The Sunday Memory Drawer - When Movies Are Really Bad

Like all of the ones nominated for Oscars tonight.   It is now the awards show that nobody cares about.  And, to think that these films are the worst yet.   I've seen my share in life.

Movie fan that I am, I will stick out a stinker as long as possible.   You know those films.   The one that you start to hate by the end of the first reel and it actually goes downhill from there.   I know lots of folks who would get up and leave.   For the most part, not me.   I will grit my teeth and hope against hope that it will get better.

But there have been three movies that I never saw the end of.  Of course, one wasn't because it stunk.   Years later, I saw it on TCM and thought it was very clever.   But, trying to see it at the Loews Mount Vernon theater with its artist rendering above, well, that didn't work.   Indeed, it was the very first movie my mother ever took me to see.

Perfect entertainment for somebody my age.  And, oh, look, "it's colorsome."

So, on one warm weekday afternoon, Mom walked me down Stevens Avenue to Loews for the first of what would be thousands of motion picture experiences for yours truly.

Except...

I remember the huge and glorious edifice being empty.  It was the first show of the day and apparently even a colorsome movie like Tom Thumb wasn't packing them in just yet.   We made the long climb to the balcony, which was my mother's prime viewing location.  Why?  It was the smoking section.

I probably was in awe of my surroundings.  It was so eerily quiet.  But the hall was very pretty.  And the velvet curtain that faced us all.

Moments later, the lights began to dim.

Uh oh, what's happening?

The curtain slowly started to inch its way apart to reveal a huge white wall.  

Suddenly, this all didn't look so inviting.  I had no clue what was happening.  But none of it looked good.  And I reacted the way any well-adjusted child would.

I started to scream.

'WHHHHAAAAAAAA!   WHHHAAAAAAAAAAA!"

My mom was so off-put that she probably had to douse her cigarette.  What the hell was wrong with me?

"WHHHHHAAAAAAA!  WHHHHAAAAAAAAAA!"

If there was anybody else in the theater at that moment, I am sure they were complaining to the manager.  Can you shut that freakin' kid up?

Mom had no luck with me.  This freakin' kid wouldn't shut up.  I sounded like Lucy Ricardo on the umpteenth time that Ricky wouldn't let her be in the show down at the Tropicana.

There would be no Tom Thumb for me that afternoon. 

I think I stopped the histrionics several blocks away.  And re-ignited them  anew when Mom had her say.

"You've wasted my money, today, young man."

Young man?  Okay, I was four.

With a great flourish, my mother ripped apart the two movie tickets.  Wasted money, indeed.  The tickets were probably no more than fifty cents each.  Needless to say, the rest of my afternoon was spent in my room.  A just punishment for having squandered my family's fortune.

Not wanting to repeat the scream fest ever again, my mother got smart at how to get around my "dimming lights/curtain parting" phobia.  For the next two years whenever I was taken to the movies, we arrived ten minutes into the first feature.  I clearly recall one afternoon while we hung around Hartley Park just up the street from the RKO Proctors theater.  The show had started at 1PM.  My mom looked at her watch.

"1:15PM.  I guess we can go in now."

I eventually outgrew this nonsense.   But, in the case of the two other movies I have walked out on in my lifetime, I was better off screaming at the curtain.

You see that there?   Academy Award winning.   And it did win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.  Okay, I was a film buff.   This was something I needed to see one night with some friends.   

Of course, back then for people living in Westchester, New York, the only outlet you had to see foreign or art house movies was the Scarsdale Fine Arts theater. Sadly, I think it's a furniture store now.  But, back in the day, it was the "in" place to be for film devotees.   

I don't remember just how quickly "The Tin Drum" skidded off the tracks for me.  But, within the first half-hour, we were treated to a bunch of unlikable people set against the Nazi Holocaust.  With this annoying kid pictured above banging on his freakin' drum.

