WITHDRAWAL

 As seen across the street from my friend and former roommate Patrick's home in Bedford Stuyvesant, the eastern edge where it meets Brownsville and Weeksville. Yes, they got the cash box.

When I was growing up, Bed Stuy was one of the most feared of all NYC neighborhoods, but over the past three decades gentrification has sanded away much of its once-savage edge. However, traces of its hardcore nature are sometimes clearly present.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY...NOT

I was thinking back over my torturous years of dealing with the agonies of unchecked all-over atopic dermatitis, which rendered my skin looking like I had been using a chicken joint's deep-fryer as a hot tub, and I recall with horror the time that I was prescribed a cocktail of Gabapentin and Doxepin as a way to relieve the relentless itching and peeling of my skin. I'm no stranger to psychoactive chemicals, but I can say with authority that that combination gave me what I can only describe as an actual out of body experience, coupled with flesh-crawling imagined terrors. From drugs.com:

"Using doxepin together with gabapentin may increase side effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and difficulty concentrating. Some people, especially the elderly, may also experience impairment in thinking, judgment, and motor coordination."

I took that combination for a total of three days, after which I took myself off of it and told the prescribing doctors that I refused to continue with that course of treatment. It's the closest thing to what I imagine the worst kind of demonic possession being.

ELEGY FOR THE 4:30 MOVIE

 NOTE: This was originally posted in 2007. 

Since I began blogging a few years ago, many of you with similar filmic tastes have written in with occasional nostalgic mentions of Channel 7's late, lamented THE 4:30 MOVIE. From the heartfelt musings you’ve sent in I’ve come to realize that the five-day weekly movie festival was beloved by armchair film fans of all stripes and not just by a dyed-in-the-wool freak like Yer Bunche, so I think it's high time we all took a stroll down memory lane, back to the pre -Oprah days when the NYC afternoon airwaves were ruled by giant monsters, superheroes, Roman warriors, societies of talking apes, journeys into unknown realms of sci-fi and horror, beach parties presided over by cute Italian chicks in one-piece bathing suits, and the eerie doings of Vincent Price.

And just to state it right up front, there's already an excellent article on THE 4:30 MOVIE by Joe Cascio elsewhere online — from which I cribbed most of the pics, so I owe Mr. Cascio a debt of acknowledgement and gratitude for having clipped those ads from TV GUIDE — so rather than detail the show's history I will instead concentrate on its meaning to those of us fortunate enough to have had it as part of our fondly-recalled childhood-to-adolescence experiences.

I first discovered THE 4:30 MOVIE upon moving to Connecticut in the summer of 1972, and it was the prefect salve for a movie-loving new kid in town who had no friends. Having spent my formative years in California, I was used to a steady infusion of all manner of crazy television, a cornucopia that spewed forth Japanese cartoons and monster shows, horror and sci-fi movies on CREATURE FEATURES with host Bob Wilkins (R.I.P.), the adventures of the Thunderbirds and their futuristic marionette brethren, and reruns of the original THE OUTER LIMITS, but the TV programming in the Tri-State area at the time was a wasteland that was a mortal enemy to stuff that kids enjoyed. WPIX, Channel 11 out of New York, was particularly heinous, its afternoon schedule consisting of little other than the gameshow BEAT THE CLOCK — more like BEAT ME WITH A CLOCK, because it was so fucking boring — and the Hanna-Barbera chestnut MAGILLA GORILLA, another of their triumphs of character name over character content, while Channel 5 was still abut a year or two away from any decent cartoon reruns other than assorted DC Comics-based cartoons like AQUAMAN that wore out their welcome very swiftly, or the much-enjoyed daily airing of LOST IN SPACE.

But one thing New York TV did have was movies. Lots and lots of movies of all stripes, and all of the local channels had their own small-screen showcases for big screen fare, ranging from classics to B-movies to cult items, an across the board smorgasbord for the young and bored, and fitting the bill of that last description, I was drawn to THE 4:30 MOVIE like a moth to a flame.

