Thursday Bits

I’ve heard of other large models of the Solar System, but not about the one in Sweden. There’s one much closer at hand, whose Sun and inner planets are in Peoria, but I’ve never gotten around to seeing it.

A recommended YouTube series: Lessons from the Screenplay. Ann introduced me to it by suggesting one comparing the character arcs of Parasite and Sunset Boulevard, something I would never have thought of. The narrator, who introduces himself as Michael, makes a novel and compelling case for the comparison.

I watched a couple more over the last few days, one about The Shinning — which I haven’t seen in about 30 years, and probably should again, same as Sunset Boulevard — and another about No Country for Old Men. Both videos were thoughtful and interesting, and not too long, which all I ask from YouTube movie criticism.

Looks like SOB lowlifes have co-opted a perfectly good nonsense word that’s been around for years and years. That’s the vagaries of language for you.

It’s time. I’m a little surprised it’s going to happen so soon, but not sorry to see it go. With any luck, the striking Belle Époque pedestal will be repurposed, rather than torn down.

Thursday Things

I don’t drive around that much these days, but every time I do the signs of the times are out for me to see. Literal signs.
During a walk this week, a common area closed.
At least the walk around the small lake was open.

The latest movies in the stay-at-home-on-demand-movie-watching-extravaganza: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Ann’s suggestion) and Goldfinger (mine).

I’d never seen the former all the way through. I remember first seeing part of it in the common room of some cheap accommodations in Pusan. Watching it now, I’m willing to argue that there’s a touch — just a touch — of magical realism to the thing. I may be the only one to think that.

As for Goldfinger, I told Ann that if she watched only one Bond movie, that should be it.

Our latest Star Trek episode was “Amok Time,” the one in which Spock goes all funny in the groin because hyperrational Vulcans have to mate like salmon every seven years or something. Ann was much amused by the Vulcan costumes. Yes, I said, the costume designers must have had a grand old time working for Star Trek.

This can be found in our back yard. A retired inflatable yoga ball, you might call it, but I think of it as our model Neptune.model Neptune

Also, an image to play around with, applying the PhotoScape Bokeh function that I didn’t know I had until now.

The dog in a favorite position.
I believe she’s officially an old dog now, though I don’t know which office determines that. Anyway, no new tricks for her. She never was one for them even as a younger dog, though we didn’t try to train her all that hard.

Thursday Tidbits, Including Doggerel

Usually it’s bad to brag about your ignorance, but there are exceptions. I didn’t know this until recently and I’m not sorry. It’s an example of the ridiculousness I miss by not paying attention to social media memes. That is, by not being one of the callow youth who use social media as the thin straw through which they obtain all their information, a practice that surely stunts their brains.

Speaking of callow youth, when I was a child I thought the prestigious journalism award was the Pulit Surprise. When I typed that out, I laughed at the thought of it. Then again, it might be a surprise to some of the recipients.

As mentioned yesterday, we’re watching more movies than before. Toward the end of March, I discovered an bunch of pre-WWII Universal horror pics on demand, and we watched those first. In order: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and The Invisible Man. All first times for Ann, but not me, except I couldn’t remember whether I’d seen The Invisible Man, though I read the book years ago.

Ann said she enjoyed all of them, but The Invisible Man most. The main character wasn’t just a murderous psycho, he was also positively playful while committing less-harmful pranks, she noted, which humanized him a bit.

Since then, our viewing has been less thematic. Along with the aforementioned Groundhog Day, we’ve watched Intolerable Cruelty (a lesser Coen Bros. effort, but not bad), The Terminator, Space Jam and The Death of Stalin.

We also watched an oddity called John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch, which is as long as a short movie, but more like a TV special, which I believe it was. As a pseudo-kids show, it had many entertaining moments, and on the whole was slightly demented, like Mulaney’s comedy.

Some silly verse I wrote last year. My entire output of verse of any kind for the year. I’d forgotten about it until the other day.

Blake was a flake, and
Shelley ended up in a lake.
Byron was mad, bad and a cheater, while
Coleridge was a lotus-eater.
Wordsworth really liked his abbey, and
Keats’ odes were none too shabby.
In doggerel about poets Romantic,
Best not to wax too pedantic.

See also “The Krystal Cabinet.”

