smile awhile; discuss awhile

 

(center)   Henry Kissinger, Pat Moynihan

the Hall & Oates song for Thursday, November 30th is

"Sara Smile"

(play it from You Tube, and enjoy!)

♪ ♪

--------------------------------------

[excerpt / Moynihan letters]

Praising the Republicans to Representative Melvin Laird, a powerful member of the House leadership.

14 AUGUST 1967

HONORABLE MELVIN P. LAIRD

MEMBER OF CONGRESS

HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Dear Congressman Laird:

        I would not be more in agreement with you as to the pointlessness--and at this moment, with respect to the Democrats--the arrogance of the debate over who really recognizes these problems.  The English say that no man is a hero to his butler, and I say that neither is any political party to a man who has served it.   

One of the impressive developments of the past few years has been the intellectual cutting edge of the criticism you fellows have been leveling against us, and that is all to the good.

        I would be honored to take part in any kind of exchange you suggest.  Let me make a suggestion:  I am a member of the Institute of Politics which has been established here in Cambridge in memory of President Kennedy.  (Congressman Ford was one of our guests last year.)  How would it be if you and some of your colleagues came up for a long evening discussion, or perhaps a day of discussion some time this fall?  

We would be honored, and you would find it pleassant, and even possibly of use.  I have not talked about this with Dick Neustadt, but he is the most agreeable of men, as I am sure you know.

________________________________

{Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  A Portrait In Letters Of An American Visionary.  Edited by Steven R. Weisman.  PUBLIC AFFAIRS.  New York.  2010.}

----------------------------------------

Melvin Laird

-30-

indeed, I thought I went out of my way

 

Vietnam War Protests at the White House

______________________________________________

Hall & Oates song for today!

"Kiss On My List"

(play it on You Tube)  ♫♫

When they insist on knowing my bliss

I tell them this

When they want to know what the reason is

I only smile when I lie, then I tell them why

(Because your kiss) your kiss is on my list...

-----------------------------------------

[excerpt - Moynihan letters]

Moynihan grew increasingly concerned about not offending the Johnson White House, though his disenchantment was clearly growing, as he indicates to Harry McPherson and Bill Moyers.

AUGUST 8, 1967

Dear Harry,

        I called Bill Moyers this afternoon and learned in passing that you and Joe Califano felt there was a suggestion in my Newsday article that if President Kennedy were alive we would not be in our present difficulty.

        Several interpretations of this occur to me.  One is that you are all more than normally sensitive on this point--in a way that I would not be--and that you really are disturbed.  If this is so, let me ask that you accept my apologies, and perhaps also that you tender them to the President, as I certainly intended nothing of the sort.  

Nor do I think anything of the sort.  Indeed, I thought I went out of my way to cite the failure of the 1962 Welfare Amendments as an example of our refusing to confront reality.

        Best,

Note for Bill Moyers:

        I hope you won't mind my sending this note.  It is in the family.  If an apology is in order, I feel I ought to offer one.

        I may have misled you in my remark about Edinburgh.  I recall that you studied there, but do not recollect that the doctrine of the forgiveness of sin was ever very prominent in that branch of Celtic theology!

________________________

{Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  A Portrait In Letters Of An American Visionary.  Edited by Steven R. Weisman.  PUBLIC AFFAIRS.  New York.  2010.}

The East Room - White House Historical Association

-30-

in a not especially pleasant time

 

                                               Arthur Goldberg

Today's Hall & Oates song

(play it from You Tube - the original album version is available)

"She's Gone"

♪♪ ♫

Song is a mood.  Different sections have different tempos - the pace changes with the sentiments expressed in the lyrics.

That opening - transcendent feeling that captures your attention, and the mesmerizing beginning phrase:

"Everybody's high on consolation..."

_____________________________

-------------------- [excerpt from the book of Moynihan's letters]

Moynihan's growing disappointment in the Johnson administration is expressed here to former Labor Secretary and Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, now ambassador at the United Nations.

25 AUGUST 1967

HIS EXCELLENCY ARTHUR J. GOLDBERG

UNITED STATES MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS

799 UNITED NATIONS PLAZA

NEW YORK, N.Y.

Dear Ambassador:

        What a very generous note, in a not especially pleasant time.  Somehow nothing works.  

I wrote that article that appears in the Washington Post because Bill Moyers asked and urged me to do so, and in just the terms that finally appeared.  

