Red Dress Series + Avocados + The Lunch Club

Well, Elizabeth, that was another stunning Red Dress Photo you posted this morning. It almost looks like you are on another planet. I like the very high mountain, the one farthest in the back and shrouded. You also got some of the "God Lighting" effect, in which the clouds break the sunlight into individual rays, and this can be seen (as you are aware) in the foreground. In this photo, the saturation of the red dress especially stands out, and I agree with your friend Brian, "when is the book and/or gallery show happening"? In fact, I've been saying it all along. This series has been fantastic, and also original, and you have placed Yourself and The Dress in some spectacular settings. I remember once saying that it would be awesome to one day do a photographic book with all kinds of imagery of various locations, combined with words on opposing pages. The words could be anything : poetry, descriptions of the location, odd thoughts, literally anything that worked together with a particular photo.

You sure have the material here to do something with, should you so choose, and of course have the opportunity. I have a feeling that the Red Dress Series is gonna find it's way out into the world. After all, the locations themselves are already expanding - all the way to Iceland!  :)

I also saw a post via James' brother that looks like you have a concert coming up, possibly Sonic Boom? I hope so. It would be great to see you back out there taking some concert pix too. Another post I saw was for Dreamhouse. I hope you are in contact with your bands, and if so, then the opportunities will continue. I'm glad you are posting. Good things are on the way.  :)

Today was a basic workday, nothing much to report except a quickie hike at Limekiln, taken after an equally quick stop at Trader Joe's for chips and salsa (got my avocados at Vons later this evening). And what's the deal with avocado prices, anyway? They used to be 99 cents - max - for years, and that was for the big ones. And more often than not, they were always on sale - two for a buck, three for a buck. I remember one Super Bowl week about ten years ago when the local Food 4 More chain had them at 8 for a buck! And this was for the giant Green Skin Avocados, too.

But - as happens - the growers got greedy, and now the best deal you can find is for a two dollar, good sized but not huge avocado. For me this is at Vons, normally a ripoff for produce, and at that store they want $2.99 for a giant avocado; the size that were once 8 for a buck on Super Bowl week ten years ago. Now, eight of those giant sized ones would run you 24 bucks.

The Growers got Greedy, and they never have avocados on sale anymore. The small ones now cost a buck, and the miniature ones are 75 cents.

I am hooked on avocados, gotta have at least a few bites every day (ususally half an avo), and so I suppose the growers have a "drug pusher" mentality : "get 'em hooked, then gouge 'em". There are worse habits to have, I know.....but two bucks for an avocado? How about a price break, Mr. Pusher (I mean, um...Mr. Grower). I am a good customer.  :)

In other Food News, I should mention that we now have a third kitty joining the lunchtime crew at Pearl's. I think I told you about White Paw. Did I? Well, anyway, White Paw is a black cat with, you guessed it!, white paws. She has been hanging around Pearl's backyard for many weeks now. Wherever she lives, she spends much of her time here, and she is always here for lunch, since about late July. So our own cat, the one and only Black Kitty, has had a lunch buddy for a couple of months. At first, I would see White Paw hangin' around, and I'd just allow her to finish whatever Black Kitty hadn't finished. But after a couple weeks, I began to put out a bowl of food for her, too, so she could have her own. Thus we have had the Lunch Club for about six weeks. And I'm not stealin' anyone's cat, cause White Paw is always gone at night, so no worries on that score.

But at any rate, word must have gotten around that there is a Crazy Cat Lady in the making, except he's a man - meaning me of course. And the big old grey and orange kitty that lives across the street is now coming over at lunchtime to join the group. She is also a She (so far as I can tell from afar), and is bigger than Black Kitty and White Paw, and much more self assured. She just walked up one day, about a week ago, like - "ya got a plate of food for me too"?

It's clear she eats at home, she's a big cat, but I couldn't refuse her to join the Lunch Club. So now we've got three kitties eating lunch, every day around Noon, and they all seem to know the schedule.

I hope I'm not doing anything wrong. As I said, I am not - and would never - try to "steal" anyone's cat. Both White Paw and Big Grey & Orange go home after eating.

But they seem to like The Lunch Club, and Black Kitty likes their company, and so I feed 'em.

I think The Kobedog would approve, even for cats.  ////

See you in the morn.

Two Busters + Mac

Two new Busters tonight at CSUN. The first was "Seven Chances", in which an oft-used theme from the old days is trotted out : a millionaire's will is read; in order for the heir to receive his money, he must be married by such-and-such a date, in this case his 27th birthday. For Buster, that just so happens to be Today. He is single, but if he can get married before 7 o'clock in the evening, he will inherit 7 million dollars. There are a lot of 7s happening, and as he formulates his plan to get married by the end of the day - with the aid of his law partner - he finds himself with a list of 7 names of eligible bachlorettes and sets out to work on them, one by one. They are his "Seven Chances" of the title. His ploy basically boils down to walking right up to each of them and asking "will you marry me", without any preamble or explanation, and naturally he is rebuffed in varying ways. Having blown all seven of his chances, and as the hour gets closer to 7pm, he visits a girlfriend and asks her the same question. She enthusiastically accepts.......until he blows it by explaining to her the premise - that he had to marry somebody by 7 o'clock to collect his inheritance. "Oh.....just anybody"?, she says.

And that ends that..........(at least for the time being)

Meanwhile, his law partner - taking no chances - has placed a large ad in the local newspaper, complete with monetary details. Any willing bride-to-be is invited to show up at a nearby church at 5pm, in order that Buster be married on time.

This brings us to the last 15-20 minutes of the 56 minute movie, and to some of the craziest stuff I've ever seen on film. Suffice it to say that the newspaper ad does the trick. Several hundred women respond and begin arriving at the church in droves. Buster has been inside, asleep, and when he awakes he is horrified. The women are not his type, to put it mildly. Now begins a chase scene that has to go down as one of the greatest in the history of movies, and I shall not provide a description except to say, imagine 300 women chasing Buster Keaton through ever changing scenarios, for fifteen minutes, the creativity and "human cartoon" factor increasing as it goes. At one point, I recognised a location. Hey, SB, do you remember a few years ago when I was first doing my hikes, and I was driving out to Newhall to look for an old mountain pass that was known as Beale's Cut? You probably don't remember, but I came close to it when I discovered an old Oil Refinery just off Sierra Highway that I wound up taking pictures of. They are in my 2014 photo album on FB. Beale's Cut is on a mountain right behind that abandoned refinery. Way back in 1925, or maybe before that, it was the only way for cars to cross from the Valley to Santa Clarita/Newhall. Well anyway, Buster used it for a location shot. The chase scene shows him jumping across Beale's Cut. I don't know if he actually made the jump or if it is an editing trick, but it was cool to see another local landmark in a Buster movie.

"Seven Chances" is a must see for the last 15 minutes, of which you've never seen the likes of in any movie.

The second film was "Go West", which was more of a melodrama, if a Buster movie can be called such. His character's name is Friendless (how sad!), and at the beginning of the film he is shown pushing all of his belongings (furniture, etc) into a pawn shop, for which he is given $1.65. With that, he buys some food, hops a train and heads west, where he lands a job as a cowhand at a desolate ranch. I'll not give as descriptive a review as I did with "Seven Chances" because (take a guess...) I'm really tired, but a Cliffs Notes version is that Buster, i.e. "Friendless", finally makes a friend, a beautiful girl named Brown Eyes.

And she really is beautiful, the most beautiful cow you've ever seen. And she loves Buster too.

The rest of the movie deals with Buster's efforts to keep Brown Eyes from the slaughterhouse, and while the finale is not quite as "slam-bang" spectacular as the one in "Seven Chances", it is still very impressive, and must have been a hell of a thing to stage. It is one thing to have 300 women chasing after Buster in the first movie, but in "Go West", the finale ends with a cattle stampede....through Downtown Los Angeles, down near the area around what would eventually become Union Station. It's an incredible thing to see what the area looked like in 1925, but what is immediately recognizable are the train tracks as you pull in to where the station would be located in the 1930s. And there were stockyards down there in those days....

So instead of 300 women chasing Buster, you have about 300 cattle, running not just street to street, but shop to shop.

It is cinematic insanity, and as I've been saying, with Buster Keaton you never know what is gonna happen next. It must have been an exhilarating time to be a filmmaker with his level of talent, in the very early days of cinema which had passed the Nickelodeon phase and the early Silents with their very basic camerawork and editing. Buster knew he could blow all of that stuff off the map, and he did so. he was like the Edward Van Halen of Silent Comedy, at that time, and his movies hold up today, with staging of scenes that would not even be attempted now.

Elizabeth, I must say I liked the Yoga Doggie. I think one of the "airport" posts from yesterday was actually a post about an upcoming rock festival. I hope you are going.  :):)

I saw a Macintosh stat here at the Blogger page yesterday, for the first time in a while. As you know, I can't decipher computer stats or anything of the kind, but I always knew the regular appearance of the Macintosh prior to about early Summer (last June), so maybe The Mac Is Back?

I guess well see. :):)

See you in the morning.

"A Song To Remember" + SB

Tonight's movie was "A Song To Remember" (1945), a biopic on the life of Frederic Chopin, starring Cornell Wilde, and the great Paul Muni as his piano teacher and lifelong mentor. Man, this movie was just great. We all know Chopin's music, but I - for one - did not know much about his life, other than that it was rather short. The movie begins in the family home, teacher Muni on hand, young Frederic rehearsing. From there we are given an overview of the political strife in Poland at the time, which was controlled by the Russian Czar. Cut to a decade later - handsome Cornell Wilde is now onscreen as the young adult Chopin. Wilde the actor had a Tony Curtis vibe about him (or maybe it was vice versa, as Wilde was born first). Anyway, what I mean is that he was very good looking and athletic - like Curtis - and yet he projected a sincerity and vulnerability that provided a contrast to his looks. Both actors do not come off as macho, but as humble, and this quality was appealing for the roles they were chosen to play. Cornell Wilde garnered a Best Actor nomination for his portrayal, and though he did not win, his performance was first rate.

