The Ceremonious and the Unceremonious

Just awful hearing that Peter Bogdanovich is no longer with us. The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon are two of my top favorites, perfect films start to finish. I could watch them any night of the week. I just watched Paper Moon a month ago with my kids.

I've read a few of his books too, my favorite is Who the Devil Made It. I even listened to his 10-or-so hours of interviews with Orson Welles. He was the key connection to old Hollywood directors.

He was one of a small handful of older film people that I would often take time to be pleasantly conscious of the fact they were still with us. It's as if a library a film knowledge has just burned down, but at least we still have what he left.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/movies/peter-bogdanovich-dead.html

January 6, 2022

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I don't think most former Secretaries of Defense generally talk about the president they served under in this way.

Mattis- "Today's violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice. Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and We the People will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect Union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country."

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I was in meetings all day, and all I missed was an attempted overthrow of the US government. I mean that's what storming the capital is. They were encouraged by the president, communing with his election fraud confabulations and cheers for rowdiness. All Trump supporters are not on board with this, and we can never judge the other side by their extremists (as Trump lives for), but it's a good day for all Trump supporters to take a step back and ask themselves if they really believe in the violent overthrow of the US government. And if so, on what evidence? All evidence that has been presented, is garbage. They came into this from an irrational starting point– that Biden had a 0% chance to win legitimately, and this is where irrationality has taken them.

January 6, 2021

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Listening to Pence, McConnell and Schumer speak, one thing is clear- this is Victory over Trump Day.

January 6, 2021

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A lot of people have been praying for this day, praying for the truth to finally be uncovered. Well good news, their prayers have been answered.

January 6, 2021

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Borowitz- "Lindsey Graham's rejection of Trump tonight has all the integrity of a drug dealer flushing the meth down the toilet."

January 6, 2021

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Just two minutes ago. 

I for one would like to offer my congratulations to the 46th president of the United States, Mike Pence. Get this guy out of there. Let him try to organize a prison riot.

January 6, 2021

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I ran out of my own easy genealogy so I started doing Emma's. Did you know that her like 40th or so great-grandpa was Sigurd "Snake Eye" Ragnarsson? He was a Viking and King of Denmark, and died from being thrown into pit of poisonous snakes.

January 6, 2019

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There's just too much Trump stuff this morning! The book says he's an authoritarian, he responds like an authoritarian trying to ban it and sue the author. It says his staff thinks he's not smart, he responds like an imbecile, "I'm, like, really smart." It says he's unbalanced, he responds in a rage. He says it's all lies, and then that they are violating confidentiality. So which is it? I just wish there was some way we could have known all this before we voted for him!

January 6, 2018

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There's no way a majority of taxpayers will support paying billions of dollars to build a wall separating us from Mexico, but a majority will definitely support paying billions of dollars for a wall separating us from Donald Trump.

January 6, 2017

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You might think I'm crazy if you haven't seen it, but Up has perhaps the greatest montage in the history of the movies.

January 6, 2010

Postscript- Still true!

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Picture I took of David.

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On this night in 1839– The Night of the Big Wind, the most damaging storm in 300 years, swept across Ireland, damaging or destroying more than 20% of the houses in Dublin.

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Treasure of the Sierra Madre was released on this day in 1948.

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Farewell, Good Brothers was released on this day in 1990. What an opening! Transcendent with Angel Baby by Rosie and the Originals, playing over top of an alien effigy on the cross, wow. Currently free on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/jFac-S_cqgI 

(Bah! They cut out the song. I do have a VHS copy, and that might illustrate the value of hard copies. Also, we don't know what our ancestors will find offensive and ban.)

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Nancy Kerrigan was attacked on this day in 2004.

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Gustav Dore joined us on this day in 1832. His illustrations of The Raven are haunting.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/05/gustav-dore-poe-the-raven/

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Khalil Gibran, The Prophet:

Do not live half a life

and do not die a half death

If you choose silence, then be silent

When you speak, do so until you are finished

If you accept, then express it bluntly

Do not mask it

If you refuse then be clear about it

for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance

Do not accept half a solution

Do not believe half truths

Do not dream half a dream

Do not fantasize about half hopes

Half the way will get you no where

You are a whole that exists to live a life

not half a life. 

He joined us on this day in 1883

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Loretta Young was born on this day in 1913.

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Alan Watts birthday, born in 1915.

"For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, “Now, I’ve arrived!” Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”

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Other notable birthdays- Joan of Arc (1412), Carl Sandburg (1878)

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Sherlock Holmes was apparently born on this day in 1854. There aren't a lot of fictional characters that have birthdays! Maybe him and Jesus.

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We lost Theodore Roosevelt on this day in 1919.

"Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering."

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Anne Frank's mother, Edith Frank, lost her life at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on this day in 1945.

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Sidney Poitier left us on this day in 2022. He helped them them build their chapel and then he left. His work was done.

https://youtu.be/rn6w255CGkk

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Bea and Rue genuinely crack up.

https://youtu.be/opEigpvhJRE

January 6, 2022

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Huffington Post- H&M, Wal-Mart Destroy Unsold Clothing

One more reason why the Grapes of Wrath should be required high school reading...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/hm-wal-mart-destroy-unsol_n_413234.html

January 6, 2010

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Watching Sam Peckinpah's Ballad of Cable Hogue again tonight, always loved the intro. And if like me, you've ever walked a marathon while lost in the desert, legs shredded from cactus needles, without water, you might like it too!

https://youtu.be/LwAuW18mz3Q

Jan 06, 2019 12:15:58am

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Not the best speaker on the planet but the argument is rock solid- the last president whipped his crowd into a frenzy that attempted to overturn democracy through violence, and he watched for hours while those close to him begged him to do something. It was his only shot to hold onto the power he lost.

https://youtu.be/D1OSQfrnovw

January 6, 2022

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Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1970s, young women out and about.

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Back in my day we could watch mushroom clouds from the comfort of our own homes.

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John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley- "I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction."

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Plato- "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."

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Salinger- "Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."

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Miyazaki- "Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over."

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Camus- "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

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David Sedaris, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls- "States vote to take away my marriage rights, and even though I don't want to get married, it tends to hurt my feelings. I guess what bugs me is that it was put to a vote in the first place. If you don't want to marry a homosexual, then don't. But what gives you the right to weigh in on your neighbor's options? It's like voting whether or not redheads should be allowed to celebrate Christmas."

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Vowell- "But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota."

Damn I can really relate to that!

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Asimov- "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

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Hitchens- "Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan—'a land without a people for a people without a land'—disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea?"

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Orwell- "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it."

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Gore Vidal, Julian- "Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors."

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A sailor who slept in the sun 

Woke to find his fly-buttons undone. 

He marked with a smile, 

"Jesus Christ, a sundial! 

And now it's a quarter past one."