October movies, round 2 of 2.

169. (916.) The Heavenly Body (1944)
I'm generally ambivalent about the screwball romantic comedies of the '30s and '40s, but this one I hated. Just to get the script moving, the female lead, Heady Lamar, improbably behaves without a brain in her head so that there will be tension between her and her husband played by William Powell. William Powell should never be treated this poorly. Seriously, if any dame ever treated me that way, I wouldn't shed a single tear as the door hit her on the way out.

170. (917.) Morning Glory (2010)
Rachel McAdams is, as always, a delight, but this movie has no depth. What, old people resent being sidelined by youth? Deep, man, deep.

171. (918.) Modern Problems (1981)
Have you ever seen Zapped? This film is like that, but with adults acting like teenagers instead of teenagers acting like teenagers. Not Chevy Chase's best movie. And Chevy Chase has had a lot of "not best" movies.

172. (919.) How to Steal a Million (1966)
Audrey Hepbrun and Peter O'Toole make a great couple in this heist/romance hybrid. One of my pet peeves in movies is when the plot seems to take a right turn sometime during act 2 for no good reason (Terminator 2 springs to mind), but I'll forgive it here. Because Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.

More to come.

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Among the other things my aunt dropped off while housecleaning last week was a copy of The Literary Digest Vol. 55 No. 14 cover dated October 6, 1917. Much as the Newsweek would be familiar to modern readers, so too this magazine's warnings about the dangers posed by illegal aliens (in this case German agents), military chaos in Russia (in this case the result of two Russian Revolutions), and the failure of the public at large to respect its soldiers (in this case resulting from a lack of patriotic songs). If you think shit in the world is bad now, be glad you weren't living in 1917.

The most familiar aspects of this magazine are the advertisements. Covering everything from handsaws to night shirts, most of the advertisements are — unsurprisingly in a "literary" publication — for books. Mail away and you can teach yourself electrical engineering, learn how to raise rabbits for fun and profit, and speak French in time for your deployment to the front. But the most intriguing ad might be this:

A "wholesome" guide to everything I need to know about sex in 1917? Must be a short book. Thanks to the magic of the Information Age, we no longer need to mail $2 to Philadelphia to find out what Knowledge a Young Man Should Have. All 232 pages of Sexology by William H. Walling (including its 2 illustrations!) are available for free on Google Books.

First of all, the book was 13 years old by 1917, so some of its medical advice was probably outdated. But that wouldn't have been an issue for Professor Walling. Most of his teachings were based on tradition, anecdote, or religion that would have been more at home in Ripley's Believe It or Not. Chapter IV, "Masturbation, Male," opens with the incrimination, "viewing the world over, this shameful and criminal act is the most frequent, as well as the most fatal, of all vices." Is that so? I don't think there are many episodes of Law and Order where the coroners has listed "jerking off" as the cause of death.

"Dr. Doussin Deubreuil relates the case of a child who contracted the habit spontaneously at the age of five years, who, in spite of all that could be done, died at sixteen having lost his reason at eleven."

The book gives no guide to what sorts of cures could be used to prevent the inevitable "loss of memory and intelligence" inflicted upon even the occasional masturbator. Just know that if you do it, you're gonna lose your marbles and die. I suspect this is the prototypical case of the cure being worse than the disease.

This sort of drivel takes up 8 pages. A further 7 pages are devoted to the equal dangers of "Masturbation, Female" ("Alas, that such a term is possible!"). There's also guidance on the physical and moral dangers of abortion and incest and an accompanying medical explanation that the "softer and less voluminous" brains of women make them easily confused and stupid. You can't argue with science, ladies!

But the good doctor isn't a monster. His book advises strongly against rape (even by married men of their wives) and does its best to dispel myths about marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth. (He's a big fan of breast over bottle.) "A husband is generally the architect of his own misfortunes," is the first bit of wisdom listed in his final chapter. Of course the same chapter ends with "The only recipe for permanent happiness in wedlock: Christianity" does go a few steps too far.

In the 21st century, we've gotten use to misinformation and bad science disseminated through blog posts and cable news. Isn't it nice to know that the self-proclaimed experts of a century ago and their mail-order instructional manuals were just as bad?

(Footnote: If you want to read about how the motion picture industry is actually becoming — gasp! — big business in 1917 America, you can also read that copy of The Literary Digest online here.)

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First of all, Editor — if that is your real name — inherited color blindness is sex-linked, and although more common in men (who have only one X chromosome), it can and does affect women. It's not like, say, prostate cancer, which only affects men because women don't have prostates.

