Cranky-D

Scott Weiland’s band Velvet Revolver is currently working on writing songs for their follow-up album to “Contraband.” They are planning to use producer Rick Rubin, but he is also slated to work with Metallica on their follow-up to “St. Anger.” Or is saint spelled out in the title? I don’t know, I can’t find the CD. Anyway, according the the drummer for Velvet Revolver, Matt Sorum (formerly of Guns and Roses, they think VR will get Rick Rubin to work with them first:

“I think we’re going to beat METALLICA to the studio ’cause we write songs faster than they do,” he boasted.

I’m not sure if writing songs faster is a good thing or not. Still, so many bands belabor the point and spend months doing what should only take maybe a week or two, so maybe Matt has a point. Still, I don’t recall many drummers who actually do much writing. Banging on things with sticks is primal. Even thinking is optional. However, since I play guitar, and a lot of people slam guitar players, maybe I should’ve kept fingers from typing that. Too late now.

Scott is appearing on the tonight show Oct 5 along with Dave Navarro (former guitar player with Jane’s Addication) , Billy Morrison (formerly the bass guitar player in The Cult), and Matt Sorum, as the cover band “Camp Freddy.” They will be performing Cheap Trick’s song “Surrender,” probably the biggest hit Cheap Trick ever had. Scott will also be appearing in a benefit concert in San Francisco on October 6 for music education and disaster relief.

But, you might ask, just how is he doing? In the case of relatively young people like Scott, no news is good news. He has been showing up for various public events, he did an unannounced free concert, showed up at a fashion show, the usual sort of stuff the wealthy people do. There has been no mention of him doing drugs again, which means he is either not taking drugs at all (most likely), or he has gotten better at hiding it. Either way, he won’t be dying before next year, and therefore is useless to me as a points-getter.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

Dan Fogelberg is apparently still alive. I say that only because his death has not been announced. Otherwise things are very quiet.

As I noted last time, the news on his homepage is not good. He took down a post that seemed hopeful. Now, I think, he’s just waiting for the end.

Note: Downer stuff to follow. No funny stuff.

I’ve watched two people die from cancer. One of them was my mother, and the other was a former supervisor who ended up being a friend in my own time of need, both to me and to my family, during a particularly long hospital stay I had in 1989. That stay of mine is a story in itself. I’ve written about it elsewhere, maybe I’ll repost it here someday. Or maybe I’ll re-write it entirly. Or not.

My mother died first. She was diagnosed soon after my own troubles occurred. She had surgery. They removed the tumor and gave her chemotherapy. She went through the waiting period and it wasn’t even six months before it re-appeared. Another round of chemotherapy did nothing. She decided to stop treatment at that point, since she was tired of being sick.

I was out of work at the time, having recently finished my undergrad education which had been interrupted by my illness during the last two classes I needed to take (and which, of course, were only offered once a year). It was an easy choice for me to be the one to stay home with her. It was a strange time for me, since we didn’t get along for a great majority of my life. Anyway, I played cribbage with her, went on walks with her, took her to the doctor and wherever else she wanted to go. I remember on one walk she asked me if I thought it was okay if she asked G-d to die soon. I said I thought that was fine.

She was in a lot of pain, naturally, and she had an aversion to pain meds, one that I don’t share at all. I assume she took some of them. Since it was morphine, if I had been her I would’ve taken a lot of it. She hung on until early 1991. One day she was fine, the next day her mind was gone, like a light going out. It went from conversations to blank looks and vaguely remembered things and constant worrying about whether she was taking her pills at the correct times. Since she was always a control freak, she wouldn’t trust us with telling her we had the whole pill situation under control. A week later, after a day of final lingering with her breathing fading as her body shut down, she passed away in her bed at home, like she wanted to.

Relatives showed up that day, the in-home nurse had to show up to affirm the death, all that crap. We had to count out the morphine pills along with the nurse (and some of us wished we had skimmed some of them) before they got flushed, since it’s a heavily regulated drug. That day we went out to buy the hole and box. All in a weird daze.

