Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant's film with Sean Connery, hasn't been seen by me. I've seen Drugstore Cowboy, Van Sant's film about a druggie in Portland, Oregon, in the early 1970s. Thinking about that film, I wrote a random word, Finding, to start this, then added Forrester. The two words linked not because I thought back to Drugstore Cowboy.
Of Van Sant's films I've seen Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, loathing the last one mentioned. I felt perplexed by My Own Private Idaho, though impressed by its daring. Good Will Hunting, though pretty good, is an overrated drama featuring a fine performance by Robin Williams, and Minnie Driver is fun to look at if one is a heterosexual man or boy.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, based on Tom Robbins' second novel, stars River and Joachin Phoenix's sister, Rain Phoenix. I remember nothing about the book, but there are cowgirls. Cowgirl is when a woman straddles a man during sex. I don't know if Robbins meant that reference. I'll assume he did.
Rain Phoenix proves in this film that not all of the Phoenix children can act. Her lameness as an actress contributes somewhat to the film's badness. Similarly, Jake Lloyd's negligently directed performance as the boy Anakin Skywalker doesn't save Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Horseradish, from being so inferior compared to the first-made trilogy.
In the theater in 1999, I squirmed each time Jake Lloyd tried to say something as the boy who will become evil Darth Vader.
I didn't understand, too, why the visually striking (what with the makeup job) and physically dynamic Darth Maul got killed. Keep such a villain for the next two films in the trilogy, Mr. Lucas. Don't have Obi Wan bifurcate him. Don't have Maul drop down a seemingly bottomless shaft, though I've heard Maul isn't dead; put back together, I guess, or maybe his upper half is part of a wheeled cart equipped with devices and switches (in gleaming black, of course). When feeling contemplative, Darth Maul plays an organ built into the cart. Dark Bach-like dissonant tones, swift arpeggios, light saber sound effects. Darth Bach Meets the Cowgirls.
When you haven't seen someone for a while, you might get asked, "What have you been up to?" or some such question. I don't like answering that, not because I'm ashamed, or embarrassed that my life might seem lifeless, with no social contact, which isn't true, but I'm not the gadfly I was in the past. My new life is much like my old life, for I've always valued solitude. I get a kick out of my own company. Some people experience this in their lives. They're not bored, and if bored, they find boredom interesting.
I don't always watch a movie or video on YouTube feeling as if I need to pay total attention to it. I absorb a load of data, though, forgetting some of it, retaining some of it. I haven't yet descended into memory loss as a serious problem. Thursday, February 8, President Biden ill-advisedly gave a press conference in response to a deposition dealing with his removal of classified documents to his garage in Delaware, the papers stored next to his Corvette, stuffed in its trunk with documents relating to his role in destroying Ukraine, but that's a joke. He keeps the Corvette in the same garage, though.
Biden, clearly, doesn't have his shit together. He defended his memory to the journalists, giving himself an A-okay rating. He declared he's the President. He makes the country go. Yes, he's elderly, but so is Thomas Jefferson!
After the press conference, MSNBC showed a panel of five broadcasters: Joy Reid, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ari Melber, Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow. Reid's net worth of four million dollars is matched by Ari Melber's four million. Chris Hayes has six million, O'Donnell has sixteen million. Maddow has 100 million dollars. She's obviously their leader. Between the four of her subordinates they only have thirty million dollars. Rachel Maddow beats that by seventy million!
The five millionaires bullshitted like I've never before heard broadcasters bullshit. They condemned the report from special counsel Robert Hur, which found that Biden "willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency." Hey, is that against the law? Yes, but his age, condition ("poor memory") will keep him from a trial. How fucking convenient!
Lawrence O'Donnell, himself an elder at seventy-two, claimed that calling Biden "elderly" indicates bias on the prosecutor's part. Nevertheless, Lawrence, I've heard news anchors and pundits on MSNBC, NBC, CNN, and others refer to the president as "old," as in, "Is he too old to run for reelection?" Shall we study another poll of Americans which tells us the majority of citizens think he's too fucking old? I wonder if the next poll on the same subject will yield a different result, as the president continues to age?
The relevant question, "Is the President senile?" doesn't get asked by O'Donnell, by his much richer colleague, Maddow. Instead, they shift blame to the prosecutor, who in actuality did Biden a favor by not throwing the book at him.
I've lived with senile people. Anyone else who has can recognize the signs. A sense one is dealing with absence. Poor memory. Fading in the middle of a conversation.
As Joe Biden's brain dies, liars like O'Donnell, Maddow, and the rest, cover for his disastrous presidency, trying to make the case that we're not experiencing our intake of Biden data like we know we are.
He's not senile, he's eighty-one for Christ's sake! For an eighty-one year old, he's doing great! My dad's seventy-eight. He just looks at TV all day and can barely talk. Biden? He's as fresh as he was when he became vice-president. Just because he lost fifty billion brain cells from shampoo and conditioner scents effervescing from girls' and women's hair doesn't mean his brain doesn't work!
What's the plan, White House? Retire Biden and hand the reins to Kamala Harris? Can we endure that woman for a few months? Are the presidential planners conducting an in-depth study to learn if they can get away with making Harris the forty-seventh President? Will they hype her skin tone? Will having as President the first African-American woman really matter to the poor, the homeless, the uninsured? She's a millionaire who doesn't give a shit about the poor and homeless. She's not on board with universal health care. She's gone along with sending weapons to Ukraine and Israel, so she's a killer. Yeah, I think she's the leader for us, in other words, a typical fucking American politician.
Nikki Haley, losing badly in her campaign for the Republican Nomination, Trump dominating her vote count and in the polls, has odious ideas about human beings and what to do with them. She's all in with destroying Ukraine by prolonging the war with "aid," meaning to give it more and more weapons, even to a nation finding itself in a rolling catastrophe. Anybody who thinks Zelensky is a good leader devoted to democracy is fucked in the head, or gets paid to say that. Nikki wants to keep funding that shitshow. How many Ukrainians have had to die and will have to die to satisfy bloodthirsty government and corporate officials on other continents?
Donald Trump, like Darth Maul, has come back and will probably win this November, unless he's put in prison. It would be interesting for the President of the United States to do his job from prison. Cabinet meetings could take place in the cafeteria, watched over by guards. Instead of Air Force One, he'd have a motorized scooter, Freedom One, with built-in organ. Melania would visit him twice a year for conjugal visits. The rest of the year she'd live in twelve or thirteen different mansions, mistress to some banking jillionaire.
Our leaders are no good.
Vic Neptune
