I have no idea if you are still with me, but if you are, then Hi, Elizabeth. :) Today I slept in very late, due to multiple job-related awakenings in the night, and so I missed out on getting Lush tickets again. I think I mentioned that I've been a fan since the 90s, but they broke up before I ever got to see 'em. Now they are back, like Slowdive and other shoegaze bands, and I think they weren't aware of their popularity because they first scheduled an April 25th show at the 400 capacity Roxy Theater (actually a club), and that show sold out in about two minutes. I tried but failed to get a ticket for that show. Then a few days ago they announced a show in September for the Fonda Theater, which is bigger, holds maybe a thousand. But I overslept and that one is sold out, too.
The good news is that they are gonna have a second show at The Fonda. I will be sure to be awake when it goes on sale, and hopefully this time I will get a ticket.
There is rumored to be a mega-concert in the works for October, on the same grounds where they do Coachella, out in the desert. It's gonna three nights, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and it's gonna feature just six acts, two per night. The acts are gonna be The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan the first night, Paul McCartney and Neil Young the second night, and The Who and Roger Waters the last night. It is all but official that it is gonna happen. I am jokingly calling it The Seventy Year Old Man Concert, because all the performers are at or over that age, but I also think it might just be the biggest concert of all time, even bigger than Woodstock in terms of audience. I doubt I will be there, and I imagine it will be a thousand bucks minimum for all three days, but it's kind of cool to feature so many legends in one event, at this stage of the game when we are losing people. Woodstock featured everyone at the end of the 60s, when they were all young, and now this festival will have some of the longest lasting acts from that era - who are still at the top of their games - at the twilight of their careers.
I predict at least a half million people, if the grounds will hold that many. Me, if I could pick one night to go, would of course be Paul McCartney, whom I've never seen.
I mean, I doubt I would go, just because I don't do humongous festivals anymore.....but you never know.
My favorite shows nowdays are the ones where you go, and it's easy to get there (no traffic or parking hassles), and there is just the headliner (no opening acts, or no more than one), and where the band you came to see is done playing by 11pm. That's my idea of a great concert evening nowdays, haha. And thank goodness a lot of bands do it that way. :)
Today I went to Aliso for a nice 60 minute hike, 3 miles total. And this evening I watched a classic sci-fi, "Quatermass 2" from 1957. I'd been waiting for this one for many years, because "Quatermass And The Pit" (a third sequel) is one of my favorite movies ever. "Q2" has been hard to find on dvd and was a collector's item until recently, when it was finally re-released, so I got a copy for ten bucks, and it didn't disappoint. Sci-fi from the 50s is one of my favorite genres, and the few British entries I have seen in that mostly American dominated category are all superior efforts, especially the Quatermass Trilogy.
So that was my day, and reading my books, all my usual stuff. Hope you had a good day too.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Friday, April 29, 2016
Meek's Cutoff
Hi Elizabeth,
Tonight we saw a really good movie at CSUN : "Meek's Cutoff", a Western directed by a woman named Kelly Reichardt. She is a relatively new filmmaker and her take on the Western genre was both traditional (settlers crossing the land in covered wagons) and fresh (her focus on female characters). The cinematography was gorgeous, and everything about the film was excellent, really. But then came the ending, and even though we were warned about it by the Professor, I still felt let down.
I just don't understand why modern indie filmmakers find it so hard to have something resembling a proper ending to their story. It is not fair to say, "the ending is up to the audience".
No it's not up to the audience! That's why we're the audience, precisely because we are not involved in the creation of the film. We are there to watch it, and like an audience for any art form, we expect a story in some sense of the word. I have no problem with obscure storylines in movies, but the thing with "Meek's" is that is does have a traditional story as the film progresses, which happens from point to point, event to event as the settlers try to cross from Utah to Oregon in 1845. So the movie is straightforward as a story, and it is extremely well made, but then........
......she just pulls the plug on you. I find that to be either high-handed by the director, or just plain lazy.
Anyhow, I would still recommend the film, just because it's so well done, and beautiful to look at. Maybe just don't watch it to the end, lol.
I hope all is well. xoxoxoxoxoxoox :):)
Tonight we saw a really good movie at CSUN : "Meek's Cutoff", a Western directed by a woman named Kelly Reichardt. She is a relatively new filmmaker and her take on the Western genre was both traditional (settlers crossing the land in covered wagons) and fresh (her focus on female characters). The cinematography was gorgeous, and everything about the film was excellent, really. But then came the ending, and even though we were warned about it by the Professor, I still felt let down.
I just don't understand why modern indie filmmakers find it so hard to have something resembling a proper ending to their story. It is not fair to say, "the ending is up to the audience".
No it's not up to the audience! That's why we're the audience, precisely because we are not involved in the creation of the film. We are there to watch it, and like an audience for any art form, we expect a story in some sense of the word. I have no problem with obscure storylines in movies, but the thing with "Meek's" is that is does have a traditional story as the film progresses, which happens from point to point, event to event as the settlers try to cross from Utah to Oregon in 1845. So the movie is straightforward as a story, and it is extremely well made, but then........
......she just pulls the plug on you. I find that to be either high-handed by the director, or just plain lazy.
Anyhow, I would still recommend the film, just because it's so well done, and beautiful to look at. Maybe just don't watch it to the end, lol.
I hope all is well. xoxoxoxoxoxoox :):)
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Great Photo + Another Bad Movie + Apostolic Succession + Love
Happy Late Night, my Darling,
That was another excellent shot you posted this morning. I really like the placement of everything : band members in the lower corners, the singer emphasized by wide angle in the middle, and the lights mixing with the fog effects to create "clouds". It's a shot with a lot of impact, and the background is good too, with the open "doorway" behind the singer and the ceiling both featuring rectilinear patterns.
See, I notice everything. :)
Another thing I notice is that you are really developing an identifiable style with your concert photos; getting your own look, your own take on the concert setting. I see that you are on Instagram, so I just signed up to see your photos there, too.
Tonight I watched a movie called "Code Unknown" by an Austrian director named Michael Haneke. He has made some good films, most notably "White Ribbon" and "Cache", but "Code Unknown" was not one of them. You could more properly call it "Story Unknown". It purports to show the "interconnectedness of life" through social interaction, and it depicts the random everyday acts of a select group of people who unwittingly come in contact with one another.......but it isn't even as cohesive as I just described.
What it really is, is just another Bad Film. I could go on a Cinematic Tirade here, but I won't, haha.
Let's just say that I am tired of directors who think that you can just hang a bunch of slapdash, unrelated scenes and call it a movie.
A movie has to have some kind of story that ties together at the end. Even if it is a totally abstract story, or even if it is told in such a ridiculous way that it had to have been directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
A movie has to entertain. Even if it is a Poetic Movie filled with long, ultra-slow takes and runs 3 hours. "Andrei Rublev" is such a movie, but it entertains because it is thoughtful and it has a story, even though the story is fragmented and rambling, and obscure.
In the film I saw tonight, and in a lot of modern Art Cinema (see Von Trier), some directors think that Their Immense Genius is so overwhelming that all they've gotta do is put random scenes on screen and they've made a masterpiece.
Me? I don't think so, and I am striking out recently with the Von Trier debacle from the other night and tonight's Michael Haneke film. Both were very much not good. I think I've gotta institute a 30 minute rule, or maybe I'll be generous and make it 45 minutes. "If nothing remotely interesting is happening - or if there is no discernible plot - or if the director just plain sucks".....then I am gonna hit the Off Switch from now on.
I have always been averse to doing that, because I love movies so much. In the past, I have only ever turned off a few films, like "Tideland" by Terry Gilliam or "Cosmopolis" by David Cronenberg, two of The Absolute Worst Films Ever Made. But now I vow to hit the off switch more often, if only to save hours in my life, haha.
On the Good News Front, Hillary Clinton won 4 out of 5 states tonight, and is now within 200 or so delegates of securing the nomination. She will beat Trump - guaranteed - and thus we are gonna have our first Woman President in America, and it's going to be an exciting thing to watch......
I am also reading about the Gnostics (I might have mentioned them already), and how they deliberately challenged the New Testament with their own version, based on their opinions of "what it really meant".
In Dr. Joe's book, he describes something called Apostolic Succession, and it blows my mind. Remember that when you read about Christianity from me, it is always from my perspective that it was something mindblowing that happened - rather than from some folks interpretation that "you are gonna go to Hell if you don't believe every word in the Bible".
So what blows my mind about Apostolic Succession is this : The Story Of Christ happened, and was witnessed in real life by the twelve apostles. Several of them went on to travel and preach about what they had seen. The telling of this story affected enough people that a Church was born, and it grew. No Church in the history of mankind took off in this way, nor has lasted as long and had such influence.
And that is because of The Original Story, told by the twelve apostles, about what they had personally witnessed.
Stories tend to get altered or watered down, or changed by repeated tellings, and the Apostles knew this, and so they deliberately chose their successors from guys who were sworn to Tell The Original Story As It Actually Happened. Meanwhile, the Gnostics were trying to use Greek logic to disprove the story and alter it to a relatively human perspective, i.e. "the human mind created the idea of God".
But Apostolic Succession has been preserved to this day, much like American Indian oral tradition has been preserved, of their ancient tales, and in preserving the story of Christ strictly in this way, by choosing and hand picking the bishops who would succeed the Apostles 2000 years ago - and then on down the line to today - we are able to recieve the story undiluted. It seems like a fantasy to the secular, modern and science oriented person, to logic minded people.
But you can be a logical person and still understand, at your core, that unfathomable things have happened in this world. And the Story Of Christ was the ultimate of that. The Apostolic Succession was constructed to ensure that when one guy died, one Apostle at the beginning, that the next guy as his successor would tell the story exactly as his predecessor had, to ensure the Truth Of What Actually Took Place.
Those can be two different things, which is why I am such an adherant of Accurate Language.
There can be History.....that is One Thing, and it can be 100% accurate, or less so, depending on who wrote it, and how it was passed down, and if an agenda was in place, political or otherwise.
But then there is The Truth Of What Actually Happened. That is the Other Thing, and it can only be passed down in one way: By ensuring - via every necessary measure - that the passed-down account of what happened (the story) remains entirely unaltered.
That is what Apostolic Succession was all about, and has been all about to this day. The story of what was witnessed was so mind boggling that measures had to be taken to ensure it would always be told as it actually happened........
In order to perceive this, just imagine if you saw the same thing today.
You would tell it exactly as you saw it, because there would be no need to make anything up. And you would want the people you told it to, to report it in the exact same way, to maintain the truth.
That's all for tonight. I will see you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
That was another excellent shot you posted this morning. I really like the placement of everything : band members in the lower corners, the singer emphasized by wide angle in the middle, and the lights mixing with the fog effects to create "clouds". It's a shot with a lot of impact, and the background is good too, with the open "doorway" behind the singer and the ceiling both featuring rectilinear patterns.
See, I notice everything. :)
Another thing I notice is that you are really developing an identifiable style with your concert photos; getting your own look, your own take on the concert setting. I see that you are on Instagram, so I just signed up to see your photos there, too.
Tonight I watched a movie called "Code Unknown" by an Austrian director named Michael Haneke. He has made some good films, most notably "White Ribbon" and "Cache", but "Code Unknown" was not one of them. You could more properly call it "Story Unknown". It purports to show the "interconnectedness of life" through social interaction, and it depicts the random everyday acts of a select group of people who unwittingly come in contact with one another.......but it isn't even as cohesive as I just described.
What it really is, is just another Bad Film. I could go on a Cinematic Tirade here, but I won't, haha.
Let's just say that I am tired of directors who think that you can just hang a bunch of slapdash, unrelated scenes and call it a movie.
A movie has to have some kind of story that ties together at the end. Even if it is a totally abstract story, or even if it is told in such a ridiculous way that it had to have been directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
A movie has to entertain. Even if it is a Poetic Movie filled with long, ultra-slow takes and runs 3 hours. "Andrei Rublev" is such a movie, but it entertains because it is thoughtful and it has a story, even though the story is fragmented and rambling, and obscure.
In the film I saw tonight, and in a lot of modern Art Cinema (see Von Trier), some directors think that Their Immense Genius is so overwhelming that all they've gotta do is put random scenes on screen and they've made a masterpiece.
Me? I don't think so, and I am striking out recently with the Von Trier debacle from the other night and tonight's Michael Haneke film. Both were very much not good. I think I've gotta institute a 30 minute rule, or maybe I'll be generous and make it 45 minutes. "If nothing remotely interesting is happening - or if there is no discernible plot - or if the director just plain sucks".....then I am gonna hit the Off Switch from now on.
I have always been averse to doing that, because I love movies so much. In the past, I have only ever turned off a few films, like "Tideland" by Terry Gilliam or "Cosmopolis" by David Cronenberg, two of The Absolute Worst Films Ever Made. But now I vow to hit the off switch more often, if only to save hours in my life, haha.
On the Good News Front, Hillary Clinton won 4 out of 5 states tonight, and is now within 200 or so delegates of securing the nomination. She will beat Trump - guaranteed - and thus we are gonna have our first Woman President in America, and it's going to be an exciting thing to watch......
I am also reading about the Gnostics (I might have mentioned them already), and how they deliberately challenged the New Testament with their own version, based on their opinions of "what it really meant".
In Dr. Joe's book, he describes something called Apostolic Succession, and it blows my mind. Remember that when you read about Christianity from me, it is always from my perspective that it was something mindblowing that happened - rather than from some folks interpretation that "you are gonna go to Hell if you don't believe every word in the Bible".
So what blows my mind about Apostolic Succession is this : The Story Of Christ happened, and was witnessed in real life by the twelve apostles. Several of them went on to travel and preach about what they had seen. The telling of this story affected enough people that a Church was born, and it grew. No Church in the history of mankind took off in this way, nor has lasted as long and had such influence.
And that is because of The Original Story, told by the twelve apostles, about what they had personally witnessed.
Stories tend to get altered or watered down, or changed by repeated tellings, and the Apostles knew this, and so they deliberately chose their successors from guys who were sworn to Tell The Original Story As It Actually Happened. Meanwhile, the Gnostics were trying to use Greek logic to disprove the story and alter it to a relatively human perspective, i.e. "the human mind created the idea of God".
But Apostolic Succession has been preserved to this day, much like American Indian oral tradition has been preserved, of their ancient tales, and in preserving the story of Christ strictly in this way, by choosing and hand picking the bishops who would succeed the Apostles 2000 years ago - and then on down the line to today - we are able to recieve the story undiluted. It seems like a fantasy to the secular, modern and science oriented person, to logic minded people.
But you can be a logical person and still understand, at your core, that unfathomable things have happened in this world. And the Story Of Christ was the ultimate of that. The Apostolic Succession was constructed to ensure that when one guy died, one Apostle at the beginning, that the next guy as his successor would tell the story exactly as his predecessor had, to ensure the Truth Of What Actually Took Place.
Those can be two different things, which is why I am such an adherant of Accurate Language.
There can be History.....that is One Thing, and it can be 100% accurate, or less so, depending on who wrote it, and how it was passed down, and if an agenda was in place, political or otherwise.
But then there is The Truth Of What Actually Happened. That is the Other Thing, and it can only be passed down in one way: By ensuring - via every necessary measure - that the passed-down account of what happened (the story) remains entirely unaltered.
That is what Apostolic Succession was all about, and has been all about to this day. The story of what was witnessed was so mind boggling that measures had to be taken to ensure it would always be told as it actually happened........
In order to perceive this, just imagine if you saw the same thing today.
You would tell it exactly as you saw it, because there would be no need to make anything up. And you would want the people you told it to, to report it in the exact same way, to maintain the truth.
That's all for tonight. I will see you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Happy Monday Night + BP + English
Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
Today I did see a few posts from you, and a couple were via your friend Steve, so maybe that means you are working on something for his band? Just a guess as always. :) If true, however, then it might mean that I got it wrong yesterday, and that things are going okay for you, client-wise. I hope so, and that's what I thought in the first place. I don't know if we are ever gonna have communication like we used to, only you know for sure. :)
Good news on the blood pressure front. This morning I got the lowest reading I've ever had : 115/76. I took it again this afternoon and it was back to 132/81, so I guess my average "walking around" BP is somewhere in that range, and it lowers at night. When I am exerting, it goes up as high as 150/90 or so, like when I took it a few weeks ago after pushing my sister around in a wheelchair, but after Googling obsessively about it, I find that this is normal, too. They say that people lifting weights can go as high as 200/120, so I guess I can stop worrying. If my average is about 132/81 or so, then that's pretty good for 56.
I am reading my books and Googling terms like "ecumenical" and "epistemological" and "ecclesiatical", and "dispensation" and several dozen other terms and phrases, so as to understand the technical language of the Church, a language that was very precise due to the dialectical breakdown of ideas in that time, especially by the Greeks. They sure had some heavy thinkers back then.
I have remarked to friends in recent years that nowdays, an entire conversation between two Surfers could consist of one word - "dude" - uttered with different emphasis and differing inflections. Though the importance of language has been devalued since the time of the Greeks, the two Dudes having the conversation would still understand each other, because of inflection, emphasis, body language, and common culture. No Googling would be necessary.
But with precision of language, and dialectics, and all of this Greek philosophy, you've really gotta know the terminology. And I think that a lot of it bogs down the understanding of it's meaning to the general public. It's another case, for me, like with advanced mathematics, as these subjects are written about by members of each discipline, who are not capable of explaining to the layman.
It's all about language, and if the language of explanation is able to be used at it's zenith, on any subject, then almost anyone can understand anything. Without a lot of convoluted verbiage which slows down comprehension.
Ideas should be presented, in writing and in conversation, somewhere between the examples of the Two Surfers, who have simplified language to a single word, and the Greeks, who had convoluted multisyllabic words for every aspect of philosphical perception.
English is the greatest language ever conceived for the explanation of concepts. But it must be used precisely, and without excess flourish, to be understood......without Googling, or being a Surfer. :)
That's all for tonight.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Today I did see a few posts from you, and a couple were via your friend Steve, so maybe that means you are working on something for his band? Just a guess as always. :) If true, however, then it might mean that I got it wrong yesterday, and that things are going okay for you, client-wise. I hope so, and that's what I thought in the first place. I don't know if we are ever gonna have communication like we used to, only you know for sure. :)
Good news on the blood pressure front. This morning I got the lowest reading I've ever had : 115/76. I took it again this afternoon and it was back to 132/81, so I guess my average "walking around" BP is somewhere in that range, and it lowers at night. When I am exerting, it goes up as high as 150/90 or so, like when I took it a few weeks ago after pushing my sister around in a wheelchair, but after Googling obsessively about it, I find that this is normal, too. They say that people lifting weights can go as high as 200/120, so I guess I can stop worrying. If my average is about 132/81 or so, then that's pretty good for 56.
