally recognizing many of the individual dancers who would be there and grading each one of women on how they danced or the men on how questionable their masculinity was. I remember being thrilled waiting and watching for the Soul Train Line where the dancers in pairs would wait to perform their 5 to 10 second bit and I would dream about what I would do if I was there. That’s what I should talk about, but I won’t because remember him as being a miserable cunt.

I’m sure I’ve written about this before, I just don’t remember when, but I remember seeing Don Cornelius at the MGM Hotel in Vegas at the Tyson Bruno fight. I was there with a bunch of community kids and a few adults as guests of the boxing promoter Don King. The boys were there happy to see people, celebrities that they had only seen on TV and were collecting autographs and snapping pictures of everyone. I saw a couple of the boys who were about 9 or 12, recognize Cornelius who was sitting down on one of those ottoman things the hotel had looking up sad and old speaking to someone. They ran over to him and excitedly asked to take a picture of him. He looked at them, brushed them aside like yesterday's lint and waved them off.

Bastard!

Evelyn, one of the adults in charge, walked over to them and apologized to the man and took the boys away with her. He didn’t even flinch and my disgust for him grew instantly. I walked away.

Well this hasn't actually been a tribute and someday I’ll have to see someone about those traits in me that make me have these visceral feelings, but until then all I have to say is, and I really do mean it, “…as always in parting, we wish you love, peace and soul!” RIP Don Cornelius.

My Audition Piece

Since Andy Rooney has retired from the TV show 60 Minutes I thought I'd give people a chance to see what or who could be a replacement for him and fill in the last 5 minutes of the show.

So the death certificate for Steve Jobs is in and according to many of the news outlets the cause of death was respiratory arrest.

Excuse me, but what the hell is respiratory arrest? Are they saying that the man just stopped breathing so I he died? Even I know when someone stops breathing he or she dies. In fact I would even bet that Dr. Conrad Murray, and I use the title loosely, would know that if someone stopped breathing they are probably dead and that it was time to hide the evidence...quickly.

And another thing, whats up with that woman Margie Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church tweeting that she was going to demonstrate and picket Mr. Job's funeral because he taught, "his neighbors to sin." I mean fine if that is what she really believes but did she really have to tweet it from an iPhone?

I think sometimes I really don't understand what's going on.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Cover of the US release of the first I, Claudius DVD.

Damn it. I don’t know how I’m going to work this into Black History Month, but here goes. The revolution will not be televised.

Speaking of TV, one of my all time favorite television shows was and maybe always will be is I Claudius. Now you can have your HBO’s Rome or Gladiator or anything else you want, but they don’t really compare to Claudius. This show was true genius.

It's the story of a twitching, stuttering crippled idiot of a boy who kept records of his family where everyone was expected to succeed in life except him. It tells the story of The Divine Augustus and his wife the Lady Livia and how Claudius was able to endure everything from childhood to maturity, from deception and intrigue to an adulteress wife Messalina and become the fourth Roman Emperor.

I think there maybe only 6 or 8 episodes in the entire series and it was done by the BBC in the mid 70’s, which means of course there was no money put into it and sometimes it shows. But being based on a story by Robert Graves written in the 30’s, what it lacks in production values is more than compensated for by good storytelling and acting done by performers who, if they are still alive, carry a few Sirs or Dames in front of their names now.I won’t tell you about who conspired or killed or slept with whom to get the man or woman or position that they wanted or needed, but I will say that for every move portrayed in the show, if there was no back up by the Praetorian Guard or the army, then it was doomed to failure. The military was always in charge and this is what I learned about Mediterranean politics.

