Amanda Dole showing off a cute figure in Pandemonium (1987)
I have never seen this, but I love the plot summary: “A beautiful nude feral girl raised by dingoes returns to Babylon, Australia to find her family. Her mom is an evil landlady and her nutty tenants want the girl for themselves. One of them realizes the girl was sent to stop the Apocalypse.”
You may have noticed that some analysts have been measuring improvement in the coronavirus statistics by saying that the percentage increase is going down, as measured by new deaths divided by the previous death total. I really shouldn’t have to explain this to anyone who has taken 7th grade arithmetic, but that is mathematical gibberish. Any situation that is stable will appear to decline by using this method, and many situations which are getting worse will appear to get better.
Example One: a stable situation. Let’s imagine a country where exactly one person dies every day for a 30-day month. On day 2, the increase in deaths will be 100%, Day 3 will be 50%, etc. By the time day 1 of the next month arrives, President Salamander can announce, “Look at the great job I’ve done. I brought the rate of increase down to 3%. Just a month ago it was 100%!” I don’t need to show you a graph for this one, The “deaths per day” graph is a straight horizontal line, and the “percentage increase” graph shows a smaller percentage every day, falling quickly at first, then flattening (but still falling slightly) toward the end of the month.
Example Two: a sample situation that gets steadily worse every day. Let’s imagine country B, where the situation just keeps getting worse: one death on day 1, two on day 2, three on day three … until there are 30 on day 30. The daily graph of deaths by day will look like this:
But the percentage of increase in the deaths will look like this:
The percentage increase on day 2 will be 200%, day 3 will be 100%, day 4 will be 67%, etc. The percentage increase will be less every day, although the day-to-day decrease will be very small on the end of the month. (You can see that the graph is nearly flat, but never totally flat as the month ends.) Still, President Pompadour can step up to the podium on the first day of the next month and say, “Look at what a great job I’ve done. I have gotten the increase down to 7% per day. Just a month ago it was 200%.”
So what you want to look at is the graph of deaths per day. That will give you a good picture of how a country is progressing. If you want to get fancy, graph the raw numbers, a 3-day rolling average and a 7-day rolling average to get a better picture of what the trend would look like without anomalies, glitches and flukes. Here’s what those three graphs look like for Italy so far, and I think it gives a good picture of how bad or good things really have been.
The article is not clear about exactly which portions will be “Live,” but from what I can gather, it will basically be Saturday Night Taped.
(The article is on NBC’s web site. If they don’t know, who does?)
Perhaps you don’t immediately recognize his name, but if you are a male baby boomer, I can just about guarantee that you’ve seen more of Mort Drucker’s art than of any other artist you can name. For more than 50 years he was MAD magazine’s go-to guy for celebrity caricatures. He has passed away at 91.
Here’s a tiny fraction of his work.
“At press time, the prime minister had reportedly informed his medical team that after his emergency lifesaving haircut, he’d never felt better.”
Warsaw-based model Kate Ri bares all
She also manages to work a lot of nudity into her Instagram feed
“Woman put 400 Easter eggs filled with porn in mailboxes”
“In each of the cases, residents reported noticing that the flag on their mailbox was in the up position and when they checked to see why, they found the egg, which contained a fish-shaped cracker, a sheet of toilet paper, a powdered drink mix and a crumbled up pornographic image.”
Really, everything necessary to sustain life.
“A group of sunbathing nudists in the Czech Republic were recently told they needed to cover up, just not in the way that most would expect. While they were completely free to remain nude, local ordinances required that they keep their mouths covered due to the global coronavirus outbreak.”
Proper Corona-era Tan Lines:
Brainscan once again takes a deep dive into the history of film nudity. In this presentation, he focuses on the exploitation master, Harry Novak, who filled the drive-ins and grindhouse theaters of America with some of their most memorable moments. All of the comments and collages below have been created by Brainscan. Some accompanying film clips are found in the members’ section.
In case you can’t see the thumbnails below, switch to this link:
In the first several years of his productions, Harry Novak turned to print models to carry the load of on-screen nekkidness. He was not alone, as most who made exploitation movies of the 1960s and early 1970s relied on women who had already shown a disposition to undress in front of a camera. Here is a smattering of what the still camera had to show.
Althea Currier in Kiss Me Quick
Althea Currier modeling
Cathy Crowfoot in Street of a Thousand Pleasures
Cathy Crowfoot modeling
Claudia Banks in Kiss Me Quick
Claudia Banks modeling
Dyanne Thorne in Wham Bam, Thank You, Spaceman
Dyanne Thorne in modeling
Gaby Martone in Mermaids of Tiburon
Gaby Martone modeling
Joyce Gibson in Wham Bam, Thank You, Spaceman
Joyce Gibson modeling
Karen Thomas in The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet
Karen Thomas modeling
Mary Bauer in Henry’s Night In
Mary Bauer modeling
Mickey Jines in The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet
Mickey Jines modeling
Pat Barrington in Lila
Pat Barrington modeling
Rene Bond in Below the Belt
Rene Bond modeling
Sharon Wells in A Sweet Sickness
Sharon Wells modeling
Tori Lambert in Agony of Love
Tori Lambert modeling
Uschi Digard in Below the Belt
Film and modeling legend Uschi Digard
Part 1 of this series, The Sixties, can be found here.
Part 2, Hicksploitation, is here.
Part 3, The Seventies, is here.
Susannah York in “Images” (1972)
You probably have not seen this film, even if you are a Robert Altman fan. It never received a normal commercial release in America. Some time later it was reported that the film’s original negative was burned by Columbia Pictures. Accidentally. Maybe. Director Altman himself expressed great surprise that a print was obtained by the Cleveland Cinematheque for an Altman retrospective in 2001!
Even if you love Altman’s films (I do), you may well hate this film (I do). I found it to be confusing and as dull as dishwater. My colleague, the late Tuna, also hated it and described it as follows:
“Images (1972) was a total mystery to me after watching it. Thank goodness there was a featurette on the DVD with Writer/Director Robert Altman. I learned that we are seeing life through the eyes of a schizophrenic (Susannah York). Nothing we see in the movie can be assumed to be real, but she may be married, writing a children’s book about unicorns, and staying in a vacation home with her husband. When she is not using voice-over to recite the book she is writing, she is having encounters with herself, her French lover who dies in an airplane crash, and other men. This is high on the list of films I will never see again.”
A lovely capture of Caitriona Balfe in an episode of Outlander (s1e7)
This time she’s headed out to surf, but she doesn’t seem to have remembered her swimsuit. (It’s a pretty cool picture.)
Chantel Jeffries bending over in a leopard bikini
“Playing with her pooch, and inducing a serious drool-fest with a whole lot of her plentiful braless cleavage/bosom in a very revealing low-cut tanktop”
