Tag: Entertainment

Reading Is Essential!

Autumn began last week……that much closer to some cooler weather and down here that is important……

One of my crowning achievements is imparting my love of reading and books onto my daughter and now onto my granddaughter.

I have about 2500 books in my library and less then 10 books of fiction.  To say I love reading is an understatement….I like the feel of the pages, the smell of an old book….all in all I love books.

Recently the push has been for “books on tape” (audio books) this lets people “read” a book while driving, jogging, even when having sex (but I would not try this if one wants to keep breathing)…..this lets people expand their knowledge and their enjoyment of literature.

I admit it that I have been a critic of “books on tape”……well the truth is I have been a book snob.  I felt that something was being missed by listening to your book instead of reading it.

Well, like everything someone has done a study on this subject……

Even for people who love books, finding the opportunity to read can be a challenge. Many, then, rely on audiobooks, a convenient alternative to old-fashioned reading. You can listen to the latest bestseller while commuting or cleaning up the house.

But is listening to a book really the same as reading one?

“I was a fan of audiobooks, but I always viewed them as cheating,” says Beth Rogowsky, an associate professor of education at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

http://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books/

I will withdraw to the “War Room” and kick back and do whatever the Hell I want…..I love being retired.

Live From New York!

When you retire you have plenty of time to wax nostalgic….and the weekends are the perfect time for me to do so…..

I remember those iconic words to the intro of a new comedy show on NBC….starring Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray and John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Garret Morris ( I am sure I forgot someone)(plus my spelling could be off as well)…..

I was a bar manager in those days and it became a ritual of watching SNL…the jukebox was off, the band had to take a break, etc. and the bar would settle in for some great humor.

I admit that once the original cast departed I lost interest….don’t get me wrong the replacements were humorous and good for the parts but they were not the originals…..and IMO not as funny.  Yes Will Ferrel is funny…..and Eddie Murphy….and….they all are funny just not as funny as the originals.

Recently Chevy Chase has made the news around SNL…..

“The worst [expletive deleted] humor in the world.” That’s what Chevy Chase has to say about today’s Saturday Night Live, FOX reports. Chase, an original SNL cast member, made the comment during a lengthy interview with the Washington Post, during which he also took shots at a couple former cast members. Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush? “Just not funny.” Tina Fey? He liked her, but “didn’t see what all the folderol was about.” As for SNL co-creator Lorne Michaels: “I’m amazed that Lorne has gone so low. And the audience of millions? “A whole generation of s—heads.” So when, in Chases’ estimation, was Saturday Night Live worth watching? The first couple of seasons, he says, adding “Why am I saying that? Because I was in it? I guess.”

FINALLY!

You should see the looks I get these days when I tell people I do not think SNL is as funny as it should be…..most look like I just insulted Jesus or someone of equal importance.

I know what am I thinking?  Well to be honest I do not think Seinfeld is all that funny either……so if you like chalk it up to me being an old fart.

Glad to see I  am NOT alone.

Time for that relaxation I look for on weekends……(the “honey dos” are getting a bit much, LOL)

Sympathy For The Devil

I could post a link to the Rolling Stones but why bother….I am sure that 80 year rockers will try one more concert tour…..this post is about a movie that is being released as I type…..Operation Finale.

Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad and security agency Shin Bet – led by the tireless and heroic agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) – launched a daring top-secret raid to capture the notorious Eichmann (Kingsley), who had been reported dead in the chaos following Nazi Germany’s collapse but was, in fact, living and working in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina under an assumed identity along with his wife and two sons. Monitoring his daily routine, Malkin and his operatives plot and execute the abduction under the cover of darkness just a few feet from Eichmann’s home. Determined to sneak him out of Argentina to stand trial in Israel, Malkin and Eichmann engage in an intense and gripping game of cat-and-mouse.

Perfect timing for a movie to gain sympathy for Israel…..the news has been biting Israel in the ass for a month or so….with the protests in Gaza and all the deaths of civilians by Israeli troops and then the Zionist pricks passed a  Jewish state law….making anyone no Jewish as not a citizen…that includes Christians as well as Muslims…..

