Paul Ryan Flash Friday : Flash of two Cities

After all these birthday posts the last few day it´s a nice change of pace ( no pun intended ) to return to our regularly scheduled FLASH FRIDAY post.

As we have seen in our last issue the city council of Keystone City is not very happy about Wally West´s continued stay and they are doing their best in this issue to make him and Linda feel unwelcome. It´s a good thing the people of Santa Marta don´t feel the same way. But is there something more sinister afoot ? There´s only one way to find out.

Curiouser and curioser. I don´t know what sinister menace lies ahead for our scarlet speedster - because it´s been a while since I read these issues and I still haven´t prepared the next chapters yet - but I hope you enjoy reading Wally´s adventures again, or for the first time. So far there have been as many voices praising these posts as not been blown away by them so for the time being I´m going to continue celebrating the one and only real Flash. Unless something warrants it I will continue with the issues of Paul Ryan doing my very best to turn FLASH FRIDAY into a regular thing.

I know I´m going to run out of his issues sooner or later but there are still the first 110 something issues to go. I may go back all the way to issue 1 of volume 2, maybe I will go with favorite storylines. Only time and the speedforce can tell. Until then don´t trip and we will be back in a Flash. 

Before we come to the celebrity birthdays of Today there are two links I want to share. As usual you never find what you are looking for - which in my case were one of those famous flash facts to put them at the end of the post - but always get something better you never knew you were looking for in the first place. So head on over the BIFF BAM POP website for The Top Ten Most Outrageous Flash Facts and DIAL B FOR BLOG will school you why every Flash fan needs to watch Catch Me If You Can.

Now on with the show we have swimsuit model Linda O´Neil who celebrates her 42nd birthday. You may remember that I cast her as Zatanna in one of my Casting The Justice League of America Movie posts that also features 36DD bombshells Tylene Buck and hasian LeAnna Scott.

We also have Sir Mix - a - Lot in our countdown as the Mack Daddy who first wrote an ode to the female derriere and who still influences songs and music videos like Nicki Minaj´s Anaconda whose title is a direct quote from the world famous smash hit Baby Got Back turns 53.

Yesterday it was Diether Krebs´ birthday and Today one of his longtime sketch partners Iris Berben celebrates her 66th anniversary who also teamed up with the much better looking german sex symbol of the 70s Ingrid Steeger in the sadly short lived Zwei Himmlische Töchter series.

I already wrote a bit about the series but only posted the second episode because there is some slight nudity in the first one. But since those two seem to be the only ones on YouTube here is - no pun intended - the pilot.



Apologies to Dire Straits band member Mark Knopfler who turns 67 but I want to keep it down to one music video per post so I chose to pay tribute to Kid Creole who also has his 66th birthday. Your video is just postponed.



On Wednesday we had the most macho Zorro with Antonio Banderas, Today Hollywood beau George Hamilton turns 77 who played the most gay Zorro. He has been on everything from Dynasty to 2 Broke Girls as well as the vampire comedy Love at First Bite and the video game turned big blockbuster movie Double Dragon with Alyssa Milano who already showed her bootylicious qualities. Her scenes alone justify the entire movie.

Speaking about vampire movies, Alyssa later got her freak on in Embrace of the Vampire where she did her best performance going full frontal.

I finally managed to pay tribute to her last year but I had to split it into two posts ( the main post and the bonus round with her best episodes on Charmed ) because I might have gone a bit overboard with the GIFs.

Who always gets kind of overlooked in the whole Embrace of the Vampire stuff is Jennifer Tilly who DID have a short but saucy scene and besides playing poker - where she openly tries to distract her opponents with her bursting 40D cleavage - she´s a frequent guest on The Late Late Show.



Today is also the anniversary of Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno - Reyes, known casually as Mario Moreno, and known professionally as Cantinflas, a mexican comic film actor, producer, and screenwriter and an iconic figure in Mexico and Latin America. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin. The character came to be associated with the national identity of Mexico, and allowed Cantinflas to establish a long, successful film career that included a foray into Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin once commented that he was the best comedian alive, and Moreno has been referred to as the " Charlie Chaplin of Mexico ". To audiences in the United States, he is best remembered as co - starring with David Niven in the Academy Award winner for Best Picture film the Jules Verne adaption Around the World in 80 Days, where he played Phileas Fogg´s valet Passepartout for which Moreno won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

I didn´t find any Cantinflas movies in english - in fact I´m not sure if there are any - but readers who understand spanish might want to check out this classic where our hapless hero is mistaken for the charismatic desperado El Siete Machos. The name is pretty much selfexplainatory.



