And now Ernest Borgnine has left us

From fighting in World War II on through seven decades of a legendary acting career, it can't be said that Ernest Borgnine wasn't blessed with ninety-five years of a packed life on this Earth...

The first time I saw Borgnine in anything, it was Escape from New York. He played Cabbie: the guy driving the taxi through the streets of the then-future maximum security prison that was Manhattan. Not long afterward he appeared for the first time as hotshot veteran pilot Dominic Santini on Airwolf. And over the years I managed to catch his earlier work too, like Marty (for which he won an Academy Award) and his sitcom McHale's Navy.

Borgnine had more than 200 acting credits, right up to the last few years where he was known to younger audiences as Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants (I will admit to having never seen anything pertaining to Spongebob: I only know what the kiddies tell me...)

Thoughts and prayers going out to Mr. Borgnine's family tonight.

And in tribute to his memory, here is the ultra-violent shootout scene he was involved in from the 1969 western The Wild Bunch!

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"We're gonna turn it on! We're gonna bring you the power!"

It's been six days since the derecho event last Friday night crippled electrical infrastructure across the East Coast. My girlfriend Kristen had been one of those afflicted: at one point there were more than 20,000 people without juice in Roanoke County, Virginia but thankfully earlier this evening her lights came back on (along with the air conditioning :-)

Okay well, this isn't really something designed as a tribute to those brave souls who have been laboring like mad to replace snapped-apart power poles and fixing transformers, but at least the song itself fits. From 1971 it's the original intro to PBS's hit series The Electric Company!

Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno together on a children's educational TV show. Those were heady days, dear readers...

Seriously though: many, many thanks and thoughts of appreciation to the thousands of electrical workers who have been striving through some of the most brutal heat on record to restore power back to millions of people who got slammed by this thing.

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The officially licensed E.T. Finger Light

From the "What the hell were they thinking?!" file, GeekTyrant has found what must be the worst licensed merchandise ever: the E.T. Finger Light...

I'm looking at this and the only thing that I can honestly muster to mind to say is "Oh. My. God."

Fortunately more tactful minds prevailed and this light was pulled in favor of a full-hand version (I spotted it on sale at Toys R Us yesterday) but even so: where the hell was the due diligence on this thing? I mean, this was really manufactured and marketed.

But hey, at least the Atari 2600 game is no longer the worst-ever piece of E.T. merchandise...

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If you've never seen A FACE IN THE CROWD...

...then be aware that TCM (the Turner Classic Movies channel) will be running it at 1:45 a.m. this coming Friday, July 6th. That's Eastern Standard Time anyway (dunno how that'll translate in your own locality). Be sure to set your DVRs accordingly!

Why?

Because if you only knew Andy Griffith from the down-home Sheriff Andy Taylor he played on The Andy Griffith Show, then his performance in A Face in the Crowd will without a doubt shock the hell out of you.

This was Griffith's first film role. Directed by Elia Kazan from a screenplay by Budd Schulberg and released in 1957, A Face in the Crowd has Griffith as drunken Arkansas drifter "Lonesome" Rhodes: a no-good bum who becomes a media creation with fame, fortune and irredeemably rotten with power and corruption. Over time Rhodes comes to have influence over millions of people through the sway of television. And he is the most viciously mean bastard that you're ever likely to see in any motion picture in the history of anything. Also starring Patricia Neal, with appearances by Walter Matthau and Lee Remick, A Face in the Crowd has Andy so far removed from Mayberry that you'll be genuinely left wondering how in heck did he ever wind up with The Andy Griffith Show. Even so, in light of Griffith's passing early yesterday, it's a really nice tribute to his memory that TCM is doing by playing this movie. Highly recommended!

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Mourning in Mayberry: Andy Griffith has passed away

The very sad news breaking everywhere right now is that Andy Griffith has passed away at the age of 86 at his home in Manteo, on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Awright well, what can be said that hasn't already been during the course of his long life: Griffith was an incredible performer, whether he was acting or singing or doing comedy... like what started it all for him, his 1953 monologue "What It Was, Was Football":

A few years later Griffith was in No Time for Sergeants, considered by many to be his single funniest work...

And 'course it wasn't long afterward that Griffith was keeping the sleepy little town of Mayberry safe and sound as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Griffith first put on the badge in a "backdoor pilot" episode of Danny Thomas's Make Room for Daddy (an episode which also featured future co-stars Ronnie Howard and Frances Bavier). More than fifty years later, and The Andy Griffith Show is still playing, somewhere, throughout the world in syndication.

