Mood Melancholy - November 2024

 It's been a rough 12 months for me and Monique, full of disease and death and setbacks and sorrow. We are ground down. Tuesday's election results were a perfect capper.

Early on in the Biden Administration -- henceforth known as the Second Weimar Republic -- I remember saying a couple of things. The first was that it drove me crazy that he was having these remarkable policy and legislative achievements, but was utterly unable to communicate those successes to the American people. The second came as they repeatedly failed to deal swiftly and harshly with an armed insurrection and Trump's attempt to overthrow the American government:

"Feckless Democrats and fascist Republicans will be the ruination of us all," I said, donning the mantle of the Cassandra of the early 2020s.

The feckless Democrats have done their part. Now the fascist Republicans have center stage to themselves.

This was the first time I wasn't directly involved in a campaign since the 2000 election shortly after I moved to Michigan. The reasons were mostly entirely unrelated to the election itself, but I hesitate to offer up a post-mortem for Tuesday's Democratic disaster because I hate to be the guy sitting out on the side pointing out what the players did wrong. However, a fair number of people have asked me for my two cents, so here it is:

Several big lies repeated loudly again and again over four years beat out a thousand small truths mumbled incoherently over the same period.

It would be easy to blame Kamala Harris for that, since it was her name on the ballot. But it feels to me as if these results were baked in before she ever took the lead on the ticket. Had she not run a very strong campaign for her hundred days as candidate this could've been an even bigger disaster for the Democrats. Thanks, Kamala. I appreciate the effort.

Joe Biden was a great Senator and a master of the inside game in Washington. But for all that I admire Biden's accomplishments in his first two years, he also failed to communicate those accomplishments effectively. And it constantly felt as if he failed to understand the moment. He kept trying to negotiate with the GOP of forty years ago but never understood that he was getting clobbered in a back alley of the Age of Misinformation.

"We're the American people," he liked to say after some outbreak of general crappiness. "We're better than that."

"No, Joe," I would think wearily. "I've studied a lot of American history and on average we are not better than that. Not unless we are exceptionally well led."

So what next? I don't know. Our best hope for the next few months is the sheer demonstrated incompetence of Trump and his hangers-on and yes-men. But too many of the worst people have been planning the worst things to give me much hope that we'll be as lucky as we were the first time around. 

I doubt I'm entirely done with campaigning, but I'm not sure if I'll be ready to come back off the sidelines in 2026 or not. As with 2024, it would mostly be for reasons not related to the election itself.

If I was in charge of Democratic Party messaging for the next four years -- and nobody is knocking down my door asking me to take the gig -- I'd pick two or three brutal truths and shout them again and again and again. And again and again and again. And again and again and again. 

Sadly, I belong to a political party that failed to have the stones to deal effectively with the aftermath of an armed insurrection. I doubt genuine messaging discipline will suddenly appear in our bag of skills.

If anybody cares enough to buy me lunch, I'll tell you my nominees for the brutal truths we should be telling again and again and again. But there'll be no lack of terrible things that the Republican Party will do in the next few years. The problem will be picking just two or three. But the real problem is that the Democratic Party never found a truth it couldn't bury under a nuanced 23-point policy statement.

In the meantime there will be plenty of calls to storm the ramparts in protest of whatever's happening. I'll be more inclined to heed them if the elected Democrats still in office look as if they are finally battling on our behalf. For the last four years it has felt as if they were more interested in fundraising off the rising tide of fascism than in actually defeating it. I'm going to need to see something effective out of some of them before they see another dime out of me.

The institutionalists and technocrats have failed us. It's time for a wartime consigliari to take charge.

All in all, not a very cheerful blog post. But it's not a cheerful time. The grey November rains outside  my window match my mood melancholy.

Winter is often a time for rest and recovery. Our new year starts around the winter solstice for good reason. I'm planning some rest and recovery for myself this winter. I wish you all the same.

The Revised Patioboater Guide to the 2024 Presidential Election

Up is down! Down is up! Higgledy Piggledy all around!

Like a lot of folks, I'm relieved that Biden decided to step down after all. I suspect his Presidency is going to age well. He accomplished a ton of things in a short period. 

Since nobody reads this blog anymore this is mostly for myself, but I'd like to go on this bloggy record as predicting a narrow Harris win in November, followed by two months of dirty tricks and lies. I haven't really looked at the Congressional races, but I'd like to think there might be enough momentum to push both houses back to the Dems. We shall see.

