You better…!

Yeah, it’s different from the old site. Mellower. Quicker. Briefer. More personal. More frequent. Not so hot on current events. But do you like it?

Let us know.

A Moment of Recognition. DON’T TOUCH THE FLOWERS! Is that simple enough, even for kids?

Hard to resist Luddite emotions. The Jersey motorhead who’s frightened of all the texting teenage drivers. Disgust at all the Facebook kids who photograph themselves doing anything and everything. Life is NOT photographs of you being pleased with yourself. But I have to keep myself honest. Every once in a while, the new technology works.

When do you ever get to see the love of your life the way she must have been when she was just a tadpole? I mean, you glimpse it now and again in children and grandchildren. Evanescent. Glimmering. But if you have a picture you take and then discover is special, and you go back to it because it reminds you of the extraordinary course of her life, which finally delivers her to YOU, then that’s pure gold.

We saw this little girl at Longwood Gardens. She was a handful, to her parents and everyone else. But beautiful. My wife would have been exactly like her at that age. WAS, at that age. I’ve heard the stories.

The ubiquity of the iPhone can be a sort of time machine. All those random snaps we take can be both past and future. That’s the promise and the peril.

We’re playing with time now. I hope we’re up to it.

They get along. Mostly.

I was just wondering, what can we learn from cats? They’re actually more like people than dogs are. Altruism isn’t their long suit. Touchy, prejudiced, self-centered, predatory, and possessive. But they’re neither anti-social nor heartless. Like the two guys in the pic. You should hear what Mickey (right) says about orange cats. They’re stupid and obnoxiously physical, low-class bullies who don’t know their place and would just grab everything if nobody brought them up short from time to time.

Whereas Elliott (left) thinks gray cats are a kind of plague. Just because they’ve been around forever (and ever), they think they get first dibs on everything, including the food in orange cat bowls and the Big Guy’s lap. The world would be a better place without them, and somebody somewhere should teach them a serious lesson about not being such a prick all the time. If they didn’t have all that extra weight (gravitas) they all have, the orange cats would teach them that lesson. Count on it.

On the other hand, they can make allowances. They agree that the little golden girl who is a third their size requires looking after by both of them.

Izzie the Bengal. 7 lbs of trouble.

They don’t always agree on what “looking after” means. Elliott knows it means playing hard with the aggressive little one. Mickey knows there’s a difference between playing hard and playing too damn hard. Which is when orange bullies need their asses kicked. And DO get their asses kicked.

But here’s the thing. All the conflicts and biases don’t turn into enmity. They’re both champs at just hanging out, even with each other.

What does it say that the world’s most successful and promiscuous predators, with a love of sheer killing that makes even humans seem like pikers, can settle down beside one another and purr like everything is, deep down, cool?

You tell me.

None of these platitudes apply to Izzie. Celebrities live by different rules altogether. In 7 years, she’s never scored a single takedown in her fights with the big guys. Ask her? She’s won every bout. Lindsay Lohan should have her confidence.

If he’s not happy I’m not happy.

Not everything is lovely. Not all endings are happy. A thing I want to share with some of our readers who are just approaching what used to be called middle age. You won’t be able to take all your friends with you. One of the commenters on a recent post alluded to this in passing. I know it’s a source of grief. But it really shouldn’t be.

Every life has a trajectory. Imagine each life with a graph of that trajectory. As with most graphs, there will be intersections. Unlikely that all the trajectories of youth will coincide for long. Why marriage is so sacredly important. It’s a vow that two trajectories will remain the same, will intertwine themselves and stay together. The double helix of lived life. Think. You can actually see it.

Not how friendships work. There can be consistencies that keep trajectories close, within hailing distance because of shared values and interests. But there are also certain to be shocking divergences. Oaths of friendship are not marriage vows. As you proceed through life, you WILL lose friends you never thought you would.

The compensation is that there are new friends. People whose early trajectories might have been startlingly different than yours. But a convergence occurs that might be more meaningful than the coincidences of youth. Mature people may be headed in the same direction, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. Be open to the possibility.

