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How I Know I Am Not A Good American


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In order to decide whether or not you are part of a community, part of a culture, part of a nation; you must examine your values. I mean if all those around you worship something that you despise, you are the odd man out.

I have decided that I am not a very good American. It has to do with my likes and dislikes. So I figure it is a genetic disorder. I must admit all my disagreements with American Culture. Supposedly, if we first admit our faults we may have an opportunity to take more steps in the healing process and I might become a good American after all.

 

GRACE KELLY

I despised Grace Kelly (Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco") when I was ten. Do you realize that The American Film Institute ranked her #13 amongst the Greatest Female Stars of All Time?

I would have no problems at all rating her one of the thirteen worst actresses I have ever seen on the screen. Her affectations in speech and in her walk did nothing for a young boy or an old slob like me. Phony, phony, phony. She died drunk driving an automobile.

She had grown up as the daughter of a millionaire in Philly, went to the finest schools while living in the finest neighborhoods. She did not apply herself in school and got theatrical parts due to the American love for Cinderella. And she was one of those two faced traitors who chose 'duel citizenship' when our country absolutely bans such things.

I remember watching High Noon and thinking...this is the dumbest movie I ever saw.

HIGH NOON

Plot: This stupid film is supposed to be number 27 on the 'all time list'. I mean, we are supposed to believe that a little 22 year old aristocratic cream puff just falls in love with a 51 year old alcoholic in some dirt town in what is supposed to become New Mexico. Just after the wedding, we find out that,  them liberal and corrupt politicians up north let loose some killer the sheriff had brung down a few years earlier.

And one by one the local citizens demur as Cooper begs for a posse to stop black bart or whatever the frick he is from comin to destroy the town. I have to admit that the last demurer gives the all time dumbest line ever given in a western; a line that would be repeated in thousands of films and TV Westerns:

But I have a wife and children Sheriff.

As if only gay caballeros can ever take up the challenge to rid this earth of Black Barts.

Even his own deputy demurs and sits in a bar getting drunk all day. Lloyd Bridges (whom I have always idolized) plays the spiteful coward who had somehow inherited Cooper's old lady friend. He is mad because he does not get to be the new sheriff in town after Cooper leaves. The showdown between Cooper and Black Bart's men is so badly shot that it  DEFIES credulity. I mean the film does not flow,

Rather, it continues in fits and starts, badly choreographed. And the stunt man for Cooper performs feats that no 51 year old alcoholic could achieve.

Needless to say, I never liked Cooper either. His aw shucks persona just pisses me off. I must admit, having sat through the film recently,  it was fun to see actors like Elam who would go on to appear in some of the greatest westerns ever made, like Once Upon a Time in The West.

 

JULIA ROBERTS

 

I just got through watching buttlips (the first buttlips that I can remember) in the Pelican Brief. Her feigning of fear and such is sooooooooooooooo aggravating; I suddenly remembered why I could never sit through the damn movie. I just cannot stand looking at this pretense of thespianism.

I have never hit a woman or a child in my life, but I swear to god almighty (blesses himself) I have the strongest urge to just slap her silly in this film if only to wake her up and challenge her affectations.

Just take a minute and think of someone like Susan Sarandon. She would not stand for some director telling her to curl up her 90 lb body in some chair wearing some oversized undershirt panting and sobbing and such.

The plot is terrible anyway. I mean I could see the conservative oligarchy plotting to kill some liberal Supreme Court Justices in order to solidify the fascist America in which we now reside, but one billionaire oil guy would never do this alone.

I mean I like pelicans and all, but we are facing the economic torture of millions of Americans everyday due to the fascists who sit on our present court together with our fascist legislators.  Instead of pelicans, why not choose asthmatic children as the victims of fascism; those who die in Emergency rooms all over this country every year.

 

JOHN WAYNE

 

I hate John Wayne and I do not think I need to lay out my reasons here. He was a bad actor, a bad husband, a bad father and a bad fascist repub.