The response from the White House?  That it was a tasteless thing to suggest that if President Kennedy were alive we would have no problems.  

However, one thing the past two years have taught me was how to live without being popular.  Actually, the mail on the Post article has been extraordinarily favorable.  The nation wants leadership.  They want an administration that will be seen and candid and try to explain as much as can be explained.  

Instead, we are getting utterly transparent evasions and pieties. ...

{Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  A Portrait In Letters Of An American Visionary.  Edited by Steven R. Weisman.  PUBLIC AFFAIRS.  New York.  2010.}

__________________________

Vice President Lyndon Johnson; President John Kennedy

-30-

an American man of ideas

 

___________________________________

Hall & Oates song for the day:

"Rich Girl"

play it from You Tube!  ♫ ♪

----------------------------------------------

________________________

---------------- [excerpt from Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary.  Introduction by Steven R. Weisman]

Daniel Patrick Moynihan led a singularly American life, but it was a life unlike any other in modern America.

        As a youth in New York, Pat Moynihan struggled with poverty in a family devastated by the disappearance of his father at the height of the Great Depression.  Young Pat shined shoes, tended bar, worked the piers as a longshoreman, and stole rides by clinging spread-eagled to the back of the crosstown bus to get to high school in Harlem.  

He briefly attended City College of New York before joining the Navy as a teenager during World War II.  He served as a gunnery officer, traveled the world, returned to complete an undergraduate degree from Tufts, and studied in London....

        Moynihan was a pathfinder in John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, a commander in Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and Great Society, and an enabler in many greater and lesser moments of Richard Nixon.  He was a renowned professor at Harvard well before becoming a successful politician.

...Determined that a nation's public spaces should reflect the legacy of its ideals, he was instrumental in the effort to revive some of America's greatest urban environments, from the Custom House in Lower Manhattan to Union Station and Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital.  

        The span of his history was such that upon Moynihan's retirement in 2000, President Clinton bestowed on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom--the very honor that Moynihan had himself recommended be established under President Kennedy.

        Above all, Moynihan, who died in 2003, was the originator of powerful ideas that were also powerfully argued--ideas that actually helped transform how Americans think about their country, its internal fissures and its place in the world.

_________________________

-30-

I can go for being twice as nice

 

Reading about the Hall & Oates lawsuit and restraining order the other day, through internet comments I learned how much people love their music.

"Hall & Oates stay on my playlist."

"My dad has their albums."

Etc.

The expression "restraining order" brings to my mind images of - one of these guys wants to physically hammer on the other one.  

        But in further reporting today, it looks like the restraining order is to prevent one from selling some music, or rights, or something, which a signed contract says they control together.

So that sounds more like paper-lawyer-office activity, rather than - I don't know - brawling outdoors.

----------------------------------------------

reader comments

------------------

~  Just sad.  I thought these two were okay and not about the drama.  The music will always be good but this is disappointing for fans...

~  A very early video, with Oates singing lead for once.  Is Daryl [ticked] at him here?  Damn I miss the 70s!  [video was a performance of "She's Gone"]

~  I can't go for that!

~  Oh no, now they are on ABC World News! 

~  Sad news!!

That's how it goes sometimes.

Just like those marriages that break up after decades.

People fall out.

~  This is sad.  These men need to get their sh!t together and tour.  Imagine the bank they could make.  

Idk how it could get to this level where a restraining order has to be filed.  I mean, is somebody trespassing on the other's property yelling give me my demos back?  

        I hope they can work it out, they have classic songs.

~  Now why they wanna make Sarah frown?

~  This is very sad for me; I love their music!

Say it isn't so!!!!!

~  Daryl could have done it by himself but I love the voices together.  They both loved Philly soul and came through with the sound.  They need to get it together.  Too damn old for this mess.

___________________________

-30-

everybody's high on consolation

 

I was thinking about words that people sometimes use in writing, but they would be unlikely to use in speaking.

One of those is "crowing" - saying that a person was boasting, or bragging, being smug, and calling it "crowing."  And another is "trumpeting," which means the same thing.

Like - "he was crowing about having beaten the rap."  Or - "the institution investigated itself, and then trumpeted that there had been no wrong-doing."

Now, I doubt the person was supposed to have made a sound like an actual rooster crowing - "er-er-ER-er-ERRR!!"

And did the institution's spokesperson really trumpet?

