Mugs Are Busting Out All Over - June 2019

 Hey, Girl!

 Clever that he writes his Facebook profile on his forehead.

 Reminder to me that I need ink toner.

 I really need ink toner now.

 When you really like a movie...

 There's a gag in his mouth.  I hope he gets to tell it.

 At ease!

 Somebody gave birth to this.

 Note; bacteria tends to form on tongues.

 Shhhh...she's sleeping.

 The local prison decided to have a Star Wars costume party.

I'm not forgetting, Jussie Smollett.

Dinner last night;  Sandwich and salad.

And Here's Another Documentary Surprise

They often sneak up on you like thieves in the night.  You expect nothing and then, for ninety minutes, you are held captive by a great documentary.  After it's over, not only have you been entertained but you have learned something in the process.   God bless all the film makers who toil in this genre.

The latest gem is "Bathtubs Over Broadway," which was in theaters for a bit about two months ago but now resides comfortably on Netflix.  This is a film that you cannot stop smiling at as it unfolds.  It is as heartwarming as it is educational.   Once again, I am in school, learning about something I never knew existed.

This movie follows the exploits of Steve Young, who worked for many, many years as a comedy writer for David Letterman's late night fest.  A quiet loner, Steve becomes interested in collecting old record albums.  You know the kind?  The ones you need a needle to play on a phonograph.   But Steve is just not interested in old musical platters.  Nope, he becomes addicted to a very special genre often not found for sale.   

You see, back in the 60s and 70s, companies regularly staged out-and-out musicals for their annual meetings or conventions.   Ironically, the shows were often recorded and offered back to employees as a memento.  Most wind up in record collectors' dust bins.   

Or, as this movie shows, in Steve Young's house.

Steve becomes addicted to the productions that were staged by the likes of Monsanto or McDonald's or Amoco or American Standard, which manufactured sinks and toilets.   He is mesmerized by how good the music and the staging is.   And, ultimately, he starts to seek out some of the individuals behind these productions.

Some, of course, went on to great careers as he discovers in interviews with Martin Short, Chita Rivera, and Florence Henderson.  But, most were performers or artists who never made the move out of "industrial show business."  All of them very talented, just not household names.   Steve starts to track them down.

What results is essentially a cottage industry for Young as his searches lead to a book, lectures, reunions, and the occasional re-staging of a musical number or two.

It's all so sweet and nostalgic as some of the folks are honored that somebody took the time to find them.  Hence, the reason why I defy you not to smile all the way through.

God bless Steve Young for unearthing an area of show business usually forgotten.  And thank goodness for those who put it all on camera for us to enjoy and learn from.

Check it out, please!

LEN'S RATING:  Four stars.

Dinner last night:  Chopped salad with buffalo ranch dressing.

This Date in History - June 5

And a mere minutes after this photo was taken...  But, first, let's go back to the year 70.

70:  TITUS AND HIS ROMAN LEGIONS BREACH THE MIDDLE WALL OF JERUSALEM IN THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

And the status of the outer and inner wall is?

1257:  KRAKOW, POLAND RECEIVES CITY RIGHTS.

And was later a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants.

1283:  ROGER OF LAURIA, ADMIRAL TO KING PETER III OF ARAGON, CAPTURES CHARLES OF SALERMO.

Who was later taken over by Vinnie from Bayonne on WFAN.

1798:  DURING THE BATTLE OF NEW ROSS, THE ATTEMPT TO SPREAD UNITED IRISH REBELLION INTO MUNSTER IS DEFEATED.

And what did the United Irish Rebellion have against the Addams Family?

1829:  HMS PICKLE CAPTURES THE ARMED SLAVE SHIP VOLADORA OFF THE COAST OF CUBA.

Hold the HMS.

1832:  THE JUNE REBELLION BREAKS OUT IN PARIS IN AN ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW THE MONARCHY OF LOUIS-PHILIPPE.

Which is why the song goes "April in Paris."

1837:  HOUSTON, TEXAS IS INCORPORATED BY THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS.

