Web Log Archive, March 23 through April 5th, 2008
Saturday, April 5th, 2008 Happy Birthday: Alice and Vincent
Friday, April 4th, 2008
Well before my
eightieth birthday, habit had become my master and one of my longstanding
habits is to read myself to sleep. It's a 'safer' way to wind down than watching
television because, with the latter, one has little control over what content
may appear or with what pace that content is 'delivered'. I mean, ya
might get sucked into a tennis match, a Lifetime movie, a baseball game, a
gripping documentary, a breaking news story or...what I'm saying is that if your
objective is to fall asleep, then often it won't happen soon with the boob tube.
But with a book, you can simply read until it falls out of your hands.
Usually, I just look through whatever books my kids have left behind.
Then I pick one...and start. Last year, I slogged through Dickens' Bleak
House. At more than 900 pages (in the paperback
form), it lasted nearly two months and, frankly, I can't remember now what it
was about nor the name of a single character. Soporific,
it was! A few weeks ago I finished Dashiell Hammett's The
Maltese Falcon and then there was Jessica
Mitford's The American Way of Death.
Both made excellent bedtime fare.
About a week ago, I found a paperback of Jane Austen's Sense
and Sensibility. I had not before read anything
by this iconic authoress and now I'm about halfway through her 1811 classic
novel. By coincidence (and I discovered this by chance), PBS's
Masterpiece Theater is broadcasting a
new production of this work. It's shown in two parts: the first was shown
last Sunday and the conclusion will air next Sunday. Part One was
beautiful!
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Fascinating factoids:
In 1900, a white
person, at birth, could expect to live about 48 years while a black
person could expect to live only about 33 years!
By 1950, those numbers were, respectively: 68 years and 61 years.
By the year 2000, those numbers had risen to 77 and 72 years.
By 2002, Japanese women had the
world's longest life expectancy: about 85 years.
Russian men had the shortest expected lifespan: about 59 years.
According to Pamela
Druckerman, in Russia, "by age 65 there are
just 46 men left for every 100 women."
According to the latest statistics published by our Center for Disease Control, a person born today in the United States will, on average, live 78 years...one or two more if female, one or two fewer if male.
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
Every actor in his heart believes
everything bad that's printed about him.
Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movies!
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
Whether or not you have a happy ending depends upon where you stop your story.
Orson Welles,
1915-1985
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Monday, March 31st, 2008
"Be
courteous to all but intimate with few. It is better to be alone than in bad
company."
"The
practice of cursing and swearing is a vice. Every person of sense and character
despises it."
"Make
the most of the hemp seed and sow it everywhere."
"We
ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors."
"If
the freedom of speech is taken away then, dumb and silent, we may be led like
sheep to the slaughter."
"Permit
me to put on my spectacles, for I have grown not only gray, but almost blind, in
the service of my country."
George Washington, 1732-1799
Sunday, March 30th, 2008 When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife. ---Prince Philip
An inquest into the
deaths resulting from a ten year-old traffic accident would, ordinarily, not be
a rich source of high humor and titillating gossip, but if that accident took the
lives of the Princess of Wales and the son of one of the world's
wealthiest men...
Here is an edited (much condensed) excerpt from the testimony of Mohammed Al-Fayed, given on 2/18/08 in the courtroom of Lord Justice Scott Baker, Assistant Deputy Coroner for Inner West London. Briefly, it is Mr. Al Fayed's contention that the accident was no accident and that virtually everyone who ate breakfast that day within three thousand miles of Paris, participated in a conspiracy to hide 'the truth'.
"I told him exactly what clicked in my mind, all what Diana had told me, exactly what happened.
And I know that Diana is not hallucinating. It is factual. She suffered for 20 years
this Dracula family...Prince Charles or Prince Philip,
and the minute that she can see happiness and love at the end in a family which she respects, they don't let
her do that and they took my son with her. I am sure [Prince Charles] knows what is going on to
happen because he would like to get on and marry Camilla...his crocodile wife and he is
happy with that.
But I think Prince Philip is the actual head of the Royal Family and he is a racist, as anybody
knows. It is well known: he [grew up] with the Nazis. He was brought up by his auntie who
[married] Hitler's General. This is the guy who is now in charge and manipulating everything and can do anything. They are
still living in the 18th/19th century. Time to send him back to Germany where he comes
from. You want to have his original name? It ends with 'Frankenstein'...and here is a picture of him
walking with a Hitler General at 15 years old. What do you want proof more than that?
I am in no doubt whatsoever that my son and Princess Diana were murdered by the British security
services on the orders of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh."
Mr. Al Fayed is undeterred by
evidence not in line with his convictions. He insists, for example, that Diana
was pregnant (with his grandchild) on the night of her death...in spite of a
simple reason why she could not have been.
He dismisses official findings that his employee driver, Henri Paul, was quite
legally drunk at the wheel of the ill-fated Mercedes...in spite of post-mortem
analyses and video
surveillance (from Al Fayed's own hotel security system) showing the chauffer drinking at the hotel's bar in the hours before the crash. He brushes away
the embarrassing revelation that his noble son (supposedly on the cusp of
announcing his engagement to the Princess) was 'two-timing' Diana during the
summer of 1997...in spite of a twenty-minute surreptitiously-made recording (played at
the inquest) of a telephone conversation between his son, Dodi, and the 'other
woman', model
Kelly Fisher, who had gone so far as to sue the younger Mr. Al Fayed in the
weeks before his untimely death, claiming 'breach of contract' because Dodi 'seduced
Diana all day and fucked me all night!"
