Old Vs. New Hollywood

If you read this blog on a regular basis, if such a person exists, thank you for reading, but one will notice a theme. I didn't start out to make this blog with any persistent themes, but I myself have noticed one emerging. Maybe this happens to everyone once they start getting old, but it seems impossible not to notice that the past was better. Sure, it wasn't perfect, and I don't mean to whitewash everything, but you must admit it was just BETTER. Today's topic is about something way before my time, but seems worth noting because I don't know how much people are talking about this.

I submit to you that the Hollywood of "yesterday", or, the classic Hollywood, is much better and more interesting of the Hollywood of today. Not to say there weren't scandals, because there were as many controversies and scandals back then as there are today, but the actresses had a certain beauty, talent, class and glamor that is largely missing today. Perhaps it is a certain intangible quality. They supported the war effort and many of them visited the troops in World War II on USO tours.










I figured the above could prove my point far better than words. They being: Veronica Lake, Jane Russell, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, Ella Raines, Lana Turner, Julie Adams, Gloria Grahame, and Gene Tierney, from top to bottom. These are only a few examples and a few pictures. There were many more. But a lot of these were "femme fatales" from the film noir era. In those movies, life was tough and these women had to survive. They had to be tough too, just as tough as the city and the men in the city, but they always retained their vast feminine side as well.
I didn't include Marilyn Monroe (or any that followed in her wake such as Mamie Van Doren, Diana Dors or the underrated Jayne Mansfield) because I feel she already represents a popular idea of the women of Hollywood past. I felt I should concentrate elsewhere.
Male actors didn't have to, for the most part, have the model-perfect good looks of Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, they just had to have the talent or fit a certain character perfectly. Take Edward G. Robinson with his ubiquitous cigar, forever cast in gangster roles, or Vincent Price, who played many types of roles but is primarily known for his horror interpretations. It is doubtful the sole criteria for these men becoming movie stars were their looks. I know the movie industry has always been superficial -- in many ways it HAS to be, because it is trading in images, after all -- but it has never seemed as soullessly so as it is today, compared with yesterday.
So while today we have actors and actresses bashing Bush and the war, and promoting the liberal views they have the time and money to pursue, all the while adopting a cadre of multi-racial children from other countries while spurning their own, not to mention Angelina Jolie making out with her brother or whatever, and the rehab sagas of the starlets, and Paris Hilton and her pornography...just think about the way it used to be for a second...or do you honestly prefer THIS...?

Election Coverage, Part 2

I know what I'm about to write isn't very new or original, but in the interest of keeping up with the times and creating new blog posts, I have decided to weigh in on the democratic "issues" going on right now.

Hillary Clinton and the claim of "sniper fire": Wait...A Clinton is LYING? Stop the presses! No one should be at all surprised about this. Except maybe the fact that she's still doing it all these years and hasn't learned her lesson. That's pretty surprising. Especially when there is VIDEO to prove her false statements. That, and Sinbad. God bless Sinbad. Just when the world is drowning in uncertainty, Sinbad comes along to show us all the way. Supposedly, when Sinbad refuted Hillary's claims of Sniper Fire, she said derisively, "he's just a comedian". This is so insulting and angering. Not only was he good enough to go with her to Bosnia in 1996 being "just a comedian" (unless she planned to use him as a human shield in case things got rough, I wouldn't put it past her), but that's assuming, because he is a comedian, he is incapable of telling the truth...he must be JOKING!!!!! He does nothing but joke (i.e. LIE) only when it comes to HER of course...well, when he has the sheer audacity to tell the truth, backed up by videotape, every single soldier involved, and all other witnesses...but he's "just a comedian", so, listen to me and not him...or anyone else. Arggghhh! Where are the snipers when you REALLY need them? Also, it is insulting to the American soldiers involved that worked so hard to make sure everything went off without a hitch and was safe for her and Chelsea (another sure sign of danger: throw my daughter and the comedian into the line of fire!). But since when has she cared about the troops except when it has been politically expedient? (that goes for all liberals by the way).But it's not the first time she used Chelsea in a lie: she said she was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11 and ducked into a coffee shop and was saved...that was a lie, Chelsea said herself she was in bed and saw it on TV, she said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, but her date of birth and his accomplishments do not match...and let's not forget about all the scandals, especially the ones involving releasing her records...I could go on all day, the point is, the Clintons LIE and MAKE THINGS UP! When are more people going to see this? How many lies do they have to tell?

