Dave's Journal, Oct2016
My very favorite movie genre is "Classic Horror". ("Giant Monsters" is my next favorite.)
I don't mean "Slasher Movies" - I leave those to the millenium age group.
Think I'll devote a lot of this month's journal ramblings to my personal reviews of the classics, as I watch them again this month.
Not THE most pivotal days, but nonetheless pivotal.
Sometime in 1985: Mike and I used to wrestle, and I was in pretty good shape back then (always working out) and I always pinned him. I'd let him win for a bit, then I'd just throw him off me and pin him down. Until .... one day ..... I could not push him off me. He thought at first that I was kidding, but then realized I simply could not push him off. Big day in a guy's life, when you can take dad down.
Today; I had to call Mike to take our air conditioners out of the windows. Big day in an old guy's life when you can no longer do the heavy lifting.
Maybe I should have called this Two Pivotal Day's in My Life (?)
Watched this last night (seen it many times before). An excellent production (though it has some big - but forgivable - plot holes).
One thing I never picked up on, and it only hit me after I looked up the movie posters. The most popular posters only show Elsa Lanchester (shocking electric hair). But some of them (like this one) prominently show Dr. Frankenstein's wife.
In the movie, the "monster" kidnaps Frankenstein's wife while Dr. Pretorious pressures Frankenstein to make a wife for the "monster".
It struck me later that the implication was "if you don't make a wife for the monster, he's going to keep your wife !! This angle was not played up in the movie, but is definitely implied by the posters - hell, Dr. Frankenstein is not in the poster but his wife is !
Additional insider script commentary from cousin Pete: When the Bride comes to life, and Henry helps her take her first steps, she looks at him like she knows him. An earlier idea was when they were looking for a young heart, after Elizabeth is kidnapped, Pretorious had planned to kill her and use her heart. When the Bride looks at Henry funny, it's because she did know him, because she inherited Elizabeth's heart. The plot changed, but they kept that part in.
I got two other movies under my belt last few days. The Wolfman is a very sedate, tight, civil production (boring? .... ehhhh), but back in my childhood, at midnight, watching it on Shock Theater, it would scare us to death. Actually, all of these old movies did that.
Cousin Pete reminded me that I also had a vinyl LP of "shock" music/sound effects.
Loretta has opened an account on ETSY to sell her crochet work!
I have seen her stuff first hand and it is gorgeous, so if you know anyone who needs crochet'd hats, etc, send them here:
One of the modern classics produced by Hammer Productions in England. Along with The Curse of Frankenstein, this movie defined what I knew as "real horror". I have this DVD, and the Frankenstein has been on my shopping list forever.
My vote for The Most Boring Scary Movies goes to all the mummy movies ever made. This one, from Hammer Productions, could put you to sleep.
"Put me down, Kharis. Please put me down."
Footnote: two years later, this nice lady (Yvonne Furneaux) had a starring role in Federico Fellini's classic "La Dolce Vita, with Marcello Mastroanni and Anita Ekberg.
If it was a little little bit closer, I'd go to Portsmouth a lot more than I do. It's a nice little downtown / harbor area, with lots of nice shops and coffee houses, etc etc. Even a very European sidewalk cafe area where people sit for hours (I saw this today) and talk and drink stuff.
Deb and I spent a few hours there today before picking up Elise and two college friends to transport them back home. Aside from the horrific traffic jams (2 1/2 hours to make a 1 1/2 hour trip home), it was a nice day.
Deb was off on a bus tour to the slot machines; it's been raining all day; I drove down to the art museum to see an exhibit that they promised would be worth the trip. Well . . . it was, and it wasn't. The exhibit was the work of American painter W.M.Chase. Turns out I liked his early stuff a lot, but did not like his later stuff at all. So I went down to the cafe, had gourmet vegan something something salad and a glass of cheap wine. Then I wandered the halls that were more crowded than I have ever seen them.
