Congratulations, Elizabeth! (and also "Wow"!)

Tonight, first things first : huge congratulations to Elizabeth on having her film "Elemental" selected to be shown on the gigantic Standard Vision outdoor screen at the Marriott Hotel at L.A. Live. It will be showing all Summer, from July to September, and.......whoa, SB!

This is amazing! Earlier this evening I saw your FB icon under this new heading of "Stories" that FB recently instituted. I didn't know what the "Stories" link referred to because I'd never had reason to click it before. Your post for "Elemental" went by pretty quickly, so I had to click it a few times to see what what happening, but when I was able to read the whole thing, I thought...."My Goodness"!

You know how, way back in 2012, I said that "sometimes all you can say is 'wow' "?

Well this is one of those times! So here goes : "Wow"!!!

I knew something good was gonna happen with your film, and I said so when you were showing at the Wisconsin Film Fest. I thought, "well, this will lead to something else because people who can do something about it will be seeing it". And then you had the other screenings a month or so ago, and I said the same thing.

And now, tons of people who will be walking past Staples Center will see your movie. Staples is where the Lakers play, and which is also the biggest concert arena in Los Angeles. I saw Van Halen and Rush there. Staples Center is part of a major entertainment complex called LA Live (which I am sure you know by now), and it is a place that also has a lot of restaurants, and it's just a huge center for the Entertainment Industry and it attracts large crowds on a nightly basis.

I hope you get a chance to see it in person for yourself, just to see how much of a big deal it is.

You deserve it, because this time you have knocked the ball so far out of the park that you are in a whole new ballpark.

I knew something good was gonna happen. :):)

I will be sure to get down to Staples at some point this Summer, so I can see "Elemental" for myself on the giant screen. I can't say exactly what day I will be able to go, because I only just a few hours ago saw the news, but I can take a day trip on a future day off, where I can take the train to Downtown like I did a couple years ago, and I can bring my camera and make an afternoon of it.

Two thoughts occur to me. 1) This is an amazing achievement. 2) This was always going to happen, from Day One.

Think back to when you made the "Autre Temps" video just six and a half years ago, and here you are now.

And, this break will lead to yet another one. But your foot is in the door now, Elizabeth, and the door is opening.

As my Dad used to say about Hollywood, "once you're in, you're in"!

Congratulations once again, and post updates with any new info, such as screening times if you can find them out, or anything else.

Wow! You've gotta see your own movie at L.A. Live for yourself.  :)   ///

That's really all I know for tonight because it's such great news. I didn't watch a movie because Grimsley came over. We watched the Paul McCartney "Carpool Karaoke" that was originally shown a couple weeks ago. Grim taped it of course. Any factories still producing vhs tapes will never go out of business as long as Grimsley is around. It was great to see Sir Paul back in Liverpool, though, and I have been Googling the price of trips there, because I have to see the birthplace of The Beatles before......too much more time passes.

Let's say before I'm "64". Or even better, "When I'm 64".

That's when I will go to Liverpool. :)

I also finished "The Outsider" today. By Stephen King. It was Un-Put-Downable, a combination of his recent crime thrillers like "Mr. Mercedes" and the most base and primal themes of his early works of pure horror like "Cujo". That book was about a dog; "The Outsider" is about a Doppleganger, but the monster in each book is a product of Pure Evil, a subject that SK can describe with more insight than any other author before or since.

See you in the morning.   xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Baby Face" & Pre-Code Hollywood

Tonight's movie was "Baby Face" (1933). It was part of my "Forbidden Hollywood" collection, and was the most suggestive of all the pre-Code movies I've seen so far. I'm sure it was downright scandalous for it's time.

Northridge's own Barbara Stanwyck stars as a young woman who lives and works in a Speakeasy that is run by her lout of a father. His Speakeasy is a converted house that is near a steel mill full of thirsty, macho workers who like their illicit beer (this is during Prohibition). One man also wants something else. He wants "Baby Face", the young Miss Stanwyck. This man is a powerful local official, and seeing as how he has protected the owner of the Speakeasy from the police, he is now expecting the favors of his daughter.

So of course the father pimps her out to the man. Now we are seeing just how realistic things were getting in the early sound era, before the Hays Code set in and movies became Glitzed Up. This scene is depicted as luridly as it would be today, and it looks like real life.

Barbara Stanwyck hates her father, but she is soon free of him because his whiskey still explodes and he is killed by the fire. Now she is on her own, but with no idea of where to turn. An older man comes to visit her, a nice gentleman of German extraction who had been a customer of the Speakeasy. He encourages her to strike out on her own in life, and gives her a book to read : Nietzsche's "Will To Power", a work of philosophy that in my opinion would bring out the worst, most selfish instincts in the most gullible or greedy readers. Screw Nietzsche.....

But Babs doesn't think so. Soon she gets ideas to use her feminine wiles as she was trained to do by her sick perverted father, only now, she is working for herself instead of him.

She moves to New York with her black female servant (who she treats well and relies upon), and soon Babs is working at a major Manhattan bank. She gets her hair permed and uses her looks to then begin to climb the ladder of corporate success by sleeping her way to the top. This ascension is presented in the most direct way possible for 1933. Though there is no nudity nor sex depicted, the level of innuendo is every bit as shocking. I have remarked before that, for many of us who grew up in the 1960s and beyond, in a more open era, we tend to look back and think of folks from the past as "squares" or even prudes in some cases. I think a lot of this cultural judgement comes from the pre-conditioning we all have from the movies of that era. Movies are images, after all, and the images we have from the late 30s through the mid-60s are ones of restriction, even inhibition or neutering. The characters aren't necessarily neutered but their actions are, in the movies made after the Code was instituted. So we got this image of people from the 30s and 40s as slick, sleek romantics, but they are also straight talkers who never utter a word of innuendo, unless you count some of the milder imagery of Bogie lighting two cigarettes and things like that. Don't get me wrong, I love the deep romance of 40s movies, even if it was fantasized, because romance should be fantasized. A love affair should be shown as something magical, a real life fantasy.

But in the matter of telling all kinds of stories, even the most sordid ones, the Hays Code knocked out a lot of the most forthright depictions of negative behavior by everyday characters, and so the moviegoers of the late 30s no longer got to see real life characters such as Barbara Stanwyck's "Baby Face".

This film is a revelation, not because it's any great artistic achievement, but because it shoves this woman's predicament and her subsequent behavior in the face of the viewer, and forces you to watch her play out the string of her entanglements. She is riding high to the top, the vice presidents of the bank are her dupes because she is beautiful and smart and she has got what they want.

But then of course conflicts arise, because there is more than one man involved, and tragedy results.

I'll say no more, but this is a very modern film for it's time, which is really our time or any time. It is a stark tale of the misguided ambition of a woman driven by subconscious forces, who doesn't find out what love is until it's too late....

If I were to suggest one pre-Code film to you, it would be this one, the 76 minute uncensored version of "Baby Face".

Two Big Thumbs Up.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

"Sierra" starring Audie Murphy, and Some History To Go With It

Tonight's movie was selected from my ten pack Western Collection, on which I am now running low because I have been pounding them too quickly. Like you, I can't get enough Westerns. The movie was "Sierra", starring a new favorite actor : Audie Murphy. I reviewed Audie in "Kansas Raiders" a few weeks ago, and I've seen him in a few other films too (all Westerns). He plays his roles essentially the same way in every movie, with the same expressions, same way of reciting lines, etc. That is because he was not first and foremost an actor, but was a famous WW2 Hero who was recruited to become an actor after the war. He had the looks to pull it off, and for Western movies he could ride a horse. So he was more of a Movie Star than a trained actor, but he had a lot of charisma in his ultra serious persona, and he could hold the screen with the best of them.

In "Sierra" he plays a young man who is holed up in a cabin, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains in central California (filming locations were in Utah). He lives up there in isolation with his Pa, a man who was put on trial for a murder he didn't commit. This happened in the town at the foot of the mountains. Pa was found guilty but escaped before he could be sentenced, taking young son Audie with him, way up high into the Sierras, too high for anyone but the most hardy to follow.

They have been living undiscovered up there, making a living from capturing wild horses and selling them to gold miners and other cut-off-from-society types. As the film starts, Audie is watching a wild herd cavort around a small valley below his perch in the rocks. Suddenly there is noise behind him. The herd runs off, and he turns around to see a pretty young woman who has arrived out of nowhere.

She is Wanda Hendrix, who would become Audie's wife after this film was completed, though their marriage only lasted two years. Wanda lives in the town below. She had been riding her horse but became lost. Her horse ran off and here she is, way up high in the Sierras, having discovered Audie Murphy and the secret cabin in which he lives with his fugitive - but innocent - father.

Audie and Pa are then presented with a dilemma, because Wanda Hendrix - who is from town - has heard of Audie's Pa, and though she seems like a nice gal and not of the mindset of the mob that wanted to hang Pa, Audie must decide if he can trust her to let her return back down the mountain by herself. Will she tell her own people about the fugitives and the cabin?

Audie is super serious and suspicious as he always is in his movies, and so he decides to accompany her back to town, to make sure she doesn't reveal the secret.

Along the way, she is bitten by a rattlesnake. He saves her life; she falls in love with him, and almost vice versa.......but he still places the protection of his Pa above vulnerability.

A truckload of stuff happens after this, once again because of major league screenwriting talent, even in a formula Western. The main theme is What Price Justice?

Should Audie Murphy, a no nonsense son, risk his father's life by exposing their hideaway? Or should he confront the vengeful townsfolk with the truth of his father's innocence, which he knows they won't believe because they are hiding the real killer, who lives among them.

Audie Murphy in real life was the most decorated soldier in WW2. In real life, his combat experience caused him major psychological problems, big time PTSD, which caused Wanda Hendrix to divorce him. He had nightmares of combat.

