Crystal Fun With Iagree

Crystal Power is a great source of Crystal Power — just ask any boy who grew up in the 1930s and listened all night to radio beams coming into his own “cat’s whisker” crystal set! And do not be afraid of Crystals. We know it is mostly a girl’s name, but it is also a boy’s name if you are Billy Crystal, say. All, all can partake of the Power of the Crystal.

Here is how: Get a Crystal. That is all there is to it.

Errata — Liberal Fascism is NOT a Novel

OOPS! Iagree made a little mistake earlier in our review of Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism. We called it a “novel.” We should have read it first, or read other reviews. It’s actually a serious book about history and politics and stuff. Way over our head since we tend to think holistically, not concretely, bogged down in lots of ‘facts” and “details.”

Also, Liberal Fascism has abolutely nothing to do with Danny Kaye. That was just a beautiful dream on our part. But we will never, never stop dreaming. When your dreams die, so does your spirit, and when your spirit dies, so does your oomph. Iagree’s oomph is going strong.

Iagree does not regret its error. We see being wrong as being right in a higher way. You learn, you move on. And Iagree takes back nothing we wrote about On the Double. We only wish all films were so filled with song and laughter. Danny Kaye dances in his long-johns! What more could you ask for?

As for Liberal Fascism, what is the verdict? Well, the few pages I read before my mind began expanding to encompass the universe were very interesting. Iagreetotally agrees totally!

Iagree’s Ten Best Movies September 2008

Soon it will no longer be September 2008. September 2008 will always be September 2008. But not it.

And so it is we must hurry to crown the TEN BEST FILMS OF SEPTEMBER 2008. To that end Iagreetotally has selected the TEN BEST FILMS OF SEPTEMBER 2008 and entered them in a list. Here, without further preamble is the Iagree list of the TEN BEST FILMS OF SEPTEMBER 2008.

TEN BEST FILMS OF SEPTEMBER 2008

1. First. Disaster Movie
2. Secon. College
3. Third. Dinosaurs Alive!
4. 4th. Bottle Shock
5. 5th. I Served the King of England
6. 6. Righteous Kill
7. 7th. House bunny
8. Eighth: Sukiyaki Western Django
9. 9th – The Women
10. A tie for Tenth Place! It’s a tie! = Death Race and Dark Knight.

Now you know why we were in such a hurry!

Iagree’s Lil Book Nook: Liberal Fascism

Jonah Goldberg’s latest novel, Liberal Fascism, does the impossible: It is both funny and humorous at the same time!

The “mistaken identity comedy” is at least as old as Plautus’ Menaechmi and as American as Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. But Goldberg gives it a new twist. Set loosely in the period between the Boer War and the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, Liberal Fascism recounts the misadventures of the hapless president Woodrow Wilson who is sent by a bureaucratic snafu to Germany where he has been ordered to asssassinate rising Nazi star, Adolph Hitler. The plan begins to go awry when the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels notices Woodrow’s uncanny resemblance to “der Führer” and coerces him to act as Hitler’s “double” as a ploy to frustrate would-be assassins. Hoo-boy! Will Woody have to assassinate himself?

Things really go wrong when both Woodrow/Adolph and a young aparatchik, Nikita Krushchev, fall for the same Dietrich-like chanteuse. Love may be in the air, but so is the Luftwaffe — and it’s no Bliss-krieg for poor Woody!

Some critics have carped about the novel’s being too “derivative.” Well, what of it? Does Liberal Fascism owe something to the immortal Danny Kaye farce On the Double? Certainly! But what post-1961 comic novel does not?

Iagree in the Book Nook: Sartor Resartus

Thomas Carlyle, that Favorite Son of Craigenputtock, burst on the scene like a comet in 1831 with the publication of… hold on a second. Do comets burst? Now that I think about it, that doesn’t seem right. “Burst.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think what a comet likes to do is to streak through the night flashing its glittery tail. These are certainly not actions I would ascribe to Mr. Carlyle, as staid a Scot as you could ask for.

Anyhow, Thomas Carlyle burst on the scene in 1831, like a… a… Tropical Fruit Flavored Starburst with the publication of Sartor Resartus, his satire of German philosophy. I think it’s meant to be funny, but if you were born after 1870 you may not “get” any of the jokes. I sure as heck didn’t.

Basically, he starts out bummed. He calls it “The Everlasting No.” (das ewige Nein) Everything gives him a pain in the neck and all he does is thrash. After a while he calms down a bit, becoming sort of listless. He calls this condition “The Center of Indifference.” Ho-hum, he says. Finally, after a bracing “Annihilation of Self” (Selbst-todtung), he gets the Yippies good. He cheers up a lot – even alarmingly — because he has figured out “The Everlasting Yay!” Here’s how Mr. Carlyle puts it:

On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YAY, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.

