• Prices in the prison shop are too high
• Swiss Meusli appears too often on the breakfast menu
• There are only 45 channels on their cable TV

I didn't make that up, honest. Not a word of it. The part I make up is coming next. I do have one question. When prisoners go on strike, what do they do different? Luckily, I was able to contact the prisoners union via the internet and I now am prepared to share with you the complete list of demands they sent to the Swiss authorities.

1. Warden must stop skimping on the butterfat in the goat's milk fudge
2. We insist on resuming the conjugal visits from Pam since she left Tommy again
3. Every day's ice cream - chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. Would it hurt the warden to mix in some rum raisin now and then?
4. Keep Slim Whitman away on visiting day. We're tired of him bugging us for yodeling tips.
5. Keep our cheese safe from the mice. By the time we get it, it's full of holes!
6. Please, not so many non-nudes in Uncle Scoopy's Fun House
7. Add a tunneling device to everyone's Swiss Army Knife ... um ... to aid the Army in removing land mines.
8. Incessant "cuckoo, cuckoo" all night long is driving us crazy. We want some normal clocks in here.
9. We need to be insured against possible fire damage from those flaming desserts.
10. Johnny Cash must learn to pronounce Thorberg correctly in his concerts.
11. What's with this fucking eternal Swiss neutrality? Take a stand, dammit!

Polls with Lawdog

MY TAKE ON THE ANIMATED FILMS: Personally, I think you guys are a lot smarter than the Academy. You correctly identified the brilliant "South Park" over all the pretenders. Lawdog did a thorough job on the commentary, so I haven't much to add except these points First, I think South Park is the best movie musical since "Singin' in the Rain". Second, it is arguably also the funniest movie of the 90's, certainly a worthy competitor for "Something about Mary" and "Groundhog Day", the two that won our poll. Third, despite the woeful inadequacy of all Stone and Parker's other movies, this one is arguably the best movie of 1999, but it received as few nominations as the Academy could possibly spare (and for the wrong song, at that!). These two guys have managed to make a general release with an edgy, biting, take-no-prisoners, spare-nobody attitude which is just so damned refreshing in a bland whitebread world, and which reminds me of my comic idol, the late Michael "Mister Mike" O'Donoghue. Plus, they are essentially honest. Stone and Parker say the things we all think, but never dare to say ourselves. Their portrayal of childhood is more accurate than most of the ones that purport to realism.

The academy has never accorded comedies full status, as you know. Even the classics like Blazing Saddles, Love and Death, and Duck Soup have been ignored by the Oscar folks. Some comedies do get nominated, but the Oscars have a universal rule: in order for a comedy to be nominated, it must not actually be funny. Thus, nominations go to "Tootsie", a good movie to be sure, but basically a stylish character-based movie with a few laughs. Nominations do not go to movies that leave you laughing from start to finish.

Well, they are wrong, you are right. Toy Story and Lion King are great movies. My kids were singing those friggin' Lion King songs forever. But South Park is a comedy masterpiece. End of Story.

The Gist and Lawdog

Yesterday's girl is Marina 23, from London. (1, 2, 3, 4)

Gold is Tessa Hewitt, from 27 September 1979,

The request is Susan Shaw, one of the very first Page Three Girls, from 1972.

Hi Scoopy,

It's the Masterbagger back from the dead. I'm thinking of doing a few vidcaps again and need a little advice on vidcap hardware. I pretty much stopped using Windows/Intel equipment in favor of Silicon Graphic and Apple machines. The SGI machines are great for video/capture but I can't seem to find any vidcap equipment for doing still captures on the Apple G4? I have an Aurora Fuse video capture card in the G4 but video capture is done from Adobe Premiere which has no single frame capture. The Apple DVD software also has no single/still frame capture for some odd reason?

I'm wondering if you or any of the vidcappers that participate on your website use a Mac and could suggest some alternative to Premiere 'filmstrip' files to do single frame still captures. I can be reached at masterbagger@hotmail.com.

Members Bonuses

FOREIGN CLASSICS

I think it is possible to argue that Tuna's film and mine have a lot in common. They represent two of the ten best foreign films of the 1990's, they are both family stories covering multiple generations, both filled with banquets, and they both are told from the women's POV.

