Worst Prison Break Ever
Good Christ, is PRISON BREAK hurting for ways to stretch its gimmicky premise over a full 22-episode season? So desperate that it has to rip off LOST by showing us flashbacks to the characters' lives before they went to prison? Does anybody really care about the armed robbery that sent Sucre to the joint (he was doing it to buy his fickle girlfriend an engagement ring)? Does anyone really believe that the sexy young doctor used to be a morphine addict or that the evil prison guard once hit on her at an AA meeting? More shades of LOST in the scene that had a fleeing Lincoln bump into Sucre on the street. This series is implausible enough without making my disbelief stretch that far.

Of course, 24, as always, kicked ass. I can't say that the final shot surprised me very much--the Vice President seemed too much of an obvious red herring--although Logan's actions at first glance don't appear in retrospect to jibe with his role as the terrorists' orchestrator. We'll see how the 24 writers paint themselves out of this corner.

THE WEST WING's cliffhanger packed a helluva punch, even though we all knew it was coming. It's Election Day, and as the polls start to close, the Santos campaign staff discovers (off camera) the dead body of Vice Presidential candidate Leo McGarry. We've been waiting with dread for this moment ever since the death of actor John Spencer earlier this year, and next week's episode dealing with the late McGarry/Spencer should be an extraordinarily strong one. I think the series has only four or five more episodes to go.

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER, a consistently interesting HBO series, was stronger than usual this week, despite the presence of actor Seth Green on the panel. Green was unfunny and useless, adding nothing of substance to the discussion. The show did feature one of the series' strongest off-the-cuff moments, where Maher served California Representative Dana Rohrabacher. I was glad to see Maher press the issue with a member of Congress, since no professional journalist is doing it. You can see a bit of it here at Crooks and Liars. It runs less than a minute, but it completely demonstrates the rampant hypocrisy of so many sycophantic Washington Republicans. You know damn well that Rohrabacher doesn't believe a single word he's trying to stammer, but reciting the party line is more important to him than standing up for his true beliefs.

Oh, yeah. And fuck you, Tom DeLay.

Ridin' The Storm Out
I just spent 45 minutes in my basement, hiding from tornados. Central Illinois is a hotbed of twisters in the spring, and tonight we got hit by several of them. The tornado sirens went off just after 7:00pm, so I switched the TV over to the local NBC affiliate, which had pre-empted THE WEST WING for weather coverage. A tornado had been sighted near a small town very close to here, so I thought maybe I should seek shelter in the basement of this big ol' house (also, the National Weather Service was breaking into cable programming with an announcement that literally read, "Find shelter now to save your life!"). All my neighbors had the same idea as I, so we had a little social gathering in the basement, the neighbors and the dogs and the cats and the toddlers. I even got to see a vicious dogfight--always fun, even if I didn't get a bet down in time (just kidding, ASPCA!).

Spent much of the weekend near St. Louis. Chicken and I went down Saturday morning to watch the Final Four telecasts on my brother's 52-inch widescreen projection TV. The weather was nice there on Saturday afternoon, so we were able to grill chicken and hot dogs and hamburgers and get bloated on chicken and hot dogs and hamburgers and baked beans and cake and...well, you get it. The basketball games were dogs, unfortunately, but hopefully Florida and UCLA will make tomorrow's NCAA championship game something of a battle.

I was hoping to go out for awhile after the games, but instead we stayed in and introduced Chicken to MAGNUM, P.I. I'm embarrassed for him, but it's true--Chicken had never in his life seen one episode of MAGNUM, P.I. Pitiful, I know. But after showing him the pilot this weekend, I think he's now convinced of the kickassedness of Selleck and his show.

The coolest thing that happened this weekend, however, is this:

It's a gift from my friend Chris in Los Angeles. In case you can't see it very well, it's the 2-disc Special Edition DVD of PREDATOR, but what makes it unique is this:

It's autographed by Bill Duke! KICK FUCKING ASS!

Chris is working in post-production on X-MEN 3 at Fox, and Bill Duke is acting in the movie, so when their paths crossed, quick-thinking Chris scored a major coup. Bill Duke = major badass.

Good Company
Looks like Mark Evanier thinks along the same lines as I.

