Thursday Poetry Slam...

...and DVR alert: At 11:30 this morning [EST] Turner Classic Movies is showing the greatest rock-and-roll (for want of a better description) film of all time. I refer, of course, to the utterly astounding 1958 exploitation classic High School Confidential, directed (without recourse to mind-altering drugs, apparently) by the great Jack Arnold. Featuring Russ Tamblyn as an undercover narc passing as a teenager and living with Mamie Van Doren, his sexpot "aunt" who spends the entire movie coming on to him. A film that opens with the young Jerry Lee Lewis, looking mean moody and magnificent, pounding out the title song on a flat bed truck...

and just keeps getting better for another 82 minutes.

And a film that also features this classic of alienation from the Age of Anxiety.

That's the alas forgotten Phillipa Fallon as the beatnik poetess. "Tomorrow is a drag, pops. The future is a flake."

Hey doll, I know the feeling.

In the meantime, if you got up to late to catch HSC on the tube, you can -- and most definitely should -- order the DVD over here.