All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Since ev’ry man who lives is born to die,
And none can boast sincere felicity,
With equal mind, what happens, let us bear,
Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care.
Like pilgrims, to th’ appointed place we tend;
The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.
John Dryden
Ah, the joys of domesticity. Today, in anticipation of the weekend barbecue, I am working my way down Camera Girl’s list of chores. I have swept and mopped the front deck, washed the windows, cleaned the lawn furniture, bought a new toilet seat, bought some stuff I needed to install a couple of air conditioners, bought some stuff to clean the cars and dug out my ladder to clean the first-floor gutters.
Yesterday unexpectedly, the roofer, Wayne, showed up out of the blue after three weeks of radio silence and said he was ready to look at those couple of shingles that had come loose during an EF5 tornado that had moved the house onto my neighbor-across-the-road’s property. The neighbor’s been real good about us living on his land. Of course bringing the plumbing and electrical services under the road cost me a good deal but I was looking for more interaction with the neighbors anyway so it’s been a great experience, all in all.
Anyway, Wayne (by the way all roofers in my experience are named Wayne) came over with the ricketiest wooden ladder I’ve ever seen and set it down against the house. Now, the spot where he wanted to climb slopes at about a 45-degree angle and he proceeded to even it out by piling a couple of boards under one of the ladder’s feet. I’m looking at this and thinking, is this guy insured? Wayne’s assistant has the job of putting tension on the rope attached to the ladder. Looking at this I’m trying to form a diagram in my head of the forces at play in this little scene. Wayne’s weight, Bob’s tension on the line, the frictional force between the boards and the soaking wet grass underneath them and the absurd angle of the ladder and the ground and the force of my blood pounding in my veins watching this insanity. I felt like I was participating in a Three Stooges routine in real time. I suspect I was Moe but I wasn’t completely sure.
Miraculously every one walked away alive and intact including my repaired roof shingles. Wayne charged me a paltry eighty bucks and I felt like I had gotten off easy in the lottery of life but vowed to find another Wayne in the future. Unfortunately, Wayne’s perambulation on top of my house woke up my granddaughter who was taking her mid-day nap and this didn’t endear either myself or Wayne to Camera Girl. We already had a previous roofer named Wayne that she despises due to various offenses against the code of acceptable contractor conduct. So this only reinforced her hatred for contractors in general and specifically roofers named Wayne. I will say in defense of the earlier Wayne that he is a staunch fan of Donald Trump and even placed an enormous Trump sign on the side of his work truck.
Of course the danger with outside work in New England is you invariably discover some new and worse damage to home and environs. I am always fighting a losing battle against snow and moisture damage. I recently replaced and painted some external woodwork (stairs and railings) and already I saw rotted sections. But not being someone who quits easily, I am formulating a plan that involves wrapping these areas with waterproof tarps during the winter months. This seems kind of crazy but the alternative is to replace the wood with something impervious to snow and rain. I’m guessing concrete or stainless steel are the only sure bets and that would be very expensive.
And walking around the yard I noticed the deer finally put me out of my misery by eating every last one of the daylily flower buds that were growing in one of the more remote beds. Blah, blah, everyone has to eat, blah blah. I’m going to move those damn things this autumn and put them within stone throwing distance of my house. I hope they bring wolves back to New England and they eat these deer into extinction. Yes I do.
So today was a useful day. And doing outside work kept me from thinking of Dementia Joe and how badly our country has been damaged. Tomorrow I’ll return to contemplating the end of western civilization. But today I got the chores done.
I suspect the FBI has swatted the ZMan, spirited him away to an underground, under-volcano lair for torture and replaced him with a robotic imposter. How else to explain this post where he more or less declares that J. D. Vance might just not be an establishment fink. Be still my beating heart.
Well, good for the ZMan. Being a protege of Peter Thiel I imagine Vance is a very smart guy who has one foot in the cloud world but with still one foot dragging wistfully on the dirt side. Let’s call him an ally for now.
Tucker shows one investigator who did the hard work of documenting double scanned ballots, thousands of them. Horrible incompetence or intentional fraud? Either way, there’s something there to look at.
Here’s an article where the writer interviewed policemen who had either just resigned or were preparing to. He gets their read on why policing the blue cities is no longer worth the personal risk.
