#eugene levy 1988

[autolykiss]

the enigma of bobby bittman

Eugene Levy as Bobby Bittman (2/2)

[glennk56]

Thick Wilson

Thick Wilson is from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His very first screen appearance was on a British TV show, The Rag Trade in 1963, going by the name he used most, Thick Wilson. He also has gone by his real name, Addison Bell. His last appearance was on a Lifetime movie made in Canada, Obituary in 2006. I don't know if he is still living, but if he is, he is 95 years old.

He only had 4 credits in the 1960s. His homebase was England.

In 1967, he appeared in The Dirty Dozen as General Wordan's (that's Ernest Borgnine's character) Aide.

In the 1970s he was able to have 9 screen appearances, still based out of England.

Here he appears in an episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes in 1973. He did not talk in this one.

In 1975 he appears in From Hong Kong with Love, a UK, France and Hong Kong collaboration, which also featured Clifton James.

In 1976 Thick Wilson appears in the initial episode of Second Verdict, a British TV show that second guessed the accuracy of historical events.

Most of Thick Wilson's credits appeared in the 1980s & 1990s. He also did a lot of voice-over work in animated programs.

Here he is the Mayor in 1980s The Mirror Crack'd, his second major motion picture.

And The Great Muppet Caper in 1981.

The Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew in 1983. This one out of Canada.

And another British movie in 1985, Morons from Outer Space.

And back to Canada in 1986 for Bullies.

The episode, Skeleton on The Ray Bradbury Theater in 1988, featuring Eugene Levy in this one.

Also the Canadian film Buying Time in 1988.

And the sci-fi horror film The Dark in 1993. It looks like he started going as Addison Bell for good in this year.

And Tommy Boy with Chris Farley and David Spade in 1995.

Also in 1995, National Lampoon's Senior Trip.

He did an episode of Goosebumps in 1996.

A Hallmark Hall of Fame movie in 1997, Rose Hill.

Showtime movie, Jasper, Texas in 2003.

And a comedy, Phil the Alien in 2004.

And finally Obituary in 2006.

[greensparty]

Remembering Joe Flaherty 1941-2024

Sad news that comedy legend Joe Flaherty has died at 82. I don't use the word Legend lightly. As a part of Second City in both Toronto and Chicago, he was a cast member / writer / producer on the brilliant sketch comedy show SCTV (1976-1981), SCTV Network (1981-1983), and SCTV Channel (1983-1984). Talk about a meeting of the comedic minds: you had Flaherty along with John Candy, Robin Duke, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis, Tony Roasto, Martin Short, and Dave Thomas doing some of the most LOL sketches in TV history. He won two Emmys for writing on the show He did so many awesome impressions and characters, notably Count Floyd, the scary TV movie host. He brought that character back for a short film shown at Rush's 1984 concert tour and also for the live action portions of the animated The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (1988-1989). He played so many other great characters like Caballero, the owner of the SCTV station, and co-host of Farm Report. SCTV was so good and so much comedy that came after was influenced by it. Conan O'Brien was said he learned so much from SCTV but the biggest thing was to do something funny until it's not funny anymore.

Count Floyd

One of my favorite scene-stealing moments from him was as the Western Union rep in Back to the Future Part II. He shows up with a delivery for Marty!

Flaherty makes a special delivery in Back to the Future Part II

Other notably performances included Used Cars, Stripes, Johnny Dangerously, Club Paradise, One Crazy Summer, Innerspace, Happy Gilmore, Detroit Rock City, and as the dad on Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000).

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

[wanderingmind867]

My US Voting Record:

I made this with the help of wikipedia, google and posts like voting guides which I found online.

Note: I would have been a Monarchist during the Revolutionary War, but I'd probably still vote if living in America (No matter how displeased the revolution made me, I'd probably still always be willing to vote). But to show my dissatisfaction, every vote until 1824 is a protest vote:

1788: Nobody (I refuse to vote for George Washington). Maybe a write in protest vote for King George III?

1792: Nobody (I refuse to vote for George Washington). Maybe a write in protest vote for King George III?

1796: Maybe a write in protest vote for King George III?

1800: Maybe a write in protest vote for King George III?

1804: Maybe a write in protest vote for King George III?

1808: Maybe a write in protest vote for King George III?

1812: Protest Vote for King George III (I can't vote for anyone after the War of 1812 got started)

1816: Protest Vote for King George III (again, I don't know if I'd be able to forgive anyone after the War of 1812)

1820: Protest Vote for King George IV (I can't support Monroe after he helped fight 1812 against Canada and the British).

1824: Henry Clay/Nathan Sanford

1824 Contingent: John Quincy Adams

1828: John Quincy Adams/Richard Rush

1832: Henry Clay/John Sergeant

1836: Daniel Webster/Francis Granger or William Henry Harrison/Francis Granger

1840: William Henry Harrison/John Tyler

1844: Henry Clay/Theodore Frelinghuysen

1848: Martin Van Buren/Charles F. Adams

1852: John P. Hale/George W. Julian

1856: John C. Frémont/William L. Dayton

1860: Abraham Lincoln/Hannibal Hamlin

1864: Abraham Lincoln/Andrew Johnson

1868: Ulysses S. Grant/Schuyler Colfax

1872: Horace Greeley/Benjamin Gratz Brown

1876: Samuel Tilden/Thomas A. Hendricks

1880: James A. Garfield/Chester A. Arthur

1884: Grover Cleveland/Thomas A. Hendricks

1888: Benjamin Harrison/Levi P. Morton

1892: James B. Weaver/James G. Field

1896: William Jennings Bryan/Thomas E. Watson

1900: William Jennings Bryan/Adlai Stevenson I

1904: Eugene V. Debs/Benjamin Hanford

1908: William Jennings Bryan/John Kern

1912: Eugene V. Debs/Emil Seidel

1916: Allan L. Benson/George R. Kirkpatrick

1920: Eugene V. Debs/Seymour Stedman

1924: Robert M. LaFollette/Burton K. Wheeler

1928: Al Smith/Joseph T. Robinson (although Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis aren't bad either. I might've been a prohibitionist then, considering I hate the taste of alcohol. But Smith opposed lynching. So he gets my vote).

1932: Norman Thomas/James H. Maurer

1936: Norman Thomas/George A. Nelson

1940: Norman Thomas/Maynard Krueger

1944: Norman Thomas/Darlington Hoopes

1948: Henry A. Wallace/Glen H. Taylor

1952: Adlai Stevenson II/John Sparkman

1956: Adlai Stevenson II/Estes Kefauver

1960: Richard Nixon/Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (Solely because I hate JFK)

1964: Lyndon B. Johnson/Hubert Humphrey

1968: Hubert Humphrey/Edmund Muskie

1972: George McGovern/Sargent Shriver (although I still really like Thomas Eagleton as VP)

1976: Gerald Ford/Bob Dole

1980: Jimmy Carter/Walter Mondale

1984: Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro

1988: Willa Kenoyer/Ron Ehrenreich (I hear Michael Dukakis went to high school with the guy who founded the Judge Rotenberg Centre, which is a terrible place. So I can't vote for Dukakis. Can't take a chance on him with that history).

1992: Ross Perot/James Stockdale

1996: Ross Perot/Pat Choate

2000: Ralph Nader/Winona Laduke

2004: Ralph Nader/Peter Camejo

2008: Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez

2012: Barack Obama/Joe Biden (Beginning in 2012, I'd probably start voting for Democrats more often because I felt I had no choice. But I'm still a bit unhappy with them. Haven't been since 1988 or 1992).

2016: Gloria La Riva/Eugene Puryear

2020: Joe Biden/Kamala Harris (My heart says Howie Hawkins/Angela Walker, however).

[1988-fiend]

Dear Disney

In the event of a live action version of Tangled there is only one right choice for the casting of Flynn Rider/ Eugene Fitzherbert

Make the right move.

The End.

Sincerely,

1988-fiend

[kevrocksicehouse]

Steve Guttenberg made four Police Academy movies. A few more actors who worked in comedy franchises:

Peter Sellers in “A Shot in the Dark” D: Blake Edwards (1964). Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau, the officious, incompetent and master of slapstick clumsiness was Sellers great creation a master of chaos heroically nonplussed by the mayhem he causes because “Eet is all part or Life’s Rich Pageant.”

Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun : From the Files of Police Squad! D: David Zucker (1988). Clouseau’s American cousin, whether he’s mangling the national anthem, inadvertently torturing his partner Detective Nordberg (played by OJ Simpson, justice fans), or dropping any one of the puns or groaners in the script (“Cops and women don’t mix. It’s like eating a spoonful of Drano; sure, it’ll clean you out, but it’ll leave you hollow inside”).

Bill Murray in Ghostbusters II. D: Ivan Reitman (1989). That’s right, the much-reviled sequel. And Murray has to act opposite a baby (“You’re short your bellybutton sticks out too far, and you’re a terrible burden on your poor mother.”). But that humanizes him making the movie something a little better than a retread and setting up some of the more reflective movies he would do in the next couple of decades. Also, hairless pets. Weird.

Robin Harris  in House Party. D: Reginald Hudlin (1990). Whether wailing on his teenaged son (“You can call child Abusers if you WANT to, but they better not come in here ‘cause I’ll kick their ass too!”) or cussing out the police on his behalf (“I’m from a small town called ‘Fresh Off a Cop’s Ass,’ and you’re making me homesick’) one of the most hard-nosed (and funniest) fathers in movies.

Eugene Levy in American Pie. D: Paul Weitz (1999). A kinder and gentler father but just as effective. I’m not sure if Atticus Finch would be as understanding if he caught one of his kids copulating with an apple pie but Levy’s response is a model of quiet diplomacy: “We’ll just tell your mother that…we ate it all.”

[aliveandfullofjoy]

100 Artists Who Shaped My Year: 2019

It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, and I’m technically two days late, but here we are all the same! A list of 100 different artists whose work made an impact on me in 2019. Some are local, but most are not. One has to remain anonymous for now, because life is silly. 

In alphabetical order.

Pedro Almodóvar, for writing and directing Pain and Glory (2019, film) and Bad Education (2004, film);

Anonymous Playwright, for a play title whose name I can’t mention yet;

Will Arbery, for writing Heroes of the Fourth Turning (2019, play);

Frédéric Back, for making The Man Who Planted Trees (1987, animated short);

Antonio Banderas, for his performance in Pain and Glory (2019, film);

Ingmar Bergman, for writing and directing Scenes from a Marriage (1973, film) and Summer Interlude (1951, film);

Caty Bergmark, for directing Baby (2019, musical) and life;

Eli Bolin, for writing the music for Documentary Now: Co-Op (2019, television) and John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019, television);

Bong Joon-ho, for writing and directing Parasite (2019, film) and Snowpiercer (2013, film);

Nicholas Britell, for his score for If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, film);

Bo Burnham, for writing and directing Eighth Grade (2018, film);

D’Arcy Carden, for her performance(s) in The Good Place (2018-19, television);

Carol Channing, for being a light in the dark;

Benjamin Christiensen, for directing Häxan (1922, film);

Toby Chu, for his score for Bao (2018, animated short);

Olivia Colman, for her performances in The Favourite (2018, film), Broadchurch (2013-17, television), and Fleabag (2018, television);

Willem Dafoe, for his performances in The Lighthouse (2019, film) and The Florida Project (2017, film);

Ana de Armas, for her performance in Knives Out (2019, film);

Donna Deitch, for directing Desert Hearts (1985, film);

Kaitlyn Dever, for her performance in Booksmart (2019, film);

Eugene Fedorenko, for directing Every Child (1979, animated short);

Beanie Feldstein, for her performance in Booksmart (2019, film);

Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (2019, musical);

Elsie Fisher, for her performance in Eighth Grade (2018, film);

Jennifer Garner, for her performances in Love, Simon (2018, film) and 13 Going on 30 (2004, film);

Greta Gerwig, for writing and directing Little Women (2019, film);

Brian David Gilbert, for Unraveled (2019, webseries);

Daniel Glenn, for Sixteenth Night (2019, play);

The Great British Bake Off (2019, television);

Adèle Haenel, for her performance in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, film);

Regina Hall, for her performance in Support the Girls (2018, film);

William Jackson Harper, for his performance in The Good Place (2018-19, television);

Jerry Herman, for his tremendous career;

Marin Hinkle, for her performance in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-18, television);

Tom Hooper, for directing Cats (2019, film), the most fun I’ve had in the movies in forever;

Peter Jackson, for directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03, film);

Barry Jenkins, for writing and directing If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, film);

Carly Rae Jepsen, for a damn good concert;

Erland Josephson, for his performance in Scenes from a Marriage (1973, film);

Kunio Kato, for directing La Maison en Petits Cubes (2008, animated short);

Val Kilmer, for his performance in Tombstone (1992, film);

Tim Kov and Anna Hulkower, for My Little Tonys (2018-19 podcast);

Yayoi Kusama, for her Infinity Mirrors exhibit;

The Lemonheads, for their cover of “Frank Mills” (1992);

Dan Levy, for his performance in and producing Schitt’s Creek (2015-19, television);

Eugene Levy, for his performances in Schitt’s Creek (2015-19, television) and Waiting for Guffman (1996, film);

Lizzo, for Cuz I Love You (2019, album);

Billie Lourd, for her performance in Booksmart (2019, film);

Jonathan Majors, for his performance in The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019, film);

Dave Malloy, for writing Octet (2019, musical);

Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire, for writing Baby (1983, musical);

Djibril Diop Mambéty, for directing The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1999, film) and Touki Bouki (1973, film);

Corinne Marchand, for her performance in Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962, film);

Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, for writing Six (2018, musical);

Mike Marshall, for his performance of “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” in The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019, film);

Elaine May, for writing, starring in, and directing A New Leaf (1971, film);

Noémie Merlant, for her performance in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, film);

Anaïs Mitchell, for writing Hadestown (2019, musical);

Hayao Miyazaki, for his entire body of work, but especially the films of his I watched for the first time this year: Porco Rosso (1992), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1988), The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), and Castle in the Sky (1986); 

Elisabeth Moss, for her performance in Us (2019, film);

John Mulaney, for writing and starring in Documentary Now: Co-Op (2019, television) and John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019, television);

Annie Murphy, for her performance in Schitt’s Creek (2015-19, television);

Bill Nelson and Joseph Trefler, for writing Men with Money (2019, musical);

Tim Blake Nelson, for his performance in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018, film);

Rosemary Newcott, for directing The Wizard of Oz (2019, musical) and A Christmas Carol (2019, play) at the Alliance Theatre; 

Griffin Newman, David Sims, and Ben Hosley, for Blank Check with Griffin and David (2015-2019, podcast); 

Yuri Norstein, for directing Hedgehog in the Fog (1975, animated short) and Tale of Tales (1979, animated short);

Lupita Nyong’o, for her performance in Us (2019, film);

Catherine O’Hara, for her performances in Schitt’s Creek (2015-19, television), Waiting for Guffman (1996, film), and Home Alone (1990, film);

ozello, for pronouns, but especially “caleb” (2019, album and song);

Nick Park, for writing and directing Creature Comforts (1989, animated short), A Grand Day Out (1989, animated short), The Wrong Trousers (1993, animated short), and A Close Shave (1995, animated short);

Dolly Parton, for her body of work;

Robert Pattinson, for his performance in The Lighthouse (2019, film);

Paula Pell, for her performance in Documentary Now: Co-Op (2019, television); 

Joe Pesci, for his performance in The Irishman (2019, film);

Christopher Plummer, for his performances in Knives Out (2019, film) and The Man Who Planted Trees (1987, animated short);

Hal Prince, for everything; 

Florence Pugh, for her performance in Little Women (2019, film);

Marjane Satrapi, for writing and directing Persepolis (2007, film);

Céline Sciamma, for writing and directing Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, film);

Andrew Scott, for his performance in Fleabag (2018, television);

William Shakespeare, for his body of work, but especially Macbeth; 

Domee Shi, for directing Bao (2018, animated short);

Stephen Sondheim, for everything; 

Emma Stone, for her performance in The Favourite (2018, film);

Jan Svankmajer, for directing Alice (1988, film);

Jeanine Tesori, for writing Fun Home (2015, musical), Shrek (2009, musical), and Caroline, or Change (2003, musical);

Alfred Uhry, for writing The Last Night of Ballyhoo (1997, play);

Liv Ullmann, for her performance in Scenes from a Marriage (1973, film);

Agnès Varda, for directing Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962, film) and Faces Places (2017, film);

Vernal & Sere Theatre Co., for their production of Spirits to Enforce (2019, play);

Alicia Vikander, for her performance in I Am Easy to Find (2019, film);

Paula Vogel, for writing Indecent (2017, play);

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, for writing and starring in Fleabag (2017-18, television);

Lulu Wang, for writing and directing The Farewell (2019, film);

Rachel Weisz, for her performances in The Favourite (2018, film) and Disobedience (2017, film);

Orson Welles, for directing The Other Side of the Wind (2018, film) and Macbeth (1948, film);

Lina Wertmüller, for directing Seven Beauties (1975, film);

Chloé Zhao, for directing The Rider (2017, film);

and Zhao Shuzhen, for her performance in The Farewell (2019, film).

