Well, only if you care about me as much as I do - which would be troubling...
Today, I put on offer on the cutest house ever in the entire world!!! A house - a whole house, with a yard, and a basement, and a porch, and fruit trees, and a roof, and things that I'll probably have to paint and repair and.....sorry, hyperventilated a bit there. It's a daunting idea, but the house is just perfect for me and my kitties! The seller has accepted my offer, but it's another short sale (I'm starting to wonder if there's any other kind), so it's up to the bank, now. That's cool, I still have to wrap my brain around owning a HOUSE instead of a condo...
So, keep your fingers crossed for me, please!
Okay, back to your regularly scheduled programming...
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157 comments:
Aaaaah, but what *kind* of fruit trees? And no attic?
See, that makes all the difference.
;)
Good luck, my dear hostess. My fingers are crossed.
wv:catick
What JM's kitties will produce until they're used to their new surroundings
Congrats, JMF! I think in the long run, a house will please you more than a condo would, despite the responsibilities of repair, etc. Good luck!
wv: solarrha = sun-induced trots
that is awesome, FH! congratulations! a basement and everything, wow...big step. keeping my fingers crossed for you. :)
Don't forget the taxes (ours are a defacto second mortgage, and bet that your real estate broker is underestimating them), though won't you get all kinds of tax breaks this year? Hope the mortgage is 30 years fixed.
If not expect the rates to be readjusted upwards, and make sure that you're not being steered to a variable rate when you qualify for a good low fixed one. But you probably have all kinds of financial savvy well beyond the simplest advice. Don't let the bank screw you. Report in Huffington Post a couple weeks ago that banks are holding up pretty good short sales because they don't want to report the losses on their books.
Oh, and "no one", before you respond in your usual ignorant way, yes I realize your post was intended to be supportive.
So a rebuttal to my post will not be necessary.
But your habit of phrasing things like maneating cockroaches are right outside our doorstep, tends to turn people off.
Even when you mean well.
Perhaps going to City College and taking Emily Post classes would help.
Either that or watching more SESAME STREET.
Closing a deal is a time for alertness. People are pressuring you on all sides. Everything has to be checked and double checked. We went through this at the top of the boom. I went to two accountants. I found errors in our closing costs. We were steered to an overly expensive insurance carrier. If I can save someone from a surprise tax burden or a bad loan structure, why wouldn't I do that? Plus, I am very interested in why banks are refusing to accept what appear to be very reasonable short sales. The bank may do that in this case, and I think a buyer with a reasonable offer should have recourse or some way to pressure the banks as they create delays. So we should talk about that.
You're the one who needs the class, TedSpe. You really do.
Your entire post sounds like a shyster lawyer charging people to make a deal they could easily do themselves.
Especially nowadays.
Which, by the way, is illegal. So any advice you give, be sure it's free.
Yes, banks are more cautious. They're trying to avoid morons. Including themselves.
Before? They embraced them.
Now? They're scared. For so many reasons.
JM is obviously not a moron.
You were screwed in your mortgage deal?
Uh huh.
Now you want to give advice?
Great.
By the way.
This conversation is over.
This conversation never began because you don't understand what's going on.
Your comment on the banks indicates that you don't understand what you are talking about. FH is not talking about a bank making a loan to her; she's talk about the bank that owns the house agreeing to a price below the value of the debt still owed on the home.
Now the point is that banks seem to be balking at very reasonable short sale offers even as we the taxpayers are bailing them out. So I was trying to raise the question of what FH can do to pressure the bank to accept a reasonable offer. I am offering no advice. I am raising a question.
Now you really do need that class. We weren't screwed because I double checked everything. And it's important to keep maximum alertness.
And we bought a home that is holding its value. This is how we did it: in the boom times buyers were going for shiny things; we looked for a home without a shiny kitchen and bathrooms and made sure that we were able to buy it at a steep enough discount to compensate for all the costs to do improvements. The home had a new roof which was more expensive than a renovated bathroom, but people did not put proper value on it because it was not bright and shiny. We bought at a dollar/square foot price that is still holding up very well.
So for example if FH is offering a price that is quite reasonable, perhaps she can talk the bank into accepting it. Or perhaps she can show that even if her offer is a bit low from a square footage perspective, it's more than reasonable considering the improvements she'll have to do. SO if she documents that, perhaps she can push the bank.
Just brainstorming.
I want to thank you guys for your good wishes - they are greatly appreciated!
Hartal - I wouldn't dream of doing anything other than a fixed rate, 30 year loan. I'm going to try to go the escrow route for monthly tax & insurance payments, to spread the burden throughout the year. And, yes, thanks to PrezBO I should be getting some sort of tax credit at year end, as a first-time home buyer. I won't qualify for the state's credit, as it is most definitely NOT a new home.
TedSpe - thank you for coming to my defense. I understand your reaction to Hartal's tone, but believe me - I will listen to any advice that is offered. I probably won't take 90% of it, but I'd be a fool not to try to learn from the experiences of others. And, thank you for the kind offer of help, and your e-mail address. That is very generous of you - and be careful, I just might take you up on it.
Trees: Apple (don't know what kind), guava, pomegranate, persimmon, another fruit, also an artichoke plant, roses & some freesia (sp?). As my co-worker put it, I'll be a 'faux farmer'! It really is the cutest little house (not even 1,200 sq ft), but I love it to pieces and as soon as it's mine, I'll share pictures.
WT - Ted's wv was my favorite, but then I read yours! That may just be one for the ages!!!
Oh. Let's break this down.
For the sake of realizing there's a moron trying to help someone but, based on their actual experience, may be hurting people, primarily our dear hostess, let's disect the idiot's last post. Dipshit's posts will put in ""'s and my repsonses will be sans same:
"This conversation never began because you don't understand what's going on."
Immediately, an insult. An assumption that I'm a moron. Mr. Tact.
"Your comment on the banks indicates that you don't understand what you are talking about. FH is not talking about a bank making a loan to her; she's talk about the bank that owns the house agreeing to a price below the value of the debt still owed on the home."
Again, assuming I'm a moron. I said she's dealing with a bank. Dipshit just wrote she's dealing with a bank that is making a loan for another bank.
It's a fucking BANK. Either way you look at it. Our dear hostess is dealing with a BANK!
Idiot!
Let's move on.
"Now the point is that banks seem to be balking at very reasonable short sale offers even as we the taxpayers are bailing them out."
Uh huh. And which banks are being bailed out by we the taxpayers? What BANK has been bailed out? Do you understand the difference between the TARP and a bailout? No? I'm not going to explain this to you. But just to get down to the brass tacks, banks WANT to make loans. That's how they make money. Moron.
"So I was trying to raise the question of what FH can do to pressure the bank to accept a reasonable offer."
Were you? It sounded more like you got fucked. No bank is going to "pressure" our hostess on anything. The way banks make money is by making loans. And right now they're desperate for ideal individuals such as our gracious hostess. They're already to bend over backwards for her as long as she doesn't have a fucked up credit background.
Moving on.
"I am offering no advice. I am raising a question."
Really? Where was the question?
"Now you really do need that class. We weren't screwed because I double checked everything. And it's important to keep maximum alertness."
Okay, that's just some sort of James Bond villian movie diolougue to insult me. It has nothing to do with anything. But it sounds...ooooh...sinister
"And we bought a home that is holding its value."
Where?
"This is how we did it: in the boom times buyers were going for shiny things; we looked for a home without a shiny kitchen and bathrooms and made sure that we were able to buy it at a steep enough discount to compensate for all the costs to do improvements. The home had a new roof which was more expensive than a renovated bathroom, but people did not put proper value on it because it was not bright and shiny. We bought at a dollar/square foot price that is still holding up very well."
That's a good paragraph. A little long and you used the word "shiny" twice but I'll let that go. But it held no depth to our hostess's situation. Okay.
Here we go.
"So for example if FH is offering a price that is quite reasonable, perhaps she can talk the bank into accepting it. Or perhaps she can show that even if her offer is a bit low from a square footage perspective, it's more than reasonable considering the improvements she'll have to do. SO if she documents that, perhaps she can push the bank."