Not every lost friendship is a failure. Not every new friendship is a sign of superficial “affection of the moment.” You’re not who you were when you were 20, 30, or 40. That’s okay. Because some people are. They’re stuck. They’re lost. Or they’ve chosen a very different path from anything that makes sense to the you you are now.

Forgive yourself and welcome the new friends. The old friends who are worthy will make themselves known to you. Not your job to bend over backwards out of misbegotten loyalty.

Honestly, Raebert doesn’t get this. His trajectory is much more like a marriage vow, both to me and his mommy. Upset me and you upset him. Some friendships are like that. Most aren’t.

I hate to do this because everyone knows that I revere Fitzgerald above all other American writers. But here’s one of the reasons why. He defined the difference between romance and sentimentality in simple terms. The romantic knows that everything has to end. The sentimentalist wants everything to go on forever. It doesn’t. And it can’t. Meaning the romantic is the realist and the sentimentalist the utopian fool. Go figure.

Simmer down, Raebert. We have plenty of the best friends anyone ever had. And our friends are your friends.

Symbolism is cool.

Here’s the irony of post-modern rationalism. When you evict from the culture a God of tradition, morality, and judgment, you still get gods. Pagan ones. What they do is right because they do it, and their followers just worship the iconography. The loyalties are specific and personal, what is called in secular contexts a cult of personality. The new gods walk among us and, like Pharaohs, their shine is more glamour than wisdom.

Since this happens to an astonishingly consistent degree — Castro, Lenin, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Hugo Chavez, Hitler, Mao — at what point do the most devout realists begin to accept that the concept of the divine is hard wired into the human brain? If it’s just an accident or mistake of evolution, does it really matter? By what arrogance do the superior ones believe they can overcome the mandates of evolution?

If gods are an inevitability in human culture, which type should we trust more, or more cynically, distrust less? The ones who speak in stone and written scripture or the ones who bray at us through microphones, in love with the sound of their own voices?

Just a passing thought on an otherwise lovely spring day.

Sometimes you hunker down.

What was it the poet said? The world is too much with us. There are times when we can all agree that things aren’t going well. These are the times when we should be able to help one another. Going inside ourselves for comfort doesn’t mean cutting everyone else out. It means finding the root things that sustain us at the most elemental level. We should be able to share those things, those moments, those private resources.

I invite you all to share now. What keeps you sane? A rich beef stew? A catch in the back yard? A book read out loud with the kids? An arm around your spouse? Let’s hear it.

It doesn’t have to be poetic. I don’t care if it’s bowling or chihuahua tricks or Fred Astaire movies. But there’s no way we’re not all hunkering down in some way right now. We don’t have to do it all alone.

Suddenly realized that just because something’s Brit or Canadian doesn’t make it good. There are things On-Demand and at Netflix that aren’t worth watching. This will be quick. The bad stuff doesn’t result in a lot of data.

Orphan Black. I assume you know better than to watch most BBC sci fi. Primeval, ugh. Anything the Syfy channel plagiarizes, like that abomination with the werewolf, the vampire and the ghost. Orphan Black is new. My wife pulled the pin 15 minutes in. I thought she was a model of toleration. She thought I was testing her. One word: Suck.

Taggart. Scottish slop of a TV crime series. Long running, awful, and incomprehensible. And that’s before we get to the brogue bullshit. Which is actually offensive in its desire not to be understood.

Rebus. See Taggart above.

Cracker: See Taggart above. Only without the brogue.

The Last Detective. A guy with worn out shoes who gets no respect from anybody in his department even though he solves all his cases. Not even allowed a police car. No matter how successful he is, they still hate and despise him. The lead is a former Doctor Who. Don’t be fooled. It’s a crap show.

The Commander. Some Brit female police higher-up and higher than that who strips to her bra in the pilot. It’s a bullet bra. She’s as sexually attractive and charming as a bullet. Don’t waste your time.

DNA. Does Not Attract. Any sentient audience, I mean. Nobody worth liking in the whole cast.

