My previous blog about the infamous Dawn Langley Hall in Charleston led me to thinking about the best Hollywood movies in which cross-dressing plays a vital role of the plot. Here's my list.
Some Like It Hot: One of the all-time funniest movies. Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe are all at the top of their game. Jack Lemmon gives what may be the greatest comic performance in cinema. And to top it off ... you also get the great Joe E. Brown in single-minded pursuit after the cross-dressing Jack Lemmon.
Tootsie: A close second to Some Like It Hot. Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, Terri Garr, and Jessica Lange are all phenomenal. And kudos to the late director Sidney Pollack for his great cameo as Hoffman's exasperated agent.
Victor/Victoria: In 1930s Paris Julie Andrews plays a struggling female singer who cannot get a job. Her friend (played by the fabulous Robert Preston) comes up with a scheme: Victoria will pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman and get a job as a female impersonator in a nightclub. Then Chicago mobster James Garner finds himself oddly attracted to "Victor". Great, great movie.
Psycho: What else do you need to know? Anthony Perkins as a cross-dressing murderer masquerading as Mama.
Dressed To Kill: Michael Caine is chilling as a cross-dressing psychopath.
The Crying Game: Infamous movie about a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who executes one of his hostages and then goes on to have a relationship with the murdered man's girlfriend.
Nuns on the Run: Comic silliness with Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane as criminals who hide out in a convent dressed as nuns.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar: Hilarious movie with Patrick Swazye and Wesley Snipes as transvestites who get marooned in a small town and get involved with the locals and their troubles.
Ed Wood: Directed by Tim Burton (in glorous black and white) and starring Johnny Depp as the cross-dressing cult movie maker, and all around weirdo, Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films and also his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played with magical intensity by Martin Landau.
WORSE CROSS-DRESSING MOVIES
Glen or Glenda: Usually considered one of the worst movies ever made, it has become a cult classic due to its awfulness. Directed and starring Ed Wood (with a drug-addicted and impoverished Bela Lugosi) with such ineptness it inspired a movie that was 100 times better, Ed Wood.
Mrs. Doubtfire: Robin Williams in drag so he can see his kids ... it's even worse than it sounds, mainly because it is directed by the vapid Chris Columbus.
Yentl: Barbra Streisand cross-dresses as a Jewish man so she can study law. Bad, bad, bad ...
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
CHARLESTON and ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.
Unknown to many is the fact that an bizarre event in Charleston became fodder for a great Laugh-In joke. In October 1971 a Charleston woman named Dawn Langley Hall gave birth to a daughter Natasha. Nothing unusual about that ... right?
Well, when Dawn had arrived in Charleston in 1962 she was called Gordon Langley Hall ... yes she was a man. But on September 23, 1968, after successful surgery at John Hopkin's University's Gender Identity Clinic, Gordon became Dawn. Gordon claimed he had been a woman his entire life, but had mis-identified at birth as a man. (Yeah, right.)
Unknown to many is the fact that an bizarre event in Charleston became fodder for a great Laugh-In joke. In October 1971 a Charleston woman named Dawn Langley Hall gave birth to a daughter Natasha. Nothing unusual about that ... right?
Well, when Dawn had arrived in Charleston in 1962 she was called Gordon Langley Hall ... yes she was a man. But on September 23, 1968, after successful surgery at John Hopkin's University's Gender Identity Clinic, Gordon became Dawn. Gordon claimed he had been a woman his entire life, but had mis-identified at birth as a man. (Yeah, right.)
Dawn became engaged to a black man named John-Paul Simmons. But in 1968 the South Carolina state constitution prohibited the “marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or a person who shall have one-eighth or more Negro blood.” Dawn hired a lawyer and changed South Carolina law. Charleston's first inter-racial marriage of record took place for January 22, 1969.
For several months during the spring and summer of 1971, Dawn walked the streets of Charleston wearing maternity clothes. Some claimed she would have a big belly beneath her dress one day, and a flat stomach the next. Someone claimed to see a military surplus blanket stuffed beneath Dawn’s dress. Anna Montgomery worked at a baby store on King Street and waited on Dawn. Anna claimed in the Charleston Chronicle that Dawn looked like a pregnant woman, “he forgot to tie down the strings of a pillowcase stuffed with cotton."
Dawn was convinced that white Charleston wanted to kill her unborn half-black child. She claimed there were numerous threats against her, so she decided to move seven hundred miles north to Philadelphia to give birth at the University of Pennsylvania hospital – or maybe to better hide whatever deception she was trying to pull. John-Paul remained in Charleston.
According to a birth certificate on file at the Department of Health Vital Statistics in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on October 17, 1971, Natasha Marginell Manugault Paul Simmons was born. After her return to Charleston, Dawn pushed Natasha up and down the streets in an old-fashioned British baby carrier just like the one the Queen had for Prince Charles. She kept the birth certificate handy to flash at all doubters. Even John-Paul wasn’t impressed. He knew exactly where Natasha came from – one of his girlfriends.
“I’d been going with her for eight months –constantly had sex, sex, sex, all the time with this girl,” he said. “She was about twenty-three. She got pregnant." John-Paul claimed that the girl’s daddy knew Dawn wanted a baby, and the daddy didn’t want his daughter to have an illegitimate daughter with a black man. Dawn gave the father $1000 for the baby. The first time John-Paul saw Natasha he commented, "Whoever saw a blue-eyed nigger?"
