Apocalypto, M. Gibson

Here's the truth about Mel Gibson's latest epic APOCALYPTO.  I've so far read none of the reviews, so this is entirely my own, private experience viewing the quite long movie.

Like me, some viewers might get antzy and impatient in the beginning because it's unfamiliar, to me anyway, film story- telling. We're in the dark jungle, things aren't going too well and everyone is unsettled and angry. Poachers from a different ethnic (??) group or tribe are taking their food.  The "poachers" turn out to be from a people forming the beginnings of civilization. But not only are they poachers, they are rounding up slaves for ritual sacrifice. In these beginning scenes I was very struck by the quality and effects of the makeup. Oscar for makeup is a cinch. Ditto cinematography.

The story is an attempt to recreate PreColumbian Mayan Indian culture in what in now the Yucatan, Mexico. Remember the step pyramid in Yucatan (State), well that is featured as a locale in the movie. (Not actually shot in Mexico; Nearby I think I did read.) Never in my long life did I dream that human heads would be filmed rolled down those steps from the top, and the body dropped on a heap of literally thousands of headless, naked bodies out of which all the hearts had been ripped while still pumping. That's an actual, real life event, the 30,000 murdered by raw heart removal and all done with amazing speed. Anthropologists have determined how long that took. Much less than a day.

Full appreciation of the intent of the moviemaker might include the assumption that the beginning fertile jungle scenes might be a metaphor for the Garden of Eden into which snakes show up. Murderous snakes. But snakes forming the beginnings of civilization nevertheless.

Near the conclusion of the massacre scenes a few sacrificial humans escape and are hunted, and hunted hard and long as if the killers feared their own death if they failed to return every single slave.

The final shots of the movie are stunning. I was taken completely by surprise!

I can't reveal the ending in good conscience, yet, by not writing that down I can't give my interpretation of the entire movie.  So, I'll save that for some future Part Two.

The implications of the ending thrilled me as I have never before been thrilled at the movies.

Barry

If in your Comment you reveal the ending, I don't mind, it's  just that I can't do it.  Usually, BTW, I don't buy that SPOILER alert stuff, but this is different.

Oscars for Mel Gibson! I hope and pray. What guts!!

 

 

Unknown (Ha)

Unknown to me my eleven year old was paid $20 and given a small, very small, bird in a fairly large cage, both he and one of his friends, for helping a neighbor move into the house next door, a building owned by the neighbor's sister.

Everyone is asleep save me and the tiny bird. I assume the bird will get bigger. It responds to sweet talk; I think we're going to get along. I like the merry warbling. Nearby on the table is a new, small humidifier in the shape of a large frog. I guess you could say the household is going zoological.

Main Entry: zoo·log·i·cal

Function: adjective
Pronunciation: "zO-&-'lä-ji-k&l
Variants: also zoo·log·ic
/-jik/
1 : of, relating to, or occupied with zoology
2 : of, relating to, or affecting lower animals often as distinguished from humans
- zoo·log·i·cal·ly
/-ji-k(&-)le/ adverb

Would you say a cat is out? Wouldn't a cat peer at the tiny mite until it dropped from fright?

I thought I might have made up the word, but no, there it was in the AOL dictionary. People get offended when I supply dictionary samples; it's as if they thought I was being insufferably didactic, when all I'm doing is confessing my ignorance.

Although, obviously, Christmas has passed, I'm still belatedly sending presents and cards, or messages, to make up for holiday sloth. Do you figure a late Christmas present is better than none, or is forgetting inexcusable; not really forgetting , just sloth again. I sent a friend a bottle of wine and an opener to get the cork out. A fancy contraption reeking of power and wealth. His, not mine. Years ago his mother, probably breaking some kind of rule, told me soto voce that he'd bought the building he'd been living in. In a big rich city. Okay, so I sent coals to Newcastle.

Another late gift idea I will implement later today - a risky idea based on not much - is to purchase for a modest sum two contraptions, one each for the younger boys, that look a bit like small camcorders, but are actually a flashlight and a radio that runs on movement and not batteries. Each has an antenna. Dunno about yours, but my younger boys dote on flashlights and use up expensive batteries something fierce. The presents might turn out to be an economy measure.  With the exception of the bottle of wine all the late-bought presents probably came from China. Without China I might not have had any Christmas at all.

Skip the newest treatment of The Nativity. It is inept. The actor playing Mary looks like she works on an asembly line in Detroit. That young woman knows too much.

The year 2007 rushes toward us. What calamities, what joys; what, just what is headed our way?!? I'd kinda just like to stay in 2006.

Barry 

 

 

Blurted Out

Private camaraderie in public as practiced by Journalers here, but not as far as I know on secret Blogs unavailable to public scrutiny, requires some trust (in human decency) as well as a certain daring. (Those lacking daring, an interest in public service.)

An un-named AOL-sanctioned group voted (when I read that word I immediaterly thought of various criminal conspiracies through history, ha ha ha) to disallow me to place my Link to this site on the Signature line of my AOL Writers message board posts. (Post=Entry). Their stated reason for selecting me for that special muzzling is that I write incendiary Entries. You've seen them burst into flames I'm sure. 

If anyone would like to comment (in any way you like) on this situation please leave a Comment here, or send an email, or smoke signal. No, I take that back: they are afraid, deadly afraid of fire, so no smoke please.

 

Barry 

 

 

 

Christmas and Churchgoing

Went to church (as opposed to Church) in the afternoon of Christmas Eve Day, a children's service, in Pasadena California, home of the Rose Parade, and the Rose Bowl football game. The service was held at All Saints Episcopal church, and we, the whole family, were invited by my daughter from a previous marriage, now 35, who has served as a Christian Missionary in Northern Alaska.  My daughter lives near San Francisco, about 600 miles up the coast.  She was visiting friends. It was a wonderful chance to be together, and I knew the children would enjoy the presence of so many other children.

In an almost silent huddle my daughter and I agreed that this particular church, huge and beautiful in its architecture, gave God billing over Jesus. I was on my very best behaviour, determined to give up my fault of finding fault. But some provocations break the sternest resolve. I still cannot for the life of me imagine what would get into the head of any Christian cleric to turn the Nativity into a broad comedy. The wise men given comic costumes just for the entertainment of children? Pratfalls and a whining Inn keeper fed up with wise men and shepherds showing up in the middle of the night disturbing the neighborhood? I can't remember any former Virgin at all. But she must have wandered across the stage at some point. Mary as an extra!???? I'm not sure if the child was delivered.  I swear, the only pregnant woman in the entire assemblage, hundreds of people, was my wife, huge at only six months.

This is the same church, I later hit upon, that is in trouble with Federal courts for failing to observe separation of Church and State. There is a threat that this very same church will be denied tax exempt status. All the parishioners looked oh so spiffy. I swear on the Bible my four year old, said something close to, "They (the all White congregation) are more handsome [his word!] than we are." The wall of White people actually made me too feel uncomfortable. The next day son Michael pointed to 'Curious George'(the Movie character) in a wall poster wearing a shirt and tie. People at church wore shirts and ties, some of them.

Pasadena became a posh place at the beginning of the 1900's and has remained lilly white every since. It was a summer vacation mecca for Chicago merchants. Too bad. The buildings have always outshone the people. Green and Green homes, architectual marvels of practicality, enduring construction and beauty ornament the city. But every time I go there, which is fairly frequently because I swim train at the aquatic center, I break out into a rash.