[eatingtherich]

A Colossal Wreck

I’ve been reading through Alexander Cockburn’s A Colossal Wreck. As far as pleasure and style go, it is a great book. A concise and humorous perspective on exactly what the book presents itself to be, the American political landscape from the mid 90′s up to Cockburn’s death in 2012. The book is actually just a collection of dated journal, and very on topic; though most are his personal observations of current events, he sometimes veers into other topics such as Thanksgiving turkey recipes or the etymology of the word “troglodytes.” A staunch leftist and populist, much of the book directs its ire at the complacency of liberals in America behind the Clintons and their imperialistic goals and corporate persuasion, and the entire fault of any left movement in the U.S. There a number of places where I greatly agree with Cockburn, but then some moments where his perspectives are befuddling to say the least, and some that seen from today in Trump-America, are very odd to hear coming from such a vocal leftist. In the coming days I’ll share some passages that have most stood out to me. 

First I am going to post Cockburn’s passages on Bernie Sanders, for whom Alexander Cockburn was particularly skeptical of, as self-proclaimed Independent Socialist Democrat, but from Cockburn’s perspective was woefully complacent with Clinton’s agenda. I will say, I like Sanders, and he is still currently my preferred Presidential Candidate for the 2020 election, but critiques Cockburn raises are valid and worth looking into. Just as well, I disagree with Cockburn on some issues he raises in his book, but by and large, enjoy his writing and can’t let his faults eclipse his successes. Most of his criticisms levied against Bernie are his condoning of the wars in Serbia and Kosovo.  All quotes below come from A Colossal Wreck, by Bruce Cockburn, 2014, Verso.

August 7, 1996

A Democratic President has just destroyed a big chunk of the New Deal and not one major Democratic figure has defected because this President destroyed the tiny protections for those down on their luck, for children, for single mothers, for immigrants between jobs who have been paying taxes for maybe ten or twenty years. Donna Shalala didn't quit. Robert Reich didn't quit. Peter Edelman of HHS did [sic] quit. Marion Wright Edelman canceled a demonstration before Clinton's decision "because I didn't want want to be Sister Souljah," then issued a bitter statement, but she didn't say she was shifting her support to Ralph Nader. Ron Dellums's office was saying that he understood Clinton's need to "hold the center." Barney Frank said that Clinton had done more for the poor than Ralph Nader. (There may be a personal edge there since Nader once said publically it was disgusting of Frank to run a homosexual prostitution ring out of his congressional office.) Here, for the third time in thirty years, we have a historic opportunity for the rallying of left forces beyond the Democratic Party. It happened in 1968 with Eugene McCarthy; and in 1984 and 1988 with Jesse Jackson. Now we have another chance. And who steps forward as our public champions? Bernie Sanders, the "independent" hot-air factory from Vermont, requests everyone to vote for Bill Clinton. The Labor Party, born in Cleveland a month ago, insisted that no labor candidates be fielded for the foreseeable future, and further stipulates that no labor-affiliate field independent candidates. Prominent Labor Party folk are simultaneously on the Democratic National Committee. Unions active in promoting the Labor Party have made a deal with the Democrats that the Labor Party will do nothing impertinent or subversive, such as actually run candidates against Democrats. From day one, with all that nonsense about doing nothing till 100,000 advocates are signed up, the entire Labor Party effort has been an exercise in demobilization, achieving the miracle of a Third Party that is the wholly owned subsidiary of the party it is challenging. This leaves us with Ralph Nader, who has the public status, the knowledge and the right political instincts.

October 16, 1998

...As for B. Sanders, whose fund-raising letters this election time have once again been touting Congress’s only “independent progressive socialist,” his latest achievement has been to give the cold shoulder to delegations traveling all the way from Texas to Vermont to challenge the Conscience Complex in one of its most self-satisfied redoubts.

Sanders has been prominent among those in the North East congressional delegation on trying to export the region’s nuclear waste to a poor, largely Hispanic community in Texas, Sierra Blanca. The only merit in dumping the waste there as opposed to, say, Burlington, is that the people in Burlington are richer and have more clout. When the Sierra Blancans turned up in Vermont, Sanders put out the word that he would quit any platform graced by any of their members. If you truly like “independents” in Congress, better by far to send your money to Ron Paul, who acts upon his proclaimed beliefs, unlike Sanders.

March 31, 1999

It’s bracing to see the Germans taking part in NATO’s bombing. It lends moral tone to an operation to have the grandsons of the Third Reich willing, able and eager to drop high explosive again, in this instance on the Serbs. To add symmetry to the affair, the last time Serbs in Belgrade had high explosive dropped on them was in 1941 by the sons of the Third Reich. To bring even deeper symmetry, the German political party whose leader, Schroeder, ordered German participation in the bombing is that of the Social Democrats, whose great grandfathers enthusiastically voted credits to wage war in 1914, to the enormous disgust of Lenin, who never felt quite the same way about social democrats ever after. Whether in Germany or England or France, all social democratic parties in 1914 tossed aside previous pledges against war, thus helping produce the first great bloodletting of our century.

Today, with social democrats leading governments across Europe-Schroeder, Blair, Jospin, Prodi-all fall in behind Clinton. This is, largely, a war most earnestly supported by liberals and many so-called leftists. Bernie Sanders has voted Aye, and in London Vanessa Redgrave cheers on the NATO bombers. There’s been some patronizing talk here about the Serbs’ deep sense of “grievance” at the way history has treated them, with the implication that the Serbs are irrational in this regard. But it’s scarcely irrational to remember that Nazi Germany bombed Belgrade in World War II, or that Germany’s prime ally in the region, Croatia, ran a concentration camp a Jasenovac where tens of thousands of Serbs-along with Jews and gypsies-were liquidated. Nor is it irrational to recall that Germany in more recent years has been an unrelenting assailant of the former Yugoslav federation, encouraging Slovenia to secede and lending determined support to Croatia, in gratitude for which Croatia adopted, on independence in 1991, the German hymn, “Danke Deutschland.”

April 14, 2000

[The mention of Sanders comes late in the passage. On this date, Cockburn relates a story of how he was invited to speak at a conference held by Antiwar.com, a libertarian organization. The event coordinator, Justin Raimondo, extended his invitation to Cockburn on the grounds that this was an event in which the left and right could reach across the political divide to come together against war. Those listed in attendance: “Patrick J. Buchanan, Tom Fleming, Justin Raimondo, Kathy Kelly, Alan Bock, Rep. Ron Paul, and representatives of the Serbian Unity Congress.”]

...Their amiable hilarity at my sallies reminded me of Goldsmith’s lines in “The Deserted Village” about the pupils of the country schoolmaster: “Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee/ At all his jokes, and many a joke had he.” (How many people have read the whole of that wonderful poem, one of the most savage denunciations of free trade ever written?)

“Can we unite,” I asked the crowd, “on the anti-war platform? We have already, in the case of Kosovo for example. But where would you as libertarians want to get off the leftist bus? A leftist says ‘Capitalism leads to war. Capitalism needs war.’ But you libertarians are pro-capitalism, so you presumably have a view of capitalism as a system not inevitably producing or needing war. Lefties have always said capitalism has to maximize its profits and the only way you can maximize profits in the end is by imperial war, which was the old Lenin thesis...

“I think the old categories are gone. I see no virtue to them. I see Bernie Sanders listed as an Independent Socialist in the US Congress. I see what Bernie Sanders has supported, starting with the war in Kosovo. And then I see Ron Paul, on the other hand, writing stuff against war which could have been written by Tom Hayden in 1967.”

