San Diego Naval Air Station (and other stories)

Here's a hypothetical for you: what would you do if you woke up one day and found that your life was a lot different than you thought it was, that there were many things you hadn't known about yourself, and not only that, but also that these things had deliberately been kept secret from you? And what if, on top of that, you learned that these secret things were out-of-the-ordinary things, even extraordinary in some cases? How would that make you feel?

Now, what if - on top of all of the above - you went on to discover that even though you hadn't known about the secret things pertaining to your life, there were people who had known about them, maybe not in full detail, but at least in part or through rumor. And what if you further found out that these people had used their knowledge of your life, however accurate it may have been, to take advantage of you without your knowing it? And you wouldn't know it because you wouldn't have known that your life had any secrets.

But these people did know that. They knew your life had big secrets behind it, and they used that knowledge to gain access to you, or maybe their parents did.

Perhaps you'd inherited a great fortune at birth, and were never told, yet your friends knew about it for all the time you'd known them. How would that make you feel? Would you feel that they never were your friends? 

It's an interesting premise to consider, especially if the secret (or secrets) didn't involve a fortune but something far more powerful than money.

Now here's another hypothetical, and it's a strong one: what if you woke up one day and found out that your father was a Nazi war criminal? That he'd been involved in the death camps and heinous mass murder, long before you were born. How would that make you feel? And what if this news didn't jibe with the father you knew? Would you even believe it? You might not, especially if your father was an upright, mild-mannered citizen and community member.

But what if, later in your life, evidence started to pile up in that direction, that - yes indeed - your father had been a guard, or a thug, at a death camp, but as the years passed and the insanity receded, he had successfully "remade" himself as a professional man in a foreign country. But let's say he was not entirely reformed. He only seemed that way and presented a good "false front." Let's say that, in his new country, he learned the ropes through an established, ethnic gang of fellow emigrated Nazis, or Nazi sympathizers (posing as anti-Communists, perhaps), and that this clique had the power to allow him to, say, run a drug gang for profit? Or even a sex-and-drugs gang. Would you be shocked to find out all this stuff about your dad, if you knew him as an architect or engineer? You might indeed be stunned, if you didn't already suspect it or know about it.

This is how it was in the Mafia, or so we hear. It's the old Legitimate Businessman Theory. I'm sure there were children and even some very naive wives who thought dear old dad really was just an insurance man, when really he was rubbing people out. I'll bet there are plenty of Italian-American folks who could tell childhood stories of finding out their dad was a hitman.

But in our hypothetical situation, the reality is even worse. Dad turns out not to have been a hitman, but a mass murderer. Remember John Demjanjuk? The Cleveland auto worker? He was suspected, in the 1980s I believe, of being a guard at Treblinka, known to the inmates as Ivan the Terrible. He was tried and found not guilty, though many suspected he got off with a free pass.

Anyhow, as with our first hypothetical, it's an interesting, if awful, premise to consider, that you could wake up one day and find out that your dad had been a Nazi, and a murderous one at that. And that after the war he had relocated, say, to America, and you only had ever known him as dear old dad.

It would be incredibly tragic for the child in such a situation.

Now, imagine that our two hypotheticals are somehow intertwined. This is our Thought Exercise for today.

I did watch a movie last night, another documentary, called "The Thunder From Tinian", made in 1995 to commemorate 50 years since the end of the war. I was interested because of the Enola Gay, but also because Roy (Pearl's husband and one of my earliest male influences besides my Dad) was stationed on Tinian at the time the Enola Gay took off. The documentary features interviews with the surviving crew members, and also goes into the phenomenal amount of construction work that was required to turn the small island into an air base. The Navy's Seabees are featured. Their contribution alone is worth watching for. It's a harrowing story of the state of the world in 1945, and the film concludes with the crew members, to a man, saying that's impossible for anyone from a future generation to understand the position they were in, and that - had America not dropped those bombs, with all the horror they created - the end result of the war would have been a lot worse. They also point out that Japan and Germany were both close to creating their own atomic bombs, and what if they'd dropped theirs first? Humanistically speaking, it was a lose/lose proposition for those young men to be placed in the position of dropping those (or any) bombs, and yet, in the documentary, they all state that it was the only thing to do, in order to end the war. I happen to agree with them, though I wasn't there either, and (as they say) I can't possibly understand the position they were in, nor can a person with a condemnationalist opinion. 

An important book on the subject, concerning the air offensive against Germany, is "Bomber Command" by Sir Arthur Harris, Commander of the Royal Air Force during World War 2. And for the perspective of those on the ground (the recipients of bombs), read "Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany" by Thomas Goodrich, a book I mentioned in the last blog.

Well, that's just about all I know for today. I mean, I know a lot more, but it's way too much for this (or any) blog. I am also thinking of San Diego Naval Air Station. Now called Naval Air Station North Island, or NAS North Island, it is part of the vast Naval Base Coronado that is spread out along the San Diego County coastline. According to Wiki, Naval Base Coronado, of which San Diego Naval Air Station is a part, is the largest aerospace/industrial complex in the United States Navy. I mention it specifically because I can remember going to San Diego Naval Air Station when it still went by that name. Perhaps my Dad took me to an air show there when I was very small. And maybe he had someone to meet at the airbase, as well. At the greater Naval Base Coronado, there used to also be the Miramar Naval Air Station. We went there, too, and in later years, when I became an adult, I used to get it confused with San Diego Naval Air Station, and think they were all the same thing.

Miramar, Coronado, San Diego Naval Air Station.....I lumped them all together. When I was between the ages of about 8 and 12, Dad used to take me and my brother and Mom down to San Diego to go to the beach. He loved it down there, and we'd go to different places, like La Jolla, Oceanside, and Coronado Beach itself, which had a famous old mansion near the sand, where Dad said all the old Colonels lived. Maybe it was a retirement home. But for sure it was a big mansion. Dad would point out the Navy's fighter jets roaring overhead. Miramar was, I think, home to the Blue Angels (but I could be wrong about that), and it was turned over to the Marine Corps in 1996, according to Wiki. We stopped going to San Diego, and the beaches, after 1972. But the trips to San Diego Naval Air Station that I am initially referring to happened way back in the "dark ages" of my memory, like when I was three or four.

In 1977, Dad announced that we were moving to Colorado Springs. "I'm joining NORAD, son." NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command. 1977 was a rough year for Dad. He'd broken his leg in a fall (caught his ankle on a bedpost) and he had a cast up to his hip. He'd been suspended from his job prior to that (Dad had a drinking problem), and he eventually lost his job at MGM, where I later worked. I remember telling him, that Summer in 1977, "Dad, if you don't go back to work, it'll be the worst decision you ever made." This was before he broke his leg. But it was his life, and his choice, and he did not go back to MGM. Instead, when his leg healed, he announced that we were moving to Colorado Springs, and for a while (maybe a couple of months) he was adamant about it. It was "NORAD" this, and "NORAD" that. NORAD, NORAD, NORAD. I just chalked it up to Dad's drinking and his military fascination. "We're moving to Colorado Springs, son." I even tried to find a brochure on Colorado Springs at the library, just in case we did move (there was no internet in those days or I could've looked it up).

Now, our move to Colorado Springs so that Dad could join NORAD was almost certainly a figment of his imagination. I say "almost" certainly, because I can't be 100% certain, only 99.9%, and that's because my Dad also almost certainly had secrets about his life, much like the person in our first hypothetical proposition, stated above. But in Dad's case, he did in fact know his own secrets (unlike the person in the hypothetical). Dad knew his own secrets, and they certainly had to do with the military, and possibly more than that, and the thing about Dad, was that he was able to keep those secrets. He had the discipline to keep them for his entire life. They may have even been what caused him to drink.

My own fascination with all things military comes from Dad, and things like our trips to San Diego Naval Air Station, and to Miramar, and to San Pedro to tour the battleships, and to Point Mugu, and Vandenberg. 

I've had a persistent memory-image (call it a prehistoric memory, or even a dream) that I call The Red Elevator. In it, I am inside a Red Elevator, that itself is inside a tower made of red steel crossbeams. The tower is high, and we are going up very fast, or at least it feels fast to me, and I can see the red crossbeams going by as we go up. "We" means me, and a man I think is my Dad, and another man who is "in charge" of this trip. My Dad (I think of him here as my "formal Dad") is wearing a black suit and is carrying a briefcase. He is "squared away" as they say. With his free hand he is holding my hand, so I am guessing I am very small, maybe three? And there's three of us in this elevator, but the main thing is the elevator itself, because of the Red and the Crossbeams. And the height of the tower.

And when we get to the top, we get out onto a platform (also red), and there's a big white object there, and someone opens it up, and from the platform you can see as far as the eye can see. ///

The Pow Wow

I'm resting up again today. Don't like the sudden change to cold weather. To me, if it's below 60, it's cold. If it's not windy, I don't mind 55 degrees too much, but when it's blowing (which it is much of the time here in November/December), I especially don't like it. Wind is my absolute #1 least favorite weather condition, and in Fall, Northridge is the Windy City. Anyhow, I went over to the Indian Pow Wow last night at CSUN. They didn't have it during the Covid years, so it was awesome to see it again. I walked over twice, at 5:30 and then again at 8 for the closing ceremony. I stayed about a half hour each time. It's awesome to watch the dancers, to see the headdresses and beautiful, handmade clothing. The moon was near full, with Jupiter following it around (it's been tagging along all week), and I watched the dancers' feet as they matched the beat of the drums, and I just thought: "what an amazing culture, and they lived this way for 8000 years."

For me, as a white man, and one who is proud of my culture also but feels that it is not sustainable in its current form, I have wondered how great it might have been (and still could be), if we as Americans could help to restore Native American culture and bring it more to the forefront, and try to live under Nature's rules, and the rule of The Great Spirit (God), instead of constantly trying to conquer Nature (paving everything over, developing every square inch of land, creating climate problems, frying people's brains with electronic devices), and denying the existence of God.

I'll bet if you went to the Pow Wow, you'd feel the same way too.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love American culture, as stated above. No one loves Americana more than me, but I think it peaked around 1920-1950, and by 2000 it went into a sharp decline. Of course, the half-century from 1950-2000 was amazing and in many ways beyond compare. We went to the Moon in 1969. But then, slowly but surely, the corporation mentality began taking over, and here we are today. No more explanation is necessary. But at the Pow Wow, I thought again: "Man, if we could just dial it back. Dial back the idea of "progress". It's a ridiculous notion, the idea that Man is "going somewhere" and "needs to progress". And furthermore, the idea that "progress" is defined as electronic technology.

The mountains don't progress. The ocean doesn't progress. The sky does not progress.

