Wow what a busy week. I hope to have something more substantive posted tomorrow or before week's end but for now this will need to suffice. We talked before about revenge porn being outlawed in California and how often more mature people eschew revenge. Revenge can often backfire on you and/or reveal your ugly petty private insecurities for the whole world to see. That's usually not a good thing. Of course when most of us are hurt we want to hurt back. That's just part (an ugly part?) of human nature. And by taking revenge or as some would call it, seeking justice or providing retribution, we aren't just seeking to hurt those who we believe harmed us, but provide a future warning to other people that should they mistreat us, we intend to do the same exact thing to them. Under this way of thinking revenge, petty though it may be, can have a significant deterrent effect on would be bad actors and thereby make the world a better, safer, nicer place for everyone. If you know you won't get away with your crap on someone then maybe you won't try your crap on someone else. Don't start nothing, won't be nothing. We have outlawed pistols at dawn. And it's also no longer legal to buy yourself a shotgun as long as you are tall and blow that no good so-n-so dead against the wall. So what's a man who's mad and who wants revenge and whose patience is at an end supposed to do? Well recently a local pimp strip club owner and businessman named Alan Markovitz, who buys, sells and owns various gentleman's clubs in and around Detroit and Philadelphia, and is going to have his own reality TV show, decided that the opportunity to take revenge on his ex-wife and her new lover was just too good to pass up. No he didn't beat her, post numerous pictures across the internet of her in her birthday suit, boast publicly of her intimacy skills or punch her new man in his face. Nope. That's for people who don't have money. Markovitz has money. Markovitz was so angry that his ex-wife Lea Tuohy cheated on him with someone that he knew that he bought a suburban lakefront house next door to the new couple and erected a $7000 statue of a middle finger pointing directly at the couple. Helpfully, the finger lights up at night. How sweet.
Markovitz recently moved into a lakefront home in Orchard Lake, and he spent $7,000 on the digital objet d'art. It's made of a bronze-like material.
Why?
He says he's angry at the man who lives next door because that man, Markovitz says, had an affair with the woman who was Markovitz's wife. She is now his ex-wife. And she lives next door.
"I'm so over her," Markovitz said Friday evening. "This is about him. This is about him not being a man."
If Markovitz is so angry, why did he move next door to the man and his ex-wife? He claims it was a coincidence that a realtor showed him the house. But after that, "karma" took over. Markovitz said people have told him to let it go, but he can't do it, he said. It's about principle. The statue was unveiled about a week ago in front of a group partying in the yard.
Bill Withers is a West Virginia born musician who is generally placed in the R&B/Soul category. For him though that framework is probably a little limiting. He's a singer/songwriter/pianist/guitarist who has a mastery of and familiarity with a lot of different genres. All the same though he also has an extremely distinctive voice and songwriting style that is pretty much immediately recognizable. Much like some musicians such as John Legend or Ben Harper who would come after him and perhaps were influenced by him(?), Withers wrote seemingly intensely personal, often melancholy soul ruminations which were occasionally balanced by more ruefully upbeat songs that veered into more danceable directions. Withers has a smooth and mellow baritone voice but can also sometimes reach into a tenor's range. He is one smooth dude. Withers provided another example of how blues morphed into soul and R&B in the late sixties and early seventies. Many of his songs had a blues feeling even if they only very rarely followed typical blues lyrical or musical conventions. Withers has said that he found that the usual blues lyrics either bored him or that other people could sing them more convincingly than he could. He always wanted to write his own music anyway.
