The Gamut Between Orson Welles and Ed Wood

Goodbye to the second half of the greatest tennis rivalry in the history of the game. What a career for Nadal. What feistiness, spirit, and fortitude. I could spend the day watching his highlights.

10 Iconic Federer Vs Nadal Points

https://youtu.be/C_ea3U5qQRs

October 10, 2024

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Haven't played racquetball for 3 weeks, felt terrible tonight the first few games, lost all three. A few weeks ago I thought I broke my toe, but it got better, until the first point of the game when I'm guessing I re-broke it. I was losing the fourth game pretty bad, not sure what I did but I got it really bad twinge in my back. I guess I got serious at that point because I came back and won, then won the last game too. Miraculous. I was totally exhausted. 

When I left, I saw some people walking and became conscious of the fact that I was in a car, and the whole concept of cars seemed downright absurd. Here we put all these hard, flat surfaces everywhere so we can drive our cars around, haha, it was totally ridiculous. I love when I get totally exhausted from racquetball.

October 10, 2024

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Wow, I certainly never expected Kim Kardashian to pick up Norm Macdonald's torch, blasting OJ jokes on SNL. 

That was a great show, and in no small part thanks to these Halsey lyrics: 

Ever since a little girl I found this sweet

Driving past the graveyard on a lonesome street

All the little flowers give me something to believe in

Never knew the feeling of a state of home

Been a couple years I'm living on the road

Couldn't really tell you where they'd leave a stone to visit me when I am dead and gone

October 10, 2021

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I didn't know she was taking this picture. She was pleased with it.

October 10, 2020

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Orson Welles, gone 35 years ago today, in 1985. I'm reminded often of Harry Lime's line from The Third Man, that apparently Welles might have ad-libbed. (Apologies to Graham Greene if he didn't.)

"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."

October 10, 2020

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Welles was played brilliantly in Ed Wood by Vincent D'Onofrio. Ed Wood was born on this day in 1924.

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An Orson Welles story. Not sure where I picked it up.

Orson Welles had several rules for talk show hosts.

"There were no notes, no pre-interviews," Merv Griffin once recalled. "And his dictum was: 'I do not want to take any trips down memory lane' ... but one night, he was waiting at my dressing room door.

And he said, 'I feel very expansive tonight.' And I said, 'Yeah?' and he said, 'Ask me anything you want. I'll talk about anything... Ask me all that tabloid gossip stuff you want about Rita and Marlon.' And I said, 'Orson, you've got to be kidding. And Hearst?' And he said, 'Ask.'

"We went on, I asked everything, and it was fascinating. And he went home and died two hours later."

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Eisenhower- "Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

*not all of us are descended from them, but the point stands

October 10, 2020

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People say that we should resist Trump, but I don't find him the slightest bit tempting.

October 10, 2020

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Part of the problem with Trump is the bed of nails effect of all his scandals. There are so many that any single one doesn't make a dent. Imagine if FDR got us out of the Great Depression and helped us win World War II, and then while running again, he uttered, "either I win the election or it is rigged." That alone should disqualify him in the eyes of every last one of us.

His supporters can blame the lamestream media all they like, but there's plenty to disqualify Trump simply using him as the original source.

October 10, 2020

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I'm forced to agree. One that would throw my cognitive dissonance off the charts...

October 10, 2019

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The president was asked if he's concerned about ISIS fighters breaking out of Kurdish prisons: "Well they're going to be escaping to Europe, that's where they want to go, they want to go back to their homes." 

No worries... they are just going to EUROPE! Has the president heard of this new invention, the steamship? Besides what are the Kurds lives worth? Sure, they fought ISIS but what did they do to fight Hitler?

Wait, what did Trump himself do to fight Hitler? (Or Ho Chi Minh for that matter?) I guess by his own rationale we shouldn't care about Trump, or each other.