You know what? I’m not going to talk about the friend much, except to say that I was glad I could visit him from time to time and give him someone outside the family to talk to. By the time I met him in 1985, he had already had surgery and chemotherapy, though I didn’t know anything about it until I got sick. I was still working for him, and he called me just about every day while I was in the hospital.

I think that he couldn’t talk about death with his family. He fought cancer and remission and multiple surgeries and radiation for about 10 years before he died. I didn’t know he had died until I called him asking about a reference, and he wasn’t there any more to talk to. That was about 6 months after I had left my home town.

That’s what Dan and his wife have to look forward to. I don’t wish it on anyone. I hope it all goes as smoothly as it can.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

Liza Minelli will be appearing in an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Minnelli, 59, will play a former beauty queen whose daughter, an aspiring beauty queen, was found murdered on Halloween night, said Pam Golum, a spokeswoman for Wolf Films, which produces the NBC show.

I don’t want to be a meanie, but I don’t think she would’ve qualified as a beauty queen even when she was a youngin’. She was okay-looking, and had, and perhaps still has, a very good singing voice, though I am not into that kind of music at all. But she would never be mistaken for a winner of the genetic lottery in the looks department. Still, that’s what acting is all about, I suppose.

I wonder if living in the shadow of a famous mother, and being almost as famous but never matching the fame, has contributed to her addictions. I would not be surprised at all.

In the mean time, she has a divorce to deal with. A recent ruling went her way when a $10 million civil suit bought against her by her former husband, David Gest, was thrown out of court:

Music producer David Gest has lost the first round of his divorce battle with Liza Minnelli after his $10 million civil assault lawsuit was thrown out of court Thursday[as far as I can tell, Sept 21].

Gest claimed his estranged wife beat him so badly during alcoholic rages he had to be hospitalized, but State Supreme Court Justice Jane Solomon wasn’t buying the allegations.

Instead she granted Minnelli’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit after her own medical expert made it clear that Gest’s much publicized headaches were caused by a strain of herpes.

They were married from March 2002 to July 2003. That’s a long time in Hollywood years.

On another note, a sex tape featuring Liza and former husband David Gest has not been picked up for distribution by anyone. It’s a fake article, but I thought it had its moments.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

One of the famous landmarks in Los Angeles, the Capitol Records building, is begin sold as part of a package deal for some well-placed land in Hollywood. If you haven’t seen the building, click on the link. It looks like a giant stack of 13 records. If you’re under 25, a “record” is a polymer disk that had an analog signal embedded in grooves. A “needle” read the waveform in the groove and the vibrations of the needle were translated back into sounds.

I mention this because the building contains an echo chamber engineered by multi-track recording pioneer Les Paul. Before Les Paul came along, all recording was done “live.” If one person in the band made a mistake, they had to do the whole thing over again. With multi-track recording, it eventually became possible to dedicate one or more tracks to each person or instrument, so that even if everyone played at once, it would still be possible to fix one or two bad performances. It also made it possible for the same person to perform more than once on a given song, which is something we take completely for granted these days.

Les Paul spent years working with the multi-track, exploring the limits and exploiting the equipment however he could. According to Wikipedia, his first multi-track work was on wax disks. By recording additional tracks slightly out of sync, he introduced the concept of delay. He also came up with the idea of having a tape head that could simultaneously record one track while playing back the other tracks. Ampex took those ideas and made the kind of equipment that pretty much dominated studio recordings until the digital age came along.

Being a busy guy, he also had a radio show at one time. In honor of his contribution to radio, he was recently inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

He is 91, and still plays in public every week. It seems that having something to do that you enjoy is key to living a long time. I picked him because he’s old and somewhat obscure. However, people are living longer than ever. He’ll probably make it to 95, and that’s fine with me.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

A new Playboy Club is opening on Friday, October 6, at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. It is located in the Fantasy Tower, and there will be a cerimonial lighting of a giant neon bunny head that evening.

