Film Class

     Five movies I haven't seen:

     Chariots of Fire (1981, '82 in the U.S.): Slow motion running on the beach, Vangelis, Olympic runners in the twenties, running on a Scottish beach, many locations in Britain, wearing of tweed, runners look like they're in a Marine recruitment video, or a detachment of pray-the-gay-away Republican congressmen.  Ooh, dig on the Republicans!  Don't worry, Democrats, I bitch at you, and plenty! 

     The film looks like a professional English prestige picture, like The English Patient.  Chariots director Hugh Hudson made Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984).  I saw that with my brother in a theater.  Pretty fucking hot, Andie Macdowell as Jane.  Real jungle scenes, so different from a set.  Not quite like Gilligan's Island is what I'm saying.  Ian Holm is really in the fucking jungle!  Yes, Ian Holm, Bilbo Baggins, is in the fucking jungle!  Ash, the robot in Alien who bleeds spoiled milk, is in the fucking jungle!

     Ian Holm is dead but check out his role in Branagh's Henry V, Fluellen, the Welsh captain, a convincing performance as a professional soldier, carries a sword, but so does Bilbo Baggins.  Baggins in the jungle.  Fluellen the Welsh mercenary in the fucking jungle!

     Soldiers in movies sometimes get depicted glamorously, like Robert Taylor in Bataan (1942).  A handsome man like that would get a different job, not sweating it out in the Philippines climate every day for months before something big happens and when it happens in Bataan, watch everyone but Taylor drop one by one, Japanese soldiers advancing.  Taylor, the last American alive, fires his Vickers machine gun right and left, and lastly right at the camera, yelling, "Come and get me!  We'll give it right back to yuh!  Hey vertical Jap, want to go horizontal?  There you go, courtesy of Uncle Sam!" 

     A moment after the film ends he runs out of ammunition, engages hand to hand armed with a knife and a rifle he uses as a club.  Shot three times, he survives, is marched north, put in a cargo ship's hold with other captives, lands in Japan, gets sent to a prison camp and thence to a laboratory run by Unit 731, notorious Japanese experimental program.  Real thing, people, war crime stuff, no more destructive than what scientists do now when they create super-viruses.

     Robert Taylor is the wrong choice for that role.  We don't want to see a handsome man experimented on.  It should be Michael J. Pollard, or Gary Kroeger, or is that true?  Come to think of it, we don't want to see Radar O'Reilly fighting for his life, about to be captured or killed, or maimed.  

     Yet, for commerce, a special three hour MASH, third season.

     Hawkeye has to operate on Radar, had a ten minute scene before commercial break mid-show discussing who should repair Radar.  Wayne Rogers, Trapper John that is, doesn't give a shit one way or the other.  He's busy thinking up new put downs for Houlihan and Frank Burns.  Frank says he's willing to assist in the repair of Radar.  Hawkeye says, "I guess it's up to me." Finishes his fourth martini, and bumps into the central pillar.  Ash puffs from the stove.  For some reason, MacLean Stevenson's unit commander role is absent.  Maybe he's in Tokyo whooping it up at a reunion of his West Point class?  

     Alan Alda gets really Alan Alda in the next scene, sitting on Radar's bed.  We don't see Radar,  he's too ghastly.  Alan Alda speaks in that low serious Alan Alda voice, his bedside manner voice, his all joking aside voice, but the martinis lend an additional level of screwy humor to the scene, laugh track man's fingers on the controls.  

     Radar can't speak.  His tongue has been driven into his brain.  His right hand is embedded in the middle of his face so it always looks like he's wiping his mouth.  You see why we can't show this on primetime TV in the 1970s?  Take a beloved character and mutilate him?  Gary Kroeger fans want to see that happen to their beloved character?  No, you don't show crippled Radar.  He was driving back to camp after delivering a cuckoo clock to MASH 4062 when boom!  

     Land mine planted by a North Korean no doubt, maybe Chinese explosives in there, those Chinese and their fireworks!  My hand is in my face.

