The Fall (2006) by Tarsem Singh

It's an underrated film, and it might be one of the most visually stunning films ever made. I saw this in the theater, then I immediately bought a ticket for the next screening. Might be the only time that's happened.

I highly recommend. The locations were all over the world. It's a stunning effect.

Yes, Trump has an uncanny ability to produce iconic photos. My friend @kriegmaxxing noted the Trump has an aesthetic sensibility and employs people with similar sensibilities.

This is true, but there's something going on in these photos that's beyond mere aesthetics...

https://twitter.com/Chris_arnade/status/1916134430202114298

This is a photograph of a man who just cheated death. He came within an inch of having his head explode live on CNN. And instead of cowering, or trying to GTFO and scurrying off with his head down (like I would have done), he stopped to raise his fist and shout "fight".

Kudos to Evan Vucci for this perfectly composed photo. But what makes this photo iconic isn't just Vucci's excellent photography (and his bravery for running into the line of fire to get the shot). This photo is great because it's capturing an extraordinary moment.

And this extraordinary moment would not have been possible without the participation of an extraordinary man...

My grandfather was born on a farm in the American West.

This was before WW1. No phone, no cars, no electricity, no indoor toilet. He was one of ten kids. Somehow they all made it to adulthood.

He was tapdancer. Worked in Vaudeville (which means he opened for a stripper). That's how he paid for college during the depression. First member of the family to do so.

He was a pilot in the war. Learned to fly, operate radios. Things that barely existed before he was born.

After the war he worked as a stockbroker for a time, but his old boss asked him to come back for the Berlin Airlift. So he joined the US Airforce.

Eventually he went back to school. Got a masters in International Relations. For a time he worked for the NSC in the Eisenhower White House.

Mostly he was stationed in Europe. That's where my mom mostly grew up. Earning US dollars in post-war Europe made for a good lifestyle. Servants, vacations, nice things.

He ended his career flying B-52s. He was a bird colonel.

I became his caretaker at the end of his life. He was 101 years old. His doctors were amazed he was still alive. He kept asking to go home--near the farm where he grew up.

I didn't want him to go--because there was no one there to take care of him. No family. I didn't want to put him in a nursing home in another state.

But he kept insisting. So finally I relented. I found a nursing home that would take him.

He was too frail to do the drive, so we got an air ambulance. It was a little Learjet. I went with him.

The pilots asked if he was a vet. I told them that he was indeed. Told them he was a retired colonel.

Both the pilots were Air Force Reserve. The addressed him as Colonel. Gave him a salute. He was weak but he saluted back.

He had tachycardia by that point. His resting pulse was typically about 130. But as we took off his pulse came down to the 70s. It hadn't been that low in years.

He felt at home in the sky. Flying was something he could only dream about when he was a kid. He was relaxed, and calm, and he slept.

We made it to the nursing home in his home state. I got him settled in his room, met the nurses, then walked down the street to grab a fast food dinner.

I came back an hour later and he was dead. He wanted to come home to die and that's what he did.

Our grandparents lived in a world of what must have been mind-boggling change. But it was also a world of opportunity--where a poor farm kid could grow up to fly jets and have European servants and work in the White House.

That world is gone and it's not coming back. The question is what we will build in it's place. One day you're a kid working on a farm. Then you're flying a plane over the arctic that has the power to destroy cities. The 20th Century was a crazy place man...

Favorite Woody Allen movies (in no particular order...) Stardust Memories

This is how fucked the system is...

I get hit by an uninsured illegal. Not only was she uninsured and unlicensed and driving an unregistered vehicle, she was driving like it was her 1st time.

So she hits me, she walks away. The cop gave her a ticket. I asked the cop "how do you know who she really is?"

The cop shrugged, said he has no idea if she is who she really is, and told me he deals with this all day every day. Because we're in a sanctuary county and state there's not a lot he can do.

I have no idea if she paid her reckless driving ticket. There's been no follow up from the DA.

So I got hurt. It could have been worse, but I've been pretty fucked up for the past 14 months or so.

And I've got medical bills. For the ambulance ride, MRIs, PT, follow up appointments, specialists. All the things.

My health insurance won't cover the accident costs, because my auto insurance is supposed to do that. So I submit bills to my (major) auto insurance company.

Then I get a letter, emails, and a text telling me I've reached my coverage limit and to stop submitting bills.

I had uninsured driver coverage, but they claimed I didn't. So I had to get a lawyer.

Now instead of just paying the medical bills, the insurance co will have to pay more for my "pain and suffering". Except... any extra money I collect will not go to me. It will go to my lawyer.

At this point I just want to get reimbursed for my out of pocket costs--which are pretty severe and have stressed my savings. But it's been 14 months and I have yet to see a dime.

