Only the biggest stars are on hand at the San Diego Comic-Con!

There are more than a couple strange revelations to be had while thumbing through my somewhat yellowing 1992 San Diego Comic-Con program. First but far from foremost is that the event was almost always referred to as the “San Diego” Comic-Con, so as not to be confused with the multitude of other comic cons going on at any time throughout the country. The San Diego happening had yet to brand itself as the comic con, forcing other cons to come up with different, more confusing names (Wizard Con, Emerald Con, etc.) for fear of being hauled into court over trademark infringement.

But the most noticeable aspect of this program, in contrast to today’s con is that almost every page is actually, believe it or don’t, DEVOTED TO COMIC BOOKS! Man that’s crazy. This would never fly today. There are several black and white pages containing essays on the history of comic books from the old pulps of the 1930s to the underground comix of the 1960s and 70s. Video games are not mentioned anywhere and neither are blockbuster motion pictures. While Entertainment Weekly readers, the paparazzi and more than a few gothy exhibitionists were reportedly whipped into a frenzy by Johnny Depp’s surprise appearance at this year’s Comic Con, in 1992, Van Williams who played the Green Hornet during one truncated season 25 years prior merits an entire full page ad announcing that he would be appearing “In Person!” from 10am-2pm on August 13th. As far as the Comic Con of 1992 is concerned, Van Williams is still a big star.

Van Williams will only be appearing at the Now booths and remember kids, FREE GIVEAWAYS!

Just as this year Denzel Washington, Cameron Diaz and Robert Downey, Jr. didn’t let Depp corner an exclusivity deal with the limelight, Van Williams wasn’t the only star at Comic-Con in 1992. Mr. T was also manning a booth signing new copies of his T Force comic book, which had short-lived written all over it, even to those of us who waited in line for a free autograph. But there was Mr. T with a gold plated fork and knife around his neck telling the entire convention that he was going to “eat up the competition.” When I finally made my way to the head of the line and found myself face-to-face with maybe my first bona-fide celeb, I told him that Rocky III was my favorite movie of all time (only a slight exaggeration) and asked if he could say my favorite line for me, which was, “Pain.” He looked dead at me. I got scared. For a moment there he was no longer Mr. T, he was Rocky Balboa’s ruthless opponent Clubber Lang. “PAIN,” he said back to me, hanging on that one syllable for a very long time. You know, he just might make this T Force thing work, as crazy as that sounds.

What makes today’s big league movie stars seem like interlopers at the Comic Con is that they mostly get to have careers beyond donning the spandex, capes and mask and playing DC or Marvel’s most hallowed crime fighters. Christian Bale still gets to be Christian Bale and Robert Downey, Jr. is Robert Downey, Jr. the actor. Adam West, however, was Batman. A couple of seasons playing the Caped Crusader in the 1960s relegated West to donning the batsuit at super market openings or on low budget Southern wrestling shows to earn some extra scratch in the 1970s. Toby McGuire is spared the fate of showing up to truck pulls in the Spidey costume, but even if he had to, today’s more branding conscious comic cos would hit him with a court injunction to keep him from making any unauthorized appearances as the web slinger.

Comic book artists were still the gods of the 1992 con. Frank Miller had a line of autograph seekers a mile long earned solely by his work in the comic book medium. Sin City and Dark Knight were still decades away from being blockbuster movies. The biggest buzz around Todd McFarlane was that he was starting a new comic company called Image and leaving his successful run of Spider-Man to draw and write something called Spawn. His career as a successful toy manufacturer was still a ways off.

San Diego always had the rep for being the biggest convention in the country back then, but my motivation for making the pilgrimage down there wasn’t to catch a glimpse of movie stars. I went to the comic con to meet the God of my imagination, Jack “The King” Kirby, the creator or co-creator of Captain America, Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, The Hulk and countless other staples of our pop culture that have probably bought Marvel Comics CEO Avi Arad several spreads in Malibu since.

