Started the day off with a bio-quickly for Sumire Matsu. Waaaay to thin for my liking. She is an example of the esteemed quality of "kubire"-- the curve between ribs and hips-- which seems to mean to me, actually, just plain old boniness... not to mention the neurotic worrying about weight, and other personality traits that usually accompany such a figure... Ms. Matsu (at right) smiles here, but I still feel bad when I see such a figure. You can actually see her bones there, can't you? It brings images of prison camps to mind... Well, if some women want to be this way-- really want to, rather than feel they have to-- and some guys like this, fine, fine, I guess. Give me a lady who's nice and comfortable, relaxed, plump and happy though. I didn't work much on Boobpedia for a weekend, but I did start six more Boin Box series bios: Megumi Yuuka, Mia Kashiwagi, Yuka Nishii, Mizuho Seto, Marin Koyanagi, and Riho Hoshiyama.

Back to my public domain comedy-viewing project, I finally got around to watching Hillbilly Blitzkrieg (1942), sequel to Private Snuffy Smith (also 1942). I was going to jokingly refer to it as "Hillbilly Apocalypse", but Wikipedia's pimp informs me that name has already been taken, apparently by a musical group of some sort. My second choice, "Hillbilly Holocaust" has also been taken... Speaking of Google, Barney Google, the star character of the comic strip which Snuffy Smith took over, appears as a main character in this film, played by double-talking comic actor Cliff Nazarro. Nazarro "had the unique ability to ramble on and on, with 80 percent of his speech being garbled nonsense words, generally confounding friends and foes alike." (according Tim Hollis in Ain't that a knee-slapper: rural comedy in the twentieth century scroll up to p.109) A man after my own heart... And I thought the sound on the DVD just went askew whenever he said anything. In the final fade-out, Snuffy and Edgar Kennedy are both riding a bomb traveling through space. They look down and Snuffy says, "There goes Pearl Harbor!" and Kennedy replies, "Yeah! Next stop Tokyo!" Apparently the film was not a success, according to the surmising of Hollis. But one can only wonder, seeing this final scene, if Kubrik saw it... It's eerily similar to the great scene in Doctor Strangelove with Slim Pickens as a Major "King" Kong a-hootin' and a-hollerin' as he rides his own bomb to apocalypse... Our second film of the day was Angel on My Shoulder (1946) starring Paul Muni as a dead gangster, and Claude Rains as the Devil. This "class" comedy from a big studio-- United Artists-- was less enjoyable than the B-movie quickies I've been watching lately. Sure, it was better made, but I got the feeling I was being condescended to. Seemed like one of those "sophisticated" comedies the critics and big-shots always like, but, 20 years later, are forgotten, while the low-brow stuff is still enjoyed. (Reminds me of a certain "Encyclopedic" project which allows self-appointed guardians of quality to decide that what its readers should read, and delete what they actually want to read, because that is not respectable... I mean "notable".) Muni, especially, was over-doing the comic acting, and the gangster-ese. A "serious drahmatician" trying to hard to be a lowly comedian. Rains is his usual self, which is not bad, but as the Devil? Sure the Devil can be suave and manipulative, but should he be totally non-threatening? I don't know, just didn't work for me. The Hillbilly movie was more fun, if, obviously, not the better film of the two.