WEDNESDAY MOVIES


Bukowski:  Born Into This
and
Be Here To Love Me

You’d have to be a true romantic I guess to get these two wild
men.  One, a poet, the other a songwriter – both idolized by other
poets and musicians and barely known by anyone else.  They lived
to write and wrote to live, and both were flat out alcoholics by the
time they died.  Charles
“Hank” Bukowski (1920-1994) lived most of
his life in L.A. and survived being repeatedly beaten by his father as
a child.  Townes Van Zandt (1944-97) came out of Texas, and survived three
months of shock treatment permitted by his parents for manic
depression, losing his memories of his childhood.   
These
documentaries on DVD tell their stories, how in spite of their
incredible
talents, they never really became household names – like the more
famous Beat Poets in Bukowski’s case or the singer-songwriters who made
his music famous in Van Zandt’s, people like Kris Kristofferson,
Willie Nelson, and Emmy Lou Harris (all of whom appear in the
film).  Both went through good women like they went through drugs
- hell bent for leather, and each had one close by when they
died.   Their stories are fascinating and in their corners of
the artistic world they are adored.  Bukowski lived to 74 and died
of pneumonia while being treated for leukemia.  Townes Van Zandt’s
heart gave out after hip surgery at age 53.   Give them a
visit – it’s a world most of us will never know and one they had no
choice but to live in.  Here’s a verse by  Townes Van Zandt
you might recognize:

If I needed you
would you come to me,
would you come to me,
and ease my pain?
If you needed me
I would come to you
I’d swim the seas
for to ease your pain

and here’s a short poem by Bukowski:

What Can We Do?

at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn’t
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it’s best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.

Deep Thought: 
“You might think that the favorite plant of the porcupine is the
cactus, but it’s thinking like that that has almost ruined this
country.”
Today I am grateful for:  Laughter
Guess the Movie:  “How
dare you open a Space Ranger’s helmet on an uncharted planet? My
eyeballs could have been sucked out of their sockets!” 
Answer:  Toy Story, 1995.  Winner:  sfamylou.
Report exonorates Armstrong of doping

ARTHUR MAX

Associated Press

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Lance Armstrong called it a “witch hunt” from
the very beginning, saying a French newspaper used dubious evidence to
accuse him of doping – even charging that lab officials mishandled his
samples and broke the rules.  (Rest of article here.)

MONDAY READING

When the war in Iraq began I discovered Poets Against the
War, which has continued to post poems all these months and
now years from individuals of every age and place.  On Memorial
Day, here is one by Liza Singer,15 years old, written this month. 
She says she is:  “Just a high school student who sees really no
point in war in general. A person who cannot understand how one could
kill another. My opinion is that no matter what, I’d kill myself before
anyone else.”  And here is her poem:

Dying Dreams

Listless air passing through the empty room,
There is nothing left here.
Countless souls seeking retribution through all the empty bodies,
There is nothing left here.
The memory of the faint whistle of a bullet destroying countless dreams,
There is nothing left here.
All previous goals are lost as emotionless soldiers die in a split second,
There is nothing left here.

Oppressed by the invisible bonds holding us down,
Dragging us into an infinite spiral.
Depression is our only comfort,
There is no sky.

Deep Thought: 
“As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red
again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a
bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.”
Today I am grateful for:  Food labels
Guess the Movie:  “I
always tell the girls, never take it seriously, if ya never take it
seriosuly, ya never get hurt, ya never get hurt, ya always have fun,
and if you ever get lonely, just got to the record store and visit your
friends.”  Answer:  Almost Famous, 2000.  Winner:  journal_of_a_working_girl
War Crimes: My Lai is a Lesson from History
The killing of 24 civilians in Haditha has reminded America of another massacre that tarnished its reputation 38 years ago.
by Rupert Cornwell
To Americans of a certain generation, the news this weekend must have
seemed dreadfully familiar: an endless war, whose rationale is ever
harder to understand, and where “victory” is gradually drained of
meaning; a group of soldiers enraged by the loss of a comrade to an
invisible enemy, running amok and exacting revenge on civilians, whose
only crime was to have been in the wrong place at the wrong
time.   (Rest of article here.)

SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

Okay, I know this is not what you’d especially care to think about on a
Sunday morning, but it IS incredibly good news for anyone who expects
to live beyond 60.  On Friday the FDA has approved the first
vaccine to reduce the risk of shingles, called Zostavax (made by
Merck).  It’s a one-timer, like the pneumonia vaccine.  Shingles are incredibly painful blisters and itching
caused by the herpes zoster virus that can go on for months or
years.   The virus is present in everyone who has had
chickenpox, because it remains latent in the system for years until the
immune system goes down bad for some reason and then it can flare up
again as shingles.  I saw my father suffer terribly with it as he
was in his final days in the hospital with Parkinson’s disease and
Alzheimers.  So this vaccine strengthens the body’s immune
response to the virus to head off an outbreak, or make it less severe
if it happens.  It’s the first vaccine to be used to ease an
infection that has already occurred.  It’s also the first vaccine
in 30 years intended exclusively for older people.  (But just to
add a bit more good news, two other important vaccines are on board for
younger people – Menactra to prevent meningococcal meningitis, and a
cervical cancer vaccine to be out soon that will also be popular with
teenagers and young adults.)  And I’ll tell you what, bright and
early Tuesday morning when I head back to work at the hospital I’m
going to email my primary care doc and tell her to sign me up for
Zostavax.  Too late for my dad, not too late for me.  And
even if you’re young, tell your parents, tell someone you know in that
generation about this – it could mean a lot one day.  (More about chickenpox and shingles.)

Deep Thought: 
“Too bad you can’t just grab a tree by the very tip-top and bend it
clear over the ground and then let her fly, because I bet you’d be
amazed at all the stuff that comes flying out.”
Today I am grateful for:  Underwear.
Guess the Movie:  “Can you
keep a secret? I’m trying to organize a prison break. We have to first
get out of this bar, then the hotel, then the city, and then the
country. Are you in or out?”  Answer:  Lost in  Translation, 2003.  Winner:  weightof.
Enron’s Good Fight

by Paul Rogat Loeb
“We fought the good fight,” Jeff Skilling said, standing strong after
he and “Kenny Boy” Lay were convicted of defrauding Enron stockholders.
But what an odd choice of words. I suppose Joachim von Ribbentrop and
Attila the Hun could say the same thing, but fighting to stay out of
jail is a small imperial dream. Skilling and Lay did authorize
blitzkrieg-worthy raids on West Coast utilities, where Enron traders
bragged about stealing from “grandma Millie,” and jamming their $250 a
megawatt hour power “right up her ass.” And Enron did conquer the
venerable Portland General utility, then leave it a hollow shell-I met
a woman who’d lost her entire retirement. So maybe those were the
fights Skilling referred to. But these opponents barely put up a
struggle.  (Rest of article

THURSDAY WHATEVER

The garden is with morning,
and you lean above an iris
looking young.
The ground is warm.  A leaf
has fallen to my lap,
my thoughts are slow.
I think in shadow patterns
realizing that the sun moves,
and that you have touched my hand,
but nothing more.

Winner:  lostyetlooking.
First Female Conscientious Objector Sentenced for Refusing Deployment to Afghanistan

FORT BENNING, Georgia – May 24 – Army National Guard Specialist
Katherine Jashinski received a bad conduct discharge today and was
sentenced to 120 days confinement after pleading guilty to the charge
of “refusal to obey a legal order.” She was acquitted of the more
serious charge of “missing movement by design.” With 53 days already
served (on Fort Benning), and 20 days off for good behavior, Ms.
Jashinski has 47 days of confinement remaining.  (Rest of article here.)

