The Beautiful Mind, a Beautiful Day, Medical Matters

One of my all-time favorite movies is the 2001 semi-fictional biographical thriller A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as John Naah, the Novel laureate (Nash really won that award) for economics who went through a serious protracted trial with his schizophrenia.  His"friend"of many years, a hallucination, was Charles Herman, played on screen by Paul Bettany.  The way the film portrays this character...one moment he's invisible and the next he's right up in your face...made a formidable impression on me.  If something like this happened to me, I would be very upset about what was going on in my mind...especially if there were a pattern of repetition to the phenomenon. How could I bring this experience up in conversation, possibly risking in the process being called crazy? In the Bible, following the resurrection of Jesus, his disciples were walking around, largely despondent and discouraged. Suddenly the risen Lord would appear to them out of thin air,  this being the part of the text that threw me back a bit.  I will need to be careful about what I observe in life and how to process and react to it.  I do know that, as far as I can discern, my home is relatively secure with any intruders unlikely to make an unwelcome appearance. So the only feasible alternative is...

Today I went with Melissa to consult with her physician's assistant dealing with the oncology following her 2024 cancer treatment and what the future plans are regarding appointments and procedures.  Also, we went to UF Health at the Oaks Mall where I had a lab blood draw and provided a urine sample.  We're dealing with this cancer ordeal arm in arm, loving and supporting each other through it all. I'm praying for complete healing, acknowledging the Lord's supremacy in everything.  Right now it's April 20th, 2026...let's see where the calendar takes us...

On This Anniverary of the Pearl Harbor Attack

Right now it's morning in Gainesville.  I'm sheltered in place within my house and it's raining quite a bit, predicted to do so for hours.  I think I did sleep some last night, although I'm not counting on my FitBit to bear that out.  It is also December 7th, the 84th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that ushered in the United States' entry into World War II.  I thought of the family scene at the close of the movie The Godfather Part II in which Santino (Sonny) rants about "what do you think of the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor on Pop's birthday".  Fredo replies, "They didn't know it was Pop's birthday", bringing a round of laughter.  Later Michael, played by Al Pacino, reveals that he had just enlisted in the Marines, greatly angering his volatile older brother.  This flashback scene comes right after the end of a planned murder spree in which Michael has not only disgraced his own family but has effectively destroyed it.  The scene to me is one of the best in the Godfather series, not just this movie.  Well, Pearl Harbor has NOT just been attacked, and today is before me although I plan to stay at home for most of it.  Blessings to all...

Quote of the Week...from Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in The Godfather

He never asks a second favor when he's been refused the first, understood?   

                                                                   Tom Hagen (played by Robert Duvall) from The Godfather

Tom Hagen is the adopted son and attorney of Don Vito Corleone...aka the Godfather in the famed movie series.  After being sent out to Hollywood to secure a sensitive favor from a belligerent movie producer, Hagen finds himself a guest at the dinner table as "Mr. Woltz" refuses the Godfather's request while indicating that he'd be only too happy to comply with any others.  Both parties know that the requested favor is only a superficial nicety to cover up what is essentially an extortion demand...do this or else.  That Vito Corleone thrived in a criminal environment of circumventing the law never kept him from enunciating and practicing his own "principles"...the above "one-and-done" refused favor being one of these.  Crime, extortion, violence...not at all for me, thank you.  Yet I can see the Don's point of view from my own life experiences of dealing with obnoxious people whose paper authority in certain settings goes to their heads as they try to remind me of our relative positions on their cherished, pathetic pecking orders.  I will ask such an individual for something once and if they make a grand show of resistance to my proposal based on their "superior" status, then that's the absolutely final time they will ever hear from me about any request...and they'd just better forget about me ever covering for their eventual mistakes as well.  The Godfather...I'm speaking about the original movie...is a masterpiece of psychological and social relationships, exposing the corruption beneath practically...if not all...institutions (including business, law, government and religion).  Corruption, I might add, enforced by its own extra-legal system of justice devoid of due process.  We like to pretend we live in a free society, but I strongly disagree for the above reason...