But Man thinks he does, or that he needs to. We had all the technology we needed, to make life easier, about 50 to 100 years ago. Since then, and especially now, it's just to stifle ourselves. There's really no such thing as progress, just as there's really no such thing as science. There is discovery, but mathematics exists without Man's investigation, just as a tree does indeed make a sound (or at least sound waves) when it falls in the forest, even if no one is around to hear it.

There's no progress because the Earth goes around the Sun, and that's it. So, what is the best way to live?

Go to the Pow Wow, and you might get an idea. Then combine it with the best of American culture, from the peak of Americana. It's a big, beautiful country, and continent, and there's plenty of room for everyone, but we can't afford to let things run rampant, as they are now, in the way of the corporate/silicon valley/news media mentality, with fake news and fake politics (Trump is right about those things), and we must dial things back so we don't drive America off a cliff.

Well, anyhow, I'll shut up. I did watch a documentary last night, called "Ten Seconds That Shook the World"(1963), about the bombing of Hiroshima. It was written by Alan Landsberg, who had an office on the MGM lot, during the time I worked there, and it was directed by the legendary David Wolper. The inimitable Richard Basehart narrated, and it was put together using actual and staged footage, from the island of Tinian, showing Captain Paul Tibbets briefing the crew of the Enola Gay and addressing the 509th bomb group. Pearl's husband Roy was on Tinian. If I am not mistaken, he was a communications specialist, and I thought of him as I watched. His daughter told me that the soldiers were all nervous that the bomb would go off on the island, or the plane would crash on takeoff, and that fear is reflected in the movie.

The bombing and the mushroom cloud are shown, and are as horrible as can be imagined. The landscape in the aftermath is something most folks have probably seen. Anyway, it's an important part of history. And as awful as Hiroshima was, and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Tokyo was just as bad, if not worse, and the British/American firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg created a literal hell on Earth, with flames that rose miles into the air. I am reading a book called "Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany". It is decidedly not for the squeamish. But it describes how Germany was destroyed, and what happened to the ordinary citizens, and you wonder why something like this had to happen, and how it came to happen; you wonder what led up to it?

And you analyse what you read, and then you read and read some more. 

I'm also reading Geddy Lee's book: "My Effin' Life". I've only just started. He has a chapter about the experience of his parents in a Nazi concentration camp. I haven't come to that part yet.

Well anyhow, that's all for the moment. I'm still working on figuring out my own effin' life.  ////

Disneyland Report

Hello Folks (if anyone is still reading) : I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I am resting up after a marathon day at Disneyland. I went with my sister (we drove there separately); it was the only day available for her, and we thought the day after Thanksgiving might be a slow one at the park. I couldn't sleep the night before, so at 5 am, I figured "what the heck" : if I was gonna lie in bed awake I might as well get ready and head down to Disneyland, to get there as early as I can. I was on the freeway by 7, it was a straight shot on I-5 to Anaheim, with no traffic, and, because we'd anticipated a comparatively quiet day at the park, I was somewhat surprised when I arrived to find myself in a fairly long line of cars waiting to go through the parking lane. I arrived in the lot at around 8:15 (fifteen minutes after Disneyland opened), but it took 15 -20 minutes just to get through the parking booth (no biggie), and then you do the security check and get on the tram that takes you to the main gate. I like the tram, but it was kind of fun, right after Covid when Disneyland re-opened, when they had you walk to the gate (about a half mile) because the trams weren't running yet.

The gate line was short, and I was inside the park at 9:09, walking through the Magic Tunnel. It may have been the earliest I've ever gotten there. The crowd was already good-sized. I've had days in the past when I've arrived at 10:30 to 11 am and Main Street was almost empty, but that only happens on a middle weekday during the off-season, and this was a Friday during Thanksgiving weekend. Anyhow, I went straight to the Main Street Cinema. I always bookend my Disneyland trips with visits to the Cinema, because Mickey started it all, and it was just 6 days past his 100th birthday (he has the same birthday as my Mom, who would've turned 100 also). After watching Mickey, I went to Sleeping Beauty's Castle for a walk through. It wasn't open the last time I went, so it was awesome to see it again.

I did Snow White, Pinocchio and Mr. Toad while waiting for my sister to arrive, and when I finished those, I thought "maybe I have time for Star Wars". The lines for that ride used to be 90 minutes to 2 hrs, now they average about one hour. I thought I'd chance it, but Vickie called when I was halfway through the line. She was at the gate and I had her ticket, so I bailed out of the line and hotfooted it back to Main Street. I met her at the gate. We still use paper tickets (you know me, I'm a caveman, don't have an iPhone, etc.), and anyhow, I handed Vickie her ticket, and we headed right back to Fantasyland. I love the whole park, but that's always been my favorite Land. We did all the same rides again (the ones I had just gone on). Then we went up to Toontown.

Have you heard about the new ride called Mickey's Runaway Railroad? It just opened a few months ago. Toontown used to be mainly for little kids (6 and under), but now adults will love it too. I didn't know what to expect with the Runaway Railroad. I'd read that it was impressive, but wait till you see it for yourself. Man, it's like being in a magical Mickey Mouse Dream. I'll say no more, but when you next go to Disneyland, absolutely do not miss it.

We went on Pirates and the Haunted Mansion, which was decked out as The Nightmare Before Christmas. The new Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse is awesome. Don't miss that one, either. We did the Teacups. I promised Vickie I wouldn't spin the wheel too hard. The trick on that ride is to stare at the person directly opposite you; it helps defeat the optical illusion that causes dizziness (loss of equilibrium). We rode on the Sailing Ship Colombia, which was cool because it's not always in operation, but the Mark Twain Steamboat was down, so they are using the Colombia instead. I always enjoy seeing the Indian Village at the back of the Rivers of America.

We did some browsing for pins and other merch. Disney has so many cool sweatshirts and tees available; man, people deck themselves out in all kinds of Disney gear. We saw several strolling bands, also, including a band of strumming Pirates in New Orleans Square. Vickie stayed until 5:30. I still had 7 hours to go. I've been at Disneyland several times now by myself. I've never gone strictly by myself, but I've done the park solo for hours at a time, and it's very doable. It's more fun to have someone with you of course, but even if you are there by yourself you don't get lonely because there are 50,000 people there with you, haha. I am already used to going everywhere by myself anyway, and I am a fast walker, and good at making my way through foot traffic (which helps at Disneyland), so I always pound a lot of rides on my own. After Vickie left, I went on the Jungle Cruise (lots of fun after dark!), and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I did Winnie the Pooh, Storybook Land Canal Boats (a favorite), the Submarines (unmissable), Peter Pan. I did Haunted Mansion and Pirates again. I did Small World (which looks incredible at Christmastime), and then stayed for the fireworks, which ended with a fall of snowflakes and Christmas music. The last ride I went on was Indiana Jones, at midnight. By that time a lot of folks have gone home, and you can just walk right onto rides that would've taken an hour in line, earlier in the day.

I finished the night by purchasing a pin (I chose Pinocchio), then resting for 10 minutes, once again in the Main Street Cinema, watching Mickey cartoons and thinking of Disneyland trips of yore.

I'd live at Disneyland if I could. I suppose many folks would, also.

I left the park at 12:36 am, so I was there for 15 hours and 27 minutes, probably my longest day ever at the Magic Kingdom. I was on my feet most of the time and must've walked ten miles, so today I am taking it easy. The ride home last night was also a straight shot, no traffic, and I got back to my apartment at 2 am.

I hope to watch more movies soon. That's what I've been writing about for a long time. Life has been very interesting of late, but also very challenging, and I hope to understand more of what my life is all about. But for now, I am thinking about yesterday, which was really awesome, as every trip to Disneyland always is.

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving, and are having a peaceful holiday weekend. I will try to keep the blog going as best as I can. ////    

To Trump, or not to Trump: That is the Question

Still no movies. Just more documentaries, and I'm reading a book on the fall of Nazi Germany. I also watched a doc about the Croatian Ustasi. Have you ever heard of them? They were like the SS of Croatia in WW2. They ran the death camps, among other things, and were so barbaric that - according to the video - they even gave the German Nazis pause. Read about Croatia and the Holocaust.

 It's really hard for me to write at the moment. I just feel like I'm typing a lot of words that don't correspond to what I'm thinking and/or feeling about what's going on in my life at this point in time. That was John Dean's famous phrase during the Watergate hearings: "at this point in time". He got criticized for saying it, though I don't know why, but anyhow, I'm only writing to keep the blog going. I went into the store tonight, the Vons market down the street, and everything was so ridiculously expensive I ended up walking out, even though I was short on stuff for dinner. Here's a shocker for you, and before I tell it, I must remind you that, during his administration and up until the present time, I was the #1 anti-Trumper in the country - nay, the world.

I used to tell Grimsley that if it could be measured, I would be standing on top of the antenna on the top of the Empire State Building, and the #2 anti-Trumper would be on the sidewalk. If there had been a worldwide scientific test to find out who disliked Trump the most, I would've won it.

But then came the Biden presidency. And I was the guy who championed Joe Biden. Now, I had hoped Hillary would run again, but she didn't, and I sure didn't want Bernie, or whoever else was running. So, in 2020, as the primary season ran on, I told people (and I only know three or four) "you've gotta vote for Biden. Bernie's a commie and he doesn't stand a chance."

Well, I was (and am) greatly relieved that Bernie's steam ran out, but I am chagrined at what's been wrought by what is without any shadow of a doubt the worst presidency of my lifetime. I mean, I even rooted for Kamala Harris when the VP shortlist was announced. Talk about going 0 for 2!

The point of this minor tirade is to say that - despite my former status as the #1 Dump Trump frontman, I may indeed vote for the guy if it comes down to him and Joe Biden. To be fair to Biden, I don't think the administration's utter failure is 100% his fault. Washington DC, and the American government as a whole, is corrupt to it's core, as is it's corporate media lapdog overseers. What it is, is evil. And that's why I don't follow politics no more, or basically anything anyone says. I trust me, and that's about it.

But I still don't wanna pay 7 dollars for a bag of Doritos, youknowhatI'msayin'? Or 4.99 for a sack of potatoes that used to be two bucks. Can of soup? 3.99. Crackers? Five bucks if you're lucky. Good thing my molars are shot and I can't crunch 'em anyway.

How about you? Do you wanna pay 6 bucks for a dozen eggs, and have two wars going on, either one of which could trigger......well, I won't say it. But I will say that - hey! oh joy! - it's all happening on Joe Biden's watch, not to mention the runaway wokeness that's destroying American culture.

Now, Donald Trump was, and remains, the world's biggest a-hole. No one will topple him any time soon on that score. But gas, even though a ripoff even then, remained steady at 3.79 throughout his presidency. And eggs were one buck, maybe two. Milk was 1.99 a gallon.

