Category: The Voices in My Head

So, Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” character is coming to the big screen. Sort of. In One Shot (trailer below), Tom Cruise is inexplicably cast as Jack Reacher. WTF?!?

No, seriously: WTF?!?

The Character, as established by Child in–I think–17 novels is 6’5″, 250 pounds of phlegmatic, unstoppable force. I can think of exactly NO “negotiation” (read, “Reacher utterly destroys the bad guys in hand-to-hand, or head-to-face-butt”) scene in any of the books that a guy Tom Cruise’s size could survive, let alone wreak the havoc the Reacher character does.

And then there’s personality. The quirky, birdlike Cruise twitching from one girly-voiced dialog delivery to another is hardly the image of the laconic, phegmatic Reacher portrayed in so many successful novels to date. Absolutely nothing in the trailer, for instance, seems congruent with the Reacher character in the books.

I imagine those who have never read any of the books and have a crush on Pretty Boy Cruise will enjoy the thing, but while I applaud the fact that Lee Child is going to make some big bucks off the thing, I kind of wish he’d played the part of Reacher himself. It’d have been at least a little more believable.

 

 

Yeh, yeh, I drink pop. Soda. Whatever. Not so much as I used to, but I drink the stuff. At least I no longer drink Pepsi, long my preferred cola (never really did develop a taste for Coca-Cola; it always came across as too sweet to me, for one thing). I stopped drinking sugar and corn syrup sweetened pops long ago, and in fact even went off carbonated soft drinks entirely for a while, since artificial sweeteners just didn’t make the grade for me, although I’d partaken of them for some time under a mistaken impression they’d help me control my middle age spread (they didn’t seem to).

A couple of years ago, though, I discovered a cola that’s not only sugar free but tastes better to my palate than my old fav, Pepsi: Continue reading “Confessions of a Pop Drinker”

You know the ones I mean: generally well-acted, pretty darned good (as in superior to most cable fare on US TV) production values, great music and sound, scenery and settings to die for, interesting faces and voices, etc. OTOH, pretty predictable plots, lots of evidence why Britain used to be “GREAT Britain” (with tons of pointers for those who want to emasculate the US as well *sigh* ) and far too much use of “classic” whodunit camera techniques. And what’s with the stupid four-episode “seasons”? That’s pretty crappy, guys. Just sayin’.

So many good things hampered by a few glaring faults. Better than what I can find on cable TV, though.

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Still… Positives include Inspector Lewis, the spinoff from the long success of the Inspector Morse books and the series. Sometimes I want to say, “Take Inspector Lewis, PLEASE,” but usually it’s really quite good on the whole. An example: the theme music. Just wonderful stuff, but I could swear one motif in the theme is outright “borrowing” of a Beethoven motif. That in itself is only to the good, of course (heck, I’ve “borrowed” a motif here and there for development into something else, myself), if I am correct (just noticed it–yeh, I’m kinda slow *heh*–and haven’t replayed the section I’m thinking of in my mind’s ear, but it seems so at first thought), but, regardless, that it even evokes such a thought is an indication of the quality of the music.

And that reminds me: it’s probably time for my quarterly refreshment of Beethoven’s oeuvre in my mind’s ear (it used to need refreshment less often for memory replay, but my mind’s ear just ain’t what it used ta be, ya know? :-)). Fortunately, just about every recording of every Beethoven work I’ve been able to lay my hands on is now stored on my Amazon Cloud Drive (as well as available to load en masse onto a pocket-sized mp3 player) and accessible to listen to almost anywhere on multiple devices.

So, thanks to the prod from Inspector Lewis, I’ll be “seeing” the aural landscapes of Beethoven’s mind’s ear a bit more directly over the next couple of weeks’ time. Thanks, Robbie.

…why it is that some people who just “can’t stand” to watch TV or movies on their laptops or desktops nevertheless find squinting at TV or movies on an eeentsy-weensy 3″-4″ smartphone’s screen to be da bomb?*

…why some people call their desktops their “hard drives” or think referring to their hard drive as “memory” is appropriate? These are often the same people who think that turning off their desktop’s monitor=turning off the computer.

…how some people confuse “upload” with “download” with “install”.

…how some people can use computers for years and not even know what OS they have installed or the names of the programs they use most OR that “program” and “application” are essentially interchangeable terms.

Just stupid, I guess, ignorant savages who think electricity and everything connected to it is just magic.

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*Note: when I find some TV or movie worth watching, the only technology I prefer to avoid using to watch it is a typical big screen theater. Wastes of money on many levels, IMO–particularly in being crammed into audiences increasingly filled with yahoos, boors and “idjits”. TV (big or small screen), desktop, laptop, tablet: all fine with me, especially since in the last three formats I can have volume levels controlled to my taste and in the latter two formats I can use really, really good ear buds or earphones for surprisingly accurate sound reproduction and in the desktop format, my very good surround sound system really makes for great listening in my office. TV? Notsomuch, as its sound is shared (and that’s enough of that story).

I have a little ditty that uses the old Kennel Ration commercial, “My dog’s better than your dog” tune, but I’ll not inflict it on you now.

The point, though? Different does not necessarily mean better. We are all different from the skin all the way to the bone and blood and meat and sinew, heart and soul. Different in composition, talents, abilities, outlook, desire, understanding, etc.

We are also all the same in many ways. Some of the most important ways we are the same include that we all have the same opportunities while at the same time we all have different opportunities.

*huh?!?*

Let me repeat that.

We all have the same opportunities while at the same time we all have different opportunities. We all have the opportunity to choose to be useful. We all have different opportunities (and different kinds of opporunities) to be useful. Some, sadly, choose to be useful in the least positive way, viz.,

“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning”–Catherine Aird

And remember,
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, the graphic and attendant caption misses the simple fact that there can be many uses for such a distorted, mangled tool, but of course, none of those uses fit within its original design parameters…

Another opportunity that everyone has is the opportunity to be just. Everyone can choose to be fair in dealing with others… or to be hypocritical, applying standards–if any–differently to different classes of people: the very essence of unjust behavior.

“Those children are noisy and rude, while my children [who are engaging in exactly the same behavior] are simply being [enthusiastic, exuberant, creative–pick your own fav hypocritical lie].”

All of us have the opportunity to choose to be grateful… or to be whiners. If you’re alive, know that you don’t deserve to be. It’s a gift. Start there. I like the way Joe Sobran put it,

As one of the characters in Lear tells his father: “Thy life’s a miracle.” Of whom is that not true?

The more we reflect on the sheer oddity of our very existence and, in addition, of our eligibility for salvation, the deeper our gratitude must be. Amazing grace indeed! To call it astounding is to express the matter feebly. Why me? How on earth could I ever have deserved this, the promise of eternal joy?

And given all this, in comparison with which winning the greatest lottery in the world is just a minor fluke, how can I dare to sin again, or to be anything less than a saint for the rest of my life?

I suppose I could continue, but you get my drift, I trust. I’ll leave the other ways we are “the same” (and different in ways that make little difference at all, really… and all the difference in the world, as well) as an exercise for the reader.