Hugh Hefner started the original Playboy Club in 1960. It set new standards for class, luxury, and of course women running around in skimpy clothing, though the clothing was no more skimpy than you would have seen at the beach. At first you had to “be someone” to be a member, but the rules were eventually relaxed. Over the years it declined, probably because the rest of the world caught up with it, and the last original club closed in the 80s.

The new club is apparently returning to the exclusive bit. The press release notes that they will be catering to “discriminating tastes.” In case you’ve been living in a cave the last twenty years, that means people who have a lot of money. They weren’t clear whether the proles would be turned away at the door, but having experienced some discrimination in Las Vegas myself, I imagine they will be.

If you really want to splurge, you can stay in the Hugh Hefner Sky Villa, which has 9000 square feet of space. Yowza! You have your own indoor waterfall, fully equipped gym, sauna, and outdoor cantilevered jacuzzi, just to name some of the amenities. No rate was specified, but of course, if you have to ask, you cannot afford it. I don’t think Orbitz is going to offer any specials on that space any time soon.

The best part of it all for Hugh is that while he was consulted on various aspects of the thing, he only provided licensing. He did not invest a dime in the enterprise. That’s good, considering that with the proliferation of internet pron the magazine business is in a decline.

However, while the magazine is losing circulation, Hef’s circulation is apparently doing just fine. I chose him because he’s old, but the fact is, he’s in pretty good health. If I do a dead pool in another five years, maybe I’ll choose him then. Otherwise, forget it.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

Charleton Heston turned 83 on September 27th. He is now worth one point less. Of course, he won’t be dying any time before the end of the year, so that doesn’t matter all that much.

One of his most famous quotes, although I don’t think he originated it, is (paraphrased) “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” Some commie jackass thinks that makes him the number one celebrity you love to hate. He probably doesn’t even understand what the statement signifies. I no longer waste my time with people like that. As a one degree of separation piece of information, the rifle he was holding at the time was an NRA presentation rifle made by Cecil Brooks, who has made them since 1955. He died the same day Chuck turned 83, at the age of 93.

Chuck’s mainspring is slowly winding down. We have no idea how well he’s doing these days, since the family decided to keep it all to themselves. While I agree with their decision, it makes it more difficult to compute the odds. My guess is he has a few years to go, which means no points from his passing for me.

I’m so far behind in the points race, it no longer matters. I need some of the youngsters to kick off.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

Mindy McCready got into more trouble with the law:

Country music singer Mindy McCready was spared from jail on Wednesday [Sept 13] following a July conviction for driving on a suspended license, but her legal troubles aren’t over yet.

McCready, who in July was acquitted of driving under the influence but found guilty of driving on a suspended license, Wednesday received a 60-day suspended sentence from Criminal Court Judge Seth Norman. She had faced up to 60 days in jail.

This is bad because she is still on probation from a conviction for prescription drug fraud. Theoretically, this infraction could land her in jail for the remainder of her probation period, which expires in 2007. However, we can all rest easy since her lawer can supposedly prove she was not, in fact, driving on a suspended license. I dont’ know if the “under the influence” charge was trumped up or somewhat proveable, but I imagine she had been drinking or drugging a little bit.

I didn’t want to finish without mentioning this little tidbit from the same source:

Following the sentencing, McCready said she will write a song about her legal ordeal, but will wait until it is finally over to start it.

She’s a country singer. Drinking, drugs, being jilted, and ending up in jail are good sources of material. Maybe she can really crank out the tunes if she ends up in the slammer. Either way, she isn’t dying soon, much to my chagrin.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

What do we have about Ford these days? I think blather would be a proper way to frame it. First of all, unlike many presidents, Ford was not a doodler:

“Unfortunately, I have to report that President Ford was not a doodler,” wrote Ford archivist William H. McNitt. “In fact, you almost never saw him in a White House meeting holding a pen. When others were talking, he was listening.”

Listening is a good thing, I suppose, but I’ve found that meetings are almost always incredibly boring. The more boring they get, the more the margins on my paper get filled with weird crap.

Politically, the only thing going on is allegations associated with 30 year-old coverup involving George H.W. Bush, or Bush senior if you prefer:

Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.

