To thine own self be true

Starting to watch a good, interesting documentary on PBS, This Is Bob Hope. Woody Allen is one of many guests praising Hope’s style and humor. The more you see of Hope, the more you realize how much Woody borrowed of the latter two–something Allen has acknowledged several times previously, stating that Hope was his favorite comic and main influence. Vey uncanny watching the Hope clips and remembering Woody’s delivery in Love and Death, for instance.

Yeah, Hope was very funny. I remember looking forward to his infrequent tv specials when I was a kid. In later years, he specialized in stand-up one-liners on American politics in his monologues or on his many military base tours which were hugely popular among soldiers serving overseas. Not to be forgotten too, were his many hostings of the Academy Awards during which he always bemoaned not winning an Oscar. He was all over the place on-air from the1950s till he retired. A very special comedian and personality. His kind of humor and that which Woody practised in his early films were totally unique, intelligent, and quick-witted. Now largely unknown and unappreciated by modern audiences who would not be able to keep pace with that nuanced, clever style.

–Jim Goodwin

Trump is to Rupert Pupkin in Scorcese’s The King of Comedy?

He’s got it down good by now. His role for re-election:
Cry on cue.
Say you’re sorry.
Give out big money.
Repeat ad nauseam whenever the Liberals are questioned or in trouble.

Is there a pattern here?

Is he a good performer? Has he got his role down by now? When will he stop playing this role or do, doh, things differently? How is it possible that crying automatically occurs in each instance? (Is he this sensitive about the poor, veterans, old people, Canadians who don’t want illegal immigrants and returning hard-wired jihadists in Canada, Peter Kent (called him “a piece of shit”), or the woman MP he roughed up on the floor of the House?) Does he seem to have any trouble saying ‘sorry’ for p.c. issues repeatedly? Why is big money automatically built into every one of these melodramatic replays? (Does Canada have unlimited money to dole out willy-nilly?) In what ways has he been or is he just basically just acting or performing, and become a p.c. role?

No, Justin is very limited, predictable, and plays to p.c. agendas very well. Perspective: but you also have to consider how sensitive he’s been in other situations, as outlined above. How dare anyone question the Deep (examine any of his ‘thoughtful’ answers and dismissive ‘arguments’), Eloquent (“uh, uh”), Beautiful Boy Wonder/Selfie King?

(pet-friends)

(family-friends)

(work-friends)

(childhood-teenage-friends)

(writer-friends)

(musical-friends)

(love- and spouse-friends)

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he that has found one has found a treasure.
–Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus

To the query, “What is a friend?” his reply was, “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
–Aristotle

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.
–Edna Buchanan

A friend is, as it were, a second self.
–Marcus Cicero

Friends are God’s apology for relations.
–Hugh Kingsmill

A friend: one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
–Walter Winchell

What about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach.
–E.M. Forster

Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity.
–Edwin Land

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
–Gail Sheehy

Creativity is an act of defiance. You’re challenging the status quo.
-Twyla Tharp

Someone has said that conversation is sex for the soul.
–Isabel Allende

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it.
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but, far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
–Dorothy Nevill

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
–Rebecca West

The only proper intoxication is conversation.
–Oscar Wilde

Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.
–Stella Adler

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
–Pablo Picasso

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
–Thomas Merton

The primary purpose of practising any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow.
–Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
–Oscar Wilde

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
–George Bernard Shaw

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small “yes” at the center of a vast “no”.
–Gore Vidal

Prince Harry’s engagement to Markle.
Hardly hard news.

corporations started withdrawing their advertising. It’s only for money reasons that they climbed on their high moral horse. Money talks everywhere in North America; no, online is not immune to Mammon. Hardly sacred or nobler than elsewhere.