     Wayne Rogers, that is, Trapper John, finds Radar while out for a walk with Nurse Hotsytotsy, whom Pierce has been trying to bed, or supply closet, or shower stall, for three months, ever since she joined the cast as a semi-regular.  Nurse Hotsytotsy keeps her food in but Trapper John sprays the dusty road with Korean spirits.  Trap has seen a lot, but people blown to smithereens at least are dead.  This halfway stage between a decent life and death doesn't look like a fate I'd choose for myself, he thinks.  

     I'll have to make sure no mirrors are within Radar's reach.

     Radar's right boot is off his foot but embedded in his liver.  His left boot is thirty-five feet from the wrecked jeep, hanging by its laces from a strained twig.  All of his toes and half the foot are in the boot.  The Jeep's steering wheel has bent around his body, holding him in like a second rib cage.  

     Radar looks like a new person.  He'll need a new driver's license picture when he returns stateside.  

     Once he recovers from this, thinks Trapper John, wiping his mouth, even with his hand stuck to his face, he'll go back to work, our Radar!  Plucky little fellow.  Ottumwa Iowa raises good sons!  Ioway, where the tall corn grows, but Radar's not tall!  Actually, he's hard to look at in this state.  I'll fix him, or Hawkeye will.  Frank would make him look worse.  Doctors meeting, our tent, we'll provide the drinks.  

     Pierce: So he's messed up, completely?

     John: You mean is his wee-wee attached to his body? (laughter)  Yeah, but he's not gonna get dates looking like he looks.

     Frank Burns: The poor fellow.

     Pierce: Frank?  Compassion?

     Burns: No, I was thinking of someone else. (laughter)  

     John: Who's going to rearrange Radar?  Can we put the toes back on at least?

     Burns: That's delicate work.

    John: I wasn't asking you.  Unless you think you're qualified enough as a surgeon to put Radar back together. (tittering of laughter)  I'll bet you my next paycheck you can't put him back together.  

     Burns: My paycheck against yours! (laughter)  I'll make him look like a movie star!  Like Mickey Rooney! (laughter)  Like Everett Sloane! (big laughter)

     John: Make him look like Radar.  

     Burns: Is that a condition of the bet?

     John: No.

     Pierce: I'll assist, Frank.  Somebody's got to be there if you make a mistake that costs Radar.

     Burns: I will study what's to be done and I will do it!  

     Next scene, Hot Lips Houlihan in her black sweater and green fatigues rubs Frank's shoulders as he whimpers.

     Burns: I think I bit off more than I can chew.  How am I going to extract Radar's hand from his face?  How not damage his hand, how to rebuild his mouth, give him new teeth, scoop his tongue out of his cerebellum, do brain work on his cerebellum, that's on the bottom right?  And how am I going to reattach his foot fragment with its little toes not currently attached to their owner who loves his toes.  I love my toes.  Do you want to see my toes?

     Houlihan: For the second time, I don't want to see them!

     Burns: I have to trust in my skills as a surgeon.  I was considered for an award back in my home town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, but I lost out to a district attorney who got arrested for taking bribes in exchange for lighter sentences.  

     

     Does Radar get put back together?  By Frank Burns?  He makes mistakes, Hawkeye corrects all but one of them, for neither Frank nor Hawkeye, nor Nurse Hotsytotsy noticed this mistake.  Frank shaved off too much of Radar's butt, flesh needed to pad out withering sections.  This episode covers a period of 10 weeks, it's three hours long, and has never been seen due to the explicit sex scenes.

     Radar recovers, finds it hard to sit for more than a few minutes, makes it hard to hunker down and pound the typewriter keys.  Radar stands a lot, this hurts his feet, one of which has an ugly scar at the reattachment line.  The left toes don't work, it's just a useless appendage giving him more discomfort than if he didn't have it hanging on like an unwanted passenger.  

