What does Norway need?

What does Norway need?An orienteering development philosophy.That's the two sentence summary of an article from OPN.If I understand the Norwegian correctly, the article makes the case that Norway has been without a philosophy or model and that at the national team level the focus changes with each coach. Anders Garderud focused on developing running speed to prepare for the WOCs in continental

Maryland Cornholin'

Apparently, Maryland now holds a Cornhole Cup & Beerfest competition every year. Will someone please explain this phenomenon to me? Because everytime I hear the word "cornhole" I snicker like Beavis and Butthead ("I am Cornholio!"). At the very least, I think they should consider changing the name, because when I hear the word "cornhole" I envision hillbillies pulling down Ned Beatty's tighty whiteys in Deliverance and...well, it's not a pretty picture. I mean, how many words have such a diverse definition, one referring to a bean-bag tossing variation on the game of horsehoes, the other referring to backdoor lovin'? The cornhole game is also known as "tailgate tossing," but since Brits call people who stroke their John Thomas "tossers," this too takes on a randy meaning!


No way I can wear this shirt!

Related Links:
Corn-hole (Online Slang Dictionary)
Cornhole (Wikipedia)
Cornhole 101

Jason Mraz - Im Yours w/ Lyrics(: Watch this vid; PLEASE!

Listen to the song and sing along.... Don't forget to have fun...

Now.. what's the message in the song? what do you think it is about?...What part of the song lyrics.. do you like the most..? Why?

Don't hesitate no more and share your comments with us all...

Keep on shining Love and Peace!
Doris3m

Wlink Unit 3 level 5

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by doris3m | Upload your own presentation

The Swiss Talent Code

Brent wrote about Swiss orienteering using a framework from The Talent Code. The Talent Code is worth a read if you're interested in performance in just about any endeavor.Back to okansas.blogspot.com.

Horrorfind Weekend in Death Valley

Horrorfind Weekend: The Spookiest Show On Earth

Horrorfind Weekend
September 25-27
Hunt Valley Marriott
www.horrorfindweekend.com

I had nothing better to do this past Sunday so I headed out to Hunt Valley (formerly known as "Death Valley" in the days before the mall got injected with steroids in the form of Wegmen's, the Regal Cinemas multiplex, and all those new retail "shoppes") for the Horrorfind Weekend horror fan convention. I'm not a horror or gore hound by any means, but I do like to check out the obscure cult, foreign and sci-fi movie bootlegs that are offer in the dealer rooms there - plus my ever-shrinking libido doesn't mind looking at the all the pale-faced tatted-and-pierced Goth babes (who are instinctively drawn to horror and gore like moths to the flame) in their Betty Page 'dos, platform heels, and form-fitting leather clothing so tight their naughty bits are almost hermetically sealed.


"Which way to the Dealer's Room?
We heard there are some pale gore hunks there!"

Of course, some lost "Simpsons Comic Book Guy" souls actually go to these events to meet and get their photos taken with washed-up celebrities like Margot Kidder (who looks like a homeless person you'd see pandhandling outside at the downtown library), Corbin Bernsen of L.A. Law (who I didn't even notice because, in my friend's spot-on description, he was "that bald guy sitting in the corner with his face buried in his Blackberry") or even scraping-the-bottom-of-the-name-recognition-barrel celebs like the Z-list actors who will forever be known as "the black guy in Ghostbusters" (for the record: his name is Ernie Hudson) or "the black guy from Night of the Living Dead (Ken Foree).


"Wait - the black guy from Ghostbusters is here?!?"

OK, I will admit this year I was kinda interested in seeing Danny Trejo - the pock-faced, tough-skinned Latino bit player who's made a career out of playing bikers, druggies and assorted badasses (not to mention "Carlos Santana" in Delta Farce!), most recent high-profiled as the star of the bogus movie "Machete" in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. I later saw "Machete" lobby cards and posters for sale in the dealer room, which makes sense because the Machete trailer spoof was so popular in Planet Terror that Rodriquez decided to make a real movie of that name starring Danny Trejo (tagline: "They fucked with the wrong Mexican!"); it's due out sometime next year.


Looking Sharp: Danny Trajo is...Machete!

