DeRosaWorld

Saturday Musings

- - Some political notes from the field and a DeRosaWorld poll: I was in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week and talked a lot of politics with a lot of people. I think Senator Obama is going to take both states by a large margin. Most people I spoke with were Hillary supporters, but it is any Democrat against McCain for them. These are the 'Archie Buckers' the Obama campaign painted with racist colors during the primaries. They have forgiven him.

They are so sick of the Republican Party and President Bush, Jr. that they are supporting Obama. Race may or may not be an issue for them, but not a show-stopper. They are afraid of McCain and despise the policies of the Republicans that have brought about the housing foreclosures, the high price of gasoline, and the Iraq war and shame. Shame, a word I heard repeated.

They are also tired of all the right-wing media bleating on and on and on in defense of the Bush, Jr. Administration. They don't believe it anymore. They are afraid that their sons will be drafted. These are the things they are talking about.

The politics of fear worked too well and now the electorate is afraid of the Republicans.

There is a concern about Obama out here, but it is not the color of his skin. They are worried because they know nothing about him. They are afraid of his inexperience. They are afraid he will fail before he can turn things around. They are now pinning their hopes on an unknown. That is how desperate they are. So if the skinny kid with the funny name doesn’t have any more Larry Sinclairs out there with pictures of him snorting cocaine off his boner, then I think we are going to have ourselves a Democrat in the White House come November…and he is going to get a lot of white support, both male and female, rich and poor.

- - The progressive blogosphere was of a mixed mind this week. Some wanted to be mad at Senator Obama for caving into the FISA bill…and they are right to be mad. What was he thinking?

Others were begrudgingly clapping for Senator Clinton for supporting their man…and they are right to be happy. The Hillary supporters are going to come out strong for Obama in November. Could the same be said of the Obama supporters if the Democratic Party nominee were Senator Clinton?

- - The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969 in New York City on Christopher Street at the Stonewall Inn. The NYC cops got as good as they gave that day. This day is still celebrated in the bars of the West Village. Before Stonewall is a great documentary about the gay community and the times leading up to the riots.

- - I couldn’t fit Don DeLillo’s Underworld into the carry-on, so I took two slim Gore Vidal novels with me, hoping the Office of Homeland Security didn’t open my bag. In A Yellow Wood and Dark Green, Bright Red are two very honest and unique novels. They have been reprinted in England; you cannot get them in America. I got them from Amazon UK. (Beware the weak dollar vs. the euro.)

Two post World War Two novels that the New York Times either didn’t care for or refused to review because of The City and the Pillar scandal. In A Yellow Wood (1947) is a rare look at life in New York City immediately after the war as veterans come home and take up the business of America. And in that glorious time between VJ Day and the Communist witch hunts when American artists thought they could be honest with us and themselves. This is the time of film noir in Hollywood. Something was wrong. The defeat of fascism didn’t bring peace, just prosperity. There was something new out there that was in charge now, and to be afraid of …and it turned out to be us.

Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) is a great example of the cliché “ahead of its time”. This book shows us what America was up to in Central America before most Americans could find Guatemala on a map; empire building, with a little sex in it. If there was ‘special rendition’ in 1950, Vidal would have been shipped off to the basement of the Pentagon for revealing state secrets.

- - Yes, I did have a soft pretzel and of course cheese steaks. Three cheese steaks in fact. I also had some decent Chinese Food, something California is in as short supply as water. How hard is it to make an egg roll with a little hot mustard on the side?

- - Get yourself some good sipping whiskey and buy Emmylou Harris’ All I Intended To Be. At first you’ll sit and feel sorry for yourself and feel the aches and pains of middle age, but by the end you will be refreshed and ready to get up and face the world. She captures that middle-aged need to put your feet up feeling. Fuck the young; let them suffer with the High School Musical soundtrack. This album was made for adults by adults.

- - One last word on flying in modern America. It sucks and the airline industry should be ashamed of itself. If they don't want to do the job anymore, give it up and let us have a lot of smaller, independent airlines with the American, small  business mentality. Let's make the FAA do its fucking job and in this new century let the major airlines go the way of TV news, movies, rock & roll, cheap gasoline and other 20th century Americana. Something needs to change because Americans need and want to travel around this great country of ours and the current major airlines do not deserve our business. Americans do not deserve being treated like this.

