Mom

Mom just called to tell me that an asteroid will be hitting the earth in 2036.

Lovable Old Cuss

Sometimes I think twitter is okay, usually when it is Maud Newton doing the twittering. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! See, I pretended not to know it's called "tweeting" because that makes me seem like a lovable old cuss! Speaking of lovable old cusses, it is thanks to Maud Newton's tweeting that I found out about a somewhat ornery and charming little discussion Larry McMurtry had about TRUE GRIT in its various manifestations. He doesn't seem to like the novel too much, which strikes me as pretty crazy, but he's a grown man and that's really none of my business! My favorite part is when Mr. McMurtry objects to a character who communicates by gobbling like a turkey: "It’s a cliché. There are too many films where a character gobbles." And his friend asks, "What films?" And Larry McMurtry abruptly changes the subject! I just love it for some reason.

Evil Piñata Movie

In case you're interested, there's a movie on RIGHT NOW about an evil piñata. It stars Jaime Pressley and the guy from the TV show BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Here is some dialogue: "I saw those footprints. They had hooves. Legend says that the piñata has hooves and the actual heart of a pig." Then somebody else says, "Does the legend say anything about it coming to life?" Then the guy from BUFFY looks reflective and says, "Not that I recall." And Jaime Pressley says, "Then how do you explain that?" So I infer that at this point in the movie the piñata has already come to life, but Jaime Pressley sounds pretty calm about it! In fact, everybody seems strangely nonchalant. They're chatting! That's what they're doing: sitting around a campfire casually chatting. And then somebody else says, "When we broke it open we could hear the cries and suffering of a whole village. That's exactly what it sounded like." In case you're interested!

Doppelganger Country

I am rereading COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER by Loretta Lynn before teaching it to some graduate students, or as they are sometimes called by the more whimsical and capricious among us, "grad students." Last time I mentioned the book, I told you about a UFO in it. Well, get this! I guess I forgot it also has a doppelganger in it, or as I like to call it, a doppelgänger. Thank goodness for the "blog" someone on the "internet" had the foresight to produce an illustration of the very alive Ms. Lynn looking like a ghost for no reason! Our scene begins as young Loretta is playing a Halloween prank: "We were rubbing soap on the windows of Tillie Dollarhide, who lived just up the holler. I could see her working in the kitchen. Suddenly I looked down in the yard and saw that same woman walking by some rocks in her garden."

Bob Hope's Personal Valet

Well, this story in the New York Times isn't funny, because there's a guy out of work. But there are lots of interesting parts. Did you know, for example, that there is something called "Pretty Woman Syndrome"? The movie PRETTY WOMAN made "some shoppers hesitant to enter upscale stores, afraid of being humiliated by snooty sales clerks." So they hired this guy to stand on the sidewalk in Beverly Hills and shout encouragement to people! Now they've let him go. But here's the main thing: he used to be Bob Hope's personal valet! I think someone will give him a new job. He seems to have a lot of spirit.

Bieber!

This Justin Bieber article is filled with amazing quotations! "Yesterday he punched me in the stomach and he said, 'You’re a beast.' In Justin’s world, that means, 'You are amazing and thank you very much.' So I take that." Wow!

Scooter!

I just found out from the New York Times that Justin Bieber's manager is named Scooter! Why didn't I know this already? Scooter!

