My son, a wonderful filmmaker, writer, editor and director, introduced me to the term “artificial lighting.” Essentially, when you shoot a movie, you can’t rely on ambient lighting because it doesn’t do the job unless you’re shooting outdoors under ideal conditions. But inside, you have to create your own lighting so you can control the outcome of your film. Filmmaking aside, I started to contemplate the term “artificial lighting.” This led to thinking about other things designated as artificial.
If something is artificial, is it bad or good? Read the rest of this entry »
The day before yesterday I was sitting on my balcony, computer in hand, sipping a mocha latte cappuchino grande java, a decaf concoction of my own invention, when I came across a blurb about a congressional hearing over rap music. So I clicked on the link and got a glimpse of a truly inspiring notion: that Congress should get a group rate on a labotomy. Lemme splain somethin to yous.
Television is a vapid void of crap, except for a very few shows. I don’t watch it. Three years ago I cancelled my cable and have watched about 5 hours total since that day. Most of these 5 hours consisted of watching the Oscars on a local station that I can get with my antenna.
Just Because You’re In a Movie Doesn’t Mean You’re an Actor. There was recently an item in the news that porn star Jenna Jameson thinks actress Scarlett Johansson would do well to play her part on the big screen. Is this a lost and out of control ego or what? Why on earth would a talented, respectable, hard-working actress play the part of a porn star? That would be like David Beckham taking soccer lessons from my old high school P.E. coach.
I don’t know how many people Jerry Stiller has in his fan club, and I don’t want to know. I’d like to believe I’m the only devotee. But that would be selfish. How many others are like me in this category? I would hope it’s around 2.5 million, give or take. I’m not in any clubs; I don’t particularly like clubs. But if there was a non-club, I would be among the top Jerry Stiller fan club members. Even though I never wear Tshirts advertising anything — and I mean anything — I would make an exception and wear a Jerry Stiller Hanes 50-50 if it came in white, black or dark blue. I’m not a red or yellow kind of guy. To go even further, I wouldn’t do any gardening, home repairs, sidewalk patching, sandblasting, automotive adjustments or attic crawling because I’d treasure my Jerry Stiller Tshirt just about as much as my autographed photo of Woody Allen.
As pirates go, Flynn wasn’t good. He was an okay actor as a pirate, don’t get me wrong, but his pirate was not really a bad guy, so there was this whole misrepresentation thing going on. Very confusing. I was a little kid and I didn’t know if a pirate was good or bad. All I knew was that they ruled the seas. I didn’t know what that meant either.Pirates are colorful and exciting in the movies. They wear baggie shirts and pants that end at the calves with boots that have big buckles. I wonder if these are swash buckles. Also, the bandanas add a nice touch. Five hundred years later and now everybody’s wearing those shmatahs on their heads. Same thing regarding the ear rings. Hollywood insiders of the day hinted that Errol Flynn may also have had a nipple ring, not because of his pirate roles, but because he was a nasty freak.
From the looks of it, Paris Hilton is very, very important. News about Paris overshadows other news, like major oil spills that turn our oceans into dead zones, bombs blowing up children across the sea, big corporations saying their foods are organic when they’re not, what’s happening with the Enron investigation and how Al Gore is changing the world for the better.