Walking across the parking lot on my way in, I spied a spiffy looking black hearse. My first thought was that it was Chris X of Reptilian Records back in town from his Satanic honeymoon (he was recently married on 9-9-09 after missing out on making his vows on 6-6-06), but it was actually "Queen of Ghouls" Kim Yates of Kim's Krypt ("We'll scare the living yell out of you!") rolling uptown in style from her Dundalk domain. (By the way, her '68 Cadillac Crown Superior hearse is available for rental.)


Dundalk Representing: The Kim's Krypt Hearse


Kim's Hearse: Gettin' its full-frontal hood-on

I later saw Kim outside the dealer's room and asked her if she escaped any flooding from the September 18th broken water main deluge in Dundalk. She did, then proceeded to try and get me to buy her band's CD. Kim started out doing a Halloween-themed Haunted House but now offers family-oriented thrills for Kryptmas, Valentine's (Massacre) Day, and Friday the 13th, though no word on Yom Kippur as of yet (not a big demand for that in Dundalk I 'spose). Charismatic Kim is always "on" like a carnival pitchman, while her female "partner" Lil' Angie silently mans the merchandise table, the two as different as night and day. I gotta make a note to get down to Kim's Haunted House at the Merritt Park Shopping Center this Halloween and visit her crew, which includes her pets Boo "The Dog that Eats His Own Poo" and Spooky "The Exorcist Cat That Eats Rats." Even Alice Cooper is a fan of Kim's Krypt!



In Like Skint

I think they charge $20 to get in, but no one stopped me when I walked in - and I walked very slowly with my hand clasped around a $20 waiting for someone to greet/accost me - and, well, this Fanboy About Town has places to go and people to see! (Besides, I think the cashier chick was too busy texting away on her cell phone - today's Youth are very easily distracted).

Almost as soon as I entered the dealer's room, I ran into my Frederick, MD-based artist friend Steve Blickenstaff and his lovely wife Pingzhen, who had a table there.


The Blissful Blickenstaffs, beaming

Steve is most famous for his Good Music For Bad People album cover for The Cramps...



...but he's also done created artwork for They Might Be Giants, Thin White Rope, and even local blood-sucking surf-rockers The Atomic Mosquitos (with whom he plays theremin). Steve's wild Basil Wolverton-meets-Big Daddy Roth-&-Robert Williams-style art celebrates everything I love about monster, alien, zombie, and Pin-Up Gal kitsch.


Blickenstaff's usual suspects


Blickenstaff's art is an eyeful!


Steve's "Guitar World" illustration

Steve really knows how to market himself (it's surprising how few artists do), offering his work in every size, shape, and price range - from $1 pins and stickers to paintings in the low $$ hundreds. And accessories! Pendants (I bought a Ghoul Girl cameo for my GF), wall clocks (I bought one for the kitchen), keychains, you name it, he's got it. Check out his amazing artwork at www.stephenblickenstaff.com.

At the next table I heard what sounded like a bug zapper, but instead it was a tattoo artist inking some design on the back of a dude's leg.


Inkers were on hand to Tattoo You

There were actually two tattoo vendors in the dealer's room. That's a new trend. A bunch of inked babes in fetish gear were working the other table down the aisle. I fought the temptation.

At the Horror-101.com table I was watching a screener of the locally-produced Cannibal Holocaust spoof Isle of the Damned (available from direwitfilms.com)...



... when a voice behind me said, "You really should buy this, Tom!" Looking around it was my Facebook friend Armando Valle...in the flesh! Armando's not only a film geek, he also likes the same music as me. he filled me in on what a great show the Pet Shop Boys put on at D.C.'s Constitution Hall on a rare tour this past summer.


Professor Warner (note granny glasses) finally met his
Facebook virtual friend Armando Valle in the flesh
at the Horror-101.com booth

But the highlight of the dealer's room awaited me right across from this table, where I saw a guy selling a cornucopia of film and TV-related ID badges. As a Lost fan, I had to pony up for a couple of Dharma Initative Parking Permits...


Perfect for a VW Bus!

...and as a media maven about metropolitanland I had to grab the Jimmy Olsen Daily Planet press badge (no doubt it'll help me get into this week's Comic-Con for free, too!).


Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen press badge

The guy also had some nice Blade Runner IDs, including a "Spinner Operator's Permit" badge but I don't look enough like Harrison Ford to pull it off.


Deckard says "Come Fly With Me"

Right around the corner a guy had a great bootleg DVD table where I found Penelope Spheeris' The Decline of Western Civilization and The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years packaged together for $10.