Now, it's ten bucks for a freaking frozen pizza. It's insane, and it's only getting worse every day.

With what's going on in my life, I've been Googling "are we in the End Times?", and I'm not even fundamentalist.

I did tell my sister though, just the other day, "I am now the rightest-wing man in America. I make Donald Trump look like a hippie." And it's not because I am political. Remember, politics is stupid. I said that in the last blog. Hello? You've got to be a numbskull of the first order if you still "support your team" even after 60 years of modern corporate politics. AOC is as big a shill as Jim Jordan. It's a clown show. So, as a last resort, I am voting my pocketbook, and to save civilized American culture.

Now, before you cancel me (which you couldn't do because.....well, I'm me), you should know that if there was a scientific test for racism, or hatred, I would score zero and come in last, because I don't have that gene in my body. To me, there are two kinds of people: nice ones, and a-holes. And all the nuances in between, of course. But it obviously has nothing to do with anything physical like skin color. I've been the victim of people who are obsessed with body parts (one in particular), and I'm not like them in any way. I generally like people. I just don't like what is happening in America, caused by greed, and I especially don't like what has happened in my life. I can't even concentrate enough to watch a movie anymore.

But yeah.....ten bucks for a frozen pizza. Six bucks for eggs. 4.60 for gas is now considered cheap.

I got the living shit kicked out of me in 1989, I got beaten to a fucking pulp at the Concord Square apartment complex in Reseda, and nothing was ever done about it (I've got a witness named Ann, you can ask her). And I've got to manage my money. So I may well vote for Trump in 2024, even though he's the biggest a-hole in the world. I hope your week is off to a good start.  //// 

Current Tidbits

I don't have any movies to review because I haven't watched any for a few days. I did watch one, last Sunday I think it was, called "Tell England", the story of the invasion of Gallipoli, and it was excellent (directed by Anthony Asquith), but I wasn't able to pay enough attention to give it a worthwhile review. I think it was, at the very least, the basis for the Mel Gibson movie entitled "Gallipoli" that came out in the 1980s, which I have never seen. But at any rate, even though I can't adequately review "Tell England", I can give it Two Huge Thumbs Up.

I hope to get back to watching movies soon. The trouble is that I can't concentrate, so I've just been browsing a few documentaries instead, World War Two stuff mostly. Aerospace, too. I just finished reading an amazing book called "The Demon in the Ekur" by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell. I've read every one of Dr. Joe's books, and even though this is one of his shortest (just 150 pages), it's maybe his most important. It deals with the subject of plasma physics. I, of course, am long on record (going back to my Myspace blogs in the early 2000s) as saying the Big Bang is a false premise. I read a book about 12 years ago by an astronomer named Tom Van Flandern entitled "Dark Matter, Missing Planets" that explained the physics of what he called a Steady State Cosmology. It made a lot of sense (the man was a genius), and now in Dr. Joe's book, we learn about the work of Hans Alfven, a Nobel Prize winner, who pioneered the study of cosmic "plasma" as it is called. Read it if you are interested, and just to give you a tidbit, have you ever seen the footage of the Ivy Mike explosions, which I mentioned in the last blog? They are interesting also for the round "eyeball-looking" shape that materialises just after the detonation, before the mushroom cloud. Now, before you roll your own eyeballs, read Dr. Joe's book, and remember Hans Alfven.

It is to these more obscure researchers that we might one day owe our thanks for a better understanding of the Universe, a very mysterious place. I've also long been on record, in my blogging since 1999, that evolution is also a false premise. I am fortunate, in making such an antithetical statement, in that I have no political attachments, and I was not University educated, and thus I don't have a dog in the hunt. I'm not part of a team, nor do I take a side. I just read the best available material and then learn and decide for myself, and I also have a lot of life experience. So, on the evolution side, I'm betting I'll be right about that one, too. I've always thought the idea that we began (we being humans) as one-celled amoebas, swimming in the primordial soup, and "evolved" from that into what we are today, and that we "evolved" from chimps or apes, and on top of that, that it all happened by random chance in a chemical process without any appreciable meaning......to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard in my life. Laughable if not propaganda. But that's just me. You decide for yourself. But you should also think for yourself, and not just use Neil deGrasse Tyson or Rachel Maddow as a jumping-off point. Or Tucker Carlson, of course. Remember, I'm not political. Politics is even stupider than evolution.

But yes, read about plasma physics in Dr. Joe's book, which gets Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. In music news, I am excited by the two new Judas Priest songs I've heard, which is unusual because I don't really listen to metal anymore. But the JP songs have the sound and feel of the "Defenders of the Faith" era - they're really good - and so I am looking forward to that album.

I guess that's all for the moment. I wish I had more to tell ya. You know, it's funny. I've been writing blogs since 1998 - 25 years - and I have almost 3000 here on Blogger alone, and many more from my years on Myspace, and Delphi before that. And I know I have readers, not many, but I can see the hit counter, and it's been steady the entire time......and yet, in all the 25 years I've been blogging, writing thousands of blogs and surely well over a million words by this time, I've never had a single comment, nor even an acknowledgement that anyone has ever read a single thing I've written. Isn't that interesting? And yet I keep writing, because I know people are reading. And yet they never make themselves known. 

I guess I have faith. That must be it, like tossing a bottle into the ocean and knowing that someone will receive it, and one day send a message back. I wish you all a very nice weekend.  ////

Reed Hadley narrates "Operation Ivy" (a documentary), and A Scene in Progress from a Movie We Are Working On

Last night's movie was "Operation Ivy"(1952), a documentary about the Ivy Mike detonations on Enewatak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. At the time, it was the largest thermonuclear explosion in history, later eclipsed by Castle Bravo and the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba. It's very good, especially if you are interested in the science behind hydrogen bombs. Reed Hadley narrates on site. Two Gigantic Thumbs Up.

Now, let's pretend we are writing a scene for our own movie:

The setting is a ground-floor studio apartment in a large complex in Reseda in the San Fernando Valley. A young man, 29 years of age, is lying on his back on the floor. We aren't yet sure how he got there. Perhaps he was drugged or otherwise forcibly knocked down. He has been "caught in a trap", shall we say. A line of dialogue is heard: "Smile, you're on Candid Camera." Another young man, the tenant, says to the man on the floor, "You've had your fun. Now it's time to face the music."

Previously, it had been dark in the unit, which consists of one main room, no bigger than 400 sq. ft, which serves as a combination living room/sleeping area, with a bed near the small front window. A couch is against the south wall, across from a TV set and entertainment center (stereo, etc.). This main room also contains the unit's small kitchen, with a counter that separates the kitchen from the living area. Further back, on the south side extending from the living area past the kitchen, is a short, narrow corridor that leads to the bathroom, which is offset at a 90% angle.

It had been dark in the unit, or dim, but now we see the lights flash on as others enter through the front door. Perhaps just one man at first, with a camera. We aren't sure if he's there, or alone at first, so before we shoot this scene we should have a roundtable discussion because we are striving for historical accuracy. We don't wanna wind up like Ridley Scott and be accused of fudging details. But for now, let's just say that the lights flash on (in the unit that had been dark or dim), and that line of dialogue is heard: "Smile, you're on Candid Camera." And let's say that the first person to enter the unit after this happens is a man, also young, holding a camera. Did they have home video cameras in 1989? That's when our movie takes place.

Anyhow, we don't have a lot of dialogue yet. We're going to write it as we go along. But we have our developing scenario. It appears that the young man on the floor has been entrapped; filmed, videotaped, what have you. And now it is time for him to "face the music", in the words of the unit's tenant.

The man on the floor feels drugged. Or does he? This part we aren't yet sure of. Don't worry, we'll figure it out. Remember, we're striving for historical accuracy. There is a lot we still have to fill in, but after it is explained to the man how he has been entrapped, others enter the apartment. Is the man on the floor then degraded? We aren't sure yet, but we think so. We'll roundtable all this stuff. If he is degraded, it'll probably be pretty bad. Yes, it could be very bad indeed, because the people degrading him (all those in the room) want him to know they don't like him. In addition to terrorizing him, they want to let him know he's been caught, and entrapped, and they want to humiliate him, too, but that's not all, because after they degrade him, if they do (and we think they do), now they are going to threaten him.

And now, we have a little more material for our scene, stuff we can add with confidence, knowing it is historically accurate. The man on the floor, terrorized, entrapped and degraded, is now stunned to see the arrival of a man he knows as his girlfriend's father. He's only met the man two or three times in their 9 year relationship (which serves as the larger context for this scene), and perhaps he doesn't instantly recognize him, or better yet, perhaps he does, but it's so shocking that it takes a second to register. How can this man be here? He's a professional man, a soft spoken man of intelligence, in his 60s. He's a Dad, for crying out loud. How in the world can he be here? That is what's going through the mind of the man on the floor as his girlfriend's father now looms over him. All of a sudden, he's not the Teddy Bear of a Dad who's shaped like Yogi Bear (tall and pear shaped, short white hair, slightly balding, sometimes wears a watch cap.) This time, he's scary as hell. He still has the same soft spoken voice, but he now leans over the young man - his daughter's erstwhile boyfriend - and explains who he really is. And wow. Just wow. The man on the floor can hardly believe it, but there's no doubt it's true. He knows this by the ice in the man's eyes. And the cold blood in the threats he is making. He tells the young man that it's over between him and his daughter. Then, he pulls a knife to emphasize this point, holding it to the young man's throat.

The young man is scared to death, but we don't yet have dialogue for this part. 

Now, two other characters enter the scene. They may have already been in the room. We don't know yet. The two are sisters, daughters of this man who is threatening the man on the floor. One daughter is against what he is doing, in fact, very much against it. The other daughter (the younger sister) is the erstwhile girlfriend of the man on the floor, who has been entrapped, filmed, degraded, humiliated, and is now having his life threatened by her father. This daughter (the girlfriend) doesn't seem as concerned about her boyfriend on the floor. In fact, a big part of this entrapment/assault is to let him know "she's not your girlfriend any more, got it?" This daughter is getting panicky. She doesn't want to be there because she's just completed college, which took her seven years. She doesn't want it all to have been for nothing.

And now, we come to the part of the scene, almost the climax, where the dialogue is indeed accurate. We've verified it, it's written in stone (so to speak) in our script. You can picture it: The father is still looming over the man on the floor, threatening him, making sure he understands the potential consequences, and his daughter, perhaps wearing her green-and-black jacket, is getting more and more agitated. She says:

"Daddy, let's go."

"Daddy! Let's go!"

"Daddy! Let's go! I don't wanna be here if the cops come!"

Meanwhile, the older daughter excoriates their father, trying and failing to separate her sister from the situation.

