NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

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This song lasts forever. Just sit back, hug your kids, dogs, cats, ferrets, partner, friends and listen to the beauty and glory of Coltrane.

Yes. I posted this at the old blog and we lost it went we transferred it over.

I don’t care.

It’s Coltrane.

Cee,

I realize the season is still young. Or possibly not even on when they call it after a large, tart fruit, BUT …

Kip Wells’ first start of the spring was a good one, as the St. Louis Cardinals downed the Florida Marlins 8-1 in Grapefruit League play.

AND

The St. Louis Cardinals continued their Spring Training dominance over the Florida Marlins Sunday with a huge 12-3 victory. Starting pitcher Scott Olsen (0-2) of the Marlins’ took the loss.

I must consult with the Squirrel Queen on the amount of my taunting for our gauntlet.

Been a fan for years.

I’m thinking that the goat curse might mess with you during Lent, or it might help.

Just saying.

hugs,

‘coma

Dump, dump baby.

Jackson Miller has an epiphany, but we all need to think about the words he says because I think he’s being wise here and he’s thought about it at length.

Yay. Lynnster helped me move my archives. Now we can have all the Newscoma goofy in one place. Is it wrong to want to give her a hug, squeeze her unmercifully and then take her to a concert? She also has more on Elvis, which is of the cool.

Here’s something I admit I haven’t thought about. Wow. Bloomberg is something, I quite honestly, haven’t considered. Is it plausible? Courtesy of Tit’s List, I think she does it more justice than I could. It is very … umm … something I would have not ever considered.

This is scary from Boingboing because I just can’t fathom it. I mean, we are talking about a kid. And it just sounds horrible.

LeftWingCracker is doing something that is new groovy. Man, I love Celtic music and this is just better than cool.

And say hello to Funditpundit.

Read.

So, Squirrel Queen comes into the abode last night and says these shocking words.

“I saw, what I believe. was a near perfect game of basketball last night.”

I stared at her, preparing to watch High Plains Drifter and did not realize that if one is a sports editor and says these words, there is probably relevance. Do not doubt Squirrel Queen.

I mean it. Ask Smiley and the Dog Doc. She knows her sports.

“Umm. Okay,” I said, pouring an adult beverage and positioning myself on the couch with Mabel and Duff, staring blindly at the latest updates at Monkeys for Helping.

“No,” she said with the authority of a person with knowledge. Now if you don’t know Squirrel Queen, you do not know that she is very level-headed, says very little but has that Teddy Roosevelt big-stick, little bit of talking thing going on. “It was nearly perfect. It was damn-near amazing.”

The team she’s covering (I’ll probably take crowd shots and work the laptop. Mine, I might add. My broken down laptop) held the opposing team at sub-state to five points in the first half.

FIVE POINTS.

“Okay,” I said. “How did it go?”

“It was quite wonderful,” she said with this wistful look on her face. “They were a team. An actual team, working as a team, and it was fluid.”

I like basketball as much as the next person. Actually, I like it quite a lot (not as much as football and baseball) and high school basketball has an innocent savoir faire about it. It’s just cool beans to see kids play sports because that want to. Yeah, they want scholarships and the chance to go further but they still get the fact that it’s an “in the moment” sort of thing which is sort of exquisite in it’s own right. As SQ covers high school games, I thought she might be overreacting. Damn, I’m a dumb-ass. You see, she’s been covering the number one team in the state in Class A basketball. They have lost one game.

Well, skippy.

She’s been covering sports since 1986 and played on before that and, dang it all, if there had been the enthusiasm for women’s sports back in the day, she might have played college softball.

Me, I watched Television, drank beer illegally, hung out and read sexy fiction, but she was the jock.

“We’re going to state,” she said. “You’re coming to do the tech work.”

Now telling me I’m coming to do tech work is like telling Mabel that I’m bringing her on vacation to drive the car. But I get what she was saying. She’s gonna need help at state. Oh, Rex, I will be drinking beer at Liquid Smoke. Where art thou?

It’s Gleason. They win a lot, and when you think it’s a community of less than 1000 people and the girls team kicks butt on a regularly basis, it makes you wonder how NFL teams with a 300 million dollar budget can’t win three games all year.

Just saying. These ballplayers are good.

