Quote of the week

"The doughnut is the dumb blonde of the pastry world. Buoyant and pillowy as a breast implant, it promises delight while innocently denying potential consequences. Offer to buy a doughnut a drink, and your reward is a giggle followed by coy acquiescence. Beloved of police, children, and Homer Simpson, the doughnut beckons us all to forget our cares and surrender to sugar-induced hilarity."

-- Jill Lightner in The Seattle Weekly

Book-of-the-week

A is for ass-kicking
B is for boner
C is for copping a feel
D is for taking a dump
et cetera, et cetera

Well, no surprises here.

Mission accomplished!

Doughboy Beware! That's the title of Biscuit & Gravy's entry in this year's 48-Hour Film Project, and it was turned in with five minutes to spare. Sixty-five teams entered the competition, and thirty-eight of them turned in films by the deadline earlier this evening. Anyone in the L.A. area who's interested in seeing the films can do so at the Laemmle Theatre on Fairfax this coming Tuesday and Wednesday nights -- Doughboy Beware! will be shown in Group B on Tuesday night at 9:30.

All in a day's work

Well, halfway there. Sean and Curtis are now holed up with about 45 minutes' worth of video, trying to whittle it down to five or six minutes. That should take them late into the night, and they'll probably be working up until the last minute tomorrow -- they always seem to have problems sending these short films from the computer to the DVD printer. My job was to provide lunch for 19 people, so my work here is pretty much done.

The genre Biscuits & Gravy drew is silent film. The required character is Chris (or Christine) Murray, a captain. The required prop is a rope. The required line of dialogue is, "Let's just say: Mission accomplished." The idea we came up with last night is this: an armed forces "hygiene" film for American enlisted men in France, 1919. Basically, "We've liberated the French! Here are some handy tips for enjoying your debauched leave safely." Sean and Curtis are planning to use title cards and to sepia tint the whole film; they'll probably go with ragtime music throughout.

Here are a few pictures I took on the set today:

Tricia, semi-made up as a French whore, prepares to touch up Jonny's makeup while Curtis, the director, looks on.

Tricia gets started while Robin and Steve toast American superiority.

John, playing the omnipresent villain, offers me a harmless sip of absinthe. C'mon, how's one little drink gonna hurt me? (Later, Jonny actually chugs from this prop bottle, which contains corn syrup and green food coloring.)

I've been up since 3:30 in the a.m., so truly, my work here is done. Tune in tomorrow or Monday to see if we can honestly state, "Let's just say: Mission accomplished."

A brief respite

I took a short break from movie prep (e.g., laundering 5 Ninja outfits and creating a prop bottle of absinthe... don't worry, I'll tell you all about it later) to take the Hitler vs. Coulter quiz. I got 11 out of 14 correct!

I'll sleep when I'm dead -- or Sunday night, whichever comes first

After last week's ultra-defensive post, in which I stated that most of my friends and family have nothing to do with the entertainment industry (which is true), I must now confess: My husband and our best friend are filmmakers, and they're going to shoot another movie this weekend.

Now, don't get me wrong: Sean and Curtis operate about as far outside the studio system as is possible. Their production company, Biscuits & Gravy, sounds properly small; they usually work with a budget that hovers around zero dollars; actors double as grips, makeup artists, and boom operators; their camera jib is made out of PVC pipe; and, most damning of all, I am the caterer on all of their productions. But they do dream of making it big some day. A few of their short films (After the Ball, Demo Reel, Harmony Bar) are good enough to make it into film festivals. They shot a feature-length horror film called Death Valley last year and are now trying to market it. They were lucky enough to befriend a journalist who recently wrote a highly complimentary article about them for Screen International. They've even shot a couple of industrial films for a large media empire located on the east coast -- those jobs are notable because they're the only projects they've ever been paid for.