Odd. That's the only word for our Christmas, the social aspect of it anyway. The private Christmas was sheer heaven, praise the Lord.

Oh my God, how powerful it might have been if somewhere in the service a young person's voice could have spoken "Hail Holy Queen Mother of mercy, hail our light our sweetness and our hope......" (Do I have the words right Ally?)

Barry

 

 

The Holidays Hanakkah & Christmas

Documentaries on TV (Discovery Channel - Health) about childbirth have gripped my pregnant wife all morning. The last one was a pip!: an adorable boy, age 12, brother of two younger boys, has been diagnosed with a blood disorder which requires for remedy a bone marrow transplant. (Please don't hold me responsible for medical accuracy here, my Entry is about the spirit, not the body.)

To solve this malady the parents have cheerfully and fearfully opted to immediately have another baby and use some of that baby's blood, should it perfectly match, by injecting it into that baby's much older brother. We didn't have to wait nine months, thanks to film editing, ha ha.  But, the parents did have to wait, and wait, and wait. Their bravery in the face of the daily decline of their immensely lovable and appreciative twelve year old who has gotten thinner, and has stopped growing, was gripping.

The transplant worked. The oldest and the youngest in closeup kissing and hugging sure were moving even though the poor infant didn't, couldn't yet hug or kiss back.

I noticed that the parents wore commonplace religious icons, and if I'd been more observant I'd have seen more of the same in their Southern USA home.  I noticed how adult and non-gooey emotional both parents behaved on-camera during their long ordeal.  I noticed they were equals. The producers couldn't possibly have 'cast' better, more believable 'actors.' Sometimes real people on camera cannot behave naturally, not even in a crisis, so crippled do they become from stage fright.  I wonder if attending religious ceremonies, regardless of denominations, over a lifetime imparts an ease while being observed? In any case, both parents were deeply committed to the sacrifices they undertook to save their twelve year old son, and their demeanor on-camera was most moving and inspiring.  The Producer, CBS, probably paid some of their expenses, but nevertheless we are enormously grateful to those 'actors' for allowing us to watch their ordeal. 

After the TV show I read someone's message on an AOL message board declaring that all religion is myth.

I think that person needs a 'bone marrow transplant.' Would that shore up a sagging spirit?  Some of us may need the arduousness of parenting so as to fully enjoy and appreciate the thills of being alive on this beautiful planet.

God Bless. 

Barry

 

Childhood

Nearly everyone has an opinion about the raising of children, who should have children, who shouldn't have children, how old one should be to bring up children, how many children a couple should have, whether same sex couples can successfully raise children, whether or not population growth can or should be regulated, and most vociferously of all whether it is okay to kill children in utero.

Does all that opinionating taken in a lump seem just a tad idle considering that in Africa presently there are millions of children not cared for because their parents died of a sexually tranmitted virus? I feel for Madonna suffering criticism for daring to adopt an African child without first gaining universal approval for doing so.

In short, I smell - our nation reeks of it in fact - self-righteous pontificating on a grand scale. Has partial birth abortion really truly taken place in America on a large scale? Please tell me it isn't so. It is so isn't it? Americans, the selfish barbarians, always seeing to their comfort while madly opinionating about what the rest of the world is up to.  A sign of America's decaying society is the almost total absence of foreign art - novels, movies, painting, music and dance, to cite just a few, circulating in our culture. How long is it since you last saw a foreign movie?!  Hmmmm? Yet, we are so greedy to look good in the arts we stole art treasures from Italy, and only recently gave them back. We suck.  ELIZABETH the two part history drama from England played repeatedly here on television and that was nice; I'm consoled knowing that it will be shown on college campuses here as part of History lecture classes.

Children are probably taken better care of in Japan than they are in America. They are certainly disciplined to greater effect than children are disciplined here in America. Japanese children are taught math earlier and longer and more rigorously than they are in America. As a result, Japanese autos shine magnificently on our flooded- with-foreign-vehicle freeways and highways and city streets. Ford, wanting some of the action, became principal investor in the Japanese auto company, Mazda!

We oughtta start over. We could begin by redesigning our school systems.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas

Christmas spirit, to be candid, seems light years away from my actual true state right now. I don't want anything for Christmas, I want something for March, a healthy, uncomplicated delivery of our baby. The only present I've bought so far is a blood sugar testing device for the mother (the mother of Dwight) whose Ob-Gyn Doc is on the alert for possible runaway blood sugar. These days, in contrast to earlier days, baby doctors test for everything under the sun. Drug empires must pay sums for stats re healthy deliveries. I think of baby deliveries all over the world, deliveries in 'Mangers' benign and poisonous, and feel floods of gratitude for favors received.

I've never heard conjectures about any possible embarrassment experienced by Mary and Joseph when there was no space for them found in the Inn. Today's modern mother would have a hissy fit worrying about possible infection from the bovine company. You could say Mary and Joseph were the ultimate expecting couple. He didn't grouse about all the possible 'fathers,' secure in his faith in his own Father In Heaven.

You know, whoever, who-all, wrote the New Testament must, absolutely MUST have had help from 'Above' with the writing.  Such writing!  Holy inkwell is that stuff well-written!

Barry 

 

 

 

Footware

My current favorite footware - for California even in winter - is what Might in some places be called 'slippers' or sandals, or thongs.

Main Entry: thong

Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'tho [ng]
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English thwong; akin to Old Norse thvengr thong
1 : a strip especially of leather or hide
2 : a sandal held on the foot by a thong fitting between the toes and connected to a strap across the top or around the sides of the foot

Yeah, like that. I started wearing them for walking from the swimming pool changing room to my lane. The cement walkway is often made rough to prevent falls by children running. That footware obviates sox and sure simplifies getting footware on and off. trouble is many kinds and styles are made so poorlythe thong quickly breaks after a couple of weeks. Finally I found the 'thongs' of my dreams: they are colored red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag, and along the outside of the canvas "strap" across the front of the foot is printed nicely "MEXICO." That suited me fine: I retired in Mexico for nearly five years and returned to California when our children needed to go to school.

The other day in the men's room at McDonalds I was accosted, and was nearly forced into fisticuffs by an elderly, well dressed Mexican man who accused me of stepping on his country, and, besides, the 'shoes/sandals/thongs' I was wearing, plus my feet, were dirty. I ended up screaming at him over and over to "Grow up."

Lest you think this is a most unlikely, atypical McDonalds confrontation, let me briefly recount another event, far, far more serious, that happened a couple of weeks ago in a children's public playground not much more than a hundred yards as the crow flies from that men's room. My son, aged eleven, witnessed with his very own eyes a man shot to death in broad daylight. I've never seen anyone killed. I served in Korea in time of war, and while I saw bodies, I never actually saw anyone murdered, killed, or rubbed out. I hated that my son had to see that. And I'm frightened that he was not more upset: is he growing up in a world where murder happens? So what??

