My latest painting:

I wanted a photo of me punching that Mystery Box, and I couldn't take it myself, so I enlisted Mom's help. She has never played Super Mario Bros., and she didn't quite understand what I was after or, apparently, that you can keep pressing the shutter button on my phone to capture a whole bunch of images (because, you know, there's not actually a roll of film inside the phone). And that is how you get an expression like that on my face.

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39/2471. Alcatraz Island (1937)
According to IMDB, "This was the first film set in the prison on Alcatraz Island," and it spends a lot of time showing us how high-tech the prison was for its day. Otherwise, it's a pretty standard prison story.

40/2472. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
I got the feeling that everyone involved wanted to get together and make a Beetlejuice movie, they just weren't sure what the plot should be. It's quite a narrative mess, which is okay enough for those who relish Tim Burton's trademark take on horror. I admit that I was very much charmed by the unexpected climactic musical sequence built on Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park." (I assume the superior Richard Harris version was too slow to dance to?)

41/2473. Force of Arms (1951)
"Force of Arms" is not a great title for a hybrid "war is hell" romance mash-up. But William Holden is, as always, real good as the Joe struggling through his PTSD.

42/2474. The Case of the Black Cat (1936)
If you spend this entire Perry Mason movie waiting for the black cat to show up, you'll miss out on everything else: there is no black cat. It's actually the housekeeper's cat, and even then, it's mostly just a plot device to get Mr. Mason involved in the eventual court case.

43/2475. The Set-Up (1949)
This is a very, very good boxing movie that covers all the usual bases (love of the sport, gambling rings, corruption, long-term damage, etc.) that also manages to play out in real time. Recommended (assuming you can stand watching grown men hit one another in the face over and over).

44/2476. The Case of the Howling Dog (1934)
Perry Mason fans on the Internet say this is the best Perry Mason movie, and they might be right. I mean, at least this case has a howling dog. [Note: I watched this movie back in 2018 and had totally forgotten it. So that probably tells you how memorable it really is.)

More to come.

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Mom is participating in her annual college football bowl game pool, where she tries to correctly predict winners against the spread in every bowl game. I never participate myself, but I do always root for her picks.

The first game of the pool was last Saturday's IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl (formerly the Camellia Bowl) and Mom picked South Alabama to cover 9.5 points. They very nearly did, if only Western Michigan (which has one of the country's worst bowl game winning percentages) hadn't kicked a late field goal to cut the difference to 7 points at game's end. Those dicks!

The question I was asking myself late in the game was whether gambling on the outcome actually made the game more fun. Yes, I cheered when S. Alabama kicked an extra point to go up by 10, but I found myself rooting against W. Michigan's kicker late.

This is exactly why I don't play fantasy football: cheering for or against individual players to compile stats is not nearly as satisfying as pulling for a team to win a game. I'm sure I would have been at least equally entertained by W. Michigan's attempt at a late comeback if I wasn't counting points and waving my fists in the air at the football gods.

Mom never does great with her picks, in large part because she never picks against a team she wants to see win. I think that's wise. And I still agree with picking against Western Michigan in a bowl game, especially since they are now 2-10 all time. Those dicks!

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84/2250. Elmer, the Great (1933)
The premise here is that baseball player Elmer (Joe E. Brown in an over-the-top performance of buffoonery that would embarrass Adam Sandler) is such a great batter with such intolerable eccentricates that the Chicago Cubs are forced to lie to him about his love interest in order to ride his bat to the World Series. Of course, the lies lead to crime, specifically a gambling syndicate, that potentially compromise the game. Because that's what lies do.

85/2251. Skippy (1931)
Never heard of the comic strip "Skippy"? I doubt this film will make you seek it out, although I'm lead to believe it was a big hit in its day. Li'l Jackie Cooper breathes life into one of the most famous comic strip characters of the early 20th century in a series of misadventures involving, among other things, dog murder. Seriously. Cooper was nominated for an Oscar for this because everyone is heartbroken to see a child crying over a dead dog. Shame on you, Hollywood!