This all happend during the Ford Administration. It isn’t clear how much Ford new, but since he was a listener rather than a doodler, I imagine he knew something about it. Still, we were still doing the realpolitik thing at the time, and protecting dictators was part and parcel of doing business in the world. So, no judgement calls from me. For all we know, sweeping it under the rug, if that indeed happened, was the proper course of action. Not everything gets to be aired out in public.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

My sweet baboo Courtney Love has agreed to participate in a documentary about her life:

Courtney Love’s drug recovery and musical comeback are set to feature in a telling new documentary about the rocker. The singer has decided to chronicle her battle with drug abuse following a lengthy stint in rehab and is keen to show fans she’s on the road to recovery.

The best quote, though, comes a bit afterwards.

Wait for it…

It is not known if the documentary will feature her newest pal, Whitney Houston, who Love has recently been helping with drug abuse counseling sessions.

Courtney Love, drug abuse counselor. I’ll tell you what, if I wanted to abuse drugs, Courtney would be a good person to ask. If those two fall off the wagon together, the results could be both catastrophic and amazing. We’re talking about a serious train wreck.

What would celebrity talk be without some gossip. Apparently, she has the hots for some squirrel named Russell Brand. I have no idea who this guy is. I am, of course, heartbroken over the whole thing.

OK, I’m over it now.

She added to the mystique that is Curt Cobain by one of the songs on “Nevermind” was about her, thus sending legions of fans to scan the lyrics to decide which one it is.

My guess is “Lithium.” The following quote from her mother may shed some light on why I think that:

Courtney doesn’t cook, drive or have relationships. One hundred years ago, she would have been institutionalized. So much of Hollywood is based on people like that. One day two years ago, Frances was staying with me, and we were at a nail salon, which had a television on. The announcer said, “After the break, we’ll tell you what ex-rock star was running naked through the hallway.” I grabbed Frances and said, “We’ve got to go, sweetie, I just remembered I have an appointment.” In the car, she said, “Grandma, I know that’s Mommy. And if you don’t tell me, I’ll have to look on the Internet.”

Okay, the first sentence doesn’t mean a whole lot, really. Plenty of people are like that. Running naked through hallways isn’t nearly as common, as far as I know.

Maybe saying it’s “Lithium” is too snarky. I happen to be one of the, apprently, few people who like her, as much as you can like someone you haven’t met. Perhaps she is really a major PITA, and I’d want to take a tire iron to her skull within 5 minutes of meeting her.

Anyway, she is supposedly working on her second solo album with Billy Corgan (of Smashing Pumpkins fame). The tentative title is, “How Dirty Girls Get Clean.”

I’m not holding my breath over that.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, was stopped by the police on Sept 8:

Rapper 50 Cent is facing multiple motor vehicle violations after he was pulled over by police in Midtown Manhattan Friday.
[..]
Police say he was pulled over for driving his Lamborghini erratically and was issued two summonses for expired permits and unsafe lane changes.

For most people, one brush with the law in a day is enough. However, our man 50 is somewhat of an overachiever:

Rapper 50 CENT was so unfazed by his arrest on Friday afternoon (08SEPT06), he still attended a fashion show and got into an alleged brawl with a fan.

According to the article, a fan he had denied an autograph to later refused to change seats so 50 could sit properly with his entourage. So 50 hit the guy (presumably) a few times. I’m not sure if that’s a good way to keep the fan base alive. I have the feeling that his CD sales will be dropping a bit, though he may add a few new fans who dig the thug image.

When I heard the original report on television, I thought they said his car was chrome-plated. I was pretty sure that wasn’t possible. However, there is such a thing as a chrome-like finish, and here’s a link to a site with pictures showing the progress of applying a chrome-like finish to his car.

Serious bling. Part of me wants to say something about people with way too much money and little fashion sense, but the rest of me wants to continue breathing.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

BB King is one of many artists appearing on an album by Jerry Lee Lewis, along with many others. But, was he actually even in the same room with him?