Withers' first albums were produced by the Memphis soul musician Booker T. of Booker T. and the MG's. The sessions included musicians such as the Stephen Stills, The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band as well as Booker T and company. Withers had zero interest in dancing around the stage, having the traditional female backup singers or the then ubiquitous horn section. This was relatively unusual for a black "soul" musician. But Withers' music has a strength and vibrancy which didn't require what Withers saw as unnecessary frivolities. When he first started out there was a lot of space in Withers' arrangements. Instrumentation was relatively spare. Withers is a self-taught musician who honed his craft during his stint in the Navy (he joined at age seventeen) and upon his return to civilian life. He did not start to gain fame in the music world until his early thirties. He didn't quit his day job until well after he was established as a musician. Withers evidently had and has little use for (white) experts on the blues who wished to categorize his music or claim he wasn't playing "black enough". In a documentary he responded thusly:
"You gonna tell me the history of the blues? I am the goddam blues. Look at me. Shit. I’m from West Virginia, I’m the first man in my family not to work in the coal mines, my mother scrubbed floors on her knees for a living, and you’re going to tell me about the goddam blues because you read some book written by John Hammond? Kiss my ass."
OK then. =)
I think everyone knows his songs "Lean on Me" or "Ain't No Sunshine". Great works. I love the chilling antiwar anthem "I can't write left-handed." "Who is he..." captures a man's (justified?) paranoia about what his wife has been doing behind his back. "I'm Her Daddy" describes the pain of a father separated from his daughter. I like the Isaac Hayes' cover of "Use Me" better than I do Withers' original. "Just the Two of Us" is probably as close as Withers ever got to adult contemporary pop. It's a good song. The relatively vituperative (for Withers) "You" and the hopeful "Can We Pretend" both came out on an album released when Withers' marriage with actress Denise Nicholas was breaking up. The self-described extremely private Withers has always resisted and resented simplistic autobiographical readings of his songs. He's pointed out that just because he wrote a song about suicide ("Better off Dead") doesn't mean that he ever considered it.
In Wither's telling, "You" at least was about an amalgam of people he had known as well as a metaphor of a person's rise to fame and fortune. He denied it was about his marriage saying that a) he was not a fast enough writer to include hints about his marital strife on the then current album "+ justments" and b) a private person like himself would not put out personal information for the public to sift through. True enough. All the same, "Can We Pretend" was largely written by Nicholas, who has confirmed that it was, from her perspective, in part about their marriage. "Lovely Day" features Withers holding vocal notes for almost 20 seconds while "Harlem/Cold Baloney/Shake Em Down" is a combination of Withers' music and the traditional blues "Shake em on down".
I enjoy singing along with his music on long commutes. If you are only familiar with Withers' more popular works you should pick up some of his early seventies work and give it a listen. The music is deceptively simple stuff that will make you feel better and make you think at the same time. I really like his voice. If you are hip to such singer-songwriters as Dylan, James Taylor, Richard and Linda Thompson, Stevie Wonder, Jon Lucien, Carole King etc. you ought to be aware of Withers' work
There is a blues song called "Right Place, Wrong Time" that was written by bluesman Otis Rush and was later a hit for Dr. John. Unfortunately that title applies to the lives and career success of a lot of Black American musicians and Luther Allison was no different. He was born in 1939 and was likely part of the last generation of black bluesmen to see blues as a natural organic outlet for their creativity. He was from Arkansas. Having moved to Chicago with his family in his early teens Allison was tearing it up as a precocious bandleader in the mid to late fifties. He was respected enough by his peers to open for them on occasion or sit in with them in clubs. Famously, blues giant Freddie King turned over a few of his gigs to Luther Allison. Howling Wolf once invited him to sit in. And Wolf didn't extend that invitation to many people.
Despite this respect on the streets Allison wasn't able to get a record deal under his own name until 1969's "Love Me Mama". The release was well received within the declining blues market but what really gave Allison a chance at the big time was his appearance at the late sixties and early seventies Ann Arbor Blues Festivals. Allison was building a sound which was updated electric blues rock with nods towards the funk and soul scenes of the time. He had a quite modern hard edged guitar tone, one which wasn't too different from contemporaries like Duane Allman or Eric Clapton. His version of "Little Red Rooster" for example would not have sounded out of place on seventies era hard rock radio stations. Allison obtained a three record deal at Motown, where I believe he was the only upfront blues artist signed. At Motown, Allison was able to explore a number of options besides straight ahead blues but unfortunately Motown seemingly had little idea how to market him. I think those albums are lost gems but apparently at the time they were released people didn't see it that way. After his record deal with Motown expired Allison bounced around a few other labels. He played the declining black blues circuit in America but wasn't exactly making big bucks.
