This is a Dark Ride

After some thought, I'm going to return my LJ to a "mostly friends only" posting status. I think that some items should be public, and others I don't mind sharing. I will keep my more personal and TMI stuff blocked, unless you're on my friends list. 6/1/2010

I've decided that, since most of my posts lately have been friends only, I am going to just give in and make the rest of my posts friends only. If you're reading this and you aren't a friend, you've been missing a lot. Leave a comment, and we'll see.

If I don't friend you, please understand that unless I know you, can read your posts, or think your LJ is interesting, I probably won't add you. Sorry.

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Yes.

The Variants is a web series by local comics store owner Richard Neal about, well, life in a comics shop. It's been getting better over time, and this month's episode was probably their best so far.



If you're a gamer, or have ever been one, this will induce flashbacks. Which makes it well worth watching.

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One thing? How about my President developing some balls and not caving in every time the Republicans raise their voice to him?

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"Hard Day's Night," because it's fun and it's from a fun movie.

At Tom Thumb on Northwest Highway, in the checkout line. He looked at my Saints t-shirt and asked if I was from New Orleans. I said yes, and asked where he was from. "Metairie Road, near I-10" he replied. He was an older man, dapper in a hat like older men can be. He asked me if I'd moved up after Katrina, and I said "sort of." Which is true-it was almost a year later when we moved, after sttatus_quo said she couldn't live there anymore, not see another hurricane.

The man had a daughter in Dallas, so he liked living near her. It'd taken him 22 hours to get to Dallas when he evacuated; I told him it took us 6 hours to get to Lafayette. We looked at each other with that knowledge that our lives had changed through circumstances beyond our control. I asked how he liked Dallas; he said it was different. I knew that feeling. He had friends from back home who lived here and they had lunch once a week; I envied that. When he finished checking out, I shook his hand and wished him well.

That's the kind of thing that used to happen in New Orleans all the time-random encounters that ended up meaning something. Those don't happen in Dallas often...

The American commando team that killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, reportedly included a dog, sparking furious speculation about the dog's identity and discussion of the role of canines in war. Less publicized—and far more essential to top-secret U.S. military operations—are cats.

A slide-show essay is here. Remember our feline heroes!

Mike Scott at Da Paper started a hashtag on Twitter reimaging Casablanca as if it'd been set in New Orleans. Now, people are taking classic lines from the movie and giving them a New Orleans flavor. You can follow it on Twitter with the hashtag #IfCasablancaHadBeenShotInNewOrleans.

Some of my favorites:

"Play it again, Dr. John."
"The Germans wore grey, you wore rhinestones and feathers."
"Of all the daiquiri shops, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."
"I'm shocked, shocked to find drinking on the streets!" "Your go-cup, sir."
"Round up the usual Who Dats."

Tura Satana is best known as Varla, the exotic bad girl of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! But she was a lot more than that. A Japanese-American, her family was in Manzanar during WWII. She was brutalized and abused as a child, running away to LA to start over. By age fifteen she was a burlesque dancer, then a model who posed nude for Harold Lloyd. Tura did a burlesque tour, where she met Elvis Presley. Elvis proposed, she turned him down. Kept the ring, though.

Back in Hollywood, Tura became an actress, appearing on television and in film. While acting in Irma La Douce, she got a casting call from Russ Meyer, even then a legend in B-films. Tura read the script for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, telling Meyer she thought Varla should be kind of feminine, but also a bitch on wheels. Meyer was convinced, and made her the star.

Tura did a few more films, then retired to spend time with her kids, working as a nurse. In 1981, she was walking when a driver hit her at sixty miles an hour. It took her two years to recover. Doctors said she'd never walk; Tura told them “Not only will I walk again, doc, but I’m going to do everything else I used to do.” And she did.

Tura Satana passed away yesterday at her home in Reno, NV. She was eighty one, with legions of fans and was still appearing at conventions and in interviews. And until the end, she was still a trooper.

Goodbye Tura, you will be missed.

Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal. On two cellos.

via MeFi