Thieves Likes Us (1974)

 After seeing 3 Women two weeks ago, I was understandably eager to fill in some gaps in my Robert Altman filmography knowledge. Thieves Like Us (1974) seemed like the perfect property. Depression-era bank robbers? Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall both in the same movie? Altman? A sure-fire YES. I was surprised to find a different, quieter movie than the synopsis and the movie poster would have you believe. The basic plot concerns three escaped convicts robbing banks in the mid-west, in the 1930's; but if you're looking for wham-bam, Bonnie and Clyde stuff, this not the right stop at which to get off.

 Do you ever watch a movie set in the twenties' or thirties', but made in the sixties' or seventies', and think "Oh for goodness sake, didn't anyone even give an old college try towards historical accuracy? I would be pleased if ONE PERSON in this movie wasn't wearing a flapper headress and heels to go work in the shoebox factory". The idea of "ah, it'll look thirties' enough" is pervasive throughout period movies made in that era. I understand that they're not meant to be documentaries, but sometimes the seventies'-ness of a movie is almost distractingly offputting. Gatsby, for all that it tried, still looks more like a soft-focus, Vogue fashion layout than the Jazz Age. Considering this, I was actually taken aback by the attention to detail lavished on the set dressing in this movie. IT. IS. FABULOUS. I kept peering into the backgrounds and foregrounds of the scenes, trying to get a better look at the items on the mantlepiece or clustered on shop shelves. Second only maybe to Paper Moon (which was made in black and white and by thirties' movie connosieur Peter Bogdanovich, making it a little unfair to draw comparisons), the setting makes you feel the thirties'. Take a look at some of these screenshots, and you're not going to see any Hollywood back-lot, fifties' Western town thinly disguised to look like a thirties' small town type messing around going on here. It's all legitimate! To the point of almost resembling old photos you'd see in

American Heritage or the like. Keith Carradine stars as Bowie (usually pronounced by all the other characters as to sound more like "Boy"), the youngest of the three bank robbers. I remembered his performance as Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood and as Special Agent Lundy on Dexter as being really, really great-- while I like his long faced father and brother (John Carradine and David Carradine, respectively), there's a smiling, jocular, sweet and knowing something about Keith's voice and manner in particular that really draws me to him as a character. Never is this so well showcased as in the role of Bowie, who has the gum-chewing, teenage cluelessness of a comic strip character, and yet somehow still manages to rob banks for a living. Today, the concept of "having a plan" from practically middle school as to what you want to do with your life is so heavily engrained into school-going youths that it's hard to wrap your head around the way Bowie has just fallen into things. He ran away from home, knocked over a drug store at an early age with "some guys he knew", just to make some easy money, and ended up shooting the store owner when the owner chased after them with a gun. Which, at sixteen, put him in penitentiary for murder. ON A LIFE SENTENCE. The lack of intentionality leading up to "guess what, here's the rest of your life", is so interesting to me... it must happen all the time. Still, in spite of his being a bona fide criminal, you root and you root and you root for poor Bowie to make that one last score with the two middle aged "main men" of the robbery gang, so he can just get out of it and settle down with the equally babe-in-the-woods Keechie (Shelley Duvall).

 Though prominently featured on the box, Shelley Duvall really only gets to stay in the narrative as a main character about halfway through the running time. A major shift from the rouged, sleekly page-boy'd Millie in 3 Women, Duvall is makeup-less to the point of almost looking sweaty throughout many of her closeups (another seventies' "absolutely not" in the period piece playbook... had it been a major release, even as a small town girl, she would have had false eyelashes a mile long). Her eyes, without the benefit of mascara or eyeliner, somehow look even larger than ever, as she matter-of-factly asks Bowie (Keith Carradine) about the murder that landed him a life sentence at sixteen. Keechie is the daughter of the gas station owner who puts the three robbers up after their intial prison break, and there's a great mix of innocent naiviete and early practicality that reminds me a lot of what most of our grandmothers or great-grandmothers must have been like at eighteen.