Was that press release - seriously - trumpeting?

Is that trumpeting?

(elephants:  "Hold our beer.")

-------------------------- And in today's headlines - What The Heck??  You know the music group Hall & Oates?  Apparently Hall is suing Oates, and has also put a restraining order against him.

Yikes.

That isn't very harmonious or melodious.

Their songs:  the first one I think of is "Rich Girl."

        ♪ ♫ -- and you've gone too far

'Cause you know it don't matter anyway...

internet comments:

~  That's unfortunate.  P.S. Their songs are timeless.

~  What?

~  Exactly my reaction.

I love Hall & Oates.  Such great music.

I can't believe things are so bad between them that a restraining order is needed?  That's crazy.

~  Dawg.  I thought 2020 was one for the ages... 2023 is ending in a shebang

~  Private Eyes are watching you.  They see your every move.

~  Oh no, I can't go for this.  Hall and Oates need to get it together

~  Right?!  I mean, D*MN!

Hall & Oates stay on my playlist.

~  Wow well this sucks.  I love their music

~  I sure as hell didn't have this on my bingo card

_______________________________

-30-

goodbye mein leiber herr ♫

 

VE Day:  the fall of Nazi Berlin

1945

In a speech last week, Donald Trump said his [imaginary] enemies "live like vermin".  The first thing I thought of was, Hitler referred to Jewish people as "vermin" back in the 1930s, as the concentration camps were being built.

        There's been, since 2015, this talk that Mr. Trump keeps a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table.  I don't know if that is truth, or what they call an "urban legend."

        Some people might believe that he wants to be just like Hitler and kill a bunch of people if he gets back in, and that's why he keeps Mein Kampf close to hand, like a guidebook.

        And some other people might believe that Trump doesn't have Hitler's book in his bedroom at all, that's only what meanies say about him.

        I tend to believe he doesn't have the book because I find it difficult to imagine that he has ever read any book in his life.

____________________________

--------------------------------

        Someone was on the Internet today saying she lets her 4-year-old son have coffee with breakfast.

...That sort of online tidbit that seems meant to get reactions....

People are saying it's bad to give them coffee - this made me remember my mom reading me Pippi Longstocking when I was little - and in that book, the children drink coffee.  I asked about that, and my mother said it was different over there, kids drink coffee in Sweden.

        (Little children ask so many questions - I suppose parents learn to just - come up with an answer on the fly, and keep it movin'....)

-30-

freedom under fire

 

U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, and Martin Luther King

1965

the New York Times

Federal Court Moves to Drastically Weaken Voting Rights Act

The ruling, which is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court, would effectively bar private citizens and civil rights groups from suing under a key provision of the landmark law.

by Nick Corasaniti

Nov. 20, 2023

[excerpt]  A federal appeals court moved on Monday to drastically weaken the Voting Rights Act, issuing a ruling that would effectively bar private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits under a central provision of the landmark civil rights law.

The ruling, made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, found that only the federal government could bring a legal challenge under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a crucial part of the law that prohibits election or voting practices that discriminate against Americans based on race.

The opinion is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court.  The court's current conservative majority has issued several key decisions in recent years that have weakened the Voting Rights Act.  But the justices have upheld the law in other instances, including in a June ruling that found Alabama had drawn a racially discriminatory congressional map.

Passed in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement, undoing decades of discriminatory Jim Crow laws and protecting against egregious racial gerrymanders.  

        But the law has been under legal assault almost since its inception, and court decisions through the years have hollowed out key provisions, including a requirement that states with a history of discrimination in voting obtain approval from the federal government before changing their voting laws.

The decision by the court of appeals on Monday found that the text of the Voting Rights Act did not explicitly contain language for "a private right of action," or the right of private citizens to file lawsuits under the law.  Therefore, the court found, the right to sue would effectively lie with the government alone.

Should the ruling stand, it would remove perhaps the most important facet of the Voting Rights Act; a majority of challenges to discriminatory laws and racial gerrymanders have come from private citizens and civil rights groups.

"It will be a devastating near-death blow to the Voting Rights Act if it remains the law," said Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.  

"Radical theories that would previously have been laughed out of court have been taken increasingly seriously by an increasingly radical judiciary."

__________________________

__________________________

Reader Comments

Adrianne

Massachusetts

Never stop your citizens from suing.  Parliament stopped listening to the colonists and they took up arms instead.