Driving back to Berkeley with $300 in cash in my pocket, I mentally toasted antiwar.com. Alas, not many leftists will ever want to have much to do with them.

[whileiamdying]

Allen Ginsberg, Master Poet of Beat Generation, Dies at 70

by Wilborn Hampton April 6, 1997

Mr. Morgan said that Mr. Ginsberg wrote right to the end. ''He's working on a lot of poems, talking to old friends,'' Mr. Morgan said on Friday. ''He's in very good spirits. He wants to write poetry and finish his life's work.''

William S. Burroughs, one of Mr. Ginsberg's lifelong friends and a fellow Beat, said that Mr. Ginsberg's death was ''a great loss to me and to everybody.''

''We were friends for more than 50 years,'' Mr. Burroughs said. ''Allen was a great person with worldwide influence. He was a pioneer of openness and a lifelong model of candor. He stood for freedom of expression and for coming out of all the closets long before others did. He has influence because he said what he believed. I will miss him.''

As much through the strength of his own irrepressible personality as through his poetry, Mr. Ginsberg provided a bridge between the Underground and the Transcendental. He was as comfortable in the ashrams of Indian gurus in the 1960's as he had been in the Beat coffeehouses of the preceding decade.

A ubiquitous presence at the love-ins and be-ins that marked the drug-oriented counterculture of the Flower Children years, Mr. Ginsberg was also in the vanguard of the political protest movements they helped spawn. He marched against the war in Vietnam, the C.I.A. and the Shah of Iran, among other causes.

If his early verse shocked Eisenhower's America with its celebration of homosexuality and drugs, his involvement in protests kept him in the public eye and fed ammunition to his critics. But through it all, Mr. Ginsberg maintained a sort of teddy bear quality that deflected much of the indignation he inspired.

He was known around the world as a master of the outrageous. He read his poetry and played finger cymbals at the Albert Hall in London; he was expelled from Cuba after saying he found Che Guevara ''cute''; he sang duets with Bob Dylan, and he chanted ''Hare Krishna'' on William F. Buckley Jr.'s television program. As the critic John Leonard observed in a 1988 appreciation: ''He is of course a social bandit. But he is a nonviolent social bandit.''

Or as the narrator in Saul Bellow's ''Him With His Foot in His Mouth'' said of Mr. Ginsberg: ''Under all this self-revealing candor is purity of heart. And the only authentic living representative of American Transcendentalism is that fat-breasted, bald, bearded homosexual in smeared goggles, innocent in his uncleanness.''

J. D. McClatchy, a poet and the editor of The Yale Review, said yesterday: ''Ginsberg was the best-known American poet of his generation, as much a social force as a literary phenomenon.

''Like Whitman, he was a bard in the old manner -- outsized, darkly prophetic, part exuberance, part prayer, part rant. His work is finally a history of our era's psyche, with all its contradictory urges.''

Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark and grew up in Paterson, N.J., the second son of Louis Ginsberg, a schoolteacher and sometime poet, and the former Naomi Levy, a Russian emigree and fervent Marxist. His brother, Eugene, named for Eugene V. Debs, also wrote poetry, under the name Eugene Brooks. Eugene, a lawyer, survives.

Recalling his parents in a 1985 interview, Mr. Ginsberg said:

''They were old-fashioned delicatessen philosophers. My father would go around the house either reciting Emily Dickinson and Longfellow under his breath or attacking T. S. Eliot for ruining poetry with his 'obscurantism.' My mother made up bedtime stories that all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers and healed them.' I grew suspicious of both sides.''

An Authorization For a Lobotomy

Allen Ginsberg's mother later suffered from paranoia and was in and out of mental hospitals; Mr. Ginsberg signed an authorization for a lobotomy. Two days after she died in 1956 in Pilgrim State Hospital on Long Island, he received a letter from her that said: ''The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight in the window -- I have the key -- get married Allen don't take drugs. . . . Love, your mother.''

Three years after her death, Mr. Ginsberg wrote ''Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894-1956),'' an elegy that many consider his finest poem.

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village,

downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph

the rhythm, the rhythm -- and your memory in my head three years after -- . . .

''Kaddish'' burnished a reputation that had been forged with the publication of ''Howl!'' three years earlier. The two works established Mr. Ginsberg as a major voice in what came to be known as the Beat Generation of writers.

Mr. Ginsberg's journey to his place as one of America's most celebrated poets began during his college days. He first attended Montclair State College. But in 1943, he received a small scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson and enrolled at Columbia University. He considered becoming a lawyer like his brother, but was soon attracted to the literary courses offered by Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling, and switched his major from pre-law to literature.

At Columbia he fell in with a crowd that included Jack Kerouac, a former student four years his senior, Lucien Carr and William Burroughs, and later, Neal Cassady, a railway worker who had literary aspirations. Together they formed the nucleus of what would become the Beats.

Kerouac and Carr became the poet's mentors, and Kerouac and Cassady became his lovers. It was also at Columbia that Mr. Ginsberg began to experiment with mind-altering drugs like LSD, which would gain widespread use in the decade to follow and which Mr. Ginsberg would celebrate in his verse along with his homosexuality and his immersion in Eastern transcendental religions.

But if the Beats were creating literary history around Columbia and the West End Cafe, there was a dangerous undercurrent to their activities. Mr. Carr spent a brief time in jail for manslaughter, and Mr. Ginsberg, because he had associated with Mr. Carr, was suspended from Columbia for a year.

In 1949, after Mr. Ginsberg had received his bachelor's degree, Herbert Huncke, a writer and hustler, moved into his apartment and stored stolen goods there. Mr. Huncke was eventually jailed, and Mr. Ginsberg, pleading psychological disability, was sent to a psychiatric institution for eight months. At the institution, he met another patient, Carl Solomon, whom Mr. Ginsberg credited with deepening his understanding of poetry and its power as a weapon of political dissent.

Becoming a Protege Of the Poet Williams

Returning home to Paterson, Mr. Ginsberg became a protege of William Carlos Williams, the physician and poet, who lived nearby. Williams's use of colloquial American language in his poetry was a major influence on the young Mr. Ginsberg.

After leaving Columbia, Mr. Ginsberg first went to work for a Madison Avenue advertising agency. After five years, he once recalled, he found himself taking part in a consumer-research project trying to determine whether Americans preferred the word ''sparkling'' or ''glamorous'' to describe ideal teeth. ''We already knew people associate diamonds with 'sparkling' and furs with 'glamorous,' '' he said. ''We spent $150,000 to learn most people didn't want furry teeth.''

The poet said he decided to give up the corporate world ''when my shrink asked me what would make me happy.'' He hung his gray flannel suit in the closet and went to San Francisco with six months of unemployment insurance in his pocket. San Francisco was then the center of considerable literary energy. He took a room around the corner from City Lights, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's bookstore and underground publishing house, and began to write.

During this period, Mr. Ginsberg also became part of the San Francisco literary circle that included Kenneth Rexroth -- an author, critic and painter -- Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Robert Duncan and Philip Lamantia. He also met Peter Orlovsky, who would be his companion for the next 30 years.

His first major work from San Francisco was ''Howl!'' The long-running poem expressed the anxieties and ideals of a generation alienated from mainstream society. ''Howl!,'' which was to become Mr. Ginsberg's most famous poem, was dedicated to Solomon, and begins:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. . . .

Mr. Ginsberg read the poem to a gathering arranged by Mr. Rexroth, and those present never forgot the poem, its author or the occasion.

Mr. Rexroth's wife privately distributed a mimeographed 50-copy edition of ''Howl!'' and in 1956, Mr. Ferlinghetti published ''Howl! and Other Poems'' in what he called his ''pocket poets series.''

With its open and often vivid celebration of homosexuality and eroticism, ''Howl!'' was impounded by United States Customs agents and Mr. Ginsberg was tried on obscenity charges.

After a long trial, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the poem was not without ''redeeming social importance.''

The result was to make ''Howl!'' immensely popular and establish it as a landmark against censorship. The outrage and furor did not stop with the sexual revolution. As late as 1988, the radio station WBAI refused to allow ''Howl!'' to be read on the air during a weeklong series about censorship in America.

There were almost as many definitions of Beatniks and the Beat movement as there were writers who claimed to be part of it. As John Clellan Holmes described it, ''To be beat is to be at the bottom of your personality looking up.'' But if the movement grew out of disillusionment, it was disillusionment with a conscience.