It’s That Guy

Had a “it’s that guy” moment on Easter evening when watching Groundhog Day. Ann wanted to see it since she hadn’t before, but had heard of it. Yuriko and I hardly minded seeing it again, third time maybe over the last 25 years, since it’s a movie of such charm.

Fairly early in the movie, Bill Murray’s character has an appointment with a psychiatrist. It’s a small part, since I don’t think the psychiatrist appears again, unlike many of the other townsfolk. As soon as I saw him, I thought — it’s that guy in Lodge 49, an entertaining series I’m watching about once a week (the best way to do it). Only he’s close to 30 years younger.

So it was: David Pasquesi, who plays a lodge member who has an actual interest in alchemy, unlike most of the rest of the members. Like most character actors, his list of credits mostly includes titles I’ve never seen, or even heard of in a lot of cases. Does good work on Lodge 49, though.

Curiously enough, that isn’t the only overlap. Brian Doyle-Murray, who also had a small part in Groundhog Day, is a recurring character on Lodge 49.

Movies Unlimited, April 2020

Today = an actual spring day. Even when a little wind blew and the sun was behind clouds, it was still pleasantly warm. Lunch again on the deck. Breakfast, too.

The April 2020 edition of Movies Unlimited came in the mail not long ago. I will assume for now that the dread coronavirus doesn’t last long on paper and handle my mail. (That’s what it should be called, the dread coronavirus. It was good enough for the pirate Roberts.)

Sounds like a magazine, but it’s really a catalog produced by a company of that name in Itasca, Illinois, only a short drive from where I live. I don’t remember the last time I got one. They come now and then, not monthly. But MU seems optimistic that someday, in a freak of geezer inspiration, I’ll order one of its DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Maybe I will.

“The book you’re holding is NOT the complete Movies Unlimited Catalog,” the company proclaims on the inside cover. “This Is!” it says, with an arrow pointing to a picture of a 432-page catalog available for $8.95. Order it now, it says, “and get ready to be movied like you’ve never been movied before!”

Well, no. But the free smaller catalog has its interests. In fact, MU offers a decent selection — old and new, famed and obscure, color and black-and-white, movies and TV shows, domestic and foreign, in a variety of genres. Much of it for an older audience, such as the wide selection of 20th-century TV series, but not entirely geared to geezers, with a sizable selection of 21st-century output.

There are near-full pages devoted to Studio Ghibli, Disney, the Three Stooges, Ray Harryhausen, film noir, John Wayne, Dick Tracy, Hammer, Little House on the Prairie, Audie Murphy and more, and one full page each devoted to Martin & Lewis and Dark Shadows.

That last one struck me as an oddity, but I guess they know their market. Mostly women roughly my age, I think. Maybe more men than I’d expect, those who watched it in secret during its initial run. That didn’t include me. I think I saw an episode and decided that was enough.

Anyway, someone interested in owning the complete original series on DVD will have to pay $479.99 for 131 discs totaling 470 hours, “packaged in a coffin-shaped, collector’s set and including a 100-page booklet.” If that’s too much, 26 separate collections are for sale for $31.99 each, or you can buy Dark Shadows Bloopers & Treasures.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

With a name like Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I suspected — in spite of what I’d read — that the place had gotten the Hollywood treatment instead of a proper renovation. That is, superficial and unsatisfying.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Just off a dowdy selection of Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood Forever is a resplendent cemetery, on par with any of the lush rural-cemetery-movement grounds I’ve seen in other parts of the country.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

With examples of funerary art.
Hollywood Forever CemeteryHollywood Forever CemeteryA number of private mausoleums.
Hollywood Forever CemeteryIncluding one picturesquely set on a small island, the tomb of William A. Clark Jr. (1877-1934), son of copper baron Sen. William A. Clark Sr.Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Plenty of trees.
Hollywood Forever CemeteryIf you find just the right spot, you can see the Hollywood sign off in the distance.
Hollywood Forever CemeteryThere are a few unexpected features, such as a section devoted to Southeast Asian memorials.
Hollywood Forever CemeteryI’ve also read that in our time, Russian immigrants are fond of the cemetery. There’s plenty of visible evidence of that.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Russian memorials

