Classic Rant #905 (February 14, 2013): My Funny Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day to all.

This is a holiday that we don't get a day off from work for, but if we don't handle it the right way, we could be on a vacation for a long, long time.

Women tell their husbands that they don't want anything, but if you don't get them anything, you are on their sh-- list for at least the time being.

Greeting card companies make the most of this day. It is one of their biggest holidays of the year, and when looking for a card, you have so many choices: traditional cards, religious ones (this is, after all, SAINT Valentine's Day), musical ones, large ones, small ones ... you name it, they have it.

Although this year, I had a really tough time finding grandparents cards. I did find one, but there must have been a run on new babies during the past year, because there weren't too many grandparents cards to choose from.

Anyway, some people give their loves flowers, others give candy, and others give a lot of other gifts, like jewelry.

Me, I have gone the flowers route a few times, and it is really a nice thing to give on the holiday. Last year, I did that.

This year, I just kept it small. I bought the requisite cards, and I got my wife something small but nice. I can't tell you what I got her because if she reads this, it will upset the celebration.

My wife stays away from the sweets, so candy is out, but I got her something nice.

I just expect a card from her, and that is fine with me.

I always thought of Valentine's Day as the day the man buys the woman something, not really the other way around, so a card is just fine.

So to all the men that read this blog, you better go out and get something for your loved one, because if you don't, you will regret it.

You don't need to go crazy, just buy her something nice.

And for you ladies who read this blog, I hope you aren't forgotten.

The bottom line is, you deserve to be put on a pedestal today for all you do for us men.

So happy Valentine's Day, and remember guys ...

Don't forget!

Rant #2,254: It's a Laugh

How was your weekend?

Mine was a nice one.

My aunt visited on Saturday, and she is basically my connection to both the old world of my grandparents to the new world of the bohemian 1960s.

She has had an interesting life. She was an actress in 1960s New York, she later went into book publishing and then taught acting in Harlem, and has had a couple of famous graduates who cite her as one of the reasons that they became what they have become.

She has had some health problems in the past years, but when you want somebody to put you back on the right track, she is that person. She is a font of information, although she admits that she doesn't remember a lot of her life. I try to fill in the blanks when I can, and I think she appreciates that.

On Sunday, I took my son to work, picked him up from work, did a little shopping with my wife, and that was about it.

So on Sunday, I finally had time to do nothing, which can be constructive when you are at home. Sure, I did the laundry, but really, I had a good part of the day to simply chill out, which is exactly what I did.

I was looking for some movies to watch while I was chilling out, and I found a couple of interesting movies from the 1940s to watch, some fun films that I had not seen probably for 40 years or so.

But sit tight for the explanation of what I watched, because before I talk about the films in specific terms, I have to give you sort of a thumbnail background of these movies.

The Dead End Kids started life on Broadway, and the makeup of these actors mirrored somewhat the juvenile delinquent kids of the day--very ethnic, very first generation Americans, and very, very New York.

So you had the Irish kid, the Italian kid, the Jewish kid, and they all had attitude. Cops were their enemy, and the play, and subsequent movies featuring these actors, including Huntz Hall, replicated in Hollywood style, at least, some of the kids growing up in the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The Dead End Kids, in various incarnations with various casts, kind of morphed into the East Side Kids, still a group of delinquents from that area of New York, but with a more comedic bent, and again, with an ever-changing cast in hand, this group ended up morphing into the Bowery Boys, who were still delinquents, but overaged versions of these supposed kids, and their movies were laugh-fests from the first frame to the last.

Of course, this is a thumbnail version of this story--which stretched from the early 1930s to the last Bowery Boys film in 1958--and you can look up the real story about how this franchise jumped from the Dead End Kids to the East Side Kids to the Bowery Boys--and how Leo Gorcey became one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood--elsewhere on the Web.

Anyway, running through the morphing from one group to another was another groups of kids, real kids who also helmed a popular movie franchise, and that is the Our Gang/Little Rascals kid actors, who have their own interesting story about how they morphed from one name to another,

Some of these kids found everlasting fame--like Jackie Cooper--and others found fame during a certain period, but pretty much faded off the face of the earth.

Then there were those that kind of were in-between fame and being unrecognizable.

Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, for a time, paralleled Leo Gorcey's work schedule, really up to his unfortunate death in the late 1950s, which I am not going to chronicle too much here.