But if you seriously want to see Griffith shine, you have to step away from his comedic repertoire and look at what he was capable of doing as a serious dramatic actor. The first time I saw Andy Griffith as anything apart from Sheriff Taylor, it was his portrayal of real-life murderer John Wallace in the 1983 television movie Murder in Coweta County...

Griffith starred opposite Johnny Cash, who played the Georgia sheriff who brought Wallace down for murder. The final scene, showing a shaven-headed Griffith strapped down in the electric chair, would be a particularly unsettling image for anyone who grew up with The Andy Griffith Show.

But that's downright mild compared to what was Andy Griffith's very first movie: from 1957, it's A Face in the Crowd.

I've no idea how else to put it: if you've never seen it before, A Face in the Crowd will scare the hell out of you...

I first saw it about a year and a half ago when TCM ran it. Directed by Elia Kazan, A Face in the Crowd has Andy a long, long way from Mayberry as drunken drifter "Lonesome" Rhodes. It's a brutal morality tale about celebrityhood and its power to corrupt. A movie that in many ways was far ahead of its time and even prophetic. And Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes is positively the meanest son of a bitch you're likely to see in any movie. If you haven't seen it already, I have to recommend it as being perhaps the finest work that Andy Griffith ever pulled off.

But today, Griffith is mostly going to be remembered as "America's Sheriff": the chief constable of a town that never really was but we all wanted to visit.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.

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United States Supreme Court upholds Obamacare

What. The. HELL?!?!?

HOW in the blue f--k is ANYTHING about Obamacare constitutional?!? What the #$%* are they smoking at the Supreme Court?!? Are they high on bath salts or something?!

Well, it's not like this would be the first time that the Supreme Court screwed it up, is it?

The individual mandate just became the biggest tax imposition in the history of mankind. We are now living in a socialist state that would have made the Kremlin hardliners envious.

This country is soooooooo screwed.

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BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY lip sync!

A little over a week ago I was in a rented SUV thingy riding up to Mount Hood in Oregon along with m'lady Kristen, her brother and his wife. And it just so happened that "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen came on the radio.

Well as many people know I can't help but perform along whenever that song gets played. So much so that I've developed a little "act" over the years. But Melissa had a bit of a headache so Kristen quickly asked me to "tone it down" a tad.

As you can tell, I did indeed maintain some decorum... though I couldn't help but cut loose a bit :-)

You may have to turn up your speakers to hear the radio.

Thanks to Kristen for posting this (and I'd totally forgotten that she recorded it :-)

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DALLAS came back last night

I didn't know it either until yesterday morning (yes, I can be woefully behind on pop culture at times). Not a "reboot" as it turns out but a new series on cable network TNT that's a continuation of the primetime drama that ran on CBS from 1978 to 1991 (not counting the '85-'86 "Bobby Ewing/Only a dream" season).

So I tuned into Dallas, which I rarely do for a new television series. And lo and behold I enjoyed it quite a lot! It was like the Ewings had been going about their lives all this time and we caught up with them two decades later. Larry Hagman is back as the scheming J.R. Ewing, Patrick Duffy returns to the saddle as brother Bobby and Linda Gray - lovely as ever - has come back to the role of J.R.'s on-again/off-again wife Sue Ellen. But the real action is found among the next generation: J.R.'s son John Ross and Bobby's adopted heir Christopher. John Ross is old-school Texas oilman like his daddy and Christopher is into developing alternative energy industries. There's already a great dynamic set up between the two, set once again amidst Southfork (which the late Miss Ellie had willed would never be drilled for petro).

Maybe it's not the legendary feud between the Ewing and Barnes clans that began with Jock and Digger eighty years earlier, but it's nonetheless a smart update that stays faithful to the spirit of the original. Ken Kercheval is set to return later this season as Cliff Barnes (maybe we should begin wagering on how many times Cliff gets drunk this time) and apparently Victoria Principal might be reprising Pam.

So in honor of the triumphant return of Dallas, here is one of the most classic bits of dialogue in television history. From the original CBS series, it's J.R. and Sue Ellen having it out in their own inimitable fashion...

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Back from the Pacific Northwest!

That was the most fun trip that I've had in a long, long time.

Will be posting pics in the next few days, after getting caught back up on things. I'm wondering if the excursion to Mount St. Helens might merit a post all its own.

So... did I miss anything? :-)

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THE SHINING, PART II

Struggling writer Christopher Knight becomes the latest caretaker to fall victim to the madness of the Overlook Hotel...

Except it's not winter: it's early June. This isn't Colorado either: it's Oregon. And this is not the Overlook, but the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood (open for skiing year-round) which is what was use for the exterior and establishing shots of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic The Shining.

And while we were there I just had to channel my inner Jack Nicholson for a pic (especially since there was so much snow around us!).