But many of his guests recorded their contributions elsewhere, with the final product mixed by Rip, who refused to say which artists were in the studio with Lewis because he doesn’t want to “ruin the illusion.” He did have to explain the technology that made that possible to Lewis.

You could’ve done this kind of thing ever since magnetic tape was invented, but it’s really easy nowdays since it’s much simpler to import digital recordings off of a CD or digital tape than it would be to move tape around, given the idiosyncracies of tape recorders.

Yeah, I know, big deal. Not much is going on with him, beyond the fact that he continues to tour at 80 years of age. So, instead of trying to stretch this out, I’ll give you a piece of his autobiography so you can hear the man himself. What follows is the first paragraph from the first chapter.

I struggle with words. Never could express myself the way I wanted. My mind fights my mouth, and thoughts get stuck in my throat. Sometimes they stay stuck for seconds or even minutes. Some thoughts stay for years; some have stayed hidden all my life. As a child, I stuttered. What was inside couldn’t get out. I’m still not real fluent. I don’t know a lot of good words. If I were wrongfully accused of a crime, I’d have a tough time explaining my innocence. I’d stammer and stumble and choke up until the judge would throw me in jail. Words aren’t my friends. Music is. Sounds, notes rhythms. I talk through music. Maybe that’s why I became a loner, someone who loves privacy and doesn’t reveal himself too easily.

I think the book is interesting from more than one standpoint. As a struggling guitar player who loves the blues, I like to hear about the musical stuff. However, I was just skimming it again and noted how much he talks about his life in the rural south. I recommend it to anyone who might be interested in either of those topics.

One other thing. Someone who didn’t like BB King got converted at a small concert in Aspen:

So, as my friend sat in my kitchen telling me about her concert plans, I was unimpressed. Not that I have anything against B.B. King, it’s just that he tends toward loud electric solos and horn sections. I prefer my Blues a bit more subdued and acoustic. A horn section in a blues band? Not my thing.
…
The thing is - B.B. King was amazing! Oozing with presence and charisma and completely deserving of the title “living legend.” And he was right in front of me! I was as impressed as a blues snob could be, and I could not take my eyes off of him.

Join us… .

This was cross-posted to thedead pool

100 word stories are back.

Today’s topic is a new astrological sign.

He saw an attractive woman at the bar. He decided to give it a shot.

“So, what’s your sign?” He tried to work up an ironic expression to demonstrate his abounding coolness.

She looked at him with a small smile. “You first.”

“I’m a Gemini.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I’m an AntiGemini. It could never work between us. I’m like antimatter to your matter.”

“But, since I’m a Gemini, I’m twins. How can you cancel out both of them?”

“It’s either that or my second option.”

“And that is?”

“I find you repulsive.”

“I can live with AntiGemini.”

“That’s good.”

Update: I got moved to the front page. Woohoo!.

I appears that Kelly Osbourne is able to show some good sense:

“The way I see it, we’ve voted this guy in to run our Government and we can’t just turn against him. It must be the hardest thing in the world to run the country - I know I couldn’t. Poor Blair. That said, I always try to stay out of politics.”

It’s the last part that caught my eye, the part about trying to stay out of politics. I wish more musicians would do that. They’re supposed to sing and live lavish lifestyles and that’s about it.

However, that good sense seemed to be missing when she married a guy she had only known for a week. At first, the rumors were apparently flying, but the gossip mongers quickly found out that the marriage was fake.

“This Press release is to confirm that this [the marriage rumor] is totally untrue and is as real as the inflatable church that carries out these non-legally binding mock marriages for fun.”

She’s spending most of her time going to parties and fashion shows and award shows and generally (I imagine) buring up daddy’s money. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As for mom, Kelly rarely sees her these days:

Pop star KELLY OSBOURNE is thrilled her mother SHARON has landed her own British TV chat show, because it’s the only time she gets to see her. Kelly, 21, is so busy with her career, she never has any time to spend with her mum - so she turns on to Sharon’s chat show when she wants to feel closer to her mother.

Television: it brings families closer together. Is there anything T.V. cannot do?

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

Here.