When we moved to Rathburn Avenue in 1970, there was a paraplegic veteran who lived around the corner on Etiwanda Street with his wife and daughter. This man's backyard would have been less than 75 yards from ours as the crow flies. His name was Perry. He was always in a wheelchair and you would see him out front, weeding his yard. He never said hello, but always nodded when you walked past. We were just kids, anyway. We had no idea what he'd been through. But my Mom and Dad knew about Perry. They told me he was best friends with Audie Murphy, and that they had been in the same Company during the war. Afterwards, when the Valley was being developed in the late 1940s and early 50s, Perry bought all the houses on Etiwanda between Nordhoff St. and Sunburst Ave, four houses in all. Houses were only 12 to 15 thousand bucks back then, so Perry probably got a loan or maybe he got the money from his disability settlement.

But the kicker is that his best friend Audie Murphy also bought a house right around the corner, on Rathburn Avenue. Yes indeed. And he lived in the house for a while before moving to Encino after he became a movie star. The Audie Murphy house was four doors north of the house we moved into in 1970, and it was only two doors north of my late friend Mike's house. I don't know exactly when Audie Murphy lived there, probably in the early 1950s, and maybe not for long, but he did live in that house for a time, next to his best friend Perry, who lost his legs in the war.

Audie Murphy was a combat hero and a movie star, but it came with a huge price because war is not glorious, despite how it is often portrayed in movies and literature, and especially in politics and historical accounts. What it is, is pure horror. And from what I have read, Audie Murphy was tormented by his experience.

He died in a plane crash in 1971. Wanda Hendrix continued to love him, despite their divorce. She died at 52 in 1981, of pneumonia brought on by alcoholism.

Such is life, often the stuff of tragedy. But also, within such lives, often times much is done, much is accomplished.

Audie Murphy went from Texas kid to War Hero to Movie Star before he died at age 46.

His second wife, Pamela Murphy, who was married to him when he died, became an employee at the Sepulveda VA Hospital, where my Dad got his health care for the last 30 years of his life. Pamela Murphy had taken the VA job because Audie's mental problems and his gambling had left them broke when he died, and the VA had seemed like the natural place for her to apply. They hired her, and she worked in Admittance for years and years. I took Dad to all his VA appointments from about 1998 to 2008, and every time we went, we would see Mrs. Murphy in the lobby with her clipboard, helping the vets to see their doctors. Some were young, from Iraq. A few were older, WW2 vets like Dad. Most were from Vietnam era. Pamela Murphy looked to be in her late 70s then, but she just kept right on working, helping soldiers at the VA Hospital in Sepulveda.

Everybody in the lobby knew she was Audie's wife, but she had a respect and high reputation that was all her own.

So there's a little bit of history for you. See you in the morn.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Raven"

Tonight I watched "The Raven" (1935), the final movie in my four film Boris & Bela Collection. It starts out in near identical fashion to last night's masterpiece "The Black Cat". This time a lone woman is driving too fast down a muddy road. The night is pitch black, the rain is pouring down. Suddenly the car's headlights flash upon a "detour" sign - the road ahead is washed out. Holy smokes!

The woman swerves to avoid a ditch, her car rolls over, fade to black.

In the next scene she is in a hospital on an operating table. She is comatose, and the surgeons have given up on her without even trying to operate. Her father is in the room too. He is a local Judge, an important man of influence, and I am assuming we are in America this time because everyone so far has spoken without an accent. But we could be in Transylvania or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, because of the Washed Out Muddy Road and the Pitch Black Night and the Pouring Rain and the Spooky Looking Trees. At any rate, the doctors tell the Judge that nothing can be done for his daughter, but he refuses to accept that verdict. "Please", he implores them. "I'll pay you anything! You must save her".

The docs insist it is beyond their power to do this, but because the Judge continues to beg them, they name a man who just might be able to help.

That man is of course Bela Lugosi, and by golly, who else would you want as your surgeon if your life was on the line, am I right?

Dr. Lugosi can work miracles. He also has an Edgar Allen Poe fixation, whereby his study has a taxidermist Raven sitting on his desk. He recites Poe poems chapter and verse to visitors, and....

Horrors! He also has a Poe-inspired Torture Chamber down in his basement, accessible only by a Secret Revolving Panel in the wall of his nicely appointed but not particularly stylish home.

The Judge is not aware of this, however, so he of course wants Bela to operate in order to save his daughter. Bela reluctantly agrees, and he does indeed save her life. When she awakens after the operation, she is as good as new.

But then!

Then Bela falls in love with her (the beautiful Irene Ware), and her father the Judge won't allow it, because she is already engaged to a nice young gentleman without a scary accent.

However!

A monkey wrench is then thrown into the works by the arrival at Dr. Lugosi's door of a criminal on the run. He is of course Boris Karloff. Boris wants Dr. Bela to "change his face" so that the police will not recognise him. Bela is a medical genius who can do that no problem. And he does it. He changes Boris Karloff's face.

But the results are not exactly what Boris was hoping for.

Things go downhill from there, to put it mildly, and naturally - as you would expect - the action is going to lead us down to the basement, where Dr. Lugosi has constructed his elaborate Torture Chamber, all of which is based on the devices of Mr. Poe (Pit & The Pendulum, the walled in room of "The Cask Of Amontillado", et al).

Boris Karloff is still pissed about his less-than-satisfactory Face Change, but he is gonna hang in there with Dr. Bela for the moment, because only Bela can fix his face...if he decides to do it.

Bela, for his part, is fixated on Irene Ware......and Ed Poe.

That's all I can tell you, except for the usual truisms about the black and white photography looking incredible, and the Ton Of Story being elucidated over the course of a mere 62 minutes.

As I have said recently, I encourage you to see all of the Boris & Bela collaborations, and besides that I also implore you to see all the movies each man starred in on his own.

Now that I've finished this latest four film collection, I'll be looking at both men's IMDBs for movies I haven't seen, though I know I'll be lucky to find others as good as these four. I've probably watched 25 to 30 movies over the years that had either Karloff or Lugosi in them, or both.

Anyhow......

Movies & Life

Tonight's movie was "The Black Cat" (1934) starring Boris & Bela. Bela is the Good Guy once again, as he was in "The Invisible Ray", the other B&B co-starrer I saw and reviewed a couple weeks ago. This time he plays an Eminent Psychiatrist who is on his way to a small village in Hungary, where lives a certain doctor he intends to visit. While on a train, he ends up sharing a cabin with a young American couple who are heading for a town not far from the one Bela is going to, in order to visit the wife's parents. There is only a single train station in the area, and so Bela, his servant, and the young couple all depart the train and decide to share a taxi that will drop them off at their respective destinations. The taxi is huge, like a car from The Nethercutt Museum, and they set off down a muddy road running across a hillside. Rain is pouring down. Bela is telling the couple of the history of the area. There was once a wartime prison camp nearby (WW1, not 2), where thousands of prisoners died. Lugosi reveals that he was a prisoner there for 15 years, but escaped.

Just then, the taxi comes over a rise and hits a mud puddle and overturns. It goes crashing down a hill and the driver is killed. The young wife of the American couple is injured, and Bela Lugosi suggests that they accompany him to the doctor's house, which is of course set upon a hill.

They have nowhere else to go and the woman needs medical attention, and yet - it still seems like a really bad idea once they get there, and that is because the doctor is really creepy, and he is a Satanist, and he has a room down in his basement where he keeps Bela Lugosi's wife and daughter in a kind of suspended animation (which is never explained). Though he has not told the young American couple, Lugosi has come to the doctor's manse precisely to find out what has happened to his wife and daughter, who he knows were coveted by Doctor Karloff while he, Bela, was in prison.

It turns out that Karloff was the head of that prison camp, and that his ultra modern house (an architectural marvel) stands on it's former grounds.

This is one of the weirder, if not the weirdest Bela & Boris movie I've seen, and it comes complete with an authentic Hollywood version of a Satanic Ritual at the end. You can probably trust a Hollywood version for authenticity, haha; Lord knows there's been enough devil worshiping weirdos living there throughout the years for proper research to have been done.

So forget all the unexplained stuff, like how Karloff's zombie-like women are kept in glass boxes in which they seem to defy gravity, or why he lives in an Art Deco house when he should be living in a cavernous castle, or why Bela Lugosi is terrified of Black Cats.

You don't need explanations for those things, because the movie is too awesome for you to concern yourself with minor though curious story details.

It looks great (black and white of course), the house is awesome, as is the basement set for the Ritual. Karloff is gaunt and eerie looking in his gilt collared robe and black eye liner.

These 66 minute horror flicks from the early 1930s were flat out weird, plain and simple.

They would not get made today because people today aren't weird enough.

Two Huge Thumbs Up for "The Black Cat", one of the very best of the B&B collaborations.

I also watched a Mr. Moto last night : "Think Fast, Mr. Moto".

I am too tired to describe it, but you know that every Mr. Moto movie is great, and when you start watching them, you will wish you lived inside a Moto movie.

I'm still a bit beat up, ladies and gentlemen, and I apologize for not being my usual self.

My job is tough, and on top of that I never have anyone to talk to. I don't really like the Internet world that we have now. I liked the world better when people saw other people in person, and talked to other people in person. I've been writing a blog for almost 20 years, at different sites, and do you know that - although I've had tens of thousands of page views during that time - I've never had one single acknowledgement by anyone, that they have read my blog.

Not one.

I only keep doing it because I see those "hits", those "page views", which tells me that somebody is reading.

But I feel like I am slowly fading away, because no one ever communicates with me.

And all I have is my job, with a dementia patient, and if I could do one single thing it would be to eliminate dementia from the face of the Earth because, trust me, it is the worst thing a person can ever get.

Don't get dementia, whatever you do. Do your crossword puzzles, read your books, keep your mind engaged.

