"Certain Women" by Kelly Reichardt

I am back at Pearl's. She is getting over a cold that has left her with a really bad cough. I am taking all precautions to prevent myself getting sick, not only because we can't have the caregiver getting sick, but also because I just plain hate getting sick. Thus, even though I am already a major-league handwasher, tonight I am positively OCD about it. Haven't had a cold or flu since about Spring 2016, and before that sometime in 2014, and I aim to keep it that way. Stay home if you are sick, and if you are well, wash your hands a lot, and whatever you do - don't rub your eyes. In this way, you too will avoid a lot of colds, as they are transmitted more by touch than by air.

Alrighty then. Tonight's movie was "Certain Women" (2016), on Criterion and directed by Kelly Reichardt. You might recall that I went on a mini-binge of her movies (she only has nine) back in Spring 2016 (probably around the last time I got sick, lol), after The Professor showed us "Meek's Cutoff",  Reichardt's take on the Western. We saw it as part of the "Tarkovsky Plus" retrospective at CSUN at that time. Professor Tim thought that Reichart's excellent use of natural scenery and slow, steady camera work showed a Tarkovskian influence, and that is quite possible. Having seen five of her nine movies by now, she is surely the cinematic master of the American Northwest. I don't know, really, that any other filmmaker has tackled the landscapes of states like Montana and Oregon over and over again, and made them so integral to their stories, so she may have that territory all to herself, but a.n.y - how.......

She is a very skilled filmmaker, but "Certain Women" is not one of her best films. First of all, to appreciate Kelly Reichardt, you have to be ready to Go Slow. Tarkovsky was the King Of Slow, and he was also the Slowest Poet. His films resonate with meaning, but at least with the Tarkmeister, things happen in his films.

It has become the case, however, with his proteges, that quite often Nothing Happens in their films. Sometimes this happens because the director can't write. Reichardt can write, though she chooses to write minimally. There is very little plot in her films. Mostly, there is observation. We the audience merely observe the characters of a Reichardt film, living their lives. There really isn't much story, and almost no plot at all.

What she is showing us, over and over in every film, is how hard it is for folks to live in places like Montana, where it is freezing cold, and where the small towns look nearly abandoned, and where the landscape of vast prairies and enormous mountain ranges absolutely overwhelms the human spirit.

The Nature of these places is too powerful to be lived in with any degree of success.....

For those who are Spiritual, that is.

The Down-To-Earth, the Pragmatic and the Hardy might find a place for themselves in the frozen and barren wastelands of Montana, but those with a longing of Spirit will not. They will only feel that longing amplified. It's not the small-townness, which can be found in any American state. It is rather the remoteness, and the relentless power of nature. It seems a very depressing place.

That's what her movies are about. I wouldn't live in Montana if you paid me a million bucks, but her protagonists are stuck there. In "Certain Women", the film is split into three stories, told in three vignettes that are supposed to overlap but really do not.

Laura Dern is a lawyer in a fairly big town. A client of hers goes postal after losing a worker's comp lawsuit. She becomes a hostage in his standoff with the police.

Michelle Phillips is a Type A woman, married to slacker James LeGros (who is great at playing slackers, haha). She really doesn't like living in the middle of nowhere, but is trying to build her dreamhouse there, out of local sandstone. Now really, there is much less happening than what I have written implies. I mean, the Sandstone Aspect is the biggest deal of the Michelle Williams part of the movie. Of all the Nothing Happens threads, this second part of the film is the Nothing Happeningest.

The best of the three stories is the last one, featuring Kristen Stewart as a lawyer from what passes for a city in Montana. As part of her job, she has to drive four hours across dangerous highways covered in black ice, to teach something called "School Law", so that local schoolteachers in the boondocks will know the protocols of things like expelling a student.

Who would make a movie with such a storyline?

Good Lord, you'all.

But because Kelly Reichardt is such a talented filmmaker, she can pull it off. She can present to you the most tedious things, but because she is so good with photography, color and pacing, and so adept with her actors, she can keep you engaged, when - with any lesser  filmmaker - you'd be saying "get me outta here".

So anyhow, Kristen Stewart is driving for hours to teach a ridiculous night class to a handful of local schoolteachers in the boondocks. And a local girl happens to be driving down the the center of town one night, and she sees what is going on. And because a night class is a big deal in this town, she decides to sit in, though she is not part of the program.

She is a Native American girl who is isolated even beyond all the other characters in the movie. She works on a horse ranch, away from even the small town, and the horses and the snowy mountains are all she has for company. So when she sits in on this night class, and meets the lawyer Kristen Stewart, her life takes an exciting jump. She finally has a friend.

It is the performance of this actress, Lily Gladstone, that steals the movie and keeps it from falling into the Art House abyss. Her portrayal of a solitary yet hopeful young Indian woman, cheerful and humble yet right on the verge of a breakdown, is so close to what the reality must be for such a person in those circumstances that it is unnerving to watch. One lengthy scene is particularly heartbreaking, as she drives in her truck away from a meeting with Stewart. I will tell you no more than that. It is a display of restrained hopelessness that is as emotionally devastating as anything you will ever see. She should get an Oscar nomination for her portrayal, and she is by far the best thing about "Certain Women".

I give the movie a reluctant Thumbs Up. It's good, but only if you are a Kelly Rechardt fan, and even then she can do much better than this. But see it mainly for the Kristen Stewart/Lily Goldstone thread, and......

Don't move to Montana.

That seems to be the real message.

See you in the morn.   xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

A Tremendous Film Called "Rotation" + Let's Do It!

Tonight's movie was "Rotation" (1949), a German film by a director named Wolfgang Staudte. I had never heard of this director until I read about him in one of my current books, "The Devil's Chessboard", which is about the rise of Allen Dulles and the CIA as major forces in American government. As the Dulles story really gets going in World War Two, when he worked as a spymaster in Switzerland, and was responsible for bringing Nazis into the United States after the war, there is a brief mention in the book of something that took place on the other side. In the sector of what became East Germany, controlled by the Soviet Union, there came about a type of cinema called "Trummerfilm", which translates as "Rubble Film". Apparently, from what little I have read since seeing the reference in the book, the making of "Trummerfilms" was a way for the Russians to use now-captive East German filmmakers to promote the idea of German guilt for the war. Russia had suffered more than any other country, and - despite how the Soviet Union eventually turned out for the worse - they wanted to use the filmmakers at that time to show how Germany was to blame to the unequaled catastrophe.

In the book, it is explained that director Wolfgang Staudte had made "compromises" to enable himself to continue working in Germany after the Nazis took over. Since I had never heard of Staudte, I don't know what those compromises entailed. Perhaps he agreed to make propaganda films, I don't know.

One thing is for sure, however. There is no way he could have made "Rotation" during the Nazi era.

And in fact, even though he made it as a "Trummerfilm" during the immediate Soviet post-war directive to produce such films, it is important to note that even the Soviets banned the film upon seeing the final cut, because it was too Pacifist for them. Apparently they wanted movies that would extent no grace, even to the German people, which is exactly how this story is told, by way of a young couple who meet in 1924, twenty years before the annihilation of the Reich.

They soon marry and have a baby, but by that time the world is in the grip of the Depression, and the German economy is in dire straits. Hitler is gaining power by the early 30s, by promising to restore the economy through National strength. The husband of the family is non-political and wants nothing to do with the Nazis, but he is forced to join the party to keep his job. His wife's brother is a rebel, a Communist who had fled to Prague to escape arrest.

Slowly the noose tightens around the family. The couple's son, born in happier times, is now 18 years old and has been a member of Hitler Youth for several years. One of the widely remembered precepts of Hitler Youth is that they were instructed to report anyone whom they witnessed denouncing the Party or the Fuhrer. In the movie, this happens between Father and brainwashed Son.

That is all the plot I am gonna give you, to avoid too many spoilers.

I don't know the history of Wolfgang Staudte's career as a filmmaker, and therefore I don't know the extent of his artistic compromise that allowed him to keep working after Hitler took over. It could be similar to other artists such as the legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan, who joined the Party out of being given an ultimatum. He only wanted to conduct and make music, but has since been branded by some as a Nazi collaborator, which is not true.

I think the same is true of Wolfgang Staudte. He may have "compromised" - whatever that means in his case - just so he could continue working. It doesn't make his compromise good or bad, but keep in mind that he was an artist and not a war monger. If you ever want to know why I write a lot about the Nazis, it is because they were quite literally the closest representatives to The Devil that have ever been seen on the Earth. And they were in power only 75 years ago. That's just a couple of Grannys ago.

So that's why I write about them, and also because American Monsters like Allen Dulles collaborated with them. These were the true monsters, not any artist that may have been forced to "collaborate or die".

Very simply, then : "Rotation" by Wolfgang Staudte is one of the greatest anti-war films ever made, and in fact, you will not find a more pacifist message in a WW2 picture, nor will you find a message as succinct and skillfully delivered as in this film. In my mind, Staudte goes down as a great filmmaker just for "Rotation" alone. In it's telling, we see that not all Germans were in support of evil. Some knew what they were looking at.

The term of "Trummerfilm" (Rubble Film) is quite accurate, because Staudte uses stock footage to show you exactly what a city looks like when it has been bombed into the Stone Age. In that regard, he gave the Soviets the Rubble Film they wanted, to show the result of the war and the German guilt. But he also delivered a pacifist message against all war, for any reason, and against propaganda, that resonates down to this day.

I think "Rotation" is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. There are so many, of course, so many "greatest films". But this one was filmed in the aftermath of the worst war in world history, on location in the country that was responsible for that war, and it was directed by a filmmaker who felt some guilt for his country, and so he released an artistic torrent against all war in a tour-de-force of movie making.

"Rotation" should be more well known, I think. I am a big movie fan, I know lots of movies and yet I had never heard of it until I read "The Devil's Chessboard".

