Nobody 683

January 31, 2007
Nobody # 683

Nobody Asked Me But:

"Would we the gift that God has gie’ us, to see ourselves as others see us." Robert Burns

Apparently I have no such gift, for there I was sitting on a corner bench in the heart of Laguna looking sharp, (I thought) watching the world go by, as I waited for Barb to come out of a dress store. I was wearing camouflage khakis, a little baggy perhaps with their tie at the bottom, a Nalu shirt from Hawaii, old but like new, and my London Barbour hat purchased as a birthday gift from my wife - for not a small price. Next to me was my new Christmas present Tumi bag. (see picture at left)

A well-dressed man started to walk past me, glanced my way, stopped and asked me "could you use a couple of bucks?" Like a fool I said no, but I am thinking of staking out that bench and picking up my daily coffee money.<<<

While we were in Coronado Saturday we visited one of my favorite bookstores, and I bought “The Book Of Answers” by Carol Bolt. It contains a couple of hundred answers for which the reader supplies the questions. I thought it would be fun to include one periodically. So here is the first with my question. Feel free to send in your own questions as well. The best ones – which means all of them – will be included in following Nobodies.

Answer: “Not if you’re alone.”

Question: Is it all right to have sex in public?<<<

And now, back to our celebratory trip. No! I didn't get the abalone. This year Arches, (below)where we returned for Barbara's birthday dinner, had it priced at a modest $129.00. I also passed on the Lobster tails at $65 and $95 settling for an excellent lobster thermador, while Barb had her usual beef stroganoff. She liked but didn't love it, her version, which we have at home on special occasions, being much better. However, the place is the same - plush red booths, LeRoy Neiman paintings and so much history.

And therein lies the sad tale. After 60 years, this Orange Country landmark is closing. We heard conflicting stores about whether it is actually shutting down or merely moving, but, either way, it will not be the same.<<<

And while on the subject of closing, here is an E-note I sent to my bagel-loving daughter:

On our first morning in Laguna Beach, I thought of you. I walked across the street to a really neat Diedrich's coffee house (left) for reading and a cup of black. While I was there, the most incredible aromas of bagels toasting engulfed me and I knew that this would be a place you would love. They smelled so good that I almost bought one.

As it turned out, it was good that I went that first morning, because it was their last day in business. As Barb read later, they sold out to Starbuck's. So, next time I will have anew SB but not my usual "different" place - "something lost and something gained in living every day".<<<

As always, our trip was great. We stayed in places where we could walk more often than drive, which was very neat. We also relaxed more. In Laguna, we sat looking out over the beach and ocean and read a lot.

Saturday we drove to Coronado where we hadn't been for a couple of years and that was fun - especially since we found some great ice cream and the “Answers” book. When I win a big buck lottery, Coronado is a high possibility on my list of places to live. A water and San Diego skyline view would be incredible. In fact, I would buy a condo also, so you all could visit often. The only drawback would be the fact that San Diego is a world-class city with an airport unchanged since Lindberg’s visit in 1920something.<<<

Neat experiences:

Thursday evening we wanted to watch the Bruin game, and our hotel did not have the Fox sport channels, so we sought out a sports bar. By coincidence, several Bruin fans had reserved a gaming room to watch as a group, and they invited us to join them. We won, of course, but then we came home to shockingly poor play and a loss to Stanford.<<<

Discovering Pescador Fish Market in LaJolla. We were walking and passed a small fish market, fresh to buy and cooked to take home – or eat in if you could grab one of the four tables. We got lucky and had a small but excellent meal.<<<

Best of trip.

Single food or taste:

J – (1) Ice cream in Coronado (2) Lobster T. at Arches (3) Clam chowder at Pescador (4) Malt at Coldstone in LaJolla (5) Cherry scone at Panera Bread at Newport Beach

B – (1) Beer-battered prawns – accompanied by bites of rice pilaf (2) Juanita’s rolled tacos ( both flour and corn) in Leucadia (3) Beef stroganoff (4) Cinnamon roll from Bread and Cie in San Diego

Best meal: J – Fish dinner (sole, potatoes au Gratin, coleslaw) at The Fish Market in San Diego

B – Beer-battered prawns, (with rice pilaf and a shrimp salad), at The Fish Market (left)

Best feelings: Peace and contentment.<<<

But back, for a moment, to discontent. The Bruins should have beaten Stanford. But as I feel myself start to sink into a depressive state I remember that we are still 18-2 this year, and next season our weakness in the middle will be filled with Love.