 

JIMMY STEWART

 

I hate Jimmy Stewart. I mean I hate Rear Window, It's a Wonderful Life, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I despise all his films except for Harvey. Psychosis is charming to me in a way which may explain my unamericanism.

In the fifties he would wear a rug that I would not put on my dog and in his fifties he always had some 22 year old like Novak or Kelly fawning over him.

And compare his movies and his 'acting ability' to someone like Henry Fonda. Come on!!!!

He was a life long repub and fascist.

 

BOB HOPE

 

I hate Bob Hope. I hate Bob Hope's movies. Can you imagine, the idiot could not understand why he never received an Oscar nomination?

Patty cake patty cake baker's man.  Fine, five year olds might enjoy Hope/Crosby slap stick.

Oh I know, he would take half naked girls overseas and 'celebrate' our troops. But I just know he did it for the money. He died a billionaire when a billion dollars was a lot of money.

RONALD REAGAN

Bedtime for Bonzo.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIOEN6XamA

Do not even get me started. I hope he and Wayne are stuck in some hell hole in hell; forced to watch their own movies.

So there you have it. Oh I idolized and still do idolize Douglas Fairbanks & Son, the Barrymores, Henry Fonda,  Errol Flynn, Carol Lumbard, Cary Grant (30's & 40's anyway), along with hundreds of others on the so called 'Silver Screen'.  But I was taught somewhere or other that if you can't stand Grace Kelly, Gary Cooper, Julia Roberts, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope or Ronald Rayguns....well you just aint a real American.

 

p.s.:  I am out of sorts and cigs for twelve more hours, so please forgive my callousness today. And I pick a day where I will stay up 25 instead of 24 hours. Go figure.


71 Comments

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It's a Wonderful Life is one of the worst movies ever foisted on the American public. I literally cannot sit through it without waves of nausea battling with the desire to fling something through whoever's TV it's being shown on.

That the perpetrators of the hideous TV atrocity "Thirtysomething" chose Bedford Falls as the name of their prodco tells you all you need to know about that.

And I remember Henry Fonda, on I think the Dick Cavett show on ABC, opposite Carson - who I only later came to appreciate - responding with one word to the question of what single part of his life he was most proud of: Jane.

The dude had cojones grandes, as it was post-Vietnam.

(BTW, much of the negative mythmaking about Jane Fonda relative to North Vietnam was later exposed as complete BS, not that the right wing nutcases much care about truth.)

And I for one am very relieved that Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett never had kids. She's a blithering misfit, and while he's a serious musical talent, any offspring they had would've been among the most bizarrely-featured children of all time.

The rest of your rogues' gallery? Who cares? Meant nothing to me, so I guess I am as bad an American as you.

(Stagecoach was OK, though - John Ford knew how to deal with Wayne - don't let him talk!)

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Stagecoach and a couple other films out of hundreds that he made. Those old two reelers and such.

Frankly, for some time I thought I was the only one. hahaahha

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Dick
Grace Kelley: Agree, but I really liked the clothes they always dressed her in, the wardrobe and shoes were so awesome.
Julia Roberts: Agree, Agree except for Mystic Pizza. I love that movie.
John Wayne: Grouch, very funny indeed.
Jimmy Stewart: What??? Well, uh, oh, :o
Bob Hope: Not that funny
Ronald Reagan: Ummm, you can't really consider him an actor.
and I will add Charelton Heston: Blech, especially that Planet of the Apes movie and Soylent Green
Bruce Willis: I don't have to say why do I!

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hahahahah. I give Willis a little bit of a break but I should not.

Heston. I mean Moses played by Heston. It was like those movies where Jesus has blond hair and blue eyes. hahahah

Oh and a lot of intelligent people like Mystic Pizza.

After High Noon I ended up watching Pelican Brief. Straight through...The defenseless, 'tormented' and put upon woman...