Durham County. Sickening. Starts out perverse and gets worse. Until you want to throw up.

There’s a Canadian show called Intelligence, I believe. Wherein they’re ever so much smarter than the rude Americans. In every single installment. By the third episode, you’re done. You know, Brits do better American accents than Canadians do. Of course, we don’t do Canadian accents at all, do we, eh? Something about familiarity and contempt. Three cheers for us.

Accused. uh, Guilty.

Five Days. See Accused above. Just how awful are we supposed to feel about being alive on earth?

The State Within. (me with my finger down my throat trying to cough it up. Same goes for everything done by this writing and production team.)

Wallander. Suicide porn. DO NOT WATCH.

There’s also a French law enforcement show of some kind, whose name escapes me. Oh. It’s called Spiral. Let the show escape you too. When you see French credits and subtitles, RUN!!!!

My wife was supposed to help on this post. But she’s still not feeling tip top. I’ll get back to you later.

Of course, it’s entirely up to you how many retreads of Miss Marple you can stand.

PS. Two that I was going to list as unworthy my wife did defend. Canadian both. Flashpoint and Rookie Blue. For what it’s worth.

I don’t know how many of you have cable on-demand as opposed to Netflix. Haven’t heard from any On-Demand subscribers yet, but that’s where the current BBC series Ripper Street, Whitechapel, and The Hour are to be found.

Guy’s Netflix list was correct but incomplete. The Da Vinci Files and Murder in Suburbia are there too. Some other good series are on Netflix as well, a little older perhaps but worth calling out separately. In no particular order then:

Waking the Dead. A London cold case unit, heavy on forensics and psychological profiling. Multiple seasons of six movie-length episodes. Superior cast headed by Trevor Eve, Sue Johnston, and Holly Aird. One of our favorite all-time shows.

Wire in the Blood. A Brit antidote to this year’s idiotic Hannibal series. Robson Green performs wonders as a psychologist who goes deep, too deep sometimes, into the minds of the ultimately evil. Multiple single-digit-episode seasons, usually great with a few clinkers, most notably lousy a one-off movie set in the American southwest. (Just don’t watch that one.) He works with the police, who think he’s nuts, which he is. Bizarre plots, crimes, and outcomes, with some excellent chemistry between Green and the female detective inspectors who slowly come to trust him.

Foyle’s War. World War II Britain, not London. A somewhat elderly inspector who does not drive deals with crimes that frequently wind up involving the military and the intelligence community. He has a plucky young female driver of whom he grows discreetly fond, as for a daughter he never had. Fine understated performance by Michael Kitchen as a scrupulous policeman who simply doesn’t care about the politics of the war. He solves crimes with a mild relentlessness that’s worth the slow pace. Multiple seasons.

George Gently. Another somewhat elderly detective inspector, set this time in the sixties, who is exiled from London to the northern hinterland. He is smart, thorough, experienced, and wise if not brilliant, and he is saddled with a callow, ambitious sergeant who wears every common prejudice like a flag. Their relationship is both funny and sad, energized by the skillful acting of Martin Shaw and the unexpectedly endearing Lee Ingleby. Slow and uneven but mostly worth it. A couple short seasons.

Doc Martin. A snooty and brilliant surgeon flees celebrity practice for a small coastal town filled with eccentrics and lunatics. Why? He can’t stand the sight of blood. He also has zero people skills. Less than zero, maybe. With Martin Clunes in the title role it’s absolutely wonderful FOR ONE SEASON, the first. After that, drop it like a hot potato. A one-joke premise that can’t be sustained.

Annika Bengtzon, Crime Reporter. Swedish and subtitled. But wait. It’s actually really really good. Annika is a grownup archetype of Swedish beauty, though usually harassed and makeup free. Unlike most Scandinavian drama, the show is packed with action and quick-paced. She is an indefatigable reporter, fearless to the point of folly, and struggling with a home life and children who always get short shrift when she launches herself into a story. You’ll forget the subtitles in a few minutes, I swear. Maybe six episodes total. One I’d never have found without my wife, who also likes a Scandinavian antiterrorism series called the Eagle that puts me right to sleep.

