The Happiest Place on Earth - a movie

I found this very cool project (film) and I really like what they are doing. If you want to throw $15 (or more) to help, go to their site and pledge a few bucks:     Check them out:

Our Story

Exactly one week before Thanksgiving 2008, director John Goshorn was laid off from his job in local television.  

"As I wrestled with questions of why and how, and developed coping strategies, I was also struck by how my circumstances could have been much worse, how desperate I might have become if they were, and why.   As I wrote, I realized that I was far less concerned with the mechanics of the plot than the national – and human – psychology the plot revealed.  Namely, the tendency to believe that we should remain immune from harm, that the end of restoring “what’s ours” justifies whatever action will get us there, and our inability to accept that perhaps the life we perceive to be “ours” was never real in the first place, just an attempt to recreate a fairy tale."  

Over a period of nine months of unemployment, this thinking developed into the story of the feature film, The Happiest Place on Earth:

Days after Jonah and Maggie Price move into their first home, he loses his newspaper job, jeopardizing their dream of finally starting a family after a decade together.  Maggie picks up a second job, and they attempt to muddle through, but Jonah can’t find work and they find themselves in danger of losing their home.  After a particularly humiliating job interview, Jonah retreats to the coast to console himself, but doesn’t come back.  When he is declared missing, Maggie must weigh her material circumstances against her hopes of his safe return.

All that being said, check out the Top 6 sites for raising money for a film.

Gogol Bordello - Just a band?

A few years ago I was watching Henry Rollins Show.

I miss that show. Henry, of Black Flag, a punk band that used to scare the crap out of parents and sometimes fans alike, had a show formatted so it started with his, scary good looking face, leading to an introduction of his show.

Then he would have a guest, a Rant he called "Sounding Off", where he would scream at you for a few minutes on some relevant topic, during which he would be intermittently funny, serious and pissed off. And you felt he had a right to be and you had a right to be and you felt good that someone else felt that way. More than once he introduced me to topics, things, people, music, I'd had no idea about. He would then have a musical guest on at the end doing a couple of songs.

Why, don't we have that kind of quality, speaking to a group, such as we are?

I don't know. Has to be a bunch of us out there. Well, at least Henry did it for a while.

So one night he had on a band new to me. I didn't know what to do, other than to call my kids downstairs and say, check this band out: Gogol Bordello. We realized later my friend Dave had given us a "Cool" CD of some music he had now idea where it was from. It was Gogol for the most part, from the film, "Everything is Illuminated".

Eventually my two kids and I went to their concert in Seattle and it was unbelievably cool. The loudest bass I'd ever experienced. I love these guys and wow can they party on stage! There is a documentary where a woman took Eugene, the lead singer, back to his homeland (The Pied Piper Of Hützovina).

Wikipedia:

"Gogol Bordello is a Gypsy punk band from the Lower East Side of New York City, formed in 1999 and known for theatrical stage shows and persistent touring. Much of the band's sound is inspired by Gypsy music. The band incorporates minor-key accordion and violin (and on some albums, saxophone) mixed with punk and dub.

"Gogol" comes from the name Nikolai Gogol. As one of the most influential writers in Russian and Ukrainian literature, Gogol paved the way for the likes of Kafka and Dostoevsky. He also serves as an ideological influence for the band because he "smuggled" Ukrainian culture into Russian society, which Gogol Bordello intends to do with Gypsy/ East-European music in the English-speaking world. "Bordello", in Italian, refers to a brothel or a "gentleman's club".

"The band was originally titled Hütz and the Béla Bartóks, but Eugene Hütz says that they decided to change the name because "nobody knows who the hell Béla Bartók is in the United States". The band played their first show as the unofficial band at an after-hours club called Pizdetz where they became the house band and DJ Hütz became the house DJ."

I knew the first time I saw this band on The Henry Rollins Show was something special and they don't disappoint when you see them live. One or more of them have been on TV, film and documentaries.

