Reads

National Lampoon's Animal House turned 30 three weeks ago, and I missed it. (Must be another attack of CRAFT--Can't Remember a Fucking Thing--Syndrome.) It was the first R-rated movie I saw. Dad took me. I subsequently watched it roughly 800 times on HBO.

Bigfoot remains a mystery. And that is how it should be; no one should really "solve" UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, etc. We need strange magic in the world. (Anyway, no actual Bigfoot could live up to my memory of the creature from The Six Million Dollar Man, where Andre the Giant and Ted Cassidy stepped into his shoes in separate episodes.)

I'm humbled to admit I've read more about the late critic Manny Farber than I've actually read him. These reminiscences encourage me to get up to speed.

Always nice to hear from Robin Wood, Canadian critic and author of one of my favorite volumes, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, which changed my thinking on pariah films like Heaven's Gate, Cruising, and the more obscure Eyes of a Stranger, a movie maybe after Farber's heart. Here he picks his fave Criterion DVDs.

And a happy third anniversary today that thank God I did not forget.