The movie THE LAST OF DICK CHENEY, b/o the eponymous Gnomix (and the SC series EVERYBODY LOVES DICK) is now live at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg01NZxL1y8

I ordered the LARGE cup of coffee!

If he had one of these cars forty years ago, he'd be president today.

Iceland mourns the death of Santa Claus.

Santa Claus sleeps with the fishes.

In the West Bank today, an Israeli soldier killed Santa.

An elephant went on a rampage after a game of elephant polo.

Lakshmi takes her dog out for a walk.

The Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers is
cracking down on the Writers Guild of America with strikebreakers.
Moments after this picture was taken, Hulk killed Sarah Silverman.

Well, I have my Halloween costume for next year.

A girl like that, you don't eat all at once.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Missiles fly.

Pope John Paul II roasts in hell.

One is a terrible lizard with a brain the size of a cashew,
and the other is a replica.

I am reading "The Comic World of the Marx Brothers' Movies" by Maurice Charney, which I don't recommend. Charney is a pedantic nitwit, who, if he actually met the Marxes, would be de-pantsed and thrown into a snowbank. However, there is one sentence that is funny, albeit unintentionally.

Of Harpo, he says, "He is on intimate terms with his horse."

THIS is the worst production ever of THE MIKADO.


We apologize for any inconvenience.

NZ veterinarians are planning to put down this 7-legged lamb,
but everybody knows a lamb like that you don't eat all at once.

FBI informant Joe Barboza, Senate Committee on Organized Crime informant Willie Cicci.

"Oh yeah, a buffer. The family had lots of buffers."

"One move and the diaperhead gets it."

All my movies are now available at iTunes for free download onto one of those MP4 devices that the kids today love so bad.

grouchobeer productions will hold the World Premiere of the machinima "Dubya and the Monkey in YOU BET YOUR LIFE'", based upon the comic serial, Sunday, May 27, at The Freedonia Gazette Open House in New Hope, PA. Coming soon to an iTunes and an internet near you.

Currently in post: "Porter Goss, International Man of Mystery" and "Porter Goss in CHINATOWN". I am laboring mightily to get them under 10 minutes so I can put them on Youtube.

Expect big news, possibly this weekend, about a co-production, perhaps even a professional gig.

Yesterday, the Pope was kidnapped off the street in Sao Paolo, Brazil,
by masked Mossad agents, thrown into the back of a van, and driven to
a jungle airstrip, whence he made a 22-hour flight on a cargo plane to
Tel Aviv, where he was finally put on trial for war crimes.

Paul Wesolowski, editor, is holding the 25th-- and possibly last-- Annual Freedonia Gazette Open House on  Sun., May 27. He is the world's foremost Marx Bros. expert and his collection is astounding in both breadth and depth. Returning after being conspicuously absent last year is the great video producer Robert Bader, who, every year scours the world's film archives to come up with clips that one has not only never seen, but did not even know ever existed. (Last year, your humble correspondent was the de facto programmer using Paul's discs.)

Paul's other passions are cacti and regional root beers, so every year, I brew a cactus-flavored root beer with a Marx-themed label, and here is this year's label:



COPACABANA was a 1947 movie centering around the famous NYC nightclub. Groucho is Lionel Q. Devereaux, an agent whose client/fiancee (Carmen Miranda), a Brazilian bombshell, also impersonates a French chanteuse (don't ask). In keeping with this theme of duality, Groucho the agent, who since his last movie, A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA, had grown an actual mustache in real life (in previous movies, his mustache was greasepaint), introduces a hot young comic-- Groucho, avec greasepaint mustache, who sings the song, "Go West, Young Man" by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. (I cannot confirm this, but I assume the song was in the first draft of the Marx Bros. movie GO WEST, which was written by Kalmar and Ruby.) "Young" Groucho sing with pretty cowgirls against a backdrop of painted cacti. Well, Paul and Bob will get the reference.

The definitive history of the Marx Bros. in animation has yet to be writ,
and I may be the man to write it.

Their debut as cartoon characters came not long after they made their
screen debuts, and they have been favorites of animators ever since,
from "Looney Toones" to "Animaniacs" and beyond. (Coming soon to
Grouchobeer Productions?)

Their appearances are usually brief gag cameos, often in cartoons
that feature caricatures of many other Hollywood stars. Sometimes
characters like Bugs Bunny or Popeye would impersonate them. A
planned series in the 1960's (there were other cartoon series
of Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, and The Three Stooges) was
never made and a more recent (1990's) pilot for an Adult Swim-type
cartoon has never been shown on television-- a tragedy, because
it is a brilliant conceit carried off magnificently. The writing, acting,
animation, and direction are all top-notch. What doomed this
production-- and perhaps any further Marx toons-- is the fact that the
rights to Groucho Marx belong to Groucho Marx Productions, Inc.,
while Chico and Harpo's rights are licensed by another company
(which is now owned by Microsoft.)

I hasten to add that with the exception of an animated version of the
Napoleon scene from I'll Say She Is made for TV in the seventies
where Groucho revisited the character he created on Broadway in
1925, they never supplied the voices for any of these cartoons, and
the voices range from OK to awful, as do the likenesses.

The real Marx Bros. were under contract first to Paramount and later
to MGM, but do not appear in many cartoons for those studios that I
am aware of, although Popeye's first solo cartoon did not feature his
now-familiar theme, but rather an instrumental version of "Whatever
t Is, I'm Against It" from Horsefeathers. Groucho also makes a gag
cameo in Popeye's version of William Tell, which was animated
by the great Shamus Culhane, who later married Chico's
daughter Maxine. (Culhane also included caricatures of his future
uncles-in-law Groucho and Harpo-- but no Chico--  in his cartoon
The Brave Tin Soldier.) This is rather typical, as Groucho and
Harpo tend to appear the most often, with Chico lagging behind.
But he is represented, and so even is Zeppo, albeit in
mostly-forgotten series like "Buddy", "Bosko", and "Flip the Frog".

The animated Marxes probably "appeared" most often for rival
studios Warners and Disney. Following are screen grabs from
Warners' Hollywood Steps Out.

.

Harpo gives Garbo a hotfoot on her really big shoe...



... and prepares to burst stripper Sally Strand's bubble.



Hey, that's not Thelma Todd!



(From http://tesla.liketelevision.com )

This woman failed in her audition for the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders, but she was made the team's first-string halfback.



Finally admitting we could lose in Iraq, today Dubya sent over an adviser skilled in conflict resolution and human
waste removal, Tony Soprano.




The KKK opened its first Klaven in Rome, over the protests of Grand
Kleagle Clifford Worley, who claims that Italians are actually
descended from blacks.



An NOAA spokesman displayed this 38" rockfish caught off Alaska,
but noted that a specimen of even greater dimensions avoided capture.


The Boniello litter turned ten years old yesterday, which is
seventy in dog years. They celebrated by beating up the
surviving Dionne Quints.



Halliburton unveiled its new line of stuffed polar
bears. They are available stuffed with pate de
foie gras or narwhal.


Stop or you'll go blind.



This won't hurt as long as you believe in Jesus, Achmed.

I received the following email the other day from Miriam Marx Allen. "Thanks for showing me the movies you made on your computer, Matt.  Anything anti-Bush is perfect as far as I'm concerned.
Best Regards, Miriam"

http://grouchobeersgrindho.blip.tv