Eugene Hütz with Gogol Bordello live at Pisa, July 2010

• 2004 - Kill Your Idols - Hütz was interviewed in this documentary about New York's "No Wave" music scene.
• 2005 - Everything Is Illuminated - In Liev Schreiber's directorial debut, which stars Elijah Wood, the role of Alexander Perchov was played by Eugene Hütz. It includes cameo appearances by other Gogol Bordello members in the train scene.
• 2006 - The Pied Piper Of Hützovina - Documentary by Pavla Fleischer about a road trip she and Eugene Hütz took to Ukraine to trace his roots.
• 2006 - Wristcutters: A Love Story - "Eugene", played by American actor Shea Whigham, is partly based on Eugene Hütz, whose music ("Through the Roof and Underground" and "Occurrence on the Border") is featured in the film as that recorded by the character's old band.
• 2008 - Filth and Wisdom - The entire band appeared in this independent film directed by Madonna. Eugene Hütz is the protagontist. Madonna also allowed Eugene to add his own dialogue into the script.
• 2008 - Gogol Bordello Non-Stop - The development of the band was documented in this film directed by Margarita Jimeno. It follows the band's rise from underground legends to international fame from 2001 to 2007.
• 2009 - Larger Than Life in 3D - Live High-def digital concert footage shot in stereoscopic 3-D at the Austin City Limits festival in October 2009.
• 2009- Live From Axis Mundi: Professionally recorded live concert footage shot in New York.

Elizabeth Chi-Wei Sun

For Pamela Racine photo

Gogol may not be the music for the masses, they may even be an acquired taste for many, but you can't deny their energy, their positive attitude and their lighthearted orientation coming out of a group of people who have had a rough time of it over the centuries. Regardless, they are one of my all time favorite bands.

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart. Be Brilliant.

“A word to the wise isn’t necessary, it is the stupid ones who need all the advice.”
—Bill Cosby

“Many years ago I chased a woman for almost two years, only to discover that her tastes were exactly like mine: we both were crazy about girls.”
—Groucho Marx

“Not all chemicals are bad. Without hydrogen or oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.”
—Dave Berry

“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.”
—Groucho Marx

“Some see the glass as half-empty, some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big.”
—George Carlin


“Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.”
—Chuck Norris

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There’s no use in being a damn fool about it.”
—W.C. Fields

“The man who can’t dance thinks the band is no good.”
—Polish Proverb

“When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun.’”
—Unknown

"Fair Game" and How the Bush Administration Misled the World

Happy April Fool's day. Find someone you care about and make them laugh. Just don't be mean spirited. Pull a joke on someone. But don't hurt them. Don't "Out them" in anyway. Don't do what the Bush Administration did to Valerie Plame Wilson and tell the world she was an CIA agent, who just happened to be under cover at the time, running multiple ops around the world and most likely got some people killed. Someone, in the White House, was a traitor to the United States, a penalty typically enforced by death, but in the case of "Scooter" Libby, was enforced with a Presidential pardon, commuting the sentence he was given by the court.

Thank God that fiasco is now over. This country has suffered severe set backs in the eight years of the Bush rodeo in this Nation's capital.

I just got my Blu-Ray disk of the movie "Fair Game" with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, about CIA Officer Valerie Plame and ex Ambassador Joe Wilson and how the President Bush and Vice President Cheney and their Administration named her as an active agent with multiple live operations in play around the world, because she was the wife of Joe, who stood up and said the White House lied.

This is a story about how the White House wanted to go to war, to take down Saddam Hussein, and how they faked a need, faked evidence, to be able to do so. And when someone calls them on the carpet about it, how they tried to destroy people's lives. It has now been shown that this all did happen. Now one knew, the American public was tricked, deluded, lied to. The Bush Administration fooled their constituents and the world.

Valerie, once her cover was blown, was ejected from the CIA, and was then treated, in a way, that one could only describe as how a wanton woman was once treated in the old days when she had been raped. As if she had brought it on herself, or had caused it and was in some way to blame for it. After receiving many serious death threats during this initial time after her cover was blown (by the white house), she requested from the CIA, personal protection for herself and her family.

There were three others (Tenant, Ashcroft, and Rove) who had also received this types of threats and who had already been given round the clock protection. All they offered Valeria and her children and husband, an ex US Ambassador was the promise of a few more City Police cruisers to pass her house each day. If you know anything about espionage at all, City Police are not properly prepared to deal with that kind of action. One might almost get the feeling that had she or her husband actually been killed, it would have been a desired event. Where is all the "we are a family" that the CIA likes to have people believe?

Joe and Valerie

Or, did they? I know many of us were oblivious, ignorant, or naive. But there were others. Myself being one of them. But then, I have had a background that lead to an understanding power plays in politics and espionage and intelligence gathering.

I remember many of the news briefs shown in the film, many of President Bush and those of his administration and what they said, how I felt, what people around me thought.

I had a strong sense of being lied to, back then.

