Graphic Grandeur (Star Force One Edition)

 

 

You can fret about what went on at Davos all you want. As for myself, I worry more that...

...Earth may soon be paid an unwelcome visit by otherworldly beings!

Cartoon by Matt Reuter

Vital Viewing (Another Nice Mise-en-scène You've Gotten Me Into Edition)

 

Comedian Oliver Hardy was born on this day in 1892 (he died in 1957.) Here's a 1950 TV interview he did right as he was about to set sail for France: 

The interviewer makes mention of Hardy being part of a famous comedy team, so without further ado, let's see that comedy team in action:

Uh...That's not the comedy team I had in mind.

That's more like it, pilgrim!

In 1956, two of the funniest men who ever lived got together one last time to have their picture taken, though you'd be forgiven if you didn't immediately recognize the one on the right. So what accounts for Oliver Hardy's gaunt appearance? It seems the comedian, spooked by a mild heart attack he had suffered in 1954, went on a crash diet, shedding a whole 150 pounds. However, in a letter to an acquaintance, Stan Laurel speculated his longtime comedy partner had cancer. We do know that a series of strokes felled Hardy about a year after this photo was taken. At least the master of the comic reaction was able to give us one final feat of foolery for the camera.

Quips and Quotations (Naturalized American Film Auteur Edition)

 (Originally posted on 12/8/2014. I've made a slight adjustment to the title--Kirk)

I’m not against the police, I'm just afraid of them.

--Alfred Hitchcock.

Graphic Grandeur (You Don't Know Dickens Edition)

 

And then there was Venezuela...

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Smart Art (Ringing In the New Year Edition)

 

New Year's Eve couldn't come sooner! After all, it's been 365 days of rising prices, heightened international tensions, increasing inequality, burgeoning racism, growing sexism, skyrocketing attacks on the LGBTQ community, and fascism in the ascendency. Any downward trends? Yeah, myself, because all of it has left me down in the dumps. Funny how that works. Not that I've entirely given up hope. I mean, 2026 just gotta be better! There's no place to go but up (assuming prices, international tensions, inequality, racism, sexism, attacks on the LGBTQ community, and fascism all go down.) So what's the best way to celebrate the deep-sixing of 2025 and the welcome arrival (and hopeful course correction) of 2026? To best answer that question I went to a seance and asked the medium to contact birthday boy Henri Matisse (above), who suggested that at the stroke of midnight, we all start...

...dancing!

Happy New Year

from Shadow of a Doubt

Off to See the Blizzard

 

 "Can't all the good little boys and girls in the world wait just this once? The Jack Frosts are throwing a party and I want to go!"

Actually, that's model Dorian Leigh and actor/singer/dancer Ray Bolger on this 1946 magazine cover. Bolger makes a rather scrawny St. Nick, don't you think? He could use a pillow under that outfit, or maybe just some...

...straw. Hey, it's worked in the past.

704 Hauser Street Pride

 

Rob Reiner's violent death is shocking, but no more--in fact, it arguably should be a bit less--shocking than the violent deaths at Brown University and Australia's Bondi Beach, both of which had a higher body count. Interestingly, the All in the Family star and This Is Spinal Tap director did share one characteristic with the Bondi victims. He was Jewish and they were Jewish, but in Reiner's case anti-semitism does not appear to be a motive in his killing (instead, as of this writing, mental illness and the accompanying family strife it so often causes seem to be contributing factors.) Still, Reiner's life is worth your attention not for how it ended but for its contributions to acting and cinema. Eventually it went beyond those art forms. Reiner was every bit as progressive as Mike Stivic, the character he played on AITF. That progressiveness was spun-off not into its own TV show but the real-world body politic. Reiner supported many causes, but I'm going to focus on just one right now. In 2008, Reiner co-found The American Foundation for Equal Rights to help fight California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. "We don't believe in separate but equal in any other legal position except this," he said in explaining how same-sex marriage at the time was outside the Constitution. Thanks to a court battle that Reiner's organization pursued, the Ninth Court of Appeals eventually overturned the proposition. Not bad for a "meathead."

1947-2025