Adding Insult to Injury, ha ha ha ha

Sometimes it can be an enormous comfort to have actually read a book or two: that, even as a hobby, can cut into one's movie watching, and TV relaxing of the intellect, but on many an occasion book knowledge can be like virus protection, insulating one from appalling, tacky ignorance.

A beloved Online, AOL Journal Wiseguy has posted the following quote - it's not even his own -
as a quip worthy of storage and emulation, something to give your image some jive. I was going to tell him where it comes from, for real, not simply from some B-movie, but he has banned me from posting a Comment on his Journal. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Smart manoever! He knows what hole to hide in.

"< V for Vendetta

"I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence.">"

This quote of a quote actually originated with Einstein: "God Does not play dice with the Universe." To which, respectfully, a later, younger physicist, the Nobel Prize winner, actor from an episode of Star Trek, Stephen Hawking, in his second Physics popularizing book The Universe in a Nutshell wrote, armed with new knowledge, "It turns out that God is quite a gambler."

Ignorance is not cool. Making fun of education to endear oneself to the deprived is kinda bestial, and should be given a wide berth.

Good Morning! Look! I'm not scared of being unlovable!  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.......

Barry

 

 

Pixie's Returning! (Maybe)

Remember pixiedustnme? the woman army veteran who calls the father of her child "The Idiot" ***? She's testing the waters to see if there is sufficient clamor for her return. What colossal vanity! First she tries to cause a stampede away from AOL, and now she wants to be begged to return. Gimme a break. Let's see your Honorable discharge first.

Barry

*** Setting up her daughter for a life of agony trying

to figure out why her Mom hates men.

Private Club

Gee whiz, now Scalzi, John M. is editorializing about a dead woman blogger I've never heard of let alone never having read her now Famous Journal memorialized by double fund-raising, first by ever-loved Jimmy, who apparently has raised so much money he could build a marble pyramid in her memory, and now by our esteemed Editor-in- Chief. 

Friends, there's money to be made in these here blogging environs. How do we know she's dead? Jimmy lists, to click on, "$10" as the lowest amount to "donate." What do we do if we can spare only $5? switch to John M. to see if we have better luck?  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha....zzzz.......ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

ssssssss$0.01/2

 

Barry

 

 

 

Blogging & Journaling

"Barry, sometimes I don't understand.  You chastize some for wanting comments, but you were annoyed at me for NOT wanting comments.***  I'm confused.  

Blogger and Blogspot are the same host, by the way - you go to Blogger.com to create a blog named xxxx.blogspot.com.  And no one there is incommunicado.  People who left put pointers in the old AOL journals, and there are several directories pointing to where people went.  At Bloglines.com you can set up for feeds of updates, and unlike AOL, there are no ads, and you get the WHOLE post on the feed.  In fact, I don't use AOL Alerts any more - Bloglines gives me AOL journal updates much more neatly.

There are several reasons that people may be leaving AOL journals:  
AOL uses a broken and non-standard HTML, so some things just don't work right.
AOL doesn't display some templates correctly.  
Putting large photos into the journal is a royal pain, compared to other blog hosts.  
AOL moderates content.  
Anyone knowing your screenname(s) can find your journal (like your boss, for instance).
Your non-AOL friends and relatives who might want to read your journal are forced to get an AOL screenname.
...and other reasons, not the least of which is that AOL code is inefficient, full of bugs,  and slow.

If you tried another journal/blog host, you might leave AOL, too. I assure you people aren't leaving to get away from anybody.  They're leaving for greener pastures."

From: Silk   aka  (Not in front of me this second)

DISCUSS!

Barry

*** Please, don't expect consistency right now. I know

I waffle on many things.   - bb3

 

AOL Journals, Where goeth thou.....hmmmmmm?

Bloggers (Journal-keepers) on my list are leaving AOL journals; some are incommunicado in Blogspot and Blogger, and others have left their Journal idle for months. 

