Former FEMA Director Mike Brown, who resigned in September, was asked to stay on an extra 30 days to help the agency complete its review of the response to Hurricane Katrina. He stayed on at his annual salary rate of $148,000. HELLO!!! WAKE UP, AMERICA!!! If I was that man’s boss, I’d have fired his ass in a heartbeat. Does our current adminstration have a clue at all? If there was ever a time we really needed Monica Lewinski in the White House, it’s now, people! Just one man’s opinion.
Archive for October, 2005
Enough Already!!!!
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005On Rosa Parks
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005I dropped into a local convenience store yesterday to photocopy some resume material. A big dude walked in, looking like a back-up singer for 50 Cents. He recognized me from TV and we started talking passionately about the legacy of Rosa Parks. He was much younger than I, yet we were so glad that her history was being broadcast because many of our young Americans — be they black or white — may only have really known her name from being a topic of conversation on the comedy movie Barbershop that came out a couple of years ago. The power of her act of civil defiance and the actions that followed were awesome to us. I’ve written this before, but the fact that we Black people were fighting for the right to vote, the right to an education and the right to use a clean non-segregated restroom when I was a child here in the Land of the Free never leaves my spirit. I didn’t get that young brotha’s name but it sure was good to talk to him. Yesterday morning, in the first half-hour of Today on NBC, Katie Couric said some very touching things about the late Rosa Parks. Wouldn’t it be nice for my people if we could point to an African-American broadcaster hosting a network morning news show who was making just as much as Katie? Wouldn’t THAT be some equality? Thanks for your time and attention.
A DeLay Reaction
Thursday, October 20th, 2005This has not been a good week for one of the most muscle-flexxing Conservatives in the House. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, has been ordered to return to Texas for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges. Earlier this year, DeLay was the dude who declared that the right to filibuster was unconstitutional and, I believe, he also said that Terry Schiavo was a gift from God for the Conservative cause. Modern politics — lord have mercy. Of course, he said he’s innocent. Read all about it on www.TomDeLay.com. He put his message out on his website. What tickles me is that there’s still a section you can click onto so you can contribute to Tom’s Congressional Committee. Yeah, right. I’ll do that just as soon as Trent Lott finishes writing a Kwanzaa cookbook. For your homework, I want you to rent a DVD of the Frank Capra classic starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. You’ll see that the filibuster can be a good thing for a good cause in a damn good movie. A Willet Creek Dam good movie. (You’ll understand when you see it.)
Free Katie Holmes
Saturday, October 15th, 2005Katie Holmes has had to pull out of a starring role in a new Dennis Quaid movie because she’s now visibly pregnant with Tom Cruise’s future tax deduction. I’d heard friends mention “silent birth” in relation to the actress, but I really didn’t know what they meant until I read some newspaper reports this week. She’s being coaxed by Scientologist friends to deliver the baby the Dianetics way. The book by L. Ron Hubbard says “Maintain silence in the presence of birth to save both the sanity of the mother and child and safeguard the home to which they will go.” In other words, shut up and push. Oh, baby, that’s too freaky even for us Catholics — and we’ve got some pretty wacky rules and regulations. Personally, I think this is what happens when men run religions. With all due respect, if L. Ron had ever passed something that weighed as much as a Butterball Turkey through a major orifice in his body, I bet he would’ve sounded like an Ethel Merman Car Alarm. I know I would. I say “Free Katie Holmes.” Let her make some noise. Amen.
Brava La Diva Oprah!
Thursday, October 13th, 2005Last week, in a very serious show, Oprah realized her mission on earth — to help protect our children. If you saw the show, you know how visibly angry she was that child molesters are released from custody to go out into society and do evil again and again. She posted the faces of known molesters on her website. Faces of men who have eluded local police and the FBI. She pledged to give big money from her own bank account to whomever finds one of those men. That was last week. This week, she made good on her promise and happily gave out not one…but two awards. One man was caught in the Midwest and the other was caught overseas in Belize. BELIZE, people! Not by cops or the FBI, but by ordinary women who watch Oprah. Can we all just think about that? The power…THE POWER OF OPRAH! She got action in just one week!!!!! I know you’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking — Oprah, girl, put a picture of Osama bin Laden up on that website. Let some poor, beat down, Afghani housewife drag his hairy, hateful ass into custody thanks to the Oprah show. Slap his picture up there. Our government can’t find a 6′ 4″ bearded man with one kidney who dresses like a giant Q-Tip. Let Oprah do it! She has become TV’s Favorite International Bounty Hunter. November is a major television ratings month. If I was Oprah, I’d kick off November by following up my Angel Network with “Oprah’s Angel Swat Team.” Get her posse together and clean up crime in this world — Gayle, John Travolta, Nate Berkus, her hair and make-up team armed and kicking in the doors of suburban crack dens. Stedman bitchslapping a pimp. She could even let Tom Cruise jump up and down on Osama after her show leads to his capture. I LUUUUUUV ME SOME OPRAH!!!!!!!
