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Bina - 2008-08-29 19:06:13
Kirsten Scott Thomas is married to a Frenchman and lives in Paris. I read an interview with her prior to this film's release. I'm very jealous of her life.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-29 19:11:20
I'm very jealous of that Frenchman!
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Mr Lojban - 2008-08-29 19:15:55
@Bina: Which part? The "married to a Frenchman" part? The "lives in Paris" part? Or the "Pompatus of Love" part?
@Andrea: It's spooky that that site is written by a dead guy. Also, I had always assumed much greater loss of life on the Andrea Doria.
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Paula - 2008-08-29 19:34:19
Mr Lojban, I urge you to tell the folks about your personal connection to that ship, for our friends who aren't on Facebook...
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Mr Lojban - 2008-08-29 20:18:03
Well, the story goes that a friend of my dad's, a certain Fr Kenneth S., had been booked on the Andrea Doria. Somehow he was unable to make the departure & returned home on a later ship. Fr Kenneth ended up officiating at my parents' wedding. By the time I met him, he already had a reputation in my house for singing inappropriate songs about leprosy. [Paula, despite my comments on your Facebook page, in fact he & my father had met in about 1947 or so.]
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MacGregor - 2008-08-30 00:36:37
On a related topic, the K's are absolutely a great live band. That is maximum entertainment. Great songs with a real sense of humor but still poignant... great songwriting, and loads of fun to watch.
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2fs - 2008-08-30 03:47:57
Re the speechifyin' and presidentializin': I take your point - but I think that people respond to it because they're so sick at heart of eight years of cynicism, selfishness, arrogance, disregard, and brutality so that "hope" becomes a nearly physical thing, embodied in the passion, intelligence, and integrity of his speaking. Plus: nice to imagine the President of the United States will be able to form a coherent sentence again.
On the other hand, yes - it gets a bit culty (that one image of Obama - I think it was described somewhere as "looking like he's posing for a coin" - has got to go), and I'm not expecting him to be anything other than a slightly liberal centrist...but after Bush/Cheney, that'll be as refreshing as a cooling rain shower after two solid months of sweltering humidity. We'll worry about being too wet and the need for umbrellas eventually.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-30 13:32:47
2fs--I think it's dangerous to buy into the idea that this even resembles a cult of celebrity. Perhaps that's fueled by people wanting so desperately to believe that change for the better is possible, and it is such a deeply moral issue at this point that it takes on nearly religious overtones. I think what it comes down to though is that people want to believe once again that it is in our own power to take control and do what's right. The theft of the 2000 elections, I believe, rocked Americans 10 times harder than Watergate and even harder than 911 a year later. There has been a sense of powerlessness. People want to believe again. And though it's dangerous to believe that Obama is symbolic of all that's good, or symbolic of anything, there is no doubt that the current administration stands for everything that's wrong and bad.
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Paula - 2008-08-30 14:26:22
Yeah, I'm basically in agreement with both of you (I think). Like I said, I was moved by the speech, and I am a big Obama supporter, but I also know that no single candidate, no single public servant, can change the world, we all have to contribute. And certainly no public servant is gonna change my life, cuz that's my job. So I'm truly excited that change is on the horizon (he is going to win), but I am afraid of the inevitable backlash when Obama's more zealous followers begin to see that he's not Zeus (or Hey-Zeus). But maybe I'm being overly cautious because the Clintons broke my heart in the '90s.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-30 14:36:03
Since my brain converts everything to a correlative pop song, I can only think of Lloyd Cole's Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken
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Bina - 2008-08-30 16:49:03
Mr. Lobjan, if I could marry a Frenchman and go live in Paris and act in movies, I'd probably die of happiness.
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Philip - 2008-08-31 03:17:50
I agree with what I think McGregor is saying -- Have we become so warped that any show of clarity, competency and adherence to principle in our politicians has to be pooh-pooh'ed away as mythical mumbo jumbo? Let the TV clowns bray on (and on) and call it whatever they want, but what they say has less and less to do with reality every day. The speech I actually saw was thrillingly straightforward and down-to-earth. Obama's not actually saying or doing anything more remarkable than that the words coming out his mouth actually correspond to reality. (Even Mighty Bill Clinton never pulled off that trick!)
I am also massively relieved that they are not repeating the mistakes of '00 and '04 -- the spineless kowtowing to utter craven bullshit, and the inevitable crab-like sidle to the center. I hate to say it, but Gore and Kerry deserved what they got. Obama and Biden, by contrast, have spines -- they seem to relish the idea of taking those two vile, low, incompetent and cynical jackasses to pieces in televised debates, and I can't wait to see it. Obama all but said, You seriously want to "debate" how you have brought this country to the brink of ruin? Bring it on, motherfucker!
PS: I also agree with McGregor about the Lloyd allusion -- but then I'm always ready to be heartbroken.
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