Journal heaven for a few blog keepers is to decoratively pen their plans for their garden, then sit back and receive a long line of supplicants expressing astonishment at the perspicacity and hoeing skill and penmanship of the blogger. Is there no bottom to the depth of vanity and self-importance of the human animal? Or, is the blogger so self-esteem deprived, so near suicide from loneliness, that it takes an army of penmen and penwomen to keep them from slicing their wrists out of despair?

My Irish/Australian Catholic relative by marriage, a grandmother to at least eleven children, and God knows how many others, enormously rich by comparison to all in her small town - she and her husband owned the town's largest (only) department store and garage - infuriated my father who observed her selling vegetables to the neighbors during a drought. They lacked a well as deep as hers.

Getting into heaven, it's said, is mighty hard for all of us, to say nothing of the difficulty for the rich.

'Judge not, that you be judged,' is oh so true, but I throw caution to the winds in a fit of anger and indignation.

Barry

 

Messages Reveived Messages Ignored

 

"And nor did the moments when the dialogue sounded a little manufactured like when the young black guy gave the speech about hip-hop. It also didn’t ring true when the black guy stood by and watched the cop assault his wife, it wasn’t like he was trying to avoid a 20 year stretch – but perhaps I’m out of touch!"

 

Tilly;

    You must be a professional writer to be so perceptive about plot

construction and logic of dialog. In my eagerness to actually promote

the movie - I loathed everything about Brokeback Mountain and fantasized that Acting Members of the Academy would read my

rants on the subject and vote for CRASH instead.

    I believe there might be a smidgeon of screenwriter politics in

the portrayal of the passive, Black husband who'd allow his wife

to be molested. The character worked for a movie studio.

The screenwriter of CRASH is flat-out zapping and zinging

Hollywood for its supine existence in the midst of chaos.

The ONLY member of WGA (Writers Guild of America) AOL

screen name CaseyMccc posted on the screenwriter's message board (which has been virtually destroyed by savage trolls) yesterday that

he hasn't seen CRASH yet!?  Sex politics, and career politics, I swear to you!!!  CaseyMcc is a nice man, but success in his business demands that he toe the line. He, and his fellow workers hoped and prayed for

Brokeback Mountain to win Best Picture. Instead is has failed

abysmally at the box-office, and has in various other ways been

shamed: a Hollywood calamity which I heartily applaud.

 

Actor, comic, culture commentator Bill Cosby has made waves in

recent times decrying the still-in-existence 'foot-shuffling' of African

Americans even today. The screenwriter of CRASH is insisting that

Bill Cosby is right, and so made the husband so embarrassingly tamed

in at least two scenes in his movie. The other  is when he caves in

to the demands of the 'producer' (brilliantly acted by Tony Danza in

a tiny role).  The lead, plain clothed detective also caves to City politics.

The screenwriter's 'Idea' for the philosophizing Black bandit is more on

the theme of the passive Black man who bragged he would never rob another black man, yet does so. He atones by releasing the Chinese

 slaves.

 

As to the music, all I can say is that it helped me understand what

was going on, and made me cry, even almost sob in places. When my

four year old came to me before the movie was over to tell me he liked

the scene where the wife was pulled out from under the crashed

vehicleby the man she hated, I gave him a huge rocking hug.

 

But, you're right: the screenplay suffers somewhat from a

"Surfeit of overt intention" (forget where I got that phrase, school

I guess) which has definitely turned offsome viewers. I'm not sure

what to say about, or think, of "Message movies."  If you get caught

delivering the message the force of the message is diminished.

The Greeks might have had the right answer: be bold and shockingly

inscrutable. Medea is incomprehensible. OR IS IT!!!!??????

 

Barry

 

The Mix

Race, wowee, after all this time race is still a hot topic?! The reason is, perhaps, that nobody, or almost nobody, is willing to take on the subject. Virtually all, a very high percentage of active Members of AOL are lilly white. I can hear it in the speech, I can hear it in the attitudes displayed, a very conspicuous tone of entitlement and privilege. I can hear it in the tension, humorlessness and intolerance of the writing, or writer wannabe Member. Curiously, rich white members probably do not write so frequently about what they have, about their houses and their view and their garden. The rich take those things for granted, they have lived with them all their lives. The new rich might  sometimes be another matter. The rich are more comfortable about race than are the middle class. You're not use to this subject? beginning to squirm? Tough. This is America.

