Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Question: “ The findings of a new study show that low-fat diets do not reduce risk of cancer or heart disease. What do YOU think?”
Answer 1: " Yes! Personal accountability takes another blow?"
Answer 2: " I've never heard of the Hardee's Institute For Health, but they've put out a very convincing study here." 
Answer 3: " What did it say about smoking? Was there anything in there about smoking? Can we start smoking again?"Question: “ According to the Government Accountability Office, the Bush Administration spent $1.6 billion in public relations and advertising in the past 30 months. What do you think?”
Answer 1: " I'd say the ads were successful. George Bush has become a household name."
Answer 2: " I didn't realize it cost so much to make oneself look like an apocalyptic nightmare. "
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Monday, February 27, 2006
Worth 1,000 Words
John Ford's 1940 film 'The Grapes Of Wrath' is probably the most affecting, subtly heart-rending Depression story I've ever seen. Steinbeck considered the film superior to his own boo, and it's certainly more compact and tightly-constructed. What bats this ball out of the park are the images, reproduced below. Here you see American families, evicted from their homes, fleeing westward in impossibly overloaded vehicles, just looking for honest work, to see their hopes dashed to pieces in a humanity-sapping supply-and-demand nightmare. Somehow John Ford manages a light touch to this state of affairs, as does the humble dignity of the characters. He largely avoids heavy-handedness. The images, though, say it all.
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Sunday, February 26, 2006
Saturday, February 25, 2006
A Love That Will Never Grow Old
a.k.a. Taiwan's poignant inability to quit us...
It struck me as sweet and sad that Taiwan's President commented yesterday that his country has a "Brokeback Mountain" relationship with the US. Some highlights:
"It motivates us...to understand all of us are bound to make difficult decisions in life, yet we must strive to dispel prejudice...," President Chen Shui-bian told more than 500 American business leaders in Taipei.
"There is a 'Brokeback Mountain' in each and every one of us."
He should have also said "if this democracy and independence thing catches us in the wrong place... at the wrong time... then we're dead..."
Brokeback director Ang Lee is of course from Taiwan, which is claimed by China, which has banned Brokeback Mountain, among other appalling deeds. "Brokeback" is playing to packed theaters in Taiwan, where Ang Lee is revered.
This is an aerial photo of Taiwan, which crams 22 million people, more than in Texas, into its 13,000 square miles, which is about the combined size of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
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Friday, February 24, 2006
Question: “Frank Miller and DC Comics Announced that they would be publishing a comic in which Batman hunted down Ossama bin Laden. What do you think?”
Answer 1: " Did Katrina teach us nothing? We need Batman here, at home." Answer 2: " A cartoon targeting the Muslim world. I bet that'll go over great." Answer 3: " Superheroes taking on real-life enemies doesn't always work, if you recall the Incredible Hulk vs. Pol Pot cross-over "Many are voicing concern over Bush’s recent approval of a deal allowing a company based in the United Arab Emirates, who had ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers, to monitor security of select U.S. ports. What do you think?
Answer 1: “Why not? Some of those al-Qaeda people have probably done much more research on our ports than anybody else."Answer 2: " I think that we should have a little faith in these people. I mean, they were gracious enough to take Michael Jackson off our hands."
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Thursday, February 23, 2006
A Web Site You Can't Quit
My friend Peter's unveiling his Brokeback Mountain website, www.brokebackmountaintour.com, with news, video clips, and all manner of Brokebackiana. I encourage you to go take a look.
More on Miami later, including the creation of a WonderSalad, a trio of films, and two very different national parks, one of which spells the end of Florida.
You heard me. The end of Florida.
I'm falling a bit behind on my posts, I'm afraid - heavy workload, and I took Tuesday off. But I feel renewed. And tonight, I concocted my own version of the WonderSalad.
My pal David and I did a tad of shopping, wherein I purchased pink salt and pink pepper, with the serious intention of doing more pink cooking : - )
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Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
One Man's Ceiling Is...
I'm back from Miami, fully immersed in work, right up to my eyebrows.. At least it's interesting work... The excellent news: I'm 100% healthy and feeling great, for the first time in weeks!