Dawn’s announcement of the birth of her daughter became the fodder for TV comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, hosts of the wildly popular Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a show with more than forty million viewers. The opening monologue contained the following exchange:
Dan Rowan: News flash: Charleston, South Carolina. Noted transsexual Dawn Simmons hast just given birth to a daughter.
Dick Martin: We can only hope she grows up to be half the man her mother was.
For the complete story of Dawn Langley Hall you can read the following:
- Wicked Charleston, Vol. II: Prostitutes, Politics & Prohibition by Mark R. Jones (yours truly) Chapter Five is titled "The Queen of Ansonborough".
- Dawn: A Charleston Legend by Dawn Langley Hall. Dawn's memoir of her life.
- Peninsula of Lies by Edward Ball. A kind of detective story that refutes some of the claims made by Dawn in her memoir.
Friday, May 23, 2008
UNFORTUNATE NAMES FOR NEWLYWEDS
These are self-explanatory.
Butts-McCraken
Poore-Sapp
Crapp-Beer
Best-Lay
Filler-QuickMonday, May 19, 2008
'WHITE-LINE 'RAVENEL "Angry' / RUSTY THOMAS Gone / TEDDY KENNEDY Alive
Thomas Ravenel, former SC State Treasurer is angry that he has to go to prison after being convicted of cocaine possession and intent to distribute. I guess being a Ravenel skewers your world view that you're not supposed to go to jail. "I've kind of resigned myself that I'm not going to get any breaks," he said.
Welcome to reality, Mr. Ravenel. Now talk to Mayor Joe about resigning ...
But it's difficult to blame Ravenel for his elitist view - growing up in the pampered good-ole-boy culture of old Charleston. The same culture that allowed fire chief Rusty Thomas (now resigned) to keep the CFD at the sterling standards of the 1970s. Chief Thomas is the perfect example of The Peter Principle - 'In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.'
On July 7, 2007, Chief Thomas defended the training and standards of CFD. He said that he trusted the department's time-honed (i.e. old, outdated) techniques, regardless of what written standards might say.
"We come from a long line of traditional firefighting, and we are never going to get away from that — never," Thomas said. "You can't read out of a book how to put a fire out. You have to go out there and do it, and that's what we do."
And people wonder why South Carolina (and Charleston County) have some of the worst public education in the United States. Here we have a public official saying that he has nothing to learn by reading about advancements in fire fighting theory and safety. CFD trained their staff to rush headlong into the building. Charleston firefighters are taught in training that if a newspaper photographer snapped their photo at a fire scene they weren't doing their jobs. That meant they were standing outside the burning building, rather than attacking the blaze head-on.
Wow. And people in this city are STILL supporting Chief Thomas and Mayor Joe. You remember Mayor Joe, don't you? The man whose job it is to keep abreast of the status of all city departments. The Mayor blames the owner of the Sofa Super Store for the deaths of the Charleston 9. Because, after all, nothing is EVER the city's fault.
I guess we should blame the flooding on the pennisula on the rain, not on the city's failure to solve the drainage problem. Blame the eye-sore trash of cigarette butts up and down Market Street every morning on the restuarant owners, not on the city who made it illegal to smoke inside privately owned businesses.
But we can keep dumping money into the abyss called the South Carolina Aquarium. By the way ... when's the last time anybody saw a movie at the IMAX? Oops, sorry, it's closed.
Just another example of the Charleston way of doing business.
****************************************************
In similar news, it seems Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D/M[arxist]-Mass) had a seizure over the weekend. And as of this writing, Mary Jo Kopechne is still dead.
Leo DeCapprio discusses the size of his brain ... or his penis ... not sure which.
Welcome to reality, Mr. Ravenel. Now talk to Mayor Joe about resigning ...
But it's difficult to blame Ravenel for his elitist view - growing up in the pampered good-ole-boy culture of old Charleston. The same culture that allowed fire chief Rusty Thomas (now resigned) to keep the CFD at the sterling standards of the 1970s. Chief Thomas is the perfect example of The Peter Principle - 'In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.'
On July 7, 2007, Chief Thomas defended the training and standards of CFD. He said that he trusted the department's time-honed (i.e. old, outdated) techniques, regardless of what written standards might say.
"We come from a long line of traditional firefighting, and we are never going to get away from that — never," Thomas said. "You can't read out of a book how to put a fire out. You have to go out there and do it, and that's what we do."
And people wonder why South Carolina (and Charleston County) have some of the worst public education in the United States. Here we have a public official saying that he has nothing to learn by reading about advancements in fire fighting theory and safety. CFD trained their staff to rush headlong into the building. Charleston firefighters are taught in training that if a newspaper photographer snapped their photo at a fire scene they weren't doing their jobs. That meant they were standing outside the burning building, rather than attacking the blaze head-on.
Wow. And people in this city are STILL supporting Chief Thomas and Mayor Joe. You remember Mayor Joe, don't you? The man whose job it is to keep abreast of the status of all city departments. The Mayor blames the owner of the Sofa Super Store for the deaths of the Charleston 9. Because, after all, nothing is EVER the city's fault.
I guess we should blame the flooding on the pennisula on the rain, not on the city's failure to solve the drainage problem. Blame the eye-sore trash of cigarette butts up and down Market Street every morning on the restuarant owners, not on the city who made it illegal to smoke inside privately owned businesses.
But we can keep dumping money into the abyss called the South Carolina Aquarium. By the way ... when's the last time anybody saw a movie at the IMAX? Oops, sorry, it's closed.
Just another example of the Charleston way of doing business.
