So many good movies to watch and so little time, right Judy? Added bonus: Today's politics are like a bad movie you wanna leave but can't

My friend Judy Diaz and I love to talk about movies, politics, gardening, and food. We were on the phone last nite when the SC primary returns were coming in. We were flabbergasted that the racist prevaricator Gingrich won.

Hey, when times are tough, politicians conjure up scapegoats. Why dyou think Hitler, from Austria, was so successful? Bit by bit he raised his voice against the Jews and the desperate jobless population followed his every hysterical word.
America, according to Gingrich, is being adulterated [sic] by the poor, especially the blacks, and the voters in the Palmetto State, none of whom do their research, are swayed by the snake-oil salesman that is Gingrich, who made a fortune doing the work of a lobbyist.

Before I go to sleep at nite, I actually think about these outrageous things that are taking down our country: the creeps who are running for president, and Obama, who is the plaything of the corporations.

We are owned by corporations. The little guy has absolutely no say.

David Stockman, former budget director under Reagan, who disagreed w/his boss's fiscal policies, was a guest last night on the Bill Moyers Show. I'll end my political rant w/a quote from Stockman, b. 1946, found on Wiki:

The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline and responsibility. They're on an anti-tax jihad -- one that benefits the prosperous classes.

Oops, one more rant. Democracy? Try plutocracy.

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Because I subscribe to Top Documentary Films, I watched a British documentary called Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe? It was narrated by Stephen Hawking, the great cosmologist/thinker, who is now 70 years of age.

For the first time, while watching "Curiosity" I minorly understood the theory of the Big Bang, which is neatly explained by a law of physics called negative energy. I will watch it again b/c I'm supremely interested in quantum physics and alternate universes. Scott knows a lot about this and helps explain it to me.

The film begins with these words:

Hello, my name is Stephen Hawkings, physicist, cosmologist, and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.

Do you think it's true, that as Dr Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice"

There's a lot of violence going on in the billions upon billions of galaxies up there, but of course they're not sentient beings as we are.

Hawking concludes by saying the Universe created itself. Time began with the Big Bang. Had God created the Big Bang and the immutable laws that govern the universe, he would have had no time to do so, since Time did not exist before the universe was created.

The universe spontaneously created itself.

Sadly, said Hawking, this leads me to believe there is no heaven or afterlife. We've got to appreciate the Grand Design of the Universe while we are here, and for that I am very grateful.

Last nite, Scott and I watched a great film on Channel 12: Shake Hands with the Devil, a 1959 flick set in 1921 Dublin about the Irish Revolution.

Great cast starring James Cagney - Don Murray, still alive at 82 - Glynis Johns, still alive at 88 - and Dana Winter, who passed this year at 79.



Richard Harris played a true hero.

Unforgettable scene with Cagney and Dana Wynter. Cagney played a man w/two faces: a master surgeon who saved people's lives and a brutal member of the IRA who loved nothing more than killing people. Will he succeed in killing Dana Wynter? Or will Richard Harris, as he promised, save her?

This morning we watched The Great Gatsby, a beautifully photographed film starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston.

Mia Farrow as the shallow, wooed-by-riches Daisy who literally gets away w/murder. "You know rich girls can't marry poor boys," she said to Jay Gatsby who truly loved her.

Well, Gatsby, who pompously called everyone "old sport," worked his way up in the world - behold his castle - never mind that he was a bootlegger - and won his Daisy over for a little while, but she was a prudent woman and went back to her philandering husband.

How lucky can a snowed-in girl get? While preparing dinner, I watched this sci fi thriller on Channel 17. Maybe there is a god after all.

Help! Help! It's coming our way.

Poor Leo G Carroll (five bonus points if you remember what TV show he was in) is a scientist who invented a growth hormone that created the grotesquely huge insect w/ toxic venom.

John Agar also starred. His acting career got off to a good start but then he was relegated into B movies, like this one, which is quite good.

Mara Corday is the exquisitely beautiful assistant of Leo Carroll and GF of Agar. A life-long friend of Clint Eastwood - they're both 81 or 82 - he got her stalled career back on track again.

Delicious bean soup w/ veggies and grated cheddar on top.