“Let us rejoice and let us sing…
And dance and ring in the new…
Hail Atlantis”…Donovan
Ideally, the use of music in film is to accentuate the action being shown on the screen. When the director makes the right choice, the synergy can be incredible (such as when Antonioni layered Pink Floyd’s “Careful That Axe Eugene” onto his Dali-esque final scene of Zabriskie Point).
I guess my relationship with the films of Jean-Luc Godard could be described as “It’s Complicated”.
I’ve gone out of my way to seen every film I have had access to…which might be close to 30. Yet, it’s hard to say I really like his films…it’s more that I find them extremely interesting.
His early to mid-60’s films were the best. Known as the father of the French New Wave, Godard’s films had an incredible style to them even though I didn’t necessarily understand the point of his artistic effort. He also featured incredible looking women (especially the smoking hot Anna Karina) and allusions to socialist politics which weren’t all that obtrusive at first but got much more so later to the detriment of his art IMO.
First, let me be fair and state that there is one limited use for Keurig single-serving coffee makers that makes sense…hotel rooms. Given the tendencies for cheap hotel coffee makers to overflow and make messes, and the ease of maintenance by hotel staff, I wholeheartedly endorse Keurig’s for hotels.
Now, let’s review why they suck:
The Keurig Image: This is the woman on the Keurig home page:
When I see her picture, what do I wish to do? Buy Keurig coffee? No. Perpetuate random acts of senseless violence? Yes. Let’s also not forget that one would need about 6 Keurig refills to get enough coffee to fill that huge cup…definitely not truth in advertising.
I have a tremendous affinity for cover songs that are so different from the originals that you’d have to know the original in order to recognize that the song is actually a cover.
A perfect example of such as song is Joe Cocker’s “With A Little Help From My Friends”. The only thing in common between Cocker’s version and The Beatles original is the lyrics. There are no other commonalities whatsoever as Cocker put his trademark manic emotional bombast on the Beatles excellent but very mid-tempo original.
It was 1980 and I was 13 years old. Mork and Mindy had just started its third season. As I recall, the first two years were really great but during the third season, the show went downhill fast. I was extremely disillusioned by this happenstance. The kid in me, in some sort of silent social protest, swore off network television shows for good.
For good. Forever.
Really. Not joking.
I sweat a lot when I work out. But, I got nothing on this other guy that I always see in the gym.
We both frequent a Cybex Cross-Training machine that looks something like this:
He’s close to 60, rail thin, and in really good shape for someone his age. He always shows up in the same undershirt and pair of shorts and he always use machine for between 30-45 minutes at a pretty decent rate of speed.
One of my closest friends is African. He told a story once that really stuck with me.
He’s a very perceptive guy and keenly observant as to the cultural differences between Americans and people in his homeland. One day, he was talking about the superficial nature of American relationships and said he really didn’t trust most Americans because the relationships are easily sacrificed for selfish aims. In Africa, friendships are much deeper because frequently, people’s lives depended on them. American can sacrifice relationships much easier because there are little or no consequences for doing so.
So on Monday, I wrote a macabre story about death. Coincidentally also on Monday, in my Facebook feed, I saw the following question asked…
For me, the answer was clear…a dead body. If you’ve ever smelled one, you’d never forget it.
I didn’t post that answer in that Facebook thread (for obvious reasons). However, since the story behind the answer is linked in so many ways to my last post, I think it’s worth telling.
In the Mid-90’s, I used to work for an apartment management company. We took over management of a “one step above skid row” apartment complex out on East Burnside in Portland well before the area became gentrified and trendy. It was part of my job to help inventory each and every apartment unit and prior to that task, I went to meet the apartment manager. He talked about some of the activities and tenants that he dealt with as part of his job and during the conversation, he told the following story which I will never forget.
Vanishing Point
A Google or Bing Search for “…” returns zero results, which is strange since I frequently use this construct in all of my writing. I’m unable to use the search engines to generate any insights for this blog post (though I can use “…” as a Microsoft Word document title). Therefore I have to create this post relying solely on brain power :.)