It’s kind of like in ’52 when Col. Nasser overthrew the Muhammad Ali dynasty and deposed King Farouk in Egypt. He had the military behind him to back him up and become the second President of country. Anwar Sadat, who although may have been just a junior officer under Nasser, rose to become Vice-President and then President when Nasser died in 1970. When Sadat was assassinated 11 years later he was succeeded by his Vice-President Hosni Mubarak who was a also the former Air Chief Marshall in the Egyptian air force. Now the military is directly in charge of Egypt’s state of affairs since the resignation of Mr. Mubarak and the military will determine the process of democratization for the country during the next few months. The revolution will not be televised.

MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images)

I’m not talking about the kabuki street theatre that we all have seen being played out in the public squares and the streets of Cairo. I’m not talking about the chants and the slogans shouted by the crowds as they mull about calling this one a crook and that one a despot or a terrorist. I’m not talking about the well place placards written for the benefit of France 24, or Sky News, or CNN where people are rioting one day and the ladies are sweeping the streets the next.

I’m talking about the real movers and shakers behind the palace or barrack walls, the ones with the stars on their epaulets and the braids on their chests. The ones who have been in charge since before Cleopatra and Akhenaten before her will decide will decide what will happen in the future and they won’t show you how it’s to be done because the revolution will not be televised.

Modern Family

Alright so this is a bit of fluff and I'm a little late to the table, but I’ve noticed over the years that with the more choices on television these days I seem to watch less and less of what’s being shown. Sure there’s the stuff on HBO like True Blood and that Mormon show that I can’t remember the name of right now that I watch and then there’s Boardwalk Empire that I’m trying to warm up to, but other than those there is nothing else that I actually watch. On the networks I’ve seen maybe 20 minutes here and there of Glee and the CSI shows and fallen asleep in front of something else, that is until a few weeks ago when I found on Hulu one of the funniest shows on TV, Modern Family.

Apparently the guy who played the father from Married With Children is married to a much younger woman with a son of her own from somewhere in South America. Al, I call him Al because that was his name in the old show, has two children of his own. His daughter, a well meaning controlling shrew of a woman is married to some sort of wuss who seems to live in his own ill conceived version of "coolness" and fatherly masculinity. They have 3 children of their own, but they’re just there to move the story along.

Al also has a son who is married to another man and they have an adopted Asian girl. Of course if you’re white and gay in America the only children that you will be allowed to adopt will be a minority or a better yet a foreign minority. Let the hilarity begin. And yet in point of fact, it really does.

With this combination of characters of different people with different ages and different outlooks on life and script outlines written by the numbers you would think that the show would have been cancelled before the end of the second commercial. Except of course it wasn’t. What was presented has been show that has been well written, well paced, and reasonably well acted. The scenes are sharp, inventive and thoughtful. They make you satisfied without dumbing down to all the usual sensibilities which many shows do. Everything in this sitcom flows easily for less than thirty minutes making it seem like you just sat down in front of the TV. Well it would seem like I just sat down in front of the TV if I hadn't watched all the shows that I've seen on my laptop.

But all in all, this show is a keeper.

Who is Brenda Vaccaro

Normally I don’t even care about award shows. They are all about people or things that I know nothing about and don’t want to know, or if I do, will forget about before the end of the next commercial. In fact because I love movies, the only show that I will watch is the Oscars but that’s only during the commercials of whatever else is on another channel. I used to say that the only thing that would make television worse would be to add another stupid award show, that was until someone discovered the reality show and TV and my life took a turn for the worse.

Anyway, for some reason I was going down the list of award nominations for the 2011 Golden Globes and under the category for Best Supporting actress in a TV movie there was a bunch of people listed but no Brenda Vaccaro. Brenda Vaccaro? Who’s Brenda Vaccaro you ask? Well let me tell you about Brenda Vaccaro. By the way, have I mentioned the name Brenda Vaccaro yet?



I first came across Brenda Vaccaro in Airport ’75 or maybe it was ’77, it was a while ago, and then again in the Jacqueline Susann film Once is Not Enough which she had done before the Airport movie. I had heard that she was once the older lady in Michael Douglas’s life when he was young enough to have an older lady. But Since then, nothing, Nothing that is until I saw her earlier this year, big as a Buick and just as ugly, in the Dr Death, Jack Kevorkian bio-pic You Don’t Know Jack.

