Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Well, let’s see what’s new in the news. Once beloved TV has been Rachel Maddow claims that a Bernie Sanders site was being run from Albania. Well, could be, I suppose. There were like thousands of pro-Sanders sites. It didn’t take too much to set one up. Doesn’t really make much difference. The action is in the comments and it would have been pretty much the same as for any other site.

Al Franken and Sheldon Whitehouse, neither of whom are in my political good books at the moment, got in some pretty good digs at Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Whitehouse brought up the very real and needed to be mentioned fact that sleazy, right wing Republican donors have spent, between stonewalling Garland and now backing Gorsuch (I’d never heard the name spoken until about half an hour ago, so I’ve been pronouncint it Gore Suck, which I think is better) somewhere in the neighborhood of $17 million, which is a pretty nice neighborhood. Franken brought up a case where Gere Suck ruled against a truck driver who abandoned his trailer because he was freezing to death. The story makes sense if you her the whole story, but I try to limit this blog to 500 words, max., so i’m not going into it.

I hope the Al Franken has finally found his balls (hint – they were in Hillary’s handbag), and Whitehouse, too, and they will somehow find the votes to impeach. I doubt it, though.

Some books should never be made into movies and On The Road is sure one of them, I’m watching it right now and it is so bad I am mesmerized, it’s like they’ve changed the whole spirit of the story, stripped it of it’s energy until it’s just some boring, creepy guys wandering around in the dark at night with hunched shoulders, smoking lots of cigarettes, quoting bad poetry to each other, oh, Jesus, here’s the scene in the Mexican whorehouse and they just make sex look ridiculous, jittering around to bongo music and now they are in the market and in the book you felt a bit of the common humanity of all people, here you see racial stereotypes and ugly Americans and this is pretty close to the end I guess because that’s where the book ends, if I recall correctly, when Dean abandons him sick in Mexico and heads home.
What was fast on the page, rolling from paragraph to paragraph like a cascading mountain stream, becomes slow and boring and painful to watch as a film, being badly acted is only part of it, it’s like the director didn’t know which was to go, to make it an ode to the novel, which they do in parts, lots of narrated sections, or to actually turn it into a film, telling a story (there was no story, really, it was a long poem about America in the ’50s, the music, the newfound feeling of boundless mobility, the exuberance) and developing the characters and the question is, as Firesign Theater used to say “How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?”

Sergi Santos, a sex robot designer (yes, that is an actual job description) has come up with a new twist: a sexbot that can play hard to get. Here’s the video: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3115956/meet-samantha-and-artificially-intelligent-sex-robot-who-really-likes-to-be-kissed/
Basically, if you’re touching her on the arms or hips, you might get some sexy chat, that’s somewhere between ‘family’ and ‘romantic’ modes (his terms, not mine), but you can turn on her inner sex machine with a kiss. Now, if you watch the video (which, if you’re expecting something sexy, don’t), when the designer says ‘she will respond to a kiss,’ he reaches over with his hand to pry her mouth open. It was the unsexiest damned thing I’ve ever seen.
I thought to myself, ‘He needs a 4th mode.’ In addition to ‘family,’ ‘romantic,’ and ‘sexy,’ she should maybe have an ‘educational’ mode. In my head, I was saying it sarcastically, but as soon as I said it I realized what a great idea that is.
Future sex robots (of both genders) will function much as a driving (or flying) simulator does today. You’ll even be able to get a certificate. “This certifies that Joe Jones has achieved level 8 in the art of cunnilingus” for instance, or “Charlie Smith can correctly locate the significant erotic points on the female body.” In the future, if you’re out on a date with a girl (a real one) they may ask (demand) to see your certificate before they take you home.
I’m not sure if that will make the world a better place, or a worse one. But I am quite seriously predicting that’s one way they will be used.

When I was a little bitty boy, my grandmother gave me a cute, little toy, silver bells upon a string, she told me it was my ding-a-ling-a-ling. Not your typical rock ‘n roll song, but a fun, little, comic ditty.
It was the popular hit at the time, the one time I saw Chuck Berry live. It was in a big, old building, like a derelict factory or something, in Des Moines, sometime in the early 70s.
He showed up ridiculously late, and the crowd was starting to get pissed off, but when he came he put on a hell of a show.
It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well, you could see that Pierre really, truly loved the mademoiselle….
That was the song that my brother Dennis played at my wedding, 15 years ago. I’m sure that none of Helena’s Czech or Polish relatives new any of the words, but most of them were so hammered by that point it didn’t matter anyway, and plenty of people were dancing. Love that song, but did not realize until today that it was by Chuck Berry. Another one I didn’t realize was his, until I started writing this article and wanted to make sure about ‘You Never Can Tell’ so went to Wikipedia, was ‘Memphis, Tennessee.’
Marie lives on the South Side, high up on the ridge, just a half a mile from the Mississippi bridge….
Currently, every Thursday, in one of my larger classes, there is a boy called Johnny (I’m sure among his friends he goes by Jan, or maybe Honza, but it’s an English class), and I call him Johnny B. Goode. Maybe I’ll stop doing that now. Maybe I won’t.
The point is, Chuck Berry is an artist whose songs have influenced my life greatly, they have struck at key points and they have left a mark. And now he is gone. I’m not particularly saddened, he made it to 90 and had a full and interesting life which, although it had it’s rough patches, including a couple of stretches in the old Iron Bar Hotel, also had a lot of great moments.
RIP, Chuck Berry. Your music will never die.

I’ve been seeing a lot of films this last week with a bit of history in them, like today it was Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks about the negotiations to get Frances Gary Powers back, and there was a film called Confirmation about the Anita Hill hearings, and The Rat Pack, and some piece of crap about John McCain, with Woody Harrelson in it, and it seemed to be focusing on Sarah Palin and totally blaming her for McCain’s defeat, as if he’d had any chance before he picked her.
Of course, when I say I saw these films, I mean I saw the last half, or the last 3/4ths, because I’m talking about TV viewing. Catching a film at the beginning is like catching the perfect wave right at the top, and that doesn’t happen very often.
They are interesting to me, because they make the news real (I am old enough that what is now history was once news. So, I still have unresolved issues and sometimes find myself shouting at the TV during these period dramas), they put faces behind the names, even if they are actors’ faces. Usually, directors try to get actors who resemble the main characters at least a little bit – Kevin Costner playing Jim Garrison in JFK was a glaring exception, and a serious flaw in the film.
The most interesting to me was the Rat Pack film, because it focused heavily on Frank Sinatra’s connection’s with mobsters and how that affected his relationship with JFK, which was closer than I’d realized. Also, some interesting stuff about Sammy Davis, Jr. that I hadn’t known.