Quote of the Week...from the Movie Groundhog Day

Phil Connors: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

This to me was the funniest line from a very funny movie, 1993's Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a vain Pittsburgh TV weatherman on an unpleasant assignment to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  Only things suddenly get much worse when he wakes up the morning after February 2nd...and discovers to his horror that it's Groundhog Day all over again, with the same people saying and doing the same things and himself exactly the same as if he had never already lived through the day...the same, that is, except for his complete memory of what is happening to him.  After a few experiences of repeatedly waking up to the same day, he goes out drinking with some local blue-collar dudes, the above-mentioned Ralph being one, and poses the quoted question.  Of course, Phil means something quite literal as he asks about what if nothing you did mattered...and promptly comes up with the answer: no consequences...leading to another hilarious scene.  As Phil's affliction keeps going on from same day to same day, the movie does change in tone to that of desperation and ultimately acceptance and a deeper appreciation of life and what should be one's priorities in it.  But Ralph's answer so poignantly expresses so many people's viewpoints without needing to undergo any supernatural time-bending experience. Time does tend to march on from day to day in a cyclic, repetitive pattern.  Part of this is how we're constructed as biological beings tied in to the solar cycle, part is society's way to organize itself to prevent chaos, establish some order and effectively function...and part is each individual's aggregation of habits...some of them more recently acquired and others lifelong...that resist spontaneity and change.  There's not so much to be done with the first two reasons, but that last one is within each person's power to control and steer into a more interesting and meaningful direction... 

Quote of the Week...from Charles Herman

So what's your story? You the poor kid who never got to go to Exeter or Andover?     ---Charles Herman from the movie A Beautiful Mind

Maybe when you saw who said today's quote, you scratched your head...maybe not, if you saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as troubled mathematical genius John Nash and featuring Paul Bettany portraying his college roommate Charles Herman.  His above quote happens after their initial meeting, in which Nash rudely dismisses Herman for interfering with his studies.  Charles, in response, suggests that the two go "break the ice" with his flask of liquor.  So, on the rooftop, the conversation begins with the invitation for Nash to tell his own story...which warms him up considerably to his new (and rare) friend.  Never mind who Charles Herman really turns out to be, just consider two points in this brief sequence.  People tend to get dismissive of others who they think are crossing the line into their own territory or are unduly intruding or distracting them.  Conversely, those so dismissed often take offense as they feel themselves disrespected...I've been on both sides of this.  Yet Charles takes the high road and gives his roommate what he wanted all along: a chance to tell his own story to someone interested in hearing it...the diametric opposite of being dismissive.  I wonder how many enduring friendships have begun with that open invitation to tell one's story, and how many grudges and resentments have festered with memories of how someone was basically told to get lost?  Food for thought... 

Quote of the Week...from James T. Kirk

The answer is "no"...I, therefore, am going anyway.     

---Admiral James T. Kirk, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 

I was always a big fan of the Star Trek original television series...it pained me that early on in its run my parents insisted on watching Bewitched on our one TV set from 8 to 8:30 Thursdays, directly opposite hour-long Star Trek's first half.  So, for some time I knew a lot of episode endings, but not what led up to them.  After finally realizing what a popular cash cow the series was, somebody had the sense to start a movie Star Trek series, albeit more than a decade after the original series was unceremoniously cancelled in 1968.  The third of these, The Search for Spock, is the sequel to the second, The Wrath of Khan, in which Leonard Nimoy's character Spock willingly sacrifices his life to save the starship Enterprise and her crew.  Unknowing of Spock's Vulcan customs, Kirk (played by William Shatner) releases his friend's casket to a soft landing on the strange, distant planet Genesis. Later Spock's father berates him for not reuniting the body with Spock's spirit, which he had given Dr. McCoy (Deforest Kelly)... yeah, I know this is getting a little weird.  Long story short, Kirk wants permission from his superiors in Star Fleet to return to Genesis and retrieve Spock's body...but he is denied because of the controversy surrounding that planet.  So, he walks up to his all-star skeleton crew and delivers the above quote.  I used it today because, well, in life sometimes you have a decision to make, and sometimes it goes in the direction of defiance and not compliance.  As individuals each of us has choices that can determine where we want to go in our respective lives.  It may be tempting to look "sideways" at someone else who is taking a different path than us, especially when that path seems to keep crossing our own from time to time.  Then it's tempting to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and to begin to doubt our own resolve.  I can guarantee you this: no matter what you do or not do, there is always somebody out there who will criticize your decision, and sometimes even get nasty about it.  Then again, on the positive side of all this, there's another "Jim" I'd like to quote: the musician Jim Croce, who sang in his hit I Got a Name, "I've got a dream, I've got a dream.  Oh, I know I can share it if you want me to.  If you're going my way, I'll go with you"...  

