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Saturday, January 07, 2006

Of Omens And Other Oddness...


Today's "curse study" was to be baseball-related again; The Curse of Donnie Baseball aka Don Mattingly... who is simply one of the unluckiest guys ever in his professional career. Although I loathe the Yanks, I can sympathize with Donnie here; for I feel his pain. I often feel as he must be feeling in the face of such frustrating never-ending lethargy... The fact that his mere presence on the club is a bad omen foreboding almost certain defeat cannot be good for the ego nor the heart. The numbers don't lie though - every single year that Mattingly is associated with the Yankees, they lose. When he is not on the payroll, they become again the execrable dominant arrogant winners that take it all. Under these circumstances, Donnie has it much worse than the Babe or Rocky ever did - and that Billy Goat never suffered any anguish in comparison.

But enough about baseball's curses - we are in the middle of winter here! We need more seasonal curses - I suppose...

Nothing colder than HELL - I am sure. And this year, the pivotal date of 6/6/6 will hit us, once June rolls around... Not surprisingly, Hollywood will release another carefully chosen remake at this time - a remake of The Omen!

"The Omen 666 is a 2006 remake of the 1976 horror film The Omen. Directed by John Moore, with writing credits by Dan McDermott, it is set for release on June 6, 2006 (i.e., the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the new millennium). It was scheduled to begin filming on October 3, 2005 in Barrandov Studios" (What? Why not on October 6TH...? Or 31st for that matter!)
In a bit of "dark sense of humor display in the casting of the parts" for the film, they chose to cast Mia Farrow - Rosemary herself - as the antichrist's devilish nanny! This ties up neatly the Rosemary's Baby and Omen mythos together, with a bow... and a pitchfork? Mia certainly had never seen that coming - she got a gig for life with spawns of satan when she took the role of Rosemary way back then... Woody wasn't enough...

It is very fitting of course that both come together - mayhaps now, in some odd way, the characters of Adrian and Damien will merge and become one and the same - for they are supposed to be the same fiend after all. It is high time to amalgamate them, I think... Adrian had somehow a chance at redemption (think of it as the reversal of the alleged last temptation of Christ - but with some heavy Godspell influences... almost!) No such chance for Damien (with the exception of a few minutes of screen time self-torture, anguish and resentment of being "stuck with being the antichrist" during Damien - Omen II which was directed by Don Taylor, husband to memorable Hammer Horror films actress Hazel Court.) All these films are close cousins - so it shouldn't surprise anyone to see Rosemary babysit Damien now...! Anyone who hankers for more Hammer-type of classic horror, craves for that refined style... should be well served in June!

As with more recent films The Craft and Poltergeist (which we will see again on TLB Prime - count on it) - The Omen was plagued with bizarre incidents during its filming back in 1976... The most shocking of all (as also very Omen-like) was when Gregory Peck "canceled a flight to Israel, only for the plane he'd chartered to crash, killing all on board."
Things like that make you wonder if certain films made on certain subjects are not displeasing somebody somewhere - and no, I do not mean God either...
With taglines such as this one: Good morning. You are one day closer to the end of the world. You have been warned. - one has to expect something a tad more out of the ordinary with this sort of movies... not to be found with such run-of-the-mill fare as Ben Stiller flicks... or Jim Carrey vehicles.

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Friday, January 06, 2006

ROCKY C (hmm... what's a C's value again, in Roman Numerals?)

Today we shall examine ROCKY's Curse... no, not THAT Rocky!
Ironic too, since we are on a day where namesakes can get confused all over the place it seems; it is the birthday of King Richard... no, not THAT Richard! Not the Lionheart... who died in 1199 - and was King Richard The First. But really the second; born in 1367 and with little in common with the original! King Richard II was of England too - that's pretty much all that these two Richards have in common! Richard II was likely murdered or even starved to death in the end - NOT the kind of treatment fit for a king...! To think that he was born on this day, to a fair maiden named Joan too! She had no idea what ignominious end her son would meet ultimately. An interesting "factoid" about English kings (titled "God Save 'im" fittingly enough) says it like it is: "King of England is an awful job: Harold II copped an arrow through the eye, George III went mad and Edward V was murdered by his uncle. Nowadays there are no murders, only telephone recordings."