As usual Hollywood is helping Israel play the victim card in response to their aggression against civilians……and trying to help spread the lie that Israel is a democracy and a victim….maybe in theory but in action they are NO better than the Nazis they hunted…..

Please do not get me wrong….yes the Jews were treated horribly and deserve all sympathy for those days……I question the timing of this release…t..as with all releases based on this point in history.

Israel needs all the help Hollywood can muster for their atrocities of killing civilians and stealing land, destroying crops and just acting like the thugs they are…..

I have questioned Israel actions in the last 40 years and just now the world is seeing what I saw in the 70’s and we can thank social media for most of the information.

They will get NO sympathy from me.  Period!

A Forty Year Mystery

Saturday and I found my first post of the day…..if you are an old fart as I am then you would have watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in a movie theater and quite possibly you we stoned out of your mind…..but for 40+ years there has been a debate raging about the ending of the movie……basically…..what the Hell was that all about?

What do you think the ending scene is all about?

There is now an answer and the mystery can be solved…..but will it end the debate?

Ever wondered what Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey is all about? Well, keep wondering, but an excerpt from an unreleased Japanese documentary has Kubrick explaining the film’s mysterious ending, BoingBoing reports. “I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I’ll try,” the famed director of Dr. Strangelove and The Shining tells TV personality Jun’ichi Yaio in a phone call. “The idea was supposed to be that [the astronaut played by actor Keir Dullea] is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time.”

After discussing the “deliberately” inaccurate French architecture of the room in the closing scene, Kubrick says that “when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.” The footage, posted online late last month, was bought on eBay in 2016 and appeared in time for the film’s 50th anniversary, Esquire reports.

Okay we all can sleep a little better having found out what the ending of the film was all about.

Closing Thought–12Jul18

I like rock and roll…put another dime in jukebox, baby……and now I would like to drop some history on you guys…….

The Day the Music died……and I am not talking about the song from the 70’s……….

Today, more like tonight, we will celebrate the day Disco Dies…….

Thirty-eight years ago this evening, a doubleheader at Chicago’s Comiskey Park devolved into a fiery riot when crazed fans stormed the field as part of anti-disco promotional event dubbed Disco Demolition Night. The whole thing was the brainchild of disc jockey Steve Dahl, who dressed up like the general of an anti-disco army and called his followers “The Insane Coho Lips.”

“I hate the taste of pina coladas,” he told newscaster Greg Gumbel on the fateful evening shortly before smashing a disco record against his head. “I’m allergic to gold jewelry, so there’s nothing there for me. You have to spend so much time blowdrying your hair. It’s a waste of energy.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flashback-watch-disco-demolition-night-devolve-into-fiery-riot-206237/

Now you know the rest of the story……you are welcome.

I must go down for the day…..important stuff that needs my attention…..chuq

Those Were The Days

Sunday and I want to wax poetic…..the older one gets the more one thinks of those magic days of our youth…..and one of those amazing things that no longer exists were the late nite shows at the local Drive-In movie…..there were three where I live…Beach Drive-In, Don Drive-In and the one I frequented the Do-In Movie.

Let’s step back in history for the answers to the questions…..

Whatever happened to the institution and the fun of the Drive-Ins?

Sometime in the 1970s, my older cousin and her husband took me and a neighbor girl to a drive-in theater in Texas, and I still remember how amazing it was to be watching a movie from the back of a station wagon. I mean, you’re sitting there in a car, watching a movie and listening to the audio over a speaker. As a kid, it was about one of the coolest things ever. Nowadays you have cars with built-in DVD players, video game systems, and LCD flatscreens, but nothing really beats the experience of going to the good old drive-in.