I ran into Jack Kirby on the main floor at the Hanna-Barbera booth. He was just standing there and nobody seemed to be paying attention to him at that moment. After introducing myself and gushing about what a big fan I was, Kirby started telling me tales. “Now Captain America was based on real tough guys that I knew growing up,” he told me. “I knew guys who would take on six guys at once you know. They’d kick a barrel under one guy’s legs and make him fall and then wallop the rest of them.” As I started walking away from the King, politely thinking that I didn’t want to monopolize all of his time, he followed me around the convention’s main floor. I mean he was talking to me.

He told me about serving in under General Patton in World War II and how you saw Patton all over the front lines, yelling at the troops in person, while their colonel may as well have been orbiting the earth in a space station. “You know there was this big explosion behind enemy lines from a shell or something,” Kirby told me as we walked past the DC Comics booth, “and this big German started running up to us. He was buck naked. The explosion blew his clothes clean off and his big schlong was whipping back and fourth. He wanted to surrender to me but I made him surrender to my buddy. I was embarrassed.” After about ten minutes somebody else caught Kirby’s attention and he was regaling him with tales of World War II or coming up with the Silver Surfer.

The only evidence of my meeting with the King of Comic Books is this snap shot of Kirby and me posing with my copy of Fantastic Four #5, the first appearance of Doctor Doom…

Me and Jack “The King” Kirby – The Elvis of Comic Books. God, I’m glad I found a Thor shirt that even remotely thinks of fitting me.

Folks, this was before the days where husky fan boys could find comparatively tasteful 4XL button up club shirts with screen prints of Spider-Man turning into Venom adorning them. Back then we were stuck cramming ourselves into whatever XL Thor t-shirt was remotely close to fitting like stuffing so much meat and lard into a sausage casing. Those were cruel times for the fat man indeed.

I was also able to meet stop motion animation guru Ray Harryhausen (Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts), another one of my childhood Gods…

Me with Ray Harryhausen – the God of Special Effects. They say that computers are going to replace stop motion but I don’t think that even Hollywood could be so cold and heartless.

But the seeds of today’s star driven Comic Con were sewn at the 1992 convention. Francis Ford Coppola showed up to hype his new Dracula film. This was the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now showing up at a Comic Book Convention! It was previously unheard of for movie industry talent of his stature to be caught taking the time to address so many pimply nerds. In doing so, Coppola paved the way for Tim Burton to hold his packed press conference at this year’s con. Some would point to this as progress or a new kind of respect for the comic book medium but I’m not sure how much comic books have to do with today’s comic con besides providing much of the source material for the Hollywood blockbusters that are promoted there. The comic book artists were the movie stars of the con in 1992 con but have now been pushed aside by actual movie stars. At last year’s Comic Con, NBC had a big booth touting The Office on the main floor. While The Office is a funny show, it has nothing to do with sci-fi, fantasy, or comic books.

There’s no turning back now and many of the giants that walked the convention floor in 1992 are gone now (Kirby, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Gil Kane and too many others). Comic Con is big business but there’s something to be said for this kooky, yellowing program that I’ve managed to save for nearly two decades. Comic book stores in Sacramento or Denver could still afford half page ads back then and a good chunk of the book’s space isn’t devoted to network TV shilling but to 75th birthday wishes to Jack Kirby by such artists as Steve Leialoha, Mike Royer, Paul Power, Eisner and Bill Griffith. This drawing of The Thing by longtime Kirby inker Joe Sinnott really sums it all up though:

Joe Sinnott’s 75th Birthday wishes to Jack “The King” Kirby.

