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"Yucky stuff"

It looked like rain, and then it rained and splashed and flooded. Being dry seemed a good idea, so instead of a day on Telegraph selling fish, I stayed home.

Still made some money, though, for three hours of washing Judith's accumulated dirty dishes, and five hours of snipping fish out of pre-printed mylar sheets. 

Then I napped, something I can never get enough of these days.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Here's the strangest response yet to my "I'll do anything legal for five dollars an hour" flyers.  A guy called my voice mail, and read my entire ad into the machine, noticeably lingering at the part where I say I'll do "yucky stuff."

When I wrote the ad, I imagined "yucky stuff" might be emptying bedpans or picking up a hundred dried dog turds from someone's yard, but nobody's asked me to do anything truly yucky… until now.

When I returned his call, the man hesitated, seemed embarrassed. I thought he was going to back out and hang up, but when he screwed up his nerve he said, "I'm a really hairy guy, and I've got a really hairy butt."

There was a brief pause, him not sure how to say something, and me wondering what the heck he was about to say., "It's very difficult…," he said, "to wipe myself cleanly, because stuff gets stuck in the hair…"

"You need someone to shave your ass?"

"Well, yeah," relieved that I'd said it.

I thought it over for a few dozen heartbeats. "Well, I'll tell you what," I said. "I've been kinda sick, and this sounds like it might make me sicker, but — if you can wait a week or so until I get my strength back, I'll shave your ass. OK?"

"Great!" he said, and gave me his address. Maybe next weekend, we agreed.  I ain't looking forward to it, but I need the money. Philosophically, it's only work like any work, only most work is only figuratively shitty.

From Pathetic Life #22
Sunday, March 10, 1996

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

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Brenda, Bradley, and Barbara

Slept eleven hours, which is too much and means I'm still sick, and still I woke up weak, feeling like a few more hours of shut-eye would help. Instead, of course, I went to work, but not before upping the dose on my self-medication with these under-the-counter antibiotics. Took two instead of one this morning, and brought two more to have with lunch.

Figure I can judge whether it's too much or not enough, by the size of the white splotches on my tongue, which are a little smaller this morning than last night.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Sold fish on Telegraph, and the walk to and from Telegraph wasn't as arduous as I'd feared, which I'm taking as a sign of recovery. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, haw haw.

I worked between Brenda and a guy I call Jacque the Green. 

Brenda is great. She's a little wacko in the best sense, easy to talk with, and she's lived a life, but I don't feel authorized to tell you the tales she tells me.

She's usually in a good mood and when she's not she just clams up, doesn't get all volatile like some people, like me.

As promised, I gave her a copy of my zine today, something I wouldn't ordinarily do and ain't comfortable with, but she lassoed me into it (2/18). She was considerate enough, of my feelings and my privacy, to stash the zine in her purse instead of reading it at her table. She said she'll read it when she gets home.

Jacque the Green sells left-wing politics. Like a salesman, he always wants to talk to people passing by, about his petitions, his opinions, and what a wonderful President Ralph Nader would be.

One of Jacque's pitches and clipboards is about registering people for the Green Party, and while they're perhaps closest to my own persuasion, hearing the political patter all day when he's three feet away, it loses some of its appeal.

♦ ♦ ♦   

Actually, most of the vendors on the Avenue have lost their appeal to me. Almost every one of them annoys me one way or another, like most people do, only more so, because most people aren't' sitting on the sidewalk selling stuff and always talking about what they're selling.

Most of Telegraph's vendors, especially the licensed ones, are petty chiselers who don't believe in anything but money. I don't complain about them often in the zine, because usually I shut them out of my head. When you work with butt-heads every day, you learn to tune most of it out — a skill I learned working at Macy's.

♦ ♦ ♦   

Today, though, I was feeling shitty — same as for the past two weeks, though it's maybe getting better — and a vendor named Bradly was the worst part of my bad day. When I was a licensed vendor, I worked around Bradley a few times. He's all about the potholders he makes and sells, leaving zero potential for friendship between us, but we used to be cordial — "Good morning," and occasional potholder jokes.

Now that I'm a free-speech vendor, we rarely work on the same block, and he's forgotten that we ever existed on the same sidewalk. 