Fed up with this Allison packed up and moved to France. His music, especially the traditional blues songs, were much more popular in Europe in general and France in particular. He stayed in France for most of his remaining life. In 1994 he recorded a comeback album and moved back to the United States. But not three years after this he discovered he had inoperable lung cancer and passed away. So it goes, I guess. If you like blues I think you will like Luther Allison's music. I would suggest his earlier work before his voice darkened and cracked and he switched to screaming over singing (imo). YMMV. Check out the slide-funk of "Now You Got It" or his cover of Willie Nelson's "Night Life" for a typical example of his Motown period. I think his version of "Last Night" is a song I would suggest to anyone who wants to know what blues is about. If you don't feel something while listening to that either blues is not for you or you're just dead, which to me is about the same thing. Luther's son Bernard has picked up where his late father left off. He's produced a body of work worth investigating in its own right.
UPDATE: Suspect charged with second degree murder and other charges. Read more after the jump. On most days I don't like just putting up a news article with minimal analysis but this happens to be one of the days when my boss actually expects me to work. The nerve of that guy never ceases to amaze me. You'd actually think he pays me or something. And because much like the President I am facing a November 30 deadline on some critical tasks, there must be less blogging and more programming/project managing on my part. So it goes. All the same though I did want to quickly draw your attention to this article below which has some new information about the Renisha McBride situation. The takeaway is that (1) the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has still not issued an arrest warrant for Ms. McBride's killer and (2) Ms. McBride was shot in the face, but apparently not from point-blank range. This would to me, seem to be another indication that the young woman was not a threat. There is something wrong in our society where the default is to consider ANY black person a threat. There have been different statements about whether there was an accidental discharge of the shotgun or whether, if charged, the suspect intends to claim self-defense. FWIW, the Wayne County Prosecutor is a black woman, Kym Worthy, who may have first come to local and perhaps national prominence some years prior when she was the lead prosecuting attorney in the trial of Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers, two Caucasian cops who beat the black motorist Malice Green to death. It is unusual that the alleged suspect has not been arrested as of yet so we'll have to see how everything turns out. Wayne County, which if there is a trial is where the trial would be unless it's moved, is about 40% black. Juries tend to have lower black representation than that. Dearborn Heights, which is where the shooting took place, is a Detroit suburb which is overwhelmingly white.
It was shortly before 1 a.m. Nov. 2 and Renisha McBride was involved in an accident with a parked vehicle in Detroit. More than two hours later and six blocks away, she was shot in the face by a man who told police he thought someone was breaking into his Dearborn Heights home. The 54-year-old homeowner, according to police, said his 12-gauge shotgun discharged accidentally. What happened during the hours between the accident and McBride’s death on the front porch of a home in the 16800 block of West Outer Drive remains a mystery. New details surfaced in the controversial case Monday, raising more questions about the 19-year-old’s death.
The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is waiting for several items relating to the investigation from the Dearborn Heights Police Department at this time,” the statement from spokeswoman Maria Miller said. Meanwhile, civil rights leaders have called for a thorough investigation of the case. McBride’s death was ruled a homicide by the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, which released her autopsy report Monday. According to the report, McBride was shot in the face, not the back of the head as her family initially had said. “There was an entrance shotgun wound to the face, with no evidence of close-range discharge of a firearm noted on the skin surrounding this wound,” according to the report. LINK
DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. -
Theodore Wafer was arraigned Friday afternoon in connection with the shooting death of 19-year-old Renisha McBride. Wafer, 54, is charged with second degree murder, manslaughter and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony in the Nov. 2 shooting McBride. He must pay 10 percent of a $250,000 bond to be freed from jail. Authorities say McBride, of Detroit, drove into a parked car in the city around 1 a.m. After her death, tests determined her blood alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit for drivers in Michigan, a toxicology report said.
Witnesses said she left on foot, bloodied and disoriented, Worthy said. She ended up on Wafer's porch in neighboring Dearborn Heights at least a couple hours later that morning.