The young adult Chopin is spirited away to Paris from Warsaw, by his teacher Muni, after landing in hot water with Russian authorities over his participation in the meetings of a subversive political group. This is the stuff I did not know. His teacher knew he had a genius on his hands and did not want to lose him. In Paris, his compositions and playing ability quickly won him the friendship of Franz Lizst, and through Lizst he was introduced to feminist novelist George Sand, who had a huge effect on his life. She is written in the script as a shrew and played as such by Merle Oberon. She convinced Chopin that harboring political causes was antithetical to his development as an artist. I must say that in many respects I agree with her stance, and SB - if you are reading - that is why I have always suggested you focus 100% on your talents and your work and ignore the "24/7 Chaos World" around you. You as an Artist are not meant to wallow in chaos, nor division. Of course, there are limits to this philosophy, such as if one's country is under attack, and so young Chopin was torn, but as he was by now far away on the island of Majorca, with George Sand who was in love with him, he acceded to her wishes. And as a result, he wrote some of the greatest piano music of all time.

However, he began to get sick, probably with tuberculosis, and as he weakened, word got back to him that some of his old political colleagues in Poland had been arrested. After years of avoiding the concert stage, because the stresses of performance were too much for him, he agreed to a tour of Europe in order to raise money for his Polish friends in prison.

It is in the last twenty minutes of the film, depicting this tour, that Cornell Wilde rises to the height of a great performance, as the sickly Chopin, though dying, gives his all in concert after concert. What a finale.

The film looks spectacular, in Technicolor with every attention to detail given to the 19th Century decor of the salons and concert halls of Paris and greater Europe. Paul Muni is probably onscreen more than Wilde, and though his performance is a bit "stagey", as if he were in a play, he really holds down the film nonetheless as an anchor, to give Wilde the chance to shine.

"A Song To Remember" was made in 1945, right at the end of WW2, a time of an enormous release of human emotion worldwide. I am of the belief that it will take perhaps another century until human beings will have a chance to accurately assess the consensus emotional effect of that war, which has been dried up and organised into mere statistics in history books. But at the time, both during the war and right after, in 1945, the movie industry was looking to bring some of that emotion home, and in this film perhaps they meant to show the heights to which humanity can ascend. The movie is about a classical composer - imagine such a film being made today. But in those days, the world had just barely escaped the abyss, and perhaps could see the best of what was on the other side.

Two big thumbs up for "A Song To Remember". ////

SB, I saw a couple of posts, both having to do with airports, or being on a plane (via your friend Joel). So, if you meant them for me to see, I am guessing you may be traveling? Or getting ready to?

Keep me posted if you want to. I am always right here.  :):)

The Key To Incredible Service

Today I got a new key made for my car, and I've gotta give a shout-out to AAA and the locksmith they called for me. In this day and age, it is safe to say that service, of any kind, ain't what it used to be. But sometimes, you can be pleasantly surprised. Do you ever get service - again, of any kind - that is so good that you just kind of go "Whoa Nelly!"? That's what happened this afternoon with my key.

Tuesday is, as you know, Golden Agers day. I always take Pearl to church for the GA meeting, which lasts from Noon to 2pm. I wanted to take care of The Key Thing today, having giving up on finding my lost one. It probably fell into the same Black Hole where single laundry socks go, and also Small Round Food Items That Fall On The Kitchen Floor and are never seen again. Remember Seinfeld's Grape? (was it a grape? Well anyway, it disappeared). Things fall on kitchen floors and Simply Vanish, as you know. And so went my keys last Friday.

But today, I got a kind of Return Karma : After picking Pearl up at 2pm, I called Triple A to inquire if they provided locksmith services, I was told that they do, but of course it was not free of charge as are the simple roadside services they provide. However, there was a 60 Dollar Discount. That was the first cool thing, sixty bucks saved right off the bat. The lady called a local locksmith, gave me the discounted price right over the phone (not cheap but not too bad, about what you'd expect), and then told me that the locksmith would arrive "within the hour". I had brought a book from home, my EVH biography, to read while I waited. But before I could even pick it up, the locksmith was pulling into Pearl's driveway, about 15 minutes after I called. After showing him my registration and all of that, and signing the form, I went back in the house, looked at Facebook for a few minutes, and then was gonna go kick back with my Edward Van Halen book. In my Googling, I had read that making new keys can take at least an hour, and sometimes longer. Once, in 1995 I lost a set of keys to my Dad's car, at Edwards Air Force Base of all places! Maybe I will tell that story if I'm not too tired. But my point is that, on that occasion, it took the locksmith more than an hour to make a new key, and it was an involved process.

This time? Well, I never had a chance to read my book. The guy finished making the key in 20 minutes. So, all told, it only took about 40 minutes from the time I called AAA until I had the finished key in my hand.

Now that is what I call Incredible Service. That's as good as it gets, and it made my day.  :)

So now I have my car back, at least till the next smog test in February.......and maybe beyond.

I will tell ya about the loss of Dad's keys at Edwards, and another time I lost my own car keys in Malibu Creek State Park. That happened way back in 1980. Normally, I would put the brakes on the Car Keys Theme after today's happy ending, but those other two instances were so nutty that I feel I must tell them........though I shant do it tonight, because the hour is late. Tomorrow night perhaps, Two more nutty stories, and then Be Gone!, Ye Tales Of Lost Keys.....

But man, forty minutes from phone call to having the key in my hand. That's pretty hard core, right?

I say "Yes", and so do you.  :)

That was really the major news of the day. No hike, but a full CSUN Walk, and I also watched a great episode of "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea". In Antarctica, an atomic experiment with plankton has gone wrong, and a husband & wife team of scientists are killed. The "Voyage" crew, on their Seaview submarine, are on hand to investigate, with other scientists.......but the plankton gets on board, and starts to grow, like.....really fast. It grows so fast because this is early 60s Sci-Fi, doggonnit, which is what makes it so great. That, and the submarine set itself, very realistic, and really just everything about the show. It was made more than 50 years ago and still holds up as one of the greatest science fiction dramas ever produced.

Elizabeth, I know you've probably been concentrating on other things in recent weeks, but I did see a post today, via your friend Morgin, which made me thing that maybe you are still reading, at least once in a while. It was her post about getting locked out of her room and having to cut the doorknob off.

The actual experience would not have been particularly funny to her, I'd imagine, but reading about was funny, as are most or even all Lost Key Lockout Fiascoes, once they are resolved.

Once they are resolved, then everything is groovy once again.

I hope you are doing well in all ways, in your new city.

Post a picture, or anything at all, if you feel like it.  :):)

Levenda's "Sinister Forces"

A slow news day today. Mostly just reading during the afternoon. One of my current books is "Sinister Forces : The Manson Secret", which is Part Three of Peter Levenda's 1000 page masterwork on the unseen but interwoven connections between politics, magic, religion, psychic manipulation and ancient native cultural influence that have helped to shape the United States as it exists today.

He starts Book One with an examination of the Adena Indian culture, the Mound Builders, and explores what those mounds, which are still visible in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and other area states, were built for. We in the modern era can speculate, with our experience in anthropology, but we actually don't know what the mounds were for. But beyond that, Levenda goes into what the psychic influence of the mounds might be, and what influence they may have had on early American settlers.

He doesn't deal in mumbo-jumbo. The three book series is extremely well researched and written. It is all about undercurrents, which begin in previous centuries with Native American rites and superstitions. But are they really superstitions? That's what Levenda wants to know.

Then come the Europeans, with their religious beliefs and rituals, some of which were influenced by Alchemists and magicians like Giordano Bruno, and some others at the other extreme by John Calvin.

What effect did these people have, in conjunction with the already extant Indian culture, on the developing psychology of the early American people? Witch hunts were born of that era, for one thing.

Well anyhow, I haven't the time nor the energy to (george) thoroughly (good) dissect the entire work for you. But it is important to mention that the study of the occult, and the power of occult beliefs, and the power of the ceremonial magic of the alchemist and the shaman, and of the religious rite, has all played a humongous role in how the post-war CIA wished to develop their hand, in shaping the America they wished to bring into existence beginning in 1947. At the time, we had just defeated the Nazis. More accurately, we had defeated the German Army, and we had Paperclipped hundreds and maybe thousands of Nazi scientists into the United States. Many of the American officers who would go on to found the CIA were originally with it's precursor agency, the OSS. These men had dealt with the Paperclip Nazis first hand, and wanted to learn of the occult beliefs of their Aryan philosophy, as promulgated most famously by the maniacal Himmler

The OSS, and then the CIA, was always interested in the question of power. How did the Nazis get so much power? And did their belief system and it's practices have anything to do with it?

Much is made of the German belief in Willpower. Our CIA, after bringing the Paperclip Nazis to America, wanted to replicate this power. Their reasoning (and excuse) was to use it as a means to combat Soviet Communism, which was suspected of utilising all kinds of psychic and mental technologies against their own citizens, in an effort to centralise government control.

So there was a lot a subterranean stuff going on.

The deal with the CIA - though I have hammered on them, and rightly so in a lot of ways - is that they are Exceptionally Tuned In Guys.

They knew all about Aryan Philosophy. Not merely the White Supremecy part, but the "rebirthing" part, the Creation Of The New Man, and all of that stuff. The CIA was big into psychic and occult phenomena. They believed, probably correctly, that great power was derived from a strong connection to various elements on The Other Side. But they were only interested in power, not spiritual advancement, as might you or I be, when we pray.

The CIA introduced Hallucinogenic Drug Culture into The United States Of America - for real - and they did this in an effort to create a power source through the hoped-for creation of Mind Controlled subjects, unfortunate folks under their spell who were subject to all sorts of experiments, and who were used to be turned into political assassins.

It's no joke, but very much for real. Sirhan Sirhan was almost certainly a CIA created assassin. So was Lee Harvey Oswald, though perhaps without the mind control. My own reading and research on Timothy McVeigh suggests to me, very strongly, that he was essentially a good soldier who was turned into a mind controlled actor by the Special Forces of the military (read CIA) and the conflicting energies of the criminal militia movement, who themselves use allegiance tactics similar to the Manson Family or Jim Jones or any mind-controlled cult..

Well, I will leave it at that for tonight. I am also reading a biography of the Great Edward Van Halen, he being a Magician Of The Good Variety, a Creator Of Joy.

