Reel Critics: ‘Stooges’ shows off its slapstick roots

Chris Diamantopoulos, Will Sasso and Sean Hayes in 20th Century Fox's "The Three Stooges"

The Farrelly brothers are known for their offbeat comedies that challenge the limits of good taste.

“Dumb & Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary” are their familiar big hits. But their current remake of ”The Three Stooges” takes them firmly into safer PG-rated territory.

I grew up in the 1950s watching many of the real Stooges’ original short films. They were broadcast on mainstream TV in the late afternoon when kids got home from elementary school. They were stupid and silly but absolutely hilarious to a child’s mind.

The producers wisely divide this film into three separate but connected episodes that emulate the 30-minute format of the originals.

The plot magnifies the slapstick madness that made the original Stooges famous. The eye-poking, head-rapping, face-slapping escapades are nonstop. They are juvenile and ridiculous but provide several belly laughs throughout. You will be greatly entertained if you are a fan of this brand of low-brow humor.

Otherwise, you have no business attending this show.

–John Depko and Susanne Perez, Daily Pilot

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City Lights: When Angels were a family affair

As the Angels embark on a new season, I have a signed baseball in my collection at home that probably isn’t worth much money.

But I don’t care.

Suffice to say that it’s probably the only baseball in existence signed by Chad Curtis, the Angels’ left and center fielder from 1992 to 1994, and his wife.

Yes, his wife.

And anyone can see that, because, unlike the average ballplayer’s, her handwriting is quite legible.

Right now, of course, it’s hip to love the Angels. Just last weekend, former pitcher Jim Abbott, who famously overcame a disability to achieve major league stardom, visited Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach for a book signing. When the Angels make the playoffs, the local sports bars turn into seas of red. That’s what a world championship and a decade of contention will do for a team.

But that Chad-and-Candace Curtis ball, snug in its tight plastic box, evokes a time when following the Halos was a decidedly minor-league affair. Back then, the Angels and their fans felt more like a family, just because, frankly, there were so few of us at the ballpark.

– Michael Miller, @MichaelMillerHB, Huntington Beach Independent

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Hansen: Churches try to save themselves

B.J. Beu of Neighborhood Congregational Church plays the flute at a Native American ceremony at Alta Laguna Park on Sunday. (Courtesy David Hansen)

Early Easter morning at Alta Laguna Park, as the sun rose in the east, the plaintive sounds of Native American music floated among a group of about 20 people.

Pastor B.J. Beu of the Neighborhood Congregational Church played a flute while a drum kept the beat.

The ceremony included a “centering prayer,” where the people faced the four directions with the invitation to “listen to the earth.”

While it also had more traditional references to the meaning of Easter, the ceremony clearly was not your typical church service.

Which is the point.

Today’s churches cannot survive on traditional services alone. In fact, with the aging baby boomers and lower attendance, many churches are already making changes.

Over the last 10 years, attendance has dropped between 10% to 20% at the major Protestant denominations, Episcopal, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran and Presbyterian, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

Mainline churches have a disproportionate percentage of people older than 65, and at the same time they have failed to reach a younger audience.

–David Hansen, Coastline Pilot

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Offbeat Laguna walking tour

An eerie ghost-like face can be seen in a second-floor window above Envy, a woman’s clothing store on Forest Avenue. (David Hansen)

Living in Laguna Beach means you have to play tour guide when people come to visit, which usually means milling around downtown, buying overpriced ice cream cones and trying not to look like a tourist.

Not anymore.

Determined to break the cycle, I’ve developed an alternative walking tour to keep things interesting. With all due respect to the official tours, I wanted something, well, a little different.

I usually begin at the Wells Fargo building, 260 Ocean Ave., because I like grand entrances. What better than the amazing marble spiral staircase? I always like to take people up to the free art exhibits on the second and third floors in the elevator, then walk down the staircase as if I own the bank.

After that, I go over to Broadway. There are a couple very odd, very cool things to see.

Of course there’s Coast Hardware, 240 Broadway, where I like to show people the amazing collection of salt and pepper shakers. I know that sounds borderline “Hoarders,” but don’t judge until you’ve seen them.

After the hardware store, I take visitors to the Laguna Travel Service, 260 Broadway. I don’t actually go in but instead just stand on the sidewalk, stare at the store and imagine it’s 1967.

It’s not hard. Trust me.

–David Hansen, Coastline Pilot

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City Lights: The Poet Laureate of reader comments

Last week, Times Community News got a surprise visit from a poet. No, Rita Dove or Mark Strand didn’t stop by the newsroom. But our story on DrunkRescue, a new Huntington Beach business that offers rides home for out-on-the-town drunks, got an online reader comment much different from the usual anonymous posting.

It was different, mainly, because it was written in rhymed couplets. I emailed the author and asked for his or her name so we could print the comment in Mailbag (it’s in our letters page this week), and a return message revealed that Michael P. Ridley — a.k.a. The Alaskan Poet — had sent it anonymously.

Then again, for those familiar with Ridley’s work, the poem’s author may have been easy to guess. Ridley, a lawyer who lives in Costa Mesa, has a history of posting poetic reader comments and once wrote a column (in verse) for the Orange County Register. He also runs a pair of poetry blogs: one dealing with personal issues, and the other weighing in on news of the day.