Kevin Love that is, and here are a couple of his answers from a recent interview:

“Love, averaging 32.8 points and 17.7 rebounds while shooting .631 from the field and .838 from the foul line, is in the eyes of many the greatest prep basketball player in the state’s history. But the son of former NBA player Stan Love and Karen Love is also a teenager with a 3.0 GPA, a fertile mind and other interests off the hardcourt.”

“He sat down this week with the Portland Tribune for a Q&A” session.

Q: How many years do you think you’ll be at UCLA? “

A: It depends on how everything goes as a freshman and sophomore, and maybe my junior year. You have to see how you do and assess your options and see what your draft status is. If I were to stay all four years, that wouldn’t bother me at all. At least I’ll be getting my education at a top-five school in the country. It’s a win-win situation.”

Q: Where will you be in five years?

A: “Hopefully in the NBA. If not, my time at UCLA will put me in a position to succeed in life.”<<<

Book tip: Run, don’t walk to your nearest Border’s or B&N and buy a copy of Richard North Patterson’s latest novel, “Exile.” Fiction enlightens fact in this story of a Jewish lawyer who defends an Arab woman accused of being an integral part of the San Francisco assassination of the visiting Israeli prime minister, a man who may be the region’s last best hope for peace. Patterson gives a balanced look at the good and bad existing on both sides in this seemingly endless conflict. Let’s hope that he doesn’t get the Jimmy Carter treatment for daring to do so. I will have more to say on the subject next week.<<<

Despite my fascination with “24,” I strongly condemn torture. Which leads me to the question: What do you call a President who sanctions shipping out torture to Poland, a place infamous for some of the worst Nazi death camps?

Answer: Mr. Sensitivity.<<<

Kudos (actually, what the H is a kudo?) to North Carolina for being the 11th state to suspend the death penalty. No matter how you feel about capital punishment, the potential for mistakes is too high a price to pay.<<<

Allow me to finish with this pictorial reference to famous fiction. You guessed it. This is “The Old Man And The Sea.”

Nobody 682

Sunday, January 21, 2007
Nobody # 682

Nobody Asked Me But:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

The Child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety. – “The Rainbow,” by William Wordsworth

May each of us always love rainbows and the rising and setting sun and may we always allow our child to remain, at least partly, father to our man.<<<

Have the Iraqis lost their head? Actually just one of them in another botched up execution, complete with pictures of corpse here and head way over there. Of course, we have messed up a few electrical and chemical jobs ourselves, so I shouldn’t be too critical – glass houses and that sort of thing.<<<

As documented by historian Jeffrey Kimball:

As Nixon put it in March 1971: “We can't have [the South Vietnamese] knocked over brutally … " Kissinger finished the thought " … before the election." So Nixon and Kissinger pushed the South Vietnamese to "stand on their own," promising we'd support them if necessary. But at the same time, Kissinger assured the North Vietnamese — through China — that the U.S. wouldn't intervene to prevent a North Vietnamese victory — as long as that victory didn't come with embarrassing speed.

Can it be any clearer than this? Nixon, with Kissinger’s help, killed Americans in order to win an election. If you have any ambivalence about these two bastards, it is time to rid your self of it. Those people who hold up signs calling Kissinger a war criminal are absolutely right.<<<

I see where Senator Carl Levin, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN last Sunday that he did not believe Congress should “use the power of the purse” to halt the president’s plan and should go no further than approving non-binding resolutions opposing it. “Non-binding resolution?”

Tough as nails, those Democrats! I am sure that the Bush boys (and girl) are quaking in their Texas boots or Manolos.<<<

It certainly didn’t bother our president who was telling jokes later that day on 60 Minutes. He said that Saddam Hussein "was a significant source of instability" that needed to be removed, and then added: "Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude," implying that Iraq is now stabilized.

That was a joke wasn’t it?<<<

Do all of you remember Lowell Thomas? Of course you do. He was a radio news commentator from the 1930s and 40s. We were looking to get rid of some of our old books in storage, and I came across a book by Thomas, “History As You Heard It,” which contains excerpts from his broadcasts.