I hope all is well. I am super tired.  :):)

Getting Out Of Dodge

Sailing into waters of Uncharted Tiredness. "Aha"!, you say, "then it must be Sunday night". And you are correct. Tonight I am Extra Mega Tired because I spent the afternoon searching high and low for my car keys, instead of resting as I usually do after church. I am sorry to say that I was unable to find the keys, and I looked all over the place here at Pearl's. I even went through the big blue recycling bin, dumped everything out and sorted through it, but no luck. I still refuse to believe that my keys fell out of my pocket at one of the three stops I made on Friday. I stopped at the local Recycling Center, then I stopped at the Ralphs on Saticoy, and finally I stopped at the gas station across the schtreet from Ralphs.

Those three stops were the only times I would have reached into my front pocket for car keys. I was driving Pearl's car at the time, and had I accidentally pulled two sets of keys out of my pocket, all jumbled up, I would have felt it, sensed it in my hand or heard it hit the ground if that had happened. More importantly, I have been operating with three sets of keys in my pocket for almost eight years now, always being careful to pull out the right set and leave the others in the pocket. I can tell each set by it's key fob. So I've been pulling out keys for eight years, and while they sometimes have gotten entangled (very infrequently) and just a few times a set has hit the ground (maybe 5 or six times in 8 years), not once have I failed to notice it. I am very touch sensitive, sight sensitive, hearing, the works.

I notice what is happening around me to an extreme degree, and had I dropped those keys in a parking lot (say, if they became entangled) I would've noticed it for certain.

So, I've instead misplaced them somewhere, but after looking all afternoon, I have no idea where that is.

If I can't find 'em by Wednesday, the choice will come down to "call a locksmith" or "junk the car". I am leaning toward "call a locksmith", but I may have to buy a new (used) car by February anyway. My car has been just barely passing smog for many years now, and I am doubtful it will pass this time.

The problem is not so much buying a new (used) car, it's about looking for one. My work schedule kind of precludes extended excursions, and a search for a good used car can take time.

Well anyway, the heck with it. I don't care about having to replace the key so much as just plain wondering where it is.

Ultimately, "screw it" will be the operating Key Words.

I have come to the conclusion that Getting Out Of Dodge may be the key to happiness in modern life, at least as it concerns avoiding annoyance. That phrase is already well-known, and I suppose to most folks it refers to making a quick exit from a hairy situation. I have adapted it to fit Anything Annoying. I live in a neighborhood with extremely high traffic density. Literally, when you leave your driveway there are cars coming at you from all angles - from all available lanes of Reseda Boulevard, both directions in an endless flow. They are coming out of every apartment parking lot, out of every strip mall driveway. Sometimes it seems like there are more cars than people, and it has gotten so bad in Northridge that it is ruining the quality of life here. But it's just the cars. Not the people. I have said to myself "I hate CSUN", because the University adds 40,000 people to my 'Hood, and all of them with a car. But I don't really hate CSUN. I love CSUN. It's been my backyard for almost 50 years. What I hate is the cars. They are everywhere, and they never stop coming, even late at night.

So I've started using the phrase, "Just get outta Dodge". To me, that usually means just getting away from the area if I am in a car. I take side streets, anything to get away from Reseda Boulevard. I don't mind driving longer, in time or mileage, just to escape the chaos.

So escaping the chaos is really what Getting Out Of Dodge represents. For me, it is mainly local traffic, which for me is an every day experience, and it sucks. Or it could now mean how I respond to the loss of my car keys, when I have no time to replace my ancient-but-still-running car.

"Get Outta Dodge". Don't sweat it.

I like Getting Out Of Dodge. It is becoming my motto. No matter what happens, I can always Get Out Of Dodge.

Now, I should tell you that I have even contemplated moving out to the desert. Not now, but eventually.

But then I wouldn't have any rock concerts, and I'd have to drive fifty miles just to go to the store, and all kinds of stuff like that. So then I'd have to Get Out Of Dodge there, too.

Ahh......a Happy Medium is what is required. I am of course Too Tired To Think About It Tonight, so I will let you do so instead.

Anybody? A third-way alternative to either high-density cities with horrendous traffic, or boondock desert living with no rock concerts?

Me, I dunno. I just practice Getting Out Of Dodge in all ways, as a philosophy.  :):)

Continental Art + El Scorpion Park + Reseda Art Walk

Writing from home again, my second and final night off.  A Major League Sleep In this morn, til 11:30 (yowza!), and felt nice and rested as a result. Listened to the new Steven Wilson album, which is quite a bit different from his previous solo albums in that there are not a lot of instrumental passages, nor extra long songs, but what there is, is a lot of melody and hooks. The man can sure write himself some pop songs when he puts his mind to it, and he has done so here. On a related note, I scored a pair of tickets for SW's concert at The Wiltern. I will be going with my long time friend Ono (his FB alias). The concert isn't til next May! My goodness, is that enough advance notice for ya?  :)

I think that if Tool ever announced a tour, it would be about fourteen years in advance.

You get it, right?

Tool? Fourteen years? SW once made a related joke in concert about their album releases, but anyhow......

"Okay, Ad, enough already. Don't forget you have church in the morning" : Me to self, and probably You to Me as well. 

I got a slow start today but was out & about by 4pm. I went to Continental Art Supplies in Reseda, just below The Way Of Sherman, because as you may have seen on FB, they are going out of business. Continental was a the go-to store for artists all over the Valley for close to 50 years. I didn't know of it until the mid-90s when I was living in the Burton Street house. Dad used to go there, and then Mr. D started to go there. They were painting at Burton, and I, who had never painted before, became interested. Then I got hooked. Now, I must admit that I got most of my painting supplies at Home Depot. Yep. I bought house paints there, because Dad had a Willem de Kooning book that said he used house paint. And I bought particle board to paint on because it was cheap. I have no technical painting talent, but I had a blast painting for a couple of years, 1995-96. And I still have all my paintings, probably around 30 of em, stored right here in The Tiny. One hangs on my wall.....

But to get back to Continental Art Supplies, that is where Dad and Mr. D shopped, and mostly for drawing supplies. Sketch pads, pencils, pastels. Drawing, back then, was beyond my ambition. I can only paint in Abstract style, and as for technical drawing, I am a notch above Stick Figures. But I was inspired by what Dad and especially Mr. D could do, and eventually - a few years after they had both passed away - I decided to Do Some Sketchin' of my own. And now The Tiny Apartment is so overloaded with my drawings that I have to move them around and resituate them when I want to, say, make dinner or go to sleep.

I have mounted many of my drawings and have them leaning against bookcases, against walls, against the microwave.

Man, I have gotta get a bigger place to live. And soon.

At Continental Art today, there was not much left in the store. They will close for good in one week, and most of the stock was gone, which reminded me of the close-out I participated in as a cashier, of the great K-Mart store out by the Northridge Mall, which had their going out of business sale in November 2008. It lasted three months, and by the final week the store was nearly empty. Continental Art was like that today, just a handful of items left.

But I found a small sketch pad, with charcoal pencils included, for a little over four bucks. And this time, when I have time, I am really gonna work on my technique. I am gonna actually draw Something, an object, even if it sucks.

After leaving Continental I went to El Scorpion Park in West Hills, straight down Vanowen to Valley Circle, about 5 miles. There I had a very nice hike. I didn't go to the Cave Of Munitz this time, as there were many hikers in that area, so instead I ventured off toward the back of the park and took some pics of the trees. You can never go wrong when choosing trees.

After leaving El Scorpion at around 6pm, I drove straight back to Reseda for the Reseda Art Walk, once again on Sherman Way. Grimsley met me there at 7pm, and we strolled up and down the boulevard, checking out the various artist's booths and stands selling local 'Zines.

Remember 'Zines? Zines were big in the late 70s, written mostly by Punk Rockers who were also Artist Types. I guess Zines are back, or maybe they never left. There were a lot of Zines being sold at the Reseda Art Walk.

It was a lot of fun, and a great way to end my day in a Reseda type way, continuing the motif of art, begun at Continental. The vibe took me back to the 90s (at Burton), and to the late 70s (with the Zines), and it was nice to see that Reseda is still doing it, and doing it the DIY way, like me (only better).....

Making art, just for the sake of doing so, because Art Is Life.  /////

See you in church in the morning.  :):)

Keys + SB

Tonight I am writing from home. I'm off til Sunday morning. Today was busy, as it always is on changeover days when Pearl's daughter comes down, and I was getting a lot of stuff done and it was business as usual, until about 4pm. That's when I reached into my pocket and realised I didn't have my car keys.

Oy.

I don't know about you, but I am a Big Time Double Checker. I suppose it's mostly an age thing, but -wait a minute, I'm no old fogey! - so it might just be an Information Age Busy World Thing, a Multitasking Thing, where I always wanna make sure I've got everything I need for the Whole Bunch Of Stuff I always have to do. Mostly, that just means patting myself down every time I leave The Tiny (and before I close the door) to make sure I have all my keys, my wallet and my phone. It's a routine thing, something that's automatic. I don't even think about it, I just pat my pockets, front and back (mostly front cause I can always feel my wallet back there), and I can tell when everything is in place, just by touch sensation. I have three sets of keys : one for The Tiny Apt., one for Pearl's house and car, and one for my car. "Why don't I just keep 'em all one one giant ring"?, you ask.....because then if I lost my keys, I'd lose all of them.

So luckily for me, I only lost my car keys, haha. Now, I am pretty sure I misplaced them rather then actually lost them, because I mentally retraced my steps and my locations during the day, and I also thought about my actions. And to make a long story short, I am 99.9 % certain that my keys are somewhere on Pearl's property, and quite possibly even in her recycling bin.

You see, I am a person who is forever holding things in my hands. Let's say I am on my walk, and I am listening to phone messages. When I am done, I am liable to just fold up my phone (old school flip phone) and hold it in my hand and keep walking. Same deal with keys. Usually, after I lock up my apt. and proceed out the door, I have my house keys in hand. If I am getting into a car, I automatically pocket them. But if I am on my walk I will usually just grip them the entire time.

I'm a hands person, but nowdays I'm a little bit more fumble fingered because of the Dupuytrens.

So, after mentally retracing my steps, and thinking what I did today relative to my car, I am thinking that I fumbled my keys somewhere by the recycling bin, when I grabbed the morning paper after getting out of my car and then went to the bin to dispose of the newspaper's plastic bag. I am guessing I disposed my keys along with it.