– Michael Miller, @MichaelMillerHB, Huntington Beach Independent

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City Lights: Could Trayvon Martin incident happen in Orange County?

Every so often, a local story turns into a national one — and then a local one again, as individual communities hold themselves up to the light and question whether a similar thing could happen to them. Such has been the case with the death of Trayvon Martin.

Leaving one obvious factor out, the incident in Sanford, Fla. — in which an unarmed 17-year-old was shot by a neighborhood watchman who claimed self-defense — is tragic but not unusual. Every day, somewhere, people die under dubious circumstances; every day, judges and police listen to conflicting accounts of who followed whom or who attacked first.

The Martin case deserves a thorough hearing in court, and with pressure mounting nationwide, I have no doubt that it will receive one. But the case has sparked a national dialogue less about self-defense and vigilantism than about skin color. At this point, has anyone not heard countless times that Martin was black and that his death appears to be racially motivated?

In the last month, a Time magazine columnist published a piece advising parents on how to talk to black boys about the Martin case. “Black maleness is a potentially fatal condition,” the author wrote, later suggesting that parents explain, “You will have to make allowances for other people’s racism. That’s part of the burden of being black. We can be defiant and dead or smart and alive.”

– Michael Miller, @MichaelMillerHB, Huntington Beach Independent

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Hansen: Gay Laguna fades away

It’s been said that Laguna Beach was born gay, started by colorful artists and infused with an eclectic happiness that can only come from open-minded people.

Then why has it become so straight?

What happened to the energy, the progressiveness and self-effacing creativity?

“It’s not the same,” said Fred Karger, 62, a longtime activist and now the first openly gay Republican candidate for U.S. president. “There are still a lot of gay people but many have left to Palm Springs or San Diego or Long Beach or Los Angeles. And it’s not the same without that kind of cool gathering spot.”

Karger was referring to the Boom Boom Room. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the closing of the iconic gay bar, which shut its doors on Labor Day in 2007. Karger, and many others, tried unsuccessfully to keep it open.

“I am absolutely convinced — and I’ve tried to talk to that economic development commission when they were exploring ways to bring revenue in — and I said you should help get a second gay bar in this town,” Karger said. “And you’ll see the gay community come back, and you’ll see a lot of these stores coming back to life.”

On the campaign trail in Puerto Rico last week, Karger pointed out a large gay cruise that was about to leave the port — and the benefits it brings.

“I’m actually in Puerto Rico right now campaigning for president, but there’s a gay cruise leaving from here with 2,300 gay men on it from all over the place. There’s a lot of money spent on travel, particularly in the gay community. And they used to come to Laguna.”

–David Hansen, Coastline Pilot

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On Theater: SCR revival of playwright’s breakthrough play is a marvel

Commentary: Goodbye, my Newport-Mesa friends

Jeffrey Hubbard, former superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. (Steven Georges)

When I was in seventh grade, growing up in La Mirada, I decided to become a teacher because I thought it was the greatest and most important job in the world.

In the last 43 years my opinion has not wavered. In the course of my professional career as an educator I was able to attain that job and accomplish, I hope, some wonderful things for students in three districts as a teacher, principal and superintendent.

As a graduate student at USC I first heard about how highly Newport-Mesa Unified School was thought of and dreamed of working there someday. Thanks to the school board and community for making my dreams come true.

I want to thank the Daily Pilot for giving me this opportunity to say “thank you” and “goodbye” to the school district and community that I love so dearly. There is no doubt in my mind that my first 24 years in education were simply preparation for the best job in the California Public School System — that of being superintendent in Newport-Mesa.

I am, of course, saddened at the turn of events in the last year which were initiated by a previous district that I worked very, very hard for, and sadly no one there stepped up to tell the truth. However, that sadness has always been overwhelmed by the joy and satisfaction of being the superintendent of NMUSD.

–Jeffrey Hubbard via Daily Pilot

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Forever young at 80

Joan Templeton Morris holds her gift from Milvi Vanderslice. (Milvi Vanderslice)

Corona del Mar resident Joan Templeton Morris and her husband, Bob Morris, hosted a fabulous “Forever 20″ party Sunday for more than 100 guests at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club in Newport Beach.

Brunch was followed by two hours of dancing and music from the Greg Topper Band, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Templeton Morris looked so very young — 80 is the new 40 — and danced more than anyone.

“We have this wonderful body, but it changes,” Morris Templeton said Tuesday. “It’s not the body I had as a baby, as a teenager, as a mother, when I was pregnant and all that. We have many, many bodies. It’s beautiful.”

Her son Erik Hoff welcomed guests at the door and emceed, complete with a roast.

Templeton Morris, a leap year baby, was a lovely child, resembling Elizabeth Taylor, and was homecoming queen at Pepperdine.

She was an architecture professor at Cal State Long Beach for 39 years and took students on extended trips to Europe. Her hobbies are painting, exercises, boating and dancing.

“In the year 2000 … I had another huge party because leap year only hits a centennial every 400 years and I made it,” Templeton Morris said. “On one table I had a 1600 ship and on another a space rocket because the next year would be 2400.”

Her son Steve and daughter-in-law Amanda Morris also attended, along with Templeton Morris’ grandsons.

Also in attendance were some of Templeton Morris’ very first students from the 1959-60 school year.

— Milvi Vanderslice

Editor’s note: Milvi Vanderslice, the writer of this piece, is friends with Joan Templeton Morris.