Anything with Steve Gutenberg is absolutely positively NOT a classic film

No, not even Cocoon.

This post follows my comment from several months ago when I questioned AMC showing "Short Circuit." Now it turns out that the Museum of Film and Television will have a "Classic Night" which will feature "an assortment of excerpts from ABC's Tuesday night line-up circa 1985 featuring classic gen X series Who's the Boss? Growing Pains, and Moonlighting"

Who's the Boss? Why not throw in Mr. Belvedere and Alf? I think better choices would include "Benson" ( arguably could be seen as the precursor to "Spin City"-certainly the clueless mayor character got its start there), "Mork and Mindy" (Robin Williams meet the American public, American public meet Robin Williams), "Greatest American Hero", "Night Court" and "Soap" (Billy Crystal as a "suicidal homosexual" who dated more chicks than most healthy heterosexuals I know put together-all two of them).

I'd go if they showed the Muppet Show. That kids are growing up without Pigs in Space, Animal Hospital and Kermit the Frog fills me with despair. The episodes starring Mark Hammil, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Joel Gray, and Roger Moore all stay in my memory. I mean, Joel Gray singing "Cabaret" to muppets. Can you beat Kirk Cameron beat that?

Personally, I'd like to see a detective shows of the 80's retrospective. I loved the old shows. I have here a list I composed during one of my monday meetings of the detective shows I'd like to see:

Remington Steele (Early Pierce Brosnan)
Simon and Simon
Riptide
Moonlighting ( I admit it, I liked the show)
Magnum P.I.

shows to leave out of the retrospective:
Matlock
Murder, She Wrote
Jake and the Fat Man
Columbo

Bad sitcoms of the 80s that shouldn't be included in ANY retrospectives:

the Tortellis (Cheers spin off)
Alf
the Charmings (probably derived from the Munsters)
Webster
My Two Dads
Full House ( Oh please, PLEASE let this one die-it's been in syndication FOREVER)
Mr. Belvedere
Easy Street ( Loni Anderson-Nooooooooo!)
E.R. ( no not the tv drama-a DIFFERENT E.R.)


Anybody remember a sitcom from the 80s starring Ted Knight I think as a grouchy old cartoonist with two daughters and the obviously gay upstairs neighbor played by Jim Jay Bullock? What the hell was that called?

File Under "Things I Never Expected to See in This Life"

Macaulay Culkin in drag in the film party monster.

I mean, Seth Green I can see, but Macaulay Culkin?

Check out some of the outfits in the NYC premier gallery-my favorite is the drag queen whose outfit is made entirely of Hello Kitty dolls.

Maybe the film will get a spot of honor in NYC's Freakatorium next to Sammy Davis Jr's glass eye.
Your purple cons are so hot...

Ladies and gentleman I give you the come on of the week. I have to say I thought it was great. Let me set the scene.

I am sitting across the street at R's having tea. All summer I've been meaning to sit out there and listen to the cute guys who play good jazz and all summer I would go home and collapse. And tonight I was like, "It's the end of the fucking summer, I don't care what else happens , I AM GOING." So I go and I am sitting on this nice night listening to jazz, trying to correct student papers, but not trying so hard as to miss out on the music and this guy leans over and asks me "What university are you editing papers for?" I was so impressed. Most people think I teach high school. Most people ask me what grade I teach. I told him and it turns out he is getting his PhD in philosophy and then he leans in and says, "I think your purple cons are so hot." I started laughing because I was expecting something like "I think you have a great body" or "I think your breasts are fabulous." He continued, "I think no matter what you wear, you can wear your purple cons around me."

Now I suspect the guy was slightly drunk, and his two female friends decided to leave taking him along with him shortly after that cutting our conversation short, but still it was funny and it made my night entertaining so I don't have feel bad about being too freakin' shy to talk to the hot guitarist. ( I'm such a yutz.)

I think I need to force myself to go out and do that more often because really it was a nice way to spend the night. Two and half hours of jazz ona nice night with a cup of tea and a creative come on line.
Some Help

Ok for reasons I am not going to discuss now I am looking for disability or cancer related blogs, not web pages, not web sites, just blogs. Any help will do. It seems like there should be a lot of them, but I can't seem to find them. Just discussion boards and personal pages.
Tuesdays in the Park with Bunni

insert amusing squirrel anecdote here

in order to give it social relevance and weight connect to Freud's "the Power of the Word"

then move onto the Scott M Peck's concept of "Grace" in the "Road Less Traveled"

finally self criticism at wasting my free time ( actually my office hours) in the office

I'm workin' on the entry, but somehow I think your imagination of what it's going to be will be more interesting than the actual experience

Oh and leave your support and encouragement-I signed up to take the GRE! Grad school here I come. Friday I'm going to take the practice test.
From Carnivale to Sex in the City

Samantha: No man wants to fuck Granma's pussy.

Carrie: This is a child's birthday party.

-Today's Episode of Sex in the City

Ah yes, I watched it. I won't spoil anything for you, but jesus I can remember when watching sex in the city gave me hope and now I just feel awful. I look at their fabulous apartments and everyone having these great relationships, and to borrow a phrase from Scott Thompson of the Kids in the Hall, "I feel like...to puke."

