Being civil

Lots of kerfuffle about President Obama dissing the Supreme Court during the State of the Union. Oh, my. but really, he fits right in. Letterman, O'Brien and Leno are being rude to each other in public; TV ads call the competition liars by name; a Reep called the President a liar right out loud during another Congressional speech. It's absolutely trendy to be impolite. Gonna get worse too.

Nails It!

Robert Redford (quoted by Ebert)

"Paris Hilton doesn't have anything to do with anything."

Those Good Old Days

I am a Good Old Days contemporary and am here to say it wasn't just no sex. I'm afraid there also wasn't any dope and and there wasn't much rock and roll. Teendom in the 50s was a sad darn thing, I'll tell you. Don't know how we made it thru. Also, no mobile phones, no freeways, no jet travel, no In-N-Out Burger, no plastic of any kind, no FM radio, essentially no TV, no painless dentistry, no acne treatments, no xerox.... I could go on. Surely there will those who think it was a better, simpler time, but it is unlikely they were there, and I know my own children had a lot more fun and are healthier for it.

(cross posted from pal Roger Ebert's blog)

Fair and Balanced

Tocqueville wrote of his own journalism: 'I never gave in to the temptation to tailor facts to ideas rather than to adapt ideas to facts.' Nice, huh? Wish I could say that myself, but truth is I don't know very many of us who really can. Sad, huh?

(for the quote and a darn good time I am indebted to Greil Marcus' A New Literary History of America)

Dope for the little ones

I'm due to attend a meeting of a non-profit next week. they think I know how to get them in the news and I like what they do. But it reminds me:

I was working for a non-profit, doing some movies, and sat in on their Board meeting to make a report or something. Group, which did good deeds in public schools, had reached a fund raising agreement with Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Mail the specially marked ice cream carton top to Ben or Jerry and my organization gets 25 cents for its work with school children. Something like that. So I'm half listening as the ExDir reports that they've decided on a name for the Ben and Jerry boxtop promotion. It will be called 'Lids for Kids'. I woke up to tell them I thought that might not be a good name for the program.

Sometimes I wish it had gone through. Just to see what happens.

New World View

We did a renovation thing on the apartment by the Bay. Hired a recommended tile guy who turned out to be Cuban. Not his parents or relatives, born there. He sent Michel to lay the stone-- and a lovely job too. Michel is from Chile. (Op. cit) The crew that moved the bearing wall so we could have a normal-sized shower was from Bulgaria. The cabinets and counters, were built by East Oakland Chinese and installed by a Thai. We bought the flooring from a Russian and it was put down by a pair of Mongolians. This is the small job non-unioin construction work force in the Bay Area in the early 21st century. How cool is that.