I hung out for a while.   But, then, there was the scene at the beach.   These characters started to eat live eels.  I started to feel vomit oozing up into my mouth.   I don't remember exactly what my friends did.   I got up and ran into the lobby for a gallon or two from their water fountain.

I was done with 'The Tin Drum."

Ah, and there was one other that had me beating a hasty retreat.  And, at first glance, you would wonder why.

I mean, come on, Len.  How can you go wrong here?  Jack Nicholson.  Meryl Streep.  Mike Nichols directing.  Nora Ephron writing.

By the end of the first half-hour, I couldn't take these completely insufferable people.  Interesting because it was allegedly loosely based on the romance of Ephron and journalist Carl Bernstein.   The histrionics on the screen were so annoying that I bade a temporary goodbye to my movie partner and headed to the lobby.

The good news is we were at Movieland on Central Avenue in Yonkers.  The lobby was full of video games.   I was not a video game player.   That night, I became one.  One quarter after another.  One Pac Man after another.   The time went a lot faster for me than it would have sitting back in that theater.

Indeed, I guess you can say my batting average is pretty good.  Walking out of two movies.   Technically being dragged out of a third.   Now there is junk I see to this day.   But I rarely walk out.   I think back to the day of my mom yelling at me after the aborted attempt to see "Tom Thumb."

"You've wasted my money today, young man."Well, now it's my own money.  And I don't waste that so easily. 

Dinner last night:  Ribeye steak and pan roasted tomatoes in balsamic sauce.

Classic Newsreel of the Month - March 2026

 And they're still marching.

Dinner last night:  In and Out Burger.

Friday the 13th and How Unlucky Are These Losers?

 

More photographic torture. Proof that this is one strange country. Take, for instance, the twisted young miss above. I suppose some guys will find this impressive. Actually, I do. Bravo. Honey, are you on Facebook? We should be friends.

The strange thing is that neither of these kids know this man. When does your local neighborhood predator pose for photos?

To all those women who think they are beautiful when pregnant: you're not. Call me when the kid is out and already teething.

A new movie is opening: Nightmare on Easter Sunday.

I'd love to see what this family looks like five seconds later.

"What do you mean that I have a pre-existing condition?"

And this is a family that probably has hand sanitizers all over the house.

When narcolepsy strikes on your wedding day...

"Whacha mean you want some sugar? I already gave you plenty."

Dinner last night:   Leftover grilled sausage.

The People Next Door

 

Another guilty pleasure. This is a website that is designed to provide a community service. If you are moving into a new neighborhood and you want to see how friendly it is, you simply pop in a zipcode and up pops any stories about problems in the area. So, essentially, if you see a lot of crabapples around, you skip the neighborhood.

Of course, this now takes on a life of its own. It's a place where the anger around us just overflows. And, pointing out the overall stupidity of our fellow man, the site is hilarious. Take a gander at this entry:

This man has serious obsessive compulsive disorder - he's a maniac who screams at his wife and kids to clean up the house constantly. He makes his sons shovel leaves out of the gutter on the entire block -- both sides. He trims our trees and bushes and throws all the trimmings all over our yard.. and the worst part -- he digs all over his property, trying to find cat poop, and then throws ALL of it over into our yard because we have a cat. (He does not DNA test it first, nor has he DNA tested our cat to find out if it is OUR cat's poop and not waste from the other 18 cats in the neighborhood. The man is truly a psycho. I pity his poor wife and children.
Victimized09/28/2007

Now, would you want to move next door to him? What about this lady?