Let’s face it, the chances of me posting here much are diminishing, except for the fact that I have to fulfill the dead pool posting requirement. The lure of actually getting feedback on my writing is intoxicating. I plan on enjoying it while I can.

I have a new entry at protein wisdom.

I’ve been allowed to guest-post over at protein wisdom. He is one of my increasingly few daily reads. I’ve learned a lot from him, especially with respect to his posts on intentionalism (a sample, you can search the site for more). Now, all I have to do is generate some decent content both here and there.

Since my plan is to work off of ideas Jeff G has invented, I will not cross-post anything here that I have written there. Instead, I will post a link to the content in case anyone who reads here is interested in what I’ve done.

My first entry is here.

Anna Nicole Smith did not have a good weekend. Just three days after the birth of her daughter, her son died:

Former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith’s 20-year-old son died while visiting his mother and 3-day-old sister in a Nassau, Bahamas, hospital.

Daniel Smith was already dead by the time Doctors Hospital staff reached his mother’s room Sunday morning, Royal Bahamas Police Force Assistant Commissioner Reginald Ferguson told People magazine Monday.

The first report said the he died of a heart attack. However, the latest news is that he had drugs in his system:

Model/actress Anna Nicole Smith’s son, Daniel, reportedly had antidepressants and other drugs in his system when he died in the Bahamas this week.

Sources investigating Smith’s death told the Bahamian newspaper, the Nassau Guardian, that the drugs were likely the cause of death, CNN reported Wednesday.

The autopsy was still under way at the time of the report. I just heard an update on FauxNewz that shed no additional light on this event, so right now it sounds like a drug overdose. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been drinking on top of the antidepressants.

No jokes for this entry. I feel free to make fun of people for their own stupidity, but I won’t joke at Anna’s expense over this. Losing a child is probably the worst thing that can happen to a parent (I don’t know, never had a kid). So, best wishes to yet another one of my picks that won’t die soon.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

After years of wedded bliss, Whitney Houston has decided to divorce Bobby Brown:

Whitney Houston has filed for divorce from her husband Bobby Brown, her publicist told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Publicist Nancy Seltzer declined to reveal where or when Houston filed the divorce papers, and said the singer had no statement to make.

I’m sad. These kids seemed to have had it so together, and now we find out all was not right with this fairy-tale couple. Oh, wait a minute:

The tumultuous marriage of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown _ which withstood drug addiction, Brown’s numerous arrests, the decline of Houston’s once-sparkling image and domestic abuse allegations _ is coming to an end.

Hmm. Drug addiction and domestic abuse do not a healthy marriage make. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe I have a really short attention span.

My favorite quote is from article pointed to by the first link:

The couple are believed to live in Alpharetta, Ga.

They are “believed to live” in Georgia. No one knows. I wonder if they know where they live? I mean their earthly homes, and not Whitney’s home on planet cokehead. Or is she a crackhead? I can’t keep that crap straight.

Nothing like a breakup to make people depressed. Now all she has to do is fire all her handlers so she can O.D. And right after that, monkeys will fly out of my butt.

This was cross-posted to the dead pool

I’m up late yet one more time. I believe I’ve been drinking.

Yep, I seem to have a lowball of 12 year old scotch at my side. Normally I wouldn’t be drinking such an expensive liquor this late in the game, but I got tired of the Captain Morgan, and I don’t have any Jameson in stock. I’ll remedy that tomorrow.

I just got finished watching “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” which starred Anthony Quinn. Before that was an hour-long interview with Anthony Quinn. This all occurred on TCM, a great station for late-night viewing since they show movies without commercials.

I hate commercials.

Anyway, the story was by Rod Serling. Once I saw that credit at the beginning, I decided to commit to the whole thing. It was rated at 3 stars, and I think it lived up to that rating.

It had a feeling of a television type thing, but I think it was very well-done. It was nice and static, which is cool when you’re the kind of person who gets extremely tired of the fast editing that gets done in most every movie made these days. Quinn affected a dialect which I guess is supposed to be the result of years of getting his head beaten. I don’t know if that’s realistic or not.