Barry 

Preamble to The Last....

I'll start it off: I'll bet CRASH crashed in the South. It's a movie about race. Recently an acquaintance I'm fond of shocked me out of my skull by revealing, at least to me, that she's a racist through her refusal to find any merit whatsoever in the movie CRASH. Only with great difficulty do I restrain myself (a difficulty since overcome) from writing an essay about the Roman Legions being virtually the founders of modern Germany, and that the Nazi's borrowed Roman Legion symbols for their theatrics, for example at Nuremberg (sp?). And, what's hysterically funny about that, is that Roman Legions were made up of soldiers whose DNA was a result of gene flow across the Sahara into Italy. The Roman Legions, also, were charmed at the time of their occupation of England with the blond hair of the "Angels" (Hence 'England') and interbred with them. You remember, of course, Remains of the Day, Hmmmm? How chummy some wealthy Brits were with Industrial, expanding Germany?

Barry

CRASHing all over the place....

<  "I liked Crash.  Found it entertaining and thought provoking.  But it wouldn't have dawned on me to put it on a best picture of the year list.  The writing was solid and clever, but it felt to me that the whole ensemble cast — as racially, economically and motivionally diverse as they were — ended up speaking in the same voice:  that of a successful white Los Angles screenwriter in a hurry to make a point.

There are many supporters of Crash, but also many detractors.  And many of these detractors are black.  They believe Crash is a way for liberal whites to feel they've taken a hard look at racism when they've merely watched a manipulative and self-serving movie.  Some think the white racists were made too sympathetic.  I don't agree with that.  But some detractors make interesting points.

'A new poster':  don't know who you are yet, but when someone who has never appeared on a board shows up and directs people to a fee-charging writers event, it usually smells like spam." >

From : (a message board)

I very much liked this post. My first sentence of appreciation, just penned, is routinely called "sucking up" by you'all know whooo, Boo! I'd prefer it to be noted as Barry addressing the folder with my better self.

Some of the sticks to bash the movie CRASH that you cite might be taken into account by the complicated ideas in the screenplay: in dialog as well as action. I'd try to make the case that the writing is honest vs calculated goody-two-shoes, but even if some of your charges stick, I'm so grateful for the rest of the production, especially the unity of the acting, that I'm willingto let them pass. Remember, 'Race' is fiendishly difficult to write about, and just as fiendishly difficult to live with and among. For example, I'm married to and have been married to since 1992, an Asian woman. I'm revoltingly 'anglo' leading man type: In an Oldsmobile Industrial film made in 1966/7 I was cast as James Bond. Our children are, to say the least, hybrid, and thanks to hybrid vigor astoundingly quick, smart, and the oldest leads his class in Math. I've just had developed and had printed two forgotten rolls of film of our beginning family of three shot in 1994/7 showing, to me, how my young wife's appearance has changed in the 14 years since we were married. I'd forgotten she looked Asian back then, ha ha ha ha. We begin in relationships influenced by exterior appearances, and discover the human being who is not shaped by race. Most religions preach that in the eyes of God we are all equal. Our equality is guarranteed by our Constitution, and enforced by our laws like it or not. That's why America could be Heaven.

These truths, I feel, are emphasised brilliantly, though with some indirection, in the movie CRASH.

Barry

Skip this: Auto Talk, boooooooring.....

LA has been called the auto capital of the world. I live in LA. Having an auto is imperative, although slowly but surely rapid transit, including Underground (Subway) fast Metrolink, and two-section busses are in place and growing.

Having a car is a happiness nevertheless, for shopping, attending entertainments, even going swiftly to the library, the doctor, swimming pools and parks, the zoo, and the theater and concert halls.

