cinema history class: night of the devils

Session: It's Not Just One of Those -- Very Unusual Vampires, Week 4
Movie: Night of the Devils (1972)
Directed by Giorgio Ferroni

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
Stuck in the woods after he crashes his car, Nicola finds himself sheltering with a family that is Deathly afraid of a vampire who prowls the forest by night. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Night starts off surrealistically, with odd imagery of a maggot-infested skull, an exploding head, a naked woman, and various other disconnected images. We see Nicola, suffering from amnesia, in a mental hospital, before the main plot is shown in flashback. It's an interesting start.

There are some times that the movie gets a bit slow, though even then there's a constant sense of dread that kept me on the edge of my seat. Nicola is puzzled by and annoyed at his hosts and their seeming-irrational actions, and that conflict helps. Of course, we in the class were vocally urging him to just get himself TF out of there. But the last twenty minutes or so were a real thrill ride, as Nicola leaves, then returns for Sdenka, thinks better of it and then has to fight off the whole vampire family.

There is one major plothole that bugs me. After Nicola drove off in his panic, leaving a non-vampirized Sdenka in the forest surrounded by her vampirized family, how did she manage to escape?

The ending had me puzzled. I had figured out that Sdenka wasn't a vampire. By this point, it had become clear that vampires have red rings under their eyes. Sdenka didn't. When she was chasing after Nicola in the basement of his insane asylum, with Nicola believing she was a vampire,  I knew that he would kill her and then find out the truth. And I got that part right. But why did the camera show the fires in the furnace so prominently? I was certain that they would play a role in the ending. There really was no other reason for them to be there. Maybe Nicola, heartbroken by his mistake, would hurl himself into the flames. But those flames played no role -- a fact that seems even stranger given that the final shot was a loving closeup of the flames. I am convinced that there was a rewrite. Keith says he has never read of any such change. But I'm sure that there was.

Ratings

Me: 9

Bob: 9

Christina: 9.2

just another shopping trip

 We -- Blair, Ethan and I -- went out grocery shopping. Blair texted Asher to see if he wanted anything. Hilarity ensued.

Blair:
Want anything from Whole Foods

Asher:
yes

Blair:
What do you want

Asher:
yes

Blair:
If you only say yes, I will not know what you want

Asher:
ok

Blair:
If you do not tell me what specific items you want I will not be able to get them

Asher:
sushi

Blair:
No sushi [editor's note: Blair was not denying Asher sushi. Rather, she was telling him that they were out of sushi]

Asher:

Blair:

Asher:

k

Did you get this

Blair:
We have Makinajian chicken at home

Asher:
Did you get it

I need to know

Blair:

The closest we got was Bell and Evans and turkey slices for Eighteen

Asher:

Get out

Blair:
What do you want

Asher:

This

Blair:

Do you want me to buy a soup chicken

Asher:

Blair:
Can you come outside and help with groceries

Asher:

k

cinema history class: captain kronos — vampire hunter

Session: It's Not Just One of Those -- Very Unusual Vampires, Week 3
Movie: Captain Kronos — Vampire Hunter (1974)
Directed by Brian Clemens

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
Captain Kronos, his sidekick Grost and the lovely Carla (who has been known to dance on Sundays) set to the task of ridding an 18th century village of its vampire. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Keith explained that this movie was supposed to be the first in a series featuring Captain Kronos and Grost as they went about hunting vampires. I note that at the outset because some of what follows is written with that context in consideration. At any rate, the film did poorly at the box office, so the expected sequels were never created. And that's kind of a shame, because this was actually a very engaging film.

This was beautifully shot. Lots of well-framed camera angles where we see people emerge between trees, or through arches. It was really great to see.

There was some great slapstick humor thrown in, with sequences that made me think of Bugs Bunny and other Merrie Melodies characters.

And they really did leave the best for last. The one-two punch of the big reveal of just who was the vampire, followed by the climactic sword fight. The latter was a great bit of choreography.

