If You're Visiting From Charlie Parker ...

If there is anybody here who isn't a regular reader of "If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger, There'd Be A Whole Lot Of Dead Copycats," not only do I recommend you take a trip on over there immediately (click here), but I'd also like you to tell me how that's possible. Charlie Parker, which bills itself as "An Ongoing Series of Cultural and Personal Observations; by Tom Sutpen, Stephen Cooke, Richard Gibson, Kimberly Lindbergs and Greg Ferrara" has ten followers to my one, making it one of the most popular blogs out there. Me, I've been following it since before I knew that "following" is a term of art.

Anyway, Charlie Parker has chosen the Mythical Monkey as the "Blog of the Month"—which is like Ted Williams telling you that you can hit, only better because Ted Williams is dead and I don't play baseball. Until they start handing out Oscars for movie blogging, this is as good as it gets.

If you're visiting from Charlie Parker, welcome!

And what are you likely to find here at the Monkey?

Photos
Two of my most popular posts were a series of photos of Greta Garbo as she aged, from nine to 85—

—and a similar set of John Wayne, from a shockingly handsome twenty-three year old to a grizzled cancer patient in his last film, The Shootist.

Made-Up Awards
Named for my wife Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies (here) are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.

Okay, I say present day—anybody who's been reading this blog for a while knows I move so slowly, I'm literally going backwards. Which leads to the other set of made-up awards I'm working on—

The Silent Oscars (here) are my choices for best picture, director, screenplay and all four acting categories for the years before the Academy began handing out awards, beginning with 1915 and running through July 31, 1927. Silent movies will never be as popular as they ought to be until we have something to argue about, and everybody knows, we love to argue about who should have won what award.

Mammoth Essays
For example, an eight part, 12,000 word post about the Marx Brothers, which can start reading here.

But there are many more, including essays about—

Louise Brooks

Charles Chaplin's City Lights

and

Jean Harlow

Differences Of Opinion
Remember: there are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.

Mishigas
With a blood feud between Lon Chaney and Douglas Fairbanks, a fistfight involving Wallace Beery and John Barryrmore, plus the regular feature "That's Typing, Tuesday," sanity is optional here at the Monkey.

And above all, Movies
Public domain ones, of course.