TUESDAY POLITICS

Ed Garvey is a Madison lawyer, political activist and the editor of the fightingbob.com web site.  In an article for the Madison Capital Times today he
listed some reasons for optimism.  Here’s the short version:

1.  Class  members at Liberty University in Virginia and
New School in New York opposed Senator John McCain’s speeches
due to his support of the war in Iraq.
2. Senator Russ Feinfold walked out in protest from a session of
the Judiciary Committee voting to ban gay and lesbian partnerships.
3. People in Wisconsin started going door-to-door to urge voting against the ban in #2.
4. Judge Paul Beibel in Illinois ruled that the results of a report on police torture in Chicago be released to the public.
5. The UN Anti-Torture Commission and the attorney general of Great
Britain told the US to close Guantanamo Bay prison, stop torturing
detainees, and close secret CIA prisons.
6. Italy got rid of Prime Minister Berlusconi, and his successor announced that Italy will withdraw its troops from Iraq.
7. At least six Latin American countries are getting rid of
multinational corporations and starting to share oil revenues with
their poorest citizens.
8. Two million Latinos marched to shed light on the attempt to make them criminals.
9. An invasion of Iran is unlikely without a draft, which would really freak the freak.
10. Rumsfeld is being attacked by his own retired generals.
11. In Wisconsin, former Speaker Scott Jensen will go to jail for corruption.
12. Support for the war in Iraq (as an average two soldiers a day are still dying there) continues to drop.

And here is the long version.  Onward and upward!

Deep Thought: 
“Sometimes, when I drive across the desert in the middle of the night,
with no other cars around, I start imagining: What if there were no
civilization out there? No cities, no factories, no people? And then I
think: No people or factories? Then who made this car? And this
highway? And I get so confused I have to stick my head out the window
into the driving rain – unless there’s lightning, because I could get
struck on the head by a bolt.”
Today I am grateful for:  My jaw.
Guess the Movie:  “I was
12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in
the summer of 1959 – a long time ago, but only if you measure in terms
of years. I was living in a small town in Oregon called Castle Rock;
there were only twelve hundred and eighty-one people, but to me it was
the whole world. “  Answer:  Stand By Me,  1986.  Winner:  RnBoW_SPOT
Report: Bin Laden says Moussaoui had nothing to do with 9/11

New audiotape released
(Cairo, Egypt -AP, May 23, 2006) – Osama bin Laden purportedly said in
an audio tape Tuesday that Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person
convicted in the U.S. for the Sept. 11 attacks, had nothing to do with
the operation.  (Rest of article here.)

WEDNESDAY MOVIE

Akeelah and the Bee

Did
you happen to notice the hook-up between Lion’s Gate films and
Starbucks to promote this film?  This is an innovative new
marketing campaign that I bet we’ll see lots more of in the near
future.  For its first film push, Starbucks picked Akeelah and the
Bee, carrying the soundtrack since early April and the DVD when it
comes out later on.  Even better, a little traveling Scrabble set
for long car trips was right on the counter by the cash register, where
I snapped it up to send along with my grandchildren when they take a
12-hour journey to San Francisco in June.  Not that they’re 100%
likely to use it.  Neither of them has been noted to carry a book
around with them for entertainment.  Reading is something required
by school, not something to pry yourself away from anywhere else. 
Electronics and TV are their drugs of choice when amusing themselves
indoors.  So then I went to see Akeelah and the Bee with them and
their dad at the cineplex.  It was stuck in one of the tiny venues
that seat about 100 people for starters.  I noticed several little
gaggles of grade school age girls chaperoned by teacher/mother type
women.  No African-Americans of any age in the room.  I
wonder what the customer profile is for Starbucks.  My impression
is mainly yuppy, mainly white, mainly young-to-middle age, mainly
middle to upper income.  So why a film about an adolescent
break-out speller from South Central LA?  You got me. 
Akeelah can spell.  Simple as that.  She got the gene. 
Having the gene myself, I learned like she did at an early age that it
was better to keep a low profile about it.  Does the word
“brainiac” give you an idea of how popular this gift is?  So
Akeelah’s dad was shot down in the street in the past, her mom is a
hardworking no-time-for-nonsense single parent (Angela Bassett), and
her brother is drifting into the street life.   Luckily for
her, the school principal notices her talent and pushes her to enter a
local spelling bee, which eventually becomes regional, then
national.  Also, a former spelling champ, now famous English
professor (played by Laurence Fishburne), just happens to be asked to
coach her.  To make a long story short, this is a happy ending
type deal.  Akeelah manages to heal just about everybody’s wounds
- including her whole ghetto community cheering her on.  She turns
it into a win-win situation – teaming up with her nastiest rival at the
top-level contest.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for happy
endings.  We were glad we went in my family.  It was just a
teensy bit prettier than I would have thought life in South LA would
be, but I feel guilty kvetching about such a detail.  Good for you
Starbucks!  Politically correct first choice for sure, though I
have yet to hear my grandchildren beg me to break out the scrabble set
again.