Simplicity itself and a master stroke of programming, THE 4:30 MOVIE would regularly air a week of random flicks from disparate genres, but when they went all-out with the genre-themed weeks the viewers flocked and the ratings shot through the roof. For years kids in theTri-State area sat enthralled during Monster Week — usually a parade of giant Toho rubber suit leviathans like Godzilla and Mothra, or a string of competitor Daei’s Gamera cycle — Superhero Week, Edgar Allen Poe Week — a selection of Vincent Price's AIP Gothics — Jerry Lewis Week (never one of my favorites), Animation Week, Epic Week — which would break down films like BEN-HUR and CLEOPATRA into installments that would fill out a whole week with one movie, which in the case of CLEOPATRA was not only agonizing, but also verging on criminal — Ray Harryhausen Week, Beach Party Week — I'd tune in just to watch Annette Funicello breathe, a wondrous sight that gave me my appreciation of the dark-haired Italian ladies and their hypnotic curves — and, of course, PLANET OF THE APES Week, each movie throwing more gasoline onto the fire of our hungry imaginations. And for once the station honchos paid attention and kept the good stuff coming, adopting an attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” that served them well for about fifteen years.

I discovered many of my favorite films through THE 4:30 MOVIE, including FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966), PLANET OF THE APES (1968), and other Hollywood goodies, but I most value the experience for inundating me with monsters, monsters, and yet more monsters, inadvertently fostering a lifelong addiction to such oft-derided cinema. It was there that I was schooled in tales of Godzilla and his behemoth brethren, the mostly-forgotten stone warrior Majin, and also of the lesser (read "cheap and idiotic") Gamera, Japanese giants whose movies were the latest expression of a myth base rife with ogres and other such big-assed, badassed, city-stompin' motherfuckers. And when the show gave us a week's worth of Ray Harryhausen it was practically guaranteed that the streets would clear of children, no matter how intense the day's game of "Viet Nam Terrorist" or "Ghost" would get. All that needed to happen was for an older brother or sister (or the occasional film-geek parent) to stick their head out of the front door and scream, "Hey! JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS is on! Move it!!!" and move it we did. In fucking droves, dude.

This afternoon wonderland of special effects miracles, alien invasions, and sometimes outright horrors was where I encountered THE FLY (1958), the first film to have an ending that fucked me up for life.

This scene still horrifies me, even though I always knew it made no sense, and every time I see it I'm suddenly eight years old again, staring open-mouthed at the TV in our old house on Ellery Lane.

But it's a far more obscure film that stands at the top of my list of 4:30 MOVIE memories and that's VOYAGE INTO SPACE (1970), a feature cobbled together from several episodes of the Japanese kiddie show JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT (1967). It's a combination sci-fi /secret agent/giant monster flick and, even considering some rather stiff competition, it may just be the most balls-out insane Japanese monster joint from the pre-1975 period thanks to its patchwork construction.

Very loosely based on Mitsuteru Yokoyama's GIANT ROBO manga, the movie unleashes Emperor Guillotine (from the planet Gargoyle)

and his attempts to conquer the world with the aid of the Nazi-esque Gargoyle Gang

and an endless supply of giant (and fake-looking) critters, among which can be found sea monsters, plant monsters and a whatchamawhoozits that appears to be a bunch of traffic cones hot-glued together and painted silver called "the Nucleon."

Exactly what the fuck is this thing?

Opposing this inter-planetary evil is Unicorn, a secret agency equipped with jet packs and a weird salute that makes a "dweep" noise that isn't remotely possible for a human to generate, and among their number is Johnny Sokko,

an incredibly annoying kid of the type too often found in Japanese monster flicks, who controls a towering death-machine imaginatively named Giant Robot who kicks much hand-to-tentacle ass, fires seemingly limitless missiles from his fingers, and for no adequately explained reason looks like an Egyptian pharaoh.

The film has virtually no plot and is just one monster vs. robot fight after another, and as such it's highly entertaining (if exhausting). The dialogue is ridiculous, the monsters wouldn't scare a four-year-old, and the film is packed with more irresponsible violence than any other children's film you can name, so what's not to love? This one left such an impact on those who saw it as kids that there's even a kickass metal version of the Giant Robot theme tune performed by Buckethead!

But, like all things, it was only inevitable that THE 4:30 MOVIE would pass into our memories, one of the early casualties of lousy 1980's television. In an era that would see the dawn of infomercials and the blight of MTV, THE 4:30 MOVIE was inexplicably replaced by THE PEOPLE'S COURT, which was in turn unseated by OPRAH, a show that's still dominating weekday afternoons just before EYEWITNESS NEWS on New York's Channel 7 to this very day. In short order all of the local channels followed suit and the great movie shows of yore went the way of the dinosaurs. No more MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE, FRIGHT NIGHT, SCIENCE FICTION THEATER, or the show with the most unforgettable of local TV opening sequences, Channel 11's CHILLER.

