Judgment at Nuremberg

My biggest worry in this post is that I won't do the film justice. Appropriate that I begin with justice, since finding it and meting it out is the purpose of the film. Judgment at Nuremberg tells the story of the war crimes trial of four German judges who held office during the Third Reich. An American tribunal of judges hears the case and pronounces judgment. Before I start talking about the actors and story and all that, here's what I asked noted to myself at the beginning of the movie:

"It's very interesting and smart that they tell the story of a trial of the judges. All the war crimes attention goes to the big guys: Goebbels, Goering, Speer, etc. The men who were the face of the regime. But this movie gives us judges, men of the law, and that's a very clever way to go." I thought about a scene towards the end of Devil's Advocate, where Keanu Reeves asks Pacino why he chose to use a law firm to take things over and cause all the trouble. Paraphrasing here, "Because the law gets us into everything!" So as I thought about it, what better way to pick through a society and what it's going through in troubled times than to examine what the law becomes, how it is applied, and what it does to those applying it and suffering from the results? Great choice of material.

Judgment at Nuremberg comes to us from 1961, the same year as West Side Story, The Hustler, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. WSS won Best Picture, but Maximilian Schell won Best Actor for JAN. More on him in a bit. Directed by Stanley Kramer, who has four other films that I've seen: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (maybe the funniest thing I've ever seen), Inherit the Wind, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and High Noon.

Actors you've heard of:
Spencer Tracy (my favorite actor of all time), Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift (who is skyrocketing up the charts after only two movies for me), William Shatner.

Actors you know but may not recognize: Ed Binns (also in Patton, my favorite movie), and Werner Klemperer. Think of it, ladies and gentlemen! This movie has Captain Kirk (Shatner) and Colonel Klink (Klemperer) in it at the same time! Holy cow.

Here's the hard part where I have to talk about the movie. I don't really know how, so I'll talk about the characters and see if I can piece it together from there. Tracy is the chief judge on the tribunal. A district court judge from Maine who knows nothing about Germany except what he's read or seen on TV. He tries to stay objective and dignified at all times. He befriends Mrs. Berthold (Dietrich), a widow who tries to convince him that not all Germans are monsters, and that in fact they did not know what was going on in the concentration camps.

Shatner is in a minor role as his assistant. He's in love with a German girl.

Lancaster is Dr. Ernst Janning, a very respected man with a great legal reputation. He is out of place among the other defendants, who are party hacks. He refuses to take part in his own defense. He is simultaneously contemptuous of the court that presumes to judge him, and contemptuous of himself for the things he has done in the name of patriotism.

Widmark is Col. Lawson, the US Army prosecutor. He is fiery and aggressive and relentless when questioning a witness. He is determined to see that no one gets off because "it was the law" or they were "just following orders". His experience in liberating concentration camps gives him an edginess when dealing with Nazis or Germans who "didn't know".

Judy Garland is Irene Hoffman, a German woman who was accused in the 30s of having relations with a Jewish man, a crime at the time. She was 39 at the time, but looks a few years older in the film, worn down by all that she has been through. This is not the Dorothy that cross-dressing men love and adore.

Maximilian Schell plays Hans Rolfe, the lead defense attorney representing Janning. Since I already mentioned that he won an Oscar, you may have guessed that he was pretty good. He wasn't. He was marvelous. He is smart and clever and passionate and sincere. He quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes. He sets devious traps for the prosecution's witnesses. He is proud of his country, and does not want to see it overrun by Americans on one side or Russians on the other. He tries to salvage some shred of dignity for the German people by saving Janning, one of their best. Schell is a great, great German actor. He would later be in A Bridge Too Far. (and also Krakatoa, East of Java. The great thing about that is that Krakatoa actually lay WEST of Java, not east.

I save Montgomery Clift for last because once again, just like he did in A Place in the Sun, he really steals the show for me. His character is Rudolph Peterson, whose family had been persecuted by the Nazis because they were communists. He was forced to undergo sterilization by one of the defendant judges. In APITS, I mentioned how he was able to show so many different emotions in his face so vividly. He does the same thing here. Rudolph is not an intelligent man. He is scared and intimidated by the setting and the men in it. But he is also angry and stubborn, which breeds a certain defiance. They ask him probing questions, which makes him sad and uncomfortable. He is confused and ashamed, certain and proud. All of these things and more play over his face, like ripples in a waterfall, shimmering from here to there, one right after the other. His nervous and fidgety body language adds to our impression of who Rudolph is, and anyone with a heart pities him, especially when Rolfe questions his mental capacity (and that of his mother) and whether that was the real reason for his sterilization (German law at the time required sterilization for the incompetent to prevent them from reproducing more 'deficient' Germans). There is a gripping moment where he pulls out a picture of his mother to show the court.

"My, my mother, what you say about her, she was a woman, a servant woman who worked hard. She was a hard working woman. And it is not fair, not fair what you say! I want to show you, I have here her picture. I would like that you look at it. I would like you to judge. I want that you tell me – was she feeble-minded? My mother – was she feeble minded? Was she?"

Combine that dialogue with Clift's acting, and I get chills just thinking about it. He is beyond magnificent, in my opinion.