My lawyer just wrote up the demand for payment. Every little charge is itemized. The document is 25 pages long + there are hundreds of pages of documentation attached....

If you drive in the USA you might have noticed your auto insurance premiums have gotten really expensive. It's mostly due to cases like mine, where illegal immigrants without insurance decided to play bumper cars on city streets.

You'd think that the insurance companies (who are quite a powerful lobby) would be publicly demanding mass deportations.

But they didn't publicly demand anything. And I'm not sure why exactly (insurance industry followers feel free to chime in).

But I'm sure the fear of being called a racist had something to do with it. And even now that we have a president who's doing something about the problem, they're still silent.

As for me, I'll be fine. But it's been 14 months. I'm out of pocket many tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs. My neck still hurts. I can't lift my arm over my head. And I'm paying way too much for car insurance🤷‍♂️ Oh, and in case you're wondering... yes I could sue the woman who hit me. But no lawyer would take it on contingency. Because she doesn't have anything I can collect.

If the roles were reversed, she'd be suing me and I'd be losing my house right now.

Maybe it was all some sort of performance art piece?? I feel like I'm Dorthy waking up back in Kansas.

"It wasn't a dream, it was a place. And you, and you, and you were there."

Reminder: something happened I witnessed something profound that day. I'm still not sure what that was. Here's what I wrote at the time:

What did I see?

What was this?

What should we call this?

I’m puzzling over this because I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’m struggling to find a precedent either in history or in myth.

"Miracle" isn't quite appropriate. There’s a plausible explanation. He turned his head at the exact right time and the bullet grazed his ear.

But it was more than mere luck. It's too implausible to be serendipitous.

Trump dodged a literal bullet, and America dodged a proverbial bullet. I don't want to contemplate the violence and chaos would have inevitably erupted….

Thankfully (as the Wise Man said) providence protects idiots, children, drunks, and the United States of America…

———

I didn’t take Trump seriously. During the 2016 election I (quite frankly) thought he was a buffoon. Boxy suit, tacky gold, mail order bride. He was a C-list celebrity playing at politics.

And maybe he was. Maybe he was doing it for the publicity. But he took Clinton apart, and I liked that.

Then he won. Then came the lies.

I mean… the magnitude of those lies! The Russia stuff. The secret server in Trump Tower communicating with the FSB. The pee tape. The "fine people". The Comey firing.

Of course in the end we learned that he was completely justified in firing Comey. He and the FBI lied to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Nixon could only dream of pulling something like that.

And then they impeached him for shaking down the Ukraine for a kickback, when in reality the Biden family had been taking Ukrainian kickbacks all along.

And what was the personal toll? The pee tape story must have had some effect on his marriage.

I knew someone who knew Ivanka. She knew her socially. Big money NY people, Hamptons crowd, those people. After the election Ivanka became an outcast. No more dinner invites. Old friends didn't return calls. Ostracism.

And then came the Floyd riots, the sham election, January 6th. We know about this. We were all there.

But they wouldn’t leave him alone. They could have let him walk away. They didn’t. They couldn’t. They needed an enemy.

They raided his house. The agents were authorized to use deadly force. They went thru his wife’s underwear drawer.

They not only prosecuted him, but anyone around him. How many Trump political prisoners are there? And how many more have been disbarred or bankrupted from legal fees?

Why does Trump keep fighting? Undoubtably The Offer has been made. That all the legal problems will disappear if he just walks away and never runs again. And undoubtably there are people close to him who’ve urged him to take that deal.

I know The Offer has been made because The Offer always gets made. (Although it’s possible The Regime is so hubristic they didn’t make The Offer...)

A pragmatic man would take the deal.

But he won’t.

And he keeps fighting.

———

One of the themes in the Hebrew Bible is personal transformation through ordeal. The Abraham story is a good example. He was a loser. He was a grown ass man living in his mom’s house.

God calls on him to go into the strange land. Abraham complies and… a series of terrible events follow.

Among other things he’s cucked by the Pharaoh of Egypt, and his cousin Lot is kidnapped and Abraham has to raise an army to get him back.

But each ordeal transforms him. And at no time does he quit. Not even when God demands he sacrifice his only son.

He never quit and he became a different man. A better man. He became The Father of Nations.

Or maybe you wrestle with God all night. You start the day as Jacob and end up as Israel.

Ordeal does this. It transforms us.

In Phillip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep there’s the character of Wilbur Mercer. He walks up a never ending hill. All the while he’s insulted and pelted with stones.

In the book there’s a new religion based on Mercer’s ordeal. You can get into an “Empathy Box” to feel his pain. This is how you worship.