But this weekend they're participating in their fourth go-round of The 48-Hour Film Project, which has become an annual labor of love. This crazy contest, which of course offers nothing in the way of financial rewards, is all about being fast: The contestants (I think there are 48 teams in Los Angeles) have 48 hours to write, shoot, edit, score and deliver a six- to eight-minute film. At 7 o'clock on Friday evening, each team is assigned a genre drawn from a hat; then, so no one starts filming early, all the participants are told about the three elements (a prop, a character, and a line of dialogue) that every entry must include. Biscuits & Gravy's first effort resulted in Super Ego, which chronicles a 12-step meeting for superheroes that's infiltrated by a stool pigeon intent on exposing their weaknesses. This flick won the Audience Favorite award. The next year they took their assignment very seriously and came up with Reaping Season, a detective story featuring an intrepid cop and an unlikely killer. Reaping Season fell pretty flat with both the audience and the judges, though it was well-made and had a particularly nice score. Last year they hit one out of the ballpark with Significant Others (enter the title at this site), a mockumentary about a temp agency that provides replacements for the important people in your life. They won Best of L.A. and Best Screenplay (that last one is a bit of a joke as much of the movie is improvised) and got to travel to lovely San Jose with winners from all over the world to compete at Cinequest Film Festival. (They didn't win, but we did get to visit the Winchester Mystery House.)

So it all begins again this evening. There will be very little sleep, a lot of crankiness, and unbearably hot weather. What will be the genre and the required elements? Will it all come together smoothly or fall apart in the end? Most importantly, where will Biscuits & Gravy have our celebratory dinner on Sunday night? If any readers express the slightest interest in the outcome, I'll let you know what happens.

Occasionally Jay Leno is funny

"President Bush made another shocking surprise visit today that stunned everyone. He went to a bookstore."

Forthcoming book-of-the-week

This children's book will not be published until September, but it's so good you should order it NOW. The subtitle, which is probably too small for you to read, is and other stories you're sure to like, because they're all about monsters, and some of them are also about food. You like food, don't you? Well, all right then. The stories have titles like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon Doesn't Wait an Hour Before Swimming," "The Phantom of the Opera Can't Get 'It's a Small World' Out of His Head," "The Invisible Man Gets a Haircut," "The Phantom of the Opera Still Can't Get 'It's a Small World' Out of His Head," "Count Dracula Doesn't Know He's Been Walking Around All Night with Spinach in His Teeth," "The Yeti Doesn't Appreciate Being Called Bigfoot," and "The Phantom of the Opera Can't Get 'The Girl from Ipanema' Out of His Head."

This wonderful book is written and illustrated by Adam Rex.

Book-of-the-week

Too bad it wasn't released in time for Father's Day.... if my dad were around, I'd've given it to him.

Useful in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances

Today I was using an online dictionary to look up the Yiddish word for "hello." I clicked on the section called "Daily Terms," thinking that was a likely spot to find "hello." No such luck -- but I did find "hameshe kurve," which apparently means "home type whore."

Uncle Bill

Uncle Bill, my dad's older brother, died this morning. He'd been afflicted with emphysema for a number of years and had recently entered hospice care, so it wasn't a great surprise, but still... He was 84.

I never knew Uncle Bill all that well. He and his family lived in Denver, while my family lived in L.A. He struck me as being quite like my father: reserved and quiet, but also smart and funny. Any time one of us kids asked Dad a question he couldn't answer, he'd say, "That must be something your Uncle Bill knows." He claimed that between the two of them, the brothers knew everything in the world. Since we weren't in the habit of phoning up Uncle Bill to test this statement, we had to take Dad's word for it. Now that both Bill and Dad are gone, there's a great void in the world's wisdom.

Uncle Bill hung onto all the family possessions, and I mean all of them. I once asked Dad if he had a high school yearbook I could look at, and he told me Uncle Bill had it. I never understood why my uncle would keep his younger brother's yearbook. He also kept his mother's living room suite for decades after my grandmother died, and he wouldn't let my aunt replace it with newer, nicer furniture; my mom always thought this was mean of him, but I think he was trying to hold on to something that was important to him.

Uncle Bill's birthday was April 23, the same as Shakespeare's.

I love L.A.?

Feral Mom will be visiting Los Angeles soon, and I can't wait to hear her take on this place. If anyone is going to notice L.A.'s non-picture-perfect, defective, offensive, gross underbelly, it will be she. And she might also be the one to point out some good stuff that has never been mentioned before.