You’ll be happy to know the the drive-in phenomenon isn’t quite dead yet, despite being well over 50 years old. While it might be in intensive care, there are still over hundreds of drive-in theaters out there that need your love. You might consider tracking one down near you and showing it some love the next time you have an itch to get out of the house and check out a flick. You’ll be glad that you did. In today’s GeekBomb, we’re charting the history of the drive-in theater experience, and we’ll be letting you know how you can check one out yourself. Brace yourself, we’re pulling the pin…

http://www.slashfilm.com/geekbomb-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-drive-in-movie-theater/

If you would like to share some memories of the drive-ins then please feel free to let us know your thoughts….

Whatcha Reading?

The weekend and I try to find something interesting to post or at least an FYI post…..

First of all….does the world need another Jurassic movie?  What could be said in a new one that has not already been said?

I read a lot…..most of my reading is non-fiction and most of my books relate to the studies I have pursued……international relations, conflict management, political science, history…..but I realize that most people are not as boring as I am and they consume a lot of fiction….

My daughter is one of those people that likes to be scared both by book and by movies…..so I did a little research and found the books that supposedly scares the pants off its readers……

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not your love of horror movies and scary stories is creepy, this should give you some peace of mind: There’s actually a science behind the thrill. In a study published in the Journal of Media Psychology, Glenn D. Walters, PhD, found that the genre tends to lure us in because it delivers tension, relevance, and unrealism. In other words, the mystery, suspense, and shock factors grip and excite us, while the themes tend to tap into our deepest fears without actually making them a reality. And as thrill-seeking bookworms, we’ll be the first to admit that horror novels make for the best beach reads, thanks to the entertaining plots and the promise of a heightened sensory experience.

There’s also just something about the intimacy of reading a book—and the fact that they leave so much more up to the imagination, where monsters and demons are quick to rear their ugly heads—that make them freakier than the freakiest of movies (in a good way, of course). If you agree, you’ll want to add all of the best horror novels from our reading list to your library. From classic Stephen King must-reads to under-the-radar discoveries, horrifying true crime reports, psychological thrillers, supernatural spooks, and everything in between, these are the best horror novels around. Get a sense of each below.

The 50 Scariest Books of All Time

NOTE:  I apologize for the original link has seemed to have disappeared…please forgive me…but please let my readers know the scariest books that you have ever read….chuq

Since I will not read these books….please let me know if you have any knowledge of their scariness…..

Thanx for the visits….my day of posting is done….I will go enjoy the rest of my day…..peace out…..chuq

Closing Thought–07Jun18

I wrote a couple of decades ago about the entertainment of Americans and how it has gotten more and more bloodthirsty….

Boxing could be bloody but for the most part was a good sport….then came wrestling…this was a spectacle and the bloodier it got the more popular it got……then the birth of MMA (Mixed Martial Artist) fighting which again was bloody and the more so the more it was in demand.

I wrote back in the day that we were slowly moving to a new age of gladiatorial fighting for entertainment….the more blood the better the ratings.

Over last weekend I feel that we are moving ever closer to those games where gladiators fight and draw blood for the masses entertainment.

Now we have an old sport that has not been done since 1889……

In what is being called a first since 1889, a large-scale, government sanctioned bare-knuckle boxing event took place in Wyoming on Saturday night and things got bloody. Per USA Today, a sold out crowd of 2,000 people in Cheyenne watched as 10 bouts played out before them with fighters protected only by a little gauze around the palm. An even larger audience likely tuned in via pay-per-view to see the fights, including four heavyweight bouts. Fighters came from several backgrounds including boxing, UFC and MMA. The quickest knockout occurred when Sam Shewmaker used one punch to send Eric Prindle to the canvas 18 seconds into their heavyweight bout. “It felt like hitting a home run,” Shewmaker told the AP., a fourth-generation stone mason from the tiny central Missouri town of Gravois Mills. “I didn’t think I would be able to catch him that early, but luckily I did.”

In the only female fight of the night, 29-year-old Bec Rawlings from Brisbane, Australia stopped Alma Garcia with a TKO in the second round. Rawlings and her fellow combatants were all eager to become the first to take off the gloves for a large-scale event since July 8, 1889, when John L. Sullivan went 75 rounds to beat Jake Kilrain. Even that event was illegal and had to be staged under the cover of secrecy as most states had outlawed the non-gloved version of boxing. Fighting was forced underground until 2011, when a Yavapai Nation sanctioned a match that drew more than a million viewers. The promoter of that event and Saturday’s, David Feldman, realized there was a hungry market for bare-knuckle fights. Wyoming has since become the first state to sanction and regulate the sport.