I am reading my books and Googling terms like "ecumenical" and "epistemological" and "ecclesiatical", and "dispensation" and several dozen other terms and phrases, so as to understand the technical language of the Church, a language that was very precise due to the dialectical breakdown of ideas in that time, especially by the Greeks. They sure had some heavy thinkers back then.
I have remarked to friends in recent years that nowdays, an entire conversation between two Surfers could consist of one word - "dude" - uttered with different emphasis and differing inflections. Though the importance of language has been devalued since the time of the Greeks, the two Dudes having the conversation would still understand each other, because of inflection, emphasis, body language, and common culture. No Googling would be necessary.
But with precision of language, and dialectics, and all of this Greek philosophy, you've really gotta know the terminology. And I think that a lot of it bogs down the understanding of it's meaning to the general public. It's another case, for me, like with advanced mathematics, as these subjects are written about by members of each discipline, who are not capable of explaining to the layman.
It's all about language, and if the language of explanation is able to be used at it's zenith, on any subject, then almost anyone can understand anything. Without a lot of convoluted verbiage which slows down comprehension.
Ideas should be presented, in writing and in conversation, somewhere between the examples of the Two Surfers, who have simplified language to a single word, and the Greeks, who had convoluted multisyllabic words for every aspect of philosphical perception.
English is the greatest language ever conceived for the explanation of concepts. But it must be used precisely, and without excess flourish, to be understood......without Googling, or being a Surfer. :)
That's all for tonight.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Home From Church + Reinforcement + Love (Happy Late Night + Von Trier + Love)
Hi Elizabeth,
I am just getting home from Pearl's following choir practice, and I thought I'd check in early because I saw your post via Tristan on FB, the one with Edward Scissorhands. I am assuming you meant it as a general response to me, because it refers to "how life is going" at the moment.
If you mean that things are difficult in your life right now, of course I am sorry to hear that, but I'm also glad you posted, because to communicate is always the best thing (and I know I harp on it all the time like a broken record).
If that is the case, I don't know what the problems are, but all I can say is that I'm here for you as always. Sounds trite, I know, but you know I mean it, and that I am not just a guy on FB. At least I hope I'm not. You know I love you and care about you. What happens in your life is important to me. That's why I said last night that I wish our communication was like it was a couple years ago, but don't worry about that now. What's important is for you to just hang in there and keep the faith, whatever it is that's going on.
I have been under the assumption that everything is going well with your career, and that ytou have had many projects lined up and things you are working on currently. I hope that is the case, but if you are in the midst of a dry spell - don't worry. Again, just have patience and faith, and continue to do what you do and perfect your crafts. Whether you have many clients at any given time, or just a few, or none at all, that is just like a line in a graph. It will always go up and down somewhat. But what is always present is your talent, which is already at a high and professional level. You have professional talent and high creativity at a young age. Your career is not gonna go anywhere but up, even if it takes some time.
So that's what I say if the issue is your career and amount of current clients. No worries, my dear. :)
If it's money, same thing. We know it's not easy to earn a living in any artistic endeavor, but it can be done, and it is done all the time. Your Mom seems to support what you are doing, which is awesome, and if that is the case then don't worry about the money because it, too, will come.
And remember what we used to talk about in the old days, about how, as an Artist (for you, a Capital A is always necessary), the main thing you need to be concerned about is simply paying the bills. If you've got the bills paid, everything else is gravy. Artists aren't in it for the mansion and the Rolls Royce. Those things are nice, but for the Artist, the real reward is in the creation of the Art. So if you are creating, and you've got the bills paid, and perhaps a little extra, then everything is good. And one day you can make a lot of money, too, especially with your talents.
But if you are struggling in any aspect at the moment, I urge you not to worry too much. Or even at all, really. Things will improve. They always do.
I hope everything is good at home, and here at my end, you know I have always supported everything you do, and it goes without saying that I always will. I am glad you posted, cause it always better to communicate if things aren't going right, and it helps me to know what's going on. Remember in the old days, when I would say "I am reinforcing you"? Like an actual Force, lol, but for real. I just remembered that I used to say that, so I'm saying it again! :)
That's all for now. I'm gonna relax for a few minutes and then do some shopping before I head back to Pearl's, but I will be around as usual, for most of the afternoon and evening. And I will write more later tonight at the usual time.
I Love You. No worries because everything will be okay. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
12:32am : Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby. I hope the rest of your day was good, and that things are going a little better than they were, if my assumption was correct in the first place about the Scissorhands post. I had a nice evening, though I watched another Von Trier film and I sorta wish I could have my 104 minutes back, lol. It was called "The Element Of Crime", made in 1984 so it was an early effort for him, and to be honest I thought it was pretty bad. It wasn't shocking like "Antichrist", but that was a well made film, with good pacing, despite the content. This was supposed to be some kind of nightmarish detective story, and the nightmare in this case was for the viewer - me. So, Von Trier is kind of striking out with me. "Dogville", which I saw on dvd with my Mom in 2004, was pretty bad. "Antichrist" was good, as a pure horror film, but awful in some of it's content. And "Element Of Crime" was the worst of the bunch. Lars Von Trier is a critic's favorite, but I think I am all done with him, and I have never said that about any director before - only actors - but after tonight I can go no further, haha.
I am really enjoying my new books, and singing, and I just try to fill my off hours with Stuff That Means Something To Me, or anything that is enriching, even short periods of rest and meditation. For you, I would just suggest that you keep in mind the Fun Aspect of your work, and remember the times you had coming up at UW and also in art school in Italy. In other words, always keep in mind, in the first place, why you love doing what you do, and don't worry too much about the other stuff. In my life - though admittedly lived in a mostly non-professional setting - I have nonetheless had a wealth of experience on the ups and downs we all go through, and so I can report back to you (back in time, so to speak, you being younger than me), that if you just keep doing what you do, and focus entirely on it, even if it has many aspects (other things you like besides your profession) - if you just will always focus 100% on who you are and what you do, and practice the things you are good at, that are important to you......
You will never go wrong, and you will never lose, nor be lost.
That I guarantee you from experience.
That's all I know for tonight, Sweet Baby. I Love You and am thinking about you.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I am just getting home from Pearl's following choir practice, and I thought I'd check in early because I saw your post via Tristan on FB, the one with Edward Scissorhands. I am assuming you meant it as a general response to me, because it refers to "how life is going" at the moment.
If you mean that things are difficult in your life right now, of course I am sorry to hear that, but I'm also glad you posted, because to communicate is always the best thing (and I know I harp on it all the time like a broken record).
If that is the case, I don't know what the problems are, but all I can say is that I'm here for you as always. Sounds trite, I know, but you know I mean it, and that I am not just a guy on FB. At least I hope I'm not. You know I love you and care about you. What happens in your life is important to me. That's why I said last night that I wish our communication was like it was a couple years ago, but don't worry about that now. What's important is for you to just hang in there and keep the faith, whatever it is that's going on.
I have been under the assumption that everything is going well with your career, and that ytou have had many projects lined up and things you are working on currently. I hope that is the case, but if you are in the midst of a dry spell - don't worry. Again, just have patience and faith, and continue to do what you do and perfect your crafts. Whether you have many clients at any given time, or just a few, or none at all, that is just like a line in a graph. It will always go up and down somewhat. But what is always present is your talent, which is already at a high and professional level. You have professional talent and high creativity at a young age. Your career is not gonna go anywhere but up, even if it takes some time.
So that's what I say if the issue is your career and amount of current clients. No worries, my dear. :)
If it's money, same thing. We know it's not easy to earn a living in any artistic endeavor, but it can be done, and it is done all the time. Your Mom seems to support what you are doing, which is awesome, and if that is the case then don't worry about the money because it, too, will come.
And remember what we used to talk about in the old days, about how, as an Artist (for you, a Capital A is always necessary), the main thing you need to be concerned about is simply paying the bills. If you've got the bills paid, everything else is gravy. Artists aren't in it for the mansion and the Rolls Royce. Those things are nice, but for the Artist, the real reward is in the creation of the Art. So if you are creating, and you've got the bills paid, and perhaps a little extra, then everything is good. And one day you can make a lot of money, too, especially with your talents.
But if you are struggling in any aspect at the moment, I urge you not to worry too much. Or even at all, really. Things will improve. They always do.
I hope everything is good at home, and here at my end, you know I have always supported everything you do, and it goes without saying that I always will. I am glad you posted, cause it always better to communicate if things aren't going right, and it helps me to know what's going on. Remember in the old days, when I would say "I am reinforcing you"? Like an actual Force, lol, but for real. I just remembered that I used to say that, so I'm saying it again! :)
That's all for now. I'm gonna relax for a few minutes and then do some shopping before I head back to Pearl's, but I will be around as usual, for most of the afternoon and evening. And I will write more later tonight at the usual time.
I Love You. No worries because everything will be okay. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
12:32am : Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby. I hope the rest of your day was good, and that things are going a little better than they were, if my assumption was correct in the first place about the Scissorhands post. I had a nice evening, though I watched another Von Trier film and I sorta wish I could have my 104 minutes back, lol. It was called "The Element Of Crime", made in 1984 so it was an early effort for him, and to be honest I thought it was pretty bad. It wasn't shocking like "Antichrist", but that was a well made film, with good pacing, despite the content. This was supposed to be some kind of nightmarish detective story, and the nightmare in this case was for the viewer - me. So, Von Trier is kind of striking out with me. "Dogville", which I saw on dvd with my Mom in 2004, was pretty bad. "Antichrist" was good, as a pure horror film, but awful in some of it's content. And "Element Of Crime" was the worst of the bunch. Lars Von Trier is a critic's favorite, but I think I am all done with him, and I have never said that about any director before - only actors - but after tonight I can go no further, haha.
I am really enjoying my new books, and singing, and I just try to fill my off hours with Stuff That Means Something To Me, or anything that is enriching, even short periods of rest and meditation. For you, I would just suggest that you keep in mind the Fun Aspect of your work, and remember the times you had coming up at UW and also in art school in Italy. In other words, always keep in mind, in the first place, why you love doing what you do, and don't worry too much about the other stuff. In my life - though admittedly lived in a mostly non-professional setting - I have nonetheless had a wealth of experience on the ups and downs we all go through, and so I can report back to you (back in time, so to speak, you being younger than me), that if you just keep doing what you do, and focus entirely on it, even if it has many aspects (other things you like besides your profession) - if you just will always focus 100% on who you are and what you do, and practice the things you are good at, that are important to you......
You will never go wrong, and you will never lose, nor be lost.
That I guarantee you from experience.
That's all I know for tonight, Sweet Baby. I Love You and am thinking about you.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Happy Saturday Night
Hi Elizabeth,
Happy Saturday Night. I hope you had a nice day. I went shopping with my sister Vickie, and then tonight I watched a really good Film Noir that I got from the library, "Pitfall" (1948), starring Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott, who left the E off the front of her screen name. :) Both she and Powell were great in these kinds of movies, and this one was very tightly written and directed, every scene counted. And, there was great b & w cinematography and some classic location shots in Santa Monica and Downtown L.A. from 1948, which was fun to see. I'm a big fan of Film Noir and am always looking for ones I haven't seen, so I was glad to find this one.
I hope your current projects are coming along well. I miss the old days when you would regularly post, but I guess this is the way things seem to be now. I don't know if it's current or permanent, but for the record, I sure do miss seeing you on FB, and the way things were in years past. I guess you are still with me, because you sent me a nice birthday message. :)
Anyhow, I hope we can still communicate, and regularly so, because I've gotta write (it's just something I love to do), and if I ever just go back to writing "to myself" entirely, which I really don't wanna do, then it would all be really boring, comtemplative stuff about books I read, and obscure scientific and religious notions, and metaphysical and supernatural weird stuff. It would all be Adam writing out into space.
Well, anyway, post if you wanna.
See you in the morning. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Happy Saturday Night. I hope you had a nice day. I went shopping with my sister Vickie, and then tonight I watched a really good Film Noir that I got from the library, "Pitfall" (1948), starring Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott, who left the E off the front of her screen name. :) Both she and Powell were great in these kinds of movies, and this one was very tightly written and directed, every scene counted. And, there was great b & w cinematography and some classic location shots in Santa Monica and Downtown L.A. from 1948, which was fun to see. I'm a big fan of Film Noir and am always looking for ones I haven't seen, so I was glad to find this one.
I hope your current projects are coming along well. I miss the old days when you would regularly post, but I guess this is the way things seem to be now. I don't know if it's current or permanent, but for the record, I sure do miss seeing you on FB, and the way things were in years past. I guess you are still with me, because you sent me a nice birthday message. :)
Anyhow, I hope we can still communicate, and regularly so, because I've gotta write (it's just something I love to do), and if I ever just go back to writing "to myself" entirely, which I really don't wanna do, then it would all be really boring, comtemplative stuff about books I read, and obscure scientific and religious notions, and metaphysical and supernatural weird stuff. It would all be Adam writing out into space.
Well, anyway, post if you wanna.
See you in the morning. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, April 22, 2016
Uncle Boonmee + Prince + Studying Stuff Just To Challenge My Brain
Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
Tonight at CSUN we saw a very interesting, poetic film called "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". How's that for a title? I had not heard of it before the Professor announced the season schedule back in January, but apparently it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2010. Tonight, I can see why. It is a film in which nothing much happens, and yet much is put forth. I don't wanna say "much is said", because that's not really the case either. There are no big philsophical pronouncements. But through the minor story line (Uncle Boonmee is sick and dying and is visited by his sister and a caregiver, and also a few ghosts), and through some fantasy sequences, and absolutely terrific cinematography, mostly in dim light - a lot of feeling is put forth. The director is Thai (Google his name if you wish, it's too long to remember here), but he finished his art degree in Chicago, so he has a high level Western filmmaking ability, but the sensibility of the film is all Thai.
It's one of those films that you don't ask, "what's it about", you just see it, and I recommend it with a big thumbs up, although it is a slow film with long takes (like Tarkovsky). I loved "Uncle Boonmee"! :)
Well, I was sorry to hear about Prince. I was aware he got sick on a plane last week, and because we have lost so many, I was thinking, "here we go again" even then, because they said the plane had to make an emergency landing. I had always thought Prince was a teetotaler, no drugs no alcohol, but now they are saying that the airplane episode was a drug overdose. At any rate, though I was not really a fan of his music (and I guess I'm in the minority there), there is no doubt he was a talented guy, and more importantly, he seemed like a good guy. You never heard any trashy stuff about Prince, famous as he was. So, very sad to lose another musician who meant so much to so many people.
I hope your day was good. I didn't see any FB posts today, so I guess you are busy.
I am just working, reading my books, and Googling things I don't understand, like Differentials and Derivatives. I don't understand much of anything in the Penrose book, but I am just hoping to absorb the gist of it simply by reading the words. Anything to stretch my brain, lol.
But sometimes, when I read about complex numbers and Reimann surfaces and stuff like that, I wanna say, "are you guys nuts"!? Because who would think about such weird minutia all day long, and make a career out of it"?
But some guys brains just work that way. Me, I did good all the up to beginning Algebra, which I got an A in, in 7th grade. Now I wanna try to learn at least a little more, and go where the weird guys go. So I am reading stuff I can sort of understand, but not really, haha.
It's all in the language, and in the explanation of that language to the lay person.
I am good at explaining things, and I think that if I ever could learn Calculus, that I could write a book and explain it to guys like me, in plain English, so that they would understand the abstract language of the equations. I think that the mathematicians themselves, even a super genius like Dr. Penrose, just don't have the ability to explain it to the layman. So I will do it, after I attempt to finish reading his book. :)
I am even more enjoying my Dr. Joe books, because those I can understand, haha, and I am finding the study of the early Church to be fascinating. Sorry if I hammered away at it in last night's blog. I am not a person to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat, and anyhow, my beliefs evolve as I learn more. My belief in Christ is unchanging, but I like to know everything I can about the history of the events, and how they were framed by the opinions of various leaders from those times. I know I jump around when I write about it, and I go from idea to idea without always finishing my thought, but that is because I get excited thinking about it.
I don't get excited in the way of a "religious follower", which is not to put down Christian people who basically follow the tenets of their church, because I do that too. But I am also a history fanatic, and that is the way in which these topics excite me, when I have the chance to learn more - especially from a trusted expert like Joseph Farrell - and thus discover more about the history of the Church, how it was formed and why it split, as I said yesterday.
I am not so much interested in Liturgy and all the technical terms of Christian doctrine. That is a language that, like high mathematics, that is foreign to me. I can learn it, but I wasn't brought up in those disciplines, and so it is a challenge now.
But what I am really interested in, as a person who believes in Christ, is the real time events.
I am interested in What Actually Happened during that time.
What was real, and what was changed by future leaders to fit a philosophy? That's the kind of stuff I want to know, and it's why I study what I study, among other subjects.
I know it's probably boring. If so, sorry. I am always looking for stuff to write about, and nowdays it seems to be about my current reading material.
Anyhow, see you in the morning. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight at CSUN we saw a very interesting, poetic film called "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". How's that for a title? I had not heard of it before the Professor announced the season schedule back in January, but apparently it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2010. Tonight, I can see why. It is a film in which nothing much happens, and yet much is put forth. I don't wanna say "much is said", because that's not really the case either. There are no big philsophical pronouncements. But through the minor story line (Uncle Boonmee is sick and dying and is visited by his sister and a caregiver, and also a few ghosts), and through some fantasy sequences, and absolutely terrific cinematography, mostly in dim light - a lot of feeling is put forth. The director is Thai (Google his name if you wish, it's too long to remember here), but he finished his art degree in Chicago, so he has a high level Western filmmaking ability, but the sensibility of the film is all Thai.