I also predict a very bumpy ride for these final six weeks. 

Maybe, just maybe if Harris and the Dems win the GOP will take a look at itself and what is has become and step back from the abyss. I doubt it though. The alternative right-win information environment that a majority of Republicans live in these days is just too toxic. A crushing defeat at the polls might lead the toxicity merchants to step back a bit. But a narrow defeat is likely to just encourage them to double down on toxicity and disinformation. Woe betide us all in 2026, 2028, and beyond.

In any event, good luck Kamala! I'm afraid you're going to need it. 

The Patioboater Guide to the 2024 Presidential Election

Honestly, do any of you need or want any guidance for the 2024 election? Anybody? 

These two guys have been around on the public scene for a long time, so I can't imagine there's anybody left undecided, unless they've been in a coma for the last 20 years.

Okay, here's the quick guide: on the one hand, we have a failed president who led the worst Covid response of any industrialized country, then attempted to overthrow the government when people voted overwhelmingly against him. On the other hand we have a decent guy who has led the best economic recovery from the pandemic among industrialized nations, and who passed a series of very effective economic and environmental bills through a narrowly divided Congress.

Choose wisely.

But for those who sat down with a cup of coffee for this read, here's my longer take on the election...

It has probably not gone unnoticed by many of you that my Facebook page has been a quiet place in recent years, mostly filled with photos of sunsets, dogs, and old British cars. This was a conscious decision to focus my space and time back to its original intent, which was to get nice little glimpses into the lives of my family members and friends. I recommend it for peace of mind. I also made myself a rule that I'm not going onto other people's timelines to rebut whatever crapola they post. Again, I recommend it for peace of mind. I have yet to see anybody win a Facebook argument on that basis.

As part of that shift, I've been posting a lot less about politics myself. It isn't that I suddenly don't have opinions, thoughts, or insights. But I also grew tired of the inevitable wave of right-wing misinformation and lies that piled up on those posts, which required me to then spend my time moderating and deleting crapola from the worshipers of the Cheeto God. I could spend a long, long blog post opining about the Age of Misinformation. This isn't that post, but it's important to acknowledge the context for this election.

Since there are very few truly undecided voters to be found, this presidential election is going to end up being a turnout election. The convicted felon is going to spew his Big Lie about the 2020 election to get his base fired up. They will be fired up and they will vote, presumably having also been told that the fix is in so they will have to vote in overwhelming numbers. At the same time, he and his allies and a bunch of Russian 'bots will be spewing a firehose of negative disinformation about Biden, mostly by way of getting people to bring it into the open so that dimwitted pundits will opine about it as if it's not utter made up crapola. ("Meanwhile, is President Biden planning to ___[Crapola]___? Some people say yes. Stay tuned after the break and we'll explain...."

The convicted felon also needs to convince people who would sigh and dutifully vote for Biden that it's not worth it and they should either throw away their vote on a 3rd-party candidate or stay home altogether.

On the flip side, Biden has a different problem that also is based in turnout. He wasn't particularly anybody's #1 choice going into 2020, so there's not really a passionate base supporting him personally. Heck, he wasn't my top choice, either. But he's done a much, much better job with a difficult situation than I expected. Not flawless by any means. But if you sit down and evaluate the job he's done fairly, he's done extremely well.

But the polls sure as heck don't show that. There are some genuine reasons, but a lot of it is also the public reaction to the unrelenting drum of negativity that buzzes of our televisions 24/7 nowadays and seeps into the rest of the news sphere. In any case, he needs to convince people who would be inclined to vote for him to actually show up and vote for him. 

He also needs to convince Republicans who won't vote for him but can't stomach another four years of Trump to at least not do the thing that Republicans do in overwhelming numbers: vote for the R on the ballot, regardless of who it is.

So that's what we're going to see in this election: from the GOP and the Russian bots an unrelenting torrent of crapola about how the country is somehow now a hellscape compared to 2020, despite a lot of facts like economic and crime statistics that compare favorably to 2019 before Covid hit, much less 2020. (Does anybody actually remember 2020? Anybody? Because that was *not* a good year!) And from Biden we're going to see some general feel-good marketing reminding people to take a look around because 2024 is mostly pretty good. Plus, there's going to be a lot of targeted campaigning to people who might show up because they support a specific issue or set of issues -- hello, women. And there'll be a fair amount of targeted campaigning to whatever's left of the non-MAGA Republicans asking them to take a very close look at their guy before pulling that lever.