If he hasn’t done so already, Governator Schwarzenegger is going to sign a real shite-bomb of a budget this morning. Since I’ve given you blogs on the lamentation of my salary and my guide to Arnold-free action flicks, I figure it’s time to make my Arnold Budget Bash-O-Rama a true trilogy. They love trilogies in the sci-fi/fantasy/action genre. But not only is this the third installment of the series, it’s also a prequel! We’re going all the way back to 1977 for Arnold’s appearance in a later season episode of Streets of San Francisco where he plays a crazed Austrian bodybuilder with a major case of ‘roid rage. Somewhat disturbingly, it’s also Schwarzenegger’s most autobiographical work this side of Pumping Iron. We can call this trip down memory lane a reboot and blame it all on time traveling Romulans. Hey Romulans, can you reboot the California Constitution while you’re at it? Just a thought.

The kinetic and jazzy opening theme starts. We’re treated to a credit sequence that leans heavily on the zoom lens. The voiceover almost becomes the song’s lyrics: “The Streets of San Francisco/A Quinn Martin Production/ Starring Karl Malden.” For original Battlestar Galactica fans, this episode also stars Richard Hatch as Inspector Dan Robbins. Michael Douglas, Malden’s original co-star, had already left the series in order to produce One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). The split must have been amicable because Steve Keller (Douglas’ character) didn’t die in an exploding helicopter or anything. Keller did leave the force to teach at something called the “Berkeley College.” I bet he’s getting furloughed right about now. Tonight’s episode is called “DEAD LIFT.” You’ve gotta’ love those Quinn Martin titles.

There’s a quirk to the construction of 70s crime dramas. They usually begin by following the antagonist as he/she/they commit a criminal act, with our main characters only joining the story once they are called in to investigate. If an episode of Streets or Starsky and Hutch begins by focusing on the show’s leads, it usually means that one of them is going to be taken hostage by the middle of act two. This episode follows the standard form however. Arnold as Josef Schmidt is jogging around the lake in Golden Gate Park. An out of breath but still aloof liberal chick catches up to him and persuades Arnie to go back to her off-campus apartment. Once at her pad, she gets him to take off his shirt, rub baby oil on his pecks and give her an impromptu pose-down. She giggles at Arnie uncontrollably while he’s flexing. “I am not a freak! I am not ugly! It’s what a body is supposed to look like!” he rages as he violently shakes that cultural elitist to death before hightailing it out of the apartment.

Arnold is not a freak!

Stone (Malden) and Robbins arrive on the scene of the crime. The murdered woman’s doormat of a boyfriend is on hand to fill the investigators in on the details. She had just graduated from SF State which means she at least avoided CSU’s 20% tuition hike before our Governor squeezed the life out of her. The boyfriend also tells us that she “had this thing for sociology” which led her to bring home construction workers, firemen, and trash collectors to “see what they were thinking.” Stone and Robbins find a cassette tape that she had made of Arnold yelling “I am not a freak” before she died. They also find traces of baby oil.

The day starts out crappy and just keeps getting worse for Arnold. After committing accidental homicide, he shows up to his job lifting empty beer kegs at the Anchor Steam brewery to find out that he’s going to be fired because he works too hard. He’s putting too much pressure on those bearded and lazy union types by being too good. Something called “efficiency experts” are also to blame for this. “I’m here to work!” Arnie rages as he tosses around more empty beer kegs and cases of beer. It’s worth noting that this scene seems to have shaped Arnold’s political views as if this really happened to him. Since becoming governor, he’s launched several ballot initiatives to bust the unions. During Reagan’s second term as president, the early effects of Alzheimer’s disease led him to recount scenes from his movies as if they were real. If Arnold follows in the footsteps of the Gipper and starts to suffer from some kind of human growth hormone induced dementia later in his political career, this is the sequence that he will mistake for reality.

Left: Karl Malden. Right: Arnold gets canned at by Anchor Steam. They may have been onto something over there.

Stone and Robbins find a witness who saw Arnold and the victim leaving Golden Gate Park together. The wit also shows the inspectors that Arnold lumbers around like some kind of constipated robot. Stone asks the SFPD judo instructor about guys who walk around like constipated robots. The judoka tells him that he’s looking for someone with “over-developed lats.” Stone and Robbins then question a cigar chomping carnie at a pro wrestling gym. “Good lookin’ strong guys can make a fortune in the rasslin game,” he informs Stone. Stone then asks if any of his grapplers use baby oil. “Baby oil,” the wrestling promoter sneers, “You know you’re looking for a pretty boy. One of those Mr. America types. They rub the oil on, you know, to show off their meat.”

