Update 1-14-03


Hi,

A week of messages to be passed on and around.  In the order they arrived:

From Paul DeMartino to Booker Gibson:  I appreciate your mentioning Eva Cassidy, since I'm a big fan.  It's a real shame she's no longer around.  She had a dreamy
voice and a cool jazz style.

From Peggy Cooper Schwartz to Ralph Kramer:  Sincere condolences on the loss of your sister, Harriet.  I hope that many beautiful memories will comfort you at this time.

From Robert Fiveson to Barnet Kellman:  Jerry Bittman is a true intelligence agent. He's been sent to Nebraska, so people there can see what intelligence is.

From Robert Buchsbaum to Mary Sipp Green:  I'm a month or two behind, but I did want to mention that I made it to your exhibit at the Arden Gallery in Boston.  It was wonderful.  Your landscapes have a marvelous luminous quality.
      Also, we are actually having a real winter so far, along the New England coast.  That means the ground has been covered with snow for longer than just a day-or-two.  It's nice for a change.  We can go skiing and sledding without having to drive two+ hours to get to the mountains.

From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  Who knows how I remember these things, but please pass on birthday wishes to Ken Schwartzman, for January 10th, and Paul Zegler, for the 19th.

Excerpts from two nostalgic pieces, the first from Linda Cohen Greenseid:
      Growing up, do you remember that:
      Decisions were made by going, "Eeny-meeny-miney-mo."
      Mistakes were corrected by simply shouting, "Do over!"
      Catching fireflies could occupy an entire evening.
      The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was cooties.
      War was a card game.
      Water balloons were the ultimate weapon.
      Taking drugs meant chewing orange-flavored aspirin

The second from Allen Moss:
      As a child in the 1950s:
      We rode in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
      Our cribs were covered with bright-colored, lead-based paint.
      We built go-carts out of scraps, rode them down hills, and only stopped by
running into bushes.
      We left home in the morning and played all day, with no one able to reach us by cell phone.
      We played dodge ball, and sometimes the ball really hurt.
      We broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits.  These were accidents, with no one to blame but ourselves.
      We punched each other out and learned to get over it.
      We shared one soda from one bottle with four friends, and no one died.
      We and ate worms though we were told not to, and the worms didn't live inside us forever.

Finally, again from Robert Fiveson:  Look at this link, kind of a funky-kitsch homage to near greatness:  http://www.bijouflix.com/goods/bijou_store1vcd_A-C.htm#clonus
      Following the link, among other things, you'll find:  CLONUS (1978) Starring Tim Donnelly, Dick Sargent, and Peter Graves.  Directed by Robert S. Fiveson.  This film has a minor cult rep, with some good reason.  While it's not early Cronenberg in quality of execution, it is about that level in terms of intellectual ambition in dealing with its subject matter:  clones, ethical or monstrous?  Given that this flick is over two decades old, you might conclude that it's outlandishly off-base in its speculations of the future.  In actuality, CLONUS is a pretty good B sci-fi flick, cast in the paranoid/conspiracy mold.  So little has changed, in fact, that CLONUS could have been a latest studio release, i.e., THE SIXTH DAY, save for the budgetary differences (though it should be noted Fiveson does an admirable, if not always believable, handling of the admittedly-B movie depiction of villainy on his non-budget).
      Peter Graves is a ruthless Senator up for re-election.  Part of his inhuman decision to remain an incumbent for life involves having some handy back-ups available.  To reveal more threatens what modest-but-worthwhile narrative turns the story employs.  Tim Donnelly is still best remembered from a starring role as fireman Chet Kelly on the popular TV series EMERGENCY.  Keenan Wynn, by this time, was one of a gang of character actors routinely employed in ever-successively impoverished films.

The home page:  http://hometown.aol.com/falcons1965a


Rich