As the film goes along, it introduces more of the context in which the trial is taking place. The Russians have blockaded Berlin, leading to a massive airlift. The Cold War is starting to emerge as the way of the world. The US will need the support of the German people, they say, and sentencing their respected citizens and leaders to harsh sentences is not the way to get it.

It also deals with the scope of guilt for the Holocaust and the Nazi part. If these judges are guilty, it is like saying that all Germans are guilty. At least that is how Mrs. Bertholt sees it. These men loved their country and were only doing what they thought was necessary to protect it, they said. If some few must suffer, then it is worth it for the greater good. Of course, it's a lot easier to love your country when it's not oppressing YOU.

Even though I don't usually think much about this sort of thing, I couldn't help noticing a couple/three things about how some of the issues in the movie are relevant today. "Judges to not make the law, they enforce the law." That was part of Rolfe's defense, and how many times have we heard that the last few years? We're occupying another country, something Col. Lawson states we're not cut out for (we're too forgiving, he says). We have to balance what's in our immediate national interest with a larger sense of justice.

I love this movie. I think it's fantastic. It's long at three hours, six minutes, but I recommend it to anybody and everybody. I've probably left out some things, so I may have to revisit it in the future.

Idol Mania and the Conservation of Angular Momentum

Last night was the first night America got to vote on the contestants on American Idol. Voting got easier in the second hour after the show. My three fave girls are Paris, Kellie, and Katharine, though I admit that Lisa could beat them all. Mandisa was darn good as well. I hope Brenna gets voted off ASAP. The guys are on tonight, and the only one I really care about so far is Taylor Hicks. Bobby Bennett's bio page says that among his personal goals in life are to win an Oscar, Grammy, and a Tony. This would leave him one award short of Rita Moreno, who was the first person ever to win all of those AND an Emmy. The Emmy came from a guest appearance on one of the five greatest TV shows of all time, The Muppet Show. The others include Dragnet, The Simpsons, All in the Family, and Rocky and Friends (aka the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show).

But if you're looking for a current American Idol outside of the singing stuff, then allow me to suggest Sasha Cohen. As you can see from the pic, she's the embodiment of flexibility. And if you watched her on the ice last night, you saw her use it to great advantage. At one point she was leaning back, skating along on her left foot, and her right foot was about straight up in the air. Next it was leaning forward and doing the same thing in reverse. After some crazy spins and whatnot, she takes her right leg up in her hand, held it straight up above her head, and spun around and around and around and around on one leg. Holy Moley. That's idol material right there.

Watching the skaters spin around at medium speed and then speed up in mid-spin was quite a sight, and for a while I was wondering how it could be possible. Then while talking to someone at work today, I remembered an exchange I had with a friend a while back. We were discussing astronomical bodies that spin at unimaginably high speeds, like the quasar that goes at 100 revolutions per second. And that's not even the fastest thing out there. As a spinning object shrinks in volume but stays the same in terms of mass, then the velocity of the spinning increases by the square of the difference in the change in radius. My friend even used the ice skater analogy as a way of explaining it. So a skater spinning on one leg with arms out can spin faster without expending any more energy just by tucking everything in. It's a great visual image, both in terms of explaining physics and in skating aesthetics. The exact figures he gave were these:

"The sun currently has a radius of about 700,000 km and spins once every 27 days. If the sun underwent gravitational collapse to a size of 10 km (a typical size for a pulsar), its radius would have shrunk by a factor of 70,000 and its rotation rate would go up by the square of that amount (4900000000 times), which would make it spin 2100 times per second."

If Sasha Cohen could do that, she's drill all the way through the earth's core and take the crowd with her, trailing in her wake. Assuming she didn't get separated out like she was in a centrifuge.

A Not So Easy Ride

The Netflix slip for Easy Rider has words like "counterculture" and "antiestablishment" on it, which emblazons "hippie" onto my brain. The thing that stands out to me so much is that very little actually stands out. Except maybe some of the scenery, which is really beautiful as they ride through the Southwest. The scenery and the fact that two of the songs are now car commercial standards: "Born to Be Wild" and "The Weight" (the one with that 'pulled in to Nazareth, was feelin' bout half past dead' line). Easy Rider slides in at #88 on the AFI list.

Actors you'll recognize: Peter Fonda (the son of the Man Himself). Dennis Hopper, who directed and co-wrote it with Fonda. Jack Nicholson, who earned the first of his twelve Oscar nominations for this one. I haven't seen all the movies from that year, but it surprises me that a guy who's on screen for maybe twenty minutes of a 95-minute movie got a nomination. He's good, though. People you've heard of but may not recognize: Phil Spector, who I've heard of AND don't recognize. He's the "Connection" at the beginning of the movie.

The movie cost $340,000 to make and grossed over $60m in three years. Not too shabby.

Hopper and Fonda don't do too much talking about being hippies, so we have to piece together what they're like from how they carry themselves and the people they hang around with. Fonda is more laid-back, while Hopper is a bit more uptight. Hopper's itching to get to Mardi Gras, while Fonda wants to enjoy the ride. Something tells me that he wasn't keen on going to see Barkus. Whatever their attitude, they should both stay away from small-town Southerners. Not a good mix with those guys.

