Who says Vegas marriages don't last?

Ours has outlived the Stardust. That's its dust you're looking at.

Today, my wife and I celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Woo-hoo! And while that's certainly a great thing, it's sad to think about how much of the cool old Las Vegas has been demolished in those 10 years.

The Stardust, where we spent a day or two. (We also stayed at The Flamingo, which is still with us.)

The Desert Inn.

The New Frontier.

The Aladdin.

And God knows how many others. The Sands was a vacant lot when we arrived.

I always thought it'd be cool to go back for our 10th. But maybe it's better to remember it the way it was back in '98 — when only SOME of the cool stuff was gone.

By the way, we got married at 6pm on Monday, the 23rd at The Graceland Wedding Chapel. Jennifer was escorted down the aisle by a chunky Elvis singing "Love Me Tender." We then rereated to a wonderful restaurant beside Caesar's Palace, where our friend Beth drank too much wine. We did the whole garter/bouquet thing near the entrance to Caesar's — with Japanese tourists videotaping it all.

It was a great day.

The Mona Lisa's Got Nothing On This.

The Santa Fe Super Chief. One of the most beautiful things mankind ever created, right up there with The Beach Boys' PET SOUNDS, The VW Beetle and Rat Fink.

The latest on my hot rod.

Checked my driveway this morning, and there's still not a hot rod parked in it. Damn.

But over the weekend, I got the latest issue of RODDER'S JOURNAL (not so much a magazine as a really beautiful coffee table book that comes out four times a year), and it has a great, in-depth article on Bob Tindle's Orange Crate.

It's a fabulous example of a '32 Ford sedan, a bitchin' drag car and a real icon of my youth. I built the Revell model (and gunked it up with so much Testors glue the body didn't lift up right) and stared at its photo in hot rod mags. From what I've gathered talking to other hot rod nuts, I was not alone.

According to RJ, the Orange Crate's still out there, in nice unrestored condition. In fact, it's been seen at a number of car shows, and was selected as one of “The 75 Most Significant ’32 Ford Hot Rods."

It's weird to think that some of these cars can be found in garages and barns all across America, just sitting. What else is out there? And more important, can I have it?

Who says a great movie has to be any good?

The other night, I flipped past that SEINFELD episode where Elaine suffered for the fact that she hated THE ENGLISH PATIENT. I love that episode -- because, like Elaine, I hated it, too.

Hated.

This got me to thinking about movies, and why people like certain ones -- and why they might SAY they like certain ones because they think they SHOULD. For instance, tell someone that you hated E.T. (which I did), and people will look at you like you just kicked their grandmother in the stomach. (I'd love to kick E.T. in the stomach.)

Anyway, back to that sorry THE ENGLISH PATIENT. I went to a party not too long after it came out, and one of Raleigh's film critics was there. (How many do we have, come to think of it?) We were introduced: "You two both like movies a lot..." We got to talking movies, and quickly found that we were coming at cinema from two completely different directions.

Not only was it obvious we didn't like the same films -- aside from THE WAGES OF FEAR, I think -- but we didn't like each other, either. He was pretentious and went on and on and on, a lot like the movies he dug. Me, I prefer simpler, shorter films: westerns (7 MEN FROM NOW), crime films (FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE), stuff with people in rubber suits tearing stuff up (THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON). Good, solid genre pictures.

Seeing that it would be easy, and a helluva lotta fun, to really get under this guy's skin, I cooked up a diatribe that I'm still quite proud of:

Movies are entertainment. You give up your money and a couple hours of your time, and hopefully you get something in return. With THE ENGLISH PATIENT, I looked at my watch a lot, wished the bastard would hurry up and conk out, and for days bitched about my lost six bucks.

But take something like ORGY OF THE DEAD, a piece of nudie junk written by Ed Wood back in 1965 or so: I laughed, my friends laughed, and we backed it up and watched a couple parts of it again. And we still talk about it -- years later.

