Messing With Lucy

 

Well, amid all the other problems of the world, this dominated peoples' lives last week.  Inexplicably.  

You might have seen the story.   Aaron Sorkin is writing and directing a biopic on Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.   It allegedly follows a production week of "I Love Lucy" and some tempests in their marriage.   Javier Bardem is playing Desi.  Nicole Kidman will play Lucille Ball.

And then's when the Earth shook...

Okay, as far as I am concerned, I am sick to death of seeing Nicole Kidman in every movie made.   Like the seemingly ever present Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon, Kidman has no clue how to say "no."

Now, apparently, others feel the same way at least with regard to this Lucille Ball casting.   Because the internet broke under the burden of hysteria activated by the fans of an actress who they feel is the only logical choice to play Lucy.

Debra Messing.

And that subsequently activates my gag reflex.   

Despite the fact that Messing is allegedly an absolute bitch-and-a-half (please weigh in, Megan Mullaly), her acting ability is the equivalent of an anvil dropped from a 500-foot-tall building.  She clearly was the weakest link on the "Will and Grace" mess.

But, in their last season, they did a tribute to "I Love Lucy" and Messing impersonated Lucy in several scenes.   The key word is "impersonated" and she did so with all the gusto of a SNL sketch.   This was not acting.   This was an embarrassment.  And, as much as I hate the idea of such a movie, it probably needs an actress and not a sketch "comedienne."  Messing is hardly the latter and definitely not the former.

Yet, using social media, this box of rocks fanned the flames of this horrific injustice.   And her fans followed suit like the rats leaving Hamelin.  

Here's another non-talent that I can't wait for us to be rid of.  

Indeed, amidst all this drama, the real Judas Iscariot in this piece is Lucie Arnaz.  She once was a talent I used to admire.   But, once the work dried up, she sits on top of the rights to her parents' legacy and sells it out regularly for a few pieces of silver.   She's the one who allowed the "Will and Grace" knuckleheads to use some scenes verbatim without crediting the original writers.   And she's the one who has given the blessing to Aaron Sorkin for this soon-to-be debacle.

The sooner they all are removed from our sight lines, the better.

Dinner last night:  Beef knockwurst.

This Date in History - January 20

 

Happy birthday in Heaven, Arte Johnson.   Do they have Walnettos there?

250:  EMPEROR DECIUS BEGINS A WIDESPREAD PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN ROME.   POPE FABIAN IS MARTYRED.

Cardinal Bobby Rydell was spared.

1265:  THE FIRST ENGLISH PARLIAMENT TO INCLUDE NOT ONLY LORDS BUT ALSO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MAJOR TOWNS HOLDS ITS FIRST MEETING, NOW KNOWN AS THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT.

That had to be on my very first world history quiz.

1576:  THE MEXICAN CITY OF LEON IS FOUNDED.

So?

1649:  CHARLES I OF ENGLAND GOES ON TRIAL FOR TREASON AND OTHER "HIGH CRIMES."

I want to know what those high crimes constitute.

1788:  THE THIRD AND MAIN PART OF FIRST FLEET ARRIVES AT BOTANY BAY.  THEY DECIDE THAT IT IS UNSUITABLE FOR THE LOCATION OF A PENAL COLONY.

Is it me or is January 20 a pretty boring day in history?

1841:  HONG KONG ISLAND IS OCCUPIED BY THE BRITISH.

Those Brits sure did get their mitts around some nifty cities and countries.

1887:  THE UNITED STATES SENATE ALLOWS THE NAVY TO LEASE PEARL HARBOR AS A NAVAL BASE.

Let us know how that works out.

1894:  CARTOONIST HAROLD GRAY IS BORN.

And, in a way, so is Little Orphan Annie.

1896:  COMIC GEORGE BURNS IS BORN.

Made it all the way to 100, he did.

1920:  ACTOR DEFOREST KELLEY IS BORN.

Beamed up.

1920:  THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION IS FOUNDED.

Troublemakers.

1929:  COMIC ARTE JOHNSON IS BORN.

Vvvvery interesting.   

1930:  ASTRONAUT BUZZ ALDRIN IS BORN.

One small step.  Oh, wait...that was the other guy.

1937:  ACTRESS DOROTHY PROVINE IS BORN.

She was kind of hot back in the day.

1941:  A GERMAN OFFICER IS MURDERED IN BUCHAREST, ROMANIA, SPARKING A REBELLION AND POGROM BY THE IRON GUARD.

Pogrom always looks misspelled.

1942:  WORLD WAR II - SENIOR NAZI GERMAN OFFICIALS DISCUSS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE "FINAL SOLUTION TO THE JEWISH QUESTION."