Here’s one: April 27, 1938 – “The Nazi government issued a new edict today, a regulation for Jews that bids fair to crush them. Hermann Goering, as economic dictator, issued a degree empowering Hermann Goering, as administrator of the four-year plan, to use all assets owned by Jewish people. Thereupon he issued another degree ordering Jews in Germany to register and list everything they owned.”

Reading this and dreaming back into history, I wish I could say that at least one among the many good reasons we fought against Hitler was to save the Jews. Instead I know that in our country, as in much of the world, Jewish sympathizers were a minority compared to the anti-Semitic and the apathetic.

Would that I could persuade all of you to read Phillip Roth’s great novel from last year, “The Plot Against America.” Perhaps his fantasy could never have happened here, but it might have been close.<<<

STUDENT WATCH - BETTER KNOWN AS THE DEPARTMENT OF I TAUGHT THEM ALL THEY KNOW:

America Ferrera, who won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in A Television Comedy Or Musical last Monday, could never stop laughing at my history teaching.<<<

Gilbert Arenas scored 51 points, also last Monday, becoming only the second active player to do that three times in the same season. (Kobe is the other) Ask him and he will tell you that he owes it all to watching me make paper-ball jump shots into the wastebasket.<<<

Back to the Golden Globes. In a strange twist, Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima” won the best foreign language film prize. The somewhat bemused director commented that he “might make a Hungarian or Lithuanian movie next.”<<<

Still on the GG – I saw their choice for Best Picture, “Babel” last Tuesday. Here is my brief review:

I don’t care if it did win a Golden Globe, “Babel” is not the best movie of 2006. The three I wrote about earlier were all better. But make no mistake. “Babel” is very good, especially if you are skilled at connecting the dots and following mazes.

Like its biblical namesake, the Tower of Babel, the film mixes languages, locations and stories. The latter travel full circle and finally come together with endings both happy and sad. The touchstone incident is the accidental shooting of a woman who is traveling with her husband in Morocco as they try to put their marriage back together. Why they need to, and why Morocco, is never made clear – at least to this viewer. The shot is fired by a boy who herds goats for his father. The rifle he used was a gift from a Japanese businessman to his hunting trip guide, who later sold it to the father. The Japanese man has a teen daughter who is deft and mute and traumatized by the memory of her mother’s suicide. Meanwhile the couple’s children are being cared for a Mexican illegal who is almost like a family member.

So let’s count the stories. We have the couple stuck in Morocco waiting for medical help and evacuation while the State Department drags its feet. Then we have the Moroccan police trying to find the shooter. Next there is the Japanese girl, a teen in Tokyo, looking for love in all the wrong places. And, finally, we have the Mexican nanny who, not wanting to miss her son’s wedding, takes the children with her to Mexico.

Time and story weave their way from present, to future and back and forth again. It is a credit to the director and the excellent cast that the result is a whole and not pieces scattered in the viewer’s mind.

In a **** system, I give this a ***1/2.<<<

Last year the Dodgers acquired left-handed pitcher Mark Hendrickson in a trade. They paid him $1.95M. This past week they re-signed him for $2.925M, a million dollar raise for a below average year, and with a 6-15 record and a .421 ERA, the “below average” is being kind. Not a bad reward for failure, especially when you consider that even an excellent teacher doesn’t get quite that much.<<<

And on the same subject – more dollars than sense:

It was Justice Potter Stewart who said of the difficulty of defining obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” About 10 days ago, after prolonged denials, Miami Dolphin coach Nick Saben accepted the coaching position at the University of Alabama. For walking in The Bear’s footprints, Saben will be paid just under $4M a year, making him the highest paid state employee in the history of Alabama.

Now that’s obscene.<<<

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential hopeful said Monday he thinks the Confederate flag should be kept off South Carolina's Statehouse grounds.

Of course it should. Southerners are whistling Dixie when they claim the Stars and Bars represents not a defense of slavery but a remembrance of a way of life. That is like saying that the Nazi Swastika has little to do with genocide.<<<

Try to follow this logic – I dare you.