A newly retired Minneapolis officer said, “And the fundamental conclusion that I reached was that following Derek Chauvin, it no longer matters if what you were doing was legal, trained, the morally right thing to do, reasonable under the circumstances, the best effort of a reasonable human being in a marginal circumstance, which is basically what cops do. None of that matters. What matters is the outcome, and if you become the next spark in a viral firestorm.”
Basically the officers know the mayors and the police commissioners don’t have their backs, “There’s not a single leader that steps up for the regular cop, the regular street cop,” a now-resigned Chicago officer said. “They have the power, they have the ability to get up there and say why this was justified, and then they can sit there and explain it if they want, but they don’t know how to, or they don’t want to, or they don’t care.”
Reading the comments I found several readers who have my opinion. Let the voters of Minneapolis and Portland and Chicago stay in their cities and defend themselves once the police are no longer there to protect them from the mob they’ve created.
When I consider life, ‘t is all a cheat.
Yet fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow ‘s falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
John Dryden
This will be an outrage free day. Even though Bastille Day is not my idea of a holiday worth celebrating today is a joyous occasion in my house. I will therefore accentuate the positive.
I think I will initiate a series of posts devoted to various facets of Western Civilization. I’ll range over history, culture, ethnography and geography. I’m tempted to start from ancient historical and geographical facts about the region and then move forward through time introducing the various actors as they appear on the scene. Now do I start with the Neanderthals? Finding out they were red-heads means the Irish may want to claim then for their own.
I will include information on the Yamnaya who appear to have been the mythical proto-Indo-European tribe that expanded East and West and spawned the languages that now dominate half the planet. Not bad for a bunch of bronze age horsemen from the steppes. I’d like to touch on especially some of the lesser known nations of Europe, the Georgians, the Lithuanians, the Letts, the Finns and others. this will serve the dual purpose of allowing me to produce interesting and upbeat content and at the same time satisfy my curiosity about things I’ve always wanted to know.
But just to show I’m not an Indo-European chauvinist, (well actually I am), I’ll include information on the Basques. These seem to be the descendants of the oldest inhabitants of Europe from a time before the Indo-European ancestors came on the scene. Or at least before their languages began to dominate. And I won’t neglect our neighbors to the east. The river valley civilizations of the Near East were the source of agriculture that was the basis for organized human life on the planet. So I’ll throw the Sumerians in just to show I’m a sport. Do I have to include the Egyptians? I guess I might. Without them we wouldn’t have had those mummy movies. Well, we’ll see.
And I mean to trudge on through the third season of Star Trek. I’ve been dragging my feet because it is a terrible season. But I’ve promised myself I’ll finish it. As I’ve mentioned I intend to review Jackie Gleason’s classic 39 episodes of “The Honeymooners” series. But I probably need to at least start into the Star Trek work to allow myself the reward of watching something fun like the Honeymooners.
The endless rain here in New England continues. I’ve adapted to the annoying reality of it but I do hope that the second half of July returns to the normal hot dry summer I prefer. Well, we’ll see.
So this may be a slow day. I’ll write what the mood provides and enjoy a dinner out for once. I’m bringing Camera Girl to our favorite Chinese restaurant and we’ll embrace the Orient for a change.
“The Bad and the Beautiful” is a film about Hollywood. Kirk Douglas plays Jonathan Shields, the son of a famous Hollywood producer who has his sights set on following in his father’s footsteps. Starting out as the producer of B movies for a friend of his father’s, Harry Pebbel (played by Walter Pidgeon), Jonathan finds, befriends and ultimately betrays the best director, actress and author that fate sends his way. The movie is about this destructive mode of living that Jonathan inhabits. Along the way we see that Jonathan is both tremendously talented and possessed of enormous personal magnetism. But these positive traits are set against his staggering disregard for the welfare of the people around him. Basically, he’s a narcissist. He also suffers from bouts of clinical depression when he finishes each of his film projects.
The set up for the plot is the actress (Lana Turner playing Georgia Lorrison), the director (Barry Sullivan as Fred Amiel) and the author (Dick Powell as James Lee Bartlow) arriving at the office of Harry Pebbel who is trying to get the three of them to agree to star, direct and write Jonathan’s next project. His last film was a financial disaster and the only way he can get funding is to have a team of celebrated professionals like them involved.
Harry is the narrator introducing the three vignettes that chronicle Jonathan’s disastrous relationships with Georgia, Fred and James Lee. Each of the stories features Jonathan catalyzing the creative success that each is capable of but also betraying each of them in a way that is unforgivable.