It's going to be a bumpy four-and-a-half months.

If you're looking for something you can do in the midst of all of that to help keep a failed President and convicted felon from somehow getting back into the Oval Office for a revenge tour, here are my suggestions.

1. Vote for Joe Biden.
2. I mean it. Vote for Joe Biden. I don't care what your specific beef with him or the two-party system is. If you care about the future of this country, vote for Joe Biden. You can bring your beefs to me on Wednesday, November 6, and I'll hear you out.
3. Make sure your friends and family members also vote for Joe Biden. No sitting this one out just because we're all tired.
4. If you're looking for more to do, find a local candidate that you like and help with their campaign. In some elections the top of the ticket has coattails that carry the candidates lower on the ballot. My guess is that in this one the top of the Democratic ticket is most likely to benefit from good campaigning and get-out-the-vote campaigns from the rest of the ticket.
5. If you have a few extra bucks to put into this, donate to Joe Biden's campaign. You will probably feel that the money gets spent asking you for more money, but that's okay. Marketing campaigns are expensive, especially when they have to counter a firehose of crapola.
6. If you have a few extra bucks to put into this, donate to other good candidates. They will make a difference in who shows up to vote.

And that's about it. I'd advise steering clear of the 24/7 television news industry for the next few months. It's going to be ugly and uninformative. If you need a peaceful place, stop by the ol' Facebook page. I can't promise I won't ever post on politics between now and Tuesday, November 5. But if I do I can promise I'll be using the ol' delete function energetically in the comments. In truth it'll mostly be sunsets, Benny Beagle, and old British cars.

Here. Have a pretty sunset photo. If you read to the bottom you've earned it.

I watched (almost) 40 Hallmark Holiday Movies in 2022

Let's get this confession out of the way: I like predictable entertainment. 

For one thing, it's comfortable, especially at the end of a long day. I also enjoy watching artists and writers work within constraints: the sonnet, the three-act play, the Perry Mason one-hour telecast. When you know the genre and where you're going, you can relax and enjoy the ride. We all know that Godzilla is going to stomp Tokyo and waddle back into the sea. But how intricate are the buildings he will destroy? And do we make some new friends along the way?

Given that, it should be no surprise that I have a soft spot for Hallmark Holiday Movies, which are among the most predictable of television productions. Billions of bytes have been spilled detailing the dozen or more repeated plot points in these cozy holiday semi-classics, so you don't need me to do that for you. In any case, after a long, long, long year, I decided that I would fire up my trusty DVR and catch as many of the this year's crop as I could and enjoy some nice, comfy Christmas watching.

Along the way I discovered a few problems:

1. I naively assumed there would be maybe 15 or 20 of them to sort through. Between the regular Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Mysteries & Movies, they put out a mind-boggling forty new Hallmark holiday movies this year. That's a lot of Hallmarking, especially since I didn't intend to start watching until after Thanksgiving.

2. It seems that most of North America's hometown Christmas tree lots / Christmas cookie bakeries / holiday hotels / Christmas ornament factories have already been saved by plucky heroines with dull boyfriends in the big city. With 40 holiday movies to crank out this year, Hallmark has been pushing their plots and settings further afield. Sometimes this works well. Sometimes it does not. The ultimate effect is that the general quality feels all over the place, probably more so than in prior years. (Or maybe my memory of the efforts of prior years are covered in a gauzy holiday haze, and they've always been uneven. That seems entirely likely)

3. Hallmark's efforts to bring a lot more diversity to these productions remains a work in progress. For the most part, this is much improved from the first few years of their efforts, which mostly seemed to consist of making a black guy the mayor of every 99%-white small town in America. A few of the better movies this year were set in black or Asian American families. And this year's Hanukkah entry was also one of the strongest entries.

On the other hand, some of the more inclusive entries were among the weaker efforts. There's a certain bit of representation there, too, since several of the other weak movies this year had big-city white girls going home for Christmas. These movies are proving that they succeed or not based on their merits, not based on the ethnicity of the cast. I applaud the fact that Hallmark is trying to make movies that look more like America. They still have a ways to go, but at least they're trying. 

