High School of the Week- Springfield Southeast (Illinois)

Though he is actually an alumnus of The Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, we are featuring a photograph of President Barack Obama with our High School of the Week entry for Springfield Southest High School in Springfield, Ill., because the state capital of Illinois is effectively where Obama's political career began to flourish when he was a member of the state senate there some ten years ago.

We must profess that Illinois offered many potential choices for High School of the Week selection process: Actor Bruce Dern, who recently turned 76, is an alumnus of New Trier High School in Winnetka, Bill Murray graduated from the private Loyola Academy in Wilmette, the classic 1985 teen angst film "The Breakfast Club" was filmed at Maine North High School in Des Plaines and my cousin Brent Gokbudak went to Niles West High School in Skokie where his teammate on the gymnastics team was none other than future Olympian Bart Conner! (All of these schools are in suburbs of Chicago).

But we chose Springfield Southeast HS, a school with an enrollment of some 1,350 students according to Wikipedia, over all of them. The school nickname is The Spartans, and there are both boys and girls hockey teams at the school as well. Elbert Kern is the football coach for The Spartans. And Jason Wind is the school's principal.

Of course, even folks in Karachi, Pakistan, know that Seymour Skinner (his 'real name' is Armin Tamzarian according to Wikipedia) is the principal of the elementary school in the fictional Springfield on "The Simpsons." There is speculation that the Springfield in the cartoon series was based on Springfield, Mass., but that has never been verified.

Last Ten Films I've Seen---Three with Bruce Dern

Three of the last ten films I've seen, "The Trip" (1967), "Psych-Out" (1968) and "Coming Home" (1978) feature the great character actor Bruce Dern (father of Laura Dern, pictured here) who turned 76 on Friday. Dern recently played Frank Harlow in the hit HBO series "Big Love," which still may not play well in Provo, Utah (since it's about fundamentalist Mormons with lots of wives).

"The Trip" also featured Dennis Hopper, who died last week. He had also just turned 76 some two weeks before his death. "The Trip" which also featured Peter Fonda was a precursor to "Easy Rider."

Even though "Watermelon Man" (1970) was made by a black filmmaker in Melvin Van Peebles (Mario Van Peebles' father), I'm not sure it would get made today as it deals with a racist white man who becomes black overnight. Sadly, the star of the film Godfrey Cambridge died at age 43 in 1976 while on the set of a tv movie with Kirk Douglas in which he was to play Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Here are the films:

1. "Watermelon Man" (1970. dir-Melvin Van Peebles)
2. "Personal Best" (1982. dir- Robert Towne)
3. "The Trip" (1967 w/Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. dir-Roger Corman)
4. "Psych-Out" (1968 w/Jack Nicholson. dir-Richard Rush)
5. "Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1973. w/Robert Mitchum. dir-Peter Yates)
6. "Coming Home" (1978. w/Jane Fonda and Jon Voight. dir-Hal Ashby)
7. "The Girl Can't Help It!" (1956 w/Jayne Mansfield. dir-Frank Tashlin)
8. "The Special Relationship" (2010. HBO TV movie about Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. dir-Richard Loncraine)
9. "Dog Eat Dog" (Colombia. 2008. dir-Carlos Moreno)
10. "It Happened One Night" (1934 w/Clark Gable. dir-Frank Capra)

SIDEBAR- There is a great blog entry by my good friend Moviezzz about the very short-lived tv show "Tales of the Golden Monkey" (1983-84). At the time, all of us thought it was a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" rip-off, but as it turns out the producers had submitted the idea for the show before the epic film came out in 1981!