No, Alf or Alfie--the name he was called as he began to mature on screen into more supporting roles on both movies and television--appeared in a number of high-profile films during his afterlife from the Our Gang/Little Rascals series, but in small roles, including "It's a Wonderful Life," but he also had side gigs as a star performer in a number of very low-budget films.

Now here is what I am getting to, so get ready--

The Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys was such a popular franchise, as was the Our Gang/Little Rascals films, that there was going to be a number cf copycat series, trying to duplicate the fame--and probably fortune--of their predecessors.

For the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys axis--and really, mostly the East Side Kids part of that equation--the Gas House Kids were created.

This group also grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and yes, they were full of ethnic characters, including the Irish kid, the Italian kid and the Jewish kid, and yes, these supposed juvenile delinquents got into the same tangles with bad guys as the East Side Kids did.

The difference here is that Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall were not around, but Alfalfa and the likes of other former kid actors in the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys and yes, the Our Gang/Little Rascals axis appeared in these copycat films, including the likes of Billy Halop and Tommy "Butch" Bond.

The Gas House Kids lasted all of three films compared to the nearly 70 films that the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys starred in and the more than 200 shorts of the Our Gang/Little Rascals series, but whatever the case, the three films of the Gas House Kids are fun to watch 70 years after the fact, if for nothing else than to see what happened to Alfalfa and Butch as they went through puberty and were in the mid-1940s good looking young actors.

The three films that I watched on Sunday--"The Gas House Kids," "The Gas House Kids Go West," and "The Gas House Kids Go To Hollywood"--are derivative, with the thinnest of plots, but they are fun to watch, have plenty of laughs, and a lot of action too.

Yes, just like the East Side Kids films did.

And I have to say, seeing Alfalfa in these films, and to a certain extent Butch, was a bit of a revelation.

We certainly all remember these two actors as pining for the love of Darla in the Our Gang/Little Rascals series, but we remember them as good kid actors.

Here, in these three films, they are much more grown up, and while the material isn't the best, the two do chew the scenery so to speak, and Alfalfa--who was known as that name specifically in the second two of the three Gas House Kids films, and was more of a supporting character in the first film--and the Jewish character with a different name!--really shines in the two films where he is the star of this series.

He shows an excellent comedic timing, and without the trademark cowlick, you can see that he was maturing as a comic performer in these movies, even with poor material to further his skills.

And as a sidenote, in 1956, Alfalfa finally appeared in a Bowery Boys' feature, "Dig That Uranium," so in a way, he had fully come full circle, from the Our Gang/Little Rascals to the Gas House Kids to the Bowery Boys.

Butch is the consummate performer. Still with that pug-nosed face and good skills, he was also better than this material, and he actually was the first film Jimmy Olsen in the Superman serials, appearing opposite Kirk Allyn and Noelle Neill.

If I remember correctly, Bond was in a number of films, but then went into the directing and producing end of the business, steadily working after a stint in the Navy, and it is interesting to note that he was a prop master on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In."

He died in 2005.

Switzer's life was much more complicated. He worked steadily in movies and television through the late 1950s, and he also trained hunting dogs on the side, boasting many Hollywood people as his clientele, including Henry Fonda, I believe.

Anyway, in a dispute about payment, Switzer was fatally shot in January 1959. He was 37 years old.

That aside, I watched the three Gas House Kids movies with a bit of a fascination, because I had not seen these films in decades. I did remember one basketball bit in the best of the three films, "The Gas House Kids Go West," but little else.

It was fun seeing these then young male actors plying their trade years after their more familiar kid roles, and it has made me search for other vehicles that Switzer and Bond were in, and I am sure that I will find them.

So 70 years later, I can laugh at these movies, because the humor, although somewhat pedestrian, is still funny after all these years.

What more can one ask from a movie?

Even those films considered not that good when they came out can still pack a punch, and certainly, the three Gas House Kids films do just that.

You can find the three films on YouTube, and if you want to have some honest laughs, please check them out.

Classic Rant #904 (February 13, 2013): Once There Were Five, Now There Are Two

People come and go in our lives.

Some make a lasting impression, and some basically pass us in the wind.

We meet lots of people during our lifetimes, and some people we never meet, but get to know from afar.

Such was the case with Rick Huxley, who died yesterday way too soon at the age of 72.

I never knew Huxley personally, but I got to know him through his music.

Huxley was the bassist of my favorite British Invasion band, the Dave Clark Five.

The band, affectionately known as the DC5, was in the runners up spot, right behind the Beatles, during the early days of the British Invasion of music that came over to our shores from England.