Declines I & II: One for each ear

Though I have multiple copies of both films on video and DVD, the quality was so good I had to pick it up; it looked like it was taken directly from a laserdisc. (I just wish I hadn't been so tight-fisted and am now regretting not picking up two rare and out-of-print items, namely former Saturday Night Live writer Michael Donohue's Mr. Mike's Mondo Video 1979 TV special and Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre. Doh! Oh well, there's always Comic-Con this weekend...)


The ones that got away...

As I was walking away from this table I almost bumped into...Danny Trejo, who had just strolled in with some young babe with Pepto Bismol-pink hair.

"Danny Trejo!" I blurted, showcasing my flair for the obvious. "I loved you in that movie you made with Patricia Arquette," I blathered away. His face squinched up as he drew a blank, no doubt because, retard that I am, I was confusing Patricia Arquette with Maggie Gyllenhaal in the 2006 rehab movie Sherrybaby, in which Danny plays 12-step veteran Dean Walker (a good guy for a change!) who meets Gyllenhaal at an NA Meeting. But Danny sympathized with the mentally challenged and graciously agreed to let his pink-haired friend snap my photo standing next to him. Wow, I never realized what a little guy this badass is!


"Delicate" Danny Trejo with "Testosterone-Teeming" Tom Warner

It's funny, I had just screened The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years at the Enoch Pratt Central Library the day before and commented that I didn't know anyone who had seen Penelope Spheeris' even rarer 1998 followup The Decline of Western Civilization Part III. Well, I found a copy at another vendor's table on the other end of dealer's the room.


Decline Part III

I passed, since it featured bands I had never heard of (Litmus Green, Naked Agression, Final Conflict, The Resistance), but it was there along with the other two voumes of Spheeris' music doc trilogy. I felt like calling up my friend Paul Wegweiser and telling him about the bounty of Decline of Western Civilization DVDs (Paul has searched for the original for years!). It was right next to The Complete Howard Stern Show on Channel 9-WOR bootleg (too expensive at $70) and the Japanese live-action manga adaptation of Rapeman (too disgusting). Spying a boot of The Complete Parker Lewis Can't Lose, I had to tell the young vendor that it had finally been given an official release so he might want to pull it now.

I mosied over to the adjacent table, a vendor from Michigan for a company called Monsters Among Us (www.monstersamongus.net), who had an amazing collection of pristine laserdiscs - still the best visual medium for watching movies (even though, like LPs, you have to flip sides) - in addition to an impressive array of cult LPs (natch), monster magazines, old Playboys, and even some vintage copies of Movie Club, the local movie mag produced between 1993 and 1997 by Baltimore's late great B-movie king Don Dohler. (Blood, Boobs & Beast, a documentary about Dohler that premiered at the 2007 Maryland Film Festival, is now available for purchase on Amazon.com.)


Don Dohler's legacy was in da house!

Right next door to this guy's table I saw a painted-by-numbers Hipster Doofus (well-trimmed goutee, Colonel Sanders glasses, Sinatra fedora, racetrack shirt hanging over his beer belly) holding an expensive mini-digital camcorder and interviewing some artist's crotch. "So, Mr. [name]'s crotch, tell us about your art, blah blah blah." How utterly fascinating!


Hipster paparazzi, representin'

God, there but for the grace of Atomic TV go I, I thought. This schmuck took glib to levels even I hadn't descended. The guy he was interviewing actually had some cool t-shirts for sale. I liked the one of Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer Tower with a bunch of guns jutting out of it. Since I recently read about a Hopkins student who killed a burglar with a samurai sword, I expect an update in next year's tee.

Harm City, representing, horror/gore-style!

A bit of a peek at Christmas. A bit of changing up and adding to...
in my petite work space. ~
Christmas 2009 :)

HO*HO*HO

Hugs,
Mary

A bit of a peek at Christmas. A bit of changing up and adding to...
in my petite work space. ~
Christmas 2009 :)

HO*HO*HO

Hugs,
Mary

Bums

Anyone who works downtown can appreciate Peter Bagge's take on this bi-coastal phenomena that was originally published in the April 2007 ish of Reason magazine (and also included in his Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me Fantagraphic Books collection). Bagge's observations about Seattle's homeless ring just as true for Baltimore - or any major metropolitan area, for that matter; far from a rant, his panels offer some quite cogent facts about the people and the problem.


