Archive for 12/4/2008 - 7 Kislev, 5769

Here’s the year in film, as seen from the eyes of a reviewer for the Lebanon Daily StarTwo parts interest me:

Last year, the Middle East was grist for the mill of “Fahrenheit 9-11,” by that propagandist of America’s militant center, Michael Moore. This year militant Islam - in the form of terrorists from the fictional “Durkadurkastan” - was fodder for the vulgar wit of “Team America: World Police,” by “South Park” veterans Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

This marionette melodrama a la “Thunderbirds” lampoons both ignorant militarists and presumptuous entertainers - aka the American Screen Actors’ Guild and Michael Moore.

“Team America” will never darken the cinemas in this region, of course, but rumor has it that copies have leaked into select DVD-rental outlets and you can always download it off the net.

It’s refreshing to see an outside voice stating the obvious truth that Michael Moore is a Centrist. Fox News Fans might have a difficult time accepting this, though.

Unfortunately, while at this point in the review I have a high opinion of the author, he ruins that opinion in the final two paragraphs of the piece:

There’s always a film that should be missed and in 2005 it’s Ari Sandel’s “West Bank Story.” This 35-minute musical short, centering on rival Israeli-Palestinian fast food restaurants, recasts “West Side Story” in the Palestinian territories. It depicts “Juliet” as a doe-eyed Palestinian babe and “Romeo” as a ruggedly handsome Israeli soldier manning a checkpoint.

Many would question whether Palestine’s persistent agonies are the appropriate point of departure for a form as flimsy and jejune as the musical comedy. The screening of “West Bank Story,” though, late in the schedule of a recent film festival, afforded a much-appreciated opportunity to catch a nap between films.

Well…he considered it worthy to mention. And he considers my cousin “ruggedly handsome.”

I just opened one of my holiday gifts. I inserted the CD into my computer. And I installed the software.

Now I get to play with it.

What does it have to do with William Blake?

Not much, except he did write a poem entitled: The Tyger. Here’s the first verse:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

And the software I just installed is named Tiger.

I guess I could have made a reference to Frosted Flakes.

Music I Should be Listening to Right Now: Paradise by the Dashboard Lights

Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates. My cousin was there at the beginning of December, as his film was selected as one of the Dubai Film Festival shorts. (Morgan Freeman and a few other members of the US entertainment industry were on hand too, most likely due to other films)Here’s a review from “The Gulf Today”

In good journalistic fashion, the opening paragraph pretty much sums it up: “Simplistic. Shallow. Wacky. Belittling. Breezy. Frivolous. West Bank Story is bound to evoke mixed reactions. And there is one word which certainly wouldn’t fit its premise: Profound. ”

The reviewer finds it difficult to laugh at most of the humor, but he does find good things to say.

Here’s a post from March of 2004 on Capital Punishment

It lists the reasons I’m against it, and also to another blogger’s post about a case in Missouri five years before when we may well have executed an innocent person.

Fortunately, the information in this old post about the execution of juveniles has changed since then. The US, on March 1, 2005, removed itself from this incredibly short list.

This post is for the individual who doubted me when I told them that the cost of the death penalty is higher than the cost of life without parole.

Not that this is the strongest argument against the death penalty. But it is counter-intuitive. A study in Kansas showed:

# The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases.
# The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases.
# The appeal costs for death cases were 21 times greater.
# Trials involving a death sentence averaged 34 days, including jury selection; non-death trials averaged about 9 days.

Of course, some argue the appeals process is too long, and needs to be tightened. It depends on your priorities. Shorten the appeals process and you’ll save some money, but you will also guarantee there will be a higher risk of error. When you make an error and sentence someone to life imprisonment…while they can’t have the lost years back, they are still alive.

My niece did something a year ago I thought was really cute and funny.
I forget the movie her parents took her to, but apparently during a
scene she found scary she watched it through her fingers. She didn’t
close her eyes, or turn away, she still saw everything. But she felt
watching it through her fingers helped.

I think I found it humorous because it had been such a long time for
me I’d forgotten. Last night, however, for a few seconds, I was
watching through my fingers just like her. (Not to suggest she was
there with me. What scares us are on radically different levels, and
anyone who brought a 7year old to this movie should be charged with
child abuse.)

I laughed, I cried, I was frozen in my seat. And if I wasn’t leaving
town on Saturday, I’d be back in the theater this weekend, and
willingly pay full price. There are only a handful of remakes in
history that have outdone the originals.

Kong deserves the five star reviews it’s been getting. Even though it
doesn’t have a teenage hearthrob in it, I think it has a chance of
challenging Titanic box office receipts. The one difficulty it might
have is there are a significant number of people who don’t like
‘horror’ movies. And Peter Jackson’s version of Skull Island is
definitely a more frightening place than the original.