Quote of the Week...from Scut Farkus

What, you're gonna cry now?  Come on, crybaby! Cry for me, come on! CRY!     ---Scut Farkus

Scut Farkus was the big bad bully character in Jean Shepherd's immortal 1983 movie A Christmas Story, for which he compiled a number of already published short stories and wrapped them together within a holiday theme.  It's become a TV staple, with a couple of channels running nonstop marathons at Christmas.  I already knew Jean Shepherd in the mid-1970s for his late-night humorous monologue shows on my local talk radio station in Miami Beach, WKAT/1360, shows that originated from the mighty WOR/710, (50,000-watt clear channel) in New York City.  I also had read the short story he wrote to which the above quote pertains.  Little Ralphie, around eight I guess, is all excited as Christmas approaches...he desperately wants a Red Rider toy air rifle, but his mother says no, "You'll shoot your eye out".  And now his own teacher has just written the same thing on a homework assignment he wrote about it...and Ralphie is trudging home in the snow, tears falling from his eyes.  Suddenly Scut Farkus, the school bully...accompanied by his little, stocky toady Grover Dill...jumps in Ralphie's way, confronting him and ridiculing his crying.  And then our hero does something unexpected: he charges his adversary, pushing him to the ground, proceeding to beat him up.  The scene didn't look realistic to me and, besides, I knew from Shepherd's earlier short story that it was the more manageable Dill that Ralphie fought, not impossible Farkus.  I also had a problem with the bully in this story being a social outcast among the kids...where I grew up in South Florida during the sixties and seventies, it was the bully who was the popular kid on the block or at the bus stop.  I could take the above quote of an imaginary figure in different directions, but since I always remember this jeering taunt of Scut's, I decided to turn it on its head and make something sweet about it.  You see, we have a year-old mixed breed puppy dog named Daisy, and when Melissa ("Mommy" as far as Daisy is concerned) ever goes into another room in the house with the door closed, Daisy sidles up to the door and begins to whimper just like she did when she was very young and temporarily separated from her litter.  And every now and then when she does this, I go straight into my Scut Farkus routine, repeating almost verbatim the above quote...but with some good-natured affection thrown in...                                                                            

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

Who are you going to believe...me or your own eyes?.    --Groucho Marx

The witty, acerbic member of the twentieth century comedy team Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx had a lot of funny sayings...another I like is from the movie Duck Soup: "Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can't make head nor tail out of it."  The above quote I did select sadly has a lot of relevance to today's world of disinformation, conspiracy theories and innuendo. I, like you, am a fellow traveler through this strange time of mass digitalization and nearly universally available news sources due to cell phone/Internet technology as well as a multitude of different "news" channels on television, tailored to reinforce the preconceived notions of their viewers.  Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, and search engines like Google employ algorithms to discern their users' interests and politics...and then present material that promotes them.  I distinctly remember Trump's 2017 presidential inauguration and the general sparsity of people attending it in person...and his claim to the effect that it was a record-setting crowd.  And then his yes-people went out into the media to parrot that false claim.  About all these mass shootings, the Covid pandemic and the 2020 election, I've seen these issues all for what they were and yet the media is loaded with those promoting denial and lies: and people believe them and not their own eyes!  I'm not sure people in general haven't changed...they've always had this kind of tribalism to them that sways them to accept "facts" that are untrue just to fit in with their group.  What's different is how this omnipresent digital input is affecting how different folks distinguish reality from fantasy...or whether they actually want to...

Weekly Short Stories: 1983 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I start reviewing science fiction short stories from the year 1983 as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim's anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from that genre for the previous year.  In '83 I was living a frugal, single life in Gainesville as a cook in a local Chinese restaurant, studying foreign languages on the side like Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese...almost a monastic kind of existence, looking back on it.  This was also the year in which the Nuclear Freeze movement took off in Europe, while a very important TV movie on nuclear war was shown here in the States: The Day After.  More on this special year next week...right now let's a take a look at those stories...

BLOOD MUSIC by Greg Bear

Predating the late Michael Crichton's interesting novel Prey on a similar theme by nineteen years, this story examines a scenario in which nanotechnology merges with microbiological synthesis to produce an unseen world within one's body that works much faster than does evolutionary change in modifying and "improving" it.  An employee at a company researching such stuff foolishly injects himself with some of the microscopic, synthesized protein material and the change begins to happen...what an ending!

POTENTIAL by Isaac Asimov

It seems that supercomputers have the capacity for breaking down the myriad sections within the human genome to find that which predicts telepathic abilities.  The government's top-secret espionage section is naturally interested in this and discovers that an Iowan teenage boy may well be endowed with such talent.  They visit, interview and test him...tough luck, guess they were wrong.  When they leave, he breathes a sigh of relief...then realizes that they had been mistakenly trying to see if he could read other people's minds... 

