For the New Year!

In the comment section of a prior post I wrote: it might be interesting to see how many of us have come across “famous” people, who we knew, and how they reacted to us.

So that’s what this post is about:

“Famous People” and our encounters with them.

Who have YOU come across and/or interacted with?

Leave your comments and tell everyone:

• Who were they?
• When and where was it?
• How were you treated?
• What was your impression?

I’ll start first:

I was in radio for a number of years and made some contacts in the so-called music business. I had occasion, in October of 1976, to help record a rock album with Steve Lillywhite and Mal Kingsnorth in Glasgow, Scotland, and the result was Status Quo Live, issued in 1977. For my efforts I did get a free plane trip and a black and white glossy of the group — but that’s it. I got no credits on the album but it was still a helluva lot of fun. I was introduced to drinking a lot of beer, and also met, peripherally, some of those young women who tended to follow rock groups.

Around that time I had chance to become involved with “looping” dialogue for ILM at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County — particularly involving The Empire Strikes Back — because it was discovered I could imitate a certain small green character at the time, as I was helping do sound in San Francisco. And that’s where that ends because I promised. I had a chance to become involved in Foley creation and editing but, because I was stupid, I let it drop.

Silly me.

I saw actress Tyne Daly at the bar of a small restaurant near the former Sutro Baths south of San Francisco in the early 80’s. This was prior to her becoming a Zeppelin herself. Today she requires her own zip code.

In 1987, I was invited to the dinner table of then-Fornicalia Governor George Deukmejian and his wife Gloria in the Straw Hat Pizza restaurant at Marconi and Fair Oaks in Sacratomato. I was surprised that there was no security detail with him. The manager embarrassed the couple by announcing their presence over the building’s intercom. They got their pizza for free. I had to pay.

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Enough about me.

What about you?

You’ve read the posts throughout the Blogosphere, seen the TV shows (even that horrible Fox News!), probably listened to the rational and reasonable NPR or, worse yet, dared to listen to those Right Wing bastions of chest-thumping screeching screwball screeds, radio shows on the order of the dangerous Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved and, and, those types —

You know the kind — the ones that grab the sheepish, uneducated, unwashed masses by the glottis and brainwash the groundlings, likely by subversive, hypnotic machinations (how else would these NASCAR-watching, bloated-belly, trailer-trash, white, gun-toting, dentally-challenged, wife-beater-wearing, 12-pack-chugging dolts, their women, as chattel of course, kept barefoot on the hardpack dirt floors and oppressed by being forced to cook, clean and churn out little whelps like production lines despite womens’ Right to Choose – be duped!) — these are the people that are supporting (Can you possibly feature this?? Supporting!!) President Bush’s lame justification of domestic spying on American citizens.

This all came about, and rightly so, because the New York Times dared to print a story (on 12-16-2005) about the NSA spying on our own citizens, within the shores of the continental United States. Our citizens! What an abrogation of power! What an abuse of executive authority! And who is responsible, who ordered these abuses you ask? Why, none other than the Master Abuser himself, President George W. Bush!

Jonathan Alter, in Newsweek, wrote yesterday that George Bush is acting like a Dictator, though in his own mind, Bush is not thinking he’s a Dictator. In this case he was working in an extra-Constitutional, dictatorial fashion, a violation of the separation of powers. Alter said Bush is in fact acting dictatorially, as Bush insists his authority is coming from the Congressional resolution after 9-11 regarding the use of “all necessary force.” Alter was not making a 4th Amendment argument — he was saying that Bush was in violation of the 1978 FISA Act itself.

“It was the work of a patriot inside the government who leaked the NSA program,” Alter also wrote. Yes, the individual did break the law for that individual to leak. But he should not necessarily be prosecuted for doing this because of the overarching good. Doing so would have a chilling effect on future leakers or whistleblowers. In a larger historical sense, considering the good of the American people, FISA says you have to seek approval from the FISA court. Period. Read USC 1809.

Alter, on Hugh Hewitt’s program this date, said Gore was the actual winner in 2000. Bush should have conceded. Gore made a mistake in cherry-picking a certain county and should have insisted on a recount throughout the entire nation.

9-11 gave Bush license to act like a Dictator, Alter said. The original draft of the Patriot Act gave carte blanch to eliminate habeus corpus. Alter supported The Patriot Act, but wants it done according to the law. Bush cited the Constitution in giving him the right to tell the NSA to make its taps. In the larger view, Bush believes he has the ability to simply violate the law. And so Alter wrote.

The House, unfortunately, recently passed the re-crafting of The Patriot Act, which sunsets December 31st. If the Senate doesn’t re-authorize, then the House (currently adjourned) may find itself re-summoned to attack the Senate. How wrong is that?

What a ridiculously lame argument the Right makes, to say that technology is such that the FISA court cannot be sought after, within 72 hours as it should. It is not about technology, or the so-called safety and security of our country, but continuing national oppression by the Fascist Bush Regime.

