Day of the Jackal, 1973

The Day of the Jackal was a big 1973 UK-French co-production about a fictional attempt to assassinate Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s. Sort of a combination of James Bond and Dragnet. The movie was a procedural. It goes through the procedures used by the assassin as well as by French security services, and it was a bit of a travelogue. We see the Jackal driving through France in his sports car, catching a train, staying in hotels.

It turns out that the French in the 1960s were worse than Americans. There's an execution, police torture, warrantless wiretaps. Police walk around with submachine guns, members of the armed forced try to murder the president. It would have been a nice place except for all that stuff.

It was set in '63 but they they freely used cars made after that which was probably just as well.

You can be pretty sure that a movie made two years after Charles de Gaulle died of natural causes isn't going to end with him being assassinated ten tears earlier. The director took it as a challenge to hold the audience's attention when they knew full well how the movie would end.

Available now for instant viewing on Netflix.

Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez.

I guess everyone's heard the news by now. Eighteen-year-old Justin Bieber has split up with his 20-year-old girlfriend, Selena Gomez. I would comment on it, but I don't know who Selena Gomez is.

Bieber's Canadian. He started getting tattoos while in high school (if he went to high school). Apparently this is normal in Canada. He played laser tag one time and the other kids recognized him and kept shooting him, so he socked a 12-year-old. The RCMP investigated but nothing came of it.

He played a juvenile delinquent on a TV show and his character was gunned down at the end of the episode. One of the regulars on the show later regretted telling interviewers that Justin was a "brat" and added that he was a pretty good actor.

And I'm sure he's a very nice boy. If he's not, then I'm sure he would be if he weren't writhing under the scourge of stardom. Or maybe he would be even worse if he weren't a celebrity.

I don't really know if he's a very nice boy or not. Forget I said it.

Obama wins

Well, the election was quick and painless. Ralph Nader was right---the networks had a conflict of interest. The more they maintained the illusion that Romney had a chance, the more people would watch the news and the more advertising they could sell.

I went to bed early and I just got up. Any word yet? Did Obama lose the popular vote? If he did, he should do what George Bush did. He should explain everything he does with the refrain, "That's what the American People elected me to do!"

Two Minute Warning

There was an old disaster movie called Two-Minute Warning, about a sniper in a football stadium. My next door neighbor had gone to Hollywood to become a star and played a gunshot victim. I watched it again recently---the recent unpleasantness involving Ray Carney made me want to watch John Cassavetes movies, and Cassavetes played a SWAT team commander in it. Gene Rowlands is in the crowd arguing with her boyfriend, David Janssen.

I thought it was a pretty good movie at the time. Directed by Larry Peerce who had a varied career, directing Goodbye, Columbus early in his career. It had looked like he'd be a major director, but he found himself making made-for-TV movies for a time. He directed the 1960s pilot to The Hardy Boys.

Two-Minute Warning was terribly violent. It had to be heavily edited when it was shown on TV, which might explain the weird thing they did.

I watched it long ago when they showed it on network TV.

"I don't remember this happening," I thought.

There was no explanation for the sniper's actions in the movie. So the network shot some additional material and added a plot. Art thieves planning a heist decide to cover their escape by having a sniper open fire at a football game. The art gallery is somehow located next door to the stadium.

But the thieves find they can't flee in their van because of the crowd pouring out the stadium.

"Hey! They robbing the art gallery!" someone yells. "Let's stop them!"

The crowd climbs all over the van and stops them from fleeing.

Man, that was stupid!

Watching it again, John Cassavetes' character seemed like less of a jerk than I remembered. The SWAT guys seemed to like the idea of shooting people, but you had to hand it to them----they climbed really high ladders. 

USS Enterprise heads for the scrap heap

The aircraft carrier the USS Enterprise is on its way back to the US. It's 50 years old, isn't terribly safe and is nuclear powered. It was sent to the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran leading to speculation that the US was hoping it would spontaneously sink or blow up so that the US could blame Iran and start a war, or, if Israel attacked, Iran would easily sink the Enterprise and the US would have an excuse for joining in.

That much is over.

The US hasn't won a war since 1945 and it's not going to start now. The Zionists comfort themselves by bombing refugee camps and murdering children, but they haven't won a war in nearly 40 years.

Ray Carney petition delivered

Still nothing from Ray Carney. What's that guy doing?

If he were smart, he would have spent the last couple of months copying the tapes and photocopying the papers. He could have Mark Rappaport's cake and return it, too, and everyone would be relatively happy.

Daniel Levine posted on Jon Jost's Cinemaelectronica blog that he's delivered Jost's on-line petition to Boston University faculty. They were aware of the situation and were already consulting their attorneys to figure out what to do.

When does Winter term start? That's when Carney will be back teaching, trying to explain to his students why he did what he did. Hard to imagine what he could say.

Horace Vernet, "Invalid handing a petition to Napoleon at the Parade

in the Court of the Tuileries Palace"

Atheism, skepticism, Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins

"If you get on an elevator with Dawkins and you refuse to have sex with him, his first thoughts are about slicing up genitals." 

---Stephen Colbert's Wikiality, the Turthiness encyclopedia

http://wikiality.wikia.com/Richard_Dawkins

One day many years ago, I was driving out to the coast. I got behind a line of Citroens, mostly 2CVs and Traction Avants. It was the local Citroen Club out for a drive.

I told a guy about it. As a joke, I suggested he start his own club for Chevy Corsica owners. (Not much of a joke, I know.) He said he didn't want to hang around with fellow Corsica owners.

Perhaps it was ironic that owning a car like a Citroen that nobody else has would be an opportunity for social interaction while having a Corsica, owned by millions, a favorite fleet and rental car, would leave you socially isolated.

Or maybe that's the way it should be.

Look at the atheists and skeptics. They don't believe in mind reading, ghosts or religion, which, by itself, doesn't seem like much basis for the community they've managed to form.

Now vast numbers of them have launched attacks on one of their own, Rebecca Watson, for daring to advise against hitting on women in elevators. Even Richard Dawkins joined in the attacks.

First Dawkins wrote some sarcastic crap, which was stupid. Sarcasm is a tool of teenagers arguing with their parents, not intellectuals making thoughtful public statements. Then he defended his statement by saying that the guy hit on Watson using words, and she turned him down using words. What's so terrible about people using words? Unless it's Rebecca Watson using words to explain that she doesn't like being hit on in elevators.

Apparently for a large number of atheist and skeptic men, rape threats are the preferred mode of discourse.

Even when they don't disagree with women they make rape threats. Not just against women but against young girls. Watson wrote about a 15-year-old girl who posted a picture of herself holding her birthday present, a copy of a book by Carl Sagan, on an atheist bulletin board. The girl was instantly subject to a barrage of obscene and perverse messages. They clearly understood that this was a 15-year-old. One said, I don't call it kidnapping, I call it instant adoption. Another quipped that blood was a sexual lubricant.

This movement, if you can call it a movement, is full of scum. Next time Christians want to debate atheists, they can just read messages from atheist bulletin boards. If they debate Dawkins, he'll probably defend it. "Those are words!"

It could be that simply not believing in mind-reading or astrology is scant basis for social interaction. The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was able to narrow their focus---they don't believe in it and they want scientific investigation.

But if you have too big a tent, you're going to get a lot human garbage in there.