Fun fact: Trump was born 14 months after Hitler died. (So I wonder what Hitler's soul did for those 5 months before landing in baby Trump. I know, I know... "Trump is Hitler" is an easy joke, and unfair... yet, if Trump was born in Austria on April 20, 1889, failed at painting, and felt that the Jews were they enemy of the German people who were just embarrassed in WW1... you just think that PERHAPS...)

October 10, 2019

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Flint, Michigan schools received water filtration systems from Elon Musk. Seems worth remembering.

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Watching Ken Burns' Vietnam, just maddening. Humphreys surged ahead in the polls in 1968 with the news of the first peace talks between Saigon and Hanoi, until the South Vietnamese leader pulled out three days before the US election. Two seperate wiretaps confirmed that Nixon sabotaged the peace talks by privately promising the South Vietnamese leader a harder line against the North. So we have a US citizen colluding with a foreign government to help swing a US election. President Johnson, in a recorded phone call with the Republican Whip in the House, agreed it was treason. Fear that he would be found out haunted Nixon his entire presidency. This all happened before I was born but it seems somehow very strangely familiar.

October 10, 2017

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The Hill- Mensa Offers To Host IQ Test For Trump and Tillerson

Let me guess- if he wins, he's smarter, but if he loses it was rigged.

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/354718-mensa-offers-to-host-iq-test-for-trump-and-tillerson/

October 10, 2017

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Lot of talk about the bar being lowered for Trump- yeah, BY Trump! He holds a press conference vilifying Bill Clinton, and then says he's better than Bill Clinton. Reminds me of the old Hitler bumper sticker, "Hey, at least I'm not Stalin!"

October 10, 2016

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Trump's thing about Bill Clinton being worse, because Clinton's was action and Trump's was just words... you don't have to look at that too hard before realizing that Trump's "words" describe his own pattern of sexual assault (i.e. "action.")

October 10, 2016

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I'm furious with Hillary over those 33,000 emails! (And I was 60.6 times more furious with Bush for losing two million.)

October 10, 2016

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I'm trying to imagine what today's headlines would be if Hillary had the sniffles and scowled throughout the entire debate. Probably would spell the end for her, but it was the absolute least of Trump's problems.

October 10, 2016

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They call today Columbus Day, maybe because it was on this day in 1492 that the crew of the Santa Maria attempted a mutiny.

October 10, 2022

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Atlas Shrugged with published on this date in 1957. Dorothy Parker had this to say about it.

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside. It should be thrown with great force."

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It was a quaint time. On this day in 1973, Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned after being charged with evasion of federal income tax.

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John Prine joined us on this day in 1946.

Roger Ebert from Chicago Sun-Times stopped by, and instead of writing about the movie that he walked out on, he wrote about me. 'Singing Mail Man Delivers The Message.' And from that day on I didn't have an empty seat!"

Crazy how even the most talented people still need a stroke of luck.

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Édith Piaf left us on this day in1963. Tiny person,with one of the most powerful songs.

NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait

Ni le mal

Tout ça m'est bien égal

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

C'est payé, balayé, oublié

Je me fous du passé

Avec mes souvenirs

J'ai allumé le feu

Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs

Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux

Balayé les amours

Avec leurs trémolos

Balayé pour toujours

Je repars à zéro

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait

Ni le mal

Tout ça m'est bien égal

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

Car ma vie

Car mes joies

Aujourd'hui

Ça commence avec toi

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Solomon Burke left us on this day in 2010. A whopper of a song:

CRY TO ME

When your baby leaves you all alone

And nobody calls you on the phone

A-don't you feel like a-cryin'?

Don't you feel like cryin'?

Well, here I am, a-honey

A-come on, well, cry to me

When you're all alone in your lonely room

And there's nothing but the smell of her perfume

A-don't you feel like a-cryin'?

A-don't you feel like cryin'?

A-don't you feel like a-cryin'?

A-come on, come on, cry to me

Whoa

Nothing can be sadder than a glass of wine alone

Loneliness, loneliness, such a waste of your time, oh yes

You don't ever have to walk alone, you see

A-come on, take my hand, and baby, won't you walk with me?

