High Anxiety 1977 Review

Not as good as Silent Movie and Blazing Saddles, but better than Young Frankenstein. Some scenes feel like they are trying too hard to set up a joke, but others show Mel Brook's mad imagination at its best.

The early part in the Asylum was probably the weakest part. The dog man scene and the S&M scene were low points especially for my parents who were also watching.

The conference scene where Mel Brooks is forced to use kiddy versions of the names of reproductive anatomy was very good. The Birds parody with the Pidgeons was pretty good also. The shower scene that parodied Psycho was let down a bit by the bell boy’s overacting, but the concept was pretty good. The "braces" killer was a bit too gross. We really did reach peak sexual innuendo in the 1970s.

The climax was dramatic. The camera pulling out and hitting the window was a genius touch. Mel Brooks has a thing for unusual endings.

7.5/10

Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange. Tale 3 Sub-Tale 4 "Tale of the Paralytic" Review.

Currently reading "Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange", a medieval Arab story collection.

Most of the stories so far have been tales of "misfortune" in which we witness horrible things happen to our protagonist.

The latest story (the fourth sub story of "The Tale of the Six Men) is just as awful as the others.

I have chunked the story into groups of 3 paragraphs.
Because the paragraphs are very long, and there are no scene or sub-chapter breaks while reading, these stories can be hard to read. Especially in one sitting.

Here is an example of how I am approaching these stories now:

4.       The paralytic (3 paragraph chunks). The most entertaining story so far, but pointless like the others.

4.1.     An old woman promises the mc a hot babe if he follows her and does what he’s told. He is not to disagree with this hot woman he is about to meet. He goes to beautiful house. Hot babe seems to like him.

4.2.    The hot girl shows her bad side. She pelts mc with cushions. The girl enjoys amusements and novelties.  Mc almost loses patience. Girl promises he will get what he wants if he obeys her. He agrees to hang on for now.

4.3.    MC’s eyebrows are dyed and his moustache plucked by the girl and her girl friends. He is humiliated his bear is next. Still he holds out. Girl says he has won her with his good nature.

4.4.    Girl tells mc to chase her from room to room until he is fully aroused. He thinks he’s finally gonna have sex. Unfortunately he falls through the floor to the tanner’s market during the chase. He is found by police. 100 lashes. Expelled from the city. Poor guy.

The story was approximately 4 pages long in small print.

I give the story a B-

This one was sometimes amusing, and not just a list of horrors.

A New Reading Momentum Tool

Today I created a new tool for keeping track of reading momentum.

Method: stick a paper arrow around  magnetic bookmark with bluetack. On the paper arrow, I write today's date and page number (on the back), and make a mark for every chapter (or if my motivation is really bad: every page) I manage to finish.

This idea was inspired by this reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/4xeewl/i_finaly_did_it_i_have_rewatched_all_pok%C3%A9mon/

The fact that someone managed to watch over 900 episodes of Pokemon in 8 months is mind boggling to me. I believe this person's success, is in part to keeping a log of progress.

Goodreads of course has an app and a progress tracking function on their site. Unfortunately I don't have a working smartphone, and I have a thing for attacking paper with a pencil at every opportunity lately.