If I Were A - What The F Is This?

I woke up with this song in my head. This is not what I expected to find on the youtube.

God Bless, Blossom Dearie. You're inspiring a whole new generation.

I Cannot Turn A Blind Eye To This Pun

Oh no you didn't, NYP!

Sepia Town!

Know what's awesome? This website here.

It's all user-submitted vintage photographs, helpfully aligned on a map. It's a little clunky, but well worth the visit.

Here's the closest one I could find to my house:

Here's where Kevin & Diana live, sort of:

Here's another one near me:

This is the closest one I could find to Jonathan in Brooklyn, near the 7th Ave B/Q stop. That sure looks scary.

Sorry Amber, they didn't really have any up by you.

Snow Day = Internet Research!

Snowpocalypse!

L M N O Pee My Pants!

Jesus Maria. I bet if I had seen this in my youth, I would have been scared into illiteracy. James Earl Jones & Sesame Street - a match not made in Heaven.

These Ponies Deserve Tonys (Get it?)

I mean, the internet is AWESOME.

These People Are Having A Worse Day Than Any Of Us

Seriously?

Oh, and they're not due in port until FRIDAY.

A Meme, Or 3, A Day

I mean, there's this:

Or this:

Or really, this:

Some people have TIME!

Live Blogging! Awesome Club is Extra Awesome Tonight.

Shelley-Shocked; or, Water for Winters

In honor of tonight's Awesome Club movie selection, here's Shelley Winters in all her finest. Remember when Johnny Carson was on TV? And the previous guests would stay to sit on the couch when the new one came out? And British people could go on an American talk show and say Women's Lib was a mistake?

This gets a little long, but it's worth it. Make sure to watch the whole thing - you think she's gone, but she ain't.

God Bless you, Shelley Winters.

Cavity Creeps! Watch out, Toothopolis!

Thanks, Gawker, for putting together this collection of 80s TV commercials. All my Nostalgia Buttons were tickled simultaneous, or whatever.

Remember My Buddy? Terrified me. IRONY


Teddy Ruxpin was pretty scary too, but that lil' kid was soooooo cute. Why was the narrator (pronounced nar-RAT-er) British?


For at least ten years, my dad woke me up with this line.


Ooh ooh! The Cavity Creeps? Does anyone else find this one a little phallic around the 17 second mark? Or am I just a big perv?


They've got more on the site, including that lady that fell down and couldn't get up and the Flintstones. Thanks, Internets.

Live Blogging! Monday Morning Puss

Farley & Crisises, of Marie's

So the other night I watched Side Street, a sort of companion movie to They Live By Night. Companion movie in that both star Farley Granger & Cathy O'Donnell, both are tragic noir love stories, and both are made by directors I adore - TLbN by Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar) and Side Street by Anthony Mann (Winchester '73).

In his memoir Farley talks about being excited to make Side Street because he got to reunite with O'Donnell, and the location shoot in New York gave him a reason to leave LA for a while, where he was smarting over Shelley Winters cheating on him with Burt Lancaster.

I appreciated the usual film noir things in Side Street; shadows, femme fatale (Jean Hagen, singing here but not in the rain). I also appreciated all the location shots - many of which were apparently filmed around the Third Avenue El, which doesn't exist so much anymore. It also features one of the best of the early car chase scenes, impressive overall and certainly in light of the limitations in cinematography at the time.

I liked knowing, also from Farley's book, that during the filming he was rebounding from Shelley by having an affair with Leonard Bernstein. Excellent.

Anyway, this quick scene caught my eye towards the end. He's hunting down Jean Hagen, a cabaret singer, and goes in and out of a bunch of dive bars in the village. This one still stands, and sure is popular with the gays who like to sing around a piano.

God Bless you, Farley Granger. You are the gift that keeps on giving.

Me-OW!

Today has been a dilly!

Anyway, as my friend Brian said, Holy Crap I Want Some Of This Cat Food:

Two More Things

Not so long ago, a chum and I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I hadn't seen it in a few years, and it knocked me out, of course. Who doesn't like to play Hump The Hostess, or Get The Guests? Also, I had forgotten it was a Mike Nichols movie, and his first one at that.

Anyway, I thought the movie poster & tagline was pretty clever:

And then? I thought this OTHER Mike Nichols movie poster & tagline was pretty clever too. Who wouldn't want to see this?

I only wish that one also starred Dame Elizabeth Taylor and Sir Richard Burton.

Two Things, Times Two

Sorry It's Belated, We Were All Tied Up

Happy Belated Valentine's Day, from me & Barbara Stanwyck.

I love you, Television Programs.

A Small, Yet Creepy Wonder

Dudes. Remember this?

Amazon kindly alerted me to its upcoming availability.
I'm not sure if I should be excited or terrified.

A Canadian friend of mine admitted she had never heard of this program. WTF, Foreigner?

Whenever I meet a stutterer, I flash back to the episode where Vicki The [Freakishly Strong] Robot cured that little girl of her stuttering by administering an electric shock each time she couldn't get a word out. I think I mention this memory to my friend Shelley, a speech therapist, every time I see her. She swears this is not condoned by her profession.

I learned through the internet that other than guest spots on other late 80s sitcoms, it doesn't seem like the cast went on to much after the show. The little boy though did star in something called Policewoman Centerfold, for whatever that's worth.