****************************************************
In similar news, it seems Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D/M[arxist]-Mass) had a seizure over the weekend. And as of this writing, Mary Jo Kopechne is still dead.
*****************************************************
HOLLYWOOD ALERT
Leo DeCapprio discusses the size of his brain ... or his penis ... not sure which.Wednesday, May 14, 2008
BOOKS I HAVE READ MORE THAN FIVE (5) TIMES
This list does not include juvenile books like The Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer and Black Beauty since I read those dozens of times as a kid. Only adult novels make the list:
To Kill A Mockingbird / Harper Lee: I have read this book every 2-3 years since 1977. One of the best of all time. Simple and charming yet very deep. One of the best movies of all time also ...
The World According to Garp / John Irving: When this book was released I read it two times in a row! I literally finished the book and turned back to the first page and read it again. Funny as hell and sad as hell ... a difficult combination to pull off well. Decent movie too ...
The Princess Bride / William Goldman: One of the most fun books you will ever read. The early edition (pre-movie) had one of the greatest tag lines in publishing history: What happens when the most beautiful woman in the world meets the handsomest prince in the world and he turns out to be a son-of-a-bitch? The movie is good, but the book (of course) is much much better. I read this in college and tried to interest my friends in reading it ... I had no takers. When the movie was released 20 yrs later, everyone wanted to read the book and I took great delight in reminding them I tried to make that happen years ago.
Carrion Comfort / Dan Simmons: Wow! Creepy beyond belief. And some of it takes place in Charleston! The little old Charleston matron, Melanie, is one of the creepiest characters to walk through the pages of a book. A massive, multi-plotted novel about a vast global conspiracy among "mind vampires" who use the power of their will to impose it upon weaker humans. French movie is in production ...
A Town Like Alice / Nevil Shute: A great adventure romance. A WWII book, a romance, a travel story ... all rolled into one. Shute is on my list of one of the few writers who has never written a boring book. Great BBC production for Masterpiece Theater in the 1980s starring Bryan Brown.
Dune / Frank Herbert: Towering sci-fi epic that deserves its reputation as one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time. If you've read it, you already understand how detailed and complex the story is ... and how exciting. It takes place on a remote desert planet named Arrakis that is the only place in the known universe that produced the highly addictive spice melange. The plot is fueled by a massive power grab by feuding Intergalactic families with all the intrigue and double-crosses you might expect, along with a touch of mystical religion. Lousy movie directed by David Lynch in the 1980s and a tepid miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel. New version is in production currently ... I'm not holding out much hope. The book is difficult to turn into a movie.
Replay / Ken Grimwood: A classic take on the time-travel novel. In the opening paragraph 43-year old Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and "awakens" in 1963 at the age of 18 ... with all the memories of his previous life intact. He lives again to the age of 43 and then dies ... and "awakens" again ... over and over and over. Kind of hope they don't make a movie ... Hollywood would screw it up like they did Jumper.
Strangers & Watchers / Dean R. Koontz: Koontz has fallen prey to the Stephen King syndrome ... publishing books that would never see the light of day if they were written by someone who was not a "name" author. However, these two books were written when Koontz was hitting his commercial (and creative) stride. Strangers is one of the best takes of the alien-abduction story that branches out in intriguing ways. Watchers is Koontz favorite book of his ... a sweet and harrowing story about a lonely man and woman who are brought together by an unsual dog. The plot of the movie Watchers was so different I'm not sure the producers ever read the book.
Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card: My personal favorite sci-fi book. Deceptively simple but full of misdirection and narrative layers. Eight-year old Ender Wiggen is an unsually intelligent boy who is sent to Battle Schoo. Several generations ago Earth luckily defeated an invading alien force called the Buggers, did not destroy them. So Earth is busy training the best and brightest to be ready to meet the Buggers when they return ... and they may be closer than you think. Movie version is in slow developement ... Card has huge control over this material ... thank goodness. Hoepfully when and if it is a movie, it will be faithful.
Cannery Row / John Steinbeck: My favorite novel by one of America's best writers. Steinbeck's "serious" books can become preachy populism (The Grapes of Wrath) , but his comic novels are flat-out hilarious and filled with great characters. The group of bums called "Mack and the boys" are some of the best comic relief in fiction. Odd and stylized movie starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger is entertaining.
To Kill A Mockingbird / Harper Lee: I have read this book every 2-3 years since 1977. One of the best of all time. Simple and charming yet very deep. One of the best movies of all time also ...
The World According to Garp / John Irving: When this book was released I read it two times in a row! I literally finished the book and turned back to the first page and read it again. Funny as hell and sad as hell ... a difficult combination to pull off well. Decent movie too ...
The Princess Bride / William Goldman: One of the most fun books you will ever read. The early edition (pre-movie) had one of the greatest tag lines in publishing history: What happens when the most beautiful woman in the world meets the handsomest prince in the world and he turns out to be a son-of-a-bitch? The movie is good, but the book (of course) is much much better. I read this in college and tried to interest my friends in reading it ... I had no takers. When the movie was released 20 yrs later, everyone wanted to read the book and I took great delight in reminding them I tried to make that happen years ago.
Carrion Comfort / Dan Simmons: Wow! Creepy beyond belief. And some of it takes place in Charleston! The little old Charleston matron, Melanie, is one of the creepiest characters to walk through the pages of a book. A massive, multi-plotted novel about a vast global conspiracy among "mind vampires" who use the power of their will to impose it upon weaker humans. French movie is in production ...
