Just A Movie? Fans Paying $100 For 'Dark Knight'

With all the grousing on TV and the newspaper about the state of the economy and how to budget, find good deals and change your lifestyle, you would think we are on the verge of slipping into third world status overnight. However, the anecdotal evidence was just not tracking--the roads are just as packed as they ever were and my neighborhood restaurants have not become ghostly. The I-17 north, which I have been frequenting as of late, still looks like a parking lot., 24-7.

And now this headline! Apparently the gas and food price escalation has not really dented the disposal income of a whole lot of people coast to coast. Hopefully they will all carpool to the theater. That would make Al Gore proud.

Now here is a guy who is hellbent on sending the economy into a spin; he is out there setting amorphous deadlines for retooling the entire energy strategy. What gives Al? Did you find yourself rambling about in your 10,000 square foot house with nothing to do so that you had to come out with a new proclamation to get some attention? Maybe you should go to the movie, I hear it is about a Joker.

Now this headline: Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate which basically says that there are many among the 50,000 physicists in this organization who doubt the anthropogenic genesis of global warming. Here is a link to that article:

http://www.dailytech.com/Myth+of+Consensus+Explodes+APS+Opens+Global+Warming+Debate/article12403.htm

Does anybody REALLY understand what is going on, much less how to "fix" it? I don't think so; but that doesn't stop EVERYONE from pontificating. Meantime, let's all just get back to work or school and go on vacation and be kind to one another and not be unnecessarily wasteful. If everyone did this life would be good. I think Heath Ledger would agree.

I Just Knew There Was Something Fishy Going On

All of a sudden it was practically raining tilapia. This fish was rarely heard of and even more rarely eaten just a few short years ago. It was the fish of choice for keeping the canals clean that out here in the west are our lifeblood for water. I knew that fact and so when this fish became ubiquitous in the food world, showing up in practically ever freezer case and on every restaurtant menu I grew suspicious. And to be honest grossed out. I can say with some authority that I have never eaten the stuff and I am generally a fish and seafood lover (no surprise there for those of you who know how much I love most food-except in the interest of disclosure I am not a big lobster fan, mostly because it is just too much work and not enough pay off but also because it,is the ocean's vacuum cleaner)!

Then I discovered that industry had learned how to farm these charming creatures. They became easy to grow, easy to sell and easily slipped into just about every fish eaters carte in America. Now the farming didn't bother me; most of the shrimp around here comes from the briny ponds near Gila Bend and I have no problem with that. It was the idea of the tilapia

It turns out my instincts were correct. Now they are discovering that Tilapia contains really bad fats. Check it out here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25590107/.

So stick with the known commodities like trout, cod, snapper, orange roughy and halibut, OK? Cheap is not always better.

Free Your Mind

To celebrate Independence Day here are some links that will free you from the group think that is the greatest threat to our freedom:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3797

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

Take a few minutes to liberate your mind and educate yourself. After all, an informed citizenry is the foundation of democracy.

Have a great Fourth of July weekend! Stay cool and don't shoot your gun in the city limits.

To Prove I Am No Weenie

I was able to make it through the entire length of this incredible video. I dare you to try:
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1438490562

The Lost Art of Visiting

We went to see Sweeney Todd on Christmas Day. For me it could not have been worse. Sure, the effects and lyrics and all were very clever and masterful. But can't we find a way to express our creativity without slashing people's throats? Just exactly what about this is entertaining? How far has our society stooped that we find such gratuitous violence cute and clever?

Most mass marketed movies contain such drivel; mindless, pointless violence done in an artful way is no redemption for the subject matter in my view. Now, I am not a weenie (although I do not like horror films), I get the whole adrenaline thing. But I just can't see how this junk is so main stream but movies like The Visitor barely get screened.

