Tag People

Trick or Treat – ish

Michael 6 Comments

Today I will present to you another edition of some things that have been floating around in my brain.

THOUGHT ONE

Last week, for the first time in 8 years I was in an airplane. People were polite, the flight was good, the flight attendants seemed happy enough considering they were actually at work. And they snacks weren’t bad. And they still had snacks. It was direct flight so I didn’t have to deal with a rush of angry travelers rushing from gauge to gate for a connecting flight. Even though it was over 5 hours, thanks to the technology of sound cancellation and in flight Wi-Fi I hardly noticed. TREAT!

Last week, for the first time in 8 years I was in an airport. The gate agents were meaner than I remembered, the chairs in the gate area were more uncomfortable than I remembered, baggage claim was slower than I remembered. TRICK.

Last week, for the first time in 8 years I had to go through airport security. The line was short, the line moved fast, every TSA agent was pleasant and one actually helpful! PEANUT BUTTER CUP TREAT!!

THOUGHT TWO

I don’t have any data to confirm it but I think football season is bringing out even more o the worst in those trending to a return of Neanderthalism. It was one of my more distressing days, physically speaking. Some days I move with great agility and grace. Most days I move like the clutz (klutz?, yeah, klutz), most days I move like the klutz I have ungracefully grown into, Occasionally I have days I can barely walk without super lot of “dear God please let me finish what I need to do and get home and cry” type pain days. This was one of those days. It was also the day I was circling the parking lot looking for somewhere, anywhere close to the store’s entrance. It was also the day every handicap spot was taken by a monster of a “look at me I’m a man and I still make testosterone” pickup truck. One in particular stood out. That was the one speeding through the lot, not stopping at crosswalks, and swerving around 3 pedestrians like there were orange cones in an obstacle course into the last handicap spot. As he hopped out of the driver’s side I heard shout to presumably somebody with very poor taste in “men” in the passenger seat, “fxxx fxxx-ing light beer. You’ll drink what I fxxx-ing buy!” The voice inside said, “Whatever, just hurry so we don’t miss kick-off again!” SUPER BAD TRICK!!!

I don’t have any data to confirm it but I think most complain, critique, and criticize without ever experiencing that which they complain about, critique, and criticize. Case in point, see above helpful TSA

Agent. I was approaching the line entrances dragging my rolling carry-on (roll-on? Hmm, no, that’s deodorant), anyway, I was dragging rolling carry-on, “personal item” slung over my shoulder, cane keeping me from listing too far starboard, err, falling over. He came over to me and asked if I wanted any help, a chair or one of their little golf cart thingies (I know it has a more official sounding name but you know what I mean), and I said no thank you, I move a little slower than I used to but I’m fine. He asked me if I had the TSA Pre-Check and when I said no, he led to a line that labeled First Class and Special Passengers. “I’m declaring you my special passenger. Have a good, safe flight.” SUPER GOOD TREAT!!!

THOUGHT THREE

It’s pumpkin pie season again! TREAT!

It’s pumpkin spice everything under the sun season again. TRICK.

THOUGHT FOUR

The reason I was in the airport on the plane was to visit a dear friend I speak to daily but haven’t seen in over 2 years. EXTRA SUPER TREAT!!!!

The best times like visiting a dear friend you have seen in so long are always over too fast. THE WORST TRICK EVER.

THOUGHT END

Have an extra super good and safe week everybody! Till next time…

THOUGHT EXTRA

How much have you missed while you were waiting for the right moment, waiting for better odds? How would you like a 50/50 chance of getting anything you want? You already do! Read how to get those odds at ROAMcare.org. (That’s a TREAT worth looking into!)

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Happy Holidays

Michael 4 Comments

Today in the USA it is Columbus Day. That’s what it says in the Federal Register. Americans being Americans can’t let anything happen without controversy so the holiday named for a man who never set foot on North American soil is called by a few other names so we aren’t honoring the man who forcibly conquered entire populations of people who were here when he never set foot on American soil. But that’s a different post for a different day. Today’s post is just to wish you a happy day because for 99.7% of us, that’s all we’re gonna get.

