Two Sea Turtles

 One on land, on in the water

Maui

 Good week to be here.

Inauguration Day

Michael Curtiz's Opening of Mildred Pierce

 If you watch most movies from the pre-TV period, you proceed in a typical fashion. Title Cards, then the story opens relatively statically. But Michael Curtiz developed the type of opening we now see more often. The kind that pulls you in. Take the opening of Mildred Pierce (below).

The first sequence sets up the plot and tone of the movie from the beginning.

1. A shot of an Ocean Front House shows power and money.
2. The Interior reflects money and power, but pans to a dapper playboy (Monty) who is shot repeatedly.
3. Monty hits the floor, the gun is thrown at him, and Monty says "Mildred."
4. A car rushes away - we assume with the killer.
5. Mildred Pierce walks hesitantly along an ocean boardwalk. She walks out on the pier.
6. Mildred looks painfully at the water, and begins to climb over the railing.
7. A loud clang announces someone else is there.

Here you go. You know there is a murder. You know that this is Mildred, rich but haggard. You know she doesn't know what to do next. All before the first words are spoken.

Now rewatch the mini-scene of Monty being shot. The first frames are from a lower angle. You see Monty and the ceiling simultaneously, giving a sense of claustrophobia.  When he falls, the gun is thrown, and he is lying in front of a fire that isn't extinguished, showing the killer leaving in a hurry.

Joan Crawford, as Mildred, gives a great performance in these few scenes. She conveys a sense of helplessness and weariness without saying a word.

Great.

Michael Curtiz turned bad guys from the silents into feel-good stars.

In the silent movies, two of the bad and evil men were William Powell and Warner William. They were big box office stars. With sound, they were some of the few that made the transition to talkies. No doubt it is because both were Broadway actors before coming to Hollywood.

Some of their first sound movies were done with Michael Curtiz who managed their change from cads to charming, if alcohol-influenced, detectives and good lawyers.

Color me inpressed.

 

Beautiful Plantation Restaurant

Yesterday we ate at an old sugar mill. It was redone beautifully. 

I’m not a fan of pics of me, but I like this.

Kay Francis - what happened to stars in the 1930s.

 Most people haven't heard of or seen Kay Francis, which is too bad. She was legendary. Here is a blurb from Wikipedia.

Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress.[1] After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star and highest-paid actress at Warner Bros. studio.[2] She adopted her mother's maiden name (Francis) as her professional surname.

My reading of Michael Curtiz biography (truly an amazing book) mentions her many times. She and Curtis had an excellent record at Warner Brothers. The book talked about 2 of her films, and how Curtiz changed them and introduced new shots. I watched them. I was impressed by the direction. And, it turns out, I loved Kay Francis.

A precode Comedy

A precode drama / tragedy

She was called box-office poison and dumped in 1936. It was Carol Lombard, who had been in a few of her films, that demanded Kay get a role in a show with Carol and Gary Grant. She was very good, and had a comeback until the war.

In WWII, she immediately joined and entertained the troops. In 1944, she collapsed on stage and was rushed back to her hotel room after passing out from "exhaustion and medication." Then came the horrible accident when trying to wake her up and then letting her sleep it off, the helpers left her legs against the radiator, where they were horribly burned. She ended up in an oxygen tent for her 3 degree burns and essentially stopped working afterwards.

She died from cancer in 1968. Without a family, she left a million plus dollars to a nonprofit that trains site-seeing dogs.

Iconic Bird is reintroduced in Japan

 The Toki (Japanese Crested Ibis) is endemic to only a few places in Japan.  It feasts in the rice fields, where it eats bugs and frogs from the rice patty (not rice). From the 80s through the 2000s, the population crashed to extinction in the wild. 

Japan took the last 9 out for breeding. China cooperated with them, getting the 7 last ones from a Chinese zoo sent to Japan to help the gene pool.

The breakthrough came in a typhoon of 2017 that wiped out the infrastructure of the island (Sado) in the Ishikawa province. When the typhoon destroyed the rice fields in particular, about 30+ rice farmers signed on to grow rice without pesticides in a Toki pact. About 3 years later, many of the Toki were released. It is thought there are now about 900 birds doing well there.