So I will give it the highest possible recommendation here : Two Gigantic Thumbs Up.

It's the Real Deal, of Real Life. One of the greatest films ever made.  ////

Elizabeth, if you are reading I hope you had a nice day. I saw a couple of posts, one about " Happy New Year from my wife and I", and another about "making 2018 our year".

I agree to both of those proposals!

So let's do it.  :):)

I Love You and will see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Libeled Lady"

Tonight's movie was "Libeled Lady" (1936), starring Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy. Now how's that for a great cast? That is about as top-notch a group of 1930s Screwball Comedians as has ever been assembled, and not only that, but four of the great actors of the Golden Era, period. Now, if you remember a movie I reviewed about two weeks ago called "Easy To Wed" with Esther Williams, Van Johnson, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn, that was the 1946 remake of "Libeled Lady". "Easy To Wed" was good in it's own right, and the cast was also so talented that I had to see the original, so I ordered it from the Libe.

The story and script are virtually the same in both films. The editor of a "yellow journalism" newspaper (think New York Post) is trying to portray a wealthy heiress as a homewrecker, a woman of many affairs. The truth is the opposite. She is rich and pampered, but has no men in her life except her high powered father, who decides to sue the publisher of the newspaper when it publishes yet another fraudulent story about his daughter.

In "Easy To Wed", the daughter was Esther Williams. In "Libeled Lady" (the original movie), it was Myrna Loy. Both actresses were good, but the difference overall is in the Sophistication Of The Screwballishness. Loy was the epitome of the Sophisticated 30s Actress and Comedienne, and here she is paired with her "Thin Man" partner, the great William Powell. Taking nothing away from MGM Gold Mines Esther Williams and Van Johnson, who were excellent in the remake (as was the entire cast), the standard for this type of comedy was set in the 30s by fast-talking masters of repartee, like Loy and Powell. Jean Harlow was a unique screen personality who could hold hold her own with anyone, whether one-on-one with Clark Gable or as part of an ensemble as in this movie. Add Spencer Tracy (one of the great screen actors), and even though his part is relatively smaller than the others, you have a dynamite group of performers. It's no wonder that "Libeled Lady" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. It didn't win, but it still holds up 80 years later as one of the classic screen comedies of the Screwball Era. As great as the actors can be in the modern age, you could not find a group of people nowdays with the same type of screen presence, and the combination of wit, glamour, sophistication, rapid-fire timing and the slight touch of slapstick self-deprecation necessary to pull off these kinds of films.

I am always encouraging people to watch movies from the Golden Era, and not just go to see current films at the theater or rent them on dvd. I use myself as an example when trying to explain the allure of older motion pictures, and especially those that came out of Hollywood during the era of the Studio System. It is true that the pictures are stylised (i.e shot mostly on sets, with dressed-up casts, some minor characters that are stereotypes), but it is that very style that pulls you in. Hollywood was trying to create a fantasy world as an escape, but also as an adventure, something to run towards as you sat in the theater and tried to forget the world for a couple hours. That is why they promoted the glamour and sophistication and comedic genius of the superstar actors of the era, so that the audience could feel part of that on-screen world. No matter how high-class or well dressed the characters were, there was always the sense that they were regular people just like you.

Then in the 1940s came Film Noir, where the characters had it much worse than the audience. Now, the viewers could have an adventure into the underworld of crime and treachery, while feeling sympathetic to characters who were in fatal trouble.

The point is that, in the Studio System, they had a formula - yes. They had Film Noir, or Westerns (escape to the past), or Screwball Comedies, or Biopics (stories of Great Men), and many other styles too.

But they always had great casts, and most importantly great stories and scripts.

In the 1950s, in Europe, the era of the Auteur was ushered in, the "Director as Author", where he was the sole visionary of the final onscreen result. Luckily, there were a truckload of significant filmmakers in Italy and France at the time, and some in Poland and other countries as well. Japan.

Many countries.

And the era of the Art Film began. The Art Film was all about the psyche, of both the characters and the Director. This was a tremendous era in cinema, of course, but the reason I suggest taking a trip back to the Golden Era is to see what kind of feeling the movies were trying to create in their audiences, when the art form of motion pictures was first becoming a force in American culture. In watching the movies from that era, I see something interesting. I see a reciprocal closeness between the actors onscreen and the audience. The Movie Stars in those days projected a love of the audience that is palpable. You can see it onscreen. The aim of the movies back then was to draw you in, to become part of the Movies and the Stars. It was about box-office too, naturally, but box-office wasn't the behemoth it is now, nor were the Stars regular people as they are now.

All of this is just to suggest that you give older movies a try.

I never gave them a try myself, which is why I use myself as an example. I just figured, "hey, those movies are old, and in black and white, and they don't look like movies from today".

That was when I was in my 20s and halfway through my 30s.

But then, living with my Mom, who knew all the old movies, I came to appreciate the style.

And what happened, slowly but surely - kind of like with classical music - is that I got hooked on older movies, and I discovered a Treasure Trove.

And finally I began to look for great movies from all eras, from every decade, every year, with every great actor and by all the great directors, and even just the ones who are only good.

I suppose I have rambled on way past the toleration point, and about a subject I always talk about at that. But I had nothing else to write about today, and so it was a tangent worth going off on, I think.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"A Ghost Story" + Love

Tonight I did watch a movie : "A Ghost Story" (2017), starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. This was another flick I ordered from the Libe, having seen it advertised on IMDB and Amazon over the past couple of months. I knew it wasn't a horror movie, but other than that I didn't know what to expect. The dvd box has a critic's quote on the back : "Wondrous and Poignant"!

Hmmm.......definitely Poignant. And, after considering the movie on my walk this evening, I suppose it is a bit Wondrous as well.

I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, especially after the first half hour rolled by and virtually nothing happened. I was tempted to turn it off, but that temptation was only mild because there was clearly a competent movie here, and what's more - a movie with a degree of originality, a rare quality nowdays.

The problem in the first 30 to 45 minutes, is that the director David Lowery may have accidentally locked himself out of the editing room, and so was forced to show every last second of every scene that he had filmed; really long takes with little to no movement by his actors.

Or, if he was not actually locked out of his editing room, then he did it on purpose. I will just describe one scene as an example, and I choose this particular scene because, in my post-movie Googing, this scene was mentioned by several viewers.

The scene is of the Rooney Mara character eating a pie. It is depicted in real time, and while I didn't time it, I believe it lasted close to five minutes if not longer.

Okay. This took place about 30 minutes in. Had the film not had a well-executed hypnotic pace and concordant slow-panning camerawork, I would not have made it past the pie eating scene. And in fact I did wonder, just briefly, "why am I continuing to watch this"? In this case, it wasn't because the movie was bad. It actually showed all kinds of promise. It's just that literally almost nothing had happened in a half hour, and the director was trying to emulate Tarkovsky in his camerawork, but without Tarkovsky's substance of story.

I never thought seriously about turning it off, because it was clear the director was trying for something poetic, and he was pulling it off in the technical sense with great rhythmic camera movement and especially camera placement, at a distance removed somewhat from the scene, as if the viewer was standing in a corner of the room, watching unobserved.

I am not gonna tell you much about the story, because for one thing, there is barely a story to tell. This movie is more about a feeling - about isolation and loneliness and empathy, and the passage of great spans of time. It's also about loyalty and love and dedication, even while experiencing abandonment.

And all from the point of view of a ghost. The ghost is depicted in the simplest and most universally recognisable way possible : covered in a white sheet. At first you go, "wait a minute.....is this gonna be goofy"? But then as the movie progresses, you see that both the Ghost, and the director, are quite serious. Think of the human-sized Rabbit in "Donnie Darko" and you will get the idea. In fact, I'd say that "A Ghost Story" might have parallels with "Donnie Darko" in the way it touches upon the metaphysical aspects of the afterlife.

But really, it's a movie about being left behind, and waiting, waiting and waiting to be called upon once again. Waiting, because there is nothing else left to do. As a ghost, there is nothing else you can do but wait and observe.

"A Ghost Story" is not without it's problems. Ultimately for me, the main problem was not about the real-time overlong scenes, but the Usual Culprit - lack of substance in the story. Lowery was going for feel, and in that respect he hit a home run. He also scored high points for a "Donnie Darko" type of otherworldly isolation. If he had taken the time to add a few details to his script, details that would have brought the viewer more closely into the lives of the couple Affleck and Mara, which would have allowed us to understand why they were at odds, and to know what actually happened to cause the Ghost character to emerge, then he would have really had a major league movie like "Donnie Darko", a fully fleshed out story instead of a 2/3rds one.

There is one other scene that is beyond depressing and pretentious, that goes on and on like the pie-eating scene, and it takes place at a party where pretentious people are drinking and talking. An actor named Will Oldham , who was in a great Kelly Reichardt movie called "Wendy and Lucy", goes on a tirade about the futility of creative endeavor, and really of the future of human life. I thought it was one of the stupidest scenes I have ever watched in any movie, beyond pretentious and depressing, and then I thought "maybe the director intends it to be".

In the final analysis, that is why this movie is a flawed but successful experiment, rather than a Tremendous Film, which it could have been in the hands of a more experienced director and writer. David Lowery also made another film with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara called "Ain't Them Bodies Saints", which was not totally horrible but was not very good either. In fact, I don't really remember what it was about to be honest. He used slow pacing in that movie, too.

But it's not enough to try and be artful.

At the risk of hammering this point into the ground, I will say it once again :

You've got to write a story, a full story. It's a cop-out to leave things open to the interpretation of the audience. When you do that, it's like you are telling them, "you write the story for me".

And it's really too bad, because with "A Ghost Story" - which I still give a Thumbs Up - the guy could have made a hypnotic classic. If only he'd made the effort to write a complete script.

Still, give it a view, if you have the inclination. It's quite original in it's own way.  ////

The rest of my day was just chillin', reading and playing a little guitar. And walking down to the Libe and store. I'm home until Friday.