As I see it, that makes ORGY OF THE DEAD a better movie than THE ENGLISH PATIENT.

The guy just walked away.

That's Ed Wood up top. He was a total loser of the variety only Hollywood can chew up and spit out. God bless him.

(By the way, I also hated PLATOON, JURASSIC PARK and TITANIC.)

I love this.

Here's a piece by hot rod lowbrow pin-up sticker artist Coop. As he says on his blog, "click to embiggen." Hope he doesn't mind that I boosted it.

There's an EASY RIDER-ness to it that makes me want to hang it over my mantle. If I had a mantle.

You Can't Make Up Stuff Like This.

"Louisiana Men Claim Buffet Eatery Banned Them"

HOUMA, La. (AP) -- A 265-pound man says a restaurant overcharged him for his trips to the buffet, then banned him and a relative because of how much they consumed during their visits.

Ricky Labit, a 6-foot-3 disabled offshore worker (That's Ricky in the photo), said he had been a regular at the Manchuria Restaurant, eating there as often as three times a week. But on his most recent visit, he said a waitress gave him and his wife's cousin, Michael Borrelli, a bill for $46.40, roughly double the buffet price for two adults.

"She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'" Labit said.

Labit and Borrelli said they felt discriminated against because of their size.

"I was stunned, that somebody would say something like that. I ain't that fat, I only weigh 277," Borrelli said.

Accountant Thomas Campo, who spoke for the restaurant because the owner's English is limited, said the men were charged an extra $10 each on Dec. 21 because they made a habit of dining exclusively on the more expensive seafood dishes, including crab legs and frog legs.

"We have a lot of big people there," Campo said. "We don't discriminate."

The argument over the bill grew heated, and police were called. The police report states that the disagreement was settled when the restaurant said the bill was a mistake and, to appease Labit, the meal was complimentary.

Labit said he insisted on paying but was told not to come back. He complained that when seafood on the buffet line runs out, the restaurant only grudgingly cooks more. Campo said the proprietress tries to reduce waste of quality food.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. (Ooops, sorry!)

I gotta get my priorities straight.

I used to be all over the stuff coming out on laserdisc and DVD and CD. A widescreen transfer of GOLDFINGER on laserdisc? How many William Castle movies are available on DVD? Can you get the mono mix of THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS by The Byrds on CD? It was all a big fat piece of cake. And it mattered.

Nowdays, I'm not so well-versed. Or up-to-date. Or whatever. Or maybe it's that I got to much reality impacting around here these days. Who knows.

It turns out that one of my all-time favorite movies, BEDAZZLED -- the 1967 Peter Cook/Dudley Moore one, not that sorry lame putrid remake thing -- has been out on DVD since April. And I had no idea.

Of course, to most people out there, it's no big deal. So what? Go order one and shut up. But us collector-loser-freaks, we want it right away, or at the very least we want to know the damn thing is coming out. Guess it's all part of wanting to be an Expert. It's required to earn your Geek merit badge.

So, anyway, BEDAZZLED is out. It's one of the funniest movies ever made. It's got Dudley Moore in a nun outfit jumping on a trampoline. It's got a great score (by Moore). And it's got that hip, mod 1967 Technicolor Panavision thing in spades, courtesy of director Stanley Donen.

Oh, and it's got Raquel Welch (as Lust) go-go dancing while Moore, still in his nun get-up, gets drunk. And ain't that why the motion picture was invented in the first place?

How to ring in the New Year.

Step 1. Select the snack of your choice. (In my case, Cheetos -- the crunchy ones.)

Step 2. Choose the adult beverage of your choice. (I'm having a White Russian.)

Step 3. Insert THE NIGHT STALKER DVD into your DVD player. (An episode you haven't seen ever/in a long time/last night, but it was really good. You could also go for one of the two TV movies.)

Step 3. Enjoy.

A Wonderful Life It Ain't.