Their music was known as the "Tottenham Sound," and it was basically foot-stomping, good-time music.

Think of their hits: "Glad All Over," "Bits and Pieces," "Over and Over," "Catch Us If You Can," "You Got What It Takes," ... I could write an entire Rant on all of those big songs that they had.

During those early years, they seemed like not only regulars on every Top 40 radio station in the country, but also on television, in particular, on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Sullivan seemed to like them, like them even more than the Beatles, and they hold the record for male rock and roll performers' appearances on the show.

Huxley was basically in the background in the band, with drummer Dave Clark out front with his name and drum kit and Mike Smith at the keyboards and the lead singer.

But Huxley, along with Denis Payton and Lenny Davidson, made up the backbone of the band, and they were quite strong, belting out hit records and a load of other great tunes, instrumentals too.

They appeared in a few films, including their own "Having a Wild Weekend," and pretty much from 1964-1967, they were ubiquitous, both on record and television.

As the music changed, they did too, but not enough to offset the new, heavier music.

Their popularity zoomed in Europe from 1967 to 1970 or so, but not in the U.S.

For all intents and purposes, the DC5 pretty much ended their run during this time, but unlike other bands from that period, they never really chose to cash in on their success afterward by playing oldies shows and releasing numerous compilations and repackages of their albums and hit singles.

Dave Clark, the mastermind behind the band, had his own reasons, but it made fans furious. Other bands were very happy to come back to play for their fans, but when the DC5 ended, it was really over for the band.

All the members went their separate ways.

Huxley, a native of Dartford, England--the same town that spawned Keith Richards and Mick Jagger--stayed in music, did a few other things, and pretty much faded into the woodwork.

In 2008, the band, under a cloud of mystery and intrigue, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Clark, Davidson and Huxley were at the ceremony (Huxley at the far right in the above photo), together again for the first time in nearly 40 years.

Clark has since released a wealth of material on iTunes, and today, if you want to hear the DC5, you pretty much can.

But it is the old records that really stand out. For me, the only way to listen to the DC5 is on record.

Huxley was supposedly a heavy smoker, and he had emphysema.

But according to Clark--who reportedly has stayed close with Huxley--he had just spoken to his old bandmate, and Huxley had recently been given a clean bill of health by his doctor.

"He always made me smile and I'll miss that immensely," Clark said. "He was never arrogant and flashy. He was a gentleman and very low key. He was a very, very talented musician and a great friend."

No official cause of death has yet been announced..

But again, those records ... they are the best way to listen to the DC5.

So today, if you can, put one of those old, scratchy records on your turntable and listen, really listen, to their music the way it was supposed to be listened to.

That will really pay tribute to Huxley, and even though as I said I didn't know him personally, I think he would like that.

Rant #2,253: Get Back

No, I don't want to talk about the imbecile who believes that she has been pregnant for over a year, and swears she will be delivering at least twins sometime soon.

Her doctors say that she is not pregnant, but she claims she is.

We will leave that to the opportunist Dr. Phil to figure out.

But today, instead, we will talk something about the history of this blog.

Since 2009, the Ranting and Raving Blog has thrilled the populace with stories about everything from sports to politics to just everyday things that rile us and thrill us, often at the very same time.

Looking back at Nov. 2 posts over the years, you will find a fine mix of stories that is commensurate with what I want to do here, and that basically is to both entertain and make you think, again often at the very same time.

Let's look back at some of those posts ...

On November 2, 2008, in "Halloween Is a Scary Holiday Now (Rant #123), I wrote about how the current celebration of the holiday is pretty creepy. Sure, kids still dress up as they have for decades, but parents do too, and that is just wrong. I still stand by those comments. Halloween is a kids' holiday, why are parents dressing up?

On November 2, 2011, in "Dog's Day Afterthought" (Rant #609), I wrote about our beloved family dog, Max, who was ill and would eventually succumb to his various sicknesses. He was a good dog, and for him to suffer the way he did in his last days was not good for him or for his family.

On November 2, 2016, in "Bette Davis Aye," I once again spoke about Halloween, and a variety of other topics, but I centered on the Bette Davis film "Dead Ringer," where Davis and the rest of the cast chewed the scenery so much that it made me hungry, but it also kept me captivated.

And just last year, on November 2, 2017, in another one of my "Bits and Pieces" compendiums, I spoke about a variety of subjects, including the Houston Astros winning the World Series, the terror episode in New York City on Halloween evening, and actor Kevin Spacey being cited once again for sexual misconduct. If that isn't a real potpourri of subjects, I don't know what is.