I mean, ok I am going to spoil, Miranda suffers a miscarriage after only three weeks and she is devastated. OK, OK, I'm a little forgiving. But she has a great husband ( even if he does tea bag his balls on the white sofa-yick) and a FABULOUS APARTMENT and she is devastated by this minor set back. But what really kills me is she inspired to get out of the house in a lovely tribute to what looked like Audrey Hepburn from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" meets Jackie O from, and I kid you not, WATCHING THE ELIZABETH TAYLOR TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY FROM E! Christ, if only all depressions were so easy to cure. Fuck Freud just get basic cable. I mean, some of us have depressions that go beyond a half an hour of who's who in the life of Richard Burton. Some of can watch a whole frickin' mini series and still want to throw ourselves under the six train.

For me, I have been seriously considering that whole Emily Dickensen/ J.D. Salinger deal. Part of it probably stemming from reading Possession since the character of Cristabel LaMotte ( I admit the name is heavy handed-so are the character names Mortimer Cropper and Beatrice Nest) is based on Dickensen. Perhaps both of these people felt that they could not connect with others at all and it was too painful for them to live among people that they could not connect with. So instead of living in rejection everyday they simply absented themselves from the equation. This prevents rejection by others and technically puts them in the power position in terms of accepting or rejecting the attentions of others. It also might drive people to great extremes in order to make contact, weeding out, so to speak, those with less than extremely dedicated purposes.

I digress.

The other show that I watched tonight was Carnivale. The world of the carnivale has long been intriguing to scholars and artists. It has long been a source of fear to outsiders (think of the fear represented by films like "Freaks" the fear of contagion) and mystique (Allen's "Shadows and Fog" ends with the main character, a clerk, achieving his dream of joining a carnival to aid a famous magician). Rabelais ( oh yeah, I'll teach you all to call me anti intellectual) said the attraction of the Carnivale is it's "topsy turvey" aspect-it is a world in reverse. In keeping with this idea one of the most attractive scenes in the first episode of this show is when an attractive seemingly normal new comer to the carnivale is taunted and teased by the "freaks" the conjoined twins, the giant, and the bearded lady. In this world, the "normal" or the "healthy" are really the "freaks", and it also establishes that what we reject as abnormal has to do with the values of particular social group. The saying that in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king is flawed. ( H. G. Wells explored this concept in his story about the land of the blind.) In the land of the blind, the blind would regard sight as an anomaly and reject the one eyed man as an outsider.

Carnivale avails itself to using stock characters, the french mentalist ( who may recognize from the show "The Pretender") is a blind man who can "see" with his mind. Of course, this archetype dates back to Tieresias, the blind prophet who warns Oedipus about his fate. Making him french just gives him a little more style. He is also more self reliant than Tieresias, for although Tieresias needs a boy to lead him about, our french "seer" is so gifted he can even cheat at cards.

The allure of the Carnivale and of freaks in general is a world where those who have been cast out can not only be accepted, but admired. It is also accepting of those desires that we are supposed to cast out ( ie. the "hoochi" girls).

This show, however, is based more on magical realism. There is no chicanery here. There are no fake unicorns or mermaids. There are no illusions or tricks. The mentalist can really see into the minds of others, and the faith healer can really heal others. This naivete to some degree does not give full credit to the power of Carnivale, the artifice and necessary illusion to it all.

Carnivale itself can date back to Bacchic or Dionysian rights. The idea of these orgiastic and drunken rights ( think Mardi Gras) is that there needs to be a balance. Individuals who try to repress everything are headed for a melt down and so are those who totally indulge in chaos. For a person to truly thrive there must be a balance, and Carnivale creates a safe world in which the chaos can be indulged. It is a seperate world with its own rules. Once the Carnivale is over, the old rules re-emerge, but we feel purged.

But in order for us to fully participate in the world of the carnivale there is a necessity for artifice or illusion. Carnivale to some degree is both about facing ugly truths ( the deformed, the naked lust, etc) and embracing artifice and illusion (fake "miracles", fortune telling etc.).

I'm hoping the story picks up.





And your question is?

So I got this question tonight from a student about an assignment:


S: So when you said the assignment should be 2-4 pages, are you implying that it should be 2 or 3 or 4 pages long?

Bunni: When I give a 2-4 page assignment, it means that 2 is the minimum amount of pages and four is the maximum amount of pages unless I give approval to a specific student to go under or over page requirements.

S: Thanks that answers all my questions!
No Mo' J.Lo

Yes, if AOL entertainment news is to be trusted, Ben and J.Lo have finally called it quits.

Somebody give me an amen.
IQOTD

"Well I gotta admit that things have really opened up for me now that my life has turned to shit."

Seymore as played by Steve Buscemi in Ghost World

I saw this film in the summer of 2001. I found the end of it depressing. Here is this truly unique character, Enid, played by Thora Birch, who ( and I hate to ruin the end of the film) leaves her world because she realizes that she simply can't fit it. Initially although she helps Seymore to get a girlfriend, and somehow manages to get into art school, suddenly all of her plans implode. Seymore is fired, her art school plan falls through, and her best friend hates her. In the end, she simply leaves town in a bus to an unknown location.

The film seems to me now prescient. Part of the reason I found the film ( I would link to the official site, but it had three THREE pop up ads and I just refuse to endorse any site with that many pop ups) depressing was I identified with Enid, and the idea that Enid could find no place in which to reside and so simply had to erase herself was depressing. But of course in light of what happened to me after this film ( the 2 year anniversary is coming up-get out the good china please) the films seems to be even more accurate. What do the people who don't fit anywhere do? What I do now? Stay in my apartment unless I'm not working? Try not to think about how other people regard us? Isn't one of the few viable solutions to vanish? Be it in the way of Emily Dickenson or J.D. Salinger or in the more permanent way of Woolf and Plath.
IQOTD

Dante: A woman makes a man cum, that's standard. A man makes a woman cum, that's talent.

Clerks