I'll save the sermon. But our world, everyone's world, is not safe.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

Fatherhood

Online I've repeatedly been called names for siring a child at my age. If I could remember the names of the older gents in the Bible who became fathers I'd reply, but I can't remember for sure. Abraham couldn't have been young when God tested him. I plan to bring up the subject next time I'm at confession: Saint Mary's in East LA near one of the swimming pools I frequent: Father John. He's the good priest who said he wears street clothes on the bus so he won't get dunned for a donation; He's the cleric who gives communion once a year to those not technically eligible.

 

I'm reading Father Greeley's fine novel THE PRIESTLY SINS (2004) about the molestation scandals. Odd to be reading it at exactly the same time the LA Times has daily, long items about the millions still to be paid out to victims. The LA Diocese has "billions," (literally) says the TIMES, but still the Church fears it must sell off some property.  Insurance companies are refusing to pay all, or even most.  Greeley's novel (2004) begins with a courtroom scene in which an informant is being discredited, or rather discredit is being attempted. The point, I believe, in the greater narrative, is that in the beginning the Church went strenously into denial. A nun, now elderly, still a nun, was molested (raped) when she was very young, has just won millions in court, and yet still accuses the Los Angeles chief cleric, Rev. Mahoney (Cardinal?) of continuing to cover up. What a mess! God help us, amen.               

 

Merry Christmas!!!!     (Already?)

Any more news of the US Congress attempting to ban Christmas?                                    

 

Barry

Dream Interpretation

Gee, the software/format has been spruced up. It's as if I'd been away. Nah, just lazy.

I had a dream. Vivid, lifelike. There's a book beside my bed in which I have immediately upon waking written an account of my dream. Last entry, some years ago. Having remembered dreams might accompany being happy.  So, it is good news to me that I had such a lively dream.

Here's how it went. Background: I've swum competitively since I was about ten. I will compete again, Master's Swimming (age divisions) in 2007; I've already sent in my SPMA annual fee. Being underwater, therefor has been a lifelong activity. Example: a few years ago I noticed on the bottom of the pool a pair of swim goggles. That particular day long course lanes (50 meters) were not open so I had to swim short course in the other pool (At the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, Pasadena) at one end of which is the diving tower under which the pool is 17 feet deep. That's where I saw the goggles on the bottom. To be candid I haven't swum down 17 feet very often in my life. That's a lot of water! It's heavy! But I wanted the goggles! Yes, I kept them, so sue me.

My dream, the other day, was about being underwater. I have not been underwater, except to do freestyle flip turns, for quite some time. My interpretation of my dream is completely separate from being underwater.

I should interject here that I own, was given as a gift by the author, The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of the Dream, By Paul Sloan, MD. Inside the front cover, and inside the back cover, are letters written to me by Doctor Sloan. (I dated his daughter many years ago.) He did me the courtesy of telling me that ANYONE (even an actor! Ha ha) can interpret their dreams. "The only interpretation of a dream that is useful is that of the dreamer"! he wrote to me.

Several days ago, in the middle of the night, I woke having great difficulty in breathing. I went outside and gulped cool night air, and still I felt awful. (I may have taken antagonistic, not to be taken together, supplements and medication. Whatever, I was careless, and thought I could play Superman. It was quite, quite scary.

In the dream I was deep underwater, having fun, but suddenly I knew I could never swim back up to the surface: I was trapped by a great weight. I was terrified.

Interpretation of the dream: In my life I'm trying unsuccessfully to stop from drowning. With the dream as a warning I know I'll be able to ferrret out the actual, complete meaning of my dream, the warning of deadly danger.

Barry

 

Theatricality in CRASH

Heaven's Gate! one tries to prime the pump

and a sniper shoots you down. Then a Cracker

shoots you again to make sure you're dead.

In talking about CRASH I intend to talk about

theatricality in a movie, structural devices by

which theatricality is achieved.

Heaven's Gate was so absurdly assembled that

there are a myriad continuity lapses unintended.

Little things such as a pipe held in one hand

was forotten when shooting was resumed and

viola the pipe miraculously had jumped to the

other hand. That lapse was symptomatic of slovenly

workmanship and had nothing to do with the merit

of the story.

CRASH: Christmas is expressed by decorations , and once

suggested is repeated when snow falls, at the end, something

that really truly does happen sometimes in Los Angeles.

Christmas is unexpectedly invoked to alert the viewer

that something pivotal is about to happen, or has

already begun to happen. Ditto the mournful, high pictched,

beautiful woman's voice singing in a foreign language,

recorded in surround sound. The distance of the voice

helps underscore the tragedy of loneliness and neglect.

THE THEME OF OSCAR WINNER BEST PICTURE 2005

Racism is so ever-present in our society, so pervasive,

so poisonous, that actual buying and selling of human

beings still takes place.

I wonder how difficult a 'sell' that was in Hollywood?

I don't know how to interpret the presence of so many

production companies in the credits. I'm only an actor

living on an actor's pension. (Oh, yes, and I just got a

cost-of-living increase from Social Security. Yummy!

I bought extra generic love pills, two kinds, from India

via the Internet.

Barry

Robert Graves, Writer

I want to respond to the journal entry made by bgilmore725 (the amazing teacher from down South) but my temperamental computer has trouble with Links, "trouble" made worse when AOL made dead my signature space, so that not only can I not place my journal Link there, I cannot place anything there! It has been made radioactive. As punishment for having protested I am fined US $9.95 for one month, in spite of having my own, paid for, Cable Access high speed. And, my password is what AOL told me it would be, not what I selected!!?  Whatever happened to the old AOL slogan, "AOL will never ask you for your Password."  No, no, it will be what AOL tells you it will be, and if you protest you will be fined by an employee in India (or South Africa, or Israel, or Argentina, or The Philippines) to whom, in my case, I must give my bank account numbers. 

An aol message board troll has quoted, he claims, words now festooning that AOL Member's Screen Name Signature space, the space I cannot use for my posts, not for anything, words claimed as words of my daughter posted, entered, on an AOL "Lesbian Chat Room." They exist, those boards, I just found how to get to them. They come in all flavors. I'm not going in there. They shouldn't even be there. I wonder what they advertize on  "Lesbian Chat Rooms"?

Back to the real world and bgilmore725 blog pages. She teaches "Exceptional Chidren." Yesterday she posted a video, previously shown on Oprah, a Comment informs, unknown to me since I never watch Oprah. I'm a news junkie. This is a video worth watching. A powerfully built father runs in a swim suit after swimming while pulling his severely handicapped now adult son in a rubber boat, then carries his son in his arms to the the finish line of what is some kind of obstacle race/marathon or other form of multi-stage race a la Triathalons.  

For some of us, in some moods, watching such displays of selfless sacrifice for the good of someone much less fortunate, is curiously troublesome. Even if our concience is clear, we can have relatives of conspicuous religious and community loyalty and service, fail ignominiously at some stage of their lives when they grasped what was more convenient for them, and to hell with anyone else.

For that reason I chafe at being solicited to applaud the spiritual virtues of an unknown. After a lifetime of close scrutiny I'll have an opinion of someone's spiritual health, not on the basis of a newsreal or a TV video.

Illegally, IMO, I was shoved out of the house with 20 pounds Australian when I was a child. A bit earlier my mother had died, at age 41, and my father vanished. My two even younger brothers were farmed out to an orphange from where they were adopted. The family, relatives, I was soon discharged from was conspicuously Catholic. Saying the Rosary was a long standing custom. I knelt and even took my turn with spoken prayer. That family produced eleven (11) children.