I also am starting to wish that I won't live in Los Angeles much longer.

I can't take the cars anymore. They come at you from all directions, every single time you step out your door.

They come at you from all directions, 360 degrees. And they accelerate too fast, and you are tailgated to within a few feet of your rear bumper.

You don't see as many people as you do cars.

All of this is wiping me out.

If I had someone to talk to, it wouldn't be as hard to deal with. But no one ever responds.

Corvette Summer

I'll tell you a few cool things about Mike right away, and just in short sentences so I don't get lost :

Mike had a blue 1968 Corvette Stingray with a 427 cu. engine, which is just about the bitchinest engine you could have in your car. I think he got the 'Vette in 1976, maybe '77, but we drove all over the place in that car, and it was great for me because I was still a couple of years away from getting my drivers licence, which I didn't acquire until I was 18.

We used to cruise Van Nuys Boulevard in Mike's Corvette. Wednesday night was the unofficial "cruise" night, and we went every week for a couple of years. Van Nuys Bl. was always packed with hot rods, low riders, street racers and regular old sedans, all full of teenagers and young adults, everybody there to "make the scene". We'd go up and down the street, sitting low in the 'Vette with the engine rumbling. We were automatically cool because of that car. It was awesome.

During the Summer of 1978, Mike drove us in the 'Vette to Zuma Beach, every single day. I don't mean some days. I mean every day, for the whole Summer. Zuma was the cool beach to go to back then. We always put our towels down by Lifeguard Station #6, cause we'd seen some cute girls there the first couple of times we went. I wouldn't have had the nerve to talk to them by myself, but Mike broke the ice. We saw those girls on and off during the Summer. Mike and I would bring a Frisbee and stand far apart down by the water, throwing it long distance to each other to try and look cool in case the beach chicks were there. We also did it because we loved playing Frisbee, ever since high school where we would play on the quad at Cleveland HS. We used the quad for Frisbee all through the school year in 1976, until one of our long throws hit someone in the head. I won't say which one of us threw it, haha, but after that we got banned from playing Frisbee at school. We still played at the beach, though. And we got so tan that Summer, that a friend's Mom told me I looked like a Negro.  :)

Mike liked to drive his Corvette very fast. To get to Zuma Beach, you took a canyon highway from Agoura called Kanan Road. It wound through the mountains between the Valley and the beach, and it only had two lanes. Mike would haul ass through there, going 70 mph when 50 would've been safer, but what gave me white knuckles was that he liked to pass slower cars by going over the yellow line into the lane of oncoming traffic. Good thing there were never any Mack trucks coming when we made those passes. :)

I'll tell you some more things tomorrow night, as I think of 'em. It's Sunday Night, and you know what that means; I've got my industrial strength Fred Flintstone toothpicks in place, propping my eyes open.

And I'm still displaced by the news about Mike.

I've lost several friends at relatively young ages. The Late Great Mr. D was only 47 when he died in 2008. My friend Sean was just 41 when he passed in 2010. Like Mike, these are very close friends I am talking about, not mere acquaintances. Mike himself was only 59. I knew he wasn't gonna live forever because he had a medical condition brought on, in part, by a horrendous motorcycle accident he suffered about 25 years ago, in which he rolled a racing bike he was riding, at 135 miles per hour.

Mike was into speed of the physical kind, and he went from fast cars to fast motorcycles. He had moved away by then, so I wasn't aware until much later that he'd been in this accident. His doctor was amazed that he lived through it, and said it was only because Mike was wearing full leathers, and because he hit the ground on a roll. But that crash was partially responsible for the medical condition that resulted. Mike told me about this in November 2015 when I saw him at the PFM concert at The Whisky A Go Go. There was more to it than just the bike crash, but Mike straight up told me he knew he was on borrowed time.

We stood outside The Whisky after the show, and he talked about all the stuff we had done as kids and teenagers. He said he had had an amazing life and had no regrets. He said everything now was "gravy". He looked perfectly fine that night and was full of energy. I'd never have known anything was wrong if he hadn't told me.

So I knew this was coming, but because it wasn't a typical illness, I just figured "nah.....it's not gonna happen. Maybe ten years from now"....

It did happen, though, and it hits me very hard, but in different ways than you might think.

For me, I have been thinking almost non-stop about the tons and tons of stuff we used to do.

Mike had a big personality, and because I had not seen him much since 1990, his death has brought him back. It's like he is back in my life now that he is gone.

But we had indeed reconnected in real life too. We were trading "likes" on FB less than 24 hours before he died.

Life and death and friendship are things worth thinking deeply about.

I said last night that I am tired of losing people. I want things to go the other way now. I need them to go the other way.

I want to gain someone. I want to connect, the way I did as a child when I met all of my friends.

Only this time I want to get married. I know that can't happen instantaneously, but I am hoping that things will go in that direction. I'm tired of loss, and tired of being alone and not having anyone to share things with.

It's been very hard for me sometimes. Sometimes extremely hard.

God made me to be one of the Strong Ones, and I know I am gonna be here on Earth for a good long while yet.

But boy it can be lonely when everybody else goes away.

I love you guys and I will see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

For Mike

Tonight I'd like to tell you about my friend Mike, so that you can get to know him a little bit, or if you already knew him you can reminisce along with me.

My family moved to Rathburn Avenue in June 1970. We'd only moved a few blocks, from Osborne Street where we lived in a big two story house when Dad was flying high in Hollywood, but Dad lost his position in December 1969 and suddenly we couldn't afford to live there anymore. My Mom found the Rathburn house and we rented it instead of buying. My Dad was depressed about this turn of events, but I was happy about the move once we settled in, and I think my brother was, too. The reason? There were lots of kids on Rathburn Avenue. Yes, we'd moved to a much smaller house that didn't have a pool or basketball court or the treehouse we had at Osborne, but on that street there were no kids, and thus no one to play with. I did have one friend on Osborne, but he went to private school and was hardly ever home.

But Rathburn was a Kid's World. I was 10 and Chris was 6 when we moved there.

And the first kid I met was a guy a year and a half older than me. He was pushing 12, a little pudgy, and very outgoing and talkative. I remember him coming over to our side yard to introduce himself one day not long after we moved in. That was Mike.

I was always a shy kid (until you got to know me), and so Mike being Mike, a real wise guy with a joke a minute, I came out of my shell at his seeming insistence at being my friend. Right away at our first meeting, he wanted to know "what do you like", i.e. what kind of kid are you? He was sizing me up and I responded because he was welcoming me to the neighborhood. Soon after meeting Mike, I felt at ease meeting all the other kids on the street, and even a few from around the corner, which in Kid Distance is like being in another town.

I spent a lot of time at the house of David B and his sister, and they became close friends as well, but it was with Mike that I would have many one-on-one adventures. With the other kids, we were often a group. With Mike, it was usually just me and him, and we did a ton of stuff together.

One of the first things I can tell you about my friend has to do with music. I was always a huge music fan since coming out of my crib and putting on my sisters' Beatles records, but even by age ten I had never gotten past Top Forty radio. Now, that wasn't a bad place to be in the 1960s and early 1970s, when every single song on the radio was great, but I knew nothing of "hard rock" or any of these new bands emerging at the time. Mike had first introduced me to an album by Three Dog Night called "Seven Seperate Fools". I knew all the hits by the Three Dogs, but buying an album never crossed my mind. Soon though, I was in possession of that record and Three Dog Night was my favorite band.

Then, in March 1972, when I was in 7th grade, I went over to Mike's house one day and he asked me if I'd ever heard of a band called "Deep Purple". The name rang a bell, I knew they had an earlier hit on the radio but I couldn't place it. Really I didn't know anything about them and I said so. Mike handed me an album he'd just bought, with a cover that looked like a warped photograph of the band members. It was called "Machine Head". He let me take the album home, and it was my introduction to Deep Purple.

As I listened to the music on my parents' console stereo, I was amazed by the guitar sound and the heavy groove of the music, and the wailing vocals. The album cover opened up into what was called a "gatefold", and there were pictures of the band members inside.

I saw a photo of the singer, the drummer, etc.....I didn't know any of these guys. Their music was a whole new world to me, but I was used to famous names like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger.

One photo in the gatefold stuck out, however. As I listened to the music on "Machine Head" I was a bit mesmerised by the stare of the guy on guitar.

He had a cool sounding name, too : Ritchie Blackmore.

Looking at his slightly unshaven and staring face in that gatefold pic, I became an instant fan.

"This is the guy who is playing those guitar solos"?

He looked like the guy who would be playing those solos, and those songs, and that music.

I was sitting there in our living room on Rathburn Avenue, and I was listening to Deep Purple, a band I previously knew nothing about, and my life was changed permanently. You have to go back to your memories of being very young and being exposed to new music to understand, and I am sure you have your own experiences.

But for me, on that day I was introduced not only to Deep Purple but also - most importantly - to Ritchie Blackmore, who became not only my favorite guitarist but also my favorite musician of all time.

And that was because of Mike.

He introduced me to my favorite musician. About eight years later, Mike would take a photo of me standing next to Ritchie Blackmore after a concert, a photo that I have on my Facebook.

To have a friend who did all of this would alone qualify that friend as a very special soul who you were meant to meet in your life. But that is just one of the cool things that happened with Mike and me.

I had meant to just tell you all about Mike in this one blog, in short sentences and snippets, but I see that I can't. It is late now and I have to get up early for church in the morning.

I guess I will keep telling you about my friend until I am all done, maybe all at once if I can do it, or maybe in longer anecdotes like the one tonight.

The larger point of all of this, is :

Think for a moment about life. Think about your life and the people you have met. Some of those people are peripheral, and maybe not all have played a major part in your life. But stop and think of those who have.

Think about your closest friends, and the times you have had together.