Just because someone is 90 years old, it doesn't mean they have nothing to do but to sit around and die. They could occasionally LEAVE THE HOUSE without fear of breaking to pieces. I had a teacher who still wouldn't retire at 89, my grandfather just bought a new house at 90, and there was a guy in my orchestra who was 96 and played with us until weeks before his death. Our downstairs neighbor also happened to own the building, so we felt we needed to walk on eggshells around her (or above her) and ignore her miserable stench. At first her and her daughter (the one who handled most of the business) and her son-in-law were nice, but pretty soon they showed their true colors as miserable, miserly, walking corpses. The daughter told us that she was nearly deaf, so that we should ring on the doorbell in case she fell asleep in front of the TV and it bothered us. So pretty much all the time she would fall asleep in front of her blasting TV at 1 in the morning, and the TV was not in the living room, but below one of the bedrooms. This was annoying to the point that one roommate had to wear earplugs, but we assumed that the benefit of this would be never getting noise complaints. When we started practicing with our band in the living room (no drummer and we kept the level of the instruments pretty quiet) at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday she called the management company to complain that she was sick and trying to sleep. Wow, suddenly her hearing was regained! It's a miracle! And did she really have to call the management company? She owns the building! She could have just called us or rang on our door, and we would have apologized and stopped. But no, she wanted it to go on our "permanent record." From there on out any time of day (usually afternoon) when a stereo was on, she would call the management company and complain that we were holding band practice in the apartment without permission. I honestly should have complain about the stench wafting up from downstairs because it was vile. Maybe if we changed our music to sound like the laugh track of Everybody Loves Raymond she wouldn't have noticed.

The vitriole on here is astounding. Thanks to the internet, thousands of people can now avoid punching the wall in their bathroom. When you start reading these things, you can't stop. The potato chip of prose.

What an absolute joy it was living next door to Dick. A sad, old, pathetic and lonely husk of a man who compensated for these shortcomings by being an obnoxious, misogynistic, child-hating, male-prostitute hiring, petty and childish piece of trash. I can't remember which parts I miss most: The TV blaring so loud I'm sure it could be heard on the space shuttle at all hours of the day or night; the faked-to-make-you-think-he's-actually-happy-laugh during endless reruns of his favorite show 'Wings'; the homeless junkie piece of shit he hired to cook his dinners(!!) and sweep his front step who'd loudly sing Avril Lavigne so out of tune and so loud you thought there might be a constipated tyrannosaurus living through the wall; the glorious drug and alcohol filled parties aforementioned junkie piece of shit would host while Dickie was out of town; the aforementioned man-whore selling crack and who knows what else out of Dick's apartment; the boyish (Dick's only, like, fifty) stomping as loud as he humanly could up and down his stairs just to remind you he lives there; the spraying of the complex's garden hose through my upstairs bedroom window because I couldn't get a sick child to sleep; the abrupt blaring of his stereo if anyone spoke out on the courtyard so loud it brought the deaf lady four doors away THE DEAF LADY FOUR DOORS AWAY! out of her apartment because she felt it through the floor; the complete apathy from the management when informed of all this; the calling of the police three times to deal with his behaviour; the sexual harrassment of some male tenants; his ugly face; his stupid moustache; everything about him. Years later and I still wish him a horrible, painful death. Don't ever move here. Never, never, never.

Okay, one more...

Woman in this neighborhood that's aggressive, litigious and compulsive. Calls police for fabricated/trumped up reasons. Had a 70 year old gardener arrested for stepping on her lawn. Called Hazmat for neighbor emptying water into the street. Attracts and feeds rats - deliberately. Plays obnoxious loud music to discourage neighbors from using their yards. Reportedly peers in neighbors windows at night - not confirmed.

And one last one...

My neighbors have the noisiest f--k fests I’ve ever heard. Usually at around 8 pm to 11 pm. Could be any night of the week. Yesterday morning they started in at 7 am! And they always leave the window open! When the traffic dies down you can hear them out on the sidewalk. Until we realized what the noises really were, another neighbor and I thought they had a dog they were locking out of the house allowing to howl all night long. That’s how loud the woman is! We live in houses with maybe 5 feet between them and I can hear them through the walls. I really hate these people!!!!! They have their house up for sale. God I wish somebody would buy it! I’m thinking of leaving copies of the sale flyer at preschools & churches so I can get some neighbors with lower libidos.

Of course, you can rant on and on about your neighbors. Or you can take some action. Let me tell you about a problem we had out here about nine years ago.