The United States of America has 11 federal holidays. Proposals are floating around Washington to approve 7 more. And there are a handful of days (Armed Forces Day Inauguration Day, and others) which grant federal employees days off but have not been elevate to the rank of “Holiday.” Not that it would matter. There is a law on the books that says the federal government cannot force any state to observe a federal holiday and it cannot prevent any state from declaring its own holiday(s). I guess that’s the technical difference between a federal holiday and a national holiday.

Of those 18 holidays, only 7 are actually fixed days that commemorate something that happened that day either by history or tradition. Five of the approved holidays – New Years, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas) are celebrated the same day every year. Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday of November regardless of date (likely to make the scheduling for Black Friday easier). Two of the six holidays that float so they will always result in 3 day weekends supposedly commemorate peoples’ birthdays (Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Washington) and you’d think if we were celebrating birthdays we’d celebrate it on the birthday date, but…well. Americans. What can I say?

Those floating days are important to the narrative here so let’s keep them, and 5 of the proposed 7 federal holidays that may join their ranks, in mind. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act (yeah, that’s what it’s called) of 1968 was enacted to create more three day weekend opportunities for employees. That’s about it. Oh and that’s the act that made Columbus Day an official federal holiday, so it instituted 2 things of controversy with one law. (Originally Veterans Day was also assigned to a floating Monday but reverted to November 11 in 1978.) Those federal employees are important here now too. Let’s keep them in mind now.

So, if you are a federal employee, Happy Columbus Day. Enjoy your day off.  Everybody else. Get back to work. Congress only has the power to enact federal holidays and grant days off, premium pay, or any other perk of the law for employees of federal institutions. Everybody else. Sorry. Unless you have a really generous boss, no law gives you those days off. Nope. It’s not one of your rights either. Generally, since the 1970s most business still conduct business on almost every day of the year.

If you’re like me and have always worked in hospitals or organized health care settings, emergency services, or some entertainment fields, every day, whether weekday, Saturday , Sunday, or holiday, could be a day of work. Some banks and schools celebrate every holiday and then some and might have more than just those extra 11 days off. But for many, holidays today are not like the holidays of the past. Few people experience days off or holiday celebrations for more than for New Years, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Which incidentally were the first four recognized federal holidays. You know what? Maybe that just about right.

So allow me to wish you a happy day. Even if you don’t want to call it anything!

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Read the book

Michael 2 Comments

Not too many posts ago I wrote one about the changes that a story goes through on its way from printed page to silver screen. That got something stirring in me and I set out to read or reread as many of the books that have been the inspiration to some of my favorite movies. Along the way I noticed something curious. Many modern movies hold themselves much closer to the original stories than movies from the golden age, and while I think that’s a good thing for the high school football star who has little time for such nonsense as reading, the older movies are typical of a higher quality, story telling wise and even production wise. (Yes, I know, but that’s my opinion. It’s also my blog. Get over it.)

We likely have Will H. Hays to thank for the creative license taken by screen writers in the 1940s and 50s. Although the so-called Hays Code “governed” film propriety until 1968 when the now familiar 4 tiered Motion Picture Association of America rating system was adopted, it was during the golden age of moviemaking (1936-1962) that the classic movies differed much from their classic written beginnings – but often in a good way.

Reading the book versions of some film classics revealed three major changes. Most movies were targeted to run from 105 to 115 minutes. Provocative talk was okay, action was not. The bad guy not only never wins, he always gets more than his due.  Although I the past two weeks I’ve read The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and To Have and Have Not, I’m going to use Farewell, My Lovely, adapted to “Murder, My Sweet” as the film/book comparison. I’m case you want to read, watch, or do both with this story and have not yet done either, I will not reveal any plot information in this discussion.  

Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, released in 1944 as “Murder, My Sweet”* has enough character exposés and plot twists to fill 3 hours of screen time. Even “Gone With the Wind” couldn’t keep audience members who were honest entertained for 180 minutes. To keep it to a reasonable length, some sub-plots were completely eliminated and characters combined to make transactions flow through the deleted scenes less awkwardly. Of thirteen main characters from the novel, eight made the transition to the screen version and three of them were significantly altered.

Before we discuss plot changes it is worth noting the Chandler was not a stickler for plot details. Rather than relying on formula and a certainty that everything wraps up neatly at the end, he said he was more interested in the message conveyed by his stories. During the adaptation of another of his novels, The Big Sleep, screen writer William Faulkner, a pretty good novelist himself, was unable to reconcile one of the murders. It is said that after many hours of trying to successfully reveal, or at least hint at the culprit responsible for the character’s demise, the screenwriting team decided to call Chandler and ask who did it. His response? He didn’t know either!