Think about what you have shared and why you are so close.

Think of all the things you have done with a friend. Think of the bond that resulted.

What you will see is that your friendship with that person was meant to be, because it resulted in outside things being discovered and brought in.

Friendship is not static. It is a creative force.

I wanted to write about Mike in just one blog and wrap it all up in a neat little bow, but I see that I can't do it. So I'll try to do more as we go along.

It's hard for me and I'm a bit spaced out. I'm tired of losing my friends so early.

I will see you in the morning after church.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

My Friend Mike + "Frantz"

I am very sorry to report that a lifelong friend of mine has passed away. I only learned of his passing two hours ago, on Facebook (where we often learn of such things these days), and I am still a bit stunned, and numb, but I will try and go ahead with the blog anyway. The friend was Mike B., and if you go to my Facebook you will see who I mean. I have known Mike since 1970 when I was 10 and he was 11, and he was one of my closest friends for all of that time. I will write more about Mike and our friendship tomorrow night or Sunday, but for tonight let me just write about my movie as usual because I need some "usual" at the moment.

I watched a French movie called "Frantz" (2016), the title of which refers to the name of a young German soldier who was killed in World War One, but could also have symbolic meaning as a homonym for France the country, I suppose.

The film is a slowly evolving romantic drama that takes place in 1919, a year after the war's end. Anna is a young German woman living with her fiance's parents. Her own parents are deceased, as is her fiance who was killed in the war. He is the "Frantz" of the title. Anna tends his grave, and in doing so she comes into contact with a man who has been leaving flowers there. Curious as to who he is, she tracks him down to a local hotel, and there he introduces himself. He is a Frenchman, also young. He says that he was a friend of Frantz, whom he met in Paris before the war began. He explains that he and Frantz bonded over a shared passion for art and music, and in the way this sequence is presented, you are expecting that Anna is going to be presented with the fact that her fiancee was in a gay relationship. But that is not the case. Adrian, the Frenchman, and Frantz, the German do seem to have a good friendship, but both like women, which is demonstrated as the film continues. Frantz, for his part, is shown in flashback as being devoted to his Anna.

Anna, who has been sad and lonely since Frantz' death, is brought back to life by meeting his Parisian friend Adrian. At first, her fiancee's parents (who she lives with) won't accept him because he is French, and therefore the enemy. But as Anna tells them, the war is over and Adrian knew Frantz before the war. Slowly, the parents come to not only accept Adrian into their lives, as a connection to their lost son, but also to encourage his visits. He tells them of his times with their son Frantz when they both lived in Paris, and these recollections make Frantz come back to life in the bereaved parents' hearts. The same is true for Frantz' fiancee, Anna. She begins to look forward to Adrian's visits, and not only because of his tales of times together with her beloved Frantz, but because she is now slowly falling for Adrian himself, as a substitute.

But Adrian himself is grief stricken, and there is a reason. He does not want to become romantically involved with Anna, and so he flees from her and Frantz's parents, and takes the train back to Paris.

Adrian has a secret, and that is all I can tell you about the plot "Frantz" the movie.

It is beautifully shot in black and white by a director named Francois Ozon, who uses color in flashback sequences to good effect, as a way of showing how full of life his characters were before the war. There is much to do with the historical enmity between the French and German societies, and the desire for revenge on the part of some Germans after their defeat in WW1. "Frantz" is an anti-war film as well as an artistic romance and mystery. In some respects it's also a ghost story of lost love and senseless death.

The movie meanders in places and loses it's dramatic tension when this happens. A good ten to fifteen minutes could be cut out of it to tighten up the drama, but then some of the lingering melancholy would be lost I suppose, as much of what I considered the "excess footage" involved following Anna around through the streets of her small German village, or as she takes the train to Paris, trying to locate Adrian and find herself in the process. Those scenes go on a bit, and you find yourself looking at the clock unfortunately, but on the whole, especially because of the great performances of the young actors and the expert photography, I give "Frantz" Two Solid Thumbs Up.

It's not a masterpiece, though it wants to look like one, but it is a very beautiful story and film about love, and how it is stripped away by the acceptance of war as part of the human condition. It is also about cowardice and forgiveness, and the ability to walk away from all of this intact.

See it. ///

Thinking of Mike.

More tomorrow.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Big love to everyone.   

"Kid Millions" starring Eddie Cantor + "Dead Mountain : The Dyatlov Pass Incident"

Tonight I watched a movie called "Kid Millions" (1934), starring an early legend of Hollywood named Eddie Cantor. He was born in 1892 and goes so far back that he got his start on the Vaudeville stage. He was a comedian who also sang, and his schtick was very New York Jewish, and he became a giant movie star by the time the sound era rolled around at the beginning of the 1930s, when he was almost 40. I knew of Eddie Cantor but had never seen one of his films until tonight, and I've gotta say I've never seen anything quite like it. "Kid Millions" is ostensibly about a goofy guy (Cantor) who inherits 77 million dollars when his long lost father - an Egyptologist - dies. The father had discovered a Pharoah's tomb laden with jewels (valued at 77 Million), which was all now bequeathed to Cantor. This being a New York bowery style of comedy, there are also a few other no-goodniks who are after the dough (and I hope you are reading all of this with a Bronx accent).

But the plot is only marginally important , because out of nowhere a staged Hollywood Musical number will appear, and suddenly the movie will look like a Busby Berkeley production, complete with lines of dancing Goldwyn Girls, then switching to an appearance by tap dancing sensations The Nicholas Brothers, who then give way to Cantor himself.......in Blackface.

To some, that would be a big no-no in the PC age; a slur. However, it was used as a form of comedic tribute in those days, not as a put down, and in this case it is staged in the same revue in which the Nicholas Brothers appear.

I don't even know how to describe "Kid Millions" except to call it a Hollywood Extravaganza. It's got Lower East Side comedy, featuring a young Ethel Merman and her hoodlum boyfriend. It's got the opposite, sophisticated couple of George Murphy and early star Ann Sothern, all of whom are after the money. It has the aforementioned soundstage-filmed Big Entertainment aspect of choreographed, synchronized dancing and live performance. And then it's got this crazy Egyptian plot as well, which actually winds up in Egypt for the final act of the film, where the money seekers are confronted by the local Egyptian monarch who wishes to avenge his ancestor, whose tomb was dug up in the first place.

No description can convey how crazy this movie is. It's pure Hollywood Entertainment, coming in the middle of the Depression when folks needed a pick me up. It looks big budget for 1934, and top level talent was hired all the way down the line to nail the hair trigger humor and fast talk situations that send the story careening from plot to fantasy to musical showcase and back again.

"Kid Millions" is not a movie that everyone would appreciate today because much of the comedy is broad and of the "nudge-nudge" variety, but on the other hand the whole idea of such a movie is so over the top that even the nuttier minds of today's movie industry would be hard pressed to come up with anything as creative, and they would never be able to find as talented a cast to pull it off.

Two Big Thumbs Up, then, for "Kid Millions". Eddie Cantor is nuts, like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, though in a different way. I will certainly be looking for more of his movies.  ///

This afternoon I finished reading a book I'd been working on for the past few weeks, called "Dead Mountain" by a guy named Donnie Eichar. The book was recommended to me by Amazon, and I found a library copy. It is an adventure story and mystery all wrapped up into one - the tale of a group of Russian students who in January 1959 set out to hike to the summit of a foreboding mountain in the Urals of northeastern Russia. The ten students were all advanced hikers. This trek would earn them official classifications as Soviet Masters Of Sport. The hike involved a train trip to a town near the Urals, hitchhiked truck rides to get even closer, and then an extremely rough 50 mile jaunt on several snowmobiles just to get to the trail they were supposed to take, which ran alongside a frozen river. Then they had to hike another thirty miles to get to the top of the mountain.

They did all of this in temperatures that reached 25 below zero, and in knee to waist high snow.

On the night of February 1st, 1959, they had made it halfway to the top of the mountain, which was not super high, about as high as Oat Mountain here in the Valley, 3400 feet. But they were up in the frozen wilderness near Siberia, and they never came back. One hiker had turned back days earlier due to illness, but the other nine all died on the mountainside on the night of February 1st, 1959. Forensic evidence suggested that something caused them to exit their tent in a hurry. They ran into the darkness that night, in deep snow and without shoes. They split up and could neither find each other nor find their tent again, and their bodies were recovered after a month long search.

The tragedy became well known in Russia as The Dyatlov Incident, named after the leader of the hike. Over the passing decades, many theories were posed to account for the students' demise. Most of the explanations involved secret military experiments, nuclear weapons testing and the like.

Author Donnie Eichar set out to follow the hikers' path in 2012, and to interview anyone with pertinent information from that time. At the end of the book he proposes his own theory for what happened to them, and it is no less spooky than the lingering military or supernatural explanations of the Russians.

Along the way, in the telling of the story you get to know the hikers and feel that you are accompanying them on their trip, where all is well and a grand adventure is underway, until......

As a comparatively minor hiker myself, I was astonished by the gumption of these young people, who averaged 22 years in age. Perhaps their raw nerve was matched by naivete, I don't know. Even the native people who live in that area, the Mansi (similar to Eskimoes) won't go near that mountain.

But in the telling of their story there was something very inspiring about the student hikers, and how they interacted as a group in pursuit of their goal, with camaraderie and discipline, as a team against all odds. They were youthful friends who believed in something, and that is what stays with you.

You don't have to read the book, but at least Google "the Dyatlov Pass incident".