Sex with Women Over 60
Tuesday, October 11th, 2005I knew that title would get your attention. Did you know that actor Daniel Craig played a hot carpenter who has an affair with a grandmother in a British film called The Mother? By the way, it’s a mutual attraction. She’s not a predatory creature like Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate and he’s not doing it for money or fame like a character in a Tennessee Williams drama. I bring that up because Britain’s fabulous and fine actor is still my top choice to be the new James Bond. And my second choice is still the equally fine Peter Dinklage — even if his name does sound like something that happens to a man’s privates when cold water has been dumped into his lap. Who would be your top choice to be Agent 007? Let me know.
Hoffman as Capote
Saturday, October 8th, 2005I have a showbiz List of Disbelief — actors whom I can’t believe have never been nominated for an Oscar®. I started it when Dennis Quaid didn’t get recognized for his supporting role in FAR FROM HEAVEN. Others on it include Mia Farrow, Donald Sutherland, Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman. One of my favorite acting teachers told our class two months ago that we should study Hoffman’s performances to see how he captures the correct physicality and tone of a character. She’s absolutely right. Look at him as the closeted porn film crewmember in BOOGIE NIGHTS, as the 1950s rich American snob in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, and as the rock critic and unlikely father figure to the teen journalist in ALMOST FAMOUS. When the actor said his first line as the lead character in his new film, CAPOTE, I gasped. When I was kid, the late Truman Capote did guest appearances on talkshows. Hoffman is so f***ing brilliant that you wonder if that’s acting or a case of spiritual possession caught on film. Come next year, I think I’ll have to cross him off that list. He’s got to be a frontrunner on Oscar Night. The performance is great. The movie is good, not great. However, the tale that goes back to the 1950s when Capote was writing his acclaimed book In Cold Blood, has a lot to say about today’s world of the arts. Like many of our current performers, Hoffman’s Capote suffers from RCS — “Red Carpet Syndrome.” His best friend and constant companion is Harper Lee, the Southern woman who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird. Unlike Truman, Harper doesn’t need to be the centerpiece at a party. She doesn’t need the Photo Op on the Red Carpet. In fact, as she graciously wafts through parties, folks compliment her on the news that she got a book published but no one can remember its title or its subject matter. For Capote, the Red Carpet traps him like flypaper. A Kansas family was slaughtered by two cons. He decides to write a novel based on the chilling crime. Like a journalist, he spends a good amount of time interviewing the two men in prison for his written report. The book will become his masterpiece, but not without a price. There’s one scene that really says it all and shows the unholy trinity of journalism, entertainment and crime. Truman arranges for famed fashion photographer Richard Avedon to take pictures of the killers. Capote poses with one of them. Lines have been blurred. Harper Lee is to Truman what Lester Bangs is to William in ALMOST FAMOUS. When Lester tells the writer “These people are not your friends,” that is exactly what she feels watching her friend embark on this long, dark writer/subject relationship. That undercurrent of crime making people stars is fascinating to me. It happens. The TV career of Star Jones started when she was a legal counsel in Brooklyn and gave network commentary on the OJ Simpson murder trial. Today she’s a millionaire TV talkshow celebrity. If you watch two classic movies, you will have a deeper appreciation of CAPOTE. The films are TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and IN COLD BLOOD, the movie based on the Capote novel. Jem and Scout’s friend, Dill, is based on Truman in the Gregory Peck gem. A number of scenes in Hoffman’s new movie are recreations of scenes from IN COLD BLOOD, the critically-acclaimed 1967 film starring Robert Blake. If Blake, an actor accused of murder, ever got an Oscar nomination in his career, it should have been for playing the killer in that movie. Like Hoffman, he delivered an excellent performance.