July 15, 2016
Dear Everyone:
Future historians are going to have a field day with this year’s
election.
Never before has there been a woman candidate for a “major” political
party. (For those of you
playing at home, that’s
Hillary Clinton.)
Never before has the
Republican Party been in such a pickle, faced with a popular nominee
that most of them can’t stand.
(Hello,
Donny, the “Presumptuous” Trumpet.)
Not since 1968, when
Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Robert Kennedy were both assassinated has there been such a year.
The expected
Democratic Nominee (Lyndon
B Johnson) pulled the rug out from under his Party by declining to
run. Racial tensions were
skyrocketing. Political
turmoil abounded. Riots took
place at the
Democratic National Convention.
“Never before…” crow the current crop of political correspondents, most
of whom weren’t even born in 1968.
Actually, things have happened in the past.
In 1870, the United States finally recognized the
rights of African American
men to vote. It took
another 40 years for the
rights of
women to also be
recognized.
Nevertheless, things are certainly lively this year.
And the nominations haven’t even been officially held yet.
It will be interesting to see what the future makes of it all.
As for all those “experts” who base their predictions on past elections:
The problem with using past events to predict future occurrences
is that it’s like hurtling down the freeway, at 90 miles per hour, with
your eyes glued to the rearview mirror.
It involves a rather large “Oops!” factor.
But enough of that and on to more important matters:
Movies.
The last two movies we’ve been to see have both been
animated features.
This is interesting because “Jeannie”, who chose both films, used
to have a distinct aversion to animation.
But she seems to have gotten over that.
The first one was
Finding Dory.
About 13 years ago,
Pixar produced a film about a little
clown fish
named Nemo.
Finding Nemo
was all about Nemo’s father’s frantic search for his missing son.
The father, Marlin, was aided and abetted by a
blue tang
named Dory.
Dory suffered from a condition commonly known as CRS (Can’t Remember
S**t), an affliction that troubles many of us.
Nevertheless, Dory and Marlin successfully found Nemo and
everyone lived happily ever after.
Until Dory, in the new movie, suddenly remembers that she has parents
that she hasn’t seen in she doesn’t really remember how long and we’re
off again. Nemo, Marlin and
Dory travel, in the blink of an eye, from the
Great Barrier
Reef to
Morro Bay, California, where they encounter
Sigourney
Weaver. Really.
Many exciting adventures ensue.
Dory meets up with lots of other sea-dwelling entities.
This is a Pixar production, so they pull out all the stops.
The animation is so good that you forget what you’re watching is
animation. When little Nemo
scowls at his father for doing some typically dumb Dad-thing, you just
accept that a fish can scowl.
The second film was
The Secret
Life of Pets. This
one was produced by
Illuminations Entertainment, a subsidiary of
Universal
Studios, which is itself a subsidiary of
Comcast.
Illuminations Entertainment gave the world
Despicable
Me, which in turn spawned its own sequels and prequels, complete
with tiny yellow creatures called
Minions.
The movie is not really about the Secret Life of Pets, because it would
be fairly boring to watch a fat, gray cat sleep on top of the
clothes dryer
all day. Instead, Max, a
pampered terrier who
lives in a posh
Manhattan apartment, and his new “roomy”, Duke, fresh from the dog
pound, embark on a quest, while running afoul of a particularly
bad-tempered bunny rabbit named Snowball and his own cohorts.
It even includes the
mythical
alligators in the New York sewers.
One interesting point is that
Albert Brooks
is featured on both films.
He plays the clown fish Dad, Marlin, in
Finding Dory, then turns
around and portrays a
red-tailed hawk
named Tiberius in Secret Life… Talk about
versatility!
Of the two, Finding Dory is
definitely the superior product, both in script and production values.
On the other hand, you can make a game out of spotting all the
product placements in Secret Life…
Either way, a pleasant excuse to sit in air-conditioned darkness
for a couple of hours. With
popcorn, of course.
Love, as always,
Pete
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