However, there was one particularly irritating fail in Hallmark's move towards racial inclusiveness in these films, and it came in one of their biggest, most hyped movies of the year, A Holiday Spectacular, which revolved around the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes in 1958. In that movie one of the main characters is an African American dancer in the Rockettes in 1958 who apparently started with the Rockettes in the late 1940s. In fact, the Rockettes didn't permit their first black dancer until 1987. (No, I didn't know the date that until I looked it up afterwards, but I had a vague memory of it, and this nagged at me as I watched.)

That character and subplot felt like whitewashing genuine history, instead of representation. I like seeing diversity on screen and in surprising places -- Denzel Washington as MacBeth? Yes! -- but with the emphasis of this production on seeming historic authenticity, this felt dishonest about what America was really like in the 1950s -- misrepresentation instead of representation. 

So, kudos to Hallmark for continuing to work on inclusiveness. I get what they were trying to do there. But there's more work to be done. There's also a lot more to be said and written on the topic. It's a continuing microcosm of America's "three steps forward, two steps back" progress on racial equality.

As for the movies themselves?  My reviews are below in alphabetical order. My favorite by far was Ghosts of Christmas Always, an entirely surprising and fun mash-up of "A Christmas Carol" and a Hallmark Holiday movie plot. Several of the other best movies of the year also involved mash-ups or remakes or winks at the well-worn Hallmark movie trope. My runner up for the best is probably Three Wise Men and a Baby, a Christmas remake of Three Men and a Baby that wrung a lot of laughs out of classic men-and-baby comedy.

The worst by far was We Wish You a Married Christmas, which consisted of two hours spent with an unpleasant squabbling married couple. I only mention it here as extra warning. Spare yourself. It was awful. 

Everything else lay somewhere between. Some good. Some very good. Some bad. Some very bad. Some eh. I don't provide any real plot summaries or other information below, so here's a good listing from the TV Guide channel with plot summaries and stars if you want to know more: Hallmark Christmas Movie Calendar 2022: The Full Schedule.

My Rankings

Grinch - Avoid at all costs.

* Ugh. Not good.

** Eh, what did you expect? It's a Hallmark holiday movie

*** Genuinely entertaining

**** Wow! Go out of your way to watch this next year!

#Xmas **

Another classic Hallmark trope: totally botching how social media works in real life. Better than I expected, especially after a weak start and setup. But still dubious.

All Saints Christmas ***

Pop singer and a fake engagement. The plot summary made me think it would be terrible, but the whole movie was fun. Well worth a watch. Special kudos for the ridiculous computer-generated snowflakes falling at the end in Louisiana.

A Big Fat Family Christmas ***

Reluctant daughter and a big family party in San Francisco. Another one that beat my expectations, mostly due to likeable turns by the lead actors, as well as Tia Carrera chewing up scenery as the Mom and a lot of very good location shots of SF.

Christmas at the Golden Dragon ***

Family Chinese restaurant closing. This one grew on me as it went along. The cast was good and the whole thing had a lot of heart, plus yummy Chinese food.

Christmas Bedtime Stories *

Widowed mother. This one probably deserves an "Incomplete" from me because I turned it off after 15 minutes or so. On the other hand, the dismal 5.0/10 IMDB rating and the terrible plot twist at the end mentioned as a spoiler in several user reviews tell me that my instincts were 100% correct here.

Christmas Class Reunion **

Disastrous reunion 15 years after graduation. Pretty likeable. Pretty fun to watch. Pretty predictable. Might've deserved a third star from  me, but didn't quite make it.

A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe **

I wanted to like this one more than I did. I like Rachel Boston. I like a good Christmas mystery. And I love rescuing the family Christmas cookie biz. But it just never really developed a spark. Sigh.

A Cozy Christmas Inn ***

Another one right in the old-school Hallmark tradition. Small-town girl goes home for the holidays.

A Fabled Holiday **

Unlikely couple stuck in a possibly mythical village. I expected more out of this one. I like Brooke D'Orsay as a lead actress and I like when they work some genuine mythological angle into these movies. But it never quite flew.

Five More Minutes: Moments Like These **

Five minutes later you're going to have to look it up on IMDB to remember what it was about or who was in it. Totally forgettable.

Ghosts of Christmas Always ****

Amazing. They took the two most overused holiday clichés -- "A Christmas Carol" and the Hallmark Christmas movie -- and made something that felt new and unpredictable. Special kudos for fresh performances from the leads and the supporting cast. Absolutely the best of these that I saw this year and totally rewatchable. Just perfect as it is.