A Town Like Alice / Nevil Shute: A great adventure romance. A WWII book, a romance, a travel story ... all rolled into one. Shute is on my list of one of the few writers who has never written a boring book. Great BBC production for Masterpiece Theater in the 1980s starring Bryan Brown.
Dune / Frank Herbert: Towering sci-fi epic that deserves its reputation as one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time. If you've read it, you already understand how detailed and complex the story is ... and how exciting. It takes place on a remote desert planet named Arrakis that is the only place in the known universe that produced the highly addictive spice melange. The plot is fueled by a massive power grab by feuding Intergalactic families with all the intrigue and double-crosses you might expect, along with a touch of mystical religion. Lousy movie directed by David Lynch in the 1980s and a tepid miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel. New version is in production currently ... I'm not holding out much hope. The book is difficult to turn into a movie.
Replay / Ken Grimwood: A classic take on the time-travel novel. In the opening paragraph 43-year old Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and "awakens" in 1963 at the age of 18 ... with all the memories of his previous life intact. He lives again to the age of 43 and then dies ... and "awakens" again ... over and over and over. Kind of hope they don't make a movie ... Hollywood would screw it up like they did Jumper.
Strangers & Watchers / Dean R. Koontz: Koontz has fallen prey to the Stephen King syndrome ... publishing books that would never see the light of day if they were written by someone who was not a "name" author. However, these two books were written when Koontz was hitting his commercial (and creative) stride. Strangers is one of the best takes of the alien-abduction story that branches out in intriguing ways. Watchers is Koontz favorite book of his ... a sweet and harrowing story about a lonely man and woman who are brought together by an unsual dog. The plot of the movie Watchers was so different I'm not sure the producers ever read the book.
Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card: My personal favorite sci-fi book. Deceptively simple but full of misdirection and narrative layers. Eight-year old Ender Wiggen is an unsually intelligent boy who is sent to Battle Schoo. Several generations ago Earth luckily defeated an invading alien force called the Buggers, did not destroy them. So Earth is busy training the best and brightest to be ready to meet the Buggers when they return ... and they may be closer than you think. Movie version is in slow developement ... Card has huge control over this material ... thank goodness. Hoepfully when and if it is a movie, it will be faithful.
Cannery Row / John Steinbeck: My favorite novel by one of America's best writers. Steinbeck's "serious" books can become preachy populism (The Grapes of Wrath) , but his comic novels are flat-out hilarious and filled with great characters. The group of bums called "Mack and the boys" are some of the best comic relief in fiction. Odd and stylized movie starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger is entertaining.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
X-FILES - BEST EPISODES
Rebel and I just finished our 14 month saga of watching all 9 seasons of The X-Files in order. Very sad to have it come to an end. I was most surprised by how many of the episodes in Season 9 were really good. However, Seasons 3,4,5,and 6 were when this show was really turning out a great episode week after week. So my final opinion. The best show on TV ... ever. Dana Scully is smart, and hot hot hot! Monica Reyes is almost as hot hot hot. The Smoking Man is one the greatest characters ever on TV, and the Lone Gunmen were fabulous. And Mulder is Mulder.
Here are my favorite episodes ... in order in which they were broadcast. I gave up trying to rank them. I did make myself leave out another 15 however.
1. Humbug
Production Code: 2X20 (second season, 20th episode)
Wacky and weird.
Mulder and Scully travel to Gibsonton, Florida, a town built and populated by circus and sideshow performers to investigate the death of Jerald Glazebrook, The Alligator Man. While searching for leads on the killer, the agents come across many bizarre characters including the local sheriff who was once known as Jim Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy, Dr Blockhead who performs human feats of endurance and The Conundrum, a tattooed jigsaw man who eats live animals. Scully finds it difficult to find a normal suspect, in a place where nothing is normal.
2. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Production Code: 3X04 Guest Star: Peter Boyle.
Sad and smart.
Mulder and Scully are called in to assist in an investigation of a killer who is targeting fortune tellers. The investigators have very little to go on and need all the help they can get. Clyde Bruckman, an insurance salesman, knows so many details about the crimes that Scully suspects he is the killer. Mulder however believes that Clyde Bruckman has psychic abilities and is divining the information that way. Peter Boyle as Bruckman is outstanding.
3. War of the Coprophages
Production Code: 3X12
Funny and weird.
Mulder travels to Millers Grove, Massachusetts to investigate reports of UFO sightings in the area. It turns out that the town is suffering from a cockroach invasion, and that these cockroaches have been attacking and killing people. Mulder confers with Scully by phone, she is skeptical of killer cockroaches. In each case Scully has an explanation, the exterminator was allergic to cockroaches and died of anaphylactic shock, the teenage boy was using drugs and suffered from Ekbom Syndrome, a drug induced delusion of insects invading the body causing the sufferer to try to cut them out. And the medical examiner died of an aneurysm while on the toilet. Then Mulder catches one of the cockroaches and discovers it has a metal body.
4. Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Production Code: 3X20 Guest Stars: Charles Nelson Reilly and Jess Ventura
Fabulous, maybe the best episode of all! Funny and weird like a nightmare.
Renowned writer Jose Chung, researching for his book on alien abductions, interviews Dana Scully, who relates to him the case of a teenage couple, Chrissy Giorgio and Harold Lamb, who claim to have been abducted while on a date in Klass County. The only problem is, the victims and witnesses all have different versions of the events that took place. From Chrissy's first belief that she had been a victim of date rape, to the re-appearance of Harold with his tale of alien abduction. Jesse Ventura as a Man In Black is a great cameo, and the casting of Charles Nelson Reilly is brillant. But the scene with Mulder in the diner eating plate after plate of slices of pie is true magic. Like the best lost episode of Twin Peaks.