Wafer told investigators that he thought McBride was breaking into his home, and that the shotgun accidentally discharged when he investigated, police said.
After 911 was called at 4:42 a.m., McBride was found dead with large shotgun wound to her face, Worthy said.
Well what do you think? President Barack Obama said the Obamacare rollout has been "rough so far" and he has been deeply concerned about it. Under a fix offered by Obama on Thursday to address a controversial provision of the Affordable Care Act, the President said Americans who received cancellation notices may be able to keep their individual insurance plans for one more year.
The deal is meant to cover millions of people who have had their insurance policies canceled because the policies do not meet Obamacare requirements. The uproar has ensnared the White House for weeks, shining a spotlight on Obama's earlier promise that people who liked their insurance plans could keep them.
But the fix, as reported earlier by CNN's Dana Bash, puts the onus of the renewals on insurers. The administration is not requiring insurers or state insurance commissioners to extend the existing plans, but instead is allowing insurers to offer an additional year of coverage.
Also, insurers must notify policyholders of the difference in benefits between their policies and the Obamacare plans available on the insurance exchanges. And the companies must inform people that additional policies are available on the exchanges and that subsidies may be available to those who qualify.
This fix will not solve "every problem for every person," Obama said.
We've long heard the startling statistics regarding rape in the United States. According to Crisis Connection the statistics are even more startling when you focus on college campus' in the United States. Here are a few of those statistics:
Every 21 hours there is a rape on an American college campus
1 in 4 women in college today has been the victim of rape, and nearly 90% of them knew their rapist
Of the college woman who are raped, only 25% describe it as rape
Of the college women who are raped, only 10% report the rape
34% of completed rapes and 45% of attempted rapes take place on campus
Almost 60% of the completed campus rapes that take place on campus occur in the victim's residence
31% occur in another residence
10% occur in a fraternity
It gets worse when you take a closer look at the recent high profile cases, (Steubenville/Genarlow Wilson) which involved victims below the collegiate level.
I am a young woman, so I don't need these stats to tell me that there is a problem. I can also understand the indescribable pain that victims of rape feel, as well as the devastation that occurs for victims who speak out against their perpetrators, only to feel silenced. I get it! So the controversy at Sarah Lawrence College involving Annie Robertson and Garvey-Malik Ashhurst-Watson are of no surprise to me.
Annie in her own words:
To make matter worse for Ms. Robertson, Mr. Ashhurst-Watson was initially charged with two counts of sexual misconduct and those charges were later dismissed. The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation and concluded that there were inconsistencies in the accounts of the events between the two parties and not enough evidence to prosecute Mr. Ashhurst-Watson.
"How can you tell a woman she is safe when her body no longer belongs to her? When you are finally able to burn me at the stake, frame my ashes for your school’s distinction. Until then, I will be tying nooses with the strong cords of my voice. I will be hanging your boys up and invoking my no until the spirit takes them and their legs stop twitching." - Annie Robertson
It's unfortunate that Ms. Robertson decided to unnecessarily invoke race with well known and documented elements of slavery. For this I can't take her seriously. I can't see how, through what I imagine to be the most devastating and hurtful of circumstances, Ms. Robertson can only see the race of her "perpetrator". Ms. Robertson was a victim of a crime, a victim of violence. So why would she choose to focus on the fact that her "perpetrator" was black?
This poem is indicative of Ms. Robertson's mindset and her character. Words are powerful. Ms. Robertson knows this. So to now pretend that the racial elements were unintentional is just not cool.
If Ms. Robertson really wanted to make sure that her "attack" didn't happen in vain, she would have set out to truly make a difference. Look at the statistics (especially the ones above) and make the decision to begin a meaningful national conversation on rape and sexual violence on college campus'. Ms. Robertson could have started a movement in her back yard, by galvanizing everyone at Sarah Lawrence with a mission to make campus rape a thing of the past. No, instead she made a decision to put a "poem" on her Facebook page about lynching black men. This poor decision not only weakens her argument, but it weakens a movement that already exists to help young women recognize when they are victims of violence, and take action against their perpetrators. Coming forward and accusing someone of rape it already a very difficult act. Victims fear persecution, so many remain quiet. Ms. Robertson has made it even worse, especially for anyone who may be a victim of rape or any other form of violence, at Sarah Lawrence.
