This site appears to have been hacked with a bunch of link redirections inserted in the front page, which is why Google purged me from their indices. I did an XML backup of the site’s contents, wiped out my entire public_html directory, reinstalled the latest version of WordPress, and then restored the contents. If you run into flakiness, that’s why. ..bruce..
Google weirdness — this site purged from Google
It appears that this site was purged completely from Google sometime on the evening of December 6th. I have no idea why. This means, of course, that not only are no Google searches coming to this site, but that the site has likely lost whatever ‘authority’ it had in the Google search algorithm.
Anyone with suggestions as to why this may have happened? ..bruce..
Christmas recommendation: “Scrooge” (1970)
[cross-posted from And Still I Persist]
This remains my favorite Christmas movie (yes, even over “A Christmas Story”). It is a musical version of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, starring Albert Finney in the title role. I am not alone in my praise for this movie; note that of the 406(!) customer reviews for it at Amazon, 366 (90%) give it 5 stars and another 21 give it 4 stars.
“Scrooge” didn’t do all that well when it was released theatrically in 1970. Movie critics didn’t like it, feeling that it was somehow silly in the light of the earlier ‘classic’ versions of “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 Alastair Sim version). For years after that, if “Scrooge” showed up at all, it was in a chopped-up, pan-and-scan version on TV; I can remember my own profound disappointment when I first saw it on TV. The VHS release wasn’t much better — while not chopped up, it was still pan-and-scan, losing much of the outstanding cinematography and choreography.
But for five years now, it’s been out on DVD in an uncut widescreen version. The movie itself has held up very well. The score and libretto are outstanding; a few of the movie’s songs have crept into the mainstream over the years (I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing one on their weekly broadcast earlier this year). As mentioned above, the choreography is outstanding as well, as are the cinematography and art direction.
The real key, though, is Albert Finney in the title role. The director cast a young man (Finney was only in his early 30s when this was filmed) as Scrooge, figuring that it was easier to make a young man look old than to make an old man look young. Furthermore, the old Scooge is not played as a stern if elegant patrician; he’s played quite literally as a dirty moneygrubber, with a permanent hunch to his back. His Scrooge is not someone you would want to cross or meet in a dark alley.
The movie shows a bit more of Scrooge’s young life (via the Ghost of Christmas Past), giving a better sense of Scrooge’s descent from a tall, handsome, modest young man to the bent-over miser he becomes. It also adds a scene of Scrooge in Hell (as part of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future) that is quite humorous and at the same time chilling (so to speak). And there are a few changes in the final sequence of events as well, but they represent a payoff from things set up early on.
At its core, though, “Scrooge” fully delivers on Dickens’ original message of regret, repentance, and redemption, and it does so in a powerful fashion. I recommend it without reservation. ..bruce w..
Missionaries find Bigfoot footprints!
I’m sure the mission president was thrilled when he read this newspaper article about two LDS missionaries finding possible “Bigfoot footprints” outside their house:
Two missionaries with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints received a scare on the night of Dec. 2 when they saw what they think was a set of sasquatch footprints outside of their Burns Lake home.
Tyler Beck and Brad Blazzard are in B.C. for two years, rotating in different communities throughout the Smithers and Burns Lake area for the past seven months.
“The first thing we thought was that someone was playing a trick on us,” Beck said.”But we don’t know anyone our age who would do that and our house in on the southside, so pretty much in the middle of nowhere.”
The footprints, which Beck said was about 20 inches long is right in front of Beck’s porch, leading to the path where the pair keep their wood shed.
Beck said prior to finding the footprint at 9:30 p.m. on the night of Dec. 2, he didn’t really believe in the possibility of bigfoot.
“I still don’t know what to think,” he said. “I have heard some pretty ridiculous things about bigfoot but now I am leaning toward the edge of thinking it may be possible.”
It’s not clear how then ended up talking to the local newspaper about this, but I’m not sure they helped their missionary efforts much by doing so.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite Calvin Grondahl cartoons. It shows two Nephites up on a wall; staring back at them is a one-eyed giant with pointy ears. One Nephite says to the other, “You realize of course, that if you mention the Cyclops in the gold plates, it’s going to create an enormous credibility problem.” Heh. ..bruce..