Long before it switched over to the American League.

1850:  SHERIFF PAT GARRETT IS BORN.

Billy the Kid, watch your step.

1851:  HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S SERIAL, "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," IS PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME.

It was a soap opera?  Like sands through the hourglass, so are the slaves of our lives.

1879:  REVOLUTIONARY PANCHO VILLA IS BORN.

Si.

1883:  THE FIRST REGULARLY SCHEDULED ORIENT EXPRESS DEPARTS PARIS.

That trip is murder.

1883:  ECONOMIST JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES IS BORN.

That adds up.

1910:  AUTHOR O HENRY DIES.

How's that for a twist ending?

1915:  DENMARK AMENDS ITS CONSTITUTION TO ALLOW WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.

Which is why so many men went there to become women.

1916:  LOUIS BRANDEIS IS SWORN IN AS A JUSTICE OF THE US SUPREME COURT.

I thought he was a college.

1917:  DURING WORLD WAR I, CONSCRIPTION BEGINS IN THE US AS "ARMY REGISTRATION DAY."

Getting a little drafty around here.

1920:  AUTHOR CORNELIUS RYAN IS BORN.

Interesting that his birthday is on June 5 since......well, you will see later.

1934:  JOURNALIST BILL MOYERS IS BORN.

Journalist?  Really?

1942:  DURING WORLD WAR II, THE US DECLARES WAR OF BULGARIA, HUNGARY, AND ROMANIA.

Every war needs a couple of pushover countries.

1944:  DURING WORLD WAR II, MORE THAN 1000 BRITISH BOMBERS DROP 5000 TONS ON BOMBS ON GERMAN GUN BATTERIES ON THE NORMANDY COAST IN PREPARATION FOR D-DAY, THE NEXT DAY.

Happy birthday, Cornelius Ryan.   Now you have something to write about.

1947:  THE MARSHALL PLAN - IN A SPEECH AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, US SECRETARY OF STATE GEORGE MARSHALL CALLS FOR ECONOMIC AID TO WAR-TORN EUROPE.

Knock 'em down and then build 'em up.  Ain't war grand?

1951:  ECONOMIST/TV HOST SUZE ORMAN IS BORN.

I met her once.  I still don't have a million dollars.

1951:  JILL BIDEN IS BORN.

As inconsequential as they come.

1956:  ELVIS PRESLEY INTRODUCES HIS NEW SINGLE "HOUND DOG" ON THE MILTON BERLE SHOW, SCANDALIZING THE AUDIENCE WITH HIS SUGGESTIVE HIP MOVEMENTS.

Meanwhile, Milton was even scarier when he dressed like a woman.

1963:  BRITISH SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR JOHN PROFUMO RESIGNS IN A SEX SCANDAL KNOWN AS THE PROFUMO AFFAIR.

Wasn't that an episode of "Man from U.N.C.L.E.?"

1967:  THE SIX DAY WAR BEGINS IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

The six day war now in its fifth decade.

1968:  US SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY IS SHOT AT THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL IN LOS ANGELES.  HE DIES THE NEXT DAY.

"Let's go on to Chicago and win there."

1971:  SINGER/ACTOR MARK WAHLBERG IS BORN.

The newest kid on the block.

1975:  THE SUEZ CANAL OPENS FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE SIX-DAY WAR.

And is still open as the war approaches its sixth decade.

1976:  THE COLLAPSE OF THE TETON DAM IN IDAHO.

Look out below.

1977:  THE APPLE II, ONE OF THE FIRST PERSONAL COMPUTERS, GOES ON SALE.

What version are we up to now?

1981:  THE MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT OF THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION REPORT THAT FIVE PEOPLE IN LOS ANGELES HAVE A RARE FORM OF PNEUMONIA SEEN ONLY IN PATIENTS WITH WEAKENED IMMUNE SYSTEMS, IN WHAT TURNS OUT TO BE THE FIRST RECOGNIZED CASES OF AIDS.

