On the occasion of what would have been his 62nd birthday, we salute the late Bill Paxton. 1521: EDWARD STAFFORD, 3RD DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, IS EXECUTED FOR TREASON. What happened to the first two Dukes of Buckingham? 1536: GEORGE BOLEYN, 2ND VISCOUNT ROCHFORD IS EXECUTED FOR TREASON. What happened to the 1st Viscount Rochford? 1536: HENRY VIII AND ANNE BOLEYN'S MARRIAGE IS ANNULLED. But they were not executed. 1580: ANNE OF DENMARK IS CROWNED QUEEN OF SCOTLAND. Isn't she being a bit of a hog? Two countries? 1673: LOUIS JOLLIET AND JACQUES MARQUETTE BEGIN EXPLORING THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. Gee, this water is filthy. 1792: THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE IS FORMED. And immediately finished the day at an all time low. 1805: MUHAMMAD ALI BECOMES WALI OF EGYPT. Gee, that boxer was old. 1814: OCCUPATION OF MONACO CHANGES FROM FRENCH TO AUSTRIAN. So it went back to French at some point? 1875: ARISTIDES WINS THE FIRST KENTUCKY DERBY. I assume this was a horse. 1886: BUSINESSMAN JOHN DEERE DIES. Well, with a tractor, he was easy to bury. 1911: ACTRESS MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN IS BORN. Me, Tarzan. You, toddler. 1915: THE LAST BRITISH LIBERAL PARTY GOVERNMENT FAILS. Don't they all? 1939: THE COLUMBIA LIONS AND THE PRINCETON TIGERS PLAY IN THE US' FIRST TELEVISED SPORTING EVENT, A COLLEGIATE BASEBALL GAME. Was this also the first Ballantine beer commercial? 1940: WORLD WAR II - GERMANY OCCUPIES BRUSSELS, BELGIUM. Springtime for Sprouts. 1954: THE US SUPREME COURT HANDS DOWN A UNANIMOUS DECISION IS BROWN VERSUS BOARD OF EDUCATION. TKO in ten rounds. 1955: ACTOR BILL PAXTON IS BORN. Good actor. Wonderful performance in Apollo 13. 1956: COMIC BOB SAGET IS BORN. The house got fuller. 1967: SIX-DAY WAR - PRESIDENT NASSER OF EGYPT DEMANDS DISMANTLING OF THE PEACE KEEPING UN EMERGENCY FORCE IN EGYPT. Does the UN ever manage to keep peace anywhere?? 1973: THE WATERGATE TELEVISED HEARINGS BEGIN IN THE US SENATE. There go my episodes of Tattletales. 1974: POLICE IN LOS ANGELES RAID THE SYMBIONESE LIBERATION ARMY HEADQUARTERS, KILLING SIX MEMBERS. Meanwhile, whatever happened to Patty Hearst? 1992: BANDLEADER LAWRENCE WELK DIES. And a one and a two... 2004: THE FIRST LEGAL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES IN THE US ARE PERFORMED IN THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS. As opposed to illegal ones? 2004: ACTOR TONY RANDALL DIES. Interviewed him once. Really nice man. 2005: COMIC FRANK GORSHIN DIES. ??????????????? Am obscure joke. Think about it. 2011: BASEBALL STAR HARMON KILLEBREW DIES. And still went 1 for 3. 2012: SINGER DONNA SUMMER DIES. Last dance, last chance... Dinner last night: Cheeseburger at In N Out Burger.
You know that I pretty much review every movie I go to see. I usually come right home and write my critique and then I store it away for later blog posting. Well, somehow, I completely forgot to run this piece on Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" even though I saw it sometime between when it had made bazillions and gazillions of dollars. It just went into my blog queue and never came out. Until now. I wonder why. Maybe it's because the film didn't really register with me as memorable. Or perhaps it's due to the fact that I thought I saw it all before. Oh, wait, I did. Let's see. There was the animated feature I saw back in the early 90s. Then I remember I took my then-young goddaughter to see the stage version on Broadway. Was there an Ice Capades edition of it? That sounds familiar. And didn't NBC produce an all-Hispanic live version with Jennifer Lopez as Belle and Jimmy Smits as the Beast? Or am I imagining all this? Whatever the case, this movie is a reminder that Hollywood has completely run out of new ideas and will cannibal stuff it made before. Okay, in this case, there is a sweetness about the new live action production of what was once a cartoon. Women who saw it as kids are now mothers taking their kids to see it and that's a good thing. For that reason alone, "Beauty and the Beast" is pretty serviceable entertainment. Of course, when I look up the original run time of the cartoon, I see it came in at a nifty 84 minutes. The live action version clocks in at two hours plus which makes me think that the characters move faster when animated. Yes, the 2017 edition is quite padded and loaded with special effects that I supposed people can't really draw. There seemed to be more songs because, after all, what's a Disney movie without a tune they can exploit for next year's Best Song Oscar. Despite the excess, the story remains the same...a tale as old as time...ahem. There are some accommodations made for 2017 audiences. Given the big push for diversity, several of the characters are played by African-Americans. I'm not being a hard ass about this, but history tells me that there were likely very few Blacks dancing waltzes as members of the long ago French aristocracy, but that's just me. There's also a quick gay-oriented joke that is quite funny and worrisome for the folks at squeaky-clean Disney. I mean, if the producers wanted to really tie in the present day, I'm surprised that the irate mob at the end of the movie didn't carry some "Trump Must Be Impeached" signs. The casting in this "Beauty" was perfectly fine. Emma Watson can sing and Dan Stevens (Matthew from Downton Abbey) can grunt. I had an issue with the guy playing the villainous Gaston. Oh, Luke Evans in the role was perfectly snarly but he was completely miscast. First of all, he looked like Robert Goulet which would put him about thirty years too old for Belle. And, second of all, I never liked Robert Goulet. I've also never been a fan of Kevin Kline, which meant his appearance as Belle's father completely annoyed me. Of course, all the appliances and knick knacks in the castle were played by live actors, but, again, they were animated so I guess that this movie is only a reboot of the cartoon in part. Frankly, I much prefer cartoons when they involve talking candlesticks and tea cups but I'm funny that way. Again, this new version made a fortune, so you can fully expand Disney to keep recycling everything in their library. I fully expect an all-giraffe edition of "Pollyanna" and a reboot of "The Parent Trap" where the parents are both of the same sex. Welcome to creativity in 2017. LEN'S RATING: Three stars. Dinner last night: Had a big lunch so just a sandwich and salad.