So I will check on Sunday after church. They are either in the blue bin or somewhere in that area. If I can't find 'em, no major deal. My car is very ancient, I've had it since 2006, and it is due for a smog check next January that I am not sure it would pass.......but I will try to find my keys anyway, and I'll let you know. Keep your fingers crossed for me.  :)

Elizabeth, I hope you got your car repaired, and I guess you must have or you wouldn't have traveled to the Apple Orchard the other day. I hope everything else is going well, too. I am thinking about you, as always, and I am always looking forward to your future projects. I have no doubt that your career is gonna take off in Chicago right where you left off back in Madison. That is absolutely gonna happen, so count on it. I am always right here in your corner, y'know.  :):)

I saw one post, via a video director, where you made a comment in reference to the movie "Sin City", and yes indeed that is a striking visual style to use stark black and white, with only marginal grey scale in between, and then to emphasize just one or two very saturated colors The look of the graphic novel, and also with the geometrically situated camera angles. You know what I mean.

Also glad to see that Sarah & Steve are touring Europe. I saw the posts from Wales, and that is beyond cool that they got to see that castle. You should go to England one day too. For me, it would be my first destination if I visited Europe. All that history, and all of that ancient culture, still intact......

Let's go.  :):)

That's all for tonight. See you in the morning.

Buster & Stephen

Tonight at CSUN we saw two more Buster Keaton movies : "Sherlock Jr." and "The Navigator", both from 1924. According to Professor Tim, "Sherlock Jr." bombed on it's initial release but has gone on since then to be considered one of Buster's greatest works, and it is easy to see why. His imagination and invention is on full display here, in the story of a lowly movie theater projectionist who dreams, sometimes literally, of becoming a great detective. Many of the movies great scenes are depicted as part of a lengthy dream sequence. There is use of double exposure and all kinds of other early cinematic tricks which in retrospect seem just incredible for a film made 93 years ago. In one of the most famous sequences in Buster's dream, he leaves the projection booth and goes downstairs to the theater, and then proceeds to enter into the movie he has been showing, by jumping through the screen. It is all so inventive that the word "genius" readily applies.

In "The Navigator", the cinematic invention takes a back seat to the set pieces and gags, but what a setting it is. Buster and his fiancee find themselves alone aboard a ship that has been put out to sea by saboteurs. The ship is the setting, and the 55 minute film is an almost continuous run of tightly choreographed mishaps and mayhem. Once again - as in our last Keaton screening of two weeks ago - you had a theater full of young people laughing their asses off. That's the whole deal with Buster Keaton, and I've probably already said it, but he's rock n' roll, he's current, no matter the decade or century. I've probably already said this too, but it occured to me again tonight, that Buster is a Human Cartoon. You know how in a cartoon, there are no rules? Anything that can be drawn and animated, can happen and become "real life"?

Well, that's Buster Keaton in a nutshell. He is a non-stop human cartoon, and you never know what he is gonna do next. It is no exaggeration, nor is it mere nostalgia, to say that he is the greatest cinematic comedian of all time. His movies are really something, and I am as new to them as are most of the people in the theater, and I think we are all pretty surprised.

Today was also Stephen King's 70th birthday. Do you have a mental list in your head of your very favorite creative people, be they musicians, writers, painters, filmmakers, whomever? If you do, you know who has not only been your favorites but who has meant the most to you, in a spiritual way, the artists who have "been with you" so to speak, on the inside, perhaps for much of or even most of your life.

For me, Stephen King is certainly on my list of Very Favorite Creative Artists. I am sure many people feel the same as me about SK. For me, he is way up there with people like Ritchie Blackmore, The Beatles, David Lynch and Edward Van Halen. People whom I not only admire and who have given me, and the world, so much, but who also have created a personal connection, one that makes them feel like family.

Many critics, while lauding his vast talent as a horror writer, have left it at that, that that is all he is - just a great horror writer - or some have added a disclaimer to make clear that they do not consider him a man of literature, not in a league of great American writers who have conveyed in their works a sense of the Greater American Psyche. I am not a reader of American Lit, simply because it does not interest me, not the stories nor the writing style of contemporary authors such as Cormac McCarthy or Thomas Pynchon or great authors further back, like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I don't read any of those guys because they don't resonate with me. They are probably good writers, but for some reason, a guy who is a Phenomenal Writer is placed below such writers as a Literary Author, simply because he works in the Horror Genre.

This is all wrong, and here is why : Just read the sentences. Read the sentences, and read the paragraphs, and then the chapters, and feel the structure......and then feel the Understanding.

I submit that it is Stephen King who is The Great American Author, the one with the most intuitive understanding of The American Psyche in all it's regional forms. He is America's Great Psychologist, as well as a teller of terrifying tales and also a fine humorist to boot. In every SK book it is inevitable that certain passages will cause me to laugh out loud.

I first saw a Stephen King book on the paperback rack in the Alpha Beta supermarket at Reseda and Nordhoff. The year was 1976, probably Fall. The book was "Salem's Lot". It had a shiny cover and was a fat book, a thick book, and it was displayed prominently and caught my eye. Also, the author's name was printed in letters as large as the title. A quick glance at the summary on the back cover told me it was a Vampire story.

The entire presentation was impressive, and it stuck with me. And about a year later, in 1977, I saw "The Shining" once again on the rack at Alpha Beta. And this time I bought the book.

And I've been reading Stephen King for 40 years since. He is one of the great influences of my life, as I posted on FB, not just because of his stories but because of what is inside the words : the wisdom.

See you in the morning.

The Strangeness of "Mother!" + Apple Orchard

Okay, so I went to the theater today - the Winnetka 21 - to see "Mother!" by Darren Aronofsky. The exclamation point is part of the title, and I guess after seeing the movie it's understandable. This is one film that definitely requires an exclamation point.

I went mostly at Grimsley's insistence. As you know, for most films that are made nowdays, I can wait for the dvd. Obviously, movies were made to be seen in a theater and there is no comparison of dvd with the theater experience, but I don't often go because I don't like a lot of the movies being made nowdays, and there is also the "sick-of-doing-everything-by-myself" factor. But Grimsley, once he starts hounding you to go to something, sometimes it best to just go, haha, just to stop the hounding.

Some movies I go to without needing outside motivation, like "Dunkirk" or "IT". Those are movies I know are gonna be Tens. With Darren Aronofsky, I am about a halfway fan. I like but do not love him as a director. I really liked "Pi", his debut, but did not much care for "Requiem For A Dream". I thought "The Wrestler" was good, but that was not a true Aronofsky movie, as he did not write it. I think he did write "The Fountain", and that was my favorite film by him so far, because he turned down the Attention Deficit Disorder editing and camerawork, and actually put some feeling into his storyline. It was a heartfelt film in the deepest sense.

"Black Swan" you know about. He didn't write that one either, but it still retained a good bit of his deranged directorial signature, even in a big Hollywood production. Elizabeth, if you are reading, I know you loved that movie, and after "The Fountain" it is my second favorite film by him. "Black Swan" also won Natalie Portman the Oscar and made a ton of money, which probably helped Aronofsky to keep getting work, as many of his films, save "The Wrestler", had not done well at the box office.

Which brings us to "Mother!". I said this to the guys at the King's X board, and I will say it again here. You can file this one under the "What Were They Smokin'? " category, and the answer is "PCP".

"Mother!" is so over-the-top as to be almost unclassifiable It is Aronofsky Unleashed. It's probably the movie he's been wanting to make all along. Mostly, you could call it a Horror Movie (which it certainly is), with multiple references to "Rosemary's Baby", but any attempt at labeling ends there. Some viewers are attaching all kinds of religious metaphors to the story, some of which may be accurate (as I found myself thinking similar things in certain places), but overall I think it is best to enter the theater with no preconceived notions of what "Mother!" is about, and it is probably best to leave the theater that way, as well.

The main actors are all excellent : Jennifer Lawrence holds the whole thing together and has to go through the proverbial wringer. Much of the focus is literally her face, shown in extreme close-up throughout. The always reliable Javier Bardem is her husband, who in this case is neglectful....um....in the extreme....?

You see, they live alone, in this big old country house in the middle of what looks like wilderness. But all of a sudden, all these....people show up. Really weird people, starting with weirdo Ed Harris and then his Virago of a wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She had been gone from movies, it seemed, for quite a while, but boy does she jump back in with "Mother!".

For the first half of the film, you have this intrusive weirdness of Harris & Pfeiffer, set in a very scary environment. That part of the film I loved, and give it a 10, with big Thumbs Up.

But the second part of the film, which descends into chaos that even Darren Aronofsky cannot describe (he has said he doesn't know the meaning), is somewhat less well done.

It's beyond weird. It's far different than most films. But, having followed a very good horror movie set-up in the first half, which leaves you hoping for a good payoff in the second half, the movie not only goes out of control, quite literally, but it goes on for too long and thus loses any hope of redemption for the storyline, which showed so much promise in the first half.

But I can see that this movie was never about storyline. Still, it is a must-see, just because you have never seen a movie like it. You might like it (as I did), or love it (as did Grimsley), or you might hate it (as have many viewers over at IMDB). But see it if you get the chance, and see for yourself.

I, for one, would like to see Aronofsky take his Ritalin and make some cohesive and truly well-done Art Movies. Or if not, to simply work as a stylistic director of other people's scripts, ala "Wrestler" and especially "Black Swan". He may not, on his own, be another David Lynch, but go see "Mother!" anyway. It will certainly be different from anything you have seen, and Grimsley will hound you if you don't go.

So there you have it.  :)

Elizabeth, if you are reading, I saw the photo on FB of you and your friend at the Apple Orchard. That was a very nice picture of you, and as always I hope you are doing well. I wish we had an apple orchard to visit around here. We do have some citrus groves, however. Anyway, it looks like a wonderful place to be, especially as we are on the cusp of Fall. I'll bet you had a nice time.

Post if you wanna.  :):)

Of Quakes and CIA Demons

The quake about 90 minutes ago was a minor one, a 3.6, and was very short in duration, probably just 5 or 6 seconds, but it did feature a fairly scary jolt at the beginning - that feeling of being hit, by some giant unseen force  - and it reminded me (as if I needed reminding) of what's so darn terrifying about these doggone earthquakes : two things, 1) the fact that you have no idea when they are coming; they arrive out of the blue every time, theories about "earthquake weather" notwithstanding, and 2) that feeling of a giant force. The Northridge Quake began with a huge boom, like an explosion, followed a split second later by a horrific jolt, 100 times worse than tonight, that felt like a gigantic fist striking our house from below. It was one of the most frightening feelings I've ever had in my life, and so, ever since then, when we get even a minor jolt, I still mentally prepare myself (as do all Angelenos), because you never know, in the first couple of seconds, if the jolt is gonna peter out or get worse. Although it must be said that in the Northridge Quake, there was no simple jolt to begin with, nor was there any question of the quake's strength. You knew it was a Huge Deal from the moment that boom went off.

