THREE STOOGES REDUX

I don't know whether I should be thrilled or terrified or maybe a little of both. All three of these guys scare me a little. But then, the Stooges scared me too.

NYQUIL DREAMS

I dreamt that I was a small, unidentified Polenysianish child carried across the ramshackle remains of an old bridge over a fresh lava flow on the back of Burgess Meredith as he used a handily felled and stripped bamboo tree as a tightrope walker's pole as Paul Newman and my unidentified Polenysianish brother looked on in concern.

Ends up it wasn't a fever dream, but the equally deadly, When Time Ran Out.

QUICKSILVER STARRED IN HIS OWN MOVIE!!

Okay, that never happened and was never planned to happen, ever. Pietro could not support a film vehicle. The speed-stuff would look great, what with the computers and the tech and the sounds and the whizzing, but the truth is only a young Joseph Cotten could have ever played him, as he is the only film star with the chops and the hairline. I think Werner Fassbinder would agree with me, and that's more than good enough for me.

However, 1986's Kevin Bacon-starrer, "QUICKSILVER", is about a hep, doesn't-bike-by-the-rules bicycle messenger named Jack Casey (thank you, Commodore-Vic-20 character-name-generator) who, well, rides fast around New York messengering stuff, and then there's a romance and some conflict and a big finish. On bicycles. I think Kevin Bacon triumphs in the end at something and discovers he is more than just a messenger. Maybe he discovers he has a message of his own. We all do. Mine is to always bring a windbreaker with you, even if it's warm, 'cause you never really know and it's always cooler at night.

I actually saw this movie when it came out in 1986. I was straight and sober so I remember none of it, but I do dilly-efinitely remember the veeerrrryyyy-hot-in-a-chipmunky-way Whitney Kershaw, who played the girl who liked Kevin Bacon. Seeing her in bicycle shorts kept me in personal-pleasuring mental material for years, until I moved onto whoever played the girl in "Hot Pursuit" with John Cusack. And Whitney's character's name, I remember it because it is the BEST name in any movie ever: Rand. Her name is Rand. How could you not fall in love with a girl in bicycle shorts named Rand? I dare you not to, next time you see one. Seriously, you will fall hard, harder than you thought and more than you want. It will be the relationship that destroys your heart until you stitch it back together with prayer, time, and your cat's companionship. And even when you find your real life-partner, memories of Rand will haunt you at the oddest times, and you will smile, but your smile will be crying a little.