So the more I remember those bygone days of movie bliss, I realize that even with the eleventy-gajillion channels available on cable, today's Tri-State Area kids are missing out not only on having their imaginations expanded, they're also being deprived of a steady dose of genre film history. And that, dear readers, is truly tragic. I mourn not for THE 4:30 MOVIE, but for those who will never get to know its like.

2000 A.D.'s SHAKO

NOTE: This was originally posted in 2007. 

"Shako! The Eskimo word for the Great White Bear. It means simply...KILLER!"

Thus opened the 1977 serial SHAKO, a sixteen chapter, virtually plotless excuse to depict a Polar bear biting people's heads off, and I'll be damned if it wasn't funny as hell.

Running in the first year of Britain's legendary weekly sci-fi anthology comic 2000 AD, SHAKO was unique since its sci-fi hook was tenuous at best — the bear had swallowed a container of a deadly germ warfare culture and had to be hunted down by the CIA — especially when weighed against the other serials that populated the magazine's pages, most notably the nascent JUDGE DREDD.

2000 AD came hot on the heels of the cancelled ACTION, another weekly mag that catered to bloodthirsty young boys, each strip filled with wall-to-wall carnage and graphic violence, factors that made it the target of UK parental outrage, and no strip in the book was more notorious than the flagrant JAWS ripoff, HOOKJAW (note the imaginative title).

The series was nothing more than a body count on the high seas, and the plot histrionics appealed to its laddish audience not merely thanks to its outrageous level of gory mayhem, but also because it read like a strip a ten-year-old could have written, and therein lay the balls-out fun. But all good things must end or get cancelled by a bunch of parental pussies, so HOOKJAW went to the Davy Jones's locker of comicdom, and was resuscitated with an ursine stand-in for the shark in 2000 AD #20-35.

I first discovered Two-Thou (as us fans/geeks affectionately call it) during a trip to England in the summer of 1981 and have been hooked ever since, and in '86 an abridged version of SHAKO was printed in that year's 2000 AD annual. I was in my third year of college when I picked it up, and one of my fondest memories of introducing my friends to comics has to be seeing my pal John Gibson convulsed with laughter as he read the bear's murderous rampage, occasionally stopping to giggle and exclaim, "Shako!!!" in his best movie trailer narrator's voice.

No joke, the growing body of the story has no purpose other than to depict a startlingly intelligent polar bear staying one step ahead of his pursuers, sadistically setting traps for them, chomping on their heads like candy, and just generally being a big, white menace.

Among the many laugh-out-loud highlights, the two funniest bits have to be the one where a guy is in the shower and, soap in his eyes, gropes about to find what he thinks is a fluffy white towel, and the one where a Russian whaler named Sergei actually gets into a fist fight with Shako because he wants to fight an American (???) and shouts, "A left to the fish basket, Yankee!" as he punches the bear in the gut shortly before Shako tears him a new one. Chapter after chapter goes by, each topping the previous for ludicrous action, only to culminate with CIA man Buck Dollar blowing the shit out of Shako with a bazooka, only to die when the bear's carcass falls on him. What's not to love?

Remembered these days only by Two-Thou diehards, SHAKO has become a cult favorite for all of the previously stated reasons, and the entire serial was recently reprinted in 2000 AD EXTREME EDITION #18 (Oct. 31, 2006), the magazine that re-presents the harder-to-find offerings from Two-Thou's bygone days. When I saw the bear's face on the cover, I let out a yelp of surprise and delight, scooped it up and bought the motherfucker, reading it on the subway and laughing like a madman.

And in a true testament to SHAKO's cult status, there's even a T-shirt available, featuring bloody claw marks and the bear biting a guy's head off, emblazoned with the slogan,"Shako! The Only Bear on the C.I.A. Death List!"

My kind of merchandising tie-in! Trust yer Bunche and read the motherfucker, already! It'd make for an hilarious film adaptation, especially with buckets of spewing red paint, and the title character played by a really bad animatronic, the less realistic, the better.

 

THE ANSWER TO LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING: 42

 NOTE: This was originally posted in 2007, on my 42nd birthday.

Yours truly, approximately seven months old, 1966, before I was ruined by potables, pussy, and pot. 

It's June 27th, 2007, and today I am forty-two years old. Forty-Two, the number that is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, according to the late Douglas Adams, author of THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and its subsequent volumes. Yet despite its status as a supposedly universal catch-all for any question posed, I still find myself with many, many unanswered queries at this stage of my existence. But then again, that may be the whole point of Forty-Two. 

