Monthly Archives: May 2025

City Connections

So Major League Baseball is starting Version 2.0 of the “City Connect” uniforms. Some of the new versions are clear improvements (e.g. Dodgers (though it wasn’t hard to come up with something better for them)); others are along the lines of “What were you thinking? Your first ones were great!” (e.g. Boston) Cynics can see them as just another way to suck money away from fans; others can see them as cool and fun ways to try something different on occasion.

I, of course, have my own Thoughts on the Matter.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Frankenhooker (1990)

If you dig in the heap of “Awful Movies That Are Still Fun to Watch”, you will undoubtedly come across The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962). It’s about a doctor whose radical ideas on transplants has him on the outs with the medical establishment. He gets the chance to Show Them All! When his girlfriend is decapitated in an accident. Fortunately, he manages to keep her head alive – now all he needs is a body to graft it to.

Weird idea, but not one that’s unusual. In competent hands, and with some resources given to it, one just might be able to create a passable movie on that premise.

Frank Henenlotter wrote that he came up with the idea for Frankenhooker out of thin air when his pitch for another movie failed. But the similarities between the two movies are too strong for it to have been a mere coincidence. Perhaps he saw the older movie and vaguely remembered the plot, or perhaps he knew that “Brain” was in the public domain, so he was free to riff on it to his heart’s content.

Anyway…..

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Going to Overtime

The NBA and NHL Playoffs are in full swing, and with a couple of local (to me) teams involved, it’s hard to avoid hearing the latest results. My mind started to wonder – have any Game Sevens in the final championship round gone to overtime? Have the two teams ever been so evenly matched that they needed to keep going past the normal limit to determine a champion?

(NOTE: The year given refers to the year in which the game was played, not the year the regular season began)

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Charm City – 6

I noticed something on the drive down. Everyone, with reason, talks about the foliage of fall. All those brilliant and vivid golds, oranges, and reds on the trees, mixed in with the remaining greens. But in the spring, and lasting for about the same amount of time, one can notice a similar display on the trees as new growth bursts out of its protective coverings. Golds and reds among the many shades of yellow-green, with the occasional splash of pink, white, or purple from an ornamental tree that managed to escape into the wild. The colors are rather less “saturated”, of course, but they are there if you are willing to look.

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