They Like Our Food. They Like Our Girls. They Like Our Style.

What a great find is this pre-NetJets Braniff Air ad featuring Andy Warhol and Sonny Liston. It is played perfectly by both men. It is cleverly suggesting that you might meet a fascinating character on a Braniff flight but also humorously noting that people often sit next to people that they’d like to knock out.  (A professional boxer must be even more restrained than the common man in that regard!)  Warhol’s lines are also about as good as they could be for a twenty second ad. Liston’s look is priceless.

And the orange seats! My word!

I like the Warhol/Liston ad better than the Whitey Ford/Dali ad, which is OK, and delightful because surprising, but does not work the same way.

25 Great Movies of the Decade

I’ve been looking at a lot of best movies of the decade lists and while some of them are good, many turkeys are being promoted while some cinematic triumphs are being overlooked. Here are 25 great movies that I would watch again right now, in no particular order, but the top 5  are top 5 for a reason.

1. Look at Me

2. The Lives of Others

3. No Country for Old Men

4.  A Very Long Engagement

5. Lost in Translation

6.  Casino Royale

7. Little Miss Sunshine

8.  Enigma

9. Gosford Park

10. Sprited Away

11. The Proposition

12. Kissing Jessica Stein

13. Amelie

14. Ratatouille

15. The Futurama Movie

16. Pan’s Labyrinth

17. Hotel Rwanda

18. The Constant Gardner

19. I Heart Huckabees

20. King Kong (for the dinosaur wrestling scene)

21. Le divorce (it was good!)

22. The Last King of Scotland

23. Baby Boy (that was some funny shit!)

24. The Royal Tenenbaums

25. The Kill Bills

Of course, the greatest cinematic thing of the decade was that mega-movie known as The Sopranos.

Fly Eddie Cheeba Routine

Thank goodness for this classic Eddie Cheeba routine.

If your name is Kenny…Jack Benny, Jack Benny.

Choi and Vargas-Cooper

I just read Mary HK Choi and Natasha Vargas-Cooper on some vampire movie that I’m never going to see. Can these women please have their own TV show? Immediately? It could replace Charlie Rose.

Leshan Giant Buddha

I watched a good documentary the other night on the 200 foot Leshan Giant Buddha in Sichuan, China and the attempts to preserve it, as it is carved of fragile red sandstone and it is the last of its kind, since the Taliban blew up the world’s other giant Buddhas.

I would like to propose, since this is China and money is no object, that Shigeru Ban (I know he’s Japanese) or some sort of Shigeru Ban imitator be brought in to design some stylish canopy to protect the Buddha from acid rain.  The canopy could be retractable and a giant curtain could fall from it. Christo could be involved in the curtain design.

Finally, I was reminded of the MET’s stunning ancient Sichuan show of some years back. 2003? So many statues with those unique eyes. How do they relate to the eyes of the Leshan Buddha? Were there remnants of that ancient style still in the air in 700 AD?

Armani, Nike, Starbucks, Apple

Cintra Wilson’s review of Armani’s new flagship store last week had some interesting statistics.

$14,000 in revenue in 1975

$100 million in 1985

$2 billion today.

If someone told me those years and numbers I’d think: Nike, Starbucks, Apple, some Silicon Valley concern that is not a household name. Armani would not be the first thing to spring to mind. What does Armani have in common with these West Coasterly type ventures with which it shares a trajectory?

Reflections upon this topic have prompted a poem:

Armani:

Unlike Brioni,

Its history

Ain’t Marshall Plan-y

Apollinaire’s Art Criticism

HA! Love it.

“Room 23. M. Matignon shows us a lady opium-smoker out of some novel. Opium has a lot of faults and disadvantages, but it has more charm than this painting.”

from “A Visit to the Exhibition Rooms” (1911)

A Practical, Modern-Day Thing

 

Harvey Weinstein on line one!

Mr. DIGGS: You know, I think it happens in every life, actually, not only every story, but as you go throughout the Bible, the Quran and all these wise books and even my own life, there’s always a moment that you hear something that changes you. Malcolm X said, you know, he got it in prison when he heard the words of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Moses from the burning bush; the Prophet Muhammad in the cave. We get this call in your life and when you get the call, we must answer the call.

Now, I just take it to a practical modern-day thing. I’m an actor inside of movies, right? And that started from a call. Mr. Harvey Weinstein from Miramax movie called me up – RZA, I want you in my movie. You have a new career now. And I answered that call and I went, and I did his movie, and he was correct. It led to a whole new career for me. So the call comes. Be prepared to answer it.

This NPR interview has some great moments:

My three-year-old son, every time we turn the news on he goes Obama?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DIGGS: You know what I mean? He has a new pinnacle now.

MARTIN: A black president is a fact of life for him, not a subject of a comedy routine.

Mr. DIGGS: Exactly.

Tribute to Eddie Fobbs

Edwin Fobbs passed away on September 22nd, just shy of his 72rd birthday, which would have been today, October 1.

What can I say about the great Mr. Eddie Fobbs?

He was a fount of wisdom.

drafted by the New York Yankees at age 16

19 years as caddy master at Seminole

28 years as locker room man at Meadow Brook

caddied for Ben Hogan

Eddie Fobbs was a great golfer

he used to hit driver off the deck

“You made par? So what! That’s what you ’sposed to make!”

he was a heck of a Georgia Skin player

and a heck of a pool player; beat players who had held their own against Ralph Greenleaf

he was was with his good friend Sam Cooke just before Cooke was killed

he switched Caddillacs, and later SUVs, with astonishing frequency.

he had style; he used to rock those Kangols…

he said: never apologize to nobody.

George H.W. Bush offered him a shirt that said George Bush, Vice President. But Mr. Eddie didn’t want no shirt. So George H.W. Bush gave him his own pocket knife.

he said: always pay your gambling debts immediately. (especially to him! sheeeit!)

he pronounced Albany as “ALL-BINNY!”

“I cannot BELIEVE I’m out here bettin’ on bogey. I makes bets on BIRDIES AND PARS. Bogey??? Sheeeeeeit!”

Mr. Eddie, you will be missed. Rest in peace.

A Little Congressional Dogerrel

There once was a juvenile ranter

who went by the name of E. Cantor

he whined and whined and whined and whined;

someone get this man a decanter

 

 

There once was a man named E. Bayh

who was prepped for his post from ye high

if hogs ever flew these dogs that are blue

would get thrown out of office and cry.

 

 

There once was a man named John Boehner.

I’m told that’s pronounced like container…?

T.S. Eliot knew-y that a groaner’s a buoy

and I know this moaner’s insaner…*

 

*Than whom, I can’t say, but I don’t mean Eliot.