And that was the biggest waste of time, and very long paragraph, you wrote.
Pretty much, here's your advice.
Hey! JM (or as you call her, FH) Make the best deal you can! And take pictures!
WOW!!
You're a fucking financial genius.
God bless you!
Anyways, JM. The offer still stands
And if he does help you presumably with lottery or inheritance money--is there any evidence that he understands what a short sale is?-- do remember that you have me to thank for it. In making the offer, TedSpe is after all trying to show how different he is than me. OK let me help this along: FH, I hope your dreams are crushed. What the hell do you have to say about that TedSpe?
ps I thought going the escrow route means you have to pay the insurance upfront, but I don't remember now. And how are the banks talked into accepting short sales?
freesia smells really nice. so does pink jasmine. you should plant some of that.
in some ways I'm glad we live in a condo otherwise I'd have to be at Mr. Suza all week to get outside and mow the lawn (God, can you imagine? Just getting him to do the dishes takes a minimum of 12 hours -
Me: "dear,will you do the dishes?"
Him: "sure." ((continues playing video game))
<4 hours later, dishes still in sink>
Me: "honey, are you going to do the dishes?"
Him: "yes, I said I would."
Me: "ok, well I need to use the sink now, so if you could load the dishes, I'd appreciate it."
Him: "ok, I said I would do it, but I'm on my way out right now."
<2 hours later - I am loading the dishwasher>
Him: "I told you I would load the dishwasher...").
Snot.
Actually, I think I'm going to go rip the sheets of the bed right now so I can start the laundry. He's still sleeping. :)
"Advice I might add that would not necessarily come from me" Good to hear, Ted Spe.
Congrats Ferret. I wish you the best. Sincerely.
I'm sorry about that last few days--I behaved very badly--I'm really a nice person in real life...I hope that you can forgive me. And, I really didn't want to discuss a certain issues anymore...just for this reason.
I also hope that you can see how one person can make a difference--for better or worse.
suza - I was wondering if I could hire you. If I get the house, I will post on Monday that I need to mow the lawn on Saturday. That way, you can 'coax' me for 5 whole days, and I might just go do it.
Ok. Don't forgive me. Would you like me to leave?
Gina - sorry, I posted and left. Didn't see your post. Thank you for your good wishes, and of course I forgive you - not that it's necessary. We all have strong opinions, and can get emotional when discussing them. I just wish we could all be a little nicer to each other (TedSpe, Hartal - I'm talkin' to you!)
As for one person changing the world, I couldn't agree more!!!
My dear hostess, I am keeping my fingers crossed for you. I've never owned anything other than a single family detached house, so I can't speak to whether a house is better than a condo/townhouse, from a personal ownership perspective. It's true that condos and townhouses in the past have tended not to be as good an investment as houses. Given recent events, however, I think all bets are off, and so you should be looking at a house mainly as a place to live. If it turns out to be a good investment, so much the better.
All of the advice given here has been well-intentioned towards you, and even if some of the assumptions don't accurately reflect your particular reality (the few details you've given leave open a wide variety of possibilities), the appropriate qualifiers have been included, so I don't think you need to wonder about it, even though some of us are having a harder time than others leaving their personal issues with each other aside. If you were to sum up hartal's advice as, "You can never be too careful," you can't go wrong with that. But then again, that is the unspoken motto of almost all lawyers.
wv: hansup
(Just give the bank your money and no one gets hurt.)
Thank you, ferret. I really didn't mean those mean things I said about you. I know you're a nice person, too.
YC--did she accept your proposal?
And, yes, we do need more Hartal's--then we can have more third-world slums springing up everywhere! Destroy western civilization as we know it! We can all act like him! What a wonderful world it would be!
Personally, I think the world needs 3 billion more people like me, but then again, I'm biased. :)
Seriously, nobody's perfect. To the extent everyone here seems to have good intentions, I think we all need to cut each other some slack. Criticize the ideas, sure, but leave the personal crap out of it.
I think one of the reasons our dear hostess has been reluctant to kick anyone out is because she can see the good intentions each of us brings, despite the fact that they may get hidden when we let our baser instincts rule. I can be just as big an asshole as anyone else here, so I'm not trying to condescend to anyone. I'm just asking that we cut each other some slack on the personal issues. I realize how hard it can be, having done more than my share of indulging my vitriol, but it's worth a try, isn't it? Especially as we're giving Jean our best wishes.
Gina, did who accept what proposal?
My wv is plishfun. Already I'm in a better mood.
Maybe the solution is to not respond to attacks from certain people that seem to get some sort of satisfaction from hurting others or starting fights.
It's too bad Hartal doesn't practice his stated religion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
The woman you asked to marry you on MLS's blog. You said something like I'm an old man, but will you marry me? Who was it? AP? I've wanted to know for two years now.
Good luck, Ms. F! I bought my first piece of property in the 80s, almost by accident. The opportunity just occurred. Fifteen years later it was worth a lot more.
I went into the transaction cold. Everything happened a bit fast. I did not really understand everything related to the two notes I signed. In fact, at closing a balloon payment term in the second mortgage surprised me. I took a moment (during closing) to call my mortgage broker and to tell him how I felt about him. I stuck it out, though. In the end, the ability to refinance a few years later at a lower interest rate solved every issue. You are buying into Northern California at a good moment, I think. If you intend to keep the house for ten years or more you should be fine. (Also, I assume you know a lot more about finance than I did.)
Of course, I detest the insitution of private property. But I still remember how good it felt to live without a landlord for the first time.
The fruit trees sound delightful, too.
Gina, Hartal, didn't start a fight. I don't speak fluent Hartalese, but I believe he was advising Jean to assert herself and not let the bankers, lawyers and real estate agents fuck her over. You got a problem with that?
I'm not answering any question of yours until you answer mine first. Period.
I don't recall asking Miss Pants to marry me, but whomever it was, she apparently declined my proposal. I did ask her on her blog once if she was posting on MSM using the name Lucy Loo. You remember her don't you Gina?
On three million or billion more of any one person, I thought that the argument based on dubious evolutionary psychological theory was that only wealthy women would have an interest in quite expensive optional cloning. There is no reason for them to sacrifice half their genes for progeny, as per selfish gene theory, since they don't need to marry to get the wealth needed to ensure the survival of their children. Wealthy men may engage in cloning too, but perhaps there would be genetic advantages in reproductive sex, given their own genetic inheritance (in other words economic wealth may be more separated from genetic wealth in men). So the instinctual response to cloning in this bizarre interpretation is patriarchal in nature. Of course the wealthy woman would have to be careful not to spread the inheritance too thin.
At least this was the laughable idea of that legal superstar father son team of the Posners, I believe.
More important than being nice is trying to say something interesting, and--lucky for TedSpe and Gavone-- that would include revealing what a train wreck your mental life has become.
Hey another slum joke. Where's qua with his BF joke? A great time to be had here. Off to work.
Gina Gavone said...
Of course I remember that slut.
I wonder what ever happened to her?
She's still posting, still getting people's goats. Rumor has it, she's Amanda Pants' crazy aunt.
Oh yes, FH. I will be happy to send you "friendly reminders." In fact, it is part of my regular job to get people to agree to deliver things on dates which they subsequently blow off, despite my sweet little reminders.
I still try, though. Hope springs erternal!
:)
The downside of home ownership: When something breaks, there's no landlord to complain to--the buck stops with you.
On the other hand, when we bought our house a few years ago, we went ahead and signed up for the home buyers' protection insurance through the title company, and it has more than paid for itself in the cost of various repairs. Our experience may be unusual, but it seems like there's been one or two significant repairs that have been needed each year that significantly exceeds the annual cost of the insurance.
dsg - you've just hit on my biggest concern! I'm pretty handy, but there's only so much I can do. Thanks for the info about the Home Buyers Protection, I'll definitely have to look into that!
ferret, I really hope this comes through for you this time. And believe every word they say about unforeseen repairs. The cardboard box I'm living in is now almost completely covered in duct tape. At least it's more reflective with summer coming on.