I really wish Annie Roberston hadn't taken the direction of this conversation to such a disgusting level.
Sound off...
1 - When you read Annie Robertson's "poem" what did you think? 2 - Has Ms. Robertson weakened her argument? 3 - When the charges were dismissed against Mr. Ashhurst-Watson, what should Ms. Robertson have done? What should any victim in Ms. Robertson's position do? 4 - Is this situation a lesson for young men on college campus' across the US?
Sometimes you can get fooled into watching a movie because you see some noticeable names in the cast and assume that well that must mean there's some minimal level of quality. That was certainly the case with me and the movie R.I.P.D. I foolishly thought that a film that had Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, and Mary Louise Parker in it would have no problem reaching a basic level of distinction. Well that was a mistake. Actors and actresses can go slumming and/or do things strictly for the paycheck or to repay a favor or simply to get their name out there just like the rest of us. The other reason I wanted to watch R.I.P.D. was that it was based on a graphic novel with which I wasn't familiar but had heard good things about. Hmm. Well if the movie was in any way faithful to the source material I no longer have any interest in reading the graphic novel. The only good thing about this movie from my perspective was watching the Sports Illustrated model turned actress Marisa Miller bounce around. Pulchritude alone couldn't save a really bad stupid movie. I'm glad I didn't see this in the theater and am seriously considering if I can get a refund from my cable company on the grounds that this movie really stunk. R.I.P.D. appears to be a low rent ripoff of the Men in Black franchise with a shout out to Ghost. It's got the old grizzled cop with a strange name (Bridges) and the smart mouth young rookie (Reynolds). Even though they don't much like each other they have to Overcome Their Differences To Save The World. When people die most of them go to heaven or hell. As with any rule though there are some exceptions. Some dead people, generally the ones who would have gone to hell, decide that they'd rather stay on earth. I mean earth is better than hell, right. And if you were going to heaven you wouldn't stick around on earth would you.
In order to fight these creatures, known as deaddos, Heaven or some other otherworldly bureaucracy, has formed the Rest in Peace Division (R.I.P.D.) which is made up of talented former cops who weren't quite the worst of the worst but weren't good enough to go immediately to heaven either. So in a sort of limbo, they get a chance to work off their sins and avoid going to hell, by capturing or destroying deaddos. The Boston division of this group is overseen by Captain Proctor (Mary Louise Parker). She explains all this to the newly dead Boston detective Nick Walker (Reynolds) and pairs him up with Old West Marshal Roycephus Pulsipher (Bridges). Off they go to Save The World which will involve stopping the nefarious plans of Nick's former partner Bobby Hayes (Bacon) who murdered Nick, is putting the moves on Nick's widow and is apparently a deaddo. In order not to frighten their former loved ones or permit them to get attached to the world again, every R.I.P.D. officer is given an avatar, which is how normal humans see them. Bridges' avatar is Marisa Miller. Reynolds' is James Hong. Proctor evidently once had a thing with Roy, which he at least would like to restart. Skip this movie. TRAILER
The Last Days On Mars directed by Ruairi Robinson
Zombies in space. If this concept appeals, then this film might work well for you. It is the typical sci-fi/horror concept of putting people in an enclosed dangerous environment and having one of them get infected. So in that aspect it's quite similar to The Thing or Alien. I like these sorts of movies, especially when they're well done. This one is adequate. It's not necessarily a must see but there are worse ways to spend your time. It's believable for the most part which is more than I can say for a lot of films in this genre. There is an international manned excursion to Mars. This mission is coming to an end. The scientists have been on Mars for six months and are eager to be on their way back to Earth. They are irritable. They bicker with each other over minor issues. One of the scientists, a slimy fellow named Marko (Goran Kostic) manages to wheedle the mission captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) into letting him and another astronaut go back out onto the Mars surface after they are supposed to be preparing to leave. Marko lies and says that he didn't set a monitor properly. As the by the book captain doesn't want to hear it from his supervisors, he assents to the request.