Mr. Ginsberg tried to explain the aims of the Beats in a letter to his father in 1957: ''Whitman long ago complained that unless the material power of America were leavened by some kind of spiritual infusion, we would wind up among the 'fabled damned.' We're approaching that state as far as I can see. Only way out is individuals taking responsibility and saying what they actually feel. That's what we as a group have been trying to do.''

On another occasion, he described the literary rules more succinctly: ''You don't have to be right. All you have to do is be candid.'' Mr. Ginsberg was nothing if not candid.

As he wrote in ''America,'' another 1956 poem, which took aim at Eisenhower's post-McCarthy era:

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956

. . .

America this is quite serious

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set

America is this correct?

. . .

Mr. Ginsberg said the poets who formed the prime influence on his own work were William Blake, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and Williams. He declared he had found a new method of poetry. ''All you have to do,'' he said, ''is think of anything that comes into your head, then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.''

His disdain for poetry's traditional rules only gave ammunition to his critics. James Dickey once complained that the ''problem'' with Allen Ginsberg was that he made it seem as if anybody could write poetry.

Traveling Widely For Two Decades

Mr. Ginsberg used the celebrity he gained with ''Howl!'' to travel widely during the next two decades. He went to China and India to study with gurus and Zen masters and to Venice to see Pound. On his way home, he was crowned King of the May by dissident university students in Prague, only to be expelled by the Communist Government. He read his poetry wherever he was allowed, from concert stages to off-campus coffeehouses.

He was in the forefront of whatever movement was in fashion: the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960's, the anti-Vietnam war and anti-C.I.A. demonstrations of the 1970's, the anti-Shah and anti-Reagan protests of the 1980's. In 1967 he was arrested in an antiwar protest in New York City, and he was arrested again, for the same reason, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. He testified in the trial of the so-called Chicago Seven.

Through it all, he kept writing. After ''Kaddish'' in 1959, major works included ''TV Baby'' in 1960, ''Wichita Vortex Sutra'' (1966), ''Wales Visitation'' (1967), ''Don't Grow Old'' (1976) and ''White Shroud'' (1983).

In his celebrated career, Mr. Ginsberg received many awards, including the National Book Award (1973), the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished poetic achievement (1986), and an American Book Award for contributions to literary excellence (1990).

In 1968, Cassady died of a drug overdose. Kerouac died of alcoholism the next year. By the mid-1970's, Mr. Ginsberg had helped start the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo., a Buddhist university where he taught summer courses in poetry and in Buddhist meditation. He also was becoming one of the last living voices of the Beat generation and the keeper of the flame.

In 1985, Harper & Row published Mr. Ginsberg's ''Collected Poems,'' an anthology of his work in one volume that firmly established the poet in the mainstream of American literature. The poet again made tours, showing up on television shows, but this time he was in suit and tie offering a sort of explanation of his work.

''People ask me if I've gone respectable now,'' he said to one interviewer. ''I tell them I've always been respectable.''

During another interview, he confessed: ''My intention was to make a picture of the mind, mistakes and all. Of course I learned I'm an idiot, a complete idiot who wasn't as prophetic as I thought I was. The crazy, angry Philippic sometimes got in the way of clear perception.

''I thought the North Vietnamese would be a lot better than they turned out to be. I shouldn't have been marching against the Shah of Iran because the mullahs have turned out to be a lot worse.''

But despite his suit and tie, the censors continued to look over Mr. Ginsberg's shoulder. During the interviews, David Remnick, then of The Washington Post, accompanied him to CBS's ''Nightwatch.'' A producer, unfamiliar with the poet's work, asked if he would read something on the show.

''How about reading that poem about your mother?'' she suggested.

'' 'Kaddish,' yes. Time magazine calls it my masterpiece,'' Ginsberg replied. ''But I don't know. . . .''

The poet pointed to a word in the poem he doubted would make prime time. As Mr. Remnick reported, the producer's eyes glazed over and there was a long silence.

''Your mother's . . .?'' the producer said in horror.

''Couldn't we just bleep that part out?'' the poet offered, always helpful.

''No,'' the producer said.

''It's O.K.,'' the poet replied. ''I've got other poems.''

Social Conscience Plus Sex and Drugs

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

-- From ''Howl!'' (1955-56)

America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia

I'm addressing you.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time magazine?

. . .

It occurs to me that I am America

I am talking to myself again.

-- From ''America'' (1956)

And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers -- and my own imagination of a withered leaf -- at dawn --

Dreaming back thru life, Your time -- and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,

the final moment -- the flower burning in the Day -- and what comes after,

looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city

a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed --

like a poem in the dark --

. . .

O mother

what have I left out

O mother

what have I forgotten

O mother

farewell

-- From ''Kaddish'' (1959-60)

. . . Kansas! Kansas! Shuddering at last!

PERSON appearing in Kansas!

angry telephone calls to the University

Police dumbfounded leaning on

their radiocar hoods

While Poets chant to Allah in the roadhouse Showboat!

Blue-eyed children dance and hold Thy Hand O aged Walt

who came from Lawrence to Topeka to envision

Iron interlaced upon the city plain --

Telegraph wires strung from city to city O Melville!

. . .

Thy sins are forgiven, Wichita!

-- From ''Wichita Vortex Sutra'' (1966)

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Gilda Radner who Died: May 20, 1989 in Los Angeles, California

Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American actress and comedian, who was one of the seven original cast members for the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). In her routines, Radner specialized in parodies of television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show. She also portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979. Radner's SNL work established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy.

She died from ovarian cancer in 1989. Her autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including those with the illness. Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her personal wish that information about her illness would help other cancer victims, founding and inspiring organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, hereditary factors and support for cancer victims. She was posthumously awarded a Grammy Award in 1990. Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992; and she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.

Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Henrietta (née Dworkin), a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman. Through her mother, Radner was a second cousin of business executive Steve Ballmer. She grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby" (and on whom she based her famous character Emily Litella), and an older brother named Michael. She attended the exclusive University Liggett School in Detroit. Toward the end of her life, Radner wrote in her autobiography, It's Always Something, that during her childhood and young adulthood, she battled numerous eating disorders: "I coped with stress by having every possible eating disorder from the time I was nine years old. I have weighed as much as 160 pounds and as little as 93. When I was a kid, I overate constantly. My weight distressed my mother and she took me to a doctor who put me on Dexedrine diet pills when I was ten years old."

Radner was close to her father, who operated Detroit's Seville Hotel, where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while performing in the city. He took her on trips to New York to see Broadway shows. As Radner wrote in It's Always Something, when she was 12, her father developed a brain tumor, and the symptoms began so suddenly that he told people his glasses were too tight. Within days, he was bedridden and unable to communicate, and remained in that condition until his death two years later.

Radner graduated from Liggett and enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1964. She planned to get an education degree.

In Ann Arbor, Radner dropped out in her senior year to follow her boyfriend, Canadian sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff, to Toronto, where she made her professional acting debut in the 1972 production of Godspell with future stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, Martin Short, and Paul Shaffer. Afterward, Radner joined The Second City comedy troupe in Toronto.

Radner was a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a comedy program syndicated to some 600 U.S. radio stations from 1974 to 1975. Fellow cast members included John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Richard Belzer, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Rhonda Coullet.

Radner gained name recognition as one of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", the freshman group on the first (1975) season of Saturday Night Live. She was the first performer cast for the show, co-wrote much of the material that she performed, and collaborated with Alan Zweibel (of the show's writing staff) on sketches that highlighted her recurring characters. Between 1975 and 1980, she created characters such as obnoxious personal advice expert Roseanne Roseannadanna after NY local female reporter Rose Ann Scamardella and "Baba Wawa", a parody of Barbara Walters. After Radner's death, Walters stated in an interview that Radner was the "first person to make fun of news anchors, now it's done all the time."

She also played the character Emily Litella, an elderly, hearing-impaired woman who gave angry and misinformed editorial replies on Weekend Update. Additionally, Radner parodied celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut in SNL sketches. She won an Emmy Award in 1978 for her work on SNL. In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Radner was ranked ninth in importance. "She was the most beloved of the original cast," they wrote. "In the years between Mary Tyler Moore and Seinfeld's Elaine, Radner was the prototype for the brainy city girl with a bundle of neuroses."