You Think It's An Epidemic Like The Flu?
Now Playing: TRUE CONFESSIONS
I don't watch crappy movies all the time. Occasionally I like to delve into something more, uh, conventional. Mature? Hmmmm. Well, at any rate, I caught a letterboxed print of TRUE CONFESSIONS on cable. Based on John Gregory Dunne's novel, TRUE CONFESSIONS (which is not yet on DVD) stars Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall as estranged brothers who become involved in the horrible murder of a so-called "party girl" during the 1940s. Duvall is a slightly crooked cop who investigates the murder, in which the victim was cut in two and dumped in an L.A. vacant lot (loosely based on the notorious Black Dahlia case). DeNiro is a monsignor whose ambition to move up in the Catholic hierarchy has led him to do favors for wealthy congregation members, such as Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), a former hood who now runs a successful construction business...successful because of the jobs building Catholic schools that DeNiro keeps throwing his way.

Even though the story is centered around a brutal murder, the movie isn't really about it, and if you're looking for an absorbing mystery, TRUE CONFESSIONS isn't the movie. It is, however, a great showcase for two of America's finest actors, at least at that time. Both DeNiro and Duvall have a tendency to either overact or sleepwalk through projects that don't interest them, but not in this case. They are marvelous in TRUE CONFESSIONS, particularly in a poignant final scene in which the brothers finally become closer than they have ever been. In addition to Durning, Ed Flanders, Burgess Meredith and Kenneth McMillan are quite good, and an actress named Rose Gregorio, of whom I know next to nothing, is superb as a middle-aged whore with whom Duvall has a history.

TRUE CONFESSIONS isn't a forgotten classic or anything like that. It's slow-moving and nowhere near as interested in its crime plot as I think it should be, but it's of some interest, especially if you're a fan of superlative screen acting.

And then I watched an episode of F TROOP that guest-starred Don Rickles as a rampaging Indian out to scalp the Fort Courage gang and got all that "quality" out of my system.

Don't Like Chicken On Sunday
I've got a lot of terrible movies in my collection, but I don't know if any of them are worse than SKIDOO, which is considered to be one of the worst films in the history of Hollywood. A notorious flop produced and directed by the great Otto Preminger, who not only made one of my favorite courtroom dramas, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, but also played Mr. Freeze on BATMAN, SKIDOO is an all-star abomination released by Paramount in 1968. Everything you've heard about it is true. I recently had a discussion with a friend who claimed that GIGLI was "not as bad as the critics made it out to be." Yes, it is, but SKIDOO is much, much worse. So if you're thinking, "Whatever, how bad can it be?", well, you've been warned.

SKIDOO was clearly intended to be a hip, "with-it" youth comedy, but it was unfortunately made by old squares who don't seem to have even met anyone under 30, much less ever been that young themselves. 52-year-old Jackie Gleason stars as Tony Banks, a former Mob assassin who retired from the organization seventeen years earlier when his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) was born to his wife Flo (the forever unappealing, unattractive and untalented Carol Channing). The same evening the conservative Tony meets his daughter's new boyfriend, hippie Stash (John Philip Law), his old business acquaintance Hechy (Cesar Romero) drops by with his son Angie (Frankie Avalon) with a proposition. Gangster "Blue Chips" Packard (Mickey Rooney) plans to testify against the head of the Syndicate, the mysterious germ-hating God (Groucho Marx), who orders Tony to infiltrate the prison where Packard is incarcerated and "kiss" him. That's right--Groucho plays God.

Instead of a linear story, SKIDOO consists of a series of increasingly absurd comic scenes that are unlike any other you've ever seen. Not that this makes them funny or entertaining, mind you, just jawdroppingly wild. For instance, Gleason's LSD trip, in which he lies on his prison bunk hallucinating Groucho's head rotating on a flying screw (!) and his cellmates shrunken to the size of a mouse and surrounded by a glowing pink pyramid. Or Groucho himself puffing on a joint. Or Channing's excruciatingly tasteless striptease (she was 47 at the time). Or Preminger's wildly inaccurate view of the hippie lifestyle. Handed an M rating by the MPAA, probably for its drug use and mild swearing, SKIDOO, like MYRA BRECKINRIDGE and HEAVEN'S GATE, lives up--or is that down--to its reputation by throwing so many sight gags and over-the-hill guest stars at the screen that, mathematically, some have to work. None do. Among them are the obviously British Peter Lawford as an American senator, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Frank Gorshin, Fred Clark, Richard Kiel, Austin Pendleton, Slim Pickens, Robert Donner, Michael Constantine, Arnold Stang and L.A. Ram Roman Gabriel.

