Documentary on Women in the 17th Century

The BBC churns out high-quality documentaries on a regular basis. I like to learn about history, but I also like shows concerning wildlife or any kind of science. I like best those shows that have a strong narrator, who may be seen or may be off-camera. Recently, I watched a documentary about housewives and harlots in 17th century England. I felt this was a good topic, because shows seldom touch upon women in history, because most leaders, scientists, generals, etc. were men. The narrator was Dr. Lucy Worsley, apparently some sort of academic who speaks in a compelling way, one notices right away. She is female in a male-dominated profession, rather tomboyish, and my partner noticed that she speaks with a lisp, most unusual in television, although to me it seemed she had a German accent. When I first saw her, I thought she was ill-looking, but the more one watches her speak, the better she wears. She conveys a zest for the subject and an engaging manner of speaking, lisp or not. One admits her learning and poise, and then her beauty. Her material is well-written, although I noticed that she does tend to harp upon the same narrow topics, when a broader view might have been more appropriate. I felt like some material was being repeated, and wish that the show had been heavier on facts and lighter on interpretation, leaving interpretation to the audience, in the style of Werner Herzog.

Trey Bilings Show is Hidden Gem

Not too many people have seen a thirty-minute film called "The Trey Billings Show," but it is one of the best comedies around, and the star, David Drake, is completely incredible in it. With the help of camera tricks, he plays both a zany, self-absorbed talk show host and his interviewee, a fictitious famous actress fallen on hard times, appearing on the screen at the same time.

Elisabeth Moss is into Scientology

I was flabbergasted to learn my latest favorite actress, Elisabeth Moss, a star on Mad Men, belongs to the Church of Scientology, but then again, I have to ask myself, how many Catholic actresses are there, after all? Catholicism has proven weird too, and Islam has never been a walk in the park, either. Even Judaism looks downright peculiar at times. I guess my main beef with Scientology is that it seems obscure and mysterious, even cult-like. The story about evil Xonad, alien from outer space who lives in a spaceship and is trying to control our brains with negative theons, just seemed too funny to be a religion. I was hoping that Moss might be a mild Methodist or even an Episcopalian at worst, or atheist or agnostic at best. But she actually believes in Xonog or whoever it is floating around in that spaceship and beaming negative theons into our brains. I guess to look at the matter objectively is to admit that her theology is no weirder than the competing ones. I'm glad she at least made clear that she does not support or condone any of the homophobia in the Church of Scientology.

For the record, I feel that Elizabeth Moss is a bright star, and when she's in the picture, one can't keep one's eyes off her. Even when she is supposed to be ugly, due to dowdy clothes and indifferent make-up, she's really not.

Isy Suttie of Peep Show

Isy Suttie, Mark's girlfriend in the unique UK comedy Peep Show, is an atypical beauty. Her expressive face and gorgeous blue eyes in season 8 episode 3 are not to be missed by anyone that is open to the concept of feminine beauty. Although her role isn't demanding, she brings an uncommon authenticity to it and can't improve, having already achieved perfection. Half her charm lies in her demerit, her deviation from the popular notion of beauty, her uniqueness, hence her attainability. She's not thin, not like so many ambitious actresses today, nor very young--not some mere child, but thirtysomething--and she has a big nose, a beak in fact, larger than most men's noses--and we know that a big nose correlates with a big penis in men--and regular breasts, but she's fifty flavors of awesome somehow, and one wonders how she attracts, what is her secret? An inner joy, a light within, a mystery that must be studied further. Isy Suttie is the fun gal that geeks would like to get with and more to the point, that geeks think they actually could get with, the woman that wouldn't shoot them down or misuse them, a straight-shooting, plain-speaking, laughing, warm and sunny type of woman, with a Welsh accent that reveals itself at unexpected moments, adding to her mystery and allure, as when she says to Jez, "But is Mark fawn?"

