At Long Last

I was listening to THE MAN the other day and he read this article on the air written by a columnist named Gary Hubbel and I had to stand up and salute. Finally, someone has had the nerve to write what everyman is really thinking. No apologies. No qualifiers. No pulled punches. I don't know that Angry White Man is the best identifier, but I think that he might be using the current catch phrase that inaccurately describes REAL men. We're frustrated. And often times irritated. And everyday we get out of bed and ask God how we can make a difference in our world today and to give us the strength to do our best and to be brutally honest with ourselves.

I agreed with everything that Mr. Hubbel had to say, with the exception of one line involving a reference to a "blue moon." Check it out: In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man.

Bon Voyage!

So, I finally saw Life is Beautiful. It was good. The writer/director is a genius. It was very well woven together. You see all sorts of little things happening in the background that are brought into the forefront later in the film. I even got choked-up at one scene, where the hero selects a record, puts it on a gramaphone and turns the bell to an open window. Belle bawled like a baby(just in general). Definitely worth seeing. The only thing wrong with it, is some marital referrences. I think that's why it's PG-13.

I love foreign films because you never know how the movie is going to turn out. I don't always like how they turn out, but that's part of the fun. Most of the time, you can see how all these other countries are several years behind in their technology and technique. Sometimes, as with Zhang Yimou, you can see how they're just Masters in their own right. It's like when I was a kid and still living in California and would go to the midwest, and would see how everyone was wearing last years fashions, styling their hair in trends that were dead and gone back home, and how even the radio stations would be playing songs that were already forgotten in Cali. I wonder if it's still like that, or if technology has equalized things. It's been so long since I've been home.

American movies are somewhat predictable. Probly because of how many of them have been made and are made every year. We kind of know what is going to happen next. The leader of the resistance is captured: the rebels are going to break him out. The leading lady and the leading man hate each others' guts: we know they're going to end up together at the end of the movie. But it's not like that in foreign films. At least not always. You never know where the movie is going to go. And that is half of why I like them. The other half is because of the language. I love foreign languages. Farsi has got to be the prettiest.

So that brings me to the the title of the post:

The only name that I recognized was Gérard Depardieu, and I recognized Peter Coyote, an American actor, but couldn't tell you, without looking at IMDB, what else he's been in. To my untrained ear, his French and German were perfect!

The movie starts out in a pre-war Paris, in a movie house. Hitler is posturing and France is caught in his head lights. One character glibly states later that the conflict won't last more than a couple weeks because not even Hitler wants war. In the theater we meet the leading lady, Viviane Denvers, played by Isabelle Adjani, who obviously has problems. Not just from the evident insecurity about her performance, she's the Angelina Jolie of the day, but also with a man in the main floor seating who has been watching her, not her movie. In the following scenes, we meet the aspiring author Auger, played by Grégori Derangère, who we learn is a childhood friend of and is hopelessly in love with Denvers. Always has been. And its not a romanticly sweet fact. Needless to say, he gets himself put into a tight spot because of it.

Flash forward an undisclosed period of time: Hitler is prevailing in his assualt on France and his troops are quickly approaching Paris. Everyone is fleeing to the South. Auger learns that Denvers has gone to Bordeaux with the Minister of State Jean-Étienne Beaufort, Gérard Depardieu, and so he boards an over-packed train, where he is reunited with his new found friend Raoul, played by Yvan Attal, and meets Camille, played by Virginie Ledoyen, who is a student at the University of Paris and the assistant to Professeur Kopolski, Jean-Marc Stehlé, a stateless Jew who has created an incredible liquid that everyone eventually wants.

When everyone finally arrives in Bordeaux, we learn that Raoul is a longsighted petty crook, Denvers hasn't changed at all, Auger still loves her senselessly, Camille is watching Auger, a lot, nobody wants to help Professeur Kopolski, the French governement is undecided as to what it should do, and, oh yeah, there are German's among them.

Long story short, and this has taken some serious thought: THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE THAT I HAVE SEEN SINCE THE PRESTIGE. The acting is extreemly good, and the script is tightly drawn. It's PG-13 but I think that that is for some violence. The rating noted language also, but I don't remeber much, if any. Maybe it's there in French and they didn't subtitle it

There have only been two movies that had me crawling in my seat in suspense: Frequency, with Jim "Jesus" Caviezel and Dennis Quaid, and Bon Voyage.