Saturday Musings

- Tim Russert’s funeral was a bit surreal. I guess when you serve the Emperor; you get an Emperor’s funereal. The military honors kind of raised the bar for dead journalists, though. I mean what do we do when Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite go? And can you image the funeral pyre for Rush Limbaugh?

- So, our Democrat-Congress gave immunity to the telecoms. FAIL.

- So, our Democrat-Congress keeps funding the Iraq war, no questions asked. FAIL

- Maybe someday someone will explain to me how George Bush, Jr. gets away with frightening and bullying everyone from journalists, to politicians to the military. He seems like a fucking moron to me.

- How’s the price of gasoline at your pump?

- Thank god President Bush, Jr. is visiting the flooded Midwest. It has been rumored he can part the waters.

- NASA confirmed there is ice on Mars. Of course, Earth has brought global warming to Mars by digging up the ice and letting it melt in the sun. If I were the Martians, I'd attack as soon as possible. Send the tripods now, before it is too late and you end up with McDonald's and second hand cigarette smoke.

- The airline industry, remember those guys and the $$$$billions taxpayers gave them after 9/11…well they are going to start raising prices and restricting flying with minimum stay-over requirements. Can we have the 9/11 money back?

- Too bad Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party crushed most of the unions in America. Maybe they would have wanted to help the average American. Ah, well.

- Don DeLillo’s Underworld blogging continues: Last week I finished the Prologue: The Triumph of Death. Now this was no ordinary prologue, this is about fifty pages of new wave cinema edited sports prose about October 3, 1951 and the Giants beating the Dodgers for the Pennant at The Polo Grounds, the same day the Russians set off an atomic bomb. I guess this would be called a tour de force. Among others we meet Cotter, a kid who jumps the gate to see the game and ends up with the game winning ball in his possession.

Part One: Long Tall Sally jumps us up in time to 1992. We meet Nick and learn that in the montage from the Prologue, Nick was the kid on a roof listening to the Game on the radio. He now owns the legendary baseball. He also has a typical, fucked up suburban life in Arizona. But, he also has a strange ex-lover who is painting Cold War era bombers in the desert. See this is a post-modern novel, so things are going to be revealed backwards. Man, some of this territory was covered fifty years ago by Norman Mailer. We get it.; being a middle-aged American male sucks, especially if you only moved to fucking Arizona instead of all the way to California.

The centerpiece of this section of the book is, I think the hot-air balloon ride Nick and his wife take over the nuclear bomber art exhibit. There is also a long passage full of wonder inside a condom store. Nick figures out that one of his friends and co-workers is banging his wife. Lot’s of experimental cross dialog in which you don’t know who is a talking. This just reminds me that John Huston’s Key Largo is on TCM. Huston did some sound/cross-dialog experiments in that movie. I stopped reading and put the television on and watched a couple of movies at the same time. I kept switching channels between TCM and IFC. There was a French movie on about a group of kids who decide to kill the leader of their group, for no real reason.  There is a small scene where two of the kids are riding on a motorcycle and they stop so one of them can throw-up. They were drinking and partying too much earlier. The kid who was sick asks the other if he has any gum because his mouth has such a bad taste in it. The kid offers him a strawberry flavored condom. The sick kid takes it and pops it io his mouth. And I thought. This was better that that entire condom store passage I just read in DeLillo.

Anyway, I am not quite ready to cry “bullshit” on Underworld, just yet. It may be the great American novel and because Cotter showed up again at the end of this section. So we are back in time tracing the baseball.

I’ll keep you posted on Part Two next weekend.

- Speaking of French new wave…Are you ready for this?…Belinda Carlisle has a new album out, Voila in which she sings completely in French. It doesn’t get no better than this folks. The Go-Go’s lead singer has always been a secret favorite of mine.  Guys, if reading Don DeLillo makes you worried about turning 50 or 60, Belinda Carlisle singing Jezebel in French is the cure for middle-aged angst.