 This scene, from outside the bank as a robbery takes place, might as well be a Grant Wood painting. It's so beautifully framed!

 You don't "see" a lot of the crimes taking place as much as you see "T-Dub", "Chicamaw", and Bowie driving away afterwards, counting their money at a safe house, and talking about how the next one will definitely be "the last". The sense of lingering dread of getting caught...how constricting and claustrophobic the idea of "waiting until the heat dies down a little" can be... the realization that there may never be "that one last, great haul", but another and another until you get caught... are all far more effectively delivered by showing you more of the mundane, after-and-between-crimes scenes than the attempts themselves. Also, note the combination of old, Victorian and teens' furniture and furnishings with newer things in this room, just like you would have it in a real person's house. I love it!

 The real focal points of the movie, Bowie and Keechie, together with what I'd consider the main co-stars: the radio and Coca-Cola. In every other scene, someone's listening to a crime drama or a mid-day soap opera, having gangsters or sob stories as the background noise to their own lives. As pervasive as we think the television is in its influence on American culture, I like to think about a 1930's in which the radio was as constant a companion as the tv ever was. As for Coca-Cola, people drink Cokes, ask about Cokes, offer each other Cokes, express a wistful desire to have a Coke, in this movie like ad exec's drink cocktails in Mad Men. At one point, a promotional girl dressed as a turn of the century Coca-Cola ad rolls up in the back of a car outside one of the banks the gang is about to rob, handing out free Cokes and reminding the recipients of her bounty, "Remember to tell your friends how you got these from Coca-Cola"! I had no idea the Red-Bull style, giveaway marketing went back that far! Also, I now want a Coke.

 When they hole up at T-Dub's cousin's wife's house, we get a look at one of those big, Norman Rockwell, meat and potatoes American dinners I've only ever dreamed about. Look at the sheer amount of things on the table! (for instructions on how to cook like you mean it, you should check out Square Meals by Jane and Michael Stern. Go on, do it!)

 A Wanted ad in a national crime magazine reminds you that to the rest of the nation, these aren't the familiar, flawed-but-likeable characters we've gotten to know, but cold, hard killers and robbers, fugitives from justice. Look how stark and unlike themselves they look in the mug shots.

 The living area where Keechie takes care of Bowie after his injury is wallpapered in turn of the century sheet music. See what i said about attention to detail? I've actually seen places wallpapered in comics and other colorful paper items in Life magazine pictures from the time. Atta boy, Altman!

 T-Dub, at one point, marries the girl who I think is his cousin's daughter? Weird, yes, but I wanted you to see her Joan Blondell hair, sweetheart neckline black velvet dress, fur wrap and little star brooch. Isn't she just a kewpie? And if so, can you see the doll of her kind sitting on the mantle? We love it.

 If you like Depression-era movies, this is the ONE for you, but I do need to warn you, the last ten minutes is probably one of the harshest endings since the crime-doesn't-pay shocker at the end of The Public Enemy (1931). Remind me never to rob several banks if I get that time machine up and going, because as said: CRIME. DOES NOT. PAY, people. Check out this poster, which tries to make it look like a second sequel to (the enjoyable, perfectly paced, but far less gripping) The Sting. Be aware that the movie is nothing like this poster.

 Do you have any bank robber/gangster pictures that are absolutely must-see? Or do you shy away from gun-toting scofflaw movies? Watch Thieves Like Us on youtube (in shame!) or Grab a copy on Amazon (for as little as $1.44 plus s/h!) Watch it instant streaming on Netflix! (all you need is your subscription) Just watch it! :) PS: The book Thieves Like Us, by Edward Anderson, was filmed once before as They Live By Night, directed by Nicholas Ray and released in 1949. While pretty different (the Ray movie is more of a noir, for some reason), you might want to catch that one as well just for the magnificent direction. Nick Ray fans FOR LIFE! PPS: While looking for the title online, I kept picking this dang New Order song, which I love, which has nothing to do with the movie, and which is now stuck in my head. I'm sharing the love here: Til next time!