When we were living in an apartment complex in Beverly Hills for a little while, our front door overlooked the pool area. There was an apartment directly below us that was essentially next to the pool. It was inhabited by a woman and two teenage kids. She would leave for the entire weekend to run off with her boyfriend. That left the two urchins alone to have night-long slumber parties every Friday and Saturday nights. We'd pound on the floor to no avail. It was extremely frustrating.

So, you can imagine my anger one Sunday night when I dropped a can of tomatoes on the kitchen floor. Two minutes later, there is a knock on the door from Mommy Downstairs.

"Could you please keep the noise down?"

Huh? She left so quickly that I had no chance to respond. But, my roommate had plenty to say when he got home several hours later and heard my story.

"We'll fix her ass."

Two days later, my roommate had to be working till 3AM. When I walked out of my bedroom to go to work, he had pinned a note to my door.

"On your way out, go see what I did."

In the middle of the night, he had taken every piece of pool furniture and stacked it up against their front door. The way it was all positioned, it would come crashing into their apartment as soon as they opened the front door. Neither of us had to be there when it happened. We could imagine the disaster. And that's all we needed.

And, apparently, that's all they needed. They moved out one month later.

Who needs to rant on a website? No, wait, I just did.

Dinner last night:   Pappardelle from my freezer.

This Date in History - March 11

 

We remember Lawrence Welk on his birthday.  How could I forget him?   The man was on all available TV sets in my house every Saturday night.   And, oh, that's the Champagne Lady Norma Zimmer who my grandmother hated.

222:  EMPEROR ELAGABALUS IS ASSASSINATED ALONG WITH HIS MOTHER, JULIA SOAEMIAS, BY THE PRAETORIAN GUARD DURING A REVOLT.  THEIR MUTILATED BODIES ARE DRAGGED THROUGH THE STREETS OF ROME.

As if there aren't enough traffic problems there.

1387:  ENGLISH CONDOTTIERO SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD LEADS PADOVA TO VICTORY IN A FACTIONAL CLASH WITH VERONA.

Here's something you don't hear often.  "Mommy, I want to be a condottiero when I grow up."

1641:  GUARANI FORCES LIVING IN THE JESUIT REDUCTIONS DEFEAT BANDEIRANTES LOYAL TO THE PORTUGUESE EMPIRE IN ARGENTINA.

"Daddy, I'd like to be a bandeirante when I grow up."

1702:  THE DAILY COURANT, ENGLAND'S FIRST NATIONAL DAILY NEWSPAPER, IS PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Now the King can do his Sudoku in the morning.

1824:  THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF WAR CREATES THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

For all those Indians who want to cheat on their wives.

1845:  UNHAPPY WITH TRANSLATIONAL DIFFERENCES REGARDING THE TREATY OF WAITANGI, CHIEFS HONE HEKE, KAWITI AND MAORI TRIBE MEMBERS CHOP DOWN THE BRITISH FLAGPOLE FOR A FOURTH TIME IN NEW ZEALAND.

Now that's a run-on sentence.

1851: THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF RIGOLETTO BY GUISEPPE VERDI TAKES PLACE IN VENICE.

Rigoletto...with meatballs.

1861:  THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA IS ADOPTED.

This means war, y'all.

1867:  THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF DON CARLOS BY GUISEPPE VERDI TAKES PLACE IN PARIS.

This proves Guiseppe Verdi is not a one-hit wonder.

1888:  THE GREAT BLIZZARD OF 1888 BEGINS ALONG THE EASTERN SEABOARD OF THE US.

Even in 1888, that's overtime for sanitation workers.

1895:  ACTOR SHEMP HOWARD IS BORN.

Why I oughta!

1903:  BANDLEADER LAWRENCE WELK IS BORN.

Did he ever count up to three?

1918:  THE FIRST CASE OF SPANISH FLU OCCURS IN WHAT WILL BE A WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC. 

That's what happens when there's no Theraflu.

