Old Movies and ME

You may or may not be aware that my husband has been out of town for some weeks now. While on my own, I moved my computer into the living room so the TV could keep me company.

At first I watched a lot of IFC - Independent Film Channel, Free Speech TV, and the DOC channel, then I moved onto some fluff -- Law & Order and even a few CSIs and some other network TV - That got old real fast! I actually started watching The OC again, so I will admit I was bummed to hear it was cancelled.

Enough was enough though, and I have seen every movie in the IFC rotation even the bad ones - Widows Peak -- PLLLEEEASSE, did that SUCK! I moved onto the History Channel, which was great for New Years with all that End of the World programming, but that too got old.

I found myself turning to TCM Turner Classic Movies and I found many interesting movies, and best yet - no repeats.

I watched 'A Day In The Sun' with Liz Taylor (And, I must add that, I have long made jokes about the "Liz Taylor School Of Acting" as I may have mentioned before because I saw her in Cleopatra. It was an insult to an actor who gave a bad performance -- "They must've gone to the Liz Taylor School Of Acting"). But, she was really good in this movie about a guy who starts at the bottom of a large company and moves quickly through the ranks, the problem is he hooked up with a gal when he first started at the company - a lowly factory girl, who announced she was pregnant right about the same time his career was taking off and when the rich and beautiful Liz Taylor had taken an interest in him.

What's a fella to do? Of course, rent a boat and get rid of the pregnant gal, which is exactly what happened, sort of. (After seeing Liz really acting, I had to move her up to my list of actors that forgot how to act, my list includes Al Pacino, Ed Norton, and many others I can't think of at this moment).

I also watched a cool old movie called 'The SIlver Horde' about a young man who heads to Alaska to find his fortune, buys into the salmon canning biz (I have to admit all those dead fish kinda freaked me out), and falls for a former "dance hall floozy" (per the info button's description).

I have enjoyed these movies and some others so much because they are not so simplistic. I mean the plots aren't as complex as some movies today, but they are more interesting. Many movies today are overdone and too much, they try to make things so complex and formulaic and instead of being interesting, they are predicable and overacted. I finally have learned what it means when people "chew the set".

So that's my two cents (sense). It have to go, it's time to watch 'My Kingdom For A Cook' tonight on the DVR......

The list of Things I Never Need To Do

I came up with the idea of this list of Things I Never Need To Do a few weeks ago while talking with my father.
We were talking about the mountain climbers that were recently killed while trying to climb a mountain in Oregon. I told my dad, I would never want to climb a mountain, that it was too dangerous, and life is risky enough.
Suddenly, a thought popped in my head (!) that there were actually quit a few things I NEVER wanted to do when I really thought about it, and I decided it was time to speak out about it.
Now let me clarify, I am not someone with a lack of experiences or yearnings, there are plenty of things I would love to do, and places I need to see, but then again, there are a lot of daredevil, dangerous and ludicris things people do - like climb Mt. Everest, and a good amount of those people are injured or killed. I have had my share of near death experiences, and while they have made me strong, I won't go out of my way to have any more than life is already, inevitably, going to throw my way.

So I started with this...

Things I NEVER need To Do
1. Climb a mountain (Toooo risky)

I quickly added...
2. Jump out of a plane (I was thinking of skydiving, but as I type it, I think instead, I never want to have to jump out of a plane period!)

Then, I went to Los Angeles for a week at Christmas to spend time with my husband Shane, and our friend Hart Fisher who is a legendary cartoonist and publisher, and now edits movies in Hollywood, he has also done a few horror movies of his own. I mention this because, while there we watched a lot of movies and went to see 'Apocolypto' at the theater.

I then added these to my list...

3. I never need to be burned alive.
4. I never need to loose a limb (or an organ I only have 1 of).
5. I never need to get lost in a foreign country, (especially a jungle, a war zone, a hostile nation).

I guess those are my top 5, I will add more later.

