John, Mother's Day and Flash

John Huston was an interesting guy - a great film director who loved to go over budget, to live full throttle, to bag big game in Africa, and of course, he's Dad to Angelica Huston. Clearly, he was very passionate in all that he did. His films include African Queen, The Maltese Falcon, Beat the Devil, and a very compelling Marilyn Monroe documentary. They were friends too and did a few movies together.

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mom's out there. Your contribution is beyond measure and I am so grateful for all you do, both individually and collectively. Happy Mother's Day. Here's some Flowers. Search for Mother - and find an interesting video related to dear old mom.

Been working like a dog - converting over 10,000 video files to fill up the new flash library. After conversion, the flv files are injected with metadata to enhance playback. The servers needed to play all these flash files had to be created and custom tweaked. And a slew of little applications working together create the random ad inserts in the playlist. (just refresh the page and replay the video) - you'll get a new playlist in ads and station ids. Want more flash movies, tv shows, cartoons etc etc...a mountain of flash video files to watchhere's a link.

Watch The Wild Ride, an old bad boy film with funky fast cars, cops riding killer vintage Harley Davidsons and of course, Jack Nicholson.

An Aqualad on the Food Channel Tonight

Our good buddy Jimmy King of the Aqualads will be featured tonight on the Food Channel at 10 PM EST. (Some show called, Diners, Drive-in and Dives - or something like that). Jimmy's mondo restaurant is called The Penguin, and it is really an historic site, going back to 1944. Very cool place to get a deep fried pickel, the burgers are amazing, and the ambiance is a real throwback in time.

Here's a cool vintage clip of the Aqualads.


Gotta get back to work. more Aqualads here.

Ballet Mecanique - Stop Motion Masterpiece

In 1924, Fernand Leger was already known as an amazing painter with a flair for the outrageous. So when he decided to make a film with avant garde composer George Antheil it seemed like a natural idea. But there was one problem, the musical score was like twice as long as the film. That's not going to work. And so, each artist went away with their artisitc work and the music was not played with the film when it debuted in 1924. Way early days of film. Sergei Eisenstein released Potemkin in 1925. In a few rare instances, some folks have tried to re-sync the works to the best of their ability. Some of them are pretty decent too. But I have to give props to our resident wizard at LikeTelevision™ - Frank Random. A few years back, he decided to tackle the impossible and rescore the works as it might have happened. What can I say - a home run, Random's the man. Having played as a studio hired gun bass player, engineer, producer or composer on over 1000 albums & CDs, I guess this shouldn't surprise me, but I was very impressed by the tension and musical interplay of his re-syncronized version. Blew me away. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Ballet Mecanique.



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John Edwards sees Floyd the Barber

In a last ditch effort to rescue his campaign from profligate spending on trivial hirsutes - John Edwards left the burgeoning metropolis of Beverly Hills to head down to Mayberry for a $1.00 haircut from Floyd the Barber. Floyd had a little trouble in his shop with some missing dynamite, but it wasn't a terror plot, just a hungry goat.

Taxes and the Titanic

Watch Granny, armed with a shotgun, take a few warning blasts at the Revenue Man in Jed Pays His Taxes. Meanwhile George Burn's wife, Gracie Allen is just confusing the heck out of the tax boys - here, and here too.

also of note - April 15th was the day the Titanic sunk. One of favorite episodes of One Step Beyond has got to Night of April 14th, about all these people who had profound nightmares and visions of the upcoming disaster. The story of the book, published shortly before the launch is really amazing - very eerie. Check it out here or

Real World Sopranos go to Hollywood

Imagine a story so big - it was like Anna Nicole Smith, (or better - a real Marilyn Monroe type instead of someone who thinks they are were), meets Tony Soprano meets CSI. Well, back in the day - on April 4th, 1958 the world got all that and then some as mob connected gangster, wanna be movie star Johnny Stompanato is stabbed by his lover's daughter, Cheryl Crane. And his lover is none other than Lana Turner, one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood at the time. She was every bit as big as say Meryl Streep or Nicole Kidman. Megastar. One could only image how frothed the Paparazzi might get if they had a story this juicy. Because the details were even more tawdry. It happened on Good Friday at the big Beverly Hills mansion. Stompanato was killed by a 14 year old girl with a huge carving knife. She was afraid Stompanato was going to hurt her mom, so she went downstairs to the kitchen, got the knife, and in a moment of panic and terror, stabbed Stompanato in the chest. He would eventually die and later on, little Cheryl Crane would be exonerated by a jury. Stranger still, Lana Turner goes on to make one of her best films - Imitation of Life, which is a lot like Lana Turner's real world troubles.

Electric Earthquake

Back in the day - Tesla supposedly designed a sonic weapon that could create an Earthquake at full power. I think that's where the Fleischers got the idea for this cartoon.