Joe Cline lived in Alabama and worked for a company that made benzene. From his exposure to that chemical he developed leukemia. But when he tried to sue, the state Supreme Court threw out the case ruling that there was never a valid time for him to sue. Now here it comes: Alabama says a person cannot sue for exposure until “manifest injury develops. But they also have a statute of limitations requiring that such a suit must be filed within two years of exposure. So, if you live, work and are damaged by your job, you had better hope that you get cancer fast.<<<

Tucson headline: Cops track sex for sale on craigslist Makes sense. Since one goes to the list for day labor, why not noon and night as well?<<<

On tectonic evolution:

Ten million years from now, says Dr. Robert S. Dietz, “Los Angeles will be abreast of San Francisco.” And in another 50 million years,” he added, “Los Angeles will have moved up the west coast into Alaskan waters.”

Question: Could our recent cold spell mean that nature has speeded up the process? We may not yet have reached Alaska but it feels like we are close.<<<

Stephen Colbert said it best at the correspondent’s dinner:

"Bush will believe the same thing on Wednesday that he thought on Monday, irregardless of what happened on Tuesday."<<<

Our President also told Jim Lehrer a few nights ago that in 20 years, radical Shiites could be warring with radical Sunnis and Middle Eastern oil could fall into the hands of radicals, who might also get weapons of mass destruction.

Ah, help me out here. Isn’t that close to the same argument he used to justify the war in the first place?

My how times have changed – not!<<<

UCLA 73, University of Arizona 69. (As you can see by the picture, to give the Cats a chance, some Bruins played blind) .Now we are 17-1 and I am ecstatic but exhausted. It is hard work willing them to victory!<<<

No 683 next week as we will be returning that day from Barb’s birthday trip to Laguna and LaJolla. HAPPY BIRTHDAY (TUESDAY) TO MY WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nobody 681

Sunday, January 14, 2007
Nobody # 681

Nobody Asked Me But:

Last week, I finished “The Lay Of The Land,” by Richard Ford. It is the concluding book in a trilogy ("The Sports Writer," "Independence Day" – the latter won him a Pulitzer) on the life of protagonist Frank Bascombe. The book, 485 pages long, is about 10% active and 90% passive - Bascombe’s thoughts about his life, past and present, his politics and his New Jersey environment.

If you think this makes for a fast read, think again. My time (about 3 ½ weeks (or was it years?) was divided between enjoyment and “is this damn thing ever going to end?” But mixed in with Frank’s 3 billion thoughts were some delicious ones including “I have chosen a life smaller than my talents because smaller made me happier.”

This thought hit close to home. I have written many times about doing the same thing during my pre-retirement and the opposite since retiring. During the former I worked sorta hard but not that hard, because I wanted time to enjoy being alive. Since retirement it has been much of the opposite. I fill my life beyond the brim because of a sense that I do not want to miss anything in my remaining years. I have only a few regrets about the past, but my present calls for change.

In the 1970s there was a debate between two writers about these conflicting choices. Richard Bach, in his huge best seller, “Jonathon Livingstone Seagull,” defended the always striving to reach your potential goal position, while James Kavanough, in “Celebrate The Sun,” wrote that people should surrender Bach’s level of striving that made one miss life’s simple joys.

I am sure that ambition is good, if take in moderation, but am positive that celebrating the sun is the wiser choice. It is the latter that I sometimes allowed to slip away and am trying to rediscover. It helps when I take time to re-read this poem:

Of Simplicity

By James Kavanough

Simplicity calls,
After all the scheming’s done,
Now that I’ve paid homage
To damn near everyone.
God should be satisfied,
Parents got their due.
My education’s justified.
I’ve proved myself to you.

Simplicity calls
Now that everyone’s been paid,
But even so I hesitate
Because I’m still afraid.
One of these days,
I’ll jump the last few walls;
Give no explanation
Save”simplicity calls”!<<<

If I lived in Canada, part of the cure would be found in watching a new television series playing there. It is called “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” and is a show about a small Muslim community.

It contains such gems as a religious leader preaching: “'Desperate Housewives'? Why should they be desperate when they're only performing their natural womanly duties,” while, at the same time, a woman whispers to another from behind her veil, “I hope he finishes in time for us to get home and watch this week’s episode.”<<<

The Bruins beat the Trojans! The Bruins beat the Trojans – in a game that was closer than the final score. And here is our warrior among warriors, Aaron Afflalo. (left for game winning shot) "I want to leave some small mark on the greatest basketball program in the country."