In the movie she plays the role of Jack’s vibrant and yet caring sister that goes tits to forehead with Al Pacino with conviction and believability. She steals scenes when she has to and subjugates herself when she needs to, which was most of the time because she was dealing with Al and let’s face it no one can really go up against Al Pacino. She isn’t the star but she helps the movie move along when the movie needs to move along. She made my experience good and that was worth a mention I should think.

So it looks like…don’t you just hate it when people start off a sentence with the word so. I was watching CNN the other day and the guest started every thought with the word “so.” After a while it became so annoying and I realized that I had noticed it before with other people on TV or on the radio and that it must have become a trend or something. Either way I hate it. It’s now one of my pet peeves like people riding bicycles on the sidewalks only to risk life and limb to young pedestrians and old people as they go about business. But I’m going off on a tangent now and ranting. As I was saying...

So it looks like there will be no need for me to watch the Golden Globes next year and I wish I can say that they will miss me, but since I’ve never watched them before, my guess is that they won’t.

Nothing More To Be Said Here

Alright but I've said it before, Betty White is a living legend.

First Rant of the Year

"All the News That's Fit to Print" is the slogan or motto for the New York Times and I sometimes wish that the local television stations felt the same way about there news programs. If they would only show just the stories that were worth watching, informing or uplifting the public they would be so much better than they are now.

I dislike local television news because it is so full of sensationalism. Not that the national network news is any better, but local news no matter where you go will put on the most outrageous stories just to get ratings...and that annoys me.

I think that Philadelphia TV market is the 4th or 5th largest television market in the the US. It covers not only the city of Philadelphia and the rest of South Eastern Pennsylvania, but all of New Jersey south of Trenton and pretty much all of the State of Delaware. I don't know how many people that would be, but suffice to say that's a pretty big audience with Channel 6's news getting the largest share ratings.

It's believed that Channel 6's Action News garners it's audience because they show more stories about violence and abuse, house burnings and diseases threatening to wipe out mankind than does the competition. And if perchance there should a story that involves a race issue where someone is being hurt or threatened, then they will go all out and enlarge the story and do an in-depth investigation and or analysis of the situation until they can't squeeze anything else out of what will be seen after a few weeks to have been a story about nothing. But like I said before, local news appears to be the same where ever you go.

I saw the story below coming out of Atlanta where some guy wants to start up a "Whites Only" basket ball league of US born citizens only and I wondered what was all the fuss about? Doesn't someone at the news station know that as soon as the man puts his sign up on the street and before the paint has been given a chance to dry, his business would be sued and shut down by the community and the courts for discrimination. Can no one figure out that this man would be filing for bankruptcy before he even took in his first dollar? Does no one there know that that this man's actions would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution?

The story is a non-issue and yet they felt it was important enough for them to air it and feed it the other local stations so that they could fill their time with nonsense.

Oh, how I hate local TV news.

Reality TV that you can't find in the States

Did you know that CBS was still fighting the fine that they were charged with by the FCC for showing Janet Jackson's titty during the Superbowl?

I am always amazed by the amount of things that people can put on TV in other countries that would bring about the destruction of civilization in the US as well as the wrath of God if the same things were shown here. I long for the day when people can be a little less puritanical here and perhaps a little more accepting of the way people really are.

Also, I'm always surprised by the amount of artists who will not even do a TV commercial in America because they believe it may demean their careers but will at the slip of a hat shake it all loose and show daddy's little dividend just because they have crossed the borders.

Take Sisqo for example on Britain's Big Brother. Can you really see him doing that here? Would you like to see him do that here?

Girls Gone Wild?

You know one of my guilty pleasures was the show Dateline on NBC where they would find someone interested in having sex with a teenager, have him go to a house and expose him on national TV. It would be fun to see some of them arrive with liquor in one hand and condoms in the other ready to strip and do the do with someone they had never seen before.


