Or should I say dolt?

Here’s the headline from Breitbart:

DANA PERINO CALLS ‘THE BUTLER’ SCREENWRITER ‘AMAZING’

And here’s the story. Lowlights:

Perino made her remarks on Tuesday’s episode of Fox News’ The Five in a discussion about comments Daniels, who directed the film, made in which he said he believed America was more racist with President Barack Obama as president.

The Butler has been blistered for its inaccuracies, including the film’s false portrayal of the Reagans, as esteemed Reagan biographer Craig Shirley noted…

Perhaps not surprisingly, Strong also wrote the screenplay Game Change, which was riddled with lies and inaccuracies about Sarah Palin…

I’m leaning toward dolt. She continually apologizes for Jay Carney and the Obama White House’s blatant political spin. My take? She has no political convictions at all. She’s just a succubus to power, loving the inside the beltway life. In addition to no real convictions, she has no real judgment and no real morals, just demure habits that parade as all of the above.

Ick.

In his usual way, Lake sought to raise the dead with a reference to the “hidden treasure” called The Glossary.

It may be hidden, but it’s not lost. It’s here.

And its antecedent is here. (Just think what he could have done with hyperlinks… {me, bowing low})

Apologies to my wife. She wanted today to be about poetry, not polemics.

But poetry is a young man’s game. Polemics is the discipline men are coerced into by the passages of life. Ask Dante. Ask Ambrose Bierce. Or, if he’s not available, ask me.

Didn’t know about this till my wife told me. She suggested I post one of mine.

Not because I think it’s great but because she asked, I’m posting this triviality from 2005, when my TBB character Harry turned 60. As it happens, I turned 60 this year. I posted it at The Boomer Bible website (boomerbible.com), which lives still in the Wayback Machine. When you’re 60, practically everything you know lives in the Wayback Machine. This one’s maybe not as good as Psong 59, but the symbolism is so much more, well, symbolic.

Herewith, Psong 60 from the Psongs of Harry:

I could give up sleeping,
2 But for the alarm of morning,
3 Which wants to surprise us awake,
4 With a brand new ancient lesson.
5 Every morning is everywhere,
6 The center of being undraped and unafraid,
7 On display for its satellites.
8 When I was in Rio, I flung open the broad smiling horizon built upon my balcony,
9 And I squinted the darkness away.
10 Today I roll out under the roof of morning,
11 Trusting a sun I can’t see,
12 Imagining the boastful light above the trusses and timbers and shingles of our conceits,
13 But I do not dare to look at the blush of retreating night,
14 That pink behind we all must show,
15 In impotent flight.
16 Darkness always loses courage in the end,
17 And dawn wins every day.
18 So must I,
19 But more slowly now than then,
20 When I was young.

Will this do, my dear?

Alive or so..

My wife is unable to come up with a good reason why you’d like to see an accurate movie about what really happened in Melbourne in 1999. But she did watch it all the way through.

You should see the movie without reading anything about the facts. Forget facts. Good performances by Sam Neill, Guy Pierce and various Sheilas (it is set Australia after all). Amazingly, the biggest parts of life and death both in the plot are female. Can you believe that?

No wonder Sam Neill spends most of his time on camera shaking his head. Unless men are really so much in charge down under that shaking your head is an indicator of the next sex act. Sorry, Sam. If you’re not married, enjoy yourself. If you are, consider the continent of Australia the equivalent of the dumbest few square miles in America — Las Vegas, where everything awful happens and nobody ever mentions it.

Teeth always ready. Direwolf.

Just a narrative now. Think he was there when I died on South Street. Showed him the blue picture from the previous post. He started and got off the couch.

Something happened on South Street. Or will. Lots of people know it. A deerhound confirms it. He was the King’s Guard.

Why he’s ten times stronger, smarter, and more focused than any deerhound you’ve ever seen. We have the same nightmares.

Starting to understand why he’s over protective…

As a doornail. Don’t think he’s at peace.

But I’m not. You’ll probably be stuck with my confessions longer than his.

P.S. Nastiest thing you ever said to me, George: the old stuff was no longer interesting. In the old days it was sting like a hornet… Now it’s lay them out on the floor however. I had a rapier. Now I’m the MMA of writing. Which do you prefer?

It’s all good.

He wants that big leg over mine. I want it there too. We’ll talk about destroying the house and the status quo ante later. (No we won’t.) Think about what it’s like to have a conscious, flawed being in thrall to you. They know some of your commands. They disobey constantly. You threaten them with all kinds of doom. But dammit, there’s some love in there, and golden calfs etc notwithstanding, you know when all is said and done you’re the one they love.