The Gift of Peace ***

There are so many widows and widowers wandering around these movies that a genuine look at mourning and resulting loss of faith felt like a breath of fresh air. I liked this one much more than I expected to.

Hanukkah on Rye ***

"The Shop Around the Corner" aka "You've Got Mail" but with Jewish delis and a Hanukkah theme. We all know where this one is going, but the leads are so likeable in the roles that it's fun to take the ride with them.

Haul Out the Holly ***

Lacey Chabert makes fun of the movie she's in. I liked this one more than it probably deserved, mostly because it was so goofy. It's basically one big wink at the entire format, and manages to have a lot of fun along the way.

Holiday Heritage (Didn't see)

I was pretty burned out on all of these by the time this one came up in my watching. I let the predictable-sounding plot and the weak 5.9/10 IMDB rating make the call. Maybe I'll give it a try if it comes up in the Christmas in July Hallmark marathon. Maybe not.

The Holiday Sitter **

On the one hand, kudos to Hallmark for including a movie with a romance between two gay men. On the other hand, they made them the blandest characters in the blandest movie imaginable, an uninvolving two hours you will entirely forget afterwards.

A Holiday Spectacular **

An unusual history spectacle for Hallmark with a substantial production budget featuring the Rockettes. This one was generally a lot of fun and worth a watch. But to do that you also need to set aside the disappointing whitewashing of Rockette history that I mention up in the introduction.

The Holiday Stocking (Incomplete)

I wasn't feeling the new-angel plot, so I stopped watching after about 10 or 15 minutes. The 6.9/10 IMDB rating says that it deserved better from me. So be it. Watch it yourself and tell me if I was wrong.

In Merry Measure ***

Battling Christmas singing groups in a high-school contest. Another one that was better than I expected from the plot summary, probably because I expected a lot more squabbling but they got past that part of the plot quickly. Bonus points for fun Christmas music performances.

Inventing the Christmas Prince **

Starts terribly, gets watchable for a while in the middle, ends with a dubious deux ex machina. Ultimately the whole thing felt like a two-hour HR training session highlighting what not to do in the workplace. I wanted to like this one more than I did, especially because lead actress Tamera Mowry-Housley was good in her role as a rocket scientist.

Jolly Good Christmas **

Romance finds a personal gift-buyer in London. This would've been just fine if they'd let the lead actor use his own accent. Instead he does a terrible American accent that is awful to the point of distraction. Would've been three stars if they just let the British actor be British.

A Kismet Christmas **

Magic cookies and a nice girl comes home. Good, but forgettable.

Lights, Camera, Christmas! ***

A Hallmark movie about making a Hallmark movie. This one had fun by being a bit meta about the whole Hallmark holiday movie phenomenon.

Long Lost Christmas ***

Looking for long-lost family. Predictable, but everybody in it is so likeable that I gave it a third star, which it probably doesn't deserve.

A Magical Christmas Village **

A pleasant two hours of predictability as every classic plot point plays out in a toy village first.

A Maple Valley Christmas **

Our heroine tries to save the family maple syrup biz. Likeable leads, reliable plot … there might've been a good movie buried in here somewhere, but it all felt a bit tired.

The Most Colorful Time of the Year *

Crazy stalker eye doctor forces experimental cure for color blindness on teacher in denial about his color blindness. Likeable enough on the surface, but there are so many doctor-patient boundaries being crossed here that the whole thing gets a creepy vibe.

My Southern Family Christmas **

Heroine investigates her long lost family in the bayou under false pretenses. Likeable, good performances, classic Hallmark plot. So why didn't I give it a third star? I'm not sure. Maybe it's ultimately the needless deception that fuels the plot. In any case I don't feel compelled to watch it again or recommend that you go out of your way to watch it. So two stars it is.

Noel Next Door ***

Single Mom renews the spirit of Christmas in the neighborhood grouch and finds romance. The first new one of the 2022 season, this was a nice kickoff right in the old Hallmark cliché slot.

Our Italian Christmas Memories **

A commendable effort to bring in a genuine real-world problem, eldercare and dementia. And it had some pretty good performances. But not great, either. A lesser critic would now call the ultimate result as forgettable as grandma's pasta sauce recipe. Fortunately for us all, I'm not that critic.

