The Outlaw Josey Wales

Before it becomes history or too late to say anything I just want to mention one thing and say, I love Clint Eastwood and I don't care who knows it.

I don’t know if we are diametrically opposed to each other politically. The fact that he is an avowed conservative who believes in equal rights, pro-choice, the environment and ant-war is not very far from my own slightly left of Karl Marx when the feeling’s right beliefs and who doesn’t believe in big government but believes the George Orwell quote that some of us are moreequal than others. I think we have a common ground where we can worship on.

I’m not talking about the area where he’s been making movies for the last 50 years and I’ve been watching them for the last 30, although that might help explain my feelings for him. I’m talking about the fact that we both see and acknowledge the same issue or problem and neither one of us are satisfied with what the solution has been. Clint’s idea to solve things, at least on film, has always been to go in growling, teeth bared and with a big dick swinging in the wind. Don’t believe me, look at the clip below and tell me the Magnum isn’t a substitute for a body part. My solution has always been to wait for the Revolution and give or take names like Madame Defarge did in the Dickens novel although I doubt that would be any more effective Clint’s answer.

Even so, to have been able to see The Outlaw Josey Wales at the Republican Convention take down the President of the United States just by doing some simple local diner ad hoc scene was a sight to be remembered  as only a top-notch director could have done. It was just unfortunate that it was so good and out shone everything else that when Mitt came along to state his own case, no one really cared and more than that no one really listened.

But like I said earlier I love Clint Eastwood, and if he were running for something I might look at the GOP and see if there was some way that I could find myself supporting them. But instead of The Outlaw Josey Wales running they have my governor The Outlaw Jersey Whale standing in front of that moving blue screen making me feel sea-sick, and that bitch I’ll never support.

Misfits

Nothing political that I want to get into, so a bit of fluff.

For some reason I can't seem to get enough of Misfits. It's a show that has no social morés worth talking about, played by kids that you know if you met in the street you would cross the road and with a script that doesn't make any sense about 70% of the time; but I've seen all the episodes and I love them. Maybe that says more about me than about anything else.

Hmm.....I shall have to think about it.

Philly Naked Bike Ride 2011

Waiting for the Philly Naked Bike Ride

This thing is getting bigger and bigger.

I swear, I swear, next year I'm going to ride...But that would mean I would have to buy a bike and that would seem a little silly to pay whatever they cost, just ride one day out of the year and maybe even chicken out at the last minute. That's what the guy in the picture did, well he obviously didn't chicken out but then again he has some balls on him... I don't. That is to say in the emotional, spiritual way I don't have those kind of balls and not the physical way. Although if we had to measure up, I might not have the; but I'm beginning to digress.

The point is, next year watch out Philly the old man is coming through.

Maybe.

Philadelphia Naked Bike Ride 2011

Another Piece of my Childhood Gone

I think that I been able to go to the movies by myself since I was 8 or 9. There was that brief stint during my 20's when I wouldn't be seen dead without someone by my side, but now I'm back to where I was before. If no one will go to see something with me, I'll lose no sweat off of my nuts and just go by myself. Maybe I'm that way because of the movies that I used to see.....Bond, James Bond.

You see back when I was a kid, you had to be a millionaire's son, or damn close to one, to have a video machine, so I saw all my old movies in second run theatres. I would go to the local theatre or not tell my parents and catch a bus out of town to see a double billing of something or other. Some times I would be lucky enough to see some white girl shake her naked and well shaped pink nippled titties on the screen for all of 5 seconds in a movie that I would completely forget the name of after leaving.  Other times I'd be lucky to see a Thunderball and Dr. No special and see what real adventure was about.

It wasn't just seeing the decrepit old man running about on the screen that excited me, although I think that Sean Connery was in his mid-30's when he did those movies, it was the pace of the things, the jokes that I didn't understand, the veneer of being smarter than the other guy and the music, oh yes the music.

The film scores in a Bond movie are often simple but done in such away that punctuates and dramatizes every scene,  making the film and the audience climb into that other realm, the realm of movie magic.Much of that  music was written and orchestrated by John Barry. He suffered a heart attack and died this weekend.

As Sir George Martin said about his work,  "You could always identify John's scores. They were very dramatic. They leant themselves to the film in a way that enhanced everything. He was an extraordinary musician - very, very clever.

"Without John Barry there would be no James Bond theme, because the whole essence of that was the excitement, the drama, the orchestration."

Of course John Barry did the scores for many other movies, Born Free, Out of Africa, Indecent Proposal just to name 3 out of over 100, but it will the sounds that I heard in my childhood and the soundtrack of my dreams that I will remember him for.