You have, Aaron, you have. And not just yesterday. You have been a credit to UCLA since you first stepped on the campus. Now how about staying another year and playing on a National championship team with Kevin Love?

Speaking of Love, he scored only 4 points for his Lake Oswego HS team in its Friday night game. Of course those were the only points in the game, which ended at the three-minute mark when Love stole the ball, took it the length of the court and broke the glass backboard with powerful slam.<<<

Here are two quotes from a recent USA Today poll in which only 26% of the people support the Bush policy for Iraq:

“It’s one thing to be steadfast and another to be stubborn,” said Rick Lacey, a Republican who voted for a Democrat in the last election.

“I’m as devout a Democrat as they come,” said Mr. Daily. “But if we are still in the war in two years and a Republican candidate for president like Hagel or Brownback is more anti-war than the Democrat, then I will vote Republican.”<<<

As David Brooks pointed out in a column last week, the Democrats slipped up again. Most American people, including many Republicans, were ready to support a plan to end our senseless bleeding in Iraq, but the Dems couldn’t unite their quick exit vs. gradually withdrawal factions and once more sacrificed action for reaction.

They should have compromised on a more troops/timetable-for- withdrawal policy, which had the twin virtues of being both right and an easy sell to the voters.

Come on Democrats – LEAD!<<<

(Note: A piece in this morning’s LAT indicates that the Democrats may be coming together on this)<<<

NO! NO! NO! There is nothing that would cause me to move to Iran.

What? You say gasoline there is .35 cents a gallon. Barb, do you still have that veil?<<<

I don’t know about you, but I have always wondered about royalties – what is the writer or singer’s cut per sale. I found a piece of the answer in last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine interview with Yusuf Islam. (AKA Cat Stevens – remember, “I’m being followed by a moon shadow?”)

Q. - How do you support yourself these days — off your old hits?

A. - I think we sell about 1.5 million albums a year.

Q - Which is how much in royalties? About a dollar an album?

A. - Probably more.<<<

Did you know: that former New York mayor and now possibly the Republican candidate for President, Rudy the G is trademarking his own name? Consider the possibilities if he becomes our next chief executive. We may be able to buy POTUS Giuliani boxers or briefs – probably the former considering Rudy’s pugnacious nature.<<<

The time is 2027. All women on earth are sterile. There seems no future.

The place is England, which is trying to stave off this coming end to humanity not with a stiff upper lip but an irrational purging of all immigrants using a Homeland Security force that might well be the secret dream of today’s American anti-immigrants.

Then introduced into the picture is a young black immigrant girl who is pregnant and perhaps the only hope for human survival. But she and her baby are the focal point of the struggle between the nativist British government and the persecuted immigrants who want to use the child as a symbolic rallying point for their armed resistance.

It is the task of our protagonist, Clive Owen to steer her and the baby, once she is born, unharmed between these forces and to a sort of habitat for humanity safe haven.

The film, “Children Of Men,” which I saw this past week, is loosely based on a novel of the same name written by P. D. James in 1992. It is outstanding both for the moral questions posed and for its cinematography. I would not rate it ahead of “Letters From Iwo Jima,” but it is totally deserving of an Academy Award best picture nomination and is one of the three best 2006 films that I have seen. (“The Queen” being the third)<<<

Oh, and I need to add here that in listing the best films that I saw this past year, I forgot to mention “United 93,” which I thought very good but not good enough to deserve awards like being named Best Picture by the NY Film Critics Association. I think that sentimentality is replacing objectivity in judging this picture.<<<

And before we leave movies, “Alpha Dog” opened Friday in theaters across the country. It is the story of the senseless murder of one of our former students, Nick Markowitz. Since both Barb and I feel that the tragedy should not have been exploited, I was not sorry to see the following from a review in the NY Times. The reviewer is Manohla Dargis who once had the same position at the LA Times:

“Alpha Dog” is a true-crime story inspired by a pipsqueak thug improbably named Jesse James Hollywood.”

“Here the dimwitted mastermind is Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), a pint-size nihilist with wary eyes and a face full of molting hair. He has a skinny blonde named Angela (Olivia Wilde), a pit bull called Adolf and a posse of cretins.”