Yay

Had a nice hike yesterday

 Eddie and I are spending a little time in Hawaii with my brother and sister-in-law in Maui. I've never been, and it should be fun.

Meantime, here are some pictures of a little hike we did yesterday up Tahquitz Canyon.

The nondescript start of the hike.

The riparian vegetation shows this stream is pretty reliable.

Ta-da! The end. It is very shallow where you can see. 
Past the rock is opens up into a deeper pool.

And we return to the valley floor.

And so we say good-bye to the lovely Tahquitz Canyon and Waterfall.

Nin Com Poop Ery

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is our new Health Secretary. (For my British friends, like a change in government in your country, our new President staffs his cabinet. Unlike in your country, however, they are never legislative (Parliament) members.)

Anywho, RFK Jr. is a renowned anti-vaxxer. He subscribes to refuted theories and disapproves of all vaccines, even going so far as to question if the Polio vaccine was a good idea. He is nuts.

But at least the best thinking could go; he is a nut with a sense of dedication to what he believes in, whatever the cost. And the cost for him was high, one thought. He quit his legal practices to devote himself full-time to this nutty cause. He could afford to do that because he has a family fortune and his wife is a well-paid actress.

Of course, it turns out that was a lie. Despite his public insistence that he works for his non-profit for free, he just "adjusted" his earned income to state that he made a little money from it. In reality, he pocketed $2.2 million in wages for a non-profit that lost $3 million last year.

Oh, the woes of the powerful.

The Entertaining and Frustrating World of Taylor Sheridan

 For those who don't know, Taylor Sheridan is a prolific writer and producer of great, entertaining, and frustrating shows. He wrote the Acadamy-nominated Sicario and Hell or High Water. He has been nominated for an Academy and Writer's Guild Award.

Most famously, he wrote Yellowstone and its prequels. Yellowstone is a mean, violent, and thoroughly entertaining TV show. It is also conservative with a small "c." As a writer, he consistently badmouths urban people who come to "urbanize" Montana. In particular, he trashes New York and Los Angeles residents. He derides those people (i.e. me) as vermin who must be stopped. Okay. I get it. The people in those areas feel that way about non-Montanans as a group. But they are nearly all friendly to the actual people from those places.

And in Landman and Lioness, two new shows I like, his MAGA bonafides go up exceptionally. 

In Landman, he makes a totally true statement about the enduring need for oil. I TOTALLY agree with his reasoning and explanation. But then he has to tack on that wind and solar are useless. Not that wind and solar are a start of renewable energy, but they are useless except in the oilfields. 

He is completely right that oil is indispensable and will continue to be used (hell - we still use coal). But solar, wind, and nuclear are additive to the energy mix as we move forward. A point he actively and vocally disavows. 

Look I could go on and on. But my point is threefold.

1. He hates people that don't agree with him. They are killed, tortured, turned into laughing stocks, or turned into Snidely Whiplash villains. 

More Importantly

2. Taylor Sheridan's shows annoy me in a way that progressive shows(with a small p) must annoy others.

I think those TV shows that extol inclusion probably annoy conservatives (again, small "c"). It has opened my eyes a bit. The preachiness of Sheridan is painfully evident to me. But it has also made me aware that some of my favorite shows are just as or more annoying when they get preachy.

Note: Sheridan may hate LGBT people (especially Trans), but he is NOT a racist. He is full of inclusion for some really forgotten people - Mexicans, Indians, the elderly, and those living week to week. His casting isn't colorblind, but it is honest and truthful. He never supports hate directed at a race of people.

Okay. Italian

 I want to learn Italian. I did a 30-day online course, which was great. Now I can read and understand a lot. But then I dropped it. I am going to blame the holiday stuff. 

Therefore, I am going to start again. I will daily post some information about what I did the day before here, everyday. It is a way to keep myself on track and let Lynn (or whomever) comment if I do not do it.

Hopefully, this will work.

FYI - for those playing along at home. Every Italian syllable is pronounced with the vowels. So my name is "mi chiamo" pronounced "me key-a-mo" . There is less of an accented syllable in Italian - so it is all a little flat.

And some odd changes like the American "chi" is spelt "ci" and the American "ke" is spelt "chi". 

Anyway, please help keep me honest.