In 1994, I immediately thought "this is The Big One". That's a phrase they've used for a long time, "The Big One". They've used it probably since the 1970s, after the Sylmar Quake in 1971 got everyone talking about earthquakes for the first time in my lifetime. I don't recall ever feeling any quake before that one, not even a minor one. But after Sylmar (a major quake but nothing compared to Northridge), you started hearing this phrase about "The Big One". It was probably coined by some news person or geologist, and it referred to the mega-quake that has been predicted to hit us here in Southern California for about 30 years now. When Northridge hit, in January 1994, my immediate thought was "This is The Big One". That's how great the force was. But as bad as it was, it turned out not to be The Big One.

And so ever since then, I have no desire to ever find out what The Big One is. I hope it won't occur in my lifetime (with apologies to future generations). But I've paid my earthquake dues, having been through Sylmar and Northridge, and - to a lesser but still frightening extent - the more distant but still strongly felt quakes of Whittier in 1987 and Landers in 1992. Yeah, I've got the same name as an earthquake, so go figure. But I've had enough, thank you very much. Other quakes will have to wait until I am gone, preferably about 40 years from now, unless major advances are made in life extension technology by then, in which case the waiting period will have to be extended....

And now I am just jabbering away, as happens now and again here at the blog, haha.  :) 

So forget about quakes, but what else can we talk about? No movie was seen tonight. I did watch an episode of "The Prisoner" with Patrick McGoohan, but you may not know that show, and I have ventured far too deep into the Realms Of Tiredness to explain it to you this even-ing. The evening, when everything evens out......

Now I am jabbering away yet again.

Well, so no movie was had, and I watched an obscure TV show, but I did finish H.P. Albarelli's masterful book on the JFK assassination, "A Secret Order". If you ever wanna know what the CIA is all about, read two books by Hank Albarelli. I have mentioned them before, "A Terrible Mistake", and "A Secret Order". And if you ever wanna know who the world's worst people are, it them - the people who run the CIA. Well, let's say they are tied, with the same kind of demonic people in Russia, China and most other countries with "intelligence" agencies. What these people are, are sociopaths, and in America they come out of universities like Yale and Harvard and Princeton. The usually have "bloodlines" that they consider to be superior to other Americans. Those at the top of the Agency, anyway. But in truth, now that they are being exposed in books like those of Mr. Albarelli, we can see these people for who they actually are, which is really not much more than a bunch of murderers and torturers, and people who conduct  extremely cruel experiments on other human beings. In that regard, they are only slightly lesser than the infamous Nazi doctors, who are the Devil himself. And really, so are these CIA guys. They just haven't quite reached the Evil Pinnacle of the Nazis just yet....

But if you ever wonder why America is so fucked up (sorry to cuss but i had to), it's because we only have a democracy in name. 

In reality, since about 1947 or so, the country has been shaped by these MFers in the CIA. We the people still drive our cars and have our freedom to buy stuff and to go to our jobs and lots of other stuff.

But the chaotic, divided, paranoid America that you see today, that we live in today, was created by the CIA.

The CIA, a bunch of spoiled-brat old money East Coast assholes from Yale who think they are better than everybody else. But they aren't. They are actually a lot worse.

They are a demonic organisation, run by sociopaths, and they are the reason why we have the America that you are living in today.  ////

See you in the morning.

Happy Sunday

Sunday Night Mega-Tired. Writing to avoid becoming irrelevant, even though I don't have much to say. Can't keep missing blogs though. SB, are you out there?  :)

There's no way to tell if she reads anymore. Sigh......well, if you don't I don't blame you, girl Just - whatever you do - keep making music and videos and taking pictures, and drawing and painting too!

Sculpting? Yes indeed. Though I suppose you can put that one on the back burner for now. But one day you shall sculpt, I am certain.  :)

If you are reading, Elizabeth, I hope all is going well in Chicago. I haven't seen too many posts in the past few days, but I did see the picture of Izzy the dog, and he looks like a great guy to me. I have got a framed photo of Kobi here on the kitchen table as I type, and I sure do miss him, even though I feel like he is always with me - my ghost doggie and constant companion. One day I would like to have another actual dog, however, a real live dog, and I am sure that The Doberman Pinscher wouldn't mind.

I'll bet you would like to have a dog one day too.  :)

Right now we still have The Black Kitty, and she is pretty sweet for a semi-feral cat. She still swats at me, though, if I try to pet her coming from the front, i.e. "face forward". The only way she will not swat is if you approach your hand from behind her head, or from a side angle. She is also a major Chow Hound who pounds bowls of cat food and then wants more a couple of hours later. It must be Chinese Cat Food I am feeding her, haha. Lately, we have another kitty that has been joining her for lunch. Every day for about three weeks now, at around Noon, another Black Kitty appears, this one with white paws and muzzle. I think she had been trying to steal our Black Kitty's food, and so I just got her a bowl and have begun to feed her as well. She only comes over for lunch, but hasn't missed a day in quite a while.  :)

This morn was church, and the singin' was good. Our other tenor was absent, so I was singing solo in that regard, but I trust my voice now and always have fun no matter the lineup.

This evening I watched a short film called "The Butcher Boy", directed by and starring Fatty Arbuckle and featuring Buster Keaton. This film, known as a "short" is the first exhibit in the dvd collection of Buster Keaton Shorts that I ordered last week from Amazon, and which just arrived at my door. "The Butcher Boy" was made in 1917, one hundred years ago (doggone amazing) and if I am not mistaken it is Buster Keaton's first film appearance. Both he and Fatty Arbuckle are hilarious, and I've got a whole bunch of Shorts to continue watching on the 5 disc set.

It tells you a lot that I am not a huge comedy person and yet I ordered the Keaton set, which on top of being 100 years old is also silent. And I am not doing Silent just to be cool or hipster. I am way past that stage in life. No, Silent films are Silent films, a genre unto their own, but I think that the comedic energy of these guys, and their creativity, transcends the Silent Era. I think if Buster Keaton (or Fatty) came out today, debuted in 2017 with their first movie and made with 2017 techniques but with their own inimitable style, they would still be huge at the box office. That's what makes Keaton so great. He is a wild man of comedy who is funny to anyone in any era.

So that's the news for today.

"Patriot's Day" + Tell The Truth, Tell What You Know, Stop Pretending

Tonight's movie was "Patriot's Day" (2016), a very well made thriller about the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013. Because we all know the story, we know what's coming in the movie. There is thus no plot to become involved with, and no mystery to keep us hanging on the edges of our seats. However, because the film is directed by Peter Berg, an expert at high tech, action packed real life "headline" stories, what you get is an involving film that is even handed, which means that everyone is presented as a real person and not as a caricature. This includes the bombers, who are given their own storyline. They were brothers, and are presented in reality as a bullying older brother with a chip on his shoulder and a phony-baloney religious philosophy, and a younger brother who is a university student who sells pot and has assimilated into American Millenial culture. He is also heavily influenced by his older brother, and this is shown in the movie, though his own culpability for what he did is not watered down. Director Berg very simply - but with great skill - presents things as they happened, and some of these things are a shocker.

When the brothers are on the run after being identified, and have been stopped by the Watertown police, I had no idea the extent of what happened during that showdown, and indeed the full truth of it may have been presented in this movie for the first time.

I do not recall hearing on the news that the brothers threw very powerful pipe bombs at police, many of them, which in the movie are shown as explosive enough to overturn police cars. I don't think this was done just for Hollywood Show. Peter Berg would not do that. And yet, I am certain I do not recall a pipe bomb showdown being reported on the news. I knew that pipe bombs had been found, but not that they had used them against the police.

But at any rate, my goodness.........this is one hair-raising scene, and if it really went down that way, then perhaps the public is being shown for the first time just how dangerous these guys were, and possibly how well-trained the older brother was. By whom, exactly, we do not know.

But to sum up : "Patriot's Day" is not my usual fare, I watch older films, art films, and all the other stuff that you know I watch because I write about it. I don't usually watch modern thrillers because they usually simply aren't well made - they don't keep me interested. But because it was made by Berg, I knew it would be good, and it exceeded my expectations. He also made "Deepwater Horizon" and "Lone Survivor", both of which starred Mark Wahlberg as does "Patriot's Day". Those two guys are a good combination for this type of movie, director and star, and they do it better than anyone else, so a big thumbs up for "Patriot's Day". As a final note, near the movie's end, the Wahlberg character (a police sergeant) is asked by a colleague if he thinks terrorism can be prevented, and if not, what the best response might be. His answer might surprise you. It's a powerful ending to the movie and it kind of blew me away.

That's all the news for today. Been trying to fight depression for the past week or so, and felt a bit lethargic this afternoon, so no hike was had. I haven't been sleeping real well either, which had something to do with it, but that is more job related than depression related.

Don't worry too much about me. My depression is more "situational" than clinical. I don't have the kind of brain chemistry depression that is chronic and is classified as a disease. Mine is more related to just having had to deal with this doggone 1989 thing all by myself, every day, for 23 years, since 1994 when my memories came back to me. I have still lived my life during all that time, and I have been blessed with many great experiences since '89, but still, it always lingers and it has always been - every day - something I think about. And it has been exceptionally hard, and at times extremely difficult, to deal with the fact that no one but myself has ever spoken of it. No one else has even acknowledged it, let alone discussed it. It's just been a neverending Wall Of Silence from everyone I know who knows about it (even if they pretend they don't) and those who participated in it.

It's been an impenetrable Wall Of Silence from everyone involved, and after all of these years, it's really begun to wear me down. I hate to say this, but I hope it doesn't wind up killing me.

It has affected me pretty severely, you guys.

In fact, the silence about 1989 has been even worse than the events of 1989, which is really saying something, because 1989 is the biggest secret in America today, and for a reason. But for me, the silence has been even worse. The events of September 1989 went on for twelve days; the silence has gone on for 28 years now, and is continuing with no end in sight.