The man on the floor watches, in terror and shock, as this girl, this young woman whom he thought he knew but didn't, storms out, saying: "Daddy, I'm going to wait in the car!"

Fade to black, or simply cut, until we have more for our scene. Two Huge Thumbs Up so far.  ////    

Lillian and Terry, and The Thug

Okay, so we now have Lillian and Terry inside the kidnap house - the house on Etiwanda Street (you know which one), and we have them in there while I was inside, in handcuffs, all bound up, as a captive. And we know that they "did their thing" in front of me, to humiliate me, but it was more than that, because it was all part of some sick game. And there was money involved.

We know that Lillian exhibited an entirely different personality in this situation: cruel, indifferent and highly sexualized. The kidnapper is engaged in a ritualized game with them. But here's the kicker: both of them know I am a kidnapped hostage of this man, a crazy man, a psychotic. They have both seen what I am being subjected to - they participated in it!

And, I don't know if this was the next morning, or when, but I believe it was when the kidnapper was either out of the house or out of earshot. And I asked them, "Can you at least tell somebody I'm in here?" And Lillian made a snide remark, like "You brought this on yourself." Terry smirked too, and they left. And I sat there thinking, "That's my girlfriend, but she's a crazy person that I don't know." We've since learned that she is a split-personality, a "created" split-personality. But that does not excuse the fact that she was an accessory to kidnapping and torture. We are also learning that my experience in the kidnapper's house was a whole lot worse than I've previously remembered, and believe me, the memory was already bad enough. Now, it's even worse.

And Lillian and Terry were in the house while it was going on. David B. was also in there. That is fact. Sometimes I use his full name, this time I'm being nice. But that MF was in there, while I was being tortured.

Lillian, as a "created" split-personality, was a "ticking time bomb" according to one person with knowledge of this event. I'd call that side of her A Demon. Straight Fucking Up. A Demon.

We are just recently remembering that she came over one night, don't know the time but it was probably fairly late. I am guessing it would have been in August, 1989, sometime after the Casualties of War blowout, and she came over, unannounced, with some thug relative of hers. A young guy, with muscles and tattoos. Dark hair. Scary. And she fucking threatened me, saying, "I could have you killed, Adam." And this thug had a hunting knife he showed to me. He told me there were all kinds of ways it could happen. He even threatened my dog. He may have had handcuffs. That's a big thing with these people, from Rappaport, to the thug at Terry's apartment, to this piece of garbage who came with her to my house and threatened me with his muscle and his knife.

Hey Lillian, would you care to dispute it? Terry, a piece of shit if there ever was one, lived in my garage for five years when I still had amnesia. Now, I know he deliberately tried to kill me with that stun gun. He zapped me with it over and over.

Yes, Lillian is a fucking crazy person. And her thug is a fucking piece of shit. Terry is deader than a fucking doornail, of course, but he hasn't gotten off so easy. He's pausing in Hell, along with my kidnapper, until the Judgement Day comes. Then Hell will seem like a picnic. ////

Three Good Movies

Last night, Scott Brady starred in "Canon City"(1948), the story of a prison break in that Rocky Mountain town, shot in and around the lockup it occurred in. The real warden co-stars. Brady, the brother of Lawrence Tierney (and just as good an actor) plays "Jim Sherbondy", a con doing a 10 year stretch for armed robbery. Some older felons in the machine shop are planning a breakout; Jim doesn't want any part of it, or them, because he's getting out in two years. He tells the ringleader to shove off. But they need him because his workspace has a locker where they can hide their prison-made guns. They strong arm him by essentially saying, "You may have been sentenced for a bank job, but we know you also killed a cop." Thus blackmailed, he is forced to join them.

The breakout takes place on a pre-planned night during a shift change. But it just so happens that a blizzard is raging outside - bad timing for the convicts, who already have to fight their way out through the remaining barriers and guard posts in the medieval prison, then jump the barbed wire wall. And when they land on the other side, they fall waist deep in snow, which wets their clothes and gets in their shoes, freezing their feet.

They make it to a farmhouse across Rocky Mountain terrain, and a suspension bridge that's higher than the Empire State Building. One guy falls over the side. A hardened lifer played by Jeff Corey splits from the group and ends up at a house where he takes a family hostage. Their grandmother eventually hits him on the head with a hammer. The other escapees fall one by one, in the snow. Two are caught by cops and returned to Canon City. That leaves Scott Brady, who invades the home of an average American family. He never wanted to be part of the break in the first place, but now that he's out, he certainly doesn't want to be recaptured. "I don't wanna hurt nobody, I just wanna be free. So don't cross me and you'll all be fine." The psychological aspects of the plot now kick in. The Mom feeds him, which cracks his facade. The little girl says, "I like you. You aren't like they say on the radio." That further mellows him, though he's still desperate. Finally, the little boy gets a cramp. It turns out hes got a ruptured appendix. Mom begs Brady to let her take the kid to a hospital. He reluctantly agrees, with a warning: "Just remember, I've got your husband and your daughter right here with me." Mom returns, having delivered her boy to the emergency room without calling the cops. Dad says to Brady, "I'll tell you what. Since you gave my son a chance to live, I am willing to drive you out of town, past the roadblocks. That will get you out of our house and give you a chance at freedom. If you stay here it will only mean death for us all."

Brady agrees. The daughter rides along, and they drive him through a mountain pass but the cops have it blocked off at the top. Brady gives up rather than take Dad and daughter hostage, and the warden says, "We'll consider that you did the honorable thing" as they take him back to Canon City prison. It's one of those prison redemption flicks that in this case happens to be a true story. It was Scott Brady's first role, he would go on to make many Noirs. Shot by the great John Alton, the picture is unfortunately soft. A restoration would be nice. Two Big Thumbs Up, with a high recommendation.  ////

The night before that, we had "Mad Dog Coll"(1961) starring the creepy John Davis Chandler as a sociopathic young gangster, abused as a child and so angry that he's crazy enough to take on the legendary Dutch Schultz. Nothing Dutch or the cops can dish out can be one-tenth as bad as what his dad subjected him to, which we see at the beginning of the movie. He has a military-grade machine gun, rare in the early 30s, which gives him an advantage over the rifles and Tommyguns of the other gangster squads. Telly Savalas plays the cop who tried to set him straight as a teen. But he went bad and badder, and it's a true story. Two Big Thumbs Up, if you can handle 90 minutes of Davis-Chandler's performance, which is very good, but eerie. The picture is very good also.

Sorry for the short review on that one, but the going is rough at the moment.

We do have a bonus movie, made for TV, called "Weekend of Terror"(1970), about two weirdos who botch a kidnapping, then kidnap three nuns to try and fix the situation. Lee Majors and Robert Conrad are the bad guys, with Conrad very convincingly playing the psychotic one. Remember when he said "I dare you to knock this off" in that Eveready battery commercial? That used to tick me off as a teen. But he was great in "Wild, Wild, West" and he's very good here (though frightening). Lee Majors plays the emotionally damaged army pilot who is both cowed by Conrad and compassionate toward their captives. But when push comes to shove he's just as unstable. Lois Nettleton plays a former nun who has become a New Age Hippie, wearing a short skirt when she visits her former Sisters on vacation. They hope to convince her to rejoin the convent, but she speaks a whole new language now, using phrases of the era like "can you dig it?" Still, she retains their Godly spirit. The trio head out on a road trip to the convent, but have engine trouble in the Arizona desert. When their car stalls, they are offered roadside assistance by Conrad, who has "accidentally" killed the original, intended kidnap victim by putting her through torturous "escape games" for his amusement, truly terrifying stuff.

With their hostage dead, Conrad and Majors are screwed as far as collecting any ransom, because the girl's Dad is demanding proof of life before he'll pay. Conrad gets the idea to kidnap another woman and dress her in the dead girl's clothes and with a wig. That's when he happens upon Lois Nettleton, who is flagging down cars to help the stalled trio. He thinks she's alone, so he stops with the intention of kidnapping her, but then he sees the other two nuns in the car, dressed in habits, and he tricks them into riding back to his house, which is located in the middle of nowhere. The head nun has a bad feeling on the way, and it turns out she's right. Majors prevents Conrad from abusing them in any way, ("Cmon, they're nuns!"), so the viewer is spared any atrocities, including violence. But they still know he plans to kill them when the ransom money is delivered, because they've heard Conrad say "we can't leave any witnesses." The plot then becomes their attempts to escape, and the movie lives up to it's title. The ending seemed to me a little too "Stockholm Syndrome", and I didn't agree with it whatsoever. Other than that, a gripping TV movie. The picture is good not great. ////

And that's all I've got for the moment. I hope you have a nice weekend.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)   

Christopher George and Janet Leigh in "The House on Greenapple Road", and "The Quiller Memorandum" starring George Segal and Senta Berger

Just a quick editorial note to say that it's a little difficult to keep the blog going right now, just because it's hard to focus on movie reviews when the things I am learning on a daily basis are so staggering. I am flabbergasted to the point where I have trouble concentrating on anything but the current day's revelations. That doesn't mean I won't try to keep writing about movies. I can kind of do them in my sleep by now (and last night I didn't get any sleep!), but if the blogs are late, short, or of poor quality, the above-mentioned news is the reason. It's been truly life-changing. ////

A few nights back, we saw a TV movie called "The House on Greenapple Road"(1970), in which "Detective Dan August" (Christopher George) is searching for the killer of a promiscuous woman (Janet Leigh). Her little daughter (Eve Plumb) comes home from school to find a bloody mess in the kitchen. There's no body, so she's spared that awful sight, and perhaps she's too young to put two and two together because she's not sure what the scene depicts. She runs next door to her neighbor's house (Julie Harris), and by the time the cops get there, Eve is told her Mom is "out of town". She's kind of a red herring character, used, I suppose, just to put a child in the movie, because the nymphomania of the mother and the passivity of the cuckolded, ineffectual father would suggest a childless marriage.

At any rate, after talking with neighbor Julie Harris (such a great actress), Dan August learns that Janet Leigh had quite a few boyfriends; rotating them as one night stands. August and partner Keenan Wynn (gotta love him) then make a tour of all the prototypes: the blonde, beach-stud boy toy (who works in a car wash), the con man yacht clubber, the club owner, and the phony New Age preacher have all slept with the woman, taking advantage of her mania. Really she's empty inside, and just one step from going off the deep end. Her ineffectual hubby, who suffers from "too nice" syndrome, loves her as a co-dependent. Dan August tries to help him: "How can you still feel anything for her when she cheated on you right and left?" But his head's all twisted around because he's the one she chose to marry. So even though he's the only one Not Gettin' Any, he feels the most important in her life because he's the hubby. "She only uses those men; she needs me." And in a way, he's right. He's her only hold, by marriage, on sanity, and against being tagged a prostitute, which several of her boyfriends call her. One even tries to pay her! She goes crazy and has a fit, almost clawing his eyes out: "Don't you EVER hand me money!" In her mind, she just "believes in free love". But call her a hooker and she'll kill you.