Yet another cartoon about my favorite film:
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Monday, February 20, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Paddle Your Own Canoe
This is Mrs Henderson. She's self-centered, quirky, eccentric, and comically rude. She presents naked ladies to horny young soldiers.
This was a fanciful, somewhat escapist but very engaging entertainment. Perfect period recreation, lots of music and costumes and one-liners and naked women and a poor, naked, Bob Hoskins.
Oscar-calibre acting? This dame looks Oscar-quality when she's brushing her teeth.
If she still has teeth. She doesn't have any sex in the movie, though she certain has a romp. With no visible scenery-chewing, she always makes it seem natural and effortless.
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Thursday, February 16, 2006
Under The Gun
I'm trying to crank out one of the most complex research reports of my career, with a throng of salespeople and investors chomping at the bit, breathing down my back. Precious little time for entertainment. I did manage to finish "Stagecoach," the magnificent 1939 proto-Western that launched John Wayne and set the bar high not only for Westerns, but for multi-plot, multi-character ensemble action movies. It's about a motley crew of diverse characters making a dangerous trip across New Mexico and Arizona... via Stagecoach It contains... an Apache attack! wa wa wa! This is not a revisionist Western : - ) Nor can I guarantee you with any assurance that actual horses were not harmed during the filming of this movie....
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Captured By The Game
From The Onion, my favorite feature, “What Do YOU Think?
Question: “This weekend, Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old companion on a hunting trip in Texas. What do you think?”
Answer 1: " I think it might be time to take a closer look at Dick Cheney's series of geriatric 'hunting accidents."Answer 2: " Being a compassionate conservative, Cheney immediately apologized and offered to snap the poor man's neck." Answer 3: " It's nice to see that Cheney brings the same clear-headed approach to arms deployment in his personal life that he does in formulating foreign policy." Question: “A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Apple, claiming that iPods have the potential to cause hearing damage. What do you think?”
Answer 1: " I don't know if it causes hearing damage, but the ability to listen discreetly to Britney Spears has done major damage to my musical taste ." Answer 2: " This is like when no one warned me my gas bill could skyrocket by turning up my thermostat all the way." Answer 3: " Doesn't matter. The only thing I use my ears for is to listen to my iPod."
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Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Happy V.D.
Every Day's The 14th, as Outkast would sing... But the initials V.D. once had other connotations, less innocent that Hallmark and red boxes of chocolate. Way back in primitive times, in the 1970s, before ATMs, ADD, and AIDS, we had a different term for what are now called 'sexually transmitted diseases,' or STDs We invoked the god Venus herself to avoid such and explicit phrase - these were 'venereal diseases,' VD for short. Taught in high school health or sex education classes, VD was the subject of endless giggles and jokes, since at the time, nothing was permanent or lethal. Having VD back then was cause shot of penicillin, not estate planning.
Way way back, in the first half of the 20th century, soldiers were warned of that 'terrible diseases' were among dangers of cavorting with prostitutes (see poster left). I doubt this detrerred many soldiers, but it certainly encouraged condom use.
Rebel Without A Plot: My classic movie festival continued Sunday with the James Dean classic 1955 'Rebel Without A Cause.' Though it's a short, plotless film where the troubled teens act too much as textbook diagnoses of various adjustment problems, it's made memorable mostly by Dean's tortured 'method acting,' creating tormented characters from the inside out. The style, pioneered in the early 1950s by Marlon Brando and others, still has repercussions today, right up to Heath Ledger's trasnformation into Ennis del Mar on our favorite Rocky Mountain. Speaking of things gay, pretty boy Sal Mineo (pictured left) plays 'Plato', a misunderstood kid who idolizes Dean's character (pictured right) in what feels like homoerotic infatuation, and meets a tragic end, though he's never rejected by Dean. Dean's enduring reputation rests solely on three films, since he died at 22 in a car crash: the other two are Steinbeck adaptation 'East of Eden' and family dynasty saga 'Giant,' the latter of which is high in my Netflix queue.
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Monday, February 13, 2006
Doesn't Feel Like The Great Blizzard...
Maybe because nothing was shut down, not even the subways - maybe because it accumulated quickly on a weekend and stopped. In 1994 and 1996, the city ground to a halt for at least two full workdays. Anyway, here are some images:
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