     Radar defects to the Chinese, they graft a butt onto his backside.  Being able to sit down, even on a cane chair in Maoist lecture rooms, is a relief.  No typing either.  Mustn't have access to an instrument the use of which may allow expressions of one's feelings and thoughts.  

     Say, that sounds about right.  Don't think for myself, I'm getting it now!  Do what I'm told?  Okay!  I had that conditioning from the U.S. Army.  Is it wrong-thinking of me to miss those days?  Is sentiment not welcome in this mid-century period of war, the torrents made by political decisions in countries far away?  I want to be an actor making money, good money, in Hollywood, meet Marilyn Monroe, dance with Debbie Reynolds, drink with John Derek, act for Capra.  

     Frank Burns after the war continues the practice of straightening out mutilated people.  Some of his "successes" are worthy of a spooky Clark Ashton Smith sculpture.  He gets into Mutant Funding, an organization out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, founded by Conservative Flat Earthers who seek to make new species, like turn the world into the Planet of Doctor Moreau.  Hawkeye by this time suspects Burns is connected to something bad.  He confronts Burns in the latter's round office in the penthouse of Mutant Funding's 190 story building in Fort Wayne.  

     Hawkeye has chosen to confront Frank Burns wearing a Groucho Marx suit, big eyebrows, cigar, and painted on mustache.  

     Burns: Halloween, Pierce?

     Hawkeye: How many Polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb?

     Burns: How many?

     Hawkeye: One.

     Burns: That's not funny.

     Hawkeye: Have you heard of Dada?

     Burns: What are you talking about, Pierce?  Get to the point or get out.

     Hawkeye: An art, or maybe anti-art movement in World War One.  They put on shows in Zurich, two German war veterans and a girlfriend of one of them, Emmy Hennings.

     Burns: And what is the point?

     Hawkeye: Dada is not dead, watch your overcoat.

     Burns: I beg your pardon?

     

     The three hour episode ends.  Everyone comes out on a stage, holding hands and smiling, Gary Kroeger is normal, back to his short lovable self, we didn't have to see him with an army boot sticking out of his midsection.  The lost episode, too racy for TV, in some scenes too honest about the human condition, but most of all, too long for the time slot.  Executives changed their minds about the allotted time for the special episode.  A three hour time slot for a show normally in thirty minute time slots is asking for a lot from a moderately successful program that's been on for just three years; Putting the most well-liked character, Radar in jeopardy would snag viewers, but the explicit sex scenes with Houlihan and Burns, Houlihan and Trapper John, and Houlihan and Nurse Hotsytotsy will not clear Big Censor.

     Big Censor must be appeased, obeyed.  Big Censor ends careers.  I love Big Censor.

     Black market booze for sale in New York, Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard doing the cha-cha, sound films on the way, The Jazz Singer, the second movie on the list I haven't seen.  Al Jolson singing "Mammy."  Blackface performer, looks pretty awkward now.  Myrna Loy's in the movie, I'd watch it to see her.  I understand the film is otherwise silent except for musical sequences and a little dialogue, but I may be wrongly interpreting that as a fact based on something I read years ago.  Memory pool contains facts of the past turning into fictions because misremembered, colored by future viewpoints of oneself.

     Scene with Al Jolson at his dressing room makeup table, applying the makeup that will turn him into a farce of a Black man.  The pretty White woman watching him says, in silence, "It's marvelous!"  Some words come through without hearing them spoken.

     In 1927, year of The Jazz Singer, were blackface performances by White actors and actresses a tribute to talented Black performers?  Was it simply racism, a making fun of an inferior race, White's former servants, slaves, subjugated?  Somehow the mask of blackface lost its ability to entertain.  It's a no-no, but in 1999, seventy-two years after Jolson pretended to be Black, Justin Trudeau went to a party in blackface.  