Jack's Daily Movie Guide For Insomniacs

Here is the part where I tell you about how I couldn't sleep and what movies happened to be on TV when I couldn't sleep. I know you don't care! But did you ever think about the fact that I don't care that you don't care? Because I don't care. I have never seen GOOD WILL HUNTING. Nothing against it! It just slipped through the cracks for me somehow. So I saw the end of it last night when I couldn't sleep, and I must say it is shot something like a horror movie. When I came in, there was Robin Williams sitting at his desk, writing something on a piece of paper. He turned his back on Matt Damon to do so. Then Matt Damon rose and LOOMED BEHIND HIM. I knew better, but if I hadn't known better, I might have thought that Matt Damon was going to sneak up on Robin Williams and do something horrible to him. They hugged instead. Some friend of Robin Williams came to visit him at his office, and there was a similarly weird vibe. I don't know, the way it was shot as they walked off together, you had the feeling that only one of them was going to come back alive. Maybe it was the way his friend kind of laughed like a maniac barely holding it together earlier in the scene. Or the way they are framed as they depart: I think we end up seeing just their shoes, which feels ominous for some reason. Or maybe I was in a bad mood! Maybe this says more about me than it does about them! There was also a scene of Ben Affleck knocking on the door of a mysteriously quiet house and peering through the windows in a way that usually suggests in a movie that there is a dead body to be discovered inside. But there wasn't. And then Matt Damon spies on Robin Williams through his window in a manner suggestive of both VERTIGO and PSYCHO (the latter of which GOOD WILL HUNTING director Gus van Sant later remade, of course)! I reemphasize: GOOD WILL HUNTING is not a horror movie. It seems to be a "feel-good movie." When it was over, I flipped to MR. SATURDAY NIGHT, which is structured like so: David Paymer (for example) stares into the window of a diner (for example). Then there is a 20-minute flashback. Then we cut back to David Paymer still staring through the diner window, which erroneously gives the viewer the distinct feeling that David Paymer has been standing there like a statue for 20 minutes, just staring and staring with a certain blank intensity which would certainly be unsettling for the patrons of the diner. MR. SATURDAY NIGHT did what hardly any other movie has ever done: made me feel like getting back into bed! So I did. I didn't even make it to the Jerry Lewis cameo! Luckily for me, Kent Osborne drew a version of MR. SATURDAY NIGHT over on that place where he draws movies. Above is one of Kent's drawings of MR. SATURDAY NIGHT.

Famous Sausage & Peppers

Thanks to our friend Joey who supplied certain exotic ingredients from a faraway land (Memphis) I was able to make my famous sausage and peppers tonight, as famously seen on Maud Newton's "blog." Looking back, I notice some mistakes in the recipe as originally recorded for posterity. 1) Don't let the garlic get brown and bitter! Are you crazy? Add it AFTER the peppers and onions, and let it get a deep golden color, but not brown. 2) Yes, ALWAYS add dried basil after you add the tomatoes. 3) Put some sugar in there, too! People like sugar. 4) Kelly Hogan is the one who told me to scrape the brown bits off the inside of the pot into the sauce. Why didn't I give her credit?

It All Makes Sense!

Wait! I recently watched a movie called DOPPELGANGER. Meanwhile, Kent Osborne reports on the existence of TWO Mike Henrys in town during the filming of GHOST STORY, which, like DOPPELGANGER, features a gooey skeleton! That makes TWO Mike Henrys and TWO gooey skeletons! Stay with me. Mike Henry played Jackie Gleason's son in the Smokey and the Bandit films, as Kent points out. Barry B. has made the observation that in Smokey and the Bandit II - note the TWO! - Jackie Gleason plays his original character's TWO brothers... to quote Barry B., "One looked and acted like Rip Taylor and the other was a singing mountie." NOW! What about the conspiracy theorist who has been quoted on the "blog" as asking why Lindsay Lohan is "in so many movies where she is either a twin, plays 2 people or switches personalities"? Lindsay Lohan, like Drew Barrymore (star of DOPPELGANGER) started out as a child star. Charlie Sheen, who has been suffering problems similar to Ms. Lohan's (and formerly, Ms. Barrymore's!), is on a show entitled TWO and a Half Men. COINCIDENCE? Then HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS? Just recently, the "blog" noted the deaths of TWO MEN NAMED CHARLIE, one of whom was on a TV show called SWITCH, which shared its name with a MOVIE ABOUT PEOPLE SWITCHING PERSONALITIES (as first noted in a "post" about a movie with the DOUBLE name AUTHOR! AUTHOR!)! That's right, TWO entertainment products called SWITCH, alluded to in a "post" about a movie with a DOUBLED title. The first time Kent and his brother Mark went to the Cannes film festival, they sent me a video of someone they called "Le Jack": a French accordion player (LIKE ME!) with MY ANNOYING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND MANNERISMS. I can't show you that video because IT HAS DISAPPEARED! And HOLY COW I just had to come back and edit this "post" because I just remembered that Craig Wasson plays TWINS in GHOST STORY, plus he was the star of the movie BODY DOUBLE, which comes DIRECTLY BEFORE the DOUBLY titled BOEING BOEING in the alphabetical list of movies that have been mentioned on this "blog"! It all makes sense, people! It's right in front of your faces and YOU REFUSE TO SEE IT! There are some kind of global shenanigans going on, and the "blog" is being set up to take the fall!