I'm a native Angeleno, and I guess I get tired of hearing all the stereotypes about L.A., in part because I don't fit most of them myself. I'm not beautiful and thin and tanned, I don't drive an SUV, I don't work in the film industry, I'm not writing a screenplay, and I don't want to be famous. What's more, virtually all of my friends and family live lives closer to mine than to what you see on T.V. We just have jobs and drive cars that are past their primes and obsess about the latest Lost. Some of us like to read -- did you know that L.A. is the biggest book-buying market in the country? Some of us notice that L.A. does have seasons; anyone who says otherwise has never been caught in one of our cold, relentless winter rainstorms. Some of us go out to dinner with our in-laws and drink a little too much and get involved in stupid arguments about casting non-white actors in traditionally white roles. (I, errrr.... and for the record, I was on the pro side!)

Maybe when you're in the middle of something, either a place or a situation, it's hard to see what an outsider will consider obvious, but maybe that's just because you have a different perspective as an insider. I suppose if you think of Beverly Hills as "L.A.," you're going to run into a lot of stereotypical, pretty, actorish types. But Pasadena and South Central and Rancho Cucamonga are all part of L.A., too, and those are places it's hard to generalize about. In greater L.A. you'll find gated communities, slums, fancy new condos, modest 100-year-old houses, smog and traffic jams, fresh air and wilderness, et cetera ad infinitum. It's like any other big city, only with the potential of earthquakes.

Boy, do I sound defensive. I am. I hate hearing that everyone out here is shallow and surgically-enhanced and just waiting for their big break on that new fall reality series. Not everyone here is from somewhere else. Like I said, I was born here; and although I've spent some time living in other places (including a pretty cool stint in the midwest), I will always come back because L.A. is where my family and friends are, and I know I'll always be able to find great Mexican food and a theatre showing that obscure independent film I've been waiting for. Wait -- is that a stereotype? I guess a few of them are true.

Do I love L.A.? Sure, why not?

Mmmm... cheesy goodness

The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood is in the middle of a wonderful series devoted to The Golden Age of British Horror, 1955 - 1975. Last night Sean, Curtis, Howard and I took in a couple of the more science fiction-ish titles: X, the Unknown and The Crawling Eye.

X, the Unknown sounded like the more promising of the two titles. A sentient slime has risen from 2000 miles below the surface of the earth to start feeding on radioactivity; it, in turn, emits radioactivity that fatally burns anyone who comes in contact with it, all the while growing larger and more powerful. It's up to a scientist (Dean Jagger, the lone American in this British/Scottish production) and an inspector from the British Energy Commission (a young but instantly-recognizable Leo McKern) to figure out how to stop it. Hmmmm... reading back over that description, it's hard to say why I thought this premise sounded "promising," but the first half of this flick is quite entertaining. Jagger and McKern are an appealing duo, the location work is impressive, and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster generates some genuine mystery in his script. Anthony Newley does a nice job in a (mercifully nonsinging) small role. Then -- I dunno, it just got kind of dull and I kept dozing off. I woke up for the end, when Jagger and McKern join forces with the military to blast the slime to kingdom come. After the huge explosion, a bunch of enlisted men run towards the blast site -- in excitement? to inspect their work? -- and are knocked flat on their arses by a second, smaller explosion. "What was that?" Jagger exclaims. "That wasn't supposed to happen!" Then the military officer congratulates him on a job well done. The End. Huh? Were they setting up a sequel? I'll never know, because after a short intermission, we were into The Crawling Eye.

The Egyptian's program had informed us that this movie is also known as The Trollenberg Terror. IMDB states that its other aliases include Creature from Another World, The Creeping Eye, and The Flying Eye. Although we were prepared to be flexible, imagine our surprise when the title card appeared (and lingered, and lingered, enhanced by a woman's agonized screaming) stating that we were about to see Night of the Living Terror. No problem: we knew this movie was going to be great fun, based on the opening scene's rubbery mountain sets (every time an actor leaned against the rocks they squooshed inward), overwrought dialogue (also by Jimmy Sangster), and the first of two decapitations. This story involves a radioactive cloud permanantly floating alongside Trollenberg mountain in the Swiss Alps. Forrest Tucker plays Alan Brooks, a U.N. inspector called in to investigate matters. I was very irritated to hear this character described as being "about 40." I'm 40, and this guy was pushing 60, I was sure of it. When I later looked him up on IMDB, however, I learned that Tucker was born in 1919, making him no more than 38 or 39 when this movie was made, and my irritation has since turned to pity. And the way he kept lighting up, as well as offering cigarettes to other characters, it's no wonder he died of lung cancer, poor fellow.