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John Irving's Owen Meany character dubbed films like Heston's: Male Nipple Movies. Etched in my mind forever.
that said, I confess I love Julia Roberts' guffaws. I am not a film buff.
I agree with Bwak; Tracy and Hepburn were grand.
I don't get what the choices have to do with being good Amurricans. I am so out of step that I don't even know what it means; that goes for my entire life, really.

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Wendy this is just some old matrix I was in...goin back to 1969 there was a cultural shift, a gap.

This blog is silliness actually. ha

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Yes, but I thought you would love the 'male nipple movie' category!
And you can prove you are a good amurrican by signing a pledge to love Michael Jackson.

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Well, dd...I was wondering what you think of me. I'll pass! :-))

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hahahaahah. Well Chuck, I am friendlier when I have tobacco. hahahaha. You are okay with me but that might be a bad sign for you. haaha

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UM is kicking some Michigan State butt! Iowa pulled another one out, today. 9-0

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Um

I liked the quiet man, and Grace Kelly was a princess, although I always like Audrey and Katherine Hepburne much, much, much better. They were intelligent princesses. I never saw high noon, and Cooper never impressed me. I always thought of him as a wannabe Gregory Peck. Peck, I loved. (Roman Holiday, 'nuff said)

I liked Jimmy's aw shucks stuff, though I agree Fonda acted circles around him. As far as "it's a Wonderful Life," I can't say I agree. I looked forward to it every christmas eve while I wrapped presents, at least, until Ted Turner stopped THAT tradition. Frankly, my big crush was Spencer Tracy. There was a boy in my High School that looked a bit like him, and I worked up my courage to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. Oh my, the joy when he said yes, and the crushing disappointment and heartbreak when in the interim he went out with the pitcher on my softball team and hit it off with her. I told him it was OK if he wanted to go with her, and he said, "Wow, thanks!"

Ack!

Maybe I am just less cynical and more naive than you, Dickon.

I hardly think you are a bad American, though. You are, however, a very interesting one. I'm kinda glad to see this. I didn't think you ever got out of sorts, although I would have expected it several times.

Your unfailing courtesy is always a joy to me. It still will be, really. I guess, it's OK that you are human just like any other American.

(hugs)


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You know, you are damn sweet sometimes. hahahahahha

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I try very hard to suppress it

=D

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we are all bad Americans now!!!

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He's ALWAYS out of sorts at the end of the month when he runs out of cigs...you didn't know that about him???

Sorry Arthur...it's almost over. Hang in there. :-)

But you ARE particularly cranky today...is it even LEGAL to hate "It's A Wonderful Life?" (I have to admit it isn't one of may favorites, either.)

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hahahahahahah. Its all better now.

Its the first. hahhaa

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Whew! Glad to see you made it! I knew you would!

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Bwak, oh I forgot I love the Quiet Man... Ohhh, one of my favs, thanks for reminding me, it will be on TCM over thanksgiving as usual I am sure and I will watch it, but all Irish folks are required to watch it, it makes us want to go home.

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Grace Kelly...only one flick and that was "To catch a thief" and only because she was cast opposite Carry Grant. For some reason that worked. I think because it was a Hitchcock flick.

C

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Hitchcocks best was performed in the thirties.

Methinks.

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Any chance you could add Jerry Seinfeld to your list?

I swear to God, that man's show marked the absolute complete and final no possible chance of redemption for American culture.

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The end of civilization as we know it quinn.

C

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I never watched the show at all. I have watched five minutes of it from time to time.

I did not understand it. Nobody was married, nobody had children...grown people were worried about what their parents though about them...it was so selfish...

This reality stuff has taken over now and I never watch that.

Yeah, Seinfeld was not even a good stand up and he is worth a hundred mill...

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A couple of years ago, I noted in a post, that I hadn't watched a sit-com since Cheers. Someone replied "Don't worry about it -- you are not attuned to popular culture." If popular culture is defined as Lost, Dancing With the Stars, Hollywood House Wives, Sex In the City and the other reality shows, I have one comment...Nor do I enjoy the scent of fresh dog shit! I have never watched one minute of Seinfeld!