5. Home
Production Code: 4X03
Monumentally CREEPY and disturbing!
A baby is found buried alive in shallow ground and appears to have birth defects resulting from generations of inbreeding, leading Mulder and Scully to a reclusive family who have a history of inbred children. You will also never listen to Johnny Mathis again and feel comfortable. Truly great! This episode was so disturbing FOX only aired it on network TV twice.
6. Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man
Production Code: 4X07
A Lone Gunmen episode! AND a Smoking Man episode all rolled into one! An important episode in the X-Files mythology.
Frohike pieces together and recites to Mulder and Scully what could be the possible life story of the Cigarette Smoking Man; from a young captain in the US Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy. What measures will the CSM take to ensure that he remains a mystery forever?
7. Small Potatoes
Production Code: 4X20
Hilarious and sweet.
Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilised eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.
8. Unusual Suspects
Production Code: 5X01
Funny as hell and important to the mythos.
In this flashback episode, Mulder meets a straight-laced federal employee, a sex mad AV expert and a nerdy computer hacker who become known as the Lone Gunmen. They bond together to help Susanne Modeski, a strange woman with evidence of a government conspiracy. When their plan to expose the conspiracy fails and Susanne is captured by a group of men-in-black, they soon become a paranoid group of government watchdogs.
9. The Post-Modern Prometheus
Production Code: 5X06
Sweet, odd and sad.
Filmed in glorious black and white with a comic book feel to it, this is a modern retelling of Frankenstein as Mulder and Scully get caught up in a town where the residents live on Jerry Springer episodes and fear a two-faced monster who has been impregnating the women.
10. Bad Blood
Production Code: 5X12 Guest star: Luke Wilson.
Funny and scary!
Another episode that shows different people's viewpoints of the same story. After Mulder chases down and kills a young man whom he believes to be a vampire, Scully realizes that his fangs are fake. The agents then return to DC, aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event. Luke Wilson plays the sheriff with the hots for Scully, or maybe not, depending on who is telling the story.
11. Triangle
Production Code: 6X03
Exciting and romantic.
Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has re-appeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future but evidence further suggests that it is he, who is back in the past. Mulder plants a REAL kiss on Scully in the time warp, knowing she will not remember in the real timeline.
12. Dreamland (1) Dreamland II (2)
Production Code: 6X04 Guest star: Michael McKean.
Mysterious and hilarious. One of the best!
While being detained near the famed "Dreamland" Area 51, a strange craft flies overhead and Mulder swaps bodies with an Area 51 'Man-in-Black'. While the other agent has fun in Mulder's body (seducing Skinner's secretary and putting the moves on Scully), Mulder himself finds it difficult to fit into someone else's life, especially a shadowy one. Mulder contacts Scully about the body-swap and tries to get her the Flight Data Recorder from the UFO test flight but his alter ego uses Mulder's FBI persona to have him arrested.
Mulder is thrown in jail at the Area 51 compound but is released when it is discovered that the flight data recorder he stole was a fake. Scully comes to her senses and realizes that the Mulder she sees isn't who he really is and heads back to Nevada to help the real Mulder. Meanwhile, the mechanism that caused the body swap is rapidly snapping back, undoing everything in its wake and Mulder and his alter ego must race to put themselves back where they belong.
13. Rain King
Production Code:6X07 Guest Star: Victoria Jackson.
Romantic, sweet and funny.
Mulder persuades Scully to join him in an investigation in Kroner, Kansas after being asked by the local Mayor, who believes that the drought they have been suffering from for the past nine months is caused by Daryl Moots. Following an argument with his fiancee Shelia, Daryl lost his leg in a car accident six months earlier, ever since then he has been able to make it rain at will. They go to Rain King Inc's office and meet Daryl's secretary, she cannot understand why Mulder and Scully are investigating Daryl who is just trying to help people.. Mulder and Scully go to a local farm where Daryl is due to make it rain. When Daryl arrives he claims not to know how he does it, but after a little dancing around, there is a clap of thunder and it starts to pour with rain. That night Mulder is nearly killed by a cow picked up by the wind and dropped in to his hotel room. Next morning Shelia claims to be responsible for the weather. Mulder doubts that she is the one controlling the weather but does believe that she is the key to the case as suspicions focus in on the local weatherman and his unrequited love for Shelia.
14. How The Ghosts Stole Christmas
Production Code: 6X08
Guest Stars: Edward Asner and Lily Tomlin.
Funny and creepy at the same time.
Mulder talks Scully into investigating a haunted house on Christmas Eve where several couples have met their fate on that very night. While there they encounter endless tricks and traps set by a ghostly couple who originally made a lovers suicide pact in the house. The ghosts try to convince Mulder and Scully to kill each other.
15. Arcadia
Production Code: 6X13
Hilarious!
On their first official case back on the X-Files, Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married couple at a prestigious planned community where several residents have recently disappeared after failing to comply with the rules and regulations.
16. The Unnatural
Production Code: 6X20
Great! One of the best!
It is Saturday afternoon and Mulder is in the X-files basement office leafing through New Mexico newspaper obituaries from the 1940's looking for anomalies, much to Scully's dismay on such a beautiful afternoon. But Mulder stumbles across a newspaper picture of agent Arthur Dales with a Negro baseball player and the alien bounty hunter. Ripping the page from the book, Mulder leaves the office and goes to Dales' apartment, only to discover that Dales brother, also named Arthur has taken over the apartment. But when he shows the photo to Dales, it turns out that the photo is of him not his brother.