If you have a minute, take a listen and you'll see what I mean.

Modern Family

Alright so this is a bit of fluff and I'm a little late to the table, but I’ve noticed over the years that with the more choices on television these days I seem to watch less and less of what’s being shown. Sure there’s the stuff on HBO like True Blood and that Mormon show that I can’t remember the name of right now that I watch and then there’s Boardwalk Empire that I’m trying to warm up to, but other than those there is nothing else that I actually watch. On the networks I’ve seen maybe 20 minutes here and there of Glee and the CSI shows and fallen asleep in front of something else, that is until a few weeks ago when I found on Hulu one of the funniest shows on TV, Modern Family.

Apparently the guy who played the father from Married With Children is married to a much younger woman with a son of her own from somewhere in South America. Al, I call him Al because that was his name in the old show, has two children of his own. His daughter, a well meaning controlling shrew of a woman is married to some sort of wuss who seems to live in his own ill conceived version of "coolness" and fatherly masculinity. They have 3 children of their own, but they’re just there to move the story along.

Al also has a son who is married to another man and they have an adopted Asian girl. Of course if you’re white and gay in America the only children that you will be allowed to adopt will be a minority or a better yet a foreign minority. Let the hilarity begin. And yet in point of fact, it really does.

With this combination of characters of different people with different ages and different outlooks on life and script outlines written by the numbers you would think that the show would have been cancelled before the end of the second commercial. Except of course it wasn’t. What was presented has been show that has been well written, well paced, and reasonably well acted. The scenes are sharp, inventive and thoughtful. They make you satisfied without dumbing down to all the usual sensibilities which many shows do. Everything in this sitcom flows easily for less than thirty minutes making it seem like you just sat down in front of the TV. Well it would seem like I just sat down in front of the TV if I hadn't watched all the shows that I've seen on my laptop.

But all in all, this show is a keeper.

Merry Christmas Bed Intruder

Since it's Christmas I was going to talk about everyone being merry and jolly and everything while people in the Côte d'Ivoire were dying in the streets because of election results and that there were wars going on and poverty and disease was  still rampant elsewhere in the world. Then I was going to compare it to the original Christmas Story where people will often speak about peace coming to world because of the birth of the Christ Child while forgetting to mention the accompanying Massacre of the Innocents, the mass slaughter of first born children ordered by King Herod. The good and the bad. The yin and the yang.

After that I was going to wrap it up by saying something about, "good times," a line from a book rather than the TV show. And by the book I mean Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities where he starts off with, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," and then go on from there. It might have turned out nicely, but I think it would have been too much work to do well, or well enough before Christmas. So I'm just going to show a bunch of video pieces.

I don't know if Joan Rivers is still doing that show where she goes into the houses of rich people who got there because of some idea they had, but I remember part of a show where she went to the home of the man who invented the Snuggie or the Slanket or something. Well actually I don't remember the house or even really the show, but I do remember thinking to myself was how does someone selling a cheap polyester blanket with sleeves cut or sewn into it become a millionaire? And how does someone get silly white girls to flash there boobs in front of a home video camera and make a mint out of it, and why don't I have the ability to make money out of nothing?

Well apparently this ability seems to be happening to everyone except me.....Roll the tape please because its starts here and now....



And that becomes this.



Which moves onto....

Who is Brenda Vaccaro

Normally I don’t even care about award shows. They are all about people or things that I know nothing about and don’t want to know, or if I do, will forget about before the end of the next commercial. In fact because I love movies, the only show that I will watch is the Oscars but that’s only during the commercials of whatever else is on another channel. I used to say that the only thing that would make television worse would be to add another stupid award show, that was until someone discovered the reality show and TV and my life took a turn for the worse.

Anyway, for some reason I was going down the list of award nominations for the 2011 Golden Globes and under the category for Best Supporting actress in a TV movie there was a bunch of people listed but no Brenda Vaccaro. Brenda Vaccaro? Who’s Brenda Vaccaro you ask? Well let me tell you about Brenda Vaccaro. By the way, have I mentioned the name Brenda Vaccaro yet?



I first came across Brenda Vaccaro in Airport ’75 or maybe it was ’77, it was a while ago, and then again in the Jacqueline Susann film Once is Not Enough which she had done before the Airport movie. I had heard that she was once the older lady in Michael Douglas’s life when he was young enough to have an older lady. But Since then, nothing, Nothing that is until I saw her earlier this year, big as a Buick and just as ugly, in the Dr Death, Jack Kevorkian bio-pic You Don’t Know Jack.