Along with a sprinkling of earlier Russian émigrés.
Hollywood Forever Baron Woldemar de BarkowHollywood Forever also sports a number of unconventional memorials. Something you might expect in California, except that I’ve seen them elsewhere.
Hollywood Forever CemeteryHollywood Forever CemeteryOr maybe not unconventional, but just a little unusual.Hollywood Forever Cemetery Paddy marker

Plenty of regular folks, too. Most of the permanent population would be, I believe. John Taylor was laid to rest just as the movie business started getting off the ground in Hollywood.Hollywood Cemetery John Taylor 1915

The cemetery dates back to 1899 and has had three names: Hollywood Cemetery, Hollywood Memorial Park, and since 1998, Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Its history is as strange as Hollywood itself.

A long-time owner in the 20th century essentially used the place as a piggy bank, and let it go to pot by the 1990s. The current owner invested millions in the property’s renovation — or oversaw the investment, and I’ll say it again, did a splendid job — with the funds at least partly generated by a pre-need funeral company Ponzi scheme his father and brother went to prison for, though the owner himself wasn’t charged. Sounds like a subplot in the entertaining and California-esque Six Feet Under, except the con was perpetrated in Missouri.

The whole story is more than I care to unpack, but for further reading there’s “The Strange History of Hollywood Forever Cemetery,” an article about the Ponzi scheme, and this entertaining article in LA Weekly.

Not only has the current owner made the cemetery look good, he’s raised public awareness of it through various events, such as outdoor movie screenings and other events not usually associated with graveyards. Also — and perhaps most astute of all, from a business perspective — he seems to have opened up space to be interred, especially in mausoleums near famous people (example to follow).

That brings me to the fact that I’ve buried the lead (har, har). All the features I’ve mentioned above are nice, but not really why I spent a couple of hours at Hollywood Forever on a pleasantly warm Sunday morning.

I’d come to find the graves of movie stars. Normally, celebrity earns a shrug from me. But I was in Hollywood. Movie stars are part of its sense of place. It’s a movie industry town, after all. Besides, a highly detailed map of the cemetery is available at the front office for a reasonable $5, and it guides you to the graves of about 200 notables.

“We sell more of these maps than we do flowers,” the lady behind the counter told me.

So I was on a treasure hunt to find some stars that I’d heard of, especially from the Hollywood of before I was born, more or less. It was fun.

Grand names are part of the deal at Hollywood Forever. Parts of the cemetery include the Garden of Eternal Love, Chandler Gardens, Garden of Memory, and a Jewish section featuring the Plains of Abraham, Garden of Jerusalem and Garden of Moses. This is the the entrance is the Abbey of Psalms Mausoleum.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Abbey of the PsalmsHollywood Forever Cemetery Abbey of the PsalmsI entered in search of the Crying Indian, Iron Eyes Cody. I found him in a modest niche. His wife, who died about 20 years before he did, rests there as well. She’s called “Mrs. Iron Eyes Cody” on the plaque; you have to look her up to learn she had a name besides her Italian-American husband’s made-up Native American name. She was Bertha Parker Pallan and, unlike him, was actually an Indian.

Iron Eyes is small potatoes compared to the real star of the Abbey of Psalms: Judy Garland. She has her own chapel-like room, re-interred there only in 2017. That must have been quite a coup for Hollywood Forever.Near the entrance is the Abbey of Psalms Mausoleum - Judy Garland

Want to have your ashes near Judy? It can be arranged. A lot of new-looking, glass-door niches are in the chapel walls, most still empty, though I did note that John Cassese, the “Dance Doctor,” recently occupied an eye-level niche across from Judy. His niche includes an urn, but also a bobblehead-like figure of him, a printed obituary, an award he won in 2013, a small disco ball, some seashells and other objects.

From there I headed to the open air, looking for Mel Blanc.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Mel BlancI left a penny. Here was a man who had entertained me and millions of others.

Most of the graves I wanted to see were in the Garden of Legends, an open area, and the Cathedral Mausoleum, so I soon headed that way. Douglas Fairbanks and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. have their own lawn and reflecting pool, with a major memorial next to the Cathedral Mausoleum.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery Douglas Fairbanks

Hollywood Forever Cemetery Douglas FairbanksThe cemetery shop only had a few postcards for sale, but they included ones featuring Douglas Fairbanks, probably dressed for The Black Pirate and looking very much like the actor who invented swash and buckle. I sent one of them to a friend of mine and wrote, “You or I might be cool, but we’ll never be Douglas Fairbanks cool.”