In June 1947 Dales was a police office in Roswell, assigned to protect a Negro baseball star Josh Exley from member of the Klu Klux Klan, bent on keeping baseball white. Exley played for a Negro team called the Roswell Greys and had hit 60 home runs in the season matching Babe Ruth's record, and so was being scouted for the major leagues. Only Exley does not want to play for the major leagues, he is quite content to stay where he is and play baseball for the Roswell Greys. Only Dales claims this was because Exley was actually a grey alien who had fallen in love with the game of baseball and that was the reason he did not want to play in the major leagues. As the newspapers and reporters would dig in to his background and reveal the truth. A fear shared by Exley's fellow aliens who send the alien bounty hunter to deal with the problem in his own unique fashion.
17. Improbable
Production Code: 9ABX14
Guest Star: Burt Reynolds.
Weird and slyly funny.
When Reyes uses numerology to connect the murders of several women to an obsessed serial killer, she and Scully become trapped with a mysterious checker-playing man who may or may not be the killer. The question then becomes who is going to be the next victim. Burt Reynolds is very effective as the checker-playing man who may (or may NOT) be Satan.
Here are my favorite episodes ... in order in which they were broadcast. I gave up trying to rank them. I did make myself leave out another 15 however.
1. Humbug
Production Code: 2X20 (second season, 20th episode)
Wacky and weird.
Mulder and Scully travel to Gibsonton, Florida, a town built and populated by circus and sideshow performers to investigate the death of Jerald Glazebrook, The Alligator Man. While searching for leads on the killer, the agents come across many bizarre characters including the local sheriff who was once known as Jim Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy, Dr Blockhead who performs human feats of endurance and The Conundrum, a tattooed jigsaw man who eats live animals. Scully finds it difficult to find a normal suspect, in a place where nothing is normal.
2. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Production Code: 3X04 Guest Star: Peter Boyle.
Sad and smart.
Mulder and Scully are called in to assist in an investigation of a killer who is targeting fortune tellers. The investigators have very little to go on and need all the help they can get. Clyde Bruckman, an insurance salesman, knows so many details about the crimes that Scully suspects he is the killer. Mulder however believes that Clyde Bruckman has psychic abilities and is divining the information that way. Peter Boyle as Bruckman is outstanding.
3. War of the Coprophages
Production Code: 3X12
Funny and weird.
Mulder travels to Millers Grove, Massachusetts to investigate reports of UFO sightings in the area. It turns out that the town is suffering from a cockroach invasion, and that these cockroaches have been attacking and killing people. Mulder confers with Scully by phone, she is skeptical of killer cockroaches. In each case Scully has an explanation, the exterminator was allergic to cockroaches and died of anaphylactic shock, the teenage boy was using drugs and suffered from Ekbom Syndrome, a drug induced delusion of insects invading the body causing the sufferer to try to cut them out. And the medical examiner died of an aneurysm while on the toilet. Then Mulder catches one of the cockroaches and discovers it has a metal body.
4. Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Production Code: 3X20 Guest Stars: Charles Nelson Reilly and Jess Ventura
Fabulous, maybe the best episode of all! Funny and weird like a nightmare.
Renowned writer Jose Chung, researching for his book on alien abductions, interviews Dana Scully, who relates to him the case of a teenage couple, Chrissy Giorgio and Harold Lamb, who claim to have been abducted while on a date in Klass County. The only problem is, the victims and witnesses all have different versions of the events that took place. From Chrissy's first belief that she had been a victim of date rape, to the re-appearance of Harold with his tale of alien abduction. Jesse Ventura as a Man In Black is a great cameo, and the casting of Charles Nelson Reilly is brillant. But the scene with Mulder in the diner eating plate after plate of slices of pie is true magic. Like the best lost episode of Twin Peaks.
5. Home
Production Code: 4X03
Monumentally CREEPY and disturbing!
A baby is found buried alive in shallow ground and appears to have birth defects resulting from generations of inbreeding, leading Mulder and Scully to a reclusive family who have a history of inbred children. You will also never listen to Johnny Mathis again and feel comfortable. Truly great! This episode was so disturbing FOX only aired it on network TV twice.
6. Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man
Production Code: 4X07
A Lone Gunmen episode! AND a Smoking Man episode all rolled into one! An important episode in the X-Files mythology.
Frohike pieces together and recites to Mulder and Scully what could be the possible life story of the Cigarette Smoking Man; from a young captain in the US Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy. What measures will the CSM take to ensure that he remains a mystery forever?
7. Small Potatoes
Production Code: 4X20
Hilarious and sweet.
Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilised eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.
8. Unusual Suspects
Production Code: 5X01
Funny as hell and important to the mythos.
In this flashback episode, Mulder meets a straight-laced federal employee, a sex mad AV expert and a nerdy computer hacker who become known as the Lone Gunmen. They bond together to help Susanne Modeski, a strange woman with evidence of a government conspiracy. When their plan to expose the conspiracy fails and Susanne is captured by a group of men-in-black, they soon become a paranoid group of government watchdogs.
9. The Post-Modern Prometheus
Production Code: 5X06
Sweet, odd and sad.
Filmed in glorious black and white with a comic book feel to it, this is a modern retelling of Frankenstein as Mulder and Scully get caught up in a town where the residents live on Jerry Springer episodes and fear a two-faced monster who has been impregnating the women.