In both book and movie, a missing necklace and a missing woman are central to the story. While the compactness of the plot and some subplot elements that were victims of time are obvious if you read the book before watching the movie, but if your first exposure to the tale is at the movies, there are no unresolved issues.  How the woman and necklace become missing and found, and what happened in between were victim to the censors and may leave your wondering if the suspension of disbelief might be stretched just a little. Illegal drug use, questionable social couplings, racial and economic disparities, and police corruption were tempered or cast aside. The resulting screenplay, although missing many of the stops along the way to the conclusion, does not suffer for these details. In most cases, the viewers can replace with their imaginations what was handed to them in writing. This is not always a bad thing. Often your imagination can make a better story than the one first considered and when the inferences are made deftly, the conclusions can be fairly consistent. In a different movie/book tandem, The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, although Nick and Nora sleep in separate beds in full pajamas with dressing robe and gown, there is no question that they are giddyingly in love with each other and present as a passionate couple.

The conclusion of “Murder, My Sweet,” although satisfying, takes a major departure from the novelist’s vision. Again, needing to satisfy the censors of the time, the character wrap up are quite different. Some “bad guys” in the novel are still walking around when the last page is turned. The Hays Code wanted audiences to see that crime not only doesn’t pay, but exacts a price. We never see the bullets fly (too violent) but we see the results. And who does the “cleaning up” and how they are manipulated so nobody gets an easy way out are somewhat vague. A final twist is the movie’s version of a happy ending, although working well for the movie, may not have been exactly as Chandler would have written it.

The is no question that if you watched “Murder, My Sweet” you know you are watching the story behind Farewell, My Lovely. It is faster paced, you might think you missed something when you went to re-butter the popcorn, and at the end you could be saying, “oh, yeah, I can see that,” but it’s clearly the same story. It’s just not the same.

Is it a bad thing that movie adaptations deviate from their source materials? Not always. When nothing but the title and a character name are all that are recognizable you get the sense the studio or production company know they have a dog of a story and the only way they stand a chance to make money is to buy a popular title. But a good story in the hands of talented screen writers, especially if they are source writers themselves, will show through regardless of constraints placed by the questionable morals police or to the keep it short so they don’t get bored police.

To quite somebody from some book or movie, “It’s all good!” (But it wouldn’t kill you to read the book.)

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* Murder, My Sweet was not the first screen adaptation, nor the last, nor was the screen the only adapted medium of Farewell, My Lovely. Although the latest adaptation was made in 1975, it still was subject to significant changes for time and cultural references.

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Move It!

Michael 5 Comments

A couple of days ago I was talking my regular morning walk when I passed a young man loading a U-Haul trailer. Not an unusual site in an apartment complex parking lot. People are always moving in or out. I suppose I made more of a mental note about it because it was the middle of the month and that, although still not unusual, is less usual that it would have been two weeks later. Maybe that’s why my brain went into overtime thinking of moves I’ve made over the years.

There are some people who have never moved. I know at least one family where at least one offspring has lived in the same house through what it now the fourth generation. And there others I know who have moved multiple times in a year, one particular other who moved three times in one particular year. I think I fall neatly in the middle. In my first six years of adult life I had six different addresses. In the next thirty I had one. (Actually, let’s call it one and a half as I maintained a small apartment on the opposite side of the state to lessen what would have otherwise been a killer commute. But that’s a story for a different post. I’ll make a note of it.) Since then I have moved along through two additional addresses. If you are one of the ones who have never moved, I’m not so sure I can say you’re one of the lucky ones. Moving can be an adventure and some adventures are pretty – umm, adventurous.  If you’re one of the ones who has moved and it has never involved a drive it yourself truck or pull it yourself trailer, then indeed you are one of the lucky ones!

