From "Across the Universe," or maybe a sign of global warming.Revolution Studios image
Now that Al Gore has won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize maybe he'll stop complaining about how he got ripped off of the presidency. Well, probably not, and why should he, it was a rip. I've never been a big Gore fan, but I did think his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" was a good wake-up call on global warming, and entertaining too.
And no doubt Bush has been a total disaster as president. I wonder, though. Would Gore be happier if he were in the White House and W were winning the Nobel for, I don't know, literature?
Doris Lessing copped that award yesterday. I remember being assigned "The Golden Notebook" in college, but I confess I can't remember much about it. It's possible I never finished it, or even started. Or, as my guilty case manager might put it, it's possible that book never got read. Good for Lessing, though. I heard an interview with her on NPR yesterday and she seemed surprised not at all that she won. The nice thing about being 87 is that you can be brutally honest.
Also on NPR yesterday I heard a disturbing story about more than a thousand troops from Minnesota being denied education benefits under the GI bill, even though they served two tours in Iraq, because they were discharged with credit for "only" 729 days of service instead of 730, the magic number. But they did serve 730 days, and others from the same group got full credit. The Army is calling it a bureaucratic mistake but not promising to fix it. I don't support this stupid war, and I don't really get the mentality of soldiers who are gung-ho volunteers for combat duty, but wow, what a ripoff.
All the "support our troops" b.s. from the top and they can't give these men and women the meager compensation they've earned? I'm outraged.
Turning now to the arts: I think I got a glimpse of my near future, like this weekend, from this interesting Los Angeles Times story about how teenage girls are turning "Across the Universe" into an unlikely hit movie. Here's one 15-year-old girl quoted in the story: "You go up to a group of people and say, 'Who wants to see "Across the Universe" this weekend?' " Sacharow explained. "The songs are addicting. Everyone who goes to see it has the soundtrack. I listen to it every day. I hear people singing the songs around school."
If that doesn't sound exactly like Gina, I'll do my duty and buy a newspaper every day. Our girls haven't mentioned this flick yet, but I feel it coming.
Oh, by the way, it looks like our duty is going to get more expensive.
5 comments:
When Gore ran the second time on the Clinton ticket, I was at a editorial writers convention in Kentucky which involved editorial writers from every major newspaper in the east. Gore began life as a newspaper reporter, heard about the convention, turned his plane around to visit, introduced his old editor as the greatest thing since sliced bread (helping him up on the stage like a grandson helping and grandfather), handed out a copy of his foreign policy speech complete with footnotes and annotations and set back to see every newspaper in the east parrot his words over the next week. A smooth move.
Yup, the Nobel Prize for Al made me sit a little wistfully over my triple grande non-fat latte this morning -- fantasizing what the world would be like now if he were president. Sigh.
Re: Screwing the Minnesota vets. Seriously, this makes steam come out of my ears.
Re: Across the Universe -- Laurie saw it last night and gave me permission to say: "Well, it's a mus-i-cale." She didn't want to be a spoiler, so she did not say too much more. It must have shortcomings tho, cuz she gives it only 2 gliomas. She also said I should see it because it has some beautiful visual moments, but it was not as good as another color-drenched mus-i-cale: Moulin Rouge. (We love Baz.)
BTW: just for the record you can be both a Beatles and a Stones fan -- so I'm humming that soundtrack even tho I haven't seen the movie. Hah.
Janice: love that story.
was just going to say, re our expensive duty -- one reason I have read the grunion pretty faithfully for 18 years: it's free.
Yea for Gore. It was not just Gore who had the presidency stolen from him, it was the entire country who had their rights stolen when the Supreme Court prevented the counting of votes to give the presidency to Bush. My blood still boils.
Love your story Janice. Agree with you Kay, what a shame we can't just start over.
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