I more accurate name for the following list would be How To Feel Miserable As A Human Being.
Of course, what one is supposed to do is not admit publicly to having actually done any of these ten things, not now, not in the past, not ever.
Alas, #1 ("constantly compare yourself to other artists") invariably leads to #5 and the not mentioned #11 "beat the shit out of yourself repeatedly and unrelentingly for no reason" are particularly lethal bear traps and time holes to be avoided. I don't mind doing #9, provided the pay rate is decent, the check is good and the parameters are well-defined.
And I haven't done all of these ten things. . . really!
(Imagine Andy Rooney voice here) Do you ever notice that there is only one letter of difference between "deprived" and "depraved"?
Just one letter. . . the lives of King Henry VIII, wordsmiths Lord Byron and William S. Burroughs, not to mention countless never broke but ever libidinous hedonists from 1965-1980 notwithstanding.
During a busy morning putting off accomplishing anything on the dreaded to-do list for as long as humanly possible, I perused my e-mails and found a request for relationship advice.
Although the mere thought of my offering helpful hints for the lovelorn - frankly, only an utter inability to bounce back quickly after getting dumped (and then resume the very Pepe LePew antics which earned the rejection in the first place) prevented me from enduring more matrimonial train wrecks and subsequent divorces than Zsa Zsa Gabor - provokes quite a laugh, here goes:
If you find yourself thinking about how much you want that special someone to:
communicate in a forthcoming, open way
be accountable for behavior, admit wrongdoing and apologize
resolve conflicts together, not just unilaterally dictate terms
acknowledge when communication problems arise and work together on tackling them head-on
at least be present (emotionally, intellectually, spiritually as well as physically) some of the time
treat you with respect and consideration
be happy with you by his/her side - and not want to date others
stop doing and saying things that seem calculated to drive one away
consider you at least 1/17 as attractive as the poor love-starved bastard played by Emil Jannings found Marlene Deitrich's Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel
And NONE of the aforementioned things has been happening. . .
Stick a fork in it, it's DONE. End it, run, don't weaken - and don't go back.
Then grieve, rage, curse, run, go to the gym (take out your anger on inanimate objects or exorcise aggressions on exercise machines if need be), take as long as needed to heal and get on with your life.
Every now and then I stop producing classic movie events, listening to jazz music, watching vaudeville clips, ancient short comedies and Scopitones long enough to ponder just what we, as citizens, given the massive corruption in our political system, can do to make a difference - and invariably end up wandering circuitously through the dark woods of further questions.
Among said questions: "is there any way I can have checking and savings accounts that do not support sleazy business practices, sleazier lobbiests and the even (shudder) sleazier politicos they bribe (a.k.a. buy off with their generous contributions)?" I stumbled upon a potentiallysatisfactory response in the following article,Move Your Money: A New Year's Resolution.
This posting describes the Move Your Moneywebsite, where consumers can easily identify the most sound community banks and smaller financial institutions in their neighborhoods. Credit Unions are not yet included in this assessment, but the website mentions that ratings for these institutions will be forthcoming. One can do further research via theInstitutional Risk Analyticswebsite and check out consumer feedback regarding banks and credit unions on Yelpand other portals.
If enough squeezed middle-class consumers migrate a substantial chunk of their business from irresponsible "too big to fail" behemoths to community banks and credit unions, the message - which has yet to reach our elected representatives (and possibly never will) - will be loud and clear. And the small business loans which will lead to a meaningful rebound in the economy won't be coming from the big boys.
After all, the very institutions who begged the most for taxpayer money, without a doubt, lobbied the hardest for ill-advised and ultimately disastrous deregulation and will fight tooth and nail to kill any needed systemic reforms.
With apologies, I leave the playgrounds of music and movies. I'll return to the sandbox - like the great Brian Wilson in 1966 - pronto.
Eulogies for Senator Edward Kennedy continue to pour in and literally thousands are paying their respects at the Kennedy Library as I write this. Not only is there the sense, with the recent deaths of the Senator from Massachusetts and his sister, formidable activist Eunice Kennedy Shriver, of the end of an era in our shared history. There's a gnawing feeling that a certain style and approach in American politics, one in which you can battle opposing forces toe-to-toe without demonizing and dehumanizing them, is vanishing.
Senator Kennedy and Rep. Jack Kemp, both recently passed, as well as 2009 Medal Of Honor recipients (Kemp posthumously) this year, represented the two opposite sides of this coin. Both were lightning rods who followed their own paths, assertively partisan yet capable of listening to and at times even finding common ground with political foes. They found the most unlikely collaborators in public service and ruffled feathers in both parties along the way.