I usually set up my cart half an hour before Bradley sets up his, and this morning, as has happened several times in recent weeks, he pushed his cart past me on the sidewalk without saying squat, without the tiniest nod of his head to acknowledge my existence, without eye contact as he passed six inches from my table, and without hearing my "Howdy, Bradley," which he never hears, so it gets more fakely enthusiastic every time I shout it.

Maybe he hates me for something I said. That's usually what happens when someone freezes me out, because I do say a lot of stupid shit.

Oh, well. Some day I'll have a chance to disavow his existence like he's disavowed mine. Maybe I'll spot a shopfitter at Bradley's table but not see it, or maybe he'll be in a shouting square-off with a customer or a cop or another vendor and I won't hear it, or he'll need to break a fifty to make a sale and I won't have the money despite having the money. I'll know Bradley, like he doesn't know me.

♦ ♦ ♦  

For all my occasional but recurring complaints about zine-readers approaching me on Telegraph, a zine-reader approached me on Telegraph toward the end of my day, and it went OK. It doubtless helps that she was a redhead, beautiful in an un-ordinary way, smiling a smile that occupied about half her head, when she said, "Hi, you must be Doug. I'm Barbara Cooper." 

Well, I'd have nothing but kind words for Ms Cooper even if my buddy Josh hadn't tried to convince me to be kinder to strangers. She's the artist who painted the cover for Pathetic Life #15 — "Jesus makes one Prozac feed the multitudes," and we've written each other a few harmless letters, so I almost know her. Didn't know she was an attractive redhead, but it's irrelevant for a man of my mountainous size, minimal self-confidence, and toxic breath.

The upshot is, Barbara and I and her roommate — sorry, I've forgotten her name — went for burritos and a couple of beers, and by the time I'd eaten half my dinner she'd gone from being a name on my mailing list to being someone I was glad had said hello.

Point, Josh.

Anyway, it was great meeting her, nice meeting her roomie and all, but I'm feeling sick again so I'm taking two more of these illegal antibiotics and then I've just gotta get some sleep.

From Pathetic Life #22
Saturday, March 9, 1996

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

Addendum, 2023: Mentioning Barbara Cooper's cover art reminds me: Midway through its run, Pathetic Life began to have cover illustrations, and sometimes illustrations inside. It's frustrating that I haven't been able to publish those pictures along with all the re-typed text, but my scanner didn't survive the move from Wisconsin.

One of these weekends I'll bring my master copies of Pathetic Life to the library, and use their scanner to bring back the pictures.

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Marijuana and erythromycin

Set up the fish-cart next to Bo today, and he was talkative all day, pissed off and blue. He likes to take a day off once in a while, so for the second time in as many months, he'd hired someone to run his table for a few days each week. And for the second time in as many months, he'd had the fire the person he'd hired, for selling pot from the table.

Marijuana should be legal, but I can understand Bo's perspective. He runs one of several marijuana tables on the Ave, selling how-to-grow books and pot patches and t-shirts and stickers, all without either a business permit or "free speech approval" from the city. Being pro-pot and unlicensed is asking for enough trouble, you know? If his table became known as a place to purchase pot, the cops could lock him up and seize everything, including Bo.

Some of the other marijuana tables actually sell brownies or cookies or weed, but it's a risk Bo doesn't take and doesn't want his staffers to take. 

His big downer, he says, is that both the people he's fired were friends, and all day he was grousing that he has no friends he can trust.

I didn't say much to that. What I wanted to say was, "Maybe don't hire your friends, since your friends all seem kinda shitty." Probably he would've laughed at that, but it's not a joke. I've seen some of his friends.

"If I have just one friend on the Avenue," he said as he was re-complaining later, "it's probably Jasper," and hello? Jasper is the biggest jerk in Berkeley.

♦ ♦ ♦  

When the day was done and I was walking home, again I was feeling poorly. Better than yesterday, but still not good. I've been hoping that my weeks of walking pneumonia were over or almost over, but was I sick again? Or maybe it was just a really humid day and I'm a hundred pounds overweight pushing a cart.

When I got home I decided to shower away the stickiness and stinkiness, and stripping I noticed that my t-shirt was dripping wet, completely drenched. I am ordinarily not a drenched with sweat guy.