My first couple of moves were easily handled by the back seat and trunk of my car. Granted that car was a 1976 Monte Carlo that had more interior room than some of today’s trucks have cargo volume. The trunk swallowed a console television set with room, lots of room to spare, as long as I didn’t mind barreling down the highway with the trunk lid raised. I believe it was move #3 that was the first to require a more traditional heavy hauler, in the form of a small boxy U-Haul trailer tacked onto the rear bumper of the Monte Carlo’s successor, a shiny white Thunderbird that had oodles of amenities but barely enough room in its trunk for a decent early 80s stereo. These were all simple, “get from one side of town to the other” type moves that barely registered to the neighbors that somebody was moving in or out. Not the type where a large truck with a crew of uniformed workmen ready to pack, lift, and carry any and everything put in front of them. That will be coming. But not yet.

The next move was the first that involved a truck. A big truck, smaller than a full blown moving van but bigger than a standard cargo van type truck. But no packers. No lifters or loaders. No drivers. Just a big truck. And me. And the then Mrs. And a dog. So, me. Now this trip involved a move! A cross country move. Well, a cross half country move, from Pennsylvania to central Texas. One thousand four hundred miles over three days. Me in the truck with nearly everything we owned. The then Mrs. and the dog in the brand new red T-Bird Turbo coupe with the snack bag. This was pre-cell phone days. The only way to communicate on the road was with walkie talkies or CB radios. We opted for the CB set-ups, anticipating being always in contact with each other, coordinating rest stops, food stops, and sleep stops. In reality, the only times on day one we were within range of each other were during the radio check in front of soon to be former residence and at the pre-determined first night stop, a Days Inn, 480 miles west and 150 minutes behind schedule. And so it went for the next 4 days. Yes, we modified our planned daily mileage and driving times significantly, swapping 300 miles a day for 5 days into the place of the definitely overachieving initial plan of 500 miles over 3 days.

It was a few years after then that time came to move back in the other direction, and remembering the joys of the earlier trip across half of the country, I opted for the fullest of full services available. We didn’t even have to lift a tape gun to seal any of boxes that we didn’t fill. The most strenuous thing I did for that move was sign a check. Everything was packed, loaded, and hauled 1400 miles east without any work done by yours very truly. Everything. Including the bag of garbage sitting beside the garage door waiting to be carried to curb upon our departure.

The moves since then were of a hybrid nature. I packed and unpacked and the stuff in the middle was handled by a small crew of professionals and real moving vans. Not as many good stories came from those moves, no stories at all I think. That was okay with me. I had plenty to talk about from other more eventful moves, even if there were half a lifetime ago.

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Two Rights Make a Wrong

Michael 4 Comments

Quite some time ago, actually nearly 4 years ago I wrote of the madman who gunned down 13 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue. I don’t recall how many rounds he fired from his assault weapon that he had the right to bear but it was enough that eleven of the thirteen were perforated sufficiently to die quite dead before help arrived. He who did the shooting has yet to come to trial. Those that know are saying a trial might begin in the spring of 2023. He has been exercising his rights to challenging this or that or asking for certain reviews and considerations. At the time there was much support for the victims and their families and much publicity of the public support for the victims. No different than at any of the mass shootings periodically experience. We say we hate hate and we hate haters, then a week later the local football team wins or loses and something takes over the headlines and we forgot what we were supposed to hate. Among the talk of hating haters, very little talk of love is mentioned. It was when I published that post was that I added this picture to my blog’s footer. (I don’t know how many scroll down that far to see it and if you read this in your email or your WordPress reader, you’d never even know it was there.)  

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But this post isn’t about the insanity of mass killings, the insanity of the right to bear arms, the insanity of the legal system. It’s not even about the sanity of what loving your neighbor might do to combat the insanity of hating everybody instead. No, this post is about the insanity of the average Joe (or Jo) of expecting our “rights” to be always right.

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a particular Tweet was published expressing the Tweeter’s remorse at not knowing the Queen was ill or the Tweeter would have wished her a long, painful, and tortuous road to death. It seemed cruel that someone would say so, but right or not, it is her right to say as she wishes. It also seemed inflammatory so the monitors at Twitter removed it. Within a few hours, hundreds or Tweets were published, and petitions filed supporting the Tweet and the Tweeter and condemning Twitter for removing the message. But here again, right or not, it was Twitter’s right. (Before anybody jumps on the “what about free speech” bandwagon, know that all those rights in the Bill of same are guaranteed from meddling by the government. Private parties, whether individual or corporate all have the same rights.)

