January 2008 archive

How do I talk about Cary Grant without using all the expected words… suave, sophisticated, sexy, charming, dapper, handsome, dimple-in-chin, tall, great in a suit, great voice/cadence/rhythm, great walk. And fucking funny. A vaudevillian heart more than a heart throb… he could fall, tumble, crash into things, drop things, and act like a nerd. His confused was both endearing and comical. He had a darkness as well. It always took me by surprise; it was incredibly intriguing.

But you knew he smelled good. If your nose could only find its way to his neck and nestle right below his ear. You knew he could kiss… every time I saw him, it was easy to imagine kissing him. But not just serious kissing. Flirty kissing. Laughing kissing. Eyes wide open kissing.

And… He was one of the best actors I’ve ever seen.

Do you think I had a thing for Cary Grant?  And I don’t care if he was gay or bi. No bearing on how I felt, well, still feel. And you want to know something even funnier? ej is a little Cary Grant-like. Not in looks. But the nerd part for sure and he’s funny and charming. Mostly, it’s those Grantesque “everything that can go wrong will go wrong” moments. Like going into an American supermarket and asking for chocolate bars. the guy told him they didn’t have any. of course, he eventually found them and then, in true ej style, his voice pitched as he complained that not only were there chocolate bars, but there was a whole aisle of them…  it’s hard for him to accept that sometimes, people don’t understand his accent.

I got to see Cary Grant once. He was going around the country, sitting on stages small and large, and answering people’s questions. “An Evening with Cary Grant” I think he called. When I saw him (he was 82 then), Liz Smith introduced him. And guess what? I was the first one he pointed to in the audience to ask a question.

Here’s the way I remember it…

“Mr. Grant… Cary. I just wanna hear you say my name.” And the audience erupted with laughter… he smiled, put his hands over his eyes to cut the spot lights to look at me.

“What’s your name?”

Fighting the swoon… i said p… pfiore8. And he said, “Hello pfiore8. How are you this evening?”

One of my best ever moments…

1. The victims of Hurricane Katrina are thinking big — really big. According to the Associated Press, Katrina’s Victims sue for $3 quadrillion. “A whopping $3,014,170,389,176,410 is the dollar figure so far sought from some of the largest claims filed against the federal government over damage from the failure of levees and flood walls following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane… For the sake of perspective: A mere $1 quadrillion would dwarf the U.S. gross domestic product… was $13.2 trillion in 2007.” Our national debt is now over $9.2 trillion.

2. While Iran isn’t the most trust-inspiring nation, the Bush administration isn’t well-known for their honesty and ablity to tell the truth either. So, it comes as no surprise that, according to The New York Times, Iran accuses the Bush administration of faking Persian Gulf video. “‘Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about the navy vessels, the archive, and sounds on it are fabricated,’ an unnamed Revolutionary Guard official said… The video and audio were recorded separately and then matched, Naval and Pentagon officials said Tuesday… The video runs just over four minutes and, according to Pentagon officials, was shot from the bridge of the guided missile destroyer Hopper.”

   Here’s the video… kind of low production values… reminds me of those ‘bin Laden’ videos. What do you think?

3. The Los Angeles Times reports Conservative Supreme Court cool to voter ID challenge. “he U.S. Supreme Court, hearing arguments in a partisan election-law dispute, gave no hint today that it would strike down the nation’s strictest voter identification law. Democrats in Indiana challenged the law as unconstitutional, saying the Republican-backed measure would deter thousands of poor, minority and elderly voters from casting ballots. Registered voters in Indiana without a valid driver’s license or passport would not have their ballots counted. But the justices, with the conservatives leading the way, said the Democrats had failed to prove the measure would have much impact.” Gee… color me surprised!

4. Here’s a fun story… the Washington Post reports In India, gods rule the ‘toon’ universe. For “eight-year-old Tejas Vohra, one of his favorite superheroes is a cool cartoon version of Hanuman, the monkey-headed Hindu god… In ‘The Return of Hanuman,’ the adored deity is reborn as a boy who goes to school in khaki shorts, uses a computer, combats pollution and, most important, smashes the bad guys to pulp… ‘It was awesome to see the gods laughing, singing and flying planes. The fights were really good, and in the end Hanuman sets everything right.’ A number of haloed Hindu gods and goddesses have debuted in the frenetic world of animation over the past five years. Their appearance marks a shift from a decades-long period in which Indian children grew up almost exclusively on American TV and movie characters”.

Also posted at Invictus

The “dark nexus” of the world is where its most secretive business is conducted, such as the bribes and secret payoffs that Sibel Edmonds recently revealed were behind a nuclear proliferation ring that involved many top U.S. officials. According to a recent compelling article by Chris Floyd (whose descriptor above I have quoted), this “shadowlands” is “where covert operations, criminal networks, terrorism, high finance and state policy mingle, and battle, in profitable murk.” I believe Peter Dale Scott famously called this essential, if diabolical aspect of modern history, “deep politics.”

Floyd likens the recent Edmonds tale to that of the scandal around BCCI, “the ‘Bank of Credit and Commercial International,’ a supposed financial group that a U.S. Senate investigation called ‘one of the largest criminal enterprises in history'”.

My candidate lost last night!  I’m so depressed, I can barely function.  

I guess the voters of New Iovadalina just don’t get it.  Spineless bastards must have lied in the pre-primary polling.  

The only reason we lost is because the other guys outspent us three to one.

The only reason we lost is because the media likes the other candidate better.  

Welcome to the grand illusion

Come on in and see whats happening

^{(tinou bao flickr creative commons)}

Here’s something sort of interesting….

Empire Burlesque must read

H/t to Inky99

For the last two years, younger women listened to men explain how cold, calculating and manipulative Hillary Clinton actually is; older women made dinner for their families, sat with their knitting, or worked the late shift, and sometimes watched and listened, too.

Professional and working moms balancing infants on one knee and a bag of groceries on the other while watching Tweety and other six-figure earners explain to them how Hillary didn’t really deserve an equal place at the table. Men, as well, watched and listened to the spew.

And then, on January 8th, 2007, these women and men voted.

When the dust cleared the first woman in American history with a serious shot at winning the White House had won the nation’s first primary. Pundits reeled and moaned.

‘What about Hillary’s negatives?’, they asked. ‘Everybody hates Hillary’. Few even now have a clue what all this Hillary hate actually means, which is simply:

99% of the people around Hillary would happily take a bullet for her.

All that hate over the years has built up an enormous sense of loyalty, in many. And the reason the talking heads don’t understand that is simple: many of these fighters are women.

In Tweety’s world courage always wears a cod-piece and sounds like John McCain.

Susan B. Anthony would understand.

Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan and the like, dedicated only to their own careers, never will.

When the talking heads figure that out, the news may once again be worth watching.