Diabolical bastards.

1945:  WORLD WAR II - THE MIKLOS PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF HUNGARY AGREES TO AN ARMISTICE WITH THE ALLIES.

Who was worried about Hungary as a world threat??

1946:  DIRECTOR DAVID LYNCH IS BORN.

Who did kill Laura Palmer?

1949:  POINT FOUR PROGRAM, ECONOMIC AID TO POOR COUNTRIES, IS ANNOUNCED BY PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN IN HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS.  

What about poor people here?

1954:  IN THE US, THE NATIONAL NEGRO NETWORK IS ESTABLISHED WITH 40 RADIO STATIONS.

Hey, that's an N word, too.

1956:  TV HOST BILL MAHER IS BORN.

Idiot.

1958:  ACTOR LORENZO LAMAS IS BORN.

Son of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl.

1981:  TWENTY MINUTES AFTER RONALD REAGAN IS INAUGURATED, IRAN RELEASES 52 AMERICAN HOSTAGES.

The basic FU to Jimmy Carter.

1984:  ACTOR JOHNNY WEISSMULLER DIES.

Cheeta was devastated.

1986:  IN THE US, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DAY IS CELEBRATED AS A FEDERAL HOLIDAY FOR THE FIRST TIME.

And will continue...as long as it's on a Monday.

1990:  ACTRESS BARBARA STANWYCK DIES.

Alleged had a long time affair with Agnes Moorehead.

1991:  SUDAN'S GOVERNMENT IMPOSES ISLAMIC LAW NATIONWIDE, WORSENING THE CIVIL WAR IN THE COUNTRY.

Like it's out of today's headlines.

1993:  ACTRESS AUDREY HEPBURN DIES.

No breakfast today.

1998:  WRESTLER BOBO BRAZIL DIES.

Inventor of the famed Cocoa Butt in the head.

2007:  A THREE-MAN TEAM, USING ONLY SKIS AND KITES, COMPLETES A 1,093-MILE TREK TO REACH THE SOUTHERN POLE OF INACCESSIBILITY FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1958 AND FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER WITHOUT MECHANICAL ASSISTANCE.

And this is a big deal why?

2009:  BARACK OBAMA IS INAUGURATED AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

I could have listed all the Presidents inaugurated on this date, but who really cares?

2012:  SINGER ETTA JAMES DIES.

At last.

2017:  DONALD TRUMP IS INAUGURATED AS THE 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

And, in 2020.....fill in the blank.

Dinner last night:  Leftover tri-tip.

And Here's Another Review of a Movie That Should Have Opened in a Theater

 
Yeah, that's a mouthful of a title for a blog post.   But what else can we do in these days?

"Soul" began streaming on Christmas Day via Disney Plus and the Oscar buzz almost began immediately.   Then I heard raves all over social media.   Okay, my sofa was open.

Now, let me first preface this.   I am not a fan of Pixar movies.   The only franchise I really liked was "Toy Story."   The rest I have found boring.   And the constant need they feel to diversify the lead characters is nothing more than gratuitous.  And, given that the main person of "Soul" is a Black jazz musician/middle school band teacher, I figured this was another in a long line of Pixar flicks that I would not like.

Well, I did like "Soul" a bit more.   Not to the hysterical bouts of joyous frenzy I have read on Facebook.  But it did have some merit, albeit grossly overrated by those who think every movie with a Black character is an automatic Oscar contender.

Indeed, "Soul" really isn't that much of an original idea.   Have you seen "Here Comes Mr. Jordan?"  Or "Heaven Can Wait?"  Or "It's a Wonderful Life" for Pete's sake?  Well, "Soul" is nothing more than throwing all those movies into my new Cuisinart food processor and coming out with something that does nothing more than provide the filling for a cinematic sausage.

Jamie Foxx provides the voice for "Joe," the aforementioned musician/teacher.  On a big day in his life, he falls into a manhole and begins his trek to the Great Beyond, which comes off sounding very much like a Montessori school.  Is he dead or just in a holding pattern?  "Soul" does get a little confusing at times.   

Eventually, Joe is assigned to mentor an infant soul going in the other direction to begin life on Earth.   Tina Fey plays "22" and is amusing for the first time that I can remember.   Somehow, they wind up back on the planet but she's in his old body and he's now a cat.   Don't look for explanations.  None are provided.

Eventually, there's a message conveyed that life is what you make of it.  It ends.  And then...wait...it ends again.   And then...wait...it ends one more time. Whenever that happens in movies, you know that the writers were undecided how to wrap it up so they wind up using all three ideas.  