Elizabeth, I hope your day was good. You are probably just chilling as well. The day after Christmas is always low key. I saw your post about your friend Nico's proximity to the fire. I assume it was the Thomas fire. I know he is one of your long time friends from way back, maybe even from your band days. I did not know that he had moved to California, but wow, that is some good fortune that he escaped the fire unscathed. Thanks be to our incredible firefighters, they are the absolute best.

The weather is still fairly warm here, about 72 degrees, and thankfully without the wind.

We will head towards the New Year then, with good energy and the expectation of good things to come.

I Love You. See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

A Nice Christmas Day + Lights + "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood" + Two Considerations

Elizabeth, I hope you had a nice Christmas Day. I imagine you celebrated with your family, and once again I wish you a Merry Christmas. I went over to Pearl's for Christmas dinner, and we had a great meal and good conversation all around. We were joined by Pearl's neighbor Tommy, who is also a member of her church, and we got a call from my sister Vickie and her husband Nico, who are in Hawaii. So that was mostly my day. I saw a lot of Christmas lights on my way home, too, which always gives me a special feeling, not only because they are beautiful to look at but also because I think that the act of putting up the lights, and making the houses and the night look so pretty, are a way for people to participate in bringing some "joy to the world", so to speak, and I think that it makes people happy to look at the lights. I know it does for me. So it's a way of putting some beauty into the world, and nowdays you see people getting really creative and elaborate with the lights. I think it's a nice way to share the Christmas spirit, through colored light.

I haven't watched a movie for the past couple of days, but I did watch a great BBC Masterpiece production of a Dickens story, called "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood". I needed some Dickens for Christmas, and I had found that dvd in the library system about a week ago and had it sent to Northridge Libe, where it arrived just in time for my Christmas fix.

I've mentioned that I've been running out of fresh Dickens material, having seen every version of "A Christmas Carol" and most of his other works that have been filmed, or at least the ones that are in the library's extensive collection. "Drood" was the only one from my search that I had not seen, and it turned out to pack quite a wallop.

Now, I didn't know any of the details going in. I had never heard of this story before.

But : there is a choirmaster in a church, in London in the 1840s. So right from the start, I was hooked. A choirmaster is the main character!

Okay : so he has a prize pupil, a young lady who sings........but also plays piano.

I knew none of this going in, because I had not heard of the story.

But : the problem is that the choirmaster, though brilliant, is a creep. He's got a fix on the young lady, though she is engaged to his nephew. Now, the choirmaster has also been a mentor to the nephew, who he professes to love, and yet......he is jealous of because of the nephew's higher station in life. This is England of the Victorian era, and Dickens wrote about class differences. The nephew has been brought up in relative wealth, while his Uncle has toiled away directing a church choir. He must show deference to his somewhat spoiled younger relative, but more than that......he is secretly in love with his nephew's fiancee, the piano student.

What a plot, eh?  :)

But that's not the half of it. Not even close. Because all of a sudden an impoverished brother and sister arrive from Ceylon. They are of half English parentage. They are adopted by the priest of the parish where the choirmaster is employed. And the brother starts asking questions about a man named Edwin Drood, whom he believes to be his English father, who abandoned him and his sister as children.

Can Charles Dickens write, or what?  :)

I consider him to be the equal of Shakespeare, perhaps not in the use of language, but definitely in plot. And almost in language, too, doggonnit.

"Edwin Drood" turned out to be Dickens final novel, and it was never finished because he died while working on it. I only discovered that by Googling it after I had watched the movie. So I don't know how much of the movie was improvised by modern writers, and how much was Dickens. Wikipedia says that only the ending is unknown.

But boy could that Charles Dickens write. There are plot twists in "Edwin Drood" that come right out of the blue, and I'll say no more than that.

But for me, just to get the dvd because I was looking for previously unseen Dickens, and then to have it have that plot, and have a choirmaster and a piano student....

Well, it was just one of those things, you know. And it was one of the best BBC productions that I've seen.

I need more BBC! I'm hooked, I tell you. I have one more "George Gently" to watch, but after that, I'm gonna have to do something.

Buy more "Gently", search for more Masterpiece Theatre.......any other suggestions would be appreciated.

In closing, two grammatical details must be pointed out.

The first is that the word "Theater", when using it in an Anglo-Saxon connotation, must be spelled with the final "e" and "r" reversed, so that the word is written as "Theatre". If using it in an American context, the more familiar "Theater" is okay.

Far more important, however, is the second detail, and that is the pronunciation of both words : "Masterpiece", and "Theatre" (English spelling).

The word "Masterpiece" will only be pronounced as "Mahs-steh-peece", and "Theatre" will only be pronounced as "Thee-a-tah".

As long as we are on the same page on those two considerations, we can watch more BBC.  :)

Sound good?

Okay, see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Singing In Church On Christmas Eve

Wow, what a day. What a Christmas Eve! First we had our church service in the morning, where we sang two anthems ("Do You Hear What I Hear" & "Rejoice") and also four Christmas themed hymns from the hymnbook. Then I came home and chilled for a while - and reveled in the Rams victory and clinching of their division (gimme a quick High Five for that one.....okay thanks) - and after some last minute shopping at the produce mart and a CSUN walk, I went back to church this evening for the 7pm service. Round Two, as it were.

I picked up Pearl on the way. At 93, she made it to two services also. Not too shabby, I say.  :)

For the choir, the evening service consisted of just a single anthem ("Rejoice" by Frank Hernandez once again, listen to the Youtube version by The Birthday Party for maximum value), but we also sang five more Christmas hymns and finished up with "Feliz Navidad". Christmas music like "Angels We Have Heard On High" and "Joy To The World" is stuff you can really belt, with good vocal control of course, so I was singing full volume along with our other tenor and we sounded really good. It sure is a couple of steps up for me from three years ago, when I reluctantly joined the choir. I had potential then, but couldn't hit all the notes consistently. Now it's no problem, and it's really fun to go into a particular section of a song with a great melody, knowing you can hit all the high notes and hit them with sustain and shape.

You develop an elasticity with your voice, where you can stretch it and expand it. Elizabeth, you know what I am talking about. And you have of course been singing a lot longer than I have. And also, you were in a choir many years back, and so you know too the aspects of that type of singing.

I am at the point where I would love to try and record my voice, and also do some two or three part harmonizing with other singers on tape, just to play it back and see what it sounds like.

Your friend Anna harmonized with herself on the version of "Hallelujah" that you shared today. That was a great cover she did, and she also added an intro of rhythmic voices, almost like a calypso or doo-wop style, that was really cool, very effective. The intro set up the "song proper" in dramatic fashion.

So harmonizing with yourself is another creative way to experiment with vocal techniques.

Let's sing!  :):)

After the evening service, we had a candlelight procession out to the sidewalk on Saticoy Street. They had wheeled an upright piano out there, and our pianist led us in a few more carols for motorists passing by, and the world at large.

It was the most singing I've ever done in one day, and it was a blast.

Now what we need to do is to form a singing group.

Finally, at 10:30pm, after I was back home, I walked across the street to Our Lady Of Lourdes church for their Christmas Eve service, which I have attended for many years now. Lourdes was my Mom's church; I used to take her there from 1999 until 2005. They always have a full house on Christmas Eve, and they do a traditional Catholic liturgy, which I am not fully acquainted with but it doesn't matter.

All are welcome, as they say at all churches, or at least the ones I know.

So that was my day : three church services, lots of singing, and a short trip to see some Christmas Lights at 8pm, up in Granada Hills.

Merry Christmas, Elizabeth. I hope you are enjoying the holiday with your family and your friends.

And remember........Singing Group!

See you in the morning.  :):)

The Real Me + I Love You

I'm writing from home tonight, off work until next Friday morning. I'm feeling much better today - more on that in a moment - but I will mention very quickly that last night's blog on Elon Musk seems to be quite popular, by my pageview standards, anyway. 19 hits! That's a landslide for me. Now, because I am feeling like my normal self once again, I feel I should say that I didn't mean to pick on old Elon. I'm sure he is a nice guy and all of that, and no doubt he is brilliant as well.

That's the Regular Everyday Me talking, and I mean what I say. Regular Me strives to see the best in people, and also tries hard not to bring up unpleasant opinions, or unpopular opinions. I have disciplined myself over the years to try and Showcase What Is Good in the world, and I think that is a result of getting older, and living through the things I've lived through, and not wanting to feel angry or depressed about those things because anger and depression are horrible, poisonous feelings. I have worked hard in my life to overcome bad feelings, negative energy, inner demons, whatever you want to call the source of said feelings. I think my Mom really helped to turn me around more than anything - she was just a wonderful person - and to give myself a little bit of credit, I think I helped myself to turn around, too. God helped me to turn around, because it was He who created me the way I really am, with a happy and optimistic nature.

The Me When I Get Depressed, is actually a kind of Regressed Me, a return to the way I felt as an adolescent. I came from a troubled home, as I've mentioned. Many of us have, if not most of us. There are very few Brady Bunch Families, where the biggest problem is when one of the kids doesn't get chosen for the school play, or something along those lines. In real life, many families have domestic problems, and many families keep those problems to themselves. Or they try to, anyway.

I tried to, as a teen, and it resulted in mood swings. I won't go into detail, but one of the hardest years of my life was when I was 17. My brother and I were dealing with a very difficult situation at home, and because I was just a kid, all I could do was to "stuff it". Alternately, because I was approaching adulthood, I also felt confident enough to sometimes confront my parents about their drinking and fighting. But then, when I did that, I just felt even worse afterwards, because I had "joined in the anger" so to speak. Getting angry at my folks achieved nothing and only made me feel worse. But I had developed the "hero" or "saviour" complex that some older children acquire in dysfunctional families. At 17, I wanted to assert myself to try and "take control" of an out-of-control situation. And I couldn't take control, because I was just a high school kid.

