Blondes vs. Brunettes #28 - Cruising Around Wikipedia#1

Well, you know my story, starting back when I was a young kid listening to my babysitter give me a lesson on blondes vs. brunettes.  I hit my apogee in the Kansas City area back in the early 90s (…. Don’t want to be too accurate here …) and then life moved on in a serious way and surrounded by the usual responsibilities that come along in life, I pretty much shoved the rivalry into the closet for a couple of decades.

But then the nest emptied, I established my man-cave downstairs and decided it was safe to drag the **rivalry** out of the closet.  As it emerged again I began to see the potential, given the technology, to not only “dig it” again, but to “spread it” !!

 

So here we are!! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!!

 

So I started this deal on Yahoo Groups by establishing a blonde vs. brunette group, but it was a real beeeaaacch keeping it up, especially becuz there was a limit of 5MB to the size of the videos I could upload. 

Even uploading pics was a bitch. 

Eventually, I let it die of neglect.

In its place, I turned to Wikipedia. 

You see, I had this brainstorm one day that I could write an “encyclopedic” article about Blondes vs. Brunettes.  I labored on it for a couple of months and finally submitted my masterpiece as a “new article.” 

The all-knowing, all-powerful Wikipedia editors didn’t see it quite that way, i.e., not a masterpiece at all, not even an encyclopedic article worthy of Wikipedia.

So they denied it and I was rejected. 

Crushed. 

But not defeated.

I took a couple of piece parts of my masterpiece and added them to the existing article titled “Blonde.”

No comments from the community, so I just kept on adding until it got big enough that I was able to create a new section titled “Blonde vs. Brunette Rivalry.”

And then I kept expanding that to the point where the blonde vs. brunette rivalry section was as big as the as the rest of the “Blonde” article. 

Eventually, I figured push would come to shove so I added a paragraph that spoke to Irving Klaws' work, plus I added the image of the “Blonde vs. Brunette Texas Strip-Off” VCR cover.

 

Oh boy, what I blow-up that caused.  Aside from being called a communist, a pornographer, and a destroyer of family values, the stuff was deleted.  Eventually, one member of the community threatened to move the whole she-bang out of the article and spin it off into a new article.

Oh, really?

So I let it play out and finally this one guy, whose Wikipedia name shall go unmentioned, moved the entire blonde vs. brunette rivalry section.

Well I guess that taught me a lesson, huh?

What a laugher.  So that’s how I finally managed to get “Blonde vs. Brunette Rivalry” into Wikipedia as its own article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_vs._brunette_rivalry

On its own, as an independent article for about 14 months now, garnering (if you include the redirect page) about 6,000 page views a month or 72,000 hits since inception.  Not bad.

Each paragraph of the article is a juicy nugget. You’re familiar with a couple of them:  blonde vs. brunette chess tournament and blonde vs. brunette powder puff football.  I won’t bother to go into all that again. 

 

Well, at least not this week!!  But over the next few months, we’ll back our way into some other parts of the article, like the French miniseries that featured blonde and brunette wrestling teams.  Geez, those French know how to do things right!

The one part of the article I do want to mention is the piece that discusses the Le Monde (that’s a French newspaper … ah, those French again!) article on the issue of blondes vs. brunettes.  The author, a rather astute fellow named Arnaud Leblin, pointed out that American TV has almost, without exception, characterized blonde women as having the positive values of purity, goodness, and sincerity, frequently at the expense of their brunette counterparts. The article provided several examples:

• Bewitched – Samantha, a blonde witch who is the perfect hostess and wife. In a comic twist the actress playing Samantha also plays her dark haired cousin Serena, who embodies mostly negative qualities.
• Dynasty – Blonde Krystal pitted against brunette Alexis.

• V – Both the original series in 1984 and the remake in 2009 featured an intelligent, humanistic blonde battling a brunette who was the leader of the alien cannibals.

Yep, pretty good run down, by a French guy, no less.

Basically, what this guy is referring to is the Evil Brunette construct where the dark haired and usually dark eyed woman, is the bad girl and the blonde, blue eyed female is the good girl.  

So with that long, roundabout introduction, here’s what we will talk about this week, namely two other articles I created on Wikipedia.

First, is an article on the famous movie “Thor and the Amazon Women.”

 

You can read the full Wikipedia article here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_and_the_Amazon_Women

The film’s synopsis:

Thor and the Amazon Women (original title: Le Gladiatrici) is a sword and sandal picture that features a civilization of women warriors ruled by the evil Black Queen who has subjugated the men in her land. Thor and his friend Ubaratutu live in a distant village with a young blonde woman named Tamar and her young brother Homolke. Tamar’s father was the king of a seaside village who had been killed several years earlier when the Black Queen’s Amazon warriors raided the village.

As a form of entertainment, the Black Queen enslaves captive women and forces them to fight each other. Women who refuse to fight are executed by the Evil Queen’s guards. Ghebel Gor, one of the enslaved women, tells the queen about Thor and his reputation as a strongman. Aware of a legend that a strongman may cause her downfall, the queen sends her Amazon warriors to abduct Thor. They fail as Thor manages to escape their trap, but instead they capture Tamar and her brother. Subsequently, Tamar is sent to gladiator school and is trained to fight other women. During the training, Ghebel Gor tells Tamar that she hopes to never fight her because of the Tamar’s superior strength.

