Privatize the Roads! It's the American Way!

This (from a Tennessee Democratic Party blogger) is exactly the argument I've been making as I fume and fuss over this issue around here:

One thing we do have is equal access to the basics of life in a civilized nation- roads, schools, electricity, water. Both my Mercedes-driving neighbor and my Honda-driving self (as well as people lower on the income scale than me who can afford no better than a 5-year old used Buick) have the protection of the fire and police departments, and are equally defended by our military. Since health care addresses these same basics of a civilized existence, the question we need to be asking is not whether we should have a plan that covers everyone, but why health care was ever lumped into the same category as all the other extras (bigger houses, nicer furniture, fancier cars and televisions) in the first place.

I also loved the Joe Scarborough interview with my new hero Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NYC), in which Weiner, arguing for a single payer plan, asks what we need insurance companies for while poor Joe is left speechless. part 1:


part 2:


excerpt:

Their director [of Medicare] makes 150,000 dollars. The director of my insurance company makes 4 million dollars. Why does that make any sense? It's indefensible...
...
I ask again: What value are insurance companies bringing to this transaction?

This is a good representation of the argument from FarLeftSide.com:

Groucho Marx

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1977 of Groucho Marx, whose death was pretty much ignored by most folks because of the death (only 3 days earlier) of Elvis. I have embedded a couple of key movie scenes here. There used to be more, but youtube and googlevideo removed them. FilmReference.com says,

The Marx Brothers' irreverent brand of humor has been described as surrealistic, absurdist, and anarchic. Consistently anti-authoritarian, their films mock serious institutions and professions, figures of authority, and "high art," with special abuse reserved for anyone deemed pompous, rich, or respectable.

I've blogged the following of his films:

Animal Crackers (1930)
The Cocoanuts (1929) and Monkey Business (1931)
Horse Feathers (1932)
Duck Soup (1933)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
A Day at the Races (1937)
At the Circus (1939)

Where Are You on the Political Spectrum?

You can take the quiz at Culture Kitchen.

Here are my quiz results:

Where are you on the political spectrum Your Result: Liberal   Your political and policy decisions are influenced by the principles of liberty, equality, peace and justice. You have an altruistic concern for your fellow men and women. You are likely to be a Democrat, but not all Democrats are liberals.
Lefty
Moderate
Libertarian
Wingnut
Conservative
Where are you on the political spectrum Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Mickelsson's Ghosts

Mickelsson's Ghosts is a 1982 novel by John Gardner, the last novel he wrote.

from the back of the book:

It is the story of Peter Mickelsson, a brilliant professor of philosophy, who, having totally lost control of his life, buys and sets about restoring an old farmhouse, only to find that he is haunted by the ghosts of former occupants.

He's not haunted only by ghosts of the house's former occupants, but by ghosts of his own imagination and weird happenings. Philosophy, psychology, religion, questions about madness and reality, abortion, the I.R.S., medical malpractice, incest, suicide,...

The New York Times concludes it's "a standard-brand thriller with a queer Gothic hum in the background."

Live Graceland Camera

Now that the tourists have finished paying their Death Week homage to The King, it's quieter at Graceland. You can see a picture of the house that updates every minute at this link. There are 3 virtual tours linked here.

The picture above is from Wikipedia Commons.

After Midnight

Eric Clapton's version of J.J. Cale's After Midnight was on Clapton's 1970 album.



This song is on the list of 500 Songs that shaped Rock and Roll from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Elvis Presley

The Daughter offers these 2 tasteless Elvis jokes in honor of the day:

• Q: What was Elvis' last big hit?
  A: The bathroom floor.

• Q: What would Elvis say if he were alive today?
  A: "Let me out, let me out, let me out!"

If she really had a full appreciation of Elvis and real faith that he is still alive she would, of course, not think those jokes were so funny. She is not, however, a true believer. What can I say? I have tried to convince her, but she remains more than skeptical.

As a finish for our Elvis Presley Tribute Film Fest we watched Lilo and Stitch, which I wrote a blog post for back in January.

