Pop Culture Petri Dish

If you haven't read the last entry already, you might wanna do so, just to get caught up. Done? Good. Some of the best stories came from some of the most unexpected sources. Bug-eyed character fixture Don Calfa contributed engaging bits in everything from Scorsese's New York, New York to the eighties comedy, Weekend at Bernie's . But he enthused most amusingly about the role that's insured him eternal horror movie cultdom, Ernie the Mortician in Dan O' Bannon's zombie spoof, Return of the Living Dead . A real salt-of-the-earth New York guy, Calfa genially chatted about what a tyrant O'Bannon was (though Calfa himself enjoyed a good working relationship with the volatile writer/director), and the folicular decline of good friend and fellow character actor Frank Sivero. Boyish-looking Kenny Miller enjoyed a career that spanned fifty years, and shoulder-rubbing with some real giants. In typical six-degrees-of-horror-movie-separation fashion, I only knew Mil...

This last weekend (January 27 and 28, to be exact) marked my fifth trip to the LA/Hollywood area in the last three years. Dismiss the area all you want, seen-it-alls; call it an aesthetically unexceptional 'burg planted squatly into a smoggy, dry, sun-crisped semi-desert. Call it nothing more than a dirty, ugly little industrial town. All of the above could effectively be argued, but I could give a spit less. Hollywood's still utter magic to these unjaded movie-geek eyes. The big draw for Rita and I was yet another Hollywood Collectors' Show . Since I covered my February 2005 Collectors' Show adventures in an earlier Blog , I'll spare you the exposition and leap straight into the highlights, which are as strange as they are abundant. Tinseltown is one gloriously weird place; it socks away surrealism like a squirrel socks away nuts. For one thing, Barry White greeted us as we boarded the Avis shuttle to get to our rental vehicle. OK, maybe it wasn't really Barry ...

I'm a traitor to my gender. Or at least a traitor to my hometown, maybe. The beleaguered Seattle Seahawks have finally fought their way to the Super Bowl after nearly four decades of mediocre showings, and all of a sudden, even locals who don't know pigskin from pomegranates are dancing in the streets like Pee Wee Herman on crystal meth. Me, I don't really care. Mind you, I hold no ill will whatsoever for the legions of fans who'll be crowding living rooms and sports bars to watch the big game. Nor do I wish anything less than the best for this buncha Northwest gridiron underdogs as they slug it out with the Pittsburg Steelers on Sunday. And my dear old Dad--a hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool sports freak if ever there was one--will have even more of an excuse to meld gleefully with the easy chair Howard-Hughes-style while radio and TV Bowl coverage bombards him, which makes me happy for him. But truth be told, I'm just not a football fan. As a spectator sport it lacks s...