The Two Mike Henrys

Kent Osborne confirms that GHOST STORY was shot in his hometown when he was a kid, yet his story only adds to the swirl of mystery surrounding our strange human brains with their ephemeral memories or whatever all these "posts" have been about, but probably that. Kent writes: "I did meet Fred Astaire, Patricia Neal, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, AND John Houseman, but at the time, I didn't know who they were so my mom was more excited than I was. I also remember meeting Mike Henry, who played Jackie Gleason's son, Junior, in the Smokey and the Bandit movies and I was REALLY excited to meet him. I remember asking if he ever got his fly zipped up (a reference to the first Smokey and the Bandit). Anyway, I always thought he was a producer on Ghost Story, but I just checked IMDB and the Mike Henry who played Junior wasn't involved with Ghost Story. There is however, ANOTHER Mike Henry, who worked as a production assistant, so now I'm really confused. There are two Mike Henrys? And both of them were in Woodstock, Vermont, during the shooting of Ghost Story? That's really weird, right? Anyway, that's my Ghost Story story!"

Disillusionment

Wow, this book is falling apart, just like me. It's a paperback from 1981 (coincidentally, the same year GHOST STORY - mentioned in the previous "post" - came out. Also in that previous "post," the Paul Schrader incident that this book corroborates). It's called THE CRAFT OF THE SCREENWRITER by John Brady. In it, Brady interviews several successful screenwriters, including Schrader. Man, this book is falling apart. It's in pieces. I guess that proves it! Computers are great and books are terrible, just like everybody says. On the other hand, I have lots of other books from 1981 that are in perfectly fine condition. Did I read this one a lot? Maybe, on the evidence that I recall the Schrader incident so vividly. But it looks like the real problem is some extremely cheap glue that failed to act as binding. Get your act together, Simon and Schuster! The important thing is that I was right: Schrader recalls sneaking in to see THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR "with a couple of friends. We were all quite disappointed. There was nothing nearly as sinful as we had been led to believe." Such disillusionment! Maybe that's why in the next paragraph he says, "I don't see movies as anything special... How can you believe in movies any more than you believe in the telephone? It's a tool that you can use. Also, when other kids were sitting in darkened theaters being fed pablum, I was reading and engaged in more stimulating pursuits." Well, la-di-da for you, Paul Schrader!

Ghost Story

Up before dawn again! Watching GHOST STORY on one of the movie channels! GHOST STORY, I am almost certain, was the first R-rated movie I ever saw in a theater. And how happy I must have been to discover that it fulfilled all my boyish expectations of R-ratedness: the ghost (pictured) really likes to take off her clothes A LOT! If I am recalling something I read a million years ago correctly, Paul Schrader (whom Dr. Theresa and Megan Abbott discuss in their recent interview) had a strict religious upbringing that disallowed movie watching. And one day he slipped away to go to the movies and see what all the fuss was about. (Please note, I am telling this story from what I laughingly call "memory" and may have several details wrong. Maybe I will double check the facts for you later. Or maybe I won't! This is the "internet"!) I want to say that Schrader ended up going to see the Disney film THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR and found himself sad - maybe even angry? - about its pervasive inoffensiveness. So I am sorry he did not have my GHOST STORY experience. But also: he is crazy! Fred MacMurray has a FLYING CAR in that movie! And he puts this stuff (flubber) on the soles of people's shoes and they can JUMP REALLY HIGH! And Keenan Wynn plays the classic Disney villain Alonzo P. Hawk. Learn to relax and enjoy yourself, Paul Schrader! Treat yourself to some popcorn and Milk Duds! And now let us return our attention to GHOST STORY. Like all movies I have been watching lately, it has a gooey skeleton in it. I also want to say that GHOST STORY was filmed in Kent Osborne's hometown in Vermont. I seem to recall that he told me a funny story from his childhood about that. I'll let you know if he reminds me! Finally, GHOST STORY stars Fred Astaire, which makes me so old that I went to see a Fred Astaire movie when it opened at the theater.

Ice Cube, Part Three

I haven't finished watching that Jimmy Fallon interview with Ice Cube, sorry! BUT when I got home from teaching yesterday, Ice Cube's movie TRESPASS was on one of the movie channels as if to remind me of my neglect. I am ashamed to say I fell asleep on the couch while it was on! I don't blame TRESPASS. I blame all the giving I do with the teaching and learning.