Saturday Musings

- Tim Russert didn’t want to learn the lesson all working class Irish, Italians and Jews learn the hard way. Never trust the WASPS.

- The Great Game in Afghanistan took a hit this week. About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, And in western Afghanistan today, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle, killing four Americans.

- Bush, Jr. is still in Europe.

- The Cedar River was a force to be reckoned with this week in Iowa. And Des Moines’ levees were ruptured by the Des Moines River today. Let’s hope the government response matches the task.

- The Supreme Court decided that habeas corpus is an important part of the American Constitution. Bush, Jr. said he would nod his imperial head and abide by the Court’s ruling, although it was only a 5-4 decision….huh?

- The world continues to shake and quiver. Northern Japan took a hit yesterday. Is mother nature trying to tell us something, like “get off”.

- Speaking of getting off earth, NASA’s latest Mars lander, Phoenix has collected particles that offer a snapshot of millions of years of life on the Mars. NASA is hoping to find evidence of the existence of water and life-supporting organic minerals in the polar region. Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?

- I hope that lift off clip thing that fell off the Space Shuttle doesn’t fall and hit me in the head. Something else to worry about.

- I’ve been under the weather lately, knocked down by one hell of a cold, with a slight fever, heavy chest congestion and lots of runny nose. Yesterday I made a lunch out of a can of imported tuna in olive oil from Genoa, Italy, a clove of fresh garlic and some rigatoni. I felt a lot better. I try to hold off the American over the counter medicine if I can, but not this time. Mucinex and Afrin are my bff.

- Glen Campbell has an album coming late summer in which he covers his favorite rock songs. I am so excited. There will be some Green Day and some U2 and god knows what else. That old boy can sing and play the guitar.

- Emmylou Harris, the reigning queen of alt-country also has a new album. All I Intended To Be. I need to catch up with Emmylou. She’s keeps churning out records and changing partners and I just can’t get enough of her.

- Don DeLillo’s Underworld…okay, so the opening is Pafko At The Wall, a tour de force of sports writing that seems like he turned his manuscript over to Oliver Stone to edit. I don know. There is something so un-noble about this so noble a moment in baseball. The kid listening alone on the rooftop and the people spilling out in to the streets captures the uniqueness of the moment, but most of the characters are out of the film noir era, post WW2 America that scared the hell out of the Republican Party and J. Edgar Hoover (and enamored the French). It is a big book and I will blog about it here each week until finished. The opening is certainly crafty, but am I reading the great American novel? I’ll let you know.

Saturday Musings

- Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (D-IL) age 46 is the presumptive Nominee of the Democratic Party for President in 2008.

- Arianna Huffington can finally relax. Hillary won’t be the nominee.

- The white, male talking heads exploded all at once across the networks when Hillary gave her campaign wrap-up speech after the South Dakota and Montana primaries earlier this week and did not concede the election. Russert, Matthews, Obermann, Toobin, Gergen. It was awesome. You could see they wanted to kill her. MSNB even split the screen like Hollywood Squares so they called all scream at once.

- One thing to be concerned about, Senator Obama lost eight out of the last ten contests to Senator Clinton.

- The Senate Intelligence Committee finally gets to release its 2004 report that proved Bush, Jr. lied to America about the need to go to war in Iraq. Who arrests the President?

- NASA tells us that Bush, Jr. lied to us about their findings on climate change and even changed the data in their reports. Does anybody in the Press want to ask him about this?

- How about those gasoline prices? Ready to throw garbage at Bush, Jr. public appearances yet? No, let’s wait to blame the new President.

- Was talking to a 9/11 conspiracy nut and she said, If everything Bush, Jr. ever told us was a lie, and then challenged me to prove her wrong and I couldn’t, then why would he tell the truth about 9/11? The argument gave me pause.

- Don DeLillo’s Falling Man may be the first really big book about 9/11. I’m preparing myself to sit down and revisit that day. I think this read requires I sit in my chair over a long weekend and don’t get up until the end.

- Bo Diddley has left the stage. My introduction to him actually comes from George Thorogood’s cover of Who Do You Love. As a youngster, I loved to track back music I liked to its roots. Artists like Janis Joplin led me back to Bessie Smith. Elvis Presley led me back to Big Mama Thornton. Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac led me back to Etta James. Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues band with Peter Green that led me back to many of the great blues artists and guitarists from the 1940s and 1950s.

