Friday Night at The Movies VIII

Last night it was time for an old family favorite again; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. 2 hours and 41 minutes of some of the best comics of the era doing there best gags; a virtual Who's Who of the greatest names in the business.

I remember seeing this movie on TV several times, usually on New Years Eve, from 9:00 to midnight, back in the day before the whole evening was about setting to watch The Ball drop on Times Square. It looks better in color on the wide screen.

It's hard to pick a favorite scene. The shares scene at the beginning of the movie? Sid Caesar tearing up the hardware store? Buddy Hackett trying to fly an airplane? Milton Berle and Terry-Thomas in a fist fight beside the road? There is a whole lot of good stuff packed into what seems like a short movie.

And the best part? The movie works. It's not just a series of gags, The plot is believable, the characters motivations are well laid and consistently followed, and as usual (for me anyway) a good story, convincingly told.

Briefly, Five men (Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney) all stop to help the victim of an automobile accident (Jimmy Durante). Durante tells the men about the money he stole 15 years earlier ($350,000.00) and where its buried. The rest of the movie is the race to Santa Rosita to retrieve the money.

Sounds simple, don't it? They tried to remake Mad Mad World in 2001 in a movie called Rat Race, which tanked pretty spectacularly. The formula may sound simple, but the correct execution is complex.

The movie holds up well. Almost 50 years old (released just a few days before JFK was shot in Dallas) the gags still are funny, and don't rely on knowing what was happening in 1963 to be funny. Without even knowing who most of these actors are, the movie is still funny. And most of the cast is dead by now.

So what makes it funny? Time-honored, universal humor. Milton Berle, traveling with his wife and his constantly badgering mother-in-law, Ethel Merman. Jonathan Winters, becoming enraged, and destroying a gas station. The chase through the abandoned building; all of these gags were probably first written is Latin, if not Ancient Greek or Sanskrit.

And how could I forget the star of the movie, Spencer Tracy? He is the cop who has been looking for the money Durante stole for 15 years. Driven to madness by his annoying wife and daughter, he is the joker in the deck that creates the madness in the last 30 minutes of the movie.

A few hours to kill, especially on a snowy Friday night; a few good beers and somebody to laugh with you. The perfect combination for a viewing of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Be Different

I found this through Bing this morning. Hundreds of pictures of people holdiong up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Now I know what to do the next time I'm in Pisa.

Take my picture with the Leaning Tower.

But I'll be pushing it over!

Did I See This In The News?

Sometimes it s impossible to satirize a situation.

I have posted about my new favorite site, Duffel Blog. 100% military satire. Including this article. I think.

Just how much Cultural Awareness do we need? Just how many times have our Marines had the idea that they need to be 'culturally aware' of the enemy?

And who on the other side is making sure they are culturally aware of us?

Yeah; that's what I thought.

It's Been Twenty Years; Get Over It

As usual I was looking for something else and found this article.

Well, damn the bad luck.

I feel sorry for the guy. One incident twenty years ago has ruled his entire life ever since.

But that is HIS FAULT, nobody else's.

And of course, it's coming up again now because of an agenda.

How many of us can point to one incident in our past, back when we were young and dumb, that has had a profound influence, for good or evil, on where we are now? And how many times has it been us who has tied ourselves to that incident, especially for evil, and has not allowed the world to move past that incident? Even though the rest of the world has long forgotten that part of our past?

To me, just the fact that this guy has failed to let go of a 20 year old incident, and has allowed it to create who he is marks him as a loser.

Two other interesting points. Well, to me anyway:

The incident that caused his downfall happened somewhere I am well acquainted with; the RAF Mildenhall NCO Club. If I had a nickel for every drink I've hoisted in that place...

I'll admit to having been rip roaring drunk in there a time or two.... Dozen. But you know what? I never kissed a male friend in the joint.

I ain't ever been that drunk.

Part two of why this is interesting?

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the founding of the US Air Force.

You Sometimes Reach a Point

I ran into this story while out and about on the Internets. I think somebody has over reacted.

We can start with whether or not this guy should have taken his dog mountain climbing with him, then move into not being properly prepared to be on the mountain. 

The guy's story rings true with me. I can see who he would have made every decision he says he did, based on the situation he says he was facing. I can also see why he would cough up the bucks for the vet's bills after dog was rescued.

