In praise of Gladys Kravitz

Before there was Lenny Kravitz, before there was even The Jeffersons, on which Lenny Kravitz's mom appeared, thus providing me with a halfarsed link between this pointless allusion and the wonderful world of situation comedies, there was the archetypal meddling neighbor Gladys Kravitz. I just watched Bewitched for the first time in many years (not counting the terrible movie of the same name a few years back), and I have a few words to say about Gladys Kravitz.

First of all, who are we talking about when we speak of Gladys? People always want to argue about which Dick they prefer, York or Sargent, but fewer people will debate the relative merits of the two Kravoi, Alice Pearce and Sandra Gould. Pearce's Kravitz was brilliant and unproblematical in my opinion ... she was just a nosey, shrill, hysterical proto-Furley. The archetypal Gladys. Gould, who Kravitzed the episode I just watched, is different. Strangely attractive when she's not overshadowed by Elizabeth Montgomery, and not blessed with the hilarious facial expressions and brilliant slapstick timing of her predecessor, she brings another layer to the character.

With the first Gladys, we feel somewhat bad for husband Abner, even though he's a loser, just because his wife is so annoying. With the second, though, Abner's sterotypical long-suffering husband schtick crosses right over into verbal abuse, and the smirking Stevens' mock-innocent shrugging as Gladys "Cassandra" Kravitz tries to blow the whistle on their satanic hijinks smacks of cruelty.

Because, of course, she's right. Samantha is a witch, and her family is a whole pack of witches, (a coven if you will). Admittedly, as a former wacky neighbor myself, I have more than average sympathy for my fellow WNs ... but I think Gladys's reputation is undeserved. What if your next door neighbor were a witch? Wouldn't you try to tell people about it? I say Gladys is a hero!

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Back when I was teaching, I was once talking about witches in connection with "Young Goodman Brown" and a student announced that his sister-in-law was a witch. "There's no such thing as witches," I replied. "I mean, can she fly?" If you're a wiccan, earth goddess worshipper, etc., more power to you, but if you can't fly, you ain't a witch in my book.

Of course, this was at the same university where I once drew the five pointed star, the "sign of Solomon" from Sir Gawain's shield, on the blackboard, and a student in the front row flinched--actually flinched. I said, "Did you think I was going to summon forth a demon from the blackboard? Really? Do you think that if I could summon demons out of the blackboard, there wouldn't be demons running all over this place by now?"

No sense of humor, some of these people. Maybe they should watch some sitcoms.

Hey, Christian Bale!

Hey, Christian Bale! Where can I buy me one o' them fat-tired motorcycles that you can't lay down? Gotham Moto Mart maybe? I guess I need to buy one in case there's a robot apocalypse.

Seriously ... how many movies does something have to appear in before it's a cliche? Just saw a trailer for Terminator: Put Us Out of Our Misery, and here we go with these batcycle-style toy motorcycles again. I don't care if do they exist in real life (because I'm sure somebody is itching to tell me allllll about them) ... I don't believe in them. I don't find them credible. I deny their existence. And I don't want to see a movie full of them, any more than I want to see a movie where an annoying boy races an absurd flying chariot through the desert against a collection of malignant muppets. Where's that big old sandworm when you need one?

Back to the trailer. Did you catch that one giant robot that looks like a large version of the buffoonish Spy Vs. Spy robots from "Episode 1" of the Star Wars debacle? Seriously, if you're making a Terminator movie and can aim no higher than pretend motorcycles The Phantom Menace, the mindless soulless robots have already won. They're here already! You're next!



Remember The Road Warrior? That was a good movie. Muppet-free as I recall, and the vehicles, though fanciful, were real.

I guess I'm just tired of watching cartoons ... but if the director is named McG, I guess you have to be prepared.

Q: What might have saved Star Wars I - III?

A: Basically, an elite group wearing these.

INcidentally, at some point in the movie I insist on calling Star Wars, because that's what it was called, Darth Vader is addressed (by Peter Cushing, I think? Or Obi-Juan?) as "Darth."

Implying that it was his name, not his title. I'm just saying.

I know Star Wars wasn't that good to begin with, but Lucas's retrobuggering of Star Wars just ... bugs me.

Sorry, fandroids, but I'm not quite willing to believe that this line of Darth Vader's dialogue from "A New Hope" wound up on the cutting room floor:

"What the hell? I think I built that f---ing robot."