Could Arnold Schwarzenegger be smoking medical Marijuana?

So I was starting my day off with some coffee and news, and some homemade cinnamon muffin bread, in front of my computer -- this is where I start most days.

As we Televisionists say " A Screen is a screen", (I beleive this has been commented on this very blog by Shane).
This means Ritual Viewing also includes surfing the internet, it all comes from the same place, it's all TV!
Speaking out against TV and then spending 12 hours a day on the inernet is the exact same thing, as are video games, and movies. If you are viewing a screen for entertainment or information purposes you are offering Ritual Viewing to our god TV.

I came across the following news story about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger' broken leg....

Schwarzenegger misses inaugural kickoff
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070105/ap_on_re_us/schwarzenegger_inauguration

[SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger missed the start of his two-day inaugural celebration Thursday to recuperate at home with a broken leg while his wife greeted a crowd gathered at the Capitol.
"He wishes he could be here ," first lady Maria Shriver told about 300 people at the event that highlighted California's environmental strides.]

The article goes on to say this, "Schwarzenegger canceled his appearance after he tripped over his ski pole while standing on a slope in Sun Valley, Idaho... Doctors used screws and cables to connect broken fragments of his right thigh bone during a 90-minute operation Dec. 26."

he tripped over his ski pole while standing
he tripped over his ski pole while standing
he tripped over his ski pole while standing
he tripped over his ski pole while standing

That sure sounds like a stunt one would credit to being stoned.
I wonder if Gov. Schwarzenegger hit the Pot Store before hitting the slopes? Not that I would blame him!

Of course skiing seems like a reckless dangerous sport altogether if you ask me. I really can't even imagine a time I would ever strap on a pair of skis. Snow Shoeing maybe, hiking, sure, but putting on skis and sliding along with only a pair of sticks to help you -- no way!

I think I am going to add that one to my list of Things I Never Need To Do.
.... more on that later.

History TV

12/31/06
Last night I watched a complete evening of History TV. It's not something I normally do, but when I do watch this type of programming I sometimes find them enjoyable.
It all started when I flipped on the TV in the early evening, I was tired from a holiday trip to the TV holy land of Los Angeles, and I had driven nearly 300 miles just to get home from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, so I was in a mood to veg out.

I caught a show already on about the history of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) - well actually it was called 'Aftershock'. I always considered myself fairly knowledgeable about the Klan and the Civil War, but found I actually knew very little about the time period shortly after the Civil War ended, and the Confederate soldiers headed home.
I did not know they had to unpledge their allegiance to the Confederacy, and more shocking was that the 14th Amendment that gave freed Negroes the right to vote (men only don't forget), also took away the right to vote for all of the confederate soldiers. So while blacks everywhere were registering to vote, a huge portion of the Southern population of America was unable to. And, of course we all know that women didn't get the right to vote until 1923.
Now it makes a little more sense about why an organization like the Klan could ever exist and even flourish. It had less to do with people who were getting the right to vote, and certainly much more to do with having the right to vote stripped from you when you are an American, and even having vocally pledged allegiance to America before being allowed to return home. They called this time period "Reconstruction" in the South, it was really just a nice way to say they were punishing the rebels.
(Dare I mention, most Freed Slaves voted Republican in those days.)

After that, I watched 'Decoding the Past'. The description on the info button was wrong. It wasn't about Mayan predictions for doomsday 2012, as promised, it was instead about the Tsunami of 2004, meteors or astroids hitting the earth, and other disasters. It was Disaster TV - Fear it , Fear It!

Finally, I caught a good amount of the new show about Nostradamus, called Nostradamus: 500 Years Later, what can I say, I never could make heads or tales of his predictions, and after watching some of this show I understood why. Because he was full of shit, that's why. I fell asleep on the sofa while "experts" talked about the marvels of his predictions, and what they "of course" mean, then they would show the prediction on the screen and it would be about as direct as a fortune cookie.

I fell asleep, with the boob tube on...