Feats Of Strength
I'm writing now, because I'm going into work a half-hour later today. It's okay--the boss knows...and I still might get there before he does. That's no slam. He was with us last night.

Last night, Chicken, Grady, Kellner, LD and I gathered at Moto's to move gigantic chunks of wood with our bare hands. It was sort of like a prison exercise, like George Kennedy made Newman do in COOL HAND LUKE. Moto had chopped down a huge tree in his back yard and cut it into pieces (well, more accurately, had it done), and we had to load the pieces into a truck and unload them out at the Kellner compound. This took two trips of lifting, carrying, dropping, etc. and involved much heaving and cursing. It really wasn't as bad as all that, I suppose. There was good teamwork, not much bitching. I have a few small scratches and scrapes on my arms; I was smart enough to wear gloves, but next time I'll do long sleeves. And the Motos grilled up a ton of burgers, dogs and brats, of which I had way too much (as was obvious when I had to leap out of bed and onto the growler at 3:15 this morning), but it was good stuff, Maynard. And, hey, I admit, it was good for me to do a bit of exercise too. Last night was fun, all things considered. I didn't get home 'til after 11:00 though. Took a shower, read a bit, and hit the hay. Had the windows open. It was good sleeping weather.

I forgot to tell you about the amazingly shitty movies Kevin (my B-Fest compadre) made me watch Sunday night. He brought over a bunch of tapes he had picked up at his local Family Video for $2 each or something like that. One was MULE FEATHERS, which is about as bad as they come. It's a PG slapstick comedy western starring Rory Calhoun as a conman who poses as a priest and carries on conversations using mental telepathy (!) with his donkey (!), who's voiced by Don Knotts. It's like a much stupider version of A BOY AND HIS DOG, but with no cannibalism. The post-synched sound makes it look really cheap, as does the fact that they only shoot the western town set from two angles. The comedy is leaden, the editing incomprehensible, and the sound effects juvenile. MULE FEATHERS was a tough 80 minutes.

After that was an episode of a Japanese TV series called SPECTREMAN, in which superhero Spectreman fought a giant flying whale. Spectreman seems like every other Japanese superhero, like Ultraman, in that he can grow to mammoth proportions, fly, shoot rays, etc. His powers are useless against the flying whale, though, and he discovers that his foe has a strange Corsican-brothers reaction to him. So to stop it, it does...nothing. Literally. He lays down on the beach and sends his homies to float over and drop a bomb down its blowhole. Unfortunately, Spectreman's arch enemies, a pair of cackling space monkeys (!) in a flying saucer, use the opportunity to literally kick the hero while he's down and can't fight back. The coolest thing about SPECTREMAN is its kickass theme song that reminded me of the SONS OF HERCULES theme.

I then pulled out CHAIN GANG WOMEN, which is the world's #1 bullshit title. There are no chain gang women, and no women at all until about 40 minutes in. It's not a bad little exploitation movie, really, but you could be forgiven for being disappointed by it.

We wrapped up with THAT WAS ROCK, a compilation of clips from the legendary THE T.A.M.I. SHOW and THE BIG TNT SHOW, neither of which are on DVD, presumably because of rights issues. Both were huge rock concerts staged in Los Angeles especially for film and featured virtually every major rock, pop and R&B act of the period, which was 1964 and 1965. Not all that performed made the THAT WAS ROCK tape, which featured new intros by Chuck Berry, but among the ones who did were the Rolling Stones, Ike and Tina Turner, a kickass James Brown, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Ronettes, Lesley Gore, Gerry and the Pacemakers and several others. The badassedness of these musical greats almost made up for Rory Calhoun talking to his ass. Almost.