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Chuck I still catch a Cheers once in awhile. It was funny cause I was dry for about thirteen years. And there was a bartender who did not drink. hahahah

For awhile I moonlighted for the musicians' union and would spend my nites in bars attempting to collect dues and never took a drink. hahah

I still love that show.

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Good morning Dick. I think your tirade may have something to do with recognizing the pattern of lies that has become so a part of our culture. This reality is more than adequate to make anyone sit up and take notice. Sadly, our entire generation (boomers) have been fed a pile of shit that makes Everest look puny by comparison.

The crowning achievement is very evidently the Bush whoppers and especially Iraq which cost many American and Iraqi lives. And that lie remains unchallenged. Everything right now flows from this extreme injustice and gross violation of our laws.

Our present turmoil is almost exclusively based in the above recognition and will only grow worse until it comes to a screeching halt. Individual relationships, community relationships and the nation cannot survive in an environment of lies. This is very basic. In measuring what Bush did we are informed of the fact the nation is at extreme risk. I am certain we have some very sick people running things. You just don't get up in front of millions of people and tell these lies without having something very seriously wrong.

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A propaganda system to beat all propaganda systems TPC. They really are damn good at it.

Repetition
Determination
Shamelessness

Fox news and MGM, I guess

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You forgot completely immoral and without concern for human life. Small details, I know.

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Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man series. Now what could be better than that?

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Oh I loved them. I remember having an all nighter with my wife. Watching all of them.

He has that cork gun, shooting ornaments off the tree from the couch. hahahah

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Jeezus, anything with Loy and Powell... anything.

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I agree. Here's an antidote to all those bad actors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGTEkJ8axbo&feature=related

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Norton makes me look positively CHEERY. HA

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Ha!

Thanks for that DD. Very cathartic. Particularly High noon and julia roberts (she ruins just about every movie she is in)

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I feel alittle like I have committed blasphemy. I mean people I like and people I agree with politically might disagree vehemently with me on this critique.

And yet this does not express a tenth of the anger I held thirty or forty years ago. hahaha

Butt lips drives me nuts.

It is just I ran into an homage to Grace and it set me off after watching High Noon and Pelican Brief all within a couple days. I mean she had a five year career and she took on a foreign title and still claimed American citizenship.

IT PISSES ME OFF, SAL. HAHAHAHA

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Who are all these people of which you rant, Mr. Day? If they are movie stars I do not know their work. The only movie worth anybody's time is "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure". George Carlin is in it. That's all that matters.

I'm glad you finally have cigs to take the edge off yer cranky.

Party on, dude.

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You got that right Flower. The first is always a good day for me. Must wait for spirits though. Sunday closing laws you know. hahahah

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We must wait until High Noon on any Sunday here in the Great Lakes State before we are allowed to purchase magical elixirs.

It worries me that I am aware of this law.

But, not too much.

;o)

Heavy frost on the jack o'lanterns this morning, dd. Brrrrrrrr.

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I liked Jimmy Stewart, particularly in his westerns. He was a hawk, but not a chicken hawk. Although he failed his early physicals (underweight), he was probably the first movie star to join the Army (air corps) - before Pearl Harbor - and refused to accept behind-the-lines PR duty, eventually flying 20 bombing runs.

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True. Clark Gable flew and refused any promotional role. He just did his duty.

Cannot fault Stewart for that.

But he was a repub and it was no accident that he chose the role of the biggest promoter of fascism in this country when he played Lindberg.

At any rate I despise Stewart anyway. He always worked for conservative causes.

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And I thought I was alone in my little hate-closet...

Seinfeld Sucks. Roberts rankles. Stewart stinks (- though Vertigo is Da Shit!)

Ah, to have friends with taste... and cigarettes 'n beer, in Dick's case.
Happy first of the month, DD!!

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Well thank you Obey. There are ideas and there are even some emotional reactions that seem to be best kept to oneself. Polite company you know. hahahaha

But, you can feel odd man out when you do not let it be known.

