"They will have to pry my precious gun from my cold, dead hands" ...Charlton Heston a.k.a. Moses and head of the National Rifle Association. Poor Charlie...He could part the Red Sea but lost his powers when it came to a battle with Alzheimers. We are all too familiar with his most famous role in the epic The Ten Commandments which just had it's annual run several weeks ago over the Easter holiday. This is the kind of movie that you see it once, and that's enough. A good movie maybe however, we all know the story. This is in the same category as the yearly playing of Julie Andrews' The Sound of Music which also aired recently. Here's two films each with a running time a little over 120 minutes that ABC stretched to over three hours because of commercial breaks. Commandment Eleven says, "Thou shall not promote a silly ABC sitcom while viewing a Hollywood interpretation of THE BIBLE" Charlie dropped the tablet with 11-15 on his way up to the top of the mountain. With a staff in his right hand and a machine gun in his left, he already had his hands full. Besides, it was more important to tell the masses that "Guns don't kill people... PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE" Indeed, Charlie loved his guns cocked and loaded. It was nice that NRA members kept him on board despite his slipping mental health. I guess there's no harm in letting your 95 year old Grandfather wander out the nursing home doors at 3:00 in the morning with an AK-47. That's exactly what I'm getting at! While sipping my morning cup of Celestial Seasonings this morning and watching the gals on The View share stories of meeting Heston, I was most intrigued by Whoopi Goldberg who touched briefly on Charlie's love for black women. "I asked him how difficult it was to kiss a black, female co-star on camera back in the day when that sort of thing was a "no no" Whoopie quipped. "He said, 'let me show you how simple it is for me' as he leaned over and slipped his tongue into my mouth and grabbed my chest" A nervous Barbera Walters turned a funny shade of blue as she quickly changed the subject. Well, the man was in a class by himself. Afterall, one of his last great moves in cinema was to give Jay-Z, Ice Cube, and Snoop Dogg his blessing for the followup to the classic movie. Already in pre-production, Ten Mo' Commandments is expected to hit theaters in May 2010. OK, so he was Moses, Ben-Hur, and the dude from the Planet of the Apes. After that? Hmmmm. Oh yeah, a stint as guest host on SNL a few years back. President Bush loved the man too and welcomed him to The White House several years back. A misty eyed George W. Bush spoke this morning and told us to, "Open your windows, raise your arms, and fire away" in honer of Mr. Heston. He would have wanted it that way as this monkey meets the man with the yellow hat in the sky.