A long sentence that could be reduced to four words.  "This is gonna suck."

1993:  PORTIONS OF THE HOLBECK HALL HOTEL IN ENGLAND FALL INTO THE SEA FOLLOWING A LANDSLIDE.

You wanted a view of the water?  Now you got it.

1993:  SINGER CONWAY TWITTY DIES.

Long before people would start sending daily messages in his name.

1998:  A STRIKE BEGINS AT THE GENERAL MOTORS PARTS FACTORY IN FLINT, MICHIGAN THAT QUICKLY SPREADS TO FIVE OTHER PLANTS.

And they thought AIDS moved fast.

1998:  LOS ANGELES MAYOR SAM YORTY DIES.

Next to Twitty, the second funniest name to die on this date.

1999:  SINGER MEL TORME DIES.

I hear this guy was a real scumbag.  

2002:  SINGER DEE DEE RAMONE DIES.

Dee Dee Dead.

2003:  A SEVERE HEAT WAVE ACROSS PAKISTAN AND INDIA REACHES A PEAK OF 122 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

In countries where there is no central air.  Yeech!

2004:  PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN DIES.

His casket drove past my apartment on this date.  The closest I have ever come to a President, dead or alive.

2012:  AUTHOR RAY BRADBURY DIES.

Talk about high Fahrenheit temperatures.

2018:  FASHION DESIGNER KATE SPADE DIES.

They'll need one to bury her.

Dinner last night:  Leftover beef and salad.

Crazy Rich Asians Adjacent

It's been about three months since I last set foot in an actual movie theater.   An excess of Marvel super heroes, sloppy Disney remakes, and assorted other over-hyped junk will do that to you.   

Oddly enough, I have found myself gravitating to a few of those movies which get released to theaters for a week before nesting in comfort on a streaming service.   That Ted Bundy movie was one example.   Pleasantly, "Always Be My Maybe" is another.

Now don't judge me but yes, I did see a chick flick or...as they are more commonly known these days...a rom com.  And I was actually quite charmed by it all.  Especially since I didn't pay seventeen or twenty bucks to see it in a theater.   Netflix in my living room worked just fine, thank you very much.

Okay, no new ground is broken here in this comedy produced, written, and starred in by Randall Park and Ali Wong.  In fact, some might rename this movie as a lower budget version of "Crazy Rich Asians."  In some ways, the quaintness of this Netflix tale worked better for me than the overly opulent and gaudy "CRA."  Go figure.

The plot, of course, is one you have seen many times over.  From Doris Day and Rock Hudson to decades later with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, you can almost predict the ups and downs of romance hours before you turn on your TV.  In this one, we meet kids and next door neighbors Sasha and Marcus when they are about ten years old in the mid 90s.  Sasha is mostly left by her working parents to fend for herself.   As a result, she learns to cook from Marcus' mom.  Naturally, Marcus and Sasha become BFFs and that ends badly with a sexual encounter in the back of a Toyota Carolla about eight years later.

Flash forward to 2019 and they are in different worlds.  Thanks to what she learned from Marcus' mother, Sasha has become a renowned celebrity chef.  Marcus is working for his father's air conditioning company and singing in a crummy bar band.   You know they are going to re-connect and come apart and re-connect and come apart over the course of the next 90 minutes.   As predictable as it is, I enjoyed it all.

Indeed, the movie works thanks to the very organic relationship essayed by Randall Park and Ali Wong.   It all feels right.   And, in a very unnerving but oddly clever twist, Sasha begins dating actor Keanu Reeves, who is played in a bombastic and blow-hard way by....wait for it...Keanu Reeves.   Boy, it took guts for Keanu to lampoon himself the way he does.   In a film of "you know exactly what is coming next" moments, that plot device came out of the blue and really stole the middle of the picture.

Once again, "Always Be My Maybe" is not one to drive to a theater to see.   But it's being streamed and it's perfect fodder for a night on the living room couch.

LEN'S RATING:  Three stars.