Some years later I learned, with shock, that the oldest child, a son, my early life major playmate had been killed in traffic. And, a daughter had been incinerated in their kitchen attempting to ignite the coke in an Aga Cooker, a job that had been mine. I've wondered what the mother of that family would have given to not have seen the remains of her flaming daughter on the kitchen floor, or, had the poor creature run to her mother's solo bedroom (she always slept alone) screaming for help? That mother might have run out into the early morning dark garden. Perhaps she was a creature of habit to such a degree that she did the usual at that hour, put fresh water in the place provided for the birds, which she loved.

Because of the above troubling subject I've decided to bury myself in the self-styled "Novel" by academic, poet, novelist, linguist, Robert Graves' King Jesus written/published? in 1946. I suspect he called the book a "novel" because his extroadinary research, both in volume and detail is staggering to read, and hard to assimilate coming from such paucity of religious knowledge as mine. But he takes such care to be thorough and respectful I stay with him.

Please emailme if leaving a Comment is a drag for whatever reason. Here's my journal link. Please email me if this link does not work:

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

  

 

 

Take Two: Children

Okay, sweet people, that's too 'rough' for you? Let's switch to children and the disciplining of same.

I have an extraordinarily spirited four year old. Oh my Lord his non-stop energy is astounding. He can't wait, each day, to get to school (Pre-K). So, you can easily imagine the mischief he gets into. For safety's sake I must rein him in but in doing so I worry that it might be better to allow more leeway short of safety considerations.

Too much discipline, I fear, will over-train the tiger. A four year old learns from copying adults. But, damn it, I'm NOT gonna let him drive. Let him throw a tantrum, I'm immoveable.

Barry

 

Writing

Hey, people: how about writing a mini-essay, un-illustrated, about your last infidelity?  Oh come on: You've been faithful for 54 years?! Frankly, my dear, I don't believe you.

When you were unfaithful, and got caught, how did you patch it up? Hmmmmm? Come on, give us a tip or two.

I want to speak for all, not just for myself. After all, in due course total rectitude begins to pale.

Barry

Also, please include what you'd like to read about in the blogs of others?

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Religion

On my automobile's radio FM-1 99.5 on certain days I listen to religion palaver. It soothes me. As a retired actor I'm fascinated by the voices of sundry preachers wrestlng with 'selling' the Christian Bible. They aren't anywhere near as virulent as the Sunniis vs the 'whatever' sect they share horrendous murders with in Iraq, but nevertheless they do assiduously defend their territory.

One gruff-golden voiced older preacher, Hank Hannagraaff pilots a telephone call-in program in which he separates the wheat from the chaff. He was asked by a trembling-voiced indignant woman what he thought of "Landmark Education." Oh dear, that just happens to be an organization about which I know a thing or two. Hank quickly established that Landmark is not true to Scripture, and that the woman's soul was in imminent danger. Landmark has only good things to say about religions and always, without exception, avoids entanglements Scriptural: Religion is not their territory: keeping your word, doing what you said you were going to do, not making people wrong, learning that serving is not servitude, making a difference, those are just a few of Landmark's interests. It sprang from an organization which was invited to Soviet Russia, a State that abjured religions, with the hope that it might help make a difference with that State's extreme troubles with alcoholism.

So, I've gotta write a letter to ol' Hank. This journal entry is my warmup for that task. I have his address, or one of them, a radio station in Glendale a 'suburb' of Los Angeles largely Armenian by accidents of history; so help me its citizens look and act Soviet-style. Men and woman, for example, seem indistinguishable. Yet, groups of men sitting around a table in a small mall look as it they were conducting a rehearsal for an episode of The Sopranos. But that's just superficial apprearance: all actually law abiding, solid USA citizens. Reminds me, that tiny glimpse into the exterior of former Soviet Armenia, of the Russian rush to Church when the Soviet State collapsed. Banning religion was the single most stupid act of the Soviets. Putting their capitalist chandeliers in the subway was okay, but banning Picasso from their museums was deplorably stupid.

Fighting over religion: heavens,  that's a heavy sin.

As a Catholic (fearfully errant) I deeply admire Pope John's accepting an invitation to visit the Wailing Wall  in Jerusalem. John did what the others did and left a small written note with the stones. Same God! Same God reads all! Fighting over religion has gotta stop. Or else.......

Barry

 

 

Written communications

Communication by words alone is not as simple as one might suppose. That's why photographs and other graphics are so effective on blogs. Effective, that is, in stirring up responses: try, just try, blogging solely with words and one feels as if rattling along, alone in the Universe. That can be softened a little by laboriously endorsing every single word 'Entered' by another. I can do that, but after a while I feel insincere, or, simply get tired of the labor. In earlier times, in the days of Sam Johnson for example, correspondence was replete with humble jargon, such as "Your ever so humble servant," and so on. We don't buy that stuff any more.

Written communication via snail mail - you know, stamps, envelopes and a street address - has always been my favorite. I still have a copy of a letter written when I was ten (it was in 1943, WW2 ablaze) the motive of which was to inveigle my cousins into having me come to their place for the holidays: you know, rabbits, horses, shooting, cricket, and building underground "Headquarters." My letter is a riot of very bad writing, which of course is its charm. I might post a copy here, odd scrawl and all, but you see that would revert to graphics. It's words I want to employ, the good ol' English sentence. In spite of my verbal aggression, showing off, in the letter, my dear, strict Catholic aunt Helen saved the letter and half a century later my couson Michael sent me a copy, of really, really bad writing, which can be intriguing, even eclipsing splendid, perfect English, which sometimes can be a bloody great bore to read.

Here's the little known secret: writing all by itself, unsoftened by various decorative aids, can be infuriating, hurtful, inflamatory, defamatory, destructive, rude, frightening, gidding-making and also boring as hell ablaze. I know, because I've ruined many decades-old friendships simply by letting 'er rip in a letter. For example, a friend  from school days has allowed his mid-section to balloon. He's grown exceedingly didactic and superior in old age, so I'm tempted to write to him about the permanent 'lectern' conveniently placed in front of him, positioned so that no matter which direction he faces he can immediately launch into a speech on the subject of his sublime superiority intellectual. In college he was just about the only Freshman to flunk the famous "Step-test" which measured one's heart strength and recovery. Today, that test would kill him, I'm certain of that. Yet, I'm certain also that he is incapable of linking his perpetual ill-humor with the weakness of his heart. Heartlessness is a physical malady.

Sail on, Oh ship of Blog, maybe we can get something done after all.

Barry

Shoot, I just couldn't resist: I sent him an email copy.

 

 

 

My Link

My Link

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

It would appear that a longtime AOL message board troll found a way to void my Journal link posted on the Signature line of my message board posts. He did it by adding a space to my name. He would have me believe that AOL, and Himself, are one and the same. If that should turn out to be true then AOL is going to Hell in a basket even quicker than I thought.

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Disgusting Trolls

Whatever, whoever, AOL employees secretly,

and not so secretly shelter TOS violator friends

should be fired by AOL immediately.  I now have the

names and expect AOL to act, and act NOW.

 

BBartle3

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

He bent to kiss her.

"Don't do it again. If I miscarry again I'll die.

There are easier, quicker ways to kill me.
You can't have a child by me, don't you

understand? What makes you think you can

have a child by anyone?"