Dark Shadows/An Open Letter to Tim Burton

Tim. Tiiiiim, Tim, Tim.

Source, source (One of these things is right, and one of these things is wrong. You tell me.) WHAT. ARE YOU DOING. TO MY CHILDHOOD. I've been waiting for months to see the trailer for the new Dark Shadows movie. Sounded good in the pre-production days... Tim Burton at the helm, Johnny Depp as two-hundred year old vampire Barnabas Collins. I figured there was not a lot that could go wrong with that winning equation of symbiotic star and director; both kooky, both a little brave, both extremely talented. And I would be right, if it was 1995, and the duo were just on the heels of the endearingly antic, totally-true-to-the-spirit-of-the-subject, biopic of Ed Wood. Turns out, however, it's 2012, Johnny Depp is coming off a comatose walk through The Tourist, and everything's gone to shit professionally between what was once THE bound-to-do-something-original duo. That's strong language, but I feel STRONGLY that the remake of Dark Shadows coming to theaters this summer will drastically affect the way those two title words go together in the hallowed halls of kitsch pop culture. So, listen to me vent a little negative energy, and tell you a little bit about my childhood eccentricities. Good combination? GREAT combination.

 Source, source (Whole cast photo, Barnabas Collins. It was 1991! Don't judge!)

I understand, being a college graduate and of at least average intelligence, that Dark Shadows is, or was, not exactly the Citizen Kane of television either during its initial run (1966-1971) or during its short-lived, prime-time revival (1991). I also understand that, as a ten year old, I'd just learned to set the VCR to tape programs both a) while I was at school and b) after I went to sleep. When my dad advised me that Sci-Fi channel was running a month-long rerun of the nineties' revival series and mentioned that "it might be something you would be interested in", his Hitchcock young adults' story collections, Tales From the Crypt comics obsessed fifth grader went about the arduous task of finding an old cassette of Oprah to tape over and setting the VCR timer to the witching hour (roundabout 10 o'clock in my childhood household...I had school the next day!) to tape what would become my favorite grade school tv show. I had my helpful dad special order the companion book from Media Play in those pre-Amazon days. I meticulous photocopied stills of Barnabas, Victoria, and Angelique from the book for inclusion in my special "Dark Shadows" three ring binder. I wrote fan fiction, before I even knew what that was, to continue the story where the series had left off after being cancelled, on a typewriter at my grandmother's house, and taped in hand drawings for illustrations. I kept the two, six hour VHS tapes, archive-labelled, in my room so my mom wouldn't accidentally re-tape Oprah over them. In short, the show was very important to me.

 Source (I could lie to you and tell you I didn't want to look EXACTLY like Joanna Going when I grew up, but I won't. )

The nineties' version, which drew more inspiration from the semi-coherent and more darkly gothic movie of the series, House of Dark Shadows, is not without its flaws. Still, it features a strong cast headed out by Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire) as a suitably baritone-voiced, much scarier, much handsomer-in-an-early-90s-way Barnabas, and even resurrects the screen career of the 1950's Vivien Leigh lookalike actress Jean Simmons as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. The difference between the original series and the revival is mainly tone... while the sixties' series boasted a bargain bin of every-freakin-supernatural-creature-or-public-domain-literature-ripoff-you-could-imagine, in a gleeful bacchanal that was a grade schooler's perfect dream of not-that-scary, but-scary-to-me plotlines, the revival was streamlined into what I loved from the storyline. You get one child ghost (Barnabas's sister Sarah), one love-scorned witch (the sultry, blonde, man-punishin' Angelique), and one tortured, sensitive, immortal vampire (ye olde Barnabas), one psychic (Maggie), and one kid-with-weird-powers-who's-friends-with-the-ghost-kid (David). And of course, the reincarnated, looking exactly like the original, Josette/Victoria Winters thing, just to make Barnabas a little more tortured than he already was, being an immortal creature of dark damned to walk the night for all eternity (hey! Some people are cool with that, man!). A lonely little gleeful for the ghoulish, hopelessly romantic child had found THE show to watch.