Another movie pioneer who was born on this day is Cecil B. DeMille, the founding father of the Hollywood film industry and the most commercially successful producer / director in cinema history. He is best known for his epics King Of Kings, Samson and Dalilah and The Ten Commandments. 

As usual we end this post with a Flash video, this time about all the alternate versions of the Flash. Which for me includes all NEW 52 Flashes.



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My JLA movie cast goes native ( american )

It´s time again to gird your loins and prepare the kleenex as another part from my casting for the Justice League of America movie is finished.

This has really turned into a longer series as I thought but the JLA IS one of my favorite subjects and this way I get to wax philosophic about that and post lots of pictures of hot women at the same time. Maybe now you see why I thought so long about IF I should post this on my comic blog.

Today we visit - or revisit as I already wrote about it in a few posts - one my favorite periods on the book : the run by Joe Kelly and Dough Mahnke which never really has caught on with the broad Justice League fanbase. Which is something I never understood because I really liked those issues.

I mean some people say that the best run on Justice League is the one by Grant Morrison, others swear it´s the Post Crisis relaunch by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire and there is a lot of truth to that.

Some like the Justice League with Ed Benes ( I´m not citing a specific writer because there were several of them ), heck I have even heard arguments for the runs of James Robinson and Mark Waid - short as they were - but it seems there is not much love for Joe Kelly´s tenure on JLA.

Maybe I´m biased in this regard but - as I already wrote in my BEST LEAGUE EVER posts - 2 of my alltime favorite Justice League stories, as well as one of my favorite Justice League maxiseries are from that run.

And I was already out the door at that time. Grant Morrison had ended his run with WORLD WAR III, Mark Waid had also left the book and I had just waited until the last story arc Brian Hitch had started penciling wrapped up to jump ship. His issues were so late. I mean this was as good as it was going to get since really I liked Doug Mahnke and was a big fan of his art on MAJOR BUMMER but how good could this Joe Kelly guy really be ?

So I kicked JLA from my pull list and the first issues of the creative team didn´t generate much of a buzz. But that all changed with the next arc THE OBSIDIAN AGE. I have gone back and re - read my old BEST LEAGUE EVER posts because I thought about pimping them but I decided against it. So I will probably write more about this at length - as well as other significant periods in the team´s history - down the line. Anyway, during OUR WORLDS AT WAR Aquaman and the city of Atlantis had disappeared and AGE OF OBSIDIAN revealed that they had landed more than 3,000 years in the past. During the story the Justice League confronted another team of superheroes of that period ( Raven Manitou was a member of that team ), were killed by them and came back to continue the fight, another Justice League team was introduced in the present day and the story was so big it had to be put into two trade paperbacks. Not bad, eh ?  

But they were only getting started because after the much shorter RULES OF ENGAGEMENT and THE WHITE RAGE came another blockbuster, TRIAL BY FIRE which was basically the Martian Manhunter against everybody.

You might say that´s not much of a story since J´onn J´onzz´ weakness is fire and that is easy to exploit but what if he was not vulnerable to fire anymore ? A lot of people don´t realize this but the Martian Manhunter is one of the most powerful members of the Justice League. Just think : he has all of Superman´s powers PLUS telepathy PLUS shapeshifting PLUS the ability to become transparent and walk through walls. He´s unstoppable.

But to really do this justice it deserves a post of it´s own so let us dive right into my next candidate for the Justice League of America movie :

Rachel McLish as Dawn ( later Manitou Dawn )

I´m not sure why I included her in my list since I´m not a fan of forced racial diversity. It´s not like she spent that much time with the JLA or I have that many candidates who can play a native american woman.

So I went with somebody who had already played the part in RAVENHAWK.



Rachel Mc Lish was one of the main fitness models who did swimsuits and lingerie photos when I was in school so I wanted to include her in the list.

She had a few minor movie roles like in ACES : IRON EAGLE III due to her impressive physique but I don´t think Hollywood was really ready for that kind of movies with - physically - strong females. They didn´t know what to do with her so she never achieved her full potential as an action star.



Since Rachel McLish had been such a prolific fitness model with so many photoshoots under her belt you´d think it would be easier to find some quality pictures on the net but it seems Mr. Weider´s prudeness has its effects even on the internet and it was extremely difficult to find these.

