30/2462. Alma's Rainbow (1994)
Another '90s black indie coming-of-age movie that aired on TCM, and also quite enjoyable, assuming you like '90s indies and/or coming-of-age movies, as I do. The pacing felt a little uneven, but that's adolescence, isn't it? I found it charming.

31/2463. Scarecrow (1973)
I've said it before, but it bears repeating after his recent, tragic death: When I was a kid, I didn't like watching Gene Hackman in a movie, but as I've aged, he's become a favorite. And it was in his memory that I watched this, which had been languishing on my DVR largely because I expected bad things from his co-star, Al Pacino (who I disliked as a kid and still dislike). In many ways, it's a dark, dark buddy road "comedy" movie based on Of Mice and Men with extra homosexual rape and mental breakdowns! The version I watched seemed to be edited in such a way as to only suggest the rape, but I read online several reviews that agree that the scene was more explicit in its first-run release. I don't know if that's true or another example of the Mandela Effect.

Coke by the barrel? Yes, please!

32/2464. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
A post-apocalyptic movie in which the only survivors are hung up on the fact that white and black people shouldn't kiss. Maybe this was as progressive as Red Scare 1959 Hollywood could get, but golly, I spent the movie very irritated that race was even as issue in the empty ruins of New York City. Maybe that was the point, but it's a frustrating viewing experience.

33/2465. The Domino Principle (1977)
More Gene Hackman! This time he's a imprisoned murderer recruited by The Government to carry out a clandestine execution. His wife (who he killed for) is played by Candice Bergman, dressed down in a bad wig to look just awful even by mid-70s style standards, and his best friend, Mickey Rooney, is given a plot twist that makes less than no sense. I didn't hate it, but really, only because of Hackman's skill at portraying a grumpy everyman scrambling to get out of proverbial quicksand.

More to come.

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33/2199. Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)
Not as good as Gold Diggers of 1933, but that's partly due to the fact that Gold Diggers of 1933 is so very, very good. The opening is fantastic, and there's a lot of enchanting Busby Berkley choreography in here. Too bad almost all of these "gold diggers" themselves are intrinsically unlikeable characters.

34/2200. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
I don't know how entertaining this silly mock-autobiography will be for people less familiar with Weird Al's discography than I am, but my mother's beau, who doesn't know Weird Al from a normal one, seemed to enjoy it fine.

35/2201. April in Paris (1952)
The song-and-dance numbers in this musical comedy should be better known, but the otherwise tired script and the mismatched pairing of naive Doris Day and sad-sack Ray Bolger make watching a bit of a chore. Keep an eye out for the rainbow of poodles late in the third act scene used as the source of the cover image of the August 9, 1952 issue of Collier's Magazine. (Google it.)

36/2202. All About Eve (1950)
Not to be confused with The Three Faces of Eve (which I have done), this is the one about a sociopath, not a split personality. They both have Academy Award winning performances, of course, but this is the one that grabbed Best Picture. It probably deserves it, especially because of Bette Davis's ability to convey rare onscreen character growth (and George Sanders' delightfully manipulative theater critic).

37/2203. The Jane Mysteries: Inheritance Lost (2023)
Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel lost Candice Cameron Bure to Great American Family, so they grabbed Bure's Full House sister, Jodie Sweetin, with diminishing results. Solvable purely by formula alone, this isn't particularly recommended.

38/2204. Garage Sale Mysteries: Searched & Seized (2022)
The last installment of Lori Laughlin's signature Hallmark mystery series feels simultaneously contrived and comfortable, much like a Murder She Wrote episode, which is certainly the point. Too bad there won't be any more of these, at least on Hallmark. (While Hallmark frowns on bribing college officials, Great American Family doesn't, so Laughlin followed her Full House stepdaughter over there after she got out of prison. Man, the behind-the-scenes on these made-for-tv Hallmark movies is getting wilder than any of their murder mysteries.)

More to come.

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At last! A rainbow on the horizon!

By which I mean that we are just ten days from football season. Count them down!

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Louis Vuitton is a well known French luxury fashion brand famous for their expensive purses like the Artsy MM:

That purse retails for $2,000, which explains why they are such a common target for counterfeiters. Therefore, the company is unusually aggressive about taking legal action against perceived violators of their valuable brand. That's why they sent MGA Entertainment Inc. a cease and desist letter over MGA's top-selling toy, the Poopsie Pooey Puitton.

According to Amazon.com, Poopsie Pooey Puitton contains 12 unicorn food packets. "Just add water to make a rainbow of poop!" Who wouldn't want that? Other than Louis Vuitton, I mean.

In response to Louis Vuitton's bullying, MGA has pre-emptively sued to defend their right for parody speech. The following is a real sentence in a real court filing, per Reuters.

The use of the Pooey name and Pooey product in association with a product line of "magical unicorn poop" is intended to criticize or comment upon the rich and famous, the Louis Vuitton name, the LV marks, and on their conspicuous consumption.