Tomorrow is the beer with Sunday Closing laws, you see. But the 'edge' is off. ha

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A propaganda system to beat all propaganda systems TPC. They really are damn good at it.

From dd above...

Anyone who somehow has the scales fall from their eyes CANNOT be a "good American" - as defined by the "damn good" purveyors of fiction.

Gosh, it's a lonely road in America! ;)

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It is not so lonely TheraP when you can get a little grumpy and almost all your friends show up and get into a lively discussion!!!!

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There was a wink next to my comment.... no, this is not a lonely thread! :)

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Jesus Crikes, DD!! {Blesses himself} Did you give out cigarretes to the tricker-or-treaters last night, or what? No smokes?!? Holy Smokes! That IS hell. No wonder you're seeing these bad actors all around you.

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Yeah Gregor and they snarl at me in my dreams. hahahaha

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HAHAHAHAHAH!!! "Buttlips" and "hell-hole in hell" are my favorites! Oh, so good!

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Well thank you MBH. A little rage sometimes spurs me on to a higher level as it were. hahahaha

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Hmn.I could watch Pretty Woman again.

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Oh Flavius, it is not like it's impermissible. Others here like her also. A lot more hair in those days. Gere marries a hooker. Everybody lives happily ever after.

I mean I like the Prophesy series.

No real accounting for tastes,especially mine.

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I don't think any of this makes you a bad American DD. It makes you a real American. Real Americans are rarely in the mainstream but instead have the cajones to stray from the heard and risk being different. Everyone with an independent mind has a list like this DD. But I gotta say your descriptions got me chuckling.

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It is kind of funny. I see inspiration in so many who commented today. That is the rant spurred on by a little anger in a blog from time to time. hahaah

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Ok Dick. What we need now is one thread - ONE - where we all list the TV shows (and movies) that are out there NOW that makes you feel like a good American. And no, not Keith & Rachel or Jon S or Michael Moore - but the obviously political stuff.

Personally, I'm just going through back seasons of The Wire. (I'm behind the times on thee things, I know.) But I'd be damn proud to be American and have made those shows. It doesn't quite make up for the suffering inflicted by Jerry Seinfeld, but... it's a start. ;-)

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The Wire may well be the best episodic drama TV has ever generated. Certainly the best policer. With very, very few exceptions, only gray hats there.

How do we really total it up> Incredibly dense yet coherent stories, amazingly richly drawn characters, production values that throw the grit of inner-city Baltimore right through the screen at us, and a wonderful mix of theme and incidental music to boot.

I suspect that from some distant future, TV historians will look back and know that The Wire was in fact dramatic television's pinnacle.

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This is a great idea Q. Just recently we had THE UNUSUALS and SOUTHLAND...two cop shows that really really really broke new ground for different reasons and were dropped. Piss me off much. I viewed each episode several times on the net.

I mean in the Unusuals they had one team composed of a guy who had a premonition that he would be dead in six months with a partner who had medical tests telling him he would be dead in six months. Everybody was crazy. It was wonderful.

In Southland there was a big burly cop who seemed to hate everybody teamed with a rookie dilettante. The burly guy ended up being a drug addict and gay on the side. (I know, which side)

If I had the bucks I would have tapes of:

I Claudius
Rumpole of the Baily
Playhouse Ninety
.....


Instead we get I love lucy and mash and bonanza and...........

This worked out so well I should think next Saturday nite. I would however rather see you do it since you have not blogged in four or six months anyway.

Think about it. Otherwise I will set up the thread.

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About six months ago I watched The Wire straight through and enjoyed it a lot except for the weak second season. In order to enjoy it I had to do what I usually find very difficult in a serious show and that is accomplish a suspension of disbelief when something stupid or completely illogical, or even impossible happens in order to carry the plot.
The stake-outs were ridiculous. They parked in SUVs with blacked out windows across from there subjects and whipped out binoculars and cameras through open windows or from rooftops and the street-wise dealers never noticed. The bad guys never noticed that that SUV they hadn't noticed pulled out with them and followed them all over town. They never noticed the guy on the roof.
Well, it was good enough that that didn't spoil it for me. I think the final episode wrapped up the story exceptionally well.