The good news is that, unlike all the other holiday season releases that I have viewed on a plethora of streaming services, I did not fall asleep during "Soul."  That alone is worthy of the following rating:

LEN'S RATING:  Three stars.

Dinner last night:  Beef tri-tip.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - January 18, 2021

 Welcome him on Wednesday.

Dinner last night:  BBQ Ribs from Holy Cow.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - Conveniences Of Old

 

Since the world of 2021 has already grown tedious, let's embrace days of yore.  Or something like that.

Indeed, it really wasn't that long ago.  I think back to my childhood days and realize how primitive my household was.  Oh, don't get me wrong.   We had bathrooms in the house and everything.   But, if my family was trying to keep up with the Joneses...well, they didn't.  

I basically take for granted the modern conveniences I enjoy today.   Shower, spa tub, washing machine and dryer in my own apartment, central heat and air conditioning.  But, back when, those would be luxuries for my family.  I am looking at the photo above and imagining my mother doing the same thing complete with Kent cigarette dangling from her mouth.

She would have to be in the tub because...gasp...we didn't have a shower.

There were two bathrooms in our home. One downstairs in my grandparents' part of the house.   The other was ours upstairs.

Neither one had a shower.  

Indeed, the tub downstairs was a bit more modern.   Ours was a large clunky model from perhaps the 30s.  It dominated the whole bathroom.   And when it was "bath night" for somebody, you lost the use of the room for at least an hour.   It took forever to fill it up.   It took a lifetime to drain when you were done.   But, as I can attest, it was absolutely delightful to just sit and soak.

When I would go in there, I had plenty of company.  A small boat or two.  Usually one or two or seven action figures.   I'd recreate an episode of "Sea Hunt."  Sometimes, the soap acted as a raft.   Thank God we were an Ivory household.   It floated.  

Washing was almost a sidebar event when I was in our vessel of a bathtub.   I could waste tons of time in there.  Until the invariable knock on the door....

"Get out of there already.  I have to go."

Plug pulled.

And, speaking of the wash...

This was not my grandmother's washing machine in the basement, but I could have been.  We weren't that advanced in laundry facilities, either.

Grandma had a room in the cellar where this clunker resided next to a sink.  Proximity to the faucet was a must since you need a long rubber hose to get the water from the tap to the washing machine.  You threw your dirty laundry into the tub and it churned away...loudly...for about an hour.   No matter where you were on my neighborhood block, you knew my grandmother was doing her thing on a Friday morning.

Of course, these things didn't necessarily have a rinse cycle.  Instead, you took your soaking laundry and ran it through the roller on the top.   I was allowed to help with this process.   Carefully.

"Don't get your fingers in there."

Duh.

On nice days, the clean laundry was hung out on the clothesline near my grandmother's kitchen window.  During the winter, she hung it on the clothesline in the basement.  This created a great curtain drop for me when I staged my imaginary Tonight Shows down there.  From behind Grandma's bloomers came me...the star of the show.

Upstairs, we had a more modern washing machine.  It might have been bought in the early 60s.   But, you still needed to engineer a primitive hook-up to the sink via a long hose.  This convoluted contraption made the kitchen off-limit whenever laundry was being done.  And, our clothesline was on the second floor.   During stiff winds and unsecure clothespins, it was frequently that I had go to the next yard to pick up an errant t-shirt.

At one point, the washing machine broke down.   For some reason still a mystery to me, we never had it fixed.  My dad simply lugged the dirty stuff over to the laundromat.  I once asked why we didn't simply get it repaired.

"We might as well buy a new one."

Okay.   So why don't we do that?

"We're not made of money."

Yeah, I heard that a lot.

Now our Philco refrigerator looked a lot like this.  And it worked just fine.   Until the handle on the bottom door broke.  To open the refrigerator, you took a screw driver to push on the mechanism lever.  Voila.  It opened.  So, as a result, we had to keep the screw driver on the kitchen table right near the Philco.  If it got misplaced, we'd have a virtual police dragnet in the house to try and find it.

Again, I asked the obvious question.   Why don't we get the original handle fixed?

"And pay some repair guy an arm and a leg???"

Oh.  Again.

All right, you probably have a food processor like I do.  But, back when I was a kid, my grandmother used this mechanical animal to stretch out leftovers for a couple of days.  If you had ham or roast beef and some cooked potatoes, you simply attached this monstrosity to the end of the kitchen table and made hash.  

There was a method to do this and I always helped because I loved my grandmother's hash.  First, you would put a piece of the cooked meat into the top.   You'd churn away at the same time.   Then, a piece of potato.  Churn some more.   A slice of onion.   Churn.   Then back to the meat.  Churn.   Then back to the potato.  Churn.