“The cretins rule in “Alpha Dog,” which has much the same entertainment value you get from watching monkeys fling scat at one another in a zoo or reading the latest issue of Star magazine. Of course a little of that nasty stuff may land on you, but such are the perils of voyeurism.”<<<

Did you read about Shadow, the Santa Monica cat, who had a hard time adjusting to the two cats already living in his new home? Shadow’s owners, answering an ad, allowed him to be part of a cat behavior modification group. He is now on Prozac and his behavior problem, urinating on the furniture to establish territory, has almost entirely dried up.

This could affect humans in a big way. Not only in urinating patterns but, now that the drug has found an new market, perhaps its price will drop.<<<

"Two things perhaps best symbolize Iraq in 2006:

The first is the recent execution of Saddam Hussein. Only a country in shambles could offer up such a spectacle, execution turned into circus.” (JT in Nobody, January 7th)

“The execution of Saddam Hussein was Iraq in a nutshell. Aside from the dead man at the end of the rope, nothing went the way the Americans wanted.” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post. January 9, 2007)

I am glad that Cohen, a very good columnist, is reading Nobody, but I think he should have asked my permission before he stole my stuff.<<<

And finally, here is Robert Frost on the President’s decision to send more troops to Iraq:

A Soldier

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark.<<<

Nobody 680

Sunday, January 7, 2007
Nobody # 680

Nobody Asked Me But:

Once more the moon is shining on my desk, so let’s have a few words.

"In matters of foreign affairs, our country, may she always be right, but our country right or wrong." Commodore Stephen Decatur.

“My country, to fight for, perhaps to die for, but only when her cause is just and necessary.” JT.

I saw "Letters From Iwo Jima" this past week. It absolutely stunned me. I have never seen a greater picture on war, on its futility, on its frequent injustice to those who are sent off to fight and, perhaps, die.

In my opinion, every leader who kills his countrymen in an unjust war is automatically a war criminal. What is unjust? Every war is unjust except those fought in self- defense or to save people from slavery, genocide or conquest by an oppressor nation.

The next morning I wrote this to Elizabeth and Greg:

“In as much as you can control the situation, (including refuge in Canada) do not ever allow your children to fight in an unjust war.”

Hugh and I saw “Letters” together. Here are his thoughts on it:

“I will have no problem adding both pictures (“Flags Of Our Fathers is the other one) to my DVD library. Both are exceptional and so moving. Again Clint is a master storyteller. Both movies were "little" (as in intimate) pictures of soldiers that were given impossible jobs to do. The characters in both pictures had so much in common and were the centerpiece of this tragic battle (over 7,000 Americans killed and only about 200 Japanese that survived out of a garrison of 21,000). I cannot think of anything else to say that was not said in this tremendous work of art.”

But not everyone who saw this picture is this intelligent, which leaves me with an ethical dilemma. As you know I belong to a semi-secret group known as The Dead Bruin Society. Last week one member proposed a friend named Tony Medley for membership. It seems that, among other things, Medley writes movie reviews for the web site “Rotten Tomatoes.” I checked it out and discovered, among his other incredibly stupid reviews, an incredibly, incredibly stupid one of “Letters.”

“So Clint Eastwood makes two movies trying to make a moral equivalence between imperial Japan, responsible for all the atrocities, and America, fighting to end the horrible atrocities, one right after the other, “Flags of Our Fathers,” about the three surviving Americans who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima, and, now, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” about the battle from the Japanese point of view.”

“Now in “Letters From Iwo Jima,” Clint creates moral equivalency between the heroic Americans invading Iwo Jima and the zealots who were defending it.”

“… it (‘Letters’will influence the ignorant and uninformed, and that's the main reason I condemn it.” (What a pompous ass.)

Here is my commentary on his review. I wrote this to “Tomatoes”:

How can you post a taste sample for reviewer Tony Medley when he has no taste? Anyone who thinks "Letters From Iwo Jima" justifies Japan's aggressive role in starting WW II either didn't watch the film or should avoid watching movies that are beyond his ability to understand - which probably includes everything deeper than "Frat House; The Sequel.”

His review of "Letters" is the worst review on any film in any media I have ever encountered. I hope that he has a day job.