Arnold goes home to have a have a heart-to-heart with his alcoholic landlord who tells him that guzzling bourbon sure beats pumping iron. “Don’t you know that your body’s a temple?” Arnold asks the old codger in frustration. The landlord says that he’s “worshipping the spirits” and that the rent’s still due. Arnie is forced to earn some scratch as an artist’s model, posing in strange, tan-colored man panties. Another liberal woman (Diana Muldaur), this one older and more desperate takes him home to her apartment where she tells Arnold that he is an artist who “uses his own body as clay.” Arnold gets lucky this time.

Stone and Robbins’ investigation leads them to a claustrophobic body builder gym where grimy muscle heads with bad hair pump iron and are hustled by a skinny grifter in an old school jogging suit. The huckster running the gym (Bert Freed) is a Joe Weider type who is only slightly more trustworthy than the wrestling promoter. Still, he helps Stone and Robbins narrow down their leads and once they pull some military records, they’re hot on the trail of the Governator. They go to an old address of Arnie’s and question his previous drunken landlord. She tells them that she had to throw him out because of all the “clangin’ and bangin.’” Remember when San Francisco was filled with cranky, boozehound landlords instead of the yuppie property speculators the city is plagued by today? Ah, the good ol’ days.

Arnold’s new lady friend (man she moves fast) convinces him to sign up for the “Mr. San Francisco” contest that is conveniently being held later that afternoon in order to boost his confidence. If there’s one thing Arnold lacks, I guess, it’s confidence. She mistakenly brings some college-educated, wine drinking, Nancy Pelosi loving, Gavin Newsom hugging pals of hers to the tournament to meet her new man. One of the libs refers to Arnold as “ferocious, jungle-like.” He then chortles loudly as Arnie strikes a pose and quips, “I can see why you didn’t want me to have that fourth cocktail. You were afraid I would throw up.” Arnold catches wind of this but manages to take second place anyway.

Chortling libs mock Arnold’s physique.

Arnold makes it back to the lady friend’s pad before totally losing it. “What good is it being best at something if nobody understands what you’re best at?” he emotes before shattering a bunch of vases and punching holes in paintings. “It is progressive resistance! In progressive resistance you go from something light to something heavy like this!” he says as he busts up a coffee table. Some uniformed police officers arrive but the sight of public employees only sends Arnold into more of a rage. He easily bats one away and subdues the other.

Governor Schwarzenegger appropriates city-owned assets by physically grabbing their police personnel.

Robbins and Stone show up on the scene with their guns drawn. There is mild disappointment that we don’t get to see Karl Malden go one-on-one with the Austrian Oak, but it isn’t to be. If it were an episode of Cannon, you know we’d be seeing William Conrad opening up a can of blubbery whup-ass all over Schwarzenegger. Instead, Stone/Malden gets a handle on the situation by asking: “How many times are you going to hurt people?”

“Until they stop laughing!” Arnold answers while clutching a middle aged cop in his vice-like grip. And there’s the problem. We laugh at Arnold’s accent, his muscles and his gap-toothed grin. We laugh at his movies when we’re supposed to as he delivers one liners in Kindergarten Cop (1990) and when we’re not as he’s badly dubbed in Hercules Goes Bananas (1970). We laugh at his commentary track on the Conan DVD (thanks Holzfeuer) and we laugh at Dead Lift. We just can’t stop laughing at Arnold. But until we do, he’s going to keep on cutting with that big fucking knife of his and hurting the elderly, poor kids without medical care, students at all levels, cities, counties and everyone who works for them. And as Streets of San Francisco brings me insight into one of the most captivating figures of my lifetime, I realize that ArnoCorps, a punk metal band devoted to ruthlessly mocking Arnold at every turn has a new EP ready to drop. Arnold’s gonna’ slash and burn no matter how much Malden lays into him with a stern talking to.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Streets of San Francisco airs weekdays at 11am on KOFY TV-20 (cable channel 13). They’ll show Dead Lift sooner or later. Watch for it.

