Uncle Bo: Twenty Years

I wrote this huge post for over and hour with tears steaming down my face and as I neared the very end blogger encountered an error and closed itself with nothing but the picture saved in the draft.   Mad and heartbroken I went back in hopping for a miracle save finding only the picture starring back at me but instead of being upset a calm hit me, his eyes starred at mine, and I realized it didn't matter.  I could never recreate that post or tell u what I said but that's okay because the one it was meant for saw it and knows how I feel.

So here's the finish to it:  I love you forever.

I have no idea what it felt like when we hugged but I know exactly what it is like to be wrapped up in your love.

quick review of Chapter 27

A few years back I happened upon Chapter 27, the story of Mark David Chapman- John Lennon’s killer.

I’m not usually into biopics about murderers but having heard Jarred Leto made such a transformation for the role, I was intrigued. I figured at worse, it’s a history lesson not taught in a class room, and since the Beatles are rock royalty and I have actually met Sean Lennon, I feel like it’s something worth learning about.

Basically the plot is a walkthrough of the days leading up to the murder, and we learn that Chapman was actually a huge Lennon fan. His original intentions were to meet the icon and simply get his autograph. However, we see him slowly get overpowered by mental instability, and though he battles his brain not too, the outcome is what we all know it to be. 

I do not want to feel bad for someone who kills. I tried not to but faced with the impeccable skills of Leto, it’s hard not to feel sympathy, at least for a moment until you realize again, “Oh yeah this guy is a murderer.”

Now that the Election is over I would like to point out that I did not follow President Obama like some uninformed liberal sheep. In fact, over the last four years The B- man has won me over a great deal. In 2008 he was far from my ideal candidate and I freely admit the last four years have proved to me that I should've had a bit more faith in the then Illinois senator. I found this piece that I wrote during the Democratic Campaign of 2008

Last week Hillary Clinton said that she would not drop out of the Presidential race because you never know what may happen, sighting the fact that Robert Kennedy was murdered in June. This led to a media uproar because apparently this was a death threat made to Barack Obama. It made headlines; I admit it wasn’t the brightest thing to bring up because by now she should know that anything she says is scrutinized.  There is a definite double standard in the way media has covered the two democrats.

I’m sure it seems like I’m just another Clinton supporter who is becoming a sore loser but there really is.  Yesterday Barack said, “I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps.”  What a compelling tale, except that the Russians liberated that camp. I’m an American History buff; trust me I know what I’m talking about.  Now in the interest of fairness, he is actually related to someone who liberated one of the smaller camps, Buchenwald. 

The lying isn’t what I have a problem with. He made a mix-up or maybe he said a well known camp to emphasize his point. That was a war that ended almost sixty years ago and there are more important issues that should be discussed by the candidates and media alike. There is a war in the Middle East, how about that? And what about health care- AIDS, child diseases? Then there’s our crumbling infrastructure and New Orleans is still in ruins. Maybe talk about climate change. These are issues that should be in the forefront but the coverage this year isn’t about the issues.  Sure I think this is wrong but the issue I have is the double standard.

If Clinton said this, she’d have been grilled to death. She always is. When he says it, it’s not even mention in the newspaper, forget about the headline. What is wrong with this? Are they scared of him? Do they not want to appear to be racists because they don’t have a problem appearing sexist. Or is it, and I can only imagine it must be this, that the American Press Corp is too scared to piss off Oprah for fear she will destroy them or stop giving away free cars or cancel her show, because if that happened how would people see Tom Cruise go crazy live. How would people know what to do if Oprah doesn’t tell them, then American’s would have to choose for themselves who would make the best president based on issues and voting records?

Nobody wants that because thinking is hard.

Let freedom ring!!!

God Bless America

A Liar's Autobiography the movie

Last summer I shared the super exciting (at least to me) news that a movie was getting made based on the late Graham Chapman's book A Liar's Autobiography.  After patiently waiting for it to become a reality, I finally watched the film today.   