     I don't know anything about Al Jolson.  I don't know if he was kind to everyone, like people who worked for him, or if he maltreated people.  Al, you're a mystery to me, but I do see you sporting blackface.  It looks ridiculous, it's an insult to Black people, you're wearing their skin.

     The conqueror appropriates even the faces and identities of the conquered.

     I doubt Al Jolson engaged in profound thought on the subject, wondering about his blackface performances.  It was something some White performers did, but Woodrow Wilson steered clear of it.  World leaders behave themselves in their personal lives, as we expect.

     Nancy Pelosi on late night talk TV describing her $25,000 refrigerator and the hoarded expensive ice cream occupying the lowest compartment, a special freezer box for Nancy's ice cream.  Heavenly texture, smooth sweet chocolate pouring down Nancy Pelosi's throat, cooling the volcano, appeasing the endless needs of pleasure, no interest in sex anymore because she's old as fuck, 113 years old, starting to show it.

     Al Jolson I would invite into my living room to have a conversation.  He did many things other than The Jazz Singer.  In other words, his face was usually pale.  An honest pale face, right Al?  Not the darkened performer, making some of us squirm.  Blackface doesn't work with the general public anymore, Al!  In case you resurrect and get back into show business, remember, don't do blackface!  Don't make your comeback role be that of a serial killer, either.  Start with something likable.  A comedy, maybe a touching occasionally funny melodrama, we'll try to get Diane Lane.  A movie for the women.  Al Jolson gets new fans, and they're ladies!

     The third movie I haven't seen, Ben-Hur from 1925, said to feature the better of the two chariot races, the other from the 1959 Ben-Hur.  

     Top the 1959 chariot race?  

     Heston versus Boyd, Jew versus Roman, Monotheist versus Pagan, chiseled features man versus chiseled features man.  Stephen Boyd has blades on his wheels, chews up opponents' wheels, he's a cheater.  Heston's team of white chargers, honest to god Arabian stallions, Heston acting like he's really churning the sand in a hippodrome circa A.D. 30.  Boyd dies from chariot race wounds, repents.  Ben-Hur meets Christ, Ben-Hur saves a Roman Admiral's life during a sea battle that causes Ben-Hur to lose his oaring job.

     The fourth movie I haven't seen, The Castle (1968), starring Maximilian Schell, adapting Kafka's novel of the same name.  I saw Orson Welles's The Trial.  I liked it.  Kafka's writing has a mysterious going around in circles quality.  He pulls you in with his light suspense manner, and after a while you're pulled around by this man's web of words.  I find I break free after a few pages because I can't stay with it, it's too intense at being hyper-involved with Kafka's peculiar form of expression, the art of saying nothing while saying everything.  Rothko's paintings possess this quality.

     Filmmakers can, to their benefit, trust reality, put the camera facing a tree, a street, a lake, a yard, towards an approaching storm, let the natural sound and image come together, acceptable as entertainment, as film, as presentation, because we all experience reality, the feel of air, the hard surfaces of a bathroom, the wind in trees, the sound of geese flying north.

     Big raindrops chomping on my office window.  Train chugging five blocks away.  Hear the Doppler effect as its last car passes.

     So what do we got? 

     

     Chariots of Fire

     The Jazz Singer

     1925 Ben-Hur

     The Castle

     Fifth choice, Lost Horizon, from 1937, Ronald Colman, Shangri-La, a place bestowing immortality and healing but you can never leave; I guess one ages rather quickly and alarmingly when one passes out of Xanadu, out of a poem by Coleridge, from a song sung by Geddy Lee.

     The list, weighty with sixteen Oscars, not that I intended that.  I could've picked Joy in the Morning (1965) with Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimieux, one of my must-see actresses.  Instead I bypassed Coppola's The Outsiders (1983) to pick the obscure, The Castle.  All I know of the novel is a land surveyor named K.  In The Trial the protagonist was Josef K.  Now there's no first name, unless K. is his first initial.  Kurt?  Kevin?  