Earlier tonight we watched Elvis Has Left the Building and Bubba Ho-Tep.

Blog posts on other Elvis movies:

King Creole

Elvis Has Left the Building

2nd in our Death Week Tribute Film Fest is Elvis Has Left the Building, a 2004 film about Elvis impersonators who are dropping like flies. It stars Kim Basinger, around whom no Elvis impersonator is safe and John Corbett, a man whose soon-to-be-ex-wife is an Elvis impersonator. Annie Potts, Sean Astin, Angie Dickinson, Pat Morita and Wayne Newton (as himself) are also here.

trailer:

Elvis Has Left the Building (2005)
Uploaded by m0vietrailerpark. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

MSN has an overview. Reviews are hard to come by, but we think it's hilarious.

Bubba Ho-Tep

In honor of Elvis Presley on the anniversary of the date of his supposed death, we watched Bubba Ho-Tep, a 2002 Elvis movie starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as President ("They dyed me this color") Kennedy. This is my 3rd time to see it, the 2nd time for The Husband and maiden voyages for The Daughter and The Younger Son.

trailer:


Moria gives it 4 stars. 1000 Misspent Hours calls it "the best mummy movie I’ve seen in years, probably the best to hit the screen since 1959." Variety calls Bruce Campbell's performance "inspired". Rolling Stone says it's "absurdly clever". The New York Times starts off, "I'm not sure you could do much better in terms of high concept than the premise for the action-comedy ''Bubba Ho-Tep.''" Roger Ebert begins,

Elvis and JFK did not die, and today they're roommates in an East Texas nursing home whose residents are being killed by an ancient Egyptian Soul Sucker named Bubba Ho-Tep. I want to get that on the table right at the get-go, so I can deal with the delightful wackiness of this movie, which is endearing and vulgar in about the right proportion.

BBC says,

Cult horror classics don't come more instantaneous than Bubba Ho-Tep, a fiendishly funny comedy horror, in which an ageing Elvis Presley battles an Egyptian mummy with a little help from former President John F Kennedy.

Religulous

Religulous is a 2008 documentary with Bill Maher.

Online at GoogleVideo:

The scriptures are not teaching science. It's very hard for me to accept, not just a literal interpretation of scripture but a fundamentalist approach to religious belief. It's kind of a plague. It presents itself as science, and it's not. (astronomer/priest)

The irony of religion is that, because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world actually could come to an end.
...
The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists,

That last quote is from Bill Maher and is part of a mini-sermon well worth listening to even if you don't watch the rest of the movie. It's about the last 10 minutes of the film.

The New York Times describes it as "a sometimes funny, sometimes cheap attack on organized religion." Variety calls it "brilliant" and "incendiary". Roger Ebert has a review, giving it 3 1/2 stars. The Guardian opens with this: "Shooting fish in a barrel is the order of the day in comedian Bill Maher's faintly tiresome attack on religion". Christianity Today points out that

it's not the hardest thing in the world to make a religion look silly when you only focus on the kitschiest, most grimace-inducing practitioners of it.

Slant Magazine compares it to Ben Stein's Expelled, saying

to both films' detriment, they employ a similar, debilitating brand of smug disingenuousness, feigning interest in discussion while arrogantly and speciously preaching in the very same manner that their subjects are ridiculed for.

Rotten Tomatoes links to many reviews.

blog responses:
Exploring Our Matrix

HT: MoviesFoundOnline

Jathia's Wager

Jathia's Wager is the first open-source science fiction film.

a science fiction story about a young man living in an isolated community of humans, who must make a life changing decision about his future and his species

a bit preachy...

It's online at googlevideo:


HT: SFSignal

Tantrix

When I went downstairs for tea tonight I discovered The Daughter and The Younger Son playing Tantrix. I watched that round, and they let me in on the next one. I was Green. We've had this game for several years and pretty much obey the stated rules. You can play a solitaire version online here.

There's a Facebook page.