A Royal Corgi Christmas **

The Corgis are cuter than the rest of the movie, which involves a dog trainer and a dissolute prince. More Corgis would have helped this one. Like, a lot more Corgis. Really, just re-run the Corgi race towards the end for two hours. Alas, that this was the one I saved to watch with my niece Stella, purely based on the Corgi-ness of it all. I should've inflicted a better movie on her.

The Royal Nanny ***

An MI5 agent goes undercover as a nanny. Completely ridiculous, but inexplicably fun. The fun factor makes it an easy watch, probably because nobody involved in this thing takes the mash-up of Hallmark Christmas "royal" movie with an action flick very seriously. Instead they're all just having fun with the tropes.

A Tale of Two Christmases (Didn't See)

I somehow missed this one. The 5.6/10 IMDB ranking says that may have been for the best.

Three Wise Men and a Baby ****

I was pretty skeptical, but this ludicrous remix of "Three Men and a Baby" was so likeable and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny that it was genuinely one of the best ones this year.

Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas **

On the one hand, a pretty entertaining entry. On the other hand, I got "creepy stalker" vibes off the phone message that serves as the McGuffin. Maybe I'm just being too cynical about it, but I guess it's sort of one star if you get creeped out by the message, but three stars if you're fine with the heroine dropping everything to track down the intended recipient. All of that averages out to two stars, so here we are.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas ***

Who really wrote the famous Christmas poem? This one was genuinely good fun and again a place where Hallmark injected a surprising lift into their formula by bringing in another overused Christmas staple.

Undercover Holiday (Didn't see)

Eh, I dunno. The plot looks terrible and the low 5.4/10 rating on IMDB seems to concur. This one is still on my DVR. Will I take the plunge? Seems unlikely.

We Need a Little Christmas **

Widowed single mother finds friendship and romance. Another one I wanted to like more than I ultimately did.

We Wish You a Married Christmas [Grinch]

Just terrible. Two unpleasant hours with a squabbling married couple. This was the 2nd of these I watched this season and it almost put me off the project altogether. People need to be warned. I am warning you.

When I Think of Christmas **

Big city lawyer comes home to sing Christmas carols with her ex-boyfriend. For some reason she's supposed to feel bad about being a successful lawyer. Pleasant, but forgettable. How forgettable? I had to look over the IMDB entry a couple of times to remind myself that I really did watch this one. And now that I'm looking back at this list one more time, I still can't remember what this one was about.

Everything you need to know about what happened in Michigan this week.

 Gallons of (virtual) ink are being spilled by the Michigan political punditry this week to try to explain how the Democratic Party gained control of the governorship, attorney general, secretary of state, and the legislature for the first time in decades, and why they didn't see it coming.

It's not nearly as complicated as they're trying to make it seem.

For the statewide offices, here's what happened:

1.People want to control their own bodies. People like the nice lady who helped them do that over the last six months. They also like her friends who did the same.

2. People like the nice lady who tried to keep them safe from Covid. They also like her friends who did the same.

3. Promise made, promise kept. The damn roads are getting fixed. Michigan was awash in orange barrels and road construction projects this summer. Everybody I talked to about it said essentially the same thing, "It's a pain in the ass, but isn't it great that the roads are getting fixed?"

A ton of work and money went into getting out the message on these points. but a ton of work and money doesn't matter if the message doesn't resonate with people. That message resonated. The only surprise is that political pundits were surprised by that.

As for the legislature, establishing a nonpartisan commission to draw legislative districts worked. After decades of GOP gerrymandering, the partisan results reflected the actual votes that people cast.

Kudos to all my friends in politics who have worked so hard over the years to get us to this point. (A few kudos to me, too, even though I wasn't directly involved in this election that finally put us over the top.)

What do I expect next? More roads getting fixed and more policies that help actual people. If the Democrats now in office deliver on that, they'll have another good year four years from now.

I watched 13 terrible movies in October

I watched 13 terrible movies in the run up to Halloween. Usually I try to mix in at least a few genuinely good horror classics while they're scattered about the movie channels in October. But I've seen just about all the genuinely good horror and sci-fi classics. And so what's left? The anti-classics.

It was fun. One of the great thing about watching terrible movies is that you go into them with low expectations. If the movie turns out to be terrible, well then, what did you expect?

