1999-10-18. . . Cholly Kokonino reporting

Well, it's true that Schulz doesn't kick Charlie Brown around much any more. But there's still plenty of crummy mood left in the old guy, and for the last couple of decades, it's been channeled through a character left unmentioned by the Comics Journal: Spike, the beagle hermit who looks a little like Dashiell Hammett.

Only a week or two ago, he featured in a downright Warean moment: a single-panel strip of a desert thunderstorm, with Spike, small and centered, braced against a cactus and accompanied only by the thought-balloon "Mom!" (Or, as Ware would've put it, "M-m-mom?")

And my favoritest Peanuts of all time ever was a 1980s Sunday Spike -- I paraphrase from memory so's not to stir up the lawyers:

(Spike looks at cactus) "Did you ever hear how it was that I moved to the desert? When I was very young, almost a puppy, I lived in a house with a family. One day the family had a birthday party in their yard. A guest saw a rabbit and told me to chase it. And then everyone was shouting for me to chase it. I was excited and wanted to do the right thing, and so I chased the rabbit. The rabbit ran into the street and was run over. And so I came here, where I can never hurt anyone again." (Pause) "I've never told anyone that story." (Looks at cactus) "I guess I still haven't."

. . . 1999-10-20

My favorite joke from A Nest of Ninnies by John Ashbery & James Schuyler: "We can't let a lady drink alone, can we, Marshall?" Mr. Kelso said. "Sometimes it's difficult to stop them," Marshall said. Otherwise? The book's kind of OK, I guess. Like Dawn Powell except with no characters or structure. If you've read all the Dawn Powell novels, you might as well go ahead and try it. Calling O'Reilly: I'd love to see the Joe Brainard cover illustration for this edition recycled on a Cross-Platform Java reference volume....

. . . 1999-10-22

Tinseltown's most whimsical leading man was being interviewed in a favorite watering hole (one much like the Hotsy Totsy Club that surrounds us) when he became slightly miffed by the tone of a question.

Quickly snatching the young reporter's wallet from the bar, the star asked, "And how would you feel if I was to announce loudly to all and sundry that" (he peered into the gatefold) "your driver's license expired over two years ago? Or if I pressured you as to" (pulling a worn rectangle of newsprint from out the inner sleeve) "why you show such interest in --"

But here he stopped. For the scrap of paper held nothing less than the obituary of the very reporter before him. His interviewer was a zombie -- one of the walking dead!

Silently the grand old man of the screen replaced the precious souvenir; silently he replaced the wallet; humbly he admitted, "You know, I never realized how difficult it must be to maintain both interest and propriety in one's questioning." And the interview continued.

Yes, they had faces then. What's more, beating or not, they had hearts.

. . . 1999-10-24

The Miracle of Digestion: I've finally finished off the large bag of Vietnamese coffee I was given a couple of months ago, whose distinctive Vietnamesisity was that the beans had been roasted in butter.

It's tempting to say that the odor while brewing was unimaginable, but in fact it was pretty much exactly what you'd imagine except more intense. I'm just sorry I never got around to trying a mug with one of my other favorite treats, microwave popcorn dredged in Dutch cocoa powder, for the complete colonial experience.

Recently received via anonymous donation: A free-in-every-box informational pamphlet headlined "How to use 100% certified organically grown cotton digital tampons".

I remember back when it was a big deal just to be stereophonic....

. . . 1999-10-26

After the opening celebration, we settled down with La Sala at a noisy restaurant, ordered a lot of beer, and opened our note pad for an exclusive interview with the artist. A transcript follows:

Sierra Nevada?
No. Yes.
California part.
I went to Copperopolis.
No copper. Ghost town.
Not where invisible man came from.
C gets to proofread.
As long as I don't stand out.
Invis not part of body.
Nothing to do with body politics.
Clarify!
Not butter.
Times when it's good.
High-school.
Visible - bad things happen.
Elvisopoly.
[trade secrets]
Detergent - completely artificial.
Sneezing gasping wheezing.
Not nature.
Scotch tape, xerox.
6 + 4 is 12
More insulting to call it scottish tape.
Hop scottish.
Drinking game.
(looks like) notor Lielb
That's a good interview.

. . . 1999-10-28

It's official: dot-com-izing is the colorization of the 1990s! And see how nicely it can learn to play with the new copyright laws! As excerpted from some guy named Bloomberg:

American Film Technologies Inc. officials have ousted the chief executive of the company that pioneered "colorizing" of black-and-white movies and replaced him with a turnaround specialist, according to filings with securities regulators.
. . .
But a dropoff in demand for colorized films left the company struggling to survive, court papers said. American Film hasn't generated any revenues since 1995 and its lab and film library are sitting unused.
. . .
Rudy said he's arranged for a $250,000 cash infusion for American Film, which will now focus on offering colorized films via the Internet. The company is planning to offer color versions of such classics as To Kill A Mockingbird and A Farewell to Arms, he added.

By colorizing such older movies -- whose copyrights have expired -- American Film gets exclusive rights to the films for the next 95 years, Rudy said.

"We're excited about the possibilities of distributing our product over the Internet and rebuilding the value in this company," he said.

. . . 1999-10-29

The 100 Super Movies au maximum: The Old Dark House

What you're likely to hear about The Old Dark House:

• Its camp value. Which is only to say that it has a large part for Ernest Thesiger.

What the first-time viewer is likely to notice about The Old Dark House:

• The tedious ineptitude of the romantic scenes between so-war-damaged-I-forgot-to-laugh Roger Penderel and infant-with-a-sex-life Gladys DuCane.

• The title card confirming that, yes, as hard as it might be to believe, the Karloff who plays the menacing grunting giant in this movie is the same Karloff who played the menacing grunting giant in Frankenstein.

• The Pre-Codedness of it all, starting with the first line of dialog: "Hell!"

What I'm likely to mention about The Old Dark House:

• Most old dark house movies go for a thrill a minute. Which means a lot of randomness, arbitrarily cut short by a rational explanation at the end. Sometimes it's great randomness, like in Seven Footprints to Satan, but it still levels out in the way that random action randomly tends to do.

  THE Old Dark House, on the other hand, builds up a definite structure, albeit one that's always threatening to tip over or burn down to the ground. Each permutation of Femms is allowed to come to a rolling boil before a new Femm is sprinkled into the brew, and "They didn't tell you about Saul, did they?" is right up there with "Have a potato" and "I like gin" in my personal store of happy hostess remarks.

• As the great American frontiersman Cooper has proven time and again, it takes a queen to really milk homophobia for all it's worth. And The Old Dark House uses homophobia to scarier effect than any other movie anywhere. Yes, more effectively than Hitchcock. Oh, come on, Quentin Tarantino couldn't milk a cow if he was pressed against its heaving udder. Yes, goddamn you, more effectively than William Friedkin!

  None of the Femms respect personal space, but when the hairiest of the lot acknowledges to Melvyn Douglas:

  Like you? I love you, my friend.

  and finishes off the ensuing knife thrusts and tussle with a serious no-body-double hickey -- mm-mmm, that's where we stop separating the men from the boys!

... an' anotha thing ...

... then again ...