Author: photog
Andrew Klavan Inteviews Mamet
David Mamet famously declared he had ceased to be a “brain dead liberal” back around the time of the 9/11 attacks. And the Left has been attacking him ever since. And since he is a playwright and a movie script writer that has had an enormous impact on his career and life.
Here Andrew Klavan talks to him about what that’s been like and why it’s okay. I find it interesting to hear how those on the inside of the matrix describe the process of being attacked by the antibodies of the collective. It’s like an autoimmune disease or more closely it’s as if these people have become cancer cells and have now been detected by the immune system.
Toward the end Mamet speaks very enthusiastically about what will be happening while Hollywood is dying. “You don’t need a lot of money to make a movie. You need a phone and a good idea.” I find that very hopeful.
The Great Debate of July 2024
“Hello my name is Anderson Cooper and you are tuned into the first presidential debate between our beloved President Joe Biden and “convicted felon” and cartoon super-villain Donald Trump. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be presiding over this incredible spectacle.
CNN has gone to great lengths to be both totally impartial but also relentlessly opposed to misinformation. To that end Mr. Trump’s microphone is programmed to shut off whenever the moderators decide he is guilty of misinformation. There was a debate about also attaching electrodes to Mr. Trump that would apply a punishing electric current in the event of multiple attempts at misinformation but it was decided that wouldn’t be legal, so you know.
I’ll come back after the debate with reactions from a test audience but right now let’s go to the debate as it begins.”
Dana: Good evening gentlemen, and you too Mr. Trump. Our first question is for President Joe Biden. Mr. President, out of all the amazing successes that you’ve had as president; conquering COVID, restoring the economy to incredible vibrance, fixing climate change, destroying racism and transphobia and curing cancer, what do you think is your greatest accomplishment?
Biden: That’s a great question Dana. I remember that time I was at Potsdam with Churchill, Truman and Stalin. I had just beaten Stalin in an arm-wrestling contest and he had agreed to dismantle the Soviet Union in 1991 and I was feeling kind of good. But I think all of that pales in comparison to that time I taught my son Hunter how to run a Ukrainian energy conglomerate. He had been having some slight troubles with crack cocaine and I knew that learning the ropes of drilling and extracting oil and gas in Easten Europe would clear his head. It’s like my Uncle Bosie always used to say, before he was eaten by New Guinean cannibals, “Always tell the truth and don’t take any guff from dog-faced pony soldiers.
Dana: Inspiring words to live by Mr. President. Well, Donald Trump, you don’t have any accomplishments to name so instead let’s hear what you have to say about your high crimes and misdemeanors. Are you most ashamed of your hush money conviction, your January 6th insurrection or your attempts to steal classified documents?
Trump: I’m most ashamed of having agreed to this charade. You nitwits are going to try to sell the American people on the fantasy of Joe Biden being in his right mind. That’s not going to work. He’s delusional and barely able to speak coherent English for more than two minutes at a time.
Biden: Now hold on you dog-faced pony oldier, I’ll ake you hind the arn and ock some sense int ou and moulbi woudle foad mobe saiden ray. Come on man! You know. The thing!
Trump: You see? What the hell is a moulbi woudle? The man is one step away from the memory ward at Happy Acres.
Jake: Listen Trump, we all recognize the incredible courage of President Biden for being America’s first zombie president. Many of the recently deceased suffer from the prejudices and misinformation that unenlightened individuals such as yourself spread about them.
We’re here to make sure he gets an even playing field. With the correct translation programs and subtitling “moulbi woudle” becomes, “set the record straight.”
Trump: Alright that’s enough. You can do the rest of this without me.
Jake: That’s right and we will. Our AI video program will provide us with an accurate version of what you would have said if you had stayed.
Trump: Deep fake?
Jake: Potato, puhtata.
Trump: That’s about right. Joe is some kind of vegetable anyway. Well, I wouldn’t have lasted the whole ninety minutes anyway. That smell is more than I can stand.
22JUN2024 – Quote of the Day
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?
Michel de Montaigne
22JUN2024 – Photo of the Day
Putting Up a Fight
I am a Tolkien fan and have been one since I was probably eleven. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, his lesser works, even his biography. And I greatly respect the world-building he did in creating Middle Earth; the history, geography, the various non-human races and the tribes of men, even the religious underpinnings of his world. I love his characters and their interplay with each other and the plot.
But I must be honest. I find Frodo thoroughly annoying. Sure, sure. He carried the One Ring for the better part of a year and didn’t fail until at the very edge of the abyss. And this after being poisoned by Shelob and frog-marched by orcs across the plains of Mordor. Maybe that effort was heroic to an extent that we are supposed to revere it as an herculean effort for making it 99.9% of the way. Maybe.