One of the peculiar conceits of the movie is that different vampires have different vulnerabilities. So there's the challenge, after identifying the vampire, of figuring out just how to kill it. Stake through the heart? Nope. Hanging? Nope. And so on. This makes for a scene that's more interesting and more enjoyable than it should be. But I suspect it was created for the greater purpose of setting up for an interesting series. If vampires all have the same vulnerabilities, then a series of movies in which they all die the same way could get pretty repetitive. And this little angle could have saved the series.

I was disappointed in one aspect of the ending -- the fact that Carla stayed behind rather than travel on with Kronos and Grost. I suppose that was done with an eye toward the hoped-for series. Each movie could have a new love interest for Kronos -- sort of like David Banner from TV's The Incredible Hulk. Of course, I think the trio had a good dynamic, so I'm not convinced that the new-girl-in-each-installment would have been better. I think it would have been better to see the trio in each installment.

Alas, we'll never know.

Ratings

Me: 8

Bob: 8.5

Christina: 9.9

Ethan: 9

happy tunesday! (never kill a man twice)

Here's another one of my songs -- arranged, performed and produced by Tobias Wilson.

The song evolved, sort of, out of another songwriting project.

Some years ago, I was working on a song called "Bleed Me a River." It was intended to be very negative and threatening. Wild West. Guy threatening another guy with a gun type of stuff. I never did finish that project. Or, rather, I haven't finished that project yet.

At some point, I mentioned to Keith, who teaches the cinema history class I take, that "Bleed Me a River" sounded like the title of a Spaghetti Western. In relatively little time I came up with a general idea for how such a movie would go. I spent a Saturday at Keith's house working with him on the idea.  I never did finish that project. Or, rather, I haven't finished that project yet.

But something came out of it. At one point I had a plot hole. I wasn't sure how to explain a character's actions. Eventually, I came up with a simple explanation. Asked about what he was doing and why, he explained, "Mama always said, 'Never kill a man twice.'"

And at some point I thought that "Never Kill a Man Twice" would make a great song title. I decided to make it abstract, and full of misery. I think I succeeded.

And I think Tobias Wilson, session musician for hire, did a great job with it.

 

short stout markers

One of the things that I have found particularly frustrating about Blair's and my daylily hobby is labelling. Once we got into it enough label our daylilies we started using one of the popular types of marker stakes. This kind consists of a tall -- they come in various sizes, generally between one and two feet -- thin dowel with a hinged plate attached at one end.

The idea is to put the label on the flat part of the plate.

These work reasonably well -- to a degree. But there seems to be a problematic fragility to these stakes. They seem to get damaged easily. They get bent out of shape, they come out of the dirt. And sometimes the hinged plate comes off the dowel. For people like me, who are less than fastidious about keeping charts of the locations of various cultivars, this can be real trouble for a garden. Marked pants become NOIDs*. There are plenty of other, similar marker. Many have two stakes that hit the ground. But I'm skeptical about them being much better.

This hit us extremely hard last year, as a pack of wild backhoes and forklifts ran amok in our garden. A lot of our garden was damaged or destroyed, and parts that weren't had more than the usual amount of lost markers. As Blair and I look to recover what we can of the garden, we talked about buying markers.

And Blair suggested we try ordering something that's very different.

These new stakes we ordered are much shorter, but the part that goes into the ground is stouter. And they're made of one piece of metal. I made one label out as a test -- it'll go in the ground tomorrow.

On the downside, I think it'll be harder to read the cultivar name and information, since that will be much lower to the ground and not angled for convenient viewing. But on the upside, I doubt that these will die at nearly the rate of the old ones.

Fingers crossed.

___________________________________

*NOIDs = No IDs
 

cinema history class: the vampire

Session: It's Not Just One of Those -- Very Unusual Vampires, Week 2
Movie: The Vampire (1957)
Directed by Paul Landres

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
Kindly Doctor Beecher accidentally takes the wrong pills. Instead of relieving his migraine they turn him into a Jeckyl and Hyde type creature who roams at night searching for blood.  Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

The thing that struck me about this is that it felt like I was watching a TV show. Keith noted that a lot of the people involved in the production were usually involved in TV. I'm not really expert, so for the most part I really can't put my finger on why it felt like TV. That said, some of the conversational asides just sounded like TV dialogue -- even as some of them served to illustrate important points about the characters.