I will cut to the chase here and say that God helped. God allowed time to pass, while keeping our family more or less together. There were no irrevocable splits, and though my parents did ultimately separate, we sometimes still all went to the movies together. That was because of me, when I was in my 30s. I wanted everybody to be friends, and family, and it pretty much worked out that way.

That part was kind of awesome. I never gave up on my parents, and they never gave up on me. Mom got me into God, helped me to turn my life around after I got my ass kicked in 1989. Dad was Dad, sometimes ornery, sometimes less so, but he was also the most intelligent man I ever knew, and one of the funniest. Dad did a lot in his life, and he could still drink a six-pack when he was 86 years old. He was physically tougher than me, in that way for sure. And he was a good man.

But I think I am psychically tougher then either of my parents. In fact, I know I am. And it is because of them that I am so tough in that way. I can withstand a ton of stuff, and keep going (which is why I say to my fellow 1989 people that "you have no idea what I've been through").

But sometimes, I have succumbed to depression. As noted yesterday, that is most decidedly Not The Real Me. What it is, is a regression to the less-disciplined, less evolved moods of my younger years, when I would lash out about stuff,

Also as noted, there are only two things that cause occasional depression in me nowdays. One is, as reported, that I am nearing 60 and am still single. And the other is this 1989 Thing, which I have actually begun to try to do something about by writing FOIA letters to the CIA. I am gonna continue on that course, because I can no longer "stuff down" my experience, which forever changed my life.

The "60 and single" thing has been hard, too. Being shy sucks. But you know what? There is something good about it too. God made me this way, and because I am this way I don't wanna meet a lot of women and go on a bunch of dates and play that game. All I have ever wanted was to be with one woman.

Just one.

I have always wanted to have someone in my life to really connect with, in all ways, heart and mind and soul.

I am really just a Soul who is walking around here on Earth in a body, and I am looking for just such another Soul. Someone who has one foot here on Earth, and one foot in the Spirit World, and who feels at home in both places. Some one who just knows.....

I started writing this blog here on Blogger in 2013 because of you, Elizabeth.

I know that things have tailed off, communication-wise. Since you moved to Chicago, I haven't addressed the blogs to you as I used to, but that was only because the means of communication had seemed to tail off. You are just starting out on your own, and you have a lot of things to focus on, and it isn't easy. And on the other hand, it's also a very exciting time of life. In many respects, in your 20s there is never a dull moment. So I changed the blog just a bit, and started writing about anything I could think of, which has been mostly movie reviews.

Today I saw your post, though, and it made me feel a whole lot better. The post was via one of your band guys, and it said "I have found my better half".

I don't know if that was meant for me, but because the post was from Los Angeles, and because we have an intuitive form of communication and my intuition is razor sharp, I am pretty sure it was meant for me.

And I thank you, because you made my day.  :)

I love you, you know.

Maybe one day we will have regular communication, but the most important part is what I just said above.

I Love You, Elizabeth. If you feel the same way about me, then that makes me so very happy.  :)

Thank you. :):)

Tomorrow morning we have a Christmas program in church, and then we have another service in the evening at 7pm, so a lot of singing will be happening.

And I feel very happy to sing.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

See you in the morning.

I Don't Believe In Elon Musk

Sorry about all the downer posts. Writing about how I'm feeling is a double-edged sword, because on the one hand it's better for me to write about it and get it out of my system instead of bottling it up, but on the other hand it is a bummer to read about. So, apologies again to my anonymous friends in Poland and Equador. One thing that would be great would be if even one person who has ever read this blog would leave a comment, or in some way acknowledge that they've read it.

Today was okay, not great/not horrible. I'm just trying to get through the remainder of the year and then we'll see what happens in 2018. Normally I have always looked forward to the Christmas season, one of my favorite times of the year, but this year I will be glad when it is over.

All of this is so Not Me. I am usually the biggest cheerleader for Christmas, for all things joyous, for life itself, and I will be again. It's just been a rough few days, but the bad feeling will pass.

I heard about the lights in the sky this evening over Southern California, but I didn't see them. I wish I had, because the pictures on FB, and the video footage, look pretty spectacular.

However.......(there's that word again, always portending doom, haha)......now where was I?

Oh yeah:  However! You may be surprised to find out that I am not a SpaceX fan.

Sounds like another curmudgeonly opinion from Yours Truly, right?

Well, even if it sounds like it, it's not. For one thing, I am not a curmudgeon.

I am the opposite.

But for another more appropriate thing, appropriate to the situation, I grew up during the heyday of NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The feats of NASA are the stuff of legend (even though I personally believe that technology exists that makes rocket propulsion obsolete).

But NASA was the Real Deal, a national program that was promoted all across the country with pride. Every young boy and probably a few young girls knew the names of all the astronauts. They were real heroes, beginning with the Mercury program, and then the Gemini which got us ready for the Moon, and then Apollo, which took us there. It was a National effort, a monumental experience shared by the whole country, and - when we got to the Moon - it was shared by the whole world.

But time causes forgetfulness, and it also causes great programs to be run down. Money is an issue, and politics. Politicians should be run into the ground, but that's another story.

But another group of people whom should be run into the ground are phony baloney entrepreneurs and copycats, and those who publicize them, and those who run false operations.

I am not a curmudgeon, but I am a student of many things.

And I have an intuition that I believe to be unsurpassed.

Sounds arrogant, I know, but you'd have to be me to understand, and anyway, in this case I am sure a lot of people in the Space Industry would understand, and especially at NASA.

And so, I ask the question, "Who the hell is Elon Musk"?

Seriously. Who is this guy?

Nobody had ever heard of him until about five years ago. Then he, as the press would have it, "created" the Tesla automobile. No doubt a great car, from what I've heard.

But seriously, had you ever heard of this guy before that?

And then suddenly, a new car is created. A fantastic car, though expensive. And you never hear much about the company that makes the car, but only about one guy, the founder, Elon Musk.

A guy you had never heard of before.

That is called a Cult Of Personality, created by the press.

And then, after he created the Tesla, he was tunneling under our cities, intent on creating great transcontinental subways and undersea tunnels. And again, you never heard in the press about the company, or if anything had been accomplished.

The only thing that was written about was Elon Musk, a guy nobody had ever heard of previously, with a weird name that sounds good in the media.

And now, after the Tesla (indeed a good car by all accounts), and the tunneling (of which no evidence exists), we are now being delivered into media-induced fascination with SpaceX. Great name, right?

They shoot off occasional rockets (which are an outdated technology), and because of the intense promotion, and because most importantly of The Cult Of Elon Musk ( a one man Cult Of Personality), we are supposed to believe that he is gonna send us to Mars or what ever the latest promotion is.

I think today the promotion was that he is gonna send a Tesla to Mars.

I know - I am well aware! - that I can come off as a wet blanket when I comment about things like this, in the way that I comment about them. It's like your Dad saying, "back in my day"......! Or, "get off my lawn", haha.

I know that it sounds like a curmudgeon to bad mouth SpaceX.

But actually, it's anything but that.

As I said, I was born into the Space Age of NASA, and I have seen the Real Deal, even if rocket technology is now outdated, though still used for "public performances".

More important, as it concerns SpaceX, is my intuition.

I am certain that my intuition is reliable. It has been my greatest asset in navigating a sometimes difficult life. And in my adult life I have studied many military programs closely. All space programs fall under military jurisdiction, just for your information.

And that is why I don't believe in SpaceX as an alternative to NASA. It is a private company, which should tell you something right off the bat. Hmmm, shall we privatize space, anybody?

And shall we corporatize it?

We have a good frontman, a guy with a photogenic name. All we've gotta do is keep promoting him, that he is a supreme genius. The people of the world, or at least in America, will fall in line.....

Except me, your local skeptic. I am not under the thrall of Elon Musk, whoever he is and whatever he represents. All I know is that he is a guy that nobody had ever heard of until perhaps five years ago. He's not like Bill Gates, whom we knew about from the ground up, from when he started Microsoft, and who took years and years to become who he has become.

Elon Musk may be a computer genius, and he may have "invented" a nice car, but I think now he is a frontman for a private space company that wants to corporatize outer space, and other planets.

Thank goodness he doesn't have the means to do so, because his technology doesn't compare to NASA, and even their tech is outdated by what actually exists within Black Projects in this country.

I can always smell a publicity stunt or otherwise deceptive story from a mile away, and I am sorry but I don't believe in Elon Musk. It's just my intuition.

Back tomorrow. I'll be writing from home.

Trying To Stay Above Water

Writing just to "say hey". I wish I could say that today was better than yesterday. The good news is that it wasn't worse, and I did watch a funny movie tonight, "A Slight Case Of Murder" (1938) starring Edward G. Robinson. Great title, eh? Especially for a comedy. I'm not gonna review the movie, on account of I'm feeling kind of wiped out. Depression sucks. Boy does it ever.

There are two conditions I would never wish on anyone - one is dementia, which has gotta be one of the very worst things that can happen to a person, and the other one is depression, where you feel like you are trapped and falling down a black hole and you can't reverse it. You can only wait for it to reverse itself, and in my case that usually takes a few days.

It is important to point out - and I have done so before - that I do not have any type of clinical depression. I don't have a chemical imbalance, and my depression is not chronic. Well, I guess it is in a sense, because it is related entirely to long term loneliness, and to long term frustration over a serious and unresolved issue. So in that sense, it is chronic, because I have been alone for such a long time and I have been dealing with this Issue for such a long time. In these circumstances, a person is bound to get depressed from time to time. But my state-of-mind throughout the years has been pretty well balanced, I must say. Otherwise I would not have been able to pursue the hobbies I enjoy (hiking, photography, reading, etc) and I would certainly not have been able to work as a caregiver. I would not have had the necessary focus and energy that are required. Depression saps you of focus and energy, and in those who are truly "chronically depressed" (likely a bullshit medical term for something the medical profession doesn't understand), the state of depression can pop up unbidden, at any time, because it has to do, at least in part, with a hormonal/chemical imbalance.

