The Tallulah Trilogy!

NOT the actual cover. Just a mock-up.

Sorry to be days late. I thought Flogger, or at least Little Dougie, would have had this post up on time, but nooooo. I had a celebratory eggnog on Christmas Eve, and woke up ten minutes ago. No book flogging up. Typical!

So my big news is out. Coming late this spring is the publication of the next volume of my memoirs, Tallyho Talulah. This is the biggest publication news of 2012, that and for Halloween, the final volume of The Tallulah Trilogy: My Gruesome Life, will also become available for your eBook readers and Print-on-Demand hard copies.

Of course, credit-hog Little Dougie is listed as the "author." I must start looking at my contracts sober, if I could only figure out when? Readers of my earlier memoir, My Lush Life, will recall that one chapter titled "The Seventies" was but a single blank page. This is because I can't remember anything from 1969 to 1980. I'm told this is common. Well Little Dougie was poking around in my attic one day, and he found a typed manuscript of a memoir I dictated into a tape recorder for a personal assistant to type up each day, of my adventures in the California beachside town of Alta Caca, CA, in the summer of 1974. Reading it, the story was as new to me as it will be to you.

I had gone to Alta Caca to star in a summer-musical theater production of a new musical based on a classic Bette Davis-Joan Crawford movie. I was also teaching a master class in acting for virile teenage boys. While I was there, stuff happened, and there were shenanigans. I made friends and enemies, I had sex, and also got married to yet another husband (at the same time!), I had adventures, and I drank rather a lot. I met some sweet surfers who "hung ten" at sea and on land, I met a very unhappy music man whose wife disappeared mid-summer, and I had some magnificent martinis. It was so lovely there, even the Headless Indian Brave, fell in love.

And, as it turned out, Little Dougie found out that my visit had implications beyond anything I knew. He interviewed the other survivors of that summer - those that can hear my name mentioned without SCREAMING! - and has enlarged the narrative beyond what I remembered, which is easy, because I remember none of this. Tallyho Tallulah will be the best beach read you'll ever get greasy with suntan oil. [Note. The above cover is just to give you the idea. This will not be the cover design. However, the cover of My Gruesome Life below is final.]

This IS the final cover for this book for Halloween.

Little Dougie has a second book coming for Halloween, which completes what he cheekily calls The Tallulah Trilogy, his epic comic novel/movie star memoir, My Gruesome Life.

Let me be clear, My Gruesome Life is not about me. But you may want to read it anyway. Oh, I am in it. They want people to buy it after all; but I merely make cameo appearances in the mid-sections, where I steal the narrative from everyone, upstage the main characters shamelessly, and of course, have yet another new husband unmentioned in My Lush Life or Tallyho Tallulah. I never can keep track of how many husbands I've had, not even when I limit it to just my own husbands.

My Gruesome Life is the autobiography of Guy Thanatos, the famous horror movie icon known as "The Man Who Gave Evil a Bad Name" when he ruled the horror screen along with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Sir Christopher Lee back in the 1960s. Dougie spent months in 2004, sitting in Maison D'Thanatos, Guy's mountaintop lair/movie star mansion, listening as Guy told Dougie his amazing, terrifying, hilarious life. Think "I, Claudius" set in Hollywood in the 1960s, told as a Vincent Price black comedy of murders. Or think Kind Hearts and Guillotines. It's either the scariest comic novel ever written, or else the funniest horror novel you'll ever read.

I know Guy Thanatos terribly well. I was in his very first movie when he arrived in Hollywood in 1939, East vs West. Later we appeared together in one of his 60s mad scientist/monster movies (He played The Scientist, I had the other main role), Doctor Scary, while I was romancing Al Steele. Guy is mentioned a couple times in My Lush Life, but here he takes center stage. It's a lot of fun, in a sick twisted way of course. So 2012 is the year of Little Dougie in bookstores and online. Exact release dates will be announced here when I have them. The Tallulah Trilogy shall sooon be complete.  What awaits? Tallulah Morehead and the Deathly Complexion?

Now for some bits and stray random thoughts from lately.

Nothing says "Christmas Cheer" like Christmas at The Addams House.

Hilarious. Comedy Central re-ran the Charlie Sheen Roast on Christmas Eve. You can not get into a more cheery holiday mood than watching z-list comics and the comedy genius that is Mike Tyson making obscene insults to the king of hookers and blow. I'm all teary just thinking about it.

Mel Gibson's days of worrying that gay guys are mentally undressing him are all over. These days, gay men mentally dress him.

Hey, all you masochistic, anti-Semitic ladies out there, Mel Gibson is back on the market. Hubba! Hubba!

This picture of Paul Newman is just to cleanse your mental palette of the photo of Mel above.

This just in: Kim Jong Il has officially changed his name to Kim Jong Dead. He's not Il anymore.

In a Huffington Post article by the screenwriter of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the author wrote: "[The director] told me that world should have the color of an old man's foreskin. I haven't actually seen an old man's foreskin, but I took the point."

Since old men's foreskins is not on my menu very often, I asked Little Dougie about this quote. He replied: "WHAT point? I see an old man's foreskin every time I go to the bathroom or change my clothes, and trust me, it's the exact same color it was 60 years ago."

I didn't dare ask him what color that was.



Now shooting his third James Bond movie, Daniel Craig has a firm grasp on his most-important part.