This is a classic that went viral many years ago. I still love the phony sensitivity of the in-studio hosts. Dinner last night: Angel hair pasta with bacon and tomatoes.
When I think about it, Mom's been gone for a long while now. Indeed, all my relatives in my parents' generation...aunts and uncles and the like...have passed on. They all departed around the same relatively young age of 70. I would often wonder why. Then I would look at my dad's old Technicolor slides of family gatherings. Everybody had a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other. Message received. It's Mother Day so memories again come to the forefront. Here's Mom and me feeding some ducks at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. This was a popular Sunday afternoon destination for my family. Our own little theme park. Six Flags Over Dead People. I have some other photos of us and the ducks and the thing I noted in all of them: my mother's always on the side of the pond in high heels. Barbara Billingsley lives. Except I never saw her vacuuming the hallway in them. Looking at vintage snapshots, I am always blown away over how well dressed she always was. Now that I recollect, my mother was a clothes junkie. Her closet was constantly filled with new stuff. And shoes, shoes, and more shoes. I got dragged at least once a week by her as she checked out the new offerings at Bromley's on Fourth Avenue in Mount Vernon. One of those dress stores that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable as I sat there quietly as Mom tried on one outfit after another. I always wondered how we could afford it all. I got my answer a little later on when the weekly shopping jaunts included a stop at the Mt. Vernon Loan Company on Fiske Place. My mother would go up to the window, hand over an envelope, and then turn back to me. "Don't tell your father." Gotcha. Over time, I noticed that the Mt. Vernon Loan Company never really disappeared from my mother's anointed rounds. When I got a little older, I was entrusted with delivering the little white envelope myself. The loan place was conveniently located in the same office building as my dentist and my orthodontist. One stop shopping. Get the rubber bands or the bite plate adjusted and pay off Mom's deficit. No fuss, no muss. In retrospect, my mother was one of the original liberated women. Because, as soon as I was about six or seven, she was off to work. First at a pen manufacturer, then at an electrical supply place. Finally, she made the great leap to the big time. Commuting to Manhattan for a job at a major accounting firm. Meanwhile, I was hanging with the grandparents while Mom and Dad worked. And, as long as I can remember, the envelopes to the loan company kept coming. I never questioned it all. Except I could always tell that money, as usual, always seemed to be a big discussion point between Mom and Dad. Which is why she kept working. Once she was working "downtown," the wardrobe in her closet expanded at geometric proportions. Essentially, Mom never had a dollar she couldn't spend. I learned this more and more years later when she was retired and on a fixed income. I financially supplemented her a lot in her post-working era. She used her Social Security and her pension to pay for her rent and her food. I covered the other stuff: electric bill, the phone, the cable. It should have given her a comfort zone that was pretty cushy. Except for those months where she ran out of cash before we hit the 30th of the month. And our conversations were always the same. "Can I borrow fifty dollars? I'm short this month." I'd dutifully go over everything she paid for and I was always suitably confused. I could never understand how she went over budget. I'd ask the same question and get her knee-jerk reaction. "No, I'm not paying off the loan company." After several short months, I started to dig around. In her apartment building, she had a passel of retired friends who were also not doing their best at living check-to-check. But, instead of asking their own offspring for bailouts, they'd come to my mother. And she was more than happy to lend out some cold cash. While the budget in all the apartments on Fleetwood Avenue were balanced, my mother was building a shortfall worthy of the federal government. Forget Reagan. My mother was the true inventor of "voodoo economics." After squelching the stimulus package that my mom was extending to her cronies, the spending returned to normal for a while. And then short months returned. "No, I'm not paying off the loan company." And? "No, I'm not giving money out to the building." Once again, I had to impose a thorough investigation of my own mother. It didn't take long to find the answer. In a kitchen cabinet, I found over five hundred expired lottery tickets. Some weeks, she had spend more than 100 dollars, attempting to "be in it to win it." Outed as the newest member of Gamblers Anonymous, my mother tried to make nice. "If I win the big prize, I'll give you most of the money." Nice try, Mom. In retrospect, I guess it could have been worse. It wasn't like she was spending her money on fast living and cigarettes. Well, she did a little of that, too. They all did from what the pictures tell me. Dinner last night: Orange beef from Century Dragon.