Election Day is Tuesday--and unlike others who say "Vote!" I really mean it--for whatever candidates you choose, and not just those for a specific party--Veterans Day is right around the corner, and then we have Thanksgiving and finally the end of the year holiday season. For my family, we also have my wife's birthday, my father's birthday, and my sister's birthday, so the next 60 days are jam packed with events and days that are noteworthy.

This has not been the greatest year on the charts for either me or our society, and with 60 days left to the year, we can stay pretty much the same, redeem ourselves, or go further into the pit.

I hope we at least can stay on an even keel, and not go any further into the abyss that we are in.

Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Classic Rant #903 (February 12, 2013): Get Out the Bobsleds!

As I told you yesterday, in my neck of the woods, the Nemo storm brought 12 inches of new powder to our streets.

Just a few miles east, they received three feet of the white stuff.

But looking at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, heck, if we got 20 feet it couldn't bowl me over like this cover did.

After shoveling mountains of snow, we get model Kate Upton with her own mountains of ... well, she is certainly dressed to shovel snow, isn't she?

The phenomenon of the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is incredible. This time around, a blogger just happened to somehow have gotten access to the cover, and put it up way before the magazine wanted it to be shown.

The photo was so hot that, well, the cat was literally let out of the bag, and now, other photos have surfaced on the Internet, but none as beguiling as the cover shot.

I am not a subscriber to Sports Illustrated, by the way--I was as a teenager in the early 1970s, when this issue pretty much went by the boards as just another weekly issue--but this particular issue has risen above the rest, coveted by not only men, but by many women, too.

I guess it shows the ideal, but also, it generally shows these women in bathing suits that just about any woman can afford, at about $40 apiece, or is it a piece? I know that is how they price women's bathing suits.

And looking at Upton's bathing suit, or lack of one, well, they say you have to start at the bottom to work your way to the top, don't they?

Anyway, Sports Illustrated did not start this swimsuit issue craze, or at least the annual swimsuit issue was not officially started by them.

In the mid 1960s, the old, venerable Sport Magazine--which my father and I subscribed to for decades--had the first swimsuit issue. It featured female athletes modeling the latest in athletic swimwear.

After doing this for a few years, with little or no fanfare, the magazine dropped the feature, and Sports Illustrated picked up on it in the 1970s, and initially, it wasn't much different than what Sport Magazine showed.

But through trial and error, they found that showing a bit more skin with professional models made the magazine special, and they have been doing a magazine like this each year probably since the mid 1980s or so.

So here we have Upton and several other models modeling swimwear at points across the globe.

It isn't Playboy, and it isn't even Maxim, but on a cold winter's day, a magazine like this can warm the cockels of man's heart, I guess.

No, no one really looks like this--don't tell me these women aren't air brushed in some way--but it is nice to know that some women at least approach this type of perfectness.

And when I look out at the mounds of snow still on our street, I can think of the wonders of Kate Upton.

Natural wonders, both, err, each, err, of them.

Yes, I am a male chauvinist pig, I admit it, and just looking at the cover of this issue reinforces my belief that women are really God's greatest creation.

And now, when you tell me to take out the garbage for the 80th time, I will listen. I will be your slave for your affection.

And I can thank God for that.

(And for Kate Upton, too.)

Rant #2,252: Big Man In Town

Today, just a few days after the World Series, the baseball world mourns the passing of Willie McCovey, one of the most feared hitters of his generation, who passed away yesterday after fighting numerous ailments for years.

The Hall of Famer was 80 years old.

You can look up his statistics, including his more than 500 home runs, pretty easily, so I am not going to get into that too deeply.

But McCovey was a major cog in several San Francisco Giants teams during the 1960s, although he was often overshadowed by another Willie in the lineup--one of the greatest players of all time, Willie Mays.

He basically was the Giants' Lou Gehrig and Mays was the Giants' Babe Ruth, and yes, you can mention Mays and McCovey in the same breath as the New York Yankees' stars.

They were that good.

McCovey looked like a ballplayer--his nickname was "Stretch"--and his size and stature prefigured the current makeup of baseball players. In an era when most ballplayers might have straddled the 6-foot mark at best, McCovey was 6 feet, four inches tall and had long arms, so he was able to hit pitches that most other players could not handle.

The first baseman/outfielder won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1959, made six All-Star teams, won the MVP Award in 1969. He and Mays played together in San Francisco for 13 seasons. He later played for the Oakland Athletics and the San Diego Padres during his 19-year career.