So we are going to the ‘Boro this weekend. And Sen. Roy Herron invited me to his office last week but I may actually take him up on it to his dismay (you ask people to come visit, but do they mean it sort of thing) and although I can’t seem to find my buddy Rep. Mark Maddox, I think he owes me coffee. He might dispute.

And Lowe Finney, with all the creepy things I’ve seen on my blog about you, you’re are not only buying me a coffee, but singing me an Aria. I know you can do it.

I want to talk Broadband, Campy and Economic Development. SQ will be covering girls hoops and I’m sure there is a beer in our future.

So, yeah.

And Scratchy Throat, when you coming down to the shed hood?

For Ceeelcee:

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You are going to be drinking a lot of regret beer this summer, my friend.

Last week, I talked about my affection for two things: High Plains Drifter and Kurosawa movies. Yesterday was my day in the sun as Rashomom was playing on the Independent Film Channel in the morning and High Plains Drifter played late last night.

As it had been awhile since I had seen both films, I had to tell you, it was weird that I had just written about both things and that I got to wallow myself in their utter brilliance.

Rashomom is a compelling, wonderfully detailed film that relies on the new modern age of cinema combined with components of the opening techniques of silent film. According to Wikipedia, it was the first film made in direct sunlight, and when you watch Kurosawa’s work, you realize that there are only three sets in the whole movie. Doesn’t matter. The movie is inspiring, telling the story of a rape and a murder from four different perspectives, it is a classic tale of that everyone’s perspective is different even when witnessing different events and creating discussing those events. Except for the bandit, played by Toshiro Mifune, whose story is tainted with something of animalistic madness, each story told about the events on an afternoon in the woods is guided by the narrator at the moment’s own agenda.

Is the movie dated? No, not really. Good storytelling transcends time. You might be a person who doesn’t like foreign films, but the bottom line is that this movie set the standard for film-making. And keep in mind, this movie is nearly 60 years old.

And read about the Rashomom Effect. Perspectives always offer contradiction because each human is different with their own scheme and plan.

High Plains Drifter. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways? A western that is a ghost story. A western that delves into the horror of man’s actions and the spiritual consequences that come from those actions. A western that shows the cowardice of certain men and women, and an entity who seeks vengeance because of this town’s self-righteousness and hypocrisy.

But you see, High Plains Drifter doesn’t play it’s cards where it tells you the story. You have to figure all this out for yourself, and that’s what makes it so delicious.

My God, this movie is so good that I just can’t stand it.

The Stranger who enters Lago, Arizona is sadistic, unsympathetic and, at times, so evil that it’s hard to have any sort of emotion for him because of his lack of emotion. The parallels of him riding the pale horse of death as one of the four horseman of the Apocalypse is just juicy stuff. Clint Eastwood’s homage to Don Siegel and Sergio Leone and then making their movies into one of his own is just stunning.

There are clues all through this movie that tells you that not all is what it seems. After he rapes the town Harpy (told you his character wasn’t sympathetic AT ALL) she shoots him in the washtub at close point range, and he isn’t hurt is a small clue. After the town Harpy comes back for more after he takes over the town due to the community “leaders” living in fear and willing to offer their souls for his assistance (and then decide to kill him after she throws down with him, our eyes are always on the door. So how the hell did the Stranger get on the roof. We were watching the door the whole time (or were we?)

I could go on, and this is probably just too long to read, but I can’t help but be smitten by the sparse, yet patient (oh so patient) direction of Eastwood.

On a side-note, I saw this movie when it came out when I was about eight years old at the theater. I didn’t get it and it always freaked me out. When I watched it again as an adult, I understood why I didn’t get it.

Because it’s pretty damned complex, and once again, is another film about perspective, but this time, it is us as the audience, which is left to determine what we just witnessed. Who the hell is The Stranger? Well, we know, deep in our hearts we know, but The Stranger says on his grey horse at the end of the movie in the last damned line to Mordecai as his small ally marks the unmarked grave. He tells us but because the movie is such a weird roller coaster ride, it’s hard to grasp what we have just seen.

And then The Stranger disappears in the heat as he rides away.

So, I am no Cuppa with the Cinema Obscura, but these two movies are so tasty that I had to share. So pleasing to the palate, and yet so violent and disturbing, that I could not take my eyes away from them.