It's one of those films that you don't ask, "what's it about", you just see it, and I recommend it with a big thumbs up, although it is a slow film with long takes (like Tarkovsky). I loved "Uncle Boonmee"! :)
Well, I was sorry to hear about Prince. I was aware he got sick on a plane last week, and because we have lost so many, I was thinking, "here we go again" even then, because they said the plane had to make an emergency landing. I had always thought Prince was a teetotaler, no drugs no alcohol, but now they are saying that the airplane episode was a drug overdose. At any rate, though I was not really a fan of his music (and I guess I'm in the minority there), there is no doubt he was a talented guy, and more importantly, he seemed like a good guy. You never heard any trashy stuff about Prince, famous as he was. So, very sad to lose another musician who meant so much to so many people.
I hope your day was good. I didn't see any FB posts today, so I guess you are busy.
I am just working, reading my books, and Googling things I don't understand, like Differentials and Derivatives. I don't understand much of anything in the Penrose book, but I am just hoping to absorb the gist of it simply by reading the words. Anything to stretch my brain, lol.
But sometimes, when I read about complex numbers and Reimann surfaces and stuff like that, I wanna say, "are you guys nuts"!? Because who would think about such weird minutia all day long, and make a career out of it"?
But some guys brains just work that way. Me, I did good all the up to beginning Algebra, which I got an A in, in 7th grade. Now I wanna try to learn at least a little more, and go where the weird guys go. So I am reading stuff I can sort of understand, but not really, haha.
It's all in the language, and in the explanation of that language to the lay person.
I am good at explaining things, and I think that if I ever could learn Calculus, that I could write a book and explain it to guys like me, in plain English, so that they would understand the abstract language of the equations. I think that the mathematicians themselves, even a super genius like Dr. Penrose, just don't have the ability to explain it to the layman. So I will do it, after I attempt to finish reading his book. :)
I am even more enjoying my Dr. Joe books, because those I can understand, haha, and I am finding the study of the early Church to be fascinating. Sorry if I hammered away at it in last night's blog. I am not a person to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat, and anyhow, my beliefs evolve as I learn more. My belief in Christ is unchanging, but I like to know everything I can about the history of the events, and how they were framed by the opinions of various leaders from those times. I know I jump around when I write about it, and I go from idea to idea without always finishing my thought, but that is because I get excited thinking about it.
I don't get excited in the way of a "religious follower", which is not to put down Christian people who basically follow the tenets of their church, because I do that too. But I am also a history fanatic, and that is the way in which these topics excite me, when I have the chance to learn more - especially from a trusted expert like Joseph Farrell - and thus discover more about the history of the Church, how it was formed and why it split, as I said yesterday.
I am not so much interested in Liturgy and all the technical terms of Christian doctrine. That is a language that, like high mathematics, that is foreign to me. I can learn it, but I wasn't brought up in those disciplines, and so it is a challenge now.
But what I am really interested in, as a person who believes in Christ, is the real time events.
I am interested in What Actually Happened during that time.
What was real, and what was changed by future leaders to fit a philosophy? That's the kind of stuff I want to know, and it's why I study what I study, among other subjects.
I know it's probably boring. If so, sorry. I am always looking for stuff to write about, and nowdays it seems to be about my current reading material.
Anyhow, see you in the morning. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Great Photo, Japanese Garden, and Christian Dialectics as per Dr. Farrell
Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
I hope your day was good. That was a great shot this morning, with the guitar player in the fog. One thing I noticed on that one is that your framing was excellent. You didn't cut the guitar neck off, and in fact you lined it up exactly at the edge of the frame. That's what I mean about really paying attention to your composition before you snap the pic, and that's what I try to do in all my nature shots. Now, in live action shots, such as with rock n roll, it isn't always possible to get a perfectly composed shot because those doggone musicians keep jumping around, haha. But that time, you lined everything up just right, and if you are in the habit of looking for that balance before you snap the pic, it will become automatic.
Here's a question, probably dumb but worth asking : do digital SLRs have viewfinders, or do you look at an LED screen like with point-and-shoots? I guess it doesn't make that much difference, but I always liked the viewfinder in old film cameras because it shut everything else out and you could concentrate on the frame.
Well, anyway......
Today I tried to go visit a place called The Japanese Garden, which is ironically located on the grounds of our local sewage treatment facility, which is called the Tillman Reclamation Plant. They wanted to beautify it, so about 25 years ago (give or take), they created this realistic Japanese Garden on the grounds, using "reclaimed" water, i.e. filtered sewage water, to irrigate it. It's supposed to be a model of ecological efficiency, and the Garden is so beautiful, so they say, that people get married there, TV shows are shot there, etc. It is located right across from Lake Balboa, on the same giant-sized park grounds, and once again it is a place I've never been, even though I've lived in the Valley all my life. But the Valley is huge, 28 miles across and 12 miles deep, and there are tons of places a person might never see, if they didn't make a point to go to.
So I went to visit The Japanese Gardens, finally, but it was closed. I dunno why. There were trucks there, so maybe they were doing some maintenance work. So what I did was to walk over to the Sepulveda Wildlife Reserve, also on the same grounds, and take a walk down the path there, which is where I found the baby geese that were in my FB photo this evening. At least I think they were geese. Mama goose was just outside the picture frame, and she was big like a goose, with a long neck, but different colored. She had a black face, black and white neck, and a brown and white body. I need a guidebook to identify the birds I see. I know some, like coots, or Canada Geese, or egrets, but this one I didn't know.
I am reading another Dr. Farrell book I just got in the mail, which is a text of a University course he taught, and the first book (my new one) of four in all which make up the whole course, is called "God, Dialectics and The First Europe". I'd heard the term "dialectics" many times, but had never really known what it meant, so I had to look it up. It's the arguing, using logic and reasoning, for the "truth" of opinions. In the preface he explains how the church was unified before the schism in the 11th century. The schism was caused by the dialectic reasoning of St. Augustine, who changed the Holy Trinity from one of Essence (God) and Substance (God as unknowable and pure spirit), to Essence (God) and something material, a person.
I just started the book, and I know nothing about Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but it is blowing my mind because I want to know if they are saying that Jesus Christ was a philosophical invention of St. Augustine.
You know me, I am always interested in The Truth Of Things, right down to pulling out the roots.
Dr. Farrell, in the book, describes himself as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, which is based on a more mystical and less dogmatic interpretation of what is said to be the original Gospels.
He describes modern, Western, Christianity as "Hellenised", meaning that it was mixed with Greek philosophy in the 11th century. Pure Christian spiritualism was mixed with the logic and reasoning of Aristotle, and thus says Dr. Farrell, that it resulted in Modern Christianity, in which humans, with their often flawed reasoning and logic, have chosen to somewhat equate themselves with God in trying to interpret Him.
I mean........I am just getting started in this book, and I know nothing about the Eastern church, but as I was just reminding myself after reading the preface tonight : I blow my mind every time I consider the Christian story, because it happened so recently in the scheme of things. 2000 years ago is nothing, as we have discussed.
There is physical evidence of humans, or their predecessors (cave men) on Earth for perhaps 100, 000 years or even more. And yet "history" only began just a few thousand years ago, and then was changed, irrevocably to this point, by the appearance of Christ.
The appearance of Christ changed history - the act of writing everyday happenings down or passing them on orally - into something called religion, which was on a whole different level, the belief in an afterlife, and the hoped for adjusting of morality to acheive it.
The events of 2000 years ago are still shrouded in myth and mystery, and in modern times have become a source of incredible divisiveness because of the shrill rancour between secular folk (who believe it's all BS) and True Believers who believe every last word of the Bible as if something called God actually wrote it.
But what stands out, to me anyway, is that something major happened. And the Flood prior to that. There is no doubt that a major catastrophe hit the Earth and resulted in geological change, the continents pulling apart and drifting. If you look at their shapes, it's pretty obvious they all once fit together as Pangaea.
That is obvious geological history, much as one can see the huge sandstone rocks at Chatsworth and in all of the West, and thus can see, from years of study, that this region was once underwater.
So we had geological catastrophies, perhaps sometime in the last 10,000 years, and then a very short time ago, a person called Christ appeared in a specific region, where Greek philosophy had previously been the source of wisdom, and Roman rule had been the source of human power and government.
So those folks figured they had it all down, I suppose, using reason and logic.
But we are still trying to figure things out to this day.
This is why a book like the one I began reading tonight intrigues me, because I am less interested in "what is happening now", i.e the continuation of the 24/7 cycle, which is a roundabout, and I am more interested with discovering how we got here. What are human beings, and why do we do what we do?
After all, it was only 2000 years ago that something major happened. That much can't be disputed, I don't think. The important thing is finding out exactly what it was. What was the story of Christ? Was it changed by St. Augustine? I don't know. I'll guess I'll just keep reading......... :)
(and for the record, I believe in Jesus Christ, whose words cannot be improved upon)
That's all I know for tonight. I will see you in the morning, Sweet Baby.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I hope your day was good. That was a great shot this morning, with the guitar player in the fog. One thing I noticed on that one is that your framing was excellent. You didn't cut the guitar neck off, and in fact you lined it up exactly at the edge of the frame. That's what I mean about really paying attention to your composition before you snap the pic, and that's what I try to do in all my nature shots. Now, in live action shots, such as with rock n roll, it isn't always possible to get a perfectly composed shot because those doggone musicians keep jumping around, haha. But that time, you lined everything up just right, and if you are in the habit of looking for that balance before you snap the pic, it will become automatic.
Here's a question, probably dumb but worth asking : do digital SLRs have viewfinders, or do you look at an LED screen like with point-and-shoots? I guess it doesn't make that much difference, but I always liked the viewfinder in old film cameras because it shut everything else out and you could concentrate on the frame.
Well, anyway......
Today I tried to go visit a place called The Japanese Garden, which is ironically located on the grounds of our local sewage treatment facility, which is called the Tillman Reclamation Plant. They wanted to beautify it, so about 25 years ago (give or take), they created this realistic Japanese Garden on the grounds, using "reclaimed" water, i.e. filtered sewage water, to irrigate it. It's supposed to be a model of ecological efficiency, and the Garden is so beautiful, so they say, that people get married there, TV shows are shot there, etc. It is located right across from Lake Balboa, on the same giant-sized park grounds, and once again it is a place I've never been, even though I've lived in the Valley all my life. But the Valley is huge, 28 miles across and 12 miles deep, and there are tons of places a person might never see, if they didn't make a point to go to.
So I went to visit The Japanese Gardens, finally, but it was closed. I dunno why. There were trucks there, so maybe they were doing some maintenance work. So what I did was to walk over to the Sepulveda Wildlife Reserve, also on the same grounds, and take a walk down the path there, which is where I found the baby geese that were in my FB photo this evening. At least I think they were geese. Mama goose was just outside the picture frame, and she was big like a goose, with a long neck, but different colored. She had a black face, black and white neck, and a brown and white body. I need a guidebook to identify the birds I see. I know some, like coots, or Canada Geese, or egrets, but this one I didn't know.
I am reading another Dr. Farrell book I just got in the mail, which is a text of a University course he taught, and the first book (my new one) of four in all which make up the whole course, is called "God, Dialectics and The First Europe". I'd heard the term "dialectics" many times, but had never really known what it meant, so I had to look it up. It's the arguing, using logic and reasoning, for the "truth" of opinions. In the preface he explains how the church was unified before the schism in the 11th century. The schism was caused by the dialectic reasoning of St. Augustine, who changed the Holy Trinity from one of Essence (God) and Substance (God as unknowable and pure spirit), to Essence (God) and something material, a person.
I just started the book, and I know nothing about Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but it is blowing my mind because I want to know if they are saying that Jesus Christ was a philosophical invention of St. Augustine.
You know me, I am always interested in The Truth Of Things, right down to pulling out the roots.
Dr. Farrell, in the book, describes himself as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, which is based on a more mystical and less dogmatic interpretation of what is said to be the original Gospels.
He describes modern, Western, Christianity as "Hellenised", meaning that it was mixed with Greek philosophy in the 11th century. Pure Christian spiritualism was mixed with the logic and reasoning of Aristotle, and thus says Dr. Farrell, that it resulted in Modern Christianity, in which humans, with their often flawed reasoning and logic, have chosen to somewhat equate themselves with God in trying to interpret Him.
I mean........I am just getting started in this book, and I know nothing about the Eastern church, but as I was just reminding myself after reading the preface tonight : I blow my mind every time I consider the Christian story, because it happened so recently in the scheme of things. 2000 years ago is nothing, as we have discussed.
There is physical evidence of humans, or their predecessors (cave men) on Earth for perhaps 100, 000 years or even more. And yet "history" only began just a few thousand years ago, and then was changed, irrevocably to this point, by the appearance of Christ.
The appearance of Christ changed history - the act of writing everyday happenings down or passing them on orally - into something called religion, which was on a whole different level, the belief in an afterlife, and the hoped for adjusting of morality to acheive it.
The events of 2000 years ago are still shrouded in myth and mystery, and in modern times have become a source of incredible divisiveness because of the shrill rancour between secular folk (who believe it's all BS) and True Believers who believe every last word of the Bible as if something called God actually wrote it.
But what stands out, to me anyway, is that something major happened. And the Flood prior to that. There is no doubt that a major catastrophe hit the Earth and resulted in geological change, the continents pulling apart and drifting. If you look at their shapes, it's pretty obvious they all once fit together as Pangaea.
That is obvious geological history, much as one can see the huge sandstone rocks at Chatsworth and in all of the West, and thus can see, from years of study, that this region was once underwater.
So we had geological catastrophies, perhaps sometime in the last 10,000 years, and then a very short time ago, a person called Christ appeared in a specific region, where Greek philosophy had previously been the source of wisdom, and Roman rule had been the source of human power and government.
So those folks figured they had it all down, I suppose, using reason and logic.
But we are still trying to figure things out to this day.
This is why a book like the one I began reading tonight intrigues me, because I am less interested in "what is happening now", i.e the continuation of the 24/7 cycle, which is a roundabout, and I am more interested with discovering how we got here. What are human beings, and why do we do what we do?
After all, it was only 2000 years ago that something major happened. That much can't be disputed, I don't think. The important thing is finding out exactly what it was. What was the story of Christ? Was it changed by St. Augustine? I don't know. I'll guess I'll just keep reading......... :)
(and for the record, I believe in Jesus Christ, whose words cannot be improved upon)
That's all I know for tonight. I will see you in the morning, Sweet Baby.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Photos, Americana, and Hillary
Happy Late Night, my Darling,
I'm just checking in to say hi. Not much to report, yesterday and today being Typical Workdays. I did see yesterday morning that you were having issues with your computer, so I hope it checked out okay, if you did wind up taking it to the repairman. If that's the computer you use for your work, then you need it to be in tip top shape. With these little Chromebooks that I have, just uploading too many photos will cause them to slow down and crash. If I plug in a 16gb SD card, I am asking for trouble, lol.
I also saw a post that said something about a "sneak peek" at a new shoot, and the photo was one of the models you have worked with, so maybe that is another new project? Just guessing as always.
I was looking at your latest Flickr photos again, and I really like the one with the Pepsi machine and the classic Midwestern house off to the side and in the distance. It represents Americana, and I love that kind of stuff. The snow on the ground sets the time of year, and it's just really good. It represents something solid.
I have always wanted to just drive, because I have never traveled, and I would love to drive across highways and photograph all kinds of things that represent solid, or lasting America. Even to get pictures of things like old pay phone booths, or old abandoned gas stations, that is the kind of thing I would look for, and in your pic, you got a lot of stuff into the composition - the brick wall, the Pepsi machine, which is all squared away and linear, and then on the right side you have the angled lines of the street and the snow, anchored at the back by the house and even the once again linear telephone pole. So that, to me, is really good composition in a photo, and it also says something about it's subject matter. A couple Summers ago, I was driving around Reseda on work breaks, looking for cool Old Stuff, or Regular Everyday Stuff, to shoot, and I found some interesting old shops and a laundromat that was cool. That kind of stuff.
So now maybe I will go out and look again. Good photos are waiting where you may not always expect them. :)
Well, tonight in New York........you know the result. If you are a Bernie supporter I am sorry, although you voted for Obama in 2012, and Hillary was Obama's Secretary Of State, so maybe you are supporting her.
Oh, heck, I don't know, and it's none of my business. :)
But it's exciting, I think, that we are on the verge of having our first female Presidential nominee.
And Hillary will beat Trump, guaranteed. So coming up in the Fall, America will be the first Superpower in the modern age to have a woman at the helm. And it will just be interesting to see how a woman, in this case Hillary, who is very intelligent, approaches the Presidency, as different from how all the men who preceded her have approached it.
Maybe China and Russia will one day have female Presidents, too. I don't say that to pander or to be patronising, but because - hey! - it might just lead the world in a new direction.
Who said it's a Man's World, anyway?
(I mean, men are pretty cool too, they've invented stuff, they play football and stuff like that)....
But this time it's a woman's turn. So "Go Hillary"!
See you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I'm just checking in to say hi. Not much to report, yesterday and today being Typical Workdays. I did see yesterday morning that you were having issues with your computer, so I hope it checked out okay, if you did wind up taking it to the repairman. If that's the computer you use for your work, then you need it to be in tip top shape. With these little Chromebooks that I have, just uploading too many photos will cause them to slow down and crash. If I plug in a 16gb SD card, I am asking for trouble, lol.
I also saw a post that said something about a "sneak peek" at a new shoot, and the photo was one of the models you have worked with, so maybe that is another new project? Just guessing as always.
I was looking at your latest Flickr photos again, and I really like the one with the Pepsi machine and the classic Midwestern house off to the side and in the distance. It represents Americana, and I love that kind of stuff. The snow on the ground sets the time of year, and it's just really good. It represents something solid.
I have always wanted to just drive, because I have never traveled, and I would love to drive across highways and photograph all kinds of things that represent solid, or lasting America. Even to get pictures of things like old pay phone booths, or old abandoned gas stations, that is the kind of thing I would look for, and in your pic, you got a lot of stuff into the composition - the brick wall, the Pepsi machine, which is all squared away and linear, and then on the right side you have the angled lines of the street and the snow, anchored at the back by the house and even the once again linear telephone pole. So that, to me, is really good composition in a photo, and it also says something about it's subject matter. A couple Summers ago, I was driving around Reseda on work breaks, looking for cool Old Stuff, or Regular Everyday Stuff, to shoot, and I found some interesting old shops and a laundromat that was cool. That kind of stuff.