But apparently someone has killed her. The problem is that Detective August can't find a body. The yacht club guy is the first suspect, because he's a con man who is also a former drug dealer. Are we seeing a pattern here? Anyone care to raise their hand?

Well, at any rate, yacht club guy's alibi proves legit, so suspicion now focuses on the hubby, who leads the coppers on a high speed chase through Pacific Palisades. A huge twist will be revealed for the reason he has done this.

The plot is linear: A-B-C-D, with no real Colombo-style backtracks. But the acting is "TV Top Notch", you've even got Linda Day as a snippy bimbo, before she married Chris George and became Linda Day-George. He died young, poor guy. He was very handsome with TV series star quality. Even at almost two hours, the movie never drags. The airdate says January 1970, so my family would've still been living in the big white house on Osborne Street. We had a black and white TV then, on which we watched the moon landing 6 months earlier. It was in the living room. I don't remember watching a lot of TV during the two and a half years we lived in that house, except for "Laugh-In". I think I was upstairs with my radio, listening to UCLA basketball games. My major TV bingeing period began again at the Rathburn St. house when we moved there in June 1970. When we lived in Reseda (until January '68) we always watched TV, but we never had a color set until maybe 1976. I think someone gave us a used Sony. It's funny, because my Dad, who worked as a TV executive when he first came to Hollywood, for a long time did not like television. He called it the Idiot Box. But man, did I ever love TV as a kid. However, this movie was too early (1970) for me to have seen it. Also, it must've ran 2:30 for it to be 2 hours without commercials. At any rate, Two Big Thumbs Up. A very good, if standard, murder mystery. The picture is razor sharp.  ///

Our previous movie was "The Quiller Memorandum"(1966), in which government agent George Segal is hunting post-war Nazis in West Berlin. They've gone underground and are hard to spot in civilian clothes. Segal has all kinds of code words and phrases he tries out on strangers, but he can't tell who's who, until he meets a pretty schoolteacher (Senta Berger) with whom he takes a different tack. Instead of saying, "Can I try one of your cigarettes? They're a different brand than mine," he strikes up a normal conversation, then edges in a question: "Tell me...I know it may sound strange, but do you know of any people in this town who aren't who they say they are?" 

Because it's George Segal, the filmmakers go with his combo of suaveness and light comedy. And, he's just enough of a tough guy here to be believable as a secret agent. He was also a great actor. Max von Sydow plays "October", the head of the secret Nazi group. He has Segal kidnapped and taken to the group's hideout, where he's drugged and interrogated. October wants to know where the Nazi hunters' base is located, so he can destroy it. Alec Guinness is the leader of the Anglo-American agency, playing a cat and mouse game to bring hidden Nazis to justice. They, in turn, use kidnapping as a prime tool, and they possess a high level of organisation and secrecy, and use drugs and hypnosis to scramble your brain. 

George Segal takes their punishment, and even manages to escape a couple times. Of course, a romance develops between him and the beautiful Senta Berger. Max von Sydow (before he was typecast as an old man) often portrayed the prototypical evil, Nordic madman. 

The end of the movie is ambiguous. We don't know if Senta Berger is a Nazi sympathizer, or if she's on George Segal's side. That was a key theme of the Cold War spy thriller, not knowing whom you can trust. 

All in all, it's competent, formulaic stuff done with style. Two Big Thumbs Up with a high recommendation. The picture is very good.  ////

And that's all for tonight. I'm working on a million things, my head is spinning and I'm trying hard to stay above water. I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):) 

"Casualties of War" and Happy Lillian's Birthday

Tonight, because it's Lillian's birthday, we're gonna do something a little different. Instead of reviewing last night's movie and the one before it, we're gonna get in our Time Machine and go back to the night of August 17, 1989, when she and I drove to the UCLA campus in Westwood, to see a preview screening of "Casualties of War." 'Twas a Thursday evening, and the movie, directed by Brian dePalma, was being shown at the UCLA film school one night prior to opening nationwide. We'd been invited, one of us or the other, by either my brother or his friend David Birke, who had recently graduated as a UCLA film student. David had made his final film project at our house earlier that year, over the Memorial Day weekend. I can't remember now, if they (my brother and/or David) extended the invitation to me, or to Lillian. My guess would be that my brother offered the passes to me, on behalf of David, but the invitation could've gone directly to Lillian, also, and it isn't crucial either way.

She and I weren't having the greatest Summer. Or at least I wasn't. I had other things on my mind, and as we watched the film, I just remember a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, exacerbated by the ugly violence onscreen. Now, the funny thing is, had I been writing the blog back then, I very likely wouldn't have been able to review the movie the next day, because I wouldn't have remembered seeing it. Strange, right? But in the years since, when the time came that I could remember it, I've remembered the night more than I have the movie. And it wasn't a very happy night.

I must cut in to say that, for the period spanning late September 1989 to October 1993, I couldn't remember much about 1989 at all. But even stranger than that, is the fact that it would never have occurred to me to even think about that year. And so, to put it another way, I "wouldn't have remembered not remembering" that I'd seen "Casualties of War", or that I'd seen it at UCLA, or that after we saw it, I had a terrible night.

Lillian's night sucked, too.

But mine was much worse than hers.

But yeah, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even think about that year, so - until I did start thinking about 1989 - when a shocking memory came back to me in October 1993, I never knew anything about the night of August 17. It wasn't until I began using movies as memory triggers (because Lillian and I went to a lot of movies), that I remembered the events of that night, the main event of which was a horrible argument we had on the way home. I must cut in again, to say that - for the uninitiated, and to make a long story short - I was using movies as memory triggers in the same way that your favorite songs can make you remember where you were and how you felt when you first heard them. I have, I am learning, something close to an eidetic memory, and certainly a photographic memory. I am amazed by the things I've remembered, especially after what was done to me to cause me not to remember them. But that is a whole 'nuther story. Suffice it to say, that for 30 years as of last month, I've been working to restore my memory of the year 1989, which some very bad people tried hard to destroy.

And sometime in the years between 2004 - 06, I began compiling a list of every movie Lillian and I ever saw. I used IMDB and other internet sites to help make this list, and it also helped that I have a strong memory. And it was when I got to our 1989 movies that I remembered we saw "Casualties of War." The location stood out; I recalled we'd seen it at UCLA, on the night before it opened in theaters, as the guests of David Birke. Thus, as it's national release date was Friday August 18, I was able to place the date of the UCLA showing as August 17. And I remembered our horrible argument.

Things hadn't been going well for Lillian and I that Summer. And when the movie ended, as we were leaving, she said, "Oh...there's Mrs. Birke (David's mother). I'm going to go say hello to her, I'll be right back." Well, because I was already miffed at Lilly, (more about which in a minute) her acknowledgement of Mrs. Birke got my antennae up, and as we walked out to the car, I said, "So...how do you know Mrs. Birke?" What I meant was, "How do you know Mrs. Birke when I don't even know her and have never met her?" I'd suspected Lillian of cheating on me that year, and I thought the only way she could know Mrs. Birke is if they met at a function where I was not present.

And it turned out they had. As I continued to press Lillian as we drove up the 405, she finally said, "Okay, you wanna know? I met her at the same theater, at the screening for Dave's student movie!" Lillian was pissed that I'd caught her out, and when she got angry, she had a temper that was extremely frightening. The thing was, I'd never seen her lose her temper before. But I'd caught her in a deception, and she started yelling at me as I continued to press her. "I do a LOT of things I don't tell you about!" she blurted.

I remembered all of that, sometime between 2004 - 2006. I'd have to go into my journals to give an exact date (it was when I was first compiling my movie lists). Well, for years, I thought that was the extent of our horrible argument, i.e. me confronting her about knowing Mrs. Birke. That connection had other, very serious connotations that connected Lillian and David to a man named Rappaport, but at any rate, when I ultimately wrote about that night in my 2006 book "What Happened in Northridge", I wrote that the argument continued until we got back to my house, at which Lillian dropped me off and went home. The big "kicker" for me, as far as the book and it's mystery were concerned, was that I'd connected her to David Birke, in a way that was separate from me and our relationship. Because why else would she be invited to his student film screening when I wasn't? After all, she didn't know David. He was my brother's friend. And I was thinking, "how in the world does she know David Birke?" And of course, it opened up a can of worms.

Well, for years, I thought our argument was all about Mrs. Birke, but earlier this year, I realised that she was only the tip of the iceberg on that terrible, terrible night.

Let me explain. For years, regarding the massive amount of information I've had to process and organize as it pertains to What Happened in Northridge, I had a "single-image" memory, like a mental snapshot, that showed Lillian standing on the doorstep of a man named Marshall L., who lived across the street from my family back then. That's all the memory was: just a snapshot of her standing there, on his porch. It didn't amount to much, so I put it on the back burner, because with so much information to process, it didn't give me much to go on. By 2006, I did know that Marshall had been one of two people to come to Rappaport's door after he kidnapped me, during the time I was held captive in his house. The other person was Dennis Janovitch. Both Marshall and Dennis knew that he'd kidnapped me, and both urged Rappaport to let me go, which he refused to do. They may have been worried he was going to kill me, and they were very nearly right. And of course, both Dennis and Marshall were connected to him.

But to get back to Lillian, while I didn't know why she had been standing on Marshall's porch, nor when that "snapshot image" had been imprinted, there was, on her account, already a Rappaport Connection, which now included Dennis, Marshall and David Birke. And, as all of this pertains to Marshall, for years, I thought he was what you might call a "shady neighbor" who knew what Rappaport was up to, and tried to talk him out of it. And I never tried to "develop" that "snapshot image" of Lillian standing on his porch, because, in my amnesia, I didn't think it amounted to much. 

Then, in February of this year, I began meditating, and after 30 years of frustration, several mind-boggling memories came back to me, one of which was the origin and larger context for my "Lillian on Marshall's porch" image. I was staggered, as the larger, continuous memory connected to our horrible argument on the night we saw "Casualties of War" came to light. As it turned out, the argument hadn't hinged on Lillian's acquaintance with Mrs Birke! That was only the starting point. Nor had it ended when we got back to my house. In fact, because I'd refused to get out of her car, it continued late into the night, getting uglier and uglier by the minute. She turned off her car's engine and got increasingly frustrated as I badgered her with questions, provoked by her statement on the freeway: "I do a LOT of things I don't tell you about!" As my full memory now returned, I realized I had seen her several days prior to our "Casualties of War" nightmare, sometime in early August 1989, park her car on the west side of my house, but instead of coming to see me, she went across the street to see Marshall L! That's where the "snapshot" memory came from! Marshall, in those days, was called The Bodybuilder by some of our friends. He was older than us, perhaps by ten years, and he had a stocky, clean-cut look.

