Tag Archives: commentary

LAGUNA BEACH

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A court ruling before Christmas has brought peace to this seaside wonderment. It’s the home of Bill Gross (once prominent in PIMCO) and his partner who live on a suitably sized spread, and in all corners like to hear the theme music to Gilligan’s Island over and over and over again, again, again, again, ….etc. Neighbors sued to stop the culture which Bill Gross and his mate were trying to foist on Laguna Beach. The neighbors won.

Laguna Beach is a playground without much of a beach. Most of the sporting activities happen down in the sand. But surfing, body and board [not broad], is like trying to catch a wave in Balboa Bay. Go to beaches north and south. Warren Buffet had a house there but sold. No one ever caught Warren out and about in swim trunks.

Laguna is a tony, swank place with a long-lasting art festival, the sort of event that attracts the Howells: Rich, vacuous, vapid elders who have a chauffeur, or they pay for valet parking so they can walk to close-by booths and shops. Southern Californians of artistic persuasions have second homes there. Laguna is a jumping place. A habitué told about life there of easy expression, mostly ceramic frogs, each signed and dated. Twenty-five dollars ($25) was a lot of money back then, and on eBay that frog now goes for ten. Life has always been a gamble. Who knew that pet rocks would have greater values?

During the Sixties and Seventies TV reception was poor in Laguna. I understand why people pine for Greenacres. But cable changed everything. Gilligan’s Island? That show was straight and square: Gilligan too foolish and stupid to love; blustering captain; aloof Howells; the professor extra stupid so joined a tour boat with a crowd of morons; Ginger, too innocent to be conniving; Tina Louise, type-cast in a short show. Even when cannibals showed up, nobody on the island got eaten. And one thinks of the missed dialogue. On The Beverly Hillbillies Jed Clampett described a bird near the cement pond as a “blonde feathered bush tit.” 

Obviously, if anyone in Laguna Beach believes Gilligan’s Island reflects the values and manners of that seaside spot, that comment helps homes slide down the cliffs onto the beach to be eroded into the Pacific Ocean. That show needs to be brought up to date. With a captain like Bill Gross and his matey, who might be Ginger or Mrs. Howell, much has to happen to save that place. Laguna isn’t a community of romance. In the show Mary Ann seemed suited to the professor but they never got it going. Mr. Howell was a complete dolt; he could take lessons from our current President and make Tina a handy target. That leaves the Captain and his “little buddy,” Gilligan, life long sailors. Wasn’t it Winston Churchill who observed, Buggery is what makes the Royal Navy work?

The problem with Gilligan’s Island (the moral to this piece) is, the island and its inhabitants reflect a setting and people who never existed and a place and time that will never happen. This situation redounds on Bill Gross and his matey. It was utterly correct to turn off Bill Gross’s efforts to cultivate and enlighten Laguna Beach.

IDIOTS, Jr.

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Now that Pres Don has gotten rid of competent, intelligent white guys, individuals who have done something with life and prospered, unlike himself, he’s going for the retreads of the second string.

Larry Kudlow, new Director of the National Economic Council, is of CNBC fame where Don had his TV show. Larry wasn’t as big a person as Don; he’ll never be exposed to the elements on the Hollywood Walk of Fame i.e. the homeless. Both Larry and Don believe the homeless are using the tax cuts to bilk millions from the government from favorable programs handing out dough. How else, could the homeless live in such an exclusive neighborhood?

These attributes fit Larry’s behavior when giving advice on TV: Angry rich man complaining the United States government taxes him to give money to the poor. He sounds like and is as current as George Bush proposing economic prosperity, the lift of a driving dream. WRONG POLICIES! Larry’s a very retro guy: Let’s Make America Great Again Like It Was During The 1920s. That decade finished well, didn’t it?

John Bolton, new National Security Advisor, looks like a walrus, with a white lip. Give him a uniform, narrow his mustache and he looks like someone else. He also sounds like that person: Adamant, right and righteous, hard, and opinionated based upon faith and fibs.

Both men have had stints in government, and no one in government hired either of them later for any position of responsibility. But each stuck around getting whatever exposure was available – CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and mail solicitations. Bolton had a petty foundation he was the face card for, and once a month, bi-weekly and sometimes weekly envelopes arrived with cant writings inside expounding political and social positions edging toward totalitarianism. The only benefit a right minded, red blooded American got from Bolton was observing in the photographs that Bolton was getting gray. (Kudlow is mostly bald.)

The big advantage that Don Trump has over Bolton and Kudlow – they are lower on the food chain. Neither has Don Trump’s girth, 400 pounds of flab. Each is relatively trim ready to wear second-hand, empty suits. They are names, sometimes recognizable, unrespected, timeless and each has fallen into Don’s event horizon. The best that can be said about each man: When Don fires them, no one will know they are gone.

SEE IT NOW – THE FUTURE

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Recent grade-B scientific films present sets which seem a step away from funky main streets of small town America today. Instead of the barber’s pole, there is a pole with a half dozen round plastic platters, like multiple serving areas for kids to NBA players. That was futuristic during the Sixties, and it dates and looks odd today. But the incongruity fits in a science fiction movie: everyone can recognize what it is but like a barber’s pole, no one know what it means.

Next to see on the screen are the race and ethnicity of people. Any film company should have its characters from various places show up in semi-native festive garb. That happens in California usually. It is difficult to know whether someone is in the United States military or with the LAPD. She may be going to a costume party. Ditto, putting these people on a movie set while filming a science fiction flick. The languages present a wild, crazy, different sound tract.

No change has to be made when asking characters to speak, not American but their first language. The misunderstandings today are brief and small. In the future it may be impossible to cross the street without knowing five languages.

A few movies have used the present day to project a futuristic society. This presents a step, an advancement reflecting a truer future than any other show. For instance the future is unlikely to be anything like The Jepsens. In the cartoon there are just too few people, too many open spaces and isolated houses abound. It is likely that houses will be owned and sold in 100 years, but honey-combed constructions of apartments, condominiums and town houses are what most of the human race will live in. It is call urbanization. There will be too many of us: From caves we came, to caves we will return

Science fiction movies rarely show the current press of human existence or what that will be in the future – close quarters, get off my back! In the movies this point can only be inferred by how many human beings are killed and by whom. Undoubtedly, the protagonist feels totally bad when a human being is smoked – less so if a droid dies. Deaths of druids evoke different emotions. After the first human beings are extinguished, death gets easier, and everyone becomes desensitized. It does not matter how many characters are killed, provided the protagonist and his brawny, brainless hunk survive as the only persons on earth, there to watch the sun rise – a new day on the planet to begin again and the human race will avoid all the mistakes it made the last time.

Are you voting for Don Trump, or Hillary Clinton?

The prospects for over-population movies are narrow. Everyone knows the likely solution, and human beings don’t like that. Everyone also dislikes solution number two: Don Trump and HRC survive and …