My depression, as reported many times before, just has to do very simply with getting older and still being single, and feeling alone, and worrying that it will always be this way.

Most days I can just find enough interesting things to read, or I can go through my work routine and "get through the day" with a job well done, but it isn't getting any easier as I approach 60.

I am getting to the point where I don't even look forward to concerts that much anymore, because I will be going by myself, and I have no one to share the experience with, and so it just seems a chore.

I don't want things to be this way. I have known the Vibrance Of Life, and I want to feel it again. But it's not gonna happen for me until I have someone to share my life with. Being alone sucks.

And on top of that, to be dealing with this monumental and nearly incomprehensible 1989 situation - once again all alone - just compounds things. It makes me feel like "I've just got me", but the problem with that feeling is that there is no reservoir to draw from. We are each other's reservoirs; No Man Is An Island, and when a person feels isolated long-term, like for thirty years, his own personal reservoir of resilience runs dry.

I believe - and actually I am certain - that what happened to me in 1989 was a unique event in American history, and that is why it seemingly cannot be talked about. I understand that it freaks people out, and I did not mean to malign Lillian in my blog from last night. I was present and witnessed what happened to her at Northridge Hospital and also at the Wilbur Wash. I know it hasn't been easy for her either, and she may have had to deal with other factors that have prompted her silence all of these years. But still, there is no doubt whatsoever that she knows more than I do about what happened and why. And so, she has not had to deal with the incredible frustration of not knowing, as I have.

Lillian is married now, and "living her life" per se, and has moved forward in some fashion and more power to her in that regard.

But I have not been so lucky as to be able to move forward, because what happened to me has not only not been talked about or discussed - it has never even been acknowledged.

Think about it : somebody like Travis Walton, the famous UFO abduction guy? He is well known, everybody knows his story, which is incredibly weird and scary. It's been talked about, there was a book and a movie. And there are stories even weirder than Travis Walton's, believe it or not. I know because I've read them. Try reading about the Skinwalker Ranch, for example.

But the thing is that.....all of those things can be talked about, and written about, until everyone knows about them.

But for some strange reason, What Happened In Northridge in September 1989 cannot even be acknowledged, let alone talked about or discussed.

When my memory came back in 1994/95, and I mentioned my first confused stirrings to Lillian, it's like she snapped and became a different person. That alerted me to how serious the situation was. Lillian knew more than I did. For a time, it was understood by her and others around me that I had total amnesia, and so the problem of my knowledge was at bay.

But then I remembered, and everything changed, and I became a Pariah. It's a form of Blaming The Victim. "He remembered, that motherfucker, and now I am in danger".

I would say to those who felt that way : "try to imagine what it has been like to be me".

You have no idea.

Conversely, for the others, it is one thing to pretend that something never happened. Imagine a gang of people who killed somebody and got away with it. They can then proceed, slowly but surely, to pretend that the killing never happened because they never got caught; nobody was prosecuted; nobody found out who did it; and they never acknowledged the crime amongst themselves. Some in the gang might feel guilt, the major sociopaths would not, but what must it be like to try to live your life, knowing you are on the fucked-up criminal end of the situation, and that you have gotten off Scott Fucking Free? What must that be like for a person with a conscience?

As hard as it has been for me, I would rather be me than to be a person on the other side of the secret.

Their day is coming, the day when they will have to step up to the plate and tell the truth.

The government of America will one day have to tell the truth as well. That day is coming, too.

Regardless of what happens to me, or how my life turns out, or how I feel......

That day is coming.

Sorry

I'm back......well, sort of. Actually I am pretty depressed. I thought that I probably shouldn't write a blog again tonight, because I didn't want it to be a bunch of "poor me" whining, but then I thought that I didn't want my two readers, in Poland and Equador respectively, to wonder what happened to me; three days in a row with no blog and they may have thought I was toast.

I guess I have been hovering on the edge of depression for a long time, though a lot of factors keep me on the Good Side of the equation. For instance, I once remarked to my niece that the mental and physical balances of one's day can determine one's mood. I think I said something like, "if you have a good night's sleep, and then a nice cup of coffee in the morning, and a good breakfast, your outlook is probably gonna be good". By this I mean the physical aspect - balanced blood sugar, sufficient rest - plays into the mental aspect, i.e. you had a shitty day yesterday but "tomorrow is a new day", and because you got good rest (i.e physical restoration) and good nutrition in the morning, along with the caffeine stimulant we all love, the New Day is bound to be better than the last one.

This has always been my philosophy, that every day is a new day, and in my previous years I once came to the conclusion about myself that I had never once woke up depressed. We all have bad days, and most of us have lived through all kinds of tough times, but I was always, for most of my life, an optimistic person at heart.

I wish I could say that this was still the case, but it is not. I have my Faith, which makes me optimistic in the Long Run, but I am also worn down by realistic experience.

And my realistic experience for the past three decades is that I have basically been alone. I had my parents for a while, and there is no doubt whatsoever that I have been fortunate and blessed in my life in so many ways, but in analysing the social aspect of my life, I have mostly been alone. I am not a loner by nature, just to clear that up, and really I am a friendly person, good conversationalist (I think) and I try to be a good listener, and all those things that makes a person "good company". But I also have the curse of shyness, and believe me, it is a curse, because it makes a person almost incapable of introducing himself or starting a conversation. For a shy person like me, if a person breaks the ice, I have no problem joining in, but to initiate conversation?........almost impossible.

Now, I am far from the shyest person who ever lived, and I did have my share of friends throughout my life. But my shyness has stayed with me throughout my life nonetheless. For others who are naturally outgoing and gregarious, it might be impossible to understand what it feels like to be inside yourself. The shy person wants to converse, wants to be part of things, but cannot break the ice in person, and so feels trapped in a sense. Everything they wish to say, to contribute, is retained and stuffed down inside.

And often, the shy person watches from the sidelines as the glib and facile, gregarious personalities get all the attention. People who on the surface appear to be charming, but whom in reality have nothing to say. This was my experience in high school. I was what you would call a "ghost".

All this is a way of saying that my adolescence, like the adolescence of many, was difficult, because I was introverted. Not extremely introverted, but to a fair degree.

My 20s were different. The decade of the 1980s was very social for me, only within my own realm of friends, but the friendships were many, and seemingly strong, and in those years I was in a relationship. For almost ten years I was in the only relationship of my life. I felt like myself then, like the Real Me. I felt integrated with the world.

But then came 1989, and the events of that year, events I would not even begin to remember until 1993.

And when my memory finally developed, many many years later, I came to the conclusion that all those friends I thought I had, actually did not give a flying fuck about me.

Because many of them participated in trying to throw my life into the trash.

I would suggest a book about a person I have an affinity with, a young lady named Sylvia Likens. She died in 1965 (I think), but when I read a book about her in the early 90s, I felt an affinity. She was just a nice person whose life was thrown into the trash can by some very evil people.

And while my experience was not as horrible as hers, it easily could have been, because I was ganged up upon by neighborhood people just as she was. She was held prisoner by a next door neighbor named Gertrude Baniszewsky, and I was held prisoner by a next door neighbor named Jared Rappaport.

Sylvia was a teenager when this happened to her, and she died, was tortured to death.

I was 29 when Mr. Rappaport kidnapped me, by hijacking me with a gun, and I was tortured, too. But because there was government involvement in my situation, I survived, just barely.

And when I came out of all of this trouble and turmoil in the late 1990s, with the help of my parents, I discovered that the people I had thought were my friends were, in several cases, the people who had participated in the horrible events of 1989, and had acted against me.

It's a long, long story, and I've written a book about it, but I felt like my life was over at the time. I thought that my neighborhood, and my supposed friends, were out to kill me.

No joke, but 100% truth.

As the years passed, I tried to contact the lady with whom I had had a relationship during those years.

I tried, simply by sending Christmas cards and a few emails. I also made an ill-fated attempt at contact in 1995, when I was high on drugs, which ended ignominously.

That was really stupid of me, but the point is that - in looking back twenty years - that nobody - not a single person - was willing to help me in my quest to understand what had happened to me.

Not a single person.

Not any one of my so-called friends, and not the lady with whom I had a ten year relationship.

Instead, I was called names because of the things I was mentioning, the subjects I was talking about. I was told that I was hallucinating. I was told that I was crazy. I was told that none of what I was saying was real. I was told, basically, by several people, that what I was talking about was the result of drug use.

But the years went by. Almost two more decades have gone by. This has been a shitload of time, and it has been one motherfucker of an ordeal. All of those so-called people who once pretended to be my friends have no idea what an ordeal it has been for me.

Nor does the lady with whom I had a ten year relationship in the 1980s.

She has ignored all of this, and has skated on her merry way, while I have twisted in the wind, as if my life didn't matter.

I have been twisting in the wind for 28 years. Try it sometime and see how it feels.

And while I have without doubt had many good times in the interim, it goes without saying that my life has been Profoundly Affected by the events of those years past.

Profoundly Affected. Which is why I identify with Sylvia Likens.

I am not on the verge of a breakdown, so don't worry. But I am on the edge of depression, and I guess that simple things can push me over the edge.

I guess I just wish that I had somebody who really cares about me and wants to be with me. I see that other people have someone in their lives, and I wish I did too. It's that simple.

I've been by myself for almost thirty years, and I am strong, and I know that life is not easy, but I have also tried so very hard to resolve things - to communicate - and no one, not a single person, has wanted to communicate with me.

Not a single person. Not one.

It hasn't been easy, at all.

"Two Weeks In Another Town" + 1960s Campiness in Films + Rams

The singing in church was good this morning, and afterward during rehearsal too. We are getting into the Christmas music now, which I love to sing and I imagine you do too. Who doesn't love to sing Christmas carols & hymns?  :)

Tonight's movie was called "Two Weeks In Another Town".

