7 books you will enjoy reading to your kids

Boy, this list was much harder to make than I expected!  Too many subcategories.  I’ll just have to be satisfied with a general theme of “sevenness,” but I’d like to do more reading lists later.  Or is that boring?

These are just seven books which I enjoyed as a child, which my kids read or wanted to hear over and over again, and, most importantly, which I didn’t mind reading to my kids over and over again.

There are so many books which have good stories, but aren’t told well – they’re clunky, wordy, repetitive in the wrong way, or just aren’t crafted with any understanding of how kids listen or think.  But these seven are books that got it right, and have fantastic illustrations, too.

Check out Conversion Diary for more links to everyone else’s 7 Quick Takes!

Seven Books You Will Enjoy Reading to Your Kids

–1–

Half Magic by Edward Eager.

I never understood why this book isn’t more widely-read (and I think it would make a great movie, too).  One summer, four children find a magic talisman which grants half wishes, which leads not only to complications and surprises, but ethical dilemmas (they accidentally made an iron dog half-alive.  Should they make it turn back into iron, or bring it fully to life?).  The story is incredibly original, it moves along so nicely, and the children and their relationships with each other are so funny and real–it’s a perfect read-aloud book.  The illustrations by N. M. Bodecker are also charming and really add something to the story.  The author wrote six other books in the same vein, and all are worth reading, but Half Magic is by far the best.

–2–

The entire Frog and Toad series, Owl at Home, Fables, and Mouse Tales and Mouse Soup written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.

Lobel also wrote several other books, but these are the best.  So simple and deft, so gentle and witty and full of affection.  Frog and Toad are imbued with more personality than any character in a modern novel that I can name — but Lobel does it in five pages of easy-reader words.  The vocabulary is simple, but it’s no Go, Dog, Go phonics slog– his prose is a delight to read, never a chore.  You never have to go back and reread, because you said some dialogue with the wrong expression–it’s all there.  Arnold Lobel ought to be studied in writing classes, and “The Dream” ought to be required reading for first confession classes.

–3–

Tales From Grimm told and illustrated by Wanda G’ag.

All the unvarnished truth about fairy tale characters, bloody feet, gouged out eyes, and all.  These aren’t just stories, they’re little masterworks of rhythm.     The illustrations are otherworldly and unforgettable, and the book includes many less familiar stories, too.  Snip, snap, snout, my tale’s told out!  (Also by this author, and recommended:  The Funny Thing, Millions of Cats, Snippy and Snappy)

–4–

Granfa’ Grig Had a Pig and Other Rhymes without Reason from Mother Goose selected and illustrated by Wallace Tripp.

I feel like my kids should know Mother Goose, but in most editions, the illustrations are creepy, sappy, or bland.  This is because the subject matter of nursery rhymes is often bizarre, and no one is sure how to handle the weirdness.  Wallace Tripp, one of my favorite illustrators, lets the lunacy and hilarity come through (often providing sly commentary on the rhyme).  They are full of detail to fascinate kids, and they’re just funny and refreshing.  He also has inluded lots of lesser-known rhymes that you will be glad to know (“Slug abed, slug abed barley butt, / Your bum is so heavy, you can’t get up” comes to mind).

–5–

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths

Demeter and Persephone

All of the books written and illustrated by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire (I just like saying those names!) are wonderful, but Greek Myths is the one I liked the best as a kid.  The illustrations always make me think of William Blake on summer vacation:  the same primitive feel, the same slightly over-determined composition, and the same naked emotionalism of the faces — but more color, more flesh, more fun.  And the stories are just right:  they have lots of action, lots of humor and pathos, but manage to be decorous–no easy feat.  Those gods were weird.

–6–

Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories.

"The Mixed-Up Feet and the Silly Bridegroom"

For a wonderful introduction to Jewish storytelling, here is a collection of seven sweet, strange, and funny stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, unforgettably illustrated by the master, Maurice Sendak.  I’ve read other books written and illustrated by this pair, but this one shows them both at their best.

–7–

Homer Price, More Homer Price, and Centerburg Tales.

