Relicui Mei

I thought Paycards was the greatest game show ever. I appear to have been mistaken. Canadian gameshow Mad Dash was a low-budget masterpiece, complete with weird premise, bizarre questions, a dickish host, and cheap prizes. "Hockey or bowling: in which would you use... a BALL?!"

 The only thing stupider and more useless than wearing a backwards baseball cap is wearing a backwards baseball cap during a sex scene. No, you don't look any more butch while ****ing **** with one on.

 The Way West isn't anyone's favorite movie or even favorite Western.  It's too upbeat for those who like downer westerns and vice versa. Robert Mitchum only seems to wake in time to say his lines, but still suffers sleep inertia.  Kirk Douglas seems to be playing not a character, but A Kirk Douglas Character.   And Richard Widmark is, as always, tofu in the mix. "Guys? I ... I'm here, too. Can I look?" But, it's a poor film that has NO memorable lines or scenes, and The Way West got one off that I'll always remember: Innocent teenage boy: "I noticed that [the frontiersman's necklace ]. Mighty handsome possession.  D'ja get it off a dead Indian?" Veteran frontiersman: "Yeah; my wife." Much more powerful and memorable than the way the " Frontiersman with an Indian woman handles a question from an innocent young'un" was done in The Indian Fighter (played by Kirk Douglas in a better performance), it says worlds ...

 

Today, I watched "Howl" . Or, as the opening credits put it, " H O W L ", which I suppose was some kind of attempt to meet a legal requirement to warn viewers how painful it would be. It was, of course, a werewolf film.  When the Werewolf expansion for the Sims 4 came out (I won't call it the "Werewolf pack" because that's confusingly ambiguous) it became my excuse to binge a thousand werewolf films I'd never seen.  So now when I come across an werewolf film unknown to me, I'll give it a try, for completist purposes. I have seen things. Things you don't want to know about. Sometimes they are so bad I will bail on them (and I've watched all of The Werewolf of Washington , a film so bad it made me DEPRESSED, and which should be retroactively legislated out of existence)  But "H O W L" was SO bad I watched the entire thing, because I was riveted by how such a thing could have occurred.  No sane person would have written thi...

 My fiancé, Neigar, is done making our shirts for the ceremony. This one is mine: This one is his: Such a skilled seamster he is!  It makes me proud.

 I think, from a cultural perspective, it's pretty cool that the what is probably still the rockingest salsa number of the last ten years  is by a bunch of old fat people.  Because talent is not confined to the young and thin and that fact is often lost in broader American pop culture.

Even though I'd seen the film many times, it wasn't until I heard this rendition of Professor Fate's theme , from The Great Race , and the same group's rendition of the Royal Waltz (the Prince's theme) from the same film that I realized that they are based on the same melody. Because, of course the person who plays Professor Fate is the same person who plays the Prince Because Henry Mancini was a genius.

When I went to Turkey Thicket to swim today it was shutting down! "Unplanned maintenance", as we say in the aviation industry.  So I made good use of the opportunity to visit the nearby gasoline station, where I had them check my "needs oil" light.  As I suspected, I did not need oil, the oil meter simply hadn't been reset the last time I got the oil changed.  I also got the nice Garage Person to help me use the gas pump at the station because it had me completely stymied.   The car is a hybrid electric and I've only filled it by myself once before.  It was refusing to use the electric because it new the gas it my tank was so old it was in danger of going sour and would only burn gas until I replenished the tank.  So, ironically, I occasionally need to fix the gas tank in my car to... stop it from using gas. The man must have had trouble understanding how someone with a car would not know how to get gas; he asked whether I was from Australia.  It's the...

I think I deserve to start reading Alley Oop. It's a comic strip about the adventures of a caveman who frequently time travels (with a daffy old scientist). It's like Rick & Morty, except witty and funny and enjoyable. It's 90 years old.  Alley Oop has been around longer than Batman and Superman.   But since I've just gotten to know him, I hope he sticks around.

Yesteday I went to Turkey Thicket for the first time. It's really big, as you can see. Turkey Thicket is a recreational and aquatic center in Brookland (a neighborhood a mile or two NE of my place).  During the week, I work out at a different place, the Edgewood Recreational Center,(which is about a mile and half east (in Edgewood, natch).  Edgewood has a fine Weight Room, but no pool. Before the pandemic, I had been working out at a gym near my office.  But when the pandemic hit, I had to find others solutions (as did we all). I worked out at home and bought an exercise bike, but once the pandemic lifted I sought out a low-cost gym option.  There were none, but there WAS a NO-cost one: Edgewood, which is free to District residents. At the time, I had also considered Turkey Thicket, but for so long it was either closed by the pandemic or under and extensive renovation. Eventually I simply forgot to follow up to find out when it was open... until yesterday! The facili...

Last night I watched Johnny Guitar , expecting yer basic Western with perhaps better production values than most. That's Joan's actual size as she appears in the film, during which she swallows several horses, whole.  They go well with scenery. That is not what Johnny Guitar is. It's hard to say WHAT Johnny Guitar is. Hard not just for me, but apparently for almost every critic and commenter who's ever reviewed the film.  “It's a film that's many things to many people, from camp spectacular to revisionist genre epic, and nearly every reading seems viable.” “A pop-culture madhouse dressed up in spurs and a cowboy hat" “Quite possibly the weirdest Western ever made by a mainstream studio in the 1950s." “This 1954 Freudian Western is one of the all-time left-field wonders of the studio system, a film so subversive it's a wonder it ever got made.” “Compared to other Westerns, Johnny Guitar is high art--richly atmospheric and with noir elements that ...

I already have a blog for discussing comic books .  This blog is for everything else that remains. First up, a mystery: If Billy hadn't yet married that girl, then why did she get an official letter when he died? Billy, Don't Be a Hero by Mitch Murray & Peter Callander The marching band came down along Main Street The soldier blues fell in behind I looked across and there I saw Billy Waiting to go and join the line And with her head upon his shoulder His young and lovely fiancee From where I stood I saw she was crying And through her tears I heard her say Billy, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life Billy, don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife And as he started to go she said, Billy, keep your head low Billy, don't be a hero, come back to me The soldier blues were trapped on a hillside The battle raging all around The sergeant cried, "We've got to hang on, boys! We've got to hold this piece of ground" I need a voluntee...