The Atlantic analyzes the “Twilight” novels
Caitlin Flanagan looks at the “Twlight” phenomenon and, I think, puts her finger on exactly why these novels (which so many love to scorn) have become so popular:
The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.
Twilight is fantastic. It’s a page-turner that pops out a lurching, frightening ending I never saw coming. It’s also the first book that seemed at long last to rekindle something of the girl-reader in me. In fact, there were times when the novel—no work of literature, to be sure, no school for style; hugged mainly to the slender chests of very young teenage girls, whose regard for it is on a par with the regard with which just yesterday they held Hannah Montana—stirred something in me so long forgotten that I felt embarrassed by it. Reading the book, I sometimes experienced what I imagine long-married men must feel when they get an unexpected glimpse at pornography: slingshot back to a world of sensation that, through sheer force of will and dutiful acceptance of life’s fortunes, I thought I had subdued. The Twilight series is not based on a true story, of course, but within it is the true story, the original one. Twilight centers on a boy who loves a girl so much that he refuses to defile her, and on a girl who loves him so dearly that she is desperate for him to do just that, even if the wages of the act are expulsion from her family and from everything she has ever known. We haven’t seen that tale in a girls’ book in a very long time. And it’s selling through the roof.
Be sure to read the whole thing, and then ask yourself: why are the “Twilight” novels and movie so popular among adult women as well? ..bruce..
BYU vs. Utah: a post-game analysis…by Hitler
The following video sequence from the movie “Downfall” may well be the most frequently subcaptioned video clip in the history of the net (check the “subprime mortgage” version).
So, of course, someone had to apply it to the Utah rout of BYU a few weeks back:
Hat tip to Deep Shades of Blue (a great BYU football blog run by ex-Cougar Quinn Gooch). ..bruce..
Thanksgiving Day menu
[cross-posted from And Still I Persist]
We have family and friends coming over for dinner (actually, two of our grandsons have been here since Sunday; we’ve been having a great time with the Wii, the ping pong table, and the air hockey table), a total of 10 people. Here’s what I’m fixing for dinner:
- roast turkey (22.5 lbs)
- corn bread stuffing (water chestnuts, whole cranberries, sliced almonds, celery, onion)
- mashed potatoes (new potatoes, skin on, lots of butter)
- sweet potatoes kittichai (mashed sweet potatoes plus coconut milk)
- mixed steamed fresh veggies (green beans, broccoli, broccolini, brussle sprouts, carrots)
- homemade cheese sauce (Sandra’s contribution)
- roast acorn and delicata squash (1 each, small, mostly for the novelty)
- Pillsbury Grands! rolls (hey, gotta take a shortcut somewhere)
- homemade cranberry sauce (made with orange juice and fresh orange zest)
- homemade pumpkin and mince pies, with homemade whipped cream
Note that “homemade” for the pies means Pillsbury roll-out crusts, jarred mince filling, and canned 100% pumpkin filling (plus requisite sugar, spices, eggs, and condensed milk). I actually made a pumpkin pie from scratch many years ago (e.g., cut up and cooked the pumpkin, made the crust from scratch, etc.), and I decided it’s just not worth the time and effort.
This is a feast day, and a day for giving thanks. I was going to write a longer posting about the meaning of this day, but then I remembered that I did that last year, so just consider that post included by reference. In spite of the current financial turmoil, we still live in the land of greatest opportunity and freedom. And with our son still over in Iraq, we are especially mindful and grateful for all the sacrifices made for those freedoms. God bless us, everyone. ..bruce w..
‘Net searches that end up at this blog
One of my favorite features of the Sitemeter monitoring service that I subscribe to is that I can see the actual search strings that people typed into Google or other search engines that led them to this blog. The single most common set of search strings combine “Mormon” or “LDS” with “Obama”. A fair number of people do searches on “adventures in mormonism”, for reasons that entirely escape me (I chose the name based on a lingering fondness for the late 80s movie, “Adventures in Babysitting”). But what I find most fascinating are the one-off searches that somehow lead here. Here are a few recent example; quotes are from the search strings themselves; all typos and grammatical errors are preserved:
- “was actually” logic
- repo book
- texas supreme court order mail or person
- stone to leave for family when rapture occurs
- latter day saint church how many private jets
- thomas s monson – the antichrist
- recorded aether hyperspace
- victorian old man clip art
- lds, mormon, eye color
- pbs conspiracy mormon jehovah
- which temple does mitt romney attend
- “one last stolen look”
- grandpa mormon beliefs
- rights of senior missionary companions
- does the lds loves obama
- is the mormon church ran by aliens
- mormon sounds
- exobiology characteristics
- sword turns into milk
- the brothers karamazov edmund fuller less pages
- is it ok for mormon kids to hug
- mormon church mt. shasta
- mormon sheep
- mormons have no personal debt
- michelle obama is mormon?