"Como Agua Para Chocolate", from Johnny Web

I finally saw "Like Water for Chocolate", which is a classic example of magical realism translated to the screen. In short, the youngest daughter of a prosperous fin de siecle Mexican family is forbidden to marry and have children until her mother dies. As a result of this family tradition, the great love of her life goes to her oldest sister. He, in turn, reciprocates her love and marries the oldest sister so he can be near the youngest.

Magical Realism is a very powerful strain in the fiction of Latin America, and I'm not all that comfortable with it. I always wonder if they want me to believe that these people are real or not. I suppose my brain is too compartamentalized, but I want fairy tale characters to be able to transcend reality, ala Princess Bride, but I like real people to abide by natural law. However, many people like this kind of approach, and Gabriel Garcia Marques won a Nobel Prize for writing it well. Some examples The star's cooking has magical properties. With her passion foiled in life, she pours it into her food, and it produces remarkable results. When her tears fall into her sister's wedding cake, it causes everyone who eats it to cry. Other times her food makes skin smoke, and acts as aphrodisiac, magnet, panacea, etc. When the lovers actually get together, sparks fly. Literally. And their lovemaking causes lightning, stock market fluctuations, revolutions, and mysterious changes in hat sizes. Maybe I made some of that up. When she rides off to Texas, the train of her dress, dragging behind the wagon, is of infinite length. That must be one strong horse. Oh, well, having confessed my discomfort with magical realism, let me not hesitate to remind people that the importance of a literary technique is the effect it produces. Magical realism, like any written figure of speech, can help to produce an emotional response, or to help us get our minds around certain concepts and feelings.

Forgetting my personal biases for a minute, I think you can find some legitimate things to ctiticize in this movie. The characters are really cardboard and uninteresting, especially Pedro, the dashing love of her life. I kept wondering what these two would talk about if they ever had a chance to have a conversation. And the domineering mother is a complete cartoon, unrecognizable as a person, rather like the standard wicked stopmother in those Disney stories. The film only makes use of about 10% of the pallette. It's virtually a black-and-white movie, except substituting brown for black and faint orange for white. Those just aren't my favorite colors - although they lend a dreamy old time sepia photograph quality to the story which is, after all, a recollection of family stories by a great-niece in our own times. And the corny ending just stretches ones credulity beyond all reason. And the pacing of some scenes is so-o-o slow.

I've whined so much about this movie you'd think it was Plan 9 or something, and I've given you a false impression. Despite everything I've said, it has a certain undefinable - "magic". It has a charming and gentle way of treating very serious and depressing subjects in a "OK, let's get on with life" way, ala Kurt Vonnegut. I guess Vonnegut himself is a magical realist, now that I think of it. And I did really get involved, and kept hoping the lovers would figure it all out without hurting their friends and family. And I guess that justifies magical realism - it produced the response from me that it was supposed to produce, despite my crabbing about it.

I guess it's just like reading Dickens. You have to accept his rules, even if you think they're dumb, and know that any beggar you mistreat will undoubtedly be the king in disguise or your long-lost father. If you buy into the fact that only 11 people live in London, and they keep running into each other, you can enjoy Dickens, and get a lot out of his work. Magical realism requires the same participation from you. You just have to play along, enter into its leisurely pace and accept its conventions, and then it lends you some of its warmth, and you're happier for it.

I have Lumi Cavazos, the star, in today's edition. The other women will appear in subsequent editions. Lumi got naked from about every angle, so that wasn't so bad. Unfortunately, the nudity was that candlelit type, like Salma in Desperado.

Lumi Cavazos (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8)

"Antonia's Line", from Tuna

This is a really excellent Dutch movie which I have previously discussed, and which I like a lot. If I could keep only one European film from the 1990's, I'd keep this one over Life is Beautiful or Il Postino. (I don't know if it would be my final selection. I'd have to think about it some more.)

NEW FEATURE. If you love Tuna's work but are daunted by the quantity of his output, this might help. Click here for a thumbnail index of all of Tuna's pics from this film. Study the index first, the download the ones you want Els Dottermans (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7) Elsie DeBrauw (#1, #2, #3, #4)

GR's corner

Kathy Shower in "Sexual Malice" Samantha Phillips in "Sexual Malice" Sheeri Rappaport in "Little Witches" Jimmy's movie

Film clip of Joanna Lumley in "Games Lovers Play". Still caps above in Jimmy's column.