Deep Thought: “Too
bad Lassie didn’t know how to ice skate, because then if she was in
Holland on vacation in winter and someone said ‘Lassie, go skate for
help,’ she could do it.”
Today I am grateful for: Irises.
Guess the Movie: “Come
to Los Angeles! The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and
inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see.
There are jobs aplenty, and land is cheap. Every working man can have
his own house, and inside every house, a happy, all-American family.
You can have all this, and who knows… you could even be discovered,
become a movie star… or at least see one. Life is good in Los
Angeles… it’s paradise on Earth.” Ha ha ha ha. That’s what they tell
you, anyway.”  Answer:  LA Confidential, 1997.  Winner:  buttermelon
Memo to Pelosi: How to Discuss Impeachment
Submitted by Bob Fertik on May 7, 2006 – 6:32pm.Impeachment
To: Rep. Nancy Pelosi
From: Bob Fertik
Re: How to Discuss Impeachment
As
the Democratic Leader in the House, you are the chief spokesperson on
whether Democrats will impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney.  (Rest
of article here).

MONDAY READING

Wikipedia

I couldn’t resist buying the Time 100 Special Issue that came out
today.  It breaks the winners down into 5 categories: 
Leaders & Revolutionaries, Scientists & Thinkers, Heroes &
Pioneers, Builders & Titans, and Artists & Entertainers. 
The first one I came to on the list that seemed to exemplify reading is
a name I never heard before – Jimmy Donal “Jimbo” Wales.  But I
sure have heard of Wikipedia.  This
is another one of those young entrepreneurs who came up with a great
idea that caught on – like Google and Craigslist and Amazon.com. 
Jimmy Wales will turn 40 this summer, born in Alabama, taught by his
mother and grandmother in a small private school using Montessori type
methods of following your interests in what you study.  Eventually
he went all the way to PhD in finance and became an options trader in
Chicago earning major bucks.  Around 1999, he decided to reinvent
the encyclopedia for the internet age – free, up to date, available to
everybody.  He started by commissioning articles and doing peer
reviews, but realized it would take centuries to get anywhere that
way.  Then the Big Quantum Leap Idea – using a software called
“wiki” to create an “edit this page” button, it was now possible to
enter and track changes by readers.  Wikipedia was born.  It
now has more than a million articles – and best of all, because so many
users protect and nurture it, any hackers or vandalizations are quickly
fixed.  In other words, it’s OUR encyclopedia.  We can add to
it or change it, and we can keep it accurate and true.  It’s like
one big giant group conscience.  What a deal and what a
guy.  Here’s
Wikipedia on Jimmy Wales.