But then, I am a dog lover, and hated losing each of my dogs when they died. It would have been a hard decision for me  to leave a treasured companion on the mountain like he did.

So why the animal cruelty charges? Was what he did cruel to the dog? Absolutely. But it wasn't intentional.

Unless somebody believes he should have stayed on the mountain and risked his life and his companions because of the dog?

As I said, I'm a dog lover., But after all, he is an animal. There has to come a point where you weigh the value of the two lives involved, and determine that the human life is more valuable.

Treating this guy like a criminal is just adding insult to injury. Animals should be protected from abuse. And pets see too much abuse in this country as it is.

But treating this guy as a criminal abuser cheapens the real abuse.

And the picture is a couple of my dogs. The light colored one is my wife's long-haired chihuahua Bandit. He left us late last spring, and is up on the hill next to Junior. The dark one is Daisy, the Young'uns dog. And yeah; I took the picture.

A Target Rich Environment

This morning the news was full of blogging material. I couldn't turn around without hearing something that set my teeth on edge and my blood pressure soaring.

There was some woman on the radio this morning talking about suing a local park district because she doesn't like the rules at the park; it seems that a rule against 'Garbage Picking' is code for 'We don't want the homeless in our park'. Who knew?

And then there was Obama and his speech today in Cincinnati. Apparently he feels there is too much government support of automakers.

Not in this country; in CHINA! apparently having your government actually, you know, OWN an automaker is not problem. But just financially supporting them is against the rules.

But the winner?

The Fed is going to print money to buy MORTGAGES!

Here is how this will help (allegedly):

By printing money to buy mortgages they will keep interest rates low (lower than 0%!?!?!?) by keeping the banks flush with cash (you mean more than the Trillions they are already sitting on from TARP and the other 'Quantitative Easing' programs?!?!?!?), so more people will be able to get a loan (based on WHAT JOB!?!?!?) and buy a house, increasing demand and raising housing.

And then all of the unicorns will fart a hundred rainbows and everybody will sing Happy Days are Here Again! and the economy will instantly recover. I made up a part of that. I'll let you guess which part.

They are completely missing that housing prices are a SYMPTOM, not a cause. The cause is TOO MUCH MONEY SUPPLY.

Which printing more money will not help, will it?

50 more days until we can get rid of these idiots.

Define Self-sufficiency

I found this through Instapundit the other day; a very good read. I guess I liked it because we have a man of superior education who agrees with me.

The modern world is almost completely cut off from self-sufficiency. Some of us like to think we are self-sufficient, but in reality we are as dependent on others for survival as the biggest welfare queen.

For example; say your water heater goes out. You call a plumber, he installs a new one, and you pay the bill. Not very self-sufficient.

Now lets say instead of calling the plumber, you install one yourself. That's self-sufficient you say?

Maybe. Did you make the water heater, or did you drive on government roads in a car you bought to a big box store where you bought a new water heater that somebody else made and somebody else shipped in a truck made by somebody else on the same government roads you are about to haul your new water heater home on?

The 19th century, and earlier, idea of being self-sufficient is completely different than today's version. Very few people lived in towns, because town did not allow enough ground to raise you own food- both flora and fauna- and to hunt from the wild what you didn't or couldn't grow. Like trees for housing and fuel.

a 19th Century man knew where his bacon and eggs came from; he had raised the hogs and chickens, slaughter the hog and cured the bacon in a smokehouse he built from the stones he cleared from his fields over a fire he fed with wood he had cut from his own land.

Or he lived in town, and created something he was able to sell that would allow him to purchase what he needed from those who had excess. And even in town he would have had a few chickens.

There is a family farm near me that has been in the same family for generations. Around a hundred acres, that farm is still producing, just like it did in the 19th Century. But the same farm that once supported a family in style solely from the work they did on the farm, now does not. The farm still produces the same, but our modern life style requires us to be dependent, and not self-sufficient.

A 19th Century farm will not produce a new water heater, nor the electricity to run it, nor will it produce enough excess to create the cash needed for these items, or the hundreds of others we now 'need' for survival.

Go back just 40-50 years and think about the lifestyle we all lived. One TV; black and white usually, but maybe color. And only 3 channels; maybe 5 if you have a UHF tuner. One phone; black, with a dial and tied to the wall with a fat cord. I could go on; as could you. In a little over one generation, look at what God hath wrought.