KNIGHT OF SHALLOWS by Rand B. Lee

This tale is a look at the world worlds of alternate universes, and it seems that there are certain individuals who have the ability (or curse) to travel in and out of them, each universe containing a different version of that person.  The story's protagonist is one of these and his subsequent adventures have him searching through wildly divergent realities for a murderer (an alternate self), who kills other alternate selves...while our hero collaborates with yet another alternate self.  All within a few blocks in Key West, Florida, centered around a bar.  Intriguing...and a little funny, too...

SPENDING A DAY AT THE LOTTERY FAIR by Frederik Pohl

This brief story, similar in theme to Shirley Jackson's famous 1948 short story The Lottery, takes place in a future of overpopulation as each nation on Earth takes its own path in dealing with it.  In America they hold fancy festivals involving lotteries...but a small percentage of the entrants will die while few believe their "number" will come up because of the low odds.  Yet in this story all abortion and birth control have been banned...while killing off little children in the lottery is okay.  Ultimately, this is a tale indicting the ongoing politics about abortion, with the author siding with those complaining how many of the "pro-lifers" lose interest in the lives they want to protect after birth occurs...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1983 as it pertained to short science fiction...

More About the Beatles' Get Back Sessions and Their Walk Through 1969

I've been continuing my slow watch of the Beatles' Get Back documentary on Disney Plus, a few sometimes painful minutes at a time.  It's still just a few days into the project in early January, 1969 at their London Twickenham Studios site.  It's been interesting hear Paul McCartney playing out fragments of songs that would later appear on the Abbey Road album (Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight) and as a solo artist two years later after the Beatles breakup (Another Day).  George Harrison came into the studio with his own material as well...I Me Mine, The Inner Light and For You Blue were standouts.  But John Lennon didn't seem to have any new songs to throw into the mix besides Gimme Some Truth (his Across the Universe was a holdover from the '68 White Album sessions) and Paul openly confronted him on this...John often appeared disheveled and out of it.  At one session they sat around and speculated about the site of the project's closing concert, including a strange remote ancient stadium in northern Africa...only Paul seemed enthusiastic about even putting on a show. As for Ringo Starr, the Beatles' drummer, although rarely partaking in the band's musical creative process, he was consistently present and agreeable.  If you didn't know anything about the Beatles' history you might think from what's been shown so far that it was Paul and George leading the creative process with Ringo and John providing the support.  I know the outline of events that would transpire after this project in 1969...the Beatles would hire Allen Klein in February as their manager over the objection of Paul, who wanted his own soon-to-be own father-in-law for the job.  Paul and John would respectively marry Linda Eastman and Yoko Ono in March and at the same time George would be arrested for pot possession with his wife Patti.  The band recorded the Abbey Road album from February through August, it was released in September, and in the same month they signed a new long-term recording contract...soon after which John announced to the others his departure from the Beatles.  That fall the hoax that Paul McCartney was dead from a 1966 car accident and was replaced by an imposter took hold in the popular culture...Paul's isolation with Linda at their rural estate compounded the mystery.  The public at large would still believe that the Beatles were still together until McCartney's announcement with the release of his first solo album in the spring of 1970 that the band was finished. Ironically, a few weeks later the Let It Be album, based on the very Get Back sessions I've been watching, was released, boasting on its jacket that it was a "new phase" Beatles album.  Living through 1969 as a 12-13 year old, I just remember what a cool, kick-ass song Get Back was...

Just Watched the Movie Hamilton

Hamilton is a 2020 movie of the same-titled Broadway musical, filmed at its Richard Rogers Theatre on 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, just a block or so from where I stayed at the Marriott Marquis while visiting with my family in 2010.  At that time we saw the Broadway production of South Pacific at the Lincoln Center...today it was Melissa, Will and I sitting in our living room watching my second Broadway play on our television screen, thanks to Disney Plus which carried it in their listings.  The first few minutes quickly knocked me off my feet with the diverse cast and fast-paced rap, music and action...at first I had to ask if this show was about the same Alexander Hamilton I knew from studying American history.  An immigrant from the Caribbean West Indies, Hamilton was a patriot during the American Revolutionary War and served under General George Washington, a role which would later lead to his appointment as the first president's Secretary of the Treasury.  Along the way he got to know others like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr...the Broadway play makes his relationship with Burr much more extensive than it apparently was in real life.  Those at all familiar with the real Hamilton know of the tragic end of his life, but I felt the show did an admirable job of presenting it and the aftermath...well, the ending was a real tearjerker!  It's a pretty long film at 2 hours and 40 minutes, so plan in advance some free time to watch it.  I felt that the music was incredible, and may be the first time ever that I had experienced rap on such a high artistic level...amazing.  Later on I read up on Hamilton and found the the Broadway play, which debuted in 2015 and won numerous awards, was not only coproduced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who portrayed Alexander Hamilton, but he also wrote it and composed its music and lyrics: what an incredible, daunting accomplishment!  All of the acting was fantastic, but I especially appreciated that of Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr.  If you're interested in history, then I would suggest this movie as a point of departure and not the final word on what really transpired.  I would rather have been there in person to see Hamilton performed live on stage, but still feel very privileged to have been able to experience this beautiful work of art even if only at home on a wide flat-screen TV.  Why not try it out for yourself?

