A Cathedral of Sin & Delicious Deceits

The enthusiastic indulgences of love, lust, booze, hallucinogenics and illegal activities in the media matrix of the early 1930s was a spherical sensation into the imagination.

"The more you see, the more you want to see," he said to Joan Blondell, pictured above in "Union Depot."    

Two Daisies, prostitutes shown scouting out various sailors in 1932s "Union Depot." This movie is complete with murder, adultery, excessive boozing and grand theft. Blondell is the focal female character in this 1932 film gem.  

Obviously movies today display sexuality and vices more vividly, but the writers and actors in "Union Depot" got their point across clearly and concisely. 

Fornication, such as adultery had to result in ill consequences by a film's end in July of 1934. Biblically written laws were enforced in mainstream movies by then, and it wasn't until 1968 that our current movie rating system was implemented and 100 percent of the insane censorship laws was dissolved. 

Shirley Temple starred in three movies in 1934, and by 1935 Temple was the number one box office draw in America if not the world for the next three years. She became Hollywood's mascot of morality after the Hollywood Pre-Code era of 1930-1934.     

Mark Izzy Schurr        

Another Modern Moron Book Review

 "My Best Friend's Exorcism," and "Horrorstor" contain conflicts beyond believe, yet New York Times Best-Selling author, Grady Hendrix weaves Satanic rituals and ghost hunting into a blissfully bizarre barrage of horror and laughter.

These are two of five Hendrix books I've read, gifted to me from my sister Linda. 

"My Best Friend's Exorcism" details the friendship of Abby and Gretchen who were high school besties in the late 1980s. In 1988, while the two were still in high school, one of the two is possessed by the Devil, or is she? Image if the only way to save the life of your best friend is steal a baby so the infant can be sacrificed in a Satanic ritual. Hendrix knows how to create conflict in his stories, and this is just one of many in this book. 

Hendrix tinges on the goriness of Stephen King, yet manages to keep his books at a PG-13 rating, at least in my mind. 

Hendrix suggests that some women in the 1980s breed babies for the sole purpose of sacrificing them to Satan and said the Health Department writes the term 'Irregular Procedures' on their medical charts when documenting demonic possession. 

Young best friends, barely old enough to legally drive and on the cusp of finishing high school to enter the realms of adulthood are both thrust into an insane reality, complete with murder and genuine friendship. 

She slid out a broad gleaming butcher's knife and looked directly at her friend who was turned the other way in the dark living room...Hendrix has a writing flare that suits me, and I sincerely thank Linda for introducing me to this amazing writer. 

Male and females have a slightly different clock ticking in our minds which omit an infinite array of actions and feelings, and "My Best Friend's Exorcism" gave me an enlightening understanding of the female mind. Three stars easy for this book. 

Mark Izzy Schurr

Work manufactures lunatics who lose their minds in the numbing grind of repetitive labor, Grady Hendrix said in his book "Horrorstor."   

Upon reading the above words, I automatically gave this book a solid four-star rating. 

This novel is about a group of co-workers who sell high-end furniture and decide to become ghost hunters because of strange activities after hours in the workplace. 

In a nutshell, this is the story of four co-workers, three women and one man who decide to make their own TV show about ghost hunters. Trinity names the show "Ghost Bomb," because the show is about ghost's and according to her, the show is the bomb. 

Trinity sincerely Believe's in ghosts and her co-worker Matt agrees to be a part of the show in hopes of parting her thighs. 

Bloody handprints are seen on the walls of the store by the ghost hunters, and when one of their own disappears, they begin to believe she is alive in the walls of the store, and the quest to save her begins. 

The basic storyline seems lame and silly maybe, but Hendrix has great character development and this reader found himself pulling for the quote-unquote hero of the story and rooting against its villains.  

Mark Izzy Schurr 

         

Savage & Sensational Spheres of Innerspace

Journey beyond the darkness of cold black spring in the northern spheres of Earth and comfort the soul amidst this world of slain justice. 

Eagar to experience new wonders and challenges beyond this mortal plane, and tread upon a world without leaders or followers. As a creature of chaos, I traverse the realms of oblivion and infinity. To dwell on an island in the far reaches of an unknown galaxy where death is sleep and forever ends when a sun sets. 

Mark Izzy Schurr

Picture was Schurr Shot at Donner Summit, California, April 30.  

Bee Positive

 The caressing ambience of spring has seized my sensations, and the mystic band of elation has shrouded unwarranted doubts and fears. 

While too many others seem to harbor hate and cling to grudges, I choose to laugh and not explain myself anymore. The periphery of human perception has put me on a path of an enticing and unknown energy that penetrates the core of oblivion and infinity. I'm no angle, nor a demon, just an entity who studies grace and skill, with insane dreams of tranquility, peace and harmony.

Mark Izzy Schurr

Picture was Schurr Shot in my back yard in 2021 with my Sony Cybershot 50x zoom camera.  

Scholastic Book Sensation, Malala Yousafzai, a True Activist

Only three out of every five girls in Pakistan between the ages of 15 and 24-years-old are able to read and write. 

"How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?" Malala Yousafzai said when she was 10-years-old in September, 2008.

Yousafzai was shot in the head on a school bus in front of other school children when she was 14-years-old by members of the Taliban, a terrorist group our former Fascist in Chief wanted to invite to the White House when he was still president. Two other girls were also wounded on that bus. 

In January of 2009, the Taliban began enforcing their rules of shutting down 'all girls' schools, and in some cases, bombing those various educational facilities. 

This school in Pakistan school was bombed by the Taliban for teaching girls

On January 3, 2009, Yousafzai started blogging about the insane and nefarious rule of the Taliban, and living amidst their horrid regime rule. Malala and her father Ziauddin sent the blogs to the British Broadcasting Corporation which is why we know about the atrocities Malala has endured and survived. 

