I wiped out my own blog. My entire blog. Trying to upgrade WordPress. Nice Joe restored me as of last night. I restored “Not entertaining it” from the cross-post at If I Ran the Zoo, but I didn’t cross-post the thing about California gay marriage, nor can I find it cached. Ah, well.
Sorry about your comments.
I listen to CBS all-news radio when I wake up. Weather every ten minutes and annoying voices is exactly what I need before coffee. And it also ends up being my toe-dip into the mainstream media (which I otherwise avoid).
So Hillary Clinton was apparently interviewed by Katie Couric last night, and they talk about Clinton maybe dropping out of the race, and said she said absolutely not. They then play a clip of Clinton saying, “Well, I’m not entertaining it. It’s just not even anything I’m entertaining right now.”
I get in the shower. I do my hair. I come out of the bathroom, and now the radio is talking about Edwards’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Someone asks Obama if he would consider Edwards as a running mate, and they quote his answer (something like “He’d be on anyone’s short list”). Then they get back to the Couric/Clinton interview, and say they asked Clinton if she was considering running mates, and they say it’s not on the table yet, and play a clip of her saying, “Well, I’m not entertaining it. It’s just not even anything I’m entertaining right now.”
The same clip.
The same clip in response to two different questions. Which is…now we know for a fact they’re just making shit up. It was the most trust-destroying thing I’ve ever heard on the news, worse than an outright lie, it was so transparently, lazily deceptive. I nearly choked.
And it turns out that the quote was in response to neither question. What Clinton was actually responding to was whether she would consider being Obama’s running mate should he win the nomination.
There’s really…there’s no excuse of any kind for that kind of crap.
All solved. I thought #2 was going to hang around another day, but Amy swept in and batted clean up.
Shakesville has a series called “How Odd!”, highlighting the way in which the Reuters Oddly Enough page presents violence against women and misogyny as “odd;” the articles may be deadly serious, but the headlines tend to be smirky and coy.
Not that sexism doesn’t burn my toast, but today they crossed the line into religious bigotry. How odd!
This was a perfectly serious article, about a solemn, and meaningful (and not at all unusual, which is to say, “odd”) religious rite to goddess Kali. It also mentioned that animal rights groups in Nepal protest animal sacrifice, and details some of the political troubles of the king who made the sacrifice.
The only thing “odd” about this is that it’s not monotheistic. It’s purely prejudice, with no window-dressing of being anything else. Would an “Oddly Enough” headline read “American Leader offers prayers to god of peace”? Or perhaps “American Senator offers lamb shank to desert deity”? Is an offering to Kali somehow more “odd” than that?
Theme solved by Melville (comment #8).
1. Not to be confused with the documentary of the same name, this one has a dream sequence designed by a famous artist.
TIE: Solved by Evn (comment #1) and Tom Hilton (comment #3).
2. “Stay away from boys ’cause they are all disgusting, self-indulgent beasts that pee on bushes and pick their noses.”
Solved by Amy (comment #12).
3. One of the sisters of this Oscar-nominated actor’s character is played by his real-life sister. The actress playing his mother stars in a hugely popular TV show. The actress playing his doctor starred in two different Best Picture nominees.
Solved by Trevor J (comment #2).
4. A soldier with an injured face is brought in to talk with another soldier; his childhood friend.
Solved by Roberta (comment #11).
5. “The next woman takes me on’s gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars!”
Solved by maurinsky (comment #4).
6. The director of this film won his first Oscar after six previous nominations.
Solved by maurinsky (comment #5).
7. “He was a white slaver, I know he was. He was wearing one of those white suits, that’s how they advertise.”
Solved by Melville (comment #6).
Ace in the Hole (1951) 10/10
Down on his luck newspaper reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) takes a job at an Albuquerque paper. His hope is that some big story will bring him back to the attention of the major urban papers. When a man (Richard Benedict) is trapped in a cave, Tatum sees his big break, but if Mimosa (Benedict) is rescued too soon, Tatum can’t play the story for all it’s worth. Tatum persuades the local sheriff and construction chief to use a slower rescue method while a media circus gathers. Directed by Billy Wilder.
This is a dark, cynical story of corruption and self-interest. It was honestly hard to watch, and yet it was compelling and I can’t fault it in any way. None of the main characters are likeable, certainly not Douglas’s Chuck Tatum, who is a son-of-a-bitch from the opening scene and only gets worse. Jan Sterling as Mimosa’s wife is unpleasant through and through, and yet strangely sympathetic. She doesn’t want to fool anyone or play any games for fame or even fortune, she just wants enough money to get her out of town and away from an unhappy marriage.
