All posts by Ray Ivey

Politics
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The indefatigable Jerry Brown has held almost every elected state position there is in California.  Currently our Attorney General, he scored big points with me yesterday when he demanded a change in Proposition 8, the upcoming ballot measure aimed at creating a constitutional amendment preventing same-sex marriage.

Brown changed the phrase “only marriage between a man and a woman will be valid and recognized” to [this initiative] “will eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.” 

This wording change is a triumph for fairness, as it makes clear that, since the recent California Supreme Court ruling, same-sex couples currently have the right to marry, and that this initiative would not merely block the expansion of rights, but would cancel existing rights already held by many Californians.

This is the first indication of something I predicted a few months ago.  Taking existing rights away from people is a much bigger deal than merely blocking the expansion of rights to groups or individuals who have not yet enjoyed those rights.  It’s a more difficult thing to do, as the homophobic creeps behind Prop. 8 are finding out.

 

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 247 user reviews.

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Don’t pee when you have to.  Pee when you can.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 300 user reviews.

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Travel
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I was pleased to be able to fly from Boston to Los Angeles first class last week.  Thank you, frequent flyer miles!  The airline was United.

I was a bit shocked at the food served in first class, though. 

First they went around and said, “Warm nuts?”  Well, sure, why not?  Except the nuts they handed me were stone cold.  Nothing wrong with that, but why call them “warm nuts” when they aren’t?

Next, dinner.  I had a chicken breast thing which tasted fine.  However, it was accompanied by a “salad” that was simply one kind of lettuce in a bowl.  One kind of lettuce and nothing else.  That’s not a salad.  It’s especially not a first-class salad.  It’s a bowl of lettuce.

Even weirder were the side dishes.  They consisted of 1) potatoes and 2) corn and lima beans.  Hello?  While they are all vegetables in a botanical sense, in terms of the food pyramid they are starches, not vegetables.  Potatoes and broccoli would have been appropriate.  Corn/lima beans and spinach would have been fine.

But what moron do they have at United planning FIRST CLASS meals who thinks it’s appropriate for both side dishes to a meal to be starches?  That’s a mistake an eighth-grade Home Economics student wouldn’t make.

However, United came close to redeeming itself with the dessert.  It was hot fudge sundaes!  Actual hot fudge sundaes!  Never thought I’d have that on a plane.  They were constructed fresh right in front of you. 

So, come on, United.  If you can come up with a winner like that for dessert, you should be able to do better with the actual meal.  Aim higher, possums.

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 214 user reviews.

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Rule Zero:  Don’t be an asshole.

This rule applies in all situations and is not suspendable.

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 160 user reviews.

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Movies
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Lately I’ve been using my new Netflix account to catch up on all of the old Disney animated features that I’ve never seen.  I missed most of the package pictures from the WWII era, as well as a few others.

Ever heard of that Disney classic Make Mine Music?  How about Mr. Toad?  Melody Time?

Well.  It turns out there’s a REASON most these movies are obscure.

But at least I was able to get through those.  Lately I’ve been trying to get through The Sword in the Stone and it’s just sooo crushingly boring and unfunny and filled with bad music that I just can’t watch it all.  Even the Black Cauldron was better than this (actually it wasn’t bad . .  more on that later).

Average Rating: 4.4 out of 5 based on 190 user reviews.

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Minutia of My Fascinating Life, Pronouncements
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I know I should be supportive of this; I know you love it . . . . it just scares the shit out of me.  If I ever get the email about your heroic final days on K2, I will dig you up and kill you again.  But the death you suffer at my hands won’t be the cushy comfort of going to sleep in the snow or plunging 13, 000 feet onto sharp rocks.   No, the deliverance I will deliver will consist of, among other things, 1) watching Pauly Shore movies, 2) eating nothing but liver, 3) listening to a merry medley of Christian Rock, old Marie Osmond records, The Best of American Idol and white rap.  Death will be slow and very unpleasant.

Average Rating: 4.9 out of 5 based on 202 user reviews.

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Reading Material
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Visionary science fiction writer Thomas Disch put a bullet in his head on July 4th.

America isn’t very kind to its geniuses.  This author of 334, Fun With Your New Head and On Wings of Song has spent the last few years trying to keep from being evicted from his rent-controlled apartment in New York.  Evidently he had been struggling with money since the death of his longtime partner, Charles Naylor, in 2004.

Disch was nominated for the Hugo Award (science fiction’s top honor) twice and finally won it, ironically, for an excellent piece of nonfiction:  The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of.

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 206 user reviews.

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Movies
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Directed by Timur Bekmambetov

Starring: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Kretschmann

Wanted is trash, but it’s reasonably entertaining trash. After several days of seeing crunchy whole-grain granola independent films and documentaries, I wanted to see something that blows up real good. The movie is directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who also directed the Russian Night Watch movies.