Okay, movie fans.......um, you know how I usually watch some pretty good movies and then write about them to the best or worst of my ability? Okay, you do know about that. I knew you did. And you also know that nobody is perfect, right? That includes me, naturally, and while I try to be "near perfect" in the Cinematic Sense, and only watch movies of reasonable quality at the very least, and never watch any that really suck, tonight I am sorry to report that I stumbled a little bit.

I ordered "Two Weeks" because I had done a Cyd Charisse search in the library database after seeing her in a recent Esther Williams movie. I've seen her famous musicals like "Brigadoon", and "The Band Wagon", and she was featured just last week in "It's Always Fair Weather". So I was just looking for any other movies she made that the library system might have, and this one turned up : "Two Weeks In Another Town", the town being Rome. It turns out that Cyd Charisse, despite third billing, hasn't nearly as much screen time as Kirk Douglas and Edward G. Robinson, the other two top billed stars. But the lack of Cyd screen time isn't the problem.

The problem is Camp, or rather.....Camp. Gotta use italics in this case. What do you think of Campy Movies, where things are Deliberately Outrageous and More Than A Tad Flamboyant?

I am not a huge fan of Camp myself. I like farce comedy better, or satire, or anything a bit more sophisticated or subtle. Camp is obvious and over-the-top, and thus it describes this movie pretty well.

Kirk Douglas (whose name must be pronounced with the appropriate clenched jaw, between-the-teeth intensity and voice cracking screechiness, like " Kiirkk! Duglesss"!) stars as a washed-up former star who has wound up living in a sanatarium for three years after a near fatal drunk driving accident. His relationships to his gold-digging man-eating wife (Charisse) and his mentor and favorite director Edward G., have been fraught with frustration. His ego has been crushed by both of these more powerful personalities, and he has wound up in a country-club psych ward for the wealthy.

His doctors, though, think him rehabilitated after three years. Nowdays it would be three weeks. Whoever heard of three years straight in a rehab center? But in the old days, when they were called Sanitariums, like the infamous Hotel California in Camarillo, many patients did indeed remain in custody for years.

So anyway, Kirk Douglas is deemed healthy by his doctors, and he simultaneously gets a phone call from Robinson, his former directorial mentor. Robinson has a job waiting for him in Rome! But when he gets there, it turns out not to be an acting job, but a role as head of the sound dubbing staff, a technical job.

Good grief, people. I can't believe I am going into such detail. It's Sunday night and I am tired.

But I do go into detail because it could have been a very good movie, if Director Vincente Minnelli hadn't turned it into a romp.

Basically, to cut to the chase, it's a movie about Movie People, and more specifically Movie People as they existed in the short-lived but very exciting culture of Rome in the early 1960s, when the Jet Set brought fresh hipness to the attention of the news media and made Rome the place to be for a short while : the city of Fellini and Sophia Loren. In the early 60s, cultural change moved very fast. I have remarked how, in the 1960s, each year seemed like five years because so much happened, on all fronts, from societal fronts, to pop culture, to science, to politics. There never has been a decade like the 1960s.

And so Rome, and Italy, were very hip to the cogniscenti for a short while in the early 1960s. That's what this film is about - actors driven crazy by the movie business, adultery and misogyny (a staple of the biz as we see today), and Diva behavior amongst tempermental actresses.

It's as if Movie People - and the people who surround them, the business people - think that the whole world revolves around them. And they react accordingly, due to the pressure involved.

The Kirk Douglas character tries to break out of this prison of egotism, but the problem for me, as your reviewer, is that it took everything I had as a Movie Fan, to make it through this flick.

It wasn't a terrible movie. I've seen worse every time I go to Redbox. It's just that it was so much different in style from what I am used to from Old Hollywood. I suppose I should've seen the 1962 release date as a warning sign. When Hollywood entered The 60s, in the pop culture sense, the movies often became fiascos. Maybe drugs and alcohol were a problem, I dunno. Tonight's movie was professionally made, but it depicts a somewhat reckless culture that was developing in movies which resulted in what was, in my opinion, the worst decade for cinema since it's creation.

The 1960s was not a great decade for movies overall, especially when compared to the previous thirty years. This is not to say that there aren't a lot of great films from the 60s, which there are, but only to say that a Camp style began to be exhibited in many genres, including things like "jokey spy movies", even Campy Westerns. It is like scripts were written to make a joke of things, when previously the job of movies was to tell stories and present great art.

"Two Weeks In Another Town" isn't horrible, it has it's moments, and it also has the fun that was early 60s Rome and that was European Culture in general, in the pre-JFK assassination and pre-Vietnam innocence that typified that era.

Unfortunately, it also has the Ham Acting and scriptural and directorial laziness and sloppiness, and Movie Business Self Indulgence of that era, and that's why I have to give it two Big Thumbs Down.

I barely made it through, and I did so only because of the star power and (over) acting of Messers Douglas, Robinson and Ms. Charisse, who would all normally be great in a normal movie.

Which this wasn't.  :)

But hey, I'm probably still batting 99% in my other recommendations, so go check out a Submarine Movie or a Western, or "The 3 Penny Opera" or a Louise Brooks or Buster Keaton silent film.

Or read a book, maybe about Jim Jones. Man, what a koo-koo bird. He's one of the all-time champs.

And how 'bout them Rams? That was an Old Fashioned one they put on the Seahawks this afternoon.

Well anyway......see you in the morn.  :):)  Super tired.......my goodness.

"The 3 Penny Opera" + "Mack The Knife" + May The Winds and Fire Soon Cease

Tonight's movie was "The 3 Penny Opera" (1931) on Criterion, ordered and received from the Libe. If you have heard of the title, you may also have seen it written as "The Threepenny Opera". I am using the numerical title as shown on the dvd cover. I ordered the movie from the library system because it was directed by GW Pabst, he of the Weimar Republic era artistic movement that took place before the Nazis came in. Pabst directed "Pandora's Box", which I reviewed a week or two ago. That film was my first exposure to him, and I wanted to see more of his movies. I don't know if I'd call him part of the German Expressionist movement, but he's certainly in the general area of that style. His films - the ones I've seen - use grand sets and theater lighting - and look like plays come to life, and yet they look much larger than filmed plays. They look like real life, if real life was a stage play. The German film industry of the early 1930s, pre-Hitler, must have had studios that were near equal to those in Hollywood, in order to produce a picture of this magnitude, utilising large backlot settings.

The movie opens in a poor section of London, the Soho district. A street performer is regaling passerby with a song. It took me a moment, and then I realised : "Hey wait a minute.....he's singing "Mack The Knife". I only know that song from Bobby Darin. If you are my age, you might have heard it too. I never knew why a big pop singer like Bobby Darin would have recorded a song about a Jack The Ripper type of killer, but he did and it was a big hit. But even more than that, the lyrics were weird, like an "inside story" where You Had To Be There To Understand. The song makes reference to Lottie Lenya, a German singer who we learned about in elementary school (weird the things you remember, eh?), but anyway, in the movie, this street singer was doing "Mack The Knife", and as I recognised the song, I thought, "Oh...so this is where it comes from".

I always figured it was just a Bobby Darin song, written with eccentric lyrics by some pop hitmeister of the late 50s.

I had no idea it was written by Kurt Weill for Bertolt Brecht, or that "The 3 Penny Opera" was a Brecht play. And that is because I really didn't know much about Kurt Weill or Bertolt Brecht, other than that I've heard their names mentioned time and again throughout my life with regards to theater.

I never gave Brecht or Weill a second thought because I just figured they were Not Within My Realm Of Interest. Probably critics' favorites from another century or something.

I sought out the movie, as noted, because of the director GW Pabst, but now having seen it, I see why the team of Brecht and Weill is held in high regard. In "The 3 Penny Opera" they are making a social comment along the same lines as Dickens, only a century later and from a German perspective. Brecht is using the class warfare and poverty of London as his setting, and being a German playwright, his characters speak in German, but the message is the same as Dickens.

In London (and England) in the Victorian era, there was mass manipulation of the poor by mid-level schemers, whilst the wealthy lived in isolation and could in no way relate to the average person's predicament.

I won't go into yet another political tirade, thank goodness!, because we all know enough about that subject for now, but I will suggest that you watch "The 3 Penny Opera" by GW Pabst, in order to see what the artistic culture was like in Germany just two years before the Nazis took over. It was very left wing, and in reading on IMDB about the actors involved in this film, some of them fled the country because they saw what was coming. I point this out to show that there was a great and accomplished artistic community in what was called Weimar Germany that existed before the Nazi era, and their films show an openness and artistic inclusiveness that would be instructive to us even today. Not all Germans were Nazis, and indeed the great German artists of the 20s and early 30s had a social consciousness that we would recognize today. And, they were super talented and made some great movies.

So check out "The 3 Penny Opera", which is not an actual opera but basically a story of crime and police corruption in Victorian London, and how the poor are manipulated by a scheming middleman, who organises them into a political force for his own benefit.

I had heard of Bertolt Brecht. Now I see why he is considered a great writer.

But see the movie because of the GW Pabst directorial style, and see "Pandora's Box" too.

That's all for today. The Santana Winds are back, and we will pray they go away soon, because the Thomas Fire is still burning out of control, and will likely end up being the biggest fire in California history if the winds don't die down soon. So prayers are in order, and thanks to the firefighters.