The sheriff (Ray Teal, who is painfully familiar from having been in everything ever) is a thoroughly despicable guy. Tatum easily convinces him that appearing heroic to the media will get him re-elected, and of course, good media depends on Tatum. With that little detail handled, Tatum owns the town and the story.
Forgotten in all of this is Leo Mimosa, trapped, pinned, and thoroughly isolated. He seems, from what little we see, like a decent guy; trusting, direct, a veteran, and pathetically trying to be a good husband despite knowing how badly his wife wants out. Of course, Leo matters to know one except his parents; not to Tatum, not to the sheriff, certainly not to the thousands of people who gather and set up camp to participate in the spectacle. Media circuses have only gotten bigger and gaudier, so as dated as this movie might appear in terms of technology and style, it is up-to-the-minute in terms of its opinions and observations about the way media attention buries (hah!) stories it tries to tell.
The actors chosen for this film, except for Douglas, are not stars, and they are not beautiful. The sense of ordinariness is perfect; everything feels present and immediate. This is important in building the sense of claustrophobia; for Leo, trapped in a cave, for Tatum, trapped in the media circus he created, for everyone playing out roles and telling lies. Whenever Tatum walks through the growing crowd into his quiet room, it’s like a breath of air, and the parallel to the trapped Leo is a constant subtext.
Tatum is a bastard, and sometimes he talks too much like a Billy Wilder bastard, all snappy dialogue and hard edges, but he is also thoroughly real. How different is he, truly, from Chris Matthews, or Joe Scarborough, or any of these guys who love the fact that there’s a story more than they care about anything happening inside the story? Tatum wants to write a story, and he wants to sell it, and he wants it to be his ticket back to New York. That Leo grows weaker with each day is secondary. That Lorraine Mimosa wants out is never a consideration at all. It’s all just a story.
Normally we do guided meditations on Sundays, but I have a different idea for Mother’s Day.
We are “guided” by media and marketing as to exactly what thoughts we’re supposed to have today. But our real thoughts are often more complex. We’re supposed to be loving and grateful and tender. But most of our mothers are not Hallmark mothers. Most, in fact, are human beings.
In thinking about our own mothers, we may indeed feel loving and grateful and tender. We may also feel grief and loss and rage. We may feel abandonment or neglect or longing. We are likely to feel a combination of things, only some of which would make a marketable greeting card.
I remember there was a day I was working out, and I was explaining how my mother could be both maddening and wonderful. The two women I was working out with were really interested in shutting me down, in criticizing me for airing negative thoughts. I was saying how, when my knee was broken, my mother would take me to my doctor’s appointment (because it’s pretty hard to drive in an immobilizer), but she would show up every time in her Mini-Cooper. And every time I would ask her to please bring the Camry instead, because it was a long, slow, painful process to wriggle my way into her tiny car in the immobilizer. But every time she came with the Mini-Cooper. And yet, every time, she came.
The women at the gym were angry with me for being exasperated, when my mom was so great to pick me up in the first place. And it’s surely true that there are plenty of people whose mothers live the same twelve miles away mine does, who’d have to take a cab. I did say she was wonderful and exasperating. Human. Not a Hallmark card. And that wasn’t okay with these ladies, who, it turned out, were grieving the loss of their mothers.
Grief. Exasperation. Love. Anxiety. Self-consciousness. Compassion. Frustration. These are all real feelings. We may have any or all of them. Or others.
I invite you, this Mother’s Day, to explore your honest feelings about your mother, and to permit yourself to have those feelings.
Camera. Smells. NUMMY.
I read on MSN about a dating site for smart people. MSN was uber-sarcastic about it, but I thought it looked cool. Smart people=yum. Smart nerds also=yum. My kinda site.
You have to pass an “IQ” test to join the site, and well, read the letter I sent them:
Dear Sirs/Madams:
I have to complain about your supposed “IQ” test. In your attempt to be “culture-fair” you have eliminated whole categories of intelligence from your test, and you are testing only visual/spatial intelligence.
I am a published author and a former member of Mensa. I have previously tested very high on IQ tests, especially in the areas of linguistic and logical intelligence, neither of which your test addresses, since you avoid the use of language.
I failed your “IQ” test. I realize that writing to complain sounds whiny and self-serving; no one likes failing such a test, and so I considered not writing. But honestly, you are driving away highly verbal people with poor spatial skills (I am left/right impaired, get lost even with my GPS, and cannot for the life of me get a high score on Tetris). It seems like you’re not “IntelligentPeople.com” so much as “VisualPeople.com” or “MapReaders.com.” In terms of finding a life partner, no one really needs to drill down to the spatially intelligent.
I am sorry that I will not be signing up for your service.
Regards,
Deborah Lipp
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’ll let you know if I get a response.
As the post title suggests, the theme was birthdays.
Theme solved by Trevor J (comment #16).