I asked some of my friends, coworkers: "Do you believe what they are saying? Do you think they are making things up just to go to war?" Everyone said the same thing: "Of course they are lying, Bush wants to go to war, oil is at stake, the middle east is at stake; Bush and his family are oil and in bed with companies like Blackwater, and Halliburton, that Cheney was head of it at one time."

It was just a bunch of rich guys, in charge of the US Government, looking to make themselves and their friends, billions of dollars and over the course of the decade and perhaps even now still, trillions of dollars.

I did not then fully believe what was being said and I was trying to make up my mind, after the attack on the Two Towers in New York, on American soil: did I care? It kept me from thinking clearly, not that I could have done anything at the time, anyway. And I had a lot of other stuff going on back then, some very dark moments in my own personal life and really, I wanted to see some wrong's, righted.

We had no one to strike back at in Al-Qaeda, we needed a good old John Wayne conventional war.

Oh, look, there's Iraq, over there. Saddam is a bastard (even though we set him up, cut intelligence assets in the Middle East because he was our "friend"), let's take him out.

As for the movie, I really liked it. I checked out the extras when the movie was over because I wanted more. I found that on the second audio track, were the people who the story was about, the authors of the books they had both separately written that the movie had been based upon.

I had to listen to it.

Hearing their voices and what they had to say, was a strong statement. We had eight years of insanity with Bush in power. The Horror Years. I don't know if it was Bush, or Cheney, really. Carl Rove has said that if the President had known there were no WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), he wouldn't have gone to war (blaming the CIA, which is always the White House's scapegoat).

There is a shot in the film in another country, where you feel that country is run by a bad government, then when we next are in the US, you have this correlation, is America like that too? Are we too living in a government run amuck?

Valerie Plame Wilson's blog on Huffington Post.

Demographic Transitions

A 2005 report by the World Watch Institute, what Bill Maher has called, a "Hippy ThinkTank", said, that in countries where there is what they call a "youth bulge" like in Saudi Arabia, 75% of the people there are under thirty years old.

They say this is what causes civil unrest. They call this a "demographic transition", to go from large families with a short life span, to small families with a long lifespan. The thought is that this is a precursor to what typically leads to calls for Democracy.

One suggestion could be not to attack these countries, when they turn instead from what our kids would do, to play hard, instead to terrorism, blowing things up, or flying planes into buildings, to see this happening, and the CIA reports on this frequently, for every country in the entire world (C.I.A.: Central Intelligence Agency, part of their charter, IS to collect "intelligence", that is to say, information, but then to apply commentary upon that, so that then you have, "intelligence" reports; clever how that works isn't it?). Key to this situation, is the lack of jobs for this "bulge" of young people, how can that NOT lead to unrest?

The smart thing to do with countries like this, would be to help along that decrease in population and help to increase the longevity of that countries citizenry. Because then they have a bottom heavy citizenship with no jobs and that leads to civil unrest. As that time approaches, help them to find new industry, found corporations, businesses, ways to manage their country.

How do you do this? One comedian suggested dropping condoms, rather than bombs (yes, Bill said that).

The Tea Party, according to Journalist David Brooks, is a group that uses "Abby Hoffman means to achieve Norman Rockwell ends".

That has no bearing on this.

I just wanted to share that.

Writer's Block? Feeling... clogged?

Are you a writer? Or do you just think you're a writer?

Writer, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

So if you're a writer, do you get "Writer's Block"?

I don't myself.

I never have times when I lose my writing capability, though sometimes my creativity is less than others, but I can always still write. If ever I have what people call, "writer's block", perhaps my writing isn't as great as other times, but I can always write. If you can think of a word, if you can spell it, you can write. So then, how, can you have "writer's block"?

I always felt people that said they had "writer's block" were either not real writers, or just didn't want to write, either not knowing what to write, or fearing the repercussions of writing; being that they would be judged either by themselves or others. It's always far easier to not write, than to deal with rewriting (writing is rewriting, after all, an old adage). Many people try to write, then never do, so they can say they ARE a writer. But, writer's write.

If ever I have trouble moving forward on a piece of writing, I might switch to another form (screen, short story, novel, nonfiction, blog, etc.), then return to my original troubled piece, later. But, I will switch gears, go for a walk, visit another town for a nice afternoon and lunch, generally, change my lifestyle for a short time (and hour, hours, or day).