For example in one early scene, Dr. Beecher's daughter, Betsy, is practicing the piano. In her conversation with her father, she says that she's always practicing something and she only wishes he would get patients who pay cash. In an earlier scene, there's a bit of a gag with an elderly patient who has bad hearing. Both of these little vignettes serve to show that Beecher is a beloved part of the community, and they do it without really requiring a lot of extra time.

The makeup was superb. Beecher, in full makeup, looks like one of the creatures from 1932's Island of Lost Souls. Though, despite the film's title, it's not really vampire-like.

There's a very strong anti-drug message, which I guess makes sense given the era in which the film was made.  Also, the era affected the overall plot. The sensibilities of the day were to make monster movies with scientific (as opposed to supernatural) explanations. It did work.

The only thing that puzzles me is the branding. Among the monsters, they chose to brand this as a vampire movie. I think they should have presented it as a modern Jeckyl and Hyde movie.

Ratings

Me: 8

Bob: 9

Christina: 8

Ethan: 7.5

on bottled water

I've been drinking a lot of water recently. I had a brief conversation about it with my manager at work -- several times when we were on the phone he could hear the sound of me gulping from the water bottle. Or maybe it was the bottle glugging as it surrendered its contents to my waiting lips.

He wasn't angry. Actually, he seemed kind of amused. I've known him for over 30 years, so we have a good rapport. And so, when he heard my gulping, we started talking about water. But when I mentioned that I buy bottled, he paused. I could practically hear his eyes rolling. He made some kind of comment about the wastefulness of buying bottled water when tap water is a tiny fraction of the price. In fact, New York City's tap water is known for being among the best.

Slightly embarassed, I kind of downplayed it. I forget if I blamed it on the kids or on Blair. But he sympathized -- he wants his family to drink tap, but his wife and kids want bottled. If I recall correctly, he lost that fight.

The fact is, I know a lot of people who refuse to buy bottled water. And others who will buy it when they're out and about, but not for drinking at home. And I kind of understand. It seems irresponsible to pay two dollars for something when I can get the same thing for a penny.*

But the thing is, they're not the same. Some bottled waters taste better than tap. There was a time that I tried drinking tap water at home. And I just didn't drink it. I'd fill a bottle with it and have the bottle next to me as I worked. And unless I made a conscious effort to force myself, I wouldn't drink it. And the same is true of some of the lesser waters.

But if I have one of my favorites, I'll drink a lot of it without really thinking. At this point I usually have a case of it by my desk, so I will drink several liters during any given day. I suspect this has contributed to my recent weight loss. If my belly is full of water, I feel less need to eat. I'm not saying that the water is the only factor. But I am sure it's a part of it.

So, what are my favorite waters? I have found that I like the mouth flavor of the high-pH waters -- which, coincidentally, my dentist says are good for teeth. Among those, the ones that taste the best are Starkey, Iceland Natural and Fiji.

____________________

*These numbers are illustrative for making my point. This should not be viewed as an assertion about the actual prices of bottled or tap water.

cinema history class: blood of the vampire

Session: It's Not Just One of Those -- Very Unusual Vampires, Week 1
Movie: Blood of the Vampire (1958)
Directed by Henry Cass

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
Unjustly imprisoned, Dr. John Pierre is forced to work in the prison laboratory for the evil Dr. Callistartus*. Hilarity ensues.

Class News:

In this session, we welcome Bob as the newest member of the class.

Reaction:

I'm generally not into this kind of movie -- these gothic-feeling things from the late 1950. But this one was great. It held my attention for its entirety. And there wasn't a wasted moment. For me to enjoy so thoroughly a film from this subgenre, it's got to be good. This felt like a Hammer film -- a really really good Hammer film. I almost expected to see Peter Cushing show up. 