So, that's why I wrote what I wrote last night, and why I wrote all of this tonight. And again, as I said last night, I sincerely hope you all will think about what I have said, and consider talking about what you know, and what you remember. You could effect a lot of good in the world by doing so.

It's no good anymore - just a lot of lying on your part - to pretend that you don't remember what happened to all of us, and what you participated in. I had total amnesia for four years, and I remember quite a bit of what happened to me, and I remember many things about all of you as well. So I know all of you remember, too. You just need to step up to the freakin' plate.

So do it already. Stop waiting. Stop postponing. Stop ignoring. It's wrong to do so!

The time is now. You guys need to tell the truth, to stop pretending you don't know, to stop pretending it didn't happen, and to stop just going merrily on your way in life.

You need to stop it. Stop the silence. Stop it today, and don't wait. 

God Bless, and I will see you tomorrow, so long as I have something to write about.

"X-15" + Silence Is Profoundly Wrong

Tonight's movie was "X-15" (1961), about the pioneering rocket jet of the same name, that set speed and altitude records that may still stand (I'm not sure but too tired to Google right now). When I was a kid in second grade, and the teacher would ask all the students what they wanted to be when they grew up, my answer was "Jet Pilot". I never meant it as wanting to be an airline pilot, but always a military jet, because Dad took me to airshows and I thought those jets were the coolest. Probably a lot of boys gave the same answer in those days, and a big reason was the publicity surrounding the X-15. The kids I knew at school all knew what it was. We thought it was pretty fantastic.

The movie "X-15" was shot almost entirely at Edwards Air Force Base, one of my favorite places in the whole world, so that alone made it great viewing for me. As a dramatic movie, it was no great shakes. There is no real plot except for the repeated testing of the plane, and the only question that plays out is "will it work, or won't it"? There are a couple of minor subplots that involve the wives of the pilots, and in the case of Charles Bronson, his young son as well. But mostly the movie is about The "X", and it actually plays out like a Study Film that they used to show in elementary school. Remember those films? They were professionally made, and they would have a voiceover announcer, and they would take you in the film to a dairy, or maybe a bakery, and show you how stuff was made. Remember "Study Films"? Kids loved 'em because they took you away from the boredom of the class for 25 to 45 minutes.

"X-15" plays like half Study Film, half Hollywood drama. But the real draw of the movie is the authentic stock footage of actual X-15 flights. They begin under the wing of an enormous B-52. The X-15 cannot take off on it's own because it is not built to do so. Instead, it is attached to the underside of one of the B-52's wings and carried up to 45,000 feet. From there the pilot ignites the rocket, then detaches from the B-52 and takes off.......and you get to see all of this in the movie, real footage of the real thing, and if you are a Jet-Age Fan like me, to see it is awesome, and it takes you back to when you were a small child and you thought a lot about such things.

For me, airplanes were some of the first machines I was introduced to. Because my Dad was in the Air Force in WW2 (called the Army Air Corps until 1947), he was fascinated with military planes himself, and because he was in a Radar Battalion, their whole job was to watch out for enemy planes, in this case coming from the German Wermacht.

When I was about three or four years old, Dad built me several plastic models of WW2 planes, and they were all Messerschmitts and Henkels and Junkers. He also bought me a series of pamphlets on each plane, with all their statistics. Man, I wish I still had those!  :)

I sometimes wondered, in a child's way, why Dad didn't make me any American model planes. After all, we were the Good Guys, right? And the Germans were the Bad Guys.

It didn't hit me until a couple of years ago that Dad made me those German planes because they were the ones he and his radar battalion were trained to look for. They were the planes of his experience, and he wanted me to know about them. And so, even in my crib I had model airplanes suspended overhead.

And I was born into the era of the X-15, which began right around 1960 (too tired to Google, lol), and so my own fascination grew from there. I have gotta get back to Edwards one of these days. They haven't had an airshow since 2009 because of budget cuts and the stupid ultra-paranoid security world we live in nowdays. But one day they will have another one, and I'll be there! Somewhere in my photos I've got a pic of the X-15 on display inside an Edwards hangar. Wow!  :)

So that was really all the news of the day. These days, because of work hours, it's all about the nightly movie (where applicable) and some days a local hike, and my constant reading.

Movies are an escape for me, as they are for us all, which is why we love them.

But life cannot only be about escape, and relief from stress.

At some point - and I say this to anyone who might be reading who is aware of what happened in 1989 - we have to confront reality. It is very important for you to acknowledge, to yourself if to no one else, that you were part of an overwhelming, life changing experience that was monumental in importance and has been completely buried due to reasons known only to some high-level agency of the Federal government . 

It wasn't just "some weird thing that happened" that you barely remember, and that consequently does not matter to you because you barely remember it.

No, that is not good enough. And it will rot your soul if you keep up that attitude. No joke; that is what will happen. It will rot your soul.

You cannot continue to pretend that This Thing never happened to you, or that if you do acknowledge it to yourself, that it was "only a dream" (as one guy who was there actually said to me) or just some weird thing that has long ago passed by.

You people who were there in September 1989 and who may be reading this blog cannot continue to do these things, to pretend this never happened, because it is not right.

And it will end up killing you, psychologically if not physically.

I am going to be bringing this subject up more and more. Not every day, but on occasion, as the mood strikes, and nowdays it strikes me very often.

I have been living with what happened every single day for 23 years now.

It's a wonder I am still alive.

Keeping silent about 1989 is profoundly wrong. Every day of your lives, when you fail to confront this, and fail to think about what happened to all of us, and what you participated in, and more importantly to talk about every aspect of it, you are doing The Wrong Thing.

Ignoring it is profoundly wrong. Keeping silent is profoundly wrong. Pretending that it never happened is profoundly wrong bordering on evil.

And yet, every day of your lives when you wake up and say nothing, and just go about your business, you are doing just that : Ignoring, Keeping Silent, Pretending.

Every day of your lives you are doing The Wrong Thing, and it's the very worst thing you could do, given the circumstances.

Please think about what I have said. Thanks.

That's all for tonight.

"IT" Is Fantastic + Iceland/Chicago

Sorry I haven't written for a couple of days. It's just the usual reason, that nothing worth mentioning was happening. Sometimes when that happens I can manufacture a topic, often from something I am reading, and when I watch a movie I can always make that my topic, but I was drawing a blank the past two nights. I get a bit depressed, too, just because I don't have anybody to hang with, and I don't wanna be One Of The Boyz anymore, and I don't have anybody in my life and I'm not married. Same 'ol sob story, I know, but it's very real to me, and it's not easy. Some days it's a real struggle.

Well anyhow, today I can write, because I went to the Granada Hills Theater this afternoon to see "IT". I wanted to wait a few days to avoid crowds, and I made a perfect choice in going mid-week at 1pm, cause there were only about five people in the very large theater, and so with me way up front in the second row (I always sit close for the full effect), it was almost like having "IT" all to myself.  :)

Okay, straight up : let's get right to the Ten Scale. I give it a 9.5. Coming out of the theater, I was gonna give it an 8.5 - still very high - but as the day wore on, I couldn't stop thinking about the movie, and how much the filmmakers got right. And they got so much right, that I had to upgrade it a point, and so 9.5 was the final score.

It ain't easy adapting a Stephen King book for a movie script, which is why we've had so many sub-par films from same. King himself rarely does the adapting (in fact, has he ever? I'm not sure), and the writers who have done so have often rendered the story readers are familiar with from his books to be.....well, not unrecognizable, but certainly not pure King. Some directors, like Stanley Kubrick, have almost destroyed the book in favor of making their own vision of the movie. "The Shining" was pretty good (not great), but it was not a faithful adaptation, by any stretch, of what was a Brilliant Book By A Brilliant Writer. And make no mistake; King is indeed brilliant. His forte is Horror, but what he really is, is The Great Psychologist Of The American Psyche. And he also has a feel for Americana like few others (maybe writers of old, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom I have not read). Simply put, Stephen King is The Great American Writer, and "IT" is, in my opinion, his greatest book.

"IT" is really about the wonders and horrors of childhood, distilled into a very complex plot in the book, about a killer clown who lives in the sewers and preys on the children of Derry, Maine. Only a few certain kids can see him, adults cannot, and these kids call themselves The Losers Club because they are all nerds and outcasts, to varying degrees, many of whom come from broken or abusive homes.

As a huge fan of the book - which I can live inside every time I read - I have to say that director Andy Muschietti and his screenwriters did the best possible job they could have, with a eleven hundred pages of material to whittle down. Yes, some major Book Events have been changed - the Apocalyptic Rockfight was given short shrift, and The Neiboldt House Experience now includes all of The Losers, instead of just Bill and Eddie. But some changes, and outright cutting of other material, were inevitable in such a long story, and overall they do not affect the movie as a motion picture.

As a movie, with as good an adaptation as you could hope for, "IT" is near perfect. For starters, you could not possibly cast more perfect adolescent actors for each part. Every kid, every Loser, is almost exactly as you would have pictured from the book. To add to that, the look of Derry is Picturesque and Perfect. They used a Canadian town, and I mentioned Americana - this is what I was talking about, the kind of "America" that we wish still existed.

So right off the bat, the casting of the film, and it's location, and it's feel, are exactly what you were hoping for.

As for the horror, that is an interesting question. Horror movies, per se, rely on tension and long, drawn out scenes. Think "Paranormal Activity" for a modern version of horror. "IT", on the other hand, is really a coming-of-age story, and a tale of adversaries - The Losers vs. The School Bullies. And, they are also fighting their parents and this freakin' Clown, so there is a Ton Of Stuff going on.

This is no One Note Horror Film, and so, while there is a lot of horror, the fixation is more on story and atmosphere rather then building tension as in a pure Fright Film.

"IT" is a Horror Story, but the emphasis is on the story, and the horror is mostly slam bang. The movie is In Your Face. It never lets up for 2 hours 15 minutes.

Some of the horrific set pieces, such as Beverly's infamous experience in her bathroom, are truly scary and ingeniously staged. The Neiboldt House is likewise awful. Overall, the set design and lighting, and the sound design all contribute to make "IT" one of the most atmospheric horror movies of the modern, ultra technical era. Boy did they nail it on that score.

But in the end, it's the kids and the story that make the show, and Pennywise, too. And the overall look and feel of the film, right down to it's Top 40 1980s soundtrack songs.