In 1979, incoming NBC President Fred Silverman offered Radner her own primetime variety show, which she turned down. That year, she was a host of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly.

Alan Zweibel, who co-created the Roseanne Roseannadanna character and co-wrote Roseanne's dialogue, recalled that Radner, one of three original SNL cast members who stayed away from cocaine, chastised him for abusing it.

While in character as Roseanne Roseannadanna, Radner gave the commencement address to the graduating class at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1979.

Radner had mixed emotions about the fans and strangers who recognized her in public. She sometimes became "angry when she was approached by strangers in public, and upset when she wasn't".

After breaking up with Jeffrey Rubinoff, Radner had an on-again-off-again relationship with Martin Short while both were appearing in Godspell. Radner had romantic involvements with several male Saturday Night Live castmates, including Bill Murray (after a previous relationship with his brother Brian Doyle-Murray) and Dan Aykroyd. Radner's friend Judy Levy recounted Radner saying she found Ghostbusters hard to watch since the cast comprised so many of her ex-boyfriends - Aykroyd, Murray, and Harold Ramis. Radner was first married to musician G. E. Smith after they met while working on Gilda Radner – Live from New York; they divorced in 1982.

Radner met actor Gene Wilder on the set of the Sidney Poitier film Hanky Panky (released in 1982), when the two worked together making the film. She described their first meeting as "love at first sight". After meeting Wilder, her marriage to Smith deteriorated. Radner made a second film with Wilder, The Woman in Red (released in 1984), and their relationship deepened. The two were married on September 18, 1984, in Saint-Tropez. They made a third film together, Haunted Honeymoon, in 1986 and remained married until her death in 1989.

Details of Radner's eating disorder were reported in a book about Saturday Night Live by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, which was published and received much media coverage during a period when Radner was consulting various doctors in Los Angeles about symptoms of an illness she was suffering that turned out to be cancer.

In 1985, Radner was experiencing severe fatigue and suffered from pain in her upper legs on the set of Haunted Honeymoon in the United Kingdom. She sought medical treatment, and for a period of 10 months, various doctors, most of them in Los Angeles, gave her several diagnoses that all turned out to be wrong because she continued to experience pain.

Finally, on October 21, 1986, Radner was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. She immediately underwent surgery and had a hysterectomy. On October 26, surgeons removed a grapefruit-size tumor from her abdomen. Radner then began chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatment, as she wrote in It's Always Something, and the treatment caused extreme physical and emotional pain.

In September 1988, after tests showed no signs of cancer, Radner went on a maintenance chemotherapy treatment to prolong her remission, but three months later, in December, she learned the cancer had returned. She was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 17, 1989, to undergo a CT scan. She was given a sedative and went into a coma during the scan. She did not regain consciousness and died three days later, from ovarian cancer on May 20, 1989; Wilder was at her side.

[autolykiss]

the enigma of bobby bittman

Eugene Levy as Bobby Bittman (1/2)

[wazafam]

Jane Lynch is currently one of the busiest and hardest-working actresses in Hollywood and it has been that way for a while now. After making her big-screen debut in the 1988 body-swapping comedy Vice Versa, Lynch has accrued more than 215 film and TV credits.

RELATED: 10 Classic Glee Episodes Every Fan has Seen

She has earned Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for her seminal performance on the hit show Glee, and recently won a second Primetime Emmy for her guest-role on Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Lynch also won back-to-back Emmys for hosting the game-show Hollywood Game Night, which bodes well for her new gig as the host of NBC's The Weakest Link reboot. She also appeared in some notable films.

10 Rio (2011) - 6.9

Lynch has lent her voice to countless animated features during her three-decade career and counting. In Rio, she voiced the role of Alice, The Other Goose.

The film follows Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), a baby macaw that is kidnapped from its native Brazil and taken to the U.S. to be sold for profit. When Blu falls off the delivery truck and is taken in by a young girl in Minnesota, the bird spends the next 15 years in captivity. Upon meeting a female macaw named Jewel, the two set off on an epic pilgrimage back home to South America.

9 Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (2009) - 6.9

Lynch also worked with Rio director Carlos Saldanha on Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, lending her voice to the role of Diatryma Mom. The film follows Sid (John Leguizamo), who steals a trio of dinosaur eggs so he can start a family of his own.

RELATED: Ice Age: 5 Ways It Ages Well (& 5 It Doesn't)

Upon the theft, Sid is kidnapped by the mother of the three eggs and sent to a harrowing subterranean lair to fend for himself. The more endangered Sid becomes, the faster his friends Manny, Ellie, and Diego must rescue him.

8 Paul (2011) - 7.0

Greg Mottola's Paul tells the story of Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), a pair of UFO-obsessed comic-book enthusiasts who concoct a hair-brained scheme to infiltrate Area 51 to witness authentic extraterrestrial life.

RELATED: Simon Pegg: His 10 Highest-Grossing Movies, According To Box-Office Mojo

On their quest, the two men meet Paul (Seth Rogen), a tiny foul-mouthed alien who leads an adventurous road-trip back to his fleeting mothership. Lynch plays a supporting character named Pat Stevens that the trio encounters on their sojourn.

7 Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018) - 7.0

Lynch reprised her role of Calhoun in Ralph Breaks the Internet, the most-recent movie she's participated in. Released several years after the original, the sequel finds Ralph (John C. Reilly) trapped inside a racing arcade game with his best friend, Vanellope (Sarah Silverman).

Due to a technological glitch, Ralph and Vanellope travel through the internet in an attempt to obtain the proper cable that will help them restore her game.

6 The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (2005) - 7.1

In Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Lynch plays Paula, the aggressive and hyper-sexual boss of Andy (Steve Carell) who continues to make overages to him during business hours.

RELATED: 10 Funniest Judd Apatow Comedies, According To IMDb

Painfully shy and awkward, Andy's immature friends and co-workers attempt to help him finally lose his virginity. But when Andy meets Trish (Catherine Keener), a genuine romance blossoms that allow Andy to remain true to himself while finding authentic love.

5 The Hammer (2007) - 7.2

While Lynch merely makes an uncredited cameo as "woman who argues with Jerry," The Hammer still ranks among her highest-rated movies, per IMDb.

Rather than a virgin, The Hammer centers on a 40-year-old boxer named Jerry Ferro (Adam Carolla) trying to reclaim the pugilistic glory he enjoyed 20 years earlier. Given a slim shot to make the Olympic team, Jerry rigorously climbs the ranks of the ring in an attempt to realize his childhood dream.

4 A Mighty Wind (2003) - 7.2

Along with John Michael Higgins, Lynch plays a folk-singing member of Witches in Natures Color (WINC) in the Christopher Guest mockumentary A Mighty Wind. That is, the two worship color and channel the energy into their folk songs.

The film revolves around a folk music reunion festival and the various participants in the twilight of their careers. Much of the drama centers on Mitch (Eugene Levy) and Mickey (Catherine O'Hara), two estranged former lovers who can't help but make beautiful music while in each other's presence.

3 Best In Show (2000) - 7.5

In Christopher Guest's incisive satire about The National Dog Show, Lynch plays formidable reigning champion, Christy Cummings, the dog handler of a precious poodle named Rhapsody in White.

The poodle's biggest competition to repeat as champion comes from Winky, a Norwich terrier owned by the odd couple Cookie (Catherine O'Hara) and Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy). Meanwhile, Christy has an illicit affair with her employer, Sherri Ann Cabot (Jennifer Coolidge).

2 Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - 7.7

Compared to its sequel, Lynch played a much larger role as Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun in Wreck-It Ralph. As the lead character of the in-movie video game Hero's Duty, Calhoun helps Felix find Ralph inside the Sugar Rush racing game.

RELATED: Wreck-It Ralph Main Characters Ranked By Likability

Meanwhile, all Ralph wants to do is leave his villainous nature behind and become the heroic figure of his video game. His wish comes true in part when he manages to save Vanellope from a terminal glitch that nearly put her out of order.

1 The Fugitive (1993) - 7.8

Lynch makes a small but lasting impression in The Fugitive, playing Dr. Richard Kimble's former medical colleague who's willing to help him while on the lam.

Falsely accused of murdering his wife, Kimble escapes from a prison transport bus and immediately sets out to prove his innocence by finding the real culprit. Kimble spends years in hiding as he systematically works to identify the one-armed man who murdered his wife in cold blood and framed him for it. It's Lynch's character Kathy that allows Kimble to solve the crime.