Another undeservedly neglected collection.  A young boy in a rural town (where, without explanation, several of the inhabitants are named after classical heroes and authors) gets into peculiar adventures with skunks, superheroes, balls of yarn, giant ragweed, mysterious mousecatchers, and disastrously catchy rhymes.  Just satisfying and entertaining, and, again, lively and funny illustrations by the author, another favorite of mine, Robert McCloskey.

links to image sources:

Homer Price

Zlateh the Goat

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Half Magic

Greek Myths

Wallace Tripp

Frog and Toad

Happy weekend, everyone!  I’ve been in a fog all week, and can’t get ahold of my syntax.  Sorry if anything above doesn’t make sense.

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Pasty vampires and greasy musclemen a go go!

So far this week, I’ve talked about cute shoes, not-cute shoes, Burl Ives, Raffi, and photogenic lichen.  Time for a palate cleanser, don’t you think?  And so, with some well-justified trepidation, we welcome back . . .

Hi, I’m The Jerk. It’s awful nice of Simcha to let me back here after last week. Things got a little carried away. I said some things that maybe I shouldn’t have. You all said some things maybe you shouldn’t have. The way some of you got worked up, you’d think I wrote about modesty.

Since the resounding success of Tango & Cash, I found it really hard to get into this week’s feature, The Lost Boys. Witnessing Stallone and Russell awesome it up for an hour and 30 minutes  (OK, I kind of lost track of time after Russell first used his boot gun), my life has been changed. No movie will ever be that good.

Not even "Over The Top"?

But you folks asked for a review of The Lost Boys, and that’s what I promised. Though not in so many words. It was more of an implied promise that would be impossible for you to prove in court. I’M NOT ON TRIAL HERE!

The Lost Boys

There are really two movies called The Lost Boys. There’s the funny and scary horror movie with a hip soundtrack and clever dialogue that everyone remembers from the not-at-all dated period of 1987.  And then there is the movie that actually plays when you put the DVD in the machine. The one with this guy:

Make mine extra greasy!

For those of you in the know, by whom I mean older men with a horn fetish, this is Timmy Cappello, a successful body builder, musician, and the lynch pin for the whole damn movie.  Michael (played by Jason Patric, who makes Keanu Reeves look like a bit of a better actor than Keanu Reeves– maybe that guy who played Horshack) and Sam (played by Corey Haim, who makes Horshack look like Jason Patric) go to Timmy’s concert. Watch this clip. It’s all there. Michael’s first glimpse of Starr (Jamie Gertz in full Jamie Gertz mode); Sam’s attempts to keep his brother’s eyes on the greasy muscle man, and away from the possibility of a heterosexual entanglement; the extras “head banging” to the “rocking” saxophone from “Timmy.” It’s all there.

This scene should be your second clue that the movie you remember fondly is, well, crap. Big time. First clue? It was produced by Richard Donner. This is the  guy who got his start directing Gilligan’s Island and never really progressed. How seriously can you take a guy whose life as an artist began with him shouting “No, no, no, the Skipper needs to hit Gilligan harder!” Or, “More coconuts!”

Next up? How about this guy:

This shirt makes Elton John cringe.

The outrageous clothes, the shop-till-you-drop Valley Girl attitude, even the way the other characters in the movie react to him all pretty much spell out that this is a kid who really liked the volleyball scene in Top Gun.

This is the poster on his closet door.

More proof? How about the bath scene. Only girls get bath scenes. Period. Think Janet Leigh. Now stop thinking Janet Leigh, you pervs.

So, is Corey Haim’s character an early pioneer for gay pride?

Or is it just that an earlier draft of the script had the Sam character as Michael’s little sister? At some point in development, probably between the fifth and sixth eight balls, the producers decided they would go with Corey Haim–but no one bothered to do a re-write.  Haim, being a pro, ran with the part.

"Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo"

Or, it was directed by Joel Schumacher.

I directed him too!! Yum!!

Could Schumacher be the sole reason for this movie’s oddness?

Sadly, no. Look at the casting: Keifer Sutherland as a vampire?

He looks like one of those illegal roofers.

I had no idea vampires could be so … potato faced. You know why I had no idea? Because they can’t. Vampires are evil and menacing. Pasty doesn’t cut it.

Then there are the Lost Boys themselves. They dress like escapees from a Duran Duran video. I would say they are all nondescript, but they had to cast Alex Winters. Yeah, from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. We all like him, right?

He was either Bill, or Ted.

Hey, you know, there something about his face …

Ooh-ooh-ooooh!

Then we have two real actors, Diane Wiest and Edward Hermann, slumming it. Wiest won an Oscar shortly before this for Hannah And Her Sisters. While that is a revolting movie, she is really good in it.

Hermann is best known for playing Goldie Hawn’s husband in Overboard, a romantic comedy featuring Kurt Russell. That was just a revolting movie.

Finally, we have Barnard Hughes playing Grandpa. His character is a curmudgeonly taxidermist who knows more about the vampires than he lets on. Hughes, of course, played the curmudgeonly taxidermist named Grandpa in East of Eden with James Dean. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Grandpa, a curmudgeonly taxidermist, in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. And he got his start in theater playing Grandpa in Olivier’s Hamlet, Prince of Danish Curmudgeonly Taxidermists.

Is this a badger I see before me?

Oh, I almost forgot the Frog Brothers. Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander are honestly the best part of the whole movie. The comic book store clerks / vampire killers provide the only humor in the movie.

Newlander and Feldman fight for the phone. It might be their agent calling. It never is.

I know Feldman made a sequel, but Newlander wasn’t in it, so I refuse to watch.

Well, the librarians are getting that look like they might call the FBI on me, again, so I better wrap this up. Stupid Patriot Act.

Angela Lansbury sends her regards, jerk!

For a parental warning, I don’t know what to tell you. This is an R-rated horror comedy. This movie isn’t really that funny. Not particularly scary. There is some gore. Gertz and Patric do have a “love” scene, but it is about as convincing as Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire.

Good thing we're straight.

Next week’s movie will be decided by another poll. I am going to leave the poll up through Friday at midnight. Here are your choices: Last week’s runner-up, The Legend of Billie Jean, Helen Slater’s magnum opus; The Omega Man, Charlton Heston’s quick pay-day; or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a movie that is fine example of our collective guilt.

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Burly Urly Ives

We have a newish van. It’s a rebuilt vehicle, which means that some of its parts–the boring ones, like the brakes and the engine–are new and shiny; but others are weirdly out of date.  The body, for instance, sports a car-length blue and silver geometric decal straight from 1989.  It is radical.  When I drive it, I feel radical.  There is some matching detail symmetrically adorning the back doors, which makes it look disconcertingly like our van has a little mustache.  Well, I can get over that.

Our old van had a CD player.  The new one, in keeping with its new/old split personality, has a top notch tape deck.  I was a little aggravated about this at first, but then I realized something:  now we can listen to Burl Ives again!  I only have Burl Ives on tape, and he is so great.  Here’s what accompanied us home from the library:

I would a thousand time rather have the little guys listen to folk music than “What a Girl Wants” by Kidz Bop or whatever–wait, what’s that homeschooling word?–twaddle passes for children’s music these days, even though an awful lot of folk music is about cutting throats and beating wives.

I like the Wiggles pretty well, but other than that, we just make the kids listen to whatever sounds good to us (did I mention that you can plug your iPod into the tape deck?).

Unfortunately, that means the little tykes sometimes go around humming ditties by Pavement or the Violent Femmes.  I still think it’s better than Raffi (although I just got my husband to admit that “Baby Beluga” is actually quite moving).

I used to work very hard at making sure my kids knew all the good old songs of childhood, but after a while I couldn’t take the moans and howls of agony that would greet my singing voice.  Heck with them.  Next time we’re going on a road trip and my husband dials up Oingo Boingo, I’m not lifting a finger.

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Why don’t you like my shoes?

I am not great with clothes shopping.  As I have mentioned before, shopping bundles together being fat and being old and being cheap into a tense, ugly ball of being miserable, effectively blotting out the pleasure of getting new stuff.

You’d think shoe shopping would be different–easier, simpler, less emotionally fraught.   You don’t even have to look in the mirror.  But somehow, I make it difficult.  I don’t know how it is, but all the shoes I come home with are just so dang stupid.

The one exception is what I was wearing today, when I took three kids for their well-child check ups.  I then drove three kids right back home again when seemingly-well child #3 threw up on previously-well children numbers 1 and 2 in the doctor’s parking lot.  Then I went to the supermarket to pick up something nice and bland for supper.  So here’s those shoes:

Moderately cute, aren’t they?  They’re fairly comfortable, they go click-click-click, which makes me feel brisk and capable, and they were only $3 at Target.  Believe it or not, these are my dressiest dress shoes, as well as my go-to footwear when dragging nauseated children around town.

Next, I present the shoes I actually squealed about (in my head) when I found that they were my size. They cost ten whole dollars.  For someone who generally shops at stores called things like “Ye Kingdom of Consign-a-lot,” these were a downright frivolous purchase.

Especially when I got home and remembered that I recently made another frivolous purchase:  a bright green purse.  To go with my bright red shoes.  Fa la la la la!

Next:  my comfortable, expensive sandals which do a good shoe’s job of making me forget that I’m wearing them:  my trusty old non-deluxe Tevas.

Or Teva, because I can only find one.

These next ones are the shoes I wore on my recent one-day hiking spree, because I couldn’t find my other Teva:

Can’t you see how malevolent they are?  I don’t know how they got into my house, but when I put them on, it looks like someone was angry at my feet.  “Take that!   Grrrrrrr, here’s some webbing with big, ugly stictching, and arrrrrr, here’s some rigid hunks of rubber.  I’ll teach you to have ten little toes and flexible skin!”  Worst blisters ever.  Seriously, they even made my eight-year-old son avert his eyes, and he really, really likes gross stuff.

Here is another shoe of mine.  I think you can see why it’s single:

I bet her partner never even took the time to see if she has a great personality.  Poor dear.  Now she’ll have to go join the shoe convent on the porch, where spinsters spend their lives praying for the soles of others.

And finally:

I guess these are shoes?  I don’t know.  Where did they come from, and how did they get so dirty?

My husband thinks I should also talk about my boots.  He doesn’t mean the black Gloria Vanderbilt shoe-boots I bought with a gift certificate 12 years ago.   They look something like this:

except they have crescent-shaped toenail holes in the tops, because I can never find socks, and they are shaped less like footware and more like a pair of venerable potholders.  I like them because they are black.  Also, there are two of them, which matches my feet.

But it turns out my husband meant something he laughingly referred to as my “work boots.”  I don’t know what’s so damn funny about that.  I can’t take a picture of them, because I put them in a bag marked “Salv Army,” and I have to leave them in the back of the car for a few years before I can take them out and wear them again.

But you know what?  I have a problem here.  I bought a pair of shoes.  They are SO CUTE.  They are the cutiest, wootiest shoes you ever saw.  I wear them a lot, and they fit, they’re in season . . . I don’t know.  For some reason, I guess I halfway expect people to burst into applause whenever I walk up in them.  I mean, they have silver wingtip-style toe caps!  But, at the same time, they’re heelless for that carefree spring in your step in the happy, happy springtime!  But they have a nice big elastic band so they don’t fall off!  They are the perfect shoe.  Actually, they slide around a bit, but that is totally my fault, not the shoes’ fault.  My fault.

Just look at these shoes!

No?

Aw hell,  you wouldn’t understand.

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So tell me: West and Wewaxation

My parents are semi-retired.  They visit their grown children when they can, and try to combine these trips with very specialized iteneraries.  For instance, they made a tour of exhibitions of the work of their favorite artist, Charles Burchfield

image source

(The title of this particular piece is “Sun Emerging,” but, like most of Burchfield’s work, it ought to be called “Damn!” or “Wowza!” or “Help!”)

And a few years ago, they visited Lost Cove, Tennessee, of Walker Percy fame.  We also got a postcard from a full-scale reproduction of Moses’ tabernacle, which the Mennonites built in Lancaster, PA, for some reason.

My parents take pictures at various glitzy tourist traps:

and their photo albums on Facebook have titles like:   “Fungus”;  “Lichen”;  “More lichen.  We like lichen.”  My mother’s description of one outing with my father was as follows:

What he didn’t mention was that I was scared for him because his sense of balance was off since the spinal cord tumor, car accidents, and several surgeries, and I didn’t think the narrow edges of cliffs and stone bridges with no handrails were a good place for him to be. I even had to bargain with him to get him to agree to use one of the tree branches I found for a walking stick. At age 66! You can’t tell a man anything. I kept thinking, between Hail Marys, “I’ll have to arrange to have his body shipped back home, and then drive back from Tennessee all by myself–and the car key was locked in the trunk!

Ahh, west and wewaxation at wast.  I don’t know if this is how they pictured their retirement (or even whether they expected to have one at all).

My husband and I are anticipating something more like this

photo source

for our own retirement.  There is also some talk of living in either a yurt or something made of adobe, but I forget why.  I think we also somehow plan to live in Greece or the outskirts of Rome, and one of us is going to have to learn how to play the guitar finally, or at least the harmonica.  It will sound good to us, despite our age and palsy, because we will be pretty drunk.

So tell me:  what are your retirement plans?  If you could do anything at all, I mean?  Or, if you are already retired, is it working out the way you hoped?

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7 Quick Takes: “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” Edition

Many mothers of big families are at a loss for words when strangers make personal comments about their family size.  Other women are able to use their conspicuous presence in public as a chance to witness to the joy of this lifestyle.   Still others see it as an opportunity to ditch one or two of the slower kids in the crowd.

No matter which description fits you, there will come a day when you are urging an unruly string of children down the narrow hall of the hospital, where you are late for an appointment to have the blood of several of them painfully tested for something you know perfectly well they don’t have.   Some of them will be licking the walls, one will be wailing about losing her vending machine puppy in the parking lot, and two will merely be going silently boneless.

It is at moments like these when some sweaty bozo in an AC/DC T-shirt will appear, plaster himself comically to the wall to let you pass, and remark, “Haw haw haw, looks like someone don’t have a TV!”

(photo source)

So the following guide is for you, mom.  If one of your damn wiener kids hasn’t shoved a fig newton into the printer, feel free to make a copy, laminate it, and keep it in your ludicrously enormous purse.  It will help you respond to people who see your presence as a challenge, when really all you want to do is mail a letter, buy some diapers and few pregnancy tests, or pay the librarian for the books you ruined this week, and go home.

7 Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions About Your Big Family

–1–

Boy, you’ve got your hands full, don’t you?

Congratulations!  As the ten billionth person to make this clever remark, you are a winner!  As your prize, please accept this delicious baby.

–2–

Don’t you know what causes that?

Yes, it’s brought on by being in the presence of morons.  Every time I leave the house, I feel the urge to rush home to my husband and, for the sake of future generations, try to outnumber people like you.  Whoopee!

–3–

Are those all your kids?

Quiet, you fool, my husband’s listening!

–4–

How many kids do you have, anyway?

I dunno.    [I don’t know if it qualifies as snappy, but it’s often true, and it shuts people up.]

–5–

You’re stopping now, right?

Of course!  Lots of people have eight kids.   Eight kids is nothing.  Of course, our van is longer than most people’s driveways.  We own two milch cows just to supplement breakfast.  And with the money from our Additional Child Tax Credit, we bought a Learjet.  That’s life with eight kids.

But to consider having nine kids?  That would be cuh-razy.

–6–

[This next one is for kids who are members of big families.  It’s a direct quote from lunch recess at Disnard Elementary School, and partially explains why no one liked me in sixth grade.]

Hey, huh huh huh, you have seven brothers and sisters?  Boy, huh huh huh, your parents must really like to dooo it!

Yeah, boy, I guess that proves they had sex eight times.  And you’re an only child, so I guess your parents just don’t love each other very much.  Ha ha!  Now, who wants to be my lunch buddy?

–7–

Don’t you have a TV?

If you think TV is better than sex, then you are doing it wrong.

————————————————————————————————

So long until Monday, folks! Don’t forget to check out Conversion Diary for links to everyone else’s Seven Quick Takes.  And don’t forget the most basic rule of appearing in public with lots of children:  it’s everyone else’s job to get out of your way.

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Greatest Movie Ever

(Note:  The Jerk swears a lot.  What do you want?  He’s The Jerk.  Tomorrow, the blog will be heartwarming again.  –Simcha)

——————————————————————————–

I’ve been bumped!

Here’s the deal: Tuesdays seem to be prime blog viewing days (what do you ladies do with your weeks?) and every time I post a movie review, Simcha loses at least one subscriber. OK, four.

Now, I could get all angried up about getting moved, but I get paid the same amount no matter when this thing runs. Also, now I don’t have to be that careful with what I write anymore. (That was a warning for the squeamish.)

Onto the movie!

Tango & Cash

Embrace the Awesome!

Holy shit! This is the most awesome fucking movie ever made! Fuck you, Orson Welles, Citizen Kane is nowhere near as awesome as one half of a drop of sweat coming off of Stallone during any one of his sweaty, sweaty scenes. I don’t really know what that means.

OK, OK, OK, OK, so Tango (Sylvester Stallone) is this rich guy, who is one of L.A.’s best narcotics cops, and Cash (Kurt Russell) is this slobby, scruffy guy who is also one of L.A.’s best narcotics cops, AND, get this, they don’t like each other! Did you even see that coming? I know, right, totally unexpected, then, the super bad guy no one knows about (Jack Palance playing some guy whose name I forget) totally frames Tango AND Cash for a murder … THAT THEY DIDN’T EVEN DO! Oh, man, then, they have to escape from prison, and their captain can only give them 24 hours to clear their names, and Cash meets Tango’s little sister (Terri Hatcher) who is like some stripper, except she keeps her clothes on and plays the drums during her dance,  and Cash really likes her, and Tango totally doesn’t like that, but she’s like “I can do what I want,” and Cash is totally into her, and then they track down all the guys who frame them, and it leads to Jack Palance, who is always in his super secret lair kissing rats, and they go to the guy who made boot guns for Cash and he gives them this totally sweet truck with like machine guns on it, but he’s like “I need that back,” and Tango and Cash are like “We won’t scratch it,“ and they use it to find the super secret lair and the truck gets SQUISHED by some really big things, and then Jack Palance pushes the self destruct button, right? I know. And Tango and Cash chase him to his hall of mirrors (just like Enter The Dragon!) and Jack Palance has Tango’s sister, but Tango and Cash totally save her and kill Jack Palance just in time to run out of the super secret lair before it EXPLODES!!! OK, OK, OK, OK, whew.

Totally. Fucking. Awesome.

As you may have guessed, I kind of like this movie, a lot. Perhaps this hampers my ability to provide a critique, but I don’t care.

Let’s start with Sylvester Stallone.

Yo

Most people know he got his start with Rocky, but they forget he wrote that movie. Yeah, I know, this guy is not actually illiterate. Watch Rocky again, it is a bittersweet drama with a ton of gritty heart. That guy went on the be Tango.

Who says cocaine and steroids are bad for you?

Kurt Russell is the ultimate utility infielder of movies. This guy started acting as a kid, doing real solid work his whole life, but never being in the truly big pictures. Got a modest budget action movie but  you can’t afford Harrison Ford, or Tom Cruise, or John Saxon? You go get Kurt Russell. Not only will he be a decent leading man, he’ll do whatever carpentry you need done on the set.

Did I forget to mention he's in the union?

The other thing you have to kind of like about Kurt Russell is he is one of the few actors out there you seems like a semi-decent human. He’s been with Goldie Hawn forever. They have bunch of kids and they seem like nice people. So what if she’s transgendered.

I shtupped Angela Lansbury.

Jack Palance is a genuine Icon. Shane, and, um, Shane. Crap. I thought this guy made better movies than he really did. I know he won an Oscar for City Slickers, but that was one of those, “We feel bad you’re gonna die soon,” awards.

I also starred as Mr. Kitch in The Secrets of a Sensuous Nurse.

In any normal movie, the scene where Jack Palance starts kissing the two rats he has named Tango and Cash would be the biggest WTF moment of the whole enterprise. Not this movie. Not by a long shot.

OK, so the director, Andrey Konchalovski, co-wrote Andrei Rublev. That’s something. Right? It shows this is a man with real, lasting talent, despite whatever duds he might has made in a long career. Right?

Oh. I see.

Well, then there’s Terri Hatcher. Who am I kidding. This is a woman who can’t hold her own acting in a scene with Sylvester Stallone. She probably took her clothes off for money in real life, yet look how unconvincing she is as a drumming stripper.

Probably because in this movie, she kept her dignity, as it were, by keeping her top on. That must have been a new experience for Terri. Speaking of dignity, check out Russell in drag.

Wait a damn minute! Has anyone ever seen Kurt and Goldie in the same place at the same time?

The guy’s a pro, like I said. The script calls for him to get up in drag, he’s gonna do it, and be at least twice as convincing as Terri Hatcher!

OK, so the parental warning: If you like this kind of thing, maybe you should not ever become a parent. We’ve got bad language, lotsa violence, some random boobs, and Sly and Kurt doing a prison shower scene.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get Andrew Sullivan to read your blog.

So, that’s Tango & Cash. No one will be able to top it. Ever. Unless they make a sequel. I’m gonna start on my spec screenplay tonight. Tango & Cash & The Jerk!

Next week, if Simcha hasn’t broken my fingers, I will review one of the following movies: Man With the Golden Gun, which features Christopher Lee’s third nipple; The Lost Boys, a fabulous vampire movie featuring nothing gay whatsoever; or The Legend of Billie Jean, featuring Helen Slater’s, um, shall we say, assets.

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