Well, imagine my surprise, when the full memory of her visit to his doorstep came back to me 34 years later. And it was not a happy memory. And in her car, on the night of "Casualties of War", Lillian admitted to me a secret "lifestyle" she'd been part of, that included Marshall and his girlfriend. She spat these admissions at me with a temper described above. It was like being next to an entirely different person. She said horrible things to me that night, in a sarcastic tone of voice, and I learned that she really didn't like me very much, to put it mildly. I in turn was shocked at her admissions, which I'll say no more about now, but come back when I finish my new book (hopefully next year), and I'll tell you everything. Because now, I don't think she's a very good person, to put it mildly. And it disgusts me that she's allowed to keep working for Walt Disney and soiling the company name. And that she's never gone to prison, or suffered one single consequence for her actions. But then, none of the bad guys have ever suffered a consequence, because they've all had protection. By now, we have a good idea from where that protection comes, but I'm sidetracking. Anyway, back to the story.... 

Well, in February of this year, by which time I now knew of her involvement with Marshall L., I thought that was it, as far as the extent of our argument that night. I knew it had gone on long after she parked her car, and in meditation I remember her, tired and pleading, "please, will you get out of my car? It's 2am. I have to be at work in the morning."

I continued meditating daily through March of this year, at which point nothing new was coming, so I stopped and devoted my efforts to finishing my two latest books, the ones I finished recently and hope to publish next year. In October, I finished both of them, then began writing my new book (an updated and more complete version of "What Happened in Northridge"), and - in an effort to fill the gaps in the 2006 version of that book - I began meditating again to improve my memory. And I picked up where I left off, at our "Casualties of War" argument, because I wanted to see if I could recover exact or even approximate dialogue from that night. And I got some, but what is even more astounding is that I remembered that things got so ugly, and Lillian so much wanted to go home, that she opened her purse and showed me a stun gun.

And when I remembered that, it was like: Boom! Goodbye Mr. Spalding.

Because I knew then, as the memory played in my mind, that the stun gun was the same one she and Terry used on me 15 nights later in his apartment, when they very nearly ended my life. And I knew that it had been given to her by Marshall L, an electronics manufacturer. Well, I meditated the next day, to see "what happened after that." I was on a roll, and the floodgates had opened, releasing other absolutely game-changing memories that we haven't the time for right now. All of this has happened in the last ten days or so.

The next "film segment" that came up in my daily meditations (this one about three days ago) continued after Lillian showed me the stun gun. When I apparently still wouldn't get out of her car (and may have taken her keys out of the ignition), at some point Marshall himself came out of his house. I don't know if it was because he heard all the yelling, or Lillian summoned him, but he came first to her driver's side window and she told him what the problem was. She'd already "explained" (by yelling and degrading me) that he was her boyfriend now, not me, and then.......that was when I remembered her diamond ring!

Oh, the power of memory! You really do have a "film of your whole life" inside your head. It's actually inside your Spirit, which is why it can never be successfully erased. You do have to work hard to get at it, but I'm a pro by now, and I remembered that Lillian had on a big, gaudy diamond ring that night, and that was what provoked our Nightmare Evening, not Mrs. Birke. She was only the final straw. Now, keep in mind that our whole relationship had been in trouble dating back to (at least) mid-1988, and likely earlier.

And I'd always thought the trouble began with Terry, who Lilly was also having a sexual relationship with, and that the situation exploded at Concord Square on the night of September 1st, which began the Event known as What Happened in Northridge. But now, to my utter amazement, I am seeing that it began, or exploded, on the night of "Casualties of War", provoked by the diamond ring she was wearing. Her "Mrs. Birke" comment was merely the final straw. I'd been stewing at that ring the entire evening. That's why I had a pit in my stomach as the film played.

But that wasn't all. As my meditations continued, over the past three days, I learned that Marshall illegally detained me that night. Using some strongarm method (still to be determined, but likely a pistol or the stun gun) he forced me into his house. I pulled up a memory of sitting in his living room, in handcuffs, that played in my mind like a movie. I could see his mantle, the clock above it, and the yellow-painted living room walls. Marshall had detained me, through use of force, because I'd been yelling, and because Lillian had divulged their secret. The argument was loud, and the cops could've come, which would've screwed up a whole bunch of people's trips. Our argument was so ugly, you'd have thought we were mortal enemies, and that she'd hated me the entire ten years we were together. And Marshall came outside, at 2 am. He forced me out of Lillian's car, told her to drive away, then forced me into his house, where I sat on his couch, in handcuffs, and looked at his cuckoo clock.

But then, it got even weirder, because tonight The Walls of Jericho came down.

In tonight's meditation, I remembered.....(get ready).....that Marshall had made a phone call, and that Howard Schaller responded! Holy smokes! Howard came to Marshall's house, while I was sitting on his couch in handcuffs! Yessirree! Marshall was connected to Howard, who later attacked Lillian in the Northridge Hospital Parking Lot on the night of September 1st! Howard was of course a speed dealer. I doubt the swingers used speed, but maybe Howard sold cocaine, also. Unfortunately, he's deader than a freaking doornail now, so we can't ask him (though I suppose we could go down to Hell and look him up).

But even that's not all, because then Howard Schaller called Dave Small, and told him to get his ass over there right away, because they "had a situation" on their hands, "involving your buddy Adam".

And so good old Davey Small, the middleman between Howard and Lillian in their drug deals, (and she had two other middlemen, Dennis and The Evil David Friedman, for her drug deals with the sociopathic Gary Patterson) came over to Marshall 's house that night in the wee hours of the morning. I can remember looking out his window as the sky turned purple just before sunrise. I still had the handcuffs on. He was "apologizing" for what had happened. Howard wanted Marshall's assurance that nothing would "get out" and that, if it did, that his name would be kept out of it. Marshall assured him that he'd handle it, and negotiated with me to let me go. I did the old "I promise you guys I won't say anything" routine. Dave Small acted strangely unlike his mild-mannered self, like a lower-or-middle ranking "drug professional". "Sorry about this, Ad. Don't worry, Howard. He won't say anything." In my memory, I could picture the shirt he was wearing.

Once Howard had their promises, and mine, that there wouldn't be any trouble, he left. And Dave left soon after that. I'm still working on what Marshall did to me before letting me go home. I think he had an electronic device that works like Rohypnol, it emits sounds and tones that "sound like they are coming from inside your head". And perhaps he drugged me as well. Because I didn't remember the incident the next day!

So there you have it: game, set and match. You have Lillian, Marshall L, Howard Schaller, and Dave Small, all wrapped up in one package, with a pretty bow tied around it for Lillian's birthday. Oh, and you have me in Marshall's house, in handcuffs as the sun was coming up. And, man oh man, does this situation connect about a hundred dots! And I've been working on this puzzle for 30 long years, while I've been twisting in the wind.

So Happy Birthday, Lilly! I hope you had one hell of a doggone nice day. And that goes for the rest of you clowns. The good news is that there's much, much more to come.  :)

We'll resume our movies next time. The picture is razor sharp! ////

Richard Burton and Lee Remick in "The Medusa Touch", and "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" starring Vincent Price

Last night we found an awesome thriller called "The Medusa Touch"(1978). Richard Burton stars as "John Morlar", a man who believes he has the power to cause disaster with his mind. As the movie opens, we see him in his London apartment, watching a report on an American moon mission. An anchorman informs us that all contact has been lost with the space capsule. Then an intruder enters the flat and bashes Morlar's brains in with an iron statue. Morlar's neighbor is interviewed, but tells police he saw and heard nothing. He adds, however, that Morlar was not well liked: "He was a malcontent who was seeing a psychiatrist." The great Lino Ventura plays "Inspector Brunel" a French detective on loan to the Brits, who takes charge of the investigation. Shockingly, it's no longer a murder. Somehow, against all odds and with a shattered skull, Morlar began breathing again as the coroner took him away. He was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support, where he has a faint pulse but surprisingly strong brain-wave activity.  The Inspector goes to see Morlar's shrink "Dr. Zonfeld" (Lee Remick), who comes off all cool and clinical, but because Brunel is persistent, she slowly opens up about what she perceives as his mental illness. 

She reveals that Morlar thought he'd caused various people's deaths, dating to his childhood. "He said it started with his father, who was having an affair. Then there was a headmaster who tormented him in school." Their deaths are shown in flashback, as are all of Morlar's scenes. He's akin to Damian in "The Omen", who can will death upon you. Dr. Zonfeld tells Brunel, "He was delusional, of course." But Brunel thinks there may be more to it. He goes to see a metaphysicist at the local university, who shows him the filmed results of telekinetic experiments (which appear to be the real thing). Inspector Brunel believes Dr. Zonfeld isn't coming clean with him, so he puts the pressure on. "Listen, we are running out of suspects." "And you're insinuating I'm the only one left? Okay, well I'll tell you. He was so insistent that he had this power - to kill with his mind - that I decided to call his bluff. And when I went over to his apartment, where he said he'd prove it to me.....well, something happened that was so incredible that I still have trouble talking about it."

Folks, we are then shown a scene that will blow you out of the freaking water. Just watch the movie and see it for yourself (and no Googling). Lee Remick's mind is blown, and she's the "level headed" shrink who believes that everything has a "rational" explanation. I must cut in to say that science has only just begun to discover what is possible in physics, and the problem is always the scientists themselves, because of their rigid belief systems, and massive egos. But now, Dr. Zonfield believes, because she's seen Morlar's ability with her own eyes. He goes mad then, with his hatred of The Establishment, and sets out to destroy even more. But how can he do this when he's lying comatose in a hospital?

Wow! On the one hand, you have a classic 1970s disaster movie. In addition, you have a great police thriller, and on top of that, you have a mind-melding ESP plot. It's long at 109 minutes, but never drags thanks to the talent of the stars. Lee Remick was an underrated actress, tall, blonde and coolly intelligent. Man, they made great disaster movies in the 1970s. Bring back the studio system! Chuck CGI! Bring back real movies, with real actors. Okay, I'll shut up now. But this is how you do a thriller. Two Huge Thumbs Up! The picture is razor sharp.  ////

Now then: I can't believe we've never seen "The Abominable Dr. Phibes"(1971). I mean, there's that title. It should've been enticement enough. In evaluating things that have scared you in your life, or affected you in any strong way emotionally, to properly analyse the effect it has had, you have to go back to when you first encountered the source, be it a picture, a word, a movie title, etc. For instance, I've mentioned how and why a poster for "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" had such a lasting effect on me, from when  first saw it as a seven year old in the window of the Reseda Theater. It was the image on the poster especially, of Christopher Lee with a stake through his heart, but there was also that title. The whole idea of Rising from the Grave was bad enough, and on top of all of this, the word "grave" is terrifying. So yes, one must identify what affects one, and in what way, or ways.