Back to the plot, such as it is: This radioactive cloud is presumably from Outer Space, acting as a cover for creatures seeking a new home. As it, or they, acclimate to the atmosphere, the cloud begins to move down the mountain, in an apparent bid to take over the world. Two sisters traveling on the same train as Brooks become involved in the terror as one of them, a telepath, is irresistably drawn to the cloud. Whatever's in the cloud, of course, wants to destroy her so she won't reveal the takeover bid until it's too late for the rest of us. There's another decapitation, a couple of reanimated corpses, lots and lots of Molotov cocktails, and Laurence Payne as Philip Truscott, an extremely natty reporter who just happens to be on the scene. The actresses playing the sisters are quite attractive. Janet Munro, who plays telepathic Anne, is wide-eyed with interestingly crooked teeth. Jennifer Jayne as older sister Sarah, however, is clearly positioned as the "eye candy," as Howard put it; her shoulders are bare whenever the script can manage it, and she constantly threatens to fall out of her low-cut dresses. The film climaxes in a mountain observatory with a lot of explosions as military planes fire-bomb the place to rid the world of the crawling eyes.

And what of these crawling eyes? Well, that's exactly what they are: giant, veiny octopus-looking things, each equipped with a single bloodshot eyeball, that slither up and down the Alps with ease. Every time one appeared on screen the audience laughed and cheered and applauded. Truscott points one out on the closed-circuit TV screen in the observatory and remarks, "Cute little things, aren't they?" "Yeah," Brooks reples grimly. He points to the screen. "I'm gonna throw a bomb at that one." The film's miniature work is on a par with its rubbery mountain sets. Still, The Crawling Eye is utterly enjoyable, full of laughs and entertainment and people getting stabbed and shot and strangled.

Tonight at the Egyptian: Curse of the Demon (aka Night of the Demon) and Burn, Witch, Burn! (aka Night of the Eagle).

Book-of-the-week

This one's for you, Howard.

Deconstructing dinosaurs

Howard and I took a little road trip out to SoCal's desert communities yesterday. On our way back we stopped for pie at the Wheel Inn, a great old diner located on famous Route 66. Howard read about the place in Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood and has been wanting to visit for over a year. It's a great place to buy fake antlers (at least I think they're fake) and toy dinosaurs. The pie's not bad, and the coffee is terrific.


Howard had chocolate cream pie and I enjoyed the peanut butter cream pie. Our waitress, who was a very pleasant, middle-aged Latina woman, wore a sort of cheap, non-sexy One Million Years B.C. outfit. Actually, it looked more like an off-the-rack Flintstones costume. Kind of a weird look for a roadside diner unless you know that Cabazon and the Wheel Inn are home to...

... these crazy dinosaurs you may recognize from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. There's a T. Rex and an apatosaurus, and together they make up an educational exhibit. The weird thing is, they were purchased some years ago by an outfit that uses them to promote the concept of "intelligent design."

This sign is at the base of the tail of the apatosaurus, who is known as "Dinny." You enter here and walk up a steep staircase into Dinny's stomach, where there is a good-sized gift shop selling all kinds of dino-themed paraphernalia. The book racks feature titles such as The Young Earth, Darwin's Demise, Is the Big Bang Biblical?, and Dinosaurs of Eden. Many of the toys, all of which seem to be standard-issue, made-in-China crap, have had a home computer-printed sticker attached to them that reads, in part, "Is evolution true? The fossil record does not support evolution," then directs purchasers to a website that no doubt completely refutes Darwin's theory. The shop is filled with signs and merchandise displays "debunking" evolution and promoting "intelligent design." A TV mounted on the wall was playing a DVD of a televangelist denouncing "that evolution junk." The shop also stocks a startling number and variety of toy guns.

Howard and I decided to go into the T. Rex, which costs two dollars and is totally worth it.

You enter through the T. Rex's side and start climbing up, up, up a very steep staircase that is surrounded by more homemade displays that simultaneously shout "Aren't dinosaurs neat?" and "Evolution is a lot of hooey!" There is no air conditioning inside the T. Rex and it had to be something like 120 degrees in there. Finally, at the top of a tiny, scary spiral staircase, is the dinosaur's mouth. You can look out and see for days.

I couldn't understand why the inside of T. Rex's mouth had been lined with this heavy chickenwire. Was there really that big a problem with people throwing stuff from the dinosaur's head? Then I looked around and noticed all the bird shit, and I realized it was more a matter of keeping the avian element out.