Source...? (Above, Barnabas in fang-rante; below, Angelique casting some spell, doubtless some bad stuff for Barnabas is coming down the pipeline...)

In the late nineties' (and possibly before), the self-same Sci-Fi channel, before changing its name to SyFy and focusing mainly on original productions, would broadcast reruns of classic sci-fi and horror productions. I watched a ton of Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, Quantum Leap, Beauty and the Beast, V, Ray Bradbury Theater, and Tales from the Darkside in that era. Sci-Fi ran two episodes every weekday of the original sixties' Dark Shadows series, from 10-11 am, for their daytime programming. I got re-ho-o-o-oked on the Barnabas habit one summer between eighth grade and ninth grade at my grandma's house, and when school was back in session in the fall, started taping the shows while I was at school to "run home" and watch after classes were out, oddly replicating the famous "I Ran Home to Watch Dark Shadows" nostalgia battle cry that referred to its 3:00/right-after-school original air time. I had to know what was going on with Adam and Carolyn in that weird, Frankenstein rip-off sub plot! I loved the low-budget soap opera style set dressing, the NUMEROUS, ALL THE TIME line-flubbings and visible boom mikes, and most of all, the heart of story arcs that were obviously written for housewives and the aforementioned, running-home-children. Make it sappy! Make it scary! Make it so preposterous you're not really sure what's going to happen next week! While the revival show is my heart, I won't pass up a chance to watch the original series to get a warm memory of that pre-teen I once was, whirligigs in my imagination all a-twitter with the Styrofoam supernatural the show offered me.

Source, source (I want that exact cover on the left, with my head and Matthew's head superimposed inside the crystal ball, as our wedding invitations)

Cut to a much more jaded, supernatural-SATURATED decade, the year of our Lord 2012. Post Twilight, post Vampire Diaries, post True Blood...let's close-up on this morning, actually, as I sat at my desk and saw on my Facebook feed that the trailer for the Burton remake had finally been released. I saw the teaser spread of the cast in Entertainment Weekly, and reacted with a "well, we'll just have to see", though having STRONG reservations about the Eddie Munster-ish makeup, Nosferatu hands, and glued down hair Johnny Depp sported (I know the hair is probably a wink to sixties' star Jonathan Frid's ridiculous head-rug, but come on). The trailer, sadly, confirmed my worst fears about it, while adding some others I'm not sure I'd even thought of. Watch for yourself:

The vampire, all over the wall sex scene? I thought I was watching a gothic version of Norbit. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? As I vociferously protested earlier this week on various social mediums (*cough*: Facebook), if you want to make "The Little Vampire Who Came To Dinner: An Edward Gorey/Royal Tenenbaums/Norbit ripoff done in the poorest taste possible by Tim Burton", why don't you divorce yourself entirely from the idea of a remake entirely and create a NEW story. It's not even like the Dark Shadows franchise gives any luster to the production or its promotion, especially considering the soap/romance portions (VERY. IMPORTANT. to all incarnations of the show) are being completely excised in favor of very broad comedy and animation-like caricatures. REIMAGININGS ARE UNACCEPTABLE, TIM BURTON. DO YOU HEAR ME? Do you remember Planet of the Apes? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? You are not good at this!! If you have no respect for the original property or its spirit (I know that sounds way lame, but I can't think of a better word), MAKE YOUR OWN MOVIE. You've done it before! Snap out of it!

Source ("Oh, helleth to the no, my good madam... you are asking for it and you shall receive it!"---> I'm making that one up, but there's a 1700's style rephrasing of "kiss my ass" in the trailer that is no better, I promise. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING.)