Heading into the Garden of Legends, I soon happened across Johnny Ramone. I didn’t even know he was dead.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Johnny RamoneNearby is a cenotaph for Hattie McDaniel, who was denied burial here in 1952 because of segregation. Her memorial was erected in 1999.

Next I spent a while looking for Fay Wray, and found her, and then Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The composer is buried under a tree.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Erich KorngoldHollywood Forever Cemetery Erich KorngoldI sent the picture to my old friend Kevin, a movie music enthusiast. But for Kevin I might not know about Korngold, or have ever listened to such treasures as the music from The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Sea Hawk.

Rounding the pond that forms the centerpiece of Garden of Legends, I came across Cecil B. DeMille.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Cecil B DeMilleOne I hadn’t been looking for: Virginia Rappe.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Virginia RappeI puzzled for a moment. Who was that? Then I remembered.

Tyrone Power is hard to miss.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Tyrone PowerNext to him is Marion Davies’ mausoleum, which you might miss if you don’t know that her actual name was Douras, which is above the entrance. She paid for the building herself, I’ve read.
Hollywood Forever Marion DaviesAt the Cathedral Mausoleum, an even larger complex than the Abbey of Psalms Mausoleum, I found Peter Lorre in a niche. I was looking for him. I also found Mickey Rooney. I wasn’t looking for him, but he does illustrate that stars are once again considering the cemetery, now that the period of neglect is over.

Rooney’s inscription says: “One of the greatest entertainers the world has ever known. Hollywood will always be his home.”

Well, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, Mickey, though I want to mock that inscription. Then I began noticing some other recent arrivals from the movie business, most of whom I’d never heard of. Some of the memorials were like ads in Variety, touting their careers.

Last stop: Valentino. I couldn’t very well miss him.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery ValentinoI’d read that lipstick is often there, and so it was. He’s got amazing staying power for a silent film star.

Curious, I took note of the grave next to Valentino: June Mathis Balboni (d. 1927). Just an accident that this person is next to the Great Lover?

No. She knew him. In fact, she discovered Valentino and wrote some of his movies, most notably The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Remarkable the tales that cemeteries tell.

Winterlude ’20

Though it hasn’t been a harsh winter, it has been winter, so time for a short hiatus. Back posting around March 1.

It turned out to be a good idea to know as little as possible about Parasite before seeing that movie, which we did last weekend, weeks after we’d originally considered going. All that time, I did my best not to read about it. Not knowing the arc of the story helped maintain the suspense, which was as riveting as anything Hitchcock did, especially after the midway twist.

I did know that the movie came highly recommended, and by sources I respect more than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Could it, I wondered, be better than 1917? It was. That’s a remarkable achievement all by itself. One of those rare movies that is as good as people say.

I’ve updated my vanity North American map again.
The key to the colors is here. The color scheme is wholly idiosyncratic, so I do have certain ideas about certain places. For instance, if I spent some time in following places, I’d color the respective states blue: the Northwoods of Minnesota; Norfolk and vicinity in Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and Tuscon, Arizona. If I spent a night in West Virginia or Delaware or Rhode Island or Manitoba, they’d be orange. Just means I need to get out more.

Though cold today, the sun was out. Time to take my new garden gnome outside.

Gnomish Stalin was a Christmas president from my brother Jay, shipped to me from the UK. Cornwall, specifically. For all I know, Cornwall might be the world hub of eccentric garden gnomes.
This year, I got Jay a Russian nesting doll — a political matryoshka doll, made in Russia. He sent me a picture. Nice set, though you’d think there would be room for Khrushchev at least, whom I’d pick for inclusion over Yeltsin.
Coincidence that we both sent Russian gifts — political Russian-themed gifts, no less? Or synchronicity? Who knows, I’m just glad to have a new conversation piece for my summertime visitors.

1917

A while ago I saw the trailer for 1917, before I knew anything about the movie, or even that such a movie was in the works. Often enough you can judge a movie by its trailer. You know full well that it would be a waste of time. The 1917 trailer didn’t inspire any confidence in me that I wanted to see it. Hell’s bells, World War I is getting the Pearl Harbor treatment, I thought. Lots of brainless CGI.