This is a tough movie for me to evaluate. The story itself and the acting performances are really secondary to the overall experience, it seems. That makes Nicholson's nomination all the stranger, I think. I may have been more affected if I'd been alive and watching it in 1969, the same year that gave us Midnight Cowboy and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

(Yowza! Ian McShane was in Agent Cody Banks? How did that happen? This is the guy who plays Al Swearengen on "Deadwood", the foulest man on the foulest and most vulgar show on TV! Rivaled only by Calamity Jane's character. Click here to see a site that keeps track of the cursing statistics in the show. Well, one curse in particular. Agent Cody Banks? Yumping Yiminy)

The best thing about Easy Rider from a personal standpoint is the fact that they shot a scene in one of the cemeteries in New Orleans, aka the Cities of the Dead. I'm all for any movie that has that, even though the scene itself wasn't too good, in my opinion. Probably because I've never seen a tripping out scene that I thought was any good.

I don't see any real reason to recommend Easy Rider, unless you want to see a famous movie or Jack Nicholson just before he got really big. I'm probably unfairly maligning Peter Fonda for not being Henry Fonda. Because nobody is Henry Fonda, boys and girls.

Now there's a man with talent

James Cagney playing the main character in Yankee Doodle Dandy. It was a big change from his previous gangster roles. He sings, he dances, he acts. And he'd better, since the man he was playing did all of that and more. YDD is the story of George M. Cohan, who started performing in vaudeville acts with his family at an early age. He wrote and starred in plays and musicals on Broadway, and wrote the songs "Over There" and "You're A Grand Old Flag". He could accurately be described as a flag-waving patriot. His most famous works were about how great America is. He became the first entertainer to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. "Over There" was the theme song--if that's the right term--of the U.S. troops during World War I. The chorus:

Over There, Over There
Send the word, send the word,
Over There
That the Yanks are coming, The Yanks are coming,
The drums rum tumming everywhere
So prepare, Say a Prayer
Send the word,Send the word to beware
We'll be over, we're coming over.
And we won't be back till it's over over there!

Actors you've heard of: James Cagney. Actors you know but may not recognize: probably none, unless you're a fan of Casablanca. S.Z. Sakall plays investor Schwab in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He was also Carl, the manager of Rick's place in Casablanca. Both dated in 1942, so that was a good year for Mr. Sakall. And only if you look into the imdb archives will you realize that Walter Huston plays Cagney's father and the old guy in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I totally whiffed on him.

1942 also gave us Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary Cooper.

Good movie, fun to watch. My favorite scenes: 1) the one-on-one that Cohan has with Eddie Foy, a rival showman. Foy: "I've got a chorus of seventy!" Cohan: "Oh, I don't think they're that old." 2) The "Over There" performance, which is pretty moving. 3) There's a postwar "montage" that's cleverly done. It's a shot of Broadway theaters and lighted billboards, each showing another Cohan show. Liked it a lot. It's an excellent job of doing something snazzy without snazzy special effects technology to do it with. 4) Cohan and his wife are wandering the globe after he retires. They get to England, and he tells his wife, "It's a good thing I wasn't born in England. Their flag's got so much history, I'd wear myself out waving it around."

Two hours and six minutes. It's more likely that you'll see it in bits and pieces on TV before you ever sit down and watch it all at once. But it's good.

A strange experience

Last year I went to see my cousin play basketball against Gallaudet University, which is the world's only university for the deaf and hard of hearing, according to their website. I think I mentioned that I was surprised at how it was just a regular basketball game (and yes, a little disappointed, to be honest). I don't know what strange things I was expecting, but the only different thing about the game was that their players and coaches didn't yell a whole lot.

Fast forward to this weekend, when I went to see the same two schools again, only the men this time. I was on the mostly CUA fans side, opposite the GU bench. It was a much different experience because of the GU fans on the other side of the gym, behind their team's bench. For one thing, there were a lot more of them that last I saw. For another, they were LOUD. Probably louder than the Catholic fans. It's really bizarre to watch a hoard of deaf (or hard of hearing) kids heckle an opposing player trying to shoot foul shots. Even more bizarre to watch them do it to a jackass CUA student who got thrown out for arguing with the ref.

So what makes this bizarre? Maybe the fact that we (and when I say "we", I mean "me") tend to generalize people who are handicapped in one way or another. Those poor people who don't fit in with society and are happy just to get by any way they can. So it's like getting doused with cold water to realize that they're passionate about sports and winning and not backing down in the other team's gym. One student in the middle appeared to be the ringleader, and a good job by him. Whenever the CUA cheerleaders came out during a halftime, a few GU girls would stand in front of their section and dance it up (and in the interests of full disclosure, some of those girls were pretty darn attractive. I need to learn me some ASL). They yelled for traveling. They yelled for fouls. They yelled for possession on out-of-bounds calls. I think they even had an organized "Bison!" cheer at one point.

