Videos from the VHS Vault: Creepy Creatures

Restaraunt Review: Shipley's Do-Nuts

The South is a land of mystery to me. Despite my mother being of Tennessee stock I am a born and raised Yankee. I have been south of the Mason Dixon line on many different occasions. The thing that confounds me most about the south is why it is so hard to get an iced coffee. It is late July. It's Mississippi. It's hotter than the devil's tushy and all you want to do is drink something both cold and caffeinated. So you stop at a donut shop. Ask the nice lady for a few donuts and an iced coffee. And you get a look like you offered sodomy lessons or something. So you buy a hot coffee and have to wait a half hour to drink it. The only thing I can figure is that the sweet tea industry is so strong in the south that it has strangled any competition iced coffee may have had. I had to travel another day and a half before finding a great place in Austin Texas that would sell me an iced coffee.

Shipley's is an excellent place for donuts or as they call them "do-nuts". I had a lemon and apple filled. Delightful. Perfectly assembled pastries. But I had nothing to wash them down with. If it were wintertime this wouldn't have been a problem. When it's close to a hundred degrees out, the last thing you want is a hot coffee. I swear to goodness I almost had a case of the vapors. And that is not something this Northern gentleman can abide.

Address: 2151 S Lamar Blvd, Oxford, MS 38655
Price Range: $
Cuisine: Southern Do-Nut

Videos from the VHS Vault: Awesome Action

Restaraunt Review: Linda's Donuts

One fast and easy way to test the quality of a donut shop is to quickly count the number of older customers. If you walk in and see an ocean of white, gray and blue hair you know you have hit the mother lode. Which is exactly what happened when I stepped foot in Linda's. Every table was full of four or five retirement aged or greater individuals. I longed to cozy up with them, ask for some life lessons or tips on getting out grass stains. But I was there for one reason and one reason only- the donuts! Linda's sells fantastic hand crafted donuts. The jelly donut I purchased was sugar covered as opposed to the usual powder. I have heard negative reviews of their coffee from fellow food critics and I had a thermos of coffee in the car so I skipped the coffee. Plus it was standing room only, so I had to take my donuts to go. The seniors are right though, Linda makes a great donut. In the days since my visit the donuts have not been far from my mind. I may make the trip back to Linda's again, quite soon. And as I bound into my golden years I look forward to many more visits to this fine eatery.



Address: 247 Belmont Street, Belmont, MA 02478
Price Range: $$1/2
Cuisine: All Ages Donut

Summer Movie of the Summer-2010!!!

Okay gang! I'm back. It's been a very busy summer for yours truly and I know you all have been dying to know what my annual summer movie pick for this year is. I am not going to give it too much ballyhoo. It is quite simply Piranha 3-D. The original is one of my favorite movies ever, and while Al Aja is no Joe Dante it looks to be a fun time. From the fact that it's in 3-D to what looks to be Richard Dreyfuss making an appearance in his outfit from Jaws, nothing about what I've seen so far would make me believe this to be anything but the greatest movie of all time.

Awesome awesomeness.

Scrapbooking '69

On a recent visit to my parents crib, I came across one of my dad's old scrap books he kept when he was in Vietnam. Many years before Martha Stewart. There were a good deal of political cartoons- particularly those by the fantastic Ron Cobb, naked lady pictures, concert ads and just general images of hippies having fun. I scanned the ones that were film related, perhaps I shall scan some of the others at a later date. I really love the black & white film ads. Check out the fantastic 20th Century fox logo in the ad for the Che Guevara movie.

Videos from the VHS Vault: Thrilling Thrillers

Why I have such pale skin and a flat tushie.

The Boston (although it's been taking place in Cambridge) Underground Film Festival is currently winding down. I bought a festival pass enabling me to see as much as my greedy eyes can get their hands on. It's been a fairly awesome time. A few duds. A few stylish looking, but ultimately boring pictures. A good deal of solid entertainment. I am not going to trash any of the films I disliked, they will just be absent from this summation. Here are the high points.

Opening night featured the four hour Japanese movie Love Exposure. I don't know why the words 'crazy' and 'Japanese' go together so often, but this is a pretty good example. The plot involves a young man named Yu growing up with his devout Christian father. His father opens his own church and expects his son to go to confession. Yu is a good kid with nothing to confess to. Not wanting to let his father down he goes out to intentionally sin. He falls in with a group of delinquents, who teach him how to fight. This of course leads him to the art of the Japanese Upskirt Photo- which involves taking surreptitious photographs of young girl's panties. He eventually meets the love of his life who ends up becoming his step sister. It takes about an hour for the title to flash on screen. A love triangle emerges, some cross dressing occurs, there's a bit of gore. The fantastic pace of the first couple hours isn't sustained throughout, there are some lulls. It really didn't feel a minute over three hours, though.