Bon Appetite!

Oh! How I loath where I live . . .

I have lived here, yes, in "Fiji", for 12 years and quite frankly, I still hate it. Oh, I like the towns just fine, and I love the people (my people, to be specific), and frankly I do live in one of the best towns in the state, but if God told me to move ANYWHERE, tomorrow, I would be gone by the end of the week. And not just because it is one of the most liberal states in the union. What makes it worse, is that I have lived in some of the best locals in the Nation.

The best twelve years of my life were spent in a double wide, on 40 acres of A'mon's in California. An hour and a half from the beach, from Pier 39, Monterrey, Big Sur, Carmel. An hour and half from the mountains. Camping ever summer. Skiing ever winter (multiple times).

And then I moved to Colorado for two years. God smiled when he made Colorado. Two feet of snow on Monday, 70 degrees on Saturday, and NO nasty, slimy mud.

And then I lived in Florida for 18 months. Ten minutes from the beach. Snorkeling in the spring. Surfing in the late summer. "Oh, but the summer heat" Ah, but the balmy coastal summer night breezes that refresh a languishing soul.

Then I came back here(sorry I don't have any dripping letters for that word). Where the summers are painfully hot and humid and when it rains, it just gets worse. I have come to loath summer rain storms. I no longer pray "Lord, let it rain" but rather, "Lord, let it rain . . .all week" because then maybe one or two of those days will be endurable. And the winters? Oh, why did you have to ask? The winter rains bring only one thing: muck. I don't say "mud" because that would be an insult to all mud everywhere. One step in our local slime and the mutant soil monster awakes. Inside of five feet you are covered from boot soles to hips in two inches of immobilising, living, devouring clay infused gunk. And later? When it finally decides to get cold enough to snow, like in late December? It doesn't have the decency to fall straight down like civilized snow does, say, out in Colorado, but rather it runs sideways, driven by the gale force winds, screaming in demonic glee with its icy cousins sleet and hail. And only once or twice in twelves years do you get more than an inch of snow. Then it's nice.

But what has set off this stenographical tirade? On Wednesday, the pipes froze. It was 2 degrees. Today? I raked leaves off of the lawn, and sweltered in my hoody.

Now, lest you get the wrong idea, I am not discontent living here. Ah, what a paradox. Home, is after all, where the heart is. And having married a good local girl, almost eight years ago, and at first having had a good job and currently owning a growing business, I have managed to come to a place of endurance of the unbearable local settings.

So. It's all good! Thanks for listening.

On How to Break Crystal . . .

As many of you may know, I absolutely love Opera. Soory, really really like, opera. But, and this caveat is honest, not all opera is created equal. There is a definite difference between romance language opera and guttural language opera. Like the difference between Puccini and Mozart. And not all singers are created equal. I personally can not stand screeching sopranos, and there are quite a few, or Tenors who try too hard. Now, this is not a dissertation on the differences between operatic composition or a study on who is the best, but rather an introduction for those of you who may not know what beauty lies at the pinnacle of classical music.


My favorite soprano: That's a tough one. The one that I like the most that anyone can hear is, Anna Netrebko. She's young (thirties), Russian, has this lower octave soprano that is incredible, and even though she is definitely not fat, after she sings, it's over. More on her to follow. Claudine Collart is awesome. But she did hardly anything. She was essentially a backup singer. How unfortunate. Mado Robin holds the claim to fame for being the highest, clearest soprano. EVER. I have some tracks, that when I figure out how to play them through the blog, I'll upload, for all to be blown away. Overall favorite: Mady Mesple. Her Lakme is unparalleled.

My favorite Tenor: is there any other than Pavarotti?

To illustrate, here is Anna Netrebko, whom I have linked to on the left (you figure it out):


And here is the definitive Pavarotti:


I am a pretty big Puccini fan. Turandot was his last opera and at the first performance, after "Liù, poesia!" the orchestra rested and the conductor turned to the audience and said: "Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto" ("Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died"). And the curtain lowered.

These are the standards that I hold opera to.

It's got to be good all the way around, as a whole, if it's going to be good at all.