While plenty famous in its day, Dark Shadows, in its current form, is not famous enough or well known enough at present to withstand the negative effect of a major motion picture release thirty years after the original property was put to bed. What I most resent about the whole business is the selfish idea (on my part) that when I mention the beloved-of-me television franchise, someone will automatically go "Oh, right, I saw that. Jesus, you like that kind of stuff?!" Well, no, friend. I do not like that kind of stuff. I HATE that kind of stuff. What I like is the cheese-ball, cutie, kitschy, totally ridiculous, totally addictive, but EARNEST television series of my childhood. You fellow cult-following devotees can probably understand this on some level. Don't find something I love and ruin it with your horrible, money-hungry, not-even-interesting-in-its-own-right, bloat of a blockbuster, because I will hate you for it, whether people agree with me or not.

((continues to rant and rave into the night, clutching my little paper Dark Shadows Official Fan Club card and several ancient VHS cassettes)) Do you have any sworn allegiances to childhood books, movies or tv shows that someone has totally ruined for you? Did you ever watch the original Dark Shadows or will you watch the movie when it comes out? Am I completely crazy? Let me know what you think. Bonus: Matthew, re the trailer, in the style of that one South Park episode: 

Double Bonus: Watch the whole of the 1991 revival series, FOR FREE, LEGALLY on MGM's youtube page. Nineties'-datedness aside, I can PROMISE you it will be better than the Burton film:

Til next time!

Photo Friday, Class Pictures Edition (1930's)

 

 Guys, it's Friday! We've managed another week without being blown off to Oz in usually-sunny Tennessee, and if that isn't cause for jubilation, I don't know what is. For Photo Friday, I thought I would share some of the newest photos in my collection. My sister Susan and I went to every estate sale in the world two weekends ago, and just to round out the shopping frenzy, stopped at Phoenix Flea Market in Old Hickory on the way back from a sale around the corner. That! Place! Is! So! MUCH BIGGER ON THE INSIDE. I mean really, the architectural equivalent of Mary Poppin's carpet bag. While I was wringing my hands over whether or not to purchase a real Schiaparelli costume jewlery bracelet from the fifties' (with a head spinning price tag that was less than it should have been, but still more than I could afford?), Susan and I popped into a small booth that was mostly photos, ephemera, and Coca Cola merchandise. To hit the jackpot!

 

 I forgot all about the nerve-jangling bracelet when I saw these early 1930's class photos. Each is about the size of a postcard, with file labels noting each student's name, in a set of about twenty five. Doesn't everyone look waaay too grown up to be in high school? While the men were handsome in their suits and ties, I was most interested in the women's more varied fashions. Look at the sweet bow at Innis Hushour's neck! Or the fabulous, cotton-boll resembling print and bead neclace in Arline Wiswell's photograph! I rarely find groupings of photos like this with so many people from the same sitting, and all so good-looking to boot. Everyone looks like a movie star! I was fairly ecstatic to come across them, and quickly went about the business of choosing the best of the bunch to take home with me.

 

 William Sonke reminds me of an 80s/90s actor I can't quite place. He's always playing the FBI director or the dad? Gosh, I'll think of it as soon as I publish this. Dorothy Benton has the most dramatic collared dress! I was trying to think of the name of that curlicue, every-which-way embroidery that was popular again in the 90s on semi-formal linen dresses, but it escapes me. With her neatly marcelled hair (possibly a longer length tucked into a faux bob to make it look more modern?) and earnest look, she's the one I would most like to look like in a photo out of the whole lot.

 

 Lyle Breen and Sheldon Wieland (I guess his tag fell off, but his name is also written on the back of the photo)-- the former looks exactly like some forties' second banana wisecrackin' guy. See how his tie's untucked? Wieland, on the other hand, resembles a central casting good guy the girl meant to marry before her real beau came back into the picture (a la Ralph Bellamy in His Girl Friday). Maybe it's the influence of the melting pot in post-war America, but don't you think people from this time period looked more distinctive? If you showed me a lineup of high school graduates from this year's class, I don't think they would be as easily told apart as these guys are.