Are we drawing ever closer to the old “Fight to the death” sport?

Is there a line between entertainment and criminal intent?

A “Who-vian” Surprise

Saturday and I have something “cool” to pass on…..

I have been a Dr. Who fan since the mid 70’s…..it is a Brit SciFi series about a time traveling alien that takes on all sorts of “bad guys” and he never dies he just re-generates into another person.

This season the 12th doctor will pass on into another character…….a couple of seasons ago the Dr’s arch enemy, The Master, morphed into a woman now he is known as The Mistress or “Missy”……

Then I told my daughter that the show was setting up the audience to the possibility of the Dr. morphing into a woman also…..and then……

British actress Jodie Whittaker was announced Sunday as the next star of the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who—the first woman to take a role that has been played by a dozen men over six decades. Whittaker, best known for playing the mother of a murdered boy in detective drama Broadchurch, will replace Scottish actor Peter Capaldi at the end of the year, the BBC says. Whittaker is the 13th official incarnation of the Doctor, a galaxy-hopping Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in the Tardis, a time machine shaped like an old-fashioned British police telephone booth. In a testament to the place Doctor Who holds in Britain’s cultural life, the revelation was made on live television after the Wimbledon men’s tennis final.

According to the AP, Doctor Who ran from 1963 to 1989, and was revived to acclaim in 2005. Its longevity is partly due to its flexible premise. The central character, known only as the Doctor, can travel across space and time and can regenerate into new bodies—allowing for endless recasting of the role. Speculation had been mounting that a woman would get the role, generating excitement from some fans and opposition from others who feel that the character has been established as male. Whittaker says that becoming the first female Doctor “feels completely overwhelming, as a feminist, as a woman, as an actor, as a human,” adding: “I want to tell the fans not to be scared by my gender. Because this is a really exciting time, and Doctor Who represents everything that’s exciting about change.”

Damn!  It feels good to be right once in awhile, huh?

I am heading out into the garden….please everyone try to enjoy your day and be well and be safe.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Sunday and another day in the garden……well what’s left of it…….a little sun, some heat, snacks and wine…sounds perfect, right?

Back in the day I was a budding guitarist…I just knew that I was gonna be one of the greats…..then in 1967 I visited a club, the Oleo Strut, and saw a live performance of a up and coming rock star…..

After watching this man play a guitar I realized that I would NEVER be that capable of playing and after that I abandoned all pretense of being a “rock star”……

You had to be there a small club that sat 200 people maximum and see this individual play….I shall never forget it….EVER!

I bring this piece of personal history up because of something that I read recently……

The convention couldn’t sound less rock-and-roll — the National Association of Music Merchants Show. But when the doors open at the Anaheim Convention Center, people stream in to scour rows of Fenders, Les Pauls and the oddball, custom-built creations such as the 5-foot-4-inch mermaid guitar crafted of 15 kinds of wood.

Standing in the center of the biggest, six-string candy store in the United States, you can almost believe all is well within the guitar world.

Except if, like George Gruhn, you know better. The 71-year-old Nashville dealer has sold guitars to Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. Walking through NAMM with Gruhn is like shadowing Bill Belichick at the NFL Scouting Combine. There is great love for the product and great skepticism. What others might see as a boom — the seemingly endless line of manufacturers showcasing instruments — Gruhn sees as two trains on a collision course.

Source: The death of the electric guitar – Washington Post

I too see a problem…the music today is too mamby pamby….all blue skies and lollipops…..techno crap is replacing artistry…..slowly the real guitar artists are disappearing…I am only glad that I was there when there were real artists playing for the love of music……

My day is done and I feel like listening to some rock from my day…..

Have a good day and get some rest…..peace out…..chuq