This week is Banned Books Week in the USA. Each year the American Library Association celebrates the right to free expression and and directs attention to that right by challenging the parents and politicians who challenge certain publications as having no moral value and as such should be removed from libraries, schools, or anywhere children might be exposed to questionable content. A “top ten” list of of the most challenged pieces is compiled each year and published on their website. What is interesting is that many of the books are non-fiction. I’m not certain how somebody challenges the propriety of something that just is, but that is their right to question and ask for something to be taken out of the schools, just as it is the right of those who develop syllabi to use their education and experience to prepare their lesson plans and those charged with maintaining libraries to select writings from all diverse sources.

In 7 weeks, Americans will march to the polls to cast their votes for 36 governors, 33 senators, and all of the members of the House of Representatives, along with a variety of state, county, and local offices. It’s hard to tell opponents from their ads. Regardless of party, the advertising party is for the “hardworking people” and the opposition is “too radical,” “too extreme,’ or both. How is it that both sides can be right. They can’t, but the both have the right to say what they will, and others have the right to challenge them.

Rights are funny things. Somewhere along the way, in the effort to satisfy everybody, what is right seems to have gotten lost in defending the Bill of Rights. Or maybe the capitalization should be the other way. Maybe what is Right is more important that what rights are guaranteed. Can’t decide which right is right? Take a look at the bottom of my posts. Maybe the answer is there.

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Fourth (million) and ten

Michael 2 Comments

I can’t help it. It’s been too long. I am going there. I have to do it. It’s time to fuel the fire. So let’s open the controversy right now. I don’t like football.

There, I said it. I don’t like football.

I don’t see the point. There’s no real skill involved, no sort of strategy, and it’s so boring! They budget 3-1/2 hours of TV time to play a 60 minute game, that has a total of maybe 8-10 minutes of action. Bowling has more action. Even golf has more action and I think that’s a waste masquerading as sport also.

But boy people go nuts for that “game.” Billions of dollars change hands every year because of it. According the BetMGM the average team salary of just the players is over $188 million. The minimum salary per player for 2022 is $705,000.  Let than sink in. Everybody out there who will make that much this year, please raise your hand. Anybody? No? Okay, how about this.  That $705,000 is $45,000 more than last year’s minimum salary. Who out there got a $45,000 raise this year for being the lowest paid employee? Hmm. How about, how many of you make $45,000 a year. Ah, finally, I see some hands.  NFL practice squad players earn a minimum of $11,500 per week, which comes to $207,000 for 18 weeks of work. These are the guys the teams use to play act as the opposing team during practices and possibly develop into “full time” team members. Think of them as football interns.

Of course, players aren’t the only ones on the field during a game. Also roaming around between the goal posts are the 8 referees officiating each game (technically 1 referee, 1 umpire, 5 judges and 1 replay official). They make an average of $205,000 per year. And we won’t even talk about the coaches. (But the lowest paid NFL head coach will make $3 million, but I don’t want to talk about it.)   

Enough about what people make playing the game. What about what people make playing on the game. ESPN estimates over 45.5 million people will bet more than $12 billion this year. The teams will split about $270 million of that.

And then there are some people who actually go to the games. They will spend about $10 million for tickets which represent only 1.25% of a team’s revenue. Three billion dollars will be spent on NFL merchandise, 2/3 of that on jerseys. It seems you aren’t allowed into a stadium without wearing a replica jersey. In case the team needs an emergency fill in? 

You might think I am bitter about how much money is generated by a group of people who were not finalists in their high schools “most likely to succeed” voting nor had to worry about which way to flip their mortarboard tassels. (If you understood that reference you probably aren’t an NFL football player.) No, I just can’t figure out how football became the American National Religion. Twenty-two men squat across from each other over a not round ball, officially a “prolate spheroid” (seriously – look it up), and after a series of grunts, they hurl themselves into each other with much banging and clanging of protective equipment. After everyone falls down, they pick themselves up, congratulate themselves on a fine display of testosterone, mill about for a while, then line up and do it again.

Twenty-one million TV viewers tuned into the NFL opener between Buffalo and Los Angeles last Thursday. That’s down from the 25 million who watched last year’s opening game. Hmm. I wonder. Maybe those 4 million people who have seen the light.

