Psst! Hey You. Wanna See A Free Horror Movie? How About Two?

Posted on October 31, 2013 by geelw

Ah, public domain movies… free to watch without the guilt (or smugness or those who don’t believe in guilt) of messy piracy to fret about. Anyway, what are YOU doing home on Halloween? I’m here posting stuff because I’m behind on updates this month and need to keep you kids quiet while I catch up a little. So go make some popcorn, get a big fizzy drink (or non-fizzy if that’s your thing), plop down in front of your tee-vee (OK, monitor) and catch these two 1970’s vampire flicks. Yeah, it’s Count Dracula’s Great Love and Countess Dracula, so if you’ve seen them already, feel free to change the channel or go to bed early. Speaking if going to bed early, these aren’t for young kids or anyone allergic to exposed pretty lady parts (hey, I took a few anatomy classes, so boobs bother me not), dubbed English dialog and plenty of fake looking stage blood. Now that MY ass is covered (hey, it’s chilly in here!), enjoy the films!

Two Reads From Dark Horse For The Scary Season…

Posted on October 31, 2013 by geelw

Yeah, yeah… I know for SOME of you every day is scary, but get up and out in the sunshine once in a while and you’ll see that people aren’t SO bad after all. Then again, Halloween most certainly seems like a more than good time to stay IN after a certain hour in some places, so you’ve hopefully stocked up on food and drink, have enough TP to last a while and maybe some nice and scary movies queued up on your favorite device. Yeah, I know you still use that Betamax, so I was purposefully being vague in that previous sentence…

Now, If you’re a reader and like your things with words a bit on the scary side, you may as well venture out before it gets too dark and boogie on over to your nearest comics emporium just to pick up these two finely illustrated fright-filled tomes from the fine folks at Dark Horse Comics. Tales From the Crypt: The EC Archives – Volume 4 is a chilling collection of classic 1950’s horror from some of the best in the business back then and despite their age, the pre-Comics Code tales of terror and that excellently detailed art will have your eyeballs dancing in their sockets as your brain tells them to calm down so it can process that scary stuff it’s trying to also see.

“Feh!” you say? Followed by “Aw, how can some old smelly comic that’s older than my granny be SCARY?” and a smug “They didn’t even HAVE horror back then!”. Well there, dear troll child… let me give you a taste of things to come… Continue reading →

My Halloween Plans? I’ll Probably Go As Nostalgia…

Posted on October 31, 2013 by geelw

(thanks, allPublicDomain!)

I actually have no plans for Halloween, but if I did and had unlimited funds, I’d dress up as a movie screen and walk around showing people stuff that would blow their minds. All you fans of those modern Batman and other “retro” looking cartoons want to know where they got that funky art style from? BOOM! – here’s a classic Max Fleischer Superman cartoon that still blasts all that modern stuff out of the water. You’re one of those who like that stupidly snappy editing straight out of a music video where you can’t tell what the hell is going on? BANG! – You get Orson Welles’ F for Fake coming your way down the block.

Yeah, I’ll even hit you with the original uncut version of GREED once I get that damned time machine repaired. Some old drunk in a seedy Baltimore bar back in 1957 told me where to find a pristine print, but the damn control box blew all six fuses when I was on the way back from a detour for some dinosaur sightseeing and I’m now stuck here in 2013. The gal who can fix the thing lives in 1942 and works at a Navy shipyard. And nope, Radio Shack does NOT have the parts I need (although they DID back in 1978). Oh well, it’s not So bad here in the present if I don’t watch the news at all…

So Long, Lou Reed: A Walk on the Mild Side Brings Back Memories…

Posted on October 27, 2013 by geelw

I made Lou Reed laugh once. A long time back (I think it was 1986 or 87, but my memory is a bit fuzzy), I ran into him downtown around St. Marks Place as I was walking to a friend’s place for a birthday party. I recall it was around sundown with fading light and he was coming out of a small shop I don’t recall the name of. As I stopped to nod in his general direction (what I usually did when encountering a celebrity type on the streets of NYC) a trio of Asian tourists (a guy and two women) recognized him and asked if he’d pose for a quick photo with them.

Since I was only about five or so feet away (and probably grinning like a nut on the loose from Bellevue), one of the tourists looked in my direction and smiling as if he’d won the biggest lottery ever, motioned me over pointing to his expensive camera and asked me to snap a shot or two. Of course, I jumped at the chance and three shots later (because I got my thumb in the way on the first picture), handed the camera back to the guy who now wanted ME to pose with Lou. I declined, as I’m not the “Lookit me with the star!” kind of guy (and back then I was a lot more camera shy than I am these days), but Lou was in a pretty good mood and said “Come on”, waving his hand up and forward… Continue reading →

Humor? “It’s Saturday! Let’s Go Dancin!”

Posted on October 26, 2013 by geelw

I used to be one of THOSE people. Yeah, you know if you’re old enough and lived in a big enough city with clubs and nightlife. Yeah, I was a dancer… or a “dancer”, but not on a weekly basis like many, many others who caught the bug that turned into Saturday Night Fever or Dance Fever later on. I think I had the milder version that didn’t morph into Dance Disease, so I’m lucky. I didn’t do a LOT of clubbing with the intention to dance, as hey, no lessons plus terminal terrified shyness isn’t good for steppin’ out at all. Thus the wonders of booze loosening the brain and legs was discovered and some embarrassing flailing away for a few rapturous minutes later, one steps away from the scene, hot and sweaty and smiling at the effort put forth.