And so it is with Dr. Phibes. First, there's his name. I don't know if screenwriter William Goldstein considered the phonetics of fright when coming up with a name like Phibes (which no one's ever heard of because it doesn't exist), but it's a freakin' scary name: Phibes. He also used Ph instead of F, because Fibes wouldn't have been half as scary. Then, on top of that you had the word "Abominable." I don't know about you, but when I was five or thereabouts, the Abominable Snowman was one of the scariest things in the world, and it's because he was Abominable (c'mon - it wasn't because he was a snowman). So we see that certain words and the arrangement of their phonetic components have a tremendous power to scare. And a child feels this instinctively. A kid hears the word Abominable and he's scared, for the same reason that "Tarnation" is funny (and what the heck is Tarnation anyway?)

Finally with Dr. Phibes, you had that iconic image where he pulls off his face mask, and he's a skull, and a burned one at that. I don't know if they revealed that in a trailer, a TV commercial, or what, but I remembered it even though I never saw the movie, and it once again stayed with me for life. At 11 years old when the movie came out, with the additional image of the "Skull" Phibes playing the organ, I was under the impression that it was a terrifying movie; as scary as horror got, something truly sick, almost forbidden except for adults. And as an adult, you'd intuit that it had an undertow of necrophilia.

So, to me, the whole idea of Dr. Phibes was unsafe. Even when I turned 14, and wanted to see Texas Chainsaw and Last House, I would've been put off by Phibes, and again - because of his name, his skull, and his lurid organ playing. It seemed scary bordering on obscene or blasphemous. All of this is to say that I had no idea it was played tongue-in-cheek. I thought it was a straight-up brutal horror fest.

Well, the Brits are very nimble at black humor. They have nuanced gradations of how farcial to play a given thing. You can do a black comedy full on, with exaggerated irony, or you can tone it down and do it Straight Faced, which is how it's played here. This is Horror Theater, played slightly Tongue In Cheek. The Brits can dial it in to any degree you wish, and in fact, contrary to how many of the fans reviewed it, I wouldn't call "Phibes" a comedy at all. Now, it's actually not scary, but more like macabre fantasy. The exception is Vincent Price's performance. It's scary because its genuine. He's silent for much of the film and speaks with a microphone up to his throat.

And since we often talk about what has frightened us in life, one of my all-timers was my barber when I was 8 years old. When we moved to Northridge, the barber by Alpha Beta was a nice enough man, but he'd had his larynx removed, and spoke with an electronic vibrator to his throat. Sitting in the barber's chair and being subjected to that (him holding the device to his throat) and the way it made his voice sound, scared me bad enough to ask my Dad to switch barbershops across the street to Vons. And Vincent Price speaks this way in the movie, with a suction mike on his throat. He lives in a giant old mansion in London, with a central music theater, complete with a mannequin orchestra that he himself has created. He wants revenge for the death of his wife at the hands of the surgeon Joseph Cotton. "Nine must die" he says, and that includes everyone on the operating staff. He kills them one by one, the good-old Agatha Christie formula. It's that kind of movie, with Dr. Phibes' theater as the spectacular central set piece. He has a silent female assistant named Vulnavia. We don't know if she's dead, a zombie, or what, but she's young and beautiful and does whatever Phibes says. The victims are killed in clever ways according to the Nine Egyptian Curses, and it becomes clear to the police that he's narrowing it down to Joseph Cotten.

The art direction is Oscar worthy and reminiscent of "Clockwork Orange"; that retro Pop Art look of the era. It's a definite must-see film for it's arty but gruesome take on the Phantom of the Opera story. Lurid and ghastly are the key words here. Phibes is tailed by the dedicated-but-stymied police. Two Big Thumbs Up for the fairly simple plot, but Two Huge for the concept. Vincent Price raises the level of the enterprise by playing it dead serious. The picture is DVD quality.  ////

Well, folks, I must say that my life has changed so drastically, just since I wrote the last blog, that I am more than a little overwhelmed at the moment. I'm not gonna say anymore just now, except that it's both very good and very bad. The bad part is so godawful that it beggars belief. Anyhow, I am dealing with it and moving forward, and no, it's not a health issue, so no worries on that score. It has to do with a certain long running saga in my life. I will say that I'd rather be me than the bad guys, including ML (whom you would not want to be, trust me). As difficult as it's been for me, for them it's going to be horrendous. And to quote Jeremy Irons: "You have no idea."

So that's where we're at, at the moment. I thank The Lord and God the Father for every blessing, for without Them I would not have made it. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Cyborg", my late night is Wagner Tristan. I hope you had a nice Saturday. Go Rams vs. Green Bay. I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)  

Boris Karloff in "The Ghoul", and "The Whip and the Body" starring Christopher Lee (plus Halloween Report)

Well, it's been quite a Halloween horror season, beginning back on October 1st with Clint Walker and "Killdozer", and it's been so much fun that I don't think we'll stop just yet. Better to let it play out of it's own accord than to cut it off by pulling the plug. After all, Halloween doesn't end until we say it does, so we'll probably watch a few more horror flicks until we move closer to the holidays. Then we'll get all warm and fuzzy. I hope you had a great Halloween. I did, by doing the usual, with a twist. I did two Halloween walks, first in Reseda on the route Pearl and I used to take. There were swarms of Trick-or-Treaters, more than I've seen in a long time. I then did a second walk in Northridge, past Cupid's and through the old neighborhood. Rathburn Street always has some very cool Halloween houses, but 9032...oy! (see below). My walks totaled 8 1/2 miles, then I drove up to Granada Hills, to see a haunted house Grim had mentioned, which was raising money for charity. I went through it, and man - it was super scary, with killer clowns jumping out of the woodwork, zombies in fog in the corners, and a voodoo priestess whom you couldn't tell if she was real or fake! I had a blast, then came back to my apartment about 10 pm, where I watched two of my Halloween Traditionals: "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". All told, it was an amazing Halloween and an awesome Halloween season. The movie reviews are below:

Tonight, for Halloween, we watched "The Ghoul"(1933), starring Boris Karloff. We've seen it about five or six times now, dating back 20 years to when I found a copy at the 99 Cent Store. Though not as well known as other films in the Karloff Kanon, it's certainly one of the most demented. Boris, playing "Professor Henry Morlant", an Egyptologist, has - during an archaeological dig - come into the possession of a gem called The Eternal Light, belonging to the ancient King Anubis, who is now regarded as a god. Professor Morlant is dying, and believes that if he is buried with the Eternal Light in his hand, that Anubis will bring him back to life on the first full moon after his death, and grant him eternal life.

When we first see Morlant sick in bed, Karloff's makeup is, in my opinion, as scary as any of his more famous characters. I mean, we often talk about onomatopoeia around here - words that sound like what they describe - and, I mean, you don't call your movie "The Ghoul" unless he's one creepy-looking dude. Ghoul is one of the scariest words in any language (I think its Indian or Egyptian); it means "grave robber". Anyhow, Professor Morlant - on his deathbed - makes his loyal houseman "Laing" (Ernest Thesiger) bandage the Eternal Light in his hand before he dies. But Laing only pretends to do it, to avoid Morlant's wrath. In reality he's afraid of committing blasphemy because he's a Christian and Anubis is a pagan god. He pockets the jewel, not to steal it but to give it to the professor's heir. All he knows it's that he doesn't want it, and he's not going to bury it with his master, who he believes has gone insane.

When Morlant dies, a funeral procession made up of friends and peers carries his coffin (a replica of an Egyptian sarcophagus) into a large stone crypt on his property. The group walks out, muttering disagreement with the proceedings ("disgusting!"), and a man walks in: Morlant's bookkeeper and lawyer "Broughton" (Cedric Hardwicke). He too thinks Morlant was insane, but he's not going to let a priceless artifact go to waste. He opens the sarcophagus to examine Morlant's hand, but finds there is no jewel wrapped inside it! That's because Laing disobeyed the order. But Broughton is not about to give up, and others are in on the hunt. There's a priest (Ralph Richardson) who just happens to have stumbled upon the scene, and a Sheikh from Arabia who's been looking for the Eternal Flame for the two years since Morlant stole it. But even the Sheikh is a crook (in addition to the others) because he isn't Egyptian.

He ends up being attached to "Kaney" (Kathleen Harrison), a wacky British gal who's the best friend of Morlant's niece "Betty" (Dorothy Hyson). Kaney and the Sheikh make for excellent (if bizarre) comic relief. There's an element of the Old Dark House motif at work, inasmuch as there are many characters with differing situations and motivations gathered in the same place.

Complicating the Gem Hunt is that someone has wired a dy-No-mite! charge to the 700 pound door of Morlant's crypt, which is also locked, but Morlant has a key on the inside, for when Anubis raises him from the dead, allowing him to blow this pop stand when the full moon shines. But when he awakens, he discovers he doesn't have the Light, and boy is he ever pissed. He stalks over to the Mansion Proper, as only Boris Karloff can stalk (all stiff-legged), and starts strangling people: men, women, it makes no difference to him. Then, one of the Light seekers turns out not to be who we think they are, and Betty and her cousin Ralph (Morlant's heirs) find themselves trapped in the crypt with The Ghoul and the god Anubis. A fire breaks out, and that's all I can tell you. "The Ghoul" is as much about the seekers of the Eternal Light, and the butler Laing, who wants to dispense himself of responsibility for his crazy master, as it is about The Ghoul himself. Karloff is featured at the beginning and the end (and he's unforgettable in the role, he really was a great actor) and he bookends the race to steal the mythic gem. The comic relief team of Kathleen Harrison as Kaney and Harold Huth as Sheikh Dagore are low key and superb, keeping the humor subtle without intruding on the suspense. "The Ghoul" is a horror classic, truly off-the-wall. Imagine someone trying to make a movie like this today. Or better yet, don't. Two Huge Thumbs Up. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

Now I will briefly tell you about 9032. Have you seen what the current owner has done to that house? It's obscene bordering on criminal. In fact, I'd jail whoever did it. It's the equivalent of radical and unnecessary plastic surgery that renders a person unrecognizable. What was once a homey and comfortable wood planked house with shuttered windows, two lovely sycamores by the kitchen, a back porch separating the garage from the main structure, and a white picket fence bordering the raised back yard, now looks like a Dark Grey Stucco Fortress. It looks like a bunker or a freaking prison.

