Hey Buster!

Arriving home prematurely from work an hour earlier tonight due to a dearth of work, as well as feeling a bit dour and defeated by a bullying team of a work week and supervisors, I sat down and watched the kind of movie that's beginning to grow on me: the good old silver screen knockabout comedy, Steamboat Bill Jr. with Buster Keaton. Months ago, I got hold of a two-DVD set called Legends of the Silver Screen one with two pictures from Charlie Chaplin--The Kid and Tillie's Punctured Romance--and another with a double feature from Buster Keaton--The General and Steamboat Bill Jr.--together.

I love watching Keaton for two simple facts: (1) his clumsy and unabashed, yet impressively daring knockabout acrobatics, and (2) the famous and charistmatic look of pathos in his tragic eyes, and youthful dead-pan facial expressions onscreen.

I guess ever since I read and wrote a paper discussing vaudeville or knockabout comedy in Beckett's Waiting For Godot, affirming a love of all things slapstick from an early age since discovering SCTV and Jim Carey's knockabout comedy, I've become a sucker for the original vaudeville movie stars.