Quote of the Week...from Fictional Character John Mallory

Where there's confusion the man who knows what he wants stands a good chance of getting it.    

                                                                            ---John Mallory

The above quote is from the classic 1971 Sergio Leone "spaghetti western" movie A Fistful of Dynamite (alternate title Duck You Sucker), with James Coburn playing the Irish revolutionary explosives expert John Mallory, who made the above comment to his sidekick, Mexican bandit Juan Miranda (played by Rod Steiger).  Today the quote applies to how public opinion can be manipulated through both social and mass media with "alternative facts" and conspiracy theories, and how foreign adversaries like Russia are planting confusion and division within our society in this manner.  After all, if America is at war with itself over the simple notion of what is real, how effectively can it stand up to other countries who choose to challenge it?  It used to be that the political and social differences and disagreements among our population could be discussed between anyone, with a commonly-agreed-to set of facts forming the reality basis for the argument.  Nowadays, this side has its special facts and the other has theirs...I think one of the main problems is that many people have abandoned the traditional sources of information (the newspaper, the evening news) in favor of specialized Internet sites, Facebook and Twitter feeds, clearly agenda-driven "news" channels, and hearsay to get their information.  The sad truth is...and always has been...that those traditional news shows and newspapers have always had embedded bias within them. But one of the reasons we went to school is so that we could discern that bias and filter out the truth value of what others were expressing. Instead of recognizing this fact, though, and continuing to rely on these sources for their primary information, I see an increasing segment of our population abandoning this basic functioning of mature adulthood and instead latching onto media idols, automatically accepting whatever they say, no matter how ridiculous, and demonizing whomever they choose to demonize. I used to think that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter would provide effective forums for people to exchange their views with me on what I have posted on them. Well, I'm older and wiser now...the overwhelming majority of those old classmates...as well as contemporaries...never chose to interact with me on Facebook and I've become pretty intolerant (and correctly so) of those users who voluntarily allow themselves to be deluded by questionable information sources. This voluntary succumbing to disinformation, by the way, isn't just confined to those with conservative leanings.  Many on the political left stubbornly insist on their own narratives about the way things are, selectively including anecdotal events affirming them while rejecting or ignoring anything contradictory.  It's interesting in this time of very effective and...unlike in most of the world...universally-available and free COVID vaccines, both ends of the spectrum are engaged in wacko conspiracy theories that masses are following in refusing to get their vaccines...at least on the left (in general) those choosing against vaccination are still wearing masks to protect themselves... 

A Fistful of Dynamite is one of my all-favorite movies.  Being as self-indulgent as I am on this blog for listing my "favorites" of this and that, I'm working on a new weekly feature in which I review a movie that meant a lot to me...stay tuned...

Great Old TV Episodes...from the Bell Science Series

 

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COSMIC RAYS is one of the eight hour-long episodes in the Bell Science series of television specials spaced out over the late 1950s and 1960s...later they were all transferred to film and projected on the walls of elementary schools across the nation, including mine, Nova Elementary.  I saw all of them in the fourth through sixth grades (1965-68) and thought so much of them that I would even skip my own class to sneak in on a showing down the hall in another.  Frank Capra directed the first four episodes, including this one from 1957, featuring (pictured) narrator Dr. Frank Baxter (a fixture for all of them) and actor/screenwriter Richard Carlson as they try to win the detective mystery award for the latter part of the twentieth century (with puppets of Dickens, Poe and Dostoevsky serving as judges).  Their story is that of the mysterious cosmic rays that blanket the Earth and how electrons are ripped away from atoms in the process.  By creating an animated analogy using Fagin, Dickens' thief from his Oliver Twist novel, they explain that it's the atoms broken up by the invading rays...i.e. Fagin's "henchmen" that register on all the devices and these subatomic particles are many in number, including protons, neutrons, electrons, positron, mu mesons, and pi mesons...the latter of which Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa in 1935 predicted as an instrumental factor in the yet-unexplained nuclear force.  But what was Fagin, the original cosmic ray?  Naked atoms of all types, stripped of their electrons after being emitted by stars and accelerated to near-light speeds by nebulae across the cosmos...oops, I gave it away.  But of course, it's science and not fiction...

