So I’m thinking about the economy. And wondering when it bottoms out and takes a turn for the better, where the jobs are going to come from?
The number of human beings necessary for commerce has been on the decrease for decades.
I remember a comment from the guy in my office in the 70’s charged with hiring and firing. It was the advent of electric typewriters and rudimentary word processors. He was one of those liberal, humanist types, but his words resonated. “I’m not going to allow efficiency get in the way of hiring real people to do our secretarial work.” That’s a paraphrase, but close enough.
Anybody ten years or older who has seen a movie recently knows who Robert Downey Jr. is. He’s one of the great actors of our time, a fellow whose charisma blasts from the screen. A flawed human who has struggled with drugs and their attendant problems, but who hopefully has come out the other side of that darkness.
But I’m here to talk about his father, that would be Robert Downey Sr.. And the flawed but seminal film he made in 1969 titled “Putney Swope.”
The premise is simple but was revolutionary at the time. A New York ad agency has a token black member on the Board of Directors. When the chairman dies during a board meeting — his corpse still on the table — those remaining mistakenly elect Putney Swope the new chairperson. Seems the by-laws prevent anybody from voting for himself. Thus Swope is tabbed, since the others can’t vote for themselves and none think any will ever vote for the black man. Read the rest of this entry »
Call me Paranoid. (Or Call me Ishmael, if you like, but it won’t be quite as apropos, given my subject here.)
Anyway, I’m getting a bit paranoid. Like I said. It derives from several recent readings and planned events in the context of our wackamundo terroristic world.
Here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking things are starting to look a whole lot like the world in George Orwell’s seminal dystopian novel, “1984.” That world of brainwashed Winston Smith consisted of three super powers. One was Oceania, where Smith lived. The others were Eurasia and Eastasia. Read the rest of this entry »
So I heard “Stayin’ Alive” on the radio this afternoon. Which got me to thinking, as I’m wont to do, about the film it’s from, “Saturday Night Fever.” It’s a great flick.
It is variously flawed but a marvelously compelling bit of cinema. From the very opening scene under the credits, which I’ve provided for your viewing pleasure.
Watch Tony’s rhythm as he walks down the street carrying a can of paint on the way back to the paint store where he works. He’s checking out the women and a new shirt for the weekend. Earnest. Vain, just short of cocky. Thinking he’s in charge of his future. With some understanding of his flaws.
John Travolta’s Tony Manero is one of the great characters from the halcyon days of American movies, which were the 70’s. He was jobbed when it came Oscar time. Travolta was nominated but Richard Dreyfuss stole the statuette for “The Goodbye Girl.” Read the rest of this entry »
As much as I agree with Keith Olbermann’s politics, I hate that he stoops to rant and rave in the same manner as the Hannitys and O’Reillys and Limbaughs. But he made statement the other night that is so right, so important, so elegant, so deserving of the most extended of audiences that I feel compelled to pass it on. Olbermann’s essay:
This review starts. Stops. Starts, stops. Starts that start and stops and start and stop the starts that stop the stops that start the starts that stop the stops.
I’m not sure exactly when I first heard, or even became aware of “Astral Weeks.” It certainly wasn’t in ’68 when it was recorded. Most likely a decade or so later when the album nabbed a high perch on the Best Albums of All Time lists.
So I ventured in the slipstream, never turning back. My vinyl copy is worn. The CD is on regular rotation. The album is soulful, elegiac. It is sad, triumphant. This Irishman we’d only known as a rocker used top shelf jazz players to back him. Brilliant. Who knew he had genius in him?
BELKNAP CAMPUS — On assignment, the intrepid reporter is driving through the red and black quagmire U of L students maneuver daily. Who knows why but he asks himself — as the youngest at the Seder table asks during the Jewish observance of Passover — Why is this day different from all other days?
Simple answer. It’s basketball media day, harbinger of the most sacred of seasons — college hoops. It will end April 6 with a new national champion. Which coincidentally is two days before Passover.
On Seder night it is traditional to ask Four Questions. Cardinal fanatics also have a quartet of queries as the season dawns.
The intrepid reporter intends to find answers amidst the boilerplate sound bites that plague these media show-and-tells. Read the rest of this entry »
While savoring David Byrne last night at the Palace, I couldn’t help but wonder what the OMFUG those punks and poseurs at CBGB thought of the Talking Heads back in the late 70s?
That scene was grunge and black leather and safety pin piercings and spit and snot and rage and three chord metal thrash. And here came these preppy artsy types from the Rhode Island School of Design playing their spare, measured, triumphantly ironic tunes for the mosh piters. I can’t imagine the questioning looks.
Byrne and his Talking Head cohorts — long since separated — survived and thrived quite nicely thank you very much. Byrne, always the ring leader, more than his brethren and sistern. He’s done art, and movie scores, introduced the music public to third world artists, soundtracks and albums, and generally spent his career engendering a cooler than cool often disengaged aesthetic.
It may be not apocalyptic, but it sure is fish or cut bait time for the American electorate.
We’ve heard it before, but I’ll reiterate. This is an important election. A very very important election.
Too important — hopefully — for our “American Idol” culture to fall prey to the smarmy campaign being run by the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin.
As best I recall there are tens of thousands of our boys and girls in Iraq. And we are spending billions to prop up a government there that, by all accounts, is more flush than we are because of oil profits.
Our financial system is in serious turmoil. Companies are going under. Unemployment lines are lengthy. If not panic, a certain sense of ennui is pervasive.
People need to be able to pay for health care. Hell, they need to be able to buy milk for their kids and put gas in the car so they can at least go out and look for a job to replace the one from which they’re laid off.
Our bridges are wobbly. Our roads are crumbling. Restaurants and stores are closing. The construction business is at a standstill.
And McCain and his lipsticked pit bull running pal are carping about a couple of lunch meetings Barack Obama had with a distinguished professor who happened to be a Weatherman back when Obama was just out of diapers.
So the question the American electorate must answer is this: Are we going to be so stupid, or so racist, or so loyal to these renegade elephants, that we let them get away with stealing the future with this election? Read the rest of this entry »
My first night in my first house was nearly my last.
Overly exhausted from the stress and excitement of the move — a house and two condos into one — I couldn’t sleep. I got up in the middle of the night and hauled empty packing boxes to the basement.
On my second or third trip, I slipped and fell down the steep flight of steps.
The back of my neck grazed a concrete abutment during the fall.
As I lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, I immediately thought of a friend of Joanie’s who had a similar accident just weeks before. His head crashed against an abutment. He went into a coma, soon to pass away.
My future brother-in-law sidled up to me Christmas Eve at the family gathering. Surrounded by the detritus of wrapping paper, he looked me in the eye and accused me — good-naturedly, I think — of, well, his words: “You’re brainwashing my daughter.” Read the rest of this entry »
For a moment let’s simply suppose we’ve never seen the photo before. For this exercise’s sake, let’s forget what we’ve read about Robbie Hawkins.
Erase from memory how he walked into an Omaha mall the week before last. How he took the escalator to the third floor of the tony department store Von Maur filled with holiday shoppers being serenaded by the store’s signature live pianist. How he then pulled out an AK47 and started spraying bullets around the room. How he killed eight very innocent people and then aimed the rifle’s nozzle at himself, ending the carnage and his own misery. Read the rest of this entry »
The number of human beings necessary for commerce has been on the decrease for decades.