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

Smoke From The Thomas Fire, Still Burning + Climate Change + Dickens + Jim Jones

Smoke filled the air today, from the Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties to the north of the Valley. Ironically, it happened because the wind finally stopped blowing. "Thank Heaven", I thought, because I wanted to go up to Aliso and finally get a hike in after two weeks of wind. The temp was 80 degrees. No wind. It was a perfect day. But by the time I got around to going up there, at 3pm, the sky over the Valley was filling with smoke, so much so that the Sun was turning red, and you could look right at it. You could look directly at the Sun without even squinting. It was weird. I probably shouldn't have gone on my hike with the smoke in the air. I thought about just going home instead, but I thought, "I'm already up here, and I haven't had a hike in two weeks", so I went down into Aliso for a 2.5 mile stroll. Tonight my lungs aren't too much the worse for wear. Slightly irritated, but at least I got a pic of the Sun, though as I mentioned, the color was ten times as amazing as the white balance on my little cam would allow me to capture. I was even thinking as I took the pic, "If Elizabeth was taking this photo, the colors would look exactly as I am seeing them".  :)

The other thing I was thinking was "I don't recall any fire we've ever had that burned for two weeks". California is Fire Central, and in Southern California we've had some huge ones over the years, including the Station Fire of a few years ago, but almost always they were under control and almost put out within a week or so. But this Thomas Fire is not only still going after 12 days, it's still going strong, enough to fill the Valley with smoke almost two weeks after it began. It has now burned 400 square miles, or 20 by 20 miles. The climate change has caused these extreme conditions, where we have torrential rain last Winter, followed by lush growth in the mountains, followed by a ten month dry period without a drop of rain, followed by a late Summer that didn't really begin until September and has lasted until the week before Christmas, with Santana Winds that have come along and blown for two straight weeks until today, causing record breaking fires.

Other states have different and in some cases even more extreme examples of climate change, but that's ours.

No movie tonight, but I did watch a very good BBC production of Charles Dickens' "Hard Times", a title by Dickens that I hadn't heard of until I saw this dvd at the Libe. As you know, my Dickens Addiction comes around every Christmas Season, and I am always looking for stuff I haven't seen. "Hard Times" is probably not as well known as his most famous works, but it concerns the same social themes that were Dickens' staples; the plight of the poor and working class in Victorian England, the materialism of the wealthy and privileged, the moral certainty and judgementalism of the supposedly educated. It was a bad scene, and Old Charles chronicled the whole thing. Having only known him from "A Christmas Carol" at first, I branched out in recent years and watched many productions of his works, all by the BBC of course, and now I am hooked and constantly on the lookout each Christmas for a Dickens Fix. I am probably nearing the end of the line of available material, and "Hard Times" - in the production I watched tonight - was not a full length miniseries as some of the best Beeb adaptations have been, like "David Copperfield" or (my favorite) "The Old Curiosity Shop". "Hard Times" was done all in one shot as a 100 minute teleplay. It was quite good, though I love the extended TV editions of Dickens' work the best, where they really get into the story and the characters.

I am gonna wind up hooked on the BBC! I see that in my future. For one thing, you can't beat English actors. I am already hooked on "Inspector George Gently", the cop show that takes place in the 1960s. But I am really gonna have to catch up with all of the great "Masterpiece Theatre" stuff and classical Dickens and Shakespeare shows that I have not yet seen.

That was all the news for the day. I am reading "The Road To Jonestown" by an excellent author named Jeff Guinn. In my studies over the years, I am learning about very strange people like Jim Jones, people who don't need to sleep but two or three hours a night, people of nearly superhuman energy. I am very interested in the sociopathic personality, because these are people who are able to not only "fit in" with the rest of us, we normal humans with varying degrees of empathy, but to rise to the top of the power structures of society because of the incredible physical and mental energy they possess.

Reading about Jim Jones - who I must say is one of the creepiest people I have ever read about - the thing that I notice is that he has physical and psychological energy that is far beyond the limits of 99% of other human beings. In this regard, he is like Lyndon Johnson, another guy who did not need to sleep, and who got a ton of stuff done, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

We need to study not only the history of such people, i.e. what they did, but we also need to study the spiritual or supernatural aspects they may have inside them.

People who are so Driven. Who don't need much sleep, and can get monumental tasks accomplished, goals that involve dozens or even hundreds of other people, who must be motivated by the person possessing all of this unusual energy.

People like Jim Jones are under some kind of Force, and it needs to be studied. I mean, reading about him, he makes Charles Manson look like an amateur. He is, or was, a psycho of the highest level.

And I think we really need to begin to study the psychic makeup of people like Jim Jones, who exhibit such tremendous paranoid latent anger and megalomania, and I think we need to study such people, and the energy phenomenon that possesses and drives them, before they gain enough traction to carry out their goals.

I mean, the whole world simply stood in awe of Hitler until it was too late. Many were aware of what kind of person he was, but few knew what to do. What do we do with a man of such anger and charisma?

Well, now we know. You get rid of the MF, as soon as possible. You shut him down.

Jim Jones is a classic example. No one shut him down because no one cared to examine the evidence that was right in front of them.

But we know more now, and my study, if I were a psychologist, would be to undertake a deeply psychic and physiological study of the sociopathic personality - the People Who Have No Empathy For Other Human Beings, and Who Also Seem To Possess Almost Superhuman Physical Energy.

We need to generate a major scientific study into the nature of the Sociopath, because they often are driven to attain positions of great power, and it may take the energy of many of us to bring a power-mad sociopath down.

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morn.  :):)

Great Pic With Four Horned Ram + Final Night With Buster + Tangent About TV and American Culture

Another 85 degree day, and super windy again, 20-25mph all day long. I'm sorry but I've gotta very quickly get my complaining out of the way, so I'll say that I hate wind so much that I'd take freezing cold December weather over unending wind. It's been blowing for 10 days now. Enough already. End of complaint.  :)

Elizabeth, if you are reading, that was another great picture this morning. I mean - wait a minute! - who the heck has pictures of themselves, in a field in Iceland, standing with a group of characters that includes a Four Horned Ram?

I mean, who would have such a picture but you?  :)

I love the Four Horned guy. He is looking straight at the camera, and the look in his eye, combined with his horns, give him the aura of a Mythical Beast out of an ancient epic. Or, he could be in the front row at a Metal concert. That's his look and image. But as you say, he is a nice guy in reality. Animals are so wonderful, so full of soul when you get to know them. And only you could have met such a guy as that......  :)

I also have to give props to the guy on the far left of the photo. He or she has no horns, and is a bit stubby. He probably knows that Four Horns is the main man. But he's looking right at the camera anyway, like "hey, I'm in this picture too".

I would love to hang out with those guys, and maybe even bring a dog. A dog would say, "how're you guys doin'"? And things would transpire from there. Discussions, perhaps. The dog would steer the talk toward food....

I joke, but if you look at the animals as people, so to speak, then it is fun to put personalities to them. And you can kind of see it in their eyes, too.

Well, tonight was the final night of the Buster Keaton retrospective at CSUN. Last week, we missed Buster's MGM movie "What, No Beer?" because of the campus closure due to the fires. I was hoping we'd have a marathon tonight, and see "Beer" with the already scheduled program for this evening, but we did not, and I will have to see if I can find a copy in the Library system. We did see some of Buster's late TV work, however, including the only serious role he ever played, in an episode of a dramatic show called "Rheingold Theater", which was also known as "Douglas Fairbanks Presents" as per the show's host, Fairbanks Jr. I had never heard of this show before, and for folks who have never seen television from the early 1950s, it can be a revelation because first of all, it's hard to imagine when TV was brand new, and it really wasn't all that long ago. TV and rock n'roll emerged at around the same time, in the early 1950s, just about 7 years before I was born. And the medium of TV, when it was new, was high quality and very serious where dramatic programming was concerned. I have written about the need for the brand new medium of television to show that it could compete with the established format of motion pictures, which were presented in theaters. So here was TV, in only a few homes at first, on small black and white screens....and they had to deliver.

And so they did, with very high quality dramatic programming.

I know I just went off on a tangent. The subject was Buster, but I had to get in a plug for early TV. My Dad came to Los Angeles in 1951 was involved in TV almost from it's inception. The funny thing was, Dad called it "the Boob Tube", even back then. Dad, even though he was a TV and Motion Picture executive for most of his life, was essentially a Book Person. History was his thing. Show Biz was just "what he did". But for me, being a little kid, I really picked up on it, and as a result now that I am older, I have wanted to explore and write about (at least in short occasional blogs) the movie and TV business of the old days, as I remember it from being around my Dad as a kid.

I also write about it because of the almost complete degeneration of television since then.

I'll spare you a tirade. You don't need one from me, you can see it for yourself. But for comparison, just for the heck of it, look for old shows from the early days, when drama anthologies were popular. And what you will see, beyond the new (at the time) medium of television, was the serious element in American Artistic Culture.

Television was especially serious, and very artistic. Shows in those days explored all facets of the Human Condition, and did so without resorting to anything base. Crudity and stupidity were unheard of.

The 1950s in general, were - despite the conservative reputation of that decade - a period of serious artistic reflection. This was the era of Method Acting, i.e. the study of emotion, an "inward" study. And at the same time you had the breakout of Rock 'N Roll, an outward expression if there ever was one.

So much was expressed in the 1950s, so much drama on the brand new TV system, and so much exuberance in the music of the brand new Rock 'N Roll.

But no stupidity was involved, and that is a point I want to really emphasize, because we see - since the 1950s - how both mediums have been corrupted, both television and popular music. Both have been extremely dumbed-down.

We all know the reason for that. 

But I think that, because we have restorations of old TV shows, and because we have the music, we can hold on to that era. People of my generation already know it. And we know we had crooked politicians in those days too, like LBJ, and Nixon.

But in those days, as bad as things were, with the Vietnam War, and before that WW2, at least the American Artistic Culture was holding up, holding to high standards. The highest standards. We could look to our movies, our music, and our new medium of television to bolster us. Our allies were the great artists of these mediums, the actors and musicians, the producers and directors and writers.

I know I've gone far off my original topic of the night, of Buster Keaton and our final showing at the Cinematheque. But it was Buster who got me on the tangent, because of that episode of the Douglas Fairbanks TV show that we saw tonight.