Pennsylvania

Our democracy is in imminent danger.

Seattle

One step closer to the end goal of permanent minority rule.

L M Weber

Rosalia

We need to impeach judges who destroy the Voting Rights Act.  They are unworthy of interpreting the law for the nation.

Elaine

In other words, slowly chip away at civil rights, prepping America for despots, autocrats and minority rule.  This is beyond outrageous.

America, you in danger girl.

Aaron

Durham, North Carolina

If this ruling is upheld, then it would fall to the executive branch to bring any challenges under the voting rights act.  

Under a Republican president, states could simply ignore the Voting Rights Act, and have their voting restrictions stand unchallenged as long as said voting restrictions benefitted Republicans.  

        That is completely unacceptable.

Indiana

What is happening to this country?  Time is rapidly running out for people to wake up to the fact that we are losing our democracy.  The slow, chipping away at our rights will lead to the collapse of our foundations.

The question above is rhetorical.  But the threats are real.

Bryan 

Seattle

10 of the 11 8th Circuit judges were appointed by Republicans.  All six of the senior judges were appointed by Republicans.  A Republican judiciary is just as opposed to equal voting rights as the Republican base.

Adie

Pennsylvania

Why in the world are federal rulings that affect the whole country being issued by a court whose jurisdiction includes more livestock than people?

Court shopping by partisan and religious zealots.  This has to stop.

____________________________

-----------------------------------------

Where the last Comment from Pennsylvania refers to "zealots" - it makes me think of The Crown episode where Billy Graham comes to England.  The young Queen and her mother sit watching TV during a broadcast of a speech by Rev. Graham.

QUEEN MOTHER

It's rare, and not entirely reassuring, to see religious certainty in someone so young.

QUEEN

He's not young; he's my age.

QUEEN MOTHER

Precisely.  A child.

I think moral authority and spiritual guidance should come from someone with a little life experience.  Not from someone who learned their trade selling brushes door to door in North Carolina.

QUEEN

But there's a humility to that which I like.

QUEEN MOTHER

(staring a little more closely at the television screen)

Are those people crying?

The people of Great Britain never cried during the war.  Now they're weeping like children.

        [Graham continues talking, getting more wound up as he goes - "I'm going to preach a gospel, not of despair, but of hope.  Hope for the individual, hope for society! - hope for the world!!"]

QUEEN MOTHER

Turning out in droves for an American zealot.

QUEEN

He's not a zealot.

QUEEN MOTHER

He's shouting, darling.  Only zealots shout.

-----------------------------------------

(on the TV) actor Paul Sparks as Billy Graham; in background:  Claire Foy as the Queen

-30-

a November poem

 

an autumn day before it gets too cold

Golden sunshine poured

through windows

Onto carpet, desk,

and cat - and

gave us a bright day in November

So that we could almost

forget that it was November.

A civil breeze only 

barely lifted

leaves and coat edges -

Seeming diplomatic and social, 

not ferocious,

letting people say to 

each other,

'It's a nice day!'

Early sunset dropped a

Line of petal-pink before

our eyes

before

Darkness replaced it.

With the ebony curtain of night,

We stopped thinking about

the nice day

and began

Picturing

what we can do with our

two days off

----------------------------------------

-30-

television by radio

 

Yesterday, researching the career of Marc Lawrence - it was astounding to see a seemingly endless list of movies he appeared in.  A very busy character actor.  With a long career - made his last appearance on film at the age of 93.

Going through that list of movies:  so many that I had never heard of!  In the days before television, Hollywood put out a lot of product.

And speaking of TV - on that list, the 1936 movie "Trapped by Television" - ? - ? - ? ...

[excerpt from Wikipedia] ---------------- Trapped by Television is a 1936 American comedy-drama crime science fiction film directed by Del Lord and starring Mary Astor, Lyle Talbot and Nat Pendleton.   The film is also known as Caught by Television in the United Kingdom.

Plot

An inventor is working on his latest creation, a new form of television monitor and camera, but is struggling to complete his invention due to lack of funds.  

His monetary problems are compounded by an aggressive bill collector looking for payments, and competition from a rival scientist.  

        When organized crime figures are added to the mix, the desperation level rises for our intrepid inventor. ------------------------------ [end / excerpt]

____________________________

I was somewhat confused by this whole concept - how could they know about TV in 1936, when people didn't have TVs until the '50s?