Unlike the other seven Bell Science shows, The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays was difficult at the time for me to follow...I'm guessing that other kids had the same problem: physics is hard enough without throwing nineteenth-century English literature into the mix: it probably didn't help that the first time I saw it was halfway through the film, after I slipped into the back of the room unnoticed.  I was mystified by it all and impressed by how Baxter and Carlson presented the scientists making the important discoveries in such a favorable light...I imagine a lot of young students back then were inspired to go into science and engineering from watching this and other Bell Science movies.  They have all these movies on YouTube...I recently saw this particular episode and noted the discontinuity between the heavy science being taught and the use of puppetry and funny cartoons to explain it.  I was in my first year of life when this show first aired on TV and viewed it some ten years later in school...the science since has dated and even Yakuwa's theory about the nuclear force has been challenged.  But of course now we have quarks, hadrons, and string theory to use as models and frameworks.  Maybe some of today's dry scientific papers with all that mathematics could use some puppets and cartoons, too...and bring back good ol' Dr. Baxter or a reasonable facsimile thereof to help us poor goofs to understand it all better...

Game of the Week: Jumanji

 

I first became aware of the 1995 adventure movie Jumanji...based on the same-titled 1981 children's book by Chris Van Allsburg...while shopping in the late 90s at my local Sam's Club store, then on NW 13th Street.  They were promoting their big-screen television sets and were playing it on DVD...I was impressed with the movie's special effects, especially the stampeding wild animals, to the point that I wasn't all that into shopping that day.  Later on I got to see the entire movie, which starred Robin Williams as a boy from 1969 stuck within a sinister, supernatural board game for 27 years, finally rescued from his dangerous jungle confinement when two other kids hit upon the game and begin playing it in 1996.  Jumanji, one of my favorites, had its spinoffs and remakes, all of which I have consciously avoided; I have also stayed clear of recent versions of classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, and Total Recall...to name a few.  But I did go back and read Allsburg's original book, 35 pages long and about half of which are full-page pictures.  His story is simpler as a brother and sister take home the Jumanji game they found under a tree in their nearby park and play it when their parents go out...it wreaks havoc in the house as each roll of the dice brings forth dangerous animals and manifestations, threatening them and wrecking the house: but like Doctor Seuss's classic The Cat in the Hat, all is made well before mom and dad get back home.  The movie version is more complicated with subplots abounding, both in the 1969 and 1996 time settings.  It was well-acted, funny, suspenseful, intriguing, and compelling...a great mix.  Since this blog feature is about games, this may be the weirdest entry since Jumanji cannot, by dint of being magical in nature, be a real game.  But it takes the outward form of one of those board games (like Parcheesi, for example), where the contestants advance their tokens along the path on the board with each roll of the dice and deal with the consequences of where they land, until the ultimate winner gets to the center of the board, representing the golden city of Jumanji, and chants that name, ending the game and reversing all the mayhem.  Then the players, thereafter understandably wary of this traumatic game, bind it up and get rid of it...but of course Jumanji eventually makes its convoluted way to another set of players.  Jumanji, although very, very problematic while being played, nevertheless served as a great catalyst for transforming the lives of its players and directing them to what should be their priorities...the best games will do that, though I think I'll take a pass on the lions, giant mosquitoes, stampedes, bats, murderous hunters, spiders, predatory plants, crazy monkeys, floods and earthquakes, thank you...

Quote of the Week...from Frank Sinatra's Character in the The Manchurian Candidate

Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

                     --Major Bennett "Ben" Marco, played by Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The above quote is repeated verbatim during the thriller movie The Manchurian Candidate, and from other characters besides Sinatra's Ben Marco, about Raymond Shaw, a staff sergeant during the Korean War whose outfit...in which everyone roundly hated Shaw (and he them)...disappeared for three days.  Upon their reappearance, Marco tells a story of heroic valor on the part of Shaw and the latter is awarded the Medal of Honor.  Various of the soldiers who experienced the disappearance...which in reality was a kidnapping of them by the communists and intensive brainwashing sessions...repeat the same story, along with that above quote.  But deep down inside, Marco knows it's all false, and it's his refusal to accept his own brainwashing that leads him into solving the mystery over the course of the movie.  I bring this up because I sense a different kind of brainwashing...or maybe mass hypnosis...going on in my country whereby people are adamantly claiming that Donald Trump was the greatest president ever...and of course the false narrative that an incredibly elaborate conspiracy on the part of Democrats, election officials and workers, media figures...and even Republicans who have for years been loyal to Trump...robbed him unfairly of the 2020 presidential election and that he really won it "in a landslide".  Looking from the outside in, this at first seems preposterous to me...but I'm sensing something much more ominous and dangerous going on here.  It's as if whole swaths of our population were functioning in a kind of hypnotic trance...how do you reason with people whose sense of reality is so twisted?  You don't, I suppose, and I don't know how this is all going to play out since the focus of their unquestioning adulation, Raymond Shaw Donald Trump, is no longer in office.  It's not a forced brainwashing, but rather a voluntary one as people surround themselves with only the media sources that confirm their own beliefs and suspicions and depend on other like-minded folks in their lives for reinforcement, creating a false sense of consensus among themselves about what is true and what isn't: in other words, an informational feedback loop...  

Zombies Among Us

I've never been a fan of zombie flicks...neither the movie Night of the Living Dead from 1968 nor the recent Walking Dead television series and its spinoffs.  The genre, which features reanimated, soulless corpses that infect others they encounter until hordes threaten humanity's very existence, never captured my imagination...until just recently, that is, when it occurred to me that in a figurative sense there are zombies among us in this real world.  These are people, "dead from the neck up" as the saying goes, who have voluntarily surrendered their own souls to unquestioningly idolize one mortal, flawed figure...namely Donald Trump...and to believe everything he says and follow his commands without reservation.  You cannot reason with these people any more than the human heroes of those zombie shows could with their counterparts...they are self-brainwashed personality cult followers on the same order as that freakish Heaven's Gate group in the nineties that committed collective suicide over the Hale-Bopp comet and the leftist People's Temple under the murderous Jim Jones in the seventies who forced his own people to commit mass "suicide" in Guyana.  In 2021 those in this version of the phenomenon are sustained and energized by the Internet and TV networks that deliberately seek to inflame their passions on behalf of their "lord master". Since Trump is a national political leader, the comparisons to fascist strongmen with cult followers such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler also come to mind.  The upshot is that even when our problematic president is finally out of office, he's still going to be out there and those tens of millions of Americans are going to still be slavishly following him as their idol, lord and source of "truth"...to this I add a major disclaimer that I don't believe that all who voted for Trump are like this...but sadly a large portion are, and keep in mind that on the day after the January 6th insurrection, a public opinion poll revealed that 45% of Republicans supported it.  When Trump finally does disappear from the scene (he is getting along in years, after all), the zombies will find another idol to latch themselves onto...someone who undoubtedly will use our very soon-to-be former president's demeanor and behavior as a template to build their own personality cult.  And these folks are everywhere, like the Matrix: in your workplace, when you're shopping, at your churches, on the roads, among the police and military, among your political representatives, and in your neighborhoods and schools.  Zombies.  Among us.

Constellation of the Month: Perseus

 

For December I picked as my Constellation of the Month Perseus, prominent for much of the year in northern nighttime skies, and which crosses the meridian around 9 pm this month.  It represents the Greek mythological hero who, riding the winged horse Pegasus, rescues the fair maiden Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus at Queen Cassiopeia's behest...all are represented by nearby constellations. The 1981 movie Clash of the Titans, starring Harry Hamlin as Perseus, presented one version of the story.  Perseus, although possessing no first magnitude stars, is nevertheless loaded with many bright ones, marked by Mirfak and Algol...the latter, "only" 93 light years away from us, is actually a triple star, with its variation in brightness caused by the stars taking turns eclipsing one another.  Mirfak is much further away and bigger.  Perseus is the focus of the annual Perseids, the most spectacular meteor shower of all and which takes place in the wee morning hours around August 11-13 as the Earth rotates into a cloud of dust particles along its orbit around the sun and ignites them within the atmosphere. I can't begin to count the times, though, in which I tried to watch it but for various reasons was thwarted...often from overcast skies, my schedule, or just falling asleep: let's see if I can't catch it in 2021! I've always welcomed seeing Perseus rising up in the northeastern sky (from my Florida latitude) as it presages the coming of the most interesting part of the celestial sky, that of the wintertime.  Next month there can be only one constellation that stands out above all others for January...well, even for the entire year, for that matter: can you guess which one it is?    