Before we get on Rocky's case, I would be remiss if I did not mention that, also on this date, in 1412, the Joan we all know was born too, across the English Channel onto *la terre des Francs* - Joan of Arc (Jeanne D'Arc), the French heroine and martyr who fascinates to this day.
She was not royalty - but we know how she wound up as well...!

Those are other stories, of course - onwards to Rocky! Rocky COLAVITO that is; who? If you asked yourself that, you are not from Cleveland... Rocky C here was not "sold" like Babe Ruth was - but he was traded when his demands became too much for management. And since that 1960 trade (which sent Colavito "on penance" to Detroit - where the chances for a pennant were sort of... nil!) the Cleveland Indians have never won anything of true significance... or so they say! The true curse here began not when they dumped Rocky here; but rather when they made the even bigger mistake of reacquiring him five years later! He cost too much to reacquire - and trading away two good future aces for an aging one, trying to make amends, proved to be disastrous.

The chain of events that followed seems a tad contrived - no two tragic events that befell the team since Rocky's return appear to be truly related. It all just happened to the same team over the course of thirty years... Were it to be happening to the same FAMILY, maybe then I would concur there's something to it (say, like the Kennedys. But they sort of do it to themselves too; multiplying their chances that something bad will happen by having the Kennedy women giving birth like rabbits...!). However, this is a baseball team - with, over the course of 30 years of operations, HUNDREDS of player personnel that came and went... Things are just bound to happen with so many people coming and going... and over multiple decades!

Seems to me Terry Pluto, sports columnist and writer, wanted to do his own version of the Curse of the Bambino (and Colavito rhymes with Bambino! Ahh... those hot-blooded Italian guys and their cussing...! Where are their mamas when they're needed? *lol*) - and he finally wrote the book that he wanted to write about it in 1994. One of the tragedies collected as "evidence" was the mental illness of Tony Horton, "a power hitter who couldn't handle the stress of playing in the major leagues"... Well, neither could Jim Piersall of the Red Sox - and Piersall (unlike Horton) returned to baseball after receiving treatment... this despite the fact that Piersall was on the team that took 85 years to lift its own curse! The Indians are huge crybabies with their little alleged curse not even 45 years-old yet... (About Piersall - I always resented the fact that the movie about his life was titled "Fear Strikes Out" and starred Anthony Perkins - better known and remembered as the homicidal loon Norman Bates from Psycho! Whereas Lou Gehrig - who was so ill they named a disease after him - got the flamboyant title "Pride of the Yankees" and none other than Gary Cooper to play his part! At least, in basketball, Boston has the Celtic Pride while New York has... Knickerbockers! *LOL*)

Thus, the alleged curse of Rocky Colavito is not very convincing - the most fascinating bit attached to it is actually evidence to reinforce the belief in ANOTHER CURSE ENTIRELY - tied into SPORTS ILLUSTRATED magazine! "Following a surprising 86-win season for the Indians in 1986, the cover (of Sports Illustrated) showed Indians sluggers Joe Carter and Cory Snyder, and carried the words "INDIAN UPRISING" and the sub-headline, "Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League!" The Indians lost 101 games that year, though some believe that the "curse" that led to this collapse was "The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx.""
As fascinating as these numbers are (86 in 86 - and then a collapse) this cover jinx is not very credible either - shades of the Madden Curse, and that one did not make the cut here (although I will mention it again! Eventually...)

The Madden Curse (gee - that was fast) is about video game jackets - and that makes me think of video clips; music videos that is!
Check out this link ASAP and vote for one - it will highlight the NEXT playlist here (which better not act up as much as the current one has been acting up... lately!) NEXT FRIDAY - on our new, sometimes technically-deficient (blame it on the video code suppliers!) tradition here on TLB Prime... Luminous Friday Night Videos!
Blessings - enough cursings already in this world!

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Thursday, January 05, 2006

Of Lost Causes And Cussing Over It...


Phantoms lost 1-0 to some Tigers from Bridgeport last night

And, for today's curse, we have on the menu... the Curse of Billy Penn! Not to be confused with Billy Goat - indeed. Billy Penn is really a STATUE - not even a living thing! No ordinary scapegoat this one - and even if pigeons have their way with it, it has considerable pride, evidently. No building was to exceed the height of this statue - and when a glass tower was built that dwarfed it considerably, trouble began for all major league teams based in Philadelphia! Only two minor league teams have escaped this wrath of William Penn's statue; the Philadelphia Wings (Lacrosse) and the Philadelphia Phantoms (fittingly) of the AHL...