On Tuesday, Governor Schwarzenegger announced another 2,000 layoffs, making many California residents more than a little bummed by having a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator that “absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead” as our state’s highest elected official. As budget talks drag on, more IOUs are issued and rhetoric becomes stale to the point of petrifaction, even the most testosterone addled Golden State movie buff can become queasy at the sight of Arnie chomping on a stogie and blowing shit up. Although mindless enjoyment of Terminator, Conan and Commando may now be almost impossible, Reagan era defense spending has provided us with a diverse supply of oily biceps and big guns that don’t belong to Arnold. Here is my painstakingly compiled top-ten list of Arnold-free action flicks:

10) ABRAXAS: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE (1991): You want a governor, you’ve got a governor. Jesse “The Body” Ventura shows off acting chops that make you understand why he went into politics as he plays a space cop sent to save the Earth from his former partner turned renegade who impregnates human chicks with alien embryos. This film can often be found in dollar store DVD bins, making it the right entertainment choice for the recently unemployed or those socking away money as they brace themselves for potential layoffs.

9) SILENT RAGE (1982): It’s Chuck Norris versus the Terminator! What more can a guy ask for? Actually this flick came out a full two years before Arnie donned a pair of shades and said, “I’ll be back.” Chuck squares off against an unkillable killer akin to those seen in then-recent slasher films like Halloween and Friday the 13th, thus satisfying our prurient need for both 80s splatter and taekwondo ass kicking in the process.

8) THE SWORD AND THE SORCEROR (1982): Tired of Conan? Meet Talon (Lee Horsely of TV’s Matt Huston), a royal heir turned barbarian adventurer who beats up thugs with a mutton leg. The evil Titus Cromwell (Richard Lynch) unleashes and then double-crosses a demon sorcerer (Richard Moll AKA Bull from TV’s Night Court) in order to seize a kingdom from its rightful leader (sorry to bring up the recall election) and only Talon and his rad three bladed sword that launches projectiles like an unsafe Micronauts toy can restore justice. Joining Talon is a team of swashbuckling johns assembled at a local brothel who take time out from getting their relaxers to save a kingdom. Ample bosoms and beheadings plus a crucifixion for good measure.

7) OVER THE TOP (1987): Sly Stallone is an independent trucker named Lincoln Hawk who decides to bond with his estranged military school brat son (David Mendenhall) by practically kidnapping the kid, making him listen to maudlin pop music and dragging him to an arm wrestling competition in Vegas. At the tournament, Hawk comes up against various disgruntled Teamster types in an ugly face contest where competitors desperately grunt, drool and scowl at each other in order to win the grand prize of a new semi truck that they can hopefully sell to help pay for skyrocketing medical co-pays. Will Sly the Guy be able to teach his son how to arm wrestle and flex his neck muscles or will megalomaniacal grandpa Robert Loggia and henchman Terry Funk send the boy to Harvard instead?

6) KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS (1989): This flick begins with Charles Bronson brandishing a 12-inch dildo and saying, “Now I’m going to show you what you do to those little girls,” to a perv that he’s just shoved down face-first onto a hotel room bed. As the screen fades to black you can hear the moans and screams of said perv. We then cut to a scene of Bronson washing his hands! This Cannon Films production somehow, against well nigh impossible odds, manages to get even more sleazy and just plain wrong from there making Kinjite the cinematic equivalent of huffing turpentine.

5) SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (1989): California voters weren’t the first ones to fall prey to Schwarzenegger’s charisma and aptitude for psychological warfare. Before us, Lou Ferrigno was hoodwinked by the Austrian Oak during the buildup to the 1975 Mr. Universe competition. Arnold won, leaving Louie as a runner up. The two had parallel film careers. Arnold became one of the highest paid movie stars of all time, while Lou ended up in low- budget but strangely arresting Italian-made fantasy potboilers like this one. Directed by Luigi Cozzi, the man who brought us the best Italian Star Wars ripoff ever with Star Crash, Sinbad of the Seven Seas opens up with a mind-bending, almost incongruous intro within an intro about Edgar Allan Poe. Who was Edgar Allan Poe? Why don’t you go check the library? Oh yeah, they’ve all been closed down due to budget cuts.

4) HEARTBREAK RIDGE (1986): Before Clint Eastwood became the venerated director of such Oscar worthy fare as Million Dollar Baby (2004) or Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) he wasn’t above helming this 21-gun salute to the US military triumph at Grenada. Eastwood plays Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, a decorated ‘Nam vet charged with whipping a platoon full of fuckwits into shape for the greater glory of God, Country and Ronald Reagan. Mario Van Peeples plays the rappin’, guitar slinging, ring-leader of the class clowns that Clint has to motivate with a flurry of lines like: “I’ve drunk more beer and banged more quiff and pissed more blood and stomped more ass that all of you numbnuts put together.” Clint also punches out a steroided out Arian lug enabling disenchanted Californians to live vicariously through him.

3) DELTA FORCE (1986): It’s Chuck Norris tag teaming with none other than Lee Marvin in a cross between Missing in Action and The Dirty Dozen! Bearded Chuck and grizzled Lee head up an elite rescue team dispatched to rescue a plane that’s highjacked by Iranian terrorists. Robert Forster (Jackie Brown), heavily tinted by tan in a can, is the lead Jihadist and delivers the best badguy line in Farsi ever when he tells one of his thugs to “go over there and kick him in the head.” Among the plane’s passengers are George Kennedy, Joey Bishop, Shelly Winters and Martin Balsam, which gives the film the extra spice of a 1970s Airport (or Airplane for that matter) disaster flick. Norris has a super motorcycle (reminiscent of those seen in the similarly titled sci fi clunker Mega Force) that launces rockets at Islamic extremists. Warning: this film’s heroic score is so mindlessly infectious that it will get stuck in your head for decades no matter how much Popov Vodka you consumed in a multiplex parking garage before seeing this movie.

2) DEATH WISH 3 (1985): This movie is living on a fixed income; I swear that the same exact TV set is stolen at least three times in this thing from three different apartments. However, what producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan spared on art direction, they made up for by cramming more senseless violence into this entry in the Death Wish franchise than any other (and that’s really saying something). Due to police department staffing reductions and draconian cuts in human services, elderly white people and hardworking Latinos are left to the mercies of an army of punkers with painted faces and parachute pants. Bronson trades in his little nickel plated .38 for a hefty Browning automatic rifle to show that he can out-Rambo Stallone any day of the week despite being more than eligible for AARP membership. The action resembles both a stage play and a shooter game (or maybe whack-a-mole) as thugs stick their heads out of tenement buildings and Bronson blows them away.

1) ROADHOUSE (1989): Possibly the only 80s action flick with as many rad lines as Predator. “I heard you had balls big enough to come in a dump truck… I used to fuck guys like you in prison… My way or the highway… Pain don’t hurt…” It just goes on and on. Patrick Swayze is Dalton, a mullet-headed bouncer with a PhD in philosophy, but any true cineaste knows this already. It’s like knowing that Clark Gable is Rhett Butler. For those of you who are way too into the Coen Brothers, Road House bears strange similarities to The Big Lebowski (especially in the casting of Ben Gazzara and Sam Elliott). For those of us impacted by the current recession, this barroom brawling epic illustrates how the small business owner is crushed by greedy monopolies that set prices and freeze out competition. Now if only Dalton could take on Wal-Mart.

In preparation for this article, several of these films were viewed on old laserdiscs. Any way to stretch a buck.