I don't know why Peep Show hasn't caught on in America. It's about the best comedy there is on television. It's quirky and offbeat. My fellow Americans just don't know what they are missing. Peep Show is easily the coolest show on television. I have yet to interest any of my American friends in the show. It is an acquired taste. I think it grows on one, becoming funnier the more times it is watched. The first time, a viewer suffers from information overload. There's just too much narrative and too many things happening at once. Understand, this is both a weakness and a strength. The show makes extraordinary demands upon the viewer, indeed, and that is its weak point, if there is any weak point, reducing its popularity in the mainstream. By the second and third viewings, the viewer is prepared and has already absorbed much of the storyline, so the show increases in value over time, unlike most other shows, becoming funnier the more times it is watched. I cry foul to critics until they watch the show thrice. If by the third time they aren't laughing, then fair enough.
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by igor 04:20 4 replies by igor 09:32 0 comments

Respect for Nurses

There should be a rule that no one should mess with nurses. I can testify that nurses work harder than anybody else. The stress level of their job is through the roof. I couldn't do it. I don't have the stamina. I'd never hassle a nurse, and the Australian DJ's who hoaxed a nurse over in London ought to be sacked for doing so. Hoax a banker, politician, or businessman, but never anyone in the medical profession or for that matter, law enforcement or firemen. I understand humor and fun and games and enjoy a good hoax myself, but some people work in uncommonly high-stress jobs and should be given a little bit of slack by the public, and in particular radio DJ's, who are dispensable to begin with, let's face it. Everybody needs a nurse. A DJ, we can do without. I don't know whether some people understand just how difficult it is to become a nurse in the first place.

I could care less about the royalty / Kate Middleton connection. Even though I'm liberal, I'm not particularly anti-royal. I'm a pragmatist. If royals conduct international diplomacy, support charity and worthwhile causes, and use their position as a bully pulpit to support worthwhile and humanitarian causes, then royals might actually do some good in the world, more so than some of our wealthy who inherited their fortunes and do nothing. I think the question of whether royalty is good or bad depends upon the words and deeds of the royals.Post a Comment

by igor 04:20 4 replies by igor 09:32 0 comments

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.

I read an article in the New York Times today about Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who has been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, the same illness that my father suffers from. Three things about mental illness I can tell you:

1. People do not understand it and are afraid of it.


2. Mental illness is subtle sometimes and can be treated. I would expect that many of J.J.'s peers suffer from similar disorders with varying severity.


3. It is common to blame the sufferer, whereas with a physical ailment the cause, such as cancer, is blamed rather than the victim.

I remind myself to forgive my father, because he is crippled by manic-depression. An observer is tempted to forget the illness during his periods of lucidity. I am tempted to react to him in normal fashion as I have all my life, but now his illness has progressed until his mind is ruled by the illness, with little of his better, former self remaining.

Mental illness raises fascinating ethical questions. Perhaps one should forgive everybody, because all evil under the sun may be the result of mental illness, undiagnosed and untreated. Can free will exist in a mind impaired? Today we know only a few mental illnesses, but how many conditions exist without labels? Of course universal forgiveness was the position Jesus adopted. Perhaps we are too limited in both resources and wisdom to adopt this position on a societal scale or even an individual one.Post a Comment

by igor 04:20 4 replies by igor 09:32 0 comments

Brave

I think the bravest guy on television has to be Jon Stewart. He's incredibly fearless. He's what I always wished the other guys in TV News would be like, except he's even better than anything I would have imagined. He communicates with humor in a way that really appeals to many people. He doesn't even have great material, but I just like watching him. I prefer watching a guy smiling and laughing, like Stewart, rather than getting uptight and upset like the guys on Fox News. They seem to have problems with anger management and are always making much ado about nothing. Fox panders to the middle-age rage that some guys experience. It's a biological thing, seems to me. If one just watches Fox all the time then I have to wonder about the judgment, whether such a person is gullible. I thought Glenn Beck was a bit abnormal. Jon Stewart essentially stopped Beck's career with a satire that hit home somewhere in Fox News Headquarters. I think the chief executives over there got a load of Stewart's satire and took a closer look at Beck and were taken aBeck.Post a Comment

by igor 04:20 4 replies by igor 09:32

Goodbye, Gore Vidal

It is with sadness I mark the passing of Gore Vidal, one of my favorite writers. However, he had a long, prosperous and successful life, so one mustn't be too sad. I liked the quote from his partner, "Didn't it go by awfully fast?" I often feel that way too. Life does go by awfully fast.