So now maybe I will go out and look again. Good photos are waiting where you may not always expect them. :)
Well, tonight in New York........you know the result. If you are a Bernie supporter I am sorry, although you voted for Obama in 2012, and Hillary was Obama's Secretary Of State, so maybe you are supporting her.
Oh, heck, I don't know, and it's none of my business. :)
But it's exciting, I think, that we are on the verge of having our first female Presidential nominee.
And Hillary will beat Trump, guaranteed. So coming up in the Fall, America will be the first Superpower in the modern age to have a woman at the helm. And it will just be interesting to see how a woman, in this case Hillary, who is very intelligent, approaches the Presidency, as different from how all the men who preceded her have approached it.
Maybe China and Russia will one day have female Presidents, too. I don't say that to pander or to be patronising, but because - hey! - it might just lead the world in a new direction.
Who said it's a Man's World, anyway?
(I mean, men are pretty cool too, they've invented stuff, they play football and stuff like that)....
But this time it's a woman's turn. So "Go Hillary"!
See you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, April 18, 2016
Happy Sunday + Hope You Had a Great Show + Singing Solo
Hi, Sweet Baby,
Happy Late Night. You may or may not be back from your concert tonight, but I hope you had a blast, and the bands too for that matter. I hope everyone had a blast and that they had a good turnout also. You probably took a ton of shots. I saw Sarah's post (under posts You like) and she said they were gonna be shooting a video, so......are you the one doing it? That would be extra cool, and another notch on your video resume. I hope you are making the video, but even if not, you still have a lot of things happening. :) I will look forward to your shots from the show tonight.
Church was good this morn. We sang really well, and got compliments again. And.....I did something I've never done before. (what could it be?....)
I rehearsed solo - just me singing alone - with our choir director at the piano. There was a luncheon after the service, which Pearl and I did not attend, but most of the choir did. Last time I did Pot Luck, in February, I got hammered with one of the worst flu bugs of my life, so I don't do Pot Luck anymore, but anyway, so I was still on the stage, going over my sheet music, and the director came in and asked if I wanted to just rehearse the tenor part alone, so I figured I might as well. I wanna become a good singer, after all. :)
So, if you had come into the church at about Noon, you'd have heard me singing solo at full volume, accompanied by piano. It was fun, and I am glad I had the confidence to do it. Normally, or perhaps in my younger years, I might not have. I have always loved singing to myself, but singing in front of others is fairly new to me. It's a whole new discovery, and another chapter in "You Never Know What's Gonna Happen In Life".
That's all for tonight! I will see you in the morning. Post some pics if you wanna. :)
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxo :):)
Happy Late Night. You may or may not be back from your concert tonight, but I hope you had a blast, and the bands too for that matter. I hope everyone had a blast and that they had a good turnout also. You probably took a ton of shots. I saw Sarah's post (under posts You like) and she said they were gonna be shooting a video, so......are you the one doing it? That would be extra cool, and another notch on your video resume. I hope you are making the video, but even if not, you still have a lot of things happening. :) I will look forward to your shots from the show tonight.
Church was good this morn. We sang really well, and got compliments again. And.....I did something I've never done before. (what could it be?....)
I rehearsed solo - just me singing alone - with our choir director at the piano. There was a luncheon after the service, which Pearl and I did not attend, but most of the choir did. Last time I did Pot Luck, in February, I got hammered with one of the worst flu bugs of my life, so I don't do Pot Luck anymore, but anyway, so I was still on the stage, going over my sheet music, and the director came in and asked if I wanted to just rehearse the tenor part alone, so I figured I might as well. I wanna become a good singer, after all. :)
So, if you had come into the church at about Noon, you'd have heard me singing solo at full volume, accompanied by piano. It was fun, and I am glad I had the confidence to do it. Normally, or perhaps in my younger years, I might not have. I have always loved singing to myself, but singing in front of others is fairly new to me. It's a whole new discovery, and another chapter in "You Never Know What's Gonna Happen In Life".
That's all for tonight! I will see you in the morning. Post some pics if you wanna. :)
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 17, 2016
A Nice Birthday
Happy Late Night, my Darling,
Thank you for the birthday wish this morning. :) I had a very nice day, went to three parks total. First I went to Limekiln Canyon for a short hike at 3pm, after shopping with my sister Vickie earlier. Then at 4:30 I took Pearl and The Kobester to Lake Balboa. It was a gorgeous day, and we saw many paddle boats on the water, and people walking dogs. Kobi saw a giant Great Dane and was very impressed.
At 6:30, I drove up to Aliso Canyon and met Grimsley there for an evening walk. The place gets dark early and kind of turns into Sleepy Hollow at dusk, but we had just enough light to hike all the way to the north end of the canyon and then turn up the hillside to a rural road that goes back down eventually to civilisation. The whole loop is about two miles, and that was fun too. It was dark out when we finished.
A great birthday all-in-all, with many nice greetings on FB, and lots of time spent in nature. Plus, the main event was the concert last night. My hearing is about 75% back to normal, haha.
I liked the pic of you taking a picture by the side of the pond, at whatever park you were at. I'm glad it has warmed up for you guys. Now you can enjoy outdoor weather for many months, plus you will be going back to AZ soon. :)
Tomorrow morning, church and choir. We have a pretty easy one to sing ("Cast Your Cares Upon The Lord"), because it's a very short song and the sopranos sing the first half of it. But the tenor part, while brief, is legato - soft but sustained - so I will try to "give it shape" as our director always says.
If I am not mistaken, you have a show tomorrow night with Versus Me and also Sarah's band, so I hope you have fun. That you will get great shots is given, so I will look forward to seeing them!
See you in the morning and then after church.
I Love You! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thank you for the birthday wish this morning. :) I had a very nice day, went to three parks total. First I went to Limekiln Canyon for a short hike at 3pm, after shopping with my sister Vickie earlier. Then at 4:30 I took Pearl and The Kobester to Lake Balboa. It was a gorgeous day, and we saw many paddle boats on the water, and people walking dogs. Kobi saw a giant Great Dane and was very impressed.
At 6:30, I drove up to Aliso Canyon and met Grimsley there for an evening walk. The place gets dark early and kind of turns into Sleepy Hollow at dusk, but we had just enough light to hike all the way to the north end of the canyon and then turn up the hillside to a rural road that goes back down eventually to civilisation. The whole loop is about two miles, and that was fun too. It was dark out when we finished.
A great birthday all-in-all, with many nice greetings on FB, and lots of time spent in nature. Plus, the main event was the concert last night. My hearing is about 75% back to normal, haha.
I liked the pic of you taking a picture by the side of the pond, at whatever park you were at. I'm glad it has warmed up for you guys. Now you can enjoy outdoor weather for many months, plus you will be going back to AZ soon. :)
Tomorrow morning, church and choir. We have a pretty easy one to sing ("Cast Your Cares Upon The Lord"), because it's a very short song and the sopranos sing the first half of it. But the tenor part, while brief, is legato - soft but sustained - so I will try to "give it shape" as our director always says.
If I am not mistaken, you have a show tomorrow night with Versus Me and also Sarah's band, so I hope you have fun. That you will get great shots is given, so I will look forward to seeing them!
See you in the morning and then after church.
I Love You! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Iron Maiden at The Forum (Good Lordy Moses)
Happy Late Night, my Darling,
Well.........wow. I have been to some loud concerts in my life, but tonight was one of the loudest if not thee loudest when pure force of sound is taken into consideration. With Iron Maiden, not only do you have the band, but their fans too. I had not been to a Maiden concert in 28 years, and they played big arenas back then too, but in the years since, the fans have become fanatical. Maiden is their band, and one of the catch phrases that singer Bruce Dickinson has always used has been "Scream for me (insert name of city)".
So tonight, when he yelled that out, "Scream for me, Los Angeles"!, it sounded like pandemonium.
Bruce yells it out a lot, in between verses of a song, so the music is always going when he yells "scream for me", and you get the combined roar of the music and the crowd, and it was positively deafening.
Music to be performed as you are storming into World War Three, with crowd cheering you on.
I jest, of course, about that part, because Bruce (a talker in concert) always makes short speeches about togetherness, like tonight : "It doesn't matter what color you are, or if you're Bruce Jenner or what you believe in - if you're an Iron Maiden fan then you're family". That's the IM philosophy, and that's why the fans feel and act like a unit. All that matters is the music, and they (we) all love it. But having not been there at IM shows for the past three decades, I have missed that growing experience of family. Everybody's got an IM shirt on, everybody sings along....I mean, it was intense.
I think it was The Heaviest Metal Show I've ever been to.
I realise that I say something of that nature about every show I go to - lol - but because the technical aspects of rock concerts have grown exponentially from the earlier days, now you have sound that's off the charts, that sounds like WW3 as I said. I don't mean that sound wasn't good in years past - it was great and even incredible in the 70s. And the loudest concert overall that I've ever been to will always be Cal Jam, just because of the sheer amount of sound equipment used. But that was an outdoor show, where the sound can expand.
So indoors in an arena like The Forum, the sound is held within. And when it's turned up to the max with a band like Iron Maiden, then simple "loud sound" becomes "force of sound".
Even David Gilmour at The Hollywood Bowl was very loud, in decibels. But it was loud in a milder way.
At any rate, enough about The Loudness. What I am really trying to convey is The Force of the music.
Now, Grimsley texted me that he walked out. I can simultaneously understand that, and also think "well too bad". I saw a Dad standing near me who had his little girl on his shoulders, and I thought, "well, that kid is gonna remember this for the rest of her life", much as I will never forget California Jam, my first concert.
This rock n' roll thing is getting interesting at this point. Bands we have loved for our whole lives are retiring.
We fans never could have imagined that. Rock bands don't retire! We're all forever young. Rock music and especially rock concerts are in the moment. Nothing is more "be here now" than a rock concert.
Yet the musicians are indeed getting older. You'd never know it by the shows they've been putting on in recent years, many of which are peak efforts for various bands, career highs.
And with some of them, or really all of the bands that I've loved for decades that I've seen recently, it's like they've been saving the best for last. And now, with the sound technology being what it is, a band like Iron Maiden can put on a concert that sounds like the end of the world, in pure Force Of Sound.
This is how our era of rock winds down, with Monolithic shows. Bands going out in a Supernova.
Bruce remarked at the end that "you never know if we will make it back to North America".
Bands always used to say, "see you soon", or "see you next time". But we aren't in that era anymore.
Now we are going out with a bang.
If Iron Maiden ever do come back this way, absolutely do not miss them, even at the expense of your hearing. :)
See you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Well.........wow. I have been to some loud concerts in my life, but tonight was one of the loudest if not thee loudest when pure force of sound is taken into consideration. With Iron Maiden, not only do you have the band, but their fans too. I had not been to a Maiden concert in 28 years, and they played big arenas back then too, but in the years since, the fans have become fanatical. Maiden is their band, and one of the catch phrases that singer Bruce Dickinson has always used has been "Scream for me (insert name of city)".
So tonight, when he yelled that out, "Scream for me, Los Angeles"!, it sounded like pandemonium.
Bruce yells it out a lot, in between verses of a song, so the music is always going when he yells "scream for me", and you get the combined roar of the music and the crowd, and it was positively deafening.
Music to be performed as you are storming into World War Three, with crowd cheering you on.
I jest, of course, about that part, because Bruce (a talker in concert) always makes short speeches about togetherness, like tonight : "It doesn't matter what color you are, or if you're Bruce Jenner or what you believe in - if you're an Iron Maiden fan then you're family". That's the IM philosophy, and that's why the fans feel and act like a unit. All that matters is the music, and they (we) all love it. But having not been there at IM shows for the past three decades, I have missed that growing experience of family. Everybody's got an IM shirt on, everybody sings along....I mean, it was intense.
I think it was The Heaviest Metal Show I've ever been to.
I realise that I say something of that nature about every show I go to - lol - but because the technical aspects of rock concerts have grown exponentially from the earlier days, now you have sound that's off the charts, that sounds like WW3 as I said. I don't mean that sound wasn't good in years past - it was great and even incredible in the 70s. And the loudest concert overall that I've ever been to will always be Cal Jam, just because of the sheer amount of sound equipment used. But that was an outdoor show, where the sound can expand.
So indoors in an arena like The Forum, the sound is held within. And when it's turned up to the max with a band like Iron Maiden, then simple "loud sound" becomes "force of sound".
Even David Gilmour at The Hollywood Bowl was very loud, in decibels. But it was loud in a milder way.
At any rate, enough about The Loudness. What I am really trying to convey is The Force of the music.
Now, Grimsley texted me that he walked out. I can simultaneously understand that, and also think "well too bad". I saw a Dad standing near me who had his little girl on his shoulders, and I thought, "well, that kid is gonna remember this for the rest of her life", much as I will never forget California Jam, my first concert.
This rock n' roll thing is getting interesting at this point. Bands we have loved for our whole lives are retiring.
We fans never could have imagined that. Rock bands don't retire! We're all forever young. Rock music and especially rock concerts are in the moment. Nothing is more "be here now" than a rock concert.
Yet the musicians are indeed getting older. You'd never know it by the shows they've been putting on in recent years, many of which are peak efforts for various bands, career highs.
And with some of them, or really all of the bands that I've loved for decades that I've seen recently, it's like they've been saving the best for last. And now, with the sound technology being what it is, a band like Iron Maiden can put on a concert that sounds like the end of the world, in pure Force Of Sound.
This is how our era of rock winds down, with Monolithic shows. Bands going out in a Supernova.
Bruce remarked at the end that "you never know if we will make it back to North America".
Bands always used to say, "see you soon", or "see you next time". But we aren't in that era anymore.
Now we are going out with a bang.
If Iron Maiden ever do come back this way, absolutely do not miss them, even at the expense of your hearing. :)
See you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, April 15, 2016
Von Trier "Antichrist" + Love
Hi Elizabeth,
Happy Thursday Night. Tonight at the CSUN Cinematheque we saw a film by director Lars Von Trier called "Antichrist".
Good Lordy Moses, now I can say I've really seen it all. Von Trier is a controversial director who is also kind of full of himself, and when he is in the news it's either for one of his provocative films or because he's yet again said something extremely un-PC. I had only ever seen one of his films prior to tonight, "Dogville" with Nicole Kidman (which I watched with my Mom about 12 years ago), and I don't remember much about it except that it was filmed and performed like a stage play. It was very stylised and probably went right by me because the story wasn't very interesting. Still, I am aware that Von Trier is a big name at Cannes and in the art film world in general. He seems to have a bug up his you-know-what about something, but I'm not sure anyone but him knows what it is.
"Antichrist" could be viewed as a straight-up psychological horror film, and if you watched it that way, as horror, it's a very well made and effective film. I was thinking, "Man, if I watched this on Halloween night, I'd be jumping out of my skin". The movie is ostensibly about a couple - the man a therapist, the woman his patient - who lose their small son in a tragic accident. They retreat from their apartment to a cabin in the woods, and that's when it turns into The Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist and Psycho all in one. I mean, it's not like any of those films, but those three give you a general idea. The woman is crazier than a hoot owl, as they used to say. I think I'd rather have Leatherface coming after me than her, in this movie.
Von Trier is an excellent technical director, and he makes use of all kinds of interesting optical techniques to present a very haunting film.
But he also turns up the violence to the max, and adds in a very grotesque sexual element that would make parts of the film either disgusting for some people, or at the very least a turn-off.
For me, well.......I am more or less unshockable, but......there are a couple very gross shots.
As a pure horror film, I'd say it's one of the scariest ever.
But why add the grossness?
And the answer is because it's Von Trier, who - from what I've read about him - insists on rattling people.
But he does so with an agenda that's only clear to him.
If I were a film critic, interviewing the guy, I'd ask:
"So what exactly are you trying to say"?
It's one thing to be obscure, and it's often a good thing, and with the greatest of the art film directors, their message comes through anyhow. But with Von Trier, in the two films I've now seen (and the others I've heard about), he doesn't seem to have a message. He just seems pissed off about something, but you can't figure out what.
To sum up : as a horror film, if you watch it on Halloween, it will scare the hell out of you (and gross you out).
But just as a film/film, as a movie recommendation, I'm afraid I would not recommend watching it to all but the most hardened filmgoers (like me), because of some of the imagery......
Other than that, a normal day. I liked your short clip this morn on FB, and you are right about the girl looking like she's right out of an Anime, it's all in her hair, the way it's combed, and her eyes, and the upward angle you shot it at.
I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing!
Well, that's all for tonight.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Happy Thursday Night. Tonight at the CSUN Cinematheque we saw a film by director Lars Von Trier called "Antichrist".
Good Lordy Moses, now I can say I've really seen it all. Von Trier is a controversial director who is also kind of full of himself, and when he is in the news it's either for one of his provocative films or because he's yet again said something extremely un-PC. I had only ever seen one of his films prior to tonight, "Dogville" with Nicole Kidman (which I watched with my Mom about 12 years ago), and I don't remember much about it except that it was filmed and performed like a stage play. It was very stylised and probably went right by me because the story wasn't very interesting. Still, I am aware that Von Trier is a big name at Cannes and in the art film world in general. He seems to have a bug up his you-know-what about something, but I'm not sure anyone but him knows what it is.
"Antichrist" could be viewed as a straight-up psychological horror film, and if you watched it that way, as horror, it's a very well made and effective film. I was thinking, "Man, if I watched this on Halloween night, I'd be jumping out of my skin". The movie is ostensibly about a couple - the man a therapist, the woman his patient - who lose their small son in a tragic accident. They retreat from their apartment to a cabin in the woods, and that's when it turns into The Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist and Psycho all in one. I mean, it's not like any of those films, but those three give you a general idea. The woman is crazier than a hoot owl, as they used to say. I think I'd rather have Leatherface coming after me than her, in this movie.
Von Trier is an excellent technical director, and he makes use of all kinds of interesting optical techniques to present a very haunting film.
But he also turns up the violence to the max, and adds in a very grotesque sexual element that would make parts of the film either disgusting for some people, or at the very least a turn-off.
For me, well.......I am more or less unshockable, but......there are a couple very gross shots.
As a pure horror film, I'd say it's one of the scariest ever.
But why add the grossness?
And the answer is because it's Von Trier, who - from what I've read about him - insists on rattling people.
But he does so with an agenda that's only clear to him.
If I were a film critic, interviewing the guy, I'd ask:
"So what exactly are you trying to say"?
