Flim Flam Film Fan Flan

I'll try to approach this authoritatively.

The 1967 version of Casino Royale made for a fairly ponderous comedy. Several directors oversaw individual segments and the whole goulash was then strewn together, resulting in major continuity gaps and narrative flaws. None of this was helped by Peter Sellers walking off the project prematurely. I've always though that Sellers came across as a cool dude but apparently, except for Stanley Kubrick, everyone reported that he was a monster to work with.

On the other hand, this Bond spoof is placed right in the middle of one of my favorite decades for film set design. So, visually, it more than makes up for what it lacks in story.

...Oh yeah, the score to Casino Royale was by Herb Alpert which lent the perfect union of kitsch for later generations to gawk at --and yet another reason why this chaotic mess deserves to be enshrined.

Click any image for large view.

my favorite shot, hands-down: slo-mo feathers and ursula andres spinning on a circular bed

some anonymous loser

no 60s comedy is worth it's salt without a hallucination sequence

60s computers were the BEST! I've always puzzled over how the 60s could look more modern than the 70s. is it because the 70's saw us scaling back on our vaunted expectations of the future due to the mounting political corrosion ? what do you say, Joey Polanski?

woody allen IS Jimmy Bond... this was his second film, following "what's new pussycat?"

My Political Bag, Man

right-on! rah-rah!, go geritopia!

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How's that?

you make the whole gang quiver with glee, geritopia!
now go and get out the vote!

Mr. President

So whatever happened to the title of President? Nobody addresses the actual President using the title. Rather, it's "Mr. Bush".

Damned hippies!

Does this situation imply that the title "Mr. President" is no longer spoken for and I can simply steal it to advance my own social standing at cocktail parties? While moving up the political ladder, I will be accompanied by a Marylin Monroe impersonator with a 5 o'clock shadow who will sing " Happy birthday Mr. President". It's all part of the master plan to walk gallantly in reverse across the White House lawn, past security, and assume permanent residence.

Speaking of Presidents, I kind of miss the iconic President Nixon, mostly for his riotous piano playing. I've made the pilgrimage to the Nixon museum in Loma Linda. It's built on a lot connected to the house where the guy grew up. The museum also has Dick & Pat's final resting place in the back yard, which is sort of unsettling as it catches you off guard with a frozen stare and a mouthful of milk duds.

Likewise, one day people will tour the homestead of my youth to fawn over my legacy. All the original rooms will be set up as exhibits behind a velvet rope. And now, dear friends, I present an exclusive Bloggy-Blog preview, featuring painstakingly preserved artifacts inside the actual log cabin of my birth!

Mr. President's Okeeffe and Merritt

Mr. President's Kitchen Clock

Mr. President's Original Doorbell

Mr. President's Ceramic Lion

Mr. President's Commemorative Douglas Aircraft Wall Plate

Mr. President's Central Home Intercom Control Panel

Mr. President's Wood Paneled Intercom Speaker

Mr. President's Original Refrigerator Contents

Mr. President's Retarded "Big Note Songbook" Piano

Mr. President's Brother's Frankenstein Toy That Drops Its Trousers

The Portable Disneyland

My vote for best ride at Disneyland would have to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. That's because it's very economical and effective. Toward the end, you get the sound of an oncoming train and a bright lamp bearing down on you. What else do you need?

There's always that impulse to go to the DL park Anaheim just for that one ride. But it's such a hassle and not a very practical matter. Sometimes you just need your fix and you're on your way. So the solution would be to install complete modular Mr. Toad's rides in various storefront spaces, accessible and as plentiful as the neighborhood 7-Eleven.

So goes my utopian ideal.

Toiling For Mud: The story of an aborted blog

sad, flaccid advertising.

You'd never want to write too consistently on a personal blog because it just starts to look sad. On the other hand, if you write too infrequently, you risk losing your loyal (paid) readership. The sophisticated thing to do then is to share the writing output with a partner.

Not wishing to signal to the world the enormous chunks of time I routinely devote to staring off into space, I figured that installing a guest writer here would be an excellent decoy. But who would I get? I wanted my guest to be a sensation, perhaps someone with a public profile. I've learned from the wisdom of the entertainment industry that when you can't get A-list, you go for B. [ If you can't get B-list, then you get the dolphin show guys. ] The zero-budget solution was to recruit my favorite TV commercial mascot: the dancing 3D man from the Closet World ad! He could be great asset by blogging about his unique celebrity lifestyle.

NOT the real Closet World dancing man but definitely the same genus.

