a blog about ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS of movies and recent television series. My favorite directors are Woody Allen (who didn’t do it, but she’ll probably go to her grave “remembering” it) and Clint Eastwood (who should probably stop speaking about politics in public).
My tastes are catholic and include horror and chick-flicks and everything in between. Favorite movies remain King Kong (1933) and Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937).
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SEVERAL WORDS ARE MISUSED with great consistently—and often great dexterity—on the internet. “Moot” is one of them. Given that it can be used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective, it’s not surprising that users get things mixed up and become misusers and even abusers. While its use as an adjective is what I want to address here, I might as well give you the whole shebang. READ MORE
I MAY BE GETTING UP THERE IN YEARS, but sex remains a topic of interest, both in its arousing forms an in its humorous forms. I was recently emailed a collection of quotes about sex and marriage and found many of them rather fun. Some were even too accurate, making them all funnier. Apparently, they have been making the rounds of the internet for years. READ MORE
NORMAN LEAR IS BACK ON TOP! It started on May 22, 2019, when ABC television broadcast “Live In Front Of A Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All In The Family And The Jeffersons.” The show consisted of live “recreations” of two episodes from the original “All In The Family” and “The Jeffersons” from the 1970s. READ MORE
LIKE MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE, we enjoyed the 1996 movie Independence Day. When it was released, we heard nothing but good things so we splurged and sprang for a pair of tickets—a big deal for two old farts who remember seeing Saturday matinees for a quarter—and saw it on the big screen. As science fiction-based disaster movies go, it was fun (if thin of plot) with good acting (if of underdeveloped characters) and rather impressive visuals. READ MORE
IF I GAVE A DAMN about the personal lives of actors and artists—if I let the things they say and do keep me from their accomplishments—I might not have any books to read, any records to hear, any movies to see. Thankfully, Wholly Grommett in His Finite Wisdom did not create me that way: I don’t give a damn about the personal lives of these people (unless, of course, they’re monsters of some sort). READ MORE
TODAY’S QUESTION ON QUORA that caught my attention was, “How do music artists have such rich lifestyles if everybody pirates their music?” Since I had just finished my monster mug of Cafe Bustelo—and I tried honey instead of my usual light brown sugar as a sweetener, which I won’t be doing again—I thought I’d give it a go.
My answer to the question “How do music artists have such rich lifestyles if everybody pirates their music? READ MORE
A WHILE AGO, I responded to a post on my Facebook thread about going the movies these days, including the price of tickets and concessions, excessive sound systems, rude viewers, etc. I am now a senior, so the price of tickets seem too high, and I haven’t shelled out a cent for obscenely overpriced candy, popcorn, and soft-drinks in decades! But I remember “back then,” when I was a kid and things were a lot different. READ MORE
READING ABOUT MOVIES before the Internet, I often came across descriptions of Gary Cooper as being Hollywood’s most laconic actor. That’s not a common word, nor one that was taught in the classrooms of America in the ’60s. According to Merriam-Webster, Cooper was “using or involving the use of a minimum of words,” which does sum up many of the characters he played in his day. READ MORE
IT’S NOT OFTEN that I am moved to write a piece about a movie based on a review of the movie instead of the movie itself. But last night I watched Auto Focus with Greg Kinnear playing actor Bob Crane. I knew very little about Crane’s life, except that he was the star of Hogan’s Heroes, had a HUGE lust for women—lots and lots of women—and for videotaping his activities with those women.