The antibiotics from the Free Clinic ran out a few nights ago, and this morning I called them for more. But I was feeling better and stupidly told them so, so they told me to wait, and call again in a few days. Which would be Sunday or Monday.

The white stuff that had encrusted my tongue faded a lot while I was taking the pills, but it never went 100% away, and now it's starting to come back.

Lucky me, though -- today an illegal source on the Avenue helpfully provided more antibiotics. She didn't say where she got the pills, and I didn't ask, and her name shall remain nameless, but she also didn't say what the pills were, how strong they are, or how many I should take, how often.

My guess is four times daily, same as the erythromycin, so bottoms up and cheers.

From Pathetic Life #22
Friday, March 8, 1996

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

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Two breakfasts with Mom

 leftovers & links 
Sunday, March 12, 2023

Last Saturday's breakfast with the family was most peculiar. I have a new job, which is good news, but I didn't and don't want to share the good news at breakfast. So I didn't.

Do I need to explain why? Guess so, because I'm weird and so's the family dynamic, but it's a long story...

Any time I tell my mother anything about my life, she finds a way to weaponize it, turning it into something unpleasant, like the last time I told her I'd found a job. She wants to know everything about what's going on in my life, but anything she knows she throws back at me, and after a lifetime of that, I try to say as little as possible about my life.

It's an un-fun game we both play. She asks the same questions over and over, and I sidestep them almost every time.

Many years ago, before I moved away, Mom used to call me at work far too often — often enough that the boss complained, and Mom's calls became an office joke. "It's your Mom again, on line two." And sometimes she'd surprise me by showing up at my workplace just to talk, or take me to lunch.

Maybe normal moms do that. I wouldn't know about normal, but I hated it, and asked her not to call so often, not to pop into the office unexpected. Asking was a waste of breath, so I stopped giving Mom my work number, or telling her where I worked.

Mom's resourceful, though. She was able to ferret my work number from friends or other family members, and still called too often at work. At two different jobs, when I hadn't even told her where I work, she came to my workplace. "Uh, Doug, your mother is at the reception desk." 

Coincidentally, I later moved to California, and letting my mother know where I was slipped my mind.

I prefer choosing what she knows about me, so last Saturday at breakfast, instead of telling her about my new job on Millionaires' Island, I told her what I hadn't told her a month ago — that I'd been hired at the Post Office.

It was slightly surreal, answering her barrage of questions about that job — a job I quit after only a few days — as if that was the new job I'd just started, instead of saying anything about the job I'm actually working.

I wrote the above, about last Saturday's breakfast, just before going to this week's breakfast, so I showed up in a bad mood.

Exasperating me further, before she'd even sat down at the table, Mom pulled two stapled pieces of paper out of her purse and handed them to me. It was the police report from when I was "found."

Guess I gotta go into the backstory of that. Sigh.

For many years I was intentionally out of touch with the family. Mom had filed a missing persons report on me, which came up blank.

By the 2010s I was living in Wisconsin with my wife, and when I was involved in a minor fender-bender, the police officer ran my driver's license through their enormous Orwellian database. My name popped up as a missing person, and the cop told me they'd be reporting my whereabouts — name, address, phone number, the works — to my mother.

My wife and I tried to talk the cop out of ratting on me, but he said it was the law, which still seems wildly wrongheaded to me.

So the police notified my mother, and she called, and we had a nice conversation on the phone.

And then she called again, and called over and over again. When I asked her to call maybe once a week instead of twice daily, she left at least twenty messages on my answering machine in one afternoon. That's when I turned the answering machine off, and the ringer.

My phone still doesn't ring, but now we're back in touch, and I like having Mom and the family in my life again. Honest, I do. Pretty sure I would've chosen it, and eventually reconnected with the Hollands on my own — but being fingered by the government angered me when it happened, and still angers me now.

What if you're an abused wife, or an escaped cultist? What if you're on the run from someone truly dangerous, not merely annoying like my mom can be? You run, they file a missing persons report, and when you pop onto the radar anywhere in America, the cops immediately tell your address and everything else to anyone who's asked?

 
Mom says the same things at breakfast every Saturday that she said the previous Saturday, and one of her recurring riffs is that I was missing for so many years (though the number of years varies from week to week — last week it was 13 years, today it was 17).