The same Kinky Friedman who used to be the lead singer for the
country/folk/comedy group: Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.
Since then he’s become a writer of mysteries, where the detective is
himself.

I wonder if his ‘paper trail’ will cause him any problems.

His lyrics “mama, baby, mama, let me jump in your pajamas” and “get
your biscuits in the oven, and your buns in the bed” might upset a few
women.

The song ‘they ain’t making jews like jesus anymore’ could offend
some, as could these lyrics:

Flyin’ down the freeway
Jettin’ down to L.A., it sets me free
Going back to Nashville in my Jew canoe
Flyin’ down the freeway all the way with you

or:

Ride, ride ‘em Jewboy,
Ride ‘em all around the old corral.
I’m, I’m with you boy
If I’ve got to ride six million miles.

or

I saw a picture yesterday
In a men’s room near l.a.
Lying on the floor beside the throne.
Had i not recognized the cross
I might have failed to know the boss,
I thought, lord, you look neglected and alone.

I picked it up with lovin’ care,
I wondered who had placed it there,
When l saw there was no paper on the roll.
I said, lord, what would you do
If you were me and i was you,
Take a chance, save your pants or your soul ?

He might lose some votes in El Paso due to his song: *sshole from el paso

Some portions of the religious community might wonder what his book,
“Elvis, Jesus and CocaCola” is all about, and some might also complain
about his occasional use of the word “Christian” as a verb.

It should be interesting.

This is the initial post and will initiate all the initial categories.

There are many misconceptions about the differences between Christmas and Chanukah. This should clear them up!

*1. Christmas is one day, same day, every year: December 25th. Jews also love December 25th. It’s another paid day off work. We go to the movies and out for Chinese food.

2. Chanukah is eight days. It starts the evening of the 24th of Kislev, whenever that is. No one is ever sure. Jews never know until a non-Jew asks when Chanukah starts, forcing us to consult a calendar so we don’t look like idiots. We all have the same calendar, provided free with a donation from the World Jewish Congress, the kosher butcher, or the local Jewish funeral home.

3. Christmas is a major holiday. Chanukah is a minor holiday with the same theme as most Jewish holidays. They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.

**4. Christians get wonderful presents such as jewelry, perfume, stereos. Jews get practical presents such as underwear or socks.

***5. There is only one way to spell Christmas. No one can decide how to spell Chanukah, Chanukkah, Chanukka, Channukah, Hanukah, Hannukah, etc.

6. Christmas is at time of great pressure for husbands and boyfriends. Their partners expect special gifts. Jewish men are relieved of that burden. No one expects a diamond ring on Chanukah.

7. Christmas brings enormous electric bills. Candles are used for Chanukah. Not only are we spared enormous electric bills, but we get to feel good about not contributing to an energy crisis.

****8. Christmas carols are beautiful: Silent Night, Come All Ye Faithful. Chanukah songs are about dreidels made from clay or having a party and dancing the horah. Of course, we are secretly pleased that many of the beautiful carols were composed and written by Jews. And don’t Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond sing them beautifully?

9. A home preparing for Christmas smells wonderful. The sweet smell of cookies and cakes baking. Happy people gather around in festive moods. A home preparing for Chanukah smells of oil, potatoes, and onions. The home, as always, is full of loud people all talking at once.

10. Women have fun baking Christmas cookies. Jewish women burn their eyes and cut their hands grating potatoes and onions for latkes.

11. Parents deliver to their children on Christmas. Jewish parents have no qualms about withholding a gift on any of the eight nights

12. The players in the Christmas story have easy to pronounce names such as Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. The players in the Chanukah story are Antiochus, Judah Maccabee, and Matta whatever. No one can spell it or pronounce it. On the plus side, we can tell our gentile friends anything and they believe we are wonderfully versed in our history.

13. Many Christians believe in the virgin birth. Jews think “Joseph, Bubela, snap out of it. Your woman is pregnant, you didn’t sleep with her, and now you want to blame God. Here’s the number of my shrink.”

* Well, my family spends Dec 25th in the Caribbean, so it’s a little more special for me.
** This isn’t true in my experience
*** Well…there is the spelling Xmas, but that doesn’t really count, because it’s an abbreviation and not an alternate spelling. All the Hannukah spellings are attempts to phonetically translate the Hebrew letters into Roman letters.
**** This list was clearly written prior to Adam Sandler and South Park. And Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary penned a serious song entitled, “Light One Candle” which is quite beautiful.