86/2252. Three on a Match (1932)
While the popularity of the Skippy comic strip inspired a peanut butter brand to steal the name, Three on a Match was built on the popular superstition encouraged (created?) by a safety match tycoon to sell more matches. The story is a salacious tale of intertwining lives of three former classmates. Naturally, the third one to light on the match suffers a bad end, although that's owed more to her use of drugs than her thrifty use of matches. (Trivia note: this movie also supposedly includes Jack Webb's first screen appearance, but good luck spotting him in the crowd.)

87/2253. Private Detective 62 (1933)
Decades before Remington Steele, debonaire but destitute William Powell fast-talks his way into a becoming a partner in a private detective agency. Too bad for Bill that his new partner is no Stephanie Zimbalist and lacks any sort of scruples.

88/2254. The Castle of Sand (1974)
I interrupt today's list of pre-code Hollywood films with this Japanese police procedural with a very strong social justice message. (Lepers are people too!) The last act leans a little too heavily into sentimentality for my tastes, but the extended Dragnet-style investigation that precedes it earned my tolerance as the killer's motivations are finally revealed.

89/2255. Svengali (1931)
From the German Expressionism of the set designs to the Horrific gothic shadows of the lighting and costumes, it's pretty clear this production was heavily influenced (for the better) by the original Dracula. What's most surprising about this adaptation of the novel Trilby is how sympathetic it actually is to the hypnotic outsider Svengali, who really could (and perhaps should) be presented as something of a demonic sexual predator. I think the movie is much less kind to the prudish English fop Billee, who in his own way, isn't any better than the story's titular "villain," although I'm certainly willing to admit that my 21st-century perspective probably colors my interpretation of what "acceptable behavior" is. Worth a watch.

More to come.

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There's no such thing as good news anymore, so let's just watch movies.

120. (1774.) Pale Flower (1964)
A Yakuza hitman commits murder to impress a girl addicted to gambling, drugs, and fast living. So uplifting. The moral is clear enough by the great ending, but I can't say it's a lot of fun getting there.

121. (1775.) The Sign of the Ram (1948)
I had to check out imdb to refresh my memory on this one, which probably tells you everything you need to know. For reference, it's about a jealous handicapped bitch crushing the love lives of her stepchildren. Whee!

122. (1776.) The Vikings (1958)
Damn, Hollywood has a strange obsession with romanticizing violence and pretending it's okay so long as it's presented as Shakespearean. (To be fair, this probably has more to do with justifying attempts to satisfy the bloodlust of American audiences than any true moral perversion on Hollywood's part, but still.) I'm damn glad I wasn't a viking.

123. (1777.) Rocketman (2019)
I liked this Elton John bio-pic, but I think you'd have to be deaf not to. I'm starting to really respect Taron Egerton as an actor. He goes for it.

124. (1778.) Little Nellie Kelly (1940)
Eighteen-year-old Judy Garland plays a mother and her own daughter in this musical comedy with tragic elements. When no one's singing, it's mostly cliched melodrama, but I still liked it. Cliches work!

125. (1779.) Alexander's Trail: The Coke Bottle Story (2019)
A bloodless documentary re-enacting the life of the man arguably most responsible for manufacturing the original Coca-Cola bottle. It's as long on imagination as it is light on details, but it becomes clear in act 3 why this was made when everyone's face lights up as they start talking about Coke. (Mmm, Coke.) Worth a watch only for Coke fans, since they never even really bother to explain how the bottles were actually made.

They were made by computers, apparently.

More to come.

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I recently came into possession of some reproductions of lithographic editorial cartoons by Joseph Keppler from his portfolio A Selection of Cartoons from Puck by Joseph Keppler (1877-1892). (Book names were a little more more on-the-nose back then.) The art and craftsmanship of editorial cartoons has changed significantly in the century-plus since the heyday of Puck magazine, and not for the better. It's enlightening to compare how modern audiences would interpret Keppler's work compared to his Gilded Age peers.