Thanks, and I will see you in the morning. My eye is feeling better too.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"One Step Beyond" + Hey SB! + My Left Eye

I'm writing from Pearl's once again, back for another work cycle. I did not watch a movie tonight, but I did watch the 70th and final episode in my "One Step Beyond" dvd set. "One Step" was a TV series that ran from 1959-61 and dealt with the supernatural. It was similar to "The Twilight Zone" in some respects, and like TZ it also had a host, John Newland. The main difference between the shows was that "One Step Beyond" based each episode on a true story of some inexplicable event. Then, at the end of each show, John Newland would ponder how it might be explained. The explanation was always left up to the viewer, which was a big part of the show's appeal. There were 70 episodes in my six dvd set. It did not contain the complete series, which totaled 96, but seeing as how the picture quality was less than perfect on some of the shows, I am guessing there were many that could not be salvaged. Regardless, every single episode I saw was at the very least compelling, and most were goosebump inducing. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth, if you are reading, I read the interview you did with the Chicago art magazine. I think I found it through your Instagram or maybe your website. Anyway, it was a great interview and you made a lot of good points about photography and the creative process. I liked that you promoted your Red Dress photos, and it was super cool to see you get some recognition! You will continue to get more, count on it, and I also hope you get to shoot some more concerts in the future because you have some amazing shots in your portfolio and I know how much you love to go to shows and photograph the bands. It really sucks that Facebook (ruining things as always) has apparently stopped showing me the "posts you like" feature. It hasn't shown me anything new for several months now, and that was the only way I could communicate with you on a daily basis. As I always say, I'm still here, but now I can only communicate when you post something. I don't know how regularly you read this blog, but I did see "Mackintosh" a day or two ago, so I just wanted to let you know that it is beyond great that you are having success with your art. I even saw a comment from "Alcest Official" on one of your photos on Instagram, so maybe that was Neige himself, which would take everything right back to the beginning.

You are doing great - as was forseen! - and things are going to keep getting better. And I also see many concerts in your future, with lot of pictures  :):)

I am somewhat relieved tonight, on an entirely different subject, because I had been worried about my left eye. I think I may have mentioned this once before, probably just in passing, but about a month ago, maybe six weeks, I began to notice a strange feeling of muscle weakness around my eye. Normally, a person isn't really aware of any physical feeling around the eyes I don't think, except for a touch of eye strain here and there. Maybe an eyelid twitch every once in a great while. I've had those on rare occasions. But overall, even as a person experiences gradual deterioration in their vision and comes to need glasses, as I did in 2015, I don't think that the average person notices, per se, a lot of sensation around the muscles of the eye socket.

This is what I began to experience back in early May. My right eye felt normal, meaning no unusual sensation at all, but one day my left eye began to feel weak, as if the muscles in the socket had been fatigued in a workout. This feeling continued for several days and would sometimes be accompanied by unfocused vision, as if my weak left eye was trying to adjust to my stronger right eye. Sometimes all of this included an eyelid twitch. There was never any pain involved, but there was always this very noticeable feeling of muscle weakness all around the eye. I finally did some Googling, and of course all kinds of spooky stuff came back (which is why they say to never Google medical problems).

I figured it was being caused by lack of sleep, which can be extreme at times when you are a caregiver, and I am sure that the lack of sleep has contributed to the problem. But I also noticed that the it would go away for a day or two, and my eye would feel like it was recovering. On those days, my vision was as sharp as it could be for my age.

Starting last Saturday I had a few days off, and one of my main goals for those days was to get as much sleep as possible. Among other things, I wanted to rest my eye, and the rest of a couple of sleep-ins did seem to help. But this morning I had a major revelation.

I woke up to find myself in a sleeping position that I know I have unconsciously fallen into for perhaps several years now. In this position, I throw my left arm up above my head, raised up above my shoulder. I do this because it feels relaxing. You know how you adjust your body when you go to sleep? You turn one way or another, or put your arms under your pillow, or whatever? Well, I knew I had often raised my arm and stretched it, but I'd never thought anything of it.

This morning, however, I awoke in my apartment to find my arm stretched high above my head...

and laying exactly across my left eye.

Boom! A lightbulb went on in my head. I had a Moment Of Clarity just as I awakened.

My arm had felt heavy on my face, dead weight over my eye. I am betting now that it has been The Arm that has perhaps lain over the eye long enough on a night or two to cause nerve and muscle distress, and caused blurring of vision on some days as well.

An analogy would be if you fell asleep with your leg twisted beneath you, and it went to sleep to the point where some minor nerve damage resulted. Your leg would recover so long as you didn't let it happen again.

I am almost certain that is the case with my eye, which has been worrying me quite a bit recently because it has been the weirdest feeling......

But I am willing to bet it's been because of my Arm Thing, and I am gonna train myself, starting tonight, not to sleep that way. My eyes feel good tonight, sharp enough for age 58, and the muscle weakness around the left eye feels like a bruise that's beginning to heal.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, and I'll keep you posted. Thanks.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Cool Shirts + Cave Of Munitz + Mr. Moto

Today was my last day off until mid-July, so I did another sleep-in just like yesterday. Stayed inside for a while too, just like yesterday. It's rare that I get to take my time, so I did just that, drinking coffee and playing guitar for a while. At mid-afternoon I went to Northridge Mall to look for new shirts, nice button up shirts, but I couldn't find anything that was "me". The colorful shirts looked too Hawaiian, and I've got enough Hawaiian shirts. I didn't want long sleeve dress shirts, just something short sleeve and stylin' so I won't just be in t-shirts or Polos all the time. I think I went to the Mall a few days too late, because a lot of stuff probably got stored after Father's Day, so I'll go back and look again before Fourth of July.

I like color but it's gotta be the right combination and the right pattern. Other than that I like black, but not plain black. It's gotta have something else happening, something subtle. Just gimme a cool shirt or two and I'll go away. But they've gotta be just right, or I swear - I'll keep wearing t-shirts and Polos!

And you don't want that, now, do you? So help me find some Cool Shirts and it'll be win/win.  :):)

Thanks in advance as always. ///

After the Mall I drove down to the end of Vanowen to go to El Escorpion Park. I am trying to do hikes on my days off that I can no longer get to on workdays, and I wanted something easy today after Rocky Peak yesterday, so I chose El Escorpion because it has The Cave Of Munitz, which is both photogenic and spiritually magnetic. It is truly something to behold because it looks like a castle made out of sandstone. The Cave is different from all the other sandstone formations in the area. It seems as if it emerged fully formed, from the bottom of the sea or wherever it originated 80 million years ago. I only go to El Escorpion Park about four or five times a year, but when I do I always spend some time standing before The Cave, to take in it's vibe. There is a Quiet that you can sense, but there is power in the quiet, and you always see a hawk circling. You hear bird calls, and the buzz of bees. There are millions of bees there, good thing I'm not skeered anymore, haha. But it's like the birds know.

Whatever it is that you are feeling as you stand before The Cave, which looks like a Wizard's Castle in a movie, whatever it is giving off - the birds know it. They know about The Cave, and the way the Sun sets behind the hill to cast long shadows upon it. You can feel it as you stand there and try to comprehend 80 million years of it's existence, let alone that of the Indian Chief Mr. Munitz, who is said to have lived in The Cave centuries ago and whose curse is supposed to haunt it. You'd have to ask the local Canoga Park residents about that; I am but a mere tourist. But the birds, they know, and you can tell when you stand there.

Birds know a lot of stuff that we don't. They have their own world, after all. ///

This evening I did watch a movie, another Mr. Moto entitled "Thank You, Mr. Moto". This time, as the movie opens, Mr. Moto is in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. He is in disguise as a camel driver in a caravan, but in reality he is looking for a lost Chinese Scroll, an artwork that is part of a puzzle of scrolls that will lead to The Treasure Of Ghengis Khan (who seems to figure in a lot of adventure movie plots from the 1930s). A "veddy Brrittish" art collector is also after the missing Scroll...

Just a moment....you do know the correct pronunciation for "veddy Brrittish", do you not? I'm pretty sure you do, so I'll trust that you've got it.

The thing with all of the characters who are after the Scroll, is that they are messing with Mr. Moto, and they don't understand that you just don't do that.

Mr. Moto will solve the case and stop all bad guys in their tracks every time, and he will do it all in 66 minutes. He will also deliver the romance (with Janet Regan), except that it will not involve him because.....he is Japanese. And formal.

Or maybe because he is Peter Lorre, who personifies Mr. Moto.

They should've made a hundred Mr. Motos. I may even like him more than Charlie Chan, which is saying something. ///

So that was my days off, going hiking, waking up slow with coffee and guitar, listening to Bass Communion while reading, looking for shirts and finding none....

Now I just need somebody to do it all with, especially the things they like to do.  :):)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Mega Monster Hike at Rocky Peak + Paul Newman in "The Prize"

Today was another good one. I slept in til Noon, so two big thumbs up for that. After hanging around the pad for a while I decided a hike was in order, but I wasn't sure where I wanted to go. So, I just started driving and wound up at Rocky Peak, a trail that begins in the Santa Susana Pass in between Chatsworth and Simi Valley. I've been there before, and you may remember me mentioning it and posting photos on Facebook, but the last time I was there was November 2015, so it had been a while.

There are a couple of reasons that Rocky is not a regular hike of mine. The first one is that the "parking lot" is literally just a small dirt square that holds about eight cars if you're lucky, and a lot of the time it's full. The only other place to park is against the hillside at the other end of a freeway bridge, and I won't do that. The other reason I don't regularly visit RP is because it's a Monster Hike, like going to the top of Mission Point, and most of the time I am working and not ready to exert myself to that extent. But today was a day off and I was well rested, and I hadn't been to The Peak Of All Things Rocklike for two and a half years, and so - to paraphrase Joe Cocker - it was "high time I went".