     So Kevin has these two crazy assistants.  All they do is act foolish, tickle each other and fight, they're madcaps in the background.  They annoy Kevin but he has to keep them for they are his employees.  Maybe they're good at scoring good smokes and beverages?  One of them might even have a way with the ladies, the damen. 

     

     Someone gives me a project to direct.  I accept, I need the money, the salary will be more money than I've ever before made and then some.  I'm to make a film of The Castle, adaptation of Kafka's third and last novel.  I've read the first few pages.  I accept the challenge.

     The producer has seen my films, wants me to apply my editing techniques to this one.  I accept the challenge.  They leave me alone to make the film.  So much money is in the budget I order the construction of a large castle on a hill in Romania.  I order bats to fill the belfries of the castle.  My Kafka's Castle has vampires.  The chief vampire watches Boy on a Dolphin with Sophia Loren, projected onto a rock wall in his bedroom, so it's 1958, '59.  I've deviated from the plot of The Castle.  I still haven't read it.  I've read Amerika, The Trial, The Judgment, In the Penal Colony, Metamorphosis, The Leopards in the Temple, his diaries, some of the letters, a biography, but I have not read The Castle, though I intend to.

     I don't read The Castle.  Hey, I got through The Trial, an old translation.  I figure The Castle is a lot like The Trial.  Mystifying, you don't know what the fuck is going on, neither does the main character.  I paid my penance!  I read The Trial, that's enough!

     The resulting film, Franz Kafka's Castle (FCC), is as much about the castle's vampire nest and vampire personality inter dynamics as it is about the land surveyor and his assistants.  Gruesome bloody scenes of fang action combine with a "Kafkaesque dash of Poe and Mary Shelley, with a hint of Carl Dreyer's Vampyr).  Another critic isn't impressed: "A suffocating atmosphere, too many dark shots, a narrative propelled by actors engaging in extensive windbaggery."

     Franz Kafka's Castle (FCC), voted best horror film of the year, winner of the Kalamazoo Film Festival Golden Rooster Award For High Quality Scares.  

     K., in the film, has a pompadour, keeps his eyes hooded, wears a black leather jacket, smokes constantly, looks in mirrors a lot, comes across as a cool cat until he loses composure, shooting both of his assistants dead as they had just completed their last act of goofiness.

     Summoned to chief Vampire's office, yes, this is Dracula, K. shakes the cold hand of a (man?) with a widow's peak, resembling an aged Robert Taylor, wearing a white v-neck sweater, pale shirt with white tie and a Romanian flag tie tack.  White pants and shoes, red socks, pale flesh makes him overall look like a birch tree.  A dead woman with a bloody neck lies on the floor by Dracula's steel desk carved into the shape of a fang.

     Before you can say Lugosi, Dracula stands four inches away from K.  Dracula looks at K.'s neck, moving his head about like a meerkat.  K. feels strange, but also wonders why Dracula has no odor, ah wait, there's a smell like an old ice cube coming from his armpits.  Frozen hamburger smell coming through, too.  Is that his breath?

     Dracula: I'm glad you've decided to visit my Castle.

     K.: Why, so you can eat me?

     Dracula: I have dined, I shall not satisfy that necessity until tomorrow night.

     K.: I'm safe?

     Dracula: From me.

     K.: I've killed my assistants.

     Dracula: I have closed circuit TV.  I watched you kill them.

     K.: So it's all right then?

     Dracula: You ask me?  I, who have killed thousands?

     K.: I'm going back to Prague to turn myself in.

     Dracula: Whatever you wish.  But you could stay here, be my guest, we can be friends.  Do you play pool?

     They whoop it up for a whole month.  Six months later, K. is a gray-skinned, hollow-eyed drunk in London, a bug eater, sleeps on benches.  He's brought back to life and health by Doctor Kafka.  Kafka visits Romania and encounters Dracula, bites off Dracula's pinky, gets a taste of vampire blood, goes fucking insane, bites Dracula again, becomes a vampire.  Vampire Franz!  He rampages against other vampires, ghouls, werewolves, sprites, long-eared elves, no-eared elves, kobolds, dwarves, flee from Vampire Kafka, the man-snakes fear him.

