I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive.
In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . .
NEW YORK — Actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday of a possible drug overdose in a Lower Manhattan apartment, the New York Police Department said.
Possible drug overdose, possible suicide! Oh dear . . . another blow to the theory that being rich and/or famous is the ticket to happiness.
I think most famous actors — not all, obviously — are convinced that they can do things that nobody else can do, that they’re not cardboard people who are adored for no reason.
Tom Cruise, for example, I don’t think will ever commit suicide.
Oh well . . .
One of the cable stations had a 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon. I’ve never understood the mania some people have about this movie. I mean, it’s a nice movie, but 12 consecutive showings?!
Anyway, my son turned on the 10 p.m. showing last night and we all watched it. My wife fell asleep as she often does watching movies, but the boy enjoyed it.
Merry Christmas to everyone who’s taken the time to read this site over the past year.
Originally uploaded by debaird.
Yes I do. The first movie I saw in a theater was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
The first movie I took my son to was Space Jam.
Ingmar Bergman died today, age 89. I swear to God I though he was already dead.
We were at my son Casey’s 8th grade graduation this morning when one of his teachers came up to me, obviously revved up about something, and asked, “Did you hear what happened at the assembly yesterday?”
From the breathless tone of his question, I assumed at the very least that someone had lost a limb.
“No,” I said, “what happened?”
He told me they had a performance by a street percussion group called Street Beat, and as part of the show, they asked for a couple of volunteers from the audience. Casey plays the drums, and a lot of kids were yelling and pointing at him to be selected, so he was.
What they did with the volunteers was, the Street Beat guys would play something and the kids would try to match it. My kid was able to match everything perfectly, the other kid wasn’t, so they sent the second boy back to his seat and invited Casey to sit in and jam with them on the next song.
Keep in mind this is street percussion, where they use found objects as instruments, so his “drum set” consisted of a gas tank, an upside-down bucket and a water-cooler-size water bottle.
According to the teacher, he was awesome! I wish I’d been able to see it. I’ve been to all of his activities and performances since birth. I noticed he got a lot of comments about it from kids who signed his yearbook.
So his junior high career had some ups and downs, but I’m glad he was able to close it out on a high note.
I asked him, “Did everyone go crazy when you finished, like in Napoleon Dynamite?”
“Sort of,” he said.
I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It’s called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn’t blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator.
In memory of the Rev. Falwell, here’s one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes, from Hannah and Her Sisters
But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third-rate con men telling the poor suckers that they speak with Jesus. And to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what is going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
Farewell, Falwell!
You didn’t come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can.
From a 1955 interview with Nelson Algren in The Paris Review:
INTERVIEWER: How about this movie, The Man with the Golden Arm?
ALGREN: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have anything to do with the script?
ALGREN: No. No, I didn’t last long. I went out there for a thousand a week. and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.
A commercial for You, Me and Dupree — or maybe it was Little Man — comes on the TV and I say to my son, “That looks like a real jackass-o-rama.”
“Put a quarter in the swear jar,” he says.
We don’t have a swear jar.
“OK — first of all,” I say, “‘jackass’ is not a swear word. It’s the name of an animal. And second, where did you get the idea of a swear jar?”
“They’re available in catalogs.”
“What would we do with the money that goes into the swear jar?”
“Give it to me.”
We’re at a stop sign on 6th St. in San Pedro, waiting to cross Pacific Ave., a busy street with multiple lanes of traffic in both directions.
We’ve been waiting for an opening for quite a while when my son says, “You gotta go Tokyo Drift on these pansies.”
A guy at work — let’s call him “Steve” — has been wearing what looks like the same shirt, shorts and sandals for weeks.
Another coworker says to “Steve”: “These new Superman ads remind me of you. He wears the same friggin’ outfit every day too.”
My wife calls me at work. “How do you spell ‘Casablanca’? she asks. “Like the movie.”
“C-a-s-a-b-l-a-n-c-a.”
“I am so good!” she says. “I just need more self-confidence.”
Ruby Jones, 67, worked in the hospice unit at Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans. Last August, as Hurricane Katrina was zeroing in on the city, she elected not to evacuate, but to stay with the eight dying patients under her care.
She has been recognized by Newsweek as one of “15 People Who Make America Great”:
I’m reminded of this line from the movie The Red Shoes: “Life rushes by, time rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on dancing forever.” All of that applies to me, except for the red shoes part.
Few Americans either behind or in front of our cameras give evidence of any recognition or respect for themselves or one another as human beings, or have any desire to be themselves or to let others be themselves. On both ends of the camera you find very few people who are not essentially, instead, just promoters, little racketeers, interested in ‘the angle.’
Interesting fact: Prior to 1910, movies did not list the names of the cast members! Actors were just nameless faces on the screen . . .
I talked my 11-year-old son and his friend into seeing House of Flying Daggers instead of Meet the Fockers.
The title alone — Meet the Fockers — is a tipoff to the level of wit that you’re going to be dealing with. Fockers! Get it? It sounds like a naughty word! HA HA HA HA! Geez, make an effort, will ya?
How about House of the Flying Fockers? You meet the Fockers and throw daggers at them. That sounds like a good movie!
