Bite Me, Tony

Endlessly grim and surprisingly graphic for its time, this novel served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's 1972 film, Frenzy. Originally titled Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square , Frenzy was adapted for the big screen by Anthony Shaffer ( Sleuth , The Wicker Man ); and, by the way, that film adaptation is superior to the novel in every way. However, since this is a book review, we'll skip over the film and get to the business at hand.  Richard Blamey, a luckless alcoholic and former war-hero, finds himself slumming it as a bartender in a noisy Covent Garden pub. Already disheartened by the prison cell suicide of a friend and fellow war veteran, Blamey loses an allegedly surefire bet on a horse race, rendering him penniless and even more miserable. In desperation, he pays a visit to his caring ex-wife, who just happens to run a successful marital agency in the neighborhood. However, due to Blamey's drunkenness and self-loathing, a loud argument ensues in her o...

A few observations from the past month:  1. DJT is now selling bibles . For $60 a pop. Because that's how he is. No low is too low. But I keep wondering: why aren't there lightning bolts ? I thought there'd be lightning bolts.  2. The endless and horrible Simply Healthcare commercials are ruining my life and I have completely lost any fondness I may once have had for Stevie Wonder's For Once in My Life .  3. Palm Sunday services are excruciatingly long, especially if, like me, you are not of a religious bent in the first place. I went in expecting a lot of pomp and ceremony along the lines of Midnight Mass. This is not that . This is standing in your pew for the better part of an hour while priestly people recite the story of the Passion in its entirety. On the other hand, the Palm Sunday soprano's voice was pleasing and an announcement that the men's club would soon have their famous clam chowder for sale received a positive reaction from the parishioners, a...

So far, 2024 has not gone according to plan and now we are in the midst of a semi-shitstorm; semi because it pales in comparison to what many of our friends are going through  but still... shitstorm . To help put things into perspective getting old really sucks it just really  really  does. There is no point in sugarcoating this fact even if aging is sucking less for us than others we know.  A couple of weeks ago, just to remind me that I was, indeed, getting old, my blood pressure tablet that I'd begun taking a month or so earlier began to fuck with me. And by fuck with me, I don't mean a leisurely roll in the hay. I mean hard, hard fucking with no lube and no foreplay nay not even a kiss. At one point, I actually thought I was having a heart attack in the shower. Fortunately, it turns out, I was not having a heart attack. No, it was the massive white blood pressure capsule, the size and shape of which suggests that it could conceivably be put into service as a se...

With his ultraviolent, profanity-laden, testosterone-infused bro-fests, Guy Ritchie has largely built a successful career directing reliably smart and funny projects that usually center around groups of guys (wise and not) involved in criminal enterprises of one sort or another. Forget about Swept Away , the godforsaken Sherlock Holmes misfires, The Man from U.N.C.L.E . and, the needless and charm-free  Aladdin . Instead, acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , Snatch , Revolver ,  RocknRolla and 2019's  The Gentlemen , a direct movie precursor to the new Netflix series,  The Gentlemen .  Set in the same universe as the movie, The Gentlemen loosely follows that film's trajectory while introducing an entirely new set of characters to spread chaos and mayhem throughout the not-so-staid countryside. Theo James is well-cast as British peer and former soldier, Eddie Horniman, who, unexpectedly, inherits both a title and a cons...

Oh, dear God, please deliver me from this dreadful Prime series that C is currently obsessed with. He has been binge-watching episodes of Zorro over the course of the past week and I've had the misfortune of bearing witness to most of them. A newly-minted Spanish redo of previous Zorro's, this incarnation's constant violence (purely for the sake of violence), idiotic swordfights, horrendous dubbing, and a "plot" that is a bottomless pit of sheer stupidity, is so far over-the-top that it would be campy if the participants displayed the slightest trace of irony or wit. Main characters are repeatedly shot, stabbed, strangled, blown up and beaten, but almost no one stays dead because the show thrives on the chaos these dreadful people cause for our (none-too-bright) hero and his frenemies in the Spanish military. Make no mistake, Zorro receives his share of lethal (for you and me) injuries, but this series moves so quickly from one breathless scene of carnage to anot...

So, the COVID virus came and went with little fanfare and we emerged from our 10+-day isolation period feeling not much different than when we locked down. Thankfully, our vaccines are up-to-date so this episode was little worse than having a mild cold. I did have time to read a couple of books in a remarkably short time (for me), most notably Andre Aciman 's 2007 novel, Call Me By Your Name .   I didn't even know there was a book titled  Call Me by Your Name when the movie first opened at Ft. Lauderdale's Gateway Theater in 2017. At the time, the film was getting tremendous buzz from critics and audiences alike, so it wasn't long before C and I were queuing up outside the theater to see a film that had been described as "startling real" and "blisteringly sensual". To be honest, I have not revisited director Luca Guadagnino 's gay coming-of-age/love story since that singular viewing but I remember liking the film well enough. It quickly became...

As you may or may not know, I deleted my Facebook account a few months back with the idea of giving more attention to this blog, and making a dent in that impossible pile of books growing next to the bed. I also hoped, with all this new freedom, that we could become more involved with the Broward/Miami-Dade cultural communities. I've done fairly well on the blog, although the book pile hasn't seemed to have shrunk any. And as far as getting out and doing more, well.... Last weekend we seriously overextended ourselves and packed too much into three days. On Friday, we went to The Original Miami Beach Antique Show, where our friend, Kevin, had secured a booth for the five-day event. Hence the free tickets. This event is billed as being "the largest vintage and antique show in North America". People from all over the world hawked everything from signed Warhol prints to art-deco figurines, tiny Picasso sketches, circa 1800's Tiffany lamps, ornate French cameo glass, ...