Dawn is the wife of Raven Manitou, one of the coolest League additions from the AGE OF OBSIDIAN, based on SUPER FRIENDS´s Apache Chief.

Raven married Dawn after she was raped by one of her tribe's elders after which she was called the " kicking goat " and declared unclean. Talk about having double standards : this elder violates her and she gets the rap.

In any case, Dawn journeyed with her husband to the 20th century but when her husband started to neglect her Green Arrow, the old horndog, was there to console her. After Raven Manitou sacrified his life to save Green Arrow Dawn inherited his magic powers and became Dawn Manitou.

Coming back to Rachel McLish I think the first Ms Olympia would be perfect as the native american from Joe Kelly´s much underrated JLA run.

And here´s where I end this post because as I have already said, this deserves a way longer separate post. For now I´m wrapping this up and we will talk more about my casting for the JLA movie in the next part.

If I had done this casting call ten years earlier german movie starlet Sibylle Rauch sure would have been a shoo in for the role of Power Girl.

Sibylle played in a lot of the erotic movies that swept Germany in the 80s but her most famous roles were in the israeli series of erotic comedies EIS AM STIEL ( Lemon Popsicle in english ) that were among the most watched movies in Germany at that time. The movies follow a trio of friends on a quest to loose their virginity and as usual hijinks ensue.

Sibylle used that popularity to further her film career and start as a singer ( this was the time when women with big breasts like Sabrina Salerno, Danuta or Samantha Fox became big stars thanks to the predominance of music videos ). She later became a porn actress with one of the biggest german porn companies and her movie BORN TO LOVE even guest starred british porn superstar Sarah Louise Young. But Sibylle topped the success of this with SISTERS IN LOVE where her sister Sylvie Rauch appeared.

Sybille also was the publisher - as well as the face - of the german edition of HUSTLER from 1992 till 1995. She did a lot of cocaine and I thought she had died in 1997 but apparently she survived her suicide attempt. 



Another sex icon from my misspent youth is Ingrid Steeger who also played in a lot of erotic comedies of the 80s although she became best known for staring on the german variety / cabaret cult show KLIMBIM.

I remember the show was must see tv ( not only because Ingrid wore really skimpy outfits and sometimes even went topless ) and it´s really indicative of the kind of tv program we have Today that a show from the 80s has more political commentary and social critique than most german tv productions from Today. You can find some episodes on YouTube but since it´s been over 30 years since I watched them I have no idea which ones are the best. In any case here´s a short clip with Ingrid Steeger.



Ingrid was never quite happy with her image as a sexbomb / jokester girl but I have to say that being sexy AND funny is no small feat to pull off if you consider how many of Todays young actresses try at this and fail.

Anyway, Ingrid most stuck to what she did best and she did not only bring a godgiven natural sensuality but also a kind of naiivitee to her roles.

One of her most famous series was ZWEI HIMMLISCHE TÖCHTER ( Two Heavenly Daughters ) with co star Iris Berben who played the straight girl to Ingrid´s crazy girl. If you don´t know Iris Berben, she is one of those actresses who don´t seem to age as she looked like 20 when she was already 50. Anyway, it´s a funny series that has some famous german actors on it like Dieter Hildebrandt and if you watch it Today it´s hard to understand why it was only on tv after midnight. So I wanted to post the episode EINE PRINZESSIN NACH HOFTENSTEIN where Ingrid plays two roles and Dunja Rajter appears in a black dress with an awesome cleavage.

But - as seems to be the case with almost any video I want to post from YouTube - it has been blocked. Maybe that´s for the best since there may be some topless scenes with Ingrid in it which could have been trouble.

Instead I´m posting EIN SARG NACH LEECH which is more of a horror episode. I remember this one fondly but not so much for Ingrid Steeger´s exciting curves but because of Der Pfeiffer ! The video looks a bit strange but that´s because the episodes were shot in the old 14 to 9 tv format.



Due to my busted knee I´m having physio therapy twice a week but if my instructor looked like this I would go every day and twice on the weekend.

I have no idea who she is but I think she would be a good Power Girl.



To close this part of the post I decided to add a cartoon video. I struggled a bit with this since these posts are the only one where I can post all the sexy videos but I´ll just have to put the prank video with the hot women eating a banana in public in the next post. So here is the first episode of the Justice League of America cartoon from Lou Scheimer´s Filmation studio. There are a few more which I am going to post in the next weeks.



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