Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Brothers


Two of the greatest Americans of the 20th-century. You'll never see the likes of this again. . .

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Who is Stupid? You Decide

Jonathan Issacs:
Some brain-dead vegetable:

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Longing


A movie exploring extreme states of consciousness or moments of vision or intense emotion is notoriously difficult for story-based viewers to deal with, since most movie criticism is exclusively "realistic" and story-based in its awareness, only sensitive to social events and interactions among characters, fetishistic at analyzing psychology and motivations and resumes: criticism, in brief, only capable of describing and understanding who said what to whom, why he or she said it, and what the consequences in the plot plausibly should or should not be. The difficulty with all this is that all great movie moments are moments when frequently nothing that matters is happening in those ways, nothing may be going on socially, verbally, or "professionally" that is important. The only event taking place at a given moment may be a derangement in the style or in the tone; the occurrence of an expressive close-up of a figure’s face; or the brightness or quality of light falling on the wall of a room ~ actions or events more momentous than those noticed by the story-fetishists and are obviously not analyzable in terms of psychology, resume, dialogue, or social interaction.

The reality to which these true movie moments pay allegiance is a reality that offers itself as an alternative to the prison of manners, social standing, and political categories as definitions of the individual, or as indications of his or her capacities of performance. These are precisely the moments in which a character or a dramatic situation escapes from being understood in those terms, moments when social or political definitions break down or when an individual is released into another, less limiting relationship to his or her surroundings.

These are the moments or scenes that descriptions of the characters or summaries of the movie story leave out, scenes or fleeting moments when characters simply sit still and are silent; when they look at each other but do not speak; when music swells on the soundtrack, or the rhythm of the editing changes, or a special lighting effect is used, even though nothing is apparently happening in terms of the advancement of the plot or the dialogue spoken. Such moments, when the social situations of the characters or the lines they speak cease to express the meaning of a scene, are often the most important ones in movies, moments when the film is longing to express feelings or visions too intense or private to be expressed in story or social form. . .

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Trane at 95

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

You Don't Know What Love Is

John Coltrane does. Happy Autumn in New York.

Monday, September 20, 2021

Beyond Grace


In many ways, his speech at the United Nations, September 20, 1963, is a more radical moment than was the astonishment of American University, three months before. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty had been signed and was days away from Senate confirmation. The Civil Rights Bill had been entered into the constipated corrupt halls of Congress; and the March on Washington had been celebrated. Medgar Evers was dead. And children had died: four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, five days before; and the President's own prematurely born son, Patrick, in August.


Here Kennedy recognizes the State of Grace the world had entered into in 1963, thanks to himself, to Nikita Khrushchev, to Pope John XXIII and other leaders. And how fragile that State was. He calls not for an end to the arms race, but for total worldwide disarmament. He calls for a newly established worldwide food distribution program, one particularly embracing poor children. Calls for the creation of organizations across borders providing health care, farm subsidies and equipment, science education and laboratories, for all in need. New laws and enforcement power preserving the beauties and health of our natural environment. And a new United Nations charter strengthening human and civil rights treaties and courts, proposing new laws and courts should conflicts arise not covered by existing measures.

Most stunning -- and self-destructive -- of all is his call for an end to the space race, for a unified effort to explore the stars, the planets, the moon -- and a ban on all outer space weapons and military-oriented satellites. This, combined with Kennedy's refusal to Americanize the war in Southeast Asia, would have cost the corporate/military/intelligence vampires trillions of dollars.

They wouldn't lose a dime, thanks to the greatest American mass murderer of the 20th Century -- and one of Kennedy's assassins -- Lyndon Johnson.

It is a celebration of hope, community, cooperation, and all we hold dear on our short journey from birth to death. "My fellow inhabitants of this planet. . . ."

How far we have fallen. . .

Sunday, September 19, 2021

Burn in Hell

You and your whole WASP devil family.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Forgotten

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Happy Anniversary!

To the U.S. War on the World!
Since  9/11, the United States government -- supported by a majority of the U.S. population -- has murdered:

1,000,000 Iraqis

400,000 Afghans

180,000 Syrians

60,000 Pakistanis

260,000 Libyans

8,000 Iranians

48,000 Yemenis

15,000 Somalis

Conservative figures all. And not counting those murdered by U.S. proxies (Israel, Ukraine, Georgia, Mexico, Columbia, Chechnya, the Phillippines, Indonesia). Also not counting "stateless" persons, foreign and domestic -- no doubt in the 100,000s -- who were just in the way or didn't pay the vig on time . . . or who died of broken hearts.

Current score: USA:          over 2,000,000
                        Evil Doers:        2,753

All right!!

Monday, September 6, 2021

Spirit in the Sky

The Soul of Labor (and cigarettes), 1958.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Big 12


Happy Birthday to the blog!

A tender and very human episode of Route 66 from February 15, 1963: "Somehow It Gets to be Tomorrow"

Sure does . . .