In one hall, I stumbled upon these prints (not paintings) by a Japanese guy, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). I walked by them, then backed up. They are not large (maybe 11"X17"). I got drawn in more and more as I looked at them. Wonderful scenes. The stuff you get lost in, imagining you are in there inside the scene. They really resonated with me (and a bunch of other people lining that hallway).
When I got home, I looked around the internet for who this guy was, and turns out the Brooklyn Museum has a really nice slideshow of his work: Brooklyn Museum / Hiroshige Prints. It's a small world, after all !! Well worth some time getting lost in these little scenes from a place and time long ago.
Here is one early painting of W.M.Chase that was "okay" in my opinion. There were few others, but I did not take pictures of them.
One of the guys on our photo forum (and his wife) just finished a 4 year motorcycle trip around the world. That is a wonder in itself, but they are also fabulous photographers, and have posted some pictures throughout their trip and I love them enormously. Their work (for your enjoyment) is on Flickr here: From Estonia with Love
Embrace the HorrorI'd love to go 'round the world on a motorcycle, but I am presently glued to my rocker watching the tall stack of old-school sci-fi / horror DVD's that Cousin Pete so generously sent to me as a permanent addition to my own collection. Two down, 50 to go !!
Deb was out to lunch today, so I put a Minolta 90mm lens on the fuji and went out for butterflies and pretty plants. The lens did very well, and I got a bunch of nice pictures I will stash away to be found 100 years from now in the dusty attic rooms of my computer.
Here are 4 of my favorites.
The statisticians are taking their predictions to a new (higher? lower?) level. Not just counting individual votes or electoral college votes, but by looking at the probability of voter shifts to actually changing the electoral votes and the election outcome.
All but 2 states assign ALL their electoral college votes to the candidate that wins the popular vote. So a "big" change in votes from a "focus group of voters" in one state may have absolutely zero impact on the electoral voting.
Anyway, "for better or for worse" .......here are three probabistic projections of how this election will turn out.
Do you know Mike, the window repair guy ?
It's autumn in New England, and it's pretty easy to make pretty pictures. These are from this morning out at the wildlife sanctuary. And for once I actually saw some wildlife - a porcupine up in a tree !!!. Turns out that most North American porcupines spend all the time up trees ! (I didn't know that!)
If you need a little "peace and quiet", this is the bench you're looking for.
The solar panels on the roof give the boat shed a Colonial America feeling.
Finally caught up to the new surgeon who will do my cochlear implant. They felt the need to repeat some testing, and we did that. As expected, my hearing is categorized as "severe to profound hearing loss", but hey didn't I already know that?
Then the doctor came in, and I gotta ask ..... "Would you let this kid drill a hole in your head?"
I quizzed him (even mentioned I was looking for someone with more gray hair, but he politely laughed it off).
I go back next week to choose the type of implant, and we are scheduling the operation for mid January. It's an easy out-patient surgery with a four week physical recovery. Then they turn the implant on and we start tweaking its electronics over the following weeks (?).
This week I will meet with the doctor / audiologist to decide on which implant design we are going with, so today I am doing my homework. Glossy brochures and websites, etc.
They each have their own proprietary electronics and buzzwords ("Triformance" etc) and each of them spins the implant story to highlight their own design strengths. It's like the old game show "Who do You Trust".
A very important sub-topic for me is how to listen to electronic devices (DVD's, MP3's , etc).
So I just emailed the doctor and (kindly) told her that I will weigh her judgement heavily on these issues. Which is my way of dodging my homework and throwing the problems back to the teacher.
All in all, we deaf guys are very fortunate in this day and age. A few years back, this was not an option.
So now it's back to watching old horror movies for the afternoon !!! (too cold and windy to hike around anywhere).
Just in case no other news story kicked your teeth out today .....
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) A 3-year-old who died in a fire in Spokane was found huddled with his dog, who stayed by his side, and a teddy bear.