It's one thing to be obscure, and it's often a good thing, and with the greatest of the art film directors, their message comes through anyhow. But with Von Trier, in the two films I've now seen (and the others I've heard about), he doesn't seem to have a message. He just seems pissed off about something, but you can't figure out what.
To sum up : as a horror film, if you watch it on Halloween, it will scare the hell out of you (and gross you out).
But just as a film/film, as a movie recommendation, I'm afraid I would not recommend watching it to all but the most hardened filmgoers (like me), because of some of the imagery......
Other than that, a normal day. I liked your short clip this morn on FB, and you are right about the girl looking like she's right out of an Anime, it's all in her hair, the way it's combed, and her eyes, and the upward angle you shot it at.
I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing!
Well, that's all for tonight.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Beautiful Pic + The Kobester (not the dog) + BP
Happy Late Night, my Darling,
That was a beautiful picture of you this morning, taken by your friend, and a very pretty dress or blouse you are wearing. I'm glad you enjoyed Arizona. I've gotta see it one day myself. :)
Today was low key, still de-stressing from the experience yesterday, so I went for a quick hike at Aliso Canyon which is close and easy. Aliso is like Santa Su as far as pics go, I've kinda covered it, unless I see a really unique pattern of light or something, so I didn't take photos. But I did have a relaxing walk, and things are pretty much back to normal here at Pearl's. Thank goodness.
Tonight was the grand finale, for Laker fans, of Kobe Bryant's 20 year career. He's been a Laker all that time, since 1996 when you were just about to turn four years old. :)
Yeah, sports....I know.
But we do love The Original Kobester (meaning "before The Dog") here in L.A., and tonight I listened to the game on radio (don't have cable in my apt.) and it was one of the most exciting games I've ever experienced. Kobe scored 60 points, which very rarely happens. It was such a great send off for the fans.....
Other than that, I've just been reading my books and trying to hold down the fort here at Pearl's. I've also been sort of monitoring my blood pressure on my Mom's old bp machine, which is another story. I got kind of obsessed with "numbers" because my brother-in-law mentioned that he was diagnosed as pre-diabetic. I am not a "doctor person" (to put it mildly), and I am a typical male in that regard I suppose. But I do try to take care of my own health, and I know all about healthy eating, exercising, and meditating and maintaining a positive attitude to avoid stress.
But my bro-in-law's talk of diagnostic "numbers" got to me. Nowdays, you've gotta know your cholesterol number! Your blood sugar number! And most importantly (so they say) your BP number. I hadn't checked mine in years. In my late 30s and early 40s, on the occasional check it used to hover around 140/90, which believe it or not was considered normal until 2003. That's when this obsession with lower BP began, with the medical field.
Anyhow, I hate all that stuff, and I just have always gone by how my body feels, and have been blessed with great health. But I got all freaked out with the idea of "numbers" because of listening to my bro-in-law, and so I checked my bp with Mom's digital machine, and it was about 137/85. That's actually better than it was 10 years ago, and it's pretty good for a guy my age. But they have this obsession with so-called "perfect" blood pressure now, so I am back on the No Fun Diet, which is low sodium (among other no fun things), and I am also trying to cut my caffeine intake in half, though it wasn't high to begin with.
I mean, I have no other risk factors. No family history. My parents both lived into their 80s, Mom to 82 even with smoking, and Dad to 88 with Herculian drinking. They never worried about this stuff, though they were both on meds for bp for many years.
I don't wanna ever be on meds, for anything. So I am gonna try to bring my bp down naturally, and if I can get it down to about 135/82 or thereabouts, that'll be good enough for me.
The last time I checked it, just two days ago, it was only 132/80 when I woke up. Not too shabby!
So if I can just get it to stay somewhere in that range throughout the day, then all is well.
I'm not a huge fan of the Medical Establishment because they get a person like me all freaked out on this stuff. I ask myself, "what did people do for thousands of years with no diagnostic digital numbers to worry about". The answer is "they lived their lives". And they got exercise. And in those days there was no processed food. So maybe I'm doing some things right anyhow. :)
On a happier note, I did see a post by you just a little while ago, and it had a baby in it. Now, the post itself was also about a medical issue - vaccines to be exact - but I will go out on a limb and guess that, maybe, you meant it as a Sweet Baby post.........(I hope you did)..
Well, that's all for tonight. I will see you in the morning.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
That was a beautiful picture of you this morning, taken by your friend, and a very pretty dress or blouse you are wearing. I'm glad you enjoyed Arizona. I've gotta see it one day myself. :)
Today was low key, still de-stressing from the experience yesterday, so I went for a quick hike at Aliso Canyon which is close and easy. Aliso is like Santa Su as far as pics go, I've kinda covered it, unless I see a really unique pattern of light or something, so I didn't take photos. But I did have a relaxing walk, and things are pretty much back to normal here at Pearl's. Thank goodness.
Tonight was the grand finale, for Laker fans, of Kobe Bryant's 20 year career. He's been a Laker all that time, since 1996 when you were just about to turn four years old. :)
Yeah, sports....I know.
But we do love The Original Kobester (meaning "before The Dog") here in L.A., and tonight I listened to the game on radio (don't have cable in my apt.) and it was one of the most exciting games I've ever experienced. Kobe scored 60 points, which very rarely happens. It was such a great send off for the fans.....
Other than that, I've just been reading my books and trying to hold down the fort here at Pearl's. I've also been sort of monitoring my blood pressure on my Mom's old bp machine, which is another story. I got kind of obsessed with "numbers" because my brother-in-law mentioned that he was diagnosed as pre-diabetic. I am not a "doctor person" (to put it mildly), and I am a typical male in that regard I suppose. But I do try to take care of my own health, and I know all about healthy eating, exercising, and meditating and maintaining a positive attitude to avoid stress.
But my bro-in-law's talk of diagnostic "numbers" got to me. Nowdays, you've gotta know your cholesterol number! Your blood sugar number! And most importantly (so they say) your BP number. I hadn't checked mine in years. In my late 30s and early 40s, on the occasional check it used to hover around 140/90, which believe it or not was considered normal until 2003. That's when this obsession with lower BP began, with the medical field.
Anyhow, I hate all that stuff, and I just have always gone by how my body feels, and have been blessed with great health. But I got all freaked out with the idea of "numbers" because of listening to my bro-in-law, and so I checked my bp with Mom's digital machine, and it was about 137/85. That's actually better than it was 10 years ago, and it's pretty good for a guy my age. But they have this obsession with so-called "perfect" blood pressure now, so I am back on the No Fun Diet, which is low sodium (among other no fun things), and I am also trying to cut my caffeine intake in half, though it wasn't high to begin with.
I mean, I have no other risk factors. No family history. My parents both lived into their 80s, Mom to 82 even with smoking, and Dad to 88 with Herculian drinking. They never worried about this stuff, though they were both on meds for bp for many years.
I don't wanna ever be on meds, for anything. So I am gonna try to bring my bp down naturally, and if I can get it down to about 135/82 or thereabouts, that'll be good enough for me.
The last time I checked it, just two days ago, it was only 132/80 when I woke up. Not too shabby!
So if I can just get it to stay somewhere in that range throughout the day, then all is well.
I'm not a huge fan of the Medical Establishment because they get a person like me all freaked out on this stuff. I ask myself, "what did people do for thousands of years with no diagnostic digital numbers to worry about". The answer is "they lived their lives". And they got exercise. And in those days there was no processed food. So maybe I'm doing some things right anyhow. :)
On a happier note, I did see a post by you just a little while ago, and it had a baby in it. Now, the post itself was also about a medical issue - vaccines to be exact - but I will go out on a limb and guess that, maybe, you meant it as a Sweet Baby post.........(I hope you did)..
Well, that's all for tonight. I will see you in the morning.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
A Scary Day
Hi Elizabeth,
Well, we sure had a bad scare this morning here at Pearl's. As I have probably mentioned at least once, I don't often get a full 8 hours of sleep during nighttime hours, because Pearl herself rarely sleeps through the night. Her biological clock gets turned around backwards, which is a phenomenon known as "sundowning" in people with dementia. So, very often she will think it's morning at Midnight, and I will have to actually show her the black night sky, looking through the window, to convince her otherwise. Or she might wake up at 2:30am, fully dressed and ready for breakfast. Many nights - more often than not - she wakes up on average about twice a night, say at around 2:30am and then again between 4 and 5am. And the reason I am alerted to this is because of Kobi the dog. He follows Pearl everywhere, he sleeps in her room, and when she wakes up, so does he.
And then he starts barking, and he has a very loud, sharp bark.
So the point of this preamble is to point out that during normal sleeping hours, I don't get consistent sleep. My sleep is broken up into 2 hour stretches almost every night. Consequently, by the time the Sun comes up, I am still not fully rested. You can always tell, afterward, by whether or not you can remember dreaming. If you can remember it, that means you had some REM sleep, which is the important kind.
Well, nowdays, because Pearl is nocturnal, I have been getting my REM sleep somewhere between the hours of about 7 and 10am. Prior to that, I sleep in one to two hour stretches as mentioned above, because the doggie barks and I wake up.
So, this morning was the usual pattern, and at about 6:15am I was up for the third time, and at that point I gave Pearl her breakfast, and I fed Kobi too. Then I went back to sleep.
He barked one more time at around 8am, and I came out to let him out front to go to the bathroom. Now I was exhausted, so I went back to sleep once again.
Finally I got a little quality sleep, and when I woke up, it was a few minutes after 10am.
Pearl has a cleaning lady, and she comes over every Tuesday, usually about 11am. This time she was a few minutes early, and I heard her coming in just as I was putting on my shoes. We both converged in the living room, and I said "hi", and I noticed Pearl was not in the living room, where she would usually be. So I went to her bedroom, because sometimes when she's been awake all night, she goes back to bed and falls asleep in the morning, after eating breakfast.
But she wasn't in her bedroom.
Well, that has happened a couple times before, and the house is not big; it's a 1950s mid-century modern tract home, you can walk the whole thing in less than a minute. I scanned the bathrooms and then went out directly into the front porch area. No Pearl.
By now I was pretty nervous. I walked rapidly into the backyard. No Pearl.
Several months ago, around December of 2015, we took away Pearl's key to the front gate, because she had had an episode where she had come out onto the porch area at night, in the cold, when I was not there, and she had closed the front door behind her, and she had locked herself out. And she had been out in the very cold night for about a half hour before our neighbor heard her calling out. Our neighbor has a key, and that time she let Pearl back inside the house.
But the final barrier to the street is a locked iron gate that separates the house and porch area from the driveway and street. Her daughter and I figured that it was best to let her keep the front door key, in case she ever got locked out of the house again (even though she really doesn't know how to use the key anymore), but we also decided that it was very important to take away her key to the front gate.
Because if she ever did go out the front door when I was not here, at least the front gate would be locked, and she could go no further than the porch. Without a key to the gate, she could not get off the property.
Or so we thought.
Well, back to this morning. After I checked the house and backyard, I very quickly went from being nervous to highly stressed. I realised : "She's not on the property". She's gone. Pearl is 91 and has moderate but advancing dementia. Holy smokes.
Both the cleaning lady and I jumped in our cars and drove in separate directions. "You go that way and I'll go this way"! We combed the neighborhood, which is old style Valley from the 1950s. It's all residential for about a half mile in every direction. It's one big housing tract, with quiet streets. I thought, "well, however Pearl got out, she can't have wandered far". Pearl moves very slowly. On dogwalks it takes us fifteen to twenty minutes just to get to the end of our 1/8th mile street.
But as I drove through the curving streets, I wasn't seeing her, and I started to get very, very, worried.
And I wondered, "how the hell did she get out"?
And then it hit me : "Oh yeah.....Tuesday is also the day the gardener comes. And he always leaves the gate open as he works from the front to the back yard. The gardener has a key, too.
So somehow, a Perfect Storm of circumstance had struck, and Pearl had first gone out the front door, which she never does anymore, and then she had gone out the open gate......
.......and all when I was asleep.
I felt horrible as I was driving, looking for her. But I thought, "I have to sleep sometime". I couldn't help it.
It would never have occured to me in a million years that she'd even go out the door onto the porch, let alone out a gate that just happened to be open.......because it was Tuesday.......when the gardener comes...
I was not yet in panic mode, because I always try to gather myself when situations arise. "Maybe she tried to walk to church". Tuesday is Golden Agers day, as you know. The church is a quarter mile down the street.
I drove there and went in. No Pearl. No one had seen her.
So I drove back to the house, and thinking back on the events of the morning, I would say I was still not panicking, but I was certainly praying, and thinking - analyzing - a mile a minute.
The cleaning lady drove up a moment after I arrived, and I said, "she's not at the church......I guess I'll have to call 911".
I've never had to call 911 before, for any reason.
But I did, and gave the operator all the details. Pearl's description, etc.
"We'll send someone over", she told me. "In the meantime, you can try calling the nearest hospital".
I had been thinking all the things that run through your head when something like this happens : "Did she fall down? Could some weirdo have picked her up? Good Lord, what could it be"?
I am her caregiver, and even though I try my best every day, it's not easy to keep up with a person who has dementia. Such a person is usually slow moving, but in other ways - ways that you don't always think of - they can be relentless. People with dementia get urges. Urges to "go home", to a remembered childhood location. Or to any number of other places and scenarios. And when they are in the grip of such an urge, they can fixate on it for days. And because a person with dementia basically does not sleep, in anything resembling a normal pattern, the caregiver really has to be on his or her toes to keep up.
Dementia creates a very slow but extremely determined kind of energy. And it can be relentless.
So I called 911. And the police came. I gave them the basic rundown, and they said they were gonna drive the streets themselves first, before resorting to a missing persons report. They said they'd check Northridge Hospital, too. It's about a mile away.
In the meantime, while they were gone, I drove back to the church. "Please God", I was thinking....but no Pearl.
I called Pearl's daughter to give her the news, and it was no fun to do so. Really scary it was, at this point.
Five minutes later I was back at the house again, and now the cleaning lady and I were both standing out front, scanning the street with our eyes and waiting for the police to return. A couple of neighbors had noticed all the commotion and inquired what had happened, and gave sympathies.
I was in and out of the house, with nervous energy. On the phone with her daughter.
Then, from out the dining room window, I saw the police car pull in to the driveway.
When I saw the backdoor open, and saw an officer get out of the back door, I instinctually knew they'd found Pearl. I walked out the front door, past the porch and through the gate.....
....and there was Pearl, being helped out of the front seat of the squad car (they use SUVs now) by the officer.
Thank You, Lord.
"We found her up on Stagg Street". A half mile away! How did she get that far?
"She was sitting in a chair in front of a house, the people who live there had seen her..."....
Me : "Thank you, officers. You really saved the day".
I thanked them profusely, for I had driven past that same spot on my search earlier, and hadn't seen her.
The stress of what had happened didn't hit me until a little while later.
And it has kinda wiped me out today. It was a very scary episode indeed.
God bless the LAPD and thanks to them for finding her. I am so glad she was safe and unharmed.
We are gonna make sure that the gardener locks the gate every time he passes through it, from now on.
And we are also gonna see if Pearl's doctor can prescribe anything that might help her "sundowning", to maybe improve her sleep pattern and hopefully turn her hours around back to normal.
So that's my report for today. I am so grateful that things turned out okay.
Such is the job of a caregiver.
I hope all is going well for you.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Well, we sure had a bad scare this morning here at Pearl's. As I have probably mentioned at least once, I don't often get a full 8 hours of sleep during nighttime hours, because Pearl herself rarely sleeps through the night. Her biological clock gets turned around backwards, which is a phenomenon known as "sundowning" in people with dementia. So, very often she will think it's morning at Midnight, and I will have to actually show her the black night sky, looking through the window, to convince her otherwise. Or she might wake up at 2:30am, fully dressed and ready for breakfast. Many nights - more often than not - she wakes up on average about twice a night, say at around 2:30am and then again between 4 and 5am. And the reason I am alerted to this is because of Kobi the dog. He follows Pearl everywhere, he sleeps in her room, and when she wakes up, so does he.
And then he starts barking, and he has a very loud, sharp bark.
So the point of this preamble is to point out that during normal sleeping hours, I don't get consistent sleep. My sleep is broken up into 2 hour stretches almost every night. Consequently, by the time the Sun comes up, I am still not fully rested. You can always tell, afterward, by whether or not you can remember dreaming. If you can remember it, that means you had some REM sleep, which is the important kind.
Well, nowdays, because Pearl is nocturnal, I have been getting my REM sleep somewhere between the hours of about 7 and 10am. Prior to that, I sleep in one to two hour stretches as mentioned above, because the doggie barks and I wake up.
So, this morning was the usual pattern, and at about 6:15am I was up for the third time, and at that point I gave Pearl her breakfast, and I fed Kobi too. Then I went back to sleep.
He barked one more time at around 8am, and I came out to let him out front to go to the bathroom. Now I was exhausted, so I went back to sleep once again.
Finally I got a little quality sleep, and when I woke up, it was a few minutes after 10am.
Pearl has a cleaning lady, and she comes over every Tuesday, usually about 11am. This time she was a few minutes early, and I heard her coming in just as I was putting on my shoes. We both converged in the living room, and I said "hi", and I noticed Pearl was not in the living room, where she would usually be. So I went to her bedroom, because sometimes when she's been awake all night, she goes back to bed and falls asleep in the morning, after eating breakfast.
But she wasn't in her bedroom.
Well, that has happened a couple times before, and the house is not big; it's a 1950s mid-century modern tract home, you can walk the whole thing in less than a minute. I scanned the bathrooms and then went out directly into the front porch area. No Pearl.
By now I was pretty nervous. I walked rapidly into the backyard. No Pearl.
Several months ago, around December of 2015, we took away Pearl's key to the front gate, because she had had an episode where she had come out onto the porch area at night, in the cold, when I was not there, and she had closed the front door behind her, and she had locked herself out. And she had been out in the very cold night for about a half hour before our neighbor heard her calling out. Our neighbor has a key, and that time she let Pearl back inside the house.
But the final barrier to the street is a locked iron gate that separates the house and porch area from the driveway and street. Her daughter and I figured that it was best to let her keep the front door key, in case she ever got locked out of the house again (even though she really doesn't know how to use the key anymore), but we also decided that it was very important to take away her key to the front gate.
Because if she ever did go out the front door when I was not here, at least the front gate would be locked, and she could go no further than the porch. Without a key to the gate, she could not get off the property.