And that was the final thing that blew me away about "IT" the movie. The book takes place in the late 1950s. In the movie, they have updated the time - and the look - to the 1980s.

But not just to the 1980s.

To 1989.

And because the story takes place in Summer, the movie takes place in Summer 1989.

There are references, seen on a movie theater marquee, to "Batman" and "Lethal Weapon 2", and later to "Nightmare On Elm Street 5".

Holy Freakin' Smokes, people. You might have to be me to understand, but I am me, and I do understand.

And the movie is broken up into sections, titled by month: June, then August, and for the final scene....

September. 1989.

Of course, it's gotta be a coincidence, because everything is a coincidence, right?

I suppose if they were gonna change the timeline of the book from the 1950s, they could have also chosen the 60s or 70s, and that would've been a coincidence too, right? But for whatever reason, they chose the 1980s, and not just the early 80s or the mid-80s.

They chose 1989 specifically, and Summer, and June - August - and September....to close the movie.

Stephen King is one of the main heroes of my life.

So you know that I was extra blown away, no joke. ////

Elizabeth, if you are reading I thought that was another great Red Dress photo you posted this morning. The backgrounds from the Iceland photos have been incredible - first the black volcanic cave and now the icy blue of the waterfall (and a great pose by you also). I am glad you posted, and can see why you loved your visit to that country so much. :)

I also saw a few posts this evening that seemed to have to do with bands or musicians in Chicago, so maybe you are making connections there. I hope so, and I will bet that in no time you will be right back at it - directing videos and shooting concerts.

Keep posting if you feel like it, and post some more Iceland pics, too.  :)

Well, that's all for tonight. See you in the morning.  :):)

Super Jumbo + Madrigal Singing + Rams

Mega Super Jumbo Sized Tired on a Sunday night. I don't know if that is more tired or less tired than Tired Beyond Measure, the category I have checked in with on recent Sundays, but it sure is Super Duper Ding Dang Double Dog Tired any way you look at it. :)

Been goin' all day, and runnin' on three hours sleep. First to church (or "choych" if you are from New Joyzee). We sang a fun one today, a show-bizzy sounding tune called "Think What He'll Do For You". It sounds like a Broadway song, and you can really belt it out. But now in rehearsal we are learning a song with a midsection that sounds like a Madrigal - now that is some different kind of singing. In the middle of the song, it breaks into three different counterpoints, three voices in three different rhythms. Our director explains Madrigal singing as being a big deal for people several centuries ago because 1) they did not have recorded music they could listen to, 2) live performers were rare, 3) most people did not own a musical instrument, but 4) what everyone did have was a Voice, and so singing was a very, very big deal. It was a way to make music, and a way to hear music, and you had to do it yourself (with your church group or family or friends) because that was the only way you were likely to hear music in those days. Orchestra concerts and the like were reserved for wealthy folks, and anyway Madrigal singing goes back farther than orchestras.

So what happened is that ordinary folks got really, really good at singing, because singing was their music, and music was important to them, as it has always been. And because contrapuntal music was en vogue in those days, people got really good at it. Regular folks! And with Madrigals, you would sometimes have a song break up into many different "voices", four to eight or even more. And everyone would be singing a different line that, as a whole, would fit together like the gears of a watch.

So that was Madrigal singing in the 1500s or so, and we are learning a little bit of it in a middle section of a new song. It's only a few lines worth, but it's fun to learn and it sounds really cool when everybody hits their parts.

Anybody wanna try some Madrigal singing with me? It'll be fun - we'll go back to the Middle Ages, maybe run into Ritchie Blackmore and his wife Candice while we are there.....    :)

After church I drove straight out to Burbank to take my sister Sophie shopping. Got back home by 3:30pm and had a few minutes to chill before heading back to Pearl's. I turned on the Rams game, not knowing what to expect (because they have been terrible in recent years), and.......wow!......they were doing an Old Fashioned Butt Whipping on the Colts : 46 to 9!

So, despite Sports being an admittedly mindless pursuit, but for some reason still meaningful, it was pretty awesome to see the Rams break out of their funk for the first time in ages.

So yeah : How 'bout them Rams?!  :)

No movie tonight, but I did watch and episode of "The Prisoner" with Patrick McGoohan. It was Episode 12 in a seventeen episode series, so I have five more to go. And I would still take McGoohan in a Cage Match over Wilford Brimley and Brian Dennehy. I'm stickin' to my guns on that one.

Nearing the Event Horizon of the Black Hole Of Tiredness........

See you in the morning.  :):)

The Greater Chatsworth Area + Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea + SB

Today I went back out to Chatsworth Park for a little more exploration. Being a mostly "manicured" city park, it's boundaries do not stray too far from the main lawn and gym area, but there are some wild, natural areas in the back, where I found that old tree last week. I hiked back in that area and found a couple of cool little spots, and then I found the trail that leads up to Santa Susana State Park, which as I mentioned is located just behind and above Chatsworth Park, and is many times larger. Really though, if you had lived in the Valley a century ago when the Chatsworth area was mostly wild, you would have seen that all the parks and areas I mention in Chatsworth are all close together and are really all-of-a-piece. When you are up high, like at the top of The Devil's Slide, you can see Chatsworth Park just below you, and Stoney Point about a half mile east, and Chatsworth Park North (a smaller offshoot) a half mile to the north. It's all part of one big area, and if you came down the mountain on the other side of The Slide, that's where Garden Of The Gods is, just a half mile away in that direction.

A ton of Western movies were shot out there when much of the area was part of Iverson Ranch, which was a movie-shootin' ranch, mainly.

Well anyhow, that's Chatsworth. I love it, as you know.  :)

Tonight my friend David F. came over for a CSUN walk, and we saw something fairly awesome. Tall, billowing thunderheads had been stacking up in the northeast sky, behind the San Gabriel mountains just south of the Mojave desert. That happens quite often at this time of year. The thunderheads form when the humidity gets trapped by the mountains and it pushes upward into big expanding clouds. Once in a great while, at night, you will see some flash lightning inside those clouds, and it might continue for a minute or two, but intermittently. Not much of a big deal, just a few flashes, and even then it rarely happens. Usually the thunderheads just sit there.

But tonight, wow! We got a real Light Show, and SB - if you are reading - it was the kind of major lightning you probably get in the Midwest on a regular basis. Wow again! - the whole sky was alight, with constant, dramatic flashes within the stormclouds. The lightning flashed like you would see in a movie, only it was real life, and for us here in the Valley it was Extra Cool because we don't ever get to see lightning to that extent. Man, they must have gotten pounded with a bunch of hail and rain up in the desert, in Lancaster and Palmdale, 65 miles north. Someone must have videoed it. I will do some Googling to check........

That was all the news, except for that I watched the very first episode of "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea", which I may have reported was another Favorite Show of mine when I was a kid. It was one of the first TV shows I recall seeing, and I always watched it. "Voyage" was the creation of the great producer Irwin Allen, who became even more famous in the 1970s as the King Of Disaster Movies, with blockbusters like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" and "Earthquake". There was often a slight measure of Cheesiness to Allen's films, but he was still the king of special effects in those days, and he always gave you your money's worth. And most importantly, his films delivered in a dramatic sense. They were never boring.

But he got his start in television, and "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea" was a huge hit. I have bought the first season on dvd, which I think I mentioned, and I will probably stop there, because after Season One the show got really big, and they switched from black and white to color, which took away from the authentic Sci-Fi feel of the show. And also, it became more for kids after Season One, with cheesy looking monsters on board the submarine every week. But Season One was excellent 1950s-style sci-fi, and I am looking forward to seeing all the episodes for the first time in over 50 years!

Elizabeth, just in case you are reading, I did see one post today, via your friend Morgin. I don't know if you meant that for me or not, and ever since the beginning of Summer and since you moved, it is hard to tell what's what, as far as communication goes. But if you did mean that for me, it was very sweet, and of course I still feel the same way about you. I am always thinking about you, and hoping you are doing well in your new city. If not, you can always move back. Your happiness as an Artist is paramount.

I do miss seeing your concert pics and I hope you are (or will) be shooting some shows soon. I just want you to have a blast in your life like you have been, and to take pictures and make music and make videos like you have been. Art and expression should be your life, and adventure.

And just plain fun.

As always, I am right here if you need me and if you want to communicate.  :):)

Luckily a very easy song for tomorrow morning, because we did not rehearse last week, haha.

See you in the morning. Football season begins tomorrow. Yeah, I know......sports, SB.  ////

:):)

Garden Of The Gods

I did drive up to Garden Of The Gods this afternoon, as I mentioned yesterday. It is located about a quarter mile west of the intersection of Topanga Canyon and Santa Susana Pass Road, on a small residential street called Red Mesa. Back in Buster Keaton's time, the street would have been a dirt road, and there would've been no houses anywhere nearby. There might've been Topanga Canyon Boulevard, but if it was paved it would have probably been just two lanes, one for either direction. Santa Susana Pass Road is still just two lanes, but at least it has been newly paved. The Pass goes back to Old Western times in the 1800s when it was a route for stagecoach traffic, and according to Wiki it's use goes back 8000 years, as far back as the settlements of the Tongva and Chumash Indians. Better you Google "Santa Susana Pass Road" for yourself if you want to, to read about it's long history.

I make a small but probably controversial disclaimer to say that while I am sure the Tongva and Chumash lived in the area and used the road, I neither believe nor disbelieve in the 8000 year historical marker. And that is because I do not believe in the theory of evolution (heresy, I know), and when one does not believe in the theory of evolution, it throws the entire Age Of The Earth into question, due to the wild fluctuations and documented multiple inaccuracies in the so-called science of the various forms of radiometric dating, i.e "carbon dating" and the like. The theory of evolution is obviously false; carbon dating, inaccurate and not proven to be true or false either way, ergo the Age Of The Earth is something that no one knows for certain, no matter how much faith a person may have in science to Know All.

No one Knows All, not even scientists, and they don't know the age of the earth, nor the Universe, no matter how much they would like you to believe they do. They don't even know there was a Big Bang. That's but a theory too, and one that is not standing up to scrutiny as it once did. Sorry 'bout that, but it's the truth : No One Knows.

Much in the same way that No One Knows What God Is. Not even science has had the temerity to take a stab at that, and many scientists would simply tell you There Is No Such Thing.