This wonderful movie reminded me of the Lives of Others, another pointed look at the ways people can come up with to torture one another without ever having to sharpen a razor. There are much more insidious ways that people can get to one another than slash and burn. The Visitor http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0857191/ is the story of a vacuous college professor who unwittingly becomes entwined in an illegal immigration miasma that must be repeated on a daily basis in this country. It is very real, most engaging and so poignant. But at bottom it is about how we interact as human beings with accessible material. It is thought provoking and entertaining and quite cleverly constructed. No blood though.

The Lives of Others http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/won the1996 Oscar for best foreign film is another example of this type of movie. This one involves a vacuous Stassi agent becoming caught up in the goings on with the people he is surveil-ing. Add these to your Netflix list for some movie watching that won't be merely a mental diversion but entertainment that gently provokes the use of your brain cells.

The End of War As We Know It?

While watching TV during the nine o'clock hour a couple of nights last week my husband was flipping between channels during commercials to AMC. (Cox ripped TCM from our line up without even telling us and then jacked up the bill $5! There is never anything on so I am not sure why we pay this except we love BRAVO channel, but I digress). AMC was showing Troy one night and The Last Samurai the next. It was clear just how formulaic these films are as both nights when flipping at about the same time of night each movie was in the throes of the huge battle scene.

The striking thing about these battles, aside from the fact that women are never directly involved, is just how ridiculous it all is. How does taking out the young and the strong really accomplish anything in the long run? Not very practical if you ask me. (And I am always amazed at how effervescent and energetically violent these people and their animals are despite the fact that there are thousands of them amassed in one place with no apparent access to food or water or waste facilities. But that is the movies for you. And how coordinated they all are when there were no cell phones!)

Then, on Saturday we went to the local art movie house to watch the Visitor (see next entry for a review). The preview trailer featured a film about treating and rehabbing the wounded soldiers in the middle east. A documentary, the themes were so powerful that people were tearing up just during the short excerpts. Check it out at www.fightingforlifethemovie.com

I realized that in our progress with technology, it is no longer the case that the people fighting these wars are sequestered from the rest of us. They are surviving at higher and higher rates but often with major physical repercussions. They are subsequently returning to society in large numbers. We will be dealing with the effects of this new warfare in ways that never so apparent in the past. It used to be that the soldiers died and the one's who didn't either compartmentalized the emotional toll and suppressed it or turned to drugs and either ended up homeless or in a half way house. These are all subsections of society that most people don't see on a daily basis.

But now, we have people who are coming back without limbs and with PTSD. They are returning to mainstream society and we are going to be grappling with these issues face to face, in our homes, schools and workplaces. We are more likely to see it in everyday life than in any war ever before. It seems to me that this interaction will bring home with the concept of the actual cost of war and how losing an arm or a life has no relationship whatsoever to the global economy. When we can no longer sequester the effects of this oddly illogical problem solving technique maybe then as a people human kind will truly begin to progress. Just a thought.

Aid for the Spiraling Grocery Bill

I was only somewhat joking the other day when I suggested to my fellow Community Food Connections board members that we adopt the slogan "Eat Local; Don't Die." The salmonella scare which follows the various E.Coli scares have not done enough to get people to notice that having a nationally based food distribution system not only makes food taste bad, it also increases the risk that it is bad. The FDA just cannot handle the massive job and the regulatory practices, like all huge legal schemes, contain a pile of unintended consequences that can actually squeeze producers of healthy and delicious food out of the market.
The other really bad aspect of the system is that we end up treating our food supply like a commodity which has become the victim of our creative financial times and is the subject of the latest economic bubble. All of this is driving up the cost of food.
But it doesn't bother me so much because the bulk of my food comes from the Farmer's Market. The price has remained steady as the shipping distance is small. The risk of bacteria is minimal as the stuff is not sitting around where it can be exposed and it is so fresh that it lasts much longer than store bought so there is less waste.
My food professional pal Judy Walker actually studies this sort of thing and writes about it so here is a link to her suggestions, which no so coincidentally include a number of things that I do: http://www.newhouse.com/stretch-your-food-dollar-with-these-tips-3.html
Let me know what you get out of it.