The next day started with Slimed, a delightfully deranged over-the-top film concerning the adventures of a park ranger and a bible salesman. It took a few minutes to get in sync with the movies sensibilities, but by the time an evil mouse puppet and a bunch of easily blown up kids with lasers showed up I was 100% on board. The biggest laugh for me involved a wizard cat reclining in a bed in the middle of the woods. I am a sucker for cats in movies though. You can check out the movie in it's entirety here: http://vimeo.com/9174900




It Came from Kuchar is a pretty decent documentary about George Kuchar, director of such films as Hold Me While I'm Naked and Chigger Country. George and his twin brother Mike started making Super 8 movies growing up in the Bronx. The doc delves in to the brother's past, focusing on a class George is teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. Students learn the art of film making by starring and assisting in George's movie The Fury of Frau Frankenstein. I enjoyed it and it was nice seeing George in person. I couldn't stick around for the entire discussion because I had to meet some friends next door to see....




Pieces (aka Chainsaw Devil, Der Kettensägenkiller and One Thousand Cries Has the Night) This classic slasher film from 1982 is one of my favorites of the genre. It was great watching it on the big screen and an actual film print! It had been awhile since I had last seen it and had completely forgotten parts. Like the random kung-fu teacher and the insane chainsaw scene in the beginning. Great greatness.






The next day I saw some short films and a music video program. I realized I really like the band Die Antwoord. My favorite short, Love Child, is on Youtube- check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYj_nJwtcvc The great Mink Stole was also around to receive an award.

The following day I checked out Playing Columbine, a fairly thought provoking documentary about the role of video games in general and Super Columbine Massacre Rpg! in particular. I never had much interest in playing the game when I first head about it and like most folks found the idea of it to be in poor taste. The movie asks valid questions though about the nature of video games. Like is it possible for a documentary video game to exist? Why can other mediums examine the subject of school violence and computer games can't? I was intrigued the whole way through, but still don't have much interest in playing the game.

Finally the last thing I saw on sunday was Amer, the first full length feature from Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. It is a loving tribute to Italian cinema of the 70's, in particular the films of Dario Argento (most of the film's budget must have gone to procuring leather gloves.) The film is more or less plot-less, with a very loose anthology feel. It follows a young girl at three stages in her life. In the first a young child in a old mansion steals a pocket watch from the corpse of her grandfather. As an adolescent she travels with her mother to the hair salon and runs into some bikers. And finally as an adult she returns to the now empty mansion by taxi and is perhaps pursued by a killer. All the while using colorful lighting techniques and extreme close-ups. It's totally style over substance, but it has a great soundtrack from the films it's paying tribute to and was definitely fun to watch. Plus it was projected on film!

It was at this point the programs started to repeat and the filmmakers and actors generally returned from whence they came. But there was still greatness to come. I knew next to nothing about Love on the Rocks going into it, and am pretty glad that was the case. It was a funny, violent and weird trip. I really don't want to ruin the surprises the film has in store, suffice it so say I say check it out, you won't be disappointed. Unless you're some sort of asshole.


The documentary American Grindhouse covers a subject near and dear to my heart. I didn't learn much I didn't already know (except for a Nazis vs. Jesus movie called the Tormentors, which I desperately want to find a copy of now) but it still is great watching people like Joe Dante, John Landis, Larry Cohen, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Jack Hill talk about exploitation films. It was well put together and offered a decent overview, decade by decade.




For the last movie I took the Mrs with me. It was a gritty Austin lensed thriller by UK filmmaker Simon Rumley called Red, White and Blue. I shivered a few times watching this one, which is fairly rare for something to get to jaded old me. A cast of unlikable but occasionally strangely sympathetic characters in a chain of events leading to a brutal third act. A swell looking flick shot on one of them new Red cameras Santa failed to bring me last year. Plus I have a few new ways I do not want to die to add to my ever growing list. It was a great end to a great week of movies.

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Cardboard Time Machine to Hell

A number of years ago, a co-worker and I were hard at work at our Hambone Industries warehouse space. It was dusty and unpleasant conditions. Until we discovered a box of 30 year old Village Voices. It was as if we had found a cardboard time machine. I was instantly taken back to a simpler time, when Crazy Eddie ruled the marketplace and America was just beginning to learn the beauty of Reaganomics. The advertisements were my favorite part. There were great old ads for the Intellivsion games of my youth, cologne I was way to young wear. One of the only reasons I enjoyed going to New York City as a kid was to go to one of the two Forbidden Planet stores. They ran great ads on a weekly basis. The film section is where I lost it though. Great looking movies I'd never heard of, classics I had playing on fantastic double bills. A wonderful ad for Basket Case offering a free McDonald's Hamburger to the first 100 people. A Sir Run Run Shaw Kung-fu Festival! What a time to be alive. Anyways, I now present to you a few of the treasures from this bygone era.