Sorry to go on a Tirade. I am not anti-science, in no way shape or form. It's just that Evolution is so demonstrably false, and because from Evolution so many other "scientific" theories derive, like the age of the Earth. I haven't the time to write my argument down; I'd need a year, but if you wish you can simply research it yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Back to Garden Of The Gods, thank God (lol), it was a blast to find myself, after a short hike off Red Mesa Drive, right there on the set of "Three Ages", the Buster Keaton film I saw last night at CSUN. I was standing in between the two main sandstone formations that are the "Gods" in the Garden Of Same. In the movie, Buster and other Cavemen fought over the leading lady, and an elephant moved to and fro. I have been to The Garden several times, and taken pictures, but this was the first time when I was acutely aware of what I was looking at in a cinematic sense, simply because I had seen "Three Ages" last night.

It was cool to stand in the same place where Buster Keaton stood, 95 years ago, and it still looks almost exactly the same. Trees and bushes have grown a bit..........but not too much.

It once again made me think of the phenomenon of time, and how time goes fast and slow at the same time, and how some things change, like from Buster Keaton's time to mine (think of all the fashions and styles and music and history and wars and cultural change from the 1920s til now, not to mention the inventions).

And then there are the Rocks. They don't change, not for 100 years, or 8000. Or even for 80 Million, which I am not sure I believe anymore.

But screw all that for now.

What I got out of my visit was that Buster was running around on those rocks 95 years ago and I was standing there today.

See you in the morn.  :):)

The Genius Of Buster Keaton

Tonight at CSUN we had a Buster Keaton double feature. The first film was called "Three Ages" (1923), a look at love in the Stone Age, the Roman Age, and the Modern Age (as it was 100 years ago). The scenes from the Stone Age had the distinction of being shot in Chatsworth at the Garden Of The Gods giant sandstone formations off of Santa Susana Pass Road, which as you probably know, I have visited and photographed on several occasions. I was aware of Westerns being filmed there, including parts of "Stagecoach" w/ John Wayne, but I was not aware that Buster Keaton had used the Garden also. It was a lot of fun to see familiar rocks & boulders with Buster and his actors running around on them, dressed in Caveman outfits. The rocks look exactly the same of course. They probably looked exactly the same 10,000 years ago. I think tomorrow I may drive over to the Garden Of The Gods, just to look for some exact location set-ups from the movie. It will be fun.  :)

The other movie we saw was "Our Hospitality", a much more sophisticated film with a developed story, rather than just a series of skits, as was "Three Ages". In fact, "Our Hospitality", which was also made in 1923 (and therefore also a Silent film) has been credited by some film historians as being the first comedy film to have a complete dramatic storyline, with the comedy interspersed rather than featured. Prior to this film - so they say - silent comedy was purely about Yuks, which were generated by skits and sketches. Any story in the very early days was minimal. "Our Hospitality" changed all of that. The plot revolves around a good old American Family Feud from the early 1800s, like that of the Hatfields and the McCoys (Buster plays "John McKay").

Some of the best scenes in the movie involve a crazy, makeshift railroad made out of bent and curved tracks, and a train made of old stagecoaches pulled by a rickety engine car. These scenes are so inventive that they have the feel of a cartoon, where anything is possible. I have only been watching Buster Keaton's work for two weeks now, and I was not familiar with him before that, but even in this brief exposure I can see why Roger Ebert called him the greatest Actor/Director of all time. Keaton does it all : he writes the story, directs it, acts the lead role, and on top of that, and most importantly because this is 100 years ago, he is also creating the state of the art for cinematic comedy.

Remember that there were only a handful of comedic geniuses at the beginning of cinema. Chaplin, Lloyd, Arbuckle, Keaton. Acts like Laurel & Hardy and The Marx Brothers were later on. Of the top three early auteurs - Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton, it was Buster who did it all, and who invented the most imaginative setups. Harold Lloyd matched Keaton for physically daring stunts, and made some great movies as well, and Charlie Chaplin made movies as grand statements on society, but only Buster Keaton did The Whole Thing.

I sat and watched in the Armer Theater at CSUN tonight with an audience made up mostly of students, and it was great to hear them laughing at certain points throughout both films. This is something I mentioned last week, that Keaton's work was very hip, and that an audience from any generation would get it. Tonight I saw that. Buster would've thought it was cool.  :)

"Three Ages" is fun, mostly for Garden Of The Gods, but it is "Our Hospitality" that I would recommend highly for movie fans willing to give Silent Comedy a chance. Each film is about 65 minutes long, and so not a huge time investment. But the payoff is huge, because you get taken on a trip to Buster Keaton's world, from a century ago, and you get to see where a lot of modern movie comedy originated from. Except - nobody today would try even half of the stuff Keaton pulled off.

Well, as you can see I am having a blast watching these movies for the first time. Part of the appeal is also the opportunity to go back in time, which is another form of travel. I have always felt comfortable imagining myself in earlier decades or generations dating back to.....oh, I'd guess around 1870 or so.

But I really love the 1920s through the 1950s, the thirty year period before I was born. And I mostly only know those decades through watching movies and - in some cases - old tv shows. So it's all because of the imagery I have seen. I was not actually there, but the imagery created by Hollywood makes me feel as if I was there. And I love that feeling, because it feels like good times in good places.

That is all the news for today. I did not see any posts from the SB, but Elizabeth if you are reading, I hope things are going okay.  :):)

North Korea, America & The CIA

Well, Elizabeth, that is quite a story that your friend posted about going to North Korea. He has a lot of courage to have gone there, even as part of the French artists group. Man, you couldn't get me to go there, it wouldn't matter what delegation I was with. The place is just too damn spooky, and interestingly enough, North Korea is where the term "brainwashing" was first coined, to refer to the strange phenomenon, at the time of the Korean War in 1950-53 - of American pilots being shown on tv (in clips filmed in Korea) renouncing "American Imperialism" and the campaign against North Korea. Many of the pilots announced their "defections" in these clips, proclaiming communism to be the right way, and stating that they would remain in that country. The pilots appeared to be saying all of these things in a hazy monotone with blank expressions.

Later on, the CIA (which had only been formed a few years prior, in 1947) got very worried that North Korea had developed so-called "mind control" techniques, utilising drugs and hypnosis and other sensory tactics which amounted to torture, to literally re-direct the thoughts and opinions of the captured pilots and turn them to communism. And that is where the term "brainwashing" comes from, and it is also what led the CIA to begin their own research into drug-induced mind control, which is what led them to request a shipment of LSD from Sandoz, the first LSD that was ever brought into the USA, and which was used for the experiments I described last night.

The CIA was worried that the North Koreans - sponsored by the Chinese - had beaten them to the punch.

That's where all of the experiments leading to the creation of a Manchurian Candidate assassin were born; out of the Korean War, and out of the North Korean's capture of American pilots and the pilots' subsequent, drug-induced, "confessions" and "defections".

At that point, in the early 1950s, hard core research into the manipulation of the mind was begun by the CIA, and it is only in the last 10 to 20 years, perhaps, that we the public are truly getting a handle on what the CIA's research consisted of. That's what I meant when I referred to the CIA as evil. And they are, no doubt about it. But they got their inspiration from North Korea.

That place is creepy to the max. Of course, they are a pipsqueak country, and have been sponsored by China, or they would have nothing. Korea, as the country used to be called when it was unified, became the "hedge" or borderline, after the war, between Chinese Communism and American-style Democracy in South Korea. It is of course a whole lot more complicated than that, especially in this day and age when North Korea has isolated itself, even against the Chinese, and now they have that crazy little dude blowing off nukes like they were firecrackers.

Essentially the Korean War never ended. It's just been smoldering away on the back burner for all these years as an uneasy truce, with the DMZ as the dividing line. During the war. America troops fought Chinese troops as much as they fought Koreans. But now China is in a difficult position. They have a capitalist economy, the #1 economy in the world, and so they need to get along with America and the West, but they also still have North Korea as their Frankenstein - their monster that they created, and now the monster is declaring it's independence, with a chubby Elvis Presley impersonator at the helm.

I'd better stop now, or I'll be writing all night about it.

But yeah, I would not go there for a million dollars, and I'll bet Valnoir would not go back for as much, either. Here in America, the CIA is an agency. There, in North Korea, it's the whole freakin' country.

The weirdest country in the world.

And so, the last person we need to be dealing with them, here in America, is Donald Trump, a man whose ego is based on one-upsmanship. "You threaten me and I'll threaten you more bigly".

I don't like to use crude language, but here I must : We are in the grip of the Two Biggest A-Holes In The World, as pawns in their childish yet deadly game.

Two babies in diapers, and yet no one is stepping up to stop them.

Dennis Rodman had announced today that he would like to step in. He is a friend of Elvis Presley, but unfortunately Dennis - though no doubt he means well - is only a basketball player and just a little bit kooky himself.

Where the heck is John F. Kennedy when you need him? 

Doggonnitt, he would have nipped this thing in the bud. But in a little over half a century, America has gone from JFK to Donald Trump. Talk about brainwashing. Can you say "The American Public"? And "Television"? And "The News Media"?

And if you can factor in the intellectual laziness of the average American, and the sheer ingenuity of the Truly Evil CIA (and you have gotta trust me on how evil they are, it's no joke), to manipulate the psyche of the American Public to a trend of severe dumbing down, then you can begin to understand the formula that has been in place for over a half century, to try and keep China in check economically.

Because it was always about economics and money, and selling things to other countries to make fortunes.

It was never about a fear a communism taking over America.

We have always had the means, since WW2, to blow any other country to Smithereens. Completely.

Militarily, no country could win an all out war against the USA.

And in the nuclear age, the rest of the world has understood that, as horrible as it is, and there has been an uneasy truce.

But that little shit in Korea has seen his opening to assert his own ill-developed ego, now that his equivalent counterpart Trump is "president" of the United States. A man who speaks his own infantile language.

Trump is 71, and, impeachment or no impeachment, he will likely be gone off the planet in less than 30 years. The small chubby guy, the Elvis Wannabe, is probably in his 30s or early 40s (I have no idea and am too tired to Google it) and so he will be around a while longer, unless something happens to him.

The previous couple of generations made it through Hitler and Stalin and Mao. So we have got to make it through a couple of punks in comparison.

Thank God we can say what we want here in America. No matter what, we've still got the First Amendment, and as troubled as we are, I'd kiss the ground here before I'd set foot in North Korea.

That's all I know for tonight.