September 2006

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The pundit is off the couch (and comments are on)

(One of yours truly's many admirers)

And that's it.

The couch is now on the truck to Goodwill, but don't worry-- I made sure I fished out all the loose change and incriminating evidence before I let 'em take it. And it was full of the latter: 118 movie quizzes, countless sound files and stupid pictures, and more writing than I've ever done in one place in my life.

The best thing about doing this blog for the past three-plus years has been hearing from some of the people who saw it. Out of the dozens who got in touch, I can count the number of assholes on the fingers of one hand, and if I left out those who are also my friends, that number would be cut in half. Everybody else was a delight, and I appreciated hearing from all of you.

(By the way, as soon as my friend and CP web guru Karl starts his work day, the "Comments" feature will be turned on for this entry! So please check back and leave one-- I hear that telling me off in public is always much more enjoyable than doing it by e-mail.)

I'd like to be able tell you where to find me next, but there isn't anyplace, at least not yet. I doubt I'll be off-line for long, though, so stay tuned.(And wish me luck with the novel I'm working on, The Thing That Pukes in the Night, coming soon to a slush pile near you.)

But for now . . . this is my swan song. See ya.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 10, 2006 11:56 PM | Comments (9)

 

Last week's last Movie Quiz winners

The movie was George Pal's 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), starring Tony Randall in all seven roles. Based on a wonderful book by Charles Finney and adapted by Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont, it featured a large cast of American TV and film's best character actors (Arthur O'Connell, Noah Beery Jr., John Qualen, Royal Dano, and many more) in one of the best genuine fantasy films this country's ever produced. I loved it when I first saw it at the age of 10, and have seen it countless times since, many of them with my two daughters as they grew. I never get tired of it, and if Tony Randall's long, multi-faceted career had to be reduced to one best moment, I think this would have been it.

So congratulations to Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, Denny Lynch and Michael Kelly for recognizing the three faces of Tony shown in last week's picture clue.

And since this is the last quiz, let us not gloss over the quiz achievements of Wayne and E., who have been playing along since Quiz #4! And out of 115 quizzes, Mr. Yarber has only missed a small handful, and Mr. Palmer has gotten all but one! (Our third regular winner, Hank Parmer, was on vacation, or he would have been here this week, too.) There were many weeks when the quiz was so tough, these three know-it-alls were the only ones who got it, and was I ever grateful they did. (A quiz that no one ever gets just plain sucks, don't you agree?) So thanks a million for always being in the week's email, guys-- knowing you three were out there always kept me on my toes, and I appreciated it.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 10, 2006 10:41 PM

 

Greil Monaco's Final No-Life Top 10-- Couch Pundit: The Clips Episode

I can't think of anything poignant to wrap up the blog with, so I thought I'd link to some old entries that still hold up. This is a long entry all by itself, and often links to even longer pieces, so look on it as a Couch Pundit Digital Omnibus, to be perused at your leisure. Here they are, then, my greatest hits.

1) I nailed Dennis Miller's sellout at the very beginning. Not like it was hard to do, since anyone watching his Tonight Show appearance in April, 2003 saw the same thing. Three years later, the biggest Dennis Miller news, besides that he'll be knocking them dead in Waukegan, is that he'll be joining Hannity and Colmes as a "commentator."

(No, this isn't Dennis from the SNL days-- see next entry.)

2) The Richard Speck Variety Hour. Back at the beginning, when this blog was intended to be a running review of the stupid stuff I watched on video, this entry was perhaps most popular. A news show on Speck's last days on death row included his jailhouse home movies. "Then, best-- or perhaps 'breast'-- of all, Speck goes topless, showing off two swollen, saggy teats that must have come from an overdose of black-market estrogen." It would make a great double feature with this classic with Fatty and Buster.

3) "Bye bye home schooling." Of all the things I've written for this blog, and maybe anywhere else, this may be the one where I did my best. And when I got an email from none other than Dave Marsh praising it, I knew I'd done okay. If you skim the rest of the rehash being served here, fine, but give this one a look, please. I like it maybe best of all.