"Malala Yousafzai," a 48 page Scholastic book I acquired from the Rohnert Park Sonoma County library was a fantastic read, and I learned Pakistan became a nation in 1947 when it separated from India.

The Taliban allows girls in Pakistan to go to school now, if they stop going after the age of 10-years-old! 

Mark Izzy Schurr 

   

 

 

Mark Madness

 As a disembodied spirit in 1939, 25 years before I was born, I started the division I national championship in college basketball, on March 17 of that year. 

How did I form the NCAA Division I college basketball championship more than two decades before I was born? I'm very clever. 

Some sports gurus claim that winning the National Championship in college basketball is the hardest trophy to acquire in all of sports, and they have a solid point. There are more than 350 division I teams each for both the men and women's teams, and only 64 of those teams for both genders make the playoffs. Once the 64-team playoff tourney begins in mid-March of every year, it's a one and done game for every team. Simple, win, and play again until a single loss. 

To win the National Championship, the champs have to win six consecutive playoff games. This year's tournament of champions for both sexes did not disappoint. 

The New Jersey Saint Peter's Peacocks men's team made history when they became the first 15th seeded team entering the tournament to make it to the Elite 8, three wins shy of winning the national championship. 

I won't ramble on and on about every game I enjoyed while on Covid 19 leave, but last year's champions, the Baylor Bears from the University of Waco Texas erased a 25-point deficit in the second half to tie the North Carlina Tar Heels to force over-time. The Tar Heels knocked off last year's champions in OT, and made it to this year's championship game themselves, losing a thriller to the Kansas State Jayhawks.

This year's men's champions, the Kansas Jayhawks fought tooth and nail to reach the zenith of college basketball. Early in the tournament, the Creighton Bluejays from the University of Nebraska gave the Jayhawks a run for the money. At the halfway point of that game, there were four ties and nine lead changes. The Jayhawks led at halftime over the Bluejays, 39-38, and won the game by seven points, 79-72.

The North Carolina Tar Heels met the Duke Blue Devils, also from that state for the first time ever in the men's Final Four and won by four points to face the Jayhawks for all the marbles.

The Kansas Jayhawks set an NCAA championship game record when they came back from 16 points to beat the Tar Heels, 72-69 to hoist this year's Naismith Trophy, in honor of James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.  

On the women's side of the spectrum of spectacular, history was made when the Connecticut Huskies played the South Carolina Gamecocks in the women's championship game in Minnesota in front of a sell-out crowd. The Huskies women's team made it to the Final Four for the 14th consecutive year, and their star player, sophomore guard, Paige Bueckers scored 14 points against last year's champion's, the Stanford Cardinals, to face the Gamecocks in the Finals.

It was the first time ever in the women's Finals, two national players of the year faced one another in the championship game. Bueckers was last year's Associated Press National Player of the year, and the Gamecocks, Aliyah Boston was this year's AP player of the year. 

UConn's women's coach Geno Auriemma, now 11-1 in title games with Gamecocks coach, Dawn Staley, 2-0. 

The South Carolina Gamecocks were the number one team in the nation from start to finish, and they were simply bigger and better than the UConn Huskies, winning easily, 64-49, to claim their second championship in school history under the same coach, Dawn Staley, who also coached the Gamecocks to a championship in 2017. Bueckers was interictal in cutting the Gamecocks lead to seven points in the 3rd quarter, but the Gamecocks with the aid of their senior guard Destanni Henderson had a fantastic time to have a season high, 26 points, and was the leading scorer for both teams. Boston, as usual, was dominant in the paint. 

Bueckers has two more years in the college circuit if she doesn't go pro early. As an 8th grader, she was a starter for Hopkins High School in Minnesota. 

Mark Izzy Schurr

    

  

"Blackkklansman," A Modern Moron Movie Review

 In Lieu of black history month, here's a review of this cool flick, the "Blackkklansman." 

This movie comedically and intellectually illustrates the subtle differences between black and white minds, and there are differences, soul brothers and sisters! In the 1980s I lived in Tennessee and the Kentucky state line for four years during my Army tenue, and I was engulfed in both white and black culture. 

In the 1980s, the N-word was heard daily by me for nearly a half decade, and the vast majority of the time it was used in jest by the black people, or brother's as they were most often called by each other and us white boys, or in my case, the "Crazy White Boy," as many of the brothers called me, and it fit, I was doing a lot of LSD then. 

For the most part, black guys didn't laugh under the influence of LSD, and us white guys laughed so much, our stomachs hurt. Subtle differences. 

This movie proves we can all coexist happily, while also expressing the harsh realities of unwarranted hatred for others based on insane Christian and political rhetoric.

"Blackkklansman" is the true tale of the real-life black police officer, Ron Stallworth who was the first African American cop at his Colorado police branch in the early 1970s. Officer Stallworth poised as a white man over the phone to KKK members. Stallworth was so convincing over the phone, the then Grand Wizard and National Director of the KKK, David Duke made him an official member of the KKK.  

Another white police officer on the Colorado force was used to meet with KKK members. Officer Stallworth exposed David Duke for the pathic racist he truly is, and nobody seems to care. Why this insane organization is allowed to continue to exist and still have members in congress and other forms of government is crazy to me.  

This movie is dedicated to Heather Heyer, the woman who was run over and killed by white supremist in Charlotteville, Virginia on Aug., 12, 2017, simply because she wasn't a racist, and our then President, the Racist in Chief, Donald J. Trump said these KKK killers were fine people.   

After Heyer was brutally murdered by white supremist, David Duke said this is the first step in what Donald Trump alluded to early in his campaign. It's the first step in taking America back, Duke said.

Rest in Power, Heather Heyer

Mark Izzy Schurr