"Put the Mask on NOW!," What's the Real Scoop, Scooter? And So On...

More odds and ends to catch up after a couple of days away:

* One of the iconic movies of my youth was the oddball Canadian gem The Mask, which I shared with my kids via the Rhino Video vhs release. We savored it's 3D sequences and put on our stereoscopic glasses at every prompting: whenever the Aztec-mask possessed protagonist enters the semi-Lovecraftian realm that pushes him further and further into homicidal madness, an omniscient third-person narrator ominously exclaims, "Put the Mask on now!" Thanks to mine paleo amigo Micheal Ryan, here's a new link to a commemorative writeup on this gem, which proposes The Mask (aka Eyes of Hell) earn a brick in an

Alternative Canadian Walk of Fame

Writer Katrina Onstad nominates The Mask for being her "nation’s first-ever 3-D homegrown horror movie; for introducing plastic glasses, rubber snakes and secret psychedelics to Canadian cinema," all of which is true enough. Along with William Castle's amazing The Tingler (1959), The Mask also counts as being (as Onstad succinctly puts it) "about that moment when society moved from a 1950s fear of drug use to a 1960s celebration of the unleashed unconscious. No, seriously! It is!" It was arguably the first Canadian feature to enjoy distribution from a major studio (Warner Bros. released it back in '62-'63) -- though I'm hankering to check on that assertion -- and Onstad adds, "Plus, it was banned in Finland, and if that’s not cool enough to get you a star on the Alternative Canadian Walk of Fame, then what is?"

Indeed.
___

Updates on the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby situation:

As my amigo Mark Martin wrote to me, "I can't keep up with this guy... Make up your mind already!!!" I reckon ol' Scooter's under considerable pressure this week, ya think?

Check it out: Here's two of the many reports, each from the far sides of the spectrum (in the interest of 'balanced' venues for y'all) --

Bloomberg.com update on Scooter's Testimony

Truthout.org's update on the same

There's tons more online about this ongoing story -- keep an eye out!