However, that smell of sweet young pussy that they thought was in the air, was actually the smell of the moderator’s Old Spice soon to replaced by the smell shit as the alleged perpetrator soiled themselves when they figured that they were not only caught but on camera. I laughed at how some of them would protest their innocence swearing that this was just an aberration and would not happen again. I would smile knowing that they were about to get a knee to the back of the neck as the police arrested them on the ground. Another sexual predator would be behind bars and all would be well with the world.

Today I read on MSNBC that there were 3 teenage girls in Pennsylvania that were suing the District Attorney in Wyoming County to prevent him from charging them with child pornography and the distribution of such material. Apparently the girls had taken pictures of themselves partially dressed using their cell phones and as will happen with kids, the pictures found their way to the cell phones of their class mates. This, the DA says, was illegal.

Now I’m not sure how this will come out, but I wonder if it doesn’t come out in favor of the girls, will they have to go around for the rest of their lives listed as sexual deviants, listing their addresses with the local authorities each time they move? And if so can it happen to me?

I really don’t think I’ve done anything wrong, but a few years ago I was on one of the free and dirty beaches under the Pitons in St Lucia I took out my camera to take a scenery shot and the ex in the water. Some of the local boys who were playing on the beach decided they wanted me to take their picture and ran in front of me and started to pose. “No big deal,” I thought. I’m not good at taking pictures of people but the sooner I got this over with, the sooner they’d leave me alone. They would take a position without me prompting them, I would take a picture and they would run back and see the results.

I think it was the 3rd or 4th picture that I noticed that one of them was taking off his trunks and that there had been another who was already naked. I should have asked myself why they needed to get naked for me. Was this something that they did before for other people for other reasons? Where were their parents or why did one of them had a black eye? No, instead what I did think was that I was going to jail. I would probably get 10 years in St Lucia or life plus 10 in the US. To this day, even though I use one of the pictures on one of my credit cards, I still twitch expecting a knock on the door from the FBI.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for sex with children or child pornography in any form, but I wonder where do we draw the line and if the line was drawn already, was it done in the sand, where it's moveable and or easily erased? Will we stop at arresting little girls for being foolish and childlike, or will we go further?

Must See TV

This was to be my homage to the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. This was to be about the episode that I have been waiting for over 6 or 7 years to see and will be airing this Friday. But it's not.

Most people will think that Battlestar Galactica is just about cowboys in space, a remake of the old TV series with 2 dimensional characters and even weaker plot lines. The rest of us, the ones who have tried to understand the show, will see it as a microcosm of life and religion where there are no easy answers and nothing is ever as good or as evil as you think it is or as black or as white as you would want to believe it to be. Everything and everyone will have their various shades of gray and the trick is finding out if there are really any differences between them.


I’ve gone through strikes, single seasons spread over years, threat of cancellation, lack of production funds, and the lack of viewers all in hopes of finding the answer to my questions about the show. And maybe I won’t get them. It would be the irony of ironies if I should drop dead before Friday and never see the thing, but it would be sweet justice if I did see the show only to come out with even more questions than I had before I started to watch the show. But like I said Galactica was what I wanted to right about, but I won’t. Instead.

People said that I was cruel when I said that the people who were snaking outside of the building I worked and around the block to the Pennsylvania Convention Center a few years ago were the biggest losers as they waited for an audition in the rain for a chance to be on the reality show, The Biggest Loser a few years ago. Now it seems that I was wrong.

I’m sure by now everyone has seen the video of the thousands of people lining up in New York City trying to audition for America’s Top model when panic and pandemonium broke out. I haven’t seen the show since they had that former model, Janice I think her name was, on the show as a judge. You know whom I’m talking about, the one that looked like she was stuck somewhere between a transvestite with a really botched change operation and a hooker who had come across some extremely hard times. Anyway, even though I work with a few women who live and die by the show, I have never really understood their interest in it. A few skinny girls and the occasional normal looking one without a chance, vying for a one year contract for a cover girl position at a magazine that I’ve never heard of.