Deep Thought: 
You know how to paint a room real fast? Just put paint rollers on your
feet and somehow figure out how to skate up the walls and across the
ceiling.
Today I am grateful for:  Jars.
Guess the Movie: 
“Somebody asked me today, “Phil, if you could be anywhere in the world,
where would you like to be?” And I said to him, “Prob’ly right here -
Elko, Nevada, our nation’s high at 79 today.” Out in California,
they’re gonna have some warm weather tomorrow, gang wars, and some
*very* overpriced real estate. Up in the Pacific Northwest, as you can
see, they’re gonna have some very, very tall trees.”  Answer:  Groundhog Day, 1993.  Winner: Eliminate_the_Impossible.
Lookin’ for a Leader’

by Neil Young
Lookin’ for a leader
To bring our country home
Re-unite the red white and blue
Before it turns to stone  (Rest of song here.)

WEDNESDAY MOVIE

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Gads, I haven’t done Wednesday Movie since Brokeback Mountain in
January. Haven’t been out to the cineplex much, since Netflix supplies
my home DVD needs. But the last time I went was for this film, and boy
I was not disappointed. This is Tommy Lee Jones’ first time out as a
director and he proceeded to walk away with Best Actor at last year’s
Cannes Film Festival for his acting under his own direction. The
terrain is the border between West Texas (where Jones hails from) and
Northern Chihuaha, Mexico. The story covers big territory as well. Like
many of us, I’ve been perplexing some over the recent explosion of
Hispanic muscle in the face of powerful forces gearing up to penalize
them for being here illegally. Lots of emotion on both sides – or is it
many sides? Watching this film, I got a three-dimensional sense of the
tension on that border landscape and how it could build fast if just
one hotrod vigilante patrolman got a little too frustrated or bored
with sitting in the cactus staring through binoculars on a hot day.
Jones plays a ranch foreman who speaks Spanish and befriends the title
character, an illegal alien who works on his spread. Barry Pepper is
the patrolman, new in town, who accidentally kills Estrada on one of
those hot days. When the local cops (headed by Dwight Yoakam – gotta
love his character actor expertise) decide to literally bury the
killing, Jones kidnaps Pepper and makes him dig up the body and go on a
journey to the man’s native town deep in the Mexican backcountry.
Before it’s all over, the young racist has learned some deeper lessons,
we get to see the legendary Levon Helms (remember The Band?) play a
blind man in the desert, and of course enjoy the wonderful grizzled
countenance of TL Jones at his best. So if you like beautiful scenery,
great acting, serious message, horses, or just some clue of what it
really might be like down there where the next Great Wall may be built,
check it out if you can still find it in a theater or wait till June
when it comes out on DVD.

Guess the Movie:
“I would say that you misread Einstein, Dr. Powell. May I call you
Mark? You see Mark, what Einstein actually said was that nothing can
accelerate to the speed of light because its mass would become
infinite. Einstein said nothing about entities already traveling at the
speed of light or faster.”  Answer:  K-Pax, 2001.  Winner:  pray14me

Wit vs. Humor: Why Stephen Colbert’s Performance Was Masterful

MONDAY READING

This may be the last spring for someone
I know.
While most of us garden
and watch our souls grow,
he hopes for a miracle,
waits by the door,
and all those who love him,
who never before
thought anything like this
could touch him at all,
gather as close as they can
in their hearts,
follow his progress
and sprinkle it down
with May rain and
promises,
music and sighs,
and even though fall seems a short time away,
even though flowers are opening out,
even though sunsets continue to glow,
this may be the last spring for someone
I know.

Deep Thought:   “Just as bees will swarm about to protect their nest, so will I “swarm about” to protect my nest of chocolate eggs.”
Today I am grateful for:  Insects.
Guess the Movie:  “The
function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will
continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not
in control; we are. “  Answer:  Gandhi, 1982.
Hippopotamus among 26,000 New Species on Endangered List
by Barrie Clement
More than 26,000 species of animals, birds, plants and fish will this
week be added to the list of those in serious danger of extinction.
Thousands of species including the common hippotamus are to be added or
moved up the so-called “red list” drawn up by The World Conservation
Union (IUCN).  (Rest of article here.)