Events

Hi, I’m Edie Markovich, a 15-year-old member of Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa, a Sophomore at Cal State LA, and a marathon swimmer who is going to swim 25 miles continuously for 15 hours to raise money for Los Angeles area food banks. Will you please support this important cause and donate food or money?

Edie Markovich, a 15-year-old marathon swimmer, invites Burbank and the greater Los Angeles community to help her raise funds and collect food items for those in desperate need. Edie is doing her part to help her community and says, “Food is a basic human right, and no one should go without it especially during a pandemic.”

On Saturday, March 13th, 2021, Edie will attempt to swim 25 miles continuously at Verdugo Aquatic Facility in Burbank. She will start at 5:30 a.m. and conclude at 8:30 p.m. This remarkable challenge is sponsored by the great people of the LA Tri Club, the Coast 2 Coast Swim Challenge, a part of the LA Tri Club that provides those in underserved areas with free swim lessons and supported by City of Burbank.

Anyone who wants to swim with Edie on the day of her big swim is welcome! There are limited lanes available in 45-minute increments with a monetary donation. Go to the following link to reserve a spot today!

https://events.com/r/en_US/event/edie-markovich-25-mile-swim-fundraiser-burbank-march-801796

On the day of Edie’s big swim, community members are encouraged to bring non-perishable packaged food items, to be collected by the volunteers on the pool deck, that will go to the Burbank Temporary Aid Center (BTAC). BTAC has been providing emergency aid since 1974 to families and individuals, for whom no other public or private resources are immediately available.

Edie is also collecting donations that will go to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which has been alleviating hunger since 1973 and has distributed a staggering 1.7 billion pounds of food over the years.

Edie is a sophomore at California State University Los Angeles (through the Early Entrance Program) majoring in philosophy. She began swimming at 6 months old and grew to become one of the youngest open water marathon swimmers. Her accomplishments include a crossing of the Santa Barbara channel (19.6 km), a circumnavigation of Manhattan Island, New York (45.9 km), and a swim around Coronado Island (18.6 km). To support Edie and her fight against hunger, make your donations today by visiting:

https://events.com/r/en_US/event/edie-markovich-25-mile-swim-fundraiser-burbank-march-801796

To learn more about LA TRI Club visit: www.latriclub.com

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.” – President Merkin Muffley

Rotten Tomatoes score: 98% Tomatometer, 94% Audience Score! IMDB rating: 8.4!

And so arrives our fifth edition of this repertory film screening series. Each month, Greater Los
Angeles Area Mensa Presents… hosts a movie screening and you and a friend are invited! Plus,
we will be raffling off a gift card to the GrubHub.com meal delivery service!

For March, we will visit the 1964 dark comedy and cult classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned
to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which was included in the Library of Congress in 1989 as
one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being
“culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by
Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George, the film stars Peter Sellers (in three roles)
and George C. Scott with James Earl Jones.

“After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war
room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop the nuclear
strike.” – Letterboxd.com

TRIVIA: Peter Sellers was paid $1 million, 55% of the film’s budget. Stanley Kubrick famously
quipped “I got three for the price of six.”

TRIVIA: The film led to actual changes in policy to ensure that the events depicted could never
really occur in real life.

TRIVIA: There is a great deal of editing and cutaway away shots in the sequence where Dr.
Strangelove gets carried away in the War Room and his out-of-control right hand makes Nazi
salutes and tries to strangle him, mainly to cover up the cast around him cracking up with
laughter. Despite this, Peter Bull, playing Soviet Ambassador de Sadesky, can be glimpsed trying
to suppress his laughter.

View the trailer here: https://youtu.be/uqxCmL_X2a0

This screening will be presented in an online/virtual format, which includes a chat room
alongside the movie. To attend this screening, you must have a current subscription to Amazon
Prime and be signed in using a supported browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Using
Chrome as your browser MAY offer you the opportunity to cast the presentation to your
Chromecast enabled smart tv or set-top streaming device.

To attend this screening, please RSVP by email to the address below at least 1 hour prior to the
posted curtain time. Approximately 30 minutes before the screening begins, an email will be
sent to the RSVP list, containing a link allowing you to join. The Screening Room will be active
at that time, allowing you to arrive early to say hello and test out your connection before
curtain time.

JOIN US!!

Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa Presents…
“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”
Sunday, March 14th
6:30pm
Rating: PG
Runtime: 1 hr, 35 min
Original release: January 29th, 1964
RSVP: gregory.williamson@alumni.usc.edu

“There cannot be peace without first, a great suffering. The greater the suffering, the greater
the peace. The end you’ve always feared is coming. It’s coming, and the blood will be on your
hands.” — John Lark, “Apocalyptic Manifesto”

February brings us the fourth presentation of this repertory film screening series. Each month,
Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa Presents… hosts a movie screening and you are invited! Plus,
we will be raffling off a gift card to the GrubHub.com meal delivery service!

For February we turn to some high-stakes action and excitement with what I think is one of the
best entries in the franchise series, 2018’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout.” Written and
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, based on the television series created by Bruce Geller, the
film stars Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, and Alec Baldwin.

“Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team join forces with CIA assassin August Walker (Henry
Cavill) to prevent a disaster of epic proportions. Arms dealer John Lark and a group of terrorists
known as the Apostles plan to use three plutonium cores for a simultaneous nuclear attack on
the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. When the weapons go missing, Ethan and his
crew find themselves in a desperate race against time to prevent them from falling into the
wrong hands.”

TRIVIA: Tom Cruise trained for an entire year to perform the HALO (High Altitude Low Opening)
stunt in this film.

TRIVIA: Tom Cruise showed some impressive stunt driving skills during filming. The crew filmed
four takes of Cruise making the 180-degree turn while driving the BMW M5 down a half-dozen
steps on the streets of Paris. Three of the takes were perfect. In the last 10 degrees of the turn,
he had to “turn the steering wheel, step on the clutch, and put the car into first gear in the air.”
Stunt drivers train their entire lives to do something like that.

View the trailer here: https://tinyurl.com/y7dlsv9a

This screening will be presented in an online/virtual format, which includes a chat room
alongside the movie. To attend this screening, you must have a current subscription to Amazon
Prime and be signed in using a supported browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Using

Chrome as your browser MAY offer you the opportunity to cast the presentation to your
Chromecast enabled smart tv or set-top streaming device.

To attend this screening, please RSVP by email to the address below at least 1 hour prior to the
posted curtain time. Approximately 30 minutes before the screening begins, an email will be
sent to the RSVP list, containing a link allowing you to join.

Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa Presents…
“Mission: Impossible – Fallout”
Sunday, February 7th
6:30pm
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hr, 27 min
Original release: July 29th, 2018
RSVP: gregory.williamson@alumni.usc.edu

“Walter, you’re wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way.”

January brings us the tertiary presentation of this repertory film screening series. Each month, Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa Presents… hosts a movie screening and you are invited!

For January we will be injecting some much-needed levity into our lives with this screening of the quintessential fast-talking comedy from 1940 “His Girl Friday.” Directed by Howard Hawks and written by Charles Lederer, the film stars Cary Grant at his sharp-witted best with the glorious, fabulous Rosalind Russell.

How I have made it this far in life and have never seen this highly touted, definitive film, I just don’t know. It’s time to change that. Whether this is also your first screening or your tenth, join us for what is sure to be a good time!

“Hildy (Rosalind Russell), the journalist former wife of newspaper editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant), visits his office to inform him that she’s engaged and will be getting remarried the next day. Walter can’t let that happen and frames the fiancé, Bruce Baldwin, for one thing after another, to keep him temporarily held in jail, while trying to steer Hildy toward the news story of a lifetime, hoping to inspire her into returning to her old journalism job and his employee.”

TRIVIA: It is estimated that the normal rate of verbal dialogue in most films is around 90 words a minute. In His Girl Friday, the delivery has been clocked at 240 words a minute.

TRIVIA: His Girl Friday is based on the smash hit Broadway play The Front Page (1928) by top Chicago newspaperman Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. It has been filmed several times, including once by Billy Wilder in 1974, but Hawk’s version is often regarded as the greatest.

View the trailer here: https://tinyurl.com/y44rjh98

This screening will be presented in an online/virtual format, which includes a chat room alongside the movie. To attend this screening, you must have a current subscription to Amazon Prime and be signed in using a supported browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Using Chrome as your browser MAY offer you the opportunity to cast the presentation to your Chromecast enabled smart tv or set-top streaming device.

To attend this screening, please RSVP by email to the address below at least 1 hour prior to the posted curtain time. Approximately 30 minutes before the screening begins, an email will be sent to the RSVP list, containing a link allowing you to join.

Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa Presents…
“His Girl Friday”
Sunday, January 10th
6:30pm
Rating: Passed
Runtime: 1 hr, 32 min
Original release: January 18th, 1940
RSVP: gregory.williamson@alumni.usc.edu