You see, in THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY there was this computer named Deep Thought that was created by a hyper-intelligent race of pan-dimensional beings to suss out the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, a task that took it some seven-and-a-half-million years to complete.

Production illustration of Deep Thought from the feature film adaptation. 

When all was said and done, the answer turned out to be 42. That may all have been well and good, but such an answer is useless without a question, something that the programmers failed to take into account, so Deep Thought's creators were pretty much right back where they started: with bubkes. Since even Deep Thought had no clue as to what the Question might be, it offered to design an even more awesome computer, one comprised of biological components, called the Earth. So Deep Thought creates the Earth and thus begins a ten-million year calculation in quest of the Question, but five minutes before the calculation is completed the Earth is wiped out by an alien constructor fleet to make way for an interstellar traffic bypass. So, again, bubkes. 

In my own case I, too, have come up with the existential equivalent of bubkes in so much as that I've yet to figure out exactly what the fuck I'm doing with my life.But I am taking the steps to forge a new standard of living and endeavor, by getting off my ass and letting the creativity flow unfettered, allowing myself to rediscover what a social life is, and actively chasing women again in earnest (I have my eye on one in particular...). It's all good, and other than the occasional lapse regarding the usual day-to-day bullshit that we all have no control over I've been doing pretty well. 

And on that note, folks, since it's that time of year again, come on down to BUNCHE'S DIVE BAR BIRTHDAY BASH!!! It's gonna be held at Park Slope's legendary O'Connor's, an absolute dive if ever there was one, complete with dirt-cheap drinks, a decent jukebox, and easy train access for eight different subway lines, so whaddaya waiting for? Presents are not required — you being there is present enough — so come on down and help me celebrate another year of my excellence! The place is dank and dark, so keep an eye out for me in this shirt: 

So here's the info: WHERE: O'CONNOR’S 39 5TH Avenue in Brooklyn (between DEAN STREET and BERGEN STREET) (718) 783-9721 WHEN: Saturday, June 30th 8:00 PM - ??? TRAIN DIRECTIONS: Take the 2, 3, 4, 5, D, N, R, or Q trains to ATLANTIC AVENUE/PACIFIC STREET. When you are above ground you should be on 4th Avenue, so look around until you see a clock tower with the clock obscured by construction netting; if you see that tower, face in the opposite direction and walk up 4th Avenue until you reach DEAN STREET and hang a left. Walk over by one avenue and you’ll be on 5TH AVENUE. O’Connor’s is right there, across the street from a restaurant called EL VIEJO YAYO. The place looks like a no-frills bunker, and it pretty much is.

Yours truly during the Great Tequila Drought of 2006.

 

I hope to see you there, and Happy Birthday to me! I just wish JWP was here...

ON THE GODDESS MARILYN, BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF THE 1950'S, AND THE SALE OF MONROE'S INFAMOUS BEEJAY MOVIE

NOTE: This was originally posted in 2008.

Marilyn Monroe, in a refreshingly human portrait.

I have to confess that I just never got the whole Marilyn Monroe thing. Sure, she was pretty, turned in some memorable film performances, and posed for that iconic PLAYBOY spread on the red velvet — you have to see the bit in the documentary HEAVY PETTING that features the late Spaulding Gray discussing first seeing that shot during his adolescence; the sheer ecstasy on his face and the way he tells the story is like witnessing a religious experience — but what exactly was the big deal that elevated her to her status as a Hollywood goddess whose image is as ubiquitous as Santa Claus during the Christmas season? We've all seen the famous portraits of Marilyn with that dress being blown about in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955), and the myriad of sleepy-eyed, come hither-faced shots of her peroxided kisser, but what is it about this demigoddess of 1950's celluloid sexuality that continues to fascinate and excite film fans, both male and female, some five decades after her heyday, while other contemporary blonde bombshells have faded into cult obscurity? I was always a Jayne Mansfield man and enjoyed her very much self-aware sense of humor about her zaftig, cartoonish looks and her in-your-face lampooning of that image, especially when one takes into account the fact that she possessed an IQ of 160, was a five-language polyglot, and held membership in MENSA.

The mighty Jayne Mansfield: smokin' hot, smarter than you, and, sadly, dead by the age of thirty-four.

