When The World Is Running Down...

Zenyatta Mondatta
The Police (1980)
The third studio album from The Police is turning forty five years old today.  Practically every song on this record was a hit, including Don't Stand So Close To Me, Driven To Tears, Canary In A Coal Mine, and Man In A Suitcase.

My favorite one of all, and probably my favorite song that the band ever put out, is the third song on the album.  When I listened to this song in my 20's and 30's, it reminded me of Roland describing Mid-World in The Dark Tower by saying that "the world has moved on".  When the pandemic began, and the effects of global climate change became harder to ignore in the years after the pandemic, it started to remind me of our world because all we can really do is make the best of what's still around.

When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around

The Police (1980)

Turn on my VCR

Same one I've had for years

James Brown on the Tami show

Same tape I've had for years

I sit in my old car

Same one I've had for years

Old battery's running down

It ran for years and years

Turn on the radio

The static hurts my ears

Tell me, where would I go?

I ain't been out in years

Turn on the stereo

It's played for years and years

An Otis Redding song

It's all I own

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

Plug in my MCI

To exercise my brain

Make records on my own

Can't go out in the rain

Pick up the telephone

I've listened here for years

No one to talk to me

I've listened here for years

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When I feel lonely here

Don't waste my time with tears

I run Deep Throat again

It ran for years and years

Don't like the food I eat

The cans are running out

Same food for years and years

I hate the food I eat

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

When the world is running down

You make the best of what's still around

Where The Sun Light Don't Shine

I'm not really sure where this Halloween witch came from.  It's possible that we picked it up form a flea market, but I don't remember buying it.  It's more likely that my grandmother made it when I was a kid, but I don't remember seeing it.  Maybe she manifested in our attic all by herself.  Who knows.

Wherever she came from, she's a pretty groovy decoration and we try to find a place to put her this time of the year.  It's made pretty well, with fabric for the hat and the dress and doll hair on her head.  She's also surprisingly heavy.

The witch's body is a bottle of Sun Light dish soap that's filled with sand.  The copywrite on the bottle is from 1992.  Whether this was made by my grandmother or by a flea market vendor, this little witch has been haunting people's homes at Halloween for 33 years.

What's Black And White And Red All Over?

Reading Phillies program
August 21, 1985
I picked this up for a dollar from a table at the Hometown Farmers Market last March.  They made an interesting choice of printing the entire program in red ink, with the exception of the lucky number that could win a prize for whoever purchased this at the game.  There's no articles inside, but there are some photos, stats, facts, trivia, and some interesting advertisements for businesses that were in and around Reading, PA at the time.

 

The Next Time You Pull A Razor On Me, You Better Shave

Cleopatra Jones / Black Belt Jones

The Gap Theatre - Wind Gap, PA
The Mahoning is playing the same Disney double feature tonight that they played yesterday, so it became the perfect opportunity to head out to The Gap for a 35mm double feature of blaxploitation classics.

We had tickets to see The Church on their stop at The Colonial Theater for their 2025 North American Tour, but the whole tour has been postponed to 2026.

The first film of the night was the 1973 Jack Starrett film Cleopatra Jones.  The title character, played brilliantly by actress Tamara Dobson, is a badass secret agent who fights to take down international drug cartel, and the corrupt cops who work for them.

This is a fantastic movie.  It's a perfect balance of action and camp with a memorable cast of characters.  Shelly Winters is over the top in all the right ways in her role as the drug lord, Mommy, and Antonio Fargas is equally great as one of her underlings, Doodlebug.  Bernie Casey is also featured in this film as Cleopatra's lover Reuben Masters.  His character is in charge of a place called the B&S House where drug addicts can come to detox and to participate in meetings to ensure that they stay clean.  I'll always know Bernie Casey best as the teacher in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but I just saw him in a starring role a couple of months ago when Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde was screened as the second feature of Schlock-O-Rama IX at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.

I'd strongly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys fun action films, regardless of their appreciation for the blaxploitation genre.

The second half of the double feature was the 1974 Robert Clouse film Black Belt Jones.  This movie is classified by the vast majority of fans and critics as blaxploitation because of its largely African American cast, but I think it could better be described as a fantastic American kung-fu film.

The title character is played by kung fu legend Jim Kelly, who is probably best known for his role alongside Bruce Lee in another Robert Clouse film, Enter The Dragon.  In this film, he comes to the defense of a karate dojo run by Pop (Scatman Crothers) when they become a target of the mob who wants to acquire the dojo because they learned that the land is going to skyrocket in value due to an upcoming civic center.

This film has become a cult classic in the decades after its release, and for good reason.  It's one of the most entertaining kung fu flicks that I've ever seen.  I'm not sure if it would have as wide of an appeal to a casual audience as Cleopatra Jones, but if you're a fan of kung fu, Black Belt Jones is a movie that cannot be missed.

And that's a wrap on tonight's double feature at The Gap.  They screened two other blaxploitation films after this one with Tough at 10:00 pm and Hangup at midnight.  They showed the trailer for Tough before Cleopatra Jones, and it looked more like an ABC Afterschool Special than a movie that I'd have any interest in seeing.  If they showed Hangup at 10:00 instead, I would have stayed, but I headed out after Black Belt Jones.

Opening The Vault Again

Walt's Animation Vault II: Beauty And The Beast / The Lion King
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

August at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater kicked off with a double feature of Disney animated classics from the 90's.

The first movie of the night was the 1991 film Beauty And The Beast.  This was my first time seeing it, and while it's not the kind of thing that I'd ever pick off of a shelf to watch at home, I'm glad that I had the opportunity to see it on 35mm at the drive-in.  It's a cute story and I can see why it was such a massive success.

The second film of the night was Disney's 1994 blockbuster The Lion King.  This movie is a blatant plagiarism of Kimba The White Lion, but that's nothing new for an animation studio that has been seemingly bankrupt of original ideas since it put itself on the map by adapting Grimms' Fairy Tales to the big screen.  Don't get me wrong, it's a very good plagiarism with an excellent soundtrack, but it is what it is.

All snark aside, The Lion King is a fun movie.  It premiered in theaters a few weeks shy of my 14th birthday.  I didn't see it on the big screen back then.  In fact, I don't remember when I saw it for the first time.  I never owned the VHS and I can't remember seeing it while visiting friends or family, but I know that I saw it when I was a teenager and I enjoyed it.

For the second straight weekend, we had clear skies for a movie that has a scene that takes place under the night sky.  I love when this happens.  For just a brief moment, it looks as if the movie has extended beyond the screen.