I hadn't planned on doing a megahike, but that's what I wound up doing. I think it surpassed my previous Most Mega Hike Ever that I did back in April when I took the O'Melveny Trail to Mission Point and back. That amounted to five and a half miles round trip. Today I did at least 6 miles (three in, three out), but the thing was, that I had no idea where the trail ended. I had never been that far in before, and when I got to the high rock formations that I had thought was the end of the trail, I saw that it just kept going. I followed the trail for another mile or so, and even then I couldn't see the end, so I thought "well, that's enough for today". It took me an hour to get back to the car, so I know it was at least three miles, and it had to be at least 1000 feet of elevation gain, so for all of that I think it qualifies as my Most Mega Hike Ever, or at least tied with the one in April. The Mission Point hike is steeper, but not by much, and the thing with Rocky Peak is that it never lets up. It just keeps climbing and climbing for three miles (and who knows how much further?).

There were some incredible views from up there, because you are in between two Valleys, so at one point way up high, you can see almost the entire San Fernando Valley on your left and most of Simi Valley on your right, and if it were a clear day you would be able to see the ocean as well, over the Santa Monica mountains to the south. When you get way back on the Rocky Peak trail, you really feel like you are in the middle of the mountains. I did some Googling when I got home because I was curious about where the trail ends. Mysteriously, I wasn't able to find any info about an end point, but one hiker did post that he went all the way to where it meets the Chumash Trail, which he said was at four miles, or another mile from where I stopped. I have also been to the Chumash Trail, way back in 2014. It is located in Simi Valley right next to the Indian Caves that I had been intent on locating at the time. If you go to my 2014 photo album on FB, you will see pictures from that trip. So, I found that the Rocky Peak Trail leads at least as far as the Chumash Trail.

Next time I will go that far. Not sure when that will be, but sooner than another two and a half years for certain. :)

Tonight I watched a movie called "The Prize" (1963), which I found in a Library search for movies with Edward G. Robinson, who rules. He doesn't have the lead role in "The Prize", but that goes to Paul Newman (who also rules, if that even needs to be said), and Newman carries this flick, which is a big budget Hollywood entertainment picture that follows along the lines of a Hitchcock-style suspense film. The title of the movie refers to the Nobel Prize. The year's winners in their various fields have gathered in Stockholm (which must be pronounced as Schtok-holm, thank you) , among them Newman, an alcoholic writer of literature whose work is a critical favorite but doesn't sell. This aspect is played mostly for laughs, as the writers must have felt the need to give Newman a flaw which he would not otherwise have had, haha. Even his relentless boozing is not enough to keep the ladies away, in this case Teutonic Bombshell Elke Sommer, who plays his Swedish liason, and the feline beauty Diane Baker, as the niece of Edward G., who plays another Nobel winner. Robinson has a heavy accent, and though it is not specified which country he is from, we can be sure it is a Sinister European Power, likely from the Soviet Bloc. He is not who he seems to be, and from there the plot takes off.

Being a box office flick from the early 60s, "The Prize" spends a lot of time on International Style, which was au courant then, and it especially overspends time on hijinx, mostly of the romantic kind. Obviously, when you've got Paul Newman in your movie, and Elke Sommer and Diane Baker, you are going to have some very suggestive romance (ahem!), with dialogue that you might hear from a Sean Connery James Bond movie. Newman plays it more self-effacing than that, and so do the ladies because the hijinx is secondary to The Sinister Communist Plot. But the movie runs 2 hours and 15 minutes, and that is the problem. It's still a lot of fun, and it moves, and if you love the sophistication and hairstyles of the early 1960s, then there is a lot to like about any big Hollywood movie like this one.

Had director Mark Robson cut about 30 minutes from "The Prize", and had he focused just a bit more on the plot, he'd have really had something, because the cast has a lot of energy and everything looks great, shot on location in Sweden (with interiors at Royce Hall, UCLA).

Still, I love the time period too much to give it anything less than One & One Half Thumbs Up. The early 1960s was all about possibility, the possibility of going to the Moon, even the possibility of good movies. So give "The Prize" a shot, even if you never see it.

That's all for tonight. See you in the morn after a mega sleep in.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Good Singin' + Regis + Collage + Bass Communion + "Waterloo Bridge" by James Whale

It's Sunday night, which means I've got my Fred Flintstone signature model toothpicks in place, to prop open my eyes, but today was a good day and I got a lot done. Before I rattle off my list of accomplishments du jour, I must point out that only hard core Flintstonians will "get" the above reference. All others will have to begin sifting through episodes at their earliest possible convenience......although (hint hint) : I just did some Googling, using a few choice words (hint hint), and if you do the same, well.....

You might find yourself exclaiming "Goodbye Mr. Spalding"! That's all I will say for now.

But back to the day's events, the singing was good in church this morning. Last week Pastor Gordon left us to go to Hawaii, and today marked the final service for our Associate Pastor, Arlette. She is headed for Madagascar, her home country, after eleven years at Reseda Methodist. So now, both of our pastors have gone, and we await the arrival of Pastor Harris from Oceanside.

I am off work as noted last night, and so when choir rehearsal was over I was back home by Noon. The first thing I did after drinking some coffee was to tackle my junk mail drawer. That's where I toss all the solicitations that I should just throw out on sight, but instead I toss 'em in there, where they take their place among folded up full page computer printed concert tickets that I save for a someday scrapbook, and other more annoying stuff like bills for old car regisphilbinistrations, that I paid online but never threw out the envelope.

I've gotta pause here to ask you to please never write, or say, the word "registration" without inserting "philbin" into the center. Can you do that for me? It's very important and I thank you in advance. The same goes for the word "outrageous", although that requires you to slightly alter the latter half of the word so that it pronounces as "outregis", to which you can then add the necessary "philbin" at the end.

If I can get back on track after that, I will do so. Lemme try....

After I finished with my mail drawer, I started work on a project I've long intended to complete : creating a collage out of four drawings I had finished earlier in the Spring, arranging and taping them to black posterboard, and then interspersing cut out pieces of smaller images from unfinished drawings to add Weirdness and create a large collage piece. Taping down drawings is time consuming because you've gotta get 'em level and you've gotta press down with care, so that you don't smear anything. When I say "tape" I mean making double sided loops of Scotch tape and putting them on the backs of the drawings. I know I could use glue or paste, but the good thing about tape is that if you screw up you can fix it with no mess. The downside is that tape doesn't hold forever and eventually dries out, but that takes many years, and then you can just re-tape.

But yeah, I finally made my collage, and I am stoked. Now I wanna make a more advanced collage entirely out of cut pieces that fit together like a puzzle.

After that I went for a CSUN walk at 4pm, then I came back and read some more of "The Outsider" by SK, while listening to Bass Communion. Did I mention Bass Communion? Man, I can't remember a lot of stuff in The Age Of Information, but if I didn't mention BC, it is Steven Wilson's long time side project of Ambient Music. I had been meaning to buy a Bass Communion cd for a long time, and I finally did. The one I got is called "Ghosts On Magnetic Tape". Mr. Wilson described it as sounding like an hour long EVP experience, which was what sold me. It's not music per se, but more of a soundscape, and it sounds very much as the title describes. It's a perfect cd to read to, especially when reading Stephen King, and in fact it is so good that I just ordered my second Bass Communion album, called "Loss". I will let you know when it arrives.

Finally tonight, I watched a movie called "Waterloo Bridge" (1931), directed by James Whale, who would go on to great fame with "Frankenstein" later in the same year. There are two versions of this movie, the more famous one being the 1940 remake starring Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh. I first saw that version years ago, and it is excellent, but being a big fan of James Whale I've always wanted to see his original version, and I tracked it down finally, on a dvd set from a collection of pre-code films called "Forbidden Hollywood".

Man, was this original version great! Early sound-era actress Mae Clarke stars as Myra, a chorus girl in a hit stage show in London who finds herself out of work as WW1 rages and German bombs rain down on the city. She turns to prostitution to make ends meet, and even though the movie is pre-code, this was a bit of a taboo subject and is only hinted at. While walking the street near Waterloo Bridge, she meets a youthful Canadian soldier. She brings him home, but to her surprise - and dismay - he falls in love with her.

So begins the plot, and I'll divulge nothing further. The more famous 1940 version is slicker and more Hollywoodised - and it is a great tearjerker in it's own right - but having now seen the original, I think it is much more realistic. Mae Clarke is a revelation, what a great actress for that early era. She was playing a very complex, emotional part - a leading role - when the sound era was only two years old. In other words, just two years prior, she would have been emoting in the old style of silent film, with grand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. And yet here she is in this movie, acting for the camera with the modified expressions and greater emotional nuance that sound afforded, because now we could hear the human voice. Mae Clarke would have been one of the first crop of actors to work in this new style, and though at times early in the film you can see that she is "staging" it (acting as if in a play), as the film progesses, she gives a performance that any great actress of  the modern era would be proud to emulate.

Wow for Mae Clarke, and for "Waterloo Bridge" by James Whale, whose distinctive Expressionistic style is at work here.

A great movie, concise at 80 minutes, and of historic value as well, as it demonstrates the creative transfer from the silent era to the sound. Two Big Thumbs Up.

See you in the morning after a sleep-in.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

I'm Back + "Levon" + "20 Million Miles To Earth"

I'm back. Sorry I didn't write last night, but it was a case of I Didn't Watch A Movie So I Had Nothing To Report Because My Life Is Otherwise Marginally Boring Right Now.

I mean, it's not that bad because I do go to awesome concerts every once in a while, and I read a lot of interesting books, and I even still get out on a hike now and then. And even if I worked 24/7 and never had free time for anything, there are still many interesting subjects to write about on any given day.

I think it's more a case of When I Don't Watch A Movie It Can Be Hard For Me To Think Of  Something To Write About, because I don't wanna bitch about politics (although I will be leading the High-Fives all around when Trump is impeached), and even though I have a lot of interests, I'm not always focused enough on any single one of them to write anything of substance.