She loves telling me how the cops contacted her several times, sending pictures of unidentified corpses that fit my general description, and she'd say no, that's not my boy Douggie. And a few months later they'd contact her about some other corpse.

Having heard this a hundred times, I understand that it wasn't fun for her. Hearing about it isn't fun for me, but she tells me about it every Saturday at breakfast.

 
So that's the backstory, and then yesterday Mom plopped that old paperwork in front of me — the report from the Missing Persons Bureau telling her I'd been found, and listing everything from my address to my license plate number — like, oh, this will be fun to talk about over breakfast.

She was visibly disappointed when I only glanced at the paper long enough to see what it was, then pushed it back at her and said, "I don't care about that." Another lie, of course — I do care — I'm still pissed off about being ratted out by the cops.

"I thought you'd be interested," she said, and again started telling me the story of the ☐ 11 ☐ 13 ☐ 15 ☑ 17 years when I was "lost."

"Well, he said he isn't interested," my sister Katrina said, and from her tone I knew that they'd already talked about the police report, and that Katrina had tried and failed to convince Mom not to bring it, and not to bring it up at breakfast. 

Instead, we mostly talked about my new job at the Post Office, which I quit a month ago, and which in another month or so I'll tell her I quit. 

News you need,
whether you know it or not

• Biden administration wants a trillion dollars for war 

• Telehealth startup Cerebral shared millions of patients’ data with advertisers 

• Silicon Valley Bank CEO sold $3.6-million in stock days before bank's failure 

• BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of "right-wing backlash" 

• Arctic river channels changing due to climate change 

• Study shows the potential consequences of climate change for the ocean food web 

• How climate change is making allergy season worse 

• Autopsy reveals anti-'Cop City' activist's hands were raised when shot and killed 

• Charges for 11 Ohio cops filmed beating suspects and destroying evidence 

• Jury awards $375,000 to protester shot in the face by LAPD 

• A Louisville police officer let his dog attack a 14-year-old Black child who was not resisting. As the dog 'gnawed' on the child's arm, the officer said 'stop fighting my dog,' DOJ said 

• Republicans are trying to roll back child labor regulations 

• Republican-controlled Kentucky Senate passes bill to limit drag shows

• Three Texas women are sued for wrongful death after allegedly helping friend obtain abortion medication

• Ex-intern sues Idaho lawmakers for harassing her after rape 

• Former Trump lawyer admits false statements, is censured by judge, then gets upset because people are calling her a liar 

Mystery links
There's no knowing where you're going

• Click 

• Click 

• Click 

• Click 

• Click 

My browser history
without the porn

• Western media dumps stories on Nord Stream sabotage shifting blame from US 

• The scale of local news destruction in Gannett's markets is astonishing 

• Waiting for Brando: The epic saga of a disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad 

♫♬  It don't mean a thing  ♫
if it don't have that swing

• Calling out My Name - Del Shannon 

• Everyday People — Joan Jett & the Blackhearts 

• If I Can Dream — Elvis Presley 

• My Only Offer — Mates of State 

• 25 or 6 to 4 — Chicago 

Eventually, everyone
leaves the building

• Jesús Alou 

• Raphael Mechoulam 

• Napoleon XIV 

• Rick Scheckman 

3/12/2023    

Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.  

Tip 'o the hat to ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, CaptCreate's Log, Harm City Hearld, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, One Finger Medical, Two Finger Magical, Miss Miriam's Mirror, Nebulously Burnished, RanPrieur.com, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.  

Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn't always shitty.

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The Silent Partner, and six more movies


The Silent Partner (1978)

Here's a tidy, very enjoyable thriller you've probably never heard of, despite starring Elliott Gould, Christopher Plummer, and Susannah York.

"I'm just going to give you a little time to try to be reasonable.  If you decide you're not going to be reasonable, then one night when you come home you'll find me inside, waiting for you.  And that will be the night you'll wish you'd never been born."

THE
NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#151

Saturday,
March 11, 2023

Gould has completely switched off his ordinary charm and wit for this role, playing a nebbish bank teller named Miles Cullen, who's described by the woman he fancies as "less than the sum of his parts."

