Gilliamesque: A Pre-posthumous Memoir
Hardcover | Kindle Edition
By Terry Gilliam
Canongate Books | Harper Design
Publication Date: October 1, 2015
Cover Price: $22.00

Terry Gilliam, entertainment renaissance man, pioneer illustrator, and cinema auteur, who was the key force behind the absolutely bizarre and hilarious animation in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, has recently released an autobiography in which he tries to make sense of his wild, sprawling, and utterly successful life career, titled Gilliamesque: A Pre-Posthumous Memoir.

The title is a play on the word Pythonesque, which has pretty much entered the lexicon of language the last few years when describing a piece of humor which pushes envelopes and knows no bounds, like much of the zany oeuvre the madcap Englishmen manifested during their heyday of the late ’60s to the early ’70s. And for someone like Terry Gilliam, who just recently celebrated his 75th birthday a few weeks ago, it’s a term befitting of a man of his social, creative, and influential stature.

The holidays have dawned upon us again and it seems as if the unveiling of them gets sooner and sooner each year. In a world that has seen one of its toughest and tragic years in 2015, the beauty of the holidays is more than a traditional, religious bent, but more about the communion of people and the act of humanity that seems to crawl from the cobwebs only during this time for some people. Regardless of the volume rate, whenever something can collectively bond people together with a sense of energy that runs placid and empathetic, there’s something to be said about the perennial emotion that gets reserved for this time of year. And of course with this year, comes the giving and receiving of gifts and good cheer. And as is my wont for the past few years now, I too have been rather perennial in my choices for key music items to bestow upon good friends and loved ones this time of year. So here’s some picks for this some of this years A-list offerings in music. As usual, this list goes to eleven.

Here’s the Holiday Geek Gift Guide 2015 for Music…

Al Molinaro, who appeared on two highly popular 1970’s sitcoms in remembered roles, The Odd Couple and Happy Days, died Friday from complications of a gall stone in Glendale, CA, according to CNN. He was of 96.

Molinaro appeared on The Odd Couple as Murray the Cop, who was super nice, friendly, and with a kind of puppy dog style ignorance that the character wore around his neck in the nicest possible way. He was mainly there as a comic foil and fellow poker player to the show’s duo of stars, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. Although the show’s producer Garry Marshall (who was a friend of Molinaro) allowed the Murray character to stretch out in an episode or two during the five-year run on ABC (1970-1975). With Molinaro’s portly build, large W.C. Fields-like proboscis, and running water charm, he created one of the more memorable character on the program, and is an instantly recognizable one when the series found mega success in syndication.

With all the recent hoopla and hullabaloo surrounding the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, it’s easy to forget that the cinematic creative genius dynamic team of Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and Steven Spielberg made some pretty adventurous films prior to it, films that in a way set the stage for this timeless classic.

There was Used Cars, the 1980 comedic quilt of craziness which starred Kurt Russell, and 1979’s notoriously panned 1941. But, before that was debut of the team and their glorious work with 1978’s I Wanna Hold Your Hand. The film — executive produced by Spielberg, and directed by Zemekis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gale — was a love letter to not only The Beatles, but the American milieu and craziness that surrounded Beatlemania circa 1964, when the British foursome first landed on New York soil and played The Ed Sullivan Show.

Dog Day Afternoon, the larger than life true story about an everyman and his psychotic partner who rob a bank in Brooklyn, an operation which winds up botched and turns into a literal three-ring circus for a few hours afterwards, gripping the city of New York with an anti-heroic proceeding that almost borderlined on sheer, bizarre entertainment, celebrates its 40th anniversary this week.

Full of potent performances from Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, and others, a surefooted, ham-fisted naturalistic directorial style by Sidney Lumet, and an Oscar-winning script by Frank Pierson, Dog Day Afternoon remains a benchmark film of the 1970s, and in many ways expertly captures the entire zeitgeist of not only the mid decade feel and energy of New York City but also of America at the time, full of a post-Watergate paranoia and unease, with huge slices of humor and even pathos in the middle.