The concept that legislators can disagree vehemently on how to solve the problems of the day while working together on policy initatives, not only maintaining a civil relationship but actually (shudder) becoming friends - something Ted Kennedy was particularly and singularly adept at - is rapidly becoming a quaint anachronism.
Much to our country's detriment, the status quo now, not just in campaigning, but in governing (as well as in the often brain-dead national discourse), is to not just destroy your opponent but leave scorched earth and a pile of smoking ashes behind.
And we wonder why social and political problems get worse and nothing gets done.
I had an absolutely head-scratchingly bizarre experience on Facebook this morning.
While writing an e-mail message about arcane historical minutiae regarding the 1921 Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, of interest to perhaps two dozen film geeks worldwide, I kid you not, the words "Death To America" showed up on my screen. I did a Jimmie Finlayson-style "double take", said WTF and totally dismissed it as the product of my ever-overactive imagination. Then, a couple of minutes later, there those words were again, clearly, not too big, but in bold type. WTF?
This is too weird even for me.
And it happened as the news of the day was. . . shameless election fraud by Iran's hard-line powers that be (by any definition, a regime that has demonstrated repeatedly that they don't give a rat's ass about the wishes of their own people), led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, A.K.A. "The Godfather". With the understanding that Khamenei is the big cheese there - somewhat analagous to Al Davis' Supreme Leader relationship to the Oakland Raiders - and calls the shots, gees, Louise, could you be just a tad more clever about stealing an election than that?
Us pampered and apathethic Americans can only have admiration for the Iranian people, no doubt appalled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gross mismanagement of the country's economy (not to mention his general ineptitiude and penchant for embarrassing his nation in public), who have the guts to stand up against the repression of the ruling right-wing cabal.
It is no accident that outside observers are not allowed to even view Iran's election process. Hmmmm - do you think we need a more unsubtle reminder that the necessity to accurately monitor presidential elections in other parts of the world, including right here in the U.S.A, persists?
That tangent aside, Facebook has been hacked, continues to be hacked and will be hacked again. It would certainly be interesting to learn the source of this hack. I'm guessing a young hacker with no girlfriend/boyfriend and lots of time to burn.
And perhaps this also means no more "Welsh Rarebit" for me anytime soon as well. To illustrate:
Maybe I have indeed lost me bloomin' mind (after decades of threatening to do so) and it's time for a lengthy stretch of, in the immortal words of Elmer Fudd, "west and wewaxation at wast."
I have mixed emotions about social networking. No doubt I'll have to wear orange jumpsuits at the re-education facility for the untrendy by having no desire to Tweet/Twitter (besides watching Tweety Bird in A Gruesome Twosome). An onslaught of crass advertising plus a most user-unfriendly interface drove me away from MySpace. While I like Facebook, I discontinued my account for awhile.
There's a lot to like about Facebook - it's fun to think up bon (or not-so-bon) mots for the news feed, watch video clips chosen by movie buff friends, swap quips with far-flung contacts and receive all kinds of virtual stuff (movie posters, Parliament/Funkadelic albums, knishes from Brooklyn, Django Reinhardt references) - but the sense of lost privacy and potential for social subterfuge trouble me. It's remarkably easy to broadcast personal information publicly on Facebook . . . and that makes me remarkably uneasy! Although social networking websites are not meant to substitute for direct communication (A.K.A. in-person conversation) with our loved ones, dang it, we homosapiens are fallible, flawed creatures and do this anyway.
Christine Hassler said it aptly in her April 29, 2009 Huffington Post column:
"The internet makes it conveniently possible to avoid uncomfortable face to face interactions or phone calls. But that doesn't make it right. We're all still human beings and owe each other the dignity of not taking the easy or lazy way out when it comes to a conversation that may be difficult. All of us are becoming far too reliant on our gadgets and starved for real human connection."
Illustrating the last point is the following very funny piece about antisocial networking behaviors, as well as a clever spoof of that 1950's classroom staple, the Coronet Instructional Film.
And I can't in good conscience end this blog entry without serving up the real deal, a genuine 1953 Coronet Instructional Film, just the sort of thing that those readers who have attended the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival have sat through more than once.
Today, I'm emphatically way too damn lazy to write a blog, so here's an excellent article by Melinda Hennebergerlisting the 10 Worst Political Ads(or, at least, they are the worst, most appalling ads I know of) from Slate.com.Think the 2008 presidential race holds the patent on big-ass whoppers and even sleazier baldfaced lies? Think again. To refresh our Short Attention Span Theatre challenged memories, here's one of the disgusting hit ads, pathetic loser #5, this one from the 2004 presidential slamfest. I would call it a "greatest shit" - but it's not that good.