Or so we thought.
Well, back to this morning. After I checked the house and backyard, I very quickly went from being nervous to highly stressed. I realised : "She's not on the property". She's gone. Pearl is 91 and has moderate but advancing dementia. Holy smokes.
Both the cleaning lady and I jumped in our cars and drove in separate directions. "You go that way and I'll go this way"! We combed the neighborhood, which is old style Valley from the 1950s. It's all residential for about a half mile in every direction. It's one big housing tract, with quiet streets. I thought, "well, however Pearl got out, she can't have wandered far". Pearl moves very slowly. On dogwalks it takes us fifteen to twenty minutes just to get to the end of our 1/8th mile street.
But as I drove through the curving streets, I wasn't seeing her, and I started to get very, very, worried.
And I wondered, "how the hell did she get out"?
And then it hit me : "Oh yeah.....Tuesday is also the day the gardener comes. And he always leaves the gate open as he works from the front to the back yard. The gardener has a key, too.
So somehow, a Perfect Storm of circumstance had struck, and Pearl had first gone out the front door, which she never does anymore, and then she had gone out the open gate......
.......and all when I was asleep.
I felt horrible as I was driving, looking for her. But I thought, "I have to sleep sometime". I couldn't help it.
It would never have occured to me in a million years that she'd even go out the door onto the porch, let alone out a gate that just happened to be open.......because it was Tuesday.......when the gardener comes...
I was not yet in panic mode, because I always try to gather myself when situations arise. "Maybe she tried to walk to church". Tuesday is Golden Agers day, as you know. The church is a quarter mile down the street.
I drove there and went in. No Pearl. No one had seen her.
So I drove back to the house, and thinking back on the events of the morning, I would say I was still not panicking, but I was certainly praying, and thinking - analyzing - a mile a minute.
The cleaning lady drove up a moment after I arrived, and I said, "she's not at the church......I guess I'll have to call 911".
I've never had to call 911 before, for any reason.
But I did, and gave the operator all the details. Pearl's description, etc.
"We'll send someone over", she told me. "In the meantime, you can try calling the nearest hospital".
I had been thinking all the things that run through your head when something like this happens : "Did she fall down? Could some weirdo have picked her up? Good Lord, what could it be"?
I am her caregiver, and even though I try my best every day, it's not easy to keep up with a person who has dementia. Such a person is usually slow moving, but in other ways - ways that you don't always think of - they can be relentless. People with dementia get urges. Urges to "go home", to a remembered childhood location. Or to any number of other places and scenarios. And when they are in the grip of such an urge, they can fixate on it for days. And because a person with dementia basically does not sleep, in anything resembling a normal pattern, the caregiver really has to be on his or her toes to keep up.
Dementia creates a very slow but extremely determined kind of energy. And it can be relentless.
So I called 911. And the police came. I gave them the basic rundown, and they said they were gonna drive the streets themselves first, before resorting to a missing persons report. They said they'd check Northridge Hospital, too. It's about a mile away.
In the meantime, while they were gone, I drove back to the church. "Please God", I was thinking....but no Pearl.
I called Pearl's daughter to give her the news, and it was no fun to do so. Really scary it was, at this point.
Five minutes later I was back at the house again, and now the cleaning lady and I were both standing out front, scanning the street with our eyes and waiting for the police to return. A couple of neighbors had noticed all the commotion and inquired what had happened, and gave sympathies.
I was in and out of the house, with nervous energy. On the phone with her daughter.
Then, from out the dining room window, I saw the police car pull in to the driveway.
When I saw the backdoor open, and saw an officer get out of the back door, I instinctually knew they'd found Pearl. I walked out the front door, past the porch and through the gate.....
....and there was Pearl, being helped out of the front seat of the squad car (they use SUVs now) by the officer.
Thank You, Lord.
"We found her up on Stagg Street". A half mile away! How did she get that far?
"She was sitting in a chair in front of a house, the people who live there had seen her..."....
Me : "Thank you, officers. You really saved the day".
I thanked them profusely, for I had driven past that same spot on my search earlier, and hadn't seen her.
The stress of what had happened didn't hit me until a little while later.
And it has kinda wiped me out today. It was a very scary episode indeed.
God bless the LAPD and thanks to them for finding her. I am so glad she was safe and unharmed.
We are gonna make sure that the gardener locks the gate every time he passes through it, from now on.
And we are also gonna see if Pearl's doctor can prescribe anything that might help her "sundowning", to maybe improve her sleep pattern and hopefully turn her hours around back to normal.
So that's my report for today. I am so grateful that things turned out okay.
Such is the job of a caregiver.
I hope all is going well for you.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Vibrations Against The Air
Hi Elizabeth,
I'm just checking in to say hi. I hope all your projects are coming along well. I liked your new pics on Flickr. I always try to save some really good ones to post there myself, because the resolution is better than on FB. I sure hope to get out and do a hike pretty soon, but it's just been harder this year. But soon I will, and because we have had some rain (including the last two days), the trails and hillsides should look a lot different, much greener and with wildflowers and native plants.
I saw an excellent movie last night, "Love And Mercy", a biopic about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. In the movie, he is played by two actors - Paul Dano (when he is young and his star is rising) and John Cusack (when he is in his 50s). Both actors knock their roles out of the park, as does the rest of the cast. Even if you are not familiar with The Beach Boys music, the movie stands on it's own as the story of a musical genius struggling against schizophrenia while trying to get the music out of his head and onto tape, and in later life dealing with the controlling influence of a domineering psychiatrist. Really a great movie, one of the best depictions of a real life person I've ever seen put on film, and also as it shows how music was created in the studio, by Brian Wilson, who had a tough life but is still going today at 74 years old and has triumphed in the end, largely because of the woman who became his wife, who saved him from his tyrannical doctor. It's funny, because the name "The Beach Boys" seems like it might not correlate with musical genius, but when you really listen to what they were doing, with the rhythms, melodies and criss-crossing harmonies, there is no doubt. God Bless Brian Wilson. :)
I saw your post with the amazing contraptions that look like living Miyazaki creatures. Wow! Imagine the dedication it took to put those together. It's not only an engineering feat by the artist, but also a probable knowledge, on his part, and a belief in, the type of higher mathematics I am trying to comprehend in Roger Penrose's "The Road To Reality", in which he explains (for those who understand "the language"), how things are measured against each other, and in congruence with each other.
The mathematics of curves, and spin, and geometry and torsion, would all play a part in building those "living creatures" that have no motorised power other than the wind and their own mechanical design. So the math comes down to creating a fantastic structure (with "legs" for motion), that will move forward when it interacts with a directional wind.
In reading the Penrose book, for me, I obviously have to just skip past almost all of the calculations, as would anybody who isn't a math major, and a top-level one at that. But when you just read the words of the book, you can understand it, somewhat, on an intuitive level.
I think that's what you have to have to create the living Miyazaki creatures out of plastic bottles and tubing. You have to have a high level understanding of the engineering that is involved.
But more importantly - probably much more, I think - you have to have an intuitive understanding of the Living Plastic Creatures themselves, and in that way, by first intuiting them, and then creating them and bringing them to life, the artist is doing something similar to what Brian Wilson did.
He is bringing The Wind, or the air, to life.
Pretty amazing.
Well, that's all I know for tonight. Good singing will be had in church tomorrow morn.
Goodnight, Sweet Baby. See you tomorrow.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I'm just checking in to say hi. I hope all your projects are coming along well. I liked your new pics on Flickr. I always try to save some really good ones to post there myself, because the resolution is better than on FB. I sure hope to get out and do a hike pretty soon, but it's just been harder this year. But soon I will, and because we have had some rain (including the last two days), the trails and hillsides should look a lot different, much greener and with wildflowers and native plants.
I saw an excellent movie last night, "Love And Mercy", a biopic about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. In the movie, he is played by two actors - Paul Dano (when he is young and his star is rising) and John Cusack (when he is in his 50s). Both actors knock their roles out of the park, as does the rest of the cast. Even if you are not familiar with The Beach Boys music, the movie stands on it's own as the story of a musical genius struggling against schizophrenia while trying to get the music out of his head and onto tape, and in later life dealing with the controlling influence of a domineering psychiatrist. Really a great movie, one of the best depictions of a real life person I've ever seen put on film, and also as it shows how music was created in the studio, by Brian Wilson, who had a tough life but is still going today at 74 years old and has triumphed in the end, largely because of the woman who became his wife, who saved him from his tyrannical doctor. It's funny, because the name "The Beach Boys" seems like it might not correlate with musical genius, but when you really listen to what they were doing, with the rhythms, melodies and criss-crossing harmonies, there is no doubt. God Bless Brian Wilson. :)
I saw your post with the amazing contraptions that look like living Miyazaki creatures. Wow! Imagine the dedication it took to put those together. It's not only an engineering feat by the artist, but also a probable knowledge, on his part, and a belief in, the type of higher mathematics I am trying to comprehend in Roger Penrose's "The Road To Reality", in which he explains (for those who understand "the language"), how things are measured against each other, and in congruence with each other.
The mathematics of curves, and spin, and geometry and torsion, would all play a part in building those "living creatures" that have no motorised power other than the wind and their own mechanical design. So the math comes down to creating a fantastic structure (with "legs" for motion), that will move forward when it interacts with a directional wind.
In reading the Penrose book, for me, I obviously have to just skip past almost all of the calculations, as would anybody who isn't a math major, and a top-level one at that. But when you just read the words of the book, you can understand it, somewhat, on an intuitive level.
I think that's what you have to have to create the living Miyazaki creatures out of plastic bottles and tubing. You have to have a high level understanding of the engineering that is involved.
But more importantly - probably much more, I think - you have to have an intuitive understanding of the Living Plastic Creatures themselves, and in that way, by first intuiting them, and then creating them and bringing them to life, the artist is doing something similar to what Brian Wilson did.
He is bringing The Wind, or the air, to life.
Pretty amazing.
Well, that's all I know for tonight. Good singing will be had in church tomorrow morn.
Goodnight, Sweet Baby. See you tomorrow.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, April 8, 2016
Tree Of Life
Hi, my Darling,
I hope you had a nice day, with success and fun on whatever shoot you are currently working on. The only post I saw pertained to Trapt, and I think they were in Detroit. Maybe you are touring with them? Just a guess of course. :) Post if you get a chance, and if you want to.
Tonight we were back to Thursday Movie Night at CSUN. We had finished up all seven of Tarkovsky's films, so now we are watching films that the Professor chose as being influenced by The Tarkmeister, and we started off with "The Tree Of Life" by Terrence Malick. I am a big fan of his first two films: "Badlands" and "Days Of Heaven", the latter of which is one of the great cinematography jobs of all time. I saw "Tree" when it came out about five years ago, but I saw it on dvd, on a TV screen, and I wasn't ready for it's constantly circulating camerawork and meandering story. I probably watched it at a bad time or wasn't in the mood because I didn't like it that much.
This time, I thought it was tremendous. Sometimes, if a movie has promise - even something in general that you can find to like about it - then it can help to go back and watch it a second time. Being a fan of Malick, I have always liked the spiritual nature of his films, and that was what I did like the first time I watched "Tree Of Life". The film's abstract nature was off-putting on first view, but I liked the message.
So I was more prepared to watch it on this second viewing, because I knew what was coming. Also, I was seeing it on a movie screen, which makes a difference.
This time it blew me away. What a beautiful film, with such a spiritual message.
Well, that's all for tonight. Hope you are still with me.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I hope you had a nice day, with success and fun on whatever shoot you are currently working on. The only post I saw pertained to Trapt, and I think they were in Detroit. Maybe you are touring with them? Just a guess of course. :) Post if you get a chance, and if you want to.
Tonight we were back to Thursday Movie Night at CSUN. We had finished up all seven of Tarkovsky's films, so now we are watching films that the Professor chose as being influenced by The Tarkmeister, and we started off with "The Tree Of Life" by Terrence Malick. I am a big fan of his first two films: "Badlands" and "Days Of Heaven", the latter of which is one of the great cinematography jobs of all time. I saw "Tree" when it came out about five years ago, but I saw it on dvd, on a TV screen, and I wasn't ready for it's constantly circulating camerawork and meandering story. I probably watched it at a bad time or wasn't in the mood because I didn't like it that much.
This time, I thought it was tremendous. Sometimes, if a movie has promise - even something in general that you can find to like about it - then it can help to go back and watch it a second time. Being a fan of Malick, I have always liked the spiritual nature of his films, and that was what I did like the first time I watched "Tree Of Life". The film's abstract nature was off-putting on first view, but I liked the message.
So I was more prepared to watch it on this second viewing, because I knew what was coming. Also, I was seeing it on a movie screen, which makes a difference.
This time it blew me away. What a beautiful film, with such a spiritual message.
Well, that's all for tonight. Hope you are still with me.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Happy Wednesday + Love + Still Analysing The Rappaport Kidnapping Case (really weird, with clones and stuff)
Hi, my Darling,
Happy Wednesday Night. I hope your day was good, and I'll bet you are still going through all your photos from last weekend. It's great that you have the fashion shoots in addition to all the rock shows you are photographing, not to mention your video work as well. This morning I saw your post, via the gal you just worked with (Katie), which mentioned going to Chicago, so maybe that is your next destination, too?
I will be needing a road map to keep up, lol. :)
I will also be looking forward to see the footage you shot in Sedona (which was one of my guesses for the location), if it will be available to be seen.
Tonight I watched a classic movie from the 90s, "That Thing You Do", which was written and directed by Tom Hanks, his only directorial effort, and man did he ever nail it. It's funny, when the movie came out I didn't see it, and even though I watch a truckload of movies, and even though there has been a copy in the library system for years, it had never occured to me to watch it. I guess I just figured it was lightweight - an "actor's movie" (actors who direct aren't always the best), but boy was I wrong. I finally watched it because some of the guys over at the King's X board were talking about it, and I figured, "well, why not finally watch it".
Now, it's not Tarkovsky or anything, and it's not supposed to be. It is light and funny, but what it has in spades is style and feel. The cast is excellent, playing a band who ride a hit single to temporary stardom in 1964. And Hanks absolutely created a world, in his movie, that looks and feels like that year. There was something bright and shiny about the early 60s, before all the turmoil and fantastic change of that decade began to set in. And this movie absolutely captures that time, in the era of the coming of age of rock n' roll in America. I loved it. :)
I am thrilled at what is happening with your photography and videos, because it has happened in such a similar way to all the things we used to talk about. When you can feel that something is going to happen in advance, and then it happens.........well that's pretty special.
I think you have to Go With What You Know, in this world. Your inner instincts. They are the best directive you can take, and that's how the Magic happens.
I have been writing about my experience with Mr. Rappaport, and I am not quite done yet. All of the info in these past few blogs is really the extremely short version of the story, and I will add a few more observations and questions, perhaps tonight, or in the next few days. Because I write to you late at night, my concentration is not always at the level that is required to produce thoughtful analysis of this event, especially since I have gone over it umpteen times in the past and have had no new information to work with for a long time. Thus it has been kind of a Cold Case File, as has been all of what happened in 1989.
But, what I like to do is ponder a few select questions one at a time. Such as.....
It is apparent that my rescue from 9033 Etiwanda Avenue, in September 1989, was a military operation. To be specific, it was a special forces operation, low key in the observational sense (no "big noise" attention from news media, tons of police, helicopters, etc.), but conversely extremely effective, rapid, and frightening to observe in the aftermath.
In war, there are no rules. There is only power and the willingness to use it. This was not a police action, where some level of restraint was required. Because while the police are subject to review for their actions (even when they are out of control, as is so prevelent now), the military - and most expicitly Special Forces - are not subject to review. If you have ever seen the movie "Platoon", or heard the story of Mi Lai in Vietnam, or myriad other stories, you know that - in war - anything goes. Power and authority take over, civilian rules of society do not exist, and when you watch this happen right in front of you, not on some far off battlefield but right on your street, well, let's just say it takes you years and years to make sense of it.
I am talking now about the aftermath of my kidnapping, after I had been rescued and after Mr. Rappaport had been apprehended.
The thing is, I would swear that I saw something horrible happen to him, at the hands of the special forces soldiers directed by the famous man in charge.
I know I saw something very violent happen to the man that kidnapped me.
My original memory of the event was that he died as a result of it. This part of the story is a horror show, and not to be written about at the present time.
But originally, in 1997, when my memory first came back, I reported that there were two Mr. Rappaports.
One was the guy who kidnapped and tormented me, and the other was the "normal" or "good" Mr. Rappaport, who initially I remembered as returning home in the midst of all the chaos that night. Initially I remembered in 1997 that while I was watching what was happening to the guy who kidnapped me (the horror show), suddenly up walked the "real" Mr. Rappaport, the college professor.
And for years I thought there had been two of them.
I still don't know to this day if there were one or two Jared Rappaports. I know that sounds insane, but it isn't.
The following will sound like science fiction, but it isn't either.
What if there were such things as clones? If there were, think of the possibilities. You could send out a clone to rob a bank, and then blame it on the actual person - the real guy - if you wanted to frame him up for some reason. You could cause havoc in society through the use of clones.
Now, I am not saying that Jared Rappaport had a clone, and that was the guy who kidnapped me.
All I am saying is that I am certain I saw something horrific happen to the guy who kidnapped me, and that guy looked and sounded exactly like the Jared Rappaport that I later recognized as my neighbor. He has a distinctive, high whiny voice, and I don't think you could even duplicate a voice in a clone, could you?
So I am torn, and I know that something very high-tech was done to me, and I should add that this Rappaport story isn't the half of it. Hardly not even.
But with Rappaport, it comes down to this : he definitely kidnapped me.
And there are only two possibilities of who he is. Either there is one of him, and therefore he is the one and only Jared Rappaport who still teaches at CSUN to this day, which would belie the certainty I have that my kidnapper was killed or severely injured by the soldiers on scene......
Or there really was two of him - (a twin? a clone? I have no idea) - and if so, then he was part of the military operation that was taking place, in which I was an unwitting subject.
It is certain that I was kidnapped by my next door neighbor, and rescued 24 hours later by a small unit of special forces soldiers, directed by a later-to-be-famous man with Federal jurisdiction.
But what they were up to, I still don't know to this day.
They do, however, have technology, and practices, that would make your head spin, and that are so far removed from the public domain as to exist in another world.
It is only when you see that other world for yourself that you know it exists.