It's late Christmas Eve. Presley's in bed. Jennifer and I are getting everything ready for Santa Claus' arrival. I decide to turn on the TV to give us something to watch as we wrap presents that will be unwrapped in just a few hours.

Maybe there's some kinda holiday thing on. A CHRISTMAS STORY. The Grinch. Charlie Brown. One of those Jesus documentaries on A&E.

What do I come across? THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Now, I think this is a great film. A landmark. But I question the widsom in scheduling this one on December 24th.

Did that keep me from watching a bit of it? Not at all.

"You're ruining Christmas!"

It's an absolute fact that A JOLLY CHRISTMAS FROM FRANK SINATRA from 1957 is the greatest Christmas album ever made. Hell, even Santa Claus would agree with that.

I'll nominate THE VENTURES' CHRISTMAS ALBUM as #2. One of the Elvis ones (take your pick) holds down the #3 spot.

And the list goes on. Sorry, Phil Spector. Please don't shoot me.

Every year, Frank, the Ralph Brewer Singers and conductor Gordon Jenkins provide the soundtrack to my holiday -- and it's pretty much impossible to have a blue Christmas when this thing's on.

Up top is the original LP's cover art. Pretty, ain't it? That was the way it looked when Capitol sent it to stores back in '57. It had a "high fidelity" thing in the upper right corner.

Then, in 1963, after Frank had split Capitol for his own Reprise label, the album was re-released as THE SINATRA CHRISTMAS ALBUM. That's it to the right. Kinda lame cover, but that same great music. Now at a slightly discounted price.

Then things start getting confusing. Along comes this thing called the compact disc. Capitol puts out A JOLLY CHRISTMAS FROM FRANK SINATRA, giving us a couple extra tunes -- and they return to the original cover art! In the meantime, another Sinatra holiday CD is put together, this one on Reprise, called THE SINATRA CHRISTMAS ALBUM, pulling together various holiday tunes recorded for various things -- he never recorded a full Christmas album for the label. No relation to the retitled JOLLY CHRISMAS that Capitol had once released. (You may have seen this CD. It's got an artsy shot of a red Christmas ornament on it.)

Then we get to 2007. A JOLLY CHRISTMAS FROM FRANK SINATRA is now 50 years old! So an anniversary version of the CD is prepared, which turns out to be just the regular thing with a new cover. No new tunes. No alternate takes. Not even some kinda different-numbered-bit remastering. Just a bastardization of that cool old cover art and some shiny slipcase thing. Sorry, not impressed. (It's always bothered me that the artist is never credited, and his signature on the LP cover is illegible.)

So the music is as great and timeless as ever. But are future generations gonna be stuck with these tacky new graphics? Let's hope not. I'd like to think that my grandkids' Sinatra Christmas music (who knows what format they'll hear it on) will look like the one I had -- and my parents had. Tradition is such a huge part of the Christmas season. This is one I sure hope we don't screw up.

By the way, Frank followed A JOLLY CHRISTMAS FROM FRANK SINATRA with the fabulous COME FLY WITH ME. He was on a roll that would last damn near a decade.

Ring a ding ding!

And a jolly Christmas from me, too!

[The title of this entry thing is bellowed by one of Ned Beatty's bratty kids in Spielberg's 1941 (1979).]

"You can never go fast enough."

And you can never own this movie too many times.

My Dad's laserdisc company, The Roan Group, put TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971) out. It was the last laserdisc he released before making the switch to DVD. It's also one of my all-time favorite movies (Warren Oates gives one of the greatest film performanes ever), and having anything to do with it (and I did VERY little as far as the laserdisc was concerned) was indeed an honor.

At the same time Dad did the laserdisc, Anchor Bay released the same transfer on DVD. It's long out of print, but Criterion has just put it back out in a more deluxer deluxe edition. Came out last week -- just in time for the gearhead movie freak on your Christmas list. Man, I can't wait to get one.

I've recommended this film to countless people. And reaction to it has been split right down the middle: people either love it or hate it. There's no "it was OK" with TWO LANE BLACKTOP.