So someone belonging to some innocent Islamic organization acquires a cell phone with a US area code and uses this phone internationally? Big hairy deal. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a right to privacy; no, an expectation of privacy in the United States. The claim that those may have connections to so-called government designated terrorists factions is wrongly declarative and judgmental on its face — consider the source, people; consider the source!

• The Right brings up Craig Livingstone
• The Right brings up the United States vs. United States District Court
• The Right brings up Hillary’s 400 missing FBI files
• The Right argues that the Constitution is not a suicide pact

Even the occasionally-respected Wall Street Journal strays off the reservation with its newest editorial:

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold wants to be President, and that’s fair enough. By all means go for it in 2008. The same applies to Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who’s always on the Sunday shows fretting about the latest criticism of the Bush Administration’s prosecution of the war on terror. But until you run nationwide and win, Senators, please stop stripping the Presidency of its Constitutional authority to defend America.

That is the real issue raised by the Beltway furor over last week’s leak of National Security Agency wiretaps on international phone calls involving al Qaeda suspects. The usual assortment of Senators and media potentates is howling that the wiretaps are “illegal,” done “in total secret,” and threaten to bring us a long, dark night of fascism. “I believe it does violate the law,” averred Mr. Feingold on CNN Sunday.

The truth is closer to the opposite. What we really have here is a perfect illustration of why America’s Founders gave the executive branch the largest measure of Constitutional authority on national security. They recognized that a committee of 535 talking heads couldn’t be trusted with such grave responsibility. There is no evidence that these wiretaps violate the law. But there is lots of evidence that the Senators are “illegally” usurping Presidential power–and endangering the country in the process.

Clearly, journalism at its unmitigated, Right-Winged worst.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Children of All Ages: I will be away on vacation for the next few days with my honey, enjoying mud baths, massages and Irish music in an authentic Bay Area IRA pub where once rested a photo of Lord Mountbatten with a big X through it. I’ll clutch a Guiness for you!

Please, have a very Merry Christmas one and all!

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And thank you all, once again, all my Usual Suspects (and newcomers as well!) for visiting my blog, leaving your wonderful comments, supporting my existence in the Blogosphere and for conducting yourselves with aplomb and dignity.

2006 will be better still for each and every one of us!

Excelsior!

THIS is why I love the internet — and blogging in particular!

Two posts ago I wrote about how I’d just purchased the book Blogging In a Snap by Julie Meloni (gotta plug ya now!) because I wanted to find out how to make my blog a little nicer and find out why Blogger works as it does.

I got some comments from the post and then – boom – the author herself came to my blog and made a comment:

JM said…
Hey, for not being a shill, you shilled pretty well. Thanks! :)Now that I know people actually have it in their hands, I’ll step up my updating of things that changed in the month between finishing the book and the time the chapters were printed. So, please do check back to the book’s blog!
9:18 AM

Boys and girls, this is the NEW MARKETING that either some people get, or they don’t.

Our world has changed. It is changing still, even as we sleep at night. And each one of the Usual Suspects who read my blog is participating in a new force, a new movement, that is taking the place of standard communications, marketing, sales and promotions.

Here is what this author (who is one smart person because, when I “Yahoo’d” her for a photo to place in my post, I found tons of other computer books with multi-syllabic words and acronyms – like PHP – way, WAY above my head!) has done:

• Written a book
• Sold it to a publishing house
• Associated it with a teaching series

And then, more importantly due to the nature of the book, she produced an associated blog (for FREE!) which will provide updates to the book AND, decided (I’m guessing here) that she’d Google or Yahoo certain keywords to find out who had mentioned her book and, somehow, found my miniscule piece of the web.

So she came to my website, posted a comment herself, which impressed me, made me want to make a separate post about this event, and will end up garnering even more “advertising,” for free, about her book.

Yes, whatever “advertising” she gets from this post will be minimal because I’m certainly no force in the blogging world, but I’m only one point in likely a myriad of points she found about persons who mentioned her book. My political philosophy is likely 180-degrees opposite hers but it’s not about philosophy, it’s about making contacts and expanding one’s circle of contacts regarding the book.

And THAT is very SMART marketing on her part!

And THAT is one aspect of why I love this blogging thing!

I wrote about this in the comments section of another blog and thought: this warrants a post in and of itself. So. . .

Brokeback Mountain has already been given 7 Golden Globe nominations — it also garnered awards from Critics Choice and other areas. Any publicity it acquires helps its box office. Some kids in the Sacratomato Valley area have already been exposed to trailers for this movie. There is the given “hukk” factor from many males. These are two guys who are cheating on their wives, married to two beautiful women. They go hunting and fishing several times a year with each other — making, perhaps, women at home now wondering what’s happening when “their men” take off.

This is a movie about gay Wyoming cowboys with a Chinese director and two stars, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, who want greater “exposure” so to speak. Gyllenhaal already “tanked” in the deceptive Jarhead which went afar from the book.