The photo above is from Joff Hopkins' Flickr stream.

The Body Farm

The Younger Son and I have talked about this for some time -he brought it up, and I don't mind discussing topics some might consider morbid- and we have decided we want to donate our bodies to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center. Besides avoiding the continually sky-rocketing cost of funerals, this provides a service and keeps our bodies from being stuck in an air-tight box in a vault. Not much "ashes to ashes and dust to dust" involved in current funeral practices around here. It's not that we particularly want to donate our bodies to science, but the idea of natural decomposition just appeals to us as an alternative to the death-denying funeral culture. One of the F.A.Q.s:

2. What happens to my body after it is donated?

Once we receive a body, we assign an identifying number and we place it at the Anthropology Research Facility (ARF), our outdoor laboratory. The body may be used in a decomposition project or not. Regardless, all of donations go to the ARF and are allowed to decompose naturally.

Information on body donations is here. There's a wikipedia article here. The Utne Reader has an article. Wired.com did an interview with the founder. There was a story on NPR's Weekend Edition. FBI.gov has a video. There's also a short (warning: graphic, not for the squeamish) video tour at youtube hosted by founder Dr. William Bass. There is a Facebook group.

Cendrillon

Cendrillon (no English Wikipedia page) is an 1899 short Georges Melies film re-telling the Cinderella story. This is one of the earliest filmed Cinderellas. This film pioneered the first dissolve effect.

It's online at the Internet Archive:


FilmJournal.net has an article.

Play Time

The Younger Son chose a foreign film tonight (bless his heart), and The Husband and The Daughter sat through the entire movie without a word of complaint. Play Time is a Jacques Tati film, released in France in 1967 and in America in 1973. We have the Criterion edition, and I also watched the short biography on the 2nd disc.

There's some video from the movie here:

PLAY TIME Jacques Tati
Uploaded by NilbogLAND. -

There are several still shots from the film here. DVDTalk has an appreciation. FilmReference.com opens with this:

Jacques Tati's Playtime is perhaps the only epic achievement of the modernist cinema, a film that not only accomplishes the standard modernist goals of breaking away from closed classical narration and discovering a new, open form of story-telling, but also uses that form to produce an image of an entire society.

Only the Cinema calls it

one of the most exuberant, free-spirited, formally playful tributes imaginable to the spirit of invention and humor that leads people to make their own fun in the most unlikely of contexts.

The Thieving Hand

The Thieving Hand is a 1908 short film produced and directed by Stuart Blackton. Though he was better known for his work in animation, this silent film is live action with some interesting effects having to do with a prosthetic arm with a mind of its own.

Youtube has it online:


TCM has an overview. Weird Wild Realm has a plot synopsis and similar information on several of Blackton's films.

Drinking Liberally, Memphis

After our interesting experience at the recent Steve Cohen Town Hall meeting, The Daughter and I thought we'd seek out other local liberals. I had read about the Drinking Liberally group on a blog a while back, so I looked them up and we went. I knew where the place was, parking was no problem and the group was meeting just inside the door. So far, so good.

It went downhill from there.

The bartender took us over to the group, saying, "I've got some new folks for you." The tables were already pretty full, and we sat in the first available seats we came to: on the side at the end of the table next to a man with a cute little boy. The bartender pulled another table up to make room for more folks, took our order (he was great) and told us where the patio was. We sat there for a while before anyone spoke to us, but one guy did get up and come down to where we were to introduce himself. He was cordial and asked how we learned about the meeting. Sometime during the hour and 15 minutes we were there, a couple of other folks who came introduced themselves; but everyone who came scooted in to sit next to the people at the other end of the table. No one ever did sit down at the table that had been added next to us. The guy next to me turned completely sideways in his chair so that his back was to me, making it impossible for me to see past him or hear anything that was said on the other side of him. The guy across from me was apparently new, too, and he told us he was interested in learning more about politics. He was there with his sister (I think), who talked with the folks at the other end of the table. There was no one seated to his left across from The Daughter. These people seem like they all already know each other and may not be used to strangers coming who have never met any of them before. We felt "really awkward" to quote The Daughter. They don't seem to object to strangers sitting at their table, but we figure it's probably a private group in actual practice -at least, it felt closed to us sitting where we were.