TS - Is it true that you can repair everything with duct tape? I'm really banking on that...
I sometimes have to use gaffer's tape.
also, whenever you need something done by a contractor, be prepared to call three, have only one show up and when he gets the bid the bill is at least 50% more than he originally estimated.
maybe that's just in the city.
I think Ms. F's experience in the construction industry well prepares her to handle contractors. A friend sent me this link some time back.
http://hrbconsultinginc.com/images/hrb_boat.gif
No one wants to hang out with eels
http://shar.es/oprY
YC: AP'S aunt? I don't think so. She seemed like the type that was really good-looking. Bitchy and slightly crazy, maybe, but homely, no.
I doubt if she still posts. She also seemed very important in the Grande Scheme of Things when she wasn't getting everyone's goats. Or is that goat?
Here qua, gavone and Ted Spe, try some reflective thinking. You'll get it right if you can actually focus and think. And be patient. It'll be a new experience.
Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
A) Yes B) No C) Cannot be determined.
OK so not only can you not make a good joke or write anything insightful, you go into a furious rage when facing a problem in reflective thinking. You and TedSpe share something in common here.
Hartal - I LOVE "FU Penguin" - I actually 'follow' it, and posted today about that weird rodent thing drinking out of a mug. That guy is high-larious! Sending me to that blog was one of the best gifts I got for my birthday. (Manny Ramirez getting suspended for 50 games was the best!)
Suza - I've heard the stories, now I get to live them in real life! YIKES!
qua, a train wreck of a mind, such as gavone's and TedSpe's, is mildly more interesting than the emanations from one, such as yourself, who does not appear to have a mind at all. What is it that you see yourself contributing to this list? On this thread, I tried to share some of the things that I learned in buying a home; I tried to take an interesting and bizarre turn on the embarrassing idea that the world needs clones of me; I forwarded the FUP link which my wife had just forwarded to me; and I forwarded a puzzle that gave me some joy in figuring out.
And you? How do you live with yourself given the small-minded vitriolic criticism that is all you post?
Don't you see that you are obsessed with me? That you want my attention though you have nothing interesting to say to me or anyone? Aren't you embarrassed for yourself? You should want more from life.
The answer is A. Most people see that Anne's marital status is uncertain and then conclude that the answer cannot be determined. But we don't need to know her status to know that the answer is.
Either Anne is married, or she is not.
If she is married, she is the married person looking at an umarried person.
If Anne is unmarried, then a married person is looking at her.
So yes a married person is looking at an unmarried person.
The remarkable thing is that our intelligence tests are not good at testing for susceptibility to logical fallacies. So we have a lot of people who are very high test scorers who are actually not logical at all.
pssst...I think he's talking to himself again....
I will choose free will:
http://tinyurl.com/6f5cgc
I really wish I could check out all of these links you guys keep posting.
Apparently LaSalle thinks humor is based on complete honesty,too.
Wonder where he stole that idea from?
"There is nothing new under the sun."
wv: unaraff
(Ted K.'s lowbrow brother)
Well, it sure ain't fecundity, now is it?
wv: persholi. Uh-huh.
hey hartal. In today's (Sat.'s) Chron in an art review Kenneth Baker used the word "incommensurable" correctly. Check it out! (Don't worry too much about the artist reviewed. She's illogical and a whole lot smarter than you!)
Personally, I don't sympathize with our hostess's brave efforts to civilize hartal and YC. You guys are on your own now. I'm bailing along with the others who have departed.
"a whole lot smarter than you!"
This assumes that there is a general intelligence in terms of which people can be hierarchically ranked on a linear scale. The assumption has historically depended on resolving the information from a battery of mental tests into a principal component via factor analysis (a complex statistical technique); the principal component is called general intelligence. However, it is most probably a reification of a mathematical result as there is no neurological correlate for general intelligence. For example I could take measurements of each piece of furniture in my living room and arrive at the general size of my furniture. But that general size speaks of nothing real--it is a reification.
Howard Gardner has argued that one can easily rotate the axes in the analysis and arrive at multiple intelligences that are incommensurable (that word again). It therefore becomes difficult to say that one person is simply smarter than another (as I said I have been reading Richard Nisbett's book on intelligence, and I recommend it highly).
However there are clearly generally dumb and uninteresting people such as yourself, qua.
Get a life, qua. You are a coward and a loser.
That's the problem Quappy, you aren't leaving. You are posting anonymous attacks which you believe to be brilliant, friendship winning retorts. If Hartal and I are the only two people left on this blog, then it means FH's immune system is still functioning.
Think for a moment about what you are saying. Do you honestly believe you are making a positive contribution?
The thing is Quappy, Hartal and I are completely invulnerable to your vicious, soul scarring attacks, Jean isn't. So why don't you quit acting the coward and fool. Keep posting as Gina or TedSpe, or Xootsuit, or whoever you are, or don't. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter one way or the other.
An interesting, scientific and modest perspective on personhood and when it begins.
http://tinyurl.com/p3s8nl
My bet is that quasi Nietzsche is xootsuit who fled the list after seeing that his compulsion to write rash, insulting replies to me had gotten him into trouble again and had created doubt about whether is an attorney, at least a competent one. Can't figure out whether qua palimpsest is gavone, tedspe or perhaps suza/mindful. Don't think qua is toosense or winkingtiger or FH, however. It seems that gavone was signing in as hartal for a while, and someone registered as Yogi. Given what was happening at the time, my guess is that was xootsuit.
I once thought that at least a couple of people were signing in, appropriately enough, as "qua palimpsest". One thing of which I am pretty sure dsgonzale6 is only dsgonzale6.
Multiple screen names is so '90s.
hartal, you're a liar. I quickly posted a link to a big firm lawyer's blog that contained simple thumbnail summaries of some of J. Sotomayor's cases. I wasn't responding to you. I was sharing one big firm lawyer's take. There are many takes. But plain case summaries aren't usually biased one way or the other.
I think qua will be back, whoever it is. I won't. I don't have time for petty bickering with hartal and yogi.
No you are a liar. You were clearly responding to me; in fact you explicitly castigated me for relying on the thin Business Week article. Why do you lie so?
Of course you won't be back to defend the class action defense lawyer's defense of Sotomayor. His summary of the cases does not read as unbiased. He is positively giddy that Sotomayor has thrown out as many cases as she has. And do remember that you were the one to recommend Sotomayor due to her stance on standing to sue issues. But you gave nothing to back up that opinion, and you won't tell us why we should trust that blog.
And when did "bickering" over rights to sue become petty? Some lawyer you are!
I am not a lawyer but I tried to go through the blog recommended by xootsuit. The blogger is clearly looking for evidence that Judge Sotomayor is not what he would consider a knee jerk supporter of the claims of plaintiffs in class action lawsuits, and he finds plenty of evidence of that. In fact by his analysis Judge Sotomayor has thrown up important obstacles to plaintiffs in most of the cases that he summarizes. He says that her most troubling opinion would have been the one dealing with Visa but that her later judgements and rulings show that they are not.
So the question remains why xootsuit chose "standing to sue" questions as an area where Sotomayor's progressive credentials would shine in relation to the Supreme Ct majority today. Now it may well be that she will prove quite good on these issues, but there seems to be nothing in her record to be enthusiastic about. In fact a class action defense lawyer is quite happy with her.
Like usual, xootsuit seems to be talking out of his ass. And now he has to run away.
Yes insult when you have been caught yet again with your pants down.
The question is whether you know what you are talking about.
Do remember that you told us to welcome Sotomayor because of her progressive credentials on standing to sue issues.
Well should we?
I had a friend who had a class action lawsuit recently thrown out, so I have some sense that this is an ignored battlefield in the law today--haven't we been losing rights in America of late?
The website that you recommended said that Sotomayor herself reversed one of her most plaintiff rulings (the Visa case). So the question is why you are telling us that she is good enough on standing to sue issues.
I shudder in fear for the poor sucker who is relying on you in court if you are in fact an attorney.