The movie deals with McAvoy, playing an uber-nerd in a nothing job in a nothing apartment in a nothing relationship, suddenly gets recruited by Angelina Jolie, who represents “The Fraternity, ” an ancient order of assassins. What follows is formulaic, though the action is first-rate (particularly a sequence when a train dangles off a heartbreakingly high bridge).

The movie is also morally reprehensible. Totally.

You should only see it if you are a huge fan of Jolie’s (I understand there are a certain number of movie fans who fit this description) or want to see things blow up real good. Me, I am smitten with Mr. McAvoy, which is the main thing the movie has to offer me.

McAvoy is a short, slight guy, but this belies a very athletic background. He’s a championship boxer, for one thing, and his physicality and strength add tremendously to his screen presence, not just in this movie, but in everything he appears in, with the possible exception of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And with that shocking run-on sentence, this post is done.

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 242 user reviews.

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Politics
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I know it’s wrong to take joy in the sufferings of others, but when it comes to SUV owners, I think I can find it in myself to forgive myself.

Owners of those unpatriotic, environmentally destructive, showoffy, oversized, dangerous beasts known as Sports Utility Vehicles are finding themselves on the ass-end of a yummy Karmic whiplash these days. The bottom of the SUV market is dropping so fast that many owners of newish SUVs are finding themselves in an “upside-down” position — meaning that their cars have depreciated so fast they are worth far less than the loans.

Getting the message about gas economy too late, these hapless road hogs are flocking back to car dealerships, desperate to trade in their Humvees and Explorers and Land Rovers and Earth Eaters for peppy little four-cylinder cars with great gas mileage. Alas, when it comes to trade-in time they are experiencing excruciating reverse sticker-shock!

I heard on the radio yesterday about a man who tried to trade in his 1-year old Cadillac Escalade. He had paid $70, 000 for it. The appraiser offered him $31, 000. Hearing this, my heart sang like I was Julie Andrews spinning around on top of an Alp. What made it easier to have no sympathy for this clown was that he had two more cars at home: a second Escalade and a third, LARGER car (what was it, a Sherman tank?).

Hee hee hee. This is great stuff, even better than hearing stories of deranged Earth-Firsters who go around keying SUVs or setting them on fire. This is more delicious than cold watermelon on a hot Texas July afternoon.

The bigger lesson here is that Americans could at last learn a little modesty. Whenever I’m in Europe I’m always struck by how even the well-heeled drive around in compact, fuel efficient cars, and how few of them live in the grotesque McMansions that sprinkle our great land. We still worship the idol of Conspicuous Consumption in our country, and I’d love to see the current fuel crisis help mitigate that just a little bit.

But in the meanwhile, I have this to say to my dear friends and family members who are still misguidedly driving the gas-guzzling bohemoths: “How does it feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel paying $175 to fill up that monster?”

Mwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 156 user reviews.

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Movies
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Sidney Pollack was one of the most succesful mainstream film directors of the last forty years.  In fact, his nickname for himself was “Mr. Mainstream.”

His specialty was making big movies with big stars.  He had an ability to work well with the biggest stars, and did so successfully with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Anne Bancroft, Sidney Poitier, Al Pacino, Sally Field, Paul Newman,  Dustin Hoffman, and Jane Fonda.

He began his career as an actor at the Actors Studio, where he also eventually taught.  After brief acting stints, he began directing television and then films.

His favorite actor to work with was his old acting buddy Robert Redford, and he directed him in seven films.

His most famous movies are probably The Way We Were, Tootsie and Out of Africa,  for which he won his only Academy Award as director.

I love Tootsie, but easily my favorite movie of his is Three Days of the Condor, a razor-sharp and pitch-perfect cold war thriller.  Robert Redford stars as a member of a team of bookworms who scour all printed material published anywhere in the world. looking for key phrases or subjects the CIA might be interested in.

One day while he’s out picking up lunch for his co-workers, a team of assassins (led by the great Max von Sydow) calmly murders his entire team with a silenced machine gun.  Redford then goes underground and tries to figure out what the hell is going on, and how can safely “come back in.”

Max von Sydow gives one of the greatest performances ever in a spectacularly written role as a thoughtful, civilized, and very professional international hit man.  There’s a moment near the end of the film, when he offers Redford a gun, that is one of my all-time favorite moments in the movies.

Let’s also not forget how active and successful Pollack was as an actor, ever since Dustin Hoffman bullied him into playing the agent in Tootsie.

“I begged you to get therapy, ” he says, stricken, after being ambushed by a cross-dressed Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.  “You’re insane!’

“No!  I’m employed!”  gushes Hoffman.

Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 152 user reviews.

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