But then I must be only one not to understand it, because as far as I know the show is still going strong and there are people, thousands of them apparently, who are willing to risk life and limb for a miniscule chance to cry and show how awkward they are in life. Apparently there are thousands of girls willing to be insulted by Jay and Miss Jay in front of the nation and maybe the world, or just trying be America’s Top Model.

I am a free man!

Alright just to please RunningMom. Apparently the the previous video of the Boy Wonder was offensive to some, so I have decided to move on and add more posts so that it will eventually disappear.

I had intended to write something about Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan, both of which passed away this week, or this weekend when we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. with a day of service and welcome the the first African American President as he takes office on Tuesday. I would something like a week in review. But there isn't much more that I could say that you haven't thought of or couldn't find out and read for yourselves. So just a note.

Most people will remember Mr. Montalban as Mr. Roarke, the nattily dressed host and may I say Architect of Hidden Dreams on the show Fantasy Island, or as one of the old MGM actors they called in when they needed a latin type and Cesar Romero wasn't available. But I have and always will remember him as one of the best science fiction villains that has ever graced the silver screen and the man who is probably responsible for the success of the most successful science fiction franchises ever, Khan. Without him there would never have been a 3rd or 4th or 9th Star Trek movie.

"He tasks me. He tasks me. I will chase him 'round de mooons of the Antares Nebula..." Which really isn't a direct or even correct quote from Khan on Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, but it's what I remember and it's what I think of and sometimes spit out when I get into that trekkie kind of mood and I'm surrounded by the right people, trek people. With all the sex and danger that he exhibited at age 61 when he did the movie, he has kept me going if only in the hope that maybe one day, some day I could be as smooth real life as he was on screen.

I think I was under 10 when I first saw The Prisoner and I didn't understand it then. Truth be told, when I saw the series being repeated on PBS about 10 years ago, I still didn't understand it. But at the show's opening, which is posted below, Patrick McGoohan runs around trying not to give up information about something and not willing to accept himself as just a number but instead claimed that he was a "free man." This also is something that I strive for, although it's kind of hard to try to do as in a few weeks from now I will be sending in my personal information on tax forms about how I live and what I do and get to be able to live that way and all with a big fat social security number on top.

Speaking of a free man or freedom itself, MLK, 'nuff said.

It can also be said that an Obama in the White House will be will be a direct result of the efforts for freedom that the good reverend Dr. King gave his life for, as did so many others from the march from slavery to the March on Washington DC and beyond. And this is the part where you come in. This is the part where I realize that there is nothing I can say or do that will lift this moment any higher or greater than it already is. This is the part that I will leave to the poets and the historians and to you to record and honor, this moment and this time.

On the way to DC

My Must See TV

I’ve just made reservations to fly to Tampa to see the old ladies, my mother and grandmother, for Thanksgiving again. I’ve done this every year since my father died and it’s sort of become a tradition. A tradition I never planned to get into but my mother always starts to pressure me about going to visit her around October. This year was no different even though I had just spent a week there last month.

Something else that has also somehow turned into a tradition will be the scorn that my mother will show me when after watching Jeopardy on television, that’s what we do every weekday evening; she will ask me why I never audition to go on the show. She thinks that because I know the difference between Beethoven and Bismarck and the occupations they chose in life, I must be a genius who is just wasting his time by not enriching himself on syndicated TV.

Try as much as I can to convince her that 9 times out of 10, the questions that would be asked on the show would not be the ones I would be able to answer under the lights, cameras and pressure of facing the host and other competitors. Plus I don’t have the type of life story that I would want whittled down to one pithy statement that will be thrown out by Alex Trebek to a TV audience while they gobble up their frozen meals and down their canned beers. But if there was a show that I would like to go on, now that I have gotten over the fact that lame ass reality shows are now a fact of TV life and won’t soon disappear, it would be The Amazing Race.