Ah just occurred to me. If Michael/twinfan had returned to this list, which name would be his?
FH, and please keep us posted about the progress of your purchase. Escrows are always exciting, in both good and not-so-good ways, so if anything comes up, let us know.
just for the record, I'm not qua. I'm only me. In fact, I think qua has talked some smack about me in the past, but I don't exactly recall.
but then, SOME people can't keep even the most simple things straight.
I'm pretty sure that FH could look up the IPs of the posters if it concerned her at all. Which it apparently doesn't.
You don't recall whether qua has talked smack about you in the past, and you expect me to know whether he has. That's unfair. At this point all I remember is your interesting discussion with Gavone about GWTW; I have seen the movie but not read the book. You both were talking about the latter. And your fiance is brown, though you have not told us much else about him. Oh yeah was he a former exotic dancer? What more do you want me to keep straight? I didn't say that you are qua. I said you may be one of many possible people who could be. But I am settling on deranged michael twinfan as the most likely candidate. It would explain a lot.
I'm every single one of you.
And thee, me.
And yes, I'm also the Dalai Lama.
at least now you remember that he is brown. that is was I was referring to. I also recall that you said he was black and that I was using him in order to seem "authentic."
Authentically what, I'm not certain.
I did enjoy your debate with gina about legalized abortion and your attempted profile of her psychological situation. it's amusing to try to pinpoint people you don't know - often it leads to wrong conclusions, but it is still entertaining.
I am me and you are he and you are we and we are all together.
and have you seen this?
http://tinyurl.com/m7yoyb
And we split within ourselves. Freud's discoveries of the unconscious and repression remain revolutionary, I believe. Has anyone ever seen "Eyes Wide Shut"? I see Dr. Bill driven by murderous rage at his wife that he can't acknowledge. He is forced to discover that women's sexuality is every bit as imaginative--that is, not tied to reproduction and child-rearing only-- as his. Having lost her art business, Nicole Kidman as the wife is already in the doldrums. She is jealous of her husband who is so sure of himself. So she unleashes her adulterous fantasy on him. This has to be one of the greatest scenes in American cinema.
Then Dr. Bill is called away by the death of an elderly patient, and finds that his recently engaged daughter is willing to lose herself in a sexual experience with him and even professes her love for him, though she has never had a conversation with Dr. Bill.
He is now being awakened to female sexuality. And he is homicidally rageful, but he can't admit it. So he attempts to have adulterous sex in revenge as a way of displacing his dark desire. And this leads him to a prostitute and eventually the strange orgy scene.
I have never been able to figure out whether the orgy scene is a fantastic and symbolic representation of the id in so far as it can be represented. Everyone is in disguise, and it's as if id keeps telling Dr. Bill as the ego that he does not want remain here and see the blind amoral sexual drives that that he would be better off repressing, displacing, sublimating, etc.
Or perhaps the orgy scene is a depiction of the secret of money. The movie is indeed about money and great wealth. Kubrick seems to be saying that the point of the accumulation of money is the erotically charged sadistic power it gives over powerless bodies which can be used for gratification and dispensed with when done. The Protestant Work ethic is not what motivates the accumulation of great fortunes.
But the way the orgy scene ends is with a woman sacrificing herself for the safety of Dr. Bill.
He comes home to find his wife fantasizing about adultery and orgiastic sex as a way of humiliating him.
It's almost as if you see Dr. Bill's hair grey up a bit as he is now having to come to realize that the sexual and sadistic energies that grown ups teach children to repress.
But neither can live with what they have found out about themselves. And ironically enough they try to lose themselves in sex so that their eyes are wide shut. In the last line of the movie, Kidman says that their best way forward is to fuck as soon as possible.
At any rate, I think Kubrick's last movie may be a masterpiece, though my wife did not share my opinion.
Anyone else have thoughts on the movie?
A movie that xootsuit has been touting is Dirty Pretty Things. It is indeed a fine movie. One thing that interested me is the movie's powerful challenge to the repression of the underworld of labor and its manifold biological implications.
Here in the Bay Area think of biology in terms of the latest advances. Some of the first steps in genetic engineering were done at UCSF. Genetic drugs were invented here. We are far along in the use of genetic screens. We have pre-implantation diagnoses (perhaps one day used to choose a child that will be the best possible organ or marrow donor for a sibling or parent); people already use all kinds of assisted reproduction technology. Advances in anti-aging technologies will be made here.
But Dirty Pretty Things reminds us that the biological still remains the same. There are still the same state concerns to control the demography and biological quality of the population. The poor still only own their bodies, the sole thing that they can hawk. And society is still organized around the withdrawal of care for those vulnerable bodies as a way of empowering and enriching others.
Yeah for Netflix.
I think Eyes Wide Shut is one of those movies, like The Shining (but unlike, say, Full Metal Jacket), that is best appreciated on repeated viewings.
The first time I saw Eyes Wide Shut, I got very annoyed at the long closeups of Tom Cruise doing virtually nothing, and this colored my opinion of the movie (it also made me sleepy). But having seen it a few more times, I have come to a greater appreciation of the movie; I'm not sure I'd call it a masterpiece, but like anything Kubrick did, it is interesting on many levels.
One thing I noticed but couldn't figure out what to make of it was the use of contrasting inside and outside colors in the interior scenes; inside, everything is bathed in blue light, but outside the window, the light is an orangish color.
I didn't really perceive rage on Bill's part as much as I saw confusion. Bill is presented as a very orderly person with a very clear idea of how the world is supposed to work, but the ways of the ultrarich with whom he has come into contact are alien to him. And when he starts to think that maybe he might be able to move into their world, he is hit by the ugly reality of the risks of promiscuous sex when he learns that the woman he nearly had sex with the night before just tested positive for HIV.
And Sydney Pollock was wonderful. He was and still is my favorite part of the movie. This role, along with his parts in Michael Clayton and The Sopranos, are of a piece--his cynicism and practicality make you wonder how you ever get through the day unscathed if you're not the same way. He'll be missed.
I also liked Pollack in that film, but I was continually annoyed by the presence of Cruise and Kidman. Kubrick had said that he wanted to make EWS for years; I would rather have seen Nicholson/Streep or some other talented combo play those parts.
The bonus disc on the DVD set contains a lot of insightful comments from Kubrick's family. His widow wasn't particularly pleased with his writing the film as the subject matter made her uncomfortable. I took the film to be an exploration of her fidelity and fantasy life as much as Kubrick's own. Both were dedicated family members with artistic loves of their own.
I wonder what it would have been like with Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet?
Ewan McGregor and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Kubrick filmed the first 1/4 of the movie with Jennifer Jason Leigh (the daughter) and Harvey Keitel (not sure), but they both had to bail because it was taking him so long.
I have an unwritten screenplay in my attic called OUTTAKES, it's about a thief and film buff, who breaks into Kubrick's estate to steal that footage
Eyes Wide Shut: 2 plus hours of Tom Cruise running around, unsuccessfully trying to get laid. Tom Cruise!?!? It's Kubrick's last laugh....
In a way Cruise is perfect for the part. He has no introspective ability at all--in the movie and in real life; his ability to repress what his continuous fantasizing of his wife being fucked by her dream naval officer is really doing to him and making him feel is exactly the point. Tom Cruise is the empty ego, cheerfully navigating his way through life in conformity with reality and his superego. He is not riven in any way. At least in terms of his self understanding. Which means that he cannot understand why he wants to fuck a prostitute or crash the orgy party (I really despised the addition of the prostitute turning out to be HIV positive, because it provides an alibi for not indulging in free sex rather than a reason that the ego can himself own). He wants to humiliate his wife. But his wife can openly admit that she dreams of humiliating him by taking multiple partners with his eyes wide open to the scene. And then he finally admits to his night out with his wife. He feels guilty, though he still does not understand the meaning of his actions. He cannot come to terms with the well springs of his motivations, and the rich are depicted as essentially and fully motivated by them. Nor can his wife in the end. So they try to repress and displace all their sexually sadistic energies into both respectable married sex, spiced up a bit by calling it fucking, and mindless consumerism which is what Christmas essentially is.
admits to his night out to his wife. Sorry.