 

 Great hair on both girls, and look at the print-sweater and Irish upturned nose on Alice Uhlman! She's a dead ringer for Parker Posey (right?). Note how Alice's hair has a kind of side-burn lock in front of the ear to give the hairstyle more depth. Interesting. I wonder if this and other photos I passed on were part of one of those large, framed class portrait pieces that was eventually disassembled? It seems kind of unusual to have photos of this size, all neatly labelled, of more than one student at a time. The "class treasurer" marking on Sheldon's photo below is swaying me towards the framed class portrait hunch.

 Besides the names and Sheldon's ranking, some nicknames are included for old time's sake. How much cuter is it now that you know Alice's first name is Louise, and she actually goes by "Squees"? Do you have any outstanding school portraits either in your family's collection or in your adopted-photo-family collection? Which one of these kids would you votes "Mr. or Miss Personality"? Have a good weekend, and we'll see you Monday!

Pulp Fiction Book Covers (1950's)

 "Do her eyes speak death?" Well? Do they? I've already told you that things at the house have been in a serious state of disarray since I committed to "Spring Cleaning No For Serious We ARE CLEANING This House 2012". Whole Honda backseats of house goods have been moved from shelf, attic, and storage room space back out into the wide world for dispersal at the discretion of Music City Thrift. After a heart-wrenching, post-donation month of all my things reappearing on the Goodwill racks, I decided to take everything to whichever store I shopped the least. Seeing an old dress for sale in a thrift store is kind of like seeing an old boyfriend you used to be really into-- while you might no longer have any interest in him, you don't necessarily want anyone else to be into him either. And some dresses I care about much more than some of my exes! A large portion of the donation items have been a) dresses that are too big for me/ I never wear and b) books I have never read/have no intention of ever reading again/am not really sure why I bought in the first place. Saved from the gaping maw of the thrift store donation bin, however? Any and all vintage paperbacks. I'm sorry, I can't part with them. Even after several round-robins of rationalizations with myself, I'm hanging on to the dadgum things with a temerity that belies my basic easygoing and practical attitude towards "paring down".

 Out of Control is actually set in the Great Smoky Mountains... my old college stomping ground! Why isn't there a point on the key to the map for the Longbranch Saloon on the Strip? I KNOW that had to have something to do with whatever infamy's afoot... Since middle school, I've been hoarding fifties' and sixties' paperbacks in four categories: pulp, movie-tie in, French language novels and James Bond. At this point, the collection is probably over two hundred strong-- spines flaking, pages yellowed, smelling like smoke and your uncle's attic...mostly unreadable due to their fragile condition! I do not care, I'm keeping them. I'm concerned, like the Kodak cameras I snatch up at estate sales for a couple bucks at a time, that some day there just won't BE any Pocket Books to be pocketed for a couple quarters at a time, in stacks and bundles, to fill up the shelves of my office's bookcase and the bottom of my bookbag. 

 At left: Bombshell wiggle dress and...slanket? At left and right, a redhead's always at the "root" of these detective stories! And like having an original lithograph or painting, there's really something to having the physical copies of these books. I know there are scores of coffee table titles with better quality and condition reproductions of the cover art than I'm ever likely to find in the fifty cents shelf at Great Escape, but I like having the truly pocketbook sized originals. How Anna Karina would you feel reading a Mickey Spillane book in a doctor's office instead of the latest Harlan Coben? Not that, even as happily matched as I am with Bab, I ever think of how my outward appearance would either attract or repel Quentin Tarantino as a suitor, and comport myself accordingly. Of course not. :)

 

 She said she had been framed... but had she? I would have to very-carefully-without-busting-up-the-fragile-binding read the book to find out! I thought I would start scanning some of these covers in to share with you guys, in order to assuage just a soupçon of guilt from having kept them. But I made the right decision, right? I just couldn't bear to think of my great collection languishing in the paperback rack at the thrift store. It belongs, e're so selfishly, with me! Do you have a secret stash of mostly impractical pulp novels under your bed? What kind of covers attract your attention more than others? Which of these would you read first, based on the covers? Til next time!