And this claim of "misspeaking" is so bogus..."misspeaking" is saying "thee" instead of "the". Hillary was CAUGHT IN A LIE. That's not what misspeaking is. That's just not the definition of the word. She's hoping she can fool us by repeating the same thing over and over again. As Hitler said, "if you repeat a lie enough times, people will eventually believe it." Since when has saying "I misspoke" been an out for simply lying? And how do you explain her "misspeaking" not once, not twice, but THREE times? She said she'd "told the story so many times", you'd think she'd have the truthful version by now. Telling a story many times is also not an out for a lie. Neither is saying you're "tired". A. You're running for president. You should be tired. B. If you are shot at by snipers, I don't care how tired you are, you will remember the truth and C. If she is ever tired if, god help us all, she is elected president, like, say, in the middle of the night, is there no accountability for her lies? Just a lack of sleep will now suffice? That's just the thing about Hillary. It is insulting to the intelligence of the American people the way she just makes stuff up and expects us all to swallow her lies, and when she inevitably gets caught, her lame excuses.
We can all see what's going on here. She has claimed to have "experience". Since she doesn't, she thinks she can manufacture some. She is trying to compete with John McCain's ACTUAL experience. This is a pathetic display of desperation. She lied about having experience, now has to lie to try in vain to prove it. What a tangled web we weave. This is just typical Clinton: lies on top of lies.



Obama's "pastor disaster": for a "post-racial" candidate, maybe the best idea is not to have a black racist as your "spiritual advisor". So for the past 20 plus years, in a very close relationship with Pastor Wright, he had no idea of his fanatical racist and anti-American ravings. Either he's lying, or not very perceptive. Either way, he's not fit to be president. We are judged by the company we keep. Put this together with his "rite of passage" to visit with William Ayers, the domestic terrorist who bombed, or attempted to bomb several government buildings including the pentagon and recently said "I wish I had done more", his wife's claim that she is proud of her country for the first time now, and his refusal to wear an American flag pin, as well as his willingness to bomb our allies, and grossly inflating death tolls that he got from far left smear sites, what we have is the picture of an ultra-liberal neophyte who is trying to hide this fact from the American people because if his true colors show, he won't be elected. He has accepted no hard-news interviews as of yet. He just says "change" over and over again and dances on "Ellen". We can't be THAT stupid to elect him...can we?
And then there's that NAME again...

The Oscars

You won't find a bigger movie fan than me. I love movies so much it's scary. I worked in a video store for nine years and took full advantage of it. Watching and reading about movies has probably consumed about half my life at this point. I've seen thousands, and am clearly obsessed. However, keeping that in mind, I have absolutely no interest in the Oscars. I never watch the broadcast. Besides being a banal display of emptiness, fit only for vapid entertainment news programs, that is completely at odds with the supposed "foreign", pseudo-intellectual bent of whoever decides who is nominated.
It is really now simply a display of snobbish, elitist liberalism (is there any other kind?), because 99 percent of Hollywood is liberal, and those who aren't are scorned and not showered with awards. If you don't toe the party line, your artistic endeavor suddenly isn't worth awarding.

This is evidenced by the fact that many foreigners win the awards and films with an anti-American tendency always seem to win. It could be just that those films are better. I don't know, you be the judge, I haven't seen any of them.



But I have a theory about how the movies are chosen to be nominees. Haven't you ever noticed that ONLY movies that come out right before the awards show, say about three months or less before the telecast, seem to be the ones nominated? Apparently the crusty old dinosaurs that are the great arbiters of taste can't remember back much farther. If you were to release an awesome, Oscar-worthy film in the months following the awards, woe be to you. You won't be nominated. But if Michael Moore vomits forth another propaganda piece a month before the awards, he is an artistic genius. They should either have two or more Academy awards shows per year, and make them much less showy and long, so EVERYONE gets a chance, or they should try their best to remember the films that are released during other times of the year besides RIGHT before the Oscars.