Still, the senior Mr. Al Fayed does not lack public sympathy for his scattershot theories. Anyone who has witnessed The Queen will concur that Prince Philip is a royal asshole!
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all he is worth. Society and schools may try to iron it out of him; their tendency is to put it all in the same mold, but I say don't let that spark be lost; it is your only real claim to importance.
Henry Ford, 1863-1947
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Happy Birthday, Betty!
On Monday and
Tuesday of this week, PBS's
Frontline aired a compelling four-hour two-part documentary on Iraq,
called "Bush's
War". For most of us, it's not easy to set aside two hours on two
consecutive nights to watch anything on the boob tube but, thankfully,
the whole program may be viewed online in convenient ~ten minute segments. I'm
now about midway through Part II. My sister has it right: the narrator (Will
Lyman) imparts a not-inappropriate 'sinister tone'
to the production. It is chilling to watch the hubristic
demeanor (in early 2003) of the architects of a war that, today, is widely seen
to have been "a blunder of historic proportions".
And yes, it is
jaw-dropping to view the video clips of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell,
Rumsfeld and Rice as they confidently make dozens of declarations (and
predictions) that were soon shown to be false (and wrong)! All this would, in fact,
be humorous if the
consequences weren't (and aren't) tragic.
Nonetheless, the production has come in for some criticism from 'the
left' for what is deemed to be its 'lightweight'
handling of what ought to (especially now) be seen as extraordinary (if
not criminal) feats of prevarication and incompetence, not only on
the part of the government, but also on the part of a national press corps that seemed
to have learned nothing from Vietnam, Watergate and Iran-Contra. The venerable Ray
McGovern, for example, has written a piece posted on antiwar.com
entitled Frontline:
Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late. It's hard to argue with Ray's point-by-point
critique because he is, by any measure, a veteran varsity policy wonk. But most
people (even news junkies like myself) will find this documentary to be riveting.
It does not belabor the obvious nor does it pander to plebian
notions of 'fair and balanced'.
Rather, it's constructed with 'see
for yourself' footage...enough to confront and confound even
the most stubborn of Bush's few remaining apologists.
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
"Some people try to make friends, I just try to make
money."
"No one ever made a dime by
panicking!"
"Bear Stearns is fine! Do
not take your money out. Bear Stearns is not in trouble.
Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly! "
Jim Cramer, Stock Market
Guru, on his March 11th 'Mad Money'
show on CNBC
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Dateline:
Bradenton, Florida
He says his
arrest is a mistake...that he was merely curious as to why the pretty
girl ("with her boobs hangin' out"
) smiled at him as he drove by. He says he swung back around just to get to chat
with her.
"I haven't had that in
years! I'm 93!", he said, on his
way home from jail (for a nap) after his daughter bailed him out.
I'm not bothered by this guy's lingering prurient interests so much as I am by the fact that he still drives a car!
Monday, March 24th, 2008
Time for a movie review:
Like cats underfoot,
the sub plots weave side-to-side, interrupting, obstructing and delaying the main plot.
Oh, there's the rejected lover: torn between allegiance
to his career (as a lapdog for a soul-less Senator) and
his urge to 'do the right thing', even if that
means helping a former rival.
There's the Yuppie newbie CIA agent, torn between loyalty to his government's
capricious directives and his sense of fair play (and, of course,
lust for his to-die-for Arab girlfriend).
There's the nubile Arab teenager, torn between passion for a newly-minted
jihadist and love for her tradition-bound family (including her
violent, authoritarian father). Then there's the eight-year-old
boy, who keeps asking, 'Where's Daddy?'
And through-it-all, there's the ever-faithful with-child wife...and mother,
reduced to knocking on locked doors...and seeking mercy where none is ever
found.
Rendition
seeks to exploit, for entertainment, this decade's controversy about the methods to which the United
States has descended in its GWOT.
It's a dreary, sententious
piece carried out by a pricey cast which includes Reese Witherspoon (lovely
as always), Jake Gyllenhaal (of queer
cowboys fame), Meryl Streep (reprising her nasty-bitch
persona from The Devil Wears
Prada) and Alan Arkin (who simply won't go away, even
after his embarrassing performance in Little
Miss Daisy).
Now...this movie is not bad (like
a Robin Williams offering always is). It's just: who the
hell thinks it's entertaining
to watch some poor innocent slob get snatched and spirited away to a dismal
desert land where he gets chained up in a shit hole, stripped naked, beaten,
half-drowned, starved and electro-shocked until he tells his brutal interrogators anything
they want to hear?
The fact that the reality
of any such government-sponsored caper must be worse than what's
depict-able in a two-hour Hollywood feature (especially one with
shop-worn actors like Ms. Streep and Mr. Arkin) only compounds the tedium
attendant upon seeing all this through to its depressing and predictable
conclusion.
More is bitten off than can be chewed.
Nothing is digested but there's no appetite for more.
Lukewarm between the teeth...and cold on the plate.
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 "He has been raised from the dead!"
Excerpt from an
interview conducted on 3/19/08:
VP: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus
(sic) that
we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major
success.
Reporter: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
VP: So?
Reporter: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
VP: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the
fluctuations (huh?) in the public opinion polls.