NEXT: What Harrison Ford Movie Would You Be Like Based On Your Zodiac

Jane Lynch's 10 Best Movies, Ranked By IMDb | ScreenRant from https://ift.tt/3wgJRdX

[armeniaitn]

COAF Moves Mountains with over $ 4.5 Million Raised for 
Rural Armenia and Artsakh

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/society/coaf-moves-mountains-with-over-4-5-million-raised-for-%e2%80%a8rural-armenia-and-artsakh-66430-11-12-2020/

COAF Moves Mountains with over $ 4.5 Million Raised for 
Rural Armenia and Artsakh

An impressive roster of celebrities lent their voices to the COAF mission

LOS ANGELES–Children of Armenia Fund’s televised/virtual benefit “Moving Mountains” was held on December 5 this year in place of the organization’s annual holiday gala in New York City. The event raised over $4.5 million for COAF’s ongoing cutting-edge education, health, social and economic programs in 64 villages, along with its state-of-the-art SMART Center in the Lori region. Proceeds will also be used to build modular homes for displaced families from Artsakh who have found refuge in COAF beneficiary villages in Armenia.

The “Moving Mountains” benefit was broadcast on ARTN and USArmeniaTV. It was hosted by Araksya Karapetyan of Good Day L.A. on FOX 11 Los Angeles, COAF Senior Director of Development Haig Boyadjian, and world-renowned auctioneer Gabriel Butu. Musical performances this year included pop superstar Iveta Mukuchyan, and violinist Ara Malikian accompanied by pianist Serouj Kradjian, who paid tribute to the young fallen heroes from COAF villages who lost their lives recently during the attack on Artsakh. Other musical performances included Victoria and Liana Ulikhanyan from Armenia on violin and cello, and France-based vocalist Hakob Ghasabian.

Special appearances featured Andrea Martin, Serj Tankian, Sean Hayes, Eugene Levy, Daniel Levy, Tina Fey, Mark Geragos, David Alpay, Martin Short, Victor Garber, Mary Basmadjian, Hovik Keuchkerian, Dr. Eric Esrailian, California State Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian, Lory Tatoulian, Ken Davitian, and Kev Orkian.

COAF has been at the forefront of rural development in Armenia and is committed to addressing the devastating consequences of the recent attack on Artsakh. COAF plans on securing temporary housing and integrating 2,000 displaced people from Artsakh into its programs and services by the end of 2020. After providing temporary housing, COAF will provide permanent housing to those who will not return to Artsakh and ensure they have access to education, healthcare, social and economic programs.

In his address, COAF Founder and Chairman Dr. Garo Armen highlighted the urgency of extending COAF’s mission to manage the current crisis in Armenia. “COAF is an organization with a crisis management DNA. We now face a new crisis to manage; 40,000 Armenians from Artsakh who have been left homeless. To face this crisis, we need to raise our annual fundraising target from $6 million last year to $20 million this year. We need to provide housing so that we can avoid the tragedy of a community of Armenians living in trailers (domiks) for decades like they have since the 1988 earthquake.”

[embedded content]

Armenians worldwide are encouraged to watch and learn more about COAF’s work. The organization’s goal is to raise $5 million by year end and reach a total of $20 million by mid-year 2021.

The ���Children of Armenia” Charitable Fund (COAF) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that employs community-led approaches aimed at improving the quality of life in rural Armenia, with a particular focus on children and youth. COAF’s target development areas are education, healthcare, social and economic development. COAF launched its programs in 2004, starting in one village and expanding to 64 villages in Armavir, Aragatsotn, Lori, Gegharkunik, Shirak, and Tavush regions, impacting more than 107,000 beneficiaries.

Since 2015, COAF has developed and started implementing a new vision – SMART Initiative. COAF SMART is designed to advance a generation across the rural world through education that will benefit individuals, societies, and the environment. COAF SMART will become an exemplary model of development and will be replicated in other regions and communities throughout Armenia. The first COAF SMART Center was inaugurated on May 27, 2018, near the village of Debet, Lori Region.

Read original article here.

[moviechallenge2021]

