Sunday 28 September 2008

What We've Got Here Is A Failure To Communicate!



The world has had some great actors over the years. These actors have made great films and become huge superstars. Occasionally an actor comes along who surpasses all that and becomes like a favourite uncle you only ever see once or twice a year. To me, Paul Newman was such a person.

I never met him except in films like; Butch Cassidy, Cool Hand Luke and who can forget his portrayal of Fast Eddie Felson. He was, in a similar way to people like James Dean, an anti-hero. He brought a wry impertinence to the roles he played and people liked his anti-authoritarian spirit.

Despite typical movie-matinee idol looks he wanted more challenging roles, anti-hero roles that ensured his career spanned the generations it did. While most stars played the clean-cut he played convicts, outlaws, con-men and pool hall hustlers. He played them all with the charm and wit that made him a huge hit all over the world.

Like many great actors before him, he found it hard to win an Oscar. Despite roles that went down in history like; The Hustler, for example, where he upstaged the likes of Jackie Gleason and George C Scott. It was many years later while reprising the role in The Color of Money that he did finally win that much sort after award.

As is typical, however, he had made much better films around that time like; Absence of Malice and The Verdict. In the latter, he played an alcoholic lawyer (another anti-hero) who tries a case of medical malpractice despite being offered the chance to settle out of court against a giant law firm.

Paul Newman alone, the underdog, fighting the fight against all odds. This was a role he returned to many times. Even if ultimately he lost the fight, as with Cool Hand Luke, his total refusal to back down even slightly ensured he was always the winner with the audience.

I shall always remember him in the role of Luke in the 1967 classic. When finally caught by the prison warden he mocks him by shouting; "What we've got here is a failure to communicate!" That, of course, was something my favourite uncle could never be accused of. In film roles and in real life his style and charisma always shone through.

He will be sorely missed!

Sunday 21 September 2008

Calypso

I recently heard an interview with the late John Denver. I am not really a big fan which is probably why i didn't know he wrote a song about one of my all-time heroes Jacques Cousteau. He even got to go and spend time on the great man's ship; The Calypso, while writing the song.



In case you have never heard of him; Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French underwater explorer and filmmaker who studied the oceans and all the life in them. During my childhood I must have watched his documentaries hundreds of times and they always filled me with a feeling of wonderment at the oceans of the world.

When he died in 1997, shortly after his 87th birthday, he left behind a legacy of more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.

Personally, he always had a way of making everything he showed to me from the depths of the oceans so interesting. Although, in reality, he was a sophisticated man (he developed the aqualung) he had a simple way of sharing scientific concepts which appealed to the academic and ordinary people alike. He filled me with an interest for the sea and the life within it.



To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean
to ride on the crest of a wild raging storm
To work in the service of life and the living
In search of the answers to questions unknown
To be part of the movement and part of the growing
Part of beginning to understand

Aye, calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

Like the dolphin who guides you
You bring us beside you
To light up the darkness and show us the way
For though we are strangers in your silent world
To live on the land we must learn from the sea
To be true as the tide
And free as the wind-swell
Joyful and loving in letting it be

Aye, calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well


It appears from the John Denver song, and from musical works from artists such as Vangelis (who was heavily involved with Cousteau in the 1990s), Jean Michel Jarre and Blue Öyster Cult that I am not alone in holding the man in such high esteem.

The phrase; "They broke the mold when they made him", is very heavily over-used, but they certainly don't make people like Jacques Cousteau anymore!

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Late Night Thoughts

My story is not long, my plot is not intense.
It was so hard to write through my own self-defense.

Said you didn't want my blood, I replied I had none left.
Still hoped you would not see how you had left me bereft.

You never did like to get the letters that I sent.
You never even understood anything in them that I meant.

You read them once again, the ones you didn't burn.
Press them to your lips, your wonderful concern.

You walk into my room, you sit there at my desk.
You start the letter to the one who is coming next.

Sunday 14 September 2008

I'm Not Rappaport


Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis in I'm Not Rappaport

I watched an old film tonight with Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis. The film focuses on Nat (Matthau), a cantankerous Jew, and Midge Carter (Davis), a feisty African-American, who spend their days sitting on a bench in Central Park. They both mask the realities of aging by sharing the tall tales that Nat spins. The film deals with the difficulties of dealing with adult children who think they know what's best for their aging parents.

The film includes one of the funniest dialogues I have ever heard and is typical of the film as a whole...

Nat: Hey, Rappaport! I haven't seen you in ages. How have you been?
Midge: I'm not Rappaport.
Nat: Rappaport, what happened to you? You used to be a short fat guy, and now you're a tall skinny guy.
Midge: I'm not Rappaport.
Nat: Rappaport, you used to be a young guy with a beard, and now you're an old guy with a mustache.
Midge: I'm not Rappaport.
Nat: Rappaport, how has this happened? You used to be a cowardly little white guy, and now you're a big imposing black guy.
Midge: I'm not Rappaport.
Nat: And Rappaport, you changed your name, too!

It's a shame they don't make them like that any more!

Tuesday 9 September 2008

This Is Just A Rebel Song

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor sure has upset a few people in her time. With her outspoken views on child abuse and poverty. Her infamous appearance on Saturday Night Live. Singing of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church live on American TV. Calling Pope John Paul II; "evil", and ripping up his photo saying; "fight the real enemy" on NBC didn't do her any favours either.

Did she expect anything other than what she got? Was she trying to emulate the Beatles having her records destroyed and radio stations refusing to play her songs? Even up until today, NBC still refuses to rebroadcast the sequence.

Foolish, naive act of an innocent rebel with the right motives our just a ridicules publicity stunt? Who knows.

I do, however, get the feeling there is a really nice person in there somewhere. One capable of chilling performances like this...

Geekdom here I come

I decided I would try a custom template from those wonderful people at FinalSense yesterday. I choose not to do this originally because once you get into templates and coding then you turn into a complete and utter geek. A geek who has to download and install all the available browsers for your operating system just to make sure your template renders correctly in each.

So now I have a new template and guess what. It renders perfectly in Firefox and Safari but for some reason the divider between the posts doesn't always appear in Internet Explorer.

I am pretending it doesn't bother me and I am not going to let it worry me or spend hours trying to rectify the problem. If this is the case though why am I writing about it here... because its driving me MAD!!!

UPDATE: After of an hour or two of playing around with the HTML Code I finally got it all to line up properly. It is really frustrating when something that shouldn't work works and something that should work not only doesn't but messes up the appearence in other browsers. Why can't we have a standard that works for ALL browsers. The geek is now off to bed happy :)

Monday 8 September 2008

Yesterday, When I Was Young

A friend asked me recently which song I wanted playing at my funeral. I could think of only one...

Yesterday, when I was young,
The taste of life was sweet, as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life, as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame.

The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned,
I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand,
I lived by night, and shunned the naked light of day,
And only now, I see, how the years ran away.

Yesterday, when I was young,
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me,
And so much pain, my dazzled eyes refused to see.

I ran so fast that time, and youth at last ran out,
I never stopped to think, what life, was all about,
And every conversation, I can now recall,
Concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all.

Yesterday, the moon was blue,
And every crazy day, brought something new to do,
I used my magic age, as if it were a wand,
And never saw the worst, and the emptiness beyond.

The game of love I played, with arrogance and pride,
And every flame I lit, too quickly, quickly died,
The friends I made, all seemed somehow to drift away,
And only I am left, on stage to end the play.

There are so many songs in me, that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste, of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay,
For yesterday, when I was young.