Within my lifetime automobiles have very dramatically improved. When I was a preteen an auto engine required major engine repair before 50,000 miles. ("Rings"). An exception might have been hand-crafted cars such as those made by Rolls Royce. Today some inexpensive production line cars last at least 100,000 miles before major repair is required.

It used to be said that American cars were made with 'Built-in obsolesence' forcing another purchase. Today with winning competition from Japan, America and Germany are losing money so fast hundreds of thousands of employees must be laid off. In fact, the auto industry in America might damn near fail altogether from greed, stupidity, ignorance, and blindness. On the horizon, too, China is now making cars that will be inexpensive and in a few years, no doubt, durable. Already South Korea's KIA is looking damn tempting. It will keep getting better! I'm glad: I served to keep Korea free.

Cars, yes, provided, of course, Hybrids continue to be improved and cost remains low. Oil will be too expensive even if new reserves are found.  Gas is $3 a gallon in LA today. When I first came back to America when a teenager, "gas wars" lowered the price of gasoline to 18 cents a gallon in California. At that time, too, America sold its used automobiles to Asia. Ha ha ha ha ha. They were transported to Asia in WW2 Liberty Ships, and other hastily constructed gargo ships by 'Rosie the Rivetter' and others, ha ha ha ha.

The currently underway slow melting away of our disgusting love affair with that insulting too-tall pile of black metal known as an SUV, the throne of America's bullies, is failing in the marketplace and not an hour too soon.  Good riddance. I've often feared I'd murder a driver of one of those monstrosities, those 'things' with a mouth like an open-jawed, rabid shark.

Because of the Japanese improved Aluminum alloy, transverse engine powering front wheel drive, driving has become safer, and much more fun, and the engine lasts a very long time. Even engine 'timing' has been greatly improved. Toyota has a huge bundle of patents, and, no doubt, so do other Foreign companies. It wouldn't surprise me if Ford pays Japanese manufacturers for use of their patents. And how disgusting and slothful-sounding that is! Ford vehicles are good but Ford dealers are Neanderthall; example: LA's biggest dealer will not employ Ford's own senssor warning "Service Engine Soon" and lacks employees who can utilize a hand-held computer that plugs in under the driver's side front panel, a device that monitors functions out of easy access. Their money is made from auto sales, used and new, not from maintenance and repair. Hence, business failures.

I could get to like the subway again: In NYC I loved walking, and I loved the subway. You don't have to have a car in NYC. Opera diva Supreme, Zinka Milanov, at age 60, wrapped a scarf around her neck as protection against the cold in winter, and took an elevator down to the sidewalk, then a very short walk to the subway, to go to work at the Metropolitan.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

CRASH, the movie

CRASH, Oscar winning Best Picture 2005 is indeed a splendid movie, 100 times over better than I was prepared for. I have read no reviews, and by awards time the movie had been out for almost a year. The generalization that it was/is a "Message movie" is correct, but in no way is it preachy.

Every role is well acted, a rarity at the movies; there are no movie stars. The direction is of a piece, with no signs of post production fiddling or costly, tinkering reshoots.

In the guise of 'realism' we are nevertheless confronted with moments of surrealism, transcendance that takes one's breath away, as when a little girl, wearing a 'magic' cloak given to her by her loving father, stops a bullet. I've not seen anything even remotely as cinematically advanced in a Hollywood movie, perhaps, EVER.

This movie does not preach against race discrimination: instead, it proclaims that there is no choice available, that we are forced to "get along." Correct: we have no choice.

The photography has a unity of color made slightly more vivid than we are use to, creating just the right degree of non-realism. Gripping theatricality.

SEE THIS MOVIE. Please post about this movie.

Barry

My Auto, My Lover

Talking cars can't work 'cause almost everyone has an auto, or a good reason not to have an automobile, and advertising, custom, and conformity rules that whole discussion. A year or more, maybe two years ago, on a message board I was beat up for expressing dim views of SUVs.

Oops, change in family planning: we're gonna watch CRASH via a DVD.  

                       ...... to be continued.......

 

Barry