Maybe this year for Halloween I can go as Vicki The Robot:

I dunno. I don't think I'll be rushing out to get this, but I may watch an episode or two from Netflix, with my hands over my eyes, just in case.

Here's the opening credits, in all their creepiness:



And here? Here's a collection some smart buddy put together of the 'gayest' moments from the program. It's a bit silly, but well done, and a nice review of all the characters at least.

Anyway, I'm gonna sleep with the lights on tonight.

Live Blogging! This Does NOT Sound Tasty

Bloody Winters!

Wow. Wanna be really, really uncomfortable? Have some friends over for Awesome Club Movie Night and watch Bloody Mama, Roger Corman's 1970 exploitation movie starring two-time Academy Award Winner Miss Shelley Winters as Ma Barker. It's like Myra Breckinridge, only much much worse.
The horrors start in the first five minutes. We see a young Shelley being brutalized by her brothers and fathers (in X-Files meets Mackenzie Phillips fashion). In voiceover she swears she'll grow up and raise all boys, and have them do everything for her, her own army.
Flash foward and we're in the middle of the Great Depression, and she and her sons - including young Robert DeNiro - do exactly that. They drive across country robbing banks and killing people. In one scene, they rob a bank, take hostages, and have the hostages - old ladies - stand on the running board of the car as human shields. Inexplicably, the cops chase after them, shooting. Also inexplicably, they drive past a modern shopping mall, but no matter.

The best part of that scene is when they bust into the bank and the two-time Academy Award winner fires her machine gun and yells "everybody reach for the nightgown of the Lord!" I'm going to use that line as much as possible.

One of her sons gets caught and thrown in prison. In there, he gets R'd by his cell mate. Later, they break out together and become boyfriends. Later still, after Shelley has slept with all of her sons, she sleeps with this son's boyfriend. Oh, and that's Bruce Dern.

Eventually, there's a big bloody shoot-out. Sometime before that, smack-addicted Robert DeNiro picks up a girl that Shelley eventually drowns in a tub. Here's one of the more light hearted scenes, where she consoles him and all her sons by leading a rousing rendition of the World War 1 peace song, "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier." I'm not kidding.



God Bless you, Shelley Winters. And God Help Us All.

Also? Mildred Pap

The Polish Connection

Remember how back a ways I made a post about funny foreigner movie posters? Some buddy put up a whole bunch of new ones, all from Poland. Well, some of them I had put in my other post, but most are new.

I like their take on Tootsie. Kinda literal, less comical.

Speaking of literal, this did actually happen in The Fly, so I guess it makes sense for the poster.
Also speaking of literal, this is NOT a literal interpretaion of Terms of Endearment, near as I can remember. Huh.
Short Circuit 2! Number 5 is Alive!
Rosemary's Baby. Evocative.
Not my recollection of what the Luck Dragon looked like, or of Bastian for that matter. But now I have the Limahl song in my head, which is nice.

Why is Harry & The Hendersons so popular with foreigners, I wonder?
Hee hee. Gremlins.
Crocodile Dundee 2 looks a lot more avant-garde this way. Also? Paul Hogan shares the same birthday as me and Sarah.
And now, off for some pierogies.

Farley & Bottoms

What a beautiful, sad movie They Live By Night is.


Farley wrote very fondly of it in his memoirs; of the film itself, of his co-star Cathy O'Donnell, of the director, Nicholas Ray - who directed two of my other favorite movies, Rebel Without A Cause of course but also Johnny Guitar. It's a beautiful, tragic, well-crafted film. Hitchcock had seen a screening of it, which is why he chose to cast Farley in Rope.

Anyway, I'm 14 years old. Roll tape:



This boy, and this girl...were never properly introduced to the world we live in.

Is This A Question For Wardrobe, Hairstyle, or Rhoda Morgenstern?

Wait, really?

This is like adding chocolate to peanut butter, CRD style.

Here's some more facts -

All I know is, I think I have to see this. In the meantime, I'm going to brush up on this big Tallulah bio I picked up a few years back.


And now, I'm off to preorder tickets.

A Raw Pearl & A Honey of a Carol

I'm a little surprised I haven't blogged about this yet.


A few months ago I stumbled across this at the NYPL. I have to say, it is the most amazing hour of television I have ever seen. I mean, it's Carol Freakin' Channing and Pearl F'ing Bailey, on Broadway, together.

The two buddies had each starred in Hello Dolly - Carol originating the role, then a few years later Pearl headlining an all-black revival. And then of course, Ms. Streisand was in the movie version. Here they are together with some Jerry Herman, one of the writers of Hello Dolly:
And here they are drinking demitasse (that's French for coffee):


In Carol Channing & Pearl Bailey on Broadway they run through a bunch of greatness together and apart - songs from Guys & Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof (What, you never saw Carol play Tevye?), Pearl nails '76 Trombones,' Carol does her Dietrich impersonation, and the banter is a delight.


I dunno. There's no way to really do it justice unless I eventually show all the clips here. Instead, I think I'll just go watch it one more time.


Here's the first eight minutes or so. Is it a long-ish clip? Yes. Have I watched the whole program about a dozen times already? Yes. Enjoy. Oh, and I will forever pronounce the word 'autobiography' in the Carol Channing Way.