Michael Curtiz' life is fascinating

I remark on Michael Curtiz' interesting life. He pioneered camera movement and effects in the very early days of Hollywood sound. His still differed very much from the static reaction shots from the Silents.

So, I like Michael Curtiz as a director, but I never really understood why. One of the reasons (and I will, of course, talk about others) was his transition from Silents to Talkies. Silent movies seem histrionic now. However, the silents had their own language of looks, set-ups, and situations that the audience had grown to understand.

A scoundrel turns a lady into a fallen woman.
You can tell she is a lady by the fact she cries as lipstick is applied.

A fallen woman reflects on her sadness of her life 
This is Sadie Thompson - a prostitute in the Tropics

A delusional matron is suckered by low-lifes.

After the talkies, most directors continued static direction and interspersed talking head sound dialogs, which were merely an expansion of the old title cards. Curtiz made extensive use of dollies and camera angles to describe a new lexicon and break the habits of the first talkies. 

He is most famous for movies like The Adventures of Robin Hood, or Casablanca or Mildred Pierce. But his unique path through the transitions here is fascinating. And I am only up to 1939 so far. :-).

One of my favorite old murder mysteries is "The Case of the Curious Bride," with Warner William as Perry Mason. It is head and shoulders above the previous Warner William Perry Mason movie, "The Case of the Howling Dog." It is only to read Curtiz's story and then rewatch parts of both films (I have them both) to see why the Curtiz version is more engaging.

Action is shown, not discussed, in The Case of the Curious Bride

I love this book.

Polo in Hollywood

 (There are so many many many horrible things happening now, but I don't have the mental strength to get through them all without screaming, so I am ignoring it all.)

I am reading a fascinating biography of Michael Curtiz - the director of Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn), and more. There are a lot of cool  informational nuggets in the book, and some surprises too.

Michael Curtiz and others had ranches in the San Fernando Valley, and many of them kept horses and polo ponies. At that time, there were over 23 (maybe 31?) polo fields in LA. The only one left was at Will Rogers Park in the Pacific Palisades—who knows if it is still there.

Anyway, look at the picture below. That is Spencer Tracy (2nd from right). And Leslie Howard (2nd from the left). It was a thang.

Hollywood was in the heart of Polo in America in the 1930’s! The Los Angeles Equestrian Center, between Warner Brothers and Dreamworks, was the epicenter of Polo for celebrities at that time: Spencer Tray, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, and Robert Montgomery were regulars. Los Angeles had no less than 25 polo fields at that time!

Here is an image of Walt Disney and a friend playing on the grounds of Walt's polo field.

Here are the members of the "Donald Ducks," Disney's Polo Club.

And now, just pretty from The Guardian

 

A view of Leeds Castle in a frosty landscape near Maidstone, Kent. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Camargue, France

Pink flamingos at sunset in the Camargue regional natural park in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

Photograph: Manon Cruz/Reuters

New species discovered by team in the Peruvian Jungle

 The New York Times has a very interesting story (albeit it lengthy) of a group of scientists who went into the Peruvian Rainforest to investigate the ecosystem. They came back with information about the area, and this:

During their 38-day expedition, Dr. Larsen and his team discovered 27 new species in Alto Mayo, including four mammals, eight fish, three amphibians and 10 butterflies. The team also found dozens of rare and endangered species, some not known to occur anywhere else on Earth.

It is very cool. Here are two images: the first of the area and the second of a few of the discoveries.

Religion and Afterlife

Great words - Hard to live by.

I'm intrigued by the difference between religion and views of the afterlife, but I'm not sure why. Greek Stoicism and Buddhism have similar quotes, although who knows if they are true. They both have to be translated into English, and translations might be incorrect.

For both ways of life, I hesitate to call them religions, the belief in the state of your person in the present moment is the most important thing to concentrate on. Are you accepting the current state, and working to improve your life? Or are you caught up in the frustration of the present and focussed exclusively on the future.

Christianity, on the other hand, focuses on living a godly life to get to heaven or avoid hell. The here-and-now problems should be ignored for a future in heaven. I understand the attraction in the past when Christianity spread through populations. For a slave or serf, the here-and-now was something to be endured, not maximized. The world was difficult and dangerous in the olden days, and Christianity offered hope for a future. It also offered a road forward that stressed community and the common good. Many of us see that particular pillar of Christianity lost and replaced by attacking people that they don't like. Not all Christians, of course, but the leaders of Evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox religions seem determined to build a community of them by attacking those who differ with them.

