Love Story, the 1970 weepie directed by Arthur Hiller. (I never saw so many women crying openly after a movie!)
Obit. Edmonton’s great Hollywood director Arthur Hiller, 92. Vic Comp’s pride and joy, along with the very funny Leslie Nielsen. Both returned periodically to their alma maters, never forgetting their roots.
Same old. Here’s some titles of popular shows this summer:
Donating Sperm to My Sister’s Wife
6 Quick Dick Tricks
God Is a Scottish Drag Queen IV
Things Are a Cock
Nerdfucker
The “F” Words
The Lion, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe
Red Wine, French Toast and the Best Sex You’ve Ever Had
Jon Bennett: Pretending Things Are a Cock
Porn and Pinochet
The Dirty Talk
How Does That Make You Feel? Tales of Sex, Life & Lies.
Doh. Is there a lowest common denominator pattern here? Anyway, a supposedly edgy coarseness that has become a big bore and is to be found also at movie theatres, especially in PG movies. Sexual language, coarse language. A little toilet humor with your popcorn?
I was reading on the weekend of a mother who sent her 4-year-old to day camp where she was coloring in a room where one of the piped-in songs was about cunnilingus, something the girl found catchy and came home singing. The sexualization of preschoolers, a carryover from the young diva tv show days, is common and widespread. No wonder there’s so much child porn out there.
Kids today are growing up in a toxic, polluted language environment. I feel sorry for the kids who have lost what Blake called Innocence, and age-appropriate olde childhood experiences. Elsewhere on this blog, I have had the unmitigated gall to suggest mandatory parenting courses and licensing. Again, the reason is the same for today’s topic–I don’t like kids being turned over to the wolves to be used, abused, coarsened, and marketed to ad nauseam. No kid needs that.
-pretty much anything by Shakespeare–King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth
-most of Shaw’s plays
–Lord of the Flies
–Songs of Innocence and Experience
-most of Ibsen’s plays
–Animal Farm
-Huxley’s Point Counter Point and Brave New World
-most of Graham Greene’s novels
–The Great Gatsby
-Ford’s The Good Soldier
-most of E.M. Forster
-most of Nathaniel Hawthorne
-most of Dickens
–L’Etranger
-most of Conrad’s novels
–The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(perhaps the ultimate Dickens’ novel on money and status)
-most of Shakespeare’s plays
-most of Dickens’ novels
–Pride and Prejudice
–Sister Carrie
–Age of Innocence
–The Great Gatsby
-most of E.M. Forster’s novels
–Heart of Darkness
–Wuthering Heights
–Jane Eyre
(1st ed. dust jacket)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–Mark Twain
Sister Carrie–Theodore Dreiser
The Age of Innocence–Edith Wharton
The Sun Also Rises–Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby–F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Grapes of Wrath–John Steinbeck
My Antonia–Willa Cather
To Kill a Mockingbird–Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye–J.D. Salinger
On the Road–Jack Kerouac
(scarce 1st paperback ed., U.S. 1949)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man–James Joyce
To the Lighthouse–Virginia Woolf
Pride and Prejudice–Jane Austen
Return of the Native–Thomas Hardy
your choice of Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, or Lord Jim–Joseph Conrad
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland–Lewis Carroll
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde–Robert Louis Stevenson
Frankenstein–Mary Shelley
Brave New World–Aldous Huxley
The Razor’s Edge–Somerset Maugham
Brighton Rock–Graham Greene
Nineteen-Eighty-Four–George Orwell
Middlemarch–George Eliot
Lord of the Flies–William Golding
A Passage to India–E.M. Forster
Great Expectations–Charles Dickens
(the rare 1st American ed.)
A Bird in the House–Margaret Laurence
The Loved and the Lost–Morley Callaghan
Fifth Business–Robertson Davies
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town–Stephen Leacock
The Watch That Ends the Night–Hugh MacLennan
The Mountain and the Valley–Ernest Buckler
Who Has Seen the Wind–W.O. Mitchell
Barney’s Version–Mordecai Richler
As for Me and My House–Sinclair Ross
The Tin Flute–Gabrielle Roy
I have said, after witnessing the deaths of both parents from cancer, that I wouldn’t wish any person or any animal to go through that (not even a worst possible enemy).
Riding my bike over to the fire site this morning, I noticed all was calm, only one person walking on a nearby sidewalk. But the black, gutted devastation of a row of wooden houses was very sobering, made me think of all those negatively and psychologically affected by the inferno. (And by the way, a dog and cat were rescued, and so far no injuries reported.)
No, I wouldn’t wish anyone or any pet to experience a fire, something as fast and out-of-control as yesterday’s blaze. It’s right up there with my cancer lesson. No, no one needs that number as well.
The media is blinded by money as revealed in its obsessions with how much movies made at the weekend box office, with the salaries of professional athletes, and with the money side of anything. Money is all that matters. And our society is that money-obsessed, as I learned yet again in a trip to River Cree as I walked through the casino, afterward coming home to the usual pitches by strangers for money in my phone messages. (The 100 million lotto this weekend will also be on most minds of Canadians I expect.)
When the Prince’s baby was born, same story. How much was she worth? Penny certainly deserves whatever opportunities she gets after her impressive medal run, but already the remarkableness of her accomplishments are being tarnished by money obsession. How much are you worth? How can you make more money? These are, continuously, the questions that drive our majorly distracted, bombarded society today.
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