     He writes unfinished novels, a trilogy reflecting his experiences as a vampire.

     The Engrossing Habit

     Blaze of Lightning, RISE UNDEAD!!!

     Cross Not Your Fingers!

     Kafka returns to Prague by night, bites his father, lets his mother alone but screaming, runs across roofs, flies to the library, checks out three books of philosophy and one treatise on Torah, flies home, sitting unnoticed in his study, writing on fresh paper his new story: "The Spiritual of the Profane."

     His mother comes in, finds him sitting there engrossed, a large book in his hands.

     "Franz, where have you been?"

     Evidently didn't recognize her son as the biter of her husband.

     "Here and there.  I went to the library.  I was there for a while."

     "Do you know what happened to your father?"

     "No, what?'

     "He was bitten by a vampire and died!"

     "Oh no."

     "A vampire!  I saw it happen."

     "An honest to god vampire?"

     "I swear."

     "All right, a vampire it was then.  Drained his blood, the vampire did?"

     "No, not all of it.  Just a little stain was left on the carpet, the carpet your father's parents gave to us as part of our wedding gift.  The other part was the best: a two weeks vacation in Switzerland, in winter.  We never left the lodge.  We just loved each other, and loved each other.  It was pleasant.  You came about because of that Switzerland holiday."

     "How much cash are we getting from Father's death?"

     "Franz!"

     "Let's take charge of our place in this new reality.  How much are we getting?  I want lots of money to help compensate for the many times that brute refused me, punished me, discouraged me, yelled at me, beat me, turned me against life, made me feel like an insect, made me feel like an accused man who doesn't know his crime, made me feel lost, like inside of a huge structure, like a castle, made me feel like taking a trip to see America, land of the free, home of the Atlanta Braves.  Damn, I'm glad that fucker's dead!  No more glowering looks from his shit-brown eyes!  You Mom, you won't have to feel his grunting weight on top of you.  You won't have to hear his complaints about your cooking.  He won't fart loudly in front of your guests anymore.  He won't smoke his terrible cigars.  He won't refuse me water."

     "He was a great man," Franz's mother says, wiping her eyes with a pink handkerchief. 

     "A dead man, a not to be resurrected man!"

     Father comes back, a vampire, yes.  Franz made him into one.  If he had left it alone, Dad was probably not likely to live another ten years.  Deteriorating liver, bad lungs.

     Old Man Kafka makes a vicious vampire.  He revels in being undead.  The thought of being immortal appeals to Old Man Kafka.  He'll outlive his stupid son.  He'll outlive his wife.  He doesn't realize his son bit him.  

     I'll find a new wife!  A hefty girl with a jolly outlook!  Someone who can bear me a son, a real son, one who likes to ride horses, shoot game, clean fish, wrestle.  Not a bookish son.  A weak son with TB!  Why was cursed with such a son?  Shall I vampirize my hefty girl?  I could give her the way of unlife as it was bestowed upon me by that mad vampire.  Yes, I'll vampirize her.  We'll lay waste to half of humanity, ha ha!

     I'll set up my own Vampire kingdom in the jungles of Siam!  

     They honor me with the chance to make a sequel, The Blood Empire of Hermann Kafka, Super-Vampire.

     In Siam, modern Thailand, Hermann Kafka, father of the writer vampire, rules as a fair-minded blood drinker.  As long as there is a steady flow of "bottles," his name for human beings, H.K. is happy as a singing lark.  The Vampire class rules, some men and women live there doing various jobs, some more free than others, with vast slave labor making mangoes the Siamese Vampire Kingdom's most lucrative export.  Even Hermann likes the mango meat, cleanses his palette after feeding on people.  Some rogue men and women carry out missions for the kingdom in the outside world.  A series of spinoff films about one of these human agents is in the works.  Pray for a third Castle Vampire movie.  