Whoa yeah

When you're waitin' for a voice to come

In the night, but there's no one

A-don't you feel like a-cryin'? (Cry to me)

Don't you feel like cryin'? (Cry to me)

A-don't you feel like a-c-cry, c-cry, c-cry-cry (cry to me)

Cry, c-cry, c-cry-cry, cryin'? (Cry to me)

A-don't you feel like a-cry, c-cry, c-cry-cry (cry to me)

C-cry, c-cry, c-cry-cry, cryin'? (Cry to me)

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Another notable birthdays- Pat Burrell (1976)

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Washington Post, I’ve long opposed impeaching Trump. That’s different now. By Fareed Zakaria

Quoting Timothy Snyder- “The conclusions for conservatives of today emerge clearly: Do not break the rules that hold a republic together, because one day you will need order.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ive-long-opposed-impeaching-trump-thats-different-now/2019/10/10/0991817e-eb8e-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

October 10, 2019

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'Stunning and historic rebukes" are flying fast and furious these days. When the New England Journal of Medicine weighs in on a presidential election, you might have a problem.

"Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/new-england-journal-of-medicine-trump-anti-endorsement/index.html

October 10, 2020

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Sartre, Nausea- "It’s quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don’t do it."

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Thomas Paine- "To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."

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Epictetus- “Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.”

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Confucius- "Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men."

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Groucho Marx- "Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here."

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Diderot- "The first step towards philosophy is incredulity."

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Gore Vidal, Death Before Bedtime- "I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities."

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Sigmund Freud- "The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief."

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Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft- "Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure."

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John McWhorter, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America- "Black boys do commit more violent offenses in public schools than other kids. Period. This means that if we follow these prophets’ advice and go easier on black boys, we hinder the education of other black students. The Elect earnestly decry that most black kids go to school with only other black kids, because it fits into their agenda to point out “segregation.” But that “segregation” also entails that the black boys they think should be allowed to beat other kids up in school are handing out the beatings to other black kids."

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Rodney Dangerfield:

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

Once when I was lost, I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, “Do you think we’ll ever find them?” He said, “I don’t know kid, there are so many places they can hide.”

I found there was only one way to look thin: hang out with fat people.

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Golda Meir- "You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you."

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Addendum

Myspace Blog

October 10, 2007

Sin Shitty

Someone left a religious tract about righteousness next to the toilet in the Susquehanna Welcome Center. Is that someone's idea of target marketing- guilting someone about righteousness at exactly the most unrighteous moment of their day? If so... nice job. I can attest- many, many sins are committed in these restrooms, although most are olfactory in nature. They are as good a place as any to begin vanquishing the world of evil.

The tract was very confusing. It seemed to be saying that only the righteous can get into heaven, and we're not righteous. Only Jesus was righteous, so if you want to get into heaven you must follow Jesus? See what I mean? Confusing. That's almost an argument for not even trying to be good. Maybe it came together in the end, but once I realized I was touching something I found next to a toilet I quickly put it down and wondered how it ever got into my hand to begin with. After all, dirtiness is next to beelzebubbliness.

But I didn't begin this blog to make any religious statements one way or the other. I saw my restroom adventure as an in to tell you a joke I heard recently. This joke ran through my head perhaps 50-100 times today. It won't stop. I think the only way I can satiate it is to spread it to others, so I'm going to allow myself a selfish moment. I know that's wrong, but I'll ask your forgiveness afterward. Here it is:

What happens when you fart in church? You sit in the pew.

So there you go. I wouldn't call it funny, and it's certainly not cute. I don't know what the hell it is, but it's yours now and you can do what you want with it. I wonder if Jesus would find it funny... I mean, he had a perfect sense of humor, right?

My apologies. Forgive me?

P.S. Two miles from my hotel I got stuck in a huge traffic jam, so I decided to speak that preceding nonsense into my recorder. Exactly as I finished I looked over and saw the most unbelievably perfect bumper sticker I could possibly see at that moment. It said, "GRACE HAPPENS." No shit. Coincidences work in mysterious ways.