And every change has made us less self-sufficient and more dependent.

Some of us know how dependent we are, and some don't. I like to believe that those of us who know we are dependent are the conservatives. We know the cost and value of labor, and are willing to share with those incapable of laboring.

And then there are those who don't know the cost or value of labor, and are willing to share yours with anybody else.

I think we need more people in this country who know that bacon doesn't come from Kroger's, but comes from the hard labor of a lot of folks; just like they did in the 19th Century.

Friday Night at the Movies VII

Friday night was another video night. A few months ago I found Cool Hand Luke in the Wal-Mart 5 Buck Bin, and Friday night I finally broke the seal.

It has been a few years since I had seen Cool Hand Luke. Some scenes were familiar; others barely remembered.

Of course it was easy to remember Paul Newman in the title role. In the opening scenes of the movie, where his character Lucas Jackson is caught drunk, cutting the heads off of parking meters in the dark. At times it seems like the only light in the scene is coming from Newman's famous blue eyes.

When he is delivered to the prison camp the camp warden, played by Strother Martin, and known only as Captain, reads off his service record from the Korean War, including a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, and promotions to Sergeant, as well as demotions to Buck Private.

Our friend Luke seems to have a problem with authority, but not bravery.

The balance of the movie is Luke's battles with authority, both the official Prison system, and the more informal prisoner system.

The Prisoner system is easy. Luke has a fist fight with the prisoner's self appointed leader Dragline (George Kennedy in the role that won him an Oscar), that Luke refuses to lay down for. Dragline eventually walks away from the fight, leaving a battered and wobbling, but still standing Luke in the ring.

His battles against the official system doesn't end as well, or as easily. After numerous stays in The Box, a cramped, unheated, windowless structure, where the prisoner has a can of water and a bucket for a bathroom, Luke escapes. After he is caught and beaten, he is returned to the camp and kept in leg irons.

Luke's return the chain gang contains the most famous line from the movie: "What we have here is failure to communicate." Luke has not gotten the message about who is in command.

He escapes again, and is caught again, beaten again, and put in a second set of leg irons. Unlike the prisoner's control system, which appreciates a man's spirit, the official system does not. The Captain determines that he has to break Luke's spirit.

After several days and night of brutal treatment, Luke finally breaks. He has ended his brutal treatment at the hands of the guards, but lost the respect of his fellow inmates.

He becomes a toady for the Bosses, the guards who watch the prisoners work along the road; running errands and fetching water for the other prisoners. Everyone believes he has been broken. But he is just biding time, gaining the trust of the Bosses.

One day, out on the road gang, Luke steals the keys from all of the trucks while performing his toady jobs, and when told to go to a truck for an item, steals the truck instead. as he is driving off, Dragline jumps onto the running board, escaping with him.

Dragline and Luke split up, and Luke winds up hiding in an old. back-country Church. He sees the lights of the prison vehicles and the local police pull into the church yard just as Dragline steps through the back door into the church. Luke steps to a front window, overlooking the vehicles in the yard, and throws the Captain's words back at him: "What we have here is a failure to communicate".

At that point one of the Bosses shoots Luke square in the chest.

As Luke is being driven away to the prison hospital, he looks out the window of the patrol car and grins at Dragline.

Luke has spent the entire movie battling against authority. Did he win or lose? The movie doesn't let us know if he lived through being shot or not, but the impression is that he did not.The prisoners are seen in the final shots talking of Luke's exploits; including his final smile.

If you look at Luke himself you could say he won. He was no longer under the thumb of the prison system. He was dead, but he went out on his terms, defying their authority to the last. He was also a hero to the prisoners.

But you can also look at the larger picture. The prison system was free of Luke, and they had killed him. He was no longer around to challenge their authority. They had made him an example.

Or had they made him a martyr?

To me, the movie says a lot about challenging authority. Luke is working hard in the first scene, cutting heads off of parking meters. He's not stealing them; just cutting them down. To make a point. To challenge the city's authority to charge for parking. The challenge costs him 2 years in a prison work camp.

Once in the camp, he challenges the authority he finds there. The self imposed authority of the inmates he beats easily; Luke shows he will not be beaten down, and the authority accepts that he is an equal. The authority that Dragline has a leader is granted to him by the other prisoners, and when the sympathy for Luke from the prisoners threatens Dragline's position, he does the only thing he can do; he acquiesces to that sympathy and stops fighting.