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world
of toys...
I like the cruise joke, WT. There is that scene in the movie in which a group of guys who have obviously used a night out of lap dancing as an alibi for their own homoerotic bonding accost Dr. Bill and want any excuse to gay bash him ("qua" would have fit in this lovely group of guys, I suspect). So it seems to be a scene about how repressed desire can take the form of externalized aggression; perhaps Cruise had a heart to heart talk with Kubrick about exploring the consequences of repressed homosexual desire.
I don't know whether that scene appears in the novella. Homoerotic desire is also depicted in the orgy scene. So the id (which is what I think the orgy scene is supposed to represent) is shown to be undisciplined by heterosexual norms.
I guess it's somewhat sad that these ideas could have seemed revolutionary and scandalous to Kubrick in the late 90s and perhaps for America they were and are.
Kubrick may have done his most brilliant work in this movie by subtly effacing the distinction between reality and dream in most of the movie's encounters, so that the whole movie takes place in a liminal space between realistic dreamscapes and a dreamy real world. In other words, the movie actually takes place no where at all.
It seems that Kidman is most awake to herself in her dreams while Cruise is asleep to himself in his real encounters.
"And Sydney Pollock was wonderful. He was and still is my favorite part of the movie. This role, along with his parts in Michael Clayton and The Sopranos, are of a piece--his cynicism and practicality make you wonder how you ever get through the day unscathed if you're not the same way. He'll be missed."
Wow! That's an arresting comment, dsg. Pollock is playing a full out psychopath in Eyes Wide Shut. He has no concern at all for the women he fucks and discards. That he is not over the top as Keitel may have been is exactly the point. The psychopath has no reason not to think of himself as normal if he is in fact wealthy enough. He cares less whether the prostitutes live or die. He refers to Mandy as the one with the great tits even after she dies. And it's not clear whether she overdosed or was ritualistically murdered (and that can't be put beyond the super rich at the party).
I hope everyone gets through the day without being the same way!
So no one else has seen Dirty Pretty Things? The Nigerian actor is brilliant in that movie. He's the anti-Cruise--no one has probably revealed more internal depth with his eyes than he. There's not a moment of overacting. OK perhaps there's that one when the screenplay has him hit you on the face: We're the ones who clean your rooms, sew your clothes and suck your cocks. That line cheapened the movie and his character, I thought. I have to look up his name.
Sorry, hartal, haven't yet seen Dirty Pretty Things. But I'm sure I will get to it at some point; it sounds interesting.
As for Sydney Pollock, yes, he is a psychopath in Eyes Wide Shut; he was also a murderer in The Sopranos, and in Michael Clayton, he's the head of a major law firm defending a lawsuit against a corporation that (a) kept a product on the market despite the knowledge that it killed people, and (b) treated murder as an acceptable loss-reduction tactic.
His character is by no means a hero, or even an anti-hero; but he is ruthless and efficient and charming, and those qualities can take one a long way in certain circles. In no way would I want to be like that character, but I have a great deal of respect (not esteem) for what they can do, the same respect one would grant to a shiny, beautiful Beretta that was loaded and cocked and pointed at one. And some days, given the sharks I sometimes have to swim with, I can envy his talents.
So what Pollock was showing is that there is a thin line between cynical practicality and pyscho-pathic behavior? Perhaps he even wanted to show that the system encourages psychopathic behavior at the top or tends to reward psychopaths with the highest positions? Now after Ebbers and Madoff that's not so hard to believe.
In Eyes Wide Shut Pollock is chilling in his final scene. Dr Bill is worried what has happened to his piano playing friend, and about how Mandy came to die. Pollock begins his response with "Imagine, I tell you this is what has happened." Then he reveals details about Mandy's apparent suicide that he should not yet know, e.g. that her door was locked from the inside. He uses his avuncular voice to bring Dr. Bill along. But when he reminds Dr Bill that the thing about life is that we keep on living until we don't, it's not clear whether he making a threat to the doctor.
Now as for Sydney Pollock, I saw a beautiful movie that I think he directed. It had Giovanni Ribisi as an Italian cop tracking down Cate Blanchette after her delivery of a bomb intended for a drug dealer exploded in the hands of a janitor.
the actor in Dirty Pretty Things is Chiwetel Ejiofor, and he was in that great, great movie Children of Men.
Sydney Pollock did not direct Heaven; he was the executive producer. I remember his explaining how innovative the cinematography was in the bonus material to the DVD. It's a truly fine movie.
Well, now that you remind me that Chiwetel Ejiofor of Children of Men is the actor in Dirty Pretty Things, I'll definitely have to check it out. He was great in Chidren of Men, and I also liked him a lot in Talk to Me.
Re Pollock: As an actor, many of his roles were variants of the same character he played in Eyes Wide Shut, with the main difference being, to me, whether he edged over into malevolence. His portrayal in Husbands and Wives was extremely unsettling to me in this way.
And as a director, he could be terrific. I think the job he did with Tootsie was really underrated (not to mention his fine comic turn as Michael Dorsey's agent), and his last film, The Interpreter, is one of my favorite thrillers of recent years.
Question: Does anyone else think of The Wonder Years when seeing Giovanni Ribisi?
Haven't seen The Interpreter. You'll see that I keep on referring to movies B.C. (before children). At any rate, here's a report of a very sad turnabout in Obama's administration.
http://tiny.cc/SCXyx
Oh wait I did see the Interpreter, and remember enjoying it very much indeed. But I have to see it again.
kubrik's films were generally stiff, mannered and pompous (even when they moved quickly, Clockwork, Full Metal, they were mechanical). Hmmmmmm.
Thanks for sharing your considered opinion, qua-sar.
Interesting though that you connect clocks (Clockwork Orange) and metal (Full Metal Jacket) with the mechanical. Don't see how you are talking about those movies rather than the properties of things that appear in their titles. A little bit of free association, no?
The relationship Kubrick sets up between the audience and Alex in clockwork is quite complex and hardly mechanical.
Full Metal Jacket may well get lost (I don't remember the plot line) but it is stilll stunning visually, and I haven't seen the other anti war movie he does (set in France in WWI).
And Barry Lyndon and The Shining are by no means mechanical. Maybe you would say stiff, mannered and pompous about the former, but I thoroughly enjoyed Lyndon when I saw it for the first time about ten years ago.
I have not seen the movies he did in the fifties (but did he direct poor Dalton Trumbo's Spartacus?), yet who doubts that with Stangelove Kubrick put himself in the class of Jonathan Swift?
Kubrick co-directed "Spartacus" with Kirk Douglas. His earlier Anti-war film was "Paths Of Glory," also with Douglas. Kubrick was the director who first sparked my interest in film, so you'll hear no derision from this corner...
wv: tediga = a Latina friend of TedSpe ;-)
Oh one more thing. I defend Eyes Wide Shut because it is the most hilarious send up of the sexual life of men that I have ever seen. It's a blistering satire of how shallow the inner life of men is. This is why Tom Cruise was chosen. He's so deceptively self-assured that he does not know what to make of his wife's fantasies. And he responds to them in totally pathetic way. If you take his night out as a dream sequence, he fantasizes a woman throwing herself at him, a kindly prostitute instantly becoming enamored of him, and an orgy scene that combines aspects of a Las Vegas show
with the rituals of a teenager's secret society. He is a sad, silly and pathetic man; and then he cries on his wife's breast as if he were a child when confessing to all this. Add the psychopath played by Pollock and the homophobic crowd. People may go a bit crazy about Almodovar's depiction of women but Kubrick satirized men in his last movie as he satirized the warmakers in the movie that made him immortal.
Kidman castrating him early in the movie has to be one of the greatest scenes in American cinema. I really don't get why the movie is so underestimated.
Thanks Winkingtiger. I am going to rent Paths of Glory as soon as possible.
Lolita was a horrible attempt to "adapt" a great novel. Eyes Wide Shut was dull. 2001 was a slick cartoon.
