Pekinpah

[still from "The Wild Bunch", (c)Warner Brothers/Seven Arts]


http://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2012/01/kind-of-simple-glory-about-it.html

This terrific elegy on the end of commercial 35mm film presentation includes some great paragraphs about Sam Pekinpah's "Ride the High Country." I agree with the author, and am delighted to find someone else who keeps finding new facets to Peckinpah's great work. I happened to watch "The Get Away" a few weeks back, probably for the first time since it came out in the mid-'70s. While it isn't "The Wild Bunch," or "High Country," it's a brilliant movie, and with a romantic ending no less! Maybe we should all watch it this year, as it suggests that there might be a possible, if improbable happy ending out there for America. Of course one could also wonder if the rosy mist into which McQueen and McGraw disappear at the end of "Get Away" doesn't dissolve, eventually, into "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia." At any rate, a nice double bill, and surely such a showing would be true to Peckinpah's deeper belief that romance isn't to be trusted. (Which of course is the lesson Hartley learns too well in "Ride the High Country," to end where we began.)

Peckinpah can be considered on many levels. He's like war that way. No matter what you think of "The Wild Bunch," look up the bridge scene sometime. It's not something they did on a computer. They lived that drop into the river, and nobody got killed either.

Update (but not about Peckinpah)--last night on MSNBC every program mentioned the Romney dog-on-car thing. I can't claim I scooped them by a week. All I did was read about it in James Wolcott's blog in Vanity Fair. Congrats to Mr. Wolcott.

Oil--You Have to Pay For It

[from earlyblurs.com]


http://www.juancole.com/2012/01/ahmadinejad-in-latin-america.html

Nothing particularly amazing about the link, it's just one of a million random samples of the reality that being an oil-based economy has implications for the knee-jerk "wahl I thank we orta just kick some ass" boys down at the Texaco. Of course they'll still vote for Romney, still nod that he's durn tootin' when he opines that our current President has a weak foreign policy when it comes to Iran and the Middle East, running around apologizing and all.

The fact is, President Jimmy Carter, who knew a thing or two about putting peanuts in a Pepsi bottle, was absolutely right back in '77 when he said we needed to get unhooked from oil, and particularly from Middle East oil. The GOP of course harrumpfed, and Reagan ripped those solar panels right offen the White House roof as his first official act. And there's surely nothing but coincidence in the strange fact that Iran was in Reagan's corner in the election of '79, releasing the hostages which helped to sink Carter only after Reagan was absolutely and certainly elected and in office.

So here we are. Looking back, at the days when gas was 50 cents a gallon and the original Red Clay Ramblers, my self included, made a sort of living riding around the country in a gas guzzling Dodge van and playing bar gigs and festivals for more of Carter's peanuts, it's easier to see that if we'd just made a concerted effort, back then, to find a solution to a dependence on a fuel supply which came with being leveraged by people who didn't care to go along with our American solutions to life elsewhere, well by now we might have plumb avoided two or three nasty, costly wars, and for that matter, might even still be riding the elevators to the top of the World Trade Centers if we cared to.

Instead, we're pretty much still in the same place, and we still haven't figured out that using oil as a club tends to wack us as much as the club's intended addressee. As someone pointed out recently, if we manage to reduce the world's oil supply due to embargoing Iranian oil, a consequence will be rising fuel prices. And that will make money for oil producers, probably including Iran, and certainly including the other oil producing countries.

Oh, and yeah, the Oil Companies too. This, by the way, is how it also works for a guy like Romney, who has so much money that some of the green always flows his way.

This Guy?

Then Mitt put his sons on notice: there would be pre-determined stops for gas, and that was it. Tagg was commandeering the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, when he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. “Dad!” he yelled. “Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the rear window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours. As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Mitt coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the road with the dog still on the roof. It was a preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management. But the story would trail him years later on the national political stage, where the name Seamus would become shorthand for Romney’s coldly clinical approach to problem solving. (From The Real Romney by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, as quoted in Vanity Fair)

Dear God. This is the so-called moderate candidate, the alternative to the moderate President we now enjoy, a guy who has pulled the country back from a depression engendered by full-on Republicanism for eight years, a man who entered office during a job-loss event in full swing, and who has had about .001 support from the Republicans who were elected to help govern the country, not stymie every presidential initiative, act or suggestion from the get-go. Watching Romney's preening "acceptance" speech after his Iowa landslide of 8 votes, I told Libby it was like seeing George Bush over again--the arrogant frat-boy rich guy, so glib with his "failed President" talking phrase, so certain that he can roll over any and all opposition, hitting yet another of his life's grand slams from the perfect spot to be born standing--ten feet off third base towards home. Nice work if you can get it. I guess.

And Chris Matthews praises Romney because, unlike his most dangerous challenger, Rick Santorum, Romney isn't quite putting all out war with Iran right into his platform, but only hints at it with a wink and a nod, and perhaps with the nudge to the reluctant that, after all, the Romney is basically "speaking to the base" right now and all his turns of phrase must be taken with some digestively helpful sea salt by those in the non-base who are, for whatever reason, just bored with the guy who turned out not to be up to changing everything but the tide schedule, no matter what he promised in 2008.

After all, as far as we now know, Mr. Romney did not blow up frogs with firecrackers, like young Master Bush. I'll keep saying it here, from time to time. We just get the limited either/or choice in this here land of Liberty. There's the D. There's the R. If you don't turn out, that doesn't mean you can say it ain't your problem. And meanwhile, the selling and framing goes on at every level, all the live-long day, and don't you forget it. While Mitt will use the phrase "failed Presidency" so frequently that by the end of next week, if you watch enough teevee, you're going to be thinking maybe you don't really want to vote for a failure even if he does seem to be a nice Negro with a beautiful family and a great vocabulary, at the same moment you are also being sold quite a few other things. Who can pay conscious attention to all of it? Mostly, it all just goes to shape a point of view that feels entirely "objective", an ordinary 4-square picture of just what's "out there." Consider, for example:

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2012/01/03/shoe-company-to-women-youre-deformed/

As usual, the deconstruction is brilliant, and even more so because we never even noticed it was there to deconstruct. So, I ask you, is there still a debt crisis? Do you actually want Chevy Chase for President?

2012.1