////////
Happy Wednesday Night. I hope your day was good, and I'll bet you are still going through all your photos from last weekend. It's great that you have the fashion shoots in addition to all the rock shows you are photographing, not to mention your video work as well. This morning I saw your post, via the gal you just worked with (Katie), which mentioned going to Chicago, so maybe that is your next destination, too?
I will be needing a road map to keep up, lol. :)
I will also be looking forward to see the footage you shot in Sedona (which was one of my guesses for the location), if it will be available to be seen.
Tonight I watched a classic movie from the 90s, "That Thing You Do", which was written and directed by Tom Hanks, his only directorial effort, and man did he ever nail it. It's funny, when the movie came out I didn't see it, and even though I watch a truckload of movies, and even though there has been a copy in the library system for years, it had never occured to me to watch it. I guess I just figured it was lightweight - an "actor's movie" (actors who direct aren't always the best), but boy was I wrong. I finally watched it because some of the guys over at the King's X board were talking about it, and I figured, "well, why not finally watch it".
Now, it's not Tarkovsky or anything, and it's not supposed to be. It is light and funny, but what it has in spades is style and feel. The cast is excellent, playing a band who ride a hit single to temporary stardom in 1964. And Hanks absolutely created a world, in his movie, that looks and feels like that year. There was something bright and shiny about the early 60s, before all the turmoil and fantastic change of that decade began to set in. And this movie absolutely captures that time, in the era of the coming of age of rock n' roll in America. I loved it. :)
I am thrilled at what is happening with your photography and videos, because it has happened in such a similar way to all the things we used to talk about. When you can feel that something is going to happen in advance, and then it happens.........well that's pretty special.
I think you have to Go With What You Know, in this world. Your inner instincts. They are the best directive you can take, and that's how the Magic happens.
I have been writing about my experience with Mr. Rappaport, and I am not quite done yet. All of the info in these past few blogs is really the extremely short version of the story, and I will add a few more observations and questions, perhaps tonight, or in the next few days. Because I write to you late at night, my concentration is not always at the level that is required to produce thoughtful analysis of this event, especially since I have gone over it umpteen times in the past and have had no new information to work with for a long time. Thus it has been kind of a Cold Case File, as has been all of what happened in 1989.
But, what I like to do is ponder a few select questions one at a time. Such as.....
It is apparent that my rescue from 9033 Etiwanda Avenue, in September 1989, was a military operation. To be specific, it was a special forces operation, low key in the observational sense (no "big noise" attention from news media, tons of police, helicopters, etc.), but conversely extremely effective, rapid, and frightening to observe in the aftermath.
In war, there are no rules. There is only power and the willingness to use it. This was not a police action, where some level of restraint was required. Because while the police are subject to review for their actions (even when they are out of control, as is so prevelent now), the military - and most expicitly Special Forces - are not subject to review. If you have ever seen the movie "Platoon", or heard the story of Mi Lai in Vietnam, or myriad other stories, you know that - in war - anything goes. Power and authority take over, civilian rules of society do not exist, and when you watch this happen right in front of you, not on some far off battlefield but right on your street, well, let's just say it takes you years and years to make sense of it.
I am talking now about the aftermath of my kidnapping, after I had been rescued and after Mr. Rappaport had been apprehended.
The thing is, I would swear that I saw something horrible happen to him, at the hands of the special forces soldiers directed by the famous man in charge.
I know I saw something very violent happen to the man that kidnapped me.
My original memory of the event was that he died as a result of it. This part of the story is a horror show, and not to be written about at the present time.
But originally, in 1997, when my memory first came back, I reported that there were two Mr. Rappaports.
One was the guy who kidnapped and tormented me, and the other was the "normal" or "good" Mr. Rappaport, who initially I remembered as returning home in the midst of all the chaos that night. Initially I remembered in 1997 that while I was watching what was happening to the guy who kidnapped me (the horror show), suddenly up walked the "real" Mr. Rappaport, the college professor.
And for years I thought there had been two of them.
I still don't know to this day if there were one or two Jared Rappaports. I know that sounds insane, but it isn't.
The following will sound like science fiction, but it isn't either.
What if there were such things as clones? If there were, think of the possibilities. You could send out a clone to rob a bank, and then blame it on the actual person - the real guy - if you wanted to frame him up for some reason. You could cause havoc in society through the use of clones.
Now, I am not saying that Jared Rappaport had a clone, and that was the guy who kidnapped me.
All I am saying is that I am certain I saw something horrific happen to the guy who kidnapped me, and that guy looked and sounded exactly like the Jared Rappaport that I later recognized as my neighbor. He has a distinctive, high whiny voice, and I don't think you could even duplicate a voice in a clone, could you?
So I am torn, and I know that something very high-tech was done to me, and I should add that this Rappaport story isn't the half of it. Hardly not even.
But with Rappaport, it comes down to this : he definitely kidnapped me.
And there are only two possibilities of who he is. Either there is one of him, and therefore he is the one and only Jared Rappaport who still teaches at CSUN to this day, which would belie the certainty I have that my kidnapper was killed or severely injured by the soldiers on scene......
Or there really was two of him - (a twin? a clone? I have no idea) - and if so, then he was part of the military operation that was taking place, in which I was an unwitting subject.
It is certain that I was kidnapped by my next door neighbor, and rescued 24 hours later by a small unit of special forces soldiers, directed by a later-to-be-famous man with Federal jurisdiction.
But what they were up to, I still don't know to this day.
They do, however, have technology, and practices, that would make your head spin, and that are so far removed from the public domain as to exist in another world.
It is only when you see that other world for yourself that you know it exists.
////////
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Great Pics + The Rescue From Rappaport
Hi Elizabeth,
Happy Late Night. Once again you have gotten some great band photos. My favorite this time was of the dreadlocked guitarist reaching out to give what looks like a thumbs-up to the audience. That shot has a lot of the kind of little things I like: his expression and hair (both very rock n roll - rough but cool), contrasted by the smooth gold curve of his guitar. And he is framed perfectly by the three white lights overhead. A great shot, and it has that "in the moment" feel. You have many others in today's set that are also top notch. I like some of the angles you are choosing, giving a different view of things than is shown in a lot of rock photography. Keep doing it, and keep going for those "moment" shots.
3000 shots! Good lordy, Sweet Baby. In the old days, you'd have had your motor drive whirring away on your Nikon F3....... :)
I saw one post on FB, with a reference to Las Vegas, so I don't know if that was just a regular "like" of your friend's post, or if it means that another trip is on deck. But I am sure I'll find out! :)
What a year so far. It was my prediction that you'd become a Go-To photographer and director for your region, and that seems to be happening right off the bat. I mean, you were still in art school only 17 months ago. So............wow! :)
A basic Tuesday for me, working and reading on my breaks. In addition to my new Dr. Farrell book, I am re-reading a book called "The Road To Reality" by Roger Penrose, who is a high level math professor at Cambridge. I first attempted to read this book in 2004, but gave up in an early chapter when I came to complex numbers. Now, twelve years later, I still don't understand a lot of the language or the equations (speak English!, you doggone mathematicians!), but because I have read a lot of Dr. Farrell and other books on physics, astronomy and other complicated subjects, I have a better grasp intuitively of what Mr. Penrose is talking about, in trying to show a precise and magical mathematics at work in the Order Of The Universe.
The book is 1000 pages long. I'm now almost to page 100, so I should be finished by July or so. :)
At least I won't get Alzheimer's if I keep taxing my brain this way, haha.
Well, I wish I could say I was all done with Mr. Rappaport, but I'm not. Not quite, anyway. I have more questions from Lt. Columbo concerning Things That Seem Odd, when contrasted with how a crime of this nature would "normally" play out......
So here goes : we already know that when my ordeal came to an end, after about 24 hours, that it was not because of the LAPD, the agency one might expect to come to the rescue in such an event. Nor was it because of the FBI, or at least any official FBI with agents offering identification, etc. There were a couple of men in suits, in addition to the aforementioned military guys in jumpsuits, but the men in suits never identified themselves to me.
What was most noticeable about my rescue from Jared Rappaport, was how......invisible I guess would be the word......how invisible it was.
There were only a handful of men involved. A couple of men in suits, and a couple of guys in jumpsuits. The jumpsuit guys came first, in through the door after setting off a flash/bang device. The suit guys came later.
Here is what wasn't there : news personnel. This event happened in 1989, in the modern age of instantaneous news coverage. Call it what you will - a kidnapping, an abduction or a hostage situation - this is the type of major crime that would normally elicit Total News Coverage, especially locally here in Los Angeles.
An In House Hostage Situtation? With the hostage and the maniac both on the premises?
That means Max News Coverage, in any city at any time.
But at Jared Rappaport's house at 9033 Etiwanda Avenue that day, in September 1989, there was not a single news source to be had.
No one. No reporters, no helicopters, no nobody. Just the few men I mentioned, a couple in jumpsuits (military) and a couple in suits (authority).
No police, no SWAT team, no news reporters, no news helicopters. Nothing.
How do they do that?
Well, they have ways. It's called Jurisdiction. And jurisdiction goes upwards from local, meaning City (LAPD) to County (Sheriffs), to State, which is mainly Highway Patrol, to Federal.
And Federal trumps all.
Federal jurisdiction, if declared by the authority on site, can shut down and immobilise any local authority, even the mighty and highly professional Los Angeles Police Department.
Federal authority can shut down the pervasive news media, which is everywhere.
Except at Jared Rappaport's house on that day in September 1989.
He abducted me quietly, so to speak, and I was rescued quietly, again "so to speak", though in reality all hell broke loose in both situations, and in between during my captivity.
But no attention was brought to the situation, before, during or after.
Lt. Columbo would like to know why that is.
Why did unidentified Federal authorities come to my rescue, instead of local LAPD or regular FBI?
Why was there no news coverage?
How did they know I was being held in that house in the first place?
As far as I was aware, nobody knew I was in there, except for a close friend of my brother's who came into the house (as mentioned previously), and one or two neighbors who knocked on the door.
But how even did any of those people know I was in that house?
Rappaport abducted me fairly late at night, probably around 10pm in the evening, likely on a Saturday night on Labor Day Weekend, a holiday when things are slowed down. Auto traffic is down, especially on Rathburn Av., a side street. Foot traffic was non-existent. I saw no one as I was being taken away at gunpoint.
No one, as far as I was aware, knew I'd been taken away from my house, at least on the night it happened.
So if no one knew, because no one saw, and no one was around to see, then how the Hell did people know the next day? How did Chris's friend know?
Well, he knew because he very likely had an association with Jared Rappaport. Chris's friend is a filmmaker, and Rappaport teaches film, and they probably met during Memorial Day weekend 1989, when the friend was making a film (his senior project for UCLA) at our house, which was next door to Rappaport's. There is evidence involving such a meeting, but it is too long to go into here. Let's just say that this friend of my brother's was 100% involved in the backstory of why this MFer, Jared Rappaport, came to my door to kidnap me in the first place.
So that's how he, Chris's friend, knew I was in that house : because he saw me in there, because he came in there with Rappaport on the second day.
But how did Federal authorities know?
Well, they had been on scene the night before, when the whole thing began.
I won't get into that now.
When I was finally removed from Jared Rappaport's house, I was taken away - not in an ambulance as you would expect - not to a local hospital...
No, I was taken away......in a helicopter that hovered over Etiwanda Avenue......I was lifted up in one of those baskets they put people in, a gurney that looks like a "chicken basket", and I was lifted up in that basket, in a state of shock but lucid, and some more military guys pulled me in the basket, into the helicopter, and I was taken away.
Not to a hospital, but to a military base.
An Underground Military Base.
Accompanied by a man we all know, who had been one of the Men In Suits at the Rappaport house, and who had been in charge of the whole situation.
That's how I was rescued, and that's where they took me, and it's no joke. ////
See you in the morning......
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Happy Late Night. Once again you have gotten some great band photos. My favorite this time was of the dreadlocked guitarist reaching out to give what looks like a thumbs-up to the audience. That shot has a lot of the kind of little things I like: his expression and hair (both very rock n roll - rough but cool), contrasted by the smooth gold curve of his guitar. And he is framed perfectly by the three white lights overhead. A great shot, and it has that "in the moment" feel. You have many others in today's set that are also top notch. I like some of the angles you are choosing, giving a different view of things than is shown in a lot of rock photography. Keep doing it, and keep going for those "moment" shots.
3000 shots! Good lordy, Sweet Baby. In the old days, you'd have had your motor drive whirring away on your Nikon F3....... :)
I saw one post on FB, with a reference to Las Vegas, so I don't know if that was just a regular "like" of your friend's post, or if it means that another trip is on deck. But I am sure I'll find out! :)
What a year so far. It was my prediction that you'd become a Go-To photographer and director for your region, and that seems to be happening right off the bat. I mean, you were still in art school only 17 months ago. So............wow! :)
A basic Tuesday for me, working and reading on my breaks. In addition to my new Dr. Farrell book, I am re-reading a book called "The Road To Reality" by Roger Penrose, who is a high level math professor at Cambridge. I first attempted to read this book in 2004, but gave up in an early chapter when I came to complex numbers. Now, twelve years later, I still don't understand a lot of the language or the equations (speak English!, you doggone mathematicians!), but because I have read a lot of Dr. Farrell and other books on physics, astronomy and other complicated subjects, I have a better grasp intuitively of what Mr. Penrose is talking about, in trying to show a precise and magical mathematics at work in the Order Of The Universe.
The book is 1000 pages long. I'm now almost to page 100, so I should be finished by July or so. :)
At least I won't get Alzheimer's if I keep taxing my brain this way, haha.
Well, I wish I could say I was all done with Mr. Rappaport, but I'm not. Not quite, anyway. I have more questions from Lt. Columbo concerning Things That Seem Odd, when contrasted with how a crime of this nature would "normally" play out......
So here goes : we already know that when my ordeal came to an end, after about 24 hours, that it was not because of the LAPD, the agency one might expect to come to the rescue in such an event. Nor was it because of the FBI, or at least any official FBI with agents offering identification, etc. There were a couple of men in suits, in addition to the aforementioned military guys in jumpsuits, but the men in suits never identified themselves to me.
What was most noticeable about my rescue from Jared Rappaport, was how......invisible I guess would be the word......how invisible it was.
There were only a handful of men involved. A couple of men in suits, and a couple of guys in jumpsuits. The jumpsuit guys came first, in through the door after setting off a flash/bang device. The suit guys came later.
Here is what wasn't there : news personnel. This event happened in 1989, in the modern age of instantaneous news coverage. Call it what you will - a kidnapping, an abduction or a hostage situation - this is the type of major crime that would normally elicit Total News Coverage, especially locally here in Los Angeles.
An In House Hostage Situtation? With the hostage and the maniac both on the premises?
That means Max News Coverage, in any city at any time.
But at Jared Rappaport's house at 9033 Etiwanda Avenue that day, in September 1989, there was not a single news source to be had.
No one. No reporters, no helicopters, no nobody. Just the few men I mentioned, a couple in jumpsuits (military) and a couple in suits (authority).
No police, no SWAT team, no news reporters, no news helicopters. Nothing.
How do they do that?
Well, they have ways. It's called Jurisdiction. And jurisdiction goes upwards from local, meaning City (LAPD) to County (Sheriffs), to State, which is mainly Highway Patrol, to Federal.
And Federal trumps all.
Federal jurisdiction, if declared by the authority on site, can shut down and immobilise any local authority, even the mighty and highly professional Los Angeles Police Department.
Federal authority can shut down the pervasive news media, which is everywhere.
Except at Jared Rappaport's house on that day in September 1989.
He abducted me quietly, so to speak, and I was rescued quietly, again "so to speak", though in reality all hell broke loose in both situations, and in between during my captivity.
But no attention was brought to the situation, before, during or after.
Lt. Columbo would like to know why that is.
Why did unidentified Federal authorities come to my rescue, instead of local LAPD or regular FBI?
Why was there no news coverage?
How did they know I was being held in that house in the first place?
As far as I was aware, nobody knew I was in there, except for a close friend of my brother's who came into the house (as mentioned previously), and one or two neighbors who knocked on the door.
But how even did any of those people know I was in that house?
Rappaport abducted me fairly late at night, probably around 10pm in the evening, likely on a Saturday night on Labor Day Weekend, a holiday when things are slowed down. Auto traffic is down, especially on Rathburn Av., a side street. Foot traffic was non-existent. I saw no one as I was being taken away at gunpoint.
No one, as far as I was aware, knew I'd been taken away from my house, at least on the night it happened.
So if no one knew, because no one saw, and no one was around to see, then how the Hell did people know the next day? How did Chris's friend know?
Well, he knew because he very likely had an association with Jared Rappaport. Chris's friend is a filmmaker, and Rappaport teaches film, and they probably met during Memorial Day weekend 1989, when the friend was making a film (his senior project for UCLA) at our house, which was next door to Rappaport's. There is evidence involving such a meeting, but it is too long to go into here. Let's just say that this friend of my brother's was 100% involved in the backstory of why this MFer, Jared Rappaport, came to my door to kidnap me in the first place.
So that's how he, Chris's friend, knew I was in that house : because he saw me in there, because he came in there with Rappaport on the second day.
But how did Federal authorities know?
Well, they had been on scene the night before, when the whole thing began.
I won't get into that now.
When I was finally removed from Jared Rappaport's house, I was taken away - not in an ambulance as you would expect - not to a local hospital...
No, I was taken away......in a helicopter that hovered over Etiwanda Avenue......I was lifted up in one of those baskets they put people in, a gurney that looks like a "chicken basket", and I was lifted up in that basket, in a state of shock but lucid, and some more military guys pulled me in the basket, into the helicopter, and I was taken away.
Not to a hospital, but to a military base.
An Underground Military Base.
Accompanied by a man we all know, who had been one of the Men In Suits at the Rappaport house, and who had been in charge of the whole situation.
That's how I was rescued, and that's where they took me, and it's no joke. ////
See you in the morning......
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Dealing With Monsters
Hi Elizabeth,
Happy Monday Night. I hope your week is off to a good start, though I saw one of your posts on FB via Joel Wanasek that referred to being sick, so I hope that's not the case. If it is, take care of yourself and don't overwork - like stay up all night editing, lol. Better yet would be if you aren't sick at all. :)
I saw a few other posts, all having to do with music. One was about Guns & Roses; are you gonna go see 'em? You will have a blast if you do.