The snag, unfortunately, is that it appears that I'm one of maybe two people who actually know who the Closet World dancing man is. I came to this conclusion because there's such a glaring lack of information about him on the Web and absolutely no image resources (are my excursions into "fringe" culture really that esoteric, compared to the wealth of UFO sites and internet conspiracy theories?!). So I couldn't very well justify serving as ghost writer for this ridiculous obscure mascot, let alone doing so without accompanying graphics of the man himself.

There was but one internet oasis that committed to print an examination of the Closet World oeuvre --a blog, appropriately entitled "Airsick Moth" features an excellent deconstruction of this most underground of personalities: "Is it Closet World's aim to distract us from the less-than-interesting prospect of shopping for closet-oriented retail merchandise and installation services, by dazzling us with the disturbing jolts and twitches of the white-striped faceless effigy of the human soul, manipulating it into a cruel puppet-show foretelling of our enslavement to an addiction of competitively priced home improvement services, coat racks, and storage bins? " "...his modus operandi remains the same: a joyless thumping of pale, stiff limbs -- movement, but not life."

For those of you who have not witnessed the eeriness of Closet World's advertisement, I'm sorry. You'll just have to sit up and watch more local television at 2am.

If anyone can find me an image of the REAL Closet World figure, I will buy you a bag of those marshmallow peanut things as a reward.

Uh-Oh, the Marharishi Died

How 'bout an Ice Cold Squishy?

What to say about Mr. Mahesh Yogi?

A few things.

When I was a kid, my mother actually practised Transcendental Meditation for a while. That was a unique detour for someone like her coming from such a conservative religious background. I remember once going along to the meditation center and upon learning that they admonished people to leave an offering, usually some sort of fruit, I became spooked.

________________

Of course, like everybody, I have to mention the Beatles connection. I know that Ringo liked Maharishi "because Maharishi was always laughing". That's reasonable. After all, what else do you need to know about someone? Personally, I don't care if the Marharishi made a pass at Mia Farrow or not. I never understood why that was a big deal. If it motivated John to write "Sexie Sadie" then it was all worth it. Good chords in that one.

________________

I experienced a brief encounter in communal living in the early 90s, while sharing a house with some well-to-do white folks in Pacific Palisades (if you want to call that a commune). There was a woman living with us who was the proverbial Earth Mother-type. She was very sweet, soft-spoken and she made celery soup on a portable gas heater --never, never on the kitchen's electric stove. She was also an ardent practitioner of TM and, while she didn't have a job, she was never short on cash. I admired her for that. 'Never asked any questions.

In a casual conversation about TM, Earth Mother Lady mildly boasted that there are people with such advanced meditation ability they could actually ascend into the air and levitate --AND she had proof of it all on video! Of course, the rest of us begged her to see the video and it took her a day or two to track it down. Finally, we gathered in front of the TV, greatly anticipating the amazing levitation demonstration. What I saw turned out to be a bunch of guys wearing light robes sitting in the lotus position. They then began flapping their legs, while still crossed, and bounced in short bursts --in effect, hopping on their asses across the floor.

I laughed really, really hard. The best reason I can give is that it was funny. And, yet, I remained on very good terms with the earth-mother lady, although I have no idea where she is now.

And now you know the rest of the story.

1st Rule of Nature: The Word "Doodle" Never Impresses the Ladies

nonetheless..



I'll do a better one next time, now that I know I can do this. Sorry.

Pouring out my guts out for an Ex-Girlfriend

But what I really want to write about is the legacy of a joke attributed to our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln.


Mr. Lincoln once quipped, "A man's legs ought to be long enough to reach the ground".

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Doodles, More of 'Em #7

zero comments

Duly Diddle #6

SPEARS!

Daily Dawdle #5

Freud PWNED!

Daily Doodle #4

Yet Another Popular Term to be Sick of

You must have had your head in a book not to have noticed the popularization of the term "PWNED" on the internet. PWNED, of course, is gamer-speak for owned... as in "you're so owned", or "Dude, McCain got totally owned by Olbermann, snort-snort !".


If anything, countless "Pwned" videos on YouTube prove that it's a national obsession to pour over seeing someone you dislike being put int their place, bitterly wounded, getting comeuppance, etc. It really gets those salivary glands going.

What is wrong with everybody?

The End

Daily Doodle #3

Here's today's doodle, drawn the way real men do it on a scrap of ruled paper with a ball point pen. It's sort of a self-portrait of my senior citizen years as I slip further into my eccentric lifestyle à la Howard Hughes (wry commentary on my online dating travails). Hence, the long fingernails and vats of urine in the background.

It's entitled: "The Last Day the Jehovah's Witnesses Came Calling ".


...and here's the "Cleaned-up" version, using my patented process:

always click for big