Once I get my copy, I'll give the three people who read this a full report on its splendid-ness.

Freddie Francis: 1919 - 2007

Every December, Turner Classic Movies does this montage-y thing where they give you a runthrough of all the film people who've passed away over the last year. I always dread it, because each year I find that someone I really respect and admire has made the list -- and I had no idea they were gone.

This year was no exception. It was Freddie Francis, the British ace cinematographer and horror director. His specialty was black-and-white widescreen stuff, and THE INNOCENTS (we lost Deborah Kerr this year, too) and THE ELEPHANT MAN show what a master he was. Francis claimed to approach everything as if it was black-and-white, thinking in shade and texture rather than color. His color work in stuff like GLORY, Scorcese's CAPE FEAR and THE STRAIGHT STORY demonstrate that.

But he also directed. Typecast pretty quickly as a horror director, he made several films for Hammer (EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1964 and 1968's DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, for example)and the bulk of the anthology films like TALES FROM THE CRYPT that Amicus cranked out in the Seventies.

He quickly learned that even a good director has a hard time rising above a bad script, and this plagues a lot of his directorial work. But they always LOOK great, with a lot of the story told visually. THE SKULL and CREEPING FLESH are good examples of his visual flair making the most of a lackluster screenplay.

Over the course of my film-geek adulthood, I've searched out almost anything he ever touched -- from great pictures like SONS AND LOVERS to trash like VAMPIRE HAPPENING -- and I've always been fascinated by his use of shadow and the incredible places he decides to place his camera. These days, Freddie Francis is well-served by DVD, and something like THE INNOCENTS would make an ideal way to discover what a great artist he was -- and show off the spiffy widescreen HD TV you got for Christmas. And, of course, THE SKULL has that cool device where the camera looks out, POV-style, through the eye sockets! Good stuff.

I can feel a real Hammer Horror binge coming on.

Happy Birthday, Pally!

Francis Albert Sinatra
December 12, 1915 - May 14, 1998

Do the right thing. Light up a Chesterfield and pour yourself good stiff drink. And by all means, through something Nice N Easy on the hi-fi.

"Here by the sea and sand"

The Who, Virginia Beach, 1968. A former co-worker of mine was at this show. And I will forever hate him for it.

R.I.P.

Robert Craig Knievel
1938-2007

"... there's magic in my eyes."

Been listening to a lot of THE WHO SELL OUT lately. It's my favorite Who album, for one thing, which automatically makes it one of my favorite albums, period. And I finally tracked down the rare mono mix, which some people prefer. It's certainly different, but I haven't quite made up my mind yet.

You get a lot of different guitar solos, for one thing — especially in "Our Love Was." And a completely different version of "Mary Anne With The Shaky Hands." And it's a little punchier on the whole with a more pronounced high end, which I like.

One thing's for sure. I prefer it to the remastered CD, which has extra stuff stuck in the middle of the original album's sequence. Bad move. If I were President, that would be an offense that carried automatic jail time. But if you wanna stick some demos and stuff on the end of the original album, knock yourself out. Just don't mess with what I grew up listening to over and over and over till the neighbors could probably recite the lyrics to "I Can See For Miles." That's like painting a pack of Toastchee crackers and can of Copenhagen on the table in "The Last Supper."

However you hear it -- mono or stereo, vinyl or 8-track, CD or boosted off the Internet -- THE WHO SELL OUT is a masterpiece, taking the whole Pop Art thing The Who flirted with during that period and really running with it. From the tacky ads on the cover to the commecials between songs to songs that turn into commercials ("Odorono"), this thing is completely cuckoo. It's got Pete's Art School thing all over it. I can't imagine what it musta been like to hear this record brand new in 1967. (And as an Advertising practitioner, it's an weird justification of the kind of swill we crank out. See? It IS art!)