Special thanks to Rosie Picado for the illustration.

I work for a major California public university. My pay is probably going to be cut by eight percent next month. I’m one of the lucky ones. My fellow state workers at the DMV and other state agencies have been eating an eight per cent pay cut for months already. Now they are told they have to up their sacrifice to 15%. But those of us with jobs, no matter how devalued, are luckier still. At least we’re still working (for the time being).

Arnold Schwarzenegger, our Governator, told the state legislature in May that he sees the pain in our eyes and hears the fear in our voices. He didn’t let on that this was music to his ears. “What is best in life?” a Mongol chieftain asks the young Conan in Arnold’s first summer blockbuster, Conan the Barbarian (1982). “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women,” Arnold as Conan stoicly answers to the applause of his warrior masters. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine that ran earlier this month, Arnold said that he relaxes in a Jacuzzi with a stogie and refuses to let those harsh choices he has had to make get him down. With each pay cut, layoff, benefits decrease, fare hike for public transit, park closure, reduction in services to poor children and the elderly, Arnold most definitely hears the lamentation of their women.

But how did I become one of Arnold’s enemies to be crushed and driven before him? I begged my dad to take me to see Conan when I was 12 years old. Despite its R-rating, my dad relented. I think he wanted to see the movie too. “Lots of boobs, lots of beheadings” was my dad’s glib review to my stepmom after returning from the UA-6 proto multiplex in Redwood City. I guess that was two thumbs way up.

I went to see Predator at the Stanford Theatre, a single screen job that’s now a revival house kept afloat by funds from David Packard. As the end credits rolled, my friends and I swore we could remember each line of dialog from it as if we had seen it ten times. “Stick around… This stuff will make you a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus… We’re all gonna’ die… Dug in like an Alabama tick… You’re one ugly mother fucker.” Our belief that we could recall each of the film’s lines verbatim in those days before the advent of IMDB made us love the film all the more.

After seeing an Arnold movie, I’d put a little extra effort into the strength training part of my high school PE class. For weight sets, our school utilized these rusty metal bars that had oversized tin cans filled with hardened concrete attached to each end of them. I did extra reps of military presses, behind the head presses and other muscle building exercises. Coach Parks made me do lots of Bear runs (our high school’s mascot was the bear – like my current place of employment). The Bear Run was about a half mile. I did it very slowly but I did it. I then did more reps with those makeshift barbells before taking off for another bear run. I never saw the results that I wanted. Casting agents weren’t going to call me to be part of Schwarzenegger’s next rescue team any time soon. I was still a fat kid. Nobody told me that I had to do steroids to look like Road Warrior Hawk or Hulk Hogan. The weight lifting mags assumed that you knew this already—that you were in on the gag. There’s a saying in pro body building: “Body building without steroids is like NASCAR without gasoline.” Arnold always was full of a lot of gas, it turns out.

Arnold is ruining his legacy. Not the legacy of seizing the governorship of California through the recall election. Not his landslide reelection that looked so uncertain only months before when the entire slate of ballot initiatives backed by him went down in a steaming heap as voters rejected them one by one. No, he is ruining the only legacy of his that matters: the legacy of sometimes classic but mostly crappy action movies. It will be hard to watch them on late night cable TV because, well, if I’m smart, I’ll dump the cable TV. BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) fares just went up six per cent and the San Francisco MUNI bus line increased its standard fares to a whopping two bucks, mostly due to cuts in state subsidies. Work pays me less but it costs more to get there. No more on demand 80s action nostalgia for me. Maybe I still have old pan and scan VHS copies of some of those movies in a big Sterlite storage bin under my house. But even if I do, I doubt I’ll want to watch them.