At first glance, what do you see in this cartoon original published on August 28, 1889? Is this homeless tiger in rags demonstrating that Obamacare will drive the once proud from house and home? Or maybe it's a commentary on the Occupy movement that hid its "fierce" intentions under a cloak of "peace"?

To Keppler, who was quite adept at drawing silly looking animals other than elephants and donkeys (though he drew those, too), the cartoon above was a criticism of how New York City's infamously corrupt Tammany Hall political machine -- iconized as a tiger by America's greatest editorial cartoonist, Thomas Nast -- disguised its political ambitions on the Mayor's office with fake piety by aligning itself with the Catholic Church. These days if political cartoonists draw Catholic Church references, it's almost always a pedophilia joke. That's not an improvement, Pope.

On December 7, 1887, fifty-four years before Pearl Harbor, this cartoon dragon wearing the dress of "surplus" challenges the do-nothing United States Congress to settle the hot-button issue of post-Civil War Protectionist tariffs on imported goods that had resulted in stagnating trade and a staggering fiscal surplus. At least that's what the cartoon would have meant to its contemporary audiences. However, modern audiences will simply see a do-nothing Congress scared to inaction by an imaginary beast: government fiscal surplus. These days, it's sadly easier to believe that a giant dragon will appear in the Capitol Building than to believe that the government will ever run a surplus again.

This is my favorite of the bunch. The seductive tentacles of the octopus of "gambling" find their way to entrapping ordinary citizens across the social spectrum on May 28, 1890. To the contemporary eye of nineteenth century readers, it was a cautionary tale about the entangling menace of gambling. To the modern eye, it's still a cautionary tale about the entangling menace of gambling. Good art may come and go, but some things just don't change.

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The fellow who pays me to open Magic cards was disappointed that I didn't mention him by name in my last post. That fellow's name is Randy, and this is my way of apologizing for not mentioning him earlier.

Randy loves to gamble. He'll bet on anything. That's not to say that Randy has a problem. I'm sure he could quit any time he could no longer find someone willing to take his money. He's preparing to have a second child, I suspect, because he's already lost the rights to his first kid.

Randy is excited about today's Super Bowl. He'll certainly be wagering on the game. That doesn't make Randy unique: it is estimated that about half of all adult American -- probably the male half -- will be gambling today's game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. And like Randy, most of those bettors will be gambling not on the game's outcome, but on its details.

Proposition bets are wildly popular, Randy assures me. These "prop" bets are for the outcome of curiously specific events. Randy's personal favorite prop is to gamble on whether the first turnover of the game will be a fumble or interception. (Randy prefers fumble, but interception is the big favorite. [Actual outcome: interception]) Other examples of props for Super Bowl XLVI:

• Will Tom Brady's first pass of the game be complete, incomplete, or intercepted?
  (Favorite: incomplete)[Actual: incomplete]
• Will Eli Manning throw a touchdown pass in the first quarter of the game?
  (Favorite: no) [Actual: yes]
• Which quarterback will throw an interception first?
  (Favorite: Manning) [Actual: Brady]
• Will more or fewer than 2.5 players attempt a pass during the game?
  (Favorite: fewer) [Actual: fewer]
• Which team will cross the 50 yard line on offense first?
  (Favorite: Giants) [Actual: Giants]
• Will any player draw a penalty for excessive celebration after a touchdown?
  (Favorite: no) [Actual: no]
• Will the jersey number be of the first player to score a touchdown be higher or lower than 80.5?
  (Favorite: lower) [Actual: lower (80)]
• Will the Patriots convert a 4th down?
  (Favorite: no) [Actual: yes]
• Will the first missed field goal of the game miss left, miss right, or be blocked?
  (Favorite: miss left) [Actual: none missed]
• Will the color of the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach be yellow, orange, clear, red, green, or blue?
  (Favorite: yellow) [Actual: purple!]
• If Tom Brady's son is shown on TV during the game, will he be wearing a Tom Brady Jersey?
  (Favorite: yes) [Actual: not shown]
• Will Kelly Clarkson's bare belly be showing when she sings the National Anthem?
  (Favorite: no) [Actual: no]
• Will Madonna wear an NFL jersey or shirt at any point during the Super Bowl halftime show?
  (Favorite: no) [Actual: no]
• Which number will be higher: the gross passing yards accrued by Tom Brady plus 63.5 yards or the number of points accrued by the college basketball teams of Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Illinois, and Northwestern on February 5 minus 63.5 points?
  (Favorite: even) [Actual: Brady]