But that hobbit annoys the hell out of me. Surely, I’m not the only one who has wondered, what if Frodo had been left behind and the ring had been given to Samwise Gamgee? Maybe the whole thing could have been done in half the time. Maybe on Sam’s less refined but sturdier shoulders there wouldn’t have been as much angst about the burden of the ring. And one thing’s for sure. Gollum would have been toast. Sam would have put Sting through that homicidal proto-hobbit without further ado. And that alone would have made the story shorter and less annoying. Now you might say that without Gollum they wouldn’t have found their way in. Well, in that case they hadn’t provided Frodo with enough information to get in. So, put Aragorn and Sam together as the team. Or Legolas and Sam together as the team. Basically, anyone but Frodo. I’ve heard that the dream team is Gandalf and an eagle but if we’re afraid that Gandalf would be too tempted by the Ring then just go with Sam and an eagle.
And if Sam had succeeded in destroying the ring he wouldn’t have needed to go across the sea to heal. He would’ve gone right back to work clipping hedges at Bag End. No fuss, no muss. Sure, if Frodo had been left behind, Sam wouldn’t be inheriting Bag End because Frodo wouldn’t have to go to the Grey Havens. Sam and Rosie would need to buy a starter-hole somewhere on Bagshot Row. But the Gaffer surely had something socked away for Sam and the Cotton clan look like they take care of their own.
Now of course Tolkien had in mind that Frodo was the suffering servant of the Lord and Sam was sort of the batman or orderly for the more aristocratic Frodo. This sort of synchs with Tolkien’s service in the First World War where an upper-class officer had a commoner for a batman. And all of that is fine but I just wish Frodo had displayed a lot more pluck and grit than he did.
Would it have killed him to take down Shelob? At least go down swinging. Okay rant over.
21JUN2024 – Quote of the Day
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Michel de Montaigne
21JUN2024 – Photo of the Day
Summer Solstice 2024
So today is the longest day. I believe it. Hot, hot, hot and sunny too. Beautiful. Well, the pessimist says from now on the day is getting shorter all the way to Christmas. Well, sure. But, so what? It’s a beautiful ride. And right now, only a fool would begin sighing and whining about decline. The Earth is reaching the greatest tilt of the North Pole toward the sun and we can feel the giddy spin as it starts its long descent. What a gaudy act to follow, perched here in the dead zone of Dunwich. Watching the stars wheeling on midsummer’s night and the lightning bugs dancing around the swamp makes me smile to think that some people think all this was the act of random chance. The 10300 required factors needed to make life, any form of life, happen in this universe along with all the other astronomical, physical and chemical precursors for life line up to give us lightning bugs.
No, I’m sorry. This world was made so that I could exult in the splendor of this yearly crest. The top of the Ferris wheel, the top of the roller coaster. What a fine time to be alive.
Juneteenth Failure
Today Camera Girl entrusted me with a job she calculated I was capable of performing; renewing the licenses for the dogs. And yet I failed. Turns out the town hall is closed on account of Juneteenth. Well. Juneteenth can really sneak up on you. All my preparation, anticipation and concentration undone. Ah well. There’s always next year.
Another beautiful day. Blazing hot sun and hardly a breath of breeze. Well, we wait all winter for this so why complain about what we said we wanted? So, soak in the heat and feel the energy. But all this heat has already got my gardens way ahead of last year’s awful summer of rain marathon. Based on what I can see I’ll have raspberries this week and blueberries next week. And that’s just in time for Princess Sack of Potatoes beginning of summer visit. She’ll be here tomorrow and Friday and she loves raspberries.
The early summer flowers are all over the place. Black-eyed Susans, cone flowers, Shasta daisies, daylilies, clematis, digitalis, roses and Serbian bellflower are blooming all over the place.
The hellebores, rhododendrons, peonies and irises are already finished and the lupines are down to their last gasp. Last year everything was late and stunted. And the Elecampane I put in two years ago is already about six feet tall even before it’s flowered.
Of course, all this fertility hasn’t gone unnoticed by my neighbors. The rabbits and the deer have been enjoying the raspberry and blueberry bushes and also nibbling down some of the outlying hostas and Solomon seal plants but as Camera Girl reminds me everybody’s gotta eat. Yeah, but why here?
But not everything is sweetness and light. Massive repair work is in my future. Contractor negotiation and management is upon me. Oh, the pain, the pain. Well, the money pit is well named.
I haven’t noticed too much about the election in November that’s worth discussing this week. Biden is falling apart and various groups of people are beginning to notice and the Democrat upper echelons seem to be circling like sharks waiting to put him out of his misery. But there’s not that much for us to say until they pull the plug or the ripcord or whatever the correct metaphor is for this termination.
But whoever and however the Democrats run their race it is the ballot harvesting and drop box stuffing that will probably determine the winner in Pennsylvania. My hope though is that there will be enough video and other documentation of the fraud to convince the great majority of Americans of the truth about our “election integrity.” If that is accomplished then a real threshold will have been crossed. Hopefully enough people will stop trying to force reality to correspond with their idealistic conception of how our leaders are “elected” and move onto concentrating their energies on protecting themselves and their families from the regime and its destructive practices.
A friend in town has donated a large collection of books on Shakespear to me. So of course I’m a kid in the candy store. One of the best types of books in the collection are paperback copes of individual plays. This tends to be much handier than my large heavy “complete works” volumes which are large and heavy and tend to have small print! I especially want the tragedies and some of the better comedies in that form. Let’s start with Hamlet, King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing. That should keep me busy for a while.