Cinematic Gems and other such things…

The movies? Who doesn’t like them? I mean, we as a country have been sitting in the dark since Edison learned how to capture motion on film enjoying our guilty pleasures. Now, with the advent of the DVD rental at the corner store and immediate delivery of movies through the mail, we can enjoy them with our own bathrooms and not all the cholesterol and over-priced soft drinks.

But there are some drawbacks to the home rental system. We miss the camaraderie of the crowd… we miss the hoopla of a simultaneous reaction by the audience… we miss the stumbling in the dark by those with a weak stomach or bladder. What we don’t  miss is the rudeness that has infected our movie theaters and our lives in general. Cell phones, hats and commentary have no place in the movie theater… or any theater for that matter. Enough about that… let’s just say, I haven’t set foot in a theater in so long I can’t actually remember the last time (maybe it was “A Mighty Wind… I am not sure). It will probably be a long time before I go back again… at least to a big city movie theater.

That said, I have been spending some time revisiting classics such as “The Godfather”, “Donnie Brasco” and “Shenandoah”. But every now and again, I watch something that just plain intrigues me. Let me give you a few examples.

“Congorama” is a film from Canada. It is mostly in French language so it has subtitles (alright, you can stop turning your noses up in the air… you can read, watch and listen all at the same time). It is the story of a man looking for his father, it is the story of electric cars before their time and it is the story of the Montreal World Fair of the late ’60’s. It is the story of another man searching for his mother who just happens to be… well, that would spoil it now, wouldn’t it? The main character looks a bit like Tim Blake Nelson and the film has a very familiar quality about it. The film offers glimpses of the beautiful Canadian countryside and the character of people. You should try to see it on the Independent Film Channel.

I also watched a very good documentary just this morning. It combined two of my favorite things… music and movies. The film is called “Ashes of American Flags” and follows the band Wilco on a tour. I am not sure of the year but a quick visit to IMDB (where I get most of my information) would cure that oversight. I became aware of Wilco when they teamed with Billy Bragg to put music to large amount of lyrics left behind by Woody Guthrie. I never heard them on the radio and this movie shows me why. They are a live music type of band and no FM pop garbage music station is going to play their stuff. The closest reference point I can give you is to say they look a lot like Barenaked Ladies but with much more talent. And they don’t fly around to gigs. They take a bus which I understand and relate to very well. Good music and good movie…

Finally, today, I want to talk about a movie that I think was largely overlooked by the public in spite of garnering a Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Meryl Streep (Can this woman do anything that sucks? I know there must be something of hers but I haven’t seen it. She has a few I can’t watch like “Sophie’s Choice” because it is just too hard but otherwise, I think she is the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford/whatever classic actress of our time.) The movie is “Julie & Julia” which is delightful intermixing of two women’s stories decades apart but joined by the love of cooking. Streep is paired for a second time with Stanley Tucci with whom she had an excellent outing in”The Devil Wears Prada”. They just seem to be made for each other. Her characterization of Julia Child is priceless and how she managed to carry off the role of a somewhat brusque, overweight, unpleasant sounding… well, big woman is nothing short of amazing. The movie also introduces to the world an actress who seems to be a newcomer but has plenty of credits(and once again, thanks to http://www.imdb.com). Her name is Amy Adams and she is just so human… and so real. She cold be anyone of a dozen women I know. And her enthusiasm for cooking and blogging really are an inspiration for what I am doing now. It was because of her ambitions to write and do what she loves that have made you the object of my rants. Blame her, but see the movie. It really is worth the time and if you think it is a “chick flick”, rethink that thought and realize that you are cutting yourself out of a whole bunch of movies with that kind of misogynistic, 20th Century brain processing.

That’s it… for now. Like I said, we will go many places and see many things through my warped perspective. Until then, the balcony doesn’t exist any more. What movie theater have you been going to?

Taking on the Middle East as an EMT-P… the road there.

I needed a job. I needed to put some money back into our account. I hadn’t worked in a while and things were looking bleak. So I went to where everyone lost and destitute eventually ends up… the Internet.

I posted my resume online in June and amazing, within the next day, a recruiter was in touch with me on behalf of a company called Northrop Grumman. Yup, the very company that makes airplanes but they do oh so much more than that. They have shipyards in Mississippi, aircraft plants throughout the world and a little known military consulting firm that started out during the Viet Nam war and has been engaged in the modernization of the Saudi Arabian National Guard. They have the task of taking what was once a camel based army firing old M-1 carbines and turning it into a modern army. Since the Saudi Arabian country is second only to the United States in per capita spending for its military (meaning that per citizen, only the US spends more for the military budget), they wanted the Defense Department to help them build a modern royal bodyguard force. The DoD contracted out the job to Vinnell Arabia over 30 years ago.