Gee... William Penn - Billy P for short (?) - really takes the concept of idolatry of a graven image to a whole new level... Belief in this particular curse is empowering a mere chunk of metal, sculpted in the form of a long-deceased man, and attributing it with the power to change the course of events... and the destiny of would-be champions!

The facts are though that the Sixers, Eagles, Flyers and Phillies are all lost causes prone to choke at any given time - like so many other lost causes out there that, strangely enough, do rally some support... online anyway.
We can find some of the oddest petitions on the web - clamoring for more of the one-hit wonders of the past... claiming that there is some wide demand for it, when most times there is not. Everyone needs a crusade I suppose...

However, as far as Philly is concerned - no one but Allen Iverson is responsible for not carrying the Sixers to the NBA Finals. No one except Terrell Owens (hmm... all things "T.O." are going down the tubes... eh?) is responsible for dissolving any potential for greatness that the NFL's Eagles had... The Flyers' GM, Bobby Clarke, is widely known for always making the WRONG MOVES when he is attempting to "improve" his team... And the Phillies... well, the Phillies just suck consistently, year after year, season after season... One has to almost admire such consistency nowadays, in an ever-changing and thus highly-confusing world!

And, although William Penn is okay with it, the Philadelphia Phantoms would never win it all if they met the Providence Bruins in the Finals... (if such a match-up was possible - of course). A vainglorious ghost who wants his statue to tower over all is no match -as far as "patron saint protectors" go- for Divine Providence Itself - nothing is! ;)

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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Of Goats, Scapegoats And Goatees...!

Today's curse (!) - the curse of the Billy Goat! That one is really a doozy too...
That poor goat just wanted to watch the game (a game it cannot comprehend, but still - let it go) and it was denied that privilege - back in the day when tickets were affordable, of course! Nowadays, you want to see the Cubs lose, you do so from the comfort of your own home! ;)
The Billy Goat is the scapegoat for all of the Chicago Cubs' years of misery... Not a very credible scapegoat mind you (not half as much as the Bambino was to the Red Sox) but still... it's all they've got to explain such a mind-boggling long stretch of dismal results...


From one scapegoat to another; for such is the Luminous Blog's tradition - of making luminous connections... remember? And, right now, one has to think of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and one thinks of a scapegoat. In an effort to save his own hide, he is telling prosecutors and the FBI about "alleged bribes to lawmakers and their aides on issues ranging from Internet gambling to wireless phone service in the House." He was the one only who got nabbed - scapegoats have that in common with scorned women and paybacks in general... they hit you when you least expect it (that boomerang effect, eh) and they hit you HARD too.

"The full extent of the investigation is not yet known, but Justice Department officials said Tuesday they intended to make use of the trove of e-mails and other material in Abramoff's possession as part of a probe that is believed to be focusing on as many as 20 members of Congress and aides." Happy new year congressmen and congresswomen! It is starting off so well for you - at least for some of you it is... I sympathize though.

Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, head of the Justice Department's criminal division has been quoted saying that "the corruption scheme with Mr. Abramoff is very extensive and we will continue to follow it wherever it leads."
Promises, promises... Alice knows full well she will have to stop following up on that if it reaches too far, too high and into too many forms of corruption... Nice try though! Fisher... hmm... any relation to Eddie, Joely and Carrie? *lol*
Jack Abramoff ratted out on his buddies in a hell of a hurry though - I wish all dirty rats were like Jack Abramoff (instead of like, say... James Cagney? But I digress...).

And, in a totally different registry, new year often means new gear... new look... and new year's resolutions too! "On the razor’s edge, there were a few resolutions about shaving — like it should be done at least every other day unless one is attempting to grow a beard. Some folks also said they would like to see more handlebar mustaches, 1970s sideburns and really weird goatees (or at least that’s what I’d like to see)."
And, as a matter of fact, I am working on that...!
But it might just be a side-effect of being stuck on a rut, so... I'll see and keep you posted on that as it develops... and as I find out what it truly is symptomatic of! *lol*

The fact remains that, as always, I prefer to coin a name for it rather than make usage of the accepted colloquialism for it - "goatee" was never to my liking. The goat is an animal that, along with the serpent, has represented quite effectively the devil on more than one occasion. I do not want the characteristics of that clod... NEVER!
Hence, I am not growing a goatee - I am growing a "Musketeer's Beard"! Yep!
And Seventies Sideburns to match! *LOL*
Blessings! (NOT cursings!)