I think Randy was going to tell me that the last bet is a sure thing for Brady, but he barely got through reading it when he excused himself to make a phone call. Don't worry, though. I made sure that he paid me in cash as soon as he came back.

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The multi-state Powerball Lottery -- which you can play in Georgia -- has raised the price of their tickets, doubling the cost to $2. They assure the public that with the cost increase comes better odds for players. That would be great if twice the cost made the odds twice as good, but no. The old odds of winning were estimated at 1 in 192,000,000. The new odds are 1 in 175,000,000. Who can afford NOT to play at those odds?

The difference in those two numbers is 12,000,000, an improvement of almost 6% against the original odds. To put that in perspective, Americans have about a 6% chance of dying of a stroke. That means that you have a 94% chance of dying of anything other than a stroke.

No matter how you look at it, 1 in 175,000,000 is long odds. According to the National Safety Council, you have a far better chance of being killed by a hungry crocodile than winning the new Powerball lottery. Mathgoespop.com estimates that an average American probably has better odds of bowling a perfect game than winning the new Powerball lottery. All gambling sites recommend that you avoid slot machines because of their terrible odds, odds which are, you guessed it, far better than winning the new Powerball lottery.

But I guess no one is playing the lottery because of the odds. They are playing because there is a chance, no matter how slim, that they will make a $40,000,000 return on a $2 investment. And that sounds like an offer too good to pass up. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run down to the store. Maybe I'll buy two tickets: 1 in 87,500,000 sounds like my kind of odds.

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The Preakness Stakes is tomorrow, and Kentucky Derby champion Mine That Bird is currently the betting favorite to win at 11-2 odds, considerably better than the 50-1 odds that he beat to win the Derby. Don't get me wrong, I'm not endorsing gambling on the ponies. I don't even generally care for horse racing outside of the Triple Crown events. It's a sport for rich people, and I'm more of a... poor person. The closest I've ever come to owning a horse is possessing a copy of Who's Who in the DC Universe featuring the Legion of Super-Pets, which naturally includes Comet the Super-Horse.

(I really love the depictions for breaking the time barrier in Silver Age Superman comics. Time, ladies and gentlemen, is a rainbow.)

However, I don't think Comet should be allowed to race in any horse-race, but not because of his super-speed. No, see, Comet is really a Grecian centaur accidentally transformed into a horse, granted superpowers as a consolation for the mistake, banished to a comet for millennia by his enemies, and freed from said imprisonment by the happenstance passage of a rocket ship that contained a young Supergirl fleeing the destruction of Krypton. It all makes sense if you think about it. Comet isn't a horse, but a man trapped in a horse's body. You wouldn't let a man enter a horse race, would you?

Of course this begs the question that if Comet had a highly developed brain, was sentient, and capable of telepathic communication, why in the world would he join a group called the Legion of Super-Pets in the first place? Just because he let Supergirl ride on his back, he qualified as a pet? (Superman's Pet, Lois Lane probably isn't going to appear on newsracks anytime soon.) What male wouldn't let Supergirl ride on his back?

Fast fact: in "The Secret Identity of Super-Horse," Action Comics #301, Comet was granted the form of a bipedal human -- his fondest wish -- and began a romance with Supergirl. Turnabout is fair play, it would seem. Maybe I've just got a salacious mind, but that sounds like a comic I've got to get my hands on. I suppose a "Super-Pet" must be a little different than a traditional pet. Maybe it's the equivalent of a pet with benefits.