We're one big melting pot these days. Okay, I get it. America is a tapestry of all people from all lands who speak all languages and worship all religions. No, this is not going to be a rant for or against Donald Trump. Nope, it's about the push afoot to remind us every second of every minute of every day. And the ones doing that the most are the yokels in Hollyweird, USA. So, my writing partner and I are part of a team putting together a sitcom project that will hopefully live some place in the variety of portals where entertainment can live in 2017. We cast it as if we were doing it for reals and, right now, we are dependent on the good graces of a terrific cast who has yet to be paid a dime. I am proud of what we have assembled and this casting has been mostly my work. I am so filled with pride about what we are trying to accomplish that I show somebody at my church photos from the social media shoot we did. She looked at the cast photo. "Oh, you don't have a diverse cast?" I explained we had what we had. And, oh yeah, there is a Hispanic actor in the mix but he didn't bother to show up...don't get me started. Nevertheless, I was put off by this because, indeed, any one of our characters could have been something other than White. But they are not. I held my tongue, but the question I wanted to ask this church chum was how many people of color she had living in her lily white neighborhood of Manhattan Beach. So, one of the actors in my cast tells me that she hasn't gotten many callbacks or auditions because she is not either Black, Asian, or Hispanic. This despite the fact that, in my mind, she is one terrific performer. Then, you hear about this clown who created the Broadway megahit "Hamilton." Perhaps you have heard of it. Well, Lin-Manuel Miranda Whatever announces that future national tours will feature actors completely of color and that White actors need not audition. Uh huh. Now isn't this a trifle discriminatory? What about hiring the very best talent for the role? Most people have already overlooked the fact that Alexander Hamilton was not really Hispanic in the 1700s. I look at the clips of the current Broadway spectacular "Hello Dolly" with Bette Midler. One of the production numbers features the rich upper class of Yonkers circa 1900. I see two African-Americans as part of that ensemble. Now, okay, as unfortunate as it was, history tells me that there were likely very few Black members of the rich elite back then. Is this mike on? On our own little project, we have given thought to the notion that one of our characters could be diverse because we wrote it color blind. But, when you do that, you also open up another box of worms. I heard a story here of one African-American actress on a TV show who started to complain that the White producers couldn't write for her race. Guess who got ousted? Not her. So the double edged sword is that you wanted to be considered equal but still remain different? Have I got that right? These days, Hollywood works double overtime to make sure that every single project on stage or on the screen clicks off those all-important diverse boxes. 1. African-American or Hispanic or Asian. 2. LGBT. 3. Empowered women. "Moonlight," as overrated as it was, largely won the Oscar for Best Picture because it clicked off on # 1 and # 2. The not-as-revolutionary-TV-as-it-thinks-it-is "This Is Us" reminds us constantly that the main characters adopted an African-American child. Same on "Grace and Frankie." There was no doubt that the "new" Jack Bauer on the "24" recent reboot was going to be Black. It's okay but, at some point, this also seems forced like a little kid struggling to go on the potty. If "Mary Tyler Moore" was going on the air in 2017 (and it probably wouldn't get picked up), Murray would be a transgender and Rhoda would likely be Korean. For no good reason except that was required to get on the air. I actually talked to a very smart African-American millennial who does the fan engagement for a bunch of TV shows. He really liked our project and didn't care one iota that we did not have a rainbow cast. "The characters you have fit the story you are telling." Amen. I also quizzed on his take about the whole diversity push. "It's starting to be very silly and forced." I say amen again. You know, one of my favorite TV shows of all time was "Knots Landing." Back in the middle of their run (1988 or so), one couple was written out of the famed Seaview Circle cul-de-sac and a house became available. The new family happened to be African-American. But what was remarkable to me is that they never ever once mentioned their race. The Williams family just had the same issues that anybody else on the show had. They were used perfectly and seamlessly. The way it should be. My point is that, if diversity fits the story, please tell it. But don't require it. I have no issues seeing something featuring the Garcia family or the Jones family or the Wong family or kids being raised by dads Tom and Dennis. But, I also say that... ...we shouldn't forget about Ward, June, Wally, and the Beaver. Dinner last night: Bacon wrapped Dodger Dog.