"Ah, but you won't miscarry this time," he

said. He lay beside her. He placed his hand

on her belly. He smiled. He uttered a string
of rapid syllables in a hum, his mouth grotesque
for one moment as he did it - it was a language!

"Yes my darling, my love, the child's alive

and the child can hear me. The child is female.

The child is there."

She screamed.

She turned her fury on the unborn thing, kill it

kill it, kill it, and then - as she lay back,

drenched in sweat, stinking again, the taste of

vomit in her mouth - she heard a sound that was

like someone crying.

He made that strange humming song. 

From: LASHER by Ann O'Brien Rice (page 141)

A Borzoi Book, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

So, this board (AOL Message Board 'Fav. Fiction')lives to celebrate this fiction?

Ths is the popular writing you celebrate day

after day writing of this calibre? My, my, my.

It reads a bit like the screenplay for NAKED GUN

but not funny at all. Pathetic, sick, pathological

goes some of the way to characterize such immature

demented drivel. Shame on you!

Barry

My wife is presently 41/2 months pregnant; reading the

above actually made me feel ill with disgust that any

writer could sink so low and make so much money

doing it. Is that's what's going on in America, that having

a baby is to be possessed by the devil?!  I see.  Then it's

time to open up all our borders to whatever eager-to-be-mothers

wish to enter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bb

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Crimes against the fetus

(Below is in response to the conjecture that  Scott Petersen didn't murder his wife, his perhaps rejected girl friend did.)

But that's not the actual subject of this Entry.

                               ______________

 

I'd never thought of that, or even heard
of that as a viable scenario. The girl friend was
weird enough that's for sure, so weird it was hard to believe that Peterson could have
preferred her over his beautiful wife. But,
against that argument is the police belief
that his wife had demanded a divorce. I
think Peterson's wife's family believed that too.

Wasn't 'Girl Friend' a tad too eager to trap him into a telephone confession?

I've read of a woman who'd announced

she was pregnant, discovered she'd counted

her eggs before they hatched, and tore a

baby out of the stomache of another woman

with the key to that woman's truck, and left

her to die. It happened outside a US Air Force

clinic.

It's no mystery that the miracle of

reproduction can be a hot button subject,

such as the constant waffling on the

subject of abortion, but the crimes committed

against the very idea of having a baby, and

when the general populace thinks it is permissible without the sanction of being shunned,  gets rapidily into displays of madness.

The two people Online who have posted

contempt for me for having fathered another child have, in effect, committed a crime against a fetus. I feel I should go armed. I'll definitely keep very close watch over my wife.

I grew up in a safe place, the sea coast North of Sydney, Australia where there was almost zero crime. Manly, Dee Why, Collaroy, Narrabeen were places where I lived or frequently visited. Children and women were safe at any hour, any place. There was less media hysteria, far less violent, lying advertising, almost no brutal crime movies or fiction. But as the population grew and the global, money-making frenzy swelled so did the crime rate. WW2 last a shorter time than the war in Iraq!? Can that be true!?

The world has gone mad, and Bilious Crud (SN)is its product. 

Bow down, kneel folks, Bilious Crud (SN)married to Lorry Truck (SN) who is actually a man via surgery, is the future!

Barry

Mystery Coin

This coin, see. It appeared beside my keyboard mysteriously. Could, might be one of Michael's jokes. Michael is four going on ninety four.  Money here is green so I type in green hoping against hope this coin is worth gold, big gold. It has seven sides. Gambler's pretend money? Slot money? On the back is says, cheekily, "New Pence." Do they mean penance? It's kinda dull silver colored. Oh, yes, and there's the number "50". Gee, that might be a lot, a lot of moola. Owwww, I'm drooling.

Suggestions anyone?  What do you figure it could buy me, if the real McCoy? Is it Irish money? Catholic or Protestant? I'm picky, you know.  It just showed up.

- Barry

Movies

I just read a former friend's list of fav. movies. Her list reads to me as that of someone anxious, desperate even, to psychologically distance herself from America. I can't converse with her on the subject because she has me filtered, blocked, roped off and handcuffed, ha ha ha ha.

But, she has done me a service: when I look back on my present list of fav. movies I think I see that I've always gone to the movies primarilyto feel connected with my native home, America.

Oh, and btw, this list I will present to Netflix when I get ready: that is, the list in not 'all time' favs necessarily, just the ones I want to watch now, and watch with members of my family. Some of them might bore my young children.

1. Grand Hotel (1932) Greta Garbo

2. A Place in the Sun (1951) (aka An American Tragedy,novel by Theodore Dreiser)

3. Spirit of Saint Louis, Dir: Billy Wilder, German Immigrant, at his very best. (J. Stewart)

4. Born Yesterday (from the play) Judy Holiday

5. Twelve O'Clock High (1949) Zanuch's triumph

6. Red River. Cowboys and Indians/ The West, John Wayne, Montgomery Clift.

7. Gervaise (Maria Schell) French

8. Laura (1940s) Clifton Webb, Gene Tierney

9. A Night To Remember (English version Titanic) Clifton webb, Barbara Stanwyck

10. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (Elia Kazan Dir.)

11. On The Waterfront, Brando/Kazan

12. The Hanging Tree, Western/Gary Cooper still in the saddle and better than ever. Maria Schell.

13. Boy's Town (Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, "There is no such thing as a bad boy.")

14. All the King's Men (1949 - the current remake will bomb, trust me. Every critic will cite the 1949 superior version. Broderick Crawford. Politics out of control. I must read the novel by Penn Warren.

 

So, that's my list. What the hell is wrong with AOL? Twice while trying to type this everything went haywire: for one thing GD McAfee almost derails everything by demanding to "scan" now, or else....drop dead McAfee; I rely on another.

The movies: pls see CRASH so we can talk about it. A demented woman college something or other on a writer's message board said she won't see it 'cause she's already read The New Yorker review. "With respect to critics the only thing that would satisfy me is revenge." - Lee Strasberg co-founder of The Group Theater.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..................... 

 

Barry

 

 

 

My Comment (A preparation)

(While waiting for reading matter to be sent to me from NY, material from my Catholic chum Dick, I responded, made a Comment on the Journal of another. Maybe I can sidestep all the work required to make an entry of my own. I'm Catholic, but errant lots of the time; sloth, isn't that a sin? Try confessing that these days; you'd be asked if you've robbed any banks lately, ha ha ha ha....)

 

Your subject is definitely rivetting. You give
a comprehensive overview of the elements
present in the Pope's disparagement of Islam,
Muslims, whatever is the correct word(s).
I'm warming up to 'Journal' my own take on the
brouhaha which given that only words are
involved and not bombs, is pretty entertaining
except for the riots in response, violence from
the very people the Pope was indirectly correcting.
Muslims, IMO, are violently jealous of the glamor
of Christianity. A Parish newsletter from the
Church reported some years ago that there are
more words devoted to Mary, The Mother of God,
in the Koran, than there are devoted to Her in
The New Testament. Odd that the same people who
have been so worshipful of The Virgin Mary, Mother
of Jesus, in the Koran, shoot women, mothers
included, in the head in broad daylight in a football
stadium in Afghanistan. (The highest percentage of
infant deaths per number of births occur in Afghanistan.) As to terrorist suicide bombers, it's pretty hard for any Christain to swallow how murder, plus suiicide, two heavy-duty sins, could possibly benefit, or please Allah.