Now some people won’t get excited by travelling around the world, experiencing different cultures sights and locations in the space of one or two days. I mean how can they? There is too much to go through before moving on to the next place and task of outsmarting, out running and if necessary, out back stabbing the competition? In fact I’m not sure I would like it either except for the excitement lots of contestants must feel of feeling their hearts tighten, their lungs burst and the hopes diminish or rise as they run towards each pit stop.

If offered it would be something I could not turn away from. After all what better bliss would there be of going through the stress and tension of fighting with your loved one or partner? Strengthening or breaking your relationship as you blame each other for slowing the other one down. I know for a fact that not matter whomever I chose for a running mate, there would be such an inevitable clash of wills and bickering when I found myself not getting my way, the ratings would probably increase for the show.

There is no better TV show where you can test your own fortitude and your own core beliefs than The Amazing Race; a show that gives you the opportunity to be placed far from home and away from your comfort zones and still come out on top.

So I think this Thanksgiving in between the eating, the arguing and wondering how much more it will cost me to leave early, I shall probably secretly be telling myself, “I’ll take The Amazing Race for a thousand Alex.”

Everything Old is New Again

In a strange way, if you have read my last post, this post is sort of related to it.

There is this German guy who has been working in one of the soaps since, if not since I was born then at least for the last 30 years. He was in the 3rd Planet of the Apes movie, the one that proved that sequels can never be as good as the original. And he was in my favorite science fiction movie all time, The Forbin Project. He plays a scientist in charge of a giant supercomputer that is given control of all of the American nuclear missiles. Then with its Russian counterpart, it starts to take over mankind. It is really good, or at least it seemed so back in the 80’s when I first saw it.

Anyway, this German guy is always marrying someone or threatening someone else on his soap and my mother loves him. I have never been able to understand why. I mean how can someone do the same story line year after year and not get bored. How can someone else watch that person year after year and not get bored as well. How can anyone watch a soap opera period, and not get bored. This has always been, as Yul Brynner used to say, “A puzzlement.”

I took this class on public speaking once, and we were told that whenever you gave a speech, you were supposed to relate to your audience in order to get across what you wanted to get across. One of the best ways of this was to start with a joke, a witticism or story that the audience could grab a hold of and believe that you were part of them while you prattled on about the crap that no one was really interested in. It needed to be something that the people there either knew about already or something they could easily catch and move on with.

After each speech from the class was given, there would be a question and answer period. After one of my speeches about social security, or maybe it was about plagiarism, someone asked me, “who was Yul Brynner?” …Apparently the little bastard was too young to know who Yul Brynner was and I saw my grade slip a notch right in front of me. If you are in that cretin’s age group and don’t know who the great Yul Brynner was, then look for the King and I on PBS, or wait until next Easter and watch The Ten Commandments and you’ll know who I mean.

Well as of tonight, I now know what dearest Mama goes through when she watches her soaps. I was able to catch in the middle, Regis Philbin’s latest game show from New York and I realized it had a familiar ring to it. I thought immediately of Dick Clarks Pyramid. But then Regis pulls out Betty White and she started to slip words back and forth with the game show’s players and I know that it is Password.

So I’m watching Miss White, she was called Miss Betty White even by her husband Allen Ludden when he was hosting Password and was still alive, and I’m transported back to 30 years ago and I recognize the same head and body movements, the same false gasp of incredulity at getting an answer correct that this old pro has been using for all of her game show career, which may go back even further than the 30 that I’ve known her. There was a certain comfort in watching her create a false sense of surprise and suspense as the single words were played back and forth between her and the contestants. I watched as she gave that warm folksy show business personality of yester year and I knew as an audience member that I was in the hands of an expert.

