Ballet Mecanique - Stop Motion Masterpiece

In 1924, Fernand Leger was already known as an amazing painter with a flair for the outrageous. So when he decided to make a film with avant garde composer George Antheil it seemed like a natural idea. But there was one problem, the musical score was like twice as long as the film. That's not going to work. And so, each artist went away with their artisitc work and the music was not played with the film when it debuted in 1924. Way early days of film. Sergei Eisenstein released Potemkin in 1925. In a few rare instances, some folks have tried to re-sync the works to the best of their ability. Some of them are pretty decent too. But I have to give props to our resident wizard at LikeTelevision™ - Frank Random. A few years back, he decided to tackle the impossible and rescore the works as it might have happened. What can I say - a home run, Random's the man. Having played as a studio hired gun bass player, engineer, producer or composer on over 1000 albums & CDs, I guess this shouldn't surprise me, but I was very impressed by the tension and musical interplay of his re-syncronized version. Blew me away. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Ballet Mecanique.



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John Edwards sees Floyd the Barber

In a last ditch effort to rescue his campaign from profligate spending on trivial hirsutes - John Edwards left the burgeoning metropolis of Beverly Hills to head down to Mayberry for a $1.00 haircut from Floyd the Barber. Floyd had a little trouble in his shop with some missing dynamite, but it wasn't a terror plot, just a hungry goat.

Taxes and the Titanic

Watch Granny, armed with a shotgun, take a few warning blasts at the Revenue Man in Jed Pays His Taxes. Meanwhile George Burn's wife, Gracie Allen is just confusing the heck out of the tax boys - here, and here too.

also of note - April 15th was the day the Titanic sunk. One of favorite episodes of One Step Beyond has got to Night of April 14th, about all these people who had profound nightmares and visions of the upcoming disaster. The story of the book, published shortly before the launch is really amazing - very eerie. Check it out here or

Real World Sopranos go to Hollywood

Imagine a story so big - it was like Anna Nicole Smith, (or better - a real Marilyn Monroe type instead of someone who thinks they are were), meets Tony Soprano meets CSI. Well, back in the day - on April 4th, 1958 the world got all that and then some as mob connected gangster, wanna be movie star Johnny Stompanato is stabbed by his lover's daughter, Cheryl Crane. And his lover is none other than Lana Turner, one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood at the time. She was every bit as big as say Meryl Streep or Nicole Kidman. Megastar. One could only image how frothed the Paparazzi might get if they had a story this juicy. Because the details were even more tawdry. It happened on Good Friday at the big Beverly Hills mansion. Stompanato was killed by a 14 year old girl with a huge carving knife. She was afraid Stompanato was going to hurt her mom, so she went downstairs to the kitchen, got the knife, and in a moment of panic and terror, stabbed Stompanato in the chest. He would eventually die and later on, little Cheryl Crane would be exonerated by a jury. Stranger still, Lana Turner goes on to make one of her best films - Imitation of Life, which is a lot like Lana Turner's real world troubles.

Electric Earthquake

Back in the day - Tesla supposedly designed a sonic weapon that could create an Earthquake at full power. I think that's where the Fleischers got the idea for this cartoon.