So, am I justified in voting no on admitting this man to the DBS? Note – In DBS, majority rules, which it should, so my vote would not be a veto.<<<

“Letters” afterthought:

Contrary to “critic” Tony, Eastwood, in no way, creates moral equivalency between America and Japan. His message is that most of the Japanese soldiers on Iwo were men who know they were going to die and, in most cases, don't want to. Oh, there are some are hard cases who die willingly for the glory of Empire. Others reluctantly put survival second to duty. And some, bewildered by it all, would just like to be back home running their small business or farming their land. Isn't this the tragedy of war - that men, in many ways so alike, are sent to kill one another?

As a critic wrote recently, Eastwood has become an American Master, and this is a masterpiece.<<<

I am sorry to tell you that there will be no 10-best movie list from me this year. I didn’t even see 10 movies. I am sure that nothing will come close to “Letters,” although “The Queen” was a wonderful film. Here is my “to see” list of 2006 movies – “Children Of Men,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Good Shepard,” “Venus” and perhaps “Babel.” Did I forget anything?

Lead line in NY Times: Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says.

The Bush team is wrong. Iraq was chaotic long before 2006. It just turned into greater chaos this past year. The dream of a democratic Iraq as a Middle-Eastern “city on a hill,” always, in reality, a pipe dream, became a nightmare. After the November election, the president, forever one or a dozen steps behind reality, offered up Rumsfield as a placebo and, according to reports, has decided to send another 25,000 troops - as if that will do more than increase the number of Americans killed beyond the 3,000 gravestone mark reached in 06.

Two things perhaps best symbolize Iraq in 2006:

The first is the recent execution of Saddam Hussein. Only a country in shambles could offer up such a spectacle, execution turned into circus, clowns taking pictures with their cell phones while other clowns in black masks shouted the name of their rebel leader Muqtada al-Sadr as they fastened the noose around Hussein’s neck.

The second is the continued killing of innocents - 2,000 civilians were killed there in December, which was pretty much the monthly average. Did we liberate this country or destroy it?

Iraq is a black hole, sucking in life after life as our President dreams on.<<<

Saddam add-on: Death is sometimes justified but rarely, for civilized people, a matter for celebration.<<<

A walk on my dark side: people seem fascinated by violent death as witnessed by the number of hits in the web site that posted pictures of Hussein’s execution. I was very tempted to join them, a fact that shames me. But I didn’t, so maybe there is some redemption in that.<<<

Arizona Daily Star lead-line: Our 'most underestimated president.'

Let’s not get carried away here. Gerald Ford was a good and decent man and he should be mourned as such. But he was an average president whose success was more passive than active, the latter being the real measure of being underestimated. He was accidentally in the right place with his goodness and modesty in a time when goodness and modesty were needed.

On the other hand, he gets an A+++ for this comment he made in an interview with Newsweek Magazine’s Michael Beschloss:

"If I'd been elected in '76, the party wouldn't be as far right as it is at the present time … I sure hope it comes back to the center."<<<

Short and sweet.

This week’s Abraham Lincoln - “It is better to keep silent and be thought an idiot, than to speak and remove all doubt” award goes to:

Henry Kissinger for this inane gem - "Few (historians) will dispute that the Cold War could not have been won had not Gerald Ford emerged at a tragic period to restore equilibrium to America and confidence in its international role."<<<

No surprise here:

Many health insurance companies will not sell policies, at any price, to hale and healthy people who have, or had, such serious ailments as hemorrhoids and jock itch.

These are, of course, stupid examples of a deeper problem. We are becoming a country where only the healthy can qualify for health insurance .<<<

Coals to Newcastle:

Even some oil executives have said they don't need all of the tax breaks the government has granted the industry in recent years.<<<

On capital punishment:

A blue-ribbon commission recommended Tuesday that New Jersey abolish the death penalty and urged legislators to replace it with the sentence of life without parole.

The 13-member commission said the costs of the death penalty are greater than the costs of life in prison without parole and concluded that "the penological interest in executing a small number of persons guilty of murder is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an irreversible mistake."

I have been telling you this for how long?<<<

“One week to ‘24.’ But who's counting?” – Mike Lupica

Blowing smoke:

"It's a little disappointing because we can play with anybody and we knew that. " Pete Carroll

Except UCLA that is.<<<