 

Her status in my head as a live-action cartoon character was cemented by her role as sweet-as-could-be Jerri Jordan in THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (1956), directed by former Looney Tunes animation director Frank Tashlin, one of the creators whose work helped the personality of Daffy Duck to emerge and solidify. Painfully charming, Jerri was a mobster's girlfriend who wanted nothing more than to settle down and raise a family, but her boyfriend hires a talent agent to groom her for a singing career. Jerri, of course, falls for the agent, and hijinx ensue, but that's all kind of beside the real point of the film, which is to allow an easy-on-the-eyes and very funny exaggeration along the lines of a refugee from Al Capp's Dogpatch to wiggle about the screen and cause men's higher brain functions to come to a complete halt. 

 In short, Mansfield had fun with her goofball-with-huge-cans image, and I found that tremendously appealing. 

 

But, as was the case with many of Hollywood's leading ladies back in the days, Jayne found herself saddled with debilitating substance addiction, largely brought on by being rendered obsolete when the era of the the blonde bombshell ended on that day in 1962 when Marilyn Monroe was found dead of an apparent suicide (yeah, right). Mansfield's career took a major nosedive, and she resorted to appearing in some fairly tame semi-nudie flicks in which she displayed pretty much every part of her luscious anatomy before famously dying in an horrific car accident in 1967. Contrary to popular belief, she was not beheaded, and her equally brilliant daughter, Mariska Hargitay of LAW & ORDER: SVU fame, was in the back seat, and today bears a facial scar from that tragic misadventure. 

 

Mariska Hargitay, the most high-profile of Jayne Mansfield's kids, as Detective Olivia Benson on LAW & ORDER: SVU; smart, good-lookin', and talented, just like her mom.

 

The other fifties bleach-goddess who struck a responsive chord in Yer Bunche was Mamie Van Doren, by far the "bad girl" archetype of the trio, largely relegated to B-movie roles that showcased her impressive dairies in impossibly tight sweaters. 

 

Mamie Van Doren, apparently having forgotten to button her blouse.

 

Whereas Monroe was the Olympian of the lot, a mid-twentieth century Aphrodite if you will, and Mansfield the more "obtainable" bosomy girl next door type with an infectious sense of humor, Van Doren projected an image of the sleazy, pulp fiction-style "broad" whose persona would have been equally at home in a Mike Hammer story, engaging in sweaty and borderline pornographic sex with the hard-boiled gumshoe, or steaming things up in some sleazy Tennessee Williamsesque potboiler. A classic Hollywood starlet with an appetite for man-flesh, the Mamester got it on with various notables including Elvis, Jack Palance, Tony Curtis, Tom Jones, Steve McQueen — while on LSD, no less —  Rock Hudson (who, according to her, was an occasional bisexual who splattered her studio-loaned dress with his DNA), and Burt Reynolds among many others, and also, disturbingly, claims to have been drugged and raped by Jack (DRAGNET) Webb. You can read about all of this, in Van Doren's own words, on her incredibly candid blog in the section labeled "Bedtime Stories." Go to www.mamievandoren.com (for some reason I'm having difficulty establishing a direct link to it); trust Yer Bunche, it's one hell of a read! 

 

Mamie, looking like she's on the cover of a paperback one might find in a bus station.

 

The majority of the films on Van Doren's resume could accurately be called "crap," but they're fun and frivolous, and she worked her slutty magic to great effect. HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL! (1958), GIRL'S TOWN (1959), THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM & EVE (1960),

 

Mamie as Eve, ogled by Mickey Rooney (!!!) portraying a low rent devil.

 

and one of the very first movies I remember seeing, THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS (1966) all featured Mamie's sneering, breathy sensuality, and she clearly enjoyed chewing the scenery. In fact, these days Van Doren revels in her "Queen of the B's" notoriety, still going strong at the age of seventy-seven, unexpectedly turning out to be the last of the old school bombshells. 

 

Mamie receives her star on the Walk of Fame, 1994.

 

But, again, I ask what's the deal with Marilyn? I find both Jayne and Mamie considerably hotter, but why does the majority of the rest of film geekdom enshrine Monroe? It's not like I hate her or anything, but she just doesn't register with me. If any of you can explain her appeal and mystique to me I will be eternally grateful. I'd especially like to have this explained by a woman who's into the Monroe thing. As a guy I can get why another hetero male could be into her, but many of us find ourselves totally C-struck by just about anything even remotely female, so ladies, please weigh in. As for my fondness for the other two, maybe my fascination with boobage factors in heavily? I honestly don't have an answer.  

Which brings me to this morning.  