Although he was slowed in recent years by a variety of illnesses, and could no longer walk on his own, McCovey remained a fixture at the ballpark, attending numerous games in a private suite.

Personally, when I think about this guy, I have to not only think about Willie Mays, but also Willie Stargell.

These were baseball's "three Willies" during the 1960s, and each was a feared batter, among the best hitters and ballplayers of their respective generation, and perhaps of all time.

When McCovey came up to bat, his sheer size would transfix you, and he seemed to hit every ball hard. And he played for the "Giants" yet. Perfect!

Although he played in the shadow of Mays, he was still a Giant among baseball players during the 1960s.

In fact, probably most casual baseball fans remember him for something he did not do. With runners on second and third in what became the deciding game of the 1962 World Series, McCovey lined out hard to Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson to end the game and the Series.

He is so revered in San Francisco that a team award is named after him. The "Willie Mc" award goes to the Giants player who most replicates McCovey on and off the field, and McCovey regularly presented this award himself.

And let's not forget "McCovey Cove," the water area of the Giants' ballpark, where boaters camps out waiting for a home run to come their way.

To honor his life, San Francisco City Hall will be lit up in orange today, the Giants' color.

Quite a fitting tribute, I would say.

Classic Rant #902 (February 11, 2013): Digging Out

Well, we did get hit this weekend, although in my neck of the woods, it really could have been worse.

We got about a foot of snow from the storm they called Nemo.

That isn't too good.

But when you consider that we live about a mile away from Suffolk County, and that county got upwards of two to three feet of snow, well, we have to consider ourselves very, very lucky.

Many employers let their workers out early due to the impending snowstorm on Friday, and mine did too.

Thank goodness.

It allowed me to go food shopping, and get home when it really wasn't anything more than a major hail/rainstorm.

It was slippery, but that was about it.

The heavy snow came a bit later, and herein lies the problem.

Many employers in Manhattan also let the crews off early that day, but evidently not early enough, especially if you drive into the Big Apple.

If workers got off at 3 p.m., let's say, and it normally takes them at least 90 minutes to drive home, and they live in mid Suffolk County, well, a lot of them were stuck.

And I mean stuck, literally.

The Long Island Expressway, known as the "world's largest parking lot" due to the volume of traffic it supports, and the traffic jams that are the byproduct of this volume, came to a standstill late Friday.

Those coming in from Manhattan--and those who work in Suffolk and were simply trying to get home--found that the LIE was in deep-freeze mode.

Since much of the storm came during the traditional rush hour, thousands of cars were stuck on the road, and I do mean stuck.

The snow was so bad from exit 57--where my wife lived when we started dating--to exit 73 that people literally abandoned their cars right smack dab in the middle of the highway.

Some people stayed in their cars the entire, frigid night, with no means of support coming anytime soon.

And this made cleanup the next day near impossible.

The LIE was closed down in that expanse of exits, and since so many cars littered the road, cleanup was nearly impossible unless cars were moved--and they were, by heavy construction trucks, if even these vehicles could get through.

They were literally picked up and placed somewhere else so the plows could get through.

Also, since this was the major story of that day, not much was said about other services that the storm hit.

After Hurricane Sandy, people became more aware of losing phone, electricity and other utilities during the storm, and this happened this time too.

Gas was in very, very short supply.

Once again, lines formed at gas stations, but this time it was earlier in the week as we were warned about the impending storm.

I was able to get gas on Friday as I was coming home from food shopping, but dozens of stations ran out of gas. My wife was not able to get gas until Sunday.

Also, thousands lost power, and many thousands of others lost phone service.

Yes, this was a mess this weekend, but things are supposed to get better--kind of.

It is supposed to be pretty warm today--in the 40s--and that, mixed with another milder storm we are supposed to get, bringing a wintery mix of more snow and rain, will hopefully wash a lot of this away.

This has been a lousy winter up to this point for the Northeast, and we are only like half done with it, still having to go through the rest of February, the entirety of March, and into the middle of April until we are in the clear.

Last year, we literally got away with it, as we hardly had any snow.

This year has been a horror, and by the way, thousands of people in our area are still suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, still with homes teetering on extinction ... and then this comes and hits us.

Things have got to get better, and I sure hope they will.

But once again, your intrepid reporter basically escaped the brunt of this mess, and for that, all I can say to Mother Nature is the following:

Thank you, thank you very much.