The Killing and Dr. Strangelove were great. His only great works.
winkingtiger is absolutely right about PATHS OF GLORY.
It's probably the be all end all most frustating movie ever made. Not frustrating "war" movies. But simply movies.
It's not just a "war is hell" film. It's about politics, ego, status, having a job, not having a job and the rules we all must play just to get through the day. Granted, the terms are much harsher then we all live, considering they're in the trenches of WW1, but that's what makes it so powerful.
It frightens you. It makes you feel crippled. Helpless.
You simply watch and see no matter what logic you apply, the powers that be have the power to strike it down.
Pessemistic, true, but also a wakeup call.
With this film, the stakes are life and death. But after all, considering we all are going to die, aren't all stakes life and death?
That being said, it's also beautifully filmed and acted with an amount of intensity with clean, smooth, beautiful photography... the small parts and extras...all perfect.
And stay with it to the end.
Haunting. Really haunting.
well, ok. I've never seen Paths. Maybe it's great too.
Oh, I forgot Yous guys was also talking about Pollack.
Watch THE YAKUZA.
I won't go too much into it but it starts out as an eccentric action film and ends up being a film about honor, living one's life with responsibilty and realizing the things and moves you make can often fuck up other lives without your knowledge.
Even when it's not your fault, you still caused it. So...amends and responsibility must be paid.
And besides, it stars Robert Mitchum. So fuggedaboutitt
"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is my favorite, with Christopher Isherwood's vinegar catalyzing Pollacks baking soda into an explosive mix. The we throw a Gig Young firecracker on top of that...
the weirdness of the apes...the eeriness and the silence of space...the "affect" of the computer...all brilliantly done. Eyes Wide Shut would be dull if you have not thought through Freud, been impressed by Kubrick's ability to efface the the line between dreams and reality, unaffected by the corruptions of wealth on oujr intimate lives, and repressed your ability to laugh derisively at the sexuality of men.
quasar said, I mostly agree with you. But to be honest, FULL METAL JACKET and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE are films I go back to often. With FULL METAL, truth be told, I usually shut it off after the basic training scenes (though first I fast forward to the THESE BOOTS MUST BE FOR WALKING scene)
winkingtiger, yeah THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? is to be admired and worth a second or third look. But it's just so depressing without the contemporary frustration that PATHS(Mixing metaphors and directors ;-)
carries. Of course, considering today's economy, it might be extremely relevant in a few months or so.
That being said, fine film, great acting by all (Gig Young won the Oscar for crying out loud) and...well, good movie. Just not one I want to re-visit again and again.
But, no problem with those who do. Good movie
EWS "hilarious"? Now that is hilarious.
Take a look into the eyes of the very self-assured Cruise as Kidman is castrating him. I find that scene hilarious, but I can understand why a lot of men would not.
Look at him as a father too. He ignores his daughter; she is raised by Kidman, mostly to become a mindless consumer and sexual object. That's not funny. But the cynicism of the other father in the movie towards his daugther's sexuality (think of the scenes in the costume shop) is painfully funny. There is a dark humor here in that the father is a hopeless cynical fuck, calling his daughter a whore and then cashing in on that. Again the inability of men to connect meaningfully with women is savagely treated.
And the humor in Cruise being almost gay bashed in what appears to be his character's dream sequence...well there is dark humor there too.
Oh don't forget the humor in the way the daugther's sexuality is unleashed immediately after her father passes. The awkward way in which that repressed sexuality is expressed is pretty darn funny.
No One, you DO know that Eyes Wide Shut is based on a book called "Dream Story," written by a friend and associate of Freud's (the name escapes me, but it should be easy enough to find.) That might explain any Freudian whiff you're getting from the movie... and why some of it's ideas may seem 'old-fashioned.'
(When I first wrote this, I had a typo: "Eyes Wife Shut" which I almost left in, as it seemed germane and maybe even funny. I can't stand typos though...)
Too many good movies, too many bad movies, too many good movies to revisit. Ted, I used to agree with you about Full Metal Jacket, in that I used to turn it off once they got out of basic training, but the last couple of times I continued to watch to the end, and I was struck by themes and ideas that I hadn't noticed on prior viewings. I remember reading a review of The Shining that was written about 10 years after its release that said that the underlying them of the movie is the genocide of the Native Americans; when I watched the movie again the next time, sure enough, that element was there throughout the movie. Watching Full Metal Jacket again, I noticed that one of the subtexts of the movie was the insidious and pervasive nature of television and the mass media.
And now I gotta watch Eyes Wide Shut again, not to mention Paths of Glory.
It's all too much. :)
So who's at the vanguard of human sexual psychology these days?
Sonny and Cher's daughter
No, no, no... not the ones doing it. The ones writing and reading about it! ;)
dsg, I was being slightly facetious about FULL METAL JACKET though it's true, I do sometimes just watch the bt. But the final (I think it's the final) scene with the hunt for the sniper is a true standout in filmmaking. Not only because of the mixed emotions it invokes but the amazing fact it was filmed on location and goes from late afternoon to sunset/dusk to night seemlessly.
Because of the way films are shot, this is an absolute marvel of pre CGI continuity
I almost forgot:
"the weirdness of the apes"
what a weak attempt at poetic description!
(Clarice? Clarice? Do you still hear the weirdness of the apes, Clarice?)
Gage's review of Jackson Lear's new book hints at the sources of the rage expressed in the recent domestic terrorist acts; that rage has many less spectacular expressions as well.
'The book’s title — a play on D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” — suggests two of Lears’s greatest revisionist concerns: the lasting influence of Civil War violence and “the rising significance of race.” Beginning in the 1870s, he argues, Americans attempted to stitch their country back together around a “militarist fantasy” of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Yet rather than bringing the hoped-for personal and national redemption, their efforts produced tragedy. According to Lears, the same cultural logic that justified lynching in the American South and the conquest of American Indians in the West eventually led to war in Cuba, the Philippines and Europe — and, a century later, to our own mess in Iraq.
Lears is hardly the first scholar to address these themes. But he is among the most far-reaching, seeking to redefine an era known for its reformist energies as a time when militarism and racismall too often triumphed over more pacific, democratic ideals. Like any good synthesis, “Rebirth of a Nation”dutifully covers the major trends of the age: the rise of industrial capitalism, the expansion of American empire, the tightening chokehold of Jim Crow. What brings new life to this material is the book’s emphasis on how Americans’ “inner lives” came to shape their outer worlds. Events that appear to be struggles for conquest and plunder turn out, in Lears’s view, to be animated by a personal search for meaning. “The rise of total war between the Civil War and World War I was rooted in longings for release from bourgeois normality into a realm of heroic struggle,” he writes. “This was the desperate anxiety, the yearning for rebirth, that lay behind official ideologies of romantic nationalism, imperial progress and civilizing mission — and that led to the trenches of the Western Front.”
This approach can exaggerate the impact of culture (great-power diplomacy, too, led to the trenches). But “Rebirth of a Nation” captures something undeniably powerful about the nation’s psychic crisis as it recovered from the wounds of civil war. The late 19th century brought vast change at nearly every level of culture and society, from the growth of white-collar employment to the dislocations of mass immigration and urbanization. This crisis was particularly acute for white men, who found their traditional sources of power and identity challenged at every turn. In response, Lears writes, they turned to solutions ranging from the muscular Christianity of the Y.M.C.A. to the Populist struggle for self-determination to bloody conflicts on the battlefield.
Lears’s “poster boy” for this aggressive new masculinity is Teddy Roosevelt, whose blend of boosterism, progressivism and unabashed imperialism captured both its high ideals and serious dangers. Like so many reformers, Roosevelt sought to remake American society along more equitable and democratic lines. At the same time, he believed that Anglo-Saxon men possessed a God-given right to dominate the world. In both cases, Lears suggests, Roosevelt’s politics were the product of a profound internal struggle.'
yeah yeah we all subscribe to the New York Times. We all saw that review this morning. We can all cut and paste, too. What's your point, hartal?
So touchy.
Such a loser. A coward dicarding the older pseudonyms under which you had embarrassed yourself in previous discussions and debates--wat are they? michael, twinfan, politico, qua? And a coward obsessed with me.