I awoke and turned on NY1 news and was greeted by a segment announcing that some dude had just shelled out a cool $1.5 million bucks for a film that shows, clear as day, Marilyn Monroe administering oral kindness to some guy whose face does not enter into the frame. This purchase thrust MM back into the news again, and I was both shocked and kind of impressed with the buyer because he claims to have bought the footage to keep it out of the hands of the unscrupulous so it wouldn't be used to tarnish Monroe's iconic image. Hey, if it was me I probably would have marketed the shit out of that film and reaped untold gazillions from its DVD sales, but who knows how this film was obtained, or if she was coerced? Yeah, yeah, I can hear many of you saying that it was probably a "casting couch" scenario and that everybody who ever got anywhere in Hollywood probably engaged in such stuff — even a certain Teutonic bodybuilder who now holds political office —  but wouldn't it be a total mindfuck if it turned out to be one of the Kennedy's home movies? Oy vey iz mier... From this morning's New York Post:

HARDCORE MARILYN

FBI'S MONROE SEX FLICK SOLD FOR $1.5M

By HASANI GITTENS

April 14, 2008 --

Some really like it hot.

In the sordid tradition of peddling raunchy video footage of celebrities a la Paris Holton, a long-buried sex movie of Marilyn Monroe recently hit the market, a top collector told The Post.

An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel - 15 minutes of 16mm film footage in which the original blond bombshell performs oral sex on an unidentified man - was just sold to a New York businessman for $1.5 million, said Keya Morgan, the well-known memorabilia collector who discovered the film and brokered its purchase.

The footage appears to have been shot in the 1950s. When it came to light in the mid-'60s, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had his agents spend two weeks futilely trying to prove that Monroe's sex partner was either John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy, according to declassified agency documents and interviews, Morgan said.

The silent black-and-white flick shows Monroe on her knees in front of a man whose face is just out of the shot. He never moves into the shot, indicating that he knew the camera was there, but Monroe never looks at the lens, said Morgan, who saw the footage.

Morgan said he discovered the film while doing research for a documentary on Monroe, after talking with a former FBI agent who told him about a confidential informant who tipped G-men to the existence of the film in the mid-'60s. The feds eventually confiscated the original footage - but not before the informant made a copy of it, which is what was just sold by his son, Morgan said.

There are heavily redacted, declassified FBI documents talking about a "French-type" film. They state the informant "exhibited [to agents] a motion picture which depicted deceased actress Marilyn Monroe committing a perverted act upon a unknown male," Morgan said.

The informant was with at least one mobster at the time, the documents state.

According to the documents, "Former baseball star Joseph DiMaggio in the past had offered [the informant] $25,000 for this film, it being the only one in existence, but he refused the offer.

"Source advised that [redacted name of the mole] informed them that he had obtained this film prior to the time Marilyn Monroe had achieved stardom."

Morgan said he got the deceased informant's name from the former FBI agent who tipped him off to the flick - and was floored after he found the mole's son in Washington, DC, and the man retrieved a film canister from a safe-deposit box and spooled it up. "You see instantly that it's Marilyn Monroe - she has the famous mole," Morgan said. "She's smiling, she's very charming, she's very radiant, but she's known for being radiant," he said. "She moves away, and then it [the footage] stops."

Last month, he brokered its sale, leading the informant's son to a wealthy New York businessman who wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried. "He said he's just going to lock it up," Morgan said. "He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

ASS WEDNESDAY

 NOTE: This was originally posted in 2009.

As I see so many of my co-workers adorned with an ash cross on their foreheads today, I wonder if Catholicism had instead instituted "Turd Wednesday" and required the smearing of shit on their heads, would they do so? And just once I'd like to see some wiseass go up to get his facial ash and instead demand full-on blackface instead of a tiny cross smear. Then I'd love to see the Jolson-looking dude burst out onto the street and scream the most Amos 'n' Andy-style "HALLELUJAH!!!" possible.

"HALLELUJAH!!!"

But that's just me being a heathen.

IT'S ART! IT'S PORN! EVERYBODY'S HAPPY! — THE BEAVER SHOT AS ART

NOTE: This was originally posted in December of 2006.

There's a new show running at Manhattan's Gagosian Gallery through December 22 featuring the work of painter John Currin, and it's garnering a bit attention thanks to some of its subject matter. Nudity in the arts is certainly nothing new, nor is sexually explicit imagery, but it's bound to cause a stir in these hypocritically puritanical times when someone walks into a gallery and finds what can be construed as beaver shots hung on the wall in all their gynecological glory. Currin's "Rotterdam" (2006) is such a work, and when first encountered it exudes the ambience common to the photography in such periodicals as HUSTLER, PINK PARADE, and OPEN WIDE, but upon closer observation the piece is far less off-putting for the casual viewer than the you-can-see-her-lunch nudie mag aesthetic. 