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No, not yet

Michael Leave a comment

Across the USA and Canada, billions of people are celebrating Labor and or Labour Day. So there are probably millions of bloggers publishing the collective histories of the holidays. (Do you suppose there was some collusion that two countries came up with the same holiday within months of each other? It couldn’t have been coincidence, could it?) The few who don’t believe in organized labor but are more than happy to take the extra day off – with pay even – are celebrating the last day of summer. Now you see, that’s the one I don’t believe in.

Blog ArtFor as long as I can remember, which stretches back almost to halfway through the last century, Memorial Day has always been the “unofficial start of summer” and Labor Day its “unofficial ” end. Even the meteorologists get in on it, calling September 1 the start of Meteorologic Fall. According to my calendar, Fall doesn’t happen until the 22d day of this month and September 1 was National Tofu Day.

Yes I firmly believe Labor Day is NOT the end of summer. We might have furniture sales, we may frown on wearing white, and the pools might be closed, but the sun is still high in the sky, leaves are still high in the trees, and daytime temperatures are high enough to threaten heat stroke. That last point will be made several times, no, several thousand times over as high school and college athletes fall to the ground under the stifling weight and closeness of helmets and other protective gear in heat related injuries requiring no opponent contact, and marching band musicians and performers will do likewise in their often plumage featured uniforms designed for the coolness of autumn and the coldness of winter, football being a fall sport that often stretches into the still next season. We may not wear white but delivery and parcel service drivers everywhere will still be wearing short pants, and female TV news anchors won’t be giving up their sleeveless tops just yet. The pools and water parks might close but the lakes and swimming holes are still in business.

No, Labor Day is NOT the end of summer. We might be inundated with pumpkin spice everything and the food magazines may be featuring desserts with the classic fall warming spices, but in the backyard gardens the pumpkins are still only softball size on their vines next to the ripening tomato plants, loaded pepper plants, and never ending zucchini vines. Yard care still requires a lawn mower while the leaf rake and blowers stay hung on their hooks in the backyard garden sheds. Apple cider flavored donut holes may be featured in bakeries but cider presses are still idle waiting for the featured ingredient to ripen naturally.

So…Labor Day is the end of summer? Uh, no, not yet. Once again man makes up some oddball “rule”and then wonders why nature won’t follow suit. Well for me, I’m sticking with Mother Nature. Labor Day is NOT the end of summer. Stay tuned though. In a little less than a month you can consider having that tune up done on your snow blower. 

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Based on a story by…

Michael 4 Comments

I don’t know why but last weekend I was thinking about Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Alfred Hitchcock. Not necessarily in that order. As I’ve written before, I don’t know why I think the things I do, but I do and that is enough to make me think, and then think that I’d rather not want to think about it.

It all started with me re-reading The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which got me thinking about how a movie and a book can be so different. A movie and a 600 page novel, an epic, the proverbial tome may differ because who could get all that detail into a movie people would be willing to sit through, except perhaps Gone With the Wind, but that has its own problems. But with Ben, or BB as I like to call him, that’s a short story, and still Eric Roth managed to write a 2-1/2 hour movie based on a tale that took me a fifth of that time to read, with a bathroom break thrown in. How did he do that! The answer is, he didn’t. Roth and story writing partner Robin Swicord wrote a different story with a title and a character of the same name. It’s a good movie. It’s a good short story. They just aren’t the same. And that’s been going on pretty much since we’ve had movies.

William Faulkner’s 1944 treatment of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not does the same thing. A character or two are mentioned in both book and movie, and those plus the title are the total of what remains of the story the movie was based on. Now the 1950 adaption, “The Breaking Point,” by screenwriter Ranald MacDougall is much closer to the Hemingway classic. It’s on a different ocean and there’s an extra couple of characters, but it’s recognizable as being a story based on. But does that make it better than the 1944 classic or just different?

You can’t say that Faulkner, who was no slouch in the book writing department, was flexing his writing muscles, because he quite faithfully followed Chandler’s The Big Sleep, changing only what needed changed to make the movie acceptable to those who moderated the 1946 version of the production code (and to make it acceptable to those who wanted to see Bogart and Bacall become Bogart and Bacall). Perhaps that is why when Chandler took to the task of writing the screenplay to Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, he stayed as close as he could to the original story. Oh wait, you’re going to say, they aren’t close at all. You might even say in the movie, the strangers are on an entirely different track than the one the train chugs along on in the psychologically thrilling novel. The “Strangers” presented by Alfred Hitchcock that we see is not the version Chandler wrote. That script ran afoul of the censors (and to a large extent, of Alfred) and was almost entirely rewritten by Czenzi Ormomde. 