Dinner last night:  Leftover London broil and roasted Campari tomatoes.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - June 3, 2019

Remembering Tim Conway one more time with his classic work as "The Dentist."

Dinner last night:  London broil and macaroni salad.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - Pop Stars and Me

Summer is right around the corner and that means you might be going to a concert or two.   Paul McCartney is playing Dodger Stadium again and, as fun as it was several years ago, I don't need to do it again. 

Usually, the summer season is one where acts from the 70s and 80s pop out for one last hurrah before they all head up to platter heaven.   Of course, these groups try to emulate the sounds they used to make.   But, as I discovered with Hall and Oates at the Hollywood Bowl a few years back...well, "Private Eyes" now have cataracts.

Indeed,  I have been lucky enough in the past to have a few brushes with musical greatness.   Back in the mullet-cut 80s, I was working at an entertainment company that made an awful lot of coin producing their own concert tours. Of course, at some point, the powers that be decided that the best way to entice top talent to tour with us was by having other talent on staff to do the luring. After all, they all talk to each other, right? I'm sure Boy George, George Michael, and Bono regularly got together to play Strat-O-Matic baseball. 

But, I digress...

The talent the company hired to be on staff was Rick Wills, one of the guitarists of the then-white-hot Foreigner. I think he stayed with the band for about ten years. (He's on the far left in the album cover above.) Well, anyway, they parked this guy in our very community office in a cubicle adjacent to mine. 

Over the first few days, you could tell that he was completely out of his element in an office setting.

"What's that strange noise?"

"That would be the phone, Rick."

He pretty much kept to himself, spending the day on the phone talking to whoever rock guitarists talk to during any given day.

I decided that ice needed to be broken.

Because the office was essentially one big area like the bullpen on Murphy Brown, one radio could provide the background music for everybody. One morning, it was tuned to the then-rock station icon in New York, WNEW-FM. 

Everyone is busy working in their little cubicles. The song comes on.

Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is."

You could hear a pin drop. We all knew that one of the guys performing on that song was sitting amongst us, counting paper clips like the rest of us. The song played on. The office sat in reverent awe.

This was my opening. I was going to roll the dice. Into the steely silence, I asked the following question.

"Hey, can somebody please turn that shit off."

If it was possible, the silence deepened further. For 15 seconds or an eternity, there was an inaudible gasp around the office. Until...

I heard a little British giggle coming from Wills' cubicle.

I had made a friend.

We did lunch.

Wait, there's more.

This is Chaka Khan standing at a microphone. The day I had a run-in with her, she was standing, thanks to a wall that was propping her up in a drunken haze.

Once again, an odd meeting, precipitated by my involvement with that entertainment company which specialized in concert tours. We had engaged Chaka to appear at an industry Christmas luncheon. That would be followed by a reception for clients at a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria. (Rhetorical question: was that hotel once in Queens, hence the name?)

By the time Chaka got upstairs to meet the client base, she was about as coherent as Kirk Douglas with a hairlip. But, the photographer was there. The clients wanted pictures. Who cares if the other person in the photo looked like she was on the express line at Betty Ford?

We all ended up on line getting her picture snapped with Chaka. Everytime the flash went off, she almost slid over and hit the coffee table.

When it was my turn, I ambled alongside her. She muttered "Shmerry Christshmas." 

Snap. Flash. Done.

This would probably be the first time I've been in a picture with someone completely drunk out of their gourd. I'm, of course, not counting family portraits at Christmas gatherings.

I do remember getting quickly distracted by one of our sales managers. He implored me to escort one of our sales people out of the party. It seems he, too, had been over-served and was swallowing hors d'ouevres without removing the toothpicks.

I never knew what happened to him either.

You want more brushes with musical greatness?  Come back next Sunday.

Dinner last night:  Pepperoni pizza with sun dried tomatoes from Maria's.

Classic TV Commercial of the Month - June 2019

Does anybody still drink this stuff???

Dinner last night:  Maple bourbon salad with bacon.