Part of it is that I try to write every single day, and most days I have at least a movie or an anecdote or two. But as can be expected, it's not always easy to come up with something seven days a week. Sometimes I can do stream-of consciousness, beginning with a random observation. Like today, I was listening to 1260AM, the Oldies station, and they played "Levon" by Elton John. It's a great song and I've heard it a hundred times, but for some reason this time, I found myself thinking, "what the Hell is that song about, anyway"? Bernie Taupin sometimes wrote these little stories as lyrics for Elton, who sang them as if the stories were about real people. "Daniel" is another such song. But also with "Daniel", you go : "just who is that song about"?, because Elton makes it sound so personal and real.

So even though I've heard "Levon" over and over again since the early 70s, for some reason today I Googled "Levon Song Meaning", and many links came back. I discovered I am not alone in wondering about those lyrics.

And it turns out that they don't mean anything in particular. In an interview, Bernie Taupin called it an exercise in free form writing that started because he liked Levon Helm of The Band. The song developed to be about a guy who wants to break free of his job and his lot in life, but Taupin didn't set out to write it that way. He just liked the name "Levon", and a bunch of lyrics came out.

That's what I mean when I say that sometimes, if your mind is active, you can simply take a minor thought about anything at all and turn it into a blog. The problem for me is that my mind is not always active at 1am, which is the time of night when I begin writing.

I will shut up now, but even the act of 'Splaining Myself served as conversation material, and that is good.  :)

I am writing from home tonight, off work until Wednesday the 20th.. And, I did watch a movie tonight! Hooray.......It was another classic Creature Feature from my Sci-Fi Collection called "20 Million Miles To Earth". That is one hell of a title, and because there is also a movie called "5 Million Miles To Earth", the question must be asked : "Is '20 Million Miles To Earth' four times as great as '5 Million Miles To Earth"? Because you would expect it to be, right?

Unfortunately, the answer is no, and that is because "5 Million Miles To Earth" was the British title for "Quatermass And The Pit", which is one of the Ten Scariest Movies Ever Made.

"20 Million Miles" is quite good in it's own right, though, because for one thing - that's a lot of doggone miles. If you have 20 Million Miles in your movie, it's a good movie, period.

The story begins in Sicily, in the waters of the Mediterranean (aka The Sea Of The Medium Terrain). Two fishermen are out in their small boat, when all of a sudden a Gigantic Spaceship appears out of nowhere. It is not a flying saucer, more of a rocket jet, but it is huge and no sooner does it appear than it crashes into the sea, not far from the fishermen, who turn their boat around quickly and row toward the rocket wreck, in order to try and save the lives of anyone aboard.

Only the captain lives, and it turns out that he and his crew had been on a secret mission to Venus, so now you know for sure that you've gotten your 20 Million Miles worth.

On Venus, the crew had captured a Specimen that they had placed in a metal tube. The Specimen was to be studied in a Secret Military Lab to determine how life exists on Venus, with it's inhospitable Ammonia Atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the metal tube is found on the beach by a small boy, who opens it, and - seeing the lizard inside, encased in jelly - opts to make some quick pocket change by selling the critter to a local zoologist, who is fascinated by his new charge but is unaware of it's extraterrestrial nature. Until he checks on it in it's cage a few hours after buying it, and discovers that it has tripled in size.

And it's only gonna get Huger! Or, since I am not sure Huger is a word, I will use the pronunciation instead : "Hy-oo-ger". Meaning really big!

And big it gets, this Lizard from Venus, created by Ray Harryhausen and for the most part very effective as one of his trademark special effects. As I watched I was thinking, "you just know that Spielberg saw this as a ten year old kid, and "Jurassic Park" was hatched in his mind. Yeah, I know it was written by Michael Crichton, but he probably saw "20 Million Miles To Earth" as well.

I didn't like it quite as much as the recently reviewed "The Giant Claw", because it was more of an action picture and didn't have as much Mad Scientist stuff and Weird Physics, laboratory stuff. Because it was about a Giant Killer Lizard From Venus, the last half hour was dedicated to the Army's attempt to subdue it, in cooperation with Italian authorities, as it made it's final stand in the Colosseum.

The movie really was filmed in Italy, too. And some scenes were shot at Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, at the Garden Of The Gods. That's only 5 Miles From Northridge as opposed to 20 Million Miles From Earth, but I still think it's pretty cool.

The print was in pristine black and white, which by itself is enough to garner Two Giant Lizard Thumbs Up, and I concur.

See you in church in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Awful Truth"

Tonight's movie was "The Awful Truth" (1937), a five star Screwball Comedy that I found at the Libe in a search for new Criterion releases. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant star as a well-to-do couple who don't seem to trust each other. As the movie begins, Grant is returning from a "Florida vacation" that he never went on. Before heading home, he checks into a spa to use a tanning lamp in order to achieve the "Florida" look. Why he is faking his vacation is never made clear, but the insinuation is obvious enough. When he returns home in his newly bronzed skin, a Welcome Home party awaits him. His friends are all there, but not his wife. When she does arrive a short while later, she is in the company of a Handsome and Debonair Man, who happens to be her voice coach. She is an aspiring singer.

Cary Grant, likely cheating himself, doesn't believe her story that her car broke down, and her Handsome Voice Teacher offered her a ride home. The fact that the guy is a smarmy Continental type doesn't help matters either. Accusations fly. Divorce papers are soon filed

During the divorce proceedings, one of the movie's great bits involves the couple's dog, played by Skippy, one of the great movie dogs of all time (he also played "Asta" in The Thin Man movies).

Skippy plays "Mr. Smith" in this film, and he has several good scenes, including one where he plays "hot and cold", the game that you do in a living room where you hide an object and the other person (in this case a dog) tries to find it.

Once Dunne and Grant divorce, both seek new relationships, but they can't seem to stop running into one another, and that is because they are both trying to sabotage each other. Dunne becomes engaged to Ralph Bellamy, an Oklahoma oil tycoon, but Cary Grant throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings. Then it is Irene Dunne's turn to wreck Grant's pending marriage to a wealthy heiress. I have been an Irene Dunne fan since I first got into old movies, and she was a great dramatic actress, but I didn't know until tonight that she could pull off fast talking farce as well as anybody.

"The Awful Truth" is a riot from start to finish, with freewheeling performances from Dunne and Cary Grant, whose suave persona is said to have started with this film.

Of course, the couple are made for each other, much like the couple from "Trouble In Paradise" (1932) that I reviewed a couple weeks ago and also gave my highest rating.

In "Trouble In Paradise", the couple wound up together, and in "The Awful Truth"......

I can't tell you because you will have to see for yourself.

We all should have lived, at least for a while, in Hollywood, on a studio set, inside a movie like "The Awful Truth" or "Trouble In Paradise" or "His Girl Friday" (the ultimate Screwball Fast Talker). These movies are a world unto themselves, in which every interior is Palatial, and in which the heroine is always dressed to the hilt in designer fashions that stand out with unique shape and pattern, and in which the leading man (Cary Grant) is not just Handsome but just a tad ridiculous.

You had you be super talented to pull off any of the roles in a film like this, and I've said before that it could not be done today, not because the actors of today are less or more talented, but because they are talented in a different way that corresponds to the world of 2018.

This is why we should all go live in Hollywood in 1937, just for a movie shoot or two.

Just to soak up the style and glamour and rapid fire humor of the time.

It was over 80 years ago, but man......those guys and gals were all over it, and they knocked what they were doing so far out of the park that it cannot be replicated today.

Ten Stars for "The Awful Truth", Golden Age Hollywood at it's finest, with a style and energy never to be seen again.

Thanks, Movie Stars.  :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

"Hereditary" + Hey SB!

This afternoon I went to the theater again to see the new horror movie, "Hereditary". My sister Vickie went with me. She was getting her hair done near the Granada Hills Regency, so that's where we saw it, on a nice big screen with good sound and a small matinee audience, all of which I like.

I don't think I wanna tell you too much about "Hereditary", because unlike a lot of the older movies I watch on dvd, this one is a popular hit in current release, and you may want to see it. Therefore, I will try to just describe around the edges of the story.

The first thing I will say is that this is one of the creepiest flicks I have seen in a while. At first, there seems to be a mental illness issue with a main character. But we see that the character has had a lot to deal with in life, because of a parent. I really don't want to tell you more than that.

I will say, in a humorous way - as per Horror Movie Locations - that though the woods and mountains are beautiful, that you would have to be nuts to live in a house like that, and I wouldn't live in such a place if you gave me the house for free. If I were in that movie, I would have rented a steamroller and demolished the place. Then I would've continued into the town to take care of a few more places....

If you are a character in a horror movie, it is not good for you to live in a place that is surrounded by mountains and tall pine trees that blow in the wind.

If you are in a horror movie, you should live in a Regular Neighborhood, because then maybe nothing bad will happen to you.

But wait a minute.......how can you say that? What about the people in all of those "Paranormal Activity" movies? They lived in a condo in San Diego, didn't they? How much more Normal can you get?

Well, look.......don't give me a hard time about it. I'll take the normal house over the giant wooden mansion in the woods, any day. I like to go hiking in the woods; I don't wanna live there.

And that is because I might wind up in a horror movie.

So yeah, if I had directed the movie, I would've had a really big steamroller run over the house after about the first hour, and then nothing bad would've happened and the movie would have ended (and been very short) and nobody would've gotten creeped out.

But wait a minute.........none of what happened was the house's fault. This ain't a "house" movie.

So stop picking on the house!

Okay......but I still wouldn't live there if you paid me.

"Hereditary" starts off slow, but builds. It has a dismal atmosphere due to great photography and direction by it's young filmmakers. The cast is terrific, though they may all belong in an asylum.

Certainly one or two or three of them need to be steamrolled, too. Maybe more.

Man, it's schpooky.

