GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

Don't make the mistake of thinking that providing a viewing  guide to this series implies that I recommend it.  Rather, consider it a public service intended to mitigate the overwhelming despair that awaits the casual viewer.  Hidden is a BBC production set in Wales featuring a Welsh-speaking cast available on various streaming outlets.  The 20-episode series follows small town, crime-fighting cops Cadi John and Owen Vaughn  (pictured above) in what begins as a who done it? but soon becomes a why am I watching this?     Excepting sadomasochists, there's little chance anyone who settles in to view this will make it past the first 10 minutes.  For those that had the good sense to call it quits, here's what you missed. It turns out Wales is a country attached to the lower left-hand flank of England and small enough to fit inside Cher's basement.  Hidden depicts the land, the weather and the people that live there as catastrophically morose an...

The other day I noticed that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued an official apology to Sacheen Littlefeather for having done damage to her show business career.  Fifty years ago, Miss Littlefeather appeared on stage at the Academy Awards having been sent there by Marlon Brando to share his reasons for declining the Oscar.  When Brando's name was read off, Sacheen made her way on to the stage where the perplexed presenters, Roger Moore and  Liv Ullman, produced a more genuine reaction than  either had ever managed on the  screen.  In her non-acceptance speech, Sacheen e xplained that Marlon was going to pass on the Oscar to call attention to the way Native Americans had been portrayed by Hollywood. Today's Oscar ceremonies rarely conclude without a pitch for some cause but it hadn't been done prior to Sacheen and her words prompted  grumbling and boos from the audience.  It's no surprise that her future as an aspiring actress en...

I have discovered when freeway traffic is unbearably jammed,  pulling into the car pool lane  despite having no passengers,  can really lifts one's spirits.  Once there, zipping past hordes of irate commuters, I entertain myself with the challenge of coming up with a credible defense if stopped by the highway patrol.   Earlier this week during one of these creative sessions I was distracted by Larry Mantle's voice on the radio.  It was a teaser promoting an upcoming segment he would be doing on the egg shortage.   I gave up listening to Larry Mantle more than a decade ago.  His insistence on compiling several thousand words into a single question drove me off.  It is especially bad when he rolls out the first question for the poor bastard being interviewed.  Larry inserts every possible bit of information and nuance that he can conger up, until the question is a paragraph short of War and Peace .  I don't know if there was...

I was watching Wonder Boys on Hulu the other day and came to the part where the talented but troubled character James Leer reels off in alphabetical order the names, dates and methods employed by 15 Hollywood stars that took their own lives.  In with Pier Angeli, Charles Boyer, George Reeves (Superman), George Sanders, Jean Seberg and Gig Young was Dorothy Dandridge which for some unknown reason sparked my curiosity.  Googling revealed that she had starred in Carmen a 1954 film that I saw at the Eagle Theater when I was 9 years old.  I suppose it's possible that some part of my brain had stored away Dorothy's name for 70 years and was the reason it piqued my interest. How else could one explain my chasing her down instead of Albert Dekker who hung himself with his suicide note written in lipstick on his stomach? Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte Dorothy's single mom was an entertainer and started Dorothy and her sister in the business performing a song and dance act...

The Boards Across Hermosa organizers had received 70 surfboards as donations for artists to paint.  The same email that told me that I was one of the participants indicated the boards were "first-come, first-serve".  I immediately drove to Hermosa in a panic hoping there would still be a board small enough to fit in my Honda Civic and proceeded due to my ignorance, to select one based on size rather than condition.  I didn't see the damage until I set it up in the backyard.  I soon  returned to YouTube videos, this time for tutorials on repairing surfboards.   This latest development was quite disturbing.  Had I any inkling that the board might need to be repaired as well as painted, I would never have tried to wiggle my way into this.  The most depressing thought was that this was surely just the first of many unexpected pitfalls that lay ahead.  I struggled with the obvious question - press on or quit?   Normally, I find grea...

I walked into a gallery in the South Bay a few months ago, never suspecting it would lead to a series of poor decisions and psychological trauma.  The gallery displays mostly jumbo-sized photographs that I found to be pretty special.  I met and spoke with Monica the owner for a bit.  It was one of those rare times where I abandon my antisocial norm and babble on like a jackass.  It's similar to a grand mal seizure - I never know when it's going to happen, and when it's over I have only a vague notion of what took place.  Evidently there was an exchange of contact info as the following day I received an email from Monica encouraging me to sign up for an upcoming event involving painting surfboards.   The link she provided took me to a site that invited Hermosa Beach artists to sign up to paint surfboards that would be displayed in and around The City of Hermosa Beach for a few months prior to being auctioned off at some extravaganza at the start of summ...

Over the last few years I was aware of a series called Yellowstone that was very popular but I figured I'd just wait to see it after it was picked up on YouTube.  Last week a friend of mine urged me to make an effort to find it.  I discovered that I could see the first episode "Daybreak" on my laptop for free on a site called "Peacock".  I settled in, turned it on and before 15 seconds had gone by, watched Kevin Costner use one hand to grab a horse by its ear and with his other hand, place a pistol under its jawbone and blow its brains out.  One assumes the horse needed to be put down as the scene took place on a highway with the horse sticking its head out of one of the handful of vehicles scattered topsy-turvy up and down the road.  Although one can't be sure as no mention of the incident was ever provided - unless perhaps details were revealed during the fast-forwarding approach I soon began to rely on. Costner plays the owner of the largest ranch in Mo...

The chirps started a little after 2 am. They were spaced about 15 seconds apart.  I recognized it as the sound that smoke alarms emit when batteries need replacing. The chirps were coming from the living room but it was hard to pinpoint as the sound seamed muffled.  As much as I wanted to go back to sleep, I found myself waiting every 15 seconds for the next chirp, hoping it would stop of its own accord.  When I got to the living room  Ingrid was pointing to a round plastic smoke alarm 12 feet up the side of one wall slightly above a built-in cabinet that extended 3 feet out from the wall.  I first tried standing on a chair but when failing to even reach the top of the cabinet, it became clear that it would require retrieving a ladder from the garage.  Keeping this a short story prevents me from including a description of the current state of our garage.  After 15 minutes and a rather punishing experience, I positioned the 5-foot-high ladder at the b...

I can't recall why we drove out to Red Rock Park but it's on the list of things to do when visiting Sedona Arizona.  It's a  286-acre nature preserve and environmental education center with stunning scenery. Trails throughout the park wind through red rock formations and along side Oak Creek banked by green meadows and native vegetation. As we wound our way through the park, rounding each bend in the road revealed a new and different sweeping panorama with colorful mesas and cliffs lit up by the sun. At the northeast area of the park, things got weird. You know how you sometimes see a speck on the computer screen and not knowing if it's on your screen or a flaw in the video you are watching, you swipe the screen with your finger to try and get rid of it? I suddenly had the same urge to reach up and swat the black and red beetle suspended in front of me. Then I realized the beetle was sitting on top of a distant mesa and was bigger than Godzilla. "What the he...