The Oscars, and why RENO 911: MIAMI won't be there next year...

Well, for two weekends in a row my lovely bride and I made it out to the movie theatres...A week ago, we saw "Factory Girl," and this weekend, good sport that she is, we saw "Reno 911: Miami."...Very funny, very dirty, very raw but a pretty solid 80-some minutes of laughs...Of course, we were the only two left in the theatre to see the "monkey" at the end...We now wait through the credits of every movie we see for "the monkey," a term we coined after we saw "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" together a few years ago...You'd be surprised lately how many movies have a "monkey" at the end...The Oscars telecast Sunday night could have used a few monkeys, anywhere (other than Jerry Seinfeld's well-crafted jokes to introduce the Best Documentary)...Disappointing doesn't begin to describe my feelings for the show, which every year since, oh, probably since Letterman hosted as devolved to the point where I'm angry or perturbed earlier and earlier in the broadcast...At least Alan Arkin won for Little Miss Sunshine, but I couldn't take much more and went to bed right after the tribute to the recently deceased (which always seems incomplete to me -- lots more name actors and behind the scenes folk seemed to come in on my e-mail obits, but I was happy to see James Doohan and Darren McGavin at least featured...I didn't see Martin Scorsese won, but I figured he would win...Of course, he deserved to win at least a couple times before in my opinion, especially for "Good Fellas" and "The Aviator."...Giving Al Gore an Academy Award for "An Inconvenient Truth" is like giving some slick marketing jerkball a Nobel Prize for PowerPoint...I'm not paying Al Gore and Larry David's crazy wife $9 for a PowerPoint presentation...I'd rather waste more money on "Reno 911: Miami," or "Breach," which I hope to see before it disappears...And I eagerly await the 2nd "Fantastic Four" movie, maybe the next Spider-man movie, and have to make it up to my nephew by taking him to the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie if I know what's good for me...

"The Astronaut Farmer?" Sounds Somewhat Familiar.

I've heard next to nothing about this upcoming Billy Bob Thornton movie, "The Astronaut Farmer," but every time I've seen the commercial for the movie on television, something has been bugging me at the back of my mind (as usual)...I've been trying to remember this silly Andy Griffith (yes, Sheriff Taylor of Mayberry, also Matlock) television series I seem to remember from my teenage years, where he owned a junkyard and built a spaceship...So I tripped on over to the Internet Movie Database tonight, just to double check that it wasn't my imagination...There it is! "SALVAGE 1" -- 18 episodes in 1979, spinning out of an earlier-in-1979 TV movie on ABC called "SALVAGE"..."Imagine a millionaire junk man putting together a spaceship in his junkyard, and with the help of a ex-astronaut and an attractive explosives expert, flies to the moon to salvage the remains of the Apollo missions."...I'm curious to see if the Billy Bob Thornton movie has any possible ties to this remnant of my past wasted hours in front of the television...

Andy Reid Takes a Holiday

So the big sports story tonight is that Philadephia Eagles head coach is going to take a month's leave of absence to deal with family issues...A little late for that, isn't it?...Timing is everything -- let's see, Super Bowl two weeks ago, Pro Bowl last weekend, nothing really on the schedule except some scouting and mini-camps...Guess I can spend a few weeks dealing with my "wannabe" sons...Reminds me of the old Larry Brown "I'm resigning from the Sixers so I can spend more time with my family" trope, where 12 hours later you're on a private plane to take the Detroit Pistons job...On the other hand, Charlie Manuel's been engaged to his girlfriend for so long, you begin to understand why he's waiting -- he could be out of a job, or well into a job...Stories like that make me glad I got out of sports when I did!

"Boot Hill, Boot Hill, So Cold, So Still..."

More sad news today for a overgrown fan-boy like me...Frankie Laine passed away yesterday (Feb. 6) at age 93...If you're my age, the first exposure you probably had to Frankie Laine was the theme music from "Blazing Saddles," which was the first tip off to how goofily funny that movies was going to be -- "he rode a blazing saddle" -- indeed...Later, probably the next thing I was aware of was the "Rawhide" TV show theme (first revealed to me by Jake & Elwood Blues, of course)...And then my all-time favorite, one of my favorite Western movies ever, "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" with Burt Lancaster & Kirk Douglas...Frankie Laine had several songs throughout the movie that served as narrative "bridging" between scenes...I bought a Frankie Laine CD in the mid-1990's that had a ton of songs I had kind of known about (through osmosis) but the guy had a major career and a wonderful voice...There's a nice obituary of him on the New York Sun web site.