In a clever kickoff for the story, Miles quietly puts together some clues and sees that his bank is soon to be robbed. Armed with this advance knowledge, he decides to pilfer most of the money from his till himself, before the bad guy (Plummer) shows up with the gun.

Miles gets away with big bucks, unbeknownst to the bank, and the bank robber gets only small change. He's a mental mess, though, and instead of simply robbing another bank, he comes after Miles for revenge and the loot.

Written by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), and directed by Daryl Duke (Payday), with music by jazzman Oscar Peterson, it's close to perfect — a terrific heist and double-heist picture.

John Candy, pre-SCTV, plays another worker in Miles's bank, with no attempt to be funny.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Beer League (2006)

"Now coming to bat is Artie DeVanzo. Last season was a fine one for DeVanzo, he batted .420 with 45 RBIs. He enters today's game with a Blood Alcohol Content of 0.16, and if you kids are scoring at home, that is an impressive twice the legal limit."

Artie Lange, Ralph Macchio, and Seymour Cassel star in a comedy about slow-pitch softball.

When played by adults, the game is hard to take seriously. Many of the players are fat slobs, maybe smoking in the dugout, playing the lesser version of baseball because their talent ran out before their love for the game. The movie captures the vibe and camaraderie, sometimes even between teams, like when a guy hits a home run and gets a heartfelt "nice shot" comment from the opposing team's infielders as he's rounding the bases. 

I've seen thousands of slow-pitch softball games (used to be an umpire) and it's surprising how right the movie is about the game, but it gets a few things wrong. There's no bunting in slow-pitch, you can't bowl over the catcher at the plate, and while the game is often called "beer league" softball, you're not allowed to drink beer during the game. Many players do, of course, but it's against the rules and you need to cheat discretely. Playing first base with a beer in your hand? No, man — that'll get you ejected.

As for the non-softball parts of the movie, it all feels joyous and Jersey — seven innings of fun. it's about a feud between two teams, with the danger that Artie's team might be kicked out of the league for their perpetual misbehavior.

I only know Lange from MAD TV long ago, but he was funny there and he's funny here. His wisecracks are lowbrow but authentic, and Beer League never pretends that anything important is at stake.

And yup, that's Tina Fey working the reception desk.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Digging a new extension to the London subway system, workers discover a metal object blocking their way. Turns out it's a space ship from eons ago, and its grasshoppery inhabitants may have played an important role in the history and evolution of humanity.

Quatermass, so startlingly unlikable in the earlier Quatermass Xperiment, has been recast, and the new actor, alas, seems much warmer, somewhat dumber and more ordinary. Also, in the first film he was a renegade millionaire scientist, but now he's a government bureaucrat. He's an entirely different character with the same name, so this doesn't feel like a sequel.

The effects are dated and weren't much to begin with, but Quatermass and the Pit tells an interesting story that's genuinely unnerving. It's science fiction, absolutely, but also horror, with a great scene where a policeman walks with Quatermass around a creepy old house, as the cop tells about ghostly apparitions he's seen in the neighborhood, and what he's heard from other people about the area.

The movie asks interesting questions, and deals with the importance and sometimes the hubris of thinking logically and scientifically. It works as sci-fi, and as a mood piece, and all the elements are tied together in a thrilling climax.

Verdict: YES. Classic low-budget brainy goose bumps.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie (2010)

Born as Hugh Romney Jr, the man now known as Wavy Gravy later lived with Bob Dylan, worked with Tiny Tim, hung with Lenny Bruce, rode the bus with Ken Kesey, and started and still runs the Hog Farm commune.

In his younger years he was a folk singer and beat poet in Greenwich Village, and now he's five kinds of nuts in a chocolate fudge swirl for Ben & Jerry's. He invented his clown character and costume after being beaten by police at a protest, his logic being, cops wouldn't want to be photographed beating up a clown. 

"When you get to the very bottom of the human soul, where the nit is slamming into the grit, and you're sinking, you reach down to help someone that's sinking worse than you are."

Among the movie's many people talking about Wavy, there's Patch Adams, Dr Larry Brilliant, Jackson Browne, Ram Dass, The Grateful Dead, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Steven Ben Israel, Denise Kaufman, Tom Law, Odetta, Bonnie Raitt, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Wavy's wife since forever, Jahanara Romney, along with their son, Jordan.