I will finish by suggesting that you should study the culture of past decades, of the 1960s and 1950s, and the 40s and 30s. Study the American Culture of those days so that you will know what America once was, before the age of Trump.

I believe we can return to a Culture Of Thought and Uplift. It was the path we were on, the path that America was on, for all my life until about 9/11 or so.

Maybe we can get back to that path.

Sorry for the tangent, Buster.

See you in the morning!  :):)  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

A Different Kind Of Day

Today was a little bit different. For one thing, it was 87 degrees, which I suppose isn't all that different because we often get warm Christmas seasons, but it just felt like a Summer day. So, I got Pearl out of the house and pushed her all over The 'Hood in her wheelchair. It was good for her to get some Sun (and vitamin D), and it was fun to look at the Fickett houses in the area that are being restored. I think I've mentioned Edward Fickett before. He was an architect who designed homes in the 1950s that are part of what is now referred to as Mid-Century Modern. When I was born, we lived in a Fickett house on Hatton Street, right around the corner from Pearl and Roy, who was her husband. Anyway, we had a nice push around the neighborhood on a Summery day, and then I got an idea.

"Hey Pearl, let's go for a drive". She wasn't up for it at first, but I guaranteed it would be fun, and that we'd be back at the house in less than an hour. I had been meaning to make this drive myself, and very soon too, and suddenly, with the nice weather, today seemed the perfect day.

So I drove us out to Buster Keaton's old house in Woodland Hills. I thought it was a great day to go, because our Keaton retrospective at CSUN will come to an end tomorrow night, and I thought it was a good opportunity to pay homage. I knew, from documentary footage, that he had lived in Woodland Hills for the last twenty or so years of his life. Once, in the 20s and early 30s, he'd had a Beverly Hills Estate to rival the biggest mansions of Hollywood, but by the mid-40s his ex-wife Natalie Talmadge had cleaned him out, and Buster relocated to more modest digs in the Valley.

And it's a cool house. It's on a regular old residential street near Victory and Fallbrook, but it looks like a little castle or maybe a chalet. It appears to be made of stone or brick, or at least has a facade of such, and is a fairly sizable ranch property but nothing huge. Maybe a little bigger than our property was when we lived at 18050 Osborne St. in Northridge.

But by all accounts, Buster was happy there. He lived in that house with his second wife for about twenty years, and he actually passed away in the house itself, in 1966. So that was my little pilgrimage to the home of Buster Keaton, with Pearl in tow, on the day before we finish his film series at CSUN.

Then this evening, when I was returning home from Pearl's at 6:30, there was a major traffic jam as I approached our main Northridge intersection of Reseda Boulevard and Nordhoff Street. Traffic was being rerouted, and lines of cars were backtracking through side streets. I made it back to my building via shortcuts, and on my little street traffic was backed up all the way down the block. So instead of going up to my apartment, I walked around the corner to see if I could find out what was up.

One block up Reseda, there were Fire Trucks and Cop Cars everywhere. Yellow police tape had Reseda blocked off for a quarter mile, from Superior to Lassen. At first I thought there had been a fire, but as I got closer to the scene, I saw a spotlight shining on the window of a second floor apartment in a building about two blocks north of mine. The cops were standing under the window, talking in loud voices to someone inside the unit.

There were a few bystanders besides me. No one knew what was going on. After a few minutes, a woman walked by and said it was a hostage situation. After she left, though, a young man astutely pointed out that, had it been a hostage situation, there would have been a much more aggressive police presence. As it was, there were maybe four police cars there, with twice as many fire trucks and paramedics.

We could hear the police officers shouting to someone upstairs, in the apartment behind the spotlit window, and it was pretty clear by that point that it was not a hostage situation, but a woman threatening to commit suicide.

I've gotta hand it to LAPD tonight, and to the Firefighters. The cops were cool, calm and collected - they were patient with this woman, and the story had a happy ending because after about an hour, the paramedics went inside the building and came out with the woman on a stretcher, sitting upright. She was okay, and they put her in the ambulance, likely to the psych ward for a 72 hour observation.

Life isn't easy, as we know, and for some it is much tougher than for others. Especially at Holiday times, things can be very difficult for people who are already feeling depressed. Someone else pointed out that Finals are going on at CSUN. The building is close to campus, maybe the woman was a student. Finals bring a lot of pressure, so there is that possibility too.

I don't know what the case was. I was just glad to see the paramedics bring the woman out in one piece, so to speak. There is a lot of pressure in the world today, and it was a relief to see it defused in this situation.

The whole thing took about an hour. I walked back home after that and watched a movie. I'd picked up a few from The Libe earlier this afternoon, and I decided on a film from 1958 called "Torpedo Run". I needed a Submarine movie after the night's proceedings. Glenn Ford starred as a Sub Captain bent on revenge against a Japanese carrier, after his wife and child are killed along with 1400 other hostages in a Japanese naval decoy operation in Tokyo Bay in WW2.

That's all the review I've got tonight because of the long day. It was a really good Submarine Movie - and I recommend that you watch an occasional Sub Movie as part of your own viewing schedule - but I didn't quite buy the one dramatic subplot about the loss of Ford's wife and kid. It seemed a bit cut-and-dried to me, too unrealistic.

I can't tell you what I am referring to, on the 4% chance that you will see "Torpedo Run", but I can tell you that - despite this one thematic flaw - it is still ranks up there with the best of the Submarine Movies That You Need To See.

And that is all I know for today.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Hooray For Alabama + "Easy To Wed" + Jim Jones + The Doberman

I usually steer clear of writing about politics, but tonight I wanna give a big High Five to the people of Alabama for electing Doug Jones over the execrable Roy Moore, of whom I think it is safe to say that most Americans are not only sick of hearing about but are also glad to see him go away. I am enthused tonight, not only because Moore lost, but because it was Alabamans who showed him the door. Alabama is often looked down upon as a backwards state (probably unfairly in most regards), and it surely has it's problems like all states do, but I must take a stand here and remind anyone who reads this that I have always argued against the type of cultural condescension that liberals, from say......certain coastal cities......engage in. I have written about my extreme displeasure with the name calling and - yes, bullying - by supposedly "sophisticated" Americans, who look down on folks from the South and automatically lump everyone into one big barrel. It's one of the main reasons I am not a liberal; simply because so-called liberals are often just as mean spirited as the people they name-call and rail against.

But tonight Alabama showed everybody. The one state that everybody expected to do the worst, instead did the best. And I feel good, because I feel like the tide is now turning. In fact, make that The Crimson Tide! I feel like, if Alabama can do it, America can do it.

America can reject Trump and all of his stooges and subordinates, and all of his racist, mysogynist backwards thinking phony-Christian candidates, with Alabama leading the charge.

So, "way to go Alabama"! You guys rule. This proves what we should have already known : that there are good people all over America, be they Democrat, Republican, Independent, non-political or whatever. And you guys in 'Bama showed us tonight that all we've gotta do to defeat these Trumpians is to show up and vote. And if we keep doing it, then soon this National Nightmare will be over. And maybe one day we won't think of each other as Red or Blue, but just Red, White and Blue, and in the best way, not in the jingoistic, fist-pumping fake-patriotic sense.

I am excited tonight, and I say hooray for Alabama.  :)

Now for tonight's movie : "Easy To Wed" (1946), starring Van Johnson and Esther Williams. You already know about Esther, but Johnson at the time was her box-office counterpart. In the late-40s, he was known as MGM's Golden Boy because of his ability to bring in the crowds. The studio then paired them together for this film, which was more of an ensemble farce than an Esther Williams Swimming Pool Spectacular. Very briefly - cause I'm tired, haha - Williams is the daughter of a wealthy tycoon. Tabloid newspapers in those days were more mainstream, and would engage in libelous "yellow journalism", concocting stories about the rich and famous in order to sell lots of copies. The paparzzi is nothing new. Anyhow, Ms. Williams is followed around in an effort to make her look like a homewrecker, a woman out to break up a marriage, when in reality she is nothing like that.

Her father winds up suing the paper after one such headline, and the story proceeds from there, in which the editor of the paper enlists a Hansome Cad (Van Johnson), a womaniser, to entrap Williams, so that her reputation will be destroyed and her Dad's lawsuit will fail.

It's not as serious as all that - the story and plot is based on an older movie from the 30s called "Libeled Lady" (with Jean Harlow) - and it is played as a fast paced farce. A pre-'Lucy' Lucille Ball steals the show as a hussy who is enlisted in the scheme to defraud Williams and her wealthy father. Keenan Wynn is also exceptional in his role as the unscrupulous newspaper editor and lawyer who sets up the whole fiasco. Wynn is interesting to see as a young man, because he was one of those actors that people of my generation only remember from television, when he was much older. And in his case, in his older TV years he always seemed dissolute, mustachioed and blowsy, a tad unkempt.

But in his early roles in motion pictures, he was razor sharp, in looks and ability, and his talent for farce was top notch. That he was matched in the film with Lucille Ball is testimony of that.

Well anyhow, another Esther Williams movie in the books, even though this one was more of a group effort.

Not much else to report. The wind has started back up. Temps are in the low 80s. I'm reading a book about the Reverend Jim Jones, of Peoples Temple and Guyana fame. Talk about a Weird Dude. What's really weird is that, according to the book, he and his followers actually did a lot of good in the early years of their church, helping poor people in Indiana and Northern California. But then, Jones' megalomania began to take hold. The author Jeff Guinn, who also wrote a book about another megalomaniac named Charles Manson, is very skillful in describing how this psychosis in Jim Jones developed over a thirty year period. But it is clear that he was born that way, and it is important to understand what makes such people tick.

Elizabeth, I saw your post - via Sarah again - about "Christmas presents that bark". It made me think of The Doberman Pinscher. Man, I wish he was all wrapped up in a box in Pearl's living room. I sure do miss that guy, but I know he is with me invisibly, so I can't complain.

Hope your day was good. See you in the morn. :):)