You can probably make hash in a Cuisinart in about three minutes.   Using the meat grinder, it was at least a half hour of constant churning.  

We didn't know any better.   This is the life my parents and grandparents knew.  
I often wondered about my friends in the neighborhood.  Were they any better off?  But I'd look at their wash on the clotheslines and realize their life inside was pretty much the same.  

Primitive.  Archaic.  A little old fashioned.

But we're all still here to share in the memories of our simple years of youth.

And we now return you to your latest pandemic.

Dinner last night:  Pepperoni and mushroom pizza from Maria's.

Classic TV Theme Song of the Month - January 2021

 Look what premiered....gasp...forty years ago this month!

Dinner last night:  Teriyaki noodles.

Your Weekend Movie Guide for January 2016

 

A lot can happen in five years.  Or not.  Again, here we sit with movie theaters essentially closed.   Those that are open across the country are playing flicks nobody has heard of.   So, until the time where our cages are opened, I continue to go back in time and run Weekend Movie Guides of the past.   Like five years ago, for instance.

Check out this nifty ad for "Ben-Hur."  Playing at the Egyptian Theater back in the day.   Probably in 70 MM.  Well, next week at the same venue, "Ben-Hur" will be playing in 70 MM.  Now that's movie magic and count me in.

As for the fare in local theaters this weekend, count me skeptical.  Yes, there are the Oscar nominated films.  But also...tons and tons of crap.  You know the drill, boys and girls.   I'll skim through the LA Times entertainment pages and give you my knee-jerk reaction to what's playing at the local trash heaps.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to see that chariot race again.

Creed:  Blog review coming.  A movie that gets counted out in the second round.

Carol:   On my list to see as there are multiple Oscar nominations.   But people I know who have seen it...well...the word is not positive.

Brooklyn:  Reviewed here recently.  Should really be titled "Ireland."

The Big Short:  Reviewed here just the other day.   A good movie that will make you want to put your life savings underneath your mattress.

Bridge of Spies:   I missed this because it was released when I fractured my knee cap.  Trying to get a screener since friends have told me how good it is.

Concussion:  Blog review coming.  Spoiler alert:  Will Smith still can't act.

The Danish Girl:  Is it me or are there now too many trans gendering stories?And why did this site just tell me that I misspelled that word?

The Hateful Eight:  It's Quentin Tarantino so I supposed the word "hateful" fits.

13 Hours:  The movie the Clintons don't want you to see.   Bill and Hillary will be next door watching "Sisters."

The Revenant:  I hear it's not exactly an episode of "Paddington Bears."

Ride Along 2:  Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Ken Jeong, and Definitely Not Me.

Point Break:  So I guess it's time to remake Keanu Reeves movies?

Star Wars - The Force Awakens:  How was the box office for this?

Joy:  Blog review coming.   A movie totally driven by the lead performance.

Room:  Blog review coming.   God, I have these reviews stacked up like LaGuardia Airport on a Friday night.

In the Heart of the Sea:  A rare Ron Howard bust.   Probably showing on United Airlines already.

Spotlight:  I still think this will win Best Picture next month.

Trumbo:  I hear it's only worth going to see Bryan Cranston's performance.

Youth:  Michael Caine makes a movie a week.

The Lady in the Van:  It's got Maggie Smith as a cranky old lady.   Such out-of-the-box casting.

The Martian:   The Golden Globes had it up for Best Comedy or Musical???!!!

Mustang:  I hear it's about neither a horse or a convertible.

Son of Saul:  Is this anything like "Son of Godzilla?"

45 Years:  Charlotte Rampling is Oscar-nominated for this lady in a troubled marriage.   Screener please.

The Good Dinosaur:  Obviously not a raptor.

Anomalisa:  One of those creepy adult-oriented cartoons.   Paging Fred and Wilma.

Dirty Grandpa:  Robert DeNiro is the American version of Michael Caine.  He also makes a movie a week.

The Abandoned:  A single mom works as a night security guard.   So I guess her children at home are the title of the movie?

Exposed:  Every politician running for President in 2016.

Anesthesia:   A great name for a movie if it's very boring.

The Benefactor:  Richard Gere is a secretive guy who becomes entwined with a young couple.   Seriously, that's the logline.   It says nothing to me.

Daddy's Home:  This world is still not free of Will Ferrell or ISIS.

Krampus:  What you get when the back of your leg hurts and you can't spell.

Sisters:   I have it on good authority that this Tina Fey/Amy Poehler film is a toxic spill.

Norm of the North:  A cartoon about a friendly polar beat who goes to NY.   "The Revenant Goes to Manhattan."

Dinner last night:  Salad.