In the movie she plays the role of Jack’s vibrant and yet caring sister that goes tits to forehead with Al Pacino with conviction and believability. She steals scenes when she has to and subjugates herself when she needs to, which was most of the time because she was dealing with Al and let’s face it no one can really go up against Al Pacino. She isn’t the star but she helps the movie move along when the movie needs to move along. She made my experience good and that was worth a mention I should think.

So it looks like…don’t you just hate it when people start off a sentence with the word so. I was watching CNN the other day and the guest started every thought with the word “so.” After a while it became so annoying and I realized that I had noticed it before with other people on TV or on the radio and that it must have become a trend or something. Either way I hate it. It’s now one of my pet peeves like people riding bicycles on the sidewalks only to risk life and limb to young pedestrians and old people as they go about business. But I’m going off on a tangent now and ranting. As I was saying...

So it looks like there will be no need for me to watch the Golden Globes next year and I wish I can say that they will miss me, but since I’ve never watched them before, my guess is that they won’t.

Palin Power: Bristol Earns Personal Best on DWTS

Just a quick blurb. If no talent Bristol Palin wins Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday, I have $100 that's saying that no brains mother Sarah is winning the presidency in 2012. I'm just saying.

Say it ain't so Joe

I wish I could embed the video that I want here, but Oprah didn’t become a billionaire by giving stuff away for nothing. So you will have to follow the link or watch the fuzzy bootleg Youtube version below and go to the 6 minute mark to know exactly what I’m trying to say. Although I’m sure that there are a lot of people who will have already seen it and come to their own conclusions.

Sometime last week I was watching a repeat broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show, the one that had Michael Jackson’s children in it. Funny how that still makes me chuckle inside thinking about the blood lines must work in the Jackson family. But I was watching the show, I suspect the same way most men watch Oprah with half a mind focused on something diametrically opposed to whatever she is harping on about, when I thought I heard old Papa Joe Jackson say that he had beaten his children and how proud he was of it. He thought that he had done a good job because other people’s children who hadn’t experienced his form of discipline had ended up in jail, or on drugs, or even dead.

Since it was just me and the TV in the room the only thing I could do was ask myself, “…er did he forget Michael?”

Room for one more...

You will have to know what I'm talking about to see how the title of this piece fits in, but it’s Halloween and you can have all your Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger or Friday the 13th movies. You can have all the slice and dice, slash and burn, cut ‘em up and throw some fake blood about and make you jump movies, but they are don’t make you think movies and that to me is the true horror.

Speaking of thinking, I remember hearing when Michael Redgrave died and wondering, “Who’s he?” Then hearing that he was a famous actor and the father of Vanessa Redgrave and wondering, “Who’s she?”

I would find out later that Vanessa had a sister, Lynn who had a TV show about some sort of hospital that I’ve forgotten the name of that I would watch. Vanessa also had an actor brother Corin and a daughter Natasha Richardson who I had seen star in a movie with Christopher Walken and would later marry the actor Liam Neeson. Vanessa had another daughter whose name is I’m not sure of, but since I don’t think I’ve seen any of her work, it doesn’t matter right now.

In time I began to learn about the contributions that all the Redgraves had made to film and cinema, if not the theatre. I began learn that each time one of them was the screen, the father, the daughters, the granddaughters, even the son now and again, there was that special spark that lights up the screen and made you take notice of what was going on. The best of them was of course the father, the original, and I don’t know why that is but it just is.

You can see how good he is in many of his movies from the mid 30’s and early 50’s but since it’s Halloween the one that I want to show here is Dead of Night where Redgrave plays a ventriloquist whose dummy starts to take on a personality of its own. This was or is a sort of early version of the Twighlight Zone where in fact many parts of the movie could be found as whole episodes of the later produced TV show sans Rod Serling doing the prolog. 



I’ve only seen this movie once before when they used to show classic movies on regular TV on a regular basis, but it’s always stuck with me.

Like the guy says, if you’re looking for something to curl up to this Halloween weekend, you could do worse by passing up this movie.

Oh and Happy Halloween.

The Rent is Too Damn High

As much as you may think that Jimmy McMillan is a joke, if you really listened to him at the New York gubernatorial debate, he made a lot of sense.

It's time for me to move to New York.

Philly Naked Bike Ride 2010

Perhaps the two or three things that I noticed most and asked myself about at the Philly Naked Bike Ride was how much better organized it was this year over last year, the two or three people who were riding motorcycles which sort of defeated the purpose of the protest and how many onlookers seemed to be “size queens.”

