HAROLD THE GREAT

RIP to Harold Ramis, passed on at 69, which is way too young.

A pretty solid argument can be made that, in his unassuming way, Ramis just sort of was popular American movie comedy from the late ‘70s until the advent of Judd Apatow—he wrote, co-wrote, directed, acted in, or some combination of the above, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, Groundhog Day and the criminally underrated, hilarious but fiercely touching Stuart Saves His Family, the best movie ever adapted from a Saturday Night Live sketch. He had a couple of clunkers, sure, but his batting average was insanely high.

Also, he was for a while the head writer on SCTV, the second-greatest TV sketch comedy of all time (second only to Monty Python’s Flying Circus), even though he was American, not Canadian. As if all this weren’t humbling enough, he played one-scene roles in a couple of movies he didn’t write or direct, As Good As It Gets and Apatow’s Knocked Up, and added notes of warmth and sweetness both times. He was awesome and lovable and he’ll be enormously missed.

HOG DAY

Happy Groundhog Day!

At this writing Punxsutawney Phil’s prophecy remains unrecorded, so I’ll simply note, again, what my beloved departed mother always said about the day. Mom was from Mississippi, & she always observed that only having to put up with six more weeks of a Northwestern Pennsylvania winter was cause enough for celebration.

In Arizona, of course, we greet a short winter more glumly.

Anyway, I’m not aware of any monster groundhogs, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: ...in Phil’s honor I thought we could, at least, give the nod to a fellow rodent, such as…

…any of the giant rats in the 1982 Canadian horror picture Deadly Eyes.

It’s a terrible movie—even the presence of the great Scatman Crothers does little to help it—but there is a detail of the production that fills me with envy toward those who got to work on it: The monster rats infesting the Toronto subway were played by dachshunds. That’s right, when Crothers & the other actors were frantically fleeing the horrifying giant vermin, they were actually being pursued by wiener dogs!

What a great gig.