     

     There are enough movies to review, why don't I review one here?  World circumstances inspire a wanting to escape.  J.R.R. Tolkien spoke of the escape of the prisoner and the escape of the deserter.  Do you feel imprisoned by the conditions created by world leaders and their powerful backers, leading us to major military conflict fought with Nazis and tanks, propaganda, and a stoking of belligerent feelings resulting in martial talk the opposite of which is the pursuit of peace through diplomacy and compromise?  From these conditions I seek some rest, at least to absent my brain and the brains of others, readers, who may need a laugh, or something to ponder for a few minutes, maybe even think about later.

     The Blood Empire of Hermann Kafka, Super-Vampire! does well its opening weekend, bringing in thirty percent more than it cost to make, but that's a failure in Hollywood executives' tiny minds.  No Kafka trilogy will be completed, all spinoffs shelved.  

     The third film, also directed and edited by me, was to be called Franz Kafka's Shitstorm: The Revenge of Shovelface.  Shovelface, from the previous film, goes after the vampire who turned his wife, Candy (Jennifer Lawrence), who's killing Shovelface's relatives.  Meanwhile, K. from the first film, is back, still human, he still has questions, but his assistants have returned as vampires.  K. flees from them.  They're poor pursuers, hitting each other, fighting each other, then running full out to catch up to K., tired K.  Running from trolls, dwarves, gangsters, acrobats, K. played out Anthony Perkins's Josef K. traversing uncomfortable spaces in the Welles film, the lousy audio of that film. 

     K. is the hunted man, but the hunt takes place over years or months, a process, the original German title of The Trial, Der Prozeß.  

     What five films haven't you seen?

     I'll name five more.

     Under the Yum Yum Tree

     Mo Better Blues

     Zorba the Greek

     Conversation Piece

     Coogan's Bluff

     F I L M S ! ! ! !

     Shall I write about a film from memory?  Kindergarten Cop.  Schwarzenegger's comedies a special cluster bomb of hits and near misses and one flat out dud, Junior.  Arnold gets pregnant.  Okay, do you want to see a movie with that premise?  I don't.  

     Moving on, Twins.  Arnold S. is twins with shorty Danny DeVito.  One big one small, get the comedy potential?  He's really tall!  The other one is really short!  Height jokes permeate the film like a smell whether told or not.  

     Junior has Emma Thompson at least.  

     Jingle All the Way is Schwarzenegger's greatest comedy.  A series of chaotic blunders leads to more fun than we want.  Overpaid actors act like idiots in movies the tone and atmospheres of which are several steps away from any recognizable reality lived by ordinary people.  We give hard earned money to these clowns.  

     We can make our own entertainment, make our own films, write our own blogs, make our own music, get it heard.  

     Junior caps off this essay or messay.  Arnold with a fetus.  How did it get there?  It seems that Robert A. Heinlein would've written a 600 page novel using the premise of Junior.  

     Robert A. Heinlein's smash new (1966) science fiction masterpiece, a philosophical genetic thriller, The Fathermother.  In later years, feminist literary critics will question why Heinlein didn't call the novel, Motherfather, or just Mother.  

     The patriarchy of literary sales confuses the good intentions of the publishing industry, a well-run machine helmed by responsible men and women, though not enough women.  It's about time we got a break in the publishing industry.  Make a woman a chief editor at a publishing house!  The woman in the commercial demonstrating the new vacuum cleaner from Hoover?  My woman is on the Hoover Board of Directors!  Vroom!  What's that?  No, I didn't read all of The Fathermother.  It's rather heavy on the dialogue you know, like all of Heinlein's work since 1961.  Heinlein's much better when he writes short novels and short stories, I recommend The Door Into Summer.  His long fiction is dreadful, a ten out of ten on the windbaggery scale.

    

      I'm Vic Neptune, I make shit up.        

Vic Neptune