Make a statement about rampant materialism; buy your Poopsie Pooey Puitton today! (Did I mention this product is aimed at 5- to 10-year-olds?)

And that's where we are now. 2019. Year of the magical unicorn poop. At least until Louis Vuitton gets their hands on it. Or gets it on their hands.

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For no good reason, I bought a Wilton gingerbread house kit from Michaels earlier this month with the plan that Mom and I would build it together. That plan was somewhat spoiled when my father interrupted our house raising. (He needed tech support for the Kindle I bought him last Christmas that he just now decided to activate for the first time.) Mom went to bed while I was on the phone, and I finished our house without her.

We went shopping for a do-over replacement kit, but Michaels was sold out. Rather than give up, I doubled down. I found a recipe and made enough gingerbread for two more houses, one for Mom to decorate and one for me. (No tech support call could defeat this plan!)

Click photo to embiggen.

In the photo above, the shared kit house is on the left with the rainbow roof. Mom's greenhouse is in the middle. My sloppy icicle house is on the right.

For my standalone house, I decided I was only going to use candy accessories that I would eat. Turns out, I don't like the taste of rainbows. Who knew?

Though I'm reasonably satisfied with the final results, the best part wasn't decorating but baking the gingerbread. (The house smelled so good!) Therefore, next year I think we'll just decorate homemade gingerbread men. And we'll turn off our cellphones, just in case.

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Sunsets and rainbows.

Just because.

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I sat down at my keyboard thinking I'd rant about a movie I hadn't seen, Suicide Squad, which is getting disappointing reviews. It seems to me that Warner Brothers is damaging its own DC Comics brand by insisting on releasing under-developed movies devaluing character for spectacle. But maybe their brand is spectacle. While spectacle alone soon becomes boring, maybe Warner Bros doesn't care. After all, a new sucker is born every minute.

So, anyway, instead of ranting about that, I'll co-opt this post to talk about some movies I have seen.

66. (1004.) Marihuana (1936)
TCM played this in a block between two other 1930s anti-drug propaganda I had already seen, Reefer Madness and Cocaine Fiends. They're all chock full o' overwrought ridiculousness, and therein lies their enduring charm. In this "true story," a joint leads to nude frolicking leads to unwanted pregnancy leads to a criminal empire. Lesson learned!

67. (1005.) Finian's Rainbow (1968)
This Francis Ford Coppola directed musical was Fred Astaire's last. It's not a great note to go out on. The leprechaun is a highlight, but Keenan Wynn in blackface — though well-intentioned — isn't very engaging, the dancing seems poorly framed, and the music is unmemorable.

68. (1006.) Trenchcoat (1983)
This spy comedy/thriller starring Margot Kidder, begs comparison to Cloak & Dagger, which was released a year after this film. They're both iterations of the "unwitting innocent drawn into a world of spies" trope with very similar villains. Both seem naive, though that's likely a side effect of their attempt to reach a younger target audience. It had its moments, but I can't say I recommend it.

More to come.

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Following my last post which revealed that the rainbow ends in disappointment, I present the two inevitabilities in life: death and poodles.

July looks very jaunty in this image, no? I think perhaps I need to start taking pictures of July in front of other bleak subjects and see if she can't liven them up a bit. House fires and auto accidents, here we come.

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Question: What's at the end of the rainbow?

Answer: It's the Pitts.
[Actual photo taken 08/19 in Dublin, GA, where "pot of gold" = "used cars."]

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For reasons I'm not going to go into (use your imagination), I was recently trying to think of a superhero name for a painter. And it occurred to me that painters simply aren't super heroes.

Frustrated painters can become super villains (such as Crazy Quilt and Rainbow Raider), but never super heroes. (Sure, some become comic book illustrators -- Captain America and Green Lantern come to mind -- but that's hardly the same thing. Anyone can tell you that comic book illustrators aren't real artists.) Is this because the act of painting, a cathartic translation of thought, beautiful or otherwise, from ephemera to tangible is innately opposed to the destructive violence generally employed for subduing criminals? Or perhaps because painters have to spend so much time in a studio honing their craft that they don't have the opportunity to master gymnastics and Karate, necessary super hero skills? Maybe it's because painters spend all their time looking at things, unable to rouse themselves from marveling at the beautiful shapes formed by stark blue and red police lights to answer the sound of a bank's alarm siren.

Seems to me that the world is ready for a slew of super powered painters, charging forward with their brushes primed to cover man's inhumanity to man with a new veneer of peace and order. Painters would gain their super powers by accidentally coming into contact with experimental radioactive pigments, unusual combinations of toxic turpentine fumes, or still life compositions of creatively arranged alien meteor fragments. Heroes named Action Painter, Cadmium Kid, Color Crusader, Maul Stick, or the White Brush would band together on teams such as the Complementary Colors, Palette of Order, or (my favorite) The New Masters.

But then again, maybe not. Most of the painters I've met are pretentious dicks who I'd never want to see in tights. So maybe the lack of painter heroes is all for the best. Nevermind.

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