But the state imposed authority is a little more hard nosed. Not only will it not accept his challenge, it refuses to accept being beaten. The guards do not have to answer to a higher authority, as Dragline does. Their job is to control all of the prisoners, up to and including the ability to kill a prisoner.

The question is, which type of authority have we created in our government; Dragline's, or the Bosses?

Had Some Fun This Morning

I was directed to this site by an email from my Aunt. I thought it was interesting, so I had to share.

My first time I was a Bobbing Bobcat; the second I was a Rocketing Rabbit.

How about you?

4 Dead in Libya

People have always held differing opinions. Cain and Abel came to blows- and death- over their differing opinions, and that was, depending on you point of view, around 3,500 years ago. But civilized people have learned to argue differing points of view without bloodshed or injury, even during contested elections.

Not that we are completely blameless.We have had a Civil War and deadly riots in this country, and may have them again.

But for the most part, and most of the time, we accept one another as we are and peacefully coexist. Sometimes our feelings get hurt. We have government funded artists creating images that are disrespectful of religion, or of a particular faith. We express our outrage in blog posts, calls to radio shows and Letters to the Editor of the local paper.

But we don't determine that the artist was an atheist and go on a violent rampage against every atheist we can find.

Our currency of exchange in disputes is verbal, not physical.

After September 11th, both this week and 11 years ago, radical Moslems have clearly defined what their currency of exchange for discussion is.

It is violence and death.

As long as we fail to negotiate in the same currency we are seen as weak.

It is time to start being seen as strong, not weak.

They kill 4, we kill 40; or 400, or 4000.

Since violence and death are the currency they understand and seem to prefer, it is time to start talking in a way they will understand.

The problem is we can't. Our history; our culture, our religions, won't allow us to retaliate wholesale against a people for the actions of a few.

And it shouldn't.

But that restraint puts us in a terrible position for an exchange of ideas with the Middle East. Bluntly, I am no expert. I haven't spent years living in the area, or even studying the various cultures and sects. All I know is what I read in the papers and on the internet.

And I see a culture that believes the only way to deal with an issue that you don't like is to kill it.

James Lileks had a great column up yesterday, discussing this same thing. I guess it is on a lot of people's minds.

He references some recent occurrences, talking about the killing of gay young men in Iraq, and the incident in Afghanistan where a group of people were sentenced to death- a sentence that was carried out- for dancing.

I recall back in the late 1999 the Taliban were shelling with artillery fire an image of Buddha-  one that was thousands of years old and rather large, carved into the side of a cliff- because their religion didn't allow images like that. No discussion of what the culture that created it believed. They didn't like it, and they destroyed it.

The riots the other day in Egypt and Libya were allegedly caused by a movie available on YouTube that cast aspersions on the prophet Mohammed. They couldn't destroy the movie; they couldn't kill the men who made it, but they did ransack two US embassies and kill 4 Americans, including the US Ambassador to Libya.

As long as we are using words as our currency, and they are using violence, we can never come to any agreement. Its like trying to make a deal with a culture that prizes cow chips, while we are trading in gold; neither medium of exchange has any value in the other culture.

True, this is a subset of Islam, and only a certain number of people believe that jihad is the way to deal with the world. But it doesn't appear to me to be a Westboro Baptist Church situation and the balance of Christianity, or even the Baptist religion. Every time Westboro crawls out from under their rock they are soundly criticized. A verbal display, and a verbal chastisement.

When is balance of Islam going to chastise the violent segment of their religion?

Are they unable to, or just unwilling?

I Can See That Happening

This is flat amazing. Just the construction of the device (?) is a head scratcher. And then he dumps water in it.

I was out to a site I visit occasionally, There I Fixed It, the home of Redneck Repairs.

I don't know what he fixed, or even how it was broken, but the video is amazing.

And I have no idea how it was done, but I suspect some sort of video trickery.

Or maybe dark magic.

Say What?!?!?!

Sometimes the news is just too unbelievable. I ran into this at Althouse today, and I just had to comment.

Hanoi Jane as Nancy Reagan?!?!?

But is that better or worse than Severus Snape as Ronald Reagan?