I guess what you should expect is a little review from me, so here we go.

Here's the list, in the order that I watched them:

• It Came From Outer Space (1953)
• Slither (1973)
• The Beast Must Die (1974)
• The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)
• Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)
• The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) 
• Queen of Blood (1966)
• The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
• Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
• The Thing with Two Heads (1972)
• "My Son the Vampire" originally titled "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" aka "Vampire over London" (1952)
• The Return of the Vampire (1943)
• Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)

Here are my reviews:

It Came From Outer Space (1953) *** Spaceship crashes in the desert and aliens begin taking over the local townfolk. Pretty entertaining, plus young Russell Johnson (the Professor from "Gilligan's Island") in a small role. 

Slither (1973) *** Doesn't at all belong on this list. I assumed it must be some weird thing with snakes, but it turned out to be an oddball 1970s action-comedy movie James Caan, Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle, and a terrible title. It's good, tho'. Worth a watch.

The Beast Must Die (1974) ** "World's Greatest Hunter" gathers werewolf suspects at his remote English estate for the world's greatest hunt, if only they can figure out which guest is the werewolf. Bonus cheese points for the "Can you guess the werewolf?" break at the end.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956) ** Just the usual Tyranosaurus Rex eating cattle in a Mexican canyon 1950s Western. Kinda fun, especially once T.Rex shows up.

Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967) ** A Korean ripoff of Godzilla, but without the expensive special effects and production values. Mostly for kaiju completists, but sort of fun if you've seen a lot of Godzilla.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) ***1/2 Vincent Price at the top of his game as a Spanish Don going mad. Directed by Roger Corman, also at the top of his game here. This is a good one.

Queen of Blood (1966) ** Green vampire woman from Mars set loose on a spaceship. Best for the amazing cast, which includes John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, and young Dennis Hopper, plus a great otherworldly turn by Florence Marly as the Queen of Blood herself. Not great, but more entertaining than it should be.

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964) *1/2 This was a pretty forgettable mummy movie from Hammer studios. Picks up a bit of momentum in the second half, but not much.

Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) */**1/2 This sci-fi/gangster flick steps into "so bad it's good" territory, which makes it watchable and kind of entertaining. But it's not so bad that it's truly great. It did, however, lead to this great eponymous 1981 song by Roky Erickson and the Aliens:

Creature with the Atom Brain (Roky Erickson and the Aliens)

... which led to this dandy 2018 cover by Quintron & Miss Pussycat that landed on the Dr. Demento Covered in Punk album, which is how both the song and the movie came to my attention.

Creature with the Atom Brain (Quintron & Miss Pussycat)

The Thing with Two Heads (1972) */**** A classic of the genre, that genre being "terrible sci-fi movies in which the head of a racist doctor played by an Academy Award winning actor is transplanted onto Rosie Grier's shoulder." Also features a crazy-ass motocross chase that is firmly rooted in the early 1970s. Monique called it "the strangest movie I've ever watched" and we've watched Jodorowsky's "Holy Mountain" (1973).

"My Son the Vampire" originally titled "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" aka "Vampire over London" (1952) Zero stars - Just terrible. Do not recommend. For masochistic Bela Lugosi completists only. I suspect, however, that a good movie might be made about the making of this unwatchable thing, a statement I feel compelled to explain, since I dug around a bit to see how this awful thing came to be.

This is the final installment of 14 British "Old Mother Riley" comedies. The Old Mother Riley character was played by a guy named Arthur Lucan in drag. He had developed a vaudeville team act around the character with his wife of 30+ years, Kitty McShane, whom he met and married when she was a 15-year-old singer. To make things even a bit weirder, Kitty played Mother Riley's "indiscreet" daughter, an item that undoubtedly demands Freudian analysis. The previous 13 installments of the Mother Riley movies included Kitty, but #13 was a bit of a train wreck because they were in the midst of a bitter divorce and had to film their scenes separately. That left Arthur Lucan without half his act for the next movie in the series. 

Meanwhile, aging and alcoholic Bela Lugosi had come to London to star in a theater production of "Dracula" that fell apart when the producers went bankrupt, leaving Lugosi unpaid and without enough money to get back to America. A friend of Lugosi's somehow managed to put him together with Arthur Lucan and the sinking Old Mother Riley franchise so that Lugosi could earn enough money to pay for a ticket back to America. There is also a robot involved in this script for reasons that I don't understand but that probably amount to, "We had an extra robot costume in the studio." 