I was completely wrong. We saw the movie over the weekend and I was astonished by how good it was. Much has been made about how the action seems to happen in real time, in one movie-long shot (117 minutes), though of course the cuts are hidden. In that sense, the film is a technical tour de force, but it’s much more than that.

It’s an Iliad and an Odyssey, following two tommies from their own trenches, across no man’s land, into abandoned German trenches, and into places previously behind the lines, all the while facing the strong likelihood of injury or death. It’s one damn thing after another. It’s suspenseful, since there’s a clear objective whose resolution is always in doubt until the end.

It’s also a work of high verisimilitude, including the maze-like aspects of the trench systems, the danger and gore and misery of WWI battlefields, and the ruins of French villages, but also the pleasant springtime countryside beyond the immediate fighting. The cinematography of some of the scenes, especially the bombed out, smoldering ruins, dazzles the eye.

The back stories of the main characters aren’t fleshed out in much detail, though there is a brief but remarkable discussion of cherry trees as part of one soldier’s personal history — the symbolism of which I did not miss — and a few other intimations of a life outside the war zone. I understand that bothered some critics, but it doesn’t bother me.

This isn’t a Hallmark movie. I don’t want them to sit around discussing their feelings — as if two Great War soldiers on a harrowing mission through some hellish landscapes would do that. You don’t need their details. They’re Everymen, and they’re fully human without the exposition, focused as they are on their own situation. The lead actors conveyed all they needed to about their characters through some dialogue, but mostly their reactions to all that they encounter, not quite all of it the horrors of war.

So 1917 is a remarkable movie in many ways, but not without flaws. I wasn’t sure, for instance, that the central conceit of the mission was even plausible. The two tommies were sent to relay a vitally important order countermanding an attack by an out-of-communication British regiment that had followed the Germans after they had made a tactical retreat to the Hindenburg Line in the spring of the title year.

That two men and two men alone would have been sent on such an incredibly dangerous mission, if it were so important, seems a little strange. Some redundancy would have been called for, to help ensure the message got through. Besides — couldn’t the mission have been accomplished by delivering a message by airplane? Even if a plane couldn’t land in such a forward area, it certainly would have been able to communicate with the ground.

“These early aircraft were not fitted with radio sets, but messages about enemy troop movements needed to be communicated quickly,” the Imperial War Museum explains. “Pilots could either drop messages in weighted bags or use message streamers to drop messages to forces on the ground.”

Never mind. 1917 is an epic story, well worth watching on a big screen. Good work, Mr. Mendes.

Armistice Day 2019

Not quite a year ago — after November 11 last year — we saw They Shall Not Grow Old in a movie theater. I was skeptical about the colorization of WWI, but came away convinced that Peter Jackson and his talented technical team had done a superb job of it. More than colorizing, but also adding appropriate sound and making the speed of the film more natural to our eyes.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

— Laurence Binyon (1914)

Paper Purge

Not long ago, I decided to purge some paper around the house. Specifically, user manuals for machines that are long gone. You’d think that those would have been tossed along with the items themselves, but that’s not how clutter works, unless you’re Marie What’s-Her-Name.

Papers like this.

In the same vein, I had setup instructions for iMacs, a reel mower that now has vines on it, landline phones long junked, defunct cameras, a previous dishwasher, clothes washer, clothes dryer, and oven, and a few odds and ends I don’t even remember owning.

From a bilingual food processor manual, I learned the amusing fact that the French for food processor is robot culinaire.

Also: Woody warnings. We took the actual toy to Boot Hill long ago — well, metaphorical boot hill — after the dog did him bodily harm. Somehow, the pamphlet of written warnings was left behind.

Warnings because the only instructions involve replacing the batteries that power Woody’s voice box. The rest of the text lists warnings about the batteries: keep them away from small children, don’t swallow them yourself, put them in correctly, including the correct polarity, don’t mix different kinds of batteries, or old and new batteries, and don’t let the damn things leak, but if you do, throw them away — in a locally acceptable manner.

Pedestrian stuff. Not a single warning along the lines of: If you see Woody walking and hear him talking, you are not having a psychotic episode. Woody is a sentient creature with a secret life.