The film is in extremely limited theatrical release and especially with the storms torture to the city I chose option number 2.  A Liar's Autobiography is also available exclusively through the channel Epix; a channel needless to say I don't have which contains a website I don't subscribe to.  However Epixhd.com  allows free 14 trials and you don't even have to give them payment information and if you choose not to buy, the subscription mearly expires.   Last night, minutes before  the film became available (thankfully I had gotten my internet back a hour or so before) I started my free trial.  Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of stop and starts and barely 15 minutes of actually watching the darn thing, I quit trying for the night and resumed this afternoon with less interruptions (though still not perfect streaming like I get from other sites.)

Disruptions aside, it was everything I could hope for and more.  The fact that it is an animated feature allowed Chapman to be brought back to life and his voice track was created by restored recordings of the auidiobook of the same name. The voices of his fellow Pythons (with the exception of Eric Idle) were  lended to play themselves as well as various other important figures in Chapman's life.  There was even a beautiful moment where currently recorded Michael Palin interrupted dead for over two decades Graham and their animated characters had a cute banter.  It was truly like watching the Monty Python team making something brand new together- you've got to love technology.   Even Idle is included as a nonspeaking character and through the Monty Python recordings that were also lended to the soundtrack.  Though the book was released about a decade before Chapman passed away from cancer, the movie brings a fitting ending by using footage of John Cleese's one of a kind send to his longtime friend at Chapman's 1989 memorial

If you are a fan of Monty Python, you will definitely enjoy A Liar's Autobiography however I think that, much like Chapman himself, it has a broader appeal.  Viewers should always, however, take the title into consideration when watching some of Chapman's more outlandish claims as the book and movie are both more liar then autobiography.

***EpixHD.com bonus: If you can handle the buffering to watch it there, the website also has a documentary about Chapman himself.

Live From New York...

The following was an email from Louis C. K. tonight's Saturday Night Live host and it is absolutely beautiful:

I predicted Huricane Sandy...

Ok Fine not really but I did get paranoid about it long before last week when everyone else started.  In fact I started not long after Huricane Katrina six or seven years ago.  Here it is in a paper I wrote for College:

With the recent flooding and devastation in the mid-west, and the memory of the Christmas 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina still fresh in everyone’s mind (and in the case of Katrina-the destruction remains) the issue of a numbing effect has come up.

Horror and destruction occurs and we all feel sad for the victims. We send our money and watch as celebrities talk on TV shows of the atrocious conditions that the people face. The event happens and we kind of move on, wanting the news to stop covering it because we have mourned enough. Let me explain that this is obviously not the case if a person has loved ones who were affected or said person has a special connection with the destroyed place. I’m talking mostly of the general public who sees strangers when they look at the devastation. These are not bad people, mind you, they have a heart for their fellow man but they prefer to consume themselves more with their own lives and their own surrounding. This is a rather normal thing.

Then I began to think what if something was to happen to New York again. After 9/11 the government, both local and national, has claimed that they have done a lot to insure our safety and prevent a repeat of the events of that horrific day. While there is some debate if this statement is indeed true, I will not go into the nation’s terrorism policies at this time.

What I will say, is that the major difference between 9/11 and the other events is that 2001 was man-made destruction while the others are cause by nature and as the levees have taught us, cannot be prevented by human measures. So what would happen if nature caused havoc visible in our back yard instead of on the TV?

Manhattan is an island and beyond that a rather small island, filled with a huge number of people. If there were a tsunami or hurricane here, and I understand that it isn’t likely but for arguments sake if, there is almost a guarantee that the entire place would be enveloped by water. Can you imagine the amount of people that would die?

Not to mention the conditions that would occur after it. The water would be deadly. We wouldn’t be able to drink water except from bottles, many of us would lose family and friends, if not be victims ourselves.

This is not very likely to happen, though nothing is absolute, but I urge everyone who changes the channel or skips the hurricane coverage in the news papers to think about how you would feel if those nameless strangers were instead your mother or father, or neighbors because in the end we are all neighbors. This Earth belongs to all of us and we are all in this life together.

We all know the answers to those questions now...