Something that is very cool about SKIDOO--and really the only good thing about it--are its credits, which are sung by composer Harry Nilsson. I'm surprised no other movie (AFAIK) has ever done this. If you're able to sit through the first 93 excruciating minutes (and you're forgiven if you can't), the last four consist of Nilsson singing the titles, including the indicia, the copyright date (in Roman numeral form), and, of course, his own composition credit.

It's actually a catchy little tune, and such a good idea that you would think someone else would think of it for their movie. I have it as an mp3, but if you watch this trailer, you'll get to hear snippets of it. The trailer, which is "hosted" by Timothy Leary, is more entertaining than the feature anyway, and features most of its stars, including Sammy Davis Jr. (who isn't even in the movie).

Nimoy Lives Long And Prospers
Happy birthday to Leonard Nimoy, who turns 75 today, meaning he's exactly four days younger than his STAR TREK co-star William Shatner. What are the odds on that?

Sure, I could write here about Nimoy's Emmy nominations or his critical accolades as a film director or his stage successes or his touching death scene in WRATH OF KHAN. But...this is funnier:

Big TV
The last two days have been oddly stressful, but I think everything has been (mostly) taken care of. Props to Chicken for going for beyond the normal call to help out; I wouldn't have been able to get as much done as quickly without him.

I got a "new" larger TV Wednesday night. Some co-workers got a new plasma and asked if I wanted their old (1997) 36-incher, as opposed to the old (1997) 27-incher I have now. Holy crap, that thing is heavy, and we needed a last-minute assist from Moto to get it up my stairs.

Then, I had to get a new entertainment center, because mine would only fit a 27-incher. Here I had some luck, in that I was trying to figure out how to get rid of it. I asked the downstairs neighbors if they wanted it, and couldn't believe it when they said, "Mmmm, yeah, we do need one, we were just going to buy one." So Chicken and I moved it downstairs, which was not difficult.

The two of us then went to Meijer (after dropping off an orange at Kristin's so she could drink beer...I don't know, just go with it...) to buy my new entertainment center for the 36-incher. This is where my stupidity/bad luck jumped in, because even though I had (I thought) carefully measured all my components that would have to fit into this entertainment center--receiver, DVD recorder, cable box, DVD player, VCR--after I bought it, brought it home, and assembled it (with more much-needed Chicken help), the two larger items (cable box, DVD recorder) were too wide to fit into it. I knew it would be snug, but I could have sworn they would fit. Unless the display model is a different size? Ahhh, I don't know.

So, for the time being, I moved a table into the living room with those components resting on it, but I think that if I get a small table or maybe even a small entertainment center, I can move it next to the other one and it will look/function okay. Or even what they call a "video/audio" tower.

Bottom line: I now have a 36-inch TV (which is somewhat ridiculous in its very small room), which will come in handy watching blurry dubs of Kilink movies and old episodes of THE RAT PATROL. At least I finally got everything plugged into it, and it all seems to function. One thing I did--does anyone else do this?--is label each of the cables and wires when I unhooked them, so I would know what they plugged into when I put them into the new entertainment center. Kinda dorky perhaps, but I'm really not very good with electronics, and it sure helped me.

College Sophomore Serves Dubya
This clip was taken from THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN:



I guess George didn't read the newspaper that day.

Here is his entire hilarious bullshit response. Feel free to either laugh or cry. Both are appropriate responses.

"Actually, I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren't going to be cut off the program. We're just making sure it works better as part of the reconciliation package I think she's talking about? Yeah ? It is a form of the program to make sure it functions better. In other words, we're not taking people off student loans. We're saving money in the student loan program because it's inefficient. So I think the thing to look at is whether or not there will be fewer people getting student loans. I don't think so.