That isn't new - the Catholic-Protestant war and Islamic Jihads flared for centuries. But doubling down on past conflicts and present hatreds does not further the idea of a loving God. 

I don't know if the focus on the present versus the afterlife drives any actual changes in the way of approaching life and morality. But it is interesting.

I have a truly difficult time with the rise of Trump, but I am trying.

In the case of Stoicism, I suppose you can live that life in concert with being a Christian. The two might even complement each other. A friend of mine is Christian and follows the teachings of the church (a loving church) day to day. So they don't have to be in conflict.

Non-Trump News: We Barely Knew You (allowable Sunday whine)

We had about 2 years of very little Trump news. We heard him bleat on about the stolen election for the entire first year after his loss in 2020. People finally got tired of hearing him, and tuned him out. All was good for two glorious years, and then back to all Trump all the time in the 2024 election.

And now... oh my goodness, he and his silly pronouncements are everywhere. (And nearly always in all caps.)  The news can't keep him out of their minds.

THE FIRES ARE THE PRODUCT OF BAD FOREST MANAGEMENT!

GREENLAND IS PART OF THE UNITED STATES!!!

WE SHOULD HAVE NEVER GIVEN AWAY THE PANAMA CANAL!

TRUDEAU IS A BAD GOVERNOR OF OUR 51ST STATE, CANADA!

WE SHOULD ATTACK OUR ALLIES AND MAKE FRIENDS WITH OUR ENEMIES. NO ONE EXPECTS THAT!

ELON MUSK (Trump's butt buddy) SAYS AMERICANS ARE RETARDS.

I could go on, and on, and on. It is already painfully overwhelming every day. 

I try to let it flow over me like water off a duck's back. Instead, it is like honey is poured on your head, and that honey is filled with ants and bugs stuck in the goo. And you can see little versions of you drowning. And you know it has GOT to be a dream, but you can't wake.

It's like that.

But worse.

Two New California National Monuments

Ladder Canyon in the new Cuckwall National Monument
Ed, Lynn, and I have hiked here.

 There are two new National Monuments in California. For my British friends, a "National Monument" is a set aside of public land that places a parcel of land, usually very very large, into a status so that it is difficult to use for private projects. 

New monuments, in particular, are often designated to protect areas of importance to Indians. Note the Cahuilla Indians of the low desert - including those in Palm Springs, are known as the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians - prefer the word Indian to Native American.

Image from the new Sáttítla National Monument

Anywho, there is a very large new National Monument between the Palm Springs area and a desert swath of land along I-10 in the desert (for those that know the area). With this action, most of the Southern California deserts are protected or areas dedicated to growth. Given that almost no one lives in these places, but they are significant to the Indians, it is reasonable to carve these areas out.

You can select the image to enlarge and read it.
Note that the pink areas are set aside for development.
Checkered pink is where development can occur with restrictions.

The counterargument is that many of these new sites have minerals (or grazing) that are important to national security and, therefore, NOT protect it from development. In all of these cases, private companies that might profit from exclusive minerals leases tend of lobby against national monuments. Even though some kind of non-invasive extraction is allowed in most national monuments. They just can't strip-mine or destroy the land.

For example, in the image above, the pink checked areas are set aside for mineral development, primarily lithium.

Another hike and view in new Chuckwalla National Park

Anyway, it is cool. Now, President Trump might reduce it as he did last administration with the Bear Ears National Monument to open the area for strip-mining uranium. Hopefully, this won't happen.

The locations:

Before I start on happier news...

 MAGA people have gone mad. Mad, I tell you!

Of course, I could be wrong. After all I could have been sprayed with mood stabilizers!

PS I am on mood stabilizers, and I am still freaked out about what is happening. Mood stabilizers are not zombie juice.

2024 Warmest Year on Record in the United States (oh yeah, and the world)

 The hottest in the world is buried much farther down. Who says we are provincial?

You can ask Facebook AI Anything

 But it won't answer how to deactivate.