This infuriates one of the other scientists Kim (Olivia Williams), who is a rival of well, just about everyone. She has already been shown to be a difficult woman when she was working with the mission second-in-command Vincent (Liev Schreiber) and his girlfriend Rebecca (Romola Garai). Kim correctly intuits that Marko is not exactly an altruistic or super responsible sort, perhaps because she isn't either, and hacks into his surveillance feed. It turns out that Marko is nowhere near his monitor. Instead he has gone to a canyon where he believes he's found evidence of viral or bacteriological life. He wants all the credit for himself. Unfortunately for Marko there's some kind of earthquake or rather marsquake and Marko is seemingly swallowed up in a newly opened crevice. When the team arrives they can't find Marko and don't have the proper equipment to bring back what could be Martian life. So they leave a team member there to look for Marko while they all go back to base. Well as you might guess one or more of the team is infected with this Martian life. The impact is to turn them into ravening zombies. And infection is easily passed to other humans.
Unlike The Thing there's not really a whole lot of paranoia if only because there's not a huge delay between the time of initial infection and the onset of ravening mad dog behavior. You don't have time to casually wonder, worry and fret as to who might be infected because you'll know soon enough. There are some desperate attempts to come up with a cure and worries about whether or not the party should even try to make it back to Earth. Obviously no one has any guns or other weapons. And getting caught outside with a damaged or broken suit is also an immediate death sentence. Mars has no breathable atmosphere and a much lower atmospheric pressure than is suitable for human life. As usual a few people do some stupid things to keep the story moving but that aside I still liked the film because it did capture the immense sadness of possibly dying alone on a planet that's anywhere from 34 million to 250 million miles away from Earth. The special effects and the reddish haze that one would expect from the Red Planet are well done. TRAILER
Guys and Dolls directed by Joseph Mankiewicz
This is a droll fifties musical based on similarly humorous gangster tales by the writer Damon Runyan. In this world the gangsters are tough guys but they're really not bad guys. They might be bad boys though, which could of course explain why they're never lacking in feminine company. But there are no shootings, beatings, pimping, drug dealing, extortion, union racketeering or anything else like that. No in this milieu the extent of their crime is that they're gamblers. Other activities are either not mentioned or only very very obliquely referenced. The men in this film are tough guys with hearts of gold. This is an old school movie which in its way endorses very traditional ideas about marriage and gender roles. Where Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew featured a proto-feminist woman who refused to be married eventually coming to learn the joys of marriage and the wisdom of obeying her husband, Guys and Dolls comes to the same conclusion via its focus on men. Wild men, bachelors and players, must at the end learn to settle down, be responsible, sober and proper and learn to say "yes dear" to their new wives. Women are understood to "civilize" men and supposedly both genders are better off for it. In its way I suppose this film is really not all that different in source material and message from modern romantic comedies. There is a humorous "conflict" which, after some jokes and some soul searching, is solved so that everyone on both sides of the gender line wins. What could be better than that. And no one dressed as an overweight sassy black woman either. Go figure.
The dialogue, much of which was adapted from the stage version and the book, is really sharp, comic and often confrontational. Everyone is a wiseguy or a sharp dame. Obviously there's no profanity and no nudity though there are some depictions of showgirls in costume. Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) is a gambler who can't seem to find a spot to host his usual craps game. The heat is on from the cops, particularly the nasty and sarcastic Lieutenant Brannigan (Robert Keith) who has been eager to put Nathan away for good for quite some time. Most of Nathan's normal hosts have turned him down flat. Nathan finally finds someone to host his game but the fellow wants a much larger than normal hosting fee. In advance. This Nathan does not have. Nathan is also starting to hear it from his fiancee Adelaide (Vivian Blaine), who has become dissatisfied with their FOURTEEN YEAR engagement. She wants to get married immediately. She also wants Nathan to go straight. Nathan doesn't want to talk about either his future business or romantic plans, thank you very much.