Donald Wolfit, playing Callistratus, seemed to be channeling Bela Lugosi. The mannerisms, the voice -- even the fake bushy eyebrows -- seemed to be purposefully copying Lugosi. When he spoke, it reminded me of Lugosi in White Zombie. And the makeup on Victor Maddern, who played Carl the hunchback, was particularly well-done.

If I have to pick on something to not like, it's the heroic nature of John Pierre. As I have said before, I like my heroes to be a bit conflicted, and this guy just wasn't. But even that lapse didn't ruin very entertaining film.

Ratings:

Me: 9.5

Bob: 7

Christina: 9.2

Ethan: 9

______________________

* Seriously, you know that anyone named "Dr. Callistratus" is going to be a bad guy.

pay me for my opinions

I got a text message yesterday, and I responded. We had a lovely, if brief, chat.

I don't like it when opinion surveys contact me with the expectation that I'll share my opinions for free. As I asked, why should I be the only one not to get paid? At least the person who texted me didn't act like I was being done a favor or getting honored.

The fact is, I actually do know why the survey participants aren't getting paid. There are lots of people who are only too happy to participate for free. And they're ruining it for the rest of us who want o get paid for our opinions.

Next time maybe I'll say that I'll be happy to participate, but my answers will all be lies.

back on track

One year, one month and one day. 397 days. That's how long I went between subway rides.

On March 4, 2020, I took the subway to work and then took it home again. I didn't realize how long it would be before I went underground again. The pandemic was underway, and we had some concerns. At the office the WeWork staff were constantly wiping down surfaces, and the communal snack dispensers were empty. Blair was expressing fear regarding my daily commute, and suggesting I avoid touching the stanchions on the trains, and maybe adjust my schedule so that I'd be commuting in less-crowded trains. But as I headed home that night, I was still fully expecting to be coming back in the morning.

But the company contacted us that night -- one of our coworkers had been exposed to someone who had caught COVID, so we were to work from home on the fifth. At that point, we were still expecting this be a short interruption. I don't remember the exact sequence of decisions and communications. Suffice to say that originally we were expecting to be back in the office in less than a week. More than a year later I don't believe there's any clear timetable. I'm still working from home five days a week. and have not been back to the office.*

We have made trips into Manhattan since then -- mostly for dental appointments. In normal times, we would take the subway into Manhattan. But since the pandemic hit we've driven in. Aside from the risk of getting COVID, we've heard that it had become harder to avoid unstable and/or dangerous people on the subway. So, if Blair has an appointment, I'd drive her in, and sit in the car by a hydrant while she goes to the office. And she does the same for me.

And, as time marched on, we got used to this new way of doing things. On March 4, I sadly noted the anniversary of my last subway ride, without a change in sight.

To most people, this wouldn't be a big deal or a bad thing. But when I was a kid, there was a stretch where I took the subway to school every day. And I became enamored of it. I studied the maps, the history of the system, anything. In high school, I had to take the train to and from school, and my interest in the system intensified. I was in the school's subway club. I set aside one afternoon a week to ride a line that I hadn't before. There was a stretch of time that I had my bedroom set up like a museum, with all my subway memorabilia on display. Well, most of my memorabilia, anyway -- the huge "125th Street" sign that had once hung from the ceiling of the 125th Street (and Eighth Avenue) station was too big and heavy for my room, and so was hanging on a fence in the backyard. My parents refused my request that they let me buy a vintage R-1 car and store it in the backyard.

I was a bout a year old when my family moved to New York. Except for the aforementioned year or two where I rode the subway to elementary school,  I wasn't a regular on the trains until high school. So I'm sure this wasn't the first time I went a year without riding the trains, but you'd have to go back at least as far as the 1970s to find such a stretch.

Today marked my return.

I had a dental checkup. Blair offered to drive me in as usual, but she would have had to change her physical therapy schedule. So, appreciating her willingness to drive in with me, I decided to go back to the train. I should note two facts that played a big role in the decision: 1) I got my first COVID vaccine last week, and my understanding is that leaves me much less vulnerable to the virus than when I was unvaccinated; and 2) My understanding from people who are riding the subway again is that it's tamed down quite a bit.