Now when I say they "yelled" for things, it usually meant pointing or gesturing and shouting something like "WOOT!" And it was "woot" for just about the entire game. After a while, it started to remind me of an old western movie when the Indians charged the white settlement.

At one point, Catholic was up by ten or twelve in the second half and the GU fans were doing their thing, and one moron on the Catholic side started yelling "Scoreboard!" at them. Yes, they were loud and yes, they were challenging and yes, maybe some people thought they were annoying. But what kind of loser yells "Scoreboard" at a bunch of deaf students? Please.

There was also a close call on some sort of confrontation on their side of the gym. I saw them all pointing at somebody, and security threw somebody out, though I don't know if they were GU or CUA. But it reminded me that just because you have a handicap doesn't mean you can't be a jerk.

Way more annoying than anything else in the gym was the guy I ended up sitting next to. He knew all the Catholic players by name, number, and class. He yelled at them and the refs all game long (on a first-name basis, of course, if not a nickname). Calling out what the defense was. Imploring them to set good screens. Take your time. Finish it. Don't let him get the ball. Call the foul on 22 gold. Call the foul on 23 gold. That's a T. Stop protecting them. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul. That's a foul.

At the beginning of the second half, he thought he might be getting my way and apologized, telling me to let him know if I couldn't see. This wasn't really a problem. "You got unlucky sitting next to me," he said. He had no idea how right he was.

On the court, it was just basketball. Catholic by ten.

"That'll be the day"

By my count, John Wayne says it four times in The Searchers, the number 96 movie on the AFI list. It comes to us from 1956, the same year as Giant, The King and I, The Ten Commandments, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Tanith Belbin is skating now, and she's gotten lots of attention lately. Good-looking girl. ATWIED actually beat out all of them for Best Picture, which surprises me though I admit I haven't seen it. The Searchers, Giant, and The Ten Commandments are three of the best ever made, so it must have made quite an impression. 1956 was also the year for The Bad Seed, a movie that disturbs the hell out of me every time I think about it. "You give me back those shoes!" Shiver. Back to TS.

Actors you'll know: John Wayne, Natalie Wood (though you probably have to be over 50 to recognize Natalie Wood). Actors you may recognize but not know: probably nobody. But I give special mention to Vera Miles because I've at least heard of her, and another special mention to Ward Bond, since he was in The Horse Soldiers, which was partially shot in Natchitoches Parish.

John Ford is the director, one of his broad, epic westerns. The Netflix slip describes it as his "meditation on racism, revenge and obsession", which I guess is accurate. Comanche Indians kidnap a little girl, and her uncle and brother try to get her back. John Wayne is the main character (Ethan Edwards), though I wouldn't necessarily call him the hero or the real good guy of the film. Some of his actions fit more with the heroes of Greek tragedy than with the more straight-laced ones of American film. He's tough, because John Wayne is always tough. He's not always nice, and for a while we actually root against him. He was 49 the year the movie came out, though I think he looks a bit older. There are several shots of him where we see him with anger, or rage, or disgust, or weariness, a tribute to his acting and Ford's directing. Of course, there are also shots where I can't help thinking of Ryan Stiles impersonating him on Whose Line Is It, Anyway?

The "Good Guy" of the film is Martin Pawley, played by Jeffrey Hunter. The only other thing he was in that I've heard of was The Longest Day. No surprise, since everybody and his brother was in that movie. (Eddie Albert, Paul Anka, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Roddy McDowell, Sal Mineo, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger, Robert Wagner, John Wayne, just to name a few). Martin is naive and reckless, but stubborn and loyal as well. He just wants to find little Debbie.

The scenery is great, the cinematography is great, and I like the way that everybody in the movie fits into their roles. I don't know if this is true or not, but it seems to me that fitting happened a lot more in older films. Maybe because the characters were more stereotypical, and an actor could play basically the same character in a dozen films in a row.

What about "racism, revenge, and obsession"? Obsession in the fact that they spend five years trying to find Debbie. Revenge in the fact that Ethan never hesitates to shoot an Indian when given the opportunity. And racism, ah racism. Being an Indian isn't just a "problem" for Indians. Spending too much time with them or having Indian blood can cast a taint on someone, somehow nullifying their whiteness. I'm sure there's more than I can't think of right now. Although if you'd like off-screen racism, I always like to notice when an "ethnic" character is played by a white actor, since the moviemakers or studios never put real ethnics in the role. The Comanche chief is played by Henry Brandon, born in Berlin. Not exactly Geronimo's cousin.

Very good movie, easy to watch, likable characters, great scenery, and not too long at an hour fifty-nine.

Curling

I mentioned to some people today that curling would seem more like a sport if there wasn't any sweeping. I'm cool with the approach and letting go and positioning and knocking other stones around and all that. That's pretty fascinating after you watch for a while. But people sliding along ahead of it, furiously rubbing the ice? Well, that looks a little corny to me. Then I sort of realized that without the sweeping, it wouldn't be curling at all. Curling gets its name from the change of direction the stone takes on its way down the ice, and that doesn't happen without the sweeping. I'm describing things as well as I can considering that most of what I watch is with the sound off at work.