Gore Vidal will live forever, or survive his death for a longer time than most, due to his voluminous writings, which many will still read far into the future when many other writers are long forgotten. Many of his works are insightful and prophetic. He knew things.

The Cynicism of Gore Vidal

Anyone who scans the media without cynicism either isn't paying attention or isn't bright.

I think that Gore Vidal was spot on when he said that public opinion is molded by the few largely for the benefit of the few--those that already have their fortunes made for them. This was not unique, I think, only to the modern U.S., but is a global and eternal condition, as true a thousand years ago as today.

It is often that critics of Vidal misinterpret him through oversimplification of his message. My father wrote criticisms of Vidal throughout Vidal's book, "Virgin Islands." But I do not agree with his criticisms of the critic Vidal's criticisms. In many cases my father misinterpreted the meaning of individual words. For instance, to say that a man is unprincipled is not necessarily a bad thing. Principled men can be quite cruel and malicious. Being principled does not equate to being good or just. The word "unprincipled" figures in Vidal's criticism of both FDR and Clinton. My father, loyal to FDR, was unable to concede the smallest thing in his idol. Perhaps he would have conceded Clinton, however.

In reality, Gore Vidal was one of the most patriotic Americans that ever lived. He loved his country more than can be imagined. He was a man of ideas, interested in Right and Wrong, and desiring that Good prevail. I do not think Gore Vidal spared the smallest effort to apply his utmost powers of concentration, research and due diligence to the task of criticism, which is the art of distinguishing good from bad, or the better way from the worse.

Seinfeld Still the Best Comedy

All four of the regular characters in Seinfeld were brilliant. I'm particularly a fan of Michael Richards, who I think was exceptional. He was extremely well-suited to his role. I think that it is most unfortunate that he was not placed in a well-written movie or television show after the end of Seinfeld. However, nine seasons, with over twenty episodes per season, is quite a run. I don't think in the whole of television and movies there has ever been anything as funny as Seinfeld.


I regard the seasons two through seven of Seinfeld as the best. After season seven, the writing turned zany in the quest for more and bigger laughs. The actors morphed into inhuman monsters, which inspired the writers to sentence them to prison in the final episode.

Sympathy Misplaced, Perhaps

I can't help but feel sympathy for some of the big-shot, rich celebrities that get tangled up in some kind of scandal, legal dispute, or divorce proceeding due to their affair. Some of them are intelligent men, so the question arises, why do men stray? I suppose from the logical perspective, it would be best to remain 100% monogamous or (possibly better) asexual. Of course, humans are not entirely logical animals, and we are animals. I think in Humans 2.0, the next version of our species, when we roll it out of our laboratories, we will be more logical and consistent; some would say boring. But boring can be good. Boring becomes interesting as one's expectations adjust.

Yahoo CEO Lied About Tech Credentials

The CEO of Yahoo lied about having a bachelor's degree in computer science. That's not surprising, because it's tough to earn a bachelor's degree in computer science, and CEO's are as stupid as the day is long. The only reason they become CEO is because they are part of the good old boys club. I can't imagine any CEO actually sitting down and learning how things work. They pay other people to do all the thinking for them. The job of a CEO is simply to have lunch with other CEOs, schmooze, booze, and take all the credit for all the work done by the workers, prior to downsizing the workers and shipping the jobs off to China.

Marine Le Pen

The media keeps referring to Marine Le Pen as far-right, with little or no explanation, and that made me suspicious, so I looked her up on Wikipedia. Turns out that far-right in France has no relationship to the far-right in the U.S. She actually sounds pretty reasonable, at least on Wikipedia, and I could envision myself voting for her. The only thing I read that raised question marks was her opposition to euthanasia, but one never finds a politician that concurs with 100% of one's political and social views. The reason the media hates Le Pen is obvious. She's against free trade, and the rich boys make a whole lot of money manufacturing things via cheap labor overseas and selling it in the West, and they don't want anybody to mess with their cash cow. So every time that Le Pen is mentioned in print, she is condemned with the term "far-right" which evokes Nazis and fascists. She sounds to me like a moderate Democrat.

