"Capitalism is the Predatory Stage of Human Evolution"

Movie Monday and Miss M

Who is this dog? OK, maybe the angle is off but she's just two months and she looks ginormous. What are we feeding her?

Plus, she is obviously in the teen years. "Park time" now consists of removing stuff from her mouth - grass, leaves, rocks, you name it. And, she has decided that she should carry her leash. When I'm not busy removing plant and rock objects from her mouth, I'm trying to reposition the leash so she can't grab that in her mouth. It's become a game for her.

But she is soooooo cute; especially in this picture with her Minny Me.

Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/main/2 on Saturday, 5/24, had the first posting in a well-known blog re: "Buyers Remorse in New Jersey." I may have missed it, but I don't think Christie has made the radar of major liberal blogs yet. And that's a mistake. I know that NJ gets lost in the shadow of our big brother, NY, but it is a blue state, for now. National Democrats, at their peril and ours, had better wake up because right-to-work (the euphemism for union busting), anti-abortion legislation, super majorities needed for tax hikes (ala CA) are all possible from this conservative Gov. We may wake up to metaphorically see all the forests on fire and no means to extinguish them.

I spent the weekend punching up my monthly newsletter. We will be losing our Property Manager in a few weeks and we have a nice front page tribute to her. I was happy that the newsletter and the Board both put in a "Thank you" but that really had me jostling articles to fit them in.

For anyone who's interested, I took over newsletter editing - well, I really do the writing, formatting, and editing but I have a great staff for proofing and final prep - when a local publisher decided not to continue printing our news. for free (What did they get out of it? We gave them the copy and they laid it out around their advertisers. I guess as hard copy ad revenue decreased this venture became too expensive for them.) Anyway, our former editor moved and I was pressed into service. Now, the make-up of the former newsletter was a lot of fluff. Book reviews, recipes, trip news, etc. since that newsletter was 12 pages ( a lot of them all ads.) I decided on a front and back printed two page hard copy and electronic copy. While, I could easily add more pages on the electronic copy I didn't want the pagination problems if the hard copy expanded to more than the front and back printed copy.

I've kept that format for over 3 years and this May issue is the first one where I had to shrink font size for everything to fit. It's interesting that my major problem each month is not getting copy but formatting it. I look at it as a good mental exercise. If I ever have too much white space one month, I have a logic problem from Fermat's Room which I'm going to use. You think a lot about "What if I don't have news?" I've decided my solution is logic problems; they are definitely not fluff.

My movie review is going to be short one because I'm preparing for next Monday's posting (that is, unless I watch a great movie by next Monday) a piece on: How the hell are they going to film Breaking Dawn without inducing fits of riotous laughter in the audience? More on this next Monday.

Judy Berlin. A small, indie film with the title character played by Eddie Falco before her turn on The Sopranos and Nurse Jackie.

I sort of liked this film. It was short; it looked like real life with real houses in the tacky floor plans of the 1950s; and it had real problems which don't find resolution. All the makings of an indie. But remember, I watch movies as I knit and that can cause two problems: I can tolerate a lot of dross because I'm not wasting my time and I have to watch films more than once because I sometimes miss stuff. Well, truth be told, I miss the most because I fall asleep!

Judy Berlin is a 30-something woman who is finally leaving home to go to Hollywood. The movie follows her last day in her home town and the people she touches as she says her farewells. There's a lot going on - early Alzheimer's, adulterous passion, neighborly bickering, but I just invested the time, not the feelings.

It may be because the whole movie looked like the actors were acting. Imagine that? But that is an important point with movies since all of them are phony. From the car chases to the sex scenes; all movies are fake (even documentaries in many ways but I'm not thinking about them here.)

The difference with a good movie is that you, the audience, invest your time and invest your feelings. If you don't invest both, you're just passing the time. Which isn't a bad thing but you might as well be at a baseball game or dinner at Burger King. (Has anyone tried their "chicken as slices of bread" specialty? And lived?)

An example of investing feeling for me (and, of course, this differs for everyone) was the scene in The English Patient where Almasy carries Katherine to the cave and promises to find help and return to her. We know she's going to die there alone; they know she's going to die there alone; but the actors reach into that reservoir of pain and communicate it to the audience.William Macy once said about acting (and I paraphrase): It's reading the lines until sometimes 10 minutes of magic happen.

I didn't get that magic in Judy Berlin; I just got the story. The actors told the story; it was a story with important human feelings but I always knew they were actors playing the characters.

But it's short and it's an indie. I like to support indies (real indies, that is, not studio-spinoff-indies.) It's not a bad waste of time. Enjoy.