"Rotterdam" (2006) 

The composition is common to erotic art. Two lovers entwined, engaged in intimate contact on a large, comfy bed, both appearing to be enjoying each other. What is uncommon about the piece is the — excuse the term — in your face focus given to the figures' genitalia, and while good, old-fashioned osh-osh has been depicted in art a gazillion times since the day a horny caveman first fashioned one of those goddesses with the huge tits and Cro-Magnon badunkadunk, it's unusual to witness such frank presentation for general consumption.

The "window dressing" present is straight out of the ABC's of porno: sexy stockings and garter belt, lace gloves, ankle jewelry, "fuck me" pumps, a necklace with a dangling bauble that accentuates the female's naked flesh, sleepy/ecstatic facial expression that passes for what was once known as "swooning." It's all there, but the imagery does not strike me as pornographic for a number of reasons. The painterly medium lends the graphic tableau a level of "class" and legitimacy that few allegedly-pornographic works can muster, and the setting brings to mind (for me, at least) some old world boudoir that I could picture Marie Antoinette getting Rodgered in, and I have to admit that I find that appealing. Also, considering the obvious X-rated influence, it's interesting to note that the figures are those of ordinary people, and not the beefed-up-by-silicone and fire-hose-bedicked replicants that populate the majority of adult entertainment, and their simple commonness makes them quite charming. So, let's move on to the real issue at hand, namely the Johnson and the 'Giney.

Human genitalia depicted in the act that it was intended for is seldom seen from this angle in highbrow paintings, and while the anatomical details leave nothing to the imagination, there is no display of the effluvium that accompanies the deployment of one's naughty bits (although the guy's nuts do look a bit greasy), or the cooking oil that porn ingénues liberally apply to their havens in order to simulate the visible signs of female arousal. And while the guy's squashing of his stuff (an action that inflates his unit via a technique familiar to anyone who's seen a Ron Jeremy vehicle in the past ten years) draws your attention to its turgid veininess, that's merely a component to the connection about to be made. If you are a guy who has ever been fortunate enough to have a woman share her body with you, especially with absolute certainty that there is no chance of either unwanted pregnancy or STD's, nothing feels better than your man root happily ensconced within the lady's Good Place, and with that knowledge in mind you can relate to the dude in the painting. The guy is straining to get inside his obviously willing companion and feel her moist, enveloping heat, and she's applying just enough pull to herself to open up and accommodate that friendly member, a subtle gesture made plain by our gaze being directed with the visual aid of her lace-covered digits. The glimpse that we are afforded of her pink taste treat only gives us enough to register it as the welcome and familiar source of all things wondrous, not the sometimes painfully splayed luncheon meat vista found in most one-handed amusement mags/videos, a sight that turns the divine vulgar.

And speaking of divine, the contours of the woman's body have just the right gravity and roundness, without the cartoonish exaggeration of the rank-and-file stroke-mag diva. Of particular interest is her pubic mound, delineated in such a way as to simultaneously register the solid structure of her pelvic bone and the softness of the tantalizing flesh surrounding it. When people are fucking — and I mean FUCKING, that animal communication between two physical beings that completely erodes rational thought — there's an immediate urgency that cancels out everything else around you, and that feeling is conveyed here with a subtlety that belies its flash of pink 'n' pecker. These two are caught up in the primal heat of the moment, and, frankly, I like seeing that in a contemporary painting rather than some hoary old example from a coffee table compendium of erotic art. Currin's "Rotterdam" very much places me in the "now" of its visual tale and moves me with its sensuousness. It certainly beats the hell out of much of the art that I saw during my school days. If only I could have walked into a gallery and seen the excellence of Gustave Courbet's "Origine du Monde."   

"Origine du Monde" ("The Origin of the World", 1866)

NOTE: this is the whole painting, not just a detail. Not only can I totally get with the subject, but I also love the technique. Painting realistic-looking hair is a bitch and a half, and I'll be dipped in dog shit if that bush doesn't look just like the real thing. Hooray for art!!!

THE WEARYING OF THE GREEN

Originally posted in 2008.