The poor kid had to change his name after Mom & Pop idiotically named him Howdy Do-Good Gravy Tomahawk Truckstop Romney. Says Jordan: "The legal age you have to be to change your name is 13. I spent my 13th birthday in court." Now grown up, the former Howdy Do-Good says he works a straight job and has a traditional one-family home in Philadelphia, where, he says, "I don't have to share a wall with anyone else."

Other than inflicting that cruel name on his son, Mr Gravy comes off well in this documentary. He spends a lot of time in silly clothes, and if you have to wear clothes, why not silly? He's never particularly deep, or even political, but always seems to be kind, and by all accounts he really is.

One thing he's not is funny, which is an odd thing to say about someone who self-identifies as a clown. Still, you gotta love Wavy Gravy; it's required by lawlessness. 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Something Evil (1972)

Sandy Dennis and Darren McGavin buy a remote farm house, and it's possessed by demons or some such.

A good horror movie can be fun, but this isn't, and isn't. It was made for TV by very-young Steven Spielberg, and I've liked most of Spielberg's early stuff, but this is so lifeless you get the impression he wasn't even trying. 

Written by Robert Clouse (director of Enter the Dragon).

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦  

V for Vendetta (2006)

This was adapted from Alan Moore's graphic comics, though his name isn't in the credits. He was reportedly miffed that the setting was updated from the 1980s to 2006's present day, and maybe he had other complaints.

I've never read the original, so can't say how badly it's been bastardized, but what might've worked on the pages of a comic book gets completely overhauled in a big-budget Hollywood movie, with explosions and movie stars and soaring music and all.

V for Vendetta is set a dark future that looks like where the present is headed. Britain is a police state, imposing repressive curfews and "emergency" legislation, and controlling the media through Fox News-style bullshit shows. Expect no help from America, as we're told the situation is as bleak or bleaker in "the former United States."

Calling himself V, a mysterious masked freedom fighter stands alone against the oppression, and doesn't shy away from terrorism as a tactic. He's blown up the Old Bailey, and taken over the propaganda TV network to invite all of London to stand with him on the next Fifth of November, in front of the Parliament building where he promises a very special Guy Fawkes Day.

"You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it."

I saw this when it first came out, and found it too much, but still a good time. Watched it again yesterday, and I'll stand by my original assessment. Watched it a third time today, and still enjoyed it, but I'd be hard-pressed to explain what's going on through a lot of it.

It's fascinating to see a smidgen of my own politics on screen, but the movie is so enormous it's exhausting, and it's hard to get a grip on the whole story.

If there's an underlying message, it's that there's no real difference between terrorism and acts of state, and I don't disagree, or at least not enough to argue the point.

V seems unnecessarily cruel to his only friend, Evey (Natalie Portman), but there's no doubting the joy in watching them rouse the rabble, whether verbally or violently.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

The Wizard of Mars (1965)
a/k/a Horrors of the Red Planet

Four astronauts are on the first manned mission to Mars, but a storm screws up their best-laid plans, and they crash land. They wander the planet in desperate search of something interesting, a sense or humor, or their personalities, until they stumble upon John Carradine, who's the God of the Martians. 

If it sounds at all interesting, well, it's not as interesting as it sounds.

Based on a novel by L. Frank Baum. 

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Coming soon: 

Hamlet (1946)
Hamlet 2 (2008)
Ingrid Goes West (2017)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1974)
The Outlaw (1943)
The Red Balloon (1956)
Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

3/11/2023   

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:

Alter
Cineverse
Criterion
CultCinema Classics
DocsVille
Dust
Fandor
Films for Action
Hoopla
IHaveNoTV
IndieFlix
Internet Archive
Kanopy
KinoCult
Kino Lorber
Korean Classic Film
Christopher R Mihm
Mosfilm
Mubi
National Film Board of Canada
New Yorker Screening Room
Damon Packard
Mark Pirro
PizzaFlix
PopcornFlix
Public Domain Movies
RareFilmm
Scarecrow Video
Shudder
ThoughtMaybe
Timeless Classic Movies
VoleFlix
WatchDocumentaries
or your local library.

Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.

— — —
 
Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

 
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