When Chandler and co-screenwriter Billy Wilder adapted James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, they took much liberty with the original story, changing names and timelines, and most radically, they added a new character, the insurance investigator, which created a completely different story.  

“Double Indemnity” and “Strangers on a Train,” a double dose of two books, two movies, four stories, none of them bad but none of them based on any other. So maybe when you have great writers adapting great works of writing, you will get great results, just not always recognizable as the story they are based on. 

Now let’s talk about what Leon Uris and Dalton Trumbo did with “The Exodus.”

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Blog Art (25)Everybody is more engaged and more fun to be around when they feel valued, and they feel most valued when they are treated like people. Read why we say good manners never go out of style at www.roamcare.org. While you’re there, check out the rest of our site, then share us with your friends and family!

 

More things I think I think, I think

Michael 2 Comments

Sometimes I think those things that I think and I think what the heck am I thinking? For example for instance like:

We all have had red towels or blue jeans or black shirts that we will not under any circumstances wash with anything else the first maybe 3 or 4 times until the color stops bleeding because we don’t want to pull pink, or robin’s egg blue, or gray clothes from the washer. But we don’t do that with white. Most white textiles don’t start out that white. That’s a dye that makes them white but we happily toss them in the wash right from the get go. Every now and then as we are we sorting and folding and hanging and doing whatever in order to out away those freshly laundered clothes we will look at a load and say, darn, these shirts/jeans/towels/socks and underwear are fading.  Has anybody out there ever considered that maybe they aren’t fading but those new white jeans you tossed in the load had bled white dye? Just wondering.

Or make this for like example:

Remember when I talked about my microwave being a real nag. It still is and it still beeps periodically whenever I’m not in a hurry to take out whatever it was that I put in there. And I asked, who forgets they put food in the microwave? And then I answered myself. Stoners man. Well, I’ve been so intent on making sure I get stuff out of the microwave in a timely manner before it beeps at me, that I never noticed when I open the door, it beeps at me. Why? I know I’m opening the door. Do I have to be warned that I’m opening the microwave door? Who else would care that the microwave is being opened? And then it dawned on me…stoners, man! Those same guys who would stick a bag of popcorn in the microwave and in 90 seconds completely forget about it, are the ones who would want to know if somebody else is making off with their popcorn!

Or sometimes like this:

Regular readers, or even irregular readings if they read the right posts, know I like old movies. Old like 1930s, 1940s, in a pinch maybe early 1950s movies. As far as I’m concerned, and as far as anybody else with half a brain knows, they were just better back then. Really long term readers know I like to read movie credits. They were better back then too. They were certainly easier to read. A casual movie goer has no idea who did the accounting or catering or painted the scenery for Casablanca. As it should be. It seemed sometime in the 60s, when movie making took a decisive down turn in quality, they also wanted the viewer to know everybody who came close to the camera, even the guy who drove the truck that pulled the trailers the movie stars hung out in when they weren’t in front of the camera. It was sometime then they also made a monumental change in the credits besides just crediting everybody and their proverbial brothers. And this one made sense. The copyright date. Sometime in the 60s or maybe 70s, they started publishing the copyright date in Arabic numerals. Those are the numbers like 1,2, 3 (which is weird because they were “invented” in 6th century India) rather than I, II, III (you know, Roman numerals, which oddly really were invented around Rome, or roughly the area that modern day Tuscany occupies). You can read the entire credit crawl of In a Lonely Place and never lose your place until you get to the copyright. Then it’s “hmm, let’s see, MCM, that’s easy 1900. Okay now, XLI… dammit, come back! I almost had it…wait, that’s too many characters anyway. It came out in ’50, that’s just L. Or did it. Oh H-E-double hockey sticks, now I have to go look it up.” Even old books published copyright dates in Roman Numerals. Why couldn’t they have used real numbers then? Was there a law? We got a bunch of other crazy laws, so maybe so.

And then that started me thinking about crazy laws but we’ll let them pass for now.

