Recommendation

Meeting Max Merritt

I'd noticed him sitting at the end of the bar at the White Harte Pub in Woodland Hills every time I'd been there. He cracked me up for the first of many times when he dismissed Morrissey as a whiner over the radio's strains of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now." "I was looking for a job and then I found a job?" he cracked. "That's the worst fuckin' lyric I've ever heard in my life!"

Later, another regular told me he was Max Merritt, a 2008 inductee to the Australian Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame and author of the classic '70s hit "Slippin' Away." I'd been sitting with rock royalty and didn't even know it.

It reminded me of a time years ago when I had struck up a conversation with an older gentleman wearing jeans and a cowboy hat outside of an AM/PM on the corner of Coldwater and Moorpark in Studio City. As some point he casually mentioned that he had played with Elvis back in the day. It turned out to be guitarist James Burton.

Anyway, check out this awesome clip of Max with his band the Meteors.

Worst Word Break Ever

Woody's Winning Women

We finally had a chance to watch “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and it occurred to me that Oscar seems to favor the women who star in Woody Allen movies that include a woman’s name in the title. In fact, all four of the women who have won Academy Awards for saying Woody’s words did so in films which met this criteria: Diane Keaton for “Annie Hall” in 1977; Dianne Wiest for “Hannah and Her Sisters” in 1986; Mira Sorvino in “Mighty Aphrodite” in 1995; and now Penelope Cruz for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” in 2008. Dianne Wiest bucked the trend by picking up a second statuette under Woody’s wing in “Bullets Over Broadway,” but only after nabbing the first under terms. Unfortunately, there’s no way for a Nicole Kidman to know when she signs on for something like 2010’s typically Untitled Woody Allen London Project. And if the trend holds true, it only happens every nine to 13 years anyway.

44 Years of Stuff: Illustrated Mythology Cards

I love mythology and I love card decks, so it was a no-brainer to pick this up at an antique show in Ohio about 10 years ago for a cool 10 bucks. The Cincinnati Game Company was cranking out a lot of themed educational sets around the turn of the century. An ad card inside mentions almost two dozen others, including “Strange People,” “In Castle Land” (famous castles of the Old World), “The Mayflower” and “Yellowstone.”