You could not make it uglier if you tried. I could go on a much longer tirade but I won't, because it's too depressing. Given what I now know about my life, which is a lot, I now feel a closer connection to Reseda than I do to Northridge. But I still have fond memories of my 9032 years, and it's terrible what's been done to that house. Now, on to our next movie: 

Last night, we went back to Mario Bava, choosing his "The Whip and the Body", taking a chance on that S & M inspired title only because it starred Christopher Lee and because of it's 6.7 IMDB rating. And wow did it turn out to be good! Bava, it seems, is an art film director using horror as his context. The film is beautifully photographed, in spotlit colors of green, purple and red; horror colors. His camera moves slowly in hypnotic Tarkovskian pans. Lee, as the exiled "Kurt Menliff", is riding home at dusk to his family's castle on the coast. He wants revenge for his brother "Christian" (Tony Kendall) stealing his woman, the beautiful but tormented "Nevenka" (Daliah Lavi). Finding her alone on the beach, Menliff pulls out his whip. "You always loved violence", he spits, whipping her back before making love to her, to which she willingly submits. Their relationship is a little (ahem) unbalanced. His brother Christian says "I only took her because you left home." But Kurt did not leave willingly. He was cast out by their father for causing his first fiancee's suicide. And Christian isn't much better. He's really in love with the family servant "Georgia" (Harriet White Medin). He doesn't love Nevenka, who has a love-hate relationship with Kurt because of his violence, which he"s trying to pin on her by telling her that she "loves" being whipped. By now, she doesn't know if she does or doesn't. 

Kurt is then killed by a dagger through the throat, and the movie becomes a whodunit, exacted as high art. This is Dark Shadows on steroids. Christian buries Kurt in the family crypt, located of course in the basement. But Nevenka keeps seeing his face in the narrows of the castle. Is he really dead? Then, the Menliff patriach is killed in bed. The father never wanted Kurt to return home, nor did his mother, because of his violent nature. The undercurrent of sadism is palpable, and powerful, and for 1963 it's menacingly sinister. The movie is a slow-burn treatise on S and M, on secret keeping, and the kind of lust that leads to murder, all of it set in a haunted castle. Hey, Halloween ain't over till we say it is. Kurt Menliff is the main character but Lee is onscreen only in a supporting role, as he gets killed at the 40 minute mark. The story is a soap opera, a horror melodrama with sexual taboos ("not Tab Who, Gilligan - taboo!") that were being explored in early '60s cinema through the use of vampire themes. This is the midnight Mario Bava version of some really Dark Shadows, shot in day-glo color.

It IS one spectacular looking flick,  and for that reason it's a must-see, even if in parts it's slow as molasses and the ending is a bit of a cop out. Two Huge for the look. Two Bigs for everything else. The picture is very good.  //// 

And that's all for tonight. Hey, the blog is back on track! I've been writing my butt off, blurring my eyeballs, going from book to blog to book. But we're back on schedule and we'll try to keep it that way. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Picture Music", my late night is Wagner Die Walkure. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

J. Carrol Naish and Ralph Morgan in "The Monster Maker", and "The Blob" starring Steve McQueen and Aneta Corsaut

The night before Halloween, we watched "The Monster Maker"(1944) which I know we've seen before but I can't find an earlier review, so here goes. It's a weird little horror film from PRC and house director Sam Newfield, outside their usual metier of cowboys, slapstick and crime. Sometimes, though, PRC surprises us with ambition. The movie opens at a recital in which pianist "Anthony Lawrence" (Ralph Morgan) is playing to an enraptured audience. His beautiful daughter "Patricia" (Wanda McKay) is in the theater with her boyfriend. But seated across from them is Mad Scientist "Dr. Igor Markoff" (J. Carrol Naish) and his assistant "Maxine" (Tala Birell). Dr. Markoff can't take his eyes off Patricia; it's so distracting that she asks her boyfriend "Terry" (Bob Baker) to change seats. After the concert, Markoff goes backstage to introduce himself. "I am sorry I stared at your daughter, but you see, she exactly resembles my deceased wife." The Lawrences find him odd but harmless.

Back at his laboratory, where he tests glandular formulas on apes and dogs, he tells Maxine, "I've got to have that woman." He sends Patricia so many flowers that she finally asks her Dad to go see Dr. Markoff and ask him to stop, but when her father does this, an argument begins, and Markoff knocks Anthony Lawrence unconcho. Then, he injects him with the hormone for acromegaly! I must cut in to say that I first heard of acromegaly (a pituitary disease) in connection to an actor named Rondo Hatton, whose picture I saw in a book of Hollywood monsters when I was about 17. The caption stated that his distinctive "look" was attributed to acromegaly, a word that got my attention. Hatton had enlarged facial bones and features, and, in researching the condition after the movie, I see that Richard Kiel and Ted Cassidy and a whole bunch of guys had it, but fortunately to lesser degrees than in this film.

Because when Dr. Markoff injects Anthony Lawrence with acromegaly, he turns into a version of The Elephant Man. and - because we have our little game show here at the blog, called: "You Know That Director Saw This Movie!" - we have to say "You KNOW David Lynch saw 'The Monster Maker'". I mean, just take one look at Ralph Morgan lying in his bed with his gigantic face and head, then watch John Hurt in "The Elephant Man" and tell me that Lynch didn't crib it. It's that obvious. But yeah, so Anthony Lawrence now has acromegaly, and a really bad case of it, too. At first, it gives him so much energy that he can't stop walking all day and playing his piano all night. But then his hands get too big to play, and his head gets huge and misshapen. He can't perform in public anymore, and now Dr. Markoff - who's perfected an antidote - is in a position to bargain for the hand of Anthony's daughter. "Tell Patricia to marry me and I'll cure you".

The subplot is that Markoff's assistant Maxine has always loved him, and she knows a secret: he's not even the real Dr. Markoff, whom he killed and assumed his practice! Whoever this guy is, he's not even an MD nor an endocrinologist! You keep thinking his ape is gonna get him, but it was probably just a chance for Ray Corrigan to put on his gorilla suit.

But i mean....good grief, man! How deviant, how cruel, do you have to be to inject someone with acromegaly? Even if you injected them with the word itself, it would be bad enough. Who the hell is the guy who comes up with the words for disfiguring diseases? Someone needs to tell him he's doing too good of a job! Acromegaly? That's adding insult to injury, to call a disease that awful with a word that hideous. Aww, hell. Screw it.

But Markoff goes down, and collects his just reward when Patricia refuses to marry him, and all heck breaks loose at the end.

By PRC standards, it's a minor gem. and for sure it influenced David Lynch. Two Bigs for the movie, Two Huge for the concept. It's a must see in its own simple but very strange way. The picture is good not great. ////

The night before (Oct. 29), we had "The Blob"(1958), which - when I saw it on TV at 6 years old - scared the bejibbers out of me, in the same way that the Big White Smothering Beach Ball still does in "The Prisoner". Now, The Blob, as a monster, isn't scary anymore, but it's iconic because it's a piece of Americana. The movie also has, arguably, Steve McQueen's best performance, and he may have agreed with me: at the time of his death he had a Blob movie poster on his wall. I have to briefly cut in to tirade on the director who calls himself "Steve McQueen". He's some British guy. He'd probably say, "Yeah, well that's my name", and I'd say, "Oh yeah? Well change it! Because you AREN'T Steve McQueen! Steve McQueen is Steve McQueen. WTF are you thinking, directing movies under his name?! What if your name was George Washington? Would you go around calling yourself that? I can guarantee you a guy named Adolph Hitler isn't gonna use it in the credits. So stop using Steve McQueen, even if it is your real name."  End of tirade.

I wouldn't get so upset, except Steve McQueen (the real and only one) was the King of Cool, or he became that after movies like "Bullit". But here, in "The Blob" he's an Earnest, Sweatered Youth (he was 28), playing a guy named "Steve" who's trying to stop an alien life form from taking over his beloved small town. It all starts when he's parked on a hill with his girl "Jane" (Aneta Corsaut), watching shooting stars. Then one shoots right down to the ground. Jane says, "It could be like lightning, far away when you think it's close," but Steve says "No, it's on the other side of the hill." They check it out and find the shell of a meteor. The audience has already seen an old man find it first. He poked it with a stick and wound up with a gooey glove on his arm. The man's doggie runs off (played by Ace the Wonder Dog), and Steve and Jane find him. They also find the old man and take him to the doctor, but while they're getting ready to drive away, they see The Blob devour both the old man and the doctor and his nurse.

There is hijinx before this, of hotrodding teenagers, to set up a teens vs. adults motif. "Lieutenant Dave" (Earl Rowe), a cop, sympathises with "the kids", who have a car club. They also like spooky movies and are going to see one that night at the corner cinema. This is where the movie becomes a snapshot of the real life Happy Days, as the director isolates groups of townspeople in 1950s American Dream locations, at night, i.e the time of isolation. In chasing the dog down, Steve and Jane become isolated in the grocery store (pre-supermarket). The adults are isolated in the movie theater, and others are isolated in the diner, as The Blob grows bigger, expanding through vents and door frames.

I must say, that - for a teen or adult audience - I don't know how they thought they'd get away with this Blob as a scary monster, but that may have been the point; to have it as minimally "special effective" as possible, to simplify The Blob, so as to make it a symbol for...what? Pop Culturists have stated the obvious, that's it's a symbol for atomic war, radiation, cold war paranoia; 1950s stuff. But I think it's exactly what they say it is, A Freaking Blob from Another Planet that eats people. But the movie is as much about the townsfolk - and the teenagers - as it is about The Blob.

And no one ever calls it The Blob, by the way. Steve McQueen is The Hero, who runs between the isolated locations to save people. Dave the Policeman helps him, as do his hot-rodding monsterfilm friends. An angry Sergeant is the movie's nemesis, but not in a major way, because even he has to admit that The Blob is taking over.

I'd give the lighting director an Academy Award for setting the Night Mood throughout the film. You have the Isolation Factor at work, set at Iconic American Institutions (grocery store, theater, diner), and you have the darkness of the night, The Blob, and only Steve McQueen can save you. It's a teenager-as-smarter-than-adults deal. In this way, the film is also a time capsule of the advent of rock and roll.15 years before "American Graffiti", there were flicks like The Blob and I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

McQueen discovers the secret to defeating The Blob in the last five minutes of the movie. Two Big Thumbs Up for the story, but Two Huge for the overall film, with Color by Deluxe when my Dad was VP, and an awesome title sequence.  //// 

And that's all for today. Did you have a good Halloween? I'll report on mine in the next blog. No music this time (just writing fast to rush it out). I send you Tons of Love, as always! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)