February Words of Wisdom

His sense of service, intellectual curiosity, and capacity to squeeze fun out of any situation, were all irrepressible. That mischievous, inquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him. --Queen Elizabeth II, speaking of her late husband Prince Phillip (I just thought it was such a lovely thing for her to say, and such a lovely thing for a person to have said about him.)

 

How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best for yourself? --Epictetus

 

Every act of beauty is a revolt against the modern world. --Caspar David Friedrich

 

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. --Jim Ryun 

 

Of this be sure: You do not find the happy life; you make it. --Thomas S. Monson

If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future. --Unknown

 

When values are clear, decisions are easy. --John Spence 

 

Virtue liberates; vice enslaves. --Anthony Esolen

Free speech is not just another value. It is the foundation of Western Civilization. --Jordan Peterson

When in the course of human history has the side that's doing the censoring and trying to shut people up and make them show papers and marginalize a part of the community ever been the correct side? --Aaron Rodgers

When the goal of political action is no longer the defense of liberty, no word other than demagoguery can describe the despicable nature of politics. --Ron Paul

Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong. --Thomas Sowell

 

The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful. --Julius Evola 

Mystery is an intellectual process. But suspense is essentially an emotional process. --Alfred Hitchcock

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. --Henry David Thoreau

No matter how disappointing people, places, things, or dreams that refuse to die (even when they should) might be...

H/T to Beautifully Broken, Poetically Healed on FB.

I'll explain later. Maybe. Probably not.

You Know Who strikes again, eh?

The Babylon Bee takes on the POS ruining our wonderful neighbors to the north.

Recent reading: "The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood"

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson

The Big Goodbye looks at the struggle to create the classic film Chinatown by focusing on the four men responsible for bringing it to the big screen: screenwriter Robert Towne, producer Robert Evans, director Roman Polanski, and star Jack Nicholson.

The Hollywood that this quartet had fallen in love with and thrived in was coming to an end. One year to the day after Chinatown's release, Jaws hit the theaters and not only did Hollywood change the way they viewed successful films, but also how to make and market these films. Marketing departments and the Don Simpsons of the world were about to take over, replacing film-loving movie makers and the studios that had supported them with high-concept, often-lowbrow movies and summer blockbusters. 

After the triumph of Chinatown, Evans became a dinosaur, infamously dethroned at Paramount. Towne started using cocaine and went off the rails personally, and Polanski was infamously convicted of raping a thirteen year old girl and skipped town for exile in Europe. Nicholson would confirm his status as a great star with his next film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which earned him his first Oscar win (on his fifth nomination, the fourth being for Chinatown) and never looked back.

Wasson begins at the beginning, introducing the quartet by going back to their childhoods and giving the reader a look into what drove them personally and professionally. And of course, there is the inescapable and horrific story of the Manson murders, in which Polanski's wife Sharon Tate, their unborn son, and several others were brutally slaughtered, and its aftermath. 

A terrific book, especially if you're a fan of Hollywood and film history as I am.

The phone rang in the cutting room, and Lambro picked it up.

It was a girl's voice.

"You have the wrong extension," Lambro told her. "There's no Paul here."

"That's for me," Polanski said, reaching for the phone.

Lambro had earlier browsed an adult newspaper left in the cutting room, glancing at a personal ad, circled, fifteen-year-old girl, "confidential, likes relationships with European man in forties."

Note: Lambro is composer Phillip Lambro, who wrote the first score for Chinatown that was eventually jettisoned in favor of the Jerry Goldsmith score used in the final cut. Paul was the name Polanski and Tate intended to give to their unborn son.

40+ years after its comic strip debut, Bloom County gets the animated series treatment

I was a huge fan of Bloom County in the 1980's and had a bunch of the books, and now word comes that an animated series is in the works. If you're unfamiliar with Bloom County and its offbeat creator Berkeley Breathed, let Wikipedia explain it for you:

Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk.

On July 12, 2015, Breathed started drawing Bloom County again. The first revived strip was pubished via Facebook on July 13, 2015.

Bloom County was so firmly rooted in the eighties it's hard to imagine it finally getting to TV forty years later. I scrolled through a few of the current Facebook comics and couldn't really get a feel for its updated sensibilities. It will be interesting to see how the animated series handles the 2020's. Will it be sharp, smart satire? Uber-woke? It's hard to say. Breathed won a Pulitzer for Bloom County back in the 80's, so he's no lightweight in the writing department. I guess time will tell, but I'd watch the hell out of a non-PC Bloom County.

From me to you...

💕💕💕Happy Day Before See's Candies Big Sale Day everyone!💕💕💕

Nailed it

It's been a while since I began a post with the words, "The Babylon Bee strikes again," but well, The Babylon Bee strikes again.

Because, yeah.

Great news - Kids in the Hall documentary on the way

Amazon Prime has nabbed the documentary The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks, a documentary that I had no idea was being done. GREAT news, but how is this the first I've heard of it?

No word on when the doc will hit the airwaves, but Amazon will also be airing the Kids' new series, an eight episode sketch comedy show that's been a long time coming. According to the Hollywood Reporter article, that show will debut "later this year". 

 

So much Kids! Such wonderful news! Makes ya wanna break out in song!