So it's Saint Patrick's Day again and I'm going to stay off the streets of New York tonight while the populace at large gets Viking-level destroyed on their fermented beverages of choice. During the bygone days of my misspent youth I gladly joined in the revelry, happy that this one day of the year was more or less given over to everybody getting completely fucked up and shedding the burden of being human, but Saint Patrick's Day has long since lost its allure for me thanks to growing up (sort of) and having worked two St. Patrick's Days at the barbecue joint during those now-infamous years. The joint — now defunct — opened on this day in 2005 and St. Paddy's is as good a day as any for the anniversary of that fine dining establishment, but it became a bit overwhelming and the altered behavior of most of the crowd in attendance got rather David Lynchian in its crawly strangeness.

I don't know about the rest of the nation but New York City in the throes of intoxicated Irish pride is an untamable green-clad beast that yowls and screeches random Pogues hits in tones even more unintelligible than those found in a live performance by the band's toothless wreck of a front man, Shane McGowan. Seriously, it took me years to decipher McGowan's wasted warbling during his infamous Saint Patrick's Day performance of "Body of An American" on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE back in 1990.

The might and Majesty that is Shane McGowan.

There's a strange blend of good feelings and ready-to-erupt primal savagery that permeates the air on this day, a palpable buzz of expectation and yearning that mutates into the full gamut of human emotion once strong drink is introduced into the mix. Fucking and fighting are practically guaranteed, occasionally at the same time, and every bar in the city is sure to be packed to the rafters with folks decked out in cheap plastic Leprechaun hats and "Kiss Me I'm Irish" t-shirts, merrily gobbling up free and fatty corned beef and cabbage while swilling down foul-tasting beer tinted with green food coloring, a libation barely a step up from McDonald's odious seasonal horror, the Shamrock Shake.

The Shamrock Shake: minty taste treat, or mass-marketed bio-hazard sludge?

But the worst thing to come from all of this is the day-after remains of hardcore partying, namely broken bottles everywhere, carelessly discarded party cups, rivers of reeking piss provided by both men and women and, worst of all, sidewalks copiously adorned with spewed beer and partially-digested food, making the streets look like they've been carpeted with day-old corned beef hash. I shit you not, in some years the pavement was so puked-out that one could easily have skated on the vomit, this phenomenon being especially bad near the Park Avenue offices of Marvel Comics during the early-1990's.

The morning after also sees the subways smelling of fetid beer and drunks who have voided themselves in all possible ways without the benefit of having a restroom close at hand. The floors are glazed with spilled drinks and your feet stick to the linoleum like flypaper. Just plain revolting.

Please don't get me wrong. I totally understand the need to let off steam and get buck-wild but St. Patrick's Day is rightfully termed "amateur night" by those of us who know how to properly get our drink on and not inflict out-of-control, sloppy assholism on the innocent citizenry, so we tend to sit this day out. Have you ever been out on St. Patrick's Day and had some boozed-up Staten Island chick with big tits and green hair chat you up, only to get close to you and bark up her dinner and last six shots of Jameson all over your chest? Well I have, and I can assure you that it completely harshed my evening and forced me to shell out ten bucks for one of those "I Heart NY" t-shirts to replace the vomit-sponge that the shirt I'd worn had become. Sorry, but stark white with a touristy slogan simply is not my aesthetic.

And why is it that a day that supposedly celebrates all things Irish invariably degenerates into a reinforcement of the drunken Mick stereotype? The Irish have contributed so much worthwhile literature, music, and who knows what else to the world, but other than being thrown a bone in any one of a gazillion St. Patrick's Day parades little, if any, mention is made of that. As far as the public at large seems to be concerned, on St. Patrick's Day the greatest contribution made by the Irish is whiskey. That's a damned shame when one takes into account what a genuinely wonderful people the Irish are, a group overflowing with a no-bullshit humanity and honesty of expression that's just plain endearing. My buddies Cat, Hughes, Amanda, Declan, Garth, and Tracey are prime examples of this and many of my other friends and acquaintances whose ancestry hails from Ireland are equally as awesome.

Garth and Hughes, two of my favorite people.

So maybe that's what should be concentrated upon on Saint Patrick's Day, namely the oft-ignored excellence of our society's Irish component. And while we're at it, how about a marathon of flicks like THE QUIET MAN, DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE, and THE LUCK OF THE IRISH? So even though the drunken idiots of all ethnicities out there may unintentionally be a rampaging annoyance, show some love to any of the Irish who may be in your life. And be careful when walking on those barf-splattered sidewalks 'cause falling down and breaking your ass on concrete is bad enough, but having that happen with the added accent of having your body coated with slimy, half-digested bar food is simply horrendous.

"Sliante, ye cunt ye! BLEEEEAAAAARGGGH!!!