It's a shame they abandon the pirate radio theme toward the end of Side Two, but them's the breaks. It's also a shame that with all the Tommy Lifehouse Who's Next Quadrophenia rock opera concept album discussion, this one rarely gets mentioned — when it's maybe the time where Pete's concept really really works.

And Keith Moon goes completely nuts throughout with all sorts of engineer-y knob-twiddling giving his cymbols a real abrasive edge.

This LP has a soft spot in my heart because it was one of the first "rare" records I paid a "collector's" price for — $12 of my high school summer job hardearned (at Memory Lane Records outside Philly) for an original stereo Decca copy with the shrinkwrap still on it. It was a purchase I debated for days -- you'd think I was buying a Cadillac or something.

Have you heard the Petra Haden thing? It's great, a tribute this album certainly deserves.

Welcome to the new conference room.

I work in one of those glass-and-steel office buildings that Raleigh is so full of. These buildings all look the same -- and it doesn't seem like any are more than 15 years old.

The agency I work for occupies the entire second floor. But it's also where the lobby is (the first floor you enter through the parking deck), so we get quite a few strangers in our men's room. I went there today, and there were four guys already in there. Businessmen, each about 35. Khaki pants, blue oxford shirts, sportcoats, loafers. Hair full of product, standing up in a brush-looking kinda thing. (Come to think of it, they all looked a lot like sociopath/murderer/freak Scott Peterson.) Those briefcase-suitcase-airport-terminal-wheely things, all parked side-by-side outside the restroom door.

Two of these guys are at the urinals. The other two are waiting their turn behind them. I walk in, see all this humanity packed into the restroom and pause for a second. Do I want to wait? Should I come back later? Should I see if the stalls are occupied?

I step into the bathroom. Then it hits me. These four guys are all on their Blackberry/Treo/iPhones -- using their thumbs to frantically maneuver through emails or phone messages or child porn or whatever.

EVEN THE TWO GUYS WHO ARE PEEING!

I decided to come back later.

So, are some people arrogant enough to THINK their time is so valuable they can't even urinate without sharing their wisdom with the rest of the world? Do they think we're gonna be impressed? "Look at that, Austin. That's what I call multi-tasking!" 'Fraid not. It's more like "Oooooh! That guy's peeing and messing around with his cell phone!"

One thing's for sure. I ain't touching nobody's cell phone ever again. Who knows where it's been -- like, God forbid, a men's room in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Frame 352

From the Patterson-Gimlin film.

In Hell, everything is in Metrocolor.

When I was a kid, my Dad collected movies. He still does, but now they're on DVD, not 16 or 35mm film.

Came across this image the other day (on the wonderful, excessive, tech-y, geeky widescreenmuseum.com), and it really sent me back to those film days.

It's a 35mm frame from Stanley Kubrick's 2001. (That chilling scene right before the intermission where you realize HAL is reading their lips.) Squeezed for anamorphic projection. With a round reel changeover cue. With both the stereo magnetic and optical mono soundtracks. And printed on whatever crappy film stock Metrocolor stuff was dumped on. Seemed like no matter how well you cared for the stuff, it faded to this sickly pink over time. I've heard that some films from the period were this faded while still in their theatrical release!

The weird thing is, your brain will eventually correct the color for you — if the movie's any good. For instance, James and I watched THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM about 14 thousand times (including back-to-back showings from time to time), in a 'Scope 16mm faded-brown "Color by Pathe" print. And we never complained. You can now get it in a beautiful widescreen DVD, by the way.

Same with 2001. The redone transfer in that new Stanley box is supposed to be truly amazing. Haven't seen it yet (it's on my Christmas list).

But as for the film itself, I've seen that thing about 50 times. And movies just don't get no better.

This might be the best record of 2007.

Or maybe it's the best record of 1927, which is what it kinda sounds like.

Whatever, it's really good. And, of course, Levon Helm is a National Treasure and should be on the nickel instead of some stupid buffalo.

So do yourself a favor. Go get this here thing.