Even though I would say that at least a third of the riders were women, most people tended not to worry or judge the refreshingly freed titties that were jiggling up and down the street, but they did feel the need to state their thoughts about the exposed and unleashed male genitalia and how small they thought everyone was. I heard one guy say to his wife or girlfriend that he felt better now and not so small as he compared himself to the riders. Even I marveled at one point where I saw a fellow gym member whose dick is usually thick and at half mast with a lurid smile on his face whenever he’s in the locker room (shudder), look relaxed and normal. Obviously the message has been lost.

I think, and you can find this on the organization’s website, the whole reason for the ride is that there is an unreasonable dependency on unsustainable fossil fuel. They ride because there is a lack of respect for bike riders on the street by car drivers and they ride nude not just for attention to the cause, but because of the need for body acceptance and the awareness that not everyone can look like Pamela Anderson and Terrell Owens or whoever people think as good looking.

Perhaps next year they will do more to educate the public on what their message is but until then a little video.

"Can't buy me love"

The Beatles once wrote a song about money not being able to buy them love. Since I'm not a multi-millionaire like Sir Paul or Mr. Starr I don't really know if that's true or not...but I suspect that they were right.

I wonder why others don't see that.

"Play la Marsellaise. Play it!"

Paris is one of Philadelphia’s sister cities. I’m not sure what that means other than it has the Rodin Museum which has the largest public collection of artwork produced by August Rodin outside of Paris and that it has an excuse to do quirky little things that represent that bond.

One of those things is to do a re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille which was a castle turned prison where they kept a few people behind bars. The prison was overrun by the people in Paris back at the start of the French Revolution, the prisoners were released and the building torn down. Philadelphia relives this event by having actors invade, the now defunct, Eastern State Penitentiary on the weekend before or after Bastille Day.

Eastern State, if you remember is the first state penitentiary in the United States and is the one during the 30’s that kept gangster Al Capone for a few months and bank robber "Slick" Willie Sutton for 11 years not including the time that he spent on the outside after he tunneled his way to escape. But he was gone for only about 30 or 40 minutes so it doesn’t really count. Willie is also the one incorrectly known as the man who said when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Anyway during this year’s re-enactment of the Bastille, they had an actress on top of the ramparts of the prison play the role of the Marie Antoinette. From there she tossed free Tastykakes to the crowd below apparently referencing the “Let them eat cake” quote that the queen is supposed to have made when told that the people didn’t have bread to eat.

I didn’t attend this year’s performance because it was raining all day and plus I think it’s kind or corny. What I should have done instead was to rent or maybe even have bought a copy of my favorite movie Casablanca to celebrate Bastille Day. There is nothing that makes you feel more alive and free and maybe even want to fight Nazi tyranny than when Rick allows a resounding rendition of the Marsellaise to be played in his club, unless of course you happen to be female, Arabic and have a certain religious penchant about clothing. But then again which country is it that you know that doesn’t have flaws somewhere?

Vive la France!

To Kill a Mocking Bird - Redux

How long has it been, 20 or 30 years since I read the little brown book that my grandmother’s cousin kept in a box in her closet? Actually a better question would be why was I in her closet?

She kept dozens of books there; ones by people like Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. All of them about pimping or being a drug addict or being raped and becoming someone’s bitch in prison or all 3. Ah the classics, I don’t think they write ‘em like they used to. But she had one book that has stayed with me all of these years. It was about a little girl in the 1930’s whose family life had entered into a situation that was completely foreign to her. It was about how she discovered how truth can often be hidden behind form and ritual and convention and that win or lose, sometimes the fight is all we have; the only thing that can bring meaning to our lives.

Of course I’m referring to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird that was first published 50 years ago this weekend. I’m not going to review the book since I’m sure that’s been done by editors and professors and plenty of other people who are much more capable than me. Plus I have not read the book since I first opened it, But I remember it. I remember not realizing that Scout, the protagonist and narrator was a girl until I was about 2 thirds of the way through the book. I remember Jem her older brother who looked after her to his utmost ability, the way that most brothers do but only when they have to. I remember reading about her father Atticus the lawyer shooting a rabid dog and defending t Tom Robinson in court not because it the heroic thing to do, but because it was the right thing to do. I remember the fear created by the presence of Boo Radley until, as with all things once the reality is known, the truth is often different from the perception.

I haven’t been to Oakland since the mid 80’s so I don’t really know what the truth is about what happened on New Year’s Day 2009 when an unarmed Oscar Grant was shot in the back and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer. I don’t know how different the bay area is from the south of the 1930’s or if there is or even was a racial element to what happened. I suspect that things are very different, but I don’t know. All I know is what I feel and that is that a young man was wrongly killed and that someone or a society should have to pay for his loss and the loss to those around him.

