Just sitting and thinking

I'm a bit under the weather tonight. The main symptom I have is that while I know it's cold out and some of that cold has got in here, I feel even colder than I should, all things considered. Experience has taught me that when I try to post after taking something for a cold, the results can get pretty incoherent. So I'm doing so before I take anything.

Actually that's about it. Except for an open question. Why is it that power―military, economic, what have you―so often winds up in the hands of people who can't be trusted with it? It seems to be a constant for most of my lifetime, if not longer.

Bridge to nowhere

Monday evening I got on a bus in Rumford bound for Providence around 6 p.m. I got off said bus at about 8:40. Mind you, I still had one more bus to catch before I got home. What was the cause? A last minute bridge closure, of course. 

The best part is that you just know there was money "earmarked" for inspections and repair, and that it wound up in some guy's pocket. After all, the sunken pool in my backyard is infrastructure too, is it not?

Yet another Red Scare

 

Elise Stefanik, an Upstate New York Representative who will inevitably inflict herself on some Presidential primary or other, has words for the university presidents who have been getting a bipartisan grilling over the past week. These school officials quite probably are rather mediocre, as people in their position often are. But make no mistake. What's gotten them into trouble is that they haven't been cracking down on free speech enough. Evidence that there are actual threats of genocide being made on campus is remarkably thin, but there's an information war to be fought, and for that reason alone heads must roll. So rolling they are.

As for this standard of "moral clarity" being thrown around, well, it has some history behind it. But does it mean "being clear and consistent in your morals"? Um, no. Very much not.

Mikadorable

 

One thing that it's very difficult to find on the Internet is a decent performance of "Mi-ya Sa-ma" from The Mikado. Modern companies always seem to get Katisha wrong. Perhaps out of some kind of half-assed feminism, they try to turn her into a cute jokester who undercuts the pompous Mikado. But if she's not scary, she's nothing. If she is, you can start to respect her.

The actress who plays the actress who plays her in Topsy-Turvy gets it exactly right. While only audio is available unless you have time to watch the whole movie, the way she wields her fan like a deadly weapon is something to behold.

That time of year

The weather widget on my laptop says that it's 24 F. I believe it. During the day it was somewhat blustery, somewhere in the 30s. So while we're still a couple of weeks away from the equinox, winter has in fact arrived. And that's good. A couple of months hopping from cave to cave, trying to keep warm, has a way of focusing the mind.

Saw a few snowflakes falling in the late morning, but nothing accumulated.

Sense of place

The above is a landscape by Fairfield Porter. I'm not sure of the title, or if there even is one. It's a very interesting piece, though. You can tell it's in a rural location. The single story white building marks something close to a halfway point. It, the car, and the red house (and most brightly colored object) dominate the right side. The left is ruled by fields, hills, one side of a barn or shed. So the presence of unseen people is much more apparent on one side.

Porter was a twentieth century American artist. He was a contemporary of Abstract Expressionists like Pollock and Rothko. He was a representational artist himself, in some ways a traditionalist. Still, he could work in elements of abstraction. 

Power play

I recently saw "Dead Weight", and episode of Columbo from its first season. A decorated veteran soldier and businessman (Eddie Albert post-Green Acres) kills an Army officer who could implicate him on bribery charges. An art teacher out sailing (Suzanne Pleshette pre-The Bob Newhart Show) sees him from the boat she rented. There's no evidence to back up her claim, though, and her confidence has been worn down over the years by her epically awful mother (Kate Reid.) Her certainty is even more shaken when the old codger takes an interest in her and moves his general onto her battlefield. So while Columbo comes to believe her story, he can't get her to cooperate.

It's not bad, impressive looking, fun to watch as most 70s Columbo is. One of the main flaws is that the evidence he uses to close the case isn't something he's been mulling over and pulling at the whole way through, in his usual style; but is rather a deus ex machina that turns up at the last minute. There's also a certain distance between him and the other main actors, and it turns out the story behind this is kind of interesting.

Peter Falk had signed onto the series with an understanding with Universal that he'd get to direct an episode. At some point he sensed they were reneging on him. Miffed, he stormed off and essentially went on a blue flu strike, doctor's note included. When he returned he found that wherever possible his scenes had been filmed with his photo double, and he wasn't allowed to reshoot. 

What surprises me about this story is that Falk had only just started playing the role on any kind of regular basis, and the show was in its first season (small batch of TV movies, really,) Usually actors don't start playing hardball until they've been on the job for at least a couple of years. If they start earlier it's at risk to either the show or their own employment on it. (See David Caruso getting canned from NYPD Blue for an example of the latter.)

Falk didn't actually get what he wanted from his walk-off and pissed off several of the other people involved. Still, the show wound up lasting for seven years, then got revived later. Even fighting to a draw is rather significant.