Da Vinci and a comment

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

First, the comment: The Limey was very entertaining, but then I have a real soft spot for English gangster noir and this was exactly that, set in Hell-A.

Second: Did anyone, and I mean anyone think The Davinci Code was a good book? Dan Brown can come up with a whiz-bang plot or two, but jee-ZUS is he a bad writer! He makes Michael Crichton look like Steinbeck. It is 2-D hack airplane writing at its most lame. His characters grow and develop and have such sparkling and revealing dialog that you might have mistaken his prose for Tom Clancy.

In short, should make an excellent Summer Block-Buster type movie.

[El Dingo]

I grew up reading Doc Savage, Tarzan, movie tie-ins and comics.

The Da Vinci Code was an entertaining adventure story. Don't judge it as anything else just because it sold a zillion copies. Compare it to Michael Crichton's 'Timeline' and it stands on it's own quite nicely.

I'd rather read Dan Brown than 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering, Whiny Tedium' any day.

[cranefly]

Speaking of Tarzan.
Johnny Weissmuller starred in Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932, a role he reprised 11 more times. In 1934 he did Tarzan and His Mate, which introduced Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane and Cheeta the chimpanzee. And here's something that blew my mind when I read about it a couple days ago.

Cheetah is still alive.
He appeared in all those Tarzan movies from 1934 onward, He retired in 1967 after appearing in Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison.
He's now 74, the oldest chimp known.
He's diabetic, but still has all his teeth.
He lives with other retired showbiz simians and enjoys an occasional Diet Coke.
On his 74th birthday, he got a sugar-free cake and the International Comedy Film Festival of Pensacola Prize. That's his first award ever.

Did I just bend this topic in a major way?

--cranefly

[Haggis Killer]

...but, Cool! Cheetah!

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

"Cheetahs never prosper"? Whomever said it was obviously wrong.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

which came first Tarzan or Tarzana? Because Edgar Rice did live in one and wrote about the other. Coincidence? I think not.

I don't think Cheetah lived there. Home prices were much too high.

[Haggis Killer]

Find the keys.... find all the keys.....

Do you mean "Tarzan or Tarzana"? If so, Tarzan came first. Tarzana was named that because ERB lived there.... or really close by....

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I've heard it both ways. Your way which I believed for many years and then I saw a documentary which went the other way, that he was living in Tarzana and used it as the name for Tarzan. I better go do some checking.

Would you take the excuse I have plaster on the ring finger and it's not letting me hit some of the keys?

Of course I could just read what I wrote and do the spell check before you find out about it. That would be a tad more civilized and responsible, wouldn't it.

I guess I'll go with the ring finger excus.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

HK right, documentary wrong. According to the Tarzan website he bought the california ranch and called it Tarzana and it became the city of Tarzana. I hate it when he's right.

[Haggis Killer]

First time this week.

[King Bob]

In the review of the film, the author refers to the book as "Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence"

[cranefly]

Last night I saw Ebert's review of the movie. He said "The Da Vinci Code is a good movie directed by Ron Howard based on a bad book written by Dan Brown."

Which serves as a wonderful seque into my trip to the vet.
Fudge, our little persian, needed her hair shaved off. The receptionist asked, "Do you want a lion cut? Leaving head and the tip of the tail unshaved?" I told her no, I wanted the exact opposite.

Anyway, while she was scrambling with the paperwork and giving me dirty looks, I sat down next to the mags. And son of a gun, there was an old Burroughs paperback, one of his Pellucidar series, with a Frazetta babe strutting her stuff on the cover.

Well, I had read a lot of Tarzan books and quite a few "of Mars" books of Burroughs back as a teenager, and it was time for another fix. So I flipped it open and read a passage. Good god, it was bad. A glitch, I thought, thumbing elsewhere. But nope, horrible. Absolutely horrible. I wish I had the book in hand to quote some phrases.

Now I'm afraid to revisit Stanislaw Lem.

On one final note, a coworker told me he was introducing his kids to some of the old science fiction and horror movies. He mentioned how they had trouble staying interested. But then he discovered Mystery Science Theater. That format helps the kids stay interested through the slow parts. Anyway, when he told me that Attack of the Giant Leeches was scheduled for that evening, I told him, "Oh, that's a great movie." "You've seen it?" he asked, sounding surprised. "Many times," I replied. "It's a classic."

Only now I'm not so sure. Suddenly I'm having doubts about my teenage opinions of everything.

--cranefly

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

So, where were you getting this Perssian shaved? Guantanamo? Badda-BOOM!! Thank you! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! Goodninght!

PPFY, ZY

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

On the cover of the Woman's World magazine ( I was in the supermarket, Okay?) I spotted a headline that purported to have discovered the secret to weight loss inside the Davinci Code. Will it never stop.

I did a google search to get the exact wording of the title of the article. For some reason the Woman's World is not internet savvy. I know there's a joke in there, but I'm going to let it go.

Instead I found out the DaVinci diet is coming and the author has been given a six figure advance. I quote from the article

Warner announced this week that the book, "The Diet Code: Revolutionary Weight-Loss Secrets From Da Vinci and The Golden Ratio," will be the first in its new line of books called Warner Wellness, which will focus on health, fitness, relationships and similar topics. The book is scheduled for release in April 2006.

The diet is based on the Golden Ratio or Phi, a mathematical value that was used to build the pyramids and has since been found to exist most everywhere in nature. Da Vinci is said to have used the Golden Ratio to proportion the human figures in his paintings - which is how it found its way into Dan Brown's hugely popular novel.

At what point can I stop going into the future?