Which is why absolution is not abstract but easy.

I have no empathy. On the other hand, I’m not a Scot. (But I do wear a genie bra, as you will see.)

Some of you suffered through The Killing. A Scandinavian thing. Now we get the derivatives. For once, the Americans and the Brits get to go head to head in approximately the same season. Aiming at the target of being, uh, Scandinavian. It’s going to take ten or twenty episodes to unmask the murderer. Sheesh.

The Bridge is upsetting. An autistic American detective and a corrupt Mexican detective get drawn deeper and deeper into a thoroughly sordid mess. Cool. How Swedish.

Broadchurch is upsetting. A devastated detective inspector gets drawn into a grisly murder he got exiled from Scotland Yard into the rural wilderness to avoid. Cool. How Norwegian.

It’s all going to take hours and hours (and hours) to work out. How Danish. Hopefully avec cheese.

Nothing is ever going to be resolved. How Finnish. Let’s tango instead. Oh. Sorry. That’s what these shows are really about, isn’t it? Tango…

Actually, we were just fooling. Life means absolutely nothing. How Icelandic. The pinnacle editors of the Providence Journal are aspiring to. We can only hope they will someday make it, along with all the rest of the Harold Parmington Foundation…

[Many views of life. There’s the enormous plurality of Scandinavians and also a few others, including the few who aren’t just pretending they believe in Christianity. I’m told there are at least two or three people in New England who aren’t Irish or Italian and yet believe in the Nicene Creed. But it’s the Nordic view we need to be, well, progressive. Something about self hatred. Like this and this. Just trying to be clear.]

Each has its selling points. The Bridge makes blonde autism sexy. Broadchurch makes angry Scottish fatalism sexy. Who am I voting for?

Me, I’m betting on the autistic star of The Bridge. She’s not as heartless, unfeeling, and automatic as she looks. The burned out Scot in Broadchurch is worse.

Well, not really. She’s just more amusing. Same scene, more or less, in both shows. Partner does autistic girl a solid and she ignores it. “You’re welcome,” he says. She responds, “I didn’t say thanks.” Almost the same scene with the resentful second in command in Broadchurch. She gets her DCI coffee and then later in the day fish’n’chips, and he disdains both. The second in command says, basically, hey, you’re a prick because you never thanked me for anything, like, say, coffee and fish’n’chips, and he tells her it’s a murder investigation and get back to work. Who’s more charming? (Answer: Annika Bengtzon, subtitles notwithstanding — or bedamned. I mean, look at her…)

Of course, what am I voting on? The autistic detective in The Bridge is probably more deep down human than the DCI in Broadchurch. On the other hand, a Scottish lowlife with a troubling past and a case of general misanthropy is probably more likely to solve his murder in less than two seasons.

The ticket window is open. Place your bets…

Not Izzie, I admit.

An incredibly moving book about what it’s like to be all alone with a vision and a fear you can never realize it. If you don’t read the others, read this one. The final scene in the jungle when you’re tracking the jaguar and realize it’s been tracking you instead is the perfect intro for the next, and lesser if more important, two.

He drags his prey into the tree all alone.

No. He’s not a nice guy. Why I can relate. He’s the lawyer Rush Limbaugh refers to as “The Great One.” He is. Maybe the only one who can specify the depth of the constitutional crisis we’re facing with a president who should be impeached on a couple of dozen counts. Number One on Amazon by the way.

No. Not even a conservative.

Libertarian. And a scrupulous journalist. Which makes him a lonely hunter indeed.

Trust you to find these books at Amazon on your own. Jaguars never hold you by the hand. They just get into your head and never leave.

Well, you know, ask Rabinowitz about it.

Intrigue in Dayton

A slow-building tour de force of a movie. Minimalist dialogue. A gathering sense of menace and betrayal. It seems slow for a long time until you realize you are being played. Everything is far deeper and more desperate than you thought. Then all hell breaks loose after a fine homage to The Crow, and there’s a screaming attack that’s one of the most terrifying acts of vengeance you have ever seen.

And it all takes place in Dayton, Ohio, where it was all filmed and which I recognized within the first five minutes. Go figure.

Showed it to my wife, whom I knew would discount the Dayton connection. She was rapt.

Take a look. I was haunted enough to watch it a second time to show it to my wife. Ask her. I do that very very rarely. It got to me.