Sunday April 13, 2003

JUNK FEAST. I'm mildly briefly happy. And why? Because fortune has placed Let's Do It Again on my telescreen. Yes, the even-lamer reprise to Uptown Saturday Night with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier (who also lamely directed) and an all-black-star cast including Ossie Davis in a fez, J. J. "Dy-no-mite" Walker as a middleweight (!) boxer, John Amos as a kingpin, Calvin Lockhart (!!) as Biggie Smalls (see where they got it, kids?) and Denise Nicholas looking as be-a-utiful as she did on "Room 222" (and if she looks any different now I don't want to know about it). Goofy gags (some including hypnosis!), Poitier and Cosby in pimpwear (though Cosby is also fetching in his courderoy pork-pie hat), lots of ostentatious black supernumeraries (shouts to Louis Farrakhan!), and a reeeeal nice Curtis Mayfield soundtrack. It's a low-budget blessing, especially with Budweiser (though I expect Mickey's would do at least as well). Kudos to the African History Network for the viewing.

(On the "Room 222" tip, did you know Lloyd Haynes died of cancer in 1986? Pause in memoriam. The dude was a dude. I saw another 222er, Karen Valentine, in "Breaking Legs" off-Broadway some years back. She was fine, of course. (Larry Storch was in the same production!) And we all know about Michael Constantine's fat role in the fat Greek wedding. Ah, early 70s TV. Bliss it was to be alive.)