But whether others think of the incident as murder, man-slaughter or just deserts all I can say is that I’m reminded of a short passage in the book where Atticus said to Jem: 


“I'd rather you shoot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

It's Hot as Hell in Philadel-Phia

If it's 101 degrees Fahrenheit in Philadelphia now, what is that in Celsius and what must it have been like 2 centuries ago? No wonder there was a Revolution.

The Flim Flam Man

An email that I received recently said:



“You have won (£3,500.00 Million) on the Irish Lottery Promo held on the

22nd of April,2010 in Dublin, Ireland.

Send us Your Full Name:...,Address:...,Tel:...,Country for claims

Mr. Jimmy Peterson: +447035914740.

E-mail: clmsveri_dept@upimail.be

Note that you will be liable for the Cost of remitting your winnings to

you.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Anna Brown.

Co-coordinator Irish Lottery”

Wow! Who would have believed that it could happen to me? I don’t even remember entering or registering for a lottery and now I’m a multi-millionaire. What incredible luck I must have….. Although, I thought the Irish Lottery was in Ireland where they used the Euro(€) and not the Pound(£); and why is the email address a Belgian one and not Irish? You know now that I think about it, if someone is going to scam me they should at least try and give a good story without holes in it so that I wouldn't feel so bad about throwing away my money. What kind of clown do they take me for?

When I was younger, sometimes I would be approached by men who would say that they were just off the plane from whatever country was in the news at the time, South Africa, Guyana or someplace. They would tell me that they had given their cab driver from airport hundreds of dollars to take them to a hotel, but he had instead left them in middle of Times Square in New York, or in later years, Center City in Philadelphia with bad directions. Suddenly another man would walk up and ask if he could assist. The second man would say that he knew of a place where the visitor could stay for very little money. The first man would say that money was no object and then pull out a roll  as thick as his fist that seemed to be full of one hundred dollar bills. The second man would him and tell him that it was unsafe to show that amount of cash in public and that it should be kept in a bank. One of them would tell me how honest I looked and asked if I had an ATM card so that they could deposit the cash in my bank and maybe withdraw it at a later date with, of course, a cut taken out for myself.

Now my name isn’t Peter Parker but my Spidey senses would tingle into overdrive whenever I heard this, well at least the first 2 times that I heard it. I didn’t understand what was going on but I remembered that Mother always said you never get something for nothing, there is always a price. It was time to bolt, and I always did.

It wasn’t until I was old enough to understand what the movie The Sting was about and had seen it about 3 or 4 times on TV that I realized that I had been the mark in some sort of “Pigeon Drop” scam. Someone had tried to make me think that I could make a little more money with no risk to myself. They had tried to work on my sense of greed to see how far they could get because I looked like an easy mark.

It probably doesn’t explain why I have very little sympathy for those people who fall for swindles like the email from a lawyer somewhere in Africa or Malaysia with a dead client, or even the rich friends who were ripped off by financier Bernie Madoff who supposedly gave a 20% return on their investments without bothering to explain how it was done. I mean it’s just a con man working on the gullibility and greed of people to believe that there is something  for free where nothing exists.

So if you should ever get in touch for any reason with Mr. Jimmy Peterson or Mrs. Anna Brown or even that lawyer, tell them that I send my best but the check will not be in the mail.

Nothing More To Be Said Here

Alright but I've said it before, Betty White is a living legend.

Lena

Some people you have to look at all the facts and the figures and the stats to see what they are about. Others, you just have to feel them to appreciate them.

There will be no dates or numbers here for you to look at, just a celebration.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Now I don't know what you're stance on publicly regulated health care is but did you see this video shot by the Columbus Dispatch? I did but I don't get it.

It came out on Tuesday I think and I missed it, but thanks to YouTube I've been ablt to catch up to everyone else. Although, I don't really think that it's unique. It's probably the same type of thing that's going on all over America. It is the same kind of action or reaction that you saw when congressmen and women had their town meetings in order to explain their position of health care reform. It is the same kind of angst that you saw and felt when people compared President Obama to Hitler or Josef Stalin or some sort of "Manchurian Candidate" last year.



Very few things shock me anymore, but to see a man throw dollar bills at another man suffering from Parkinson's Disease as if he was a cheap stripper on a pole where you could see the marks left by the heroin needle in her arm and the sordid and loose looking pussy lips that had seen tighter and better days, makes me kind of pause. Not that anyone has a right to treat strippers that way, but where do people like this protester in his awfully clean white shirt come from? Are they the same ones that sent millions of dollars to Haiti and other areas in need of relief or are they ones that burn crosses in the middle of the woods or the lawns of other people? Why is there such a dichotomy in being an American.