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Ray Bradbury has passed away

This world is suddenly much less interesting this morning...




Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles and so much other classic fiction, has passed away at the age of 91.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family today.

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Greetings from Oregon!

Looking at Mount Hood from our chateau this morning...



And later today we are headed across the Columbia River into Washington State to visit Mount Saint Helens.

Will try to post some pics when I get back home :-)

Oh yeah, we saw a marijuana store in Portland yesterday! This place out-weirds even Asheville... but Oregon has still gotta be one of the most beautiful places that I've ever visited :-)

And oh yeah, here is Kristen and I at Multnomah Falls!

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Watching HATFIELDS & MCCOYS on History Channel

Tonight is Part 2 of Hatfields & McCoys, History Channel's miniseries about the legendary feud between the two clans that erupted across the hardscrabble of West Virginia and Kentucky in the years following the Civil War. And I'm enjoying the heck out of it! The miniseries that is.

Anyhoo, in addition to Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, it also stars Tom Berenger. And as luck would have it I got to meet Mr. Berenger last month at ActionFest in Asheville!

I soooo wish I had brought my DVD copy of Gettysburg along and asked him to autograph it. Or at least my Blu-ray of Inception.

Anyway, Hatfields & McCoys is pretty good so far. Well worth catching, or DVRing for later viewing.

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This song won't get out of my head!!

I told y'all that I've been quite busy lately. So much so that I'm sadly lacking in recent pop culture.

Take f'rinstance, "Red Solo Cup" by Toby Keith: a song that I did not know anything about the existence of until a few nights ago when Dad and I were driving back from dinner in Greensboro. I had to turn the volume up to make sure I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing. Before very long, Dad and I were both cracking up laughing!

Except now... this song is stuck in my brain and it refuses to leave!!

Maybe if I post the music video for it, that will help to exorcise this particular demon. So here it is: "Red Solo Cup"...

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There's a brand new girl in my life!

Awright, yes, I know: I have been woefully slack in blogging of late. Didn't even get around to doing that write-up about ActionFest (I'll be brief: Solomon Kane is the purest Robert E. Howard adaptation we've ever gotten and it oughtta kick all kinds of unholy booty at the box office, Goon is a riot, ManBorg shows how anyone can make an awesome movie for less than a thousand dollars Canadian, and Comin' At Ya! 3-D 30th Anniversary was the craziest midnight showing I've ever attended). And there was also this really big ballroom dance thingy that Kristen did a few weeks ago, that I'll be posting some video of hopefully sooner than later. 'Twas the first time that our families got to meet each other :-)

Anyway, there's plenty of good reason why I've been away from the blog more than I'd liked. There's some crazy good stuff happening behind the scenes on this end of things that have demanded full-time attention.

And Lord willing, I'll get to share some of it soon.

But in the meantime, I would like to present a tale of love at first sight.

Click after the jump for the rest of the story!

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Why is Jar Jar Binks helping the Iranian military?

The government of Iran is really trying to goad us into attacking them this time.

Never mind their nuclear facilities: look at what showed up in an OFFICIAL photo from Iran's government-controlled Mehr News Agency...

You may have to click it to see it depending on what device you're using. But anyhoo: there's Jar Jar Binks, the much-maligned Gungan hippie that Ahmed Best portrayed in the Star Wars prequels, amidst the clouds of exhaust from Iran's ballistic missile test (which is also obviously Photoshop-ped).

Iran had better tread carefully. I mean, Osama Bin Laden was found to be cavorting with Sesame Street's Bert shortly after 9/11... and we all know how that turned out for Bin Laden a year ago, aye?

Tip o' the hat to my girlfriend Kristen for passing this along :-)

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George Lindsey, AKA Goober Pyle, has passed away

I saw George Lindsey live onstage at the Grand Ole Opry when I was six years old. Even at that young age, it was something of a surprise to hear that the man I knew best as Goober Pyle from The Andy Griffith Show could also sing really well too. He was performing right alongside Roy Aycuff, Grandpa Jones, a few other country legends.

What a performer Lindsey was. I mean, to go from playing sinister "tough guy" types (including one appearance on The Twilight Zone) to being one of the most beloved comedy characters in television history. In the past few years it was also revealed that George Lindsey was at one point seriously considered to be the actor who would play Spock on the original Star Trek series.

But it will always be Goober - Mayberry's fun-loving, ever-grinning grease monkey - who we will most fondly remember Lindsey as being. Somewhere here in North Carolina and in a better time still, Goober can be found even now down at the fillin' station. I've no doubt he'll be there as long as good television like The Andy Griffith Show is still on the air.

George Lindsey passed away yesterday at the age of 83.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.

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