Turner Classic Movies is showing Casablanca this morning. Was there ever more on-screen chemistry than between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman? But here's what gets me about this movie, the way everyone in Ricks Cafe Americain smokes all the time, and the way they start a drink at one table, take two sips while talking to someone, then leave that table to go to the bar to talk to someone else and order a different drink and take two sips, then leave the bar, go to another table and order yet another drink. Now, I consider myself an experienced drunkard (which makes me, like Rick, a "citizen of the world") but I could only aspire to that kind of drinking! And, fuck me, I want to start smoking again every time I watch Casablanca. Seriously, if the getting of cancer was ever made to look sexier than in this movie, I've never seen it.
A true comic genius has passed away today. One of the first comedy albums I remember listening to as a child is "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." His most famous shtick was the telephone conversation where the audience hears only his end of the call. The most famous and best of this is the " Introducing Tobacco to Civilization " skit.
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