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Jan. 29th, 2014
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Jan. 29th, 2014 09:00 amSticky mustache. Pancakes this morning. That syrup. I need to get that shave out of the way.
I think I know the routine into which I want to fit my shaving. The same as my hair. Just let it grow until it becomes too annoying, and then shave my face bald, and let the cycle begin again. Of course, the mustache and beard run on a faster track. To stretch out the cycle a bit, I want to continue shaving for two or three weeks after the big shave, depending on my mood and the opportunities that present themselves. Right now, I am having trouble finding my space to do the big shave.
I need to do better at creating my opportunities. Maybe that has always been true. For everything.
* * *
1630
My face is bald again. When I got up from my afternoon nap, Pop was still on his rounds, and so I got out the razor and made my opportunity.
I think I know the routine into which I want to fit my shaving. The same as my hair. Just let it grow until it becomes too annoying, and then shave my face bald, and let the cycle begin again. Of course, the mustache and beard run on a faster track. To stretch out the cycle a bit, I want to continue shaving for two or three weeks after the big shave, depending on my mood and the opportunities that present themselves. Right now, I am having trouble finding my space to do the big shave.
I need to do better at creating my opportunities. Maybe that has always been true. For everything.
* * *
1630
My face is bald again. When I got up from my afternoon nap, Pop was still on his rounds, and so I got out the razor and made my opportunity.
1980 Reagan Acceptance Speech (Part 2)
Jan. 29th, 2014 04:23 pmReagan is really giving it to Carter now. Remember, the 1970s was the era of stagflation and American hostages in Iran. America was reeling, and Reagan was making the most of his opportunities. He was understood to be a strong right-wing guy, and he had some trust gaps to cross.
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First we must overcome something the present Administration has cooked up: a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one part deficit spending and seasoned by an energy crisis. It’s an economic stew that has turned the national stomach. It is as if Mr. Carter had set out to prove, once and for all, that economics is indeed a “dismal science.”
Ours are not problems of abstract economic theory. These are problems of flesh and blood; problems that cause pain and destroy the moral fiber of real people who should not suffer the further indignity of being told by the White House that it is all somehow their fault. We do not have inflation because, as Mr. Carter says, we have lived too well.
[...}
Can anyone look at the record of this Administration and say “Well done”? Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter Administration took office with where we are today and say, “Keep up the good work”? Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, “Let’s have four more years of this”?
I believe the American people are going to answer these questions the first week of November and their answer will be, “No – we’ve had enough.” And, when the American people have spoken, it will be up to us – beginning next January 20th – to offer an Administration and Congressional leadership of competence and more than a little courage.
-- Ronald Reagan at Republican Convention, 1980
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First we must overcome something the present Administration has cooked up: a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one part deficit spending and seasoned by an energy crisis. It’s an economic stew that has turned the national stomach. It is as if Mr. Carter had set out to prove, once and for all, that economics is indeed a “dismal science.”
Ours are not problems of abstract economic theory. These are problems of flesh and blood; problems that cause pain and destroy the moral fiber of real people who should not suffer the further indignity of being told by the White House that it is all somehow their fault. We do not have inflation because, as Mr. Carter says, we have lived too well.
[...}
Can anyone look at the record of this Administration and say “Well done”? Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter Administration took office with where we are today and say, “Keep up the good work”? Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, “Let’s have four more years of this”?
I believe the American people are going to answer these questions the first week of November and their answer will be, “No – we’ve had enough.” And, when the American people have spoken, it will be up to us – beginning next January 20th – to offer an Administration and Congressional leadership of competence and more than a little courage.
-- Ronald Reagan at Republican Convention, 1980
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Church's Chicken
Jan. 29th, 2014 07:30 pmPop had another 2-for-1 coupon for Church’s Chicken. He always seems to get this after I have had my big barbecue chicken lunch. But it was actually pretty good: Church’s chicken tenders and their new biscuit. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken, their mashed potatoes aren’t bad either. They know how to do processed, powdered mash potatoes. It is not as good as the homemade or made-from-scratch servings, but there are restaurants that skim on their mashed potatoes and serve up something that is only fit for prisons and elementary schools and TV dinners.
Roger Ebert
Jan. 29th, 2014 08:32 pmWe have a new documentary on Roger Ebert, the film critic, that also delves into his partnership with Gene Siskel. It's titled "Life Itself", the title of Ebert's memoir.
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Here are some of the things I didn’t know about Ebert that I learned from Life Itself. I’d always assumed that his rock-steady gaze and toweringly brash, domineering personality grew out of his status as America’s most influential celebrity movie critic — but, in fact, those things were fully there when he was in college, editing the school newspaper with a fearsome, cocky-beyond-his-years arrogance that made him a campus legend. I knew that countless filmmakers were indebted to him, but I didn’t know that Martin Scorsese, crawling out of his heavy addiction period, credited Ebert (and Siskel) with bringing him back from the dead through the tribute they organized at the Toronto Film Festival in the early 1980s. And though the movie should have done more digging into how Ebert first hooked up with Russ Meyer (it presents his penning of the script for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as a fait accompli — and neglects to mention that he wrote several other, far more tawdry screenplays for Meyer), it’s pretty up front about Ebert’s involvement, for years, with reckless and unstable women. I bring this up only because it gets to Ebert’s dual nature: He was a tubby, ink-stained Midwestern geek who walked on the wild side.
Speaking of which, the single most extraordinary fact unearthed by Steve James isn’t about Ebert at all but about Gene Siskel. Did you know that before he became a movie critic, he was part of Hugh Hefner’s inner circle? We see early-’70s shots of Siskel on the Playboy private jet, wearing a caftan and a Harry Reems mustache. Siskel the playboy and Ebert the Russ Meyer partner/parasite: No wonder these two critics, beneath their mutual antipathy, got along. Yet, of course, they also famously didn’t, and the ongoing soap opera of the Ebert-Siskel relationship is the most surprising — and, believe it or not, moving — thing in Life Itself.
-- Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly
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Here are some of the things I didn’t know about Ebert that I learned from Life Itself. I’d always assumed that his rock-steady gaze and toweringly brash, domineering personality grew out of his status as America’s most influential celebrity movie critic — but, in fact, those things were fully there when he was in college, editing the school newspaper with a fearsome, cocky-beyond-his-years arrogance that made him a campus legend. I knew that countless filmmakers were indebted to him, but I didn’t know that Martin Scorsese, crawling out of his heavy addiction period, credited Ebert (and Siskel) with bringing him back from the dead through the tribute they organized at the Toronto Film Festival in the early 1980s. And though the movie should have done more digging into how Ebert first hooked up with Russ Meyer (it presents his penning of the script for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as a fait accompli — and neglects to mention that he wrote several other, far more tawdry screenplays for Meyer), it’s pretty up front about Ebert’s involvement, for years, with reckless and unstable women. I bring this up only because it gets to Ebert’s dual nature: He was a tubby, ink-stained Midwestern geek who walked on the wild side.
Speaking of which, the single most extraordinary fact unearthed by Steve James isn’t about Ebert at all but about Gene Siskel. Did you know that before he became a movie critic, he was part of Hugh Hefner’s inner circle? We see early-’70s shots of Siskel on the Playboy private jet, wearing a caftan and a Harry Reems mustache. Siskel the playboy and Ebert the Russ Meyer partner/parasite: No wonder these two critics, beneath their mutual antipathy, got along. Yet, of course, they also famously didn’t, and the ongoing soap opera of the Ebert-Siskel relationship is the most surprising — and, believe it or not, moving — thing in Life Itself.
-- Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly
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