FYI, one of my favorite movies is “Philadelphia Story,” so take that into consideration when deciding whether to seek this movie out or ignore it. I love the old stuff. Kate is my favorite actress, and Cary Grant is way up there on my list of actors.

It was nice to see Jackie Gleason in an unsympathetic role, and it was also nice to see Mickey Rooney in a role that didn’t shout, “Hey, I’m Mickey Rooney!” I think the acting was great, since it didn’t really seem to be acting. They managed to contain a lot of story in 85 minutes. They even had a love interest, and she was pretty good, too.

It was not exciting. There was, oddly, only one fight and that was pretty one-sided. If you have the time and inclination to see something old and black-and-white, you could do far worse than seeing this movie. If you want to see Anthony Quinn doing a great character, you should definitely see this movie.

Update: this is a much better movie about boxers than anything Stallone made.

I was reading a thread over at Ace of Spades and then hit a video link to the Rush song “Subdivisions” and it all became clear to me.

Or, as clear as anything can be at 5:30 am when you’ve been up since about, oh, 2 pm after being up the previous night until 7 am and have been drinking Berry Weiss and Bailey’s recently (starting at about 10 pm or so), as well as Captain Cokes followed by Margaritas in the somewhat more distant past.

I think I’ll freshen up a bit before continuing. Hang in there.

Well, crap. I’m out of Bailey’s. I still have enough beer, though. I’m sure all of my non-existant readers are thrilled.

Obviously, I should think, this will be more of a philosophical post rather than a nuts and bolts kind of thing. I can do nuts and bolts just fine, but really, what more do you need to say than, “Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmatic?” Not much in my book, though I will add that I owe my knowledge of Louis Pasteur’s efforts with respect to a rabies (otherwise known as hydrophobia) vaccine and the process of pasteurization (named after old Lou) as well as a love of clipper ships to assignments in grade school. So, what do I really know anyway? Kinda dismisses my argument right there, doesn’t it?

However, let us go forth anyway.

I’m an advocate for home schooling, if, and that’s a big if, the parent(s) involved are willing to really take the plunge and do it up right. The biggest argument against home schooling that I’ve seen is that students lose the “socialization” that occurs when they go to school.

In my case, “socialization” means constantly being bullied for, apparently, not conforming. I could never figure out what I was doing to offend people, but I guess my existence was the culprit. School, until college, was just so damn easy that I kicked everyone’s ass on tests. Add my lack of ability in sports to that equation, mix in general pussiness even though I was larger than most of my peers, and you have a nice mix that resulted in much humiliation for me.

I don’t think humiliation teaches you anything.

I didn’t fit in at all until my senior year in high school, when I finally found a class of people just as wacked out as I was. I wish I had discovered that group two years earlier. I could’ve been geeking out for two extra years.

Anyway, never fit in and don’t fit in much now. I always felt more comfortable around adults rather than kids my age. I doubt that the “socialization” I got helped me any.

Not that I would rather have been home schooled. No siree. But that’s another post.

My brother used to homeschool his kids. Or, should I say, his wife homeschooled the kids. Currently they’re back in regular school and doing fine, way ahead of their peers, so you could argue that it worked out okay.

My problem is that they weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary when teaching the kids. They just followed the curriculum provided by the state. Plus, I have the feeling that my nephew is very bright, brighter than his parents seem to think, and that he wasn’t being challenged at all. So in my opinion it was a waste of time for him.

Damn, this is a rambling mess. Liquor and blogging didn’t mix all that well tonight. Plus, I think I’ve argued against home-schooling, when I didn’t mean to.

I guess what I really want to say is, the state doesn’t do that great of a job teaching kids. I was labeled a problem sometimes because I would finish assignments before everyone else and then annoy others by trying to talk to them. The solution would’ve been to give me more to do, I guess.

Hell, I don’t know what my point was any more. I don’t think the “socialization” argument holds any water at all. I dont’ think exposure to my peers with respect to age did me a damn bit of good except to give me a basis to learn to recognize that most people are stupid.

Oops, did I let the cat out of the bag? So sorry.