So far, so good. Due to the Easy Predictions I made a couple weeks ago regarding the Movie Box Office, my ratio is going up.

The movie I predicted would debut at #1 this past weekend, did. (Harry also slipped on a patch of oil I wasn’t expecting, but the Lion roared supreme.)

I still have complete faith that PJ will be eating Turkish Delight next weekend. I am leaving town though on Saturday morning, and won’t be back until December 27. I will be separated from technology for the time period, so I won’t know if the rest of my predictions came true until the end of the year.

I will say, there is one historical movie I had forgotten about that is being released in these final weeks that might not take any hostages. But I’m still laying my bets on the Great Ape to finish on top.

update: The historical movie above is only opening to a limited release in two weeks (so it qualifies for an Academy Award). It’s main realease isn’t until the new year, so I’ll just stretch my predictions until then, and say the Great Ape will be taken hostage on Jan 6.

After that, it’s such a slushpile, I’ll go for a longshot and predict Woody and Scarlett will take the Mossad on in a doubles-match on 1/20.

(If anything, it’s fun to come up with these descriptions)

According to Bill O’Reilly the Nazis were rude, and shouted at people.

Some students at the University of Connecticut were rude, and heckled Ann Coulter. O’Reilly’s response:

if you go on the Internet and you look at the right-wing websites and compare them to the left-wing websites, that the far left in this country, the zealots — I mean, these are zealots — are Nazis, and this is exactly what the Nazis did. They disrupted rallies. They came in and shouted people down. They intimidated. They smeared.

So that’s O’Reilly’s definition of Nazi atrocities. Some might argue that the Nazis were rude and obnoxious, in addition to gassing millions of Jews, Gypsies, and other non-Aryans. Of course, I’m sure the British felt Colonials were rather rude for dumping all that tea in Boston harbor. Rudeness and obnoxious behavior doesn’t earn the description of “Nazi”. And to label it as such, diminishes the term for when it is really appropriate. And one really does need to ask why Bill OReilly associates rudeness with Naziism.

In an all-out brawl between

Team 1) Harry Potter, King Kong, Gandalf, Luke Skywalker, and Aslan

Team 2) Voldemort, Godzilla, Sauron, Darth Vader, and The White Witch

Who would win?
Thoughts?

And while we’re asking questions, who would win the basketball game?

AFA’s Don Wildmon says, If ADL’s Foxman criticizes religious right, some of them “won’t support Israel anymore”.

During the broadcast, Wildmon stated that Anti-Defamation League (ADL) President Abraham H. Foxman “got himself kind of in a bind” by criticizing the religious right. “[T]he strongest supporters Israel has are members of the religious right — the people he’s fighting,” Wildmon said. “[T]he more he says that ‘you people are destroying this country,’ you know, some people are going to begin to get fed up with this and say, ‘Well, all right then. If that’s the way you feel, then we just won’t support Israel anymore.’ “

Because, you know, the only reason the Religious Right supports Israel is they think that’s all America’s Jewish population cares about, so they can use it as leverage. If we look the other way as they return Jesus to public schools, etc, they will support Israel. If we don’t, well then, they’ll stop.

Thanks, Don, for making it clear to everyone who might possibly have thought otherwise.

Others, such as Scalzi and Wil have commented on Disney’s decision to leave Christopher Robin wandering alone in the woods, and bring in a new character to play with Pooh, Eyeore, Piglet and Roo. A girl. (No rumors that the girl will be called Robin or Christine…though they could easily do that.)

Neither are very happy with it. And I don’t have high hopes for it either. I enjoyed Scalzi’s short story of C.R. lost in the woods, and agree completely with Wil on how Disney should allow their ‘timeless characters’ to be updated by others. However, neither point out where I think Disney has failed in their logic.

“We got raised eyebrows even in-house at first, but the feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide,” says Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel.

Disney’s Kanter says the new cartoon represents not an abandonment of an old, familiar world, but rather an alternate universe for Pooh and his crew.

There’s nothing wrong with adding something new…but the mistake Disney has made is: despite the fact that AA Milne gave Winnie the Pooh star billing in “House at Pooh Corner” Winnie the Pooh is NOT the star of the series. Pooh, Eyeore, Piglet, Roo, and Tigger are all on equal footing. Christopher Robin was the star. Sometimes he was the star even though he wasn’t on screen. But this was his imaginary world which we were witnessing through his eyes.

I have no problem with bringing a tomboyish girl into the mix, and asking the question of what happens when Christopher grows up…but that wouldn’t be a Disney film/tv show. (Especially if I wrote it.) Nor do I have an issue with introducing a new imaginary character. But removing Christopher is so jarring because he, not any of his stuffed-animals-come-to-life, is the protagonist.