Ice Cube, Part Two

When I phoned McNeil to tell him about my Ice Cube "post," can you guess what he was doing? That's right: listening to Ice Cube! I like to keep you informed.

Ice Cube, Part One

You know about McNeil and how he loves Ice Cube so much. Well, late last night it came to my attention that Ice Cube was going to be a guest on the television program of young Jimmy Fallon, a show I have never seen before. The news sent me scampering for the dvr, for I knew that McNeil would not be up to watch the Jimmy Fallon program either, no, at that time of night McNeil wanders up and down the stairway in a nightcap, with a sputtering candelabra held aloft, in a deep slumber, unaware of his surroundings, moaning to himself. So now I am fast-forwarding through the Jimmy Fallon show to see what Ice Cube has to say for himself these days, because I know McNeil will want to know. Is "fast-forwarding" still a word the kids use? Maybe I am "shuttling." When Ice Cube came out, he immediately started talking about snow, and he talked about snow A LOT, and I found that significant because the last time I "blogged" about him I also "blogged" about snow. Significant! Then Ice Cube gave Jimmy Fallon his pastrami sandwich recipe, and I decided to stop the dvr and come in here and give you part one of my report.

Patty and Doris

I don't know what it looks like on your computer, because I don't understand computers, but on my computer I have lined up that last "post" so that it appears Doris Day and Patricia Hearst are staring at each other across a gulf of words, and both of them are saying, "Hmmmmmmmm?" I'm very proud of myself. Kind of reminds me of this.

Interview with the Dr.

Hey, look at this! It's an interview that Megan Abbott did with Dr. Theresa. They talk about Patricia Hearst and Doris Day, natch!

Big Doings at the Shoe Factory

Watching the shoe factory show. Here are some lines of dialogue from tonight's episode: "He's got it all figured out." - "Got what figured out?" - "Shoes."

Doppelganger!

Should I tell you about a Drew Barrymore movie called DOPPELGANGER? I probably should not. I know I am always giving you "spoiler alerts" and ha ha ha, isn't that cute? But to properly tell you about DOPPELGANGER I would be obliged to use nothing but spoilers all the time, real ones that will ruin the movie for you. Okay, I am going to do it! So don't read this! So Drew Barrymore is being followed around by a doppelganger, or as I like to call it, a doppelgänger. There is a cat in the movie, so right away you know something bad is going to happen to the cat. That's the one thing I can't stand about movies like this! Any time there is a cat, you are like, "Oh well. Too bad for that cat." And then you have to close your eyes during the dramatic scene when they come around a corner and discover that something bad has happened to the cat. DOPPELGANGER makes it over an hour before something bad happens to the cat, long enough for you to think, "Hey! Maybe that cat is going to be okay." But your thought on the matter would be incorrect. There is a kind of Scooby Doo ending in which we find out there is a logical explanation for all the mumbo jumbo that has been going on. It's what I might also call a Brian De Palma ending, in that the "logical explanation" is like a crazy parody of logical explanations in movies, and there are lots of rubber masks involved, bringing it back to Scooby Doo. BUT THAT'S NOT REALLY THE ENDING! After the "logical explanation" ending - I am serious, DON'T READ THIS! - Drew Barrymore suddenly turns into what seems at first like a worm! Or maybe it's the monster from the movie THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE. May I emphasize that this comes out of nowhere? The "worm" is really a kind of cocoon, out of which pop two extremely tall skeleton-like creatures. Stay with me! One of the tall, gooey skeletons (with whiskers or tentacles or something dangling from its chin) slaps the other one down onto the couch, and the latter skeleton creature just lies on the couch for the remainder of the scene. Skeleton creature #1 proceeds to take care of business! She swats the bad guy through a stained glass window. He flies through the air and is impaled on an iron fence, of course. I had to tell somebody. There had been a lot of green light and red light and blue light in the movie which made me think somebody was going for a Mario Bava sort of feeling, and when the bad guy landed on the fence I took that as confirmation. There is also a creepy music box. And to conclude, I present you with the almost touching detail that when people in this movie are afraid the doppelganger is going to get them, they most often choose to defend themselves with a baseball bat! Like a baseball bat is any match for a dopplelganger. (Pictured: Drew Barrymore's boyfriend's wisecracking sassy best friend finds a knife in a bunch of green light in DOPPELGANGER.)