Go climb a cliff, do something a little scary, jump out of a plane, maybe jump out of a plane that is even in the air, you can scare the hell out of yourself, experience near death even (BUT try hard not to actually die, otherwise, it really really cramps your writing).

My brother used to say, when things go wrong (of course, he was talking about LSD at the time in the 70s), to change channels; at times all it takes is literally, changing the channel on the TV (experienced THAT once myself).

On the other side of this, is the "I just don't want to write" syndrome. Which, is different. In that case, it's also simple. You have to want to write again. If that's the issue, some of the above works, but so does therapy, or group therapy (could just be drinking at a bar with friends), or personal therapy (could just be meditating).

I've had some experts say that you need to visit the extremes of what you are capable of, on a daily basis, otherwise your body / mind (chakras?) become clogged. So, meditate, later in the day, exercise (hard, sweat), or vice versa; though there are other ways to accomplish this (stare into the distance (hard) for a while, then examine something extremely close up; do the same for all your senses, THEN sit and write. Just some suggestions.

Another thing that works very well, is research or reading. Most authors worth their salt say that if you want to be a writer you have to read. It's more important to read when you are writing, than when you are not writing. It stimulates. You may have to gauge what you read however. If you read a writer that you admire, it may intimidate you to the point that you cannot write. If that happens, merely switch and read some of a writer that you like, but who really isn't that great of a writer. 

I've said for most of my life that in order to get myself to do things, I sometimes have to trick myself into doing it. Or, reward myself. Example: I had rented a house one time, I was in that house for three years. It was perfect when I moved in, the owner lived directly across the street. One of the things in the contract was that I maintained it as it was when I moved in. That meant, among other things, I had to keep the lawn mowed and the yard trimmed.

So, what I did was to get on the ground with an edge trimming too (an old butcher knife actually, I didn't have one of those fancy wheeled trimmers like I have now). I put a bottle of beer about five feet away, and I worked in the hot sun, not getting a drink until I worked my way up to that bottle, which I would then move another five feet away. I rewarded myself. For me, at that time in my life, it worked.

And that works now. You just have to find what that motivator is. You don't get to eat or see a movie, or watch TV, listen to the radio, or go see a friend until you finish ten pages. Or you set a goal of so many pages a day. Then you don't have to work for a day. Or, whatever works for you. For myself, I write a lot daily.

I have my day job which can be mentally demanding, then I work on my personal writing goals in my off hours. Sometimes, I'm so burned out at night, that I just take the night off from writing. Sometimes, I have such a bad week, I have to wait until the weekend. So, I adjust my goals to work with my reality and those things that crop up, unforeseen from time to time.

The point is, I really never got writer's block. If anything like that could be considered to be happening, I switch to another form of writer that is less intimidating, or more pleasurable to do. The key is, don't stop writing and you can never get writer's block.

You have to remember to work with yourself. You also have to consider a balanced life. Writing 16 hours a day, every day, is just not sustainable. You need people time, pleasure times, relaxation, exercise, variety. Treat yourself like a person and don't expect more than you can do on a sustained basis. Then when you do need to really push through a time when you have to work day and night to finish a project, you should be able to. It's like working out so that when you need to exercise hard and fast for a sustained period of time, you may in the end be exhausted, but you can do it.

I also see this in a way how I  use a musical instrument. If you want to learn to play the guitar, say, be sure you play it daily. I have a guitar in the dinning room. Every time I go into the kitchen, I see it. Sometimes, especially when I'm cooking, I have down time from the cooking and pick up the guitar. If I know I will have no time for playing that day, I will pick it up, run the scale up and down at least once, put it done and know I played it for the day. Seems like its not much, but it is.

The same goes for writing. Sometimes, its all in your definition.

Think positive, work reasonably but frequently, and don't stop.

For more on Writer's Block, see Mark David Gerrson's blog on it.

The Bees die, We Die?

Are the bees tired of Humankind's nonsense?

Maybe. They seem to be going away.

Einstein is alleged to have said: "If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination... no more men!"

Sounds scary. Except, Einstein never said that. So it's not so scary. But, if bees are disappearing, then isn't THAT scary? Oh, yeah. That would be frightening. Why? Bees pollinate 70 of the top crops we use to eat. Not to mention, a lot of pretty flowers would have some serious trouble too and we need as much aesthetic organisms as we can get.

But if bees die, many plants do not get pollinated, many animals starve, we have less crops and animals to eat, and therefore, do we have a really good reason now for preparing for vegetarianism? For growing plants in our house, hand pollinating them? Even if we lose the animals to eat, we can still artificially produce, well, produce.