Gay Marriage rights for "Rock and Roll" hall of fame inductee deciders

I have been told Madonna was inducted into the "Rock and roll" hall of fame. This didn't seem to get as much attention as past inductees, either because they are ashamed, or the powers that be snidely knew that it would upset fans of music such as myself. I'd rather not play right into their hands, if that indeed is their strategy, but there are thousands of bands that deserve to be there more than her, and inducting her is simply not fair to them. BANDS that worked hard to learn their instruments, write songs, and play thousands of thankless gigs for little to no money. The induction of Madonna is a slap in the face to those hardworking people. I don't know if you've ever been in a band, but I have. It's fun, but there is a lot of work and many expenses involved. And mine never even went anywhere. So to take a mediocre disco singer like Madonna and put her in the company of the greats and legends of the genre such as Elvis, Chuck Berry, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, the Beatles, Beach Boys and Byrds is simply vomit-inducing. (More like vomit inducting, if you know what I mean, he he).
Madonna is nothing more than a mediocre disco singer that was propped up by the awful network MTV. I suppose she is ALRIGHT if that is your kind of thing, but without MTV, she'd be waiting tables somewhere. I suppose you could say that about a lot of terrible performers, but with her it's especially true, because MTV emphasized the visual over the substance of the material. Hence the rise of glam-pop-metal like Poison. (Quick sidenote: in the late 80's, the critics thought Poison was the worst thing going, with headlines such as "there's no cure for Poison", etc., but compared to what's on MTV NOW, Poison seem like the Rolling Stones. Just to put it in perspective. Something to think about...) This environment of style over substance, with an emphasis on mediocre at best, sickeningly awful at worst music, with an audience that craved the lowest common denominator that was and is MTV, was the perfect storm that created Madonna.
I simply will never understand just WHY this MDS (mediocre disco singer) is considered talented, much less a "cultural force" of some kind. I've asked several girls, and gotten no satisfactory responses. They've grown up with her and are so brainwashed they can't remember a pre-Madonna time. They're hopeless. If I knew any of her remaining audience, gay men, I would ask them.
Naturally, the financial success of Madonna spurned record companies to find imitators. This is perhaps the one and only case where all the imitators are equal to, and in most cases, SURPASS the original. Firstly I'd like to mention ALISHA.



Her catchy and enjoyable "too turned on" is AT LEAST the equal, if not the better of anything Madonna did in her career. But no one knows Alisha. I hope that changes.



Next we have Taylor Dane. I don't sincerely think of her as an "imitator" -- she's not -- but I believe in the eyes of the music industry, she is. I believe she was marketed as a Madonna clone. But Taylor is a powerful singer with a richer voice. She was in a rock band, Felony, at first, and "tell it to my heart" was co-written by Seth Swirsky, a man known in powerpop circles as a talented guy and solo artist in his own right.

Every Country had its own Madonna -- Japan had Rebecca, England had Samantha Fox:




And I'm sure every other country had one or two...If you know of any, contact me and I'll add them. But I've saved my personal favorite for last. Martika, who is best known for the song "toy soldiers" and being on the show "Kids Incorporated" early in her career, is VASTLY more talented than Madonna. There is more heart and soul and emotion in the JAPANESE version of "toy soldiers" that she recorded than anything in Madonna's catalogue. She is another talented performer with her own style and merits that was seen by the industry as just another clone. This is a travesty and a shame.



So in the end, the music industry and Madonna created a monster -- many monsters -- but the disciples bested the teacher. However, this trend seems to have ended with the new generation of the cookie-cutter, MTV-sanctioned Madonna clone army like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson. Their intolerable ear poison is right back to where we started - bad music - so I suppose we've come full circle in the Madonna chain.
I don't know who decides who gets into the "Rock and Roll" hall of fame - after today I'll forever write it in quotes - but this shameful display has discredited them forever. It is clearly a corrupt organization who does not have a clear sense of who belongs there. Unfortunately that is the ONLY job of these deciders. Their poor judgement in this matter has shown they deserve to be fired. But perhaps they can console themselves the way they always do in times of trouble - by getting together in a big bed, listening to Madonna's "papa don't preach", breaking out the haagen-dazs and watching "sex in the city."

RECENTLY FOUND! Check out this guy's youtube video, he seems to have the same idea: