Romero and the Living Dead

With this bit of recent news that Romero is at it again, I decided to take a closer look at the world of Zombies. Another return to the land of the living dead for George is never a bad thing, I know Diary did not get the best of reviews, but like the Royal Flush, a Romero movie beats all the others hand down in my book. If you are not familiar with the previous entries in the series, go watch all of them now, in this order.

Ok, all caught up, good. Night of the Living Dead is a classic, even having been introduced into the Library of Congress alongside such other classics as Rocky, King Kong, and Blade Runner and is also Raindog Ryan’s favorite. Dawn of the Dead is my favorite in the series; Day of the Dead is the darkest, grittiest and the favorite of Raindogs Jeremy and Jon. After the classic series we were on a twenty year wait till we finally got the next entry, Land of the Dead originally expected to be titled Dusk of the Dead in order to fit the trend closer. Immediately following Land there were rumors of a direct sequel, but alas it was not to be, instead George decided to go to return to his low budget roots with Diary of the Dead. Once again, before Diary even came out, George was talking about a direct sequel. If that will happen or not is still up in the air, but first we will be seeing the new entry, tentatively titled Island of the Dead.

Remember the earlier graph above, well there is something I forgot to mention, there are alternate versions of a few of these films. There are slightly different versions of Dawn and Land and significantly alternate versions of Night and Dawn. Night is in the public domain, so there are many edits of the movie with either added color, added commentary, or alternate sound entirely, one of many Zombie fans’ most hated and despised edits is the “Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition” You see John Russo, the original film’s producer, decided to edit in new footage and new plot lines in order to “modernize” the flick. It is really not saying much more than avoid it. On the other hand, the alternate version of Dawn, titled simply “Zombie” is excellent. When not many people were interested in a Night sequel, former Sergio Leone co-writer and Italian director Dario Argento recognized Romero for all his talents and brought him out to Italy to help him write the script. A great collaboration was born that resulting in Dawn, and many other future collaborations including Romero casting Argento’s hot daughter in the forth entry. So along with Argento bringing Romero out there, he also re-cut the movie for Italy, it was a darker, shorter version that focused more on Tom Savini’s gore than the comedic elements of the original, in itself a great film, but I still prefer George’s theatrical cut. So let’s see that chart again, with these new editions.

Ok, so some of you might be asking yourself, “what about the one with the Zombie and the shark or that other one with the zombies loving brains and hanging out in the cemetery. Well those are related to the series as unofficial sequels. John Russo (this asshat again) used the name and background of Night in order to create the Return of the Living Dead series, even marketing the first entry against Day. Meanwhile in Italy, Zombie was such a huge hit, official and unofficial sequels were made. The many, many unofficial sequels are too many to name, I am only going to mention the significant ones. There are also unofficial sequels made to Day and an official sequel to the god-awful NotLD 30th Ann. Ed, so let’s take a look at the original chart again with all of these.

One of the truly beautiful aspects of Romero’s series is that none of them are really sequels. Night takes place as the outbreak occurs, Dawn takes place the end of the second day or so on through the next couple of months, Day is a good couple months down the road and Land is over a year after the outbreak. Diary and Island seem to be more of side-Tales from the Romero Zombie world. Also, regardless of when the last entry was made, Romero’s films always take place in the modern day, with a sort of reverse sliding timeline of events. Night is set in the late sixties, Dawn in the late seventies, etc. It makes it interesting to see any of the remakes, which are generally set in modern time as well, so quiet late sixties Barbra is changed to independent head strong Barbra in Tom Savini’s 1990 remake. Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn picked up the speed of things and gave us one of the first films where I actually enjoyed fast running Zombies. Here is the final version of our chart, including all of the remakes.

I hope this handy dandy flowchart helps you in your future Zombie film watching, maybe next time we will go further into the many parodies, spoofs and homage’s to the world of Romero. Or maybe the multiple versions of home releases for each movie.

The Big Con

Part I: The Set-Up

If you have not seen the news yet, Paul Newman is dead. He has been battling cancer for a couple months now, and he will be missed. Paul was in many great movies including The Hustler, Slap Shot, Cars, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Cool Hand Luke, but my favorite movie of his has always been The Sting. I really don’t know the man on a personal level, so I can’t eulogize him, but I do like his movies, especially The Sting

Part II: The Hook
The Sting has always struck me as an outstanding movie for so many reasons. The story flows really well throughout, the brave decision to shoot the whole film full screen in order to be more like the films of the 1930’s, and of course, the overall cool characters. I mean you go Harold Gould as Kid Twist (a name I have adapted over the years) one of the coolest second fiddles ever on film, right up there with Bubba Zannette in Mad Max. Then you have Robert Redford as Hooker, just smoothing his way through life, and of course, Paul Newman as the smokin’ cool old pro, passing his master swindling skills on to the young rookie. Whoever involved in the production (probably George Roy Hill) came up with the idea to use the excellent compositions of Scott Joplin as the sole score, kudos to you in creating one of the top ten soundtracks of all time.

I would say it was around 9th or 10th grade for me when my parents got me Animal House, American Graffiti, and The Sting on VHS for Christmas. Real cool editions that came with sampler soundtracks CDs cute in interesting shapes. The Animal House one cut to look like the frat house, Graffiti as a waitress and The Sting like a hand of cards. Within a month me and Raindogs Ryan and Shane watched them all and became addicted to The Sting. Everything just clicked for us, we were listening to the soundtrack none stop (we even upgraded to the full thing on vinyl!) we quoted lines to each other, and we’re swiping our fingers past our noses when passing each other, even if we were just walking by on the way to the bathroom. Slowly we shared our love for the movie with more and more Raindogs until everyone was just as familiar with every aspect of it.

Part III: The Story
One day I decided to upgrade from my worn VHS to a DVD. I was not aware of that the movie was filmed in full screen, no idea at all. In the early days of DVD, widescreen became a big thing, I finally realized what I was missing out on, and when I went to the store to get The Sting, I could not believe it, they were all full. That was bullshit for months I searched, and nothing, no wide screen movies anywhere. I gave up and went back to my VHS. One day while goofing around online, I looked up The Sting, found out the interesting fact about the aspect ratio and hit myself in the head for not buying the DVD before. I went out and could not find a single copy; it had gone out of print. I kept an eye on eBay, but that bad boy started going for 70-100 dollars a pop!

Finally on some DVD news site, I found out a special edition was finally coming out, about fucking time. I was just about to run out and pick it up, when I saw online that it was widescreen? What the hell? So I checked the forums to find out the truth, and sure enough everyone was bitching about it, they made a chopped widescreen release in order to appease the new widescreen loving film fans.

Part IV: The Sting
I ended up picking up the new Special Edition of it anyway and was not really disappointed, I mean it had great interviews with just about everyone involved, a little book with even more to read and it was the clearest the film has ever looked, after all I had gotten used to seeing it on VHS. Even the music sounded better than ever, remixed in 5.1 bitches. I always did keep my eye open for the earlier version though; I wanted to see a clean version of how the movie was suppose to look.

At some point while walking through some random used DVD shop, I finally found a copy for about five bucks. I couldn’t believe it, so I ran home (well probably drove) and threw that fucker in the player (well probably placed it in there) I started watching and everything looked sort of weird. I wasn’t quite sure what the problem was then it dawned on me, this was pan and scan. It made no sense; did they pan and scan the chopped and screwed wide screen to make a full screen copy? What is going on? So I went online again and did some more digging, turns out it was FILMED in 1:33 (full screen ratio) but always intended to be shown in 1:85 (widescreen) well, how about that? I believed the internet fan boy bitching, fuck.

Rest in Peace Paul Newman. I liked your movies.

Greater Tampa (part 3) Local Restaurants

Man, I love food. I think if I had the choice between staying awake for four days or not eating for four days, I would quickly skip the snooze and head straight for the chow. I am not quite sure when I would have to make that decision, but if I did; I am ready with a pre-prepared response. That being said, today’s Greater Tampa piece will focus on a few of my favorite local eateries of the Tampa area. See I do like more about the area than what is on TV. I am focusing only on local places and once again this is only the tip of the iceberg.

ABC Pizza
When I was maybe 13 or 14, I had a clever ploy running with fellow Raindog PeeWee (RiP), we used to both ask our Mom’s to take us to ABC Pizza on certain nights of the week, in order to meet up without their prior knowledge. We had a 99.99% success rate, always the same story, me and PeeWee agree upon the time, Mom comes home from work, “Hey Mom, instead of cooking can we go to ABC?” Mom replys: “Sure, sounds great” HAZAA!! So then we show up, “Hey look Mom, PeeWee and his Mom are here, can we sit with them?” You know as I write this, I realize only now that our Moms must have figured it out after the first few times, and yet they never mentioned a thing.

ABC Pizza was the type of laid back, affordable Pizza place you would hope you have in your town, I know I did while living in Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, etc. Great Pizza, great environment, old school Arcade Cabinets, and the coolness of using half dollars as change when you paid your bill. It is customary for as many Raindogs as available to meet up at the Riverview location whenever I get a chance to come to town, and everything is still just as good. Now I take my kids there with me as well, and they cannot get enough of the breadsticks. I can’t wait till they are old enough to enjoy the video games. In my teens, me and Ryan Guy became pros at all the machines they had to include Spy Hunter, Pac Man, and the classic X-Men arcade game. We did manage to beat X-Men after scouring both of our houses for as much change as we could possibly find. I know I am mostly sharing memories with you and less of an overview, but that’s the point of the place, it has the kind of laidback atmosphere that when combined with a group of friends or your family, make for great memories, you will not be disappointed, believe you me.

La Teresita
The food I crave the most, the food I can barely stand if not purchased in Tampa, the food I have dreams of and wish I could make on my own is Cuban food. Oh man, if you are one of those crazy immigrant hating folk, I challenge you to eat at La Teresita and still try to hold a grudge against or vast Cuban population. I would say that eating there for the first time, also being the first time I ever ate Cuban food, could be compared to the first time a Dolphin figures out how to leave the ocean behind and goes to Bush Gardens and rides a rollercoaster. Yeah, there you go, that was a good analogy. I remember trying to figure out the menu, being that some items were listed by days, some by meats, some by sides, and all in Cuban. I was questionable of the whole thing right up until I took my first bite. HOLY CRAP!! You have to try the pulled pork, yellow rice and black beans like you never imagined, true Cuban sandwiches, plantos, oh man plantos, so many dishes to try. Fun fact: Some Cuban dishes, the sandwich included, originated Tampa and made their way to Cuba due to the old tradition of cigar workers constantly moving back and forth.

Once I moved from Brandon to Tampa, I got in a nice tradition of meeting my Mom there once a week to eat. President Bush ate there when he came to town. I believe my wife still hates me for introducing her to a the place even though we can only eat there during vacation. Of all the great Cuban places in Tampa, La Teresita reigns supreme amongst them all.

Outback Steakhouse
Now, I know what you might be thinking, “Hey O’D, that’s a big chain, not a local restaurant, and for lying to me, I am going to have to cut off your legs and arms and make you a little Oblong impersonator.” Well hold on there big guy, that is quite an over reaction, let me explain, Outback is a big chain now, but originally a local Tampa restaurant, in fact the original goal of the company was to have five-six restaurants spread out amongst the greater Tampa area, enough to justify the owners the opportunity to play golf a lot. All that changed when some businessmen came to see the three owners and offered them the opportunity to franchise, at first they turned it down, but when hit with the options of franchise or we are just going to rip you off in other markets, they made the logical choice.

Food wise, we all know Outback, Bloomin’ Onions, 12 oz Outback Special with baked potato side, maybe five shrimp or a lobster tail as well, stop at the bar, snack on the Aussie Cheesy Bacon Fries and some Kookaburra Wings while sipping an ice cold beer. I would say the food is more southern/ Louisianan than Australian, but hey, I have no clue what Australian food tastes like, other than I think I saw Crocodile Dundee eat a gator once.

When I first moved to Tampa, we heard about Outback from some of the locals immediately and decided to check it out. At that point I believe it was only available in Florida and one other southern state. Outback became the number one choice for visiting relatives from up north, special occasions and our family’s tradition of picking our own birthday restaurant . Outback has been one step ahead of me wherever I go, by the time I got to Georgia, they had one, another in Kansas, Hawaii, of course, they even had special menu items just for that area. If you say you’ve never been (your lying) go check it out, good times for sure.

Till next time.

Further Reading:

Greater Tampa (part 1) Public Access

Greater Tampa (part 2) WTOG

Greater Tampa (part 2) WTOG

For your information, I do not plan to do every Greater Tampa piece on TV related stuff, I have ideas for at least six other topics, this second one just so happens to be about TV again. Sue me, what the hell? So, this time I want to talk to you about what was once the best station in Tampa, WTOG channel 44. All my Florida people are nodding their heads in approval right now I am sure. WTOG was an independent that ran mostly syndicated programming with a nice local touch to it. All night long you could count on good movies and great picks of shows. Here is a few highlights from the Golden Age of WTOG, before the CW days.
On the weekends in Tampa you could count on the great Dr. Paul Bearer. I only had a couple years with the late Bearer, being that I moved to the are in the early 90's and he passed away in 96, he hosted "Creature Feature" since the very early 70's. I did manage to catch him for the first time in the hotel room we stayed in our first week after moving to town. I watched again as often as I could, and even if I didn't have time to watch the movie he was showing, I tried to time myself to catch all of his host segments. I was a fan, but some of my friends, they where FANS. If I called my fellow Raindogs Jeremy and Jon, and tried to make plans during show time, I often received the response of, "yeah man, sounds good, we'll get dropped off over there once Dr. Paul is over." Ask around to your friends and family from the area, everyone either watched him or at least knew of him. Everyone who has meant him only has the nicest things to say. A true staple of Tampa history, and he is missed. A quick Google search reveals that the there was an eight page spread on him in Famous Monsters of Filmland issue 144 and he appeared in an episode of Hee Haw. I will also note that if you search the rare video trading sites on the internet, you will find many Dr. Paul bearer compilations for trade, people love this guy. Here is a small clip for your enjoyment.




WTOG also had one of the best news programs in the area, due in part for their focus on local news, an emphasis on the area instead of national topics. They of course covered national news, but not till after you heard about what was going on in Riverview, Gibsonton, Tampa and St. Pete. Once again I must mention a group of Raindog brothers, this time Ryan and Shane. I liked the 10 o’clock news, but Ryan and Shane ensured that whatever we were doing, we dropped it to check it out. So imagine a group of young teenagers, jamming all night, playing video games, and watching horror movies, then taking a break five minutes before 10 in order to watch the news and you will start to get the idea. At some point, while stationed in Hawaii, I ended up working with another guy about my age who came from Valrico, one day I brought up WTOG news and he resonded quickly, "Fuck yeah, Barbra Callahan." Another example of the devotion people felt to our local superstation comes in how easily and quickly I found clips of the final broadcast. So check it out.



Ok next Greater Tampa will not be about TV, I swear, although it probably won’t be my next post but keep your eyes peeled, I’LL BE LURKING FOR YOU!!

Further reading:
Greater Tampa (part 1) Public Access

Greater Tampa (part 1)

A combination of this post on Cracked and this post at BoingBoing on the same day made me think about a fun little bit of Tampa that has not come to mind in some time, public access tv. If you lived in Tampa in the late 90’s and if you had little to do on the weekend due to lack of life or vehicle, there was only one thing to do to help you pass the time, watch local public access affiliate Tampa Bay Community Network. As a part one of a planned series of looks at my many Tampa loves, I want to share with you a few of the most interesting shows, this is only the tip of the iceberg though, I could do an entire series on this subject alone.

My group of friends saw plenty of nudity on the pre-Girls Gone Wild clip show “Lifestyles.” I pretty much said everything there is to say about “Lifestyles” in my last sentence, it was just shot after shot of girls grinding in clubs, showing their boobs for beads and kissing each other sensually. The only other thing to say about “Lifestyles” is this, latter in life, when I was older and frequented multiple Tampa clubs on occasion, I often wondered where all those girls had disappeared to, and I never saw that kind of crazy shit in real life. Anyway, it might seem kind of weird now, and I know admitting this is not going to help any future Freedom of Speech arguments, but as a twelve-seventeen year old, before the days of high speed internet, this was AWESOME. Looking back, a little odd that it was me and two-five other dudes staring at the TV though, but eh, what can you do. No clips are being provided at this time, because like I said, “Lifestyles” was more or less porn, and if you need a clip to refresh your memory, go to Ybor during Gasperilla or ask your girlfriend nicely to see her boobs.

If “Lifestyles” is a decent representation of the clip show type show popular at the time, “Insanity Defense” is a perfect example of the other type of show, the one where one or more people sit around making random comments about usually nothing and taking phone calls which almost always end in the caller using their thirty seconds of air time to blurt out a curse or throw some random insult to the host. “Insanity Defense” starred Jerry Cantor usually sporting a pig hat and glasses sitting in front of an American flag or something of the sort. Jerry liked to sing along to songs, talk about local news, and provoke callers as much as possible. He actually had a number of shows over the years, but this is the one that sticks out for me. “Insanity Defense” was a popular call in for the Raindogs (my group of friends, or so we are called) usually just to curse or amuse ourselves, I did once call in to discuss the parallels of when Laverne and Shirley would appear on Happy Days and the day he had a guest star of Charlie Perkins of the Happy Dog Show (that one is a whole other story, believe you me.) Enjoy this clip, which is a great example of his work. Jerry is actually enough of a sport to have a MySpace video channel with a number of clips, so I will be enough of a sport to provide that link here. At the end of this clip, you will notice the old school awesome First Ammendement notice that played through out the day.

Insanity Defense


Last show I am going to talk about now. For those of you familiar with the last two shows, you are wondering when I was going to bring up the man, when I was going to talk about a local folk hero, a man who always speaks from the heart, Dr. “Black Jesus” Connelly. If that name does not automatically strike a bell, I will share, Dr. Connelly was a preacher of sorts convinced of the inherent evils of the white man, the blackness of Jesus and how everything in the world is wrong. He could talk for shows on end, without making a lick of sense and we just ate that shit up. A quick search of YouTube provided quite a few videos. I was shocked at how upset people were getting at the teachings of the man, but I guess you can’t get the whole picture unless you were there. He was harmless, more fodder for callers than a leader of people. A perfect example is a time when Dr. Connelly was having a long conversation with a caller on the inherent evil of this or that, and my friend PeeWee (RiP) used the operator call interrupt feature. He called us before hand to ensure we were watching (we were) and right then in the middle of the call, the operator chimes in, “Excuse me, you have an emergency call interrupt from Black Jesus.” Oh man, the Doc lost it, “what do you mean he’s on the phone for me, he is busy” That one had us rolling all night, even now I am smiling ear to ear thinking about it. Check out this perfect example of Dr. Connelly’s awesomeness to witness for yourself.



If you are still interested in Tampa public access, do yourself a favor and Google the hell out of it or ask a Raindog. There are many, many more shows worth mentioning, like I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. For those of you wondering how the above BoingBoing link related, the above mentioned Lobster Boy appeared on a number of shows and even had his own for awhile. Till next time.

Another Sunday

Well, ladies and gentlemen, another Sunday down, another week of football. Fantasy went great for me, I finally won a game, scoring nearly 130 points, I am second in my weekly football pick 'em poll, and stayed up way to late watching the second game. Good week to be a Vikings and a Bucs fan (for more info check out my buddy Ryan's weekly roundup on the Bucs) and a sad week for the Colts.

I first became a Colts fan when Tony Dungy was, in my opinion, wrongly fired from Tampa Bay. His first year at Indianapolis, I impartially watched, but when the Bucs got their first ever Super Bowl win, I started following the Colts very closely. You see, I feel that John Gruden won the championship with Dungy’s team. Many felt this way, and I made a promise to the man that gave the Bucs their first big hope since the early 80’s. To give you an idea of what Tampa was like in the pre-Dungy days; look no farther than the early episode of “Friends” when Ross was describing his nightmares about becoming a father. He used the analogy of being the wide receiver for the Bucs trying to catch his son, Joey responded by pointing out that the Bucs suck and Ross agreed that was the whole point; he was on a shitty team. You see, we were a joke, a fucking joke, and even to Ross……..who is not funny. So Tony came along, with his excellent Minnesota defense background (do you remember the Viking’s defense back then!!) and he made some drastic drafts and a few nice trades, put together a team of some inexperienced players and truly worked with them the way you only see in sports movies. All of a sudden the Bucs started winning more and more often, got some new uniforms, a new stadium and Tampa feel in love with our young chocolate coach and all of a sudden, everyone was talking football all of the time. Even young punk rocker wannabes like me and my friends.

Oh man, the colors.

So, yeah, I liked Dungy and followed his career pretty closely. When people questioned why I was cheering for the Colts, I explained the debt I felt to him, and how I had promised to cheer for him at least until he got his Super Bowl ring. As we all know, that day finally came, and I found myself still watching the Colts. I grew the same fondness for their line up as I felt for the Bucs. I am not a Manning fanatic or an Addai fanatic. My name is O’D, and I am a Dungy fanatic.

I told you all of that, so I can tell you all how you will know if I ever make a movie. If one day you see a trailer for a movie, a gritty movie, with lots of blood and shadows, men running around with guns and fast women doing shots in sleazy pool halls. Amongst the darkness of this movie, is a hitman, an assassin, killing for money and damn good at it. Now this could be the plot of many, many movie, but the way you will know if it was made by me this time is simple.

TONY DUNGY IS

HITMAN FOR HIRE

coming oct 2014
an O'D joint

Well that’s it for me. Register to vote. Take your vitamins, and call your parents.

Thereminists for Obama

While searching around the internet I came across this. What a little slice of gold, I have been laughing about this picture since I saw it and wanted to share it with you all.

Purchase your own here:
http://www.democraticstuff.com/Thereminists-for-Obama-Photo-Button-p/bt23707.htm