1927:  IN NYC, SAMUEL ROXY ROTHAFEL OPENS THE ROXY THEATRE.

Because it's easier to say than "I'm going to the Rothafel Theatre."

1931:  BUSINESSMAN RUPERT MURDOCH IS BORN.

Headline for all of us on the front page of the NY Post:  "WE DON'T CARE."

1941:  PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT SIGNS THE LEND-LEASE ACT INTO LAW, ALLOWING AMERICAN-BUILT WAR SUPPLIES TO BE SHIPPED TO ALLIES ON LOAN.

Winston Churchill:  "It's about freakin' time."

1942:  GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR FLEES CORREGIDOR.

Not returning there, that's for sure.

1955:  BUSINESSMAN OSCAR MAYER DIES.

Today, I don't wish I was him.

1956:  BUSINESSMAN JOEY BUTTAFUOCO IS BORN.

Businessman and wife beater.

1958:  ACTRESS ANISSA JONES IS BORN.

Buffy!

1970:  AUTHOR ERLE STANLEY GARDNER DIES.

The Case of the Dead Author.

1975: NORTH VIETNAMESE AND VIET CONG GUERRILLA FORCES ESTABLISH CONTROL OVER BAN ME THUOT.

Fuk Me Now.

1983:  PAKISTAN SUCCESSFULLY CONDUCTS A TEST OF A NUCLEAR WEAPON.  

I mean, don't you have to blow something up to see if this works?

1993:  JANET RENO IS CONFIRMED BY THE US SENATE AS THE FIRST FEMALE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE US.

They confirmed her for the job or they confirmed that she was indeed a woman?

1996:  ACTOR VINCE EDWARDS DIES.

Man, woman, birth, death, me.

2007:  ACTRESS BETTY HUTTON DIES.

Annie Get Your Casket.

Dinner last night:  Grilled chicken sausage.

Who Lives Where

 A blog piece from 19 years ago still resonates.

Have you all yet discovered the various websites that allow you to view the world from satellite photos? There's LiveSearch.com and Google Earth. You can type in any address and view it in photos from outer space. You can zoom in and get really good close-ups. So, I've looked up all my pertinent addresses. My childhood home. My NY apartment. My LA apartment. Essentially, they are Mapquest with pictures. More reasons to waste time on a computer (besides writing and reading these daily musings).

But, I have heard about a variation on these sites that puts a very, very sinister twist on it all.

Try linking up to MapSexOffenders.com.

I heard about this in another blog and, despite feeling a trifle unclean doing so, I signed into the link. The first thing you see is a picture of a loving family. And then you are told that you should be wary of those around you at all. If you type in a street address, you will receive a map of the surrounding area.......and these red notations of places where known sex offenders reside. I put in my LA address and about two dozen red marks immediately popped up in a five mile radius. Now, when I did so, I had a real fear that one of those red marks would tell me that my former late upstairs neighbor had some previous secret dalliances with Opie. But, good news......Barney had nothing in his pants pocket except that extra bullet.

But imagine my horror when I discovered that one of those red marks was on the next block. When I clicked on it, a name, address, police mug shot, and police record popped up. This gentleman looked like your average typical Best Buy salesman. Except, in lieu of selling LCD TVs, he was sporting a nifty conviction of lewd and lascivious behavior with a minor.

Okay, so, initially, I didn't think this was real. But, today, on my way home from church (a metaphor if I ever wrote one), I noticed that building was having an open house. I stopped the car and very gingerly walked to the intercom directory. Yep, the guy I saw was listed. In the correct apartment number and everything. I did not once consider ringing the bell and running. Who knows what his record shows if there is a website called MassMurderersathome.com.

Why do I think that he has a bowl of Hershey's Kisses right next to his front door?

Only in America can you easily get driving directions to a neighborhood pervert.

Dinner last night:   Had a big late lunch so nothing really.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - March 9, 2026

 My blog anniversary continues with this classic doggie treat.

Dinner last night:  Cheese and crackers.