And, your points are well taken.

Barry
http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Rambling Thoughts

Can you imagine? a bank robbery is in progress (what progress? scooping up the money?) in Chicago. Oh, oh the lore of the Prairee.

Perhaps because I'm in an inter-racial marriage I've blogged on the subject of race quite a few times. Waiting for the birth of a baby, as I hope you can grant, is a mite more suspenseful than ordinarily. Mother and father have played the game - which ancester's physiognomy do you pray does not show up in the 'Expected' (March 7th? '07)?  What facial features, color hair etc.? Healthy is my sole prayer. The mother wants all kinds of things I consider irrelevant. I do love black hair on a woman, so if the baby is a girl I'll have it made 'cause, I think, black hair is a dominant gene. Hybrid vigor is on our side, too.

Here's what's happening in Los Angeles. Racial pride is on the March. At the laundromat the other day I watched a tall, oh so tall maybe 6'3" Black woman with a perfect figure. So far so ordinary; but what really wowed me was that she had perfect posture, and lyrical movement, so might have been a dancer. An old guy can get away with murder so on the strength of a 'Hi there' or two, when I was leaving, I said to her, "have a great life." "Thankyou," she said looking down on my 6'0" shortness, with a smile. I've confessed this 'infidelity,' ha ha ha, to my wife who is supremely self-confident. (Sweet tempered Filipina.)

More news as it happens: A shooting at a Montreal College.

The world is nuts, so by comparison my life is perfect. Hope yours is too.

I have a photo before me, a snapshot I took of son Vincent riding a horse in Griffith Park, in LA. The lighting was lucky so I'd like to post it here; I'll give it a whirl, if, it can be added later. I have to wait for Vincent, age, 11, to help me. Well! I had him for a reason: assistance. What other reason have people had babies, huh? Gar 'head, tell me. Next month we'll take the boat to Catalina Island, about 20miles offshore. It's been swum; I'd like to try it. Be the oldest, maybe. Might be too expensive, what with boat following etc. So, the ferry might have to suffice. Not sure, but I think Vincent and I could take our bikes. I know biking on the Island is popular. A whole day of clean, non-city air!

My "ramble" is at an end. Hope nothing rubbed you the wrong way. That was not my intent.

Barry  http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

 

9/11 & 911

TIME magazine, remember that rag? It now costs $3.95. I suggest you don't bother. The current issue is dated Sept. 11, 2006. Conspiracies, second guessing, quasi-philosophic Editorial gushing are presented with the sole motive of making money, the very thing the Twin Towers represented under the title World Trade Center, and now celebrated as such in a Hollywood movie.

John asks us to give our thoughts and experiences related to the calamity. Okay, "I'll bite" (an American expression from the 1930s I believe - it was a favorite of my English father) my first inkling of the event came from a laughing Mexican gas station attendant in a Mexican State North of the  State of Oaxaca. In Spanish, and then broken English he told us - my family and I were driving back to California - that Boston had been bombed. He had the news a bit garbled: a plane leaving Boston had changed course, as we now know from being hijacked, did a left turn and headed for the Island of Manhattan, specifically the North Tower. It's the laughter of the man in the gas station I want to dwell on. Not just millions in Mexico, millions all over the world got a huge lift from seeing America on fire and falling down. Since the subway bombings, and the more recent arrest of 24 English Muslim alleged terrorists, England might now be an even more ardent friend, and never did laugh anyway.

Suicide murder, such a popular hobby/tactic in the Middle East, a most grievous damning sin for Christians, was totally unknown to me for most of my life. The young Arab who dressed as a Rabbi to board a bus in Israel then blew up himself and everyone else on the crowded bus into black scrap lying in a black skeleton of what  had been the bus, is now a reverred hero honored at feasts given in his honor, feasts paid for with the $25,000 given his family for their sacrifice. 'Son for sale?' daughter for sale? husband for sale? must constantly be whispered all over the Eastern end of the Mediteranean.

As far as I know the 9/11 terrorists' families may have gone unrewarded. If so, that might, could possibly, put a brake of building bombing, but don't hold your breath. The more modest bus bombing seems slightly more warlike, than the grotesquerie of Twin Towers bombing which works as a declaration, but, lets be honest, spells doom for the participants and their cultures. It was over-kill. By that action Osama Bin Ladin committed slow motion  suicide; it could turn out that the angry spoiled brat was all along simply mad at Daddy, and not really mad at America at all?!  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha................... who do you figure will get the last laugh?

 

You got it!

Barry          

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/ 

 

 

 

 

 

Kinsey

Kinsey the movie was on TV last night. Better by far than I expected. As a retired actor - shoot I can prove I was an actor: I could post the $0.28 residual check I received a couple of days ago; it came via a $0.39 US postage stamp.  Somewhere or another, on television I assume, an episode of a TV series in which I played a Principal role, or more accurately, had a 'Principal' SAG contract, was replayed. All I can remember about the job is that the lead actor kept giving me angry glances as if getting ready to pull rank should the director slip up and put the camera too close to me. On most sets, so help me, humans return to infancy.

That's why Kinsey is stunning. Most of it is thoroughly adult. The role of Kinsey's wife, Linnley (?) in the acting was perfect and very surprising from an American actress (so kill me; calling a woman an 'Actor' strikes me as stupid) who usually play kitten not woman.

The trouble with the storytelling is that Kinsey is depicted as 'naughty' rather than as a scientist. The actual words say he is a "scientist" but the acting is too weak to convey that truth. The lead actor sabotages the story, just as he ruined Schindler's List, playing Schindler.

Kinsey's work still deserves wider distribution. His first book, on men, which I read at Lowell High School in San Francisco half a century ago, is now out of print. And the second volume, on women, I've never read. Didn't know there was such a book.  After three marriages (tenth child on the way; please say a prayer for safe delivery) I smugly insist I know what's to be known about female human sexuality. If I didn't I sure would be a slow study. I'm more than willing to grant there is also a strong thread of mystery running through the subject, for women and men.

The front page of THE NEW YORK POST a couple of days ago featured a shot of murder suspect John Karr seated on the plane which brought him to Los Angeles from Thailand. The 'screaming' headline read, "Snake On A Plane." Since the story broke the paper has referred to him a "the perv." I doubt anything of Kinsey is on the shelves at the offices of that NY rag. The automatic condemnation cries out, 'we're pure, we're pure' when all the time they are flat out evil condemning before the man is even charged!   I subscribed the other day for two reasons: to get free Dodger tickets, and to kid my New York friend by sending him clips from that paper, just as he sends me clips from that paper.  We go way back.

In history the collection of Kinsey's data must have been done lovingly and without judgment. When a teen, reading the first volume, I thought it was funny. For example, a very tall black man had a string tied to his member and when, lying down, he had an erection it rang a bell. I thought, and still think, that is fuuuuuuuny. One fine day when the sun comes up unobscured, and birds sing in the trees, we'll all be much more relaxed about, and appreciative of,  sex, wonderful sex.

Barry 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The Female Brain

For years now, decades, the impact of the zenith of the feminist movement which in America I think was around 1989 (when, against my will my marriage number two collapsed, just as against my will as my first marriage ten years earlier) I've been guilty feeling and acting in the certitude that men and women were different. Now, finally I've stumbled upon recent wisdom, this time from Science.