10. Bad Blood
Production Code: 5X12 Guest star: Luke Wilson.
Funny and scary!
Another episode that shows different people's viewpoints of the same story. After Mulder chases down and kills a young man whom he believes to be a vampire, Scully realizes that his fangs are fake. The agents then return to DC, aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event. Luke Wilson plays the sheriff with the hots for Scully, or maybe not, depending on who is telling the story.
11. Triangle
Production Code: 6X03
Exciting and romantic.
Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has re-appeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future but evidence further suggests that it is he, who is back in the past. Mulder plants a REAL kiss on Scully in the time warp, knowing she will not remember in the real timeline.
12. Dreamland (1) Dreamland II (2)
Production Code: 6X04 Guest star: Michael McKean.
Mysterious and hilarious. One of the best!
While being detained near the famed "Dreamland" Area 51, a strange craft flies overhead and Mulder swaps bodies with an Area 51 'Man-in-Black'. While the other agent has fun in Mulder's body (seducing Skinner's secretary and putting the moves on Scully), Mulder himself finds it difficult to fit into someone else's life, especially a shadowy one. Mulder contacts Scully about the body-swap and tries to get her the Flight Data Recorder from the UFO test flight but his alter ego uses Mulder's FBI persona to have him arrested.
Mulder is thrown in jail at the Area 51 compound but is released when it is discovered that the flight data recorder he stole was a fake. Scully comes to her senses and realizes that the Mulder she sees isn't who he really is and heads back to Nevada to help the real Mulder. Meanwhile, the mechanism that caused the body swap is rapidly snapping back, undoing everything in its wake and Mulder and his alter ego must race to put themselves back where they belong.
13. Rain King
Production Code:6X07 Guest Star: Victoria Jackson.
Romantic, sweet and funny.
Mulder persuades Scully to join him in an investigation in Kroner, Kansas after being asked by the local Mayor, who believes that the drought they have been suffering from for the past nine months is caused by Daryl Moots. Following an argument with his fiancee Shelia, Daryl lost his leg in a car accident six months earlier, ever since then he has been able to make it rain at will. They go to Rain King Inc's office and meet Daryl's secretary, she cannot understand why Mulder and Scully are investigating Daryl who is just trying to help people.. Mulder and Scully go to a local farm where Daryl is due to make it rain. When Daryl arrives he claims not to know how he does it, but after a little dancing around, there is a clap of thunder and it starts to pour with rain. That night Mulder is nearly killed by a cow picked up by the wind and dropped in to his hotel room. Next morning Shelia claims to be responsible for the weather. Mulder doubts that she is the one controlling the weather but does believe that she is the key to the case as suspicions focus in on the local weatherman and his unrequited love for Shelia.
14. How The Ghosts Stole Christmas
Production Code: 6X08
Guest Stars: Edward Asner and Lily Tomlin.
Funny and creepy at the same time.
Mulder talks Scully into investigating a haunted house on Christmas Eve where several couples have met their fate on that very night. While there they encounter endless tricks and traps set by a ghostly couple who originally made a lovers suicide pact in the house. The ghosts try to convince Mulder and Scully to kill each other.
15. Arcadia
Production Code: 6X13
Hilarious!
On their first official case back on the X-Files, Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married couple at a prestigious planned community where several residents have recently disappeared after failing to comply with the rules and regulations.
16. The Unnatural
Production Code: 6X20
Great! One of the best!
It is Saturday afternoon and Mulder is in the X-files basement office leafing through New Mexico newspaper obituaries from the 1940's looking for anomalies, much to Scully's dismay on such a beautiful afternoon. But Mulder stumbles across a newspaper picture of agent Arthur Dales with a Negro baseball player and the alien bounty hunter. Ripping the page from the book, Mulder leaves the office and goes to Dales' apartment, only to discover that Dales brother, also named Arthur has taken over the apartment. But when he shows the photo to Dales, it turns out that the photo is of him not his brother.
In June 1947 Dales was a police office in Roswell, assigned to protect a Negro baseball star Josh Exley from member of the Klu Klux Klan, bent on keeping baseball white. Exley played for a Negro team called the Roswell Greys and had hit 60 home runs in the season matching Babe Ruth's record, and so was being scouted for the major leagues. Only Exley does not want to play for the major leagues, he is quite content to stay where he is and play baseball for the Roswell Greys. Only Dales claims this was because Exley was actually a grey alien who had fallen in love with the game of baseball and that was the reason he did not want to play in the major leagues. As the newspapers and reporters would dig in to his background and reveal the truth. A fear shared by Exley's fellow aliens who send the alien bounty hunter to deal with the problem in his own unique fashion.
17. Improbable
Production Code: 9ABX14
Guest Star: Burt Reynolds.
Weird and slyly funny.
When Reyes uses numerology to connect the murders of several women to an obsessed serial killer, she and Scully become trapped with a mysterious checker-playing man who may or may not be the killer. The question then becomes who is going to be the next victim. Burt Reynolds is very effective as the checker-playing man who may (or may NOT) be Satan.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
South Carolina Education
Those who can, do.
Those who cannot, teach.
Those who really cannot, teach in South Carolina.
Those who cannot, teach.
Those who really cannot, teach in South Carolina.
Monday, March 31, 2008
WICKED CHARLESTON NEW COVER; TURN SIGNALS & SHELBY LYNNE
Happy to announce the new Wicked Charleston cover will be in book stores in early April. A much more appropriate cover than the original.