My return to the underground was familiar yet strange. It was also much more of an emotional event than I would have expected. The ride seemed much quieter than I remember. Perhaps people were deferring to the multitude of signs advising people not to talk. It seemed that there was much less crowding as the doors opened and closed. And people were much more very aware of distance, as they chose whether to sit -- they left empty spaces between each other.

Grand Central seemed eerie in its quiet. It wasn't empty or deserted, but the energy was all off. And most of the vendors were absent. I couldn't simply stop and gab a black and white cookie, despite this being Frank Gorshin's birthday.

And let's not forget Mitu Busuioc. Busuioc is a fixture of the passage between the F and 7 trains at 42nd Street. An accordianist, he's part of the Transit Authority's "Music Under New York" program, which I guess means he's an officially sanctioned busker. I've walked by him numerous times over the years, and as far as I can recall, he was always playing fast happy tunes. Today he was playing a dirge.

But what struck me the most was how much of my subway memory was gone. If I'm going to transfer from the F to the 7 at 42nd Street, which end of the F do I want to be on? If I'm taking the 7 train Eastbound, what end do I want to be on to get out into Grand Central Terminal. These and similar questions were second nature to me a year ago. But today I had to stop and think. And I got some of them wrong.

I don't like being so out of touch with a system that is such a part of me.

_______________________

*As a side note, I won't be returning to the same office. The WeWork space was intended to be temporary, as they refurbished our "real" office.

stoopidstats: what players lasted for the most presidents?

 There's a member of the Twitterati whom I follow, who goes by the name of PrezWisdom*. You can find him here. As near as I can tell, his three main interests are (not necessarily in order) presidential history, baseball and Cleveland sports. We sometimes chat presidential trivia, and sometimes baseball. And when it's baseball, it somehow gets to stoopidstats.

So he asked me if I know what's the most presidents spanned by any one baseball player's major league career. He threw out several names of players whose careers spanned seven presidencies, but he wondered if there were any players whose careers spanned eight or more presidents. He knew that such a question would pique my interest. And, with the aid of a downloadable baseball database, I had at it.

I found two players -- Jim O'Rourke and Arlie Latham -- whose careers spanned nine presidencies. And there are three -- Dan Brothers, Cap Anson and Nick Altrock -- whose careers spanned eight presidencies. Unfortunately, things are never quite that easy, and the answer is subject to two questions of how to count:

• Suppose a player took off some years before coming back, and those off-years included the full term of a President's administration. Do you count that President? To illustrate with a hypothetical, suppose a player made his debut in 1976 (when Gerry Ford was president), then didn't play again until 1981 (when Ronald Reagan was president). Do we consider his career as spanning three presidents (Ford, Carter, Reagan) or only two (Ford, Reagan). I prefer to say three, but it's purely a definitional issue and I can see an argument for two.
• Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive presidential terms. By most reckoning, these are considered two separate presidencies. For these purposes, are they two presidencies or one? I prefer to say two.

In the chart below, I list all players whose careers spanned at least seven presidencies (by any combination of answers to the above questions). There are 13 players on the list -- if I extended it to six presidencies, there would be another 63 players on the list. For each player, I provided the number of presidents assuming all four combinations of answers to the two questions.

In the interests of completeness, I note that I used a 2019 database. One might wonder if counting players' activity in 2020 or 2021 would change my conclusions. I actually mentioned this to PrezWisdom in regard to the new season -- anyone playing this year (as I write this, we are in the season's third day) adds another President to his career. But PrezWisdom pointed out that it won't affect the longest spans. We recently had three consecutive two-term Presidents, so anyone playing this year and counting Biden as his seventh President would have had to made his debut no later than 1988. While I don't follow baseball particularly, I would be aware if there were an active player who had played in the 1980s. Similarly, if there had been a player who played last year (and only then added Trump as his seventh president) would mean that he had made his debut no later than 1980 (and not played in 2017-2019). Again, I would have been aware of such a player.

______________________

*No, I don't know his real name.