While Tamar trains, her brother manages to escape and returns home where he alerts both Thor and Ubaratutu and then brings them back to the queen’s village with the intent of freeing Tamar and the enslaved men. Concurrently, Yamad, the "captain general" of the Amazon warriors confides to Tamar that she secretly opposes the queen. Their conversation is overheard by Ghebel Gor who informs the queen. The captain general is subsequently executed and the queen orders Tamar and Ghebel Gor to fight to the death. Although the queen gives Ghebel Gor her choice of weapons, she loses her weapon during the fight and is forced to battle her blonde opponent with her bare hands. As they fight, Thor and Ubaratutu lead a rebellion of the enslaved men. As the rebellion spreads, Tamar kills Ghebel Gor. The Black Queen, attempting to flee, is also killed and her Amazon army surrenders. Tamar, although wounded, recovers and installs her young brother on the throne as king.


http://www.mediafire.com/watch/0gn05n5u52vz9za/Thor_and_The_Amazon_Women_2.wmv

One reviewer called the movie “about as bad as it gets.” 

Another critic ridiculed the movie, “… for its excessive use of lipstick and blue eye shadow, despite its ancient setting.”

I thought I’d highlight this movie because Ghebel (rhymes with "Maybel”) Gor (rhymes with “slut”)  is the ultimate evil brunette, a first class bitch.  How she got that way, we can only imagine.  Maybe she hated her mother and father, I mean what kind of parents name their kid Ghebel Gor?  No wonder she was pissed.  I can only imagine what kind of taunts she had to suffer as a little girl,

“Ghebel Gor’s a whore, Ghebel Gor’s a whore!”

Shhheeesh!

Susy Anderson, the goody-two shoes blonde, initially trusts Ghebel Gor, but eventually realizes that she’s a ruthless bitch.  Fortunately, she kills her as Thor engages in a tug-of-war with three hundred women as the rope he’s pulling is catching fire.

Huh?

Seriously, it’s the dumbest scene in movie history.

http://www.mediafire.com/watch/36wpdeo377cbwvg/Thor_and_the_Amazon_Women_4.wmv

http://www.mediafire.com/watch/itsblq1ft5hhb4i/Thor_and_the_Amazon_Women_3.wmv

 

The next movie up is an equally ridiculous flick called “Moon in Scorpio.”

 You can read the full article that I wrote for Wikipedia here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_in_Scorpio

Or, just blow through the plot synopsis:

Britt Ekland plays the role of Linda, who is married to Allen, played by John Phillip Law. Allen is a Vietnam War veteran. Together, they plan to take a trip to Acapulco for their honeymoon on a yacht owned by Burt (Smith) and his wife, Claire (Kesner). Joining them are a third couple, Mark (Van Bergen) and his wife, Isabel (April Wayne). Burt and Mark are also Vietnam War veterans and friends of Allen. Prior to the yacht leaving the harbor, one of the marina’s employees is stabbed to death by a mysterious figure in black pajamas.  The couples meet on the boat and set sail. During the voyage, war time flashbacks show the three men committing atrocities during their tour of duty in Vietnam to include the murdering of innocent villagers. The men are clearly troubled by this and tensions on the ship, some of which are sexual, begin to rise. Soon, the boat is vandalized, rendering some of the navigation and communications equipment inoperable. Isabel begins acting erratically and mentions several times that when the “moon is in scorpio”, bad things happen. In a short period of time, both Mark, Burt, as well as Claire are gruesomely killed, leaving only Linda, Allen, and Isabel as the survivors. Finally, Allen is killed and then, as Linda looks for him on the yacht, she surprises Isabel who is in possession of the murder weapon, an odd-shaped grappling hook. Isabel tries to kill Linda and the two women fight each other. The fight ends when Linda overpowers Isabel and stabs her to death with the grappling hook. The entire story is told via flashbacks, from Linda’s point of view, as she is the only survivor. The movie opens with an unseen person escaping from a mental institution and Linda in a hospital being comforted by a doctor. The movie closes with Linda being released from the hospital, after she has narrated her story the police.

Another brilliant plot, huh?

One reviewer said:

"From the jumbled structure, it's apparent that the movie was heavily re-edited to the point of incomprehensibility. I got the impression that Graver and screenwriter Robert Aiken originally intended the movie to be a supernatural thriller, with the veterans' past literally coming back to haunt them (either through the ghosts of the villagers they massacred, or through possession of one of the boaters). However, whatever ghostly [or] … zombie elements there may have been, they have been completely removed. The prologue and the hospital sequences were obviously tacked on afterwards, both to provide a "rational" explanation for the murders and to pad out the running time. I'm not sure whether Graver himself helmed any of the framing-sequence footage, or whether it was handled by co-producer Fred Olen Ray...in any case, the result is a mess."

No shit.

Wayne, a hot, dark eyed brunette, starred as the psychotic Isabel.  During the movie, she manages to kill all the guys on the boat.  As the critics say, it was remarkable after each death how calm the survivors were.  You’d think they’d be scratching their heads saying, “Well, I guess this cruise is over, time to head in!”  Nope, they just keep bullshitting with each other.  Fortunately, the movie comes to an end when Wayne and Britt Ekland go toe-to-toe with each other.  Naturally, you know who’s going to win the fight.

https://www.mediafire.com/?jqdy239dpylf4fl

 

OK, that’s it for this week.  My fingers are ready to fall off.

Next week, just a short note due to other commitments.