That is where I come in. I am a Nationally Registered Emergency Medical Technician- Paramedic. I have been involved in some kind of “helping people who are hurt” facet since I taught First Aid merit badge to other Boy Scouts at Camp Tapawingo in McCall, Idaho when I was 15 years old. I went to high school and college studying theater and then history and I graduated. I didn’t have a clue about what to do next. I was just told “Go to college”. So being a good, obedient American, I did what I was told.

I attended Boise State University (that’s right… but I predate the “Smurf Turf” by many years) and when I graduated in 1976 with a Liberal Arts Bachelor’s Degree in history, I figured that the world would just open up like an oyster for me. It didn’t… and I didn’t have a clue what to do next. But I had a friend who was employed by the fire department in my hometown of Boise, Idaho. And I hung around him so much during my last year of college, he finally said (I think at the prompting of his fellow firefighters so they could get rid of me), “Why don’t you get a job here?” It took about 5 minutes to make up my mind but there was one more thing Chuck (my fire department friend) had to show me. He took me up to the kitchen where there was a book that was about 2 inches thick and looked like a coffee table sized book. It was called “Traumatic Deaths” and was completely filled with color and black and white photos of dead people. They were dead from very cause imaginable. If it was traumatic, they made the book. There were people with guard rails through their heads, drownings, electrocutions… well, I think you get the picture (yes that was a very bad pun…). I did. Chuck was letting me know that I could be expected to see all this and deal with it. He was a Viet Nam vet and so he saw his share of trauma but he wanted me to be sure I could deal with it. After about 10 pages, the photos became just that… photos. I didn’t puke and I didn’t flinch. I knew I could deal with blood and now I knew I could deal with pictures. Dealing with real people would come in time but at least, I didn’t mess up the kitchen floor. Thanks, Chuck, by the way, if I have never thanked you before for that experience. You didn’t scare me.

Mind you, firefighting at the time was very new to EMS. In fact, in 1976, EMS didn’t exist in most places. In Boise, a nurse, John Fogg, bought an old ambulance and started Ada-Boi Ambulance. John would come to the central fire station and give us basic first aid lessons. We would respond to heart attacks and while there was little that we did besides comfort the patient and look good for the women (as fire fighters are want to do…) (by the way, there were no women firefighters at the time… not my call. Just not the right time…). Things were the way they were and I didn’t fit in with guys who quit high school to join the navy, which was the average education of the Boise firefighter in 1976. My first day on the job, my battalion chief came up to me and said “I understand you just graduated from college…”. Well, I was pretty proud of that and I swelled up my chest and replied “Yes, sir!” He looked me straight in the eye from his 5’1″ height and replied “That was your first fucking mistake…” So much for having a college degree and having the world open at my feet. It didn’t mean a thing to a guy who called anyone who wore an oxygen tank and mask into a fire a “pussy”. He was old school and he was in charge. He had friends and they all liked his style. Needless, to say, my career as a firefighter was short-lived. Me and my LIBERAL arts education and liberal ideas of the late ’70’s such as tolerance of gays and the acceptance of women as equals weren’t welcome and to be honest, I didn’t particularly care for them either. So we parted ways by mutual agreement in 1977. And once again, I had no job.

Enter Bogus Basin Ski Area… the next chapter in the long road to the Middle East in 2007. the story will continue…

My world and you are welcome to share it…

Good morning, afternoon, evening or what ever it may be where ever you may be.

My name is Patrick, This is my world. There is nothing special about my world. I am just an average everyday person. There is nothing in particular that makes me unique. I am just an human being trying to “scratch out a simple tune without breaking” my neck.

My world is inhabited by the characters from movies I have, memories of people I have met, thoughts of the places I have seen and all backed by a soundtrack that runs constantly in my head. As I said, you will find nothing here that you can’t find amid the flotsam and jetsam (if you know the difference between the two, you will be a worthy opponent on Jeopardy!) of any over-educated, underachieving mind… I just want to share all of it with you.

I sometimes think I should have been born in the time of Paris during the Intellectual Revolution when intelligentsia hired smart people to populate their salons after dinner and to talk amongst the guests. Benjamin Franklin was such a person and I am not saying I am as smart as the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States (another Jeopardy! clue… so you know the question?). I am just saying I would fit in well with the other social gadflies and ner’er-do-wells.

I will be commenting on movies, books, occasions, and what not. I am a political cat, I have done many interesting things in my life and I think I can string three sentences together into a coherent paragraph. This is my therapy and a way to communicate. If I didn’t let it out of my head, my head would probably explode at some point.

I hope you will read, comment and pass this on to your friends… or even your enemies if you want to bore them to death at times. Bear with me. Become a regular reader and “be my friend, Godfather?”

See you in the blogosphere.

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