Secondly, wouldn't it be far easier for the "Japs" to create a disease that only affected men, since only men have a Y-chromosome? And why would anyone need to create a disease that drove women crazy, anyway? Every woman I know is already crazy! (Am I right, guys, or am I right?)

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I know you people all thought I was off my rocker when I protested pink and black football uniforms (back on November 22, 2008). But if you don't make a stand against that sort of thing when it starts, you end up with this sort of fiasco:

I think we can all agree that this is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drew up the Bill of Rights. What the hell teams are those people supposed to be cheering for?

Those images are on page 24 and 12, respectively, in the September 2010 NFL Shop catalog. The men's Realtree® Camo Replica Jersey costs $99.99. Seriously, they think someone will buy it for a c-note. Maybe it's worth it for people who don't have time to change, rushing from their deer stands to reach the stadium in time for the 1 o'clock kickoff. But I really, really doubt it.

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Call me a misogynist if you will: I walked out of a GameStop video game store today because of the three employees working, 2 of them were females. I don't mind equal rights for the fairer sex. If those girls want to work in a shitty customer service job, that's fine by me. But they should stick to the jobs in their domain like cosmetics counters, flight attendance, or hooking. Leave the manly work of selling video games to the men who play them, ladies.

I am aware that the Entertainment Software Association claims that 40 percent of American video gamers are women. But are we really going to believe the trade association for the video game industry? They also say that the average gamer is 34 years old and has been playing video games for 12 years. I'm 34 years old and have been playing video games since I was 7! So that proves that their data is faulty. Besides, compared to the US government's claims that women account for greater than half of all Americans, 40% doesn't look like such a big number, does it?

Girls, you can keep your browser-based Bejeweled and Farmville and any other game that you can play with your 3-inch long press-on nails. And if you must have a PS3 to play your adorable Little Big Planet between trips to the mall, I'll not hold a grudge. Those aren't really games, anyway. Meanwhile, if you can stop talking on the phone long enough to remember to stay out of my GameStop, I'll promise to stay out of someplace you like to go. Like, say, hair salons. Or kitchens. Deal?

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Since I'm already on the subject of football, let me say something here: I hate black uniforms. I know I've mentioned this in regards to UGA before. But last week, Oregon wore all black uniforms for their game vs Arizona. (Oregon's uniforms had silver wings on the shoulders. I shit you not.) And FSU wore black jerseys in their game against Boston College. "Maybe this all-black thing is getting a little out if hand," I think to myself.

Then I read that FSU was wearing their all black jerseys as a favor to Nike. (Thank you for your honesty, Bobby Bowden.) It's not uncommon to hear athletic programs espouse such PR bullshit as, "we're doing it for the fans," or "black helps us recruit." Clearly, that's not true. They're doing it for Nike. (Nike has uniform contracts with all 3 colorblind schools mentioned above.) So that Nike can sell more jerseys.

While I'd like to call Nike the devil here, I'm not quite that naive. In a capitalist economy, the ultimate power is in the hands of the consumer: if you don't like something, don't buy it and they'll stop selling it. If Nike keeps making black jerseys, it's probably because many someones somewhere are buying them. So my gripe ultimately ends with those fools who would like to wear the jersey of their favorite player, but only if that player's team colors are black. That totally says just about everything about America's obsession of the individual over the team, doesn't it.

And if the people speak, the salesmen listen. I got the new NFL Holiday 2008 catalog in the mail today. Now, in addition to the abysmal pink jerseys ("with sugar glitter on front and back" -- I blame this sort of crap for my perpetual bachelorhood), you can now order "black & white jerseys." Sorry, Nike, but these jerseys are manufactured by Reebok. Which just goes to show you that for every bad idea, there's someone waiting to steal it.

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Now that the White House has weighed in, I can speak up, too. Just what the hell is all this furor over Don Imus' insult of the Rutgers women's basketball team? So he called them "nappy-headed hos." And now everyone is up in arms that he made a racial slur.

Excuse me, people, but perhaps, just perhaps, calling someone "nappy-headed" is not as significant as calling a bunch of women "hos." The first describes kinky hair, which is usually undesirable. The second labels a woman as a whore. What Imus suggested in his statement was that the winning basketball team was made up of prostitutes with unflattering hairstyles. And this is to some degree a true statement given the nature of NCAA exploitation of athletes in profitable venues and the fact that the Rutgers women's basketball team members have unflattering hairstyles.