I doubt that the show will last very long, it seems kind of weak. But like my mother, there is something about watching a professional at work, looking at them hone their craft and sharpen their skills that will make me watch out for Betty White again and again and again.

Decisions for 2008

I don’t know when I started this tradition, but it’s been going on for the longest time now. That is, I go to the movies on New Years Day. I usually find some poor sucker to come along with me. More often than not, it’s for companionship rather than sex. And now that I think of it, if I have chosen the movie, sex is that last thing that you think of doing as you leave the movie theatre. In fact yesterday’s movie was “The Savages.” It’s a film about a brother and sister who decide to put their estranged and ailing father in a nursing home and wait for him to die. The movie falls into the category of “life sucks so leave me alone,” rather than, “let’s get it on.” Needless to say, I went by myself.

But before I decided to go to the movies, I had watched a little TV. As usual, nothing was on that interested me. The cable channels were showing films that no one cared about, even when they were first released. The networks were flooded by silly parades or they were showing sports teams that I cared even less about. So I watched C-Span for about 20 minutes. How about that for holiday fare? They were showing 7 or 8 of the lesser known Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in some sort of debate. When I say these were the lesser know candidates, I don’t mean people like Thompson or Brownback or even Alan Keyes who I am sure they only bring out for some black comic relief. I mean people you have never heard of, like the guy who owned a grocery store and made over $75,000 one year and now he thinks can run the world. Or the one who tried to get on a city council but failed and now thinks that all he has to do is change politics as usual and the country will bow down to him. These people were crammed into this small semi-circular huddle when I suddenly realized, not only would no one ever know about these people now or in the future, but they were all crazy.

There was the grey haired white guy who said that the polar caps on Mars were shrinking and that Mars has no cars, so global warming on Earth due to man made influences was just a myth and a lie. There was another white guy that said that America was failing because of the millions of fetuses that were being murdered every year and that gays were breaking up the family and God has left the country because of it. There was also the young black guy espousing that to hell with the Supreme Court and who he would nominate to it. As long as God was in the political equation, the States would be able to look after their own affairs without having to turn to the federal government. I guess he must not have heard about States Rights and how they lost against Civil rights.

I suppose, you have to be crazy to run for President anyway. Because if you win, who in their right mind would want to live a gold fish bowl anyway. Surrounded by people only there to kiss your ass or take a clean shot of you for the rest of your life.

Well like I said after about 20 minutes of this and positive that the other crazy candidates that are in the first and second tiers of the Republican Party will have nothing to worry about, I said check please and turned the TV off.

I doubt that any of the people I saw yesterday will have any impact on the Iowa Caucuses tomorrow or any of the other primary elections in the future, but it might be a thought that maybe we should look carefully at who we support or elect into office this election year. Some people may say that anyone would be better than the compassionate conservative that we now have in the White House but trust me, there people just as crazy, lazy and stupid in the front tier of the nomination races trying to get in; and if we are not cautious we may look back on the last 8 years as the good old days.

Oh by the way, Happy New Year everyone.

American Gladiator

So what is this entire hullabaloo about? Some members of the blogosphere are acting as if someone ripped off their left testicle and left it to dry in the sun, all because Alex Castro (Militia) is now a gladiator. He is a gladiator in NBC’s reincarnation of American Gladiators debuting in the upcoming season.



Why all the consternation and hair pulling? Well Mr. Castro apparently has posed naked before for such fag rags as Colt. He has also appeared in gay soft porn videos for companies like Muscle Hunks and Sharpshooters Studios and some people are astounded that he can now find work in the legitimate entertainment industry. Like as if he’s performing Hamlet somewhere.



What people should be astounded about is the fact that a stupid and sophomoric television show that was cancelled in the 80’s has come back. Is this all that network TV is capable of producing now?

Listen, this shit isn’t Shakespeare. Let the man do what he does best, show off his assets. The only sad thing is, it's NBC so his best assets will still be confined to smutty video and magazines... when you can find them.