Towards the end of the novel the protagonist finds himself walking up a hill being pelted by stones.

I don’t need an Empathy Box. I have this app.

There’s an ordeal in every Hero’s Journey story. But the hero always loses something in the ordeal. Go up against Darth Vader and you’re gunna lose a hand. The dragon is going to take your arm.

Or maybe the sniper takes a chunk of your ear?

After the ordeal comes apotheosis. Divinization. Our hero has been granted divine character. He’s a newly created God.

Or maybe The Hero becomes an avatar for an existing God? Maybe one of the Old Gods? I can’t help but believe that they’re still out there somewhere…

———

I saw it about an hour after it happened. I was organizing fishing gear in the garage. I’d left my phone in the house.

Heard my phone ding. Saw I had texts. Saw that Trump had been shot.

I logged into X and found the video. This is what I saw:

I saw Trump giving a speech. I’ve seen clips of his rallies, but have never watched an entire speech. It’s Angry Boomer Standup. He has some good one liners, but fuck it gets old…

So he’s giving a speech. Then the pops of gunfire. He reaches for his ear. And then he hits the ground.

The Secret Service rushes in. There’s panic in the crowd. You can hear screams.

And then they get him to his feet. But it wasn’t Donald Trump that stood up. He was something else.

He wrestled with God. He’d been transformed. He was something else.

The man who put his fist in the air and said "fight" wasn't the same man who hit the ground.

And it didn't take decades, or weeks, or a night. It happened in less than 90 seconds. We have the video.

I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t imagine any human alive today has seen anything like it. These things don't happen.

They simply don't happen.

Ancient peoples would have recognized this. Their myths prepared them for such things.

But these things don’t happen in the modern world. They just don't happen.

But I saw it.

I saw it happen.

And I can’t believe it.

🧵👇

Pics from the Lavazza Calendar from 1993 to 2024. Tell me what you see. 1993

Al Satterwhite

🧵

Jesse Alexander

🧵

Fred Stein

🧵

Guy La Baube's nudes are playful and fun and a little surreal. 🧵

Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather (1943). I've heard it said this is the greatest dance routine from any movie. I must have been HOT on that stage. The film stock they used back then was much slower than it is now (like 50asa). You needed a lot of light to get an exposure--like giant floodlights. You can tell by the hard shadows on the wall.

It's like being in an oven. And they're dancing in tuxedos...

Story time 🧵...

I've attended exactly one Movie Press Junket. It was weird and things didn't go as planned....

https://twitter.com/RamboVanHalen/status/1809635612850548794

It was the junket for Revenge of the Sith.

This was one of those small gigs I'd take in between movies. All in it was 2 or 3 days of work.

It really is a fantastic city. Best creative energy/spirit of any city in the world. It's a place where anything is possible and you can be anything you want to be. I truly love that place.

But at the same time I'm glad I left.

https://twitter.com/Delicious_Tacos/status/1808578585038630967

I was born there. My parents divorced when I was young. Mom moved away, but dad was always there. I half grew up in LA.

As an adult I fell into The Business and moved back. You have to do LA eventually if you're in The Biz. Like you have to do NYC if you're in finance, like you have to do Detroit if you're in the Auto Industry.

At the end of Antonioni's The Passenger there's an amazing 7 minute "impossible" shot. It's a feat of movie magic and a great example of crew coordination and teamwork.

Short 🧵 on how they did it... They used a Wescam gyrostabilized camera that was developed for aerial photography. They then rigged track to the ceiling of the hotel room.

A short 🧵 about... BOKEH! Bokeh (Bow-KA) is a Japanese word. It means something like "the quality of the blurry parts of a photo". (Jap speakers help me out here...)

No you pervert, this is an Anamorphic lens.

🧵... Until the 1950s *most* movies were shot in 1.375:1 "Academy" aspect ratio.

🧵...

Cross Processing is something you don't see anymore. It's when you shoot on reversal (slide) film stock but process it as color negative. The result is unnatural colors and high contrast--and a really cool look.... Man of Fire from DP Paul Cameron

CQ (2001) by Roman Coppola: A Movie about Making Movies and how Sometimes Sensitive Young Men Win

🧵... Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford) made this as his debut feature film. Low key but impressive, it's a movie about making movies. While I feel Truffaut's Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine) is the seminal movie about movies, there's a lot CQ gets right...

Good question. Mainly because in the early 70s Kodak came out with great color film that didn't need a special camera.

https://twitter.com/TheIceHasBroken/status/1783920269918109750

The OG Technicolor process used 3 separate strips of film. One for each primary color. The film was then developed and dyed before it was laminated together. The cameras were HUGE because they had handle 3 mags of film, which made it very difficult to use outside of a studio.