DeRosaWorld

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

- The President doesn’t see a problem with the economy right now. Always the optimist, he thinks his policies are working just fine and no immediate action is needed, as he crosses off the days on the calendar until he can retire. Presidenting is hard work.

- Oil is at another all-time high this week. The price of gasoline at the pump heading straight for $4 per gallon as summer 2008 approaches. The President doesn’t know this, doesn’t understand this, but we still love him.

- The price of wheat is also breaking records. No one seems worried here in America though.

- Maybe we should start gathering around our firesides (or giant plasma screens) and recall tales from our Grandparents about the Great Depression and FDR. Here are some movie suggestions: Little Caesar, King Kong, My Man Godfrey, Man’s Castle, John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath,  Frank Capra’s American Madness, Meet John Doe and Mister Deeds Goes To Town, Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and of course there was Shirley Temple.

- The Democratic Primary may be coming to a dramatic conclusion this Tuesday. The Party faithful may finally put an end to the campaign of Senator Clinton. If not and she disappoints us all by winning in Texas and Ohio, the fight goes to Pennsylvania, where Ed Rendell and the quiet giant of Pennsylvania politics awaits to save Hillary Clinton.

- I seem lost in this year’s tide-turning Presidential election. I’m being told that the Millennial Generation is taking over from the Baby Boomers and by supporting Senator Clinton; I’m on the wrong side of American history’s latest generation gap, etc.

Well, kids I hope you know what you’re doing. I hope this century’s doers can achieve wonderful things like the Internet. You seem to like that.

I hope you all have plans for global competition for jobs and oil and resources and water and food and peace. I hope you have educational plans for your children and grand children. The last half of the 20th Century saw some amazing and powerful changes in America and the world. The Millennials have inherited a great treasure. Watch your back, though, The Republican Party doesn’t give up that easily.

Take a lesson from two generations ago. Who ever thought the Party that gave us the Great Depression in the 1920s would rule the second half of the 20th century. The Republicans are like the Terminator: They never stop coming and all they do is kill.

- On the East Coast, States like New York and New Jersey are banning hand-held cell phone use and text-messaging while driving. From what I see in Los Angeles, California’s economy would collapse if similar laws were passed out here.

- The little red-headed, spare Prince of England took up the Crusade in Afghanistan. Doesn’t seem like such a good international PR idea, British royalty shooting up the Muslim countryside and all that. None of my business I guess. Just saw it on the news.

- Hey, why is American royalty not fighting? The sons of the rich and powerful? …and the famous? …why are our Football heroes, those monsters of strength and over-muscled toughness not kicking ass on the front lines? What about our Basketball stars, giant athletes like Kobe, on the front lines? What about other young people like Justin Timberlake and Usher taking up the fight to protect America? What about all those Country Music Stars, they seem pretty tough…whiskey for my horses and all that stuff. Why aren’t the American Idols fighting?

- Sacre Blue! The French are winning US military contracts. I guess that is what happens when they finally elect a real man as their leader. A wedding gift from Uncle Sam.

- The person who wins the Best Original Screenplay Oscar is considered the best American writer for a year (face it, novelists don’t count anymore). This year Ratatouille was up for BOS, it didn’t win, but I think the nomination says a lot about Hollywood.

Louise Schumacher: Get out, go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, and don't come back. Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else. Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or - or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And, if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly.  - Paddy Chayefsky, Network

Saturday Musings

The Obama-fascists in the Democratic Party are out in force this weekend, especially on the Internet and in the blogosphere. If you do not support him, you may loose your liberal credentials. Just ask The New York Times, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and all those Union workers around the country.

Why is it okay for George Bush, Sr., Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards to say whatever they want on the campaign trail, but Senator Clinton’s husband, a former President is not even supposed to talk?

If Senator Obama is the Democratic Party Presidential nominee, I wonder if the dirty-tricksters in the Republican Party will keep using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

On Feb 2, 1790, the United States Supreme Court successfully convened for the first time. SCOTUS protects the Constitution. The Court has had some good times: The Warren Court...and some bad times: The Rehnquist Court. In the modern era the Supreme Court has come under a lot of pressure to become an agent of evil, thanks to Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Jr.

Hey, the Brits like books. Amazon UK has reissued Gore Vidal’s early novels in paperback. I just picked up In A Yellow Wood, The Judgment of Paris and Dark Green, Bright Red. These books have not been available in the US for a long, long time. Just be careful, the Bush-dollar gets beat-up in the exchange rate to the pound.

Cloverfield is monster movie that plays out like the 9/11 attacks on New York City captured on one video camera. Why not just make a movie in that same style about 9/11? I can’t think of a scarier premise. If you’ve never seen Jules and Gedeon Naudet’s 911 documentary, put it at the top of your Netflix list. These two young brothers were making a documentary about a rookie fireman in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. An emotional film, full of real-life at its most extreme. Have tissues ready. There will be tears.

I think there is a Super Bowl this weekend; a perfect time to go to Disney Land. No lines!

Kimi Raikkonen Is The Formula One World Champion

 

The Formula 1 Championship was determined in last race of the season with three drivers still in contention until the last lap! Exciting stuff.

Kimi Raikkonen won the World Championship for Ferrari after finishing 1st in the Brazilian Grand Prix.

In the final standings, McLaren's rookie sensation Lewis Hamilton and his teammate two-time World Champ Fernando Alonso finished 2nd and 3rd on the season.

Congratulations, Kimi.

Sunday Morning. Time To Go To Church

The Championships, Wimbledon - Gentlemen's Singles Finals Preview:

Federer vs. Nadal...say 'Amen' somebody! And pass the Pimm's Cup.

Michael Schumacher Retires

The first time I heard a Formula One engine I knew I was near something I didn't understand and greatly underestimated. I was at the American Honda Motor Company's main campus in Torrance, California and the Formula One Team was giving a demonstration. I was watching, a little unimpressed until the engine turned on an I heard this amazing sound. I watched the next race and was hooked. I have been a fan ever since and have gotten out of bed a 4am (Pacific Time) to watch the races live.

This Sunday is the final race of one of the sport's legends. Michael Schumacher is retiring after this season. You should check out the race and be able to say you saw Michael Schumacher drive.