#John Weagly

[crookedtable]

Franchise Detours Episode 50: 'Battle for the Planet of the Apes' (feat. actor, author, and playwright John Weagly)

Conquest for the Planet of the Apes sees Caesar (Roddy McDowall) lead an ape revolution that seemingly sews up the fate of humanity. So where could a sequel possibly take the story after the climactic turn of the previous film? As we continue our journey through the nine-film Planet of the Apes franchise, Battle for the Planet of the Apes gives us our answer. Actor, author, and playwright John…

[shotgunhoney]

Easter Spam by John Weagly

"Easter Spam" by John Weagly (@JohnWeagly) #HappyEaster

It started as a joke. I was sitting around with some friends and we were talking about Easter ham and wondered why nobody ever made Easter Spam.  I came up with several recipes that we all laughed at, but the following Easter, I put one on the menu – Honey-glazed Spam, scalloped potatoes and spring peas with mint.  I don’t know if people liked it because it was kitschy, or if they actually…

[davidjhiggins]

WICKERPEDIA, ed. Kristin Garth & Nick Morrissey

WICKERPEDIA, ed. Kristin Garth & Nick Morrissey

Mixing perspectives on the power of belief, both good and bad, to shape lives with attempts to capture the experience of believing, the Garth and Morrissey create an experience as filled with poetry, awe, and horror as the films that inspired it. … “”

[365tomorrows]

Noise Complaint

Author: John Weagly Conrad Lee answered the knock at his hotel room door to find a policeman with bulbous eyes and a puffy throat. “Good evening, sir,” the cop said. “Did you call in a noise complaint?” His Innsmouth PD nametag said he was Officer Obed. He shifted from foot to foot, causing his hip to flash in the hallway light. “Yes. Hours ago.” “Sorry, sir. Busy night, full moon and all. What…

[anothergracekellyblog]

The Philadelphia Inquirer - September 11, 1977

“Even Their Warts Are Appealing”

A review of Arthur H. Lewis’ “Those Philadelphia Kellys... With a Touch of Grace” by Kiki Olson

So long, Rona Barrett... ciao Suzy Knickerbocker... catch you later, Larry Fields. In his latest book, "Those Philadelphia Kellys... with a Touch of Grace," Arthur H. Lewis out-dishes you all in his saga of a local family that counts among its members millionaires, sports heroes, politicians, movie stars, playwrights, comics, derelicts, homosexuals, and princes.

The fact that Lewis is a kindly, avuncular septuagenarian, who admittedly doesn't stay up later than 10 p.m., has not stood in the way of his writing a book chock-full of juicy gossip about the Kellys and the fast folk they careen around with.

He supplies information we've all wondered about at one time or another - tidbits like the state of Grace's virginity when she married Prince Rainier; the "other women" in John B. Kelly's life; the real "other woman" in John B. Kelly's life; the Kelly family reaction to brother George's lifelong "friend and companion," William Weagly; what is really lurking 'neath the pantyhose of Rachael Harlow, a companion of Kell's (Jack Jr.) and this city's most toasted transsexual; who really ran the show at the Kelly manse and how she put the kabosh on her son's bid for the mayoralty, and whether Jack really prefers blondes and how some of them rate him as an escort. There's even a crunchy chapter headed "There's Never Been a Good Kelly Marriage."

The photographs that punctuate each of the 34 chapters show a family so uniformly handsome that one would suspect that they had been cloned.

When looking at the group, "normal" hardly seems an operative word.

What normal, poverty-stricken family immigrates from Ireland in the late 1800s and without much education beyond mill-working produces sons who become millionaires, sports and political figures, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights and vaudeville and motion picture stars? Then follows a generation where one goes on to become an Academy Award winner and a princess, and her brother is acknowledged as probably "the most widely known amateur sports figure in the world today."

Normal like the Kennedys, maybe, and a comparison between the two families is inevitable. They're Irish, they're rich, they're attractive, they're political and they've got to win.

Besides interviewing the Kellys themselves, Lewis has gathered material from such local archivists as Stanley Greene, Harry Jay Katz, and Jack E. Edelstein and from West Coasters Dore Schary and Joan Blondell.

Although he opens his book by saying that "it's not easy to be objective about the Kellys since you keep falling in love with them," he has hardly written a book that is gushing with their virtues. He all but refers to Grace as a shill for "the suckers who lose their dough on Monte Carlo's green felt tables," to John B. Kelly as a generous "helluva fellow" who could also be a helluva freeloader as well, and to Kell, who even after all that exercising and all those beautiful women has had his bad times, too. Lewis' chapter on the meeting with Kell's wife, Mary (they've been estranged for nine years), has a wistfulness I can only recall in Francoise Sagan's early novels.

For anyone who has felt the slightest pang of envy for the people born into a family where wealth, beauty, honor and acclaim seem to come so easily, reading this book may be a harmless romp through the land of Schadenfreude - that perspicacious German word expressing "taking joy in the sorrows of others."

Find out why Grace cried a lot and called her friends cross-Atlantic from her pretty Mediterranean palace. Discover why John B's nephew, George, who was a champion pool player, died in a Race Street flophouse. Take a gander at John B. Kelly's last will and testament. Look to see if you're one of the many Philadelphians mentioned in the book. In other words, read all about it.

Ironically, the book ends with a full-page photo of Princess Caroline splashing in the surf in a brief bikini. Since she's the Kelly offspring getting the most ink these days, I'm sure it would be of great interest to his readers if Lewis would spill all he knows about this Philippe Junot fellow.

Kiki Olson is a Philadelphia freelance writer.

SOURCE: Newspapers.com

[shotgunhoney]

Lucky by John Weagly

Lucky by John Weagly

“I see a wedding in your future.”

  Jeff almost asked the fortune teller for his money back. A wedding? For the King of the One Night Stand? Ridiculous! He’d come to Venice Beach to get lucky. Everyone said Venice girls were easy, and easy was his style. Having his palm read was just a way to pass the time until he found his next temporary girlfriend.

Now it looked like the sidewalk prophet was…