It's Sunday. I'm reading the Sunday paper Book Section. This will be a Red Letter day in my life. 

From THE FEMALE BRAIN , by Louann Brizendine, M. D. Morgan Road Books: 280pp:

"There are still those who believe that for women to become equal, unisex must be the norm. The biological reality however, is that there is no unisex brain. The fear of discrimination based on difference runs deep, and for many years assumptions about sex differences went scientifically unexamined for fear that women wouldn't be able to claim equality with men."

Break out the champaign! Uncork the wine! Musicians, give us your sweetest music made in the name of Mother!

Oh what a relief it is!

I'm too giddy with happiness to continue this, for now. The ramifications will be enormous.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Readers Message Board Palaver

<< "Kind of marvelllous that the world's first novel can be on your just list. Strictly personal, I'd substitute Great Expectations for your pick, but I don't quarrel with yours, not one bit." >        - BB3 < "I absolutely, positively HATED Great Expectations.  Pip had to be the most whiny character I have ever encountered.  Two of my three kids have also read it and feel the same way.  I loved David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, etc.  But I would leave Great Expectations OFF any *must read* list of mine.  I would also scratch Lord Jim off any list.  IMO, it was slim pickings the year the powers that be added Lord Jim to a classics list.  I did like Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness though." > From: MarySkl   A classmate, David Kenneth Israel, apparently talked our Literature professor - whose name escapes me this second - into allowing me, an undergraduate, to take a graduate course, a single author course, actually called a 'Graduate Seminar' in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard in the 1950s. I think I got a B-. Hey, I passed!  Here's the poop. Dickens' reputation was given a boost by the publication of a new biography by one, Johnson, not long before I took that inspiring course. Great Expectations can be read as a rewrite of David Copperfield written 35 years later. David had to learn caution and discretion, while the trajectory of Pip's life taught him to stop being such a snob. You're absolutely right/correct/on-target David is infinitely more likeable than Pip. One might say that the later novel was almost a confession by the narrator. I believe it is now generally believed that the later novel is the stronger work of art written by a very great artist at the peak of his powers. Barry

Buddy Lists

My Buddy List has drastically shrunk. There's good ol' Ally and good ol' Zoe, and my daughter who won't speak to me, ha ha ha ha, but today's shrinkage suggests my 'buddies' get Online via airplane. AOL, TIME WARNER was the kiss of death.

So now it's free, this AOL. If I'm offered the very latest AOL software I decline on the grounds that it's probably not to benefit me, but to benefit AOL getting even more advertising machinery on board this sinking ship.

Oh well. A new 'Buddy' of mine will show up around March 20 2007. I'm 73, the woman (mother/wife) is 35, and the buddy-to-be is about two months old. Crazy, right? Hey, this is America, "Home of the Brave." And no, it was not caused by invitro fertilization, but by the old-fashioned way. Clue: Two hours or so after swimming 1500 meters the other day, swim training for Masters swim Meets, my blood pressure taken at home read 114/64 - resting pulse. the third number I record, might have been a bit high but that was not typical. If the first figure is 170 or over a doctor will not write a Viagra prescription. So the motive to swim-train puts on some muscle.

To make room for our new Buddy we will need a vehicle with six seats. So for the price of most late model used ("previously owned" in typically evasive American lingo) cars we got a new Mazda MPV3 gorgeous thingum with front wheel drive and a hot four cylinder (good MPGs) transverse engine and transmission with overdrive. Years ago I owned a rotary engine Mazda that I totalled, replaced with another identical, and both were made sloppily. Mazda suffered a class action suit at about that time. Mazda, I figure, is still trying to climb back from their manufacturing nightmares for which I admire them tremendously. All that has to happen now is for 'Buddy's' mother to transform her driving permit into a license. In the meantime she back-seat drives ME. Ha ha ha ha ha.....

Hey, we aren't all going to abandon ship are we?

H   e   l   p    !   !   !   gulp   gulp   gulp    gulp...........

 

Barry xxx

 

 

 

 

 

Rambling

Finally getting to read a many-months-old Alumni magazine. I'm intrigued to know that research on human aging continues apace, and, sort of related, music can, and does, relieve anxiety about one's life. Less anxiety, longer life, wouldn't you say? Ha!

Here's a short cut: folk wisdom is correct; life expectancy (longevity) is partly genetic. Lab experiments with other life forms substantiates what has  already been observed about people. Scientists are also wrestling with the question, 'Why does minimal intake of food, especially later in life, with  all-nutritious food intake, prolong life?' That too involves genes and their functions. 

Tchaikovsky wrote, "Without music I'd go insane." Apparently he knew a thing or two. Music is therapeutic. Think I'll listen to it more often. For some bloggers writing is 'music,' probably, and not only makes them feel better, but extends their life span.   But we already knew all this stuff, right?

 

Barry 

Arab Wars

CNN comes into its own in time of war. So much is happening in the Middle East, and happening so fast CNN has far fewer repeat broadcasts than has been usual. What a boon to History teachers at High Schools. Just turn on the news and ask questions from the class, and/or ask the class to simply comment.

Then, in Sociology class ask questions about Taliban shooting of women in the football stadium in Afghanistan because they had dressed or behaved improperly in public. What does war and sexual repression have in common? What sex fantasies do ultra conservative Arab men indulge in? and, among each other, what fantasies do they share about Jewish, particularly Iraeli Jewish women? Interesting that we hear nothing about that. An American Muslim woman, a woman with an American doctorate in Psychiatry, had her views about Arab terrorists broadcast on Al Jazera. This news snippet was published on the front page of the Daily News in Los Angeles. To my knowledge that was published nowhere else in America. The American woman psychiatrist simply stated the obvious, that suicide terrorists are psychotic. What were we afraid of that the Al Jazera broadcasts were hushed up? What's to be afraid of?

Have to mull this one over and post again. Help, anyone?    

Barry

RACE II

Part Two:

Race. William Faulkner writes, or has a character say that the only solution to problems of race will be the inevitable "bleaching out" that will result from interbreeding. We are witnessing that. The tension in race relations are obvious in big cities; CRASH might not seem interesting to white people living in rural America, but it is riveting to those living where the story is set, Los Angeles. The "Best Original Screenplay 2005" ends on the note that today people are literally still being bought and sold. It is staggering to me that any immigrant from Europe would dismiss the movie because it doesn't have any plot. (See Comment on previous entry.)

The nearly all Black women jury that found O. J. Simpson "Not guilty" did so for reasons prosecutor Marcia Clark gives on page 389 of her book Without A Doubt, Viking 1997:

"Experience had shown me that Black female jurors are perfectly capable of convicting a Black man who brutalizes his wife or girlfriend. As I've said before - and I'll say it as many times as I have to - The Simpson case was an anomaly. What was perceived here as apathy on the part of black women jurors toward Nicole's suffering seemed to me rather a deliberate form of denial. I truly believe that our black female jurors knew in their hearts that O. J. Simpson was no better than the average asshole who gets drunk on Friday nights and  throws his woman against a wall. But I think they felt they couldn't afford to act on that knowledge. Too few black men succeed in penetrating the ranks of upper-class white society for them to allow one to be taken out in such an ignominious way. Looking back on it, I think I'd have to say that blacks of both sexes were moved to breathtaking feats of denial in order to keep the Juice from going down."