        OK, online info:

Televisions were being made in the 1920s.

[Wikipedia] -------------- Readers did see an amazing color TV on the cover of the July 1922 issue of Science and Invention.  It was perhaps the first color depiction of a color TV in the world.  At the time it was explained as "television by radio."

[Google] ------------------ Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on September 7, 1927.  The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house without electricity until he was 14.

[New York University] ------------------ The number of television sets in use rose from 6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951.

[Google] ----------------- In 1950 only 9 percent of American households had a television set, but by 1960 the figure had reached 90 percent.

-----------------------------------------

Two titles that caught my attention in that long list of movies:

Key Largo (1948) - a claustrophobic noir crime drama, it expresses hope, and determination, for a better world in the post-World War II time segment.  A classic.

and

Johnny Cool (1963) - Elizabeth Montgomery was in it!

______________________

-30-

After the Dance; Love on a Bet

 

Palm Springs, Mid Century Modern Painting by Stephen Abela

The Big Easy (1986) features some super-interesting casting:  Jim Garrison - a New Orleans lawyer who (in real life) tried someone for the assassination of President Kennedy - appears as himself, playing a judge in the courtroom.

Solomon Burke, a singer of rhythm and blues and soul music in the 1960s, appears in the film.

An outstandingly quirky and textured performance is given by the actor Charles Ludlam, portraying defense lawyer Lamar Parmentel.  He leaves an impression, with sugar-coated, old-fashioned Southern charm, dripping with honeyed persuasion.

I had to check, who was the actor who played the local "wise guy" who feels disrespected when brought in for questioning - "your father wouldn't have dragged me down here - He'd come to-da-house!"

It was Marc Lawrence (1910 - 2005).  He was born in New York City, began acting while still in school, and at the time of filming The Big Easy, he would have been around 75 years old.

        The actor lived in Palm Springs, California, from 1971 to 2005.

It was funny - looking at Wikipedia page for this actor, it offers a "Selected filmography."  When they write 'selected' it means they might leave out some of the movies he was in, because they just want to give highlights of the career, right?  

So - for Marc Lawrence, the Selected filmography reads as follows:

1932    If I Had a Million

1933    Gambling Ship

1933    Her First Mate

1933    Lady for a Day

1933    White Woman

1934    Straight Is the Way

1934    Death on the Diamond

1934    Million Dollar Baby

1935    G Men

1935    Go Into Your Dance

1935    Strangers All

1935    Men of the Hour

1935    The Arizonian

1935    Don't Bet on Blondes

1935    After the Dance

1935    Little Big Shot

1935    Dr. Socrates

1935    Three Kids and a Queen

1936    Road Gang

1935    Don't Gamble with Love

1936    Love on a Bet

1936    Robin Hood of El Dorado

1936    Desire

1936    Under Two Flags

1936    Counterfeit

1936    Trapped by Television

1936    The Final Hour

1936    Blackmailer

1936    The Cowboy Star

1936    Charlie Chan at the Opera

1936    Night Waitress

1937    Racketeers in Exile

1937    Motor Madness

1937    I Promise to Pay

1937    Criminals of the Air

1937    San Quentin

1937    What Price Vengeance?

1937    It Can't Last Forever

1937    A Dangerous Adventure

1937    Charlie Chan on Broadway

1937    Life Begins with Love

1937    Counsel for Crime

1937    Murder in Greenwich Village

1937    The Shadow

1938    Penitentiary

1938    Who Killed Gail Preston?

1938    Squadron of Honor

1938    Convicted

1938    I Am the Law

1938    The Spider's Web

1938    Adventure in Sahara

1938    While New York Sleeps

1938    Charlie Chan in Honolulu

1939    Homicide Bureau

1939    There's That Woman Again

1939    The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt

1939    Sergeant Madden

1939    Romance of the Redwoods

1939    Code of the Streets

1939    Blind Alley

1939    Ex-Champ

1939    S.O.S. Tidal Wave

1939    Dust Be My Destiny

1939    Beware Spooks!

1939    The Housekeeper's Daughter

1939    Invisible Stripes

1940    Johnny Apollo

1940    Love, Honor and Oh-Baby!

1940    The Man Who Talked Too Much

1940    The Golden Fleecing

1940    Brigham Young

1940    The Great Profile

1940    Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum

1941    Tall, Dark and Handsome

1941    The Monster and the Girl

1941    The Man Who Lost Himself

1941    Blossoms in the Dust

1941    The Shepherd of the Hills

1941    Lady Scarface

1941    Hold That Ghost

1941    A Dangerous Game

1941    Sundown

1941    Public Enemies

1942    Nazi Agent

1942    Yokel Boy

1942    This Gun for Hire

1942    Call of the Canyon

1942    Eyes of the Underworld

1942    'Neath Brooklyn Bridge

1943    Calaboose

1943    Submarine Alert

1943    The Ox-Bow Incident

1943    Hit the Ice

1944    Tampico

1944    Rainbow Island

1944    The Princess and the Pirate

1945    Dillinger

1945    Flame of Barbary Coast

1945    Don't Fence Me In

1945    Club Havana

1945    Life with Blondie

1946    Blonde Alibi

1946    The Virginian

1946    Inside Job

1946    Cloak and Dagger

1947    Yankee Fakir

1947    Joe Palooka in the Knockout

1947    Unconquered

1947    Captain from Castile

1948    I Walk Alone

1948    Key Largo

1948    Out of the Storm

1949    Jigsaw

1949    Calamity Jane and Sam Bass

1949    Tough Assignment

1950    Black Hand

1950    The Asphalt Jungle

1950    The Desert Hawk

1950    Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion

1951    Hurricane Island

1951    My Favorite Spy

1952    Torment of the Past

1952    La Tratta delle bianche

1952    I tre corsari

1952    Brothers of Italy

1953    Jolanda, the Daughter of the Black Corsair

1953    Noi peccatori

1953    Legione straniera

1953    Funniest Show on Earth

1954    Vacation with a Gangster

1954    Tragic Ballad

1955    New Moon

1955    Suor Maria

1955    La catena dell'odio

1956    Helen of Troy

1957    Kill Her Gently

1963    Johnny Cool

1966    Due mafiosi contro Al Capone

1966    Johnny Tiger

1966    Savage Pampas

1966    7 monaci d'oro

1967    Du mou dans la gachette

1967    Custer of the West

1968    Kong Island

1969    Krakatoa, East of Java

1970    The Kremlin Letter

1970    Dream No Evil

1971    Diamonds Are Forever

1972    In Pursuit of Treasure

1972    Daddy's Deadly Darling

1973    Frasier, the Sensuous Lion

1974    The Man with the Golden Gun

1976    Marathon Man

1977    A Piece of the Action

1978    Foul Play

1978    Goin' Coconuts

1979    Hot Stuff

1979    Swap Meet

1980    Super Fuzz

1980    Cataclysm

1982    Cat and Dog

1985    Night Train to Terror

1986    The Big Easy

1989    Blood Red

1992    Ruby

1992    Newsies

1995    Four Rooms

1996    From Dusk till Dawn

1996    Gotti

1999    End of Days

2001    The Shipping News

2003    Looney Tunes:  Back in Action

------------------------------------------

(picking self up off the floor) - This is the "Selected" filmography???!!!   

Just the "highlights"??!

LOL       How many more movies could he have acted in?

I wonder if he set some kind of record.

This is crazy.

________________________

Dennis Quaid; Marc Lawrence

   in The Big Easy

-30-

somebody is sending a message

 

A few weeks ago here, I was writing that The Third Man was on You Tube - two different prints, the original black-and-white; and a colorized version.  They're gone, now.

When I recommend to see something on You Tube, you have to watch it right away before they take it down!

Meanwhile, on Amazon Prime - The Big Easy is available to watch for free.  It's good!  Watch it before it goes away!

Fantastic music.

Wonderful action plot, revolving around public morality, very relevant, compared to the Corruption Run Amok that we have today.

(American public:  "Supreme Court, you have to have ethical standards."

Supreme Court:  "You're not the boss of me!")

Ellen Barkin plays a federal prosecutor who comes to New Orleans to investigate corruption.  She calls upon a Mafia person to come in and testify.  The Mafia guy protests this strange new protocol, telling his friend on the force - "When he was in charge, he wouldn't make me come down here.

(pause)

He'd come to-the-house!"

Ned Beatty is in it, so is John Goodman.

When the prosecutor says ruefully to Dennis Quaid's character, "I've never had much luck with sex," he answers,

"Your luck's about to change!"

Oy vey.

_______________________

-30-