Family Circle Cake and Cooky Book (1953)

 Ok, so you love cake...and you love cookies. You aren't too keen on the word "cooky" as an alternate spelling for the delicious baked good, but you pick up Family Circle magazine's Cake and Cooky Book anyway. UNTOLD. RECIPE TREASURES. AWAIT YOU! Or at least a lot of good-looking, show-boating, totally take-to-the-neighbors-house-for-sheer-one-up-man-ship recipes for delectables. Wanna take a look with me? I know you do! 

 The first cake is pretty much a "funfetti" birthday mix put in a bundt pan and iced with strawberry icing. Do you remember, in spite of the negligible taste difference between funfetti and regular yellow cake batter, how much more desirable the streaked-with-sprinkles variety of cake mix was in your adolescent party days? If someone's mom sprung for the funfetti cake AND matching funfetti icing, well, gee-- that child is obviously highly valued in their family! Below that, a chocolate fudge cake that has been made that much more picturesque by the addition of fudge-dipped almonds as a decoration. Sometimes I'm really impressed by the difference a simple garnish can make to a cake. There are a lot of those times in this book! 

 

 I remember trying to make a pineapple mix cake (pineapple "flavored" batter, as opposed to pineapple upside down cake mix) and being nonplussed by the resultant hint of pineapple. The package promised me pineapple pyrotechnics! The above recipe for a pineapple cream cake incorporates the actual fruit right into the mixture, so I'm interested to try this for my next Polynesian themed gathering (also see the gorgeous and unusually decorated pineapple upside down cake at below right...what, no rings? SPLIT RINGS? Is there no tradition!). The cake I'm most interested in trying, though, is the show-offy strawberry whirligig cake. I've made a number of Jello-based "poke" cakes, and I'm telling you, nothing beats J-E-L-L-O for adding color and drama to your hum drum cake-in-a-box mix. Jello is the Joan Collins of cake ingredients. I said it! What! Try a gelatin based cake recipe some time and see if you don't agree. 

 Look how well the chocolate fan cake slices! I want to make one of these of my own. Also, I'm continually taken aback with how beautifully powdered sugar dusted cakes look with the aid of a stencil or doily to marshal their dusty goodness into a pretty pattern. Has anyone ever had any luck with this? I tried once and ended up having to dust the whole thing because the image blurred. Such is life. I think this Pink Lady Cake would delight anyone. Like me! The ribboned pattern seems simple enough if you have the patience and temerity to get it down. Also, the blue and pink is so. FLIPPING. FIFTIES.

 I wouldn't have thought to do this but I'm crazy about the idea now: chop up a sheet cake into blocks, ice with color icing, then spell out a message. Can you think of all the possibilities here? "CAUTION, SNAKES!", "NOT POISONED, "DID YOU DO THE DISHES", "KICK A BRICK" are all idea that immediately came to mind, but again, you could really do this with anything.

 Last but not least, a series of simple cakes with knock-yer-socks-off decoration jobs. LET'S TRY ALL OF THEM! It's going to be a pre-diabetic extravaganza. I wonder what most of these would taste like with Splenda as a substitute? Sometimes it seems to work for me and sometimes whatever I'm making turns out tasting like glue. Still, I fear the mid century, sans nutrition facts ness of a lot of these recipes, though any in moderation couldn't hurt, right? Right. For the little drummer boy in your life:

 For the cat lover:

 For the George Washington enthusiast (or for your next "Dateline Investigates" viewing party):

 That's all I was able to grab up in my scanning frenzy, but that's plenty, in my book! I think I now have enough baking inspiration to last me out the year. Which cake looks the most tempting to you? Do you have a particular party-pleasin' baked goods recipe you use as a go-to when kids are coming over to play cards? Swap cake ideas with me, if you have any handy! Til next time.