That's a strange piece of writing. Notice that the word 'black' is not capitalized. Today Black and African American are interchangeable and both are capitalized. It's not simply a matter of color, it's race in all aspects: voice, movement, attitude, and the  baggage of history. Nevertheless some of what Marcia says is true.

What Marcia leaves out is the deliberation with which Nicole sought to torment her former husband. She virtually flaunted her affairs knowing that her stalker husband would, in effect, 'watch.' Nicole had an affair with the restaurant Mezaluna's Manager, not just with the 'boy' waiter OJ murdered. Simpson actually went to the table where Nicole and the Manager were dining and made threats up close, nose to nose. The other branch of the restaurant which the Manager also ran was in Aspen. Nicole bathed first in a tub festooned with candles. She could have charged admission.  

Isn't there an Othello psychology at work in the dreadful drama? with the difference that Desdemona was innocent while Nicole definitely was not.

The Black women jurors played God: they knew OJ was guilty, but they hated the method adopted by the prosecution in order to prove he was guilty. Race was the lens throught which all parties to the trial prepared their Defense, and their Prosecution, and deliberations by the jury. Even the city of Los Angeles was at fault in failing to make available a larger and more varied jury pool. In Santa Monica, where such a jury pool was provided, the
Civil case prosecution was successful and OJ was found guilty.

As was shown so thrillingly in the movie CRASH race in Los Angeles has a direct influence on the life of all of us. In one inner city area it has been shown that 69 different languages are spoken.

Barry

 

 

RACE

Several times my posts that had anything whatsoever to do with Race were completely ignored. (Of course my journal on some other subjects were frequently almost ignored, ha!) For example, apparently not a soul who has an AOL Journal has seen, or if seen will discuss, the Best Picture, Oscar for 2005, CRASH.  I consider it the best movie I've ever seen. So I hope you can understand my resultant feelings of dislocation. My all time favorite movie cannot even be discussed?!? My children, ages 4, 5, 11, ask frequently to see the movie again. They are children of an interracial couple! They know some of the lines, can remember the names of the characters, and recall scenes, especially scenes with police, weeks after the last time we screened the movie.

With that in mind I can hardly expect anyone to pay the slightest bit of attention to my ruminations of the subject of the Orenthal James Simpson double murder trial. I'm about to conclude the book Without a Doubt by Marcia Clark, with Teresa Carpenter. Recently I read two other books on the same subject, In Contempt by Christopher Darden, with Jess Walter, as well as Madame Foreman A Rush to Judgment? by three jurors Amanda Cooley, Connie Bess, and Marsha Rubin-Jackson. as told to Tom Byrnes.

In sum the three books together prove that OJ (aka 'The Juice') Simpson was guilty, and the murder trial failed to convict him because of machinations springing from considerations of Race. The trial took place in Downtown Los Angeles, where the potential jury pool was made up of a majority African Americans. The subsequent civil trial reached a conviction because that trial was held in Santa Monica, about 15 miles away on the Pacific Coast where it was easier for both sides to find a jury equally black and white. The convicting jury downtown was made up of eight Black women and four jurors white and Hispanic.

The moment I learned the makeup of the acquital jury, of which I was ignorant during the actual trial, I could immediately understand the not guilty verdict. Black women are brought up to defend their man. I learned that years agowhile researching for an interracial play I was writing. I read Black Rage written by two Black psychiatrists. Black Mothers know their daughters will have far less trouble finding a job than will their sons. Knowing just that much, plus the makeup of the jury, and I'd have been certain from day one that OJ would get off. Black women on the jury were insulted that the co-Prosecutor Christopher Darden was Black: they smelled out that he was a 'token' Black man chosen only to cynically endear the prosecution to that jury. It didn't, it alienated them.

                          

                             End of Part One

Barry

The 1926 novel THE SUN ALSO RISES

There are cabals, ugly groups, on message board sites and even scattered through AOL Journals (The real conspiracies are no doubt hidden in closed journals, groups for example who'd really like, no kidding, to assassinate personnas non-grata, such for example the brave and desirable MS Coulter) that give themselves away, for example, by being made up mostly of only one gender, and en masse, for example, will sneer at Hemingway's innocent novel of 1926 (heck, ages and ages ago!@!) The Sun Also Rises, made into, in 1956, an atrocious full color expensive junk movie starring non-actress Ava Gardner (a walking man trap most dangerous, and doubtless most disappointing when horizontal.)

Having reread The Sun Also Rises I'm ready to go to war with those who declare the negatives they find in the book, things such as the villain is Jewish, and the narrator confesses his prayer in which he expresses sorrow that he's a "rotten Catholic." The novel's glory is that it's private!  In America, no kidding, real notions of privacy are dead, dead long ago in the arts.  (Exception, the recent movie CRASH.)  Notice, on message boards and in Journals there's almost zip that's private. You don't, as a result, find many Nobel Laureates in those environs, or even speakers of personal truths that aren't cliches, and even those are unfelt. Symptom: plethoras of someone else's graphics! Emotions borrowed and unfelt. 

Barry

warming up, getting in shape.

Dad

A year ago, or so it seems, I posted an entry about the last time I saw my father. I truthfully described getting away from him by stranding him on a ferry by getting on just as it was about to pull out, walking to the other end and disembarking, by jumping to the wharf. That was in Circular Que(sp?), Sydney, Aust.

That was written in just one mood. One has many moods. In the father department I was extraordinarily lucky. (1) He truly loved my mother and was faithful to her. (2) He was non-violent. (3) If I do say so myself, one look at my children shows he passed on fabulous genes: beauty, brains, strong bodies, height and vivid imaginations. None of his progeny are fat, not one! Ha ha ha ha. 

He was a drunk with amazing recuperative powers. He died at age 76, sober. A Catholic nun was so grateful and inspired by him she came to my home in NYC to convey a message. The Nun had a choice between going home to Ireland on vacation, or coming to New York. Apparently my father helped construct a Catholic school house in the country by offering his services, free, as an architect. Because he was quite tall, she arranged to have adjusted the drawing board at which he worked. To my over-heated, torrid imagination it seemed they loved each other: no harm, his wife, my mother, was long dead, and who says anything improper took place? Not me!

My younger brothers never seemed to get over their hatred for our father. I think they damaged themselves with their judgmental dismissal. Yes, he was a drunk. True he abandoned us when our mother died. He did to us what his English parents had done to him. Our father fled from England by 'Transporting' himself  (Ha ha) to Australia when in his 20s. The English never seemed to get the hang of family cohesion. Take a gander at the Royal family! What a cold-hearted, passionless mess! Yuch!  Whatever the case, my English father, always somewhat removed, always, lifelong, intimidated by social rank, money and position, had biology on his side even if his parents let him down, he had no religion, and punished himself for his failures by simply disappearing. The only thing he seemed to love about England was Charlie Chaplin and would reduce himself to helpless laughter by describing and acting out Charlie in the pawn shop.

I loved, and love you Dad. You had all the qualities I most prize: brains, imagination, daring, and consistency, and tenderness.

 

Barry, son of

             John Carrick Rennie Bartle