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If it were a play you'd recognize that it is necessary for the audience to see both the followed and the follower at the same time. The illusion of reality added by putting the story on camera makes that split presentation a bit more difficult to deal with.

But then, I grew up reading science fiction. Once you get into practice, it is easy to suspend disbelief in the necessary structural unreality of the presentation. That's what it takes to follow the story.

But the presentation elements are just periphery. Just don't let the author fool you into accepting the garbage premises at the core of a book or story like "Atlas Shrugged." Ayn Rand was a Russian fanatic refugee who became a Hollywood writer and decided to take her own crap seriously, after all.

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Richard, that is an interesting comment because even as I wrote what I did I asked myself how I could square it with my early and continuing love of science fiction. At least part of the answer is that going in you know that SF presents a story within an altered or imaginary reality as opposed to a drama which purports to present a story which could be real. SF creates its own possibilities and parameters.
Still, a person must let a story tell itself on its own terms and in its own way. The Wire told stories that I believe, some which I can empathize with, some I have witnessed, and it did so very well.

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HA! (Blesses DD) This is only divergence of popular culture, so I don't know where on the scale of "good American" that works. I know that Reagan was President, but every time I saw him, the "Borax" commercials replaced anything he was trying to say - in my mind anyway.

I largely eschew pop culture, as well as dress codes (nothing fits right on a manatee) so I guess I am joining good company with the PJ Blogger Priest.

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Nothing fits right on a manatee....

I hereby render unto you the Dayly Line of the DAy Award for this here TPMCafe Site, given to all of you from all of me. hahahahhaahahhahahah

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My humble thanks at the honor, and my extreme pleasure that it made you (and hopefully others) laugh. =D

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Psychosis is charming to me in a way which may explain my un-Americanism too Dick.

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hahaha..Harvey and Arsenic and Old Lace just do not seem 'to fit'. Even as a kid I was in wonder of them, thinking:

How the hell did they get away with this?

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Two classics. Esp. like the way Raymond Massey, Peter Lorrie, the old aunts, and Grant played in Arsenic. That was back when it wasn't socially anathema to have some bona fide whack jobs in the family. I felt so much more comfortable while out in public back in those days.

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I agree! Excellent post.
The only redeeming quality about Grace K was her elegant personal style; she was without substance. Easy to look good when you're stinking rich, I guess.
And THANK YOU for supporting my Julia Roberts hatred. I get looked at like I'm some sort of terrible Commie-Nazi when I say that Pretty Woman is offensive and trite, Notting Hill makes me queasy, etc.
And Double THANK YOU for the Jimmy Stewart support. Harvey is one of my all-time favorite movies but I want to reach into the TV and smack J.S. during It's a Wonderful Life. Selfish, self-centered, nauseating, and crammed down our throats every GD Xmas.
*whew*
I feel better now.

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Hey Rock, I am trying to eat my home made fries and you got me laughing so hard, I had to take a break.

hahahaha

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I’m an even worse American than you are, because I wouldn’t know these people if I saw them on a screen. Or anywhere else. If not watching movies and television isn’t completely un-American, what is?

Oh, wait, I would recognize Reagan, unfortunately. There was that little thing of him getting elected to something-or-other...

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Oh Great Lav, I mean now you have to remind me that I gave up to much of my life watching tv.. hhah

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It always intrigued me that the Air Force Reserve promoted both Jimmy Stewart and Barry Goldwater to the rank of Major General. Useless, both of them.

I have no doubt that the publicity value of their names got them the rank. Someone went to the J. Edgar Hoover school of publicity for government agencies.

Doesn't say much for the Air Force. They should never have been made into a military branch separate from the Army.

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Yup. You got that right Richard. Like I mentioned above, Clark Gable just did his duty with no fan fare.

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  • Location Virginia, MN
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