4) The Sound of Monaco. Me, reading my one and only audio essay for the local public radio station. At the time, I was co-host of a call-in movie show (it's where the quiz got started) that became one of the most popular features on the station. I was teamed with a dithering idiot journalism professor, however, who was so bad that finally I said to the management, pick one of us and let the other go. They let me go, which, come to think of it, has been my usual reward for doing good work.

5) This picture. I came up with the headline, my older daughter, the artist extraordinaire, Photoshopped it in, complete with wrinkle. (And do click the above link and look at the kid's work-- she's great.)

6) My Bush gallery. Here are some of my favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

7) My Des Moines stories. At least the ones about the free Jimmy Smith concert and the awful-- or was it offal?-- traffic accident a friend of mine encountered. Plus the following, titled, "The 'Bowel Ride' kiddie exhibit in the center area of Des Moines' Methodist Medical Plaza":

I'm never in a good mood when I have to visit the doctor, but even my outlook was momentarily brightened by the sight of several small children giggling and scampering around in the main hub of the hospital, enjoying one of those maze things, in this case an extended tube big enough for little kids to crawl or even run through. It was only when I was right beside it that I saw what it was supposed to be: the kids were capering inside a blown-up simulation of the large intestine, and it was complete with graphically-labelled trouble areas. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing one mother talking to her toddler through a bloody-looking hole in the tubing labelled "Severe carcinoma."

8) Bob "Nosferatu" Hope, 1000 B.C.-2003 A.D. Here's my reverential farewell, written the day he died ("In other news, Hell freezes over"), as well as the Wikipedia favorite, "Bob Hope, Womanizer." Just because he's finally gone, we must never forget how much he sucked, both as a comedian and as a guy.

Even so, I have to admit, he was probably the handsomest 100-year-old in the country!

9) My comix. Unfortunately, I don't draw, and my daughters are too busy to do the artwork for me. So I had to resort to photos (Robert Blake in "Da Verdict"), or simply on the reader's imagination to fill in the pictures for my panel-by-panel scripts ("The Adventures of Dog-on-Fire" and "The Origin of Lighter-Fist").

10) This entry. Not a half-bad signoff, if I do say so myself, and-- for the first and last time-- I actually made it to ten! Somebody better see if Bob Hope came back to life!

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 7, 2006 1:45 AM

 

The last Monday Movie Quiz

We'll talk about the adjective in the title later-- for now, since I've already used my all-time fave, Citizen Kane, I thought I'd sign off with a movie that could easily be my second favorite as well as any.

Now, understand the above pic is not from the film, but rather makeup models for characters in the film. Do you see any similarity in these "people"? If not, give up now. But if you do, you either know this great movie or you'll figure it out. Either way, send me an email by late Sunday with the title, and if you're right, expect to see your name in next week's final winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 4, 2006 1:21 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Let this be a lesson to all: when you don't know the film title, just describe the picture. In this case, at least, you would have come up with The Boy with Green Hair (1948), directed by Joseph Losey and starring a young Dean Stockwell. As quiz winner Tim McDonough wrote, "Hard to believe that cute little kid would grow up to be the weirdo lip-synching into the flashlight in Blue Velvet."

So congratulations to the following quiz winners: Hank Parmer, Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, Jim Youngdahl, Michael Kelly, Mark Gisleson, Eric Castro, Tim McDonough, Bill Hearne, and Martha Kiesling. (Joe Rosenberg would be on the list, except he's on vacation.) Special congratulations to Sharon Betzler, who wins this week's fine grand prize, the rockumentary Likehell: The Movie. And special demerits to Mr. Hearne, who guessed that the clue was so easy that there would be 18 correct guesses. That would mean that everybody who reads this blog got it right, Bill!

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 4, 2006 12:45 AM

 

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