Eh, it always worked better in the cartoons. It took me a while to realize this until I got the flu ans camped out one weekend in front of the tube. Go Woody!, Go Daffy, Go Bugs! Too much of that and I was CURED, never to shake that tail feather again. This is how it should be for some and how it is these days. You want me to dance? You’d better be throwing some bills on the floor or have a gun with blanks pointed at my feet.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman Trailer: Wards of the State, Juvenile Delinquent Version…

Posted on October 25, 2013 by geelw

Urgh. OK, I think I asked this question before, but just WHO is this film targeted to? Us cranky ass oldsters who grew up watching Rocky & Bullwinkle, Fractured Fairy Tales and yes, these two characters are grinding our collective teeth about this CG travesty, the kids of today won’t have a C-L-U-E what the heck this is about other than the usual dumbed down predictable plot that lasts and hour and half and has pop songs packed in and the obligatory fake outtakes in the credits. Parents not in the know about Jay Ward and his creations (and style of humor) will of course, dutifully pack up the tots and trundle in to see this, buy the toys and other merchandise and thing all is peachy keen and as harmless as a stuffed poodle.

Me, I’ll be hitting my head with a hammer and hoping at least one or two critics point out that the Peabody segments were excellent because they worked best as unconnected shorts that were over and done with in a few minutes. Stretching things to feature length and adding needless stuff and worse modern jokes is only bleeding any chance for redemption from this one dry in record time. I didn’t even crack a smile during this trailer and that’s a bad sign because my sense of humor is pretty off the wall and expansive. Hey, I could be totally wrong, people… but it’s not a good sign in this day and age of movie trailers coughing up all the best parts of a movie in that two minutes or so. Hmmm… we shall see, I suppose…

Waaah! Good News Is Like A Brick Wrapped In Too Many Marshmallows.

Posted on October 23, 2013 by geelw

POW! So, I got a nice surprise to-day in the form of temporary freelance gig doing something many people despise but I find really relaxing. “What could it be, what could it be!”, the mob, they cry out – they want a decree. But I cannot say, for it’s not yet quite set. So I’ll ruin it not (well, not just quite yet)…

More on this breaking noose once some logistics are worked out. But if things go well (and it looks as if they should indeed), I’ll be making a little extra money and maybe getting some stuff taken care of (BRAAAAAAWWWNNNNN!) that I need to get done but haven’t because I’m just that broke. One step at a time, watch out for puddles and that’s a hell of a lot of marshmallows on that brick I got hit with. If you guess what the gig is, you don’t get a prize at all – you’re just faster on the draw than some other readers, is all.

No animals were harmed during the making of this post. Don’t throw real bricks at cats or try to get a mouse to do so. If you DO, however, post it on YouTube and make sure you disable comments or have a VERY thick skin. In theory, the mouse will get a hernia from lifting the brick, the cat will eat the mouse and the brick the mouse was lifting will hit the cat on the head. Maybe. Oh yeah, wrapping a brick in marshmallows? Bad idea unless you want an ant farm in your home. That and you’d go broke buying bag after bag of them… unless you made your own marshmallows. Or even better, marshmallow Bricks (which are very terribly NON-aerodynamic)…

Stuff I Sometimes Think About When Not Much Is Working Right…

Posted on October 21, 2013 by geelw

Not YOU, Arnold… we’re not related, thankfully. But I’d trade you a bag of brown rice for some of those muscles just so I could beat my head in on occasions such as this. I actually lost a chunk of a nice post earlier today thanks to making that silly issue of having a few in progress on WP and my laptop dying before I saved or the auto-save kicked in. It’s no trouble to rewrite stuff, but I hate having to redo posts because they always come out differently if I’m doing them on the fly and not working from notes. Anyway, between that and me generally being a wee bit too busy to keep up with my inbox today, I’m throwing this up as a diversion while I get my brain synched to do some rewriting. Ready? No? Oh well…

Has any D.J. opened or closed a set with this tune?

Just asking, folks… Continue reading →

The Ugly American: Getting Back Into Shape (Part the First)…

Posted on October 17, 2013 by geelw

For the past week plus or so, the last movie theater in my area has been shut, but it’s at least not as terrible as I’d initially thought. When I first strolled past on my usual route a block away, I noticed the blank marquee and side panels and immediately thought the place was out of business and gone forever. That would have been COMPLETELY lousy, as it would mean Parkchester going from having five or six movie theaters in the 1970’s when we moved here to having ZERO for a pretty large community of people. Granted, the last few theaters before the American shut down in the late 80’s and 90’s and all have been turned into stupidly useless shops, a church and at least one gym that aren’t needed at all because we have PLENTY of those already in the area. So no one of a certain (younger) age knows that there were plenty of options every night of the week for seeing movies in this area other than The American.

And yes, it’s too bad for them that those older theaters are dead and gone…

Continue reading →

Humor: Did You Know Fig Matches Quite Well With Ham?

Posted on October 17, 2013 by geelw

(thanks, robatsea2009!)

OK, so I’m having a suddenly NON-productive day thanks to a big fat Firefox crash that happened after a big fat Windows crash that ended up having Firefox lose my profile and every setting as it was attempting to restore them (Yaaaaaah!). It seems that the only solution other than trying to rebuild the .ini file (which is a VERY bad idea if you don’t know how to) was to delete the profile from the Firefox program folder which forces Firefox to make a new one. Problem One SOLVED, but this brings Problem Two to the forefront. New profile equals new passwords for EVERYTHING if you didn’t remember the old ones and have them handy. Blaaaaaaah. I need a cookie or a big laugh or something and thankfully, Big Fig is there with both. Watch this at least twice – once for the reaction shots from the mom and the other for BF doing that thing he does so well. OK, I’m off to dig up or recreate a ton of passwords now (Blaaaaaaah). Thank goodness that kid didn’t ask for Kool-Aid and cookies, is all I’ll say – that would have been s fight (and ad) for the ages, folks.