Sh#t ..... so what is it that I was complaining about ?
Met with the audiologist today, scheduled the implant for Jan 20th, and picked out the design (there are many). I went with a new concept (established electronics, new packaging) that is just a gizmo that sticks to your head (a magnet). Nothing goes into or hangs off your ear. We even color matched it to my hair.
Hearing aid manufacturers are now focusing their designs on people with only moderate hearing loss. The industry is recognizing that people with severe or profound hearing loss are better served by implants (bypassing the damaged ear parts), not hearing aids (simple amplifiers).
When a deaf person can't hear you, don't say "Turn your hearing aids up" . At some point more amplification does no good (this is especially true if you are yelling into a telephone). At that point, your best bet is to talk slower and more clearly to help the deaf guy try to interpret the garbage his ears are sending to his poor tired worn out brain.
I liked John McCain. Was going to vote for him until he picked S. Palin as a running mate, but I still respected and liked the guy as a political leader. Until this morning, when I read his comment during a radio interview.
"I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up," Senator John McCain said in a radio interview in Pennsylvania on Monday. "I promise you. This is where we need the majority."
That is obstructionist and politically disgusting and it's the kind of political behaviour that ruined our government (it's ruined, you know). Hostile, confrontational, combative, obstructionist, intolerant .... pick a word .... this is how the powers in Washington have choked American government to death. Our politicians choose to deadlock America rather than form a cooperative government. Both sides are equally guilty, but McCain's comment has my attention at the moment.
has dropped 58% since 1970, and it's getting worse.
(CNN) More than two thirds of the world's wildlife could be gone by the end of the decade (2020) ....... a new report from the World Wildlife Fund revealed on Thursday.
Since 1970, there has already been a 58% overall decline in the numbers of fish, mammals, birds and reptiles worldwide, according to the WWF's latest bi-annual Living Planet Index.
If accurate, that means wildlife across the globe is vanishing at a rate of 2% a year.
If I did the math right, the entire wildlife animal population on this planet (in the sea and on land) will be virtually gone in 125 years. According to the guys in-the-know, this kind of mass extinction has only happened 5 previous times in the last 580 million years.
Glad that I'll be gone by then.
This little guy (waiting outside for me to fill the feeders) looks quite pissed about the news.
Thinking about this I recall George Carlin's comments about environmentalists worrying about "the planet". He said something like "Don't BS me. You are not worried about the planet, your'e worried about mankind - the human race. The planet is going to be fine."
And he was right.
What is causing the wildlife to die is basically the activities of man - pollution and destroying forests, jungles, ovefishing the seas, warming killing the coral reefs, holes in the ozone layer killing plankton, melting icecaps etc etc. The animal population is now going to die off to near total extinction, then billions of people will die from lack of food. The planet will be less populated, forests and jungles and seas will come back. The planet will be fine, and there will be billions fewer people to cause this much trouble again for maybe another 20,000 years or so.
Call it the balance of nature.
But, on the downside ..... I imagine that God is going to be wicked wicked pissed when She hears about this.
Mike posted (on Youtube) two videos of his house made with Iuri's drone. Very cool, you may enjoy the view (I LOVED it): Mike's Channel
A few pictures of Jake, Ryan and Jack at an airshow in Ft. Worth. I'm seeing some new military heroes and engineers here.
Deb and I are voting (early) tomorrow down at Town Hall. Decisions decisions. I've decided not to vote for a president, but I feel it's okay this time. I would vote for Hillary only if I thought my vote was needed to stop Trump, but I did some homework and I see that Hillary is 30% ahead of Trump here in MA. So she is definitely going to get all 11 of our electoral college votes. So, I'm going to abstain, and only vote for state issues.
IMO, Hillary is a lot better than Trump, but that ain't saying much.
(Deb hasn't told me who she's voting for, but I'm pretty sure I can guess who it is.)