- Netflix movie review: There Will Be Blood coming from my eyes if I have to watch this movie to the end.

- This Saturday is Chicken Parmigiana day. First I make the tomato sauce. I have two double chicken breasts. I pound them. A little salt and pepper. I mix egg, milk and a lot of various Italian spices, especially oregano into the mix, dip the chicken. Coat the chicken in Progresso Italian Style bread crumbs, fry it up. Then I put the water on, cook the spaghetti. And of course Chianti.

Saturday Musings

- As the primary season comes to a close with a surprise progressive hero, Senator Barack Obama coming from nowhere to claim the leadership of the Democratic Party in the post-Bush, Jr. (and maybe the post-Republican) era, the party bosses are gathering this weekend to try and wrap up the confusing and fucked up nomination process before the actual convention.

With the final primaries being held this week, Obama hasn’t actually won, yet. Arianna Huffington has the champaign on ice, though. The celebration is about to begin. Change and hope and pride in America is right around the corner. Out with the old. In with the new.

- Republicans have no wins on their card to run on. If Democrats don’t sweep both houses of Congress and the White House this year, they might as well shut the Party down.

Conservatism has lost and lost big time. Hit McCain on the issues: The Republican economy. The Republican health care system. Republican Party perversion and corruption.

Make John McCain defend the last eight years: Republican gas prices. Republican-run war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republican Veterans Hospitals. Republican Education.

How can he defend any of it? Just ask McCain if he is a neocon? I’d like to see him answer that question.

- Isn’t is awesome having oil men in the White House? And after taking over the country with the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world….Americans can’t afford to fill both their cars and their bellies at the same time. How’d that happen?

- Sydney Pollack is a great loss to Hollywood and movie lovers. He was one of the last producers of films made for grown-ups. Since he died, I can't get scenes from his films out of my head: Robert Redford in the snow in Jeremiah Johnson. The dancers in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Barbra Streisand's sad face in The Way We Were. Sally Field's indignation in Absence of Malice. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in the airplane from Out Of Africa. Robert Mitchum kicking through paper walls in The Yakuza. Dustin Hoffman walking down a New York City street in drag from Tootsie. Thanks Sydney!

- I have not seen Iron Man. I will not go to see Sex and the City.

- I’ve been listening to a lot of The Doors’ music lately: Strange Days and Waiting  For The Sun. They are my drive-time background music. Ever since I watched the season finale of American Idol I have not been able to get David Cook’s mock-rock screeching out of my ears. Jim Morrison had some pipes and some spooky rock chops.

- Hey, John McCain’s favorite book is Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls.

- I was told recently that I needed to read Michael Chabon. He’s the pseudo-gay writer of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (a memoir of the 2008 Pennsylvania Primary) The Wonder Boys (The secret love story of John McCain and Joe Lieberman) and something called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the Pulitzer Prize winner from 2001. I picked that book up and put it down a half dozen times. (One of them decides he’s gay). So now I have Summerland, a children’s book about baseball and elves. I’ll try, but it is an awfully fat book for a children’s book. I haven’t finished Julian Green’s Memoir’s yet, and I’m getting old.

- I’m goint to try to eat more apples.

Sydney Pollack: A Handsome and Respectable Body of Work

 

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay who achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa," has died. He was 73.

Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said publicist Leslee Dart. Pollack had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, said Dart.

Pollack, who occasionally appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s."

I'm a Sydney Pollack fan. He has a consistent A-picture quality list of films to his credit. He worked well with actors and his movies are all of the kind that keep you up late if they come on and you are scrolling through the channels looking for something decent to watch.

Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)
The Interpreter (2005)
Random Hearts (1999)
Sabrina (1995)
The Firm (1993)
Havana (1990/I)
Out of Africa (1985)
Tootsie (1982)
Absence of Malice (1981)
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Bobby Deerfield (1977)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
The Yakuza (1974)
The Way We Were (1973)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
Castle Keep (1969)
The Swimmer (1968) (uncredited)
The Scalphunters (1968)
This Property Is Condemned (1966)
The Slender Thread (1965)

I'm not sure if Pollack lands on most critics top ten directors lists, but he should certainly be considered. Like Sydney Lumet, Clint Eastwood or even Robert Redford with whom he collaborated often, when I heard that Sydney Pollack had a new film, I would be sure to check it out. I was rarely disappointed, and neither were the audiences.

The Yakuza, Three Days of the Condor and Jeremiah Johnson are on my alternate list of favorite movies. Like a lot of John Huston's films, Pollack's films are not in my top ten, but are certainly movies I bring up when I am in deep into the list with serious film lovers.

Me and certainly an important list of modern movie stars will miss Sydney Pollack. He started in the early days of television, so he had the medium close-up and a face; he learned how to direct actors. Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda all benefited from his technique.

As this generation of movie directors die off, the replacements are few and far between. Maybe movies have run their course. If so, Sydney Pollack directed a class third act.

Sunday Morning Music

I Don't Know How To Love Him from the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Saturday Musings

- In the unlikely event that Hillary Clinton takes the Democratic Presidential nomination (and she will literally have to take it at the the convention) many progressive Obama supporters will not vote for her and will probably find solace in voting for a third party, Republican sponsored, progressive candidate, thus giving the election to John McCain.

- If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, the Press and the Republican Party will see to it that he loses 49 out of 50 States. (A large part of the Democratic Party machine, sitting on their hands or unwelcome in the Obama campaign will watch bitterly from the sidelines).

- When John McCain becomes President the world will once and for all turn their backs on America as a serious influence in the world. What possible use would Europe or Asia or South America have for us? We are a nation of bridge burners.

- Economic Musing: By the second half of this century your grandchildren will be sewing blue jeans for $5.00 a week for Chinese export.

- President Reagan did away with most of the College Student Grants in the 1980's so Americans had to go into debt to educate themselves. Now the Student Loan network is collapsing. This didn't come up at the ABC debate in Philadelphia. (learn to sew blue jeans)

- Our television shows are not going to be needing commercial breaks to sell products. (That damned mute button should never have been allowed on remotes.) Products are going to be incorporated into the programs so its more of a brainwashing. NBC is starting with some on-line experiments and well, we'll keep watching. Just another thing changing this century...for the worse as movies, internet, games, TV all blend into one system that makes us capable of doing nothing else but...sew blue jeans.

- A friend of mine just gave me The Complete Tom Sawyer novels by Mark Twain. (This includes Tom Sawyer, Detective !) I am going to sit in my yard and let myself drift back to a more youthful, more innocent time. With a drink in my hand of course.

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."  - Mark Twain

Oliver Stone Points His Camera At George Bush, Jr.

Filmmaker Oliver Stone is making a movie about President George W. Bush. Stone's previous presidential bio-pic Nixon was a masterpiece of scriptwriting, direction, acting, cinematography and editing. Do you think I liked it?

We are not going to get a better film about President Nixon. That movie got to the soul of the man. It wasn't pretty, but it was honest and moving.

Hopefully he will do the same for 'W'. The script is leaking and the conservative spin machine is starting to go counter any criticism of Bush, Jr. that might show up in the story.

I predict the movie will be kinder than the President deserves. Stone is a smart filmmaker and historian and one of the finest writers in Hollywood.

Jr. deserves a film that scolds him and lays waste his legacy, but from Oliver Stone I expect an understanding of this man called "W'.

America needs to understand this Presidency. It may be hard to look at, but in looking we may see our true selves and learn. That is what Oliver Stone does best. (JFK, Platoon, Born on the 4th of July, Wall Street, Heaven and Earth, Talk Radio, Natural Born Killers)

Charlton Heston Has Died

Some deaths make the earth beneath Hollywood shake. Charlton Heston had a long career and many of his films were staples of my late night TV watching as a child and teen.

The Ten Commandments
Ben-Hur
A Touch of Evil
El Cid
The Big Country
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Major Dundee
Planet of the Apes
Will Penny
The Omega Man
Soylent Green
Gray Lady Down
The Mountain Men