As we left I told them it had been nice to have met them, and they smiled in a sociable way, but I don't think they'll miss us when we never go back. The bartender seemed interested in having us come back. That's nice.

8/13/2009: I see this mention of the event at LeftWingCracker. I think the woman he identifies as "Kelly, the author of THE MEMPHIS LIBERAL" might have been the sister of the man who sat across from me, though I never heard her name mentioned last night. Her report of the meeting is here. It's evident, then, that they aren't a closed group and that they do welcome some newcomers. Sitting behind that guy's back where we couldn't see or hear anybody except for the guy sitting across from me (nice as he was) was just a bad place to be.

8/14/2009: LeftWingCracker is inviting everybody to Drinking Liberally at RP Billiards to visit with gubernatorial candidate Jim Kyle.

King Creole

The Younger Son and The Daughter had never seen an Elvis movie before. I felt like I had somehow failed as a Memphis native, so when I saw that King Creole was one of the movies being shown as part of the Elvis Film Fest, I bought tickets and took them yesterday. I think they were surprised by how good it was. The first time I saw this film it was on television. This was my third time to see it and my first time to see it in a theater.

King Creole is a 1958 Elvis movie directed by Michael Curtiz. It also stars Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau and Vic Morrow.

trailer:


Variety praises Elvis' acting. The New York Times also praises Elvis, saying,

In Paramount's surprisingly colorful and lively "King Creole," most of it outright drama, he does a good, convincing walk-through as a downtrodden New Orleans youth who tangles with some gangsters (along with that blasted guitar). It's a sturdy, picturesque job

Star Wars

I still call it the 1st Star Wars movie, but since it came out it has become Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It'd been years since we had last seen this, and we decided it would be a fitting end to our Peter Cushing Appreciation Day. Peter Cushing is Grand Moff Tarkin. The film also stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Alec Guinness. It is written and directed by George Lucas. We watched the Han Shot First version. You know... the real one.

trailer:


The New York Times has a positive review. Time Magazine calls it "the year's best movie". Variety says it's "magnificent". The BBC says it "remains one of the most memorable and glorious fantasies ever made." Roger Ebert considers it a great movie and closes by saying,

If I were asked to say with certainty which movies will still be widely-known a century or two from now, I would list “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' and “The Wizard of Oz,'' and Keaton and Chaplin, and Astaire and Rogers, and probably “Casablanca''. . . and “Star Wars,'' for sure.

Moria loves it and says,

Perhaps what made Star Wars such an enduring classic – and there is no doubt about this for when Empire magazine conducted an All-Time Best readers poll in 1997, Star Wars emerged as the No. 1 film – is less to do with myth and pastiche than it is simply out-and-out entertainment.

Island of Terror

Island of Terror is a 1966 horror film starring Peter Cushing, Edward Judd, Eddie Byrne, Sam Kydd and Niall MacGinnis.

You can watch it online at this link. Here's a trailer:

StompTokyo begins its look at this movie by saying,

You have to respect - well, perhaps not respect, but certainly admire - a movie like Island of Terror, that takes pains to set up a Simple Movie Fact in its opening minutes; that point being: these people are screwed.

1000 Misspent Hours describes the foreshadowing at the beginning of the film:

You see what I mean about the filmmakers using audience expectations to their advantage here, right? Here we are less than five minutes into the movie, and already we can see exactly how fucked these people are, and we have a pretty good idea why, too. And moments later, when we learn that Philips is rushing ahead on some super-advanced cancer-related research without checking with his colleagues in Rome, New York, and Tokyo, our suspicions only deepen. Then, when Philips’s experiment is interrupted by the main title display and the sound of breaking glass, we know without even needing to be shown that something has gone disastrously wrong.

Moria doesn't like it.