Cabazon is pretty remote, but I absolutely recommend a visit, especially if you like peanut butter cream pie and want to learn more about "intelligent design."

Crazy Pastor Chris

Tucked inside the front cover of my beat-up old paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye is a yellowing handwritten note. It reads:

Hi ya!

Well, I'm bored as all hell here in Analyt. UGH! Deborah Allen has almost fallen flat on the floor twice! I caught her just in time. I told you she shouldn't have come to math w/ me!

I hate this school soooo much! I can't wait to get out and meet "real people." You are one of the very few "real people" that I know. If you weren't here I'd probably be committed already! Why are most Arcadia people so obnoxious?

I knew Diana would love that photo. I bet she takes it to church w/ her on Sunday. What a fanatic! [Ed. note: I have no idea what that is about.] When we get married let's be normal, OK?!?!

Isn't it nice to not be around Jean The Whip [an evil English teacher, aka The Slave Driver] anymore? I do like Mrs. High, but that class is so boring!!

Working is one of my releases. I work from 5 - 12 tonight. Well the bell's gonna ring. Bye!

Even though that note is over 20 years old and unsigned, I'd recognize the large, loopy handwriting anywhere. It was given to me by Chris, my best friend in high school, and its contents are both so him and so not the person he has become. He's retained all the good stuff -- the enthusiasm, the straightforwardness, the love of 80s music -- and let go of all that negativity. He's become a minister, and let me put it this way: if I were ever to join a church (and that probably ain't never gonna happen), I think the only one I could join would be Chris's.

I met Chris in junior high and we became great pals; a few years later I considered him my best friend. We passed notes constantly and had a hundred private jokes between us. In the old days before kids swapped music files, we used to lend each other records -- you know, actual 12-inch LPs -- and our tastes were often both obscure AND uncool. Deborah Allen, mentioned in his note, was a brief fave of ours, a no-hit country singer we listened to along with Ronnie Milsap and a relative newcomer named Reba McEntire. We were both huge ABBA fans, and both pretty in the closet about it. I remember trading my 7-inch "The Day Before You Came," ABBA's last single, to Chris for "Boys Do Fall in Love" by one of the Bee Gees, when I bought their final album, and I think both of us kept pretty quiet about ever being in possession of either of those songs. I went to my first concert with Chris: The Eurythmics and Howard Jones at the Greek. It was so cool having a friend who didn't think I was a loser for loving the unhip.


Chris was a great musician. He played the saxophone and the clarinet and was in our high school's award-winning marching band; he also played the bassoon, a difficult and mysterious sort of instrument, in the school orchestra. Our high school had an odd, 23-minute free period between second and third periods known as "snack." I guess the idea was to give students enough time to grab a bite that would tide them over until lunch. I rarely bothered with food during snack -- my favorite pastime was to gather with Chris and a few other kids from band and choir in the choir room and have a short jam. I'd play the piano and Chris the sax, and everyone else would play their instruments or sing. I suppose we had a few numbers in our repetoire, but my favorite (and the only song I can recall us playing) was "New York, New York." We were pretty good and we were definitely loud.

Chris and I used to joke about getting married, though I can't remember why, because we never even dated. We certainly never made one of those "if neither one of us is married by 30" pacts! I know we liked to pick out names for all the kids we were going to have -- at one frightening point I think we'd decided upon 8 names. Thank goodness not everything we think about comes to pass.

We went to different colleges, and although we kept in touch, we drifted apart. I didn't know about all the uncertainty and soul-searching he was going through as he worked his way towards his accounting degree, so I was surprised when Chris told me he wanted to go to divinity school. He had always been such a vehement nonbeliever, and I was afraid he would turn into one of those Christians: one of those narrow-minded, humorless born-agains, several of which I've had the misfortune to know. I needn't have worried, as Chris has remained as funny and open-minded and big-hearted as he ever was. He is now the pastor of a terrific-sounding church in the Pacific Northwest, and Lisa and I have vowed that some Sunday we are going to sneak into the back of that church and do the wave while he's in the middle of a sermon. He's coming to visit SoCal in August, and I can't wait to see him.

Chris is turning 40 tomorrow (welcome to the club!). Visit his website and leave him good wishes -- you couldn't say "happy birthday" to a nicer guy.