Bums page 1


Bums page 2


Bums page 3


Bums page 4

The point that really resonated with me, was "...there are so many charities and agencies that are ready and eager to help that it' almost impossible for anyone to go hungry in the U.S. these days..." In the one-block radius around where I work there are three churches, two Catholic charity organizations, and a soup kitchen offering services to the homeless, including rides to shelters; so when I'm stopped on the street and asked for money, I always question what it's for. Naturally, the cynical side of me suspects it's for some "vice" (e.g., cigarettes, alcohol, drugs); in other words, a short-term fix to a long-term problem. Plus some of these people are downright rude, turning what should be a plea for a hand-out into something that borders on a shakedown (one guy made me spill my coffee when he leaped in front of me to bark "Yo - 50 cents!"; I didn't know if it was a request or a statement). Thus I could totally relate to Bagge's description of his 10-block to work being "choked with crazy street people..." that "...all seemed to have an exaggerated sense of entitlement, putting on loud air guitar concerts while practically demanding change from passers-by..."

But Bagge does understand that most of these people suffer from one or more mental illnesses, which is a shame...but again, there are agencies to help the people who want help all around these areas. And stopping people walking to work and asking for hand-outs only gets local businesses to enlist the aid of law enforcement or security personnel to hassle these people and tell them not to loiter around their businesses or institutions, giving the poor souls already burdened with enough problems additional bad press and resentment.

QR track from yesterday's trail race

I ran a 5K-ish trail race yesterday at Clinton State Park. The race began at "campground 1" and headed east from the start. I carried the orienteering map, keeping track of where I was and glancing around now and then. Not much to say about my race. I kept a decent effort, but wasn't moving as fast as I'd have liked.I liked the course. For the most part the trail was fast. A few spots had a

My main squeeze

Medically speaking, is Dr. Edward Schettino at VCA Westboro. He's smart, patient, explains everything and has a great sense of humor, which often is necessary during my frequent visits! I love, love, love him. I also really like Larissa and Tania and everyone else there, who all think I am both handsome and adorable. They don't seem to mind my stubborn streak at all. In fact, I love everything about VCA, especially leaving. That's when I head over next door to Especially for Pets for a bone, which Mom hopes will entice me into the wayback of the wagon.

I really think I'm getting too old for the wayback. First, I can't open my own window. Second, because of the pet "barrier" (the word must be used loosely, just as in the "squirrel-proof" bird feeder outside the kitchen window) the options for curling up in a cushy corner are nil. Major bummer. It's a long drive back and forth, and a hard-charging pup like me needs his rest.

Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me

and Other Astute Observations


Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations
A Decade's Worth of Cartoon Reporting for Reason Magazine
by Peter Bagge
112 pages, Fantagraphic Books (2009)
peterbagge@earthlink.net

I've loved Peter Bagge ever since I started reading his Buddy Bradley and Hate comics back in the Nineties when Seattle's hipster grunge scene was reigning supreme. Post-Hate, Bagge dropped below the radar for a while, had kids, and became a libertarian ("the other 'L' word" in his words). But regardless of his politics or life situation, Bagge has always maintained a critical eye for pretentiousness and pomposity - whether it be from the left or the right - as this collection of comic rants from his Noughties stint at Reason magazine ("the magazine of free minds and free markets") makes clear.

The book is organzied into thematic chapters of comtemporary American stupidity - Stupid Sex, Stupid War, Stupid Business, Stupid Arts, Stupid Politics, Stupid Tragedy, Stupid Boondoggles - culminating in "Our Stupid America." Bagge is even-handed enough to follow-up a dig at war protesters (with whom he sympathizes in idealogy if not execution) with an even harsher lambasting of pro-war zealots, and he even takes his libertarian chums to task - including his beloved Ron Paul ("In Search of the Perfect Human Being") - but what struck me most was his take-down of modern art and artists in "'Real' 'Art'" (Reason magazine, August/September 2004). They already made a movie out of Daniel Clowes' lampooning strip "Art School Confidential" but had Terry Zwigoff elected to make a documentary instead of a narrative film, he might well have used Bagge's cruel observations as source material. Brilliant stuff. I'm sure the old school folks at Baltimore's Schuler School of Fine Arts would be proud!