- lds mission presidents excommunicated
- dave berry mormon
- bipolar mormon
- mormon caverns salt lake city
- is there a jared in lehi whose last name starts with an f,
- mormon clue board game
- mormon clothing and men
- “they might be giants” mormon
- b.y.u. theme song 1945
Those are all hits within the last 3 weeks (and taken from the most recent 2000 hits on this blog). ..bruce..
The more things change…
I am currently re-reading Nibley’s The Ancient State, largely because of some novels I’m writing. This morning, I was just finishing up “The Hierocentric State” (published 1951) and found the following passage from the last paragraph strangely reminiscent of the current cult of personality on the Left (and I speak as a former lifelong Democrat):
Men seem unable to leave the dream of the hierocentric state alone. To recapitulate the sections given above, we cannot blame people if they yearn for (1) the grandeur, color, and unity of the great assembly, (2) the lofty and uncompromising certainty of universal kingship, (3) the sense of refuge and well-being in the holy shrine, (4) the high and independent life of a chivalrous aristocracy, (5) the luxury of hating all opposition with a holy hatred, and (6) the sheer authority of the institutions established and maintained by force.
Having finished that essay, I started on “Sparsiones” (published in 1945) and read the following, which called to mind the current insanity surrounding financial bailouts:
The Roman practice, best described as sparsio, of bestowing public donatives by throwing things among the multitude to be scrambled for in scenes of wild disorder has never received the attention which its strangeness solicits and its significance for the study of Roman politics and economics deserves.
A little later on, I ran into this passage from the same article:
It is impossible indeed to conceive of a system less compatible to the good order of the [Roman] Republic, or more plainly and fatally designed to beget corruption in it, than that of of the Roman collections and distributions, or any more blatant offense to every idea of order and decorum (so dear to the Republic) than a public scamble.
Food for thought.
“Twilight”: a brief review (w/spoilers)
My wife turned to me on yesterday (Thursday) morning and said, “I’d like to see the midnight showing of ‘Twilight’ tonight.” So we went; I’m always game for seeing a moving on opening day/night. And since I’ve read all the “Twilight” novels as well, I had my own interest seeing how the movie turned out.
Answer: not bad. In fact, pretty decent, given the relatively low budget and the need to edit down a very thick book into two hours. I have to give major credit to Kristen Stewart, who does a great job as Bella; most of the other actors do quite well, also.
The biggest problem, frankly, is Edward (played by Robert Pattison). Not that Pattinson does a bad job with the role. It’s that Edward in the book is described as so impossibly good looking and physically perfect that I”m not sure any actor could have lived up to that, at least not without some major and expensive special effects. (When the movie was over, a young woman behind me said, “That’s not my Edward!”)
The biggest weakness in the (adjusted) story arc was, ironically, Bella falling in love with Edward. The film only used a minor amount of internal narration — mostly at the beginning and near the end, modeling itself after the book. As such, we had little clue as to what Bella was actually thinking while she was staring at Edward: was she mad? Curious? Trying to figure him out? Once the romance started, the characters did a better job of selling it.
The movie did a good job of introducing some humor into the story, partly because the whole audience knew that Edward was a vampire before Bella did and so tended to giggle at things he would do or say, since they knew why he was acting that way. The movie also did a good job of putting out there (with a iight touch) the humor from the incongruities of Bella being around this family of vampires.
Demographics: the midnight showing — in a large metropolitan area with lot of multiplexes around — was sold out. The audience was at least 90% female, and I’m willing to be that almost all of the males who were there were (like myself) there with a female. The female ages skewed young, but there were plenty of women in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s there. I spent time looking around the audience before the movie started and came away pretty sure that I was the oldest male there (55); in fact, I only saw two others who looked as though they could even be over 40.
All in all, a decent job. I’ll be interested to see just what it does at the box office. Spoilers (such as they are) after the jump.