Annals of lower education: If you just...
Annals of lower education: If you just heard about the college course “The Films of Keanu Reeves,” and wanted to enroll--perhaps to find out who Keanu Reeves is--we’ve got some bad news.
The semester ended a few weeks ago at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design and the course isn’t being offered this time around. There isn’t even an “Introduction to Macaulay Culkin” to be found in the school catalogue.
Instructor Stephen Prina told one interviewer that the Reeves class was not a joke or fluff, but a way of analyzing modern cinema through the young actor’s 16-film career. Even People magazine was stunned, asking:
“What next--Keanu U?”
*
Keanu’s excellent career: Keanu 101 wasn’t the first honor for Reeves, by the way. In 1991, he and actor Alex Winter, co-stars of “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Adventure”--we knew we’d think of one of Keanu’s movies!--were invited to a showing in San Dimas, where the film was set. There was even talk of having them leave their footprints in cement outside the entrance, but they couldn’t make it.
In case you wanted a taste of Reeves’ acting, we have here a film clip. It’s that memorable scene where they encounter the personification of Death.
Bill (to Ted): “It’s the Grim Reaper, Dude.”
Ted (to Reaper): “How’s it hanging, Death?”
Reeves portrayed Bill. Or was it Ted?
*
Freeways we hate and the drivers who use them: We’ve said before that the title of Most Reviled Local Roadway could be claimed by the San Diego Freeway. As evidence, we cite two license plates spotted on other freeways: HATE 405 and GDDM 405.
But now comes forward filmmaker Fax Bahr, who photographed a motorcyclist with a different candidate.
*
L.A. Haw: As the curator of this column, we couldn’t help but notice a Harper’s magazine piece that bore the title, “Only-in-L.A. Law.” (For which we may sue, but that’s another matter.)
It involved a hoax memo sent under the name of an L.A. judge by a legal newspaper. The judge sued for defamation, but the state Court of Appeal held it was satire. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas F. Crosby said it’s difficult to recognize satire in this area.
“Los Angeles’ legal history does not lack for examples of the occasional judge gone off the beam,” Crosby wrote.
He recounted instances--none involving the plaintiff--of one L.A. judge who “had a mechanical canary in chambers and a live dog with her on the bench (and who) once threatened to shoot her apartment manager” and another who “prodded a deputy public defender with a dildo.”
Then there was the Orange County judge who “personally seized an allegedly pornographic movie by mounting the stage during a Mitchell Brothers Theater presentation.”
And, to think, some critics said that TV’s “L.A. Law” had run out of plots.
miscelLAny:
Local editions of the Pennysaver are running ads advertising “whipping canes imported from Singapore.” Price: $19.95 each. Entrepreneur Al Ullom, who brought back several hundred from a trip to the island nation, says he has received more than 100 orders, including “one from a woman who wanted her husband to spank her with it on her birthday.”