Real Art, page 1


Real Art, page 2


Real Art, page 3


Real Art, page 4

Proud to Be Indonesian

Melihat blog ini ada perasaan bersalah,

Kayak seorang ibu yang beranak tapi engga ngurus anaknya, engga ngasih makan, engga ngerawat, engga mandiin..dibiarin berbulan-bulan ngurus sendiri.

Gue engga posting selama 2 bulan, huahhh waktu yang panjang buat seseorang numbuhin jenggot. Sampe paman Google yang semula udah berbaik hati akhirnya marah, PR saya dari 2 melorot engga tau asal muasalnya.

Tapi, kata seperti kata SO7, yang lalu biarlah berlalu. Kalo rajin posting pasti balik lagi.. I hope so

Sekarang Gue mau ngomongin soal sinetron gaya Malingsia yang akhir-akhir ini banyak banget ditayangkan. Setelah tragedy Manohara, banyak yang pengin membuat sinetron dengan aliran yang sama.

Kaya film Pretty Woman, yang akhirnya mengilhami ABG buat kawin muda sama pangeran kaya, diperkosa, disilet-silet melarikan diri trus ceritanya disinetronkan. Untung gue engga terilhami..gue hanya terilhami bagaimana menulis scenario sinetron Manohara menjadi Sinetron genre horror berjudul Susuk Manohara.

Kaya sinetron, Tangisan Issabela, Issabella dan yang terakhir Jiran. Semua bersetting Malingsia.

Sinetron ini berjudul "JARAN" eh "JIRAN"

Yang jadi Isabella si Jamal Mirdad Lho!!

Ini lagi..nangis mlulu, gak tahu apa beras mahal!!

Kenapa sih harus ber Malingsia? Udah ngomongnya belibet, lagian apa engga inget apa yang dilakukan Malingsia terhadap Negara kita?

Mengimpor budaya Indonesia kaya Reog, Rendang, Angklung terakhir tari Pendet ke Negaranya tapi sebagai balesannya malah mengeksor teroris macam Nurdin M Top ke Indonesia.

Mbok ya ngebuat sinetron itu yang bergaya Indonesia Indonesia aja. Yang bermutu, yang bagus. Masih banyak Topik kok yang bisa dibuat cerita. Make that to be different gitu lho..

Kalo boleh gue pengin acungi jempol buat produser yang berani memproduksi, Kabayan, Para Pencari Tuhan, Lorong Waktu dan sinetron Indonesia lainnya yang bersahaja, namun sarat makna.

Walaupun sejelek apapun Indonesia

Seburuk apapun Indonesia

Sebobrok apapun Indonesia

I am Proud to be Indonesian…

Dan buat sinetron Malingsia yang begituan, I SAY : NO WAY

The Long Goodbye

directed by Robert Altman
MGM, 1973, 112 minutes
Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Henry Gibson, Mark Rydell

It's Fall, my favorite season and the time of year when I revisit the things I love most...like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. Spying a new edition of Chandler's best, most mature work The Long Goodbye (1953) at Daedalus Books & Music, I quickly devoured it. It was one of the few Marlowe novels that wasn't pieced together from short stories Chandler had previously published in pulp magazines (a cherry-picking technique he called "cannibalizing" his own narratives).


Chandler's late great masterpiece

The following week at Daedalus, I saw the DVD reissue of Robert Altman's 1973 adaptation of The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould at the height of his anti-Establishment, anti-hero popularity (Little Murders, Getting Straight, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, M*A*S*H), and picked it up, remembering only that I liked it when I saw it some 20 years ago. It's a command performance, Elliott's favorite in fact, but with Chandler's rich prose still fresh in my mind from reading The Long Goodbye, I was somewhat irked at the liberties taken with the source material.

Style Over Narrative

Then I realized that Altman, like Chandler, was always someone more interested in style - and especially language and characterization - over narrative. For his part, Chandler even admitted as much when, during the filming of The Big Sleep (1946), a confused Howard Hawks (besieged by his head-scratching script-writers William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett) contacted Chandler to ask who exactly killed whom and the author famously replied that he himself wasn't sure! Likewise, Altman was only attracted to the script of The Long Goodbye when he was given the assurance that he could cast Elliott Gould as Marlowe and that he could tack on his own, anti-hero ending. So, purists beware, if you want adherence to Chandler's novels and dialogue, watch Bogie in Hawks' The Big Sleep or Dick Powell in Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944). (Interestingly enough, The Long Goodbye and Hawks' The Big Sleep shared the same scriptwriter, Leigh Brackett - though she passed away before Altman's film was released in 1973).