With a new child we are either in a new imaginary universe, not the hundred acre woods, and all of Christopher’s pals have been kidnapped by this girl. Or if we are in the hundred acre woods we have a case of demonic possession, where Christopher has been possessed by this girl, and his personality suppressed, while she gets to play with the characters in his mind. Either scenario is very disturbing.

Mel Gibson’s production company wants to produce a miniseries on the Holocaust.

Gibson’s personal role is unknown, but it is clear that the decision to go with his production company was based on the controversy they knew would arise. Gibson’s father is on record as saying the Holocaust never happened, and Gibson has never directly refuted it, and has even gone as far as saying his religious beliefs were taught to him by his father, and his father never lied to him. Of course, it’s easy to see how it could be difficult for someone to admit that their father’s beliefs aren’t just unpopular, but factually wrong.

Gibson has stated that “atrocities happened,’ and this is enough for some to brand all those who attack him as hypocrites. But they don’t provide Gibson’s full quote:

Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933

This quote is troubling because it seems Gibson doesn’t understand that the significance of the Holocaust was not that millions died…but millions died because of a deliberate plot to exterminate a group of people based on the religious beliefs of their grandparents. He seems to equate those who died in concentration camp ovens with those who died on the battlefield. Equating the death of the Nazi soldiers at the hand of the Allies to the deaths of those in the concentration camps.

I miss the old Mel. He should never have grown a beard. I’m sure that’s his problem.

A lot of people make a big deal about the 27 club. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain are the most commonly named members. Some argue whether Cobain belongs, as there is evidence he committed suicide at age 27 partially so his name would be connected with the others. If we include him, we may be encouraging others to commit suicide at this age so they too can be members. The blues singer Robert Johnson isn’t named as often, but he too died at 27, and if you’re willing to accept non-musiciains, one could also include Columbian football player, Andres Escobar, American Football player, Pat Tillman, and actor Jonathan Brandis.

But are there any other clubs worth mentioning? Sure there are. The 27 club probably came about primarily because Brian, Janis, Jimi and Jim were all superstars, all born within two years of each other, all died within two years of each other, all at 27. Robert Johnson died back in 1938, which is one reason he is often forgotten.

However, one could argue the “30 club” is compelling:

Emily Bronte, English novelist, 1848
Patsy Cline, American singer, 1963
Sylvia Plath, American poet, 1963
Andy Gibb, British Singer, 1988
Jeff Buckley, American singer, 1994

There are some interesting members in the “32 Club”

Alexander the Great Macedonian King 323 BC
Brian Epstein, British businessman and manager of the Beatles, 1967
Bruce Lee, Chinese martial arts actor, 1973
Cass Elliot, American singer, 1974 (Mamas and the Papas)
Keith Moon, British drummer, 1978 (The Who)
John Bonham, British drummer, 1980 (Led Zeppelin)
Karen Carpenter, American singer, 1980 (The Carpenters)
Bill Hicks, American comedian, 1994

The “35 club” can even claim singers Phil Ochs (1976), Stevie Ray Vaughan (1990) and Ol’ Dirty Bastard (2004)….not to mention Mozart (1791)

So statistically, there really isn’t anything special about the number 27. You can find a group of famous people who died at any age. But this logic isn’t going to have an effect on the emotions of fans. So “The 27 Club” will live on.

Jim Morrison would be 62 today. He was born on December 8, 1943.
It should also be noted, that John Lennon was assassinated in 1980 on this date, at the age of 40. Which means Morrison would have been 37 when Lennon died, and I turn 37 in a month.

David Brooks says the dollar figures are grossly exaggerated, so let’s cut them in half. Let’s say he spent only 5 million dollars on his daughter, getting Tom Petty, 50 Cents, Aerosmith, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Stevie Nicks, Ciara, and Kenny G to peform for her. (or only 4 of those 8). And lets say instead of Video Ipods for all the guests, they were just Ipod Nanos.

What’s he going to do in 10 years to top it, when the kid’s 23, and she gets married?

And to think I thought British mogul Phillip Green was a little extravagant when he hired only Justin Timberlake for his son’s Bar Mitzvah. Pshaw.

Four kids are talking - one Atheist, one Catholic, one Protestant, one Jewish.

The Atheist asks: “Hey what do you guys do on Christmas day?”

Catholic kid says: “First we go to mass, then we come home and open our presents.”

Protestant kid says: “First we open our presents, then we go to church.”

Jewish kid says: “Well, my Daddy takes me down to our store, and we look at all the empty shelves, and then we sing, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus!’”