The media is controlled by those who steal money from the government and the people on a regular basis. To the media, "far right" can be translated as "a candidate opposed to stealing."

Media Darling, Steve Jobs

The media continues in its lionization of Steve Jobs, who betrayed the country of his birth by stealing jobs away from his fellow countrymen. In later years, he will be recognized, not for what the right-wing media is saying now about their little darling, but for what he really was, yet another amoral CEO who made a lot of money by firing American workers and sending those jobs overseas to take advantage of cheap labor. He enjoyed all the advantages of living in the U.S. and having his big fancy company protected by the U.S. government, but gave back nothing. Everytime I see an I-phone, I think about Americans with college degrees standing in line at the job fair looking for minimum wage jobs. There's really nothing more to be said about the ironically misnamed "Jobs," who should have been named "Traitor" instead.

Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent is no gent, judging by his recent remarks threatening the President of the United States. His name makes more sense without the "gen."

by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments

Andy Rooney

My Dad liked "60 Minutes," and so I watched Andy Rooney on "60 Minutes" as a child and on into my teenage years, and I never once understood his appeal. All I remember about him was that he was humorless. Rooney made frequent gratuitous digs at minorities. He seemed like a college-educated Archie Bunker. He called himself a liberal and an atheist, but I never would have guessed either of those two things. I would have characterized him as a homophobe, a racist, and a conservative. He went the atheist route just to have an excuse to offend a new group that he hadn't offended yet.

I liked the other journalists on "60 Minutes," however, and feel like they performed very useful and necessary work in the U.S.

by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments

Keith Olbermann

I've never watched any show with Olbermann, but did see clips of him on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He seemed to be the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh, so I never felt any desire to tune in. There is something to be said for being nice, funny, or cute. I can do angry myself. I don't need somebody else to do it for me.

Looks like Olbermann is wasting a whole lot of time and money of liberal and progressive people by taking Current TV to court over his expensive fifty-million dollar contract. In the first place, I don't know who is worth fifty million dollars. Maybe Jon Stewart is. I don't know about Keith Olbermann. I don't even know anyone that watches him. At least Jon Stewart can appeal to the other side through the lubrication of wit.

If I were going to watch anybody on politics besides Jon Stewart, then I'd probably give Rachel Maddow a go. In fact, I may do so. Lately, I've gotten tired of Jon Stewart. His recent shows have seemed a bit boring. I also don't understand why he brings in a constant stream of airhead celebrities to talk about their stupid movies. I suppose he's taking money from the studios, but why should I watch an insipid interview about a movie I never plan to watch?

by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

(I know, that's a dated expression, ain't it? I'm from the 19th century, how are you doing?)

Malawi is complaining because Madonna has spent only 3 million of a promised 11 million in charity so far. Sounds like corrupt officials are upset because they can't get their greedy little paws on the rest of the stash.

One thing about me is that I do *NOT* look a gift horse in the mouth. If someone does something for me, I keep a ledger in my head that shows their debits and credits. I remember good deeds and seek to pay them back in whatever way I can. In the case of bad deeds, I may avenge, forgive, wait or may decide to sever contact, depending upon the situation. But I know that if I were Malawi, I would not be complaining about 3 million dollars in free money and more to come. Let Madonna build those schools wherever the hell she wants. They are FREE!

by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments

Officer Derek Middendorf Captured on Video

A rail thin old man suffering from dementia got beaten senseless by Officer Derek Middendorf.

by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments

Megaupload

I don't have sympathy for the Megaupload tycoon. People that are in the scene to help others are one thing. Hackers understand the concept of friends helping friends, of sharing what one has. It is an old tradition that dates back to the discovery of fire. However, people that profit off the work of others are another scenario altogether. What did Dotcom invent, other than his last name? Dotcom's millions will be better put to the service of the U.S. or N.Z. governments. Dotcom is exactly the type of character that the corporations should have been going after in the first place, years ago, instead of the poor little grandmothers that they were punishing with expensive lawsuits and $3,000 fines for .mp3's that their grandchildren downloaded.

by igor 04:20 8 replies by igor 09:32 6 comments