James of Survivor

Not much to say today. I don’t have my muse to give me ideas and so I have to think for myself. That will be a joke.

Besides, it’s been cloudy and cold and wet in South Jersey since this morning and I’m not sure what I should do today just because of the way the weather makes me feel. But I am sure of sure of one thing, I’ll be watching the season finale of Survivor China tonight.

I don’t really care who wins, but it’s going to be last time that I will be able to see James. I don’t really get to watch that much TV like I used to, so when I have the opportunity to see a fine looking brotha broadcast on TV, I take it.

It’s not that I will be able to see James half naked like most people like to see him, since he has been kicked off the show and you only see him dressed in his civvies on the jury. But it will be my chance to say farewell and dream a little again.

Who would have thought that I could develop a crush on a grave-digger? What is this world coming to?

The Many Faces of Bette

As part of what is known as the TV generation, that is the generation before cable, MTV and the 24hour news networks, I grew up watching lots and lots of television.

Television was there when I came home from school and my parents weren’t. Television was there on the weekends when my friends were unavailable to play with and I needed some sort of interaction with something, lame as it was. Television marked the Rights of Passage, the older you grew the later you were allowed to stay up and watch.

As a consequence, I grew up watching many old shows that I can remember today, at least partly; Star Trek, Julia, I Spy and the Flying Nun to name only a few. And then I remember the movies.

Now many of these movies would be considered as classics today. In fact you can only see them broadcast on Turner Classics, AMC or the occasional 6 movies that they show over and over again on your local PBS station. I learned and grew to love the old stars like Bogey and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, Gable and Lombard, Crawford and Davis. Not that Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were ever really a team. They only made one movie together, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and from all accounts they couldn't stand each other so they never worked together again.

So imagine my astonishment when applying for a teller’s job at the now defunct Chemical Bank on Water Street in NYC when in a crowd of about 300 applicants, one of the interviewers shouted out the name "Betty Davis." The entire room or I should say warehouse of people turned to see if the Hollywood legend was indeed there. I mean I don’t think that she had worked in a while and who really knows about other people’s finances. This was the time when people were trying to figure out who shot JR and anything was possible. Anyway it turned out to be someone else, whose sister I worked with for about 2 weeks and told me that Betty had been plagued by that name all her life and was trying to live it down. So let’s advance a few years to the mid eighties.

I was walking down Christopher Street towards the Piers, the Promised Land back in the day, on an early Saturday evening when I noticed a moderately sized crowd standing outside a theatre. I closed in and saw a tall grey haired man looking very distinguished and very important enclosed by the crowd and one or two television cameras. Former Governor Hugh Carey of the great State of New York I thought? (Well not in those words, but you know what I mean.) I wasn’t sure who he was so I got in closer. That was when I looked down.

There she was, somewhere between belly button and nipple level stood Bette Davis. She was wearing some Willi Smith monstrosity that was about 50 years too young for her. She looked old and shriveled, like death warmed over actually, but she still looked feisty. She smiled at some of the crowd with that sneer that she had developed after surviving her mastectomy and stroke and signed one or two autographs.

The women next to me screamed out, “We love you Miss Davis,” as Bette, propped up by the grey haired man was escorted to her stretch limousine. They drove off and I thought, I should jump onto the trunk of the car and then she would let me in, talk to me and take me away from the dirt and drab of New York to the sunny, happy climes of Hollywood and I would become a star. Dreams.

I learned later on that she had been to see the play, Steel Magnolias and was thinking of taking one of the parts in the upcoming filming of the story. She never did of course. I can only imagine that it would have been either the Shirley MacLaine or Olympia Dukakis role. She was physically too frail to both work and continue smoking after having a stroke. And so I never got to Hollywood and I never became as well known as I thought I might have done when I was a child. But I don’t think the story or movie of my life is over just yet. There’s still time.