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Has anyone other than me noticed that people who drive luxury cars (BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, etc.) are mor often opting to purchase their vehicle without turn signals? Just a thought.
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I have always been a fan of the singer/songwriter school of music. Particularly the female variety. The list of my favorite artists always will include: Roseanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith, and the Indigo Girls. So I am now wondering HOW THE HELL DID I MISS SHELBY LYNNE?
I had heard of her of course, but for some reason I had dismissed her as a packaged country singer. And of course, she was in the early part of her career. However, I picked up her latest release, Just a Little Loving, a tribute to Dusty Springfield. Being a huge Springfield fan I bought it on impulse and the next day went and purchased two more Shelby CDs. Wow!
Just A Little Loving proves to me everything I've been complaining about modern female singers. All histronics and no emotion. Shelby is the polar opposite. Subtle singing, never screeches, almost whispering. I'm sorry it took me so long.
Friday, February 1, 2008
GOT A PROBLEM WITH YOUR TREE?
No, but I have a problem with that radio commerical. Has anyone other than me decided to NEVER call Van's Tree Service if you need tree work? They have the MOST annoying, cloying and shameless radio commercial. Van uses his grandson in the commercials.
First of all: what a low thing to do -- use a kid to promote your business. Obvously, Van's never read Dickens and his tales of child labor. The kid is whiny and annoying. One of those kids we all roll our eyes at in public. His parents (and obviously grandparents) thinks he's cute, but I can promise you ... he's not!
Join my boycott. If you ever need tree work. NEVER CALL VAN'S TREE SERVICE.
First of all: what a low thing to do -- use a kid to promote your business. Obvously, Van's never read Dickens and his tales of child labor. The kid is whiny and annoying. One of those kids we all roll our eyes at in public. His parents (and obviously grandparents) thinks he's cute, but I can promise you ... he's not!
Join my boycott. If you ever need tree work. NEVER CALL VAN'S TREE SERVICE.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
BEST & WORST OF 2007
Favorite Movies
I'd the be first to admit I saw very few movies this year, mainly because there were so few that caught my interest. The best movie I saw this year was released in 1950, Harvey, starring James Stewart.
I'd the be first to admit I saw very few movies this year, mainly because there were so few that caught my interest. The best movie I saw this year was released in 1950, Harvey, starring James Stewart.
- Dan In Real Life. Utterly delightful (and adult) comedy starring Steve Carrell as a widowed father of three daughters who is charmed by a women he meets in a chance encounter at a bookstore. Image his surprise when he discovers the woman is the new girlfriend of his younger brother. What a delight it is to find a well-written movie from Hollywood that deals with romance without resorting to crude sexual humor.
- Enchanted. Hilarious Disney send-up of itself. Cartoon princess is pushed down a well by her evil stepmother. Princess arrives at the bottom of the well which turns out to be New York City. The prince pursues and chaos ensues.
- Charleston, S.C.: A Magical History Tour. Filmed in 1991 and released in 2006 this is an uncomfortable viewing experience. It features David Farrow giving the type of Charleston tour that I have spent six years trying to combat - the romantic sepia-toned version of Charleston history. Billed as a walk though 'old Charleston' Farrow spends most of the tour standing in front of new buildings. The tour spends a total of 2 minutes exploring the houses south of Broad Street. Farrow spends most of the time drinking coffee and talking about being sent for dance lessons, and trotting out tired one-liners about Charleston that were out-dated when Jefferson Davis was president of the CSA. Farrow goes into a local's home to discuss Charleston's wild drinking history. If you are having trouble sleeping, I suggest you watch THAT minute segment. However, the most glaring 'OH MY GOD' moment is when Farrow takes the camera into the art studio of Elizabeth O'Neil Verner. Verner's elderly daughter proceeds to discuss her mother's career painting the "darkies" in their "sweet simplicity". Wow!
- The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen. Even though it was in published in 2003, this was by far the best book I read in 2007. A fascinating mixture of the history of the 1893 Chicago's World Fair with the methodical murder spree of H.H. Holmes, considered one of the first American sexual serial killers.
- The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Amazing novel that is old-fashioned in the greatest sense - a great story veiled in mystery. I hope Hollywood doesn't screw it up when they make it into a movie.
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles / Geoff Emerick. This may be the best book about the Beatles I have ever read - and I've read most of them! Emerick was the sound engineer for most of the Beatles' recorind sessions, and he relates the stories about how the music was made. Completely fascinating. This helped re-enforce my opinion that John was a jerk, Yoko was /is a nutcase, and Paul was the glue that kept the band together after Sgt. Pepper.
Music
- Not Too Late / Norah Jones. Another gem from Norah, doing what she does best - singing bluesy torchish songs.
- The Calling / Mary Chapin Carpenter. Any Chapin release is worth having, but this one was slightly disappointing. However, a weak Chapin is better than the best of most current artists.
- Build Your Own Fire / Jimmy Hall. Wow! Hall, former lead singer of Wet Willie (one of my favorite 70s bands) still sings and blows the harp like a young man. This is modern southern soul music at its finest.
- The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions / Cat Anderson. Recorded in 1978, this is an amazing collection of W.C. Handy standards with Jenkins Orphanage alum Anderson wailing away on his trumpet. This CD possibly got the most air time this year in my CD and MP3 player.
- Home / Delany & Bonnie. Recorded in 1968-69 and re-released in 2006. Long before the terms "root music" and "Americana" became a music category, these guys were playing it. Bonnie Bramlett has one of the greatest soul voices EVER.
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