Hours and hours and hours of curling are on during work. I wondered why it was on so much, until I figured that they were saving the skating, downhill, and other stuff for primetime. If there are stars of curling, then my top three would be the two Johnson girls, Jamie and Cassie, as well as Pete Fenson. They all look great on TV, and the producers get closeups of them as often as they can.

Curling is sort of sneaky at drawing you in, and before you know it they're in the sixth and and still a long ways from being done.

Acadiana II

I went with my cousin to Acadiana Saturday night. I had the turtle soup, pan crisped roasted duck, and an abita root beer float for dessert. The soup was okay. I've had better. I was really hoping it would be great, so I could tell everybody how great it was. Time after time when I told people that I would be having turtle soup, I was treated to looks of horror at the very idea of eating the poor things. I put them ahead of alligator, but maybe behind frog's legs. Depends on the frog.

The duck was really excellent. Crispy skin, juicy meat (important, because I tend to think that duck is pretty dry), and in between a thin layer of greasy fat. Put it all together, and you get mmmmmmmmmmmm. The dessert was okay. I'm not sure what I'm getting next. Probably gumbo to start, then bbq shrimp. We'll see.

The waitress got "Natchitoches" right, then tested me on "Tchoupitoulas".

I had a drink while I was waiting for my cousin to arrive. Nine dollars and eight cents without the tip. Holy Toledo. At SOTW, that drink costs me about five fifty, if it costs anything at all. I may try one of their menu drinks next time I'm there . Surely it can't cost more than nine bucks, n'est-ce pas?

I may try a Louisiana Purchase drink next time I'm there.

The Cosmic Convergence of Supernatural Forces

The first such occurrence took place last year, when my great-uncle and my cousin's husband were in the same building at the same time. Wish I coulda been there to see that.

Now we have a night of television simultaneity, made all the more trying by the fact that I have no Tivo or any sort of DVR device. I give you 8pm EST on Valentine's Day 2006. The WB is showing Gilmore Girls. NBC is showing the Olympics. Fox is showing American Idol. USA is showing The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. There's a zydeco band on GG, but alas, that Logan loser Rory is living with is back on the show. AI is in their Hollywood week thing, where it's all drama and arguing and bickering, and I don't really watch this part. Ice skating is on the Olympics, and I don't watch to much of that. So it's between the girls and the dogs right now.

I used to watch the dog show with my dad, so I try to keep up with it now. I'm rather partial to the border terrier. He's a little scruffy and looks like he's got lots of character. My good friend Kerrie's dog is being shown now, I think. If I remember correctly, Kelly is a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. I could be wrong.

A football game

I suppose I should say something about the Super Bowl. Sloppy game. The two-week layoff really hurt the Steelers, who had been playing at a very high level for about seven or eight straight weeks. Roethlisberger made maybe three good plays the entire game. Shovel pass off a scramble, scramble while staying behind the line and a long completion to Hines Ward on 3rd and very long, and maybe a scramble for a first down in the 4th that helped burn the clock. As TMQ notes: "Pittsburgh won despite Ben Roethlisberger finishing with a 22.6 rating. If every pass a quarterback throws falls to the ground incomplete, his rating is 39.6." Yowza.

From 1992 through 2006, ten Super Bowls have been decided by ten points or more. There have been thrillers, such as all three New England wins by three points and Tennessee coming a yard short of overtime in 2000. But blowouts have led to complaints that the commercials outshone the game itself. I didn't buy it until this year. And while they weren't spectacular this year, there were some I particularly liked:

The Wave, where an entire stadium does the flip-card thing and makes a beer pour into a glass.

Macgyver, because hey, he's Macgyver baby!

Touch Football, where the girl taunts the guy and he spears her after she catches a pass. Not that there's anything funny about violence against women, of course.

The Sheep Streaker. All of the "horses playing football" commercials have been good.

The fridge-worshipping commercial and the fixing the roof commercial have garnered praise, but I have a soft spot for pretty much any Emerald Nuts ad.

You can view all of the ads here.

Classiness Lost

Many moons ago, back when the world was young, my family and I would go down to New Orleans to see my grandparents. Part of every trip was a visit to the Riverwalk. We parked in the lot, went up the escalator, opened the door, and entered the Riverwalk. The first store we passed on the right was an Abercrombie & Fitch. At that time they sold nice, classy stuff. Started out as a sporting goods store that outfitted Presidents. Expensive and nothing I'd ever buy, but I always enjoyed walking around. The $300 leather pigs were fun to look at.

Then several years ago, classiness was lost, as whoever owned the chain sold their souls to some demon from the lowest pit of hell. They started whoring themselves to teen sluts and tramps of both sexes. Gone was any attempt at dignity or class. Of course, business went through the roof and the stock price with it. From a financial standpoint, it was a great move. And if you believe that all publicity is good publicity, then you must love the controversies surrounding their racy catalogue featuring dozens of people not even wearing the clothes they sell, t-shirts evoking the Asian dry-cleaner and inbred West Virginian stereotypes, and much more.