Now Al Sharpton is screaming about the slight and Don Imus has a two-week vacation. What amuses me about this is wondering if he had just called the team "hos" without mentioning their hairstyles, would he be in this much trouble? (Last time I checked, Al Sharpton doesn't rush to your aid unless you are a member of a minority or a Thanksgiving turkey.)

And I'd advise the Rutgers women's basketball team to stop blaming Don Imus for raining on their moment in the sun. Ladies, no one watches women's basketball. (For example, at the University of Georgia, women's season tickets for our competitive SEC program sell for $25. The horrible, horrible men's team sells season tickets for over 10 times that. Apparently in sports, dicks cost more than tits, which is oddly very contrary to the dating scene.)

May I suggest to you, Rutgers, that while you may have provided the sun, Imus and Sharpton provided the moment.

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It's been a busy week. I'm painting Dad's house, repairing Mom's front landscaping, and replacing brother's PS2. It only complicated things when I got stuck in the middle of a four-car chain reaction pile-up at the tail end of rush-hour a thundershower this afternoon. I was car #3. Car number 1, the one that started it all, is pictured below. It was driven by an hispanic 17-year old female. I was shocked into silence: I didn't know if I should complain about female drivers, minority drivers, or young drivers. (She took it much better than her father did: he looked like he was trying hard to choose between thanking God that she was alive or beating the life out of her.)

My Jeep suffered only the destruction of its bumperettes (yes, that's a technical term: it's those small D-shaped steel loops on the rear bumper) and the driver's seat now won't maintain an upright position. Worst of all? My Batman tire cover now has a tear in it. It will have to be replaced.

Last month I was complaining about mandatory seat-belt laws. It just so happens that I was wearing one when I got rear-ended. Go figure. You may have won this round, "The Man," but this war isn't over yet!

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Among the truely great books ever published is The Super Dictionary. A learning dictionary for children published in the 70s, it features the great lineup of DC super heroes: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, etc. I often tell people that I learned to read from comic books, but that's not quite true. I learned to read from The Super Dictionary.

Wonder Woman illustrates the entries for "blow" and "bush." I love this book.

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Twenty-years ago in 1986, the Post-Walt Disney Co. used its regular Sunday night "The Wonderful World of Disney" on ABC to showcase a number of failed pilots of dubious creative distinction. Several of them stand out in my memory, including "Mr. Boogedy" and one called "Northstar" about an astronaut (played by Greg Evigan of "B.J. and The Bear" and "My Two Dads" fame) who gained super powers from sunlight through a freak cosmic accident. Of most importance to me, however, is the move called "I-Man," starring Scott Bakula in the title role. To the best of my knowledge, "I-Man" aired only once before disappearing into the black-hole of un-produced pilots.

"I-Man" was about a regular guy who was granted super-human powers of self-healing through a freak accident not-too far removed from the origin story of Daredevil or those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The only hitch in his alien-induced Wolverine healing trick is that perfect darkness is now fatal for him. Figuring that complete darkness is so rare that he has little to worry about for the rest of his unnatural life span, I-Man, short for Indestructible Man, naturally, decides to turn his powers to the unselfish causes of truth, justice, and American television.

Soon, I-Man has been discovered spying for the U.S. government, as was his wont to do, and is captured by the stereotypical dastardly rich villain. He finds himself (in true super-spy tradition) invited to breakfast with the villain and his co-conspirator, the treacherous she-spy turned traitor who was responsible for the revelation to the enemy of I-Man's amazing powers (by stabbing him in the arm with a knife!). When asked how he likes his eggs prepared, I-Man responds with a snarl towards his former comrade, "Benedict, as in Benedict Arnold!"

At this point in the dialogue, I, a 10 year-old boy, laughed and said something to the effect of, "he's angry that she stabbed him in the arm." My father wasted little time in correcting me with the observation that I-Man was not disappointed in being stabbed but rather upset that the enemy was now aware of his super-secret healing factor. Of course, my father was right, which I realized as the words were leaving his mouth.

Eventually, I-Man escapes the enemy's pitch-black death-trap, discovers that the she-spy turned traitor is only pretending to be a traitor and has been revealing information to the enemy so that she can pretend to be a double agent and learn the enemy's secrets (I'm sure that this tactic makes a lot of sense to women), and discovers that his son has the same healing powers that he does just in time for a happy ending.

But none of that last bit is really important, and I couldn't tell you what happened during the final portion of that film if my life depended on it.

Man, do I HATE to be wrong.

(On a related side-note, eggs Benedict were not named for Benedict Arnold, as this show would have impressionable young viewers believe. Instead, they appear to be named for nineteenth-century New York City native Lemuel C. Benedict.)

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