Well, after being a best-seller you were told you were out-of-touch for not reading, and a Swedish movie everyone but me seemed to have seen, now THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is an English-language movie, with James Bond added to sweeten the appeal (They call him something else), opened in wide release for the holiday, and it has finally bombed at last. Who knew that millions of Americans don't find graphic anal rape to be their idea of Christmas Day moviegoing fare? What wet blankets! (I guess Dickens was right to cut the scene from his first-draft wherein Scrooge anally-raped Tiny Tim, as "perhaps a tad too much." It would have exhausted him on the reading tours.)


Actual headline in US Weekly: "'At Last' Singer Etta James is Terminally Ill." Gee, I'm - ah - "glad"? - they're so happy about it. Sorry if she kept you waiting. Some of us were sad about it.

Ew, or, as he's known at Disneyland, "Captain Ew."

Speaking of creepy Santas...John Waters!

“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them!”

— John Waters

That said, though I have lots of books, a few of them by John Waters, I definitely do not want to have sex with John Waters. (Even I have some standards- well, a few - well, one.) So I guess if John ever comes over, I'll have to hide all my books. That'll take some doing. (I love you, John, just not that way. There had to be somebody, and it turned out to be you.)

THE HORROR OF LAUREL & HARDY! #1. Stan & Ollie at The Bates Motel.

I was watching an old Laurel & Hardy  short (The only kind there are. Stan & Ollie simply refuse to do a reunion tour!) the other night, titled The Laurel & Hardy Murder Case. At the climax, Stan & Ollie were trapped late at night in this old dark house, and this crazy old lady attacks them with that nasty knife. As Stan tries to fight her off, he accidentally knocks "her" wig off, and it's a crazy old man in drag who is attacking them! Who knew Sir Alfred Hitchcock ripped off Psycho from Laurel & Hardy?

THE HORROR OF LAUREL & HARDY! #2 Laurel & Hardy Meet Frankenstein.

 
No, Laurel & Hardy never "met" Frankenstein, much as I would have enjoyed that. Boris Karloff is here menacing them in their prison picture, Pardon Us, where he played "The Tiger." (I assume "The Tiger" is a renegade Time Lord.) The thing is, Karloff is only in the French language version. Walter Long plays The Tiger in the English language version. I guess The Tiger regenerated. See? I told you. Time Lord.

Charles Gemora, out of make-up.

 
Governor Gleep of Mars has decided to throw his space helmet into the Republican presidential ring. His problem is he's been known for years to have trouble keeping his suction cups off of his female employees. And then there's the human woman he's been taking to Mars for long weekends. He says there was no sex, and since Martians have no penises, he may be right, but then, what were they doing? Plotting the conquest of earth?

But Governor Gleep did turn the Martian economy to dust. Look at the lifeless desert that is Mars today: Reaganomics taken all the way. Gov. Gleep's tax plan? "3 - 3 - 3"

And he's better than Blagojevich.

The Martians break up the Occupy Earth protests.

"It's Class Warfare," scream our alien overlords! They have a new designation for Earthlings: "Illegal Non-Aliens." They're clearing out Arizona first, so no one cares.

Vanessa Redgrave knows how to give Jesus a REALLY happy birthday!

Ken Russell, aka "Mr. Restrained," passed away a short time ago. He's now trying to talk his way out of having directed The Devils to St. Peter.

"Are we there yet?"

 
Worst Episode of The Love Boat Ever!

Click on this image. Trust me.

How I detest Hollywood sham! I just learned that the baby who plays Baby Harry Potter in the flashbacks in HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS is A DIFFERENT BABY than the one who played Baby Harry Potter in the opening scenes of HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCEROR'S STONE 10 years ago! Why? Wasn't he good enough? Are we just supposed to ignore this blatant change of tiny children? This is worse than when they changed Darrins! They didn't even bother to pretend Baby Harry Potter had had baby plastic surgery! How do you think this makes Daniel Radcliffe feel, knowing he could be replaced by a new baby at any moment, as is happening to him right now on Broadway!

When they changed Dumbledores, they had an excuse; Richard Harris was dead. Good lord! Is that it? Did the original Baby Harry Potter DIE??? I can think of no other reason. What's next? Using fake alcohol in drinking scenes? SIMULATED sex in love scenes? I am an ARTIST! Give me real booze and a real penis, and I'll give you Art - eventually! And Art will be smiling.

Is this the impostor? Or is it the other one?

This is when Christmas was Christmas!

Nothing says "Christmas" to me as much as cigarette ads with Santa smoking. These ads were products of what Tom Brokaw relentlessly calls "The Greatest Generation." (The date on this ad is "December 15, 1951," Little Dougie's second Christmas.) Yes, the best people ever, and they used Santa Claus to sell smoking to kids. (Thanks to Samurai Frog for finding this gem.)


"Let a carton of Pall Malls say 'Merry Christmas' for you." (And what will say: "Have a cancer-free New Year" for you?) And they are MILD! (As in, you die of "mild" cases of cancer and emphysema.)
 

A Hungarian Jew disguised as a Japanese Shinto man dressed up as the Nordic Christian Santa, all played by one of the scariest men in the movies. That says "Christmas in Hollywood" to ME!

A merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, joyful Kwanzaa, bleery Boxing Day, delirious Generic Winter Holiday, and a happy Arbitrarily-Chosen Point in Our Solar Orbit. In other words:
 
Cheers darlings. Read some good books this year!