Monday Notebook

Hectic weekend. Target Demo and her fiancee visited, and on Sunday the Bride and I attacked the lawn and flower beds during what proved to be a brief period of sunshine. This was the first weekend in three when conditions allowed for a lawn mowing. And what a mowing it was.

Also saw "Puss in Boots 3D," which I will be reviewing later this week. Revisited "Murphy's Romance" on DVD. Still love the movie. Finally saw "Captain America" on Blu-ray and may post some longer notes about that. It was intermittently entertaining, but not my favorite superhero movie. And I spent a fair amount of time pondering why, even now, the Marvel universe is so tangled up with the events of and around World War II. (See also "X-Men: First Class."

Moving on, if you missed it in Sunday's Beacon Journal, I had a column about the new video release of 1932's "Island of Lost Souls" and how the Devo gang discovered it via Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson's late-night show. Speaking of which -- and a hat tip to Tim Lones -- here's a clip where Ghoulardi mentions "Island of Lost Souls."

Also of interest, here's a clip of Ernie on David Letterman's show, talking about his big-money work in Hollywood:

Also from recent writing, here is the week's video column, focusing on the new "Barney Miller" set, Laurel & Hardy, "The People Vs. George Lucas" and other items. I considered "Once Upon a Time," which premiered last night, and the upcoming "Grimm" in this column. And here is Saturday's print HeldenFiles which, among other things, considers the correct spelling of Gadhafi.