But, what about the bees?

What about Einstein's famous quote? Be careful about people claiming someone said this or that. I heard this on the Bill Maher show. Ellen Page was on, she was Juno in the very cool movie, "Juno" a while back. She is narrating a documentary about Bees and she said Einstein said that, she said Bill used that quote in his show a few years ago. And? They were both wrong. When I heard them talking about it, I was fascinated. So I looked it up. Here is what I found.

Check out the article on Snopes.com. This is a great site. Whenever I get one of those chain emails, I immediately go to snopes, and 95% of the time, they explain it's total nonsense. They said: "...even though Einstein died in 1955, assiduous searching of a variety of databases of historical printed material (e.g., books, newspapers, magazines) has so far failed to turn up any mention of this quote (attributed to Einstein or anyone else) antedating 1994, when it suddenly started popping up in newspaper articles reporting on a protest in Brussels staged by beekeepers."

Okay, so Einstein never said it.

Now, what about the bees disappearing? A brief search of the internet comes up initially with news agencies, ABC, NBC, etc. But these are not the people you want to examine, unless it is for sources, so you can then go to the authorities and see what the true data is directly from the horse's mouth, as it were.

I tried the New Scientist site, but I don't usually like to pay for information if I don't have to (Hey, I'm not rich either and I don't get paid for doing this blog, believe it or not; I TRY to get paid, but so far, no joy). I see Dr. Jeff Pettis, Research Leader, USDA-ARS Bee Research Laboratory is mentioned a lot (and on Discovery.com) but couldn't find any direct information on him or his research.


A posting on BioBees,  indicates possible causes to bee decline world wide to be:


"* New kinds of virulent fungal pathogens, which can be deadly to bees and other key pollinating insects, are being detected worldwide, migrating from one region to another as a result of shipments linked to globalization and rapidly growing international trade.

"* An estimated 20,000 flowering plant species, upon which many bee species depend for food, could be lost over the coming decades unless conservation efforts are stepped up

"* Increasing use of chemicals in agriculture, including systemic insecticides and those used to coat seeds, is being found to be damaging or toxic to bees. Some can, in combination, be even more potent to pollinators, a phenomenon known as the 'cocktail effect.

"* Climate change, left unaddressed, may aggravate the situation, in various ways including by changing the flowering times of plants and shifting rainfall patterns. This may in turn affect the quality and quantity of nectar supplies."

I checked out the site for the Bee Research Lab, whose site claims that: "Throughout the world the "Beltsville Bee Lab," as it is often referred to, is recognized for its research on bee diseases and pests and for providing a bee disease diagnostic service for 100+ years".

Their site lead to the International Bee Research Association, in Great Britain. They had a link to a pamphlet, "What's happening to our Bees?"

Their pamphlet, sounding very professional and rational, says:

Conclusion
"Whether any single factor is the cause or whether collapse is brought about by a combination of causes is not clear. Certainly there is a paramount need to beware of any interpretation or spin put on one cause or another by those with some foible or an axe to grind. In this respect the popular press seems to delight in acting irresponsibly and will try to tie bee losses into whatever is doing the news rounds on a particular day, the more bizarre the better as far as they are concerned.

"At this stage, few researchers offer any firm conclusions. Some tentatively note, that from preliminary surveys, nearly all beekeepers experiencing CCD in the USA, noticed a period of “extraordinary stress” affecting the colonies prior to their demise. In most cases this stress was a result of poor nutrition or drought brought about by a number of different causes."

So something is going on, in 2010, the State of Washington requested an emergency exemption to use a pesticide hop beta acids (HopGuard) to control the Varroa Mites in Honey Bee populations in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Scientific American site has an article (free) that asks: "Plan Bee: As Honeybees Die Out, Will Other Species Take Their Place? In a race against time, researchers propagate native solitary bees as an alternative to our most important pollinators."

Summing up, do we have something to be worried about? I would say that is a qualified , yes. Is there any thing we can do about it? Well, perhaps not directly as with the Scientists and Beekeepers directly involved, but indirectly, we can talk about it, bring it to people's attention, and push for safer use and understanding of how we do things in production of honey and farming.

So, I don't have any answers either. I just find it interesting. But remember that forewarned can be forearmed and ignorance, is the most powerful force for destruction there is. We can at very least, try not to add to it. And that includes not propagating disinformation and hype by the media.