Did you see the Lunar Eclipse this evening? I didn't see the entire thing (and didn't know it was gonna be hours long), but I did see about 30 minutes worth and I couldn't take my eyes off it. The moon before the eclipse was as bright as I've ever seen it - I mean, wow!, it looked like a jewel in the sky. And when the shadow began to cross over it, it looked like the dark side of the moon (cue Pink Floyd). I thought it was really amazing to see. Usually the eclipses, solar or lunar, that we get here in Los Angeles aren't that great, but this one was spectacular, especially with the wispy clouds passing overhead that gave it a ghostly effect. I hope you got to see it, too. :)
I usually only mention sports in passing, here at the blog, but tonight I feel the need to comment on the terrible non-call of pass interference against the Rams which, it is said, cost the Saints a trip to the Super Bowl. As a Rams fan, I readily admit - as do we all - that pass interference was definitely committed and should have been called. But I think that even more important than that issue, was the question of why Saints coach Sean Payton did not simply run the clock down prior to that play. He had his team first-and-ten on the Rams 13 yard line with 1:58 to play. He could have run a truckload of time off the clock without ever having to have faced that game changing non-call by the refs. If he had called for Drew Brees just to take a knee for three downs, instead of trying to force passes, he could have almost run out the clock in the first place, which is what everyone was bitching about when the pass interference was not called a few plays later. But if you really look at it, Coach Sean Payton is the one who cost the Saints the Super Bowl. And even so, one blown call does not a game make. Just ask Brady, who will be going to his ninth Super Bowl, even though he benefited himself from many controversial calls over the years to get to play in so many.
So there you have it. Yeah, it was a terrible mistake by the ref, and it could have cost the Saints the game (although it may not have been a catchable ball, either). But the bottom line is that the Saints could have iced the game anyway, if Coach Sean Peyton had just run the clock out in the first place, with first down and 1:58 left. He failed to do that, and he cost his team the game. End of story.
Sorry, but I had to mention all of that because some pundits and fans are trying to bag on the Rams for getting into the Super Bowl because of that one non-call, and I wanted to point out that there was a lot more to the game than that. So there you have it, and now Rams will beat Brady in two weeks and we will come full circle since 2002, in the football scheme of things at any rate. ///
I am super tired, but I will briefly tell you about tonight's movie : "Female" (1932), starring an early Hollywood actress I had heard of but had never seen, named Ruth Chatterton. She was born in 1892, and starred in Broadway plays before making the transition to film. Boy was she a good actress, at least in this one movie, which was part of the five film dvd set of "Forbidden Hollywood Volume Two" that I recently received from Amazon (I don't like to give Bezos any publicity, but I've gotta give ya some background).
With "Female", we are talking serious Pre-Code sexual feminism. Ruth Chatterton is the CEO of the Drake Automobile Corporation, which she inherited from her late father. She is a dynamo who can multi-task with the best of them, chairing company meetings, handling endless phone calls and delegating manufacturing matters to subordinate executives, all from behind her desk. There is no doubt she is in charge of the company. The all-male board of directors fear her.
But she has another side, her "off work" side, which she indulges by choosing attractive male employees to invite to her house for dinner, on the pretense of talking about innovative plans for the company.
But when the gentlemen arrive, they discover that Miss Drake has other plans in mind.
In short, she is a man-eater. The problem for the guys is that they think, once they have spent the night with her, that she will thereafter treat them as equals. Back at work, however, she is The CEO and doesn't even want to hear from them. She only invited them to her house for one purpose. The guys all make the mistake of falling in love with her. She eats them up and shuts them down, exiling one guy to a company dealership in Hawaii because he got too mushy.
I have thought, through my viewing of pre-code films, that the 1930s were a time of early women's lib, and that it was a decade ahead of it's time in many ways. If you were to watch "Female", you would see a character that the powerful women of today would champion, and would see as not only a predecessor, but also a contemporary. In the movie, she is a Corporate Powerhouse who you could substitute for any woman in the news today, almost 90 years later.
The movie itself, as a dramatic story, is almost played as a comedy, but not quite because Chatterton really means business. I will have to look for more movies in which she stars.
The ending of the film might not be considered PC today, but I loved it, and it figured into my choice to give the film Two Big Thumbs Up. I don't wanna tell you any more, of course, but the ending arises out of a conflict between this woman's natural brilliance as a company CEO and what her role in society is considered to be. The ending is up for grabs, so see it for yourself.
Pre-Code Hollywood went to the heart of these matters, in the battle of the sexes at that time. ///
That's all I know for tonight. We had good singing in church this morning. I hope you had a great day, too. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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