I think the producers were hoping to create something along the lines of the infinitely better "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948) but instead they created this unwatchable mess. This movie is just terrible and unfun, perhaps because somehow through the terribleness on screen you can feel the vibe of various lives falling apart behind the screen. There's a good drama about the making of this mess by B-List entertainers whose best days were behind them -- an elegy to the fading fortunes of the vaudeville and theater performers who had a good run onscreen in the 1930s and 40s. But this movie isn't worth your time.

The kicker: This terrible disaster of a movie would have sunk into total oblivion if singer-comedian Allan Sherman hadn't had a hit record with his 1962 album "My Son the Folksinger." For some reason this inspired an American distributor to rename this mess of a movie "My Son the Vampire" and ask Allan Sherman to create a song called "My Son the Vampire" that they could use for the title track in hopes that it could combine with some marketing as "Bela Lugosi's final movie" to give it enough traction to work the back-end of some double features. And so, nine years after it sank to the bottom of the British movie market this movie sank again to the bottom of the American movie market. From there it oozed onto late-night TV in the 1960s and gained a bit of notoriety for its general terribleness.

Allan Sherman's song is a pretty good Halloween novelty tune. This movie is terrible.

"My Son, the Vampire" (Allan Sherman)

P.S. Does it seem like I used the word "terrible" a lot of times in this review? That's because this movie is terrible, and not in a good way. 

Terrible.

The Return of the Vampire (1943) *** This is a surprisingly good effort by Columbia Pictures to grab some of the Universal Pictures horror audience. It was intended to be a direct sequel to the original Dracula (1934) but after a copyright squabble they had to change the name of the vampire and shift the plot around a bit. However, after the clunky introduction with backstory, it turns out to be one of Bela Lugosi's better turns as a vampire and a surprisingly good watch.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) */**** The King of the All-Time So Bad They're Good Movies. I won't replicate all that has been written about this debacle of a movie. It was famously created by Ed Wood to fit a test clips of Bela Lugosi filmed shortly before Lugosi's death. Its making was immortalized by the infinitely better Academy Award winning movie "Ed Wood" (1994). So here's the thing you need to know: in 2020 Turner Classic Movies gave it a high-end digital transfer in its original 1.85:1 image ratio. This terrible movie has never looked so good. I hadn't seen it in ages, so I was wondering if it would still be fun. It is! Check it out. No, really. Check it out. Everybody should see this terrible movie at least once.

Does it seem like a lot of people you know have caught Covid recently?

 Does it seem like a lot of people you know have caught Covid recently? This seems like a good time for an explanation of why the current Covid situation is probably worse than you think. You should be wearing a good mask whenever you go indoors and probably whenever you're in an outdoors crowd.

The basic problem is that Omicron BA.5 is becoming the dominant variant. It is extremely contagious and also has shifted enough genetically that vaccinations and previous infection provide a good deal less protection that was the case with earlier variants.

Here are three images that show where things stand. Here's a link to the CDC web site:

COVID-19 Integrated County View

The first image is the CDC's "Community Level" map. In many ways it is a measure of how likely you are to get a hospital bed or an ICU unit if you come down with severe Covid. About ten days ago this map was mostly green. It has gotten much worse since then. 

The second image is the CDC's "Community Transmission" map. It functions as a measure of how much Covid transmission is in your community. This is a very important measure if you are trying to avoid a breakthrough case for yourself or a family member who is elderly or immunocompromised.

This map has been mostly red since the Omicron BA.2 spike started this spring. The CDC site defaults to the first map, which is generally used for policy decisions. You have to go into the dropdown menu to select "Community Transmission" to see this map.

The final image is a couple of graphs of testing and testing numbers for my home county of Oakland County, Michigan, over the last year. 

One of the major changes in testing from this winter's initial Omicron spike is the much greater availability of home testing kits. So actual total-case rates are believed to be significantly higher than the officially reported rate. (I've seen a lot of different estimates as to how much more, so I won't speculate here. Let's just say "much more".) As you can see, the number of reported tests are way down, but the current positivity rate is approaching the levels of this winter's initial Omicron spike. The rate increased 3.23% to 17.55% in just the last week.

So, yeah, Covid is bad out there right now. It's almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better.

Do yourself and your friends and your family a favor. Mask up.