My Architecture Period as a Kid

When my sister Anita, older than me by four years, got hold of a textbook on architecture some time in the mid-to-late 1960s (I'm guessing around 1967-68), she introduced me to the subject and I became fascinated with the different types of buildings...chiefly those of houses...and began to look forward to the weekly Sunday newspaper, not for the comics or sports but rather for the real estate section.  In it were always floor plans of houses that were for sale, and I would imagine myself living in them.  Soon I was drawing up my own floor plans, which...following my sailing ship, world geography, and star map periods, began the next "big thing" for me...in between collecting stamps and trading cards, that is.  At the time, as far as I can remember, I was in the fifth or sixth grade at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary in Davie...Anita's school was across the field at Nova High.   By the way, back then I was fascinated by the pictures of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural works, and I had always thought that the house at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 masterpiece thriller North by Northwest was a Wright home.  But after just looking it up, I discovered that instead of being a real building situated behind Mount Rushmore, it was only a movie set creation in California, built to look like something that the famous architect might have designed.  It was my recent subscription to online newspaper archives that brought my architecture period back to the forefront of my memory as I once again scanned through Sunday paper home sections...the above clip is from the June 19, 1966 Miami Herald: check out the prices!  Nowadays I'm more interested in big buildings, impressed by the towering skyscrapers during visits to New York and Chicago (including the Windy City's fantastic Architecture River Tour)...while equally taken aback by those block-long, shorter office monstrosities in Washington, D.C. (shorter due to the city's height restriction for buildings).  As for houses, you might think I'd be a big fan of the Home and Garden channel...but alas, my interest in house designs is no longer what it was more than fifty years ago...

Just Watched The Social Dilemma Documentary Movie

Melissa, Will and I recently set down and watched on Netflix a very intriguing and disturbing documentary film, released just this year: The Social Dilemma, released for general public viewing just a couple of weeks ago after appearing at the Sundance Film Festival in January.  In it former Google designer Tristan Harris, along with several other former major Internet company employees, present their view that uses of social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter...along with simple Internet use of search engines like that of Google, present skewed outcomes because the companies providing these services use complex algorithms deliberately designed to give the user what he or she wants and pander to people's prejudices in order to increase their usage...not necessarily providing truthful or balanced information.  Each user has a separate profile that the company analyzes to increase their addiction to the application by feeding back material that supports their own preconceived notions. This is creating among adults a very politically divided, bubbled-off society with each "camp" armed with its own "facts" and perceived outrages perpetrated by the other "side" as they spend their time shouting past each other on the various issues and politicians.  But with teens...and preteens as well...social media can become very addictive and personally demeaning, possibly even contributing to suicide...

I just finished rereading A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin's first volume of his apparently never-ending A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.  His fiction may be fantasy in that it involves a mythical world, dragons, monsters up north and the like, but with regard to how unseen forces manipulate the characters into acting against their own interests, it is very, very real and applicable to what is going on now with not only social media and the Internet in general, but also television and radio: the companies obey the bottom line of economic profit, which is provided by advertising, which in turn is driven by viewership...regardless of the truth value of what is being put out there.  As with Martin's book with his "puppet masters" stringing the characters along with their strategically-placed provocations eventually pitting the House of Lannister in open conflict against that of Stark, Harris and others reveal that these corporate AI algorithms have come to the conclusion that inciting people's passions about different subjects and themselves is the most cost-effective way to increase onsite activity and get those crucial profits for the company...and this is causing our children to become more withdrawn and insecure while our society as a whole is much more deeply divided and uncivil...

This past Sunday evening I was watching the end of an exciting, close football game between the (boo) New England Patriots and the (hooray) Seattle Seahawks.  My 'Hawks managed to squeak out a close victory on the last play of the game, but what if the broadcasters behaved the way of social media or search engines?  While not denying the final score in favor of Seattle, NBC, knowing my preferences, would have exalted everything Seattle did while casting New England in the role of dastardly, evil villains...and the officials were of course biased against the Seahawks.  But for my neighbor who likes the Patriots, the presentation by the same NBC on his TV would portray his chosen team as the heroes robbed of a victory by Seattle's cheating and poor officiating: New England really did win, even if the score says otherwise...must be some kind of hoax.  That sounds crazy, but if The Social Dilemma is right then in a way that's a lot of what we're getting on our smartphones and computers.  Users beware: they're taking us for a bunch of damned fools, and maybe they're right...I highly recommend this documentary and let the wise among us wake up to the danger...