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Dogs win for homecoming! Bulldogs 44, Troy 34. I think this game had just about everything that you could've asked for in a football game. An F-14 flyover, an enthusiastic crowd, and an alumni band and cheerleader squad. Not to mention that for the better part of 4 quarters, it was anybody's game.

But it shouldn't pass without controversy. Down 10 points and losing yards to penalties and a suddenly swarming Bulldog defense, Troy's coach, Larry Blakeney, seemed to give up late in the fourth quarter when his team chose not to attempt to convert a 3rd and 29 from their own 16 yard line, instead opting for a short yardage run up the middle to set up the punt. Invigorated by Troy's decision to give up the game, the Bulldogs returned the punt to Troy's 2 yard line, from which they easily scored their final touchdown to drive the victory margin up to 17 points.

Troy's next possession was a quick 4 and out. No attempt to punt, but it certainly appeared that since the coach had given up on the team, the team didn't care to play anymore. And why should they? What was the point if the coach had already thrown in the towel on the game? Taking advantage of the situation, the Bulldogs ate another about half the remaining time off the clock and gave the ball back to Troy with more than 2 minutes remaining. That's when things got weird.

For their final drive, Troy put in their second string. And drove the ball down the field. When they reached the UGA 35 yard line, they took a timeout with 34 seconds remaining. Two plays later, having reached the UGA 4 yard line, they took their second timeout with 18 seconds remaining. Failing to score, they took their final timeout with a mere 11 seconds remaining. That's right: eleven seconds in the game. Down 17 points. With the second team in the game. Troy called their third timeout. Sure, on the next play they scored. But with so little time remaining, the game was over.

The question becomes why Troy's coach called those last two timeouts on consecutive plays with less than 18 seconds in the game. The likely answer was to ensure that he scored another touchdown to keep the margin of victory at 10 points. He called those timeouts not to win the game, which with a mere 11 seconds remaining is essentially impossible, but to ensure the scoring of the touchdown. (Note that after the score, with 5 seconds on the clock, he chose not to onside kick, but rather to kick a regular kickoff 40 yards deep to kill the remaining clock.) In the Coach's own words to ESPN following the game:

"The crowd that stayed booed us for trying to execute, which was funny," Blakeney said. "I think we certainly had the potential to win, and I doubt we'll get any quick invites back here."

Sir, we didn't boo you for trying to execute, we booed you for wasting our time.

"The potential to win"? Down 17 points with only 18 seconds left, victory is all but impossible. Certainly, I am completely unaware of any time when such a large margin was overcome so late in a football game. In an earlier game today, Clemson scored 16 points in 39 seconds (two touchdowns separated by a safety), a rare and amazing scoring pace that is one fewer point than what Troy needed in more than twice the time. Clemson running back Cullin Harper said of Clemson's performance, "that's the fastest I've ever seen 16 points scored." By comparison, Clemson's all-time fastest back-to-back touchdowns were scored just 14 seconds apart. But two touchdowns is still fewer points than Troy needed at that point in the game. Seventeen points is at least three scores.

Since the coach had all but given up the game two possessions earlier, and he had replaced his starting players with second-stringers, there are only three possibilities. One is that he intended to give his second-string players some experience. This possibility is a necessary evil of football and would not require a lie to cover it up. Another possibility is that he wished to ensure that the record books didn't include such a lopsided score. Unpleasant and selfish, but understandable. But the worst of all is the possibility that the coach was gambling on his team. Or at least encouraging it.

After the game I checked and found that at most Las Vegas casinos, the spread on the game was between 14 or 15 points in the Bulldog's favor. By struggling to score that last touchdown, Coach Blakeney was ensuring that his team would beat the spread. This no doubt won money for gamblers backing Troy and the spread. However, beating the spread serves no purpose on the field of play and should never be the concern of a coach or a team of players. It's an embarrassing day when the head coach of a highly touted (reigning Sun-Belt Conference champion) Division-IA football team is more concerned about beating a gambling spread than winning his game. Embarrassing and disgraceful.

There is at least one thing that I agree with Coach Blakeney about. I also certainly doubt that UGA will extend any more invites to have Troy back, either.

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