But you know what? Nobody’s going to see Brokeback. The only alternative is to make the most of whatever publicity the movie generates.

But, of course, there’s more: soon coming is a movie about two gay baseball players, further expanding the “hukk” factor for most men.

“Hukk,” by the way, is the noise one makes, deep in the throat, before one blows chow.

Hollywood is experiencing the biggest drop in attendance in 20 years.

So is the major media.

But this post is primarily about Hollywood — so what factors are responsible for the diminishment of box office revenues — at the same time that motion picture producers are taking many of their companies and shoots away from Fornicalia and into areas NOT anchored to huge union costs and oppressive union rules?

Let’s look:

1. Quality of Films
Just hitting the high points of films I’ve watched in the past year or so (either in the theatre or rented on DVD), some positive examples come to mind:
– Criminal
– Serenity
– Crash
– Lord of the Rings trilogy
– Wedding Crashers (I kinda like Vince Vaughn)
– March of the Penguins (a French documentary fer Christ’s sake!)

The only movie I’ve walked out of for at least 25 years:
– The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (what a listless waste of celluloid!)

That’s about it.

Some positives from television (only on “cable”):
– Empire Falls
– Deadwood
– Rome

I’ve seen a buttload of movies this year and most were eminently forgettable.

Coming up as trailers as I anticipated seeing Walk the Line: remakes of The Poseidon Adventure and Miami Vice. As expressed by a young man, rather loudly after the trailer for Miami Vice: “Show of hands for those who think this is a bad idea?” Most everyone in the theatre raised their hand.

I usually see, on average, one new movie a week. Sometimes I’ll not see anything for a week or two — depends on circumstances. Cutting to the chase: I am a Hollywood-friendly person who wants to see movies. And even I’m hitting the alternatives.

The remakes suck. There is little originality. And the more you cater to the fringes in, for example, the homsexual community, the more I’ll see movies at home and more carefully pick and choose.

2. Ticket Prices
In Sacratomato, Fornicalia, most tickets cost $9.50. Make it an even ten bucks. In Auburn, where I go to see many of my films, ticket prices are $6.50 during the day — which is when I attend. I try not to see films in so-called “major cities” because $10 for a movie is a waste — particulary considering the tripe most movies turn out to be.

3. Concession Prices
Even in Auburn, a little (but expanding) foothills bedroom community: $6.00 for a large bucket of popcorn, $4.25 for a “medium” Coke. Total: $10.25.

So to see one movie away from a major theatre city, I’ve spent $16.75 for one person — the better part of a $20 bill.

In Sacratomato, a smaller bag of popcorn, still called “large” but not containing nearly as much popcorn as Auburn, costs $6.50. A drink, smaller (but still called medium) costs the same.

4. Advertisements
Get there early, so you can catch “The Twenty!” Wrong. I get to most Regal Theatres late so I don’t have to catch that crap. At least Century Theatres don’t have ads. Guess what folks? More ads are coming! Why? To make up for lost revenues!

5. Rude Assholes In the Audience
Plenty of them in major cities. Cell phone yakkers and loud talkers and kids talking and talking and parents bringing their stupid damned crying babies. Here’s a clue: parents, give us a break. I don’t pay to eat in a restaurant or sit in a movie to hear your piece of s*!t kid cry, talk, bawl or throw a tantrum. Take the damned kid out and pitch him or her into the nearest dumpster. One parent recently had enough class to actually say, in a loud voice to their child: “That’s enough!” and they were marched out of the theatre. There was actual applause. Myself included. That parent was the exception and not the rule.

6. DVD Pricing and Watching At Home
So here are my options:
– I can park in a packed lot with all the other groundlings
– I can hope my car doesn’t get broken into whilst I’m gone
– I can pay $10 per ticket
– I can pay $7 for popcorn that costs 20-cents to make
– I can get served by a listless tweener with nose piercing, bad nails, surly attitude, wearing pants barely containing her ass and roll of body fat with green teeth who can only produce change because the machine tells her what to give back
– I am subjected to ads prior to even the trailers
– I can hope I’ve chosen a spot furthest away from the pack of teenaged kids or bawling baby
– I can hope the movie doesn’t both suck and blow
– I can hope the bathroom, after the movie, has paper towels and warm water — or not

*OR:

– I can watch what I want, when I want, pause for breaks, on my new 36″ Toshiba flatscreen
– I can see how various movies were made in the “extra” section of each DVD
– I can lay on my leather couch, pull a fleece blankie over me, drink a Diet Pepsi instead of a stupid Diet Coke
– Or another Adult Beverage
– No one cries in my house, talks on the phone, or irritates me
– I just purchased two wonderful, classic movies on DVD for $9.95 each through Amazon.com: Three Days of the Condor and Marthon Man — for the price of a ticket for a bad movie
– And I get to keep the movies!
– And they play as well the 100th time as the first!

Hello?

Earth to Hollywood?

Are you listening?