If you'd like to make the argument that I'm being a stuck-up prude, you've got a pretty good point. If you'd like to make the argument that I'm being a raging hypocrite, you've got another pretty good point. If you'd like to make just about any argument pointing out that it's dumb for me to rage against A&F, you've got a good shot at having a good point. My main beef comes from two places: 1) the current state of A&F tarnishes one of the fond memories of when I was growing up, and 2) I hate the company's target audience of ignorant raunchy people younger than me.

And so we arrive at what spurred me to go on this rant in the first place, the TMQ article I read while catching up on about six weeks of the best online football column around. The excerpt is as follows:

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Imagine Trying to Explain This to Someone in Bangladesh :The latest Abercrombie & Fitch catalog sells "premium destroyed" jeans for $198 a pair. The pants, which appear to have been found at the bottom of a mine shaft, offer "handcrafted abrasion details" and "one-of-a-kind destroyed elements on every pair." I know ugly pants are trendy, and I'll skip the obvious comment about a society so lazy we hire someone to wear out our jeans for us. (Guess I didn't skip that obvious comment). Let's hone in on the obscenity of spending $198 on worn-out jeans merely because the purchase confers transitory, shallow status. If you've got $198 to spare, spending that sum on this self-indulgent vanity item should make you feel awful about yourself -- it proves you are so insecure and weak-willed, a cynical marketing conglomerate can trick you into wasting your money. Whereas you could give the same amount to the Global AIDS Fund and feel really good about yourself. In the corporate suites of Abercrombie & Fitch, they are laughing out loud at their own customers for being so unbelievably stupid as to pay $198 for a product that's advertised as in poor condition. At the A&F website, be sure to click on the "Diversity and Inclusion" tab, a masterpiece of hot-air corporate gibberish. It should say, "Unless you're well-to-do, weak-willed and gullible, we don't want to include you."
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TMQ rocks. A&F does whatever the opposite of that is.

Coretta

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Coretta Scott King died last week and was given a funeral service today outside of Atlanta. A funeral service of six hours according to CNN. That's twice as long as the funeral for Pope John Paul II. We had on CNN at work, and every hour somebody would walk by and say, "Is that thing still on?" Lots of different speakers, lots of different singers. Four Presidents. Poets and politicians. I personally thought it funny that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were a few seats down from each other, because those two can't stand each other and have been fighting over MLK's seat at the head of the civil rights table for years.

I've really got to get me an outfit like the New Birth bishop has:

He's the one on the left, thank you very much.

















Quick personal note on Coretta Scott King. She spoke at Northwestern State University when I was in college. At the beginning of my next history class with Dr. Jensen, he asked if any of us had noticed the historical error she made in her speech. I did. She was listing famous blacks and Africans throughout history, and she mentioned Cleopatra. Cleopatra was Greek, boys and girls. She was descended from a Ptolemy who was one of Alexander the Great's generals.

Anyway. I never heard anyone say a bad word about her while she was alive, and I doubt I'll hear any now. So farewell, Mrs. King, and save a spot for me.

"Its alive! It's alive"

Quote #49 comes from movie #87. Frankenstein was released in 1931, the same year as Bimbo's Initiation--plot outline: Bimbo the dog is initiated into a secret society in a sadistic 'fun house'; then Betty Boop (with dog's ears) takes a hand; The Pajama Party (starring the wonderfully-named Zasu Pitts), and the Fredric March version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Actors you've heard of: Boris Karloff. Actors you may not know: Karloff again. IMDB, one of the five greatest sites on the Internet, lists him with 204 TV and film credits. He played a wide range of uglies, villains, and weirdos. And in 1966, he narrated "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", maybe the greatest Christmas cartoon of all time. "You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile." Great line.

Famous monster/horror movie has success, sequels abound, and eventually you're going to see imitations and spoofs follow in droves. Psycho, Exorcist, Alien, Shining, to name a few. But I don't know if you can name a movie that's been "all of the above"-ed more than Frankenstein. Especially Young Frankenstein, starring Gene Wilder. Creating the monster by digging up graves, the elaborate device that harnesses lightning to energize the beast, the crazed shouting at success. And of course, the lumbering, lurching, moaning and groaning monster of enormous strength. Mad scientist pursuing his aims despite the pleas of the woman he loves.

And so we have the creature. "The creature", because Dr. Frankenstein never gives it a name, neither in the Shelley novel or in the film. "Frankenstein's monster" became "Frankenstein." He evokes fear and pity as he first escapes his prison, then causes mayhem wherever he goes. We know that he is cursed by the abnormal brain inside his skull, so we pity him. He does not understand the things he is doing, be they good or bad. But when he is angered or frightened, then whatever reason or decency is inside him quickly disappears, and our pity is replaced by fear. Whips, fire, chains, dogs. He has to face them all at one point or another. At the end, I think we're back to pity as he is surrounded by fire, which he fears most of all.

Quick note: I'd always thought that the famous "mob storming the castle" scene was in this movie, but such is not the case. The mob does storm the giant windmill, but that's not exactly a castle.

Even though I mentioned the mad scientist idea earlier, I never get the feeling that Frankenstein is mad. He's obsessed, and his work does put him through an enormous amount of stress. But "crazy" really never appeared to me. His jovial father seemed more of a nut case than the son.