Fred hands Jonathan the script of a great movie with the understanding that Fred will direct it. Jonathan manages successfully to get the studio to provide a lavish million-dollar budget for the project but then decides to hand the direction to a more experienced man. This ends Fred’s friendship and partnership with Jonathan but allows Fred to pursue his own career which ends in him becoming a highly successful director for other studios.
Georgia’s story features Jonathan saving this fragile young daughter of a famous actor who has fallen into a self-destructive cycle of drunkenness and loveless affairs. He realizes that in order to give Georgia the confidence she needs to succeed he will have to pretend to be her great love. With Jonathan’s help she finds her acting skills and makes the part and the movie a great success. But after the film wrap Jonathan goes into his typical depression and when Jonathan isn’t at the opening party Georgia returns to Jonathan’s home to cheer him up. Instead, she finds him entertaining a starlet in a negligee. But instead of being embarrassed he becomes enraged that she thinks she can own his affections. She flees into the night in a torrential rainstorm and we see her driving wildly and almost crashing into the oncoming traffic. This is the weakest scene in the movie. Her hysterical screaming while braking the car into a spin strikes me as absurdly comical. The next day she quits her job and even though she was bound by contract Jonathan lets her out of it. She goes on to become the most acclaimed, in demand and highest paid actress of her time.
James Lee’s story finds him recruited by Jonathan to write the script for a movie being made from his own best-selling book. It’s actually James Lee’s wife Rosemary (played by Gloria Grahame with an awful Southern accent) who wants him to stay in Hollywood for the movie work. But at the same time Rosemary is the greatest impediment to James Lee accomplishing much writing. She interrupted him at every turn and distracts him with chaperoning her to Hollywood parties.
Jonathan is frustrated by this lack of progress so he arranges for James Lee to accompany him to a cabin in the woods where they can work undisturbed. But to make sure that Rosemary doesn’t intrude Jonathan arranges for his handsome friend “Gaucho” to keep Rosemary company. Of course, Jonathan knows Gaucho will make a pass at Rosemary and he also believes she will welcome it.
Sure enough, James Lee and Jonathan make enormous progress and finish the script. But in the meantime, Gaucho and Rosemary take the opportunity to fly to Acapulco for a love tryst. They are both killed in a plane crash and James Lee is devastated by his wife’s death and by the knowledge of her infidelity. Jonathan convinces him to stay on in Hollywood to assist in the production of the movie and this lifts James Lee out of his despair. But Jonathan inadvertently says something that reveals that he knew about Gaucho’s affair with Rosemary. But instead of apologizing Jonathan goes on the attack and tells James Lee that Rosemary’s death was her own fault and that she was a hindrance to James Lee’s career. And the outraged widower punches Jonathan in the face and walks out. Afterward James Lee writes a book about a woman like Rosemary and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize. We are led to understand by Harry’s remarks that James Lee’s new understanding of his wife’s hidden desires was what made the book the success it became.
After finishing the reminiscences Harry is going to call Jonathan in Paris and tell him whether Fred, Georgia and James Lee will be willing to work with him on his new project. As the call is connected the three of them tell Harry they refuse and begin to leave the office. As they walk into the anteroom, we hear Harry talking on his phone to Jonathan as he begins to hear the details of the new movie.
In the last scene Georgia carefully picks up the receiver of an extension phone in the anteroom and starts listening very interestedly in what Jonathan is saying. Quickly Fred and James Lee huddle around her eavesdropping with her. Obviously as much as they despise Jonathan for his selfishness they are fascinated by his talent.
This movie is a narcissist’s love letter to itself. Hollywood almost prided itself on destroying the people it used up to make its products. Vincent Minelli was the director and his wife Judy Garland could have been the model for the character Georgia. And any number of other Hollywood actors, producers, directors and writers could probably have been templates for the characters in this movie. The only difference would be that the betrayals were worse in real life and the talent of the producer would have been much less impressive.
I’m of two minds about this movie. It is very well made. It captures the spirit of the industry it portrays. But the shabbiness of the people on display revolts me. Jonathan is never apologetic. He always attacks his victims. He always justifies his betrayal. He is a sociopath. I guess taken as a cautionary tale it would have value. Maybe it speaks to the selfishness in all of us.
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
John Dryden