2023 List

2023 List

DIRECTORS

0006. Paul W.S. Anderson - Resident Evil (2002)

0013. Clive Barker - Hellraiser (1987)

0031. John Cassavetes - Shadows (1959)

0120. John Lasseter - Toy Story (1995)

0125. Barry Levinson - Man of the Year (2006)

0130. David Lynch - Eraserhead (1977)

0167. Sam Raimi - Evil Dead II (1987)

0171. Ivan Reitman - Ghostbusters (1984)

0190. Kevin Smith - Clerks III (2022)

0192. Steven Soderbergh - Bubble (2005)

0212. John Waters - Mondo Trasho (1969)

0223. Robert Zemeckis - Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

ACTORS

0231. Alan Arkin - The Muppets (2011)

0234. Hank Azaria - The Simpsons Movie (2007)

0247. Sean Bean - How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989)

0248. Ned Beatty - Toy Story 3 (2010)

0249. Warren Beatty - Dick Tracy (1990)

0267. Jeff Bridges - Iron Man (2008)

0272. Albert Brooks - This Is 40 (2012)

0281. Gabriel Byrne - Spider (2002)

0298. Chevy Chase - Nothing But Trouble (1991)

0303. George Clooney - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

0305. James Coburn - Monsters, Inc. (2001)

0310. Jennifer Connelly - Labyrinth (1986)

0318. Brian Cox - Super Troopers (2001)

0327. Tim Curry - The Rugrats Movie (1998)

0329. Joan Cusack - School of Rock (2003)

0333. Matt Damon - The Informant! (2009)

0345. Benicio Del Toro - License to Kill (1989)

0346. Judi Dench - GoldenEye (1995)

0379. Will Ferrell - Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

0380. Miguel Ferrer - Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)

0384. Ralph Fiennes - The Menu (2022)

0412. Paul Giamatti - The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009)

0432. Tom Hanks - Toy Story 2 (1999)

0440. Lance Henriksen - Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

0448. Ian Holm - Brazil (1985)

0451. Dennis Hopper - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

0459. Holly Hunter - Crash (1996)

0461. John Hurt - Hellboy (2004)

0467. Michael Ironside - Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

0488. Udo Kier - Flesh For Frankenstein (1973)

0505. Jason Lee - Clerks II (2006)

0509. Eugene Levy - Heavy Metal (1981)

0528. John Malkovich - Burn After Reading (2008)

0547. Alfred Molina - Justice League Dark (2017)

0549. Demi Moore - Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)

0550. Julianne Moore - Maps to the Stars (2014)

0551. Rick Moranis - Ghostbusters II (1989)

0604. Dennis Quaid - Strange World (2022)

0611. Harold Ramis - Knocked Up (2007)

0613. John Ratzenberger - Up (2009)

0623. Christina Ricci - Speed Racer (2008)

0624. Alan Rickman - Dogma (1999)

0629. Seth Rogen - The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

0636. Geoffrey Rush - Finding Nemo (2003)

0638. Kurt Russell - The Fox and the Hound (1981)

0646. Roy Scheider - Naked Lunch (1991)

0649. Jason Schwartzman - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

0652. Seann William Scott - Jackass 3 (2010)

0671. Kevin Spacey - A Bug’s Life (1998)

0688. Donald Sutherland - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

0708. Kathleen Turner - Serial Mom (1994)

0719. M. Emmet Walsh - Fletch (1985)

0738. Luke Wilson - Bottle Rocket (1996)

0743. James Woods - Hercules (1997)

PRODUCERS

0751. Judd Apatow - Bridesmaids (2011)

0760. Walt Disney - One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

0767. Brian Grazer - Liar Liar (1997)

0778. Lorne Michaels - Vampires vs. the Bronx (2020)

0794. Bob Weinstein - Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)

0795. Harvey Weinstein - Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

WRITERS

0805. James Gunn - The Belko Experiment (2016)

0809. John Hughes - National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

CINEMATOGRAPHERS

0824. Roger Deakins - Barton Fink (1991)

COMPOSERS

0862. Howard Shore - The Brood (1979)

SPECIAL EFFECTS

0865. Rick Baker - Videodrome (1983)

0873. Dick Smith - Scanners (1981)

THEMES

0886. A Blind Person - The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)

0893. World Domination - Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus (2019)

0907. A Sexual Fetish - A Dirty Shame (2004)

0915. Full Frontal Nudity - Jackass Number Two (2006)

0920. A Psychiatrist’s Office - Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

0951. Torture - Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

0971. Body Count Over 10 - Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998)

0976. The Open Road - A Goofy Movie (1995)

1007. Warp Speed - Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler (1992)

1009. Slow Motion - Jackass 3.5 (2011)

1010. A Cult - Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

1034. I'll Wait for You - Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003)

1037. Genocide - Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku (1990)

1044. Studio Backlot - Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

1061. Featuring: King Arthur - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

1062. Featuring: Batman - Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)

1082. Bigfoot - Cry Wilderness (1987)

1087. Mental Institution - Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

1090. An Art Film - Begotten (1989)

1115. Twins - Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000)

1122. Movie Within a Movie - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996)

1128. At the Morgue - Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

1145. Pumping Iron - The Toxic Avenger (1984)

1154. Mercenaries - Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure (1988)

1159. Decapitation - Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13! (1992)

1161. I Thought You Were Dead - The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

1175. Great Soundtrack - Gummo (1997)

1192. Anime - Dragon Ball Z: Bio-Broly (1994)

1196. A Duo - Dragon Ball Z: Broly - Second Coming (1994)

1206. An Annoying Creature - Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might (1990)

1221. Oscar Winner: Best Original Score - Aladdin (1992)

1230. Razzie Winner: Worst Director - Mac and Me (1988)

1236. Mad Scientist - Dragon Ball Z: The World’s Strongest (1990)

1241. Evil Corporation - Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

1243. A Counterfeit - Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

1261. Got the Munchies - Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies (1986)

1271. Paris, France - Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

1284. Talking Animals - Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle (1987)

1290. An Amusement Park - Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks (1993)

1293. Modern Movie filmed in Black and White - Clerks (1994)

1296. Invasion - Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug (1991)

1299. A Chick Flick - My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

1310. Dark Comedy - Desperate Living (1977)

1319. A Fancy Restaurant - Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

1342. Going Camping - Dragon Ball Z: Cooler’s Revenge (1991)

1359. An Unnatural Disaster - Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm (2022)

1360. A Phobia - Jackass 2.5 (2007)

1370. Pride - Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn (1995)

1374. Dragons - Dragon Ball Z: Wrath of the Dragon (1995)

1389. Kidnapping - Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone (1989)

1390. Slavery - Dragon Ball Z: Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan (1993)

1397. An Indie - Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

1398. A Childhood Icon - Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound (1993)

1400. Scene After the Credits - Jackass: The Movie (2002)

0132/1400

[todayclassical]

March 17 in Music History

1519 Birth of French composer Thoinot Arbeau.

1664 Birth of composer Georg Österreich.

1665 Birth of French composer and harpsichordist Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre.

1675 Birth of composer Petrus Laurentius Wockenfuss.

1733 FP of Handel's operetta Deborah at the King's Theater in London. 

1745 Birth of composer Nicolas Sejan.

1746 Birth of composer Jan David Holland.

1749 FP of Handel's Solomon in London.

1772 Birth of American sacred choral composer Stephen Jenks. 

1800 Birth of German choral director and composer Carl Friedrich Zöllner. 

1805 Birth of Spanish baritone Manuel Patricio Garcia. 

1830 FP Chopin's Piano Concerto in f minor, Chopin soloist, in Warsaw. 

1839 Birth of German organist and composer Josef Rheinberg. 1846 FP of G. Verdi's opera Atilla at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

1848 Birth of American composer Horace Wadham NichoIl. 

1860 Birth of bass Josef Alken in Trier. 

1862 Death of French opera composer Jacques François Halévy.

1867 FP of J. Brahms' Waltzes, Op. 39 for piano, in Vienna.

1869 Death of soprano Teresa Saporiti. 

1871 Birth of tenor Giuseppe Borgatti in Cento.

1874 Birth of soprano Minnie Saltzman-Stevens in Bloomington, Illinois.

1876 Birth of composer Frederic Ayers.

1879 Birth of tenor Walter Kirchhoff in Berlin.

1880 Birth of Columbian composer Guillermo Uribe-Holguin in Bogata. 

1890 Birth of American composer Harold Morris.

1892 FP of (1st mm) S. Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. 

1892 Birth of composer Sayed Darwish. 

1899 Birth of baritone Walter Olitzki in Hamburg-Altona. 

1899 Birth of American composer Radie Britain, in Amarillo, TX. 

1900 Birth of American film composer and conductor Alfred Newman. 1900 Premiere of Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis.

1901 Birth of soprano Franca Somigli in Chicago. 

1902 Birth of tenor Walter Ludwig in Oeynhausen. 

1903 Birth of mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Aldor in Melrose. 

1907 Birth of soprano Ellabelle Davis in New Rochelle. 

1911 Birth of composer Raffaele d' Alessandro.

1917 Birth of Irish composer Brian Boydell.

1918 Birth of Dutch pianist, composer and painter D’Arendo.

1920 Birth of American composer and pianist John LaMontaine in Oak Park, IL. 1923 FP of R. Gliere's three act opera Shahk-Senem in Baku. 1924 Birth of English composer Stephen Dodgson. 

1927 Birth of composer Maurice Ingvar Karkoff.

1927 Birth of composer Sulkhan Ivanovich Nasidze.

1928 Birth of composer Edino Krieger.

1930 Birth of American mezzo-soprano Betty Lou Allen in Campbell, OH. 

1933 Birth of mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Steiner in Berlin. 

1934 Birth of composer Erhard Grosskopf.

1934 Birth of soprano Enriquette Tarres in Barcelona. 

1936 Birth of composer Ladislav Kupkovič.

1939 Death of soprano Thila Plaichinger. 

1941 Birth of composer Edward Harper.

1944 Birth of English pianist John Lill. 1945 FP of Myaskovsky's Cello Concerto, in Moscow.

1946 Birth of English composer and pianist Michael Finnissey in London.

1949 Birth of American composer Jane Brockman.

1951 American debut of soprano Victoria de Los Angeles at the MET Opera in NYC in Gounod's Faust. 1951 FP of Paul Dessau's opera Die Verhör des Lukullus 'The Sentencing of Lucullus' at the Deutsche Staatsoper (Berlin State Opera) in East Berlin. 

1954 FP of Quincy Porter's Concerto Concertante which won the Pulitzer Prize.  1963 Birth of American composer Nick Peros.

1963 Death of tenor Hendrik Drost. 

1966 Death of mezzo-soprano Else Schurhoff. 

1967 FP of Marvin David Levy's opera Mourning Becomes Electra, based on a play by Eugene O'Neill, at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC.

1970 Death of tenor Max Meili. 

1971 Death of mezzo-soprano Margarethe Arndt-Ober. 

1971 Death of baritone Hans Lobel. 

1972 FP of George Crumb's Vox balaenae at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. by the New York Camerata.

1976 Death of soprano Giulia Tess.

1979 Death of tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi.

1980 Death of Dutch composer Rudolph George Escher in De Koog.

1988 Death of bass Raffaele Arie. 

2002 FP of Paul Schoenfield's Partita for violin and piano. Chamber Music Society of Minnesota concert with violinist Young-Nam Kim, the composer at the piano in St. Paul, MN.

2003 FP of Augusta Reed Thomas' Pulsar. Ilya Gringolts, violin at Wigmore Hall in London.

[topbeautifulwomens]

#Robbie #Amell #aichannel #beatmaker #canada #creative #dancefloor #fashionistas #insta #lip #london #shoes

Along with his sister, Robbie Amell started acting after he was just 6 years aged. At 16, he started to land theater roles at Lawrence Park Stage in plays such as Louis and Dave, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and The Importance of Being Ernest. The encounter brought Robbie to realize that he wanted to pursue a career in acting.

Shortly after choosing to adhere to acting, he booked the portion of Daniel Murtaugh in the major motion picture Cheaper by the Dozen 2, headed by names such as Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Hilary Duff, Tom Welling and – of whom he played the son – Eugene Levy and Carmen Electra.

As it seems to be is the habit of Canadians, Robbie has played hockey considering that he was a child. He way too takes Muay Thai and crack dancing lessons.

Name Robbie Amell Height Naionality Canadian Day of Birth 21 April 1988, Place of Birth Toronto, Ontario, Canada Famous for

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