Vital Viewing (Helping Hand Edition)

Actor Harvey Keitel was born on this day in 1939. In the first of two clips I want to show you, he talks about the assist he gave to...

...a young video store clerk looking to break into the movie business:

Keitel looks, sounds, and dresses too much like one of the Mafia types he's played so often for me to even think of raiding his refrigerator.

A touching scene from Reservoir Dogs:

Tarantino must have seen the better side of Keitel's nature. After all, he got in and out of that refrigerator in one piece!

This Day in History

Welcome to your life
There's no turning back
Even while we sleep

We will find You acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

It's my own desire
It's my own remorse
Help me to decide

Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world

There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do, I'll be right behind you

So glad we've almost made it
So sad they had to fade it
Everybody wants to rule the world

I can't stand this indecision
Married with a lack of vision
Everybody wants to rule the world

Say that you'll never, never, never, need it
One headline, why believe it?

Everybody wants to rule the world

 All for freedom and for pleasure

Nothing ever lasts forever

 
Everybody wants to rule the world

On May 8, 1945, the plug was finally pulled on the Nazi war machine.

 

Quips and Quotations (The Usual Suspects Edition)

"You've got your mother's great compassion, and your father's steely ambition, whoever that may be."

--Bill Maher to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow. To his credit, Farrow seemed to take it in stride.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21ajfOl05PI

Trick Shtick

Harry "The Hat" Anderson 1952-2018

Night Court 1984-1992

Dave's World 1993-1997

Harry Anderson is best known for his two hit sitcoms (three, if you really know your '80s television), and while none of those series were lacking in laughs, I don't think any of them were the best showcase for his talent, which was simply Anderson alone in front of an audience doing his act. Not that I personally was in that audience. Instead I watched at home as Anderson for a time also made sporadic appearances on Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live, but it at least gave me a sense of what his night club act must have been like. And what was that act? Before he became a wisecracking judge and a wisecracking Miami columnist, Anderson was a wisecracking magician. Watch:

 

 And, for the grand finale, perhaps the most gruesome trick ever devised by the mind of Man:

Don't try that at home...or at a needle-exchange program.

Vital Viewing (Globe/Grindhouse Edition)

1960s screen teen ingenue Olivia Hussey was born on this day in 1951. In the following video, she reflects on her unusual adolescence:

Now let's take a little trip to Verona, courtesy of filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli:

The above is still Hussey's best known role, one that made her a star back in '68, whether that was her goal or not. But perhaps Billy Shakespeare is too highfalutin for you. Maybe you'd like a holiday film instead. We'll jump ahead six years:

Not much call there for iambic pentameter, huh?

Quips and Quotations (Rainy Day Women ♯12 & 35 Edition)

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.

--Charles Baudelaire

Rabbit Redux, or Shelling Points

(originally posted on 3/30/2013)


Christianity-wise, Easter is a much more important holiday than Christmas. After all, Easter celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Neat trick if you can pull it off. Christmas, on the other hand, merely celebrates Jesus' birth. Anybody can be born. Just look at David Hasselhoff. He was born, wasn't he? So was Paula Abdul. And Scott Baio, Vanna White, Prince Charles, Kitty Kelley, Peirs Morgan, Michelle Bachmann, Harry Reid, Florence Henderson, and the guy who played Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies.

For that matter, I was born. Trust me, folks, it's doable.

So, if it's a less important occasion, why does Christmas seem bigger? Nobody wants to admit this, but it's because the secularists got into the act. They took a solemn holiday and made it fun. More important, as far as the merchants are concerned, they made it profitable. So profitable with all those Christmas sales, blaring songs, horrendous crowds, and blinding tinsel, they've made all the non-mercantile secularists among us wonder if we shouldn't give solemnity another chance.

Easter, then, is another chance for solem-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z...

Even if Easter is second-rate as far as secular holidays go, it's not for lack of trying on the part of the mover and shakers of popular culture, who've kept up the potentially profitable fight all these years. Some examples:

Actually, I think Easter would be the safest time of year for vegetables (assuming vegetables can think, as the above illustration implies.) I mean, it's not like you're going to find rutabagas in your basket. And who dyes onions?

(Incidentally, since the above computer-animated series features anthropomorphic vegetables, what happens when one goes into a coma? It's a bit a redundant to say they're in a vegetative state, isn't it?)

I wonder if she delivers the Un-eggs.

Soft boiled humor.

I hope they don't accidentally drink the dye and beer the eggs. (You may think that's bad grammar, but those folks are Dutch; they may not even notice.)

Easter cheesecake.

I wonder if these are also good for a sore throat.

A nice, cozy, romantic getaway.

Easter before cell phones.

Easter eggs that snap, crackle, and pop.

 He has to get to work somehow, doesn't he?

"...with liberty and jelly beans for all."

That's one creepy-looking Easter Bunny.

"...it will be a blue Easter without you..."

"...one singular sensation..."

They celebrate Easter in France, too.

So, is it working? Have we made the holiday secular enough?

Still no Christmas, but close...very, very close.

Have a happy and safe Easter, whatever your belief system may be.