Two hours, twenty-five minutes seems pretty long for this type of movie in 1931. But I can't go without recommending what is maybe THE classic movie of the monster movie type. And watching an early Boris Karloff is nice, too.

Happy Birthday to Jack

I would like to take this opportunity to wish a very happy birthday to my good friend Jack. He gave me a plant as a housewarming gift that I affectionately call "Jack Junior". JJ is still alive and enjoying a spot at the window. Please tell your mother and father I said hello.

Betty Friedan vs. the Radical Lesbians

Friedan is credited with revitalizing the women's rights movement with her book The Feminine Mystique. She discouraged the idea of "sexual politics", or a women's lib movement that was based on anti-man instead of pro-equality. I took a Feminist Theory class in college that included five or six guys and 15-16 girls. On the syllabus was a section called the "radical lesbians", who advocated women segregating themselves from those nasty men. And let me tell you, when the words "radical lesbians" are on your syllabus, that makes you hang around for a while. One of the things I remember from the class in general is that the guys did much of the talking and made most of the good points, which I thought was both funny and a little disappointing. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. What I remember for sure is the very enjoyable presentation I gave on Title IX as part of our team project on women as "The Other". That was lots o' fun.

I'd like to be a fly on the wall of a RL convention. Based on some of the women I saw on the Mall later in the afternoon, the closest I could have come would be the Million Mom March. I would have felt a lot safer having a gun to protect from some of those women.

Mutiny on the Bounty

Before I start talking about this movie, let me make a note of something I noticed watching the theatrical trailers for CFTBL. They show just about all the important scenes from the movie in the previews. What the creature looks like, men fighting the creature, creature sneaking up on people, creature carrying the girl out of the lagoon (rather famous scene, by the way). They gave the audience just about everything beforehand. I hate knowing what's going to happen before seeing the movie, and I'm glad they don't do it like that anymore. Anyway.

Mutiny on the Bounty is #86 on the AFI list, and comes to us from 1935, the same year that brought us...umm...brought us such films as...hmm...nothing I've ever heard of, at least not in their 1935 iterations. Alice Adams, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and Naughty Marietta are some. Actors you'll recognize: Clark Gable. Actors you've seen but may not recognize: Charles Loughton, of whom I am quite fond because of his role in Witness for the Prosecution, a really excellent movie from 1957. I have increased fondness for WFTP since I also saw it as a play at Lazy Susan's Dinner Theater over spring break when I was a high school sophomore. I sat at the table with someone of whom I was very fond, so that probably influences my feelings on the film. Bact to MOTB.

Laughton plays the role of the tyrannical Captain Bligh, who runs his ship with not just tight discipline, but with brutal, punishing discipline. The beginning of the movie sees him ordering the flogging of a prisoner who is already dead. One man gets keel-hauled for falling into the water from his post up high and dies as a result. His cruelty causes grumbling and protest among the sailors, which only results in more punishment. Clark Gable, four years earlier than Gone With the Wind, plays Fletcher Christian, the man in charge of enforcing Bligh's orders. He chafes at the captain's harshness towards the men, and eventually leads the mutiny against him. Somewhere in the middle is Midshipman Roger Byam, who comes from a family with deep roots in the British navy. He is torn between his duty as a sailor to Bligh and his friendship as a man with Christian. He gives a wonderful speech at the end denouncing Bligh's cruelty and calling for a new covenant between officers and sailors.

I think the movie runs a little long, and it's hard for me to care about any of the characters other than Bligh or Christian. Even Byam doesn't matter much to me till the end, and the rest of the characters are sort of background to me. Interesting movie at times, but there's no way I'd rank it ahead of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which is 13 spots lower on the AFI list.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Just for fun, I ordered Creature from the Black Lagoon on DVD from Netflix. It's a well-known movie that's probably never watched anymore. It comes to us from 1954, the same year that gave us On the Waterfront, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and The Caine Mutiny. More on mutinies later. If CFTBL wasn't the scariest movie of the year, then Rear Window certainly was. That movie still frightens the piss out of me.

Actors you've heard of: None, zero. At least none I've ever heard of.

It's very short, only eighty minutes long. For any monster movie made fifty years ago, people watching today might tend to scoff at the special effects or how fake the creature looks. But here's what they did well: When the creature is on land, its mouth opens and closes constantly, like a fish's would underwater. There's a very well done "synchronized swimming" scene, where the love interest girl is going for a swim, and the creature follows her underwater. The special features call it a "pas de deux", which is a nice way of putting it. There's also a very impressive underwater struggle scene between the creature and one of the expedition members. The music is very dramatic and the monster theme gets repeated over and over and over and over.

Also, the filmmakers do a good job of depicting mood and emotion in the creature. It's a guy in a rubber suit, and there's zero facial expression. But with body language and music and the way things are shot, we get a way of inferring what's going on in the creature's mind.

One picky note: the "scientists" make the comment that the Devonian period was 150 million years ago. Technically incorrect. The Devonian was much longer ago, between 416 and 359 million years ago. The Jurassic Period was just ending its run 150 million years ago. For those of you who are interested, we're currently in the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era.