Now single quotation marks are often used when the quoted material already contains internal quotes set off by double quotation marks. You knew what was quoted, anyway.
I am sure that other readers of this blog speculate as to the motives of your pathologically aggressive and delusional confidence that you are more informed, interesting and insightful than I am when you have left no evidence of that on this blog.
nobody's obsessed with you but you. I just dislike your dishonesty.
OK so you are a loser blind to yourself. You can't see what you have posted under your qua names. It's clear to anyone who reads what you write that you obsessively invent or caricature things I have said so you can take superficial and stupid shots. There's no intellectual zing to what you write. And that raises the question of why you are so blind--perhaps you are blind with rage or self-hatred, given your dishonesty including to own sad self. But look there's hope. I just saw a documentary that appeared on Canadian television in David Suzuki's series. The title is The Brain That Can Change Itself--it's on neuro-plasticity.
A fleming will disregard the truth. But a dispodent quail will embrace the same.
Sackweligoistacs shall find the hen, but the rooster shall remain fortutious.
Let us not be reknowned by our questiomonioumous, but allow us to be judged by our synchontantariousness.
And therefore, behold, our beauty.
A coupla bigga assholz, I've yet to find.
But when I turn 50, I shall have a colonostechemateicalllyizing.
Just for fun.
Shitz 'n' giggles
FMJ = Full Metal Jacket
JMF = J.M. Ferretti
And I wonder how the house deal is going?
wv: banksol (for cleaning toxic asset stains)
I got Paths of Glory but haven't yet seen it because I also got Tropic Thunder. Now I know all the talk was about Rourke vs. Penn, but Downey is brilliant. He makes Stiller look like a retard playing a retard playing a retard. Was there anything more brilliant than Downey's assuming the voice of an overacting Australian fool in black face creating a persona who combines the voices of a dj on a "Quiet Storm" FM station and Billy Dee Williams. The conflict scene with in the in-the-closet black actor is about the funniest thing I have ever seen. A dingo eating a baby is not funny, however. Not funny at all.
Where are you, ferret?
no one, absolutely agree with you on Downey Jr.'s performance. It took so much guts and skill to pull that off. That guy wuz robbed in all the award ceremonies.
But, again, just a head's up on PATHS OF GLORY.
Great film but one of the most emotionally frustrating fims ever made. Makes you want to throw something at the screen to wake someone up.
But...that's all I'll say. Watch it.
Jeez, Ted Spe and I agree! It happened one lovely June evening. Loved what Downey said ( I think) " Either I pulled it off or I am going to hell." I don't think even Michael Eric Dyson went off on Downey Jr for the role. Maybe Mattel will still sue him for ripping off the black GI Joe look, though.
*
TooSense, some powerful ripostes to LaSalle on Shankar and Indian classical music. I have shared some of my childhood love of the sitar here, and it was great to read your comments.
"What do *you* mean, 'you people'?"
no one, aside from feeling the need to defend beauty, I've noticed a lot more Indian-bashing in this country these days. It's a predictable phenomenon, what with the Indian population in America on the rise and so many xenophobes looking for someone to blame their failures on. La Salle knows better.
So... who besides Hariprasad Chaurasia should I check out on bansuri?
You also need a brimful of Asha on the 45... ;-)
dsg, what do YOU mean "you people"?!?
TooSense you wrote "I've noticed a lot more Indian-bashing in this country these days."
Is that still going on? I'm afraid I wasn't unaware. I remember that was going on quite stupidly after 9/11 but I was unaware it was still prevelant.
Ignorance? Always. But bashing?
Why would Americans have anything against the people/country of India? Unless you're talking about the whole outsourcing thing. Is that it?
no one said...
Jeez, Ted Spe and I agree!
**
Just for the record, I *generally* agree with you. Probably in the high 90's percentile. My problem is your way of expressing yourself. But I admit, the way I generally react/reply to same is/has been incredibly juvenile.
But I think I've admitted that before.
Truce.
Until the next time.
BWAAAHAAHAAHHAA
;-)
Here's something good friends sponsored, though no bansuri here (it's not a good video though):
http://tiny.cc/J24om
ps I think it's resentment about all that spelling bee success (7 of the 11 finanists) which I actually think is an embarrassment for my people. Who the hell cares about the demonstration of potential for the kind of punctilious behavior that management favors in ass-kissing, model minority employees? I would rather see these kids competing in music, math and debate tournaments, and athletics. But these parents are probably pushing these kids into exhaustion such that they collapse in the morning shower just so they can spell archaic or idiosyncratic words seriously? Sometimes I think our testing culture is all about picking out those people who can concentrate on meaningless tasks for inhuman lengths of time. These parents must be stopped. For goodness sake, I would rather see these kids win a geography rather than a spelling bee. Won't be responding for a while. Deadline.
which I actually think is an embarrassment for my people.
**
Curious. Who are your people?
Ted, that was my favorite line from Tropic Thunder. A friend of mine, an attorney at a firm I used to work at, frequently calls me to ask, "What's the matter with you people?", whenever there's something goofy in the news about Texans, Domers or any other group with whom I share an affiliation. Or sometimes he'll say, "What's the matter with my people?", when there's a news item about Chinese people.
Personally, I think spelling is a fine skill for kids to hone. But then again, I'm biased. I also think grammar is useful to learn. Systems, organization and memorization help the mind develop logic and strength. I enjoyed seeing the Bee on TV the other day.
Ted, I don't even understand why Americans would hold outsourcing against Indians. It's mostly rich, white American executives who do it, after all. But there you go.
**
TooSense, of course. But the sad fact is, us sophisticated, knowledgeable, enlightened Americans bitched about it on at least two different levels. First, the obvious, that "They're taking jobs away from the Americans" and the more delerious reason was that the Indians were too polite. Somehow, that offended certain Americans to the point where they had to give classes to the Indian employees on how to be "slightly" more "rude" and "assertive". They realized, as crazy as it sounds, that Americans would find that more acceptable. Give an internal sense that they were dealing with someone more like themselves.
Can you believe it?
**
And dsg, I work at a company right now that's run by Chinese Americans and the majority of the customers are both Chinese Americans adn Chinese non-resident aliens. I here "What's wrong with my people" all the time. Primarily from American born Chinese who are unaware of the culture of the Chinese who immigrated here.
It's very odd for a middle aged Greek-American to have to explain the culture and nature of Chinese born customers to Chinese-American born colleagues of the nature and mindset of how they handle their finances. Plus government regulators.
But they all catch on eventually. A typical conversation would be, from a government regulator, would be "This lady brought in $50,000 in cash. We asked the source and she said it was from her family's savings?! You believe this?!" And I'll ask "Was she Chinese?" and they'll say "Yes" and I'll say "Yes. I believe it. Was a Cash Transaction Report filed? Then don't worry about it."
Different cultures. Good to try to learn as much as possible.
Ted, indeed it is good to learn. Because of the nature of my s.o.'s work, she has a lot of dealings with folks in Taiwan, and travels there frequently (she also has a lot of contacts in the Middle East and Africa, and has a funny story about a trip to India when she worked for Gap, but that's for another time).
In fact, when the wholesale apparel company she works for was in financial trouble a few years back (they had an incompetent CFO who was an old friend of her boss), she ended up putting her boss in touch with the owner of the Taiwanese fabric company that she had cultivated as an apparel manufacturer, and the Taiwanese company ended up buying a stake in her company, which saved their bacon. Of course, now she has to deal with the pressures of the competing interests of her company (making a profit on their apparel wholesaling) and the Taiwanese company (getting more of her company's apparel manufacturing business and maximizing the income from its investment in her company). It gets stressful. And as the "spouse" of an executive, I end up getting involved in social activities with them. What a crew! We ended up going to the 30th anniversary celebration of the Taiwanese company in Taipai over the Christmas holiday the year the two companies got together, as "honored guests", and it was a very interesting scene. The Taiwanese company had representatives from all of its overseas offices put on skits at the big party, and the group from the Lesotho office did theirs dressed as cavemen/savages, with clubs and primitive decorations.