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Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Birthday of a Curse...


Do you believe in curses? Today is the birthday of the once (and future?) curse of the Bambino, which allegedly originated on this day in 1920 after the "sale" of Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth - who promptly transformed into super slugger Babe Ruth for his new team, the Yankees.
Since I am stuck in a rut (...) no details on that - for now...
Hence, since the rut is settling in, let's try an experiment here on TLB... The Prime Blog on the Luminous Network (!)
Let's have a survey of all the famous curses - and how to luminously counter them!
In the next 12 days, we will survey the 12 curses still active (at least twelve curses of note out there - surely - if not more! If more, we'll add them - huh?)
If that is not exactly "luminescent material" - well then... The Luminous Blog is about what's out there, in the real world (whether theoretically or factually - and, fact is, there are eerie bits of evidence to substantiate "belief" in each and every one of these curses... just check the links in the coming days; starting with today's, of course!)
And... carry on... ah, cusping? You didn't expect me to condone cussing or cursing - did you?

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Monday, January 02, 2006

Looking back at 2005...

Ringing in a new year always makes one prone to look back fondly (or... not so fondly) at the year that has just ended... The most memorable events of the past year are always the most unusual as well...
Unusual as the following were in 2005:
"An 86-year-old Charlotte, N.C., woman spent two nights in the city lockup after police said she called 911 dispatchers 20 times in a little more than 30 minutes to complain about service at a pizza parlor. Dorothy Densmore told dispatchers the shop refused to deliver a pie to her apartment. Densmore wanted the workers arrested. Instead, police arrested her."
No pizza for granny tonight...
"Kenyan councilman Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor says he offered Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage five years ago. He's still awaiting an answer."
Chelsea was flattered, I am sure...
Maybe the next method would be more impressive for Miss Clinton's taste...
"A 38-year-old Oregon man wearing a gasoline-soaked cape set himself on fire before getting down on one knee and asking his longtime girlfriend to marry him. About 100 people gathered to watch Todd Grannis perform the flaming stunt for Malissa Kusiek, who said yes."
Yes - the Toddster here really has the hots for his Malissa...
"In Muscatine, Iowa, Dean L. Wooten was fired for greeting Wal-Mart customers with a computer-generated photo in which he appeared to be naked _ except for a carefully placed Wal-Mart bag. Wooten reportedly told customers the store was cutting costs and the bag was the company's new uniform. A supervisor told him to stop showing the photo after customers complained. He was canned when he displayed the photo again."
The morale of this story: never question company policy.
"The Easter Bunny wasn't laughing this year. Bryan Johnson, who portrayed the holiday rabbit at a mall in Bay City, Mich., says he was pummeled in an unprovoked attack by a 12-year-old boy.
"He just started hitting," Johnson said. Johnson suffered a bloody nose but kept his cool because he figured it was inappropriate for the Easter Bunny to battle back."
If they did this to the Easter Bunny in 2005... I shudder at the thought of what they'll do to him (it?) in 2006... and I wouldn't want to be in Santa's shoes either... of course!

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Sunday, January 01, 2006

The Guest (s) That Wouldn't Leave...!!!

Whether they're reprehensible party animals totally out of control and out of their minds...

Whether they brought their vicious pets that immediately start threatening you in your own home... (perhaps imitating their masters or mistresses in that too...?!?)
or not...
Whether they are just plain obnoxious and a nonpareil nuisance, whichever way one looks at them...
Statistics show (!) -we are on a Sunday, are we not? TLB tradition here- that most hosts and hostesses with the mostest do not hesitate long nowadays before throwing out the culprits and other usual suspects...! Not today they don't - not anymore! Nope! Political correctness or not, no one will refrain long from letting you know exactly what they think of you or of your behaviour in this day and age... Not even the little pukes! One must watch one's step, yes. And have an ready-to-deliver excuse too... Such as, blame that "little pukes" tirade on a surfeit of eggnog! *LOL*
The point is... Don't be a party pooper or they'll poop on your parade too (rather than rain on it...!)







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