A typical workday for me, and I took The Crew to Lake Balboa once again this afternoon. The lake is a habitat for birds, and their different calls came from the trees and filled the air with languages and conversations, which - though unknown - were beautiful to hear. We had a nice time as always.
I have been writing about my experience with Mr. Rappaport, and I'm not quite done. I could write an entire book about that one incident alone, but I won't, and actually even after I write a couple of blogs about it, the steam starts to go out of me, because I have examined, and written about, the Rappaport event so many times before - on and off for more than ten years - that, while it's easy to delve into, it's harder to get motivated to continue to write about it or explore it because for years now I have been fresh out of new information.
Every single bit of information I do have, has come from myself, from my memory and my detective work. All of it has taken an enormous amount of effort, and when I do work on The Rappaport Case it can involve a lot of concentration, which can be very taxing.
Still, I will never let it go, because..........well, would you?
I mentioned the girls from the Cleveland case in yesterday's blog, and while I in no way would compare my suffering to theirs, I would nevertheless definitely compare, in a relative way, the psychotic criminal urges and primitive emotional drive of Mr. Rapaport to the Monster from Cleveland.
The Monster abducted those girls and tormented them for, what? 12 or 13 years? Then one girl escaped and he was finally caught.
Jared Rappaport abducted me, and I was in his captivity for one night and the following day. About 24 hours, total, compared to years and years for the girls in Cleveland. And yet, I experienced at the very least a similar, full-blown aggressive pychosis involving violence against me, and torment. I have chosen not to write about that part, but it was horrible and terrifying. So while I did not experience years of captivity, I do know the terror of it, and in these matters it does not serve a purpose to "compare suffering".
A murderer is a murderer whether he kills one or one thousand, and a victim is a victim, no matter the magnitude of their suffering.
I will butt in here, and go off on a brief tangent, to say that I am well aware that we live in a bi-polar culture where so-called victims are concerned. One side of this culture says that everyone is seemingly a victim, and therefore every small slight or perceived injustice is even counted as something to be suffered unto. This has brought about the PC Culture of the Easily Offended. "I'm a Victim (Capital V), because....(fill in the blank).
This comes from an Entitlement Culture in which no one is responsible for themselves, and so every tiny thing must be somebody else's fault, hence "I am a Victim".
Then there is the other side of the coin. Many New Age "Religions" and so-called philosophies now espouse the view that "there are no victims". This is called "Moral Equivalency", i.e "who is to say that the murderer is any worse than his victim"?, or to put it more politely, the way these people would put it, "oh, the poor murderer. What a horrible life he must have had".
These folks who promote this view are almost always New Age Liberals (and you wonder why I don't identify as a liberal, haha), and some of them have the belief that it's all just karma spinning around and around, even Adolph Hitler was not a "bad person", just someone who did bad things. Everyone is reedeemable, is their belief, and in their naivete and simplistic mentality, they believe they are following the teachings of Christ.
But they feel, in their limited, simplistic thinking, that Monsters are redeemable right here on Earth, in real time, in our lifetimes. I am not talking about petty criminals, guys who have made a mistake and can be rehabilitated. I am not even talking about lifetime criminals, people who cannot function in society.
I am talking about Human Monsters, the ones even the most experienced psychologists and psychiatrists have no answers for. The "No Victims" crowd think that mass murderers are not only redeemable by Christ, but by human redemption, in the form of leniency and "understanding". This is why you read about beachfront prisons with no fences, for killers in countries like Norway. At worst, they get 7 year sentences.
So that is what that mentality brings you, a world in which no behavior is seen as "bad", but only misguided.
This is why I plug away at Jared Rappaport, the film professor at Cal State Northridge who still teaches there to this freaking day.
I plug away because, like those girls in Cleveland, I know what a Monster is. Even though the duration of my experience was not even near theirs, I still know.
And when you know what a Monster is, you also know that the Monster must be put away, or at the very least have to answer for his crimes.
It is very easy, and simplistic, to have a cheap philosophy - that even Hitler wasn't a bad guy, per se - when you have not experienced a Human Monster in your life.
If you have had that experience, you know better.
And you do not give up in your quest to make the Monster known to the world, even though it can be debilitating to do so.
You just do it because it's the Right Thing To Do.
///////
Happy Monday Night. I hope your week is off to a good start, though I saw one of your posts on FB via Joel Wanasek that referred to being sick, so I hope that's not the case. If it is, take care of yourself and don't overwork - like stay up all night editing, lol. Better yet would be if you aren't sick at all. :)
I saw a few other posts, all having to do with music. One was about Guns & Roses; are you gonna go see 'em? You will have a blast if you do.
A typical workday for me, and I took The Crew to Lake Balboa once again this afternoon. The lake is a habitat for birds, and their different calls came from the trees and filled the air with languages and conversations, which - though unknown - were beautiful to hear. We had a nice time as always.
I have been writing about my experience with Mr. Rappaport, and I'm not quite done. I could write an entire book about that one incident alone, but I won't, and actually even after I write a couple of blogs about it, the steam starts to go out of me, because I have examined, and written about, the Rappaport event so many times before - on and off for more than ten years - that, while it's easy to delve into, it's harder to get motivated to continue to write about it or explore it because for years now I have been fresh out of new information.
Every single bit of information I do have, has come from myself, from my memory and my detective work. All of it has taken an enormous amount of effort, and when I do work on The Rappaport Case it can involve a lot of concentration, which can be very taxing.
Still, I will never let it go, because..........well, would you?
I mentioned the girls from the Cleveland case in yesterday's blog, and while I in no way would compare my suffering to theirs, I would nevertheless definitely compare, in a relative way, the psychotic criminal urges and primitive emotional drive of Mr. Rapaport to the Monster from Cleveland.
The Monster abducted those girls and tormented them for, what? 12 or 13 years? Then one girl escaped and he was finally caught.
Jared Rappaport abducted me, and I was in his captivity for one night and the following day. About 24 hours, total, compared to years and years for the girls in Cleveland. And yet, I experienced at the very least a similar, full-blown aggressive pychosis involving violence against me, and torment. I have chosen not to write about that part, but it was horrible and terrifying. So while I did not experience years of captivity, I do know the terror of it, and in these matters it does not serve a purpose to "compare suffering".
A murderer is a murderer whether he kills one or one thousand, and a victim is a victim, no matter the magnitude of their suffering.
I will butt in here, and go off on a brief tangent, to say that I am well aware that we live in a bi-polar culture where so-called victims are concerned. One side of this culture says that everyone is seemingly a victim, and therefore every small slight or perceived injustice is even counted as something to be suffered unto. This has brought about the PC Culture of the Easily Offended. "I'm a Victim (Capital V), because....(fill in the blank).
This comes from an Entitlement Culture in which no one is responsible for themselves, and so every tiny thing must be somebody else's fault, hence "I am a Victim".
Then there is the other side of the coin. Many New Age "Religions" and so-called philosophies now espouse the view that "there are no victims". This is called "Moral Equivalency", i.e "who is to say that the murderer is any worse than his victim"?, or to put it more politely, the way these people would put it, "oh, the poor murderer. What a horrible life he must have had".
These folks who promote this view are almost always New Age Liberals (and you wonder why I don't identify as a liberal, haha), and some of them have the belief that it's all just karma spinning around and around, even Adolph Hitler was not a "bad person", just someone who did bad things. Everyone is reedeemable, is their belief, and in their naivete and simplistic mentality, they believe they are following the teachings of Christ.
But they feel, in their limited, simplistic thinking, that Monsters are redeemable right here on Earth, in real time, in our lifetimes. I am not talking about petty criminals, guys who have made a mistake and can be rehabilitated. I am not even talking about lifetime criminals, people who cannot function in society.
I am talking about Human Monsters, the ones even the most experienced psychologists and psychiatrists have no answers for. The "No Victims" crowd think that mass murderers are not only redeemable by Christ, but by human redemption, in the form of leniency and "understanding". This is why you read about beachfront prisons with no fences, for killers in countries like Norway. At worst, they get 7 year sentences.
So that is what that mentality brings you, a world in which no behavior is seen as "bad", but only misguided.
This is why I plug away at Jared Rappaport, the film professor at Cal State Northridge who still teaches there to this freaking day.
I plug away because, like those girls in Cleveland, I know what a Monster is. Even though the duration of my experience was not even near theirs, I still know.
And when you know what a Monster is, you also know that the Monster must be put away, or at the very least have to answer for his crimes.
It is very easy, and simplistic, to have a cheap philosophy - that even Hitler wasn't a bad guy, per se - when you have not experienced a Human Monster in your life.
If you have had that experience, you know better.
And you do not give up in your quest to make the Monster known to the world, even though it can be debilitating to do so.
You just do it because it's the Right Thing To Do.
///////
Monday, April 4, 2016
Detective Columbo on The Rappaport Case
Hi Elizabeth,
Happy Late Night. I saw a Versus Me clip on FB, that somebody in the band posted, and it showed you guys in the van on the road presumably to a show, so I am glad things are continuing to happen. I'll bet you are having a blast, of late. :) Your shot of the guitarist in blue silhouette was excellent!
The singing was good in church this morn, and then this afternoon I went to the concert at the VPAC, which was free. The Colburn School Orchestra was really good - pro level - and it was amazing to see such a huge choir. I was wrong about it being made up entirely of members of the Northridge Singers. They were part of it, but they were joined by The Gay Men's Choir of Los Angeles and Vox Femina and other soloists. I was wondering, when I first posted, how CSUN could have a 100 member choir, lol. But the Northridge Singers were the only ones listed on the sign out front.
Anyway, it was great to see such a huge choir, and the sound inside the VPAC is really awesome.
Well, now here I go again. I am gonna continue with my tale from last night, but I am gonna put my detective hat on, and look at some of the unusual aspects that have puzzled me all these years. Here goes.....
The first thing you have is Mr. Rappaport coming to my door. How did he know I'd be alone in the house? Perhaps he just took a chance, and was prepared to stick to his "cover story" (his ruse), if anybody besides me had been at home.
Or maybe he was aware I was the only one there.
Those are the only two possibilities, and if he knew I was home alone, how did he know that?
Question #2 : This one has always struck me as extremely strange. Here you have Mr. Rappaport. He is a college professor at a fairly big school. He has a wife, and a baby that had either been just born or was soon to come (discovered through research). In other words, he had a family.
So, on the surface, it would seem he had a lot to lose. He was not a desperate street criminal, but a college professor with a nice house in a nice town, and he had a small family.
So, the question must be asked : why would a man with an outwardly normal life risk all of that to kidnap me?
Was he simply unable to control himself? It should be noted that he was enraged, and that became apparent shortly after he got me into his house. He was "off the hook", shall we say. And his behavior during the time I was in his house made clear to me that he was a full-on violent psychopath, along with other conditions he exhibited. He was thus not a "normal" man at all, but merely hiding behind a "face of normality" that many sociopaths show to the world in order to fit in.
But still, why would he risk his "normal" life, and everything it entailed, to kidnap and take out his anger on me?
The crime of kidnapping is an endgame scenario. Kidnappers seek a ransom for letting the person go. As far as I was aware, Jared Rappaport never had this in mind. Money was not his motive. He was very, very angry at me (though I did not know him), and so it's probably more accurate to say that he abducted me.
But abduction is an endgame scenario as well.
Either the abductor is gonna kill the abductee, and then perhaps hide the body, or in cases like the monster in Cleveland, the abductor keeps the abductee hidden away for years on end. But that is an end game scenario, too. Those girls finally got away, and the monster ultimately killed himself in prison. The only other possibility in an abduction is for the abductor to voluntarily give up, and let his captive go. This would usually happen when law enforcement is on the scene and has the abductor in a corner. At that point, another endgame scenario would take place.
The abductor would be arrested and would go to prison, most likely for a very long time.
So, in the case of Jared Rappaport, when he came to the front door of my house at 9032 Rathburn Avenue and pointed a gun at me, thereby abducting me, he was entering into an endgame scenario.
The question tonight is : Why?
Why would he risk his whole "normal" existence (family, job, house, etc), and most of all, why would he risk his freedom ? He could presumably have been put away for...what?.....ten years? Twenty? Maybe more? It certainly would (or should) have been a very long time.
He was not a stupid man, and would have known what he was risking. But he was also crazy, and sometimes crazy people lose control of their emotions. That was certainly the case with Mr. Rappaport.
But did he know something else? Something, perhaps, about a bigger situation? Did he know that something extremely unusual was unfolding, in a larger situation that he himself was involved in? And if he did know that, and had information about that situation, could he have been aware that it was above the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department?
If he was aware of a so-called "larger situation", in which the police were ovverruled (so to speak), would that factor have given him the courage, or the chutzpah, to act out his rage against me?
What if he thought he wouldn't be arrested?
What if he knew he wouldn't be arrested, at least by the police anyway.
What if Jared Rappaport - a psychopath living behind a mask of normality - felt comfortable enough to act out in his real persona, against me, because he felt certain he wouldn't be punished for his actions?
I think it's a combination of these things: his foreknowledge of the situation, his absolute fury at me (for reasons I was entirely unaware and certainly not responsible for), and his inability to maintain his Mask Of Normality under the circumstances.
It wasn't that he was "willing to risk everything" to abduct me, in other words.
It was that he'd completely lost it - lost his Mask - and that his real, psychotic self had the confidence of foreknowledge, something he was privvy to, that a Bigger Situation was taking place, one in which he wouldn't have to worry about the LAPD arresting him.
And so he came to my door, in his controlled psychotic state, thinking he could get away with it.
I will have more questions for Detective Columbo in another blog........
Happy Late Night. I saw a Versus Me clip on FB, that somebody in the band posted, and it showed you guys in the van on the road presumably to a show, so I am glad things are continuing to happen. I'll bet you are having a blast, of late. :) Your shot of the guitarist in blue silhouette was excellent!
The singing was good in church this morn, and then this afternoon I went to the concert at the VPAC, which was free. The Colburn School Orchestra was really good - pro level - and it was amazing to see such a huge choir. I was wrong about it being made up entirely of members of the Northridge Singers. They were part of it, but they were joined by The Gay Men's Choir of Los Angeles and Vox Femina and other soloists. I was wondering, when I first posted, how CSUN could have a 100 member choir, lol. But the Northridge Singers were the only ones listed on the sign out front.
Anyway, it was great to see such a huge choir, and the sound inside the VPAC is really awesome.
Well, now here I go again. I am gonna continue with my tale from last night, but I am gonna put my detective hat on, and look at some of the unusual aspects that have puzzled me all these years. Here goes.....
The first thing you have is Mr. Rappaport coming to my door. How did he know I'd be alone in the house? Perhaps he just took a chance, and was prepared to stick to his "cover story" (his ruse), if anybody besides me had been at home.
Or maybe he was aware I was the only one there.
Those are the only two possibilities, and if he knew I was home alone, how did he know that?
Question #2 : This one has always struck me as extremely strange. Here you have Mr. Rappaport. He is a college professor at a fairly big school. He has a wife, and a baby that had either been just born or was soon to come (discovered through research). In other words, he had a family.
So, on the surface, it would seem he had a lot to lose. He was not a desperate street criminal, but a college professor with a nice house in a nice town, and he had a small family.
So, the question must be asked : why would a man with an outwardly normal life risk all of that to kidnap me?
Was he simply unable to control himself? It should be noted that he was enraged, and that became apparent shortly after he got me into his house. He was "off the hook", shall we say. And his behavior during the time I was in his house made clear to me that he was a full-on violent psychopath, along with other conditions he exhibited. He was thus not a "normal" man at all, but merely hiding behind a "face of normality" that many sociopaths show to the world in order to fit in.
But still, why would he risk his "normal" life, and everything it entailed, to kidnap and take out his anger on me?
The crime of kidnapping is an endgame scenario. Kidnappers seek a ransom for letting the person go. As far as I was aware, Jared Rappaport never had this in mind. Money was not his motive. He was very, very angry at me (though I did not know him), and so it's probably more accurate to say that he abducted me.
But abduction is an endgame scenario as well.
Either the abductor is gonna kill the abductee, and then perhaps hide the body, or in cases like the monster in Cleveland, the abductor keeps the abductee hidden away for years on end. But that is an end game scenario, too. Those girls finally got away, and the monster ultimately killed himself in prison. The only other possibility in an abduction is for the abductor to voluntarily give up, and let his captive go. This would usually happen when law enforcement is on the scene and has the abductor in a corner. At that point, another endgame scenario would take place.
The abductor would be arrested and would go to prison, most likely for a very long time.
So, in the case of Jared Rappaport, when he came to the front door of my house at 9032 Rathburn Avenue and pointed a gun at me, thereby abducting me, he was entering into an endgame scenario.
The question tonight is : Why?
Why would he risk his whole "normal" existence (family, job, house, etc), and most of all, why would he risk his freedom ? He could presumably have been put away for...what?.....ten years? Twenty? Maybe more? It certainly would (or should) have been a very long time.
He was not a stupid man, and would have known what he was risking. But he was also crazy, and sometimes crazy people lose control of their emotions. That was certainly the case with Mr. Rappaport.
But did he know something else? Something, perhaps, about a bigger situation? Did he know that something extremely unusual was unfolding, in a larger situation that he himself was involved in? And if he did know that, and had information about that situation, could he have been aware that it was above the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department?
If he was aware of a so-called "larger situation", in which the police were ovverruled (so to speak), would that factor have given him the courage, or the chutzpah, to act out his rage against me?
What if he thought he wouldn't be arrested?
What if he knew he wouldn't be arrested, at least by the police anyway.
What if Jared Rappaport - a psychopath living behind a mask of normality - felt comfortable enough to act out in his real persona, against me, because he felt certain he wouldn't be punished for his actions?
I think it's a combination of these things: his foreknowledge of the situation, his absolute fury at me (for reasons I was entirely unaware and certainly not responsible for), and his inability to maintain his Mask Of Normality under the circumstances.
It wasn't that he was "willing to risk everything" to abduct me, in other words.
It was that he'd completely lost it - lost his Mask - and that his real, psychotic self had the confidence of foreknowledge, something he was privvy to, that a Bigger Situation was taking place, one in which he wouldn't have to worry about the LAPD arresting him.
And so he came to my door, in his controlled psychotic state, thinking he could get away with it.
I will have more questions for Detective Columbo in another blog........
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