And my buddy was actually born in Hong Kong and moved to Sacramento as a child with his family. For a while, his "What's the matter with my people" calls were mocking Ed Jew and his attorneys (whom he knows professionally).
Ted, I know what you mean about the 'assertiveness' thing.
As for the 'They're taking out jobs away' bit... I'd be curious to see the results of filmed interviews of Wal Mart shoppers regarding their views on international labor solidarity. :)
PS: I'm sorry if that was you I called a wanker yesterday.
Weird but interesting, eh dsg?
And yes, TooSense. That was me. But I forgive you.
BTW, I intentinally led you to the wrong aisle.
So, I'm sorry, too.
Story of my life, Ted. :)
So, Hartal. Did you read MLS today?
I think he had you in mind when he wrote that piece.
wv:statt
What about in-sourcing of jobs?
http://tiny.cc/atBij
**
Gavone, MLS does not think about you (or me) as obsessively and disturbingly as you think about him. I tried to provide you with some help. I think MLS is hopeless; it was his readers that I was interested in during the nomination struggle. I ignored his provocations regarding Indian classical music. But the larger problem is cultural conservatism.
**
Indians are not any one way. I inherited a deep and profound tradition of mathematics, reason and debate. See Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian.
I'm not the one that kept trying to get back on his blog, Hartal. Are you threatened by me...you sound like a jealous wife.
"I inherited a deep and profound tradition of mathematics, reason and debate."
But all such argumentative Indians aren't assholes like you, are they?
Just to correct the record: MLS had me banned not from a private blog but from both his blog on SF Gate and all of SF Gate until Bronstein and Vlae Kershner reversed his unilateral decision. Reinstated to SF Gate, I hardly post to his blog at all, but that's my decision, not his. That was his first defeat.
Our encounter was based on his support of HRC over BHO (I also took on the former Gingrich supporter Lochhead's biased blogging against Obama; in fact I probably posted more comments at the politics blog site) .
My criticisms of MLS's positions were, in turn, criticized by xootsuit and twinfan (now posing as qua, I suspect) who tried to discredit me by demeaning references to what they thought my class position and educational attainments are (I let those false ad hominem criticisms pass because they weren't rational in the first place), other times by trying to portray me as a philistine, and often times by accusing me of overwhelming ignorance.
The shallow and vituperative style of HRC's SF Gate supporters probably played an important role in making the Bay Area a cash cow for Obama during the nomination and presidential runs. For this we have MLS, xootsuit, twinfan, politico and a few others to thank. They were useful idiots, and I always treated them as such.
dsgonzale6 who is by no means an idiot wanted to remain neutral between the two though he clearly had a bias for HRC, and he did not agree with me that it would take aggressive action by party leaders and HRC's own superdelegates to shut her down even after Obama had secured the requisite number of delegates. I am sure that we differ on what transpired, but after the close of the primaries HRC was still defiant and remained so until she discovered that some of her most prominent superdelegates would flip to Obama if she did not concede. Ultimately that derailed her along with the fact that the Puerto Rican turnout was not high enough to give her even the most dubious claim to the popular vote victory.
But as for MLS: Think here of his criticism of Obama's inexperience without any attention to why his judgement as to the probable outcome of the Iraq war was, then, so far superior to the other candidates' (MLS also said late in the game that he wished the US could have imposed by remote control a Western style democracy in Iraq with no attention whatsoever to whether Western style democracy is the best form for a society so riven by sectarian and ethnic conflict--the point here is that MLS is astonishingly ignorant of the world outside of Euro-America; do remember how he opened up a debate about the best actors in the world though he was only talking about Euro-American ones).
Or recall MLS's attempt to take Obama down on the basis of his relationship to Reverend Wright; on top of that he paid no attention to the complexities of Wright. And then think of MLS's ignorance of the historical Che (that he wanted to or would have unwittingly set up a Soviet satellite in Bolivia--a CIA talking point) and his uncomprehending comments on Slumdog (and that's not to say that Milk and Revolutionary Road were not better movies).
MLS was not in the least bothered by the Muslim-baiting and nativist elements in HRC's campaign.
And only an nincompoop such as qua would think every argumentative Indian has my style, but not every argumentative Indian won state and national debate tournaments in both high school and college (also took third in a Bay Area math tournament as a youngster, was obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence).
So call me what you want, but don't be sure that your opinion is widely shared even in the closed network that you may wish existed here.
OK let's take this one from Idiocracy, qua. Let's say you have two buckets, one can carry seven gallons and the other has a capacity of three gallons. Here's the question: how many buckets do you have?
Qua...I love you!
Be careful not to let the slumrat piss on you...he's carrying rabies.
Are you vying to be his seventh wife, Gavone? Well, I brought together two people so easily flustered in debate that they descend into calling critics assholes and rabid slumrats because they can't cough up a coherent reply.
You know things were going fine on this list; we were exchanging jokes about Tropic Thunder and sharing insights into Kubrick's movies. There was no rancor between me and Ted Spe.
But qua and Gavone can't have that.
No, Hartal, what we don't want is a rabid slumrat taking up residence and building a dirty rat's nest on a blog. Of course, I am speaking for myself.
If you're so fucking wonderful, where is everyone? You think people enjoy your foaming rabid mouth slobber? Post after post of it? And the only ones that do seem to have an incessant need to score points and prove that they're smarter than everyone else...which they don't quite accomplish. Maybe LaSalle reads this blog and was just offering his professional opinion on the dialogue here....just a thought.
wv: frumphai--LOL!!!!!
Just for the record, Hartal, LaSalle is everything thing you're not. And, for you to think you can even come close to writing or thinking the way he does is astounding...that's why he gets paid for his opinion and you get don't.
sorry, meant to say you get nothin'.
wv: macack. This thing is so rigged.
There was real brilliance in LaSalle's reviews of that von Trier movie (I thought he captured very well von Trier's critique of the self-assured moralism that is part of American culture), and his review of Revolutionary Road was profound and perceptive (great reading of the movie as pivoting on how a couple discovers that they came to a marriage not only for different but incompatible reasons).
There is indeed something important to learn from LaSalle's ability to put into plain and powerful prose some fundamental human problems.
I have said that before. But I think he often misses terribly in his cultural criticism as a result of his conservatism and his discomfort with cultural productions that are foreign to him or "disconsonant" with his internal mental strucures, expectations and assumptions (this even extended to his not being able to consider Wall-E from the perspective of the children who were its primary audience). His politics are thin and badly informed. And there is probably a connection between his cultural solipsism and his political conservatism.
That's my opinion.
If LaSalle has advice to give, then he should give it here. If he thinks my comments on Eyes Wide Shut, Dirty Pretty Things on Tropic Thunder were badly written or misdirected, then he should say so. I may well learn something.
But I have a question for you: Does LaSalle have a restraining order on you?
Oh by the way I know that even YC was put off by my tone when I wrote about FH's attempt to buy a house. But I think one of the most insidious things in American culture is the peer pressure to have the American dream, i.e. buy your own home. There is no shame in renting, and one should not be emotionally coerced into buying a home or too giddy to think about it rationally. My suspicion is that the bank will not accept the first offers that come in short of the debt, and I did not want to become part of the social pressure that makes people overbid for homes. So people here may think I am jerk, but my intentions were good, and I think my willingness to stand against the buy the American dream propaganda salubrious.
As I said earlier, I think everyone's intentions were good, so we should all be willing to cut each other a little slack if the way we expressed ourselves was lacking. Because we all make mistakes, it's my view that interpersonal harmony among people of good will depends on giving others the benefit of the doubt. Of course, the key issue then is whether to accept someone else's good will, but that's a matter of subjective judgment and can change depending on the circumstances.
Have I told you all that I've been accused of overthinking things? :)
It's better than underthinking things.
Why don't you ask him, Hartal? See what he says.
I mean I'm really tempted to start blabbing.
You wanna know what's funny? He's removed a lot of his old posts. I wonder why?
WV: aftmens
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