It's actually a lot better movie than I expected. If it's on late at night sometime, put down the remote and watch for a while.

Christmas in February

I should not have had to go to work today. Today is National Signing Day, the day that high school football players fax in their letters of intent to the schools they're going to play college football for. If you follow recruiting year-round, then today is D-Day, Christmas, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. I should be able to take my floating holiday today.

The Mighty Tigers of LSU did well. Not quite as precisely perfect as they could have, but very well. They filled needs at WR, DB, OL, and LB, and were able to keep much of the in-state talent at home, especially at positions of need. One recruit is still waiting to make his decision, and he could have a big impact on what happens with LSU in the next few years. Solidly top ten, maybe as high as six for the national rating.

Other winners: USC, Florida, Florida St., Georgia, Texas, and Penn State.

How many days until September 2?

Goodfellas

From time to time over the last few years, someone would mention Goodfellas, and I would have to mention that I'd never seen it. Incredulous looks would follow. Incredulous looks begone! Coming in at #94 on the AFI list, everything about Goodfellas is excellently executed. My one complaint is that the story itself seems formulaic, but since it's based on a real story, it's not like they could introduce aliens, unnecessary explosions, and chicken & sausage gumbo. Gumbo-less but spaghetti-filled, Goodfellas comes to us from 1990, the same year that brought us Home Alone, Ghost, and Kindergarten Cop.

Actors you'll recognize: Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Actors you've seen but may not recognize (HOLY COW, THAT GUY ON "AMERICAN IDOL" JUST SANG "JIGGLY PUFF"!! THAT'S NOT EVEN A SONG, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. JIGGLY PUFF IS A POKEMON CHARACTER. ALL POKEMON CHARACTERS SPEAK BY SAYING THEIR OWN NAMES OVER AND OVER. JIGGLY PUFF SINGS HIS NAME WHEN HE ATTACKS, AND THAT GUY JUST SANG THE JIGGLY PUFF SONG. ALL THE SAINTS OF HEAVEN, HELP ME): Debi Mazar, Vincent Pastore, Michael Imperioli, Tony Sirico, and a whole host of central casting Italian mob-type actors.

Violent, curse-filled, and dramatic. That describes 80-85% of all the scenes in the movie in one way or another. But it's all so well done. Joe Pesci is funny as Tommy DeVito, and his "What do you mean I'm funny?" scene may be the most-quoted of the last 15 years. (I would sort of hope that "You were the chosen one!" would make the leap, but probably not). Ray Liotta as Henry Hill makes you care about him and what happens to him. Robert DeNiro's very good as Jimmy Conway. (AAAAHHHH!! This girl is murdering "O Holy Night". Excommunicate her from whatever religion she belongs to immediately. No, sweetie, I will NOT be buying your album soon. I don't even buy the albums of artists I like) Lorraine Bracco's character as mob wife Karen Hill is very well done. Starts out naive, then once she learns what things are really about, she's grown so accustomed to the lifestyle that she first turns her head, then gets involved herself.

Goodfellas is about living the life. They show the glamour, they show the risks, and they're very honest and realistic about the whole thing. There are rules. Obey them. You will socialize in very small circles. In the long run, you will lose, so be sure it's a tradeoff you want to make (of course, John Maynard Keynes said "In the long run, we're all dead"). If you're a non-mob guy and you get involved with the mob, you're going to end up getting screwed.

Good, good movie.

The Apartment

Coming in at number 93 on the AFI list is The Apartment, made in 1960, the same year that gave us The Iceman Cometh, The Cape Canaveral Monsters, and The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond.

Actors you've heard of: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine. Actors you'll recognize but may not know: Fred MacMurray and Ray Walston. It's odd to see the father from My Three Sons playing what is technically the bad guy. Evil, no. But very little to recommend him in this movie.

Jack Lemmon is very good as C.C. Baxter, a lovable loser type guy who lets the higher-ups in his company walk all over him. He's a lot of fun to watch on screen and I like the way he interacts with the other characters in the movie. He adapts himself to each relationship very, very well, I think.

If you don't count Cannonball Run II (and you really shouldn't), then the first (and only, it appears) Shirley MacLaine movie I've ever really watched was Steel Magnolias. And she was old then. So seeing her at age 26 and doing a great job as Fran Kubelik is quite a revelation. She was nominated for an Oscar, and deservedly so. Sometimes sassy, sometimes sad, sometimes happy, but always likable and making good use of her face. Ouiser she ain't.

The movie takes its title from the fact that Baxter lets the higher-ups in his company use his apartment for entertaining young ladies. Young ladies who are not their wives, to be precise. Some merriment and much soul-searching ensues. Good movie, well done, well written, well acted. Nice.

Ray Walston was in the great musical South Pacific and went on to do some extensive work in TV for decades, My Favorite Martian, and Picket Fences among his jobs. He was also in The Sting, one of the great con movies ever, Johnny Dangerously, one of the great spoof movies ever, and somehow he ended up in a movie called The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. I don't even want to know.

The Apartment is good, especially if you like Lemmon and/or MacLaine. They're a joy.