Secondly, on Pell grants, we are actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget. Great question. The key on education is to make sure that we stay focused on how do we stay competitive into the 21st century, and I plan on doing some talking about math and science and engineering programs so that people who graduate out of college will have the skills necessary to compete in this competitive world. But I think I'm right on this. I will check when I get back to Washington, but thank you for your question."

Yeah, I bet he got right on that as soon as he got back.

Why Isn't Today A National Holiday?
The World's Greatest Living Actor, the one and only William Shatner, turned 75 years old today and God bless him. I'm an unabashed Shatner fan and have been ever since I was about 11 years old and started watching STAR TREK rabidly. You can laugh if you want, but I learned a lot about friendship, honor, loyalty, professionalism, justice and duty from watching Shatner's Captain Kirk. I never quite mastered that two-fisted neck chop though.

I only wish those who dismiss Shatner as a "bad" actor took the time to really pay attention to his best stuff. The two TWILIGHT ZONE episodes, the Roger Corman film THE INTRUDER (perhaps the best movie Corman ever directed, and certainly Corman's personal favorite), the two-part STUDIO ONE episode with Steve McQueen that spawned THE DEFENDERS, and STAR TREK episodes like "City on the Edge of Forever", where he fell in love tragically with the doomed Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), "Obsession", "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Metamorphosis" and many more. I think Shatner's work in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN is among the best acting I've ever seen in a science fiction movie (it helps that Montalban and Nimoy are so great in it too).

And, yeah, I love the crap too. PRAY FOR THE WILDCATS, where Shatner, Robert Reed and Marjoe Gortner go off on a cross-country motorcycle trip with murderous pervert psychopath rape killer Andy Griffith. IMPULSE, where Shatner plays a sweaty gigolo serial killer. I own the DVDs of T.J. HOOKER, where his determined portrayal of a scum-hating conservative cop definitely walked the line between sincerity and parody.

However, I have no rational explanation for this video. I simply stare at it in awe and marvel that I live in a world where this could exist.

People Start Pollution
Now Playing: NIGHTFORCE
You may have noticed that my blog entries have been shorter lately. I'm just experimenting a little bit to see how that works. Or maybe I'm just lazy, I don't know. I rarely receive any comments, so I have no idea who's reading this blog (if anybody) on a regular basis or what's popular and what isn't. I know Cheeseburger thinks my blog is "boring," and I suspect 1000-word treatises on 35-year-old TV shows like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE are being soundly ignored.

I don't plan on posting many videos, since I suspect they take up a lot of bandwidth, but I spent a couple of hours doodling around YouTube last night, and found a few things to share. I have to give Chicken credit for watching the entire KIDS FROM C.A.P.E.R. title sequence, which I'm sure looked to him like a Japanese game show or something ("What the fuck, kids used to watch this? On purpose?" Yes, yes, we did...).

The following video I'm sure you've all seen a zillion times. It's likely the most famous public service announcement ever made, and used to air constantly on late-night television.



Some points of note:
* I think the music is hilariously over-the-top. I'm sure it's a library cue that someone pulled off an old record, and I'd love to know what it is. DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! It sounds like a dune buggy chase on MANNIX or something.

* Iron Eyes Cody, the actor playing the Indian, was actually not a Native American, but rather an Italian-American. He played a shitload of Indians in movies and TV shows going back to the 1930s, and even pretended to be an Indian most of his adult life, I suppose to get acting gigs. He even married an Indian woman and adopted Indian children.

* You probably recognize the narrator as radio star (he played Matt Dillon on GUNSMOKE), voiceover artist extraordinare and occasional film and TV actor William Conrad. Blessed with one of the world's great voices, Conrad narrated several TV title sequences, including THE FUGITIVE and Glen A. Larson's BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY and THE HIGHWAYMAN. I can't believe he didn't do Larson's KNIGHT RIDER. At the time this PSA was popular, Conrad was the star of the CBS detective series CANNON, a well-produced and written Quinn Martin show. CANNON was a very good program, and maybe I'll write about it someday.

* This clip first aired in 1971. It was parodied in 1993's WAYNE'S WORLD 2.