And, yes, there may be more than these. But that’s enough for now.

There will be what should be a fun post tomorrow at the other site. Something I’m thinking of as an emotional experiment involving the media. Lots of Youtubes and nice voices. And a curveball if not a wicked slider.

Now we’ll see if I can live up to that teaser…

Okay. I watched the movie that got the Oscar for best screenplay.

Good God Almighty. Even the Breitbart reviewer liked it. Of course, Breitbart reviewers are stone illiterates, but how damn dumb do you have to be not to see that this movie is one of the worst of all time?

Let me count the ways. I’m not being figurative. I’m going to drive this piece of crap into the ground, no matter how much you Tarantino fans squeal.

I’m reminded of two movies nobody’s mentioned in regard to this one. Both were highly publicized products of Hollywood at its worst, famous more for their uncontrolled self-indulgence than any intrinsic merit. The original “Casino Royale” and a thing called “What’s New Pussycat?” Ever seen them? I doubt it. Both had incoherent scripts, tons of celebrity cameos, and an insider atmosphere that made it clear participating in the production was far more important than what was realized on screen. Oddly enough, Woody Allen was involved in both these monstrosities. At the time, the Hollywood press was enchanted. Today, nobody would regard either as remotely watchable. The only possible viewer response is “Huh? What were they thinking?”

Welcome to Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino is a redneck version of Woody Allen, a fanatical movie fan who can’t stop himself from copying, repeating, spoofing, and one-upping the movies he fell in love with during his horrible solitary youth. Both are curdled milk. Woody Allen has a thing for little girls. Tarantino has a thing for arterial spray, pretentious dialogue that Stephen King would consider wordy, a converted redneck delusion that he understands racial matters, and an image of himself as a post-modern film auteur. Oh. Yeah. That last one he shares with Woody.

He should have called Woody before he did Django. Woody might have told him, based on his CR and WNP experiences, that you can’t make six or seven movies at once, even if your script is longer than the lifespan of a manatee. You can’t do The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Count of Monte Cristo, American Gangster, Hannibal, Scarface, Sense & Sensibility, and Blazing Saddles in a single sitting and hope to get away with it.

You can’t count on the auditory drumming of the word nigger said every three seconds to have the necessary dramatic impact if the acting and direction is so over the top that it demands comparison to a silent movie from the 1920s. You keep waiting for the piano music and the caption screens imprinting “nigger” on your brain in legible form. That is the whole point, isn’t it? Along with all that eye-rolling and mustache-twirling villainy?

The amazing thing is how many celebrity actors past and present chose to participate. Not for the money, obviously, given the proliferation of cameo roles. They just wanted to be part of this Hollywood happening. Don Stroud. Lee Horsley. Don Johnson. Michael Parks. Walton Goggins. Tarantino, of course. Leo di Caprio as Simon Legree. and Samuel Jackson doing his best Clarence Thomas impression. Fools.

Because Hollywood blinders aside, it’s a truly terrible movie. The pacing is glacial, the climaxes are ALL anticlimactic, the action scenes are choppy and slurpy with blood rather than compelling, and the characterization throughout is cartoonish where it isn’t just opaque. Django is willing to watch a fellow black man torn apart by dogs to get to his wife but he feels entitled to torture the slave who has done the same thing to preserve his own life.

Like everything Tarantino does, it’s a moral mess. It’s not entertaining. It pisses away its conscription of Ennio Morricone and all its other anachronistic music. At the end, where it should seek a romantic resolution, it actually farts around with a spoof of NASCAR donuts on horseback, as if to sneer at us for wasting three hours caring about a love quest that was never believable in the first place.

Oscar? Anybody who found this piece of crap in any way laudable should be horsewhipped. The good news? There’s a horsewhip in the movie. Take off your shirt and bend over.

PS. Yeah. Why Raebert was grumpy. He had cause.