Arnold, if you are reading, they are making a new Conan movie without you. Why can’t you abdicate like your equally fame seeking colleague Sarah Palin and make another Conan flick instead? Here’s the pitch: you are Conan as an older man. You have conquered. You are the bearded guy sitting at the ornate throne at the end of the first movie. The burden of leadership both weighs heavily on your brow and isn’t what you had thought it was going to be. You are held captive in your palace, no longer allowed to lead your armies into victory. You can use this multi-million dollar summer epic to reflect upon your years in politics and maybe even scoop up rare (for you) critical raves in the process. “I want to lead but these bureaucrats won’t let me!!!” You can scream in your thick Austrian accent, while no doubt hurling some heavy object encrusted with precious gems at the end of the film’s first act. As act two draws to a close, you can be about to lead your horde into battle once again, in defiance of your political advisors. During the film’s climax, you will perish in battle from multiple battle axe wounds. It’s the way that Conan should go out after all. People will cry just like they do when King Kong goes tumbling down the Empire State Building or the Wolf Man is finally plugged with that silver bullet, releasing him from his curse. This film writes itself Arnold and you need to be in it. Johnny Milius can direct. It’s too bad that Mako isn’t around to narrate. Maybe Dolby or Lucas can devise some kind of Mako simulator.

There’s a homeless guy in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco who panhandles in the median strip on South Van Ness while wearing a dirty Arnold Schwarzenegger t-shirt. It has a pic of Arnold as Conan, flexing his muscles and brandishing a broadsword. “Welcome to Kalee-Forniah” it says underneath our governator’s oiled up mid section. I bet that guy doesn’t get quite the health services that he used to. Maybe we should silk screen a new shirt for him that reads: “Arnold is governor and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

Karl Malden was Detective Mike Stone. He patrolled the Streets of San Francisco (A Quinn Martin Production) around the same time that Clint’s Dirty Harry Callahan and McQueen’s Bullitt were plugging perps and getting into rad car chases respectively. But Stone/Malden wasn’t into such hot dogging. He wasn’t the rebel. He wasn’t the inconoclast. Stone probably came up on the force around the same time that Jimmy Stewart’s Det. Scottie Ferguson nearly fell off a building and discovered that he suffered from a bad case of vertigo in the process. Scottie was saddled with a desk job but couldn’t even hack that. Stone must have learned some hard lessons from Ferguson’s plight there. Stone was the father figure. He was the cement that kept the streets from cracking apart from so much Bay Area seismic activity. Stone was more likely to give you a stern talking to than draw his gun. I think the entire state of California could use one of those stern talkings to right about now.

Malden was just as much the mentor offscreen as Stone was on it. In 2006 I interviewed local character actor and florist Al Nalbandian for the San Francisco Chronicle about his long acting career. Being a Bay Area actor, he appeared in a few episodes of Streets (about four by my count). “(Malden) was a very capable man,” Al told me as he sold long stem roses and other fine flowers at his Union Square stand, “One time, when the director didn’t know what he was doing, Malden went out there and told him what to do. He helped Michael Douglas out in those episodes. Douglas is lucky to have had such a partner.” Douglas has always given more credit to Malden as an acting teacher than to his father, Kirk Douglas. While Stone was showing Steve Keller the ropes on the force, Malden was teaching Douglas how to act. (Al is still out there selling flowers by the way.)

A friend of mine works at a pretty good video store in the Mission District. He tells me that there are a handful of young, hipster types who have become obsessed with Streets. A couple of them have even found Mike Stone’s house on DeHaro Street. The city in those episodes of Streets is long since gone, replaced by high tech gulches, new ballparks and biotech hubs. Still, Malden pumped so much life into that character that anyone passing by that house on DeHaro would half expect Mike Stone to stroll out of that front door of his and regale you with tales of the best hotdogs in the Potrero or the best chili in the Tenderloin.

Karl Malden passed away today at the age of 97. He will be missed.

In addition to the Streets boxsets and the Kazan/Brando movies, you should also check out Karl Malden’s job as a Tony Perkin’s hardassed dad in the baseball/mental health drama Fear Strikes Out. It’s one of Malden’s best roles in a career of best roles. Bay Area residents can still watch Streets on KOFY TV-20 weekdays at 11am.