Nathan runs into a similar soul, the dapper, debonair and INCREDIBLY self assured Sky Masterton.(Marlon Brando) It was odd to hear echoes of what I think of as the Godfather's voice emerging from a much younger man. Like Nathan, Sky is not exactly interested in settling down anytime soon. As he snidely notes: "I am not putting the knock on dolls. It's just that they are something to have around only when they come in handy. Like cough drops." Unlike Nathan, Sky CAN'T resist a bet. Knowing this and needing the seed money for his game, Nathan bets Sky that Sky (who considers himself a player par excellence) can't take a woman of Nathan's choosing to a dinner date in Havana. (The unspoken is also implied.) Sky agrees to the bet. Nathan chooses Sister Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) , an uptight, good-hearted leader at the local Save-A-Soul mission, who has also been getting on Nathan's nerves. Sarah preaches against vice, gambling and all that it includes. She's no fan of the sporting life. But her mission is empty as Nathan and his crew certainly aren't listening. If she can't get some people to come in to the mission and change their wicked ways, her supervisors will close down the mission. They don't think it's worth wasting time and resources on people who are inveterate sinners. Sister Sarah's also a little lonely. The predatory Sky soon finds a struggle between his desire to win the bet and protective or even much gentler emotions he didn't know he had.
This was from the golden age of Hollywood musicals and it shows. The sets and color are extravagant. People break out into song at just the right moment. Brando was placed into this movie because he was the up and coming star of the time but he also did his own singing and dancing. He wasn't too bad. The film is full of mugs with colorful names like Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Big Jule, Benny Southstreet, Society Max, Liver Lips Louie, and Harry the Horse. Everyone's got an angle to play but all in all these are well meaning people. It is interesting to watch a film made in the fifties which interprets characters from the twenties through the forties and yet realize that the more things change between men and women in the dance of life, the more things stay the same. The movie's predominant mood is one of light humor so if you're looking for that experience, here you are. Well I used to be bad when I was a kid but ever since then I've gone straight as has been proved by my record. Thirty three arrests and no convictions! -Big Jule Luck Be A Lady TonightAdelaide's LamentAdelaide
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who recently admitted that yes he really had smoked crack, after a long time of denials, was recently seen on video in a highly agitated state threatening to kill an unspecified person. Now I don't much care what people do in their personal lives but I don't think it's too much to ask that the mayor of your city refrain from ingesting illegal drugs and vividly demonstrating his intention to commit bloody mayhem. But apparently that's just me. Plenty of people seem to like him. In fact his approval ratings had gone up before his latest admissions and the revealing of the latest strange video. You do wonder what it would take for some people to question if Rob Ford is the right leader for the city of Toronto. In fact, as a Facebook friend pointed out, similar actions by former Mayor Marion Barry of Washington D.C. were used as prima facie evidence of Barry's utter unfitness for office, the stupidity of people who had voted him into office and as another good reason why the people in Washington D.C. did not deserve statehood. Hmm. What could be the difference between the two mayors? In any event here's to hoping that Mayor Ford finds the help he needs to stay away from mood altering substances, including carbohydrates. Because watching him throw his tantrum I was rather surprised he didn't have a coronary on the spot.
Above the text, Ford — the mayor of Toronto — beamed out at readers from the news conference where he had just admitted smoking crack cocaine. In a drunken stupor. “Probably, approximately about a year ago.”
Despite the controversy, Ford is clinging to office, confounding critics and delighting supporters who say he’s done plenty of good for the city — despite headlines around the world that have splashed a bit of mud on the image of the gleaming lakeside city that’s arguably the cultural center of English-speaking Canada.“He’s human. We all make mistakes,” one resident told Canadian broadcaster CBC Toronto.
“If he smokes and saves me money, I’ll vote for him — even if he’s a bum,” said another. In fact, some polling data suggested Ford’s approval ratings had actually climbed in the days before his stunning announcement Tuesday after months of denials — as they had in September with the scandal in full swing.