Hey Elizabeth, I have gotta interject here to say that I saw your movie, too. The student film you made with your friend that was recently posted on your FB. You were great in your role and so was the woman playing the mother. In your scene with her, the aftermath of the baby shower took on a twisted, confessional edge. Mom started to talk about something very disturbing.....

And it was weird because this is also what happens in "Hereditary".

I mean, it's different.......but......the way in which the actress "lets it out" in your scene with her - the confessional scene - has a lot in common with something that happens in "Hereditary".

Really weird, SB!

Now you can add acting to your resume, and you are ready to work in front of the camera as well as behind it.  :)

I hope you are excited to do more of both.

Go see "Hereditary", if you like horror movies. Conversely, if you don't like them, don't go.

I am gonna start making my own horror movies, in which I stop the problem before it gets too extreme.

Steamrollers, etc.

The movies will be short, and the audience will probably want it's money back.

But I'll get to be the Hero  :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Mr. Moto's Gamble"

Tired once again cause I didn't get much sleep last night, and I can't sleep in on Tuesdays because Pearl's cleaning lady gets here early. So, if I nod off in the middle of the blog, just give me a little nudge and I'll continue.

I did watch a movie this evening : "Mr. Moto's Gamble" (1938), starring Peter Lorre as the ingenious criminologist. If you remember back to early 2017, I had discovered a lot of Charlie Chan movies in the Library database, and I had ordered and watched them. I got hooked, because I loved the puzzle every movie presented, and I loved Chan's methods of solving the puzzles. The supporting casts were excellent, Sidney Toler was great as Charlie Chan, and the format was concise. The movies were all around 72 minutes, and because you know all about The Era Of Great Screenwriting due to my endless harping on the subject, you know that every movie, though brief, featured a Ton Of Story and character.

Hollywood does what Hollywood does best, and in those days there was a Hollywood, and man, was it great.

The Charlie Chan movies are pure entertainment of course, and pure fun, and so was my first Mr. Moto film. I think Moto was a spin-off from Chan because Charlie Chan's famous "Number One Son" (Key Luke) was in "Mr. Moto's Gamble", playing a student in Moto's criminology class at an unnamed university. Moto becomes involved in a homicide investigation when a boxer dies after a heavily promoted match that attracted  a lot of bookies and betting action.

Following the Charlie Chan formula, Moto has proteges (his students) that want to help solve the crime, and - as in the Chan films - "Number One Son" is always eager to be center stage.

There are love interests (Lynn Bari, Jane Regan), and boxers and hoodlums. As with all short format films from that era, the scenes are brief and the dialogue rapid and energetic, with the exception of Mr. Moto's comparatively somnolent observations.

Like Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto is Asian (Chan is Chinese, Moto Japanese), and so - in 1930s Hollywood lore - they are automatically possessed of Great Wisdom. It isn't racism, and it really isn't even caricature because it's played straight. What it is, is a Hollywood promotion of respect for what was considered Ancient Knowledge from Far East societies that had only a half century earlier (1890s) still been closed off to the West. Some Chinese had emigrated to California, however, and some Japanese. And so the Great Asian Mystery was promoted via detective stories, and they did it very well.

Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto is the main attraction here. As awful a character as he portrayed in "M", his most famous role, he is just as great in an opposing role as a mild mannered Supreme Crime Solver who uses Ju Jitsu on bad guys.

Lorre was known for playing creeps, and it is great to see him play a good guy. This is what I said about Michael Shannon after seeing "Shape Of Water", that it would be nice to see him in a positive role, and there are many others whose versatility should be utilised.

I have already ordered me two more "Mr. Moto" movies from the Libe, and after I watch those I will order the other ones they have, four more I think.

I also have sent my first FOIA letter to the CIA regarding information on a deceased person, as I had mentioned I would be doing a few weeks ago. The only way you can request info on another person, without their consent, is if they are deceased. So I began with my Dad, for reasons also mentioned weeks ago. I will let you know of the response when I receive it, and at some point thereafter we will proceed with more requests about other persons.

See you in the morn.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Words

No movie tonight cause I went over to Grimsley's again. I've gotta quit "hanging out" in the evenings though, because I need my nights back. Hanging out once in a while is okay, every couple of weeks, a few times a month. But not multiple times per week. It's better for me to watch my movies, read my books, play my guitar and work on my drawings in the evenings, in lieu of being in a relationship, which is what I really want. But "hanging out with the boys" is at the bottom of my to-do list. If I do it too much, I start to feel like I'm in junior high again, because of the level of conversation.

Anybody wanna get married?

Lemme know. With me, you'll never have to worry about a committed relationship.

Meanwhile, while I continue to endure Singlehood, it's best that I keep to my own interests, think my own thoughts, pursue my hobbies, and maintain my focus on the things that are most important to me.

I did begin the new Stephen King book this morning. It's called "The Outsider", and boy is it ever a page turner. I've remarked that SK has really honed his style down in the last ten years or so. His sentences are shorter and to the point, and he doesn't go off on as many tangents. He still writes 600 page books, but ever since he became interested in writing crime fiction, it's become easier to devour them. With horror, there is a often a supernatural element, something that cannot be described by "nuts-and - bolts" writing. More imagination is necessary, and therefore the reader must also take time to translate the imaginary world the writer has created, because it is so far removed from the ordinary life experience.

That is why King's most famous books take longer to read, because he is digging stuff up from his Id, and then elaborating on it, creating a reality out of a supernatural situation, which is unnatural to the reader.

Crime fiction, on the other hand, is natural to the reader because we live in a world of crime and read about it everyday in the newspaper. We do not have to use our imaginations as much in the visualisation of reading a crime novel, as opposed to reading a horror or fantasy story, and so we can read faster because it reads like real life.

I am interested in dissecting what I read - in case you haven't noticed, haha - and analyzing why some books are "dry reading" (aka "academic"), and why I can pound some books while others take me months. I am interested in the way the mind processes different worded materials.

Words, and the way in which they are strung together, may be The Whole Deal.

I have often thought that, and I have thought that words may just contain the Ultimate Code, like an "Open Sesame" code, if the right words were put together in the right order.

Certainly this is the way in which words work in poetry.

And in love. Can you imagine writing the ultimate Love Letter?

If you wrote such a letter, the words would transmit exactly the feelings you had wished to send to your loved one, and he or she would receive, in emotion, everything you wrote.

This is what I mean about the real power of words, as a potential code for peace, love and cooperation.

But as for words used in stories, I will always defer to Stephen King, whether he is writing from deep in his imagination to create a world I must imagine, or whether he is writing hard boiled crime, that is (unfortunately) easy to understand, and can be turned page by page.

Try writing things down for a day or two. Write a sentence about anything, maybe what you are thinking or feeling. Often you may be thinking about what you are feeling. The heart and mind often work together. So try being their translator. Just write a few sentences.

Then read your words back, and maybe write some more the next day. It won't take you more than a few minutes.

You may discover that your Inner Voice has something important to say.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Good Singin' + Five Times Fast + I Finished "Twin Peaks", Lynch's Masterpiece

A very "Super Tired" Sunday Night to ya! Hope you're feeling Super Tired as well (not really - it just sounded like a friendly greeting). We had a nice send-off for our Pastor this morning in church, with what looked like more people in the pews than I've seen in the 3 1/2 years I've been there. The singing was good, too. Pastor G is moving to Hawaii, as mentioned, and we will have a new Pastor in a few weeks.

After church I drove to Burbank to take my sister Sophie shopping. Try saying that fast, five times (or however many times you are supposed to repeat a tongue tying phrase when you are saying it fast) :

Sister Sophie Shopping. Or, because it's fast, Sistersophieshopping...

Are you doing it? Are you saying it five times? And real fast (as opposed to just plain fast)?

Okay, good. Thanks very much for participating. I know it wasn't exactly "Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers", but I thought it was worthy of, let's say, introductory-level tongue-tie consideration.

If you've got any good ones yourself, please let me know. Tell me how many times to say 'em, and I guarantee I'll do it. You can count on me. :)

When I got back from Burbank, I read some more of my super depressing Indigenous People's History.

This is one book I'll not give updates on. All I will do is suggest you read it if you are interested, and I will say once again that the United States has got to do something major to acknowledge this largely unknown situation, which is horrible in the extreme.

My wish is that Indian Culture will become prominent again, and that their way of life will one day influence ours. ///

This evening, I watched the 18th and final episode of "Twin Peaks : The Return" (2017), and thereby finished the series that I began watching in February. David Lynch has been one of my favorite filmmakers for over forty years now. Like many hard core DL fans, I have watched and obsessed over everything he's done, and - in agreement with some fans whose reviews I have read - I can say unequivocally that in my opinion the eighteen hour "Twin Peaks" from 2017, which some fans call Season Three, is Lynch's masterpiece, everything he has been working toward since "Eraserhead".

There is so much going on in "TP 2017", with it's 217 listed characters, that I think I'd have to watch it at least two more times just to get a handle on the two dozen or so outlying story threads that stand apart from the main plot. "Twin Peaks" has always been part Soap Opera, and the 2017 version was no different, it's just that this time around, Lynch was determined to let loose his most far out movie instincts into the television process.

I said earlier that Original Twin Peaks was plenty weird, though more folksy......and nice.

This one was all over the map : weird, brutal, far out, off the charts, sentimental, dark, atomic.

The setting off of the Atomic Bomb at the Nevada Test Site in 1945 plays a big part in the weirdness of this "Twin Peaks", because it may have opened a hole in the Universe, or effected a time displacement.

I hope you had a great day. Hope it was weird, too.

Not really. I just thought it sounded like a nice greeting.

Unless you like Weird. In which case you are just like me, and if you are, then I really do hope you had a Weird Day.

I've gotta go to sleep now, before I lose my last remaining marbles.

See you in the morn.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)