Ha ha! I guess that is kind of funny in a Fallen-Away-Calvinist sort of way. No wonder Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower kept a copy of Sartor Resartus on him throughout his command of the ETO in the forties. Amid all that destruction and death, he surely needed a good laugh.

Iagree in the Book Nook: Virginibus Puerisque

Robert Louis Stevenson’s latest collection of essays, Virginibus Puerisque, makes me want to zip around like a crazed ferret.

The title is an allusion to Horace. Not Horace the Horse, an early Disney cartoon character, but Mr. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the Roman Odist. In Ode 3.1, Horace says:

Carmina non prius
audita Musarum sacerdos
virginibus puerisque canto.

In English: “I, a priest of the Muse, sing songs never heard before to the Maids and Boys.”

Here is Stevenson on growing up, something he knew about since he spent most of his life doing it:

A child who had been remarkably fond of toys (and in particular of lead soldiers) found himself growing to the level of acknowledged boyhood without any abatement of this childish taste. He was thirteen; already he had been taunted for dallying overlong about the playbox; he had to blush if he was found among his lead soldiers; the shades of the prison-house were closing about him with a vengeance. There is nothing more difficult than to put the thoughts of children into the language of their elders; but this is the effect of his meditations at this juncture: “Plainly,” he said, “I must give up my playthings, in the meanwhile, since I am not in a position to secure myself against idle jeers. At the same time, I am sure that playthings are the very pick of life; all people give them up out of the same pusillanimous respect for those who are a little older; and if they do not return to them as soon as they can, it is only because they grow stupid and forget. I shall be wiser; I shall conform for a little to the ways of their foolish world; but so soon as I have made enough money, I shall retire and shut myself up among my playthings until the day I die.” Nay, as he was passing in the train along the Esterel mountains between Cannes and Frejus, he remarked a pretty house in an orange garden at the angle of a bay, and decided that this should be his Happy Valley. Astrea Redux; childhood was to come again! The idea has an air of simple nobility to me, not unworthy of Cincinnatus. And yet, as the reader has probably anticipated, it is never likely to be carried into effect. There was a worm i’ the bud, a fatal error in the premises. Childhood must pass away, and then youth, as surely as age approaches. The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances. To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbour.

Who, you may ask, is Cincinnatus?

Ten Best Movies of 1939

There were ten best movies in the year 1939. These are ten of them. Okay, without further ado here is the Iagreetotally list of The Ten Best Movies of 1939:

The Ten Best Movies of 1939

1. First of all: Charlie Chan in Reno
2. Numer 2: Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
3. Third: Alfalfa’s Aunt
4. 5: Blondie Takes a Vacation
5. 6: Blondie Brings Up Baby
6. 7: the house of the baskervilles
7. 10:  The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex
8. Oops: 9: Someday over the Rainbow, and finally:
9. Finally: 10: Rick’s Cafe
   

that is the opinion of Iagreetotally. How much do you agree? A lot? A great deal? Very much? Iagreetotally wants to know! Tell someone who will tell someone who will tell someone who will tell someone who will tell Iagree.

Update: Oh, geez, I almost forgot: NUMBER TEN: Young Mister Lincoln.

Big Medicine

If you were so unwise as to follow my recommendations for Best Movies of 1902 and you actually viewed one of Georges Méliès dreadful movies, well, Iagretotally bets you don’t feel so hot right about now! Ha ha! Disgusting, aren’t they? Didn’t you get that I was kidding?? Ha ha ha.

Well, don’t be too cross with Iagree. I’ll fix you up, pronto. Here is just what the medicine man ordered to raise your flagging spirits: a Kickapoo Healing Stick. Yessir, that most certainly is a jawbone holding the little stone. And what’s more: the stone is guaranteed!

The Ten Best Movies of 1902

Let us look back at some of the best movies of 1902 — but I do not mean that literally, of course; if we were to actually look back we would see only the projectionist. I mean, let us recall some our favorite films from 1902. Here are The Ten Best Movies of 1902:

The Ten Best Movies of 1902 and 1903

1. Numbre 1: Le diable géant ou Le miracle de la Madone
2. Numbre 2: Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show
3. Three: Voyage dans la Lune
4. 4: Jack and the Beanstalk
5. 5. The Life of an American Fireman
6. 6. The Great Train Robbery
7. Numbre 7: The Gay Shoe Clerk
8. Nubber 8: L’homme à la tête de caoutchouc
9. Nine: The Enchanted Well
10. And finally: Numbbr ten: The Infernal Cakewalk

The Sharks Are Gonna Get It Tonight

Do you feel sluggish? Do you feel like Sluggo? Do you feel waspish or catty or vengeful? Would you rather feel some other way? Perhaps languid or foppish?

Try shark cartilage.

You may not agree with me — an impossibility — but sharks are much better than whales. Whale oil was fine in its time, but these days it’s a whole new ball game. Moby Dick is so nineteenth century. Shark cartilage plus rhino horn — now there’s your potion. A word to the wise, lil buddy; and YOU are the wise.