And Altman, who wasn't interested at all in faithful adaptations of someone's else's work, was more interested in the idea of what it would be like for an Old School '30s and '40s-era hard-boiled romantic like Philip Marlowe (for that's what Chandler considered him and Marlowe even describes himself in The Long Goodbye as "a romantic...I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what's the matter") to be placed into the middle of the sexually liberated, New Agey hippie landscape of 1970s Southern California. In fact, "Rip Van Marlowe" was his working title for The Long Goodbye. And he gave Gould, like all the actors he worked with in his career, free reign as far as improvisation. "I make them do the work...do what they're trained to do, to act," he said.

So after Elliott Gould has been finger-printed at the police station and wipes the ink all over his face while doing a blackface impression of Al Jolsen, it's a total ad-lib. Gould's Marlowe is an update for sure, but his sarcasm and attitude are firmly in the Marlowe tradition of the '30s and '40s. But even in his day, Chandler considered his P.I. a throwback, a "man out of time" who is out of synch with the values surrounding him - or in Chandler's words, "this strange and corrupt world we live in." "Nobody understands me," Marlowe tells Mrs. Loring in The Long Goodbye. "I'm enigmatic." Another character in the novel, the Latino thug Mendy Mendez, seems to sense this too when he refers to Marlowe as "Tarzan on a big red scooter" - that is, someone out of his element, stubbornly clinging to his archaic vine (and values) in a mechanized modern age.

And the rest of the casting is inspired as well, with Nina Van Pallandt as the blue-eyed ice-princess wife Eileen Wade, Sterling Hayden as madcap alcoholic writer Roger Wade (a second, but excellent, choice following the death of Altman's good friend Dan Blocker), the menacingly meek Henry Gibson as the quack Dr. Verringer, and former Major League Baseball pitcher (and Ball Four bad boy author) Jim Bouton (great '70s Jiffy-Pop bouffant!) as Terry Lennox. But Altman's most brilliant casting coup was signing Mark Rydell to portray the loony sociopathic Jewish mobster Marty Augustine (this character was a complete Altman-Brackett invention, standing in for and expanding the novel's Hispanic gangster Mendy Mendez). I love Rydell's first encounter with Gould when he tells him he "should be keeping shabbos" instead of wasting his time with a schmuck like him. And, of course, the scene in which he and his thugs take their clothes off - while attempting to force Marlowe to - so that no one has anything to hide behind in their interrogation (a scene also featuring a non-speaking but pectoral-flexing, cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger as a bodyguard!). I wonder if Gould's quip in this scene - after Rydell says he used to be self-conscious about taking his clothes off because he didn't get his first pubic hair until 15 - about how Marty must have felt like one of the Three Little Pigs, was also an ad-lib. Hilarious scene and vintage Altman.



And speaking of traditions, the Hollywood studios have a long one of mis-marketing their releases. The Long Goodbye was no different. When the film opened in Los Angeles and Chicago, the original poster for the film showed Gould holding a gun and looking like a classic Bogart-era gumshoe with the tagline "Nothing says goodbye like a bullet." It was an anachronistic pitch to a genre (and audience) that just wasn't happening in the post-Easy Rider 1970s American cinema.

Another poster showed Gould with a cat on his shoulder and cat food in his hand, a gun sticking out of his pants and a ciggie stub sticking out of his mouth, and Nina Van Pallandt walking her dog in a doorway. The tagline was "I have two friends in the world. One is a cat. The other one is a murderer." This tough guy neo-noir pitch tanked with audiences as well.


The cats, dogs, gats and blondes poster

Altman complained about the posters and the producers came up with the idea of getting Mad magazine's legendary cartoonist Jack Davis to come up with a hipper poster. One that reflected the irreverent, sarcastic "no heroes" spirit that Elliott has mastered in th early '70s. The result, shown below, was used for the film's New York release where, suddenly, the film "killed," in Altman's words.


Jack Davis' poster for "The Long Goodbye"
ensured its cult status

"We did great box office but by then it was too late." And so The Long Goodbye missed out on being a commercial success but gained its long-running status as a cult film in the process. Thank you, Jack Davis!