If you’re curious…In a Lonely Place indeed was released in 1950 (MCML) but the screenplay was copyrighted in 1949 (MCMXLIX).

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The Ignoble Experiment

Michael 3 Comments

From 1920 to 1933, America conducted its “Noble Experiment.” I’ve never been able to dig up a good reason for that moniker, yet every written piece on Prohibition in the United States makes that reference. It took over 2 years for the required number of states to approve the 18th Amendment banning the “manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors” but conspicuously not their consumption. On the back end, 10 months and 10 days were all that was needed to adopt the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition. (Fun facts, the two amendments in between both involve elections – sort of. The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote (1933), and the 20th Amendment moved the inauguration of elected federal officials from March to January, and limited the President’s term in office to a maximum of 10 years (1935). Funner Fact, the 20th Amendment is the only amendment to the Constitution that has not be challenged in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.)

So why this history lesson? I’ve been struck by the similarities of what went on with alcohol then to what goes on with marijuana now. Although you may not realize it, and movies depicting life in the wild west might suggest otherwise, America wasn’t a drunken wasteland prior to Prohibition. Alcohol was a part of daily life and contributed to life’s problems, but not to the extent temperance supporters had suggested. The final push for Prohibition came not as a result on the revivalists activities but ostensibly to shift the use of grains to the manufacture of food verses drink during the first world war.  In fact, twelve states had already adopted prohibition laws before the 18th Amendment was out before Americans for ratification.

That doesn’t mean Prohibition was universally accepted. For a while, ten states refused to enforce prohibition laws after ratification, and Prohibition never did result in a total ban on alcohol. Sacramental and ritual wines were excluded and any individual could, on a physician’s order, buy up to 10 ounces of alcohol as often as every 10 days at a licensed pharmacy. (It is probably just coincidental that the Walgreen pharmacy chain grew from twenty stores to over 500 in the 1920s.  Breweries were permitted to manufacture and distribute “near beer” that contained less than 0.5% alcohol. Distilleries sold malt syrup and wineries grape concentrates with instructions for home dilution and fermentation. If the westerns depicting bawdy saloons were overly fanciful, movies featuring Prohibition era speakeasies may be have overly kind. Black market alcohol was estimated to be a $100 million business (equal to about $1.5 billion today).

The repeat of prohibition was strictly economic. Prohibition had cost the federal government $11 billion in tax revenue ($191 billion today). But the repeal was also not universally accepted. Several states maintain prohibition laws, the last, Mississippi, finally reversed its prohibition status in 1966. There are still to this day various counties in ten separate states that continue to ban the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol.

Where are the comparisons to marijuana? There aren’t many except for a few million people clamoring for its legalization, states unevenly enforcing federal prohibition against it, local jurisdictions “decriminalizing” it, shyster shamans touting it as a medicinal, unregulated relative compounds sneaking their way into the marketplace, and states drooling over lost tax revenue that they never lost because they never had it in the first place.

You might assume from that last paragraph that I’m not a fan of legalizing marijuana. Yes and no. Are there medicinal benefits. There are indeed benefits of cannabinoids but not of the whole plant. And there are means to extract these cannabinoids, refine them, and compound them into consistently reproducible absorbable forms. And they are in fact already on the market and no I don’t mean CBD (although that has some limited use). For the rest of it. No. Alcohol and marijuana other are both addictive hallucinogens and any purported medicinal benefit from either is related to that. There is nothing that a bowl of marijuana will do that a shot of whiskey can’t. Except for one thing. I’ll explain it to you very simply.

Let’s say the two of us are sitting on my porch. I want a beer and you don’t. I drink the beer. Nothing happens to you.  You might have to listen to me sing the entire ABBA canon a cappella, but once we finish that you can get up and walk or drive home unimpaired. Let’s swap out a joint or a bowl for that can or bottle. Given enough time imbibing in your marijuana and I will be just as likely to test positive at the next random drug test on the job.

Don’t believe in passive absorption? Go ask a flight attendant with lung cancer who never smoked. But you better find one quick. There are a great many of them who will be among the 7,300 will die from passive smoke related lung cancer this year. Next year too. And so on and so on and so on.

Do we need another Noble Experiment? That’s not for me to decide. I’m not a legislator. Sort of like it shouldn’t be for a legislator to decide what makes for good medicine. Cheers.

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